Even if we ignore the encryption problem, the development of an optimized software MPEG-2, Dolby Digital decoders, integration, synchronizaion, testing with the many strangely encoded streams out there, etc is an effort which should take several man-years. I would say it is outside the capabilities of the open-source community.
The encryption is available only in hardware form and a reverse-engineering resistant software module for Windows. As far as I know it has not been reverse-engineered yet, although the availability of a software implementation should make it possible, regardless of how well it is protected.
885 issued patents are assigned to Microsoft corporation. At least 600 more are pending. The latest (5,907,837 , issued 6 days ago) would appear to let them sue most web news sites, including Slashdot:
"Information retrieval system in an on-line network including separate content and layout of published titles"
Your hardware player plays all MP3s, RIAA continues preparations of stage 2.
Stage 2
Most new CD releases are watermarked. SDMI-format starts becoming widely available. If you want to play SDMI format you must upgrade the PC software that communicates with your player. Upgraded software accepts SDMI but rejects watermarked MP3s with the exception of files you ripped for personal use on your player only.
This "solution" concentrates on the PC software which downloads files to the player. This means that they will try to keep the communication format proprietary and won't be very cooperative with anyone who wants to write download software for a different OS.
But, of course, the communication formats for the common players will eventually be reverse-engineered and download software which ignores fingerprints will be available for all important OSs at a mirror near you.
I must say that I am surprized but this proposal is actually quite reasonable and everyone gets what they want: The RIAA lawyers get their fig leaves and give the go ahead for SDMI, making online distribution an option for the mainstream. The hardware manufacturers don't need to add complex algorithms and make their devices more expensive because it's done on the host. We get something which is easy to reverse-engineer and override because it's in software on the host rather than inside a tamper-resistant chip.
Now if only more commenters actually had read and bothered to understand the article before posting dumb comments...
Using biometrics on your desktop for securing network access is tempting but it is also very dangerous - there must be a secure path from the reader to the verifier. In the case of an ATM it is physically secured inside the ATM strongbox. On a network it would have to be a combination of cryptographic authentication and a tamper-resistant reader (no such thing as tamperproof).
Without this it would be ridiculously easy to sniff your iris/finger/hand/face/voice print over the network and impersonate you.
The embedded cryptographic engine inside the tamper resistant reader would use a challenge-response algorithm to ensure that:
1. The scan comes from a real scanner 2. The scan has been performed in the last few seconds.
Using biometrics on your desktop for securing network logins is tempting but it is also very dangerous - there must be a secure path from the reader to the verifier. In the case of an ATM it is physically secured inside the ATM strongbox. On a network it would have to be a combination of cryptographic authentication and a tamper-resistant reader (no such thing as tamperproof).
Without this it would be ridiculously easy to sniff your iris/finger/hand/face/voice print over the network and impersonate you.
The embedded cryptographic engine inside the tamper resistant reader would use a challenge-response algorithm to enable the server to ensure that:
1. The scan comes from a real scanner 2. The scan has been performed in the last few seconds.
Sometimes I end up in a directory listing, which is a great way to explore a site. Unfortunately, some sites are rude enough to leave directories without index.html and block directory listing. Bad, bad webmaster. No cookie today.
I am using TeraTerm ssh to connect to linux machines and I have found that zmodem is the easiest way to transfer files. Nothing special to set up - it just works.
The major disadvantage is that it ties up your interactive connection.
Many people miss the point of crypto export restriction and point to the facts that strong crypto is wide available outside the US, that the restrictions are not consistent, hard to enforce, etc. Irrelevant.
The restrictions are actually working very well.
Anyone who really wants crypto anywhere in the world will get it. Terrorists and drug cartels are using crypto for decades. What the export restrictions are really doing is prevent the creation and widespread adoption of interoperable international standards for ubiquitous encryption. That's what they really want. They want no obstacles to their dragnet-style eavesdropping on everyone - on you.
There are some indications that FireWire is losing momentum in the PC industry. It should sto;; replace the RCA connectors in the consumer space (good riddance).
People are just tired of waiting. The USB standard was started years AFTER FireWire and has already become a mass-market product. FireWire is still stuck with commitees and interoperability problems.
The two last nails in FireWire's coffin (the first being Apple's ridiculous royalty claims) may be the USB upgrade to similar speeds (USB 2.0) and the upcoming ultrafast ATAPI standard based on serial signalling.
I'm not saying it's totally dead, it may be useful in things like disk farms for video editing and Apple will surely use it, but it won't replace SCSI and ATAPI any time soon and USB 2.0 may be a cheaper and more available connection for video capture, digital satellite receivers, etc.
On the one hand, Thompson criticizes Linux based on technical merits - and he has a point there, technically linux is far from perfect and is based on very old technology. On the other hand, he admits that the reality of the OS market means that nobody really cares if your system is technically superior and to compete you have to put an enormous effort in application development - and there's no denying that Linux has done exactly that.
What would you do if one of the next versions of Red Hat introduced a set of scripts for initialization and configuration which does everything, including making coffee and ordering a pizza but is overarchitected, slow, complicated and hard to maintain. Would you switch to a different distribution just because of that or would you stay with RH?
"Others claim that this has already happened." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
I believe it shouldn't be terribly difficult to mount a camera on top of the 3D display, use pattern recognition to search the video signal for something which looks like a face and adjust the 3D image accordingly.
Yes there is such a thing as cyberspace. It's a word. It's an idea. You may agree with what you think some people believe it means or you may not, but there it is, in your head. You make it exist, along with all the people who have certain interpretations of it in their heads.
Words and ideas have power. I think few people can argue with that. Open Source is words and ideas and they have very real power to threaten some very powerful corporations.
You may say that it's not words and ideas, that it is coding and long hours of debugging. This is also correct. But the words and ideas had the power to get thousands of programmers to spend the time coding and debugging.
Most of the mystic's terminology for describing this kind of power makes mosts of us reject what they are saying without actually listening to it. A lot of it is admittedly pure BS, but some of it actually provides some insight into how this power works.
If you take the idea that "cyberspace is the New Jerusalem" literally to mean that "cyberspace is an actual location in some other plane of existence accessible through my modem and in that plane there is a city called New Jerusalem with all the jewels and stuff" it is indeed ridiculous. But if you take into account the fact that many people have a somewhat shared image in their mind of something which is beyond their day to day existence, whether it is inspired by Judeo-Christian sources or not and that the experience of being online makes them somehow relate to that idea - this is powerful stuff. It doesn't need to be "true" or "false", it's just there. I suspect the majority of people who share this idea also don't believe it to be literally true, but it's still there. You can't ignore something which many people have in their heads. For example, many people have in their heads the strange notion that green pieces of paper are worth something. They are only worth something as long as enough people have that idea in their heads.
Ultrawideband is a form of spread spectrum. The major difference between it and traditional forms of spread spectrum is that it is spread over a band which is wide relative to the center frequency (>25% of center frequency)
For example, Qualcomm's CDMA is spread over 1.25MHz around a center frequency in the 800MHz band while a typical UWB system covers over 1GHz starting at around 500MHz.
Conventional spread spectrum systems use frequency hopping or direct sequence to spread the signal. UWB uses a simple and often forgotten form of spread spectrum called time hopping where short pulses are transmitted at pseudo-random intervals. The reason this modulation is used is simply because FH and DS cannot be practically implemented over such a wide bandwidth.
It's not new. It has been used in jamming resistant radars for at least two decades. What's new is an implementation on a single chip which is potentially cheaper than even conventional carrier-based RF technology at large quantities.
The primary advantage of ultrawideband is its insensitivity to fading. Narrowband transmissions can experience significant attenuation of the signal due to signals travelling through different reflection paths canceling out each other. A wideband signal is virtually immune to this and therefore requires about 20db less power usually taken as a safety margin against fading.
Ultrawideband systems can communicate over significant distances using a lower power spectral density than the electromagnetic noise generated by a typical computer.
The primary limitation to using ultrawideband systems is the wording of part 15 of FCC rules - apparently while your computer is allowed to pollute the spectrum for no good reason it is not allowed to transmit the same power INTENTIONALLY.
The FCC has issued a NOI (Notice Of Inquiry) seeking comments on possible change to these rules. Opposing comments come from the usual suspects: mostly users of the restricted bands such as government agencies.
Michael Dell doesn't need "to get" anything. He gets boxes sold. What most of us fail to understand is that Dell is not a technology company, Dell is a highly fine-tuned business for moving boxes and bullying suppliers into nonexistent margins.
He is going to do it, he is going to do it the right way (from a boxmover's point of view, not a technologist's point of view) and he's going to be moving even more boxes than he does now.
I believe that DjVu may do to comics what MP3 did to music: you can now scan in an entire comic book in high resolution and the download will be just a few megabytes.
He wasn't saying "I'm an ignorant user who doesn't know what keyservers are"
He wasn't saying "I don't know how cryptographic trust relationships work"
He wans't saying "The PGP web of trust doesn't work"
I believe what he was trying to say was "Wouldn't it be nice if someone compiled and published a keyring with signing keys of some of the major distributions and packages?"
That someone would need to be more or less globally known and trusted in the Open Source world and sign that keyring.
Slashdot Mirror
Every prospectus I have ever seen contains statements which are at least as scary as these.
It's standard practice to avoid getting sued later for not disclosing the risks.
Even if we ignore the encryption problem, the development of an optimized software MPEG-2, Dolby Digital decoders, integration, synchronizaion, testing with the many strangely encoded streams out there, etc is an effort which should take several man-years. I would say it is outside the capabilities of the open-source community.
The encryption is available only in hardware form and a reverse-engineering resistant software module for Windows. As far as I know it has not been reverse-engineered yet, although the availability of a software implementation should make it possible, regardless of how well it is protected.
Here is the list of 25 most popular files on download.com. Can you spot any other potential AOL acquisitions on this list?
1 ICQ - Seek out friends and colleagues on the Internet
2 Winamp - Play MP3, MP2, CD, MOD, and WAV audio files
3 WinZip - Handle ZIP files with ease
4 Webshots Desktop - Put a new photo on your desktop every day of the year
5 DevPower FlatBttn (Visual Basic 5.0) - Add a flat-style button to forms or Web pages
6 Netscape Communicator - Browse the Web and more with the latest version of Communicator
7 Sonique popular - Enjoy MP3, CD, WAV, MOD, and WMA audio with impressive visuals
8 Microsoft Internet Explorer - Surf the Net with the latest version of this popular browser
9 ICQ (without MFC DLLs) - Seek out friends and colleagues on the Internet
10 CuteFTP - Transfer files with this FTP client
11 Go!Zilla - Manage your downloads and schedule them for convenient times
12 NetZIP Deluxe - Download, unzip, and install software automatically with a suite of file
compression utilities
13 AudioCD MP3 Studio - Make your own audio CDs out of MP3 files
14 NetSonic - Access your favorite sites more quickly when browsing the Web
15 WindowBlinds - Change the look and feel of Windows
16 Phantom Sonique - Try a Phantom Menace-themed MP3 player
17 DirectX Drivers - Install this 32-bit gaming requirement for Windows 95/98
18 A Nightmare on Sesame Street - Take Ernie and Bert on a violent rampage
19 PowerUp 98 Deluxe - Fine-tune your Windows configuration
20 RealPlayer - Enjoy streaming audio and video on the Web
21 Waterfalls - Relax in front of this photo-realistic waterfall screensaver
22 GetRight - Resume downloading a file after a disconnection
23 McAfee VirusScan - Protect your system with cutting-edge antivirus technology
24 ICQ Plus - Customize the appearance of ICQ
25 Adobe Acrobat Reader - Read Adobe PDF files from the Web
885 issued patents are assigned to Microsoft corporation. At least 600 more are pending. The latest (5,907,837 , issued 6 days ago) would appear to let them sue most web news sites, including Slashdot:
"Information retrieval system in an on-line network including separate content and layout of published titles"
Stage 1
Your hardware player plays all MP3s, RIAA continues preparations of stage 2.
Stage 2
Most new CD releases are watermarked. SDMI-format starts becoming widely available. If you want to play SDMI format you must upgrade the PC software that communicates with your player. Upgraded software accepts SDMI but rejects watermarked MP3s with the exception of files you ripped for personal use on your player only.
This "solution" concentrates on the PC software which downloads files to the player. This means that they will try to keep the communication format proprietary and won't be very cooperative with anyone who wants to write download software for a different OS.
But, of course, the communication formats for the common players will eventually be reverse-engineered and download software which ignores fingerprints will be available for all important OSs at a mirror near you.
I must say that I am surprized but this proposal is actually quite reasonable and everyone gets what they want: The RIAA lawyers get their fig leaves and give the go ahead for SDMI, making online distribution an option for the mainstream. The hardware manufacturers don't need to add complex algorithms and make their devices more expensive because it's done on the host. We get something which is easy to reverse-engineer and override because it's in software on the host rather than inside a tamper-resistant chip.
Now if only more commenters actually had read and bothered to understand the article before posting dumb comments...
Another reason why the US should be careful about this is that eastern european countries seem to have an ample supply of highly skilled crackers.
Using biometrics on your desktop for securing network access is tempting but it is also very dangerous - there must be a secure path from the reader to the verifier. In the case of an ATM it is physically secured inside the ATM strongbox.
On a network it would have to be a combination of cryptographic authentication and a tamper-resistant reader (no such thing as tamperproof).
Without this it would be ridiculously easy to sniff your iris/finger/hand/face/voice print over the network and impersonate you.
The embedded cryptographic engine inside the tamper resistant reader would use a challenge-response algorithm to ensure that:
1. The scan comes from a real scanner
2. The scan has been performed in the last few seconds.
Without this, it is useless.
Using biometrics on your desktop for securing network logins is tempting but it is also very dangerous - there must be a secure path from the reader to the verifier. In the case of an ATM it is physically secured inside the ATM strongbox.
On a network it would have to be a combination of cryptographic authentication and a tamper-resistant reader (no such thing as tamperproof).
Without this it would be ridiculously easy to sniff your iris/finger/hand/face/voice print over the network and impersonate you.
The embedded cryptographic engine inside the tamper resistant reader would use a challenge-response algorithm to enable the server to ensure that:
1. The scan comes from a real scanner
2. The scan has been performed in the last few seconds.
Without this, it is useless.
Whenever I see a URL pointing into the middle of a site, let's say:
http://members.tripod.com/~tzimisc e69/satantrek.html
I click the location box in my web browser and hit backspace until I end up with something like:
http://members.tripod.com/~tzimisce69
Which often helps to get things into context.
Sometimes I end up in a directory listing, which is a great way to explore a site. Unfortunately, some sites are rude enough to leave directories without index.html and block directory listing. Bad, bad webmaster. No cookie today.
I am using TeraTerm ssh to connect to linux machines and I have found that zmodem is the easiest way to transfer files. Nothing special to set up - it just works.
The major disadvantage is that it ties up your interactive connection.
Many people miss the point of crypto export restriction and point to the facts that strong crypto is wide available outside the US, that the restrictions are not consistent, hard to enforce, etc. Irrelevant.
The restrictions are actually working very well.
Anyone who really wants crypto anywhere in the world will get it. Terrorists and drug cartels are using crypto for decades. What the export restrictions are really doing is prevent the creation and widespread adoption of interoperable international standards for ubiquitous encryption. That's what they really want. They want no obstacles to their dragnet-style eavesdropping on everyone - on you.
There are some indications that FireWire is losing momentum in the PC industry. It should sto;; replace the RCA connectors in the consumer space (good riddance).
People are just tired of waiting. The USB standard was started years AFTER FireWire and has already become a mass-market product. FireWire is still stuck with commitees and interoperability problems.
The two last nails in FireWire's coffin (the first being Apple's ridiculous royalty claims) may be the USB upgrade to similar speeds (USB 2.0) and the upcoming ultrafast ATAPI standard based on serial signalling.
I'm not saying it's totally dead, it may be useful in things like disk farms for video editing and Apple will surely use it, but it won't replace SCSI and ATAPI any time soon and USB 2.0 may be a cheaper and more available connection for video capture, digital satellite receivers, etc.
If there are enough auctions like that going on there is really no difference between that and the international currency market...
On the one hand, Thompson criticizes Linux based on technical merits - and he has a point there, technically linux is far from perfect and is based on very old technology. On the other hand, he admits that the reality of the OS market means that nobody really cares if your system is technically superior and to compete you have to put an enormous effort in application development - and there's no denying that Linux has done exactly that.
What would you do if one of the next versions of Red Hat introduced a set of scripts for initialization and configuration which does everything, including making coffee and ordering a pizza but is overarchitected, slow, complicated and hard to maintain. Would you switch to a different distribution just because of that or would you stay with RH?
"Others claim that this has already happened." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
I believe it shouldn't be terribly difficult to mount a camera on top of the 3D display, use pattern recognition to search the video signal for something which looks like a face and adjust the 3D image accordingly.
Comments, anyone?
Yes there is such a thing as cyberspace. It's a word. It's an idea. You may agree with what you think some people believe it means or you may not, but there it is, in your head. You make it exist, along with all the people who have certain interpretations of it in their heads.
Words and ideas have power. I think few people can argue with that. Open Source is words and ideas and they have very real power to threaten some very powerful corporations.
You may say that it's not words and ideas, that it is coding and long hours of debugging. This is also correct. But the words and ideas had the power to get thousands of programmers to spend the time coding and debugging.
Most of the mystic's terminology for describing this kind of power makes mosts of us reject what they are saying without actually listening to it. A lot of it is admittedly pure BS, but some of it actually provides some insight into how this power works.
If you take the idea that "cyberspace is the New Jerusalem" literally to mean that "cyberspace is an actual location in some other plane of existence accessible through my modem and in that plane there is a city called New Jerusalem with all the jewels and stuff" it is indeed ridiculous. But if you take into account the fact that many people have a somewhat shared image in their mind of something which is beyond their day to day existence, whether it is inspired by Judeo-Christian sources or not and that the experience of being online makes them somehow relate to that idea - this is powerful stuff. It doesn't need to be "true" or "false", it's just there. I suspect the majority of people who share this idea also don't believe it to be literally true, but it's still there. You can't ignore something which many people have in their heads. For example, many people have in their heads the strange notion that green pieces of paper are worth something. They are only worth something as long as enough people have that idea in their heads.
Ultrawideband is a form of spread spectrum. The major difference between it and traditional forms of spread spectrum is that it is spread over a band which is wide relative to the center frequency (>25% of center frequency)
For example, Qualcomm's CDMA is spread over 1.25MHz around a center frequency in the 800MHz band while a typical UWB system covers over 1GHz starting at around 500MHz.
Conventional spread spectrum systems use frequency hopping or direct sequence to spread the signal. UWB uses a simple and often forgotten form of spread spectrum called time hopping where short pulses are transmitted at pseudo-random intervals. The reason this modulation is used is simply because FH and DS cannot be practically implemented over such a wide bandwidth.
It's not new. It has been used in jamming resistant radars for at least two decades. What's new is an implementation on a single chip which is potentially cheaper than even conventional carrier-based RF technology at large quantities.
The primary advantage of ultrawideband is its insensitivity to fading. Narrowband transmissions can experience significant attenuation of the signal due to signals travelling through different reflection paths canceling out each other. A wideband signal is virtually immune to this and therefore requires about 20db less power usually taken as a safety margin against fading.
Ultrawideband systems can communicate over significant distances using a lower power spectral density than the electromagnetic noise generated by a typical computer.
The primary limitation to using ultrawideband systems is the wording of part 15 of FCC rules - apparently while your computer is allowed to pollute the spectrum for no good reason it is not allowed to transmit the same power INTENTIONALLY.
The FCC has issued a NOI (Notice Of Inquiry) seeking comments on possible change to these rules. Opposing comments come from the usual suspects: mostly users of the restricted bands such as government agencies.
Links:
Ultrawideband working group
Aetherwire - makers of an ultrawideband gizmo called the locator which is both exciting and very frightening.
Michael Dell doesn't need "to get" anything. He gets boxes sold. What most of us fail to understand is that Dell is not a technology company, Dell is a highly fine-tuned business for moving boxes and bullying suppliers into nonexistent margins.
He is going to do it, he is going to do it the right way (from a boxmover's point of view, not a technologist's point of view) and he's going to be moving even more boxes than he does now.
Let's see you do that.
if (...) goto i_cant_believe_i_am_using_goto;
...
...
...
i_cant_believe_i_am_using goto:
This is *NOT* a joke.
I believe that DjVu may do to comics what MP3 did to music: you can now scan in an entire comic book in high resolution and the download will be just a few megabytes.
I didn't buy a pilot because I need it. I'm a geek, not an executive. I bought a pilot because it's a fantastic toy.
He wasn't saying "I'm an ignorant user who doesn't know what keyservers are"
He wasn't saying "I don't know how cryptographic trust relationships work"
He wans't saying "The PGP web of trust doesn't work"
I believe what he was trying to say was "Wouldn't it be nice if someone compiled and published a keyring with signing keys of some of the major distributions and packages?"
That someone would need to be more or less globally known and trusted in the Open Source world and sign that keyring.