That sounds like a number that I'd make up as a kid. "OH YEAH? Well when I grow up I'm going to have 340 billion billion billion billion hundred million thousand dollars!"
It would be nice if companies set up bittorrents of those files. Say the new LOTR trailer comes out and they set up a normal server and a bittorrent for it. When more people get on the normal server, it goes slower and slower until everyone is waiting hours for it to finish. When more people get on the torrent, it goes far FASTER (it also uses up less of their bandwidth). I've been seeing more torrents lately, but not nearly as many as I'd like... and most of them are set up by users, not the company. I have no clue why they don't do it (except maybe not knowing about BT), there doesn't seem to be any disadvantages...
Web browsers, instant messengers, and basically every other thing you use to do anything on the internet is going to give you one of those warnings. So pretty much everyone is going to be constantly assaulted by these messages and therefore get used to them and start to ignore every message like that they see. Not only will this NOT deter people from using P2P programs (since they'll just ignore the message anyways), it's DANGEROUS since they'll ignore warning messages that actually have some meaning behind them.
I started to read your comment, but for some reason I thought I was reading the last article about the electric car. I was about to reply with "It has a range of around 300 miles and costs about $220,000" until I hit the last part of the last sentence.
Had you not said that, I probably would have ended up shocking a few people.
Why are electric cars always so ugly? I understand that they design them to be functional and put asethetics on the back burner, but would it really be so hard to make it nice-looking? Do they think that someone who has $220,000 to spend is going to want a car that looks like that when there are so many more beautiful cars for that price that will offer nearly the same acceleration and a much higher top speed?
Up until recently, hybrids suffered this same fate (It's gotten better recently with cars like the Civic hybrid, though). Look at the Insight, for god's sake. Sure, I'd like to drive a hybrid or electric car, but I don't want to go into my garage and frown every time I look at it.
My first computer had 64K of RAM and a 1MHz processor. My second computer had 2MB of RAM and a 25MHz processor. My third computer had 64MB of RAM and a 300MHz processor.... and now they have a PHONE that's more powerful and has more memory than all three of my first computers combined - and it has a built-in camera too! I'm sure it'll be cheaper than any of the computers as well.
I hope that they spend all sorts of money to win the lawsuit only to find that the files are full of the most boring, unimportant stuff imaginable, and that the only reason they're classified is because they were trying out some new radar technology that has now been obsolete for many years. It'll be punishment for them canceling all the good shows.
Vice City had a pretty bad bug as well - if you saved at a certain point there was a good chance that your game would be corrupted.
Companies NEED to spend more time looking for bugs in games (especially console games where you can't update the software once it's out). Hell, I'll take the job and do it for them. This trend of "release the game before it's done, they expect bugs in the first release anyway..." is really shitty.
Yeah, but with the vast majority of people using Microsoft as their desktop OS and a bunch of clueless people using media player to rip their CDs into WMA format, WMA is pretty much a must-have. How many people do you know that rip into AAC or go on Kazaa to download the latest album in AAC format?
MP3s as ringtones? This is not good news. My ears are already assaulted constantly by bad music - now I'll have to put up with listening to "Big Booty Hoes" whenever some trendy bastard's phone rings.
I misread the URL as my-sybian.com, which made me think this phone must have a really nice feature that makes you WANT to carry it around in your pocket constantly...
Those files, of course, are no more useable than AAC
Not really - there are FAR FAR more MP3 players out there that support WMA than there are that support AAC. Every new player that I've seen has had WMA support, but I don't think I've ever seen one besides the iPod that's had AAC support.
Yeah, it's POSSIBLE for people to copy it, but now it's significantly more difficult, and you actually have to have a good amount of computer knowledge to do it. A lot of things that would have gotten leaked before now won't due either to user incompetence, inability to accidentally forward things, or sheer laziness.
Yeah, but how many home users actually install service packs or upgrade media player? I'd say at least a good 85% of home Windows users don't even know how to get to Windows update.
Unless it comes in one of the auto-updates (which I really doubt they'd do), I don't think they'd be able to actually get it to a significant amount of people through an update.
Lose what fight? The fight for your "right" to share things that were never yours to share in the first place? Despite what you may want to believe, not all information "wants" to be free. There is a lot of data out there that needs to be kept confidential, and to the creators of that data having a lot more security on it is a good thing. Of course the people who want to copy the data won't think it is, but guess what? You shouldn't be copying it anyways so you don't matter!
I find it amusing how Slashdot reacts to computer security issues with such fervor, but when a type of security comes around that they don't like, it's oh so evil!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, with phones like this coming out, maybe it's not so unreasonable to think about someone hosting off a phone...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
340 billion billion billion billion unique addresses.
That sounds like a number that I'd make up as a kid. "OH YEAH? Well when I grow up I'm going to have 340 billion billion billion billion hundred million thousand dollars!"
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Or just get the Proxomitron. That program is perfection.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Part of the article is worded strangely, so I can see where that conclusion came from. It's the part where it says:
stole their proprietary technology and business model.
It's easy to draw the wrong conclusion from seeing that.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
There is a modified version of BT out there where you can throttle your bandwidth. That helped me a lot.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It would be nice if companies set up bittorrents of those files. Say the new LOTR trailer comes out and they set up a normal server and a bittorrent for it. When more people get on the normal server, it goes slower and slower until everyone is waiting hours for it to finish. When more people get on the torrent, it goes far FASTER (it also uses up less of their bandwidth). I've been seeing more torrents lately, but not nearly as many as I'd like... and most of them are set up by users, not the company. I have no clue why they don't do it (except maybe not knowing about BT), there doesn't seem to be any disadvantages...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Yeah, seriously! If that happens absolutely nobody will buy Internet Explorer!
Now how exactly does that differ from how things are now?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Web browsers, instant messengers, and basically every other thing you use to do anything on the internet is going to give you one of those warnings. So pretty much everyone is going to be constantly assaulted by these messages and therefore get used to them and start to ignore every message like that they see. Not only will this NOT deter people from using P2P programs (since they'll just ignore the message anyways), it's DANGEROUS since they'll ignore warning messages that actually have some meaning behind them.
Yeah, this sounds like a great idea.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I started to read your comment, but for some reason I thought I was reading the last article about the electric car. I was about to reply with "It has a range of around 300 miles and costs about $220,000" until I hit the last part of the last sentence.
Had you not said that, I probably would have ended up shocking a few people.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Why are electric cars always so ugly? I understand that they design them to be functional and put asethetics on the back burner, but would it really be so hard to make it nice-looking? Do they think that someone who has $220,000 to spend is going to want a car that looks like that when there are so many more beautiful cars for that price that will offer nearly the same acceleration and a much higher top speed?
Up until recently, hybrids suffered this same fate (It's gotten better recently with cars like the Civic hybrid, though). Look at the Insight, for god's sake. Sure, I'd like to drive a hybrid or electric car, but I don't want to go into my garage and frown every time I look at it.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
My first computer had 64K of RAM and a 1MHz processor. My second computer had 2MB of RAM and a 25MHz processor. My third computer had 64MB of RAM and a 300MHz processor. ... and now they have a PHONE that's more powerful and has more memory than all three of my first computers combined - and it has a built-in camera too! I'm sure it'll be cheaper than any of the computers as well.
Advances in technology really amaze me sometimes.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Your approach drastically shortens the life of the bacon, though.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I hope that they spend all sorts of money to win the lawsuit only to find that the files are full of the most boring, unimportant stuff imaginable, and that the only reason they're classified is because they were trying out some new radar technology that has now been obsolete for many years. It'll be punishment for them canceling all the good shows.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Next step: AI!
It'll be like a Roomba, but without the useful vaccuum action.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Go look at the price on one of those things, this isn't your everyday $20 sex toy...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Heh, I don't know about it from my browsing habits - my girlfriend has been bugging me for one for years. If only it weren't so expensive :/
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Vice City had a pretty bad bug as well - if you saved at a certain point there was a good chance that your game would be corrupted.
Companies NEED to spend more time looking for bugs in games (especially console games where you can't update the software once it's out). Hell, I'll take the job and do it for them. This trend of "release the game before it's done, they expect bugs in the first release anyway..." is really shitty.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Yeah, but with the vast majority of people using Microsoft as their desktop OS and a bunch of clueless people using media player to rip their CDs into WMA format, WMA is pretty much a must-have. How many people do you know that rip into AAC or go on Kazaa to download the latest album in AAC format?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
MP3s as ringtones? This is not good news. My ears are already assaulted constantly by bad music - now I'll have to put up with listening to "Big Booty Hoes" whenever some trendy bastard's phone rings.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I misread the URL as my-sybian.com, which made me think this phone must have a really nice feature that makes you WANT to carry it around in your pocket constantly...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Er, every CD-R I've burnt up to 5 or 6 years ago is still readable, and I just keep them in a CD wallet.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Those files, of course, are no more useable than AAC
Not really - there are FAR FAR more MP3 players out there that support WMA than there are that support AAC. Every new player that I've seen has had WMA support, but I don't think I've ever seen one besides the iPod that's had AAC support.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Yeah, it's POSSIBLE for people to copy it, but now it's significantly more difficult, and you actually have to have a good amount of computer knowledge to do it. A lot of things that would have gotten leaked before now won't due either to user incompetence, inability to accidentally forward things, or sheer laziness.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Yeah, but how many home users actually install service packs or upgrade media player? I'd say at least a good 85% of home Windows users don't even know how to get to Windows update.
Unless it comes in one of the auto-updates (which I really doubt they'd do), I don't think they'd be able to actually get it to a significant amount of people through an update.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Lose what fight? The fight for your "right" to share things that were never yours to share in the first place? Despite what you may want to believe, not all information "wants" to be free. There is a lot of data out there that needs to be kept confidential, and to the creators of that data having a lot more security on it is a good thing. Of course the people who want to copy the data won't think it is, but guess what? You shouldn't be copying it anyways so you don't matter!
I find it amusing how Slashdot reacts to computer security issues with such fervor, but when a type of security comes around that they don't like, it's oh so evil!
-- Dr. Eldarion --