How do you know that SETI@Home is not actually a government front and they are not already using distributed processing to break Mitnick's encryption:-)
Mitnick: "Gee, I seem to have lost it. Please give me back my property, since therefore it's of no use to you."
Authorities: "Well, it's no good to you either."
Mitnick: "Uh, I bet I can decode the stuff even without the key:-)"
Authorities: "Then decode it for us, first!"
Mitnick: "Are you on crack or something? I am not a number - I am a free man." (evidently he has seen the TV series The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan)
Authorities: "HA HA HA HA!!! HO HO HO HO!!! GIVE US THE EEEEEENFORMATION!!!" (so have they)
This is a joke, right? I mean, no one could be so stupid as to think that changing massive quantities of comparatively harmless CO2 into highly toxic methanol is desirable on a large scale.
Methanol is not ethanol. Methanol is toxic when drunk, toxic when the vapor is breathed, toxic when absorbed through the intact skin, and really bad news if you squirt a couple of drops in your eye.
Besides, methanol's only uses are as a fuel and as a raw material for making other compounds. When you burn or catalyze the Methanol as fuel, you get the CO2 back again, and when those other compounds are eventually consumed or destroyed, you get the CO2 back again (and other noxious compounds, by the way).
CO2, on the other hand, is food for plants. If you "cleaned" the atmosphere entirely of CO2, all plants would die, no more O2 would be produced, and eventually all O2 would be consumed and all animals would die. Yes, we are animals, and we would die too.
The New Scientist article is baffling because it seems to have things backwards. Our livers (in the unhappy event anyone is foolish enough to consume methanol - not ethanol) in fact convert methanol into formaldehyde and formic acid, not the other way round. It is this formaldehyde and formic acid that account for the toxic effects - notably permanent blindness and destruction of the nervous system and cerebral cortex (not real fun). I know the article waves its hands and says, oh, the process is reversible. Maybe...
1) The amount of methanol used for applications like these batteries is a drop in the bucket. VAST amounts are used in the production of that ghastly MTBE stuff that is mixed into gasoline.
2) Most methanol (and there is one heck of a lot of it produced per year) is made from petroleum and natural gas.
Methanol is BAD stuff. It's not only if you drink it; it can be absorbed through the skin and breathed in vapor form (it is fairly volatile). If you squirt some in your eye, you're in BIG trouble.
On the plus side, it's not SUPER toxic. In small concentrations it seems to be harmless, and does not build up over time like some other poisons.
OK, I mostly agree with what you say, but re gasoline not being capable of exploding - what are you smoking??? Gasoline vapor, mixed with air, most certainly can explode. Um, did you ever hear of a fuel/air bomb? Gasoline is a somewhat bothersome way to make one - there are other easier ways - but it makes a great one under the right conditions.
Hmmmm, let's see... in an enclosed area, you will suffocate whether or not you're using this device:-) The small additional use of O2 and production of CO2 is slight compared to a human being.
Hello? Earth to H3lldr0p? The C++ Builder IDE is counter-intuitive? Compared to what, exactly? EMACS? Hack, hack, cough, choke! Some of us have only a limited supply of brain cells, and we need every one of them to attack the programming problem, not fight with an arcane, Byzantine, IDE from Hell like EMACS. By comparison, the C++ Builder IDE is the very DEFINITION of intuitive.
And the C++ Builder compiler and standard C++ library are SUBSTANTIALLY closer to the ISO C++ standard than gcc, whose progress in this regard has been positively glacial in comparison.
P.S. - when I say EMACS is the IDE from Hell, consider that the Devil is very powerful, but has a user friendly quotient of minus inifinity!:-)
I don't know the answer to your question, but one nit picking correction: 10BaseT is not a chain, it is a star topology physically, and thus doesn't require termination. 10Base2 and 10Base5 are the ones that use a bus topology terminated on both ends.
With respect, and nothing personal, but I always get my dander up when I hear phrases like "a little flaky - don't use for mission critical server apps". So what does that mean? Scientific and engineering workstations, and, yes, home systems don't count?
I for one don't want my financial and other records screwed up. I don't want my email and newsgroup archives lunched. I don't even want my games going "Zing" at odd moments.
This sounds like a laughably crappy job of engineering to me.
Everyone so far has missed the point. This isn't (or shouldn't be) a one time thing. Both servers should be left there forever, subject to ongoing attacks. No need to pay anyone anything (maybe a T shirt or something). I think there'll be plenty of entrants without any big reward being needed.
NT gets better, Linux gets better. I don't have any axe to grind, and this outcome would please me. Better operating systems; who can be against that?
. I'm about done, as we have a basic philosphical disagreement, and neither of us is stupid, and we have each spent our life developing our philosophy. But I don't believe you have damaged any of my 3 points.
You say: "I don't see how it hinders society. In fact scientific and technology progress has never been so good as the past 50 years. All this time patents have been around. They have allowed companies to cash in on their inventions."
How do you know what it would have been like doing things the way I suggest? As a matter of fact, only in the last 10-20 years have patents (particularly software patents) gotten totally out of control. We didn't try it my way, so there is no basis for an A-B comparison. I see what is, and say, couldn't it be done better.
You say: "Tough luck if you invent something that has already been patented. Do better research next time because nobody benefits from reinvented wheels. In all other cases it is just plain theft of an idea and protection of it seems a very wanted feature just to protect individual freedom."
It's not up to me to research what some other guy has done, except in the present warped system of patents. Mr. Ugh, 3 caves down, came up with the concept of the round wheel. So did I, Joe Duh. Ugh, you keep out of my way, and I'll keep out of yours. That's my philosophy. Funny, doing things my way, no one damages anyone else. It's the agora of ideas, man.
And, looks like we put a different priority on liberty (freedom). "Just" protecting individual liberty is about as close to a fundamental pillar of conduct as I believe one can get.
You say: "You are right that the current system doesn't work. I pointed that out in my original post. I don't see any obstacles for improvement of this system though (accept for the generally slow speed these things tend to happen in real life)."
Just the obstacle I pointed out already. You could enlist the services of everyone in the world to work for the patent office, and it still couldn't cope. It's out of control. The concept it is promoting can't possibly be implemented rationally and effectively.
P.S. - I'm a libertarian, about as far from a socialist or communist as I think you can get:-)
I don't believe patent law protects the little guy. Not only doesn't he have the money to research and obtain the patent in the first place, but more importantly, he doesn't have the resources to prosecute "infringers".
Your scenario as-is, is not a convincing case in favor of patents. Company A has a leg up because it got there first. It might also use trade secrets to deter or slow down Company B and others (that is, if it had something truly innovative:-)
. This is the old mindless mantra "no one would ever innovate if not for patent protection".
Hornswoggle. Ever heard of trade secrets and copyrights? They are enough, and they don't invade basic personal freedom.
The patent system in its entirety should be done away with. The reasons are simple.
1) It hinders society's progress more than spurring it (because people without the funds to patent things and prosecute "infringers" are not only deterred by lack of incentive, but actually prevented by legal force from innovating, since everything, particularly in software, gets patented by somebody).
2) It invades basic personal rights, by saying, even if you figure out something yourself, you can't use the fruit of your own thoughts, just because, nyah, nyah, I thought of it first, and I had the money to patent it, and I have the money to prosecute "infringement" (so there!).
3) No patent office could possibly cope effectively with the volume of applications without making the kind of ludicrous, moronic mistakes and errors of judgement the US Patent Office does, particularly with software.
The phrase "intellectual property" is itself a product of defective intellect (not singling anyone out here; I don't believe you used the phrase). Concepts are not property! Property is property. Things you can touch. Not God's/Nature's/The Universe's handiwork/tapestry as discovered and interpreted by anyone. I.e., if I build a faster than light spaceship, you better not take it away from me. That is theft of property. If I figure out how to build a faster than light spaceship, and you do the same, more power to you. Whether you buy mine and take it apart to see how I did it, or figure it out for yourself either before I did or after I did, that is your basic personal right.
The point is, I benefit from the sweat and money of doing research by finding things out and then acting upon that insight to implement it physically in an efficient manner so as to compete successfully with others who "find out the same things".
In terms of software, maybe a bunch of us "discover" LZW compression independantly, or maybe some of us just reverse engineer or grab someone else's implementation. Either way, it's not a static world! The guy who is consistently smarter, more active, more on the ball, in terms of evolving the concept and its implementation, will succeed. It's wrong - and unnecessary - to use brute, collective force to intervene in the agora of ideas in this way.
You brainless authoritarian busybody. If you don't wish to own a gun, then I suggest that you not acquire a gun. For my part, maybe I will acquire one and maybe I will not. A man with a free will. I bet that scares you. How sad.
Laws that seek to deter free action are evil. If you want to cut down on murder, you should punish and lock away murderers, not seek to take away guns and sharp objects and ropes and muscular arms and bad thoughts from all people.
You're too quick to make a distinction about hardware such as cars, and computer software.
Don't look now, but there are plans to mandate that all new cars have engine control systems that will allow cops to shut them off by radio. Does anyone doubt that this will be hacked so the repos will be able to disable your car? Maybe even the neighborhood kids?
Oh, please, everyone, get a clue. Any Senator can introduce any kind of lame-ass bill. It's mostly all PR (hint - election year coming up).
Fritzie-baby is a DEMOCRAP. Congress is presently controlled by REPUBLICANS. Particularly in light of recent internet legislation, this bill is going NOWHERE.
After next year, who knows? Keep this kind of garbage in mind when you vote next year.
Uh, that's IONIZING radiation that mutates cells. MICROWAVE radiation has only been proven to have a heating effect (though other effects are postulated, but yet unproven). Jeeze, talk about global warming:-)
Your scenario is chilling, but it will be some OTHER chilling scenario that will actually hit us.
I agree absolutely, and would go further and argue that allowing patent protection of innovative MECHANISMS (not just concepts) is evil as well.
However, I'm afraid I have really bad news. Globalization is almost invariably a PRO restrictive and authoritarian force. I can't envision your scenario working out. You see, these other countries need US just as much as we need THEM, and the vast global infrastructure will coerce everyone into agreeing with such intellectual property rights crap via treaties.
Intellectual property rights, my right eye! Intellectual fruit USURPATION is more like it!
Re:Cartridges and regular DVD players
on
DVD-RAM Support
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· Score: 1
Loligo: a clarification and a caveat:
Clarification: the cartridge can of course be removed from the drive just fine; it's just that the disk proper cannot be removed from the cartridge without destroying the cartridge, and you would be left with two very delicate optical surfaces if you did so. It is very likely you would quickly degrade the data integrity of the disk by handling and storing it without the cartridge, but theoretically, if you were very, very careful, everything would work just fine recording and playing back without the cartridge. There is certainly nothing magic about the cartridge. It is a simple protective device with a shutter, much like that of a 3.5" floppy, a Zip disk, or a magneto-optical disk. It's just that, while it's virtually impossible to conceive trying to use a 3.5" floppy, a Zip, or M-O disk without the cartridge, you can easily imagine experimenting with using a DVD-RAM disk without the cartridge.
Caveat: the type 2 disks can only be read in DVD-ROM drives specifically designed to read them. I am not aware of any specific DVD-ROM models yet that can read them, but it's not unlikely there might be one or two brand new models which can do so.
The type 2 require extremely careful handling too, when not in their cartridge. It's just that only one side is delicate, so it's not as bad as trying to do it with type 2 disks as it is with type 1 disks.
Re:Clues .... please take one
on
DVD-RAM Support
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· Score: 1
Joe, the problem is that DVD-RAM drives are schizo. They advertise themselves to the SCSI bus as the same class as CD-ROM, which is why no special driver is needed to read CD-ROMs in them -- this is what makes them different from Zip drives, etc., which advertise themselves to the SCSI bus as removable media drives.
So while DVD-RAM is not a CDR type thing, it suffers from the same shortcoming: without special drivers, both can serve only as CD-ROM drives.
It would be nice if the DVD-RAM drive had a jumper to change the device type advertisement to the SCSI bus from CD-ROM class to rewriteable-optical type -- then it would be recognized by Linux and everything else as a magneto-optical drive. It wouldn't work as a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM or DVD video drive when so jumpered, but DVD-ROM drives are cheap anyway. I'd just add one. It would be cheap.
Slashdot Mirror
Money? Why would it take money? :-)
:-)
How do you know that SETI@Home is not actually a government front and they are not already using distributed processing to break Mitnick's encryption
A fantasy:
:-)"
Authorities: "Gimme the key, punk!"
Mitnick: "Gee, I seem to have lost it. Please give me back my property, since therefore it's of no use to you."
Authorities: "Well, it's no good to you either."
Mitnick: "Uh, I bet I can decode the stuff even without the key
Authorities: "Then decode it for us, first!"
Mitnick: "Are you on crack or something? I am not a number - I am a free man." (evidently he has seen the TV series The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan)
Authorities: "HA HA HA HA!!! HO HO HO HO!!! GIVE US THE EEEEEENFORMATION!!!" (so have they)
This is a joke, right? I mean, no one could be so stupid as to think that changing massive quantities of comparatively harmless CO2 into highly toxic methanol is desirable on a large scale.
Methanol is not ethanol. Methanol is toxic when drunk, toxic when the vapor is breathed, toxic when absorbed through the intact skin, and really bad news if you squirt a couple of drops in your eye.
Besides, methanol's only uses are as a fuel and as a raw material for making other compounds. When you burn or catalyze the Methanol as fuel, you get the CO2 back again, and when those other compounds are eventually consumed or destroyed, you get the CO2 back again (and other noxious compounds, by the way).
CO2, on the other hand, is food for plants. If you "cleaned" the atmosphere entirely of CO2, all plants would die, no more O2 would be produced, and eventually all O2 would be consumed and all animals would die. Yes, we are animals, and we would die too.
The New Scientist article is baffling because it seems to have things backwards. Our livers (in the unhappy event anyone is foolish enough to consume methanol - not ethanol) in fact convert methanol into formaldehyde and formic acid, not the other way round. It is this formaldehyde and formic acid that account for the toxic effects - notably permanent blindness and destruction of the nervous system and cerebral cortex (not real fun). I know the article waves its hands and says, oh, the process is reversible. Maybe...
1) The amount of methanol used for applications like these batteries is a drop in the bucket. VAST amounts are used in the production of that ghastly MTBE stuff that is mixed into gasoline.
2) Most methanol (and there is one heck of a lot of it produced per year) is made from petroleum and natural gas.
Methanol is BAD stuff. It's not only if you drink it; it can be absorbed through the skin and breathed in vapor form (it is fairly volatile).
If you squirt some in your eye, you're in BIG trouble.
On the plus side, it's not SUPER toxic. In small concentrations it seems to be harmless, and does not build up over time like some other poisons.
OK, I mostly agree with what you say, but re gasoline not being capable of exploding - what are you smoking??? Gasoline vapor, mixed with air, most certainly can explode. Um, did you ever hear of a fuel/air bomb? Gasoline is a somewhat bothersome way to make one - there are other easier ways - but it makes a great one under the right conditions.
I could tell you a pleasant way, but you have probably already thought of it. Probably can't use my solution on an airplane though :-)
Hmmmm, let's see... in an enclosed area, you will suffocate whether or not you're using this device :-) The small additional use of O2 and production of CO2 is slight compared to a human being.
Hello? Earth to H3lldr0p? The C++ Builder IDE is counter-intuitive? Compared to what, exactly? EMACS? Hack, hack, cough, choke! Some of us have only a limited supply of brain cells, and we need every one of them to attack the programming problem, not fight with an arcane, Byzantine, IDE from Hell like EMACS. By comparison, the C++ Builder IDE is the very DEFINITION of intuitive.
:-)
And the C++ Builder compiler and standard C++ library are SUBSTANTIALLY closer to the ISO C++ standard than gcc, whose progress in this regard has been positively glacial in comparison.
P.S. - when I say EMACS is the IDE from Hell, consider that the Devil is very powerful, but has a user friendly quotient of minus inifinity!
I don't know the answer to your question, but one nit picking correction: 10BaseT is not a chain, it is a star topology physically, and thus doesn't require termination. 10Base2 and 10Base5 are the ones that use a bus topology terminated on both ends.
With respect, and nothing personal, but I always get my dander up when I hear phrases like "a little flaky - don't use for mission critical server apps". So what does that mean? Scientific and engineering workstations, and, yes, home systems don't count?
I for one don't want my financial and other records screwed up. I don't want my email and newsgroup archives lunched. I don't even want my games going "Zing" at odd moments.
This sounds like a laughably crappy job of engineering to me.
Everyone so far has missed the point. This isn't (or shouldn't be) a one time thing. Both servers should be left there forever, subject to ongoing attacks. No need to pay anyone anything (maybe a T shirt or something). I think there'll be plenty of entrants without any big reward being needed.
NT gets better, Linux gets better. I don't have any axe to grind, and this outcome would please me. Better operating systems; who can be against that?
.
:-)
I'm about done, as we have a basic philosphical disagreement, and neither of us is stupid, and we have each spent our life developing our philosophy. But I don't believe you have damaged any of my 3 points.
You say:
"I don't see how it hinders society. In fact scientific and technology progress has never been so good as the past 50 years. All this time patents have been around. They have allowed companies to cash in on their inventions."
How do you know what it would have been like doing things the way I suggest? As a matter of fact, only in the last 10-20 years have patents (particularly software patents) gotten totally out of control. We didn't try it my way, so there is no basis for an A-B comparison. I see what is, and say, couldn't it be done better.
You say:
"Tough luck if you invent something that has already been patented. Do better research next time because nobody benefits from reinvented wheels. In all other cases it is just plain theft of an idea and protection of it seems a very wanted feature just to protect individual freedom."
It's not up to me to research what some other guy has done, except in the present warped system of patents. Mr. Ugh, 3 caves down, came up with the concept of the round wheel. So did I, Joe Duh. Ugh, you keep out of my way, and I'll keep out of yours. That's my philosophy. Funny, doing things my way, no one damages anyone else. It's the agora of ideas, man.
And, looks like we put a different priority on liberty (freedom). "Just" protecting individual liberty is about as close to a fundamental pillar of conduct as I believe one can get.
You say:
"You are right that the current system doesn't work. I pointed that out in my original post. I don't see any obstacles for improvement of this system though (accept for the generally slow speed these things tend to happen in real life)."
Just the obstacle I pointed out already. You could enlist the services of everyone in the world to work for the patent office, and it still couldn't cope. It's out of control. The concept it is promoting can't possibly be implemented rationally and effectively.
P.S. - I'm a libertarian, about as far from a socialist or communist as I think you can get
I don't believe patent law protects the little guy. Not only doesn't he have the money to research and obtain the patent in the first place, but more importantly, he doesn't have the resources to prosecute "infringers".
Your scenario as-is, is not a convincing case in favor of patents. Company A has a leg up because it got there first. It might also use trade secrets to deter or slow down Company B and others (that is, if it had something truly innovative :-)
.
This is the old mindless mantra "no one would ever innovate if not for patent protection".
Hornswoggle. Ever heard of trade secrets and copyrights? They are enough, and they don't invade basic personal freedom.
The patent system in its entirety should be done away with. The reasons are simple.
1) It hinders society's progress more than spurring it (because people without the funds to patent things and prosecute "infringers" are not only deterred by lack of incentive, but actually prevented by legal force from innovating, since everything, particularly in software, gets patented by somebody).
2) It invades basic personal rights, by saying, even if you figure out something yourself, you can't use the fruit of your own thoughts, just because, nyah, nyah, I thought of it first, and I had the money to patent it, and I have the money to prosecute "infringement" (so there!).
3) No patent office could possibly cope effectively with the volume of applications without making the kind of ludicrous, moronic mistakes and errors of judgement the US Patent Office does, particularly with software.
The phrase "intellectual property" is itself a product of defective intellect (not singling anyone out here; I don't believe you used the phrase). Concepts are not property! Property is property. Things you can touch. Not God's/Nature's/The Universe's handiwork/tapestry as discovered and interpreted by anyone. I.e., if I build a faster than light spaceship, you better not take it away from me. That is theft of property. If I figure out how to build a faster than light spaceship, and you do the same, more power to you. Whether you buy mine and take it apart to see how I did it, or figure it out for yourself either before I did or after I did, that is your basic personal right.
The point is, I benefit from the sweat and money of doing research by finding things out and then acting upon that insight to implement it physically in an efficient manner so as to compete successfully with others who "find out the same things".
In terms of software, maybe a bunch of us "discover" LZW compression independantly, or maybe some of us just reverse engineer or grab someone else's implementation. Either way, it's not a static world! The guy who is consistently smarter, more active, more on the ball, in terms of evolving the concept and its implementation, will succeed. It's wrong - and unnecessary - to use brute, collective force to intervene in the agora of ideas in this way.
You brainless authoritarian busybody. If you don't wish to own a gun, then I suggest that you not acquire a gun. For my part, maybe I will acquire one and maybe I will not. A man with a free will. I bet that scares you. How sad.
Laws that seek to deter free action are evil. If you want to cut down on murder, you should punish and lock away murderers, not seek to take away guns and sharp objects and ropes and muscular arms and bad thoughts from all people.
You said "wearing helmets is logical, dumb head".
THEN BE LOGICAL AND WEAR ONE. AND LET ME BE LOGICAL AND WEAR ONE, ONLY IF I FEEL LIKE IT.
Hello? Earth to Wanker? The 1400 is a server, not a visual workstation.
You're too quick to make a distinction about hardware such as cars, and computer software.
Don't look now, but there are plans to mandate that all new cars have engine control systems that will allow cops to shut them off by radio. Does anyone doubt that this will be hacked so the repos will be able to disable your car? Maybe even the neighborhood kids?
Oh, please, everyone, get a clue. Any Senator can introduce any kind of lame-ass bill. It's mostly all PR (hint - election year coming up).
Fritzie-baby is a DEMOCRAP. Congress is presently controlled by REPUBLICANS. Particularly in light of recent internet legislation, this bill is going NOWHERE.
After next year, who knows? Keep this kind of garbage in mind when you vote next year.
Uh, that's IONIZING radiation that mutates cells. MICROWAVE radiation has only been proven to have a heating effect (though other effects are postulated, but yet unproven). Jeeze, talk about global warming :-)
Your scenario is chilling, but it will be some OTHER chilling scenario that will actually hit us.
I agree absolutely, and would go further and argue that allowing patent protection of innovative MECHANISMS (not just concepts) is evil as well.
However, I'm afraid I have really bad news. Globalization is almost invariably a PRO restrictive and authoritarian force. I can't envision your scenario working out. You see, these other countries need US just as much as we need THEM, and the vast global infrastructure will coerce everyone into agreeing with such intellectual property rights crap via treaties.
Intellectual property rights, my right eye! Intellectual fruit USURPATION is more like it!
Loligo: a clarification and a caveat:
Clarification: the cartridge can of course be removed from the drive just fine; it's just that the disk proper cannot be removed from the cartridge without destroying the cartridge, and you would be left with two very delicate optical surfaces if you did so. It is very likely you would quickly degrade the data integrity of the disk by handling and storing it without the cartridge, but theoretically, if you were very, very careful, everything would work just fine recording and playing back without the cartridge. There is certainly nothing magic about the cartridge. It is a simple protective device with a shutter, much like that of a 3.5" floppy, a Zip disk, or a magneto-optical disk. It's just that, while it's virtually impossible to conceive trying to use a 3.5" floppy, a Zip, or M-O disk without the cartridge, you can easily imagine experimenting with using a DVD-RAM disk without the cartridge.
Caveat: the type 2 disks can only be read in DVD-ROM drives specifically designed to read them. I am not aware of any specific DVD-ROM models yet that can read them, but it's not unlikely there might be one or two brand new models which can do so.
The type 2 require extremely careful handling too, when not in their cartridge. It's just that only one side is delicate, so it's not as bad as trying to do it with type 2 disks as it is with type 1 disks.
Joe, the problem is that DVD-RAM drives are schizo. They advertise themselves to the SCSI bus as the same class as CD-ROM, which is why no special driver is needed to read CD-ROMs in them -- this is what makes them different from Zip drives, etc., which advertise themselves to the SCSI bus as removable media drives.
So while DVD-RAM is not a CDR type thing, it suffers from the same shortcoming: without special drivers, both can serve only as CD-ROM drives.
It would be nice if the DVD-RAM drive had a jumper to change the device type advertisement to the SCSI bus from CD-ROM class to rewriteable-optical type -- then it would be recognized by Linux and everything else as a magneto-optical drive. It wouldn't work as a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM or DVD video drive when so jumpered, but DVD-ROM drives are cheap anyway. I'd just add one. It would be cheap.