In Canada at least, perhaps they even triple-dip: if I go buy a phone outright from them, they still try to lock it up. And if I bring my own phone to the table, I still have to pay the same monthly rate on the contract as the guy who has three years of subsidizing built in. Why doesn't my contract rate go down as I pay more up front for the phone. Sure, there might be a bit of a premium if I am signing a month-to-month contract because the company has no guarantee that I'm going to stick around, but shouldn't I get a bit of a break? Why can't I sign a year contract at a rate that doesn't include the subsidy? Makes me wonder if you really are better off going to someone else, they aren't actually giving me anything to switch to them, they are probably making more from switchers because they haven't provided a phone, but are still collecting money as if they had.
Now just when am I going to see something like this up here in Canada? I have unlimited web use on my contract plan, but I can't use opera mini because of the subsidy locks on my phone. It's not so much the actual task of unlocking it that bothers me, it's the fact that I have to go about all this trouble even though I'm not breaking any rules. I already pay for the internet and I would probably be saving the phone company bits by using the opera proxy rather than trying to load page after page in normal html.
Starbucks Employee: That'll be an hour's wages please.
Me: Thanks!/me hands over cash, takes careful first sip.
Thats when you get to see my java regular expression.
Generally it will be me wincing in pain because I just burned my tongue. Sometimes, if it's cooled enough, you'll hear a quiet "MmmMmmm" in the style of Family Guy's Herbert.
In my opinion, my slingbox is the easiest way to watch the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica because my Mom has the only cable connection in the house, and its up there on the main floor.
Never mind that. I'm moving out soon. I just hope my sweet new invention isn't outlawed. A self-loading and self-ejecting VCR that prints mailing labels then calls a courier to get all new episodes to me anywhere in the world. Now just where am I going to find a huge cache of blank betamax tapes.
Once I read the upside-down-ternet article earlier today, I realized that I prefer my "questionable" pictures load upside-down! That idea was so great, I implemented the last half of the article into a content filter to make sure all my favourite sites render "acrobatically-enhanced" photos!
All that intermediate processing is going to cause a big drain on my proxy. I NEED 8 cores.
Exactly. My Mathematica box includes a Windows and Linux Version as well the Mac version I use... The majority of the code is obviously already portable. Porting the software was probably just as easy as working out a few kinks in a new interface (and that the interface would use API's that Apple has been managing cross-platform over the last 5 years).
Not to say that Wolfram isn't smart for doing business like this. Create your products to be portable, and you cover the entire market base. It's a stroke of genius really. I just wouldn't think this is an accurate representation of all the developers out there.
Just don't get me started about Wolfram's activation scheme. What a nightmare to change hardware. What is this 4-day demo bull whilst I wait for them to get me a valid key. How am I supposed to get any work done that way. Forget the fact that I would only ever change hardware on a Friday so that the weekend is there as a buffer and things be running smoothly again on Monday. Monday rolls around and BAM! your waiting till Thursday, if you were able to convince them over the phone that you had already uninstalled it from the old machine and had no intentions of installing it there again.
Like the subject says, this post will be ridiculously off topic, but worh every -1 I get, just for the laugh.
poop hits fan, switch gets flipped, data goes bye-bye. Funny you should say that...
I had a summer job at one time where they processed hay that farmers would bring in for resale. As part of the process there was a rather large fan (upwards of 400hp) that would suck air through the hay via a grate in the floor and seals on the side of the rows, all in an effort to dry the hay (makes it lighter, reduces spoilage). On one occasion, a farmer dropped off some hay that had been stored atop the manure pile. That day, the switch was flipped first, and then poop hit the fan. No data was lost though.
The rest is history. No kidding, fifteen years later and there is still a stain on the side of the building. The building in question was the employee's trailer. Don't even get me started about why it was placed direcly in line with the output of that fan. Many, many things can be found embedded in the sheet metal siding of that trailer, but shite is definately the most memorable.
Do I have to go get a lawer? Will Apple be suing me? I told a friend something I read on ThinkSecret. I even did it after I suspected the rumor was in fact inside information. Does that put me in the wrong?
I guess maybe I'll just start asking people and websites for non-disclosure agreements so that I can be sure that what I am legally allowed to pass on something that I heard.
The individual key thing is too easy to break. Lets try and go through it.
One needs only break one of those keys and distribute it. Then all movies will be able to be read freely until that key is removed from the standard keyspace. This key may not be able to be gained from the disk itself, but manufacturing insiders would have access, and it may be able to be reverse engineered from the player ROM itself.
Considering how quickly a new rip propagates down the network, just think how quickly 128 bits of data could do it. For instance it could easily be stegged into an image or sound file, and distibuted right under the noses of onlookers. There would be some lag time between the key being available and the studios finding out about it.
Now wait until a guy gets his hands on ten of the "crackable" players. He gets ten unique keys, and now the problem is tenfold. Release a new key as soon as you see that the old one is no longer in use, and you're back in business.
The studios don't know which key has been cracked, they only know that one has. Unless they mark the content separately with the key in question, or a hash thereof, and try and get it back after the movie has been recommpressed. They couldn't disable a whole lot/brand/model of players for fear of a peasant uprising.
Compound this by the fact that it would be a recurring process, happening through multiple channels, and the pirates would have no trouble keeping ahead of the studios. The crackers stay a day ahead of the studios, and there is no control. The problem is that they would be weeks ahead at least.
I don't mean to promote these things. I have downloaded a movie or two before for a laugh, but it's not worth it in time and quality, and on top of it all it's illegal and immoral (to me anyway). Buy the DVD if the movie has the sticker value to you, leave it on the store shelf if it doesn't. I don't forsee myself having any problems in this key-per-unit scenario; My key will always work. I only don't understand why people waste their money on something so fruitless as DRM.
Agreed. From TFA: The basic idea in recovering from cracking is to make a compromised player key obsolete. Compromised players could continue to play old discs, but not new releases. And crackers would have to start all over again.
Consumers are really going to be interested in continuously buying new players or upgrading their current firmware to play new realeases because someone broke through their brand of player. Save for the fact that once someone breaks it once, it will just get easier to do it the second time.
I can see how this would solve the cracking problem entirely. Consumers have the money, thus, consumers have the power. The simple fact is, people won't buy a disc that won't play in their player -- At least I'm not about to new player to play their new disc every time this happens.
In case they think up some scheme that means I won't have to pay anything for the upgraded player: my time is as valuable to me as money, so I had also better not have to spend any of that on getting my machine to work again either.
I would be really pissed off if the developer at the darkroom service I use decided to do any of that without specific instructions from me.
I, on the other hand, would be really pissed off if they made the photo look worse after printing it. That they altered it is of no concern to me, since they don't actually change the content of the image. If it looks better, I'd applaud them for helping me out. If it looks worse and they refuse to fix it, I'll find another lab, as I have done in the past.
I do my own image enhancement (or is it modification) of photos before I send one to the lab to be enlarged (only ever enlarged for display). When this is the case, I expect that any alterations made will be to achieve any color matching on their specific printer. I expect this be done without my specific instruction; it's part of the deal. In the past, labs that went beyond this were usually applying some extra color saturation; they for some reason think this "looks better". I didn't get really pissed at them for this. I just ask that they do it again, free of charge, most of the time they have no problem reprinting them. For the places that won't reprint for free, I just move on. I leave my prints there, without paying, and find another place. This is the way you deal with businesses. They deal in money, not feelings -- thats what you have to leverage against them.
Sorry I got a little off topic, just thought I'd add my couple cents worth.
Open source is not about windows or linux. Linux happens to be open source. Windows happens not to be. Why should anybody have any qualms about running open source apps on windows. Why should anybody care what app runs where.
If more people choose open source alternatives because they are becoming available on windows, all the power to them. If, in turn, more open source applications are started because of a more inclusive user base, then we all win.
Nothing prevents open-source software from being run on a proprietary-code operating system. I don't hear people complaining that Firefox is available in a windows version. I don't hear people complaining that linux is allowed to run a proprietary ALPHA processor. These things are always applauded everywhere else.
The main thing Microsoft has going for them is Office; not Windows and not IE. Business NEED Office, and for that they need windows, and with that comes IE. If Windows users become more accepting to OSS on their machines, if they see the quality that such software can have before dismissing it as "free and therefore crap", they may be more likely to try an open source alternative to Office. If Office wanes, then Windows wanes. Why then shouldn't Linux followers push more open source software to windows. As soon as people realize that they can have a "free" OS, a "free" office suite, and a "free" development environment, all of which working as well or better than the proprietary apps, then they are more likely to give Linux or another open source operating system a second look.
I think it would be very beneficial to teach high school students about information security and privacy. So little is formally taught about this in school. In my experience, it is usually learned the hard way when either you or someone you know gets some extra credit card charges from another country or some other illegal use of your personal information. Why can't we make an effort to change this? Why not inform them of the rules that govern the collection of such information. Why not inform people some best practices in guarding their personal information. We should be making a step toward the students, at the time in their lives when it is just becoming important to take charge of their own information and security, instead of waiting for them to reach out for themselves.
For instance, I want to be able to deny a store from collecting my name, address, and phone number when I make a purchase without the "it's store policy" line. After all, that information is not required to provide the product or service, and I am therefore under no obligation to give it to them, and they are NOT allowed to refuse service on such grounds. If more people knew that this was the case, don't you think more stores would have to wake up when nobody would just go-with-the-flow and mindlessly give out unnecessary information without thinking?
can anyone here tell me who he is, and what he has done (with proof)?
I would ask that any fabricated proof be so well done that the/. discussion of it continue for days. Also, proof presented in a neutral voice is much more likely to be accepted as fact. Just a helpful hint...
I want to see a linux distro, so that I can have a linux session on my emulated windows session on my linux box.
But seriously, I would think that the ultimate OSS, namely some flavor of linux, would be valuable to have on the CD that somebody new to open source could try? I met some distros that were easy to install/uninstall and use safely when I first dipped my tows into the linux water.
I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 4. It was released about 6 years ago. I have never had any problems with it. Initially training it, I spent about four hours reading the text passages, much more than it suggests that you need to train. I have long been able to dictate entire paragraphs and need only make a single correction. This is still much faster than typing for me, usually around 100wpm (I know, I was amazed too).
I modify my speech when I dictate, exaggerating the phonemes, speaking as clearly as possible while maintaining a reasonable and steady pace. Remember -- this version was from 6+ years ago, and I initially started on a 400Mhz PIII. With advances in hardware and software, I'm sure newer versions are even better these days.
The only drawback is when people make fun of me for speaking so oddly in a room with only a computer.
I'v been thinking about doing a project like this for a long time. I was hesitant before because of the monetary and time cost of doing such a project, and I was afraid of failure. Now it seems that the references and available support are to a point where I might actually be able to succeed. Maybe I won't have to live with Tivo pop up ads while fast forewarding after all. I had better get on with buying that HDTV decoder card before the broadcast flags come around...
As a sidenote: Some of us don't want to see that goatse shit. I'm not at all advocating censorship, but at least warn me first -- don't hide that shit in a tinyURL.
As confirmed by "An Anonymous Reader" on the Lycos story. It would seem from the updated article that the story was a hoax. Regardless of what the screensaver in question may or may not do to the reputation of lycos, the hoax will certainly damage it -- not everyone will know it was a hoax. And nobody is accountable.
There can be cases where anonymity is good. If I were witnessing atrocities in another country, I would want to report on this completely anonymously. But these cases are few and far between and the majority of the time it is unnecessary. Perhaps we should all start by realizing that further fact-checking had better be done when somebody is not putting their reputation on the line for the accuracy of some given information.
WiebeTech also has a product, the RT5, that has 2TB of storage. The price is much higher though. With this model, you can choose the RAID 0-5, and hot-swap the drives. They also purport to support Windows XP, 2K, Mac OS X, and Linux via dual Firewire 400/800 connections.
Slashdot Mirror
If successful, they will have to "use" the trademarked phrase actively to maintain it. Who wants that?
In Canada at least, perhaps they even triple-dip: if I go buy a phone outright from them, they still try to lock it up. And if I bring my own phone to the table, I still have to pay the same monthly rate on the contract as the guy who has three years of subsidizing built in. Why doesn't my contract rate go down as I pay more up front for the phone. Sure, there might be a bit of a premium if I am signing a month-to-month contract because the company has no guarantee that I'm going to stick around, but shouldn't I get a bit of a break? Why can't I sign a year contract at a rate that doesn't include the subsidy? Makes me wonder if you really are better off going to someone else, they aren't actually giving me anything to switch to them, they are probably making more from switchers because they haven't provided a phone, but are still collecting money as if they had.
Now just when am I going to see something like this up here in Canada? I have unlimited web use on my contract plan, but I can't use opera mini because of the subsidy locks on my phone. It's not so much the actual task of unlocking it that bothers me, it's the fact that I have to go about all this trouble even though I'm not breaking any rules. I already pay for the internet and I would probably be saving the phone company bits by using the opera proxy rather than trying to load page after page in normal html.
Me: I'll have a Grande Cafe au Lait please.
/me hands over cash, takes careful first sip.
Starbucks Employee: That'll be an hour's wages please.
Me: Thanks!
Thats when you get to see my java regular expression.
Generally it will be me wincing in pain because I just burned my tongue. Sometimes, if it's cooled enough, you'll hear a quiet "MmmMmmm" in the style of Family Guy's Herbert.
...place shifting survives the storm.
In my opinion, my slingbox is the easiest way to watch the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica because my Mom has the only cable connection in the house, and its up there on the main floor.
Never mind that. I'm moving out soon. I just hope my sweet new invention isn't outlawed. A self-loading and self-ejecting VCR that prints mailing labels then calls a courier to get all new episodes to me anywhere in the world. Now just where am I going to find a huge cache of blank betamax tapes.
Once I read the upside-down-ternet article earlier today, I realized that I prefer my "questionable" pictures load upside-down! That idea was so great, I implemented the last half of the article into a content filter to make sure all my favourite sites render "acrobatically-enhanced" photos!
All that intermediate processing is going to cause a big drain on my proxy. I NEED 8 cores.
Exactly. My Mathematica box includes a Windows and Linux Version as well the Mac version I use... The majority of the code is obviously already portable. Porting the software was probably just as easy as working out a few kinks in a new interface (and that the interface would use API's that Apple has been managing cross-platform over the last 5 years).
Not to say that Wolfram isn't smart for doing business like this. Create your products to be portable, and you cover the entire market base. It's a stroke of genius really. I just wouldn't think this is an accurate representation of all the developers out there.
Just don't get me started about Wolfram's activation scheme. What a nightmare to change hardware. What is this 4-day demo bull whilst I wait for them to get me a valid key. How am I supposed to get any work done that way. Forget the fact that I would only ever change hardware on a Friday so that the weekend is there as a buffer and things be running smoothly again on Monday. Monday rolls around and BAM! your waiting till Thursday, if you were able to convince them over the phone that you had already uninstalled it from the old machine and had no intentions of installing it there again.
Like the subject says, this post will be ridiculously off topic, but worh every -1 I get, just for the laugh.
poop hits fan, switch gets flipped, data goes bye-bye.
Funny you should say that...
I had a summer job at one time where they processed hay that farmers would bring in for resale. As part of the process there was a rather large fan (upwards of 400hp) that would suck air through the hay via a grate in the floor and seals on the side of the rows, all in an effort to dry the hay (makes it lighter, reduces spoilage). On one occasion, a farmer dropped off some hay that had been stored atop the manure pile. That day, the switch was flipped first, and then poop hit the fan. No data was lost though.
The rest is history. No kidding, fifteen years later and there is still a stain on the side of the building. The building in question was the employee's trailer. Don't even get me started about why it was placed direcly in line with the output of that fan. Many, many things can be found embedded in the sheet metal siding of that trailer, but shite is definately the most memorable.
The parents of the slashdot crowd are behind a secure proxy located in the basement. They just call us up and ask us if its ok to procede.
Do I have to go get a lawer? Will Apple be suing me? I told a friend something I read on ThinkSecret. I even did it after I suspected the rumor was in fact inside information. Does that put me in the wrong?
I guess maybe I'll just start asking people and websites for non-disclosure agreements so that I can be sure that what I am legally allowed to pass on something that I heard.
The individual key thing is too easy to break. Lets try and go through it.
One needs only break one of those keys and distribute it. Then all movies will be able to be read freely until that key is removed from the standard keyspace. This key may not be able to be gained from the disk itself, but manufacturing insiders would have access, and it may be able to be reverse engineered from the player ROM itself.
Considering how quickly a new rip propagates down the network, just think how quickly 128 bits of data could do it. For instance it could easily be stegged into an image or sound file, and distibuted right under the noses of onlookers. There would be some lag time between the key being available and the studios finding out about it.
Now wait until a guy gets his hands on ten of the "crackable" players. He gets ten unique keys, and now the problem is tenfold. Release a new key as soon as you see that the old one is no longer in use, and you're back in business.
The studios don't know which key has been cracked, they only know that one has. Unless they mark the content separately with the key in question, or a hash thereof, and try and get it back after the movie has been recommpressed. They couldn't disable a whole lot/brand/model of players for fear of a peasant uprising.
Compound this by the fact that it would be a recurring process, happening through multiple channels, and the pirates would have no trouble keeping ahead of the studios. The crackers stay a day ahead of the studios, and there is no control. The problem is that they would be weeks ahead at least.
I don't mean to promote these things. I have downloaded a movie or two before for a laugh, but it's not worth it in time and quality, and on top of it all it's illegal and immoral (to me anyway). Buy the DVD if the movie has the sticker value to you, leave it on the store shelf if it doesn't. I don't forsee myself having any problems in this key-per-unit scenario; My key will always work. I only don't understand why people waste their money on something so fruitless as DRM.
Agreed. From TFA:
The basic idea in recovering from cracking is to make a compromised player key obsolete. Compromised players could continue to play old discs, but not new releases. And crackers would have to start all over again.
Consumers are really going to be interested in continuously buying new players or upgrading their current firmware to play new realeases because someone broke through their brand of player. Save for the fact that once someone breaks it once, it will just get easier to do it the second time.
I can see how this would solve the cracking problem entirely. Consumers have the money, thus, consumers have the power. The simple fact is, people won't buy a disc that won't play in their player -- At least I'm not about to new player to play their new disc every time this happens.
In case they think up some scheme that means I won't have to pay anything for the upgraded player: my time is as valuable to me as money, so I had also better not have to spend any of that on getting my machine to work again either.
My dream of finally being one of the Robot Jox might soon be a reality. Sweet!
I would be really pissed off if the developer at the darkroom service I use decided to do any of that without specific instructions from me.
I, on the other hand, would be really pissed off if they made the photo look worse after printing it. That they altered it is of no concern to me, since they don't actually change the content of the image. If it looks better, I'd applaud them for helping me out. If it looks worse and they refuse to fix it, I'll find another lab, as I have done in the past.
I do my own image enhancement (or is it modification) of photos before I send one to the lab to be enlarged (only ever enlarged for display). When this is the case, I expect that any alterations made will be to achieve any color matching on their specific printer. I expect this be done without my specific instruction; it's part of the deal. In the past, labs that went beyond this were usually applying some extra color saturation; they for some reason think this "looks better". I didn't get really pissed at them for this. I just ask that they do it again, free of charge, most of the time they have no problem reprinting them. For the places that won't reprint for free, I just move on. I leave my prints there, without paying, and find another place. This is the way you deal with businesses. They deal in money, not feelings -- thats what you have to leverage against them.
Sorry I got a little off topic, just thought I'd add my couple cents worth.
-C
Open source is not about windows or linux. Linux happens to be open source. Windows happens not to be. Why should anybody have any qualms about running open source apps on windows. Why should anybody care what app runs where.
If more people choose open source alternatives because they are becoming available on windows, all the power to them. If, in turn, more open source applications are started because of a more inclusive user base, then we all win.
Nothing prevents open-source software from being run on a proprietary-code operating system. I don't hear people complaining that Firefox is available in a windows version. I don't hear people complaining that linux is allowed to run a proprietary ALPHA processor. These things are always applauded everywhere else.
The main thing Microsoft has going for them is Office; not Windows and not IE. Business NEED Office, and for that they need windows, and with that comes IE. If Windows users become more accepting to OSS on their machines, if they see the quality that such software can have before dismissing it as "free and therefore crap", they may be more likely to try an open source alternative to Office. If Office wanes, then Windows wanes. Why then shouldn't Linux followers push more open source software to windows. As soon as people realize that they can have a "free" OS, a "free" office suite, and a "free" development environment, all of which working as well or better than the proprietary apps, then they are more likely to give Linux or another open source operating system a second look.
I think it would be very beneficial to teach high school students about information security and privacy. So little is formally taught about this in school. In my experience, it is usually learned the hard way when either you or someone you know gets some extra credit card charges from another country or some other illegal use of your personal information. Why can't we make an effort to change this? Why not inform them of the rules that govern the collection of such information. Why not inform people some best practices in guarding their personal information. We should be making a step toward the students, at the time in their lives when it is just becoming important to take charge of their own information and security, instead of waiting for them to reach out for themselves.
For instance, I want to be able to deny a store from collecting my name, address, and phone number when I make a purchase without the "it's store policy" line. After all, that information is not required to provide the product or service, and I am therefore under no obligation to give it to them, and they are NOT allowed to refuse service on such grounds. If more people knew that this was the case, don't you think more stores would have to wake up when nobody would just go-with-the-flow and mindlessly give out unnecessary information without thinking?
Here's a great site, and don't even think about modding this offtopic. Kooks have run amok!
thepeacock.com
I wonder if his utopian server can survive a slasdot frenzy!
What wikipedia needs is to implement /. style moderation! Then every point of view will be represented fairly! Ni!
can anyone here tell me who he is, and what he has done (with proof)?
/. discussion of it continue for days. Also, proof presented in a neutral voice is much more likely to be accepted as fact. Just a helpful hint...
I would ask that any fabricated proof be so well done that the
I want to see a linux distro, so that I can have a linux session on my emulated windows session on my linux box.
But seriously, I would think that the ultimate OSS, namely some flavor of linux, would be valuable to have on the CD that somebody new to open source could try? I met some distros that were easy to install/uninstall and use safely when I first dipped my tows into the linux water.
I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 4. It was released about 6 years ago. I have never had any problems with it. Initially training it, I spent about four hours reading the text passages, much more than it suggests that you need to train. I have long been able to dictate entire paragraphs and need only make a single correction. This is still much faster than typing for me, usually around 100wpm (I know, I was amazed too).
I modify my speech when I dictate, exaggerating the phonemes, speaking as clearly as possible while maintaining a reasonable and steady pace. Remember -- this version was from 6+ years ago, and I initially started on a 400Mhz PIII. With advances in hardware and software, I'm sure newer versions are even better these days.
The only drawback is when people make fun of me for speaking so oddly in a room with only a computer.
Hope this helps.
-C-
I'v been thinking about doing a project like this for a long time. I was hesitant before because of the monetary and time cost of doing such a project, and I was afraid of failure. Now it seems that the references and available support are to a point where I might actually be able to succeed. Maybe I won't have to live with Tivo pop up ads while fast forewarding after all. I had better get on with buying that HDTV decoder card before the broadcast flags come around...
As a sidenote: Some of us don't want to see that goatse shit. I'm not at all advocating censorship, but at least warn me first -- don't hide that shit in a tinyURL.
RTFA. From the product info:
Sunlight is cast through two cleverly designed masks in the shape of numbers that show the current time of day
Its a cool idea.
In 2007, the Soyuz spacecraft will be for old people.
As confirmed by "An Anonymous Reader" on the Lycos story. It would seem from the updated article that the story was a hoax. Regardless of what the screensaver in question may or may not do to the reputation of lycos, the hoax will certainly damage it -- not everyone will know it was a hoax. And nobody is accountable.
There can be cases where anonymity is good. If I were witnessing atrocities in another country, I would want to report on this completely anonymously. But these cases are few and far between and the majority of the time it is unnecessary. Perhaps we should all start by realizing that further fact-checking had better be done when somebody is not putting their reputation on the line for the accuracy of some given information.
WiebeTech also has a product, the RT5, that has 2TB of storage. The price is much higher though. With this model, you can choose the RAID 0-5, and hot-swap the drives. They also purport to support Windows XP, 2K, Mac OS X, and Linux via dual Firewire 400/800 connections.