As long as the industry can keep the price of blank DVDs more than that of the original (through their "preemptive piracy tax" or pressure on manufacturers), I don't think they'll worry too much about runaway copying between friends. The DVD-factories in the China area are going to be much more of a pain than that.
I definitely think it's a desire by the industry to have strong influence in every aspect of the entertainment process, from production to viewing.
Now you can start backtracing the flood through your ISP / provider and he can start doing it with his backbone connection, ad nauseam.
Maybe this bit can be automated, sending control messages back to the sources of the messages (including routers) and asking them to choke or shutdown the connections? Of course, then you have an authentication problem to make sure somebody else doesn't shut off your legit streams...
I've heard a lot of respect for the solidness of IBM's JFS. I've also heard a lot of respect for the performance of ReiserFS. Once both of these are available with source code, will we be able to put their functionality together to get the best of both worlds, or does the way that they do things exclude each other?
If these game consoles provide HDTV outputs, then this might provide motivation for a lot of people to get HDTV sets (once the feedback loop has created enough demand to bring the price down to "reasonable" levels).
And once you've got HDTV sets (at least the 1024 level), then you've got acceptable mininum resolution for doing web surfing and/or gaming.
These consoles, acting as smart terminals & working with a subscription service over a DSL-speed line, could very well provide all the functionality that your "average" family could want out of a PC, and be a hell of a lot cheaper than a typical PC as well.
Would there be a way that a large bunch of people could set up automatic ways of dumping so much noise into the marketing databases that it would make keeping such databases worthless?
Of course, the really potentially damaging databases are the ones which the government keeps on you (and seems to be willing to make available to anybody that asks). I guess the only recourse for that is legal.
Now, the incentive to innovate is created by a public body that is independant of the government, perhaps even with its own democratically elected committee.
I got to see it once, when I was going to college as an undergraduate (it was billed as a "reading" of the Christmas Carol). Just Patrick Stewart, a few chairs and a table.
I got there late, so had to stand in the back - I forgot my glasses, so Stewart was just a generally human-shaped blob up front - and I spent two hours totally spellbound, listening to that man's voice.
I'm seen or read variations of that story a hundred times - I was just going because of the "celebrity" factor. He stated up front that he was essentially reading the story - he didn't change any of the dialogue. By the time the performance was over, I forgot I was standing up and nearly fell down when I tried to stand up again. It took me a minute or two to "return to Earth".
Frankly, you've got to have at LEAST surround-sound to get a feeling for the way his voice fills up a room - listening to him on the boob tube is a travesty. And although I couldn't make out his facial features (which were very expressive, based on 3rd-party descriptions), his body movements were VERY dynamic and extremely easy to read.
Of course, when I saw it, I think it was his 2nd year - he's probably only made it better since then...
Well, I've got news for you, dickhead, the second method involves lawsuits. And those lawsuits have to be argued by lawyers. And that means that lawyers get rich. Check out the alternative any time you grudge us our big fucken' payoff. We don't get stock options, you know.
Actually, the fact that a society needs specialists to interpret for its members just about every one of its rules indicates to me, as an engineer, that the system has grown too unwieldy & complex (too many special cases, too many "conflicting" rules, etc). If I were in charge of the design of this system, I would be working to consolidate & simplify the system until it were more maintainable - this would mean that more people would be able to understand "the rules" by themselves, and wouldn't need lawyers except for the most complex cases.
Of course, I know that anybody who is benefiting strongly from the current state of the system (lawyers are a good example:) is going to strongly resist any attempt to change the system, even if changing the system would result in an overall improvement in the "happiness level" of the society. It's only when the forces of change are stronger than the forces of the status quo that a change will occur - and if the forces are severely polarized when a massive change occurs, then the fallout can cause major societal damage.
It's quite interesting - they have a MEMS system whereby a user must enter a code to unlock the nuclear warhead for use - this code turns a series of microscopic gears/levers that raises a tiny mirror to certain angles. If the code sequence is entered correctly, the mirror is raised to the proper angle that allows a laser beam to reflect off the mirror and hit a sensor that unlocks the weapon. If the code is hit incorrectly at an sequence, the mirror is not at the proper position and the weapon is locked permanently - the only way it can be unlocked is to dismantle the weapon - a process which utilizes very specific and complex tools that only certain people/agencies have access to. I believe that this system has already been employed on US nuclear weapons - thus a foreign government/terrorist force cannot "hack" a nuke and use it.
This sounds very Rube-Goldberg-ian - how would they prevent somebody from bypassing this device?
If they try and keep the current charge "paradigm", then the SENDERS would have to pay for the delivery of paper messages, and anyone who doesn't want to pay won't get their messages delivered.
Dunno what they'll do about messages which are delivered via e-mail successfully - perhaps charge somewhat less for the overhead of administering the systems?
I thought that the problem of efficient factorization & finding discrete logarithms was mathematically proven to be equivalent (at least, that's what I thought I read in some of the "quantum computing" papers I browsed...)
Actually, if the post office can charge the sender at the normal rate of postage for the "junk e-mail", then this probably wouldn't be too bad - a couple of million junk e-mails at $.33 per message would probably discourage a lot of junk e-mailers from sending to those particular e-mail addresses.
I _know_ what you're saying, I _read_ the Transmeta whitepaper & have a pretty good idea of the concepts behind the Code Morpher, I _know_ what how the Transmeta people _want_ the chip to be used, and how a lot of people think it _should_ be used - just as I _know_ that there are going to be some people who will ignore all that & will hack on the VLIW instruction set directly. 99.9% of the people programming for the Transmeta chips won't - but there will be a few that will.
They won't give a damn about backward compatibility, or what the "next" chip is going to implement - they're not programming for money, they're programming for fun, and they'll program using the VLIW instruction set because they'll think they can do it better than the Code Morpher can (for a particular chip, and a particular set of instructions). When they start playing with a new chip, they'll learn the VLIW instruction set for THAT chip and do it all over again.
Transmeta have to create versions of the Code Morpher to be "backwards compatible" with all of the various instruction sets that they choose to support from the other chip companies, plus any "improvements" to the instruction set that those chip companies make. They will have to create a Code Morpher version to run on each new chip that they develop. (Can you say, front-end/back-end?)
If they did a good job architecturally, and make it easy to upgrade the Code Morpher (assumedly in FlashROM or something similar), then given the current processor-types, it shouldn't be too difficult for them to create new front-ends and back-ends.
As time goes on, like any project, the Code Morpher code base will get more complicated & difficult to maintain. They'll make mistakes encoding the instruction sets, and then have to issue updates to correct it, etc.
2. "Code executed through the translation layer should perform better than code executing on the bare metal because the translation software is learning and optimizing."
By definition, a "perfect programmer" will always be able to do AT LEAST AS WELL as an optimizing compiler (even at run-time!), because he or she can USE THE SAME TRICKS as the optimizing compiler (write code which collects metrics & recreates itself based on those metrics). And because the programmer has application knowledge which the compiler doesn't, he or she will mostly likely be able to DO BETTER.
Like I said before: for the most part, programmers will use what Transmeta gives them - and for a very small fraction of programmers, in the tiny bits of their code where they want to squeeze out everything they can from the hardware, they're going to try to bang on the metal.
Based on the strong reaction to my reply, I'd say that at least a few people have been programming for a living so long, they've forgotten how much fun it is to "push the envelope" of any given piece of hardware.
No matter how good the Code Morpher is, a talented programmer programming "to the bare metal" will be able to do better. A geek screaming for performance on their "baby" doesn't give a damn about whether the next processor will change its instruction set - he (or she) is interested in getting the max. performance out of the CURRENT processor - which DOESN'T mean you let somebody else's software get in the way.
As far as on-the-fly code tuning is concerned, no matter how good the "tuner" is, it can only react to changes & build code AFTER it has accumulated some metrics, whereas a programmer who is intimately familiar with his or her problem-space, can prebuild tuned code for handling most of their expected cases.
I fully expect dedicated hackers to do what every programming freak does - use the provided tools most of the time, and where they want total control & performance, to write the VLIW directly (no matter WHAT the people who made the chip say).
Frankly, ignoring all the hype, this is just a RISCier RISC chip - what the original RISC folks were aiming for in the first place, but which has fallen by the wayside as they tried to compete with Intel.
I thought the article was saying that the LASER LIGHT caused the degradation.
Re:open source did not destroy the browser market
on
Free Be
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· Score: 2
There's tons of money to be made in browsers, but you probably don't like this way either: the money is in giving away browsers that try to point users to certain portals.
In a way, this kind of makes the browser more of a "client" for the servers of the company which created the browser.
I always wondered whether a "one size fits all" browser was for the best - frankly, at least for specific applications, I thought we could use the bandwidth a lot more efficiently even individual companies could autodistribute clients for their servers (yeah, yeah, Java, security, mumblemumble...). Maybe the proliferation of browsers tied to portals would be a step back in that direction?
Re:But is that what he's saying?
on
Hole in GNU GPL?
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· Score: 2
I'm still not sure what the "loophole" is...the "employees" of the corporation are still legal entities in their own right, so if the "corporation" gives them the application, it is "distributing" it under the GPL and therefore the recipients will still have to deal w/the application under the terms of the GPL.
You can encode the data as fine-grained barcode, or perhaps one of those 2D bar codes. Hell, if you want to get funky, you could encode the data into the picture on the box and the microwave could use a CCD camera & decryption software to get it out. Or, you could outfit the package with a circuit which transmits the data via LED or radio-link when it is _powered_ by microwaves! (damn, my creative juices are flowing good right now:)
Let's take that a little farther - you could use the microwaves to power little mechanical stirrers in the package to help distribute the heat around for proper all through cooking. You could deliberately create metal strips in the package which deliver radiant heat from the microwave energy to the right places in the package to facilitate browning of your food (I believe they already do something like this for those "hot pocket" thingies).
Perhaps you could even make the package do animated displays powered by the microwaves!
"Hey, who are you guys? What's the straightjacket...wait a minute, don't you dare put that on ME!"
P.S. Does anybody have any guesses/knowledge whether the "harmful" effects (to the magnetron, I assume) of metal in a microwave apply if you have a circuit which is designed properly to accept & use the microwave energy?
Slashdot Mirror
As long as the industry can keep the price of blank DVDs more than that of the original (through their "preemptive piracy tax" or pressure on manufacturers), I don't think they'll worry too much about runaway copying between friends. The DVD-factories in the China area are going to be much more of a pain than that.
I definitely think it's a desire by the industry to have strong influence in every aspect of the entertainment process, from production to viewing.
Maybe this bit can be automated, sending control messages back to the sources of the messages (including routers) and asking them to choke or shutdown the connections? Of course, then you have an authentication problem to make sure somebody else doesn't shut off your legit streams...
Heck, you can boil the hot water for your coffee on top of the CPU - then use the CDROM tray as a cup holder!
That's an interesting concept - I wonder if they simulate tank breakdowns?
Yeah, but if there's no particular technical reason why you can't consolidate your favorite features, then why not do so?
I've heard a lot of respect for the solidness of IBM's JFS. I've also heard a lot of respect for the performance of ReiserFS. Once both of these are available with source code, will we be able to put their functionality together to get the best of both worlds, or does the way that they do things exclude each other?
If these game consoles provide HDTV outputs, then this might provide motivation for a lot of people to get HDTV sets (once the feedback loop has created enough demand to bring the price down to "reasonable" levels).
And once you've got HDTV sets (at least the 1024 level), then you've got acceptable mininum resolution for doing web surfing and/or gaming.
These consoles, acting as smart terminals & working with a subscription service over a DSL-speed line, could very well provide all the functionality that your "average" family could want out of a PC, and be a hell of a lot cheaper than a typical PC as well.
Would there be a way that a large bunch of people could set up automatic ways of dumping so much noise into the marketing databases that it would make keeping such databases worthless?
Of course, the really potentially damaging databases are the ones which the government keeps on you (and seems to be willing to make available to anybody that asks). I guess the only recourse for that is legal.
Sounds like a prime target for corruption.
I got to see it once, when I was going to college as an undergraduate (it was billed as a "reading" of the Christmas Carol). Just Patrick Stewart, a few chairs and a table.
I got there late, so had to stand in the back - I forgot my glasses, so Stewart was just a generally human-shaped blob up front - and I spent two hours totally spellbound, listening to that man's voice.
I'm seen or read variations of that story a hundred times - I was just going because of the "celebrity" factor. He stated up front that he was essentially reading the story - he didn't change any of the dialogue. By the time the performance was over, I forgot I was standing up and nearly fell down when I tried to stand up again. It took me a minute or two to "return to Earth".
Frankly, you've got to have at LEAST surround-sound to get a feeling for the way his voice fills up a room - listening to him on the boob tube is a travesty. And although I couldn't make out his facial features (which were very expressive, based on 3rd-party descriptions), his body movements were VERY dynamic and extremely easy to read.
Of course, when I saw it, I think it was his 2nd year - he's probably only made it better since then...
Actually, the fact that a society needs specialists to interpret for its members just about every one of its rules indicates to me, as an engineer, that the system has grown too unwieldy & complex (too many special cases, too many "conflicting" rules, etc). If I were in charge of the design of this system, I would be working to consolidate & simplify the system until it were more maintainable - this would mean that more people would be able to understand "the rules" by themselves, and wouldn't need lawyers except for the most complex cases.
Of course, I know that anybody who is benefiting strongly from the current state of the system (lawyers are a good example :) is going to strongly resist any attempt to change the system, even if changing the system would result in an overall improvement in the "happiness level" of the society. It's only when the forces of change are stronger than the forces of the status quo that a change will occur - and if the forces are severely polarized when a massive change occurs, then the fallout can cause major societal damage.
This sounds very Rube-Goldberg-ian - how would they prevent somebody from bypassing this device?
Does anybody know anything about the effects of running electric current through your vestibular system on a long-term basis?
Ah - yet another way that corporations could coopt a "public" government institution.
If they try and keep the current charge "paradigm", then the SENDERS would have to pay for the delivery of paper messages, and anyone who doesn't want to pay won't get their messages delivered.
Dunno what they'll do about messages which are delivered via e-mail successfully - perhaps charge somewhat less for the overhead of administering the systems?
I thought that the problem of efficient factorization & finding discrete logarithms was mathematically proven to be equivalent (at least, that's what I thought I read in some of the "quantum computing" papers I browsed...)
Actually, if the post office can charge the sender at the normal rate of postage for the "junk e-mail", then this probably wouldn't be too bad - a couple of million junk e-mails at $.33 per message would probably discourage a lot of junk e-mailers from sending to those particular e-mail addresses.
I _know_ what you're saying, I _read_ the Transmeta whitepaper & have a pretty good idea of the concepts behind the Code Morpher, I _know_ what how the Transmeta people _want_ the chip to be used, and how a lot of people think it _should_ be used - just as I _know_ that there are going to be some people who will ignore all that & will hack on the VLIW instruction set directly. 99.9% of the people programming for the Transmeta chips won't - but there will be a few that will.
They won't give a damn about backward compatibility, or what the "next" chip is going to implement - they're not programming for money, they're programming for fun, and they'll program using the VLIW instruction set because they'll think they can do it better than the Code Morpher can (for a particular chip, and a particular set of instructions). When they start playing with a new chip, they'll learn the VLIW instruction set for THAT chip and do it all over again.
BTW, regarding some of the replies:
1. "Transmeta's chips transcend backwards compatibility."
Bull.
Transmeta have to create versions of the Code Morpher to be "backwards compatible" with all of the various instruction sets that they choose to support from the other chip companies, plus any "improvements" to the instruction set that those chip companies make. They will have to create a Code Morpher version to run on each new chip that they develop. (Can you say, front-end/back-end?)
If they did a good job architecturally, and make it easy to upgrade the Code Morpher (assumedly in FlashROM or something similar), then given the current processor-types, it shouldn't be too difficult for them to create new front-ends and back-ends.
As time goes on, like any project, the Code Morpher code base will get more complicated & difficult to maintain. They'll make mistakes encoding the instruction sets, and then have to issue updates to correct it, etc.
2. "Code executed through the translation layer should perform better than code executing on the bare metal because the translation software is learning and optimizing."
By definition, a "perfect programmer" will always be able to do AT LEAST AS WELL as an optimizing compiler (even at run-time!), because he or she can USE THE SAME TRICKS as the optimizing compiler (write code which collects metrics & recreates itself based on those metrics). And because the programmer has application knowledge which the compiler doesn't, he or she will mostly likely be able to DO BETTER.
Like I said before: for the most part, programmers will use what Transmeta gives them - and for a very small fraction of programmers, in the tiny bits of their code where they want to squeeze out everything they can from the hardware, they're going to try to bang on the metal.
Based on the strong reaction to my reply, I'd say that at least a few people have been programming for a living so long, they've forgotten how much fun it is to "push the envelope" of any given piece of hardware.
I'm sorry, YOU aren't getting it.
No matter how good the Code Morpher is, a talented programmer programming "to the bare metal" will be able to do better. A geek screaming for performance on their "baby" doesn't give a damn about whether the next processor will change its instruction set - he (or she) is interested in getting the max. performance out of the CURRENT processor - which DOESN'T mean you let somebody else's software get in the way.
As far as on-the-fly code tuning is concerned, no matter how good the "tuner" is, it can only react to changes & build code AFTER it has accumulated some metrics, whereas a programmer who is intimately familiar with his or her problem-space, can prebuild tuned code for handling most of their expected cases.
I fully expect dedicated hackers to do what every programming freak does - use the provided tools most of the time, and where they want total control & performance, to write the VLIW directly (no matter WHAT the people who made the chip say).
Frankly, ignoring all the hype, this is just a RISCier RISC chip - what the original RISC folks were aiming for in the first place, but which has fallen by the wayside as they tried to compete with Intel.
I'm sure an agency that REALLY wanted the one-time pad would be able to remove the coating w/o damaging the data on the disc.
You need something like an acid which REALLY melts down the data-storage layer of the disk...
I thought the article was saying that the LASER LIGHT caused the degradation.
In a way, this kind of makes the browser more of a "client" for the servers of the company which created the browser.
I always wondered whether a "one size fits all" browser was for the best - frankly, at least for specific applications, I thought we could use the bandwidth a lot more efficiently even individual companies could autodistribute clients for their servers (yeah, yeah, Java, security, mumblemumble...). Maybe the proliferation of browsers tied to portals would be a step back in that direction?
I'm still not sure what the "loophole" is...the "employees" of the corporation are still legal entities in their own right, so if the "corporation" gives them the application, it is "distributing" it under the GPL and therefore the recipients will still have to deal w/the application under the terms of the GPL.
What's the problem?
Why would the package have to be metal?
:)
You can encode the data as fine-grained barcode, or perhaps one of those 2D bar codes. Hell, if you want to get funky, you could encode the data into the picture on the box and the microwave could use a CCD camera & decryption software to get it out. Or, you could outfit the package with a circuit which transmits the data via LED or radio-link when it is _powered_ by microwaves! (damn, my creative juices are flowing good right now
Let's take that a little farther - you could use the microwaves to power little mechanical stirrers in the package to help distribute the heat around for proper all through cooking. You could deliberately create metal strips in the package which deliver radiant heat from the microwave energy to the right places in the package to facilitate browning of your food (I believe they already do something like this for those "hot pocket" thingies).
Perhaps you could even make the package do animated displays powered by the microwaves!
"Hey, who are you guys? What's the straightjacket...wait a minute, don't you dare put that on ME!"
P.S. Does anybody have any guesses/knowledge whether the "harmful" effects (to the magnetron, I assume) of metal in a microwave apply if you have a circuit which is designed properly to accept & use the microwave energy?
A nice example of proof-by-anecdote.