I think one big issue that many people here are missing is that a college education is vastly different from technical training in a specific field. While a CS major may be able to describe more about computer science than somebody who went straight into the job force, college isn't only about learning more advanced aspects of the field.
As a Cognitive Science major (a field that combines psychology, computer science, philosphy and linguistics) I am in the School of Arts and Sciences at my University, and not the school of Engineering, though I have taken CS courses and many of my friends are CS majors. What many many people in engineering fail to realize is that college is about making you into a well-rounded, knowledgable and generally informed person. You may loathe English, but the skills that come out of that are valuable in any profession. History, Arts, Philosphy, all have nothing to do with most people's professions, but students who take them come out of the classes exposed to not only many areas of our world, but many different ways of thinking and attacking problems. The world is NOT made up of 0's, 1's, and integrals, and somebody who has jumped into the workforce will only view the world as such.
In short, college is not only about the field. Many times, a lot of the learning comes from graduate and not undergraduate programs. The point is that you can become something more than your job, something more than simply a worker. You can become a sophisticated and individual who knows something more than his own job, his own culture, and his own mode of thinking.
After reading this article, I'm sort of left wondering doesn't Napster (any P2P/free mp3 program) let you do this already? The end of his article I found a little confusing, but I think the gist of it was that you could specify a type of music that you want and it would find it and play it for you, sort of like the boxes he was talking about. But don't you have this already? Doesn't the ability to get hundreds of mp3s allow you to make any sort of playlist that you like?
I like the idea of having some sort of randomness to the mix (not just hitting shuffle on the player) and that is a great way to be introduced to new music.
Slashdot moderation works with the very very small number of posts that it gets, but how in the world would moderation work on the Internet, with more than a billion web pages that are constantly changing?
Also, this opens it up to personal grudges... how long do you think the NSA web site would stay visible to this software? All the hackers and crackers and people paranoid of the government would moderate it down.
You simply can't compare the two. One is a game that targets a certain (small) audience and while it is certainly important for it to release new versions in order to keep up with the other marketers, it is a niche market.
Web browsers on the other hand are used by everybody. We're talking about everybody who uses the internet uses the web, and changes happen here on timescales of 3-6 months, not years. You don't release a new version (a real version, not just x.01-x.02 changes) within a reasonable amount of time and millions of people feel the effect.
Reading the suck.com article raised some questions in my mind about what it would mean should netscape/mozilla dissappear. Are there any benefits to having a one-browser market? Please consider this seriously.... this isn't necessarily in favor of Microsoft, but focussing on one-browser. Would the web be a better or worse place if everybody was browsing with the same program?
As far as I can see it, here are some of the pros and cons:
Pros: One Platform Construction -- no longer will web designers have to design two different copies of their pages in order for them to look good to everybody
Standard Feature Integration -- Pages could be coded using the same components. No longer would workarounds have to be created to deal with unsupported tags (iframes/layers)
Faster Version Upgrade -- It seems to me that if everybody is using the same browser, people would update their version more often, so more people would have the latest and most sophisticated version. (why, i don't know, but this is just a feeling i have. Maybe it's because they won't be confused with IE 4.0/5.0/5.5 / NS 4.0/4.6/4.7/4.73 etc)
Possible technological advancements -- This is probably the most uncertain of the pros, but if the manufacturer of the browser had complete freedom they could add new features that would make design and browsing easier, and more fruitful. Of course, this leads immediately to our
Cons: Complete Monopoly Over Web -- Whatever this company said would be the law for viewing the web. If they didn't put a tag in, it wouldn't exist on the web.
Loss of Innovation -- The usual lack of development that occurs when there are no competitors. We're on top so why do more? (Of course this hasn't really stopped NS from stopping its innovation, but I digress)
What do you guys think? Would having a market that is overwhelmingly dominated by one browser (be it IE or NS or whatever) be a good or a bad thing?
This is definately not the attitude to have when it comes to people's privacy. When I go to the doctor, should they be allowed to just hand out my medical history to whoever pays them? Hey, I could always go to another doctor, right? Even if the information led to advertisements being sent to me on new treatments, there still is no right for certain information to be given out without consent.
What about my employer and my social security number or my email address? What happens if these were suddenly up for sale? Hey, I could just work somewhere else, right? The problem with this "free choice capitalism" is that eventually you run out of places to go. And that is of course, if you even realize that your privacy is being doled out.... most users of the internet don't know that their information is being given out and so don't have the choice to opt out or block these practices.
In short, yes. Please let the government dictate what sites can and cannot do with my personal information. I would trust them a lot more than joeschmoads.com who was started yesterday and will do anything to make a buck.
What was the result of the congressional hearings? We all loved the headline "Senator tells Music Industry: Don't Make Me Come Over There and Smack You" but was that it? Is there going to be any fair use/licensing legislation or was this just a publicity stunt?
I have to admit that I am really pleasantly surprised (if this article is true) that the judge has realized that you have to seperate the algorithm from the crime. Just as someone mentioned in another post, listing the contents of LSD is very different from making it.
It seems to me that the biggest problem has been divorcing the legality of posting the DeCSS from the legality of copying and pirating DVDs.
The next part, and this will be the trickiest step, is how to deal with the legal and illegal uses of DeCSS. I agree with all the posts here talking about how one of its major uses will be to circumvent the horrendously idiotic region controls that the MPAA has built into it. This goes back to the heart of intellectual property issue, that I buy it and I should be able to get every part of it. Hopefully this issue will get resolved in another fasion (probably a court case) so that people don't have to DeCSS their DVD's just to get all the content.
The other side is how to deal with the piracy. It seems to me that this will eventually mirror the mp3 issue... the algorithm is of course legal, but piracy isn't, and I suppose we'll see the MPAA looking more and more like the RIAA, hunting down Napster sites. I hope that the Congressional hearings on Online Music will have implications on fair use and licensing that will extend to the MPAA. As they currently stand, the intellectual property laws cannot continue to exist, and they most certainly will have to be changed. And this is why the DeCSS case has been so complicated.. it has been impossible to divorce it from issues of intellectual property rights, the rights of the consumer, and the potential for piracy.
Structure/Free For All
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When I went to the site this morning I found very little there... it was just a directory listing and all of the directories were password protected. I take it that its not supposed to look this way, and reading the log listed in one of the posts here, it seems that they had to restrict access because people (via the slashdot article) were fooling with it.
I think this is a very interesting experiment in how much freedom you can give people. Everybody would like to be part of a collective (like this site) where the structure is completely bottom-up and decentralized and everybody has a say, in fact a major say, in everything. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work too well. There will always be the people who for one reason or another would like to mess it up, and because of the lack of structure, can and will do so.
I guess the reason I'm bringing this up is because this whole concept, the struggle between structure and freedom seems to come up again and again in the computer world. Should software design be centralized or Open Source? Should the Internet have laws? Who decides the structure of the Internet/should there be a structure? It seems to me that any system that has no organization or constraints (like this site) will fail. It seems pretty much inevitable that there will always be the few (or sometimes the majority) who will mess up the spirit and the workings of the project because of spite, carelessness, or greed. That's why although institutions like ICANN need major changes, they are still damn important. Let's not forget that the Internet *does* have structure, and it is this structure (some centralization of naming, routing, etc) that has allowed it to grow to the amazing extent that it has.
I've been reading some of the other posts here and Images are not the only way to hide the data. Data can be hidden in images, audio files, headers, and ASCII white space.
One of the programs listed on that page (Snow) will embed the text as tabs and spaces in any text you provide. This is a great solution because most ASCII viewers will ignore the whitespace and just display the text. This would be good to embed in a web page because they would have to view the source in order see the spaces. The program will also encrypt your message before it converts it to whitespace, adding extra security. It is however a proprietary encryption scheme, so I don't know how well it works. In any case, the whole scheme seems pretty good!
We're supposed to hate Magento, but there isn't anything particularly hateful about him.
I personally thought that this was one of the most remarkable parts of the movie, the fact that an action movie can have two sides that you can both identify and agree with. This was perhaps the most realistic part of the film, that neither side was the best solution to the answer (will Dr. X's efforts really save the mutants/Magneto is fighting for their rights but in a violent manner) and that both can be seen as good and bad. As one reviewer put it, Magneto is Malcom X to Dr. X's Martin Luther King, Jr. In life, nothing is as simple as Luke and Darth Vader, and I think that the fact that the writers of this movie/comic book realize that makes it all that more meaningful to me.
I don't think I've seen another action movie have such thoughtful and meaninful antagonists since The Rock.
I definately agree with you on this matter.... of course all the HTML should be written as completely as it can be, but the reason I was mentioning this was that there is a huge spectrum of designers out there, and many people aren't skilled enough/don't care enough to write perfect code, but these people shouldn't be excluded from making web pages. One of the reasons the web has grown so much is because HTML is not something that is very difficult... anybody can pick it up fairly easily. It is very democratic in the sens that if you want a web page, there really is nothing stopping you from making one. I don't see any reason not to support this as much as possible, and allow for interpretation of improperly created code. People make mistakes, and its nice when the browsers will help with that.
As a web developer, I feel very torn about this issue. As anyone who has ever tried to make a web page knows, one of the biggest issues facing a developer is trying to ensure compatibility between the browsers. It's fairly easy for software developers because you can write it for a specific operating system, but because the web is viewed through two (somtimes more) browsers, each with their own specific quirks, writing good html pages becomes somewhat of a chore.
I used to be a Netscape user for several years up until this year, when I switched over to IE. I was amazed at the difference I saw. IE is much more tolerant of mistakes, handles tables a whole lot better (actual size and background images being two of the biggest factors) and has support for the hover style, a feature that can sublty but importantly enhance a page.
Now I don't mean this to be a post just in support of IE. The reason I bring this up is because it really is an issue of innovation. It sounds cliche to talk about Microsoft and its innovation, but I think that perhaps this is most apparent on the web, with browsers. I cannot tell you how many times I have felt held back by Netscape's lack of functionality, and even compliance with standards. Things have taken twice as much effort and in some cases rquired a "dumbing down" in order to get them to work well and look good in NS. I know that NS is working on the Mozilla project, and I've heard pretty good reviews of v6, but the fact that no major upgrade (and I'm primarily looking at adding functionailty) has been made for several years has really hurt the web in my opinion. In my experience, the pages for IE are much more flexible and technically advanced than those that run on NS. So my point here is, advancement is a seriously important aspect of the web.
On the other hand, however, a lot of the problems with the design has also been browser compatibilty. This requires constant checking, constant updating (have to keep on top what who has what) and in general it makes things very difficult. Usually the problem is more that one browser doesn't meet the w3c's standards rather than there being a specific proprietary advancement that the other does not ahve. Unfortunately, what Microsoft is proposing will be a proprietary advancement, and this one NS is sure to not follow.
I don't know what to do about this. The web has developed so well in the recent past because of the balance between innovation and standards. There has been a pretty good balance between pushing ahead and joining the others. I have to say though, that the web cannot continue to be where its at for very much longer. Static web pages, limited funcitonality and unwieldy design languages I hope will soon be a thing of the past. I guess when it comes down to it, I am very happy that MS is doing this.... we obviously can't look to Netscape/Mozilla for innovation since it seems like they're more concerned about integrating AIM into the browser than really advancing the technology. I am also somewhat apprehensive about how this will shape how people view the web but frankly, after years of struggling with mediocre and limited design space, I'm ready for something new.
Now here's a question that occurred to me lately while downloading the 30 day trial version of Macromedia's Dreamweaver. In order to download the software, Macromedia required me to enter my name, email address, phone number, address, state, country, zip code, and form of use in addition to three pages of special interest checkboxes. THIS IS JUST REDICULOUS! Now this frustrated me greatly because there is obviosuly no reason in the world that I should have to fill all this information in just to download the software. This is annoying, not to mention illegal under COPPA if I were under 13 years of age (they don't ask that so there is no way to get parent's permission).
Anyway, what I started wondering was is it ethical/legal to put down a Macromedia email down in the email box, sort of to give them a taste of their own medecine? I was considering strongly entering in info@macromedia.com or some other similar standard email and then checking the "send me your spam!" box. What do you think?
There was nothing mentioned in the story about Metallica hunting down the individaul users with lawyers. What they were doing was compiling a list of offending users to send to Napster in order that they be blocked.
How else should this be dealt with? So much of the time we're fighting the lawsuit against Napster by saying that they are a provider and that they can't be held responsible for what goes on on their networks. Well, if we say that they aren't responsible and that the people sharing files are responsible then we have to live up to the fact that then the people sharing the files are responsible. Its as simple as that.
Lets look at what Metallica is doing from another perspective. Lets say that a bunch of kiddie porn is being made public on AOL. The FBI will get a list of the accounts and go to AOL with the names and they will shut them, in compliance with the law. The exact thing is happening here.
I'd say that the one of the biggest factors when developing a site that utilizes dymanic pages obtaining content from databases is to have an extrememly efficiently structured db. I've been working on a potentially large project (millions of db entries) using PHP and MySQl and we've essentially been adding in database stuff as we've needed it. Since this was our first time doing this, we added things as we figured them out, and because of this the database is so far from being optimized it's not even funny. I realize this is a standard idea in programming, but it really is essential to think out your design beforehand. We are currently in the process of redesigning the db so that information is not as redundant/hard to find as it is now.
Of course along with this, it is also essential that you don't build up your server-side scripts from scratch, patching things along as you go. All these functions need to be a smart as possible and must get the most out of each process as possible. Remember, a lot of times it takes longer for the scripts to connect to the db than it does for it to retrieve your data, so one possible tip is to combine your queries into a few broad executions. So along with the db, have an overall structure for your code.
I think something that is very helpful that I've learned is that not everything needs to be done by the server-side scripts included in that page. Let's say for instance that I would like to return the number of files on a system, and this has to be added to the file counts of three other systems. Now if this were to be executed when the page is requested, it would take awhile because the script would have to make the db query right then and there and count all the specified types of files and then do it three more times (so in total you may be seraching through the entire db 4 times). What would be better is if the situation allows for periodic data collection. If the data doesn't change that much, then it would save a lot of time to write a small java program that resides on the server and every 30 min or so performs the db queries that your page would. It would write it out to a file and so when you serve the page up, all you have to do is read that file to include the info and you're done. This makes a lot of sense because not only are you saving the user time but you are saving your database from choking because if 5 people want to access the same information, the info will be the same, so why compute it 5 times over?
So essentially I think the most important things to remember are to optimize the db, optimize your scripts, and pool your data.
I actually was visitng Brown last night and happened to be walking by the Science Library when they started testing it. At first I thought it was just random lights on the building, but then I was able to make out the individual pieces falling and rotating. All of the familiar l's, straight lines, and t's were there, among the other ones and they were actually playing tetris! It was also really funny because they had a boombox playing the music from the original tetris, completing the experience!
It looks like they have the basic system down, they just need to work on the refresh rates, because as of last night it was done floor by floor, so if you moved a piece right, it would sort of move to the right line by line. But all in all a very impressive set up!
I have to agree wholeheartedly with Skroz on this matter. The truth is that except for JarJar there was absolutely nothing groundbreaking about Star Wars I. The pod race was a very good scene but like everything else, there is nothing new about it. Computer generated backgrounds, pods, etc, lots of greenscreening.... it's just a rehash of Ben Hur, and that's the reason that it wasn't significant. George Lucas was merely replicating movie elements with CGI. Instead of filming things with physical film they generated it using 0's and 1's. It's incredible that we can do that nowadays, but it is not revolutionary.
Jarjar was impressive and yet the reason that that he isn't more significant is that he was completely unecessary. Why do we need a CGI character? (let's forget about how annoying he is) A special effect may be impressive but in my view it isn't significant if it is superfluous. George Lucas was doing this just so he can say they had an entirely computer generated character interacting with real people. So what? The fact that he was CGI had nothing to do with anything and so was more tiring because when I was watching it because I saw graphics and nothing to do with plot. Just compare this to Terminator 2. The morphing is essential to who the T2 is and the great special effects make sense and strongly add to the story.
The reason why I think the Matrix won all the awards (and in my view why it certainly merited them) was because the effects were brilliant and they were significant to the plot. Other than being visually stunning (the angles, the washed out colors of the "real world", the atmospheric effects (rain on the bridge, etc), the special effects that the Matrix employed were exceedingly clever. They weren't just replicating the world with a computer (Twister, Volcano, Mission to Mars, Star Wars I) but actually giving us a new way of seeing. If I just throw up a neat backgound, that is nothing more than doing something in Photoshop. But if I come up with a new way of perceiving time, or of showing the nature of objects, then that is worthy of an Oscar. Matrix showed us a fundamentally different way of seeing. Normally you are the camera's eye and you are locked to all the physical realities of that point of view but with Bullet Time, you were every camera. This is why the Matrix won the oscars and Star Wars didn't.
I'm sorry, but I really can't believe that Michael would really suggest that a conspiracy involving the NSA is really the best explanation for the DOS attacks. I may be naive, but let's play a "so that" game:
The NSA either hacked into its own computers or faked a crash, so that it looks vulnerable,
Launched a DOS against Yahoo! so that the worlds biggest information portal can be shown to be vulnerable,
Crashed the phone systems of two states so that it can be shown our infrastructure is vulnerable
and shut down major American websites in similar DOS attacks so that it can be shown that even smaller websites are vulnerable?
And for what? So that they can get a bigger budget? For what? More eavesdropping? For what purpose?
Or is this perhaps more reasonable: a team of angry teenagers/young adults feel that to be cool they need be noticed in a monumental way. Or perhaps they have a grudge against corporate America and have decided that this is the best way to exact their revenge against deserving pillars of capitalism. This is really not too unimaginable; just think back a couple of weeks to the eToy/eToys lawsuit -- hundreds of netizens were lined up to launch their own DOS attack against a reputable web site just because they felt that they were taking away their freedom. (Obviously the best way to fight this is not in the courts or through legal protest but through a childish impatient form of attack.)
I think the most realistic explanation is the horse, not the zebra: how many hackers have attacked web sites, computer networks and phone systems just to show that they could do it? Nearly every attack (other than specific defamation) has been for this sole purpose and I think that these attacks fit right into this profile. This is obviously the most reasonable suggestion, and I think that all suggestions otherwise will end up hurting us because we will all be pointing fingers at the NSA rather than trying to better protect the Internet and hunt down those who have committed these offenses.
I think that this article serves to illustrate the fact that even though we did not use cyber-warfare in this war, this form of attack will most definately be used in the future, and the US should prepare for it. There should be major studies done on how the US is vulnerable to these kinds of attacks. What would happen, for instance, if the stock market were attacked? Or the satellite networks of the major telecommunications providors? Or the local power grids? And that's not even taking into consideration all of the military and government systems like GPS.
Now, I'm sure that the most vital systems are very very well protected, but I think it is essential to consider this as a potential venue of attack. If we look at these systems in this light, we may find that they are less secure (or the country on a whole is less secure) than we had imagined.
The need for a new way of registering domains is enormous. Just think.... how many domains have been registered in just the past three years? How many domain name disputes have there been? Now if we are to continue use this system, how in the world will the internet support all of the domains registered in the next 10 years? Will names have to become enormous, for instance johnsmithdiamondsofvirginia.com?
On a side note, I've heard of an interesting way to deal with internet porn: let porn be allowed on sites with a.prn domain, but not anywhere else. This will allow it to exist, but will also allow parents and anybody else concerned (libraries, etc) an easy way to block it. If it is ever found elsewhere, it could be shut down. Of course this gets into the issue of defining what porn *is* exactly, but let's leave that for later......... =)
Slashdot Mirror
As a Cognitive Science major (a field that combines psychology, computer science, philosphy and linguistics) I am in the School of Arts and Sciences at my University, and not the school of Engineering, though I have taken CS courses and many of my friends are CS majors. What many many people in engineering fail to realize is that college is about making you into a well-rounded, knowledgable and generally informed person. You may loathe English, but the skills that come out of that are valuable in any profession. History, Arts, Philosphy, all have nothing to do with most people's professions, but students who take them come out of the classes exposed to not only many areas of our world, but many different ways of thinking and attacking problems. The world is NOT made up of 0's, 1's, and integrals, and somebody who has jumped into the workforce will only view the world as such.
In short, college is not only about the field. Many times, a lot of the learning comes from graduate and not undergraduate programs. The point is that you can become something more than your job, something more than simply a worker. You can become a sophisticated and individual who knows something more than his own job, his own culture, and his own mode of thinking.
I like the idea of having some sort of randomness to the mix (not just hitting shuffle on the player) and that is a great way to be introduced to new music.
Gerald Ford should sue Ford Motor Company for the right to use ford.com
Dennis Miller should sue Dennis Miller Associates for dennismiller.com
The only way this can be resolved is by actually forcing the issue again and again. (FYI Check out Madonna.com for somebody who's already doing this.)
Also, this opens it up to personal grudges... how long do you think the NSA web site would stay visible to this software? All the hackers and crackers and people paranoid of the government would moderate it down.
Web browsers on the other hand are used by everybody. We're talking about everybody who uses the internet uses the web, and changes happen here on timescales of 3-6 months, not years. You don't release a new version (a real version, not just x.01-x.02 changes) within a reasonable amount of time and millions of people feel the effect.
As far as I can see it, here are some of the pros and cons:
Pros:
One Platform Construction -- no longer will web designers have to design two different copies of their pages in order for them to look good to everybody
Standard Feature Integration -- Pages could be coded using the same components. No longer would workarounds have to be created to deal with unsupported tags (iframes/layers)
Faster Version Upgrade -- It seems to me that if everybody is using the same browser, people would update their version more often, so more people would have the latest and most sophisticated version. (why, i don't know, but this is just a feeling i have. Maybe it's because they won't be confused with IE 4.0/5.0/5.5 / NS 4.0/4.6/4.7/4.73 etc)
Possible technological advancements -- This is probably the most uncertain of the pros, but if the manufacturer of the browser had complete freedom they could add new features that would make design and browsing easier, and more fruitful. Of course, this leads immediately to our
Cons:
Complete Monopoly Over Web -- Whatever this company said would be the law for viewing the web. If they didn't put a tag in, it wouldn't exist on the web.
Loss of Innovation -- The usual lack of development that occurs when there are no competitors. We're on top so why do more? (Of course this hasn't really stopped NS from stopping its innovation, but I digress)
What do you guys think? Would having a market that is overwhelmingly dominated by one browser (be it IE or NS or whatever) be a good or a bad thing?
What about my employer and my social security number or my email address? What happens if these were suddenly up for sale? Hey, I could just work somewhere else, right? The problem with this "free choice capitalism" is that eventually you run out of places to go. And that is of course, if you even realize that your privacy is being doled out.... most users of the internet don't know that their information is being given out and so don't have the choice to opt out or block these practices.
In short, yes. Please let the government dictate what sites can and cannot do with my personal information. I would trust them a lot more than joeschmoads.com who was started yesterday and will do anything to make a buck.
What was the result of the congressional hearings? We all loved the headline "Senator tells Music Industry: Don't Make Me Come Over There and Smack You" but was that it? Is there going to be any fair use/licensing legislation or was this just a publicity stunt?
It seems to me that the biggest problem has been divorcing the legality of posting the DeCSS from the legality of copying and pirating DVDs.
The next part, and this will be the trickiest step, is how to deal with the legal and illegal uses of DeCSS. I agree with all the posts here talking about how one of its major uses will be to circumvent the horrendously idiotic region controls that the MPAA has built into it. This goes back to the heart of intellectual property issue, that I buy it and I should be able to get every part of it. Hopefully this issue will get resolved in another fasion (probably a court case) so that people don't have to DeCSS their DVD's just to get all the content.
The other side is how to deal with the piracy. It seems to me that this will eventually mirror the mp3 issue... the algorithm is of course legal, but piracy isn't, and I suppose we'll see the MPAA looking more and more like the RIAA, hunting down Napster sites. I hope that the Congressional hearings on Online Music will have implications on fair use and licensing that will extend to the MPAA. As they currently stand, the intellectual property laws cannot continue to exist, and they most certainly will have to be changed. And this is why the DeCSS case has been so complicated.. it has been impossible to divorce it from issues of intellectual property rights, the rights of the consumer, and the potential for piracy.
I think this is a very interesting experiment in how much freedom you can give people. Everybody would like to be part of a collective (like this site) where the structure is completely bottom-up and decentralized and everybody has a say, in fact a major say, in everything. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work too well. There will always be the people who for one reason or another would like to mess it up, and because of the lack of structure, can and will do so.
I guess the reason I'm bringing this up is because this whole concept, the struggle between structure and freedom seems to come up again and again in the computer world. Should software design be centralized or Open Source? Should the Internet have laws? Who decides the structure of the Internet/should there be a structure? It seems to me that any system that has no organization or constraints (like this site) will fail. It seems pretty much inevitable that there will always be the few (or sometimes the majority) who will mess up the spirit and the workings of the project because of spite, carelessness, or greed. That's why although institutions like ICANN need major changes, they are still damn important. Let's not forget that the Internet *does* have structure, and it is this structure (some centralization of naming, routing, etc) that has allowed it to grow to the amazing extent that it has.
http://www.blackhat.org/stego.html
I've been reading some of the other posts here and Images are not the only way to hide the data. Data can be hidden in images, audio files, headers, and ASCII white space.
One of the programs listed on that page (Snow) will embed the text as tabs and spaces in any text you provide. This is a great solution because most ASCII viewers will ignore the whitespace and just display the text. This would be good to embed in a web page because they would have to view the source in order see the spaces. The program will also encrypt your message before it converts it to whitespace, adding extra security. It is however a proprietary encryption scheme, so I don't know how well it works. In any case, the whole scheme seems pretty good!
The uber virus already exists!!! Here's how to do it, in one quick easy step:
1) Post an article on Slashdot reffering to a particular web site
Now sit back and watch the fun! The Slashdot Virus is guaranteed to take down ANY website within seconds!!!
I personally thought that this was one of the most remarkable parts of the movie, the fact that an action movie can have two sides that you can both identify and agree with. This was perhaps the most realistic part of the film, that neither side was the best solution to the answer (will Dr. X's efforts really save the mutants/Magneto is fighting for their rights but in a violent manner) and that both can be seen as good and bad. As one reviewer put it, Magneto is Malcom X to Dr. X's Martin Luther King, Jr. In life, nothing is as simple as Luke and Darth Vader, and I think that the fact that the writers of this movie/comic book realize that makes it all that more meaningful to me.
I don't think I've seen another action movie have such thoughtful and meaninful antagonists since The Rock.
Great Job! Great Movie!
I definately agree with you on this matter.... of course all the HTML should be written as completely as it can be, but the reason I was mentioning this was that there is a huge spectrum of designers out there, and many people aren't skilled enough/don't care enough to write perfect code, but these people shouldn't be excluded from making web pages. One of the reasons the web has grown so much is because HTML is not something that is very difficult... anybody can pick it up fairly easily. It is very democratic in the sens that if you want a web page, there really is nothing stopping you from making one. I don't see any reason not to support this as much as possible, and allow for interpretation of improperly created code. People make mistakes, and its nice when the browsers will help with that.
I used to be a Netscape user for several years up until this year, when I switched over to IE. I was amazed at the difference I saw. IE is much more tolerant of mistakes, handles tables a whole lot better (actual size and background images being two of the biggest factors) and has support for the hover style, a feature that can sublty but importantly enhance a page.
Now I don't mean this to be a post just in support of IE. The reason I bring this up is because it really is an issue of innovation. It sounds cliche to talk about Microsoft and its innovation, but I think that perhaps this is most apparent on the web, with browsers. I cannot tell you how many times I have felt held back by Netscape's lack of functionality, and even compliance with standards. Things have taken twice as much effort and in some cases rquired a "dumbing down" in order to get them to work well and look good in NS. I know that NS is working on the Mozilla project, and I've heard pretty good reviews of v6, but the fact that no major upgrade (and I'm primarily looking at adding functionailty) has been made for several years has really hurt the web in my opinion. In my experience, the pages for IE are much more flexible and technically advanced than those that run on NS. So my point here is, advancement is a seriously important aspect of the web.
On the other hand, however, a lot of the problems with the design has also been browser compatibilty. This requires constant checking, constant updating (have to keep on top what who has what) and in general it makes things very difficult. Usually the problem is more that one browser doesn't meet the w3c's standards rather than there being a specific proprietary advancement that the other does not ahve. Unfortunately, what Microsoft is proposing will be a proprietary advancement, and this one NS is sure to not follow.
I don't know what to do about this. The web has developed so well in the recent past because of the balance between innovation and standards. There has been a pretty good balance between pushing ahead and joining the others. I have to say though, that the web cannot continue to be where its at for very much longer. Static web pages, limited funcitonality and unwieldy design languages I hope will soon be a thing of the past. I guess when it comes down to it, I am very happy that MS is doing this.... we obviously can't look to Netscape/Mozilla for innovation since it seems like they're more concerned about integrating AIM into the browser than really advancing the technology. I am also somewhat apprehensive about how this will shape how people view the web but frankly, after years of struggling with mediocre and limited design space, I'm ready for something new.
Best thing about it was that there was no Jar Jar.
'Nuff Sed.
Now here's a question that occurred to me lately while downloading the 30 day trial version of Macromedia's Dreamweaver. In order to download the software, Macromedia required me to enter my name, email address, phone number, address, state, country, zip code, and form of use in addition to three pages of special interest checkboxes. THIS IS JUST REDICULOUS! Now this frustrated me greatly because there is obviosuly no reason in the world that I should have to fill all this information in just to download the software. This is annoying, not to mention illegal under COPPA if I were under 13 years of age (they don't ask that so there is no way to get parent's permission).
Anyway, what I started wondering was is it ethical/legal to put down a Macromedia email down in the email box, sort of to give them a taste of their own medecine? I was considering strongly entering in info@macromedia.com or some other similar standard email and then checking the "send me your spam!" box. What do you think?
There was nothing mentioned in the story about Metallica hunting down the individaul users with lawyers. What they were doing was compiling a list of offending users to send to Napster in order that they be blocked.
How else should this be dealt with? So much of the time we're fighting the lawsuit against Napster by saying that they are a provider and that they can't be held responsible for what goes on on their networks. Well, if we say that they aren't responsible and that the people sharing files are responsible then we have to live up to the fact that then the people sharing the files are responsible. Its as simple as that.
Lets look at what Metallica is doing from another perspective. Lets say that a bunch of kiddie porn is being made public on AOL. The FBI will get a list of the accounts and go to AOL with the names and they will shut them, in compliance with the law. The exact thing is happening here.
Of course along with this, it is also essential that you don't build up your server-side scripts from scratch, patching things along as you go. All these functions need to be a smart as possible and must get the most out of each process as possible. Remember, a lot of times it takes longer for the scripts to connect to the db than it does for it to retrieve your data, so one possible tip is to combine your queries into a few broad executions. So along with the db, have an overall structure for your code.
I think something that is very helpful that I've learned is that not everything needs to be done by the server-side scripts included in that page. Let's say for instance that I would like to return the number of files on a system, and this has to be added to the file counts of three other systems. Now if this were to be executed when the page is requested, it would take awhile because the script would have to make the db query right then and there and count all the specified types of files and then do it three more times (so in total you may be seraching through the entire db 4 times). What would be better is if the situation allows for periodic data collection. If the data doesn't change that much, then it would save a lot of time to write a small java program that resides on the server and every 30 min or so performs the db queries that your page would. It would write it out to a file and so when you serve the page up, all you have to do is read that file to include the info and you're done. This makes a lot of sense because not only are you saving the user time but you are saving your database from choking because if 5 people want to access the same information, the info will be the same, so why compute it 5 times over?
So essentially I think the most important things to remember are to optimize the db, optimize your scripts, and pool your data.
I actually was visitng Brown last night and happened to be walking by the Science Library when they started testing it. At first I thought it was just random lights on the building, but then I was able to make out the individual pieces falling and rotating. All of the familiar l's, straight lines, and t's were there, among the other ones and they were actually playing tetris! It was also really funny because they had a boombox playing the music from the original tetris, completing the experience!
It looks like they have the basic system down, they just need to work on the refresh rates, because as of last night it was done floor by floor, so if you moved a piece right, it would sort of move to the right line by line. But all in all a very impressive set up!
Jarjar was impressive and yet the reason that that he isn't more significant is that he was completely unecessary. Why do we need a CGI character? (let's forget about how annoying he is) A special effect may be impressive but in my view it isn't significant if it is superfluous. George Lucas was doing this just so he can say they had an entirely computer generated character interacting with real people. So what? The fact that he was CGI had nothing to do with anything and so was more tiring because when I was watching it because I saw graphics and nothing to do with plot. Just compare this to Terminator 2. The morphing is essential to who the T2 is and the great special effects make sense and strongly add to the story.
The reason why I think the Matrix won all the awards (and in my view why it certainly merited them) was because the effects were brilliant and they were significant to the plot. Other than being visually stunning (the angles, the washed out colors of the "real world", the atmospheric effects (rain on the bridge, etc), the special effects that the Matrix employed were exceedingly clever. They weren't just replicating the world with a computer (Twister, Volcano, Mission to Mars, Star Wars I) but actually giving us a new way of seeing. If I just throw up a neat backgound, that is nothing more than doing something in Photoshop. But if I come up with a new way of perceiving time, or of showing the nature of objects, then that is worthy of an Oscar. Matrix showed us a fundamentally different way of seeing. Normally you are the camera's eye and you are locked to all the physical realities of that point of view but with Bullet Time, you were every camera. This is why the Matrix won the oscars and Star Wars didn't.
Thank you. This needed to be posted.
I'm sorry, but I really can't believe that Michael would really suggest that a conspiracy involving the NSA is really the best explanation for the DOS attacks. I may be naive, but let's play a "so that" game:
The NSA either hacked into its own computers or faked a crash, so that it looks vulnerable,
Launched a DOS against Yahoo! so that the worlds biggest information portal can be shown to be vulnerable,
Crashed the phone systems of two states so that it can be shown our infrastructure is vulnerable
and shut down major American websites in similar DOS attacks so that it can be shown that even smaller websites are vulnerable?
And for what? So that they can get a bigger budget? For what? More eavesdropping? For what purpose?
Or is this perhaps more reasonable: a team of angry teenagers/young adults feel that to be cool they need be noticed in a monumental way. Or perhaps they have a grudge against corporate America and have decided that this is the best way to exact their revenge against deserving pillars of capitalism. This is really not too unimaginable; just think back a couple of weeks to the eToy/eToys lawsuit -- hundreds of netizens were lined up to launch their own DOS attack against a reputable web site just because they felt that they were taking away their freedom. (Obviously the best way to fight this is not in the courts or through legal protest but through a childish impatient form of attack.)
I think the most realistic explanation is the horse, not the zebra: how many hackers have attacked web sites, computer networks and phone systems just to show that they could do it? Nearly every attack (other than specific defamation) has been for this sole purpose and I think that these attacks fit right into this profile. This is obviously the most reasonable suggestion, and I think that all suggestions otherwise will end up hurting us because we will all be pointing fingers at the NSA rather than trying to better protect the Internet and hunt down those who have committed these offenses.
Now, I'm sure that the most vital systems are very very well protected, but I think it is essential to consider this as a potential venue of attack. If we look at these systems in this light, we may find that they are less secure (or the country on a whole is less secure) than we had imagined.
On a side note, I've heard of an interesting way to deal with internet porn: let porn be allowed on sites with a .prn domain, but not anywhere else. This will allow it to exist, but will also allow parents and anybody else concerned (libraries, etc) an easy way to block it. If it is ever found elsewhere, it could be shut down. Of course this gets into the issue of defining what porn *is* exactly, but let's leave that for later......... =)