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User: Alien54

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Comments · 3,205

  1. Piracy and respect. on RIAA Wants Taxpayer-Funded IP Police · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Piracy is not a private offense, it hurts everyone by diminishing the incentive to invest in the creation of music."

    Of course, this is wrong headed.

    What is involved in Piracy is a lack of respect for the property rights of others, which is something that the Music industry has failed to provide the proper example for.

    Far from arguing from the moral high ground, the only high ground they occupy is a pile of excrement at the bottom of the latrine they have fallen into, and in fact dug for themselves.

  2. Microsoft Sensitivity on Salon Goes Inside the X-Box · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Takahashi realizes that his book may annoy Microsoft corporate types. "Any of the insidery stuff they just really didn't want to get out," he said. "The fact that the initial code name was Project Midway -- they don't want the Japanese people to know that because it will hurt their feelings." The Battle of Midway in 1942 was the turning point of the Pacific War. Before the November 2001 launch of the Xbox, all of the players in the console hardware market -- Sony, Nintendo and Sega -- were Japanese firms.

    This is the famous Microsoft sensitivity and respect to the rights and cultures of others coming to the fore.

    Seriously, this sort of thing is a part of the corporate culture. _Somebody_ had to approve the code name.

    It comes down to how much respect does MS have for others, inside the company?

  3. Re:Considering the other choices.. on G4: The Pong Channel? · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Considering that there are channels that are Nothing but advertising, and people will actually watch those ....

    this has a certain zen like aspect to it that is refreshing.

    Fortunately, I hardly ever watch TV, and I never got cable, because things on it worth seeing hardly ever make an appearance.

    [it's a cost benefit ratio thing. Is it worth paying hundreds of dollars a year just in case something like the Osbournes will show up? I mean, what are the odds?]

  4. The Problem of Fair Exchange on The Culture of CD Burning · · Score: 2
    The problem of course, is complicated by the fact that the music companies are not providing fair exchange with the artists. It is sort of like watching the mafia whine about missing profgits in a court of law.

    The Artist's royalties should go to the artists, or to an artists trust fund, separate from the record companies.

    Then at least we can deal with the issues of copying with the problems of crooks getting in the way.

    they muddy the water too much.

    I think we could all agree on some sort of fair exchange for the artists, if nothing else.

  5. The software on Smart Cameras To Predict Crimes · · Score: 3, Informative
    As seen on RFN item on this, here is the link to the actual company page where you can read about the software:

    http://www.cordis.lu/telematics/tap_transport/rese arch/projects/cromatica.html

    Their other projects are also interesting as well

  6. easily amused on Review: The Rock as a Hard Place · · Score: 2

    Well, there is always The First Church of the Easily Amused, another one of those internet religions with a virtual membership. (with many dead links)

  7. Re:In a way, that does make sense on Communication Making The World Less Tolerant · · Score: 2
    I am always amazed at how quickly people will forget the good and look at the bad.

    Unfortunately, many people only see what their personal devils and demons tell them to see. And some people like their demons, keeping them well fed.

    I am sure anyone here could come up with at least one example of this.

    yep, it is demons, not daemons, but that works as well. daemons of the mind. Socrates and all.

  8. formats on Public Procurement and Open Source · · Score: 3, Interesting
    isn't this why we have SMGL and HTML etcc in the first place?

    It seems that this is "merely" a matter of enforcing existing standards. But then, I am not a bureaucrat.

  9. Re:CYA on Mastercard Cuts Off Third Party Transactions · · Score: 2
    wired has a story how the urls generted by paypal were especially unsecure as far as product downloads go:

    http://wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51977,00.htm l

    The culprit, he discovered, was the cut-and-paste code provided to merchants by California-based PayPal for sending transaction data to the payment service. Examine the PayPal payment links closely and you could easily see where the software was stored on the server. If you pointed your browser accordingly, the software was yours without paying.

    this is not playing nice

  10. CYA on Mastercard Cuts Off Third Party Transactions · · Score: 3, Informative
    The change would require those merchants to set up deals with banks so they could take MasterCard directly. That's a time-consuming and costly process, especially for small merchants. [...] The change is likely aimed at porn and gaming sites that have higher occurrences of credit card fraud and identity theft [...] One in 20 online consumers were victimized by credit card fraud last year.

    Sounds like Master Card is hurting, and is trying to drum up some more business or something to cover the nut.

    The information doesn't seem to have made their press release archive yet

  11. Re:Article read better with special hat on On Hacktivism · · Score: 2
    That's some radical religious thinking for you.

    Of course, I should have inserted irony tags, since the purpose of most surviving world religions is a better world, peace, etc. Although local definitions of what this means will vary. YMMV

    And of course, most people can only view the world based on the instructions of their own personal demons and devils.

    Pick the hot button of your choice. Use often.

  12. more info on Establishing the Maximum Speed of a CD-ROM Drive · · Score: 3, Informative
    Essential Data for those unable to access

    Background

    The Audio CD Standard was set sometime back in the 70's. Then, it was decided that the record should rotate with different speeds, depending on where on the record the data was read, to get a constant data transfer rate. The method is named CLV (Constant Linear Velocity), or constant transfer rate. The transfer rate of an audio CD is a mere 176 kB/s, and to reach this rate the record only has to spin with 530 rpm when reading the innermost track, and 200 rpm for the outer track.

    CAV is for Whimps

    To be able to publish ever increasing spin ratios, many manufacturers have resorted to CAV (Constant Angular Velocity), a method whereby the record is not rotated faster when reading inner tracks. Thus they can specify impressive spin ratios for outer tracks and sell more, but in reality the spin ratio for the inner tracks is only 37.7% of this value.

    CLV is for the Tough Boys

    A 64x drive using CLV would have to rotate the disc with 33,920 rpm when reading an inner track, exposing the hub of the disk to a tangential force of some 45 N/mm2. A point on the periphery of the disc will be moving with 213 metres per second, slightly more than half the speed of sound. Can the disc take that?

    The answer is no. A powerful no.

    At about 52x, i.e. 27,500 rpm, most manufacturer's CDs blew up in a rain of plastic particles, leaving their marks on the premises. The result was a pile of shimmering plastic chips.

    He also tried Kevlar reinforcement

    In our efforts of reaching ever increasing speeds, we tried to reinforce a disc with Kevlar wires. [...] It turned out our motor didn't have enough power to spin up the disc enough to explode it in one try, because the Kevlar wires consumed several hundred watts of motor power for aerobreaking. [photo] After an extended period of time (about 20 seconds) at close to 28,000 rpm, the disc blew up with a loud bang anyway, with the wires remaining on the hub, as shown in the picture. It can be clearly seen that the wires remains pointing radially from the hub. The Kevlar wires had been stretched radially and performed as intended. What made the disc explode, was the creepage of the plastic material, i.e. its stretching over time, subjected to the high g forces.

  13. Re:Article read better with special hat on On Hacktivism · · Score: 2
    The article reads better with a tin-foil hat. God you people with the free speech and shit... Get a grip, your rights aren't being killed....

    This is in keeping with the biblial imperative:

    "Thou shalt not kill"

    Torture is another matter entirely, however.

  14. Re:good cases on Black Is The New Beige · · Score: 2
    I am just waiting for case designs and all that to become mainstream.

    On the other hand, you do have wooden cases

    This guy made his own

    I recall a company that specialized in wooden cases for everything from computers to PDAs. Some looked pretty good.

    here is a slash story from a few years back

  15. Microwatts on Spark Gaps and Ultra Wide Band Data Transmission · · Score: 1, Redundant
    A typical 200-microwatt UWB transmitter, for example, radiates only one three-thousandth of the average energy emitted by a conventional 600-milliwatt cell phone.

    So it seems that these are very very low powered.

    I mean, Microwatts?

  16. When in Doubt on Microsoft's Guide to Accepting Donated PCs · · Score: 2
    Send Microsoft Money.

    Your friendly sales person will tell you how much.

    and remember, if you haven't been sending enough, penalties may apply.

  17. Nationalizing Microsoft on U.S. Considers Microsoft Passport as National ID · · Score: 3
    If it becomes a national standard, then it should be made freely available to everyone.

    If I recall correctly, laws cannect be passed to benefit only one person or company. (although there are ways around this by clever wording)

  18. Re:WARNING! No one knows how it works!!! on Provigil Extends Your Day? · · Score: 2
    It is not unusual for a drug to be approved by the FDA, even when scientists (read: the drug company) does not know its mechanism of action.

    heck, there was a recent Duke university study, where if you looked closely into the results, placebos did better than the standard psych drug for treatments

    This was a study into the effectiveness of St. John's wort and they were using a placebo and a standard med for comparison.

    Drug companies get all kinds of things approved all the time. Doesn't mean that they know what they are doing besides running a profit.

  19. Everything as pay per view on Coding Fair Use · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is arguing for ambiguity. He thinks copyright law needs to leave room for innovation as new technologies come along.

    An audience member asks if this ambiguity is what lets lawyers threaten people with lawsuits for non-infringing uses, intimidating them into taking down Web content that should remain public. We need a floor, von Lohmann says, not a ceiling on permissible activities.

    The floor for the entertainment and other "content" industries is increasingly clear. They don't fundamentally believe in fair use, and they see technology as a way to turn everything into pay-per-view, a system that would eliminate fair use almost completely.

    This impulse has been around for a while under different names.

    It used to be known as "Killing the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg"

    Fair use need to be somehow writtin into law, but I do not see a quick way around someone who decides to sell something only on a pay perview basis. With a wide enough reach (such as the Internet) you can generally get enough people to support the market, even if they are only the tiniest fraction of the population.

    Example: Spam

  20. Re:Security as a Wicked Problem on Byte Wars · · Score: 3, Interesting
    After quickly looking at the article on "Wicked Problems" (damn good read, thanks for the Link) the basic problem I see that defines it are conflicting goals and purposes.

    if you have a single goal, then most of the time, design and planning go well. When you have a conflict in agendas at any level, you will compromises.

    Typical example: vehicle safety:

    The maximum safe car likely resembles a tank. This is not incompatible with comfort because you could have a luxury interior.

    Driving pleasure and exterior styling are more difficult.

    Now meet a price point.

    Selling the Luxury high performance tank will be relatively easy if price is no limit. Doing it under 20k (US) is maybe another story.

  21. Re:How to Think about Security on Byte Wars · · Score: 2
    The process you describe should be applied to every proposed solution to just about any problem, regardless of whether it relates to security, technology, or politics.

    I am going to get this to the attention of my local congressman.

    They need all the help they can get.

  22. How to Think about Security on Byte Wars · · Score: 5, Insightful
    as I saw yesterday on RFN, , Bruce Schneier has an interesting piece in the latest issue of CryptoGram has an interesting article entitled How to Think about Security"

    This is very useful. Damn Useful.

    here is part of the info from the RFN story:

    Here is Bruce Schneier's five step process, in brief.

    This five-step process works for any security measure, past, present, or future:

    1. What problem does it solve?
    2. How well does it solve the problem?
    3. What new problems does it add?
    4. What are the economic and social costs?
    5. Given the above, is it worth the costs?
    Take step one above, for example. Here is part of Schneier's comment on it:

    Step one: What problem does the security measure solve? You'd think this would be an easy one, but so many security initiatives are presented without any clear statement of the problem. National ID cards are a purported solution without any clear problem. Increased net surveillance has been presented as a vital security requirement, but without any explanation as to why.

    I love the insightful simplicity of the piece.
  23. The Example of CDDB on Internet Book Database? · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I am concerned about the prior example of the CDDB, where all of these people contributed tyo this great resource, only to have the resource get sold off and commercialized and turned into a tool to track users, etc.

    So While I really like the idea of the database, I do not like the possibility of the thievery of honest work by generous people.

    Is there someway so that this could be donated into the public domain or something from day one?

    (just trying to wrap my mushy mind around this for the moment.)

  24. Re:Another factor? on Rare Earth · · Score: 2
    How about the magnetic field of the earth?

    If you have a large enough rock, the compression and radioactivity in the core will kept the core molten. This combined with the spin of the planet will generate as rotating mass of metal. This, with other factors, is generally enough to get a magnetic field going. So, with a big enough planet, you get the whole deal, magnetic field, gravity, sustained atmosphere, etc.

    Yes, the core is radioactive to some degree.

    I suspect that part of the problem with Mars is that the core cooled down, shutting down plate techtonics before it really had a chance to get going well.

    If Mars took, say, 4 billion years to cool down, since the Earth is roughly twice the diameter, it will take about 8 times as long to cool off. We have plenty of time.

  25. Re:Please... on Words That Speak a Thousand Pictures · · Score: 2
    yeh, it only works on those systems where you don't have things locked down, and even then it seems broken.

    probably not properly load tested or something.

    well we just took care of that.