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Digital Rights Management on CD's This Christmas?
McDrewbie asks: "Has anyone discovered that the new CD's found under the tree or in their stocking don't play on their brand new CD player? My father got a Brookstone Wafer-thin CD system and several new CD's. Most play fine, however several ones from Sony (with CDextra software on them) and from Columbia, either don't play or play with some crackling and popping, yet play fine on our older CD player. Did these companies decide to quietly unleash DRM on the public this holiday season? Or is this just a problem with the new player (separate from it not being DRM capable)? What are other Slashdot readers experiencing today?"
I gave my sister coal for christmas as a joke.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
I used to work with a woman who swore up and down that ballsweat was something so yummy it should be bottled.
Of course, this was back when I was filming pornos on real film -- before the days of video -- and the woman was a little messed up in the head. She used to come to work in a mink coat and fire engine red heels and yell out how she wanted to fuck the best boy. "Where's the best boy? I want to fuck the best boy."
We told her, look, we're low budget and don't have a best boy.
"What about a grip? I want to fuck the grip!"
No grip, we told her. Just us camera guys, the producer, and Ray Ray the director. "Then Ray Ray," she'd scream. "Let me fuck a man named Ray Ray."
But when she saw Ray Ray and got a whiff of his funk, she decided against it. Ray Ray also made her rethink her notion of bottled ballsweat. I don't know what Ray Ray had going on his body, but it was evil and foul smelling.
Still, he directed the best pornos I'd seen up to that point. He liked camera angles and made the most of bad lighting in tiny little rooms.
Ray Ray overdosed on cocaine and ovaltine and was found one morning by this fourteen year old daughter.
No mod points, but LOL...
This is not DRM, it is a form of multi-layered technology that will not only play audio CD but other forms of multi-media, it's a broken standard it seems (at first glance anyway) and some players don't know how to read it.
.0208045182. Go try figure that one out!
.0208045182 is woven into the fabric of nature, what
It is breakthroughs like these that seem good at first and hurt us later.
Please study the following example (sorry in advance for any minor flaws, this is all from memroy!):
In June 1801, Zach, an astronomer whom Gauss had come to know two or three years previously, published the orbital positions of Ceres, a new small planet which was discovered by G Piazzi, an Italian astronomer on 1 January, 1801.
Unfortunately, Piazzi had only been able to observe 9 degrees of its orbit before it disappeared behind the Sun. Zach published several predictions of its position, including one by Gauss which differed greatly from the others. When Ceres was rediscovered by Zach on 7 December 1801 it was almost exactly where Gauss had predicted. Although he did not disclose his methods at the time, Gauss had used his least squares approximation method.
Gauss had been asked in 1818 to carry out a geodesic survey of the state of Hanover to link up with the existing Danish grid. Gauss was pleased to accept and took personal charge of the survey, making measurements during the day and reducing them at night, using his extraordinary mental capacity for calculations.
From what I understand, Gauss original identity was:
e^(ix)=cos x + sin x for any x that is a real number. When Pi is substituted in for x,
then e^(Pi*i)+1=0 is obtained.
But it doesn't end here. If one substitutes in Pi/2 for x in the trigonometric identity, then e^(iPi/2)=i is the result.
If both sides are raised to the i power, then e^(-Pi/2)=i^i is staring us in the face. And if e^(-Pi/2) is punched out on a calculator, one finds the puzzling and troubling result that i^i =
Not necessarily wishing to get into a debate: is this a chance accident of evolution or does it point an Intelligent Designer? I believe the
latter but, no doubt, the point can be argued. What I want to know is since i^i =
practical use does it have, if any?
What does it mean? Or is it just simply a beautiful paradox for us to marvel at?
Anyway, all apoligies, as I tend to ramble a bit myself, the point being is that we face these paradoxi in real life:
Does "new improved" technology with multilayered CD's worth the chance of it not working in some players?
Or the mere fact that e^(Pi*i) + 1 = 0 to some in the math.sci community feel that this proves God's existance?
Some would say only God would allow a transcendental number raise to another transcendental number, raise to an imaginary number to come out so nice as just -1!
I'll briefly mention Windows NT SP 6, which broke Lotus Notes. I don't remember the specifics, but SP6 broke Notes' TCP/IP stack, while Outlook was unaffected. Microsoft replaced it a week or so later with SP6a, and IIRC never really mentioned why the 6a - they just pulled 6, and unless you were affected you'd never know. We got bit.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Apparently if you are older than 102 years (i.e. were born before 1900) you can't register on Washington post!!