The point I was trying to make is that Jon never *wrote* the Windows binary. It was written by parties from the DoD group. He was the one who posted it, but not authored.
If I understand optical technology right, the encryption does nothing to prevent piracy, that is making bit for bit copies. Anyone could sell a writer that read 0 and wrote 0, read 1 and wrote 1. You don't have to unencrypt it to copy it bit for bit. I can make as many copies of a PGP-encrypted message as I want, because 1s are always 1s and 0s are always 0s. But to actually make something useful out of them, I need to decrypt it.
The guy being charged, Mr. Johansen never released a Windows program of any sorts. What he *did* release was the source code to decode the encryption.
With the source code, someone else created a Windows program to decode the DVD. While I'm on the subject. He also did *not* write the code to break the encryption, he was merely the one who posted it and stood behind it.
Because they knew who to go after. Previously, it has been anonymous software written for the express purpose of piracy. DeCSS has no such intentions of piracy, so there was no reason for him to hide his identity. Unfortunately, the DVD CCA took this as an opportunity to lynch someone.
It's still designed to keep out those the DVD CCA doesn't approve of. The encryption does nothing to prevent piracy, only to maintain DVD CCA's complete and total control over the technology. Just the way they like it.
What I don't understand is how the Norweigian boy can be arrested for something that is legal in his country, so therefore he hasn't committed any crime. But the MPAA whines about a law broken in the US, and so the Norweigian police arrest this guy?
I don't get it. Aren't there extradition treatise and laws for this kind of thing?
Has the media really become this corrupt that they are above the law and can coerce foreign law enforcement to ignore only the laws that interfere with the MPAA's objectives? He didn't even break Norweigian law?! and he's being arrested by Norweigian police, without an extradition agreement? I'm lost.
Someone please set me straight if I've missed something, otherwise this is a *VERY* sad situation indeed.
Perfect. That is the best analogy I've seen to the situation yet.
Kudos. I'm going to print it out and explain it to tech-less people, and get them to understand why I'm protesting DVDs, and hopefully covert a few of them to rail against the MPAA too.
The point of CSS is not to protect against piracy. It's so the DVD industry can milk as much money out of this product as they possibly can. To make sure that no one beside their chosen few can make players to play DVDs (read: those that pay the toll) they encrypt them, and only give the keys to those who pony up the dough. Now that someone has broken it, they can't come out and say that someone has found a way around their exclusivist scheme, so they just pin it on piracy. Which of course, no one likes.
There's no one to extor-ERR, pay the license fees for DVD capability on Linux, so they dont create players for Linux or bother with it. There is plenty of extortion potential in Windows companies.
End of story. Mr. Johansen (probably spelled wrong) killed their cash cow and now the MPAA will wipe its ass with the Constitution and any other basic human rights to protect its bottom line. Unfortunately its too late, the cat is already out of the bag.
Sorry Jack. Mirror DeCSS, even if you don't care about Linux DVD players. Let the MPAA play Whack The Mole. This isn't about piracy, its about protecting ourselves from corporate greed.
I believe he was referring to something along the lines that, if you educate users and business on how to protect themselves from being the victims of computer crime, then that will do more to eliminate the problem, than merely upping the police state.
It's analogous to the mugging an earlier poster made reference to. To be sure, it isn't the pedestrian's fault that he walked down the dark, unprotected alley and got mugged. But if someone had 'educated' him on the dangers of walking down dark unprotected alleys, maybe he wouldn't have been as vulnerable to attack.
If he had known it would be much safer to take the well-lit busy street, he probably wouldn't have been mugged. It takes a much higher level of skill (if you want to call it that) to mug someone on a bright, busy street, and it rules out vulnerability to maybe the lesser petty thiefs.
Ok, this relates to computers in a similar manner, I promise.:)
Say a sysadmin had a server set up straight out of the box and then never paid any attention to possible problems, he would be walking down that dark alley. Because we all know that software will always have holes that can be exploited with relative ease, sort of like the mugging in a dark alley. Neither takes much intellect or skill.
Now, if we educate users/sysadmins/business on how to protect themselves through keeping a watchful eye to possible security issues and keeping them patched, then they are staying on the brightly lit path by keeping themselves fairly well protected against the untalented hole exploits.
This isn't to say that it will take care of all computer crime, but it *will* do more toward prevention than a "global monitoring network", not to mention keeping the government out of the privacy issues hot water.
And still, there are plenty of ways to deal with other crimes besides Big Brother'ing. Encryption is one of them, security certificates are another.
While all of this may be just political dillying around, some day it may become serious, and this is what many of us find disturbing. Maybe you understand now.
But isn't that true for all games? I mean, Quake3 requires at least a 300 Mhz *and* a OpenGL video card.. why wouldn't Linux be any different, if we want high quality games, they are going to come with the similar requirements. Of course you arent going to be able to play the lastest game on your 486DX2 nameserver machine, but any reasonably new machine should work. you know, 64 meg.. 266 Mhz. etc.
But RedHat is nice and all, but it's also designed a little more for the server market. This doesnt sound like a web server machine to me. On machines doing fp intensive work, i'd go with Mandrake on Althon. Mandrake is essentially RedHat tuned for performance on high speed machines. Debian and Slackware are also options as well. And the Althon is stellar. The 750 is the best performing one right now, the 800 will be a little rough around the edges.. because of its odd cache that runs at 2/5. If you go with Althon, get a 750 or wait for the new fabs at 850+, they'll have cache running at full clock speed.
All these names are so lame.. its like someone took a random letter combinator and tosses out some dressed up alphabet soup. Itanium doesnt do anything for me, its so blah. Merced was actually cool, it creates images of mercedes even.. the luxury car/chip. It sounds cool, sounds like a strong name, and its not hard to pronounce either.
Names that are hard to pronounce aren't always bad either, it makes them seem interesting and generally cool. I always had fun with trying to pronounce Hyundai, the only reason I never bought one was because they are cheap piece of crap, but it was still a cool name. Another one is Chevrolet, I don't know if I'm even spelling it right. But it's got a couple ways to say it, and it doesnt make me any less likely to buy it, except that I prefer Fords. Anyway. Back to the matter at hand.
I think Intel should have stuck with Merced, it was much cooler than Itanium. It sounds like some cheap ripoff of the Pentium, and they are obviously just trying to capitalize on the brand recognition. Can't say I blame them, its a good idea, everyone, even those who would know a CPU from a hole in the ground, knows their computer has a Pentium in it.
I'm in AMD fan anyway, and speaking of lame chip names.. the Althon? Sounds like a mangled form of a marathon. So even good chips suffer from the lame name game. And I'm rhyming, so that's all folks.
Small to medium webserving applications. It's flexible, it's cheap, you don't have to sell your soul for a NT or IIS license. Can do almost any kind of content out of the box. It slices, it dices, it can do perl!
Nice to see this kind of thing continuing to sell well, and priced nice too.
When the guys introduce themselves, the translator has a fun time with their names and nick names.
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda -- rob commander topple mall Jeff "Hemos" Bates -- jeff in both states Nate Ostendorf -- the husband or the smoke
I also searched for linux and I'll bet that it can't find any instances, because it doesn't translate it right. With all the different pronounciation possibilities.
It's a cool idea, but has a ways to go. Go Compaq. yay.
Slashdot Mirror
The point I was trying to make is that Jon never *wrote* the Windows binary. It was written by parties from the DoD group. He was the one who posted it, but not authored.
If I understand optical technology right, the encryption does nothing to prevent piracy, that is making bit for bit copies. Anyone could sell a writer that read 0 and wrote 0, read 1 and wrote 1. You don't have to unencrypt it to copy it bit for bit. I can make as many copies of a PGP-encrypted message as I want, because 1s are always 1s and 0s are always 0s. But to actually make something useful out of them, I need to decrypt it.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
let me just say, ARGH.
The guy being charged, Mr. Johansen never released a Windows program of any sorts. What he *did* release was the source code to decode the encryption.
With the source code, someone else created a Windows program to decode the DVD. While I'm on the subject. He also did *not* write the code to break the encryption, he was merely the one who posted it and stood behind it.
Hope that helps.
Because they knew who to go after.
Previously, it has been anonymous software written for the express purpose of piracy. DeCSS has no such intentions of piracy, so there was no reason for him to hide his identity. Unfortunately, the DVD CCA took this as an opportunity to lynch someone.
Thanks, your correction has been duely noted.
It's still designed to keep out those the DVD CCA doesn't approve of. The encryption does nothing to prevent piracy, only to maintain DVD CCA's complete and total control over the technology. Just the way they like it.
What I don't understand is how the Norweigian boy can be arrested for something that is legal in his country, so therefore he hasn't committed any crime. But the MPAA whines about a law broken in the US, and so the Norweigian police arrest this guy?
I don't get it. Aren't there extradition treatise and laws for this kind of thing?
Has the media really become this corrupt that they are above the law and can coerce foreign law enforcement to ignore only the laws that interfere with the MPAA's objectives? He didn't even break Norweigian law?! and he's being arrested by Norweigian police, without an extradition agreement? I'm lost.
Someone please set me straight if I've missed something, otherwise this is a *VERY* sad situation indeed.
Perfect. That is the best analogy I've seen to the situation yet.
Kudos. I'm going to print it out and explain it to tech-less people, and get them to understand why I'm protesting DVDs, and hopefully covert a few of them to rail against the MPAA too.
Moderate this up.
The point of CSS is not to protect against piracy. It's so the DVD industry can milk as much money out of this product as they possibly can. To make sure that no one beside their chosen few can make players to play DVDs (read: those that pay the toll) they encrypt them, and only give the keys to those who pony up the dough. Now that someone has broken it, they can't come out and say that someone has found a way around their exclusivist scheme, so they just pin it on piracy. Which of course, no one likes.
There's no one to extor-ERR, pay the license fees for DVD capability on Linux, so they dont create players for Linux or bother with it. There is plenty of extortion potential in Windows companies.
End of story. Mr. Johansen (probably spelled wrong) killed their cash cow and now the MPAA will wipe its ass with the Constitution and any other basic human rights to protect its bottom line. Unfortunately its too late, the cat is already out of the bag.
Sorry Jack. Mirror DeCSS, even if you don't care about Linux DVD players. Let the MPAA play Whack The Mole. This isn't about piracy, its about protecting ourselves from corporate greed.
Thank you, I'm done now.
Not to start a war, but why not OpenBSD?
Wouldn't it be better to audit OpenBSD for their purposes, since it's already designed for that purpose. Or even FreeBSD?
I asked the question because I am honestly interested in the answer, not some zealot telling me, "LINUX IS SECURE!" or something inane like that.
I believe he was referring to something along the lines that, if you educate users and business on how to protect themselves from being the victims of computer crime, then that will do more to eliminate the problem, than merely upping the police state.
:)
It's analogous to the mugging an earlier poster made reference to. To be sure, it isn't the pedestrian's fault that he walked down the dark, unprotected alley and got mugged. But if someone had 'educated' him on the dangers of walking down dark unprotected alleys, maybe he wouldn't have been as vulnerable to attack.
If he had known it would be much safer to take the well-lit busy street, he probably wouldn't have been mugged. It takes a much higher level of skill (if you want to call it that) to mug someone on a bright, busy street, and it rules out vulnerability to maybe the lesser petty thiefs.
Ok, this relates to computers in a similar manner, I promise.
Say a sysadmin had a server set up straight out of the box and then never paid any attention to possible problems, he would be walking down that dark alley. Because we all know that software will always have holes that can be exploited with relative ease, sort of like the mugging in a dark alley. Neither takes much intellect or skill.
Now, if we educate users/sysadmins/business on how to protect themselves through keeping a watchful eye to possible security issues and keeping them patched, then they are staying on the brightly lit path by keeping themselves fairly well protected against the untalented hole exploits.
This isn't to say that it will take care of all computer crime, but it *will* do more toward prevention than a "global monitoring network", not to mention keeping the government out of the privacy issues hot water.
And still, there are plenty of ways to deal with other crimes besides Big Brother'ing. Encryption is one of them, security certificates are another.
While all of this may be just political dillying around, some day it may become serious, and this is what many of us find disturbing. Maybe you understand now.
*doink*
Silly rabbit, Wally World is Wal-Mart. Now please, oh please don't tell me you haven't heard of the behemoth Wal-Mart.
Not just still porn. We're talking about full screen, multi-angle, 32-bit color, DVD porn! oh yeah.
:)
Er. I wouldn't know though, I'm not into that kind of stuff. Heh.
But isn't that true for all games? I mean, Quake3 requires at least a 300 Mhz *and* a OpenGL video card.. why wouldn't Linux be any different, if we want high quality games, they are going to come with the similar requirements. Of course you arent going to be able to play the lastest game on your 486DX2 nameserver machine, but any reasonably new machine should work. you know, 64 meg.. 266 Mhz. etc.
:)
Or that's how I see it.
Not to start a distro war.
But RedHat is nice and all, but it's also designed a little more for the server market. This doesnt sound like a web server machine to me. On machines doing fp intensive work, i'd go with Mandrake on Althon. Mandrake is essentially RedHat tuned for performance on high speed machines. Debian and Slackware are also options as well. And the Althon is stellar. The 750 is the best performing one right now, the 800 will be a little rough around the edges.. because of its odd cache that runs at 2/5. If you go with Althon, get a 750 or wait for the new fabs at 850+, they'll have cache running at full clock speed.
Because x86 is really inefficient and convulated.
Some things are better left alone.
All these names are so lame.. its like someone took a random letter combinator and tosses out some dressed up alphabet soup. Itanium doesnt do anything for me, its so blah. Merced was actually cool, it creates images of mercedes even.. the luxury car/chip. It sounds cool, sounds like a strong name, and its not hard to pronounce either.
Names that are hard to pronounce aren't always bad either, it makes them seem interesting and generally cool. I always had fun with trying to pronounce Hyundai, the only reason I never bought one was because they are cheap piece of crap, but it was still a cool name. Another one is Chevrolet, I don't know if I'm even spelling it right. But it's got a couple ways to say it, and it doesnt make me any less likely to buy it, except that I prefer Fords. Anyway. Back to the matter at hand.
I think Intel should have stuck with Merced, it was much cooler than Itanium. It sounds like some cheap ripoff of the Pentium, and they are obviously just trying to capitalize on the brand recognition. Can't say I blame them, its a good idea, everyone, even those who would know a CPU from a hole in the ground, knows their computer has a Pentium in it.
I'm in AMD fan anyway, and speaking of lame chip names.. the Althon? Sounds like a mangled form of a marathon. So even good chips suffer from the lame name game. And I'm rhyming, so that's all folks.
considering all these problems with security and bandwidth, giving and taking between honesty and playability.
:)
I have a suggestion to id for how to design Quake 4. Make it turn based.
Like a roleplaying game. With dice rolls and everything! I'm sure all the dice rolls could be server side without lag.
Something to chew on.
To quoth the famous quote. By who I don't know who it was said.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
And the award for the most paranoia inducing event since The Cold War goes to..
you guessed it.
I use pico.
Please. Hold your applause, I know you do too.
Damn you, I was going to make the beowulf comment.
Although I was going to say, would a beowulf cluster of these things be an orgy? or just a meeting? There are however, interfacing.
Er, heh. Nevermind.
But that wouldn't be any fun, locals couldn't make fun of the foreign tourists by speaking a different language any more.
:
This is where Linux is really shining.
Small to medium webserving applications. It's flexible, it's cheap, you don't have to sell your soul for a NT or IIS license. Can do almost any kind of content out of the box. It slices, it dices, it can do perl!
Nice to see this kind of thing continuing to sell well, and priced nice too.
Great. Just what we needed, another bandwagon distro thrown together. A cow disto. Joy.
I long for the days when different distros each had a niche. Debian, debian.. wherefore art thou?
When the guys introduce themselves, the translator has a fun time with their names and nick names.
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda -- rob commander topple mall
Jeff "Hemos" Bates -- jeff in both states
Nate Ostendorf -- the husband or the smoke
I also searched for linux and I'll bet that it can't find any instances, because it doesn't translate it right. With all the different pronounciation possibilities.
It's a cool idea, but has a ways to go. Go Compaq.
yay.