Someone selling illegal copies has found people willing to SPEND MONEY.
This fact alone makes non-commercial infringement something else entirely. What this boils down to is executives with big egos thinking that a free product has value in the market and people with no understanding of math going along with them. The demand for a zero price good implies nothing about the potential for lost sales or how many people might buy should you charge as much as a quarter.
However, a bootlegger "steals" actual paying customers.
THAT is probably why the law originally distinguished between commercial and non-commercial activity.
This distinction was eroded by corporate interests. That is what has led to the current absurd state of things.
Tort reform for the rich, crime and punishment for the poor.
I think you're blurring the distinction between cost and value. If you illegally download a copyrighted work then it must have value to you; otherwise why bother spending the time and risk to obtain the work? And if you agree that it must have value, then you also must agree that there is a cost that can be tied to that value.
Your argument is that individual theft is not damaging because they wouldn't have paid for the product anyway. That's ludicrous and there is no data to support your claim. After all, if they didn't see any value then not only would they not have paid, but they would not have bothered obtaining it at all.
Many MTAs will accept "tags", where your actual address would be something like "barry@whitehouse.gov" but emails with "barry+junk0001@whitehouse.gov" would also get delivered just fine to Barry's account without any additional configuration. This allows you to use unique addresses for sites you don't trust without having to create additional addresses on the server. It works with GMail and MobileMe, and I know it works on Postfix as well.
Unfortunately it seems that many email validation scripts these days wrongly reject the "+" character for some reason.
Their point stands if you substitute another word. My thesaurus skills are failing me at the moment, so let's temporarily define "foobar" as meaning "of a nature that you would not like the general public to see".
1. If you engage in social activity with the kind of people that would post foobar photos of you, you need to find a different group of friends.
2. If you engage in foobar activities in a public place where other people can take photos of you, you need to be smarter about where you engage in foobar activities.
Google sniffing out all this stuff by accident? ! **sneeze** bullshit !
Would it be an accident, it'd even be scarier. It'd mean that the search giant don't know what they're doing.
I don't think you've ever used a sniffer. Google drove around with a wireless sniffer that recorded traffic to a log file. The guys in the van would upload all their logs to a central location where they were parsed to build a database of access point SSIDs and MAC addresses for geolocation. The problem is a sniffer dump contains a lot of raw packet data, more than just the information they needed, because that's what a sniffer is supposed to do; capture all the traffic it finds.
No penalty because there's no outcry. People give Google a pass because Google gives them free email, a free search engine, and a free browser. It doesn't seem to occur to Google's fans that their search and advertising platforms are as closed source and proprietary as Windows, and that all the free services only exist to get people's personal data indexed.
I'm pro-privacy, but this is silly. It's no secret that you pay for Google services by allowing them to target advertising at you. That's their business model and not only do they not make any attempt whatsoever to hide it, they point it out every time they have an earnings call.
I fail to see why those shouting their secrets from a street corner have an expectation of privacy. We are responsible for our own privacy, not Google and not the government.
I agree with your Borg comment, but MS never created the same value proposition as Apple. Windows is always more of the same.. I spend money, I get the same thing I had, just prettier. Apple on the other hand really gives you amazing stuff that just works. See this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlD6JS0mD7E
I am willing to give Apple money for their new software, in fact I already ordered iLife 11 for $50 yesterday. I begrudge giving MS money because it's the same old thing release after release. If you look at MS's top 10 list to upgrade to Windows 7 from XP, their marketing department struggles to make the case. Apple and Mac are fundamentally changing the way we interact with technology and innovating with each and every release.
Just spend some time with iMovie and GarageBand and you will understand the shift. And don't bother looking for the mouse button because Apple got rid of that as well, we gesture now.
There is clear differentiation between Windows XP and Windows 7, both in terms of stability and the user interface. It's hardly just a cosmetic difference. I suspect you don't use any Windows systems on a day-to-day basis.
I don't have any particular use for iMovie or GarageBand, so iLife holds little interest for me. Thinking about it now I don't believe I've ever actually launched either application, due to lack of need or desire. I do use iPhoto, but it isn't worth $50 to me just to be able to easily post photos to Facebook. I use Microsoft Live Gallery for that feature since it doesn't cost anything extra.
This comment was typed on a Mac, which I use every day for work. After about a year of using a Mac platform, I find it to be roughly the same level of stability and and usability as a Windows 7 system. I've had very rare hard lockups on both systems, which actually annoys me more in Apple's case because having a tightly integrated hardware/software platform is supposed to solve problems like that. I also had a weird battery problem on my MBP that was solved with some bizarre key combination sequence. But I digress. I do like using multi-touch gestures but they don't seem to have had any impact on my actual productivity.
These things are just tools, and they either do what we want better than another tool, or they don't. I wouldn't presume to tell you which tool is better for you.
Lessee... they tried making a browser, an OS, a VOIP app, an office suite... all duds. They bought YouTube and now they're ruining it by putting ads on top of people's videos. Everything Google touches turns to s&#t except, of course, for search.
Maybe they should stick with what they do right. I'm sure the shareholders would appreciate the savings in the form of dividends.
Without commenting on your interesting and unusual interpretation of the word "duds", I do think you should have had a look at their stock performance before saying silly things about shareholder value and dividends.
I'm continually surprised how many/.ers are really right wing, pro-corporate, anti-union, anti-tax freeloaders. 40 years of "government is bad" has become a lifestyle for a lot of people here.
They are right-wing, anti-union, anti-high-tax citizens. The left wing faction unfairly tacks on "pro-corporate" and "anti-tax freeloaders" to demonize them.
I'm trying to remember what we call those organizations that exchange money for labor with large portions of our population. Carpo... corpo... I forget.
I match two of your three criteria. I suppose pretty much all three since I brewed beer a couple times. Thanks for calling me a racist narcissist. That's really awesome of you.
I'm assuming that you are simply uninformed or confusing people that believe in small government with today's Republican party. They are not the same thing.
Democrats and Republicans disagree on many things but there are some fundamental issues where they are in lockstep.
They agree that the First Amendment is not as important as the needs of the federal government.
They agree that there is no problem that cannot be solved with enough tax revenue (even though they disagree about where to get it).
They agree that it's totally fair for government employees to retire a full decade before the rest of us, and they agree that only an idiot would rely on Social Security when you can vote yourselves nice pensions funded by the taxpayers.
If you look at your 1040 and are happy with what you see, good for you. As for me, the value I receive for the money I spend really pisses me off.
Maybe because parent is trolling. I have a MacBook Pro that just works.
My Macbook Pro "just works" too, except when it doesn't and I have to use some funky key combo to fix it.
In terms of things "just working" Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are on par with one another. This is obviously just my opinion, but I use them both every day. Oddly enough I use the Mac for work and the PC for home; go figure, right?
>>>"imaginary people" such as corporations are....imaginary. They cannot act because they do not exist.
Tell that to the people manslaughtered by the Ford Corporation when their Pinto cars blew-up. And yes accidents happen but the Corporation knew the fuel tanks were flawed and decided (as a whole), it was cheaper to just pay the dead people's families. That's practically premeditation. But what can you do?
Nothing except fine the company while the specific individuals that made the decision take golden parachutes and escape without punishment for their crime. The corporation should be treated as an object and nothing more. The company can keep its immunity but it shall have no rights; only privileges which can be revoked at anytime with a mere act of Congress.
I believe you've missed several very recent examples of executives who made illegal decisions being caught, tried, and jailed. As already stated, corporations cannot and should not be held criminally liable because that would require that every individual of these corporations be held criminally liable. This is a ludicrous concept, even if it were remotely possible.
You state that Ford "as a whole" decided to cover up the Pinto fuel tank problems. It's obvious that isn't true, unless you really believe that all the assembly line workers and secretaries were polled and unanimously agreed.
When individuals within a corporation act illegally they can be prosecuted.
Agree with you 100%. Good to know I was not and will not affected in any way. Does anything serious get done on Facebook?
Wow, what a phenomenally smug statement. Why does everything have to have a "serious" use? Social tools are useful and valid things, and 500 million users think so. Or are you more enlightened than every one of them?
What usually happens is the audio from the handset feeds back into the mic on the same handset. With a traditional very-low-latency phone call you still have echo, but you hear it so close to when you speak that you don't notice. The larger the latency, the more evident the echo.
In loud environments (like retail stores) the user will often crank up the volume on their handsets, and that makes echo even more noticeable. I did a deployment for about 250 retail stores some years ago and had to deal with the same problem you're describing.
Most VoIP hardware have tunable echo cancelers. The way they work is they keep a buffer of transmitted audio, and if they see that same audio coming back again they snuff it. Not exactly a technical explanation but that's more or less how it works.
Focus on the VoIP devices closest to the phone endpoints, where encoding/decoding is happening.
I've been working with VoIP in enterprise environments for a little over a decade. Latency is indeed a real issue and has to be considered, however it's not as restrictive as you might think. Generally speaking, if your ping is 150ms round trip you will not be able to distinguish a delay during an audio conversation, unless you're in the same room with them. Latency up to 300ms round trip is generally considered acceptable.
Cell phone conversations may or may not utilize VoIP during some legs of their calls. If they do, it's not between the phone and the tower unless you're using Skype or some other 3rd-party application on the phone. There is a distinction between encoding/decoding analog voice and how the digital signal is transmitted; you cannot consider cell phone calls to be synonymous with VoIP even though they do share some characteristics.
While cell phones do have highly variable horsepower in the CPU, the encoding/decoding is handled in purpose-built hardware chipsets, not on the CPU. It's unlikely that the type or brand of phone has any but a negligible difference in latency. Most people do not notice the latency in cell-to-cell conversations, so it may be that you're more sensitive to it for some reason.
Another factor is that some of the widely-deployed audio codecs used to compress voice were built and tuned for English speakers. Those speaking very dissimilar languages, such as Mandarin, may find that audio quality is poorer even on the same equipment.
Lastly, there are defined codec standards for wideband audio. Cisco has been including them on all their phones for several years; I assume other VoIP manufacturers have as well but do not have personal knowledge. I found that some customers did not like using them, as they are accustomed to hearing some level of white noise in the background and are prone to misinterpret a period of silence as call disconnection. If you've ever asked "are you still there?", the clarity of the call was greater than you expected or, possibly, wanted. Even with normal quality codecs we've had to inject comfort noise for years.
Little of the above applies to video. That's a whole different story.
The way it works is I put a video file on a Samba share and run PVD from my desktop. PVD scans the share, finds the new video file(s), and populates the database with information from IMDB and posters from Amazon. Kroozbox runs on my Linux server and uses the PVD database to display the movie library information in a friendly way on the screen. The whole thing was a little tricky to initially configure but works very well. Everyone in the house was able to immediately browse and use the video library without any training (we're talking ESL grandparents here).
I also have a WD TV Live which is decent but the interface isn't nearly as good as the setup I described above.
In California dealerships don't attach their logos except for maybe a license plate frame or temporary plate. I'm not sure if that's because they aren't permitted or if it's just a cultural thing. I've seen lots of cars from out of state with the permanently-affixed logos you're talking about, though. I've never understood why people tolerate them.
In many jurisdictions you require a permit to own a gun. You require additional tax stamps to purchase certain kinds of guns as well in all jurisdictions. This has been ruled to be ok per the second amendment. Regulating isn't restricting according to the court.
Now perhaps you disagree, but then perhaps you disagree only in the case of speech. However you can see where this stuff starts sneaking in. When you start trying to do end runs around the Constitution in one area, it establishes precedent to do so in other areas.
I'd be interested (and surprised) to hear about any jurisdiction where you need a permit to buy a semi-automatic firearm. I think you mean registration.
So now the Army has money for flying robotic humvees just in case we have to occupy another country after we get out of the already grotesquely expensive occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan... and the Republicans are still trying to rob the Social Security trust fund.
Goodbye, USA. It was nice while it lasted.
Oh come on. All I want is a couple of extra express busses on the route I take to work in the morning so I don't get left standing on the curb as a full bus pulls away. Do you suppose my federal, state, and local governments could scrounge up some funds for that after they're done funding the military, some new sports stadiums, and tax cuts for billionaires? Pretty please?
If you're going to blame a political party for DARPA research, would that not mean that you also have to credit them for the creation of TCP/IP? You're being silly, but I guess it's fun to run around yelling "boogieman!"
$40 million bucks is not a lot for a military project.
You're absolutely right. Horrifyingly so.
You know this Internet thingy you're looking at right now? Guess who funded the development back when it was a wacky idea that would never work. Yes, that's right... the very same US government agency. 40 years ago it was a stupid waste of money.
If making more money than the vast majority of Americans doesn't make you rich, what IS your standard?
In political rhetoric "rich" is someone who has more money than you do.
For example:
If you make $50K, someone who makes $100K is "rich".
If you make $100K, someone who makes $200K is "rich".
And so on.
If you earn $65k you're officially "rich" but try buying a home in California on that income. If you happen to live in Wyoming it's a different story. See the problem with using median income levels as a threshold for "rich"?
I think you radically underestimate how many people on here will collect $400 000 over their lifetimes, in savings etc. I'll grant that not a lot of people will get a single payout like that, but then, I bet some will when they sell a house to move somewhere cheaper.
I also expect that there are some really rich fucks that read slashdot who will see 40 million in their lifetimes. Though I can easily believe that none of them will read this particular thread.
Woz qualifies as a really rich fuck who reads (and comments on) Slashdot. Although I'm not sure I think he's a fuck.
The problem with Truecrypt is that the volume is portable and they can run a dictionary attack against the passphrase at their leisure. I roll with an IronKey, with hardware-driven AES encryption. After 10 unsuccessful attempts at entering the passphrase in a row, it destroys the key, never to be recovered again.
Also on the subject of drive encryption, I have a server here at work I built with an encrypted RAID5 array using the GELI drivers in FreeBSD. The server has to be booted with a USB drive containing the encryption key if you want the drives to come back up when you reboot the server (alternatively, you can manually mount them -- point is, you need the USB key). It's a pretty nice arrangement, too.
You can use a keyfile/password combination with TrueCrypt as well. That way they'll have to have both your keyfile (which could be any file on your system, USB stick, Dropbox account, etc.) and your password.
IF i have to RTFA then what value is a summary? Or Slashdot at all? The entire point is to aggregate news so you don't have to run off and read every single story out there at its original source.
Blaming/. because you're both lazy and wrong is... well, lazy. And wrong.
I'm certainly upset with the lack of quality, ethical journalism.
Yet in the free market, it sure seems like slant and sensationalism sell considerably better. Tabloids are the best selling newspapers in the world for a reason.
I agree. They are selling what sells best. My argument is that what you're talking about saving has already gone. Selling copyrights to lawyers is just a way to cash one last check.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone selling illegal copies has found people willing to SPEND MONEY.
This fact alone makes non-commercial infringement something else entirely. What this boils down to is executives with big egos thinking that a free product has value in the market and people with no understanding of math going along with them. The demand for a zero price good implies nothing about the potential for lost sales or how many people might buy should you charge as much as a quarter.
However, a bootlegger "steals" actual paying customers.
THAT is probably why the law originally distinguished between commercial and non-commercial activity.
This distinction was eroded by corporate interests. That is what has led to the current absurd state of things.
Tort reform for the rich, crime and punishment for the poor.
I think you're blurring the distinction between cost and value. If you illegally download a copyrighted work then it must have value to you; otherwise why bother spending the time and risk to obtain the work? And if you agree that it must have value, then you also must agree that there is a cost that can be tied to that value.
Your argument is that individual theft is not damaging because they wouldn't have paid for the product anyway. That's ludicrous and there is no data to support your claim. After all, if they didn't see any value then not only would they not have paid, but they would not have bothered obtaining it at all.
Many MTAs will accept "tags", where your actual address would be something like "barry@whitehouse.gov" but emails with "barry+junk0001@whitehouse.gov" would also get delivered just fine to Barry's account without any additional configuration. This allows you to use unique addresses for sites you don't trust without having to create additional addresses on the server. It works with GMail and MobileMe, and I know it works on Postfix as well.
Unfortunately it seems that many email validation scripts these days wrongly reject the "+" character for some reason.
Their point stands if you substitute another word. My thesaurus skills are failing me at the moment, so let's temporarily define "foobar" as meaning "of a nature that you would not like the general public to see".
1. If you engage in social activity with the kind of people that would post foobar photos of you, you need to find a different group of friends.
2. If you engage in foobar activities in a public place where other people can take photos of you, you need to be smarter about where you engage in foobar activities.
The word you're looking for is "indiscreet".
without even realizing it
Google sniffing out all this stuff by accident? ! **sneeze** bullshit !
Would it be an accident, it'd even be scarier. It'd mean that the search giant don't know what they're doing.
I don't think you've ever used a sniffer. Google drove around with a wireless sniffer that recorded traffic to a log file. The guys in the van would upload all their logs to a central location where they were parsed to build a database of access point SSIDs and MAC addresses for geolocation. The problem is a sniffer dump contains a lot of raw packet data, more than just the information they needed, because that's what a sniffer is supposed to do; capture all the traffic it finds.
No penalty because there's no outcry. People give Google a pass because Google gives them free email, a free search engine, and a free browser. It doesn't seem to occur to Google's fans that their search and advertising platforms are as closed source and proprietary as Windows, and that all the free services only exist to get people's personal data indexed.
I'm pro-privacy, but this is silly. It's no secret that you pay for Google services by allowing them to target advertising at you. That's their business model and not only do they not make any attempt whatsoever to hide it, they point it out every time they have an earnings call.
I fail to see why those shouting their secrets from a street corner have an expectation of privacy. We are responsible for our own privacy, not Google and not the government.
I agree with your Borg comment, but MS never created the same value proposition as Apple. Windows is always more of the same.. I spend money, I get the same thing I had, just prettier. Apple on the other hand really gives you amazing stuff that just works. See this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlD6JS0mD7E
I am willing to give Apple money for their new software, in fact I already ordered iLife 11 for $50 yesterday. I begrudge giving MS money because it's the same old thing release after release. If you look at MS's top 10 list to upgrade to Windows 7 from XP, their marketing department struggles to make the case. Apple and Mac are fundamentally changing the way we interact with technology and innovating with each and every release.
Just spend some time with iMovie and GarageBand and you will understand the shift. And don't bother looking for the mouse button because Apple got rid of that as well, we gesture now.
There is clear differentiation between Windows XP and Windows 7, both in terms of stability and the user interface. It's hardly just a cosmetic difference. I suspect you don't use any Windows systems on a day-to-day basis.
I don't have any particular use for iMovie or GarageBand, so iLife holds little interest for me. Thinking about it now I don't believe I've ever actually launched either application, due to lack of need or desire. I do use iPhoto, but it isn't worth $50 to me just to be able to easily post photos to Facebook. I use Microsoft Live Gallery for that feature since it doesn't cost anything extra.
This comment was typed on a Mac, which I use every day for work. After about a year of using a Mac platform, I find it to be roughly the same level of stability and and usability as a Windows 7 system. I've had very rare hard lockups on both systems, which actually annoys me more in Apple's case because having a tightly integrated hardware/software platform is supposed to solve problems like that. I also had a weird battery problem on my MBP that was solved with some bizarre key combination sequence. But I digress. I do like using multi-touch gestures but they don't seem to have had any impact on my actual productivity.
These things are just tools, and they either do what we want better than another tool, or they don't. I wouldn't presume to tell you which tool is better for you.
Technology is not religion.
Lessee... they tried making a browser, an OS, a VOIP app, an office suite... all duds. They bought YouTube and now they're ruining it by putting ads on top of people's videos. Everything Google touches turns to s&#t except, of course, for search.
Maybe they should stick with what they do right. I'm sure the shareholders would appreciate the savings in the form of dividends.
Without commenting on your interesting and unusual interpretation of the word "duds", I do think you should have had a look at their stock performance before saying silly things about shareholder value and dividends.
They are right-wing, anti-union, anti-high-tax citizens. The left wing faction unfairly tacks on "pro-corporate" and "anti-tax freeloaders" to demonize them.
I'm trying to remember what we call those organizations that exchange money for labor with large portions of our population. Carpo... corpo... I forget.
I match two of your three criteria. I suppose pretty much all three since I brewed beer a couple times. Thanks for calling me a racist narcissist. That's really awesome of you.
I'm assuming that you are simply uninformed or confusing people that believe in small government with today's Republican party. They are not the same thing.
Democrats and Republicans disagree on many things but there are some fundamental issues where they are in lockstep.
They agree that the First Amendment is not as important as the needs of the federal government.
They agree that there is no problem that cannot be solved with enough tax revenue (even though they disagree about where to get it).
They agree that it's totally fair for government employees to retire a full decade before the rest of us, and they agree that only an idiot would rely on Social Security when you can vote yourselves nice pensions funded by the taxpayers.
If you look at your 1040 and are happy with what you see, good for you. As for me, the value I receive for the money I spend really pisses me off.
Maybe because parent is trolling. I have a MacBook Pro that just works.
My Macbook Pro "just works" too, except when it doesn't and I have to use some funky key combo to fix it.
In terms of things "just working" Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are on par with one another. This is obviously just my opinion, but I use them both every day. Oddly enough I use the Mac for work and the PC for home; go figure, right?
>>>"imaginary people" such as corporations are....imaginary. They cannot act because they do not exist.
Tell that to the people manslaughtered by the Ford Corporation when their Pinto cars blew-up. And yes accidents happen but the Corporation knew the fuel tanks were flawed and decided (as a whole), it was cheaper to just pay the dead people's families. That's practically premeditation. But what can you do?
Nothing except fine the company while the specific individuals that made the decision take golden parachutes and escape without punishment for their crime. The corporation should be treated as an object and nothing more. The company can keep its immunity but it shall have no rights; only privileges which can be revoked at anytime with a mere act of Congress.
I believe you've missed several very recent examples of executives who made illegal decisions being caught, tried, and jailed. As already stated, corporations cannot and should not be held criminally liable because that would require that every individual of these corporations be held criminally liable. This is a ludicrous concept, even if it were remotely possible.
You state that Ford "as a whole" decided to cover up the Pinto fuel tank problems. It's obvious that isn't true, unless you really believe that all the assembly line workers and secretaries were polled and unanimously agreed.
When individuals within a corporation act illegally they can be prosecuted.
Agree with you 100%. Good to know I was not and will not affected in any way. Does anything serious get done on Facebook?
Wow, what a phenomenally smug statement. Why does everything have to have a "serious" use? Social tools are useful and valid things, and 500 million users think so. Or are you more enlightened than every one of them?
Ever since Stuff White People Like mocked pretentious TV-haters, they had to move on to hating Facebook instead.
Echo is always on the analog side.
What usually happens is the audio from the handset feeds back into the mic on the same handset. With a traditional very-low-latency phone call you still have echo, but you hear it so close to when you speak that you don't notice. The larger the latency, the more evident the echo.
In loud environments (like retail stores) the user will often crank up the volume on their handsets, and that makes echo even more noticeable. I did a deployment for about 250 retail stores some years ago and had to deal with the same problem you're describing.
Most VoIP hardware have tunable echo cancelers. The way they work is they keep a buffer of transmitted audio, and if they see that same audio coming back again they snuff it. Not exactly a technical explanation but that's more or less how it works.
Focus on the VoIP devices closest to the phone endpoints, where encoding/decoding is happening.
I've been working with VoIP in enterprise environments for a little over a decade. Latency is indeed a real issue and has to be considered, however it's not as restrictive as you might think. Generally speaking, if your ping is 150ms round trip you will not be able to distinguish a delay during an audio conversation, unless you're in the same room with them. Latency up to 300ms round trip is generally considered acceptable.
Cell phone conversations may or may not utilize VoIP during some legs of their calls. If they do, it's not between the phone and the tower unless you're using Skype or some other 3rd-party application on the phone. There is a distinction between encoding/decoding analog voice and how the digital signal is transmitted; you cannot consider cell phone calls to be synonymous with VoIP even though they do share some characteristics.
While cell phones do have highly variable horsepower in the CPU, the encoding/decoding is handled in purpose-built hardware chipsets, not on the CPU. It's unlikely that the type or brand of phone has any but a negligible difference in latency. Most people do not notice the latency in cell-to-cell conversations, so it may be that you're more sensitive to it for some reason.
Another factor is that some of the widely-deployed audio codecs used to compress voice were built and tuned for English speakers. Those speaking very dissimilar languages, such as Mandarin, may find that audio quality is poorer even on the same equipment.
Lastly, there are defined codec standards for wideband audio. Cisco has been including them on all their phones for several years; I assume other VoIP manufacturers have as well but do not have personal knowledge. I found that some customers did not like using them, as they are accustomed to hearing some level of white noise in the background and are prone to misinterpret a period of silence as call disconnection. If you've ever asked "are you still there?", the clarity of the call was greater than you expected or, possibly, wanted. Even with normal quality codecs we've had to inject comfort noise for years.
Little of the above applies to video. That's a whole different story.
+1 for Popcorn Hour. They make very good media streamer with great community support and add-ons.
I use the following setup:
Popcorn Hour A-110 hooked to wired ethernet
Kroozbox for TV user interface
Personal Video Database for video database management
The way it works is I put a video file on a Samba share and run PVD from my desktop. PVD scans the share, finds the new video file(s), and populates the database with information from IMDB and posters from Amazon. Kroozbox runs on my Linux server and uses the PVD database to display the movie library information in a friendly way on the screen. The whole thing was a little tricky to initially configure but works very well. Everyone in the house was able to immediately browse and use the video library without any training (we're talking ESL grandparents here).
I also have a WD TV Live which is decent but the interface isn't nearly as good as the setup I described above.
In California dealerships don't attach their logos except for maybe a license plate frame or temporary plate. I'm not sure if that's because they aren't permitted or if it's just a cultural thing. I've seen lots of cars from out of state with the permanently-affixed logos you're talking about, though. I've never understood why people tolerate them.
In many jurisdictions you require a permit to own a gun. You require additional tax stamps to purchase certain kinds of guns as well in all jurisdictions. This has been ruled to be ok per the second amendment. Regulating isn't restricting according to the court.
Now perhaps you disagree, but then perhaps you disagree only in the case of speech. However you can see where this stuff starts sneaking in. When you start trying to do end runs around the Constitution in one area, it establishes precedent to do so in other areas.
I'd be interested (and surprised) to hear about any jurisdiction where you need a permit to buy a semi-automatic firearm. I think you mean registration.
So now the Army has money for flying robotic humvees just in case we have to occupy another country after we get out of the already grotesquely expensive occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan... and the Republicans are still trying to rob the Social Security trust fund.
Goodbye, USA. It was nice while it lasted.
Oh come on. All I want is a couple of extra express busses on the route I take to work in the morning so I don't get left standing on the curb as a full bus pulls away. Do you suppose my federal, state, and local governments could scrounge up some funds for that after they're done funding the military, some new sports stadiums, and tax cuts for billionaires? Pretty please?
If you're going to blame a political party for DARPA research, would that not mean that you also have to credit them for the creation of TCP/IP? You're being silly, but I guess it's fun to run around yelling "boogieman!"
$40 million bucks is not a lot for a military project.
You're absolutely right. Horrifyingly so.
You know this Internet thingy you're looking at right now? Guess who funded the development back when it was a wacky idea that would never work. Yes, that's right... the very same US government agency. 40 years ago it was a stupid waste of money.
If making more money than the vast majority of Americans doesn't make you rich, what IS your standard?
In political rhetoric "rich" is someone who has more money than you do.
For example:
If you make $50K, someone who makes $100K is "rich".
If you make $100K, someone who makes $200K is "rich".
And so on.
If you earn $65k you're officially "rich" but try buying a home in California on that income. If you happen to live in Wyoming it's a different story. See the problem with using median income levels as a threshold for "rich"?
The Sprint HTC EVO is 4G...
Except it isn't. You should read the article, it's good.
I think you radically underestimate how many people on here will collect $400 000 over their lifetimes, in savings etc. I'll grant that not a lot of people will get a single payout like that, but then, I bet some will when they sell a house to move somewhere cheaper.
I also expect that there are some really rich fucks that read slashdot who will see 40 million in their lifetimes. Though I can easily believe that none of them will read this particular thread.
Woz qualifies as a really rich fuck who reads (and comments on) Slashdot. Although I'm not sure I think he's a fuck.
The problem with Truecrypt is that the volume is portable and they can run a dictionary attack against the passphrase at their leisure. I roll with an IronKey, with hardware-driven AES encryption. After 10 unsuccessful attempts at entering the passphrase in a row, it destroys the key, never to be recovered again.
Also on the subject of drive encryption, I have a server here at work I built with an encrypted RAID5 array using the GELI drivers in FreeBSD. The server has to be booted with a USB drive containing the encryption key if you want the drives to come back up when you reboot the server (alternatively, you can manually mount them -- point is, you need the USB key). It's a pretty nice arrangement, too.
You can use a keyfile/password combination with TrueCrypt as well. That way they'll have to have both your keyfile (which could be any file on your system, USB stick, Dropbox account, etc.) and your password.
IF i have to RTFA then what value is a summary? Or Slashdot at all? The entire point is to aggregate news so you don't have to run off and read every single story out there at its original source.
Blaming /. because you're both lazy and wrong is... well, lazy. And wrong.
I'm certainly upset with the lack of quality, ethical journalism.
Yet in the free market, it sure seems like slant and sensationalism sell considerably better. Tabloids are the best selling newspapers in the world for a reason.
I agree. They are selling what sells best. My argument is that what you're talking about saving has already gone. Selling copyrights to lawyers is just a way to cash one last check.