But that's not really apples to apples. Just because it's supersonic doesn't mean it's even remotely similar to the Concorde. Whatever they're developing ought to end up being a lot more efficient than the Concorde ever was. We're talking about roughly a 50 year difference in development dates.
Even though the Pacific market is more spread out that the transatlantic market, having this service to a couple of the hubs could end up centralizing international affairs offices of the megacorporations. The market may not end up beign as spread out as it appears. Not all commercial traffic is created equal.
I'm really not trying to argue for this project at all. I don't have a clue whether it will end up being viable. I'm just reluctant to paint it with the same brush as the Concorde just because it happens to fly really fast. After all, when you look at the problem of long haul flights, you do reach a point where you should be looking at a different (higher flying) technology as the most efficient means of getting the job done. If this could provide a nudge in the right direction of exploring higher altitude air transportation, then I'm all for it.
Yes, there really is enough transpacific traffic for this. The question isn't really about gross traffic volume, but demand for a premium high speed service. And the transpacific market has it in spades. Lots of executive traffic concentrated in a couple large hubs (Tokyo, HK, LA, etc.) I could see making in-person reaction times in the 'same workday' regime easily commanding per seat prices in the $10 000s.
Whether the business case can be made for any one particular solution - i.e. this plane - is a separate issue. I imagine they've come a long way in efficiency from the Concorde, so it might be possible.
Also, the Japanese government probably sees subsidizing this plane as a way to piggyback the development of a Japanese military arerospace programme. It's not easy starting from scratch, and their 50 year moratorium set them a ways back. I'd imagine they're eager to catch up, but haven't cared to push a purely military funding plan. Having commercial interests doing subsidized research seems an easier way of doing things.
What about things like icons in a GUI? If a logo is distributed with software as an icon in a GUI, wouldn't that be considered a trademark, and wouldn't it affect what you could do with the software distribution? Or say you got hold of a Linux distribution that has the word "Linux" or the Tux mascot in a splash screen. Isn't the GPL supposed to allow you to take that copy and re-distribute it as it is?
Actually, you can't always redistribute it "as is" without disclaimer. (Or at least, it hasn't yet been clearly established by precedent.)
For example, there is a distro called Tao which is a free distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. While the GPL allows the creator of Tao to redistribute the Red Hat GPLed code, the trademark issues necessitate (in the opinion of the maker of Tao) that further disclaimers come packaged with Tao. (i.e. something to the effect that users may find the RHEL documentation useful, but that it is in no way related to Tao...) Not because the makers of Tao aren't allowed to redistribute them - the GPL ensures that they can. Tao doesn't include the trademarked images/words because if they distribute them without holding trademark rights,
The point is that the GPL ensures the rights of distribution, code modification, use, etc., and it establishes (somewhat) clear boundaries for what can/can't be done in those respects, but any trademark rights issues are independant.
For a simpler example, after you drink a bottle of Evian, you are allowed to reuse the bottle (of course). You are also allowed to use the bottle to create a good for resale. You might not be allowed to refill the bottle with water and sell it as is. Not because you aren't allowed to sell bottled water - you are (as long as you abide by the applicable health/safety codes) - but because selling the unmodified Evian bottle full of water might cause a reasonable buyer to believe that they have purchased an Evian product. The trademark issues have nothing to do with your right to use/reuse any of the items in question (even the label - if you cover any offending trademarks appropriately). They have to do with the representation of trademarks at the point of sale.
Doesn't the GPL include a disclaimer that states if you include your work with something covered by the GPL license, you relinquish the control of any intellectual property you have included in that work, and from there it is subject to the terms of the GPL? I thought that the GPL doesn't cover software code only, but encompass other types of work like art. Wouldn't a trademark distributed with the GPL be subject to the terms of the GPL?
The GPL does not deal with trademark issues at all.
My bullshit detector went off the scale when the interview began with:
First, a bit of background about the concept of a paradigm shift.
What Dainow is describing is no more a paradigm shift than the first person who put a spare tire in their car. Redundant usage of preexisting systems to increase reliability does not equal a paradigm shift.
That said, he seems to be on the right track to achieving his goals. (Or rather, the researchers seem to be on the right track.) They seem to be naively optimistic. User metrics is obviously in its infancy if this is the cutting edge. Foiling schemes like this would require a minimum of effort:
What we need to do is create a browser plugin that actively manages cookies by sharing them. By actively, I mean not just accepting/denying based on a set of rules, but coupling that method with active uploading/downloading of cookies from an alternate source. (Deletion is not the solution!) Maintain a pool of known user-metrics cookies that users can update from rather than from the intended originator. (I'm guessing that P2P distribution would turn out to be ideal for this.) How would the user-metrics companies deal with millions of computers surfing with identical cookies?... I'm betting they honestly might abandon cookie use.
I can't see that writing a plugin that does this would be very hard. Any takers? (I would if I weren't so damn busy lately.)
Tough call - DRM is coming (Or is already here), one way or another, and is better to work on creating something done right, or to object to it on moral grounds?
I'll go with (b). Better to object on moral grounds. (Actually, I object on common sense grounds, but I digress...)
Don't you think it's a bit counter productive to, say, be an reader/reviewer, yet not be interested in the curiosities that people point out? Isn't that the lifeblood of science? Has not our entire view been changed *many* times over by someone (Eugene Parker, Einstein, Feynman, and many more) driven to uncover the nature of that very same peculiar phenomena you so lightly toss aside?
That's exactly his point, too. The OP appreciates work that is actually contributing new knowledge. His point was that the article in question is just rambling without making any significant contribution to the body of knowledge in the field.
While I'm not in quantum physics or computing, I am quite familiar with the academic problem the OP is grumbling about: There are too many papers published with too few actual discoveries. The problem is that padding one's CV is more important to certain aspects of one's professional reputation than making significant discoveries. This leads to lots of papers being written with long references sections that ramble on basically rehashing old work and making "interesting observations" about what things "might" mean. The subtext of "might" of course being that the author cannot say anything for sure, but wants to do a lot of namedropping in the process.
No. The trustworthiness computation is designed to preclude such attacks.
This is one of the lamest security fallacies around. By defeinition, the system is only designed to precludse those types of attacks that the system has been designed to preclude. Gramted, I don't think there will be botnets constructed that will fiddle with the system in a manner that will be effective, but it really IS possible.
In order to poison the ranking of one file effectively, you need a fake voting pool with clean reputation with size on the order of magnitude of the "honest" voting body. If you have that, it's a simple affair to poison a download pool (albeit temporarilly - until the honest votes start coming in to mod it down).
The key point is, poisoning is only a temporary effect (but that might be all that's needed, depending on the particular business problem the botnet is trying to solve.) The beauty of the system is that if you keep bolstering the botnet's reputations, one poisoned download is not really going to hurt their future usefulness. (Think 10000 good votes to one poisoned one.)
The key is that thios system is not effective at doing what the RIAA really wants to do: shut it all down. However, it could be very effective at suppressing a leaked movie for a couple days until release.
3. How does Credence know who is trustworthy and who is a spammer ?
Initially, it doesn't. As you vote for files, it stores your votes and discovers the set of peers with whom your votes are correlated. It also communicates with peers to find out about other peers with whom they in turn are correlated. The outcome of this computation is a numerical value computed for each file appearing in query results that reflects the probability that the given file is trustworthy.
If you vote thumbs-up for good files and thumbs-down for bad files, you will be grouped with the vast majority of people who also vote honestly. You will then compute a high trustworthiness metric for all files that this (potentially very large) group of users has ever voted on. If you vote inaccurately (i.e. you are a spammer), you will compute a low trustworthiness metric for other non-spam files, and honest users will compute a low trustworthiness coefficient for your opinion. It is thus in your best interest to vote honestly.
Seems the trust system is prone to spamming itself. If the RIAA (or anyone for that matter) flood the system with bogus votes, then the "honest" votes will get ruled out.
This seems only to be just another layer that's succeptible to the exact same pollution problems.
I put odds of this catching on and being succesful as currently documented at a big fat 0%
I would like to commend you for having the courage to try to do something to fight child pornography. I sincerely believe that it is a blight on society and that we must fight boldly to stop it. However, I believe that 'The Internet Safety and Child Protection Act of 2005' is somewhat misguided, and doomed to fail for reasons of partisan rhetoric, as well as a fundamental oversight of the bill itself.
Because the sponsors of the bill are mainly Democrats, and the major effect of the bill would be to institute a new tax, I believe that 'The Internet Safety and Child Protection Act of 2005' will have a quick death at the hands of Republican spin doctors pressing the Big Government and (ironically) the Big Brother buttons.
My objection to the proposed bill has nothing to do with the standard American party lines. In fact, I have for you a solution which will be much more effective at eliminating profits from child porn (if not altogether ending the vice itself) while introducing a piece of legislation that will have a much better chance of building bipartisan support, especially given the current cultural climate.
The major oversight of the proposed bill is that it is completely incapable of effectively policing foreign pornographers who are selling child pornography. There is no shortage of legislation against child pornography inside the USA. It is illegal. The only problem (if any) that domestic enforcement faces is funding. This appears to be the purpose of the proposed bill. Rather than punishing law abiding domestic pornographers with a prohibitive (even punitive) tax burden will not curry their good favor (if that is something you care about). While I am not a fan of the pornography industry, it is clear to me as a reasonably well-informed Internet user that for-profit child pornography is primarily a foreign problem. I do not know the demographic details, but much of it comes from eastern Europe.
I propose that, instead of taxing the domestic pornography industry (and thus actually encouraging the foreign pornography industry - which engages in more child pornography), an import duty be imposed on all foreign pornography to fund the domestic fight against child pornography.
I believe that such a piece of legislation will have a much greater likelihood of being made law, and a greater likelihood of public support. The major reasons I see are (definitely not in order of importance!):
1) Those who spend money on pornography (and there are lots of voters in this category) will not be as deeply affected.
2) Domestic pornographers will likely support this measure, as it will give them a competitive advantage. (This is a point that won't appeal to a large part of the public...) Domestic pornographers will also likely support such a measure for the simple reason that it makes sense. They know where the kiddie porn is coming from and some of them actually do care about fighting it.
3) The largest enemies in the fight against child pornography really ARE (some of) the foreign pornographers. While it needs to be played carefully, this is an issue for which the current xenophobia brought on by the polarizing "terrorism" rhetoric could actually be used to aid the cause of common sense.
4) By imposing an import tariff instead of a sales tax, the current issues surrounding Internet taxation can be avoided. The questions of point of sale/point of purchase/tax jurisdiction, etc., that are now only just starting to be tackled by legislators can be avoided. An import duty can be independent of medium. The worsing of the legislation could be left purposefully vague, while leaving room for the enforcing body to focus on Internet traffic.
5) A piece of legislation which monitors foreign credit card transactions - especially to eastern European countries - would be a surefire way to build (preferably silent) support with major lobby groups. While I personally detest everything that the RIAA stands for, their support of such a bill would go a
Moving porn shops out of the USA wouldn't make taxes any more difficult at all. It's actually easier to tax foreign transactions, because customs authorities have much greater power than the IRS/police. And the fact that you had to pay with your credit card for that Lithuanian porn makes tracing the money a no brainer.
Come to think of it, instituting an import duty on foreign porn would probably be much more effective at combating child pornography, because most of it (at least the professionally produced stuff) is foreign. I might even e-mail the senator with the idea...
Yes, it's true HDMI might not be the winner of the post DVI marketplace. Apparently there are some teething issues with it, and there are competing standards out there (Displayport et. al.).
The original point still stands, though. There will be standards out there that enforce DRM right through to the display device - probably in the near future. All MS is doing is ensuring compatibility. And hey, it doesn't hurt them to play nice with the media companies that help support the legal infrastructure on which MS's business model is based now, does it?
If you want to push resolutions a lot higher than the current stagnation point, there's a major bandwidth shortage. The next spec to come out already has soem pretty robust DRM provisions built in. They aren't mandatory for standards compliance, but the market is probably going to make it a de facto standard. After all, who wants to buy a TV or monitor that won't play the latest Blu-ray/HD-DVD?
The standards for HDMI have very little to do with Microsoft. You can blame/thank Sony, Hitachi, Thomson (RCA), Philips, Matsushita (Panasonic), Toshiba and Silicon Image. It's actually a pretty exciting set of specs. Once the DRM is cracked, it'll be even more exciting...
All Microsoft is doing is building into Windows compatibility for content that the media companies are pushing. They're doing the same thing that any company trying to sell multimedia consumer gear will be doing. Blaming Microsoft is a complete misdirection imho.
Is it so unbearable to have someone whose opinion doesn't conform to the/. norm?
While I don't quite agree with the details of why the OP believes privacy is obsolete: "The intelligence agencies can figure out ways to legally intercept anything they want anyway".
I too believe that the perceived "right" to privacy as currently legally construed is an antiquated notion - although for entirely different reasons than the OP. I believe that all methods of encryption, etc. and decryption should be completely deregulated. For everybody.
As to the original issue about wifi on planes, I have no problem with every packet on an airplane going straight into a federal database - as long as everybody is informed of this fact.
Call me a troll if you will. Or you could just get comfortable with the fact that you don't have to believe in the dogma of "privacy" as framed in American legalese to have a reasonable framework of civil rights./. mods be damned
He misspoke. He meant to say that glass molecules have a lack of structured alignment in such a manner that the majority of the photons of light are not reflected, absorbed or scattered. This is exactly the same as is the case with water. (In fact, glass is a fluid much like water - only a LOT more viscous.)
As for diamonds, the structure of the carbon atoms scatters light in a highly structured way - just not visible wavelengths.
So far, it is merely an unsubstantiated claim that that is an "advantage".
I agree entirely. I think it's actually a huge disadvantage, as it's a very inefficient method. You'll end up with thousands of nodes performing coding algorithms which are completely redundant. If the server does it all, then it only needs to be done once - and you can guarantee a reliable hash for each encoded block.
By distributing the coding, you can't get a reliable per-block hash, and you've got a bunch of nodes duplicating each other's work.
As far as I can see, Avalanche is only useful in a non hostile user environment (if such a thing exists), and only has an advantage if all the nodes and servers have relatively weak processors. That's the best case scenario. In reality, I see it as a way of Microsoft farming out what is rightfully their server processor load onto end users' power bills, and using WMP to distribute locked content at a minimal cost to MS.
Avalanche doesn't really solve this problem at all. Reading the abstract that the Avalanche article refers to (here) seems to indicate that the "solution" is a very simplistic "cry wolf" type approach which looks to be pretty easy to compromise. The most telling sentence is: 'In our scheme, users not only cooperate to distribute the content, but (well-behaved) users also cooperate to protect themselves against malicious users by informing affected nodes when a malicious block is found.' Notice that bracketed 'well-behaved' part.
This just strengthens my opinion that the 'security' of Avalanche will rely on an external infrastructure like Trusted Computing/Longhorn, etc.
I could only see the abstract of the second article. If anyone can see the whole thing, I'd appreciate it.
This is not a solution at all,but an illustration of the vuilnerability of Avalanche to poisoning.
You won't know that you've got a poisoned block until you have enough blocks to attempt a reconstruction. At that point, if you get a hash fail, you have no way of knowing which block was poisoned. See the problem?
The problem is that this would defeat the only advantage of Avalanche. The point of Avalanche is the network coding: relieving the originating server of the burden of coding all the FEC blocks.
If the originating server has to calculate the hashes, then it would have had to calculate the FEC blocks that the hashes are calculated for as well.
Ergo, the network coding advantage is lost.
Unless there is some way to compute hashes of the FEC blocks without actually haveing the blocks themselves, there would be no advantage of Avalanche over a server-implemented Tornado code..
I'm starting to see Avalanche as only becoming used as being used within a `locked' setting. Probably something that'll come shortly after Longhorn and Trusted *** start infiltrating the MS desktop.
Actually, Avalanche is a FEC method. The advantage of Avalanche over other FEC methods is that the server doesn't have to do all the coding. Hence the term `network coding'.
While the paper didn't worry too much about comparing Avalanche to other FEC methods, the comparison seems moot, as server coded FEC methods seem obviously impractical for individuals wanting to seed data from a humble PC. Reliving the seeder of the burden of coding seems an obvious enough differecne that Avalanche and other FEC methods are not nearly as apples to apples as comparing to Bittorrent. (Because Bittorrent is actually practical for Joe Celeron-user to seed right from home.)
Implementation may end up being harder, as it will be a lot harder to combat poisoned blocks in Avalanche. I think the authors were too optimistic about this issue.
The only thing he's critiquing is the methodology of the comparison to Bittorrent. But then, the paper's primary goal was to introduce the Avalanche technique. From my read of it, the authors were providing the Bittorrent comparison as a means of introducing some context to the paper, NOT as a head to head comparison. Adter all, Avalanche is by no means mature yet, so such a comparison can't exist yet.
The Avalanche technique is very insightful. It is mathematically elegant, and looks to be a very effective way to solve the slowing of downloads near completion (especially when there are few seeds left). This is a well known problem.
The authors of the Avalanche paper were very forthcoming about the costs of Avalanche: there is a significant processor cost to their technique, as they have to invert a bunch of linear equations, whereas Bittorrent chunks are all orthogonal by definition.
Asd far as I can tell, the Bram article is a reactionary zeaolt's rant and contains no useful critique (see my first paragraph). The methodology that Bram is criticizing, while valid, has nothing to do with the (commonly recognized) problem that Avalanche can solve. Whether tit-for-tat is used or some other scoring algorithm has nothing to od with the "last few pieces" problem that Avalanche solves. If Bram had picked the "locally rarest" methof to attack, then there might have been some hope of the Avalanche paper's conclusions being tossed out. That not being the case, I'd have to say it looks like Bram is unintentionally giving the nod to Avalanche.
Slashdot Mirror
Even though the Pacific market is more spread out that the transatlantic market, having this service to a couple of the hubs could end up centralizing international affairs offices of the megacorporations. The market may not end up beign as spread out as it appears. Not all commercial traffic is created equal.
I'm really not trying to argue for this project at all. I don't have a clue whether it will end up being viable. I'm just reluctant to paint it with the same brush as the Concorde just because it happens to fly really fast. After all, when you look at the problem of long haul flights, you do reach a point where you should be looking at a different (higher flying) technology as the most efficient means of getting the job done. If this could provide a nudge in the right direction of exploring higher altitude air transportation, then I'm all for it.
Whether the business case can be made for any one particular solution - i.e. this plane - is a separate issue. I imagine they've come a long way in efficiency from the Concorde, so it might be possible.
Also, the Japanese government probably sees subsidizing this plane as a way to piggyback the development of a Japanese military arerospace programme. It's not easy starting from scratch, and their 50 year moratorium set them a ways back. I'd imagine they're eager to catch up, but haven't cared to push a purely military funding plan. Having commercial interests doing subsidized research seems an easier way of doing things.
Actually, you can't always redistribute it "as is" without disclaimer. (Or at least, it hasn't yet been clearly established by precedent.)
For example, there is a distro called Tao which is a free distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. While the GPL allows the creator of Tao to redistribute the Red Hat GPLed code, the trademark issues necessitate (in the opinion of the maker of Tao) that further disclaimers come packaged with Tao. (i.e. something to the effect that users may find the RHEL documentation useful, but that it is in no way related to Tao...) Not because the makers of Tao aren't allowed to redistribute them - the GPL ensures that they can. Tao doesn't include the trademarked images/words because if they distribute them without holding trademark rights,
The point is that the GPL ensures the rights of distribution, code modification, use, etc., and it establishes (somewhat) clear boundaries for what can/can't be done in those respects, but any trademark rights issues are independant.
For a simpler example, after you drink a bottle of Evian, you are allowed to reuse the bottle (of course). You are also allowed to use the bottle to create a good for resale. You might not be allowed to refill the bottle with water and sell it as is. Not because you aren't allowed to sell bottled water - you are (as long as you abide by the applicable health/safety codes) - but because selling the unmodified Evian bottle full of water might cause a reasonable buyer to believe that they have purchased an Evian product. The trademark issues have nothing to do with your right to use/reuse any of the items in question (even the label - if you cover any offending trademarks appropriately). They have to do with the representation of trademarks at the point of sale.
The GPL does not deal with trademark issues at all.
First, a bit of background about the concept of a paradigm shift.
What Dainow is describing is no more a paradigm shift than the first person who put a spare tire in their car. Redundant usage of preexisting systems to increase reliability does not equal a paradigm shift.
That said, he seems to be on the right track to achieving his goals. (Or rather, the researchers seem to be on the right track.) They seem to be naively optimistic. User metrics is obviously in its infancy if this is the cutting edge. Foiling schemes like this would require a minimum of effort:
What we need to do is create a browser plugin that actively manages cookies by sharing them. By actively, I mean not just accepting/denying based on a set of rules, but coupling that method with active uploading/downloading of cookies from an alternate source. (Deletion is not the solution!) Maintain a pool of known user-metrics cookies that users can update from rather than from the intended originator. (I'm guessing that P2P distribution would turn out to be ideal for this.) How would the user-metrics companies deal with millions of computers surfing with identical cookies?... I'm betting they honestly might abandon cookie use.
I can't see that writing a plugin that does this would be very hard. Any takers? (I would if I weren't so damn busy lately.)
I'll go with (b). Better to object on moral grounds. (Actually, I object on common sense grounds, but I digress...)
That's exactly his point, too. The OP appreciates work that is actually contributing new knowledge. His point was that the article in question is just rambling without making any significant contribution to the body of knowledge in the field.
While I'm not in quantum physics or computing, I am quite familiar with the academic problem the OP is grumbling about: There are too many papers published with too few actual discoveries. The problem is that padding one's CV is more important to certain aspects of one's professional reputation than making significant discoveries. This leads to lots of papers being written with long references sections that ramble on basically rehashing old work and making "interesting observations" about what things "might" mean. The subtext of "might" of course being that the author cannot say anything for sure, but wants to do a lot of namedropping in the process.
No. The trustworthiness computation is designed to preclude such attacks.
This is one of the lamest security fallacies around. By defeinition, the system is only designed to precludse those types of attacks that the system has been designed to preclude. Gramted, I don't think there will be botnets constructed that will fiddle with the system in a manner that will be effective, but it really IS possible.
In order to poison the ranking of one file effectively, you need a fake voting pool with clean reputation with size on the order of magnitude of the "honest" voting body. If you have that, it's a simple affair to poison a download pool (albeit temporarilly - until the honest votes start coming in to mod it down).
The key point is, poisoning is only a temporary effect (but that might be all that's needed, depending on the particular business problem the botnet is trying to solve.) The beauty of the system is that if you keep bolstering the botnet's reputations, one poisoned download is not really going to hurt their future usefulness. (Think 10000 good votes to one poisoned one.)
The key is that thios system is not effective at doing what the RIAA really wants to do: shut it all down. However, it could be very effective at suppressing a leaked movie for a couple days until release.
3. How does Credence know who is trustworthy and who is a spammer ?
Initially, it doesn't. As you vote for files, it stores your votes and discovers the set of peers with whom your votes are correlated. It also communicates with peers to find out about other peers with whom they in turn are correlated. The outcome of this computation is a numerical value computed for each file appearing in query results that reflects the probability that the given file is trustworthy. If you vote thumbs-up for good files and thumbs-down for bad files, you will be grouped with the vast majority of people who also vote honestly. You will then compute a high trustworthiness metric for all files that this (potentially very large) group of users has ever voted on. If you vote inaccurately (i.e. you are a spammer), you will compute a low trustworthiness metric for other non-spam files, and honest users will compute a low trustworthiness coefficient for your opinion. It is thus in your best interest to vote honestly.
Seems the trust system is prone to spamming itself. If the RIAA (or anyone for that matter) flood the system with bogus votes, then the "honest" votes will get ruled out.This seems only to be just another layer that's succeptible to the exact same pollution problems.
I put odds of this catching on and being succesful as currently documented at a big fat 0%
Gotta love the torrents!
Because the sponsors of the bill are mainly Democrats, and the major effect of the bill would be to institute a new tax, I believe that 'The Internet Safety and Child Protection Act of 2005' will have a quick death at the hands of Republican spin doctors pressing the Big Government and (ironically) the Big Brother buttons.
My objection to the proposed bill has nothing to do with the standard American party lines. In fact, I have for you a solution which will be much more effective at eliminating profits from child porn (if not altogether ending the vice itself) while introducing a piece of legislation that will have a much better chance of building bipartisan support, especially given the current cultural climate.
The major oversight of the proposed bill is that it is completely incapable of effectively policing foreign pornographers who are selling child pornography. There is no shortage of legislation against child pornography inside the USA. It is illegal. The only problem (if any) that domestic enforcement faces is funding. This appears to be the purpose of the proposed bill. Rather than punishing law abiding domestic pornographers with a prohibitive (even punitive) tax burden will not curry their good favor (if that is something you care about). While I am not a fan of the pornography industry, it is clear to me as a reasonably well-informed Internet user that for-profit child pornography is primarily a foreign problem. I do not know the demographic details, but much of it comes from eastern Europe.
I propose that, instead of taxing the domestic pornography industry (and thus actually encouraging the foreign pornography industry - which engages in more child pornography), an import duty be imposed on all foreign pornography to fund the domestic fight against child pornography.
I believe that such a piece of legislation will have a much greater likelihood of being made law, and a greater likelihood of public support. The major reasons I see are (definitely not in order of importance!):
1) Those who spend money on pornography (and there are lots of voters in this category) will not be as deeply affected.
2) Domestic pornographers will likely support this measure, as it will give them a competitive advantage. (This is a point that won't appeal to a large part of the public...) Domestic pornographers will also likely support such a measure for the simple reason that it makes sense. They know where the kiddie porn is coming from and some of them actually do care about fighting it.
3) The largest enemies in the fight against child pornography really ARE (some of) the foreign pornographers. While it needs to be played carefully, this is an issue for which the current xenophobia brought on by the polarizing "terrorism" rhetoric could actually be used to aid the cause of common sense.
4) By imposing an import tariff instead of a sales tax, the current issues surrounding Internet taxation can be avoided. The questions of point of sale/point of purchase/tax jurisdiction, etc., that are now only just starting to be tackled by legislators can be avoided. An import duty can be independent of medium. The worsing of the legislation could be left purposefully vague, while leaving room for the enforcing body to focus on Internet traffic.
5) A piece of legislation which monitors foreign credit card transactions - especially to eastern European countries - would be a surefire way to build (preferably silent) support with major lobby groups. While I personally detest everything that the RIAA stands for, their support of such a bill would go a
Come to think of it, instituting an import duty on foreign porn would probably be much more effective at combating child pornography, because most of it (at least the professionally produced stuff) is foreign. I might even e-mail the senator with the idea...
The original point still stands, though. There will be standards out there that enforce DRM right through to the display device - probably in the near future. All MS is doing is ensuring compatibility. And hey, it doesn't hurt them to play nice with the media companies that help support the legal infrastructure on which MS's business model is based now, does it?
If you want to push resolutions a lot higher than the current stagnation point, there's a major bandwidth shortage. The next spec to come out already has soem pretty robust DRM provisions built in. They aren't mandatory for standards compliance, but the market is probably going to make it a de facto standard. After all, who wants to buy a TV or monitor that won't play the latest Blu-ray/HD-DVD?
The standards for HDMI have very little to do with Microsoft. You can blame/thank Sony, Hitachi, Thomson (RCA), Philips, Matsushita (Panasonic), Toshiba and Silicon Image. It's actually a pretty exciting set of specs. Once the DRM is cracked, it'll be even more exciting...
All Microsoft is doing is building into Windows compatibility for content that the media companies are pushing. They're doing the same thing that any company trying to sell multimedia consumer gear will be doing. Blaming Microsoft is a complete misdirection imho.
You're right. Sure, someone might cut your finger off to steal your Mercedes S-class, but definitely not for multimillion dollar corporate espionage!
While I don't quite agree with the details of why the OP believes privacy is obsolete: "The intelligence agencies can figure out ways to legally intercept anything they want anyway".
I too believe that the perceived "right" to privacy as currently legally construed is an antiquated notion - although for entirely different reasons than the OP. I believe that all methods of encryption, etc. and decryption should be completely deregulated. For everybody.
As to the original issue about wifi on planes, I have no problem with every packet on an airplane going straight into a federal database - as long as everybody is informed of this fact.
Call me a troll if you will. Or you could just get comfortable with the fact that you don't have to believe in the dogma of "privacy" as framed in American legalese to have a reasonable framework of civil rights. /. mods be damned
But the main point was about the analogous molecular structure of glass and your typical liquid - which is the case.
As for diamonds, the structure of the carbon atoms scatters light in a highly structured way - just not visible wavelengths.
By distributing the coding, you can't get a reliable per-block hash, and you've got a bunch of nodes duplicating each other's work.
As far as I can see, Avalanche is only useful in a non hostile user environment (if such a thing exists), and only has an advantage if all the nodes and servers have relatively weak processors. That's the best case scenario. In reality, I see it as a way of Microsoft farming out what is rightfully their server processor load onto end users' power bills, and using WMP to distribute locked content at a minimal cost to MS.
This just strengthens my opinion that the 'security' of Avalanche will rely on an external infrastructure like Trusted Computing/Longhorn, etc.
I could only see the abstract of the second article. If anyone can see the whole thing, I'd appreciate it.
You won't know that you've got a poisoned block until you have enough blocks to attempt a reconstruction. At that point, if you get a hash fail, you have no way of knowing which block was poisoned. See the problem?
If the originating server has to calculate the hashes, then it would have had to calculate the FEC blocks that the hashes are calculated for as well.
Ergo, the network coding advantage is lost.
Unless there is some way to compute hashes of the FEC blocks without actually haveing the blocks themselves, there would be no advantage of Avalanche over a server-implemented Tornado code..
I'm starting to see Avalanche as only becoming used as being used within a `locked' setting. Probably something that'll come shortly after Longhorn and Trusted *** start infiltrating the MS desktop.
While the paper didn't worry too much about comparing Avalanche to other FEC methods, the comparison seems moot, as server coded FEC methods seem obviously impractical for individuals wanting to seed data from a humble PC. Reliving the seeder of the burden of coding seems an obvious enough differecne that Avalanche and other FEC methods are not nearly as apples to apples as comparing to Bittorrent. (Because Bittorrent is actually practical for Joe Celeron-user to seed right from home.)
Implementation may end up being harder, as it will be a lot harder to combat poisoned blocks in Avalanche. I think the authors were too optimistic about this issue.
The only thing he's critiquing is the methodology of the comparison to Bittorrent. But then, the paper's primary goal was to introduce the Avalanche technique. From my read of it, the authors were providing the Bittorrent comparison as a means of introducing some context to the paper, NOT as a head to head comparison. Adter all, Avalanche is by no means mature yet, so such a comparison can't exist yet. The Avalanche technique is very insightful. It is mathematically elegant, and looks to be a very effective way to solve the slowing of downloads near completion (especially when there are few seeds left). This is a well known problem. The authors of the Avalanche paper were very forthcoming about the costs of Avalanche: there is a significant processor cost to their technique, as they have to invert a bunch of linear equations, whereas Bittorrent chunks are all orthogonal by definition. Asd far as I can tell, the Bram article is a reactionary zeaolt's rant and contains no useful critique (see my first paragraph). The methodology that Bram is criticizing, while valid, has nothing to do with the (commonly recognized) problem that Avalanche can solve. Whether tit-for-tat is used or some other scoring algorithm has nothing to od with the "last few pieces" problem that Avalanche solves. If Bram had picked the "locally rarest" methof to attack, then there might have been some hope of the Avalanche paper's conclusions being tossed out. That not being the case, I'd have to say it looks like Bram is unintentionally giving the nod to Avalanche.