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User: Joce640k

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  1. I prefer this name... on Swedish Pirate Party Fails To Enter Parliament · · Score: 1

    I think normal people will have a hard time understanding Pirate Party politics anyway. Copying something is obviously wrong, explaining that it's a reaction to the RIAA's tactics, the way that people can buy and sell laws, and the way they want to monitor everything that's done online in the name of "copyright" is long and complicated.

    I prefer to explain it as the party for people who are fed up with the weasels we normally get to vote for, and leave it at that. The Pirate Party is unlikely to ever win serious power but I want politicians to have one eye on those votes next time they sit down to lunch with the RIAA.

  2. Re:If they want to be taken seriously on Swedish Pirate Party Fails To Enter Parliament · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is it any more stupid than "Liberal", "Labour" or "Conservative"?

    If a new party came along calling itself the "The Conservative Party" you'd probably come up with a few jokes. Their original name ("The Whigs") is even better.

  3. Still a win on Swedish Pirate Party Fails To Enter Parliament · · Score: 1

    Politicians in other parties will be thinking about that 1% next time they sit down to dinner with the RIAA.

  4. Who's holding a gun to your head? on Intel Wants To Charge $50 To Unlock Your CPU's Full Capabilities · · Score: 1

    Please be more specific...I'm not seeing anybody.

  5. They might be doing it on purpose. on Intel Wants To Charge $50 To Unlock Your CPU's Full Capabilities · · Score: 1

    The whole idea of this might be that it's 'broken'. What would you rather buy? An Intel chip that you can hack (eg. i5 to i7) or an AMD chip that you can't?

    You can bet that each chip will only go up one stepping, not all the way to the top and there will be other limitations (maybe only mid-range chips will allow it).

    It's a bit like AMD's black editions - they don't garantee overclocking but hint that it might work. They never harmed AMD sales. I bet broken DRM won't harm Intel sales either.

  6. Re:I'm all for it on Intel Wants To Charge $50 To Unlock Your CPU's Full Capabilities · · Score: 1

    I understand it as well as you do. You're not thinking hard enough. If 'n' isn't different for every chip then it's broken. ...and if 'n' can be different for every chip then symmetric crypto will work just fine (and be much simpler to implement).

  7. Re:This is why we need to use Ruby on Rails. on Researchers Demo ASP.NET Crypto Attack · · Score: 1

    Visual basic is for weenies. QBASIC has everything a real programmer needs.

  8. Re:But wait on Linux Kernel Exploit Busily Rooting 64-Bit Machines · · Score: 1

    The trick is to combine this with another exploit that would normally only get you normal user access.

  9. Re:In "real life" it goes to the Third World on What Happens to Australia's E-Waste · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What's to stop people just dumping it on the street at night? Who's going to drive it all the way to a special place and pay for the privilege?

    Here we have a truck which comes round on Thursday mornings to collect your old stuff.

  10. Re:It's all about entropy on Distinguishing Encrypted Data From Random Data? · · Score: 1

    Nope. Imagine compressing a big file full of zeros. Most compressors will produce repeating output for that.

  11. Re:At the risk of doing someone's homework in a fo on Distinguishing Encrypted Data From Random Data? · · Score: 1

    Maybe you should design it so the encrypted data has some patterns in it (ie. interleaved with the ciphertext)

  12. Re:It depends.... on Distinguishing Encrypted Data From Random Data? · · Score: 1

    Simple: Because there's a difference between "the card in this camera has some holiday snaps on it" and "the card in this camera has a file on it which is indistinguishable from random noise".

    One will get you waved through, the other will get you tied up in the back room, drugged and being hit with a wrench.

  13. Re:And who is going to kill 80 million people? on Capturing Carbon With Garbage Heaps · · Score: 1

    If we reduce to 80 million we have to kill 720 million.

    I guess we could use them as fuel. It would be the carbon-neutral thing to do.

  14. Re:Yeah on Capturing Carbon With Garbage Heaps · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Um, no. If we reduce the number of people then each of them will wallow in all the surplus energy, guzzling it and releasing huge amounts of CO2.

    The "root problem" is that the economy has been based on fossil fuels for so long that everybody's mindset is broken. eg. Coal power is far more dangerous/dirty than nuclear power but nobody seems to be rushing to switch over.

    It also doesn't help that most of the people who make policies bought their way to power using the profits from oil. Getting them to promote alternatives is like trying to push shit up a hill.

  15. Re:I'm all for it on Intel Wants To Charge $50 To Unlock Your CPU's Full Capabilities · · Score: 1

    Nope. The chip needs all the information in order to be able to verify the key, this means the private part of the key would need to be hidden in the chip and somebody would be able to figure it out eventually.

  16. Re:I hope this doesn't fly ... on Intel Wants To Charge $50 To Unlock Your CPU's Full Capabilities · · Score: 1

    You're aware that the CPU you're using to read this text is deliberately crippled, right? Those little resistors on the back of the chip are only there to disable bits of it. They took a fully-functional top-of-the-range CPU and disabled bits of it because it's what a distributor ordered that day.

    There's sooooo much more processing power in there but it's kept out of your reach because of some marketing guy in a suit.

    You're welcome.

  17. Re:I hope this doesn't fly ... on Intel Wants To Charge $50 To Unlock Your CPU's Full Capabilities · · Score: 1

    Almost every i5 in the entire world is really a perfectly capable i7.

    Intel disabled bits of it purely because the distributor wanted some i5s instead of i7s that day. No other reason.

    The PC you're using to read this has a deliberately-crippled CPU.

    Have a nice day.

  18. Re:I hope this doesn't fly ... on Intel Wants To Charge $50 To Unlock Your CPU's Full Capabilities · · Score: 1

    Swiss army knives can be upgraded. eg. They sell the little screwdriver which fits in the corkscrew separately.

    It costs you money so I guess that makes them a complete ripoff. I'd better start looking for another brand.

    Not.

  19. Re:I hope this doesn't fly ... on Intel Wants To Charge $50 To Unlock Your CPU's Full Capabilities · · Score: 1

    Presumably Intel will be using the CPU serial number to keep track of legitimate users and so forth.

    If you'd bother to read the article (yeah, I know it's a lot to ask...) you'd see it's done via a big blue scratch card which you can buy pay cash for in a shop.

  20. Re:OEMs on Intel Wants To Charge $50 To Unlock Your CPU's Full Capabilities · · Score: 1

    This whole page is hilarious...

  21. Re:They've been doing this for forever. on Intel Wants To Charge $50 To Unlock Your CPU's Full Capabilities · · Score: 1

    Not quite. What Intel did was make the best chips it could possibly make, then it set the clock speeds according to what the distributors ordered from them.

    Intel has NEVER set the clock speed/abilities of every chip according to how well the chip did in QC testing.

  22. Re:They've been doing this for forever. on Intel Wants To Charge $50 To Unlock Your CPU's Full Capabilities · · Score: 1

    PS: So has AMD. And every other chip maker.

  23. Re:Can you hear that? on Intel Wants To Charge $50 To Unlock Your CPU's Full Capabilities · · Score: 1

    How on earth did that get modded 'insightful', it's stupidity incarnate.

    The ONLY difference between this chip and most of the other chips you've ever owned (AMD included) is that the 'locks' aren't soldered onto the chip. If this is a ripoff then all those other chips were too.

  24. Re:Can you hear that? on Intel Wants To Charge $50 To Unlock Your CPU's Full Capabilities · · Score: 1

    Guess what, they even do it with chips that made quality control. They make the best quality chips they con possible make and set the clock speeds according to what the distributors have ordered, not according to what the chips are capable of.

  25. Re:Yeah, That'll Last on Intel Wants To Charge $50 To Unlock Your CPU's Full Capabilities · · Score: 1

    Intel had chips with unique serial numbers back in the Pentium III days. I'm sure they still remember how to do it.