Just add more people to your team! Double! Tripple! GO WILD WITH NEW RECRUITS!
Sheeesh, some people never learn...
Important point that the review might have missed.
on
Design Patterns
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· Score: 5, Informative
What the review missed to point out (okay, I only gave it a once over..) is one very important aspect about patterns and this book in particular; it gives developer a new common language to use when communicating about software design.
For instance, you might have 're-discovered' the visitor pattern yourself and used it several times, but without the nomenclature of this book it was very hard to actually talk about that design with other developers.
Great book, one of few that - after reading it - got me all exited about development again.
It's frustrating seeing all these objections to the format. Much of the point of these free books is to get people hooked and get them to buy the real thing, right? Right?
It's not dead-tree _versus_ electronic. It's dead-tree _in addition to_ electronic. That's the key.
The electronic version; cheap, not as comfortable to read, good for searching/citing.
dead-tree version; expensive, very comfortable to read, not made for searching, looks good on shelf.
See how they complement each other?
I love the free books out there. I think it's brilliant. I've read Eckels material and I've recommended it to many many people based on the "check out the electronic version". I hope he's doing well.
The format issue notwithstanding, one great point is reader interaction and feedback. Publishing during the drafting period seems like a good way to get extra proofing and feedback, which makes for a better product, and better products sell more (music excepted:-o)
The difference, I feel, is that the region system is something which average joes can understand and question; "So you're saying that for some artifical reason this player will reject DVDs I've bought over-seas?", while the reliance by CDDA copy-protection schemes on reader firmware (as opposed to being fully contained within the CDs themselves) isn't as apparent or easy to convey. Basically, people are mostly unaware that their choice of drive will and can change the degree to which they can use copy-protected discs on their computer.
I wish they'd used a Lite-On drive in the tests too. Plextor is mostly bought by people in-the-know, while Lite-on provides quality firmware (my experience) on a much wider level and could be used as a good recommendation based on quality, high availability and low price.
I'd also like to see future research which goes beyond the black-box approach and actually use a custom firmware to dump the disc.
I just hope that some manufacturer recognize the opportunity and either provides a good quality firmware with good failovers which just rips through these protections, or provides a firmware which can be switched into "dummy cd-player mode" in which it would behave exactly like a dumb cd-player would. This shouldn't take up too many bytes, and the interface could be anything from a simple "tripple-click eject button to change mode" to a nice looking GUI-app (which Plextor is very good with already, via their "PlexTools".
(I don't work for Plextor or Lite-On. I do own drives from both manufacturers though)
As the paper points out, these schemes rely on "bugs" and "mis-features" in reader firmware, and it suggests that CDDA copy prevention won't last since "[...]Hardware and Software adaption is an inevitable and natural extension of improved design and bug fixing".
The question is if the hardware manufacturers will begin competing for customers by providing the very best fireware in their drives, or if they will join hands with the RIAA and the snake-oil salesmen. So far I see no decisive move in either direction.
Some drives can 'clone' protections just fine or need only better software on the computer side, but on the other hand there's a whole class of typical hardware -- like the Toshiba in this case -- which has been b0rken for so long that I really think the manufacturer is playing nice with the copy-protection industry.
Maybe what we really need is drives with a more capable RAW reading interface, then all errors could be emulated and/or corrected as necessary on the side we control, the computer.
It's all about consistency. You can have the most amazingly creative design but if it doesn't hold up the whole way through it breaks down in the mind of the consumer [...]
So how's the codebase?
on
Blender Is GPL
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Was it "worth it"? I don't know the first thing about blender or very much about this buy-out. Was the source available prior to the buy-out so that it could be inspectad/evaluated?
What is it this time? A PRNG for pad and a password for seed? Some trivial massaging of used pad? <sigh>
Post the algorithm on sci.crypt. Wait twelve hours. Replies will come in pointing you to the FAQ. Go read it. Feel sheepish for not understanding the OTP. No damage done. You'll soon be forgotten, like all the other clowns claiming improved "variations" of the OTP.
Plus side? You may feel relieved that you spent no money going for a patent.
No need to thank me.
Re:Clever, 0x90, but I'm changing my name to 0x120
on
InvisibleNet Presents IIP
·
· Score: 3, Informative
0x90 is the instruction code for 'NOP' (No OPeration) on IA32.
-"Damned, we've surfed right out of p0rn!"
-"We really ought to do something to justify our existance, but what?"
-"How about we rubberstamp some licenses and put out PR-fluff?"
-"Let's do it."
As you can probably guess from the way I expressed myself in the last line, I understand very well that the 'goal' isn't the most interesting part, but the way there and what can be learned about distr. computing.
HOWEVER, I mean that it makes more sense doing something for which the goal is _also_ of interest.
Such examples include but are not limited to folding and generating genomes.
Re:Congratulations
on
RC5-64 Success
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I'm with the OP on this. Once in a time there was a purpose with cracking DES; proving it wasn't as hard (secure) the government wanted people to believe. However, that was a long time ago now.
C'mon, estimating the time of a brute-force attack is almost trivial. Once you can time how long it takes to attack some percentage of the keyspace, interpolation to mid- and worst-case is simple.
There's a lot of other distributed problems to spend time on, problems where the solution actually is worth something.
As has been commented, if this doesn't bring down the price of the game, then what use is it? I've never seen a game substantially cheaper because of in-game advertising, and it's not really a new concept per se.
The other problem is that games already seems to be going the way of music. A lot of regurgitating the latest hit, and very little experimentation. Just focus on the glitz and to hell with the story (or even gameplay).
Do we really want some suit to turn down the next Planescape: Torment because there's no suitable product placements to be made in it? "Let's do another shooter instead! I think we can cut a deal with Ray-Ban!"
Good game designers might find that they'll have an even harder time pitching non-mainstream games in the future.
Since I'm not affiliated with the group I can plug them. c64-inspired rock is my own description. They have ~130MByte of music available for download. I know that most of my friends who were into c64 music also dig these guys.
They're always "considering adding support for $whatever". That's just PR-speak for 'we don't care -- yet'.
I really want a vorbis-only player for which none of my money goes to the mp3consortium, but I guess that's just as likely to happen as world peace.
Barring that, the only way to my money goes over de-facto implemented vorbis. No "but..." or "future upgrade" or anything. Either you do it, or you don't get my money. (yeah, yeah, small loss -- whatever)
Maybe it's time for a drive which does internal mirroring.
Like, "might as well keep the extra platter in this low-capacity drive and flip a bit in the firmware to mirror onto it".
Sure, there's still mechanics as a failure point, but some things like data loss after sectors going bad and head-crashes could be mitigated (or even FS-failures).
Can't be too paranoid!
"Two discs in one" could be used like ghost-images are used today. Sysadmin could load up one platter with the OS, mirror it onto the other(s) and then whenever the lUser whines about missing icons and what not just send that 'replace platter 0 from platter 1' message over the net:-)
Just writing this here to make it harder to patent. Hey! It's obvious! (or have I done this once already. I'm getting a deja moment here. Oh, well)
... cause that just reeks of confidence in ones product:-O
I just hope the recommendation -- if it is in effect for this series -- figures prominently in the advertising and isn't hidden away in some technote, you know.. like.. IBM tried to sneak it past customers?
Slashdot Mirror
Stupid me, I first though improved in the context of IBM drive tech referred to MTBF, not capacity.
Back to the usual mudslinging from SCSI-only-people.
Just add more people to your team! Double! Tripple! GO WILD WITH NEW RECRUITS!
Sheeesh, some people never learn...
What the review missed to point out (okay, I only gave it a once over..) is one very important aspect about patterns and this book in particular; it gives developer a new common language to use when communicating about software design.
For instance, you might have 're-discovered' the visitor pattern yourself and used it several times, but without the nomenclature of this book it was very hard to actually talk about that design with other developers.
Great book, one of few that - after reading it - got me all exited about development again.
Obligatory link to The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System
Behold, evil!
Yes, and that is the incentative!
It's frustrating seeing all these objections to the format. Much of the point of these free books is to get people hooked and get them to buy the real thing, right? Right?
It's not dead-tree _versus_ electronic. It's dead-tree _in addition to_ electronic. That's the key.
The electronic version; cheap, not as comfortable to read, good for searching/citing.
dead-tree version; expensive, very comfortable to read, not made for searching, looks good on shelf.
See how they complement each other?
I love the free books out there. I think it's brilliant. I've read Eckels material and I've recommended it to many many people based on the "check out the electronic version". I hope he's doing well.
The format issue notwithstanding, one great point is reader interaction and feedback. Publishing during the drafting period seems like a good way to get extra proofing and feedback, which makes for a better product, and better products sell more (music excepted :-o)
The difference, I feel, is that the region system is something which average joes can understand and question; "So you're saying that for some artifical reason this player will reject DVDs I've bought over-seas?", while the reliance by CDDA copy-protection schemes on reader firmware (as opposed to being fully contained within the CDs themselves) isn't as apparent or easy to convey. Basically, people are mostly unaware that their choice of drive will and can change the degree to which they can use copy-protected discs on their computer.
I wish they'd used a Lite-On drive in the tests too. Plextor is mostly bought by people in-the-know, while Lite-on provides quality firmware (my experience) on a much wider level and could be used as a good recommendation based on quality, high availability and low price.
I'd also like to see future research which goes beyond the black-box approach and actually use a custom firmware to dump the disc.
I just hope that some manufacturer recognize the opportunity and either provides a good quality firmware with good failovers which just rips through these protections, or provides a firmware which can be switched into "dummy cd-player mode" in which it would behave exactly like a dumb cd-player would. This shouldn't take up too many bytes, and the interface could be anything from a simple "tripple-click eject button to change mode" to a nice looking GUI-app (which Plextor is very good with already, via their "PlexTools".
(I don't work for Plextor or Lite-On. I do own drives from both manufacturers though)
As the paper points out, these schemes rely on "bugs" and "mis-features" in reader firmware, and it suggests that CDDA copy prevention won't last since "[...]Hardware and Software adaption is an inevitable and natural extension of improved design and bug fixing".
The question is if the hardware manufacturers will begin competing for customers by providing the very best fireware in their drives, or if they will join hands with the RIAA and the snake-oil salesmen. So far I see no decisive move in either direction.
Some drives can 'clone' protections just fine or need only better software on the computer side, but on the other hand there's a whole class of typical hardware -- like the Toshiba in this case -- which has been b0rken for so long that I really think the manufacturer is playing nice with the copy-protection industry.
Maybe what we really need is drives with a more capable RAW reading interface, then all errors could be emulated and/or corrected as necessary on the side we control, the computer.
Apple is serving every xbox developer too! ;-)
Was it "worth it"? I don't know the first thing about blender or very much about this buy-out. Was the source available prior to the buy-out so that it could be inspectad/evaluated?
What is it this time? A PRNG for pad and a password for seed? Some trivial massaging of used pad? <sigh>
Post the algorithm on sci.crypt. Wait twelve hours. Replies will come in pointing you to the FAQ. Go read it. Feel sheepish for not understanding the OTP. No damage done. You'll soon be forgotten, like all the other clowns claiming improved "variations" of the OTP.
Plus side? You may feel relieved that you spent no money going for a patent.
No need to thank me.
0x90 is the instruction code for 'NOP' (No OPeration) on IA32.
In case anyone wondered. (I'm guessing... not)
-"Damned, we've surfed right out of p0rn!"
-"We really ought to do something to justify our existance, but what?"
-"How about we rubberstamp some licenses and put out PR-fluff?"
-"Let's do it."
First. Extrapolation. So, corrected.
As you can probably guess from the way I expressed myself in the last line, I understand very well that the 'goal' isn't the most interesting part, but the way there and what can be learned about distr. computing.
HOWEVER, I mean that it makes more sense doing something for which the goal is _also_ of interest.
Such examples include but are not limited to folding and generating genomes.
Yes, and don't forget genome@home. You might consider joining the Wicked Old Atheists even :-)
I'm with the OP on this. Once in a time there was a purpose with cracking DES; proving it wasn't as hard (secure) the government wanted people to believe. However, that was a long time ago now.
C'mon, estimating the time of a brute-force attack is almost trivial. Once you can time how long it takes to attack some percentage of the keyspace, interpolation to mid- and worst-case is simple.
There's a lot of other distributed problems to spend time on, problems where the solution actually is worth something.
As has been commented, if this doesn't bring down the price of the game, then what use is it? I've never seen a game substantially cheaper because of in-game advertising, and it's not really a new concept per se.
The other problem is that games already seems to be going the way of music. A lot of regurgitating the latest hit, and very little experimentation. Just focus on the glitz and to hell with the story (or even gameplay).
Do we really want some suit to turn down the next Planescape: Torment because there's no suitable product placements to be made in it? "Let's do another shooter instead! I think we can cut a deal with Ray-Ban!"
Good game designers might find that they'll have an even harder time pitching non-mainstream games in the future.
Since I'm not affiliated with the group I can plug them. c64-inspired rock is my own description. They have ~130MByte of music available for download. I know that most of my friends who were into c64 music also dig these guys.
Get the vorbises, not the mp3s.
They're always "considering adding support for $whatever". That's just PR-speak for 'we don't care -- yet'. I really want a vorbis-only player for which none of my money goes to the mp3consortium, but I guess that's just as likely to happen as world peace. Barring that, the only way to my money goes over de-facto implemented vorbis. No "but..." or "future upgrade" or anything. Either you do it, or you don't get my money. (yeah, yeah, small loss -- whatever)
"The remainder (46 percent) noted they didn't own and weren't considering Linux."
Somehow I can just picture the smug faces of managers answering this, like they're real proud to be MS-fanboys :-}
Maybe it's time for a drive which does internal mirroring.
Like, "might as well keep the extra platter in this low-capacity drive and flip a bit in the firmware to mirror onto it".
Sure, there's still mechanics as a failure point, but some things like data loss after sectors going bad and head-crashes could be mitigated (or even FS-failures).
Can't be too paranoid!
"Two discs in one" could be used like ghost-images are used today. Sysadmin could load up one platter with the OS, mirror it onto the other(s) and then whenever the lUser whines about missing icons and what not just send that 'replace platter 0 from platter 1' message over the net :-)
Just writing this here to make it harder to patent. Hey! It's obvious! (or have I done this once already. I'm getting a deja moment here. Oh, well)
... cause that just reeks of confidence in ones product :-O
I just hope the recommendation -- if it is in effect for this series -- figures prominently in the advertising and isn't hidden away in some technote, you know.. like.. IBM tried to sneak it past customers?
Just kidding. No one would be nasty and put viral code where no scanner has gone before.
Personally, I'd pay premium for a new MM/Day of The Tentacle or a new Zak McKracken (yes I know about the inofficial one).
Sam'n'Max II and Full Throttle II? Not so much.
YOU FOOL! Everyone knows TeX is bug free :-)
Sure there are. Xiph will gladly license you Tremor, for one.