I once was a sysop for a small company's Data General system, where large datasets were stored as TAR archives on nine-track tapes; some poor soul had copied TO the tape instead of FROM the tape, and desperately needed to recover a file that was still there on the part of the tape beyond the end of the inadvertent write. You could read up to the added end-of-tape marker, but the tape just wouldn't read any further. Screwed, yes? Well, not quite. I set the system to rereading the damaged tape, waited 'till just before it reached the offending end-of-tape marker, and briefly put my thumb on the roller that measured tape travel, causing the drive to jump the tape ahead ('cause the sensor said "the tape is not moving!") and right past the EOT marker. Voila! The system read out the rest of the files on the tape, fortunately including the one they really needed, and I was briefly a hero. Hero never lasts, of course, but it was fun.
For me, as a space enthusiast and aerospace professional, the sad part is that *anyone* would get a shuttle orbiter project so close to operational that they could launch, orbit, and land a fully-automated prototype -- and then just lose that entire program. The physical remnant is, as you say, just "stuff," and not really important in itself. What I (and, I believe, others) mourn is the loss of a manned space-launch program that came THAT close to being operational, regardless of just whose program it was. I, for one, still believe that the more different parties we have with active space programs, the better it is for humanity as a whole; there's a big solar system out there, with both resources and hazards aplenty, and the long-term benefit of the species definitely includes being active in space.
I've read a few postings elsewhere complaining of poor thermal design, iffy build quality, and not-so-great software support (something about having to JTAG the beast to get it to run a software load), so this seems quite plausible. If you do away with the wall-wart form factor by extracting the power supply, you're in the same functional class as lots of other single-board systems (such as my current favorite, the BeagleBoard), many of which have quite mature software support and very decent I/O and expansion capabilities, for comparable cost. While I admit that the wall-wart idea is very appealing, I don't think it's quite there yet (which is rather a pity).
Trying to imply that this is some nonsense that should be dismissed just because you like Linux is like playing down and ridiculing the evidence of the murder of Hans Reiser's wife because you like ReiserFS. It's even sillier in some ways because Linux isn't at stake in the case like ReiserFS was. (An extreme analogy I know, but valid).
That's the kind of analogy that Hitler would have made.
Tin whiskers only form in the presence of pure tin, as in a tinned PC board trace or component lead. Combine the tin with lead or silver or anything else, and the pure tin crystal structure won't happen, hence no whisker formation. Tin whiskers (dendrites) form when a layer of pure tin is mechanically stressed; the tin recrystallizes as dendrites in response to the strain on the crystal lattice. The recent increase in tin whiskering is due in part to hazmat-reduction regulations that discourage the use of lead solder, causing manufacturers to plate component leads in tin rather than lead-bearing solder.
Is that WE can design and build THEM. When they can do the same for self-aware protoplasmic humanoids, it might be time to become upset about silly "supremacy" issues, and not a moment before then. Till then, sit back and enjoy the music...
While you are correct in noting that a beta emitter isn't necessarily harmless (and emphatically correct that the perjury is by far the bigger issue), I'd like to note that tritium, being an isotope of hydrogen, tends to escape straight up, very fast. Molecules of "normal" hydrogen are VERY light, and rise so fast when released that they can reach escape velocity, plus hydrogen is good at diffusing through containers. Thus, it's safe to conclude that the tritium in question bolted for the stratosphere at its first opportunity, and didn't hang around to endanger anyone. Alas, the same cannot be said of the plant management...
Consider the article's quoted claim of a 1A, 1V sample 1 inch long and the diameter of a human hair. This is plainly ridiculous.
Solar radiation intensity in near-Earth space is 1353 W/m^2 (on Earth, under all that atmosphere, it's more like 120 W/m^2). This represents the maximum possible energy input to a solar cell, of whatever design.
A human hair is about 0.001 inch in diameter, so a 1-inch piece held lengthwise covers an area of 0.001 in^2, or 6.45E-7 m^2. At the stated solar irradiance, that area will receive 873 uW of solar irradiance at MOST, in orbit, and rather less on Earth. Unless their solar cell has a 120,000% efficiency, they'll come up rather short on the 1-watt claim (1 V * 1 A = 1 W) in TFA.
I call Fuzzy Math, at least on that particular claim. The rest of their idea may well be good; let's hope the fellow who said this was misquoted, though...
If I understand the article correctly, the access application in effect ignores the entered password, and instead - probably as a result of miserable software design - uses a fixed-string password for the encryption/decryption. In that case, it's not so much a compromise as an own-goal by the fools who wrote and tested (?) the Windows access application. The encryption implementation itself is probably fine if it's given decent keys...
The ethical thing to do at this stage in the game is to drop a dime on'em. The sensible thing to do is to ensure that you still have an income afterwards. Count on the boss finding out and retaliating; whether that is illegal or not, factor that into your plans.
The anti-circumvention
provisions only pertain to circumventing technological measures that effectively control
access to a copyright work
That is precisely why replacing the boot PROM is illegal. Remember, the DMCA only talks about circumventing technological measures (eg here), it doesn't require actually accessing the copyrighted work itself afterwards.
By replacing the PROM, you circumvent a technological measure that controls access to the TiVo code, regardless of your motives.
Not true. The boot PROM checksum dance does NOTHING to protect the TiVo code; it is intended to prevent anything EXCEPT the TiVo code from running. Bypass the checksum dance, and your TiVo will run the TiVo code exactly as before; thus, there's no "protection of a copyrighted work" being circumvented here. All that changes is that the (BTW, uncopyrightable) hardware will now run YOUR operating system of choice. Before tou argue that the checksum thingy protects the copyright on THAT code, let me point out that the "protection measure" is supposed to protect a specific copyrighted work, and cannot mean categorically locking out an entire class of works (i.e., everything EXCEPT code from a specific vendor). There's even a specific exception for compatibility, which this modification would fit into.
In this case, a German eco-thriller by Frank Schätzing entitled "Der Schwarm" (The Swarm), which features just such an attack, orchestrated by an intelligent marine species, (named the Yrr 'cause that randomly-typed letter sequence worked as well as any) that has decided to get rid of those messy, polluting land-dwellers, AKA us.
Next up: Swarms of highly-toxic white crabs invade the beaches of the US East Coast, while Canadian Orcas start dining on whale-watchers.
IANAL, nor a Constitutional scholar, but "any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding" appears on its face to refer to State constitutions and laws, not to the US Constitution. The law citations I've seen on various sites support this view. According to the Supreme Court in Reid v. Covert, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_v._Covert), "this Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty".
Sooo: No, Virginia, treaties cannot serve as an end-run around the Constitution. If I understand the citations correctly, a treaty has status coequal with Federal laws passed by Congress, so a treaty could, for example, supersede a Federal law such as the DMCA; however, it could not do anything (within the US) that Congress couldn't do by legislative means, like overruling an Amendment to the Constitution.
Matter transmission (transporters). I've no beef with using transporters as a plot device, and I see why it was attractive as a way to advance the plot in a 20-minute story line; what annoys me is the total neglect of the major impacts such a technology would have on society, even on such a controlled subculture as a Star Fleet. Given the wide availability of starships and matter transmitters, what do you suppose the inevitable criminal element in a society would think to do with them? Kidnapping, art theft, bank robbery, etc, etc. would be only a few of the impacts; obsoleting most forms of transport, and even such things as outside doors, would be another (at least, as imagined by a short story I read decades ago). However, the whole Trek universe acts as though transporters were merely a fancy elevator, a situation I find rather implausible, even within the fictional context of the Trek universe. (I still enjoy the stories, but a small corner of my being still groans at the glaring oversight.)
You are very probably right; unfortunately, Microsoft has already demonstrated complete willingness, in the OOXML fiasco, to subvert ECMA by every means available, from hiring shills off the street to pack public meetings, to stacking committees with single-issue proxies (who now no longer show up, so that the committees are hamstrung without a functioning quorum) to outright vote-rigging. I really don't think they'd give a dented spittoon for any commitments they signed off on to ECMA.
Except that SCO will shortly be run by a court-appointed Chapter 11 Trustee, most likely a lawyer or retired judge. There's very little chance such a one would go along with that sort of unethical, potentially unlawful, behavior. In fact, there's very little chance the trustee will elect to further pursue pointless and doomed litigation that simply dissipates the bankruptcy estate's remaining assets, either. Not being blinded by greed and mythical beelions of dollars, the trustee (appointed, don't forget, by a not-very-sympathetic Trustee's Office) will do the logical thing: settle both IBM and Novell cases as fast and cheaply as possible, preserve as much assets as possible, then -- seeing that Chapter 11 rehabilitation is impossible -- convert to Chapter 7 and sell off the office furniture for curios and the e-mail records to the highest bidder. (Actually, I'd expect IBM to demand custody of all corporate documents as part of any settlement offer...)
SCO is toast. Look for MS to employ a new and different cat's-paw now that this one has been run into the ground.
in his Lazarus Long series, IIRC. It was called "Delay Mail," and was intended for use by time-travellers; there was an office where one could leave messages to be delivered to a specified person (possibly one's younger self) on a specified date, possibly centuries in the future.
I'm afraid this constitutes prior art (insert clever time-travel remark here)...
IANAL, but the damages amount seems disproportionate to the offense. Does this raise any additional prospect of constitutional appeal for a disproportionate penalty? (Not that the attorney in this case would be capable of mounting such an appeal pro bono...)
If you take as a criteria for a "good standard for office documents" that it have a number of interoperable implementations and provides all generally-required functionality, ODF clearly meets that standard, MSOOXML as clearly fails it on lack of interoperable implementations.
Neither standard is perfect, and there are bugs in the various ODF implementations, but it's obviously usable, as it's being widely used. Not even MS Office actually uses OOXML as documented.
in addition to a) cynicism, and b) ambition, is c) a genuine dislike for the might-makes-right tactics of the RIAA, coupled with the ability (being a licensed attorney) to actually do something about it.
Unlikely as it may sound, there are quite a few lawyers out there who actually have principles and respect for the rule of law. It's entirely reasonable to think that they would dislike seeing the system gamed by the RIAA in this way. Time and events will be the ultimate proof, but don't discount the possibility this fellow is motivated, at least in part, by principled indignation.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/30/144470789/the-last-word-in-business
Phaser on overload. (Depending on the short-circuit current capacity of the Kindle's battery and the resistance of the shorting bar,that is.)
I once was a sysop for a small company's Data General system, where large datasets were stored as TAR archives on nine-track tapes; some poor soul had copied TO the tape instead of FROM the tape, and desperately needed to recover a file that was still there on the part of the tape beyond the end of the inadvertent write. You could read up to the added end-of-tape marker, but the tape just wouldn't read any further. Screwed, yes? Well, not quite. I set the system to rereading the damaged tape, waited 'till just before it reached the offending end-of-tape marker, and briefly put my thumb on the roller that measured tape travel, causing the drive to jump the tape ahead ('cause the sensor said "the tape is not moving!") and right past the EOT marker. Voila! The system read out the rest of the files on the tape, fortunately including the one they really needed, and I was briefly a hero. Hero never lasts, of course, but it was fun.
For me, as a space enthusiast and aerospace professional, the sad part is that *anyone* would get a shuttle orbiter project so close to operational that they could launch, orbit, and land a fully-automated prototype -- and then just lose that entire program. The physical remnant is, as you say, just "stuff," and not really important in itself. What I (and, I believe, others) mourn is the loss of a manned space-launch program that came THAT close to being operational, regardless of just whose program it was. I, for one, still believe that the more different parties we have with active space programs, the better it is for humanity as a whole; there's a big solar system out there, with both resources and hazards aplenty, and the long-term benefit of the species definitely includes being active in space.
I've read a few postings elsewhere complaining of poor thermal design, iffy build quality, and not-so-great software support (something about having to JTAG the beast to get it to run a software load), so this seems quite plausible. If you do away with the wall-wart form factor by extracting the power supply, you're in the same functional class as lots of other single-board systems (such as my current favorite, the BeagleBoard), many of which have quite mature software support and very decent I/O and expansion capabilities, for comparable cost. While I admit that the wall-wart idea is very appealing, I don't think it's quite there yet (which is rather a pity).
That's the kind of analogy that Hitler would have made.
Tin whiskers only form in the presence of pure tin, as in a tinned PC board trace or component lead. Combine the tin with lead or silver or anything else, and the pure tin crystal structure won't happen, hence no whisker formation. Tin whiskers (dendrites) form when a layer of pure tin is mechanically stressed; the tin recrystallizes as dendrites in response to the strain on the crystal lattice. The recent increase in tin whiskering is due in part to hazmat-reduction regulations that discourage the use of lead solder, causing manufacturers to plate component leads in tin rather than lead-bearing solder.
Is that WE can design and build THEM. When they can do the same for self-aware protoplasmic humanoids, it might be time to become upset about silly "supremacy" issues, and not a moment before then. Till then, sit back and enjoy the music...
Indeed, I wasn't considering that possibility. Ah, logic...
While you are correct in noting that a beta emitter isn't necessarily harmless (and emphatically correct that the perjury is by far the bigger issue), I'd like to note that tritium, being an isotope of hydrogen, tends to escape straight up, very fast. Molecules of "normal" hydrogen are VERY light, and rise so fast when released that they can reach escape velocity, plus hydrogen is good at diffusing through containers. Thus, it's safe to conclude that the tritium in question bolted for the stratosphere at its first opportunity, and didn't hang around to endanger anyone. Alas, the same cannot be said of the plant management...
Consider the article's quoted claim of a 1A, 1V sample 1 inch long and the diameter of a human hair. This is plainly ridiculous.
Solar radiation intensity in near-Earth space is 1353 W/m^2 (on Earth, under all that atmosphere, it's more like 120 W/m^2). This represents the maximum possible energy input to a solar cell, of whatever design.
A human hair is about 0.001 inch in diameter, so a 1-inch piece held lengthwise covers an area of 0.001 in^2, or 6.45E-7 m^2. At the stated solar irradiance, that area will receive 873 uW of solar irradiance at MOST, in orbit, and rather less on Earth. Unless their solar cell has a 120,000% efficiency, they'll come up rather short on the 1-watt claim (1 V * 1 A = 1 W) in TFA.
I call Fuzzy Math, at least on that particular claim. The rest of their idea may well be good; let's hope the fellow who said this was misquoted, though...
lorem ipsum Slashdot's minimum-length filter is a silly ...
Eye-eye, sir!
If I understand the article correctly, the access application in effect ignores the entered password, and instead - probably as a result of miserable software design - uses a fixed-string password for the encryption/decryption. In that case, it's not so much a compromise as an own-goal by the fools who wrote and tested (?) the Windows access application. The encryption implementation itself is probably fine if it's given decent keys...
The ethical thing to do at this stage in the game is to drop a dime on'em. The sensible thing to do is to ensure that you still have an income afterwards. Count on the boss finding out and retaliating; whether that is illegal or not, factor that into your plans.
That is precisely why replacing the boot PROM is illegal. Remember, the DMCA only talks about
circumventing technological measures (eg here), it doesn't require actually accessing the copyrighted work itself afterwards.
By replacing the PROM, you circumvent a technological measure that controls access to the TiVo code, regardless of your motives.
Not true. The boot PROM checksum dance does NOTHING to protect the TiVo code; it is intended to prevent anything EXCEPT the TiVo code from running. Bypass the checksum dance, and your TiVo will run the TiVo code exactly as before; thus, there's no "protection of a copyrighted work" being circumvented here. All that changes is that the (BTW, uncopyrightable) hardware will now run YOUR operating system of choice. Before tou argue that the checksum thingy protects the copyright on THAT code, let me point out that the "protection measure" is supposed to protect a specific copyrighted work, and cannot mean categorically locking out an entire class of works (i.e., everything EXCEPT code from a specific vendor). There's even a specific exception for compatibility, which this modification would fit into.
In this case, a German eco-thriller by Frank Schätzing entitled "Der Schwarm" (The Swarm), which features just such an attack, orchestrated by an intelligent marine species, (named the Yrr 'cause that randomly-typed letter sequence worked as well as any) that has decided to get rid of those messy, polluting land-dwellers, AKA us.
Next up: Swarms of highly-toxic white crabs invade the beaches of the US East Coast, while Canadian Orcas start dining on whale-watchers.
IANAL, nor a Constitutional scholar, but "any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding" appears on its face to refer to State constitutions and laws, not to the US Constitution. The law citations I've seen on various sites support this view. According to the Supreme Court in Reid v. Covert, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_v._Covert), "this Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty".
Sooo: No, Virginia, treaties cannot serve as an end-run around the Constitution. If I understand the citations correctly, a treaty has status coequal with Federal laws passed by Congress, so a treaty could, for example, supersede a Federal law such as the DMCA; however, it could not do anything (within the US) that Congress couldn't do by legislative means, like overruling an Amendment to the Constitution.
Matter transmission (transporters). I've no beef with using transporters as a plot device, and I see why it was attractive as a way to advance the plot in a 20-minute story line; what annoys me is the total neglect of the major impacts such a technology would have on society, even on such a controlled subculture as a Star Fleet. Given the wide availability of starships and matter transmitters, what do you suppose the inevitable criminal element in a society would think to do with them? Kidnapping, art theft, bank robbery, etc, etc. would be only a few of the impacts; obsoleting most forms of transport, and even such things as outside doors, would be another (at least, as imagined by a short story I read decades ago). However, the whole Trek universe acts as though transporters were merely a fancy elevator, a situation I find rather implausible, even within the fictional context of the Trek universe. (I still enjoy the stories, but a small corner of my being still groans at the glaring oversight.)
You are very probably right; unfortunately, Microsoft has already demonstrated complete willingness, in the OOXML fiasco, to subvert ECMA by every means available, from hiring shills off the street to pack public meetings, to stacking committees with single-issue proxies (who now no longer show up, so that the committees are hamstrung without a functioning quorum) to outright vote-rigging. I really don't think they'd give a dented spittoon for any commitments they signed off on to ECMA.
Except that SCO will shortly be run by a court-appointed Chapter 11 Trustee, most likely a lawyer or retired judge. There's very little chance such a one would go along with that sort of unethical, potentially unlawful, behavior. In fact, there's very little chance the trustee will elect to further pursue pointless and doomed litigation that simply dissipates the bankruptcy estate's remaining assets, either. Not being blinded by greed and mythical beelions of dollars, the trustee (appointed, don't forget, by a not-very-sympathetic Trustee's Office) will do the logical thing: settle both IBM and Novell cases as fast and cheaply as possible, preserve as much assets as possible, then -- seeing that Chapter 11 rehabilitation is impossible -- convert to Chapter 7 and sell off the office furniture for curios and the e-mail records to the highest bidder. (Actually, I'd expect IBM to demand custody of all corporate documents as part of any settlement offer...)
SCO is toast. Look for MS to employ a new and different cat's-paw now that this one has been run into the ground.
in his Lazarus Long series, IIRC. It was called "Delay Mail," and was intended for use by time-travellers; there was an office where one could leave messages to be delivered to a specified person (possibly one's younger self) on a specified date, possibly centuries in the future.
I'm afraid this constitutes prior art (insert clever time-travel remark here)...
IANAL, but the damages amount seems disproportionate to the offense. Does this raise any additional prospect of constitutional appeal for a disproportionate penalty? (Not that the attorney in this case would be capable of mounting such an appeal pro bono...)
If you take as a criteria for a "good standard for office documents" that it have a number of interoperable implementations and provides all generally-required functionality, ODF clearly meets that standard, MSOOXML as clearly fails it on lack of interoperable implementations.
Neither standard is perfect, and there are bugs in the various ODF implementations, but it's obviously usable, as it's being widely used. Not even MS Office actually uses OOXML as documented.
in addition to a) cynicism, and b) ambition, is c) a genuine dislike for the might-makes-right tactics of the RIAA, coupled with the ability (being a licensed attorney) to actually do something about it.
Unlikely as it may sound, there are quite a few lawyers out there who actually have principles and respect for the rule of law. It's entirely reasonable to think that they would dislike seeing the system gamed by the RIAA in this way. Time and events will be the ultimate proof, but don't discount the possibility this fellow is motivated, at least in part, by principled indignation.