Absolutely agree. The places where combat is likely (North Korea, Middle East) wouldn't be good situations to use em, and a good situation to use em (land war with China maybe) has basically no chance of occurring. So while EMP/HF weapons have a high coolness factor, they aren't going to be put into wide-scale use.
I'd rather we spent this money on better low-tech defensive and communications gear for our troops, or if the money is somehow tied to R&D then researching defenses against EMP weapons on the off chance that someone else develops them.
And how does this affect any company's bottom line again?
I'm not debating that Gator and friends are scumware, believe me; I'm just questioning the effectiveness of the OP's plan to flood Gator with bad data.
Demonstrates how serious we should take their "estimated loss", doesn't it?
No, as a matter of fact it doesn't. What's so hard to understand here? Microsoft chooses to sell a product at a certain price, and for every hundred people owning the product, 97 of em are doing so illegally. If everyone who pirated the software had bought it at the $140 a pop, it would add up to the $40 or $50 million stated.
Microsoft charges for their software a third of the average Vietnamese annual salary, which is a pretty stupid business move. But that doesn't change the fact that they lost a sale each time these people pirated their software instead of buying a legit copy.
(now, claiming that it's an annual loss for Microsoft is bullshit, but I think we all knew that.)
When Gator sends this credible-looking (but purposely inaccurate) data to their clients, the clients turn around and use it to decide what types of advertisements to put on what web pages. By following your plan, we'll end up seeing ads for products you'd never buy in a million years on web pages with a completely different focus from the product being pushed. If I see an ad for adult diapers or whatever on, say, Gamespot, there's no way I'm gonna click it. But if I happen to see a good deal on RAM or a hard disk or something, I won't be completely pissed off since the product is something I might actually need one day. I'd say it's better to give Gator and friends accurate data and ignore the ads, or give completely bogus data if you really want to make their business plan useless.
Of course, all this is theoretical in my case; my hosts file is something like eight hundred lines long...
The XFree86 project has pushed away more developers than most projects ever have - is this the beginning of the end for XFree86?
Why the scaremongering, anonymous submitter? Just because one project isn't getting access to XF86's CVS tree and will have to maintain one of their own somewhere else, doesn't mean that everyone will abandon XF86. It's mature, has a ton of features, and has no viable replacement; who is gonna leave and where are they gonna go?
"The red line is Garry Kasparov's rating over time, and the blue line is the rating of the top computers on the SSDF list. The blue line is creeping closer and closer to the red line. It seems just on the verge of crossing over. "
But then, further, down, he writes:
"Although computers obviously must be improving in recent years, the strongest humans seem to also be improving at about the same rate."
These two statements contradict each other, don't they? Either computers are improving faster than grand-masters, meaning the graph and its extraploations are true; or, computers and grand-masters are improving at the same rate, which would mean the percentage of human wins and draws would be generally the same as in previous years (something not indicated by the second graphic in the article)?
"Linux" is not a monopoly, and the press release does not claim it to be. The CCAGW press release says that every state IT purchase for the next two years, with no exceptions, must be Linux/OSS; this is what they claim is the monopoly (I'm not sure I agree with their view, but it's certainly a point of contention). There's worlds of difference here... instead of being nutcases like the writeup suggests with its slant, the CCAGW may actually have a valid issue with Mass. state government policy. It took me a whopping total of thirty seconds to read the entire press release, surely I can expect the same of whoever took the time to do the writeup (and whoever was supposed to review and edit it).
I don't think port filtering is the answer for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Better that ISPs completely disable ports by default and provide a mechanism for knowledgeable users to selectively enable ports, with an accompanying waiver clearly stating that security is now solely the user's responsibility. This would protect people who can't or won't update their systems while at the same time allow people who know what they're doing to go about their business. By the same token though, I think the ISP should be able to revoke this right in case things go wrong. Say a supposedly knowledgeable user is infected X times in 12 months; this shows that he does not in fact know what he is doing, and should have the port in question blocked permanently.
I don't think very many areas of the federal government are using open source software, and I'm certain that OSS gives no more than limited political advantages to its users. In fact, using proprietary software is often in the government's best interests (but not that of the taxpayers, which is an entirely different issue...).
If a government agency's operating costs go up (due to software costs in this case), then when it goes and asks Congress for a budget increase it's likely that they will receive a larger amount in discretionary funding (they receive the same percentage of a new, larger budget). Discretionary funding is the stuff agency heads love to have, since they can spend it on their department in whatever fashion they see fit: office parties, fancy artwork, whatever. So, when choosing between two equally functional but differently-priced solutions, a depressingly large amount of the time, the government chooses the costlier product. The vendor and the department both win, and as usual taxpayers get stuck holding the bag.
um, what? you might have a point if the software in question searched the user's hard disk for these pieces of information, but it's not. According to the post, the information sent from the program to a remote server is:
"the users IP, a timestamp, the product in question, the users PC name, username, and MAC address."
Every single piece of information transferred is accessible through the use of other, perfectly legitimate pieces of software, unlike medical records (which require a plausible reason to access); it should be clear that this program is not 'rifling through anyone's belongings.' And the mentioning of burning down the house is completely absurd; nobody is considering giving this data to law enforcement agencies or blowing up the user's computer if it's running pirated software (to relate your analogy to the situation being discussed). Please take your slippery slope arguments elsewhere.
man, those are the worst... every time I hit up David's Treasure Zoo there's always a rust monster, and I've forgotten to grease my longsword and helm of brilliance... I've lost so much good stuff that way
I hear this argument a lot, but doesn't it forget to take into account that the first graphical Mac OS and Windows 1.0 came out way back in 1984? Windows 3.1 was released in 1991, when Linux was just getting started. When did KDE 1 come out, 1997? (I'm guessing here, but that's the earliest date I could find on kde.org) Point is, with that long of a head start and with the amount of money Apple and Microsoft throw at their UI divisions, there's a whole lot of technology and proprietary research to duplicate. And for whatever reason (lack of funding? inherent nature of the bazaar development model?), KDE's progress is arguably slower than that of Microsoft's. I think a couple more years of waiting is in order before KDE can match Windows in terms of ease of use.
But I really don't think people will switch to KDE on Linux until KDE can offer nearly every UI feature found on Windows; the hang-up is things like different names and locations of UI features, not the number of features itself. If people can't easily do in a new environment what is possible and necessary for their job using the old environment, then all the KDE-exclusive features in the world won't cause them to switch.
(As an aside, I think the big problem with going from Windows to Linux is the lack of quality native games, but that's another discussion.)
First of all, the RIAA has a right to go after people who pirate their IP. You may not agree with the way they're doing so, and you may not like the ridiculous lengths of time IP is protected for (I don't like either of those), but it's the law. Nobody should be surprised that they're actually carrying out their earlier threats.
Now, besides the fact that suing your own customers is not a viable business model, I don't think the RIAA will gain too much from lawsuits against P2P users. It's easy to get around, with the defendant showing proof of ownership of the CD in question and demonstrating that he's within his fair use rights to possess an electronic copy of the IP in question. It shouldn't matter how the copy is acquired, just as long as the original has been legally purchased. (But I am most definitely not a lawyer so don't take this as legal advice, especially if your name is on the list, ok?)
I use Kazaa and friends all the time, I'll admit. But the only things I download are radio shows (mostly Radio1 Essential Mixes) that you can't get on CD, and songs from CDs I owned which are physically at my house but a thousand miles from my dorm where I downloaded them. In both cases I am entitled to have a copy of these songs in my possession.
There is no guarantee that the person who duplicated the IP would have bought it legally [...]
That doesn't matter one bit. My whole point is that the only way someone can possess copyrighted property is to license it or buy it. It doesn't matter if someone was going to buy it (or not buy it) eventually; that fact that they had it *at all* without paying for it means they are stealing from the original owners. I'm not talking about format transfers like ripping a DVD to Divx or something; if that's the case, all property involved is yours and you can do what you want with it. Likewise, if you decide to share that Divx movie, whoever downloads it better have a copy of the movie on some other (legally acquired) format. But if someone has that ripped movie without also having the original DVD, they are stealing from the copyright owners since they possess a piece of copyrighted IP without having paid for it.
And as an aside, the point of copyright laws is so the entity owning the IP can make money; the point of copyright *limitations* are for the benefit of society.
Bzzt, wrong! In copyright infringement, nothing is actually taken.
Bzzt, wrong! The question is not of who owns the bits, but who has paid the copyright owner for the use of those bits and who has illegal access to bits they did not pay for. If you did not go out and buy the CD/DVD/whatever, you have no right to the content. Period. By taking someone else's IP without compensation, you're depriving them of money they would have made from you otherwise. (And please don't give me any bullshit about 'well, I ended up not liking the songs so I deleted em,' cause that's not the point. If you didn't like em, that's your loss; you don't have the right to be entertained by something you buy. Read reviews or talk to friends next time.) So yes, copyright infringement is in fact stealing.
This looks great for politicians and I'm sure it'll play well in elections in Michigan, but I seriously doubt we'll see any real gains from this legislation. When will people understand that spam is a social and technological problem, NOT a legal one? Spam is already illegal to send, if not outright then certainly without the ADV: tag which is the case here. But since (a) people still respond to spam a high enough percentage of the time to warrant more spam; and (b) these laws are not enforcable without some way to track emails from relay to relay, a purely legislative solution will not have any effect whatsoever.
What's really needed is a comprehensive program to educate people about the consequences of responding to spam in the first place, in terms of violations of privacy and amount of hassle caused from spammers selling each other address lists. I'm sure AOL/Earthlink/whoever would be willing to help with educating people in one form or another, since any reduction in the volume of spam sent through their networks directly translates into lower bandwidth costs. This social and educational device would be accompanied by a server-side mechanism replacing SMTP, which ensure a piece of email comes from a known host (and is really the host the email claims to be from). Together this would stop most spam from reaching inboxes, and those that do would be safely ignored, which would go a very long way towards making spam unprofitable.
Would you like to advertise the fact that you pick your nose? Or that you masturbate, or read Mein Kampf, or possess a large collection of medieval weaponry and wearing a black trenchcoat in your spare time? I know people that do each of these things, yet for obvious reasons none of them would wish for these facts to become widely known. There's a whole lot of things that people do which others have no need to know whatsoever. If it has no effect on my work habits and does not lead to performing illegal behavior in public, then nobody else at all needs to be concerned with it. Privacy protects those of us who want to be left alone from everyone else who thinks it's their business what I do behind closed doors.
I don't think the biggest threat to the MPAA is independent content producers, I really don't. The fact that CSS protection is not available for anyone but the major film studios is that, in all likelihood, nobody else even bothered to ask for them. Back when it first came out, there were not nearly as many independent filmmakers as there are now, when everyone has DV camcorders and a copy of iMovie. Besides, how would you or I possessing a CSS key stop Universal or Warner Brothers from protecting their own content? It wouldn't. That's not to say we shouldn't have access to CSS, only that there was a mistake in not extending it to everyone.
(As an aside, I think their biggest threat isn't even in America; it's in places like Hong Kong where professional pirates stamp out bootleg DVDs of movies still in the theater and sell them across the world. If I were Jack Valenti I'd be using some of my lobbying dollars to protect against that first, and then worry about the very small percentage of Americans who have both the fast connection and the patience to get movies from p2p networks.)
And independent music is barely more of a threat to the RIAA than independent video is to the MPAA. Local music has been performed for far longer than the RIAA has been in existence, and has had no detrimental effect to that organization; in fact, given the current trends in popular culture and recent FCC decisions, the RIAA will probably be stronger than ever (what this says about tastes in music, and probability of RIAA claims that they're losing even more money, is an entirely different issue).
The real threat to both groups is piracy, organized (MPAA) or small-scale (RIAA).
I think the things the OP listed are not necessarily an expression of 'hacking.' Certainly, given the nature of the categorization, these people are more predisposed to picking up these activities than the average person. This does not mean, however, that all (or even most) hackers are beer-brewers or yogurt-farmers or whatever; just that we like to have a detailed firsthand knowledge of whatever it is we are interested in, rather than just acquiring it in prepackaged form. Conversely, there are many people who do make their own soap who would not think to call themselves 'hackers,' even given the non-electronic-specific version of the word.
"The technology could allow the military to develop computerized assistants for war fighters and commanders that can be more effective because they can easily access the user's past experiences," DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker speculated in an e-mail.
It also could allow the military to develop more efficient computerized training systems, she said: Computers could remember how each student learns and interacts with the training system, then tailor the lessons accordingly.
Fine. So limit its scope to include only those enlisted in the military. I see no reason whatsoever for anyone at all, much less the Pentagon, to have a record of everything I've ever bought or everyone I've ever emailed or called on a phone.
we used to do that in Rollercoaster Tycoon... there was this one ride, like a shuttle launch or something, that was basically a track angled at 60 degrees into the air which the coaster cars would travel on. You could control the initial velocity of the cars so we pumped it up all the way; the next line of cars to run went flying off the end of the track, burst into flames, and landed far away, with little cartoon people running around and screaming.
(We also built hedge mazes in front of the bathrooms, but that's a different story...)
every once in a while I'll boot up my Apple ][e, plug in the joystick, and fire up Rescue Raiders. The game was fun in and of itself, but I think the real reason I enjoyed it was because it belonged to my dad and he wouldn't let me play it...
The other games I played were this series of text adventure games, written by Scott Adams (maybe of Dilbert fame, we could never find out). There were nine of em, 3 to a disk, and arranged from easiest to hardest. Couldn't beat any of em. heh. They were fun though, especially the second (treasure island) and the third (some mission impossible-type thing where you had a limited number of turns before a bomb went off).
We had em in elementary school, where the teachers let us play games like Oregon Trail; this one where you're a fish and have to eat other fish, and avoid the otter or something; and there was one where you were a geologist and had to identify rare gems by their color, hardness, etc. Anyone remember this game? Everyone I ask about em just kind of look at me.
But besides games, I learned to program on that computer; there were BASIC programs in the back of some kids' magazine I subscribed to, 3-2-1-Contact or something, that taught you about control flow, strings, stuff like that. I remember this one where you ran a zoo with panda bears that kept dying every time you looked at em the wrong way.
What if I'm registering at eBay or PayPal or some other site which sends an automatically-generated email when I complete the first step? What if I subscribe to a mailing list where I can't get a response from a human to a challenge? What if I'm applying for a job online and the company sends me an email saying they've received my resume, which I will not be able to see?
I think this kind of scheme is only useful when the message sender is human and you know who they are, in which case the system is pointless anyway. What I think we need is to phase in a new, secure version of SMTP where emails aren't relayed unless the sender's ID can be verified.
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Absolutely agree. The places where combat is likely (North Korea, Middle East) wouldn't be good situations to use em, and a good situation to use em (land war with China maybe) has basically no chance of occurring. So while EMP/HF weapons have a high coolness factor, they aren't going to be put into wide-scale use.
I'd rather we spent this money on better low-tech defensive and communications gear for our troops, or if the money is somehow tied to R&D then researching defenses against EMP weapons on the off chance that someone else develops them.
And how does this affect any company's bottom line again?
I'm not debating that Gator and friends are scumware, believe me; I'm just questioning the effectiveness of the OP's plan to flood Gator with bad data.
Demonstrates how serious we should take their "estimated loss", doesn't it?
No, as a matter of fact it doesn't. What's so hard to understand here? Microsoft chooses to sell a product at a certain price, and for every hundred people owning the product, 97 of em are doing so illegally. If everyone who pirated the software had bought it at the $140 a pop, it would add up to the $40 or $50 million stated.
Microsoft charges for their software a third of the average Vietnamese annual salary, which is a pretty stupid business move. But that doesn't change the fact that they lost a sale each time these people pirated their software instead of buying a legit copy.
(now, claiming that it's an annual loss for Microsoft is bullshit, but I think we all knew that.)
When Gator sends this credible-looking (but purposely inaccurate) data to their clients, the clients turn around and use it to decide what types of advertisements to put on what web pages. By following your plan, we'll end up seeing ads for products you'd never buy in a million years on web pages with a completely different focus from the product being pushed. If I see an ad for adult diapers or whatever on, say, Gamespot, there's no way I'm gonna click it. But if I happen to see a good deal on RAM or a hard disk or something, I won't be completely pissed off since the product is something I might actually need one day. I'd say it's better to give Gator and friends accurate data and ignore the ads, or give completely bogus data if you really want to make their business plan useless.
Of course, all this is theoretical in my case; my hosts file is something like eight hundred lines long...
so that's like, what, the regular ol' beige box I have next to my desk right now?
The XFree86 project has pushed away more developers than most projects ever have - is this the beginning of the end for XFree86?
Why the scaremongering, anonymous submitter? Just because one project isn't getting access to XF86's CVS tree and will have to maintain one of their own somewhere else, doesn't mean that everyone will abandon XF86. It's mature, has a ton of features, and has no viable replacement; who is gonna leave and where are they gonna go?
from the article:
"The red line is Garry Kasparov's rating over time, and the blue line is the rating of the top computers on the SSDF list. The blue line is creeping closer and closer to the red line. It seems just on the verge of crossing over. "
But then, further, down, he writes:
"Although computers obviously must be improving in recent years, the strongest humans seem to also be improving at about the same rate."
These two statements contradict each other, don't they? Either computers are improving faster than grand-masters, meaning the graph and its extraploations are true; or, computers and grand-masters are improving at the same rate, which would mean the percentage of human wins and draws would be generally the same as in previous years (something not indicated by the second graphic in the article)?
"Linux" is not a monopoly, and the press release does not claim it to be. The CCAGW press release says that every state IT purchase for the next two years, with no exceptions, must be Linux/OSS; this is what they claim is the monopoly (I'm not sure I agree with their view, but it's certainly a point of contention). There's worlds of difference here... instead of being nutcases like the writeup suggests with its slant, the CCAGW may actually have a valid issue with Mass. state government policy.
It took me a whopping total of thirty seconds to read the entire press release, surely I can expect the same of whoever took the time to do the writeup (and whoever was supposed to review and edit it).
I don't think port filtering is the answer for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Better that ISPs completely disable ports by default and provide a mechanism for knowledgeable users to selectively enable ports, with an accompanying waiver clearly stating that security is now solely the user's responsibility. This would protect people who can't or won't update their systems while at the same time allow people who know what they're doing to go about their business. By the same token though, I think the ISP should be able to revoke this right in case things go wrong. Say a supposedly knowledgeable user is infected X times in 12 months; this shows that he does not in fact know what he is doing, and should have the port in question blocked permanently.
I don't think very many areas of the federal government are using open source software, and I'm certain that OSS gives no more than limited political advantages to its users. In fact, using proprietary software is often in the government's best interests (but not that of the taxpayers, which is an entirely different issue...).
If a government agency's operating costs go up (due to software costs in this case), then when it goes and asks Congress for a budget increase it's likely that they will receive a larger amount in discretionary funding (they receive the same percentage of a new, larger budget). Discretionary funding is the stuff agency heads love to have, since they can spend it on their department in whatever fashion they see fit: office parties, fancy artwork, whatever. So, when choosing between two equally functional but differently-priced solutions, a depressingly large amount of the time, the government chooses the costlier product. The vendor and the department both win, and as usual taxpayers get stuck holding the bag.
um, what? you might have a point if the software in question searched the user's hard disk for these pieces of information, but it's not. According to the post, the information sent from the program to a remote server is:
"the users IP, a timestamp, the product in question, the users PC name, username, and MAC address."
Every single piece of information transferred is accessible through the use of other, perfectly legitimate pieces of software, unlike medical records (which require a plausible reason to access); it should be clear that this program is not 'rifling through anyone's belongings.' And the mentioning of burning down the house is completely absurd; nobody is considering giving this data to law enforcement agencies or blowing up the user's computer if it's running pirated software (to relate your analogy to the situation being discussed). Please take your slippery slope arguments elsewhere.
man, those are the worst... every time I hit up David's Treasure Zoo there's always a rust monster, and I've forgotten to grease my longsword and helm of brilliance... I've lost so much good stuff that way
I hear this argument a lot, but doesn't it forget to take into account that the first graphical Mac OS and Windows 1.0 came out way back in 1984? Windows 3.1 was released in 1991, when Linux was just getting started. When did KDE 1 come out, 1997? (I'm guessing here, but that's the earliest date I could find on kde.org) Point is, with that long of a head start and with the amount of money Apple and Microsoft throw at their UI divisions, there's a whole lot of technology and proprietary research to duplicate. And for whatever reason (lack of funding? inherent nature of the bazaar development model?), KDE's progress is arguably slower than that of Microsoft's. I think a couple more years of waiting is in order before KDE can match Windows in terms of ease of use.
But I really don't think people will switch to KDE on Linux until KDE can offer nearly every UI feature found on Windows; the hang-up is things like different names and locations of UI features, not the number of features itself. If people can't easily do in a new environment what is possible and necessary for their job using the old environment, then all the KDE-exclusive features in the world won't cause them to switch.
(As an aside, I think the big problem with going from Windows to Linux is the lack of quality native games, but that's another discussion.)
First of all, the RIAA has a right to go after people who pirate their IP. You may not agree with the way they're doing so, and you may not like the ridiculous lengths of time IP is protected for (I don't like either of those), but it's the law. Nobody should be surprised that they're actually carrying out their earlier threats.
Now, besides the fact that suing your own customers is not a viable business model, I don't think the RIAA will gain too much from lawsuits against P2P users. It's easy to get around, with the defendant showing proof of ownership of the CD in question and demonstrating that he's within his fair use rights to possess an electronic copy of the IP in question. It shouldn't matter how the copy is acquired, just as long as the original has been legally purchased. (But I am most definitely not a lawyer so don't take this as legal advice, especially if your name is on the list, ok?)
I use Kazaa and friends all the time, I'll admit. But the only things I download are radio shows (mostly Radio1 Essential Mixes) that you can't get on CD, and songs from CDs I owned which are physically at my house but a thousand miles from my dorm where I downloaded them. In both cases I am entitled to have a copy of these songs in my possession.
There is no guarantee that the person who duplicated the IP would have bought it legally [...]
That doesn't matter one bit. My whole point is that the only way someone can possess copyrighted property is to license it or buy it. It doesn't matter if someone was going to buy it (or not buy it) eventually; that fact that they had it *at all* without paying for it means they are stealing from the original owners. I'm not talking about format transfers like ripping a DVD to Divx or something; if that's the case, all property involved is yours and you can do what you want with it. Likewise, if you decide to share that Divx movie, whoever downloads it better have a copy of the movie on some other (legally acquired) format. But if someone has that ripped movie without also having the original DVD, they are stealing from the copyright owners since they possess a piece of copyrighted IP without having paid for it.
And as an aside, the point of copyright laws is so the entity owning the IP can make money; the point of copyright *limitations* are for the benefit of society.
Bzzt, wrong! In copyright infringement, nothing is actually taken.
Bzzt, wrong! The question is not of who owns the bits, but who has paid the copyright owner for the use of those bits and who has illegal access to bits they did not pay for.
If you did not go out and buy the CD/DVD/whatever, you have no right to the content. Period. By taking someone else's IP without compensation, you're depriving them of money they would have made from you otherwise.
(And please don't give me any bullshit about 'well, I ended up not liking the songs so I deleted em,' cause that's not the point. If you didn't like em, that's your loss; you don't have the right to be entertained by something you buy. Read reviews or talk to friends next time.)
So yes, copyright infringement is in fact stealing.
Next contestant please!
This looks great for politicians and I'm sure it'll play well in elections in Michigan, but I seriously doubt we'll see any real gains from this legislation. When will people understand that spam is a social and technological problem, NOT a legal one?
Spam is already illegal to send, if not outright then certainly without the ADV: tag which is the case here. But since (a) people still respond to spam a high enough percentage of the time to warrant more spam; and (b) these laws are not enforcable without some way to track emails from relay to relay, a purely legislative solution will not have any effect whatsoever.
What's really needed is a comprehensive program to educate people about the consequences of responding to spam in the first place, in terms of violations of privacy and amount of hassle caused from spammers selling each other address lists. I'm sure AOL/Earthlink/whoever would be willing to help with educating people in one form or another, since any reduction in the volume of spam sent through their networks directly translates into lower bandwidth costs.
This social and educational device would be accompanied by a server-side mechanism replacing SMTP, which ensure a piece of email comes from a known host (and is really the host the email claims to be from). Together this would stop most spam from reaching inboxes, and those that do would be safely ignored, which would go a very long way towards making spam unprofitable.
Would you like to advertise the fact that you pick your nose? Or that you masturbate, or read Mein Kampf, or possess a large collection of medieval weaponry and wearing a black trenchcoat in your spare time? I know people that do each of these things, yet for obvious reasons none of them would wish for these facts to become widely known.
There's a whole lot of things that people do which others have no need to know whatsoever. If it has no effect on my work habits and does not lead to performing illegal behavior in public, then nobody else at all needs to be concerned with it. Privacy protects those of us who want to be left alone from everyone else who thinks it's their business what I do behind closed doors.
I don't think the biggest threat to the MPAA is independent content producers, I really don't. The fact that CSS protection is not available for anyone but the major film studios is that, in all likelihood, nobody else even bothered to ask for them. Back when it first came out, there were not nearly as many independent filmmakers as there are now, when everyone has DV camcorders and a copy of iMovie. Besides, how would you or I possessing a CSS key stop Universal or Warner Brothers from protecting their own content? It wouldn't. That's not to say we shouldn't have access to CSS, only that there was a mistake in not extending it to everyone.
(As an aside, I think their biggest threat isn't even in America; it's in places like Hong Kong where professional pirates stamp out bootleg DVDs of movies still in the theater and sell them across the world. If I were Jack Valenti I'd be using some of my lobbying dollars to protect against that first, and then worry about the very small percentage of Americans who have both the fast connection and the patience to get movies from p2p networks.)
And independent music is barely more of a threat to the RIAA than independent video is to the MPAA. Local music has been performed for far longer than the RIAA has been in existence, and has had no detrimental effect to that organization; in fact, given the current trends in popular culture and recent FCC decisions, the RIAA will probably be stronger than ever (what this says about tastes in music, and probability of RIAA claims that they're losing even more money, is an entirely different issue).
The real threat to both groups is piracy, organized (MPAA) or small-scale (RIAA).
Jeff, is that you? Please don't tell Mom this is why our shared connection is so slow, OK?
I think the things the OP listed are not necessarily an expression of 'hacking.' Certainly, given the nature of the categorization, these people are more predisposed to picking up these activities than the average person. This does not mean, however, that all (or even most) hackers are beer-brewers or yogurt-farmers or whatever; just that we like to have a detailed firsthand knowledge of whatever it is we are interested in, rather than just acquiring it in prepackaged form. Conversely, there are many people who do make their own soap who would not think to call themselves 'hackers,' even given the non-electronic-specific version of the word.
I had a point, but I forgot it.
"The technology could allow the military to develop computerized assistants for war fighters and commanders that can be more effective because they can easily access the user's past experiences," DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker speculated in an e-mail.
It also could allow the military to develop more efficient computerized training systems, she said: Computers could remember how each student learns and interacts with the training system, then tailor the lessons accordingly.
Fine. So limit its scope to include only those enlisted in the military. I see no reason whatsoever for anyone at all, much less the Pentagon, to have a record of everything I've ever bought or everyone I've ever emailed or called on a phone.
we used to do that in Rollercoaster Tycoon... there was this one ride, like a shuttle launch or something, that was basically a track angled at 60 degrees into the air which the coaster cars would travel on. You could control the initial velocity of the cars so we pumped it up all the way; the next line of cars to run went flying off the end of the track, burst into flames, and landed far away, with little cartoon people running around and screaming.
(We also built hedge mazes in front of the bathrooms, but that's a different story...)
every once in a while I'll boot up my Apple ][e, plug in the joystick, and fire up Rescue Raiders. The game was fun in and of itself, but I think the real reason I enjoyed it was because it belonged to my dad and he wouldn't let me play it...
The other games I played were this series of text adventure games, written by Scott Adams (maybe of Dilbert fame, we could never find out). There were nine of em, 3 to a disk, and arranged from easiest to hardest. Couldn't beat any of em. heh. They were fun though, especially the second (treasure island) and the third (some mission impossible-type thing where you had a limited number of turns before a bomb went off).
We had em in elementary school, where the teachers let us play games like Oregon Trail; this one where you're a fish and have to eat other fish, and avoid the otter or something; and there was one where you were a geologist and had to identify rare gems by their color, hardness, etc. Anyone remember this game? Everyone I ask about em just kind of look at me.
But besides games, I learned to program on that computer; there were BASIC programs in the back of some kids' magazine I subscribed to, 3-2-1-Contact or something, that taught you about control flow, strings, stuff like that. I remember this one where you ran a zoo with panda bears that kept dying every time you looked at em the wrong way.
man, thanks for the trip back in time there...
What if I'm registering at eBay or PayPal or some other site which sends an automatically-generated email when I complete the first step? What if I subscribe to a mailing list where I can't get a response from a human to a challenge? What if I'm applying for a job online and the company sends me an email saying they've received my resume, which I will not be able to see?
I think this kind of scheme is only useful when the message sender is human and you know who they are, in which case the system is pointless anyway. What I think we need is to phase in a new, secure version of SMTP where emails aren't relayed unless the sender's ID can be verified.