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User: edwardd

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Comments · 53

  1. Trademark infringement with FaceTime on Apple Announces iPhone 4 · · Score: -1, Troll

    I guess Apple is big enough that they no longer worry about infringing on other people's trademarks. FaceTime has been an instant messaging platform for years, it's not like they're new. Lots of large financial firms use them.

    Come on Apple, how do you expect others to respect your trademarks if you don't respect other?

  2. Re:Check out twinhan DVB-S cards for an alternativ on An End To Unencrypted Digital Cable TV and the HTPC · · Score: 5, Informative

    DVB-S cards can use smart cards to get premium (encrypted) channels as long as you have a subscription. They don't lock you out like cable does.

    Unfortunately for American viewers, there is no legal way to do this. Although DVB-S is an international standard and widely adopted, current laws within the US prohibit using off the shelf hardware to decrypt the video signal. Doing this is considered signal theft.

    Dish Network uses Nagra 3 encryption, as do some other providers in Europe. There are no legal conditional access modules available for this crypto system, so any use of these smart cards in devices other than what the provider supplies is considered theft, as well as a violation of the DMCA.

    DirectTV uses it's own proprietary system and can only be legally used with their hardware.

    It really sucks paying to loose control.

  3. Re:They didn't have the right to sell it... on Student Suing Amazon For Book Deletions · · Score: -1

    This is not about deleting the book as much as it is about his annotations. Regardless of anyone's position on deleting the book, Amazon should never have deleted the customers notes. Those notes were created by the customer, and should not have been subject to deletion.

  4. Re:I'd like to see some OSS hurdles addressed... on New Coalition To Promote OSS To Feds · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Mod parent up.

    These are certainly areas that need improvement, and if garnering government adoption is a goal, they should be addresses. It's not that there are no open source solutions to these problems, it's that they are not yet mature (as is the case with TrouSers and Samba 4) or that they are not as fully integrated. More importantly, the solutions that are available don't have a massive marketing machine behind them.

    Just about everything that you can do with closed source software, you can do with open source. The problems are largely around usability and marketing. PHB's go with the "politically safe" choices, government PHB's even more so.

  5. Inconsistent behavior on Rhode Island Affiliates Banned From Amazon.com Sales · · Score: 3, Informative

    These are not the only states to impose this type of tax. NY requires collection of sales tax, but Amazon isn't shutting out those affiliates. If they want to make a stand, they should at least be consistent about it.

  6. Mama don't take my Kodachrome away! on Kodak Kills Kodachrome · · Score: 1

    Paul Simon is probably mourning with the rest of us, as we wonder where we left our film cameras....

    My dad got me into photography, I used to develop my own film with him when I was a kid (but that was black & white). Kodak may be ending Kodachrome, but there's still plenty of applications where digital still doesn't fit the bill. They're dwindling, but there is still a need for film.

  7. Not very surprising on Judge Reviewing Pirate Bay Trial Bias Is Removed · · Score: 1

    Especially when you consider how public the conflict of interest was made.

  8. All your Gramar checker are belong to us! on Web Analytics Databases Get Even Larger · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Take off every 'ZIG'!!

    Seriously, did anyone read this before posting?

  9. Re:Sure it will. on BYU Prof. Says University Classrooms Will Be "Irrelevant" By 2020 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "and those lectures are also available online to everyone anywhere for free. Course materials are shared between universities, science labs are virtual, and digital textbooks are free."

    See, here's where the problem is. A college is a business, just like any other. They not only make money from the tuition, they make money on what they sell in the school book store.

    Even if this happens (which is very possible) it doesn't mean a free education. The material would be free, but you'll still pay steep prices for tuition. That's how it is today. I'm taking online courses, and the college does not discriminate in pricing; online & in class courses cost the same.

  10. Re:Any guesses on Adobe's ADEPT DRM Broken · · Score: 1

    Probably because no-one's even heard of EPUB but practically everyone has heard of PDF files...

    Flamebait. ePub is a standard that's adopted by several ebook readers, and is superior to PDF for those mediums. Do your homework next time.

  11. Re:c-derived languages? on Survey Says C Dominated New '08 Open-Source Projects · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Isn't Objective-C about as widely used as Esperanto?

  12. Samuel Jackson said it best... on South Carolina Seeking To Outlaw Profanity · · Score: 0, Redundant

    This is some fucked up repugnant shit.

  13. Fundimentally, the RIAA has a flawed argument on The RIAA's Rocky Road Ahead · · Score: 1

    Their position is that since the ISP is providing a communications channel, it is incumbent upon the ISP to ensure that there is no infringement of the RIAA's intelectual property over that communication channel.

    If we draw this to it's logical conclusion, we see that this position means that any communication channel must be monitored for any activity that may be considered illegal, or that may infringe on someone's intellectual property. Since voice phone calls are communication channels as well, this position would require that every phone call be monitored in a similar fashion, as well as all print media, or any other communication channel that may be offered.

    This is clearly against the first amendment, and if it comes to a court room, the RIAA will fare poorly.

  14. No big news here.... on The 1-Petabyte Barrier Is Crumbling · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Take a look at almost any large financial firm. The email retention system alone is much larger than a petabyte, and that's just dealing with the online media, not including what's spooled to tape. Due to deficiencies in RDBMS ssytems, each of the large firms usually develop their own systems for managing the archival system on top of the database.

  15. You should check out the "ScreenOS Cookbook" on Configuring Juniper NetScreen & SSG Firewalls · · Score: 1

    I haven't read this one yet, but the ScreenOS Cookbook is amazing. I've worked closely with a couple of the authors, and they've taken a very pragmatic, recipie approach to configuring Netscreen firewalls. This book is is very concise with numerous real-world examples that will certainly apply in many environments.

  16. Ender's Game? on Your Homework is Play Video Games · · Score: 1

    How long before educational games are networked & have psycological analysis built in?

  17. Mind the Jaguar? on Really Remote Internet Access · · Score: 1

    Atari stopped making that game system a long time ago....

    Oh, wait... Now I get it

  18. Not a good thing security-wise.... on Paris Hilton Recruited to Publicize Linux · · Score: 3, Funny

    The back door is too open, and any distribution she endorses would have the nic running in promiscuius mode all the time!

  19. And why do we care? on Juiced · · Score: 0, Troll

    I mean, not only is this Slashdot, but Baseball is the sport where the most exiting thing that can happen is absoltely nothing, and this is what they call a perfect game!

  20. Re:Still watching the 700 club too, eh? on Attempt to Apply Decency Standards to Cable/Satellite Television · · Score: 1

    OK, so they don't pay me for my typing skills...

  21. This is dangerous ground... on Attempt to Apply Decency Standards to Cable/Satellite Television · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The entire concept of pat-television is that it is not available to everyone, and that people should be able to view what they wish in their own homes. If we take measures like this to the extreme, then the next argument will be to prevent people from buying porn.

    "The People Vs. Larry Flint" is a great case to show that there should be firm limits to what the government can or cannot say about decency standards. Larry Flint was able to show that his product, while distasteful to many, is covered under free speech and is not subject to this type of restriction. I don't see how pay-tv services should be treated differently. There are controls in place (parents) to restrict viewing. If these controls are insufficient, the problem is not with the material that's available to be viewed, the problem is with the parent.

  22. The Jobs are there on What is the Tech Jobs Situation in Late 2004? · · Score: 1

    The problem is that people are either not aggresive enough or are too picky about what they're looking for. I know someone who got a good offer from a financial firm for a position that had less than optimal hours (it was a sliding night shift, rotating between evening, night and morning shifts). At a job like that, a bright person will get paid untill they find the job they like better. That job could be a move within the company or someplace else, but the bill still get paid.

  23. Nothing new here on DVB-T STB/MPEG2 Player That Can Access SMB Shares · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Dreambox is a set top box that has supported DVB for years, and it supports DVB-T (Broadcast), DVB-S (Satalite) as well as DVB-C (Cable).

    http://www.dream-multimedia-tv.de/Bereiche/Produkt e/DM7000_featurelist.php/

    VDR has aslo been available for years to support the same standards under Linux. It is a full featured PVR with a robust plugin interface.

    http://cadsoft.de/vdr/

    North American viewers on the East Coast can take advantage of DVB-S & pick up a number of satalites that cover the Atlantic region. There is a wide variety of FTA programming available. My dad used to be a ham operator, I guess this is the new `ham` hobby.

  24. Pork Barrel budgets? on Dave Barry on Electronic Voting · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Maybe this will give Pork Barrel budgets a new meaning?

  25. Zuse & Suse on Was Zuse's Z3 the First Programmable Computer? · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    What's the cosmic connection? Does SCO own the rights to Zuse's work? Stay tuned, same bat time, same bat channel!