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You make your choices, and we'll make ours.

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Some people belive that risks need to be taken to protect our freedoms.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Here's an artistic analogy of Windows 2000. Some may find it a little "deep". http://www.public.iastate.edu /~gea/win2000_launch.jpg

http://www.public.iastate.edu /~gea/win2000_launch.jpg

Well, I don't know much about CSS, but you might be able to use the tag (and yes you can do it without including a href=whatever) and then defineing a CSS spec for the tag that says "color = white" or somthing like that (I don't know for sure, I've never messed with them myself.

Check out the w3c.org site for more information on CSS (cascading style sheets). It would save a lot of space in the file

I can't stand HTML editors, I guess its beacuse I grew up on Plaintext... I tried using frontpage once for making an extremely simple page, and I got so frustraited that I ended up redoing the whole thing in text (You can see the results Here. I ended up using like 3 levels of nested tables :P

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Animats posted a comment about the problems with the CAVE's corners, while this is noticable, a lot can be done to make it look better. The CAVE software includes corrections that make the images line up at the joints. Its not perfect, but a heck of a lot cheaper than a dome visual.

Most CAVE's have 3 screens and sometimes a floor projection. The new ISU C6 will have screens for all 6 sides of the cube, for total immersion! No its not a Holodeck, but we are getting close!

Animats posted a comment about the problems with the CAVE's corners, while this is noticable, a lot can be done to make it look better. The CAVE software includes corrections that make the images line up at the joints. Its not perfect, but a heck of a lot cheaper than a dome visual.

Most CAVE's have 3 screens and sometimes a floor projection. The new ISU C6 will have screens for all 6 sides of the cube, for total immersion! No its not a Holodeck, but we are getting close!

I'm glad to see a lot of people didn't buy that this was the Army's invention. Quite a few remember that the first CAVE was at EVL, but I just think it's more important to remember who was responsible rather than where they work. The CAVE was Carolina Cruz-Neira's Ph.D. project, so I think she deserves some mention in this talkback. See ISU's VRAC page.

• Obfuscated FoxPro
• Obfuscated Java Programming Contest
• The 1st Annual Obfuscated Perl Contest
• Obfuscated PostScript Contest

Hrm, I remember that to... Supposedly it sucked. But I couldn't find a refrence to it anywhere on M$'s site though...

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Dump a few of those Pentium III's, recycle them, ship them to a needy third-world country, and replace them with PowerMacs (preferably new, but buy used if you must (if you do this, be sure to upgrade the OS)). Run a dual-boot system. Being a CUSTOMER of Apple will give you more weight with them.

Yes, that's a good idea! Destroy thousands of dollars of computer equipment, from a hardware company that actively makes it difficult for alternative OS's, and is more expensive! So, that way we might get to watch their proprietary video format in a few years. Of course, by then we would all be Apple whores, so there would be no Risk in it for Apple

PPC may be 'faster', but x86 is cheaper both absolutely and in price/performance, x86 is more open, the architecture is controlled by more then one company. Intel does support Linux, investing in VA Linux, and Red Hat, and helping to port Linux to the new ia64 architecture.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

We wouldn't HAVE as many codecs. Think Sorenson would donate their codecs for the good of mankind?

You mean like the Motion Picture Exsperts Group?

Microsoft *already* supports QT in Windows Media Player. In fact, it STEALS your file associations and makes itself the default player for MOV's on Windows. That's wrong,

So? QuickTime steals them in the first place; the difference is, with QuickTime, you can't get your associations back, as there buried inside of IE. I can't right click and save a PNG file on my own computer! And at least media player doesn't flash me with an advertisement every time I use it.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Oh, right-clicking brings up a context menu. It just dosn't have a save option.

I don't see why I should have to pay Apple Money just so I can right-click save PNG files on my own computer. Somthing that it's capable of doing without QT.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

How 'bout I just don't use quicktime, that seems to be working pretty well now...

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

By the way, what makes everything Apple makes inherently bad, as you seem to imply? For that matter, what features is the QuickTime player missing?

Well, how about a "save" button? Its pretty irritating to download somthing off the 'net for two hours, only to have to download it again if you want to see it again. I was able to 'hack' the HTML and get the starwars trailer for myself back in my modem days, but it was still irritating. Also, Apple aperantly decided that it's player was so great, that it should be used for everything else as well! After all, I'm sure apple knows more about the PNG format then IE or netscape, right? Of course, since qucktime dosn't have a save, now I can't save PNG files without some work.

I don't have quicktime installed, and I doubt I ever will again. I want to use the programs that I think are good, not the ones apple choses.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

That's what John Carmak said when he started working on the Quake 2 port of quake 3. Repeat after me: mac OS is not better then Windows NT.

Change Quake2 in that sentance to MacOS, so that it makes sense...

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Now, this excludes Windows, which is obviously required to use QT4. I could buy a Mac and end that controversy, but that's not a reasonable cost at this time.

Windows NT dosn't work well enough for you but MacOS does? what the hell crack are you smoking? NT is a hell of a lot cheaper the the overprice iMAC (yeh, $1,500 for somthing a $900 PC could do).

I rebooted my mac system more times the first weekend than I have rebooted all the WinNT systems I have ever owned

That's what John Carmak said when he started working on the Quake 2 port of quake 3. Repeat after me: mac OS is not better then Windows NT.

Ok, now sit back and watch some MacHead moderate me down as 'Troll'

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

But the QuickTime player is a fairly hardcore MacOS app,

Well, they didn't have any trouble porting to windows, did they? I remember reading in One of John Carmak's plan files that Porting between windows and Linux was pretty easy, because both were pretty much modern, OSs (I think protected memory was the main thing that he said he needed. Quake doesn't use threads).

A video player doesn't really seem like something that would be hard to port from one OS to another, I mean, all it has to do is draw to the screen and read from the hard drive, right?

The only thing they wouldn't be able to take from the windows version is the tendency to absolutely rape the file associations, for both Windows Explorer, and Internet Explorer. Reassociating everything from MP3s to PNG files with itself. I won't install QuickTime because of it (or realplayer for that matter). Apparently, Apple and Real don't want people 'pirating' the content in there format, so you can't even right-click and save a PNG when QT's installed. I don't see how they'd be able to do something like this in Linux. And that's a good thing :)

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Hrm, A bit after the starwars trailer came out, I remember reading that sorensen wanted to have a Linux player or somthing, but that there licens with apple prevented that. So, at least acording to them, it was apple not sorensen who was keeping quicktime from Linux.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Security by Obscurity?

I think the above poster was simply referring to legal maneuvering. The only alternative would be to have no security at all.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Get an account, and set your parameters acordingly (unless you have one and posted anon). I read at -1 always, but I would think that at +1 or +2 you wouldn't have much to worry about.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

I don't think you'd really get that much money off your home computers, for two reasons. Even the baddest ass Athlon box is still way, way behind the really powerful vector-accelerated super computers. Beowulf clusters with 500 or more nodes rarely get in in the top 50 supercomputers.

So, you might make $20 or $30 a month, at current rates. But if everyone was able to sell there CPU cycles on a free market, I doubt you would even be able to make that much. Think about it, how much processing really needs to be done? You probably only own a few hundred millionths of the total CPU power in the world. I just don't think it would be worth it.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Gee, For a while I felt terrible. Then I rememberd that I don't live my life based on lame slashdot posts by ACs who can't even come up with a relivent sentance. You're 31337, man

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Sorry, I made a pretty big typo in that post.

Basically that DeCSS Copying the encrypted data off the disk gets you nothing!

The word DeCSS should not be in that sentance at all.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

I also wonder what American Pie has to do with DeCSS, since it came out before DeCSS existed? Nothing, obviously. and as I said, I got it 3 weeks before it came out in theaters.

Of course pirating is happening. If you've been paying attention many people have pointed out that pirating is easy, unstoppable, and doesn't need DeCSS.

DeCSS makes it easier.

I'm not sure you fully understand your own point or even morality here.

My point is only that you need DeCSS to get a Digital copy of the movie on your hard drive. Basically that DeCSS Copying the encrypted data off the disk gets you nothing! I don't see what's so hard to understand about that. The only moral point that I'm trying to make, at this point, is that you shouldn't lie to bolster your position, and that its bad for general knowledge to get so far removed from reality.

And as for my morals, I understand those just fine. I understand that it's 'wrong' on some level to pirate videos. But on a relative scale, a single act of piracy is so insignificant that it's not worth it to not do it.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

The exsistance of those files could encrimate you, if you don't turn over the key... And how would you turn over the key?

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

maybe its a simple crack if you know some key things, and he's going to print it in hex and work it by hand. Whatever.

He's only prohibited from using a computer for 3 years, I think. It would take a lot longer then 3 years to decrypt a gigabyte of stuff...

Anyway, how's he gonna print it out if he can't use a computer (in person or proxy)

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Hrm, I've got a feeling that this is a troll (I've been reading the troll boards to much, I think, its making me paranoid).

But incase it isn't, Let me say. Kevin Mitnick did surrender his right to use a computer. His choice was to stay in jail (w/o computer) or go free (w/o computer). He chose to go free. Its an agreement between Mitnick and the Gov.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Well, I wouldn't think that they'd be able to brute force it in 5 years... You'd figure that someone like KM would use more then PKzip encryption.... That said, it just seems like the government wants to rape Kevin up the Ass some more. There basically saying "If we can't have it, you can't have it, nener nener nener" That's like something a little kid would do.

The other thing is, if these guys haven't been able to crack the crypto then it proves that it's Not evidence, at least in its current form. While I'm sure the government does it all the time, it's not legal for them to keep your stuff If its not evidence. If the encrypted data is not evidence, then they have no right to keep it from him.

Now, what Kevin Mintnik plans to do with reams of encrypted and no computer is beyond me... (does he think he can run DES in his head?)

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

far as Mitnick not turning over the key for fear of prosecution, he would be safe from that under the double jeopardy clause, stating he can't be tried twice for the same crime

True, but what if theres evidence of *other* crimes....

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

I learned about Locke in higschool... american education.....

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

I wonder if this isn't just an attempt to get 'back in our favor' after the whole thing where they basicaly posted microsoft written material...

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Some people believe that it is economically unfeasible to pirate a DVD at full quality. And yes this is probably true right now. However, with better (wavelet?) compression, fatter pipes, and bigger hard drives, in the future it will not be.

I've read through all the source I could get my hands on, but I wasn't sure if what I was looking at was DeCSS or css-auth. The source files said 'css-auth.c' and css-auth.h' etc, so I'm not sure. Is this css-auth, or DeCSS? (or is css-auth just a part of LiViD)?

And as for pirating VCDs, trust me, its happening. I got a copy of American Pie 3 weeks before it came out in theaters. I got my 'good' copy of the matrix about a month before the DVD release. A friend of mine, who at the time still had an analog modem would go to public computer labs and span the files on 10 or so zip disks. Go to #vcd on efnet and tell me then that it isn't happening.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

thats good

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

DeCSS unentrypts the data on a DVD disk, and writes that data to a hard drive.

If you don't belive me, you can download it, and see for your self.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

DeCSS unentrypts the data on a DVD disk, and writes that data to a hard drive.

If you don't belive me, you can download it, and see for your self.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

As I understand it, you can watch that illegally copied DVD with a licensed Windows player which has its own CSS authentication method.

Ok:
I copy the data the encrypted data off a DVD disk
I transfer the file to a windows computer
I play file with windows software.

If that is what the statement means, then I have not mis-read his post.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Judging by your copying philosophies, you must not produce software or any other information form, because you'd just give it away.

You mean like linux?

If I slaved away on a book for 2 years, I would be pissed as hell if the whole world copied it for free.

Well, I wouldn't If the whole world was copying my book, and millions, billions, of people were reading it, I'd be pretty fucking happy. But thats just me.

Anyway, the reason that we do this is altruism. We don't care about the record/movie companies, but we do care about are frends. Also by trading mp3s/warez/moviez we get more in return. I hope this answers your question.

Although some people belive in the Ayn Rand Capitalist Utopia, others do not.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

the MPAA is the motion picture Assoc. of america. The MPA is the Motion Picture Assoc. Got to MPAA.org to find out more

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

see subject

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

If the MPAA succeeds, they could simply Subpoena the list.

A better solution would be for every one to get DeCSS(This is just the windows exe), and if worse comes to worse, pass it along individually to every one you know.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

If the MPAA succeeds, they could simply Subpoena the list.

A better solution would be for every one to get DeCSS(This is just the windows exe), and if worse comes to worse, pass it along individually to every one you know.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

EULA != LAW

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

geeks now have a two front battle of proving they aren't pirates to the court, and fixing their already dubious reputations with their own communities. There is a diffrence though, between these guys and someone like Kevin Mintnik. No one is going to think that what these guys did was wrong, really. So people are not going to look down on them to begin with.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Have you ever read 1984?

I read the book just last week; witch may be why it's so prevalent in my thoughts right now. In the past, it always bothered me when someone would cite a fiction book as a reason not to do something (or even worse a movie). But, I'm going to do precisely that right now. Mostly because I feel a little bit like Winston Smith right now, knowing something to be true when increasingly the world around me, and the people in it believes the opposite.

No, I don't like what the DVDCCA is doing; I think that it is morally wrong, both in the suppression of free speech, and the fact that they would knowingly squelch all of our liberties for a few profit points. But it isn't the ever-present Man that's perpetuating the doublethink; it's us.


There was a technical flaw in the fool.com article

"Let me repeat all this: The DeCSS program is neither designed nor necessary for copying DVD movies, which isn't economically feasible anyway and not technically possible with the partially prewritten blank disks being sold today. In any case, a tool to copy DVDs would be legal for personal use."

Or rather, two compound technical flaws.

In reality, DeCSS can do nothing but copy DVD movies. I doubt that many of you have even run the program. If you had you would know that it is a windows program (though, I'm not sure if DeCSS itself had been ported to Linux, of if just css-auth was derived from it by LiViD). DeCSS, or at least they copy I have is a Windows GUI application with only two buttons. One says "Select Folder" and the other says, "Transfer". I've posted my own mirror, if anyone doesn't believe me, they can see for themselves.

The other flaw is a bit deeper, and it comes from a failed technical understanding of what comprises the Movie on a DVD disk. Frequently, and this article as well, I've seen it stated that you can simply copy the data right off the disk with a standard file system read. This is incorrect, you can copy the encrypted data, but there is a fundamental difference between encrypted data and 'regular' data. The DVD movie is an element of pure data. The images and are nothing more then information. When you copy the contents of a DVD with a standard file system read, that is not what you get. Instead what you get is white noise. Worthless garbage. The encrypted data and they key are two halves of a whole, without ether, you do not have a movie.
What DeCSS does is remove the pure data from the physical medium, and into the pure ether of information. What DeCSS does, is copy the MOVIE. In its pure form, unprotected from copying, it can be viewed in Linux, or anywhere with an mpeg2 decompresser. It can also be shrunk down to VCD size and passed around the Internet.

Yes, it is possible to digitize the movie, and get the data that way, but it would require much more hardware then what would be required with DeCSS. Simply dumping the video to the hard drive uncompressed would require a 150 gig hard drive for a two-hour movie. (This hard drive, of course, would be able record at 21.3 megs/second-sustained as well...). Alternatively one could purchase a MPEG encoder card for a few hundred dollars. Along with an external DVD player to plug into
Yes, you of course wouldn't be able to duplicate the DVD image onto a burned DVD, because of the zeroed out pits, but after you merge the two halves to form the movie, it wouldn't be necessary.
Right now a 40gig UDMA hard drive sells for about $350. That's about $40 per movie. And that's bound to get cheaper as the year progresses. Using a data Tape would only cost $10 per movie, and if you really wanted to span 7 CD's the cost would be about $5 per movie. This is hardly what I would call economically unfeasible, and certainly less so then not using DeCSS to copy movies.

I've posted this information to slashdot before, and in several cases, I was ether called a moron or a Troll. I find it amazing that people could be so blind, so steeped in doublethink as to not only believe that DeCSS is can only be used to play movies in Linux, but to outright attack anything that doesn't conform to whatever it is they choose to believe

I've also been told that I shouldn't say what I'm saying, and that by saying it I am weakening our case. But, I cannot deny what I know to be true, and I cannot stand to see these untruths touted as reality.


At least Winston Smith got laid...

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Have you ever read 1984?

I read the book just last week; witch may be why it's so prevalent in my thoughts right now. In the past, it always bothered me when someone would cite a fiction book as a reason not to do something (or even worse a movie). But, I'm going to do precisely that right now. Mostly because I feel a little bit like Winston Smith right now, knowing something to be true when increasingly the world around me, and the people in it believes the opposite.

No, I don't like what the DVDCCA is doing; I think that it is morally wrong, both in the suppression of free speech, and the fact that they would knowingly squelch all of our liberties for a few profit points. But it isn't the ever-present Man that's perpetuating the doublethink; it's us.


There was a technical flaw in the fool.com article

"Let me repeat all this: The DeCSS program is neither designed nor necessary for copying DVD movies, which isn't economically feasible anyway and not technically possible with the partially prewritten blank disks being sold today. In any case, a tool to copy DVDs would be legal for personal use."

Or rather, two compound technical flaws.

In reality, DeCSS can do nothing but copy DVD movies. I doubt that many of you have even run the program. If you had you would know that it is a windows program (though, I'm not sure if DeCSS itself had been ported to Linux, of if just css-auth was derived from it by LiViD). DeCSS, or at least they copy I have is a Windows GUI application with only two buttons. One says "Select Folder" and the other says, "Transfer". I've posted my own mirror, if anyone doesn't believe me, they can see for themselves.

The other flaw is a bit deeper, and it comes from a failed technical understanding of what comprises the Movie on a DVD disk. Frequently, and this article as well, I've seen it stated that you can simply copy the data right off the disk with a standard file system read. This is incorrect, you can copy the encrypted data, but there is a fundamental difference between encrypted data and 'regular' data. The DVD movie is an element of pure data. The images and are nothing more then information. When you copy the contents of a DVD with a standard file system read, that is not what you get. Instead what you get is white noise. Worthless garbage. The encrypted data and they key are two halves of a whole, without ether, you do not have a movie.
What DeCSS does is remove the pure data from the physical medium, and into the pure ether of information. What DeCSS does, is copy the MOVIE. In its pure form, unprotected from copying, it can be viewed in Linux, or anywhere with an mpeg2 decompresser. It can also be shrunk down to VCD size and passed around the Internet.

Yes, it is possible to digitize the movie, and get the data that way, but it would require much more hardware then what would be required with DeCSS. Simply dumping the video to the hard drive uncompressed would require a 150 gig hard drive for a two-hour movie. (This hard drive, of course, would be able record at 21.3 megs/second-sustained as well...). Alternatively one could purchase a MPEG encoder card for a few hundred dollars. Along with an external DVD player to plug into
Yes, you of course wouldn't be able to duplicate the DVD image onto a burned DVD, because of the zeroed out pits, but after you merge the two halves to form the movie, it wouldn't be necessary.
Right now a 40gig UDMA hard drive sells for about $350. That's about $40 per movie. And that's bound to get cheaper as the year progresses. Using a data Tape would only cost $10 per movie, and if you really wanted to span 7 CD's the cost would be about $5 per movie. This is hardly what I would call economically unfeasible, and certainly less so then not using DeCSS to copy movies.

I've posted this information to slashdot before, and in several cases, I was ether called a moron or a Troll. I find it amazing that people could be so blind, so steeped in doublethink as to not only believe that DeCSS is can only be used to play movies in Linux, but to outright attack anything that doesn't conform to whatever it is they choose to believe

I've also been told that I shouldn't say what I'm saying, and that by saying it I am weakening our case. But, I cannot deny what I know to be true, and I cannot stand to see these untruths touted as reality.


At least Winston Smith got laid...

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

I can understand why many people fear many things, but that doesn't mean I want to see those things banned.

Hrm... what's your position on cloning?

Anyway, I don't want to see the stuff banned ether. In fact I think what the DVD-CCA is doing is moraly reprehensible.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

without css-auth.h, you know that right?

But it dosn't matter, The program was initaly a windows program. Just beacuse I dissagree with the 'comon knowlage' dosn't mean I'm a troll. I think what the MPAA is trying to is a bad thing, and I hope they fail. But you braindead idiots arn't helping anything

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

Oooh! Nice troll! Except for the minor fact that DeCSS was distributed in *SOURCE* form. Go back to your bosses in Hollywood, Mr. Astroturf.

hrm... The copy of DeCSS I got of signal_11's mirror contains 4 files. a readme, an exe, and two DLLs: one for win9x, and one for win2k. No source here (and its not in the readme, I checked). AFAIK, DeCSS was orgionaly posted as binary, then source (under GPL).

But it dosn't matter. You still can't use a windows program in linux, even if it is in source form, Idiot.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

I don't think DeCSS should die, quite the contrary. However, I don't think that its sole purpose was to aid in the creation of Livid. If it was, why not just make css-auth first?

It just pisses me off that so many uninformed morons are posting here 90% of whom don't even know what DeCSS even does!

[ c h a d o k e r e ]

As I understand it, you can watch that illegally copied DVD with a licensed Windows player which has its own CSS authentication method. Thus, you have successfully pirated a DVD which is perfectly playable, without decrypting anything (until final playback, using DVD Forum approved software).

You mean, you think that you can play a completly encrypted video file, with no keys whatsoever? Windows players use the keys on the Key tracks to decrypt the video. no key tracks, no video. I cant' belive this got marked as informative.

[ c h a d o k e r e ]