You are free to do whatever you want to your PS3, as long as it is OFFLINE. Once you connect it to the PSN, you start to affect other users and Sony should be well within their right to prevent you from doing malicious things on their network. So if you want Sony to leave your property alone, keep it off of Sony's property (PSN).
BTW, Blizzard does the same thing when you run World of Warcraft. See The Warden.
When does the h.264 patent expire? I've been doing google searches, but haven't had any luck in finding the dates. My google search mojo must be weak today.
In the U.S., patents expire 20 years after they were filed. Since H.264 is a fairly new codec (2003), the patent won't expire until at least 2023.
OpenDNS is not the answer to this because they do the same thing.
Also when you use openDNS, you have a good chance of getting directed to CDN servers (like Limelight and Akamai) that are not as close as CDN providers you would get directed to if you use your ISP's DNS. The reason behind this is that (in layman's terms) the the DNS picks the closest server to it's location. By changing your DNS server to openDNS, unless you live in a city with a DNS server, your location will change.
So for example if you live in Chicago and use Comcast, you will most likely get directed to Limelight's Chicago servers. If you use openDNS, you may get directed to Limelight's Los Angeles or New York servers. This can result in slower downloads.
Since internet is only redirecting URLs beginning with www. the above scenario wouldn't apply assuming your internal mail servers have names starting with www.
Netflix is currently switching users over so that Silverlight is required for streaming. All users will be switched over by years end. PlayOn doesn't currently support Silverlight so that means PlayOn won't work with Netflix by years end. PlayOn is working on a solution to this, but it's not available yet.
The publishers are being paid for second-hand sales, because the existence of a second-hand market allows them to charge more for a new product than they could otherwise.
This makes absolutely no sense. The game companies make $0 off of resale of used. So if they implement this and the people who bought used games don't buy the game, they haven't lost anything. Implementing this could actually gain them sales, if they implement it correctly, which would require lowering the price of a new game.
Michael Capps says of all the people who played Gears, only way less than half bought it. Let's make up some numbers here. Let's say Gears sold 1 million copies at $60 each for a total of $60 million. Now let's say that 3 million people played the game (1 million bought used and the other 1 million rented).
Now let's say they implement vital parts of the game as DLC and give out free codes to people who buy the game new and charge $20 to everyone else. Then let's say they lower the sale price to $40 since they expect more people to buy the game new. If more than 1.5 million people buy the game new, they have now made more money than they would have previously.
So by killing off the used game market, they could actually sell the game at a lower price and end up with a larger profit which would be a win/win scenario for both gamers and game companies.
The problem with scanning something once when it's downloaded and then forgetting about it is what happens if it is a virus, but the AV definitions haven't been updated yet to detect it? This is why AV programs scan files again after the AV definitions have been updated.
Symantec's Norton 2009 line actually tries to increase performance, by keeping a white-list of "good" programs based on data from both Symantec and all it's users (based on automatic submission of the CRC checks of running programs). Once a program is flagged as "good" it won't be scanned again until it is changed. As the OS and most common applications are flagged as "good", there is very little performance hit as compared to older versions where Norton scanned every accessed file in the system.
Various studies recently have shown no real link between violent video games and aggression. So we have one study that shows it does and various other studies that show it does not. Which one should we believe?
The PS3 browser now uses the hard drive for virtual memory so out of memory crashes should be much less frequent.
I did still have the PS3 lockup on a flash page though.
It's "blind" in that they aren't seeing what is actually running on your computer. For privacy (and performance) reasons, nobody provides metrics back to AV vendors about all of the executables that weren't labeled "bad", and rarely do the metrics about what is labeled "OK" actually go back to them.
Actually Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2009 and Norton AntiVirus 2009 do send back metrics about what people run on their system. It's called Norton Community Watch. Norton takes all this data to create a "white list" of programs that have been deemed "safe". This also let's Norton run a lot faster since it doesn't scan these "safe" applications.
So some AV vendors have started to remove the blindfold and walk forward.
The problem is that they spoof the caller id number and if you ask them for their company name and location they hang up on you. So there's no way to get that info.
I'm sure the number of frivolous law suits he filed had nothing to do with it.
He's basically been harassing a number of gaming companies, wasting the courts time and overall been abusing his position.
It's his own fault he was disbarred and frankly it's about time. Unfortunately, he'll probably just move to another state and take the bar exam there, pass it and start up his wild law suits again.
That's Comcast old (current) policy. Their new policy is documented in this page on their web site.
On page 11: "As described above, the new approach will not manage congestion by focusing on managing the use of specific protocols. Nor will this approach use 'reset packets.'"
Turns out backing up doesn't help since whatever causes the problem is saved in the backup data. Someone had the problem, formatted and got things working only to have the problem again when he restored the back up data.
Like Paypal and other banking/payment sites, TD Ameritrade deposits two transactions of a few cents each. Unlike Paypal, et al. A few days later they take back the few cents they deposited.
TiVo doesn't support the OTA antenna broadcast flag. TiVo does support the DRM flags for cable, but that is required in order to become a cableCARD certified device. On a side note, it is also illegal for a cable company to set DRM for a rebroadcast OTA channel.
As far as the TiVo is concerned though cable and OTA antenna are completely separate and have nothing to do with each other. OTA channels can always be recorded on a TiVo.
I wouldn't be surprised if major portions of the ATC code date back to the early 1960's - probably written in JOVIAL. IIRC, some of the terminal control area computers are basically modern implementations of 1960's Sperry Univac machine. I used to work on the ATC code about 10 years ago (right out of college) before the project I was working on got canceled. A lot of the code was older than I am right now and yes it was in JOVIAL and assembler.
Last I heard they were trying convert the ATC code to ada, but I don't know how far along that project is or even if it is still being done.
Even if the extension updates were signed by Mozilla (and starting with Firefox 3.0 extensions not hosted at https://addons.mozilla.org/ will need to be signed), it wouldn't make a difference unless the extension's source code was actually checked.
It is extremely trivial to create an extension that, in addition to doing what it says it does, also steals bank account info or something similar. It's also relatively easy to spot extensions that do so by doing a code check, but I doubt every extension is code checked. Also someone could theoretically make their code so hard to read that something like this could slip through even if reviewed.
Every extension submitted to Mozilla has to be approved before it will show up on Mozilla's add on site, but the approval process appears to be simply to install the extension and see if it installs correctly and doesn't break Firefox. From my experience they don't even test the extension since I've accidentally submitted updates that were completely broken, yet they were accepted.
Maybe new addon authors are scrutinized more, but I haven't seen much oversight personally. If any extension reviewer wants to set me straight I'd love to hear what's actually done.
1. A process for the simultaneous storage and play back of multimedia data, comprising the steps of:
accepting television (TV) broadcast signals, wherein said TV signals are based on a multitude of standards, including, but not limited to, National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) broadcast, PAL broadcast, satellite transmission, DSS, DBS, or ATSC;
tuning said TV signals to a specific program;
providing at least one Input Section, wherein said Input Section converts said specific program to an Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) formatted stream for internal transfer and manipulation;
providing a Media Switch, wherein said Media Switch parses said MPEG stream, said MPEG stream is separated into its video and audio components;
storing said video and audio components on a storage device;
providing at least one Output Section, wherein said Output Section extracts said video and audio components from said storage device;
wherein said Output Section assembles said video and audio components into an MPEG stream;
wherein said Output Section sends said MPEG stream to a decoder;
wherein said decoder converts said MPEG stream into TV output signals;
wherein said decoder delivers said TV output signals to a TV receiver; and
accepting control commands from a user, wherein said control commands are sent through the system and affect the flow of said MPEG stream.
What this means in laymans terms is that the patent is for the process of taking a video, converting it to a MPEG stream and then separating the audio and video portions which are then stored separately. To play back the video, the video and audio files are combined back into a MPEG stream and then decoded. In addition commands can be used to manipulate playback of the the MPEG stream. The above process allowed MPEG encoding/decoding to occur using very low end hardware.
Those who say that TiVo can sue the manufacturers of every hardware and software DVR on the market, either do not understand the above patent or do not understand how other DVRs work. The patent only affects DVRs that store the audio and video separately.
Dish was a good target because they basically reverse engineered a prototype that TiVo showed them back in the days to convince them to license the TiVo patent. DirectTV chose to license the technology, which is why they weren't sued.
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You are free to do whatever you want to your PS3, as long as it is OFFLINE. Once you connect it to the PSN, you start to affect other users and Sony should be well within their right to prevent you from doing malicious things on their network. So if you want Sony to leave your property alone, keep it off of Sony's property (PSN).
BTW, Blizzard does the same thing when you run World of Warcraft. See The Warden.
When does the h.264 patent expire? I've been doing google searches, but haven't had any luck in finding the dates. My google search mojo must be weak today.
In the U.S., patents expire 20 years after they were filed. Since H.264 is a fairly new codec (2003), the patent won't expire until at least 2023.
OpenDNS is not the answer to this because they do the same thing.
Also when you use openDNS, you have a good chance of getting directed to CDN servers (like Limelight and Akamai) that are not as close as CDN providers you would get directed to if you use your ISP's DNS. The reason behind this is that (in layman's terms) the the DNS picks the closest server to it's location. By changing your DNS server to openDNS, unless you live in a city with a DNS server, your location will change.
So for example if you live in Chicago and use Comcast, you will most likely get directed to Limelight's Chicago servers. If you use openDNS, you may get directed to Limelight's Los Angeles or New York servers. This can result in slower downloads.
Finally the main reason not to use openDNS, is that the routing from Comcast is currently screwed up.
Since internet is only redirecting URLs beginning with www. the above scenario wouldn't apply assuming your internal mail servers have names starting with www.
Netflix is currently switching users over so that Silverlight is required for streaming. All users will be switched over by years end. PlayOn doesn't currently support Silverlight so that means PlayOn won't work with Netflix by years end. PlayOn is working on a solution to this, but it's not available yet.
The publishers are being paid for second-hand sales, because the existence of a second-hand market allows them to charge more for a new product than they could otherwise.
This makes absolutely no sense. The game companies make $0 off of resale of used. So if they implement this and the people who bought used games don't buy the game, they haven't lost anything. Implementing this could actually gain them sales, if they implement it correctly, which would require lowering the price of a new game. Michael Capps says of all the people who played Gears, only way less than half bought it. Let's make up some numbers here. Let's say Gears sold 1 million copies at $60 each for a total of $60 million. Now let's say that 3 million people played the game (1 million bought used and the other 1 million rented).
Now let's say they implement vital parts of the game as DLC and give out free codes to people who buy the game new and charge $20 to everyone else. Then let's say they lower the sale price to $40 since they expect more people to buy the game new. If more than 1.5 million people buy the game new, they have now made more money than they would have previously.
So by killing off the used game market, they could actually sell the game at a lower price and end up with a larger profit which would be a win/win scenario for both gamers and game companies.
The problem with scanning something once when it's downloaded and then forgetting about it is what happens if it is a virus, but the AV definitions haven't been updated yet to detect it? This is why AV programs scan files again after the AV definitions have been updated.
Symantec's Norton 2009 line actually tries to increase performance, by keeping a white-list of "good" programs based on data from both Symantec and all it's users (based on automatic submission of the CRC checks of running programs). Once a program is flagged as "good" it won't be scanned again until it is changed. As the OS and most common applications are flagged as "good", there is very little performance hit as compared to older versions where Norton scanned every accessed file in the system.
And then you end up with something like Vista's UAC which is universally hated.
Various studies recently have shown no real link between violent video games and aggression. So we have one study that shows it does and various other studies that show it does not. Which one should we believe?
Here's just a few other studies that conflict with this study:
http://www.physorg.com/news5758.html
http://www.geeknewscentral.com/archives/007883.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050815-5205.html
http://www.computing.co.uk/vnunet/news/2184836/link-video-games-violent-teens
The PS3 browser now uses the hard drive for virtual memory so out of memory crashes should be much less frequent. I did still have the PS3 lockup on a flash page though.
It's "blind" in that they aren't seeing what is actually running on your computer. For privacy (and performance) reasons, nobody provides metrics back to AV vendors about all of the executables that weren't labeled "bad", and rarely do the metrics about what is labeled "OK" actually go back to them.
Actually Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2009 and Norton AntiVirus 2009 do send back metrics about what people run on their system. It's called Norton Community Watch. Norton takes all this data to create a "white list" of programs that have been deemed "safe". This also let's Norton run a lot faster since it doesn't scan these "safe" applications. So some AV vendors have started to remove the blindfold and walk forward.
The problem is that they spoof the caller id number and if you ask them for their company name and location they hang up on you. So there's no way to get that info.
According to a post by a Zimbra employee over at their forums. This will be corrected in the next version of Zimbra Desktop.
I'm sure the number of frivolous law suits he filed had nothing to do with it.
He's basically been harassing a number of gaming companies, wasting the courts time and overall been abusing his position.
It's his own fault he was disbarred and frankly it's about time. Unfortunately, he'll probably just move to another state and take the bar exam there, pass it and start up his wild law suits again.
That's Comcast old (current) policy. Their new policy is documented in this page on their web site.
On page 11:
"As described above, the new approach will not manage congestion by focusing on managing the use of specific protocols. Nor will this approach use 'reset packets.'"
I believe he meant "pretty bad" as in the error itself, not Sony's decision to pull it.
Yes that's what I meant.
Oops, not sure what happened to the link, but here's here's the correct one.
In this case it turns out backing up doesn't help since whatever causes the problem is saved in the backup data.
Someone had the problem, formatted and got things working only to have the problem again when he restored his backup data.
See comment #261 at the playstation blog entry on 2.40's delay.
Turns out backing up doesn't help since whatever causes the problem is saved in the backup data. Someone had the problem, formatted and got things working only to have the problem again when he restored the back up data.
See the persons's post in the Playstation blog comments (#261)
The firmware has been officially pulled by Sony for review. Even though it affected a minority of users, it must be pretty bad for Sony to do that.
See the KB link.
Like Paypal and other banking/payment sites, TD Ameritrade deposits two transactions of a few cents each. Unlike Paypal, et al. A few days later they take back the few cents they deposited.
Yes, they're really that cheap.
TiVo doesn't support the OTA antenna broadcast flag. TiVo does support the DRM flags for cable, but that is required in order to become a cableCARD certified device. On a side note, it is also illegal for a cable company to set DRM for a rebroadcast OTA channel.
As far as the TiVo is concerned though cable and OTA antenna are completely separate and have nothing to do with each other. OTA channels can always be recorded on a TiVo.
Last I heard they were trying convert the ATC code to ada, but I don't know how far along that project is or even if it is still being done.
Even if the extension updates were signed by Mozilla (and starting with Firefox 3.0 extensions not hosted at https://addons.mozilla.org/ will need to be signed), it wouldn't make a difference unless the extension's source code was actually checked.
It is extremely trivial to create an extension that, in addition to doing what it says it does, also steals bank account info or something similar. It's also relatively easy to spot extensions that do so by doing a code check, but I doubt every extension is code checked. Also someone could theoretically make their code so hard to read that something like this could slip through even if reviewed.
Every extension submitted to Mozilla has to be approved before it will show up on Mozilla's add on site, but the approval process appears to be simply to install the extension and see if it installs correctly and doesn't break Firefox. From my experience they don't even test the extension since I've accidentally submitted updates that were completely broken, yet they were accepted.
Maybe new addon authors are scrutinized more, but I haven't seen much oversight personally. If any extension reviewer wants to set me straight I'd love to hear what's actually done.
If you actually read the patent you'll see the following:
1. A process for the simultaneous storage and play back of multimedia data, comprising the steps of: accepting television (TV) broadcast signals, wherein said TV signals are based on a multitude of standards, including, but not limited to, National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) broadcast, PAL broadcast, satellite transmission, DSS, DBS, or ATSC; tuning said TV signals to a specific program; providing at least one Input Section, wherein said Input Section converts said specific program to an Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) formatted stream for internal transfer and manipulation; providing a Media Switch, wherein said Media Switch parses said MPEG stream, said MPEG stream is separated into its video and audio components; storing said video and audio components on a storage device; providing at least one Output Section, wherein said Output Section extracts said video and audio components from said storage device; wherein said Output Section assembles said video and audio components into an MPEG stream; wherein said Output Section sends said MPEG stream to a decoder; wherein said decoder converts said MPEG stream into TV output signals; wherein said decoder delivers said TV output signals to a TV receiver; and accepting control commands from a user, wherein said control commands are sent through the system and affect the flow of said MPEG stream.
What this means in laymans terms is that the patent is for the process of taking a video, converting it to a MPEG stream and then separating the audio and video portions which are then stored separately. To play back the video, the video and audio files are combined back into a MPEG stream and then decoded. In addition commands can be used to manipulate playback of the the MPEG stream. The above process allowed MPEG encoding/decoding to occur using very low end hardware. Those who say that TiVo can sue the manufacturers of every hardware and software DVR on the market, either do not understand the above patent or do not understand how other DVRs work. The patent only affects DVRs that store the audio and video separately. Dish was a good target because they basically reverse engineered a prototype that TiVo showed them back in the days to convince them to license the TiVo patent. DirectTV chose to license the technology, which is why they weren't sued.