Um, not if we'd been talking about software that was OSS (as in "non-commercial"). And that's the real gist of what the poster "TheRealMindChild" was talking about, when saying "C'mon, all of us in the business know how these things work." Which is why I'll never again work for a commercial software vendor (as least, not as a developer) -- and, for that matter, probably never again for *any* organization where the very nature of the enterprise means that there's a development imperative more important than "get it right" and "release when it's ready".
I'd be surprised. Banking software in 1944? When COBOL wasn't even the proverbial gleam in Grace Hopper's eye? On what platform? Hollerith cards? By what definition of "software"?
1. The Stick . .. No matter what DRM technology they develop and insert into the media play-back chain, every such chain must eventually terminate in a human-sensible output device (speakers, monitor, etc.). And every such device is vulnerable to having its inputs tapped for recording by an unprotected device.
For the forseeable future, it's impossible for the Watch-Dogs to move the DRM technology so close to the terminating device, as to make it impossible to tap the signal. At worst, they can make it annoying.
In the case of video, they might eventually make it useless for the Little Guy to tap the video cables, and she/he might have to open the monitor's case. But if you're willing to do that, what can the Watch-Dogs do? Move the DRM into the CRT's electron gun? (or the LCD's individual TFTs, or the plasma screen's individual sub-pixel electrodes?)
And audio signals are even harder to protect: will they outlaw the conventional magnet-coil speaker, or maybe outlaw the possession of Crown or Marantz hi-fi equipment which is packaged as separate media-reader + pre-amp + amp?
IMO, the key strategic move for militant consumers (people similar to us) is to get the jump on future legislation and technology, by working NOW to develop tapping devices which are: (a) so cheap as to be too ubiquitous (and too small) to make it practical to attempt to remove them from public possession; (b) so generic as to be field-upgradeable from a binary download, as easily as current BIOS chips (so that, when DRM tech advances, there doesn't need to be another effort to distribute the tapping devices); (c) *plausibly* marketable as being diagnosis / repair eqipment; (d) capable of capturing (and storing, and replaying) a signal with fidelity and resolution equal to the signal which the terminal device would receive anyway, so that issues of multi-generation signal-degradation are irrelevant.
This sure sounds to me like the archetypal open-source project, surely within the capability of a community with such strong historical ties to phone-phreaks. There could even be "quilting bees", where people gathered to assemble these devices in mass quantities, to be subsequently distributed at nominal cost to all of their friends and family. (True story: during the Viet-Nam War, the VC taught peasants to de-fuse, disassemble, and convert unexploded USA ordnance into very effective anti-personnel devices, using only simple hand-tools.) Remember, this community succeeded in making first-class encryption unstoppable and available world-wide.
2. The Carrot . .. is to borrow from the traditions of RIAA broadcast royalties and UK consumer television-set licenses: institute a system whereby revenue for Content-Creators is collected from taxes on each initial sale of play-back / recording devices and on storage-media. One way of assessing and apportioning the taxes could be from measuring popularity by the Watch-Dogs' sampling of legitimate broadcasts, ticket-sales, etc.
(Of course, in return for this, the RIAA etc. must see to the reversal of all anti-copying technology and legislation.)
Now, I can think of a lot of technological obstacles to The Stick which will be posted by readers of this post, but none which aren't practically and economically surmountable.
The sooner and closer that The Stick approaches reality, the sooner that the Watch-Dogs will view The Carrot as an attractive proposition. And the sooner that all this nonsense will end.
"When multi-meters (oscilloscopes, etc.) are outlawed, only outlaws will have multi-meters."
1. Ditto to the post which said, "Separate the apps, not the data." The current proliferation of app-specific formats is absurd and counter-productive.
2. I file hundreds of docs &/or URLs per day. I need something which offers some degree of assistance in immediate auto-categorization (e.g. Bayes) with feedback, while still allowing user-defined hierarchy. "Yes, thank you for intelligently recognizing that this new info is about device interrupts; but now I need to tell you that it's about kernel-coding vs. crash-debugging vs. performance-analysis."
3. One poster calls the article, "self-maturbation on the part of bored jobless software engineers that aren't solving any problems that need solving". Speak for your yourself. Yeah, I'm a developer, but most of my minute-to-minute usage of my desktop isn't all that different from "lusers" or PHBs, i.e. massaging info. Get some perspective. Your statement is like saying, "Cars are really primarily made for mechanics and automotive engineers, not for soccer moms and commuters."
4. Forked-data: sure, as long as it's restricted to the app-specific stuff. Take that table the user just created: use forked-data for the meta-data which is specific to the spreadsheet or WP app, but leave the table data as ASCII data which anyone can read.
5. Someone said, "a file-name should be enough". Speak for yourself; a lot of my needs go waaayy beyond that. If the metadata goes beyond your neeeds, then your course is clear: just don't use it. It costs you nothing to architecturally allow for its use by other people.
6. re: "clouds", there are times when I'd really like to know -- what app created this file? what OS? which host? which user? what other files had been opened (e.g., stdin)? what was the original volume label? etc.
2Flower said, "Which is simpler / less bulky, Mozilla, or Firebox? . . . I'm the audience you need to sell on the idea of ditching Microsoft the most"
1. Here's the experience of someone who JUST MADE THE SWITCH YESTERDAY. I've been using IE for years, *n*x for years, and Opera(Win) & Firefox(Win) for months.
(a) I tried ffox first, because I feared that Moz might be too much like some bad Netscape experiences I had (several years ago). I find (**on Win, YMMV**) that ffox is too slow (*including* latest releases through 0.9.1): fetch / render is ok, but re-draw (e.g. after minimizing and later restoring the window, or after uncovering from an another app's window) takes way too long.
(b) Then I tried Opera. Performance is fine, ads are a *very* minor nuisance. But for me (somewhat of an IE "power"-user), the UI difference is non-trivial.
(c) So I decided to try Moz after all. After less than two days, I'm convinced that it's the least disruptive alternative of these three.
2. Hint: install the "Little Moz" theme. It's appearance is the most like IE, and the least wasteful of screen-space (smaller icons, etc.).
3. If you're currently using the Google toolbar in IE, there's an almost-identical plug-in for Moz.
4. I can't believe the number of people who told you -- erroneously -- that you can only get Moz by accepting the Moz email client. The install-process gives you the option to install *only* the browser.
If you need further help / advice switching from IE to Moz, post a message in http://slashdot.org/~nusratt/journal
A lot of posters in this (sub-)thread mention calendaring as an obstacle to replacing Outlook. But I believe that Ximian's "Connector" offering would allow you to maintain all of your Outlook functionality (using the Ximian Evolution client).
Yes, you'd have to retain your Exchange server, but it's a big step in the right direction, no? In fact, I think that changing only the client (at first) might help persuade management, because it's a safer migration path, with a clear fall-back strategy.
Evolution doesn't run on Win, but you could use it from Win as an X app running on a *n*x box, or in a virtual machine on the same box as Win (VMware, OSS equivalents, etc.). Heck, maybe it might even run on cygwin.
Win + Moz - Outlook = no more mshtml.dll vulnerabilities, right?
Yes, technically, "ISPs" would be covered by the ruling, since their users' email is virtually guaranteed to land at least briefly in storage. However, IMHO the larger (and more shocking) consequence is that it's legal for your mail to be read by any email "provider", which is a much larger category.
I worry about cases like the one at hand -- a vendor who reads users' mail for competitive reasons -- more than I'd worry about a communications carrier. An ISP would have to be liability-reckless to commonly engage in this, because they would lose the "plausible deniability" defense to a charge of "your customer was planning crime xyz, and you should have known and called the police".
MUCH MORE TROUBLESOME: based on the court's "you store it, you can read it" logic, my email can legally be examined by ANYONE in the "storage chain", from BOFHs to the third-party off-site-backup provider. Yes, those miscreants would be vulnerable to actions from the ISP, but (IANAL) it sounds like you or I would have no recourse against anyone.
used to read Nuts & Volts, until they stopped carrying it at Tower Records (which, btw, is a MUCH better place to browse mags than Borders, Barnes, etc. -- greater variety, wider aisles, shorter lines, fewer shrieking / wailing rug-rats). Guess I'll have to subscribe now.
What about Electronics Mag (uk), and Circuit Cellar? Also, any/all mags named "Embedded xyz". And the hard-core (vs. mass-market) tech mags, e.g. SysAdmin, Perl Journal, etc. Linux Mag, Linux Journal.
Better to just sample the mags and reach your own conclusions. After all, how many parties can you name whose categorization (of others' writings) you would trust as not being biased themselves?
On a related subject, risk getting addicted to "World Press Review". It's a real eye-opener, especially if you're in the USA. Also, "Foreign Affairs", if you've *lots* of time to spare.
In OSS, espousing "anti-obscurity" means "supporting transparency of the *mechanism* for protecting the data". It doesn't mean "supporting transparency of the *data*". Your logic implies that it would be ok for security policies to allow anyone to have read-only access to our bank statements, health records, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
didn't your mother ever tell you? ;-)
"You could put someone's eye out with that!"
Um, not if we'd been talking about software that was OSS (as in "non-commercial").
And that's the real gist of what the poster "TheRealMindChild" was talking about, when saying "C'mon, all of us in the business know how these things work."
Which is why I'll never again work for a commercial software vendor (as least, not as a developer) -- and, for that matter, probably never again for *any* organization where the very nature of the enterprise means that there's a development imperative more important than "get it right" and "release when it's ready".
I'd be surprised.
Banking software in 1944?
When COBOL wasn't even the proverbial gleam in Grace Hopper's eye?
On what platform? Hollerith cards?
By what definition of "software"?
(or, "Toward A DRM Consumer Manifesto")
.
.
1. The Stick . .
No matter what DRM technology they develop and insert into the media play-back chain,
every such chain must eventually terminate in a human-sensible output device (speakers, monitor, etc.). And every such device is vulnerable to having its inputs tapped for recording by an unprotected device.
For the forseeable future, it's impossible for the Watch-Dogs to move the DRM technology so close to the terminating device, as to make it impossible to tap the signal. At worst, they can make it annoying.
In the case of video, they might eventually make it useless for the Little Guy to tap the video cables, and she/he might have to open the monitor's case. But if you're willing to do that, what can the Watch-Dogs do? Move the DRM into the CRT's electron gun? (or the LCD's individual TFTs, or the plasma screen's individual sub-pixel electrodes?)
And audio signals are even harder to protect: will they outlaw the conventional magnet-coil speaker, or maybe outlaw the possession of Crown or Marantz hi-fi equipment which is packaged as separate media-reader + pre-amp + amp?
IMO, the key strategic move for militant consumers (people similar to us) is to get the jump on future legislation and technology, by working NOW to develop tapping devices which are:
(a) so cheap as to be too ubiquitous (and too small) to make it practical to attempt to remove them from public possession;
(b) so generic as to be field-upgradeable from a binary download, as easily as current BIOS chips (so that, when DRM tech advances, there doesn't need to be another effort to distribute the tapping devices);
(c) *plausibly* marketable as being diagnosis / repair eqipment;
(d) capable of capturing (and storing, and replaying) a signal with fidelity and resolution equal to the signal which the terminal device would receive anyway, so that issues of multi-generation signal-degradation are irrelevant.
This sure sounds to me like the archetypal open-source project, surely within the capability of a community with such strong historical ties to phone-phreaks. There could even be "quilting bees", where people gathered to assemble these devices in mass quantities, to be subsequently distributed at nominal cost to all of their friends and family.
(True story: during the Viet-Nam War, the VC taught peasants to de-fuse, disassemble, and convert unexploded USA ordnance into very effective anti-personnel devices, using only simple hand-tools.)
Remember, this community succeeded in making first-class encryption unstoppable and available world-wide.
2. The Carrot . .
is to borrow from the traditions of RIAA broadcast royalties and UK consumer television-set licenses:
institute a system whereby revenue for Content-Creators is collected from taxes on each initial sale of play-back / recording devices and on storage-media. One way of assessing and apportioning the taxes could be from measuring popularity by the Watch-Dogs' sampling of legitimate broadcasts, ticket-sales, etc.
(Of course, in return for this, the RIAA etc. must see to the reversal of all anti-copying technology and legislation.)
Now, I can think of a lot of technological obstacles to The Stick which will be posted by readers of this post, but none which aren't practically and economically surmountable.
The sooner and closer that The Stick approaches reality, the sooner that the Watch-Dogs will view The Carrot as an attractive proposition. And the sooner that all this nonsense will end.
"When multi-meters (oscilloscopes, etc.) are outlawed, only outlaws will have multi-meters."
1. Ditto to the post which said, "Separate the apps, not the data." The current proliferation of app-specific formats is absurd and counter-productive.
2. I file hundreds of docs &/or URLs per day. I need something which offers some degree of assistance in immediate auto-categorization (e.g. Bayes) with feedback, while still allowing user-defined hierarchy. "Yes, thank you for intelligently recognizing that this new info is about device interrupts; but now I need to tell you that it's about kernel-coding vs. crash-debugging vs. performance-analysis."
3. One poster calls the article, "self-maturbation on the part of bored jobless software engineers that aren't solving any problems that need solving".
Speak for your yourself. Yeah, I'm a developer, but most of my minute-to-minute usage of my desktop isn't all that different from "lusers" or PHBs, i.e. massaging info.
Get some perspective. Your statement is like saying, "Cars are really primarily made for mechanics and automotive engineers, not for soccer moms and commuters."
4. Forked-data: sure, as long as it's restricted to the app-specific stuff. Take that table the user just created: use forked-data for the meta-data which is specific to the spreadsheet or WP app, but leave the table data as ASCII data which anyone can read.
5. Someone said, "a file-name should be enough". Speak for yourself; a lot of my needs go waaayy beyond that. If the metadata goes beyond your neeeds, then your course is clear: just don't use it. It costs you nothing to architecturally allow for its use by other people.
6. re: "clouds", there are times when I'd really like to know -- what app created this file? what OS? which host? which user? what other files had been opened (e.g., stdin)? what was the original volume label? etc.
Bah, CLI?! Why, in MY day all we had were punch-cards. AND WE WERE GLAD to be rid of patch-boards and blinkenlights!
2Flower said, "Which is simpler / less bulky, Mozilla, or Firebox? . . . I'm the audience you need to sell on the idea of ditching Microsoft the most"
1. Here's the experience of someone who JUST MADE THE SWITCH YESTERDAY. I've been using IE for years, *n*x for years, and Opera(Win) & Firefox(Win) for months.
(a) I tried ffox first, because I feared that Moz might be too much like some bad Netscape experiences I had (several years ago).
I find (**on Win, YMMV**) that ffox is too slow (*including* latest releases through 0.9.1):
fetch / render is ok, but re-draw (e.g. after minimizing and later restoring the window, or after uncovering from an another app's window) takes way too long.
(b) Then I tried Opera. Performance is fine, ads are a *very* minor nuisance. But for me (somewhat of an IE "power"-user), the UI difference is non-trivial.
(c) So I decided to try Moz after all. After less than two days, I'm convinced that it's the least disruptive alternative of these three.
2. Hint: install the "Little Moz" theme. It's appearance is the most like IE, and the least wasteful of screen-space (smaller icons, etc.).
3. If you're currently using the Google toolbar in IE, there's an almost-identical plug-in for Moz.
4. I can't believe the number of people who told you -- erroneously -- that you can only get Moz by accepting the Moz email client. The install-process gives you the option to install *only* the browser.
If you need further help / advice switching from IE to Moz, post a message in http://slashdot.org/~nusratt/journal
A lot of posters in this (sub-)thread mention calendaring as an obstacle to replacing Outlook. But I believe that Ximian's "Connector" offering would allow you to maintain all of your Outlook functionality (using the Ximian Evolution client).
Yes, you'd have to retain your Exchange server, but it's a big step in the right direction, no? In fact, I think that changing only the client (at first) might help persuade management, because it's a safer migration path, with a clear fall-back strategy.
Evolution doesn't run on Win, but you could use it from Win as an X app running on a *n*x box, or in a virtual machine on the same box as Win (VMware, OSS equivalents, etc.). Heck, maybe it might even run on cygwin.
Win + Moz - Outlook = no more mshtml.dll vulnerabilities, right?
Yes, technically, "ISPs" would be covered by the ruling, since their users' email is virtually guaranteed to land at least briefly in storage.
However, IMHO the larger (and more shocking) consequence is that it's legal for your mail to be read by any email "provider", which is a much larger category.
I worry about cases like the one at hand -- a vendor who reads users' mail for competitive reasons -- more than I'd worry about a communications carrier. An ISP would have to be liability-reckless to commonly engage in this, because they would lose the "plausible deniability" defense to a charge of "your customer was planning crime xyz, and you should have known and called the police".
MUCH MORE TROUBLESOME: based on the court's "you store it, you can read it" logic, my email can legally be examined by ANYONE in the "storage chain", from BOFHs to the third-party off-site-backup provider. Yes, those miscreants would be vulnerable to actions from the ISP, but (IANAL) it sounds like you or I would have no recourse against anyone.
"PC Magazine, but I can't get the links to work. Lousy paper based publications."
You're supposed to transcribe the links to the keyboard, not click on the paper pages.
and you prefer that to "Gourmet"?
and might your real name be Hannibal?
"National Geographic but I've found myself not reading it that much but just looking at the pictures"
;-)
funny about that -- I used to do the same thing in early puberty
It was the Maxim for pre-teen geeks.
used to read Nuts & Volts, until they stopped carrying it at Tower Records (which, btw, is a MUCH better place to browse mags than Borders, Barnes, etc. -- greater variety, wider aisles, shorter lines, fewer shrieking / wailing rug-rats).
Guess I'll have to subscribe now.
What about Electronics Mag (uk), and Circuit Cellar?
Also, any/all mags named "Embedded xyz".
And the hard-core (vs. mass-market) tech mags, e.g. SysAdmin, Perl Journal, etc.
Linux Mag, Linux Journal.
OT, anything about world-beat / third-world / afro-pop / roots music.
Better to just sample the mags and reach your own conclusions.
After all, how many parties can you name whose categorization (of others' writings) you would trust as not being biased themselves?
On a related subject, risk getting addicted to "World Press Review". It's a real eye-opener, especially if you're in the USA.
Also, "Foreign Affairs", if you've *lots* of time to spare.
"Vanity Fair" (although I wouldn't pay for it)
pro: genuinely interesting, informative, thoughtful, well-written articles (esp.politics)
con: the first 30 minutes are wasted trying to find the TOC, which is hidden among *boo-coo* advert pages;
the ads exacerbate your fragrance allergies
In OSS, espousing "anti-obscurity" means "supporting transparency of the *mechanism* for protecting the data".
It doesn't mean "supporting transparency of the *data*".
Your logic implies that it would be ok for security policies to allow anyone to have read-only access to our bank statements, health records, etc.
"biggest PSU I could find were capable of 36A @ 12V"
name(s)?