There are many posts here about the NSA and testing software for security, and a few arguments about their Security-Enhanced Linux project. From the NSA's Security-Enhanced Linux FAQ:
Linux was chosen as the platform for the work because of its growing success and open development environment. Linux provides an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that this functionality can be successful in a mainstream operating system and, at the same time, contribute to the security of a widely used system. A Linux platform also offers an excellent opportunity for this work to receive the widest possible review and perhaps provide the foundation for additional security research by others.
For once I'm rather relieved that Big Brother is watching...and realizing the point, and even helping the cause. Go USA.
I do not understand this scheme, but then again I'm not expert on Redbook CD formats or the way they are modified to create this protection scheme.
The inner track is audio.
The outter track is data with bad sectors etc.
Doesnt' a CD begin from the inner tracks and progress outwards (opposite of a vinyl record)? Wouldn't this allow the drive to see the audio tracks first? Or would a computer CD drive go for the data which is mapped in the TOC to the outter track first as opposed to a regular CD player which says "skip the data BS and move to audio track 1"?
If anyone can explain how this works, I'm pretty sure you're not violating the DMCA...
IANAL, but isn't there some clause in copyright law stating that you can produce a derivative work using sampled music royalty- and permission-free as long as you sample less than 4 bars?
I was under the impression that this was how MC Hammer's "You Can't Touch This" was not only possible but inpsired (it's ripped from that "Superfreak" song, the name of the artist escapes me at the moment), as well as many works by Weird Al Yankovic. Does this apply to only parodies? I'm pretty sure if the song is a remix of the sampled song you need permission no matter what, but for simply taking a small clip for yor own purposes is legal.
I know for a fact in techno/house/other electronic music many producers rip drums and hi hats from existing records because it saves production time, especially if you find the sound you where trying for already created. Of course, most of these producers probably don't give a sh*t because they realize it's no biggie...
I hope someone can answer this because it may mean I need to strip a phatty lil Biz Markie sample from my latest:-D
The real problem with this is that is just now, within say the last 5 years or so, becomming a common practice. Sure, we've had open protocols for many more years than that, but c'mon, what about all the businesses who where convinced by vendors that their proprietary stuff was "more well suited for your particular application"? They're gonna have a hell of a time.
I cite as an example the local hospital here about 5-6 years ago began updating their old VAX-style mainfame and VT100 terminals (from probably the 70s sometime) to shiny "new" Windows 95 and NT machines. They spent about $1 million on it, incuding new networking and employee training. A few weeks ago, they upgraded again, for a cost of $3 million this time, to another Windows NT/XP solution, again with training for fewer people this time and they had to hire about 30 people to trnasfer all records form the old system to the new one because the new system didn't use any standards. Wouldn't it be easier to have a server with some flavor of SQL (Oracle to keep the suits happy?) and a few programmers to create and maintain a front-end app that would work well on whatever types of PCs the hospital uses (their quite partial to IBM)? I'm sure it would save a ton of money in the long run since they seem to liek to upgrade every few years. If the data just worked or the server/clients could be upgraded seperately as needed, they' woudl save millions in efficiency.
Of course, that's money that the medical computing systems' vendors dont' get to make. So it'll never happen. Methinks it's unfortunate how capitalism and technological advances have a tendancy to choke each other to death.
What happens when a nearby gas station installs RF lighting... and all 802.11b devices and 2.4 GHz cordless phones for a mile in diameter stop working?
Is this total FUD or is it grounded in facts about these lights? Personally I don't like the idea of RF lights that would interfere for miles. I woudl think they'd need suficiently more power to make light than a cel phone or 802.11 card ( > 4W?). A previous post mentioned that 2.4GHz is the resonant frequency of water. There is some water in gasoline. Sooooo.....gas stations are going to begin randomly exploding?
If my microwave doesn't kill my cel phone connection, it must be shielded prety damn good (it's a big ass 1500W). How come they can't just shield the lights and eliminate the problem?
UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A (Select simply moves the cursor to the two players option) START
It's probably required that you press start a few fractions of a second after doing the first part of the code.
This code rally does give me less stress. Contra pisses me off so bad when I only have 3 guys before game over. How the hell can anyone beat that game like that?
If you watch when the bus jumps, there is a pile of what looks like "pipes" that kick it up in the air. Still, there are no pipes in any preceeding shots, nor is there a reason for a pile of pipes to sit on the edge of an unfinished freeway in the first place.:-)
Also, watch close or in Cheap Jittery VHS Slo-Mo and you will see clearly an empty bus with no one but stunt driver. Also, the first shot the bus is tilted WAY up in the air. When we see the landing from the rear, the bus is MUCH further forward, obviously two different jumps.
I saw a stunt special on the Discovery channel once where they showed the making of that stunt. They basically had a guy on a motorcycle drive off a platform on the side of some mountain and had a plane fly over him. He parachutes off below the plane, and the snow "poof" as the plane is going over the edge is CGI, to hide the fact that the plane was never on the platform.
They actually had another stuntman skydive along side of a vertically diving plane and climb in the door, although he didn't start from a motorcycle.
Actually, just to nitpick, he used a Macintosh. A "MAC" is an Ethernet address. I suppose this plot element would have been somewhat feasable had they worked in scenes showing how he figured out how to make his computer interface with the alien tech. and then spent several weeks learning to code for it.
The fact he gets drunk one morning and then suddenly has the answer is pretty fucking stupid though.
Still, I wonder what kind of licencing deal Apple gave those aliens for their servers to run AppleShare IP;-)
I think the problem today is that too many projects are bloated and loaded down with this stuff... What happened to software companies who don't do this? I mean I know some companies don't (including the majority of the open source community) but you would think the crappy spyware-loaded companies would bite the dust in favor of those who don't spam or track people.
Perhaps what is needed is a public awareness campaign?
You do realize, of course, that 99% of america is technically inept, while we may seem like a proud majority here on slashdot, it's because we are. Here. IRL, most people dont' know the first thing about computers. I recently heard a story about a person working in a hospital and she wanted to make a browser window fit all the text she wanted to view. My buddy, the tech support guy, said "Oh, you just click the maximize button," to which she picked up the mouse, and while examining it from all angles, replied "Which one is the maximize button?"
That's the kind of person spyware prays on. That's the kind of person who's Yahoo account gets 10,000+ spam mails a day, and who has no idea how to disable popups or even that some browsers have a control for that (Hell, some people don't even know there are other browsers besides Netscape and Microsoft). How many college kids and AOL users still run Kazaa? Almost every one I know. How many people still post their "profile" on online services even though they can be scanned for spam purposes as easily as writing a perl script? Just about all of them.
Fight ignorance with intellegence, let's let these people know and the system will clean up the trash who code such things. We don't need an Oath, which would probably end up being like this:
"I will not violate the DCMA, CDPCADADC, CACADOODOO, MSOWNSME, NOAPPLE, GNUMURDERER, or JANETRENOSBIGFILTHYTITS" is not something I'd like to swear to, especially given the fact that I can very easily *inadvertently* break this week's new Ridiculous Tech Law
Major corporations will probably sit on the standards body. Corporations like Microsoft, or AOL. Do you want them to decide what's best for you and the rest of the world, and restrict you on a professional ethics level as well as a functionality-of-your-machine level? And since it's the corporations in charge of the oath, it's useless.
It could be left up to the employer to add additional provisions, making it useless anyway.
IF this is done right, such as a grass roots campaign to educate the pubic as well as keep programmers in line, it not only could work, it would work. But if left up to those who profit from the explotation of the weak, it will never amount to anything but more control for them. After all, that's their job.
I always see ads for Rackspace.com, and looking at their site, they just announced 100% uptime for 12 months. Apparently they let you purchase (and/or rent?) a rack-mounted box with which you can do whatever. I'm not sure about bandwidth limits/DNS/etc.
Has anyone had any experience with these guys? I was thinking of getting a dedicated server box for myself sometime but I haven't had the time/money to do so.
Without going into a huge rant here, I'll express my thankfulness that this did not happen.
THERE IS A GOD.
I got into computers with the hope of one day becomming a programmer for a game company, hopefully Nintendo. If MS had bought them out I'd have found an alternative employer. The Bungie buyout was disapointing enough...
I was with you up to here. Labels serve a very important purpose: they let us know which artists are worth listening to.
I, for one, dont' really like being told what to listen to. The label's job is to deliver content to me, in the most consumer/artist friendly way. They are the distributors. That said, they could still have promotions. Do like mp3.com, have a vote section, for all the people who do go through and listen to everything, and feature those artists. Have "talent scount pick of the week". Some one will still have to work for the label and go and FIND people to sign, and these people will obviously know the goods when they hear it. The whole point of all this is the same argument about "The Web killed print media". Hell no it didn't but the print media was smart and worked with the technology to deliver more, not work against it to control their distribution channels. You never saw a senator try to pass a law banning news on the Internet due to profit loss in print media.
Although it would be nice, I think I'd rather not wait for Bluetooth's slow-ass transfer rate for all my songs.
Last i knew it was around 1.5Mb/sec, which is around USB speed, correct? (I'm so not-up-to-date with this). MacSlash had a discussion about it a while ago when Apple announced Bluetooth support and everyone agreed putting 802.11b for Airport support would be much better, although much more power consuming.
If Bluetoth can get teh trqansfer rate up then it would definately be worth it... anyone care to elaborate?
Okay, but what happens, for god knows what reason, you find yourself on the inside of the glass next to an approaching train / monorail? Seems unlikely but an interesting question.
Like memory management in MacOS X: protected, not foolproof.
Some jackass drunk tourist will find a way to rig the door open and dance on the track naked to impress his buddies (of couse, if he's nude, makes me wonder what kind of buddies would be inpressed by that...but that's beside my point) and the train will boot him out of the station and before you know it, naked drunk tourists will be falling from the sky along the strip!
Well, you're right, but this guy is a nut. Clearly. C'mon, "chmod 666 is the path to satan"? 666 isn't EVEN 666, it's OCTAL, that makes it 438 in base 10. not even close.
People like this give a bad name to religion. It's why I figure I'll deal with God when I die, if there is a God, because I just dont' know what to make of it anymore because of KOOKS LIKE THIS.
It should be a comfortable tempature. Warm but not real hot.
Have food and plenty of drinks nearby (with caffene, prefereably).
Allow music as long as it doesnt' disturb others (i.e. speakers on low or headphones, maybe even one loud stereo with something everyone likes).
No one lieks to feel cramped, make sure coders have room.
Make sure the computers have real good, large, flicker-free (if CRT) monitors on them.
I've always kind of been against having a top of the line machine for development, because the code tends to end up working out poorly on lower machines. (i.e. "It's not slow on my box, what's wrong with yours?" doesnt' mean much if your box is a 2.4GHz with a gig of RAM...) but then compile times are higher and such, and work eifficiency decreases... a catch 22. I'll leave this one up to you, it really depends on the project. YMMV.
LAN games are nice for slow days, dont' let any Team Fortress addicts get away with not working, tho!
Having an internal IRC server would be a really unique and useful way to help make the office productive, paste the code to a channel and everyone can look at it, that way no one has to leave their station to help others, and everyone remains within access of a machine. Moderation required, of course.
Just a little thing, but clicking and holding (not dragging) will also being up the Contexual menus in MacOS, requiring no keyboard at all.
And in case I didn't make myself clear on the EXPENSIVE AS GODDAMN HELL Apple hardware: Yes it's pricey but when you buy a Lexus you cruise comfortably...
Slashdot Mirror
LOL good point.
For once I'm rather relieved that Big Brother is watching...and realizing the point, and even helping the cause. Go USA.
who days ago TESTIFIED before a FEDERAL JUDGE that their software was so insecure that releasing the source would be a threat to national security.
I swear they get dumber by the day...
About time Metroid was reincarneted. Now i have a good reason to go buy a GameCube sometime.
I KNEW NIntendo wouldnt' let me down! Now if only their business tactics record wasn't for shame...
Doesnt' a CD begin from the inner tracks and progress outwards (opposite of a vinyl record)? Wouldn't this allow the drive to see the audio tracks first? Or would a computer CD drive go for the data which is mapped in the TOC to the outter track first as opposed to a regular CD player which says "skip the data BS and move to audio track 1"?
If anyone can explain how this works, I'm pretty sure you're not violating the DMCA...
...programming against the win32 API...
Revealing an uphill battle? Freud would be proud.
;-)
Now that's what i call a post.
IANAL, but isn't there some clause in copyright law stating that you can produce a derivative work using sampled music royalty- and permission-free as long as you sample less than 4 bars?
:-D
I was under the impression that this was how MC Hammer's "You Can't Touch This" was not only possible but inpsired (it's ripped from that "Superfreak" song, the name of the artist escapes me at the moment), as well as many works by Weird Al Yankovic. Does this apply to only parodies? I'm pretty sure if the song is a remix of the sampled song you need permission no matter what, but for simply taking a small clip for yor own purposes is legal.
I know for a fact in techno/house/other electronic music many producers rip drums and hi hats from existing records because it saves production time, especially if you find the sound you where trying for already created. Of course, most of these producers probably don't give a sh*t because they realize it's no biggie...
I hope someone can answer this because it may mean I need to strip a phatty lil Biz Markie sample from my latest
The real problem with this is that is just now, within say the last 5 years or so, becomming a common practice. Sure, we've had open protocols for many more years than that, but c'mon, what about all the businesses who where convinced by vendors that their proprietary stuff was "more well suited for your particular application"? They're gonna have a hell of a time.
I cite as an example the local hospital here about 5-6 years ago began updating their old VAX-style mainfame and VT100 terminals (from probably the 70s sometime) to shiny "new" Windows 95 and NT machines. They spent about $1 million on it, incuding new networking and employee training. A few weeks ago, they upgraded again, for a cost of $3 million this time, to another Windows NT/XP solution, again with training for fewer people this time and they had to hire about 30 people to trnasfer all records form the old system to the new one because the new system didn't use any standards. Wouldn't it be easier to have a server with some flavor of SQL (Oracle to keep the suits happy?) and a few programmers to create and maintain a front-end app that would work well on whatever types of PCs the hospital uses (their quite partial to IBM)? I'm sure it would save a ton of money in the long run since they seem to liek to upgrade every few years. If the data just worked or the server/clients could be upgraded seperately as needed, they' woudl save millions in efficiency.
Of course, that's money that the medical computing systems' vendors dont' get to make. So it'll never happen. Methinks it's unfortunate how capitalism and technological advances have a tendancy to choke each other to death.
...but what about the effects of the RF lights?
What happens when a nearby gas station installs RF lighting... and all 802.11b devices and 2.4 GHz cordless phones for a mile in diameter stop working?
Is this total FUD or is it grounded in facts about these lights? Personally I don't like the idea of RF lights that would interfere for miles. I woudl think they'd need suficiently more power to make light than a cel phone or 802.11 card ( > 4W?). A previous post mentioned that 2.4GHz is the resonant frequency of water. There is some water in gasoline. Sooooo.....gas stations are going to begin randomly exploding?
If my microwave doesn't kill my cel phone connection, it must be shielded prety damn good (it's a big ass 1500W). How come they can't just shield the lights and eliminate the problem?
UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A (Select simply moves the cursor to the two players option) START
It's probably required that you press start a few fractions of a second after doing the first part of the code.
This code rally does give me less stress. Contra pisses me off so bad when I only have 3 guys before game over. How the hell can anyone beat that game like that?
If you watch when the bus jumps, there is a pile of what looks like "pipes" that kick it up in the air. :-)
Still, there are no pipes in any preceeding shots, nor is there a reason for a pile of pipes to sit on the edge of an unfinished freeway in the first place.
Also, watch close or in Cheap Jittery VHS Slo-Mo and you will see clearly an empty bus with no one but stunt driver. Also, the first shot the bus is tilted WAY up in the air. When we see the landing from the rear, the bus is MUCH further forward, obviously two different jumps.
I saw a stunt special on the Discovery channel once where they showed the making of that stunt. They basically had a guy on a motorcycle drive off a platform on the side of some mountain and had a plane fly over him. He parachutes off below the plane, and the snow "poof" as the plane is going over the edge is CGI, to hide the fact that the plane was never on the platform.
They actually had another stuntman skydive along side of a vertically diving plane and climb in the door, although he didn't start from a motorcycle.
Actually, just to nitpick, he used a Macintosh. A "MAC" is an Ethernet address. I suppose this plot element would have been somewhat feasable had they worked in scenes showing how he figured out how to make his computer interface with the alien tech. and then spent several weeks learning to code for it.
;-)
The fact he gets drunk one morning and then suddenly has the answer is pretty fucking stupid though.
Still, I wonder what kind of licencing deal Apple gave those aliens for their servers to run AppleShare IP
Perhaps what is needed is a public awareness campaign?
You do realize, of course, that 99% of america is technically inept, while we may seem like a proud majority here on slashdot, it's because we are. Here. IRL, most people dont' know the first thing about computers. I recently heard a story about a person working in a hospital and she wanted to make a browser window fit all the text she wanted to view. My buddy, the tech support guy, said "Oh, you just click the maximize button," to which she picked up the mouse, and while examining it from all angles, replied "Which one is the maximize button?"
That's the kind of person spyware prays on. That's the kind of person who's Yahoo account gets 10,000+ spam mails a day, and who has no idea how to disable popups or even that some browsers have a control for that (Hell, some people don't even know there are other browsers besides Netscape and Microsoft). How many college kids and AOL users still run Kazaa? Almost every one I know. How many people still post their "profile" on online services even though they can be scanned for spam purposes as easily as writing a perl script? Just about all of them.
Fight ignorance with intellegence, let's let these people know and the system will clean up the trash who code such things. We don't need an Oath, which would probably end up being like this:
IF this is done right, such as a grass roots campaign to educate the pubic as well as keep programmers in line, it not only could work, it would work. But if left up to those who profit from the explotation of the weak, it will never amount to anything but more control for them. After all, that's their job.
I always see ads for Rackspace.com, and looking at their site, they just announced 100% uptime for 12 months. Apparently they let you purchase (and/or rent?) a rack-mounted box with which you can do whatever. I'm not sure about bandwidth limits/DNS/etc.
Has anyone had any experience with these guys? I was thinking of getting a dedicated server box for myself sometime but I haven't had the time/money to do so.
Without going into a huge rant here, I'll express my thankfulness that this did not happen.
THERE IS A GOD.
I got into computers with the hope of one day becomming a programmer for a game company, hopefully Nintendo. If MS had bought them out I'd have found an alternative employer. The Bungie buyout was disapointing enough...
I was with you up to here. Labels serve a very important purpose: they let us know which artists are worth listening to.
I, for one, dont' really like being told what to listen to. The label's job is to deliver content to me, in the most consumer/artist friendly way. They are the distributors. That said, they could still have promotions. Do like mp3.com, have a vote section, for all the people who do go through and listen to everything, and feature those artists. Have "talent scount pick of the week". Some one will still have to work for the label and go and FIND people to sign, and these people will obviously know the goods when they hear it. The whole point of all this is the same argument about "The Web killed print media". Hell no it didn't but the print media was smart and worked with the technology to deliver more, not work against it to control their distribution channels. You never saw a senator try to pass a law banning news on the Internet due to profit loss in print media.
Last i knew it was around 1.5Mb/sec, which is around USB speed, correct? (I'm so not-up-to-date with this). MacSlash had a discussion about it a while ago when Apple announced Bluetooth support and everyone agreed putting 802.11b for Airport support would be much better, although much more power consuming.
If Bluetoth can get teh trqansfer rate up then it would definately be worth it... anyone care to elaborate?
Like memory management in MacOS X: protected, not foolproof.
Some jackass drunk tourist will find a way to rig the door open and dance on the track naked to impress his buddies (of couse, if he's nude, makes me wonder what kind of buddies would be inpressed by that...but that's beside my point) and the train will boot him out of the station and before you know it, naked drunk tourists will be falling from the sky along the strip!
</crackpipe>
MacSlash also ran it.
People like this give a bad name to religion. It's why I figure I'll deal with God when I die, if there is a God, because I just dont' know what to make of it anymore because of KOOKS LIKE THIS.
Any mirrors for Mac users? I'm sure I'd liek to have the source as long as they're going away...
And in case I didn't make myself clear on the EXPENSIVE AS GODDAMN HELL Apple hardware: Yes it's pricey but when you buy a Lexus you cruise comfortably...