No. Even a cursory glance at your laptop next time you are in a commercial parking lot will tell you that (or at an apartment complex).
No. We use some prety antique hardware (laptop with embedded 11b no WPA). We are fairly remote so the number of potential attackers is pretty slim. To discourage them, DHCP is truned on. The DHCP range is blocked from the gateway by access control. To get a leachable connection, you will need to spoof a MAC address, use a fixed IP address, and hope we are not online at the moment. A conflict will be noticed.
We don't need a hack proof wireless. We just need to be more difficult than our neighbors.
This DST2007 thing has been a real pain in my ass.
There is a lot of firmware that has not been patched or acknowledged due to low priority.
I have a Linksys wireless router. Due to the difficulty getting kids offline to get ready for bed, I use the scheduler in the router to drop the connection. No nagging, begging for 5 minutes more 30 minutes later, etc.
A week before the time change, I downloaded the latest firmware update and installed it. The changelog made no mention of the DST change so I checked the router Monday morning. It did not update. I have turned off DST in the router and changed the time zone one zone to the East to put it manualy into Daylight Savings. In the fall, I will have to remember to manualy move it back to the correct time zone.
Un-patching this router is simply a matter of setting the time zone back and turning DST on.
Do you have any clue how little the naysayers know? You can be intentionally arrogant all you want, but stop pretending you have even bothered to check any facts at all.
Got yelled at in the spring for standing on the sidewalk casting a shadow causing the sidewalk to cool causing the ice to freeze on the sidewalk. Noted that in spite of my shadow, the trees budding out and the end of studed snow tires on cars. Was accused of not reading a thermometor.
After having read said thermometor showing 30 degrees above freezing, but droping because it is evening, shook head and moved on.
Yes I have looked at the sunspot cycle. I have looked at the SOHO records. I have looked at the polar ice caps on mars back a few years. (I even provided a link from National Geographic, not Fox News) Being accused of following a conspiriocy theory instead of the facts is a WTF??? moment.
Fox News myth, along with the story that climatologists were worried about an ice age back in the 70's
Looks at ice melting on hot sidewalk. Passerby claims it's freezing, not melting..
Looks at historic sequence of polar ice caps on mars with dates. Notes news archives from the 1970's (was in high school then, hard to hide the newsclippings) about the pending ice age. Notes slashdotter claiming it's a Fox News Myth. Shakes head and moves on...
Or at least stick this thing out on the fire escape on Sunday mornings when my landlord isn't looking.
Find a window with a Southern view. Nobody said the dish has to be outdoors. It just needs to have an un-obscured view of the sky. Set it on the floor in front of the window and enjoy. I have had occasions to do hidden antennas in the past. I have hidden a fringe reception UHF Yagi, FM, Shortwave longwire, and CB antennas from view with good results. Some satelite dishes can be hidden just fine in urban decor. In a gated community a dish in a recycle bin works fine. Lock the top so the neighbors don't add to the contents and bolt it in place next to the house. A 4 bay UHF bow tie antenna in a recycle bin works fine for fringe area digital TV reception.;-) A small satelite dish can be hidden in a garden tool bin out near the garden. You've seen the small garden coffin to hide your garden hose, rakes, etc. in many places. Lock it to keep your tools (Dish) safe. The poly plastic doesn't bother the reception. Most landlords don't mind if you do a little gardening.
When I go camping (usually 2 or 3 weeks a year), I don't take anything electronic except a cellphone, but even that stays turned off and in the backpack.
I leave the cell phone home. It's out of range most of the places I hike in the Cascades. I take a GPS. When I exit the woods onto a road, sometimes it's hard to tell if the car is parked a mile up or down the road. It's out of sight, but which way? Setting a waypoint where you parked the car is a good idea. Remember, deep in the woods the signal is often totaly blocked by trees. Save your batteries and turn it on only in clearings.
Have I missed something? I thought the political debate was mostly over (People cause warming) and the scientific debate was just starting to warm up. (Sun cycles causes most of the warming vs People cause most of the warming)
We started our industrial revolution at the turn of the century. Up until the 1970's the big problem was global cooling and the pending ice age. Why didn't we have heating instead of cooling in the industrial revolution?
Again, the political debate is over. Claiming CO2 may not be the big factor is the same as denying the hollicost. Watching the Mars polar ice caps is current science. The scientific debate isn't over yet.
The AP coverage stresses that the ruling upholds the right of states to sue the Federal government over issues of global warming.
Maybe they will suddnly change the studies to show CO2 is only a small contributor to warming, say on the order of burning a candle in a house causes the house to become warmer.
After all, our global warming is the same as the global warming and loss of polar ice caps on Mars. It must be the sun that is the big factor, just like your house gets colder in winter and warmer in summer in spite of burning a candle. There is positive proof that burning a candle adds heat to a house. There is also proof positive that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and a contributor to global warming. How much it warming it causes is the subject of a lot of science and political debate.
Sounds like a nice player. I hope AAC gains more widespread support.
Need to read the grandparent. It does not support AAC.
On the flipside, it does record off the radio, record off the mic, saves recordings as MP3's, connects as a flash drive, accepts SD cards, Plays MP3's and non DRM WMA's. Uses inexpensive AAA rechargable batteries. Cost less than $40.
Not bad for a cheap MP3 player / FM radio / recorder.
$1.29/track. 256K AAC encoding. Starting in May. These are known unknowns, RTFA. They'll even still sell the DRM'ed, lower encoding rate ones so you can choose.
That covers one online retailer Apple. Since EMI is offering the tracks in other encodings and qualities, I wonder what other online retailers will do with the music. The pressure was on Apple to break the 99 cent price ceiling. The pressure on the industry was on to offer DRM free. They both gave a little and took a little.
"From today, EMI's retailers will be offered downloads of tracks and albums in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates up to CD quality," EMI added.
EMI's retailers will be offered downloads of tracks and albums in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates up to CD quality," EMI added.
EMI does not have an online store. Apple is their customer. I wonder what format Apple will pick?
"DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song."
The consumer does not get the choice unless another online retailer picks another format to offer retail customers. Announcement is here;
With as fast as the industry changes, these media players become obsolete very fast. I would predict in a few years, AAC will be the norm.
I think Apple is in a good spot. I don't think there will be massive conversions of MP3 collections to MP3. I think players that play MP3 and AAC will remain the norm. Players that play MP3/WMA will remain a market fringe item. (Only because MS is still pushing the format so the players are much cheaper)
Oh yeah. I used to convert my 12 inch LP's to cassette so I could play them in the car. It takes time, effort and most often results in a drop in quality. It is generaly best to purchase music in the format you need in the first place unless you can use both formats. I bought LP's. I could enjoy them at home. I can buy iTunes, but can't play them anywhere but at home on a PC. I can convert them at a loss of quality and time for additional expence either as burnt CD's or higher cost DRM free formats.
Why not get a player that supports AAC? Just saying "WMA" makes me cringe.
I bought it because it was under $40 and it does play MP3. It just also claims to play WMA files in the feature list, but I haven't tried it.
Cringing would be if it supported MTP or Janis DRM that broke the simple thumb drive drag and drop no driver ease of use. It is compatible with any OS that supprts a thumb drive. That is why I bought it. Having an SD slot is a bonus. Easy expansion and an easy way transfer files without needing a cable. I have the choice of connecting with a USB cable, or plugging the memory card into the card slot on a PC or laptop.
you can buy higher quality 256Kbps AAC encoded DRM-free versions of iTunes songs
Because iTunes had DRM, and I don't do DRM, my choice of player did not include the iTunes format. Now that they don't have DRM, I still can't shop there. My player is MP3/non-DRM-WMA. I wonder how long it will be before they move to more popular formats.
I have a feeling that since AAC is a "Protected Patented" format, that P-P sites will be very closely watched for the sudden popularity of AAC files. A sudden rise in the format in P-P may be a good indicator of the amount of non-DRM loss to piracy. Do buying customers pirate? I would also be cautious. The file format may contain a watermark. If your copy is on the net, there could be problems. Keep your eyes open for watermarks or other embeded spying.
This isn't bad, per se, as many mp3 players support AAC very well
From what I have seen, there are more players that play MP3 and WMA than there are players that play MP3 and AAC (Not counting the sheer volume of iPods) If the reason to drop DRM is to expand the market to the population not owning iPods, keeping the AAC format will limit expansion to the segment that has AAC players instead of the segment that have MP3 or MP3 & WMA players.
I have an MP3 / WMA player and it does not play any DRM format. (Under $40 Coby player) I am outside any DRM store and outside any AAC format store. There is lots of free online MP3's of podcasts and music (not pirated). I bought a player to play MP3's. Any other format is a bonus, but not a requirement.
Hopefully the risk will pay off, but if the share price continues to fall, it won't look encouraging for other record companies.
The jury is still out. There are too many unknowns. Will the price still be about a buck a track or something like 3 bucks a track? Will it be only 128K bitrate? Will it be in MP3 so it will play on non-AAC player? In short, will they raise the value enough to a big enough market to increase sales more than just a couple points? Will the new tracks kill sales from the sneakernet at school?
I'm too dumb to figure out if this is an April fools joke or not.
Let me update you. In simplistic terms on each clock cycle, the CPU performes an operation. Using just that metric, it would not be the chip that changed. If the clock slowed down, so would the chip. Now lets get just a little more complicated.. On each clock cycle, the chip requests information and sends requests, computes results, stores results etc. Sometimes the chip has to wait for several clock cycles such as requesting data from memory or the hard drive. An old Pentium III chip at one Ghz clock for example would typicaly have used PC-100 memory. From the time the CPU requested a memory fetch, at least 10 clock cycles may have passed before the data is delivered. Due to the time the memory takes to set up the address, fetch the result, present the result and tell the CPU the data is here and valid, many more clock cycles may have passed. If the transistors have gotten weak, it may take an additional couple clock cycles for the rise time before the CPU accepts the data as valid. This is an age realated slowdown.
Another age related slowdown is built into some chips. (Feature, not flaw) The speed setp technology would be like having a car that when the radiator became plugged, it would auto reduce power on a long steep hill to keep the temprature below boiling. It's better to go up the hill slow and not boil over than stay at full speed and blow a headgasket due to warped heads.
As the heatsink compound dries out and the face of the heatsink developes an insulating layer of oxide, under intense computing, some chips slow down to prevent destruction by overheating. Cleaning and replacing the heatsink grease (maybe replacing a fan with worn bearings) will restore new operation.
The article appears to be an April Fools prank, but there are valid reasons systems slow down. Most are related to it takes longer to complete any task because all the Windows tasks keep stacking up so there is just so much more to do. Have you looked at the number of patches and hotfixes out for XP these days. This is in addition to any rootkits, (SONY & Others) toys (Weatherbug, google toolbar, internet radio) or other things the user may have added which run constantly using up clock cycles. You think automatic updates doesn't require CPU time?
Let's face it, your CPU is very busy even before you log in and request it to do something else in it's busy schedule. Most times your CPU gets more done in a day before you log in than you get done all day.
At shorter wavelengths, a coil of wire is not needed. You can do a lot at the molecular level. A common wireless power transmitter in my area is called a light bulb. A reciever is call a solar cell. The advantage of using this technology is once in a while you don't have to provide the power to make the light so you get free power. Unfortunately, this seems to work only during the daytime.
I considered making a NAS, but it was about the time several NAS in a box solutions came out. Lacking space for yet another full size box and concerned about I went with one of the pre-packaged solutions. I settled on one that does run Linux. It uses a Riser filesystem. It supports both the Unix shares as well as SMB, both of which can be shut off. The drive is easly partitioned for mounting an encrypted partition. This works well. A mounted encrypted partition shows just like any other partition. After a power down or shutdown, the encripted shares do not auto-mount. It requires going into the web base admin interface, much like a router, and entering the encrypted volume key to mount it. Nice. A stolen drive protects my data with no intervention. All the regular user/password login's are supported.
The main fight a few years ago was burying free content in the endless link maze of search pages. They paid each other for the traffic so in the search lottery, The less you paid to get people to your sight and the more you set along the better you did. Having any real content to keep people at your site was just a waste of bandwidth, so there was seldom any content. The gravy was if you got anybody into your paid site. You could spend all night going from link to link to link to link and not finding any free content.
The old tech was to wear you out until you settled on a pay site.
Other than the lawsuit campaign buy the RIAA it's the same thing Media Sentry does seeding P-P sites with dead content to the point where finding free content is a waste of time. They hope you give up and just use a pay site because that is where the content is located. A bunch of sited trying to make a buck on links or content is trying to find out how to compete against free and pirated content which keeps growing anyway.
Notice how in spite of the death of the old Naptser, that new music content keeps poping up that isn't pirated? Free content that isn't illegal is nice. Keep it up.
Any new tech for pay content, I would'n know about.. Haven't been there if it involves any DRM.
Forgot the link to show how-to. Also forgot to mention in Windows you can eject a CD at most any time. Seldom does Windows disable the Eject button. In Linux, the Eject function is locked when the CD is mounted most of the time. It will not eject when someone wants to eject and swipe the CD.
Even if another user logs in and tries to eject the CD, since they are not the owner (Didn't mount it) they do not have privilages to eject the disk. (Physical access to shutdown bypasses this.)
It may be a little more work than the Windows solution, but I like the added security and haveing a dozen or so CD's mounted at the same time.
In a classroom situation where any CD not bolted down vanishes, the Linux solution is best, even in a Windows shop. Use a Linux ISO SAMBA server for the network. It will prevent theft of the CD's when they are not even in the classroom to be stolen.
Slashdot Mirror
No. Even a cursory glance at your laptop next time you are in a commercial parking lot will tell you that (or at an apartment complex).
No. We use some prety antique hardware (laptop with embedded 11b no WPA). We are fairly remote so the number of potential attackers is pretty slim. To discourage them, DHCP is truned on. The DHCP range is blocked from the gateway by access control. To get a leachable connection, you will need to spoof a MAC address, use a fixed IP address, and hope we are not online at the moment. A conflict will be noticed.
We don't need a hack proof wireless. We just need to be more difficult than our neighbors.
This DST2007 thing has been a real pain in my ass.
There is a lot of firmware that has not been patched or acknowledged due to low priority.
I have a Linksys wireless router. Due to the difficulty getting kids offline to get ready for bed, I use the scheduler in the router to drop the connection. No nagging, begging for 5 minutes more 30 minutes later, etc.
A week before the time change, I downloaded the latest firmware update and installed it.
The changelog made no mention of the DST change so I checked the router Monday morning. It did not update. I have turned off DST in the router and changed the time zone one zone to the East to put it manualy into Daylight Savings. In the fall, I will have to remember to manualy move it back to the correct time zone.
Un-patching this router is simply a matter of setting the time zone back and turning DST on.
How much un-patched firmware is there?
Do you have any clue how little the naysayers know? You can be intentionally arrogant all you want, but stop pretending you have even bothered to check any facts at all.
:&tbnh=89&tbnw=115&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmars%2Bpolar %2Bice%2Bhistory%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%2 6safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN
Got yelled at in the spring for standing on the sidewalk casting a shadow causing the sidewalk to cool causing the ice to freeze on the sidewalk. Noted that in spite of my shadow, the trees budding out and the end of studed snow tires on cars. Was accused of not reading a thermometor.
After having read said thermometor showing 30 degrees above freezing, but droping because it is evening, shook head and moved on.
Yes I have looked at the sunspot cycle. I have looked at the SOHO records. I have looked at the polar ice caps on mars back a few years. (I even provided a link from National Geographic, not Fox News) Being accused of following a conspiriocy theory instead of the facts is a WTF??? moment.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/07 0228-mars-warming.html
http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=59498
http://calspace.ucsd.edu/Mars99/docs/library/scien ce/climate_history/polar_caps1.html
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/mission_overview.ht ml
http://www.astrodigital.org/mars/timeline1.html
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/educ/themes/display.cf m?Item=polarice
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://plan etary.chem.tufts.edu/MarsPolarCap.jpg&imgrefurl=ht tp://planetary.chem.tufts.edu/chronos.html&h=225&w =290&sz=10&hl=en&start=2&um=1&tbnid=TYj58QRSbsjd4M
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www. cosmiclight.com/imagegalleries/images/space/mars-p olarcap.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.cosmiclight.com/i magegalleries/mars.htm&h=359&w=600&sz=16&hl=en&sta rt=9&um=1&tbnid=gBBAUkXCr9kpWM:&tbnh=81&tbnw=135&p rev=/images%3Fq%3Dmars%2Bpolar%2Bice%2Bhistory%26s vnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN
NASA's and the Hubble Space Telescope images spanning from October 1996 until March 1997, show the viritable felting of Mar's polar ice cap, in just 6 months... Such an event would have been utterly devastating on our planet, making the Tsunami seem like a needle in a haystack in comparison.
Fox News myth, along with the story that climatologists were worried about an ice age back in the 70's
Looks at ice melting on hot sidewalk. Passerby claims it's freezing, not melting..
Looks at historic sequence of polar ice caps on mars with dates. Notes news archives from the 1970's (was in high school then, hard to hide the newsclippings) about the pending ice age. Notes slashdotter claiming it's a Fox News Myth. Shakes head and moves on...
12. IBM ThinkPad 700C (1992)
Wow. How did that ever beat the IBM PC XT, DOS or the Intel 8088?
I guess the platform gets ignored that started the Wintel PC revolution. The platform is not important.. It's the apps stupid!
Or at least stick this thing out on the fire escape on Sunday mornings when my landlord isn't looking.
;-) A small satelite dish can be hidden in a garden tool bin out near the garden. You've seen the small garden coffin to hide your garden hose, rakes, etc. in many places. Lock it to keep your tools (Dish) safe. The poly plastic doesn't bother the reception. Most landlords don't mind if you do a little gardening.
Find a window with a Southern view. Nobody said the dish has to be outdoors. It just needs to have an un-obscured view of the sky. Set it on the floor in front of the window and enjoy. I have had occasions to do hidden antennas in the past. I have hidden a fringe reception UHF Yagi, FM, Shortwave longwire, and CB antennas from view with good results. Some satelite dishes can be hidden just fine in urban decor. In a gated community a dish in a recycle bin works fine. Lock the top so the neighbors don't add to the contents and bolt it in place next to the house. A 4 bay UHF bow tie antenna in a recycle bin works fine for fringe area digital TV reception.
Low-profile phased array antennas like this have been used for a while for in-motion satellite internet/telephone/television and for remote uplinks.
This is the cheap version. It is not electronicaly steered. You have to manualy point it. It has no tracking. This is useless for in-motion use.
When I go camping (usually 2 or 3 weeks a year), I don't take anything electronic except a cellphone, but even that stays turned off and in the backpack.
I leave the cell phone home. It's out of range most of the places I hike in the Cascades. I take a GPS. When I exit the woods onto a road, sometimes it's hard to tell if the car is parked a mile up or down the road. It's out of sight, but which way? Setting a waypoint where you parked the car is a good idea. Remember, deep in the woods the signal is often totaly blocked by trees. Save your batteries and turn it on only in clearings.
scientific debate no
Have I missed something? I thought the political debate was mostly over (People cause warming) and the scientific debate was just starting to warm up. (Sun cycles causes most of the warming vs People cause most of the warming)
We started our industrial revolution at the turn of the century. Up until the 1970's the big problem was global cooling and the pending ice age. Why didn't we have heating instead of cooling in the industrial revolution?
Again, the political debate is over. Claiming CO2 may not be the big factor is the same as denying the hollicost. Watching the Mars polar ice caps is current science. The scientific debate isn't over yet.
The AP coverage stresses that the ruling upholds the right of states to sue the Federal government over issues of global warming.
7 0228-mars-warming.html
Maybe they will suddnly change the studies to show CO2 is only a small contributor to warming, say on the order of burning a candle in a house causes the house to become warmer.
After all, our global warming is the same as the global warming and loss of polar ice caps on Mars. It must be the sun that is the big factor, just like your house gets colder in winter and warmer in summer in spite of burning a candle. There is positive proof that burning a candle adds heat to a house. There is also proof positive that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and a contributor to global warming. How much it warming it causes is the subject of a lot of science and political debate.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/0
Sounds like a nice player. I hope AAC gains more widespread support.
Need to read the grandparent. It does not support AAC.
On the flipside, it does record off the radio, record off the mic, saves recordings as MP3's, connects as a flash drive, accepts SD cards, Plays MP3's and non DRM WMA's. Uses inexpensive AAA rechargable batteries. Cost less than $40.
Not bad for a cheap MP3 player / FM radio / recorder.
I won't need to convert. Just in on the latest announcement from EMI
"iTunes as its first retail outlet."
I expect other retailers to pick up other formats and bitrates in the future.
Unless they fix the value (quality divided by price) to a higher level, I expect the sales to remain flat at the higher price.
I wonder if EMI will ever figure out how to increase sales. Removing DRM is countered by raising prices.
$1.29/track. 256K AAC encoding. Starting in May. These are known unknowns, RTFA. They'll even still sell the DRM'ed, lower encoding rate ones so you can choose.
i ng.aspx?type=allBreakingNews&storyID=2007-04-02T12 4659Z_01_N01345958_RTRIDST_0_APPLE-EMI-UPDATE-3.XM L
That covers one online retailer Apple. Since EMI is offering the tracks in other encodings and qualities, I wonder what other online retailers will do with the music. The pressure was on Apple to break the 99 cent price ceiling. The pressure on the industry was on to offer DRM free. They both gave a little and took a little.
"From today, EMI's retailers will be offered downloads of tracks and albums in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates up to CD quality," EMI added.
From ;
http://investing.reuters.co.uk/news/articleinvest
EMI may offer DRM-Free audio formats in a variety of bitrates up to CD quality, but Apple is picking only the AAC choice at one DRM free bitrate.
EMI's retailers will be offered downloads of tracks and albums in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates up to CD quality," EMI added.
h tml
EMI does not have an online store. Apple is their customer. I wonder what format Apple will pick?
"DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song."
The consumer does not get the choice unless another online retailer picks another format to offer retail customers. Announcement is here;
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/02itunes.
With as fast as the industry changes, these media players become obsolete very fast. I would predict in a few years, AAC will be the norm.
I think Apple is in a good spot. I don't think there will be massive conversions of MP3 collections to MP3. I think players that play MP3 and AAC will remain the norm. Players that play MP3/WMA will remain a market fringe item. (Only because MS is still pushing the format so the players are much cheaper)
Ever heard of conversion?
Oh yeah. I used to convert my 12 inch LP's to cassette so I could play them in the car. It takes time, effort and most often results in a drop in quality. It is generaly best to purchase music in the format you need in the first place unless you can use both formats. I bought LP's. I could enjoy them at home. I can buy iTunes, but can't play them anywhere but at home on a PC. I can convert them at a loss of quality and time for additional expence either as burnt CD's or higher cost DRM free formats.
Why not get a player that supports AAC? Just saying "WMA" makes me cringe.
I bought it because it was under $40 and it does play MP3. It just also claims to play WMA files in the feature list, but I haven't tried it.
Cringing would be if it supported MTP or Janis DRM that broke the simple thumb drive drag and drop no driver ease of use. It is compatible with any OS that supprts a thumb drive. That is why I bought it. Having an SD slot is a bonus. Easy expansion and an easy way transfer files without needing a cable. I have the choice of connecting with a USB cable, or plugging the memory card into the card slot on a PC or laptop.
you can buy higher quality 256Kbps AAC encoded DRM-free versions of iTunes songs
Because iTunes had DRM, and I don't do DRM, my choice of player did not include the iTunes format. Now that they don't have DRM, I still can't shop there. My player is MP3/non-DRM-WMA. I wonder how long it will be before they move to more popular formats.
I have a feeling that since AAC is a "Protected Patented" format, that P-P sites will be very closely watched for the sudden popularity of AAC files. A sudden rise in the format in P-P may be a good indicator of the amount of non-DRM loss to piracy. Do buying customers pirate? I would also be cautious. The file format may contain a watermark. If your copy is on the net, there could be problems. Keep your eyes open for watermarks or other embeded spying.
This isn't bad, per se, as many mp3 players support AAC very well
From what I have seen, there are more players that play MP3 and WMA than there are players that play MP3 and AAC (Not counting the sheer volume of iPods) If the reason to drop DRM is to expand the market to the population not owning iPods, keeping the AAC format will limit expansion to the segment that has AAC players instead of the segment that have MP3 or MP3 & WMA players.
I have an MP3 / WMA player and it does not play any DRM format. (Under $40 Coby player)
I am outside any DRM store and outside any AAC format store. There is lots of free online MP3's of podcasts and music (not pirated). I bought a player to play MP3's. Any other format is a bonus, but not a requirement.
Hopefully the risk will pay off, but if the share price continues to fall, it won't look encouraging for other record companies.
The jury is still out. There are too many unknowns. Will the price still be about a buck a track or something like 3 bucks a track? Will it be only 128K bitrate? Will it be in MP3 so it will play on non-AAC player? In short, will they raise the value enough to a big enough market to increase sales more than just a couple points? Will the new tracks kill sales from the sneakernet at school?
I'm too dumb to figure out if this is an April fools joke or not.
Let me update you. In simplistic terms on each clock cycle, the CPU performes an operation. Using just that metric, it would not be the chip that changed. If the clock slowed down, so would the chip. Now lets get just a little more complicated.. On each clock cycle, the chip requests information and sends requests, computes results, stores results etc. Sometimes the chip has to wait for several clock cycles such as requesting data from memory or the hard drive. An old Pentium III chip at one Ghz clock for example would typicaly have used PC-100 memory. From the time the CPU requested a memory fetch, at least 10 clock cycles may have passed before the data is delivered. Due to the time the memory takes to set up the address, fetch the result, present the result and tell the CPU the data is here and valid, many more clock cycles may have passed. If the transistors have gotten weak, it may take an additional couple clock cycles for the rise time before the CPU accepts the data as valid. This is an age realated slowdown.
Another age related slowdown is built into some chips. (Feature, not flaw) The speed setp technology would be like having a car that when the radiator became plugged, it would auto reduce power on a long steep hill to keep the temprature below boiling. It's better to go up the hill slow and not boil over than stay at full speed and blow a headgasket due to warped heads.
As the heatsink compound dries out and the face of the heatsink developes an insulating layer of oxide, under intense computing, some chips slow down to prevent destruction by overheating. Cleaning and replacing the heatsink grease (maybe replacing a fan with worn bearings) will restore new operation.
The article appears to be an April Fools prank, but there are valid reasons systems slow down. Most are related to it takes longer to complete any task because all the Windows tasks keep stacking up so there is just so much more to do. Have you looked at the number of patches and hotfixes out for XP these days. This is in addition to any rootkits, (SONY & Others) toys (Weatherbug, google toolbar, internet radio) or other things the user may have added which run constantly using up clock cycles. You think automatic updates doesn't require CPU time?
Let's face it, your CPU is very busy even before you log in and request it to do something else in it's busy schedule. Most times your CPU gets more done in a day before you log in than you get done all day.
At shorter wavelengths, a coil of wire is not needed. You can do a lot at the molecular level. A common wireless power transmitter in my area is called a light bulb. A reciever is call a solar cell. The advantage of using this technology is once in a while you don't have to provide the power to make the light so you get free power. Unfortunately, this seems to work only during the daytime.
I was making a NAS server that was to be on 24-7.
S _server/4507-3382_7-31261848.html
I considered making a NAS, but it was about the time several NAS in a box solutions came out. Lacking space for yet another full size box and concerned about I went with one of the pre-packaged solutions. I settled on one that does run Linux. It uses a Riser filesystem. It supports both the Unix shares as well as SMB, both of which can be shut off. The drive is easly partitioned for mounting an encrypted partition. This works well. A mounted encrypted partition shows just like any other partition. After a power down or shutdown, the encripted shares do not auto-mount. It requires going into the web base admin interface, much like a router, and entering the encrypted volume key to mount it. Nice. A stolen drive protects my data with no intervention. All the regular user/password login's are supported.
http://reviews.cnet.com/SimpleTech_SimpleShare_NA
The main fight a few years ago was burying free content in the endless link maze of search pages. They paid each other for the traffic so in the search lottery, The less you paid to get people to your sight and the more you set along the better you did. Having any real content to keep people at your site was just a waste of bandwidth, so there was seldom any content. The gravy was if you got anybody into your paid site. You could spend all night going from link to link to link to link and not finding any free content.
The old tech was to wear you out until you settled on a pay site.
Other than the lawsuit campaign buy the RIAA it's the same thing Media Sentry does seeding P-P sites with dead content to the point where finding free content is a waste of time. They hope you give up and just use a pay site because that is where the content is located. A bunch of sited trying to make a buck on links or content is trying to find out how to compete against free and pirated content which keeps growing anyway.
Notice how in spite of the death of the old Naptser, that new music content keeps poping up that isn't pirated? Free content that isn't illegal is nice. Keep it up.
Any new tech for pay content, I would'n know about.. Haven't been there if it involves any DRM.
Forgot the link to show how-to. Also forgot to mention in Windows you can eject a CD at most any time. Seldom does Windows disable the Eject button. In Linux, the Eject function is locked when the CD is mounted most of the time. It will not eject when someone wants to eject and swipe the CD.
I X/GENERAL_ISO9660CDROMImages.shtml
Even if another user logs in and tries to eject the CD, since they are not the owner (Didn't mount it) they do not have privilages to eject the disk. (Physical access to shutdown bypasses this.)
Here is the link;
http://www.idevelopment.info/data/Unix/General_UN
It may be a little more work than the Windows solution, but I like the added security and haveing a dozen or so CD's mounted at the same time.
In a classroom situation where any CD not bolted down vanishes, the Linux solution is best, even in a Windows shop. Use a Linux ISO SAMBA server for the network. It will prevent theft of the CD's when they are not even in the classroom to be stolen.