Comments like these just go to show how effect the powers that be (e.g., corporations, government) have been at confusing the issue of so-called “intellectual property” with people. This fundamentally makes people less informed and more vulnerable to abuses of patents, copyrights, and trademarks. For example, this reality distortion could easily cause a lay-person to think that if something is patented, they cannot copy it (which is entirely false).
No, you cannot decrypt a hard disk in 90 days (assuming the use of strong encryption). If you find you're using Rijndael or Serepent, you're good. However, in the period of 90 days, you're more likely to experience a psychological break due to duress (like torture). Most people could handle 14 days, but not 90. Once you break, you'll be more than happy to hand over your keys.
To clarify the difference of 14 and 90 days in detainment, consider the following. Those detaining have had a couple periods on which to deprive the detainee of food and water to the point of going critical without actually killing you. Once someone become dependent on their captors for essentials like food and water, they become loyal. They have also had the opportunity to deprive the person of sleep for a solid 12 or more days, which can drive most people close to the point of insanity. Also, the textbook technique for "breaking" someone where captors inflict physical pain then "rescue" the person from it requires several iterations. 14 days just simply is not enough to accomplish these things. 90 would suffice.
And let me also point out that this is how the United States government operates these days. It would be reasonable to assume some of our closest allies are engaged in similar activities with "terror suspects".
Sony's DRM is being used as a means to hide malicious files.
Yes, exactly. In addition, it is exploits vulnerabilities to get them there in the first place.
[B]ut if a worm is released that uses DRM to better hide itself the person(s) who created and released the worm would be responsible and face the jail-time/civil lawsuits, not Sony.
What if Sony creates a tojan horse that violates system integrity without your knowledge?
Just because email makes it easier to spread a virus does not mean that the creators of SMTP get sued each time one comes out.
Correct, but, most email "worms" are just trojan horses. Sony's rootkit gets installed the same way any virus of the week gets installed. The user is fooled into thinking it is benign. In this case, inserting a CD, which should be safe, results in the system being compromised.
If some bored teenager devised and distributed such a rootkit, he or she would be accused of costing businesses millions and thrown in jail for 10 years. Can someone explain to me why Sony is not getting prosecuted for "hacking" here? What makes them exempt (aside from whatever civil lawsuits are being brought against them)?
Your reply not only answers the question, it's also informative. How the hell do the moderators see it as "offtopic"? God damn they suck. I, for one, thank you for your post.:)
Knowing how jobs has reacted to drm in the past.. it's just shameful.
Jobs has publically stated that Apple is not in the business of treating its customers like criminals. And what in Apple’s past suggests they support Digital Restrictions Management? I would like to point out that not even the iPod has any form of DRM to prevent you from recovering songs off of it.
So, care to clarify this at all?
Re:Libraries are terrible, terrible institutions.
on
Reining in Google
·
· Score: 1
I think, at this point, that we really need to ask “what is a copy?”
Exactly. So, what about memory? The human brain encodes and stores all information retrieved by the senses. If I read a book and successfully memorize it, I have succeeded in making a complete copy of the book. Whether the copyrighted material is stored as magnetic pulses on a hard disk platter or as neurons in gray matter makes no difference. So whey then is reading a book and memorizing its contents legal in our copyright law? (And before you say this is a stawman argument, recall the history of the cotton gin. Samuel Slater memorized the design then began building the machines in the United States. Is his memory not a copy of the original plans?)
Perhaps Google is intending to invoke a legal battle over copyright law intentionally. There has been much discussion that unless someone with the resources and the determination to challenge bad copyright law (e.g., the DMCA) in court, such bad laws will never be over-turned. While this initiative produces some benefit to Google, it may ultimately be a public service as well.
Libraries are terrible, terrible institutions.
on
Reining in Google
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I hear there are places where there are shelves after shelves of books, conveniently organized for quick reference, all at the disposal of the public, free of charge. What's more, these places, sometimes called "libraries", will even let you photocopy any of the material you find there for only the cost of the copy machine! Just imagine how much creativity is being stifled by these rackets! If we hope to save our society from the menace of intellectual property theft, we should be shutting them down, and not allowing Google start doing the same!
This is so much bullshit. To list the Treo 650 anywhere near the top 10 is silly. Yes, it is a cool product with some nice features. However, it is probably the single most buggy, unrefined product I have used since Windows. Really. Frequent crashes, missed calls, and flaky software abounds on this thing. You would think that the phone functionality would be flawless, but far from it.
True, numerous patches have been releases for the firmware since, but none of them make much progress towards a polished product. That and most users would never even know where to begin with the patch procedure (it's very ugly) let alone even know there are patches available.
Perhaps with a little more refinement, it would deserve its spot on any given top 10 list (where quality is a criterion). But saying it's great is quite a stretch.
God has a tantrum because human beings are attempting to do something other than slaughter mindlessly in his name. Here, we see people attempting to accomplish a feat of engineering. In reprisal, God thwarts the effort by rewiring their brains to inhibit communication. This leads to the formation of diverse cultures and perspectives, which in turn leads to ignorance and intolerance in many cases. As a direct result, human kind engages in mindless slaughter in God's name.
Eventually, however, our species ends up creating much taller towers a thousand years later anyway... Which people then destroy, causing mindless slaugher in the name of God.
Yet again, Microsoft copies what we already have.
on
Flash, Meet Sparkle
·
· Score: 1
If you want to build web applications that have a rich user experience, check out OpenLaszlo. It's based on Flash (which is ubiquitous) and it's open source.
Come on, a new WinZIP release is newsworthy? This is just an ad for a silly product that adds a flood of bells and whistles to a set of processes that should be deadly simple.
Don't you love the feel of Slashdot up your ass!? +1 Goatse troll, bitches!! Thanks for all the karma you shit-for-brains moderators.;) *_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_
g_______________________________________________g_ _
o_/_____\_____________\____________/____\_______o_ _
a|_______|_____________\__________|______|______a_ _
t|_______`._____________|_________|_______:_____t_ _
s`________|_____________|________\|_______|_____s_ _
e_\_______|_/_______/__\\\___--___\\_______:____e_ _
x__\______\/____--~~__________~--__|_\_____|____x_ _
*___\______\_-~____________________~-_\____|____*_ _
g____\______\_________.--------.______\|___|____g_ _
o______\_____\______//_________(_(__>__\___|____o_ _
a_______\___.__C____)_________(_(____>__|__/____a_ _
t_______/\_|___C_____)/_ROB__\_(_____>__|_/_____t_ _
s______/_/\|___C_____)_"TACO"_|__(___>___/__\____s _ _
e_____|___(____C_____)\_MALDA/__//__/_/_____\___e_ _
x_____|____\__|_____\\_________//_(__/_______|__x_ _
*____|_\____\____)___`----___--'_____________|__*_ _
g____|__\______________\_______/____________/_|_g_ _
o___|______________/____|_____|__\____________|_o_ _
a___|_____________|____/_______\__\___________|_a_ _
t___|__________/_/____|_________|__\___________|t_ _
s___|_________/_/______\__/\___/____|__________|s_ _
e__|_________/_/________|____|_______|_________|e_ _
x__|__________|_________|____|_______|_________|x_ _
*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_
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If that is the case, why aren't the same rules applied to the music file library iTunes maintains on one's computer's hard disk? The hard disk library shows human readable files structures are possible, I'd presume these aren't applied on the iPod to appease the music industry.
First, a few things to understand up front.
File names and directories in your iTunes library are arbitrary and even subject to change based on user preferences. (You can tell iTunes to organize the library on the file system by genre, artist, album, and so forth, and it will resort.)
iTunes relies on the ID3 or equivalent metadata blocks of your audio files to organize them into the appropriate categories.
When a file is added to the iTunes library, iTunes establishes a unique identifier for that file and associates it with whatever properties it recognizes. Whenever properties of a file change (through the iTunes interface, mind you), the association is preserved.
With these things in mind, let's look at how this works. As mentioned, iTunes keeps an identifier for every song in your library. As you change song titles, artists, years, and so forth, iTunes is able to recognize that you're talking about the same song. Suppose you've made changes to your library, next time you plug in your iPod, iTunes needs to figure out which songs are identical despite changes in their metadata. As it turns out, the file names of the songs on the iPod are those identifiers. It then simply copies the updated file to the iPod, overwriting the original. However, if you change the properties of music files in your iTunes library without using iTunes, the metadata can be used to categorize the song appropriately, but the association between the internal identifier and the metadata is lost. In this event, the file will be copied over to the iPod with a new identifier and a duplicate will occur. The reverse case is also true and works out the same. As you update ratings or hold your place in audio books on your iPod, those changes must be reflected in the iTunes library.
Another behavior which demonstrates how the file names are not mangled to irritate users is how files exist on an iPod that is not configured in iTunes to be automatically synchronized. Try restoring your iPod to its factory settings sometime and disable the automatic synchronization feature. Afterwards, add some music then go digging around in your iPod with Terminal (or, you can unhide the directories on your iPod with this tool and use Finder). You will notice that the file names are not mangled because iTunes is not responsible for keeping them synchronized. With that feature disabled, it has become the user's job to determine if two song files are identical and reconsile changes in metadata between the two copies of the song. This is emphasized when you manually add files to your iPod, change the metadata of your music, then copy it back over. You will get duplicates. The only exception in this case is an additional numeric value is added to the beginning of file names in the event of a collision.
One last mention is the directory structure on the iPod. Descending through nested directories requires more file system reads. File system reads require more disk activity. That in turn burns up more battery power. The reason for the Fnn scheme is to flatten the list and help keep activity sequential, thus extending battery life.
Yes the filenames are obscured but since the ID3 data lives in teh file it's a moot point.
True, and it's worth pointing out that the file names are not mangled to make it harder to copy them. They are mangled because they become unique identifiers. This is so that when you change the ID3 information, iTunes knows which files to replace, thus avoiding duplicates.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, you only need to use http://google.com/search?q=panama+voip+illegal for linking to Google searches.
Comments like these just go to show how effect the powers that be (e.g., corporations, government) have been at confusing the issue of so-called “intellectual property” with people. This fundamentally makes people less informed and more vulnerable to abuses of patents, copyrights, and trademarks. For example, this reality distortion could easily cause a lay-person to think that if something is patented, they cannot copy it (which is entirely false).
Better writings exist on this particular topic than I could hope to produce here, so I'll leave further exploration as an exercise to the reader.
No, you cannot decrypt a hard disk in 90 days (assuming the use of strong encryption). If you find you're using Rijndael or Serepent, you're good. However, in the period of 90 days, you're more likely to experience a psychological break due to duress (like torture). Most people could handle 14 days, but not 90. Once you break, you'll be more than happy to hand over your keys.
To clarify the difference of 14 and 90 days in detainment, consider the following. Those detaining have had a couple periods on which to deprive the detainee of food and water to the point of going critical without actually killing you. Once someone become dependent on their captors for essentials like food and water, they become loyal. They have also had the opportunity to deprive the person of sleep for a solid 12 or more days, which can drive most people close to the point of insanity. Also, the textbook technique for "breaking" someone where captors inflict physical pain then "rescue" the person from it requires several iterations. 14 days just simply is not enough to accomplish these things. 90 would suffice.
And let me also point out that this is how the United States government operates these days. It would be reasonable to assume some of our closest allies are engaged in similar activities with "terror suspects".
Yes, exactly. In addition, it is exploits vulnerabilities to get them there in the first place.
What if Sony creates a tojan horse that violates system integrity without your knowledge?
Correct, but, most email "worms" are just trojan horses. Sony's rootkit gets installed the same way any virus of the week gets installed. The user is fooled into thinking it is benign. In this case, inserting a CD, which should be safe, results in the system being compromised.
If some bored teenager devised and distributed such a rootkit, he or she would be accused of costing businesses millions and thrown in jail for 10 years. Can someone explain to me why Sony is not getting prosecuted for "hacking" here? What makes them exempt (aside from whatever civil lawsuits are being brought against them)?
Your reply not only answers the question, it's also informative. How the hell do the moderators see it as "offtopic"? God damn they suck. I, for one, thank you for your post. :)
Jobs has publically stated that Apple is not in the business of treating its customers like criminals. And what in Apple’s past suggests they support Digital Restrictions Management? I would like to point out that not even the iPod has any form of DRM to prevent you from recovering songs off of it.
So, care to clarify this at all?
Exactly. So, what about memory? The human brain encodes and stores all information retrieved by the senses. If I read a book and successfully memorize it, I have succeeded in making a complete copy of the book. Whether the copyrighted material is stored as magnetic pulses on a hard disk platter or as neurons in gray matter makes no difference. So whey then is reading a book and memorizing its contents legal in our copyright law? (And before you say this is a stawman argument, recall the history of the cotton gin. Samuel Slater memorized the design then began building the machines in the United States. Is his memory not a copy of the original plans?)
Perhaps Google is intending to invoke a legal battle over copyright law intentionally. There has been much discussion that unless someone with the resources and the determination to challenge bad copyright law (e.g., the DMCA) in court, such bad laws will never be over-turned. While this initiative produces some benefit to Google, it may ultimately be a public service as well.
I hear there are places where there are shelves after shelves of books, conveniently organized for quick reference, all at the disposal of the public, free of charge. What's more, these places, sometimes called "libraries", will even let you photocopy any of the material you find there for only the cost of the copy machine! Just imagine how much creativity is being stifled by these rackets! If we hope to save our society from the menace of intellectual property theft, we should be shutting them down, and not allowing Google start doing the same!
Duh.
This is so much bullshit. To list the Treo 650 anywhere near the top 10 is silly. Yes, it is a cool product with some nice features. However, it is probably the single most buggy, unrefined product I have used since Windows. Really. Frequent crashes, missed calls, and flaky software abounds on this thing. You would think that the phone functionality would be flawless, but far from it.
True, numerous patches have been releases for the firmware since, but none of them make much progress towards a polished product. That and most users would never even know where to begin with the patch procedure (it's very ugly) let alone even know there are patches available.
Perhaps with a little more refinement, it would deserve its spot on any given top 10 list (where quality is a criterion). But saying it's great is quite a stretch.
Yes, huge improvement. Unfortunately, there are a few problems.
I could go on, but we are not seeing a serious commitment to web standards here. Too bad they didn't follow the lead set by A List Apart.
God has a tantrum because human beings are attempting to do something other than slaughter mindlessly in his name. Here, we see people attempting to accomplish a feat of engineering. In reprisal, God thwarts the effort by rewiring their brains to inhibit communication. This leads to the formation of diverse cultures and perspectives, which in turn leads to ignorance and intolerance in many cases. As a direct result, human kind engages in mindless slaughter in God's name.
Eventually, however, our species ends up creating much taller towers a thousand years later anyway... Which people then destroy, causing mindless slaugher in the name of God.
God is stupid.
Did anyone else read that as "Syphilus3D"?
If you want to build web applications that have a rich user experience, check out OpenLaszlo. It's based on Flash (which is ubiquitous) and it's open source.
Where's the Linux version?
;)
Come on, a new WinZIP release is newsworthy? This is just an ad for a silly product that adds a flood of bells and whistles to a set of processes that should be deadly simple.
Don't you love the feel of Slashdot up your ass!? +1 Goatse troll, bitches!! Thanks for all the karma you shit-for-brains moderators. ;)_ _ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ _s _ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*
g_______________________________________________g
o_/_____\_____________\____________/____\_______o
a|_______|_____________\__________|______|______a
t|_______`._____________|_________|_______:_____t
s`________|_____________|________\|_______|_____s
e_\_______|_/_______/__\\\___--___\\_______:____e
x__\______\/____--~~__________~--__|_\_____|____x
*___\______\_-~____________________~-_\____|____*
g____\______\_________.--------.______\|___|____g
o______\_____\______//_________(_(__>__\___|____o
a_______\___.__C____)_________(_(____>__|__/____a
t_______/\_|___C_____)/_ROB__\_(_____>__|_/_____t
s______/_/\|___C_____)_"TACO"_|__(___>___/__\____
e_____|___(____C_____)\_MALDA/__//__/_/_____\___e
x_____|____\__|_____\\_________//_(__/_______|__x
*____|_\____\____)___`----___--'_____________|__*
g____|__\______________\_______/____________/_|_g
o___|______________/____|_____|__\____________|_o
a___|_____________|____/_______\__\___________|_a
t___|__________/_/____|_________|__\___________|t
s___|_________/_/______\__/\___/____|__________|s
e__|_________/_/________|____|_______|_________|e
x__|__________|_________|____|_______|_________|x
*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*
Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.
Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.
Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.
Cache of the article here.
Dude, you got smacked down by John Carmack. That's awesome. My hat goes off to you.
Just follow these simple rules:
There is no step two!
First, a few things to understand up front.
With these things in mind, let's look at how this works. As mentioned, iTunes keeps an identifier for every song in your library. As you change song titles, artists, years, and so forth, iTunes is able to recognize that you're talking about the same song. Suppose you've made changes to your library, next time you plug in your iPod, iTunes needs to figure out which songs are identical despite changes in their metadata. As it turns out, the file names of the songs on the iPod are those identifiers. It then simply copies the updated file to the iPod, overwriting the original. However, if you change the properties of music files in your iTunes library without using iTunes, the metadata can be used to categorize the song appropriately, but the association between the internal identifier and the metadata is lost. In this event, the file will be copied over to the iPod with a new identifier and a duplicate will occur. The reverse case is also true and works out the same. As you update ratings or hold your place in audio books on your iPod, those changes must be reflected in the iTunes library.
Another behavior which demonstrates how the file names are not mangled to irritate users is how files exist on an iPod that is not configured in iTunes to be automatically synchronized. Try restoring your iPod to its factory settings sometime and disable the automatic synchronization feature. Afterwards, add some music then go digging around in your iPod with Terminal (or, you can unhide the directories on your iPod with this tool and use Finder). You will notice that the file names are not mangled because iTunes is not responsible for keeping them synchronized. With that feature disabled, it has become the user's job to determine if two song files are identical and reconsile changes in metadata between the two copies of the song. This is emphasized when you manually add files to your iPod, change the metadata of your music, then copy it back over. You will get duplicates. The only exception in this case is an additional numeric value is added to the beginning of file names in the event of a collision.
One last mention is the directory structure on the iPod. Descending through nested directories requires more file system reads. File system reads require more disk activity. That in turn burns up more battery power. The reason for the Fnn scheme is to flatten the list and help keep activity sequential, thus extending battery life.
True, and it's worth pointing out that the file names are not mangled to make it harder to copy them. They are mangled because they become unique identifiers. This is so that when you change the ID3 information, iTunes knows which files to replace, thus avoiding duplicates.
"Whose synthesizer is this?"
"It's a sampler, baby."
"Whose sampler is this?"
"Bob's."
"Who's Bob?"
"Bob's dead, baby. Bob's dead..."