Significant movies I remember being available from screeners/internal sources are:
sum of all fears: leaked about 3 weeks before theater opening
matrix: leaked two weeks before theater opening, but with some of the soundtrack music not mixed in yet- neo and trinity talk in a quiet club for example with no rob zombie in the background
lotr:tt- perfect DVD rip released the same week as it premiered in the theaters. Had little warnings saying "for academy awards consideration only" that popped up once ever 20 minutes below the letterboxing
spiderman- leaked on dvd same time as it came out
hulk- everyone knows about this one
attack of the clones- perfect dvd rip the same week it showed in theaters
There are like a billion others I cant even remember right now. Basically 90 percent of the high quality piracy is being supplied by the movie industry itself right now. I dont see how they can justify stiffer controls on us when their left and right hand are ignorant of one another.
As long as the protocol is built upon the internet, there is no such thing as anonymity. Except for not directly connecting to people you dont trust to abuse knowledge of your identity.
The extra bandwidth from relaying data is not actually that bad for a broadband user. I use about 10 percent of my upload bandwidth and 5 percent of my download capability during a heavy traffic period. I could easily spare another 10 percent upload to help my friends get stuff from people they dont trust.
Whether this is actually feasible is up to debate. It remains to be seen whether the riaacops can even take care of the networks that sprung up to replace kazaa about a year ago, so moving to such a performance comprise system may not be necessary.
Better yet, look to the next generation of file sharing applications.
The next big thing will be trusted networks. Ie, you only connect to trade with users that you agree to trust. They get files through users they trust and the files slowly traverse a few extra steps to get to you. The people you trust appear to have all the files you need, and you never directly connect to a RIAA cop unless you trust them.
I suspect this will make be a terific network strategy for people who have a large number of wired friends and then move and make a larger number of other wired friends who still have friends at home. Kind of like when you move to college from HS, or to silicon valley from college. I predict this will revolutionize the old couriering system that currently relies on point to point file transfer protocols. Secure, but very slow over say cable, which has low upload speeds.
It is of course possible that a riaacop could get someone to trust him, but he has only found out the IP address/identity of that one user, not the ones that trust him. It's theoretically possible that one could subpoena the traffic from that computer, but if all the traffic is encrypted, you cant say for sure which other hosts are trading in the offending material.
Its just another layer of annoyance for the content industry pigs to go through if they ever get around to dealing with the other filesharing networks that have popped up in the past 2 years (I stopped using kazaa over 2 years ago, I stopped gnutella about a week after it came out and I realized it didnt scale).
Bingo. For years the feds tried to shut down pirate bbses and ftp sites with no luck, because most pirates do it for fun and make no money from their efforts. Judges basically said "no financial gain, no fault" and threw out the cases.
In 97, the whores in congress passed the "No Electronic Theft Act" 17 USC blah blah blah that:
1) changed the definition of financial gain to mean "receiving anything of value" such as a copyrighted work- so running an FTP site that receives files is now financial gain, as is a program that sends and receives copyrighted files- but it's much more complicated than that
2)by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $ 1,000 shall be punished
however....!
evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement.'.
c) some details
In case it wasnt obvious, the burden of proof to prosecute someone under this statue is pretty difficult to meet unless you are going after a pirate bbs or a pirate ftp site with a permanent address and fairly static library of files.
A sporadically connecting (and constantly moving) p2p client that is only sharing fragments of files is not really an entity that you can easily track. In addition, since the files on any individual client change often, or are (most often) unshared the second they finish downloading, it is almost 100 percent certain that "copyrighted works" (as well-formed files) are not shared by more than a small percentage of users, except perhaps accidentally.
It is also amusing to note that verifying that a user actually has a file is nearly impossible- its hard to distinguish between a client sending you the real file and a client sending you nonsense. Also, what about fakes, and files that dont exist in complete format anywhere? I've come across releases of movies where everyone has 99 percent of the file, but no one has the final 1% and the file might as well be random bits. Actually downloading files from a specific user on a P2P network to verify that it is copyrighted content is very difficult for one user, let alone millions spread across international borders.
To summarize- NET was formed to combat piracy that revolved around whole-file transfer protocols like FTP, HTTP and irc file servers. It is not well suited to prosecuting the massive file sharing networks that exist now. Even if it were possible to do so, it would be political suicide, since a hundred million voters will be a much bigger headache than a few whiny content industry lobbyists.
Kerberos or more generally, trusted 3rd party authentication was invented to solve this problem. You enter one password to gain access to the ticket granting service, and that service handles authenticating you for all the other ones you can use. This problem has been solved correctly for a long time, there is no need for fancy tricks like biometrics to solve it again.
Passport is a great example of such a system (obviously lacking in implementation, but the idea is great).
Also, I have a question for the DOJ lawyers. I start with a bunch of philosophical ramblings, but I think my question in the end is worth answering.
There are many who confuse moral and legal correctness- it is both wrong and illegal to murder people, so many people assume "wrong" and "illegal" mean the same thing. This only becomes a problem when small special interest groups can pay to have laws rewritten so that it becomes illegal to do things they dont like. Sort of a rule by legal proxy.
The problem at hand is that RIAA has sufficient financial resources to exercise some control over the writing of laws in this country. Unfortunately, their business model is no longer robust enough to allow them to survive market forces. Their existance was originally justified by the once-high cost and difficulty of distributing audio information to consumers, however, this is no longer the case. Thus, the RIAA is attempting to delay their inevitable destruction in a competitive market place by resorting to legal delaying tactics. Tactics I beleive are unjust and occuring at great cost to American citizens.
What I feel needs to happen is that RIAA needs to be dealt a fierce legal blow that confines it to dealing only with the economic reality of its situation, not a ficticious reality in which all living things have caused them great tort and must pay. Without these lawsuits to drag out its slow demise, I predict the RIAA would quickly either succumb to market forces or become significantly smaller in terms of both revenue and profitability. They would also have to change how they did business, and their bargaining position with artists would be considerably weakened. Not because this would be "morally right" but because there is no real economic incentive to do so now except for RIAA making alternate methods of distribution (mp3 radio and file sharign) illegal and harassing the users and owners of such businesses.
My question to the DOJ is what steps can be taken to put a stop to the barratry and legal extortion that is being practiced by this dying whale of a company?
I hate to respond to stupid posts, but microsoft LIKES having its software pirated by the average user. The more home users that steal office, the more remain proficient in the office product and demand their bosses buy it at work, which is where MS makes all its money.
Microsoft's antipiracy attempts are all about making business pay up. The 15 year old kid with a terabyte of wares doesnt have any money to spend on software, and has all the time in the world to steal it, so your efforts are wasted on him. Businesses on the other hand consider their time valuable and have deep pockets.
You dont think its an accident that no version of office or windows has had significant copy protection in the past 15 years.
This sounds like the rangefinding/GPS binoculars the military uses to read off bombing coordinates now.
Im surprised how fast it came to the civilian market. With affordable cruise missle technology available soon, ordinairy citizens will be able to carry out their own starcraft style airstrikes (minus the cute red dot and the mushroom cloud of course, but who knows).
The software market is completely glutted with incompetant morons who are suitable for use as little more than semi-computer-literate go-fers. These are the guys are are having their lunch stolen by the indians and russians who can program as good or likely better for 10x less. A lot of them are finally being forced to leave the software field altogether because they dont have the enthusiasm to do it when it isnt easy money.
In case you werent aware of this, the current paradigm for making software in this country is to have maybe 3-4 architect/senior developer type guys who design the overall product, make all the hard design decisions. They also do protyping, make libraries and develop tools for the more junior programmers to use, etc. Working with these guys are a large group of more junior guys who do all the hard work of actually writing all the code, using the design and tools that the smart guys have done.
It has been determined that you dont have to employ americans for the junior level positions, because all that is really required is hardworkingness and an eagerness to learn. You can employ ukrainians, irish, indians or chinese who speak english and if they show true talent, you bring them over on visas so they can pick up english and later become the guru type guys.
This is bad for americans because it means that you have to eat a lot of crow when youre paying your dues as a junior level guy. Until you have about 5-7 years of experience, employers will not even begin to consider you as a valued asset- until then youre really cannon fodder. You really have to hustle when your compeition considers $100 a month to be a kingly salary. Its possible to succeed (Hey, I did without even a CS degree) but it takes a lot of work to get there.
It doesnt exactly help that there are all sorts of pitfalls in the industry like clueless employers, consulting firms etc who can take someone with plenty of potential and completely ruin them as a programmer.
If youre communicating within a single language (usually the case) there are libraries for object serialization readily available. Java even has it built in to the core libraries.
If youre communicating _directly_ with programs written in other languages (C talking to java) then any programmer worth his salt can make a communications protocol to allow the two applications to work together. It takes less time to do that than to debug XSLT or DTD problems. And no, none of the problems of a simpler protocol are removed by virtue of talking in XML vs some arbitrary protocol designed for the situation at hand.
Most programs (and most programming languages) end up interfacing at the database level anyway. C and Java both have the ability to execute SQL queries quickly on a db server, thus this is the logical place for them to exchange data. Making a database column contain an XML document (in a big text field for example) only increases the complexity of the programs.
Real world experience has never caused programmers to fall in love with XML. 90 percent of the posters today are quoting the XML marketing horseshit, so take all the positive replies with a grain of salt.
Also, has anyone here every heard of CORBA or RMI? I hear its hot shit for having applications talk to one another without using a database. Sounds crazy eh?
Comedy gold. The difficulty of being a good programmer really has been a godsend, salary-wise. People still offer me upwards of 90k on a regular basis.
If I were a VB programmer right now, I'd be fucked.
We use XML heavily in a project I'm working on at my company. Some genius decided that everything should be in xml, and that we would use XSLT for a lot of the data manipulation. Naturally we also make heavy use of DTD and SAX. Lots of XML related technologies.
I can tell you now that XML is a Bad Thing. It strives to excel at too many things at once, and becomes inefficient and complex as a result.
XML tries to eliminate the step of writing parsers for data, although writing parsers has never been a significant part of application development to begin with. Its rigidity instead forces you to waste time taking the output of the parser (a complex tree) and putting it into meaningful form. XML document tree traversal = 10000x more complex than getting column data out of a ResultSet... Unfortunately it is also a billion times slower to parse XML than it is to perform a medium compexity database query.
The real problem is that XML only partly addresses the problems that relational database solved years ago (organizing and data accessable), but it does it without any of the efficiency benefits of a well designed database server. In my opinion, 90+ percent of the places where XML is being used today would be better served by using columns in a relational database table to store object fields. You get indexing, you get universal, simple and efficient searching, and you get speed.
XML has too many faults to really list in one short post. The truth of the matter is that it tries to do too many things and DOESNT DO ANYTHING WELL. Sort of like if someone tries to be skilled in all musical instruments but ends up being, at best, mediocre in a few of them.
I have to agree completely, except that I place the point of suckage around halfway through season 4. Season 4 had one or two good episodes, but I felt it was mostly poorly written and the story-arc was mostly filler. Adam wasnt a terrible main villain though.
Season 5 completely blew. The season was maybe 80 percent filler and the story arc was completely one dimensional. Glory made no sense whatsoever as a villain. She was supposedly a "god" though she had no powers except being stronger than buffy. Why she behaves like a valley girl with an IQ of 70 I cannot fathom, especially if she is thousands of years old. This season spent too much time harping on xander/anya and willow/tara. The addition of a "little sister" (probably to bring back episodes involving school or teenagers) was very poorly done.
Season 6 was more of the same, only worse. The musical episode was funny, but the rest pretty much sucked. Actually no, the 3 geeks were funny for about 10 minutes. Was there even a story arc? Yeah for the last 2 episodes or so. And yes, take out buffy with a single bullet so we can all ask "why the fuck havent the vampires been using guns for the past 6 seasons."
Season 7 sucked from begining to end. I dont think anyone is actually writing for the show anymore, and everyone just ad-libs as they change sets and film. Its sort of like when youre working on a programming project that you know can't go anywhere, but it pays better than staying home, so you keep showing up to get paid. Note that Joss Whedon moved on a while ago; sort of like how everyone good left Netscape around the time that IE started shipping with windows lol omen.
I started noticing corrupt files on gnutella about a year and a half ago- at which point I abandoned the network. I also abandoned kazaa because it was getting too popular and I figured it would only be a matter of time.
I am 100 percent certain that the networks I currently participate have neither been wormed nor filled with corrupted files. It is very difficult to get a corrupted file when the releasing group identifies each file they have released with a unique hashcode, filesize and name. Additionally, it is hard to sue a network when 99 percent of the servers are overseas, in countries with no laws regarding file sharing.
I would name the networks I am currently participating in, but everyone who has a business knowing is already there.
Yeah dude we dress nicer so you wont notice when we wear interview clothes.
As for dress code having to do something with funding, utter horseshit. The VCs only care that they see product shipped and benjamins received at the end of the day- they dont care if the developers are wearing sandals and pajamas.
Im a pretty experienced programmer, but I bailed on silicon valley because there are no jobs left there. Im working on the east coast now, at a place that makes me wear a tie and collared shirts. Once you get over the shock of having to spend more than 20 bucks a year on clothing (you can go for years without updating if you live in a server room), wearing a monkeysuit (not even a full suit) isnt really that bad. Plus it gets you in the habit of shopping for decent clothing for when youre not working.
Its a small drawback to work in a place with job security (hard to imagine after 3 years of failing startups) and 9 to 5 hours with good salary. I think that is a pretty tolerable tradeoff.
Also, there is still plenty of opportunity to be counterculture- no one said you had to dress in browns and blues only. Dress flashy if you get bored. If someone objects, tell them youre just conforming to the dress code lol troublemaker.
Making a fast car is a lot like a software engineering project. It has a long stage of planning and research, long before you cut any checks or turn any wrenches.
First, you ask yourself what you want the car to excel at. Most fast cars will be faster than most in a straight line and around curves, but a car can only truly excel in one area. Ask yourself what your priorities are. Also decide on a budget, which will cover the cost of buying the car and the cost of the mods. Here is where you have to be really honest with yourself- you can only afford so much starting car and so many mods- lying to yourself about what you can accomplish with x dollars will only lead to dissapointment.
Second, decide on a platform. The platform should be one that naturally supports your performance goals. For example, a miata for handling, a fox body mustang for drag racing and so on. You probably want to get as cheap a car as possible to save money for mods. Try and find a salvage title car with a straight frame or a car with a blown motor that can be rebuilt. You dont want something with car payments on it.
Third, how much money do you have left? Prioritize and start researching each mod to find the cheapest way to do it. Getting a good spring and shock combo might give as 90% as good handling as a coilover kit selling for 4 times the price- talk to people that are doing what you are and ask them what their experiences were. Most people will be glad to meet another enthusiast who shares their hobby and even drives the same car as them.
Now, where does simulation come into this? It doesnt. If you choose the right platform, it will almost certainly be one that other people are already modifying heavily, one with massive aftermarket support. If you choose the right mods, they will be the ones that are most readily available, with replacement parts for cheap. And the reason there is no need for simulation is because all the work has been done for you a million times.
What if you want to do something extreme that hasnt been done before? People have been doing customizations, weird engine swaps and strange aerodynamic modifications for decades. There are companies that make all sorts of one-off parts like manifolds and braces etc. Electromotive makes a series of computers that can be used to controll nearly any type of engine in existance from a 4 cylinder methanol powered car to a mazda 3 rotor turbo. Once you decide what you want to do, there is assuredly someone who will help you with it for enough money.
As for the guy who said that computers are useless and a sign that your engine is too small, I say thats BS. Any engine can benefit from fuel injection and computer controlled ignition and fuel. A lot of prostreet drag racers have begun to use big block turbos with electronic controls in place of nitrous. The cars are more consistently fast and dont break as often as the nitrous cars- and they run 5 second ETs in street trim.
Hahahah. No, a 323i does not weigh 2300 lbs- try 3200 for manual coupe (convertible weighs more). It would be so incredibly fast if it weighed that much. A 1970s 2002 weighs about that much. A miata weighs that much.
The S4 weighs about 3600 actually. AWD must weight about 400, which isnt too bad at all compared to the 3000GT VR4 whale-car.
The pushrods on the S4 can take 400hp. They are much stronger than they need to be for 250hp. There are plenty of people running 400 crank hp on the stock rods with no problems whatsoever. Its not even a controversial level of power.
First, the original poster: The audi S4 only goes from 250 crank hp to about 310 crank hp with a computer. YOu can get up to about 350 or so with an intercooler and some other low cost tweaks.
Anyway, second poster: cars today are engineered way way way beyond the use they will see in stock form. An audi s4 most likely will be reliable at 400 crank hp. They have sleeved cylinders and a strong bottom end (amongst other features). 500 would most likely be pushing it. And the S4 will run through tires at the same rate with 250 hp as it would with 600hp. Its all about the weight, not the power, unless you do lots and lots of huge smoky burnouts. The first poster's S4 will actually be no more expensive than stock in the long run, and it will not be any less reliable.
Also, an S4 is not a light little car. It weighs about 3500 lbs, which in my book is a very heavy car. Thats only marginally lighter than a bmw 5 series.
Ferraris are in the shop every 3000 miles for a number of reasons: Ferrari's reputation isnt based upon having reliable cars- that is Honda's little dance. If Ferrari starts making reliable sorta-fast cars, then they will be written off as having lost touch with their heritage (porsche cayenne anyone? blech) They arent engineered to be super reliable, they are engineered to be weekend toys for the rich. Ferrari makes a lot of concessions to performance and a lot of concessions to "tradition" since many people buy ferrari because they want to buy into ferraris old racing image. People want gated shifters, a loud whiny exhaust and they want it painted red. They have more complicated valve trains with a ton more moving parts. A ferrari v12 has about 60 valves and 4 camshafts, non of which are self adjusting (another concession). Sooo, once a year or so, you have to bring your ferrari in and have everything looked at. VERY expensive. About 3 times more labor involved than opening up a dohc 4 cylinder- this before you factor in the traditional ferrari price gouge. Ferraris have a special formula of oil you can only get at the dealer. Ferrari parts arent exactly mass produced. Its cheaper to do preventative maintenance than to drive it until it explodes and then replace the engine.
Two points: ONE: most cars do NOT benefit from performance computers. TWO: most performance computers are added on to cars that are normally naturally aspirated and converted to turbo form. (a lot of cars that dont have turbos from the factory judge the amount of air with a vaccuum sensor instead of a mass air sensor) Often the relevant sensors dont even exist for the stock computer to talk to.
To make an example, the average honda civic computer settings are pretty much already maxxed out in stock form. You add an intake and an exhaust and youre still in the range that the stock computer can adjust for. You can actually add about half an atmosphere of boost (from turbo or supercharger) and still not need a custom computer. This applies to a most other non-turbo cars as well. Factory turbo cars have even higher limits.
Remember, modern cars have to be able to operate at 10,000 feet above and below sea level in a wide range of temperatures. Most cars have injectors that can take about 150% to 200% of stock duty before they begin to max out. Up to this point the car will still not even pollute!
Basically the only 2 ways to outpace the stock computer is to
1)bring in too little air at idle or have massively oversized injectors (the computer can't control the injectors to produce less than a certain minimum period of being open) which will cause "lopey idle" or stalling and rich emmissions.
2)bring in so much air at high rpm that the stock injectors can't let in enough fuel. Basically you will start to run "lean" (not enough fuel) which will produce very high temperatures and detonation (and kill your engine).
You basically only need a special computer if you are running massive cams (alternatively you could just raise the idle, which most people do) or if youre running such massive amounts of boost that the only solution is to run massive injectors (here again, you can actually just raise the idle). Now consider this: when youre making over double the stock hp, there is no way a factory computer is going to be able to cope anyway- I dont see the point of making them more hackable. On top of which, the only reason to use an expensive computer is to make the car more emissions friendly. And guess what mods are pretty much illegal under CARB rules? You guessed it! Programmable ECUs!!! The high-boost 323 and miata guys routinely run hacked ECUs with 12-15psi of boost, then turn down the boost and swap injectors for smog every two years. Its pretty sad that you have to break the law to pollute less.
There are devices for hacking odometers of various cars. The "all makes and models" variety routinely sell for 2500-3000 on ebay. I imagine there are quite a few cars out there with dialed back mileage.
I personally think that digital odometers were a mistake, but I also think that once you get past the 150k mile mark, mileage is pretty irrelavant, since most of the car has been replaced with newer parts at that point. My old car was in better shape at 140k miles than at 118k. Ive gone through numerous body panels, a radiator, a cylinder head, a few sets of tires, shocks, brakes etc etc. I think I would rather have a rebuilt car with 200k on the clock than an original parts car with 115k.
The larger and more complex the chip, the more it costs to make, and the higher the probability that there will be a defect in a randomly chosen chip. It is more cost effective to make one good cpu than to make two crappy cpus and put them on a single grid array.
Intel is trying to get back on top in terms of performance, even if it means taking an unelegant approach and making the chips extremely expensive to produce. Note that Intel's fastest offering is barely as fast as the fastest athlon- to accomplish this, they had to move to.13 micron and use a die size that was STILL larger than the athlons. I predict that sledgehammer on EV6 will be much more interesting news than hyperthreading.
Actually that is only illegal in strongly typed languages such as java. That was perfectly legal C++.
Actually, if you read the JVM design specs at sun, you will see that booleans are really just bytes. The other 7 bits are ignored. Restrictions on what you can do to a boolean are enforced at compile time.
Actually, to be perfectly good code, experience would have been a call to function getExperience() instead of being a reference to a variable. This would allow for you to override it later and lie about how much experience you have. The code would be cleaner and you would probably get hired faster. Dont forget that most of the H1Bs are lying about their experience as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Significant movies I remember being available from screeners/internal sources are:
sum of all fears: leaked about 3 weeks before theater opening
matrix: leaked two weeks before theater opening, but with some of the soundtrack music not mixed in yet- neo and trinity talk in a quiet club for example with no rob zombie in the background
lotr:tt- perfect DVD rip released the same week as it premiered in the theaters. Had little warnings saying "for academy awards consideration only" that popped up once ever 20 minutes below the letterboxing
spiderman- leaked on dvd same time as it came out
hulk- everyone knows about this one
attack of the clones- perfect dvd rip the same week it showed in theaters
There are like a billion others I cant even remember right now. Basically 90 percent of the high quality piracy is being supplied by the movie industry itself right now. I dont see how they can justify stiffer controls on us when their left and right hand are ignorant of one another.
As long as the protocol is built upon the internet, there is no such thing as anonymity. Except for not directly connecting to people you dont trust to abuse knowledge of your identity.
The extra bandwidth from relaying data is not actually that bad for a broadband user. I use about 10 percent of my upload bandwidth and 5 percent of my download capability during a heavy traffic period. I could easily spare another 10 percent upload to help my friends get stuff from people they dont trust.
Whether this is actually feasible is up to debate. It remains to be seen whether the riaacops can even take care of the networks that sprung up to replace kazaa about a year ago, so moving to such a performance comprise system may not be necessary.
Better yet, look to the next generation of file sharing applications.
The next big thing will be trusted networks. Ie, you only connect to trade with users that you agree to trust. They get files through users they trust and the files slowly traverse a few extra steps to get to you. The people you trust appear to have all the files you need, and you never directly connect to a RIAA cop unless you trust them.
I suspect this will make be a terific network strategy for people who have a large number of wired friends and then move and make a larger number of other wired friends who still have friends at home. Kind of like when you move to college from HS, or to silicon valley from college. I predict this will revolutionize the old couriering system that currently relies on point to point file transfer protocols. Secure, but very slow over say cable, which has low upload speeds.
It is of course possible that a riaacop could get someone to trust him, but he has only found out the IP address/identity of that one user, not the ones that trust him. It's theoretically possible that one could subpoena the traffic from that computer, but if all the traffic is encrypted, you cant say for sure which other hosts are trading in the offending material.
Its just another layer of annoyance for the content industry pigs to go through if they ever get around to dealing with the other filesharing networks that have popped up in the past 2 years (I stopped using kazaa over 2 years ago, I stopped gnutella about a week after it came out and I realized it didnt scale).
Bingo. For years the feds tried to shut down pirate bbses and ftp sites with no luck, because most pirates do it for fun and make no money from their efforts. Judges basically said "no financial gain, no fault" and threw out the cases.
In 97, the whores in congress passed the "No Electronic Theft Act" 17 USC blah blah blah that:
1) changed the definition of financial gain to mean "receiving anything of value" such as a copyrighted work- so running an FTP site that receives files is now financial gain, as is a program that sends and receives copyrighted files- but it's much more complicated than that
2)by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $ 1,000 shall be punished
however....!
evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement.'.
c) some details
In case it wasnt obvious, the burden of proof to prosecute someone under this statue is pretty difficult to meet unless you are going after a pirate bbs or a pirate ftp site with a permanent address and fairly static library of files.
A sporadically connecting (and constantly moving) p2p client that is only sharing fragments of files is not really an entity that you can easily track. In addition, since the files on any individual client change often, or are (most often) unshared the second they finish downloading, it is almost 100 percent certain that "copyrighted works" (as well-formed files) are not shared by more than a small percentage of users, except perhaps accidentally.
It is also amusing to note that verifying that a user actually has a file is nearly impossible- its hard to distinguish between a client sending you the real file and a client sending you nonsense. Also, what about fakes, and files that dont exist in complete format anywhere? I've come across releases of movies where everyone has 99 percent of the file, but no one has the final 1% and the file might as well be random bits. Actually downloading files from a specific user on a P2P network to verify that it is copyrighted content is very difficult for one user, let alone millions spread across international borders.
To summarize- NET was formed to combat piracy that revolved around whole-file transfer protocols like FTP, HTTP and irc file servers. It is not well suited to prosecuting the massive file sharing networks that exist now. Even if it were possible to do so, it would be political suicide, since a hundred million voters will be a much bigger headache than a few whiny content industry lobbyists.
Kerberos or more generally, trusted 3rd party authentication was invented to solve this problem. You enter one password to gain access to the ticket granting service, and that service handles authenticating you for all the other ones you can use. This problem has been solved correctly for a long time, there is no need for fancy tricks like biometrics to solve it again.
Passport is a great example of such a system (obviously lacking in implementation, but the idea is great).
Mod the parent post up.
Also, I have a question for the DOJ lawyers. I start with a bunch of philosophical ramblings, but I think my question in the end is worth answering.
There are many who confuse moral and legal correctness- it is both wrong and illegal to murder people, so many people assume "wrong" and "illegal" mean the same thing. This only becomes a problem when small special interest groups can pay to have laws rewritten so that it becomes illegal to do things they dont like. Sort of a rule by legal proxy.
The problem at hand is that RIAA has sufficient financial resources to exercise some control over the writing of laws in this country. Unfortunately, their business model is no longer robust enough to allow them to survive market forces. Their existance was originally justified by the once-high cost and difficulty of distributing audio information to consumers, however, this is no longer the case. Thus, the RIAA is attempting to delay their inevitable destruction in a competitive market place by resorting to legal delaying tactics. Tactics I beleive are unjust and occuring at great cost to American citizens.
What I feel needs to happen is that RIAA needs to be dealt a fierce legal blow that confines it to dealing only with the economic reality of its situation, not a ficticious reality in which all living things have caused them great tort and must pay. Without these lawsuits to drag out its slow demise, I predict the RIAA would quickly either succumb to market forces or become significantly smaller in terms of both revenue and profitability. They would also have to change how they did business, and their bargaining position with artists would be considerably weakened. Not because this would be "morally right" but because there is no real economic incentive to do so now except for RIAA making alternate methods of distribution (mp3 radio and file sharign) illegal and harassing the users and owners of such businesses.
My question to the DOJ is what steps can be taken to put a stop to the barratry and legal extortion that is being practiced by this dying whale of a company?
That sucks. There are a lot of good servers in spain. Hopefully none of them keep logs.
I hate to respond to stupid posts, but microsoft LIKES having its software pirated by the average user. The more home users that steal office, the more remain proficient in the office product and demand their bosses buy it at work, which is where MS makes all its money.
Microsoft's antipiracy attempts are all about making business pay up. The 15 year old kid with a terabyte of wares doesnt have any money to spend on software, and has all the time in the world to steal it, so your efforts are wasted on him. Businesses on the other hand consider their time valuable and have deep pockets.
You dont think its an accident that no version of office or windows has had significant copy protection in the past 15 years.
This sounds like the rangefinding/GPS binoculars the military uses to read off bombing coordinates now.
Im surprised how fast it came to the civilian market. With affordable cruise missle technology available soon, ordinairy citizens will be able to carry out their own starcraft style airstrikes (minus the cute red dot and the mushroom cloud of course, but who knows).
This isnt funny, but keep modding it up.
The software market is completely glutted with incompetant morons who are suitable for use as little more than semi-computer-literate go-fers. These are the guys are are having their lunch stolen by the indians and russians who can program as good or likely better for 10x less. A lot of them are finally being forced to leave the software field altogether because they dont have the enthusiasm to do it when it isnt easy money.
In case you werent aware of this, the current paradigm for making software in this country is to have maybe 3-4 architect/senior developer type guys who design the overall product, make all the hard design decisions. They also do protyping, make libraries and develop tools for the more junior programmers to use, etc. Working with these guys are a large group of more junior guys who do all the hard work of actually writing all the code, using the design and tools that the smart guys have done.
It has been determined that you dont have to employ americans for the junior level positions, because all that is really required is hardworkingness and an eagerness to learn. You can employ ukrainians, irish, indians or chinese who speak english and if they show true talent, you bring them over on visas so they can pick up english and later become the guru type guys.
This is bad for americans because it means that you have to eat a lot of crow when youre paying your dues as a junior level guy. Until you have about 5-7 years of experience, employers will not even begin to consider you as a valued asset- until then youre really cannon fodder. You really have to hustle when your compeition considers $100 a month to be a kingly salary. Its possible to succeed (Hey, I did without even a CS degree) but it takes a lot of work to get there.
It doesnt exactly help that there are all sorts of pitfalls in the industry like clueless employers, consulting firms etc who can take someone with plenty of potential and completely ruin them as a programmer.
If youre communicating within a single language (usually the case) there are libraries for object serialization readily available. Java even has it built in to the core libraries.
If youre communicating _directly_ with programs written in other languages (C talking to java) then any programmer worth his salt can make a communications protocol to allow the two applications to work together. It takes less time to do that than to debug XSLT or DTD problems. And no, none of the problems of a simpler protocol are removed by virtue of talking in XML vs some arbitrary protocol designed for the situation at hand.
Most programs (and most programming languages) end up interfacing at the database level anyway. C and Java both have the ability to execute SQL queries quickly on a db server, thus this is the logical place for them to exchange data. Making a database column contain an XML document (in a big text field for example) only increases the complexity of the programs.
Real world experience has never caused programmers to fall in love with XML. 90 percent of the posters today are quoting the XML marketing horseshit, so take all the positive replies with a grain of salt.
Also, has anyone here every heard of CORBA or RMI? I hear its hot shit for having applications talk to one another without using a database. Sounds crazy eh?
Comedy gold. The difficulty of being a good programmer really has been a godsend, salary-wise. People still offer me upwards of 90k on a regular basis.
If I were a VB programmer right now, I'd be fucked.
We use XML heavily in a project I'm working on at my company. Some genius decided that everything should be in xml, and that we would use XSLT for a lot of the data manipulation. Naturally we also make heavy use of DTD and SAX. Lots of XML related technologies.
I can tell you now that XML is a Bad Thing. It strives to excel at too many things at once, and becomes inefficient and complex as a result.
XML tries to eliminate the step of writing parsers for data, although writing parsers has never been a significant part of application development to begin with. Its rigidity instead forces you to waste time taking the output of the parser (a complex tree) and putting it into meaningful form. XML document tree traversal = 10000x more complex than getting column data out of a ResultSet... Unfortunately it is also a billion times slower to parse XML than it is to perform a medium compexity database query.
The real problem is that XML only partly addresses the problems that relational database solved years ago (organizing and data accessable), but it does it without any of the efficiency benefits of a well designed database server. In my opinion, 90+ percent of the places where XML is being used today would be better served by using columns in a relational database table to store object fields. You get indexing, you get universal, simple and efficient searching, and you get speed.
XML has too many faults to really list in one short post. The truth of the matter is that it tries to do too many things and DOESNT DO ANYTHING WELL. Sort of like if someone tries to be skilled in all musical instruments but ends up being, at best, mediocre in a few of them.
I have to agree completely, except that I place the point of suckage around halfway through season 4. Season 4 had one or two good episodes, but I felt it was mostly poorly written and the story-arc was mostly filler. Adam wasnt a terrible main villain though.
Season 5 completely blew. The season was maybe 80 percent filler and the story arc was completely one dimensional. Glory made no sense whatsoever as a villain. She was supposedly a "god" though she had no powers except being stronger than buffy. Why she behaves like a valley girl with an IQ of 70 I cannot fathom, especially if she is thousands of years old. This season spent too much time harping on xander/anya and willow/tara. The addition of a "little sister" (probably to bring back episodes involving school or teenagers) was very poorly done.
Season 6 was more of the same, only worse. The musical episode was funny, but the rest pretty much sucked. Actually no, the 3 geeks were funny for about 10 minutes. Was there even a story arc? Yeah for the last 2 episodes or so. And yes, take out buffy with a single bullet so we can all ask "why the fuck havent the vampires been using guns for the past 6 seasons."
Season 7 sucked from begining to end. I dont think anyone is actually writing for the show anymore, and everyone just ad-libs as they change sets and film. Its sort of like when youre working on a programming project that you know can't go anywhere, but it pays better than staying home, so you keep showing up to get paid. Note that Joss Whedon moved on a while ago; sort of like how everyone good left Netscape around the time that IE started shipping with windows lol omen.
I started noticing corrupt files on gnutella about a year and a half ago- at which point I abandoned the network. I also abandoned kazaa because it was getting too popular and I figured it would only be a matter of time.
I am 100 percent certain that the networks I currently participate have neither been wormed nor filled with corrupted files. It is very difficult to get a corrupted file when the releasing group identifies each file they have released with a unique hashcode, filesize and name. Additionally, it is hard to sue a network when 99 percent of the servers are overseas, in countries with no laws regarding file sharing.
I would name the networks I am currently participating in, but everyone who has a business knowing is already there.
Yeah dude we dress nicer so you wont notice when we wear interview clothes.
As for dress code having to do something with funding, utter horseshit. The VCs only care that they see product shipped and benjamins received at the end of the day- they dont care if the developers are wearing sandals and pajamas.
Im a pretty experienced programmer, but I bailed on silicon valley because there are no jobs left there. Im working on the east coast now, at a place that makes me wear a tie and collared shirts. Once you get over the shock of having to spend more than 20 bucks a year on clothing (you can go for years without updating if you live in a server room), wearing a monkeysuit (not even a full suit) isnt really that bad. Plus it gets you in the habit of shopping for decent clothing for when youre not working.
Its a small drawback to work in a place with job security (hard to imagine after 3 years of failing startups) and 9 to 5 hours with good salary. I think that is a pretty tolerable tradeoff.
Also, there is still plenty of opportunity to be counterculture- no one said you had to dress in browns and blues only. Dress flashy if you get bored. If someone objects, tell them youre just conforming to the dress code lol troublemaker.
Making a fast car is a lot like a software engineering project. It has a long stage of planning and research, long before you cut any checks or turn any wrenches.
First, you ask yourself what you want the car to excel at. Most fast cars will be faster than most in a straight line and around curves, but a car can only truly excel in one area. Ask yourself what your priorities are. Also decide on a budget, which will cover the cost of buying the car and the cost of the mods. Here is where you have to be really honest with yourself- you can only afford so much starting car and so many mods- lying to yourself about what you can accomplish with x dollars will only lead to dissapointment.
Second, decide on a platform. The platform should be one that naturally supports your performance goals. For example, a miata for handling, a fox body mustang for drag racing and so on. You probably want to get as cheap a car as possible to save money for mods. Try and find a salvage title car with a straight frame or a car with a blown motor that can be rebuilt. You dont want something with car payments on it.
Third, how much money do you have left? Prioritize and start researching each mod to find the cheapest way to do it. Getting a good spring and shock combo might give as 90% as good handling as a coilover kit selling for 4 times the price- talk to people that are doing what you are and ask them what their experiences were. Most people will be glad to meet another enthusiast who shares their hobby and even drives the same car as them.
Now, where does simulation come into this? It doesnt. If you choose the right platform, it will almost certainly be one that other people are already modifying heavily, one with massive aftermarket support. If you choose the right mods, they will be the ones that are most readily available, with replacement parts for cheap. And the reason there is no need for simulation is because all the work has been done for you a million times.
What if you want to do something extreme that hasnt been done before? People have been doing customizations, weird engine swaps and strange aerodynamic modifications for decades. There are companies that make all sorts of one-off parts like manifolds and braces etc. Electromotive makes a series of computers that can be used to controll nearly any type of engine in existance from a 4 cylinder methanol powered car to a mazda 3 rotor turbo. Once you decide what you want to do, there is assuredly someone who will help you with it for enough money.
As for the guy who said that computers are useless and a sign that your engine is too small, I say thats BS. Any engine can benefit from fuel injection and computer controlled ignition and fuel. A lot of prostreet drag racers have begun to use big block turbos with electronic controls in place of nitrous. The cars are more consistently fast and dont break as often as the nitrous cars- and they run 5 second ETs in street trim.
Hahahah. No, a 323i does not weigh 2300 lbs- try 3200 for manual coupe (convertible weighs more). It would be so incredibly fast if it weighed that much. A 1970s 2002 weighs about that much. A miata weighs that much.
The S4 weighs about 3600 actually. AWD must weight about 400, which isnt too bad at all compared to the 3000GT VR4 whale-car.
The pushrods on the S4 can take 400hp. They are much stronger than they need to be for 250hp. There are plenty of people running 400 crank hp on the stock rods with no problems whatsoever. Its not even a controversial level of power.
Yeah but you dont need a computer to advance your timing.
First, the original poster: The audi S4 only goes from 250 crank hp to about 310 crank hp with a computer. YOu can get up to about 350 or so with an intercooler and some other low cost tweaks.
Anyway, second poster: cars today are engineered way way way beyond the use they will see in stock form. An audi s4 most likely will be reliable at 400 crank hp. They have sleeved cylinders and a strong bottom end (amongst other features). 500 would most likely be pushing it. And the S4 will run through tires at the same rate with 250 hp as it would with 600hp. Its all about the weight, not the power, unless you do lots and lots of huge smoky burnouts. The first poster's S4 will actually be no more expensive than stock in the long run, and it will not be any less reliable.
Also, an S4 is not a light little car. It weighs about 3500 lbs, which in my book is a very heavy car. Thats only marginally lighter than a bmw 5 series.
Ferraris are in the shop every 3000 miles for a number of reasons:
Ferrari's reputation isnt based upon having reliable cars- that is Honda's little dance. If Ferrari starts making reliable sorta-fast cars, then they will be written off as having lost touch with their heritage (porsche cayenne anyone? blech)
They arent engineered to be super reliable, they are engineered to be weekend toys for the rich. Ferrari makes a lot of concessions to performance and a lot of concessions to "tradition" since many people buy ferrari because they want to buy into ferraris old racing image. People want gated shifters, a loud whiny exhaust and they want it painted red.
They have more complicated valve trains with a ton more moving parts. A ferrari v12 has about 60 valves and 4 camshafts, non of which are self adjusting (another concession). Sooo, once a year or so, you have to bring your ferrari in and have everything looked at. VERY expensive. About 3 times more labor involved than opening up a dohc 4 cylinder- this before you factor in the traditional ferrari price gouge.
Ferraris have a special formula of oil you can only get at the dealer.
Ferrari parts arent exactly mass produced. Its cheaper to do preventative maintenance than to drive it until it explodes and then replace the engine.
Two points: ONE: most cars do NOT benefit from performance computers. TWO: most performance computers are added on to cars that are normally naturally aspirated and converted to turbo form. (a lot of cars that dont have turbos from the factory judge the amount of air with a vaccuum sensor instead of a mass air sensor) Often the relevant sensors dont even exist for the stock computer to talk to.
To make an example, the average honda civic computer settings are pretty much already maxxed out in stock form. You add an intake and an exhaust and youre still in the range that the stock computer can adjust for. You can actually add about half an atmosphere of boost (from turbo or supercharger) and still not need a custom computer. This applies to a most other non-turbo cars as well. Factory turbo cars have even higher limits.
Remember, modern cars have to be able to operate at 10,000 feet above and below sea level in a wide range of temperatures. Most cars have injectors that can take about 150% to 200% of stock duty before they begin to max out. Up to this point the car will still not even pollute!
Basically the only 2 ways to outpace the stock computer is to
1)bring in too little air at idle or have massively oversized injectors (the computer can't control the injectors to produce less than a certain minimum period of being open) which will cause "lopey idle" or stalling and rich emmissions.
2)bring in so much air at high rpm that the stock injectors can't let in enough fuel. Basically you will start to run "lean" (not enough fuel) which will produce very high temperatures and detonation (and kill your engine).
You basically only need a special computer if you are running massive cams (alternatively you could just raise the idle, which most people do) or if youre running such massive amounts of boost that the only solution is to run massive injectors (here again, you can actually just raise the idle). Now consider this: when youre making over double the stock hp, there is no way a factory computer is going to be able to cope anyway- I dont see the point of making them more hackable. On top of which, the only reason to use an expensive computer is to make the car more emissions friendly. And guess what mods are pretty much illegal under CARB rules? You guessed it! Programmable ECUs!!! The high-boost 323 and miata guys routinely run hacked ECUs with 12-15psi of boost, then turn down the boost and swap injectors for smog every two years. Its pretty sad that you have to break the law to pollute less.
There are devices for hacking odometers of various cars. The "all makes and models" variety routinely sell for 2500-3000 on ebay. I imagine there are quite a few cars out there with dialed back mileage.
I personally think that digital odometers were a mistake, but I also think that once you get past the 150k mile mark, mileage is pretty irrelavant, since most of the car has been replaced with newer parts at that point. My old car was in better shape at 140k miles than at 118k. Ive gone through numerous body panels, a radiator, a cylinder head, a few sets of tires, shocks, brakes etc etc. I think I would rather have a rebuilt car with 200k on the clock than an original parts car with 115k.
Die size, die size, die size.
.13 micron and use a die size that was STILL larger than the athlons. I predict that sledgehammer on EV6 will be much more interesting news than hyperthreading.
The larger and more complex the chip, the more it costs to make, and the higher the probability that there will be a defect in a randomly chosen chip. It is more cost effective to make one good cpu than to make two crappy cpus and put them on a single grid array.
Intel is trying to get back on top in terms of performance, even if it means taking an unelegant approach and making the chips extremely expensive to produce. Note that Intel's fastest offering is barely as fast as the fastest athlon- to accomplish this, they had to move to
Actually that is only illegal in strongly typed languages such as java. That was perfectly legal C++.
Actually, if you read the JVM design specs at sun, you will see that booleans are really just bytes. The other 7 bits are ignored. Restrictions on what you can do to a boolean are enforced at compile time.
Actually, to be perfectly good code, experience would have been a call to function getExperience() instead of being a reference to a variable. This would allow for you to override it later and lie about how much experience you have. The code would be cleaner and you would probably get hired faster. Dont forget that most of the H1Bs are lying about their experience as well.