It's just another input device. The drawings look nice, but I wonder how many people the employees of the company persuaded to submit this to Slashdot?
At least it makes a change from PS2 stories, or are they planning a version for that too?
JK said: Now only a fraction of Americans (recent Pew Center for Media Research surveys suggest about 18%) watch network newscasts regularly. Few younger people watch them at all.
I read ;on the BBC a few weeks ago that 50% of the US voters base their opinions on Saturday Night Live and other similar "political" shows, and it jumps up to 80% for the under 30s. Yes, they seem to be deserting the traditional news sources, but don't assume they are flocking to rational debate on the web.
but, more alarmingly, game programmers, reared in a world where they only had to worry about one processor on a console, are now recoiling in horror as they struggle through the elements of parallel processing, high-performance computing architectures, and technical documentation that has been politely described as "obscure."
I imagine it's true for the PSX and other 1st gen consoles, but even back in the Amiga days you could get the best performance by directly addressing the graphics chip to do parallel processing, etc.
Hell, the same could even be said for the Pentium with its multiple pipelines, and with the fancy graphics cards, but the majority of developers just forget about it and let DirectX or the compiler work out how to do it well enough, or they just go and licence the Quake, etc, engine where someone else has gone to the trouble of hand-optimising.
As with all new systems, there's going to be a learning process. Go back to the launch of the PSX and look at some of the games you went WOW over, and compare them with the speed and complexity of new titles for exactly the same handware, now that developers have had a chance to work out how to squeeze every last drop out of the system.
And given the success of Linux, obsucre technical documentation seems to be no hurdle to the average programmer...
I'm somewhat surprised at the mild approach of both candidates. 'Somewhat' because they can't afford to 'hurt' a large amount of people and loose votes. Yet despite this fact both make it quite clear that they are against 'the violation of copyright'. I don't see any negative comments on Napster here, just illegal activities.
It's the politican's job to be as vague as possible and offend as few voters as possible. Both their answers were "the Internet's great, but wouldn't it be greater if the deserving people got their cash?", which is not really going to lose any votes.
Thankfully, I'm not a US citizen, as such woolyness would make me not bother voting at all. At least in my home country many of the politicians haven't been spin-doctored into blatent pandering to the masses.
As others have pointed out, the region code is a set of five bits indicating which region a player is set for. Region-free DVDs have all bits set, and region-changeable ones can set whichever bit they like.
However, from my experience working directly with the guys producing Universal (and other DVCC-sourced) titles, they have always tried to test the region coding for just the exact bit set only, (an and), not just an or on the flag.
Damn, the Speccie was the one and only PC I ever truly understood - I owned a disassembled and commented ROM book - they packed that all into 16K too, with room to spare!
This article seems full of half-truths and outright fallicies. SDMI is *not* watermarks or nothing, as strongly suggested. Most of the SDMI-compliant software I am aware of uses the watermark to screen the importation of MP3 and CDA data, but are also combined with stuff to play encrypted, digital rights managed content.
In the next few months, there is (perhaps...) going to be three or four major roll-outs of DRMed content in the US and Japan, and if I don't read about DeDRM on slashdot within a few days of release, I fear that Napster et al have won!
Does one exist? If it does, this must be a four-finger topic, what with the old favourites of freedom of speech, sticking it to "The Man" (I still haven't worked out what it is, and mustn't The Man be fed up with all that glue in his hair?), the linked story having the rather dubious "We support Sega's fight against piracy, but we're only a news service, honest!", and so on.
Maybe I'll write a Gnutella clone that clearly violates the GPL, just to confuse you all.
It should also be noted the only reason we knew who planted the bomb on the plane in Lockerbie Scottland was because we monitored this traffic.
So why are there two Lybians in the dock? I have read enough reporting that suggests even the CIA had the Syrians in the frame for the first few months before switching to the politically more acceptable Lybians.
Although I tend to fall asleep during Katz's posts, one statement jumped out at me:
It's been years since a majority of Americans even bothered to vote in a national election.
Well, a quick bit of research with a search engine gave me this page which shows that every year up until 1992 was over 50%, and if you browse the rest of the site, you see that it was 49.08% for 1996. Admittedly, if you count those not eligible to vote, you would drop below 50% for most of the historical data, but surely Katz is above lying with statictics to further his cause?
Damn, I'm sure sueing FC would have been a sign of an impending self-fuck!
I love that site - watching the self-implosion of the dot-non-ecomony is just so entertaining, especially today's ironic report that DomainAuctions.com was auctioning, err, it's own address!
First, the competition seems to be about removing the watermark or circumventing other encryption, not using an audiojacker to capture the output, as that's hardly rocket science.
Second, each CD/downloaded track will not have different watermarks. The most that's planned for in the spec is identifying the distributor.
Third, the common perception that all SDMI preople haven't a clue is false. There are some stupid people (I'm sure OSS projects have their share too) but there's also a lot of very clever people too, especially in the encryption field.
There isn't a single CEO of a major corporation who wouldn't get fired in a flash if he or she decided to forego profits in favor of workers or community
Well, the founder of one of the largest companies in the world had this to say, and his policies are carried on by the directors who have followed him.
Do these things ever shed any light on the subject? Or do they just provide a forum for knee-jerk "RIAA/Censorship/The Man Sucks" posts? As you say yourselves:
Can everyone please just drop this now
Please! Slashdot, take a lead and make the dropping start with yourselves.
And I don't see that trying to be a little polite (not that f*ck* is much of a figleaf) counts as "censorship". What information has been surpressed?
Umm, such as when K-Mart or whoever announced they would card people buying "M" games, or Indinapolis (sp) introduced legislation for separating violent arcade games. That was evil as it was a big bad company violating first amendment rights, but as it's only plucky little Slashdot here, well, it's just an asterisk, so what's the problem?
"Higgs boson"? Sounds like a character from Captain Pugwash to me.
There's been Charm, Up, Down, Strange, and others I forget. In 10 years time will we discover that Higgs boson is made up of Shoe, Ni!, Migrane, and That Stuff Behind The Fridge?
- The suppression of the shooting events in the news coverage (especially in the US - which takes most of the gold in these events).
But look at this page for instance and see the author addressing "There really is no explanation for why Americans have never won
an Olympic medal in biathlon." Of course, the USA won none of the biathalon medals at Nagano either. If you mean Summer shooting too, well, this page suggests otherwise too.
Oops. You then said:
so gun-unfriendly countries (like Japan) can avoid citizen unrest when their people see the athletes training and realize that people in other countries are freer than they are
Ahh yes, Japan, where there are no imported US shows on TV, the cinemas remove all references to guns from films, especially anime, and there was rioting in the streets when a TV program accidentally mentioned that all Swiss homes have firearms.
Sheesh, the above sort of uninformed ranting gets modded up to 3?
Is the problem that US print & TV news sucks?
on
The New Mediascape
·
· Score: 1
I've often travelled to the USA, and I am no longer surprised at how bad the old media news is there. Network news consists of many less-than-a-minute stories that barely report the facts, let alone analyse, or conversely they go over the top with minutiae.
For example, I happened to be in the US when Kennedy's plane and that one off LA crashed, both last year. All news channels broadcast hours of live coverage, with such fascinating scenes as 15-minute helicoptor shots of a boat bobbing about in the pitch dark and nothing happening!
And don't get me started on how insular the news is. I get more international news from one hour of (bilingual) news here in Japan than I get from a whole week in the US.
The press is not much better, judging by USA Today and WSJ. At least the WSJ occasionally has interesting feature articles, but they both seem to work on the principle of "Never mind the quality, feel the width". Again, my English newspaper in Japan has more news (rather than just padding) - and acknowedges that there are actually countries other than the US - in its 32 pages than the 5cm-high combined thickness of the WSJ and USA Today.
I can't comment on the web media, as my news is 90% from the Beeb (ironically from the Old Media giant that is being criticised here, but maybe not ironic, as if to underline my argument that US media sucks) so I have little cause to visit US sites.
Many of you are rightly worried about which candidate will be the best to vote for in terms of the jobs, the technology, and the freedom we all value so much.
The "we all" phrase is the one that got me. It to me implies an assumption that *everyone* is a USA citizen, that *everyone* here agrees with the party line here on the three issues mentioned, and that "many" people seem unable to make up their mind without the help of Slashdot. They've all got web sites, you know.
I would hope the majority of readers here are intelligent enough to make up their own minds without needing a spoonfed opinion because, for instance, candidate X said "Linux Rocks".
And finally, there's more important issues than your own job, geek toys and freedom to ignore IP. What about environmental issues, Son of Star Wars (which both main candidates seem to support, but seems set to trigger a new arms race) or crime and punishment? These three issues will affect your life more than any Slashdot-specific hot topics.
People seem to have the impression that the Watermark is a lengthy string of bits identifying the purchaser, etc, but as can be seen here, page 21, it is merely two bits of data!
Also, there are SDMI Phase 1-compliant devices out there, this one for example, coming to the US in November, for which I wrote some of the PC software.
And no, I don't know anything about how to hack the Verance watermark, we just got a module from them.
The Yahoo article notes that 60,000 people have signed the boycott petition, and if each of those doesn't buy one CD that they would otherwise buy, it would cost the recording industry $1 million.
No, it costs the record industry about $333,333, the wholesale/shipping industry $333,333 and the retail business $333,333. Anyway, the web users probably buy via Amazon, etc at a discount to that figure.
And for the record, I buy all my CDs at about ¥2300 or so, and don't even MP3 from the rental store at ¥150 a night.
Slashdot Mirror
At least it makes a change from PS2 stories, or are they planning a version for that too?
I read ;on the BBC a few weeks ago that 50% of the US voters base their opinions on Saturday Night Live and other similar "political" shows, and it jumps up to 80% for the under 30s. Yes, they seem to be deserting the traditional news sources, but don't assume they are flocking to rational debate on the web.
I imagine it's true for the PSX and other 1st gen consoles, but even back in the Amiga days you could get the best performance by directly addressing the graphics chip to do parallel processing, etc.
Hell, the same could even be said for the Pentium with its multiple pipelines, and with the fancy graphics cards, but the majority of developers just forget about it and let DirectX or the compiler work out how to do it well enough, or they just go and licence the Quake, etc, engine where someone else has gone to the trouble of hand-optimising.
As with all new systems, there's going to be a learning process. Go back to the launch of the PSX and look at some of the games you went WOW over, and compare them with the speed and complexity of new titles for exactly the same handware, now that developers have had a chance to work out how to squeeze every last drop out of the system.
And given the success of Linux, obsucre technical documentation seems to be no hurdle to the average programmer...
It's the politican's job to be as vague as possible and offend as few voters as possible. Both their answers were "the Internet's great, but wouldn't it be greater if the deserving people got their cash?", which is not really going to lose any votes.
Thankfully, I'm not a US citizen, as such woolyness would make me not bother voting at all. At least in my home country many of the politicians haven't been spin-doctored into blatent pandering to the masses.
That's just the handy second meaning - the real meaning is an abbreviation for "Do Communications over the Mobile Network"
However, from my experience working directly with the guys producing Universal (and other DVCC-sourced) titles, they have always tried to test the region coding for just the exact bit set only, (an and), not just an or on the flag.
Damn, the Speccie was the one and only PC I ever truly understood - I owned a disassembled and commented ROM book - they packed that all into 16K too, with room to spare!
Ahh, nostalgia, it's not what it used to be!
In the next few months, there is (perhaps...) going to be three or four major roll-outs of DRMed content in the US and Japan, and if I don't read about DeDRM on slashdot within a few days of release, I fear that Napster et al have won!
Maybe I'll write a Gnutella clone that clearly violates the GPL, just to confuse you all.
So why are there two Lybians in the dock? I have read enough reporting that suggests even the CIA had the Syrians in the frame for the first few months before switching to the politically more acceptable Lybians.
It's been years since a majority of Americans even bothered to vote in a national election.
Well, a quick bit of research with a search engine gave me this page which shows that every year up until 1992 was over 50%, and if you browse the rest of the site, you see that it was 49.08% for 1996. Admittedly, if you count those not eligible to vote, you would drop below 50% for most of the historical data, but surely Katz is above lying with statictics to further his cause?
I love that site - watching the self-implosion of the dot-non-ecomony is just so entertaining, especially today's ironic report that DomainAuctions.com was auctioning, err, it's own address!
Second, each CD/downloaded track will not have different watermarks. The most that's planned for in the spec is identifying the distributor.
Third, the common perception that all SDMI preople haven't a clue is false. There are some stupid people (I'm sure OSS projects have their share too) but there's also a lot of very clever people too, especially in the encryption field.
There isn't a single CEO of a major corporation who wouldn't get fired in a flash if he or she decided to forego profits in favor of workers or community
Well, the founder of one of the largest companies in the world had this to say, and his policies are carried on by the directors who have followed him.
Can everyone please just drop this now
Please! Slashdot, take a lead and make the dropping start with yourselves.
The by-line for the story is ZD UK, so a visit to their web site tells me that CeBit say they did *not* ban Creative.
Umm, such as when K-Mart or whoever announced they would card people buying "M" games, or Indinapolis (sp) introduced legislation for separating violent arcade games. That was evil as it was a big bad company violating first amendment rights, but as it's only plucky little Slashdot here, well, it's just an asterisk, so what's the problem?
Fucking hypocrits.
There's been Charm, Up, Down, Strange, and others I forget. In 10 years time will we discover that Higgs boson is made up of Shoe, Ni!, Migrane, and That Stuff Behind The Fridge?
- The suppression of the shooting events in the news coverage (especially in the US - which takes most of the gold in these events).
But look at this page for instance and see the author addressing "There really is no explanation for why Americans have never won an Olympic medal in biathlon." Of course, the USA won none of the biathalon medals at Nagano either. If you mean Summer shooting too, well, this page suggests otherwise too.
Oops. You then said:
so gun-unfriendly countries (like Japan) can avoid citizen unrest when their people see the athletes training and realize that people in other countries are freer than they are
Ahh yes, Japan, where there are no imported US shows on TV, the cinemas remove all references to guns from films, especially anime, and there was rioting in the streets when a TV program accidentally mentioned that all Swiss homes have firearms.
Sheesh, the above sort of uninformed ranting gets modded up to 3?
For example, I happened to be in the US when Kennedy's plane and that one off LA crashed, both last year. All news channels broadcast hours of live coverage, with such fascinating scenes as 15-minute helicoptor shots of a boat bobbing about in the pitch dark and nothing happening!
And don't get me started on how insular the news is. I get more international news from one hour of (bilingual) news here in Japan than I get from a whole week in the US.
The press is not much better, judging by USA Today and WSJ. At least the WSJ occasionally has interesting feature articles, but they both seem to work on the principle of "Never mind the quality, feel the width". Again, my English newspaper in Japan has more news (rather than just padding) - and acknowedges that there are actually countries other than the US - in its 32 pages than the 5cm-high combined thickness of the WSJ and USA Today.
I can't comment on the web media, as my news is 90% from the Beeb (ironically from the Old Media giant that is being criticised here, but maybe not ironic, as if to underline my argument that US media sucks) so I have little cause to visit US sites.
Many of you are rightly worried about which candidate will be the best to vote for in terms of the jobs, the technology, and the freedom we all value so much.
The "we all" phrase is the one that got me. It to me implies an assumption that *everyone* is a USA citizen, that *everyone* here agrees with the party line here on the three issues mentioned, and that "many" people seem unable to make up their mind without the help of Slashdot. They've all got web sites, you know.
I would hope the majority of readers here are intelligent enough to make up their own minds without needing a spoonfed opinion because, for instance, candidate X said "Linux Rocks".
And finally, there's more important issues than your own job, geek toys and freedom to ignore IP. What about environmental issues, Son of Star Wars (which both main candidates seem to support, but seems set to trigger a new arms race) or crime and punishment? These three issues will affect your life more than any Slashdot-specific hot topics.
Also, there are SDMI Phase 1-compliant devices out there, this one for example, coming to the US in November, for which I wrote some of the PC software.
And no, I don't know anything about how to hack the Verance watermark, we just got a module from them.
No, it costs the record industry about $333,333, the wholesale/shipping industry $333,333 and the retail business $333,333. Anyway, the web users probably buy via Amazon, etc at a discount to that figure.
And for the record, I buy all my CDs at about ¥2300 or so, and don't even MP3 from the rental store at ¥150 a night.
I bet Yahoo would give Mr. Serious 5 million dollars just to go away. I'd give Mr Serious $5 million to just go away too!
Surely all Internet businesses are non-profit?