Lots of people talk about blaming the CEOs for this type of behavior. But as a programmer, I think of the people who actually implemented this. Somewhere, there is some employee or contractor who wrote a rootkit for Sony. Maybe a few people. And somebody was paid to make an ISO image containing music tracks and a rootkit. I would love to know what they thought when he made that ISO image. Did he call his boss and say "Hey! There's a rootkit on here!" or not? How about the team of testers who had to compromise their machines and verify what information was sent back? Did any of them think that maybe this wasn't such a good idea?
There are a lot of people responsible for this type of thing. Is corporate-group-think so powerful that these people didn't even realize what they were doing was wrong? Or did they hold their tongues out of fear? Or were they malicious?
We would be a bunch of people in caves not trusting each other and killing each other because they took your club. I too an glad that mass marketers successfully propelled humankind out of caves and into civilization. Anthropologists found that the first Car ads were what taught people how to cook their food, and how to boil water to purify it. Someone might say that they were profit driven, but does that really matter considering how much good they did? Where would we be today if our ancestors hadn't discovered electricity from mass marketing campaigns right to the cave door?
You are basically implying that all advertising ever is unwanted. Advertising is necessary, but that doesn't mean it is wanted. If I could rid my life of ads I would dance for joy. Don't mistake need with desire.
I don't have enough MS SQL 2005 experience, but MS SQL 2000 didn't scale very well. The implementation of "shared locks" and "lock escalation" in MSSQL meant that many readers + one big writer = near total database deadlock. The readers would be locked-out every time the writer touched a page they were reading. Oracle, PostGreSQL, and SQL 2005 support a system where readers never interfere with writers.
I know that there are big database features in Oracle that are way over my head and I can't go into. Some Google searches will give you some opinions. This comparison looks very well written.
Finally, it's not like MS actually has a choice here. The movie studios can and will use their lawyers to rape any commercial entity that gets in their way right now. The biggest monopoly in the world, the largest company in the biggest country in the world, run by the richest person on earth, that controls 90% of the desktop computers on the planet, and has the highest cash reserves of any commercial entity --- is being strong armed!?!?!
Please link to some of those comments, because I think you have misunderstood them.
Slashdotters don't like the parental monitoring software because they think that parents, not software, should monitor their kids. That viewpoint is completely consistent with what people are saying here today.
1) Parents should monitor their kids 2) Third party software can't be trusted to do it 3) Technological systems don't work anyway
That's amazing to me though: My bank just lets me enter in a PIN just the same as if I used an ATM. No one-time-pads at all. It looks to me like the bank was actually being fairly secure.
Carmack's style of games don't fit the Wii. His games aren't known for innovative game play. Making a game for the Wii is uniquely different from making a game for anything else. So even if Carmack ports games to the Wii, they are going to be just that: ports of games.
It occurs to me that you might be trying to be funny, but I'll respond anyway.
However, it will probably make a whole lot of people 'feel' safe. It does the opposite - people know there are defensive missiles on the plane, so they get more scared because the thought of a SAM never occurred to them before. Plus, they will likely get a red/orange/yellow/green warning light stating the likelyhood of getting attacked on this flight. It is fearmongering.
And as long as that billions of dollars goes back into the economy of the United States, it's not like we'd be losing billions of dollars. You misunderstand economics: They money doesn't just go in a circle and come back where it started. Even if you used all domestic workers and parts, which is impossible in today's economy, money is still lost. Materials are mined, energy and time are spent. Wasted money is wasted money.
If that still doesn't make sense, consider this: The only time that this cycle reaches near 100% cyclic efficiency is if you pay a domestic worker for a labor-only task. Ex: A wealthy guy pays someone to wash their yacht. Of course, even that isn't a perfect cycle since water and gas to drive there and food and electricity and soap were all consumed in the process.
These defense systems for passenger jets are a drop in the bucket compared to the war in Iraq. If we used that logic, then we would spend money on everything and anything. Because, it surely is cheaper than the war in Iraq! That's not an argument FOR doing this. It is an argument AGAINST the war.
Let me concede you your idea though: If the goal is to make people think they are safe, and to make terrorists think it isn't worth trying -- then we should test a system like this, then pretend to install it.
Patents are a minefield. Copyrights are not. You can accidentally implement something that someone has patented without realizing it. But copyrights are clearly displayed at the top of every source file you use. They are usually on the download page, and generally, developers and managers know the licenses of what they are using. It is a part of the daily life of a developer, and part of the decision to use a particular tool or not. This isn't a minefield. Nobody violates the GPL without knowing it.
From the article:
Hemel downloaded the firmware for the WIP300 phone and reverse-engineered it, first checking with a lawyer that such a process is legal, he said.
Now there is a minefield: DMCA like crud that makes researchers fear doing research. But not copyrights.
The RIAA may only go after uploaders, but that doesn't mean that you aren't committing a crime. If, by some luck, you weren't sentenced for copyright infringement, you would at least be an accessory.
Please clarify: I think you are saying that, if I apply for security clearance, I am agreeing that the government can do background security checks on me. Am I understanding you correctly? If so, 2 thoughts:
1) This article doesn't mention anything about people who are applying for security clearance. 2) Even if that were the case, how do the banks know that you signed that waiver? "Hello Mr. Bank Manager, ummm... Joe signed a waiver that lets me check his credit card statements..."
How could this possibly be enforced? Does this mean all religious discussions must include scientology? And all National Geographic programs on the origin of the universe must talk about creationism? Or am I misunderstanding this?
The Wikipedia article on Fairness Doctrine is marked as being non-neutral. Ohhh the irony!!!
From the Supreme Court ruling upholding this:
"There is nothing in the First Amendment which prevents the Government from requiring a licensee to share his frequency with others.... It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount."
What? Did they just say the first ammendment applies to the LISTENER not the SPEAKER? That's just wrong. I don't have the right to LISTEN to any viewpoint. I have the right to SPEAK any viewpoint. I can only hope that quote was taken out of context.
Mass is not a real thing either, unless we can find and measure a graviton. Same with quarks. Same with strings. Same with virtual particles. Once you get down to quantum physics, almost everything is "unreal."
Some of this is perspective. Because of our size, we take gravity for granted as something "real." But it is no different from a string - you can't see it directly. But if you were a proton, a string would seem more "real" to you than gravity, because it would likely affect your daily life.
If it were possible for a computer to know what is legal and illegal, or moral and immoral, then why limit it to a piece of software on a disk? We could just put it on a chip and into everyone's brain to make them only do moral/legal things. And we could replace courts and judges too, since they just enforce the law, and this chip somehow knows the law. There are various Sci-Fi/distopian works based on this concept. They aren't pretty.
Ohhhh, THIS is why the cable company wants the FCC's powers limited. The FCC is standardizing cable boxes and the cable companies are going to lose their lock-in.
Before reading this article, I was hating the FCC's technology mandates because of the broadcast flag. But now I see that the FCC's technology mandates, in general, seem to be pretty good. B&W TV, Color TV, standardizing cable signals, standardizing set-top boxes. The FCC is a blight that the courts fixed. But it seems like we are better with them, than without them.
Of course a cable company would not want a government body to force them to use a standard. They are feeding you FUD. It's like saying you work for AT&T and they are telling you how network neutrality is awful and you should vote against it.
I'll accept the "comes with Windows" argument. It's just kinda funny that this open-source 3D printer from Cornell university was done with a close-source proprietary video codec. Gotta laugh.
I had to struggle with that myself. I've found several ways:
1) Telephone service and Internet service are not free markets, so the free market rules do not apply. In the Libertarian philosphy, you would not need this regulation because, if the consumer prefers Network Neutrality, then they would pick an ISP who offers it. The problem is that consumers don't have that choice. #1: Most areas only allow for 1 or 2 ISPs. #2: A given packet may travel throug a dozen different networks. I can choose who I subscribe to, but not what all the other hops on the internet are. So in the end, consumer's don't have a choice.
2) Even free markets require rules. Capitalism only works if all competitors play fairly. That's why we have truth in advertising laws, labeling requirements on food, antitrust laws to stop cartels, etc. The consumer cannot make a fair choice if they are given misinformation. A non-neutral internet would allow ISPs to engage in a sort of cartel where they could delay or modify data that they didn't like. The free market won't work without network neutrality.
Imagine if Comcast partnered with Barnes And Noble so that Amazon.com packets were delayed and Barnes and Noble packets were routed first. Consumers might switch to the "faster" site and thus make a decision that didn't reflect their true free market decision.
3) Freedom of speech Since ISPs are corporations, it could cause a "chilling effect" if they were permitted to censor (or at least delay) information they didn't like. Maybe liberalblogs.org would be slower than republicansrock.net in some areas of the country. That's very dangerous.
This is a bit off-topic, but I really am trying to find the answer since the posted video is a WMV: Why do people create WMV files if they aren't using DRM? I actually don't even know of any programs that write them. What is the advantage over AVI or MP4? AVI is an open standard container format. MP4 is the ISO standard for MPEG 4. Isn't WMV just a patent-encumbered version of AVI?
I've struggled to understand this issue ever since I first bought an ATI or nVidia card and said "ooh, I want to play games under Linux!" So I'm following this discussion, and I'm now trying to figure out what you would do in this situation. You work using a custom piece of hardware, and you need to write a custom driver to talk to it.
Now you listed 2 possibilities so far: 1) Submit the driver to the kernel maintainers 2) Buy another OS
1) I assume that the kernel maintainers won't accept maintenance work for this driver. It would be silly for them to volunteer to maintain everyone else's proprietary software.:-) 2) Buying another OS. Is that really what you advocate? It kinda takes away Linux's reputation as a hobbyists tool if you are suggesting that people not use it if they need a custom driver.
It seems like there is a 3rd solution that solves everyone's problems: 3) Make a stable kernel API for drivers
Kernel maintainers won't need to maintain drivers at all. Third parties can work with custom harware more easily. And commercial closed-source drivers will be easier to maintain. It seems to me this option benefits everyone - even people you hate. Is this an example of cutting off one's nose to spite their face? Don't do something that benefits me, because it might benefit my enemy?
I bet this is big news to Americans: a government that can responsibly deter crime without infringing on the rights of the citizens. How did those darn Germans do it? Some sort of miraculous new technology? Maybe they've invented a porno-detector? Let's take a look!
only if the investigators meet certain conditions, including a concrete suspicion of illegal behavior and narrowly defined search criteria Sounds like a warrant.
The database search was conducted by the credit-card companies, not the German police, which have no direct access to the financial records of people registered in Germany...They must have a concrete suspicion and provide very exact and limited search criteria. Sounds like responsible conduct.
Bizer warned that credit-card data monitoring could lead to mistrust, especially if customers aren't properly informed. Sounds like an understanding of government, law, and proper oversight.
Looking at your resume, you haven't done much Windows API work, and in 1996 you hadn't done any. So let me correct a common misconception about Windows API programming:
There is no reason that someone else could not make controls that fade in with graphics and color menus. No secret Windows APIs are or were required to do this, even at that time. Windows has always allowed applications to draw whatever they want in their windows, and that includes transparency and fading. The win32s extensions for Windows 3.11 even offered support for non-rectangular windows. Even easier, Microsoft licensed their Office controls to applications developers who wanted to do it. There are no special undocumented API calls required to do this stuff.
You didn't read the article, which is why you are completely wrong. An unsharp mask cannot recover data from a blur. And knowing the convolving function does not allow you to reverse it. The best you can do is guestimate, which is what the maxent algorithm you linked to does. It does not reverse the function since that is mathmeatically impossible. And the method discussed in the article does not use this approach.
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of people talk about blaming the CEOs for this type of behavior. But as a programmer, I think of the people who actually implemented this. Somewhere, there is some employee or contractor who wrote a rootkit for Sony. Maybe a few people. And somebody was paid to make an ISO image containing music tracks and a rootkit. I would love to know what they thought when he made that ISO image. Did he call his boss and say "Hey! There's a rootkit on here!" or not? How about the team of testers who had to compromise their machines and verify what information was sent back? Did any of them think that maybe this wasn't such a good idea?
There are a lot of people responsible for this type of thing. Is corporate-group-think so powerful that these people didn't even realize what they were doing was wrong? Or did they hold their tongues out of fear? Or were they malicious?
P.S. I have sigs turned off
I don't have enough MS SQL 2005 experience, but MS SQL 2000 didn't scale very well. The implementation of "shared locks" and "lock escalation" in MSSQL meant that many readers + one big writer = near total database deadlock. The readers would be locked-out every time the writer touched a page they were reading. Oracle, PostGreSQL, and SQL 2005 support a system where readers never interfere with writers.
I know that there are big database features in Oracle that are way over my head and I can't go into. Some Google searches will give you some opinions. This comparison looks very well written.
Please link to some of those comments, because I think you have misunderstood them.
Slashdotters don't like the parental monitoring software because they think that parents, not software, should monitor their kids. That viewpoint is completely consistent with what people are saying here today.
1) Parents should monitor their kids
2) Third party software can't be trusted to do it
3) Technological systems don't work anyway
That's amazing to me though: My bank just lets me enter in a PIN just the same as if I used an ATM. No one-time-pads at all. It looks to me like the bank was actually being fairly secure.
Carmack's style of games don't fit the Wii. His games aren't known for innovative game play. Making a game for the Wii is uniquely different from making a game for anything else. So even if Carmack ports games to the Wii, they are going to be just that: ports of games.
Regarding Happy Birthday - you are right. Same thing with people making fan art. But that isn't as likely with software.
If that still doesn't make sense, consider this: The only time that this cycle reaches near 100% cyclic efficiency is if you pay a domestic worker for a labor-only task. Ex: A wealthy guy pays someone to wash their yacht. Of course, even that isn't a perfect cycle since water and gas to drive there and food and electricity and soap were all consumed in the process. These defense systems for passenger jets are a drop in the bucket compared to the war in Iraq. If we used that logic, then we would spend money on everything and anything. Because, it surely is cheaper than the war in Iraq! That's not an argument FOR doing this. It is an argument AGAINST the war.
Let me concede you your idea though: If the goal is to make people think they are safe, and to make terrorists think it isn't worth trying -- then we should test a system like this, then pretend to install it.
From the article:
Now there is a minefield: DMCA like crud that makes researchers fear doing research. But not copyrights.
The RIAA may only go after uploaders, but that doesn't mean that you aren't committing a crime. If, by some luck, you weren't sentenced for copyright infringement, you would at least be an accessory.
Please clarify: I think you are saying that, if I apply for security clearance, I am agreeing that the government can do background security checks on me. Am I understanding you correctly? If so, 2 thoughts:
1) This article doesn't mention anything about people who are applying for security clearance.
2) Even if that were the case, how do the banks know that you signed that waiver? "Hello Mr. Bank Manager, ummm... Joe signed a waiver that lets me check his credit card statements..."
The Wikipedia article on Fairness Doctrine is marked as being non-neutral. Ohhh the irony!!!
From the Supreme Court ruling upholding this:
What? Did they just say the first ammendment applies to the LISTENER not the SPEAKER? That's just wrong. I don't have the right to LISTEN to any viewpoint. I have the right to SPEAK any viewpoint. I can only hope that quote was taken out of context.
Netflix needs to make a version of their software that runs on PS3, XBOX 360, Wii, Tivo, etc. If they did that, then the HTPC would become ubiquitous.
Mass is not a real thing either, unless we can find and measure a graviton. Same with quarks. Same with strings. Same with virtual particles. Once you get down to quantum physics, almost everything is "unreal."
Some of this is perspective. Because of our size, we take gravity for granted as something "real." But it is no different from a string - you can't see it directly. But if you were a proton, a string would seem more "real" to you than gravity, because it would likely affect your daily life.
If it were possible for a computer to know what is legal and illegal, or moral and immoral, then why limit it to a piece of software on a disk? We could just put it on a chip and into everyone's brain to make them only do moral/legal things. And we could replace courts and judges too, since they just enforce the law, and this chip somehow knows the law. There are various Sci-Fi/distopian works based on this concept. They aren't pretty.
Ohhhh, THIS is why the cable company wants the FCC's powers limited. The FCC is standardizing cable boxes and the cable companies are going to lose their lock-in.
Before reading this article, I was hating the FCC's technology mandates because of the broadcast flag. But now I see that the FCC's technology mandates, in general, seem to be pretty good. B&W TV, Color TV, standardizing cable signals, standardizing set-top boxes. The FCC is a blight that the courts fixed. But it seems like we are better with them, than without them.
Hold up! The FCC's broadcast flag requirement has been removed. If you're company is rolling out the broadcast flag, they are doing it of their own volition.
Of course a cable company would not want a government body to force them to use a standard. They are feeding you FUD. It's like saying you work for AT&T and they are telling you how network neutrality is awful and you should vote against it.
I'll accept the "comes with Windows" argument. It's just kinda funny that this open-source 3D printer from Cornell university was done with a close-source proprietary video codec. Gotta laugh.
I had to struggle with that myself. I've found several ways:
1) Telephone service and Internet service are not free markets, so the free market rules do not apply.
In the Libertarian philosphy, you would not need this regulation because, if the consumer prefers Network Neutrality, then they would pick an ISP who offers it. The problem is that consumers don't have that choice. #1: Most areas only allow for 1 or 2 ISPs. #2: A given packet may travel throug a dozen different networks. I can choose who I subscribe to, but not what all the other hops on the internet are. So in the end, consumer's don't have a choice.
2) Even free markets require rules.
Capitalism only works if all competitors play fairly. That's why we have truth in advertising laws, labeling requirements on food, antitrust laws to stop cartels, etc. The consumer cannot make a fair choice if they are given misinformation. A non-neutral internet would allow ISPs to engage in a sort of cartel where they could delay or modify data that they didn't like. The free market won't work without network neutrality.
Imagine if Comcast partnered with Barnes And Noble so that Amazon.com packets were delayed and Barnes and Noble packets were routed first. Consumers might switch to the "faster" site and thus make a decision that didn't reflect their true free market decision.
3) Freedom of speech
Since ISPs are corporations, it could cause a "chilling effect" if they were permitted to censor (or at least delay) information they didn't like. Maybe liberalblogs.org would be slower than republicansrock.net in some areas of the country. That's very dangerous.
This is a bit off-topic, but I really am trying to find the answer since the posted video is a WMV: Why do people create WMV files if they aren't using DRM? I actually don't even know of any programs that write them. What is the advantage over AVI or MP4? AVI is an open standard container format. MP4 is the ISO standard for MPEG 4. Isn't WMV just a patent-encumbered version of AVI?
I've struggled to understand this issue ever since I first bought an ATI or nVidia card and said "ooh, I want to play games under Linux!" So I'm following this discussion, and I'm now trying to figure out what you would do in this situation. You work using a custom piece of hardware, and you need to write a custom driver to talk to it.
:-)
Now you listed 2 possibilities so far:
1) Submit the driver to the kernel maintainers
2) Buy another OS
1) I assume that the kernel maintainers won't accept maintenance work for this driver. It would be silly for them to volunteer to maintain everyone else's proprietary software.
2) Buying another OS. Is that really what you advocate? It kinda takes away Linux's reputation as a hobbyists tool if you are suggesting that people not use it if they need a custom driver.
It seems like there is a 3rd solution that solves everyone's problems:
3) Make a stable kernel API for drivers
Kernel maintainers won't need to maintain drivers at all. Third parties can work with custom harware more easily. And commercial closed-source drivers will be easier to maintain. It seems to me this option benefits everyone - even people you hate. Is this an example of cutting off one's nose to spite their face? Don't do something that benefits me, because it might benefit my enemy?
Amazing!
Looking at your resume, you haven't done much Windows API work, and in 1996 you hadn't done any. So let me correct a common misconception about Windows API programming:
There is no reason that someone else could not make controls that fade in with graphics and color menus. No secret Windows APIs are or were required to do this, even at that time. Windows has always allowed applications to draw whatever they want in their windows, and that includes transparency and fading. The win32s extensions for Windows 3.11 even offered support for non-rectangular windows. Even easier, Microsoft licensed their Office controls to applications developers who wanted to do it. There are no special undocumented API calls required to do this stuff.
You didn't read the article, which is why you are completely wrong. An unsharp mask cannot recover data from a blur. And knowing the convolving function does not allow you to reverse it. The best you can do is guestimate, which is what the maxent algorithm you linked to does. It does not reverse the function since that is mathmeatically impossible. And the method discussed in the article does not use this approach.