The question, as summarized in the title, is "Why does Windows XP connect to sa.windows.com. The guy you're responding to, and others, answered this question -- it's for Search Assistant in Windows. Information can be found all over using google.
If the guy wants the gnitty gritty details, he can install a packet sniffer and analyze it. People have already done this and written up summaries, though (see google again).
One minute worth of searching on google explains that this is for the Search Assistant part of Windows XP. It appears to be benign, but you can block traffic and everything still works OK. Consult this google search for more info.
Last night, she just downloaded and installed software by herself for the first time ever ("Hey, that was pretty easy!"), which was something that she was never really interested in on Debian.
Can you blame her? Downloading and installing a program on a mac is just a weeeeeee bit easier than doing so in Linux.
I think if we were really honest with ourselves, we would rate Linux at around the same score (perhaps C+). It is good to see our main competitor admit that we are on a level playing field:)
You're comparing an operating system to a company?
I'm hesitent to listen to Ogg Vorbis format files because I would be too embarrassed to have to say "It's Ogg Vorbis" should someone ask me what I'm listening to...
I imagine the conversation going like this:
Joe: Hey Bryan, what are you listening to?
Bryan: Ogg Vorbis
Joe: No you fucking idiot, what is the name of the song you're listening to? Who the fuck cares what format you encoded it in?!
1. Take a $100 bill. 2. Make a copy of it on your fancy color copier at work. 3. Notice it doesn't come out correctly (or if it does look OK, look for small 'tracing' dots).
And if you really want to have some fun, call a copier repairman, and see how long it takes for the secret service to arrive -- no, really.
West Wing Sopranos Six Feet Under Oz Sex in the City Live Sports
Just because "Bachelorettes in Alaska Go Bad 3" is on [Fox] doesn't mean we actually have to watch it, nor that it represents the quality TV shows that are available.
I don't think the data belongs to the songwriters or the record companies. The data is facts about the album ("this is the list of song titles" vs "this list of song titles is a creative work"). Facts don't belong to anyone.
The song list on a CD is an original work consisting of: original song names (usually) in an original order, for the purpose of describing an original set of music. The song titles are just as much a part of the art as the lyrics of the song.
I'm not saying CDDB/FreeDB is illegal, since I feel these can be used in the context of 'fair use.' However, that does not change the fact that the artist or record company owns that original work, and therefore the only service you are providing is to transcribe the text for cddb/freedb.
The point being: you're not "creating" any content for CDDB, you're just "porting" it. In return you were able to download information from CDDB.
Again, this depends on you view. Of course, you're just writing down information which others have written. The point is that the value of the data consists not of the information itself, but of the availability through a service like freedb/cddb. Thus Gracenote did hijack the data. Not the contents, but the value. The value is the time of the thousands of people who typed in the information.
The value is also the bandwidth, processing, and man power it took to make CDDB work -- how much did you pay for that?
I don't know about the rest of the people commenting here, but I think that, if this is true, it's absolutely fantastic. Being a computer technician myself (who is devoted to Win2k when it comes to M$ operating systems), I can't say enough for the power of Windows 98 on low-end client workstations. As the Register article says, give it some halfway-decent memory management and you've got yourself a damn good OS.
Unless you've been living in a cave for the past two years you'd know that CDDB [cddb.com] has been hijacked by Gracenote who've turned what was a nice, cooperative development, steadily built up by thousands of unpaid users into a private, commercial venture
And who provided the service of hosting this data and providing network access to it all these years, for free? Gracenote.
I'm so sick of this B.S. argument, "they hijacked our data!"
1. It's not your data, it belongs to the songwriters and record companies. You just re-typed it, big frigging deal.
2. You provided a service to Gracenote -- you retyped the information. In exchange, you were provided a service by Gracenote, free access to their index of CD information. On average, I would wager people took WAY more than they gave.
It's fine to promote a free service like freedb. I use it. But please for chrissakes stop complaining about gracenote, they didn't hijack anything!
Bigger drive, no onerous potential DRM issues, can use it with any channel/cable system, not just locked into a single companys. And of course, runs Linux;-).
Read my message here for an opinion on why this could be way better than standalone TiVo (from someone who has both a standalone TiVo and TW digital cable):
To me, the only advantage that these integrated boxes have is the ability to record digital MPEG-2 directly from the cable/satellite, without converting to and converting it back from analog and the loss. But guess what... the quality of the digital video stream is not all that great to begin with in most cases (the source signal is generally analog, passed through a real-time MPEG-2 encoder at the broadcasting facility, so it's not as good as say DVD) So quality loss is sort of negligle, IMO.
So your reasoning is, because some digital channels are not in great shape, we might as well give up and have them encoded twice (once by the cable company, again by TiVo)? I say if the quality is already not great, you want to preserve that, at least!
As for whether or not the digital quality is all that great to begin with -- it totally depends on the channel. The premier channels like HBO have GREAT looking digital channels.
And, no, none of the digital channels are as good as DVD, but if you have TimeWarner's HDTV box, the HBO and Showtime HD channels regularly broadcast DVD-quality movies. In fact, most of the HD shows on TV, like Sopranos, CSI, NYPD Blue, etc are all filmed and then transferred to HD, which ends up giving a DVD-quality to the show (as opposed to the truly hi-def resolution you see with live 1020i HD broadcasts, and those saved to HD tape).
I seriously hope TW will integrate HD recording into this box -- they could save that digital stream also. If TiVo ever does come out with an HD-capable box, it's going to have to take component (analog) inputs, and encode them digitally to save on the hard drive. Then decode them later to component output. YUCK!
Scientific Atlanta, the company that will be making these PVR's for TW, also makes some of TW's digital cable boxes, including the version I have which decodes the HDTV signals broadcast over their cable network.
I own a TiVo and love it!
However, the thing I am dying for is an integrated TimeWarner digital cable box with TiVo like abilities. Support for HDTV would definitely be a plus, but just having complete integration between my TW digital box and my PVR would be heaven, and the Scientific Atlanta box could make this a reality!
- The digital channels would not ever need to be decoded to analog until it's sent to my TV -- leading to better quality recordings. Right now, anything off a digital channel is being decoded, sent to TiVo in analog format S-Video, then re-encoded in MPEG format by TiVo, and later decoded for my TV.
- I would not need two digital boxes (one for TiVo, one to watch live TV).
- The current TimeWarner digital TV navigation blows away TiVo's live TV navigation system. I'd love to be able to use it again with my PVR!
- They could include two decoders, like in the DirecTiVo box, so that I can record two programs at once... after all, most channels are already encoded digitally, the hard work is done.
- They could integrate HDTV! (A killer app, AFAIAC.)
Since AOL owns a percentage of TiVo, I won't be surprised if Scientific Atlanta licenses TiVo technology for the box (one can hope!).
He doesn't even mention the radical changes to regexps in Perl 6, as described in the recent Apocalypse 5 [perl.com] and Synopsis 5 [perl.com].
If you could write and use a Perl 6 program right now, maybe he'd include a chapter on it in his book.
This article is basically an overview of his book. His book doesn't cover Perl 6 regex's. Why should it? Perl 6 isn't even done yet, and so everything new for Perl 6 could change by the time it comes out.
If you read even the summary of the slashdot article you mentioned, you'd see that, "It looks like he has left a few spots for new elements, and it is nicely modular, in the event an element is found not to exist."
Slashdot Mirror
The question, as summarized in the title, is "Why does Windows XP connect to sa.windows.com. The guy you're responding to, and others, answered this question -- it's for Search Assistant in Windows. Information can be found all over using google.
If the guy wants the gnitty gritty details, he can install a packet sniffer and analyze it. People have already done this and written up summaries, though (see google again).
One minute worth of searching on google explains that this is for the Search Assistant part of Windows XP. It appears to be benign, but you can block traffic and everything still works OK. Consult this google search for more info.
... Boeing announced today that all their new planes will be coated with a perfect mirror surface... and cost $1 billion each.
Last night, she just downloaded and installed software by herself for the first time ever ("Hey, that was pretty easy!"), which was something that she was never really interested in on Debian.
Can you blame her? Downloading and installing a program on a mac is just a weeeeeee bit easier than doing so in Linux.
I think if we were really honest with ourselves, we would rate Linux at around the same score (perhaps C+). It is good to see our main competitor admit that we are on a level playing field :)
You're comparing an operating system to a company?
I'm hesitent to listen to Ogg Vorbis format files because I would be too embarrassed to have to say "It's Ogg Vorbis" should someone ask me what I'm listening to ...
I imagine the conversation going like this:
Joe: Hey Bryan, what are you listening to?
Bryan: Ogg Vorbis
Joe: No you fucking idiot, what is the name of the song you're listening to? Who the fuck cares what format you encoded it in?!
...are a very fat man, aren't you?
Try this experiment (at work :)
1. Take a $100 bill.
2. Make a copy of it on your fancy color copier at work.
3. Notice it doesn't come out correctly (or if it does look OK, look for small 'tracing' dots).
And if you really want to have some fun, call a copier repairman, and see how long it takes for the secret service to arrive -- no, really.
West Wing
Sopranos
Six Feet Under
Oz
Sex in the City
Live Sports
Just because "Bachelorettes in Alaska Go Bad 3" is on [Fox] doesn't mean we actually have to watch it, nor that it represents the quality TV shows that are available.
I don't think the data belongs to the songwriters or the record companies. The data is facts about the album ("this is the list of song titles" vs "this list of song titles is a creative work"). Facts don't belong to anyone.
The song list on a CD is an original work consisting of: original song names (usually) in an original order, for the purpose of describing an original set of music. The song titles are just as much a part of the art as the lyrics of the song.
I'm not saying CDDB/FreeDB is illegal, since I feel these can be used in the context of 'fair use.' However, that does not change the fact that the artist or record company owns that original work, and therefore the only service you are providing is to transcribe the text for cddb/freedb.
The point being: you're not "creating" any content for CDDB, you're just "porting" it. In return you were able to download information from CDDB.
Again, this depends on you view. Of course, you're just writing down information which others have written. The point is that the value of the data consists not of the information itself, but of the availability through a service like freedb/cddb. Thus Gracenote did hijack the data. Not the contents, but the value. The value is the time of the thousands of people who typed in the information.
The value is also the bandwidth, processing, and man power it took to make CDDB work -- how much did you pay for that?
I don't know about the rest of the people commenting here, but I think that, if this is true, it's absolutely fantastic. Being a computer technician myself (who is devoted to Win2k when it comes to M$ operating systems), I can't say enough for the power of Windows 98 on low-end client workstations. As the Register article says, give it some halfway-decent memory management and you've got yourself a damn good OS.
You are ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!
(If by "Windows 98" you mean "BeOS.")
Unless you've been living in a cave for the past two years you'd know that CDDB [cddb.com] has been hijacked by Gracenote who've turned what was a nice, cooperative development, steadily built up by thousands of unpaid users into a private, commercial venture
And who provided the service of hosting this data and providing network access to it all these years, for free? Gracenote.
I'm so sick of this B.S. argument, "they hijacked our data!"
1. It's not your data, it belongs to the songwriters and record companies. You just re-typed it, big frigging deal.
2. You provided a service to Gracenote -- you retyped the information. In exchange, you were provided a service by Gracenote, free access to their index of CD information. On average, I would wager people took WAY more than they gave.
It's fine to promote a free service like freedb. I use it. But please for chrissakes stop complaining about gracenote, they didn't hijack anything!
Wow, and apparantly according to your subject line, this whole thing started when Bush entered office?!
An HD TiVo could have DVI input and output, but that might get expensive quick.
Firewire, maybe. DVI? Is anyone using DVI for HD I/O?
Well that's reassuring! I think the general population of California would like for computers to be a bit more reliable that their electric grid!
I think in general, your computer can only be AS RELIABLE as the electric grid, not MORE RELIABLE.
Or does your computer have a perpetual motion machine inside?
The link you gave requires a login. Try this instead:
u b_PVR.htm
http://www.scientificatlanta.com/customers/prod_s
Since I already fucking paid for it!
Bigger drive, no onerous potential DRM issues, can use it with any channel/cable system, not just locked into a single companys. And of course, runs Linux ;-).
Read my message here for an opinion on why this could be way better than standalone TiVo (from someone who has both a standalone TiVo and TW digital cable):
To me, the only advantage that these integrated boxes have is the ability to record digital MPEG-2 directly from the cable/satellite, without converting to and converting it back from analog and the loss. But guess what... the quality of the digital video stream is not all that great to begin with in most cases (the source signal is generally analog, passed through a real-time MPEG-2 encoder at the broadcasting facility, so it's not as good as say DVD) So quality loss is sort of negligle, IMO.
So your reasoning is, because some digital channels are not in great shape, we might as well give up and have them encoded twice (once by the cable company, again by TiVo)? I say if the quality is already not great, you want to preserve that, at least!
As for whether or not the digital quality is all that great to begin with -- it totally depends on the channel. The premier channels like HBO have GREAT looking digital channels.
And, no, none of the digital channels are as good as DVD, but if you have TimeWarner's HDTV box, the HBO and Showtime HD channels regularly broadcast DVD-quality movies. In fact, most of the HD shows on TV, like Sopranos, CSI, NYPD Blue, etc are all filmed and then transferred to HD, which ends up giving a DVD-quality to the show (as opposed to the truly hi-def resolution you see with live 1020i HD broadcasts, and those saved to HD tape).
I seriously hope TW will integrate HD recording into this box -- they could save that digital stream also. If TiVo ever does come out with an HD-capable box, it's going to have to take component (analog) inputs, and encode them digitally to save on the hard drive. Then decode them later to component output. YUCK!
... I'll tell you why:
Scientific Atlanta, the company that will be making these PVR's for TW, also makes some of TW's digital cable boxes, including the version I have which decodes the HDTV signals broadcast over their cable network.
I own a TiVo and love it!
However, the thing I am dying for is an integrated TimeWarner digital cable box with TiVo like abilities. Support for HDTV would definitely be a plus, but just having complete integration between my TW digital box and my PVR would be heaven, and the Scientific Atlanta box could make this a reality!
- The digital channels would not ever need to be decoded to analog until it's sent to my TV -- leading to better quality recordings. Right now, anything off a digital channel is being decoded, sent to TiVo in analog format S-Video, then re-encoded in MPEG format by TiVo, and later decoded for my TV.
- I would not need two digital boxes (one for TiVo, one to watch live TV).
- The current TimeWarner digital TV navigation blows away TiVo's live TV navigation system. I'd love to be able to use it again with my PVR!
- They could include two decoders, like in the DirecTiVo box, so that I can record two programs at once... after all, most channels are already encoded digitally, the hard work is done.
- They could integrate HDTV! (A killer app, AFAIAC.)
Since AOL owns a percentage of TiVo, I won't be surprised if Scientific Atlanta licenses TiVo technology for the box (one can hope!).
From the email:
it's now Turing-complete, if you have a Parrot engine and a bit of spare time. Call it a primitive "demo version" of some of Perl 6's features.
So I reiterate... "if you could write and USE a Perl 6 program right now, maybe he'd include a chapter on it in his book."
heh.
He doesn't even mention the radical changes to regexps in Perl 6, as described in the recent Apocalypse 5 [perl.com] and Synopsis 5 [perl.com].
If you could write and use a Perl 6 program right now, maybe he'd include a chapter on it in his book.
This article is basically an overview of his book. His book doesn't cover Perl 6 regex's. Why should it? Perl 6 isn't even done yet, and so everything new for Perl 6 could change by the time it comes out.
Right! And someday they'll create BEER without ALCOHOL in it!! Sheesh!
The question, then, is why hasn't anyone found Earth yet, if the probability for life is so high?
Maybe because a light year is a really long distance to travel, and Star Trek warp drives are not based on any reality in the universe?
If you read even the summary of the slashdot article you mentioned, you'd see that, "It looks like he has left a few spots for new elements, and it is nicely modular, in the event an element is found not to exist."