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Slashback: Wireless, Gasoline, Prevarication
It's not a feature, it's a bug.
A representative from Macrovision writes "This statement is being issued to address some concerns that were recently aired on Slashdot with regards to the copy protection of some music CDs, the new Beastie Boys CD in Europe in particular.
Macrovision does NOT install any spyware, shareware, malware or any self-replicating code of any kind onto a user's PC.
When playing a (Macrovision CDS-200) copy-protected CD for the first time, playback software components may be installed, if needed. This software is used to enable the on-disc music player to load an on-screen user interface and to play back the audio. For further information, please contact: cds-info@macrovision.com."
Seems to me that a CD which that requires any software installed for it to be played by a standard CD drive is by definition at least "brokenware," or perhaps "meddleware." What if it's being used in a computer without an operating system supported by these "playback software components"?
Definitional evasion aside, so far CD "copy protection" is mostly about as effective as critics proclaim it to be: ptorrone writes "There has been a lot of talk about the copy protection on the new CD 'Contraband' from Velvet Revolver, but for us we didn't have any problems making MP3s for all our devices despite their efforts to stop us it seems. Here's our story..."
MSN Search pales next to Google, so far. An anonymous reader writes "Reported earlier today here on Slashdot, MSN is preparing a new search engine which is set to knock Google's socks off. However, early results show that not only is the new algorithm lacking enough smarts to knock Google as king, it doesn't even compete with the current MSN algorithm."
Open wide and say "ARRL!" dos4who writes "Well, the ARRL Field Day 2004 results are in, and posted on The The American Radio Relay League website. In the Single Operator High-Power class, congratulations to W5ZN for logging a score well over 600,000!
I had the opportunity to witness the Abbotsford, British Columbia club in action, and it was an awesome experience. Just the sight of all those massive antennae clustered on one field invoked visions of E.T. popping in for a visit."
And william_lorenz writes "Our own group from Ohio made contacts all over the United States and had a great time doing it, camping out in tents and running multiple battery-operated radios and make-shift antennas throughout the day and night. We even played with some Slow Scan TV! What are your stories?"
Seems unlikely it's the only country not to have done so ... bluethundr writes "On the flipside of a story from yesterday the Register reports today: 'Malam Nuhu Ribadu says Nigeria is the only country in the world that has failed to apply special laws or establish dedicated "front offices" to combat the crimes.'"
Are you pumping what you think you're pumping? couch_warrior writes "It was noted in a recent /. inquiry that EPA estimates of mileage vary from real-life experience. While there are several factors that can affect this, one major but often overlooked factor is that the amount of gasoline contained in a supposed 'gallon' varies by up to 10% due to gas pump fraud. Two illustrative stories show localized evidence of this scam, but few states regulate gas pumps effectively. The laws are on the books, but enforcement is typically lax. Cynics might speculate that this is because both the State and the Fed are getting a cut of the illegal proceeds. It is a way for them to increase the tax revenue on fuel, without taking the political hit for raising taxes. A challenge for /. readers -- go buy some gasoline in graduated containers, and check for yourself [avoid 1,5, and 10 gallon sizes; many states use these for testing purposes and the computers inside the pumps 'catch up' temporarily at these intervals]. Persons of conscience might feel motivated to flood their local state weights and measures bureau with complaints (if test results warranted :-)"
Never beam your secrets in a cornfield. bgumm writes "Hot on the heels of the Texas DOT's WiFi stories, here comes one from the corn state, Iowa. The Iowa DOT and an Iowan wireless network company, I-Spot Access, have partnered to offer WiFi at six highway rest stops across the state. USA Today picked up the story, as did the Des Moines Register..."
And for those in a state too backward to have rest-stop WiFi just yet, Porsupah writes "WirelessWeek is reporting that Ricochet has been sold on again; this time, to YDI Wireless. Bay Area readers may fondly remember the company as bringing flat-rate 28.8k wireless connectivity to all of the area several years ago for $30/mo, before expanding aggressively to cover several other major US metropolitan areas, financed by MCI, with a nominal 128kbps service at $75/mo. After bankruptcy, Aerie Networks bought some of the remnants, relaunched in San Diego and Denver, and then.. nothing. What next?"
...is total and complete FUD. Come on... they searched for "Olympic gold metals." You can't judge the accuracy of the search engine by a query that only finds mistakes. And the number-one Google result for "fastest processor currently available" claimed it to be the Athlon 1.3GHz.
Overall, the biggest problem with the new MSN search seems to be that it doesn't ignore words like "the" and "what" which shouldn't be in your search in the first place. I hate Microsoft and their anticompetitive tactics just as much as the next guy, but how is this article any better?
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
Does anyone think that microsoft may try to capitalize on people's fears of Google having complete access to email and the like? Seems like it might be a good option for them to attempt even though it would be pure hypocrisy.
GroupShares Inc. - A Free and Interactive Stock Market Community
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artlu.net
When I moved back from switzerland where I had a dual ISDN line in 1994 to santa cruz, i got a ricochet modem. It was really wonderful, albeit very slow. I could go up into the hills between my house and UCSC and sit out on the field, something i can't do too efficiently nowadays. It was fun while it lasted!
Assuming this is correct, of course. Also, according to this, copyright protected discs are only banned from using the CDDA logo.
More accurately, "If it's not redbook, it's not CDDA!"
I go to school in Iowa and my parents live in Texas, so I drive across both states pretty frequently. TxDOT doesn't spend a lot of money on rest stop maintenance, so there may be WiFi, but the bathrooms are nasty. (Iowa rest stops are very nicely outfitted, however, but that's not too surprising, since I-80 is one of the major freight corridors in the US.)
Dance like nobody's watching. Sing like you're in the shower. Fuck like you're being filmed.
For those who travel cheap, a lot of KOAs are also being wired as hot spots. Unfortunately, the access charges tend to be rather steep. I was told at the KOA in Cedar City, Utah that it'd be $3.95 for one hour of access. I get the impression that flat-rate packages are a much better deal, though.
Microsoft delenda est!
Umm...my milage figures are pretty accurate by my best guesses. It's consistant, and my car actually keeps track of it's milage, both in real time, and over the last 99+ gallons of gas used. It's a pontiac bonneville, but I think quite a few of GM's line has the same features.
This has the makings of a great documentary.
1) Test the accuracy of the gas pumps for one specific vendor. Inform vendor of results.
--show retest done next day, next week, and the following month . . . assuming of course it's not an honest mistake that will be fixed.
2) Get candid interviews with patrons of the station as they watch the video showing the bad measurments and the managments response when they are informed.
3) Show scenes from the class action lawsuit filed on behalf of anyone who bought gas from specific vendor in the time frame the testing was performed.
4) Hold flash mob at specific gas station to get incredible riot like footage to hype the film
5) profit.
"Some people take one of those red, five-gallon containers, fill it up with five gallons of gas and they think that's accurate,'' Pedersen said. "Those portable containers are not calibrated and different weather conditions can change the amount they hold. They are not an accurate measure of five gallons of gas.''
On the other side MSN (and also Yahoo) use "soul-sucking" redirect links on the serch results, instead of direct links. That way they track what you click in.
In the aspect of privacy concerns, I prefer choosing not using a particular email service than copy and paste the url of every result im interested in.
And one curiosity: Microsoft seens to put high wheight on links already clicked, I searched (in another browser) the terms Ive searched before in my tests (low used terms) and the ones Ive clicked are now on the top.
What also generated a bizzar effect, one of the sites Ive clicked returned now 11 results (in the first page) and the term Ive search are secundaries on those pages (internal links for the same page).
PS.: Goggle also use redirect links, but in very rare ocassions that I couldnt determine exactly (it have happended to me just a couple of times)
About the quality of the results, its a shame. It couldnt find two informational sites I own (although, in one case, all the resulting pages had links to my site) and in the other case the top results were very shallow (term used once in the middle of the text and the sites werent about the subject) even existing thounsands of sites specifically about the subject.
Google and yahoo find those two sites easily
I read the articles. The KCBS (2) article is interesting. They say that the state tolerates an error of 6 cubic inches in 5 gallons, and that the first pump he tested was off by 50% more than that. Wow! 50% more that legal! But how much is that?
.5% low, but really that's pretty close to the mark. This is nothing compared to, say, the decrease in energy resulting from the mandated blending of ethanol with gasoline.
.1 gallon of 11.3 gallons, except for one time when it was considerably more -- and I called the state Weights and Measures people to report that station. The number is on a sticker on the gas pump, might as well attempt to make the system work. Anyway, since it always takes the same amount of gas, I have to think that most stations are either accurate or all cheating by the same amount.
Well, 5 gallons is 1155 cubic inches, so 6 cubic inches is one-half of one percent. This pump that was off was off one-quarter percent more than that. 1/4% is 5 cents on a 20 dollar fillup.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if gas stations try to hit that
In my experience, when the needle in my MR2 gets to E, it always takes within
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I thought liquids (of a given mass) changed volume very little in relation to temperature and pressure.
I don't know about anything else, but gasoline, diesel fuel and crude oil all change volume significantly with any temperature variations at all.
I have written substantial amounts of logging software for the petroleum industry, from drilling to retail gas stations, and temperature corrections are always a big part of the formulas.
When dipping a gas tank manually (using a dipstick), your friendly pump jockey has to consult a chart of temperature corrections to calculate the actual amount of gas in the tank. In many (most - maybe all) jurisdictions underground gas storage tanks have to be dipped and logged daily, and balanced against the volume of gasoline or diesel sold for the purpose of guarding against undetected leaks. When you think about it, you can see that an underground tank could leak for years and the first thing anyone would know about it is when gas starts leaking into the basement of the shop across the street or something.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
It doesn't matter that it is a joke. What matters to the record companies is that you have to take pro-active measures to defeat it (holding down the shift button included). That is the trigger for the anti-circumvention clause in the DMCA, and that is what they will be able to go after you for. Defeating the anti-circumvention device is a crime they can send you to jail for, as they can't get you for a free-use copy for your car mp3 player, and non-free-use copyright infringement isn't exactly up there with murder in the eyes of most judges/juries or the law.
I guess this means if you rip it with GRIP in Linux or with iTunes on the Mac, you're in the clear DMCA wise.....
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
You're forgetting about liquid congruity and cohesion. You know how you can never quite get all the water out of a water bottle when you're drinking from one? Liquid sticks to the surface it touches, and you always end up leaving some behind. Another example of this would be to look closely at a glass of water, and watch how the liquid creeps up the side of the glass instead of staying level. The larger the container, the greater the inner surface area and thus, the more liquid you will leave behind.
You're going to make your test inaccurate merely by transferring the gasoline from one container to another. You will *always* have less than you started with after you transfer liquid. In addition, you're also going to have to worry about evaporation, especially if you do your test very far from the gas station. It is generally considered unsafe to transport liquid fuels in standard sealed containers, particularly unstable ones like gasoline, so some is going to evaporate while you travel. That's why an accurate container must be brought on-site.
Seems to me that a CD which that [sic] requires any software installed for it to be played by a standard CD drive is by definition at least "brokenware," or perhaps "meddleware." What if it's being used in a computer without an operating system supported by these "playback software components"?
...
... This 'desktop war' is a straw man. Record companies should be fighting the "boot CD" war, and take it to the 'game console' level of ease-of-use ...
What if its a boot CD that comes with its own operating system, and if you want to play it in your computer, you just boot from the CD?
I can see music companies going in this direction; after all they have enjoyed a very lucrative relationship with audio components such as the CD and DVD player, whose sole task (opposed to the PC's multi-tasking) while you are using them is to serve a single task: playing an artists' audio CD.
How long until we see a smash underground 'demo CD' from a rockin' new act that uses vmlinuz and a custom 'record company distro' to play their tunes for you on your PC, single-task use only like... ?
PC's operating system is its strength, and weakness. The fact that anyone can have that processor running any OS they want, at any time, is an often overlooked fact;; music-co's are only suffering at the hands of mp3, because they've ignored the bigger picture: if they come to the table with their own boot CD's, in a way which breaks rules for rock and roll reasons, then suddenly the PC is a PSX2, and its a new world order for music and video artists
I'd quite happily boot my tiBook with a new CD from an artist, if it contained shit and did shit I'd never seen before on my PC, and if there were a way for me to turn off my hard dis (i.e. physically disconnect my USB ram-chip, or something...)
That shouldn't be too hard to do, now
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Pumps do drift in calibration, but they are calibrated to measure at max. output rate into free air, which allows for a certain amount of vapour, bubbling etc. Stick the nozzle in the tank, crack the valve open and fill as slowly as you can stand - the pump now under-reads the delivered quantity, because it is delivering against static pressure.
Try it; I've regularly achieved 7-10% more for free on a whole tankful. That's a big deal here in the UK, at 80p+ /litre - about $5.20/US gallon - and no, I don't feel the least bit bad about cheating the Taxman in this way.
Note that many pump are set to time-out after a few minutes to avoid the potential for being left running onto the forecourt.