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Comment Re:Possible Solution (Score 1) 932

I use a similar system for personal use but I do not have it wipe all the data on each restart, instead I just wait for the system to start getting a bit sluggish or I am ready for a clean start and restore the original virtual machine. Still kind of a pain but so much better then restoring your whole system. I have been using this setup for a couple years and I have not had to reformat my main system.

Comment Where do I put the fish again? (Score 4, Funny) 133

Parece que he perdido mi copia de la guía, pero como yo soy un príncipe de Nigeria, con mucho gusto a comprar uno por $ 10 millones de dólares EE.UU., si usted me ayudará a transferir fondos de mi hermano, que ha robado mi difunto padre trono. Por favor, responda con su información bancaria para que podamos ayudarnos mutuamente.

Comment Re:DRM Keys (Score 1) 151

Yes, I am familiar with that idea... the point however is access control. How do you decide the X lucky recipients of your partial key? How do you assume they are trustworthy? Then again, if you're not watching the logs, how to you know they aren't cheating the system, and trying to assemble the full key without your permission?

The whole point of DRM is to give permission when you wish. Any system that allows someone to skip asking permission, and later beg forgiveness is broken. In that same vein, any DRM system gives you the keys at some point, and says "do not unlock this door"; therefore it always fails, even if we use it simply because it's easier to ask then to beg permission.

Comment DRM Keys (Score 3, Insightful) 151

Perhaps I missed this in the TFA, but how exactly do they plan on actually releasing the keys? The whole point of DRM is to keep the keys out of your reach. I cannot think of a single, viable way to hide the key exchange without some black-box single point of distribution. Sure you can distribute the encrypted content via P2P... but unless the keys are decentralized as well... calling it a P2P system is just a touch disingenuous.

The key-servers still will represent a single point of failure, and a single point of ownership. Now we'll just pay for most of the bandwidth instead of them.

Comment Re:Someone doesn't get data compression (Score 1) 731

Well, writing on DEC hardware, most of the assembly instructions could be morphed by bit shifting into something else, useful, for example a Pointer Jump was just an overflow from a Jump Not Equal, so you could *cough* theoretically write an infinite looking loop that would exit when a strategically placed variable was overflowed. Thank god people don't write like that now, but when you had a 16k address space to work with, tricks like that were, well indispensable. As for the byte shifting, on a PDP, a bitwise shift (because most instructions began with a null byte) was a fast operator, rather than having to run a real decompressor.

Thinking about this, I miss the Good Old Days(tm).

Comment Re:I wish programming was a religion (Score 1) 844

Of course, this would also mean we'd need altars ... in the server room, would have to burn the right incenses and make appropriate obeisances to ward off crashes. Of course, when the crashes happen anyway, we could then have the debate over whether the religion was false or if we simply weren't observing it strictly enough and decide to throw a virgin off the roof and see if things improve. (cue jokes about the likeliest department to find virgins in.) You know, it would be kind of cool to have a giant computing pyramid atop which is the altar we tear out the beating hearts of living sacrifices.

You've never worked in a DEC RSTS/E, VMS, or a VAX Mini shop have you? (the alters are there, just behind the serial multiplexers)

Microsoft

Gates Foundation Revokes Pledge to Review Portfolio 236

NewsCloud writes "After the LA Times reported that the Gates Foundation often invests in companies hurting the very communities Bill and Melinda want to help, the Seattle Times reported the foundation planned 'a systematic review of its investments to determine whether it should pull its money out of companies that are doing harm to society'. Shortly after that interview, the Gates Foundation took down their public statement on this and replaced it with a significantly altered version which seems to say that investing responsibly would just be too complex for them and that they need to focus on their core mission: 'There are dozens of factors that could be considered, almost all of which are outside the foundation's areas of expertise. The issues involved are quite complex...Which social and political issues should be on the list? ... Many of the companies mentioned in the Los Angeles Times articles, such as Ford, Kraft, Fannie Mae, Nestle, and General Electric, do a lot of work that some people like, as well as work that some people do not like. Some activities might even be viewed positively by some people and negatively by others.'"

Mars Probe May Have Spotted Sojourner Rover 149

Maggie McKee writes "NASA's eagle-eyed Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter may have spotted the tiny, toaster oven-sized Sojourner rover just a few meters away from its companion, the Mars Pathfinder lander. It appears to have crawled there in an attempt to re-establish contact with the lander after the lander had already died. But the pictures aren't clear enough to definitively ID the rover, and it's possible Sojourner simply took off on its own. If it were miraculously still alive after 10 years, it could be 3 kilometers away from Pathfinder — and probably impossible to find, even with MRO."
Media (Apple)

Apple is DRM's Biggest Backer 400

parvenu74 writes "Arstechnica is running an article pointing out that while some pockets of the entertainment industry are experimenting with DRM-free distribution, Apple Inc, which announced that they have now sold over 2,000,000,000 songs on iTunes, is now the strongest pro-DRM force in digial media. From the article: 'DRM is dying. It's a statement being echoed with increasing frequency around the Web over the last few weeks, and is perhaps best articulated in this Billboard article. But there's a powerful force standing in the way of this DRM-free panacea, and it might not be the one you expect: Apple, Inc.'"
Communications

No Third-party Apps on iPhone Says Jobs 778

wyldeone writes "In an interview with the New York Times, Steve Jobs confirms reports that the recently-announced iPhone will not allow third party applications to be installed. According to Jobs, 'These are devices that need to work, and you can't do that if you load any software on them.' In a similar vein, Jobs said in a MSNBC article that, 'Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.'"

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