A loud siren inside the car (like in Singapore) would be safer.
I can just see it now. "Man crashes in to stuff in emergency situation because his already distracted attention was totally removed by a siren". I haven't heard a more stupid idea yet...
>theoretically that truck couldn't go faster than the speed limit
Except down a hill (assuming this device only limits gas, not brakes). Gravity will take over when the engive won't. And I'm gonna bet the HGV drivers use this advantage to the maximum of their abilities.
From what I've seen England is full of big, long, huge hills. Now you have even more problems... it is much harder to drive your car down a steep grade than on level land. This could be lots of fun. I'll have to remember to check out the newpapers over there from time to time....
You know those white TV detector vans in the UK that police if you've paid your TV license or not?
I'd bet 10:1 that they make something like that for this... Except that they'd put sensors for this all over the country, not just in white vans.
The UK loves to police things differently from most any other country in the world. Heck, I can't even think of another country where the regular police can't bear arms. Or another 1st world country that lets people run over jaywalkers legally.
Just an observation, not necessarialy a social comment against the UK.
People get points, but no one "owns" anything. Therefore the "competition" (which is necessary to define this sense of game) is simply over who knows the most words, not who can take who's land, or who has what tile, etc...
The only limited resource is time and letters. But that's equal for all parties.
The link labelled "copyrighted link" below is (c) 2001 by shepd.
By clicking on the "copyrighted link" and decrypting the data using ROT-13 (only on the alpha characters) you are hereby required to pay the copyright holder $1000 US PER CLICK.
Payment details can be acquired by simply emailing me at me email address as specified by following the instuctions of signature at the end of this letter and applying them to my email address as specified as a link on my username.
Show me you support the DMCA by either clicking on the link and contacting me for payment options, or, if you prefer, don't click the link.
Can you resist my click attraction?
And remember, I can do this... let me quote slashdot:
"All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster."
Yeah, there are a few dishes out there that can do two-in-one (I think the Hughes DirecPC dish can receive TV too). But then you are stuck getting everything from one provider (ok, so that's the entire argument _against_ cable TV -- hey, it's a free country, I'll contradict myself if I want).
>but the problem with satellite is not quite as dire as you make it out to be
I was really half joking about the situation being as bad as needing three satellite receivers... But I am serious that there are too many satellite dishes out in the country.:-)
Living in the "country", I can tell ya, it has become a veritable sea of satellite dishes. And with no reasonable internet access cabled in; With 15+ km runs to the telco, it's gonna become even uglier (and eventually, more "urban" than downtown):
- 1 satellite dish for TV
- 1 satellite dish for your game system
- 1 satellite dish for your high-speed/latency internet
- 1 big TV tower to pull in the locals
We're up to four big warts on each fully-wired house in the country. Isn't this where all you city slickers come to take all them nice lookin' photies and sunday drives? Not for long. And it seems a bit much to take up all that nice spectrum and space that could be used for so much more just for us few rural folk.
You people in the city: It's time you got back your satellite space. Get us wired with a TV cable and we won't need it. We really aren't asking for the world, ya know. Just to stop being treated like second class citizens in the digital age. I really hoped that by 2001 phones lines wouldn't be for just voice again.
Most people don't want to move out of the country just for more services. When you have $100,000's (often in the country $millions -- farmland ain't free!) tied up in a place it makes moving a huge event. I'm glad. If everyone did we'd all be living in Arcologies. I'm sure you'd agree; That would suck. Don't let your city end up with 1,000 people/sq mile! Get me cable TV!;-)
Sorry man. I never realized that _you_ where the one that posted twice. Ooops... damn, I jumped the gun twice today. Yeah, I'm an asshole. Don't take that last comment seriously either...
http://www.nationalpost.com/contactus/contactlis t. html
(warning: slashdot sometimes puts spaces in posts for no reason. There are none in the links above.)
That last link has PILES of email addresses at the newspaper (not the one you want though). Try sending one to customer service, asking for his/her email address. If they can't give it to you, ask if they'd just pass the letter on for you.
What I was trying to mean was that when you publish something on the web, you give it to the people.
As long as that site's up I can link to it and anyone can enjoy the content for free. If it was in a book, though, I'd only be able to provide a bibliographical reference and directions to the library of congress.
I know that copying the article verbatim is verboten -- and literally, I said the opposite. I'm sorry, sometimes secondary meanings don't come across so well in print. I should be more clear.
The author is talknig about abolishing copyright. This doesn't mean removing an author's name from a work. The author never even mentioned that.
But then again you are the idiot author who is defending himself by no mentioning what your entire stance is about, right?
If you are going to take an article and pretend to publish it without a name, ahem, try to make sure it defends you instead of simply leading you totally off topic.
After the story and before the copyright notice appears this:
<!----End Story Content---->
The author didn't put that notice there. He had no clue it was going to be stuck there.
>If I took his essay, put my name on it and sold it, he might sing a different tune.
Dude, this isn't what he is talking about. He never said abolish the right to keep your name on stuff. He just said that your IP stuff should be availiable to all. The difference? One could, in a non-copyright society, consider removing someone's name from an item a defaming of the person.
>How about if I mirrored slashdot post for post, sold banner adds cheaper and took business away from VA.
Now you hit the nail on the head. You are keeping the stories names on them, and are providing a "value added" service. I have a small feeling, though, that you would lose out to those others that provide slashdot minus extra banner heads.
And CmdrTaco has ALREADY stated he is OK with this -- he found someone who registered something similar to slashdot.org, and simply framed slashdot with ads. CmdrTaco told us he wasn't worried. Why should be be? What the heck is the point of going to the wrong site?
>When will these guys realize their quest for free music will cost others dearly.
Cost whom? The RIAA? The MPAA? These aren't people. How about individuals, the mettle most of the world was built on? Yes, it destroys a company and benefits people. Boo-hoo. I feel really sorry for destroying something that existed only on paper to begin with. Do trees feel pain when paper gets shredded?
>If you think it is to expensive don't buy it, that's the way it works.
[Devil's Advocate Here]: Heh, well, you see, I don't understand expense because I couldn't pay the price for the books the idea is printed on. I guess I don't deserve to understand the way money is used in the world because I don't have enough to read a book. Heck, I'm surprinsing myself right here, right now, that I've been able to learn English from the book I stole from the bookstore.
Well, I am no member of the libertarian party, a party so small in Canada (the author's and my home country) that it didn't even appear on most all people's ballots (including mine). If you must know, I voted PC (I haven't the slightest clue what the American equivalent of that party is). Yet the article made perfect sense to me.
All essays should be written without pre-conceptions (except those you are arguing for/aganist). This author is arguing against copyright law/IP, therefore he is writing his essay from the stance of someone that would be involved in a world without it. Without it, you would not be stopped from filming a re-enactment of a book. With it you would be forced to stop. Black and white, Crystal clear, if you ask me.
I found this article not only answered a lot of questions, but made a fair argument aganist the use of copyright. I'll be sure to point this out to quite a few people with questions on copyright.
I think that pretty much means he has no IP rights to it. Except, perhaps, that the National Post has it copyrighted by default, like everything else.
I suggest you contact him -- I'm more than willing to bet that he would ask the National Post to release copyright on this one article. Otherwise perhaps he would be willing to release it himself in a show of good faith.
It also didn't take into account that (probably) Microsoft makes at least 100x more money than RedHat, has at least 100x more developers than RedHat, and at least 100x more site admins than RedHat, and therefore should have at least 100x the server capacity. I'm willing to bet they don't have 100 redundant servers. Their bad. Not RedHat's.
To say that Microsoft's servers are more likely to crash because of the load is like saying Macy's should be closed more often than [insert your local mom-n-pop clothing shop here]. More money == more people == more load handling capability.
In my country (Canada) there was a very interesting case about an activity where a criminal (in this case a trespasser) hurt himself on others property.
That dough-head decided to crash a party. In the end he climbed onto the roof of the house and dove into the 4' ground level pool from it.
Guess what? The nutcase _sued_ the owners of the house for the cost of his injuries (which were severe), lost time from work, and compensation for personal mental anguish.
He won. Big. The newspapers informed all people that they MUST put up BIG signs explaining proper use of the pool. Failure to do so is highly negligent on the part of the owner of the pool.
There's enough hollywood movies to tell me the US has similar laws about negligence (and self defence) too. You can only hurt others people in self defence or under duress. And you may _only_ ever exert less or equal force against the criminal. ie: If someone threatens to beat you up if you don't give them your lunch money, you aren't allowed to pull out a shotgun and blast their head off. You may, however, knock their lights out (without weapons).
So, in the case of unarmed robbery, slicing someones fingers off with a weapon (razor blade) is NOT equal or less force. You would be in deep shit (unless you were lucky enough to find a knife on the robbers, making it armed robbery).
A dye pack, though, is equal force. You are destroying the item, just as the criminal destroyed your bank.
Of course, this is assuming you're in North America...:-)
BTW: I am not a lawyer, so the above isn't legal advice.
>I think you'll find *all* servers go down, especially ones under the consistently heavy load of ddos, millions of hits a day, etc like MS. Redhat goes down, MS goes down, big wow.
Check your links before you use them as a defense.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=redhat. co m -- Uptime: 69 days. Max: 64 days. Avg: 29 days.
Microsoft has (just barely) beaten RedHat in ONE area of uptime. RedHat slaughters Microsoft in all other areas. Maybe that's because you don't need to reboot RedHat when you install _most_ patches, where as you have to reboot windows to install service packs? I don't know. Do you have a reason as to why this discrepency exists?
I find it _pathetic_ that Microsoft's uptime currently equals that of slashdot.org. Seriously, when a major, multi-billion dollar company can't compete with a website run by a few hackers [that is notorious for being broken], that in and of itself speaks volumes about the quality of software being used.
No matter how stickily integrated the problem, there is always a solution. It's just that the solution sucks more than the problem as the problem becomes more integrated.:-)
But, ask yourself this, was it worth hacking VideoCipher II? Yup. No matter how many parts and how much cost was involved, it was worth it. An idea that lets you get something for free is always going to be worth big bucks.
Expect someone to desolder this chip from the board and recreate a non-integrated (and therefore fully hacked) replacement _someday_. Eventually. 'Till then the market will be waiting like a pack of dogs salivating over their next meal.
Cool, my C64 DID have a digital TV out after all then!;-)
All that s-video does is split luminosity (brightness) from chrominance (colour). This is a major improvement to composite NTSC because getting it compatible with both B/W (which was the original design) and colour was a big hack. Not cool at all. You pay for it in bleeding reds and various other problems in composite signals (which I don't fully understand, since I don't repair TVs for a living).
By separating them, the two the bandwidths don't interfere, and a clean colour component is avaliable to your TV. Notice that if one of the two cables in your S-Video is bad (which ever is chroma) you only lose colour. But the signal is still a totally crisp B/W.
I'll give it to you that AOL prying into my stuff is worse than Microsoft doing it... well, maybe. Just a little.
And RealPlayer has a lot of security problems too, I'll agree.
But wait: Netscape, IE, RealPlayer, these are all closed source apps. The common theme. Don't trust anything that keeps you from looking inside.
>Ever heard of a packet sniffer? Or a personal firewall?
The difference here is that you choose to put (and setup) these on your machines. If you decide you want to log certain transfers, so be it. At least you got the choice.
If your ISP is doing it, well, that's no good. I'd get the heck away from them and get on a real ISP that respects your privacy.
>They are a monopoly, so they don't need to make bits of cash on the side selling demographics.
Three words: Bell Phone Book.:-) Just because you have lots of money already and are a monopoly doesn't stop you from getting even more greedy. Where I live you have to pay to get unlisted, then you pay an additional fee on top of that to stop your unlisted info from being sold to telemarketers. And then you have to pay even more to get your name hidden on Call Display. They won't even block your phone number unless you dial *67 (or is that *69?) all the time or are part of some kind of Witness Protection Program. Really, I kid you not.
>I haven't seen any security advisories about M$ stealing user data, and IMO, they don't have to.
I still remember the "old days" [not so old, really]. Before MS quit wasting their time going after friends sharing software. The days where Microsoft threatened (and, I believe, implemented in early betas) to include a phone home feature in Chicago that would report a scan of the users hard drive. I don't think I kept the magazines that discussed it (stuff from '94 is just a little out of date).
And lets not forget the NSA key.
While Microsoft is better than AOL, it's sort of like comparing being stamped on by an elephant and mauled by a bear. They both suck.
I'm actually using Mozilla 0.7 right now. It's great. It feels like Netscape 4 (which was easy to use, when it worked), and is really fast. Plus it renders HTML quite well.
Just a sidenote: Any particular reason why your website just forwards you to slashdot? Just wondering...:)
Even if the source is closed.
Even if I'm not sure how much info my browser sends to M$ about my purchases.
Think about this: Do you trust MS enough to let them know your entire purchasing history? Closed source software has a long history of backdoors and somewhat secret information transfers.
Since they charged you (assuming you use windows, the platform with the highest IE use) $100 for your browser (which happens to be bundled with an OS), don't you want to charge them money if it turns out they are getting your info? Normally I'd suggest you fix the software, but that's illegal with Internet Explorer. It's like a car with the hood welded shut.
With open source, you know what you are using. You can see there isn't a "report https accesses" module.
It's all about the price of your privacy and security, baby. I don't have a price on mine. Do you have a price on yours?
Slashdot Mirror
>What was said is that there is a way to prevent the signal from even getting to the speakers in the first place.
:-)
This encryption therefore sounds like a slow, bloated, expensive, overmarketed mute switch. Such innovation!
Yeah, that does seem to fit Microsoft policies perfectly.
It may also be a reference to the two people from the gang in "Mad Max 1" that would push and shove each other all the time, crying out:
"push me"
"shove you"
"Push Me!"
"Shove You!"
"PUSH ME!"
"SHOVE YOU!"
Then again, maybe not...
A loud siren inside the car (like in Singapore) would be safer.
I can just see it now. "Man crashes in to stuff in emergency situation because his already distracted attention was totally removed by a siren". I haven't heard a more stupid idea yet...
>theoretically that truck couldn't go faster than the speed limit
Except down a hill (assuming this device only limits gas, not brakes). Gravity will take over when the engive won't. And I'm gonna bet the HGV drivers use this advantage to the maximum of their abilities.
From what I've seen England is full of big, long, huge hills. Now you have even more problems... it is much harder to drive your car down a steep grade than on level land. This could be lots of fun. I'll have to remember to check out the newpapers over there from time to time....
You know those white TV detector vans in the UK that police if you've paid your TV license or not?
I'd bet 10:1 that they make something like that for this... Except that they'd put sensors for this all over the country, not just in white vans.
The UK loves to police things differently from most any other country in the world. Heck, I can't even think of another country where the regular police can't bear arms. Or another 1st world country that lets people run over jaywalkers legally.
Just an observation, not necessarialy a social comment against the UK.
People get points, but no one "owns" anything. Therefore the "competition" (which is necessary to define this sense of game) is simply over who knows the most words, not who can take who's land, or who has what tile, etc...
The only limited resource is time and letters. But that's equal for all parties.
Does that count?
#vapyhqr
vag znva()
{
cevags("Uryyb Jbeyq");
erghea(0);
}
/* Gur Bar Zvahgr Jnvgvat Crevbq Qbrfa'g Fgbc Gebyyf Naq Znxrf Fynfuqbg FHPX! */
The link labelled "copyrighted link" below is (c) 2001 by shepd.
By clicking on the "copyrighted link" and decrypting the data using ROT-13 (only on the alpha characters) you are hereby required to pay the copyright holder $1000 US PER CLICK.
Payment details can be acquired by simply emailing me at me email address as specified by following the instuctions of signature at the end of this letter and applying them to my email address as specified as a link on my username.
Show me you support the DMCA by either clicking on the link and contacting me for payment options, or, if you prefer, don't click the link.
Can you resist my click attraction?
And remember, I can do this... let me quote slashdot:
"All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster."
Thanks slashdot.
Yeah, there are a few dishes out there that can do two-in-one (I think the Hughes DirecPC dish can receive TV too). But then you are stuck getting everything from one provider (ok, so that's the entire argument _against_ cable TV -- hey, it's a free country, I'll contradict myself if I want).
:-)
>but the problem with satellite is not quite as dire as you make it out to be
I was really half joking about the situation being as bad as needing three satellite receivers... But I am serious that there are too many satellite dishes out in the country.
Living in the "country", I can tell ya, it has become a veritable sea of satellite dishes. And with no reasonable internet access cabled in; With 15+ km runs to the telco, it's gonna become even uglier (and eventually, more "urban" than downtown):
;-)
- 1 satellite dish for TV
- 1 satellite dish for your game system
- 1 satellite dish for your high-speed/latency internet
- 1 big TV tower to pull in the locals
We're up to four big warts on each fully-wired house in the country. Isn't this where all you city slickers come to take all them nice lookin' photies and sunday drives? Not for long. And it seems a bit much to take up all that nice spectrum and space that could be used for so much more just for us few rural folk.
You people in the city: It's time you got back your satellite space. Get us wired with a TV cable and we won't need it. We really aren't asking for the world, ya know. Just to stop being treated like second class citizens in the digital age. I really hoped that by 2001 phones lines wouldn't be for just voice again.
Most people don't want to move out of the country just for more services. When you have $100,000's (often in the country $millions -- farmland ain't free!) tied up in a place it makes moving a huge event. I'm glad. If everyone did we'd all be living in Arcologies. I'm sure you'd agree; That would suck. Don't let your city end up with 1,000 people/sq mile! Get me cable TV!
Sorry man. I never realized that _you_ where the one that posted twice. Ooops... damn, I jumped the gun twice today. Yeah, I'm an asshole. Don't take that last comment seriously either...
Must... stop... posting... late... at... night.
>If anyone knows how to do so, please write me!
s t. html
Try these:
http://www.nationalpost.com/contactus/
http://www.nationalpost.com/contactus/contactli
(warning: slashdot sometimes puts spaces in posts for no reason. There are none in the links above.)
That last link has PILES of email addresses at the newspaper (not the one you want though). Try sending one to customer service, asking for his/her email address. If they can't give it to you, ask if they'd just pass the letter on for you.
(Check my response above).
:-/
Yeah, sorry... didn't mean for that sentence to be read like that; I should have chosen other words. Oh well - can't win 'em all.
What I was trying to mean was that when you publish something on the web, you give it to the people.
As long as that site's up I can link to it and anyone can enjoy the content for free. If it was in a book, though, I'd only be able to provide a bibliographical reference and directions to the library of congress.
I know that copying the article verbatim is verboten -- and literally, I said the opposite. I'm sorry, sometimes secondary meanings don't come across so well in print. I should be more clear.
>WHICH I WROTE THIS MORNING ALL BY MYSELF
The author is talknig about abolishing copyright. This doesn't mean removing an author's name from a work. The author never even mentioned that.
But then again you are the idiot author who is defending himself by no mentioning what your entire stance is about, right?
If you are going to take an article and pretend to publish it without a name, ahem, try to make sure it defends you instead of simply leading you totally off topic.
Use the source luke...
After the story and before the copyright notice appears this:
<!----End Story Content---->
The author didn't put that notice there. He had no clue it was going to be stuck there.
>If I took his essay, put my name on it and sold it, he might sing a different tune.
Dude, this isn't what he is talking about. He never said abolish the right to keep your name on stuff. He just said that your IP stuff should be availiable to all. The difference? One could, in a non-copyright society, consider removing someone's name from an item a defaming of the person.
>How about if I mirrored slashdot post for post, sold banner adds cheaper and took business away from VA.
Now you hit the nail on the head. You are keeping the stories names on them, and are providing a "value added" service. I have a small feeling, though, that you would lose out to those others that provide slashdot minus extra banner heads.
And CmdrTaco has ALREADY stated he is OK with this -- he found someone who registered something similar to slashdot.org, and simply framed slashdot with ads. CmdrTaco told us he wasn't worried. Why should be be? What the heck is the point of going to the wrong site?
>When will these guys realize their quest for free music will cost others dearly.
Cost whom? The RIAA? The MPAA? These aren't people. How about individuals, the mettle most of the world was built on? Yes, it destroys a company and benefits people. Boo-hoo. I feel really sorry for destroying something that existed only on paper to begin with. Do trees feel pain when paper gets shredded?
>If you think it is to expensive don't buy it, that's the way it works.
[Devil's Advocate Here]: Heh, well, you see, I don't understand expense because I couldn't pay the price for the books the idea is printed on. I guess I don't deserve to understand the way money is used in the world because I don't have enough to read a book. Heck, I'm surprinsing myself right here, right now, that I've been able to learn English from the book I stole from the bookstore.
Well, I am no member of the libertarian party, a party so small in Canada (the author's and my home country) that it didn't even appear on most all people's ballots (including mine). If you must know, I voted PC (I haven't the slightest clue what the American equivalent of that party is). Yet the article made perfect sense to me.
All essays should be written without pre-conceptions (except those you are arguing for/aganist). This author is arguing against copyright law/IP, therefore he is writing his essay from the stance of someone that would be involved in a world without it. Without it, you would not be stopped from filming a re-enactment of a book. With it you would be forced to stop. Black and white, Crystal clear, if you ask me.
I found this article not only answered a lot of questions, but made a fair argument aganist the use of copyright. I'll be sure to point this out to quite a few people with questions on copyright.
His essay was published on the web.
All can read it, save it, print it, give it away.
I think that pretty much means he has no IP rights to it. Except, perhaps, that the National Post has it copyrighted by default, like everything else.
I suggest you contact him -- I'm more than willing to bet that he would ask the National Post to release copyright on this one article. Otherwise perhaps he would be willing to release it himself in a show of good faith.
It also didn't take into account that (probably) Microsoft makes at least 100x more money than RedHat, has at least 100x more developers than RedHat, and at least 100x more site admins than RedHat, and therefore should have at least 100x the server capacity. I'm willing to bet they don't have 100 redundant servers. Their bad. Not RedHat's.
To say that Microsoft's servers are more likely to crash because of the load is like saying Macy's should be closed more often than [insert your local mom-n-pop clothing shop here]. More money == more people == more load handling capability.
In my country (Canada) there was a very interesting case about an activity where a criminal (in this case a trespasser) hurt himself on others property.
:-)
That dough-head decided to crash a party. In the end he climbed onto the roof of the house and dove into the 4' ground level pool from it.
Guess what? The nutcase _sued_ the owners of the house for the cost of his injuries (which were severe), lost time from work, and compensation for personal mental anguish.
He won. Big. The newspapers informed all people that they MUST put up BIG signs explaining proper use of the pool. Failure to do so is highly negligent on the part of the owner of the pool.
There's enough hollywood movies to tell me the US has similar laws about negligence (and self defence) too. You can only hurt others people in self defence or under duress. And you may _only_ ever exert less or equal force against the criminal. ie: If someone threatens to beat you up if you don't give them your lunch money, you aren't allowed to pull out a shotgun and blast their head off. You may, however, knock their lights out (without weapons).
So, in the case of unarmed robbery, slicing someones fingers off with a weapon (razor blade) is NOT equal or less force. You would be in deep shit (unless you were lucky enough to find a knife on the robbers, making it armed robbery).
A dye pack, though, is equal force. You are destroying the item, just as the criminal destroyed your bank.
Of course, this is assuming you're in North America...
BTW: I am not a lawyer, so the above isn't legal advice.
>I think you'll find *all* servers go down, especially ones under the consistently heavy load of ddos, millions of hits a day, etc like MS. Redhat goes down, MS goes down, big wow.
o ft .com -- Uptime: 11 days. Max: 77 days. Avg: 15 days.
. co m -- Uptime: 69 days. Max: 64 days. Avg: 29 days.
Check your links before you use them as a defense.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=micros
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=redhat
Microsoft has (just barely) beaten RedHat in ONE area of uptime. RedHat slaughters Microsoft in all other areas. Maybe that's because you don't need to reboot RedHat when you install _most_ patches, where as you have to reboot windows to install service packs? I don't know. Do you have a reason as to why this discrepency exists?
I find it _pathetic_ that Microsoft's uptime currently equals that of slashdot.org. Seriously, when a major, multi-billion dollar company can't compete with a website run by a few hackers [that is notorious for being broken], that in and of itself speaks volumes about the quality of software being used.
No matter how stickily integrated the problem, there is always a solution. It's just that the solution sucks more than the problem as the problem becomes more integrated. :-)
But, ask yourself this, was it worth hacking VideoCipher II? Yup. No matter how many parts and how much cost was involved, it was worth it. An idea that lets you get something for free is always going to be worth big bucks.
Expect someone to desolder this chip from the board and recreate a non-integrated (and therefore fully hacked) replacement _someday_. Eventually. 'Till then the market will be waiting like a pack of dogs salivating over their next meal.
S-video is digital?
;-)
:-)
Cool, my C64 DID have a digital TV out after all then!
All that s-video does is split luminosity (brightness) from chrominance (colour). This is a major improvement to composite NTSC because getting it compatible with both B/W (which was the original design) and colour was a big hack. Not cool at all. You pay for it in bleeding reds and various other problems in composite signals (which I don't fully understand, since I don't repair TVs for a living).
By separating them, the two the bandwidths don't interfere, and a clean colour component is avaliable to your TV. Notice that if one of the two cables in your S-Video is bad (which ever is chroma) you only lose colour. But the signal is still a totally crisp B/W.
Just FYI.
I'll give it to you that AOL prying into my stuff is worse than Microsoft doing it... well, maybe. Just a little.
:-) Just because you have lots of money already and are a monopoly doesn't stop you from getting even more greedy. Where I live you have to pay to get unlisted, then you pay an additional fee on top of that to stop your unlisted info from being sold to telemarketers. And then you have to pay even more to get your name hidden on Call Display. They won't even block your phone number unless you dial *67 (or is that *69?) all the time or are part of some kind of Witness Protection Program. Really, I kid you not.
:)
And RealPlayer has a lot of security problems too, I'll agree.
But wait: Netscape, IE, RealPlayer, these are all closed source apps. The common theme. Don't trust anything that keeps you from looking inside.
>Ever heard of a packet sniffer? Or a personal firewall?
The difference here is that you choose to put (and setup) these on your machines. If you decide you want to log certain transfers, so be it. At least you got the choice.
If your ISP is doing it, well, that's no good. I'd get the heck away from them and get on a real ISP that respects your privacy.
>They are a monopoly, so they don't need to make bits of cash on the side selling demographics.
Three words: Bell Phone Book.
>I haven't seen any security advisories about M$ stealing user data, and IMO, they don't have to.
I still remember the "old days" [not so old, really]. Before MS quit wasting their time going after friends sharing software. The days where Microsoft threatened (and, I believe, implemented in early betas) to include a phone home feature in Chicago that would report a scan of the users hard drive. I don't think I kept the magazines that discussed it (stuff from '94 is just a little out of date).
And lets not forget the NSA key.
While Microsoft is better than AOL, it's sort of like comparing being stamped on by an elephant and mauled by a bear. They both suck.
I'm actually using Mozilla 0.7 right now. It's great. It feels like Netscape 4 (which was easy to use, when it worked), and is really fast. Plus it renders HTML quite well.
Just a sidenote: Any particular reason why your website just forwards you to slashdot? Just wondering...
Even if the source is closed.
Even if I'm not sure how much info my browser sends to M$ about my purchases.
Think about this: Do you trust MS enough to let them know your entire purchasing history? Closed source software has a long history of backdoors and somewhat secret information transfers.
Since they charged you (assuming you use windows, the platform with the highest IE use) $100 for your browser (which happens to be bundled with an OS), don't you want to charge them money if it turns out they are getting your info? Normally I'd suggest you fix the software, but that's illegal with Internet Explorer. It's like a car with the hood welded shut.
With open source, you know what you are using. You can see there isn't a "report https accesses" module.
It's all about the price of your privacy and security, baby. I don't have a price on mine. Do you have a price on yours?