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Slashback: Decade, Fragmentation, RDRAM
A screenplay written by Jack Valenti? cc_pirate writes: "Apparently Sen. Fritz Hollings (D - Disney, er - SC) completed his hearings today on how the media needs to have content protection included in computers. Intel and other high tech companies resist and are chastized by Hollings."
Penguins are the new Turtles. Gerein writes "After many months of extreme lobbying, personal attacks, public petitions and surveys, the war over the future OS of the Bundestag (German parliament) is finally over (previous /. stories). As heise reports (in german, use the fish) Linux won't make it to the desktops (they're going with XP) but will take over the 150 servers. The last critical question over the directory service has finally been decided in favor to OpenLDAP instead of Active Directory. It's not the complete victory for Linux, many had hoped for, but it's a start for more Open Source in the German government."
Full disclosure seems like a nice idea. Merlynnus writes: "Yahoo! is running a story, Copy-protected CD makers lose battle, in which Music City Records, Fahrenheit Entertainment and digital rights management company Sunncomm have 'agreed' to stop collecting personal info, and to label copy-protected CDs as defective, er, play-challenged in certain devices. The agreement came as the result of court action by a Cali resident, Karen DeLise, over the Charlie Pride CD, 'Charley Pride: A Tribute to Jim Reeves.' Did that CD really need copy-protecting?"
This should have been transparent. Metrollica writes: "It turns out the transparent aluminium article at Spiegel was misunderstood. Sci-fighter published a correction. The transparent substance was not aluminium but alumina, shorthand for aluminium oxide. Slashdot reported on transparent aluminium here."
Odds are, somebody's written a thesis on it ... and here one is. Whether in response to this Ask Slashdot question or just a lucky guesser, Cine writes: "The standard filesystem benchmarking tools such as Bonnie++, Postmark , Mongo and others all test the optimum case for the block layouting algorithm. But in practice one also is interested to know how a filesystem performs when it is or was heavily used over a longer period (e.g. months and years).So Constantin Loizides has written a Master Thesis about the performance of filesystems under the influence of fragmentation."
Intel-Rambus break not as simple as portrayed.
Controlio writes: "Tom's Hardware Guide has posted a clarification regarding the EBN story with the sensational headline, 'Intel to drop support of Rambus in new CPU products'. The article was also posted on Slashdot. Tom reports:
EBN had the sensational headline Intel to drop support of Rambus in new CPU products, but the story goes on to say, "Intel will continue using Direct Rambus memory with its network processors. Also, although not new products, the next iterations of its 850 and 860 chipsets, supporting a 533MHz front-side, will support RDRAM when they arrive, probably in the second half of this year." A little misleading, wouldn't you say? Hard to tell, but you read it for yourself, and make your own call.Great. More sensational journalism. Maybe someone should submit Jack Robertson's resume to Fox News."
Finally, some congratulations are in order. danny writes (does he ever): "February 28th marks the 10th anniversary of my first book review; there are now over six hundred. I have written an account of ten years writing book reviews, which illustrates something of how online publication has changed over the years."
Wow.
Maybe somebody should inform the good senator of how much money the high tech sector is worth and that it is distributed nationally, where as the movie industry primarily operates out of Southern California (percentage $$$ wise). He should be reminded that if a flaw is found, then every consumer item is vulnerable. Is he planning on setting up a firmware police to make sure your refrigerator won't play pirated software?
Germany did find in my opinion. Going all of one thing is insane. An all Linux network is no better than an all Microsoft network. Lest ye protest, remember that they just found a major security hole in PHP. I wonder how many unpatched Linux boxes their will be after a week? They can join all of those unpatched Windows boxes.
Ok, am I the only one thinking if you can make windows out of alumina, that doping it correctly you can make a seriously BIG 'synthetic' ruby by doping said window with chromium? The article is non-specific about size, even a window of 4" square and 1" thick represents a pretty big honking ruby. Are sapphire (the other kind of alumina) and ruby about to go the way of aluminium itself?
:)
If I remember correctly at the time it was built, the Washington Monument was capped with an aluminum peak. This was done, because refined aluminum metal was both rare and precious.
I'm thinking ruby drinking glasses, ruby soda cans, 5c ruby rings. You get the picture.
Lee
Did I miss something? Aren't these guys a little late?
Computers already exist that can easily handle the compression, storage and manipulation of copyrighted content. Are they going to require me to turn in my home system? If not, then what on earth is going to stop me from hooking up my video capture card to the line out (which is going to have to be there to remain compatible with all of the billions of dollars of consumer equipment out there) and divx'ing their latest and greatest?
Its too late!
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
"The underlying issue is not old media versus new technology. It is creativity versus theft," said Disney CEO Michael Eisner.
Yeah, because The Little Mermaid, Atlantis, and Aladdin were very original ideas all thought up by the geniuses at Disney...
Since this will now result in the total demise of copyright infringement, the movie, recording, and video game industries then immediately pay taxes on the hojillions of dollars they claim to be losing per year, at the prevailing highest corporate tax rate, with no writeoffs on this amount. These additional taxes should be a small price for industry to pay for the increased profits that would result from all that sudden demand now that their material isn't available for copying in digital form, now that general purpose computers would be outlawed.
Oh--you mean they aren't going to sell all that, because the people they claimed as having been costing them money wouldn't have bought the product anyway? That's OK--we can just sell the assets of the companies benefiting from the SSSCA to take care of the taxes, then.
The transcripts (what was actually said including questions & answers) will probably be available in a couple of weeks at the Government Printing Office {check out Orrin Hatch's Judiciary Committee Hearing on Copyrights while you're there}
The submitted statements are available on the Committee's own page.
The hearing was broadcast on CapitolHearings, but they don't seem to offer archives. I ripped the stream & will post an Ogg Vorbis version soon, but the everyone must have woken up today & decided to surf porn 'cause the 16kbps stream over a well-tuned DSL connection was interrupted several times, some of which failed auto-retries (do I hate RealPlayer now?).
If anyone else has a stream rip, please post it. My favorite part is Hollings saying "son of a bitch" a couple minutes before the hearing starts. Yes, that microphone is on sir.
Did anyone else listen? I thought Eisner went off the deep end during the question & answer period. He wants to protect camcorder-at-the-movie -> DivX;-) movies from distribution (not just stuff with DRM). The Intel V.P. (who was very calm despite the verbal LSD flying around) said that wasn't possible, but I don't think he was considering the full totalitarian push. Consider a law requiring ISPs to NAT and dynamic-IP all users so no one can run a server unless registered (like guns) & authorized. All P2P traffic is illegal. The entire US is firewalled off from "rouge" nations. Sure, it sounds unlikely, but that's why Eisner sounded so wacked out. He really sounded like he either wanted the net to become cable TV or just be shut down entirely (Disney isn't making any money from abc.com or disney.com or go.com- what do they need the damned pirate club for anyway?)
You might think Eisner was talking about watermarking, but he wanted 90% of "pirate" traffic catchable. He's MORE concerned about a teenage projectionist inviting over his buddy who's dad has a 3-chip DV camcorder than DRM cracks. A 400x300 divx compress from a camcorder aimed at a screen is not going to preserve watermarks unless they really fuck up the quality. I think he's heading towards the RIAA "we want the right to snoop & crack those pirate sonofabitches" idea.
-M
Unfortunately, I get around a !20%! speed advantage using rambus over ddr-sdram for serious scientific computations (large matrix inversions, primarily, for simultanious equation solutions).
Rambus SIGNIFICANTLY kicks the arse of DDR (and certainly standard sdram), and the extra cost is well worth it in these situations. I wish people would stop trying to benchmark 'high-end' equipment by running office suite benchmarks on it and then think they are actually testing anything.
Good code (and trust me, with runtimes in the days it is WELL worth having good code for these problems) does actually make use of the full capabilities of rambus, and ddr doen't even come close to catching up.
I would love to see them produce 64-bit wide rambus dimms (the same width as ddr-sdram) as opposed to the current 16 bits wide, and THEN see the ddr try to keep up, as this would give them equivalent circuit board resource usage.
The future of RAM (well, for a while) will be rambus type busses, as they make much more effective use of pins on the chipsets, and pins are becoming a scarce resource (look at the pincounts for the new hammer line from AMD if you don't believe me), allowing rambus to support many moer busses than ddr.
Politically rambus is a complete failure, which is a pity, the technology is absolutly great, as is the real-world preformance FOR THOSE WHO NEED IT.
I was going to go for a rabit/antelope combo...
How about a basselope instead?
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
I agree somwhat, with this to offer...
Here's a quick one. In 1991 Brent Spiner, of Cmdr. Data fame on ST:TNG, released an album titled Ol' Yellow Eyes is Back. It was a very short run and only a limited number of copies were produced. It *was* put in reprint in 1994, but that was also a limited run. Since hearing of this album in ~1996 I have been on a warpath looking for a copy by any means needed.
Essentially, I am a consumer in need of a product. Is it around for me to purchase? No. Is this still copyrighted material? Yes. Will I download it the first damn chance I get. You freakin' bet. If the album is not in production any more then neither the label nor artist will be making money on any more sales, as they will be used. I would gladly purchase a used copy (in good condition, of course), but they are nowhere to be found.
This is one example. The same goes for an album by Symbiosis that I have been tracking down, and there are many more that aren't in production any more but would be illegal to download. How in the hell am I supposed to get this music? To me this is the biggest train that the RIAA/MPAA is missing.
(PS - If anyone happens to have a copy of Ol' Yellow Eyes this is an open invitation to contact me. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more)
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
Unfortunately, he's wrong. Perhaps he's never heard of the Greeks and the Romans? The Greeks got as far as inventing mechanical calculators, while the Romans had central heating. These technologies were not rediscovered until the last couple hundred years.
Never, ever make the mistake of thinking that our prosperity must last forever. We could fall at any time, and it's a long way down.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
The article quoted Hollings as saying to Intel, "We don't want to legislate. We want to give you time... to develop technology."
I think the real-world translation of this might indicate that the Honorable Senator from Disney is looking for a settlement of sorts.
Maybe Intel ends up producing DRM-enabled CPUs and mainboards for entertainment-oriented PCs, and Congress refrains from banning traditional general-purpose computers.
Then the "content" industry produces stuff that only works on the DRM-enabled systems, and those of us who don't care about watching the latest Disney flicks on our rack-mount servers will be left alone.
In other words, the scenario that Seth Finkelstein described in a comment to the previous SSSCA article.
But I don't think that's such a horrible outcome. You'll have your regular computers like you have now, and then you'll have a glorified VCR to use with all your "content." A work computer and a "fun" computer.
*shrug*
Being a trained attack dog for Disney and AOL doesn't serve anyone living in your state. It just gets him campaign money.
If you find that it's literally impossible to back up your hard drive or your company's data storage a year from now because he got those "anti-piracy" (note: in Hollings-speak, fair use = piracy) laws passed, do you think Hollings will help you? Maybe he can get a law passed making it illegal for hard drives to fail.
His public contact page is http://hollings.senate.gov/webform.html.
Be as nasty as you like, there's no possibility of working with him. He has been bought and being an honest politician, will probably stay that way.
From http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/indus.asp?C ID=N00002423&cycle=2002
The top industries supporting Ernest F. Hollings are:
1 Lawyers/Law Firms $1,151,134
2 TV/Movies/Music $260,034
Note: you may safely assume that at least some of the law firm contributions are from organizations on media industry payrolls.
Since I don't live in South Carolina, the only way he's going to pay any attention to what I say as a non-constituent is if I send it via snailmail with a check for over $1,000 enclosed. Since hell will freeze over before I send him money, I didn't see any reason to bother writing him.
Here's a copy of the e-mail I didn't bother sending. Perhaps some of you who live in SC can get some inspiration from it. Note: URL below is
a fair usage quote from Yahoo News:
Dear Senator Hollings:The above comment makes you either a liar or a fool.
There was a time I used to admire you. After you decided you now represent AOL/TimeWarner, the MPAA, and Disney instead of the poor suckers who voted for you, I no longer can respect you as a public leader or even a human being.
You're just another political whore. You are a disgrace to the US Senate and a living indictment of American democracy.
Of course, this is not news to any of your staff member who reads this, but if that person had any personal integrity or decency, he or she wouldn't be working for you anyway.
Hopefully, when those companies you attack finish with you, you'll be just someone who's trying to become a lobbyist and finding that nobody in politics can afford to be associated with you, instead of the "powerful senator" you are no longer fit to be.
A.Lizard
Tech Public Policy stuff
The unfortunate part is that intel may very well kill of rambus in the 'consumer' level (ie: where the best price/performance tends to be for computational clusters), to a large extent due to 'public' misunderstanding of benchmarks. A lot of people think that ddr is as good as rambus.
For example, a lot of people trot out the 'latency' issues without understanding them. ddr requires a lengthy burst read of *64* bit wide data to achieve it's bandwidth, while rambus, also needing a brust read, reads only 16 bits per, resulting in a more 'localised' abiity to read memory, and therefore less wasted reads, which amounts to less wasted memory bandwidth.
It is very interesting to have a look at the memory subsystems used in mainframes, where it is very normal to have a large number of effectively seperate, and not very wide, memory busses to allow much more efficient 'scattered' data reads without generating false dependencies between memory addresses.
you are correct. what is funny is that the person who submitted that had the username of 'Metrollica'. I may be wrong, but I do believe that I've seen his handiwork on quite a few trolls here (when I go surfing at -1). He certainly claimed credit for the last posting of the 'troll faq' that I saw.
You forgot Hunchback of Notre Dame, Cinderella, Snow White, Winnie the Pooh, etc.
Winnie-the-Pooh isn't expired. Di$ney just bought the rights outright from the company that inherited them from the Milne family. Under the Bono Act, "The House at Pooh Corner" (1928) by A. A. Milne (d. 1956), which introduced many of the popular Pooh characters, doesn't expire in the US until 2024 (1928+96) or in the EU until 2027 (1956+71).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Sadly, fair use is a defense against infringement but not a right. If vendors make fair use impossible to exercise, all we can do is persuade everyone to take their business to vendors that don't (or somehow accumulate more money than the content cartels and buy ourselves a law).
Nobody's obliged to continue pressing DVDs, but it seems to me if a company sells DVD players and then starts pressing DVDs their existing players can't handle, they've violated the warranty of merchantability.
So, while I wrote this post I decided I should do my homework first. On Freshmeat I found a defrag program for linux, but it seems to be totally dead, abandoned since 1998. On sourceforge a search for defrag only gives a hit for some Windows application. A Google search finally points me to a Debian page which advertises exactly the kind of defrag program I was looking for. The buglist shows that it is still being maintained, but there does not seem to be much going on (which might be a sign of stability, but the developer could have tried to impress me with promises to support more filesystems than only ext2, minix and xiafs). Why isn't this program a standard solution that makes fragmentation a non-issue? Do people here have experience with this tool?