I believe that it does have check printing (experimental at this point, requires gnome-print) but that's only for printing date, payee, and amount on a check that's already been printed - just like Quicken does.
I'm working on an app to print checks under Linux like VersaCheck ('cause they pissed me off with their shoddy software, and their subsequent "tech support".) I did a cleanroom implementation of the MICR font, and I just finished up a Postscript program that will print the checks... I want to wrap a command line and a GUI app around all this so you can choose check formats, different accounts, etc. It's not done yet, but it's not vaporware, either - I promise.:) I guess I need to have it checked by a bank, too.:)
Also, I let the GnuCash guys know about what I'm working on so that they could incorporate it into GnuCash - haven't heard much back from them yet.
Can ACPI be used to monitor temperatures, and turn fans on/off accordingly? It seems like ACPI implementations are still pretty weak. I think the fans go off in various sleep states, but it'd be nice to toggle them based on temperature.
Only when I'm doing top-secret defense work... oh wait, I don't do that... but these drives were supposedly from a shelf in a locked vault. Their loss triggered hearings in Congress. Seems to me that if they were that big of a deal, encryption would have been a snazzy idea.
I figured that even if the drives were stolen, surely the data was protected with strong encryption... wouldn't that be smart? Was all the data on the drives "in the clear?" Besides, you could prosecute the thief under espionage laws AND under the DMCA, if he actually got to the data.:)
I just read Monty's rebuttal of the "Ethics of Free Software" article, which was previously on Slashdot. I gotta say, I was impressed. Nice to see that the smart programmers are also able to express themselves in careful, intelligent, thoughtful ways outside the programming realm.
I figure that if you're security-paranoid, and you're programming an app, then you'd make sure that you never wrote sensitive info to disk. Say, you decrypt something, but only to (volatile) memory, so it can't be retrieved. Now... if that memory is written to swap, all of a sudden, you could probably go through that partition bit by bit and see what was there, as long as it had not been overwritten.
This is completely off the top of my head, and may very well be wrong.:)
It dismays me to see how much confusion there is on the part of the involved parties, and the press. Mr. Garbus asked Mr. Valenti if he had heard of "D-I-V-X" and Mr. Valenti said "no." Now, of course Mr. Valenti had heard of the failed pay-per-view DIVX scheme... but of course Mr. Garbus was probably referring to the new video compression algorithm... but then Wired picks it up and refers back to the failed pay-per-view scheme...
It also pays me to hear "The DeCSS" and "The Broadband" and "The Wireless" and various other tidbits that sound like we're just not quite clear on the concepts.
"If I decrypted the DeCSS on the wireless, how long would it take me to pirate a DIVX?"
(No, not an exact quote, but some questions didn't make any more sense than that...)
Just make a browser that works and is fast guys.. leave the e-mail/chat/news/widget stuff for an addon or something.
It is, essentially. If you get the linux installer package, it gives you the option of installing only what you want. If you only want the browser, you can do that. You can even leave out Java....
To make matters worse, this line of questioning was actually regarding the distributed form of DeCSS - nothing to do with the DVD itself. It was shortly after this that Mr. Garbus demanded the man's hard drive, I think.:/
In fact, that exchange was in my original submission for the story... I understand that Mr. Garbus is what... in his 50s? And Linux etc is a pretty new thing for him. He's worked really hard to try to understand what's going on... but reading this deposition has a "comedy of errors" feeling to it. Lots of things that show that they really don't quite know what's going on.
I'd like to see a place where those people who are "in the know" could review the case materials (they're all faithfully posted to cryptome) and try to correct the technical errors in their strategy, re-explain the things that are causing confusion, etc.
These are the people who are gonna make the laws when they set this precedent on the DMCA, and it seems that they're floundering a bit.:/
I wanted to make my own MICR font so I could try writing a free check-printing program... big bucks for all that stuff, too (MICR character definitions, character placement, check dimensions, etc...)
I finally found some of it on a canadian bank org's website - probably not supposed to be there.:)
So if having a monopoly in both the OS and App spheres is not illegal (and I agree that it's not) then why break up the company? Why not slap a punitive fine on them, and other remedies that will prevent further abuse, but leave them intact?
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but didn't Windows and Office each hold monopoly positions for their products? Do we not now have two companies, each with a monopoly in their realm?
I suppose that if the OS & App companies can't collude, then that opens things up for competitors in both fields, eventually... but I liked RMS's suggestions better than this.
I still maintain that it's more akin to running a taxicab service where you can hop in and say "I'm new here, take me to the part of town where I can buy crack and rent whores." In fact, might be closer to say it's a taxicab service called "Drugs-R-Us" - this is mp3board.com we're talking about, not some general search engine. And I know not all mp3s are pirated - but face it, most are...:-)
How about if I set up a business where I pick you up at your house in a limo, take you to get some corner girls and some crack, and then drop you back off at your house?
Or if I go arrange the deals with the corner girls and the crack dealers, and just act as the middle man?
I'm afraid of these attacks on linking, too. But it does seem that the line gets blurry when you look real close.
Well, if you're talking semantics, then DeCSS can be used to copy DVDs, just not to a standard DVD medium. With a big enough hard drive, I can make a perfect copy of a DVD. There's just not a whole lot I can do with it at that point - at least not portably.:)
Slashdot Mirror
The gnome version of GnuCash started out as "GnoCash" I believe... let's just say "GnuCash" is a step in the right direction. :)
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I believe that it does have check printing (experimental at this point, requires gnome-print) but that's only for printing date, payee, and amount on a check that's already been printed - just like Quicken does.
:) I guess I need to have it checked by a bank, too. :)
I'm working on an app to print checks under Linux like VersaCheck ('cause they pissed me off with their shoddy software, and their subsequent "tech support".) I did a cleanroom implementation of the MICR font, and I just finished up a Postscript program that will print the checks... I want to wrap a command line and a GUI app around all this so you can choose check formats, different accounts, etc. It's not done yet, but it's not vaporware, either - I promise.
Also, I let the GnuCash guys know about what I'm working on so that they could incorporate it into GnuCash - haven't heard much back from them yet.
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Can ACPI be used to monitor temperatures, and turn fans on/off accordingly? It seems like ACPI implementations are still pretty weak. I think the fans go off in various sleep states, but it'd be nice to toggle them based on temperature.
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Do you encrypt all of your data?
Only when I'm doing top-secret defense work... oh wait, I don't do that... but these drives were supposedly from a shelf in a locked vault. Their loss triggered hearings in Congress. Seems to me that if they were that big of a deal, encryption would have been a snazzy idea.
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I figured that even if the drives were stolen, surely the data was protected with strong encryption... wouldn't that be smart? Was all the data on the drives "in the clear?" Besides, you could prosecute the thief under espionage laws AND under the DMCA, if he actually got to the data. :)
---
I just read Monty's rebuttal of the "Ethics of Free Software" article, which was previously on Slashdot. I gotta say, I was impressed. Nice to see that the smart programmers are also able to express themselves in careful, intelligent, thoughtful ways outside the programming realm.
---
I figure that if you're security-paranoid, and you're programming an app, then you'd make sure that you never wrote sensitive info to disk. Say, you decrypt something, but only to (volatile) memory, so it can't be retrieved. Now... if that memory is written to swap, all of a sudden, you could probably go through that partition bit by bit and see what was there, as long as it had not been overwritten.
:)
This is completely off the top of my head, and may very well be wrong.
---
It dismays me to see how much confusion there is on the part of the involved parties, and the press. Mr. Garbus asked Mr. Valenti if he had heard of "D-I-V-X" and Mr. Valenti said "no." Now, of course Mr. Valenti had heard of the failed pay-per-view DIVX scheme... but of course Mr. Garbus was probably referring to the new video compression algorithm... but then Wired picks it up and refers back to the failed pay-per-view scheme...
It also pays me to hear "The DeCSS" and "The Broadband" and "The Wireless" and various other tidbits that sound like we're just not quite clear on the concepts.
"If I decrypted the DeCSS on the wireless, how long would it take me to pirate a DIVX?"
(No, not an exact quote, but some questions didn't make any more sense than that...)
---
Just make a browser that works and is fast guys.. leave the e-mail/chat/news/widget stuff for an addon or something.
It is, essentially. If you get the linux installer package, it gives you the option of installing only what you want. If you only want the browser, you can do that. You can even leave out Java....
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Also, check this report by the Pew Center - they did some research on who uses Napster (age, gender) and why (pirating, sampling).
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There are many more shots here. They look pretty cool!
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To make matters worse, this line of questioning was actually regarding the distributed form of DeCSS - nothing to do with the DVD itself. It was shortly after this that Mr. Garbus demanded the man's hard drive, I think. :/
---
In fact, that exchange was in my original submission for the story... I understand that Mr. Garbus is what... in his 50s? And Linux etc is a pretty new thing for him. He's worked really hard to try to understand what's going on... but reading this deposition has a "comedy of errors" feeling to it. Lots of things that show that they really don't quite know what's going on.
:/
I'd like to see a place where those people who are "in the know" could review the case materials (they're all faithfully posted to cryptome) and try to correct the technical errors in their strategy, re-explain the things that are causing confusion, etc.
These are the people who are gonna make the laws when they set this precedent on the DMCA, and it seems that they're floundering a bit.
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Or I could post the URL, and land in jail... :/
:)
It's the _information_ I found, not the copyrighed document. Relax.
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I wanted to make my own MICR font so I could try writing a free check-printing program... big bucks for all that stuff, too (MICR character definitions, character placement, check dimensions, etc...)
:)
I finally found some of it on a canadian bank org's website - probably not supposed to be there.
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But weren't they all ascii-art? :-)
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So if having a monopoly in both the OS and App spheres is not illegal (and I agree that it's not) then why break up the company? Why not slap a punitive fine on them, and other remedies that will prevent further abuse, but leave them intact?
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Forgive me if I'm wrong, but didn't Windows and Office each hold monopoly positions for their products? Do we not now have two companies, each with a monopoly in their realm?
I suppose that if the OS & App companies can't collude, then that opens things up for competitors in both fields, eventually... but I liked RMS's suggestions better than this.
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Um, golly thanks, but I got that far already...
Got a link for the device this thread is talking about?! (Hence "link at buy.com" not "link to buy.com....")
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Got a link at buy.com?
Thanks,
-Eric
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Too bad you can't buy the iPaq without a Microsoft product... that could lower the price even more.
:-)
I'm also not sure I like to see the parallel and serial ports called "Legacy..."
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I still maintain that it's more akin to running a taxicab service where you can hop in and say "I'm new here, take me to the part of town where I can buy crack and rent whores." In fact, might be closer to say it's a taxicab service called "Drugs-R-Us" - this is mp3board.com we're talking about, not some general search engine. And I know not all mp3s are pirated - but face it, most are... :-)
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They make no money *BY* pointing you there
Perhaps you missed the banner ads and the javascript pop-ups on that site...?
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How about if I set up a business where I pick you up at your house in a limo, take you to get some corner girls and some crack, and then drop you back off at your house?
Or if I go arrange the deals with the corner girls and the crack dealers, and just act as the middle man?
I'm afraid of these attacks on linking, too. But it does seem that the line gets blurry when you look real close.
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Well, if you're talking semantics, then DeCSS can be used to copy DVDs, just not to a standard DVD medium. With a big enough hard drive, I can make a perfect copy of a DVD. There's just not a whole lot I can do with it at that point - at least not portably. :)
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