I bought a sony minidisc player a few years ago. It was a lovely bit of kit in the era before iPods, which allowed you to transfer mp3's onto minidisc. Unfortunatly the incredibly buggy (windows only) software and associated DRM crud that provided the interface between it and my pc completely crippled it to the extent that I got rid of it as soon as possible. I vowed never to give sony my hard-earned again. So far I've stuck to it, which has probably cost them in the region of £2000 based on various gadget and electronic equipment purchases I've made since.
Someone alluded to the Wargames movie/book. Which begs the question: would you see an improvement if you set the bayesian filter against itself, and fed the resulting games back into its knowledge base? Would favouring the shorter games in this feedback loop improve it further?
I'm not intimate with the BT protocol. But this strikes me as a way to stop the *AA people getting lists of downloaders, and at the same time improve BTs performance and robustness (not that they seem to be a big problem ATM):
When you connect to a tracker, as well as downloading the file you want, the tracker could give you a list of other torrents to download. The client would then carry on as normal downloading the file you want, and at the same time download chunks of the other files, up to - say for example - half the size of the file you want. The very nature of BT means you don't need the whole file to redistribute it.
That way, you have plausable deniability - you might be just downloading a Linux ISO, but at the same time you've downloaded chunks from a dozen other, maybe illegal, files, and re-distributed them to others. The *AA people then can't get a list of downloaders because even though you're downloading a chunk of the latest hollywood blockbuster, its not intentional, and you're not downloading the whole thing. You're just caching it for others to download from you.
The tracker could implement some strategy to decide which other torrents a client downloads, based on the least available or the most popular or whatever other criteria make sense.
The downside of course is that you download more than you actually need, but thats offset by the privacy you gain.
As a British citizen, part of me does find this a little draconian, but at the same time, it brings some massive benefits too. The quality of broadcasting that comes out of the BBC is far better than any of the other TV channels in the UK, wether they be broadcast (ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5) or cable/satellite. And for radio its a world-beater - radio 4 alone is well worth the license fee. (I think?) The Licence Fee also pay for things like bbc.co.uk, which is an amazing online resource, providing masses of news content, as well as recordings of radio shows etc. If you keep your eyes open, bbc.co.uk is the source of *many* a slashdot story.
Putting aside the public service broadcasting such as News, Documentaries and Current Affairs shows that comes out of the BBC, our tenner/month has also paid for things like Monty Pyton, Dr Who, The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Red Dwarf, The Office and stacks of other shows that seem to be enjoyed the world over. The lack of any demands from advertises allows the BBC to innovate constantly, without having to worry about being on message for the advertisers.
The only thing that depresses me about all this is the BBCs coverage of Iraq since the Hutton enquiry, which, to my eyes has taken it from world-beating news source to a US propoganda lacky. Channel 4 news is now a world ahead of the BBC when it comes to truthful unbiased news.
As for the scarey Detector Vans, I think they do (or did) exist, and used a similar idea to Tempest, picking up the EM interference that leaks out of TV sets (The Local Oscillator isn't some special Clipper like device installed in all UK TVs - thats just dumbed-down speak to let people know they can detect your TV). But as far as I know, these days they just use a list of households with TV licences, and bang on the doors of the houses that dont.
Regardless, I would much rather pay this fee, than be subject to the constant barrage of adverisments and lowest common denominator bollocks that comes out of the US. Yes, we do get things like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Jerry Springer - jeez, thanks America! (We forgive you for bringing us the Simpsons though!)
Maybe us hard-done by brits should start collecting a fee from slashdot users when they link to a BBC Sci-Tech story or news item, or download a classic british tv show from Bit Torrent?
PS I'm suprised there have been no "In Russia^H^H^H^H^H^HThe UK TV watches You" jokes yet!
I bought a Sony NetMD, and it was enough to put me off ever buying Sony kit again.
The player itself was nice, but the software that came with it was Windows only, riddled with bugs, crippled with really dumb DRM, unintuitive and generally pants.
Am currently considering an iRiver H140.
Whats your favourite cow exploit?
on
WiFi Gone Wild
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I can't wait for the first time a hurd of wirelessly controlled cows get hacked. Imagine the fun you could have with a hurd of cows at your command.
I think I'd have them follow the same person around all day. When he stopped walking, the cows would stop. When he went in a building, the cows would wait outside.
Or just send them all to go and flash-mob the local butchers.
Slashdot Mirror
I bought a sony minidisc player a few years ago. It was a lovely bit of kit in the era before iPods, which allowed you to transfer mp3's onto minidisc. Unfortunatly the incredibly buggy (windows only) software and associated DRM crud that provided the interface between it and my pc completely crippled it to the extent that I got rid of it as soon as possible. I vowed never to give sony my hard-earned again. So far I've stuck to it, which has probably cost them in the region of £2000 based on various gadget and electronic equipment purchases I've made since.
Someone alluded to the Wargames movie/book. Which begs the question: would you see an improvement if you set the bayesian filter against itself, and fed the resulting games back into its knowledge base? Would favouring the shorter games in this feedback loop improve it further?
I'm not intimate with the BT protocol. But this strikes me as a way to stop the *AA people getting lists of downloaders, and at the same time improve BTs performance and robustness (not that they seem to be a big problem ATM):
When you connect to a tracker, as well as downloading the file you want, the tracker could give you a list of other torrents to download. The client would then carry on as normal downloading the file you want, and at the same time download chunks of the other files, up to - say for example - half the size of the file you want. The very nature of BT means you don't need the whole file to redistribute it.
That way, you have plausable deniability - you might be just downloading a Linux ISO, but at the same time you've downloaded chunks from a dozen other, maybe illegal, files, and re-distributed them to others. The *AA people then can't get a list of downloaders because even though you're downloading a chunk of the latest hollywood blockbuster, its not intentional, and you're not downloading the whole thing. You're just caching it for others to download from you.
The tracker could implement some strategy to decide which other torrents a client downloads, based on the least available or the most popular or whatever other criteria make sense.
The downside of course is that you download more than you actually need, but thats offset by the privacy you gain.
As a British citizen, part of me does find this a little draconian, but at the same time, it brings some massive benefits too. The quality of broadcasting that comes out of the BBC is far better than any of the other TV channels in the UK, wether they be broadcast (ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5) or cable/satellite. And for radio its a world-beater - radio 4 alone is well worth the license fee. (I think?) The Licence Fee also pay for things like bbc.co.uk, which is an amazing online resource, providing masses of news content, as well as recordings of radio shows etc. If you keep your eyes open, bbc.co.uk is the source of *many* a slashdot story.
Putting aside the public service broadcasting such as News, Documentaries and Current Affairs shows that comes out of the BBC, our tenner/month has also paid for things like Monty Pyton, Dr Who, The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Red Dwarf, The Office and stacks of other shows that seem to be enjoyed the world over. The lack of any demands from advertises allows the BBC to innovate constantly, without having to worry about being on message for the advertisers.
The only thing that depresses me about all this is the BBCs coverage of Iraq since the Hutton enquiry, which, to my eyes has taken it from world-beating news source to a US propoganda lacky. Channel 4 news is now a world ahead of the BBC when it comes to truthful unbiased news.
As for the scarey Detector Vans, I think they do (or did) exist, and used a similar idea to Tempest, picking up the EM interference that leaks out of TV sets (The Local Oscillator isn't some special Clipper like device installed in all UK TVs - thats just dumbed-down speak to let people know they can detect your TV). But as far as I know, these days they just use a list of households with TV licences, and bang on the doors of the houses that dont.
Regardless, I would much rather pay this fee, than be subject to the constant barrage of adverisments and lowest common denominator bollocks that comes out of the US. Yes, we do get things like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Jerry Springer - jeez, thanks America! (We forgive you for bringing us the Simpsons though!)
Maybe us hard-done by brits should start collecting a fee from slashdot users when they link to a BBC Sci-Tech story or news item, or download a classic british tv show from Bit Torrent?
PS I'm suprised there have been no "In Russia^H^H^H^H^H^HThe UK TV watches You" jokes yet!
I bought a Sony NetMD, and it was enough to put me off ever buying Sony kit again.
The player itself was nice, but the software that came with it was Windows only, riddled with bugs, crippled with really dumb DRM, unintuitive and generally pants.
Am currently considering an iRiver H140.
I can't wait for the first time a hurd of wirelessly controlled cows get hacked. Imagine the fun you could have with a hurd of cows at your command.
I think I'd have them follow the same person around all day. When he stopped walking, the cows would stop. When he went in a building, the cows would wait outside.
Or just send them all to go and flash-mob the local butchers.