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User: mini+me

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  1. Textbooks on Use of CD-ROMs in Higher Education? · · Score: 1

    I wish they would put textbooks on CD-ROM, I just bought my college text books today and I was thinking why they are not on CD-ROM? I just bought a new laptop so it would have been nice. Oh well, too late for this year now.

    I think text books on CD would be a good idea though because it would allow for more interactivity, linking to websites that are relavent to the topic, I guess all the info could be on the net instead of CD but they wont make the money that way.

    I know I'd much rather lug around may laptop than all of those big text books! Maybe someday that will be the norm.

  2. Re:Successor for CDDB ? on CDDB Shutting Down Media Jukebox · · Score: 1

    What about examining the individual song for certain sound patterns or something and use that to query to database server? That would work for any media, (CD's, MP3's, Radio, etc., etc.)

  3. Re:Trust us...we're the government! on Is 'Promis' Software Spying On Canadian Spies? · · Score: 1

    What about other software? Say the operating system market, what if a particular (closed source) operating system that many large and small businesses use had a back door in it? What if company A wanted trade secrets from company B and company B uses this product with a back door, but the back door is unknown until company A pays big bucks to a very rich software company to reveal the secret. Company A could even be the government for that matter.

    I'm not suggesting that these back doors exist, but who knows, we already have found one back door that Microsoft has created. Who's to say they haven't created others? The same applies to all other software vendors too.

    I would hope that software that will be used to store sensitive data would release the source for review by the perspective buyer. If they refused then would you really want to use the product anyways? What does the software company have to hide? Just as the subject says, "Trust us...we're the government!"

  4. Signal recieved by dish, is there a better way? on Satellite-Delivered Broadband Gets Louder · · Score: 1

    What I don't like about these services is that they still require a dish to receive the signal, I want broadband in my car!! Does anyone have any solutions that would work in cars that is affordable ? I would love to have the ability to download Mp3's on demand or listen to streaming radio in my car. What about if all wireless computers could communicate with each other creating a small-scale wireless network that would eventually route to the internet?

    It's good to hear that there is more options coming to the broadband arena, especailly ones that will work for people in rural areas though. Unfortunenlty I doubt these services will work on anything other than Windows, and possibly the Mac (especially the MSN service!) but atleast it is a start and lets hope I'm wrong!

  5. Re:newbie torture on Coding Classes & Required Development Environments? · · Score: 1
    So what is the previous version of 2000?
    What ever New Technology Technology is I guess?

    Atleast that's what Microsoft says Windows 2000 is based on.
  6. Link to CNN instead of DeCSS? on More DeCSS Time-Warner Hypocrisy · · Score: 2

    I guess it's too late for my idea, but I was going to suggest that everyone link to the cnn page that had the decss link instead of linking to DeCSS itself. Too bad too, because what would they do then? I guess they could make all linking illegal, but that defeats the whole purpose of the internet!

    Here goes the whole Napster debate again, we are trying to put blame on the person linking to the data rather than the person who is posting the data. When will they learn?

  7. Re:It's About Time . . . on Amicus Brief For Napster -- From AT&T And Friends · · Score: 1

    That's not how I read it. Some documents on the web may be perfectly legal distrbute yes, but there are mp3's that are legally distributed on napster too. Now what if someone put a copyrighted book on the web? (an act which is illegal by current copyright laws) When the search engines come and index this page containing the book they will then have links to copyrighted material, exacly the same as napster does! It is just that one indexes MP3's instead of HTML, besides that they are doing almost the exact same thing!

  8. Usenet on What Are the Best New-To-UNIX Resources? · · Score: 3

    Once you learn the absolute basics (ls, cat, etc.) and you know what you want to do with your system, but don't know where to go from there I always find usenet to be the place to look. More than likely someone else has had the same problem as you and a quick search on Deja will usually turn up something. If your search fails to turn up anything relavent you can post your own question. The people on usenet seem quite knowledgable about the questions and they'll probably do thier best to help you out.

    In my experience usenet is the best place to look for tech help. It's too bad that so many people who are on the internet don't even know what usenet is! (Some would argue that's a good thing though)

  9. Re:scenario if they succeed on Sony VP On Stopping Napster · · Score: 1

    Doesn't Gnutella use port 80 to do the file transfers? I could be wrong, I don't have it installed at the moment to check. The point is, how are they going to block port 80, while still allowing web access?

  10. What about Carnavore? on Sony VP On Stopping Napster · · Score: 1

    Conspiracy theory here, but if I understand Carnivore correctly it could have the ability to route traffic. Now all Sony has to do is go to the government and get them to block Napster and other file sharing programs on Carnivore. I know this isn't the intended use of Carnivore, but could it not be done? Maybe I shouldn't give them any ideas!

  11. Re:sure, I'll buy that approach. on Sony VP On Stopping Napster · · Score: 1
    Now, any suggestions as to how they'll get routed around?
    Yeah, put them out of business.

    Many people have stated before that they are going to stop buying Sony products, now if everyone in the whole world would also do this they would go out of business, then they wouldn't even have the chance to undertake this nonsense.

    Or we could tunnel napster through HTTPS or something. Lets see them stop that!
  12. Re:GNUTella? What about AOL itself? on AOL Sued for Creating Gnutella · · Score: 1

    Lets not forget to sue AOL for distributing those disks, I mean what if I were to save a copywrited work on it and give it to someone else? Not like you are going to fit much of an mp3 or anything else now-a-days, but that's beside the point.

    Another thing, why can't AOL send out it's programs on CD-RW's or something that can actaully be used for something other than a coaster or frisbee?? It was always nice to be able to use the AOL disks to store other stuff on them!

  13. Re:in case you hadn't noticed on VMSK/2 Promises 5 Times More Bandwidth · · Score: 1
    MTV stopped playing music years ago because there simply isn't enough good music to fill the airwaves.
    There isn't enough good music because like you said there isn't enough good music, but also because they can't play half the songs they have because they have questionable content (or so they say). Why can't people just censor themselves? This is the way MuchMusic is anyways, I don't get MTV so I cannot speak for it.

    I have to agree with you that something is wrong with all of the Briritney Spears, N'Sync, etc. that music is just getting worse, and worse and the sales just go up and up!? I guess this is why Napster is such a big deal, because people might start to realize how bad this stuff is and good music might start to roll in.

    I just don't know what some of these people might do if they don't have the media to tell them what to like!
  14. Wireless Internet Radio/TV on VMSK/2 Promises 5 Times More Bandwidth · · Score: 1

    Instead of broadcasting just MP3's or any other form of digital media over the airwaves would it be feesable to get rid of them all together and use the internet for everything? If this kind of bandwidth is possible could we not change the FM/UHF/VHF bands to internet only communication, and the broadcasters would use the internet instead to broadcast their media. Because the broadcasters would use the internet they would be able to reach everyone in the whole world and not just the people in thier area. Of course this would allow anyone to be a broadcaster which the current broadcasters would likely be against.

    With the broadband that is starting to roll out, houses with fibre or other broadband technologies would be able to use it as the connection, or for people out in the middle of nowhere they could use the wireless technology. Car radios would be internet clients that connect to all the radio stations, TV's would also do the same thing for TV broadcasts, etc.

    I don't know if the bandwidth would be able to handle all of this, but if you could have 100 streams over each frequency I think we'd be okay, especially if they were low power which would allow the frequencies to be used over and over again within a certain distance. I'm sure someone out there will be able to figure it out.

  15. Re:BSD & Apache? on Supporting Tens Of Thousands Of Users With Apache? · · Score: 1

    Actaully from what I can tell (by using Netcraft) Hotmail is entirely running Win2K now atleast on the front-end. I have been unable to get a FreeBSD box show up at all now, it is true that they started the migration by slowly putting in Win2K boxes, but it seems that they are now complete and all of the computers are windows now. Maybe it's just me though.

  16. Re:BSD & Apache? on Supporting Tens Of Thousands Of Users With Apache? · · Score: 1

    Not entirely true, Hotmail uses Windows 2000/IIS 5 now. Well that's unless they hacked Apache and FreeBSD to report Windows? http://www.netcraft.com/whats/? host=www.hotmail.com. Oh and if you want to get technical, Yahoo doesn't necesarily use Apache, netcraft reports their webserver as unknown, I guess it could be a modified apache though. http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?ho st=www.yahoo.com. But yeah it's true that Yahoo does run FreeBSD and Hotmail did until recently.

  17. Work envorionment on What Kind of Office Space Do You Want to Work In? · · Score: 1

    This is not about the workplace but rather a high school computer lab. Anyways the high school I used to attend had one computer lab (the one with the nice Macs and SGI's) that was dark other than overhead lamps above each computer. It was dark when you first walked into the room but once you were at a computer you wouldn't even notice that it was dark at all. The 21" monitors, keyboard and mice all sat on a counter and the computers sat on a shelf above the monitors. It's somewhat hard to explain but it's one of the nicest computer setup's I have seen. This setup seemed to be perfect for using a computer and I think many of these ideas could be used in the workplace.

    The teacher of the class that used that lab said he would have liked to have workstations that mounted to the cieling and could be moved wherever you want in the room. This is the setup he would have liked to seen but due to cost restraints they had to settle for that setup. I guess they spent too much on the SGI's! ;) Has anyone ever used one of these workstations that mount to the cieling?? I'd be interested to find out how well they work in the office.

  18. Let a Computer Class use it... on What Can I Do w/ an SGI Challenge XL and No Money? · · Score: 2

    Why not let your computer class use the box, they could set it up and learn the basics of UNIX. This year in my high school class a couple other students and myself were able to "borrow" a couple of boxes to put Linux on and setup a free web site hosting service for the students at the school (as well as message boards, chat, streaming radio and live camera images from the school). The result was CHSS Realm (sorry the school's network seems to be down today, hopefully it'll be back up in a day or two!). I'm sure at least a handfull of the students would like to learn to use that computer you have! It's not like they can wreck it or anything, if all else fails just reinstall everything!

  19. Re:Low-Power Radio Stations + The Internet on Low-Powered Radio Stations-Could They Work? · · Score: 1

    Why not distribute between the radios themselves? Every radio can recieve the signal as well as re-broadcast it.

    Better yet allow all internet traffic to be sent via these devices. Why can't all wireless internet devices communicate with each other creating thier own network. The devices could route each other's data until a device is close enough to communicate with an internet node. Every cell phone, radio, and anything else that uses radio frequencies to communicate could use this protocol to exchange thier info rather then the methods used today.

    If a device is too far away to reach an internet node it'll just find the next closest device on this wireless network and that device will route the data on to the next device until finally the internet is reached. This could be a quick way to roll out wireless internet. I know there would be some problems with this design, but with all the smart minds out there I'm sure someone could come up with solutions to the obvious (and not so obvious) problems!

  20. SMB File Sharing on MPAA Sues Scour: Will Google Be Next? · · Score: 2

    IIRC Scour uses SMB (and a couple other protocols) to transfer the files between computers. It's been a while since I've used Scour so I could be wrong. Now if Scour loses this, would this not make Windows illegal also seeing as how they are using the same protocol for file sharing? I propose we set up a "Network Neighbourhood" over the Internet using Windows (and I guess Linux users could use Samba) to transfer Movies and MP3's. That way when the MPAA and RIAA get wind of this happening it'll be Microsoft they'll have to sue since they created the product. Since Microsoft has the money to fight back maybe the MPAA and RIAA will finally figure out that they are not suing the right people.

  21. Re:OFFTOPIC: Timestamp on this guy? on Easter Eggs in Open Source? · · Score: 1

    Maybe it's an easter egg in the slash code? Speaking of which, are there any easter eggs in the slash code?

  22. MP3 Player Problems on Is There A Market For A Voice Controlled MP3 Car Stereo? · · Score: 1

    I have been considering making an MP3 player for my car (as many other people have) for quite sometime now (back when there was only one in existance that I could find! ;)

    The problems I see with the player that could cause problems is as many other people have mentioned is how will it recognize your voice when the stereo is cranked? Anothing this is sound quality, it says on the website that this thing using FM radio to send out it's signal. Although this is handy, would there not be some sound quality loss? Maybe you sould include the option to use FM radio, or RCA outs or something... Another thing that would be a neat feature is a LCD screen, for GPS, DVD movies, Games, etc! ;) Wireless net access would also be a great feature...Then you could put that vioce recognition to use for IRC while driving or something. Well that's my $0.02 anyways...

  23. Re:Turning point -- Yes, but in our favor! on The Internet-Have We Reached A Turning Point? · · Score: 1
    Download the design plan you want, feed it into the replicator, and presto! Car made while you wait. Meanwhile, a small fee goes back to the creator of the design, and perhaps a small fee for the dirt-utility that supplies the basic matter from which your car was made.

    Actually no fee would be needed, if everything was created out of nothing so to speak, then the plans to make the car could be "open source" we would have our whole open source software movement apply to almost everything!! Since everything would be free then work as we know it would not be needed, so instead of going to work and not necessarily doing what you like you could instead spend your days tinkering with your car designs, or your software, or whatever you are interested in. It would rid us of this whole capitalist culture we are living it right now, and things would be done the right way.
  24. Re:*can* be used in a crime != *will* be used. on The Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Part Two · · Score: 1
    This will probably sound like a "me too" post, but here it goes:
    Now this really *pisses* *me* *off*. RIAA thinks it it entitled to assess a fine *upon* *me* because *other* people are pirating. This leads me to one of two conclusions. (1) this fee is wrong, and should be banned or (2) Since I'm being punished along with the pirates, I may as well actually set out and pirate since I've already been judged guilty with sentence carried out. Since the crime has already been paid for, why not to pirate?
    I have always thought the same thing, if I'm going to pay extra for my CD-R's or *insert favorite media here* I may as well get my moneys worth!! Sure I could use the media to store personal property, but if I'm going to pay for storing other people's property on it then why can I not do so? Besides doesn't pirating usually make sales of the original property go up???? (such as software or music)
  25. Copying of Music on What Does the Audio Home Recording Act Really Allow? · · Score: 1
    As a general rule for CD-Rs, if the CD-R recorder is a stand-alone machine designed to copy primarily audio, rather than data or video, then the copying is allowed. If the CD-R recorder is a computer component, or a computer peripheral device designed to be a multi-purpose recorder (in other words, if it will record data and video as well as audio), then copying is not allowed.
    What is the big difference between a stand alone CD recorder and one that is hooked up to a computer? (other than the price of CD-Rs I understand)

    Also, I doubt this would ever hold up in a court of law, but an MP3 is really not a copy of the origional song (due to compression and what have you) so if I were to copy an MP3 I am not really copying the original copyrighted song! Just a thought.

    Failing all of that, I guess I'll just have to get myself an anolog computer, seeing as how copying to an analog device is fine. ;)