New business model for places with cheap access to fat pipes: selling VPN tunnels. So your ISP refuses you access to full Internet. Big deal. You open a VPN to the endpoint you bought cheap access to, and use it as a gateway.
It's common for cable ISPs to filter IPSec packets, but IPSec is not the only VPN solution. OpenVPN allows tunneling through both TCP and UCP, and I suppose there is a myriad of possibilities involving writing iptables modules.
The DRM information will be encoded somewhere in the file, typically in its header.
It won't be difficult for eg. the WinMX developers to make the option to begin the download from a new source by fetching the first half-kilobyte of the file, then checking it for DRM, then refusing to download it and looking for a different source, if told so in the configuration. Same applies for all other P2P clients that support fetching of only a part of the file (which means de facto all of them).
RIAA will gain at most some temporary advantage. Not for long.
You suffer the "felony" punishment only after being busted. If your "illegal behavior" can't be easily detected, you're fine.
As long as people won't be stopped on the streets and the firmware of their players audited by the cops, I don't think people will be too concerned about commiting this kind of crime.
Easy way out. Buy a box of Xilinx FPGAs, and some ADC/DAC chips. Download codec and USB cores from Open Cores. Voila - you have fully configurable software-defined external codec units.
In couple years, when DRM will be ubiquitous, there will be a booming black market with "coprocessor" devices of this kind. Fueled by the abundance of out-of-work engineers and developers, whose job went to the East.
Nature seeks balance, in medium-to-long-term ignoring the wishes of the money-hungry CEOs. [insert yin-yang sign here]
...we are economically dominated by the hard boiled scientific minded...
I dare to object; such people are beancounter-minded. Scientific-minded people value the knowledge and open access to it - which is difficult to quantify in money.
...but what about the people who would write the tools you would have used if there were no open-source tools available.
Could you afford the non-open-source tools then? Would they still have jobs, or would the sw dev section get outsourced to Bangalore and the local engineers you seem to be caring about so much end up unemployed anyway?
A penny saved is a penny earned - when you count the money you didn't have to spend as earnings you'd have to make and then spend otherwise, the numbers suddenly look much more positive. Plus no waste on taxes, and no accounting paperwork.
Design of the appearance of physical devices is a form of art as well; the fact the form has to have a function in addition to only its appearance doesn't make it less art.
Artistic value and usefulness aren't mutually exclusive.
Use a small RC-controlled helicopter, outfitted with a wireless camera pointing downwards. Fly in a criss-cross pattern over the area you want a photograph of. Use software mentioned on/. couple days ago for generating a high-resolution aerial photograph of the area. Could be also useful for espionage.
Improvements: Use a fleet of microcopters with infrared uncooled bolometer cameras for patrolling over an area when eg. searching for a missing person or guarding a space. Load other instruments on board for eg. environmental monitoring, eg. taking air samples from the immediate vicinity of eg. factory chimneys - useful for eg. underground ecology groups without much funding.
Speculative idea: Could it be possible to put some helium-filled balloons to the sides of the copter? That could offset the weight of the additional onboard equipment, and could serve as cushioning for expensive instruments in case of crash-landing (or as floating bags for crash-landing into water). It'd be a cross of a helicopter and a blimp/dirigible, though. But would make it possible to have a quite large frame with balloons and multiple rotors, capable of carrying considerable amount of equipment. Could also be pretty stable in flight.
What about a "coprocessor"? Put a big fat FPGA, eg. some Xilinx, on the bus next to the CPU, and feed it with code specific for the given task? This would offer a fully reconfigurable hardware coprocessor, just upload a task-specific "schematics" before unleashing it upon the task.
Did some smaller-scale experiments with taking pictures of the scope screen by a digital camera. If you got a camera that allows manual setting of the exposition time, you're set. No film costs.
You can also take a webcam and fix it against the scope screen, then project the webcam image. I did something similar when I need a consultation with an overseas colleague (though it wasn't realtime but sending digital photographs of the scope screen, but it wouldn't be a problem to make it into streaming video).
Some of those flashing 12:00 are because of getting fed up with setting it up after every blackout. Got one such VCR. Stopped setting it up after some time when I didn't use the timer recording anymore. Planned to add battery backup to the clock, but retired it because of worn heads before I got to actually implement it.
Reminds me I could take it apart and look how it works. Could be a nice weekend project.
On my last service mission, when I was sent to UK to repair something, I happened to walk through inner London with pockets full of tools - including a knife and a couple of screwdrivers. Screwdrivers can (and in some areas commonly are, especially when sharpened) be used as pretty dangerous offensive weapons, better for stabbing than knives. Does it make me a chargeable criminal? Because I will do it again, without guilt or remorses.
If carrying screwdrivers is outlawed, only outlaws will carry screwdrivers. (Sorry, had to say it.)
Anyways, you do realize the liability aspects of a project like that, right?
What liability? Lawyers should be herded, summarily executed, dried, powdered, and used as fertilizer. Basic knowledge and the awareness of existence of Darwin Prize should be enough.
What's much more detrimental to experimenting and playing with cool toys than people complaining about "hacking cookbooks" is the pervasive fear of liability and lawyers.
b.1) Learn how the tech works, develop some counter-tech yourself. Optionally sell it, optionally get sued by both the marketers and another megacorp that wants to sell it too.
b.1.a) Geeks shall unite and develop open-source hardware for detection, jamming, and neutralization of these problems, using cheap off-the-shelf parts, exploiting the global nature of the Net and local nature of the rf-spectrum laws.
In fact, why don't we walk around the store with RFID readers? That way we can check the real price of each item - no confusion or misleading shelf placement. If there is a rebate, that information should be on the tag.
The tag is only a read-only serial number. Of course, you could then retrieve the associated data from the store's database via eg. 802.11 (about the prices and rebates), and over the cellphone from other databases (if there is a rebate in a different store (from local area's Special Consumer Actions service), who really owns the vendor (from the database of companies and their ownership, so if you boycott or distrust somebody you can know whom all they have without having to painstakingly keep track yourself), what's it made of (through the community-maintained Wiki-like database of compositions of things - could be good for GM-food labeling where the manufacturers weren't forced to it), and more and more and more. Scan the tag, query the databases, display the results. Can be done right today, using the existing UPC/EAN barcodes and camera phones.
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Government, terrorists... where's the difference?
It's common for cable ISPs to filter IPSec packets, but IPSec is not the only VPN solution. OpenVPN allows tunneling through both TCP and UCP, and I suppose there is a myriad of possibilities involving writing iptables modules.
It won't be difficult for eg. the WinMX developers to make the option to begin the download from a new source by fetching the first half-kilobyte of the file, then checking it for DRM, then refusing to download it and looking for a different source, if told so in the configuration. Same applies for all other P2P clients that support fetching of only a part of the file (which means de facto all of them).
RIAA will gain at most some temporary advantage. Not for long.
As long as people won't be stopped on the streets and the firmware of their players audited by the cops, I don't think people will be too concerned about commiting this kind of crime.
In couple years, when DRM will be ubiquitous, there will be a booming black market with "coprocessor" devices of this kind. Fueled by the abundance of out-of-work engineers and developers, whose job went to the East.
Nature seeks balance, in medium-to-long-term ignoring the wishes of the money-hungry CEOs. [insert yin-yang sign here]
One of the reasons to keep things on read-only mediums (including but not limited to CDROMs, DVD-Rs, and read-only network drives).
I dare to object; such people are beancounter-minded. Scientific-minded people value the knowledge and open access to it - which is difficult to quantify in money.
Its software is buggy, though. Read the warning there.
Could you afford the non-open-source tools then? Would they still have jobs, or would the sw dev section get outsourced to Bangalore and the local engineers you seem to be caring about so much end up unemployed anyway?
A penny saved is a penny earned - when you count the money you didn't have to spend as earnings you'd have to make and then spend otherwise, the numbers suddenly look much more positive. Plus no waste on taxes, and no accounting paperwork.
Artistic value and usefulness aren't mutually exclusive.
Use a small RC-controlled helicopter, outfitted with a wireless camera pointing downwards. Fly in a criss-cross pattern over the area you want a photograph of. Use software mentioned on /. couple days ago for generating a high-resolution aerial photograph of the area. Could be also useful for espionage.
Improvements: Use a fleet of microcopters with infrared uncooled bolometer cameras for patrolling over an area when eg. searching for a missing person or guarding a space. Load other instruments on board for eg. environmental monitoring, eg. taking air samples from the immediate vicinity of eg. factory chimneys - useful for eg. underground ecology groups without much funding.
Speculative idea: Could it be possible to put some helium-filled balloons to the sides of the copter? That could offset the weight of the additional onboard equipment, and could serve as cushioning for expensive instruments in case of crash-landing (or as floating bags for crash-landing into water). It'd be a cross of a helicopter and a blimp/dirigible, though. But would make it possible to have a quite large frame with balloons and multiple rotors, capable of carrying considerable amount of equipment. Could also be pretty stable in flight.
The prettiest part of a girl should be her brain.
What about a "coprocessor"? Put a big fat FPGA, eg. some Xilinx, on the bus next to the CPU, and feed it with code specific for the given task? This would offer a fully reconfigurable hardware coprocessor, just upload a task-specific "schematics" before unleashing it upon the task.
Hope MPlayer will get support for it soon.
Did some smaller-scale experiments with taking pictures of the scope screen by a digital camera. If you got a camera that allows manual setting of the exposition time, you're set. No film costs.
You can also take a webcam and fix it against the scope screen, then project the webcam image. I did something similar when I need a consultation with an overseas colleague (though it wasn't realtime but sending digital photographs of the scope screen, but it wouldn't be a problem to make it into streaming video).
Well... there are certain high-voltage phenomenons I *prefer* to be isolated from. ;)
You don't get the source.
Reminds me I could take it apart and look how it works. Could be a nice weekend project.
If carrying screwdrivers is outlawed, only outlaws will carry screwdrivers. (Sorry, had to say it.)
Got my share of melted copper.
What liability? Lawyers should be herded, summarily executed, dried, powdered, and used as fertilizer. Basic knowledge and the awareness of existence of Darwin Prize should be enough.
What's much more detrimental to experimenting and playing with cool toys than people complaining about "hacking cookbooks" is the pervasive fear of liability and lawyers.
I hate disclaimers.
b.1.a) Geeks shall unite and develop open-source hardware for detection, jamming, and neutralization of these problems, using cheap off-the-shelf parts, exploiting the global nature of the Net and local nature of the rf-spectrum laws.
The tag is only a read-only serial number. Of course, you could then retrieve the associated data from the store's database via eg. 802.11 (about the prices and rebates), and over the cellphone from other databases (if there is a rebate in a different store (from local area's Special Consumer Actions service), who really owns the vendor (from the database of companies and their ownership, so if you boycott or distrust somebody you can know whom all they have without having to painstakingly keep track yourself), what's it made of (through the community-maintained Wiki-like database of compositions of things - could be good for GM-food labeling where the manufacturers weren't forced to it), and more and more and more. Scan the tag, query the databases, display the results. Can be done right today, using the existing UPC/EAN barcodes and camera phones.
We can't train people to fscking WRITE anymore?