As michael exults: "Yay! more portable drives that are totally incompatible with everything else including all other Iomega drives! Yay!"
This is a limitation of actuated-head, platter-based storage more than a big conspiracy to get you to buy new drives all the time.
You have rotation speed, track density, sector density, signal-to-noise ratio, flux, form factor, and more to worry about.
It's just a fact of life with our current method of mass-storage. We can't buy a drive today and expect it to read tomorrow's NextBigThing(tm).
I also think it's impractical for a standards body to come up with some sort of portable mass-storage standard because it would be too slow of a development process. Once the 10GB standard was finalized, everyone would want the 20GB standard and so on. By the time everyone could agree on what the standard should contain and ratify it, it wouldn't be that useful anymore. --
Re:Who has forgotten they live in the US?
on
Congress@Work
·
· Score: 1
I don't think the fact the page is in French is the problem... I think the majority of the problem is this:
Any member of congress (and I mean ANY) that chooses to use this picture on his or her main page is scary, to say the least.
Anyone else think he looks like Goofy after a fishing trip? Just imagine him saying, "Gowrsh! Look at awwl da fish I cawt, uh guh!" --
From the C|Net article: Late Tuesday, Microsoft responded to the open letter. "We appreciate the dialog on this issue--it's exactly the type of discussion Craig was hoping to foster," the company said in a statement
Microsoft's arrogance just comes into full view with this statement. They're essentially taking credit for the Open Source response!
The length of patent terms can and should be self-regulating: Make the length of term for new patents in each patent category (mechanical device, electronic hardware, software, etc.) inversely proportional to the average number of patents issued in the previous two quarters
As elegant as this sounds, it's a feedback loop. Think about it... as more patents are issued, the term shortens, forcing companies to innovate faster (and potentially produce bullshit "innovations") to protect their profits, causing a shorter term, and so on. Eventually, you end up with patents that last about five hours. --
I don't know if there's an organized boycott or not, but I refuse to buy anything that uses RAMBUS until this is all figured out. I'm not going to get involved in this VHS/Betamax war.
The only exception so far has been my Playstation2, which I just simply couldn't live without.:) --
Re:The first exploit.
on
Cracking OSX
·
· Score: 5
This isn't any different than just about every other system. If I can physically get at it, I can break into it.
If all else fails, I'll just take the damn thing with me. --
This is a little like asking if a brand new model of car is likely to be stolen.
Of course it will.
Why?
Why do mountain climbers insist on climbing the highest mountains? Simply because they're there.
It will be cracked at some point because it's a new target. Apple will then (hopefully) do the little dance that all OS makers do... patch it up and make it better.
If the crack exploits some flaw in Darwin, at least we can go look through the code to figure it out... a much greater luxury than what is allowed by most other OS manufacturers. --
I've seen record company adverts for their artists particular ringtones.
Personally, I think it's a good strategy. Think about it... there's no way in hell you could mistake a ringtone for the actual song, but the melody itself, if addictive enough, might just be enough to get you to purchase a CD.
Now if only I could text MP3s to my friends... hmmm. Nokia, you listening? --
If I remember correctly, California law (if you're even in California) will not allow the granting of "comp time" instead of real pay. It can be given in addition to, but not instead of.
IANAL, though. I could just be pulling this outta my ass. --
I'd never really thought about this before, but the internet could, over a long enough time-line, perpetuate freedom of speech even into repressed countries.
As the internet has grown in popularity, more and more information has been available from countries with highly-restrictive governments, like Singapore and China.
It's extremely difficult, mostly because of impracticality, to monitor all traffic on a national back-bone and only pass traffic which is approved by the government. If the government were to completely remove internet access to prevent this "threat" they could suffer a backlash of immense proportions.
In addition, as wireless technologies grow and satellite systems become more common, it will become almost completely impossible to prevent the transmission of data which isn't "approved."
Maybe 200 years from now the entire world will be free all because of a few IP packets flying around. --
Unfortunately, I think part of the strategy the RIAA has in mind is to lobby for changes in law in order to require SDMI to be present in devices.
If they can push laws through that would make it illegal to sell a device which circumvented SDMI, the RIAA wouldn't be as concerned about rogue players because they could sue the manufacturers for damages. Perhaps worst of all, they could sue YOU for violating the DMCA by using your rogue player.
I completely agree with trying to protect children who don't know any better, but I'd really like to see this law apply to ALL information gathering, not just to children under 13.
I think a company (or anyone, for that matter) absolutely should NOT be able to sell your information without your consent and that consent cannot be tied to a service.
For instance, you get a phone line. Unless you specifically state that you will allow the phone company to sell your information to others, they are forbidden from doing so. In addition, they cannot make your acceptance of their selling your information a portion of their service agreement.
THAT would be a useful law to me. Go fine flippin' Real $100,000 for sending me crap-mail about stuff I don't want. --
Although I agree with others that this particular e-mail is not a "scummy" spam (i.e. one that has come from a third party that you have no direct or indirect affiliation with), it is a spam nonetheless.
Kozmo used the facade of being concerned that their customers did not know about their opt-in program to send a spam regarding their new "gift" system. Clearly, this is an advertisement.
Kozmo could have just as easily sent an e-mail expressing concern and sent ANOTHER e-mail to those that opted in advertising their new service. Clearly, they did not do this because the real purpose was to advertise the service, not express concern. --
Firewire is a great protocol, runs at high-speed, and is very reliable. It's also a pain in the ass to put into a small, simple little device. How many firewire mice do you see on the market?
XP _has_ to at least support USB 1.1 because there are a friggen TON of little piddly USB devices that people use regularly. These are the same people M$ wants to buy XP, so USB 1.1's gonna be in there. Not to mention the scanners, digital cameras, and Handsprings of the world.
Once you have USB 1.1, it's not too big a stretch to stuff USB 2.0 in there. M$ is notorious for slipping things like this in when you're not looking. --
Price per Volume (by characters) -
Curl Corporation's usage-based software compiles information from end-user plug-ins that encounter Curl content. Included in this information is the number of characters of Curl content that are executed by the plug-ins. Curl Corporation's fees are derived from the total volume of Curl content executed by the plug-ins together with a price per one billion characters as determined by the customer's annual minimum fee commitment.
If I'm reading this right, the plug-in that executes the code reports back how many characters it has executed for billing purposes. I'd think there would be privacy concerns with this, not to mention how cheesy it is to bill based upon executed characters. Couldn't they easily fanagle their compiler to be really inefficient just to boost the character count? --
I just can't imagine that this extension to the ATA standard would work in hardware without SOME sort of interaction in software. Granted, I haven't read the spec, but it seems strange to me that the drive would decide for itself what content was copyrighted and refuse to save it.
How would the drive know? Some bit that's set on the bus? Couldn't you simply unset the bit? If it's an analysis of the data going across the bus, wouldn't there be the risk of false identification? What if I'm saving a PDF and it decides to refuse a block because it looks like the pattern it's matching? --
It's useful because the networks make a lot more money if a lot more people are watching their shows which leads to more people watching their commercials.
If they know via the Tivo data that, for instance, people in California like ER a whole lot more than the people in Texas do, they can figure out what would make it appeal to more Texans.
Until EVERYONE has a Tivo and EVERYONE skips commercials, the content providers are going to find this data useful.
Once everyone has a Tivo, they'll just simply give the service away for free and offer sponsorship of the listings screen or something of the sort.
There's no way around sponsorship... too many people are too willing to hand people too much money. Everyone and everything has a price. If NBC came to your house and said they'd hand you $5 million to paint your house with a big-ass NBC logo, would you turn them down? Your neighbors would hate it, but you'd have $5 mil in the bank.
I hate to break this to everyone, but cable companies have been doing this same thing for a long time now. You really think those "digital" cable boxes are receive only? --
Slashdot Mirror
As michael exults: "Yay! more portable drives that are totally incompatible with everything else including all other Iomega drives! Yay!"
This is a limitation of actuated-head, platter-based storage more than a big conspiracy to get you to buy new drives all the time.
You have rotation speed, track density, sector density, signal-to-noise ratio, flux, form factor, and more to worry about.
It's just a fact of life with our current method of mass-storage. We can't buy a drive today and expect it to read tomorrow's NextBigThing(tm).
I also think it's impractical for a standards body to come up with some sort of portable mass-storage standard because it would be too slow of a development process. Once the 10GB standard was finalized, everyone would want the 20GB standard and so on. By the time everyone could agree on what the standard should contain and ratify it, it wouldn't be that useful anymore.
--
I don't think the fact the page is in French is the problem... I think the majority of the problem is this:
Any member of congress (and I mean ANY) that chooses to use this picture on his or her main page is scary, to say the least.
Anyone else think he looks like Goofy after a fishing trip? Just imagine him saying, "Gowrsh! Look at awwl da fish I cawt, uh guh!"
--
Every time I scan the /. page I parse this as "'Chinese Worm' Fixes Linux Systems?"
Time for more coffee. *shakes head*
--
From the C|Net article:
Late Tuesday, Microsoft responded to the open letter. "We appreciate the dialog on this issue--it's exactly the type of discussion Craig was hoping to foster," the company said in a statement
Microsoft's arrogance just comes into full view with this statement. They're essentially taking credit for the Open Source response!
Completely astounding.
--
The heliopause, mentioned in the article, is the point where the Sun's solar wind is offset by that of other stars and deep space.
--
The length of patent terms can and should be self-regulating: Make the length of term for new patents in each patent category (mechanical device, electronic hardware, software, etc.) inversely proportional to the average number of patents issued in the previous two quarters
As elegant as this sounds, it's a feedback loop. Think about it... as more patents are issued, the term shortens, forcing companies to innovate faster (and potentially produce bullshit "innovations") to protect their profits, causing a shorter term, and so on. Eventually, you end up with patents that last about five hours.
--
Well, I hate to break this to you... but every other technology company has dropped at least 20% in the past year.
Not that I support Rambus or anything, but let's keep the facts straight.
--
IIRC, TiVo keeps the DirecTV encryption secret because it doesn't know anything about it. The smart card you stick in the slot does the decryption.
The TiVo box simply "tunes" the decrypted output of the card.
--
I betcha this is going to be the X-Box's flagship game.
--
>The company (a big OEM, moo moo)
The Dairy Farmers Of America?
Richard Simmons??
Jenny Craig???
--
I don't know if there's an organized boycott or not, but I refuse to buy anything that uses RAMBUS until this is all figured out. I'm not going to get involved in this VHS/Betamax war.
:)
The only exception so far has been my Playstation2, which I just simply couldn't live without.
--
This isn't any different than just about every other system. If I can physically get at it, I can break into it.
If all else fails, I'll just take the damn thing with me.
--
This is a little like asking if a brand new model of car is likely to be stolen.
Of course it will.
Why?
Why do mountain climbers insist on climbing the highest mountains? Simply because they're there.
It will be cracked at some point because it's a new target. Apple will then (hopefully) do the little dance that all OS makers do... patch it up and make it better.
If the crack exploits some flaw in Darwin, at least we can go look through the code to figure it out... a much greater luxury than what is allowed by most other OS manufacturers.
--
I've seen record company adverts for their artists particular ringtones.
Personally, I think it's a good strategy. Think about it... there's no way in hell you could mistake a ringtone for the actual song, but the melody itself, if addictive enough, might just be enough to get you to purchase a CD.
Now if only I could text MP3s to my friends... hmmm. Nokia, you listening?
--
If I remember correctly, California law (if you're even in California) will not allow the granting of "comp time" instead of real pay. It can be given in addition to, but not instead of.
IANAL, though. I could just be pulling this outta my ass.
--
I'd never really thought about this before, but the internet could, over a long enough time-line, perpetuate freedom of speech even into repressed countries.
As the internet has grown in popularity, more and more information has been available from countries with highly-restrictive governments, like Singapore and China.
It's extremely difficult, mostly because of impracticality, to monitor all traffic on a national back-bone and only pass traffic which is approved by the government. If the government were to completely remove internet access to prevent this "threat" they could suffer a backlash of immense proportions.
In addition, as wireless technologies grow and satellite systems become more common, it will become almost completely impossible to prevent the transmission of data which isn't "approved."
Maybe 200 years from now the entire world will be free all because of a few IP packets flying around.
--
Unfortunately, I think part of the strategy the RIAA has in mind is to lobby for changes in law in order to require SDMI to be present in devices.
If they can push laws through that would make it illegal to sell a device which circumvented SDMI, the RIAA wouldn't be as concerned about rogue players because they could sue the manufacturers for damages. Perhaps worst of all, they could sue YOU for violating the DMCA by using your rogue player.
This just plain sucks, folks.
--
I completely agree with trying to protect children who don't know any better, but I'd really like to see this law apply to ALL information gathering, not just to children under 13.
I think a company (or anyone, for that matter) absolutely should NOT be able to sell your information without your consent and that consent cannot be tied to a service.
For instance, you get a phone line. Unless you specifically state that you will allow the phone company to sell your information to others, they are forbidden from doing so. In addition, they cannot make your acceptance of their selling your information a portion of their service agreement.
THAT would be a useful law to me. Go fine flippin' Real $100,000 for sending me crap-mail about stuff I don't want.
--
Although I agree with others that this particular e-mail is not a "scummy" spam (i.e. one that has come from a third party that you have no direct or indirect affiliation with), it is a spam nonetheless.
Kozmo used the facade of being concerned that their customers did not know about their opt-in program to send a spam regarding their new "gift" system. Clearly, this is an advertisement.
Kozmo could have just as easily sent an e-mail expressing concern and sent ANOTHER e-mail to those that opted in advertising their new service. Clearly, they did not do this because the real purpose was to advertise the service, not express concern.
--
I think we may be overlooking the obvious here.
Firewire is a great protocol, runs at high-speed, and is very reliable. It's also a pain in the ass to put into a small, simple little device. How many firewire mice do you see on the market?
XP _has_ to at least support USB 1.1 because there are a friggen TON of little piddly USB devices that people use regularly. These are the same people M$ wants to buy XP, so USB 1.1's gonna be in there. Not to mention the scanners, digital cameras, and Handsprings of the world.
Once you have USB 1.1, it's not too big a stretch to stuff USB 2.0 in there. M$ is notorious for slipping things like this in when you're not looking.
--
(quoted directly from here)
If I'm reading this right, the plug-in that executes the code reports back how many characters it has executed for billing purposes. I'd think there would be privacy concerns with this, not to mention how cheesy it is to bill based upon executed characters. Couldn't they easily fanagle their compiler to be really inefficient just to boost the character count?
--
I just can't imagine that this extension to the ATA standard would work in hardware without SOME sort of interaction in software. Granted, I haven't read the spec, but it seems strange to me that the drive would decide for itself what content was copyrighted and refuse to save it.
How would the drive know? Some bit that's set on the bus? Couldn't you simply unset the bit? If it's an analysis of the data going across the bus, wouldn't there be the risk of false identification? What if I'm saving a PDF and it decides to refuse a block because it looks like the pattern it's matching?
--
It's useful because the networks make a lot more money if a lot more people are watching their shows which leads to more people watching their commercials.
If they know via the Tivo data that, for instance, people in California like ER a whole lot more than the people in Texas do, they can figure out what would make it appeal to more Texans.
Until EVERYONE has a Tivo and EVERYONE skips commercials, the content providers are going to find this data useful.
Once everyone has a Tivo, they'll just simply give the service away for free and offer sponsorship of the listings screen or something of the sort.
There's no way around sponsorship... too many people are too willing to hand people too much money. Everyone and everything has a price. If NBC came to your house and said they'd hand you $5 million to paint your house with a big-ass NBC logo, would you turn them down? Your neighbors would hate it, but you'd have $5 mil in the bank.
Cheers,
Chad
--
I hate to break this to everyone, but cable companies have been doing this same thing for a long time now. You really think those "digital" cable boxes are receive only?
--
All kidding aside, I'm sure the RIAA (and the MPAA) has considered this model. Look at how well it fattens the software fat-cats.
--