Given his obvious cluelessness about the technology involved, it seems unlikely unless he finds some source of reliable information and become a, well I guess the best term would be, "kit kiddy".
A bit longer: every digital watermarking scheme that I know of has been "broken" by finding some transformation of the content which deletes the watermark while preserving the content more or less unchanged from the point of view of human enjoyment.
> wouldn't a binary diff reveal whatever watermarking was in effect?
If the watermarking occured in the frequency domain, for example, a binary diff would merely show that almost every sample in the music file had changed. And adding random noise to each sample in a file might leave the watermark intact.
> Especially given the fact they can't afford to hire competent admins > and so are stuck with whomever is locally available.
This is where the infiltration of Linux on the low-end consumer systems will eventually change things.
A downside of the the same infiltration is that Linux will become an attractive target for malware. [Here is where we cue the endless debate if Linux is inherently easier to secure than Windows (personally, I believe it's true).] Otherwise that would be another big plus for Linux for SME's --- the relative lack of malware and therefore easier administration/security.
Judging from the huge numbers of comments on NewEgg (I'd guess that it was at least 20% of the comments) that the drive died within days or months, this Linux-unfriendly idle flag setting is really just a minor irritation.
On the other hand, since many of the failure comments blamed it on overheating, perhaps Linux users from regions with real penguins will be OK.
> It's also shutting down their processor sales at Christmas.
I know this is Slashdot, but most people don't stuff stockings with CPUs.
I'm sure that any kind of computer being bought for Christmas has a CPU which was manufactured a minimum of a month or two ago. I'd actually guess that their processor sales slump somewhat in December and January because of surplus production of assembled computers in the previous months (and because at least some of the workers who buy CPUs and upgrade business computers go on vacation).
> When will their crawlers automatically disqualify ALL sites that contain malware though?
Not possible; even disregarding the problem that other posters have raised, that the automatic recognition of novel malware is more or less impossible, most of the black hats setting up these sites have started to get really sophisticated and the servers can return different web pages based on IP addresses, and often never serve up exploits more than once to any given IP address.
Like everything in the security game, it's cat-and-mouse.
> for the purpose of using AMD processors and running Linux
This article seems to totally contradict your comment (except for the running Linux part, but if not Linux, what operating system would you suggest? It's obviously much better to supply a standard OS if possible, no?)
> and they were talking about replacing it with a foot peddle
My understanding is that the current solution is a pull-string generator; hopefully it has a hefty enough flywheel to enable a single individual to both power the generator and work on the OLPC, but if not, the OLPC has NiMH batteries which will store charge to enable work with the distraction of power generation. I have the feeling that people will also figure out how to pull the strings with their legs even if it's not the way the generator designers planned they would use it.
> I suspect at best, it will be much like computers in the US. A few nerds will play with them because the think they are neat, > and most people will not think they are worth the effort.
Now it's time for me to turn the tables on you. In the US, only a few nerds think it's worthwhile using computers? Don't tell me you've fallen into the same confusion as the guy I originally flamed, in thinking that the point of the OLPC is to advance computer science education. My understanding is that in addition to any pedagogical software, the OLPC is supposed to be supplied with a varied range of applications including music composition, drawing, camera + photo editing, etc., which will interest at least some of the children. Not to mention that the children in question have fewer alternatives for entertainment (e.g., no widely available television, if I am not mistaken).
Yes, I meant that Slashdot userid duggi, who I was flaming, should probably not teach if there were good teaching professionals available instead. His slant on education didn't really turn me on...
OTOH, your argument in a later comment that some teaching professionals are bad is somewhat of a "strawman" argument; although I do agree with you that the teaching profession (usually encouraged by their academic branch) periodically comes out with really bad pedagogical ideas and sometimes it takes them years to figure out how bad they are. My experience is that the better teachers are quite conservative and don't start using these revolutionary ideas until they have been field tested for a while on someone else's students (and often, to remain "politically correct" with their colleagues and with parents they have to give some lip service to these new ideas and claim they are "integrating" them in their teaching methods).
The OLPC is one of these revolutionary ideas and they're still looking for the first guinea pigs. I personally think it will be good in the long run, but the going will be rough at the start.
> this would be like me trying to make an argument about the relative merits of Microsoft programming technologies, > and not even knowing the proper name of "DirectX", and calling it "DirectZ"
And what if you're dealing with a vastly experienced DirectX programmer who's recovering from Wernicke's aphasia? Or mild anomia? Or...
By the way, don't be misled by the contents of that Wikipedia article into thinking people only suffer the exact symptoms stated in it. Aphasias actually have a very wide range of presentations. As I said, you should go read the advanced neurology texts.
I, myself, mispronounced "finite" for what I would guess was about two years of my youth, because I encountered it in mathematics texts without ever having heard anyone actually pronounce it, and just assumed it was "infinite" without the "in". It took several months of hearing it pronounced by others and being corrected once or twice before I actually checked the dictionary. Your argument in effect is that my mathematical ability was lessened in some way during that period because of that. Kind of stupid, no?
> I am trying to solve a 1st order differential equation, I would like a pencil and a paper to work this out.
The equation is: dx/dt = x + cos(x * t)*sin(x + t)
Good luck. The reality is that the vast majority of 1st order differential equations cannot be solved with pencil and paper, and using numerical algorithms on computers is the best and most general way to solve them.
But even without this, you're totally missing the point. The student's computer wouldn't be solving the equation for him; it would be
teaching him how to solve it. I'm not an educational professional, but I suppose one way might be to
present a (simple, pencil-and-paper solvable) problem to him, asking him to choose the answer from a list
based on his choice, either pat him on the back for being right or show him an explanation of why he was wrong
> I cannot how a 10 year old is going to learn maths or chemistry (for that matter, his local language) in a laptop.
Leave teaching to teaching professionals. They seem to think computers are useful tools in their trade.
> After committing an error like this, it's safe to assume that that poster's opinions > can be laughed at and ignored.
I see that your grasp of human neurology is laughable. After committing an err...
Oh, never mind. I'd recommend you read a few advanced neurology texts dealing with the remarkable effects of selective brain damage, but I'm in doubt that your own neurological framework is plastic enough to accept that the logical validity of an argument has little to do with the linguistic capabilities of the positor.
> So this one only covers Digital Versatile Discs. Not HD-DVD, not BluRay, not any theoretical third HD media format.
Actually, this patent application might (if the Patent Office would stop being braindead) serve as prior art for subsequent applications on those higher-resolution formats.
I was going to continue in the line that maybe IBM is just trying to help us (while padding its patent statistics) by preventing patents on those and future formats, but then I realized that even if no one can collect licensing fees on the "technology" it doesn't mean that someone won't implement it. It might even encourage it. Ugh.
> So if you want to save it as XML and then convert it back
Considering that your opinion is that OOXML is a terrific open standard (I have replied to previous posts of yours on this topic), why would anyone want to convert the document back to the old.DOC file format?
> Would you rather they keep the file format closed?
They did. And that's why we're arguing. And why they got either 3k+ or 10k+ comments on their "standard". The "standard" does not specify how the legacy Office-isms like linebreaksLikeWord97 should be rendered.
The first AC reply to your idea is correct but I have a feeling you still might not understand his point. The "leap seconds" which we are talking about are not, like the extra days in leap years, always added to the length of the day. Sometimes they are subtracted.
I am not an expert, but the "exact second" calculation you want to make, averaged over a long enough period of time, seems to me to depend on the motions of every sizeable object in the Solar System and probably also (or maybe even more strongly) on fluid dynamics within the Earth's core. Both of these systems are almost certainly chaotic ones, and therefore probably not amenable to the solution you suggest (pre-calculation).
If it's implemented properly, and as far as I know in TrueCrypt it is, the last thing I would think it would be vulnerable to would be "simple filesize arithmetic", considering that in that mode of use, TrueCrypt should be encrypting entire filesystems, not single files.
AFAIK, it's still vulnerable to an attack which compares the differential history of the encrypted partition over time, but in most reasonable scenarios, in order to launch that attack you need to "own" the computer anyway, which means that the minute the user enters the passwords everything is compromised.
The only scenario where it is a possibly useful attack is when:
(1) You can gain surreptitious periodic physical access to the computer via break-in (2) You can gain surreptitious periodic remote access to the computer via some kind of repetitive ephemeral backdoor
In both of these scenarios, most attackers would (attempt to) install keyloggers or otherwise "own" the computer anyway.
> Fun fact: What you write on a post card can't be used against you in a court of law.
Let's see you test this. Take your fingers and make nice clear prints on a postcard, then write a death threat to the president on it and send it from your neighborhood post office to the White House. Repeat this action once every month.
Please let us know what happens (find a Slashdot-enabled lawyer before you start the experiment, please).
Maybe the moderator just didn't think it added anything to the discussion on the topic, i.e., it was redundant with respect to the headline post (or whatever one calls the paragraphs at the top of the web page which start the whole discussion and are there before the first post)?
It seems that some moderators like the Slashdot equivalent of "cheerleading" and others don't...
Well, actually, it just happens to be that they were referring to "George McGovern, purveyor of finest smoked haddock" but you won't find his article because it's been deleted.
Even assuming that the disambiguation page for "George McGovern" would become so lengthy you couldn't find "presidential candidate" at a glance, shouldn't disambiguation pages on Wikipedia be sorted by "greater notability first"? If not, it would be a trivial solution to your problem. And still let Wikipedia include many articles with lesser notability.
> In fact, I'd bet that most point-and-click novice Ubuntu users, for example, have a basic understanding of what a kernel is, > what code is, how memory is used, file systems, rights and permissions, basic IO, networking, etc., etc.
Thanks for the good belly laugh. I see you've never met my wife and children.
This is one reason people are paying more attention to Ubuntu and similar easy-to-use distros. Non-geeks are able to use them, relatively painlessly.
I will agree with you if what you mean is that the vast majority of Linux users have a knowledgeable geek lurking somewhere nearby (usually the person who installed it).
physical media will be a thing of the past,... There will be no replay option once they determine that a game is no longer profitable enough to continue serving, and there will be no right of resale,...
After I replied:
and some games that are like, say, bicycles, which people can own.
I'm glad that my post had such a great influence on your opinion. I agree with you that my use of the word "dystopian" was an exaggeration, I know that many people enjoy games using the business model you are talking about. I replied because the way I read your original post it seemed to me that you also were exaggerating, claiming that a whole niche of the games market would disappear.
In such a consumer dystopia, I'd think that open-source games would start to gain a foothold in the old off-line, infinitely replayable niche, and eventually the proprietary game producers might partially return to produce games for that niche. Look, we're not talking MS vs. Linux here, you don't use games to run all the other programs on your computer.
Of course, by that time widespread use of computers as general purpose computational platforms might be dead, so the open-source games couldn't compete (e.g., Linux on Playstation 3 cannot use the GPU). I would hope not.
It's also probably the sense which has the greatest genetically based phenotypical variation. To put it simply, there's probably more average difference between "normal" individuals' olfactory experiences than those of sight, hearing, taste, and touch.
That might just be because we rely so little on smell, what is accepted as normal has expanded with respect to this sense (as opposed to color-blindness, for example).
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't you skip
step 0. Boot Linux from USB.
?
Assuming firefox will only use ramdisk for it's cache, of course...
Given his obvious cluelessness about the technology involved, it seems unlikely unless he finds some source of reliable information and become a, well I guess the best term would be, "kit kiddy".
> Can someone give a short version of how digital watermarking works?
It doesn't. Short enough?
A bit longer: every digital watermarking scheme that I know of has been "broken" by finding some transformation of the content which deletes the watermark while preserving the content more or less unchanged from the point of view of human enjoyment.
> wouldn't a binary diff reveal whatever watermarking was in effect?
If the watermarking occured in the frequency domain, for example, a binary diff would merely show that almost every sample in the music file had changed. And adding random noise to each sample in a file might leave the watermark intact.
> Especially given the fact they can't afford to hire competent admins
> and so are stuck with whomever is locally available.
This is where the infiltration of Linux on the low-end consumer systems will eventually change things.
A downside of the the same infiltration is that Linux will become an attractive target for malware. [Here is where we cue the endless debate if Linux is inherently easier to secure than Windows (personally, I believe it's true).] Otherwise that would be another big plus for Linux for SME's --- the relative lack of malware and therefore easier administration/security.
Judging from the huge numbers of comments on NewEgg (I'd guess that it was at least 20% of the comments) that the drive died within days or months, this Linux-unfriendly idle flag setting is really just a minor irritation.
On the other hand, since many of the failure comments blamed it on overheating, perhaps Linux users from regions with real penguins will be OK.
> It's also shutting down their processor sales at Christmas.
I know this is Slashdot, but most people don't stuff stockings with CPUs.
I'm sure that any kind of computer being bought for Christmas has a CPU which was manufactured a minimum of a month or two ago. I'd actually guess that their processor sales slump somewhat in December and January because of surplus production of assembled computers in the previous months (and because at least some of the workers who buy CPUs and upgrade business computers go on vacation).
with the distraction of power generation -> without ...
Oops!
> When will their crawlers automatically disqualify ALL sites that contain malware though?
Not possible; even disregarding the problem that other posters have raised, that the automatic recognition of novel malware is more or less impossible, most of the black hats setting up these sites have started to get really sophisticated and the servers can return different web pages based on IP addresses, and often never serve up exploits more than once to any given IP address.
Like everything in the security game, it's cat-and-mouse.
> for the purpose of using AMD processors and running Linux
This article seems to totally contradict your comment (except for the running Linux part, but if not Linux, what operating system would you suggest? It's obviously much better to supply a standard OS if possible, no?)
> and they were talking about replacing it with a foot peddle
My understanding is that the current solution is a pull-string generator; hopefully it has a hefty enough flywheel to enable a single individual to both power the generator and work on the OLPC, but if not, the OLPC has NiMH batteries which will store charge to enable work with the distraction of power generation. I have the feeling that people will also figure out how to pull the strings with their legs even if it's not the way the generator designers planned they would use it.
> I suspect at best, it will be much like computers in the US. A few nerds will play with them because the think they are neat,
> and most people will not think they are worth the effort.
Now it's time for me to turn the tables on you. In the US, only a few nerds think it's worthwhile using computers? Don't tell me you've fallen into the same confusion as the guy I originally flamed, in thinking that the point of the OLPC is to advance computer science education. My understanding is that in addition to any pedagogical software, the OLPC is supposed to be supplied with a varied range of applications including music composition, drawing, camera + photo editing, etc., which will interest at least some of the children. Not to mention that the children in question have fewer alternatives for entertainment (e.g., no widely available television, if I am not mistaken).
Yes, I meant that Slashdot userid duggi, who I was flaming, should probably not teach if there were good teaching professionals available instead. His slant on education didn't really turn me on...
OTOH, your argument in a later comment that some teaching professionals are bad is somewhat of a "strawman" argument; although I do agree with you that the teaching profession (usually encouraged by their academic branch) periodically comes out with really bad pedagogical ideas and sometimes it takes them years to figure out how bad they are. My experience is that the better teachers are quite conservative and don't start using these revolutionary ideas until they have been field tested for a while on someone else's students (and often, to remain "politically correct" with their colleagues and with parents they have to give some lip service to these new ideas and claim they are "integrating" them in their teaching methods).
The OLPC is one of these revolutionary ideas and they're still looking for the first guinea pigs. I personally think it will be good in the long run, but the going will be rough at the start.
> this would be like me trying to make an argument about the relative merits of Microsoft programming technologies,
...
> and not even knowing the proper name of "DirectX", and calling it "DirectZ"
And what if you're dealing with a vastly experienced DirectX programmer who's recovering from Wernicke's aphasia? Or mild anomia? Or
By the way, don't be misled by the contents of that Wikipedia article into thinking people only suffer the exact symptoms stated in it. Aphasias actually have a very wide range of presentations. As I said, you should go read the advanced neurology texts.
I, myself, mispronounced "finite" for what I would guess was about two years of my youth, because I encountered it in mathematics texts without ever having heard anyone actually pronounce it, and just assumed it was "infinite" without the "in". It took several months of hearing it pronounced by others and being corrected once or twice before I actually checked the dictionary. Your argument in effect is that my mathematical ability was lessened in some way during that period because of that. Kind of stupid, no?
> I am trying to solve a 1st order differential equation, I would like a pencil and a paper to work this out.
The equation is: dx/dt = x + cos(x * t)*sin(x + t)
Good luck. The reality is that the vast majority of 1st order differential equations cannot be solved with pencil and paper, and using numerical algorithms on computers is the best and most general way to solve them.
But even without this, you're totally missing the point. The student's computer wouldn't be solving the equation for him; it would be teaching him how to solve it. I'm not an educational professional, but I suppose one way might be to
> I cannot how a 10 year old is going to learn maths or chemistry (for that matter, his local language) in a laptop.
Leave teaching to teaching professionals. They seem to think computers are useful tools in their trade.
> After committing an error like this, it's safe to assume that that poster's opinions
> can be laughed at and ignored.
I see that your grasp of human neurology is laughable. After committing an err...
Oh, never mind. I'd recommend you read a few advanced neurology texts dealing with the remarkable effects of selective brain damage, but I'm in doubt that your own neurological framework is plastic enough to accept that the logical validity of an argument has little to do with the linguistic capabilities of the positor.
> So this one only covers Digital Versatile Discs. Not HD-DVD, not BluRay, not any theoretical third HD media format.
Actually, this patent application might (if the Patent Office would stop being braindead) serve as prior art for subsequent applications on those higher-resolution formats.
I was going to continue in the line that maybe IBM is just trying to help us (while padding its patent statistics) by preventing patents on those and future formats, but then I realized that even if no one can collect licensing fees on the "technology" it doesn't mean that someone won't implement it. It might even encourage it. Ugh.
> So if you want to save it as XML and then convert it back
.DOC file format?
Considering that your opinion is that OOXML is a terrific open standard (I have replied to previous posts of yours on this topic), why would anyone want to convert the document back to the old
> Would you rather they keep the file format closed?
They did. And that's why we're arguing. And why they got either 3k+ or 10k+ comments on their "standard". The "standard" does not specify how the legacy Office-isms like linebreaksLikeWord97 should be rendered.
The first AC reply to your idea is correct but I have a feeling you still might not understand his point. The "leap seconds" which we are talking about are not, like the extra days in leap years, always added to the length of the day. Sometimes they are subtracted.
I am not an expert, but the "exact second" calculation you want to make, averaged over a long enough period of time, seems to me to depend on the motions of every sizeable object in the Solar System and probably also (or maybe even more strongly) on fluid dynamics within the Earth's core. Both of these systems are almost certainly chaotic ones, and therefore probably not amenable to the solution you suggest (pre-calculation).
If it's implemented properly, and as far as I know in TrueCrypt it is, the last thing I would think it would be vulnerable to would be "simple filesize arithmetic", considering that in that mode of use, TrueCrypt should be encrypting entire filesystems, not single files.
AFAIK, it's still vulnerable to an attack which compares the differential history of the encrypted partition over time, but in most reasonable scenarios, in order to launch that attack you need to "own" the computer anyway, which means that the minute the user enters the passwords everything is compromised.
The only scenario where it is a possibly useful attack is when:
(1) You can gain surreptitious periodic physical access to the computer via break-in
(2) You can gain surreptitious periodic remote access to the computer via some kind of repetitive ephemeral backdoor
In both of these scenarios, most attackers would (attempt to) install keyloggers or otherwise "own" the computer anyway.
> Fun fact: What you write on a post card can't be used against you in a court of law.
Let's see you test this. Take your fingers and make nice clear prints on a postcard, then write a death threat to the president on it and send it from your neighborhood post office to the White House. Repeat this action once every month.
Please let us know what happens (find a Slashdot-enabled lawyer before you start the experiment, please).
Maybe the moderator just didn't think it added anything to the discussion on the topic, i.e., it was redundant with respect to the headline post (or whatever one calls the paragraphs at the top of the web page which start the whole discussion and are there before the first post)?
It seems that some moderators like the Slashdot equivalent of "cheerleading" and others don't...
Well, actually, it just happens to be that they were referring to "George McGovern, purveyor of finest smoked haddock" but you won't find his article because it's been deleted.
Even assuming that the disambiguation page for "George McGovern" would become so lengthy you couldn't find "presidential candidate" at a glance, shouldn't disambiguation pages on Wikipedia be sorted by "greater notability first"? If not, it would be a trivial solution to your problem. And still let Wikipedia include many articles with lesser notability.
> In fact, I'd bet that most point-and-click novice Ubuntu users, for example, have a basic understanding of what a kernel is,
> what code is, how memory is used, file systems, rights and permissions, basic IO, networking, etc., etc.
Thanks for the good belly laugh. I see you've never met my wife and children.
This is one reason people are paying more attention to Ubuntu and similar easy-to-use distros. Non-geeks are able to use them, relatively painlessly.
I will agree with you if what you mean is that the vast majority of Linux users have a knowledgeable geek lurking somewhere nearby (usually the person who installed it).
After I replied:
I'm glad that my post had such a great influence on your opinion. I agree with you that my use of the word "dystopian" was an exaggeration, I know that many people enjoy games using the business model you are talking about. I replied because the way I read your original post it seemed to me that you also were exaggerating, claiming that a whole niche of the games market would disappear.
In such a consumer dystopia, I'd think that open-source games would start to gain a foothold in the old off-line, infinitely replayable niche, and eventually the proprietary game producers might partially return to produce games for that niche. Look, we're not talking MS vs. Linux here, you don't use games to run all the other programs on your computer.
Of course, by that time widespread use of computers as general purpose computational platforms might be dead, so the open-source games couldn't compete (e.g., Linux on Playstation 3 cannot use the GPU). I would hope not.
It's also probably the sense which has the greatest genetically based phenotypical variation. To put it simply, there's probably more average difference between "normal" individuals' olfactory experiences than those of sight, hearing, taste, and touch.
That might just be because we rely so little on smell, what is accepted as normal has expanded with respect to this sense (as opposed to color-blindness, for example).