I would suppose that Starfleet would be a derivative of the USAF, so it does make sense.
Back in the early 90's (I think it was late '92 to early '93), the Air Force actually adopted the Navy's rank insignia system. They kept the rank names (LT, CPT, MAJ, etc.), but went to the system of thick and thin stripes that the Navy uses to display rank on jackets and shirts (excepting the Navy khakis, that is).
I thought this was pretty cool, for one reason in particular -- this makes it easier for USAF to morph (likely in a joint capacity with the Navy, hence the rank titles themselves) into Starfleet, since the rank pips on ST:TNG forward (and, apparently, from the pictures I've seen, ST:Starfleet, too, anachronistically) are based on the Navy system. (For ST:TOS, they didn't use pips, they had continuous and broken wavy stripes on the end of their t-shirts, and I'm not sure they were even consistent with it, either...)
Of course, they also changed the cut of the jackets, so they looked more like suit jackets than uniforms, dropped all other insignia (didn't even have a prominent "U.S." on 'em), and used silver for the stripes, so everyone thought they looked like airline pilots. Lasted less than a year, I think.
I have a suspicion what the answer is going to be, but does anyone know if XM and Sirius are using the same hardware/software? That is, if I buy an XM radio, then learn that my favorite DJ or Band is getting their own 24-hour channel on Sirius, can I cancel XM and join Sirius with the same hardware?
I'm afraid this is going to be too much like DirecTV vs Echostar -- each using their own systems. Why, oh, why, can't we develop STANDARD content delivery systems and simply use the inherint subscriber / key information to control which bird you're listening to?
If we really are seeing a marked increase in worm traffic (and it's not just everyone suddenly noticing, now that others have brought it up -- just being cautious, eh?), then could it be possible that this might be part of, or a prelude to, a DDOS attack?
The NIPC issued the following advisory: Potential Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks on Monday, talking about reports of people preparing for DDOS attacks on computer and commerce infrastructures. In particular: On September 12, 2001, a group of hackers named the Dispatchers claimed they had already begun network operations against information infrastructure components such as routers. The Dispatchers stated they were targeting the communications and finance infrastructures. They also predicted that they would be prepared for increased operations on or about Tuesday, September 18, 2001.
Of course, this could just be an ill-timed release of yet another worm (like there're "well-timed" releases?). I just thought that this was particularly spooky, reading this alert after seeing this worm story...
So far the best graphics I've found, far surpassing any of the lousy diagrams I've seen on CNN, come from the Spanish paper El Pais. This page includes two interactive, animated flash documents (Grafico -- currently the first two pictures) which shows the paths of all four planes, the way they hit the buildings, and how the supports in the towers got severed, leading to the collapse.
Helps if you know spanish (which I don't), but the pictures speak for themselves.
The actual animations are at http://www.elpais.es/multimedia/internacional/plan tilla10.swf and http://www.elpais.es/multimedia/internacional/estr uc.swf .
So this doesen't affect the "Takedown" proc?
on
eBay Beats DMCA
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Damn. I was really hoping they could throw out the whole takedown procedure in the first place. Or does the ruling indemnify E-Bay from any liability at all, allowing them to throw away the procedure?
I'm reminded of the posting here a week or two ago from someone who couldn't sell a personal copy of NT, CD and License, 'cause Microsoft kept complaining....
Forget about how do you build the repository -- that's easy. (Well, okay, non-trivial, but with databases, cvs, and even just simple shared folders, storing the docs is the least of your worries).
I still maintain that the biggest hurdle in any standardized document system (especially if you include multiple concurrent authors) is the front-end editor. I wrote a simple (and highly buggy, I'll admidt, so you who know me keep your traps shut!) VB application that provided a multi-user front end to a database. The back-end (PHP) pulled all the appropriate rows for any given doc together and mashed it into a nice, navigable HTML document. I even had PDF support at one time (but it was even flakier than the GUI).
However, it was not XML, so it was REALLY limited in how easy it was to create new views on the data. The biggest problem I ran into was trying to find a good GUI editor -- this thing was written for security engineers, not HTML experts, and I wanted them to concentrate on content, not tags. I eventually settled (and settled is the right word) on the Microsoft DHTML control. Worked well enough for the time (two years ago at this point), but I still think half my problems stemmed from that widget, or bad interface programming to it. The advantage? WYSIWYG (more or less) editing. Seamless multi-user editing of the same document (well, okay, we had some record locking issues.:) ) But again, the long pole of the tent was the editor widget.
Since then, I've wanted very much to rewrite the thing to handle full XML, and I understand there's an effort underway to do just that (I've since moved to different pastures), but it's slow going. I've looked at current technology (ABIword, for example), and i'm just not convinced that it's going to be easy to get a good semi-WYSIWYG XML editor going. At least not on the cheap.
Some time ago was posted here an app called Conglomorate, which I still think has about the best approach to visually representing an XML document. But it hasn't been updated in forever, and was slow/buggy the one time I played with it. More recently, the XMLmind XML Editor (XXE) has shown a lot of promise, even including CSS files for editing DocBook XML. They even have source available. Again, goes a long way to letting you edit diverse XML files in a logical way -- not by forcing you to look at ugly tree-views of an XML file, like so many first-generation editors. Finally, the latest XML Spy editor beta goes a bit father even than XXE, using a full XSLT transform to provide a WYSIWYG format for XML files. Theoretically, with this, you should be able to display any of your documents in whichever approach you like -- full WYSIWYG, tables, trees, block labels, whatever.
Of course, neither of these latter tools work in a concurrent editing fashion. But that's a "minor" enhancement -- put together a robust DB back end, allow for good record locking, editor-to-editor communications for lock management, transaction log to allow back-out of changes, etc. Lots of possibilities. Take XXE, put this kind of capability on the back-end, an integrated login and document management system, and you've got a kick-ass document solution. Work the backend to allow for multi-stage review and publishing, and provide output engines for HTML, PDF, WAP, whatever, serve different subtrees of the system to, say, internal project web servers, external web servers, sales and marketing (for glossies), etc., and everyone can manage everything, real-time, GUI, with one tool.
But I dream.
(seriously -- if anyone's really working this, I'd love to help. I just wanna use it at home for my own web pages.)
And he causeth all... to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads
Interestingly enough, this is one of the few remaining strong superstitions I hold. Whenever I'm somewhere and they need to stamp my hand for something, they invariably want to stamp my right hand. Because this passage freaked the shit out of me back in junior high school, I always hold out my left, instead. It's amazing (and very annoying) how these people can't handle that someone might want the other hand stamped.
One of these days, if I'm sufficiently annoyed, I'll just start quoting the verse in a loud voice, shouting religious discrimination, and see what happens. Might help that I'm in a relatively conservative state, too.:)
"Even your wastebasket will kind of vibrate with happiness when trash is thrown into it. So you want the cubicle to love you and care for you, kind of a womb experience."
Does anybody get the feeling that Scott Adams is channeling Douglass Adams? I'm reminded of the doors -- "Please enjoy your trip through this door."
Re:Sure. But can you telecommute from *Chantilly*?
on
Extreme Telecommuting
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· Score: 2
[ot - tried sending email, it bounced...]
Just out of curiousity, where do you live? We're building behind EC Lawrence Park (east of Rt. 28 between 66 and Westfields). We're hoping we might be able to sneak in IDSL, but are doubtful 'cause the folks on the communties on either side are just on the fringes, too.
Anyway, where's your central office? Or is the only one out here the one at Union Mill?
Sure. But can you telecommute from *Chantilly*?
on
Extreme Telecommuting
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· Score: 2
Oh, great, a firm in Chantilly has people telecommuting from Russia. This is what the internet is all about. I'm glad to see it. If more people could do this, we'd reduce traffic, road rage, pollution, and all that rot.
Of course, since I live next door to Chantilly (and will be moving into a Chantilly zip-code next year), I have only one question:
Why the hell can't we get broadband HERE!??
Gr. Less than 10 miles from, like, AOL, WorldCom, and even MAE-East, and most of us can't get DSL or Cable Modem. You'd think....
Problem with the Rio is you have to run a special Win32 app to stream to the thing. its not as flexbile as I would wish.
Actually, that's not necessarily true. Jeff Mock (http://www.mock.com/receiver/) has hacked together a linux server for it. Basically, it's a bunch of mod_perl scripts for apache, along with a real simple perl server to answer the device's initial request.
That, and it runs linux, too (sort of). Basically, it spits out a DHCP request for an IP address, sends a broadcast request to a particular port to ask for servers (which is answered by the little perl server), and from there it learns of the IP address and TFTP directory of the server. It then NFS mounts a directory from that server, and reboots with the image it pulls from that directory. So, to upgrade it, just change the files in the server's directory. Real cool. Once running, everything (all artist, track lookups, and audio fetching) happens over HTTP on the fly.
They've even got a cross-compiler for it, so you can write some of your own programs, and a couple kernel hacks already. I'm waiting for someone to improve the UI a little -- it's good, but not quite all there. Maybe 80% perfect.
I got mine for, like, $150, on E-Bay. Also branded specifically by Rio, though the front panel looks much weirder.
There's also the AudioTron, which I looked at first, but that scans your net for SMB servers, then builds its own internal database. Lose power, lose the database, and you've got to re-scan all over again.
That and the display is impossible to read from across the room.
That I will give you.:(
I definitely recommend the Rio Receiver, though. I'd love to see more people hacking it, and improving it. I'm really amazed it hasn't been a bigger hit around here so far...
"A guy named Joe Toledo bought the domain ford.com and now the car manufacturer wants it, who do you think should have it?" I'd be inclined to side with Ford. Because Ford has a trademark....
Yeah, so?
A trademark, if I recall correctly, is only supposed to protect a certain range of products within that product's "sphere." So it's perfectly legal to sell a pen called "Ford Pens", and you're not trampling on any trademark.
Plus, why do you even need to have a use for a name? Domain names are commodities. If you bought it first, and Ford missed the boat, well, tough luck for them. You've got it, they don't.
If you're deliberately deceiving pepole, trying to *look* like some other site, okay, that's a problem with look-and-feel, trade-dress sort of laws. But if I wanted to put my family website at, say, OfficeXP.com, then dammit, I should be allowed to do that.
My biggest worry is that the same.com crap is going to happen with.info,.biz, and all the other new TLDs. We saw EXACTLY this same thing happen when they added new toll-free prefixes in the US -- American Express tried suing to guarantee that they got 888-the-card, to match their 800-the-card. And so forth.
Dammit, when will people get it through their heads that you cannot own domain names for EVERY variant on EVERY product or trademark you own? It's just not possible, and it's just not fair.
Grr.
Sorry, this is something that's been bugging me for a while. Gotta cut back on the caffeine...
I was already beginning to appreciate and trust the cool new/. feature of putting the domain name after any links... But this guy seems to have managed to sneak by it. I'm guessing (but too lazy to test) that he stuck the link in his.sig. I like that. Very impressive.
I agree with you 100%. Any program that either doesn't announce itself, or doesn't give you a chance to say "no, thanks, don't install this, just give me the thing I downloaded only" is a virus. It's installing without your control, you can't get rid of it, and it does stuff you don't want. I had a helluva time getting my system to work after Gator got added with a game (snood). Bastards.
So, how do we convince the virus scanners to put signatures for Webhancer, Gator, etc., into their products? I imagine if *that* were to happen, and these comapnes get FLOODED with corporate MIS departments demanding to know how their virus got on their systems, and how to remove it...well, that would end the problem pretty darned quick.
There truly needs to be better protection laws against software companies, and this is a good place to start fighting back. Go to McAffee, look at their definitions of a Virus, and if this fits, harras them to include it.
Thanks for the complement. It was a lot harder than I'd expected it to be.
Certainly there are tools out there that put together random, sensical-looking text with specific patterns in word usage, punctuation, spacing, whatever, to encode messages, but to actually tweak a message with intrinsic meaning in itself is a bit more difficult.....
If steganography can be made "turnkey", it'll work
for most of today's privacy requirements.
You might think that it'd be easy to detect,
or simple to prevent, but that's simply not true.
Unless someone lists all the ways in which one
can hide information, and a fantastically fast
approach to testing any given communication on the
net against those techniques. Otherwise, to
read a steganographically-encoded message,
each recipient will need to figure out which of
all the messages intercepted even includes the
data you're looking for, and what was used in
this particular instance. Hell, one might even
have two or more different techniques applied
in a single message. Like this message does.
Sort of.
I want a basic IP dialtone. I think it should be provided as infrastructure by local government.
I'm sorry, this is the most ignorant concept I can imagine. If you would like to see what government-sponsored Internet looks like, talk to Europeans whose PTTs finally were de-nationalized.
I disagree with the response and agree with the original poster. In fact, I've been arguing this with people "in the industry" for literally YEARS (at least as far back as 1995). The way I see it, what we need is the following:
Quasi-Public fiber (or fiber/copper hybrid, I'm willing to settle at this point) infrastructure to every doorstep
Operated by the government (or some private entity, but with heavy controls, regulation, QOS guarantees). Possibly a not-for-profit operation, owned by the gov't, run by private contractors.
Standardized hardware boxes for taking fiber/copper in and spitting out:
Telephone (multi-line, etc.)
Cable TV (digital, HD, etc.)
Ethernet
anything else...
Providers pay per-month, flat charge to the infrastructure operator to cover wire, hubs, whatever.
Everything software configurable and addressable.
My classic example is I call up my cable company. Tell 'em to take a hike. Hang up. Call up a 2nd cable company. Give them my credit card number (or whatever). Hang up. Go down to the basement. Count to ten. Turn on the TV to the same lineup, same channels, same hardware, but different provider.
Or do the same for phone (though I'd have to make the second call from a cell phone!)
Will this ever happen? Of course not. First, you gotta get everyone on the same page for the communications specs. Then you have to get people building the network interface boxes. Some big, thorny, cooporative issues there.
The one thing that I could, maybe (when I've been drinking too much) see happening would be for the Baby Bells to get broken up, into infrastructure (the wires and such) and services (dial tone, dsl, etc.). The advantage there is that the wires are already in place.
*sigh* It'll never happen. There's no technical reason this can't work, but it'll never happen.
The master key allows you to [...] create new displays and start selling HDCP compatible devices.
Now I may be hopelessly naive or idealistic, but wouldn't the goal of selling HDCP compatible devices permit the disclosure of the system? Or can "they" really, legally, absolutely, limit the entry of independent 3rd-party hardware manufacturers to the game?
What if Diamond wanted to start selling HDCP displays, but didn't want to pay the $$$$ that they're probably requiring for membership in the "club"? This research could allow them to create fully functional, compliant, standards based displays.
As long as they don't deliberately leave backdoors in their display to give end-users access to the raw digital stream (which would make the display itself a circumvention device), they should be in compliance with DMCA, right?
And, since they developed the system after someone outside of DMCA jurisdiction (if there is such a place, truly) reverse-engineered it, there's no trade-secret violation, they've signed no NDAs, etc., so they're free to publish their spec, right?
Or is this just a pipe dream?
How do we get a decent-sized player like Rio to start selling DeCSS-based DVD players, publishing their spec as they go "so that other manufacturers can do the same"?:)
What I'd like to see is an easier way to make use of the 3-D engines for things like office/home walkthroughs and the like. I've looked into this in the past, but never found anything that was all that easy to use. We're currently building a home (well, a builder is) (well, they haven't finished the sewers yet, so they're not actually *building* our house yet, anyway), and the 3-D home design software we bought to help us visualize the interior of the home is, well, cumbersome. And the walkthroughs are horrible.
Why can't I find a quake/doom/whatever engine with a simple Visio-like front-end, so I can program in a whole house? Or office building? Or my neighborhood? (that'd look great on the web page...)
The information contained in this document is proprietary and confidential and may not be transmitted to others in any form without the express written consent of $COMPANY. If you have received this document in error, please call $NAME at $PHONE and promptly destroy all copies.
I hate that damned disclaimer. I regularly see it appened to email in mailing lists, and it's always a struggle for me not to respond to the guy that, no, I wasn't the original recipient, and he'd probably better check next time before he sends "proprietary and confidential" info to, say, the Pink Floyd mailing list.
I know that many businesses have such disclaimers automatically tacked on by a server or gateway, but that doesn't make it right. If it's legally binding, then it's legally binding for EVERY email on which it appears, in which case, it shouldn't be on the public mail forums. If they can make a case that the disclaimer doesn't apply there, then, well, why can't I make a case that it never applies?
I'm still not sure I see where you're going. If I'm logged into AIM, via Jabber, for example -- I've got an AIM account, it's loaded into jabber.org, and I'm using jabber.org's aim-t transport to get onto AIM -- then I can talk to other AIM users. They know who I am 'cause I've got an AIM account, and they address their IMs to that account.
But if I want to talk to someone on Yahoo!, can I do that without having first set up an account on Yahoo? A Yahoo! user couldn't simply talk to tjones@jabber.org, they'd have to have a Yahoo ID to address their IMs to, right? Therefore, I still need a login on Yahoo.
I saw the discussion on JDEV today about MSIM passing stuff through, and that sounds promising, but you're still limited to MSIM protocols, right? Until you can send a message to an arbitrary address (like aim:tjonesor yahoo:tjones) and have your buddy's client be able to talk back to jabber:tjones, then you'll still need multiple logins.
So, yes, the external systems care. But if everyone I knew were all on one system, I wouldn't need jabber. So as long as they're on different systems, those systems care, so my jabber client cares, so I care.:(
Jabber does NOT require you have accounts with every other service. Jabber is actually one of the only services besides Microsoft that can actually support the capability right now to deal with external IM systems.
Sure you do. How could I, an AIM user, talk to someone on MSN or Yahoo? They need an ID to reply to (and for the message to come from, naturally), so I have to have an account on those systems. Nobody is really doing any true interoperable IMing yet, as far as I know (where I put, say, "dcooper@im.msn.com" or "htruman@yahoo.com" into my ICQ or AIM client's buddy list).
Actually, the resolution for HDTV is either 1920x1080, 1280x720, or a few DVD-quality tv resolutions
Yes, but how many TVs actually display the full resolution? I've been watching HDTV sets for a while now, and I'm not sure I've seen any that support 1920x1080. I've seem a few that support 1080 (many just do 720 vertical), but those that do only support, for example, 1280 or so horizontally.
So, even with a good signal and a $3000 TV, you still might not get full HDTV quality. They really need to be more specific in their branding -- HDTV-ready vs HDTV-compatible (that might downconvert to 1280x1080, for example) vs fully-HDTV-compliant-in-input-and-display. Urgh.
Slashdot Mirror
I would suppose that Starfleet would be a derivative of the USAF, so it does make sense.
Back in the early 90's (I think it was late '92 to early '93), the Air Force actually adopted the Navy's rank insignia system. They kept the rank names (LT, CPT, MAJ, etc.), but went to the system of thick and thin stripes that the Navy uses to display rank on jackets and shirts (excepting the Navy khakis, that is).
I thought this was pretty cool, for one reason in particular -- this makes it easier for USAF to morph (likely in a joint capacity with the Navy, hence the rank titles themselves) into Starfleet, since the rank pips on ST:TNG forward (and, apparently, from the pictures I've seen, ST:Starfleet, too, anachronistically) are based on the Navy system. (For ST:TOS, they didn't use pips, they had continuous and broken wavy stripes on the end of their t-shirts, and I'm not sure they were even consistent with it, either...)
Of course, they also changed the cut of the jackets, so they looked more like suit jackets than uniforms, dropped all other insignia (didn't even have a prominent "U.S." on 'em), and used silver for the stripes, so everyone thought they looked like airline pilots. Lasted less than a year, I think.
I have a suspicion what the answer is going to be, but does anyone know if XM and Sirius are using the same hardware/software? That is, if I buy an XM radio, then learn that my favorite DJ or Band is getting their own 24-hour channel on Sirius, can I cancel XM and join Sirius with the same hardware?
I'm afraid this is going to be too much like DirecTV vs Echostar -- each using their own systems. Why, oh, why, can't we develop STANDARD content delivery systems and simply use the inherint subscriber / key information to control which bird you're listening to?
Is it that the username might be 8 unicode (or other multi-byte format) characters?
Just a quick hunch...
If we really are seeing a marked increase in worm traffic (and it's not just everyone suddenly noticing, now that others have brought it up -- just being cautious, eh?), then could it be possible that this might be part of, or a prelude to, a DDOS attack?
The NIPC issued the following advisory: Potential Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks on Monday, talking about reports of people preparing for DDOS attacks on computer and commerce infrastructures. In particular: On September 12, 2001, a group of hackers named the Dispatchers claimed they had already begun network operations against information infrastructure components such as routers. The Dispatchers stated they were targeting the communications and finance infrastructures. They also predicted that they would be prepared for increased operations on or about Tuesday, September 18, 2001.
Of course, this could just be an ill-timed release of yet another worm (like there're "well-timed" releases?). I just thought that this was particularly spooky, reading this alert after seeing this worm story...
So far the best graphics I've found, far surpassing any of the lousy diagrams I've seen on CNN, come from the Spanish paper El Pais. This page includes two interactive, animated flash documents (Grafico -- currently the first two pictures) which shows the paths of all four planes, the way they hit the buildings, and how the supports in the towers got severed, leading to the collapse.
n tilla10.swf and http://www.elpais.es/multimedia/internacional/estr uc.swf .
Helps if you know spanish (which I don't), but the pictures speak for themselves.
The actual animations are at http://www.elpais.es/multimedia/internacional/pla
Damn. I was really hoping they could throw out the whole takedown procedure in the first place. Or does the ruling indemnify E-Bay from any liability at all, allowing them to throw away the procedure?
I'm reminded of the posting here a week or two ago from someone who couldn't sell a personal copy of NT, CD and License, 'cause Microsoft kept complaining....
Forget about how do you build the repository -- that's easy. (Well, okay, non-trivial, but with databases, cvs, and even just simple shared folders, storing the docs is the least of your worries).
:) ) But again, the long pole of the tent was the editor widget.
I still maintain that the biggest hurdle in any standardized document system (especially if you include multiple concurrent authors) is the front-end editor. I wrote a simple (and highly buggy, I'll admidt, so you who know me keep your traps shut!) VB application that provided a multi-user front end to a database. The back-end (PHP) pulled all the appropriate rows for any given doc together and mashed it into a nice, navigable HTML document. I even had PDF support at one time (but it was even flakier than the GUI).
However, it was not XML, so it was REALLY limited in how easy it was to create new views on the data. The biggest problem I ran into was trying to find a good GUI editor -- this thing was written for security engineers, not HTML experts, and I wanted them to concentrate on content, not tags. I eventually settled (and settled is the right word) on the Microsoft DHTML control. Worked well enough for the time (two years ago at this point), but I still think half my problems stemmed from that widget, or bad interface programming to it. The advantage? WYSIWYG (more or less) editing. Seamless multi-user editing of the same document (well, okay, we had some record locking issues.
Since then, I've wanted very much to rewrite the thing to handle full XML, and I understand there's an effort underway to do just that (I've since moved to different pastures), but it's slow going. I've looked at current technology (ABIword, for example), and i'm just not convinced that it's going to be easy to get a good semi-WYSIWYG XML editor going. At least not on the cheap.
Some time ago was posted here an app called Conglomorate, which I still think has about the best approach to visually representing an XML document. But it hasn't been updated in forever, and was slow/buggy the one time I played with it. More recently, the XMLmind XML Editor (XXE) has shown a lot of promise, even including CSS files for editing DocBook XML. They even have source available. Again, goes a long way to letting you edit diverse XML files in a logical way -- not by forcing you to look at ugly tree-views of an XML file, like so many first-generation editors. Finally, the latest XML Spy editor beta goes a bit father even than XXE, using a full XSLT transform to provide a WYSIWYG format for XML files. Theoretically, with this, you should be able to display any of your documents in whichever approach you like -- full WYSIWYG, tables, trees, block labels, whatever.
Of course, neither of these latter tools work in a concurrent editing fashion. But that's a "minor" enhancement -- put together a robust DB back end, allow for good record locking, editor-to-editor communications for lock management, transaction log to allow back-out of changes, etc. Lots of possibilities. Take XXE, put this kind of capability on the back-end, an integrated login and document management system, and you've got a kick-ass document solution. Work the backend to allow for multi-stage review and publishing, and provide output engines for HTML, PDF, WAP, whatever, serve different subtrees of the system to, say, internal project web servers, external web servers, sales and marketing (for glossies), etc., and everyone can manage everything, real-time, GUI, with one tool.
But I dream.
(seriously -- if anyone's really working this, I'd love to help. I just wanna use it at home for my own web pages.)
And he causeth all ... to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads
:)
Interestingly enough, this is one of the few remaining strong superstitions I hold. Whenever I'm somewhere and they need to stamp my hand for something, they invariably want to stamp my right hand. Because this passage freaked the shit out of me back in junior high school, I always hold out my left, instead. It's amazing (and very annoying) how these people can't handle that someone might want the other hand stamped.
One of these days, if I'm sufficiently annoyed, I'll just start quoting the verse in a loud voice, shouting religious discrimination, and see what happens. Might help that I'm in a relatively conservative state, too.
"Even your wastebasket will kind of vibrate with happiness when trash is thrown into it. So you want the cubicle to love you and care for you, kind of a womb experience."
Does anybody get the feeling that Scott Adams is channeling Douglass Adams? I'm reminded of the doors -- "Please enjoy your trip through this door."
[ot - tried sending email, it bounced...]
Just out of curiousity, where do you live? We're building behind EC Lawrence Park (east of Rt. 28 between 66 and Westfields). We're hoping we might be able to sneak in IDSL, but are doubtful 'cause the folks on the communties on either side are just on the fringes, too.
Anyway, where's your central office? Or is the only one out here the one at Union Mill?
Oh, great, a firm in Chantilly has people telecommuting from Russia. This is what the internet is all about. I'm glad to see it. If more people could do this, we'd reduce traffic, road rage, pollution, and all that rot.
Of course, since I live next door to Chantilly (and will be moving into a Chantilly zip-code next year), I have only one question:
Why the hell can't we get broadband HERE!??
Gr. Less than 10 miles from, like, AOL, WorldCom, and even MAE-East, and most of us can't get DSL or Cable Modem. You'd think....
Problem with the Rio is you have to run a special Win32 app to stream to the thing. its not as flexbile as I would wish.
:(
Actually, that's not necessarily true. Jeff Mock (http://www.mock.com/receiver/) has hacked together a linux server for it. Basically, it's a bunch of mod_perl scripts for apache, along with a real simple perl server to answer the device's initial request.
That, and it runs linux, too (sort of). Basically, it spits out a DHCP request for an IP address, sends a broadcast request to a particular port to ask for servers (which is answered by the little perl server), and from there it learns of the IP address and TFTP directory of the server. It then NFS mounts a directory from that server, and reboots with the image it pulls from that directory. So, to upgrade it, just change the files in the server's directory. Real cool. Once running, everything (all artist, track lookups, and audio fetching) happens over HTTP on the fly.
They've even got a cross-compiler for it, so you can write some of your own programs, and a couple kernel hacks already. I'm waiting for someone to improve the UI a little -- it's good, but not quite all there. Maybe 80% perfect.
I got mine for, like, $150, on E-Bay. Also branded specifically by Rio, though the front panel looks much weirder.
There's also the AudioTron, which I looked at first, but that scans your net for SMB servers, then builds its own internal database. Lose power, lose the database, and you've got to re-scan all over again.
That and the display is impossible to read from across the room.
That I will give you.
I definitely recommend the Rio Receiver, though. I'd love to see more people hacking it, and improving it. I'm really amazed it hasn't been a bigger hit around here so far...
david.
"A guy named Joe Toledo bought the domain ford.com and now the car manufacturer wants it, who do you think should have it?" I'd be inclined to side with Ford. Because Ford has a trademark....
.com crap is going to happen with .info, .biz, and all the other new TLDs. We saw EXACTLY this same thing happen when they added new toll-free prefixes in the US -- American Express tried suing to guarantee that they got 888-the-card, to match their 800-the-card. And so forth.
Yeah, so?
A trademark, if I recall correctly, is only supposed to protect a certain range of products within that product's "sphere." So it's perfectly legal to sell a pen called "Ford Pens", and you're not trampling on any trademark.
Plus, why do you even need to have a use for a name? Domain names are commodities. If you bought it first, and Ford missed the boat, well, tough luck for them. You've got it, they don't.
If you're deliberately deceiving pepole, trying to *look* like some other site, okay, that's a problem with look-and-feel, trade-dress sort of laws. But if I wanted to put my family website at, say, OfficeXP.com, then dammit, I should be allowed to do that.
My biggest worry is that the same
Dammit, when will people get it through their heads that you cannot own domain names for EVERY variant on EVERY product or trademark you own? It's just not possible, and it's just not fair.
Grr.
Sorry, this is something that's been bugging me for a while. Gotta cut back on the caffeine...
Haha! Lol!
/. feature of putting the domain name after any links... But this guy seems to have managed to sneak by it. I'm guessing (but too lazy to test) that he stuck the link in his .sig. I like that. Very impressive.
I was already beginning to appreciate and trust the cool new
I agree with you 100%. Any program that either doesn't announce itself, or doesn't give you a chance to say "no, thanks, don't install this, just give me the thing I downloaded only" is a virus. It's installing without your control, you can't get rid of it, and it does stuff you don't want. I had a helluva time getting my system to work after Gator got added with a game (snood). Bastards.
:)
So, how do we convince the virus scanners to put signatures for Webhancer, Gator, etc., into their products? I imagine if *that* were to happen, and these comapnes get FLOODED with corporate MIS departments demanding to know how their virus got on their systems, and how to remove it...well, that would end the problem pretty darned quick.
There truly needs to be better protection laws against software companies, and this is a good place to start fighting back. Go to McAffee, look at their definitions of a Virus, and if this fits, harras them to include it.
Hell, it might even work.
Thanks for the complement. It was a lot harder than I'd expected it to be.
Certainly there are tools out there that put together random, sensical-looking text with specific patterns in word usage, punctuation, spacing, whatever, to encode messages, but to actually tweak a message with intrinsic meaning in itself is a bit more difficult.....
If steganography can be made "turnkey", it'll work
for most of today's privacy requirements.
You might think that it'd be easy to detect,
or simple to prevent, but that's simply not true.
Unless someone lists all the ways in which one
can hide information, and a fantastically fast
approach to testing any given communication on the
net against those techniques. Otherwise, to
read a steganographically-encoded message,
each recipient will need to figure out which of
all the messages intercepted even includes the
data you're looking for, and what was used in
this particular instance. Hell, one might even
have two or more different techniques applied
in a single message. Like this message does.
Sort of.
....
I'm sorry, this is the most ignorant concept I can imagine. If you would like to see what government-sponsored Internet looks like, talk to Europeans whose PTTs finally were de-nationalized.
I disagree with the response and agree with the original poster. In fact, I've been arguing this with people "in the industry" for literally YEARS (at least as far back as 1995). The way I see it, what we need is the following:
My classic example is I call up my cable company. Tell 'em to take a hike. Hang up. Call up a 2nd cable company. Give them my credit card number (or whatever). Hang up. Go down to the basement. Count to ten. Turn on the TV to the same lineup, same channels, same hardware, but different provider.
Or do the same for phone (though I'd have to make the second call from a cell phone!)
Will this ever happen? Of course not. First, you gotta get everyone on the same page for the communications specs. Then you have to get people building the network interface boxes. Some big, thorny, cooporative issues there.
The one thing that I could, maybe (when I've been drinking too much) see happening would be for the Baby Bells to get broken up, into infrastructure (the wires and such) and services (dial tone, dsl, etc.). The advantage there is that the wires are already in place.
*sigh* It'll never happen. There's no technical reason this can't work, but it'll never happen.
Now I may be hopelessly naive or idealistic, but wouldn't the goal of selling HDCP compatible devices permit the disclosure of the system? Or can "they" really, legally, absolutely, limit the entry of independent 3rd-party hardware manufacturers to the game?
What if Diamond wanted to start selling HDCP displays, but didn't want to pay the $$$$ that they're probably requiring for membership in the "club"? This research could allow them to create fully functional, compliant, standards based displays.
As long as they don't deliberately leave backdoors in their display to give end-users access to the raw digital stream (which would make the display itself a circumvention device), they should be in compliance with DMCA, right?
And, since they developed the system after someone outside of DMCA jurisdiction (if there is such a place, truly) reverse-engineered it, there's no trade-secret violation, they've signed no NDAs, etc., so they're free to publish their spec, right?
Or is this just a pipe dream?
How do we get a decent-sized player like Rio to start selling DeCSS-based DVD players, publishing their spec as they go "so that other manufacturers can do the same"? :)
What I'd like to see is an easier way to make use of the 3-D engines for things like office/home walkthroughs and the like. I've looked into this in the past, but never found anything that was all that easy to use. We're currently building a home (well, a builder is) (well, they haven't finished the sewers yet, so they're not actually *building* our house yet, anyway), and the 3-D home design software we bought to help us visualize the interior of the home is, well, cumbersome. And the walkthroughs are horrible.
Why can't I find a quake/doom/whatever engine with a simple Visio-like front-end, so I can program in a whole house? Or office building? Or my neighborhood? (that'd look great on the web page...)
...you won't attract the worms.
Now we're all safe from Code Red!
(sorry...double-obscure OT...)
I hate that damned disclaimer. I regularly see it appened to email in mailing lists, and it's always a struggle for me not to respond to the guy that, no, I wasn't the original recipient, and he'd probably better check next time before he sends "proprietary and confidential" info to, say, the Pink Floyd mailing list.
I know that many businesses have such disclaimers automatically tacked on by a server or gateway, but that doesn't make it right. If it's legally binding, then it's legally binding for EVERY email on which it appears, in which case, it shouldn't be on the public mail forums. If they can make a case that the disclaimer doesn't apply there, then, well, why can't I make a case that it never applies?
Anyway, just a pet peeve. :)
I'm still not sure I see where you're going. If I'm logged into AIM, via Jabber, for example -- I've got an AIM account, it's loaded into jabber.org, and I'm using jabber.org's aim-t transport to get onto AIM -- then I can talk to other AIM users. They know who I am 'cause I've got an AIM account, and they address their IMs to that account.
:(
But if I want to talk to someone on Yahoo!, can I do that without having first set up an account on Yahoo? A Yahoo! user couldn't simply talk to tjones@jabber.org, they'd have to have a Yahoo ID to address their IMs to, right? Therefore, I still need a login on Yahoo.
I saw the discussion on JDEV today about MSIM passing stuff through, and that sounds promising, but you're still limited to MSIM protocols, right? Until you can send a message to an arbitrary address (like aim:tjonesor yahoo:tjones) and have your buddy's client be able to talk back to jabber:tjones, then you'll still need multiple logins.
So, yes, the external systems care. But if everyone I knew were all on one system, I wouldn't need jabber. So as long as they're on different systems, those systems care, so my jabber client cares, so I care.
Or am I missing something terribly cool?
Sure you do. How could I, an AIM user, talk to someone on MSN or Yahoo? They need an ID to reply to (and for the message to come from, naturally), so I have to have an account on those systems. Nobody is really doing any true interoperable IMing yet, as far as I know (where I put, say, "dcooper@im.msn.com" or "htruman@yahoo.com" into my ICQ or AIM client's buddy list).
Yes, but how many TVs actually display the full resolution? I've been watching HDTV sets for a while now, and I'm not sure I've seen any that support 1920x1080. I've seem a few that support 1080 (many just do 720 vertical), but those that do only support, for example, 1280 or so horizontally.
So, even with a good signal and a $3000 TV, you still might not get full HDTV quality. They really need to be more specific in their branding -- HDTV-ready vs HDTV-compatible (that might downconvert to 1280x1080, for example) vs fully-HDTV-compliant-in-input-and-display. Urgh.