At least I can say one good thing about G.W. Bush... you know where he stands on things, because he doesn't change his answers, speaches, or actions...
Dude, there are two things wrong with this:
It's perfectly fine to change your mind when new data comes to light, holding on to a belief against evidence is stupidity.
Bush does change his standpoint from time to time, just look at the whole "Let's ignore Bin laden" to "war on terr".
Really, Bush and his handlers have run your country into the ground, demonstrated their complete lack of respect for human and civil rights as well as your own constitution and yet there are sheep like you who just bend over while praising the Great Leader.
I mean, doesn't a graph like this one tell you that Reagan, Bush I and Bush II are not conservatives, but rather creditcard maxing out white trash?
You simply have the wrong idea about what is the right thing to do:
The Right Thing to do is to use only Free software. The Wrong Thing to do is to award purveyers of non-free software.
Using non-free software without paying for it, is slightly less wrong than paying for it, so it's the preferable choice, if you absolutely have to use that software.
Using Windows awards Microsoft with a larger marketshare, that's the reason you shouldn't use windows, pirated or not.
When I say "It" I refer to the huge fines that the EU typically uses to punish pricefixing.
What americans don't seem to understand is that the EU is first and foremost a common market, it's an organization built to enable free (and fair) trade, restraint of trade and of competetion in EU is a capital crime and is punished until it stops.
I, for one, have no doubt that the EU will fine MS until it complies with the demands as MS' crime strikes right at the heart and soul of EU by limiting competetion.
and I really doubt that the region derives actual profit from paying to use MS products.
There are two different situations here, short term and long term.
In the short term people would be quite happy to pirate windows, it worked for years it will work again.
In the long term you are dead wrong, if the EU simply outlawed windows then we'd see massive investments in Mac and Linux (both OS and apps) and eventually even games availability would be on par with windows.
MS is a money pit that's sucking many GigaEUR out of EU every year and leaves us with less freedom than we had, so I would really like to see all MS products outlawed or at least their EU profits taxed 100%.
Uh, no. Sorry, but the US has the most productive people in the world, along with highest per-capita income among comparable countries (certain middle eastern countries have a higher per-capita for obvious reasons). I don't feel like looking up the stats.
I'd like to see your "Uh, no. Sorry", and raise you with a "nuh uh":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
As you can see we (Denmark) is ranked slightly above the US and we *have* over 5 weeks of mandatory hollidays each year, free healthcare (my granny just had a double bypass within hours of feeling ill, total cost: 0) and free education.
While you are at it, examine this list, we are at a respectable 25'th place and solidly in the black, see if you can figure out who the deadbeat who is an order of magniture worse than the second worst is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ current_account_balance
The US economy, civil rights and customer rights are in the crapper and your current administration is not helping matters.
Sound and network can hang off USB, that leaves video which isn't really that big a connector and you need the video board internally anyway, so it's not a candidate for externalization anyway.
You are right of course, SAP DB has the same problem, it was written by germans in pascal and for some reason they use german TLAs everywhere in stead of usable names so it's very hard to follow.
I think you might be right that OOo is more or less SUN only, but I think that's fine.
The real value in OOo's license is that: If there is anything you really want to have fixed in OOo then you can or at least you can pay a consultant to do it for you.
As it stands very few people seem to have enough of a problem with OOo to make changes, but if MS was to turn into rubble tomorrow then we'd be able to carry on on OOo, even if it meant having to pay for some of the missing features.
With MS Office you are screwed if there is something you'd like that MS doesn't want to put in.
Personally I couldn't care less, OOo does everything I'd want from a wordprocessor/spreadsheet, which isn't much anyway.
Bluray has an additional layer of pr. disk programmable DRM called B+, which means that to play bluray you need to be able to emulate an entire player so the B+ code can run and help decode the content.
The problem with this is that it's much harder to make a working player for Bluray than for HDCP which has only AACS.
AACS will never be 100% broken like CSS was as it's based on AES not some dinky home made crypto, like the stuff used in HDCP.
HDDVD is better than bluray, because it's simpler.
on
The Great HDCP Fiasco
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· Score: 1
Bluray has B+ (in addition to AACS) which is basicly pr-disk programmable DRM and the ability to mess with your players firmware.
HDDVD doesn't have B+ only AACS.
AACS is bad enough, but it's not programmable in the same way as B+.
With HDDVD we will be able to play the movie with only the title key or a player key, either can be obtained from a hacked player, if only the title keys are being distributed then They(tm) cannot determine what player has been cracked and they can't disable it.
We'd need to keep cracking players to get at the player keys because there is a risk that the cracked players are exposed and their keys disabled for new disks.
Once the player key is disabled the player key can be released and all old title keys can be deleted.
All in all HDDVD(AACS) will be slightly harder to play than standard DVD(CSS) and there will be more work involved in distributing the (player/title) keys to decode the movies, but it's all doable.
Bluyray on the other hand is a nightmare where every single disk could demand special workarounds.
Hopefully the format curse of Sony will kill bluray.
1) Yes, all CRT PJs you and I are likely to buy are used, because they are very, very well built and very expensive when new, but because of the extravagant quality of the hardware they will easily last 50000 hours, more if you service it properly (yes tubes will need to be changed every 10-15k hours).
2) No CRT pj accepts a digital input, except for the ones that have digital input cards, noone in their right mind uses svideo, that's SD for $gods sake!!! We *all* use RGB, just like VGA monitors.
3) The lousiest CRT PJ will do 10000:1, it can do 100% black, you can't beat that, your digital flashlight will do light or dark grey, not black.
4) You are quite right, long-thow lenses are quite rare, but they do exist and because CRT lens systems are all built by 3M you'd be able to source a lens system from a different make of PJ for your own, the HD10 system is quite popular on LC 8" and 9" units.
5) You are completely wrong here, the quietest CRT PJ is completely silent and runs without any fans at all. The PJ I have (an Ampro 4200) did make a huge amount of noise, but I have modded it to use larger and quieter fans so it's almost inaudible even if I sit less than 1m away.
The best CRT PJ in the world (a Marquee 9500 or a Sony G90) can be had for 9k, but a very respectable 8" machine can be had for $3500 with a full 12 months warranty, beat that with a flashlight.
Re:It's more then simply not liking it.
on
A Look at Google DRM
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The ones that a bluray movie *CAN* demand to speak to, just like it can demand that you buy a $50 tub of popcorn which comes with a watch-once-code on it.
Bluray DRM is programable and can do whatever it wants to screw you over, including messing with your players firmware.
If bluray wins the format war you can kiss all your rights goodbye, because the terms for watching movies can change movie by movie, so they can slowly ratchet up the pain with each new release.
The big problem with bluray DRM is not what it demands from the player, it's what it allows the producers to do over time.
HD-DVD doesn't have this particular problem, it only has plain AACS, which is bad enough on its own, but at least it's not programable.
All common software becoming Open Source is as natural and certain as gravity.
There will always be an edge where obscurity allows non-Free software to live, but once the software enters mainstream there will be a limited time before a Free competitor takes over.
The current situation is quite extraordinary, once proprietary OSs (MS windows in particular) are scoured from the worlds harddrives (yes it may take another 20 years), they will never again be allowed in that space.
Where Open Source advances it rarely retreats, so OSS market/mind-share will only ratchet upwards, vendors of non-Free software will loosen their hold from time to time and every single time OSS will be there to take up the slack.
Remember: Software is like sex, it's better when its free.
You are not quite correct, yes you can pay $8500 for a top of the line CRT projector, but that will do 1500 X 1200 ANSI pixels at a contrast ratio of 30000:1 and a minimum tube life of 10000 hours.
If all you want is a lowres PJ then you can do 720p for much less (around $500-$700) with contrast ratios around 15000:1 and a tube life around 8000 hours.
CRT projectors are much cheaper than LCD/DLP/LCOS devices, both to buy and run (tubes are more expensive, but last 3-10 times longer than bulbs), but only if you remember to buy used PJs, new ones are only for the stupidly rich and the military simulators.
There are exactly two advantages in a digital flashlight over a CRT PJ, namely light output and portability.
My Ampro 4200G hurts my eyes on a full white screen, I don't need more light than that.
If you want a PJ for movies then do yourself a favour; look over this website http://curtpalme.com/> and try to go and see a CRT, you will want to own one.
As you say plenty of CRTs do 1080p today, even projectors, so it's not the CRTs that can't handle the resolution.
1080i is popular with producers of realtime content (read: sports) and cheapo content where they tape the video rather than film.
All the quality shows get filmed and then digitized later on.
1080i uses only slightly more bandwidth than 720p, but if you fudge it, it's about the same.
I think the producers of the content want to use 1080i because they get to send out 60 frames pr. second (that end up looking like crap on a de-interlased display) and thus better capture fast events, like sports.
720p seems to be favoured by the quality shows and it makes sense that getting 24 or 30 full frames pr. second is just right for that sort of material.
1080p is twice as expensive in bits/second as the two other modes, so it's going to be a tough sell with the beancounters.
My wishlist for resolutions: 1080p, 720p, 540p (quite a distance here) 1080i, 576i (aka PAL), 480i (aka NTSC)
I *hate* interlaced, it should be illegal to produce new content that is interlaced.
Interlacing full frames so it's possible to deinterlace back to the original frame is slightly less criminal and the only reason DVD doesn't suck completely (YUV anyone?)
The drive is not involved in region coding when the player does DeCSS in software in stead of cooperating with the drive about it, so all you need to do is use a user-loyal player in stead of a broken one.
Slashdot Mirror
No, they probably realize that SQL is case insensitive, so foo FOO foO FoO and Foo are all the same name.
You can force it to be case sensitive by quoting the string so "foo" and "Foo" are different identifiers.
Dude, there are two things wrong with this:
Really, Bush and his handlers have run your country into the ground, demonstrated their complete lack of respect for human and civil rights as well as your own constitution and yet there are sheep like you who just bend over while praising the Great Leader.
I mean, doesn't a graph like this one tell you that Reagan, Bush I and Bush II are not conservatives, but rather creditcard maxing out white trash?
Doesn't conservatism mean spending less money?
You simply have the wrong idea about what is the right thing to do:
The Right Thing to do is to use only Free software.
The Wrong Thing to do is to award purveyers of non-free software.
Using non-free software without paying for it, is slightly less wrong than paying for it, so it's the preferable choice, if you absolutely have to use that software.
Using Windows awards Microsoft with a larger marketshare, that's the reason you shouldn't use windows, pirated or not.
It's better to use a Free system and leave the non-free stuff alone.
If you must use non-free software then it's better to not pay for it, because if you pay them then they will just keep making non-free software.
It might not be such a stupid idea.
No *user* of the system could ever be expected to pay for access, but you could easily demand a small fee for all receivers.
If Gallileo is designed so receivers are simpler and cheaper than navstar then the total price for a receiver might end up being cheaper.
... or because they are really US fanbois that will defend any USian entity against any outsider no matter what.
When I say "It" I refer to the huge fines that the EU typically uses to punish pricefixing.
What americans don't seem to understand is that the EU is first and foremost a common market, it's an organization built to enable free (and fair) trade, restraint of trade and of competetion in EU is a capital crime and is punished until it stops.
I, for one, have no doubt that the EU will fine MS until it complies with the demands as MS' crime strikes right at the heart and soul of EU by limiting competetion.
and I really doubt that the region derives actual profit from paying to use MS products.
There are two different situations here, short term and long term.
In the short term people would be quite happy to pirate windows, it worked for years it will work again.
In the long term you are dead wrong, if the EU simply outlawed windows then we'd see massive investments in Mac and Linux (both OS and apps) and eventually even games availability would be on par with windows.
MS is a money pit that's sucking many GigaEUR out of EU every year and leaves us with less freedom than we had, so I would really like to see all MS products outlawed or at least their EU profits taxed 100%.
I don't know about him, but that's exactly how I feel, I don't mind DVD because CSS has been broken and I can circumvent all the DRM brokenness.
I'll never buy an AACS encumbered disk as long as I can't reliably play it on my Linux box.
Once someone manages to extract the player keys for a player I'll be happy to buy movies that were mastered before that.
You have got to be kidding!
You don't strip ads from messenger? I find that incredible.
Apps that waste screen space with ads are complete eyesores and must be eliminated, either through using other software or by stripping out the ads.
Why wouldn't you invest a little time in removing annoying ads that do you no good, do you enjoy being taken advantage of or something?
You are completely wrong.
The data on the disk is compressed and encrypted with AES.
The data going to the display is uncompressed and encrypted with HDCP.
The two are not compatible, at all, in any way.
Sound and network can hang off USB, that leaves video which isn't really that big a connector and you need the video board internally anyway, so it's not a candidate for externalization anyway.
Point well taken.
You are right of course, SAP DB has the same problem, it was written by germans in pascal and for some reason they use german TLAs everywhere in stead of usable names so it's very hard to follow.
I think you might be right that OOo is more or less SUN only, but I think that's fine.
The real value in OOo's license is that: If there is anything you really want to have fixed in OOo then you can or at least you can pay a consultant to do it for you.
As it stands very few people seem to have enough of a problem with OOo to make changes, but if MS was to turn into rubble tomorrow then we'd be able to carry on on OOo, even if it meant having to pay for some of the missing features.
With MS Office you are screwed if there is something you'd like that MS doesn't want to put in.
Personally I couldn't care less, OOo does everything I'd want from a wordprocessor/spreadsheet, which isn't much anyway.
Sigh.
Bluray is worse than HDDVD for one reason: B+.
Bluray has an additional layer of pr. disk programmable DRM called B+, which means that to play bluray you need to be able to emulate an entire player so the B+ code can run and help decode the content.
The problem with this is that it's much harder to make a working player for Bluray than for HDCP which has only AACS.
AACS will never be 100% broken like CSS was as it's based on AES not some dinky home made crypto, like the stuff used in HDCP.
Bluray has B+ (in addition to AACS) which is basicly pr-disk programmable DRM and the ability to mess with your players firmware.
HDDVD doesn't have B+ only AACS.
AACS is bad enough, but it's not programmable in the same way as B+.
With HDDVD we will be able to play the movie with only the title key or a player key, either can be obtained from a hacked player, if only the title keys are being distributed then They(tm) cannot determine what player has been cracked and they can't disable it.
We'd need to keep cracking players to get at the player keys because there is a risk that the cracked players are exposed and their keys disabled for new disks.
Once the player key is disabled the player key can be released and all old title keys can be deleted.
All in all HDDVD(AACS) will be slightly harder to play than standard DVD(CSS) and there will be more work involved in distributing the (player/title) keys to decode the movies, but it's all doable.
Bluyray on the other hand is a nightmare where every single disk could demand special workarounds.
Hopefully the format curse of Sony will kill bluray.
Yeah, I can understand your neighbour being pissed, going around helping the guy out and taking in some of the freeloaders that crowd his pool.
Just be sure you don't offer him a beer and use of your bbq as well and he'll go all crazy and start waving guns around.
1) Yes, all CRT PJs you and I are likely to buy are used, because they are very, very well built and very expensive when new, but because of the extravagant quality of the hardware they will easily last 50000 hours, more if you service it properly (yes tubes will need to be changed every 10-15k hours).
2) No CRT pj accepts a digital input, except for the ones that have digital input cards, noone in their right mind uses svideo, that's SD for $gods sake!!! We *all* use RGB, just like VGA monitors.
3) The lousiest CRT PJ will do 10000:1, it can do 100% black, you can't beat that, your digital flashlight will do light or dark grey, not black.
4) You are quite right, long-thow lenses are quite rare, but they do exist and because CRT lens systems are all built by 3M you'd be able to source a lens system from a different make of PJ for your own, the HD10 system is quite popular on LC 8" and 9" units.
5) You are completely wrong here, the quietest CRT PJ is completely silent and runs without any fans at all. The PJ I have (an Ampro 4200) did make a huge amount of noise, but I have modded it to use larger and quieter fans so it's almost inaudible even if I sit less than 1m away.
The best CRT PJ in the world (a Marquee 9500 or a Sony G90) can be had for 9k, but a very respectable 8" machine can be had for $3500 with a full 12 months warranty, beat that with a flashlight.
The ones that a bluray movie *CAN* demand to speak to, just like it can demand that you buy a $50 tub of popcorn which comes with a watch-once-code on it.
Bluray DRM is programable and can do whatever it wants to screw you over, including messing with your players firmware.
If bluray wins the format war you can kiss all your rights goodbye, because the terms for watching movies can change movie by movie, so they can slowly ratchet up the pain with each new release.
The big problem with bluray DRM is not what it demands from the player, it's what it allows the producers to do over time.
HD-DVD doesn't have this particular problem, it only has plain AACS, which is bad enough on its own, but at least it's not programable.
All common software becoming Open Source is as natural and certain as gravity.
There will always be an edge where obscurity allows non-Free software to live, but once the software enters mainstream there will be a limited time before a Free competitor takes over.
The current situation is quite extraordinary, once proprietary OSs (MS windows in particular) are scoured from the worlds harddrives (yes it may take another 20 years), they will never again be allowed in that space.
Where Open Source advances it rarely retreats, so OSS market/mind-share will only ratchet upwards, vendors of non-Free software will loosen their hold from time to time and every single time OSS will be there to take up the slack.
Remember: Software is like sex, it's better when its free.
You are not quite correct, yes you can pay $8500 for a top of the line CRT projector, but that will do 1500 X 1200 ANSI pixels at a contrast ratio of 30000:1 and a minimum tube life of 10000 hours.
If all you want is a lowres PJ then you can do 720p for much less (around $500-$700) with contrast ratios around 15000:1 and a tube life around 8000 hours.
CRT projectors are much cheaper than LCD/DLP/LCOS devices, both to buy and run (tubes are more expensive, but last 3-10 times longer than bulbs), but only if you remember to buy used PJs, new ones are only for the stupidly rich and the military simulators.
There are exactly two advantages in a digital flashlight over a CRT PJ, namely light output and portability.
My Ampro 4200G hurts my eyes on a full white screen, I don't need more light than that.
If you want a PJ for movies then do yourself a favour; look over this website http://curtpalme.com/> and try to go and see a CRT, you will want to own one.
As you say plenty of CRTs do 1080p today, even projectors, so it's not the CRTs that can't handle the resolution.
1080i is popular with producers of realtime content (read: sports) and cheapo content where they tape the video rather than film.
All the quality shows get filmed and then digitized later on.
1080i uses only slightly more bandwidth than 720p, but if you fudge it, it's about the same.
I think the producers of the content want to use 1080i because they get to send out 60 frames pr. second (that end up looking like crap on a de-interlased display) and thus better capture fast events, like sports.
720p seems to be favoured by the quality shows and it makes sense that getting 24 or 30 full frames pr. second is just right for that sort of material.
1080p is twice as expensive in bits/second as the two other modes, so it's going to be a tough sell with the beancounters.
My wishlist for resolutions: 1080p, 720p, 540p (quite a distance here) 1080i, 576i (aka PAL), 480i (aka NTSC)
I *hate* interlaced, it should be illegal to produce new content that is interlaced.
Interlacing full frames so it's possible to deinterlace back to the original frame is slightly less criminal and the only reason DVD doesn't suck completely (YUV anyone?)
Or in short: Right on!
I'm an old man, my memory seems to be failing me, maybe it was w98 that nt5 was supposed to ship along with...
Needless to say, nt5 didn't happen and w2k was too late so I ditched windows altogether.
If ms hadn't lied about when nt5 was going to ship then I'd probably still be stuck on windows.
The drive is not involved in region coding when the player does DeCSS in software in stead of cooperating with the drive about it, so all you need to do is use a user-loyal player in stead of a broken one.