A predecessor of DESCHALL
on
Brute Force
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I would like him to more clearly spell out the trends in Internet distributed computing. I would like to hear that DESCHALL was derived from project A and that it inspired projects B, C, and D. Was it was the original Internet distributed computing network?
I was involved (VERY slightly) in an effort called the "Distributed Internet Crack" to brute-force the keyspace of 48-bit RC5 in February 1997.
The project was the brainchild of Germano Caronni, a member of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zuerich.
The Distributed Internet Crack would be an immediate predecessor to DESCHALL, which started only 8 days after DIC successfully cracked 48-bit RC5.
The possibility of cracking DES is mentioned in the Distributed Internet Crack FAQ: "Paul Foley estimates that DES would be approximately 70 times more difficult to solve than 48-bit RC5". DIC solved 48-bit RC5 in about 13.5 days whereas DESCHALL took about 120 days (obviously with many more computers involved).
My impression at the time is that DIC and it's immediate predecessor, which involved much the same team and cracked 40-bit RC5 in 3.5 days, were among the first to use this sort of distributed computing (involving volunteered computer time, coordinated via the internet) on such a large scale. I'd be very interested in learning about any predecessors of these projects.
Reading over the FAQ for the Distributed Internet Crack is actually quite interesting after all these years. You can still see it here:
Solution: 74 a3 53 cc 0b 19
Time: from start of contest until Mon Feb 10 18:52:23 1997 (a little over 13 days)
Method: again, massive distributed coordinated keysearch
The Distributed Internet Crack is harnessing the power of thousands of computers over the internet to crack an encryption challenge offered by RSA Laboratories. The group first attacked the 40-bit RC5 Challenge, cracking it in about 3.5 hours
The Distributed Internet Crack broke new ground in several areas:
The most machines ever working together on a single, public, project: over 5000 at once, at probably over 10,000 altogether (machines often drop in and out over the course of the crack).
The most keys per second ever solved in a public project: 440 million keys per second at peak, 140 million keys per second over the course of the project.
The big reason we see so much more "bad" grammar/spelling now is because there is so much more informal writing now.
A lot of conversations that used to be held around the water cooler (a place not known as a font of High English Usage) are now held via email, IM, or bulletin boards.
In short, the problem may be more noticeable simply because we have more written record of it. But I'm not sure actual English usage is getting any worse. It's just that we are doing far, far more informal writing.
n(n-1) --> n^2 as n becomes large. The thing's an approximation, anyway. It's not intended to be valid to the zillionth decimal point.
Whether the "n(n-1)" is divided by 2, or 10, or 10000, or 10000000 is basically irrelevant because the whole point of the "law" is that the value of the network grows IN PROPORTION to n^2.
Obviously, the exact proportionality constant will vary depending on whether you are measuring the network's value in rubles, ducats, ounces of silver, pounds of camel dung, or whatever.
For most everyday uses, you just leave out the camel dung, er, I mean, the proportionality constant, altogether--because the whole point is to be able to compare the value of two networks. This one over here is 100X as valuable as this one. And this third one is 100000X as valuable as the first one. Etc.
Carefully going over the algebra involved is left as an exercise to the reader.
I had port 25 suddenly & unexpectedly blocked by SBC/Yahoo, too.
For some reason they have no problem sending all of their customers zillions of email ads, yet informing us of an important technical change like this is "impossible".
Once I realized what was going on, however, a quick Google search provided some answers.
There is an automated process to request unblocking Port 25 on a per-account basis. It took about 24 hours after filling out the request form, but it did work for me.
Opt out of port 25 blocking form (be sure to fill out account name/password correctly & choose as "Abuse Type", "**Opt Out Port 25".
Note that this is an automated request, so there is no point in filling up the description field with a detailed account of all your frustrations. Just make sure you've got your account info and "**Opt Out Port 25"--that's all you need!
I gotta say it's a little absurd to expect privacy
while you're on the road. I mean, the cops don't need a warrant to tail you. They don't need a warrant to put out an APB for your car.
Two things are different about this:
1. They planted the thing on your car, which is your property. (Is it OK for the police to reach in and slash your fuel line or you brake line, just because your car is parked in some public place? How about let the air out of the tires? There is some reasonable expectation that people, and the police most of all, will keep their grubby mitts off other people's property, no matter where it is located.)
2. Maybe there is no expectation of privacy when the car is on the public road. But cars are NOT always on the public road. Just for example, if my car is parked in my own garage with the garage door closed, I have a clear expectation of privacy.
But GPS works just as well in my garage as on the public road.
It's true that much of the essential mathematics one might cover in, say, a first year calculus class was discovered a few hundred years ago and hasn't substantially changed since.
Yet . . . both the application the average student will put calculus to, and the availability of helpful tools that affect the approach a teacher might take in communicating the underlying subject to the students, have DRAMATICALLY changed just in the years since I took calculus myself (approx. 1981-82).
I don't have to lecture slashdotters about the rise of the personal computer in that time and the effect that has had on both how we learn and use math . ..
In short, even if the subject matter doesn't change, the social context does. Great teaching has to bridge the gap between the subject matter and the PEOPLE who are learning it. People's interests and abilities (K-12 curriculum, etc.) are changing continually . ..
On the other hand--textbook companies have learned that if they just thrash the market with new editions every 3 years or so, profits increase dramatically.
I have observed, as have many others, that more often than not, changes supposedly justifying a new edition are extremely superficial (as little as changing fonts and correcting a few mistakes, in some cases). The fact is that editions could and would be changed much, much more seldom if the good of the students were the reason for the changes rather than ever higher profits for textbook publishers.
And . . . textbook publishing is has an extremely high profit margin, far higher than most other types of publishing.
FWIW, I remember being worked up, in 1981, that my textbooks cost $100/semester. In 2004 dollars that is approx. $219. My sense is that the average student is paying above $300/semester nowadays--that is to say, it's not just your imagination, textbook companies really are gouging students more than they used to.
Combining the formal methodology and psychological concerns of Chomskian linguistics with the insights of Schenkerian music theory, the authors attempt to describe how a listener experienced in the tonal idiom intuitively creates an understanding of a complete musical structure. . . . Each component is first exposed informally . . . and then expressed as a logically rigid set of "rules" of "musical grammar". . . . The latter consist of both well-formedness rules, which describe the minimal conditions for an intuitively understandable structure, and preference rules, which correspond to the intuitions that allow a listener to choose the preferred interpretation of the structure from all of the possible ones that conform to the well-formedness rules.
People still argue (a lot) about how successful Lerdahl and Jackendoff were in actually creating and codifying a generative theory of music. But it's very interesting book, and even more interesting idea, nonetheless.
Those of you interested in the dynamics of space flight, how much fuel it takes to get into various orbits or to leave the earth, whether or not you need to reach "escape velocity" and so on and on, ought to have a look at this:
I've take physics classes, calculated orbits, blah blah blah, but Orbiter gives you a hands-on feel for what it takes, both fuel-wise and navigation-wise, to get into low earth orbit, move from one orbit to another, match orbits with another spacecraft or satellite, fly to the moon, mars, etc. etc. etc.
Eye-opening, to say the least . . . and also a heck of a lot of fun!
Take for example a 200-pound person riding your basic 40-pound cruiser bike at a nice easy cycling speed of 12 MPH. Let's compare the grade with the number of watts the cyclist must put out to maintain 12 MPH on that grade:
Just for comparison Lance Armstrong can put out 600 watts at VO2max and on a long ride averages 245-280 watts.
First off, you can see why he doesn't weight 200 pounds and ride a 40-pound cruiser bike with fat, soft tires . . .
But, regardless of what kind of bike you ride and what the gears are, you just simply have to put out a surprisingly lot more power to keep the same speed going up hill vs. on the flat.
This is accentuated if you try to stay in a big gear/slow cadence up the hill (or if your bike runs out of low gears, so that even in your lowest gear you have a slow cadence). As the book review mentions, keeping a fast cadence is one of the ways cyclists "trick" their bodies into being able to put out a lot of wattage for a very long time without becoming exhausted.
At low cadence, your muscles load up with lactic acid quickly and so start to feel tired quickly.
At a higher cadence your entire aerobic system takes on the job of putting out the watts. No one individual muscle is putting out a whole lot of force at one time, so no muscle gets overworked and overtired quickly.
Subjectively, if you climb a hill at low cadence, your legs are pushing very very hard and soon they feel more and more tired until finally they are so tired you just can't push the pedals around one more time.
If you climb the same hill at high cadence, your heart rate climbs, your breathing rate climbs (eventually, if grade/speed are high enough, reaching a limit you can't pass), but it feels like your entire body is getting thrown into action, not just your legs. Each rotation of the pedals at high cadence is relatively light, easy, and quick, so more muscles in your legs can be involved (not just the largest ones) and no one muscle gets worked to the point of exhaustion.
(Please read the book for the "real" explanation of the physiology of high vs. low cadence--but that's the best I can do on short notice.)
"A bicycle can't stand on its own because it's two tired . . . "
>The news about the initial arrests of hundreds of >small businessmen and soccer moms will cause anti- >malware sales to skyrocket, and it will cease to >be as easy for spammers to find zombies on fast >networks.
Just FYI, and in a similar vein, when Pathfinder landed in 1999 I made a page with stereo pairs of the landing area (using images from Viking). Some of the hills, craters, etc., are pretty breathtaking when viewed in 3-D.
Pathfinder landing site in 3-D
Some interesting views taking from the Pathfinder lander, in stereo are here.
--B
This page has several photos of the landing site, showing the weather the day of the landing (it was fine) and also the famous "crater" within the landing zone:
Beagle2 landing site photos
Using immensely complex software of my own design, overcoming numerous technical obstacles and limitations of my operating system(s), and proving more than six completely new and previously unknown mathematical theorems in the process, I've managed to compress the 1 gigapixel image down to only one pixel.
Below is what I believe to be the lowest resolution, least detailed image ever created. I have been unable to find any record of a lower resolution photographic (i.e. non-scientific) digital image, or one that could be downloaded over your modem connection with any greater speed.
What's that old saying? "Open mouth, shoot self in foot." Something like that.
Diebold might win this case, but just the fact that it is being brought means that they have lost. All the facts will be aired and Diebold will lose the public trust. It's hard to imagine how a voting machine company could continue to operate under those circumstances.
But on to the case itself: According to the traditional four points courts consider in determing fair use, I'd say the EFF has a pretty reasonable case. (Though the DMCA will probably come into play and, as we all know, the DMCA can shred fair use rights entirely).
Here is my layman's analysis of the four points of Fair Use as they apply here:
1. "The nature of the copyrighted work"
As a long, factual type of work (as opposed to a work of artistic expression, something highly creative and original, or something like a short poem or song), these memos will enjoy the LEAST possible amount of protection of any kind of work, under this point. This point clearly weighs towards the students/ISPs.
2. "The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes"
The character of the use is clearly non-commercial, which weighs heavily in favor of fair use. Especially since students and a university were involved, there could be some argument made about "nonprofit" and "educational purposes". Here, too, is where EFF can argue convincincly that it is in the public interest to have these important documents in full public view. Furthermore, extracts from or summaries of the documents would not serve the public interest in the same way that the full set of verbatim documents do.
3. "The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole"
This is the only point that weighs heavily against the students/ISPs. Unfortunately, some judges will find in favor of the copyright holder if even ONE of the four points weighs in favor of the copyright holder.
4. "The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." The market value of the literary copyright on this work is $0, and this weighs heavily in favor of the students/ISPs. Diebold never intended to sell these documents or make a profit from their copyright on these documents.
Entirely irrelevant is the fact that Diebold may lose money because of negative publicity or as a result of the revelation of embarrassing information in the copyrighted material. I believe that there is good precedent on this matter (though I'll have to leave it to the lawyers among you for the details).
The court is supposed to weigh all four factors together. Three of the four factors weigh towards the students/ISPs, which is certainly good. But I did happen to read a case not that long ago (not being a lawyer, I can't give the citation, sorry) in which the judge summed up very similar to they way I just did, found that 3 of the 4 points clearly favored Fair Use, and then ruled for the copyright holder. In his opinion, the fact that ALL of the work had been copied outweighed all the rest of the points. (I seem to recall that the case was actually rather similar to this one, and involved verbatim copying of "Church" of Scientology documents which proved various nefarious actions on the part of church members.)
Someone said that copyright doesn't apply until something is published. That isn't true (at least in the U.S.) and hasn't been for many years (since 1979?). Copyright in a work exists from the moment it is fixed in a tangible medium (ie, from the moment it is written, typed, recorded, videotaped, etc. etc.).
No copyright registration or copyright notice is required. However--the damages that can be collected are severely limited if the work was not registered with the copyright office BEFORE the violations occured.
The copyright for the Memos was certainly not registered when this whole t
Converting exes, zips, gifs, various movie formats, etc., to MP3s was extremely common in the Napster days. They had various utilities to wrap your file up in an mp3 envelope, and then unwrap it on the other end. Since napster could only handle MP3 files, this was a little trick that turned napster into a general purpose file-sharing tool, not just an MP3-sharing tool.
FWIW, the copyright "conundrum" posed by the conversion of ordinary files into sound files isn't much of a conundrum at all. (The mp3-ified version of the file is simply a derivative work of the original file and you can work out the rest of the details from there.)
The real conundrum is why everyone thinks of P2P networks as being for stealing MP3 music and not for anything else.
P2P could be a sort of everyman's easy to set-up FTP server. But from day 1, the companies involved have pushed them as MP3 sharing tools and nothing else (as I mentioned before, Napster was for MP3s only--they didn't even try to PRETEND it was for non-copyrighted music until very late in the game.).
So the P2P companies have blown it from just about day 1. They could have been selling P2P as a useful general-purpose tool. They could have been making some real effort to promote legal, valid uses. But they didn't.
Meanwhile, if the music companies had publicly made a case against "music stealing" and sued 100 Napster users right in Napster's infancy, they could have nipped this right in the bud. Instead, they muddle along, suing the wrong people, letting everybody get used to the idea of MP3 sharing as a perfectly normal activity, missing every possible opportunity to turn the situation to their advantage, and generally acting like the over-capitalized, over-fed, calcified, ossified, petrified, walnut-brained dinosaurs they actually are.
So it's very hard to feel sorry for EITHER group of companies involved here--P2P companies or record companies.
Listening to the congressional hearings, one can scarcely avoid wiping away a tear shed in sympathy for the poor, starving musicians whose music is being stolen without compensation. But are the musicians going to get any portion of the compulsory license? Certainly not musicians whose music is owned by the big record companies . ..
Whatever happens, you can bet that some P2P companies might prosper, and the big record companies will prosper.
But I don't see much in this for the musician or the consumer . ..
In fact, the clamps put on by the compulsory license schemes I hear bandied about more and more often, are likely to benefit the large record companies and disfavor the independent musicians.
Just for example: I used to have several internet radio stations on Live365.com playing my own music. I didn't have millions of listeners, but I certainly had a few every day.
When the compulsory licensing scheme for internet radio came into play, Live365 had to start charging broadcasters hefty rates to cover the compulsory license fees. This priced me right out of my radio stations--even though ALL the music on them was mine and I completely owned the licenses to them.
Same with "licensed" P2P networks--my own MP3s appear on these networks from time to time, a situation of which I heartily approve. But would they appear on a "closed" system with compulsory licenses? Would they even be allowed there?
BTW, one of my pieces was indirectly mentioned in the article (follow the link about DNA music; mine was made by reading off DNA sequences into musical notes, rather than the more usual method of reading them off to make proteins). There's got to be a little karma in that, hasn't there?
>Notice how little (OK, none) of the public debate >is substantive: whether people should be allowed to >download music for listening purposes; whether the >interests of media providers outweigh the privacy >interests of citizens; whether it's fair to allow >the RIAA to charge people $15,000 - or even >imprison them, or destroy their computers - in >defense of fifty-year-old music tracks.
Or what percentage of the damages they collect will be going to the artists who created the music, as opposed to the giant, insatiable, and irrelevant corporate maw. (Hint: 0%)
Microsoft officials strongly deny that NT caused the Yorktown's systems to fail. The responsibility for ensuring ship operations doesn't rest with the OS but with Yorktown's system administrators and software programmers, who should have safeguarded the application from propagating the errors, company officials said. . . .
But some Navy officials are concerned that NT does not have the capability to protect the network from crashing when applications fail.
"Using Windows NT, which is known to have some failure modes, on a warship is similar to hoping that luck will be in our favor," wrote Anthony DiGiorgio, an engineer with the Atlantic Fleet Technical Support Center, in a June 1998 article titled "The Smart Ship is Not The Answer."
Supreme Court Justice Breyer found that only about 2% of copyrights between 55 and 75 years old retain commercial value.
Between 55 and 75 years ago, nothing was copyrighted unless the author made a specific effort to register it with the Copyright Office.
Nowadays, anything you create (write, sing, paint, etc. etc. etc.) is afforded copyright protection from the instant you fix it in a tangible medium (write it, record it, paint it, etc.). [1]
The point is--between 55 and 75 years FROM NOW, it isn't going to be 2% of copyrights that will still have any value. It will be more like 0.00000002%.
Every letter, every web page, every email, every little bit software you hacked together in an evening, every digital snapshot, every tape you make for your girlfriend . . . all copyrighted and locked away, unable to be used by anyone for 50 years after your death.
Naturally there will be a lot of useless junk in there. But on the other hand, there will be our entire cultural heritage--the entire record we leave behind--all under copyright protection for no good reason.
Slashdot Mirror
I was involved (VERY slightly) in an effort called the "Distributed Internet Crack" to brute-force the keyspace of 48-bit RC5 in February 1997.
The project was the brainchild of Germano Caronni, a member of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zuerich.
The Distributed Internet Crack would be an immediate predecessor to DESCHALL, which started only 8 days after DIC successfully cracked 48-bit RC5.
The possibility of cracking DES is mentioned in the Distributed Internet Crack FAQ: "Paul Foley estimates that DES would be approximately 70 times more difficult to solve than 48-bit RC5". DIC solved 48-bit RC5 in about 13.5 days whereas DESCHALL took about 120 days (obviously with many more computers involved).
My impression at the time is that DIC and it's immediate predecessor, which involved much the same team and cracked 40-bit RC5 in 3.5 days, were among the first to use this sort of distributed computing (involving volunteered computer time, coordinated via the internet) on such a large scale. I'd be very interested in learning about any predecessors of these projects.
Reading over the FAQ for the Distributed Internet Crack is actually quite interesting after all these years. You can still see it here:
Also a press release on the project's successful conclusion:
Some quotes from the FAQ:
Solution: 74 a3 53 cc 0b 19
Time: from start of contest until Mon Feb 10 18:52:23 1997 (a little over 13 days)
Method: again, massive distributed coordinated keysearch
The Distributed Internet Crack is harnessing the power of thousands of computers over the internet to crack an encryption challenge offered by RSA Laboratories. The group first attacked the 40-bit RC5 Challenge, cracking it in about 3.5 hours
The Distributed Internet Crack broke new ground in several areas:
Spelling/grammar trolls are always in bad taste.
The big reason we see so much more "bad" grammar/spelling now is because there is so much more informal writing now.
A lot of conversations that used to be held around the water cooler (a place not known as a font of High English Usage) are now held via email, IM, or bulletin boards.
In short, the problem may be more noticeable simply because we have more written record of it. But I'm not sure actual English usage is getting any worse. It's just that we are doing far, far more informal writing.
And is that necessarily a bad thing?
> n(n-1)/2 = n^2 ????
>
>Ehhh, doubtful....
n(n-1) --> n^2 as n becomes large. The thing's an approximation, anyway. It's not intended to be valid to the zillionth decimal point.
Whether the "n(n-1)" is divided by 2, or 10, or 10000, or 10000000 is basically irrelevant because the whole point of the "law" is that the value of the network grows IN PROPORTION to n^2.
Obviously, the exact proportionality constant will vary depending on whether you are measuring the network's value in rubles, ducats, ounces of silver, pounds of camel dung, or whatever.
For most everyday uses, you just leave out the camel dung, er, I mean, the proportionality constant, altogether--because the whole point is to be able to compare the value of two networks. This one over here is 100X as valuable as this one. And this third one is 100000X as valuable as the first one. Etc.
Carefully going over the algebra involved is left as an exercise to the reader.
For some reason they have no problem sending all of their customers zillions of email ads, yet informing us of an important technical change like this is "impossible".
Once I realized what was going on, however, a quick Google search provided some answers.
There is an automated process to request unblocking Port 25 on a per-account basis. It took about 24 hours after filling out the request form, but it did work for me.
Help page from SBC/Yahoo.
Opt out of port 25 blocking form (be sure to fill out account name/password correctly & choose as "Abuse Type", "**Opt Out Port 25".
Note that this is an automated request, so there is no point in filling up the description field with a detailed account of all your frustrations. Just make sure you've got your account info and "**Opt Out Port 25"--that's all you need!
Two things are different about this:
1. They planted the thing on your car, which is your property. (Is it OK for the police to reach in and slash your fuel line or you brake line, just because your car is parked in some public place? How about let the air out of the tires? There is some reasonable expectation that people, and the police most of all, will keep their grubby mitts off other people's property, no matter where it is located.)
2. Maybe there is no expectation of privacy when the car is on the public road. But cars are NOT always on the public road. Just for example, if my car is parked in my own garage with the garage door closed, I have a clear expectation of privacy.
But GPS works just as well in my garage as on the public road.
It's true that much of the essential mathematics one might cover in, say, a first year calculus class was discovered a few hundred years ago and hasn't substantially changed since.
.
.
Yet . . . both the application the average student will put calculus to, and the availability of helpful tools that affect the approach a teacher might take in communicating the underlying subject to the students, have DRAMATICALLY changed just in the years since I took calculus myself (approx. 1981-82).
I don't have to lecture slashdotters about the rise of the personal computer in that time and the effect that has had on both how we learn and use math . .
In short, even if the subject matter doesn't change, the social context does. Great teaching has to bridge the gap between the subject matter and the PEOPLE who are learning it. People's interests and abilities (K-12 curriculum, etc.) are changing continually . .
On the other hand--textbook companies have learned that if they just thrash the market with new editions every 3 years or so, profits increase dramatically.
I have observed, as have many others, that more often than not, changes supposedly justifying a new edition are extremely superficial (as little as changing fonts and correcting a few mistakes, in some cases). The fact is that editions could and would be changed much, much more seldom if the good of the students were the reason for the changes rather than ever higher profits for textbook publishers.
And . . . textbook publishing is has an extremely high profit margin, far higher than most other types of publishing.
FWIW, I remember being worked up, in 1981, that my textbooks cost $100/semester. In 2004 dollars that is approx. $219. My sense is that the average student is paying above $300/semester nowadays--that is to say, it's not just your imagination, textbook companies really are gouging students more than they used to.
Here is a brief summary, by Bill Tilghman:
People still argue (a lot) about how successful Lerdahl and Jackendoff were in actually creating and codifying a generative theory of music. But it's very interesting book, and even more interesting idea, nonetheless.--Brent
bhugh [at] mwsc.edu
Eye-opening, to say the least . . . and also a heck of a lot of fun!
Take for example a 200-pound person riding your basic 40-pound cruiser bike at a nice easy cycling speed of 12 MPH. Let's compare the grade with the number of watts the cyclist must put out to maintain 12 MPH on that grade:
Figures from the Bicycle Speed and Power Calculator.Just for comparison Lance Armstrong can put out 600 watts at VO2max and on a long ride averages 245-280 watts.
First off, you can see why he doesn't weight 200 pounds and ride a 40-pound cruiser bike with fat, soft tires . . .
But, regardless of what kind of bike you ride and what the gears are, you just simply have to put out a surprisingly lot more power to keep the same speed going up hill vs. on the flat.
This is accentuated if you try to stay in a big gear/slow cadence up the hill (or if your bike runs out of low gears, so that even in your lowest gear you have a slow cadence). As the book review mentions, keeping a fast cadence is one of the ways cyclists "trick" their bodies into being able to put out a lot of wattage for a very long time without becoming exhausted.
At low cadence, your muscles load up with lactic acid quickly and so start to feel tired quickly.
At a higher cadence your entire aerobic system takes on the job of putting out the watts. No one individual muscle is putting out a whole lot of force at one time, so no muscle gets overworked and overtired quickly.
Subjectively, if you climb a hill at low cadence, your legs are pushing very very hard and soon they feel more and more tired until finally they are so tired you just can't push the pedals around one more time.
If you climb the same hill at high cadence, your heart rate climbs, your breathing rate climbs (eventually, if grade/speed are high enough, reaching a limit you can't pass), but it feels like your entire body is getting thrown into action, not just your legs. Each rotation of the pedals at high cadence is relatively light, easy, and quick, so more muscles in your legs can be involved (not just the largest ones) and no one muscle gets worked to the point of exhaustion.
(Please read the book for the "real" explanation of the physiology of high vs. low cadence--but that's the best I can do on short notice.)
"A bicycle can't stand on its own because it's two tired . . . "
>The news about the initial arrests of hundreds of
>small businessmen and soccer moms will cause anti-
>malware sales to skyrocket, and it will cease to
>be as easy for spammers to find zombies on fast
>networks.
Of course . . . the "RIAA approach".
And a way to get a free pair of red/blue glasses to view the anaglyphs.
And some anaglyph 3D views from the Spirit lander.
Just FYI, and in a similar vein, when Pathfinder landed in 1999 I made a page with stereo pairs of the landing area (using images from Viking). Some of the hills, craters, etc., are pretty breathtaking when viewed in 3-D. Pathfinder landing site in 3-D Some interesting views taking from the Pathfinder lander, in stereo are here. --B
This page has several photos of the landing site, showing the weather the day of the landing (it was fine) and also the famous "crater" within the landing zone: Beagle2 landing site photos
Below is what I believe to be the lowest resolution, least detailed image ever created. I have been unable to find any record of a lower resolution photographic (i.e. non-scientific) digital image, or one that could be downloaded over your modem connection with any greater speed.
Enjoy:
What's that old saying? "Open mouth, shoot self in foot." Something like that.
Diebold might win this case, but just the fact that it is being brought means that they have lost. All the facts will be aired and Diebold will lose the public trust. It's hard to imagine how a voting machine company could continue to operate under those circumstances.
But on to the case itself: According to the traditional four points courts consider in determing fair use, I'd say the EFF has a pretty reasonable case. (Though the DMCA will probably come into play and, as we all know, the DMCA can shred fair use rights entirely).
Here is my layman's analysis of the four points of Fair Use as they apply here:
1. "The nature of the copyrighted work"
As a long, factual type of work (as opposed to a work of artistic expression, something highly creative and original, or something like a short poem or song), these memos will enjoy the LEAST possible amount of protection of any kind of work, under this point. This point clearly weighs towards the students/ISPs.
2. "The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes"
The character of the use is clearly non-commercial, which weighs heavily in favor of fair use. Especially since students and a university were involved, there could be some argument made about "nonprofit" and "educational purposes". Here, too, is where EFF can argue convincincly that it is in the public interest to have these important documents in full public view. Furthermore, extracts from or summaries of the documents would not serve the public interest in the same way that the full set of verbatim documents do.
3. "The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole"
This is the only point that weighs heavily against the students/ISPs. Unfortunately, some judges will find in favor of the copyright holder if even ONE of the four points weighs in favor of the copyright holder.
4. "The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." The market value of the literary copyright on this work is $0, and this weighs heavily in favor of the students/ISPs. Diebold never intended to sell these documents or make a profit from their copyright on these documents.
Entirely irrelevant is the fact that Diebold may lose money because of negative publicity or as a result of the revelation of embarrassing information in the copyrighted material. I believe that there is good precedent on this matter (though I'll have to leave it to the lawyers among you for the details).
The court is supposed to weigh all four factors together. Three of the four factors weigh towards the students/ISPs, which is certainly good. But I did happen to read a case not that long ago (not being a lawyer, I can't give the citation, sorry) in which the judge summed up very similar to they way I just did, found that 3 of the 4 points clearly favored Fair Use, and then ruled for the copyright holder. In his opinion, the fact that ALL of the work had been copied outweighed all the rest of the points. (I seem to recall that the case was actually rather similar to this one, and involved verbatim copying of "Church" of Scientology documents which proved various nefarious actions on the part of church members.)
Someone said that copyright doesn't apply until something is published. That isn't true (at least in the U.S.) and hasn't been for many years (since 1979?). Copyright in a work exists from the moment it is fixed in a tangible medium (ie, from the moment it is written, typed, recorded, videotaped, etc. etc.).
No copyright registration or copyright notice is required. However--the damages that can be collected are severely limited if the work was not registered with the copyright office BEFORE the violations occured.
The copyright for the Memos was certainly not registered when this whole t
FWIW, the copyright "conundrum" posed by the conversion of ordinary files into sound files isn't much of a conundrum at all. (The mp3-ified version of the file is simply a derivative work of the original file and you can work out the rest of the details from there.)
The real conundrum is why everyone thinks of P2P networks as being for stealing MP3 music and not for anything else.
P2P could be a sort of everyman's easy to set-up FTP server. But from day 1, the companies involved have pushed them as MP3 sharing tools and nothing else (as I mentioned before, Napster was for MP3s only--they didn't even try to PRETEND it was for non-copyrighted music until very late in the game.).
So the P2P companies have blown it from just about day 1. They could have been selling P2P as a useful general-purpose tool. They could have been making some real effort to promote legal, valid uses. But they didn't.
Meanwhile, if the music companies had publicly made a case against "music stealing" and sued 100 Napster users right in Napster's infancy, they could have nipped this right in the bud. Instead, they muddle along, suing the wrong people, letting everybody get used to the idea of MP3 sharing as a perfectly normal activity, missing every possible opportunity to turn the situation to their advantage, and generally acting like the over-capitalized, over-fed, calcified, ossified, petrified, walnut-brained dinosaurs they actually are.
So it's very hard to feel sorry for EITHER group of companies involved here--P2P companies or record companies.
Listening to the congressional hearings, one can scarcely avoid wiping away a tear shed in sympathy for the poor, starving musicians whose music is being stolen without compensation. But are the musicians going to get any portion of the compulsory license? Certainly not musicians whose music is owned by the big record companies . . .
Whatever happens, you can bet that some P2P companies might prosper, and the big record companies will prosper. But I don't see much in this for the musician or the consumer . . .
In fact, the clamps put on by the compulsory license schemes I hear bandied about more and more often, are likely to benefit the large record companies and disfavor the independent musicians. Just for example: I used to have several internet radio stations on Live365.com playing my own music. I didn't have millions of listeners, but I certainly had a few every day.
When the compulsory licensing scheme for internet radio came into play, Live365 had to start charging broadcasters hefty rates to cover the compulsory license fees. This priced me right out of my radio stations--even though ALL the music on them was mine and I completely owned the licenses to them.
Same with "licensed" P2P networks--my own MP3s appear on these networks from time to time, a situation of which I heartily approve. But would they appear on a "closed" system with compulsory licenses? Would they even be allowed there?
BTW, one of my pieces was indirectly mentioned in the article (follow the link about DNA music; mine was made by reading off DNA sequences into musical notes, rather than the more usual method of reading them off to make proteins). There's got to be a little karma in that, hasn't there?
See (or should we say, hear?) Music of the Human Genome
--B
>Now, for a file of all zeros, hey, I agree, you
>can do a lot better. So, how often do you download
>files containing nothing but zero?
Er, every time I visit Slashdot?
>Notice how little (OK, none) of the public debate
>is substantive: whether people should be allowed to
>download music for listening purposes; whether the
>interests of media providers outweigh the privacy
>interests of citizens; whether it's fair to allow
>the RIAA to charge people $15,000 - or even
>imprison them, or destroy their computers - in
>defense of fifty-year-old music tracks.
Or what percentage of the damages they collect will be going to the artists who created the music, as opposed to the giant, insatiable, and irrelevant corporate maw. (Hint: 0%)
Supreme Court Justice Breyer found that only about 2% of copyrights between 55 and 75 years old retain commercial value. Between 55 and 75 years ago, nothing was copyrighted unless the author made a specific effort to register it with the Copyright Office. Nowadays, anything you create (write, sing, paint, etc. etc. etc.) is afforded copyright protection from the instant you fix it in a tangible medium (write it, record it, paint it, etc.). [1] The point is--between 55 and 75 years FROM NOW, it isn't going to be 2% of copyrights that will still have any value. It will be more like 0.00000002%. Every letter, every web page, every email, every little bit software you hacked together in an evening, every digital snapshot, every tape you make for your girlfriend . . . all copyrighted and locked away, unable to be used by anyone for 50 years after your death. Naturally there will be a lot of useless junk in there. But on the other hand, there will be our entire cultural heritage--the entire record we leave behind--all under copyright protection for no good reason.