You have an interesting point there, I was kind of locked onto the more destructive DoS paradigms when I posted.
My first reaction to your suggestion was that it would be easy to discover and disable any such knock-jammer, but then I realized that the attacker might enclose it in an armored box and just glue the whole thing to the door with reinforced epoxy or something stronger.
I stand corrected --- and am even more happy I didn't invest:-)
The other contactless technologies which I can think of are more easily "burnt-out" in a DoS attack: induction - generate a much larger field,
optical - use a very strong light source (yes, I know, it is possible to
defend against this with even more sophisticated technology, but that
would be more expensive).
The next step up from knocking would be to knock holes in the door or
blow it up or something, which anyway would work against the other
solutions.
MS lawyer: Exhibit A shows the watermarks which prove that the version posted
on <latest still viable P2P network> came from Company X.
Company X lawyer: Exhibit B is a list of all of the security holes which
were discovered in Windows XP in the period since MS sold
their licensed code to our company...
OTOH, if the license explicitly states draconian security requirements for the computers which are used to hold the source code (e.g., cannot be connected to the Internet, cannot be connected to any network, must be kept in a Faraday cage, cannot run Windows, cannot be turned on, or whatever) then MS might still have some case...
Of course, MS with even no case whatsoever isn't something you want to have to deal with in court.
Despite all the humorous and not-so-humorous scenarios posted of waking up in the future in a less than ideal situation, as long as I would be able to communicate and absorb information enough to be able to try to understand what things are like when I wake up, my ferocious curiosity would make me try it.
Except for the fact that I think the probability of success is so small as to make it not worthwhile.
It's probably an archaic notion, but some people used to listen to the radio because it enabled them to be exposed to some subset of their society's culture. One rather intelligent guy at my work surprised me one day when he told me that he prefers media which is "edited and arranged" for him by others. He dislikes, for example, playing an album or playlist in random order.
There was already one poster here who replaces DJ's at his parties by letting the audience select the music from his extensive collection on hard disk via a GUI. Except for copyright (and possibly security) problems, there's no reason why he couldn't also let people plug in their portable music collections via USB, have the computer make a statistical analysis of the data, and then play a representative selection of music from the audience's
collection.
This of course opens up a whole new frontier for trolling ("Uggh! Who brought that music!"). And subliminal advertising. Lots of new societal ramifications...
Your point about rape prosecution and this pill was what first hit me about the post. However, the pill might still be useful for the (probably small) minority of rape victims where the rapist has been caught almost immediately so the victim could make a statement and a line-up identification before taking the pill.
Another low-probability situation where it could be useful is when the events of the rape were recorded faithfully enough by surveilance cameras that the personal testimony of the victim would only be to affirm that "it did happpen that way".
The comments there are interesting. A major point made is that the reason that video telephones haven't caught on isn't because of the technology or cost but rather that video telephony destroys many advantages that regular audio telephony has, like minimal intrusion on privacy, while delivering very little advantage on its own since most people actually don't like staring fixedly at each other when they talk (which they tend to do over video telephones now).
OTOH, people just might manage to adapt to talking over video telephones in a more relaxed manner. I suppose it was pretty weird for people when the telephone was introduced, also.
Anyway, it seems likely that current OS's will have plenty of time to adapt while our culture adopts (or doesn't adopt) massive communication via video. Thus making Metcalfe's out-of-context comment look pretty stupid (which it wasn't, really, since after you filter out the Metcalfe-sque flamebait he just said they'd have to change to be able to handle massive communication at video data rates).
AFAIK, all of the posts about this drive have overlooked the fact
that the drive does not support CD's. It is Blu-ray + DVD,
not Blu-ray + DVD + CD.
Anyone know if this is just a cost-cutting thing or is it explicitly
part of the Blu-ray licensing arrangement so that the content producers
can start to phase out non-DRM music?
On second thought (gotta love that Preview button), it'd be really
weird if the Playstation 3 couldn't play CD's, so I guess I should take my tin-foil
hat off now...
If this lame-brain scheme actually does get implemented with a high enough tax rate, it could drive businesses with a large tax bill to "offshoring" their software use to out-of-state "IT hosting" companies.
Of course, since almost every electronic device nowadays is digital somewhere, this tax should also logically extend to many or most: telephones, programmable advertising marquees, microwave ovens, CNC and other industrial manufacturing equipment, cars, trucks, air conditioners,...
I didn't expect you to have had it, duh! You're a junkie, not a moron.
"What possible value is it to my clients to have me write/fix an open source player"
The value of as many copies of Windows which will be needed to run your application. That could be any sum of money from, God only knows, $79 up to $150,000 or whatever MS is charging for their most expensive site licenses. Of course this assumes that the only reason they would buy those copies of Windows would be to run your software, which is unlikely. It still does not mean that the cost of your application being Windows-only is non-zero. That will only be true when all current and future versions of Windows are given away at no charge and all Windows applications can be run under all other OS's (so that no extra hardware is required to run the free Windows versions).
*Everything* has a cost. Open source, closed source, homogeneous computing environments, heterogeneous computing environments, monopolies, market competition, freedom, slavery,.... everything has its own cost.
"when WMP is out there FOR FREE!"
for free! : You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.
"Just don't try to force the rest of us to go the tinker-toy route with you."
If what you wrote was correct about MS just loving the idea that you'd redistribute WMP with your application, then the EU decision has no such effect on you. Explain to me how it forces you to do anything except possibly install WMP. Anyway, IIRC, most or all business flavors of Vista won't bundle media players, either.
The EU decision is supposed to make people like you understand: (1) MS *is* giving WMP away for free by bundling it with Windows (you both understand and love that), and (2) that is an unfair business practice since it actually does cost MS something to produce WMP (you obviously don't care about this). One man's meat is another man's poison.
"They give better products away for free, and they're "bad" because of it?"
Since when has Windows been free? Just because something is bundled with a
paid-for product does not mean it is free. Or do you think that Microsoft
would be happy to let the Wine developers give away WMP (for free!) along with
an appropriate (and probably hypothetical) version of Wine so that all those Linux fanboys who haven't
seen the light yet can use WMP (for free!) under Linux?
I built applications around the FREE OCX for WMP and could count on WMP existing on the users' machines.
You meant "could count on WMP existing on the users' machines which were running a
sufficiently up-to-date (and paid-for) copy of Windows.
You haven't had much luck porting your applications to Linux or OS X now, have you?
BTW, you could have just bundled your applications with a decent open-source media player like VLC, instead. And patched it if it didn't have the necessary interactivity for you. But that would,
I admit, have probably been more work.
You're so high on the heroin you're not even aware of the price, or the danger.
Hm, everything you say is correct, but it's obvious to me that you missed my point, since you more or less corroborate it in your post.
It hinges on two fairly different ideas of what "perfect & enduring" is.
You focused on the information itself contained in the page being perfect and enduring. I have to admit that I hadn't really thought that hard about that. I guess a web page with a valid proof of some hard mathematical problem will still be perfect and enduring information in the future. I admit I was thinking of a lot of other stuff for which perfection is a much more subjective judgement.
I was more focussed on perfection including accessibility of the information, and as you yourself state:
"available to researchers who care to figure them out"
"translations of course require continual update as language changes"
and here again you are ignoring what I thought was the major thrust of my post which was "interpretation, explanation, and rehashing will be required as culture changes". I probably just read too much science fiction, but I have no problem imagining someone in the far future reading the Rubiyat needing to search crossreferences for more or less every concept, including lots of stuff you probably accept as unchangeable, like "eating", "sleep", yes, even "death", and just not being able to get to the "perfect" information you claim is in them.
That's just an illusion, also, if the page isn't "wikified" and actively maintained by others after you're gone. In another 2000 years, even if it is still hosted somewhere like www.archive.org, your "perfect and enduring" web page will be about as intelligible as Beowolf is today (and I'm not talking about clusters). If not less so, given the accelerated pace of change.
It's not an urban legend. A teenager was hospitalized close to death not too long ago where I live after drinking 25 liters while winning a water drinking contest.
I think the technical term would be "electrolyte imbalance" (although that might also be applied to the opposite where you eat too much salts and not enough water).
Your nerves (and probably a lot of other stuff) need ions to work (but I think it's mainly the axons and not so much the synapses) and drinking too much makes you piss those necessary ions away.
Uhm, you forgot the step where you pay $262.99 to Microsoft for the compiler?
(Assuming it's Visual Studio 2005 --- and of course M$'s compilers are not
totally backwards and forwards compatible, so you might have to pay more for other
compiler versions, assuming M$ is still selling them).
There are free compilers, but most software developers on Windows don't use them.
And porting from M$'s compilers to the free ones, which are gcc-like, is usually
non-trivial.
Other than that what you wrote is pretty much OK. I'm willing to concede that if
Windows compilers were all available and free of charge, a Gentoo-like setup could
work.
Your average (or at least the lowest 20 percentile) Windows user, unfortunately, lacks
the know-how to read warning dialogs, never mind the patience to wait for a large program
to compile. And expecting them to learn is similar to expecting that pilots should have to
know how to fix every piece of equipment on any airplane they fly.
Wow! I gotta tell NASA --- don't waste money sending a manned mission to Mars, I know a guy on Slashdot who lives there!
"The answer to point two is simple... I'm not too sure about Windows; but I would imagine"
If you have no familiarity with Windows, which is the computing platform used by the people I mentioned in (1), I fail to see how you can be sure it is "simple". (It isn't.)
"The answer to point one is just as simple. Your grandmother and most other people who don't know what a compiler is, can always learn what one is."
Martian grandmothers must be very different than the majority of Earth grandmothers!
"And no, I don't use OpenOffice."
You obviously missed the point here. Or have you actually personally reviewed all the software you use?
Even though from your sig you obviously don't use TeX or Mathematica, I will stoop to comment on your post...:-)
(1) My grandmother and most people don't know what a compiler *is* (2) These people are not helped if someone distributes source code
which isn't the real source code which was compiled to get
the executable.
The only reason mal-coders haven't done it is because very few non-technical people think the way you do. So giving them "the source code" doesn't impress them at all...
BTW, do use OpenOffice? Exactly how long did your code review take?
The emphasis of aikido is on grappling and neutralization without
harm to the attacker, not leveling with blows. It's probably
the best martial art to use for self-defense from the point of view
of your post.
In practice, however, if the attacker is stupid enough to ignore
the pain which his body is using to warn him to submit, he still can hurt himself
by strongly resisting being controlled or pinned.
Don't hold your breath waiting for the Fezzik/Inigo rhyming
scheme to replace it.
It requires too much cooperation between Slashdotters...
To start another thread, I see you've ironically been modded funny,
which would appear
to be an attempt of the moderators to express "moderation-humor"
--- is it fair that AFAIK the meta-moderators can't moderate them
that way?
Or can they? Being a n00b, I can't tell from the scant info in the FAQ?
Slashdot Mirror
You have an interesting point there, I was kind of locked onto the more destructive DoS paradigms when I posted.
:-)
My first reaction to your suggestion was that it would be easy to discover and disable any such knock-jammer, but then I realized that the attacker might enclose it in an armored box and just glue the whole thing to the door with reinforced epoxy or something stronger.
I stand corrected --- and am even more happy I didn't invest
The other contactless technologies which I can think of are more easily "burnt-out" in a DoS attack: induction - generate a much larger field, optical - use a very strong light source (yes, I know, it is possible to defend against this with even more sophisticated technology, but that would be more expensive).
The next step up from knocking would be to knock holes in the door or blow it up or something, which anyway would work against the other solutions.
OTOH, I'm not about to invest in this company...
See:
File->Batch Conversion/Rename->Set Advanced Options
Wow! I didn't know that RTFA could also stand for "Run the F***ing Application"!!!
I love scripts myself, but don't be a "kneejerk"...
"sue them in to oblivion"
I can just see the trial:
MS lawyer: Exhibit A shows the watermarks which prove that the version posted
on <latest still viable P2P network> came from Company X.
Company X lawyer: Exhibit B is a list of all of the security holes which
were discovered in Windows XP in the period since MS sold
their licensed code to our company...
OTOH, if the license explicitly states draconian security requirements for the computers which
are used to hold the source code (e.g., cannot be connected to the Internet, cannot
be connected to any network, must be kept in a Faraday cage, cannot run Windows, cannot
be turned on, or whatever) then MS might still have some case...
Of course, MS with even no case whatsoever isn't something you want to have to deal with in court.
Except for the fact that I think the probability of success is so small as to make it not worthwhile.
Build and use the cool RFID Zapper.
I have a feeling that their server might not be up to a Slashdotting, so use www.mirrordot.org if possible...
There was already one poster here who replaces DJ's at his parties by letting the audience select the music from his extensive collection on hard disk via a GUI. Except for copyright (and possibly security) problems, there's no reason why he couldn't also let people plug in their portable music collections via USB, have the computer make a statistical analysis of the data, and then play a representative selection of music from the audience's collection.
This of course opens up a whole new frontier for trolling ("Uggh! Who brought that music!"). And subliminal advertising. Lots of new societal ramifications...
Another low-probability situation where it could be useful is when the events of the rape were recorded faithfully enough by surveilance cameras that the personal testimony of the victim would only be to affirm that "it did happpen that way".
The comments there are interesting. A major point made is that the reason that video telephones haven't caught on isn't because of the technology or cost but rather that video telephony destroys many advantages that regular audio telephony has, like minimal intrusion on privacy, while delivering very little advantage on its own since most people actually don't like staring fixedly at each other when they talk (which they tend to do over video telephones now).
OTOH, people just might manage to adapt to talking over video telephones in a more relaxed manner. I suppose it was pretty weird for people when the telephone was introduced, also.
Anyway, it seems likely that current OS's will have plenty of time to adapt while our culture adopts (or doesn't adopt) massive communication via video. Thus making Metcalfe's out-of-context comment look pretty stupid (which it wasn't, really, since after you filter out the Metcalfe-sque flamebait he just said they'd have to change to be able to handle massive communication at video data rates).
AFAIK, all of the posts about this drive have overlooked the fact that the drive does not support CD's. It is Blu-ray + DVD, not Blu-ray + DVD + CD.
Anyone know if this is just a cost-cutting thing or is it explicitly part of the Blu-ray licensing arrangement so that the content producers can start to phase out non-DRM music?
On second thought (gotta love that Preview button), it'd be really weird if the Playstation 3 couldn't play CD's, so I guess I should take my tin-foil hat off now...
If this lame-brain scheme actually does get implemented with a high enough tax rate, it could drive businesses with a large tax bill to "offshoring" their software use to out-of-state "IT hosting" companies.
...
Of course, since almost every electronic device nowadays is digital somewhere, this tax should also logically extend to many or most: telephones, programmable advertising marquees, microwave ovens, CNC and other industrial manufacturing equipment, cars, trucks, air conditioners,
Wow. That's one hell of a tax!
"Haven't had the need to."
.... everything has its own cost.
I didn't expect you to have had it, duh! You're a junkie, not a moron.
"What possible value is it to my clients to have me write/fix an open source player"
The value of as many copies of Windows which will be needed to run your application. That could be any sum of money from, God only knows, $79 up to $150,000 or whatever MS is charging for their most expensive site licenses. Of course this assumes that the only reason they would buy those copies of Windows would be to run your software, which is unlikely. It still does not mean that the cost of your application being Windows-only is non-zero. That will only be true when all current and future versions of Windows are given away at no charge and all Windows applications can be run under all other OS's (so that no extra hardware is required to run the free Windows versions).
*Everything* has a cost. Open source, closed source, homogeneous computing environments, heterogeneous computing environments, monopolies, market competition, freedom, slavery,
"when WMP is out there FOR FREE!"
for free! : You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.
"Just don't try to force the rest of us to go the tinker-toy route with you."
If what you wrote was correct about MS just loving the idea that you'd redistribute WMP with your application, then the EU decision has no such effect on you. Explain to me how it forces you to do anything except possibly install WMP. Anyway, IIRC, most or all business flavors of Vista won't bundle media players, either.
The EU decision is supposed to make people like you understand: (1) MS *is* giving WMP away for free by bundling it with Windows (you both understand and love that), and (2) that is an unfair business practice since it actually does cost MS something to produce WMP (you obviously don't care about this). One man's meat is another man's poison.
Since when has Windows been free? Just because something is bundled with a paid-for product does not mean it is free. Or do you think that Microsoft would be happy to let the Wine developers give away WMP (for free!) along with an appropriate (and probably hypothetical) version of Wine so that all those Linux fanboys who haven't seen the light yet can use WMP (for free!) under Linux?
You meant "could count on WMP existing on the users' machines which were running a sufficiently up-to-date (and paid-for) copy of Windows. You haven't had much luck porting your applications to Linux or OS X now, have you?
BTW, you could have just bundled your applications with a decent open-source media player like VLC, instead. And patched it if it didn't have the necessary interactivity for you. But that would, I admit, have probably been more work.
You're so high on the heroin you're not even aware of the price, or the danger.
Hm, everything you say is correct, but it's obvious to me that you missed my point, since you more or less corroborate it in your post.
It hinges on two fairly different ideas of what "perfect & enduring" is.
You focused on the information itself contained in the page being perfect and enduring. I have to admit that I hadn't really thought that hard about that. I guess a web page with a valid proof of some hard mathematical problem will still be perfect and enduring information in the future. I admit I was thinking of a lot of other stuff for which perfection is a much more subjective judgement.
I was more focussed on perfection including accessibility of the information, and as you yourself state:
"available to researchers who care to figure them out"
"translations of course require continual update as language changes"
and here again you are ignoring what I thought was the major thrust of my post which was "interpretation, explanation, and rehashing will be required as culture changes". I probably just read too much science fiction, but I have no problem imagining someone in the far future reading the Rubiyat needing to search crossreferences for more or less every concept, including lots of stuff you probably accept as unchangeable, like "eating", "sleep", yes, even "death", and just not being able to get to the "perfect" information you claim is in them.
You missed it. After years of research, it has been discovered that Star Trek was just a spoof of a "top Finnish movie".
*ducks*
"Bruce Schneier invented a crypto system based on playing cards for the novel."
Ah, yes, Solitaire. Not that I really believe you're going to use it, but FYI, it's broken.
It's not by chance, either. Paul Crowley, the guy who broke Solitaire, also tried to invent a strong manual encryption algorithm and failed.
Not that I'm in the league of those guys, but I've been working on the problem myself and it's not easy.
"Web-pages can be made perfect and enduring"
That's just an illusion, also, if the page isn't "wikified" and actively maintained by others after you're gone. In another 2000 years, even if it is still hosted somewhere like www.archive.org, your "perfect and enduring" web page will be about as intelligible as Beowolf is today (and I'm not talking about clusters). If not less so, given the accelerated pace of change.
It's not an urban legend. A teenager was hospitalized close to death not too long ago where I live after drinking 25 liters while winning a water drinking contest.
I think the technical term would be "electrolyte imbalance" (although that might also be applied to the opposite where you eat too much salts and not enough water).
Your nerves (and probably a lot of other stuff) need ions to work (but I think it's mainly the axons and not so much the synapses) and drinking too much makes you piss those necessary ions away.
Uhm, you forgot the step where you pay $262.99 to Microsoft for the compiler? (Assuming it's Visual Studio 2005 --- and of course M$'s compilers are not totally backwards and forwards compatible, so you might have to pay more for other compiler versions, assuming M$ is still selling them).
There are free compilers, but most software developers on Windows don't use them. And porting from M$'s compilers to the free ones, which are gcc-like, is usually non-trivial.
Other than that what you wrote is pretty much OK. I'm willing to concede that if Windows compilers were all available and free of charge, a Gentoo-like setup could work.
Your average (or at least the lowest 20 percentile) Windows user, unfortunately, lacks the know-how to read warning dialogs, never mind the patience to wait for a large program to compile. And expecting them to learn is similar to expecting that pilots should have to know how to fix every piece of equipment on any airplane they fly.
Wow! I gotta tell NASA --- don't waste money sending a manned mission to Mars, I know a guy on Slashdot who lives there!
"The answer to point two is simple... I'm not too sure about Windows; but I would imagine"
If you have no familiarity with Windows, which is the computing platform used by the people I mentioned in (1), I fail to see how you can be sure it is "simple". (It isn't.)
"The answer to point one is just as simple. Your grandmother and most other people who don't know what a compiler is, can always learn what one is."
Martian grandmothers must be very different than the majority of Earth grandmothers!
"And no, I don't use OpenOffice."
You obviously missed the point here. Or have you actually personally reviewed all the software you use?
"Sony will choose to ignore this violation of their DMCA rights."
The DMCA also makes it a crime for Microsoft to do that.
Therefore the US gov't must also "choose to ignore this violation".
Not too hard to guess what move they won't make.
Even though from your sig you obviously don't use TeX or Mathematica, :-)
I will stoop to comment on your post...
(1) My grandmother and most people don't know what a compiler *is*
(2) These people are not helped if someone distributes source code
which isn't the real source code which was compiled to get
the executable.
The only reason mal-coders haven't done it is because very few
non-technical people think the way you do. So giving them "the source
code" doesn't impress them at all...
BTW, do use OpenOffice? Exactly how long did your code review take?
Ouch.
Now I really feel new here; imagine that, I expected insightful content!
Uhm, exactly what style of aikido are you talking about here?
Perhaps you were thinking about karate?
The emphasis of aikido is on grappling and neutralization without harm to the attacker, not leveling with blows. It's probably the best martial art to use for self-defense from the point of view of your post.
In practice, however, if the attacker is stupid enough to ignore the pain which his body is using to warn him to submit, he still can hurt himself by strongly resisting being controlled or pinned.
Don't hold your breath waiting for the Fezzik/Inigo rhyming scheme to replace it.
It requires too much cooperation between Slashdotters...
To start another thread, I see you've ironically been modded funny, which would appear to be an attempt of the moderators to express "moderation-humor" --- is it fair that AFAIK the meta-moderators can't moderate them that way?
Or can they? Being a n00b, I can't tell from the scant info in the FAQ?