And even then, both xine and mplayer fail to play some newer formats, like the latest version of WMV. Which is a shitty format to begin with, but it's all arround the internet it seems...
I assume you're talking about WMV9, since it is all around the internet.
MPlayer/Xine play them just fine once you've installed the binary codecs into their correct location.
Uhhh...you do know that 64bit machines can run 32bit binaries right? Mplayer works just fine here on my NetBSD powered 64bit SparcStation.
You are confused. MPlayer works because it is built with many native codecs that aren't dependant on x86 binary DLLs. It's the newer formats such as WMV3/RealVid3/VP5/VP6/etc that you can't play on non-x86 machines yet.
Other comments aren't exactly encouraging either. Saying how nice it is to have more than 2GB memory space (64-bit), so they don't have to track down memory leaks anymore...
It's true, the Burj Tower is going to eclipse everything else by a large margin.
But, it is designed somewhat pyramid-like, in that it gets much smaller and smaller towards the top. So once again, it doesn't exactly seem fair that the two are compared on equal terms.
Okay, this is off-topic, but the topic is pretty stupid anyhow, so...
I must say, I find the standards for "tallest building" to be completely arbitrary, to say the least. I think moronic would be more appropriate.
I consider the Sears Tower to be the tallest by every rational measure. The Petronas Towers were considered taller only because the, err, "spire", simply met the standard for being part of the "structure", rather than being an antenna.
The Taipei 101 is taller than the Sears Tower because it has a tiny little observation-type deck up on it's spire. It's slightly higher than the highest floor of the Sears Tower, although not really a floor. That is in addition to the previous spire/antenna issue.
In addition, the Sears Tower has 110 floors, while the Taipei 101 only has 101 (hence the name). And no, the floors aren't any smaller...
Wikipedia has a very good illustration of their relative heights. After seeing it, I think most everyone will agree that the Sears Tower is taller in every rational measurement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Skyscrapercompa re1.PNG
My old AMD 950MHz system is more than happy handling any media you care to throw at it.
Only if you don't throw HDTV videos at it... My Athlon system, overclocked almost to 2GHz, can just BARELY play 1080p content with a whole lot of software tricks using mplayer on Linux.
You can do hardware decoding with a few videocards on Linux, but you have absolutely no options for deinterlacing, inversing telecine, etc. You're also completely out-of-luck if you want to play WMVHD content, HD h.264, etc. So, it's far, far nicer to be able to do the decoding in realtime on the CPU.
And besides that, most people want to be able to convert the video they've captured from one format to another, in a reasonable ammount of time. How long do you think it would take to edit and reencode 1080 material on a < 1GHz system like yours? Using something like Xvid, probably a week...
The description of "quiet" made me think "fanless", not "just as many fans as my existing system".
I have very quiet systems, with a LOT of fans... I'm not even interested in going fanless (even if it wouldn't cost an arm and a leg), since my DVD-ROM and hard drive are louder than the fans in my HTPC...
The original poster was premised on using ipv6 for peer to peer. That basically invalidates your discovery arguement, no random probes thru address space required. Just join the p2p network, and wait for the machine to tell you where it's located. Ip discovery problem solved.
That's true, but it doesn't change anything.
With public addresses, you can still block all incomming connections with your firewall. If you want to allow a single port through for P2P, you only open one port, whether through NAT or public addresses.
As for the overall security, you misunderstood the whole concept. Nat is not the only layer involved, it's just one of the layers, providing 'yet another obstacle' to potential intruders.
Once again, you are missing the point. NAT provides NO additional security. NONE. Not one bit. If you have your firewall configured so that outside connections can't get through, they won't get through, whether your machines are behind a NAT, or using public addresses. If your firewall isn't configured so that it will stop connections, then those connections will be able to get through to the machines, whether you are using NAT or public addresses. The only thing NAT does is to require a handful of special packets to be sent by the potential intruder, to discover that it is a NAT, and what addresses are active behind that NAT. That's all there is to it, and NATs are very popular, so everyone you are trying to keep out, knows how to get through.
SPI is a good example, lots of low end routers these days advertise 'stateful firewall'. That's all fine and dandy, but, they are basically just out of the box implementations, and, there's no real ability to actually set up stateful conditions on them, and even if there was, the vast majority of folks deploying them, dont have a clue how to go about it.
Yes, low-end routers aren't a good option for even small businesses. Not that there's any reason they should want to use one though... It's trivially easy to configure something like OpenBSD on flash, or a small hard drive, with PF already configured for NAT, IPv6, bandwidth shaping and stateful filtering. Plug it in to some old 33MHz box you've got lying around, and your theoretical small business has a solution even cheaper than a linksys NAT/router.
Enter the second dose of reality, the small office is _most likely_ using a commodity dsl/cable source for data, and it's _highly likely_ that isp already prevents source routing upstream, so, your source routed black hat isn't gonna get there anyways.
*Ahem* As I very explicitly said, that's just the simplest way to go about it. There are a great many other ways to penetrate a NAT as well.
There are a lot of locations where nat alone would have been suffient a few years ago, but really need better barriers today. The proliferation of open source solutions actually make some of those better solutions as cost effective today as nat alone was 5 years ago.
NAT is never sufficent on it's own. I wouldn't have set-up a home user, even 20 years ago, with a wide-open NAT, lacking any packet filtering. Before stateful firewalls were common, blocking incomming ports 0-1024 was standard procedure, and there's practically never any reason to forego that most basic security step.
And I would like to mention that stateful packet filtering with open source software was quite possible, much longer 5 years ago. I just browsed through the history file of IPF, and it mentions compiling on NetBSD at least by Feb 1995, and FreeBSD just a few months later (that 11+ years ago now) and IPF was a stateful packet filter even back then.
You are confused, you view nat as a _bad_ thing, and publicly addressible computers via ipv6 as a _good_ thing. That's fine in theory, but, out here in the real world, the internet is a nasty place, and to put a windows machine into a slot where it is ip accessible from the outside, well, that's just begging for problems.
No, you are the one who is very confused.
NAT provides no protection at all... Just a little obscurity. If you have private addresses behind a NAT (and no firewall/packet filter) you're not protected at all. Some simple tricks, like source-routed packets, will bypass the NAT entirely. Send source routed pings to the broadcast addresses of the private address ranges, and you'll get a nice list of (most of) the computers on that network and what IP address they are using. From there, you have full access right through the NAT. It's becomming more and more common for stacks to drop source-routed packets, and ICMP/pings, but make no mistake, those are certainly not the only way to easily pierce through a NAT.
On the other hand, if you have a stateful firewall, you are very secure. You can use private or public addresses behind that firewall, and you are equally secure either way. For public IPs, you just configure the firewall to not even acknowledge that any of computers/IPs are online, and nobody will be the wiser.
Finally: a NAT without a firewall/packetfilter stands out like a sore thumb when you are scanning addresses. And public IPv6 addresses provide a much greater level of obscurity than NAT possibly can, just due to the huge (unoccupied) address range.
I don't know how you figure several days to read a Shakespeare play, given that every word on the page is spoken by the actors in two hours...
I don't know how you figure you can read *only* the dialog of a Shakespeare play, given that much of the information of a play is conveyed visually...
It would be very hard to understand a story you read, if it included only the words the characters spoke. No 'narration' about where they are, who else is around, what they are doing, etc.
The flaw in that logic is that all that matters is what the FCC find indecent
No, it doesn't. The FCC doesn't decide what channels you get, or what content each network can show, unless it's broadcast over the air. They'd like to get some control of cable and satellite, but Ala Carte subscriptions will completely eliminate any need for that.
I can't remember the last time I saw a post so deserving of a "troll" mod.
The difference in price between CNN and Fox News will be nonexistant. Maybe The Discovery Channel will cost a couple cents more each month, but that's not going to price it out of the market. These companies are all ad-supported, not fully supported by the cable company. They've dealt fine with being less popular so far, and will continue to do so.
As an undergrad, I found lectures eithr dull, or entertaining but not an effective way of learning.
TV programs like those I listed are certainly not dull, and they use the video to great advantage, which lectures just can't do. Educational programming on TV is at the very least far better than lectures.
but I will agree I get more benefit from seeing it acted.
Then why do you insist that learning from TV programs is a waste of time, and reading the vast source material is necessary instead?
I would qualify this, however, by saying that I have never seen a TV production of any of his works that comes close to seeing it performed live.
Obviously, because you haven't seen it, doesn't mean it does not exist. You could film a live performance, broadcast it on TV, and get exactly the same thing from watching it. Anyhow, Shakespeare isn't a favorite subject of educational programming. That's more along the lines of Masterpiece Theatre.
In any case, it's quite unfair to say educational programming on TV is worthless, because you prefer to watch mind-numbing shows instead.
Well, what I was intending to convey by the use of quotes around "indecency" was that my problem is not with fighting indecency in general, but with the attempt by the government to define what is indecent for everyone based on a set of religious values that not everyone--indeed, I would say not even a significant majority--in America shares.
This is not going to do that. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It will do almost the exact opposite, as I illustrated already. So why should you care that most people want this so they don't see a breast on TV? You can use it to do the exact opposite, and get the channels that show the most breasts.
And they don't let us and the networks decide what to watch and air--they have Decreed that showing a female breast, or any human genitalia, is Forbidden outside of certain very specific situations
Ala Carte will take their control of cable programming out of their hands. Right now, they can threaten to take their money elsewhere if ANY of the channels ever shows anything they don't like. It's the all-or-nothing pressure that stops any controvercial content. If 5% of people complain, a network risks losing 100% of their audience when the cable companies pull them.
With ala carte, those 5% won't be subscribers, but a lot of others will be. The threat from those 5% is practically nill.
This does not give them control over what you watch, rather, it gives you control of what you watch, them control of what they watch, and completely takes away the conflict between people with opposing views.
Discory, History and Science are popular channels - within a subset of america to which you belong. Outside of that subset, they have (almost) no relevance.
No, that's not true at all.
It's not just me, it's also the guy who works at the AM/PM down the street, my redneck 2nd cousin from Arkansas, etc. As a matter of fact, the most popular shows on Discovery Ch is "American Choppers" which I wouldn't be caught-dead watching.
You assume those channels are vastly unpopular because you don't know a lot of people that watch them, but the fact of the matter is, the ratings say otherwise. They are all quite popular for cable channels.
No one, regardless of age, should be loitering outside this guy's store. And if there's a simply way to encourage a group not to loiter, especially when the loiterers are pretty much exclusively composed of that group, then I say "go for it!"
This is not teen-ager repellant, it's a weapon. It's the equivalent of having electrodes that only seriously shock the young.
You know, I know many shop-keepers that would like a device like this if it could be used to keep black people or mexicans out of their stores, since they do statistically make up a much higher percentage of thefts, and a very low percent of sales. That doesn't make it legal or right to do so.
If this ever makes it's way into wider use, you can expect the shit to hit the fan. Not only are kids/teens going to avoid the store, they will continue to do so for the rest of their lives, and the store will go out of business. And that's the BEST CASE. The worst case (and not too unlikely) is that these teens are going to be very, very angry at the management of the store, and retaliate, with anything from knives, to firebombs, to riots through the store.
Television is an awful medium for education. It's passive, and it's single speed (you can't go back and study a bit that you missed, or didn't quite understand, or skip through the simple bits easily). About the only thing television is good for is passive entertainment - when your brain is tired and wants a rest.
That's got to be the stupidest thing I've heard. Most lectures are also passive and single-speed, yet nobody is saying they are worthless. Besides DVRs are quite popular, and address all your concerns.
I don't imagine there's anything I can say that will convince you of how very wrong you are. All I can suggest is that you actually WATCH some of the educational shows some time. Nova, Nature, etc., all do a much better of educating you on a subject than reading an article would be able to. An hour of well-done video can be immensely helpful in educating someone on a subject.
Consider this... In perhaps 2 hours, I can watch a Shakespeare play in it's entirety, and get the very same thing out of it, as you can by spending several days READING that same play in print. Plus, it's much easier for most people, while the long and drawn-out process of reading it would be deathly boring to most people.
Unfortunately those people don't want an off button for their own TV. Those people want an off button that they can use on everyone else's. TV.
Are you even paying attention? This does not give them an off-button on your TV. Quite the opposite. It takes away the "off button" they currently have on your TV.
Now you can subscribe to all the channels you want, which they opt-out of, and everyone should be happy.
If you can come-up with some way that Ala Carte will do the opposite, I'd like to hear it. Instead, you're just completely off-base here.
A person stepping out of the shower is natural, legal and a very real part of millions of people's lives and yet it is "indecent" to show on television.
A person vomiting is also a very real part of millions of people's lives, yet I don't think most people want to see it on TV all the time.
A person being in a car accident and having their innards explode all over the road is a very real part of life. A person being brutally raped is a very real part of life. etc.
Just because it's "real" doesn't mean you want it on TV.
On the other hand, an action sequence with some demon from the pits of hell tearing a person apart in front of their children is fine for a Sunday afternoon movie promotion.
It's fine when it's completely unrealistic. You won't see the realities of something like that happening. You don't see organs being mutilated, or intestines flying about, etc. When they show someone being killed on TV in "gruesome" ways, it's nowhere near as graphic as something like disecting an animal in biology class.
As for nuditity, it's usually acceptable if it's completely unrealistic as well. Space alien with several non-human-like breasts?... they'll let you show it, no problem.
But since I watch the History Channel, the Science Channel, Discovery, etc, I do care. These channels will probably fall by the wayside as their revenue is reduced by a huge margin. =(
Those are rather popular channels, and won't be going out of business any time soon. I think pretty nearly every man over 18 in the US will subscribe to those 3 channels.
The country music channels are in much more peril. They don't really have shows that people would want to watch... They're more or less an impluse-watch channel. During commercials, you flip over to them. While you're flipping through, you might see something interesting and watch for 10 minutes. etc.
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I assume you're talking about WMV9, since it is all around the internet.
MPlayer/Xine play them just fine once you've installed the binary codecs into their correct location.
You are confused. MPlayer works because it is built with many native codecs that aren't dependant on x86 binary DLLs. It's the newer formats such as WMV3/RealVid3/VP5/VP6/etc that you can't play on non-x86 machines yet.
Too much latency in their code stealing dept?
*IF* you have 30ms+ latency on the link, as they explicitly said in the video.
Seems fair (or ironic) since he *was* replying to a post with bad information that got modded up.
The network stack issue isn't "used-to", that's current. Longhorn hasn't shipped yet.
Other comments aren't exactly encouraging either. Saying how nice it is to have more than 2GB memory space (64-bit), so they don't have to track down memory leaks anymore...
Trolls, trolls everywhere...
The Sears Tower's top is much smaller than it's base. However, even at it's top, it's about as wide as the base of almost all of the other towers.
It's true, the Burj Tower is going to eclipse everything else by a large margin.
But, it is designed somewhat pyramid-like, in that it gets much smaller and smaller towards the top. So once again, it doesn't exactly seem fair that the two are compared on equal terms.
Okay, this is off-topic, but the topic is pretty stupid anyhow, so...
a re1.PNG
I must say, I find the standards for "tallest building" to be completely arbitrary, to say the least. I think moronic would be more appropriate.
I consider the Sears Tower to be the tallest by every rational measure. The Petronas Towers were considered taller only because the, err, "spire", simply met the standard for being part of the "structure", rather than being an antenna.
The Taipei 101 is taller than the Sears Tower because it has a tiny little observation-type deck up on it's spire. It's slightly higher than the highest floor of the Sears Tower, although not really a floor. That is in addition to the previous spire/antenna issue.
In addition, the Sears Tower has 110 floors, while the Taipei 101 only has 101 (hence the name). And no, the floors aren't any smaller...
Wikipedia has a very good illustration of their relative heights. After seeing it, I think most everyone will agree that the Sears Tower is taller in every rational measurement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Skyscrapercomp
Only if you don't throw HDTV videos at it... My Athlon system, overclocked almost to 2GHz, can just BARELY play 1080p content with a whole lot of software tricks using mplayer on Linux.
You can do hardware decoding with a few videocards on Linux, but you have absolutely no options for deinterlacing, inversing telecine, etc. You're also completely out-of-luck if you want to play WMVHD content, HD h.264, etc. So, it's far, far nicer to be able to do the decoding in realtime on the CPU.
And besides that, most people want to be able to convert the video they've captured from one format to another, in a reasonable ammount of time. How long do you think it would take to edit and reencode 1080 material on a < 1GHz system like yours? Using something like Xvid, probably a week...
I have very quiet systems, with a LOT of fans... I'm not even interested in going fanless (even if it wouldn't cost an arm and a leg), since my DVD-ROM and hard drive are louder than the fans in my HTPC...
That's true, but it doesn't change anything.
With public addresses, you can still block all incomming connections with your firewall. If you want to allow a single port through for P2P, you only open one port, whether through NAT or public addresses.
Once again, you are missing the point. NAT provides NO additional security. NONE. Not one bit. If you have your firewall configured so that outside connections can't get through, they won't get through, whether your machines are behind a NAT, or using public addresses. If your firewall isn't configured so that it will stop connections, then those connections will be able to get through to the machines, whether you are using NAT or public addresses. The only thing NAT does is to require a handful of special packets to be sent by the potential intruder, to discover that it is a NAT, and what addresses are active behind that NAT. That's all there is to it, and NATs are very popular, so everyone you are trying to keep out, knows how to get through.
Yes, low-end routers aren't a good option for even small businesses. Not that there's any reason they should want to use one though... It's trivially easy to configure something like OpenBSD on flash, or a small hard drive, with PF already configured for NAT, IPv6, bandwidth shaping and stateful filtering. Plug it in to some old 33MHz box you've got lying around, and your theoretical small business has a solution even cheaper than a linksys NAT/router.
*Ahem*
As I very explicitly said, that's just the simplest way to go about it. There are a great many other ways to penetrate a NAT as well.
NAT is never sufficent on it's own. I wouldn't have set-up a home user, even 20 years ago, with a wide-open NAT, lacking any packet filtering. Before stateful firewalls were common, blocking incomming ports 0-1024 was standard procedure, and there's practically never any reason to forego that most basic security step.
And I would like to mention that stateful packet filtering with open source software was quite possible, much longer 5 years ago. I just browsed through the history file of IPF, and it mentions compiling on NetBSD at least by Feb 1995, and FreeBSD just a few months later (that 11+ years ago now) and IPF was a stateful packet filter even back then.
No, you are the one who is very confused.
NAT provides no protection at all... Just a little obscurity. If you have private addresses behind a NAT (and no firewall/packet filter) you're not protected at all. Some simple tricks, like source-routed packets, will bypass the NAT entirely. Send source routed pings to the broadcast addresses of the private address ranges, and you'll get a nice list of (most of) the computers on that network and what IP address they are using. From there, you have full access right through the NAT. It's becomming more and more common for stacks to drop source-routed packets, and ICMP/pings, but make no mistake, those are certainly not the only way to easily pierce through a NAT.
On the other hand, if you have a stateful firewall, you are very secure. You can use private or public addresses behind that firewall, and you are equally secure either way. For public IPs, you just configure the firewall to not even acknowledge that any of computers/IPs are online, and nobody will be the wiser.
Finally: a NAT without a firewall/packetfilter stands out like a sore thumb when you are scanning addresses. And public IPv6 addresses provide a much greater level of obscurity than NAT possibly can, just due to the huge (unoccupied) address range.
I don't know how you figure you can read *only* the dialog of a Shakespeare play, given that much of the information of a play is conveyed visually...
It would be very hard to understand a story you read, if it included only the words the characters spoke. No 'narration' about where they are, who else is around, what they are doing, etc.
Take your baseless tinfoil conspiracy theories and go home. You're just getting annoying now.
No, it doesn't. The FCC doesn't decide what channels you get, or what content each network can show, unless it's broadcast over the air. They'd like to get some control of cable and satellite, but Ala Carte subscriptions will completely eliminate any need for that.
I can't remember the last time I saw a post so deserving of a "troll" mod.
The difference in price between CNN and Fox News will be nonexistant. Maybe The Discovery Channel will cost a couple cents more each month, but that's not going to price it out of the market. These companies are all ad-supported, not fully supported by the cable company. They've dealt fine with being less popular so far, and will continue to do so.
TV programs like those I listed are certainly not dull, and they use the video to great advantage, which lectures just can't do. Educational programming on TV is at the very least far better than lectures.
Then why do you insist that learning from TV programs is a waste of time, and reading the vast source material is necessary instead?
Obviously, because you haven't seen it, doesn't mean it does not exist. You could film a live performance, broadcast it on TV, and get exactly the same thing from watching it. Anyhow, Shakespeare isn't a favorite subject of educational programming. That's more along the lines of Masterpiece Theatre.
In any case, it's quite unfair to say educational programming on TV is worthless, because you prefer to watch mind-numbing shows instead.
This is not going to do that. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It will do almost the exact opposite, as I illustrated already. So why should you care that most people want this so they don't see a breast on TV? You can use it to do the exact opposite, and get the channels that show the most breasts.
Ala Carte will take their control of cable programming out of their hands. Right now, they can threaten to take their money elsewhere if ANY of the channels ever shows anything they don't like. It's the all-or-nothing pressure that stops any controvercial content. If 5% of people complain, a network risks losing 100% of their audience when the cable companies pull them.
With ala carte, those 5% won't be subscribers, but a lot of others will be. The threat from those 5% is practically nill.
This does not give them control over what you watch, rather, it gives you control of what you watch, them control of what they watch, and completely takes away the conflict between people with opposing views.
No, that's not true at all.
It's not just me, it's also the guy who works at the AM/PM down the street, my redneck 2nd cousin from Arkansas, etc. As a matter of fact, the most popular shows on Discovery Ch is "American Choppers" which I wouldn't be caught-dead watching.
You assume those channels are vastly unpopular because you don't know a lot of people that watch them, but the fact of the matter is, the ratings say otherwise. They are all quite popular for cable channels.
This is not teen-ager repellant, it's a weapon. It's the equivalent of having electrodes that only seriously shock the young.
You know, I know many shop-keepers that would like a device like this if it could be used to keep black people or mexicans out of their stores, since they do statistically make up a much higher percentage of thefts, and a very low percent of sales. That doesn't make it legal or right to do so.
If this ever makes it's way into wider use, you can expect the shit to hit the fan. Not only are kids/teens going to avoid the store, they will continue to do so for the rest of their lives, and the store will go out of business. And that's the BEST CASE. The worst case (and not too unlikely) is that these teens are going to be very, very angry at the management of the store, and retaliate, with anything from knives, to firebombs, to riots through the store.
That's got to be the stupidest thing I've heard. Most lectures are also passive and single-speed, yet nobody is saying they are worthless. Besides DVRs are quite popular, and address all your concerns.
I don't imagine there's anything I can say that will convince you of how very wrong you are. All I can suggest is that you actually WATCH some of the educational shows some time. Nova, Nature, etc., all do a much better of educating you on a subject than reading an article would be able to. An hour of well-done video can be immensely helpful in educating someone on a subject.
Consider this... In perhaps 2 hours, I can watch a Shakespeare play in it's entirety, and get the very same thing out of it, as you can by spending several days READING that same play in print. Plus, it's much easier for most people, while the long and drawn-out process of reading it would be deathly boring to most people.
Are you even paying attention? This does not give them an off-button on your TV. Quite the opposite. It takes away the "off button" they currently have on your TV.
Now you can subscribe to all the channels you want, which they opt-out of, and everyone should be happy.
If you can come-up with some way that Ala Carte will do the opposite, I'd like to hear it. Instead, you're just completely off-base here.
A person vomiting is also a very real part of millions of people's lives, yet I don't think most people want to see it on TV all the time.
A person being in a car accident and having their innards explode all over the road is a very real part of life. A person being brutally raped is a very real part of life. etc.
Just because it's "real" doesn't mean you want it on TV.
It's fine when it's completely unrealistic. You won't see the realities of something like that happening. You don't see organs being mutilated, or intestines flying about, etc. When they show someone being killed on TV in "gruesome" ways, it's nowhere near as graphic as something like disecting an animal in biology class.
As for nuditity, it's usually acceptable if it's completely unrealistic as well. Space alien with several non-human-like breasts?... they'll let you show it, no problem.
Why?
While more people may find MTV indecent, perhaps you find the religous christian channels indecent... It's just a different side of the same coin.
They already do that. The only thing this will change is to make it so you aren't paying money to those networks you never watch...
Those are rather popular channels, and won't be going out of business any time soon. I think pretty nearly every man over 18 in the US will subscribe to those 3 channels.
The country music channels are in much more peril. They don't really have shows that people would want to watch... They're more or less an impluse-watch channel. During commercials, you flip over to them. While you're flipping through, you might see something interesting and watch for 10 minutes. etc.