I believe the point is that "to damage nuclear reactors" conjures a far different (and more explosive) mental image than "to damage nuclear enrichment facilities", even if the economic impact is the same.
Why is it so hard for some people to grasp that Anonymous are just what they claim to be - everyone and yet no one person? There is no roster, no voting, but they are still organized.
It's hard because corporate leaders have an incredibly difficult time organizing their own companies to achieve comparable feats to what Anonymous can do overnight.
You can actually use military techniques to analyze why this is. Anonymous operates inside the enemy ODA (Observe Decide Act) loop.
The ODA loop for a typical corporation is at least 5 people. Eg. from when someone observes something (anon is ddosing us) to when that information reaches someone who can act on it (the CEO) anonymous has already completed it's complete loop which is (post on IRC, have people read it and suggest action) the ODA loop for anonymous is on the order of 5 minutes, the ODA loop for a corporate CEO is probably more like 5 hours to 5 days.
Therefore anonymous will always be about 25 steps ahead of a corporate target. The primary advantage that comes from this is that anonymous appears to act 'randomly' which causes further stress on the enemy ODA loop and forces them to continually react which leaves the proactive party in control of the competitive landscape (battlefield)
If you study military genius you'll find that the most effective commanders were the ones that pushed command furthest down to the org chart.
We know that decentralized control is much more efficient than centralized control. Communism didn't lose because its a failed ideology or because its godless, it failed because it's command and control systems allocate resources poorly. They allocate resources poorly because of information asymmetry and the length of the ODA loop.
The important thing to take from this for software development is that your time from when you decide to implement a feature to when you deploy to production or get a product to market (AppStore,BestBuy,etc) is your ODA loop.
Also, for software watch what happens to your favorite webserver under intense load when you replace it's queue (FIFO) with a stack (LIFO). The LIFO drastically shortens the median response time.
The unifying concept is the half-life (exponential decay) of plans and information. The older your intel, the less valuable the plans you have built off of that information.
Top-down and waterfall approaches institutionalize this in order to provide an illusion of control to the executives and shareholders. Agile development and maneuver warfare each seek to tighten their feedback loops.
Exactly. And as has been said and cited before, those who have cracked versions may never use them, or very well may never have bought it to begin with (a user is not by default a client - but they have the potential to become one). Congress put out a report stating that piracy actually (in some way, be it minor or not) helped "digital sales"
I find it frustrating that my lawfully purchased software is sometimes much more difficult to run (keys, registration, ads before it starts up e.g. EA Games) than my friends running pirated copies.
Not only that, but those who didn't spend their money on {software|music|movies} very likely managed to spend it on something else.
There is no giant pirate treasure hoard, where "pirates" cache these "billions of dollars every year", and we would not all be billions of dollars richer if only these pirates would give their money to the software / entertainment industries instead.
"Congress put out a report stating that piracy actually (in some way, be it minor or not) helped "digital sales"
"minor or not"
So did it help or didn't it? I don't know how they could ever prove this. How do you prove intent, one way or another? By asking people that pirated software if they would have purchased?
If companies didn't actively try to fight piracy (even if it doesn't work that well), they would eventually go out of business. This is because free versions would become easier for the masses to obtain than the paid version and nobody would be willing to pay money for something they can easily get for free. The only reason it works for big companies like Microsoft and Adobe is because they can take the financial hit. Most small software companies can't.
The same thing is happening with software developers and open source. Companies are slowly realizing that they can get the software they need for free. Sure, they can hire a developer to make changes to it, but that developer doesn't need a college education and can be paid much less (or they just outsource it to India, Russia, or the Philippines).
"I find it frustrating that my lawfully purchased software is sometimes much more difficult to run (keys, registration, ads before it starts up e.g. EA Games) than my friends running pirated copies."
Blame the pirates. Remember that these protections were built as a result of rampant piracy. DRM wasn't around during the Napster days.
Personally, I don't even sell apps anymore..only services. This way, there's nothing to pirate. I suppose this will be the end result of piracy: all commercial software will be services that need to be paid on a monthly basis.
"Such a system, if fully operational, could direct substantial -- and deadly -- firepower." That's the purpose of a gun, right? These reporters really get some people "all into a tizzy" over rather bland headlines. It'd be nice if they reported on real injustice once and awhile.
A fair collection of (DJ) mixes (live or not) and sets can easily account for a few hundred gigabytes. Take Tiesto's "Club Life" and Armin Van Buurin's "A State of Trance" for example. With each set being around two hours or more of high quality mp3, with the former having over 300 episodes, and the latter having around a hundred. These things add up quickly.
So far this seems to be the consensus of the comments here: Google is doing this legally (as are other companies), and that the article is misleading. Sure, it says that it's legal, but then it turns around and sympathizes for the US government that can't keep from spending money that it hasn't made (and has no hopes to make). I know everyone hates Wall Street, but they /do/ know how to make money - thievery or not.
Reduce costs, increase profit by increasing market by dropping taxes. Companies are moving away from the states, and law is remaining stagnant for a evolving market.
One can hope so. It's really dependent on how the DMCA is interpreted. I was wondering where this legal action was when I heard about the exploits.
Shame on Congress for passing the DMCA to begin with. This exploit only furthers cryptography in practice (that is, this will be a lesson in crypto textbooks for generations to come).
