Uhhh... Internet2 is a private academic network. What exactly were you expecting from it, except a set of high speed data links between research universities? It was never intended for the average person to get a DSL connection to Internet2, because all the sites connected to Internet2 also have connections to the Internet, so there would be no benefit. The advantage is that the big universities have a dedicated network, without napster and all that crap bogging it down.
Personally, I always wanted to build something like that, except it would quiz you with random Math problems, forcing your brain to be awake before it would stop yelling at you. I figure if you can do integrals and solve a few differential equations, you are probably awake.
We watched Bill Nye in high school. We had little handouts we had to fill out from the information in the show. I found the show so annoying, I would fill out everybody else's handouts so that I would have somebody to talk to during the show (because they wouldn't need to pay attention to get the answers).
Personally, I'm convinced that portable video won't catch on until I can get really cheap glasses. Ot's too damned inconvenient to drive with a PSP/porta-DVD.
owever, consider that these children are harmed not just in the making of the porn but in its distribution. I really don't know what we're talkig about with this stuff, if it's pictures of children being abused or if it's just nude children, but if it's the latter then the kid might be far more traumatised just by growing up knowing that people were using her picture. And imagine being the parent of that kid and knowing that guys around the world were using that photo.
I have a few female friends who let boyfriends take private photos of them. After the relationships ended, both men posted the photos onto the internet. At least one of my friends has been greeted at a Denny's restaurant by a "fan."
So, I can imagine that "fans" of child porn, being sick pedophiles, if they found their favorite star, might do more than say hello. I know at least one girl who was raped while she was under age. I really wouldn't be surprised if I know other women who have been raped and it just never came up in conversation. Even just the act of being greeted by a fan could be extremely traumatic to a young person trying to get past a history of abuses.
So, yeah, IMHO, distribution of child porn, or any other things that the star never intended to be seen is Not Cool.
I halfway considered making a joke about selling contrabandwidth for child porn distributors, but I couldn't even say it as a joke.
Anyhow, back to my idea of a black market stock exchange... I wonder how you would convince illegal operators to file all the necessary disclosure forms opf their financial positions and such. I wonder if the threat of murder would result in more ethical practices by black market operators than legal operators who only have to worry about fines or possible jail if they screw investors...
Yeah, imagine if that mediocre fanfic Star Wars movie that was recently on slashdot got substituted for Episode III... My god, that is a wonderful idea! I'll get started right away. Thanks for the suggestion.
No, the "average person," certainly can't. I can. I deal with video compression a lot, so any artifacting is very obvious to me. But, most people will look at any motion picture and not notice any problems. Most don't notice the brown dots designed to screw with pirates, or the cigarette burns, or the random motion of the frame when projected.
You see, you and I are what are called "enthusiasts." We care. We can see it. My dad just wants to watch the presentation, and wouldn't notice anything but the most horrible projection, unless it was a side-by-side comparison.
My dad thinks he is getting HiDef Satellite right now because he has an HD capable TV. He thinks it looks very good, and bragged to his friends. I don't have the heart to tell him you have to pay extra for the HD channels. I don't have the heart to teach him to spot the horrible MPEG artifacts around every crisp edge. He thinks he has great quality, and it looks good to him, and ho doesn't have to pay extra for the HD channels he wouldn't really notice...
And, amazingly, there aren't any posts from the people who have died from smoking related fires... I guess it must be impossible!
Re:that's expensive
on
Contrabandwidth
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I wonder if there is any good way to invest in a black market? I'd gladly run a proxy server to help people in opressed countries access stuff, but then, bandwidth costs and all... A shame there isn't a black market stock exchange, where one can invest in emergent social causes, and get a cut of the profits. One could invest seed money for a marijuana dealership, or a contrabandwidth supplier, etc.
On a side note, since I'm in the US, and running a proxy here is legal, would there be any potential legal implication to my supporting a black market overseas, assuming I never go to saudi arabia? What if I did go do saudi arabia?
First off, biometrics are not very secure. Second, how do you ssh in? Most programs don't have hooks for biometrics, after all. Web browser based interfaces. Lots of off the shelf software. Things where you want most of the data to stay on a central server, rather than storing all the tax information for the US on a guy's laptop...
I worry about it all the time. My users constantly volunteer their passwords when I don't ask for them. If they know I am going to use their computer to install a printer driver or something, many will write their password on a sticky note for me, "just in case."
Our receptionist will buzz anybody into the office if they ask. After work one day, she admitted she felt bad not knowing anybody's name because she's new, and didn't want anybody to realise she didn't know them, so she buzzes everybody in.
So, any random person could compromise my whole network by knowing only a few words of english. "Can you buzz me in?" and it doesn't matter what they say for the second part, because you can trust anybody in the building because you "need key card access," and the users will volunteer their password to anybody they think they can trust.::sigh:: I spend more time worrying about spyware, though.
In general, yes, lights will be one limiting factor. I'm going to blabber a bit about how complexity grows in raytracing when you move past very simple scenes... Then get to your comment about Doom3.
In the simplest algorithm, assume only point lights, no spots or area lights. Basically, when you are shading a point, so you can draw it on screen, you trace a ray from that point to each light. (You may limit the lights that are at a distance beyond some cutoff, doesn't matter.) If the ray hits some geometry on the way to the light, it is in shadow for that light.
So, without reflections, or anything cool, just pointlights, and shadows, you will trace S+L*S rays
where S is the number of scene samples (pixels) that you are shading, and L is the number of lights. The lone S comes from all the rays you trace from the eye point out into the scene in order to figure out which point is visible at which pixel.
If you have lots of reflections and refractions, that's what can really start to slow things down. At your point being shaded, you have to trace a ray each for the reflection, and for the refraction. If the reflection ray then hits another surface which is reflective, you trace another ray to get the reflected reflection, same with refraction. So, in theory, each sample point can spawn two new rays in addition to the rays for shadow tests, and each of those two new rays can result in two more new rays, etc. You basically have to set some limit to how many times you let it recurse, because two parallel mirror planes would take forever to render accurately.
But wait, there's more! (it slices, it dices!) Everything really starts to explode when you throw out soft shadows and hard reflections. If you want everything to be nice and soft and smooth, you basically have to trace lots of rays and average the results. So, instead of each recursion in a shiny refractive scene spawning two more rays, it may need to spawn 20 or 200. Assume a max recursion of 5, and 20 rays being generated by each shading point. First point traces twenty rays. Each of those 20 trace 20 for 400. Each of those 400 trace 20 for 8000 160,000 3,200,000 shading sample points for the fifth level of recursion, each of which will need to trace rays for each of the lights which might not be casting a shadow on it, possibly many more for soft shadows.
So, 3.2 million times Lights times soft_shadow_samples times pixels times samples_per_pixel (and believe me, 10 samples each for the reflection and refraction is not very smooth in my experience!)
A veritable explosion of rays, as I am sure you see. I won't even begin to discuss radiosity, because that's actually slow, and computationally intensive.:)
Now, we get to the subject of Doom3... I'm not sure this hardware would actually be that well suited to Doom3. You know all the lovely shading effects, with detailed highlights and bump mapping? They pretty much define the Doom3 Experience. That all comes from a technology called programmable shading. Basically, while your GPU is rendering the polygons in the game, it runs a tiny little program that determines the precise shade of black for each and every pixel.
A raytracing accelerator takes advantage of the fact that ray hit-testing is a very repetative chore which can be done in hardware very efficiently.
But, as you can see, most of the really interesting rays in a scene are the "secondary rays." The rays that are for reflection and refraction and lighting and such. So, suppose this card calculates a ray, and figures out the point that needs to be shaded. Because the accelerator is all in hardware, for programmable shading like Doom3, it would need to hand-off back to the host processor, which would run the shader code, which would ask for 20 more rays, etc. So, with a fully fixed function raytracer, there would either be annoying limits on what the scene could look like, or you would constantly be going back and forth be
It's not amazing at all. When nVidia started making 3D accelerators, OpenGL was a mature, common API. Direct X was gaining traction. DCC and game programmers were familiar with the immediate mode API's, and were making programs that used them.
By making a card that rendered in immediate mode, nVidia had, ya know, a market. If they created a raytracing card, they would have needed to invent a new API to run it. They would have been the only ones with a card that used the API. Because they would have had a very small installed base, nobody would have written programs to take advantage of the API. Other companies have made raytracing accelerators. This isn't new. Most of them have not done incredibly well because there is so little actual use for the product.
Think of it this way... How many programs have you seen written for the 3DFX glide API? So, if you are one of the people who still has a glide card, but it was designed so that it couldn't do OpenGL becuase it used completely different technology, how useful would it be to you?
Personally, I'd love a card like that, if it was well supported by Lightwave, and had a vibrant developer community, and multiple vendors making cards for the raytracing API, and I was sure it wouldn't disappear soon.
Most of us who use strange architectures really won't be that terribly effected. I have an Alpha box, SPARC boxen, and some MIPS hardware, etc, so I guess I qualify. (I've never actually run Linux on the MIPS hardware, though)
Most of the folks using SPARC Linux, like me, use older boxes. They work now, and there isn't a huge number of new systems being sold with the expectation of running Linux. Most of the new SPARC hardware will be running Solaris. Since my Ultra1's work just fine under debian, I don't really care about having up-to-the-minute software on them. If I do, I can still compile the latest kernel, or whatever. I just won't be able to install from an official "release" iso set. I assume there will be unnoficial iso's available, just like always.
And, thankfully, I do have "common" PPC hardware, so I can stay up to date on those boxes with the mainstream releases!:)
The importance of Apple isn't in Blu-Ray players. It's Blu-Ray burners. DVD Studio Pro will have great support for Blu-Ray, and all the presets in Final cut Pro will assume that you will be making a 50 GB project instead of 30 GB. Sure, there wll be a few other important DVD burning setups used by the very high end and the very low end, but for full featured, reasonably priced setups, Apple will have a significant install base.
A few million independent producers, or a few major studios making a few movies... (Hint, adult entertainers count as "independent," and we all know how significant they are to the uptake of new technology...)
i think the moderators will ignore us, the thread is now fairly old. I am a bit annoyed about the negative mod, but I'm not concerned, as I have plenty of karma.
So, this large dissiciated group is sort of like Open Source Language, right? Then, I ain't be wrong, I'm just forking the language!:)
Heaven help us if I'm supposed to believe my English prof's about how the language works. I remember one day when one of them was consulting an English grammar reference, and declared, "Wow, I never knew we had *that* tense in English!"
For the life of me, I can't recall the name of the tense. I could probably google it, but don't care. It's what we'd call "Perfect Tense" if we were right-thinking latinophiles.
A more fitting analogy would be if the applicants were given instructions on how to break into the admissions office.
Given that the applicants used their own logins to perform the "hack," I'd say it's more like they were given a personalised key to the admissions office, and there was a sign on the door saying "free cookies." Since, it was perfectly appropriate for these people to be in the metaphoric admissions office.
But, there is a file cabinet labelled "admissions letters" in the office. It isn't locked, it's just sort of in a corner so you won't likely notice it until somebody points it out. There isn't a sign saying "keep out," or a lock (i.e. file permissions set to prevent you from accessing the file while you are logged in). Now, any reasonable person can see that you probably weren't meant to go into that file cabinet. You are just supposed to be in that office to get the brochures, and application forms. But, I don't think it's at all obvious that you would be denied entry for peeking after somebody pointed out the cabinet.
If there was some special hacking that needed to be done, like entering a poison SQL command in an unprotected form, or overflowing a buffer, then that would be like picking a lock, and obviously you are somewhere that you should be careful not to get caught. But, this was just changing a URL, basically, looking in something that was essentially in open view, unprotected. I almost certainly would look at mine, but I wouldn't try to hack in and change stuff, or anything obviously wrong like that, and I would be pissed if they decided to change their mind because I read the acceptance letter. Sorry, I don't feel like wasting a month of my life because some self-important prick wants to build up the suspense, and not-tell me something which has long since been decided. I sure as hell wouldn't want to spend a month not knowing if I should be looking for work, an apartment, residency rules regarding my driver's license, etc, in a place. Should I start training my replacement at work because I am going off to Harvard, or should I plan on keeping my job because I'm going to nearby state school?
So much is hanging on something like that, that I frankly wouldn't cosider it to be unethical to try and have access to personal information as quickly as possible.
Just because an error is moderately widespread doesn't mean it's no longer an error --
Who says so? do you have their address so I can write a letter of complaint about how they are defining our language? For better or worse, there ain't nobody in charge of English. Usage varies by region and it varies over time. Fexziber to you if you disagree.
Off-site backups. Assume your off-site backup storage facility will have a physical compromise, and somebody will get the passwords on your backup tapes. Your tapes may sit for months or years before it happens, though, so if you rotate, odds are decent that the password will have expired before anybody figures out what they are.
It still may be adding some security. Suppose a backup tape headed off site falls off the back of a truck, and somebody decides to try and brute force a few passwords using the encrypted stored passwords. Suppose it takes them a month from when the backup was made until the hacker is able to go onsite to try and login. That means there is only a 2/3 chance that a given password is still valid. If it takes him two months, there is only a 1/3 chance that the password he brute forced is valid.
Sure, he may be able to see that if flower5 doesn't work, maybe he should try flower6, but it certainly doesn't put you any worse off than the user just using "flower," which they would. And, by not rotating, if anybody ever gets a backup tape, then large parts of your organisation is pwned. Unless you have employee turnover higher than the amount of time it takes to brute force a password, of course...
No, Intel is pressing software designers to embrace Intel's 64 bit architecture. Nobody needs any pressing with regards to AMD64, because lots of software is already taking advantage of it, and most of the rest will run fine in 32 bit mode.
Itanium, on the other hand, requires lots of pressing to convince anybody to write for it. Very small market, after all...
50 cents per hour, eh? Interesting. I have started wondering if I shouldn't just start making independedent films. If I could get a few thousand people to pay a dollar for a torrent to an un-DRM'd video file, it would be enough to find microbudget indy work, with college students, and semi-pros. Obviously, it wouldn't be as slick as Star Trek, but with a few grand per episode of budget, you can make do with decent equipment and talented nonames.
The only problem would be that I'd have to pay a lawyer to sue anybody who put the files on Kazaa, or else I'd almost certainly never be able to get people to actually pay for it. I haven't been able to think of a good solution, except for trying to find advertising sponsors, and working them into the productions, so that you can't just skip over the ads. (I.E. The hero would save the day with the sponsor's product, or the bad guy would try to kill people with the competitor's product.)
But, since the distribution would be on the internet, most likely, no local businesses would be interested in advertising. (No guarantee that more than a handful of people in the same state would watch, and all the people in latvia wouldn't care that Bob's has the cheapest stuff in Denver.)
But, being a small independent production, a company that is international, and would be interested in reaching people all over the internet like Coca Cola would probably not be interested in targeting a few thousand geeky downloaders on the internet.
So, anybody have any good ideas for how to do an independent Internet distributed series without DRM?
Zubrin (Guy who wrote case for Mars), who is a bit of a nut, but knows a lot about rocket engines, has suggested that while a reusable system is a good idea, the shuttle is basically built backwards. What we need is a system that has a disposable top, TPS if applicable, etc. But, a reusable first stage booster assembly. The first stage won't be subjected to the same level of thermal stress as the last stage, and so needs much less in the way of protection to be made reusable.
In many cases, there may not even be a reason to bring the last stage back, such as satellite deployment, etc, and the last stage mission requirements will vary so widely that it may not make sense to reuse it even if it is free.
Slashdot Mirror
You could always do what I do -- just use dd to make a 500 MB file from /dev/random, and call it "encypted_assasination_plan.pgp"
See how long it takes them to crack that!
Uhhh... Internet2 is a private academic network. What exactly were you expecting from it, except a set of high speed data links between research universities? It was never intended for the average person to get a DSL connection to Internet2, because all the sites connected to Internet2 also have connections to the Internet, so there would be no benefit. The advantage is that the big universities have a dedicated network, without napster and all that crap bogging it down.
Personally, I always wanted to build something like that, except it would quiz you with random Math problems, forcing your brain to be awake before it would stop yelling at you. I figure if you can do integrals and solve a few differential equations, you are probably awake.
We watched Bill Nye in high school. We had little handouts we had to fill out from the information in the show. I found the show so annoying, I would fill out everybody else's handouts so that I would have somebody to talk to during the show (because they wouldn't need to pay attention to get the answers).
Personally, I'm convinced that portable video won't catch on until I can get really cheap glasses. Ot's too damned inconvenient to drive with a PSP/porta-DVD.
I have a few female friends who let boyfriends take private photos of them. After the relationships ended, both men posted the photos onto the internet. At least one of my friends has been greeted at a Denny's restaurant by a "fan."
So, I can imagine that "fans" of child porn, being sick pedophiles, if they found their favorite star, might do more than say hello. I know at least one girl who was raped while she was under age. I really wouldn't be surprised if I know other women who have been raped and it just never came up in conversation. Even just the act of being greeted by a fan could be extremely traumatic to a young person trying to get past a history of abuses.
So, yeah, IMHO, distribution of child porn, or any other things that the star never intended to be seen is Not Cool.
I halfway considered making a joke about selling contrabandwidth for child porn distributors, but I couldn't even say it as a joke.
Anyhow, back to my idea of a black market stock exchange... I wonder how you would convince illegal operators to file all the necessary disclosure forms opf their financial positions and such. I wonder if the threat of murder would result in more ethical practices by black market operators than legal operators who only have to worry about fines or possible jail if they screw investors...
Yeah, imagine if that mediocre fanfic Star Wars movie that was recently on slashdot got substituted for Episode III... My god, that is a wonderful idea! I'll get started right away. Thanks for the suggestion.
No, the "average person," certainly can't. I can. I deal with video compression a lot, so any artifacting is very obvious to me. But, most people will look at any motion picture and not notice any problems. Most don't notice the brown dots designed to screw with pirates, or the cigarette burns, or the random motion of the frame when projected.
You see, you and I are what are called "enthusiasts." We care. We can see it. My dad just wants to watch the presentation, and wouldn't notice anything but the most horrible projection, unless it was a side-by-side comparison.
My dad thinks he is getting HiDef Satellite right now because he has an HD capable TV. He thinks it looks very good, and bragged to his friends. I don't have the heart to tell him you have to pay extra for the HD channels. I don't have the heart to teach him to spot the horrible MPEG artifacts around every crisp edge. He thinks he has great quality, and it looks good to him, and ho doesn't have to pay extra for the HD channels he wouldn't really notice...
And, amazingly, there aren't any posts from the people who have died from smoking related fires... I guess it must be impossible!
I wonder if there is any good way to invest in a black market? I'd gladly run a proxy server to help people in opressed countries access stuff, but then, bandwidth costs and all... A shame there isn't a black market stock exchange, where one can invest in emergent social causes, and get a cut of the profits. One could invest seed money for a marijuana dealership, or a contrabandwidth supplier, etc.
On a side note, since I'm in the US, and running a proxy here is legal, would there be any potential legal implication to my supporting a black market overseas, assuming I never go to saudi arabia? What if I did go do saudi arabia?
First off, biometrics are not very secure. Second, how do you ssh in? Most programs don't have hooks for biometrics, after all. Web browser based interfaces. Lots of off the shelf software. Things where you want most of the data to stay on a central server, rather than storing all the tax information for the US on a guy's laptop...
I worry about it all the time. My users constantly volunteer their passwords when I don't ask for them. If they know I am going to use their computer to install a printer driver or something, many will write their password on a sticky note for me, "just in case."
::sigh:: I spend more time worrying about spyware, though.
Our receptionist will buzz anybody into the office if they ask. After work one day, she admitted she felt bad not knowing anybody's name because she's new, and didn't want anybody to realise she didn't know them, so she buzzes everybody in.
So, any random person could compromise my whole network by knowing only a few words of english. "Can you buzz me in?" and it doesn't matter what they say for the second part, because you can trust anybody in the building because you "need key card access," and the users will volunteer their password to anybody they think they can trust.
If you have the worditude to say it, you will have no problems. Actually, problems is too big a word, I prefer "problettes."
In general, yes, lights will be one limiting factor. I'm going to blabber a bit about how complexity grows in raytracing when you move past very simple scenes... Then get to your comment about Doom3.
:)
In the simplest algorithm, assume only point lights, no spots or area lights. Basically, when you are shading a point, so you can draw it on screen, you trace a ray from that point to each light. (You may limit the lights that are at a distance beyond some cutoff, doesn't matter.) If the ray hits some geometry on the way to the light, it is in shadow for that light.
So, without reflections, or anything cool, just pointlights, and shadows, you will trace
S+L*S rays
where S is the number of scene samples (pixels) that you are shading, and L is the number of lights. The lone S comes from all the rays you trace from the eye point out into the scene in order to figure out which point is visible at which pixel.
If you have lots of reflections and refractions, that's what can really start to slow things down. At your point being shaded, you have to trace a ray each for the reflection, and for the refraction. If the reflection ray then hits another surface which is reflective, you trace another ray to get the reflected reflection, same with refraction. So, in theory, each sample point can spawn two new rays in addition to the rays for shadow tests, and each of those two new rays can result in two more new rays, etc. You basically have to set some limit to how many times you let it recurse, because two parallel mirror planes would take forever to render accurately.
But wait, there's more! (it slices, it dices!) Everything really starts to explode when you throw out soft shadows and hard reflections. If you want everything to be nice and soft and smooth, you basically have to trace lots of rays and average the results. So, instead of each recursion in a shiny refractive scene spawning two more rays, it may need to spawn 20 or 200. Assume a max recursion of 5, and 20 rays being generated by each shading point.
First point traces twenty rays.
Each of those 20 trace 20 for 400.
Each of those 400 trace 20 for 8000
160,000
3,200,000 shading sample points for the fifth level of recursion, each of which will need to trace rays for each of the lights which might not be casting a shadow on it, possibly many more for soft shadows.
So, 3.2 million times Lights times soft_shadow_samples times pixels times samples_per_pixel (and believe me, 10 samples each for the reflection and refraction is not very smooth in my experience!)
A veritable explosion of rays, as I am sure you see. I won't even begin to discuss radiosity, because that's actually slow, and computationally intensive.
Now, we get to the subject of Doom3... I'm not sure this hardware would actually be that well suited to Doom3. You know all the lovely shading effects, with detailed highlights and bump mapping? They pretty much define the Doom3 Experience. That all comes from a technology called programmable shading. Basically, while your GPU is rendering the polygons in the game, it runs a tiny little program that determines the precise shade of black for each and every pixel.
A raytracing accelerator takes advantage of the fact that ray hit-testing is a very repetative chore which can be done in hardware very efficiently.
But, as you can see, most of the really interesting rays in a scene are the "secondary rays." The rays that are for reflection and refraction and lighting and such. So, suppose this card calculates a ray, and figures out the point that needs to be shaded. Because the accelerator is all in hardware, for programmable shading like Doom3, it would need to hand-off back to the host processor, which would run the shader code, which would ask for 20 more rays, etc. So, with a fully fixed function raytracer, there would either be annoying limits on what the scene could look like, or you would constantly be going back and forth be
It's not amazing at all. When nVidia started making 3D accelerators, OpenGL was a mature, common API. Direct X was gaining traction. DCC and game programmers were familiar with the immediate mode API's, and were making programs that used them.
By making a card that rendered in immediate mode, nVidia had, ya know, a market. If they created a raytracing card, they would have needed to invent a new API to run it. They would have been the only ones with a card that used the API. Because they would have had a very small installed base, nobody would have written programs to take advantage of the API. Other companies have made raytracing accelerators. This isn't new. Most of them have not done incredibly well because there is so little actual use for the product.
Think of it this way... How many programs have you seen written for the 3DFX glide API? So, if you are one of the people who still has a glide card, but it was designed so that it couldn't do OpenGL becuase it used completely different technology, how useful would it be to you?
Personally, I'd love a card like that, if it was well supported by Lightwave, and had a vibrant developer community, and multiple vendors making cards for the raytracing API, and I was sure it wouldn't disappear soon.
Most of us who use strange architectures really won't be that terribly effected. I have an Alpha box, SPARC boxen, and some MIPS hardware, etc, so I guess I qualify. (I've never actually run Linux on the MIPS hardware, though)
:)
Most of the folks using SPARC Linux, like me, use older boxes. They work now, and there isn't a huge number of new systems being sold with the expectation of running Linux. Most of the new SPARC hardware will be running Solaris. Since my Ultra1's work just fine under debian, I don't really care about having up-to-the-minute software on them. If I do, I can still compile the latest kernel, or whatever. I just won't be able to install from an official "release" iso set. I assume there will be unnoficial iso's available, just like always.
And, thankfully, I do have "common" PPC hardware, so I can stay up to date on those boxes with the mainstream releases!
The importance of Apple isn't in Blu-Ray players. It's Blu-Ray burners. DVD Studio Pro will have great support for Blu-Ray, and all the presets in Final cut Pro will assume that you will be making a 50 GB project instead of 30 GB. Sure, there wll be a few other important DVD burning setups used by the very high end and the very low end, but for full featured, reasonably priced setups, Apple will have a significant install base.
A few million independent producers, or a few major studios making a few movies... (Hint, adult entertainers count as "independent," and we all know how significant they are to the uptake of new technology...)
i think the moderators will ignore us, the thread is now fairly old. I am a bit annoyed about the negative mod, but I'm not concerned, as I have plenty of karma.
:)
So, this large dissiciated group is sort of like Open Source Language, right? Then, I ain't be wrong, I'm just forking the language!
Heaven help us if I'm supposed to believe my English prof's about how the language works. I remember one day when one of them was consulting an English grammar reference, and declared, "Wow, I never knew we had *that* tense in English!"
For the life of me, I can't recall the name of the tense. I could probably google it, but don't care. It's what we'd call "Perfect Tense" if we were right-thinking latinophiles.
Given that the applicants used their own logins to perform the "hack," I'd say it's more like they were given a personalised key to the admissions office, and there was a sign on the door saying "free cookies." Since, it was perfectly appropriate for these people to be in the metaphoric admissions office.
But, there is a file cabinet labelled "admissions letters" in the office. It isn't locked, it's just sort of in a corner so you won't likely notice it until somebody points it out. There isn't a sign saying "keep out," or a lock (i.e. file permissions set to prevent you from accessing the file while you are logged in). Now, any reasonable person can see that you probably weren't meant to go into that file cabinet. You are just supposed to be in that office to get the brochures, and application forms. But, I don't think it's at all obvious that you would be denied entry for peeking after somebody pointed out the cabinet.
If there was some special hacking that needed to be done, like entering a poison SQL command in an unprotected form, or overflowing a buffer, then that would be like picking a lock, and obviously you are somewhere that you should be careful not to get caught. But, this was just changing a URL, basically, looking in something that was essentially in open view, unprotected. I almost certainly would look at mine, but I wouldn't try to hack in and change stuff, or anything obviously wrong like that, and I would be pissed if they decided to change their mind because I read the acceptance letter. Sorry, I don't feel like wasting a month of my life because some self-important prick wants to build up the suspense, and not-tell me something which has long since been decided. I sure as hell wouldn't want to spend a month not knowing if I should be looking for work, an apartment, residency rules regarding my driver's license, etc, in a place. Should I start training my replacement at work because I am going off to Harvard, or should I plan on keeping my job because I'm going to nearby state school?
So much is hanging on something like that, that I frankly wouldn't cosider it to be unethical to try and have access to personal information as quickly as possible.
Who says so? do you have their address so I can write a letter of complaint about how they are defining our language? For better or worse, there ain't nobody in charge of English. Usage varies by region and it varies over time. Fexziber to you if you disagree.
Off-site backups. Assume your off-site backup storage facility will have a physical compromise, and somebody will get the passwords on your backup tapes. Your tapes may sit for months or years before it happens, though, so if you rotate, odds are decent that the password will have expired before anybody figures out what they are.
At least, thats my understanding.
It still may be adding some security. Suppose a backup tape headed off site falls off the back of a truck, and somebody decides to try and brute force a few passwords using the encrypted stored passwords. Suppose it takes them a month from when the backup was made until the hacker is able to go onsite to try and login. That means there is only a 2/3 chance that a given password is still valid. If it takes him two months, there is only a 1/3 chance that the password he brute forced is valid.
Sure, he may be able to see that if flower5 doesn't work, maybe he should try flower6, but it certainly doesn't put you any worse off than the user just using "flower," which they would. And, by not rotating, if anybody ever gets a backup tape, then large parts of your organisation is pwned. Unless you have employee turnover higher than the amount of time it takes to brute force a password, of course...
No, Intel is pressing software designers to embrace Intel's 64 bit architecture. Nobody needs any pressing with regards to AMD64, because lots of software is already taking advantage of it, and most of the rest will run fine in 32 bit mode.
Itanium, on the other hand, requires lots of pressing to convince anybody to write for it. Very small market, after all...
50 cents per hour, eh? Interesting. I have started wondering if I shouldn't just start making independedent films. If I could get a few thousand people to pay a dollar for a torrent to an un-DRM'd video file, it would be enough to find microbudget indy work, with college students, and semi-pros. Obviously, it wouldn't be as slick as Star Trek, but with a few grand per episode of budget, you can make do with decent equipment and talented nonames.
The only problem would be that I'd have to pay a lawyer to sue anybody who put the files on Kazaa, or else I'd almost certainly never be able to get people to actually pay for it. I haven't been able to think of a good solution, except for trying to find advertising sponsors, and working them into the productions, so that you can't just skip over the ads. (I.E. The hero would save the day with the sponsor's product, or the bad guy would try to kill people with the competitor's product.)
But, since the distribution would be on the internet, most likely, no local businesses would be interested in advertising. (No guarantee that more than a handful of people in the same state would watch, and all the people in latvia wouldn't care that Bob's has the cheapest stuff in Denver.)
But, being a small independent production, a company that is international, and would be interested in reaching people all over the internet like Coca Cola would probably not be interested in targeting a few thousand geeky downloaders on the internet.
So, anybody have any good ideas for how to do an independent Internet distributed series without DRM?
Zubrin (Guy who wrote case for Mars), who is a bit of a nut, but knows a lot about rocket engines, has suggested that while a reusable system is a good idea, the shuttle is basically built backwards. What we need is a system that has a disposable top, TPS if applicable, etc. But, a reusable first stage booster assembly. The first stage won't be subjected to the same level of thermal stress as the last stage, and so needs much less in the way of protection to be made reusable.
In many cases, there may not even be a reason to bring the last stage back, such as satellite deployment, etc, and the last stage mission requirements will vary so widely that it may not make sense to reuse it even if it is free.