Well, the only reason this is possible is that the credit card comanies don't care. Introducting strong cryptography, challange-response protocols and real online banking will make such frauds nearly impossible. All these technologies exist, but why aren't they implemented?
Apparently the losses of the credit card companies are not enough to justify the move towards stronger verification schemes. This is also fine with everybody - the card ownerers are not liable for more than $50 of losses and the hackers have an easy source of income.
The REAL losses are covered by the big corporations, and I couldn't care less about them. Don't bitch about the lack of security - it doesn't harm any REAL people, only corporations.
Since August of 1998, a team within the Digital Imaging Group (DIG) has been developing a rich file format for JPEG 2000
It surely took a long time to develop it. I hope it's worth it.
Image authors will also have the option of saving the picture in lossless format for archival storage
This is great! It means I no longer need to keep all of these uncomressed BMP files lying around.
Wavelet technology also provides for a continuous download stream of data that allows the user to control the amount of image resolution desired
This is also great. If I understand it correctly, it will allow you to download 30% of the image and get 30% of the quality, download %50 and get 50% quality or download it all and get full quality. But I might be mistaken.
Another innovation is that a new standard, "sRGB" will be the default colorspace for this format. In the current JPEG standard, there is no notion of default colorspace. This lack of precision contributes to inconsistent JPEG color rendering
This is a Good Thing, too. Great for printing.
The JPEG 2000 standard for metadata also provides for extensibility of the metadata properties. In other words, new functionality can be added without having to rewrite the standard. And speaking of adding information, the metadata catalog can be modified without having to rewrite the entire image file. These abilities make for a very nimble, adaptable image file format
Well, we don't seem to need this (using different formats is easier). If the format is too extensible, it can lead to the "get-the-latest-viewer-you-moron!" syndrome, like all the problems with the HTML that we have now.
If all goes as planned, the official schedule for implementation will be released in January 2000
Barthel said this patented variable-sized window-scanning technique has been incorporated into the JPEG2000 committee draft. Besides LuraTech, Ricoh and several other committee members found bits and pieces of their patented technology in the spec. Barthel said all involved companies have signed agreements that give developers royalty-free rights to part one of JPEG2000.
The open source community should be very conserned about this issues. We don't want the LZW patent screw-up with the GIF format to happen again. There are two sollutions: either drop the patent (I don't know if this can be done, any lawyers?), or make sure that the software using it can be GPLed forever. The word "forever" is very important, so that we won't have any problems.
I believe that we should put enough pressure on this standart and make it really free. If the screenshots are real, it is definitely worth it.
By the way, I am not completely sure that this is real. Something like this usually pops up every second year, and usually it's fake. I remember reading about fractal compression, which was supposed to blow JPG away. It was in the early 90s, and obviously it didn't have much effect on the industry.
Such advances are really great for the IT industry and the commmunity. I can't wait for downloadable high qualit movies to become available. The next big thing after MP3 will be movies. Either pirated or commercial, movies will be available on the Internet. I can see all the big movie companies making movies available for download for a small charge (even if it's $3 or $5 I will gladly pay it, instead of spending hours looking for the same movie on some pirate site. The Internet will drop the marketing and distribution costs for most of the movies, and it will make it profitable to make the files available, even if the piracy level stays high.
Most of the American public seems surprisingly uneducated about Russia and the current political sutiation there. For most of you, Russia is still the enemy that is going to launch its nuclear missiles any moment. Wake up!
Russia is a democratic country now, even though it's plagued by dirty politics, the Russian mafia and corruption. These things are inevitable in every society that is expiriencing such a major change in its structure and ideology. Almost everybody in Russia accepts the Western values of democracy and freedom. The young people wear jeans, watch mostly American movies and chat on EFnet. There are some exceptions, but doesn't America have its Neonazis and KKK guys too?
Almost 90% of the movies sold in Russia are Western movies. Obviously, if all the Russians just hated the West, they wouldn't like these movies. I'm pretty much sure that most of the Russian soldiers will not fight in a war with the West - they will simply see no reason for it. Communism in Russia is dead. The ideology does not matter any more. All that matters is the economy.
This is were the problem lies. Russia used to be one of the worlds's major economic powers, competing only with the US. This is no longer true. The economic system had to be changed completely. Almost every part of the system broke. Rebuilding the economy will be hard and it will take at least a couple of decades. Till then life for most of the Russians will be miserable and poor.
Think about this: You are a Russian guy. You never paid much attention to ideology, never really believed in all of this communism/capitalis junk. All that you want is to have a nice house, car, enough money for your chidlren and so on. It's basicly the same stuff that drives most of the people on earth. 10 years ago you had a job, free health care, free education for your childer. You were not rich, but none of your peers was rich, so you didn't feel bad. Than, after 1990 everything changed. Your country, which used to be a super power in the world affairs, is no longer any special. You are poor. You look at all the mafia guys around you, who driver BMWs and live in palaces. You don't like it. Then you look at the USA, and see how good your life can be. Not everybody drives a BMW there, but buying a car is not a problem. You probably need to spend your yearly income just to byu some crappy car from the 80s. The people who clean shit and vomit at McDonalds earn more than you. You might be smart, but it does not matter. You feel that you have less chance of success, just because you are born here and not on the other side of the Atlantic. What about the equal opportunity? This is not fun. You don't like this.
It's true that pretty much everybody in the developing world. Most of the world population (especially the young people feel really angry about this) - it's not envy, it's just the feeling that thigs are not fair. Things are not right. The difference between Russia/Eastern Europe and the rest of the world is that the people thare USED TO be relatively rich. Poverty didn't exist, at least not to the extent it exist now. Although you had to sacrifice your freedom for it, your economical situation wouldn't be bad at all. You would get free health care, you would send your children to college - for free.
The ideology is no longer an issue, but being poor is still not fun. Especially when you REMEMBER having a better life.
I hope this will help some of you to understand Russia better. They are just people - like you and me - who want to enjoy their life. That's all.
P.S. Disclaimer: I am not Russian. But I still know what I'm talking about.
Well, the kernel on the boot floppies of the boxed distribution was 2.2.12. Actually the kernel included in the base package was 2.2.12 too - it's not in the Slink archive.
I believe that the key to Linux success is to give the user more freedom. Freedom to look at the source, freedom to contribute to the development. Freedom to chose his or her distribution.
Having many different distributions is very important for the Linux community. We need to have a suitable distribution for everybody - ranging from a Linux newbie to a hacker guru - and there is no way a single distribution can satisfy them.
It is clear that there are more newbies than gurus, so it is not surprising at all that RedHat is more popular than Debian. Their target user groups are different. RedHat is more mainstream, Debian is the underground distribution. There is nothing wrong with this and we should keep it this way.
Making Debian user friendly by limiting its features is wrong. It will make Debian users unhappy. Making RedHat more powerful by limiting its userfrienlyness is also wrong.
What do we need to do? Nothing. Both distributions can happilly coexist together: make love, not war:-)
I have the boxed version of Slink (Debian 2.1) and it comes with the 2.2.12 kernel. I was really surprised by this, because the "unofficial" Debian CDs that I had included only 2.0.x and 2.1.x kernels.
This is strange, because the Debian ftp server includes only the 2.0.28 kernel. Did they produce a special version of Debian for the boxed distribution? Any ideas?
RedHat 4 was my first Linux. Then I switched to Slackware and finally tried Debian. These distributions have a lot of things in common, but there are also some differences. The major difference is the look-and-feel of the distributions. I think that they are appropriate for different kinds of users.
RedHat is a newbie's Linux - it keeps everything very simple and stupid (compared to the other two distributions). It helps you avoid making mistakes. It's very hard to fuck up the system. Of course hardcore Linux users will not like this, but they can use Slackware or Debian instead. For the majority of the newcommers to Linux RedHat is a very good choice.
Debian, on the other hand, is the absolute hardcore Linux distribution. The DEB package format is the more advanced and versatile than RPM. It manages the dependacies between the packages better, but still allows you to ignore its suggestions. If you really know what you are doing, Debian will be a good choice. And of course, it is still one of the biggest distributions - 2.1 binaries take 2 CDs. It definitely gives you a lot of options.
Switching from RedHat to Debian is not _very_ easy. I wouldn't recommend this to anybody without at least one year of Linux expirience. Debian is still an administrator's OS and it's not very well suited for the general public. I think that this is a good thing. We need different distributions for different people. Puting a newbie in front of a Debian box will be as frustrating for him as putting an administrator in front of a RedHat box.
Watch for Corel Linux: it uses the debian package format but it's oriented towards new Linux users - stressing on the user-friendliness. I have not tried it, but may be it will be better choice than RedHat and Debian for the average Linux user.
I was very happy to hear this. I am running Debian potato (unstable) right now, and I am quite happy. It works great and there aren't many bugs.
There is definitely a big improvement in the Debian distribution. I still consider it to be the best distro.
I am also a proud owner of one of the first boxed Debian distributions - it includes a CD, a Debian bumper sticker and a book from O'Reilly. It's actually pretty neat.
I hope that with the help of VA, SGI and O'Reilly (they are the sponsors of the boxed disribution) Debian will finaly become a mainstream Linux distribition, just like RedHat and the rest. It's quality is amazing. The only thing that it lacks is the commercial support, but hopefully somebody will take care of this.
Sorry for the misspelling. Well, he wrote about 200 RFC-s and I suppose that there are at least 100 RFC archives on the web, so his name will be found on about 20000 pages.
A search for "Einstein" results in 190,720 pages found. "Roosevelt" scores 2nd with 175,130 hits. "Gandhi" is found on 62,695 web pages.
This might not be the best way to judge people and their influence on the society (There are only 436 pages about "John Postel", but every Slahsdotter will agree that his work influenced the life of everybody on Earth in the past decade)
But looking for some name on Altavista is a good way to judge people's popularity among the web users (how does this relate to popularity among the general public, I don't know).
Einstein's science may have directly affected everybody's life, but he had become an icon for the whole sceintific field. Have you seen the science icon on Slashdot?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the only reason this is possible is that the credit card comanies don't care. Introducting strong cryptography, challange-response protocols and real online banking will make such frauds nearly impossible. All these technologies exist, but why aren't they implemented?
Apparently the losses of the credit card companies are not enough to justify the move towards stronger verification schemes. This is also fine with everybody - the card ownerers are not liable for more than $50 of losses and the hackers have an easy source of income.
The REAL losses are covered by the big corporations, and I couldn't care less about them. Don't bitch about the lack of security - it doesn't harm any REAL people, only corporations.
Here are some quotes from an article about JPEG2000:
Since August of 1998, a team within the Digital Imaging Group (DIG) has been developing a rich file format for JPEG 2000
It surely took a long time to develop it. I hope it's worth it.
Image authors will also have the option of saving the picture in lossless format for archival storage
This is great! It means I no longer need to keep all of these uncomressed BMP files lying around.
Wavelet technology also provides for a continuous download stream of data that allows the user to control the amount of image resolution desired
This is also great. If I understand it correctly, it will allow you to download 30% of the image and get 30% of the quality, download %50 and get 50% quality or download it all and get full quality. But I might be mistaken.
Another innovation is that a new standard, "sRGB" will be the default colorspace for this format. In the current JPEG standard, there is no notion of default colorspace. This lack of precision contributes to inconsistent JPEG color rendering
This is a Good Thing, too. Great for printing.
The JPEG 2000 standard for metadata also provides for extensibility of the metadata properties. In other words, new functionality can be added without having to rewrite the standard. And speaking of adding information, the metadata catalog can be modified without having to rewrite the entire image file. These abilities make for a very nimble, adaptable image file format
Well, we don't seem to need this (using different formats is easier). If the format is too extensible, it can lead to the "get-the-latest-viewer-you-moron!" syndrome, like all the problems with the HTML that we have now.
If all goes as planned, the official schedule for implementation will be released in January 2000
Other good links:
.j2k files for your viewing pleasure (I wish a had a viewer :-)
JPEG2000 Requirements and profiles document, V.6.0
SEMINAR ON IMAGING SECURITY AND JPEG2000 - this is an interesting collection of documents about digital image security and watermarking. These gyus take security seriously!
JPEG2000 bitstreams - actual
JPEG2000 Decoder (Version 2.3.1) - written in Java, the source is not available yet (it will be)
Barthel said this patented variable-sized window-scanning technique has been incorporated into the JPEG2000 committee draft. Besides LuraTech, Ricoh and several other committee members found bits and pieces of their patented technology in the spec. Barthel said all involved companies have signed agreements that give developers royalty-free rights to part one of JPEG2000.
The open source community should be very conserned about this issues. We don't want the LZW patent screw-up with the GIF format to happen again. There are two sollutions: either drop the patent (I don't know if this can be done, any lawyers?), or make sure that the software using it can be GPLed forever. The word "forever" is very important, so that we won't have any problems.
I believe that we should put enough pressure on this standart and make it really free. If the screenshots are real, it is definitely worth it.
By the way, I am not completely sure that this is real. Something like this usually pops up every second year, and usually it's fake. I remember reading about fractal compression, which was supposed to blow JPG away. It was in the early 90s, and obviously it didn't have much effect on the industry.
Such advances are really great for the IT industry and the commmunity. I can't wait for downloadable high qualit movies to become available. The next big thing after MP3 will be movies. Either pirated or commercial, movies will be available on the Internet. I can see all the big movie companies making movies available for download for a small charge (even if it's $3 or $5 I will gladly pay it, instead of spending hours looking for the same movie on some pirate site. The Internet will drop the marketing and distribution costs for most of the movies, and it will make it profitable to make the files available, even if the piracy level stays high.
Most of the American public seems surprisingly uneducated about Russia and the current political sutiation there. For most of you, Russia is still the enemy that is going to launch its nuclear missiles any moment. Wake up!
Russia is a democratic country now, even though it's plagued by dirty politics, the Russian mafia and corruption. These things are inevitable in every society that is expiriencing such a major change in its structure and ideology. Almost everybody in Russia accepts the Western values of democracy and freedom. The young people wear jeans, watch mostly American movies and chat on EFnet. There are some exceptions, but doesn't America have its Neonazis and KKK guys too?
After being exposed to the Western culture for more than a decade, now it's part of the Russian life. Take a look at some of these links:
Russian Babylon5 fan club
Russian X-Files fan site
Russian DVD online store
Almost 90% of the movies sold in Russia are Western movies. Obviously, if all the Russians just hated the West, they wouldn't like these movies. I'm pretty much sure that most of the Russian soldiers will not fight in a war with the West - they will simply see no reason for it. Communism in Russia is dead. The ideology does not matter any more. All that matters is the economy.
This is were the problem lies. Russia used to be one of the worlds's major economic powers, competing only with the US. This is no longer true. The economic system had to be changed completely. Almost every part of the system broke. Rebuilding the economy will be hard and it will take at least a couple of decades. Till then life for most of the Russians will be miserable and poor.
Think about this: You are a Russian guy. You never paid much attention to ideology, never really believed in all of this communism/capitalis junk. All that you want is to have a nice house, car, enough money for your chidlren and so on. It's basicly the same stuff that drives most of the people on earth. 10 years ago you had a job, free health care, free education for your childer. You were not rich, but none of your peers was rich, so you didn't feel bad. Than, after 1990 everything changed. Your country, which used to be a super power in the world affairs, is no longer any special. You are poor. You look at all the mafia guys around you, who driver BMWs and live in palaces. You don't like it. Then you look at the USA, and see how good your life can be. Not everybody drives a BMW there, but buying a car is not a problem. You probably need to spend your yearly income just to byu some crappy car from the 80s. The people who clean shit and vomit at McDonalds earn more than you. You might be smart, but it does not matter. You feel that you have less chance of success, just because you are born here and not on the other side of the Atlantic. What about the equal opportunity? This is not fun. You don't like this.
It's true that pretty much everybody in the developing world. Most of the world population (especially the young people feel really angry about this) - it's not envy, it's just the feeling that thigs are not fair. Things are not right. The difference between Russia/Eastern Europe and the rest of the world is that the people thare USED TO be relatively rich. Poverty didn't exist, at least not to the extent it exist now. Although you had to sacrifice your freedom for it, your economical situation wouldn't be bad at all. You would get free health care, you would send your children to college - for free.
The ideology is no longer an issue, but being poor is still not fun. Especially when you REMEMBER having a better life.
I hope this will help some of you to understand Russia better. They are just people - like you and me - who want to enjoy their life. That's all.
P.S. Disclaimer: I am not Russian. But I still know what I'm talking about.
Well, the kernel on the boot floppies of the boxed distribution was 2.2.12. Actually the kernel included in the base package was 2.2.12 too - it's not in the Slink archive.
I believe that the key to Linux success is to give the user more freedom. Freedom to look at the source, freedom to contribute to the development. Freedom to chose his or her distribution.
Having many different distributions is very important for the Linux community. We need to have a suitable distribution for everybody - ranging from a Linux newbie to a hacker guru - and there is no way a single distribution can satisfy them.
It is clear that there are more newbies than gurus, so it is not surprising at all that RedHat is more popular than Debian. Their target user groups are different. RedHat is more mainstream, Debian is the underground distribution. There is nothing wrong with this and we should keep it this way.
Making Debian user friendly by limiting its features is wrong. It will make Debian users unhappy. Making RedHat more powerful by limiting its userfrienlyness is also wrong.
What do we need to do? Nothing. Both distributions can happilly coexist together: make love, not war :-)
I have the boxed version of Slink (Debian 2.1) and it comes with the 2.2.12 kernel. I was really surprised by this, because the "unofficial" Debian CDs that I had included only 2.0.x and 2.1.x kernels.
This is strange, because the Debian ftp server includes only the 2.0.28 kernel. Did they produce a special version of Debian for the boxed distribution? Any ideas?
RedHat 4 was my first Linux. Then I switched to Slackware and finally tried Debian. These distributions have a lot of things in common, but there are also some differences. The major difference is the look-and-feel of the distributions. I think that they are appropriate for different kinds of users.
RedHat is a newbie's Linux - it keeps everything very simple and stupid (compared to the other two distributions). It helps you avoid making mistakes. It's very hard to fuck up the system. Of course hardcore Linux users will not like this, but they can use Slackware or Debian instead. For the majority of the newcommers to Linux RedHat is a very good choice.
Debian, on the other hand, is the absolute hardcore Linux distribution. The DEB package format is the more advanced and versatile than RPM. It manages the dependacies between the packages better, but still allows you to ignore its suggestions. If you really know what you are doing, Debian will be a good choice. And of course, it is still one of the biggest distributions - 2.1 binaries take 2 CDs. It definitely gives you a lot of options.
Switching from RedHat to Debian is not _very_ easy. I wouldn't recommend this to anybody without at least one year of Linux expirience. Debian is still an administrator's OS and it's not very well suited for the general public. I think that this is a good thing. We need different distributions for different people. Puting a newbie in front of a Debian box will be as frustrating for him as putting an administrator in front of a RedHat box.
Watch for Corel Linux: it uses the debian package format but it's oriented towards new Linux users - stressing on the user-friendliness. I have not tried it, but may be it will be better choice than RedHat and Debian for the average Linux user.
I was very happy to hear this. I am running Debian potato (unstable) right now, and I am quite happy. It works great and there aren't many bugs.
There is definitely a big improvement in the Debian distribution. I still consider it to be the best distro.
I am also a proud owner of one of the first boxed Debian distributions - it includes a CD, a Debian bumper sticker and a book from O'Reilly. It's actually pretty neat.
I hope that with the help of VA, SGI and O'Reilly (they are the sponsors of the boxed disribution) Debian will finaly become a mainstream Linux distribition, just like RedHat and the rest. It's quality is amazing. The only thing that it lacks is the commercial support, but hopefully somebody will take care of this.
It makes sense :-)
A search for "Einstein" results in 190,720 pages found. "Roosevelt" scores 2nd with 175,130 hits. "Gandhi" is found on 62,695 web pages.
This might not be the best way to judge people and their influence on the society (There are only 436 pages about "John Postel", but every Slahsdotter will agree that his work influenced the life of everybody on Earth in the past decade)
But looking for some name on Altavista is a good way to judge people's popularity among the web users (how does this relate to popularity among the general public, I don't know).
Einstein's science may have directly affected everybody's life, but he had become an icon for the whole sceintific field. Have you seen the science icon on Slashdot?
He deserves being the person of the century.