Whether this reflects higher inherent complexity and still evolving process or simply acceptance of crappy quality is harder to discern.
Acceptance of crappy quality, I'd say. Now, take video games (pre-Internet.) You ship a product on a ROM cartridge or a CD, that has no way of ever being updated except by shipping the customer a new media... well. Believe me, the reliability of those products approaches unity, because a single software error could (and has) cost millions. Consequently, it was worth the investment in design and quality assurance to make the product reliable. Contrast this to, say, any modern operating system where the programmers know that even if they screw up royally they can just fix it with the next maintenance release.
If they were really serious about their DRM, they'd never trust software to protect a key.
I think the reality is they're not, at least not in an NSA sort of way. This is just a bar that has to be raised high enough to keep the ordinary viewer out in the cold, so far as content distribution and usage is concerned. These people aren't stupid (misguided, perhaps, but certainly not stupid) and I'm sure they are fully expecting AACS to be cracked at some point, at least partially. But that doesn't matter if that average viewer has no access to the tools needed to do it. That's pretty much the way it is with CSS now... how many non-technojocks do you know that have any idea what DeCSS or DVDShrink are, or would know where to go to get a copy of AnyDVD? CSS is still working just fine, for what it is.
No, in the case of your employer it's still snitching: the business relationship is between you and company for which you work. The IRS inserted themselves into that relationship in order to extract their pound of flesh before the worker receives it. That doesn't make such "reporting" intrinsically right, in anything but a legal sense.
Ah, all right. Just use the 100 kW model and volatilize the bastard. You'll have fewer handicapped individuals around when the war is over that way.
Re:The hackers are moving too early...
on
AACS Device Key Found
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
That's a good point... of course, if you make modifications of sufficient magnitude to frustrate existing decryption tools, odds are you just created a whole new set of security holes. Those will also be found. Also, like CSS before it, the technology will have to be implemented by every video hardware and software maker on the planet (well, in China anyway) and sooner or later the details will get out. Furthermore, if (and it's currently a big "if" given the childlike manner this whole media war is being played out by the likes of Sony, Microsoft and the rest) either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray actually does take off and manage to replace the DVD, they'll find themselves in the same situation they were in with CSS. Not that it matters: as the MPAA has admitted the goal is to keep the bar high enough that the vast majority of consumers have no way to bypass the DRM. There's a certain acceptance by these people that there will always be a some degree of infringement going on, they just don't want it too widespread.
Ultimately, the only real way to protect content is going to have remote-controlled content-monitoring LCD shutters surgically implanted in everyone's eyes as soon as they are old enough to enjoy TV (and these creeps would do just that if they could get away with it.) Anything else will be circumvented sooner or later, which they know perfectly well. It's also why the content companies are pushing so damned hard to export US/EU-style IP law around the world and have copyright infringement treated as a heinous crime akin to murder. Once the cops (everywhere) are accustomed to treating copyright infringers as serious criminals, the MPAA and their ilk are hoping and praying that people won't do it anymore.
I think they will be disappointed. I hope they will. There aren't enough jails to hold everyone that ever violated a copyright, or exercised fair-use rights in countries that support them.
Don't bother him with facts. You'll just distort his prefabricated worldview, and you wouldn't want to do that (just be sure to be completely reasonable when discussing the stupidass things his country's government does, otherwise you might inadvertently expose some hypocrisy.)
He also forgets that the our military has very limited ability to operate within the territorial United States (e.g. the Posse Comitatus Act.) Oh, I agree that there are many someones, somewhere, who bear the responsibility for not stopping that tragedy, especially after all the billions we've spent on security. However, the finger should be squarely pointed at civilian agencies such as the FBI, CIA, NSA, and other organizations referred to by various three-letter abbreviations (if it happens again, I think the letters DHS would top the list.) The United States military is not really at fault for what amounts to a failure of domestic intelligence and/or the ability act upon it.
On the other hand, if all you want to do is remove an enemy sharpshooter from action just focus a 100 mW laser at his scope for a few milliseconds. He won't be doing much shooting after that.
Oh, there probably are civilian applications (bonding Teflon to frying pans, that sort of thing) but as a military weapon it seems to me that a high-powered CW device is less destructive than a really-high-powered pulse laser.
My local theaters have been doing that for years. At first they'd show a half hour of crap, so people just began to show up half an hour after showtime. Now they may do fifteen minutes, they may show up to fifty-five minutes (I sat through almost an hour of local car dealerships, florists and fast-food restaurants begging me for business.) Really torques me into a pretzel. Let me tell you, the back row of seats has gotten much more popular recently (if you've got to wait an hour you might as well enjoy yourself, I guess.)
It's also reduced the amount of money I spend on tickets to about ten percent of what it used to be. I mean, if I know, in advance, that no matter how good the movie I'm going to be frustrated and annoyed by the time it starts I have to think twice about going. So now we find other ways to entertain ourselves on an evening out. I hear studio execs complaining about theater revenue every so often: my advice to them would be a. produce more films worth the admission price and b. skip the goddamn commercials. Nobody likes commercials, especially after we paid to view your product! That's just sleazy, any way you slice it. I register the same complaint about cable TV, which is why I don't have it.
Yes, I know that the theater owners have their own sob story, about how the studios and distribution companies have squeezed all the profit out of theater operation so they have to subsidize their businesses with advertising. Now that may be, but conversely I am under no obligation to support what has become a disappointing experience.
No, but when you start having vast quantities of unnecessary or harmful laws on the books, you will see more "crime", although it's crime that is crime in name only.
Oddly enough, many would. I would. In my case, for example, content producers are losing their share of my income simply because I won't buy their offerings if they do have Digital Restrictions Management. Maybe I'm an anomaly outside of the Slashdot crowd, but everyone I've spoken to who has had a bad encounter with DRM (and they are legion) has come to the same conclusion. It just isn't worth the hassle, and the risk. Frankly, I don't need most of the products that are currently being DRM'ed. I just don't. Okay, I do buy the occasional DVD, but they'll only keep getting my money so long as I know I can strip the DRM if I so choose. If I cannot do that, I can't protect my investment. Consequently, if the distribution folks ever succeed in creating unbreakable DRM, or preventing me from accessing the requisite tools, my money will stay in my pocket. They have to earn my respect before they can earn my dollars.
Given enough females, I'm sure I could do better than 150 in the course of a year. I might need to take some vacation time when that year is up, however.
Laws usually have more than one reason for existing, and they are always open to interpretation.
Absolutely, and proportionate response is just one aspect... collateral damage is another. You set up a 12-gauge to take out a burglar, well. Death is a disproportionate response to theft, I agree, but he took his chances and lost. On the other hand, don't be surprised to find yourself on manslaughter charges because you also blew holes in the paperboy's head as he passed by on his bike.
This idiot programmer doesn't seem to grasp that his program has no awareness of whose data he might be destroying. Sometimes more than one individual uses a computer, sometimes even honest people don't know what they're doing and make mistakes, and sometimes software malfunctions. The simple knowledge on my part that this character's products have a deliberate destructive potential built right in is sufficient to keep me from ever installing or buying it. Why chance it? It would be like installing a trojan with unknown capabilities on purpose!
Frankly, this guy sounds about as principled as the average RIAA executive, and not someone with whom I would choose to do business anyway. In any event, the wanton destruction of someone else's property as a deterrent against their illegally using your own product is morally bankrupt from the get-go.
Yes, well, at least that cracker with the.ru TLD won't be able to grab a couple hundred thousand such records all at once. Not so much security-by-obscurity as it is security-by-inconvenience.
Or is there some corporate smear money being exchanged here?
Well, I certainly wouldn't put it past the innovator from Redmond to use this guy to spread some more FUD, but if so, they've only managed to encourage the competition to improve their codebase.
"World class" is a relative term, relative to what other countries have.
And relative to what I'm getting from my provider here in the U.S., I'd say you probably still qualify as world class. Last December I upgraded to the next performance tier (another ten bucks a month) and my speeds dropped by half. Go figure. Needless to say, I complained (vociferously!) about this but nothing changed, so I went back to the previous tier and my speeds went back up to where they were before. It's enough to make you throw up: they got an extra thirty bucks for providing me with half-speed for a few months.
My dial-up connection is very consistent. It is a rock steady 28.8 Kbps and does not slow down. Text only web browsing works quite well. FTP downloads/uploads are a consistent 3 KB/s.
When I'm taking a shower, and my girlfriend happens to flush the toilet or turn on the tap, the shower gets dangerously hot. I thought I needed a capacity upgrade, so that when someone else uses water I don't get scaled. Then I realized that if I just turn the shower down to a tiny trickle, it doesn't matter if anyone else uses water!
Youtube and torrents aside, there are legitimate uses for broadband. Keeping your Windows box patched up can take a chunk of bandwidth, and there are large files that people need that don't involve copyright infringement. But I agree, a lot of Internet use is pretty trivial. On the other hand, it's a form of entertainment to a lot of people, people who are willing to pay for it. No different from cable TV in that respect. The difference is that the cable TV providers don't have the option of overselling their capacity, because their head end provides all the data the subscriber is entitled to. In the case of Internet access, it's a different matter: they sold us one thing, and when demand got heavy enough, we found out that it was really a house of cards and they'd lied to us.
There are a couple of things you aren't supposed to criticize on Slashdot. NASA is one of them. Linux is the other. Besides, it's best to be patient about such things... if your commentary is worth the points someone will come along and fix it.
I don't think most of the ISPs even have common carrier status. The telcos do, when it comes to phone service, but as a data service operator they don't. I believe (and someone who knows more can correct me) that they reason they don't want to be considered common carriers is that they would be subject to additional (read: expensive) regulatory burdens.
I think that, no matter where you go, it's a matter of the luck of the draw. I went to Canada on business, in 2004 I think (when did the big Eastern seaboard power failure happen?) and when I got off the plane I walked over to the row of booths where the security folks were. There was nobody else there (it was about 11:00 at night) and the humorless, buzz-cut, military type behind the counter asked me if I was here on business or pleasure, looked at my ID (I didn't have a passport, just my driver's license) and waved me on with a "have a pleasant stay, sir." I was pleasantly surprised, actually. On the way back... well. There were metal detectors, X-rays, and a five hour wait in line for the privilege in a room where the air conditioning had failed, all that before I got anywhere near a plane. Plus I had this arrogant little prick of a security guard jam his goddamn handheld detector into my crotch. Ouch. I told him he'd better damn well watch where he put that thing. Everybody around laughed and thought it was funny. Ha ha. No apology from that asshole, of course. Needless to say, I don't have much to say about the way my own people handled me on the way back. And that was before the new passport requirements.
The thing that really steams me is that, in the USA, huge amounts of people cheat the system by just driving across the damn border (and I don't mean Canada's, either.) All this "Real ID" baloney, coupled with all the RFID'd passports and surveillance crap that we have to put up with nowadays, won't do anything about that. But it will probably make it a lot harder the next time my company sends me up to Canada on business.
Some things are best left forgotten. If I committed some crime in the distant past, was caught and paid my dues, I shouldn't be penalized for it now. Besides, what they're really doing isn't so much keeping out the riff-raff, but selecting for the really sharp criminals, you know... the ones who were smart enough to never get caught. Frankly, you're welcome to 'em.
More to the point, copyright and patent law (at least here in the U.S. and apparently the EU and anyone else foolishly interested in "harmonization") are no longer about supplying economic incentive to encourage the creation of new works. They are now about protecting the new and existing works of a select few forever. In that light, punishing this individual so severely is even less rational: he violated laws that were already deliberately broken and no longer serve the interests of the population (creator or consumer) after being turned into extreme protectionist measures.
This all comes down to balance... when the law disrepects the people, people tend to disrespect the law. Unless, of course, a given population has been successfully brainwashed into a sheep-like mentality, as has happened here in the United States.
As John Mayer's "Waitin' for the World to Change" pointed out, "When you trust your television, what you get is what you got, 'cause when they own the information, they can bend it all they want." It's pretty bent now, all right.
Slashdot Mirror
Whether this reflects higher inherent complexity and still evolving process or simply acceptance of crappy quality is harder to discern.
... well. Believe me, the reliability of those products approaches unity, because a single software error could (and has) cost millions. Consequently, it was worth the investment in design and quality assurance to make the product reliable. Contrast this to, say, any modern operating system where the programmers know that even if they screw up royally they can just fix it with the next maintenance release.
Acceptance of crappy quality, I'd say. Now, take video games (pre-Internet.) You ship a product on a ROM cartridge or a CD, that has no way of ever being updated except by shipping the customer a new media
If they were really serious about their DRM, they'd never trust software to protect a key.
... how many non-technojocks do you know that have any idea what DeCSS or DVDShrink are, or would know where to go to get a copy of AnyDVD? CSS is still working just fine, for what it is.
I think the reality is they're not, at least not in an NSA sort of way. This is just a bar that has to be raised high enough to keep the ordinary viewer out in the cold, so far as content distribution and usage is concerned. These people aren't stupid (misguided, perhaps, but certainly not stupid) and I'm sure they are fully expecting AACS to be cracked at some point, at least partially. But that doesn't matter if that average viewer has no access to the tools needed to do it. That's pretty much the way it is with CSS now
No, in the case of your employer it's still snitching: the business relationship is between you and company for which you work. The IRS inserted themselves into that relationship in order to extract their pound of flesh before the worker receives it. That doesn't make such "reporting" intrinsically right, in anything but a legal sense.
Ah, all right. Just use the 100 kW model and volatilize the bastard. You'll have fewer handicapped individuals around when the war is over that way.
That's a good point ... of course, if you make modifications of sufficient magnitude to frustrate existing decryption tools, odds are you just created a whole new set of security holes. Those will also be found. Also, like CSS before it, the technology will have to be implemented by every video hardware and software maker on the planet (well, in China anyway) and sooner or later the details will get out. Furthermore, if (and it's currently a big "if" given the childlike manner this whole media war is being played out by the likes of Sony, Microsoft and the rest) either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray actually does take off and manage to replace the DVD, they'll find themselves in the same situation they were in with CSS. Not that it matters: as the MPAA has admitted the goal is to keep the bar high enough that the vast majority of consumers have no way to bypass the DRM. There's a certain acceptance by these people that there will always be a some degree of infringement going on, they just don't want it too widespread.
Ultimately, the only real way to protect content is going to have remote-controlled content-monitoring LCD shutters surgically implanted in everyone's eyes as soon as they are old enough to enjoy TV (and these creeps would do just that if they could get away with it.) Anything else will be circumvented sooner or later, which they know perfectly well. It's also why the content companies are pushing so damned hard to export US/EU-style IP law around the world and have copyright infringement treated as a heinous crime akin to murder. Once the cops (everywhere) are accustomed to treating copyright infringers as serious criminals, the MPAA and their ilk are hoping and praying that people won't do it anymore.
I think they will be disappointed. I hope they will. There aren't enough jails to hold everyone that ever violated a copyright, or exercised fair-use rights in countries that support them.
Don't bother him with facts. You'll just distort his prefabricated worldview, and you wouldn't want to do that (just be sure to be completely reasonable when discussing the stupidass things his country's government does, otherwise you might inadvertently expose some hypocrisy.)
He also forgets that the our military has very limited ability to operate within the territorial United States (e.g. the Posse Comitatus Act.) Oh, I agree that there are many someones, somewhere, who bear the responsibility for not stopping that tragedy, especially after all the billions we've spent on security. However, the finger should be squarely pointed at civilian agencies such as the FBI, CIA, NSA, and other organizations referred to by various three-letter abbreviations (if it happens again, I think the letters DHS would top the list.) The United States military is not really at fault for what amounts to a failure of domestic intelligence and/or the ability act upon it.
On the other hand, if all you want to do is remove an enemy sharpshooter from action just focus a 100 mW laser at his scope for a few milliseconds. He won't be doing much shooting after that.
Oh, there probably are civilian applications (bonding Teflon to frying pans, that sort of thing) but as a military weapon it seems to me that a high-powered CW device is less destructive than a really-high-powered pulse laser.
so vista is like an expensive whore with STDs?
Yes, but being a proprietary product there won't be any Open Sores on her.
My local theaters have been doing that for years. At first they'd show a half hour of crap, so people just began to show up half an hour after showtime. Now they may do fifteen minutes, they may show up to fifty-five minutes (I sat through almost an hour of local car dealerships, florists and fast-food restaurants begging me for business.) Really torques me into a pretzel. Let me tell you, the back row of seats has gotten much more popular recently (if you've got to wait an hour you might as well enjoy yourself, I guess.)
It's also reduced the amount of money I spend on tickets to about ten percent of what it used to be. I mean, if I know, in advance, that no matter how good the movie I'm going to be frustrated and annoyed by the time it starts I have to think twice about going. So now we find other ways to entertain ourselves on an evening out. I hear studio execs complaining about theater revenue every so often: my advice to them would be a. produce more films worth the admission price and b. skip the goddamn commercials. Nobody likes commercials, especially after we paid to view your product! That's just sleazy, any way you slice it. I register the same complaint about cable TV, which is why I don't have it.
Yes, I know that the theater owners have their own sob story, about how the studios and distribution companies have squeezed all the profit out of theater operation so they have to subsidize their businesses with advertising. Now that may be, but conversely I am under no obligation to support what has become a disappointing experience.
No, but when you start having vast quantities of unnecessary or harmful laws on the books, you will see more "crime", although it's crime that is crime in name only.
Oddly enough, many would. I would. In my case, for example, content producers are losing their share of my income simply because I won't buy their offerings if they do have Digital Restrictions Management. Maybe I'm an anomaly outside of the Slashdot crowd, but everyone I've spoken to who has had a bad encounter with DRM (and they are legion) has come to the same conclusion. It just isn't worth the hassle, and the risk. Frankly, I don't need most of the products that are currently being DRM'ed. I just don't. Okay, I do buy the occasional DVD, but they'll only keep getting my money so long as I know I can strip the DRM if I so choose. If I cannot do that, I can't protect my investment. Consequently, if the distribution folks ever succeed in creating unbreakable DRM, or preventing me from accessing the requisite tools, my money will stay in my pocket. They have to earn my respect before they can earn my dollars.
Given enough females, I'm sure I could do better than 150 in the course of a year. I might need to take some vacation time when that year is up, however.
Laws usually have more than one reason for existing, and they are always open to interpretation.
... collateral damage is another. You set up a 12-gauge to take out a burglar, well. Death is a disproportionate response to theft, I agree, but he took his chances and lost. On the other hand, don't be surprised to find yourself on manslaughter charges because you also blew holes in the paperboy's head as he passed by on his bike.
Absolutely, and proportionate response is just one aspect
This idiot programmer doesn't seem to grasp that his program has no awareness of whose data he might be destroying. Sometimes more than one individual uses a computer, sometimes even honest people don't know what they're doing and make mistakes, and sometimes software malfunctions. The simple knowledge on my part that this character's products have a deliberate destructive potential built right in is sufficient to keep me from ever installing or buying it. Why chance it? It would be like installing a trojan with unknown capabilities on purpose!
Frankly, this guy sounds about as principled as the average RIAA executive, and not someone with whom I would choose to do business anyway. In any event, the wanton destruction of someone else's property as a deterrent against their illegally using your own product is morally bankrupt from the get-go.
Yes, well, at least that cracker with the .ru TLD won't be able to grab a couple hundred thousand such records all at once. Not so much security-by-obscurity as it is security-by-inconvenience.
Or is there some corporate smear money being exchanged here?
Well, I certainly wouldn't put it past the innovator from Redmond to use this guy to spread some more FUD, but if so, they've only managed to encourage the competition to improve their codebase.
Forewarned is forearmed.
"World class" is a relative term, relative to what other countries have.
And relative to what I'm getting from my provider here in the U.S., I'd say you probably still qualify as world class. Last December I upgraded to the next performance tier (another ten bucks a month) and my speeds dropped by half. Go figure. Needless to say, I complained (vociferously!) about this but nothing changed, so I went back to the previous tier and my speeds went back up to where they were before. It's enough to make you throw up: they got an extra thirty bucks for providing me with half-speed for a few months.
Gagh.
My dial-up connection is very consistent. It is a rock steady 28.8 Kbps and does not slow down. Text only web browsing works quite well. FTP downloads/uploads are a consistent 3 KB/s.
When I'm taking a shower, and my girlfriend happens to flush the toilet or turn on the tap, the shower gets dangerously hot. I thought I needed a capacity upgrade, so that when someone else uses water I don't get scaled. Then I realized that if I just turn the shower down to a tiny trickle, it doesn't matter if anyone else uses water!
Youtube and torrents aside, there are legitimate uses for broadband. Keeping your Windows box patched up can take a chunk of bandwidth, and there are large files that people need that don't involve copyright infringement. But I agree, a lot of Internet use is pretty trivial. On the other hand, it's a form of entertainment to a lot of people, people who are willing to pay for it. No different from cable TV in that respect. The difference is that the cable TV providers don't have the option of overselling their capacity, because their head end provides all the data the subscriber is entitled to. In the case of Internet access, it's a different matter: they sold us one thing, and when demand got heavy enough, we found out that it was really a house of cards and they'd lied to us.
There are a couple of things you aren't supposed to criticize on Slashdot. NASA is one of them. Linux is the other. Besides, it's best to be patient about such things ... if your commentary is worth the points someone will come along and fix it.
I don't think most of the ISPs even have common carrier status. The telcos do, when it comes to phone service, but as a data service operator they don't. I believe (and someone who knows more can correct me) that they reason they don't want to be considered common carriers is that they would be subject to additional (read: expensive) regulatory burdens.
I think that, no matter where you go, it's a matter of the luck of the draw. I went to Canada on business, in 2004 I think (when did the big Eastern seaboard power failure happen?) and when I got off the plane I walked over to the row of booths where the security folks were. There was nobody else there (it was about 11:00 at night) and the humorless, buzz-cut, military type behind the counter asked me if I was here on business or pleasure, looked at my ID (I didn't have a passport, just my driver's license) and waved me on with a "have a pleasant stay, sir." I was pleasantly surprised, actually. On the way back ... well. There were metal detectors, X-rays, and a five hour wait in line for the privilege in a room where the air conditioning had failed, all that before I got anywhere near a plane. Plus I had this arrogant little prick of a security guard jam his goddamn handheld detector into my crotch. Ouch. I told him he'd better damn well watch where he put that thing. Everybody around laughed and thought it was funny. Ha ha. No apology from that asshole, of course. Needless to say, I don't have much to say about the way my own people handled me on the way back. And that was before the new passport requirements.
The thing that really steams me is that, in the USA, huge amounts of people cheat the system by just driving across the damn border (and I don't mean Canada's, either.) All this "Real ID" baloney, coupled with all the RFID'd passports and surveillance crap that we have to put up with nowadays, won't do anything about that. But it will probably make it a lot harder the next time my company sends me up to Canada on business.
... the ones who were smart enough to never get caught. Frankly, you're welcome to 'em.
Some things are best left forgotten. If I committed some crime in the distant past, was caught and paid my dues, I shouldn't be penalized for it now. Besides, what they're really doing isn't so much keeping out the riff-raff, but selecting for the really sharp criminals, you know
More to the point, copyright and patent law (at least here in the U.S. and apparently the EU and anyone else foolishly interested in "harmonization") are no longer about supplying economic incentive to encourage the creation of new works. They are now about protecting the new and existing works of a select few forever. In that light, punishing this individual so severely is even less rational: he violated laws that were already deliberately broken and no longer serve the interests of the population (creator or consumer) after being turned into extreme protectionist measures.
... when the law disrepects the people, people tend to disrespect the law. Unless, of course, a given population has been successfully brainwashed into a sheep-like mentality, as has happened here in the United States.
This all comes down to balance
As John Mayer's "Waitin' for the World to Change" pointed out, "When you trust your television, what you get is what you got, 'cause when they own the information, they can bend it all they want." It's pretty bent now, all right.
I take it that dB, in this case, means "dollar Bill"?