I'm in it, too. I've been boycotting the MPAA (and the RIAA for what it's worth) since January. There are plenty of independent artists out there -- no reason to give misguided corporations our money.
Can anyone give me details on how I'd go about procuring one? Takara doesn't seem to have a web site, and I don't know nearly enough people in Japan...
Third pass at translation. I *am* a native English speaker, but I don't speak a word of German.
This Tuesday's leap day brought some surprising computer problems to the high-tech nation of Japan. According to the Reuters news agency, 1200 ATMs located in post offices experienced leap-day-related problems. Likewise, the Japanese Weather Office had difficulties with local temperature and precipitation measurements. According to reports, 43 stations all over Japan have been transmitting incorrect information since this morning. As early as Monday some 24-hour forecasts were printing with errors: the '29' indicating the last day of the forecast became '1'. In northern Japan, the seismic activity monitors in 20 regional offices failed; however, unlike at the start of the year, this time there were no reports of malfunctions in Japan's nuclear power plants.
I'm disturbed. CERT has always taken the lead in these sorts of investigation. When did the FBI take its place?
The early involvement of the FBI implies a rush to presume both criminal intent and jurisdiction. Which might well be the case in this instance, but I don't like the precedent set. Not at all.
It currently bypasses proxy filters; I've got a keyword-filter bypass mode that i'm tinkering on -- it just does the standard AOL-style substitutions of 'sh!t' for 'shit' and such to sneak pages by censoring software.
For a while, it substituted 'sock' for 'cock', which made portions of the internet extremely amusing. From time to time you'd get stories about 'sockpit voice recorders' and suchness, though.
Using an SSL connection from the client to the proxy makes it pretty hard for big brother to determine what all you're up to.
This is almost exactly what the EFF was formed to do. Look at their history --- they've been involved in every hacker-important issue in the last decade.
But the only way lobbies work is if they have support. I'm a dues-paying member of the EFF. You should be one, too.
My original article had a link to this plain-english to perl script; one of several bits (including a long description of how DeCSS fits into the LiViD project) that got cut by my editor for focus.
Salon assures me they're not going to let this issue rest, though, so hopefully there will be an opportunity to explore the legal issues --- including those raised by your script & those like it --- in a future article.
This was actually a topic of my master's thesis. More information on my FLEX compiler project. Both the RAW and the FLEX groups here at MIT have compilers that do bitwidth analysis.
If there's a missing requirement in the rules of the contest, it's the lack of a migration path from make. Without that, you just have an interesting toy, because no one will move their existing significant system without it.
...but presumably the contest judges will recognize and reward solutions which offer said upgrade path...
I think you really answered your own question. The problem with replacing autoconf or make is that they're both "mostly there". Everyone tends to put up with their limitations when confronted with some of their inadequacies, because it seems to be such a hurdle to start from scratch. If you buy the 'more scriptable' argument behind the contest, it makes *perfect* sense to offer money for these -- there's no way anyone would ever think about reinventing autoconf or make any other way, and they're simply never going to get the amount of portable scriptability that source carpentry would like to see in them without starting from scratch.
ESR is viewing life through increasingly narrow blinders these days. The real problem is *security design*. When you design a protocol, you must have in mind a particular threat model and some cost factors. When Quake was designed, single-player single-machine play was what was in mind. QuakeWorld hacked in network support, but security was obviously not a huge priority -- it's a *game* not a *bank*, for pete's sake -- so just enough protection was added to keep 99% of the script kiddies from cheating. Besides, there were some major performance constraints on the hardware; anything else would have been overkill given the threat model.
*OBVIOUSLY* open source brings with it a different threat model, a stricter and tighter one. The quake situation just proves that it is *very difficult* to retrofit security into a design. The protocol must be designed from the get-go with your security goals in mind. (I will hand-wave at the 'Jabber' open source chat client as another example of a protocol that was designed without security in mind. 'Open source' has little to do with it.)
The standard for e-commerce apps should be set much higher than that for a first-person shooter like quake, and I agree with ESR that "security through obscurity" should *never* be considered adequate when Real Money is on the line. But there are many ways other than full source disclosure to banish security through obscurity: open standards, for example, or publishing full details on wire protocols. I don't necessarily need to give out my implementation to promote confidence in my design, and indeed, if my design is truely secure, details of the protocol should be all that is required to convince me of the fact. [Note that in some cases -- for example, NIST's digital signature standard -- there are subtle protocol insecurities that might prompt me to take a look at the implementation to ensure that these gaps aren't exposed in practice; but in most cases protocol details are enough.]
The bottom-line is: computing with insecure clients *is* possible, as are "dumb client" approaches which concentrate the security in the server. Perhaps neither of these are applicable to the tight performance constraints of networked gaming. That simply means that the client *must* be trusted in some way -- which means we need to integrate authentication capabilities and Web Of Trust stuff like, say, PGP has to implement that trust. This has very little to do with "Open Source", littler still to do with Free Software, and everything to do with practical security engineering. Bruce Schneier would be qualified to comment on the issues. ESR is not.
Remember that "Ultranationalism" is just our modern media's polite codeword for what would have been more straightforwardly called "fascism" by our forebears.
Hear, hear! He's hard at work, we're told. Giving a lecture on MMIX tomorrow (Wednesday) here at MIT (I think that's the right date)... I plan on attending...
From the article I read, the embro was produced in vitro, and allowed to grow in an incubator for 3 days before implantation. Not sure I'd call that "natural".
Sure, using real wildcat sperm and eggs to start the process off is easier than using mammoth DNA and an de-nucleated elephant egg, but I'm not sure I'd call either of the processes "natural".
This story was posted 8 days ago. Exact same company, exact same process. Here's what I posted then:
Check out the
patent and their cheesy promo graphic. They claim that this technique is transformer-transparent. If the signal really does make it through transformers and around sharp corners with little radiative loss, then they could really be onto something. It'll take real-world testing to find out. I'd expect the maser would be expensive. So the crucial factor will be how many maser-transmitter/repeaters are necessary. (maybe one of these high downstream low upstream bandwidth dealies to minimize the # of masers required).
I'm sorry, but I object to this. Pervasive big-brotherism is *not* what I want to see the Internet grow into. So I will continue to operate my proxys, which keep no logs. The techniques you describe will only result in a lot of hassling *me*, free-speech advocate, when the IPs you see start coming through proxy servers like mine. The same technological limitations apply: I would probably limit access to my proxy server if there were a reliable technological means of doing that properly, but there isn't, so I won't.
Think twice and *care* about your rights some, people. Sure, the guy yelling on the street corner may annoy you a bit, but wouldn't a ban on public speech annoy be worse?
Right, but writing the signal as r(cos wT + j sin wT) is just a short hand for representing what happens to the cos and sin terms of the fourier decomposition (and keeping them separate). The signal doesn't *actually itself* have any 'imaginary part'. It has sums of wholly-real sine and cosine wave components, according to its fourier decomposition.
OK, so there's this basic premise fundamentally flawed in every one of these silly 'survive on nothing but net' stories I've read: they always put a reporter on the job. Now, I read the news to find out what's going on OUT IN THE WORLD, not in some guy's bedroom. News you can find out about from the comfort of your terminal I can find out myself. So of course these reporters start going batty and turn to interesting stories about deodorant and sex chat rooms. Reporters are not meant to be closed up in rooms.
Hackers, on the other hand, often can make great use of extended concentration time. So can writers, for that matter. Or a slew of other professions. Just not reporters. Problem is, writers and hackers (and I'm both, so I know whereof I speak) don't see anything special in turning the world off for a while. And what does it really matter if the groceries take a day for delivery? Plan ahead, dumbass.
A related question is why these stories always begin with the refrigerator empty. We know things take time to deliver. Again, plan ahead.
So, if *I* had five days in which I couldn't leave my room but could live on-line? I'd use the uninterrupted time to write some on a play I've been working on. Or hack some on any one of a number of open-source projects I've been wanting to get around to. Or read the Joyce and Mann I've been trying to find time for. I'd catch up on email to far-flung friends, enjoying the speed *and convenience* of the internet. I don't know about you, but I *like* the fact that email doesn't force an immediate response like a phone call does. It means I can write an email while my friends in New Zealand are sleeping. And that the response I receive will be more thoughtful and considered than something spoken on the spur of the moment.
With proper planning, there's absolutely no need to run short on groceries or personal hygenic supplies. And social interaction isn't a *daily* necessity for all of us. Yes, I'd go batty if I had to live that way for, say, a year; but I've certainly gone 5 days without seeing personal friends and haven't gone ape-shit like these poor reporters seem to do.
OK, I'm ranting by now. But I wish these poor news-folk would get through their thick skulls that there *is* such a thing as a 'life of the mind', and lots of ways to be productive that don't involve face-to-face contact. A life lived entirely secluded turns in on itself, sure -- but as a writer I have stores of Real World experience that I still haven't found the alone, uninterrupted time to write down and digest properly. Perhaps if these damn reporters would stop ringing my phone...
Actually, the electrical engineering connection is a red herring. Phasor analysis (which is what I assume you're referring to) does use imaginary numbers, but there is *no* fundamental link to the mathematics. It just turns out that the easily-remembered rules to manipulate imaginary numbers correspond with worked answers to commonly-occuring problems of frequency analysis. The real connection occurs via the frequency domain and a fourier transform... it just so happens that you can easily remember the results of the double transformation using arithmetic on imaginary numbers.
This was drilled into our heads during EE classes at Princeton; it's a shame your professors didn't make the distinction clear. Phasor manipulation is a *short-cut*... not the real thing.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm in it, too. I've been boycotting the MPAA
(and the RIAA for what it's worth) since January.
There are plenty of independent artists out there -- no reason to give misguided corporations our money.
Can anyone give me details on how I'd go about
procuring one? Takara doesn't seem to have a
web site, and I don't know nearly enough people
in Japan...
Of course, none of this water is likely vapor or liquid -- it's all solid water ice.
Third pass at translation. I *am* a native English speaker, but I don't speak a word of German.
You can find more information on UCITA activism at http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/~cananian/ UCITA/. California and Oklahoma are the next battles to be fought.
The early involvement of the FBI implies a rush to presume both criminal intent and jurisdiction. Which might well be the case in this instance, but I don't like the precedent set. Not at all.
For a while, it substituted 'sock' for 'cock', which made portions of the internet extremely amusing. From time to time you'd get stories about 'sockpit voice recorders' and suchness, though.
Using an SSL connection from the client to the proxy makes it pretty hard for big brother to determine what all you're up to.
But the only way lobbies work is if they have support. I'm a dues-paying member of the EFF. You should be one, too.
My original article had a link to this plain-english to perl script; one of several bits (including a long description of how DeCSS fits into the LiViD project) that got cut by my editor for focus.
Salon assures me they're not going to let this issue rest, though, so hopefully there will be an opportunity to explore the legal issues --- including those raised by your script & those like it --- in a future article.
This was actually a topic of my master's thesis. More information on my FLEX compiler project. Both the RAW and the FLEX groups here at MIT have compilers that do bitwidth analysis.
I think you really answered your own question.
The problem with replacing autoconf or make
is that they're both "mostly there". Everyone
tends to put up with their limitations when
confronted with some of their inadequacies,
because it seems to be such a hurdle to
start from scratch. If you buy the 'more scriptable' argument behind the contest, it
makes *perfect* sense to offer money for these -- there's no way anyone would ever think about reinventing autoconf or make any other way,
and they're simply never going to get the amount
of portable scriptability that source carpentry
would like to see in them without starting
from scratch.
There are technological solutions to these attempts at bullying. See http://www.cypherspace.org/~adam/eternit y/, for example.
ESR is viewing life through increasingly narrow blinders these days. The real problem is *security design*. When you design a protocol, you must have in mind a particular threat model and some cost factors. When Quake was designed, single-player single-machine play was what was in mind. QuakeWorld hacked in network support, but security was obviously not a huge priority -- it's a *game* not a *bank*, for pete's sake -- so just enough protection was added to keep 99% of the script kiddies from cheating. Besides, there were some major performance constraints on the hardware; anything else would have been overkill given the threat model.
*OBVIOUSLY* open source brings with it a different threat model, a stricter and tighter one. The quake situation just proves that it is *very difficult* to retrofit security into a design. The protocol must be designed from the get-go with your security goals in mind. (I will hand-wave at the 'Jabber' open source chat client as another example of a protocol that was designed without security in mind. 'Open source' has little to do with it.)
The standard for e-commerce apps should be set much higher than that for a first-person shooter like quake, and I agree with ESR that "security through obscurity" should *never* be considered adequate when Real Money is on the line. But there are many ways other than full source disclosure to banish security through obscurity: open standards, for example, or publishing full details on wire protocols. I don't necessarily need to give out my implementation to promote confidence in my design, and indeed, if my design is truely secure, details of the protocol should be all that is required to convince me of the fact. [Note that in some cases -- for example, NIST's digital signature standard -- there are subtle protocol insecurities that might prompt me to take a look at the implementation to ensure that these gaps aren't exposed in practice; but in most cases protocol details are enough.]
The bottom-line is: computing with insecure clients *is* possible, as are "dumb client" approaches which concentrate the security in the server. Perhaps neither of these are applicable to the tight performance constraints of networked gaming. That simply means that the client *must* be trusted in some way -- which means we need to integrate authentication capabilities and Web Of Trust stuff like, say, PGP has to implement that trust. This has very little to do with "Open Source", littler still to do with Free Software, and everything to do with practical security engineering. Bruce Schneier would be qualified to comment on the issues. ESR is not.
Visit the secure anti-censorship proxy at https://lm.lcs.mit.edu.
I'll give him a hint: why would a close alignment of planets on July 4 be interesting?
Remember that "Ultranationalism" is just our modern media's polite codeword for what would have been more straightforwardly called "fascism" by our forebears.
I strongly suspect you could write a jabber plug-in that would do this.
Hear, hear! He's hard at work, we're told. ... I plan on attending...
Giving a lecture on MMIX tomorrow (Wednesday) here at MIT (I think that's the right date)
Sure, using real wildcat sperm and eggs to start the process off is easier than using mammoth DNA and an de-nucleated elephant egg, but I'm not sure I'd call either of the processes "natural".
Think twice and *care* about your rights some, people. Sure, the guy yelling on the street corner may annoy you a bit, but wouldn't a ban on public speech annoy be worse?
Right, but writing the signal as r(cos wT + j sin wT) is just a short hand for representing what happens to the cos and sin terms of the fourier decomposition (and keeping them separate). The signal doesn't *actually itself* have any 'imaginary part'. It has sums of wholly-real sine and cosine wave components, according to its fourier decomposition.
OK, so there's this basic premise fundamentally flawed in every one of these silly 'survive on nothing but net' stories I've read: they always put a reporter on the job. Now, I read the news to find out what's going on OUT IN THE WORLD, not in some guy's bedroom. News you can find out about from the comfort of your terminal I can find out myself. So of course these reporters start going batty and turn to interesting stories about deodorant and sex chat rooms. Reporters are not meant to be closed up in rooms.
Hackers, on the other hand, often can make great use of extended concentration time. So can writers, for that matter. Or a slew of other professions. Just not reporters. Problem is, writers and hackers (and I'm both, so I know whereof I speak) don't see anything special in turning the world off for a while. And what does it really matter if the groceries take a day for delivery? Plan ahead, dumbass.
A related question is why these stories always begin with the refrigerator empty. We know things take time to deliver. Again, plan ahead.
So, if *I* had five days in which I couldn't leave my room but could live on-line? I'd use the uninterrupted time to write some on a play I've been working on. Or hack some on any one of a number of open-source projects I've been wanting to get around to. Or read the Joyce and Mann I've been trying to find time for. I'd catch up on email to far-flung friends, enjoying the speed *and convenience* of the internet. I don't know about you, but I *like* the fact that email doesn't force an immediate response like a phone call does. It means I can write an email while my friends in New Zealand are sleeping. And that the response I receive will be more thoughtful and considered than something spoken on the spur of the moment.
With proper planning, there's absolutely no need to run short on groceries or personal hygenic supplies. And social interaction isn't a *daily* necessity for all of us. Yes, I'd go batty if I had to live that way for, say, a year; but I've certainly gone 5 days without seeing personal friends and haven't gone ape-shit like these poor reporters seem to do.
OK, I'm ranting by now. But I wish these poor news-folk would get through their thick skulls that there *is* such a thing as a 'life of the mind', and lots of ways to be productive that don't involve face-to-face contact. A life lived entirely secluded turns in on itself, sure -- but as a writer I have stores of Real World experience that I still haven't found the alone, uninterrupted time to write down and digest properly. Perhaps if these damn reporters would stop ringing my phone...
Actually, the electrical engineering connection is a red herring. Phasor analysis (which is what I assume you're referring to) does use imaginary numbers, but there is *no* fundamental link to the mathematics. It just turns out that the easily-remembered rules to manipulate imaginary numbers correspond with worked answers to commonly-occuring problems of frequency analysis. The real connection occurs via the frequency domain and a fourier transform... it just so happens that you can easily remember the results of the double transformation using arithmetic on imaginary numbers.
This was drilled into our heads during EE classes at Princeton; it's a shame your professors didn't make the distinction clear. Phasor manipulation is a *short-cut*... not the real thing.