I think we'll see zeppelins come back as commercial transport about the same time the telegraph becomes the primary means of long distance communication again.
telegraph n. a method of electronic written communication over a long distance. (From Greek roots tele == distance and graph == writing.) The Internet (especially e-mail, newsgroups, and the Web) is the world's largest telegraph network, only instead of morse code AM'ed over copper wire, you have ASCII code over fiber in the backbone and V.90 over copper in the last mile.
China is our "most favored nation"... they didn't do anything after Tienneman, why would they do something over something as trivial as copying discs
Because the RIAA and MPAA members are stuffing senators' pockets? This may be just the thing to get the United States to officially recognize Taiwan as not being part of the "People's Republic" of China.
how future alien looking robots will be able to bring people back to life with dna but they will only live for one day "because of the space time continuum". What amatuerisness.
The amateurishness is on Spielberg's part. Hadn't he seen The 6th Day[?]? If I remember right, human memories could be stored in "syncordings" that could be backed up. If Hollywood is going to present a consistent view of the future, please don't fsck it up just to keep your hapless Pinocchio from feeling like a real boy for longer than 24 hours.
Yes, the ending you saw is the ending Kubrick wanted. But did Kubrick hand Spielberg that ending just to leave the door open for sequels, thinking audiences would "edit it out" as they were supposed to for Planet of the Apes?
since Slashcode is GPL software, all it would take is an examination of the source code
Slashcode as distributed on slashcode.com is free software and is distributed with source code. OTOH, Slashcode as used on slashdot.org is free software, but it is not distributed in any form[1]. Not distributing binaries == not required to distribute source code.
[1] I'm not counting distributed computing. "Distribution" according to the GPL refers to transfer of software to another entity, not running the code on multiple load-balanced servers, as Slashdot does.
Maybe its simply because it is harder, for the sender, to falsify the originating phone number?
Yes. The telco is treated as a trusted source for authenticated the physical location of the origin of the fax. This can be used to back up an assertion that "The person who sent this fax was authorized to use this telephone account to send this fax," or that "My client didn't commit this murder because he was off in Chicago sending this fax at the time the murder occurred."
They'll send DMCA takedown notices to web hosts
on
Seanbaby.com
·
· Score: 1
[Media giants] may make [counterculture content] slightly more difficult to find, but they can't force me to look at their crap.
Slightly more difficult? If AOL and MS really want to stop the counterculture, they'll be visiting Google.com often, looking for unofficial fan sites, and sending cease-and-desist letters and DMCA takedown notices. At least that's what Enid Blyton Ltd. did about my Noddy fan site.
Will that be Michael Eisner (head of Di$ney and responsible for the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act[?]), Hilary Rosen (head of RIAA), or Jack Valenti (head of MPAA)?
it doesn't excite me too hear about yet another audio codec that produces lossy audio files
You're not going to get much compression if you go lossless. Popular lossless LPC codecs such as shorten and flac only pack files to 40% to 60% of their original size because they spend most of their bandwidth on coding incompressible noise.
If your audience uses human ears, you don't really want "lossless"; you want "transparent." It's already been shown that golden ears can't distinguish a 1.4 Mbps 44.1 kHz stereo wav from a 256 kbps MP3 file encoded with LAME. OGG's improved psychoacoustics and quantization techniques (including channel coupling that's stronger than simple mid-side) can go deep into territory MP3 doesn't dare go.
So you're saying that 20 years after a patent has expired I can repatent it myself
No. I'm saying that after 20 years have elapsed, the patent has expired, and the invention is now in the public domain for all to use. There is prior art other than still-effective patents, such as expired patents, journal articles, and the like.
djb fixed all the BIND security flaws long ago. It is called djbdns.
According to http://cr.yp.to/distributors.html, the djbdns license does NOT allow modification of the source code (even when the product is released under a different name) and therefore breaks freedom 1. Besides, BIND 9, despite the name, is not based on the BIND codebase at all; it's a complete rewrite and shouldn't have the same security holes.
There are lots of games that run on Pentium
on
Windows in 2020
·
· Score: 1
Keeping a "Pentium or better" is not sufficient in the long run and the reason is just one word: "Games".
TOD is very playable on Pentium 100 computers. And if you don't like that kind of game, you can try hundreds of others with TuxNES including open-source games such as GNOME vs. KDE.
The games makers seem to push the limits of the operating system out there right now
"Games makers," or "first person shooter makers"? Not everybody is a Quakeoholic; some people enjoy thinking games such as Solitaire, SameGame, or Tetanus (a falling tetramino game). Some like the Flash games you can find at Newgrounds. They all run fine on the PII/233 MHz laptops I see everywhere at my school. Not everybody needs a 2 GHz Pentium 4 and GeForce 3 because not everybody thinks Black & White is that much more than a glorified SimCity (which, incidentally, ran on a 3.6 MHz 65816-based Super NES console).
And people will buy this new hardware (and subscription software OS'es) up because right now, they really need their fix of games.
Or they can just connect their GAMECUBE console (coming 5 November in many markets) to their current computer's TV tuner.
A usable interface to the linux kernel
on
Linux Turns 10
·
· Score: 1
A usable interface?
Linux already has a usable human interface: throw on a GNU system (libc, gcc, bash, fileutils, etc.) then add a GUI such as KDE or GNOME, and you've got a very nice operating environment.
The tune is copyrighted. The copyrighted *lyrics* are:
Now, I'll have to sic AOL on Slashdot. AOL owns the copyright on Happy Birthday and will own it forever thanks to the Sonny Bono Act[?], which sets a dangerous precedent that every 20 years, Congress will pass a law extending copyright terms. And even the Supremes have a price.
inexpensive (compared to the price of a computer with a built-in serial console)
They don't even list a price on their web site. They do give an e-mail address to request spam, but this behavior has always led me to think: "If you have to ask, you can't afford it."
any PC with an ISA slot
I haven't seen a new box with an ISA slot for the last couple years. From the website: "For those with no ISA slots at all, please sit tight as we expect to be shipping PCI before the end of 2000." It's almost the end of 2001. Does this fit f---edcompany.com's criteria for a "fuck"?
The owner of a small consulting firm I used to work for patented a method of software assembly using genetic algorithms about two decades ago
It'd be in the public domain by now. The term for the patent monopoly was 17 years after the patent is granted or 20 years after it's filed; those are about the same because it typically takes 3 years to approve a patent.
Just thank goodness Sonny Bono[?] never touched patents.
In fact it was the reverse engineering of the IBM BIOS
Yes, the Phoenix clean-room clone of BIOS contributed, but so did Microsoft's non-discriminatory licensing policy for MS-DOS. Most other platforms at the time ran a proprietary OS owned by the hardware maker; MS-DOS was just as proprietary, but it wasn't tied to the hardware like Apple II DOS 3.3 and later ProDOS, GS/OS, and Mac OS were. In fact, Microsoft originally offered a port of MS-DOS to Macintosh computers based on MC68000 processors, but it never caught on because the popular applications were binary-only for x86.
Praise Microsoft for helping open up the PC hardware market, but blame app vendors for not porting their apps to other archs. Also blame Microsoft for false advertising, as both FUD and its claims of standard conformance under "embrace and extend" amount to false advertising.
DISCLAIMER: On legal issues, all Slashdotters (myself included) should be treated as talking out their asses.
You can't run a PC off a serial port. The BIOS software on most PCs expects a keyboard with a PS/2-style interface and a memory-mapped text display and will fail POST if it doesn't find them. This makes it much harder to use a PC as a server, as you can't just hook up a vt100 and get into BIOS setup like you can with most other workstations.
no one is really into... encrypting their band's music (since being noticed is what they *do* want)
If an independent band inserts.ogg files into Freenet and then publishes the KSK (or whatever Freenet retrieval keys are called) on its web site, bam! Instant legitimate use, and no more need for the Fraunhofer patent license required to get your work onto MP3.com. (LAME doesn't work for bands in countries that recognize Fraunhofer's patent on "coding an audio stream by doing a spectral transform on each block then allocating bits per frequency based on fixed sub-bands".)
Slashdot Mirror
I think we'll see zeppelins come back as commercial transport about the same time the telegraph becomes the primary means of long distance communication again.
telegraph n. a method of electronic written communication over a long distance. (From Greek roots tele == distance and graph == writing.) The Internet (especially e-mail, newsgroups, and the Web) is the world's largest telegraph network, only instead of morse code AM'ed over copper wire, you have ASCII code over fiber in the backbone and V.90 over copper in the last mile.
"Sean-baby"? I guess it's time for somebody to write a parody of "Hatten är din".
China is our "most favored nation" ... they didn't do anything after Tienneman, why would they do something over something as trivial as copying discs
Because the RIAA and MPAA members are stuffing senators' pockets? This may be just the thing to get the United States to officially recognize Taiwan as not being part of the "People's Republic" of China.
Could something like SirCam or another virus/worm be used as a distribuition method for information like this?
You could have a SirCam clone or a Code Red variant download and install the Freenet client and then request the hdcp crack.
Taiwan is not signed to either the Berne nor WIPO treaties. So copyright does not apply.
That is, unless every WIPO member embargoes Taiwan.
And where [copyright] does not apply is where information will flow freely.
Not if all routers in all WIPO states drop all packets originating from Taiwan's IP blocks. Then Taiwan can't communicate with anybody.
how future alien looking robots will be able to bring people back to life with dna but they will only live for one day "because of the space time continuum". What amatuerisness.
The amateurishness is on Spielberg's part. Hadn't he seen The 6th Day[?]? If I remember right, human memories could be stored in "syncordings" that could be backed up. If Hollywood is going to present a consistent view of the future, please don't fsck it up just to keep your hapless Pinocchio from feeling like a real boy for longer than 24 hours.
Yes, the ending you saw is the ending Kubrick wanted. But did Kubrick hand Spielberg that ending just to leave the door open for sequels, thinking audiences would "edit it out" as they were supposed to for Planet of the Apes?
since Slashcode is GPL software, all it would take is an examination of the source code
Slashcode as distributed on slashcode.com is free software and is distributed with source code. OTOH, Slashcode as used on slashdot.org is free software, but it is not distributed in any form[1]. Not distributing binaries == not required to distribute source code.
[1] I'm not counting distributed computing. "Distribution" according to the GPL refers to transfer of software to another entity, not running the code on multiple load-balanced servers, as Slashdot does.
Maybe its simply because it is harder, for the sender, to falsify the originating phone number?
Yes. The telco is treated as a trusted source for authenticated the physical location of the origin of the fax. This can be used to back up an assertion that "The person who sent this fax was authorized to use this telephone account to send this fax," or that "My client didn't commit this murder because he was off in Chicago sending this fax at the time the murder occurred."
the IETF cannot proceed without the permission of Adobe and Xerox because the new standard relies on IP from the two companies.
It doesn't have to. There's always PNG, the latest free replacement for GIF and TIFF.
> Just buy a box or two of Red Hat Linux
Better yet, just buy boxed Cygwin.
I think most coders will agree with me when I say, "Send those guys/girls a case of beer!"
Some jurisdictions have a minimum drinking age. In the United States it's 21. In Saudi Arabia it's (i.e. Prohibition).
lack of a sane backup mechanism? you can just copy the files around for backup...
No. You don't want your web site to turn away customers for 20 minutes every night just because your database doesn't support live replication.
[Media giants] may make [counterculture content] slightly more difficult to find, but they can't force me to look at their crap.
Slightly more difficult? If AOL and MS really want to stop the counterculture, they'll be visiting Google.com often, looking for unofficial fan sites, and sending cease-and-desist letters and DMCA takedown notices. At least that's what Enid Blyton Ltd. did about my Noddy fan site.
And I know just the client to test it out on too.
Will that be Michael Eisner (head of Di$ney and responsible for the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act[?]), Hilary Rosen (head of RIAA), or Jack Valenti (head of MPAA)?
it doesn't excite me too hear about yet another audio codec that produces lossy audio files
You're not going to get much compression if you go lossless. Popular lossless LPC codecs such as shorten and flac only pack files to 40% to 60% of their original size because they spend most of their bandwidth on coding incompressible noise.
If your audience uses human ears, you don't really want "lossless"; you want "transparent." It's already been shown that golden ears can't distinguish a 1.4 Mbps 44.1 kHz stereo wav from a 256 kbps MP3 file encoded with LAME. OGG's improved psychoacoustics and quantization techniques (including channel coupling that's stronger than simple mid-side) can go deep into territory MP3 doesn't dare go.
So you're saying that 20 years after a patent has expired I can repatent it myself
No. I'm saying that after 20 years have elapsed, the patent has expired, and the invention is now in the public domain for all to use. There is prior art other than still-effective patents, such as expired patents, journal articles, and the like.
djb fixed all the BIND security flaws long ago. It is called djbdns.
According to http://cr.yp.to/distributors.html, the djbdns license does NOT allow modification of the source code (even when the product is released under a different name) and therefore breaks freedom 1. Besides, BIND 9, despite the name, is not based on the BIND codebase at all; it's a complete rewrite and shouldn't have the same security holes.
Keeping a "Pentium or better" is not sufficient in the long run and the reason is just one word: "Games".
TOD is very playable on Pentium 100 computers. And if you don't like that kind of game, you can try hundreds of others with TuxNES including open-source games such as GNOME vs. KDE.
The games makers seem to push the limits of the operating system out there right now
"Games makers," or "first person shooter makers"? Not everybody is a Quakeoholic; some people enjoy thinking games such as Solitaire, SameGame, or Tetanus (a falling tetramino game). Some like the Flash games you can find at Newgrounds. They all run fine on the PII/233 MHz laptops I see everywhere at my school. Not everybody needs a 2 GHz Pentium 4 and GeForce 3 because not everybody thinks Black & White is that much more than a glorified SimCity (which, incidentally, ran on a 3.6 MHz 65816-based Super NES console).
And people will buy this new hardware (and subscription software OS'es) up because right now, they really need their fix of games.
Or they can just connect their GAMECUBE console (coming 5 November in many markets) to their current computer's TV tuner.
A usable interface?
Linux already has a usable human interface: throw on a GNU system (libc, gcc, bash, fileutils, etc.) then add a GUI such as KDE or GNOME, and you've got a very nice operating environment.
The tune is copyrighted. The copyrighted *lyrics* are:
Now, I'll have to sic AOL on Slashdot. AOL owns the copyright on Happy Birthday and will own it forever thanks to the Sonny Bono Act[?], which sets a dangerous precedent that every 20 years, Congress will pass a law extending copyright terms. And even the Supremes have a price.
inexpensive (compared to the price of a computer with a built-in serial console)
They don't even list a price on their web site. They do give an e-mail address to request spam, but this behavior has always led me to think: "If you have to ask, you can't afford it."
any PC with an ISA slot
I haven't seen a new box with an ISA slot for the last couple years. From the website: "For those with no ISA slots at all, please sit tight as we expect to be shipping PCI before the end of 2000." It's almost the end of 2001. Does this fit f---edcompany.com's criteria for a "fuck"?
The owner of a small consulting firm I used to work for patented a method of software assembly using genetic algorithms about two decades ago
It'd be in the public domain by now. The term for the patent monopoly was 17 years after the patent is granted or 20 years after it's filed; those are about the same because it typically takes 3 years to approve a patent.
Just thank goodness Sonny Bono[?] never touched patents.
In fact it was the reverse engineering of the IBM BIOS
Yes, the Phoenix clean-room clone of BIOS contributed, but so did Microsoft's non-discriminatory licensing policy for MS-DOS. Most other platforms at the time ran a proprietary OS owned by the hardware maker; MS-DOS was just as proprietary, but it wasn't tied to the hardware like Apple II DOS 3.3 and later ProDOS, GS/OS, and Mac OS were. In fact, Microsoft originally offered a port of MS-DOS to Macintosh computers based on MC68000 processors, but it never caught on because the popular applications were binary-only for x86.
Praise Microsoft for helping open up the PC hardware market, but blame app vendors for not porting their apps to other archs. Also blame Microsoft for false advertising, as both FUD and its claims of standard conformance under "embrace and extend" amount to false advertising.
DISCLAIMER: On legal issues, all Slashdotters (myself included) should be treated as talking out their asses.You can't run a PC off a serial port. The BIOS software on most PCs expects a keyboard with a PS/2-style interface and a memory-mapped text display and will fail POST if it doesn't find them. This makes it much harder to use a PC as a server, as you can't just hook up a vt100 and get into BIOS setup like you can with most other workstations.
no one is really into ... encrypting their band's music (since being noticed is what they *do* want)
If an independent band inserts .ogg files into Freenet and then publishes the KSK (or whatever Freenet retrieval keys are called) on its web site, bam! Instant legitimate use, and no more need for the Fraunhofer patent license required to get your work onto MP3.com. (LAME doesn't work for bands in countries that recognize Fraunhofer's patent on "coding an audio stream by doing a spectral transform on each block then allocating bits per frequency based on fixed sub-bands".)