It's a protocol thing. DNS servers keep a local cache of name-to-IP translations it has done recently, and has an upward-in-the-chain server it turns to when it doesn't have an answer for a query. Eventually, the chain of upstream servers leads back to the root servers. So, if a local installation of BIND is told that "com" and "net" are not allowed to return "A" records unless further quantified, the proper failure result will occur.
I think what this proves is that RFC's are worthless... since there is no central control over the Internet, nobody has a lawmaking authority to say certain malpractices are disallowed...
But in part, the OS that Microsoft delivers is the one that most consumers are willing to accept. If Windows developed a reputation for attracting fines, then Windows would either have to shape up or be totally rejected by the market...
It's very hard to spoof activity at the port to which your line to the ISP is physically connected, which I'm sure would be a measuring point checked when assessing fines...
My point is, when there's a major political race in New York City, there's debates on WCBS-TV. When there's a major political race in Boston, there's debates on WBZ-TV... CBS O&O's don't have a track record of refusing to cover debates and often are primary sponsors. Why would you expect that to change?
See, the fun of having a republic is that we don't have to fully understand and decide on every issue... we hire people to do that for us. However, if you don't pay attention to who we hire then things really get out of hand...
The thing is, the "If the networks owned all the stations, there'd be no debates on network stations" argument doesn't quite ring true when you look at all of the network-owned stations that kick the network aside on Friday Nights to air local Major League Baseball games.
The FCC is part of the executive branch, and is there to execute the laws that have already been passed. When a law is vauge on exact numbers, it sometime specifically tells the FCC to come up with the exact limits as is the case here.
So, for Congress to take back a power they have granted to the FCC, they do have to pass a new law. The FCC is just a buggy complier... give it garbage laws in and you just might get garbage out...
However, all of the FCC's power comes from the fact that a law creates it to administer the laws that relate to communications, such as keeping track of who the licensed users broadcast frequcies are, and determining what the qualifications to hold a license is.
If Congress were to pass a law with a veto-proof majority, they could create a law that would override any contradictory FCC rulings even if the president wants to try to stop it.
Congress is more important than the FCC... Congress could make life miserable for them by refusing to give them a budget allocation.:)
There's nothing that stops CNN from creating spinoff flavors. They already have in the forms of CNN Headline News, CNNfn, and CNN en Espanol. There also used to be a CNNsi, but that network was pulled back as a failure.
What these regulations deal with is how many stations the big network owners are allowed to own in broadcasting, which used to be tightly limited to encurage local interests to own local TV stations. It used to be, the local supermarket barron could own 1 TV station in his home area, and have that be a viable business. But now, the economics of the TV industry have allowed the networks to own stations in nearly every major market, and in the markets where they don't on the station the station owners are heavily dependant on the network.
Local programming other than newscasts has virtually evaporated during the 1990s, and now there are network affiliate stations in mid-sized cites that are closing up their news operations as well. We're losing distinct media voices in this process, and that's the concern.
Typically, a bill that doesn't get the 2/3 majority the first time around won't have it the second time if needed to override a veto. It'd take having the political environment shift during the time in between to make several Senators who voted "no" the first time to vote "yes" the second time.
Still, Google will have to visit that server as a unique new domain name it's never met before just to find it's robot.txt tells it not to bother. Still a lot of unneeded processing cycles and bandwidth for them, having to account for every typo of a domain on the web.
Actually, 'www.slashhhdot.com' would not be a 404, because that's a web server's error message. Attempting to contact a non-existant domain used to bring a locally generated error message in the browser, which IE had the option handling by sending to MSN for a slightly more useful page.
Now, that MSN page never gets a chance to be called because all non-existant domains belong to VeriSign...
Is it just me, or is Verisign now absuing the trust of the Internet community, which is a very strange thing for a company that wants to be a root of trust when it comes to issuing SSL certs?
You can't really have an "open standard" that requires the obeying of a copyright flag because it would be far too easy for somebody to implement a standard-tweaking version that simply forgets to honor that flag and otherwise perfectly complies with spec.
DRM systems have to stay closed or otherwise they colapse.
You're a cable company. You make a living selling access to a stream of media delivered out of Hollywood. You don't wanna become an electronics store. Particuarlly, one that operates at a loss. But only Scitiffic Atlanta and Motorolla know how to make cable boxes, and buying into either of those closed standards ties you into having to also buy their backend equipment as well.
You've gotta buy these $500 boxes to make the system work, but the dish companies' boxes only cost them about $300 to get and they're giving boxes away free and they only charge $5 a month per extra receiver of programming. You can only eek a $5 a month rental fee for a $500 box that has a 7 year lifespan. Uh oh, $5x12x7 is $420... you're bleeding money, pal.
OpenCable isn't about content control... it just leaves a plug-in spot for whatever DRM the system owners want, it's about standardizing what comes after that so that other companies can make such boxes and an integrated TiVo and PC card are actually possible...
The cable companies actually want this open standard, it's Scientific Atlanta and Motorola who are the ones affraid of it...
All P2P really does at a technical level is build a rather randomly distributed system of mirrors for the distribution of content. That's nice, but without a central starting point there's no facility for the updating, refreshing, or retracting of content.
High traffic websites have been doing mirroring for a long time, and Alakami's business is based on putting mirroring servers exactly where they belong... as close to upstream of the users as possible for the content that will be repeatedly requested. Caching proxy servers can also be used on the corperate/ISP side of things to get the same effect.
The only real use of the mainstream P2P clients is to obsficate the originator of a file by creating thousands of sites offering that file... basically an "I am Spartacus... I am Spartacus... I am Spartacus... I am Spartacus... " scene for anybody trying to figure out where the file started. As we've seen in today's other P2P thread, the most popular P2P content is done in a way where the "leaker" doesn't wish to be identified.
BitTorrent is the only major P2P protocol that ensures what you're getting is what you meant it to be... basically that the content has been "signed" by its originator who needs some help on the bandwidth costs and many supporters of the sender are working together to provide it. For other content that's meant to be distributed, you have to step outside of the protocol to get the MD5 hash to make sure you got what you thought you got and not a virus... which effectively does the same thing. When somebody tries to distrubute a virus-tainted Linux on a website, they're sure to get shutdown by their ISP if not worse, because to run a website you've gotta tell other people who you are and stand behind the content you post. Not so on P2P, which is why it's such a popular way to send out viruses.
P2P as a distribution model has some limited merits, but "P2P" as an avoid-paying-"the man" system is a fad that'll die out has soon as "the man" reminds people that crime doesn't pay. The correct way to use P2P, which I'm sure will come out in time, is as too to beat "the man" at his own game. It'd be nice if a site with large-ammounts of open source fans (such as this one) would hold a musical talent contest where instead of locking the winner into an RIAA-label deal, the winner is given access to a recording studio and experts to help them to record their music, a personally-promotional infomercial (even if it has to be on TechTV) with which they introduce themselves, sing a few songs, and pitch tickets for a multi-city upcoming tour, and a high-bandwidth site from OSDN where they must post unprotected Ogg Vorbis and MP3 files of the songs they recorded with the prize. Their share of the ticket sales from the tour is the only prize money they get, but that should be more than enough for them.:)
What would be even easier for the studios to do would be to use alt-version scenes in the pre-release DVDs, where things such as a digitally-added billboard shows a different sponsor than the one who paid for the placement to be in the "real" version, an extra stood in a position where they won't be seen in the final cut, the color of a house passed by while driving is changed.
Without knowing what the change is, it'd be nearly impossible to correct it...
A far easier solution would be to embed a different secret deliberately-altered scene into each pre-release version of the film, since that would be a watermark that would be nearly impossible to make right.
Little things such as using a scene that won't be used in the final product, or changing a billboard in the background from the real sponsor to that sponsor's competitor would be impossible for somebody not in-the-know to notice, and even if noticed it'd be impossible to cover up that watermark with the correct piece that because the outsider won't know what that is.
Just to be sure on this... if one of my own employees steals code and gives it to a client, it's not the clients' fault if he uses it, right?
Nope, it is the client's fault as soon as they realize (i.e. are told in a certified mail letter by your lawyers) that they're in possession of stolen code that they really shouldn't have. At that point, they're prohibited from using it any further. They're entitled to use it for as long as they in good faith believe that they're standing on solid ground, but once they look down they fall.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a protocol thing. DNS servers keep a local cache of name-to-IP translations it has done recently, and has an upward-in-the-chain server it turns to when it doesn't have an answer for a query. Eventually, the chain of upstream servers leads back to the root servers. So, if a local installation of BIND is told that "com" and "net" are not allowed to return "A" records unless further quantified, the proper failure result will occur.
I think what this proves is that RFC's are worthless... since there is no central control over the Internet, nobody has a lawmaking authority to say certain malpractices are disallowed...
The BIND patch simply has to disregaurd any line that assigns an IP address to "*.net" and "*.com"... TLDs shouldn't have wildcard entries.
But in part, the OS that Microsoft delivers is the one that most consumers are willing to accept. If Windows developed a reputation for attracting fines, then Windows would either have to shape up or be totally rejected by the market...
There is a way to make a computer totally hackproof, turn it off.
It's very hard to spoof activity at the port to which your line to the ISP is physically connected, which I'm sure would be a measuring point checked when assessing fines...
My point is, when there's a major political race in New York City, there's debates on WCBS-TV. When there's a major political race in Boston, there's debates on WBZ-TV... CBS O&O's don't have a track record of refusing to cover debates and often are primary sponsors. Why would you expect that to change?
See, the fun of having a republic is that we don't have to fully understand and decide on every issue... we hire people to do that for us. However, if you don't pay attention to who we hire then things really get out of hand...
The thing is, the "If the networks owned all the stations, there'd be no debates on network stations" argument doesn't quite ring true when you look at all of the network-owned stations that kick the network aside on Friday Nights to air local Major League Baseball games.
The FCC is part of the executive branch, and is there to execute the laws that have already been passed. When a law is vauge on exact numbers, it sometime specifically tells the FCC to come up with the exact limits as is the case here.
So, for Congress to take back a power they have granted to the FCC, they do have to pass a new law. The FCC is just a buggy complier... give it garbage laws in and you just might get garbage out...
However, all of the FCC's power comes from the fact that a law creates it to administer the laws that relate to communications, such as keeping track of who the licensed users broadcast frequcies are, and determining what the qualifications to hold a license is.
:)
If Congress were to pass a law with a veto-proof majority, they could create a law that would override any contradictory FCC rulings even if the president wants to try to stop it.
Congress is more important than the FCC... Congress could make life miserable for them by refusing to give them a budget allocation.
There's nothing that stops CNN from creating spinoff flavors. They already have in the forms of CNN Headline News, CNNfn, and CNN en Espanol. There also used to be a CNNsi, but that network was pulled back as a failure.
What these regulations deal with is how many stations the big network owners are allowed to own in broadcasting, which used to be tightly limited to encurage local interests to own local TV stations. It used to be, the local supermarket barron could own 1 TV station in his home area, and have that be a viable business. But now, the economics of the TV industry have allowed the networks to own stations in nearly every major market, and in the markets where they don't on the station the station owners are heavily dependant on the network.
Local programming other than newscasts has virtually evaporated during the 1990s, and now there are network affiliate stations in mid-sized cites that are closing up their news operations as well. We're losing distinct media voices in this process, and that's the concern.
Typically, a bill that doesn't get the 2/3 majority the first time around won't have it the second time if needed to override a veto. It'd take having the political environment shift during the time in between to make several Senators who voted "no" the first time to vote "yes" the second time.
Still, Google will have to visit that server as a unique new domain name it's never met before just to find it's robot.txt tells it not to bother. Still a lot of unneeded processing cycles and bandwidth for them, having to account for every typo of a domain on the web.
I wonder if this means we can all get free domains by claiming that Verisign is squatting on every domain close to one we own...
Actually, 'www.slashhhdot.com' would not be a 404, because that's a web server's error message. Attempting to contact a non-existant domain used to bring a locally generated error message in the browser, which IE had the option handling by sending to MSN for a slightly more useful page.
Now, that MSN page never gets a chance to be called because all non-existant domains belong to VeriSign...
Is it just me, or is Verisign now absuing the trust of the Internet community, which is a very strange thing for a company that wants to be a root of trust when it comes to issuing SSL certs?
You can't really have an "open standard" that requires the obeying of a copyright flag because it would be far too easy for somebody to implement a standard-tweaking version that simply forgets to honor that flag and otherwise perfectly complies with spec.
DRM systems have to stay closed or otherwise they colapse.
Nope... that so isn't the problem here.
You're a cable company. You make a living selling access to a stream of media delivered out of Hollywood. You don't wanna become an electronics store. Particuarlly, one that operates at a loss. But only Scitiffic Atlanta and Motorolla know how to make cable boxes, and buying into either of those closed standards ties you into having to also buy their backend equipment as well.
You've gotta buy these $500 boxes to make the system work, but the dish companies' boxes only cost them about $300 to get and they're giving boxes away free and they only charge $5 a month per extra receiver of programming. You can only eek a $5 a month rental fee for a $500 box that has a 7 year lifespan. Uh oh, $5x12x7 is $420... you're bleeding money, pal.
OpenCable isn't about content control... it just leaves a plug-in spot for whatever DRM the system owners want, it's about standardizing what comes after that so that other companies can make such boxes and an integrated TiVo and PC card are actually possible...
The cable companies actually want this open standard, it's Scientific Atlanta and Motorola who are the ones affraid of it...
All P2P really does at a technical level is build a rather randomly distributed system of mirrors for the distribution of content. That's nice, but without a central starting point there's no facility for the updating, refreshing, or retracting of content.
:)
High traffic websites have been doing mirroring for a long time, and Alakami's business is based on putting mirroring servers exactly where they belong... as close to upstream of the users as possible for the content that will be repeatedly requested. Caching proxy servers can also be used on the corperate/ISP side of things to get the same effect.
The only real use of the mainstream P2P clients is to obsficate the originator of a file by creating thousands of sites offering that file... basically an "I am Spartacus... I am Spartacus... I am Spartacus... I am Spartacus... " scene for anybody trying to figure out where the file started. As we've seen in today's other P2P thread, the most popular P2P content is done in a way where the "leaker" doesn't wish to be identified.
BitTorrent is the only major P2P protocol that ensures what you're getting is what you meant it to be... basically that the content has been "signed" by its originator who needs some help on the bandwidth costs and many supporters of the sender are working together to provide it. For other content that's meant to be distributed, you have to step outside of the protocol to get the MD5 hash to make sure you got what you thought you got and not a virus... which effectively does the same thing. When somebody tries to distrubute a virus-tainted Linux on a website, they're sure to get shutdown by their ISP if not worse, because to run a website you've gotta tell other people who you are and stand behind the content you post. Not so on P2P, which is why it's such a popular way to send out viruses.
P2P as a distribution model has some limited merits, but "P2P" as an avoid-paying-"the man" system is a fad that'll die out has soon as "the man" reminds people that crime doesn't pay. The correct way to use P2P, which I'm sure will come out in time, is as too to beat "the man" at his own game. It'd be nice if a site with large-ammounts of open source fans (such as this one) would hold a musical talent contest where instead of locking the winner into an RIAA-label deal, the winner is given access to a recording studio and experts to help them to record their music, a personally-promotional infomercial (even if it has to be on TechTV) with which they introduce themselves, sing a few songs, and pitch tickets for a multi-city upcoming tour, and a high-bandwidth site from OSDN where they must post unprotected Ogg Vorbis and MP3 files of the songs they recorded with the prize. Their share of the ticket sales from the tour is the only prize money they get, but that should be more than enough for them.
Since when could Gap jeans be stored on a disk? That's what seperates information from matter... :)
What would be even easier for the studios to do would be to use alt-version scenes in the pre-release DVDs, where things such as a digitally-added billboard shows a different sponsor than the one who paid for the placement to be in the "real" version, an extra stood in a position where they won't be seen in the final cut, the color of a house passed by while driving is changed.
Without knowing what the change is, it'd be nearly impossible to correct it...
A far easier solution would be to embed a different secret deliberately-altered scene into each pre-release version of the film, since that would be a watermark that would be nearly impossible to make right. Little things such as using a scene that won't be used in the final product, or changing a billboard in the background from the real sponsor to that sponsor's competitor would be impossible for somebody not in-the-know to notice, and even if noticed it'd be impossible to cover up that watermark with the correct piece that because the outsider won't know what that is.
You can't leak something that doesn't exist in a working form yet...
Just to be sure on this... if one of my own employees steals code and gives it to a client, it's not the clients' fault if he uses it, right?
Nope, it is the client's fault as soon as they realize (i.e. are told in a certified mail letter by your lawyers) that they're in possession of stolen code that they really shouldn't have. At that point, they're prohibited from using it any further. They're entitled to use it for as long as they in good faith believe that they're standing on solid ground, but once they look down they fall.