This sounds like something that would have been useful 15 years ago
before compression was widely used, and when people were still writing
newsreaders.
Maybe you should try to actually use Usenet before
speaking about it. There's no compression between
a Usenet server and client.
Something which the article states, and which is stated elsewhere, is that an alternative to MPEG4 is Microsoft's video format. Isn't this just a variant of MPEG4 though?
The original DivX was a rewritten version of a leaked implementation of Microsoft's video format. If you look at the FFMpeg site (which has a clean-room implementation of DivX), it lists the DivX codec like this: "MSMPEG4 V3 (aka DIVX)".
So which way is it? If MPEG4 is unusable due to patents, and Microsoft's format is based on MPEG4, then Microsoft's format is also unusable. If Microsoft's video format is usable, then so is DivX (at least the original version). So what is the problem? Either everyone is screwed, or no one is screwed.
The only downside I can see is that the official MPEG4 used Quicktime as a container format. This would get rid of the AVI-crap once and for all. A container format is a lot easier to come up with than a codec though, and I think for example Tarkin already has a quite good container format.
Add in the khttpd, add some extra features to it to process form on particular pages, to interact with the routing tables. Voila, you have modifiable routes.
And voila, you have the perfect exploit. If you can modify the routing tables, then so can an attacker.
This is wrong. They are poor (or unproven) fighters, but have been excellent at gathering popular support. The Taleban didn't fight to gain power, they convinced people that they would bring peace. "Taliban" means "student", i.e. they are derived from religious students, who proposed religious purity as a way to bring the Afghan society together.
The thread was about the US losing its leading position in technological development and freedom of expression. Your response was ironical, because "making money" is precisely the reason why freedom of expression is being threatened in the US.
As I have understood it, science fiction must always have some component of science in explaining the "fantastical" things which are introduced (hence the "science"). Sure, Lord of the Rings could be science fiction, but then Tolkien would have to explain the magic using some scientific base.
I haven't read the books, but I suspect that with this condition, Star Wars would disqualify. I think though that Star Wars is much closer to Lord of the Rings than Asimov's or Clarke's stuff, so maybe calling Star Wars "fantasy" instead of "science fiction" is not such a bad idea.
No it's not. If you consider that maybe 100000 people around the world are going to want that file, the FTP server is not going to seem like such a hot idea. Much better is sending it between the ISPs, and then the users can get it locally from their own ISP.
There will always be a stronger individual, somebody with enough balls to hijack the entire enterprise and pretend that everything is done "in the name of the people."
Yes, true, as so nicely illustrated by history. However, I don't see how capitalism is immune to this either, or a similar fate, but in the name of the "market" instead. It's pretty clear that
unregulated capitalism degenerates as badly as communism (witness Microsoft or the multinationals, DMCA, etc.). Sure, as long as regulation has the upper hand, companies can be controlled by the people, but the trend is that companies take over more and more of the roles of the state (media is one important role), and it's very easy for regulation to lose power. I don't think either of these mechanisms are some holy grail, democracy is the important thing. Otherwise you just have to pick dictator, Stalin or the AOL/TW board?
You know, I understand what you mean, but you are arguing about something else than I am. There is no reason we have to be fundamentalists. Your statement is easily disproved. I am employed by a university in Holland, which, guess what, is owned by the state, and I am thus employed in the public interest. So are the absolute majority of academics in Europe.
This system works, no problems. If you want American examples, there are probably similar universities there, or companies maintaining the road system or whatever. Just because communist states never seem to get off the launch pad doesn't mean that the ideas are bad. A moderate and partial implementation already exists in all of the modern democracies, and there's no reason why it can't be expanded to include Free Software as well.
If software is to be free, then who can we expect to write it.
Just look at Linux, BSD, GNU, XFree, and all the other GPL/BSD tools. People have written them. They are free. I don't think a lot of those people got paid for doing that. Even without monetary compensation they get written. Maybe some of those people get their salary from regular programming jobs, but some don't/didn't (Linus, Stallman). I just don't see what the problem is.
Even if the whole proprietary software industry collapses, there will be people to write Free Software, i.e. students, academics, and people with non-programming type of jobs. If for some reason new software started to become scarce because all the programmers had to work as garbage collectors, some organization supported by those who wanted the programs (state, industry, or privately supported) could be set up to employ people in the public interest.
I guess Free Software is related to the communist ideology, but Stallman does the right thing in separating what is commonly known as "communism" and the ideology itself.
The core of communism is who controls the means of production. Did the people in the Soviet Union control the means of production? No, they did not. Thus it was not communism.
It's not a straight isomorphism, but I think it's clear that with proprietary software, it's possible to hinder people in producing meaningful software (compatibility, compilers, etc.), thus removing the means of production (the means of production become knowledge (APIs, protocols) instead of factories). With Free Software you are guaranteed this. Free Software also has a collective pool of software, which I think is more related to the scientific community than communism, but certainly also is desirable.
I highly doubt a term like "Enter Sandman", or "Lucky" is copyrightable. Also, people entered such information under the impression that it would be freely available. If Gracenote knew all along that it wouldn't be, why didn't they say so? I think this is an implicit contract or something like that.
I lived in China when I was younger, and I've had a lot of contact with the US (I'm European), so I think I have at least some perspective. I'm not really sure what the Chinese people are thinking about democracy and things like that, but I don't think it's so important. I think the average American feels he has as much power to change the government as the average Chinese.
What I think is important is trying to understand the culture and history, because this is essentially what defines how people think. I think "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" is a pretty good way to try to understand China, it's a pretty good representation of a folk tale (maybe like Gladiator is to western epics). Maybe that can be a good analogy, that in Gladiator, the lone fighter is the hero, while in Crouching Tiger, the lone fighter causes a lot of damage. Just imagine if Mel Gibson would say "Oh no, I can't do this by myself, several are stronger than one.", that would be inconceivable. I think a lot of people are thinking that the Chinese are longing to live just like in the west, but my guess is that they don't. They probably don't really like the current situation either, but they probably want something different from the extreme individualism that's the norm in the west.
Just because a company can exploit you, doesn't mean that they should, even under capitalist theory.
It doesn't really matter what companies should and should not do. Say we have two companies A and B. A plays nice, while B plays not so nice. If B becomes more profitable as a consequence of this, it will attract the investors, and eventually A will die. Just think, you have $1000 to invest in stocks. You can choose between A, which is expected to grow 10%, or B, which is expected to grow 100%, which do you choose? It's very simple. This is why pure capitalism doesn't work so well in practice, not only are the dirty companies more successful, but not being dirty means you don't survive, so the dreams of all those honest, hard-working, companies fighting to improve the life of consumers is just bogus. Also, just like humans, companies can change the rules, so if a company can become profitable by lobbying for law changes, then B wins and A loses again, but in addition, we have crappier laws.
They are not forcing a specific product, but some specific rules in the marketplace. The US (or US companies) did this with processors a few years ago, i.e. they forced their suppliers to license the technology to competitors, to prevent having a single source (that's why AMD had access to Intel technology). This is a similar action, only they take it a bit further.
I don't see the problem some people are having with regulations in the marketplace. If a market economy can be compared with evolution, then regulation is just adding some conditions which prevents locally optimal, but globally catastrophic species from taking over. You have to remember that the marketplace selects for companies which are short-term beneficial to the investors, and this is rarely the long-term optimum for consumers or society.
In all of that post, you did not provide one single factual argument why D3D is technically better than OpenGL. If you say "It has effects that OpenGL simply cant be made to do.", why not provide some examples? Maybe because there are none?
Now, if the open source community made a well documented, up-to-date, easy to code for, massively supported / cross platform API then we might get somewhere.
Uh, what about OpenGL? It meets all of these requirements, while Direct3D does not. I don't get it, what technical advantages does Direct3D have over OpenGL? As far as I can see, it has only disadvantages.
So the message I get is that kidnapping people and demanding ransom money for their freedom is BAD BAD BAD when a couple evil criminals do it to innocent people, but it's okay for the government to put the kidnappers in jail.
There is one major difference here though, and that is that the US government hacked the computers IN RUSSIA. They were clearly not authorized to access them, even after they'd stolen their passwords. You don't need to make analogies to see this point, just switch the parties. The police in country X hacks an individuals computer in the US, and gains information which shows the individual is a criminal. They then prosecute the individual in country X.
The thing is, these individuals are no different than an ordinary Russian citizen. The FBI clearly has no right to hack an ordinary Russian citizen's computer. It doesn't matter what the FBI thinks. What they implicitly did here was issue a search warrant in Russia, without getting any kind of confirmation from the Russian police. If that is ok, then any law enforcement agency in the world could hack any private computer in the US, but I'm sure you would not accept that. How would that be different?
Maybe not in the US, but it is in for example Sweden. There was a discussion on a radio program with a member of the department of justice about copyright, and she explicitly stated that no, copying a tape and giving it to a friend is not illegal.
Re:What happened to the ASCII art filter?
on
Review: Memento
·
· Score: 1
True, but why should you filter away ASCII art? Isn't this exactly the same as filtering software for the web, which filter on keywords such as "breasts" and "sex", and accidentally filter away supposedly "good" content? And why should anyone determine what's good and bad, I thought the policy was to not censor at all? I think it's quite hypocritical to cry foul when someone wants to censor the web, and then do exactly the same thing here. You can never get rid of this kind of stuff anyway. When moderation was introduced, the only thing that happened was that the sophistication level dropped. So instead of MEEPT we get goatse.cx. Woo, nice job.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe you should try to actually use Usenet before speaking about it. There's no compression between a Usenet server and client.
Something which the article states, and which is stated elsewhere, is that an alternative to MPEG4 is Microsoft's video format. Isn't this just a variant of MPEG4 though?
The original DivX was a rewritten version of a leaked implementation of Microsoft's video format. If you look at the FFMpeg site (which has a clean-room implementation of DivX), it lists the DivX codec like this: "MSMPEG4 V3 (aka DIVX)".
So which way is it? If MPEG4 is unusable due to patents, and Microsoft's format is based on MPEG4, then Microsoft's format is also unusable. If Microsoft's video format is usable, then so is DivX (at least the original version). So what is the problem? Either everyone is screwed, or no one is screwed.
The only downside I can see is that the official MPEG4 used Quicktime as a container format. This would get rid of the AVI-crap once and for all. A container format is a lot easier to come up with than a codec though, and I think for example Tarkin already has a quite good container format.
Just because a company is successful doesn't mean it's products are good. Microsoft is very successful but makes very bad products.
And voila, you have the perfect exploit. If you can modify the routing tables, then so can an attacker.
If the attacker has root, then he can just unload the module.
I think you could only lose the data if you had at least two partitions, so that's probably irrelevant .
This is wrong. They are poor (or unproven) fighters, but have been excellent at gathering popular support. The Taleban didn't fight to gain power, they convinced people that they would bring peace. "Taliban" means "student", i.e. they are derived from religious students, who proposed religious purity as a way to bring the Afghan society together.
The thread was about the US losing its leading position in technological development and freedom of expression. Your response was ironical, because "making money" is precisely the reason why freedom of expression is being threatened in the US.
Note that "making money" is not to be found anywhere in the post you responded to, nor the entire thread.
Isn't what you defined just "fiction" though?
As I have understood it, science fiction must always have some component of science in explaining the "fantastical" things which are introduced (hence the "science"). Sure, Lord of the Rings could be science fiction, but then Tolkien would have to explain the magic using some scientific base.
I haven't read the books, but I suspect that with this condition, Star Wars would disqualify. I think though that Star Wars is much closer to Lord of the Rings than Asimov's or Clarke's stuff, so maybe calling Star Wars "fantasy" instead of "science fiction" is not such a bad idea.
No it's not. If you consider that maybe 100000 people around the world are going to want that file, the FTP server is not going to seem like such a hot idea. Much better is sending it between the ISPs, and then the users can get it locally from their own ISP.
Yes, true, as so nicely illustrated by history. However, I don't see how capitalism is immune to this either, or a similar fate, but in the name of the "market" instead. It's pretty clear that unregulated capitalism degenerates as badly as communism (witness Microsoft or the multinationals, DMCA, etc.). Sure, as long as regulation has the upper hand, companies can be controlled by the people, but the trend is that companies take over more and more of the roles of the state (media is one important role), and it's very easy for regulation to lose power. I don't think either of these mechanisms are some holy grail, democracy is the important thing. Otherwise you just have to pick dictator, Stalin or the AOL/TW board?
You know, I understand what you mean, but you are arguing about something else than I am. There is no reason we have to be fundamentalists. Your statement is easily disproved. I am employed by a university in Holland, which, guess what, is owned by the state, and I am thus employed in the public interest. So are the absolute majority of academics in Europe.
This system works, no problems. If you want American examples, there are probably similar universities there, or companies maintaining the road system or whatever. Just because communist states never seem to get off the launch pad doesn't mean that the ideas are bad. A moderate and partial implementation already exists in all of the modern democracies, and there's no reason why it can't be expanded to include Free Software as well.
Just look at Linux, BSD, GNU, XFree, and all the other GPL/BSD tools. People have written them. They are free. I don't think a lot of those people got paid for doing that. Even without monetary compensation they get written. Maybe some of those people get their salary from regular programming jobs, but some don't/didn't (Linus, Stallman). I just don't see what the problem is.
Even if the whole proprietary software industry collapses, there will be people to write Free Software, i.e. students, academics, and people with non-programming type of jobs. If for some reason new software started to become scarce because all the programmers had to work as garbage collectors, some organization supported by those who wanted the programs (state, industry, or privately supported) could be set up to employ people in the public interest.
I guess Free Software is related to the communist ideology, but Stallman does the right thing in separating what is commonly known as "communism" and the ideology itself.
The core of communism is who controls the means of production. Did the people in the Soviet Union control the means of production? No, they did not. Thus it was not communism.
It's not a straight isomorphism, but I think it's clear that with proprietary software, it's possible to hinder people in producing meaningful software (compatibility, compilers, etc.), thus removing the means of production (the means of production become knowledge (APIs, protocols) instead of factories). With Free Software you are guaranteed this. Free Software also has a collective pool of software, which I think is more related to the scientific community than communism, but certainly also is desirable.
MPlayer (check freshmeat) plays incomplete AVIs. It plays everything. It can also rebuild the index for fast forward/backward. It's great.
I highly doubt a term like "Enter Sandman", or "Lucky" is copyrightable. Also, people entered such information under the impression that it would be freely available. If Gracenote knew all along that it wouldn't be, why didn't they say so? I think this is an implicit contract or something like that.
I lived in China when I was younger, and I've had a lot of contact with the US (I'm European), so I think I have at least some perspective. I'm not really sure what the Chinese people are thinking about democracy and things like that, but I don't think it's so important. I think the average American feels he has as much power to change the government as the average Chinese.
What I think is important is trying to understand the culture and history, because this is essentially what defines how people think. I think "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" is a pretty good way to try to understand China, it's a pretty good representation of a folk tale (maybe like Gladiator is to western epics). Maybe that can be a good analogy, that in Gladiator, the lone fighter is the hero, while in Crouching Tiger, the lone fighter causes a lot of damage. Just imagine if Mel Gibson would say "Oh no, I can't do this by myself, several are stronger than one.", that would be inconceivable. I think a lot of people are thinking that the Chinese are longing to live just like in the west, but my guess is that they don't. They probably don't really like the current situation either, but they probably want something different from the extreme individualism that's the norm in the west.
It doesn't really matter what companies should and should not do. Say we have two companies A and B. A plays nice, while B plays not so nice. If B becomes more profitable as a consequence of this, it will attract the investors, and eventually A will die. Just think, you have $1000 to invest in stocks. You can choose between A, which is expected to grow 10%, or B, which is expected to grow 100%, which do you choose? It's very simple. This is why pure capitalism doesn't work so well in practice, not only are the dirty companies more successful, but not being dirty means you don't survive, so the dreams of all those honest, hard-working, companies fighting to improve the life of consumers is just bogus. Also, just like humans, companies can change the rules, so if a company can become profitable by lobbying for law changes, then B wins and A loses again, but in addition, we have crappier laws.
They are not forcing a specific product, but some specific rules in the marketplace. The US (or US companies) did this with processors a few years ago, i.e. they forced their suppliers to license the technology to competitors, to prevent having a single source (that's why AMD had access to Intel technology). This is a similar action, only they take it a bit further.
I don't see the problem some people are having with regulations in the marketplace. If a market economy can be compared with evolution, then regulation is just adding some conditions which prevents locally optimal, but globally catastrophic species from taking over. You have to remember that the marketplace selects for companies which are short-term beneficial to the investors, and this is rarely the long-term optimum for consumers or society.
In all of that post, you did not provide one single factual argument why D3D is technically better than OpenGL. If you say "It has effects that OpenGL simply cant be made to do.", why not provide some examples? Maybe because there are none?
Uh, what about OpenGL? It meets all of these requirements, while Direct3D does not. I don't get it, what technical advantages does Direct3D have over OpenGL? As far as I can see, it has only disadvantages.
There is one major difference here though, and that is that the US government hacked the computers IN RUSSIA. They were clearly not authorized to access them, even after they'd stolen their passwords. You don't need to make analogies to see this point, just switch the parties. The police in country X hacks an individuals computer in the US, and gains information which shows the individual is a criminal. They then prosecute the individual in country X.
The thing is, these individuals are no different than an ordinary Russian citizen. The FBI clearly has no right to hack an ordinary Russian citizen's computer. It doesn't matter what the FBI thinks. What they implicitly did here was issue a search warrant in Russia, without getting any kind of confirmation from the Russian police. If that is ok, then any law enforcement agency in the world could hack any private computer in the US, but I'm sure you would not accept that. How would that be different?
Maybe not in the US, but it is in for example Sweden. There was a discussion on a radio program with a member of the department of justice about copyright, and she explicitly stated that no, copying a tape and giving it to a friend is not illegal.
True, but why should you filter away ASCII art? Isn't this exactly the same as filtering software for the web, which filter on keywords such as "breasts" and "sex", and accidentally filter away supposedly "good" content? And why should anyone determine what's good and bad, I thought the policy was to not censor at all? I think it's quite hypocritical to cry foul when someone wants to censor the web, and then do exactly the same thing here. You can never get rid of this kind of stuff anyway. When moderation was introduced, the only thing that happened was that the sophistication level dropped. So instead of MEEPT we get goatse.cx. Woo, nice job.