Gang up with couple other bright minds from around MIT. Write the best, the most ultimate system for analyzing of music files ever. Allow automatic recognition of certain styles of music. Turn it into a decentralized publishing system for independent producers, allowing easy integration with a web shop. Allow searching by both metadata and automatically decoded music styles and similarities with an user-submitted piece of file. Harness the knowledge present on MIT, from digital signal processing and acoustic fingerprinting to how brain processes sound.
The only, ONLY, powers RIAA still has lies in their existing collections (difficult to work around, but that's a finite amount of material that will in 20 years fill one iPodequivalent, given the growth of storage density) and in their distribution chain (which this proposed invention will take away, or more accurately, makes irrelevant). Make it easy for the new talents to be heard by anybody who wants them. Put the computers into the position of the middleman who knows both the individual listeners' tastes and the sound of each and every garage band that peddles their wares on the Net. Such systems exist, but few are good.
Ideally, allow the system to be linked with P2P networks on one side (eventually use existing P2P as a leverage for getting the indexing system used by enough people to make it useful on its own via the network effect) and with web shops on the other one (to bridge the gap between the artists and the consumers, and eventually to generate revenue from referrals to at least recoup the R&D costs). Optionally also make it easy to find music for podcasts and streaming radio, based on its indexed meta-properties (think an AI-DJ). Give people the widest choice the world can offer, as a counterweight to the prefabricated standardized heavily advertised industrial product.
Pay the RIAA settlement. And ruin their future. That's a fair swap.
The sphere of influence of the Congress has certain geopolitical constraints, despite their wishes. The rest of the world may still have it - either natively, or pushed out as a last-week over-the-air firmware upgrade when things start looking interesting.
Also do not forget the potential of wifi and bluetooth-enabled smartphones, together with user-installable software. I personally do not care if the decentralized functionality is carrier-pushed and legal, or blackmarket and homemade, as long as it is widely deployed.
This looks like the great US of A wants to control information flow in the rest of the world. Here is what the world should do:
Decentralize the comm infrastructure. As widely as technically possible. Redesign it to fail gracefully. Deploy mesh networking as backup system. For cellular telephony, form a mesh network of both the base stations and the handsets themselves, so even if all the bases are destroyed the handsets still can maintain the network themselves, at least for text messaging. Same for wifi routers and other kinds of comm nodes. As a non-military benefit, this could serve as a fallback for cases of "normal" infrastructure overload.
Develop and deploy ultrawideband technology for consumer devices, making it difficult to impossible to jam the band using the military EWAR toys. This should also make the communication more robust against non-military noise sources.
Develop and deploy phase-array antennas for consumer devices, to automatically adjust the antenna patterns according to the position of the comm devices, both saving batteries and rejecting jamming signals from unwanted directions.
Design the civilian infrastructure to be hardened against both intentional attacks and natural disasters taking out swaths of infrastructure. Make it a matter of national security.
All the technologies required are already existing. Now they just have to be brought out of the labs and released on the street.
Last but not least, prepare lower-tech fallback to establish networks disseminating the people's version of truth to counter the occupant's version, as you can not rely on the infrastructure providers. Prepare a diverse range of tactics, from people physically meeting together and swapping printouts and tapes to low-power FM and TV stations made of repurposed consumer equipment (eg. an antenna connected to the modulated output of a VCR - covers only a block or so but better than nothing. Covers significantly more with an output amplifier.) So take out your old book about antennas and read it today. You do not know when your expertise will be needed.
As an Europe-based sysadmin of a mixed-vendors system, I'd actually like this outcome. At that moment, everybody is forced to migrate, and minor things like slightly broken formatting on an OO-imported Word document won't matter anymore.
In short term, you can run unpatched. That buys you time. Microsoft usually does not bother releasing patches until the threat is already in the wild, so no big loss here anyway - it already happened, I think it was the WMF hole, that a third-party developer released a wrapper around the affected DLL that blocked the problem by eliminating the vulnerable library call. Not mentioning the possibility to screen the code with antivirus-like software directly on TCP/IP and library-call levels. That can be made within Europe virtually overnight, leveraging existing antivirus technology. See also Hogwash, a Snort-derived packet scrubber.
The critical infrastructure will stay up and running. With hiccups, perhaps, but if your crisis scenario comes, I don't expect more than little temporary discomfort followed by a blissful era without intentional incompatiBILLities, longer uptimes, and better general reliability.
Billy may throw a hissy fit and cut Europe off. All he gets in that case is pissing off and temporarily inconveniencing couple million people, creating a large-scale proof-of-concept mass migration project for the rest of the world to follow in a more leisure pace, and creating a market for non-Windows software large enough for even non-EU vendors to cater for.
What may at a cursory glance look like MAD is more likely to be a suicide.
AS skewed as the sports playing field is now I shudder to think what things might be like once the 'designers' get a hold of something like this.
If it means that the professional sport will be finally good for something useful, in this case for betatesting new enhancement technologies, I for one don't see anything wrong there.
The machines in question are flexible by their nature. Flexible enough to form ad-hoc communication infrastructures. Yes, there is a lot of things they can not do. But once they are in place, they may pretty well make distribution of information, being it news or textbooks, much cheaper than if we'd doom them to rely on pen and paper. Yes, it's easier to print out a textbook and give it out - but once you have a laptop, it's easier to copy the file and don't bother with printing. Throw in some ad-hoc wireless for added flavor.
I remember the communication in the age of FidoNet. Mail often took days to get between nodes dependent on dialup. But it got through and it was better than nothing and it was cheaper than the alternatives. These machines allow a wide range of communication, and that includes the "packet driver" - a driver with a packet of floppies.
Also don't forget the possibility of rigging up packet radio from the already-present HAM equipment. Granted, this equipment has limited availability, but you can distribute the data manually from such nodes of connectivity.
You talk about needs. Communication is one of the most important needs; correctly used, it makes satisfying of the other needs significantly easier.
The long-term impairment of Billy's chances to make money on Africa is only a relatively insignificant added value.
Whats coming to them is completely by their own hands, and the job of a responsible and intelligent citizen would be then to help them. Helping them would include your beloved maintenance, with intent to cut the addiction, not to prolong it indefinatly.
Some people have naturally too low production of endorphins. Such people tend to live in permanent subconscious level of pain, which a proper dose of opiates can make go away and make them feel genuinely better. That is likely to be a major predisposition for addiction to opiates.
Overstigmatization of addiction causes serious problems for people with chronic pain. Due to fear of people feeling better than somebody thinks they should, doctors are limited in prescribing even non-opiate painkillers, so people unnecessarily suffer. Maybe it makes somebody powerful feel better, I don't know.
The differences are not that fundamental. Until some big cheese comes with a need for an Enemy, regardless if that cheese is a crazy president or a crazy cleric, and starts babbling about how these differences are not only important but critical and how being hostile to Them is important and what rewards will we get for disliking them and what risks insufficient dislike brings. Then we end up with a madman in the middle of a herd that becomes his power.
In a bigger facility you have an on-site technician. In a smaller facility you should have at least one user who is able to follow telephone instructions and can boot from a CD, run diag software as told, and ultimately swap a part, usually just one, not "all". You don't replace the whole computer but only the part that failed, that is a cost saver as well. The user of said workstation may be sent to buy the new part, which further eliminates the delay. The diagnosis tends to be easy, at least with the most common hardware failures, especially with some spares around.
Besides Cisco IOS has its own issues too. It's far from being a silver bullet, though you can shoot yourself in the foot as well. So it's not like it's an one-time investment with no further costs. If you think so, you're in for some rude awakening.
I prefer that important devices like routers don't contain parts that fail relatively quickly... like hard drives.
Put in more RAM. Use RAM drive, boot from a CD. If a CD drive fails, borrow one from another machine and you are back up. If the CD itself fails, make a new one from its image saved on the server. If any other part fails, do the same you would do in case of a failed CD drive.
Everything has a limited lifetime. So count with it and design from mutually replaceable parts you have plenty of around.
Besides, the person whose computer you just cannibalized can be the same person who will have to be sent out to buy parts anyway, therefore their downtime caused by taking their machine apart does not have to be counted.
Use the same machine the workstations are. Then when something dies, you reprioritize, find the least-important-at-the-moment employee, borrow their workstation, use a spare part from there, and you are back up and running in less time than a techsupport call wait takes, without the elevator music. One person downtime costs much less than one office downtime.
Every machine doubles as a source of spare parts. When everything is built on as same/similar hardware as reasonable, sourcing parts in timing-critical situations becomes much easier.
Alternatively, mail it, optionally via the mentioned anonymizer, to Maxxus of the recent Skype Crack fame to figure out something.
Seriously, we need to come up with some permanent publishing solution for liberated tech specs. Maybe some sort of decentralized, massively redundant (to cope with nodes going up and down unpredictably), reputation-backed (to avoid spam) anonymous/pseudonymous (to avoid lawyers) P2P wiki-like something. Perhaps we could also piggyback it on the mainstream Wikipedia by the means of eg. Greasemonkey.
I would like to bring to your attention the VS1053 chip from VLSI.
Download the datasheet here:
http://www.vlsi.fi/download/download.shtml
While the spec is preliminary, the chip is already on the way.
I suppose there are more of them on the market already.
This leads to an elegant solution: paid subscription to a key distribution service. The payments are used to buy the sets and extract valid keys. As only one key is needed for all the customers, pooling the money is possible. $1 per month times eg. 1000 can go a long way.
The will to power cuts both ways. For every loud suit'n'tie there is a dozen of silent revolutionaries armed with soldering irons. People more than willing to deny some power to the suits.
Take one hacker down and two more spring up, attracted with the thrill and glory.
Unless they'll be using it outside of DMCA/EUCD reach, they'll have to deal with customs.
In the age of FPGAs? Nah, they just be flashed with a "legal" software, declared as such, then reflashed back with the correct firmware securely downloaded off the Net.
Alternatively it can use a standard off-the-shelf FPGA dev board, bought 100% legally off the shelf, as the hardware part.
Japan got many many more cities obliterated. Only two of them gained all the fame, though. Guess a prototype test is more memorable than old tried and tested airdrop of combined fragmentation and incendiary cargo.
Slashdot Mirror
The only, ONLY, powers RIAA still has lies in their existing collections (difficult to work around, but that's a finite amount of material that will in 20 years fill one iPodequivalent, given the growth of storage density) and in their distribution chain (which this proposed invention will take away, or more accurately, makes irrelevant). Make it easy for the new talents to be heard by anybody who wants them. Put the computers into the position of the middleman who knows both the individual listeners' tastes and the sound of each and every garage band that peddles their wares on the Net. Such systems exist, but few are good.
Ideally, allow the system to be linked with P2P networks on one side (eventually use existing P2P as a leverage for getting the indexing system used by enough people to make it useful on its own via the network effect) and with web shops on the other one (to bridge the gap between the artists and the consumers, and eventually to generate revenue from referrals to at least recoup the R&D costs). Optionally also make it easy to find music for podcasts and streaming radio, based on its indexed meta-properties (think an AI-DJ). Give people the widest choice the world can offer, as a counterweight to the prefabricated standardized heavily advertised industrial product.
Pay the RIAA settlement. And ruin their future. That's a fair swap.
Also do not forget the potential of wifi and bluetooth-enabled smartphones, together with user-installable software. I personally do not care if the decentralized functionality is carrier-pushed and legal, or blackmarket and homemade, as long as it is widely deployed.
Decentralize the comm infrastructure. As widely as technically possible. Redesign it to fail gracefully. Deploy mesh networking as backup system. For cellular telephony, form a mesh network of both the base stations and the handsets themselves, so even if all the bases are destroyed the handsets still can maintain the network themselves, at least for text messaging. Same for wifi routers and other kinds of comm nodes. As a non-military benefit, this could serve as a fallback for cases of "normal" infrastructure overload.
Develop and deploy ultrawideband technology for consumer devices, making it difficult to impossible to jam the band using the military EWAR toys. This should also make the communication more robust against non-military noise sources.
Develop and deploy phase-array antennas for consumer devices, to automatically adjust the antenna patterns according to the position of the comm devices, both saving batteries and rejecting jamming signals from unwanted directions.
Design the civilian infrastructure to be hardened against both intentional attacks and natural disasters taking out swaths of infrastructure. Make it a matter of national security.
All the technologies required are already existing. Now they just have to be brought out of the labs and released on the street.
Last but not least, prepare lower-tech fallback to establish networks disseminating the people's version of truth to counter the occupant's version, as you can not rely on the infrastructure providers. Prepare a diverse range of tactics, from people physically meeting together and swapping printouts and tapes to low-power FM and TV stations made of repurposed consumer equipment (eg. an antenna connected to the modulated output of a VCR - covers only a block or so but better than nothing. Covers significantly more with an output amplifier.) So take out your old book about antennas and read it today. You do not know when your expertise will be needed.
Be ready. Be prepared. Be Pentagon-proof.
In short term, you can run unpatched. That buys you time. Microsoft usually does not bother releasing patches until the threat is already in the wild, so no big loss here anyway - it already happened, I think it was the WMF hole, that a third-party developer released a wrapper around the affected DLL that blocked the problem by eliminating the vulnerable library call. Not mentioning the possibility to screen the code with antivirus-like software directly on TCP/IP and library-call levels. That can be made within Europe virtually overnight, leveraging existing antivirus technology. See also Hogwash, a Snort-derived packet scrubber.
The critical infrastructure will stay up and running. With hiccups, perhaps, but if your crisis scenario comes, I don't expect more than little temporary discomfort followed by a blissful era without intentional incompatiBILLities, longer uptimes, and better general reliability.
Billy may throw a hissy fit and cut Europe off. All he gets in that case is pissing off and temporarily inconveniencing couple million people, creating a large-scale proof-of-concept mass migration project for the rest of the world to follow in a more leisure pace, and creating a market for non-Windows software large enough for even non-EU vendors to cater for.
What may at a cursory glance look like MAD is more likely to be a suicide.
For example, doing homeworks for somebody stronger, who will be your rent-a-fist.
That explains why is your unit known as "Slimeys".
If it means that the professional sport will be finally good for something useful, in this case for betatesting new enhancement technologies, I for one don't see anything wrong there.
100 lb of armor-eating nanotech goo. Pwnz0red.
I remember the communication in the age of FidoNet. Mail often took days to get between nodes dependent on dialup. But it got through and it was better than nothing and it was cheaper than the alternatives. These machines allow a wide range of communication, and that includes the "packet driver" - a driver with a packet of floppies.
Also don't forget the possibility of rigging up packet radio from the already-present HAM equipment. Granted, this equipment has limited availability, but you can distribute the data manually from such nodes of connectivity.
You talk about needs. Communication is one of the most important needs; correctly used, it makes satisfying of the other needs significantly easier.
The long-term impairment of Billy's chances to make money on Africa is only a relatively insignificant added value.
Unless it's an early sign of a brain haemorrhage.
Some people have naturally too low production of endorphins. Such people tend to live in permanent subconscious level of pain, which a proper dose of opiates can make go away and make them feel genuinely better. That is likely to be a major predisposition for addiction to opiates.
Overstigmatization of addiction causes serious problems for people with chronic pain. Due to fear of people feeling better than somebody thinks they should, doctors are limited in prescribing even non-opiate painkillers, so people unnecessarily suffer. Maybe it makes somebody powerful feel better, I don't know.
Plenty of them. Just not in the financial meaning.
Be wary of wannabe leaders bearing enemies.
Is that anything difficult?
Besides Cisco IOS has its own issues too. It's far from being a silver bullet, though you can shoot yourself in the foot as well. So it's not like it's an one-time investment with no further costs. If you think so, you're in for some rude awakening.
Put in more RAM. Use RAM drive, boot from a CD. If a CD drive fails, borrow one from another machine and you are back up. If the CD itself fails, make a new one from its image saved on the server. If any other part fails, do the same you would do in case of a failed CD drive.
Everything has a limited lifetime. So count with it and design from mutually replaceable parts you have plenty of around.
Besides, the person whose computer you just cannibalized can be the same person who will have to be sent out to buy parts anyway, therefore their downtime caused by taking their machine apart does not have to be counted.
Every machine doubles as a source of spare parts. When everything is built on as same/similar hardware as reasonable, sourcing parts in timing-critical situations becomes much easier.
Seriously, we need to come up with some permanent publishing solution for liberated tech specs. Maybe some sort of decentralized, massively redundant (to cope with nodes going up and down unpredictably), reputation-backed (to avoid spam) anonymous/pseudonymous (to avoid lawyers) P2P wiki-like something. Perhaps we could also piggyback it on the mainstream Wikipedia by the means of eg. Greasemonkey.
C'mon, just find a willing seller, and buy it. Law and market are fairly orthogonal.
If it's illegal to buy/sell old electronics...
I would like to bring to your attention the VS1053 chip from VLSI. Download the datasheet here: http://www.vlsi.fi/download/download.shtml While the spec is preliminary, the chip is already on the way. I suppose there are more of them on the market already.
This leads to an elegant solution: paid subscription to a key distribution service. The payments are used to buy the sets and extract valid keys. As only one key is needed for all the customers, pooling the money is possible. $1 per month times eg. 1000 can go a long way.
The will to power cuts both ways. For every loud suit'n'tie there is a dozen of silent revolutionaries armed with soldering irons. People more than willing to deny some power to the suits.
Take one hacker down and two more spring up, attracted with the thrill and glory.
In the age of FPGAs? Nah, they just be flashed with a "legal" software, declared as such, then reflashed back with the correct firmware securely downloaded off the Net.
Alternatively it can use a standard off-the-shelf FPGA dev board, bought 100% legally off the shelf, as the hardware part.
Customs enforcement was obsoleted by JTAG.
Isn't the suggestion to sleep on an important decision significantly older than television?
Japan got many many more cities obliterated. Only two of them gained all the fame, though. Guess a prototype test is more memorable than old tried and tested airdrop of combined fragmentation and incendiary cargo.