You can only get access to the mp3's from mp3.com if you already own (or are at least IN POSESSION of) the CD.
You pointed out a subtle distinction: possession != owning. Yes, the cliche goes "possession counts as nine-tenths of the law," but the other one-tenth comes from contracts. For example, I often borrow CDs from a public library, but they come with a contract that I must return them after 21 days or pay late fees. I certainly do not own them under first sale and most likely may not keep backups in my possession.
So, take the time to learn Dvorak.... it should effectively screw up any timing-based password sniffers!
Not so fast. The choice of Dvorak or QWERTY adds only one bit of entropy, merely doubling the possible dictionary/brute-force keyspace to check. This poses no problem to attackers whose computer power increases exponentially with time. (I wonder why distributed.net 's keyrate appears to increase linearly though...)
There's a big double yellow line with orange traffic cones between improving signal-to-noise and censorship. Slashdot is slalom-skating it.
Ever since CmdrTaco and friends created the moderation system, Slashdot has intentionally deleted exactly one comment, and it was a flagrant copyright infringement. If you browse Slashdot at -1, you'll see everything.
Microsoft Sidewinder USB joypads suck
on
MAME on X-Box
·
· Score: 1
and then buy a $20 gamepad from any computer store.
I had a SideWinder PNP Game Pad and a SideWinder Game Pad Pro. They both had the same glaring flaw: a directional control not aligned to the primary axes of the controller but instead rotated 20 degrees clockwise, making it hard for this 10-year console game veteran to consistently push straight down.
If you want a USB joypad, get a $20 Gravis GamePad Pro USB. If you want a non-USB joypad, get two Super NES controllers and a parallel port adapter and use them with DirectPad Pro.
USB != HID
on
MAME on X-Box
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Correct me if I'm wrong, but X-box uses USB ports for their controllers. I'd imagine that would allow for a large array of controllers and keyboards and the like.
The Xbox system uses controller ports electrically identical to USB but speaks not the standard USB Human Interface Device protocol but a proprietary encrypted protocol. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides security through obscurity: even though 17 USC 1201 gives an exception for reverse engineering for interoperability, Microsoft has an unlimited legal budget to bring baseless lawsuits against any independent vendor of Xbox-compatible hardware and filibuster them as long as possible to drain the little guy's legal fund.
ROM dumps of games you own can be illegal
on
MAME on X-Box
·
· Score: 1
Is it legal to own ROMs?
In the United States, software stored on semiconductor mask ROMs has additional copyright restrictions: for ten years after December 31 after the initial release of the software, you can't make a backup unless you're reverse engineering the game for interoperability.
What about ROMs that The Community owns?
on
MAME on X-Box
·
· Score: 2, Informative
only among the people who own (heh heh heh) the original roms
Some authors have released their arcade and console software either as proprietary free(beer)ware or as free software. For instance, Elite for NES is free(beer), and GNOME vs. KDE is GPL'd.
Some arcade games were based on N64 tech
on
MAME on X-Box
·
· Score: 1
You can't play N64 games with MAME. It stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Arcade only. kthx:)
Some arcade games such as Killer Instinct and Cruis'n USA ran on "Nintendo Ultra 64," an arcade system very similar to the N64 console. It wouldn't be that hard to emulate N64 if you're already emulating U64, just as it wouldn't be hard to emulate NES if you're already emulating Nintendo's VS Unisystem and PlayChoice (both essentially NES with a coin slot).
You can't make backups of ROMS newer than 10 yrs
on
MAME on X-Box
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Excuse me, but I am legally permitted to download MAME ROMs for any arcade machine that I currently own.
WRONG. Title 17 USC (copyright law) does not provide a "second copy exception"; it does provide a "backup exception" if you dump your own older ROM sets. But programs newer than 10 years old stored in ROMs are subject to additional mask work copyright restrictions that apply only to semiconductor ROM chips. You can't even backup recent ROMs you own unless you perform bona fide reverse engineering on them. In other words, the MAME developers can dump them, but you can't.
Homebrew devkit with 4 joypads? Try the PC or NES.
on
MAME on X-Box
·
· Score: 1
I've been looking for a dev kit for a system w/ 4 controllers for a long time.
Here's Allegro. If you use DirectPad Pro to plug two Super NES controllers into your parallel port and then you plug in two USB controllers, you have four pads, enough to make a Mario Party clone.
The problem with Linux is that it's just too darn hard to install - if you want sound, scanner, email
Red Hat's and Mandrake's installers do a good job configuring devices. The problem with Linux is not necessarily with Linux but with hardware manufacturers not providing documentation to free software developers. Just look at some of the winsoundcards, winscanners, and winmodems available today. Back in the day, a printer came with a reference card detailing every single escape code you could use to change its fonts or draw graphics. Now they come with a black box Windows 9x driver.
games
Lots of games come with both KDE and GNOME. Not everybody in the world is a fan of first-person shooters, but even then, Doom Legacy runs on Linux.
Even if Quartz is optimized for AltiVec, it's still software rendering. EVAS uses the 3D engine of the graphics card
And why do you consider a second CPU running software 3D not a graphics card? Whether the rendering happens on the same chip as the application or on a card plugged into AGP does not matter as much as decreasing execution time of rendering, that is, getting a faster frame rate.
Alias? Make a shortcut. In fact, Mac OS's shortcuts are called aliases.
Cron? Try dragging it into the Scheduled Tasks Manager app and then choosing the calendar values.
Yes, I believe that wherever possible, all features should be accessible through a GUI, through a scripting language (be it Python, AppleScript, or whatever), and through an interactive command language (possibly based on a scripting language). This would also help people with disabilities to use the system.
Anyway, what is the window close keyboard shortcut on the Macintosh? It's not Alt-F4.
On Macintosh computers, Cmd+N is New document, Cmd+O is Open document, Cmd+W is close Window, Cmd+S is save, Cmd+P is Print, and Cmd+Q is Quit. Cmd+Z is undo, Cmd+X is cut, Cmd+C is copy, Cmd+V is paste, and Cmd+A is select All, and Cmd+I is properties (short for get Info).
Go to university and get yourself an ethernet drop. 100Mbps ethernet is much better than a puny 128kbps-uplink-capped connection
Sure, you'll get fast file transfers across the school's network, but what if 1,500 students are sharing the 6 Mbps fractional T3 uplink from your school to the Internet?
It's not the USD$40/mo; it's the $200K up front
on
Stopping The 56K Hate
·
· Score: 1
It's not the USD $40 per month; it's the $200,000 or more up front to move your SO and kids into an area where broadband cheaper than T1 is offered. It's the $40 per month you still pay when you can't use the broadband because you are living in another town nine months out of the year. (That's one of the advantages of dial-up; you can dial-up in any town where your ISP has modems, and UUNET POPs are quite common.)
I took one of the banners and made it 10x smaller.
on
Stopping The 56K Hate
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Feel sorry for the modem user - put more images on your page.
When I took one of the banners, I made it 10 times smaller by converting it from JPG to an indexed PNG posterized to 6 levels, ending up with a 500 byte version that travels over a 50 kbps link in the time of the average eyeblink (100 ms). I also notified the webmistress of the location of this smaller PNG.
With all this discussion about copyrights, we often miss patents. A format can be illegal because it uses patented methods or processes. MPEG-4 (the core technology of the DivX;-) family of video codecs) uses numerous patents, such as MPEG audio layer 3 (Fraunhofer). License royalties ($4 per hardware or software encoder or decoder for even MPEG-2 and likely more for MPEG-4) are generally out of reach for developers of free software or free(beer) proprietary software.
I have Metropolis on DVD right in front of me. I'd consider that old, especially considering it's not even a 'talkie'.
This could be just the thing we need to show that the DMCA is poorly written. The DMCA only prohibits devices designed to circumvent "works protected under [Title 17, U.S.C.]" which does NOT include works first published before January 1, 1923. (Note that this doesn't apply to Metropolis specifically, but that's Sonny Bono's fault.) If Hollywood ever releases a pre-1923 movie on DVD with CSS encryption, that could be used as the loophole for a DeCSS clone that "allows you to view public domain content on CSS-encrypted DVDs. This program is not prohibited under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because it is NOT intended to be used to decrypt content still under content."
Hell, why do people subscribe to porn sites, when they have a newsfeed? Because the material available in alt.binaries.nekkid.women is sporadic, and flooded with spam.
No, because neither their ISP's newsfeed nor Deja carries binaries, and the alternative costs as much as the porn sites. Besides, filters catch most of the unsolicited commercial postings.
Why spend 30 minutes or much, much longer when I can make it to the video store, rent, and travel time both ways in about 20 minutes?
Some people (myself included; I'm almost 21 years old) do not know how or do not have enough money to operate a motor vehicle and do not live in an area with decent public bus service. It takes me an hour to get to the video store and back, time I could spend watching movies. Flash movies. Movies provide more laughs per hour than anything Hollywood puts out because Flash movies don't try to pad it out to 110 minutes.
distributed infrastructure (kinda like a P2P network;)
Akamai. On steroids.
Having a broad catalog gives more choice
Not if the pirate's catalog is broader with respect to the narrow category of movies a fellow wants. For example, if I searched for "Pinocchio" I wouldn't get Di$ney's version (because Di$ney isn't participating) but instead two AOL(tw) releases: "The Adventures of Pinocchio" (1996; New Line) and "A.I." (2001; Warner) (that is, once it's released on PPV).
screwing up... quality of catalog (post-DVD releases only)
Do you seriously believe that movies that have passed into the pay-per-view window are of lower quality than those still in theaters or being sold on DVD? Classic movies (top 10%[1] of black-and-white and early releases) are classics for a reason
Slashdot Mirror
You can only get access to the mp3's from mp3.com if you already own (or are at least IN POSESSION of) the CD.
You pointed out a subtle distinction: possession != owning. Yes, the cliche goes "possession counts as nine-tenths of the law," but the other one-tenth comes from contracts. For example, I often borrow CDs from a public library, but they come with a contract that I must return them after 21 days or pay late fees. I certainly do not own them under first sale and most likely may not keep backups in my possession.
So, take the time to learn Dvorak. ... it should effectively screw up any timing-based password sniffers!
Not so fast. The choice of Dvorak or QWERTY adds only one bit of entropy, merely doubling the possible dictionary/brute-force keyspace to check. This poses no problem to attackers whose computer power increases exponentially with time. (I wonder why distributed.net 's keyrate appears to increase linearly though...)
There's a big double yellow line with orange traffic cones between improving signal-to-noise and censorship. Slashdot is slalom-skating it.
Ever since CmdrTaco and friends created the moderation system, Slashdot has intentionally deleted exactly one comment, and it was a flagrant copyright infringement. If you browse Slashdot at -1, you'll see everything.
and then buy a $20 gamepad from any computer store.
I had a SideWinder PNP Game Pad and a SideWinder Game Pad Pro. They both had the same glaring flaw: a directional control not aligned to the primary axes of the controller but instead rotated 20 degrees clockwise, making it hard for this 10-year console game veteran to consistently push straight down.
If you want a USB joypad, get a $20 Gravis GamePad Pro USB. If you want a non-USB joypad, get two Super NES controllers and a parallel port adapter and use them with DirectPad Pro.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but X-box uses USB ports for their controllers. I'd imagine that would allow for a large array of controllers and keyboards and the like.
The Xbox system uses controller ports electrically identical to USB but speaks not the standard USB Human Interface Device protocol but a proprietary encrypted protocol. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides security through obscurity: even though 17 USC 1201 gives an exception for reverse engineering for interoperability, Microsoft has an unlimited legal budget to bring baseless lawsuits against any independent vendor of Xbox-compatible hardware and filibuster them as long as possible to drain the little guy's legal fund.
Is it legal to own ROMs?
In the United States, software stored on semiconductor mask ROMs has additional copyright restrictions: for ten years after December 31 after the initial release of the software, you can't make a backup unless you're reverse engineering the game for interoperability.
only among the people who own (heh heh heh) the original roms
Some authors have released their arcade and console software either as proprietary free(beer)ware or as free software. For instance, Elite for NES is free(beer), and GNOME vs. KDE is GPL'd.
You can't play N64 games with MAME. It stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Arcade only. kthx :)
Some arcade games such as Killer Instinct and Cruis'n USA ran on "Nintendo Ultra 64," an arcade system very similar to the N64 console. It wouldn't be that hard to emulate N64 if you're already emulating U64, just as it wouldn't be hard to emulate NES if you're already emulating Nintendo's VS Unisystem and PlayChoice (both essentially NES with a coin slot).
Excuse me, but I am legally permitted to download MAME ROMs for any arcade machine that I currently own.
WRONG. Title 17 USC (copyright law) does not provide a "second copy exception"; it does provide a "backup exception" if you dump your own older ROM sets. But programs newer than 10 years old stored in ROMs are subject to additional mask work copyright restrictions that apply only to semiconductor ROM chips. You can't even backup recent ROMs you own unless you perform bona fide reverse engineering on them. In other words, the MAME developers can dump them, but you can't.
I've been looking for a dev kit for a system w/ 4 controllers for a long time.
Here's Allegro. If you use DirectPad Pro to plug two Super NES controllers into your parallel port and then you plug in two USB controllers, you have four pads, enough to make a Mario Party clone.
NES also supports four controllers through the Four Score adapter. Read More on how to develop for NES.
The problem with Linux is that it's just too darn hard to install - if you want sound, scanner, email
Red Hat's and Mandrake's installers do a good job configuring devices. The problem with Linux is not necessarily with Linux but with hardware manufacturers not providing documentation to free software developers. Just look at some of the winsoundcards, winscanners, and winmodems available today. Back in the day, a printer came with a reference card detailing every single escape code you could use to change its fonts or draw graphics. Now they come with a black box Windows 9x driver.
games
Lots of games come with both KDE and GNOME. Not everybody in the world is a fan of first-person shooters, but even then, Doom Legacy runs on Linux.
Even if Quartz is optimized for AltiVec, it's still software rendering. EVAS uses the 3D engine of the graphics card
And why do you consider a second CPU running software 3D not a graphics card? Whether the rendering happens on the same chip as the application or on a card plugged into AGP does not matter as much as decreasing execution time of rendering, that is, getting a faster frame rate.
(try aliasing or scripting or cronning a wizard)
Alias? Make a shortcut. In fact, Mac OS's shortcuts are called aliases.
Cron? Try dragging it into the Scheduled Tasks Manager app and then choosing the calendar values.
Yes, I believe that wherever possible, all features should be accessible through a GUI, through a scripting language (be it Python, AppleScript, or whatever), and through an interactive command language (possibly based on a scripting language). This would also help people with disabilities to use the system.
Anyway, what is the window close keyboard shortcut on the Macintosh? It's not Alt-F4.
On Macintosh computers, Cmd+N is New document, Cmd+O is Open document, Cmd+W is close Window, Cmd+S is save, Cmd+P is Print, and Cmd+Q is Quit. Cmd+Z is undo, Cmd+X is cut, Cmd+C is copy, Cmd+V is paste, and Cmd+A is select All, and Cmd+I is properties (short for get Info).
Go to university and get yourself an ethernet drop. 100Mbps ethernet is much better than a puny 128kbps-uplink-capped connection
Sure, you'll get fast file transfers across the school's network, but what if 1,500 students are sharing the 6 Mbps fractional T3 uplink from your school to the Internet?
It's not the USD $40 per month; it's the $200,000 or more up front to move your SO and kids into an area where broadband cheaper than T1 is offered. It's the $40 per month you still pay when you can't use the broadband because you are living in another town nine months out of the year. (That's one of the advantages of dial-up; you can dial-up in any town where your ISP has modems, and UUNET POPs are quite common.)
Feel sorry for the modem user - put more images on your page.
When I took one of the banners, I made it 10 times smaller by converting it from JPG to an indexed PNG posterized to 6 levels, ending up with a 500 byte version that travels over a 50 kbps link in the time of the average eyeblink (100 ms). I also notified the webmistress of the location of this smaller PNG.
Apart from the fact that the graphical banners seem a bit unnecessary (wouldn't a text link be more in-keeping with the message?)
When I put one of the buttons on my own site, I used a graphical link with alt text. Such links show up as a text link on text browsers.
can I mod this whole story down to Score: -1; troll? Or, +1 funny?
If you don't like the omelet that Slashdot serves, special order your own omelet at Kuro5hin, where YOU choose the stories.
-- Pinocchio Poppins, pin0cchio on Kuro5hinhard to read
When I downloaded the button, I pumped up the gamma in GIMP by 2.0. This made it much easier to read.
GIF banners
A GIF would look silly next to my "burn all .gifs" button, so I converted it to PNG.
those of us who often surf through lynx
Users of Links, w3m, and Lynx will see the alt text "56K PRIDE" along with alt text for every other textual image on my site.
>> DiVX Legal: No
> Based on? How is a format illegal?
With all this discussion about copyrights, we often miss patents. A format can be illegal because it uses patented methods or processes. MPEG-4 (the core technology of the DivX ;-) family of video codecs) uses numerous patents, such as MPEG audio layer 3 (Fraunhofer). License royalties ($4 per hardware or software encoder or decoder for even MPEG-2 and likely more for MPEG-4) are generally out of reach for developers of free software or free(beer) proprietary software.
Philips is offering a free MPEG-4 player.
I have Metropolis on DVD right in front of me. I'd consider that old, especially considering it's not even a 'talkie'.
This could be just the thing we need to show that the DMCA is poorly written. The DMCA only prohibits devices designed to circumvent "works protected under [Title 17, U.S.C.]" which does NOT include works first published before January 1, 1923. (Note that this doesn't apply to Metropolis specifically, but that's Sonny Bono's fault.) If Hollywood ever releases a pre-1923 movie on DVD with CSS encryption, that could be used as the loophole for a DeCSS clone that "allows you to view public domain content on CSS-encrypted DVDs. This program is not prohibited under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because it is NOT intended to be used to decrypt content still under content."
I am talking out of my ass.Hell, why do people subscribe to porn sites, when they have a newsfeed? Because the material available in alt.binaries.nekkid.women is sporadic, and flooded with spam.
No, because neither their ISP's newsfeed nor Deja carries binaries, and the alternative costs as much as the porn sites. Besides, filters catch most of the unsolicited commercial postings.
Why spend 30 minutes or much, much longer when I can make it to the video store, rent, and travel time both ways in about 20 minutes?
Some people (myself included; I'm almost 21 years old) do not know how or do not have enough money to operate a motor vehicle and do not live in an area with decent public bus service. It takes me an hour to get to the video store and back, time I could spend watching movies. Flash movies. Movies provide more laughs per hour than anything Hollywood puts out because Flash movies don't try to pad it out to 110 minutes.
distributed infrastructure (kinda like a P2P network ;)
Akamai. On steroids.
Having a broad catalog gives more choice
Not if the pirate's catalog is broader with respect to the narrow category of movies a fellow wants. For example, if I searched for "Pinocchio" I wouldn't get Di$ney's version (because Di$ney isn't participating) but instead two AOL(tw) releases: "The Adventures of Pinocchio" (1996; New Line) and "A.I." (2001; Warner) (that is, once it's released on PPV).
screwing up ... quality of catalog (post-DVD releases only)
Do you seriously believe that movies that have passed into the pay-per-view window are of lower quality than those still in theaters or being sold on DVD? Classic movies (top 10%[1] of black-and-white and early releases) are classics for a reason
[1] Sturgeon's Law: 90% of film is crap.