> You can look at illegal child porn images and instantly know that they're illegal
Oh, if only the world were so simple (even better would be a big red button I could push to eliminate all child abuse). Unfortunately, every jurisdiction has a particular age threshold which it uses to define "child porn" and so, unless you have some kind of superpower which I have never heard about, you could never be certain if an image had a (for example) 17.9999 year old child versus an 18.0001 year old adult. Even professional producers of porn have been fooled.
So, this particular oft-cited qualitative difference between CP and copyright infringement is actually illusory.
A short investigation of their website would have enabled you to know that it is 3% of all browser accesses to sites running statcounter.com tracking code. The methodology is therefore vulnerable to browser manipulation via, for example, extensions --- I'm pretty sure that if I show up at all in their stats, it is in the "other" category because my NoScript config blocks JS from that site.
> Percentages mean nothing on their own
No, they obviously have meaning on their own, although I agree that I was wrong to use them to make statements about usage. Either a constantly growing number of humans over the last year are aware of the existence of Linux and its ability to access websites with statcounter.com tracking code, or a growing number of reported-as-Linux bots are slipping through statcounter.com's bot filtration methods (it is hard to know if this possibility is significant, since the site doesn't publish, AFAICS, statistics of how many bot accesses were filtered out compared to total accesses which were compiled), or Linux users are somehow increasingly accessing the web more than other kinds of users (something I view as unlikely).
I do agree that all my statements in my original post about "users" were wrong, and I was stupid to post that before checking the site for info about the methodology used, so, yes, thanks for the correction!
Cool site, that --- it lets you download the actual data they use for their graphs. Using that one can see that:
Desktop Windows declined by 3% over the last 12 months
The total percentage of XP + Win8 only declined by 0.3% over the same period, so most XP users seem to be migrating to Win8
Total Windows + iOS only declined by 1.4% (1.7% if you include MacOSX) so currently the leakage of users to Linux-based systems (including Android) is rather insignificant on a yearly basis, but does seem significant on longer time scales like decades or generations
It is possible to make a totally wireless chemical detonator by using something like, for example, gelatin-coated sodium metal in hydrogen peroxide (+ an appropriately heat-sensitive primary explosive), or possibly some other kind of coated metal + picric acid. I don't think it's recommended except in circumstances where it would be impossible to use a wired detonator --- the exact detonation time would be quite unpredictable.
The original suggestion, by an engineer, was half tongue-in-cheek: "Don't be evil" (those whose mother tongue isn't English may not understand that this phrasing is strained in a certain way which, at least to me, suggests comic-book level evil). He probably didn't even mean it to be an official motto, it was just a reply to some suggestion in a meeting.
Then both the anti-Google crowd and Google's own PR droids changed it to "Do no evil", which is sanctimonious, instead. Oooops...
Ken Thompson's theoretical attack against the Unix ecosystem was only practical because, at the time, he controlled a major portion of binary distribution and simultaneously a major portion of the information which could be used to defeat the attack, that being compiler technology. Nowadays, there are tons of different, competing compilers and systems for code rewriting, any of which can be used to "return trust" to a particular OS's binary ecosystem (if someone would take the time and effort to actually do it).
Although I believe Bruce Schneier's information (previously covered in Slashdot) that, probably, any widely used software system available today is practically effortlessly pwnable by the NSA's TAO division, I don't think that the problem of designing hardened systems is an impractical one. It's just going to take a lot of hard, hard work (Schneier's call-to-arms in this regard has already been covered by Slashdot).
On the other hand, actually doing it, for the express point of showing how ebook DRM has no real effect on preventing piracy but only hurts the consumer, is much more damaging to the publishing industry. So, it comes down to whether the people who have the big red [GO LEGAL] button in front of them have heard about the Streisand Effect.
It's slightly beyond me how in this day and age office workers can't figure it out by themselves, say perusing the vast information trove that is Internet.
I don't understand. Maybe this is because I haven't read the paper, yet, but the distinct impression that I get is that this is a generic "weakness" against any encryption scheme, including multiple composition of simpler building blocks.
Additionally, I had had the impression that meet-in-the-middle is only practical for small enough block or key sizes which enable the attacker to maintain a table in memory which is of the same order of size as the key/block-space. This does not seem practical for most modern block ciphers.
I'm fascinated and hopeful from the plethora of various non-chemical bed bug control methods which have been discussed here, but rather bemused that no one has talked about insect growth regulators, which are much less toxic than most insecticides (they actually don't even kill the insects themselves, just short-circuit their life cycle, preventing reproduction), yet more effective for long-term control (from what I understand).
Did I miss something and bed bugs have already developed a wide immunity to these agents?
> When you purchase music, you actually purchase a license. Your rights are whatever > the seller gives to you through the license. There is no ambiguity.
My rights are whatever the seller gives me? So if the license I get says I cannot complain about the quality of the music in any public forum, this abrogates my first amendment rights? Somehow, I don't think so.
> There is no ambiguity.
Somehow, I get the impression you aren't a lawyer.
Oh, and by the way, unless you were talking solely about digital downloads, you should read the following Wikipedia article: First sale doctrine. And even the status of digital downloads is not totally determined, we're still waiting for the ReDigi litigation to play out.
Correct. My understanding was that the conclusion that they came to was that if they just ignored the letters, it was unlikely anything would happen (as I have hinted in my previous post in this thread).
Frankly, I think you'd be amazed at the number of people who do just that, and buy the product afterwards (or, possibly, before --- if we're talking about books vs. ebooks). Could you give us your opinion about that kind of behavior, and why you would never consider doing that (I'm assuming, of course, you're intelligent enough to have thought of that idea, yourself)?
> Pretty soon there won't be any AAA games left for you to steal, loser boy.
I didn't quite understand this. Did you mean that piracy will cause the (current) AAA game producers to go out of business? Or did you mean that DRM-filled-up-the-wazoo games shouldn't be considered "AAA" anymore?
Besides which, which reality do you live in? Last time I checked, all (or at least most) of the DRM-via-online attempts for (really popular) games got cracked in short order (except, of course, things which are more or less totally online play).
> Because not watching Game of Thrones is a life threatening situation...
Some people believe that the extremely long term and onerous punishments which copyright inflicts on our society are life threatening to our culture.
Secondly, what TPB has succeeded in doing is showing the world that it is a practical impossibility to enforce copyright. When you add this to Bill Gates' candid confession that even if Microsoft had a magic genie which could totally prevent piracy of Windows in China, they wouldn't use it, you could interpret (wrongly, I know) your utterance as concerning (somehow totally enforced) copyright as being life threatening to the relative popularity of Game of Thrones.
> and the copyright holders are vicious about litigating
No. You really, really don't understand something here. The reality is that the (putative) copyright holders are vicious about threatening to litigate. They really, really, don't want to litigate, because just one decision against them would erase all future income (and many legal scholars believe that their case is weak).
I was in a Friday's restaurant not too long ago, and they (gasp!) sang "that song". I discussed it with one of the workers, and he told me that there had been a real discussion and research done and they came to the conclusion that it was probably OK.
> Don't expect to see too many AutoCADs coming out from that model.
Somehow, I think you are short sighted. Especially since what AutoCAD has most to worry about isn't some lone FOSS developer waking up one morning and managing to produce, single-handedly, the FOSS equivalent --- it is much more likely that some commercial startup will make a good try at competing with AutoCAD, fail, and the likes of Google (or more probably, General Motors --- or even, in this day and age, crowd-funding by the maker community!) will decide to buy that startup's product and release it open-source, and possibly even continue to (partially) back its development (because they're tired of paying through the kazoo for AutoCAD, over and over again, and think this a good investment which could drive CAD software prices down).
> Think about it, since ThePirateBay exists the copy protection (DRM) went right into NSA survilance style
Uh, don't you think that a much more likely explanation is that the content cartel's reaction is merely a natural one caused by the "Emperor has no clothes" exposure by TPB that copyright is, given modern technology, not enforceable in any practical fashion without trampling over all kinds of rights which people cherish (and yes, here we have the real overlap with the NSA situation).
Slashdot Mirror
> You can look at illegal child porn images and instantly know that they're illegal
Oh, if only the world were so simple (even better would be a big red button I could push to eliminate all child abuse). Unfortunately, every jurisdiction has a particular age threshold which it uses to define "child porn" and so, unless you have some kind of superpower which I have never heard about, you could never be certain if an image had a (for example) 17.9999 year old child versus an 18.0001 year old adult. Even professional producers of porn have been fooled.
So, this particular oft-cited qualitative difference between CP and copyright infringement is actually illusory.
> 3% of what?
A short investigation of their website would have enabled you to know that it is 3% of all browser accesses to sites running statcounter.com tracking code. The methodology is therefore vulnerable to browser manipulation via, for example, extensions --- I'm pretty sure that if I show up at all in their stats, it is in the "other" category because my NoScript config blocks JS from that site.
> Percentages mean nothing on their own
No, they obviously have meaning on their own, although I agree that I was wrong to use them to make statements about usage. Either a constantly growing number of humans over the last year are aware of the existence of Linux and its ability to access websites with statcounter.com tracking code, or a growing number of reported-as-Linux bots are slipping through statcounter.com's bot filtration methods (it is hard to know if this possibility is significant, since the site doesn't publish, AFAICS, statistics of how many bot accesses were filtered out compared to total accesses which were compiled), or Linux users are somehow increasingly accessing the web more than other kinds of users (something I view as unlikely).
I do agree that all my statements in my original post about "users" were wrong, and I was stupid to post that before checking the site for info about the methodology used, so, yes, thanks for the correction!
> As long as the USA is a democratic republic the voters can vote for a new government
See Lessig's TED talk about that.
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is."
> It's a fair assumption that a home has just 1 laptop/PC
In the Western world? It seems to be increasing, and closer to two currently.
Cool site, that --- it lets you download the actual data they use for their graphs. Using that one can see that:
It is possible to make a totally wireless chemical detonator by using something like, for example, gelatin-coated sodium metal in hydrogen peroxide (+ an appropriately heat-sensitive primary explosive), or possibly some other kind of coated metal + picric acid. I don't think it's recommended except in circumstances where it would be impossible to use a wired detonator --- the exact detonation time would be quite unpredictable.
The original suggestion, by an engineer, was half tongue-in-cheek: "Don't be evil" (those whose mother tongue isn't English may not understand that this phrasing is strained in a certain way which, at least to me, suggests comic-book level evil). He probably didn't even mean it to be an official motto, it was just a reply to some suggestion in a meeting.
Then both the anti-Google crowd and Google's own PR droids changed it to "Do no evil", which is sanctimonious, instead. Oooops...
Ken Thompson's theoretical attack against the Unix ecosystem was only practical because, at the time, he controlled a major portion of binary distribution and simultaneously a major portion of the information which could be used to defeat the attack, that being compiler technology. Nowadays, there are tons of different, competing compilers and systems for code rewriting, any of which can be used to "return trust" to a particular OS's binary ecosystem (if someone would take the time and effort to actually do it).
Although I believe Bruce Schneier's information (previously covered in Slashdot) that, probably, any widely used software system available today is practically effortlessly pwnable by the NSA's TAO division, I don't think that the problem of designing hardened systems is an impractical one. It's just going to take a lot of hard, hard work (Schneier's call-to-arms in this regard has already been covered by Slashdot).
Well, I proposed doing this 4 years ago and all I got was +4 Funny for my (I admit not quite Herculean) efforts.
On the other hand, actually doing it, for the express point of showing how ebook DRM has no real effect on preventing piracy but only hurts the consumer, is much more damaging to the publishing industry. So, it comes down to whether the people who have the big red [GO LEGAL] button in front of them have heard about the Streisand Effect.
It's simple:
"Hm, how do you center a table entry, again?"
[Consults browser]
"Ooooo, look, ... shiny!"
Jesus! (Satan?) I didn't think the Slashdot "whoosh" sound required DRM to be enabled ... what has this world come to?
> so potentially at least one Linux browser, be it Chrome or Firefox could potentially be blessed to stream on Linux one day
No, no, surprised little boy, in a red poofball hat, don't be sucked in!
DRM-ed streaming on Linux will bring with it a thousand years of evil!
You wouldn't want a browser with glowing red eyes now, would you?
Bravo (<sarc/>) to the UK for what is easily the most mangled libel laws of the entire globe!
I don't understand. Maybe this is because I haven't read the paper, yet, but the distinct impression that I get is that this is a generic "weakness" against any encryption scheme, including multiple composition of simpler building blocks.
Additionally, I had had the impression that meet-in-the-middle is only practical for small enough block or key sizes which enable the attacker to maintain a table in memory which is of the same order of size as the key/block-space. This does not seem practical for most modern block ciphers.
I'm fascinated and hopeful from the plethora of various non-chemical bed bug control methods which have been discussed here, but rather bemused that no one has talked about insect growth regulators, which are much less toxic than most insecticides (they actually don't even kill the insects themselves, just short-circuit their life cycle, preventing reproduction), yet more effective for long-term control (from what I understand).
Did I miss something and bed bugs have already developed a wide immunity to these agents?
I think he might have meant this source .
Or, maybe not.
> When you purchase music, you actually purchase a license. Your rights are whatever
> the seller gives to you through the license. There is no ambiguity.
My rights are whatever the seller gives me? So if the license I get says I cannot complain about the quality of the music in any public forum, this abrogates my first amendment rights? Somehow, I don't think so.
> There is no ambiguity.
Somehow, I get the impression you aren't a lawyer.
Oh, and by the way, unless you were talking solely about digital downloads, you should read the following Wikipedia article: First sale doctrine. And even the status of digital downloads is not totally determined, we're still waiting for the ReDigi litigation to play out.
Correct. My understanding was that the conclusion that they came to was that if they just ignored the letters, it was unlikely anything would happen (as I have hinted in my previous post in this thread).
> I have been in countries with little copyright protection and guess what happens with their music and film industry?
I dunno, maybe... government shills will use their great success to claim that, er, copyright needs to be strengthened?
But please, feel free to serve up some referenced facts which actually confirm your anecdotal opinion. I'm actually quite open-minded.
> So I would just go and pirate those as well?
Frankly, I think you'd be amazed at the number of people who do just that, and buy the product afterwards (or, possibly, before --- if we're talking about books vs. ebooks). Could you give us your opinion about that kind of behavior, and why you would never consider doing that (I'm assuming, of course, you're intelligent enough to have thought of that idea, yourself)?
> Pretty soon there won't be any AAA games left for you to steal, loser boy.
I didn't quite understand this. Did you mean that piracy will cause the (current) AAA game producers to go out of business? Or did you mean that DRM-filled-up-the-wazoo games shouldn't be considered "AAA" anymore?
Besides which, which reality do you live in? Last time I checked, all (or at least most) of the DRM-via-online attempts for (really popular) games got cracked in short order (except, of course, things which are more or less totally online play).
> Because not watching Game of Thrones is a life threatening situation...
Some people believe that the extremely long term and onerous punishments which copyright inflicts on our society are life threatening to our culture.
Secondly, what TPB has succeeded in doing is showing the world that it is a practical impossibility to enforce copyright. When you add this to Bill Gates' candid confession that even if Microsoft had a magic genie which could totally prevent piracy of Windows in China, they wouldn't use it, you could interpret (wrongly, I know) your utterance as concerning (somehow totally enforced) copyright as being life threatening to the relative popularity of Game of Thrones.
> and the copyright holders are vicious about litigating
No. You really, really don't understand something here. The reality is that the (putative) copyright holders are vicious about threatening to litigate. They really, really, don't want to litigate, because just one decision against them would erase all future income (and many legal scholars believe that their case is weak).
I was in a Friday's restaurant not too long ago, and they (gasp!) sang "that song". I discussed it with one of the workers, and he told me that there had been a real discussion and research done and they came to the conclusion that it was probably OK.
> Don't expect to see too many AutoCADs coming out from that model.
Somehow, I think you are short sighted. Especially since what AutoCAD has most to worry about isn't some lone FOSS developer waking up one morning and managing to produce, single-handedly, the FOSS equivalent --- it is much more likely that some commercial startup will make a good try at competing with AutoCAD, fail, and the likes of Google (or more probably, General Motors --- or even, in this day and age, crowd-funding by the maker community!) will decide to buy that startup's product and release it open-source, and possibly even continue to (partially) back its development (because they're tired of paying through the kazoo for AutoCAD, over and over again, and think this a good investment which could drive CAD software prices down).
> Think about it, since ThePirateBay exists the copy protection (DRM) went right into NSA survilance style
Uh, don't you think that a much more likely explanation is that the content cartel's reaction is merely a natural one caused by the "Emperor has no clothes" exposure by TPB that copyright is, given modern technology, not enforceable in any practical fashion without trampling over all kinds of rights which people cherish (and yes, here we have the real overlap with the NSA situation).