Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: GSM, Buffy, Wobble
Macrovision, everyone's favorite killjoy. byteCoder writes "Apparently Macrovision marketing is trying to put a good spin on Intuit's plan to eliminate the use of Macrovision's DRM software for pre-paid copies of TurboTax (as discussed last week here). This reminds me of the classic Monty Python line: "I'm not dead yet!""
That's got to be some spin -- An anonymous reader points to Eric Hellweg's Tech Investor on CNN, which suggests that the backlash which triggered Intuit's copy-protection reversal may have cost the company $100 million.
Can I use my Go Phone there? An anonymous reader writes ""In a follow-up to the Slashdot article 'CDMA vs GSM in Post-war Iraq,' The Reg has a story about how MCI has won the contract to rebuild the mobile phone system with GSM. This is a good thing for the people of Iraq that GSM is being used, GSM is the world standard and several U.S. companies (AT&T for one) are switching to GSM."
Adding Money to Insult. Neophytus writes "Remember the 'Star Wars Kid' that waxy.org found a couple of weeks ago? Well after over a million downloads the guy has been found. His name is Ghyslain, a 15-year-old tenth grader living in Quebec. Jish contacted him and got a brief, but interesting, interview."
No unlimited copy privileges in jail. the-dude-man writes "As reported here A 19-year-old pleaded guilty to costing DirectTV for leaking information about the secrets of DirectTV's most advanced anti-piracy technology to hacker websites. As part of the plea deal, Serebryany admitted to copying and distributing 800 megabytes of scanned documents from DirecTV, costing the company $68,000 in investigatory costs. Both sides stipulated to sentencing factors that carry six months to a year in prison under federal guidelines -- assuming no prior convictions. The sentencing court can depart from the guidelines only if the judge finds that the proposed sentence doesn't adequately reflect the facts of the case. According to court records affidavit, Serebryany's adventures began when he found himself with access to some of DirecTV's most coveted technological secrets while working for his uncle at a document imaging company at the office of a Los Angeles law firm, Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue. The firm was representing the satellite TV company in a lawsuit against NDS, the makers of the smart cards DirecTV uses to control access to its signal."
For every 11 discontented customers, there's one of these happy oddballs! RedWingsSuck writes "A few weeks ago, I asked /. users what they thought about the wobble my 12" Power Book has developed. Last week Apple Care told me that I could send my laptop off for repairs. I decided to drive to the local Apple Store, about 15 minutes away, and drop it off. They had my laptop for less than 3 days. When I went in to pick it up, they told me that it was sent in and the BC (bottom cover) was repaired. It doesn't wobble anymore, so I am happy. I was really surprised with how fast it was fixed. I didn't mean to sound like I regretted my AiBook purchase in the last post, and now I even happier."
Relax, it's a television show. HardcoreGamer writes "Buffy creator Joss Whedon responds to questions from New York Times readers on Buffy the Vampire Slayer as it comes to the end of its 7 season run. He also discusses the now-canceled Firefly and concludes with one of the key reasons why the show is ending: 'I'm simply too tired.'"
That Sarah Michelle Gellar wants out, that the ratings are declining, and that no one wants Dawn the Vampire Slayer all contributed to Buffy leaving the air, too.
'I'm simply too tired.'
Yes, seasons six and seven are certainly evidence that somebody was "asleep at the wheel." In fact, they were quite reminiscient of an enormous vehicular accident...
Do you like German cars?
She wants to devote full time to being a pr0n star? *looks hopefull*
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
Dawn the Vampire Slayer
Witness vampires and miscellaneous other creatures of the night defeated as Dawn petulantly screams. For instance: "Get out, get out, get out!"
Do you like German cars?
Perhaps Buffy was getting tired, but Firefly was just starting to shine! I hope Joss Whedon doesn't mean that he was tired in general, just tired in regards to BTVS. I'm still hopeful that Firefly will make a comeback someday. In any event, two of its actors have played villains on Joss Whedon's other shows, Angel and BTVS. I thought that was nice of him, helping the actors of his cancelled show by giving them parts on his still-running shows.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
I'm gay. Blah blah blah.
--Some Priest
Good for you!
--Mister Apple-Impersonator.
And there ya have it! Go back under the bridge trolls.
Guess what -- our beloved USA-homegrown CDMA didn't win out in Iraq after all. So you all can take your allegations of US self-bias and shove it.
George W. Bush
President, United States of America
They tried to use illusions on Trogdor, but he burninated [spoilers] them all!
ANDREW: Illusions? Against a burninator? (chuckles)
__________
[Big Brick Wall]
...so why is it such a great thing that MCI is building it in Iraq?
Eventually all carriers will have to move from whatever they're using to either WCDMA or cdma2000. The transition to WCDMA is not simple, and there are doubts that WCDMA will deliver on its promised performance. On the other hand, cdma2000 is much simpler to adopt, and has been proven to work (in Korea, for example.)
GSM is dead. R.I.P.
How much sooner than the United States will Iraq get a GSM/GPRS network? AT&T, T-Mobile and Cingular are taking their time. Maybe the Iraqi people will get affordable data plans, too.
Is that so many other geeks find him pitiful. If his self-esteem wasn't low already...
No,
It's not a good thing for Iraq for GSM to be implemented. GSM is really aging. The only way to get even moderately high-speeds is using the piggy-back GPRS. Reconstructing GSM to be 3G is very difficult transition path. If it weren't for Quallcom's patents on CDMA, nobody would be using GSM which is based on TDMA.
I really like some of the stuff GSM has done with respect to the phones themselves, such as the use SIMM card for storing the phones information. But CDMA is by far the technically superior solution, however patent incumbered. Building an infrastructure from the ground up on TDMA technology is just brain-dead politics.
Yes, GSM is more widely supported than CDMA, but note that the GSM folks are having a heck of a time providing 3G support, whereas the two big CDMA providers in the states (Verizon and Sprint) have both rolled out huge 3G networks. The reason for this is that 1xRTT is a better standard for data. By contrast, DoCoMo is losing money hand over fist deploying WCDMA.
GSM is everywhere largely because of European licensing agencies requiring GSM, and those same restrictions are built into the licenses for 3G spectrum (with UMTS). NOT because GSM is a better technology. CDMA gets better efficiency (more users per channel per cell) than GSM, especially in lightly loaded areas.
I don't see why GSM-everywhere is so desirable. The conveinences everyone claims that GSM has (eg SIM cards) are already being standardized in cdma2000, and will be here soon. GSM is a beast from the past, pushed only by government regulations. For those who say AT&T's switch shows that GSM is the future, remember that AT&T is switching from a TDMA network that's technologically equivalent to GSM (and hence inferior to CDMA), and that AT&T is having all sorts of network problems as a result, since they have to hard-block their frequencies, effectively creating a huge fragmentation problem.
I didn't mean to sound like I regretted my AiBook purchase in the last post, and now I even happier Sweet! Can't wait to get my hands on one... Wonder how much they are...
a video of myself doing some Neo-esque bullet-dodging kunf-fu moves... maybe I'll get an iPod too.
All joking aside, from the interview, Ghyslain (the starwars kid) acted quite mature for someone his age... aware that his not-meant-for-public-viewing is now world famous he chose not to be bitter or overly proud of this. He seems to just let it pass as a page in his life story.
Anyway, he did make me laugh, and what a way to start what is anticipated to be a loooong busy day.
Thanks Ghyslain!
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Come on guys, pitch in and buy this kid an iPod and other stuff for his efforts! What a star!
Am I the only one who was completely detached of that last buffy episode? well actually from the last 2 seasons? She could have died and I don't think it would have cared less... I was almost worried that she would die and Faith replace her for another stagnating 5 seasons....
I'm sure I am not the only one who was continuing to watch it because he "invested time into watching the 5 previous seasons that were really cool and I need to know how it will all end"... the ending of season 5 when she closes the portal by jumping into it was like...at least 10x better than yesterday's serie ending.... Its a good thing that this show finally ends eventho I was a big fan the 5 first seasons. When I see shows like family guy, B5 crusade and firefly being cancelled and see crap like this season's of buffy still on, it makes me wonder.
Now I just hope the Angel show doesn't go the same way.
One show that I really enjoyed this year was John Doe, is there a second season of this? this is probably one of the good findings this year, new actors good story, just enough "fiction" to keep it "real", I like the balance and the general concept.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
If their encryption algorithm is really so secure and uncompromisable as they claim, they should have no qualms about letting the details out in public (where they could be presumably subject to peer review), just as is standard practice with other crypto algorithms and the crypto community.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
Since the last posting about Buffy, I've had to look no further than my own computer area to figure out how it's relevent to Slashdot.
:)
Doesn't every nerd have a huge poster of Sarah Michelle Gellar next to their Matrix poster?
Consider the "First Evil" arc. They started that one over four years ago!!! Yeah, I know we you like the way he plants clues and goes for a slow buildup. So do I. But that buildup looks like the workers were drunk and AWOL half the time!
The whole series is full of stuff like that. My favorite villain in all of genre fiction is Glorificus, The Fashion Queen from Another Dimension. But I was only able to enjoy her arc by nodding at the plot inconsistencies you could drive a truck through. A willing fan can do that for a while (hence Star Trek), but Buffy fans have less patience.
I think if Joss Whedon is going to remain a major player (and I do hope he manages to revive Firefly) he's gonna have to rethink his working style. TV and movies are collaborative media, yet he insists that all the big insights be his and his alone. That prevents people from hijacking his vehicles (as happened with the Buffy movie) but also prevents people from telling him when his clothes are no invisible, but missing. No wonder Buffy got so far off track.
Slashback tonight brings you updates on the future
That's a pretty good trick... care to tell me how you do it?
lysergically yours
It's amazing how much transfer that stupid video has used up. I wonder what being slashdotted will do to it... I can't believe there's been $3,519 in donations to buy that kid stuff! Amazing! I'm gonna go do something stupid and film it so people will buy me stuff! For the record, I'd like a shiny new power mac with dual processors and one of those huge screens.
hey!
Perhaps Slashdot should do an interview with the Star Wars kid. To further the emotional scarring =)
Bah. We all know that Lucas is going to surprise us in the next SW film with a 15-minute lightsaber sequence featuring Cowboyneal.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
It was pretty clear, even during the last episode in, admittedly, one of the weaker story arcs why this show has such a devoted following: the writing is incredible. Thanks to Joss and everybody involved for creating characters, plots, and dialog that were immensely entertaining (the D&D scene alone had me laughing hysterically). I'm going to miss this show and these characters. Why can't shows with potential like, say, Enterprise figure out the tricks Buffy managed to pull year after year? Note to Paramount: maybe you have to start caring about the writing again to bring a borefest like Trek back to life. Notice that no one on Buffy wore catsuits.
Here is an exact link: http://www.jish.nu/2003_05_01_archive.php#20028747 3
I would really love, if we will manage to buy him not only iPod, but also a Mac he desire.
This Is Not a Sig
Crappy codec that sounds no where near as good as EFR on GSM. Crappy phones with short battery life. Wot ? No bluetooth ? Most have no infrared even.
These phones are lightyears behind GSM phones.
Also, saying that the US is "CDMA territory" is simply wrong. Cingular, AT&T and T-Mobile (VoiceStream) are 3 of the top providers in the US, Sprint and Verizon being the other two.
Hate to break it to the CDMA biggots here, but there are more GSM subscribers in the US than CDMA.
I've used both over many years, and gravitate back to GSM for better sound, SMS that works and yup, the all important international roaming.
CDMA is technically better, especially in remote areas, but GSM is the way to go.
CDMA is simply a bad case of NIH.
Your choice for subject to that reply is also appropriate. Who went in and started that war in the first place? Of course you need to take full advantage of being in there, no question about it.
BUT, what if Saddam just would have stepped down, and let the so called democracy pour in, would US companies still have first say about re-building the country? Is that bias based solely on war-efforts? In this case, war efforts seem to make US tech bit more better by effect than european.
And the moneywise situation? US is not going to benefit hugely from Iraqi oil when it is effectively controlling the whole place, whose money is that?
Bit off the topic, but nice to change opinions about it anyhow.
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
Like maybe to France's Alcatel?
I sure hope none of the money goes to Alcatel! Not because they're a French company, but because their stuff is crap.
Willow:
:-) Why couldn't Xander's dream have included the tongue-ring, Kennedy, Willow, AND Dawn?! Now THAT would have been a series climax!
"...I could lose control. And I don't mean like 'my girl-friend's got a tongue-ring losing control'"
Dawn, a few minutes later:
"OH! Tongue-ring..."
Did anyone notice the reference to Trogdor the Burninator in Buffy? It was rad!
Wil
wiki
Look at Andrew talking about Faith attacking the Vulcanologist, or Buffy's funny bad joke about Caleb splitting. It's all still there.
/.
Yes, and the show gets -10 points for reusing an old Running Man one-liner. But don't worry, I'll get a -1 for talking smack about Buffy on
The problem with the show as a "drama" is that it completely loses credibility with the amount of trite humor written in to each script. Drama, without a doubt, needs humor. A perfect example is the doorman in MacBeth, or Dogbury in Much Ado About Nothing. If you want to watch absolute mastery of this in modern times, look no further than Aaron Sorkin (West Wing) or most of the writing on Star Trek: TNG which, incedentally, is why that was considered the last great Star Trek series. But this show had too much of it. If it was a drama, then it had too much comedy for the actual dramatic aspects of the script to effectively come through. If it was a comedy, then it had too much drama to be substantially funy enough to make the grade.
I see three things that prevent Buffy from being anything more than another shite WB/UPN series, First and foremost is the acting. As much as I try to look past the teenage angst-ridden script, all I see is B-grade actors who are most likely never going to make it to an actual network TV show (not WB or UPN). Granted, much of the dialogue prohibits full realization of their acting skills, but you can't blame everything on the script. The fact of the matter is that I can't relate to anyone on the show.
Secondly, the show is convoluted. The movie, AFAIC, was a piece of art. It poked fun at the trashy valley-girl stigma attached to so-cal in the early 90's while at the same time bringing a fresh horror-spoof to the whole thing. I just wish I could have been in the pitch room for that one. The problem is that doesn't translate well to TV. The concept was obviously meant for the big screen as, once the vampires are removed from Sunnydale, the gimmick is over. The writers of the show, in order to keep people from fleeing like they were at a Great White concert, had to come up with some new and more enveloping angle with each passing season, which created a two-fold problem. 1 - everyone has to watch at least five or six episodes in a row before they "get" the plot (at least, this is what I have been told repeatedly). And 2 - it gets trite. Once the novelty of vampires wears off, you have to switch to witches, demons, godesses, and everything else your mother warned you about. That, my friend, is the mark of a show that didn't have a decent premise to begin with.
Lastly, the writing is just terrible. Everything the actors say seems to be geared toward impressing high-school students or allowing introverts to live vicariously through the show. As I said before, a perfect example is the "cookie dough" scene I sat impatiently through in the final episode. That had no place in a pre-armageddon spectacular complete with uber-demons and the death of cast regulars. I honestly don't think the writers of this show have ever given any thought to how real people would act in any of these situations. And I for one don't particularly care to watch drama that has no grounding in reality. It becomes corny and contrived which is, after all, what I feel this show was from the get go.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
That girl can stretch a t-shirt like nobody's bidness...
INAL, but I have been involved in court cases. You don't go out of your way to make life easy on the opposition. In fact you go out of your way (within legal limits) to make like difficult for them. Drowning your opponent in paper is the most fun response to a fishing, I mean discovery, request that there is. Often there will be damning information down in there, but they never bother to actually go thru it all to find it.
Buffy to Spike: Here's a magic amulet. Let's shag.
Buffy to Willow: I need a spell.
Willow: I'm scared.
Buffy: Don't worry. The writers didn't bother to look up the latin. All you have to do is sit and look constipated.
Willow: I can do that; I had bran today!
Wood to Faith: I'm better looking than you, skank.
Andrew: I'm a geek. Wheeeee!
(Inside the Hellmouth)
Kennedy: Look at all the vampires.
Buffy: Don't worry. Willow's spell made you all slayers.
Kennedy: Why didn't we do this in episode 3 this season? Then we could have had time for some good episodes.
Buffy: Shut up ho, and kill uber-vamps.
Kennedy: Hey, how come one of these uber-vamps kicked Buffy's arse six ways to sunday for two episodes, yet now we're killing thousands of them.
Faith. Shut up and kill uber-vamps.
The First: Neener neener neener
Buffy: Beat it, bitch.
Spike: Woo hoo, me necklace is killing all the uber-vamps.
Kennedy: Shame angel couldn't have brought it in episode 3, then we could have...
Spike: stuff it, wanker.
Anya: Hey, how come I have to be the only one to die?
(Above ground)
Dawn: Hey look, the whole town's gone, fallen into a pit.
Cordelia: I always said Sunnydale was a pit.
Xander: Beat it, slut, you're not in this show anymore.
Cordelia: oops.
Willow: So, what do we do now?
Buffy: fuckifiknow.
(Fade to black)
The Ministry of Oil is intact. The Museum is not. Even where bombs were not dropped, there are consequences when you invade a country. These are well known. Looting and riots are high up the list. Was no planning done here?
The US said the same about Afghanistan. I repeat: how are they doing these days? And for the record: Saudi Arabia is stable and has good oil output. If you think that is a good thing, try living under the Sauds. Stability and oil -- feh! What about hospitals? What about classrooms? What about restoring power and water supplies?
And also for the record, Iraq has been a haven for education and civilisation for a thousand years. The Iraqi people are still, by-and-large, intelligent, educated, cultured and cosmopolitan. Where is maintaining that tradition in the list of what-must-be-done? Because without it you have just another fundamentalist theocracy. Without careful and thoughtful help right now that still could happen, as the mullahs and imams make their claims to the rights to secular power.
He was making a reductio ad absurdum argument, by taking an argument and applying it with the same force but the opposite intent. This is a useful technique. It can be used to highlight all sorts of internalised bias. e.g., "The US was justified in invading Vietnam in order to protect it from itself" vs. "Vietnam would be justified in invading the US in order to protect it from itself". See how it works? Try it yourself on what comes out of Fox News sometime.
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
Possibly he thinks he could have saved the series if he hadn't been so overcommitted (three active series, and development work on two more). Probably not true: I think a lot of Fox people either didn't understand Firefly or just didn't think such a high-budget series could be profitable. (Reality shows are so much cheaper to produce!) Still, it would have had a better chance if Whedon had been able to fight the network's creative meddling and idiotic scheduling.
I once read an interview with him, where's he's standing on the bridge of Serenity (the set is a complete mockup of the ship) and proclaiming that he's in "Geek Heaven". Ever since Fox pulled the series, I've been watching the news for reports that the set has been broken up. Unless I missed that report, he's keeping that set around, which must be costing him a mint. If he gives up and gets rid of the set, then we'll know that Firefly is dead, no mouth-to-mouth, no resurrection spell!
GSM is cheap because its old. Cheap GSM stations and cheap GSM phones. I might be able to pay $1000 for a PDA CDMA phone but an Iraqi might only have $50 for his basic GSM (I'm sure he'd love to have the phone I threw away 4 years ago because it was getting tacky)
GSM is implemented throughout the Middle East - allowing roaming and phone exports/transfers over the border.
GSM is well known to technicians.
GSM works well in environments like Iraq. You might live in some isolated part of the huge US of A where GSM sucks but Iraq is an urban and concentrated country. Most people live near the cities or the river valleys.
GSM does not suck. It allows clear voice transmissions and gives an acceptable data transfer rate (not for internet browsing but for email okay).
Iraq does not need an expensive data network with bells on it. It needs one that works. And GSM works excellently - as Europe can testify.
GSM is not the future. But its the working present.
Ok, so MCI gets to build a GSM network in Iraq. Get over it - the reason that Sprint isn't doing it is because a) CDMA sucks monkey member and b) the US is more or less the only country on the planet that does NOT use GSM. It wouldn't make any sense to drop a CDMA network in Iraq when all of the surrounding countries use GSM. Also, there is already a lot of equipment for GSM in Iraq that can be reused (of course MCI will probably bill for new equipment even though they use the old stuff).
The U.S. has a horrible track record of going with non-standards in order to try to lock out foreign competition - or at least make them build a different widget just to sell in the U.S.
Here are some examples:
U.S - TV uses NTSC, the rest of the world uses PAL, so TV and VCR makers have to make a completely different product to sell here.
U.S. - HDTV over the air uses 8VSB (because of political lobbying), an inferior modulation method to COFDM, which the rest of the world uses because of its technical merit.
U.S. - uses the English system of measure whereas the rest of the world uses the more intuitive metric system
U.S. - drives on the wrong damn side of the road
I'm sure there are hundreds, if not thousands of other examples..
What I'd like to know is - how the *F* did the U.S. make such a logical and sound conclusion as to what network to use in Iraq?
Do you actually read the news?
The US taxpayer is not footing the bill!
1) Iraq has a mountain of debt to pay because as a result of the end of the war everyone is coming in with their bills. INCLUDING the US.
2) The money laid out now by the US is coming back from oil revenue.
3) The GSM standard is not just a French standard, but a worldwide standard. CDMA could have been a worldwide standard, but Qualcomm has its head stuck up its butt.
Do you want to know what the main concern now is? That Iraq will be crushed under their debt. They did some stats and found out that when Iraq is pumping oil at its peak, that will only account for 20 billion dollars. That is not even close to being enough money to pay back everybody. And the concern is that it could turn into a world war 1 fiasco.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
The reconstruction, like most of the war, is being paid for primarily out of the pockets of the US taxpayers. That's mostly coming from US workers.
You do know that the puppet-iraq gov is going to hand over untold numbers of oil contracts to american firms eh? this is the real prize here... how many years of pumping cash out of the desert is going to goto the US-Oil now that you've invaded and occupy Iraq?
The present bickering about 'reconstruction contracts' is missing the really big show. Thats going to be many many many billions in oil plunder.
Goddamit 16 better stay the age of consent. After all, if the girl can drive a car... Also, who needs to re-live the realities of menial jobs and real life disillusionment? Its TV- Its suppose to be fantasy and escape- Morality and Social commentary should be given in small, digestible portions The last thing America needs is a show preaching self-righteously to the great unwashed masses. Give me clever, irreverent humor any day- after all, the show was born out of a simple joke- a horror movie genre with a 'slayer' named 'Buffy?' ;]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
Don't anyone get blinded by the facts now. After some quick googling, pages such as this will easily be found:
u lfwar
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/gulf.war/facts/g
Check at the bottom, under "The Cost". While Kuwait and Saudi Arabia paid the lion's share, I just listed France and Germany (plus Japan) because they're the ones being daemonized by the US, even though they contributed more financially to the first Gulf War than the US.
a news service which is not American. Because no-one could accuse USAtoday or the Wall Street Journal of being partisan.
That infrastructure would not have needed to be rebuilt overnight if it had not been targeted in the first place. (a war crime by international convention, by the way. Not that that has ever stopped the US army.) As things like water treatment plants and power stations were deliberately targeted, all civilian deaths as a result of their lack are the direct responsiblity of the army who destroyed them.
Unlike the UK (Ireland, India, Australia, great chunks of Africa) or the USA? (Mexico, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Hawaii, the Phillipines, just from the top of my head, and in no particular order). Pot: meet Kettle.
Oh, really ?
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife