I absolutely think this was justified. He did this while at work. Somehow I think his work would frown upon improper use of their network. The only issue here is that he was caught. I don't think it's wrong at all that he was fired.
I understand the need for anonymity, but I actually find I like hearing about these people being outed after they abuse it. It's absolutely necessary for whistle blowers, but I don't think it's necessary to allow everyone on the net to act like a 10 year old. A little fear of exposure for non-important posts would do a world of good I think.
Bicubic gives you a sharper image. Is is preferred over bilinear when enlarging an image (this sharpening is also what causes the artifacts you're referring to).
Bilinear makes for a much softer image. It's preferred for reducing an image since reducing the image tends to sharpen it. A little softening can be desirable in such cases, which makes for a good use of bilinear.
It's not only old games that are affected. Most video's don't come in standard LCD resolutions. Neither do photo's, both of which can be scaled to fill the screen for a nice display. It would be a good thing if you didn't have to rely on the player or display software to do the scaling.
Video is biggie for me. I'm sure others have their own reasons.
I disagree. I've used the scalers built into dosbox and Mame and such. I don't think they 'fail miserably'. Given the age of the source material, and the fact that many of those are also low color as well as low resolution, I think they do a good job.
By pixel art, I assume you mean raster graphics, which although limited, can be upscaled with proper interpolation. There will always be a loss of subjective quality when scaling raster graphics (softening), but you can get good results.
They talked about this one this morning on the Today show. They said that the vendors for the website you are visiting are actually giving your credit card numbers to these 3rd parties, so when you sign up, you don't actually give them your credit card number. They instead get it from the parent site, who happily hands it over for a cut of the profits.
I have to wonder why the parent website isn't being hauled into court for giving away your credit card number? The 'authorization' given is extremely vague. You basically agree to sign up for classmates.com or whatnot, and the parent web site sends classmates your credit card info because you 'agreed' to it on the parent site. Classmates then starts charging your card for a 'membership' fee.
You bring up a good point. I wonder why built-in scalers in LCD screens are so poor? There is obviously a demand for better scaling on LCD monitors if people are turning to software scalers. Why don't LCD manufacturer's take note and produce better hardware?
Not true. With proper scaling, you can take a small image with a 640 width and scale it up to HD resolutions with good results. Their called scalers, and chances are, if you've bought a DVD or Bluray player in the last few years, it has one built in.
Good software scalers, are Lanczos, and Bicubic (with Lanczos giving a sharper result in my opinion).
If you use something like Dosbox, or one of the old emulators, you can often choose a decent scaler option which helps to alleviate your graphical woes. As with anything so subjective, try each and see which looks better to your eyes. You can definnitely get workable results, even with an LCD display.
You seem to think I am saying they will somehow pay for the OSS itself. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying there are other costs associated with switching an operating system outside of the OSS itself.
Part of the costs they are looking at is to train everyone to use it. Like it or not, not everyone can just dive right into an OS. For most folks on/. it's easy, but for someone who's intimidated by a PC, not so much. They also have costs invested in current software that will have to be replaced, be that with OSS, or with some pay solution. It takes time (people hours) to replace software, and then time to train on the new software in addition to the OS training.
Last but not least, you have to have a support infrastructure, who will also need to be trained, and the IT folks themselves will need a higher tier to go to when they cannot resolve in house (with the in house support being optional..I'm not sure how a school's IT support works in Russia), which means support contracts.
OSS is great, but it is rarely free for non-personal use.
I would think that once they got over the 'conversion' hump, they would be in a better position, but it sounds like they are struggling with even getting through the conversion itself.
Sad but too. All too often you will hear a congressman say 'I Believe'. They forget that they are not there representing themselves. There are there to represent the people of their district. The only time they remember this is when they are up for election.
I've written my congressman quite a few times and I always get the same response.
I don't think anyone doubts that unions did great things for the American workforce. What they tend to bash is tipping the balance too far to the side of the union workers. When their demands become too unreasonable that they threaten the very company they serve, then there is a problem.
Had they been more accommodating, they probably wouldn't be in bankruptcy. The cost of the insurance packages, retirement packages, 3 people to do one job, union rules that prevent simple jobs from being done, even when they could be done safely, etc.
And yet not one of those studys shows that they play more or less with dolls.
I can't speak to crying more as I've never seen a study that claimed that. The others are irrelevant to this articles claims as it had nothing to do with sex drive or increased verbal ability.
I really don't think you want to hold up Microsoft's anti-pirating techniques up as a good example. There are no keys, no server checking, basically no checking at all on a Mac as to whether your license is valid or not. They don't treat all of their users like criminals.
Exactly. There isn't a child alive who hasn't been conditioned from birth.
Gender roles are nothing like they were in the 1950's, and society is changing gender roles and expectations as a result. Children adapt faster than people. They mimic what they see without deep thought into the social implications. Monkey see, monkey do.
Then why do boys play with GI Joe and Army Man toys? I agree. There is no study that I'm aware of that says that estrogen makes you want to pick up a doll (action figure?). Those are gender roles, taught by parenting. If you stick a child in a room with a bunch of girl and boy toys, without showing them which they should be playing with, they would play with all of them. We teach children what toys to play with because we as parents buy them. We encourage boys to be boys and girls to be girls.
This article makes far reaching 'guesses' without any hard science to back it up.
The leap from this to the change in male to female ratio was a total guess. This reads more like a sensational news story than any sort of scientific paper.
Prove it. I've already looked at every major vendors site. The prices are the same. HP, Dell, Lenovo, Sony. They are all the same when you compare the same hardware.
I have to agree there. I think Vista was a huge boon to OS X (and Linux as well). I know I made the switch after I purchased to Vista licenses and felt totally burned. I fell back to XP, and just fumed that I'd wasted my money. I wouldn't have looked at OS X or Linux were it not for Vista.
You forget that Apple tried to open up their company to 3rd party clones. It almost ended the company.
I agree that much of their profit is coming from the iPod market, but they still have a growing segment in the PC market that cannot be ignored, especially during an economic depression.
And yet Apple is reaping profit hand over foot, during a economic depression. Why fix what isn't broken. They obviously have something that Microsoft does not. "Cool" and "Hip" will only go so far. If there is nothing of substance to back it up, then after a few months, the hotness has worn off, and people drop them in droves. This obviously is not happening. Apple continues to increase it's market share, even in these bad economic times.
I can guarantee you that if MS finds any manufacturer that isn't properly licensing Windows, they would be wiped from the map. The difference here being that MS licenses it's OS for resale. Apple does not. The only barrier to entry is to buy an Apple Mac, which are about the same price as any other comparable piece of hardware from a PC manufacturer (not a whole seller mind you, but a manufacturer).
If I recall, it's the Microsoft market share and profit that is shrinking. Apple is doing just fine on it's "1960's proprietary hardware business model', whatever that means. It's just a closed system, nuts to bolts. Nothing wrong with that. Thousands upon thousands of manufacturer's produce a closed product.
Net neutrality basically says that all data is treated equally as far as priority (QOS). It has nothing to do with price that content providers can charge. It just ensures that they deliver what they charge for without discriminataion.
Net Neutrality won't have any effect on prices. I think he was referring to these sites getting you to switch, and then charging for the content. It has nothing to do with throttling or anything of that sort.
I don't think the OP is a Troll. I have the same concern. Hulu is already talking about charging for content. I could see me switching to just internet from my cable company, only to find out my sources of entertainment had dried up or all started charging.
As soon as I saw this, the same thought came to my mind.
I always wondered why they couldn't store transaction data on the server when doing this sort of thing. I realize how convenient it is to store it locally on the client end, but these are simple text files. It should be relatively easy to write a server side tracking system. The users can get a temporary session ID and be referred to that session for the duration of their visit.
I also have to wonder why the referrer is of almighty importance. Where they visit within the site should be available via logs.
Slashdot Mirror
I absolutely think this was justified. He did this while at work. Somehow I think his work would frown upon improper use of their network. The only issue here is that he was caught. I don't think it's wrong at all that he was fired.
I understand the need for anonymity, but I actually find I like hearing about these people being outed after they abuse it. It's absolutely necessary for whistle blowers, but I don't think it's necessary to allow everyone on the net to act like a 10 year old. A little fear of exposure for non-important posts would do a world of good I think.
I disagree. Serious users will know exactly what they need and download it. 'Regular' desktop users will do fine with FSpot.
It's not as if they are banning GSpot from the desktop. People can always download it if they prefer.
They are nothing alike other than being algorithms used to resize data
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicubic_interpolation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilinear_interpolation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanczos_interpolation
Bicubic gives you a sharper image. Is is preferred over bilinear when enlarging an image (this sharpening is also what causes the artifacts you're referring to).
Bilinear makes for a much softer image. It's preferred for reducing an image since reducing the image tends to sharpen it. A little softening can be desirable in such cases, which makes for a good use of bilinear.
They are most definitely not the same.
It's not only old games that are affected. Most video's don't come in standard LCD resolutions. Neither do photo's, both of which can be scaled to fill the screen for a nice display. It would be a good thing if you didn't have to rely on the player or display software to do the scaling.
Video is biggie for me. I'm sure others have their own reasons.
I disagree. I've used the scalers built into dosbox and Mame and such. I don't think they 'fail miserably'. Given the age of the source material, and the fact that many of those are also low color as well as low resolution, I think they do a good job.
By pixel art, I assume you mean raster graphics, which although limited, can be upscaled with proper interpolation. There will always be a loss of subjective quality when scaling raster graphics (softening), but you can get good results.
They talked about this one this morning on the Today show. They said that the vendors for the website you are visiting are actually giving your credit card numbers to these 3rd parties, so when you sign up, you don't actually give them your credit card number. They instead get it from the parent site, who happily hands it over for a cut of the profits.
I have to wonder why the parent website isn't being hauled into court for giving away your credit card number? The 'authorization' given is extremely vague. You basically agree to sign up for classmates.com or whatnot, and the parent web site sends classmates your credit card info because you 'agreed' to it on the parent site. Classmates then starts charging your card for a 'membership' fee.
How has this gone on so long?
You bring up a good point. I wonder why built-in scalers in LCD screens are so poor? There is obviously a demand for better scaling on LCD monitors if people are turning to software scalers. Why don't LCD manufacturer's take note and produce better hardware?
Not true. With proper scaling, you can take a small image with a 640 width and scale it up to HD resolutions with good results. Their called scalers, and chances are, if you've bought a DVD or Bluray player in the last few years, it has one built in.
Good software scalers, are Lanczos, and Bicubic (with Lanczos giving a sharper result in my opinion).
If you use something like Dosbox, or one of the old emulators, you can often choose a decent scaler option which helps to alleviate your graphical woes. As with anything so subjective, try each and see which looks better to your eyes. You can definnitely get workable results, even with an LCD display.
You seem to think I am saying they will somehow pay for the OSS itself. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying there are other costs associated with switching an operating system outside of the OSS itself.
Part of the costs they are looking at is to train everyone to use it. Like it or not, not everyone can just dive right into an OS. For most folks on /. it's easy, but for someone who's intimidated by a PC, not so much. They also have costs invested in current software that will have to be replaced, be that with OSS, or with some pay solution. It takes time (people hours) to replace software, and then time to train on the new software in addition to the OS training.
Last but not least, you have to have a support infrastructure, who will also need to be trained, and the IT folks themselves will need a higher tier to go to when they cannot resolve in house (with the in house support being optional..I'm not sure how a school's IT support works in Russia), which means support contracts.
OSS is great, but it is rarely free for non-personal use.
I would think that once they got over the 'conversion' hump, they would be in a better position, but it sounds like they are struggling with even getting through the conversion itself.
Sad but too. All too often you will hear a congressman say 'I Believe'. They forget that they are not there representing themselves. There are there to represent the people of their district. The only time they remember this is when they are up for election.
I've written my congressman quite a few times and I always get the same response.
'I believe'...
I don't think anyone doubts that unions did great things for the American workforce. What they tend to bash is tipping the balance too far to the side of the union workers. When their demands become too unreasonable that they threaten the very company they serve, then there is a problem.
Had they been more accommodating, they probably wouldn't be in bankruptcy. The cost of the insurance packages, retirement packages, 3 people to do one job, union rules that prevent simple jobs from being done, even when they could be done safely, etc.
Not all that is union is golden...
And yet not one of those studys shows that they play more or less with dolls.
I can't speak to crying more as I've never seen a study that claimed that. The others are irrelevant to this articles claims as it had nothing to do with sex drive or increased verbal ability.
I really don't think you want to hold up Microsoft's anti-pirating techniques up as a good example. There are no keys, no server checking, basically no checking at all on a Mac as to whether your license is valid or not. They don't treat all of their users like criminals.
Exactly. There isn't a child alive who hasn't been conditioned from birth.
Gender roles are nothing like they were in the 1950's, and society is changing gender roles and expectations as a result. Children adapt faster than people. They mimic what they see without deep thought into the social implications. Monkey see, monkey do.
Then why do boys play with GI Joe and Army Man toys? I agree. There is no study that I'm aware of that says that estrogen makes you want to pick up a doll (action figure?). Those are gender roles, taught by parenting. If you stick a child in a room with a bunch of girl and boy toys, without showing them which they should be playing with, they would play with all of them. We teach children what toys to play with because we as parents buy them. We encourage boys to be boys and girls to be girls.
This article makes far reaching 'guesses' without any hard science to back it up.
The leap from this to the change in male to female ratio was a total guess. This reads more like a sensational news story than any sort of scientific paper.
Prove it. I've already looked at every major vendors site. The prices are the same. HP, Dell, Lenovo, Sony. They are all the same when you compare the same hardware.
Why don't they use zip compression on the URL text? Just post the compressed string instead.
I have to agree there. I think Vista was a huge boon to OS X (and Linux as well). I know I made the switch after I purchased to Vista licenses and felt totally burned. I fell back to XP, and just fumed that I'd wasted my money. I wouldn't have looked at OS X or Linux were it not for Vista.
You forget that Apple tried to open up their company to 3rd party clones. It almost ended the company.
I agree that much of their profit is coming from the iPod market, but they still have a growing segment in the PC market that cannot be ignored, especially during an economic depression.
And yet Apple is reaping profit hand over foot, during a economic depression. Why fix what isn't broken. They obviously have something that Microsoft does not. "Cool" and "Hip" will only go so far. If there is nothing of substance to back it up, then after a few months, the hotness has worn off, and people drop them in droves. This obviously is not happening. Apple continues to increase it's market share, even in these bad economic times.
I can guarantee you that if MS finds any manufacturer that isn't properly licensing Windows, they would be wiped from the map. The difference here being that MS licenses it's OS for resale. Apple does not. The only barrier to entry is to buy an Apple Mac, which are about the same price as any other comparable piece of hardware from a PC manufacturer (not a whole seller mind you, but a manufacturer).
If I recall, it's the Microsoft market share and profit that is shrinking. Apple is doing just fine on it's "1960's proprietary hardware business model', whatever that means. It's just a closed system, nuts to bolts. Nothing wrong with that. Thousands upon thousands of manufacturer's produce a closed product.
Net neutrality basically says that all data is treated equally as far as priority (QOS). It has nothing to do with price that content providers can charge. It just ensures that they deliver what they charge for without discriminataion.
Net Neutrality won't have any effect on prices. I think he was referring to these sites getting you to switch, and then charging for the content. It has nothing to do with throttling or anything of that sort.
I don't think the OP is a Troll. I have the same concern. Hulu is already talking about charging for content. I could see me switching to just internet from my cable company, only to find out my sources of entertainment had dried up or all started charging.
As soon as I saw this, the same thought came to my mind.
I always wondered why they couldn't store transaction data on the server when doing this sort of thing. I realize how convenient it is to store it locally on the client end, but these are simple text files. It should be relatively easy to write a server side tracking system. The users can get a temporary session ID and be referred to that session for the duration of their visit.
I also have to wonder why the referrer is of almighty importance. Where they visit within the site should be available via logs.