just use an HDTV - 46" to 70" ought to keep you happy, and doesn't cost much more than a good large monitor. Besides you could actually find an excuse to set-up the beloved beowulf cluster to stream uncompressed hd to your monitor (1.5 gb/s).
The digital rights management type systems will have to be beaten in court in a manner that refers to the original Beta case - giving the rights back to the end user, not the deadbeat middlemen.
To answer what is middle ground: High quality product distributed at a resonable price that can be manipulated by the end user (backed up, mixed, etc. If the price is resonable and the product usable, sales should increase. The more muddied the waters get with all this copy protection bs, more consumers will get confused and abandon the technology - see DIVX and DAT. Give me a cd or dvd at a fair price and I will buy it. Make it overpriced or unusable and I won't. Most people are inherently honest. There will always be some who aren't.
A minor nit-pick:
There is a flaw in the Metallica logic - they became huge, with NO radio or video support. Until "One", there was no airplay, not even on rock stations (there were a few, but very few). One of lifes greatest ironies was hearing "One" on a top 40 station because album sales were so high. Until "And Justice..." there was no support from a marketing standpoint. It would be interesting to see what effect a P2P distribution system would have had if it existed during the first two albums - would they have become huge faster, or bombed?
(I worked for a rock radio station during this timeframe, so I have some idea of what was going on behind the scenes at that time)
They have been called coffin nails for a century for a reason. The question is who forced you to take the first one? I used to smoke until I got the right incentive to quit, fortunately while I was still in college - getting laid and getting a job (this just as the anti-smoking nazis were getting started with no smoking buildings, etc)
It is hard to quit, but not that hard - mind over matter, etc. Coke is far far scarier.
My.02
ps - since you just quit a week ago, the worst is already over - you've got it made if you don't slip. After the next week, it should be straight forward. Besides, save what you spent on smokes for a year and go buy a nice Alpha running bsd or linux.
I looked at that patent - I can blow it out of the water with prior use - 1988, with a laser salvaged out of an early grocery store scanner - about a 1.5mw HeNe, complete with exposed plates - grab that -4kV (ouch). Had a kitten running around and around, it jumped on the sofa and then the wall, at which point it did a "Sylvester", sliding down the wall vainly trying to stop, and down behind the sofa - all 4 of us were in pain from laughing - poor kitten. Anyway, this predates the patent by some 5-10 years (i forget exactly). If someone wants to waste the money to overturn it, speak up.
As for your patent, you will have to be more specific - I think many can point out prior art. But if you patent masturbating to a beowulf cluster of linux boxes running porn videos of Natlie Portman while doing something with hot grits, you might have a winner - just think about all the royalties you could collect just from the trolls here at/.
Personally, I'd try patenting "First Post" - maybe it would save some bandwidth and time...
If you are a US citizen, and work abroad, and stay out of the US for an extended period of time, you don't have to pay Federal taxes. Be careful of state taxes, I know of one couple who left California for Saudi Arabia for 5 years, came back, and CA decided that since they were intending to return, that they owed back taxes and penalties - and the courts upheld this decision. That being said, you would do well to check with an accountant/tax lawyer, and see what kind of tax avoidance you have (avoidance is legal, evasion is not). Having travelled a large portion of the world, I can state that traveling jobs are a wonderful opportunity. If you are flexible, you can have a great time, and make good money too. Just look out for all those governments trying to take your hard earned cash.
How about - How much would they have had to spend on lawyers to accomplish the same goal? - You can be CERTAIN that lawyers would have told them that they could accomplish the same thing - catch and sue/extort the cracked card sellers, and get a list of buyers of cracked cards, etc. This did happen not too long ago, don't know if there was a/. story or not.
Bottom line is - several top flight encryption/smart card experts, software coders, and lost pissed off customers are much cheaper than a bunch of $500/hour shysters.
Anyway, DirecTV/Hughes has the worst customer service I have seen in a long time - I've never had to wait more than 30 seconds to get a live person at Dish. No further comment on AT&T cable...
There is a story about verio defending Cryptome against an order to remove the web site for posting the now sealed court record which includes the DeCSS source code. the link is (sorry no html):
my heater is set to 58, everything else is off or in standby - none the less, point taken. However not everyone is obeying the order to sell - the latest are threats to withhold natural gas shipments - expect federal orders there too...
Very high - look at those godawful infomercials - those cost $3k to $5k for EVERY run - how many widgets do they have to sell to break even? In one case (i used to work in tv) the same infomercial would run every night at the same time 7 days a week - at least $20k - thats 2000 suckers a week at 99.95 - this went on for months - how many losers need $100 widgets? And this is for just one channel - there are how many channels? You can be sure these people wouldn't spend this kind of money unless they were making even more.
I know i've posted this comment before, but the bottom line is the stuff works.
I usually get 5 or 6 spams a day from uu.net. I now send all uu.net spam to sales@uu.net and info@uu.net - they have begun to get annoyed, judging from the complaints i am beginning to get from the sales scum. I told them i'd stop forwarding their spam back to them when started cancelling their pink contracts. I'm starting to see a decrease in uu.net spam. I recommend that EVERYONE send all uu.net originated spam back to the sales people allowing all these spammers on the net. Anyone who has submitted an abuse complaint to them I'm sure is aware that it is falling of deaf ears. Send the complaint to some live ones...
Fax spam is illegal. There should be a number to get off the list, but often it isn't there. The FCC has info on their website - you will have to browse for it - but i seem to recall that there is a place you can mail the junk fax to so the government can prosecute it. One of the biggest offenders is fax.com - they send junk fax on behalf of The Center for Missing and Exploited Children, whose main sponsors are Computer Associates and Sun. (can you tell i did some legwork?) Anyway, many of these scum are trying to use a loophole in the anti-telemarketing law that has exceptions for calls made "by, or on behalf of, non-profit organizations" - this clause does NOT apply to fax.
Anyway, if you can find out who is sending the fax spam, you can prosecute them, and also the company who hired the spammer - every fax spam I have seen has some toll-free number to call to buy the goods/services advertised. I would suggest adding to your answering machine (if recording time permits) "This machine does not accept unsolicited fax ads. By sending you agree to pay a proofreading fee of $500 per page"
(alter amount to taste - probably between 500 and 1500/page) good luck
Actually its because out of state suppliers are REFUSING to sell to California. Updates on radio, msnbc, cnet. We haven't bent over far enough for the power providers...
We can solve the lack of powerplants issue quickly - any community can veto a power plant in their area - in exchange the community goes to the top of a list - that community will be taken off the grid BEFORE any rolling blackouts occur. They stay at the top of the list until another community NIMBYs a powerplant. After 15 or 20 years, they fall off the list. That should put a stop to NIMBYing most decent projects. A safeguard should be added to prevent rediculous power plant proposals - ie trying to build a small plant in the middle of a highly developed neighborhood...
This is actually very simple - the french have the PERFECT device for dealing with the kinds of corrupt politicians (redundant) that come up with laws like this - its time to dust of the guitiene (sp?). The rest is all in the sig: politician = lawyer
For all of those stuck in tech support jobs - you have to check out this site:
http://www.deadtroll.com/stream.html
and listen/watch welcome to the internet help desk - i guaruntee aching sides from laughing so hard - warning do not drink anything that you don't want coming out your nose - oj, milk, soda, beer, booze etc.
btw - WHAT is up with Forbes showing a picture of a dog squatting to take a dump? Forbes?!?!
Not only did the 15C do arrays, it would do complex matricies (4x4 i think, and 8x8 normal). Programmable as well - I loved that thing in college. Even better than the 42s. To this day, every deck officer I know still has, and most use the 41cx with the navigation pack. Maybe there wasn't one on the Valdez or the Cadiz - it would explain a lot.
I still have an old hp o'scope - quad trace, weights like 150 pounds - GE was the original owner and paid $2200 in 1961 for the thing - more than a loaded new T-bird. I still use their old tube voltmeters, the best ever made.
Put your money in the speakers - you will see a much higher return in $/quality from speakers than from the receiver. Your receiver selection should be based on necessary i/o, features (ac3/dts, #of svid, component vid, etc), and neutral sound. Harmon Kardon is my personal preference - good sound, not a lot of gimmiks - if you want every weird gimmik under the sun go with JVC. But go to a high end type audio store and LISTEN - your ears are your best tool for this. Another trick - take a classical type piece of music and turn in down very low, til it is just audible, and listen for hisses, clicks and other forms of distortion - this will tell you a lot about the performance of both speakers and amps. Good luck
I have been working with the Whistler Adv Server Beta 1 for about a month or so. It has no such security checks. It seems to me that there will be a huge market for cracks to this - while I won't do it myself for what should be obvious reasons, since this product is already floating around the warez world, it should be pretty straight forward to compare the install files of beta one and the release version to decypher and break the new protection. This is going to be a VERY unpopular "feature", and hopefully there will be sufficient backlash from consumers to kill it.
Ironically it is the consumer version that they are most worried about - most users of server/adv server/etc will be licensed, its the personal, and to some extent professional versions that are the most pirated. (is pirating a pirate piracy?)
At least its stable - win 2k gives me far more trouble than whistler does, and runs much faster.
On that note i think i'll leave before the flames burn me (hey my p133/red hat 6.2 is still faster than windows on a machine 4x "faster")
A lot of people have posted this solution - be careful. I don't know what the cost in romania would be, probably not a lot (in russia and the baltics, a pro can be hired for under $1000. (Here in the US its more like $10k + first class round trip airfare, another $10k+). The problem is as soon as your hire pulls the trigger, you are on the hook too. I forget who said it, but "The reason some people are alive is that its illegal to kill them". Unfortunately, hiring someone to kill is legally the same as killing them, and in most countries punishable either by life sentence or death penalty.
Just soliciting for a contract is often a crime.
All of the above doesn't mean that the solution isn't accurate. The only positive is that he allegedly attacked a uu.net server - is that why i'm only getting 1 or 2 spams a day from them instead of 5 or 6?
and no, i'm not trying to flamebait, but having investigated making sure that one is aware of the consequences of pursing this line of thought (however justified)
forward all spam sent by uu.net customers to the sales@uu.net, and info@uu.net. add hostmaster and webmaster if you like. I forward all 5/6 spams/day/email account to them, and now they are starting to complain about the constant forwarding. I told them I would stop when they cancel their pink contracts and cancel the spammers accounts
i am wondering about taking legal action against uu.net for aiding and abetting a harrasser
True, but the picture will still be superior - acquisition is extremely important - a show acquired through a hd lens, hd camera, and recorded on a hd deck, then down converted will look much better to the person at home, wether via cable or rabbit ears, than the same show acquired through a standard lens/camera/tape package, even a late model digital one. Many trade magazines, such as television broadcast, have had articles on this. The November issue had a story on WRALs experience on going digital, and the improvements from using the new equipment. (www.tvbroadcast.com)
as for the copy protection - it probably wont be in the set-top box, but in the vcr, etc. They won't be able to make the signal non-compatible with the older existing stb's. They also will probably avoid "breaking" the professional grade dtv tuners in use at commercial stations for monitoring, etc.
from the end of the article, my take is that this is a move by the mpaa to get in front of the supreme court and overturn the 1984 betamax decision - the court is much more conservative now, and more friendly to business. I don't think hollywood has a strong enough case to overturn the previous ruling, but they certainly have enough money to buy all the senators and congresspeople that they need to write laws in their favor (see dmca).
Since 80+ percent of the spam I receive comes from uu.net customers (like this should surprise anyone) and since their abuse department does nothing, i have been forwarding all uu.net sourced spam to hostmaster, webmaster, sales, info, and fraud, advising them that i was in California, and to stop aiding and abbetting spammers.
I actually got a nasty email from a sales person last week, complaing that they didn't want to see the spam. (sorry, on a different machine or i would post the full comment for everyones ammusement)
If everyone starts forwarding their uu.net spam back to their sales and info people, i would think that this might actually make them reconsider their position. According to spamhaus, they are currently sheltering at least 15 different spam companies. make them sleep in their own #$@%^& and see if it helps.
Slashdot Mirror
just use an HDTV - 46" to 70" ought to keep you happy, and doesn't cost much more than a good large monitor. Besides you could actually find an excuse to set-up the beloved beowulf cluster to stream uncompressed hd to your monitor (1.5 gb/s).
Your timetable is too long - as soon as MPAA can inform their politicians, this will happen - less than six months, maybe as few as three.
The digital rights management type systems will have to be beaten in court in a manner that refers to the original Beta case - giving the rights back to the end user, not the deadbeat middlemen.
To answer what is middle ground: High quality product distributed at a resonable price that can be manipulated by the end user (backed up, mixed, etc. If the price is resonable and the product usable, sales should increase. The more muddied the waters get with all this copy protection bs, more consumers will get confused and abandon the technology - see DIVX and DAT. Give me a cd or dvd at a fair price and I will buy it. Make it overpriced or unusable and I won't. Most people are inherently honest. There will always be some who aren't.
A minor nit-pick:
There is a flaw in the Metallica logic - they became huge, with NO radio or video support. Until "One", there was no airplay, not even on rock stations (there were a few, but very few). One of lifes greatest ironies was hearing "One" on a top 40 station because album sales were so high. Until "And Justice..." there was no support from a marketing standpoint. It would be interesting to see what effect a P2P distribution system would have had if it existed during the first two albums - would they have become huge faster, or bombed?
(I worked for a rock radio station during this timeframe, so I have some idea of what was going on behind the scenes at that time)
They have been called coffin nails for a century for a reason. The question is who forced you to take the first one? I used to smoke until I got the right incentive to quit, fortunately while I was still in college - getting laid and getting a job (this just as the anti-smoking nazis were getting started with no smoking buildings, etc)
.02
It is hard to quit, but not that hard - mind over matter, etc. Coke is far far scarier.
My
ps - since you just quit a week ago, the worst is already over - you've got it made if you don't slip. After the next week, it should be straight forward. Besides, save what you spent on smokes for a year and go buy a nice Alpha running bsd or linux.
And you can bet there will be a huge squawk here on /. when they go to sell their customer list...
I looked at that patent - I can blow it out of the water with prior use - 1988, with a laser salvaged out of an early grocery store scanner - about a 1.5mw HeNe, complete with exposed plates - grab that -4kV (ouch). Had a kitten running around and around, it jumped on the sofa and then the wall, at which point it did a "Sylvester", sliding down the wall vainly trying to stop, and down behind the sofa - all 4 of us were in pain from laughing - poor kitten. Anyway, this predates the patent by some 5-10 years (i forget exactly). If someone wants to waste the money to overturn it, speak up.
/.
As for your patent, you will have to be more specific - I think many can point out prior art. But if you patent masturbating to a beowulf cluster of linux boxes running porn videos of Natlie Portman while doing something with hot grits, you might have a winner - just think about all the royalties you could collect just from the trolls here at
Personally, I'd try patenting "First Post" - maybe it would save some bandwidth and time...
If you are a US citizen, and work abroad, and stay out of the US for an extended period of time, you don't have to pay Federal taxes. Be careful of state taxes, I know of one couple who left California for Saudi Arabia for 5 years, came back, and CA decided that since they were intending to return, that they owed back taxes and penalties - and the courts upheld this decision. That being said, you would do well to check with an accountant/tax lawyer, and see what kind of tax avoidance you have (avoidance is legal, evasion is not). Having travelled a large portion of the world, I can state that traveling jobs are a wonderful opportunity. If you are flexible, you can have a great time, and make good money too. Just look out for all those governments trying to take your hard earned cash.
How about - How much would they have had to spend on lawyers to accomplish the same goal? - You can be CERTAIN that lawyers would have told them that they could accomplish the same thing - catch and sue/extort the cracked card sellers, and get a list of buyers of cracked cards, etc. This did happen not too long ago, don't know if there was a /. story or not.
Bottom line is - several top flight encryption/smart card experts, software coders, and lost pissed off customers are much cheaper than a bunch of $500/hour shysters.
Anyway, DirecTV/Hughes has the worst customer service I have seen in a long time - I've never had to wait more than 30 seconds to get a live person at Dish. No further comment on AT&T cable...
There is a story about verio defending Cryptome against an order to remove the web site for posting the now sealed court record which includes the DeCSS source code. the link is (sorry no html):
http://www.msnbc.com/news/521095.asp?0nm=-11O
my heater is set to 58, everything else is off or in standby - none the less, point taken. However not everyone is obeying the order to sell - the latest are threats to withhold natural gas shipments - expect federal orders there too...
Very high - look at those godawful infomercials - those cost $3k to $5k for EVERY run - how many widgets do they have to sell to break even? In one case (i used to work in tv) the same infomercial would run every night at the same time 7 days a week - at least $20k - thats 2000 suckers a week at 99.95 - this went on for months - how many losers need $100 widgets? And this is for just one channel - there are how many channels? You can be sure these people wouldn't spend this kind of money unless they were making even more.
I know i've posted this comment before, but the bottom line is the stuff works.
-
I usually get 5 or 6 spams a day from uu.net. I now send all uu.net spam to sales@uu.net and info@uu.net - they have begun to get annoyed, judging from the complaints i am beginning to get from the sales scum. I told them i'd stop forwarding their spam back to them when started cancelling their pink contracts. I'm starting to see a decrease in uu.net spam. I recommend that EVERYONE send all uu.net originated spam back to the sales people allowing all these spammers on the net. Anyone who has submitted an abuse complaint to them I'm sure is aware that it is falling of deaf ears. Send the complaint to some live ones...
Fax spam is illegal. There should be a number to get off the list, but often it isn't there. The FCC has info on their website - you will have to browse for it - but i seem to recall that there is a place you can mail the junk fax to so the government can prosecute it. One of the biggest offenders is fax.com - they send junk fax on behalf of The Center for Missing and Exploited Children, whose main sponsors are Computer Associates and Sun. (can you tell i did some legwork?) Anyway, many of these scum are trying to use a loophole in the anti-telemarketing law that has exceptions for calls made "by, or on behalf of, non-profit organizations" - this clause does NOT apply to fax.
Anyway, if you can find out who is sending the fax spam, you can prosecute them, and also the company who hired the spammer - every fax spam I have seen has some toll-free number to call to buy the goods/services advertised. I would suggest adding to your answering machine (if recording time permits) "This machine does not accept unsolicited fax ads. By sending you agree to pay a proofreading fee of $500 per page"
(alter amount to taste - probably between 500 and 1500/page) good luck
Actually its because out of state suppliers are REFUSING to sell to California. Updates on radio, msnbc, cnet. We haven't bent over far enough for the power providers...
We can solve the lack of powerplants issue quickly - any community can veto a power plant in their area - in exchange the community goes to the top of a list - that community will be taken off the grid BEFORE any rolling blackouts occur. They stay at the top of the list until another community NIMBYs a powerplant. After 15 or 20 years, they fall off the list. That should put a stop to NIMBYing most decent projects. A safeguard should be added to prevent rediculous power plant proposals - ie trying to build a small plant in the middle of a highly developed neighborhood...
.02
my
This is actually very simple - the french have the PERFECT device for dealing with the kinds of corrupt politicians (redundant) that come up with laws like this - its time to dust of the guitiene (sp?). The rest is all in the sig: politician = lawyer
For all of those stuck in tech support jobs - you have to check out this site:
http://www.deadtroll.com/stream.html
and listen/watch welcome to the internet help desk - i guaruntee aching sides from laughing so hard - warning do not drink anything that you don't want coming out your nose - oj, milk, soda, beer, booze etc.
btw - WHAT is up with Forbes showing a picture of a dog squatting to take a dump? Forbes?!?!
Not only did the 15C do arrays, it would do complex matricies (4x4 i think, and 8x8 normal). Programmable as well - I loved that thing in college. Even better than the 42s. To this day, every deck officer I know still has, and most use the 41cx with the navigation pack. Maybe there wasn't one on the Valdez or the Cadiz - it would explain a lot.
I still have an old hp o'scope - quad trace, weights like 150 pounds - GE was the original owner and paid $2200 in 1961 for the thing - more than a loaded new T-bird. I still use their old tube voltmeters, the best ever made.
The world has lost a genius. Rest in peace...
Put your money in the speakers - you will see a much higher return in $/quality from speakers than from the receiver. Your receiver selection should be based on necessary i/o, features (ac3/dts, #of svid, component vid, etc), and neutral sound. Harmon Kardon is my personal preference - good sound, not a lot of gimmiks - if you want every weird gimmik under the sun go with JVC. But go to a high end type audio store and LISTEN - your ears are your best tool for this. Another trick - take a classical type piece of music and turn in down very low, til it is just audible, and listen for hisses, clicks and other forms of distortion - this will tell you a lot about the performance of both speakers and amps. Good luck
I have been working with the Whistler Adv Server Beta 1 for about a month or so. It has no such security checks. It seems to me that there will be a huge market for cracks to this - while I won't do it myself for what should be obvious reasons, since this product is already floating around the warez world, it should be pretty straight forward to compare the install files of beta one and the release version to decypher and break the new protection. This is going to be a VERY unpopular "feature", and hopefully there will be sufficient backlash from consumers to kill it.
Ironically it is the consumer version that they are most worried about - most users of server/adv server/etc will be licensed, its the personal, and to some extent professional versions that are the most pirated. (is pirating a pirate piracy?)
At least its stable - win 2k gives me far more trouble than whistler does, and runs much faster.
On that note i think i'll leave before the flames burn me (hey my p133/red hat 6.2 is still faster than windows on a machine 4x "faster")
James P Hogan wrote a short story similar to this. Definately worth a read.
A lot of people have posted this solution - be careful. I don't know what the cost in romania would be, probably not a lot (in russia and the baltics, a pro can be hired for under $1000. (Here in the US its more like $10k + first class round trip airfare, another $10k+). The problem is as soon as your hire pulls the trigger, you are on the hook too. I forget who said it, but "The reason some people are alive is that its illegal to kill them". Unfortunately, hiring someone to kill is legally the same as killing them, and in most countries punishable either by life sentence or death penalty.
Just soliciting for a contract is often a crime.
All of the above doesn't mean that the solution isn't accurate. The only positive is that he allegedly attacked a uu.net server - is that why i'm only getting 1 or 2 spams a day from them instead of 5 or 6?
and no, i'm not trying to flamebait, but having investigated making sure that one is aware of the consequences of pursing this line of thought (however justified)
no they aren't
just do the following
forward all spam sent by uu.net customers to the sales@uu.net, and info@uu.net. add hostmaster and webmaster if you like. I forward all 5/6 spams/day/email account to them, and now they are starting to complain about the constant forwarding. I told them I would stop when they cancel their pink contracts and cancel the spammers accounts
i am wondering about taking legal action against uu.net for aiding and abetting a harrasser
any thoughts?
True, but the picture will still be superior - acquisition is extremely important - a show acquired through a hd lens, hd camera, and recorded on a hd deck, then down converted will look much better to the person at home, wether via cable or rabbit ears, than the same show acquired through a standard lens/camera/tape package, even a late model digital one. Many trade magazines, such as television broadcast, have had articles on this. The November issue had a story on WRALs experience on going digital, and the improvements from using the new equipment. (www.tvbroadcast.com)
as for the copy protection - it probably wont be in the set-top box, but in the vcr, etc. They won't be able to make the signal non-compatible with the older existing stb's. They also will probably avoid "breaking" the professional grade dtv tuners in use at commercial stations for monitoring, etc.
from the end of the article, my take is that this is a move by the mpaa to get in front of the supreme court and overturn the 1984 betamax decision - the court is much more conservative now, and more friendly to business. I don't think hollywood has a strong enough case to overturn the previous ruling, but they certainly have enough money to buy all the senators and congresspeople that they need to write laws in their favor (see dmca).
Since 80+ percent of the spam I receive comes from uu.net customers (like this should surprise anyone) and since their abuse department does nothing, i have been forwarding all uu.net sourced spam to hostmaster, webmaster, sales, info, and fraud, advising them that i was in California, and to stop aiding and abbetting spammers.
I actually got a nasty email from a sales person last week, complaing that they didn't want to see the spam. (sorry, on a different machine or i would post the full comment for everyones ammusement)
If everyone starts forwarding their uu.net spam back to their sales and info people, i would think that this might actually make them reconsider their position. According to spamhaus, they are currently sheltering at least 15 different spam companies. make them sleep in their own #$@%^& and see if it helps.