Their license covers the documentation, NOT the protocol itself. Clearly they can't license something that exists only in abstract (here, let me license you some air). If you want to implement SMB, you have two choices--
1) Download the CIFS documentation from Microsoft at the URL provided, and agree to the terms of the license.
2) Reverse engineer (through packet sniffing, etc) the protocol, never touching/reading any of Microsoft's documentation (eg: figure it out on your own).
The section of the DMCA you cited prevents software makers from limiting a customer from reverse engineering a product for compatibility purposes; Microsoft can claim all day long that you can't reverse engineer their OS (and I'm sure they include packet sniffing in their 'reverse engineer' definition), but the law says you have a right to circumvent any measures they put in place to stop you, and (in parts not quoted by the parent) even PUBLISH your results amongst peers.
Don't apologize, I share your fear regarding potential side effects of such treatments and experiments. I'm all for medical (and scientific) advances, I just hope that in doing so we aren't in fact dooming ourselves to some mass death. (A very good example of something being changed such that it was 'too good' is the recent revelations regarding asthma-- I saw it on CNN I believe, but doctors and scientists believe that some cases of asthma may in fact be due to young children growing up in much more sterile environments. Because the lungs and other internal organs related to breathing aren't exposed to the same level or variety of contaminants, they can't cope with such things once the children start spending more time out in the natural air (it doesn't help that kids also exert a lot of energy, and tend to breathe more during physical activities outside).). That example wasn't related to any one scientific advancement, but it does show that not all things science teaches us is always correct.
Ah, apologies then.. I've never had a GC or GC disc to try in my DVD-ROM drive, I just took the articles at their word (well, the announcement articles) that said it was a mini-DVD. I wasn't aware it was modified that much. =) I guess the more accurate description of Nintendo's format is that it likely uses a very similar physical layout, but stores the data in such a way as not to be readable at all (and I mean beyond simply using a different file system). Oh well. =)
It's interesting that the site you linked to doesn't have a way to actually rip the audio to MP3/OGG/etc though. When the question of perfect digital to digital copies is mentioned, the site says it's not possible. I wonder if CloneCD'd copies will exhibit the same problem, or if that's potentially a way around the issue/bug (Sony seems convinced that the technique they use is written to an area that CD-R drives can't access/read and/or write, so I'm guessing that data isn't cloned by CloneCD).
I mean, obviously it's been ripped somehow (read: the various posts elsewhere, citing hits on Kazaa, Gnutella, etc), but I wonder if those were analog to digital rips, or if they were real bona fide digital copies to MP3/etc.
Nintendo's GameCube format is nothing more than a mini-DVD, which in itself is not much different than 3" Pocket CD-R(W) discs. I'm sure the designers of DVD, when hammering out the format, made the same provisions. A better anology (I understand your root point) would be making their own format, ala the Dreamcast GD-ROM discs (which, AFAIK, are unlike anything commercially available, physical characteristics aside).
I've never understood that, why the hell isn't MPEG2 being implemented as a CODEC and shipped with the popular OS's? Is there some organization that forbids this?
1) Allow local saves of the videos, both because it'll please visitors of the website, and because it'll SAVE YOU MONEY on bandwidth costs. Streaming a video 1000 times because some guy likes those Victoria's Secret commercials is just wrong, and won't turn a profit.
2) Provide higher quality video content; work with the advertisers to get these high quality copies (I know there's some red tape involved, but really-- what advertiser DOESN'T want free advertising? Especially to people who WANT to see their ad?). Every year, compile all the ads that can fit on one DVD together, and release it at a profit-getting price ($25-35 seems reasonable here). Or use two DVD's, if need be. I can think of atleast 1-2 ads I'd like in a permanent format to view at my leisure (or show to friends) that would make it worth the money to buy such a collection (especially if they were high-bitrate, high resolution versions).
I can't really think of anything else worth suggesting, someone mentioned adding more available formats, and if I had my way, they'd be distributing MPEG1 or MPEG2 files instead of ASF/WMV/MOV. That'd be about the only thing I left out. =)
Now to why you're wrong. A Representative is VOTED in, just like a Senator. These people don't get voted in when they don't do their jobs or listen to their constituents. You say that those people on Napster don't matter, nor do people who have broadband-- but you're wrong. If they acted together as a group, they could easily sway the vote come election time. It's called "special interest groups", and there's groups promoting black/african-american interests, women's rights interests, pro-life interests, religious interests and so forth. Isn't it about time we had a group that was interested in protecting our freedoms? Oh wait, we DO. It's called the EFF. But they need us to act on our own behalf as well, but just in concert with them.
It's not a petition you dumbass. You fill in your identifying information so they can properly address your complaint to the appropriate Senator/Representative, then FAX IT IN on your behalf. I'm sure they keep a list, just as a petition does, but the fact that it also faxes your complaint in makes it so much easier to voice your disgust with the bill (well, that and the pre-filled letter, too).
Nice trolling, I'm not going to bite, merely refute why you're wrong (and why anyone who believes this shit is wrong too)--
It's really rather easy to write to closed-source, binary only OS's; it's called writing code that's not broken itself and using the API correctly. Sure, there's bound to be bugs inside an OS' kernel, but if your code still won't work when the bug is fixed, then it's something with YOUR code. Driver writers are notorious for being sloppy and having all variety of problems under NT/2000/XP. Epson is my favorite example-- their printer driver for the Stylus COLOR 440 has a memory leak (specifically, the 'Status Monitor' portion of the software). Leave it run for a few weeks and watch it easily chew up 300-400 MB of memory. Is this a problem with the NT kernel? Should it be Microsoft's responsibility to make sure OTHER people write good code?
Open source is great, I love it, it gives me and others an opportunity to learn about pieces of software we'd otherwise never be exposed to, but trolling the idea that closed-source/binary is the root cause of poor system stability is weak at best, and wrong on it's face.
This guy is absolutely correct-- just about any problems you can find with older versions of NT stems from drivers/resources/applications written by *SOMEONE ELSE*.
Heh, then your IS people aren't doing their jobs-- this task could EASILY be automated from an internal corporate intranet; logon to intranet site, go to "FTP Access" page, click on "Add new user", answer handful of simple questions, click on "Create account" (making sure to have checked the box that allowed you to e-mail the details to an e-mail address of your choice), then at the Finished page, optionally upload files immediatly without switching programs at all.
And the e-mail your client receives? Embedded ftp:// URL with username and password already in it (ftp://user:pass@ftp.yourftp.com). Of course it also lists the details in case the URL won't suffice for the user (or the user has a clue and has their own preferred FTP client).
It's utterly retarded to make this sound difficult when it's not-- your IS department made it difficult, the type of psuedo-application I detailed above is something that could be hobbled together in a few *days* (probably in a few hours if the person knew what they were doing). Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if such an administration system already existed.
Uh, because that'll never happen? As I explained, WMP 7+ is just a new shiny front-end to the same CODEC's (well, I think WMP 7+ installs newer CODEC's, but the interfaces are pretty much the same). Therefore, I won't be needed to do anything-- as I said, I **DID** install WMP 7.1 (or whatever the latest one is), I just set the file associations back to the old Windows Media Player (6.4). (NOT the old, old one from Windows 3.1 days, that thing uses Video for Windows I think, which is definately behind the times...).
So, to re-iterate; one can install Windows, install WMP 7.x+, then revert the file associations back to the older WMP (6.4 is the last one that didn't feature their ass-ugly skinnable interface and snooping software) for playback purposes. Afterall, all *I* need is a media player, not a jukebox/equalizer/etc (that's what individual tools like Winamp are for).
Uh, you didn't ask which version of WMP I was using. (You just assumed I was some naive luser, eh?)
I use Windows Media Player 6.4-- I installed the latest and greatest, but set the file associations back to the 6.4 player (the player, afterall, is merely a host to the CODEC's used in the newer versions, and it works fine if you revert back the the older player). You'll note that the 6.4 version doesn't do the things you describe.
Not quite. The problem with this government is that it lacks the one branch of government that most others have-- a judiciary. Right now, it's a combination of a legislature and an executive branch, with only a lucky few privelaged enough to vote; the remainder of people who didn't manage to register in time are out-of-luck and completely disenfranchised.
ICANN needs to 1) lose it's name, 2) enact a judiciary, 3) allow people to register to vote in the elections/proceedings no matter how late in the game they are (obviously once an election is over, that's it), and 4) set some binding rules that forbid the main ICANN/whatever members from ever trying to enact a rule or rules that would ever disenfranchise netizens.
As for the current member/board of ICANN, I think there needs to be more members representing more areas of the world. It definately shouldn't be based upon population (ala the US House, for example), but more like the US Senate (each country would get one representative?). A chairman/leader would be elected as well, by the netizens, with certain powers to keep the whole thing half-assed balanced.
Really, that's probably better than the current system, despite the way people feel about American politics.
Agreed, Media Player is about all I use when given the choice-- I won't even INSTALL RealPlayer, mainly due to their issues in the past with privacy. As for QuickTime, the nags are bad, true enough, but the thing that gets me is the way it constantly 'flickers' while playing video content; the entire interface redraws itself repeatedly, almost as if some code hacker at Apple were obsessed with OnPaint events and decided to redraw the whole interface anytime a WM_PAINT message was received. Needless to say, it occurs just often enough and in such a frequency that the video currently playing tends to get jerky because of it. This is the main reason I avoid QuickTime files (the plugin doesn't seem to suffer from this issue, so using it tends to work itself out okay).
I find that SuperVCD (SVCD) is pretty damn nice for working the home videos into a digital format-- you got yer MPEG2 video streams, and reasonable sound quality. At an average of 45 minutes per disc (half an hour if you're pushing the quality up really high), it works out nicely.
VCD on the other hand doesn't work quite as well for me, mainly due to the constant bitrate (CBR) used in MPEG1 (SVCD uses variable bitrate (VBR) MPEG2). The CBR tends to make things extremely blocky/washed out with the poorly taped home videos (you know, we're not all human steadicams, jerky videos are a staple of modern living IMHO)...
About making an (S)VCD for free, it can be done. You use VirtualDub for video capture duties, TMPGEnc for MPEG1/MPEG2 encoding (as I think I said earlier, it also handles the sound duties, and has built-in templates for VCD, SVCD and DVD (in PAL and NTSC formats)) and GNU VCDImager for creating the BIN/CUE files to burn (advanced features include making semi-reasonable chapters and I think SVCD even supports using menus and stills). Two of the three tools suggested are even open-source/GPL'd (TMPGEnc is, unfortunately, closed-source, and the author(s) imply in some of the dialogues that they intend to charge $$$ for it in the future (they've been saying this for the past year, and they still do releases about once a month)). That leaves a video editting package (in the event you want to edit your videos or add titles, etc) and the actual CD burner hardware (which, with the prices of 16x/24x CD-RW drives hovering in the $100-170 range, is not an object generally). For video editting, the only viable option I've come across is Adobe Premiere.. if anyone has any suggestions on free/cheap video editting tools for Win32, I'm curious what other peoples experiences are. =) For more info on (S)VCD's, including compatibility with stand alone home DVD players, as well as tools and FAQ's on creation, I suggest the following--
Maybe this particular thread of the story is DVD-RW vs. DVD+RW, but even then, people are missing the point; there currently doesn't EXIST a DVD+R (write only) specification to compare DVD-R against. This inherent flaw in DVD+RW instantly nixes it as an option in most peoples minds (36.4% compatibility is NOT acceptable). Plus, RW formats in the CD-R arena haven't exactly been a success, mainly because regular CD-R discs are around $0.15-0.35/each in price. Contrast this against rewritable media, which usually costs more like $0.75-1.15/each. In fact, the only time I use a CD-RW is when I'm testing something (I do hobby video editting/production, burning the completed projects to (S)VCD's and viewing on a real DVD/(S)VCD player). THEN I burn it to CD-R. Just this past weekend I had to deal with a family-members CD-ROM drive that couldn't read a CD-RW disc, re-enforcing the idea that RW media is meant only for either a) personal backups or b) testing content prior to burning to a write-once media.
In the end the following things are true--
1) People who will be using DVD burners to record video will likely i) burn test copies for themselves on a -RW/+RW disc prior to burning to a write-once media for broad distribution, or ii) burn directly to a write-once medium comfortable with the fact that their write-once medium is both a) affordable and b) compatible.
2) People who will be using DVD burners to backup data will not be as affected by compatibility between DVD-RW and DVD+RW due to the fact that most backup restorations will be done in the original burners drive (who does he need to be compatible with then?).
3) People who want to do both of the above should easily see that DVD-R (given the lack of a DVD+R drive to compare against) is more compatible than going with a DVD+RW solution (again, this is subject to change if the consortium responsible for DVD+RW can get a highly compatible DVD+R format going).
The original/. article was about "The state of recordable DVD's"-- so IMHO, this post (and my original post, pointing out the uselessness of debating DVD+RW vs DVD-RW) are quite on-topic and get to 'the real meat of the issue', as I stated in my posts original subject.
Any idiot promoting DVD+RW is CLUELESS. The parent messages OWN link shows WHY you should avoid DVD+RW like the plague-- take a look at the bottom of the first table, look at the compatibility of DVD-R on DVD players. DVD-RW vs. DVD+RW is irrelevent, DVD-R (which is what the vast majority of people should be using) is compatible with 95.5% of the DVD home players (the kind that attach to your television) and 100% of the DVD drives (the kind used inside your PC) tested. Contrast this against DVD-RW and/or DVD+RW; only 36.4% of home DVD players could handle DVD-RW or DVD+RW discs (both had the same success rate, 36.4%). From the article:
A few observations on these results. First, the DVD-R media does fantastically well; the only player which failed to read it was my own personal player, a Toshiba that is several years old. While such news might not make owners of older players happy, the compatibility percentage of DVD-R was by far the best of the three media types here.
This should be all that anyone need to know to decide whether to go with DVD-R/DVD-RW or a DVD+RW drive. MaximumPC also did a few articles on DVD-R vs DVD+RW and basically slammed DVD+RW for it's lack of compatibility. (MPC's website currently doesn't have reviews of the Pioneer DVR-A03 online, nor HP's DVD+RW, which mentioned these compatibility snafu's in better detail.. maybe someone else can find online versions and post them.)
Anyways, my overall point being, people SHOULD want maximum compatibility, and if that's your thing, DVD-R and DVD-RW are your only choice. (Afterall, you want your movies and whatnot to play in your nice Playstation 2, right? DVD-R plays in a PS2. DVD+RW (and DVD-RW) do NOT.)
I dunno about that. I'm mostly self-taught, gleaning most of my knowledge from books and magazines, and while I didn't start out with C, I also didn't find a lack of knowledge about the inner workings of a PC to be a hindrance either.
Not to start a flame-war about this language vs. that language, but I started out with QuickBasic 4.5 (or, since it's no longer for sale, QBasic, as it was shipped with MS Windows '9x/SE/ME). It got me started, and I used the very basic book 'QBasic by Example' to learn the ins and outs of how to write programs (I admit, for Basic, some of the code in this book is REALLY old and stale, but for those just starting to learn programming, it's a good start to have IMHO). From that I moved up to Visual Basic for DOS 1.0, the only real difference between it and QBasic was the addition of some reference material on the language (what functions/subroutines do what, how to call them, categorized and indexed for easy perusal).
After that I moved up to Borland Pascal (IMHO a good cross of the best things of C and Basic), learning more about the hardware involved in a PC and dipping into assembly language for the first time (Borland Pascal (and for the curious, Borland Delphi today) make it easier to learn assembler since it includes a built-in assembler (basm) that doesn't invoke any seperate compilers (like some C compilers do when you use __asm for example-- if you're lacking an assembler, your __asm blocks won't compile (again, this depends on if the C compiler has an internal assembler, or uses an external one)). From that I learned C and ultimately started working on C++ (a subject I'm still expanding on today).
I think it's more appropriate to start out with the highest level language you can find, get your feet wet with learning, then work your way down into the internals (this is probably also the best time to start to learn code optimization at the CPU level, for example). For someone jumping into PC programming that has no prior experience, a computer architecture book IMHO would be the wrong way to go.
Agreed, I was going to reply to the parent of your post, but you summed up my feelings very well-- EULA's have been proven in court to be only partially binding, because often times they make claims or demands that would infringe upon your rights as a consumer (or even as a free citizen). I mean c'mon, if the EULA had (let's pretend for a second) a clause stating that if Bill Gates wanted sexual favors from you, you had to give them to him, WOULD YOU REALLY be singing the praises of how I "agreed to the license, you have to give good 'ol Bill that blow-job!"?
Common sense people. Just because a license SAYS something doesn't make it legally binding or even true. Lawyers come up with all these weird and wonderful demands and maybe HALF of them actually stick when fought in court. (Usually the common sense ones, you know, no piracy of the software you purchased, etc.)
I'm well aware of that, but unlike smoking cigs (I know you didn't list this as an example, but I'm mentioning it early to get it out of the way in case someone ELSE does) for example, there's really only one use for a gun-- kill or injure people. With smoking though, the big tobacco companies DID try to downplay the possible harms their product did (not releasing studies done internally, not warning the consumer, etc). I think these gun suits won't make it though, I mean there's no logic at all in trying to sue a gun manufacturer because the murderer of your child/spouse/sibling was done with one of their weapons. What, should we go after baseball bat manufacturers too, maybe hockey stick companies? Heck, while we're dreaming up frivelous lawsuits, let's go after knife manufacturers, surely THEY knew that [so and so] was going to slit young [daughters name here]'s throat, right?
Right.
The BNetD people wrote something that generally speaking is benign and causes Blizzard no harm (and in fact, IANAL, but legally thinking, doesn't there 1) need to be enough harm caused and 2) enough infringing uses for it to even get a day in court?). I dunno what their REAL reason is (you know, the one they didn't put in the FAQ), but I imagine it's probably got something to do with them perhaps starting to charge for access.. Which if there was a possibility of open source competition to something like that, I'd like to see it.
Big deal, they wrote a server to emulate another server-- it happens all the time with other products, what the hell makes Blizzard so special? Their arguement about piracy, while entertaining, is also irrelevent. If I bought their product, I should be able to use it any way I choose-- I should not need to go through an intermediary to play online (it's like being forced to ask Mommy if it's okay to play-- I grew up a long time ago, didn't Blizzard get notice?).
Now, regarding the legality of their claims, the DMCA and so forth-- I have complete faith that if something like this were to go to trial, Blizzard would lose. Nobody involved with BNetD is pirating Blizzard software. It's like holding gun manufacturers responsible for the murders caused by their guns-- madness. How can the manufacturer control what their product is used for? The BNetD folk can't, just as Smith and Wesson can't.
Nod, local banks, especially credit unions, have been the best road for me-- my bank, Spokane Teachers Credit Union (STCU) has done everything right with me. No fees for a checking account (Key Bank, the bank everyone over here in Seattle seems to love, charges you a MONTHLY fee if you have a balance less than $750), I can do banking at local banks thanks to the Credit Union Service Center Network, and I get reasonable rates on savings accounts and credit cards (though, admiteddly, nothing beats the introductory rates of big bank cards, but then you can usually get those without getting a checking account). For anyone living in the Spokane area, it's worth getting an account with them (and unlike the name implies, you don't need to be a teacher anymore to join; merely live in the area).
Avoid the big banks like the plague, support your local banks and credit unions.
Agreed, some way to choose the theme via preferences would kick ass. (And having more themes would be even better.) Not that I don't like the original/. look, I just thing the Aqua-ish style of the apple.slashdot.org site kicks ass.;) (And I don't even like Apple that much.)
Slashdot Mirror
Their license covers the documentation, NOT the protocol itself. Clearly they can't license something that exists only in abstract (here, let me license you some air). If you want to implement SMB, you have two choices--
1) Download the CIFS documentation from Microsoft at the URL provided, and agree to the terms of the license.
2) Reverse engineer (through packet sniffing, etc) the protocol, never touching/reading any of Microsoft's documentation (eg: figure it out on your own).
The section of the DMCA you cited prevents software makers from limiting a customer from reverse engineering a product for compatibility purposes; Microsoft can claim all day long that you can't reverse engineer their OS (and I'm sure they include packet sniffing in their 'reverse engineer' definition), but the law says you have a right to circumvent any measures they put in place to stop you, and (in parts not quoted by the parent) even PUBLISH your results amongst peers.
Don't apologize, I share your fear regarding potential side effects of such treatments and experiments. I'm all for medical (and scientific) advances, I just hope that in doing so we aren't in fact dooming ourselves to some mass death. (A very good example of something being changed such that it was 'too good' is the recent revelations regarding asthma-- I saw it on CNN I believe, but doctors and scientists believe that some cases of asthma may in fact be due to young children growing up in much more sterile environments. Because the lungs and other internal organs related to breathing aren't exposed to the same level or variety of contaminants, they can't cope with such things once the children start spending more time out in the natural air (it doesn't help that kids also exert a lot of energy, and tend to breathe more during physical activities outside).). That example wasn't related to any one scientific advancement, but it does show that not all things science teaches us is always correct.
Ah, apologies then.. I've never had a GC or GC disc to try in my DVD-ROM drive, I just took the articles at their word (well, the announcement articles) that said it was a mini-DVD. I wasn't aware it was modified that much. =) I guess the more accurate description of Nintendo's format is that it likely uses a very similar physical layout, but stores the data in such a way as not to be readable at all (and I mean beyond simply using a different file system). Oh well. =)
It's interesting that the site you linked to doesn't have a way to actually rip the audio to MP3/OGG/etc though. When the question of perfect digital to digital copies is mentioned, the site says it's not possible. I wonder if CloneCD'd copies will exhibit the same problem, or if that's potentially a way around the issue/bug (Sony seems convinced that the technique they use is written to an area that CD-R drives can't access/read and/or write, so I'm guessing that data isn't cloned by CloneCD).
I mean, obviously it's been ripped somehow (read: the various posts elsewhere, citing hits on Kazaa, Gnutella, etc), but I wonder if those were analog to digital rips, or if they were real bona fide digital copies to MP3/etc.
Nintendo's GameCube format is nothing more than a mini-DVD, which in itself is not much different than 3" Pocket CD-R(W) discs. I'm sure the designers of DVD, when hammering out the format, made the same provisions. A better anology (I understand your root point) would be making their own format, ala the Dreamcast GD-ROM discs (which, AFAIK, are unlike anything commercially available, physical characteristics aside).
I've never understood that, why the hell isn't MPEG2 being implemented as a CODEC and shipped with the popular OS's? Is there some organization that forbids this?
I wrote in with my suggestions, basically these--
1) Allow local saves of the videos, both because it'll please visitors of the website, and because it'll SAVE YOU MONEY on bandwidth costs. Streaming a video 1000 times because some guy likes those Victoria's Secret commercials is just wrong, and won't turn a profit.
2) Provide higher quality video content; work with the advertisers to get these high quality copies (I know there's some red tape involved, but really-- what advertiser DOESN'T want free advertising? Especially to people who WANT to see their ad?). Every year, compile all the ads that can fit on one DVD together, and release it at a profit-getting price ($25-35 seems reasonable here). Or use two DVD's, if need be. I can think of atleast 1-2 ads I'd like in a permanent format to view at my leisure (or show to friends) that would make it worth the money to buy such a collection (especially if they were high-bitrate, high resolution versions).
I can't really think of anything else worth suggesting, someone mentioned adding more available formats, and if I had my way, they'd be distributing MPEG1 or MPEG2 files instead of ASF/WMV/MOV. That'd be about the only thing I left out. =)
Nice cut and paste job there, idiot.
Now to why you're wrong. A Representative is VOTED in, just like a Senator. These people don't get voted in when they don't do their jobs or listen to their constituents. You say that those people on Napster don't matter, nor do people who have broadband-- but you're wrong. If they acted together as a group, they could easily sway the vote come election time. It's called "special interest groups", and there's groups promoting black/african-american interests, women's rights interests, pro-life interests, religious interests and so forth. Isn't it about time we had a group that was interested in protecting our freedoms? Oh wait, we DO. It's called the EFF. But they need us to act on our own behalf as well, but just in concert with them.
It's not a petition you dumbass. You fill in your identifying information so they can properly address your complaint to the appropriate Senator/Representative, then FAX IT IN on your behalf. I'm sure they keep a list, just as a petition does, but the fact that it also faxes your complaint in makes it so much easier to voice your disgust with the bill (well, that and the pre-filled letter, too).
Nice trolling, I'm not going to bite, merely refute why you're wrong (and why anyone who believes this shit is wrong too)--
It's really rather easy to write to closed-source, binary only OS's; it's called writing code that's not broken itself and using the API correctly. Sure, there's bound to be bugs inside an OS' kernel, but if your code still won't work when the bug is fixed, then it's something with YOUR code. Driver writers are notorious for being sloppy and having all variety of problems under NT/2000/XP. Epson is my favorite example-- their printer driver for the Stylus COLOR 440 has a memory leak (specifically, the 'Status Monitor' portion of the software). Leave it run for a few weeks and watch it easily chew up 300-400 MB of memory. Is this a problem with the NT kernel? Should it be Microsoft's responsibility to make sure OTHER people write good code?
Open source is great, I love it, it gives me and others an opportunity to learn about pieces of software we'd otherwise never be exposed to, but trolling the idea that closed-source/binary is the root cause of poor system stability is weak at best, and wrong on it's face.
This guy is absolutely correct-- just about any problems you can find with older versions of NT stems from drivers/resources/applications written by *SOMEONE ELSE*.
Heh, then your IS people aren't doing their jobs-- this task could EASILY be automated from an internal corporate intranet; logon to intranet site, go to "FTP Access" page, click on "Add new user", answer handful of simple questions, click on "Create account" (making sure to have checked the box that allowed you to e-mail the details to an e-mail address of your choice), then at the Finished page, optionally upload files immediatly without switching programs at all.
And the e-mail your client receives? Embedded ftp:// URL with username and password already in it (ftp://user:pass@ftp.yourftp.com). Of course it also lists the details in case the URL won't suffice for the user (or the user has a clue and has their own preferred FTP client).
It's utterly retarded to make this sound difficult when it's not-- your IS department made it difficult, the type of psuedo-application I detailed above is something that could be hobbled together in a few *days* (probably in a few hours if the person knew what they were doing). Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if such an administration system already existed.
Uh, because that'll never happen? As I explained, WMP 7+ is just a new shiny front-end to the same CODEC's (well, I think WMP 7+ installs newer CODEC's, but the interfaces are pretty much the same). Therefore, I won't be needed to do anything-- as I said, I **DID** install WMP 7.1 (or whatever the latest one is), I just set the file associations back to the old Windows Media Player (6.4). (NOT the old, old one from Windows 3.1 days, that thing uses Video for Windows I think, which is definately behind the times...).
So, to re-iterate; one can install Windows, install WMP 7.x+, then revert the file associations back to the older WMP (6.4 is the last one that didn't feature their ass-ugly skinnable interface and snooping software) for playback purposes. Afterall, all *I* need is a media player, not a jukebox/equalizer/etc (that's what individual tools like Winamp are for).
Uh, you didn't ask which version of WMP I was using. (You just assumed I was some naive luser, eh?)
I use Windows Media Player 6.4-- I installed the latest and greatest, but set the file associations back to the 6.4 player (the player, afterall, is merely a host to the CODEC's used in the newer versions, and it works fine if you revert back the the older player). You'll note that the 6.4 version doesn't do the things you describe.
Thanks, try again.
Not quite. The problem with this government is that it lacks the one branch of government that most others have-- a judiciary. Right now, it's a combination of a legislature and an executive branch, with only a lucky few privelaged enough to vote; the remainder of people who didn't manage to register in time are out-of-luck and completely disenfranchised.
ICANN needs to 1) lose it's name, 2) enact a judiciary, 3) allow people to register to vote in the elections/proceedings no matter how late in the game they are (obviously once an election is over, that's it), and 4) set some binding rules that forbid the main ICANN/whatever members from ever trying to enact a rule or rules that would ever disenfranchise netizens.
As for the current member/board of ICANN, I think there needs to be more members representing more areas of the world. It definately shouldn't be based upon population (ala the US House, for example), but more like the US Senate (each country would get one representative?). A chairman/leader would be elected as well, by the netizens, with certain powers to keep the whole thing half-assed balanced.
Really, that's probably better than the current system, despite the way people feel about American politics.
Agreed, Media Player is about all I use when given the choice-- I won't even INSTALL RealPlayer, mainly due to their issues in the past with privacy. As for QuickTime, the nags are bad, true enough, but the thing that gets me is the way it constantly 'flickers' while playing video content; the entire interface redraws itself repeatedly, almost as if some code hacker at Apple were obsessed with OnPaint events and decided to redraw the whole interface anytime a WM_PAINT message was received. Needless to say, it occurs just often enough and in such a frequency that the video currently playing tends to get jerky because of it. This is the main reason I avoid QuickTime files (the plugin doesn't seem to suffer from this issue, so using it tends to work itself out okay).
VCD on the other hand doesn't work quite as well for me, mainly due to the constant bitrate (CBR) used in MPEG1 (SVCD uses variable bitrate (VBR) MPEG2). The CBR tends to make things extremely blocky/washed out with the poorly taped home videos (you know, we're not all human steadicams, jerky videos are a staple of modern living IMHO)...
About making an (S)VCD for free, it can be done. You use VirtualDub for video capture duties, TMPGEnc for MPEG1/MPEG2 encoding (as I think I said earlier, it also handles the sound duties, and has built-in templates for VCD, SVCD and DVD (in PAL and NTSC formats)) and GNU VCDImager for creating the BIN/CUE files to burn (advanced features include making semi-reasonable chapters and I think SVCD even supports using menus and stills). Two of the three tools suggested are even open-source/GPL'd (TMPGEnc is, unfortunately, closed-source, and the author(s) imply in some of the dialogues that they intend to charge $$$ for it in the future (they've been saying this for the past year, and they still do releases about once a month)). That leaves a video editting package (in the event you want to edit your videos or add titles, etc) and the actual CD burner hardware (which, with the prices of 16x/24x CD-RW drives hovering in the $100-170 range, is not an object generally). For video editting, the only viable option I've come across is Adobe Premiere.. if anyone has any suggestions on free/cheap video editting tools for Win32, I'm curious what other peoples experiences are. =) For more info on (S)VCD's, including compatibility with stand alone home DVD players, as well as tools and FAQ's on creation, I suggest the following--
VCDHelp.com
Doom9.org
There's other good sites, but those should be enough to get people going that are curious.
Maybe this particular thread of the story is DVD-RW vs. DVD+RW, but even then, people are missing the point; there currently doesn't EXIST a DVD+R (write only) specification to compare DVD-R against. This inherent flaw in DVD+RW instantly nixes it as an option in most peoples minds (36.4% compatibility is NOT acceptable). Plus, RW formats in the CD-R arena haven't exactly been a success, mainly because regular CD-R discs are around $0.15-0.35/each in price. Contrast this against rewritable media, which usually costs more like $0.75-1.15/each. In fact, the only time I use a CD-RW is when I'm testing something (I do hobby video editting/production, burning the completed projects to (S)VCD's and viewing on a real DVD/(S)VCD player). THEN I burn it to CD-R. Just this past weekend I had to deal with a family-members CD-ROM drive that couldn't read a CD-RW disc, re-enforcing the idea that RW media is meant only for either a) personal backups or b) testing content prior to burning to a write-once media.
/. article was about "The state of recordable DVD's"-- so IMHO, this post (and my original post, pointing out the uselessness of debating DVD+RW vs DVD-RW) are quite on-topic and get to 'the real meat of the issue', as I stated in my posts original subject.
In the end the following things are true--
1) People who will be using DVD burners to record video will likely i) burn test copies for themselves on a -RW/+RW disc prior to burning to a write-once media for broad distribution, or ii) burn directly to a write-once medium comfortable with the fact that their write-once medium is both a) affordable and b) compatible.
2) People who will be using DVD burners to backup data will not be as affected by compatibility between DVD-RW and DVD+RW due to the fact that most backup restorations will be done in the original burners drive (who does he need to be compatible with then?).
3) People who want to do both of the above should easily see that DVD-R (given the lack of a DVD+R drive to compare against) is more compatible than going with a DVD+RW solution (again, this is subject to change if the consortium responsible for DVD+RW can get a highly compatible DVD+R format going).
The original
This should be all that anyone need to know to decide whether to go with DVD-R/DVD-RW or a DVD+RW drive. MaximumPC also did a few articles on DVD-R vs DVD+RW and basically slammed DVD+RW for it's lack of compatibility. (MPC's website currently doesn't have reviews of the Pioneer DVR-A03 online, nor HP's DVD+RW, which mentioned these compatibility snafu's in better detail.. maybe someone else can find online versions and post them.)
Anyways, my overall point being, people SHOULD want maximum compatibility, and if that's your thing, DVD-R and DVD-RW are your only choice. (Afterall, you want your movies and whatnot to play in your nice Playstation 2, right? DVD-R plays in a PS2. DVD+RW (and DVD-RW) do NOT.)
I dunno about that. I'm mostly self-taught, gleaning most of my knowledge from books and magazines, and while I didn't start out with C, I also didn't find a lack of knowledge about the inner workings of a PC to be a hindrance either.
Not to start a flame-war about this language vs. that language, but I started out with QuickBasic 4.5 (or, since it's no longer for sale, QBasic, as it was shipped with MS Windows '9x/SE/ME). It got me started, and I used the very basic book 'QBasic by Example' to learn the ins and outs of how to write programs (I admit, for Basic, some of the code in this book is REALLY old and stale, but for those just starting to learn programming, it's a good start to have IMHO). From that I moved up to Visual Basic for DOS 1.0, the only real difference between it and QBasic was the addition of some reference material on the language (what functions/subroutines do what, how to call them, categorized and indexed for easy perusal).
After that I moved up to Borland Pascal (IMHO a good cross of the best things of C and Basic), learning more about the hardware involved in a PC and dipping into assembly language for the first time (Borland Pascal (and for the curious, Borland Delphi today) make it easier to learn assembler since it includes a built-in assembler (basm) that doesn't invoke any seperate compilers (like some C compilers do when you use __asm for example-- if you're lacking an assembler, your __asm blocks won't compile (again, this depends on if the C compiler has an internal assembler, or uses an external one)). From that I learned C and ultimately started working on C++ (a subject I'm still expanding on today).
I think it's more appropriate to start out with the highest level language you can find, get your feet wet with learning, then work your way down into the internals (this is probably also the best time to start to learn code optimization at the CPU level, for example). For someone jumping into PC programming that has no prior experience, a computer architecture book IMHO would be the wrong way to go.
Agreed, I was going to reply to the parent of your post, but you summed up my feelings very well-- EULA's have been proven in court to be only partially binding, because often times they make claims or demands that would infringe upon your rights as a consumer (or even as a free citizen). I mean c'mon, if the EULA had (let's pretend for a second) a clause stating that if Bill Gates wanted sexual favors from you, you had to give them to him, WOULD YOU REALLY be singing the praises of how I "agreed to the license, you have to give good 'ol Bill that blow-job!"?
Common sense people. Just because a license SAYS something doesn't make it legally binding or even true. Lawyers come up with all these weird and wonderful demands and maybe HALF of them actually stick when fought in court. (Usually the common sense ones, you know, no piracy of the software you purchased, etc.)
I'm well aware of that, but unlike smoking cigs (I know you didn't list this as an example, but I'm mentioning it early to get it out of the way in case someone ELSE does) for example, there's really only one use for a gun-- kill or injure people. With smoking though, the big tobacco companies DID try to downplay the possible harms their product did (not releasing studies done internally, not warning the consumer, etc). I think these gun suits won't make it though, I mean there's no logic at all in trying to sue a gun manufacturer because the murderer of your child/spouse/sibling was done with one of their weapons. What, should we go after baseball bat manufacturers too, maybe hockey stick companies? Heck, while we're dreaming up frivelous lawsuits, let's go after knife manufacturers, surely THEY knew that [so and so] was going to slit young [daughters name here]'s throat, right?
Right.
The BNetD people wrote something that generally speaking is benign and causes Blizzard no harm (and in fact, IANAL, but legally thinking, doesn't there 1) need to be enough harm caused and 2) enough infringing uses for it to even get a day in court?). I dunno what their REAL reason is (you know, the one they didn't put in the FAQ), but I imagine it's probably got something to do with them perhaps starting to charge for access.. Which if there was a possibility of open source competition to something like that, I'd like to see it.
You're an idiot.
You clearly aren't thinking this through.
What's wrong with you?
Big deal, they wrote a server to emulate another server-- it happens all the time with other products, what the hell makes Blizzard so special? Their arguement about piracy, while entertaining, is also irrelevent. If I bought their product, I should be able to use it any way I choose-- I should not need to go through an intermediary to play online (it's like being forced to ask Mommy if it's okay to play-- I grew up a long time ago, didn't Blizzard get notice?).
Now, regarding the legality of their claims, the DMCA and so forth-- I have complete faith that if something like this were to go to trial, Blizzard would lose. Nobody involved with BNetD is pirating Blizzard software. It's like holding gun manufacturers responsible for the murders caused by their guns-- madness. How can the manufacturer control what their product is used for? The BNetD folk can't, just as Smith and Wesson can't.
Avoid the big banks like the plague, support your local banks and credit unions.
Agreed, some way to choose the theme via preferences would kick ass. (And having more themes would be even better.) Not that I don't like the original /. look, I just thing the Aqua-ish style of the apple.slashdot.org site kicks ass. ;) (And I don't even like Apple that much.)