Keep in mind exactly how well informed the average user is, especially about techie devices. Flashy = good, which is why MS software doesn't move towards fast/stable/etc, but instead towards "ooh, pretty!". Essentially, anyone that doesn't read/. (or similar) will probably never really learn what DRM means, except in the way of features. Unless it can be gift-wrapped for a simplistic consumer, they won't care.
This can be seen in many areas, including newer Cell phones. Some actually brag about running Windows (and doing very basic functionality, like playing MP3/WMA files), yet they crash constantly. Regardless, these phones are in very high demand.
As for the analogies, try taking the rifle or printing press from most suburbanite soccer moms. Neither of these tools are even significant to them, and neither are digital rights.
Furthermore, they are not quite taking anything away from us, but refusing to supply us with more. What would happen if Winchester/S&W/etc all stopped producing firearms? Would the gun enthusiast market be enough for another company to step in and fill the void? Is the computer enthusiast market big enough for DRM-free to continue? Market forces are the only determining factor in either case.
Dial-up compression is very real, and is not limited to HTTP. It is, however, limited to data that compresses well (possibly GZip, I don't know). When I had dial-up, I could regularly get speeds of 15KB/s on a 33.6 via compression. This applied to all text data (e.g. usenet headers), but not binary data. This came free with my various ISPs, no question asked.
Now, the various bargain-basement dial-up places charge an extra $5/month for it, with extra BS software required.
Webservers and browsers don't play a part in any of it, all is handled by the computers directly attached to the phone line.
First, be sure to use quality discs. Cheap discs are usually CMC, which sucks, while some of the best discs are Ritek (I only use Ritek G04, since the G03 is discontinued and I've heard mixed reviews of G05). Taiyo Yuden is also supposed to be great, but I can't verify success rates.
For more details, check Here. Notice the very high success rates on Ritek and RiData branded discs. The dye is what matters, and it means an awful lot in compatability.
I never said it couldn't be used with RR, just that they refuse to install it on one. When I had it installed (during my brief WinME encounter), they went with USB install (I was doing ICS and only had 1 NIC), and installed drivers for it. Since then I went the way of switch/router and now have a Linux box online.
Years back, MediaOne actually forbade users to run a server OS (including Linux).
Yes, you can use Linux with most broadband. No, the ISP won't support it, and in some cases will refuse to even let you install it yourself if they know about it.
Well, the cable modems thing is rather simple. 100% of customers with Road Runner (and others) use Windows, or else they won't install it (officially, anyway). Near as I can tell, it's so that there are no complications during setup and the installer not knowing anything about Linux (etc).
Regardless, don't most desktop Linux users build their own systems (excluding laptops), and thus avoid the Microsoft Tax? While the numbers aren't going to be exact, they're going to be close enough. This is especially true right now, since it's good enough to approximate the figures as: Lots of Windows users. Not many non-Windows users.
I would expect that BMW to be a 3-Series and have a 2.5 liter engine. Similarly, I would expect a Lexus SC470 to be the SC model and have a 4.7 liter engine. That's because these model names/numbers indicate a characteristic of the car itself.
AMD's numbers came from marketing, and are the same reason why most people would expect a VX7000 to be better than the VX6000, and probably both better than a GL5000. Doesn't matter if the GL5000 got its model number from something significant or if it's just random, and I think that's the problem here. Intel's numbers have a very direct significance to the product itself, while AMD's are marketing (officially benchmarking it against the old Athlon T-bird line).
Besides, AMD isn't being unreasonable, with most benchmarks showing AMD's model number to be approximately equal to a P4 with as many MHz. This, I believe, is why it's not perceived as such a big issue.
Well, the forums over at VCDQuality don't seem to buy into it, and really I can't believe these are really insiders. Aside from a few names dropped (some of which I can't verify, others are very well known- hell, Centropy's release of Matrix Reloaded included the C|Net article about their release of Matrix Reloaded- not exactly nuclear launch codes), this is all rather common info, and some of it is outright wrong (or outdated, e.g. TCF hasn't been a major group in a while) Also, the article assumes that all the material is stolen by the groups themselves- while this is mostly true, it's not uncommon that it's received on the black market ("Honk Kong Silvers").
Nearly all of my info came from public articles (Wired, C|Net, etc) and (mostly) public forums, such as http://www.vcdquality.com/ and http://www.theisonews.com/. I do not have now, nor have I ever had, any sort of special access based on what I could provide, or how much I was trusted.
While I made the jump to BNR2 a while back, it has a tendency to get more problems with each new version. To this day, I have to use 0.12.7 on my XP box (even after an XP reinstall), and I could never get above the.13 series to work right on linux. Great interface, but it has major bugs that need resolved.
Having said that, I've also tried Newsbin Pro, NewsPro, XNews, and Agent, and NONE of them work as well as BNR2. (Agent comes closest, but it's fallen way too far behind)
In the Pentium 133 days, ZSNES wasn't open source. It was strictly for DOS, no Windows, and certainly no Linux or Mac. When it was open sourced, the authors (zsKnight, _Demo_, and contributions by Pharos; pagefault came post-GPL) said they really didn't expect much to change, since it was all ASM and not a high-level language like most OSS.
And on a P133 w/ 32MB RAM & Win95 original, it ran around 20-30fps even without sound. (ZSNES 0.400)
The 0.5% is for an AUTOMATIC recount. Ohio law allows anyone who loses an election to demand a recount, with some limitations ($$$). According to Badnarik's and Cobb's websites, they are going to get a recount in Ohio, simply because they demanded one and are going to cough up the cash for it.
Just because it's not required doesn't mean it won't happen.
You've got it backwards- PAL runs faster. PAL uses 25 frames per second while NTSC FILM run at 23.976 (as a side note, NTSC runs at 29.97). Movies are filmed at 23.976 fps worldwide, and are sped up to 25 fps in PAL areas.
So, when including that, the USA version is missing about 10 minutes.
The VCD standard does NOT use MPEG Layer 3, it uses MPEG Layer 2 (224kbps, 44100 Hz). MPEG.org includes several links to free/public domain encoders/decoders/players, and thus is probably not patented.
That's not entirely accurate- while U.S. patents are not enforced globally (yet), any company that does business within the U.S. will have to abide by them, or at least not get caught violating them. It's similar to the EC persuing the Microsoft antitrust case- while Microsoft isn't based in Europe, they do business there. To continue doing business there, they must follow the rules of the land.
While I hate the plurality system, you have a lot more faith in the population of the masses than I do. I'd consider getting a majority of them to even recognize a third candidate to be an improvement, let alone convincing people to rank them.
If it were adopted, you'd find a lot of people with ballots like: 1. Kerry 2. Bush 3. 4. etc.
Slashdot readers (and the like) are not the majority, and we are also not perceived as being significant. We have to accept the situation as it is (people are stupid, ill-informed, and lazy) and work from there.
Approval voting is the only one I've seen that might work, and even that is questionable.
While a minor cannot be the sole signer, they can be a co-signer. I got a credit card (from Capital One) when I was 16, because I had a parent co-sign the agreement. All in my name, and building my own credit (one of the selling points, IIRC). Co-signed by an adult in case I were to default.
Maybe I missed something, but isn't it legal to have a router (not a hub, a router) with only 1 connection? I remember seeing something about turning a Dreamcast into a router using its 1 ethernet connection. Of course, it had to be connected to a hub/switch, but it was still a functioning router.
(BTW, Linksys currently advertises their routers by how many connections on the LAN side- e.g. 1 port router, 4 port router, etc)
Obviously the folks at Real Networks are aware of and *CARE* about the opinion of slashdot readers. This is a very good sign, especially since a lot of people here seem to hate Real with a passion.
Maybe it's only a matter of time until Microsoft/etc can't ignore us anymore.
Brand of media seems to be pretty meaningless, it's the dyes used that really matters (Ritek and Ricoh seem to be the best). http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdmedia
Slashdot Mirror
Keep in mind exactly how well informed the average user is, especially about techie devices. Flashy = good, which is why MS software doesn't move towards fast/stable/etc, but instead towards "ooh, pretty!". Essentially, anyone that doesn't read /. (or similar) will probably never really learn what DRM means, except in the way of features. Unless it can be gift-wrapped for a simplistic consumer, they won't care.
This can be seen in many areas, including newer Cell phones. Some actually brag about running Windows (and doing very basic functionality, like playing MP3/WMA files), yet they crash constantly. Regardless, these phones are in very high demand.
As for the analogies, try taking the rifle or printing press from most suburbanite soccer moms. Neither of these tools are even significant to them, and neither are digital rights.
Furthermore, they are not quite taking anything away from us, but refusing to supply us with more. What would happen if Winchester/S&W/etc all stopped producing firearms? Would the gun enthusiast market be enough for another company to step in and fill the void? Is the computer enthusiast market big enough for DRM-free to continue? Market forces are the only determining factor in either case.
Dial-up compression is very real, and is not limited to HTTP. It is, however, limited to data that compresses well (possibly GZip, I don't know). When I had dial-up, I could regularly get speeds of 15KB/s on a 33.6 via compression. This applied to all text data (e.g. usenet headers), but not binary data. This came free with my various ISPs, no question asked.
Now, the various bargain-basement dial-up places charge an extra $5/month for it, with extra BS software required.
Webservers and browsers don't play a part in any of it, all is handled by the computers directly attached to the phone line.
First, be sure to use quality discs. Cheap discs are usually CMC, which sucks, while some of the best discs are Ritek (I only use Ritek G04, since the G03 is discontinued and I've heard mixed reviews of G05). Taiyo Yuden is also supposed to be great, but I can't verify success rates.
For more details, check Here. Notice the very high success rates on Ritek and RiData branded discs. The dye is what matters, and it means an awful lot in compatability.
I never said it couldn't be used with RR, just that they refuse to install it on one. When I had it installed (during my brief WinME encounter), they went with USB install (I was doing ICS and only had 1 NIC), and installed drivers for it.
Since then I went the way of switch/router and now have a Linux box online.
Years back, MediaOne actually forbade users to run a server OS (including Linux).
Yes, you can use Linux with most broadband. No, the ISP won't support it, and in some cases will refuse to even let you install it yourself if they know about it.
Well, the cable modems thing is rather simple. 100% of customers with Road Runner (and others) use Windows, or else they won't install it (officially, anyway). Near as I can tell, it's so that there are no complications during setup and the installer not knowing anything about Linux (etc).
Regardless, don't most desktop Linux users build their own systems (excluding laptops), and thus avoid the Microsoft Tax? While the numbers aren't going to be exact, they're going to be close enough. This is especially true right now, since it's good enough to approximate the figures as:
Lots of Windows users.
Not many non-Windows users.
I would expect that BMW to be a 3-Series and have a 2.5 liter engine. Similarly, I would expect a Lexus SC470 to be the SC model and have a 4.7 liter engine. That's because these model names/numbers indicate a characteristic of the car itself.
AMD's numbers came from marketing, and are the same reason why most people would expect a VX7000 to be better than the VX6000, and probably both better than a GL5000. Doesn't matter if the GL5000 got its model number from something significant or if it's just random, and I think that's the problem here. Intel's numbers have a very direct significance to the product itself, while AMD's are marketing (officially benchmarking it against the old Athlon T-bird line).
Besides, AMD isn't being unreasonable, with most benchmarks showing AMD's model number to be approximately equal to a P4 with as many MHz. This, I believe, is why it's not perceived as such a big issue.
Well, the forums over at VCDQuality don't seem to buy into it, and really I can't believe these are really insiders. Aside from a few names dropped (some of which I can't verify, others are very well known- hell, Centropy's release of Matrix Reloaded included the C|Net article about their release of Matrix Reloaded- not exactly nuclear launch codes), this is all rather common info, and some of it is outright wrong (or outdated, e.g. TCF hasn't been a major group in a while) Also, the article assumes that all the material is stolen by the groups themselves- while this is mostly true, it's not uncommon that it's received on the black market ("Honk Kong Silvers").
Nearly all of my info came from public articles (Wired, C|Net, etc) and (mostly) public forums, such as http://www.vcdquality.com/ and http://www.theisonews.com/. I do not have now, nor have I ever had, any sort of special access based on what I could provide, or how much I was trusted.
While I made the jump to BNR2 a while back, it has a tendency to get more problems with each new version. To this day, I have to use 0.12.7 on my XP box (even after an XP reinstall), and I could never get above the .13 series to work right on linux.
Great interface, but it has major bugs that need resolved.
Having said that, I've also tried Newsbin Pro, NewsPro, XNews, and Agent, and NONE of them work as well as BNR2. (Agent comes closest, but it's fallen way too far behind)
In the Pentium 133 days, ZSNES wasn't open source. It was strictly for DOS, no Windows, and certainly no Linux or Mac. When it was open sourced, the authors (zsKnight, _Demo_, and contributions by Pharos; pagefault came post-GPL) said they really didn't expect much to change, since it was all ASM and not a high-level language like most OSS.
And on a P133 w/ 32MB RAM & Win95 original, it ran around 20-30fps even without sound. (ZSNES 0.400)
Your phone probably has an internal antenna as well- most newer phones do. The only way to see that effect would be to cover the entire phone.
Of course, this is all assuming it's true in the first place- My phone does have both internal and external, so I can't test it reliably.
The 0.5% is for an AUTOMATIC recount. Ohio law allows anyone who loses an election to demand a recount, with some limitations ($$$). According to Badnarik's and Cobb's websites, they are going to get a recount in Ohio, simply because they demanded one and are going to cough up the cash for it.
Just because it's not required doesn't mean it won't happen.
You've got it backwards- PAL runs faster.
PAL uses 25 frames per second while NTSC FILM run at 23.976 (as a side note, NTSC runs at 29.97). Movies are filmed at 23.976 fps worldwide, and are sped up to 25 fps in PAL areas.
So, when including that, the USA version is missing about 10 minutes.
The VCD standard does NOT use MPEG Layer 3, it uses MPEG Layer 2 (224kbps, 44100 Hz). MPEG.org includes several links to free/public domain encoders/decoders/players, and thus is probably not patented.
That's not entirely accurate- while U.S. patents are not enforced globally (yet), any company that does business within the U.S. will have to abide by them, or at least not get caught violating them.
It's similar to the EC persuing the Microsoft antitrust case- while Microsoft isn't based in Europe, they do business there. To continue doing business there, they must follow the rules of the land.
Ohio actually can get most of a recount- it's still about 80% punch cards, even though Diebold is based there.
Unless I missed something, pharmacists don't prescribe anything, doctors do. Pharmacists merely fill that prescription.
While I hate the plurality system, you have a lot more faith in the population of the masses than I do. I'd consider getting a majority of them to even recognize a third candidate to be an improvement, let alone convincing people to rank them.
If it were adopted, you'd find a lot of people with ballots like:
1. Kerry
2. Bush
3.
4.
etc.
Slashdot readers (and the like) are not the majority, and we are also not perceived as being significant. We have to accept the situation as it is (people are stupid, ill-informed, and lazy) and work from there.
Approval voting is the only one I've seen that might work, and even that is questionable.
While a minor cannot be the sole signer, they can be a co-signer. I got a credit card (from Capital One) when I was 16, because I had a parent co-sign the agreement. All in my name, and building my own credit (one of the selling points, IIRC). Co-signed by an adult in case I were to default.
Maybe I missed something, but isn't it legal to have a router (not a hub, a router) with only 1 connection? I remember seeing something about turning a Dreamcast into a router using its 1 ethernet connection.
Of course, it had to be connected to a hub/switch, but it was still a functioning router.
(BTW, Linksys currently advertises their routers by how many connections on the LAN side- e.g. 1 port router, 4 port router, etc)
So about 34 characters per second? Can you stream plain text faster than you can read it?
I assume you're referring to the Centropy copy floating around, which claims to be the retail R1 DVDs.
Didn't I just see something from them about how they WEREN'T going to do the same thing the RIAA is doing?
What would happen if another domain registrar would decide to do something similar? Could it lead to antitrust action against VeriSign?
Obviously the folks at Real Networks are aware of and *CARE* about the opinion of slashdot readers. This is a very good sign, especially since a lot of people here seem to hate Real with a passion.
Maybe it's only a matter of time until Microsoft/etc can't ignore us anymore.
Brand of media seems to be pretty meaningless, it's the dyes used that really matters (Ritek and Ricoh seem to be the best).
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdmedia