Did anyone else choke on their coffee as they
read this? From the original article --
When you first run Windows Media Player, it will ask if you want to keep copy protection on, and you can turn it off if you wish. If you missed that dialog box, it is still easy to turn off copy protection by going into the Tools|Options menu. Click on the Copy Music tab, and under Copy Settings, uncheck the 'Protect Content' box. In previous versions, this box was called the 'Enable Personal Rights Management' check box." Turning off copy protection would seem the best idea.
D'oh! So the DRM is so easy to counteract that
there is literally an "override DRM" wizard,
and an "override DRM" button for those who missed
it.
So how does this so-called DRM actually provide
any security whatsoever for the copyright
holders? It doesn't. It is irritation-ware
pure and simple. Just another totally
unnecessary hoop to jump through.
<PARANOIA>
Or is it? How about this for a totally irrational paranoid fantasy: could it be that
by clicking the "turn off DRM" button you are
circumventing the copy-protection and so,
technically, in breach of the DCMA? Just how
twisted would MS have to be to implement a
honey-trap just so they could sell the RIAA
a list of the theoretically guilty?
</PARANOIA>
Disclaimer: no, even I don't really
believe this. But, hey, food for thought, eh?
With this technology, the usage conditions for content can be controlled from the distributor's end and hence, content distribution can be secured from the beginning to the end of the service.
By ``end of the service'' here, they clearly mean
``the moment that just one of the multitude of clued-up and highly motivated
hackers out there cracks the protection and puts
an unecrypted copy on a P2P network''.
Ah, you gotta hand it to Sony. They have learned
the lesson well: that you can always solve IPR
problems with technology.
Next week: Sony Announce New Initiative To
Improve Morality By Legislation.
The week after: Sony Announce New Initiative To
End World Hunger By Telling People To Be Nicer.
This is simple. The solution to the problem of
quality of service is just to invite your close,
trusted friends onto your Gnutella network and
not let the plebs out there know about it.
[pause]
Now if only I could find out where those elitist
bastards are hiding!:-)
Maybe the most disturbing assertion in the
whole of this article:
The needs of the desktop and the server are not the same as the needs of the cell phone and the digital watch. Programmers in each environment need a language tailored for them. One size does not fit all.
That can't be a good philosophy, can it? I think
we've all been shorn of the starry-eyed naivety
that had us chanting ``write once, run anywhere''
way back when; but doesn't ``write once,
compile anywhere'' still seem like an eminently
attainable goal?
I can't believe the guy didn't mention
enum. Astonishing. A great, gaping
hole in the type system of a language that spends
so much of its time congratulating itself smugly
on its type-safety. And it doesn't even make
the top ten.
When that sad day comes that I lie on my death-bed, and heartbroken throngs surround my frail and aged form, looking to glean what wisdom they may from my last words; and when one particularly attractive young acoloyte leans across and asks, ``O exalted master, what one thing remaineth a mystery to thee after these many years?'', twelve gets you seven that I'll reply with my dying breath, ``Why in the name of all that is holy doesn't Java have enum?''
Experience suggests that the scans will be of mediocre quality (missing some pages, missing parts of other pages, frequently having insufficient contrast to be legible, and losing any colour or greyscale information present in the originals).
Oh. I see your point.
Or - no - wait! Why not (get this)
do the scanning right?
D'ya think that might work? Huh?
Do ya? Do ya?
your argument doesn't apply. Intranet project. Browser is IE 6. Period. End of conversation.
``End of conversation''? You are joking, right?:-)
Really, in the sort of homogeneous environment you describe - in which a central authority mandates that everyone has to use the same software - then you're quite right. Everything is easier when your allowed to throw portability out the window. But is that really the kind of world you want to live in? Do you want your employer to tell you that you have to use their favourite browser, which doesn't block adverts/prevent popups/support tabs/[insert your favourite feature here]?
If you're happy with that, then yes, we can all go ahead and build applications that run on the client. But if we want the freedom to use the client software that works best for us, that approach ain't gonna work.
(And, for what it's worth, you didn't say anything about a homogeneous environment in
the comment I was replying to.)
5. Make Everyone Hate the Web in Five Easy Steps [...] THIS IS A JOKE!
... and yet, somehow, I'm not laughing.
Not because your point isn't well made.
But because it is well made.
Alternative title #6: How To Build Really
Spiffy Web Sites That Will Work Perfectly
For You And About Two Other People, Provided
They Both Use Exactly The Same Browser, Operating System And Patches As You, in 22 easy chapters
This is pure intellectual laziness. What is wrong with being in a "learning mode?" We do it our entire lives! Why should someone want to actually stop learning?
We want to stop learning not because we're lazy
but because we need to go into learned-behaviour
mode.
Consider driving a car. When I started learning
to drive, it seemed almost impossible to me that
anyone could successfully pull away - you have to
take off the handbrake, gently release the clutch
and depress the accelerator all at once. (Yes,
I'm British, so I learned in a car with manual
transmission.) But once I'd learned that skill,
it was scarred into my brain, and now I drive
away without a moment's thought about details
like the accelerator, clutch or handbrake. Now
that may not be a much fun as when I was
first learning to drive, but it sure is more
efficient and productive (not to mention safe!)
Same thing applies to learning anything else -
particularly UIs, programming languages, etc.
I learned to program two decades ago, and the
way I learned to extract substrings was with good
ol' MID$(). (Don't laugh.) Now every new
programming language I learn, and I've learned
plenty, does it differently: midstr(), substr(),
sub(),
some odd operator, whatever. And just because
two languages both use a substr() function, don't
assume they are the same! One will have zero-based indexes into the string, and one will
have one-based indexes. Or the length and start
parameters will be in opposite orders. Or
something.
Now this is not ``learning'' in any remotely
interesting sense. Learning is fun when it
stretches your mind, shows you new things,
gives you new concepts to play with. But
memorising the parameter lists of a new
set of functions which are exactly
equivalent to all the function I already know
from a dozen other programming environments
ain't larnin' that I can use.
All of this applies double in the area of UIs.
As Henry Spencer has so appositely observed,
``You creativity is better used in solving
problems than in creating beautiful new
impediments to understanding.''
Come ON. I MEAN. Tabbed Browsing? How is that
such a big deal that EVERYONE who ever writes
about Mozilla goes on and on and on about
Tabbled Browsing?
What's WRONG with you guys?
Don't you have WINDOW MANAGERS?
I say that we fight Microsoft by refering to all OS's as 'Windows.' Hopefully this will cause Microsoft to lose the trademark name 'Windows' because it will become generic from over usage.
The really would be funny were it not for the tiny, tiny detail that the word "windows" was indeed generic for many years before Microsoft inexplicably obtained a trademark for it.
(Which is why, back in the 80s, they at least had the humility to call it "Microsoft Windows".)
(This from the company which called its Disk Operating System "DOS", of course. And which calls its SQL server "SQL Server".)
(And somewhat offtopic, but what does this message from the Windows 98 installation sequence tell you? ``Click Finish to continue starting Windows 98''. I ask you.)
How much does a Space Shuttle booster tank cost to fill?
The guys at Thiokol tell me that each solid rocket booster costs $20 million make (without
fuel) and another $20 million to fill up with rocket fuel.
Wow. $40M and that's without the gratuity! (This isn't so bad for the European Space Programme, since we tend to tip only 10%.)
The ONLY thing that matters: screen resolution
on
Which Laptop To Buy?
·
· Score: 1
This is easy. The ONLY thing that matters in a laptop (or any other computer) is screen resolution. Every CPU these days is faster than you need, every disk is bigger than you need and so on. But if you can't get an 80-column emacs side-by-side on the screen with an 80-column xterm, or a with a 500-pixel-wide Netscape, then you've got problems.
That means that 800x600 - still by far the most common resolution for lower-end laptops - is no good. The next resolution up, however, 1076x768, is just fine. Obviously yet more pixels are nice, but the huge, qualitative difference from "can't be used for programming" to "can be used" comes at the 1076-pixel mark.
Unfortunately, most manufacturers and retailers seem to treat screen resolution as some kind of trade secret. Look at any advert for a laptop, and you'll see the screen's physical size right up near the top (as though that mattered!), but 99% of ads just won't tell you the resolution.
My poking around the refurbed-laptop market yielded the following rule of thumb, which I supply on an AS IS basis:-)
12.2" = 800x600
13.3" (rare) = 1024x768
14.4" = 1024x760 or 1200xWhatever
Bigger screens are too expensive for me even to have considered!
No doubt there are MANY exceptions to this, but the bottom line seems to be that you can pretty much ignore machines with 12.2" screens. And buy the cheapest 13.3"-or-better you can find!
4WIW, I bought a refurbed ThinkPad 600E about eighteen months ago, and it's been an absolute delight. Its 13.3" 1024x768 screen is just fine and dandy. But no doubt other machines offer that for better prices these days.
Once the recipient has learned to recognize the basic symbols used to build the
programming language, they can then capture and run programs without manually
analyzing each instruction within each program.
[...] Once they reach this point, all they need to do is archive programs and execute
them to see what they do
You can just imagine the output when they do that, can't you?
According to a research paper published at the
Proceedings of the Royal Society in London, [Seymour and Lillywhite] explained
that due to heart size and metablic rates the only way
they could have functioned on land was with a horizontal
neck.
This story doesn't contain enough information
for us to be able to tell whether it's news or
not. Does no-one have a link to even an abstract of the original paper?
It's been paeleontologically orthodox for some time now that the
majority of sauropods (including Diplodocus
and ``Brontosaurus'') held their necks more or
less horizontally - which is why that's what you
see in Walking with Dinosaurs, and indeed
The Lost World if I remember its fleeting
sauropod scenes correctly. So if all the paper's
saying is that Diplodocoids help their necks
horizontally then, hey, time for me to publish
my paper suggesting that dogs have teeth.
On the other hand, Brachiosaurus and its
kin were built very differently: most suggestively, their front legs were substantially
longer than their back legs (hence the name, which
means ``arm lizard''). This means that their spinal columns sloped upwards from hip to shoulders. Given the general
construction of these animals, it makes
all kinds of sense that their necks would be held, if not vertically, then at least inclined upwards
at maybe a 45 degree angle.
So if the Seymour/Lillywhite paper is claiming
that Brachiosaurs held their necks horizontally,
then that's a much more surprising assertion,
and one that will need a lot of justification: the whole body design of Brachiosaurs makes no sense unless it's that way to get the head up high.
In other words, I think that the sauropod scenes
in Jurassic Park (which featured Brachiosaurs) were probably also correct! (Er, except for the bit when they're sitting in the tree and a Brachiosaur head rears up - it's ludicrously too big.)
Slashdot Mirror
So how does this so-called DRM actually provide any security whatsoever for the copyright holders? It doesn't. It is irritation-ware pure and simple. Just another totally unnecessary hoop to jump through.
<PARANOIA>
Or is it? How about this for a totally irrational paranoid fantasy: could it be that by clicking the "turn off DRM" button you are circumventing the copy-protection and so, technically, in breach of the DCMA? Just how twisted would MS have to be to implement a honey-trap just so they could sell the RIAA a list of the theoretically guilty?
</PARANOIA>
Disclaimer: no, even I don't really believe this. But, hey, food for thought, eh?
By ``end of the service'' here, they clearly mean ``the moment that just one of the multitude of clued-up and highly motivated hackers out there cracks the protection and puts an unecrypted copy on a P2P network''.
Ah, you gotta hand it to Sony. They have learned the lesson well: that you can always solve IPR problems with technology.
Next week: Sony Announce New Initiative To Improve Morality By Legislation.
The week after: Sony Announce New Initiative To End World Hunger By Telling People To Be Nicer.
These are all great ideas.
... Just so long as the dental nurse remembers to change the setting on the laser from VAPOURISE BULLDOZER to PAINLESS DENTISTRY :-)
[pause]
Now if only I could find out where those elitist bastards are hiding! :-)
What, even the slug book? :-)
That can't be a good philosophy, can it? I think we've all been shorn of the starry-eyed naivety that had us chanting ``write once, run anywhere'' way back when; but doesn't ``write once, compile anywhere'' still seem like an eminently attainable goal?
One Java is enough. Maybe even more than enough.
When that sad day comes that I lie on my death-bed, and heartbroken throngs surround my frail and aged form, looking to glean what wisdom they may from my last words; and when one particularly attractive young acoloyte leans across and asks, ``O exalted master, what one thing remaineth a mystery to thee after these many years?'', twelve gets you seven that I'll reply with my dying breath, ``Why in the name of all that is holy doesn't Java have enum?''
(For much more on this, if you can bear it, feel free to check out my rant at http://zoom.z3950.org/bind/java/comment/enum.html )
Oh. I see your point.
Or - no - wait! Why not (get this) do the scanning right? D'ya think that might work? Huh? Do ya? Do ya?
Real real programmers use adb.
``End of conversation''? You are joking, right? :-)
Really, in the sort of homogeneous environment you describe - in which a central authority mandates that everyone has to use the same software - then you're quite right. Everything is easier when your allowed to throw portability out the window. But is that really the kind of world you want to live in? Do you want your employer to tell you that you have to use their favourite browser, which doesn't block adverts/prevent popups/support tabs/[insert your favourite feature here]?
If you're happy with that, then yes, we can all go ahead and build applications that run on the client. But if we want the freedom to use the client software that works best for us, that approach ain't gonna work.
(And, for what it's worth, you didn't say anything about a homogeneous environment in the comment I was replying to.)
Or better still: Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Scripts and Plugins -> Enable JavaScript. Uncheck. Done
Alternative title #6: How To Build Really Spiffy Web Sites That Will Work Perfectly For You And About Two Other People, Provided They Both Use Exactly The Same Browser, Operating System And Patches As You, in 22 easy chapters
Wait a minute ... why doesn't your site work in my browser?
What's that you say? My site doesn't work in your browser either?
How very strange.
Moderation totals: +1 funny, -1 gratuitously sarcastic.
We want to stop learning not because we're lazy but because we need to go into learned-behaviour mode.
Consider driving a car. When I started learning to drive, it seemed almost impossible to me that anyone could successfully pull away - you have to take off the handbrake, gently release the clutch and depress the accelerator all at once. (Yes, I'm British, so I learned in a car with manual transmission.) But once I'd learned that skill, it was scarred into my brain, and now I drive away without a moment's thought about details like the accelerator, clutch or handbrake. Now that may not be a much fun as when I was first learning to drive, but it sure is more efficient and productive (not to mention safe!)
Same thing applies to learning anything else - particularly UIs, programming languages, etc. I learned to program two decades ago, and the way I learned to extract substrings was with good ol' MID$(). (Don't laugh.) Now every new programming language I learn, and I've learned plenty, does it differently: midstr(), substr(), sub(), some odd operator, whatever. And just because two languages both use a substr() function, don't assume they are the same! One will have zero-based indexes into the string, and one will have one-based indexes. Or the length and start parameters will be in opposite orders. Or something.
Now this is not ``learning'' in any remotely interesting sense. Learning is fun when it stretches your mind, shows you new things, gives you new concepts to play with. But memorising the parameter lists of a new set of functions which are exactly equivalent to all the function I already know from a dozen other programming environments ain't larnin' that I can use.
All of this applies double in the area of UIs. As Henry Spencer has so appositely observed, ``You creativity is better used in solving problems than in creating beautiful new impediments to understanding.''
Come ON. I MEAN. Tabbed Browsing? How is that such a big deal that EVERYONE who ever writes about Mozilla goes on and on and on about Tabbled Browsing?
What's WRONG with you guys? Don't you have WINDOW MANAGERS?
Huh.
The really would be funny were it not for the tiny, tiny detail that the word "windows" was indeed generic for many years before Microsoft inexplicably obtained a trademark for it.
(Which is why, back in the 80s, they at least had the humility to call it "Microsoft Windows".)
(This from the company which called its Disk Operating System "DOS", of course. And which calls its SQL server "SQL Server".)
(And somewhat offtopic, but what does this message from the Windows 98 installation sequence tell you? ``Click Finish to continue starting Windows 98''. I ask you.)
Yes. Yes, that's true. You could.
If your ears were stuffed with cheese and
your friend on the other end of the line had
his mouth stuffed with putty.
Or, of course, if you were a moron.
This is a joke, right? These binary compatibility things may exist as intellectual exercises, but try making them work with real software.
I have serious serious problems trying to run linux-2.4 binaries on my linux-2.2 box. That is the true state of the art.
When we have Linux-to-Linux binary compatibility, then maybe I'll start getting excited about Linux-to-*whatever* compatibility.
Wow. $40M and that's without the gratuity! (This isn't so bad for the European Space Programme, since we tend to tip only 10%.)
That means that 800x600 - still by far the most common resolution for lower-end laptops - is no good. The next resolution up, however, 1076x768, is just fine. Obviously yet more pixels are nice, but the huge, qualitative difference from "can't be used for programming" to "can be used" comes at the 1076-pixel mark.
Unfortunately, most manufacturers and retailers seem to treat screen resolution as some kind of trade secret. Look at any advert for a laptop, and you'll see the screen's physical size right up near the top (as though that mattered!), but 99% of ads just won't tell you the resolution.
My poking around the refurbed-laptop market yielded the following rule of thumb, which I supply on an AS IS basis :-)
- 12.2" = 800x600
- 13.3" (rare) = 1024x768
- 14.4" = 1024x760 or 1200xWhatever
- Bigger screens are too expensive for me even to have considered!
No doubt there are MANY exceptions to this, but the bottom line seems to be that you can pretty much ignore machines with 12.2" screens. And buy the cheapest 13.3"-or-better you can find!4WIW, I bought a refurbed ThinkPad 600E about eighteen months ago, and it's been an absolute delight. Its 13.3" 1024x768 screen is just fine and dandy. But no doubt other machines offer that for better prices these days.
You can just imagine the output when they do that, can't you?
--
This story doesn't contain enough information for us to be able to tell whether it's news or not. Does no-one have a link to even an abstract of the original paper?
It's been paeleontologically orthodox for some time now that the majority of sauropods (including Diplodocus and ``Brontosaurus'') held their necks more or less horizontally - which is why that's what you see in Walking with Dinosaurs, and indeed The Lost World if I remember its fleeting sauropod scenes correctly. So if all the paper's saying is that Diplodocoids help their necks horizontally then, hey, time for me to publish my paper suggesting that dogs have teeth.
On the other hand, Brachiosaurus and its kin were built very differently: most suggestively, their front legs were substantially longer than their back legs (hence the name, which means ``arm lizard''). This means that their spinal columns sloped upwards from hip to shoulders. Given the general construction of these animals, it makes all kinds of sense that their necks would be held, if not vertically, then at least inclined upwards at maybe a 45 degree angle.
So if the Seymour/Lillywhite paper is claiming that Brachiosaurs held their necks horizontally, then that's a much more surprising assertion, and one that will need a lot of justification: the whole body design of Brachiosaurs makes no sense unless it's that way to get the head up high.
In other words, I think that the sauropod scenes in Jurassic Park (which featured Brachiosaurs) were probably also correct! (Er, except for the bit when they're sitting in the tree and a Brachiosaur head rears up - it's ludicrously too big.)
--
Disclaimer: please don't sue me.
--
<SARCASM>
Oh. Well that's alright then. I'm sure we can all rest assume that that will never happen again.
</SARCASM>
--