Skip to main content

Home/ LumpysCorner/ Group items tagged programs

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
John Lemke

What happens with digital rights management in the real world? | Technology | theguardi... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...digital-rights-management

rights 2014 DRM yourrights copyright DMCA copywrong security law legal litigation

shared by John Lemke on 10 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • In 1997's Bernstein v United States, another US appeals court found that code was protected expression. Bernstein was a turning point in the history of computers and the law: it concerned itself with a UC Berkeley mathematician named Daniel Bernstein who challenged the American prohibition on producing cryptographic tools that could scramble messages with such efficiency that the police could not unscramble them. The US National Security Agency (NSA) called such programs "munitions" and severely restricted their use and publication. Bernstein published his encryption programs on the internet, and successfully defended his right to do so by citing the First Amendment. When the appellate court agreed, the NSA's ability to control civilian use of strong cryptography was destroyed. Ever since, our computers have had the power to keep secrets that none may extract except with our permission – that's why the NSA and GCHQ's secret anti-security initiatives, Bullrun and Edgehill, targetted vulnerabilities in operating systems, programs, and hardware. They couldn't defeat the maths (they also tried to subvert the maths, getting the US National Institute for Standards in Technology to adopt a weak algorithm for producing random numbers).
    • John Lemke
      John Lemke on 10 Feb 14
       
      This is also why they have a hard on for developing a quantum computer.
  • An increase in the security of the companies you buy your media from means a decrease in your own security. When your computer is designed to treat you as an untrusted party, you are at serious risk: anyone who can put malicious software on your computer has only to take advantage of your computer's intentional capacity to disguise its operation from you in order to make it much harder for you to know when and how you've been compromised.
  • The DMCA's injunction against publishing weaknesses in DRM means that its vulnerabilities remain unpatched for longer than in comparable systems that are not covered by the DMCA. That means that any system with DRM will on average be more dangerous for its users than one without DRM.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • For example, in 2005, Sony-BMG music shipped a DRM called the "Sony Rootkit" on 51m audio CDs. When one of these CDs was inserted into a PC, it automatically and undetectably changed the operating system so that it could no longer see files or programs that started with "$SYS$." The rootkit infected millions of computers, including over 200,000 US military and government networks, before its existence became public. However, various large and respected security organisations say they knew about the Sony Rootkit months before the disclosure, but did not publish because they feared punishment under the DMCA. Meanwhile, virus-writers immediately began renaming their programs to begin with $SYS$, because these files would be invisible to virus-checkers if they landed on a computer that had been compromised by Sony.
    • John Lemke
      John Lemke on 10 Feb 14
       
      How the Sony DRM created serious security issues.  It should also be considered a violation of our civil rights.  Who the hell gave Sony permission to modify my OS!  Furthermore why didn't the OS companies sue Sony?  Likely because they are in bed together.
  • If I was a canny entrepreneur with a high appetite for risk -- and a reasonable war-chest for litigation – I would be thinking very seriously about how to build a technology that adds legal features to a DRM-enfeebled system (say, Itunes/Netflix/Amazon video), features that all my competitors are too cowardly to contemplate. The potential market for devices that do legal things that people want to do is titanic, and a judgment that went the right way on this would eliminate a serious existential threat to computer security, which, these days, is a synonym for security itself.And once anti-circumvention is a dead letter in America, it can't survive long in the rest of the world. For one thing, a product like a notional Itunes/Amazon/Netflix video unlocker would leak across national borders very easily, making non-US bans demonstrably pointless. For another, most countries that have anti-circumvention on the books got there due to pressure from the US Trade Representative; if the US drops anti-circumvention, the trading partners it armed-twisted into the same position won't be far behind.I've talked to some lawyers who are intimate with all the relevant cases and none of them told me it was a lost cause (on the other hand, none of them said it was a sure thing, either). It's a risky proposition, but something must be done. You see, contrary to what the judge in Reimerdes said in 2000, this has nothing to do with whether information is free or not – it's all about whether people are free.
  • The DMCA is a long and complex instrument, but what I'm talking about here is section 1201: the notorious "anti-circumvention" provisions. They make it illegal to circumvent an "effective means of access control" that restricts a copyrighted work. The companies that make DRM and the courts have interpreted this very broadly, enjoining people from publishing information about vulnerabilities in DRM, from publishing the secret keys hidden in the DRM, from publishing instructions for getting around the DRM – basically, anything that could conceivably give aid and comfort to someone who wanted to do something that the manufacturer or the copyright holder forbade.
  • Significantly, in 2000, a US appeals court found (in Universal City Studios, Inc v Reimerdes) that breaking DRM was illegal, even if you were trying to do something that would otherwise be legal. In other words, if your ebook has a restriction that stops you reading it on Wednesdays, you can't break that restriction, even if it would be otherwise legal to read the book on Wednesdays.
John Lemke

Top 10 Incredibly Useful Windows Programs to Have On Hand - 0 views

lifehacker.com/grams-to-have-on-ha-1584009886

2014 windows programs LL-Pub useful resource

shared by John Lemke on 01 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • John Lemke on 01 Jun 14
     
    While I am a Linux user, I often get asked for recommendations by Windows users. This is a great list of utilities. Especially the malware software.
John Lemke

Use Hemingway's Advice to Rewrite Like a Pro - 0 views

thewritelife.com/s-advice-to-rewrite-like-a-pro

2013 writing advice rewrite copywriting tips tricks howto

shared by John Lemke on 30 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Hemingway, like all experienced writers, showed a willingness to sacrifice each fresh layer of words in order to stay true to his overarching story.
  • Give yourself some distance Don’t confuse taking time away from a project with slacking off or quitting. A little distance may give you a new vantage point from which to look again. The word revise comes from the Latin revisere, “to look at again.” Tell your story aloud Share your story over coffee (or on the phone) with a friend or acquaintance. If you can, record yourself doing so, using free conference calling or pairing Skype with Audio Hijack or another program. Then listen back.
John Lemke

The Secret to Writing Well Isn't What You'd Expect, Says Study - 0 views

thewritelife.com/writing-well-new-study

2014 writing WriteLink freelance copywriting study research

shared by John Lemke on 30 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • While visualizing your story may seem like the right way to approach writing, it turns out that for full-time writers, the brain performs a bit differently. When Dr. Lotze watched writers from a competitive creative writing program perform the same tests, he found that experienced writers, while brainstorming, used parts of their brains associated with speech instead of vision.
  • Novice writers, Lotze suggests, are more likely to watch the story unfold like a movie inside their heads.
  • And perhaps more importantly, write often. If creative writing is a skill your brain learns over time, then like anything else, the more you practice, the better you’ll get.
  • John Lemke on 30 Jun 14
     
    The important part of the finding is that writing is a skill that one can master over time.  While I agree with Stephen King in the sense that great writers can not be created, I also agree that anyone can become a decent writer.
John Lemke

NASA Formalizes Efforts To Protect Earth From Asteroids | TechCrunch - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...o-protect-earth-from-asteroids

2016 nasa techcrunch NEO NearEarthObjects asteroid comet space

shared by John Lemke on 16 Jan 16 - No Cached
    • John Lemke
      John Lemke on 16 Jan 16
       
      They admit that they failed to detect the most significant one to strike in the history of the program.
  • the Chelyabinsk asteroid is the exception, not the rule, and with improved technologies NASA has been able to detect smaller asteroids over the years. NASA notes that “more than 13,500 near-Earth objects of all sizes have been discovered to date – more than 95 percent of them since NASA-funded surveys began in 1998.
    • John Lemke
      John Lemke on 16 Jan 16
       
      And here they say that is the exception...
1 - 5 of 5
Showing 20▼ items per page