Yeah, I read that, and I'll give the artist credit for touching on the required elements. However, this is where the reality-disconnect happens. Just because you drew a red cylindrical thingy and declared it to be an ultracapacitor or high-pressure accumulator, doesn't make it so.
Power density is the issue. If you look at gasoline, you're talking about 45 MJ/kg. The best batteries in the world don't approach that energy density; ultracaps are worse. With Li-ion batteries in the 250 Wh/l range, and say a 10kW motor, your 1-hour run time will require at least 40 liters of battery (assuming 100% conversion efficiency.) I'll spot you a 4x improvement in the battery tech in the short term. You still need 10 liters of battery. The "artist" batteries are... volumetrically optimistic.
Unfortunately, this particular case does require Unobtanium. A metric ton of Expens-O-Lite won't bring this puppy back into the realm of reality. And I quote [from another article]:
... motorcycle controlled by 36 pneumatic muscles with 2 linear actuators.
Mkay, where is the compressed air stored? I'll grant that it could be stored in the backpack, or possibly in the front yoke arms, but even assuming that you're using 5000psi tankage, you'll use all the available space to store a reasonable buffer. The article cites electric wheel motors. I like that general concept in motorcycles. But they require batteries or a generator. Am I displacing the air tanks for the batteries? Again, where do these go?
I'm sorry, but the engineer in me can't make the leap of faith that the details have been done here. I see a pretty artistic concept that someone has plastered some random specifications onto in an attempt to make it something that it's not. It's art, not engineering.
In 20 years or so, we can re-address this issue. That's about the timeframe it'll probably take to see 10x battery/ultracap improvements such that the electric drivetrain of this vehicle may be viable.
Artists seem to have a reality-distortion field similar to Steve Jobs, only more introverted. "I'll use chromium-doped litho-phosphate batteries..." and all the real-world issues become moot. Ugh. I don't mind folks pushing the envelope, but this is just mental masturbation. Don't print a pile of technical specifications in an attempt to rationalize the "art." If it's art, just say so. Don't pretend it's an engineered product that actually exists.
Perhaps I should have clarified that I was referring to US spaceflight. Until recently, it was damned near impossible to take hardware built in the US and launch it on foreign vehicles. ITAR restrictions and all that... Top that off with Congressional mandates that US programs were to use *only* the Shuttle, and you have a recipe for stagnation.
I definitely think that the programmatic split is the right thing to do. There is no reason to send a flight crew up with every single launch. The Shuttle's original mission objectives had a much more hands-on expectation. That has turned out to be inaccurate.
The Shuttle is an impressive piece of hardware, but it's payload capacity is a huge step backward from that of the Saturn series. The Saturn V (which happens to be man-rated as well,) could loft 118,000kg into LEO. You'll need four or five Shuttle trips to move the equivalent mass, assuming your payload can be neatly sectioned into quarters and reassembled on-orbit. There's an enormous payload penalty imposed on the Shuttle - life support systems, avionics, wings, re-usable engines - all contributing in a negative manner to the payload capacity.
I haven't been following the recent Ares developments. I got tired of watching the Shuttle program participants trying to lobby their respective programs into the Ares plans. The space program is as much a political entity as it is a technical one. That alone will guarantee that it won't be anywhere near an optimal [technical] solution. As long as the politicians hold the purse strings, we're going to get more of the same.
It used to be that only NASA or the Air Force could do such things.
WtF? It used to be that NASA and the Air Force had a strangle-hold on spaceflight. They were the only ones who could do such things. Ugh, this annoys the crap out of me.
The Shuttle was a huge program when it was first considered. Congress mandated it's use to justify the expenditure. The Air Force levied horrible constraints against development, turning it into the mediocre performer it is today. The Congressional mandate effectively stopped any substantial commercial spaceflight development until pretty recently.
I've flown a payload on the Shuttle (STS-116.) Lemme say that the oversight for flying on a manned launch vehicle was enormous. That's a completely unnecessary burden for most launches. The single-use unmanned boosters are a much more effective method for putting everything but people into orbit.
The US space program is 20-30 years behind where it should be. I can't stand when folks think it's a wonderful thing that the bureaucrats are finally getting a clue. We should be completely furious that it's taken this long.
The entertainment industry has always identified that control of the distribution channel was their primary objective. They pander to the masses about supporting starving artists and contributing to the cultural collective, but at the end of the day, it degenerates into control - plain and simple.
Like it or not, the entertainment industry is part of the political process. Wanna write and sing a protest song? Nope, sorry, that's become a felony under the NO-BITCHIN bill passed recently. That's a tad extreme, but it's illustrative of the badness that can be levied by a small cadre of individuals and companies if they're allowed to control media distribution with such draconian measures. And don't fool yourself, they're playing a long-term incremental game. They're slowly eroding your freedom, and you're the frog in the comfy warm water.
Your indie store owners are suffering as a result of transient conditions. It'll settle out. It's unfortunate that they're taking one in the head, but it's unavoidable as the general population adopts a new social perception about music sharing.
The freedom of the press and the political opposition are the same issue approached from different directions. If you quote an op-ed piece I wrote about a political candidate, and issue a scathing rebuttal, I can have your comments removed from electronic publications by issuing a DMCA Takedown demand. Your political and "free" speech has been... interfered with. See how that works? I'm not saying that it's right to do so, but I am pointing out that there is a law-enforcement-supported method for quelling free speech. And that's the hideous bad thing.
And don't forget about NASA's Get Away Special (GAS) program on the Shuttle. Standardized containers carry experiments. That program was initiated in the mid 1970s. I know there are both closed and "exposure" options, but I don't recall if they allow deployments. Pro'lly not.
"... non-legitimately purchased content"? At first I thought this was editorializing by the submitter, but no, TFA contains that exact quote. I garner two ugly conclusions from this statement from Mr. Perrette:
- 1) Your device will soon only play "purchased" content. No home movies for you.
- 2) Your device will soon only play content purchased from us.
I think Microsoft has figured out what Step 2 is:
1. Create media player with subscription services.
2. Shoot self in foot by crippling said player to the point no one wants it.
3. Profit!?
Recently, I watched the Top Gear episode with the Veyron on VW's test track in Germany. They said the tires (tyres) would cook off in 14 minutes at top speed. I suspect the designers sized the fuel tank to empty prior to the tires going away. Sounds like a safety feature to me... not that I ever expect to be able to experience a Veyron [grumble, grumble].
I don't get it....wouldn't the market dictate progress for massive fuel efficiency gains?
Unfortunately, this isn't a free market environment. It's heavily regulated by the gub'ment. Auto manufacturers have exactly zero incentive to reduce your consumable spending, to make your driving experience better, etc. Their involvement ends at the sale. Fuel economy is a sales tool, but it pales in comparison to body styling, paint color, interior trim options. Don't believe me? Go "price your vehicle" at any online manufacturer's website. The first two selections are "sport package upgrades" and "paint color." Why? Because the customers have been taught not to consider pesky things like annual consumable expenditures. None of the manufacturers make it easy to sort cars based on fuel economy...
Increasing fuel economy is a touchy subject, because the car manufacturers have ties into Big Oil. Example - Jeep introduced a crummy Italian diesel engine into the 2005 Liberty lineup. Mileage for the 2.5L CRD engine was about 25MPG, compared to about 19MPG for the 3.7L gasoline V6. Demand for this vehicle configuration was overwhelming. So Chrysler ramped-up production in response, right? Nope. They killed it. Seems counter-intuitive, until you consider that introducing a high-mileage diesel into the SUV space alters the balance in a way that upsets Big Auto Makers and Big Oil Producers. I would have loved to see Chrysler stuff the Mercedes E-class diesel into their cars, but that's hoping too much.
Lamp manufacturers pay UL for the privelege of being certified. UL doesn't randomly grab equipment and force a cert upon it. The voting machine manufacturers should be more than interested in having third-party audits of their equipment... unless they are either crap or corrupt. I suspect the former, but the latter isn't too far behind.
Regardless, I don't see how the manufacturer could impose restrictions on the equipment if it has been sold. Leased? Yeah, that'd come with a use restriction because title never was transferred.
I just want to see the ISS reconfigure itself to do battle with a giant vinyl-suited bipedal space alien! That's much more exciting than the current "science" mission. I'd certainly stop bitching about it being a huge waste of money.
That's a nice link. Thanks. I was approaching from my telecom-centric point of view, where the item to be encrypted is the data, not the medium on which it is stored. There's a fundamental difference between the two, and I think there's a place for both. In a transport environment, it is assumed that the attacker has access to the data stream as well as the encryption algorithm. The strength of the encryption is based exclusively on the math.
The block-based CBC structures will enhance encryption strength within the block, but if the sector ID information is used as part of the initial vector calculation, the resultant data will be tethered to the medium on which it is stored. Relocating the data (i.e. in an off-line backup process) will trash the encrypted information if it's not an exact duplicate. That may be desirable, or it may not be. I can see an IT staff getting hosed because the backups can't be restored (or worse, they were tested on specific hardware which works, but because Seagate/Maxtor/WD et al doesn't make a particular hard drive anymore, future restorations aren't viable.)
This is a random-access device. The codebook encryption method is pretty much your only option unless you intend to re-crypt the entire downstream content because a one-byte write altered the chaining dependencies. In telecom apps, most of the data is streaming, and chaining cyphers are very appropriate. For static storage with an arbitrary data-order access opportunity, chaining cyphers would cause dramatic reductions in throughput, to the point of making the device unusable.
AES in ECB mode is less secure than (ECB + salt) or CBC mode. However CBC mode is inappropriate for this device. That doesn't make ECB suddenly "insecure."
The point you have appeared to miss is that OP was saying the Sun should be a defendant, as it contributes to the warming of the earth ( and by contributes, I mean is almost totally responsible for).
Actually, it's worse than that. The quote I posted was from TFA, and was uttered by the attorney from Boston, Matt Pawa. It's pretty clear that this is a cash-grab, and that they're cherry-picking the defendants.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Kivalina by two nonprofit legal organizations -- The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment and the Native American Rights Fund -- plus six law firms.
Uhm, yeah... Q: When was the last time you saw eight different law firms band together to defend the rights of 390 people? A: When the lawyers thought there was an insane amount of money at stake...
I'm sorry, and this is going to sound really cold, but I just can't get worked up over 390 people who live in a coastal area who are now bitching that the world isn't letting them do what they want. I'd have some sympathy if they were 390 people living off the land without involvement in modern civilization. But they're not. They have modern conveniences - see that radio tower in the CNN photo? I trotted over to Google Maps to have a look at the satellite imagery... Hey! They have modern boats, presumably diesel powered. They have aircraft and a runway. They have modern buildings that certainly weren't fabricated from local materials... Sounds like they're hooked-in to the global economy just like the rest of us. Hypocrisy at it's finest.
It's not civil disobedience at all. It is outright theft, plain and simple.
Civil Disobedience: the active refusal to obey certain laws without resorting to physical violence.
The laws in question are the copyright structures that bias benefit away from society and toward a select few who seek continuous compensation for a singular act of creation. Given the opportunity, the media cartels would terminate any "fair use" clause, and require (through force of law) that you engage in a "pay per play" structure. They would also extend copyright durations indefinitely, as they are already doing, such that you and everyone else is bleeding cash into their pockets. How exactly does this benefit society or promote creation of new works?
Civil Disobedience doesn't have to be an organized protest marching at a significant location. An individual may perform an act of civil disobedience, though individual acts usually aren't as effective as large organized ones. Rosa Parks is an excellent example of how individual civil disobedience can be effective.
Like it or not, copyright law around the world is busted. It's been usurped by the large media cartels, and converted into a corporate welfare program. Oh, and your participation is compulsory - the cartels may use government resources (law enforcement, the courts, etc.) to force you into compliance. This is one situation where the government is listening to the special interest at the expense of society.
If you want to talk about "outright theft," have a look at the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in the US. Works that were scheduled to enter the public domain were snatched back under copyright protection. The artists, authors, and middle-men enjoyed decades of government-authorized monopoly, with the understanding that at the end of the term, the works would enter the public domain. Instead, they continue to enjoy the monopoly, while society has lost all benefit. They deprived me of access to these works, for which they have already received compensation (and I'm not talking about the monetary kind of compensation.) So when the lawmakers are clearly in the pockets of special interest groups, it's unlikely that changing the laws will be an option. Civil disobedience is the next best thing. Note that boycotts and abstinence don't work, as the media cartels have lobbied for blank-media taxes, thus ensuring that you're bleeding cash into their coffers whether you use their products or not.
sellacious : adj - appealing to one's baser need for cash Example: "Mr. Thompson's sellacious behavior may indicate that he is a money-grubbing attention whore."
How's that? I do believe this is my new favorite word.
Shoplifting is illegal because it benefits the individual at the expense of society. Were the behavior of just taking something out of a store to become legal, the term "shoplifting" would cease to exist... as would personal property rights, etc. You'd also end up living in an ideal communist environment where everyone owns everything.
However, what you're observing here is civil disobedience on a massive scale. If the politicians would take their collective head our of the lobbyist's asses for a moment and actually comprehend what's going on, they'd see that copyright structures are grossly biased away from the "benefit of society" side. (Note that I'm not going to hold my breath for the politicians to wake up and reform copyright legislation into something sane.)
I'm not suggesting that *all* downloading is legit, but the media cartels are absolutely desperate to maintain what little control of the distribution channel they have left. They couldn't care less about collateral damage they cause.
Yeah, it's the random access requirement of the hard drive that imposes a significant limitation on what you can do. ECB has inherent limitations in that it's deterministic - if you send the same data/key pair, you get the same output block. That provides information to an attacker. If you use "salt + ECB," you can deprive an attacker of information. Chaining is definitely much more secure, especially when you may be subject to a man-in-the-middle attack. Chaining really works well in a telecom environment where you're streaming data from one place to another. You don't have the random access issues there.
Selecting an encryption method is always a compromise. You need to balance resources (time, money, etc.) against operation (latency, key management, intended users.) If you're looking to export a product from the US, including strong AES encryption will get you hassle regarding ITAR. Yes Virginia, encryption algorithms are considered munitions by the US government. The optimist in me would like to think that in-house crypto solutions are implemented to avoid ITAR issues, and not that someone "knows a better solution."
The ECB mode of AES is nothing like a repetitive block XOR. The "reused OTP" block encoding is very susceptible to plaintext attacks, and is trivial to decode. AES in ECB mode is a mathematical data transformation that has dependencies on both the key and the data. It's deterministic, in that the same data/key pair will produce the same output, but it's quite resistant to plaintext attacks. If you "salt" the data with a small bit of random information, you'll eliminate the deterministic output liability. You can't run AES in the chaining mode on a hard drive due to the random-access nature of the media.
I've worked with AES for several years now, including embedded implementations on PIC 16F microcontrollers. It's a pretty phenomenal algorithm. I'd use an ECB implementation over a short-block OTP (i.e. 2kB) any day.
Dammit, I was betrayed by the calculator. 166hp is 123.8kW. I haven't figured out how I screwed the pooch on that one. I tried backing our the math, and it doesn't make *any* sense. Ugh.
Ultimately, the insolation is the issue. Even under the most generous situations, there just isn't enough solar energy incident on a car to supply the power that's typically demanded.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I read that, and I'll give the artist credit for touching on the required elements. However, this is where the reality-disconnect happens. Just because you drew a red cylindrical thingy and declared it to be an ultracapacitor or high-pressure accumulator, doesn't make it so.
... volumetrically optimistic.
Power density is the issue. If you look at gasoline, you're talking about 45 MJ/kg. The best batteries in the world don't approach that energy density; ultracaps are worse. With Li-ion batteries in the 250 Wh/l range, and say a 10kW motor, your 1-hour run time will require at least 40 liters of battery (assuming 100% conversion efficiency.) I'll spot you a 4x improvement in the battery tech in the short term. You still need 10 liters of battery. The "artist" batteries are
I'm sorry, but the engineer in me can't make the leap of faith that the details have been done here. I see a pretty artistic concept that someone has plastered some random specifications onto in an attempt to make it something that it's not. It's art, not engineering.
In 20 years or so, we can re-address this issue. That's about the timeframe it'll probably take to see 10x battery/ultracap improvements such that the electric drivetrain of this vehicle may be viable.
Artists seem to have a reality-distortion field similar to Steve Jobs, only more introverted. "I'll use chromium-doped litho-phosphate batteries ..." and all the real-world issues become moot. Ugh. I don't mind folks pushing the envelope, but this is just mental masturbation. Don't print a pile of technical specifications in an attempt to rationalize the "art." If it's art, just say so. Don't pretend it's an engineered product that actually exists.
Perhaps I should have clarified that I was referring to US spaceflight. Until recently, it was damned near impossible to take hardware built in the US and launch it on foreign vehicles. ITAR restrictions and all that ... Top that off with Congressional mandates that US programs were to use *only* the Shuttle, and you have a recipe for stagnation.
I definitely think that the programmatic split is the right thing to do. There is no reason to send a flight crew up with every single launch. The Shuttle's original mission objectives had a much more hands-on expectation. That has turned out to be inaccurate.
The Shuttle is an impressive piece of hardware, but it's payload capacity is a huge step backward from that of the Saturn series. The Saturn V (which happens to be man-rated as well,) could loft 118,000kg into LEO. You'll need four or five Shuttle trips to move the equivalent mass, assuming your payload can be neatly sectioned into quarters and reassembled on-orbit. There's an enormous payload penalty imposed on the Shuttle - life support systems, avionics, wings, re-usable engines - all contributing in a negative manner to the payload capacity.
I haven't been following the recent Ares developments. I got tired of watching the Shuttle program participants trying to lobby their respective programs into the Ares plans. The space program is as much a political entity as it is a technical one. That alone will guarantee that it won't be anywhere near an optimal [technical] solution. As long as the politicians hold the purse strings, we're going to get more of the same.
The Shuttle was a huge program when it was first considered. Congress mandated it's use to justify the expenditure. The Air Force levied horrible constraints against development, turning it into the mediocre performer it is today. The Congressional mandate effectively stopped any substantial commercial spaceflight development until pretty recently.
I've flown a payload on the Shuttle (STS-116.) Lemme say that the oversight for flying on a manned launch vehicle was enormous. That's a completely unnecessary burden for most launches. The single-use unmanned boosters are a much more effective method for putting everything but people into orbit.
The US space program is 20-30 years behind where it should be. I can't stand when folks think it's a wonderful thing that the bureaucrats are finally getting a clue. We should be completely furious that it's taken this long.
The entertainment industry has always identified that control of the distribution channel was their primary objective. They pander to the masses about supporting starving artists and contributing to the cultural collective, but at the end of the day, it degenerates into control - plain and simple.
... interfered with. See how that works? I'm not saying that it's right to do so, but I am pointing out that there is a law-enforcement-supported method for quelling free speech. And that's the hideous bad thing.
Like it or not, the entertainment industry is part of the political process. Wanna write and sing a protest song? Nope, sorry, that's become a felony under the NO-BITCHIN bill passed recently. That's a tad extreme, but it's illustrative of the badness that can be levied by a small cadre of individuals and companies if they're allowed to control media distribution with such draconian measures. And don't fool yourself, they're playing a long-term incremental game. They're slowly eroding your freedom, and you're the frog in the comfy warm water.
Your indie store owners are suffering as a result of transient conditions. It'll settle out. It's unfortunate that they're taking one in the head, but it's unavoidable as the general population adopts a new social perception about music sharing.
The freedom of the press and the political opposition are the same issue approached from different directions. If you quote an op-ed piece I wrote about a political candidate, and issue a scathing rebuttal, I can have your comments removed from electronic publications by issuing a DMCA Takedown demand. Your political and "free" speech has been
And don't forget about NASA's Get Away Special (GAS) program on the Shuttle. Standardized containers carry experiments. That program was initiated in the mid 1970s. I know there are both closed and "exposure" options, but I don't recall if they allow deployments. Pro'lly not.
"... non-legitimately purchased content"? At first I thought this was editorializing by the submitter, but no, TFA contains that exact quote. I garner two ugly conclusions from this statement from Mr. Perrette:
- 1) Your device will soon only play "purchased" content. No home movies for you.
- 2) Your device will soon only play content purchased from us.
I think Microsoft has figured out what Step 2 is:
1. Create media player with subscription services.
2. Shoot self in foot by crippling said player to the point no one wants it.
3. Profit!?
>Rapid Onset, Vital Passage and Sudden Thrust. The titles may conjure images of blitzkrieg,
>
Sounds more like pr0n.
Seriously, video games are a simulation environment. Makes sense to use them as training tools. This is news, why?
Recently, I watched the Top Gear episode with the Veyron on VW's test track in Germany. They said the tires (tyres) would cook off in 14 minutes at top speed. I suspect the designers sized the fuel tank to empty prior to the tires going away. Sounds like a safety feature to me ... not that I ever expect to be able to experience a Veyron [grumble, grumble].
Increasing fuel economy is a touchy subject, because the car manufacturers have ties into Big Oil. Example - Jeep introduced a crummy Italian diesel engine into the 2005 Liberty lineup. Mileage for the 2.5L CRD engine was about 25MPG, compared to about 19MPG for the 3.7L gasoline V6. Demand for this vehicle configuration was overwhelming. So Chrysler ramped-up production in response, right? Nope. They killed it. Seems counter-intuitive, until you consider that introducing a high-mileage diesel into the SUV space alters the balance in a way that upsets Big Auto Makers and Big Oil Producers. I would have loved to see Chrysler stuff the Mercedes E-class diesel into their cars, but that's hoping too much.
Lamp manufacturers pay UL for the privelege of being certified. UL doesn't randomly grab equipment and force a cert upon it. The voting machine manufacturers should be more than interested in having third-party audits of their equipment ... unless they are either crap or corrupt. I suspect the former, but the latter isn't too far behind.
Regardless, I don't see how the manufacturer could impose restrictions on the equipment if it has been sold. Leased? Yeah, that'd come with a use restriction because title never was transferred.
I just want to see the ISS reconfigure itself to do battle with a giant vinyl-suited bipedal space alien! That's much more exciting than the current "science" mission. I'd certainly stop bitching about it being a huge waste of money.
That's a nice link. Thanks. I was approaching from my telecom-centric point of view, where the item to be encrypted is the data, not the medium on which it is stored. There's a fundamental difference between the two, and I think there's a place for both. In a transport environment, it is assumed that the attacker has access to the data stream as well as the encryption algorithm. The strength of the encryption is based exclusively on the math.
The block-based CBC structures will enhance encryption strength within the block, but if the sector ID information is used as part of the initial vector calculation, the resultant data will be tethered to the medium on which it is stored. Relocating the data (i.e. in an off-line backup process) will trash the encrypted information if it's not an exact duplicate. That may be desirable, or it may not be. I can see an IT staff getting hosed because the backups can't be restored (or worse, they were tested on specific hardware which works, but because Seagate/Maxtor/WD et al doesn't make a particular hard drive anymore, future restorations aren't viable.)
This is a random-access device. The codebook encryption method is pretty much your only option unless you intend to re-crypt the entire downstream content because a one-byte write altered the chaining dependencies. In telecom apps, most of the data is streaming, and chaining cyphers are very appropriate. For static storage with an arbitrary data-order access opportunity, chaining cyphers would cause dramatic reductions in throughput, to the point of making the device unusable.
AES in ECB mode is less secure than (ECB + salt) or CBC mode. However CBC mode is inappropriate for this device. That doesn't make ECB suddenly "insecure."
Uhm, yeah
Q: When was the last time you saw eight different law firms band together to defend the rights of 390 people?
A: When the lawyers thought there was an insane amount of money at stake
I'm sorry, and this is going to sound really cold, but I just can't get worked up over 390 people who live in a coastal area who are now bitching that the world isn't letting them do what they want. I'd have some sympathy if they were 390 people living off the land without involvement in modern civilization. But they're not. They have modern conveniences - see that radio tower in the CNN photo? I trotted over to Google Maps to have a look at the satellite imagery
If anything is substantially responsible for increasing the earth's temperature, it's that nuclear-reactor-in-the-sky.
The laws in question are the copyright structures that bias benefit away from society and toward a select few who seek continuous compensation for a singular act of creation. Given the opportunity, the media cartels would terminate any "fair use" clause, and require (through force of law) that you engage in a "pay per play" structure. They would also extend copyright durations indefinitely, as they are already doing, such that you and everyone else is bleeding cash into their pockets. How exactly does this benefit society or promote creation of new works?
Civil Disobedience doesn't have to be an organized protest marching at a significant location. An individual may perform an act of civil disobedience, though individual acts usually aren't as effective as large organized ones. Rosa Parks is an excellent example of how individual civil disobedience can be effective.
Like it or not, copyright law around the world is busted. It's been usurped by the large media cartels, and converted into a corporate welfare program. Oh, and your participation is compulsory - the cartels may use government resources (law enforcement, the courts, etc.) to force you into compliance. This is one situation where the government is listening to the special interest at the expense of society.
If you want to talk about "outright theft," have a look at the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in the US. Works that were scheduled to enter the public domain were snatched back under copyright protection. The artists, authors, and middle-men enjoyed decades of government-authorized monopoly, with the understanding that at the end of the term, the works would enter the public domain. Instead, they continue to enjoy the monopoly, while society has lost all benefit. They deprived me of access to these works, for which they have already received compensation (and I'm not talking about the monetary kind of compensation.) So when the lawmakers are clearly in the pockets of special interest groups, it's unlikely that changing the laws will be an option. Civil disobedience is the next best thing. Note that boycotts and abstinence don't work, as the media cartels have lobbied for blank-media taxes, thus ensuring that you're bleeding cash into their coffers whether you use their products or not.
sellacious : adj - appealing to one's baser need for cash
Example: "Mr. Thompson's sellacious behavior may indicate that he is a money-grubbing attention whore."
How's that? I do believe this is my new favorite word.
Shoplifting is illegal because it benefits the individual at the expense of society. Were the behavior of just taking something out of a store to become legal, the term "shoplifting" would cease to exist ... as would personal property rights, etc. You'd also end up living in an ideal communist environment where everyone owns everything.
However, what you're observing here is civil disobedience on a massive scale. If the politicians would take their collective head our of the lobbyist's asses for a moment and actually comprehend what's going on, they'd see that copyright structures are grossly biased away from the "benefit of society" side. (Note that I'm not going to hold my breath for the politicians to wake up and reform copyright legislation into something sane.)
I'm not suggesting that *all* downloading is legit, but the media cartels are absolutely desperate to maintain what little control of the distribution channel they have left. They couldn't care less about collateral damage they cause.
Yeah, it's the random access requirement of the hard drive that imposes a significant limitation on what you can do. ECB has inherent limitations in that it's deterministic - if you send the same data/key pair, you get the same output block. That provides information to an attacker. If you use "salt + ECB," you can deprive an attacker of information. Chaining is definitely much more secure, especially when you may be subject to a man-in-the-middle attack. Chaining really works well in a telecom environment where you're streaming data from one place to another. You don't have the random access issues there.
Selecting an encryption method is always a compromise. You need to balance resources (time, money, etc.) against operation (latency, key management, intended users.) If you're looking to export a product from the US, including strong AES encryption will get you hassle regarding ITAR. Yes Virginia, encryption algorithms are considered munitions by the US government. The optimist in me would like to think that in-house crypto solutions are implemented to avoid ITAR issues, and not that someone "knows a better solution."
The ECB mode of AES is nothing like a repetitive block XOR. The "reused OTP" block encoding is very susceptible to plaintext attacks, and is trivial to decode. AES in ECB mode is a mathematical data transformation that has dependencies on both the key and the data. It's deterministic, in that the same data/key pair will produce the same output, but it's quite resistant to plaintext attacks. If you "salt" the data with a small bit of random information, you'll eliminate the deterministic output liability. You can't run AES in the chaining mode on a hard drive due to the random-access nature of the media.
I've worked with AES for several years now, including embedded implementations on PIC 16F microcontrollers. It's a pretty phenomenal algorithm. I'd use an ECB implementation over a short-block OTP (i.e. 2kB) any day.
Dammit, I was betrayed by the calculator. 166hp is 123.8kW. I haven't figured out how I screwed the pooch on that one. I tried backing our the math, and it doesn't make *any* sense. Ugh.
Ultimately, the insolation is the issue. Even under the most generous situations, there just isn't enough solar energy incident on a car to supply the power that's typically demanded.