>That sounds like a monumental mistake, not a single small mistake, what are they on?
Exchanging the secret key is The Big Problem of cryptography.
It's really hard to both give and retain the key. That's the fatal flaw in most DRM schemes. You want to massively distribute something and allow the client to have a hands-off installation process, but you also want exclusive control over that process.
Didn't work for DVD-CSS. Doesn't work for Dongled software. Totally didn't work for this virus thingy.
Every state regulates alcohol sales. If they didn't, federal law would make it impossible to have *any* alcohol sales.
>Utterly Insane Anti-Smoking Regulatation...
This is the same in quite a few places. I support it. I would support legislation making tobacco a controlled substance with exception for medicinal uses.
>No Economy of which to speak.
Lots of people with good jobs up there would disagree with you.
>No individual health Insurance.
Illegal in the State of Washington, or what the hell are you talking about?
>DEREGULATE Liquer Sales
Sounds like you have a problem with the liquor laws in your state.
>Then of course, there's the entire 2006 titty-bar regulation...
>If you disagree on me that pot is wrong and it is wrong to infringe copyrights - that is another subject.
Pot is no more wrong that coffee or peanut butter (far safer than either).
As for copyright infringement, I want my copyrights to carry the exact same weight for me, that they do for big corporations, then I'll say the system is just and fair. As it stands, large corporations get much more authority from their copyrights than individuals get. That's neither just nor fair, and should not be useful in a system that has a strong "equal protection" doctrine.
Personally I would just flat out ignore the law, mod chip it, run XMBC or linux or whatever and not care that I am "doing something illegal"
Oh, I don't care about "illegal" in the first place, and it is not illegal where I live to modchip an XBox. But then it's more effort than I want to put into it.
I'm just sincerely looking for the MechAssault game to do the softmod with, and it bothers me that it's hard to find.
>I ahve a copy of mech assault I never finished. What is this exploit that you speak of?
The no-modchip way to boot Linux on a first-generation XBox is to put a boot loader in a savegame, which can be loaded from the original version of MechAssault.
That certainly the first edition of MechAssault a sought-after item, since the game was "fixed" for later editions. Now the MechAssault game is common as dirt in stores and rental shops, but I never see the original edition. Later editions have been out long enough that I have to assume the resale market is polluted with those. Sellers never seem to know what I'm talking about when I ask.
I want the mod, and I'd pay a premium for a guarantee that I could get the correct version. I think it would be nice to have an over-the-table source for such things. I don't think there's anything clandestine about it (which there might be with modchips).
"There are other games that allow the hack, too - the original Splinter Cell and 007: Agent Under Fire (original versions of both games)."
I was just using Mechassault as an example. I'd settle for any those as well. I don't expect anyone to explicitly put in their ad "this is the version you need to boot Linux on an X-Box", but why not?
"http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40 & satitle=mechassault Bam, it will cost you about 5 bucks plus another 5 to ship it Paypal makes it all easy and you can just message the seller to ask what version it is. "
But how do I know it's the right version? That game was re-released and not renamed, with the exploit fixed.
I've been looking for the version of Mechassault that lets you do the classic XBox linux loader trick. All the xbox mod sites make it sound like Mechassault is easy to find, taken for granted, but the hole was fixed a long, long time ago, and I've never seen a first-edition game.
I don't know if the X-Box came out this past winter or the winter before, but yesterday while shopping for light bulbs and laundry soap, I saw two XBox 360s in a store. Those were the first ones I've ever seen.
Now, I have a first-generation XBox, and a couple of games. I don't play it, but I have guests who frequently do.
Anyway, I bought my XBox on a whim, when it just really seemed cheap. I'm sure if I get a 360, it will be for the same reason -- the "new" will have left its marketplace, and it will be, say, half the current retail price. By then, there might even be some interesting games for the platform.
>Linux is nearly usable for the mass market now; much less 10 years ago.
What Linux is today is obscenely better than the mass market stuff of 10 years ago. That doesn't mean to suggest that it's ten years behind anything, either. Linux is close on the heels of the mainstream stuff, and in many areas, passed it a long time ago.
I don't know what the "nearly usable" actuall refers to, as I sit here, happily using my Linux box. Yeah, sometimes I boot to Windows. When I'm too lazy to figure out a video codec, or when I need to run a certain teleconference app that is choppy in VMware. That's about it. I have an Audio recording and Synth workstation that's Windows XP, because my applications there are Windows-only, but I'd hardly call that "mainstream."
"In an unconfirmed report, the English teacher for this school has apologized saying that the school needed a better example of irony because the students just weren't getting it."
So is this teacher going to sign his or her name to a motion for injuction to stop the process against the kid, or is he or she just going to use this as a platform to make smart-assed unconfirmed reports?
It might have been a better strategy for Stallman to understand that the general public is, for whatever reasons, unable or unwilling to understand the distinctions between "free" and "free" software. Or maybe they don't care. But whatever the reasons, perhaps there was a missed opportunity to exploit that misunderstanding/apathy, instead of the folloy of trying to change people's attitudes.
GNU software is a complete success. He wanted more than mere "success", he wanted a revolution. Oh well.
I remember being told, back in the early 90s, not to use Linux in my business, since I should wait for the GNU Hurd to come out.
If I'd followed that advice, I would have missed the entire window of opportunity for success in the tech market, and I would still be waiting for Hurd.
Today, the suggestion seems to be to abandon Java. There are other languages that might be a better fit for my problem domain, but I have hundreds of thousands of modules, dozens of man-years, and revenue generating production systems built on Java (and running on Sun hardware). We *chose* what Richard calls "The Java Trap".
Stallman seems to not realize that people in the industry hear his plaintive cries, understand fully what he is trying to say, and then move down to the other end of the Group W bench.
>...that brings back. Quarterdeck's QEMM was quite the lifesaver back in those olden days.
Windows was a GIANT step backwards from DesqView, but fortunately relief came quickly in the form of free unixes and life has been good ever since, hardware makers be damned.
We used computers to solve all of those, plucked the low hanging fruit, and then hit the wall when we realized the *really* interesting problems were those that would take computers trillions of years to solve...
>Volumes 1-3 of The Art of Computer Programming by Knuth. Be sure to do all the problems .
Knuth is great, but I don't know about actually working through all the MIX stuff.
It might be more constructive to get Cormen/Lieserson/Rivest and read it cover to cover, however long it takes to do it. Similarly, maybe a summer with a discrete math book would be appropriate before (or during) that.
On the practical side, study the complete works of W. Richard Stevens, and rightfully call yourself a Unix system programming guru.
Choose an editor and learn every feature of it. (not getting into the argument of which is better).
Choose a high level language and read whatever O'Reilly has to say on it. Different languages have different canonical literature. Choose mentors and take their advice.
In 1965 I had a toy that accepted punched cards, each with a trivia question, and compared the user's multiple-choice input to what was coded on the card, and indicated a result on a matrix display of flashlight bulbs. The card feeder mechanism was motorized, and I recognized this toy as The Second Coolest Thing In The World (the first being a modular, articulated, battery powered, tread driven robot that I have never seen any vintage toy catalogs or anywhere else.)
Anyway I know that toy wasn't a "computer", but it certainly planted a seed that directed my life and career. By 1973 I had access to the telex network which means that as a little kid I was basically using the "internet" as it was, and also a little later, programming in FOCAL on a remote PDP, from the teletype in my dad's office. I was also able to access an IBM 360 system (Dow Chemical's order system, also remoted from my dad's office) where I could create and save text files (and nothing else that I could ever figure out.) I learned the bizarre EBCDIC character set before I learned cursive writing... And I could read ASCII on TTY paper tape, which I simply recognized as a substitution cipher (something I learned from a children's menu in a restaurant.)
So my parents recognized my interest and aptitude (duh) and bought me a Model I TRS-80. It had a 2-digit serial number, and unfortunately, when it was upgraded to Level II, all they did was replace the thing. I appreciated the upgrade, but even then I realized that losing the very early serial number would be regrettable later.
Oh well.
So I went to college, and discovered to my horror that, #1, the idea of the personal microcomputer had yet to catch on, #2, the curriculum was focused heavily on COBOL programming (which was still done with punch cards!), #3, that the OS used was "MUSIC" (McGill University System for Interactive Computing), which I later realized was a fairly good VMS clone, but *BORING* to learn, and #4, university advisors were told to discourage "Computer Science" as a major (no future in it) and recommended "Business Computer Information Systems" instead.
So to make a long story short, my degree is in music theory and composition. All my formal computer science education has come recently after two decades of working in the field and a lifetime of self-education... Doesn't bother me a bit.
Discrete Mathematics. You can take this as far as you care to -- there's no "end" to the process, but if you don't bother learning the basis of the theory of computing, sooner or later you will hit a wall, and might not even realize you've hit it.
Datapath Organization. It is very worthwhile to learn the MIPS architecture from the Hennessey and Patterson book, even if you consider MIPS to be an obsolete architecture. Even if you have no intention of programming in assembly language, as long as computers are digital machines, it behooves you to understand how arithmetic and control are done with gates, how data are organized in binary, and how to implement algorithims using only the most essential and elementary pieces. This is a field of study that never stops also.
These two areas are really where I see knowledge gaps in people I have interviewed. Now, in the real world, (e.g., business software), it's not likely that someone will ask you to prove the time complexity of an algorithm. However, there is definitely a difference in the problem solving approaches by people who do have, and people who do not have a solid theoretical background.
On the other hand, there are university grads who come out of college with great math and science, and (in my neck of the woods) excellent unix systems programming skills, but who have had one, maybe two semesters of courses where they developed any kind of sophisticated system in an OO language. And you can't even count on them having taken a database course (a 400-level elective, which is essentially mutually exclusive with a 3D graphics course, again, here in my hood).
Bear in mind, my shop specializes in a certain flavor of in-house business software, and I really like it when people come in with genuine experience with Java and J2EE. It would make me literally cry if someone were to come in and show me their copy of GoF95 where the page margins are worn down from it being read and referenced so much:-) There is a similar phenomenon among Unix systems programmers -- there are specific sections of the books by W. Richard Stevens that I expect to be more weathered than others.
Maybe I'm giving away the length of my beard, and I am exaggerating a little to make a point. There are some books that you probably already have on your shelf. Actually study them. If your school doesn't teach 3 semesters of discrete math followed by 2 semesters of algorithm analysis and a grad program in analysis, it's not really a CS program at all, in my opinion.
"That's only if the company you're working for (in NY) doesn't itself make any money off of the work you're doing. That NY company pays corporate taxes, and is by its proximity to thousands of other NY businesses, participating plenty in the state economy. "
Fair enough. But you're misunderstanding the purpose of personal taxes: The government has a vested interest in ensuring that it remains difficult for you to become prosperous, and thus, become a threat to their authority.
" Why, because NY residents aren't as able to do the work? Or because the NJ residents (who are paying more taxes, currently) are willing to work for less? There's a lot of competition out there."
They figured out a way to get a piece of the action. They extract it from the worker. And the worker will either tolerate it or he will not. If he chooses "not", the full impact will be more on the order of "quitting and getting a gig elsewhere", and certainly not on the order of "leading an armed rebellion to overthrow the regime of tyranny."
Before you mod me down to "loony", do bear in mind that the last time there was a major issue with taxation in that region, that is precisely what it came down to. Violent rebellion targeted at a full-scale overthrow of the state...
Taxation is a search for an equilibrium solution just barely under the threshold where the people subject to the tax would rather risk their lives by violently opposing it than paying it.
(Remember, the Boston Tea Party perps would have been summarily hanged for what they did, and let's not kid ourselves about the penalties for armed assault against members of the British Army and Navy.)
So, with that in mind, do you consider this level of taxation tolerable, or do you find it intolerable? Tolerable means you are willing to live another day under the status quo. Intolerable means you would prefer, if it comes to it, to die in an effort to ensure that your progeny will enjoy a better life.
"But you're choosing to make money in NY, and this is the price the people of NY want to charge you for playing host to the place where you're making your cash."
I would add, "making your cash, and removing it entirely from the state's economy."
They do have a point (which I disagree with) that that money should carry a higher premium.
You are also, arguably, taking a job away from a New York resident.
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>That sounds like a monumental mistake, not a single small mistake, what are they on?
Exchanging the secret key is The Big Problem of cryptography.
It's really hard to both give and retain the key. That's the fatal flaw in most DRM schemes.
You want to massively distribute something and allow the client to have a hands-off installation
process, but you also want exclusive control over that process.
Didn't work for DVD-CSS. Doesn't work for Dongled software. Totally didn't work for this virus thingy.
>State Controlled Alchohol Sales...
Every state regulates alcohol sales. If they didn't, federal law would make it
impossible to have *any* alcohol sales.
>Utterly Insane Anti-Smoking Regulatation...
This is the same in quite a few places. I support it. I would support legislation making tobacco a controlled substance with exception for medicinal uses.
>No Economy of which to speak.
Lots of people with good jobs up there would disagree with you.
>No individual health Insurance.
Illegal in the State of Washington, or what the hell are you talking about?
>DEREGULATE Liquer Sales
Sounds like you have a problem with the liquor laws in your state.
>Then of course, there's the entire 2006 titty-bar regulation...
Those places are a ripoff anyway.
>And now, no Internet Gambling.
Biggest ripoff in the history of the internet.
I will bet you a DOLLAR, $1.00, that nobody gets prosecuted for this.
>If you disagree on me that pot is wrong and it is wrong to infringe copyrights - that is another subject.
Pot is no more wrong that coffee or peanut butter (far safer than either).
As for copyright infringement, I want my copyrights to carry the exact same weight for me, that they do for big corporations, then I'll say the system is just and fair. As it stands, large corporations get much more authority from their copyrights than individuals get. That's neither just nor fair, and should not be useful in a system that has a strong "equal protection" doctrine.
What's wrong with pot? So wrong that it justifies destroying buildings? What?
Personally I would just flat out ignore the law, mod chip it, run XMBC or linux or whatever and not care that I am "doing something illegal"
Oh, I don't care about "illegal" in the first place, and it is not illegal where I live to modchip an XBox. But then it's more effort than I want to put into it.
I'm just sincerely looking for the MechAssault game to do the softmod with, and it bothers me that it's hard to find.
>I ahve a copy of mech assault I never finished. What is this exploit that you speak of?
The no-modchip way to boot Linux on a first-generation XBox is to put a boot loader in a
savegame, which can be loaded from the original version of MechAssault.
That certainly the first edition of MechAssault a sought-after item, since the game was "fixed" for later editions.
Now the MechAssault game is common as dirt in stores and rental shops, but I never see the original edition. Later editions have been out long enough that I have to assume the resale market is polluted with those. Sellers never seem to know what I'm talking about when I ask.
I want the mod, and I'd pay a premium for a guarantee that I could get the correct version. I think it would be nice to have an over-the-table source for such things. I don't think there's anything clandestine about it (which there might be with modchips).
"There are other games that allow the hack, too - the original Splinter Cell and 007: Agent Under Fire (original versions of both games)."
I was just using Mechassault as an example. I'd settle for any those as well. I don't expect anyone to explicitly put in their ad "this is the version you need to boot Linux on an X-Box", but why not?
"http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R4
"
But how do I know it's the right version? That game was re-released and not renamed, with the exploit fixed.
These Ebay auctions don't specify.
I've been looking for the version of Mechassault that lets you do the classic XBox linux loader trick.
All the xbox mod sites make it sound like Mechassault is easy to find, taken for granted, but the hole was fixed a long, long time ago, and I've never seen a first-edition game.
I don't know if the X-Box came out this past winter or the winter before, but yesterday while shopping for light bulbs and laundry soap, I saw two XBox 360s in a store. Those were the first ones I've ever seen.
Now, I have a first-generation XBox, and a couple of games. I don't play it, but I have guests who frequently do.
Anyway, I bought my XBox on a whim, when it just really seemed cheap. I'm sure if I get a 360, it will be for the same reason -- the "new" will have left its marketplace, and it will be, say, half the current retail price. By then, there might even be some interesting games for the platform.
>And there are probably some examples not based on Phillip K. Dick works, as well.
I find City of Lost Children to be squarely in this category. And also Brazil.
>Linux is nearly usable for the mass market now; much less 10 years ago.
What Linux is today is obscenely better than the mass market stuff of 10 years ago.
That doesn't mean to suggest that it's ten years behind anything, either. Linux is close on the heels of the mainstream stuff, and in many areas, passed it a long time ago.
I don't know what the "nearly usable" actuall refers to, as I sit here, happily using my Linux box. Yeah, sometimes I boot to Windows. When I'm too lazy to figure out a video codec, or when I need to run a certain teleconference app that is choppy in VMware.
That's about it. I have an Audio recording and Synth workstation that's Windows XP, because my applications there are Windows-only, but I'd hardly call that "mainstream."
>I've always wondered why Sun was unable to get Dell and others to pre-install the Java VM.
I feel the same way about Cygwin.
But in Sun's case, I think they believe they will do just fine on their own.
"In an unconfirmed report, the English teacher for this school has apologized saying that the school needed a better example of irony because the students just weren't getting it."
So is this teacher going to sign his or her name to a motion for injuction to stop the process against the kid, or is he or she just going to use this as a platform to make smart-assed unconfirmed reports?
> All software has bugs. ALL SOFTWARE!
What about an implementation of an algorithm that has been rigorously proven
correct?
It might have been a better strategy for Stallman to understand that the general public is, for whatever reasons, unable or unwilling to understand the distinctions between "free" and "free" software. Or maybe they don't care. But whatever the reasons, perhaps there was a missed opportunity to exploit that misunderstanding/apathy, instead of the folloy of trying to change people's attitudes.
GNU software is a complete success. He wanted more than mere "success", he wanted a revolution. Oh well.
I remember being told, back in the early 90s, not to use Linux in my business, since I should wait for the GNU Hurd to come out.
If I'd followed that advice, I would have missed the entire window of opportunity for success in the tech market, and I would still be waiting for Hurd.
Today, the suggestion seems to be to abandon Java. There are other languages that might be a better fit for my problem domain, but I have hundreds of thousands of modules, dozens of man-years, and revenue generating production systems built on Java (and running on Sun hardware). We *chose* what Richard calls "The Java Trap".
Stallman seems to not realize that people in the industry hear his plaintive cries, understand fully what he is trying to say, and then move down to the other end of the Group W bench.
>...that brings back. Quarterdeck's QEMM was quite the lifesaver back in those olden days.
Windows was a GIANT step backwards from DesqView, but fortunately relief came quickly in the form of free unixes and life has been good ever since, hardware makers be damned.
We used computers to solve all of those, plucked the low hanging fruit, and then hit the wall when we realized the *really* interesting problems were those that would take computers trillions of years to solve...
>Volumes 1-3 of The Art of Computer Programming by Knuth. Be sure to do all the problems .
Knuth is great, but I don't know about actually working through all the MIX stuff.
It might be more constructive to get Cormen/Lieserson/Rivest and read it cover to cover, however long it takes to do it. Similarly, maybe a summer with a discrete math book would be appropriate before (or during) that.
On the practical side, study the complete works of W. Richard Stevens, and rightfully call yourself a Unix system programming guru.
Choose an editor and learn every feature of it. (not getting into the argument of which is better).
Choose a high level language and read whatever O'Reilly has to say on it. Different languages have different canonical literature. Choose mentors and take their advice.
>It depends when you first used a computer.
In 1965 I had a toy that accepted punched cards, each with a trivia question, and compared the user's multiple-choice input to what was coded on the card, and indicated a result on a
matrix display of flashlight bulbs. The card feeder mechanism was motorized, and I recognized this toy as The Second Coolest Thing In The World (the first being a modular, articulated, battery powered, tread driven robot that I have never seen any vintage toy catalogs or anywhere else.)
Anyway I know that toy wasn't a "computer", but it certainly planted a seed that directed my life and career. By 1973 I had access to the telex network which means that as a little kid I was basically using the "internet" as it was, and also a little later, programming in FOCAL on a remote PDP, from the teletype in my dad's office. I was also able to access an IBM 360 system (Dow Chemical's order system, also remoted from my dad's office) where I could create and save text files (and nothing else that I could ever figure out.) I learned the bizarre EBCDIC character set before I learned cursive writing... And I could read ASCII on TTY paper tape, which I simply recognized as a substitution cipher (something I learned from a children's menu in a restaurant.)
So my parents recognized my interest and aptitude (duh) and bought me a Model I TRS-80. It had a 2-digit serial number, and unfortunately, when it was upgraded to Level II, all they did was replace the thing. I appreciated the upgrade, but even then I realized that losing the very early serial number would be regrettable later.
Oh well.
So I went to college, and discovered to my horror that, #1, the idea of the personal microcomputer had yet to catch on, #2, the curriculum was focused heavily on COBOL programming (which was still done with punch cards!), #3, that the OS used was "MUSIC" (McGill University System for Interactive Computing), which I later realized was a fairly good VMS clone, but *BORING* to learn, and #4, university advisors were told to discourage "Computer Science" as a major (no future in it) and recommended "Business Computer Information Systems" instead.
So to make a long story short, my degree is in music theory and composition. All my formal computer science education has come recently after two decades of working in the field and a lifetime of self-education... Doesn't bother me a bit.
Discrete Mathematics. You can take this as far as you care to -- there's no "end" to the process, but if you don't bother learning the basis of the theory of computing, sooner or later you will hit a wall, and might not even realize you've hit it.
:-) There is a similar phenomenon among Unix systems programmers -- there are specific sections of the books by W. Richard Stevens that I expect to be more weathered than others.
Datapath Organization. It is very worthwhile to learn the MIPS architecture from the Hennessey and Patterson book, even if you consider MIPS to be an obsolete architecture.
Even if you have no intention of programming in assembly language, as long as computers are digital machines, it behooves you to understand how arithmetic and control are done with gates, how data are organized in binary, and how to implement algorithims using only the most essential and elementary pieces. This is a field of study that never stops also.
These two areas are really where I see knowledge gaps in people I have interviewed. Now, in the real world, (e.g., business software), it's not likely that someone will ask you to prove the time complexity of an algorithm. However, there is definitely a difference in the problem solving approaches by people who do have, and people who do not have a solid theoretical background.
On the other hand, there are university grads who come out of college with great math and science, and (in my neck of the woods) excellent unix systems programming skills, but who have had one, maybe two semesters of courses where they developed any kind of sophisticated system in an OO language. And you can't even count on them having taken a database course (a 400-level elective, which is essentially mutually exclusive with a 3D graphics course, again, here in my hood).
Bear in mind, my shop specializes in a certain flavor of in-house business software, and I really like it when people come in with genuine experience with Java and J2EE. It would make me literally cry if someone were to come in and show me their copy of GoF95 where the page margins are worn down from it being read and referenced so much
Maybe I'm giving away the length of my beard, and I am exaggerating a little to make a point. There are some books that you probably already have on your shelf. Actually study them. If your school doesn't teach 3 semesters of discrete math followed by 2 semesters of algorithm analysis and a grad program in analysis, it's not really a CS program at all, in my opinion.
"That's only if the company you're working for (in NY) doesn't itself make any money off of the work you're doing. That NY company pays corporate taxes, and is by its proximity to thousands of other NY businesses, participating plenty in the state economy. "
Fair enough. But you're misunderstanding the purpose of personal taxes: The government has a vested interest in ensuring that it remains difficult for you to become prosperous, and thus, become a threat to their authority.
"
Why, because NY residents aren't as able to do the work? Or because the NJ residents (who are paying more taxes, currently) are willing to work for less? There's a lot of competition out there."
They figured out a way to get a piece of the action. They extract it from the worker. And the worker will either tolerate it or he will not. If he chooses "not", the full impact will be more on the order of "quitting and getting a gig elsewhere", and certainly not on the order of "leading an armed rebellion to overthrow the regime of tyranny."
Before you mod me down to "loony", do bear in mind that the last time there was a major issue with taxation in that region, that is precisely what it came down to. Violent rebellion targeted at a full-scale overthrow of the state...
>Since when has taxation been about fairness?
Taxation is a search for an equilibrium solution just barely under the threshold where the people subject to the tax would rather risk their lives by violently opposing it than paying it.
(Remember, the Boston Tea Party perps would have been summarily hanged for what they did, and let's not kid ourselves about the penalties for armed assault against members of the British Army and Navy.)
So, with that in mind, do you consider this level of taxation tolerable, or do you find it intolerable? Tolerable means you are willing to live another day under the status quo. Intolerable means you would prefer, if it comes to it, to die in an effort to ensure that your progeny will enjoy a better life.
"But you're choosing to make money in NY, and this is the price the people of NY want to charge you for playing host to the place where you're making your cash."
I would add, "making your cash, and removing it entirely from the state's economy."
They do have a point (which I disagree with) that that money should carry a higher premium.
You are also, arguably, taking a job away from a New York resident.