Just because it is small and efficient doesn't mean it is written well. Small and efficient are just two possible goals when writing software. A lot of very ugly hacks were used to make uTorrent so micro. That means it misses the mark on other possible goals like maintainability and portability.
Many people are pointing out that Apple is likely to provide an SDK in the future and all of this effort to crack the iPhone is a waste of time. Have any of you looked at the iTunes SDK? Yes, iTunes has an SDK that lets you add an item to the sidebar and do all sorts of cool things. Why are there no cool apps integrated with iTunes like music recommendation and sharing? In order to get the iTunes SDK you must sign a contract that gives Apple veto power over your app. If they don't like it, you don't get to ship it. Instead of real, full power functionality, you get crippled politically correct crap. Like music sharing that cuts off after five shares even if you're sharing your own recording of your own performance from the night before with your officemates (this happened to us last week.) To me, this situation is unacceptable.
When Apple releases an SDK for iPhone, the situation will be the same. You wont get the SDK without signing a contract with Apple. You app wont run on iPhone unless Apple, an extremely conservative organization, allows it. This work will allow people to create innovate applications and functionality that Apple may not like.
I salute the people who are working under difficult conditions to blaze a trail that other software developers can follow.
The old fluorescent backlit displays begin degrading immediately and lose their brightness in a non-linear way. After one year they are noticeably dimmer and difficult to use in brightly lit environments and by year 2-3 they are almost unusably dim. I hope the LED backlights do not degrade so quickly or at all. Lower power consumption is most welcome, of course.
All along Apple has planned to support 3rd party apps on the iPhone the same way they support them with iTunes/iPod: you can't get the SDK without signing a restrictive contract. A contract that gives Apple the final say on whether or not you can ship your application. Enforced through copyright; your app, when linked to their SDK, has stuff that Apple has exclusive rights over so you can't just get a copy of the SDK from a friend and avoid signing the contract. Some people are happy with that but it's a far cry from the software freedom that Slashdotters profess to support.
Ever wonder why there is only one music store that integrates with iTunes? Why all attempts to integrate anything fun and useful for consumers into iTunes are quashed? Because Apple is an extremely conservative organization that uses all of its power to suppress anything it doesn't like. Expect the same thing with iPhone.
Forget trying to ship anything for the iPhone that is innovative, contrary to the status quo, or competitive with Apple.
Despite the best efforts of spammers, my filter is still highly effective. While I have received an ever increasing amount of spam over the last couple of years, my filter has kept it out of my inbox. Almost none of it gets through and my e-mail is as useful as it was 15 years ago when there wasn't any spam. I don't think the filter I use is anything special (SpamSieve for Mac.) People who suffer from spam problems likely aren't using anything at all or are using filters that are only for show, so the "has a spam filter" box can be ticked and not designed to be effective (i.e. the ones provided by crappy web mail or Microsoft and Apple mail programs)
The biggest front on the war against spammers is simply educating non-experts on the existence of effective filters. Plus, we should be chiding companies like Apple and Microsoft for providing impotent filters. I think they purposely make crappy filters to avoid pissing off big companies (spammers.)
Back in '95 or '96. We all thought it was so plainly obvious. In fact, the key thing that makes one-click shopping possible, the browser cookie, was put into the browser specifically for the purpose of associating a browser/session with stored data on the back end (payment/shipping details, purchase list.) The reason nobody did it is because engineers thought it was a BAD IDEA. Forcing people to enter their credit card and billing address details was a form of SECURITY. Being able to purchase things with one click was just too easy. Someone could come up to your computer and ring up a bunch of charges. Keeping payment details for thousands of customers on your computer was deemed too large a risk. It wasn't until the Marketeers at Amazon thought this was a good idea that it came about.
However, I think the fact that the cookie support was already in the browser is proof that the claims of the patent were obvious.
Easy, you work in an environment that has no or poor debugger support. For instance, I don't know any Python programmers that use the debugger. They all use extensive logging.
Nobody disputes that the key is a circumvention device and trafficking in it is illegal. There should be no problem getting a court order to remove it. However, the DMCA takedown notification doesn't require a judge and has strict limits to prevent its abuse. It is only for taking down material that you hold exclusive rights to under Copyright law. The key is not Copyrighted and you shouldn't be able to use the DMCA 512c takedown notification on it.
Most likely, the summary and descriptions are wrong and people are merely being sent demands to remove the material, not DMCA 512c takedown notifications.
You can't claim Copyright on a random crypto key
on
Censoring a Number
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm sorry, but you can't claim Copyright on a randomly generated cryptographic key. That is because a randomly generated key does not meet the minimum creativity requirements of Copyright law. No creative input == No Copyright. The bar is very low but a randomly generated key patently does not meet it.
Uh, even if this was a supreme court decision, the precedent wouldn't be useful for slashdotters because slashdotters aren't CSS licensees. This was a breach of contract case and only "legit" companies with deep pockets get to make a deal with the DVD-CCA. About the only impact this may have on slashdot readers is existing CSS licensees might start making devices like Kaleidascape. If the DVD-CCA doesn't like this behavior, expect the language of the CSS license to change.
For your client's sake, I hope you don't normally rush in and make comments without knowing what you're talking about.
Uh, Scharffen-Berger is as good as any chocolate made anywhere in the world. You may prefer the flavor of others but you can't say the quality isn't there. Unfortunately, the rest of the USA made chocolate isn't so good.
Don't forget Southern California, there are wineries making excellent wine down there too.
Sorry, the limit on the number of pieces in a torrent is 2^32. The message length prefix (i.e. the max length of the have-bitfield) as well as the piece indicies are 4-byte unsigned ints.
Yes, the editors of TFA are clueless. Not only was DAT hugely successful in the professional audio world (and is still in use though it is certainly declining) but it was the format of choice for live concert tapers until very recently and for traders until CDR really hit it big about 8 years ago.
The copy protection was absolutely not "draconian" since it was easily defeated by using one "semi pro" deck or even "scrubber" boxes that were available.
Finally, its failure and the success of CDs had nothing at all to do with copy protection. It had everything to do with convenience. CDs have random access, no rewinding, simpler and more reliable transports that don't eat the media, etc... DAT has the sound quality of CD but most of the inconvenience and expense of tape.
In Napster's case, internal e-mails from officers of the company said stuff like "our users need to stay anonymous because they are pirating music." Once it was established that the officers of the company knew their users were infringing and that the very purpose of the service was to allow infringement then it was all over for Napster.
The main reason the BT is fast and ed2k is slow is because BT is not a huge decentralized network with search.
In ed2k and any other similar system like gnutella or kazaa people are searching for old files that don't have many downloaders. That is strike #1. What really kills it is the fact that the distribution of files on such networks follows a power law. Odds are, whatever you want is only on a server that has a crapload of files that lots of other people want, leading to very long queues.
By contrast, BT has no search for old stuff so people tend to join "fresh" torrents. Then, everyone on the torrent is pretty much only transferring that file instead of "sharing" a huge library of stuff. This has been mitigated somewhat by multiple torrent downloading clients but it still holds pretty well.
Finally, BT has become very popular with *publishers* because anyone can setup their own tracker and control their own torrents instead being forced to join some big huge network with lots of other stuff. This has also led to higher quality since the operators of trackers/indexes can patrol the torrents.
Steve Jobs has always had an anti-DRM stance. That is why the iPhone will have an open API available to any developer who wishes to write software for it. There wont be any onerous agreement required to receive the SDK. Right?
Christopher Go of Cebu City Philippines discovered earlier this year that Oval BA turned red. Chris is one of the world's premier amateur planetary imagers. Check out his page dedicated to Red Jr..
Even in the day of the great orbiting observatories and huge ground based intereferometers, there is still room for amateurs working with modest equipment to make discoveries.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because it is small and efficient doesn't mean it is written well. Small and efficient are just two possible goals when writing software. A lot of very ugly hacks were used to make uTorrent so micro. That means it misses the mark on other possible goals like maintainability and portability.
Many people are pointing out that Apple is likely to provide an SDK in the future and all of this effort to crack the iPhone is a waste of time. Have any of you looked at the iTunes SDK? Yes, iTunes has an SDK that lets you add an item to the sidebar and do all sorts of cool things. Why are there no cool apps integrated with iTunes like music recommendation and sharing? In order to get the iTunes SDK you must sign a contract that gives Apple veto power over your app. If they don't like it, you don't get to ship it. Instead of real, full power functionality, you get crippled politically correct crap. Like music sharing that cuts off after five shares even if you're sharing your own recording of your own performance from the night before with your officemates (this happened to us last week.) To me, this situation is unacceptable.
When Apple releases an SDK for iPhone, the situation will be the same. You wont get the SDK without signing a contract with Apple. You app wont run on iPhone unless Apple, an extremely conservative organization, allows it. This work will allow people to create innovate applications and functionality that Apple may not like.
I salute the people who are working under difficult conditions to blaze a trail that other software developers can follow.
The old fluorescent backlit displays begin degrading immediately and lose their brightness in a non-linear way. After one year they are noticeably dimmer and difficult to use in brightly lit environments and by year 2-3 they are almost unusably dim. I hope the LED backlights do not degrade so quickly or at all. Lower power consumption is most welcome, of course.
All along Apple has planned to support 3rd party apps on the iPhone the same way they support them with iTunes/iPod: you can't get the SDK without signing a restrictive contract. A contract that gives Apple the final say on whether or not you can ship your application. Enforced through copyright; your app, when linked to their SDK, has stuff that Apple has exclusive rights over so you can't just get a copy of the SDK from a friend and avoid signing the contract. Some people are happy with that but it's a far cry from the software freedom that Slashdotters profess to support.
Ever wonder why there is only one music store that integrates with iTunes? Why all attempts to integrate anything fun and useful for consumers into iTunes are quashed? Because Apple is an extremely conservative organization that uses all of its power to suppress anything it doesn't like. Expect the same thing with iPhone.
Forget trying to ship anything for the iPhone that is innovative, contrary to the status quo, or competitive with Apple.
If you're not first, you're last. - Ricky Bobby
Despite the best efforts of spammers, my filter is still highly effective. While I have received an ever increasing amount of spam over the last couple of years, my filter has kept it out of my inbox. Almost none of it gets through and my e-mail is as useful as it was 15 years ago when there wasn't any spam. I don't think the filter I use is anything special (SpamSieve for Mac.) People who suffer from spam problems likely aren't using anything at all or are using filters that are only for show, so the "has a spam filter" box can be ticked and not designed to be effective (i.e. the ones provided by crappy web mail or Microsoft and Apple mail programs)
The biggest front on the war against spammers is simply educating non-experts on the existence of effective filters. Plus, we should be chiding companies like Apple and Microsoft for providing impotent filters. I think they purposely make crappy filters to avoid pissing off big companies (spammers.)
Back in '95 or '96. We all thought it was so plainly obvious. In fact, the key thing that makes one-click shopping possible, the browser cookie, was put into the browser specifically for the purpose of associating a browser/session with stored data on the back end (payment/shipping details, purchase list.) The reason nobody did it is because engineers thought it was a BAD IDEA. Forcing people to enter their credit card and billing address details was a form of SECURITY. Being able to purchase things with one click was just too easy. Someone could come up to your computer and ring up a bunch of charges. Keeping payment details for thousands of customers on your computer was deemed too large a risk. It wasn't until the Marketeers at Amazon thought this was a good idea that it came about.
However, I think the fact that the cookie support was already in the browser is proof that the claims of the patent were obvious.
Easy, you work in an environment that has no or poor debugger support. For instance, I don't know any Python programmers that use the debugger. They all use extensive logging.
Nobody disputes that the key is a circumvention device and trafficking in it is illegal. There should be no problem getting a court order to remove it. However, the DMCA takedown notification doesn't require a judge and has strict limits to prevent its abuse. It is only for taking down material that you hold exclusive rights to under Copyright law. The key is not Copyrighted and you shouldn't be able to use the DMCA 512c takedown notification on it.
Most likely, the summary and descriptions are wrong and people are merely being sent demands to remove the material, not DMCA 512c takedown notifications.
I'm sorry, but you can't claim Copyright on a randomly generated cryptographic key. That is because a randomly generated key does not meet the minimum creativity requirements of Copyright law. No creative input == No Copyright. The bar is very low but a randomly generated key patently does not meet it.
Uh, even if this was a supreme court decision, the precedent wouldn't be useful for slashdotters because slashdotters aren't CSS licensees. This was a breach of contract case and only "legit" companies with deep pockets get to make a deal with the DVD-CCA. About the only impact this may have on slashdot readers is existing CSS licensees might start making devices like Kaleidascape. If the DVD-CCA doesn't like this behavior, expect the language of the CSS license to change.
For your client's sake, I hope you don't normally rush in and make comments without knowing what you're talking about.
Serious reductions in the use of fossil fuels is coming, just as soon as we use them all up.
You must live on the east coast which has very few decent breweries. I hear Dogfish Head is good, though.
Uh, Scharffen-Berger is as good as any chocolate made anywhere in the world. You may prefer the flavor of others but you can't say the quality isn't there. Unfortunately, the rest of the USA made chocolate isn't so good.
Don't forget Southern California, there are wineries making excellent wine down there too.
Date rape drug? Like alcohol??
Sorry, the limit on the number of pieces in a torrent is 2^32. The message length prefix (i.e. the max length of the have-bitfield) as well as the piece indicies are 4-byte unsigned ints.
Yes, the editors of TFA are clueless. Not only was DAT hugely successful in the professional audio world (and is still in use though it is certainly declining) but it was the format of choice for live concert tapers until very recently and for traders until CDR really hit it big about 8 years ago.
The copy protection was absolutely not "draconian" since it was easily defeated by using one "semi pro" deck or even "scrubber" boxes that were available.
Finally, its failure and the success of CDs had nothing at all to do with copy protection. It had everything to do with convenience. CDs have random access, no rewinding, simpler and more reliable transports that don't eat the media, etc... DAT has the sound quality of CD but most of the inconvenience and expense of tape.
Except in a civil suit the standard of evidence is merely "preponderance of evidence" and not "beyond reasonable doubt."
In Napster's case, internal e-mails from officers of the company said stuff like "our users need to stay anonymous because they are pirating music." Once it was established that the officers of the company knew their users were infringing and that the very purpose of the service was to allow infringement then it was all over for Napster.
The main reason the BT is fast and ed2k is slow is because BT is not a huge decentralized network with search.
In ed2k and any other similar system like gnutella or kazaa people are searching for old files that don't have many downloaders. That is strike #1. What really kills it is the fact that the distribution of files on such networks follows a power law. Odds are, whatever you want is only on a server that has a crapload of files that lots of other people want, leading to very long queues.
By contrast, BT has no search for old stuff so people tend to join "fresh" torrents. Then, everyone on the torrent is pretty much only transferring that file instead of "sharing" a huge library of stuff. This has been mitigated somewhat by multiple torrent downloading clients but it still holds pretty well.
Finally, BT has become very popular with *publishers* because anyone can setup their own tracker and control their own torrents instead being forced to join some big huge network with lots of other stuff. This has also led to higher quality since the operators of trackers/indexes can patrol the torrents.
Steve Jobs has always had an anti-DRM stance. That is why the iPhone will have an open API available to any developer who wishes to write software for it. There wont be any onerous agreement required to receive the SDK. Right?
Good luck getting your neighbors to turn off their "security" lights.
Just like the morons that bought broadcast.com
Christopher Go of Cebu City Philippines discovered earlier this year that Oval BA turned red. Chris is one of the world's premier amateur planetary imagers. Check out his page dedicated to Red Jr..
Even in the day of the great orbiting observatories and huge ground based intereferometers, there is still room for amateurs working with modest equipment to make discoveries.
Sorry, the first web browser was also the first "full GUI HTML editor." WorldWideWeb.app by Tim Berners Lee.