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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 163 responses total. |
gull
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response 118 of 163:
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Feb 27 00:43 UTC 2003 |
I wonder if Congressmen have any idea of the technical challenges
involved. Attempts to block instant messenging in corporate
environments are instructive -- they've merely resulted in instant
messaging clients that create network traffic that looks very much like
web browsing, to firewalls.
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polygon
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response 119 of 163:
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Feb 28 04:28 UTC 2003 |
Re 117. From the perspective of the pop music world, the sky IS falling.
Not that it bothers me any.
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krj
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response 120 of 163:
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Mar 1 15:50 UTC 2003 |
Here's a fun new essay, from a print media guy's perspective, about
the reactions of the music and movie business in the face of the
Internet driving the value of *all* media towards zero.
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/media/columns/medialife/n_8384/ind
ex.html
"Stop, Thief!" by Michael Wolff
"For one thing, it is very strange to have entertainment executives--
generally regarded as among the most amoral, conniving and venal
of all businessmen -- taking the high ground. And yet here they are
delivering heartfelt defenses of artists, and even art itself--they
see the very essend of the nation's cultural patrimony at risk.
And you really don't sense a phony or opportunistic note.
Rather these guys actually seem to be losing sleep over this.
It's right and wrong they're arguing about here. Good character
versus a virtual barbarian deluge. They believe, with feeling,
that bad or sadly misguided people do this digital pilfering...
"The other odd thing is that these guys who have built their careers
and their industry on trying to give an audience exactly what it
wants -- no matter how low and valueless and embarrassing -- are
now standing with a high-church rectitude against the meretricious
desires of this same group. It is a bizarrely out-of-character
role: holding the line. Censuring the public. *Suing* the public!
Indeed, branding the great American mass-media audience as a
craven and outlaw group."
...
"...*everybody* can't be an outlaw. If everybody does it, it's
normal rather than aberrant behavior. It's not so much the consumer
who is on the wrong side of the law, but the entertainment industry
that's on the wrong side of economic laws."
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goose
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response 121 of 163:
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Mar 4 14:05 UTC 2003 |
RE#118 -- Are corporate environments trying to squash IMs? We view it
as "critical infrastructure" to quote my boss. It's a great tool.
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gull
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response 122 of 163:
|
Mar 4 14:31 UTC 2003 |
Some are. We haven't tried, for the most part, where I work. Some
places view it as either a major time-waster, or as a threat to
security. Not only have many IM packages turned out to have significant
security holes, IM traffic is much harder to log than email. That can
lead to legal exposures or risks of people leaking trade secrets undetected.
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jaklumen
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response 123 of 163:
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Mar 5 01:20 UTC 2003 |
I know Trillian, as a multi-user IM client, has an option to log
conversations. I know nothing about the programming involved, but
even if it's harder, I suppose it may still be theoretically possible.
If security programs can currently log keystrokes entered on a
machine, why not this? (This is not a rhetorical question, I'm
honestly listening.)
|
other
|
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response 124 of 163:
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Mar 5 01:34 UTC 2003 |
Keystroke loggers do not discriminate. Logging everything is more
insecure than not logging important conversations. Besides, a keystroke
logger will only record the outgoing half of the conversation.
|
mdw
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response 125 of 163:
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Mar 6 00:06 UTC 2003 |
It depends on how much authentication and encryption IM does. If IM
used Diffie-Hellman, for instance, then without getting a copy of the
private key used at one end, there won't be any way to recover the
shared secret and decrypt whatever is protected using it. If you can
install software on the client machine, instead of a keyboard log, you
might instead want to log all screen updates done by the IM client. Of
course, if you want to search the text, depending on where you hook into
the graphics subsystem, you might have to do character recognition of
bitmapped graphics.
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gull
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response 126 of 163:
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Mar 6 15:26 UTC 2003 |
Are there any current IM clients that actually do encryption? I thought
they were mostly using plaintext.
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goose
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response 127 of 163:
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Mar 7 16:32 UTC 2003 |
A quick Google shows that VeriSign and AOL are or were working on an encrypted
IM client. and I see a news report from April 2001 reporting on Novell and
Mercury Prime(?) making encrypted IM clients..
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goroke
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response 128 of 163:
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Mar 8 15:11 UTC 2003 |
I'm entering this discussion late in the game, and haven't looked at any of
the earlier incarnations in some time, but I am surprised that the recording
industry isn't trying to take advantage of the positive aspects of
file-trading, rather than trying to kill it off altogether. Using the radio
analogy, it seems to me that a workable solution would be to concentrate not
on the trading of files per se, but on the trading of high-quality stereo
files suitable for CD burning and avoidance of purchasing high-quality
commercial copies. I don't know about the current service providers, but
Napster always claimed that they were providing users with the ability to "try
before you buy". Not that I necessarily *believe* that, but if the industry
had called their bluff, and negotiated a deal whereby files could be traded
only if they were of sufficiently low quality (perhaps even requiring that
they be monaural) to make them unsuitable for CD burning, while being of just
high enough quality to give a fair idea of the content, the industry could
have gained another avenue to promote its products. After all, amazon.com
as well as several other music marketplaces already have marginal-quality
monaural excerpts on selected tracks for CDs they offer for sale.
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scott
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response 129 of 163:
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Mar 8 16:05 UTC 2003 |
The record industry has not been noted for its intelligence lately. Had it
been a bit smarter and more willing to take risks it could have started a
decent download service years ago.
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gull
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response 130 of 163:
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Mar 10 03:28 UTC 2003 |
Remember, this is the same industry that thought it should be illegal to
buy blank cassette tapes.
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mcnally
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response 131 of 163:
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Mar 10 03:56 UTC 2003 |
..and effectively killed DAT as a consumer audio format and nearly did the
same to MiniDisc.
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goose
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response 132 of 163:
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Mar 10 14:07 UTC 2003 |
YEs, if it wasn't for the tenacity of Sony we'd not have MiniDisc's
|
anderyn
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response 133 of 163:
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Mar 10 15:11 UTC 2003 |
Which is agood thing (having MiniDiscs!)
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polytarp
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response 134 of 163:
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Mar 10 20:09 UTC 2003 |
JABBER !
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gull
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response 135 of 163:
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Mar 11 01:34 UTC 2003 |
I've avoided MiniDisc because I don't like formats that only one
manufacturer supports.
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scott
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response 136 of 163:
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Mar 11 04:19 UTC 2003 |
It's a semi-propriety standard, but there are certainly recorders and media
available from manufacturers other than Sony.
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jazz
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response 137 of 163:
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Mar 11 14:52 UTC 2003 |
Sony was, though, as usual, very late in opening up the specification
to the MD format.
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gull
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response 138 of 163:
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Mar 11 15:00 UTC 2003 |
Yup. I kind of figured it was doomed to be the 8-track tape of the
digital world, and it's looking like I was probably right.
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krj
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response 139 of 163:
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Mar 11 16:39 UTC 2003 |
Minidisc is highly useful if you need a very small, very portable,
decent quality digital recorder. My wife uses hers a lot to record
herself singing. However, if you don't need the
portability at the recording end, MD has pretty well been replaced
by MP3 files recorded on a larger computer and played back on a
portable.
Unfortunately the development of quality portable MP3 recorders
is blocked by the Audio Home Recording Act, due to the requirement
that consumer digital recorders implement a SCMS (Serial Copy
Management System). The few MP3 recorders on the market appear
to be trying to stay under the radar by limiting the MP3 rate
to 128K or so.
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scott
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response 140 of 163:
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Mar 11 16:45 UTC 2003 |
Outside of the US, MiniDisc is quite popular.
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keesan
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response 141 of 163:
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Mar 11 17:03 UTC 2003 |
Isn't a microcasette recorder small enough?
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scott
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response 142 of 163:
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Mar 11 18:12 UTC 2003 |
Small enough, but the sound quality of microcassette is terrible.
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