I remember in the early/mid 90's when MO drives were just the bee's knees, an MD drive was made to connect to a mac via SCSI. I don't know why it never took off. I think it offered like 140 MB of storage. I would have liked to seen that drive with an MP3 player connected to it. MD disks are pretty good really. I just always thought MP3 was nicer than ATRAC.
Why not just connect it to a laptop......because you cannot download songs from an iPod onto a computer (without 3rd party software)....because that defeats the purpose of wireless filesharing....then you have to actually borrow someone's ipod and interrupt their listening, while this allows you to grab tunes off their iPod via P2P networking....because hooking up someone's iPod to a computer just to see if they have the song(s) you are looking for is lame and probably fruitless.
Yeah, this solution is inelegant and you probably will not find anyone else sharing tunes on an iPod with a PocketPC, but this shows it is possible and at least some people want it. I would buy one of these if it were just some sort of iPod attachment with BT or 802.11 buit in (Come on, this kind of product is bound to be released now that AP Express has already kind of done a similar thing), but I can't justify buying a PDA which is otherwise useless to me just for this. Right now, there is no way using "just the functionality of the OS" to swap songs from iPod to iPod.
Video files on the sharing services are generally one of these 3 types. I wonder what percent of the "pirated" video falls into each category. I personally have never downloaded any feature films with Aquisition (my pirating SW of choice), but download the hell out of some tv shows. Chappelle's Show, Aqua Teen HF, and Sealab are my personal favs with a few comedy specials thrown up in the mix. I also wonder how illegal my downloading shows is. I could just watch these shows on TV when they come on and tape them, but I would rather have them on my computer for simple ease of access.
Well, computers have played some pretty damn interesting chess in the past. Let's take the Deep Blue-Kasparov matches as a much overused and overhyped example: 1996 game 1: 23. d5 was a brilliant move on deep blue's part. I would hope that I would find such a good move there. Yes, the computer found that move through calculation, but the move itself shows a great understanding of spatial and pawn structure elements of the position.
1997 game 2: this game was riddled with awesome moves, but 23. Rec1 33. Nf5 and 24. Ra3 are the cream of the crop. 23 Rec1 is annoying and almost a human move. The computer is playing almost perfectly here. I think Kasparov has very little counterplay here. Kasparov's queenside is UGLY and he gets little to nothing in compensation. 24. Ra3 just rocks here. Deep blue is playing the Ruy Loppez like he means it. That move made me really wonder about who was behind the computer. The Ruy Lopez is a rich opening with lots of crazy details regarding strategies in each variation, but deep blue nailed them like any world level player who playes the lopez should. Basically, deep blue couldn't have forseen a Lopez variation, but found the correct strategies all the same. Also in this game, Deep Blue psyched Kasparov out of a draw. In his top form, Kasparov WOULD HAVE SEEN the draw. 45... Qe3 does it. At the least, it is a draw by perpetual check, and if Deep Blue tried to stop it he gets crushed. 33. Nf5 is a very "computer" move, but really blows away Kaspy. It doesn't make sense muc really, but brings the bishop into play fast and kind of psyched out Kasparov.
So you see, computers can play interesting chess. These are only 2 great games I have around of a computer-human match. there are others, but theses are the most dramatic.
The real difference between go and chess though is that go can't be solved by computation (very well at least) and chess can. I think to really get a Go program to work well it will really just have to play and lose a lot of games. I am by no means a great go player, but I know that I have learned a hell of a lot more just playing Go and talking about it than I have from any book. Chess skill can be taught in strategy and tactics, but go can only really be learned from experience. Computing in Go is secondary to the learning process, intuition is key.
the problem with that is that people will still go see movies that suck and even like them. I base this on my perusal of local movie showtimes at Amazon.com. The lowest rated movie of all the ones in my area is "White Chicks" which I was kind of actually wanting to go see (I think the wayans brothers are funny, not very deep/meaningful, but funny nonetheless). That movie got 3/5 stars, a cinematic D-, but still passing. I think that there are some bombs dropped on the silver screen nowadays, but even the crap that we get shoved in our faces is worth seeing to some people. Gigli was bad, but a few people saw it anyways and it probably made some money for a few people. I go to movies to be entertained and forget my cares for a while. It really doesn't matter what's on. I've never seen/read any Harry Potter or Shrek before, but my GF and I went to the drive in to see Shrek2 and Harry Potter3 the other day. The movie itself is secondary to me to the act of going to the movies.
Little bit of a niche market there. I'd say it appeals more to the 18-35 still living at home guys who need a portable device for all their pr0n viewing needs. In other words, the/. crowd.
The reason for mail in rebates is that they bank on people not sending them in. Say, if about 60% of the rebates are redeemed, then they are only losing out the equivalent of $60 off the retail price per unit. I'd say a lot of us have had rebates that we forget about or just say f-it because of the stuff required. I remember I had one that you had to send your old phone to some charity, get a voucher from them, and send it in with a lot of personal info along with a purchase receipt, the UPC on the box, and your last bill.
Re:Not surprising, and not bad.
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RIP G4 PowerMac
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· Score: 1
The funny thing though is that having OS9 installed on a separte bootable partition makes OS X almost completely insecure. Booting into 9 gives the ability to access anything on the OS X volumes.
Re:Not surprising, and not bad.
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RIP G4 PowerMac
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I had for a long time used Classic apps (from 1989-2003), but switched over to OS X when I got my new G5 in December. I didn't realize until LAST WEEK that I do not have Classic installed on my Computer. I just went and got new versions of all my apps that I really use and installed them. I was even able to find replacements for a few old games that my mom played on her home computer when I switched it to 10.3 (one had graphics done in MacPaint). I think that if you have an app that does not run well in Classic mode then you should probably voice your opinion to the publisher. Truthfully I haven't programmed any for OS X, but I can't see why it would be so terribly hard to port a program from OS 9 to OS X. If it is properly "carbonized" is should run just fine, right? Then again, if a program hasn't been updated in 3-5 years and is crucial to the task at hand, you should probably look for alternatives. Broken functionality is a side effect of progress in the computer world. Perfect backwards compatibility is rarely even close to being so.
I think the only way that Apple really can respond is to put together a new DRM scheme that is harder to crack and is more restrictive. If you're so worried about your precious music files than go out and buy a damn cd. No DRM, no compression. Or, just download a non-drm copy of the music from gnutella (which after you purchase a legal copy should be okay). I am just bitter because these people who are out trying to break every DRM scheme will eventually make the RIAA and labels not want to put music online. People said that they pirated music because they can't purchase it online, but now that they can purchase it online, the few who are trying to get more than they paid for (If you buy DRM music, you have no right to break the DRM) are likely going to mess it all up for the rest of us.
Step 1: find cool cd in record store Step 2: take CD home and rip losslessly to Hard drive Step 3: Burn copy of said CD Step 4: scan cover art Step 5: sell CD for $5 at used CD store This means I end up paying $2-8 for each CD and have both a lossless digital copy and a CD copy. Screw a bunch of filesharing, I can get CDs cheap enough thank you.
I can't believe that Hypercard was still was just recently killed. I always thought that Hypercard was WAY more powerful than people let on. It was really the Mac OS of programming. On the surface level, it was an easy to use, fairly limited, programming environment. What most people didn't know though is that Hypercard was capable of just about anything any other language could do at the time. The "guts" of Hypercard were hidden from the user (and most programmers), but with some effort you could have a tool that was flexible as hell.
Re:Now how do they expect to land a probe on ACID?
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Melting Europa
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· Score: 1
Man, there's no way I could land a probe on Europa while on acid. That stuff messes with my head too much. Give me a couple hits and I would be mixing up feet and meters all over the place. It sure does make 2001 make a lot more sense though.
The above post is simply incorrect. Artists are usually given loans for promotional videos which have to be paid back to the record labels, also they can write off a lot of their promotion as business expenses. Also, record companies can't really pay to have videos or songs played, it's illegal. The truth is that record companies exist mainly to perpetuate themselves. Videos were created mainly to close the airwaves to anyone without the cash. Before videos, singles were the only real mass promotion channel and were cheap and easy to release. Now that you have to have a video in order to get airplay, the cost of entering the distribution channels has increased to levels where corporate power is needed to be popular. Thus, record companies discourage artists from being independent and force them to sign with a label so that they have a chance of being heard.
So shut up before I have to drop any more knowledge on your ass.
Gotta love a vehicle that is balanced by gyros. I mean hey, If I am hungry, I can always just eat the balances for my vehicle and if they break, I can just get replacements from my favorite greek restaurant. Gyros Rock!!!
GRS 1915+105 has been known about for quite a while actually. It was first seen as a strong x-ray source in the early 90's. http://www.ufoinfo.com/space/shockwaves.shtml is a great article giving info about this microquasar.
Let's see. I found the radius of the event horizon to be about 41.8 Km. That's pretty darn huge. The formula I used was 2GM/c^2. Based on the data that the mass is about 14 Solar masses, M is roughly equal to 2.8e31.
TS/SCI is now handled by JWICS, but each Regional Node of DMS has a connection to JWICS. AUTODIN may still be active, though because in April '98 the pentagon said it would be maintained for Nuclear command and control's EAM traffic.
I'm just a college student with an internet connection. All this information I have is freely available. www.fas.org has quite a bit of interesting info. I'm suprised that this is still allowed.
These aren't like networks you have probably ever seen though. The current government "secure networks" aren't VPN's or anything. They run on their own lines between very secure (heavily guarded, extremely redundant security) data centers (ie. DMS has 2 in europe, 2 in the pacific, and like 10 in the USA). The traffic between data centers is encrypted with proprietary DoD software. From data centers to the end user, data is encrypted (once again, with proprietary software) and is read using an off the shelf e-mail client. So, for your lucky spy/hacker to really hack the network, he/she would have to hack either the Encryption for which he or she will never be able to find the algorithm, or just hack the computer of one user. Even then though, the hacker would only have one side of the communications and most of it would probably be of little interest as the DoD uses a 7-12x random overwriting scheme to destroy sensitive computer data. Intercepting transmissions between the user and the data center might be interesting, but still this is a Departement of Defense Computer. I think they keep pretty thorough logs and any exploit would be quickly terminated.
AUTODIN has been pretty much been replaced by DMS. I'm pretty sure that now DMS handles Unclassified through Top Secret and Specat messages. Basically it is just a secure e-mail only network though. It does not handle the machine-machine communications that AUTODIN handled (and still does AFAIK). DMS does use commercial e-mail programs (Outlook Express, IIRC) and some off the shelf hardware, so I doubt you could consider it "unhackable".
Firewire is really quite slow. A firewire drive is generally just an IDE drive with a bridge chip. The bridge chip allows the IDE drive to work on a Firewire bus. This leads to severe bottlenecking in the bridge chip. Some bridges, specifically the Oxford 911 chip bridges, are a bit faster, but performance is not quite up to par with ATA-66. I don't know of any right now that use an ATA-100 bridge, but the next generation of Firewire drives should support ATA-100 and will likely be nearly as fast as an ATA-100 drive. Until native firewire drives become commonplace though, Firewire will not approach its theoretical bandwidth.
Leaves out the coolest "tiny app"
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Tiny Apps
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Probably the coolest really tiny application I have ever seen is.the.product. It is a demo in 64k. For a while, a bunch of friends and I were having a debate about how it works. It's simply amazing all the 3d work that can be done in 64k. True, it is Windows only (DX8 required), but the results are amazing. You can find it at http://www.theproduct.de
True, there were terrorist attacks a few weeks ago. True, lots of people died. Some people (read: most people) have moved on with their lives. All the whining and crying in the world won't do a lick of good now. The only thing we can do is try to make some sense of what happened and try to live our lives.
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I remember in the early/mid 90's when MO drives were just the bee's knees, an MD drive was made to connect to a mac via SCSI. I don't know why it never took off. I think it offered like 140 MB of storage. I would have liked to seen that drive with an MP3 player connected to it. MD disks are pretty good really. I just always thought MP3 was nicer than ATRAC.
Why not just connect it to a laptop... ...because you cannot download songs from an iPod onto a computer (without 3rd party software). ...because that defeats the purpose of wireless filesharing. ...then you have to actually borrow someone's ipod and interrupt their listening, while this allows you to grab tunes off their iPod via P2P networking. ...because hooking up someone's iPod to a computer just to see if they have the song(s) you are looking for is lame and probably fruitless.
Yeah, this solution is inelegant and you probably will not find anyone else sharing tunes on an iPod with a PocketPC, but this shows it is possible and at least some people want it. I would buy one of these if it were just some sort of iPod attachment with BT or 802.11 buit in (Come on, this kind of product is bound to be released now that AP Express has already kind of done a similar thing), but I can't justify buying a PDA which is otherwise useless to me just for this. Right now, there is no way using "just the functionality of the OS" to swap songs from iPod to iPod.
Video files on the sharing services are generally one of these 3 types. I wonder what percent of the "pirated" video falls into each category. I personally have never downloaded any feature films with Aquisition (my pirating SW of choice), but download the hell out of some tv shows. Chappelle's Show, Aqua Teen HF, and Sealab are my personal favs with a few comedy specials thrown up in the mix. I also wonder how illegal my downloading shows is. I could just watch these shows on TV when they come on and tape them, but I would rather have them on my computer for simple ease of access.
Well, computers have played some pretty damn interesting chess in the past. Let's take the Deep Blue-Kasparov matches as a much overused and overhyped example:
1996 game 1: 23. d5 was a brilliant move on deep blue's part. I would hope that I would find such a good move there. Yes, the computer found that move through calculation, but the move itself shows a great understanding of spatial and pawn structure elements of the position.
1997 game 2: this game was riddled with awesome moves, but 23. Rec1 33. Nf5 and 24. Ra3 are the cream of the crop.
23 Rec1 is annoying and almost a human move. The computer is playing almost perfectly here. I think Kasparov has very little counterplay here. Kasparov's queenside is UGLY and he gets little to nothing in compensation.
24. Ra3 just rocks here. Deep blue is playing the Ruy Loppez like he means it. That move made me really wonder about who was behind the computer. The Ruy Lopez is a rich opening with lots of crazy details regarding strategies in each variation, but deep blue nailed them like any world level player who playes the lopez should. Basically, deep blue couldn't have forseen a Lopez variation, but found the correct strategies all the same. Also in this game, Deep Blue psyched Kasparov out of a draw. In his top form, Kasparov WOULD HAVE SEEN the draw. 45... Qe3 does it. At the least, it is a draw by perpetual check, and if Deep Blue tried to stop it he gets crushed.
33. Nf5 is a very "computer" move, but really blows away Kaspy. It doesn't make sense muc really, but brings the bishop into play fast and kind of psyched out Kasparov.
So you see, computers can play interesting chess. These are only 2 great games I have around of a computer-human match. there are others, but theses are the most dramatic.
The real difference between go and chess though is that go can't be solved by computation (very well at least) and chess can. I think to really get a Go program to work well it will really just have to play and lose a lot of games. I am by no means a great go player, but I know that I have learned a hell of a lot more just playing Go and talking about it than I have from any book. Chess skill can be taught in strategy and tactics, but go can only really be learned from experience. Computing in Go is secondary to the learning process, intuition is key.
the problem with that is that people will still go see movies that suck and even like them. I base this on my perusal of local movie showtimes at Amazon.com. The lowest rated movie of all the ones in my area is "White Chicks" which I was kind of actually wanting to go see (I think the wayans brothers are funny, not very deep/meaningful, but funny nonetheless). That movie got 3/5 stars, a cinematic D-, but still passing. I think that there are some bombs dropped on the silver screen nowadays, but even the crap that we get shoved in our faces is worth seeing to some people. Gigli was bad, but a few people saw it anyways and it probably made some money for a few people. I go to movies to be entertained and forget my cares for a while. It really doesn't matter what's on. I've never seen/read any Harry Potter or Shrek before, but my GF and I went to the drive in to see Shrek2 and Harry Potter3 the other day. The movie itself is secondary to me to the act of going to the movies.
Little bit of a niche market there. I'd say it appeals more to the 18-35 still living at home guys who need a portable device for all their pr0n viewing needs. In other words, the /. crowd.
:-P
Come on, can't you nerds take a joke?
The reason for mail in rebates is that they bank on people not sending them in. Say, if about 60% of the rebates are redeemed, then they are only losing out the equivalent of $60 off the retail price per unit. I'd say a lot of us have had rebates that we forget about or just say f-it because of the stuff required. I remember I had one that you had to send your old phone to some charity, get a voucher from them, and send it in with a lot of personal info along with a purchase receipt, the UPC on the box, and your last bill.
The funny thing though is that having OS9 installed on a separte bootable partition makes OS X almost completely insecure. Booting into 9 gives the ability to access anything on the OS X volumes.
I had for a long time used Classic apps (from 1989-2003), but switched over to OS X when I got my new G5 in December. I didn't realize until LAST WEEK that I do not have Classic installed on my Computer. I just went and got new versions of all my apps that I really use and installed them. I was even able to find replacements for a few old games that my mom played on her home computer when I switched it to 10.3 (one had graphics done in MacPaint). I think that if you have an app that does not run well in Classic mode then you should probably voice your opinion to the publisher. Truthfully I haven't programmed any for OS X, but I can't see why it would be so terribly hard to port a program from OS 9 to OS X. If it is properly "carbonized" is should run just fine, right? Then again, if a program hasn't been updated in 3-5 years and is crucial to the task at hand, you should probably look for alternatives. Broken functionality is a side effect of progress in the computer world. Perfect backwards compatibility is rarely even close to being so.
I think the only way that Apple really can respond is to put together a new DRM scheme that is harder to crack and is more restrictive. If you're so worried about your precious music files than go out and buy a damn cd. No DRM, no compression. Or, just download a non-drm copy of the music from gnutella (which after you purchase a legal copy should be okay). I am just bitter because these people who are out trying to break every DRM scheme will eventually make the RIAA and labels not want to put music online. People said that they pirated music because they can't purchase it online, but now that they can purchase it online, the few who are trying to get more than they paid for (If you buy DRM music, you have no right to break the DRM) are likely going to mess it all up for the rest of us.
Step 1: find cool cd in record store
Step 2: take CD home and rip losslessly to Hard drive
Step 3: Burn copy of said CD
Step 4: scan cover art
Step 5: sell CD for $5 at used CD store
This means I end up paying $2-8 for each CD and have both a lossless digital copy and a CD copy. Screw a bunch of filesharing, I can get CDs cheap enough thank you.
I can't believe that Hypercard was still was just recently killed. I always thought that Hypercard was WAY more powerful than people let on. It was really the Mac OS of programming. On the surface level, it was an easy to use, fairly limited, programming environment. What most people didn't know though is that Hypercard was capable of just about anything any other language could do at the time. The "guts" of Hypercard were hidden from the user (and most programmers), but with some effort you could have a tool that was flexible as hell.
Man, there's no way I could land a probe on Europa while on acid. That stuff messes with my head too much. Give me a couple hits and I would be mixing up feet and meters all over the place. It sure does make 2001 make a lot more sense though.
The above post is simply incorrect. Artists are usually given loans for promotional videos which have to be paid back to the record labels, also they can write off a lot of their promotion as business expenses. Also, record companies can't really pay to have videos or songs played, it's illegal. The truth is that record companies exist mainly to perpetuate themselves. Videos were created mainly to close the airwaves to anyone without the cash. Before videos, singles were the only real mass promotion channel and were cheap and easy to release. Now that you have to have a video in order to get airplay, the cost of entering the distribution channels has increased to levels where corporate power is needed to be popular. Thus, record companies discourage artists from being independent and force them to sign with a label so that they have a chance of being heard.
So shut up before I have to drop any more knowledge on your ass.
I know that Bluegrass International has a network that is available, as does the Airport in Hilo, Hawaii. A few others have this too.
Gotta love a vehicle that is balanced by gyros. I mean hey, If I am hungry, I can always just eat the balances for my vehicle and if they break, I can just get replacements from my favorite greek restaurant. Gyros Rock!!!
GRS 1915+105 has been known about for quite a while actually. It was first seen as a strong x-ray source in the early 90's. http://www.ufoinfo.com/space/shockwaves.shtml is a great article giving info about this microquasar.
Let's see. I found the radius of the event horizon to be about 41.8 Km. That's pretty darn huge. The formula I used was 2GM/c^2. Based on the data that the mass is about 14 Solar masses, M is roughly equal to 2.8e31.
TS/SCI is now handled by JWICS, but each Regional Node of DMS has a connection to JWICS. AUTODIN may still be active, though because in April '98 the pentagon said it would be maintained for Nuclear command and control's EAM traffic.
I'm just a college student with an internet connection. All this information I have is freely available. www.fas.org has quite a bit of interesting info. I'm suprised that this is still allowed.
These aren't like networks you have probably ever seen though. The current government "secure networks" aren't VPN's or anything. They run on their own lines between very secure (heavily guarded, extremely redundant security) data centers (ie. DMS has 2 in europe, 2 in the pacific, and like 10 in the USA). The traffic between data centers is encrypted with proprietary DoD software. From data centers to the end user, data is encrypted (once again, with proprietary software) and is read using an off the shelf e-mail client. So, for your lucky spy/hacker to really hack the network, he/she would have to hack either the Encryption for which he or she will never be able to find the algorithm, or just hack the computer of one user. Even then though, the hacker would only have one side of the communications and most of it would probably be of little interest as the DoD uses a 7-12x random overwriting scheme to destroy sensitive computer data. Intercepting transmissions between the user and the data center might be interesting, but still this is a Departement of Defense Computer. I think they keep pretty thorough logs and any exploit would be quickly terminated.
AUTODIN has been pretty much been replaced by DMS. I'm pretty sure that now DMS handles Unclassified through Top Secret and Specat messages. Basically it is just a secure e-mail only network though. It does not handle the machine-machine communications that AUTODIN handled (and still does AFAIK). DMS does use commercial e-mail programs (Outlook Express, IIRC) and some off the shelf hardware, so I doubt you could consider it "unhackable".
Firewire is really quite slow. A firewire drive is generally just an IDE drive with a bridge chip. The bridge chip allows the IDE drive to work on a Firewire bus. This leads to severe bottlenecking in the bridge chip. Some bridges, specifically the Oxford 911 chip bridges, are a bit faster, but performance is not quite up to par with ATA-66. I don't know of any right now that use an ATA-100 bridge, but the next generation of Firewire drives should support ATA-100 and will likely be nearly as fast as an ATA-100 drive. Until native firewire drives become commonplace though, Firewire will not approach its theoretical bandwidth.
Probably the coolest really tiny application I have ever seen is .the .product. It is a demo in 64k. For a while, a bunch of friends and I were having a debate about how it works. It's simply amazing all the 3d work that can be done in 64k. True, it is Windows only (DX8 required), but the results are amazing. You can find it at http://www.theproduct.de
True, there were terrorist attacks a few weeks ago. True, lots of people died. Some people (read: most people) have moved on with their lives. All the whining and crying in the world won't do a lick of good now. The only thing we can do is try to make some sense of what happened and try to live our lives.