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Comment Re:Yes, it is a bad thing. On several levels. (Score 1) 274

Or die in a car accident. Which is probably more likely.

The reason you're not likely to die in a car accident is because you're trained to avoid risky behaviors of your own, and watch out for dangers from others, animals, and the environment.

What you're suggesting here is to drive your car with your eyes closed, and still expect to not have an accident.

You're every lawyer's dream: To the prosecutor, a naive computer user they can take right to the cleaners and carve another notch in their law degree. To the defense lawyer, you represent a new paint job for the Porsche, or that 150" TV they've had their eye on.

Eventually, you'll figure out that the last thing you want in life is to get yourself caught in the gears of the criminal legal process. There's no winning.

Comment Yes, it is a bad thing. On several levels. (Score 1) 274

Good! The Internet was founded on free and open access.

The problem with "free and open access", at least here in the USA, is you can be accused of being responsible if someone downloads something unsavory (in the legal sense) over your connection. Even if you win in court, the costs (time, money, reputation, loss of computing equipment, loss of ability to use the Internet, etc) of defending such an accusation are enormous; that's why I no longer leave a connection open for the public. "Free and open" is no longer something I associate with US law. We're far down the road of repression and censorship, sad to say.

Worse, the situation is continually degrading, and the consequences of something that is minor now could become considerably worse in the future. Congress and the states have shown absolutely no reluctance to enact and enforce ex post facto laws, which are (among other things) laws that make consequences worse after the fact.

Security

The DRM Scorecard 543

An anonymous reader writes "InfoWeek blogger Alex Wolfe put together a scorecard which makes the obvious but interesting point that, when you list every major DRM technology implemented to "protect" music and video, they've all been cracked. This includes Apple's FairPlay, Microsoft's Windows Media DRM, the old-style Content Scrambling System (CSS) used on early DVDs and the new AACS for high-definition DVDs. And of course there was the Sony Rootkit disaster of 2005. Can anyone think of a DRM technology which hasn't been cracked, and of course this begs the obvious question: Why doesn't the industry just give up and go DRM-free?"

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Thus spake the master programmer: "When a program is being tested, it is too late to make design changes." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

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