Posts by Thorne 1324 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2012
Windows 8 was a wasted opportunity. If done properly (AKA differently) it could have made a massive difference.
What they ended up with was a touch interface forced into a non touch environment and the start of a Apple style walled garden.
Maybe 10 and Hololens might turn everything around?
Head rolling? Eye rolling maybe.....
The fact that big companies can shift profits overseas to avoid paying tax is the fault of the government and to fail to take advantage of the government stupidity would not be working in the shareholders interests.
Problem is the government doesn't have the balls to solve the problem of tax minimization and will instead tax the workers more and sell off all our assets.
There is absolutely no point whining about it to the big companies. They need to fix the laws first.
What they need is a standardized method of access. Cost is irrevellent as it can be paid for by advertising or the consumer directly.
Partner with an advertising company like Google
Put all the content in one location
Load ads real time into the content based off location and view profiles.
Profit
Free to air TV dies
Pay TV dies
Pirates die
"This dooms the federal government's hope to use the Copyright Act to ban VPNs – even in the limited case that the “primary” purpose is infringement."
The whole point of using a VPN is so nobody knows what you are using it for, so how can they claim it's primary purpose is infringement? I might be using a VPN because maybe I don't like the idea of the idiots spying on me with the mandatory data retention scheme.
If they don't know what I'm doing then how can they claim why I'm doing it?
Clearly since I fear universal spying, I must be doing something wrong......
The problem with everything encrypted is that nothing can be cached which means far more data needs to be transmitted.
All the NSA has achieved is slowing down the internet. If the government had an ounce of common sense tougher rules for spying would actually make things easier for everyone, NSA included. If people didn't need to worry about universal spying, they wouldn't need to install encryption on everything. If everything wasn't encrypted, the internet would run faster and the NSA wouldn't have the problems (once they met the legal requirements).
The problem is that now that they overreached, it can never go back to the way it was.
The problem is that Aereo wasn't really a competitor. They retransmitted via another medium which is reality only extended the audience of the original media companies.
To kill another company that was in a symbiotic position for no reason that to maintain ruthless control is so f#$king retarded it's not funny. Sure they made money retransmitting what you gave for free and didn't pay you for it but killing them off shrunk your audience and didn't earn you a single cent extra.
Morons.....
"Because I have the master list of which frames I have dropped for each recipient and can add back in any you have dropped which aren't on the list. Unless you magically coincide with the same frames by happy accident (and you have to win that lottery multiple times to really obscure the signature) then I can tell the difference between which frames you have dropped and which ones I have dropped."
And should I re-encode to a different frame rate, all is lost.
My point is that once someone knows how you encode something, they can mess it up. They key is to do a range of things and not tell people what you did. That way the only way they can tell is by comparing two leaked copies looking for differences. The odds of getting two leaked copies before the release would be almost impossible.
If done this way the leaker would be terrified that they missed a fingerprint which would incriminate them.
"And I can see which frames have been dropped and add them back in. Your solution doesn't work unless the hidden information is always in start and end of each scene."
How? If your method of identification is dropped frames and I drop more frames then you can only see the total dropped frames, not the number of frames I dropped thus you cannot work out the number you dropped to identify the leak.
It's pretty obvious
As a pirate I could defeat this in seconds flat. Just drop a random number of frames from the start and end of each scene. Suddenly the file doesn't match any of the records.
The only way for a system like this to work is to have people not know what you did. You could hue shift parts of the screen slightly, modify the audio or any of a number of tricks but the key is people can't know what you did. If they don't know then they have to compare multiple copies and with leaked copies, your not likely to find multiple copies.
Whistle blowers are treated worse in Australia. The mandatory data retention scheme was introduced so reporters can be spied on to uncover their sources so they can be persecuted to the full extent of the law.
They even went so far as making this information available without a warrant. Any government employee can look up someone phone records, browsing history and email records just by asking the providers for them.
It's not like any government employee would ever abuse that. Just remember if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear......
"Hmmm. I wonder if enough people ran a background process that randomly walked the web with their spare bandwidth, would that completely trash the value of all this metadata?
Would running such a process provide a plausably deniable mask for one's genuine activity?"
The answer is no. They will have the evidence and you will need prove your innocence.
As I see it, you should have massive commercial solar plants producing the hydrogen in the deserts and pipe it back to the cities for use in cars or just general power generation.
Sure it's inefficient but there are a hell of a lot of deserts you can build them.
"I assumed NBN had learnt this lesson and was future-proofing the FTTN to allow FTTH easier and cheaper in the future?"
Don't be stupid. The Lib's solution is the cheapest and nastiest they could find cause when it needs to be upgraded, that's someone else's problem. They'll get voted out before FTTN is even finished let alone upgraded.....
"Most people don't need Gbps Internet, and those who do should pay for it."
Users pay every month every bill that comes in and saying most people don't need gigabit internet is right up there with Bill Gate's statement that 640K is more than enough for anyone.
Yes right now but five years? Ten years? Twenty years?
Copper has reached the end of it's life. Wireless is congested. Satellite is laggy. Fibre is the only real solution and there comes a point where it's cheaper to swap all copper to fibre than maintain two sets of infrastructure.
FTTN is no better than ADSL2 once you are more than 300M from the node. At some point (very soon) where FTTN will have to ripped out and FTTH put in.
Do the job once and do the job properly.
"Answer: Just pay for what you need today. Tomorrow the hardware will be much cheaper. And you probably won't even want a PC tomorrow, but a super tablet. The future in IT is unpredictable. It is madness to over invest today for an uncertain future. Even more so when one considers the net present value of money."
Are you stupid?
Do you buy a new computer that does just as much as the old computer you have now just because it's 75% the price of a new awesome computer that will do everything you want for the next 50 year?
No you spend a bit more and not buy a piece of crap.
"If the payback was a country safe from terrorists then maybe you could make an argument."
If the police hadn't already known of these extremists long before they killed anybody they might be able to make the argument but every last one of the lone wolf attackers was already known to police and yet they failed to do anything about them.
If they can't be bothered to stop the terrorists they know about, how is data retention making us safer?
Clearly it's not Joe Public that needs saving but fat cat pollies saved from whistle blowers and journalists...
"Does anybody actually want to be a bus driver?"
This technology has the potential to kill off busses all together. Busses require a set time and a set route which does not fit everybody. Small electric self drive vehicles could be cheaper to run and pick you up and drop you off when and where you like.
Who would want to sit on the bus next to the smelly wino or any other the annoying types you find in public transport at the moment?
You have a Uber type app that calls a car to your location and off you go.
"the problem with Snowden's return is that he's undoubtably broken so many other laws via his actions that the government wouldn't even have to charge him with the "Big Issues" in order to get him put away for life."
Life is such a variable term. It can last until he dies of old age in a darkened hole or until he hangs himself under mysterious circumstances...
"Piracy is largely conducted by the middle class and destroys working class jobs."
I'd call this bullshit but no bull is large enough to make such a huge pile of shit.
As shown by France's three strike laws, trying to kill piracy via this means actually resulted in a drop in actual legal sales. Piracy drops, sales drop thus it can be concluded that anti piracy laws destroy working class jobs......
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/09/world_copyright_summit_recap/
All they need to do is work together and make a central standard method of accessing the content easily and cheaply. They can get together and sue people. Why not get together and make a solution?
Step one: All work together
Step two: Ring Google
Step three: Make a Youtube like system. Have free content with ads with the revenue going back to Google and the content providers. Have a paid system with no ads
Step four: Everybody loads their content into the one site
Whoa! Suddenly piracy is virtually dead overnight and content providers get paid and the freetards get their free content. Who'd of thunk it?
But noooooo. Lets sue people and maybe make dozens of separate websites with stupid regional licencing deals and crazy pricing and bribe governments to make new laws........
"With copyright infringement, the punishment should fit the crime."
Damn straight it should. If I get caught pirating a TV show I should be forced to watch ads.....
What? I go to jail and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars? Doesn't look like the punishment fits the crime then........
"then the wild numbers being thrown around by the coalition would have been very easy to refute indeed"
How do you pick which liar is telling the truth?
Despite the costs FTTP is better than FTTN because at some point you need to rip out FTTN and put FTTP in.
Do the job once and do the job properly.
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