A CS professor can write a book full of algorithms, and a second year CS major can read the book and tell whether a random piece of code uses an algorithm from the book. Why can't a professional software engineer read a patent application and understand what will infringe and what will not?
Because the algorithms from the CS text will be trivial, for the most part.
Wouldn't you agree that it's easier to analyze 20 lines of code than 20,000 lines?
I can understand your confusion. My suggestion, then, is to throw the vibrator away and do the job yourself next time. She'll have more energy and you won't have to go to sleep quite so frustrated.
I thought Slashdotters were supposed to EMBRACE technologies that make our lives easier...?
If Constitutional rights are abrogated altogether most Americans would see that as a cause for celebration.
Max, your disdain for what you see as the Mindless Majority sickens me. It takes a special kind of egoism to think that you know better than everyone else what's good and what isn't.
In fact, it's elitists like you that are allowing a Nanny State to exist -- the people are so stupid that they don't WANT their rights, so we have to FORCE them on them, right? Put down the Chomsky screds and try talking to actual people some time -- they're smarter than you give them credit for.
After all, the US is edging fast and furious toward a country where any freedom no[t] expressly permitted becomes forbidden.
That would pretty much require the 9th Amendment to be repealed, wouldn't it?
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
There's no way for lawmakers (who, according to you, are all EVIL EVIL EVIL) to work around this without waging a direct assault on the Bill of Rights. People won't sit quietly and let THAT happen -- ask the NRA.
to add 3 address bits to the Memory bus. wow, that must have been hard
Considering that it probably means re-engineering significant portions of the hardware, yeah it probably was fairly hard. Palms are compact devices... before they can add 3 address lines they have to find room to put them in.
All we can do is expand, complicate, and repackage, the same damn IP that we invented 10 years ago
When was this ever NOT the case? All technological innovation, ever, has been based on expansion, maturation, or reworking of existing inventions.
You know what I want in a phone? - The ability to make calls - The ability to receive calls
That's it. My 2-year-old Sprint PCS phone recently got a crack in the LCD, so I've been looking to buy a new unit to replace it.
So far, I haven't found any models that cost less than $100, because they're all crammed full of features that I don't need, like color LCDs and voice recognition and built-in cameras and programmable polyphonic MIDI ringtone generators and speakerphone and integrated PDA features...
A PC is not capable of rendering a CGI screen, in realtime, and merging that, in realtime, with a video feed, and then displaying that, in *realtime*.
They said that a baseline VGA adapter couldn't display more than 256 colors simultaneously, but coders on the demoscene figured out ways to do that. And did I mention these coders were often in their teens or early 20's?
I don't think anyone thought they meant ILM was doing final-rendering of scenes that took days per frame a year ago, now in real-time. Off-the-shelf PC hardware IS more than capable of rendering lower-res, lower-polygon-count CGI objects and merging them with live video quickly enough to be called realtime.
You and I have both read the Jargon File, we both know the difference between hacking and cracking. The fact that 'cracking' can be seen a portmanteau of 'criminal hacking' is descriptive in itself.
But the general public doesn't recognize the difference and doesn't care. The term 'hacker' is generally accepted to describe someone who commits criminal acts with a computer.
A criminal isn't one to be trusted depending on why they were in jail for, but on the other hand, one who has the knowldge, a hacker in this story, could be very usefull.
Implication: you don't think hackers are 'real' criminals.
Painter might say thats why you should higher a security professional. yet who would you rather have, some nerdy kid fresh out of college? or would you rather have someone who knows whats out there, has experience with the programs that you will be using?
I doubt that there are many successful Computer Security Professionals out there that are fresh out of college. In fact, I don't think I've ever met one who was under 40. It's a field where experience IS highly valuable, and smart employers know that.
unless you are a gamer home computers are more than fast enough now for what we want
This won't stay true forever, though.
My PII-400 is about 3 1/2 years old now, two generations old in Moore's Law terms, and it is indeed fast enough for most of what I do.
However.
If I try to play movie files using certain late-model codecs (MPEG-4 f'rinstance), I get jerky playback and poor A/V synchronization -- the processor just can't keep up with decoding the data streams in realtime.
Software bloat shows no signs of abating either, for better or worse. I bet that most people won't be satisfied with the performence of Windows XP 2005 on their 1.5GHz machines of today.
The RIAA and their foreign counterparts are there because in the past there was no easy way to distribute recordings without having to travel around the world to sell your songs and keeping track of your royalties.
No, the RIAA et al. are there because record publishers and record-player manufacturers couldn't agree on specifications for their products, so they formed a trade association to define and enforce standards (record spins at 45 rpm, the grooves are spaced this far apart, apply this dynamic curve to make the media more stable...). This is not what they do anymore, but if you're going to make a statement about why the RIAA was founded then you might as well not be completely wrong on that count.
The RIAA does not collect royalties on anything. Sales are tracked by the member record companies themselves, which are usually the same as the phonographic copyright holders. Songwriters' guilds such as BMI and ASCAP collect royalties for live performances and other issues pertaining to writing copyrights.
Taxes on your phone bill to lower the cost of internet access for schools (whether or not you have children in school) Property taxes to fund schools and minucipals services (that you may or may not use, if you send your kids to private school or don't have kids)
The benefit of funding educational programs is not just that YOUR kids get an education, but that ALL kids get an education. There's a net benefit to society when children grow up to be intelligent adults rather than drooling morons.
Health fees at most universities even if the student is already covered by health insurance.
My university refunded your health fees if you showed them proof that you already had health insurance. I'd imagine it's the same most places.
Anyway, the point of taxes (real taxes, mandated by the government, not the 9/11 Airport Security fees and other shit billed to you by private companies) is that taxpayers need to subsidize crucial infrastructure like schools and public transportation, even if (ESPECIALLY if) they've never heard of or don't care about them.
Collecting monies to reimburse record companies for "piracy" does not match these criteria in any way.
So heres what I think, why not let the musicians sell directly.
Many do. Why am I not surprised you've never heard of them? Oh, that's right, without the RIAA marketing cartel doing promotion, most people will never know they exist.
the fans, they are the ones who will support the musicians by going to concerts
I live in New York and my favorite band is a relatively unknown act from San Diego. Am I supposed to spend hundreds of dollars to fly out to see them play, or are they supposed to lose thousands of dollars on a cross-country tour that will draw maybe 20 people per city?
Musicians can sell new CDs at their concerts, the new CD can be sold at the concert before its on the net, say to about 40-50,000 people at a time for $5-10 each CD, they'd make a fortune.
How does the band get 40-50,000 fans to begin with? By virtue of their talent alone? Right.
Recording off of the radio requires comparitively greater effort than does pirating mp3's
So? There's nothing in copyright law which makes a distinction between things that are easy to copy and things that are difficult to copy.
By pirating an mp3, you are getting CD-quality -- what you would be paying for in the store.
I'm no audiophile, but even I don't agree with this. MP3 is a lossy codec. Any MP3-encoded file is of lower quality that the source file.
There is also nothing in copyright law regarding the quality of a copy.
I don't know about the legality of recording off of the radio or not
No, you don't. And it weakens your arguments about the legality of other, similar actions. Putting "obviously" in the summary of your argument doesn't make it obvious, nor correct.
I still just don't "get" recreational overclocking.
Buying a chip that's rated at a moderate speed and adding special cooling systems to coax it into performing at high speeds is like ricing out a $6,000 used Honda jalopy instead of buying a brand-new Toyota.
Why not spring the extra money up front and buy a processor that has actually been RATED by the fabrication plant to run at your desired clock speed?
Slashdot Mirror
A CS professor can write a book full of algorithms, and a second year CS major can read the book and tell whether a random piece of code uses an algorithm from the book. Why can't a professional software engineer read a patent application and understand what will infringe and what will not?
Because the algorithms from the CS text will be trivial, for the most part.
Wouldn't you agree that it's easier to analyze 20 lines of code than 20,000 lines?
I can understand your confusion. My suggestion, then, is to throw the vibrator away and do the job yourself next time. She'll have more energy and you won't have to go to sleep quite so frustrated.
I thought Slashdotters were supposed to EMBRACE technologies that make our lives easier...?
I dunno about this -- my girlfriend seems to have no energy whatsoever left after I apply vibrations to her for 10-15 minutes straight...
If Constitutional rights are abrogated altogether most Americans would see that as a cause for celebration.
Max, your disdain for what you see as the Mindless Majority sickens me. It takes a special kind of egoism to think that you know better than everyone else what's good and what isn't.
In fact, it's elitists like you that are allowing a Nanny State to exist -- the people are so stupid that they don't WANT their rights, so we have to FORCE them on them, right? Put down the Chomsky screds and try talking to actual people some time -- they're smarter than you give them credit for.
When you turn on your phone you're on the network. Who else is on the network? Your phone tells you.
VIEWING RESULTS 1-10 OF 1,352,426 [MORE]
Want to call someone? Select their name from your buddy list.
Which would be different than me selecting their name from my phone's autodialer and pushing the Talk button how?
After all, the US is edging fast and furious toward a country where any freedom no[t] expressly permitted becomes forbidden.
That would pretty much require the 9th Amendment to be repealed, wouldn't it?
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
There's no way for lawmakers (who, according to you, are all EVIL EVIL EVIL) to work around this without waging a direct assault on the Bill of Rights. People won't sit quietly and let THAT happen -- ask the NRA.
So, if I'm prohibited to use NAT-based firewalling, who's going to take responsibility for securing my home LAN?
Well, you could always use a non-NAT-based firewall instead...
to add 3 address bits to the Memory bus. wow, that must have been hard
Considering that it probably means re-engineering significant portions of the hardware, yeah it probably was fairly hard. Palms are compact devices... before they can add 3 address lines they have to find room to put them in.
All we can do is expand, complicate, and repackage, the same damn IP that we invented 10 years ago
When was this ever NOT the case? All technological innovation, ever, has been based on expansion, maturation, or reworking of existing inventions.
Just ask Microsoft how many new users they've acquired through their publicity here
You mean there are Slashdot users who wouldn't have heard of Microsoft but for the submissions here that mention them?
You know what I want in a phone?
- The ability to make calls
- The ability to receive calls
That's it. My 2-year-old Sprint PCS phone recently got a crack in the LCD, so I've been looking to buy a new unit to replace it.
So far, I haven't found any models that cost less than $100, because they're all crammed full of features that I don't need, like color LCDs and voice recognition and built-in cameras and programmable polyphonic MIDI ringtone generators and speakerphone and integrated PDA features...
Why isn't anyone serving the low-end market?
A PC is not capable of rendering a CGI screen, in realtime, and merging that, in realtime, with a video feed, and then displaying that, in *realtime*.
They said that a baseline VGA adapter couldn't display more than 256 colors simultaneously, but coders on the demoscene figured out ways to do that. And did I mention these coders were often in their teens or early 20's?
I don't think anyone thought they meant ILM was doing final-rendering of scenes that took days per frame a year ago, now in real-time. Off-the-shelf PC hardware IS more than capable of rendering lower-res, lower-polygon-count CGI objects and merging them with live video quickly enough to be called realtime.
They're called crackers.
You and I have both read the Jargon File, we both know the difference between hacking and cracking. The fact that 'cracking' can be seen a portmanteau of 'criminal hacking' is descriptive in itself.
But the general public doesn't recognize the difference and doesn't care. The term 'hacker' is generally accepted to describe someone who commits criminal acts with a computer.
You can't fight this. Learn to accept it.
A criminal isn't one to be trusted depending on why they were in jail for, but on the other hand, one who has the knowldge, a hacker in this story, could be very usefull.
Implication: you don't think hackers are 'real' criminals.
Painter might say thats why you should higher a security professional. yet who would you rather have, some nerdy kid fresh out of college? or would you rather have someone who knows whats out there, has experience with the programs that you will be using?
I doubt that there are many successful Computer Security Professionals out there that are fresh out of college. In fact, I don't think I've ever met one who was under 40. It's a field where experience IS highly valuable, and smart employers know that.
I'm alreadyt amazed that a couple of Slashdotters know whether the PATRIOT Act is unconstitutional better than the men and women who wrote it.
unless you are a gamer home computers are more than fast enough now for what we want
This won't stay true forever, though.
My PII-400 is about 3 1/2 years old now, two generations old in Moore's Law terms, and it is indeed fast enough for most of what I do.
However.
If I try to play movie files using certain late-model codecs (MPEG-4 f'rinstance), I get jerky playback and poor A/V synchronization -- the processor just can't keep up with decoding the data streams in realtime.
Software bloat shows no signs of abating either, for better or worse. I bet that most people won't be satisfied with the performence of Windows XP 2005 on their 1.5GHz machines of today.
A DDOS arms race out there on the internet is something that will happen sooner or later.
God, I hope not. The last thing we need is for the internet in general to start resembling an IRC network.
At least CmdrTaco spelled "Tablet PC" correctly...
The RIAA and their foreign counterparts are there because in the past there was no easy way to distribute recordings without having to travel around the world to sell your songs and keeping track of your royalties.
No, the RIAA et al. are there because record publishers and record-player manufacturers couldn't agree on specifications for their products, so they formed a trade association to define and enforce standards (record spins at 45 rpm, the grooves are spaced this far apart, apply this dynamic curve to make the media more stable...). This is not what they do anymore, but if you're going to make a statement about why the RIAA was founded then you might as well not be completely wrong on that count.
The RIAA does not collect royalties on anything. Sales are tracked by the member record companies themselves, which are usually the same as the phonographic copyright holders. Songwriters' guilds such as BMI and ASCAP collect royalties for live performances and other issues pertaining to writing copyrights.
Taxes on your phone bill to lower the cost of internet access for schools (whether or not you have children in school)
Property taxes to fund schools and minucipals services (that you may or may not use, if you send your kids to private school or don't have kids)
The benefit of funding educational programs is not just that YOUR kids get an education, but that ALL kids get an education. There's a net benefit to society when children grow up to be intelligent adults rather than drooling morons.
Health fees at most universities even if the student is already covered by health insurance.
My university refunded your health fees if you showed them proof that you already had health insurance. I'd imagine it's the same most places.
Anyway, the point of taxes (real taxes, mandated by the government, not the 9/11 Airport Security fees and other shit billed to you by private companies) is that taxpayers need to subsidize crucial infrastructure like schools and public transportation, even if (ESPECIALLY if) they've never heard of or don't care about them.
Collecting monies to reimburse record companies for "piracy" does not match these criteria in any way.
So heres what I think, why not let the musicians sell directly.
Many do. Why am I not surprised you've never heard of them? Oh, that's right, without the RIAA marketing cartel doing promotion, most people will never know they exist.
the fans, they are the ones who will support the musicians by going to concerts
I live in New York and my favorite band is a relatively unknown act from San Diego. Am I supposed to spend hundreds of dollars to fly out to see them play, or are they supposed to lose thousands of dollars on a cross-country tour that
will draw maybe 20 people per city?
Musicians can sell new CDs at their concerts, the new CD can be sold at the concert before its on the net, say to about 40-50,000 people at a time for $5-10 each CD, they'd make a fortune.
How does the band get 40-50,000 fans to begin with? By virtue of their talent alone? Right.
5. Foreplay consists of A:[enter]
Then again, there are some that would say if you're only interested in "enter"ing "A colon", then you're probably gay.
There is one cheat however -- can you spot it?
He's probably hanging out with Strong Mad in the basement, playing the Trogdor arcade game.
Recording off of the radio requires comparitively greater effort than does pirating mp3's
So? There's nothing in copyright law which makes a distinction between things that are easy to copy and things that are difficult to copy.
By pirating an mp3, you are getting CD-quality -- what you would be paying for in the store.
I'm no audiophile, but even I don't agree with this. MP3 is a lossy codec. Any MP3-encoded file is of lower quality that the source file.
There is also nothing in copyright law regarding the quality of a copy.
I don't know about the legality of recording off of the radio or not
No, you don't. And it weakens your arguments about the legality of other, similar actions. Putting "obviously" in the summary of your argument doesn't make it obvious, nor correct.
I still just don't "get" recreational overclocking.
Buying a chip that's rated at a moderate speed and adding special cooling systems to coax it into performing at high speeds is like ricing out a $6,000 used Honda jalopy instead of buying a brand-new Toyota.
Why not spring the extra money up front and buy a processor that has actually been RATED by the fabrication plant to run at your desired clock speed?
Beware - soon we will find people who sell overclocking devices going to jail for violating DMCA.
/. moderators will (+1, Insightful) any comment that contains either or both of the words "overclocking" and/or "DMCA".
Beware - some