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processes but fast in terms of the actual work you get done.

There is no need to take an either or attitude to PC vs Mac. They play well together...

I do a certain amount of video editting. Doing the actual editting is faster on the Mac with Final Cut Pro vs Premier / Pinnacle / Ulead on the PC ( I've tried them all in an effort to stay with only one platform.)

Now doing the actual rendering on the Mac is slow....... Check out
mac vs HT PC
The above article far understates the true advantage of Intel hardware. To truly match the
Apple architecture with Intel hardware. Go to
Dell and configure a dual 2.8 Ghz Xeon Workstation with Hyperthreading on each chip. Now you have 4 processors working for you , two real and two virtual per CPU. For $3200 you get two 2.8 Ghz Xeons with 1 gig of RAM, 2 80 gig harddrives (separating the system disk from your video disk is important) and a 4x dvd+rw drive.

Still think the G4 dual processor Mac is great? Why not use the industry standard to measure your chip of choice. In the supercomputing world how fast your machine runs is more than just bragging rights, it's job security. For that reason the SPEC benchmarks were created to get standardized validated results on any hardware. Mac OS X has a SPEC suite see
Mac SPEC

Now that you've looked at that go to SPEC and look at the CPU benchmarks. Note the scaling factor for the Xeon 2.8 Ghz with two processors
SPEC CPU
Excerpt of CPU INT multiprocessor
Chip Result
2.8 GHz Xeon 10.2
2 CPU 2.8 GHz Xeon 18.0

The SPEC is designed to show good scaling with parallelism (multiple CPU) and here shows a 1.8 scaling factor.

So your Dell machine with HT will have a greater than 2 scaling factor for highly parallel processes.

NB: I only have a 2.4 Ghz P4 as my rendering machine and it's still faster than the Powermac by enough to make me stick with the mixed network approach.

So work on the Mac -> DV over gigabit ethernet to a multiprocessor Intel dual processor machine that renders AND burns the DVD, VCD, SVCD faster.

We all know Macs are better at what matters during the creative process. Let the Intel hardware bear the drudgery ;-)

Flashback!

The c't IEController (translation attempt here) might be worth looking at... I'm not sure though whether it will prevent the automated installation of crap like this, as I've never gotten around to trying that software myself.

See also this article (translation).

The c't IEController (translation attempt here) might be worth looking at... I'm not sure though whether it will prevent the automated installation of crap like this, as I've never gotten around to trying that software myself.

See also this article (translation).

>Still, that's going to make for some fun dialog boxes:
"Searching for newly installed hardware- Found, AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense System."

Thank God they don't have Bluetooth as well...

can i connect a gb advance sp (picture) with a normal gb advance or a gb color? can it be done using gsm? can i use the bluetooth thingie to connect it to the pc and play over internet w/ flatrate to play with friends around the world? TETRIS!

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: ILETS AND THE ENFOPOL 98 AFFAIR
America's guiding hand revealed - the secret international organisation behind Europe's controversial plans for Internet surveillance

Related stories: Telepolis-enfopol papers

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: ILETS AND THE ENFOPOL 98 AFFAIR
America's guiding hand revealed - the secret international organisation behind Europe's controversial plans for Internet surveillance

Related stories: Telepolis-enfopol papers

German newsticker heise had a similar article a year ago, altough it does not cover spam explicitly.
The article has a link to another article published in "Physical Review Letters" which deals with the topic of identifying content/author by applying compression algorithms.
The underlying idea is that LZ77 compressed data is near to the entropy of a message.

I think it works both ways to some extent. Mobile phones are increasing their feature sets beyond that of just making phone calls to do everything from being a PDA to playing pretty damn cool games. The nintendo gameboy itself is even pulling that direction to keep up (seen the Gameboy Advance SP yet? looks more like a mini computer -- click here).

The famous german c't Magazine has instructions how to build a very simple ISA-based POST card, using only two GALs, a two-digit seven segment LED display, and 15 resistors. You can buy the programmed GALs at eMedia (order code 9503314PAL, 9,50 EUR, roughly the same in US$). The full article is available online for 0,40 EUR. (If you create a new account, you will get 1,00 EUR to play with. So basically, it is free.)

I built one POST card myself, and I never leave home without it. ;-)

The famous german c't Magazine has instructions how to build a very simple ISA-based POST card, using only two GALs, a two-digit seven segment LED display, and 15 resistors. You can buy the programmed GALs at eMedia (order code 9503314PAL, 9,50 EUR, roughly the same in US$). The full article is available online for 0,40 EUR. (If you create a new account, you will get 1,00 EUR to play with. So basically, it is free.)

I built one POST card myself, and I never leave home without it. ;-)

c't magazine

translation of a short except: even early prototypes of amd opteron can win over all competition in four ways systems - either 32 or 64 bit - at the sap sd benchmark. and that with only 1.6 ghz (planned to launch at 2 ghz)

i think the chart says it all. go amd!

(For all you German challenged people out there, it reads: 'New device found. Device: Airbus A310. Start automatic configuration?')

b.

I don't generally buy the fastest machine on the block, but Apple seems to be really falling behind. Their answer seems to have been to ship all Power Mac G4 towers as dual processor. But two slower processors are not as useful as one fast processor. And the heat sinks and noise on those G4 towers are even more ridiculous than on the Pentium 4's.

Your imagination is behind reality.
At least the DARPA is doing research
on that issue.

Here's a recent german article.

>In everything from Quake II to 3D Studio, the 233 MHz K6 is about half as fast as the 233 MHz PII.

This problem was fixed when the K6 overtook the Pentium I line in MHz.

Quake with 3dNow! brings K6 performance to a near par with PII performance.

(If Quake is your benchmark, that is)

You don't need UFOs. This is even more scary.

Translation of screen display:

New hardware detected.
(spoiler omitted)
Start auto-configuration now?
[Start] [Cancel]

It just has the minor problem beeing written in German, which might be as small problem for the current audience.

For those people not interested in learning a new (human) language, I suggest the english version.

I suggest a article benchmark ;).

I didn't think that was a very good article. There seemed to be a lot of guesses in there, none of which appeared to be particularly informed - or at least, they were not explained - and some of it sounded downright childish. Like:

I don't know what Reserved might mean. One of the reviewers says that maybe in this case the processor turns into DSP. It's a mad idea, but if AMD realized it, this processor would be second to none in some kinds of operations. :-)

or

AMD realizes it, and at present they develop several independent versions of the compiler together with famous software development companies. I won't unveil their names - AMD will do it if necessary. You just should know that at launch the processor will have the required support of the compiler allowing using its architectural advantages.

sorry?

No, i'd rather read C'T, at least they already have one of them chips on the test bench

charge? Because they will take what you have written in and spit it back in your face (read the last paragraph of the section titled "Software Patents"). It has been a problem for a while that only the highest-paying lobbying groups have been able to influence the decision making of elected officials, but now it is also the case that commissions of any kind can disregard the wishes of those they are supposed to represent and justify it by "interpreting" their input to correspond to whatever the commission's preconceived goals were. The sham of public input is so thinly veiled that the pre-decided decisions can be just passed into law straight away, and not many more people would mind. What a shame.

An important part of network design is understanding what traffic is going to "nearby" locations, and designing things so most traffic stays local and doesn't use expensive or scarce facilities - things like putting big hulking routers in San Francisco and San Jose so traffic between Silicon Valley companies stays in the South Bay and Multimedia Gulch companies stays in the City without needing to use too much bandwidth around the Bay, much less sending copies of all of it on three-part-carbon forms to NSA's Fort Meade, Ashcroft's J. Edgar Hoover building, and Dick Cheney's stockbroker before delivering it.

That doesn't mean that there weren't rumors from reputable sources a few years ago about active wiretaps on MAE-West sending extra copies of some packets to somebody else, or that the Russian renamed-KGB's 1998ish SORM (another URL) project didn't try to force Russian ISPs to build a full-sized wiretap feed to them (at the ISPs' expense, of course) or that there aren't Eurocrats trying to do the same thing in their countries today. And then there's the whole Echelon Wiretapping System. But it's still impractical for them to force ISPs to deliver everything everybody's reading or emailing, though I'll be happy to send them copies of most of my spam if they'd like.

On the other hand, the publicly-accessible parts of the web aren't all that big. The Wayback Machine has a copy of all of it, with reasonable samples going back a long time, and Google and the other search engines crawl it periodically, and AllTheWeb.com presumably claims to have All The Web.

• by placing a plastic bag filled with warm water on the sensor (the warmth and moisture activates the scanner, the sweat and grease left from the last finger is interpreted again)
• by taking a finger print in plaster and using it as a mold for a gelatine fingerprint
• (more methods)...

Yes, but apart from being incredibly impractical and other downsides, the EU plans ID-chips for Euro bank notes. Starting 2005 (if it goes well for them). Only for 200 Euro ($200$) and up at first, because of costs, but costs drop, of course.

Bye-bye anonymous shopping.

This reminds me of a posting I once read.

"Haha, look... the lamer goes into the Intel movie."
"You have no clue. Intel movies have a lot higher image quality than AMD movies."
"Pah, but you the story line of Linux movies is crap, while Windows movies rock!"
"Nah, Windows movies are the most sucking movies around. You can only see a blue screen when it get's exciting. Mac movies rule!"
...

Warning to the Zealots manipulated by Steve and Marketing department lie factory. Morpheus is now asking you to make a choice, the red pill or the blue pill.

Please decide which one this is.

The only thing I'd like to have seen is that it be .kids, rather than .kids.us, but I guess the limitation to .us is for political reasons - surprisingly, for Bush, in an effort not to appear to be acting as the President of the World.

That's probably just you. Most people aren't able to reliably decide on any single favorite among the popular psycho-acoustic models at mid to high bitrates (ie, 192 to 256 kbit and above). Some formats (esp Vorbis) seem to be better suited for the low and medium bitrates between 64 and 192 kbit than others, though. (reference, in German, though)

Your congress(wo)man

Not sure they would pay much attention to a letter from a British citizen living in France. Which of course is one of the problems with attacking the people sending the spams.

The U.S. economy has got a lot to lose vis-à-vis UK & France either: being considered a spam haven jeopardizes every country's role as a trading partner of Europe since Directive 95/46/EC: This is an issue that does matter to the US, and the administration is taking it very seriously, because losing Safe Harbor status (which was not easy to obtain in the first place, given the state -or in many sectors rather: lack- of U.S. privacy law) simply means this:

(56) Whereas cross-border flows of personal data are necessary to the expansion of international trade; whereas the protection of individuals guaranteed in the Community by this Directive does not stand in the way of transfers of personal data to third countries which ensure an adequate level of protection; whereas the adequacy of the level of protection afforded by a third country must be assessed in the light of all the circumstances surrounding the transfer operation or set of transfer operations;
(57) Whereas, on the other hand, the transfer of personal data to a third country which does not ensure an adequate level of protection must be prohibited;

So, do write your letters/make your calls (up to the equivalent of $20, everyone!) to the representatives and senators now (even more so as a U.S. citizen of course) and I'm pretty sure you will get a reply, and get the right people concerned about the problem (it also seems to have worked the other way round as e.g. Americans announced to spamblock European sites when the a misguided committee of the European Parliament prepared to legalize spam by adopting an "opt-out" scheme earlier this year).

In germany Heise.de even published an exploit:

C't Browsercheck

You can test your IE and report the results to your boss.

See also:

Sandblad at Securityfocus

If you need to know what the text above the mail header says: ask a friend or babelfish...

Can't say if they're real or not, but I myself (located in Germany) believe that the original posting is authentic.

Its original author posted the headers from the response in the same forum.

Have a look and come to a decision.

Remembering similar conversations with EMI some months ago, I pretty well can believe it.

Even has telephone numbers. But, hey, what's a day on Slashdot without a bash at El Reg with its eeeeeeeevil British accents and willingless to hold abusive tech corporations to account?

The person who posted EMI's mail to the Heise forum also posted the mail headers in response to several other posters questioning the validity.

Though I have to admit I don't know if that is a real header. If it is, the recipient's software translated some of the header field names instead of displaying the actual, unmodified header ("Von" should be "From", "Datum" should be "Date", "An" should be "To", and "Betreff" should be "Subject"). The recipient's email address in the header is a mac.com address, so he probably is a Mac user. Does anyone know if the German version of Apple's Mail application, the .mac webmail service or some other popular Mac email client display translated headers?

Don't want to get into a big discussion about cultural differences, but I'm German, and what I can tell you for sure is that EMI's reply is extremely rude by German standards, too. (And the replies in the German forum where this mail was first posted don't look all that different from the comments posted here...)

Here's a google translation of the original letter sent out by Mr xxx, the original German can be found here.

Mail of EMI (attention, long text) RF600R (27 October 2002 17:13) Hello,

after bought CD ran in none of my devices, I had one Mail written EMI. Here can do you my Mail and the answer from EMI read.

schnipp --

Ladies and Gentlemen,
yesterday I acquired the CD of TOTO "Through the looking glass". Up the back is to be read:

"It is designed tons compatible with CD audioplayers, DVD players and PC-OS, ms Windows 95, Pentium II 233 MHz 64MB RAM or more higher."

These statements are definitely wrong!

* Only the pieces of 1-8 in my DVD Player leave themselves actual play. The pieces of 9-11 appear not and are not playable. A common CD Player does not possess I no more, so that these CD becomes worthless.

* My Macintosh with MAC OS X 10,2,1 with that actually plays Software of itunes only the pieces of 1-7. All remaining pieces appear as only one audio TRACK, which is playable to the half only. Result: the CD is worthless.

* My PC with Windows XP actually plays the CD only with up that CD Player present off. Unfortunately you conceal the fact, that this Player is mandatory on the CD Cover. There I very much carefully the software selects, which I on my computer is installed and I do not force themselves leave, proprietaere Software to use, is worthless as result these CD.

I insured myself fortunately with the purchase that I these CD if necessary under refunding the purchase price to return can. This is but only possible, since the dealer was so obliging.

In the long run the copy protection does not fulfill its task, because it applies obviously: Copy protection = purchase protection!

This is the more unfortunaty, there I an expressed fan of the group of TOTO are and all albums possesses among other things. Too it harms that IT prevented that I also the most current work at my cabinet to place can. Because I tend to also hear the music, which I buy. PilotFederal Labour Office-close I do not need.

Altogether I would like you from given cause mine comment to Topic copy protection convey:

Unfortunately you that not only the bad robbery copiers debt survey on Their recession in sales are. Rather are the rather following reasons decisive:

* The main consumer - young people - give a majority of their Budget for Handys out, * with the DVD a competition medium appeared on the market, that deeply into the Gefilden of the music industry it fishes because it applies that one a euro only once to spend can and everyone more or less limited budget has * by the copy protection is playing the CDs on DVD Playern not or only very reduced possible. Many households are only still with DVD Playern equips. Unfortunately you cut yourselves thereby in own meat. Much toericht. * there is no copy protection, which is not to be cracked: -)

Altogether you ignore simply the fact that each salesman by law is permitted to make a copy of its bought CD. Their behavior is altogether illegal. Unfortunately it shows up here that those Disk industry obviously a too strong lobby has.

Result: I become no more CD from their still from another house buy, which is equipped with a copy protection. They are in my household not playable and thus worthlessly.

How do you intend to recover me in the future as customers?

Faithfully,

xxx

While the responses that people have gotten from the customer service departments may seem outrageous, their tone isn't always reasonable, either. Consider this exchange (it's in German, I've translated the bits I quote below):

``On the back of the CD, it reads:
"It is designed to be compatible with CD audioplayers, DVD players
and PC-OS, MS Windows 95, Pentium II 233 MHz 64MB RAM or higher."
These statements are definitely false!''
That _is_ definitely false. Just that the CD doesn't play on _your_ CD audio player or DVD player doesn't mean that it can't be designed to play on such hardware.

``Finally, the copy protection doesn't fullfil its purpose, for clearly copy-protection = purchase-protection.''
Nowhere has he proven that the copy protection is at fault here, or even that the CD has copy protection. Both are likely the case, but suddenly attacking copy protection out of the blue strongly suggests a biased view.

``Unfortunately, you oversee that your reduced tunover is not solely the fault of copy pirates.''
Again, he's assuming the common prejudice that the music industry are pursuing copy-protection because they blame their lost revenues on illegal copying. While this may indeed be true, it, again, suggests a biased view. After this, he mentions a couple of (IMHO probably valid) reasons why revenues might have decreased for music companies (mostly boiling down to ``consumers spend their money elsewhere''). He then says ``There is no copy-protection that cannot be cracked :-)''. I fully agree with this statement, but I can see how it would lead people to believe that you do, indeed intend to crack or circumvent the copy protection (note the emoticon).

At multiple occassions, he asserts that the CD he bought is ``useless'' (more literally ``valueless''). Flat-out stating that somebody's product is useless is clearly offensive.

He also states that every consumer is allowed to make a copy of any CD that they bought, and that EMI's copy protection prevents this, and is thus illegal. Assuming for now that this statement is true, and the copy protection is, indeed, illegal in Germany, it is still a very strong statement.

I think that, considering the tone of this customer's message to EMI, it is not surprising that their response is less than friendly in tone, and seems biased towards assuming the customer to have at least a positive attitude towards pirating CDs.

If we want to show the world that copy protection is a Bad Thing, we need to at least sound objective. Yes, CDs should play in devices that can play CDs, even if they are copy protected. Yes, using the CD logo on your disc suggests that it does indeed play on CD players that adhere to the Red Book standard. We need to make those points if we want people to reject techniques that violate these principles. But accusing companies of all sorts of ideas and policies, without backing up your claims isn't going to help.

What I want to know, before I take a stance on these issues is:
1) Do copy protected CDs actually violate the Red Book standard? AFAIK, current copy protection schemes exploit the fact that CD audio players read the first table of contents, whereas CD recorders read all TOCs, where the last-encountered entry counts. Is the reason the CD doesn't play that the _CD_ doesn't conform to the Red Book, or the _player_ not conforming to it (but following, say, the Yellow Book (CD-ROM) or Orange Book (CD-R, CD-RW) instead?

2) What of the ``we are allowed to make copies for personal use'' claim? To which countries does or doesn't this apply? Does this mean that copy protection can be introduced in some countries, but not in others? Isn't there a point in saying that the benefits of making pirates' business harder outweighs the losses for customers? How many people actually make copies for personal use, and how often are copies made for illegal purposes?

Personally, I wouldn't buy any CD that I couldn't backup. I don't redistribute my music (or software) illegally (well, not on purpose, anyway), and I don't think others should. If you think that CDs are too expensive, don't buy. If you need the music, then pay for it. If you like, you can search for cheaper music by looking at alternative bands. But there's no excuse for illegally distributing music (or software)!

Please mod me up, I worked on this post for a long time ;-)

---
If an S and an I and an O and a U
With an X at the end spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?
Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an HED spell side,
There's nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
-- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament"

You forget (or did you read the article and the links provided?) that the Reg does have evidence of other e-mails, some of which are also harshly worded.

If you read the original e-mail (posted on Heise.de in German), the tone of voice in the original is not far off from their translated version. Indeed, they adopted a tone of voice that German bureaucrats *love* to adopt. Very imperious, arrogant and pointed, but at the same time they stay (as a German would say) "sachlich", meaning "factual" or "sticking to the facts". German bureaucrats love to insult you between the lines, while being able to claim that they were 'only' making statements of fact.

Ah, another German that perfectly describes EMI's e-mail: "Scheinheilig". Means something like "holier-than-thou". And another word that most people will recognize: "Schadenfreude".

In meagre defense of EMI, the person who e-mailed them to complain about their CD was at times a little rude (see the Heise post) -- but that does not excuse the snotty response they sent him back.

I think I'm going to boycott EMI and BMG music from now on. Which is sad, since Beatles CDs are published by EMI, if I remember right, but I have quite a few Beatles CDs anyway (and plenty of cassettes).

I'm not mad so much because I want to copy or rip CDs (though I do it sometimes for my own use), but what *really* ticks me off is the attitude that it's somehow my responsibility to make their damned crippled CD work in my Red Book standard (!) player, and if I can't do it, then I must be some kind of idiot.

OTOH most of the music I tend to buy is usually marked "Nice Price" and is in the discount bins 'cos they were popular 10-20 years ago (man, I feel old). *sigh*

I doubt The Man would bother copy-handicapping them...

Cheers,

Ethelred

If overly stringent copy protection means there's one less person in the world listening to Toto cover "House of the Rising Sun", can it really be all bad?

Reminds me of the test c't (German computer magazine) once did on the Mobile P3 (article in German. Doing some slow typing in word actually uses more power than playing MPEG2 videos (image).

An alternative would be the also brand-new NEC ND-1100A: prices. Here's a news item at heise.de (German, translated by Google)

Yet we had one very funny (from todays perspective) trademark case in Germany...
A company called Symicron GmbH had a trademark on the term "Explora" (yes with "a") and tried to sue several companies, and private persons (on of them 16 year old pupil) for "linking to a download site containing the program FTP-Explorer and thus violating their trademark".
Yes, you read correctly, you get sued for linking to a shareware program download site.
Even worse, half of the time the courts agreed that there was a violation!
Fortunately one of the bigger companies that got sued (c.t. , mother company of Heise News Online (German) managed to get their trademark deleted, ending the insantiy.
Freedom for Links has a coverage.

I think this is a bad decision. Especially big companies and governmental web sites should be easily accessible for disabled people, too. And it's not difficult, too: If you are running a big website, you will need a CMS anyway, as well as separation between content, structure, and layout.
Not to mention that valid HTML is quite comprehensible on text or braille displays, too.

Germany has choosen a different way: Since July 2002 all german federal agencies are required to make their web presence accessible for disabled people until 2005. The Regulation for the creation of barrier-free information technology according to the disabled equalization law can be downloaded online, as well as a german article on Heise.
Although this only applies to federal agencies, and not to companies, state agencies or citizens, I think this sets a precedence for a best practice in web site design.

http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/musik/13457/ 1.html that is :)

The famous German computer magazine, c't, actually featured a hardware accelerated null device, the "Hypertronics 82C997 ENUL" in their 4/95 issue (as an April fool's joke, of course).

The article is not available online unfortunately, but some of the amused reactions of their readers are here (in German), and you can even find a picture of the gizmo (note the photoshopped activity LED).

The famous German computer magazine, c't, actually featured a hardware accelerated null device, the "Hypertronics 82C997 ENUL" in their 4/95 issue (as an April fool's joke, of course).

The article is not available online unfortunately, but some of the amused reactions of their readers are here (in German), and you can even find a picture of the gizmo (note the photoshopped activity LED).

So if this (in german) is right, "the" PowerPC has a pipeline length of 3 (Heise claims the PPC 970 has a 9 stage pipeline - which is still less than the P3's).

I found some G4 specmarks here.

There are lies, damn lies..... and advertised error rates in biometrics, as most people who have been reading the most recent issue of C`t know (english article). When normal people start doing practical test fooling biometric devices.... they get it done 99.999% percent of the time in only 0.47 seconds!!!

Okey so I made thos numbers up, but they make more sense to base you security related dicisions on then the false negative and theoratical "chance of same fingerprint on humans" numers the biometrics industry uses.... Sugestions for those who already ordered the device, try blowing on the sensor after it has been used, a lot of fingerprint scanners react to the fingerprint left on the sensor by the authorized user.