...there was good news, too. People who valued their privacy, and wanted to be viewed as more than "consumers" tied to a number, found solace in Intel's other announcement about the P!!!. Intel said when announcing the serial #'s that they'd also be implementing in a later stepping a hardware Random Number Generator. Privacy advocates praised that as much as they [expletive deleted] the dreaded Internet-readable serial #. Those new P!!!'s, originally due out late last year, were supposed to include a sensor to read "thermal noise," the completely random motion of atomic particles, and make those random values available to encryption applications. The importance of this is that truly random numbers cannot be calculated in software, they can only be approximated in software, through the use of "pseudo-random number generators." Those PRNGs are currently one of the weakest points (theoretically, at least) in implementing crypto, because a flaw in the "randomness" of their numbers could render encrypted data vulnerable. But natural phenomena like the motion of atoms is truly random, and the proposed Intel sensor would have therefore contributed substantially to the security of data. And yet, nothing has been heard of it since early last year, when it was announced along with the CPU IDs. The most likely scenario is that the utter backlash against the CPU serial #s caused Intel to completely drop its strategy of integrating "e-commerce" and data security features, which is a shame because hardware random number generation would have been almost as big a step forward for privacy as the CPU ID was a step back. But I still like to think that the NSA had something to do with it, and mutter under my breath "Damn gubbmint, takin' ma guns and ma crypto...";-)
I mean, this is Intel. They're partners with Rambus, and own a big chunk of the company, after all. No one was buying Rambus memory, at least not in the quantities Intel and Rambus had counted on, so it may have been agreed that Intel would buy the excess Rambus memory, giving Rambus a better bottom line, and contributing to a lower cost for Rambus later when the Willamette systems debut, and the "noise" issue with some MTH i820 systems is probably just an excuse to let them do this. It also gives a convenient explanation for something which Intel has been saying--that Willamette will use Rambus exclusively and no MTH-type devices will be available for it.
Now, this is a "conspiracy theory" which makes sense. It's only "certain" MTH-equipped mobos that are affected, so the total cost will probably run less than we think. It gives Rambus, partially owned by Intel and a close partner in Intel's strategy to corner the market (licensing fees in the millions, folks) on RAM used on Intel systems, a better bottom line. It gives Intel a PR-friendly excuse to drop the MTH and thus all SDRAM use in its future Willamette chipsets. I see a net gain for Intel here, not a net loss. Intel has refused to even consider the DDR SDRAM which the rest of the industry wants to use, even though it'll be faster and more cost-effective than RAMBUS. I mean, come on--Rambus has to run at 400Mhz (800 effective, two cycles per clock) to give performance comparable to SDRAM running at 133Mhz! It's obviously inferior if it has to run that much faster to attain similar performance. While 400Mhz RAMBUS does slightly outperform 133Mhz SDRAM, it ain't enough to justify 3x the price. Imagine when DDR memory and supporting VIA chipsets are available toward the end of the year--133Mhz DDR SDRAM will kick the shit out of whatever RAMBUS has available at the time (they have trouble producing their part in quantity at 400Mhz, for heaven's sake!). Face it: RAMBUS memory is an Intel scam. It has to run 3 times as fast as SDRAM to compete with it, and yet it costs 3 times the price. Wake up and smell the Intel monopolists. Just as Microsoft used IE to leverage itself into cyberspace, Intel wants to use RAMBUS to leverage itself into a RAM/chipset monopoly, what with licensing fees and all. Don't fall for it. It's just another trick from Intel, the same people who brought us the same damn processor core for five years with only minor tweaks.
They could patent anything they want, but only patenting their specific code or methodology would stand up in Court. MP3 is a publicly-usable standard, just like MPEG-1, PNG, JPEG, etc. It's not like GIF, which is patented under increasingly stupid terms. But the interesting thing about MPEG-3 (MP3) is that, unlike with MPEG-1, the standard refers only to the way the finished file is constructed and how it can be decompressed, rather than covering the encoding process. Thus, there are many ways to encode a file to the MP3 standard, not just one standard implementation, but unlike AVI you don't need the codec installed for the specific encoder--a standards-compliant MP3 decoder will decode an MP3 encoded with any of the codecs. The problem is that the Fraunhoffer reference implementations were being widely used by people, without licensing fees, in many products, and Fraunhofer wanted money for its implementation. That codec arguably produces better-sounding results than others, like BLADE, preserving more of the important wave characteristics which make a song sound true to the original.wav, while cutting more of the unnecessary junk which can't be perceived by the human ear and thus just takes up space.
But, I repeat, MP3 format can be used by anyone, and it's only a certain way of encoding to that file format which was covered by Fraunhoffer. Any MP3 encoder which doesn't use Fraunhoffer's implementation will therefore be perfectly legal. In any event, I suspect that there'll be some way to plug any codec you want into LAME, and the Fraunhoffer codec is easily obtained from the Net.
Re:I shouldn't reply to a troll, BUT--an exception
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Quickies Rock!
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· Score: 1
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the "creative endeavors" as you call them, when they're genuinely funny and/or interesting. But, there are relatively few people on the main part of Slashdot who read at -1, so ultimately your audience is limited. Very limited when you consider that, except for trolls and moderators/sometime moderators, almost no one browses at -1. If you got 16 replies, I guarantee that 12 of them at least were from mods and trolls. And as for OOG, whom you mentioned, I consider him a character rather than a troll because he posts *on-topic* stuff. You and most trolls don't, and that's the point: people click on these topics to read discussion about the topic at hand, and the occasional marginally-related humor, not to read off-topic bullshit, no matter how "creative" or side-splitting.
As for how "moderators should follow the guidlines"--they usually do, which is why your posts get modded down. A funny one-liner can get modded up for being funny, but a lengthy off-topic post like the parent post here must be modded down for being off-topic or a troll because it takes up so much space that it detracts from the discussion of the article. Clicking down ten screens of off-topic stuff shouldn't be necessary, it it wouldn't be necessary if the idea I outlined above were embraced by the different parties. Ultimately, more people would see your posts if they were in a section dedicated to such posts, and I think that that would be a good thing. Your posts are funny, I enjoy reading them, and more people would enjoy them if they were someplace where people go specifically to see that sort of off-topic but humorous or interesting stuff. As it is, trolls and flamers are on a fast track towards making Slashdot a lot less easy to troll. At the current rate, it won't be long before the powers that be decide to make only logged-in anonymous posts possible, and delete the accounts and the posts of trolls and flamers. Then Slashdot would be effectively troll-proof and you'd never be able to post here again. Do you really think it would be that difficult for someone who works for Slashdot, if they were to decide to do it, to permanetly delete all troll or off-topic posts, and the accounts from which they came? Yeah, you could open another account, but your posts would be up for a couple minutes before they'd be deleted from the board, and of course there'd be no more "name recognition" for trolls who get accounts.
And, that wouldn't be a bad thing to do, either. I think the only reason Taco and Hemos haven't done it is out of respect for "openness" and a free community. But if trolling continues to escalate, so will their means to control it. This time last year the trolling and flaming was nice and moderate. Now, it's extreme and stupid and a waste of many people's time. The choice isn't mine, or the moderators, nor is the fault. The fault is with the trolls who post excessive and off-topic, and the choices are up to the Slashdot admins and the trolls. If trolls and flames get out of hand, the admins will surely stop it quite easily by deleting all troll posts and closing troll acounts. It could be implemented easily, into an Amazon-style 1-Click system for CmdrTaco and Hemos and Roblimo and Cowboy Neal or whoever else they want to, to have the power to just delete the trolls. But if the trolls start being reasonable, maybe it wouldn't have to come to that. The idea I had about a special area for trolling and flaming is just a possible suggestion, which would be up to the Slashdot admins to implement--*if* people such as yourself were to support the suggestion. If not, so what, I don't care, it was just a suggestion. But it's people such as yourself who are being unreasonable. You can't expect a long rambling post, even if totally hilarious, to be modded up as funny when the guidlines clearly call for it to be modded down as off-topic. To mod it down as a troll might not be fair, but to mod it down as off-topic surely is fair. I mean, my posting threshold is defaulted to +2, but I click in the little box to post at just 1 because this is an off-topic message and it's appropriate for me to give up that bonus to avoid bothering people who read at a default of +2, people who are clearly looking to read only good posts which are typically on-topic. If other people decide to mod this up, or down, that's fine, but I will not presume to automatically barge in and annoy people by posting this at +2. It's therefore not unreasonable to expect you to realize that, almost every time you post something off-topic, and long, it will get modded down to -1. And right it should, not because it isn't funny, but because this isn't the place. Someone else mentioned the "undocumented" forums on Slashdot as providing a good place for posts like yours. I don't think that's sufficient, because it provides even less of an audience than the main stories do. But if there were a forum linked to the main page for your sort of humor, and for trolls and flames and free-for-all orgies of unmoderated fun, I think that that should be sufficient to satisfy everyone, and to even give trolls a bigger, and willing, audience. It's just a suggestion, take it or leave it, but personally I'd like to see the inappropriate and ever-increasing trolling and off-topic stuff stop so that I can use all my mod points for moderating stuff up which deserves to be read, rather than modding stuff down which deserves to be ignored.
I shouldn't reply to a troll, BUT--an exception...
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Quickies Rock!
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· Score: 2
You know, this was funny. I was amused. I loved "The Wizard of OS." *BUT*, most importantly, this just isn't the place for these things. Most people don't even see them since they get modded down--rightfully so--soon after they get posted. The only reaon I ever see them is that I always browse at -1 because I very rarely, but sometimes do, get moderator points and feel some odd responsibility to browse that low.
Trolls, there are maybe ten people a day who actually see your long Portman-related ramblings, and pay any attention. Most never even see them. It's a waste of your time, and the time of everyone here at/.
Now, as for the Slashdot community, here's an odd idea. Why not, ladies and gentlemen, have a special area for trolls and would-be comedians? You know, a little link in the listing to the left on the main page, with a designated place to troll/perform Open Source stand-up. Trolls are here for attention and to try to be appreciated for their sense of humor, as well as to annoy people. If there were a designated "trolling-place," people who want a little comic relief or to get into flame-wars could click over and have a little fun, and many trolls would gladly go over there where people could actually read their stuff (they don't usually read it here since it quickly gets down-modded). Some would stay here to be annoying, but most would instead post in a place where their skills would be appreciated. After all, consider the alt.flame type groups on USENET--there's a sense of pride in places like that where people appreciate the ancient skills of trolling and flaming, whereas on the main pages of Slashdot the trolling and flamebait isn't appreciated. So, it has to be a disappointment all around.
Personally, I think this would be a productive idea if the good Commander and the powers that be would consider trying it on a trial basis. Just my two cents, fellas, no harm intended...
3Dfx's drivers may be much more advanced than those of other companies, but there's the rub: most other companies are not as good with their drivers as 3Dfx. That's why nVidia has incentive to remain closed-source--because their own drivers are pretty darned good, while the drivers of S3 and ATI totally suck and Matrox's drivers have only recently started to mature in terms of 3D acceleration and OpenGL.
What that means is, by opening the source to its drivers, nVidia is inviting the competition to inspect the secret sauce and help them in developing their own recipes. It's terrible drivers which have prevented ATI from becoming a big player in performance 3D, and mediocre drivers which held Matrox back. nVidia would lose an edge if it were to open up its driver source.
However, what the Open Source community needs to do with companies like nVida is remind them that their real advantage isn't in proprietary drivers, but in the superiority of their hardware. (For example, 3Dfx's drivers are typically great, but right now their soon-to-be-released Voodoo 4/5 boards are getting stomped by the GeForce 2 from nVidia thanks to its superior silicon). If they can be convinced that opening their driver source will yield better drivers and allow them to spend more R&D time on keeping their hardware more advanced than the competition's, then they'll do that, because nVidia's best advantage is its hardware--its driver advantages are more fleeting. What's needed is an effective evangelist to show them the way, like when a certain Apple CEO said to a certain soft-drink executive "Do you want to sell sugared water all your life, or do you want to change the world?" Or, when a certain essay caused Netscape to open the Mozilla code.
The key here is that open source's big players need to start pushing for these code openings. There's no earthly reason why nVidia couldn't be made to realize how well it could capitalize on its hardware advantages if it didn't have to put so many resources into driver dev.
As a final note, I doubt they could have been ignorant of their use of GPL'd code. Their driver dev people don't just go around using source code they find on the Net, without reading what the licensing terms are. That doesn't happen in a company like nVidia which is known for its good driver development team, a big company which surely has an interest in keeping its programmers from making costly mistakes by plagiarizing the IP of other companies. I'd be willing to bet that their use of GPL'd code was on purpose, not an accident, and that there's other GPL'd code hidden in those binary-only drivers. The corporate attitude is probably that stealing open-source code is okay. And that's yet another reason that we should try extra hard, but with honey rather than vinegar, to get them to realize the merits of open-source driver development.
>> For example, in Britain they can legally force you to decrypt data, >> while in the U.S. all I would have to do is invoke my fifth amendment >> right against self-incrimination. > > It wouldn't do you any good. The Fifth applies to the state's compelling > you to testify against your self. It says precisely nothing against > your case. There is no > Fifth Amendment right to refuse to comply with a search warrant.
You cannot order up a search warrant in the U.S. to force a person to decrypt his own encrypted messages or data files. That doesn't fall under the rubric of a search warrant. Now, you could be ordered by a Court to produce the plaintext as part of testimony, under the threat of contempt of Court, *BUT*--and *here's the important part*, if the contents of the encrypted files would be self-incriminating, you don't have to decrypt them. Just say the magic words "On the advice of counsel I decline to answer, invoking my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution" and they can't make you decrypt the messages or data. But, the real kicker is, a defendant doesn't have to testify at his own trial. So, unless there were some other compelling reason for a defendant to testify, he wouldn't even have to utter those words (which a jury wouldn't like very much). Now, the prosecutor could in theory ask the judge to order decryption of the materials as part of the discovery process, but again the magic words come into play. If a police officer, however, executed a search warrant and seized my computer files, and told me to decrypt them, I'd say, "Fuck off porkmeister, and by the way I want an attorney so the questioning ends until I'm provided with one. And by the way, my drives are encrypted with 256-bit Blowfish *and* Triple-DES, and my RAM and swap partition are wiped with 32 pass extended character rotation on shutdown, so good luck." That is, they would be encrypted to that extent if I were a computer cracker, drug trafficker, arms dealer, etc. etc. As it is, the only encryption I use regularly is PGP, since I like to set a good example and to keep my conversations private, and a Windows program called Scramdisk which I use to keep my little sister and other users of my computer from accidentally tripping over my collection of bestiality pr0n.:-O
>> suppodedly only with warrant, but you and I both know the reality > > No I don't know the reality that you're talking about. Of course, > I'm just a ticket-writing donut-chomping cop, so I'd have no > idea what law-enforcement officers would do.
That would be the reality--I wish it were an alternate one, but it isn't--in which some law enforcement types get an "us-vs.-them" attitude about suspects, forgetting for the time being that such suspects are in fact innocent until proven guilty and still enjoy the protections afforded by a Constitution which our ancestors fought for. Not all cops are like that, but quite a few are. I have first-hand experience with police officers who are willing to engage in extortion and violate the rights of suspects. I won't re-hash the particular charges since they can be found in a prior posting, but suffice it to say that the arresting officer attempted to extort a confession by threatening to say that I was violent and un-cooperative unless I told him what he wanted to hear, resulting in a very high bail. Naturally, he said, if I told him what he wanted to hear then he'd say I was cooperative and the magistrate would set a low bail, but if not, he'd say I was violent an un-cooperative. He then lied to the magistrate when I refused to confess, resulting in excess bail--which in itself is a violation of Constitutional rights to a reasonable bail. I checked the statutes in my state, and that qualifies as extortion, a worse felony than the one I was arrested for. The case against me was eventually dismissed, BTW.
This isn't even that far off-topic, since the essence of our fears when broad surveillance initiatives like this new UK legislation is that these surveillance powers will be abused. If it were all about catching terrorists and kiddy porn traffickers and people like that, there wouldn't be much uproar. The problem is that the potential to abuse this system is inherent. Corrupt or misguided LEA officers could use such broad powers to open Hoover-esque files on citizens who aren't doing anything really illegal, but who go against the grain of society in moral or (ir)religious ways. LEA could intercept e-mail and read it for fun, or worse agents could surveil against people they personally don't like or knew in some other capacity. Government agencies could monitor dissidents or people who have libertarian values, just waiting for someone to make a small slip like mentioning pot use to give them an excuse to pounce or discredit. Agencies also have a tendency to hold grudges--in the US the IRS, for example, has been shown to repeatedly audit and harass people it doesn't like, like whistleblowers and people who have beaten them in tax court. The potential for abuse is limitless, and that's why such systems are inherently bad--not because of the system itself, but because of the people who use and abuse it.
Just one quick quote: "The mushrooming of surveillance has been explained by the sense of panic and crisis felt throughout the government during this period of extremely vocal dissent, large demonstrations, political and campus violence, and what at the time seemed the inauguration of a period of wide- spread anarchy. While officials... suggested that these crises justified the surveillance, they failed to recognize that the rights guaranteed by the constitution are constant and unbending to the temper of the times..."--Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, 1973
Using advanced context-based semantics, vast quantities of data can be filtered through the system continuously. That's what the Echelon system does. I can't seem to find the past Slashdot article, though I've searched, about the NSA patent on certain advanced ways to filter data, and its offer to sell some of those means to corporations which have the need to filter and categorize large databases of information, but there was such an article late last year.
In reality, the system could be set up to begin the filtering process at the level of large ISPs--easy enough in Britain since there are fewer ISPs than in the States. Also, it's been shown amply that, despite the U.S.'s prudishness and stupidity about sex and progressive social issues, we do have far more privacy protections in place than Britain and many other EU nations. For example, in Britain they can legally force you to decrypt data, while in the U.S. all I would have to do is invoke my fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. In the same vein, while the U.S. wiretapping legislation CALEA is forcing ISPs to install the capability for law enforcement to conduct digital surveillance of selected customers (supposedly only with warrant, but you and I both know the reality), I can see the UK pushing through a measure to force large ISPs to install government servers which would have all e-mail traffic pass through them practically transparently while simultaneously using the NSA's advanced context-based semantic filtering capabilities to forward copies of those selected e-mails to government computers for further analysis. Since the UK is the US's closest ally, seeing as Echelon was originally a US-UK joint operation into which the Aussies and Canadians were brought, you can bet that British Intelligence has the same advanced filtering technology that the NSA does. The key here is that, the UK intelligence services can get away with doing this openly, and might even get to force ISPs to install their monitoring equipment for them, but in the US no one would even think of openly proposing that all e-mails be subject to such snooping.
Lastly, if someone can find the older story I mentioned above, please give the link. I don't know why I can't find it, but I know it's there...
Don't worry about it, Napster's a different issue
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MP3.com Loses In Court
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· Score: 5
MP3.com lost here--and rightfully so, I hate to say--because they were offering downloads of songs to customers who already owned the CDs of those songs. Well, that's providing a service based on distributing copies of someone else's IP. That's a service which, given the current tenor of copyright law in this country, only the owner of the IP would be entitled to offer. It's rather like, if a company were to offer free downloads of the full 6-disc SuSE distro including all the non-freeware programs, for anyone running that edition of SuSE. SuSE and the companies whose non-free programs are included would probably get very upset and sue, concerned about their ability to keep track of their IP since there are ways to fool the server into thinking you're running full SuSE whyen you're really not.
I don't think it's at all unfair to close this service down, since MP3.com can keep offering downloads of songs it *does* have a right to offer, such as from artists who've given permission, have contracts with them for downloads, etc. This was a very limited part of MP3.com's services which was ruled a violation.
Napster is an entirely different issue. Napster is a network, which allows users of the network to connect to each other and download stuff. Napster itself doesn't host songs on its own "site" like MP3.com's MP3 Anywhere or whatever it was called, was doing. So, it's very likely that Napster will be ruled some form of "common carrier" and therefore not liable for what its users do amongst themselves, since its network has a legitimate use in allowing users to distribute non-copyrighted sound files. To make Napster police its network to decide what is and is not copyright infringement would put an undue burden on Napster and similar networks, and is not what a judge would order. In fact, if a network does police itself, then it would become liable--but if it just provides an open service, it can be considered a common carrier. Just my 2 pence...
> When and if they are paroled, for example, the convicted Branch > Davidian folks will probably be barred from associating with > each other which > certainly would hinder their ability to practice their > religious beliefs.
Don't stupid Americans learn what they're talking about before speaking? I'm American too, but I'm tired of the rest of the world laughing at us because of stupid people like this guy. The Branch Davidians were by and large acquitted of everything. There, I said it. Let me repeat: the Branch Davidians were acquitted. As in, not guilty of the lying and made up, false and manufactured, untrue charges which Janet Reno made up. I believe a couple guys had relatively minor weapons charges, but everyone else was acquitted of everything else. They were charged, for example, with murder of the federal thugs--er, agents--who stormed their home, but a jury acquitted them, saying that they were within their rights to protect themselves. Years later, and people are still falling sway to the FUD spread by the DoJ to cover their asses. No, no one was being molested inside the Branch Davidian compound, because the Age of Consent in Texas was low and because Koresh was commonlaw-husband to some of the under-18 girls he was supposedly with since parental consent was given. But so what, since THE ATF AND FBI HAVE NO JURISDICTION OVER CHILD ABUSE ACCUSATIONS. I repeat, they were acquitted, of all but minor charges which wouldn't warrant a restrictive parole. If I recall correctly, only 2 went to federal prison. And, yes, I'm sure you weren't just referring to those 2, that you were under the mistaken impression that all the Branch Davidians went to jail for murder or one of the other misconceptions about the case. It just ticks me off since, as freedom-loving Americans, we should stand up more when something like Waco happens. Those people had their rights unlawfully infringed by agencies which had no jurisdiction (2/3 of the affidavit for search warrant was about alleged child abuse). The Treasury Department's own investigation into the causes of the debacle concluded that the ATF was there not to go after illegal weapons, but "to enforce the morals of our society." And I thought that we were supposed to be in a free country, where people could have different religions and moralities...
> It's hard to feel sympath for scum like Mitnick
It's easy. His crimes were minor. He caused no serious damage to any network--no damage at all, if you discount a little lost peace of mind on behalf of a few stupid sysadmins who should have been running a more secure environment anyway. You obviously have either never read the specifics of the case, or have zero appreciation for civil rights. His rights were violated, he was held without his right to a speedy trial, he was blackmailed by the prosecutor into accepting continuance after continuance just to be kept out of maximum security general population where he'd be beaten and raped, and now they aren't letting him make money the only way he can earn a living. I can understand the restriction against him using computers, but a restriction against him talking about technology on the lecture circuit is a clear violation of his rights--he still has a First Amendment right, that doesn't go away. That is the most sacred and fundamental right in this country, friend. "Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured." -- Thomas Paine, 1791
Even convicted felons need to have basic, fundamental rights, or else you may as well keep them in prison. We are, today in this country, an evil and cruel society which tries to punish criminals instead of reform them. That's not how it's supposed to be. There's no excuse for sending a 12 year old kid to prison for life without parole; by definition a child is unable to fully understand the ramifications of his actions. Do you know why prisons in this country are traditionally called "penitentiaries"? Because the modern American prison system was founded on the Enlightenment idea that criminals could be reformed, if only you could make them penitent about their crimes. It was a great new idea that, instead of throwing people away when they "broke", you should try to "fix" them. It was a very humane and even Christian in the true sense of the word idea (remember Jesus with the stoning of the adulteress?). But now people would rather lock their fellow man up for life from the age of 12 than to try to make that person a functioning member of society again. It's a very sick and twisted paradigm, which most of the Western world is abhorred by. It's even contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As for Mitnick specifically, the only reason they want him off the lecture circuit is because he's portraying the people who kept him in jail as what they really are: the real criminals here. Personally, I wish that prosecutor and judge harm enough for them to realize what they've done. What goes around, comes around. "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient . . . the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." -- Justice Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court
Wow, you just gave me a great idea. Robotic cock fighiting would be cool. Forget about those sissy MIT contests where a robot trie to complete an obstacle course. I can see it now...in the back of a seedy Mexican store...the animatronic horror as a special Killer Rooster Bot from Argentina lays into the robotic Little Yerry Seinfeld...brake fluid spewing everywhere...servos flailing dented rolled aluminum limbs...the smell of freshly drawn lubricant dripping over alloy frames...the sound of torn rubber fittings gnashing in gears... And, best of all, I'd have an excuse to grease up my big shiny cock.:-o
Am I the only one who saw that episode of Seinfeld about the cockfighting? Just think of it: PETA should give us a medal for this idea.:-)
I mean, what were the AMD guys thinking??? I love AMD, and I even bought a K6-2 knowing that a Celeron would have been faster, out of loyalty to AMD and dislike for Intel. But, "Duron"? Isn't that the name of a popular brand of paint? I believe it's "Duron Paints and Wall-Coverings" or some such. http://www.duron.com So, they've named their new processor after paint. Wonderful. Don't tech guys ever go into hardware stores? What is Joe Average going to buy, a computer with a fast-sounding Celeron processor, or one that sounds like it doubles as a listing in a paint chip catalogue. AMD, I love you, but call it something else.
What was wrong with the code-name "Spitfire," anyway? The only other thing called a "spitfire" is an old type of fast sportster. It's a cool name, and counters "Celeron" quite nicely. A consumer sees "Celeron" and "Spitfire" chips and they sound competitive--remember that AMD needs John Q. Public to buy the chip, not just Slashdotters who know what they're buying beyond name. But, an average joe sees "Celeron" versus "Duron," and it's fairly obvious which one sounds better. Guys want fast, not just durable, and impressions count in selling any product.
Again, I hate to put too much emphasis on just a name, but, it's a marketing nightmare. It's a paint company name, and it sounds slow instead of showy. Gee, sounds like it should be the name for the new Cyrix chip, eh?;-) Come on, AMD, wake up and change it before it's a marketing nightmare. Joe Average doesn't want a computer that's named after paint he can buy at any hardware store, and Joe Average is the main consumer for this value chip.
Re:Not So Overwhelming, After All...
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ATI Radeon 256
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· Score: 3
> I can't understand why you would have ever bought an AMD
> CPU in the past (I certainly can now with the Athlon, however).
First point: I bought an AMD K6-2 because, at the time, it was the only reasonable alternative to supporting the Intel monopoly, a monopoly I found just as odious then as I do now. The K7 Athlon was six months or more away, and I needed a computer sooner than that. And, I wasn't going to buy Intel on principle--they'd been handing us slight modifications of the original Pentium, without much true innovation, for far too long. Amazing how the underdog AMD, with comparatively few resources, was first to market with a true "786" processor core... But, back to the point, I bought AMD on principle, and their price/performance ratio at the time was very competitive with the Celeron (differing clockspeeds for equal performance, of course). It'll still make a damn fine file server when I build a new Athlon/Thunderbird system at the end of the year.
> The main reason why ATI cards have problems on Super7 is because
> Super7 is a bad, bad hack. If you actually look around, all of the
> cards were having problems around that time.
Yes, but you're missing the point! *ALL* of the other major manufacturers fixed their drivers to make their products work with Super 7, *EXCEPT* for ATI. A TNT2 will run well on Super 7, and has since a couple months after introduction when the drivers were fixed for VIA Super 7. Ditto for G200/G400. Even a shiny new GeForce runs well under VIA Super 7. But still, after an eternity, not the ATI Rage 128 based cards. *That's* the point. All other important players run well on VIA Super 7 chipsets now, except for ATI which has had well over a year to fix their driver support. So, the problem is with ATI's protracted laziness. Nowadays Super 7 may not be the best platform to bother with, but it was for most of the over a year in which ATI ignored driver dev for it.
> And the REALMagic is a PCI card, right? And your ATI card is
> AGP? Again, this is more a problem with Super7 than the manufacturer
> of your graphics card.
No, no, no, no. The video card is a standard PCI model; I have an AGP slot which I wanted to save for an nVidia or 3Dfx card when I could save the money to upgrade, then use the ATI strictly for its multimedia functions live Video Desktop and vid capping. Look towards the future, I always say, and I wasn't about to waste my AGP slot on a card featuring an ATI chip which was already a year old. So, it isn't a problem with VIA's AGP implementation, it's, I repeat, a problem with ATI's substandard hardware support/driver support. So, if the REALmagic card has no problem doing DVD over my PCI bus, the ATI card shouldn't either. It's that simple. REALmagic took the time to write drivers which would handle DVDs well from a Super 7 mobo, but ATI Multimedia didn't. Their driver support is consistently substandard when compared to nVidia, 3Dfx, and Matrox, and I mean even on Intel mobos--read the posts on the Rage Underground help boards if you doubt this. But the driver support is especially bad for AMD/VIA solutions. There is *ZERO* excuse for blaming a chipset instead of fixing your drivers to work with it, especially when every other important player in the graphics industry has managed to make their cards work quite well with it. And before you try again to lay the blame elsewhere, yes, the latest VIA drivers have been installed and configured properly.
And, a final note: especially since a PCI-based Rage 128-based card could not play well with X in standard SVGA mode, ATI has absolutely no business calling a VIA chipset non-standard. It's ATI's cards and drivers which are non-standard.
Not So Overwhelming, After All...
on
ATI Radeon 256
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· Score: 5
Yes, it *sounds* fantastic on paper. So did, a-hem, the original Rage Fury, what with its groundbreaking new chip and whopping 32 MB of memory. But, ATI has always had one fatal flaw, and that flaw will doubtless plague them still: their drivers absolutely suck. It took a good six months after the original Rage Fury was released for it to get the performance it should have and could have had from day 1--by that time, TNT2 was mopping the floor with it in both performance and image quality, and especially in price. It was outdated by the time it was performing up to par with its specs.
This has always been ATI's main problem. Unlike nVidia and 3Dfx, ATI releases drivers slowly and never ever advertises them; in fact, its own driver download pages warn that the drivers are only supposed to be for people experiencing problems, etc., and might cause new problems. They go beyond a "standard disclaimer" and try to actively discourage driver updates--no wonder then that sites like "Rage Underground" are the center for the ATI guys into performance, sites which have their own *unofficial* performance-optimized drivers because ATI drivers suck.
So, I'm convinced that no matter the potential of ATI's new chips, they won't live up to them until it's too late. The other ATI problem is also driver-related: lack of hardware support. If you don't have an Intel processor/mobo, think twice before plonking down hard currency for anything made by ATI. I myself got an ATI All-in Wonder 128 card this Christmas, and it refuses to play well with my VIA based motherboard/K6-2 processor. It's not like the Super 7 platform is either too new or too old for ATI to have supported it in the Rage 128 based cards, or that the VIA MVP3-G chipset is so uncommon. ATI, quite frankly, just doesn't care about supporting non-Intel platforms, because they don't have to. They're the company of choice for Intel-based OEMs. So, they don't care about performance-loving AMD-using geeks like a lot of us here.
This is in stark contrast to nVidia and 3Dfx, which release new drivers all the time and which try to support every viable platform. When GeForce cards were having a problem on Athlon mainboards, nVidia released new drivers to fix the problem. Yet, ATI would probably have done the same thing they did a year ago with K6-2 and K6-3 platforms and the Rage 128 cards and blame the problem on the chipset vendors for being non-standard--i.e., non-Intel.
This is a serious attitude problem on ATI's behalf, and until they can prove that they'll provide adequate enough driver support at least for Windows, I'd recommend staying away from anything they offer because the drivers will kill it. Let alone Linux. I tried installing both Corel Linux 1.0 and Linux-Mandrake 6.0 with my A-i-W 128--based on the same year-old chip from the Rage Fury--and couldn't get it to work with X even in generic SVGA mode. ATI doesn't support all common platforms under Windows, so forget about decent Linux drivers.
I am satisfied somewhat with the multimedia features of my All-in-Wonder 128 under Windows--Video Desktop is a godsend--but even then DVD playback was unbearably awful. Of course, ATI blamed it on my VIA chipset. Funny then how the REALmagic Hollywood+ I got after the ATI's performance bit delivers flawless DVD performance on the same VIA chipset, with CPU usage averaging under 5%. Yeah, ATI, blame it on the mobo chipset instead of your own laziness when it comes to drivers...
As I said, I like the multimedia features of my A-i-W 128, even though DVD playback won't work because of shoddy drivers the rest of it is great. Video capture is flawless, and Video Desktop for TV viewing always wows my guests and provides me with hours of entertainment during my long visits to pr0n--er, tech sites. But never, ever, ever, buy an ATI card for its performance stats. It won't live up to them until the card is outdated, and even then it might never live up to them unless you have an Intel mobo and processor.
Nielsen ratings are directly used to determine what programs stay on TV and what programs don't. Frankly, I think it would be great if the insipidly backwards, 1950s-style Nielsen Ratings system were updated to take into account today's technology.
As long as all the "tracking features" are disclosed up-front, this is a great advance. I'd buy one of these units just to get my "vote" for the shows I love a chance to be heard. As it is, so few "Nielsen Families" exist that I seriously question the integrity of the very ratings system which determines what programs I get to watch--low ratings, as you know, mean a show will get the axe. Currently, less than 25,000 households from only the top 48 markets get a "vote" in the ratings game.
This would be a first step towards perhaps changing that limited, closed, backwards system. I'm surprised that Nielsen hasn't gotten together with TV manufacturers to work out a deal--there would be even greater possibilities for revolutionizing the system if that were to happen.
This is just a small first step--only ReplayTV users, as the article says, in already-established Nielsen families, are going to have their usage habits tracked. But imagine the possibilities this could lead to, if the Nielsen people are encouraged:
Imagine a world in which your ReplayTV or TiVo, or even your television set, had a built-in modem and a small chipset designed to record your program choices and upload them once a week. You could choose whether to plug in your modem or not, so no privacy issues would be involved--consumers would boycott a "mandatory" feature like that, but welcome a voluntary one. Then, your viewing choices would have the chance to affect what shows stay on the air and which get nixed, whereas now your viewing habits have no value whatsoever since you're not a Nielsen family. I much prefer this model, than having a scant few families (relatively speaking) which supposedly represent some bonehead's idea of a statistical sampling, deciding which shows survive. I miss *My So-Called Life* and *Freaks and Geeks*, dammit!:-)
Yes, legally the characters are the IP of their creators or the studios if their creators either sold the IP or created it while under contract to a studio. However, non-commercial use of intellectual property is protected by fair use doctrine, and fan fiction is all done by amateurs. While, as the article points out, no court has ever addressed the issue of fan fiction using characters who are the intellectual property of others, even a very clueless judge would uphold the right of a private citizen to write a story about a character and distribute it non-commercially.
It's not just about fair-use doctrine, it's also a first-amendment matter--a very valid point could be made that the right of free speech outweighs intellectual property claims in such cases, and that fan fiction is protected speech. This at first might seem quite odd, but look at it this way: much of fan fiction is artistic or even political in nature, and hence protected speech. Just look at the "slash" genre mentioned in the article--it could be argued that portraying well-known fictional characters as gay is a form of political, pro-gay-rights speech. If the use of someone else's character is "fair" use, then there isn't even an issue here.
Even if a very clueless court decided that using someone else's character doesn't fall under "fair use," it could perhaps be argued on more general principles that such use is legally protected: the entire system of copyright and intellectual property is founded on one simple notion, that copyright law exists to "promote the advancement of arts and sciences." That's not an exact quote, but language to that effect exists in the language of the Constitution when it refers to the right of Congress to grant exclusive rights to certain works to their creators. Therefore, if use of a character in fan fiction is promoting the creation of new "literature"--and rest assured many intellectuals would refer to fan fiction as a sort of populist literature--then it would go against the very spirit of IP law to forbid the practice.
On a personal note, I love fan fiction. There's nothing like going to alt.sex.stories and reading stuff like "7th Heaven's First Orgy" or "A Very Brady Gangbang," or my personal favorite, "Star Trek: Deep Space 69.":-o "That 70s Blow" anyone, or "The Secret Sex Life of Alex Mack"? Okay, so it gets lonely here at my workstation... hehe...
Yes, for DSP or anything that requires lots of cacheing, a Celeron-2 would be less than ideal, esp. since its L2 cache latency is set to 2 (to further induce people to go for the more expensive and less latent P!!! CuMine). However, for number-crunching these are ideal cheap processors to put into render farms, Beowulf (I hate to say that word now, the trolls seem to want to screw Beowulf clusters more than they want to screw Natalie Portman) clusters, or anything where most or all of the important code can fit into the L1 and the rest can at least fit into the L2. If your app can fit in the L1, then there's no performance increase at all between the cheap Celery-2 and the unholy expensive CuMine P!!!. If your app can't fit in the L1 but can fit in the L2--most number-crunching stuff can--then the only difference between the processors will be the slightly delayed L2 latency which won't hurt performance on such an app by much.
I ought to buy a cheap Celery-2 just to get my numbers on Distributed.net up to a respectable level.;-) Nah, because the Spitfire Athlon that's coming up will be cheaper than a similarly-clocked Celeron-2, and probably outperform it by a respectable margin.
But anyway, it all depends on what your applications for the processor are going to be, as to whether it'll really be worth the extra money. When a really good SMP Celeron-2 motherboard comes out, that and 2 cheap Celeron-2s will probably be cheaper and as effective in Linux or Win2k than a Coppermine P!!! at a speed grade or 2 above the 2 Celerons. In other words, the Celeron 2 still has its place even among the technocracy.;-)
The SMP-ability of a Coppermine processor is determined by the stepping of the processor--i.e., the earliest CuMines couldn't SMP, at least not officially. I don't know whether the capability was still there, but just not certified yet, or not there at all. Anyone know?
So, if the stepping of a CuMine--whether Celeron or full-cached--is 1, then it isn't certified for SMP. If the stepping of a full-cache Coppermine P!!! is at least 2, and prefereably 3, then it's fully SMP capable, definitely. While the Celerons are not certified for SMP work at all, and never were, they use the same core and therefore are SMP capable with the same caveats about the processor stepping. In fact, Celerons are probably just Coppermine P!!! with half the cache rendered unusable; this makes sense from an economic standpoint, because as AMD learned with their ghastly K6-III yields, much of the on-die cache can be ruined when the processor is being made; AMD had to disable all the on-die cache on such processors and sell them as cheap K6-2s, and when Intel gets a dud Coppermine it can still be sold as a Celeron as long as half of the on-die cache is still salvageable.
So, to make a long story short, yeah, the new Celeron-2s can do SMP as long as they're not stepping 1, and preferably at least stepping 3. The trick is finding a motherboard that can handle 2 SMP Celery-deuces; I think MSI is coming out with one soon, based on a VIA chipset.
Personally, I'm holding off my upgrade path (a lot--I'm still on a high K6-2 machine) until I can get an SMP Athlon Thunderbird setup, toward the end of the year. I do, however, plan to buy it one processor at a time--I ain't made of money. Personally, I'm happier with AMD chips just because I'm pissed that ChipZilla has been using the same processor core for so many year now it's pathetic. If not for AMD, we wouldn't have either Coppermine P!!! or Celery-2 processors yet--look at Intel's old roadmaps. It's obvious that they never have cared for advancing microprocessors for the desktop user. But, I digress...:-)
Screw you "Coward"! If you post a hateful little comment like this, you should at least have the brass valls to post it from your real account. As the bloody judge himself said, I was prosecuted as an 18 year old high school student under a law that's meant to protect young people from adults who can take advantage of them through significant differences in age, power, authority, and other imbalancing factors. It is *NOT* a law that was meant to be levied against a high school kid for some pretty normal sexual exploration. It's not like I posted the damn things to the Net, in fact they were at *her* house in *her* posession which is how her militant Nazi of a father found them.
You know what? Reactions like yours are *exactly* what's wrong with this country--no regard for justice and common sense, just an ignorant statement based on a general principle which is good but which can be taken too far. Justice has to take into account individual circumstances, not just blindly quote statutes. "There can be no justice when laws are absolute."
I have respect for a judge who could look at the circumstances of a case and say "case dismissed" not because the law says he should dismiss a case in those circumstances, but because he knows that it's the just thing to do.
I do not, however, have respect for a worthless troll such as yourself who'd rather be an insulting louse than take into account the person to whom he's responding was deeply emotionally scarred by a misapplication of law and the corresponding volley of heartless press coverage which also failed to take into account a little something called THE FACTS.
Fact is, the law was meant to protect young people from predators, not to screw over a high school senior for dating a high school junior when many people in my grade were dating freshmen. A crime of photography? Between 2 people IN THE SAME PEER GROUP?
What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? When you publicize the name of someone *accused* of a crime, who hasn't been convicted, you're throwing that out the window. If you think people who are arrested are always guilty, you're deluding yourself. If you think people who may or may not have committed crimes should be paraded through the press by name--and the press *always* assume guilt, and see things in the worst possible light--I'd like to kick your ass. Proverbially, of course. I'm not saying that because I'm trying to be flamebait, I'm saying it because I'm mad and I have a right to be. Here's why:
Senior year of high school, I was as happy as a geek could be. I had a close circle of fine friends, and an active social life, and I'd been accepted early decision to the college of my choice. Best of all, I had my first real girlfriend. She was a HS junior, a fellow member of the academic team, and as gorgeous as she was smart. She was everything I'd wanted. Guess what ruined it? Her dad had me arrested on a serious-sounding felony charge, just because after going out for many months we fooled around as teenagers do and one time we took some risque photos of ourselves. We were two teenage kids experimenting, nothing serious or wrong, and I got arrested for felony production of child porn for playfully taking a few nude pictures of a girl who was just a year and a half younger than I was. It didn't matter that she'd had ten times the experience that I'd had, that I'd been a virgin and she'd been with three guys before me, or that everything was done between a boyfriend and girlfriend who loved each other in that sickeningly sweet adolescent way, all that mattered was a number. The justice system isn't about justice anymore, it's just about law without using common sense. Guess what the headline was in the next issue of the local paper? "Local man arrsted for making child pornography." A silly adolescent experiement for private use between 2 people, and suddenly the police and the press put me on the same level as some sick child molesting freak. They printed my full name and address, those worthless press bastards. They did this to a HS student who just barely turned 18. Instead of her name, they listed my girlfriend as "the victim" because by chance she was a year and a half younger than me. "The victim," as if I'd abused her in some way. The judge had common sense enough to dismiss the case, but by that time my future college read the article and it took a lot of explaining to avoid getting my admission revoked. Never mind that it's enough to have to deal with being accused of a serious felony like that, without your name and address printed in the paper for the world to see whether you deserve it or not.
Fuck the irresponsible press, they have no right to know when you haven't even had your day in court yet. Innocent until proven guilty left the legal system about the same time justice did. Americans should start caring about freedom more. Think about these quotes before whining about what the press ought to be told about *accused*, rather than convicted, people:
"Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."--Thomas Jefferson
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."--Benjamin Franklin - 1759
"The American people must be willing to give up a degree of personal privacy in exchange for safety and security."--FBI Director Louis Freeh - 1994
"Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured."--Thomas Paine, 1791
At the risks of sounding like a bloody anarchist, I have to disagree that this connection in any way "taints" the software. In fact, I view it as an ennobling trait of the software involved and any similar software which will be developed in the future.
Why? Because, the old music/intellectual property distribution system is flawed and in need of a thorough shaking-up. Why was copyright invented? To secure the inventor's ability to profit from his invention, so that innovation will be fostered. It wasn't invented so that multinational corporations can exclusively profit from those inventions long after the inventors are dead. Why am I still paying $$$ for music by people who've been dead fifty years???
Let me put it in strictly music terms, since you mentioned mp3s. In the present system, bands labor in local bars and college stages for years and years, partially supported by small-press CD sales and meager incomes, until someone discovers them. At that point, they sell their soul to the record company for a few cents per CD sold and whatever percentage of the concert take they're given. Most bands end up with very little money; only a lucky few become mid-range bands whom anyone's ever heard of, and only an infinitesimal percentage become big-name stars who can finally earn dollars on each CD sold, rather than cents. Not much incentive to innovate, to make music, now is it? In fact, I'd argue that the present system often stifles musical innovation--look at all the Britney Spears wannabes created by the studios to try to cash in on the current craze, and this happens all the time. The studios want one thing, money, and they stifle musical advancement whenever they can because the present system is centrally controlled by the studios, not the artists, and innovation would hurt the studios.
Imagine a system--one we're on the brink of--in which bands can play the local scene like they've always done, but can promote through the Internet and Net-based "recording companies." There was a time when local promoters were important, because they honed the talent and brought it to the attention of the national companies--imagine a return to that de-centralization, where the power no longer rests in the hands of Sony and the rest of the RIAA, but rests in the hands of many more smaller groups like it used to. Imagine a world in which all that the national and multi-national corporations do is promote national and international concert tours once a group becomes big, rather than signing bands when they're poor in order to put them into indentured servitude and stealing 95% of the profits. Heck, most bands would be thrilled to give the music away for a very small fee direct to the consumer since the record companies bilk them under the current system.
Gnutella, Napster, et al. are going to be catalysts for this change--record companies will have to change their ways, or else piracy will outstrip legitimate purchase by a long shot. This is the chance for a revolution brought on by software and the free software ideals. Regardless of propaganda, most if not all small bands are not hurt by piracy in the form of Napster/Gnutella, and almost all the album profits from name bands go to the multi-national corporations. Heck, I read at Yahoo that several record companies make bands sign away copyright/trademark on their names and domain names--that just isn't right, it's an abuse. I see this as a short-term bout of piracy which will end when the music industry returns to a more natural state and price structure. Ultimately, this will empower musicians, and foster innovation in the field. It'll be rocky and contentious at first, but it'll work out for the best for musicians--whom copyright law is supposed to protect (not studios).
Folks, as it says, they were paying the "technology fees". The technology fees pay for purchase and upkeep of the campus computer infrastructure; therefore, they were entitled to use that infrastructure. As the first article clearly states, there is a $24/semester difference in rates for rooms with ethernet/withour ethernet--however, since they're paying the technology fees anyway, the extra $24/semester is merely a surcharge for the *added convenience* of having a room with Ethernet connection pre-installed. Furthermore, as the guy quoted in the first article said, the college would like to have all the rooms wired for network connections but doesn't merely because of the costs involved.
Seems to me that the attorney(s) for the students should argue that the students had every legal right to access a network which they were paying for, and that the $24/semester extra for a pre-wired room is for defraying the costs of physically wiring the rooms in question. Again I repeat: all students are defraying the network upkeep costs, and those who pay the $24/semester extra are defraying the cost of physically wiring their rooms.
I sincerely hope that they and their attorney(s) use this argument, since it is very valid in legal terms. Furthermore, if this argument stands at court, the students could quite legally piss off the asshole admins who turned them in by immediately going back to their dorms and re-wiring the connection in question.
Does anyone know how to contact these guys 'n' gal to tell them how we at Slashdot support them, and about this legal argument? Seems to me that if they get a really sympathetic judge, their attorney(s) might be able to get an immediate dismissal.
On an even more important note, students at OSU ought to protest, and hard. Surely someone knows a high-placed administrator or, better yet, director/regent who can get all outraged over the affair. Someone ought to get a sever tongue-lashing (mmm, that doesn't sound so bad after all...) at least for this, as it is a very poor public relations move. If the students push the angle I stated above, then it should garner them 99% of the sympathy, and it's all a matter of spin. Many here have been jumping to the conclusion that what they did *was* theft, but the facts state otherwise. It's this spin that the students need to use, and if they do then media all across the state will run stories which lambaste OSU, and that's what these students need. End of lesson!:-)
A mistaken argument. Only certain information is more valuable if it is scarce--for example, information about the stock market, corporate mergers, or other things which require stealth in order to play your hand. But a song is just a song, asshole.;-)
>Seriously, though, this is a moral issue that >you completely blow by. Say there's a cart of >apples standing on the street, with a sign on it >saying "DO NOT STEAL!" Should you still steal >the apples? How can one reasonably expect an >adolescent (or older) apple lover to refuse a >nice juicy apple?
Another example of a clueless person trying to use a false metaphor. Digital music, software, etc. is information, not a tangible good, and information can be copied an unlimited number of times without being diminished. So, by your apple cart analogy, for it to be accurate the "theif" would have to have the ability to walk up to the apple cart and create an identical copy of the apple he wants out of thin air, while leaving the original apple intact. That wouldn't really be stealing.
So, your analogy is flawed. But more importantly in the case of music and software--you aren't really hurting anyone by downloading music and software you'd never otherwise buy. I bought Q3A and UT because I would have bought them even if they weren't available pirated--which they are--and because I want to support their developers. I do however have Fiona Apple songs I downloaded for free, because she's a sexy bitch and I like listening to her sultry voice, but I'd never have shelled out $10-$20 for the privilege. That hurts neither Fiona nor the record company she signed with, because I wouldn't have given them money anyway--especially since I could record her music videos for free off of MTV if I wanted to, with the added bonus of being able to see her sexy self when she's "a bad, bad girl." In fact, I have an ATI All-in-Wonder 128, so I could easily capture the videos digitally and make a VCD. But, I digress; point being, no one is losing money, and I get free entertainment. No one gets hurt, no one steals the music since the albums are all still there.
How much continued cookie-shuffling would it take to start making their databases choke and sputter? I'm sure many of the dedicated scripters out there could cobble together something that would cycle through pulling down a lot of banner ad/cookie traffic and deleting it. Now, if just half the readership of Slashdot who have high-speed connections would participate--that'll add up to billions o' cookies for the database, and a lot of server time dedicated to serving up banners a la mode to little old us.
Ideas, folks? It is, however, time to take a stand against the AOLified and doubleclicked idea of the Net which corporate America wants to feed us. We pay for this bandwidth, not DoubleClick, so why don't we start showing them how we can use that bandwidth to screw 'em in the arse?
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...there was good news, too. People who valued their privacy, and wanted to be viewed as more than "consumers" tied to a number, found solace in Intel's other announcement about the P!!!. Intel said when announcing the serial #'s that they'd also be implementing in a later stepping a hardware Random Number Generator. Privacy advocates praised that as much as they [expletive deleted] the dreaded Internet-readable serial #. Those new P!!!'s, originally due out late last year, were supposed to include a sensor to read "thermal noise," the completely random motion of atomic particles, and make those random values available to encryption applications. The importance of this is that truly random numbers cannot be calculated in software, they can only be approximated in software, through the use of "pseudo-random number generators." Those PRNGs are currently one of the weakest points (theoretically, at least) in implementing crypto, because a flaw in the "randomness" of their numbers could render encrypted data vulnerable. But natural phenomena like the motion of atoms is truly random, and the proposed Intel sensor would have therefore contributed substantially to the security of data. And yet, nothing has been heard of it since early last year, when it was announced along with the CPU IDs. The most likely scenario is that the utter backlash against the CPU serial #s caused Intel to completely drop its strategy of integrating "e-commerce" and data security features, which is a shame because hardware random number generation would have been almost as big a step forward for privacy as the CPU ID was a step back. But I still like to think that the NSA had something to do with it, and mutter under my breath "Damn gubbmint, takin' ma guns and ma crypto..." ;-)
I mean, this is Intel. They're partners with Rambus, and own a big chunk of the company, after all. No one was buying Rambus memory, at least not in the quantities Intel and Rambus had counted on, so it may have been agreed that Intel would buy the excess Rambus memory, giving Rambus a better bottom line, and contributing to a lower cost for Rambus later when the Willamette systems debut, and the "noise" issue with some MTH i820 systems is probably just an excuse to let them do this. It also gives a convenient explanation for something which Intel has been saying--that Willamette will use Rambus exclusively and no MTH-type devices will be available for it.
Now, this is a "conspiracy theory" which makes sense. It's only "certain" MTH-equipped mobos that are affected, so the total cost will probably run less than we think. It gives Rambus, partially owned by Intel and a close partner in Intel's strategy to corner the market (licensing fees in the millions, folks) on RAM used on Intel systems, a better bottom line. It gives Intel a PR-friendly excuse to drop the MTH and thus all SDRAM use in its future Willamette chipsets. I see a net gain for Intel here, not a net loss. Intel has refused to even consider the DDR SDRAM which the rest of the industry wants to use, even though it'll be faster and more cost-effective than RAMBUS. I mean, come on--Rambus has to run at 400Mhz (800 effective, two cycles per clock) to give performance comparable to SDRAM running at 133Mhz! It's obviously inferior if it has to run that much faster to attain similar performance. While 400Mhz RAMBUS does slightly outperform 133Mhz SDRAM, it ain't enough to justify 3x the price. Imagine when DDR memory and supporting VIA chipsets are available toward the end of the year--133Mhz DDR SDRAM will kick the shit out of whatever RAMBUS has available at the time (they have trouble producing their part in quantity at 400Mhz, for heaven's sake!). Face it: RAMBUS memory is an Intel scam. It has to run 3 times as fast as SDRAM to compete with it, and yet it costs 3 times the price. Wake up and smell the Intel monopolists. Just as Microsoft used IE to leverage itself into cyberspace, Intel wants to use RAMBUS to leverage itself into a RAM/chipset monopoly, what with licensing fees and all. Don't fall for it. It's just another trick from Intel, the same people who brought us the same damn processor core for five years with only minor tweaks.
They could patent anything they want, but only patenting their specific code or methodology would stand up in Court. MP3 is a publicly-usable standard, just like MPEG-1, PNG, JPEG, etc. It's not like GIF, which is patented under increasingly stupid terms. But the interesting thing about MPEG-3 (MP3) is that, unlike with MPEG-1, the standard refers only to the way the finished file is constructed and how it can be decompressed, rather than covering the encoding process. Thus, there are many ways to encode a file to the MP3 standard, not just one standard implementation, but unlike AVI you don't need the codec installed for the specific encoder--a standards-compliant MP3 decoder will decode an MP3 encoded with any of the codecs. The problem is that the Fraunhoffer reference implementations were being widely used by people, without licensing fees, in many products, and Fraunhofer wanted money for its implementation. That codec arguably produces better-sounding results than others, like BLADE, preserving more of the important wave characteristics which make a song sound true to the original .wav, while cutting more of the unnecessary junk which can't be perceived by the human ear and thus just takes up space.
But, I repeat, MP3 format can be used by anyone, and it's only a certain way of encoding to that file format which was covered by Fraunhoffer. Any MP3 encoder which doesn't use Fraunhoffer's implementation will therefore be perfectly legal. In any event, I suspect that there'll be some way to plug any codec you want into LAME, and the Fraunhoffer codec is easily obtained from the Net.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the "creative endeavors" as you call them, when they're genuinely funny and/or interesting. But, there are relatively few people on the main part of Slashdot who read at -1, so ultimately your audience is limited. Very limited when you consider that, except for trolls and moderators/sometime moderators, almost no one browses at -1. If you got 16 replies, I guarantee that 12 of them at least were from mods and trolls. And as for OOG, whom you mentioned, I consider him a character rather than a troll because he posts *on-topic* stuff. You and most trolls don't, and that's the point: people click on these topics to read discussion about the topic at hand, and the occasional marginally-related humor, not to read off-topic bullshit, no matter how "creative" or side-splitting.
As for how "moderators should follow the guidlines"--they usually do, which is why your posts get modded down. A funny one-liner can get modded up for being funny, but a lengthy off-topic post like the parent post here must be modded down for being off-topic or a troll because it takes up so much space that it detracts from the discussion of the article. Clicking down ten screens of off-topic stuff shouldn't be necessary, it it wouldn't be necessary if the idea I outlined above were embraced by the different parties. Ultimately, more people would see your posts if they were in a section dedicated to such posts, and I think that that would be a good thing. Your posts are funny, I enjoy reading them, and more people would enjoy them if they were someplace where people go specifically to see that sort of off-topic but humorous or interesting stuff. As it is, trolls and flamers are on a fast track towards making Slashdot a lot less easy to troll. At the current rate, it won't be long before the powers that be decide to make only logged-in anonymous posts possible, and delete the accounts and the posts of trolls and flamers. Then Slashdot would be effectively troll-proof and you'd never be able to post here again. Do you really think it would be that difficult for someone who works for Slashdot, if they were to decide to do it, to permanetly delete all troll or off-topic posts, and the accounts from which they came? Yeah, you could open another account, but your posts would be up for a couple minutes before they'd be deleted from the board, and of course there'd be no more "name recognition" for trolls who get accounts.
And, that wouldn't be a bad thing to do, either. I think the only reason Taco and Hemos haven't done it is out of respect for "openness" and a free community. But if trolling continues to escalate, so will their means to control it. This time last year the trolling and flaming was nice and moderate. Now, it's extreme and stupid and a waste of many people's time. The choice isn't mine, or the moderators, nor is the fault. The fault is with the trolls who post excessive and off-topic, and the choices are up to the Slashdot admins and the trolls. If trolls and flames get out of hand, the admins will surely stop it quite easily by deleting all troll posts and closing troll acounts. It could be implemented easily, into an Amazon-style 1-Click system for CmdrTaco and Hemos and Roblimo and Cowboy Neal or whoever else they want to, to have the power to just delete the trolls. But if the trolls start being reasonable, maybe it wouldn't have to come to that. The idea I had about a special area for trolling and flaming is just a possible suggestion, which would be up to the Slashdot admins to implement--*if* people such as yourself were to support the suggestion. If not, so what, I don't care, it was just a suggestion. But it's people such as yourself who are being unreasonable. You can't expect a long rambling post, even if totally hilarious, to be modded up as funny when the guidlines clearly call for it to be modded down as off-topic. To mod it down as a troll might not be fair, but to mod it down as off-topic surely is fair. I mean, my posting threshold is defaulted to +2, but I click in the little box to post at just 1 because this is an off-topic message and it's appropriate for me to give up that bonus to avoid bothering people who read at a default of +2, people who are clearly looking to read only good posts which are typically on-topic. If other people decide to mod this up, or down, that's fine, but I will not presume to automatically barge in and annoy people by posting this at +2. It's therefore not unreasonable to expect you to realize that, almost every time you post something off-topic, and long, it will get modded down to -1. And right it should, not because it isn't funny, but because this isn't the place. Someone else mentioned the "undocumented" forums on Slashdot as providing a good place for posts like yours. I don't think that's sufficient, because it provides even less of an audience than the main stories do. But if there were a forum linked to the main page for your sort of humor, and for trolls and flames and free-for-all orgies of unmoderated fun, I think that that should be sufficient to satisfy everyone, and to even give trolls a bigger, and willing, audience. It's just a suggestion, take it or leave it, but personally I'd like to see the inappropriate and ever-increasing trolling and off-topic stuff stop so that I can use all my mod points for moderating stuff up which deserves to be read, rather than modding stuff down which deserves to be ignored.
You know, this was funny. I was amused. I loved "The Wizard of OS." *BUT*, most importantly, this just isn't the place for these things. Most people don't even see them since they get modded down--rightfully so--soon after they get posted. The only reaon I ever see them is that I always browse at -1 because I very rarely, but sometimes do, get moderator points and feel some odd responsibility to browse that low.
/.
Trolls, there are maybe ten people a day who actually see your long Portman-related ramblings, and pay any attention. Most never even see them. It's a waste of your time, and the time of everyone here at
Now, as for the Slashdot community, here's an odd idea. Why not, ladies and gentlemen, have a special area for trolls and would-be comedians? You know, a little link in the listing to the left on the main page, with a designated place to troll/perform Open Source stand-up. Trolls are here for attention and to try to be appreciated for their sense of humor, as well as to annoy people. If there were a designated "trolling-place," people who want a little comic relief or to get into flame-wars could click over and have a little fun, and many trolls would gladly go over there where people could actually read their stuff (they don't usually read it here since it quickly gets down-modded). Some would stay here to be annoying, but most would instead post in a place where their skills would be appreciated. After all, consider the alt.flame type groups on USENET--there's a sense of pride in places like that where people appreciate the ancient skills of trolling and flaming, whereas on the main pages of Slashdot the trolling and flamebait isn't appreciated. So, it has to be a disappointment all around.
Personally, I think this would be a productive idea if the good Commander and the powers that be would consider trying it on a trial basis. Just my two cents, fellas, no harm intended...
3Dfx's drivers may be much more advanced than those of other companies, but there's the rub: most other companies are not as good with their drivers as 3Dfx. That's why nVidia has incentive to remain closed-source--because their own drivers are pretty darned good, while the drivers of S3 and ATI totally suck and Matrox's drivers have only recently started to mature in terms of 3D acceleration and OpenGL.
What that means is, by opening the source to its drivers, nVidia is inviting the competition to inspect the secret sauce and help them in developing their own recipes. It's terrible drivers which have prevented ATI from becoming a big player in performance 3D, and mediocre drivers which held Matrox back. nVidia would lose an edge if it were to open up its driver source.
However, what the Open Source community needs to do with companies like nVida is remind them that their real advantage isn't in proprietary drivers, but in the superiority of their hardware. (For example, 3Dfx's drivers are typically great, but right now their soon-to-be-released Voodoo 4/5 boards are getting stomped by the GeForce 2 from nVidia thanks to its superior silicon). If they can be convinced that opening their driver source will yield better drivers and allow them to spend more R&D time on keeping their hardware more advanced than the competition's, then they'll do that, because nVidia's best advantage is its hardware--its driver advantages are more fleeting. What's needed is an effective evangelist to show them the way, like when a certain Apple CEO said to a certain soft-drink executive "Do you want to sell sugared water all your life, or do you want to change the world?" Or, when a certain essay caused Netscape to open the Mozilla code.
The key here is that open source's big players need to start pushing for these code openings. There's no earthly reason why nVidia couldn't be made to realize how well it could capitalize on its hardware advantages if it didn't have to put so many resources into driver dev.
As a final note, I doubt they could have been ignorant of their use of GPL'd code. Their driver dev people don't just go around using source code they find on the Net, without reading what the licensing terms are. That doesn't happen in a company like nVidia which is known for its good driver development team, a big company which surely has an interest in keeping its programmers from making costly mistakes by plagiarizing the IP of other companies. I'd be willing to bet that their use of GPL'd code was on purpose, not an accident, and that there's other GPL'd code hidden in those binary-only drivers. The corporate attitude is probably that stealing open-source code is okay. And that's yet another reason that we should try extra hard, but with honey rather than vinegar, to get them to realize the merits of open-source driver development.
>> For example, in Britain they can legally force you to decrypt data,
:-O
>> while in the U.S. all I would have to do is invoke my fifth amendment
>> right against self-incrimination.
>
> It wouldn't do you any good. The Fifth applies to the state's compelling
> you to testify against your self. It says precisely nothing against
> your case. There is no
> Fifth Amendment right to refuse to comply with a search warrant.
You cannot order up a search warrant in the U.S. to force a person to decrypt his own encrypted messages or data files. That doesn't fall under the rubric of a search warrant. Now, you could be ordered by a Court to produce the plaintext as part of testimony, under the threat of contempt of Court, *BUT*--and *here's the important part*, if the contents of the encrypted files would be self-incriminating, you don't have to decrypt them. Just say the magic words "On the advice of counsel I decline to answer, invoking my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution" and they can't make you decrypt the messages or data. But, the real kicker is, a defendant doesn't have to testify at his own trial. So, unless there were some other compelling reason for a defendant to testify, he wouldn't even have to utter those words (which a jury wouldn't like very much). Now, the prosecutor could in theory ask the judge to order decryption of the materials as part of the discovery process, but again the magic words come into play. If a police officer, however, executed a search warrant and seized my computer files, and told me to decrypt them, I'd say, "Fuck off porkmeister, and by the way I want an attorney so the questioning ends until I'm provided with one. And by the way, my drives are encrypted with 256-bit Blowfish *and* Triple-DES, and my RAM and swap partition are wiped with 32 pass extended character rotation on shutdown, so good luck." That is, they would be encrypted to that extent if I were a computer cracker, drug trafficker, arms dealer, etc. etc. As it is, the only encryption I use regularly is PGP, since I like to set a good example and to keep my conversations private, and a Windows program called Scramdisk which I use to keep my little sister and other users of my computer from accidentally tripping over my collection of bestiality pr0n.
>> suppodedly only with warrant, but you and I both know the reality
>
> No I don't know the reality that you're talking about. Of course,
> I'm just a ticket-writing donut-chomping cop, so I'd have no
> idea what law-enforcement officers would do.
That would be the reality--I wish it were an alternate one, but it isn't--in which some law enforcement types get an "us-vs.-them" attitude about suspects, forgetting for the time being that such suspects are in fact innocent until proven guilty and still enjoy the protections afforded by a Constitution which our ancestors fought for. Not all cops are like that, but quite a few are. I have first-hand experience with police officers who are willing to engage in extortion and violate the rights of suspects. I won't re-hash the particular charges since they can be found in a prior posting, but suffice it to say that the arresting officer attempted to extort a confession by threatening to say that I was violent and un-cooperative unless I told him what he wanted to hear, resulting in a very high bail. Naturally, he said, if I told him what he wanted to hear then he'd say I was cooperative and the magistrate would set a low bail, but if not, he'd say I was violent an un-cooperative. He then lied to the magistrate when I refused to confess, resulting in excess bail--which in itself is a violation of Constitutional rights to a reasonable bail. I checked the statutes in my state, and that qualifies as extortion, a worse felony than the one I was arrested for. The case against me was eventually dismissed, BTW.
This isn't even that far off-topic, since the essence of our fears when broad surveillance initiatives like this new UK legislation is that these surveillance powers will be abused. If it were all about catching terrorists and kiddy porn traffickers and people like that, there wouldn't be much uproar. The problem is that the potential to abuse this system is inherent. Corrupt or misguided LEA officers could use such broad powers to open Hoover-esque files on citizens who aren't doing anything really illegal, but who go against the grain of society in moral or (ir)religious ways. LEA could intercept e-mail and read it for fun, or worse agents could surveil against people they personally don't like or knew in some other capacity. Government agencies could monitor dissidents or people who have libertarian values, just waiting for someone to make a small slip like mentioning pot use to give them an excuse to pounce or discredit. Agencies also have a tendency to hold grudges--in the US the IRS, for example, has been shown to repeatedly audit and harass people it doesn't like, like whistleblowers and people who have beaten them in tax court. The potential for abuse is limitless, and that's why such systems are inherently bad--not because of the system itself, but because of the people who use and abuse it.
Just one quick quote: "The mushrooming of surveillance has been explained by the sense of panic
and crisis felt throughout the government during this period of extremely
vocal dissent, large demonstrations, political and campus violence, and
what at the time seemed the inauguration of a period of wide- spread
anarchy. While officials... suggested that these crises justified the
surveillance, they failed to recognize that the rights guaranteed by the
constitution are constant and unbending to the temper of the times..."--Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, 1973
Using advanced context-based semantics, vast quantities of data can be filtered through the system continuously. That's what the Echelon system does. I can't seem to find the past Slashdot article, though I've searched, about the NSA patent on certain advanced ways to filter data, and its offer to sell some of those means to corporations which have the need to filter and categorize large databases of information, but there was such an article late last year.
In reality, the system could be set up to begin the filtering process at the level of large ISPs--easy enough in Britain since there are fewer ISPs than in the States. Also, it's been shown amply that, despite the U.S.'s prudishness and stupidity about sex and progressive social issues, we do have far more privacy protections in place than Britain and many other EU nations. For example, in Britain they can legally force you to decrypt data, while in the U.S. all I would have to do is invoke my fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. In the same vein, while the U.S. wiretapping legislation CALEA is forcing ISPs to install the capability for law enforcement to conduct digital surveillance of selected customers (supposedly only with warrant, but you and I both know the reality), I can see the UK pushing through a measure to force large ISPs to install government servers which would have all e-mail traffic pass through them practically transparently while simultaneously using the NSA's advanced context-based semantic filtering capabilities to forward copies of those selected e-mails to government computers for further analysis. Since the UK is the US's closest ally, seeing as Echelon was originally a US-UK joint operation into which the Aussies and Canadians were brought, you can bet that British Intelligence has the same advanced filtering technology that the NSA does. The key here is that, the UK intelligence services can get away with doing this openly, and might even get to force ISPs to install their monitoring equipment for them, but in the US no one would even think of openly proposing that all e-mails be subject to such snooping.
Lastly, if someone can find the older story I mentioned above, please give the link. I don't know why I can't find it, but I know it's there...
MP3.com lost here--and rightfully so, I hate to say--because they were offering downloads of songs to customers who already owned the CDs of those songs. Well, that's providing a service based on distributing copies of someone else's IP. That's a service which, given the current tenor of copyright law in this country, only the owner of the IP would be entitled to offer. It's rather like, if a company were to offer free downloads of the full 6-disc SuSE distro including all the non-freeware programs, for anyone running that edition of SuSE. SuSE and the companies whose non-free programs are included would probably get very upset and sue, concerned about their ability to keep track of their IP since there are ways to fool the server into thinking you're running full SuSE whyen you're really not.
I don't think it's at all unfair to close this service down, since MP3.com can keep offering downloads of songs it *does* have a right to offer, such as from artists who've given permission, have contracts with them for downloads, etc. This was a very limited part of MP3.com's services which was ruled a violation.
Napster is an entirely different issue. Napster is a network, which allows users of the network to connect to each other and download stuff. Napster itself doesn't host songs on its own "site" like MP3.com's MP3 Anywhere or whatever it was called, was doing. So, it's very likely that Napster will be ruled some form of "common carrier" and therefore not liable for what its users do amongst themselves, since its network has a legitimate use in allowing users to distribute non-copyrighted sound files. To make Napster police its network to decide what is and is not copyright infringement would put an undue burden on Napster and similar networks, and is not what a judge would order. In fact, if a network does police itself, then it would become liable--but if it just provides an open service, it can be considered a common carrier. Just my 2 pence...
> When and if they are paroled, for example, the convicted Branch
> Davidian folks will probably be barred from associating with
> each other which
> certainly would hinder their ability to practice their
> religious beliefs.
Don't stupid Americans learn what they're talking about before speaking? I'm American too, but I'm tired of the rest of the world laughing at us because of stupid people like this guy. The Branch Davidians were by and large acquitted of everything. There, I said it. Let me repeat: the Branch Davidians were acquitted. As in, not guilty of the lying and made up, false and manufactured, untrue charges which Janet Reno made up. I believe a couple guys had relatively minor weapons charges, but everyone else was acquitted of everything else. They were charged, for example, with murder of the federal thugs--er, agents--who stormed their home, but a jury acquitted them, saying that they were within their rights to protect themselves. Years later, and people are still falling sway to the FUD spread by the DoJ to cover their asses. No, no one was being molested inside the Branch Davidian compound, because the Age of Consent in Texas was low and because Koresh was commonlaw-husband to some of the under-18 girls he was supposedly with since parental consent was given. But so what, since THE ATF AND FBI HAVE NO JURISDICTION OVER CHILD ABUSE ACCUSATIONS. I repeat, they were acquitted, of all but minor charges which wouldn't warrant a restrictive parole. If I recall correctly, only 2 went to federal prison. And, yes, I'm sure you weren't just referring to those 2, that you were under the mistaken impression that all the Branch Davidians went to jail for murder or one of the other misconceptions about the case. It just ticks me off since, as freedom-loving Americans, we should stand up more when something like Waco happens. Those people had their rights unlawfully infringed by agencies which had no jurisdiction (2/3 of the affidavit for search warrant was about alleged child abuse). The Treasury Department's own investigation into the causes of the debacle concluded that the ATF was there not to go after illegal weapons, but "to enforce the morals of our society." And I thought that we were supposed to be in a free country, where people could have different religions and moralities...
> It's hard to feel sympath for scum like Mitnick
It's easy. His crimes were minor. He caused no serious damage to any network--no damage at all, if you discount a little lost peace of mind on behalf of a few stupid sysadmins who should have been running a more secure environment anyway. You obviously have either never read the specifics of the case, or have zero appreciation for civil rights. His rights were violated, he was held without his right to a speedy trial, he was blackmailed by the prosecutor into accepting continuance after continuance just to be kept out of maximum security general population where he'd be beaten and raped, and now they aren't letting him make money the only way he can earn a living. I can understand the restriction against him using computers, but a restriction against him talking about technology on the lecture circuit is a clear violation of his rights--he still has a First Amendment right, that doesn't go away. That is the most sacred and fundamental right in this country, friend. "Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured." -- Thomas Paine, 1791
Even convicted felons need to have basic, fundamental rights, or else you may as well keep them in prison. We are, today in this country, an evil and cruel society which tries to punish criminals instead of reform them. That's not how it's supposed to be. There's no excuse for sending a 12 year old kid to prison for life without parole; by definition a child is unable to fully understand the ramifications of his actions. Do you know why prisons in this country are traditionally called "penitentiaries"? Because the modern American prison system was founded on the Enlightenment idea that criminals could be reformed, if only you could make them penitent about their crimes. It was a great new idea that, instead of throwing people away when they "broke", you should try to "fix" them. It was a very humane and even Christian in the true sense of the word idea (remember Jesus with the stoning of the adulteress?). But now people would rather lock their fellow man up for life from the age of 12 than to try to make that person a functioning member of society again. It's a very sick and twisted paradigm, which most of the Western world is abhorred by. It's even contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As for Mitnick specifically, the only reason they want him off the lecture circuit is because he's portraying the people who kept him in jail as what they really are: the real criminals here. Personally, I wish that prosecutor and judge harm enough for them to realize what they've done. What goes around, comes around. "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient . . . the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." -- Justice Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court
Wow, you just gave me a great idea. Robotic cock fighiting would be cool. Forget about those sissy MIT contests where a robot trie to complete an obstacle course. I can see it now...in the back of a seedy Mexican store...the animatronic horror as a special Killer Rooster Bot from Argentina lays into the robotic Little Yerry Seinfeld...brake fluid spewing everywhere...servos flailing dented rolled aluminum limbs...the smell of freshly drawn lubricant dripping over alloy frames...the sound of torn rubber fittings gnashing in gears... And, best of all, I'd have an excuse to grease up my big shiny cock. :-o
:-)
Am I the only one who saw that episode of Seinfeld about the cockfighting? Just think of it: PETA should give us a medal for this idea.
I mean, what were the AMD guys thinking??? I love AMD, and I even bought a K6-2 knowing that a Celeron would have been faster, out of loyalty to AMD and dislike for Intel. But, "Duron"? Isn't that the name of a popular brand of paint? I believe it's "Duron Paints and Wall-Coverings" or some such. http://www.duron.com So, they've named their new processor after paint. Wonderful. Don't tech guys ever go into hardware stores? What is Joe Average going to buy, a computer with a fast-sounding Celeron processor, or one that sounds like it doubles as a listing in a paint chip catalogue. AMD, I love you, but call it something else.
;-) Come on, AMD, wake up and change it before it's a marketing nightmare. Joe Average doesn't want a computer that's named after paint he can buy at any hardware store, and Joe Average is the main consumer for this value chip.
What was wrong with the code-name "Spitfire," anyway? The only other thing called a "spitfire" is an old type of fast sportster. It's a cool name, and counters "Celeron" quite nicely. A consumer sees "Celeron" and "Spitfire" chips and they sound competitive--remember that AMD needs John Q. Public to buy the chip, not just Slashdotters who know what they're buying beyond name. But, an average joe sees "Celeron" versus "Duron," and it's fairly obvious which one sounds better. Guys want fast, not just durable, and impressions count in selling any product.
Again, I hate to put too much emphasis on just a name, but, it's a marketing nightmare. It's a paint company name, and it sounds slow instead of showy. Gee, sounds like it should be the name for the new Cyrix chip, eh?
> I can't understand why you would have ever bought an AMD
> CPU in the past (I certainly can now with the Athlon, however).
First point: I bought an AMD K6-2 because, at the time, it was the only reasonable alternative to supporting the Intel monopoly, a monopoly I found just as odious then as I do now. The K7 Athlon was six months or more away, and I needed a computer sooner than that. And, I wasn't going to buy Intel on principle--they'd been handing us slight modifications of the original Pentium, without much true innovation, for far too long. Amazing how the underdog AMD, with comparatively few resources, was first to market with a true "786" processor core... But, back to the point, I bought AMD on principle, and their price/performance ratio at the time was very competitive with the Celeron (differing clockspeeds for equal performance, of course). It'll still make a damn fine file server when I build a new Athlon/Thunderbird system at the end of the year.
> The main reason why ATI cards have problems on Super7 is because
> Super7 is a bad, bad hack. If you actually look around, all of the
> cards were having problems around that time.
Yes, but you're missing the point! *ALL* of the other major manufacturers fixed their drivers to make their products work with Super 7, *EXCEPT* for ATI. A TNT2 will run well on Super 7, and has since a couple months after introduction when the drivers were fixed for VIA Super 7. Ditto for G200/G400. Even a shiny new GeForce runs well under VIA Super 7. But still, after an eternity, not the ATI Rage 128 based cards. *That's* the point. All other important players run well on VIA Super 7 chipsets now, except for ATI which has had well over a year to fix their driver support. So, the problem is with ATI's protracted laziness. Nowadays Super 7 may not be the best platform to bother with, but it was for most of the over a year in which ATI ignored driver dev for it.
> And the REALMagic is a PCI card, right? And your ATI card is
> AGP? Again, this is more a problem with Super7 than the manufacturer
> of your graphics card.
No, no, no, no. The video card is a standard PCI model; I have an AGP slot which I wanted to save for an nVidia or 3Dfx card when I could save the money to upgrade, then use the ATI strictly for its multimedia functions live Video Desktop and vid capping. Look towards the future, I always say, and I wasn't about to waste my AGP slot on a card featuring an ATI chip which was already a year old. So, it isn't a problem with VIA's AGP implementation, it's, I repeat, a problem with ATI's substandard hardware support/driver support. So, if the REALmagic card has no problem doing DVD over my PCI bus, the ATI card shouldn't either. It's that simple. REALmagic took the time to write drivers which would handle DVDs well from a Super 7 mobo, but ATI Multimedia didn't. Their driver support is consistently substandard when compared to nVidia, 3Dfx, and Matrox, and I mean even on Intel mobos--read the posts on the Rage Underground help boards if you doubt this. But the driver support is especially bad for AMD/VIA solutions. There is *ZERO* excuse for blaming a chipset instead of fixing your drivers to work with it, especially when every other important player in the graphics industry has managed to make their cards work quite well with it. And before you try again to lay the blame elsewhere, yes, the latest VIA drivers have been installed and configured properly.
And, a final note: especially since a PCI-based Rage 128-based card could not play well with X in standard SVGA mode, ATI has absolutely no business calling a VIA chipset non-standard. It's ATI's cards and drivers which are non-standard.
Yes, it *sounds* fantastic on paper. So did, a-hem, the original Rage Fury, what with its groundbreaking new chip and whopping 32 MB of memory. But, ATI has always had one fatal flaw, and that flaw will doubtless plague them still: their drivers absolutely suck. It took a good six months after the original Rage Fury was released for it to get the performance it should have and could have had from day 1--by that time, TNT2 was mopping the floor with it in both performance and image quality, and especially in price. It was outdated by the time it was performing up to par with its specs.
This has always been ATI's main problem. Unlike nVidia and 3Dfx, ATI releases drivers slowly and never ever advertises them; in fact, its own driver download pages warn that the drivers are only supposed to be for people experiencing problems, etc., and might cause new problems. They go beyond a "standard disclaimer" and try to actively discourage driver updates--no wonder then that sites like "Rage Underground" are the center for the ATI guys into performance, sites which have their own *unofficial* performance-optimized drivers because ATI drivers suck.
So, I'm convinced that no matter the potential of ATI's new chips, they won't live up to them until it's too late. The other ATI problem is also driver-related: lack of hardware support. If you don't have an Intel processor/mobo, think twice before plonking down hard currency for anything made by ATI. I myself got an ATI All-in Wonder 128 card this Christmas, and it refuses to play well with my VIA based motherboard/K6-2 processor. It's not like the Super 7 platform is either too new or too old for ATI to have supported it in the Rage 128 based cards, or that the VIA MVP3-G chipset is so uncommon. ATI, quite frankly, just doesn't care about supporting non-Intel platforms, because they don't have to. They're the company of choice for Intel-based OEMs. So, they don't care about performance-loving AMD-using geeks like a lot of us here.
This is in stark contrast to nVidia and 3Dfx, which release new drivers all the time and which try to support every viable platform. When GeForce cards were having a problem on Athlon mainboards, nVidia released new drivers to fix the problem. Yet, ATI would probably have done the same thing they did a year ago with K6-2 and K6-3 platforms and the Rage 128 cards and blame the problem on the chipset vendors for being non-standard--i.e., non-Intel.
This is a serious attitude problem on ATI's behalf, and until they can prove that they'll provide adequate enough driver support at least for Windows, I'd recommend staying away from anything they offer because the drivers will kill it. Let alone Linux. I tried installing both Corel Linux 1.0 and Linux-Mandrake 6.0 with my A-i-W 128--based on the same year-old chip from the Rage Fury--and couldn't get it to work with X even in generic SVGA mode. ATI doesn't support all common platforms under Windows, so forget about decent Linux drivers.
I am satisfied somewhat with the multimedia features of my All-in-Wonder 128 under Windows--Video Desktop is a godsend--but even then DVD playback was unbearably awful. Of course, ATI blamed it on my VIA chipset. Funny then how the REALmagic Hollywood+ I got after the ATI's performance bit delivers flawless DVD performance on the same VIA chipset, with CPU usage averaging under 5%. Yeah, ATI, blame it on the mobo chipset instead of your own laziness when it comes to drivers...
As I said, I like the multimedia features of my A-i-W 128, even though DVD playback won't work because of shoddy drivers the rest of it is great. Video capture is flawless, and Video Desktop for TV viewing always wows my guests and provides me with hours of entertainment during my long visits to pr0n--er, tech sites. But never, ever, ever, buy an ATI card for its performance stats. It won't live up to them until the card is outdated, and even then it might never live up to them unless you have an Intel mobo and processor.
Nielsen ratings are directly used to determine what programs stay on TV and what programs don't. Frankly, I think it would be great if the insipidly backwards, 1950s-style Nielsen Ratings system were updated to take into account today's technology.
:-)
As long as all the "tracking features" are disclosed up-front, this is a great advance. I'd buy one of these units just to get my "vote" for the shows I love a chance to be heard. As it is, so few "Nielsen Families" exist that I seriously question the integrity of the very ratings system which determines what programs I get to watch--low ratings, as you know, mean a show will get the axe. Currently, less than 25,000 households from only the top 48 markets get a "vote" in the ratings game.
This would be a first step towards perhaps changing that limited, closed, backwards system. I'm surprised that Nielsen hasn't gotten together with TV manufacturers to work out a deal--there would be even greater possibilities for revolutionizing the system if that were to happen.
This is just a small first step--only ReplayTV users, as the article says, in already-established Nielsen families, are going to have their usage habits tracked. But imagine the possibilities this could lead to, if the Nielsen people are encouraged:
Imagine a world in which your ReplayTV or TiVo, or even your television set, had a built-in modem and a small chipset designed to record your program choices and upload them once a week. You could choose whether to plug in your modem or not, so no privacy issues would be involved--consumers would boycott a "mandatory" feature like that, but welcome a voluntary one. Then, your viewing choices would have the chance to affect what shows stay on the air and which get nixed, whereas now your viewing habits have no value whatsoever since you're not a Nielsen family. I much prefer this model, than having a scant few families (relatively speaking) which supposedly represent some bonehead's idea of a statistical sampling, deciding which shows survive. I miss *My So-Called Life* and *Freaks and Geeks*, dammit!
Yes, legally the characters are the IP of their creators or the studios if their creators either sold the IP or created it while under contract to a studio. However, non-commercial use of intellectual property is protected by fair use doctrine, and fan fiction is all done by amateurs. While, as the article points out, no court has ever addressed the issue of fan fiction using characters who are the intellectual property of others, even a very clueless judge would uphold the right of a private citizen to write a story about a character and distribute it non-commercially.
:-o "That 70s Blow" anyone, or "The Secret Sex Life of Alex Mack"? Okay, so it gets lonely here at my workstation... hehe...
It's not just about fair-use doctrine, it's also a first-amendment matter--a very valid point could be made that the right of free speech outweighs intellectual property claims in such cases, and that fan fiction is protected speech. This at first might seem quite odd, but look at it this way: much of fan fiction is artistic or even political in nature, and hence protected speech. Just look at the "slash" genre mentioned in the article--it could be argued that portraying well-known fictional characters as gay is a form of political, pro-gay-rights speech. If the use of someone else's character is "fair" use, then there isn't even an issue here.
Even if a very clueless court decided that using someone else's character doesn't fall under "fair use," it could perhaps be argued on more general principles that such use is legally protected: the entire system of copyright and intellectual property is founded on one simple notion, that copyright law exists to "promote the advancement of arts and sciences." That's not an exact quote, but language to that effect exists in the language of the Constitution when it refers to the right of Congress to grant exclusive rights to certain works to their creators. Therefore, if use of a character in fan fiction is promoting the creation of new "literature"--and rest assured many intellectuals would refer to fan fiction as a sort of populist literature--then it would go against the very spirit of IP law to forbid the practice.
On a personal note, I love fan fiction. There's nothing like going to alt.sex.stories and reading stuff like "7th Heaven's First Orgy" or "A Very Brady Gangbang," or my personal favorite, "Star Trek: Deep Space 69."
Yes, for DSP or anything that requires lots of cacheing, a Celeron-2 would be less than ideal, esp. since its L2 cache latency is set to 2 (to further induce people to go for the more expensive and less latent P!!! CuMine). However, for number-crunching these are ideal cheap processors to put into render farms, Beowulf (I hate to say that word now, the trolls seem to want to screw Beowulf clusters more than they want to screw Natalie Portman) clusters, or anything where most or all of the important code can fit into the L1 and the rest can at least fit into the L2. If your app can fit in the L1, then there's no performance increase at all between the cheap Celery-2 and the unholy expensive CuMine P!!!. If your app can't fit in the L1 but can fit in the L2--most number-crunching stuff can--then the only difference between the processors will be the slightly delayed L2 latency which won't hurt performance on such an app by much.
;-) Nah, because the Spitfire Athlon that's coming up will be cheaper than a similarly-clocked Celeron-2, and probably outperform it by a respectable margin.
;-)
I ought to buy a cheap Celery-2 just to get my numbers on Distributed.net up to a respectable level.
But anyway, it all depends on what your applications for the processor are going to be, as to whether it'll really be worth the extra money. When a really good SMP Celeron-2 motherboard comes out, that and 2 cheap Celeron-2s will probably be cheaper and as effective in Linux or Win2k than a Coppermine P!!! at a speed grade or 2 above the 2 Celerons. In other words, the Celeron 2 still has its place even among the technocracy.
The SMP-ability of a Coppermine processor is determined by the stepping of the processor--i.e., the earliest CuMines couldn't SMP, at least not officially. I don't know whether the capability was still there, but just not certified yet, or not there at all. Anyone know?
:-)
So, if the stepping of a CuMine--whether Celeron or full-cached--is 1, then it isn't certified for SMP. If the stepping of a full-cache Coppermine P!!! is at least 2, and prefereably 3, then it's fully SMP capable, definitely. While the Celerons are not certified for SMP work at all, and never were, they use the same core and therefore are SMP capable with the same caveats about the processor stepping. In fact, Celerons are probably just Coppermine P!!! with half the cache rendered unusable; this makes sense from an economic standpoint, because as AMD learned with their ghastly K6-III yields, much of the on-die cache can be ruined when the processor is being made; AMD had to disable all the on-die cache on such processors and sell them as cheap K6-2s, and when Intel gets a dud Coppermine it can still be sold as a Celeron as long as half of the on-die cache is still salvageable.
So, to make a long story short, yeah, the new Celeron-2s can do SMP as long as they're not stepping 1, and preferably at least stepping 3. The trick is finding a motherboard that can handle 2 SMP Celery-deuces; I think MSI is coming out with one soon, based on a VIA chipset.
Personally, I'm holding off my upgrade path (a lot--I'm still on a high K6-2 machine) until I can get an SMP Athlon Thunderbird setup, toward the end of the year. I do, however, plan to buy it one processor at a time--I ain't made of money. Personally, I'm happier with AMD chips just because I'm pissed that ChipZilla has been using the same processor core for so many year now it's pathetic. If not for AMD, we wouldn't have either Coppermine P!!! or Celery-2 processors yet--look at Intel's old roadmaps. It's obvious that they never have cared for advancing microprocessors for the desktop user. But, I digress...
Screw you "Coward"! If you post a hateful little comment like this, you should at least have the brass valls to post it from your real account. As the bloody judge himself said, I was prosecuted as an 18 year old high school student under a law that's meant to protect young people from adults who can take advantage of them through significant differences in age, power, authority, and other imbalancing factors. It is *NOT* a law that was meant to be levied against a high school kid for some pretty normal sexual exploration. It's not like I posted the damn things to the Net, in fact they were at *her* house in *her* posession which is how her militant Nazi of a father found them.
You know what? Reactions like yours are *exactly* what's wrong with this country--no regard for justice and common sense, just an ignorant statement based on a general principle which is good but which can be taken too far. Justice has to take into account individual circumstances, not just blindly quote statutes. "There can be no justice when laws are absolute."
I have respect for a judge who could look at the circumstances of a case and say "case dismissed" not because the law says he should dismiss a case in those circumstances, but because he knows that it's the just thing to do.
I do not, however, have respect for a worthless troll such as yourself who'd rather be an insulting louse than take into account the person to whom he's responding was deeply emotionally scarred by a misapplication of law and the corresponding volley of heartless press coverage which also failed to take into account a little something called THE FACTS.
Fact is, the law was meant to protect young people from predators, not to screw over a high school senior for dating a high school junior when many people in my grade were dating freshmen. A crime of photography? Between 2 people IN THE SAME PEER GROUP?
In short, you, dear sir, are an ass.
What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? When you publicize the name of someone *accused* of a crime, who hasn't been convicted, you're throwing that out the window. If you think people who are arrested are always guilty, you're deluding yourself. If you think people who may or may not have committed crimes should be paraded through the press by name--and the press *always* assume guilt, and see things in the worst possible light--I'd like to kick your ass. Proverbially, of course. I'm not saying that because I'm trying to be flamebait, I'm saying it because I'm mad and I have a right to be. Here's why:
Senior year of high school, I was as happy as a geek could be. I had a close circle of fine friends, and an active social life, and I'd been accepted early decision to the college of my choice. Best of all, I had my first real girlfriend. She was a HS junior, a fellow member of the academic team, and as gorgeous as she was smart. She was everything I'd wanted. Guess what ruined it? Her dad had me arrested on a serious-sounding felony charge, just because after going out for many months we fooled around as teenagers do and one time we took some risque photos of ourselves. We were two teenage kids experimenting, nothing serious or wrong, and I got arrested for felony production of child porn for playfully taking a few nude pictures of a girl who was just a year and a half younger than I was. It didn't matter that she'd had ten times the experience that I'd had, that I'd been a virgin and she'd been with three guys before me, or that everything was done between a boyfriend and girlfriend who loved each other in that sickeningly sweet adolescent way, all that mattered was a number. The justice system isn't about justice anymore, it's just about law without using common sense. Guess what the headline was in the next issue of the local paper? "Local man arrsted for making child pornography." A silly adolescent experiement for private use between 2 people, and suddenly the police and the press put me on the same level as some sick child molesting freak. They printed my full name and address, those worthless press bastards. They did this to a HS student who just barely turned 18. Instead of her name, they listed my girlfriend as "the victim" because by chance she was a year and a half younger than me. "The victim," as if I'd abused her in some way. The judge had common sense enough to dismiss the case, but by that time my future college read the article and it took a lot of explaining to avoid getting my admission revoked. Never mind that it's enough to have to deal with being accused of a serious felony like that, without your name and address printed in the paper for the world to see whether you deserve it or not.
Fuck the irresponsible press, they have no right to know when you haven't even had your day in court yet. Innocent until proven guilty left the legal system about the same time justice did. Americans should start caring about freedom more. Think about these quotes before whining about what the press ought to be told about *accused*, rather than convicted, people:
"Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."--Thomas Jefferson
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."--Benjamin Franklin - 1759
"The American people must be willing to give up a degree of personal privacy in exchange for safety and security."--FBI Director Louis Freeh - 1994
"Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured."--Thomas Paine, 1791
At the risks of sounding like a bloody anarchist, I have to disagree that this connection in any way "taints" the software. In fact, I view it as an ennobling trait of the software involved and any similar software which will be developed in the future.
Why? Because, the old music/intellectual property distribution system is flawed and in need of a thorough shaking-up. Why was copyright invented? To secure the inventor's ability to profit from his invention, so that innovation will be fostered. It wasn't invented so that multinational corporations can exclusively profit from those inventions long after the inventors are dead. Why am I still paying $$$ for music by people who've been dead fifty years???
Let me put it in strictly music terms, since you mentioned mp3s. In the present system, bands labor in local bars and college stages for years and years, partially supported by small-press CD sales and meager incomes, until someone discovers them. At that point, they sell their soul to the record company for a few cents per CD sold and whatever percentage of the concert take they're given. Most bands end up with very little money; only a lucky few become mid-range bands whom anyone's ever heard of, and only an infinitesimal percentage become big-name stars who can finally earn dollars on each CD sold, rather than cents. Not much incentive to innovate, to make music, now is it? In fact, I'd argue that the present system often stifles musical innovation--look at all the Britney Spears wannabes created by the studios to try to cash in on the current craze, and this happens all the time. The studios want one thing, money, and they stifle musical advancement whenever they can because the present system is centrally controlled by the studios, not the artists, and innovation would hurt the studios.
Imagine a system--one we're on the brink of--in which bands can play the local scene like they've always done, but can promote through the Internet and Net-based "recording companies." There was a time when local promoters were important, because they honed the talent and brought it to the attention of the national companies--imagine a return to that de-centralization, where the power no longer rests in the hands of Sony and the rest of the RIAA, but rests in the hands of many more smaller groups like it used to. Imagine a world in which all that the national and multi-national corporations do is promote national and international concert tours once a group becomes big, rather than signing bands when they're poor in order to put them into indentured servitude and stealing 95% of the profits. Heck, most bands would be thrilled to give the music away for a very small fee direct to the consumer since the record companies bilk them under the current system.
Gnutella, Napster, et al. are going to be catalysts for this change--record companies will have to change their ways, or else piracy will outstrip legitimate purchase by a long shot. This is the chance for a revolution brought on by software and the free software ideals. Regardless of propaganda, most if not all small bands are not hurt by piracy in the form of Napster/Gnutella, and almost all the album profits from name bands go to the multi-national corporations. Heck, I read at Yahoo that several record companies make bands sign away copyright/trademark on their names and domain names--that just isn't right, it's an abuse. I see this as a short-term bout of piracy which will end when the music industry returns to a more natural state and price structure. Ultimately, this will empower musicians, and foster innovation in the field. It'll be rocky and contentious at first, but it'll work out for the best for musicians--whom copyright law is supposed to protect (not studios).
Folks, as it says, they were paying the "technology fees". The technology fees pay for purchase and upkeep of the campus computer infrastructure; therefore, they were entitled to use that infrastructure. As the first article clearly states, there is a $24/semester difference in rates for rooms with ethernet/withour ethernet--however, since they're paying the technology fees anyway, the extra $24/semester is merely a surcharge for the *added convenience* of having a room with Ethernet connection pre-installed. Furthermore, as the guy quoted in the first article said, the college would like to have all the rooms wired for network connections but doesn't merely because of the costs involved.
:-)
Seems to me that the attorney(s) for the students should argue that the students had every legal right to access a network which they were paying for, and that the $24/semester extra for a pre-wired room is for defraying the costs of physically wiring the rooms in question. Again I repeat: all students are defraying the network upkeep costs, and those who pay the $24/semester extra are defraying the cost of physically wiring their rooms.
I sincerely hope that they and their attorney(s) use this argument, since it is very valid in legal terms. Furthermore, if this argument stands at court, the students could quite legally piss off the asshole admins who turned them in by immediately going back to their dorms and re-wiring the connection in question.
Does anyone know how to contact these guys 'n' gal to tell them how we at Slashdot support them, and about this legal argument? Seems to me that if they get a really sympathetic judge, their attorney(s) might be able to get an immediate dismissal.
On an even more important note, students at OSU ought to protest, and hard. Surely someone knows a high-placed administrator or, better yet, director/regent who can get all outraged over the affair. Someone ought to get a sever tongue-lashing (mmm, that doesn't sound so bad after all...) at least for this, as it is a very poor public relations move. If the students push the angle I stated above, then it should garner them 99% of the sympathy, and it's all a matter of spin. Many here have been jumping to the conclusion that what they did *was* theft, but the facts state otherwise. It's this spin that the students need to use, and if they do then media all across the state will run stories which lambaste OSU, and that's what these students need. End of lesson!
A mistaken argument. Only certain information is more valuable if it is scarce--for example, information about the stock market, corporate mergers, or other things which require stealth in order to play your hand. But a song is just a song, asshole. ;-)
>Seriously, though, this is a moral issue that
>you completely blow by. Say there's a cart of
>apples standing on the street, with a sign on it
>saying "DO NOT STEAL!" Should you still steal
>the apples? How can one reasonably expect an
>adolescent (or older) apple lover to refuse a
>nice juicy apple?
Another example of a clueless person trying to use a false metaphor. Digital music, software, etc. is information, not a tangible good, and information can be copied an unlimited number of times without being diminished. So, by your apple cart analogy, for it to be accurate the "theif" would have to have the ability to walk up to the apple cart and create an identical copy of the apple he wants out of thin air, while leaving the original apple intact. That wouldn't really be stealing.
So, your analogy is flawed. But more importantly in the case of music and software--you aren't really hurting anyone by downloading music and software you'd never otherwise buy. I bought Q3A and UT because I would have bought them even if they weren't available pirated--which they are--and because I want to support their developers. I do however have Fiona Apple songs I downloaded for free, because she's a sexy bitch and I like listening to her sultry voice, but I'd never have shelled out $10-$20 for the privilege. That hurts neither Fiona nor the record company she signed with, because I wouldn't have given them money anyway--especially since I could record her music videos for free off of MTV if I wanted to, with the added bonus of being able to see her sexy self when she's "a bad, bad girl." In fact, I have an ATI All-in-Wonder 128, so I could easily capture the videos digitally and make a VCD. But, I digress; point being, no one is losing money, and I get free entertainment. No one gets hurt, no one steals the music since the albums are all still there.
How much continued cookie-shuffling would it take to start making their databases choke and sputter? I'm sure many of the dedicated scripters out there could cobble together something that would cycle through pulling down a lot of banner ad/cookie traffic and deleting it. Now, if just half the readership of Slashdot who have high-speed connections would participate--that'll add up to billions o' cookies for the database, and a lot of server time dedicated to serving up banners a la mode to little old us.
Ideas, folks? It is, however, time to take a stand against the AOLified and doubleclicked idea of the Net which corporate America wants to feed us. We pay for this bandwidth, not DoubleClick, so why don't we start showing them how we can use that bandwidth to screw 'em in the arse?