It was the punch card mentality, especially as propagated by COBOL. Punch cards store characters in columns, not bits in bytes. Also, some really old systems didn't store numbers in binary; they used BCD or 2-of-5, and then there were the non-2^n word length systems to worry about. It was just simpler to avoid worrying about the low-level representation entirely and stick with text and BCD.
Think about all the web pages and applications that were displaying the odd five digit year. 11000 I think it was.
That was 19100, actually. And only last month I heard of a web page that was still displaying 19104. In fact, Google finds over 100 pages showing January 19105!
This is a pretty good one: Baby - Accused of being shaken... "It is Thursday 6 January 19105.
Day 2154 of this tragic story."
I was working on an embedded system in those days. The only thing it actually did with the date was to maintain a real-time clock and to date stamp transactions that would eventually get passed on to PC-based accounting systems and credit card companies' mainfraimes.
But it had a broken leap year check which only took into account the "divisible by 100" rule but not the "divisible by 400" rule. I fixed it in 1997. A couple of years later, in 1999, they finally start testing for Y2K. It turns out that I had botched my fix (a wrong branch condition) such that it wouldn't handle Feb. 29 at all! That was just fine for 2000, but now it had a Y2004 (and 2008, etc.) problem. Oops.
CSS already has key revocation support, but it's only on the order or a hundred or so player keys.
And it's completely useless, due to fundamental flaws in CSS which mean that you can find a decryption key in 2^16 or so time without knowing a single player key. Most discs only use a single encryption key, so once you've found it, no further computation is necessary.
The data itself can only be encrypted by one key at a time. Key management just provides a way to find THE key, given one of a number of other keys.
Another problem is that by the time it's in Blockbuster, it's way too late. Between cammers and insiders, a given movie gets warezed within days of the theatrical release.
Atari has re-released the 7800 with the best of the 2600 and 7800 games built right in
That's not a 7800, it just looks like one. They didn't have enough lead time to do it right and wimped out by getting unknown programmers to hack out clones of the games for a Famiclone chipset.
But if the Flashback is sufficiently successful (which it looks like it will be), they will probably make something using real 2600/7800 code in the future.
So does this mean that if someone took 20 or 30 of those ThinkGeek lasers, and had half as many people point them on the same point of a styrofoam cup, it would still burn?
I've always known the 8080 as being called the 8080A. Presumably this means that the chip was revisioned early in its lifetime. If that's so, what was the difference between the original 8080 and the 8080A?
It also possessed a signal pin that allowed the stack to occupy a separate bank of memory.
I never knew this. I did, however, recently find out about the undocumented instructions in the 8085 which Intel presumably disavowed all knowledge of so that they wouldn't have to add source-level compatiblity for them to the 8086 design.
The fact is that in this situation everyone knows what happened. A few key employees from one established place took a copy of the server with all the data files and software and all that, and went to establish a competitor in an adjoining state. Same product, 25% cheaper. That 25% is almost entirely made up by the fact that they did not license the software everyone else has to pay for.
This software package that was cracked and passed around so viciously on many of the big warez networks was the lifeblood of a vibrant partnership of interests.
So how does an inside job with employees stealing the source code and data relate to removing anti-piracy features? And what makes you call that "cracking"?
Geez, if you're going to troll, at least take the time to make up a consistent story.
Counterfeiting is when you try to pass something off as the real thing.
An MPEG2 file named "Gigli.mpg" is not a counterfeit.
A DVD-R with Gigli.mpg burned to it and "Gigli" written on it in Sharpie marker is not a counterfeit.
A DVD-R with a scan of the Gigli disc art printed on it with an inkjet printer, in a DVD snap case with a scan of the Gigli cover sheet is a poor counterfeit.
A DVD pressed in Hong Kong with the Gigli disc art silkscreened on it, and a 4-color printing of the Gigli cover sheet is a good counterfeit.
The same applies to money:
A piece of paper with "ONE DOLLER" written on it is not a counterfeit.
A piece of paper where someone has drawn something vaguely looking like US currency but with no attempt to copy the artwork or face is not a counterfeit.
A xerox of a $1 bill, trimmed to size, is counterfeit, especially if you attempt to pass it off as such, like by using it in a vending machine.
A $200 bill with the face of George W. Bush is not a counterfeit. Neither is a $3 bill with the face of Bill Clinton.
The claim was made that the disks would be cheaper because they could be mass produced.
You must have bought it the early era of LD, then. The only reason they thought they could make them so cheaply was because they stupidly didn't take into account that they needed a cleanroom to produce them. In the end, combined with the low economies of scale of being a niche market, the production cost alone was $8/disc. The VHS version of a movie would be $20, and the LD would be $40-$50. The only difference (other than the much better picture quality) was that (as with DVD), LD didn't have the "rental" period when a new movie on VHS cost $100-$120, so that the studios could stick it to Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.
/got a lot of LDs back in the late '90s when they were being clearanced
$500/year gets you a subscription (they mail discs to you including the latest system software) and one discount purchase a year. The discount is worth more than $500 if you buy a top of the line tower or Powerbook, and even more if you order a nice Cinema display with it. Higher amounts of money get you more discounts per year and DTS will go out of their way to do tech support for you if you have a problem getting stuff to work.
Among them, there's a 1.8 GHz PM G5 (the newest one). Theoretically, should be the quietest model of them all - as it's the one with least horsepower. It's still noisy like average PC tower.
Then be glad you never looked at a G4. The last G4 towers they made were nicknamed "Windtunnel" for a reason. (I've got one, done the power supply swap, and added a piece of foam to improve airflow.) Back when the G5 was new, I went to an Apple Store. As I walked by the various computers, I didn't realize how quiet the place was until I walked by the lone Windtunnel in the store. The iMacs and G5s were nothing in comparison.
I dunno about Europe, but here in the USA, K-12 teachers can get an amazing 25% discount (once purchase per year, I presume) if you use the right links from the Apple Store. Developers only get 20%.
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That's okay as long as they don't hit control-C. Now not being able to process SIGKILL data, that would be a real problem. /SIGHUP
It was the punch card mentality, especially as propagated by COBOL. Punch cards store characters in columns, not bits in bytes. Also, some really old systems didn't store numbers in binary; they used BCD or 2-of-5, and then there were the non-2^n word length systems to worry about. It was just simpler to avoid worrying about the low-level representation entirely and stick with text and BCD.
That was 19100, actually. And only last month I heard of a web page that was still displaying 19104. In fact, Google finds over 100 pages showing January 19105!
This is a pretty good one: Baby - Accused of being shaken... "It is Thursday 6 January 19105. Day 2154 of this tragic story."
But it had a broken leap year check which only took into account the "divisible by 100" rule but not the "divisible by 400" rule. I fixed it in 1997. A couple of years later, in 1999, they finally start testing for Y2K. It turns out that I had botched my fix (a wrong branch condition) such that it wouldn't handle Feb. 29 at all! That was just fine for 2000, but now it had a Y2004 (and 2008, etc.) problem. Oops.
And it's completely useless, due to fundamental flaws in CSS which mean that you can find a decryption key in 2^16 or so time without knowing a single player key. Most discs only use a single encryption key, so once you've found it, no further computation is necessary.
The data itself can only be encrypted by one key at a time. Key management just provides a way to find THE key, given one of a number of other keys.
Another problem is that by the time it's in Blockbuster, it's way too late. Between cammers and insiders, a given movie gets warezed within days of the theatrical release.
That's not a 7800, it just looks like one. They didn't have enough lead time to do it right and wimped out by getting unknown programmers to hack out clones of the games for a Famiclone chipset.
But if the Flashback is sufficiently successful (which it looks like it will be), they will probably make something using real 2600/7800 code in the future.
So does this mean that if someone took 20 or 30 of those ThinkGeek lasers, and had half as many people point them on the same point of a styrofoam cup, it would still burn?
No, that would be fraud, not counterfeiting. Mail fraud in particular.
It also possessed a signal pin that allowed the stack to occupy a separate bank of memory.
I never knew this. I did, however, recently find out about the undocumented instructions in the 8085 which Intel presumably disavowed all knowledge of so that they wouldn't have to add source-level compatiblity for them to the 8086 design.
The ability to be a USB bus master?
One and a half gigatons. Nice. Even if it landed in an ocean, it would still make quite a splash.
This software package that was cracked and passed around so viciously on many of the big warez networks was the lifeblood of a vibrant partnership of interests.
So how does an inside job with employees stealing the source code and data relate to removing anti-piracy features? And what makes you call that "cracking"?
Geez, if you're going to troll, at least take the time to make up a consistent story.
Which has nothing to do with hard drives, since they store data using timed magnetic polarity transitions, not volts.
It's simple. Follow the money. The **AA have lobbyists. Stupid people who buy things via spammers don't have lobbyists.
Counterfeiting is when you try to pass something off as the real thing.
An MPEG2 file named "Gigli.mpg" is not a counterfeit.
A DVD-R with Gigli.mpg burned to it and "Gigli" written on it in Sharpie marker is not a counterfeit.
A DVD-R with a scan of the Gigli disc art printed on it with an inkjet printer, in a DVD snap case with a scan of the Gigli cover sheet is a poor counterfeit.
A DVD pressed in Hong Kong with the Gigli disc art silkscreened on it, and a 4-color printing of the Gigli cover sheet is a good counterfeit.
The same applies to money:
A piece of paper with "ONE DOLLER" written on it is not a counterfeit.
A piece of paper where someone has drawn something vaguely looking like US currency but with no attempt to copy the artwork or face is not a counterfeit.
A xerox of a $1 bill, trimmed to size, is counterfeit, especially if you attempt to pass it off as such, like by using it in a vending machine.
A $200 bill with the face of George W. Bush is not a counterfeit. Neither is a $3 bill with the face of Bill Clinton.
Absolutely. I can't watch most of the crap Hollywood is putting out these days even without DRM.
You must have bought it the early era of LD, then. The only reason they thought they could make them so cheaply was because they stupidly didn't take into account that they needed a cleanroom to produce them. In the end, combined with the low economies of scale of being a niche market, the production cost alone was $8/disc. The VHS version of a movie would be $20, and the LD would be $40-$50. The only difference (other than the much better picture quality) was that (as with DVD), LD didn't have the "rental" period when a new movie on VHS cost $100-$120, so that the studios could stick it to Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.
/got a lot of LDs back in the late '90s when they were being clearanced
Just imagine the BitTorrent bandwidth of a traffic jam!
Why wait until 2014? It's already here!
$500/year gets you a subscription (they mail discs to you including the latest system software) and one discount purchase a year. The discount is worth more than $500 if you buy a top of the line tower or Powerbook, and even more if you order a nice Cinema display with it. Higher amounts of money get you more discounts per year and DTS will go out of their way to do tech support for you if you have a problem getting stuff to work.
She's female and she knows VHDL. That makes her pretty hot as far as I'm concerned.
Then be glad you never looked at a G4. The last G4 towers they made were nicknamed "Windtunnel" for a reason. (I've got one, done the power supply swap, and added a piece of foam to improve airflow.) Back when the G5 was new, I went to an Apple Store. As I walked by the various computers, I didn't realize how quiet the place was until I walked by the lone Windtunnel in the store. The iMacs and G5s were nothing in comparison.
Is there any way that we can moderate TFA as "-1, Flamebait"?
I dunno about Europe, but here in the USA, K-12 teachers can get an amazing 25% discount (once purchase per year, I presume) if you use the right links from the Apple Store. Developers only get 20%.