Try this.... Go back and watch those old shows! Having not seen Battlestar Galatica in a long time, I watched the old show on SciFi for a few episodes and I ended up going 'Ewwwwh, I can't believe I liked this crappy show!'.
The new Battlestar remake is a major improvement, however.
As time goes on our standards increase. Shows from the late 70's and early 80's which many of us grew up on are in reality quite lame!
Much of it is cultural changes. Television is not all that great. There are a handful of shows that I watch, but I use my TiVo to grab those shows so I can watch them when I am ready to.
Some shows, I like:
FarScape, Lexx (just wish they had an uncensored version! used to be pretty kewl on ShowTime), Stargate Atlantis (too out of touch on SG-1), Enterprise, The Deadzone, Futurama, Simpsons, South Park, Hellsing, Coupling (BBCA version), CSI, CSI Miami, CSI NY, BattleStar Galatica (Jan 14th) and almost all of the HBO series (Curb your Enthusiasm, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, Carnivale, and the Sopranos.
I still have a Series1 because I am waiting for HD support and I don't want to spend a fortune for it.
It's really simple, I never went to LokiTorrent before but just scanned their list of torrents; There are several recently released movies being linked to from the site. Unlike Napster or other P2P networks all Torrent sites are just lists of Torrent seed locations. The Torrent websites just make it easy to find what you are looking for as BitTorrent doesn't have a search mechanism.
Right at the top of the list, I saw 'White Chicks' available for download. Although, I wouldn't rent nor buy that movie, it is indeed being served up for download. There were also pirated games, etc.
Sorry, but distributing commercial content for free is THEFT! This hasn't changed. I remember warez sites for Commodore 64 games, etc. It's the same thing except, it's on a much larger worldwide network using a file distribution tool that allows for fast downloads of popular content. It's no different then the DVD pirates in Hong Kong who duplicate DVD's offshore in international waters and then smuggle them to Hong Kong and distribute to the black market, it's just being accomplished in a completely digital way.
Movies cost a lot to produce and distribute, they also can make a heck of a lot of money. Sure, most people are not going to download a movie via BT. However, the young digital generation definitely will. The primary target audience of Movies and Music is the age 12->30 group and it's this group that is increasing Internet and technology savvy. When this group grows up their kids will be even more savvy. This is what scares the hell out of the MPAA and RIAA! Their market may not be shrinking yet, but in 10 years it will implode.
Networks are getting faster and faster, storage mediums are increasing in capacity, computers are getting more and more powerful. The law of the wild is now in effect, adapt or go extinct.
1. Stealing music, movies, games, or books is WRONG. 2. Suing your customers and trying to plug the hole in the dike is not going to work in the long term. 3. The MPAA & RIAA need to embrace the change that is coming and use their money to work with the members to come up with a new way of doing business that operates in parallel with existing distribution and sales strategies. Traditional sales, over time, will decline and the new digital sales and distribution will take over.
I would like to see a way to buy a digital movie much the same way I buy mp4p AAC files from Apple. Download it using BitTorrent technology (ideal for new popular releases). Don't restrict it too heavily with DRM or I will just rent it and rip my own copy. Make it cheaper then buying the actual DVD. How about $15 for a new release? Let me burn it to DVD-R as many times as I want. Let me stream it locally on my own subnet. Let me copy it all I want. Just embed encrypted ownership information inside the file. i.e. my information! That way, if you see it getting distributed, you go after the one who allowed it to be distributed as well as those doing the actual distribution. The only downside to this is hackers stealing your media and distributing it.
So there are many problems... There were problems before the media went digital too. Movie and Music piracy is nothing new. DRM is not the answer, it will just piss people off and it will be circumvented. A new way of doing business is needed for the old media. Movies, Music, and Books are going digital and new ways of thinking need to occur. Either these industries will adapt or they will be wiped out by the rising tide of change.
Tsunami waves have a way of bypassing any obstacle much the same way electricity will always find the easiest path to ground. Either the industry will change or it will be destroyed by the technology. If the media industry continues to price gouge the public and they keep attacking the P2P networks that are operating in the open; it will force the P2P networks to develop advanced encryption and stealth techniques. It will force them underground. What's to stop them from b
Blender is really really nice. It's main design concept is to use two hands, one on a multi-button mouse or trackball and the other on the keyboard. The numeric keypad is used to change the view, all other major functions are keyboard letter key commands (usually just one key press).
The Blender interface had a face lift recently to add pull down menus, collapsable toolbars, etc.
The main reason for portability is the Blender GUI is completely cross platform. It's that grey Unix style layout that you see in other highend 3D packages and media environments. (Apples got a few media tools that look similar).
These highend interfaces are not meant to be entirely intuitive nor to follow Apple or Windows GUI standards. They are meant to be powerhouses for professionals.
The views in Blender are highly configurable so you can setup a single view with Top, Left, and 3D views plus a forth window for tools, etc.
Having gone through tutorials and buying manuals, I find once I understand the GUI, it's really extremely productive. When you get comfortable with it, you can really fly along manipulating the environment with fantastic ease.
They were wardriving in the parking lot. The crackers discovered a wireless cash register system used by the store when they needed additional cash registers during peak times. They would roll out a portable cash register, plug it into the floor AC outlet and start processing customers. A wireless network sent the data back to the stores main computer just like a cabled cash register. The problem was the wireless network was not encrypted. The crackers did in fact access the wireless network and sniffed the data. Then they used the sniffed packets to login to the stores main computer system which was connected to a home office network WAN. They hacked into several computers and networks and installed rootkits and programs to capture credit card information. The IT staff noticed them and called the FBI. The FBI sat in a van in the parking lot and noticed the crackers pull in the parking lot and just sit there. Observing them showed they had several laptops with them. I assume the store's IT staff was feeding the FBI information. Also the FBI used it's anti-cybercrime unit to collect evidence.
These guys were not harmless hackers. It may have started that way but once they started getting aggresive and had intentions of theft, they lost any morale credibility!
Ahem... No it's not! I am an Administrator. Why should have to login as the local admin account? That's just stupid. Besides, the local admin accounts been renamed and the password set to a random large hex sequenced password. No way to login as local admin on the company builds.
"Is it just me, or are other heavy Firefox users noticing this sort of behavior?"
Uh No, it's just you!!! Been running FireFox 1.0 and PR before it for some time now on Linux, Win32, and OSX. Have not had a single crash.
It's freaking WinBlows, backup your data, uninstall FireFox. Re-install it. If it re-occurs, then backup more data and re-install Windows.
I had a problem recently with Adobe Acrobat Reader where it ran the Windows installer every time I started the application. The only way to fix it was to uninstall the reader and the full Acrobat 6 then reboot, re-install both and update them. Suddenly, it's working fine now. This is also why I run OS X as my primary workstations and Linux for my servers. My Windows box collects dust at work and is only used when absolutely necessary.
What is up with the lame luser 'Ask Slashdot' posts lately?
Huge Enterprise environment where users have an average of 15-20 passwords. Admin users have an average of 20-35 passwords. Security department in the process of tightening security across the enterprise. This involves going from 90 day expiration to 60 day expiration. Forcing all applications to be Security compliant introduces more passwords that expire. For example there are 5 PeopleSoft web based systems and each one has a unique user ID & password.
Quite frankly, the users are pissed off. They have a Windows domain password, a Netware password, a Lotus Notes password, an Intranet password, multiple mainframe passwords, client server application passwords, remote access RSA Token passwords, etc., etc., etc.
The help desks are swamped with hundreds of extra calls a month for password resets. Due to complex password rules, the users have a real hard time choosing a new password. No common words (we have an extensive database that includes sports team names, human names, pet names, etc). Remembers the last 16 passwords and refuses to let you use similar passwords.
The only saving grace is a planned integration of these systems into a single Active Directory Domain with a custom admin tool. Once all the apps are customized to hook into this directory, then the passwords can be syncronized to reduce the number of passwords to a reasonable number.
Beyond this we will probably go with smartcards or some kind of USB RSA key. After all if you sync a bunch of account passwords then if the password is hacked the hacker would be able to access multiple systems. So making a very secure passcode and hooking it to an RSA Token would be advantageous.
Ya know what, I really miss the Keychain from Mac OS 10.3.6 Panther. If I had something like this in Windows, it would eliminate a lot of the hassles. Of course, security would deem it necessary to lock the keychain frequently...
Yellowstone is one huge volcano. There is a measured magma pocket that is 50km by 30km by 10km deep and if/when that thing blows it will spew ash across the whole US, effectively killing the majority of our crops under 6 feet of ash. Not to mention blacking out the Sun for a long long time. Anyone living near the site will be killed by an enormous shockwave.
A hillside above the magma pocket is near the lake and it has risen enough to move the lake many feet over the last 50 years.
Supposedly blows every 600,000 years or so and we are about due for an eruption.
"Calling someone 'evil' is a purely subjective judgement anyway, as they're trying to do their own thing within an ideological structure that they think is right. You don't score points by being critical."
Satan's greatest 'trick' has been to convince 'man' that he doesn't exist and that 'evil' doesn't exist!
Surely, evil exists:
1. Saddam and his offspring threw people into large V8 Cylinder wood chippers feet first. 2. Saddam gassed thousands of his own people (Kurds and Shiites) and the Iranians. 3. Uday would grab any woman he wanted, rape and abuse her and if she resisted, he would kill her family then kill her. This son of a dictator also opened fire on civilian drivers whenever he felt the urge. He also shot a General in the head during a party at the palace. 4. Kim Jong Ill is personally responsible for the deaths of more then a million of his own citizens. He is completely crazy on the same level as Uday. The N. Koreans get zero outside information. Recently all radio's were confiscated and replaced with circuitry that decoded only the regime's broadcasts. Some N. Koreans were given cell phones and then the government took them away a few days later for fear of contact with the outside world. The civilians worship him like a god. 5. Liberia rebels were seen chopping up a foe with large machette knives, urinating on the victim, cutting off his genitals and stuffing them in his mouth before finally shooting him in the head. Other rebels used a victims intestines as a makeshift roadblock with the victims decapitated head on a post nearby.
If this small example does not show evil, or at least evil intent; then please explain it to me.
The left is like an ostridge who buries it's head in the sand or the picture of the monkeys "hear, see, speak no evil". Sorry but the left in the US and Western Europe is blind to evil and as such will be subjected to evil's influence. We are witnessing a repeat of history. Of course the good in the US will come to the aid of western europe in the coming WW-IV just like we did in WW-I and WW-II!
Most iPod / iTunes users converted their own CD's to MP3/AAC and purchased new music via the online Apple iTunes store. I know many iTunes Win32 users who just wanted a decent jukebox and the ability to burn custom mix CD's. They don't own an iPod yet but they may in the future.
Some users may be grabbing P2P traded MP3's but as the RIAA have been suing people for trading copyrighted MP3's this is not nearly as rampant as Microsoft claims.
But if a user already had a pirated MP3 collection gleaned from years of P2P usage prior to the RIAA crack down then they may be using an iPod.
The iTunes Online Store tunes are encoded with copyright information as well as your Apple ID! Using the Hymn application to convert a protected mp4p (protected) to an mp4a (unprotected) does not strip the Apple ID. So most users would be pretty stupid to put iTunes purchased music on any P2P network if it's DRM has been stripped by Hymn.
The Hymn project left the Apple ID to prove they were against stealing music. The main goal of the Hymn project was to remove the DRM so you could put the AAC files onto a system that doesn't support the Apple DRM but does support AAC. You can also then convert an mp4a to an mp3 but you may lose some quality. Stripping the DRM removes the Apple DRM restriction on the number
I am sure there are tools to strip the Apple ID as well but they are not in as wide spread use.
There may even be some water-marking going on with the Apple AAC files that would make them traceable or at least identifiable as iTunes files.
1. Kids in the dating age 18+ 2. Adults out on the town, before they have kids. 3. Under 30 but above 18+ and typically male (Blockbuster Action and Sci-Fi Horror Flicks). 4. Adults with young children (Disney, Pixar, etc.) 5. Young teenagers 12-17, they'll see anything to get out of the house and suck face in the dark.
The remainder are the one's buying/renting DVD's or doing pay per view (cable/satellite). Then there is the less then 1% who pirate over the Internet and burn their own DVD's. Add another 2% for those who bought 321 Studio's software before it was banned and who burn copies of DVD's they rent.
The cost of large screen TV's, DVD players, and Home Theater stereo systems have dropped quite a bit in the USA. Why pay $20+ USD for two to see a movie (not counting food) in a theater when you can sit in the comfort of your own home and watch a high quality DVD (rental cost $3-$5)?
Notice the target audience above? I remember the late 1970's and early 1980's when there were a heck of a lot more rated R movies out there. i.e. nudity, drugs, extreme violence, etc. Notice how most movies are not R rated anymore? This is because of the target audience!
The movie theaters don't make a heck of a lot of money on ticket sales they make most of the money on popcorn and soda. Think about the cost of popcorn and fountain soda then think about what you pay for it in the theater! It's a 200% markup!
Yeah and they kicked the ever loving shit out of the entire arab world! First thing they did was bomb the entire Saudi air force and then they stomped all over the ground forces. It was bloody but it was humiliating to the arabs. This is one of many reasons the arabs hate the jews so much. Well at least a recent reason. They should have expelled all the arabs completely at the end of the 1973 war. Let them be refugees in Jordon, etc.
Israel has a population that is well trained militarily. Everyone serves including woman. They have some of the best weapons in the world and the USA provides them with the rest. We buy a lot of technology from Israel as well.
Dig a moat around your mom's property and fill it with salt water and put sharks in it with freaking laser beams strapped to their heads! Be sure to put up plenty of warning signs and drawbridge over the drive way.
"Warning Freaking Hungry Sharks with Laser Beams" "Do not stare into laser beams" "Do not pet the sharks" "Do not feed the sharks" "Do not taunt the sharks"
Seriously, get some cheap web cams and set them up around the house and out the window. Find some cheap IR motion detectors and have them take photos. Either put the pictures on memory cards individually per cameras or look for a more expensive security solution with better cameras, night vision, and a DVR like storage device. Put up a sign at the end of the driveway and near the doors that says premises under surveillance.
Get a medium to large dog. Try a hound dog they are a bit lethargic and can sit around sleeping most of the time but when an intruder comes by they bark and howl nicely. Most hound dogs are good hunters and excellent guard dogs. They are friendly and not hyper they have short hair (most breeds). Most hound dogs are really very protective of their territory and their masters. Coon hounds although not an official kennel club breed are strong and smart. They can be about the size of a German shepherd or a bit smaller. They've been bred to hunt raccoons and black bears. They are really quite tough animals.
I get enough of this from the media, don't need to see it on a techie site. News for Nerds is one thing but Politics from Nerds? Now that's something I'd rather not read.
I read a heck of a lot of political blogs, closely follow the news, study history and I can clearly state that this particular forum is filled with ignorance, anger and hate from both sides.
Frankly the comments made in the Politics articles that get rated up and the ones that get filtered are completely bogus. Calling Stalin Right-Wing is just plain stupid! Comparing Bush with Hitler is equally stupid. Publishing a forum discussion on a leftist document warning about one party rule by neo-conservatives is ridiculous. Of course one party rule is a bad idea, that's why this country was founded in a balanced way. The democracy of the USA was designed to prevent this very thing from happening. Power is counter balanced and the people get to vote for 2/3rds of the structure. Trying to claim that pre-WWII Germany was a balanced government prior to Hitler's rise to power is just plain wrong! Sure someone didn't say that exactly but it was implied.
It's ironic how people who can be so scientific about things can completely throw out the concept of making a statement and backing it up with facts that actually checkout. Geeks are very logical in most matters but when it comes to politics it suddenly becomes all emotion and the logic goes out the window.
Sorry, but I will have no part in party politics, at least not with this crazy history starved group. I don't have the time to contribute to moderation nor due I have time to read the senseless drivel either.
Whatchamacallit will boycott the Politics channel from now on.
Pioneer already did this and has TiVo to boot. DVR-57H DVD Recorder Player with Hard Disc Record and TiVo.
Sure it's only 120 Hours but who really cares? I get 9 hours with a Series 1 TiVo right now and it's fine. I could upgrade it to 130 by replacing the one drive with two big one's but seriously, 9 hours is enough for me.
I don't record movies most of the time. It's just shows that I watch and most of them are an hour.
Frankly just waiting for both the Pioneer and Panasonic devices to drop in cost and I will buy them. But the Pioneer is $1,800.00 for 120 Hours plus you still need to subscribe to TiVo or buy a lifetime connection. I would rather buy a new PowerBook then spend the money on a new TiVo when I am still not exceeding the capacity of the series 1 unit I have now.
Seriously, how many would really record a lot onto DVD just to avoid buying a series on DVD when it's released at the end of a season?
Why rip movies from HBO, etc. to DVD when you could just stream it from Comcast or rent it?
I have friends who rent and rip DVD's using 321 Studio's software. But I tell ya, it's easier for me to rent the iffy movies and buy the ones I care about. I just don't have the time to rip to DVD.
1. Microsoft announces a new search feature with a layer on top of NTFS called WinFS and will be using MS-SQL Server lite to query the data. Huge bloated solution using technology originally embedded into Office 2003. (Office 2003 installs a mini MS-SQL Service, used with Mail Merge, etc). (I don't know which came first, the chicken or the egg. Microsoft may have announced this ambitious plan after seeing the news about Apple hiring the BeFS developers or they did it first and Apple responded, either way file searching has been itching for a major upgrade industry wide.)
2. Apple hires the BeFS developers and within a year integrates the BeFS metatag system into HFS+. It's extremely fast and it works great. Apple calls it Spotlight and it's available to developers right now in Beta form within the Tiger OS 10.4 beta release. Tiger's been updated a few times already. Expect in first or second quarter of 2005 for gold release. The system works across all file types and can handle indexing the contents of files. There is an API for more advanced metatag insertion and application specific search features and interface. I've seen this system in action and it is truly remarkable. Less then a second to retrieve all sorts of data. Email, AddressBook, keyword search in documents, URL's, Bookmarks, etc., etc., etc. It's so good, why even bother organizing one's data anymore?
- Microsoft forgot a primary engineering philosophy. "Keep It Simple Stupid" - KISS! They simply failed in their initial design of WinFS with MS-SQL Server. They need to scrap it and start over. The primary problems being it's too big and bloated and the potential for bugs is enormous. It's too difficult to build queries. They started with the work done on Office 2003 instead of being more innovative and starting over with a better design.
When XP changed it's search abilities I had endless calls from developers who could no longer search the contents of source code files or SQL files like they could with NT's Find command. Apparently, one had to write a plugin to the MS Search engine to add support for various file types. There were work arounds but they required re-indexing all of the files and it took hours and hours to finally start working. Also it was unpredictable in the way it began a re-index. A new file was not immediately available via search. If Longhorn really does not ship with WinFS then it is deeply disappointing. Well back to giving my developers a grep GUI...
The Apple Spotlight system instantly and on the fly indexes the metadata. It does so very quickly. The results are instantly available. You can save the query and add it to your sidebar so it's available from the main file manager (Finder). Click the smart folder (saved query) and it's always up-to-date with the latest data results. The Smart Folders idea was from iTunes, it's a way to represent a query.
Here's to looking forward to OS X Tiger and future Linux systems using similar metatags! And watching Microsoft fumble the ball and have a thirty yard penalty! Gee, by 2010 MS may actually have a viable search system. Perhaps Google will beat them to it by releasing a Windows file search feature. The Google toolbar and SearchBar are awesome all Google needs to do is add filesytem metatag layer and do the same thing as Apple Spotlight. Heck, I would pay for that solution!
It's not that their english is poor it's the extremely thick accent and the faster rate of verbal communication.
Indian call centers should be training their staff to slow the hell down when they speak and to work on their accents. It sure is english but it's the Indian accent or British accent plus the speed.
Now the Philippines is different. Their accent is almost Spanish when speaking English. Of course being occupied by the Spanish for 300 years affected that. They speak english because America won the Philippines after the Spanish American war. Recently, in terms of history, the Philippines is now independent. But America is responsible for building their schools and educating the common Filipino (this actually pissed off the elite Filipino's to no end...).
Latest figures place their Deficit to about 80% of their gross domestic product. You think the US deficit is bad? Ours is only 4% of the gross domestic product. The economy in the Philippines is about to collapse in about 3 years.
They could use the work afforded by US offshoring. Of course the reason their deficit is so bad is because of severe corruption problems in all levels of business and government. When Marco's was involved it was millions upon millions of peso's embezelled. The fact that the president was at the top and corrupt only proves that the corruption flows all the way to the bottom!
The early (DarpaNet) Internet was designed by the US Government as a cold war computing network. It was to remain intact in the event of one or more portions of the network being obliterated in a nuclear attack. Multiple point to point connections that could re-route to reach a destination.
Today's Internet is much more dependent on large pipelines and due to increased traffic is more vulnerable. Worms like Code Red and others effectively shutdown the Internet making it essentially useless. This lasted for days and weeks as new viruses spun off from the older viruses.
The question would be not so much the security of the Fed's connectivity but the reliability of that connectivity. Say you have another worm outbreak due to some flaw in WinXP SP2 that causes the Internet to literally flood with massive amounts of traffic that ends up consuming 90% of the bandwidth and ends up bottlenecking and strangling the connections in highly populated areas. The Internet as it exists today needs a serious upgrade in the next few years in regards to bandwidth, encryption, and protocols.
Just look at what happened in NYC to both the cell phone networks and the landline's when 911 happened. They were so overwhelmed by the network traffic that many people could not make a phone call. Millions of people in NYC picked up the phone and Millions more outside NYC tried to call family and friends in NYC.
I was in a meeting just this morning when the customer whipped one of those AlphaSmart things out of his bag and started using it! Now I know what the heck it was. I was sitting there expecting him to start printing labels with it or something...
Yeah right, you implement a white blood cell anti-worm/virus and then some schmuck invents an electronic AIDS virus to kill your beautiful immune system!
Slashdot Mirror
Try this.... Go back and watch those old shows! Having not seen Battlestar Galatica in a long time, I watched the old show on SciFi for a few episodes and I ended up going 'Ewwwwh, I can't believe I liked this crappy show!'.
The new Battlestar remake is a major improvement, however.
As time goes on our standards increase. Shows from the late 70's and early 80's which many of us grew up on are in reality quite lame!
Much of it is cultural changes. Television is not all that great. There are a handful of shows that I watch, but I use my TiVo to grab those shows so I can watch them when I am ready to.
Some shows, I like:
FarScape, Lexx (just wish they had an uncensored version! used to be pretty kewl on ShowTime), Stargate Atlantis (too out of touch on SG-1), Enterprise, The Deadzone, Futurama, Simpsons, South Park, Hellsing, Coupling (BBCA version), CSI, CSI Miami, CSI NY, BattleStar Galatica (Jan 14th) and almost all of the HBO series (Curb your Enthusiasm, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, Carnivale, and the Sopranos.
I still have a Series1 because I am waiting for HD support and I don't want to spend a fortune for it.
It's really simple, I never went to LokiTorrent before but just scanned their list of torrents; There are several recently released movies being linked to from the site. Unlike Napster or other P2P networks all Torrent sites are just lists of Torrent seed locations. The Torrent websites just make it easy to find what you are looking for as BitTorrent doesn't have a search mechanism.
Right at the top of the list, I saw 'White Chicks' available for download. Although, I wouldn't rent nor buy that movie, it is indeed being served up for download. There were also pirated games, etc.
Sorry, but distributing commercial content for free is THEFT! This hasn't changed. I remember warez sites for Commodore 64 games, etc. It's the same thing except, it's on a much larger worldwide network using a file distribution tool that allows for fast downloads of popular content. It's no different then the DVD pirates in Hong Kong who duplicate DVD's offshore in international waters and then smuggle them to Hong Kong and distribute to the black market, it's just being accomplished in a completely digital way.
Movies cost a lot to produce and distribute, they also can make a heck of a lot of money. Sure, most people are not going to download a movie via BT. However, the young digital generation definitely will. The primary target audience of Movies and Music is the age 12->30 group and it's this group that is increasing Internet and technology savvy. When this group grows up their kids will be even more savvy. This is what scares the hell out of the MPAA and RIAA! Their market may not be shrinking yet, but in 10 years it will implode.
Networks are getting faster and faster, storage mediums are increasing in capacity, computers are getting more and more powerful. The law of the wild is now in effect, adapt or go extinct.
1. Stealing music, movies, games, or books is WRONG.
2. Suing your customers and trying to plug the hole in the dike is not going to work in the long term.
3. The MPAA & RIAA need to embrace the change that is coming and use their money to work with the members to come up with a new way of doing business that operates in parallel with existing distribution and sales strategies. Traditional sales, over time, will decline and the new digital sales and distribution will take over.
I would like to see a way to buy a digital movie much the same way I buy mp4p AAC files from Apple. Download it using BitTorrent technology (ideal for new popular releases). Don't restrict it too heavily with DRM or I will just rent it and rip my own copy. Make it cheaper then buying the actual DVD. How about $15 for a new release? Let me burn it to DVD-R as many times as I want. Let me stream it locally on my own subnet. Let me copy it all I want. Just embed encrypted ownership information inside the file. i.e. my information! That way, if you see it getting distributed, you go after the one who allowed it to be distributed as well as those doing the actual distribution. The only downside to this is hackers stealing your media and distributing it.
So there are many problems... There were problems before the media went digital too. Movie and Music piracy is nothing new. DRM is not the answer, it will just piss people off and it will be circumvented. A new way of doing business is needed for the old media. Movies, Music, and Books are going digital and new ways of thinking need to occur. Either these industries will adapt or they will be wiped out by the rising tide of change.
Tsunami waves have a way of bypassing any obstacle much the same way electricity will always find the easiest path to ground. Either the industry will change or it will be destroyed by the technology. If the media industry continues to price gouge the public and they keep attacking the P2P networks that are operating in the open; it will force the P2P networks to develop advanced encryption and stealth techniques. It will force them underground. What's to stop them from b
Blender is really really nice. It's main design concept is to use two hands, one on a multi-button mouse or trackball and the other on the keyboard. The numeric keypad is used to change the view, all other major functions are keyboard letter key commands (usually just one key press).
The Blender interface had a face lift recently to add pull down menus, collapsable toolbars, etc.
The main reason for portability is the Blender GUI is completely cross platform. It's that grey Unix style layout that you see in other highend 3D packages and media environments. (Apples got a few media tools that look similar).
These highend interfaces are not meant to be entirely intuitive nor to follow Apple or Windows GUI standards. They are meant to be powerhouses for professionals.
The views in Blender are highly configurable so you can setup a single view with Top, Left, and 3D views plus a forth window for tools, etc.
Having gone through tutorials and buying manuals, I find once I understand the GUI, it's really extremely productive. When you get comfortable with it, you can really fly along manipulating the environment with fantastic ease.
Also, the IT Staff responsible for the wireless network should be sacked as well!
They were wardriving in the parking lot. The crackers discovered a wireless cash register system used by the store when they needed additional cash registers during peak times. They would roll out a portable cash register, plug it into the floor AC outlet and start processing customers. A wireless network sent the data back to the stores main computer just like a cabled cash register. The problem was the wireless network was not encrypted. The crackers did in fact access the wireless network and sniffed the data. Then they used the sniffed packets to login to the stores main computer system which was connected to a home office network WAN. They hacked into several computers and networks and installed rootkits and programs to capture credit card information. The IT staff noticed them and called the FBI. The FBI sat in a van in the parking lot and noticed the crackers pull in the parking lot and just sit there. Observing them showed they had several laptops with them. I assume the store's IT staff was feeding the FBI information. Also the FBI used it's anti-cybercrime unit to collect evidence.
These guys were not harmless hackers. It may have started that way but once they started getting aggresive and had intentions of theft, they lost any morale credibility!
I say screw'em they got what they deserved!
Ahem... No it's not! I am an Administrator. Why should have to login as the local admin account? That's just stupid. Besides, the local admin accounts been renamed and the password set to a random large hex sequenced password. No way to login as local admin on the company builds.
"Is it just me, or are other heavy Firefox users noticing this sort of behavior?"
Uh No, it's just you!!! Been running FireFox 1.0 and PR before it for some time now on Linux, Win32, and OSX. Have not had a single crash.
It's freaking WinBlows, backup your data, uninstall FireFox. Re-install it. If it re-occurs, then backup more data and re-install Windows.
I had a problem recently with Adobe Acrobat Reader where it ran the Windows installer every time I started the application. The only way to fix it was to uninstall the reader and the full Acrobat 6 then reboot, re-install both and update them. Suddenly, it's working fine now. This is also why I run OS X as my primary workstations and Linux for my servers. My Windows box collects dust at work and is only used when absolutely necessary.
What is up with the lame luser 'Ask Slashdot' posts lately?
QuickBooks came with my new OS X PowerBook, I've got an installer for it on the hard disk.
I haven't tried it out on Windows so I don't know how well it compares. I have been told that Quicken kinda sucks on the Mac.
Huge Enterprise environment where users have an average of 15-20 passwords. Admin users have an average of 20-35 passwords. Security department in the process of tightening security across the enterprise. This involves going from 90 day expiration to 60 day expiration. Forcing all applications to be Security compliant introduces more passwords that expire. For example there are 5 PeopleSoft web based systems and each one has a unique user ID & password.
Quite frankly, the users are pissed off. They have a Windows domain password, a Netware password, a Lotus Notes password, an Intranet password, multiple mainframe passwords, client server application passwords, remote access RSA Token passwords, etc., etc., etc.
The help desks are swamped with hundreds of extra calls a month for password resets. Due to complex password rules, the users have a real hard time choosing a new password. No common words (we have an extensive database that includes sports team names, human names, pet names, etc). Remembers the last 16 passwords and refuses to let you use similar passwords.
The only saving grace is a planned integration of these systems into a single Active Directory Domain with a custom admin tool. Once all the apps are customized to hook into this directory, then the passwords can be syncronized to reduce the number of passwords to a reasonable number.
Beyond this we will probably go with smartcards or some kind of USB RSA key. After all if you sync a bunch of account passwords then if the password is hacked the hacker would be able to access multiple systems. So making a very secure passcode and hooking it to an RSA Token would be advantageous.
Ya know what, I really miss the Keychain from Mac OS 10.3.6 Panther. If I had something like this in Windows, it would eliminate a lot of the hassles. Of course, security would deem it necessary to lock the keychain frequently...
The treaty was signed in 1966! It was a treaty between the USA and the Soviet Union.
Last I heard, the USSR is no more...
Thus making the treaty null and void, all thanks to Ronald Reagan.
Super Volcano's
Yellowstone is one huge volcano. There is a measured magma pocket that is 50km by 30km by 10km deep and if/when that thing blows it will spew ash across the whole US, effectively killing the majority of our crops under 6 feet of ash. Not to mention blacking out the Sun for a long long time. Anyone living near the site will be killed by an enormous shockwave.
A hillside above the magma pocket is near the lake and it has risen enough to move the lake many feet over the last 50 years.
Supposedly blows every 600,000 years or so and we are about due for an eruption.
Bravo! You beat me to it!
"Calling someone 'evil' is a purely subjective judgement anyway, as they're trying to do their own thing within an ideological structure that they think is right. You don't score points by being critical."
Satan's greatest 'trick' has been to convince 'man' that he doesn't exist and that 'evil' doesn't exist!
Surely, evil exists:
1. Saddam and his offspring threw people into large V8 Cylinder wood chippers feet first.
2. Saddam gassed thousands of his own people (Kurds and Shiites) and the Iranians.
3. Uday would grab any woman he wanted, rape and abuse her and if she resisted, he would kill her family then kill her. This son of a dictator also opened fire on civilian drivers whenever he felt the urge. He also shot a General in the head during a party at the palace.
4. Kim Jong Ill is personally responsible for the deaths of more then a million of his own citizens. He is completely crazy on the same level as Uday. The N. Koreans get zero outside information. Recently all radio's were confiscated and replaced with circuitry that decoded only the regime's broadcasts. Some N. Koreans were given cell phones and then the government took them away a few days later for fear of contact with the outside world. The civilians worship him like a god.
5. Liberia rebels were seen chopping up a foe with large machette knives, urinating on the victim, cutting off his genitals and stuffing them in his mouth before finally shooting him in the head. Other rebels used a victims intestines as a makeshift roadblock with the victims decapitated head on a post nearby.
If this small example does not show evil, or at least evil intent; then please explain it to me.
The left is like an ostridge who buries it's head in the sand or the picture of the monkeys "hear, see, speak no evil". Sorry but the left in the US and Western Europe is blind to evil and as such will be subjected to evil's influence. We are witnessing a repeat of history. Of course the good in the US will come to the aid of western europe in the coming WW-IV just like we did in WW-I and WW-II!
Most iPod / iTunes users converted their own CD's to MP3/AAC and purchased new music via the online Apple iTunes store. I know many iTunes Win32 users who just wanted a decent jukebox and the ability to burn custom mix CD's. They don't own an iPod yet but they may in the future.
Some users may be grabbing P2P traded MP3's but as the RIAA have been suing people for trading copyrighted MP3's this is not nearly as rampant as Microsoft claims.
But if a user already had a pirated MP3 collection gleaned from years of P2P usage prior to the RIAA crack down then they may be using an iPod.
The iTunes Online Store tunes are encoded with copyright information as well as your Apple ID! Using the Hymn application to convert a protected mp4p (protected) to an mp4a (unprotected) does not strip the Apple ID. So most users would be pretty stupid to put iTunes purchased music on any P2P network if it's DRM has been stripped by Hymn.
The Hymn project left the Apple ID to prove they were against stealing music. The main goal of the Hymn project was to remove the DRM so you could put the AAC files onto a system that doesn't support the Apple DRM but does support AAC. You can also then convert an mp4a to an mp3 but you may lose some quality. Stripping the DRM removes the Apple DRM restriction on the number
I am sure there are tools to strip the Apple ID as well but they are not in as wide spread use.
There may even be some water-marking going on with the Apple AAC files that would make them traceable or at least identifiable as iTunes files.
The primary targets for Movie Theaters:
1. Kids in the dating age 18+
2. Adults out on the town, before they have kids.
3. Under 30 but above 18+ and typically male (Blockbuster Action and Sci-Fi Horror Flicks).
4. Adults with young children (Disney, Pixar, etc.)
5. Young teenagers 12-17, they'll see anything to get out of the house and suck face in the dark.
The remainder are the one's buying/renting DVD's or doing pay per view (cable/satellite). Then there is the less then 1% who pirate over the Internet and burn their own DVD's. Add another 2% for those who bought 321 Studio's software before it was banned and who burn copies of DVD's they rent.
The cost of large screen TV's, DVD players, and Home Theater stereo systems have dropped quite a bit in the USA. Why pay $20+ USD for two to see a movie (not counting food) in a theater when you can sit in the comfort of your own home and watch a high quality DVD (rental cost $3-$5)?
Notice the target audience above? I remember the late 1970's and early 1980's when there were a heck of a lot more rated R movies out there. i.e. nudity, drugs, extreme violence, etc. Notice how most movies are not R rated anymore? This is because of the target audience!
The movie theaters don't make a heck of a lot of money on ticket sales they make most of the money on popcorn and soda. Think about the cost of popcorn and fountain soda then think about what you pay for it in the theater! It's a 200% markup!
HP is betting the shop on commodity based 64 bit computing in Itanium, Itanium II, etc.
They sure are and with not much success.
----------------
That would explain why HP just dropped Itanium and is now looking at AMD 64
Yeah and they kicked the ever loving shit out of the entire arab world! First thing they did was bomb the entire Saudi air force and then they stomped all over the ground forces. It was bloody but it was humiliating to the arabs. This is one of many reasons the arabs hate the jews so much. Well at least a recent reason. They should have expelled all the arabs completely at the end of the 1973 war. Let them be refugees in Jordon, etc.
Israel has a population that is well trained militarily. Everyone serves including woman. They have some of the best weapons in the world and the USA provides them with the rest. We buy a lot of technology from Israel as well.
Dig a moat around your mom's property and fill it with salt water and put sharks in it with freaking laser beams strapped to their heads! Be sure to put up plenty of warning signs and drawbridge over the drive way.
"Warning Freaking Hungry Sharks with Laser Beams"
"Do not stare into laser beams"
"Do not pet the sharks"
"Do not feed the sharks"
"Do not taunt the sharks"
Seriously, get some cheap web cams and set them up around the house and out the window. Find some cheap IR motion detectors and have them take photos. Either put the pictures on memory cards individually per cameras or look for a more expensive security solution with better cameras, night vision, and a DVR like storage device. Put up a sign at the end of the driveway and near the doors that says premises under surveillance.
Get a medium to large dog. Try a hound dog they are a bit lethargic and can sit around sleeping most of the time but when an intruder comes by they bark and howl nicely. Most hound dogs are good hunters and excellent guard dogs. They are friendly and not hyper they have short hair (most breeds). Most hound dogs are really very protective of their territory and their masters. Coon hounds although not an official kennel club breed are strong and smart. They can be about the size of a German shepherd or a bit smaller. They've been bred to hunt raccoons and black bears. They are really quite tough animals.
That's it! I'm now filtering the Politics Topic!
I get enough of this from the media, don't need to see it on a techie site. News for Nerds is one thing but Politics from Nerds? Now that's something I'd rather not read.
I read a heck of a lot of political blogs, closely follow the news, study history and I can clearly state that this particular forum is filled with ignorance, anger and hate from both sides.
Frankly the comments made in the Politics articles that get rated up and the ones that get filtered are completely bogus. Calling Stalin Right-Wing is just plain stupid! Comparing Bush with Hitler is equally stupid. Publishing a forum discussion on a leftist document warning about one party rule by neo-conservatives is ridiculous. Of course one party rule is a bad idea, that's why this country was founded in a balanced way. The democracy of the USA was designed to prevent this very thing from happening. Power is counter balanced and the people get to vote for 2/3rds of the structure. Trying to claim that pre-WWII Germany was a balanced government prior to Hitler's rise to power is just plain wrong! Sure someone didn't say that exactly but it was implied.
It's ironic how people who can be so scientific about things can completely throw out the concept of making a statement and backing it up with facts that actually checkout. Geeks are very logical in most matters but when it comes to politics it suddenly becomes all emotion and the logic goes out the window.
Sorry, but I will have no part in party politics, at least not with this crazy history starved group. I don't have the time to contribute to moderation nor due I have time to read the senseless drivel either.
Whatchamacallit will boycott the Politics channel from now on.
Pioneer already did this and has TiVo to boot. DVR-57H DVD Recorder Player with Hard Disc Record and TiVo.
Sure it's only 120 Hours but who really cares? I get 9 hours with a Series 1 TiVo right now and it's fine. I could upgrade it to 130 by replacing the one drive with two big one's but seriously, 9 hours is enough for me.
I don't record movies most of the time. It's just shows that I watch and most of them are an hour.
Frankly just waiting for both the Pioneer and Panasonic devices to drop in cost and I will buy them. But the Pioneer is $1,800.00 for 120 Hours plus you still need to subscribe to TiVo or buy a lifetime connection. I would rather buy a new PowerBook then spend the money on a new TiVo when I am still not exceeding the capacity of the series 1 unit I have now.
Seriously, how many would really record a lot onto DVD just to avoid buying a series on DVD when it's released at the end of a season?
Why rip movies from HBO, etc. to DVD when you could just stream it from Comcast or rent it?
I have friends who rent and rip DVD's using 321 Studio's software. But I tell ya, it's easier for me to rent the iffy movies and buy the ones I care about. I just don't have the time to rip to DVD.
The freaking shute didn't open... It went splat right into the desert sand!
1. Microsoft announces a new search feature with a layer on top of NTFS called WinFS and will be using MS-SQL Server lite to query the data. Huge bloated solution using technology originally embedded into Office 2003. (Office 2003 installs a mini MS-SQL Service, used with Mail Merge, etc). (I don't know which came first, the chicken or the egg. Microsoft may have announced this ambitious plan after seeing the news about Apple hiring the BeFS developers or they did it first and Apple responded, either way file searching has been itching for a major upgrade industry wide.)
2. Apple hires the BeFS developers and within a year integrates the BeFS metatag system into HFS+. It's extremely fast and it works great. Apple calls it Spotlight and it's available to developers right now in Beta form within the Tiger OS 10.4 beta release. Tiger's been updated a few times already. Expect in first or second quarter of 2005 for gold release. The system works across all file types and can handle indexing the contents of files. There is an API for more advanced metatag insertion and application specific search features and interface. I've seen this system in action and it is truly remarkable. Less then a second to retrieve all sorts of data. Email, AddressBook, keyword search in documents, URL's, Bookmarks, etc., etc., etc. It's so good, why even bother organizing one's data anymore?
- Microsoft forgot a primary engineering philosophy. "Keep It Simple Stupid" - KISS! They simply failed in their initial design of WinFS with MS-SQL Server. They need to scrap it and start over. The primary problems being it's too big and bloated and the potential for bugs is enormous. It's too difficult to build queries. They started with the work done on Office 2003 instead of being more innovative and starting over with a better design.
When XP changed it's search abilities I had endless calls from developers who could no longer search the contents of source code files or SQL files like they could with NT's Find command. Apparently, one had to write a plugin to the MS Search engine to add support for various file types. There were work arounds but they required re-indexing all of the files and it took hours and hours to finally start working. Also it was unpredictable in the way it began a re-index. A new file was not immediately available via search. If Longhorn really does not ship with WinFS then it is deeply disappointing. Well back to giving my developers a grep GUI...
The Apple Spotlight system instantly and on the fly indexes the metadata. It does so very quickly. The results are instantly available. You can save the query and add it to your sidebar so it's available from the main file manager (Finder). Click the smart folder (saved query) and it's always up-to-date with the latest data results. The Smart Folders idea was from iTunes, it's a way to represent a query.
Here's to looking forward to OS X Tiger and future Linux systems using similar metatags! And watching Microsoft fumble the ball and have a thirty yard penalty! Gee, by 2010 MS may actually have a viable search system. Perhaps Google will beat them to it by releasing a Windows file search feature. The Google toolbar and SearchBar are awesome all Google needs to do is add filesytem metatag layer and do the same thing as Apple Spotlight. Heck, I would pay for that solution!
It's not that their english is poor it's the extremely thick accent and the faster rate of verbal communication.
Indian call centers should be training their staff to slow the hell down when they speak and to work on their accents. It sure is english but it's the Indian accent or British accent plus the speed.
Now the Philippines is different. Their accent is almost Spanish when speaking English. Of course being occupied by the Spanish for 300 years affected that. They speak english because America won the Philippines after the Spanish American war. Recently, in terms of history, the Philippines is now independent. But America is responsible for building their schools and educating the common Filipino (this actually pissed off the elite Filipino's to no end...).
Latest figures place their Deficit to about 80% of their gross domestic product. You think the US deficit is bad? Ours is only 4% of the gross domestic product. The economy in the Philippines is about to collapse in about 3 years.
They could use the work afforded by US offshoring. Of course the reason their deficit is so bad is because of severe corruption problems in all levels of business and government. When Marco's was involved it was millions upon millions of peso's embezelled. The fact that the president was at the top and corrupt only proves that the corruption flows all the way to the bottom!
The early (DarpaNet) Internet was designed by the US Government as a cold war computing network. It was to remain intact in the event of one or more portions of the network being obliterated in a nuclear attack. Multiple point to point connections that could re-route to reach a destination.
Today's Internet is much more dependent on large pipelines and due to increased traffic is more vulnerable. Worms like Code Red and others effectively shutdown the Internet making it essentially useless. This lasted for days and weeks as new viruses spun off from the older viruses.
The question would be not so much the security of the Fed's connectivity but the reliability of that connectivity. Say you have another worm outbreak due to some flaw in WinXP SP2 that causes the Internet to literally flood with massive amounts of traffic that ends up consuming 90% of the bandwidth and ends up bottlenecking and strangling the connections in highly populated areas. The Internet as it exists today needs a serious upgrade in the next few years in regards to bandwidth, encryption, and protocols.
Just look at what happened in NYC to both the cell phone networks and the landline's when 911 happened. They were so overwhelmed by the network traffic that many people could not make a phone call. Millions of people in NYC picked up the phone and Millions more outside NYC tried to call family and friends in NYC.
I was in a meeting just this morning when the customer whipped one of those AlphaSmart things out of his bag and started using it! Now I know what the heck it was. I was sitting there expecting him to start printing labels with it or something...
Yeah right, you implement a white blood cell anti-worm/virus and then some schmuck invents an electronic AIDS virus to kill your beautiful immune system!