I love BK commercials because they are so odd. In fact, I started eating there occasionally because of them. The food is okay, but I really just want to encourage them to make more ads. Whoever is running this campaign is a genius. I'm looking forward to playing "Sneak King". I just hope it's well made.
However, society decides which laws are just and unjust.
Hello, segregation. Hello, prohibition.
You'd better get convincing society.
This is purely speculation on my part, but I imagine if you were to run a poll, the vast majority would see nothing wrong with copying MP3s over P2P. Not to mention movies, TV shows, and games. That doesn't make it right, but I don't think the numbers would back you up.
...And that's not just you and your subculture of nihilistic twerps.
I hope you don't run into someone with a different value system than yours and a trench knife the next time you're on your way to your car from the night club from a night of dancing. You'll be shit out of luck. You listened to some cool music for free while you were alive, though.
what
Seriously, though, this seems a little over the top, even for you. Consider therapy.
Well, take the idea a little further. Imagine any object can be physically created with this device. Organics, electronics, you name it. I ask you then, what happens to the economy?
1. Manufacturing would cease to exist in the traditional sense. People would simply replicate whatever was needed.
2. Shipping would no longer be an industry. The only substantial shipment (after replicators were distributed) would be people.
3. Agriculture would be patently unneccessary. Assuming this mythical device produces matter from energy, there would be no need for any production other than energy.
4. Energy production would skyrocket. The energy consumption of a single city would likely dwarf that of the entire planet now. This would not necessarily be a bad thing assuming energy could be produced safely and efficiently (read: fusion).
In other words, major sectors of our current economy would simply vanish - *poof*. The resulting unnecessary equipment could simply be liquidated with depolymerization techniques and reintegrated into housing or whatnot. But what about the people who rely on those industries for a living?
I imagine there would be an enormous amount of turmoil if this were to happen. In fact, I am reasonably certain the technology would face opposition from all threatened industries and would only become a reality after a great deal of conflict. However, it's clear to me that if this device were to exist, quality of life would be dramatically increased for anyone who owned the device.
There's clearly an analogy to be made, but I think the argument can simply be reduced to a fairly clear assertion: While technological innovations benefit mankind, they can also threaten the livelihoods of people that rely on existing economic models by rendering those models obsolete.
oops, I mean, in order to get your games to work on the original NES, don't blow. Blowing on the games might make the problem worse over time by introducing more contaminants. Instead, insert the cart, lock it down, then wiggle it left and right about 20 times. This is just a short term thing to get the game working. You need to clean it (your carts AND your console) to eliminate the problem.
Also, to keep the games from getting dirty, never set them on carpet and keep them in the sleeve or other container when not in use. Try to keep the console off the carpet too. No slouching!
We do not transmit or collect your browsing activity and do not store any information that records your browsing behavior. We only collect aggregate statistics about the URLs and search terms you enter.
What does Xupiter gain from this? Click thru money? It would seem a bit invalid if it's forced like this, would it not?
Also, does anyone find it strange that using malware for personal gain, as in this case, is acceptable, whereas writing a virus that would do exactly the same thing is regarded as criminal or even terrorist behavior? I would think that profiting from damage would be more reprehensible than causing damage for no gain.
Imagine, for just a minute, that Xupiter did this.
Don't you think it might get just a little more attention?
So here's what needs to be done. Xupiter has a program that updates it each time it is run. I would assume it checks for a certain server and downloads the file from there.
Someone needs to own that server, and replace the file with another, identical in every way, except that it changes the page to goatse (Also acceptable would be tubgirl.jpg or pain.jpg). I would imagine this would lead rapidly to the demise of Xupiter. Although there would be certain... unfortunate consequences, I feel the greater good would be served.
Plan B is a simple domain hijack and re-route. Hell, that's easy enough a child could do it.
Come on, now. Apple has managed to charge $129 for Jaguar and $100 for iTools, and this is a surprise? Not only can they get away with it, they can make their userbase beg for more, as shown here.
This is only logical behavior given the status of the economy and the nature of Apple's customer base. Count on more of this, and also count on seeing lots of exciting new iBook and iMac designs. Actually, I think one of those pathetic "Click here to donate via PayPal" banners might work for them too.
I also wish they would focus their energy in reducing my real junk mail. I'd save a jumbo size garbage bag a week if it were not for unsolicited real mail. A much bigger problem than SPAM for anyone interested in the "big picture". I bet almost as much bandwidth has been used TALKING about SPAM as has been saved by the efforts to stop it. Some updates to the SMTP specs would do a lot more to solve this problem. But then...what would the SPEWS people do for kicks?
The key difference is that the junk mail you receive has been paid for by the party that sent it, and more importantly, said party is accountable for it. You can easily eliminate junk mail by following a few steps listed on junkbusters.com. Additionally, junk mail is held to certain standards. Imagine opening your mailbox and finding a postcard with goatse man on it!
Backing up a bit... (1) We just maintain a list, no one has to use it. (2) If your ISP is either on the list or uses it then its your responsibility to find another ISP. (3) If you are having trouble finding an ISP that is neither on the list or using it, then go back to (1).
I'll leave the profit jokes for someone else. However, it looks like you made a typo in the list. Let's see here:
(1) We just maintain a list, no one has to use it. (2) If your ISP is either on the list or uses it then its your responsibility to find another ISP if you don't want the protection a blacklist provides.:P (3) If you are having trouble finding another ISP, contact your current ISP and demand they fix the problem.
I'm sure mistakes do happen, but the ISPs are probably on the list for a reason. If they take steps, they can get off the list. I'm sure the reason SPEWS is hard to work with is that they have been lied to many, many times.
And a philosophical angle, if I may. People don't focus on this much, but it's important to realize that any discussion of spam is going to get heated. People detest spammers because they behave in an atrocious manner.
"Check it out dude; I'm going to send, like, a billion ads for troutsex.com to these people that were stupid enough to type their email address somewhere. Get this: I pay $11.95 a month for a dial-up and shell account, but those suckers at troutsex are paying me a hundred bucks now and ten clams per response, regardless of whether they get any sales! And get this Bob; the beauty part is, nobody can stop getting my messages, even if they want to, because I'm using fake headers and a throwaway MSN account! I'm totally unaccountable! The vast majority of internet users will suffer so that I alone may grow richer! Say, would you like to eat some of this delicious baby?"
You're right. The approach you describe would provide the same benefit but would not jeopardize the connectivity of the innocent. I suspect the primary reason this isn't done is because it's simply too much effort. The listing authority would probably have to investigate every server on the subnet for legitimacy before listing the offenders. Another problem might be that if a spam server is blocked, another could just pop up in its place on the same subnet.
In other words, I agree the approach is heavy handed, but circumstances seem to dictate its use. I'm not an admin, so I can't be sure. But if this is indeed the case, we can console ourselves by knowing that pressure will come to bear on the ISP from its customers... one way or another.
Said 'anti-spam-zealots' can also become quite alienated from spammers. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing (spammers need something to give them an ego boost) but that's not really what spammers want. (nobody really knows what they want, though some of them actually just want to make money at other people's expense).
Isn't this how a blacklist is supposed to work? I thought the idea was precisely to annoy the honest users, such that they complain to the ISP. If the users know that they are blacklisted because of a spammer, they are likely to either leave the ISP or pressure it to turn the spammer off. It's not nice, but the intent is to get results.
Seems like I always hear the 2600 Pac-Man effects in shows. Rosanne was notorious (to me, anyway) for having those effects in the background with the kids playing a NES. Lollers.
Uh... huh? Yes, laws exist to restrict freedoms with the threat of force. I really don't understand your point here.
Maybe the point is that this is bad. The question you ought to start asking yourself is "is the number of people that benefit greater than the number of people who suffer?", or, less concretely, "is the total benefit greater than the total cost?".
i>The idea of "effective mechanism" is clear and legally sound.
No, I'm afraid it is not.
It is not vague at all.
I'm afraid it is.
If the content of the work cannot be accessed without either going through the copy protection mechanism with permission from the licensor, or circumventing the copy protection mechanism, that mechanism is effective.
Accessed can mean whatever you want it to mean. I can read a file if it's translated into l337. A lot of people can't.
If the content can be accessed without circumvention, then the mechanism is not effective.
Accessed. By. Who?
This is a completely clear idea. What's your problem with it?
It is the exact opposite of clear. Why is that so hard to understand?
A file that has been run through ROT-13 is not readable. It has to be run through ROT-13 again to be readable. So ROT-13 is an effective access control mechanism. You can't access the content until you get around the control mechanism. The fact that the access control mechanism is trivial doesn't matter at all.
Right, right, but this all does raise the question: what if the mechanism is nearly nonexistent? If cases are reversed such that uppear and lower case letters switch places, does that protect the file? You can't access the *intended* content until you get around my control mechanism, crook.
What if the file is renamed from.txt to.pxt, but otherwise nothing changes? If you don't run my.pxt interpreter but instead view the file *raw*, you can see the file plain as day, but you haven't gotten around my protection yet. Pirate.
These would, by your definition, be effective protection mechanisms. So because James Hilburt accidentally opens my.pxt in notepad, he is a thief. Consider the implications here.
That's a reach. Why would Adobe care about your friend's mom's credit rating? All she has to do is call technical support; she doesn't have to buy anything new. Not that this invalidates your example, but I want to illustrate that it's harder to come up with a situation in which eBook gets in the way than you might think at first.
Well, obviously she lost her credit card thanks to that rascal in Omaha. So when she calls tech support, they can't verify her ID easily. Yes, it's possible that she can get them to look up her old account and give the old address (she since moved to Jersey) and phone number, and they will give her the key. I know that these things can be worked around. My point was that there are extenuating circumstances. People inherit computers, give their computers away as gifts, lend computers to friends... and companies go out of business. It's not as simple as we'd like it to be.
..in order to access the data, you have to know the password. As long as the password isn't disclosed, this is an effective protection mechanism.
Please try to remember, the legal definition of "effective" is the most literal one: does the prevention mechanism have any effect at all? If the answer is yes, then it is an effective mechanism.
And this is the problem. I wouldn't be going on like this if I didn't feel that you were somehow in favor of this idea. Now maybe I'm wrong, and we agree, but it seems you feel that the idea of "effective mechanism" is clean and legally sound. I feel it is extremely vague, because nearly anything can be an "effective mechanism", if someone says it is. And that is a very dangerous weapon.
I don't think this is as black and white as that though. Your point is that the quality of the obstacle is not an issue. That sounds reasonable enough. You then go on to present a fairly binary scenario; either the freezer's open, or it isn't.
That's where I see a problem. In my view, the question isn't "Is it a good obstacle?" The question to me is "To what degree does an obstacle exist?" This might seem like a bit of a nit. Consider, however, the difference in perspective between an expert on Adobe file formats and someone who knows nothing about them; perhaps a sea otter. Your expert isn't going to see an obstacle at all; he runs the reverse ROT-13 or whatever and boom, there's the file. The sea otter will just go "phbpbpbpbfft". The damn thing's Fort Knox as far as he's concerned.
Continuing our hypothetical attempt at accessing the file, let's say I want to get involved. Maybe my friend's mom lost her key to a Harry Potter book and can't read it anymore. Her credit is screwed up thanks to a vindictive bellhop in Omaha, so Adobe won't help her. So I spend a week or so researching the file format, playing around with a few different encryption scemes and asking a bunch of people on usenet, and eventually figure it out in my free time. Is this an effective obstacle? Keep in mind, I'm not very intelligent.
What if there is a backdoor password of "Adobe"; is this effective? What if the password is "helmet"? "Dolemite?" Or, God forbid, "administrator".
I suppose I could also ask whether hiding my pr0n under the bed is an effective mechanism. I suppose it is under the hooker...
Slashdot Mirror
I love BK commercials because they are so odd. In fact, I started eating there occasionally because of them. The food is okay, but I really just want to encourage them to make more ads. Whoever is running this campaign is a genius. I'm looking forward to playing "Sneak King". I just hope it's well made.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16815168001
And you're set. I don't think you can get over 2GB on this model though.
'sup HELLO.JPG?
I sense an I-N-V...
That's a pretty tough question. I might ask you a similar one: When will you stop beating your wife, sir?
Oh wait, I used my Evil P2P Gloves (Pat. Pend.) to make a "perfect digital copy" and store it on the harddrive attached to my belt...
Tell me more about these gloves, Safety Cap.
However, society decides which laws are just and unjust.
...And that's not just you and your subculture of nihilistic twerps.
Hello, segregation. Hello, prohibition.
You'd better get convincing society.
This is purely speculation on my part, but I imagine if you were to run a poll, the vast majority would see nothing wrong with copying MP3s over P2P. Not to mention movies, TV shows, and games. That doesn't make it right, but I don't think the numbers would back you up.
I hope you don't run into someone with a different value system than yours and a trench knife the next time you're on your way to your car from the night club from a night of dancing. You'll be shit out of luck. You listened to some cool music for free while you were alive, though.
what
Seriously, though, this seems a little over the top, even for you. Consider therapy.
Well, take the idea a little further. Imagine any object can be physically created with this device. Organics, electronics, you name it. I ask you then, what happens to the economy?
1. Manufacturing would cease to exist in the traditional sense. People would simply replicate whatever was needed.
2. Shipping would no longer be an industry. The only substantial shipment (after replicators were distributed) would be people.
3. Agriculture would be patently unneccessary. Assuming this mythical device produces matter from energy, there would be no need for any production other than energy.
4. Energy production would skyrocket. The energy consumption of a single city would likely dwarf that of the entire planet now. This would not necessarily be a bad thing assuming energy could be produced safely and efficiently (read: fusion).
In other words, major sectors of our current economy would simply vanish - *poof*. The resulting unnecessary equipment could simply be liquidated with depolymerization techniques and reintegrated into housing or whatnot. But what about the people who rely on those industries for a living?
I imagine there would be an enormous amount of turmoil if this were to happen. In fact, I am reasonably certain the technology would face opposition from all threatened industries and would only become a reality after a great deal of conflict. However, it's clear to me that if this device were to exist, quality of life would be dramatically increased for anyone who owned the device.
There's clearly an analogy to be made, but I think the argument can simply be reduced to a fairly clear assertion: While technological innovations benefit mankind, they can also threaten the livelihoods of people that rely on existing economic models by rendering those models obsolete.
Dear Penthouse,
oops, I mean, in order to get your games to work on the original NES, don't blow. Blowing on the games might make the problem worse over time by introducing more contaminants. Instead, insert the cart, lock it down, then wiggle it left and right about 20 times. This is just a short term thing to get the game working. You need to clean it (your carts AND your console) to eliminate the problem.
Also, to keep the games from getting dirty, never set them on carpet and keep them in the sleeve or other container when not in use. Try to keep the console off the carpet too. No slouching!
We do not transmit or collect your browsing activity and do not store any information that records your browsing behavior. We only collect aggregate statistics about the URLs and search terms you enter.
Umm.... doublespeak, anyone?
Oh yes, Topic B.
What does Xupiter gain from this? Click thru money? It would seem a bit invalid if it's forced like this, would it not?
Also, does anyone find it strange that using malware for personal gain, as in this case, is acceptable, whereas writing a virus that would do exactly the same thing is regarded as criminal or even terrorist behavior? I would think that profiting from damage would be more reprehensible than causing damage for no gain.
My God.
Imagine, for just a minute, that Xupiter did this.
Don't you think it might get just a little more attention?
So here's what needs to be done. Xupiter has a program that updates it each time it is run. I would assume it checks for a certain server and downloads the file from there.
Someone needs to own that server, and replace the file with another, identical in every way, except that it changes the page to goatse (Also acceptable would be tubgirl.jpg or pain.jpg). I would imagine this would lead rapidly to the demise of Xupiter. Although there would be certain... unfortunate consequences, I feel the greater good would be served.
Plan B is a simple domain hijack and re-route. Hell, that's easy enough a child could do it.
Topic B
I forgot what I was going to put here.
So it was refreshing when this subtle, deeply-insightful piece came along.
Most impressive sir! Layers upon layers, indeed.
2 birds,
1 stone.
Come on, now. Apple has managed to charge $129 for Jaguar and $100 for iTools, and this is a surprise? Not only can they get away with it, they can make their userbase beg for more, as shown here .
This is only logical behavior given the status of the economy and the nature of Apple's customer base. Count on more of this, and also count on seeing lots of exciting new iBook and iMac designs. Actually, I think one of those pathetic "Click here to donate via PayPal" banners might work for them too.
This is what you'd consider a target rich environment. These people need to know why they're all wrong. Come on, teach us some stuff!
I also wish they would focus their energy in reducing my real junk mail. I'd save a jumbo size garbage bag a week if it were not for unsolicited real mail. A much bigger problem than SPAM for anyone interested in the "big picture". I bet almost as much bandwidth has been used TALKING about SPAM as has been saved by the efforts to stop it. Some updates to the SMTP specs would do a lot more to solve this problem. But then...what would the SPEWS people do for kicks?
:P
The key difference is that the junk mail you receive has been paid for by the party that sent it, and more importantly, said party is accountable for it. You can easily eliminate junk mail by following a few steps listed on junkbusters.com. Additionally, junk mail is held to certain standards. Imagine opening your mailbox and finding a postcard with goatse man on it!
Backing up a bit...
(1) We just maintain a list, no one has to use it.
(2) If your ISP is either on the list or uses it then its your responsibility to find another ISP.
(3) If you are having trouble finding an ISP that is neither on the list or using it, then go back to (1).
I'll leave the profit jokes for someone else. However, it looks like you made a typo in the list. Let's see here:
(1) We just maintain a list, no one has to use it.
(2) If your ISP is either on the list or uses it then its your responsibility to find another ISP if you don't want the protection a blacklist provides.
(3) If you are having trouble finding another ISP, contact your current ISP and demand they fix the problem.
I'm sure mistakes do happen, but the ISPs are probably on the list for a reason. If they take steps, they can get off the list. I'm sure the reason SPEWS is hard to work with is that they have been lied to many, many times.
And a philosophical angle, if I may. People don't focus on this much, but it's important to realize that any discussion of spam is going to get heated. People detest spammers because they behave in an atrocious manner.
"Check it out dude; I'm going to send, like, a billion ads for troutsex.com to these people that were stupid enough to type their email address somewhere. Get this: I pay $11.95 a month for a dial-up and shell account, but those suckers at troutsex are paying me a hundred bucks now and ten clams per response, regardless of whether they get any sales! And get this Bob; the beauty part is, nobody can stop getting my messages, even if they want to, because I'm using fake headers and a throwaway MSN account! I'm totally unaccountable! The vast majority of internet users will suffer so that I alone may grow richer! Say, would you like to eat some of this delicious baby?"
You're right. The approach you describe would provide the same benefit but would not jeopardize the connectivity of the innocent. I suspect the primary reason this isn't done is because it's simply too much effort. The listing authority would probably have to investigate every server on the subnet for legitimacy before listing the offenders. Another problem might be that if a spam server is blocked, another could just pop up in its place on the same subnet.
In other words, I agree the approach is heavy handed, but circumstances seem to dictate its use. I'm not an admin, so I can't be sure. But if this is indeed the case, we can console ourselves by knowing that pressure will come to bear on the ISP from its customers... one way or another.
Said 'anti-spam-zealots' can also become quite alienated from spammers. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing (spammers need something to give them an ego boost) but that's not really what spammers want. (nobody really knows what they want, though some of them actually just want to make money at other people's expense).
Your move.
Isn't this how a blacklist is supposed to work? I thought the idea was precisely to annoy the honest users, such that they complain to the ISP. If the users know that they are blacklisted because of a spammer, they are likely to either leave the ISP or pressure it to turn the spammer off. It's not nice, but the intent is to get results.
Seems like I always hear the 2600 Pac-Man effects in shows. Rosanne was notorious (to me, anyway) for having those effects in the background with the kids playing a NES. Lollers.
Uh... huh? Yes, laws exist to restrict freedoms with the threat of force. I really don't understand your point here.
Maybe the point is that this is bad. The question you ought to start asking yourself is "is the number of people that benefit greater than the number of people who suffer?", or, less concretely, "is the total benefit greater than the total cost?".
i>The idea of "effective mechanism" is clear and legally sound.
No, I'm afraid it is not.
It is not vague at all.
I'm afraid it is.
If the content of the work cannot be accessed without either going through the copy protection mechanism with permission from the licensor, or circumventing the copy protection mechanism, that mechanism is effective.
Accessed can mean whatever you want it to mean. I can read a file if it's translated into l337. A lot of people can't.
If the content can be accessed without circumvention, then the mechanism is not effective.
Accessed. By. Who?
This is a completely clear idea. What's your problem with it?
It is the exact opposite of clear. Why is that so hard to understand?
A file that has been run through ROT-13 is not readable. It has to be run through ROT-13 again to be readable. So ROT-13 is an effective access control mechanism. You can't access the content until you get around the control mechanism. The fact that the access control mechanism is trivial doesn't matter at all.
.txt to .pxt, but otherwise nothing changes? If you don't run my .pxt interpreter but instead view the file *raw*, you can see the file plain as day, but you haven't gotten around my protection yet. Pirate.
.pxt in notepad, he is a thief. Consider the implications here.
..in order to access the data, you have to know the password. As long as the password isn't disclosed, this is an effective protection mechanism.
Right, right, but this all does raise the question: what if the mechanism is nearly nonexistent? If cases are reversed such that uppear and lower case letters switch places, does that protect the file? You can't access the *intended* content until you get around my control mechanism, crook.
What if the file is renamed from
These would, by your definition, be effective protection mechanisms. So because James Hilburt accidentally opens my
That's a reach. Why would Adobe care about your friend's mom's credit rating? All she has to do is call technical support; she doesn't have to buy anything new. Not that this invalidates your example, but I want to illustrate that it's harder to come up with a situation in which eBook gets in the way than you might think at first.
Well, obviously she lost her credit card thanks to that rascal in Omaha. So when she calls tech support, they can't verify her ID easily. Yes, it's possible that she can get them to look up her old account and give the old address (she since moved to Jersey) and phone number, and they will give her the key. I know that these things can be worked around. My point was that there are extenuating circumstances. People inherit computers, give their computers away as gifts, lend computers to friends... and companies go out of business. It's not as simple as we'd like it to be.
Please try to remember, the legal definition of "effective" is the most literal one: does the prevention mechanism have any effect at all? If the answer is yes, then it is an effective mechanism.
And this is the problem. I wouldn't be going on like this if I didn't feel that you were somehow in favor of this idea. Now maybe I'm wrong, and we agree, but it seems you feel that the idea of "effective mechanism" is clean and legally sound. I feel it is extremely vague, because nearly anything can be an "effective mechanism", if someone says it is. And that is a very dangerous weapon.
I don't think this is as black and white as that though. Your point is that the quality of the obstacle is not an issue. That sounds reasonable enough. You then go on to present a fairly binary scenario; either the freezer's open, or it isn't.
That's where I see a problem. In my view, the question isn't "Is it a good obstacle?" The question to me is "To what degree does an obstacle exist?" This might seem like a bit of a nit. Consider, however, the difference in perspective between an expert on Adobe file formats and someone who knows nothing about them; perhaps a sea otter. Your expert isn't going to see an obstacle at all; he runs the reverse ROT-13 or whatever and boom, there's the file. The sea otter will just go "phbpbpbpbfft". The damn thing's Fort Knox as far as he's concerned.
Continuing our hypothetical attempt at accessing the file, let's say I want to get involved. Maybe my friend's mom lost her key to a Harry Potter book and can't read it anymore. Her credit is screwed up thanks to a vindictive bellhop in Omaha, so Adobe won't help her. So I spend a week or so researching the file format, playing around with a few different encryption scemes and asking a bunch of people on usenet, and eventually figure it out in my free time. Is this an effective obstacle? Keep in mind, I'm not very intelligent.
What if there is a backdoor password of "Adobe"; is this effective? What if the password is "helmet"? "Dolemite?" Or, God forbid, "administrator".
I suppose I could also ask whether hiding my pr0n under the bed is an effective mechanism. I suppose it is under the hooker...
Why, you mean you're not surrounded by babes when you open a beer? What on earth is wrong with you?