The problem is that without short-term subsidies for alternative energy, the prices of necessary goods will rise before they begin to fall. And alternative energy sources are far too expensive for anybody to afford them: if petrol has to get that expensive first, before alternative fuels become cheaper, then we're shafted. We're seeing this happening already; petrol actually hit a pound {=US$1.74, according to Google} in parts of the UK for awhile last year, though it's back down to about 90.2p {=US$1.57} UK average {source}. This will cause problems. People have to travel to work; for many, increased fuel prices will mean that more of the working day is spent just offsetting the cost of transport there and back, and less money is available for other essentials such as food, clothing and household bills {which will also be more expensive}. For those already on the breadline {and I should know -- I've been there myself}, this may be too much; they will be forced to quit jobs they can't afford to travel to, and they won't even be able to sell their cars -- who is going to want to buy a bottomless pit just to throw money into it?
Now, this situation has been building up gradually, over the years. The Government are not without fault for treating the motorist as a cash cow to be milked whenever they feel like it; fuel tax {which everyone pays; even non-motorists are paying it indirectly through public transport and delivery costs} has been used as a major source of revenue which should have been coming from higher-rate income tax {"from each according to their ability" and all that}. The law begins from the standpoint that car ownership is a luxury and car owners are the minority; but the practical reality of the situation in Britain today is that, outside of London, car ownership is a necessity: non-car-ownership is, to all intents and purposes, a disability. People are forced to commute, sometimes over obscene distances, just because jobs are so scarce and moving house is so expensive.
Capitalism does not work, because it discriminates against the poor in favour of the rich. Imagine a poker table where one player has more chips than the others put together; now that player can be fairly sure of winning all the chips, almost irrespective of what cards are dealt. If you don't play, you can't lose -- but you can't win either. With so many at the table, it's essential to have good cards to open. With so few chips in front of each player, the only way anyone has a chance to win is by going all-in -- at which point our high-roller's losses are limited, even if their cards are only mediocre, and if they're good cards then somebody will be leaving the table.
I have written more than a few reusable PHP and JavaScript functions for doing stuff, including PHP functions which generate JavaScript for form validation. When called, the function echoes the form element to the screen and returns a fragment of JS code which validates the element. If I actually want to validate the form element, then I append the result to a scalar variable which I output later; otherwise, I just call it in void context.
My preferred technique for function re-use is just to save a function or set of functions that belong together, in a heavily-commented "demo" script, which I keep all together in a directory. I also have a corresponding "include file" which contains just the function declarations from the demo script, saved in/var/www/html/. Then I can easily refresh my memory as to what each function does, by running the demo and referring to the comments; if I want all the goodies I can include them, if I want just one then I can copy and paste it.
Also, I have a few "quick start" scripts with all the <html> <head> ..... </html> stuff and my most-often-used functions and constants. These are all chmoded 444 and chowned root, so I can't accidentally overwrite them.
Switch to the user you just created, download non-free flash player and install it in own.mozilla directory. By switching users, you can choose between a flash-enabled and a non-flash-enabled browsing experience.
Alternatively, remove and recreate a symlink to the plugin as necessary.
Alternatively still, if you built your own firefox from source, tweak it a little so as not to recognise plugins and change the name of the binary.
I've always held that possession of a stencil does not make one a calligrapher, and I like to produce HTML in a text editor with syntax highlighting. My current favourite is kate. Dreamweaver produces bad HTML*, but it can't be expected to produce much else. It's a brave attempt to solve what is really an impossible problem. You really can't have a WYSIWYG {what you see is what you get} editor for a medium which is by definition WYSINNWEEG {what you see is not necessarily what everyone else gets}.
The best analogy I can come up with is a device with piano-like keys that clips onto the neck of a guitar, and frets and strums the strings in response to your key presses.
* I consider anything with <font> tags in it to be bad HTML.
There are lots of things you could use as alternatives to oil-based plastics, such as: metals, paper, ceramics, wood, natural fibres, and plant-derived plastics. Please list some specific examples and I will go into more detail.
You can also make fertiliser out of animal shit and whatever bits of ground-up dead animals you can't use to make sausages, burgers or paté. You probably could use human waste; but it would most assuredly not be a good idea to feed plants grown using human byproducts to humans -- long food chains are there for a reason -- but it would be ideal for energy crops.
If you are getting radioactive waste out of a nuclear plant, then isn't that a bit like having inflammable exhaust fumes from a chemically-fuelled engine? If a system is perfectly efficient, then the waste products should have zero calorific value. Since they evidently do have some non-zero calorific value {otherwise there would be no radioactivity in the spent fuel}, this obviously means the reactor is sub-optimal.
We should consider performing a series of experiments -- in space, if necessary -- to see if it is possible to get what we currently think of as "radioactive waste" {but which might in fact prove to be a useful resource} to undergo a secondary decomposition resulting in something stable. That way, we could extract every last residual joule of energy from the fuel and not have to worry about radioactive waste. Even just a waste product with a long enough half-life would be an improvement.
You're forgetting that the high price will drive people to alternatives in droves, and the enormous boom in the alternative energy industry will lower prices with economies of scale and drive more R&D investment.
The problem is that the alternatives simply are not there for the common person to choose. How many filling stations are selling biodiesel right now? {Yes, I know; if you drive an old Ford or Peugeot you can run it on ordinary chip fat. That hardly counts.} How many commercial airlines are there that have made a commitment to use only non-fossil fuels? How many gas companies are there making methane {which will run North Sea gas appliances without modification} from renewable sources? How many electric companies promise to generate electricity only from renewable sources?
The alternatives have to be put in place first, and subsidised to bring them to a realistic price point. Once renewable energy is within the purchasing capacity of "ordinary people", they will buy it; then economies of scale will set in, and the subsidies can be gradually cut. If this isn't done, then what will happen is that non-renewable energy will just get progressively more expensive, eventually catching up to the price of renewable energy; but this will cause serious social problems along the way.
It won't just be fuel prices that will rise; everything that has to be manufactured and/or delivered will become more expensive. The poorest people will find themselves unable to afford to travel to work; they will exist in a state of perpetual unemployment, so increasing the burden on the taxpayer. As prices continue to rise, more and more people will be forced into this situation, and the welfare state will be further strained. People will not be able to afford to refrigerate food, nor cook it thoroughly; diarrhoea germs will run rampant, placing an additional burden on the National Health Service over and above the problem of drugs becoming more expensive {due to increases in the costs of chemical feedstocks and logistics}. Deaths by fire and smoke inhalation will increase, as people try desperately to burn wood in old fireplaces with unswept chimneys and makeshift stoves. Recall that many dwelling built since central heating became the norm don't actually have chimneys, or have simple precast flues which are only meant for gas fires.
To get an engine to start, you sometimes have to use an external power source. The beardy-weirdies and the forward-thinkers alone simply won't have enough buying power between them to initiate the process of bringing down the price of renewable energy.
I should just point out, lest anyone take me for a "pirate", that full source code and distribution rights are prerequisites for any software I condescend to run on my own computers. This excludes most games. While it is true that I have never paid for a piece of software in my life, for at least this millennium I have only downloaded, modified and shared software with the blessing of the copyright holders.
Well, copper and iron can be melted down and used again indefinitely. Food grows right out of the ground, or out of itself. Energy is the sticky one; because while you can't actually destroy it, you always end up turning some of it into heat that you can't use.
What I think is likely to happen is that some country we currently think of as being the third world will get seriously into renewable energy. While the USA are off fighting for the last dregs of oil {and the UK, like any good obedient little bitch, probably will be doing all the hard work -- taking prisoners for the septics to torture} they will stay resolutely out of the war and fine-tune the technology. Of course, the fighting will get bloodier and bloodier as there gets to be less and less oil in the ground.
When the oil really does run out - and realistically, that will be the first chance for any reversal of climate change - those who no longer depend upon it will be in a good position to profit..... and those who used to depend upon it, either for using it or for selling it, will likely be shafted. The USA, and probably the UK, will be charged over the odds for energy. The Arabs will have nothing to do but throw sand at one another.
Note that crude oil is always sold in US dollars, and therefore the USA effectively get to skim a portion off every transaction. If the UK were to join the Euro - the hope of which is the only thing keeping the EU from blackballing us - it would become worthwhile for oil-producing countries to set prices in Euros rather than dollars {though currently, it's looking more and more likely that the UK will revert to pounds, shillings and pence rather than join the Euro}. Iraq tried to sell their oil by the Euro, and look what happened! Now Iran are looking to cut their own internal dependency on oil by establishing a civilian nuclear power programme, and look what is happening.....
What they have basically done, then, is turned this game into an instant automatic hit. Everybody in Australia will want a copy of this game now, because it's illegal. And they will get copies of it. Either paid-up ones, sent in an innocuous music CD box by friends or relatives abroad; or, much more likely, pirated copies. {Does anybody actually pay for games? I suppose there must be one or two.} Everybody outside Australia will want a copy because it's been banned in Australia.
All things considered, this is a fantastic marketing stunt.
My proposed solution, by the way, is to ban all sales of video games to {but not possession by} minors. That way, parents and guardians get to decide what is and isn't appropriate.
The point is that mathematics is about as abstract as anything ever gets. Almost any concept in maths applies across a far broader spectrum than any patent should ever cover: a patent is meant to cover a specific means to an end, not an end in its own right. A mathematical algorithm is either an end in its own right {if you're a mathematician} or a means without an end to call its own {if you think maths is pointless}.
Patenting mathematical algorithms would be like patenting entire scientific phenomena {such as the transfer of heat from a warm body to a cooler one} as opposed to inventions that exploit those phenomena {such as a cooking stove}. Narrow patents encourage innovation in the form of competition: other people can try to find alternative ways of achieving the same effect, sometimes they succeed and sometimes the alternative method turns out to be better than the original. Broad patents stifle innovation, by discouraging competition in a whole field at a time: nobody can compete without running afoul of a patent. {There's also an argument to be made that no person or entity should own patents on more than one thing that are essentially equivalent; the granting of the second should be on the condition that the first be surrendered immediately to the Public Domain.}
If you really want to patent stupid things, why don't you start getting your sleazeball ambulance-chasing lawyers to arrange patenting personal injuries; so the next time someone else gets hurt the same way you did, you can claim royalties from them?
Injecting something under the skin sounds as though it might amount to Grievous Bodily Harm, under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. See www.police-law.co.uk and this Wikipedia entry. It's a defence to this charge that you were making a lawful move in a recognised sport {of course, showing off or blatant cheating are not lawful moves; if in doubt, call the referee as a witness}. Also look up R. v. Brown 1993 {details of case are Not Safe for Work}.
There is also the strong possibility that such an act would violate the Human Right Act 1998, which gives the European Convention on Human Rights the status of law in the UK.
Patents are not primarily a mechanism for rewarding innovation. The purpose of patents is to encourage innovation subject to the understanding that whatever is invented will eventually be released to the Public Domain. But the whole of mathematics is already in the Public Domain -- including the bits that have not yet been written down formally. Even before Napier published the first ever book of log tables, the relationship (a ** b) * (a ** c) == a ** (b + c) still held.
The idea of patenting an algorithm is simply absurd -- and the Principle of Equivalence makes a complete mockery of any attempt to try to do it.
As I said, without a genuine key authorized and cryptographically signed by the Trusted Computing Group it doesn't work. No genuine key, no emulator.
All you have to do is treat the trust chip as a black box. You present it with a certain combination of inputs; it responds with a certain combination of outputs. We need only map the one to the other to be able to emulate it in software: we intercept anything trying to write to the trust chip, and look up the appropriate outputs. Then when the software running under emulation tries to read the trust chip, we present it with the same as whatever a real trust chip would have done.
As I said, the keys are locked inside the chips. Locked inside boobytrapped self destructing microchips.
There are ways to get around the booby traps. Just because you haven't thought of a way to defeat a security measure, doesn't mean there isn't one. Defeat is evidently not physically impossible; since if this were the case, even legitimate operations would trigger the self-destruct.
Where I'm at so far: we know what the trust chip will output for any given set of inputs. And that is enough information to emulate its operation in software.
As I said, if you manage to extract one of the keys to use in an emulator, you can only use it on a single computer or device. The keys are unique. The moment you try to use the key and emulator on a second computer they spot that duplicate use and that the key must be compromized. They revoke the key and your emulator drops dead.
How so? Once you have discovered a genuine key, that key can be built into an emulator. I'm with you up to there.
The player software is running in the emulated environment. We can control exactly which hardware features work and which ones don't work. So how is anyone going to "spot" that the key is being used on another device? The player software can't report anything to anyone, because it can only see the outside world via the emulation layer -- and we obviously can block any "phone home" attempts, presenting an artificial "thank you, all is in order, play on" response. The software running in the emulated environment has no way to tell that this came from anywhere but the real authentication server.
Some company other than your hardware manufacturer can publish that key on a revokation list as "untrusted". The publishing industry and Microsoft and websites and every computer on the planet can then decide that they no longer feel like talking to you or your device. Your device drops dead, and your hardware manufacturer is *not* at fault.
And whatever device you obtained your key from also drops dead. That might well be someone else's property. But it does not matter, because nobody is ever going to know who else's key you used -- so they won't know which key to revoke. You have done the decryption under emulation, and the player software is cut off from the outside world, so nobody gets to know about it. The copy you make, and every subsequent copy, is unencrypted.
There is absolutely no one you can sue.
Who said anything about a civil case? Breaking other people's equipment is criminal damage.
As I understand it, there is a serious issue with selectivity when reading RFID tags, due to the fact that they all have to use the same frequency. Passive RFID tags work by absorbing less or more energy from a radio transmitter to send zeros and ones. Real-life reading ranges are of the order of a few centimetres. Longer ranges are theoretically possible but create difficulties in practice. The "real" reader {i.e. the one which is actually supposed to be reading the tag} can't be too sensitive, lest its signal be picked up by other RFID tags {this system is meant for use in a store full of goods with RFID tags.....} and they interfere with the signal. The "parasite" reader {i.e. the one which is picking up overspill from the "real" reading process} can be much further away, but needs to be kept stationary because it is responding to really minute changes in signal strength. The "real" reader doesn't care about the RF power at all, since it can measure how much is being absorbed indirectly by measuring how much current is being drawn by the transmitter circuit {when the tag is absorbing more power, the oscillator draws more current}. The "parasite" reader will still be affected by any other "real" readers operating nearby.
The limitations of passive tags are decreed by universal laws and won't be overcome by invention. Ironically, RFID will become less of a threat the more widely it is deployed.
When your employer comes to you about injecting an RFID tag under your skin
That would be considered non-elective surgery, which is a form of assault {at least common assault, and maybe ABH or even GBH if an allergic reaction or septicaemia develops} -- and therefore illegal. Note also that you cannot consent to assault, and just because you said it was OK the perpetrator can still be prosecuted.
The patent should never have been awarded in the first place. For one thing, mathematics should never be patentable. For another, there was already Prior Art invented at GCHQ in the UK -- but because of its nature, it was kept hushed-up.
The patent was never applicable in the UK nor the EU.
It is extremely difficult to get a "properly" signed certificate for someone else's website..... that'd almost surely have to be an inside job.
It might still turn out to be be worth pulling off, though.
I'd go so far as to say that self-signed SSL is essentially useless. It would protect against a passive attacker though - someone who can only "see" the traffic, and can't alter it.
If nobody but the certificate owner can see the traffic, it's still more secure than if everybody can see it; not that it matters a great deal whether your money gets stolen by a phisher or by a fortunate interloper, though! SSL also encrypts traffic coming to your browser, making it OK for protecting yourself on the company intranet if some snoopy-drawers has a copy of ethereal.
All bets are off if you can run arbitrary code on the target's PC - that's pretty obvious.
Yes..... now I come to think of it, there's really no need for this little proxy application anyway. But the drive-by download idea still has legs. It might be better simply to use a drive-by download to patch Internet Explorer so that it would just accept all certificates without asking the user, regardless who signed them -- or, possibly even better, effectively create a special signing authority just for your own dodgy certificates -- which you could then peddle to any wannabee scammer. {This might take a bit of doing, since you don't have the source code; but nobody is expecting you to patch a closed binary, so it probably would lie undetected for awhile.} You might even be able to extort back some of the money these scammers manage to phish, under threat of revoking their certificates or tipping off the authorities!
How is a "properly"-signed certificate any less vulnerable to MITM attacks than a self-signed one, if the MITM himself can get a "properly"-signed one?
Here's an idea, though. Use a drive-by download to implant a user's PC with a simple HTTPS proxy server. Now the connection is secure only between the user and themself, because the proxy is decrypting the information locally. You could of course re-encrypt it on its way to a HTTPS site, against the site's own certificate; and as far as the user knows, they are on a secure connection the whole time. It wouldn't even be that hard to fiddle with the settings of Internet Explorer so as to permit types of downloads the user initially chose to reject, just temporarily; and then restore the user's settings when the download is complete {or straightaway if they open the properties requester}.
In fact let me word this as a patent claim: Method for being defrauded What is claimed is:
A system whereby a computer user, after downloading a simple application which interferes with legitimate internet usage, gives money to fraudsters.
An application which behaves as a proxy server for secure connections, replacing all secure certificates from the far end with one of its own, and decrypting and re-encrypting on the fly.
The user doing this without their knowledge or consent.
{Well, I'm hardly going to patent the perpetrator's actions, am I? Not only would I be on dodgy ground legally, probably opening myself up to a charge of conspiracy or aiding and abetting what with the claimed actions being illegal and all that; but I'd have to catch them first before I could claim any royalties. You've got your victim right there, it's not usually illegal to be a victim of crime [though there are certain things it is actually illegal to have stolen from you in certain countries], and they're probably insured anyway.}
Slashdot Mirror
If only!
The problem is that without short-term subsidies for alternative energy, the prices of necessary goods will rise before they begin to fall. And alternative energy sources are far too expensive for anybody to afford them: if petrol has to get that expensive first, before alternative fuels become cheaper, then we're shafted. We're seeing this happening already; petrol actually hit a pound {=US$1.74, according to Google} in parts of the UK for awhile last year, though it's back down to about 90.2p {=US$1.57} UK average {source}. This will cause problems. People have to travel to work; for many, increased fuel prices will mean that more of the working day is spent just offsetting the cost of transport there and back, and less money is available for other essentials such as food, clothing and household bills {which will also be more expensive}. For those already on the breadline {and I should know -- I've been there myself}, this may be too much; they will be forced to quit jobs they can't afford to travel to, and they won't even be able to sell their cars -- who is going to want to buy a bottomless pit just to throw money into it?
Now, this situation has been building up gradually, over the years. The Government are not without fault for treating the motorist as a cash cow to be milked whenever they feel like it; fuel tax {which everyone pays; even non-motorists are paying it indirectly through public transport and delivery costs} has been used as a major source of revenue which should have been coming from higher-rate income tax {"from each according to their ability" and all that}. The law begins from the standpoint that car ownership is a luxury and car owners are the minority; but the practical reality of the situation in Britain today is that, outside of London, car ownership is a necessity: non-car-ownership is, to all intents and purposes, a disability. People are forced to commute, sometimes over obscene distances, just because jobs are so scarce and moving house is so expensive.
Capitalism does not work, because it discriminates against the poor in favour of the rich. Imagine a poker table where one player has more chips than the others put together; now that player can be fairly sure of winning all the chips, almost irrespective of what cards are dealt. If you don't play, you can't lose -- but you can't win either. With so many at the table, it's essential to have good cards to open. With so few chips in front of each player, the only way anyone has a chance to win is by going all-in -- at which point our high-roller's losses are limited, even if their cards are only mediocre, and if they're good cards then somebody will be leaving the table.
I have written more than a few reusable PHP and JavaScript functions for doing stuff, including PHP functions which generate JavaScript for form validation. When called, the function echoes the form element to the screen and returns a fragment of JS code which validates the element. If I actually want to validate the form element, then I append the result to a scalar variable which I output later; otherwise, I just call it in void context.
/var/www/html/. Then I can easily refresh my memory as to what each function does, by running the demo and referring to the comments; if I want all the goodies I can include them, if I want just one then I can copy and paste it.
My preferred technique for function re-use is just to save a function or set of functions that belong together, in a heavily-commented "demo" script, which I keep all together in a directory. I also have a corresponding "include file" which contains just the function declarations from the demo script, saved in
Also, I have a few "quick start" scripts with all the
<html>
<head>
.....
</html> stuff and my most-often-used functions and constants. These are all chmoded 444 and chowned root, so I can't accidentally overwrite them.
Alternatively, remove and recreate a symlink to the plugin as necessary.
Alternatively still, if you built your own firefox from source, tweak it a little so as not to recognise plugins and change the name of the binary.
I've always held that possession of a stencil does not make one a calligrapher, and I like to produce HTML in a text editor with syntax highlighting. My current favourite is kate. Dreamweaver produces bad HTML*, but it can't be expected to produce much else. It's a brave attempt to solve what is really an impossible problem. You really can't have a WYSIWYG {what you see is what you get} editor for a medium which is by definition WYSINNWEEG {what you see is not necessarily what everyone else gets}.
The best analogy I can come up with is a device with piano-like keys that clips onto the neck of a guitar, and frets and strums the strings in response to your key presses.
* I consider anything with <font> tags in it to be bad HTML.
..... "if" being the operative word.
There are lots of things you could use as alternatives to oil-based plastics, such as: metals, paper, ceramics, wood, natural fibres, and plant-derived plastics. Please list some specific examples and I will go into more detail.
You can also make fertiliser out of animal shit and whatever bits of ground-up dead animals you can't use to make sausages, burgers or paté. You probably could use human waste; but it would most assuredly not be a good idea to feed plants grown using human byproducts to humans -- long food chains are there for a reason -- but it would be ideal for energy crops.
And you can make drugs and plastics from plants.
If you are getting radioactive waste out of a nuclear plant, then isn't that a bit like having inflammable exhaust fumes from a chemically-fuelled engine? If a system is perfectly efficient, then the waste products should have zero calorific value. Since they evidently do have some non-zero calorific value {otherwise there would be no radioactivity in the spent fuel}, this obviously means the reactor is sub-optimal.
We should consider performing a series of experiments -- in space, if necessary -- to see if it is possible to get what we currently think of as "radioactive waste" {but which might in fact prove to be a useful resource} to undergo a secondary decomposition resulting in something stable. That way, we could extract every last residual joule of energy from the fuel and not have to worry about radioactive waste. Even just a waste product with a long enough half-life would be an improvement.
The alternatives have to be put in place first, and subsidised to bring them to a realistic price point. Once renewable energy is within the purchasing capacity of "ordinary people", they will buy it; then economies of scale will set in, and the subsidies can be gradually cut. If this isn't done, then what will happen is that non-renewable energy will just get progressively more expensive, eventually catching up to the price of renewable energy; but this will cause serious social problems along the way.
It won't just be fuel prices that will rise; everything that has to be manufactured and/or delivered will become more expensive. The poorest people will find themselves unable to afford to travel to work; they will exist in a state of perpetual unemployment, so increasing the burden on the taxpayer. As prices continue to rise, more and more people will be forced into this situation, and the welfare state will be further strained. People will not be able to afford to refrigerate food, nor cook it thoroughly; diarrhoea germs will run rampant, placing an additional burden on the National Health Service over and above the problem of drugs becoming more expensive {due to increases in the costs of chemical feedstocks and logistics}. Deaths by fire and smoke inhalation will increase, as people try desperately to burn wood in old fireplaces with unswept chimneys and makeshift stoves. Recall that many dwelling built since central heating became the norm don't actually have chimneys, or have simple precast flues which are only meant for gas fires.
To get an engine to start, you sometimes have to use an external power source. The beardy-weirdies and the forward-thinkers alone simply won't have enough buying power between them to initiate the process of bringing down the price of renewable energy.
I should just point out, lest anyone take me for a "pirate", that full source code and distribution rights are prerequisites for any software I condescend to run on my own computers. This excludes most games. While it is true that I have never paid for a piece of software in my life, for at least this millennium I have only downloaded, modified and shared software with the blessing of the copyright holders.
Well, copper and iron can be melted down and used again indefinitely. Food grows right out of the ground, or out of itself. Energy is the sticky one; because while you can't actually destroy it, you always end up turning some of it into heat that you can't use.
..... and those who used to depend upon it, either for using it or for selling it, will likely be shafted. The USA, and probably the UK, will be charged over the odds for energy. The Arabs will have nothing to do but throw sand at one another.
.....
What I think is likely to happen is that some country we currently think of as being the third world will get seriously into renewable energy. While the USA are off fighting for the last dregs of oil {and the UK, like any good obedient little bitch, probably will be doing all the hard work -- taking prisoners for the septics to torture} they will stay resolutely out of the war and fine-tune the technology. Of course, the fighting will get bloodier and bloodier as there gets to be less and less oil in the ground.
When the oil really does run out - and realistically, that will be the first chance for any reversal of climate change - those who no longer depend upon it will be in a good position to profit
Note that crude oil is always sold in US dollars, and therefore the USA effectively get to skim a portion off every transaction. If the UK were to join the Euro - the hope of which is the only thing keeping the EU from blackballing us - it would become worthwhile for oil-producing countries to set prices in Euros rather than dollars {though currently, it's looking more and more likely that the UK will revert to pounds, shillings and pence rather than join the Euro}. Iraq tried to sell their oil by the Euro, and look what happened! Now Iran are looking to cut their own internal dependency on oil by establishing a civilian nuclear power programme, and look what is happening
What they have basically done, then, is turned this game into an instant automatic hit. Everybody in Australia will want a copy of this game now, because it's illegal. And they will get copies of it. Either paid-up ones, sent in an innocuous music CD box by friends or relatives abroad; or, much more likely, pirated copies. {Does anybody actually pay for games? I suppose there must be one or two.} Everybody outside Australia will want a copy because it's been banned in Australia.
All things considered, this is a fantastic marketing stunt.
My proposed solution, by the way, is to ban all sales of video games to {but not possession by} minors. That way, parents and guardians get to decide what is and isn't appropriate.
The assertion that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb is also quite popular in Newcastle, because Joseph Swan was a Wearsider.
The point is that mathematics is about as abstract as anything ever gets. Almost any concept in maths applies across a far broader spectrum than any patent should ever cover: a patent is meant to cover a specific means to an end, not an end in its own right. A mathematical algorithm is either an end in its own right {if you're a mathematician} or a means without an end to call its own {if you think maths is pointless}.
Patenting mathematical algorithms would be like patenting entire scientific phenomena {such as the transfer of heat from a warm body to a cooler one} as opposed to inventions that exploit those phenomena {such as a cooking stove}. Narrow patents encourage innovation in the form of competition: other people can try to find alternative ways of achieving the same effect, sometimes they succeed and sometimes the alternative method turns out to be better than the original. Broad patents stifle innovation, by discouraging competition in a whole field at a time: nobody can compete without running afoul of a patent. {There's also an argument to be made that no person or entity should own patents on more than one thing that are essentially equivalent; the granting of the second should be on the condition that the first be surrendered immediately to the Public Domain.}
If you really want to patent stupid things, why don't you start getting your sleazeball ambulance-chasing lawyers to arrange patenting personal injuries; so the next time someone else gets hurt the same way you did, you can claim royalties from them?
Injecting something under the skin sounds as though it might amount to Grievous Bodily Harm, under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. See www.police-law.co.uk and this Wikipedia entry. It's a defence to this charge that you were making a lawful move in a recognised sport {of course, showing off or blatant cheating are not lawful moves; if in doubt, call the referee as a witness}. Also look up R. v. Brown 1993 {details of case are Not Safe for Work}.
There is also the strong possibility that such an act would violate the Human Right Act 1998, which gives the European Convention on Human Rights the status of law in the UK.
Patents are not primarily a mechanism for rewarding innovation. The purpose of patents is to encourage innovation subject to the understanding that whatever is invented will eventually be released to the Public Domain. But the whole of mathematics is already in the Public Domain -- including the bits that have not yet been written down formally. Even before Napier published the first ever book of log tables, the relationship (a ** b) * (a ** c) == a ** (b + c) still held.
The idea of patenting an algorithm is simply absurd -- and the Principle of Equivalence makes a complete mockery of any attempt to try to do it.
Where I'm at so far: we know what the trust chip will output for any given set of inputs. And that is enough information to emulate its operation in software. How so? Once you have discovered a genuine key, that key can be built into an emulator. I'm with you up to there.
The player software is running in the emulated environment. We can control exactly which hardware features work and which ones don't work. So how is anyone going to "spot" that the key is being used on another device? The player software can't report anything to anyone, because it can only see the outside world via the emulation layer -- and we obviously can block any "phone home" attempts, presenting an artificial "thank you, all is in order, play on" response. The software running in the emulated environment has no way to tell that this came from anywhere but the real authentication server. And whatever device you obtained your key from also drops dead. That might well be someone else's property. But it does not matter, because nobody is ever going to know who else's key you used -- so they won't know which key to revoke. You have done the decryption under emulation, and the player software is cut off from the outside world, so nobody gets to know about it. The copy you make, and every subsequent copy, is unencrypted. Who said anything about a civil case? Breaking other people's equipment is criminal damage.
As I understand it, there is a serious issue with selectivity when reading RFID tags, due to the fact that they all have to use the same frequency. Passive RFID tags work by absorbing less or more energy from a radio transmitter to send zeros and ones. Real-life reading ranges are of the order of a few centimetres. Longer ranges are theoretically possible but create difficulties in practice. The "real" reader {i.e. the one which is actually supposed to be reading the tag} can't be too sensitive, lest its signal be picked up by other RFID tags {this system is meant for use in a store full of goods with RFID tags .....} and they interfere with the signal. The "parasite" reader {i.e. the one which is picking up overspill from the "real" reading process} can be much further away, but needs to be kept stationary because it is responding to really minute changes in signal strength. The "real" reader doesn't care about the RF power at all, since it can measure how much is being absorbed indirectly by measuring how much current is being drawn by the transmitter circuit {when the tag is absorbing more power, the oscillator draws more current}. The "parasite" reader will still be affected by any other "real" readers operating nearby.
The limitations of passive tags are decreed by universal laws and won't be overcome by invention. Ironically, RFID will become less of a threat the more widely it is deployed.
The patent should never have been awarded in the first place. For one thing, mathematics should never be patentable. For another, there was already Prior Art invented at GCHQ in the UK -- but because of its nature, it was kept hushed-up.
The patent was never applicable in the UK nor the EU.
Exactly.
Maybe it's time for ISPs to take the lead on this one and just block any e-mail, real or fake, that originates or appears to originate from a bank?
Here's an idea, though. Use a drive-by download to implant a user's PC with a simple HTTPS proxy server. Now the connection is secure only between the user and themself, because the proxy is decrypting the information locally. You could of course re-encrypt it on its way to a HTTPS site, against the site's own certificate; and as far as the user knows, they are on a secure connection the whole time. It wouldn't even be that hard to fiddle with the settings of Internet Explorer so as to permit types of downloads the user initially chose to reject, just temporarily; and then restore the user's settings when the download is complete {or straightaway if they open the properties requester}.
In fact let me word this as a patent claim: Method for being defrauded
What is claimed is:
- A system whereby a computer user, after downloading a simple application which interferes with legitimate internet usage, gives money to fraudsters.
- An application which behaves as a proxy server for secure connections, replacing all secure certificates from the far end with one of its own, and decrypting and re-encrypting on the fly.
- The user doing this without their knowledge or consent.
{Well, I'm hardly going to patent the perpetrator's actions, am I? Not only would I be on dodgy ground legally, probably opening myself up to a charge of conspiracy or aiding and abetting what with the claimed actions being illegal and all that; but I'd have to catch them first before I could claim any royalties. You've got your victim right there, it's not usually illegal to be a victim of crime [though there are certain things it is actually illegal to have stolen from you in certain countries], and they're probably insured anyway.}perl -e 'print "ajs318 prefers perl :) " while 1'
It may be old-fashioned, but it gets the job done. More importantly, it uses separate operators for addition and string concatenation.