M10 is way old (pushed to ftp a month ago?). Development toward M12 has been going for nearly a week now (that's post-M11 development.) M11 is within minutes of being posted but was pretty much ready for Windows and Linux a few days ago (Mac required a few small fixes.) Look at the nightly builds, try something recent and then post more inacurate information for me to refute.
Hey, I'm talking about what's on the webpage. That's the face they're presenting to the world in general. Not the FTP, not any CVS trees, whatever is on the web is what a person will see and download.
BTW, my argument is irrefutable because I posted no information that was not my opinion.:-)
In any case, I'll give M11 a shot, the moment it's on the webpage. Until then, forget it. If you have to have more inside knowledge to attempt to use their product, then it's not worth it. You think Joe User is going to go to the webpage, see M10 under the "Latest release", and say "maybe there's a later one on the ftp".. Hell no.
Well, dang me. They put the M11 on the web page yesterday, it looks like. Never mind, then. I'll give the new one a shot.:-)
Are you saying that with a straight face? What a pompous ass you are. It is a very complex project. You have no right to diss these people when they have clearly stated that this is not even a beta release! Do you really think you could come up to speed with the code that fast to make a judgement as to it's quality?
What a pompous ass you are for telling another person what they have the RIGHT to say. I have every damn right to say any damn thing I damn well please. Damnit.:)
All I'm saying, in any case, is that after a year, ANY code *should* run without crashing so easily. That's it. Since it doesn't, IT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE IT'S QUALITY CODE. Okay? Deal with it.
It looks to be basically a wrapper for a Windows based program, thus turning it into an X-Client. Thus, you can run the sucker anywhere. This, AFAIK, hasn't been done yet, mainly because no-one really cared to. However, You could probably say this is a natural extension of the X-clients in existance on other platforms. You can run an X-Client on a Windows system with an X-server running on that system, this is just reversing it.
It is kinda cool, yet extremely annoying to patent.
From a recent/. poll, over twenty percent of/. users use communicator for their mail client. Now what do you think that is for the less knowledgable browsing public?
Adding up the rest, that's 77% that do NOT use a built-in e-mail client.
Okay, I admit, I didn't think about conversion to PS as also being known as "printing", but this is because I don't use PostScript in any way, shape, or form, so it didn't occur to me.
If they had built the system as being a basic browser with advanced plug-in capabilities, they'd probably be further along in the project. Build the base, then build the addons.
For shits and grins today, I downloaded the latest version I could find at mozilla.org, which was M10. It works, to an extent. It'll display a web page, but that's about all I could get it to do without crashing.
Frankly, this does not look like quality code. I haven't downloaded the source yet to have a look, however.
When I'm building software, the first thing I prefer to do is to get some form of functional state. Preferably one that doesn't crash. Then add features as needed.
For a web browser, I agree that it seems like an object model is a good idea. Build your basic display code, then make everything else a plugin to that code. Perhaps this is what is meant by embeddable web browser, I don't know. All I know is that it's been well over a year, and the code crashes when I click a menu option. (Yes, don't click that menu, I know:-) Even debug level code shouldn't crash at the slightest provocation...
Hrmph.. I'll reserve judgement until I see a finished product, of course, but the outlook looks grim to me. Naturally, I hope they prove me wrong, because I want a good browser, damnit.
Mozilla has support for everything. Everything from email to the kitchen sink is part of the codebase.
It's gotten so badly bloated now that I hesitate to call it a browser anymore. All I want my browser to do is to display web pages, run some java/javascript, and support plugins for objects in a page. That's it. No more, please.
Look at the mozilla modules list: -E-mail/news? I'd really prefer that to be a separate program that can open my web browser if needed, thanks. -Dialup? I've already set that up, thanks again. -Embeddable Web Browser? What the heck are you embedding that in? -HTML to Text/PostScript Translation? Wouldn't this really be better as a separate program? How about saving using HTML? Simpler, eh? -PerlConnect (Perl and JavaScript connection )? What the heck is this for?
And all the other stuff there. It just seems to me that they're not developing a browser anymore, they're developing an application suite.
Start with a simple architecture, and work up from there. Ahhhhh, would be nice.
The "Phone Survey" anecdote told above is as likely a lie as the truth.
I figured this would happen.
I figured someone would think I was just going out M$ bashing.
Well, feel free to think that if you want. I know it's truth, because I was there. I did not get the name of the polling company because it frankly didn't occur to me.
IF you would have read my posts before, you would know that I'm not anti-Microsoft, at least not to a huge extent.
Perhaps we need to post a karma rating along with our messages, in order to show we truly do make informed and interesting posts, instead of just bashing everything. Or perhaps we need to make a link to see other posts by that person, so as to give an idea of the way he participates in the forum.
I don't know what the solution is. I have no way through this forum to show you I am an honest person. Nevertheless, I am honest.
The speed of light through any medium is less than the speed of light in a vacuum. Sometimes light can be made to travel through a medium faster than it's natural rate. This results in a nifty "light shockwave" which I believe is called cherenkov radiation.
Yep. You can see some cool pics of this effect at http://www.nuc.umr.edu/Reactor/Reactor.ht ml, along with a pretty good explanation of how. It's pretty neat the way it actually happens..
Furthermore, the light in a fiber actually zig-zags down the fiber channel and does not travel straight down it. This also reduces the signal's speed from c.
Actually it increases the distance of travel which gives an appearent speed difference from c, which is just as good as slowing it down.:-)
I got a call last night from some guy who asked me if I'd heard of the Microsoft Trial. Not being blind and deaf, I said yes of course. He then asked if I wanted to take a phone survey.
Normally I say no to this stuff, but my interest got the better of me and I said yes. What followed was one of the most biased surveys I have ever taken.
As I was taking this, it was obvious that the guy was reading questions off a computer screen, and really didn't grasp the nature of many of the questions. Also, there was a lot of noise in the background. LOTS of noise, to the extent that I could tell others were asking the same questions to even more people. It was a large scale survey.
Anyway, first he asked background info. Basically it wanted to know how well you understand computers and technology. Then it asked about the M$ trial. Do you know about the finding of fact? Do you agree with it? Have you read it? Do you watch the news? Do you read a national newspaper?
Then the Microsoft bias set in.
I heard questions like, "Given that the breakup of Microsoft would hurt the consumer and stifle innovation, do you agree that the government should not pursue the case any further, and do you think that the government should try for a settlement, as Microsoft has been advocating for months? Yes or no please."
I'm not joking. It was just that bad. After each one of the most biased questions, he asked the same question again, "Do you think that Microsoft has hurt the consumer?"
That one was repeated a lot, along with "Do you think the government should settle and not waste taxpayer money," and "Do you think M$ is a monopoly?"
Anyway, I got through the whole thing with my sense of morals pretty much untarnished, even having to say things like "Yes, taxpayer money should be wasted to beat that Bill Gates bastard down," because I simply couldn't cope with some of those questions.
Anyway, I thought this somehow might be relevant to the discussion at hand regarding all the m$ hubbub.
Warning: If M$ comes out with survey results of the American public anytime soon, you now know to take that with a grain of salt, don't ya?:-)
I was going to broadcast an image of Hitler saying, "I return! Join me at Otto's nightclub for the battle that will bring about the triumphant Fourth Reich," then machine-gun all the skinheads who came rushing in.
The patent contains nothing about decoding speech, BTW.
In the words of the patent: "This invention relates to information processing and, more particularly, to automatically generating a topic description for text and searching and sorting text by topic using the same. "
The patent is "A method of automatically generating a topical description of text" based on some factors that it defines. Looking deeper at the equations there, it's obvious that while this doesn't tell you how to fully do it, it's pretty detailed and gives the majority of the info. Basically, using the definition of each word in the input text, this can crank out a general idea of what the text is about. Pretty neat really.
But no speech recognition here.
Overtones of Eschelon are here, however, since you don't need a keyword list for something like this. A "red flag" conversation could seem innocent, and this algorithm might give an idea of what's really being discussed, depending on the dictionary being used.
So you're saying that the gameplay changes with each level? It's Quake on level 1 and it PowerPuff girls on level 3? Doubt it. Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Compare the play of one of the best Quake levels ever to the play of one of the worst. It's not that bad overall, usually, but levels do make a big deal in a 3d FPS. But we're talking games in general here, aren't we?
(BTW, I really like that PowerPuff Girls show.:-)
This could be true with some demos. But it could also be just as likely not true with others. The point is you don't know in advance. And if bandwidth is not an issue for you(isn't for me, but even if it was, it's just another factor in deciding to dl the game), then it's just as easy to get the demo as it is to get the whole game.
If you can be three demo levels in 5 minutes, I think you can do the math and figure out how long it would take you.... However, it only takes a week at the most to beat half-life. Think more on terms of replay value rather than the time it takes to beat it. I do. When I've beaten the game, is it fun anymore? If i haven't beaten it yet, is it fun enough to play to make it worth my time to continue to play it? Does it look good enough to buy a copy? All these are factors in a purchase.
Have you ever actually read an online review? You most likely just have a grudge because one of the reviews gave a bad rating on your favorite game. Hey, they're only human. No, everyone is entitled to their opinion. But other people's opinions are not my own. A review is just not useful enough to me to determine my spending. I have no grudge, I hold no grudges, let's not make this personal.
Demos don't limit what you get, but how much of what you get. Any limitation is degrading the product to the point where it may not be enough to make a purchase based upon. This is product dependant and demo dependant, however. Actually, I usually do play demos first, and then use that as a basis to decide whether to get the pirated game or not.:-) I'm not stating that this is a decision I make, it's just the way things usually occur. I get the demo, play it for a while, then maybe get the whole game, then, if it's worth keeping, buy it. If not, delete it. That's it. That's just the way it goes. Sometimes this process takes all of 3 hours.:-)
Steal: to take and carry away without right or permission. -Webster's Dictionary Stealing is taking something that's not yours. It doesn't matter whether you use it or not. I have not taken anything. "Taken" implies removal. I don't delete the software from the shelf. I don't remove it from anyone's system. I have copied the software. I have evaluated it. I usually delete it from my machine. After that, things are as they began in the first place, with the exception that I now can make a truly informed choice on whether to buy a product.
If the game you pirated is worth $50, have you not stolen fifty dollars from ID? If you didn't purchase the game you have no right to take it from the Internet and no right to play it. Remember that my assumption was I would not buy the product anyway. Therefore they were getting no money from me, whether I pirated the game or not. Therefore they lose nothing. Once I delete the game, I have nothing in my possesion that is theirs.
Don't blame me if you don't like the law. I never said this was legal. I never said I cared much either way. I also don't think this should be legal. I just don't let the law restrict me in my choice of actions.
Note: I have no illegal software currently on my computer. I do not pirate software daily, or even often. I never pirate anything other than games even then. I always buy games I feel are worth buying. This is just a disclaimer, not a moral defense.
Suppose Microsoft use Linux code in their new os and didn't use the GPL. Is that not stealing? Or is it not a crime just because it isn't in the physical sense?
It is a crime. So is piracy. I never stated otherwise. But does the fact that something is illegal stop you from doing it? Are you totally restricted by the law? I prefer to rely on my own personal code of ethics. Stealing food for a starving child may be illegal, but it is not wrong from my viewpoint. Stealing game software is illegal, but I do not consider it to be wrong, as long as I abide by my code of ethics, which states that it is wrong to USE software without payment to the authors. Using and evaluating software are two entirely different things. If it's against the law, fine. I accept responsibility for my actions. Call me a rational anarchist.:-)
Oh, and you never answered my big question: If I download pirated software, then immediately delete it WITHOUT running it, is it theft?
I know for certain it has nothing to do with bandwidth. Downloading the Quake demo is going to be a heck of allot quicker to download than trying to download a huge 60MB compressed pirated game file.Why do you need the entire game to discover how the gameplay is on the first level?
You don't. You need the full game to determine how good the gameplay is on the other 30-40 levels.
Of course a company is going to release the best or more hooking, addictive part of the game as the demo.
You need the full game to determine if you can beat it inside that week.
If I can beat a game in a week (can some, others not), then I don't want it. Because that meant it was pretty easy and therefore something I'd delete. I won't pay 50 bucks for a product with a shelf life of 1 week.
If the netplay is good enough, I'll go all out, buy the game, just to have a copy on a cd, on a permanent medium. To have documentation. In the case of Half-Life, as someone pointed out, to get a key to play on network servers. (I bought Half-Life.. EXCELLENT single player story and game, but way too hard at the end.)
And if you pirate games just to see if you like it why don't you just read a on-line game review of it or just download the demo? I doubt they go through all the hard work to make a demo just for you to pirate the entire game.
Did you read anything I said before? These things tell you nothing. Reviews are worse than useless, because often they're simply hype. The demo is worthless as an indicator of the rest of the game play (excepting most of id's games).
You liken a demo as to test driving a car. But when you test drive a car, you have the whole car; you don't have 3 wheels, half an engine, and no seats.
Anyway, the comparison of stealing software to stealing a car is pointless. A car is a physical object. Software is not, unless you want to talk of bits being physical. Show me a bit. Hold it in your hand. Lick it, go on, I dare you.
Let's assume, for arguement's sake, that no matter whether I pirated a piece of software or not, I would never have bought it.
If I then steal a game, then delete it, without having ever run it or played it, is it theft? Answer me that question. Either way you answer, you're still wrong.:-)
Now, if I do run it, play it for 1 minute, then delete it, is it theft?
How about playing it for 2 minutes? Three? Where do you draw the line, personally? What defines theft? What have I stolen? From whom? Where is the monetary damage? I couldn't have possibly bought that software anyway, mind you.
Let's talk about game piracy. I apologize in advance to all the game programmers out there whom may be offended by this rambling comment.
I'm sorry, but I just don't see how "Warez" can hurt a companies bottom line by that damn much.
Let's say you publish a game that's not pirated. Figure how many units you sell. Now, add the fact that your game is pirated. How many less units do you sell? My answer: not that damn many less, probably more.
Your game is more popular, reaching a wider audience (warez d00dz have friends too) who may possibly buy the game. But, even if they don't buy the game, if they'd never been exposed to it, they sure as hell wouldn't have bought it previously.
In other words, the only time you lose money from a pirated game is when a person who would have been a buyer does not buy.
Of course, in reality there's no way to measure that. So, instead, they estimate total copies of the game and say,"Hey! All those people would have bought it if it wasn't pirated! No fair," even when this is clearly bunk.
I have pirated many many games. There is not one that I kept that I wouldn't have bought. I bought Quake. I didn't buy Q2 (i didn't like it, so deleted it). I would NEVER buy a game without first pirating it and playing it for a week. Because all too often you play a game for a day and a half, realize it's total crap, and delete it. At least you're not out 50 bucks this way, eh?
Yes, game companies deserve money for their work. No, they do not deserve my money if I'm going to delete the game in 2 days. If I don't play, I won't pay. Plain and simple.
I bought Warcraft. I bought Starcraft. I bought Quake1. I'll probably buy Quake3, but I'll damn well pirate the whole game first, just to be sure I'm not getting ripped off.:-)
Now I admit, many people who might otherwise buy the game won't, because they get the pirated version. But not as many as the game companies want you to believe. Most of these pirates are kids with no spendable cash in the first place. Just remember that.
I never signed those things when I was a kid. I bloody well refused.
More to the point, I did so loudly, angrily, and blatently. Teacher handed me the paper, I read it, said out loud, "I won't sign this thing," and threw it in the trash. Every year I saw the principal because of it, but, legally they can't make you sign shit. If you don't agree with it, you don't sign it.
If they FORCE you to sign it, then it is not legally binding. By rejecting it, refusing to sign it publically like that, then even if they force you to sign it later, it means nothing. Signature under duress.
Anyway, it got me a reputation as a "bad" kid, which didn't bother me, but did bother teachers. Let me add I had straight A's too, with practically no effort, which I imagine pissed off the teachers to no end.:-)
Oh well. Screw 'em. They didn't respect me, and I didn't respect them. But, at least it was a mutual hatred you could rely on.
csh - Sea Shell tcsh - Tee Sea Shell lilo - Lie-Low cache - Cah-Shay (It's french, damnit) ~ - Til-Dah # - hash ! - exclamation point (although lately i've used bang like the rest of the world)
BTW, cache must be cah-shay, because: a) it's french (at least originally) b) you can't say CASH because if you're working on an e-commerce system things become confusing really quickly.
I fail to see the problem. ISP's are dead anyway, in terms of service.
All I want is an IP Address. That's it. Everything else, I can deal with: E-mail? Hook up a copy of sendmail. Web? Run Apache if I want to serve pages.
There's no service out there i need that I cannot get, all I need is an address on the network. That, IMHO, is the primary function of the ISP. Everything else is just nice to have.
If you're buying high speed connection, usually you get an IP along with that, right? What do I need any of their servers for, except for possibly DNS? (since having a massive database sitting around doesn't appeal to me)
Provide me an address and a way to look up other addresses. I'm happy then. Unless there's something else I don't know about (which is probably true).
Put in a fairly good randomized password generator, and don't allow users to change their password.
The reason for this is if someone gets the password file. I assume you're using a one-way crypt-type function for the passwords anyway. With randomized passwords, an attack on this will take forever, because dictionary files are useless against it.
Since you're using SSL (require 128-bit too), packet sniffing is pretty useless.
Yes, it's still vulnerable to a brute force attack (everything is, really). So let the user only try 3 passwords in say, an hour or so. This makes brute force take forever, and, if the user really forgets, they only have to wait an hour or so.
Yes, you'll have problems with people forgetting passwords, but most people write down passwords anyway and keep them in a wallet or purse or some such. There is no security without physical security anyway.
If the user forgets his hard to remember password, he can call in and get it changed to something else (also randomized) after proving his identity through other means (knowing SSN, phone #, mother's pet's maiden name, whatever:-).
Passwords CAN be secure, in that you can make getting in more trouble than it's worth to the attacker.
Since when the hell did IETF gain any form of actual control? They can release an RFC, right? BFD... It's not like they write any actual CODE or anything..
You don't want people spying on your communications? Use code that doesn't implement that spec. Wheeee!
Does anyone honestly think that, given a choice, an indiviual would choose a piece of software that is intentionally insecure? Really, given an actual, informed choice, mind you...
IETF has no real power. They can define the spec all they want, just don't use that spec. There's already specs out there which are not tapable. Use those instead. The whole point of the RFC system is "may the best protocol win", right? So.. May the best protocol win.:-)
d.net used to open source all their clients, at one time. Naturally, someone mucked about with the code and starting faking keys back to the system. It was a bit of a shambles when they finally caught on. The reason they don't release the source except to a small group now is to prevent anyone from overcoming their security measures... However, if you're mainly interested in the algorithms, they'll give you those. But not their entire source, because of the security issues.
Dcypher is not distributed computing, it's client-server, as are SETI and d.net. There is a HUGE difference between client-server and distributed computing. Perhaps slashdot should label it cooperative computing instead.
Err... You're wrong, and yet right at the same time.. wow, good job!
SETI and d.net and in fact the entire internet are "client-server". The Web is client-server. Telnet is client-server. Nearly every single piece of software on the internet is client-server. It really doesn't say a lot about what the software does, though..
Seti@home and d.net are distributed computing.
Let's define distributed computing, shall we? According to PC Webopedia here, distributed computing is:
A type of computing in which different components and objects comprising an application can be located on different computers connected to a network. So, for example, a word processing application might consist of an editor component on one computer, a spell-checker object on a second computer, and a thesaurus on a third computer. In some distributed computing systems, each of the three computers could even be running a different operating system.
Distributed computing is a natural outgrowth of object-oriented programming. Once programmers began creating objects that could be combined to form applications, it was a natural extension to develop systems that allowed these objects to by physically located on different computers.
In the specific cases of seti@home and d.net, they are taking a large project, splitting it up into small pieces, and running it all over the place. Now, there may be a problem, as our definition above implies that each "object" running on each system is different. We can define our object as being our code, but we can also, more intuitively, define our object as being our code running on our data. This conforms more towards the object-oriented methodology. All the objects are inheriting the same source code, but different data. Each bit of code running on each person's computer is running a different bit of data. This is the whole point, in fact. So therefore, all the objects are, in fact, different instances. There we go. Good enough for me.
Damn, I must be pretty bored to respond to that post.. Hmm.. Guess I need a beer.
When you are using somebody else's property, you abide by their rules. They made it quite clear that they had the right to search the student's computers. The students agreed to that rule by using the network. No room to complain.
Complaining is like Jello. There's always room for more.:-)
The point is I'm sure you could convince a judge otherwise. And even if not, you could be enough of a pain in the at that at the very least they'd think twice about doing it again.
I'm not saying it's right to pirate music, I'm saying it's wrong for anyone to do illegal things to you. It's a rights violation, damnit. They may have signed away that right, but that doesn't make it any less wrong!
Argh.. I shouldn't get drawn into these arguements.. my head is hurting.. argh.. need pizza...
Not entirely accurate according to their email. They considered 'easily guessed' passwords and those that had passwords in readme files, or were freely given upon request, the same as public access. They did find systems that had mp3s and such, but with better passwords. Those they considered were there for legal, 'private' use.
Okay, lets say I share a folder with MP3's...
If I make it publically accessible, that's fine for anyone to look at. I'm implictly granting copy permissions.
If I put a password on it, of any kind, be it easy or hard, I'm denying that permission. For a school to come into my system, basically hack it (guessing passwords is the oldest form of hacking), then they are breaking the law. Period. Criminal Trespass. Illegal Search (possibly). Definitly a rights violation.
I say, sue the shit out of the school. Or at least go wacko and shoot a few administrators (mainly a joke:-).
1) Why are both of these groupd getting picked on, it seems to me only one was trying to pirate content. 2) What does DeCSS have to do with users who just want to play their disks in their computers? Does making a player cause CSS to be defeated?
You can't play an encrypted disk without decrypting it. It's just that simple.
A DVD player (software) works a bit like this: Pass decryption code to DVD drive DVD Drive accepts it, starts streaming out decrypted MPEG data. Player decodes said data, displays it.
A DVD Pirate works a bit like this: Pass decryption code to DVD Drive DVD Drive accepts it, starts streaming out decrypted MPEG data. Pirate takes data, writes it to hard drive.
So you see that the process is really the same, it just depends on where you want to put the final data. (This is a bit simplified from reality..)
3) I'm all for free information here, but there seems to be a lot of people whining about some guys who knew damn well their work would be used to rip off content.
The downside is that you couldn't do this much any other way. The DVD consortium isn't giving out any more decryption codes, therefore nobody else gets to write a DVD player without paying through the nose for it. Naturally, those free spirits out there think this is BS, so they just worked around it.
The gist of the whole thing: They wanted to protect DVD security through secrecy. That's always a bad move. The DVD encryption was broken, plain and simple.
Not expecting anyone to steal the horse when the lock on the barn was all rusted is just stupid.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
M10 is way old (pushed to ftp a month ago?). Development toward M12 has been going for nearly a week now (that's post-M11 development.) M11 is within minutes of being posted but was pretty much ready for Windows and Linux a few days ago (Mac required a few small fixes.) Look at the nightly builds, try something recent and then post more inacurate information for me to refute.
:-)
:-)
Hey, I'm talking about what's on the webpage. That's the face they're presenting to the world in general. Not the FTP, not any CVS trees, whatever is on the web is what a person will see and download.
BTW, my argument is irrefutable because I posted no information that was not my opinion.
In any case, I'll give M11 a shot, the moment it's on the webpage. Until then, forget it. If you have to have more inside knowledge to attempt to use their product, then it's not worth it. You think Joe User is going to go to the webpage, see M10 under the "Latest release", and say "maybe there's a later one on the ftp".. Hell no.
Well, dang me. They put the M11 on the web page yesterday, it looks like. Never mind, then. I'll give the new one a shot.
---
Considering I had no trace of any older version on my system, somehow I doubt this would have helped.
---
Are you saying that with a straight face? What a pompous ass you are. It is a very complex project. You have no right to diss these people when they have clearly stated that this is not even a beta release! Do you really think you could come up to speed with the code that fast to make a judgement as to it's quality?
:)
What a pompous ass you are for telling another person what they have the RIGHT to say. I have every damn right to say any damn thing I damn well please. Damnit.
All I'm saying, in any case, is that after a year, ANY code *should* run without crashing so easily. That's it. Since it doesn't, IT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE IT'S QUALITY CODE. Okay? Deal with it.
---
It looks to be basically a wrapper for a Windows based program, thus turning it into an X-Client. Thus, you can run the sucker anywhere. This, AFAIK, hasn't been done yet, mainly because no-one really cared to. However, You could probably say this is a natural extension of the X-clients in existance on other platforms. You can run an X-Client on a Windows system with an X-server running on that system, this is just reversing it.
It is kinda cool, yet extremely annoying to patent.
---
From a recent /. poll, over twenty percent of /. users use communicator for their mail client. Now what do you think that is for the less knowledgable browsing public?
:-) Even debug level code shouldn't crash at the slightest provocation...
Adding up the rest, that's 77% that do NOT use a built-in e-mail client.
Okay, I admit, I didn't think about conversion to PS as also being known as "printing", but this is because I don't use PostScript in any way, shape, or form, so it didn't occur to me.
If they had built the system as being a basic browser with advanced plug-in capabilities, they'd probably be further along in the project. Build the base, then build the addons.
For shits and grins today, I downloaded the latest version I could find at mozilla.org, which was M10. It works, to an extent. It'll display a web page, but that's about all I could get it to do without crashing.
Frankly, this does not look like quality code. I haven't downloaded the source yet to have a look, however.
When I'm building software, the first thing I prefer to do is to get some form of functional state. Preferably one that doesn't crash. Then add features as needed.
For a web browser, I agree that it seems like an object model is a good idea. Build your basic display code, then make everything else a plugin to that code. Perhaps this is what is meant by embeddable web browser, I don't know. All I know is that it's been well over a year, and the code crashes when I click a menu option. (Yes, don't click that menu, I know
Hrmph.. I'll reserve judgement until I see a finished product, of course, but the outlook looks grim to me. Naturally, I hope they prove me wrong, because I want a good browser, damnit.
---
They're trying to support too much.
Mozilla has support for everything. Everything from email to the kitchen sink is part of the codebase.
It's gotten so badly bloated now that I hesitate to call it a browser anymore. All I want my browser to do is to display web pages, run some java/javascript, and support plugins for objects in a page. That's it. No more, please.
Look at the mozilla modules list:
-E-mail/news? I'd really prefer that to be a separate program that can open my web browser if needed, thanks.
-Dialup? I've already set that up, thanks again.
-Embeddable Web Browser? What the heck are you embedding that in?
-HTML to Text/PostScript Translation? Wouldn't this really be better as a separate program? How about saving using HTML? Simpler, eh?
-PerlConnect (Perl and JavaScript connection )? What the heck is this for?
And all the other stuff there. It just seems to me that they're not developing a browser anymore, they're developing an application suite.
Start with a simple architecture, and work up from there. Ahhhhh, would be nice.
---
The "Phone Survey" anecdote told above is as likely a lie as the truth.
I figured this would happen.
I figured someone would think I was just going out M$ bashing.
Well, feel free to think that if you want. I know it's truth, because I was there. I did not get the name of the polling company because it frankly didn't occur to me.
IF you would have read my posts before, you would know that I'm not anti-Microsoft, at least not to a huge extent.
Perhaps we need to post a karma rating along with our messages, in order to show we truly do make informed and interesting posts, instead of just bashing everything. Or perhaps we need to make a link to see other posts by that person, so as to give an idea of the way he participates in the forum.
I don't know what the solution is. I have no way through this forum to show you I am an honest person. Nevertheless, I am honest.
Ah well... No skin off my back...
---
The speed of light through any medium is less than the speed of light in a vacuum. Sometimes light can be made to travel through a medium faster than it's natural rate. This results in a nifty "light shockwave" which I believe is called cherenkov radiation.
:-)
Yep. You can see some cool pics of this effect at http://www.nuc.umr.edu/Reactor/Reactor.ht ml, along with a pretty good explanation of how. It's pretty neat the way it actually happens..
Furthermore, the light in a fiber actually zig-zags down the fiber channel and does not travel straight down it. This also reduces the signal's speed from c.
Actually it increases the distance of travel which gives an appearent speed difference from c, which is just as good as slowing it down.
---
I got a call last night from some guy who asked me if I'd heard of the Microsoft Trial. Not being blind and deaf, I said yes of course. He then asked if I wanted to take a phone survey.
:-)
Normally I say no to this stuff, but my interest got the better of me and I said yes. What followed was one of the most biased surveys I have ever taken.
As I was taking this, it was obvious that the guy was reading questions off a computer screen, and really didn't grasp the nature of many of the questions. Also, there was a lot of noise in the background. LOTS of noise, to the extent that I could tell others were asking the same questions to even more people. It was a large scale survey.
Anyway, first he asked background info. Basically it wanted to know how well you understand computers and technology.
Then it asked about the M$ trial. Do you know about the finding of fact? Do you agree with it? Have you read it? Do you watch the news? Do you read a national newspaper?
Then the Microsoft bias set in.
I heard questions like, "Given that the breakup of Microsoft would hurt the consumer and stifle innovation, do you agree that the government should not pursue the case any further, and do you think that the government should try for a settlement, as Microsoft has been advocating for months? Yes or no please."
I'm not joking. It was just that bad. After each one of the most biased questions, he asked the same question again, "Do you think that Microsoft has hurt the consumer?"
That one was repeated a lot, along with "Do you think the government should settle and not waste taxpayer money," and "Do you think M$ is a monopoly?"
Anyway, I got through the whole thing with my sense of morals pretty much untarnished, even having to say things like "Yes, taxpayer money should be wasted to beat that Bill Gates bastard down," because I simply couldn't cope with some of those questions.
Anyway, I thought this somehow might be relevant to the discussion at hand regarding all the m$ hubbub.
Warning: If M$ comes out with survey results of the American public anytime soon, you now know to take that with a grain of salt, don't ya?
Otto
---
I was going to broadcast an image of Hitler saying, "I return! Join me at Otto's nightclub for the battle that will bring about the triumphant Fourth Reich," then machine-gun all the skinheads who came rushing in.
:)
Not in MY club you won't, ya commie bastard!
jk!
---
The patent contains nothing about decoding speech, BTW.
In the words of the patent: "This invention relates to information processing and, more particularly, to automatically generating a topic description for text and searching and sorting text by topic using the same. "
The patent is "A method of automatically generating a topical description of text" based on some factors that it defines. Looking deeper at the equations there, it's obvious that while this doesn't tell you how to fully do it, it's pretty detailed and gives the majority of the info. Basically, using the definition of each word in the input text, this can crank out a general idea of what the text is about. Pretty neat really.
But no speech recognition here.
Overtones of Eschelon are here, however, since you don't need a keyword list for something like this. A "red flag" conversation could seem innocent, and this algorithm might give an idea of what's really being discussed, depending on the dictionary being used.
---
Printer RAM? Come on...
We've got 5 Printers around here, over a dozen computers, running everything from NT to redhat 6.1, to debian, to windows 98..
What the hell do they expect but for me to put "varies" on everything?
bleah
---
So you're saying that the gameplay changes with each level? It's Quake on level 1 and it PowerPuff girls on level 3? Doubt it.
:-)
... However, it only takes a week at the most to beat half-life. Think more on terms of replay value rather than the time it takes to beat it.
:-) :-)
:-)
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Compare the play of one of the best Quake levels ever to the play of one of the worst. It's not that bad overall, usually, but levels do make a big deal in a 3d FPS. But we're talking games in general here, aren't we?
(BTW, I really like that PowerPuff Girls show.
This could be true with some demos. But it could also be just as likely not true with others.
The point is you don't know in advance. And if bandwidth is not an issue for you(isn't for me, but even if it was, it's just another factor in deciding to dl the game), then it's just as easy to get the demo as it is to get the whole game.
If you can be three demo levels in 5 minutes, I think you can do the math and figure out how long it would take you.
I do. When I've beaten the game, is it fun anymore? If i haven't beaten it yet, is it fun enough to play to make it worth my time to continue to play it? Does it look good enough to buy a copy? All these are factors in a purchase.
Have you ever actually read an online review? You most likely just have a grudge because one of the reviews gave a bad rating on your favorite game. Hey, they're only human.
No, everyone is entitled to their opinion. But other people's opinions are not my own. A review is just not useful enough to me to determine my spending. I have no grudge, I hold no grudges, let's not make this personal.
Demos don't limit what you get, but how much of what you get.
Any limitation is degrading the product to the point where it may not be enough to make a purchase based upon. This is product dependant and demo dependant, however.
Actually, I usually do play demos first, and then use that as a basis to decide whether to get the pirated game or not.
I'm not stating that this is a decision I make, it's just the way things usually occur. I get the demo, play it for a while, then maybe get the whole game, then, if it's worth keeping, buy it. If not, delete it. That's it. That's just the way it goes. Sometimes this process takes all of 3 hours.
Steal: to take and carry away without right or permission. -Webster's Dictionary
Stealing is taking something that's not yours. It doesn't matter whether you use it or not.
I have not taken anything. "Taken" implies removal. I don't delete the software from the shelf. I don't remove it from anyone's system.
I have copied the software. I have evaluated it. I usually delete it from my machine. After that, things are as they began in the first place, with the exception that I now can make a truly informed choice on whether to buy a product.
If the game you pirated is worth $50, have you not stolen fifty dollars from ID? If you didn't purchase the game you have no right to take it from the Internet and no right to play it.
Remember that my assumption was I would not buy the product anyway. Therefore they were getting no money from me, whether I pirated the game or not. Therefore they lose nothing. Once I delete the game, I have nothing in my possesion that is theirs.
Don't blame me if you don't like the law.
I never said this was legal. I never said I cared much either way. I also don't think this should be legal. I just don't let the law restrict me in my choice of actions.
Note: I have no illegal software currently on my computer. I do not pirate software daily, or even often. I never pirate anything other than games even then. I always buy games I feel are worth buying. This is just a disclaimer, not a moral defense.
Suppose Microsoft use Linux code in their new os and didn't use the GPL. Is that not stealing? Or is it not a crime just because it isn't in the physical sense?
It is a crime. So is piracy. I never stated otherwise. But does the fact that something is illegal stop you from doing it? Are you totally restricted by the law?
I prefer to rely on my own personal code of ethics. Stealing food for a starving child may be illegal, but it is not wrong from my viewpoint.
Stealing game software is illegal, but I do not consider it to be wrong, as long as I abide by my code of ethics, which states that it is wrong to USE software without payment to the authors. Using and evaluating software are two entirely different things. If it's against the law, fine. I accept responsibility for my actions. Call me a rational anarchist.
Oh, and you never answered my big question:
If I download pirated software, then immediately delete it WITHOUT running it, is it theft?
---
I know for certain it has nothing to do with bandwidth. Downloading the Quake demo is going to be a heck of allot quicker to download than trying to download a huge 60MB compressed pirated game file.Why do you need the entire game to discover how the gameplay is on the first level?
:-)
You don't. You need the full game to determine how good the gameplay is on the other 30-40 levels.
Of course a company is going to release the best or more hooking, addictive part of the game as the demo.
You need the full game to determine if you can beat it inside that week.
If I can beat a game in a week (can some, others not), then I don't want it. Because that meant it was pretty easy and therefore something I'd delete. I won't pay 50 bucks for a product with a shelf life of 1 week.
If the netplay is good enough, I'll go all out, buy the game, just to have a copy on a cd, on a permanent medium. To have documentation. In the case of Half-Life, as someone pointed out, to get a key to play on network servers. (I bought Half-Life.. EXCELLENT single player story and game, but way too hard at the end.)
And if you pirate games just to see if you like it why don't you just read a on-line game review of it or just download the demo? I doubt they go through all the hard work to make a demo just for you to pirate the entire game.
Did you read anything I said before? These things tell you nothing. Reviews are worse than useless, because often they're simply hype. The demo is worthless as an indicator of the rest of the game play (excepting most of id's games).
You liken a demo as to test driving a car. But when you test drive a car, you have the whole car; you don't have 3 wheels, half an engine, and no seats.
Anyway, the comparison of stealing software to stealing a car is pointless. A car is a physical object. Software is not, unless you want to talk of bits being physical. Show me a bit. Hold it in your hand. Lick it, go on, I dare you.
Let's assume, for arguement's sake, that no matter whether I pirated a piece of software or not, I would never have bought it.
If I then steal a game, then delete it, without having ever run it or played it, is it theft? Answer me that question. Either way you answer, you're still wrong.
Now, if I do run it, play it for 1 minute, then delete it, is it theft?
How about playing it for 2 minutes? Three? Where do you draw the line, personally? What defines theft? What have I stolen? From whom? Where is the monetary damage? I couldn't have possibly bought that software anyway, mind you.
Just something to think about.
---
Let's talk about game piracy. I apologize in advance to all the game programmers out there whom may be offended by this rambling comment.
:-)
I'm sorry, but I just don't see how "Warez" can hurt a companies bottom line by that damn much.
Let's say you publish a game that's not pirated.
Figure how many units you sell. Now, add the fact that your game is pirated. How many less units do you sell? My answer: not that damn many less, probably more.
Your game is more popular, reaching a wider audience (warez d00dz have friends too) who may possibly buy the game. But, even if they don't buy the game, if they'd never been exposed to it, they sure as hell wouldn't have bought it previously.
In other words, the only time you lose money from a pirated game is when a person who would have been a buyer does not buy.
Of course, in reality there's no way to measure that. So, instead, they estimate total copies of the game and say,"Hey! All those people would have bought it if it wasn't pirated! No fair," even when this is clearly bunk.
I have pirated many many games. There is not one that I kept that I wouldn't have bought. I bought Quake. I didn't buy Q2 (i didn't like it, so deleted it). I would NEVER buy a game without first pirating it and playing it for a week. Because all too often you play a game for a day and a half, realize it's total crap, and delete it. At least you're not out 50 bucks this way, eh?
Yes, game companies deserve money for their work. No, they do not deserve my money if I'm going to delete the game in 2 days. If I don't play, I won't pay. Plain and simple.
I bought Warcraft. I bought Starcraft. I bought Quake1. I'll probably buy Quake3, but I'll damn well pirate the whole game first, just to be sure I'm not getting ripped off.
Now I admit, many people who might otherwise buy the game won't, because they get the pirated version. But not as many as the game companies want you to believe. Most of these pirates are kids with no spendable cash in the first place. Just remember that.
---
I never signed those things when I was a kid. I bloody well refused.
:-)
More to the point, I did so loudly, angrily, and blatently. Teacher handed me the paper, I read it, said out loud, "I won't sign this thing," and threw it in the trash. Every year I saw the principal because of it, but, legally they can't make you sign shit. If you don't agree with it, you don't sign it.
If they FORCE you to sign it, then it is not legally binding. By rejecting it, refusing to sign it publically like that, then even if they force you to sign it later, it means nothing. Signature under duress.
Anyway, it got me a reputation as a "bad" kid, which didn't bother me, but did bother teachers. Let me add I had straight A's too, with practically no effort, which I imagine pissed off the teachers to no end.
Oh well. Screw 'em. They didn't respect me, and I didn't respect them. But, at least it was a mutual hatred you could rely on.
---
csh - Sea Shell
tcsh - Tee Sea Shell
lilo - Lie-Low
cache - Cah-Shay (It's french, damnit)
~ - Til-Dah
# - hash
! - exclamation point (although lately i've used bang like the rest of the world)
BTW, cache must be cah-shay, because:
a) it's french (at least originally)
b) you can't say CASH because if you're working on an e-commerce system things become confusing really quickly.
---
I fail to see the problem. ISP's are dead anyway, in terms of service.
All I want is an IP Address. That's it. Everything else, I can deal with:
E-mail? Hook up a copy of sendmail.
Web? Run Apache if I want to serve pages.
There's no service out there i need that I cannot get, all I need is an address on the network. That, IMHO, is the primary function of the ISP. Everything else is just nice to have.
If you're buying high speed connection, usually you get an IP along with that, right? What do I need any of their servers for, except for possibly DNS? (since having a massive database sitting around doesn't appeal to me)
Provide me an address and a way to look up other addresses. I'm happy then. Unless there's something else I don't know about (which is probably true).
---
Pick one for them.
:-).
Put in a fairly good randomized password generator, and don't allow users to change their password.
The reason for this is if someone gets the password file. I assume you're using a one-way crypt-type function for the passwords anyway. With randomized passwords, an attack on this will take forever, because dictionary files are useless against it.
Since you're using SSL (require 128-bit too), packet sniffing is pretty useless.
Yes, it's still vulnerable to a brute force attack (everything is, really). So let the user only try 3 passwords in say, an hour or so. This makes brute force take forever, and, if the user really forgets, they only have to wait an hour or so.
Yes, you'll have problems with people forgetting passwords, but most people write down passwords anyway and keep them in a wallet or purse or some such. There is no security without physical security anyway.
If the user forgets his hard to remember password, he can call in and get it changed to something else (also randomized) after proving his identity through other means (knowing SSN, phone #, mother's pet's maiden name, whatever
Passwords CAN be secure, in that you can make getting in more trouble than it's worth to the attacker.
---
Ummmm.. I'm confused...
:-)
Since when the hell did IETF gain any form of actual control? They can release an RFC, right? BFD... It's not like they write any actual CODE or anything..
You don't want people spying on your communications? Use code that doesn't implement that spec. Wheeee!
Does anyone honestly think that, given a choice, an indiviual would choose a piece of software that is intentionally insecure? Really, given an actual, informed choice, mind you...
IETF has no real power. They can define the spec all they want, just don't use that spec. There's already specs out there which are not tapable. Use those instead. The whole point of the RFC system is "may the best protocol win", right? So.. May the best protocol win.
---
d.net used to open source all their clients, at one time. Naturally, someone mucked about with the code and starting faking keys back to the system. It was a bit of a shambles when they finally caught on. The reason they don't release the source except to a small group now is to prevent anyone from overcoming their security measures... However, if you're mainly interested in the algorithms, they'll give you those. But not their entire source, because of the security issues.
---
Err... You're wrong, and yet right at the same time.. wow, good job!
SETI and d.net and in fact the entire internet are "client-server". The Web is client-server. Telnet is client-server. Nearly every single piece of software on the internet is client-server. It really doesn't say a lot about what the software does, though..
Seti@home and d.net are distributed computing.
Let's define distributed computing, shall we? According to PC Webopedia here, distributed computing is:
In the specific cases of seti@home and d.net, they are taking a large project, splitting it up into small pieces, and running it all over the place. Now, there may be a problem, as our definition above implies that each "object" running on each system is different. We can define our object as being our code, but we can also, more intuitively, define our object as being our code running on our data. This conforms more towards the object-oriented methodology. All the objects are inheriting the same source code, but different data. Each bit of code running on each person's computer is running a different bit of data. This is the whole point, in fact. So therefore, all the objects are, in fact, different instances. There we go. Good enough for me.
Damn, I must be pretty bored to respond to that post.. Hmm.. Guess I need a beer.
---
When you are using somebody else's property, you abide by their rules. They made it quite clear that they had the right to search the student's computers. The students agreed to that rule by using the network. No room to complain.
:-)
Complaining is like Jello. There's always room for more.
The point is I'm sure you could convince a judge otherwise. And even if not, you could be enough of a pain in the at that at the very least they'd think twice about doing it again.
I'm not saying it's right to pirate music, I'm saying it's wrong for anyone to do illegal things to you. It's a rights violation, damnit. They may have signed away that right, but that doesn't make it any less wrong!
Argh.. I shouldn't get drawn into these arguements.. my head is hurting.. argh.. need pizza...
---
Not entirely accurate according to their email. They considered 'easily guessed' passwords and those that had passwords in readme files, or were freely given upon request, the same as public access. They did find systems that had mp3s and such, but with better passwords. Those they considered were there for legal, 'private' use.
:-).
Okay, lets say I share a folder with MP3's...
If I make it publically accessible, that's fine for anyone to look at. I'm implictly granting copy permissions.
If I put a password on it, of any kind, be it easy or hard, I'm denying that permission. For a school to come into my system, basically hack it (guessing passwords is the oldest form of hacking), then they are breaking the law. Period. Criminal Trespass. Illegal Search (possibly). Definitly a rights violation.
I say, sue the shit out of the school. Or at least go wacko and shoot a few administrators (mainly a joke
---
1) Why are both of these groupd getting picked on, it seems to me only one was trying to pirate content.
:-)
2) What does DeCSS have to do with users who just want to play their disks in their computers? Does making a player cause CSS to be defeated?
You can't play an encrypted disk without decrypting it. It's just that simple.
A DVD player (software) works a bit like this:
Pass decryption code to DVD drive
DVD Drive accepts it, starts streaming out decrypted MPEG data.
Player decodes said data, displays it.
A DVD Pirate works a bit like this:
Pass decryption code to DVD Drive
DVD Drive accepts it, starts streaming out decrypted MPEG data.
Pirate takes data, writes it to hard drive.
So you see that the process is really the same, it just depends on where you want to put the final data. (This is a bit simplified from reality..)
3) I'm all for free information here, but there seems to be a lot of people whining about some guys who knew damn well their work would be used to rip off content.
The downside is that you couldn't do this much any other way. The DVD consortium isn't giving out any more decryption codes, therefore nobody else gets to write a DVD player without paying through the nose for it. Naturally, those free spirits out there think this is BS, so they just worked around it.
The gist of the whole thing: They wanted to protect DVD security through secrecy. That's always a bad move. The DVD encryption was broken, plain and simple.
Not expecting anyone to steal the horse when the lock on the barn was all rusted is just stupid.
---