Is there NO way to tell *any* flavor of Windows to allow any or all programs to write to the user directories only, by limiting the privileges of a user? In Linux and the Mac it is possible to disallow a user or any program he may run from touching anything that might affect the system. Therefore, if a user is dumb enough to run unknown programs, only his/her stuff gets deservedly hosed.
Indeed, I have a relatively old 900 Mhz UNIDEN phone that has two batteries, one in the handset and another in the base charger. When we have a power failure, that phone still operates. The two batteries are identical, so when the handset battery gets low, the batteries can be interchanged and we can yak for a few hours more unless there is a power failure at that time. Also, the 900Mhz phone does not affect my wireless network.
The old fashioned land line phones are much less complicated than wireless. My daughter has only a cell phone, and much of the time, even though she IS home, it fails to ring and we have to leave a message on its voice mail. Very often, if fact in almost every conversation more than a few minutes, the connection is broken and either she or I have to redial the call. In any large city, as well as in the countryside there are many dead spots or areas with marginal service on wireless. Where we live, there is NO cell reception whatsoever, so I can use my cell phone only when I am travelling, for which it is most useful. Until cell service gets to be at least half as reliable as POTS, the wires will likely remain in most places.
Does that mean a computer that happens not to be connected to the Internet or any other network will be unable to use "trusted software" stored on its hard drive? Does that mean that if anyone writes their own software it will be "untrusted"? If so, how will someone like that get their software "trusted"? What if the powers that grant such "trust" don't like the software of its originator or the writer for whatever reasons? Does that mean that software will not run on a computer with its "trust chip" activated?
It seems that such a "trust chip" would not be accepted by the marketplace if these and similar questions are not resolved. If M$ and other powerful entities have the sole authority to grant such "trust" then someone will surely build hardware which will NOT have such a "trust" chip for the millions of customers who don't want their computers owned by *any* outside agancy and refuse to let *any* outsider tell them what they may or may not have on their PERSONAL computer.
This "trust" thing would be equivalent to car makers getting together and building cars that only "trusted" individuals would be able to operate, based on whatever criteria the car makers chose to determine whether someone was "trusted".
I do not think that *any* private entities would be able to pull this "trust" thing off without some sort of government mandates. Without such a mandate, there will always be those who will see a market opportunity to build systems that free of such "trust" restrictions and writers of software who will NOT apply to anyone for permission to publish their work. If it were not for the DMCA I'm sure there would many programs on regular store shelves that allow copying of any collection of bits, (such as movie DVD's) no matter what they represented or how they were encrypted or encoded. Even though they are illegal, some X-box mod chips make it possible to run games on copied disks for example, bypassing whatever encryption the games may employ and allowing *anyone* to make games without the blessings of M$.
Security and ease of use are at opposites, so also, if this "trust" thing makes computers even harder to use than they are already for the average Joe, then that "trust" thing, no matter how fervently certain groups may push it and no matter how much money they spend, it will not sell and that will be the end of it, even if in itself "trust" may be a good idea. Many good ideas in the past did not sell for various reasons and died a quiet death. So, in the end, such a "trust" thing will NOT work, unless the basic ideas of "the clipper chip" are revised and mandated by law.
I'm not sure about Linux, but on a Mac, if the user does not have admin privs and the root user is disabled (default) it is very difficult to screw up the ENTIRE system. A stupid user might open some malware that could hose his/her account, but the executing malware would not likely be able to write to other parts of the system. That is why some education IS required, namely that when the system is first set up, out of the box, the user should set up the first account as an admin(default) and then make an every day account without admin priv. The admin account should only be used to install things or make system wide setting changes. Apple could make the initial setup procedure help in this sort of thing.
The *NIX based computers were designed from the beginning as a multi-user setup and always had to be more secure than Windows, which is still basically a single user system, and always will be until MS gets rid of the registry.
So if the *NIX based systems would be in the majority, the amount of malware able to affect users would drop by at least 2 orders of magnitude and anti-virus makers would go hungry. There are millions of Macs, yet I don't know of a SINGLE virus that is in the "wild" that will affect a Mac total system that is set up as I have stated. Even the old OS9 did not have many viruses.
Impossible is a dangerous word to use, along with always and never. Microsoft X-Box, Satellite TV providers, the DVD/MPAA folks and others thought they had a secure hardware/software system. In frustration they bought polititians to pass DMCA to make the manufacture/cloning/reverse engineering of codebreaking hardware or software illegal. So, if the DMCA stands unchanged, that may be sufficient to prevent the wholesale manufacture in the US of "unapproved" hardware. So it still the force of law, not technology itself that may slow or prevent "unapproved" uses of future computing devices.
"Impossible" is a red flag to goad hackers and crackers to try to get around technolgy restrictions, and they have mostly succeeded so far. Every lock a man can make, another man can defeat. Making it illegal to pick locks or sell lock picking tools does not prevent burglars, but might slow them down some.
MS would like to make their systems more secure, but they have kind of painted themselves into a corner. Witness their latest service pack for XP. It breaks much existing software, even some of MS's own, and still has security problems.
If they wanted to make Windows as secure as Macs and Linux, all new Windows users would have to throw away all or at least most of their existing software and buy it all new again. For starters, they'd have to scrap the registry and that would kill most existing Windows programs.
My sister who is almost 60, took the battery out of her iBook when it did not respond to her any longer. She had not learned about the force quit function. The iBook would not boot any more, but I managed to save her data by booting it from an external drive. After that I had to reformat the internal drive and re-install everything. This time though I set her up as a normal user without admin priv. This means that she cannot install anything that can mess up the whole system. She has to log in as the administrator first. Windows however allows nasty programs to install no matter what and screw up the whole computer.
Primarily it's the job of the hardware and software makers to make a safe computer and not the users. They should make it easy for users to choose good passwords for example. Why is it that Linux and Macs are not subject to so much trouble? And don't come with the market share baloney either. It is much harder to mess up either one of these *NIX based system than any of the MS systems. Neither one has the trouble prone, easily accessible registry for example, which if it gets hosed by some malware, can prevent the computer from working at all.
People ARE licensed to drive and there are 40,000+ deaths in the US alone each year from car crashes.
So if a license were needed to "drive" a computer, I don't think compting would be much safer. Only the state would get more money and another bureaucracy would be needed. If Mac and Linux can be a MUCH safer computer, why can't MS Windows? Extending product liability laws to software might be more effective than licensing computer users.
Re:As the parent of two teens who do amazing thing
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... break their iBooks.....?
The mistake of giving a kid administrator access is probably the reasen the iBooks got messed up. If you have any Mac running OSX, DON'T give admin privs to anyone you think might not be trustworthy or know what he/she is doing. Mac malware is extremly rare, essentially non-existent, but no computer is perfect. If there is no admin access, system wide access is denied and most programs will not install. If some malware does manage to execute, it cannot access any area other than the user's own account. Also there is a warning given to the user when a program wants to run for the very first time, at which point the user can deny the program to start if there is a doubt about it.
...Government rules by force. Businesses do not.....
Anyone who has been sued or threatened with a lawsuit he/she cannot afford to defend is in effect ruled by force exerted through the purchase of the government's judiciary by the private business. Those with money CAN and DO exert force just as effectively as the government. Just ask someone who as been sued by the RIAA.
The only way this trusted computing will work would be to pass a law forbidding the sale or use of computers that don't have this so called "trust chip". Persuading the polititians to pass such a law would not be easy at this time, but perhaps a dramatic terrorist cyber-event equivalent to 911 would make it happen.
Your analogy is faulty. Our government has jurisdiction over both you and the neighbor. A foreign power has NO jurisdiction in the US. So all of France's or anyone else's laws or court rulings cannot be enforced in the USA on a US citzen.
I was not talking about the LEGALITY of copying, but the MORALITY. The nature of so called intellectual property is NOT the same as physical property, yet the copyright holders have bought enough polititians to make laws that DO treat it the same.
If I make a copy of a say a CD so I can play the music in my iPod, and another copy so my children can play it, so the original doesn't get messed up by a child, I do not consider that theft and in any way immoral, even if the greedy content owners have persuaded equally greedy polititians to make that illegal.
If I make a copy of a song, so my friend can enjoy the music also, that may be illegal, but it is NOT immoral. Besides, and this has happened, he wanted to know where I got the music and after I told him, he went and bought himself a copy of the CD, something he would not likely have done if he did not enjoy the copy of the song I made.
Ever since the invention of the player piano, content owners have fought new technology. Fighting this kind of progress is like trying to prevent the tide from coming in. When they finally realized that if you can't "lick" 'em, join 'em, they always made much more money than before.
Good content, made available at fair prices and in a convenient, desireable format has always made lots of money for the creators, regardless of the technology involved and it always will. If the content creators would learn this lesson history lesson sooner rather than later, they, as well as the public they want to sell to would be better off, although some lawyers might be poorer. Rather than sue their customers, the content owners should make much more effort to nail those who copy their content in order to make a profit from other's work.
...Actually, in America, laws are built on rights....
Where do these rights come from? From Government? No! The founding fathers of this country knew that these rights were given to humans by their creator. Our country is founded on principles given in the Bible, which is the foundation of our Judeo/Christian culture. So our basic laws are founded on the morality and principles articulated in the scriptures. The basic law there is simply: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"
To translate this onto the subject of this discussion on the MPAA and copyright is this: If you have made a work of art, such as a film, would you like it if anyone just made copies and sold them? I think that profiting from another's work IS theft, but just making a copy for yourself to use or give to your friends on an individual basis is not theft since it does not result in a profit for the person making copies. Making a copy is NOT the same as stealing a physical object, since the owner still has the original.
The argument that the creator of the work loses money because of such personal copying is unproven. On the other hand posting another's work for wholesale duplication is something that could reduce the reward the creator of that work might receive and is therefore immoral.
Unlike music CDs, DVD's with full length movies on them are not really all that expensive. It is consideraby cheaper to buy a DVD than to take the whole family to a movie show these days. I generally rent the DVD first, and then if I feel I'd like to see that film again sometime, I'll go and buy a copy.
Downloading a full movie, even over my fast connection, is still a hassle and the quality is not nearly as good as most commercial DVDs. If I did download a film, and the movie is on the hard drive, in order to watch it on our big TV, it still needs to be burned onto a DVD which is further work. I suspect that the MPAA is worried more than they need to be about this whole issue of downloading films, since it is not all that economically attractive to those who could afford to buy a DVD. Those downloaders that cannot afford a DVD represent no loss to the film makers.
Car insurance itself USED to be voluntary. Now it is mandatory. There are black box recorders in many cars already and I have read of proposals to make them mandatory so the police can better reconstruct what happened in a crash and just before the crash. The boxes record speed, whether the brake pedal was down and other operational data from the vehicle. There have already been court cases where the data was used to ascertain whether the driver was or was not doing as claimed etc.
Since you are a safe driver you will not likely get much more of a discount on insurance, but the risky drivers who has been lucky not to have been in a crash will pay more than before if these devices become commonplace and required by law.
You've got it wrong! The box won't let you exceed the speed limit at all. The computer knows where you are, the speed limit there and will adjust your speed to no more than that and flooring the accelerator will have no effect... so there... no more speeding tickets!
Indeed, you are right! Here in Oregon you can now get a ticket at 3AM for not going 20mph in a school zone. And the fine is double what a normal fine would be because it is in a school zone. The new signs state: 20mph AT ANY TIME. They used to say "When children are present" which makes sense for safety. Now, safety is secondary, revenue is the goal.
When mandatory insurance laws were proposed, we were told that insurance rates would decrease, but that has NOT ben the case. Insurance rates have gone up well beyond the normal inflation of money. The new big-brother devices will not result in a decrease for most drivers, but an increase and the cost of cars will be higher because of the electronic tracking devices. These devices will, like insurance itself, be voluntary at first and later the insurance lobby will get it made mandatory.
Indeed, a patent is essentially worthless unless the inventor has plenty of money to defend it with. Justice in general is usually available only to those who have lots of cash or a backed by someone with it. If Joe Average gets sued by somone like the RIAA he is basically screwed. Whether he is guilty or not does not enter into the equation, since that involves a trial, the cost of which Joe cannot pay. So Joe better settle. The same would be true in a patent dispute.
As a/.er with assumed internet skills, how can you say you cannot be sure of what Kerry's policies are?
Sen. John Kerry Democrat from Massachusetts says he is strongest Presidential Candidate on National Defense! He said check the Record.
Here is what some of the record shows:
He voted to kill the Bradley Fighting Vehicle
He voted to kill the M-1 Abrams Tank
He voted to kill every Aircraft carrier laid down from 1988
He voted to kill the Aegis anti aircraft system
He voted to Kill the F-15 strike eagle
He voted to Kill the Block 60 F-16
He voted to Kill the P-3 Orion upgrade
He voted to Kill the B-1
He voted to Kill the B-2
He voted to Kill the Patriot anti Missile system
He voted to Kill the FA-18
He voted to Kill the B-2
He voted to Kill the F117
He voted to kill every military appropriation for the development and deployment of every weapons system since 1988, including a bill for battle armor for our troops.
It is most likely, with Sen. John Kerry as President and Commander in Chief of our Armed Services, that they will cease to function, making it impossible for our country to protect itself
John Kerry voted to kill all anti-terrorism activities of each and every agency of the U.S. Government.
He voted to cut the funding of the FBI by 60%,
He voted to cut the funding for the CIA by 80%,
He voted to cut the funding for the NSA by 80%.
THEN, and this is abhorrent to almost every American Voter be you Democrat, Republican or Independent
He voted to increase OUR funding for UN operations by 800%
Ask yourself
Is THIS a the person you want as President of these United States providing for the Common Defense of the Nation and be the Leader of the Free World ?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Voting history can be accessed through Senate voting records on http://www.senate.gov/ or you can look at a more convenient summary at: http://www.kerryquotes.com/votingrecord.htm
Apparently nerds are not mere mortals! I suspect that the communications of most mortal nerds are even much less interesting to the FBI, KGB, Gestapo, NSA, DEA and others like that than the communications of most non-nerd mortals. So then, all the nerds should use unbreakable encryption to communicate their deep dark secrets wich nobody, even the FBI et. al. cares about.
As digital electronics and data storage get ever cheaper, all cars will eventually come with a GPS type data recorder that will record the ENTIRE driving history of the vehicle from the day it was manufactured. Every mile, location, speed and all kinds of other parameters will be recorded and be available to any "authorized" person or entity. Every driver will need an ID number that will be sensed (RFID?) before the car will move. Any bad driver's ID will be tagged with a lockout code preventing that person from driving any car, or perhaps only with certain restrictions, such as time and place. All this of course will be done in the name of "safety".
Just as these type of devices are now required in airplanes, they will be required in cars. Technology and privacy are inherently in conflict, as are security and ease of use.
If the data is first loaded into a computer before it is sent to the insurance company, a logic probe is unneccessary. All anybody needs is a hack program that "massages" the data in such a manner as to get a discount. In fact the program could "invent" data that is most likely to get the maximum discount.
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Is there NO way to tell *any* flavor of Windows to allow any or all programs to write to the user directories only, by limiting the privileges of a user? In Linux and the Mac it is possible to disallow a user or any program he may run from touching anything that might affect the system. Therefore, if a user is dumb enough to run unknown programs, only his/her stuff gets deservedly hosed.
Indeed, I have a relatively old 900 Mhz UNIDEN phone that has two batteries, one in the handset and another in the base charger. When we have a power failure, that phone still operates. The two batteries are identical, so when the handset battery gets low, the batteries can be interchanged and we can yak for a few hours more unless there is a power failure at that time. Also, the 900Mhz phone does not affect my wireless network.
The old fashioned land line phones are much less complicated than wireless. My daughter has only a cell phone, and much of the time, even though she IS home, it fails to ring and we have to leave a message on its voice mail. Very often, if fact in almost every conversation more than a few minutes, the connection is broken and either she or I have to redial the call. In any large city, as well as in the countryside there are many dead spots or areas with marginal service on wireless. Where we live, there is NO cell reception whatsoever, so I can use my cell phone only when I am travelling, for which it is most useful. Until cell service gets to be at least half as reliable as POTS, the wires will likely remain in most places.
.... central authentication servers....
Does that mean a computer that happens not to be connected to the Internet or any other network will be unable to use "trusted software" stored on its hard drive? Does that mean that if anyone writes their own software it will be "untrusted"? If so, how will someone like that get their software "trusted"? What if the powers that grant such "trust" don't like the software of its originator or the writer for whatever reasons? Does that mean that software will not run on a computer with its "trust chip" activated?
It seems that such a "trust chip" would not be accepted by the marketplace if these and similar questions are not resolved. If M$ and other powerful entities have the sole authority to grant such "trust" then someone will surely build hardware which will NOT have such a "trust" chip for the millions of customers who don't want their computers owned by *any* outside agancy and refuse to let *any* outsider tell them what they may or may not have on their PERSONAL computer.
This "trust" thing would be equivalent to car makers getting together and building cars that only "trusted" individuals would be able to operate, based on whatever criteria the car makers chose to determine whether someone was "trusted".
I do not think that *any* private entities would be able to pull this "trust" thing off without some sort of government mandates. Without such a mandate, there will always be those who will see a market opportunity to build systems that free of such "trust" restrictions and writers of software who will NOT apply to anyone for permission to publish their work. If it were not for the DMCA I'm sure there would many programs on regular store shelves that allow copying of any collection of bits, (such as movie DVD's) no matter what they represented or how they were encrypted or encoded. Even though they are illegal, some X-box mod chips make it possible to run games on copied disks for example, bypassing whatever encryption the games may employ and allowing *anyone* to make games without the blessings of M$.
Security and ease of use are at opposites, so also, if this "trust" thing makes computers even harder to use than they are already for the average Joe, then that "trust" thing, no matter how fervently certain groups may push it and no matter how much money they spend, it will not sell and that will be the end of it, even if in itself "trust" may be a good idea. Many good ideas in the past did not sell for various reasons and died a quiet death. So, in the end, such a "trust" thing will NOT work, unless the basic ideas of "the clipper chip" are revised and mandated by law.
...the Mac and Linux are insecure....
I'm not sure about Linux, but on a Mac, if the user does not have admin privs and the root user is disabled (default) it is very difficult to screw up the ENTIRE system. A stupid user might open some malware that could hose his/her account, but the executing malware would not likely be able to write to other parts of the system. That is why some education IS required, namely that when the system is first set up, out of the box, the user should set up the first account as an admin(default) and then make an every day account without admin priv. The admin account should only be used to install things or make system wide setting changes. Apple could make the initial setup procedure help in this sort of thing.
The *NIX based computers were designed from the beginning as a multi-user setup and always had to be more secure than Windows, which is still basically a single user system, and always will be until MS gets rid of the registry.
So if the *NIX based systems would be in the majority, the amount of malware able to affect users would drop by at least 2 orders of magnitude and anti-virus makers would go hungry. There are millions of Macs, yet I don't know of a SINGLE virus that is in the "wild" that will affect a Mac total system that is set up as I have stated. Even the old OS9 did not have many viruses.
...it is impossible to manufacture...
Impossible is a dangerous word to use, along with always and never. Microsoft X-Box, Satellite TV providers, the DVD/MPAA folks and others thought they had a secure hardware/software system. In frustration they bought polititians to pass DMCA to make the manufacture/cloning/reverse engineering of codebreaking hardware or software illegal. So, if the DMCA stands unchanged, that may be sufficient to prevent the wholesale manufacture in the US of "unapproved" hardware. So it still the force of law, not technology itself that may slow or prevent "unapproved" uses of future computing devices.
"Impossible" is a red flag to goad hackers and crackers to try to get around technolgy restrictions, and they have mostly succeeded so far. Every lock a man can make, another man can defeat. Making it illegal to pick locks or sell lock picking tools does not prevent burglars, but might slow them down some.
...Microsoft seems institutionally incapable....
MS would like to make their systems more secure, but they have kind of painted themselves into a corner. Witness their latest service pack for XP. It breaks much existing software, even some of MS's own, and still has security problems.
If they wanted to make Windows as secure as Macs and Linux, all new Windows users would have to throw away all or at least most of their existing software and buy it all new again. For starters, they'd have to scrap the registry and that would kill most existing Windows programs.
My sister who is almost 60, took the battery out of her iBook when it did not respond to her any longer. She had not learned about the force quit function. The iBook would not boot any more, but I managed to save her data by booting it from an external drive. After that I had to reformat the internal drive and re-install everything. This time though I set her up as a normal user without admin priv. This means that she cannot install anything that can mess up the whole system. She has to log in as the administrator first. Windows however allows nasty programs to install no matter what and screw up the whole computer.
Primarily it's the job of the hardware and software makers to make a safe computer and not the users. They should make it easy for users to choose good passwords for example. Why is it that Linux and Macs are not subject to so much trouble? And don't come with the market share baloney either. It is much harder to mess up either one of these *NIX based system than any of the MS systems. Neither one has the trouble prone, easily accessible registry for example, which if it gets hosed by some malware, can prevent the computer from working at all.
...if people were licensed....
People ARE licensed to drive and there are 40,000+ deaths in the US alone each year from car crashes.
So if a license were needed to "drive" a computer, I don't think compting would be much safer. Only the state would get more money and another bureaucracy would be needed. If Mac and Linux can be a MUCH safer computer, why can't MS Windows? Extending product liability laws to software might be more effective than licensing computer users.
... break their iBooks.....?
The mistake of giving a kid administrator access is probably the reasen the iBooks got messed up. If you have any Mac running OSX, DON'T give admin privs to anyone you think might not be trustworthy or know what he/she is doing. Mac malware is extremly rare, essentially non-existent, but no computer is perfect. If there is no admin access, system wide access is denied and most programs will not install. If some malware does manage to execute, it cannot access any area other than the user's own account. Also there is a warning given to the user when a program wants to run for the very first time, at which point the user can deny the program to start if there is a doubt about it.
...Government rules by force. Businesses do not.....
Anyone who has been sued or threatened with a lawsuit he/she cannot afford to defend is in effect ruled by force exerted through the purchase of the government's judiciary by the private business. Those with money CAN and DO exert force just as effectively as the government. Just ask someone who as been sued by the RIAA.
The only way this trusted computing will work would be to pass a law forbidding the sale or use of computers that don't have this so called "trust chip". Persuading the polititians to pass such a law would not be easy at this time, but perhaps a dramatic terrorist cyber-event equivalent to 911 would make it happen.
Your analogy is faulty. Our government has jurisdiction over both you and the neighbor. A foreign power has NO jurisdiction in the US. So all of France's or anyone else's laws or court rulings cannot be enforced in the USA on a US citzen.
I was not talking about the LEGALITY of copying, but the MORALITY. The nature of so called intellectual property is NOT the same as physical property, yet the copyright holders have bought enough polititians to make laws that DO treat it the same.
If I make a copy of a say a CD so I can play the music in my iPod, and another copy so my children can play it, so the original doesn't get messed up by a child, I do not consider that theft and in any way immoral, even if the greedy content owners have persuaded equally greedy polititians to make that illegal.
If I make a copy of a song, so my friend can enjoy the music also, that may be illegal, but it is NOT immoral. Besides, and this has happened, he wanted to know where I got the music and after I told him, he went and bought himself a copy of the CD, something he would not likely have done if he did not enjoy the copy of the song I made.
Ever since the invention of the player piano, content owners have fought new technology. Fighting this kind of progress is like trying to prevent the tide from coming in. When they finally realized that if you can't "lick" 'em, join 'em, they always made much more money than before.
Good content, made available at fair prices and in a convenient, desireable format has always made lots of money for the creators, regardless of the technology involved and it always will. If the content creators would learn this lesson history lesson sooner rather than later, they, as well as the public they want to sell to would be better off, although some lawyers might be poorer. Rather than sue their customers, the content owners should make much more effort to nail those who copy their content in order to make a profit from other's work.
...Actually, in America, laws are built on rights....
Where do these rights come from? From Government? No! The founding fathers of this country knew that these rights were given to humans by their creator. Our country is founded on principles given in the Bible, which is the foundation of our Judeo/Christian culture. So our basic laws are founded on the morality and principles articulated in the scriptures. The basic law there is simply: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"
To translate this onto the subject of this discussion on the MPAA and copyright is this: If you have made a work of art, such as a film, would you like it if anyone just made copies and sold them? I think that profiting from another's work IS theft, but just making a copy for yourself to use or give to your friends on an individual basis is not theft since it does not result in a profit for the person making copies. Making a copy is NOT the same as stealing a physical object, since the owner still has the original.
The argument that the creator of the work loses money because of such personal copying is unproven. On the other hand posting another's work for wholesale duplication is something that could reduce the reward the creator of that work might receive and is therefore immoral.
Unlike music CDs, DVD's with full length movies on them are not really all that expensive. It is consideraby cheaper to buy a DVD than to take the whole family to a movie show these days. I generally rent the DVD first, and then if I feel I'd like to see that film again sometime, I'll go and buy a copy.
Downloading a full movie, even over my fast connection, is still a hassle and the quality is not nearly as good as most commercial DVDs. If I did download a film, and the movie is on the hard drive, in order to watch it on our big TV, it still needs to be burned onto a DVD which is further work. I suspect that the MPAA is worried more than they need to be about this whole issue of downloading films, since it is not all that economically attractive to those who could afford to buy a DVD. Those downloaders that cannot afford a DVD represent no loss to the film makers.
Car insurance itself USED to be voluntary. Now it is mandatory. There are black box recorders in many cars already and I have read of proposals to make them mandatory so the police can better reconstruct what happened in a crash and just before the crash. The boxes record speed, whether the brake pedal was down and other operational data from the vehicle. There have already been court cases where the data was used to ascertain whether the driver was or was not doing as claimed etc.
Since you are a safe driver you will not likely get much more of a discount on insurance, but the risky drivers who has been lucky not to have been in a crash will pay more than before if these devices become commonplace and required by law.
...we drift over 70mph....
... so there... no more speeding tickets!
You've got it wrong! The box won't let you exceed the speed limit at all. The computer knows where you are, the speed limit there and will adjust your speed to no more than that and flooring the accelerator will have no effect
I assume these boxes need power from the battery. Just cut the power wire and soon the box will no longer function.
..to bring in revenue...
Indeed, you are right! Here in Oregon you can now get a ticket at 3AM for not going 20mph in a school zone. And the fine is double what a normal fine would be because it is in a school zone. The new signs state: 20mph AT ANY TIME. They used to say "When children are present" which makes sense for safety. Now, safety is secondary, revenue is the goal.
When mandatory insurance laws were proposed, we were told that insurance rates would decrease, but that has NOT ben the case. Insurance rates have gone up well beyond the normal inflation of money. The new big-brother devices will not result in a decrease for most drivers, but an increase and the cost of cars will be higher because of the electronic tracking devices. These devices will, like insurance itself, be voluntary at first and later the insurance lobby will get it made mandatory.
...it is really up to the courts.....
Indeed, a patent is essentially worthless unless the inventor has plenty of money to defend it with. Justice in general is usually available only to those who have lots of cash or a backed by someone with it. If Joe Average gets sued by somone like the RIAA he is basically screwed. Whether he is guilty or not does not enter into the equation, since that involves a trial, the cost of which Joe cannot pay. So Joe better settle. The same would be true in a patent dispute.
As a /.er with assumed internet skills, how can you say you cannot be sure of what Kerry's policies are?
Sen. John Kerry Democrat from Massachusetts says he is strongest Presidential Candidate on National Defense! He said check the Record.
Here is what some of the record shows:
He voted to kill the Bradley Fighting Vehicle
He voted to kill the M-1 Abrams Tank
He voted to kill every Aircraft carrier laid down from 1988
He voted to kill the Aegis anti aircraft system
He voted to Kill the F-15 strike eagle
He voted to Kill the Block 60 F-16
He voted to Kill the P-3 Orion upgrade
He voted to Kill the B-1
He voted to Kill the B-2
He voted to Kill the Patriot anti Missile system
He voted to Kill the FA-18
He voted to Kill the B-2
He voted to Kill the F117
He voted to kill every military appropriation for the development and deployment of every weapons system since 1988, including a bill for battle armor for our troops.
It is most likely, with Sen. John Kerry as President and Commander in Chief of our Armed Services, that they will cease to function, making it impossible for our country to protect itself
John Kerry voted to kill all anti-terrorism activities of each and every agency of the U.S. Government.
He voted to cut the funding of the FBI by 60%,
He voted to cut the funding for the CIA by 80%,
He voted to cut the funding for the NSA by 80%.
THEN, and this is abhorrent to almost every American Voter be you Democrat, Republican or Independent
He voted to increase OUR funding for UN operations by 800%
Ask yourself
Is THIS a the person you want as President of these United States providing for the Common Defense of the Nation and be the Leader of the Free World ?
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Voting history can be accessed through Senate voting records on http://www.senate.gov/ or you can look at a more convenient summary at: http://www.kerryquotes.com/votingrecord.htm
Apparently nerds are not mere mortals! I suspect that the communications of most mortal nerds are even much less interesting to the FBI, KGB, Gestapo, NSA, DEA and others like that than the communications of most non-nerd mortals. So then, all the nerds should use unbreakable encryption to communicate their deep dark secrets wich nobody, even the FBI et. al. cares about.
As digital electronics and data storage get ever cheaper, all cars will eventually come with a GPS type data recorder that will record the ENTIRE driving history of the vehicle from the day it was manufactured. Every mile, location, speed and all kinds of other parameters will be recorded and be available to any "authorized" person or entity. Every driver will need an ID number that will be sensed (RFID?) before the car will move. Any bad driver's ID will be tagged with a lockout code preventing that person from driving any car, or perhaps only with certain restrictions, such as time and place. All this of course will be done in the name of "safety".
Just as these type of devices are now required in airplanes, they will be required in cars. Technology and privacy are inherently in conflict, as are security and ease of use.
If the data is first loaded into a computer before it is sent to the insurance company, a logic probe is unneccessary. All anybody needs is a hack program that "massages" the data in such a manner as to get a discount. In fact the program could "invent" data that is most likely to get the maximum discount.