why doesn't he just download GPG (or any other encryption program) and start using it? If he does this,
would the "open record requests" require him to relinquish the key?
Doesn't matter. You encrypt using the public key of the person you're sending to, and their private key is needed to decrypt. So W doesn't have the key that decrypts. (Just as long as he doesn't keep a plaintext copy of the message!)
Because I work for a publisher and am interested in the potential of the technology for our titles.
Of what benefit is it to make the publishers paranoid by continually telling them that their efforts to
create eBooks are still crackable?
Even paranoids have real enemies.:-)
I don't know whether they use symmetric... or asymmetric
In this case I don't think it matters. If you know the encryption key used by a particular device, you know all you need to know to send data to that device.
...if anyone wanted to spend the few hours it would take per book, it would be much much easier to
simply scan a "real" book using a computer image scanner...
Music: If anyone wanted to spend the hour it would take per CD, it would be much easier to attach an analog tape recorder to the CD-palyer's line out connectors and make a copy. But the end result is not quite the same thing in either the book or music case.
The same book is available in other forms.
True at present, but there's no assurance that will always be true of all titles. If the eBook technolgy becomes pervasive we'll no doubt see some low-volume titles released in eBook-only format. (Yuen predicts dramatic price reductions and technology improvements over the next year and a half, based in part on bistable plastic LCD technology that is presently under development.)
Re:Microsoft can't do anything about free..
on
Linux Is Going Down
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· Score: 2
Companies should NOT have to count on hobbyists who have other priorities than helping THEM.
But the same is true of relying on commercial vendors. Their interest is in helping you only when that intersects with their own financial benefit. It's not clear that YOU are helped more by one model than by the other. I have many more horror stories about trying to get support for closed-source products (including MS') than open-source products.
They can ask for such things as support for hot-swappable components, or whatever, but they cannot demand or compel it.
When was the last time you (or anyone else) compelled Microsoft to add support for something to Windows? Frankly, if your needs are not widely shared, you have little chance of seeing support for them added to Windows.
Linux development can be community driven, but that may not be good enough for customers with specific needs that aren't currently focused on by said
community.
One reason Linux and BSD are so prevalent as Internet servers is precisely because Microsoft was late in focusing on customer's Internet server needs. So that argument cuts both ways.
It's much more tenable to go to a vendor who sees a fiscal interest in doing things like patching the kernel for certain hardware, or for testing Oracle installations, or other foo -- if
the vendor will remain in business.
Well, yes, but if the kernel needs to be patched and the OS is Windows, what vendor do you go to? On the other hand, if the kernel and its patches are open sourced, it doesn't matter if the vendor goes out of business because another vendor can pick up the source and continue development.
Whether or not Linux remains isn't that relevant to MSFT
except regarding its impact on it's market share.
Agreed. And the only reason I care about market share is because a technology that has a significate market share is more readily viewed as viable by PHBs.
The market value of that right, like any other good, depends on the balance between its utility and scarcity.
Okay, but if an actual market exists the factors that determine the market value should be, for tax purposes, moot. When producers are selling something for $X and buyers are buying it at that price, that IS the market value. It doesn't matter WHY it is.
That being the case, it's wrong for the Polish (or any other) tax officials to assign a "market value" that is far more than what the good or service is being exchanged for on the open market!
Since Stronghold is Apache+mod_ssl (OpenSSL), isn't it already open? C2Net never added any substantive code. The only reason to ever purchase Stronghold was the need to have an RSA license.
I found it amusing that in the past 2 months C2Net was frantically trying to get its customers to upgrade to Stronghold 3, just before the RSA patent was due to expire. Guess they wanted to milk the upgrade cow one more time before dying.
...this is really about mind control or the corporately financed return of the plague...
Damn right! Only free (speech) plagues are ethical. That's why I think the human genome data should be free -- so the Free Plague Movement can progress.
This could be done using Adobe Acrobat (sorry, non-Linux) plus some CGI-type software to bridge between Acrobat and the database system. Briefly, you get the form into PDF (scanning it and importing into Acrobat will do), then in Acrobat you define the fillable parts of the form (which are scriptable using JavaScript). Your data-capture application then emits an Adode FDF (forms data format) file that can be imported into the form in Acrobat. I think you can implement a more turnkey solution using either custom Acrobat plug-ins or perhaps the FDF toolkit but have no experience doing so.
Note: You need the full version of Acrobat; Acrobat Reader won't cut it.
Government slowness in bringing services online is not just sloth or lack of concern as Katz would have it. There are issues that impact providing government services that don't show up in the e-business world such as:
In e-commerce, the cost of providing services electronically is defrayed by (presumably) increased amount of business. In government, the cost is borne by the taxpayer. The political will to bear that increased cost isn't yet present.
A business can de-emphasize its brick-and-morter component (if any) as e-business swells. Government is constrained to serve all citizens equally. It simply can't get rid of the old-fashioned way of doing things -- not yet.
Many government processes legally require some form of identification (photo) or signature that can't legally be done electronically. (However, the legalizat ion of electronic signatures should accelerate putting such processes online.)
It's always fun to insult goverment and government workers. But often, as with Katz' polemic, the insults are based on a total lack of understanding of the unique mission and requirements of government. Repeat after me: Government is not business.
No, I mean one that works on other OS's. Pay attention.
But what you said was:
If they could just use a filter then they wouldn't have to upgrade from Word 6 or whatever was the last version that actually offered them new features they needed.
So what "other OS's" were you running Word 6 on that you need to upgrade it?
So, if lying, stealing, blackmail, and ignoring court orders is not the valid complaints against M$, what the hell are!?
Lying and ignoring court orders (well, court-approved settlements, anyway) are certainly valid complaints. But those have nothing to do with your assertion about M$ forcing existing Word users to upgrade in order to read newer Word formats. And when you tell lies like that, you are behaving no better than M$. Worse, you're giving M$ cover: "See? Our critics are saying untrue things about us so everything they say is untrue."
If they could just use a filter then they wouldn't have to upgrade from Word 6 or whatever was the last version that actually offered them new features they needed.
When a twit like you starts defending M$ the question I always want to ask is "If they're not a pack of shits why do they bribe, threaten, steal and lie? Do you think it's some sort of hobby?"
When twits like you attack M$ for the wrong reasons it makes it harder to get the unobsessed to listen to the valid complaints against M$.
First, i imagine the original design stopped at 2Mbps because it wasn't really feasable to go over that speed using the parts on hand.
Yes, exactly. The low-cost Gunn-diode units being used couldn't be modulated much faster than about 2 Mbps.
Second, the statement about "not much operating at 2Mbps" as a reason for trying for 10Mbps makes it sound like he really doesn't understand the way asynchronous networks function. At least with tcp...
It has nothing to do with protocols. The problem is finding something that pumps data in a useful manner at 2 Mbps. A 10-Mbps Ethernet card can be had for next to nothing. But what card do you use if you need to slow down to 2 Mbps? Thus the desire to increase the project's speed to 10 Mbps.
Of course, as other people have pointed out, the legality of a 2Mbps HAM link, let alone 10Mbps, is quite suspect. Someone with access to recent FCC rulings should comment on it. A licensed amateur may design and build their own device to transmit legally in the HAM bands, and it seems from the rules most people know about that the 10ghz HAM band is limited to 56kbps.
Not so. On any frequency above 450 MHz, US hams can use any digital bandwidth that will fit inside the band. See the FCC Rules at 97.305(c) (and 97.307(f)).
Most websites on the internet are put up as a labor of love, and neither charge for admission nor have advertising.
I don't suppose you have any data to back up that little gem?
In any case, the Web pages themselves may not be for-profit but the servers that host them most often are for-profit. And a lot of those labor-of-love sites are served with ads from the "free" services such as geocities.
More important, though, is that much of the useful content on the Web is supported by ad revenue. Look through your bookmark list some time. Count the number of useful (they must be useful or you wouldn't have bookmarked them) sites that include advertising and how many do not. I bet many if not most carry ads. I know that's the case for my bookmark list.
Saying that "advertising keeps the internet free" is to ignore the huge mass of content put up by individuals who have no interest in profiting from it.
Who said that? The poster said that many sites wouldn't be able to exist. And that's unarguably true. How do you suppose a popular site like/. could afford their lovely new server farm without ad revenue?
Look, I don't enjoy most ads any more than the next person. But their presence has positive effects as well as negative, with the principal positive effect being that they fund the Web publication of a lot of material that would otherwise be unavailable. Where cross-domain tracking isn't performed, ads are on balance a good thing.
Oh, I agree. I'm a geek, not a lawyer, so you'll have to focus on the spirit of the idea, not the literal words. Somebody else will have to come up with the exact wording.
It's the spirit of the idea that's the problem. You want the government to tell private parties what they must carry. And before you demur: that's inherent in the idea. Unless you're willing to argue that the carrier must carry everything anyone wants them to carry (as in the Eisner example I gave) -- and I think you agree that's impractical -- you leave it up to the government (the courts, mostly) to decide what material rises to the level of "must carry." That's antithetical to the free flow of information that you are (rightly) trying to promote.
Perhaps we need a new ammendment to the constitution that would read: No industry, whether public or private, shall make no restrictions to the flow of information except for information that they own directly.
Hello, Time Warner? Mike Eisner here. You know those 8 channels of ours you've been carrying? We've decided to increase it to 80. What? You don't have the capacity for that? Tough. The law says you have to carry them. But hey, I'm reasonable. Give me 10 times the fee for each of the 8 you're carrying and I won't file a complaint on the basis of the "no restrictions" amendment.
Yeah, I think your proposed law does need a little work.
Corporate blandness will be rewarded with indifference and lack of interest.
Clearly, you don't watch US television broadcasts. In this country, blandness is rewarded with wealth and fame. The Net will be no different in that respect.
This won't stop people from trying to manipulate the net - because if they "got" the net, then they wouldn't try to control it.
True if by "'got' the net" you mean they want to promote the kind of social interaction the Net is uniquely capable of providing. But large numbers of people would be quite willing to sacrifice the public good to their own benefit. This is inherent in the truism that people tend to "vote their pocketbook."
But the principal problem, in a nutshell, is that powerful people tend to become powerful because they are good at manipulating situations to their own advantage and are willing to do so. Many of those people would like nothing better than to change the Net so it benefits them, regardless of the effect on the Net as a social/cultural engine.
I can't answer because you told us not to tell you the things that are the correct answers!
Seriously, I imagine most "normal" Linux users (oxymoron?) upgrade the kernel by installing the new kernel packages provided for their distro. That's what I do on production systems, even though I do sometimes recompile the kernel for test/play purposes on my home system.
There's nothing particularly complicated about the process except figuring out the myriad options. The only way to greatly simplify that is to eliminate them as options. But they are there because they are needed, mostly. Still, if you can think of ways of simplifying the process or better documenting it, I know the whole Linux community will be grateful for your contribution. For example, why not drop a line to the HOWTO author suggesting (politely, one hopes) that the missing information be added. That would be much more productive than ranting on/.
Wrong failure being addressed
on
Linux Failover?
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· Score: 5
You're attacking the wrong problem. What you need first is not Linux failover but consultant failover: Your consultant has failed; you need to switch to a new one instantly.
Radio signals are absorbed, refracted or unaffected by the ionosphere in varying degrees depending on their frequency and the state of the ionosphere. At frequencies above shortwave (say FM radio or TV frequencies or above), signals mostly pass through the ionosphere. Ham radio includes operation at frequencies from MF (just above the AM broadcast band) to high microwave. Ham radio satellites (of which there are several) generally operate at VHF or UHF frequencies that are relatively unaffected by the ionosphere. For a brief introduction to the topic of propagation, see this page.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean like this?
It already does -- on Fridays.
Have them get back to me when they can mix Bacardi in, too.
Doesn't matter. You encrypt using the public key of the person you're sending to, and their private key is needed to decrypt. So W doesn't have the key that decrypts. (Just as long as he doesn't keep a plaintext copy of the message!)
Maybe that's what is really pissing them off.
The money I make is based on the work of James Clerk Maxwell. Where do I send the check?
Because I work for a publisher and am interested in the potential of the technology for our titles.
Of what benefit is it to make the publishers paranoid by continually telling them that their efforts to create eBooks are still crackable?
Even paranoids have real enemies. :-)
I don't know whether they use symmetric... or asymmetric
In this case I don't think it matters. If you know the encryption key used by a particular device, you know all you need to know to send data to that device.
Music: If anyone wanted to spend the hour it would take per CD, it would be much easier to attach an analog tape recorder to the CD-palyer's line out connectors and make a copy. But the end result is not quite the same thing in either the book or music case.
The same book is available in other forms.
True at present, but there's no assurance that will always be true of all titles. If the eBook technolgy becomes pervasive we'll no doubt see some low-volume titles released in eBook-only format. (Yuen predicts dramatic price reductions and technology improvements over the next year and a half, based in part on bistable plastic LCD technology that is presently under development.)
But the same is true of relying on commercial vendors. Their interest is in helping you only when that intersects with their own financial benefit. It's not clear that YOU are helped more by one model than by the other. I have many more horror stories about trying to get support for closed-source products (including MS') than open-source products.
They can ask for such things as support for hot-swappable components, or whatever, but they cannot demand or compel it.
When was the last time you (or anyone else) compelled Microsoft to add support for something to Windows? Frankly, if your needs are not widely shared, you have little chance of seeing support for them added to Windows.
Linux development can be community driven, but that may not be good enough for customers with specific needs that aren't currently focused on by said community.
One reason Linux and BSD are so prevalent as Internet servers is precisely because Microsoft was late in focusing on customer's Internet server needs. So that argument cuts both ways.
It's much more tenable to go to a vendor who sees a fiscal interest in doing things like patching the kernel for certain hardware, or for testing Oracle installations, or other foo -- if the vendor will remain in business.
Well, yes, but if the kernel needs to be patched and the OS is Windows, what vendor do you go to? On the other hand, if the kernel and its patches are open sourced, it doesn't matter if the vendor goes out of business because another vendor can pick up the source and continue development.
Whether or not Linux remains isn't that relevant to MSFT except regarding its impact on it's market share.
Agreed. And the only reason I care about market share is because a technology that has a significate market share is more readily viewed as viable by PHBs.
Okay, but if an actual market exists the factors that determine the market value should be, for tax purposes, moot. When producers are selling something for $X and buyers are buying it at that price, that IS the market value. It doesn't matter WHY it is.
That being the case, it's wrong for the Polish (or any other) tax officials to assign a "market value" that is far more than what the good or service is being exchanged for on the open market!
I found it amusing that in the past 2 months C2Net was frantically trying to get its customers to upgrade to Stronghold 3, just before the RSA patent was due to expire. Guess they wanted to milk the upgrade cow one more time before dying.
Damn right! Only free (speech) plagues are ethical. That's why I think the human genome data should be free -- so the Free Plague Movement can progress.
1. create scandalous, obscene, defamatory or immoral works using the Image(s) nor use the Image(s) for any other purpose which is prohibited by law;
Does that mean I cannot use it to create more Bill-Gates-as-Hitler images?
Damn right. Who are you to defame Hitler?
Note: You need the full version of Acrobat; Acrobat Reader won't cut it.
- In e-commerce, the cost of providing services electronically is defrayed by (presumably) increased amount of business. In government, the cost is borne by the taxpayer. The political will to bear that increased cost isn't yet present.
- A business can de-emphasize its brick-and-morter component (if any) as e-business swells. Government is constrained to serve all citizens equally. It simply can't get rid of the old-fashioned way of doing things -- not yet.
- Many government processes legally require some form of identification (photo) or signature that can't legally be done electronically. (However, the legalizat ion of electronic signatures should accelerate putting such processes online.)
It's always fun to insult goverment and government workers. But often, as with Katz' polemic, the insults are based on a total lack of understanding of the unique mission and requirements of government. Repeat after me: Government is not business.But what you said was:
So what "other OS's" were you running Word 6 on that you need to upgrade it?So, if lying, stealing, blackmail, and ignoring court orders is not the valid complaints against M$, what the hell are!?
Lying and ignoring court orders (well, court-approved settlements, anyway) are certainly valid complaints. But those have nothing to do with your assertion about M$ forcing existing Word users to upgrade in order to read newer Word formats. And when you tell lies like that, you are behaving no better than M$. Worse, you're giving M$ cover: "See? Our critics are saying untrue things about us so everything they say is untrue."
You mean like this one?
When a twit like you starts defending M$ the question I always want to ask is "If they're not a pack of shits why do they bribe, threaten, steal and lie? Do you think it's some sort of hobby?"
When twits like you attack M$ for the wrong reasons it makes it harder to get the unobsessed to listen to the valid complaints against M$.
Yes, exactly. The low-cost Gunn-diode units being used couldn't be modulated much faster than about 2 Mbps.
Second, the statement about "not much operating at 2Mbps" as a reason for trying for 10Mbps makes it sound like he really doesn't understand the way asynchronous networks function. At least with tcp...
It has nothing to do with protocols. The problem is finding something that pumps data in a useful manner at 2 Mbps. A 10-Mbps Ethernet card can be had for next to nothing. But what card do you use if you need to slow down to 2 Mbps? Thus the desire to increase the project's speed to 10 Mbps.
Of course, as other people have pointed out, the legality of a 2Mbps HAM link, let alone 10Mbps, is quite suspect. Someone with access to recent FCC rulings should comment on it. A licensed amateur may design and build their own device to transmit legally in the HAM bands, and it seems from the rules most people know about that the 10ghz HAM band is limited to 56kbps.
Not so. On any frequency above 450 MHz, US hams can use any digital bandwidth that will fit inside the band. See the FCC Rules at 97.305(c) (and 97.307(f)).
I don't suppose you have any data to back up that little gem?
In any case, the Web pages themselves may not be for-profit but the servers that host them most often are for-profit. And a lot of those labor-of-love sites are served with ads from the "free" services such as geocities.
More important, though, is that much of the useful content on the Web is supported by ad revenue. Look through your bookmark list some time. Count the number of useful (they must be useful or you wouldn't have bookmarked them) sites that include advertising and how many do not. I bet many if not most carry ads. I know that's the case for my bookmark list.
Saying that "advertising keeps the internet free" is to ignore the huge mass of content put up by individuals who have no interest in profiting from it.
Who said that? The poster said that many sites wouldn't be able to exist. And that's unarguably true. How do you suppose a popular site like /. could afford their lovely new server farm without ad revenue?
Look, I don't enjoy most ads any more than the next person. But their presence has positive effects as well as negative, with the principal positive effect being that they fund the Web publication of a lot of material that would otherwise be unavailable. Where cross-domain tracking isn't performed, ads are on balance a good thing.
It's the spirit of the idea that's the problem. You want the government to tell private parties what they must carry. And before you demur: that's inherent in the idea. Unless you're willing to argue that the carrier must carry everything anyone wants them to carry (as in the Eisner example I gave) -- and I think you agree that's impractical -- you leave it up to the government (the courts, mostly) to decide what material rises to the level of "must carry." That's antithetical to the free flow of information that you are (rightly) trying to promote.
Yeah, I think your proposed law does need a little work.
Clearly, you don't watch US television broadcasts. In this country, blandness is rewarded with wealth and fame. The Net will be no different in that respect.
This won't stop people from trying to manipulate the net - because if they "got" the net, then they wouldn't try to control it.
True if by "'got' the net" you mean they want to promote the kind of social interaction the Net is uniquely capable of providing. But large numbers of people would be quite willing to sacrifice the public good to their own benefit. This is inherent in the truism that people tend to "vote their pocketbook."
But the principal problem, in a nutshell, is that powerful people tend to become powerful because they are good at manipulating situations to their own advantage and are willing to do so. Many of those people would like nothing better than to change the Net so it benefits them, regardless of the effect on the Net as a social/cultural engine.
Seriously, I imagine most "normal" Linux users (oxymoron?) upgrade the kernel by installing the new kernel packages provided for their distro. That's what I do on production systems, even though I do sometimes recompile the kernel for test/play purposes on my home system.
There's nothing particularly complicated about the process except figuring out the myriad options. The only way to greatly simplify that is to eliminate them as options. But they are there because they are needed, mostly. Still, if you can think of ways of simplifying the process or better documenting it, I know the whole Linux community will be grateful for your contribution. For example, why not drop a line to the HOWTO author suggesting (politely, one hopes) that the missing information be added. That would be much more productive than ranting on /.
You're attacking the wrong problem. What you need first is not Linux failover but consultant failover: Your consultant has failed; you need to switch to a new one instantly.