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Slashback: Recusement, Homecoming, Cubism 100

Posted by timothy from the recurring-dreams dept.
More on the conflict of interest in the 2600 / DeCSS case. More on the South African penguins trapped in a world of petroleum, currents and love beneath the panopticon world of satellite observation. And congratulations to Distributed.Net for setting in place their new milestone. All below!

Why no, gentlemen, I see no conflict of interest. You may recall reading that Lewis Kaplan, the judge in the DeCSS trial underway in New York right now, consulted for Time-Warner, raising questions about conflict of interest. Jim Tyre of The Censorware Project writes: "Yesterday, CT posted a piece on 2600's attempt to disqualify Judge Kaplan in the New York DeCSS trial. Last night, Kaplan's 51 page Order denying the motion made it to the Net. No doubt he spent the weekend writing it, putting him in a nice mood for when trial commenced yesteday. Interesting reading for those who like to slog through such things."

The first 1000 days. emerson writes "According to their RC5-64 Stats Page, distributed.net's RC5-64 project turns 1000 days old today (July 18th; the stats page will show 1000 days when today's stats are digested and displayed tomorrow), with just over 28% of the keyspace checked out. Makes me feel pretty safe about RC5-64 versus brute-force attacks ..." Oskuro writes: "Today is the 1000th day distributed.net is searching for a winning key on RSA's RC5-64 contest. In that long time, the 28% of the keyspace has been tested, so there's a long way to go still. Maybe you want to download a client and start crunching for Team Slashdot?" Note: this means that as of today (day 1001), the stats reflect the 1000-day figure.

Wish I had scientists helping find me a mate ... John B. Hayes writes "Yahoo! News has a great story on an heroic high-tech penguin and his surviving the impossible. I wonder if there is a deeper meaning here... I mean, he made it 600 miles without a re-boot; ok, so there were some unexpected obstacles to deal with and the programmer had to step in, but that's the beauty of it. I'm charged!" cvd6262 writes "It seems that all's weel that ends well. Our Beloved Jackass Pequin, Peter, arrived home. I quote from the site: 'At 0456 this morning, Peter's satellite tag reported that he was at 33 48 S 18 22 E. Wait a moment. Those are the coordinates for Robben Island. Peter is home.' Now he only has to find a suitable Jackass Penquin mate."

All the same, I think I'd prefer some privacy. Oostendorpophile writes "I got this email today:

'Thank you for your inquiries into the FBI's "Carnivore". We have received many inquiries, many Kudos and many sneers for what has been in the news in the last couple weeks. Much of the information that the press has published has been inaccurate or misleading. Earthlink takes the following stance (in quotes below).

"We do not allow the installation of Carnivore on our network because it has the potential to compromise the privacy of our legitimate users and the performance of our network. We have an internal solution which allows us to comply with court orders without the presence of government personnel or equipment in our buildings. The government accepts this solution since they still receive the requested information about the criminal suspect, and we sleep well knowing that our customers are safe from unauthorized surveillance."

Sincerely,
Mary Youngblood
Privacy Policy
Earthlink/Mindspring Abuse Team Manager'"

This isn't the most satisfying possible answer, but at least it's nicer than block committees and "an enthusiastic welcome to the nice gentlemen who'll be sharing the building with us" ... Earthlink / Mindspring is one of the largest if not the largest ISP, though -- will smaller ISPs be able to stare down Carnivore as well?

And Apple Legal hasn't said a thing about this yet? Hollis writes "After months of discussion and work, linuxppc.org has been rewritten and is hosted at penguinppc.org. The new site has a slick design and lots of new content... check it out." And today's announcement of the new cube PowerMac puts a different light on the criticism Ryan Meader received for posting about such a thing on MacOS Rumors. It's a good thing to be wrong about! Dual G4 in a cube. Linux on PPC. Repeat.
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Slashback: Recusement More

Slashback: Recusement

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  • How it will work (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As a Mac developer, Linux user, and someone who's actually used Mac OS X, I think I can give you a pretty good idea how it will work. There's already a few X11 Servers for Mac OS 8/9. The one I'm most familiar with is MacX (aren't all these X names getting confusing).

    MacX will either let you have one big-ass MacOS window that contains your X-based desktop (with whatever window manager you want), or it can put each X window in its own Mac OS window, giving everything a much more Mac-like feel. I imagine Tenon will adopt a similar strategy: all the window widgets will be Aqua-fied, but the contents of the window will be the same as always, since they're controlled mainly by the application. Tenon's X server will probably also support a "big-ass window" mode, and maybe al

    Just to set the record straight, Carmack hacked X to run on Mac OS X server, and the hack was promptly ported to Darwin, seeing as it lacked a GUI.

    My dream system: quad G4s, three monitors.
    Monitor 1: Aqua.
    Monitor 2: X11
    Monitor 3: CLUI
  • There has been much discussion about Apple's new cube and the connection to the Next. What most ppl don't realize is that these were/are not Steve Jobs only cube shaped computers. IIRC, Pixar, which Jobs bought from Lucasfilms, also produced a cube shaped computer (graphic rendering box) to run Renderman. I vaguely remember something called chaps.

    It was back around 1989 when I first saw one. The Pixar cube was bigger than the Next cube and was sort of gray/granite in color. It was also pretty expensive. I had the opportunity to use one, but I decided not to.

  • More on the MPAA/2600/deCSS case. (Score:5)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2000 @02:42PM (#919682)
    Here is some interesting reading about day one of the case. (The first two links were collected by Linux Today [linuxtoday.com]. In general, it looks like MPAA and friends got off to a flat-footed start.

    EON's MPAA v. 2600 - Day 1 [harvard.edu]:
    Under cross-examination by Marty Garbus, Shamos the phony expert, admitted he could not have conducted his test for MPAA without the skill and help of real expert, Eric Burns [a student at CMU]. As a result Burns is now to become a witness to tell what he actually did to get the DivX, get it decoded synchronized and playable. Shamos looked swell while being examined by Proskauer and got blown away by Garbus. Even the judge took a few whacks, and approved Frank Stevenson and Eric Burns as witnesses over Proskauer's objections. ... An attempt is to be made to bring him over to the angel side.


    EFF's Movie Studios Admit DeCSS Not Related to Piracy [eff.org]:
    Schumann's affidavit and testimony that DeCSS was created to be a tool of piracy was severely undermined on cross-examination by EFF's defense team when asked about a report he submitted to the MPAA concluding that members of the Livid mailing list (where DeCSS was published) were attempting to build a Linux DVD player.


    Wired's Movie Studios on the Warpath [wired.com]:
    "Do you know of any DVD that has been sold anywhere in the world that has been decrypted with DeCSS?" asked Martin Garbus.


    "Not with absolute certainty, no," Schumann replied.

    He also said that he didn't know of anyone who distributed a DVD online that had been decrypted with DeCSS.

    As Garbus kept pressing, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan seemed to become irritated.
    Wired goes on to quote part of the snit between Kaplan and Garbut.

    Stay tuned folks; this is going to be entertaining.

    --
  • I know :)

    It's just an idle fantasy ...

    - good processors in tandem
    - cute box

    (sigh ... they *could* do it, eh?)

    timothy
  • As I understand it, it's a black box that sits, unbypassed, between the ISP's main router and their main connection to the backbone. If nothing else, I'd like to see the stats on these things... they've got to handle a freaking LOT of I/O. Maybe they're running Linux :-)
    --

  • Interesting. Hmm, the typical Slashdot conspiracy theory fest comes to mind.... time for another Poll Mastah poll!! :-P

    Poll: what really happened to the MacJunkie site?

    1. They got hacked.
    2. Internal political problems that provoked someone to self-destruct the site.
    3. Ben really was too embarrassed about his mistake, but taking the site offline was an even more compromising position, so he put up a notice stating the contrary. (Man, talk about conspiracy theories!)
    4. You dumb conspiracy theorists. They just got Slashdotted and their sponsor took them offline to save their network!!
    5. I like coffee.
  • At least the one they planned to use. Instead they are going back to the drawing board to come up with a watermarking technique that really is 'transparent' to someone listening to an authentic DVD-Audio disc.

    Read about it in New Scientist [newscientist.com]

  • This carnivore thing really bothers me. It's so an invasion of privacy, even if an actual person isn't reading it.

    Here is what pisses me off/discomforts me about this thing:

    #1 The FBI is arrogant and cocky enough to think that they have "created" the ultimate AI. It's so ridiculous... If (that is if, I'm just guessing here) their program works on picking out e-mails that have "key words" the results would be totally fucked up. Here's a little test you can try. Do a search on some search engine for a string of random "hostile" words that you would think a terrorist would use in their e-mail. I'm willing to bet you'll come up with just news articles, and some history documentary web pages. The FBI thinks their magical program will "sniff" these out. They'll end up coming up with reports kids are sending to each other to cheat in some classes... maybe school teachers should get their hands on this program.
    Additionally, If I were a terrorist and didn't encrypt my top secret bomb plans, I'd deserve to be arrested by the FBI.

    #2 I've said it <a href="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/07/16 /1848232&cid=105">before</a> and I'll say it again, the FBI is getting lazy when it comes to programs like this. Why don't they do some fucking work, and stop hiring programming firms to write programs like this for them.

    #3 If anyone BUT the FBI did this it would be (more of) a(n) outrage. And worst of all the FBI doesn't even try to put a pretty face on it. They blatantly go out and say "yes we are monitoring all of your e-mail now"... like Echelon wasn't enough.

    #4 How do we know it stops at e-mail? They could me monitoring everything we do online. What right have they to do that? How do I know some snoopy janitor at the FBI head office who has a few minutes of computer know how, won't get onto one of these heavily guarded computers and start picking through my online documents, banking web pages, and start using my porn accounts.

    Is there anyway to get around this bull shit spyware? If I get a T1 line installed in my house, will the phone company have to put the sniffer on that too?
  • How, Why, Where and when? Try something original, like posting your actual thots. Man is this me or is this much lower than a troll??
    Like this: The reality of Purchased Reviews [slashdot.org]


    Nuff Respec'

    DeICQLady
    7D3 CPE
  • I'm not sure who this box is for.
    The Geek-Of-Another-Color Rationale:

    Given the Mac's traditional markets, there are a lot of content developers (esp. audio folks) who've been screaming for a full-powered computer with NO FAN! Kudos to Apple for reducing our ambient noise levels.

    The Computers-For-Everyone-Else Rationale:

    As a technological device's market matures, you find differentiation not so much in its bells and whistles, but in fit-and-finish details. Design, design design. Which watch looks better on your wrist? They all keep time well enough... Apple has made a computer that has a little tech-sex appeal, as it were. <sarcasm>Ooh, the horror, it's small, quiet, and pretty -- how ever will the big beige box motherboard-o'-the-month crowd cope?</sarcasm>

  • Good idea... how about:

    X-Newspeak: Big Brother is watching you.

    ... or the like.
    --

  • Re:No Dual PPC Cubes (Score:3)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2000 @04:39PM (#919691) Homepage
    One of the Apple Vice Presidents, I forget the name, was quoted as saying (paraphrased):

    The cube is squarely aimed at creatively oriented people who want a powerful computer and a sign of their creativity.

    Basically, the cube is a status symbol, a conscious design decision, and is not designed to replace the G4 desktop. The people who want to buy a cube are not the die-hard techies but the graphic designers who want something cool to show their clients that basically says, "Oh yeah, I'm a designer".

    The G4 cube is to the workplace as the iMac was to the home. A toy.
  • Thanks to John Young, archivist of Cryptome [cryptome.org], for sending the trial summary linked above to the Openlaw/DVD [harvard.edu] discussion. More news articles from the trial and transcripts from the first two days are now posted to or linked off the Openlaw/DVD homepage [harvard.edu]. (Please send additional links to openlaw@eon.law.harvard.edu [mailto] and I'll add those too.)

    Incidentally, we're still proceeding with the "Openlaw" experiment -- discussing legal arguments for the defense in a public forum in full view of the opposing side. At least one of the MPAA witnesses has said he used the Openlaw site as a starting point for his search for DeCSS information online. Yet I think the mix of participants -- and thus the range of insights and analyses we've gotten -- is far broader than a more traditional set of calls to experts might have produced. Thanks to everyone who's been involved!

    Join the discussion at http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/ [harvard.edu]

  • It was a *joke*

    It really shouldn't have been moderated up, IMO.
  • Yeah. If you've got a court order telling you to connect the thing, you can fight it in court. But if they don't have a court order or warrant, and they're trying to bully you into cooperating without it, there's appropriate equipment around to plug it into.....

  • For the record:

    The FBI can not, wait, let me emphasize that... The FBI CAN NOT order a carnivore system installed. Only a federal court could do that. The FBI is a law enforcement, or 'police' agency, and has no power on its own to order wiretaps. A court order is required for any wiretap. And, the courts can stipulate exactly HOW the wiretap is to be done. So, a judge with a bent for privacy could order the FBI to NOT use Carnivore to tap an email system, even while approving the wiretap.

  • The FBI can claim that their actions at various ISPs are part of ongoing investigations, so those ISPs that have seen the box may not be able to talk. But the design of the box is fair game for FOIA - whether they built it themselves or contracted it out. So the ACLU [aclu.org] is doing a FOIA request to find out about the box, its design, what it can and can't do and what it does besides what it's authorized to do, etc.

  • This story [rbn.com] (RealAudio required) played today on KCRW's "Deadline Hollywood" radio news It was written by Charles Fleming [mailto] and contains the usual inacuracies regarding DeCSS.

    Although it pretty much hits the mark on how unpopular the MPAA is as a result of the lawsuit, and has a wry opinion that the "genie is out of the bottle", it uses the traditional (and incorrect) "decss lets you pirate dvds" rather than "decess is about playback control" framework for the issue.

    Some Quotes:

    ...deCSS is to the dvd movie what mp3 is to recorded music. It enables the home consumer to copy, reproduce and trade movies downloaded over the Internet. Downloaded for Free.

    These superhighway holdup men [Corley, et al]... may have legal protection. The studios argue that descrambling constitutes copyright theft. The other side will argue that descrambling allows consumers to make copies of dvds they already own and trade them with friends, which constitutes legal 'fair use.'

    Someone out there wanna help convince them that they should tell the real story of what this case is about?

    Click here [kcrw.com] for the Deadline Hollywood main page.

  • Hi. Read this: http://www.kuro5h in.org/?op=displaystory&sid=2000/7/18/122257/231 [kuro5hin.org]. Please don't b-slap me; this is important!

    --
  • Has anyone got any details on the Apple Desktop Connector (ADC) cable that mentioned on the Apple site and in the Wired article? It "combines power, video and USB signals onto a single cable". That's a really nice standard, except that the data could do with being faster than USB's 12Mb/s. I've got five cables coming out of my PC Ultralight (power, USB, 100Mb/s ethernet, audio & PS/2 - yeah, PS/2, there isn't a RF cordless wheel mouse with a USB interface for the receiver yet). Using this standard many people will be able to get the number of cables down to one or two. It would be great if this becomes a standard by the time I buy my next portable...
  • ...our guys, the DeCSS guys, the 2600 guys, have been a bunch of layabouts until it came to their attention that they might actually have to do something for the trial, then they try to get the judge recused because

    a) he *might* have thought that garbus did something wrong 20 years ago, and

    b) his *firm* once represented time-warner with regard to something vaguely related to DVDs (actually, WRT antitrust WRT DVDs)?

    And this, considering that Garbus' law firm is *currently* representing Time-Warner in a seperate case?

    It just goes to prove that all lawyers are slimy fucks who should be shot in the head.

  • It seems to me that this leads back to the old (relatively) discussion about public key encryption of email. I routinely encrypt most of my email - except for that going to people that I can't get them to set up PGP on their systems. Over the years, I've had people ask me "Why do you do that if you aren't doing something illegal?"

    This relates very well back to the analogy of postcards vs. letters in envelopes. Why don't people do all their 'private' correspondence on postcards? Why use envelopes if you aren't writing something that is illegal? It really does boil down to the right to communicate (1st amendment) with those whom I choose, in the manner in which I choose.

    One of the things that concerns me most is the potential for abuse in this system. This comes back to the same issues I had with the census. I refused to answer anything but the constitutionally mandated 'How many people live at this address?'. Just as the government used the census data - illegally - to forcibly inter the Japanese-Americans during WWII, you will never convince me that the Carnivore system doesn't have the potential for 'first strike' use. Here is an example:

    1. The government suspects that there may be criminal activity in a geographical region. Terrorism would be the best choice for this, as they can claim 'national security interest' and get a court order to install the system.
    2. They monitor various ISPs to find 'messages' of interest.
    3. Then they use THAT to obtain orders for monitoring specific individuals that they previously had no interest in, and wouldn't have been under suspiscion otherwise.

      1. This is just my $0.02.

  • Salon has an article today about hacktivists. It's pretty hostile though. Check it out. [salon.com]

    The bus came by and I got on
    That's when it all began
    There was cowboy Neal
    At the wheel
    Of a bus to never-ever land
  • This is worrying! What sex is Tux in that case? And how do we *know*??!

    You mean, is Tux Little-endian or Big-endian?

  • perfect! (Score:2)

    by hawk ( 1151 )
    >The cube is only 8" x 8" on the top.

    Hey, that's perfect to put the toaster on top . . .

    :)

    or a 4 cup coffe pot . . .

    hawk
  • >They were NEVER to get into enforcement, hell, they were never supposed
    >to carry guns.

    That would have made for interesting early days, as the task force to deal with Capone and the like.

    "Oh Mr. Capone! Would you please stop? I'll tell the police if you don't . . ."

    :)
  • Since Bill laid the egg (aka Windows), he must be the female.

    By elimination, the other one (Tux) is male.

    :)

    hawk
  • typical troll
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Not that it would matter so much anyway; the regeneration of the stats would be running now, so many features won't work anyway.
  • Dual G4 in a cube. Linux on PPC. Repeat.
    Nope, sorry. A tour of the Apple Store reveals there are indeed dual G4s, and that the Cube is real, but the two Cube models are single-processor - the dual models are all in the original "silver and black" (really light grey and dark blue-grey - I have one) cases.
    You didn't really think a fanless 8" cube could provide enough convection cooling for two processors? I doubt even Apple is capable of that, even with the low power draw of the Motorola chips.

  • What I want to know (Score:5)

    by Gurlia ( 110988 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2000 @03:02PM (#919712)

    What *I* want to know, is whether the guy at MacJunkie ate his hat/shorts/whatever it was that he said he would eat should the G4 Cube photos turn out to be real.

    On a related note, I think sometimes slashdotters behave like that too... spout off about something they *think* they know, and totally make a fool of themselves. But I digress.

    (Obligatory note to moderators: this is NOT flamebait. I really want to know what happened to the MacJunkie guy after this embarrassment...)


    ---
  • Except, of course, that the defense has stated its intention to show that CSS is anticompetitive in nature as opposed to antipiracy. Kaplan saying that that defense's strategy is irrelevant to the facts at hand is defensible, but it can also be interpreted as self-fulfilling justification. For example:

    "I am biased toward the plaintiff, and I've got to stay on the case to ensure their victory. Hmm, if the anticompetitive argument is irrelevant, then there is no cause to recuse me. Therefore, if I say it is irrelevant, I don't have to recuse myself, and therefore can stay on the case and assure the victory of the MPAA."

    Eh, my cynicism is showing, isn't it?

    Steven E. Ehrbar
  • Well, *duh.*

    The whole point of SETI@Home is raw data-crunching for spikes. Most spikes can be very easily attributed to earth-based or standard astronomical phenomena, which means most of the data is tossed. That's simply the rule of the game.

    To put this into perspective, d.Net is raw data-crunching for a particular phrase. All but one of the cracked data blocks will match the predetermined phrase, which means the rest of the cracked blocks are thrown out. Does that mean d.Net is waste of time? Hardly.

    Let's put this into perspective. SETI@Home might have a distant pay-off, but it's not inherently any less "wasteful" than d.Net.

  • I know the guy's brother. He's in a tizzy about having his ISP pull his page today and cost him some serious loot, so I dont know that he's had time to address the embarrassment. I already asked his brother when I get the quicktime of him eating the hockey puck mouse. :)

  • What I want to know is this: what percentage of Macintosh users actually use Photoshop, and what percentage use it the majority of the time on their computer?

    I think less than five percent even use Photoshop, being generous in my guess.

    The percentage will undoubtedly be higher for PowerMac purchasers rather than iMac purchasers, but I would still say it's less than 30% of those (PowerMac) users.

    Only if a majority of users use Photoshop intensively would the use of Photoshop to indicate general performance be acceptable.

    What Apple should do is script Office, an email application, a web browser, and any other commonly used /cross-platform/ applications (not the Finder) these days, and compare the performance between machines then. These applications /are/ used by a majority of PowerMac owners.

    Never mind the fact that a GHz machine is not the fastest you can get. Think multiple processor Intel boxes. They exist, Apple.

    Apple's being extremely disingenuous in regards to performance testing, and it's just one reason I laugh at anyone (excepting Photoshop users) believing anything Apple says regarding performance just because they have a flashy demo. Run the Photoshop comparisons at Seybold or similar media conferences, but not at MacWorld, please.
  • so this guy didn't even have a backup of his site squirreled away somewhere?

    Typical bloody Mac user :-)



    "Give the anarchist a cigarette"
  • I propose a change to the RFC:

    New header:

    X-Monitored: ,

    e.g.,

    X-Monitored: Omnivore 3.3a
    X-Monitored: Carnivore 1.0

    etc.

    :)

  • Penguins (Score:3)

    by Ratface ( 21117 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2000 @09:47PM (#919719) Homepage Journal
    From the Yahoo article
    "It is very difficult to tell the sex of a penguin. For all we know Peter could be a female,"

    This is worrying! What sex is Tux in that case? And how do we *know*??!



    "Give the anarchist a cigarette"
  • Dual G4 in a cube.

    This is wrong. There can be only one processor. For Dual G4 you would still need the same big box.

    The thing that bothers me the most is that all those Mac designer guys in my company are going to be even more obnoxious. Stupid.


  • Seti@Home only collects "tokens" from computers that tell them whether that particular data packet was abnormal, meaning they should analyze it more, or normal, so that they can disregard it and throw it away (although they do probably keep it all on backup tape somewhere).

    I believe what you are referring to is that, for a while, SETI@Home did not have enough information to distribute from the listening station. They were basically recycling old data to keep users in business while they were waiting to get control of the dish again and grab a bunch more raw data. Once the other researchers finished, SETI got it back for a while and grabbed a ton of information.

    So yes, it is disgusting that they were reusing packets of info for PR, but what should they have done? You left the screensaver on anyway, might as well make pretty pictures instead of leaving it blank.

  • Now I've seen the judgment (and how refreshing it is to be able to get at interlocutory judgments - they're not a matter of public record in the UK, more's the pity) I think the original news story was spin of a fairly pernicious sort.

    Essentially, what Garbus was alleging was that the judge's former firm had acted for the plaintiff (and probably not at the time the judge was a partner there) and that the judge had heard a rumour about Garbus some years before he was appointed to the bench.

    That last, I have to say, would disqualify two thirds of the judges in the world from hearing any case. Contrary to popular opinion, there aren't that many lawyers around. It's a small world and we squabble like cats in a sack: I could pass on rumours about half the senior counsel in London ranging from the mildly scurrilous to the outright defamatory (and the funniest one of all is absolutely true: I had it from the horse's mouth, albeit the version the Telegraph published was embellished to the point of libel)

    The point is that the mere fact that a judge had heard a rumour about counsel doesn't matter a damn. In a few years, some college contemporaries of mine may well start making it to the junior end of the bench: am I to ask them to withdraw from a case because they happen to have seen me get drunk, throw up in the Cherwell and start singing Mam'zelle from Armentieres?

    I will pass carefully over my opinion of the defence's conduct as disclosed in the recital of facts Kaplan prefaces his judgment with.

  • Typicall of mac lover: the beast is on the desk. [...] The cube sucks because you cant put anything on top of it.

    The cube is only 8" x 8" on the top. It's not the size of something you would usually put something on top of, since even a letter size piece of paper won't fit. It's more like a large, fanless toaster. I've never seen anyone try to put anything on top of a toaster :p

    Since the cube is fanless, there's not much need to put it in a separate room. The G4 towers turn off their fans when they're cool in sleep mode, so they're also fine for living quarters.

  • Maybe the Cease-and-desist notes were just a way
    to attract attention, and hype up the cube. Writing a C&D doesn't cost and it gets you a lot of publicity.
  • This is a great example of the cancer that is slowly rotting away the foundations of our judicial system.

    The law of the land should be simple enough for every layman (and woman) to understand it. Each and everyone of us should be able to defend him/herself without having to resort to paid help, who interpret the letter of law for you or, like in this case, tell you what the judge is saying.

  • This is not the case. We are losing money every minute our sponsor's ads are not being shown, and we are losing credibility every time a reader sees a 404 error. Please understand the trouble we're having. Thank you,

    Funny, their ads look fine to me... and since when do ads make more money back than you spend in ISP fees for a year? I'd like to know, because I'd put ads on my site if I thought it would generate revenue.

  • > Penn State DOES pay my salery, but I don't imagine they want to
    > adopt my opinions :)

    They pay my salary (as of next month :), but that's not enough for my
    opinions :)

    But I'll follow that link when I get back (I've suddenly had an urgent matter dumped in my lap :)
  • Not to sound too pessimistic, but it is always *possible* that there is a great white shark swimming around Robben Island emitting satellite signals from deep within its belly... I have personally seen a few massive great whites [divediscovery.com] around that area and it is not more than a few miles from Seal Island, the biggest great white breeding ground in the Southern Hemisphere.. in which case we have all been tracking the progress of a great white rather than poor old Pete :)

  • "The post mentions something about a dual processor G4 Cube. This simply isn't true. The G4 cubes come with either a 450 or 500mhz G4 chip. One lonely chip."

    Well, he's confused between the G4 Cube and the non-cube G4, both of which have varying options: Should he have read the article [mosr.com] before posting he'd have seen that they don't claim the existence of a dual-processor Power Mac G4 Cube:

    "the PowerMacintosh G4 Cube (see it on Apple.com!). Fanless, with a well-concealed sloat-loading DVD-ROM drive (on top of the box!), 450MHz ($1799) and 500MHz ($2299) versions will be available soon."

    They do however mention a dual-processor Power Mac G4.

    "Apple has announced the immediate availability of two dual-processor PowerMac G4s at 450 and 500MHz, with the low-end model sporting a single 450MHz processor."

    You see, there are two distinct different products:
    1). The Power Mac G4 [apple.com] which has the following processor options:

    • single processor 400MHz ($1,599.00);
    • dual-processor 450MHz ($2,499.00);
    • dual-processor 500MHz ($3,499.00).

    2). The Power Mac G4 Cube [apple.com] which has the following processor options:
    • single-processor 450MHz ($1799.00)
    • single-processor 500MHz ($2299.00)

    So there are dual-processor G4s, they just don't come in an eight inch cube. Hope this clears things up.

    Shame on you Timothy... :)



    "A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
  • More importantly, why would we care? Tux is fat and happy and capable. Tux is also an icon, and icons typically don't have gender (and certainly don't require it, especially in this case). And lest you think women can't wear a tux, I can show you pictures from a good friend's wedding that argue otherwise...

    If you really need a pronoun, you can use that information about penguins IRL to justify the assumption that Tux is female, and has been all along. That'll put a minor crimp in some people's assumptions, and that's always fun (one way to tell the real hackers is by the reaction when their assumptions get crimped. ;)
  • I suggest Zero Knowledge Solutions.


    Another thought for the open source/free software community: how about making a file-sharing program in the spirit of gnutella which, in addition to allowing file sharing, also makes each client a pass-through stage in a ZKS/mixmaster style IP transfer? See the ZKS website for architecure docs on how cryptographically sealed "envelopes" prevent intermediate hosts from knowing both the final destination and original source of the packet.


    Why don't I write it? Believe me, I'm thinking about it.

  • >The cube sucks because you cant put anything on top of it.

    Perhaps - but it's so small (and presumedly light) that I may put things underneath it! :)

    Seriously, though, it really is a great space-saver. I use a lot of CDs, and having to back away from my desk to insert a CD into a ground-based CPU is a pain. Plus, I like to listen to the machine work (hard drive clicks, etc.). It's often a useful diagnostic tool (is the machine low on RAM and using virtual memory? is the machine crashed [no HD activity]?)

    To each their own -

    nebulo
  • "What I want to know is this: what percentage of Macintosh users actually use Photoshop, and what percentage use it the majority of the time on their computer?
    I think less than five percent even use Photoshop, being generous in my guess.

    The percentage will undoubtedly be higher for PowerMac purchasers rather than iMac purchasers, but I would still say it's less than 30% of those (PowerMac) users.

    Only if a majority of users use Photoshop intensively would the use of Photoshop to indicate general performance be acceptable."

    True enough. But these multi-processor machines are, it seems, specifically targeted towards the power designer that *does* spend a huge amount of time in programs like Photoshop that would benefit from multiple processors.

    I agree with your point about it not being a blanket evaluation of the machine general usefulness, but it does have its uses.

    nebulo
  • I suggest zero knowledge postings. These really protect privacy. Basically you simply spout off without reading the article. This limits the FBI to only knowing that you're a pompous ass and a moron. I invented this technique, but Signal 11 stole it. As a result I had to skullfuck him in the steel cage.
    --Shoeboy
  • Wow...to think I've given up 1001 days worth of spare CPU time... [I started on Day 1 of RC5...was the 15th person to create a team :) ] and that doesn't include the time put into the RC5-56 run...

    Every once in awhile I wonder how much electricity [and $] I've wasted... but since MOST of it is on work machines, I guess it doesn't matter...

    I have to hand it to the guys at distributed.net . The statsbox has had alot of problems [it's been much better lately] but the clients have been first rate. I switched over to Seti@Home for awhile, bit I just couldn't accept a client that took up 12Megs of RAM and crashed, when the RC5 client takes up aprrox 500k and doesn't crash. [Ok, I actually have 1 machine that freezes if I run the linux client,but it's only a 200MMX so I'm not worried about it]

    KUDOS to the Distributed.net group!

    Ender

  • I feel sorry (Score:3)

    by phoxix ( 161744 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2000 @02:18PM (#919736)
    I feel sorry for all the "hacktivists" in this world. Though their intentions are correct, they will forever be misunderstood by society at large. The 2600 is the perfect example. The members of 2600 don't actually advocate doing "bad" things, however they are always informing the public of the ramifications and outcomes that actions taken by others lead to. And yet, even with this great "public service", they will be misunderstood. Why? Simple. Everyone will forever think of them nothing but the avarage "hacker". However they are far for more than "hackers". If anyone here attended the Hope 2000 meeting as I did, you will know for a fact that these people are actually important to society. These people help others see a side that they normally would never see due to the overly powerful government and really really really big comercial companies. Hopefully, the 2600 group will win, and maybe these hactivists can finally see the changes that they so advocate for in society.
  • and SETI@home tosses most of their data. Yep, a friend of mine worked for them and left in disgust - he sez it's basically a big PR operation, the crunched numbers are mostly disregarded.

    I'm running d.net on all the machines I have access to now.

    Just got a Dell 8450 in the lab - 8 xeons! Hmmmm... lots-an-lots-a-stats!
  • Net or ZDNet

    They are now the same.

  • The penguinppc site looks like an improvement but there's one crucial thing I can't find -- a complete software archive! There used to be a convenient searchable RPM archive featured prominently on linuxppc.org. Then it became difficult to find and recently I haven't been able to locate it at all. It's a huge pain having to tweak and compile all these apps that I know somebody else must have packaged.

    I do see penguinppc's FTP link [penguinppc.org] but it only contains a limited number of apps. Maybe I'm just dense - can someone point me to a better source?
  • How, exactly, does Carnivore work? Does it sit on the line like a Cisco router would, or is it a piece of software installed on the ISP's servers? If the latter, could company pay the FBI a generous amount of money to stop supporting Carnivore for a specific OS, and, since Carnivore would be mandated, legally eliminate a comptetor's operating system from a large portion of the market?
  • Realistically, we have to aknowledge that there needs to be a way for the government to gather evidence for legitimate criminal investigations. Criminal law as a whole depends on this.

    And "evidence" can include communication. The government can open your mail and trace or listen to your phone calls, legally, if you are a suspect of a crime and a warrant is issued.

    Technically, opening mail and tapping wires is easy. Intercepting e-mail is hard. There is sometimes not a perfect solution for hard problems.

    I'm not saying Carnivore is the right way to do things; based on the short blurbs that are out there, it sifts through everybody's mail to get the bad guys'. That would be pretty wrong. And like many Slashfolk, I do not trust closed-source software for this sort of application. But there may be no perfect solution, and there has to be some technology for legitimate surveilance.


    My mom is not a Karma whore!

  • Hm....

    And MacOS X is based on BSD too....

  • Earthlink and Privacy (Score:4)

    by muldrake ( 171275 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2000 @05:54PM (#919743) Homepage Journal

    Quoted from Arnie Lerma's website [lermanet.com]:

    DECLARATION OF ROBERT J. CIPRIANO

    I, Robert J. Cipriano, hereby declare and state as follows:

    [. . .]

    38. I was befriended the first day of my employment at Earthlink by a Mr. Michael Hamra, another sales associate. I quickly started a friendship with Mr. Hamra and spent countless hours talking about various things including how Earthlink started with investments, by Kirstie Alley, Tom Cruise, John Travolta and other wealthy Scientologists, into Sky Dayton's idea of an internet service provider. Mr. Hamra told me how Sky Dayton had a coffee shop before starting Earthlink and that he, because of being a Scientologist and his friendships with celebrity Scientologists, he was able to build a multi-million dollar company that could, "Watch over the entire internet from within the internet."

    39. Additionally, Mr. Hamra told me he was one of the founding group of Scientologist who ran Earthlink out of a Glendale one room office where he made sales calls from a bathroom in the office. Mr. Hamra said, "The Church of Scientology now had a database of information on every subscriber which included names, credit card info., credit reports, telephone info., computer info., who had referred them to Earthlink and who were their previous ISP providers." Mr. Hamra told me about the "other Earthlink building" which was next door on New York Avenue in Pasadena. Mr. Hamra told me that the other building was high security and is where Earthlink and the Church of Scientology did all the monitoring of the internet. Mr. Hamra was always very interested in my testimony in Berry v. Cipriano. It became clear to me that he was reporting what I was saying to other in Scientology.

    40. I received many incoming sales calls while at Earthlink from individuals who would ask, "Are you a bunch of Scientologists?" We were trained to never admit that we were involved with the Church Of Scientology.

    ---

    There is also an article [phoenixnewtimes.com] on this in the Phoenix New Times [phoenixnewtimes.com].

    Incidentally Earthlink [earthlink.net] is now owned by Mindspring [mindspring.com], so the same conditions may not currently prevail. Cipriano is also not the best source, as he is virtually a pathological liar, but he did indeed work for Earthlink, and whatever else Cipriano may have said, it's disturbing a Scientology [scientology.org] lawyer could duke people into a job there at will.

  • Gee, just 4 or 5 stories down is the "PM on DVD" thing. If you can't stand to be without your anime on DVD, at least have the decency to fuck MPAA members (like Disney) by purchasing bootleg DVD copies from China.

    -Legion

  • ...no.

    Single-processor cube.

    Dual-processor behemoth desktop machines.

    nebulo
  • "As for the dual processors - thats one answer to Motorola's problems with getting the G4 up to speed. Too bad you'll need Mac OS X to really take advantage of it."

    That's not entirely true. There's a good reason Job trots out Photoshop to demonstrate the G4's capabilities: Photoshop is specially tuned to use the G4's Velocity Engine to accelerate its functions; and, Photoshop has been multi-processor aware for many years. While it's true that most applications won't notice the extra processor, people like me who basically *live* in Photoshop would benefit tremendously from a multi-processor machine.

    I don't actually know, so I'll ask: does anybody know if other Adobe products (Premiere, Illustrator, After Effects, etc.) are multi-processor aware?

    nebulo
  • > The G4 cube is to the workplace as the iMac was to the home. A toy.

    Oh, not at all. I'm a web designer at work, and I have one of the current Blue & White G3s on my desk - and boy, would I give a lot to get that elephant off my desk! It's much bigger and unwieldy than you might think. And you can't always place it on the floor because the cords frequently aren't long enough (and don't tell me to get a VGA extension cable: they always seem to mess up the picture and make me squint).

    Because the Cube has everything I need (Ethernet, video, Firewire, USB, hefty hard drive), I don't really need all the expansion room of the larger chassis; but I do need the desk space. I'd love to have a Cube on my desk.

    And the design is cool, to! But that just makes it a good balance of form and function.

    nebulo

  • So, a judge with a bent for privacy could order the FBI to NOT use Carnivore to tap an email system, even while approving the wiretap.

    Fat chance of that.

    I know... Innocent people will never fall prey to government surveillance, the story goes, because the bureau can't place a tap without a permission from fair and impartial judge. A lovely thought -- but I'll leave you with one more figure from the wiretap report.

    Number of wiretap applications denied by judges nationwide last year: Zero.

    From a recent Kevin Poulsen article [securityfocus.com] on SecurityFocus [securityfocus.com].

    More than that, I've heard anecdotes of federal judges who just hand out signed, blank orders for wiretaps and search-and-seizures and just let the LEO fill them out at will.

  • Re:Judge not biased... but against DeCSS (Score:3)

    by Jim Tyre ( 100017 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2000 @06:28PM (#919749) Homepage
    The comment that "he probably wrote this over the weekend..." was also low.

    OK, I'll bite, as the one who made the post (and as a practicing lawyer for more than 20 years) I'll ask why you think it was low.

    It is a fact that the moving papers were submitted to the Judge on Friday. It is a fact that, by the time court went into session at 9:00 a.m. Monday, he had mostly finished it. It is a fact that, with trial in session all Monday morning, he signed the Order early Monday afternoon. When else would he have written it?

    The comment was directed to the mood he may have been in when trial started Monday, having just spent the weekend doing the Order, not to the content or style.

  • I'm not sure who this box is for. It costs about the same amount at the full G4 machines but its less upgradable.

    This box would be for me. Or, hopefully will be, anyway.

    I currently have a computer (unfortunately, a Wintel box) that includes a decent 17" monitor. Now, when I replace that computer, will I need a new monitor? In all likelyhood, no. It's only 3 years old, is a decent size, and supports just about any resolution I actually need (and can read). So, the G4 Cube is for me - I buy it, plug my monitor into it (I really hope I can - Apple's [apple.com] introduction of it wasn't very clear on that aspect) and away I go, without having to shovel out another $500.

    As for upgradability: if that's what you need, then you'll have to settle with the not-as-new-so-not-as-cool G4. The Cube seems to be slotted between the lowly 400 MHz G4 and the Dual 450, which makes me think they're going for a market where upgrades are not commonplace; If you want a really fast system, you'll buy top-end (dual 500 G4). If you want really top-end, but only in certain areas (say, storage) you buy whatever will do (400 G4), and expand it. If you're a business or home user and will use this machine until either it dies or you do and will never see the inside of the machine, you buy the Cube if you need moderate computing power, or the dual 450 or 500 MHz G4.

    Besides, if you want to expand, just plug any given USB or firewire device in. No prob!

    If anyone out there buys a Cube and finds out that they can't handle the non-expandability, I'd be more than happy to help them out and take it away from them. :)

  • You have to earn it (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Wish I had scientists helping find me a mate

    Hey, if you swim 600 miles, I will find you mate.

  • The judge isn't going to be impressed with any evidence regarding whether DeCSS is used for piracy or not, because (as he discussed in the denial of the recusal motion) he views the issue of copyright infringement as irrelevant to the case. The only issue for this judge is whether DeCSS is a circumvention tool that is prohibited by the DMCA.

    Just hang in there, get it all into the record, and go for the appeal on constitutional grounds, Mr. Garbus. We're all rooting for you!

  • because Tuxette [everythinglinux.com.au]is the one with the bow, while Tux [everythinglinux.com.au]is plain.
  • The mark must be robust enough to survive MP3 transmission over the Internet, but remain inaudible when played on the yet to be launched DVD-Audio players.

    This will be extremely hard to do. Lossy sound compression algorithms are designed to encode only the audible information, meaning any "inaudible" watermarks are removed. It's possible they could exploit faults in the MP3 algorithm and have the watermark survive, but it would be nearly impossible to make a watermark that survives MP3, Vorbis, MPEG4, AAC, TwinVQ, etc. encoding.

    Besides, DVD Audio will probably fail anyway. It's extremely late, has few advantages over CD Audio unless you're an audiophile, and many disadvanges (copy protection, won't play in existing players, probably more expensive). Don't expect record companies to start putting 3 hours of music on an album because they can.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • > The judge isn't going to be impressed with any evidence regarding whether DeCSS is used for piracy or not, because (as he discussed in the denial of the recusal motion) he views the issue of copyright infringement as irrelevant to the case.

    Still, up until today the MPAA has been making a very big issue out of it in its PR spin. It may have just lost the battle for the public's minds.

    --
  • The homing beacons that they use only transmit if they're above water. Seeing as that Great White Sharks live in the water the tracker would just stop transmitting and we'd see the tracker as fallen off or Peter as yummy shark food.
  • I have a strong feeling that Peter isn't the only Penguin-lover that's having difficulty finding a mate.
  • Makes me feel pretty safe about RC5-64 versus brute-force attacks ..

    Me too. Unfortunately the goal of the project was to demonstrate the opposite. Namely that RC5-64 was too weak and would succumb to a brute-force attack. They managed to do that in the DES, CSC and RC5-56 contests, but it looks like we're at least another year from cracking RC5-64. Maybe more since a large chuck of resources are now being diverted to the OGR challenge (a non-encryption project). I have been of the opinion for a while now that they should abandon RC5 and focus on OGR.

    Someone else spoke of how they have switched back to d.net from SETI@Home. I've done that as well. Ironically, I first learned about d.net through SETI@Home and started running their clients before the S@H clients were released. Then later it became obvious that the SETI project had all the cycles they needed and more. I felt my cycles could go to better use at d.net and I went back. I believe in both projects and in the concept of distributed computing in general, but I just came to the conclusion that I would be of more use helping d.net.
  • Nice cow graphic but did they really want to

    "Stats are down for maintenance. We're chasing bugs -- Thanks for your patience... "

    At the same time as a slashdot story?

    You can't beat bad luck I guess.

    Then again the "bug" may be a higher than average load and we may be seeing cause and effect.

  • Apple Cubism: NeXT! (Score:3)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2000 @02:24PM (#919762) Journal
    Oh, if you want Apple Cubism [wired.com], see the story in Wired about its resemblance to NeXT.
  • ... too much lawyerease for me, and besides it sounds like he's just whining that the defendants (2600) are out to get him.

    Can anyone else provide a succinct summary of the document, in plain English, that explains just what the fuck the Judge is trying to say, and how he figures he's still qualified to preside over this case, given that he's done work for Time/Warner?
  • Cube with dual G4s. Slashback is supposedly story updates and corrections, right? Please make sure the corrections are correct.

  • No Dual PPC Cubes (Score:5)

    by mattkime ( 8466 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2000 @02:25PM (#919765)
    The post mentions something about a dual processor G4 Cube. This simply isn't true. The G4 cubes come with either a 450 or 500mhz G4 chip. One lonely chip.

    I'm not sure who this box is for. It costs about the same amount at the full G4 machines but its less upgradable. (It does have more mhz than its bigger version, but not necessarily more processing power.) I think its targetted for people who reguard looks over function. (You can't even set a stack of post it notes on top of it - you wouldn't be able to get at the dvd drive.) Perhaps its a repackaged iMac with a better processor.

    I find it strange that you can upgrade the ethernet from 100Base-T to gigabit. There's an expansion slot - and a fast one, thats asking to take more than just ethernet upgrades.

    As for the dual processors - thats one answer to Motorola's problems with getting the G4 up to speed. Too bad you'll need Mac OS X to really take advantage of it. And too bad they're doing this just to keep up, rather than get ahead.
  • It just confirms the old adage...

    It better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.
  • The clips below are grabbed from a quick skim of the document...there may be errors in my interpretation.
    According to a declaration submitted by plaintiffs, Time Warner engaged Paul, Weiss in May 1994 to render antitrust advice to Warner Home Video regarding negotiations between the motion picture, consumer electronics and information technology industries to develop a new voluntary technical standard for optical digital discs. These negotiations, which did not involve copy protection or encryption issues, led to an agreement on a voluntary DVD standard in September 1995. Paul, Weiss never has been retained to advise Time Warner concerning copyright or encryption issues with respect to optical digital discs or DVD, nor did it provide any advice on that subject to Time Warner or its affiliates during the tenure of the undersigned with the firm.(pg. 24)
    Paul, Weiss is (as I understand it) the firm that was retained by Time Warner in '94. Judge Kaplan was a member of this firm, but did nothing for Time Warner at the time. Main point: It had nothing to do with copyright or encryption.
    the allegation of bias must be made in an affidavit signed by the party, who must attest that the judge harbors a personal bias or prejudice against the party or in favor of an adversary. As noted, its procedural requirements are strictly enforced. And there are sound reasons for this requirement of an affidavit from the party, not the attorney. (pg. 27)
    There is more detail on the noted page, but basically this is saying the appropriate procedure (Section 144 of the Judicial Code) for filing the motion was not followed (it must come "from the party, not the attorney"). In addition:
    The Warner issue concerns whether the judge is disqualified by reason of a relationship, not personal bias or prejudice.(pg. 28)
    Again this refers to Section 144, but this time mentions the reasons that a judge can properly be disqualified ("personal bias or prejudice") whereas this motion is trying to disqualify Kaplan simply due to his relationship to the firm.

    There are quite a few other reasons given by Kaplan later on in the document, and most seem valid (at least according to this document) and give me no reason to believe that the judge should really be removed.
  • <rant>
    if the fbi does somehow get box at each isp, then i say why not just invite them in for coffee and tell them a few stories of how you embezzled ten million bucks from your place of employment and how many times you haven't paid your taxes. then you can tell them that Hover was straight.
    </rant>
  • Is this [themacjunkie.com] the link you're looking for?

  • Re:Can't wade through the Judge's crap... (Score:4)

    by bwt ( 68845 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2000 @03:51PM (#919770)
    Basically he says that antitrust is not an issue in the trial and so his former partner's advising of Time Warner on DVD antitrust issues has no relevance to the proceeding. The fact that his firm represented Time Warner and/or Warner Brothers is not alone sufficient to sustain the need for recusal and any request based on this is not timely. (You can't hold onto recusal requests to see how you do first).

    The personal bias against Garbus claim he dismisses as wildly exagerated and not timely. He also make the arguement that it has to be bias against the party, not the attourney. These arguements are based on the recusal statues.

    He also reviews the major decisions he's made in an attempt to rationalize them and point out that several things have gone the defenses direction. He says the defendants have tried to exagerate the trial's scope larger than what it should have been and misused their discovery time and are upset because he set an agressive schedule and wouldn't relax it to accomodate their mistakes.

    My take is that Kaplan is probably right about the personal bias against Garbus stuff, but that Kaplan doesn't realize or is in denial that antitrust is an issue. The defense clearly thinks it is, so it remains to be seen what happens if/when they launch into antitrust issues.

  • Re:Can't wade through the Judge's crap... (Score:3)

    by Floyd Turbo ( 84609 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2000 @03:56PM (#919771) Journal
    Can anyone else provide a succinct summary of the document, in plain English, that explains just what the fuck the Judge is trying to say

    That's a real chore, but I'll offer two cents worth on this part:

    how he figures he's still qualified to preside over this case, given that he's done work for Time/Warner?

    The Judge hasn't done work for Time Warner -- and in fact, the motion to recuse him never says that he did.

    The point of the defendants' motion to DQ the judge was that the Judge was once a lawyer at a law firm called Paul Weiss. The defendants claimed that another lawyer at Paul Weiss, named Stuart Robinowitz, had done work for Time Warner on DVD issues. (This comes from the affidavit that's quoted on page 21 of the opinion.)

    The Judge decided that he's not required to recuse himself from the case because Rabinowitz only advised Time Warner on antitrust issues, not on encryption or copy protection. (This is the discussion from the bottom of page 37 through the top of page 41.)

  • That's one heck of an interesting article.

    Intel is essentially barred from introducing its own double data rate (DDR) chip set for microprocessors in PCs before 2003, under terms of its 1997 licensing agreement with Rambus. ... Two obscure clauses in Intel's 1997 licensing pact with Rambus let the Mountain View, Calif., memory design company terminate its agreement with Intel if it introduces chip sets with DDR capabilities supporting memories other than the Direct Rambus DRAM from 2000 to 2002.
    Of course, Rambus would be SOL if they did ditch Intel, so if I were Intel I would probably just give them the finger and get on with producing competitive systems. OTOH, Intel is clearly hoping to use Rambus for lock-in leverage, so they probably won't "finger" them until the scam^H^H^H^H scheme has failed beyond hope of recovery.

    --
  • Well, the dual G4 in a cube is more my personal fantasy (of the computer variety that is) but about
    • the need for sleep -- Yes, timothy could use some more sleep (and you spotted a symptom), and

    • "and the today's annoucnement" you're absolutely correct didn't make sense, or even sesne.



    Thanks for spotting them, fixed now. Well, the 2nd one, anyhow.

    timothy
  • I just read quickly over the decision, and, frankly, this seems like a lot of hype on Garbus's part. The Judge's decision, for instance, makes it clear that he left Paul, Weiss (the firm that advised Time/Warner) before T/W hired them, etc... and that Garbus was otherwise playing with fairly shaky grounds for dismissal.

    Sure, there's some animousity between Garbus and the Kaplan-- and with due reason, since Garbus seems to want a trial that plays well for the media. A recent poster complains that the Court was testy when Garbus repeated the point about no ripped DVDs being available...

    The poster clearly doesn't get that such a thing is A WASTE OF THE COURT'S TIME. The judge is bright enough to understand the point, and doesn't need Matlock making it with grand rhetorical flourish. As the Judge states, he's there to get the business at hand done... and judges are usually fairly pissed off when people waste their time.

    The comment that "he probably wrote this over the weekend..." was also low. OK, he writes like a judge... who work with code, and write more like coders than Shakespeare. The judgement starts off boring, and makes some dumb points that make you think the judge is against Garbus...

    And, in fact, the judge clearly is. But not because of Time/Warner -- because, as the record states, Garbus&Co. are acting like jerks, not caring about pissing off the judge, etc. IMHO, Garbus is lucky to get the leeway he has...

    Which raises a lot of questions: does he expect to win this one, or does he want to sap public opinion and increase the chances of winning on appeal (Kaplan sounds like a real old-school one, and like he sees DeCSS as clear cut, so why not piss him off and try to get positive press?).

  • Did you read that long brief? I have not heard so much bias in my life so... closely unvieled. IANAL of course, so it may be standard practice to:

    color the defendents as not willing to go to trial.
    Color the defendents as not willing to put up a defense.
    Color the DMCA as specifically taylored to prevent the exact thing we have now.
    Discovery was slow in the eyes of the judge.
    there are countless other things in this document. Hey, I am a bit biased but I expected some impartiality form the judge, I barely saw anything that resembled that.

    Basically, in reading this, there is no CHANCE IN HELL (as vince macmahon would say) for the Defendants to win this court case.

  • RC5-64 not far to go. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't know why you think that RC5-64 still has a long way to go. At the *current rate* they will be done in another 1000 days, so by that measure they are half-way done. But we all know that they will increase their rate, so will exhaust the key-space in say 500 days. But the key will be found before then, say in about 250 days. After they break that, if they started some other rc5-64 cracking effort, they would finish in a small fraction of the time taken for the current effort. They'd probably finish within a year. If you ask me, I don't feel paticularly secure about 64 bit keys.
  • You apparently have seen my posts on Slashdot, complete with my .sig, which has been in place for about 8 months (which I have changed to give attribution to Abraham Lincoln, who apparently is the originator of it, after being given grief by fellow /.'ers).
    But it certainly applies to all this Cube stuff.

  • While I think Apple's been going a tad overboard with their legal assaults, to some effect, I do *understand* where they are at with this.

    They have worked a long time to get the company back in the black, and back to doing the kind of innovations they are famous for. Not the kind where you buy a company and innovate, but, actually do the hard work, pour sweat, etc.

    As I see the perspective, Apple didnt want anyone stealing their moment. I have to agree with them. It was truly their moment. The cubed G4, the snow iMac, the deal with Circut City, the entry level mac starting at $799.

    These are all of the fruits Apple worked hard to bring. I think they have every reason to defend the right to announce it on their own terms. I like Mac Rumor sites as much as the next guy. But, I also think Apple earned the right to unveil at their leasure.

    On the other side, what they did with Macintouch was blatant and damned wrong. (For those that dont know, they sent threatening letters to Ric Ford, and the hosting ISP to get things pulled, and got a hot letter right back telling them where they could shove it)

    But, all in all, im happy with the new gear. I cant wait to order and place some of the new stuff. I especially cant wait for LinuxPPC to catch up to em.

  • Suppose the FBI demands to use Carnivore? (Score:4)

    by Tau Zero ( 75868 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2000 @02:34PM (#919779) Journal
    I can see one situation where the LE's might demand to use their own sniffer. Suppose one or more of the people under investigation are working for the ISP (or has a friend doing the same)? If anyone at the ISP knows whose messages are to be captured, that fact is likely to leak back to the subject.

    Thus, if an ISP with its own sniffer capabilities encounters a demand to use Carnivore instead, someone is going to know that something's up. The only way for the FBI to avoid this is to demand to use Carnivore (or the equivalent) as a matter of course, regardless of the capabilities of the ISP to meet the requirements of the court order without it.

    It's for this reason that I think we can expect to see the FBI demand that ISP's do it their way, no matter what's best for the customers, the Constitution, or the society at large.
    --

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