I think it is high time you anticipate reader's reaction and do extra homework assignments BEFORE you post anything on slashdot main page. I think am speaking on behalf of regular slashdot readers when I say that this pattern is getting old:
1) post something controversial on slashdot 2) get a knee-jerk reaction from the 'uninformed public' 3) do a follow-up to address the concerns and/or fix-up mistakes in the first post
In this case, you made redhat look bad in the firs t posting. There are regulars who knew that it is not as bad as it looks and red hat has good reasons to protect their trademarks. When you get a hot tip like this, what should have been done is to contact amazon.com and redhat.com, get their official stance, AND THEN post it to slashdot.
In the past, it is not problem because a) your audience is only a handful of people and b) you just a provide a link to a reputable newsite written by journalist who has done their own homework (or at least should have their homework). This means, your only responsibility is to have a correct and consise summary on their article.
Now, slashdot is getting more and more of SLASHDOT EXCLUSIVES like this redhat story, the 911 linux dispatch story, and the packetstorm story. Since these was not mainstream at the time of the post, there is no reputable website to link to; there is no 'professional' journalist doing their homework for you. You have to make all the necessary phone calls to verify the story (like Roblimo did in the 911 dispatch story). Now, that you are getting paying doing what you are doing, you have no excuse not to do this.
I hope you take this criticism constructively. Take care guys.
You know, one of these days they have to start referring genetic engineering as genetic hacking. Essentially that is what it is. You don't know what the code snippet is doing. It's like plugging some C code at random places into a program. Most of the time animal is defective (buggy programs), sometimes the code is ignored (uncovered code). Sometimes, after a million iteration, you get something great like this, but you are still not sure what the side effects are. Reverse engineering at its best.
It was merely circumvented. SDMI is a lossy compression. Recompressing it again with another lossy compression. This results in playback qualit y loss (not too significant tho).
The player itself can still be cracked however. If you reverse engineer the player, you can come up with your own player that can play the format unlimited number of times. You need a license with the new player, which is something SDMI-backers are not willing to give me. Thus, SDMI format is litigiously secured, not technically secured.
they didn't really 'crack' the encryption. all they did is circumvent the security. Nothing stops you from tapping the *uncompressed* and *unencrypted* digital stream to your speaker. if the format is lossy, a second lossy compression will less match the original sound quality. Not too much tho.:/
Lets suppose for a moment that 75 pounds of plutonium *did* come hurtling through our atmosphere. First and foremost, it would probably be so badly degraded upon re-entry that it wouldnt matter *what* it was. You could send a damn dump truck full of boubonic plague through the Earth's atmosphere, it would probably disintegrate before ever reaching the ground. The earth is continually bombarbed by fairly large chucks of threatening debris 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Its been this way for millions, if not billions of years. There's a _reason_ why we arent living in a sea of craters, kids.
you are talking about molecular breakdown; plutonium is an atomic particle. The heat from a nuclear explosion does not alter an atom's radioactive property so a reentry is gonna do zit. You're a looking a 75 pounds of radiactive dust spreading all over the atmosphere. Not a pretty picture.
Think about this for a second. Darwinism and Christianity has different stories on how we came to be; why should the children be required by *law* to accept Darwin's version? Kansas made a good move by making it optional.
... and get away with it? Ford is going to sue me and they have every right to. This way beyond having a similar interface. The FuturePower casing looks like a blatant iMac rip-off. I hope Apple wins. The GUI is still debatable.
From the looks of it, the reason she mentioned the website is too drive slashdot traffic to it. Notice that the website has nothing to do with AfroAmerican Search. Either that, or she is overreacting. As one AOL user and a technie said, they don't see anything wrong.
Whatever the case, Hemos or CmdrTaco better hide the link. I don't think we want slashdot.org look like a bunch of dolts!
Assuming that these machines are equivalently configured, AMD's statistians intentionational set the starting x-axis closer to 100% to give the illusion that Athlon is way faster than Pentium III. Don't get me wrong Athlon is faster but the modest 10% in SPECint_base95 looks like a whooping 10% by bumping the x-axis.
Flat Panel has discrete number of pixels. Let say you have 1280x1024 pixels on your flat panel. To simulate 1024x768, only a portion is used. To simulate 640x480, each 1x1 pix maps to 2x2 pix, so to use up 1280x960 pixels on your panel. You can't map it to 1.5x1.5 pix because the placing of pixels are fixed on the grid.
In the case of CRT, the size and number of pixels can be changes by adjusting the focus and size of the electron beam. A lower resolution requires a 'fatter' electron beam. A higher resolution requires a 'thinner' electron beam. The beam is swept from one corner of the monitor to the other.
In short, this about discrete vs continous. Get it?
If Microsoft can trademark 'Windows', Intel the letter 'i', Sun Microsystems 'Java', and oracle(?) 'Network Computer'... why can't OSI trademark 'Open Source'? Has the phrase been in prior use? ever? This isn't about branding and adding value to the trademark, this is about protecting the *definition* of the word. What is gonna stop Al Gore from using the phrase on his Y2K compliant website?
I guess at this point, there is so many comments nobody would even listen to my suggestion.:P
A 'hack' means a ingenious piece of work that gets the job done but doesn't necessarily works in all cases (i.e correctly). The term 'hack artist' already exist, Rob Liefeld comes to mind. In this case, a hack artist is somebody who is talented in the works of art but has no formal training or discipline.
Naturally, a 'hack coder' refers to someone who is a knack in programming but does not require formal training or discipline. All he or she has to do is read the f**king source.
coder - regular joe programmer hack coder - more specific than hacker wiz coder - Larry Wall, Linus, etc poser - wannabes
I feel like I was literally taken from behind. I never saw this one coming.
Scenario #1: RIAA's lawyers will back off. They took on Nullsoft and MP3.com because RIAA knew they couldn't afford to be tied up in litigation costs. AOL is another matter (You wanna mess with me?)
Scenario #2: RIAA's lawyers will give it a shot. Surely AOL has spare change somewhere to cover the legal expenses, reach settlement, etc.
Scenario #3: RIAA will cut a deal with AOL. This is probably the end of cheap music distribution as we know it.
This better be a joke. What were these two monkeys thinking for signing up with AOL? Lesser of two evils?
Uhmm... for 100MB ZIP medias, $18 x 20 disks = $360... compare that with $299 for 2 GIG firewire. Even with 250MB ZIP and 2 GIG JAZ, still beats them in term of transfer rate and seek time no?
I am usually against patents crap but in this case, I am with the creator. Tetris is a unique game concept so if he wants it public domain, so be it. If he wants to protect it, so be it. These sort of things are hard to come by. If I was in his position I would feel robbed if somebody comes up with a Tetris rip-off.
Nope, I don't really care about Doom or Street Fighter ripoffs. I don't see them as being unique as Tetris.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it is high time you anticipate reader's reaction and do extra homework assignments BEFORE you post anything on slashdot main page. I think am speaking on behalf of regular slashdot readers when I say that this pattern is getting old:
1) post something controversial on slashdot
2) get a knee-jerk reaction from the 'uninformed public'
3) do a follow-up to address the concerns and/or fix-up mistakes in the first post
In this case, you made redhat look bad in the firs t posting. There are regulars who knew that it is not as bad as it looks and red hat has good reasons to protect their trademarks. When you get a hot tip like this, what should have been done is to contact amazon.com and redhat.com, get their official stance, AND THEN post it to slashdot.
In the past, it is not problem because a) your audience is only a handful of people and b) you just a provide a link to a reputable newsite written by journalist who has done their own homework (or at least should have their homework). This means, your only responsibility is to have a correct and consise summary on their article.
Now, slashdot is getting more and more of SLASHDOT EXCLUSIVES like this redhat story, the 911 linux dispatch story, and the packetstorm story. Since these was not mainstream at the time of the post, there is no reputable website to link to; there is no 'professional' journalist doing their homework for you. You have to make all the necessary phone calls to verify the story (like Roblimo did in the 911 dispatch story). Now, that you are getting paying doing what you are doing, you have no excuse not to do this.
I hope you take this criticism constructively. Take care guys.
Hasdi
From the looks of it, she is the press contact for redhat:
Worldwide: +1-919-547-0012
Fax: +1-919-547-0024
For presales technical questions, quantity orders, reseller inquiries, or
+1-919-547-0012
Worldwide Headquarters
Mailing Address
P.O. Box 13588
RTP, NC 27709
Shipping Address
2600 Meridian Parkway
Durham, NC 27713
You know, one of these days they have to start referring genetic engineering as genetic hacking. Essentially that is what it is. You don't know what the code snippet is doing. It's like plugging some C code at random places into a program. Most of the time animal is defective (buggy programs), sometimes the code is ignored (uncovered code). Sometimes, after a million iteration, you get something great like this, but you are still not sure what the side effects are. Reverse engineering at its best.
Hasdi
Unfuck.exe takes an already registered WMA file and outputs it as a WAV, at which point it re-encodes it into an unprotected WMA file.
I checked mp3.com but I see no reference on this.
I'll wait for the "rogue" SDMI player to come out. It will be shot down by lawsuits. Hasdi
I'll wait for linux to run on the G4 first thank you very much. That, or MacOS X
Hasdi
It was merely circumvented. SDMI is a lossy compression. Recompressing it again with another lossy compression. This results in playback qualit y loss (not too significant tho).
The player itself can still be cracked however. If you reverse engineer the player, you can come up with your own player that can play the format unlimited number of times. You need a license with the new player, which is something SDMI-backers are not willing to give me. Thus, SDMI format is litigiously secured, not technically secured.
Hasdi
they didn't really 'crack' the encryption. all they did is circumvent the security. Nothing stops you from tapping the *uncompressed* and *unencrypted* digital stream to your speaker. if the format is lossy, a second lossy compression will less match the original sound quality. Not too much tho. :/
Lets suppose for a moment that 75 pounds of plutonium *did* come hurtling through our atmosphere. First and foremost, it would probably be so badly degraded upon re-entry that it
wouldnt matter *what* it was. You could send a damn dump truck full of boubonic plague through the Earth's atmosphere, it would probably disintegrate before ever reaching the
ground. The earth is continually bombarbed by fairly large chucks of threatening debris 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Its been this way for millions, if not billions of
years. There's a _reason_ why we arent living in a sea of craters, kids.
you are talking about molecular breakdown; plutonium is an atomic particle. The heat from a nuclear explosion does not alter an atom's radioactive property so a reentry is gonna do zit. You're a looking a 75 pounds of radiactive dust spreading all over the atmosphere. Not a pretty picture.
Hasdi
Think about this for a second. Darwinism and Christianity has different stories on how we came to be; why should the children be required by *law* to accept Darwin's version? Kansas made a good move by making it optional.
... and get away with it? Ford is going to sue me and they have every right to. This way beyond having a similar interface. The FuturePower casing looks like a blatant iMac rip-off. I hope Apple wins. The GUI is still debatable.
Hasdi
I suggest you use google to search on linus (monolithic proponent) and tanenbaum (microkernel proponent). It is a very touchy subject for linus.
From the looks of it, the reason she mentioned the website is too drive slashdot traffic to it. Notice that the website has nothing to do with AfroAmerican Search. Either that, or she is overreacting. As one AOL user and a technie said, they don't see anything wrong.
Whatever the case, Hemos or CmdrTaco better hide the link. I don't think we want slashdot.org look like a bunch of dolts!
Assuming that these machines are equivalently configured, AMD's statistians intentionational set the starting x-axis closer to 100% to give the illusion that Athlon is way faster than Pentium III. Don't get me wrong Athlon is faster but the modest 10% in SPECint_base95 looks like a whooping 10% by bumping the x-axis.
Flat Panel has discrete number of pixels. Let say you have 1280x1024 pixels on your flat panel. To simulate 1024x768, only a portion is used. To simulate 640x480, each 1x1 pix maps to 2x2 pix, so to use up 1280x960 pixels on your panel. You can't map it to 1.5x1.5 pix because the placing of pixels are fixed on the grid.
In the case of CRT, the size and number of pixels can be changes by adjusting the focus and size of the electron beam. A lower resolution requires a 'fatter' electron beam. A higher resolution requires a 'thinner' electron beam. The beam is swept from one corner of the monitor to the other.
In short, this about discrete vs continous. Get it?
Hasdi
If Microsoft can trademark 'Windows', Intel the letter 'i', Sun Microsystems 'Java', and oracle(?) 'Network Computer'... why can't OSI trademark 'Open Source'? Has the phrase been in prior use? ever? This isn't about branding and adding value to the trademark, this is about protecting the *definition* of the word. What is gonna stop Al Gore from using the phrase on his Y2K compliant website?
Ugh.
programmer
computer geek
computer nerd
wiz/hack/joe coder
codesmith
code/software hacker
loser/poser
hacker is a hacker is a hacker
I guess at this point, there is so many comments nobody would even listen to my suggestion. :P
A 'hack' means a ingenious piece of work that gets the job done but doesn't necessarily works in all cases (i.e correctly). The term 'hack artist' already exist, Rob Liefeld comes to mind. In this case, a hack artist is somebody who is talented in the works of art but has no formal training or discipline.
Naturally, a 'hack coder' refers to someone who is a knack in programming but does not require formal training or discipline. All he or she has to do is read the f**king source.
coder - regular joe programmer
hack coder - more specific than hacker
wiz coder - Larry Wall, Linus, etc
poser - wannabes
My 2 bits
Rod_Z
I feel like I was literally taken from behind. I never saw this one coming.
Scenario #1: RIAA's lawyers will back off. They took on Nullsoft and MP3.com because RIAA knew they couldn't afford to be tied up in litigation costs. AOL is another matter (You wanna mess with me?)
Scenario #2: RIAA's lawyers will give it a shot. Surely AOL has spare change somewhere to cover the legal expenses, reach settlement, etc.
Scenario #3: RIAA will cut a deal with AOL. This is probably the end of cheap music distribution as we know it.
This better be a joke. What were these two monkeys thinking for signing up with AOL? Lesser of two evils?
Rod Z
Uhmm... for 100MB ZIP medias, $18 x 20 disks = $360... compare that with $299 for 2 GIG firewire. Even with 250MB ZIP and 2 GIG JAZ, still beats them in term of transfer rate and seek time no?
1. Cocaine
2. Crack
3. Marijuana
4. Caffeine
5. All/Most of the above
6. Substance-free
I am usually against patents crap but in this case, I am with the creator. Tetris is a unique game concept so if he wants it public domain, so be it. If he wants to protect it, so be it. These sort of things are hard to come by. If I was in his position I would feel robbed if somebody comes up with a Tetris rip-off.
Nope, I don't really care about Doom or Street Fighter ripoffs. I don't see them as being unique as Tetris.