Rather than being snarky, maybe you should have replied with a link to the movie, as I requested? This entire (off-topic) thread is about imdb's failure to play nice with the rest of the internet, and your failure to implement the workaround I supplied instructions for.

Any further replies from you in this thread without the link I asked for will be met with extreme contempt, complete with expressed and implied detrimental comments about your intellectual capacity, family lineage, etc.

We're already risking downmods by even having this conversation - don't be stupid and make it worse.

... and I mean that energy requirements are constantly fluctuating, and the current value is always "a little more than we have".

I'm not disagreeing with your statement that moving mechanical parts around would require more energy than our current computer technology requires, I'm simply stating that it wouldn't make any difference to the end user.

To use a car analogy, your statement implies that vehicles such as the HumVee would not exist, because they require more energy to push their wastefully large frames down the interstate.

The energy issue hasn't changed - we'll always need "just a little bit" more than we currently have. We could actually have tapped quite a few sources of reliable, renewable energy, it's just not economically viable to do so (at least, not while fossil fuels are still available at such (artificially) cheap rates).

To further your point: The US has shot itself in the foot by impeding the progress of medical science. All the vehement arguments about stem cell research that caused the US to outlaw accessing the best source of stem cells has resulted in Belgium coming up with a cure for AIDS, instead of the US.

Here's a link to the NYTimes story. Please keep in mind while reading it that the story seems to have a massive "sour grapes" slant, deeming the procedure "impractical" due in part to the fact that the patient's immune system must be destroyed prior to the procedure... which seems laughable to jeer about, since AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) destroys the patient's immune system, causing death from such agents as "the common cold". Doing the same thing in a controlled fashion, allowing the patient to be in a controlled environment for the duration of the procedure, seems a lot less "impractical".

The gist of the matter is that the American populace has been told "it's expensive, and might kill the patient" in lieu of telling them "it's expensive, and might kill the patient, but this will actually rid the body of HIV, instead of making the patient take dangerous drugs every day for the rest of their life".

Think of the lives that could have been saved if the American research facilities had come up with this idea first. If that doesn't motivate you enough, think of all the money that the US has just lost because they shortsightedly allowed the "moral implications" of acquiring research material from non-viable fetal tissue to justify outlawing an entire field of research that just panned out... for someone else.

Unfortunately, the link you supplied is broken, due to the referrer being outside imdb.com's domain. Perhaps if you linked to the movie the image belongs to, instead, you would have at least gotten a "funny" mod, instead of being largely ignored because you didn't check your links in the preview pane.

Just saying.

... as spoken by someone who obviously didn't read the article.

Your entire premise is flawed, in that had Babbage been able to fund the production of his machine, then he would have created "an actual machine to do it quickly, reliably, and cheaply." His Analytical Engine was a precursor to modern digital machines, and the article expresses how we might have been exactly where we are now, except 100 years earlier... and with a different power source.

It even postulates that something approximating the internet might have emerged, using the telegraph instead of the telephone - and we wouldn't have had to convert from digital to analog and back again, because the dots and dashes are digital to start with.

Babbage's Analytical Engine worked, he just never actually built it.

See my comment, above, for more information concerning WW1 long range artillery. As in, "75 miles (120km) to target" long-range projectile weapons.

But the Germans *did* have long range targeting, and weapons capable of using that data (indeed, the "Paris Gun" was the reason for discovering how the Coriolis Effect affected their targeting - at ranges of roughly 75 miles (120km), the rotation of the earth was enough to affect the projected 3-minute trajectory of the weapon's explosive projectiles).

In other words, your conclusion is based on a false premise. More information is always a good thing, when asking questions about possibilities.

No, they can't. Or rather, that only works if you're using their servers. If you send a dns query packet to a specific IP address, you should only receive a response from the IP address you requested one from. Any firewall worth calling a firewall will block most spoofing attacks by default.

If you are sending DNS queries to a specific server, then your propagation delay is only as long as it takes for that server to update. In other words, if you're using a "darknet" DNS server, then as soon as the admin (or whatever automated process exists) updates the DNS records, that server begins sharing the new DNS records; without propagation, there can be no propagation delay.

For a secure(ish) proxy, look into TOR (The Onion Router) - it can be configured to send DNS queries through the secure tunnel, although it does not do it by default (if I recall correctly - always double-check information you receive from random strangers on the internet). Of course, you may want to be aware that by running TOR, you are also volunteering to be an endpoint for lots of other people's traffic, so the cost may outweight the benefit in the final analysis.

Alternatively, there are literally thousands of websites out there that will perform a DNS lookup for you in your web browser - try "DNS lookup" as your search terms in your search engine of choice. That query on google gave me back "About 5,030,000 results (0.14 seconds)" - all of the ones on the first page of results looked relevant, at a glance.

To be completely honest, I think you're making this process out to be much more complicated than it actually is.

To be honest, I absolutely love what the media industry has done in their "war of attrition". The mass media's exposure of all the underhanded tactics they have employed has turned what might have been a quiet war of attrition into a public spectacle. The rootkits on audio CDs; the suing of dead grandmothers, children with single-digit-ages, and single moms for millions of dollars in "damages"; the "MAFIAA" tactics of knocking on people's doors and threatening them; all of this has contributed to the more rapid demise of the outdated, outmoded, and frankly outclassed business practices employed by the media control industry for decades. "DRM" has come to mean "Digital Restrictions Management", rather than "Digital Rights Management" in the public eye, and has mostly been destroyed as an effective means of restricting the distribution of licensed content.

The Streisand effect has made the ability to "steal" media ubiquitous, and there is practically no way to pull the plug on it, without destroying or crippling the greatest communications tool ever invented (the internet).

The general public is becoming more aware that the "pirates" are able to access the restricted content freely, in ways that are not possible for mere "paying consumers", and the backlash has been a sight to behold. The new "downloadable digital copy" is a good example of the media industry's lackluster response, as it only works if you have a Windows-based PC to download and view it on. Sorry, Linux and Mac, you guys need to pay the Microsoft tax or you don't get to (legally) transfer your (legally-purchased) digital media to your digital playback device.

My response to the previous paragraph's tactic is to simply rip the movie anyway - Fair Use laws guarantee me the right to make a backup copy, and I see no issue with having my original disc be my backup, with the digital version being the "in-use" copy on my media server. Theoretically, a pressed disc will last for decades, if not centuries, assuming you keep it in a vibration-less, cool, and dark place - the shelves and cabinets in my half-finished (and furnished) "shed" mostly qualify as exactly that. The peace of mind I enjoy because I don't have to worry about one of my friends' kids smashing, scratching, or otherwise injuring a plastic disc is well worth the effort of spending an hour with my newly purchased (from the $5 bin at the bigbox store, or even cheaper from the local pawn shop) media in a linux machine's optical drive.

Intellectual Property law is on the verge of being reformed in one way or another, and as far as practical implications, those laws may as well not even be on the books. I don't personally "steal" music and movies (unless you consider my "format shifted backup" of my legally-purchased media to be "theft"), but I know many people who do, and they do it with practical impunity. There is such a huge non-profit black market for movies now that (I am told) there is typically a BluRay rip available the same day the movie releases in the theaters (I'm assuming it's generated from a screener, or somehow lifted from the production-room floor, so to speak).

I understand the frustration and panic displayed by the media industry - they didn't pay enough attention to the rapid rise of technology, and their business model is now obsolete. They're still arranging the deck chairs and bailing with cocktail glasses, but the ship is most assuredly sinking. Unlike many proponents of "piracy", I don't think this is a completely good thing... Once "Big Money" loses interest in the media industry because it's not profitable enough to deal with anymore, I am concerned about what level of entertainment quality will rise from the ashes. On the other hand, the media industry has been ripping off the artists for as long as anyone can remember, so maybe they've just "had it coming" for long enough that no one will miss them. I am aware of many "professional" artists who have set aside the traditional media sales methods, and moved to "pay what you think it's worth" for direct downloads, etc, so maybe there is enough momentum that the artists will once again be in control of their own careers once the industry has "died".

I'm not against IP laws in toto, by the way - I simply disagree with their current implementation. Music recorded before I was born won't be in the public domain until after I am dead, and so I understand some (most?) people's disinclination to wait for the desired information to reach the point where they can have it for free. As an example, the copyright on "Happy Birthday" won't expire for nearly another 20 years... is there anyone in the US that hasn't at least heard, if not "publicly performed" that particular work?

From the Snopes article:

The original implementation of patent/copyright legislation, which wasn't nationwide until 1790, specified a maximum term of 28 years. This is still a bit long, considering the current level of technology, but is much more reasonable than our current period of 95 years from date of publication or 70 years from the author's death. As an example of the ridiculousness of current copyright legislation, consider Disney's "Mickey Mouse" character - is there anyone, anywhere, that both has electricity available to them and does not recognize that character? "Mickey Mouse" was created in 1928 - which makes him 83 years old. "Mickey Mouse" will not become public domain until at least 2023. Admittedly, even then he will still be trademarked, but my point is that this "Intellectual Property" has been protected (vigilantly and zealously) for nearly a century, despite the ubiquity of the name and likeness in homes across the globe.

Intellectual Property deserves to be protected for a short period of time, so that the original creator can profit from their own blood, sweat, and tears. On the other hand, that "short period of time" should be closer to 10 years than 100. Otherwise, the works in question will likely be irrelevant by the time they are released into the public domain, and thus them actually reaching public domain is a futile and wasted effort. As an example, Windows 9x will be copyrighted until at least 2090, given current legislation - there is practically no chance that the computing devices in use at that time will have enough resemblance to the x86 architecture for anyone to learn anything of more than historical value from that source code (assuming the source code ever makes it to the public eye). The company that produced the software product in 1995, with another version in 1998, hasn't supported any product using that kernel since 2006 - why isn't the source for that product in the public domain right now?

As an example of the detrimental effects we are currently experiencing as a result of the previous paragraph's example, try opening an MS Office95 Word document with MSWord2007 - watch the error message appear, and wonder why "backwards compatibility" should even be an issue for a text document.

Nothing has entered public domain in the United States since 1923. Absolutely nothing. We have managed to legislate ourselves into a self-enforced "dark ages". Patents and copyrights have turned a once-flourishing home-brew programming sector into paranoid corporate sweat shops, with IP lawyers raking in record profits as the companies attempt to exert control over one another instead of innovating. Not only is this detrimental to society in general, but it is in direct contravention to the original stated goals of the legislation introducing intellectual property protections - The current United States IP laws are unconstitutional in practice, if not in intent. Is it any wonder the American populace is ignoring the law, with some even actively seeking to subvert or destroy it? The world has the same issue, and thus we have places like "The Pirate Bay", dedicated to staying just legal enough to continue operating. If it weren't for the current IP legislation issues, "The Pirate Bay" wouldn't exist - we'd all be using google, bing, or yahoo for the purpose of finding new media (and quite possibly purchasing the media from legitimate channels, instead of adding ".torrent" to the search terms).

Samsung was banned from selling their Android tablets in Australia. Apple has been banned from selling iPhones and iPads in Germany. Companies are spending millions suing each other for "infringing 'look and feel'" instead of spending that money developing new products. In the 15th century, humans had the Catholic Church with its Inquisitions and Crusades causing fear and tyranny, with the accompanying persecution of scholars and scientists (for example, the Catholic Church only publicly accepted that the world revolves around the sun in 1992). In the early 21st century, humans are having to deal with persecution by a new religious order, similarly motivated by profit, greed, and self-importance: the media (control) industry.

In short, IP laws need to be fixed, and the "war of attrition" practiced by the media industry has been more of a factor in their declining sales than "piracy" ever had a chance to be. Here's to their war.

Cheers!

When I said "Google told China to back down", I wasn't actually referring to DNS stuff, I was referring to this event.

The DNS spec isn't fast enough, then. When I used to update my DNS entries via a third-party DNS server, instead of running my own, I would be told that global propagation could take up to 72 hours. Admittedly, this was years ago, but I wouldn't imagine it to have changed all that much in the intervening time - updates only happen so fast, and that's just the way it is. If you want a more speedy DNS propagation, then I guess you'll need to either run a DNS server yourself, or find some darknet DNS server somewhere that already has this functionality.

The downside of this would be that if the "evil authority" in your story discovers the IP of the "rogue" DNS server, then you're hosed - and tracking the destinations of a specific IP's packets directed at a specific port isn't rocket surgery - this is one of the reasons why TOR is less bullet-proof than it could be (by default).

I have known 11-year-olds who knew how to get at the anime they wanted to watch, in sequential order, with or without subtitles and/or overdubbed language (as desired). I have known 30-somethings who got confused if the text they searched for didn't bring up "that thing I saw yesterday" as the first result.

So, I guess the answer to your query is "...Maybe?"

For instance, google's dns servers, at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4?

Google told China to back down, and got away with it. I doubt they're afraid of Belgium.

Fixed that for you. Since you seem to have missed the news, Mr. Jobs is dead. It was all over the TV, printed newsmedia, and the internet. I'm assuming you live under a rock, and only come out to charge your iPod.