Airport Extreme likely will never be supported. And Apple does not care at all. There is a bunch of 802.11g cards supported by Linux and even a greater number for x86 platform since you can use ndiswrapper.
Why a password-protected RSA key would be worse than the actual situation ? The private key is encrypted by some password, it is more secure than encryption scheme used in password and shadow and the private key (encrypted) is set to be only readable by the user owning it, so what's the point ?
(About other PDF producers) Most of which are crappy, and produce essentially "jpeg" PDF's - where the document is rendered as an image and stored in an PDF. Lame.
You are false. There are tools which are using Type 3 fonts (bitmapped). These kind of fonts are rendered badly by Acrobat Reader (whereas other products like ghostscript can render them smoothly).
And there are tools which are able to substitute Type3 fonts by Type1 fonts. pdflatex generates PDF with Type 1 fonts and dvips can generate PS with Type1 fonts (which in turn will become, via ps2pdf, a PDF with Type 1 fonts).
As said in some other posts, some startup tried to do the same : i2bp. VHS quality with sound in 2 kilobytes/s. This article gives a partial view on this.
Here is a short summary :
Someone hire two or three students and ask them to work on this project (none of them are specialist of video compression). They are presented as "experts".
He then announces that they have found some revolutionary compression format based first on MPEG-2, then on MPEG-4 and then on some fractal technology. This technology allow DVD quality on 2 KBytes/s then only VHS quality.
He gives demo on a closed network to some journalist, without any mean to control. A public demo in flash is given on the site. Well, if we can call this a demo.
He postpones the realease of the commercial product for some obscure patents (patents are pending on some countries, patents need to be updated, etc)
He says that the developpers are somewhere in France with their bodyguard. Additionnaly, there is some story with the Mossad.
He cancels a demo since many people think that their algorithm is inexistant. He says that this technology will be sold hundreds billion of dollars and say that Microsoft is interested.
He talks about a player in Java which is only 50 bytes long. Yes. But, it could be optimized.
Finally, we have never heared of this startup since some months.
Well, actually, it's some stupid minister who decided a tax on CD-Rs was needed.
In France, there is some old law (1989 ?) which is aimed at giving to "artists" a little part of recording media sells. The tax on the CD-R is a reactualisation of this law.
However, in 1989, this law presented some exceptions : recording media which were aimed at profesional use (some king of cassettes) were not taxed. In the reactualisation, professional use is not mentionned any more : the tax may be extended to hard disks or flash memory.
What is the worse in this tax is that you have no mean to avoid it, even if you proove that you have not used the CD for musical copy. Moreover, a study showed that, in France, only 20% of the usage of CD-R was for piracy.
This tax is collected by a private organism who have to redistribute it to "artists". In fact, this organism (SACEM) is not controlled and may do what it wants to. The tax is said to be redistributed regarding the amount of sales and to disk labels : only the most "famous" artists may gain something of this tax.
Software maker are not eligible to get this tax.
The problem is more general. Here, in France (and in some other countries), we have people who think that governement have to pay for anything : a flood, bad sales, etc. They don't seem to know anything about insurances for example. When a supermarket is striked by some thefts, it seems "logic" to raise the prices. For some "people", it is not the good way : it is far more easier to take money directly from the "contribuable". For example, you are selling some kind of gadget and half of your production is burned (accidental or criminal, don't know). In some normal world, you will call your insurer and see how many he can give you and you will slighlty increase your prices. In some odd world, you will ask a tax for matches since they are used to set a fire. And you will increase your prices too.
CDFreak's software is really neat, from what i've read about it. It reads in the audio track into RAM and mounts it as a volume, and involved creating a custom VXD, sounds pretty innovative.
This kind of CDFS VXD already exists : it comes with some plextor drive or was reverse engineered from some kind of source, we are not sure. However, a VXD like this has existed at least since 1997. It was one of the best way to rip a CD and it was amazingly fast and able to cope with "bad drive".
If you aren't running your own mail server you might not get the total satisfaction of giving them an SMTP protocol error, but dropping their mail unceremoniously into a bit bucket is certainly still worthwhile.
I am currently using a snapshot of Mozilla which is quite usable and quite stable (2000120720). More stable and usable than Netscape 6. As an end user, I cannot afford the time to compile every day the last build. Having a precompiled binary allow me to see what have been done and test it quickly. It works, I keep it, it doesn't, I throw it.
It is just for commodity. The developers can then drag many more users and feedback. And since everything is automatized, this doesn't require any effort.
[About Zinedine Zidane]
Funny you should mention him, considering he's about as French as Victor Hugo, whom I'm sure you also consider part of the great French literature.
Yes, he is as French as I am, as M. Chirac is and more than 60 millions of french people are. Why mention Front National if you take their propaganda ?
Proprietary. On internet, anyone can publish information. On the minitel, everything is controlled by France Telecom (which by the way have _no_ liability on what content is on the minitel.
Not exactly. Everyone can have its own service. But you need to pay to have a "3615 Squid" number by opposition to a classic number.
What you don't understand is that you assimilate french government and people with one justice case. French government never issue anything against Yahoo.
We don't have democratic judges and republican ones. We have far more independant justice than you have (if you are american).
You can't try to assimilate a judgement to a politic vision.
If the government wanted to stop this case, he wouldn't able to.
Which is more important - open standards or better technology?
Open technology.
Even if this company ports its format on a variety of OS, I won't be able to use it in my own products, I won't be able to use it with my favorite browser, etc. See what happened with GIF.
Microsoft will soon be selling Windows Whistler Personal, Windows Whistler Professional, Windows Whistler Server, and Windows Whistler
Advanced Server.
Microsoft sells Windows 2000 Server, Advanced Server and Terminal Server and Windows Me. Do they have different interfaces ? No.
IBM went on to create IBM OS/2 1.3 and successive versions (2.0, 3.0, 4.0, and of course the upcoming versions).
IBM realeased Aurora, the last version of OS/2. OS/2 Warp 4 support will be out next january. You can buy additional support or buy a new version sold by a new company under a new name (eComStation). IBM won't release any new version of OS/2.
YaST overwrote custom configuration without even asking or saving them
I don't know under what condition Yast could overwrite custom config, but I have seen many times the opposite. For example, I have modified manually my configuration for Postfix. The next time I have used Yast, it said me that it hadn't modified the postfix config file because it seems changed manually and that it had write a possible config file in some other file.
Moreover, in many config file like/etc/csh.cshrcn, it is clearly explained that you must not change this file manually but that you need to change another file.
SuSE is full of these checks. I think it is very well done. You just must pay attention to comments. If some file is marked do not change, there is another file to modify and if not, you can.
I am progressively installing manually (not using RPM) apps on my SuSE box. Yast has never changed files that I have manually modified.
Here is a simple idea to fake a server. Suppose you want to serve a MP3 of Metallica. If you transmit the right hash, you will be banned. Well, the idea is very simple. You want the hash and a 1k random block of the file ? OK, I take an MP3 free of rights, I "rename" it to the target MP3, I send you its hash and the 1k block you want. Everything is fine. And when I must send the entire file, I send the true one.
Well, that's the rub, isn't it? Does everyone agree that Web sites have to have ALT tags so that they're accessible to the blind?
For short : yes. Like someone else stated, ALT tags are needed to make the document HTML 4 "compliant". I suppose that the contract stated that the site would have to be "standard compliant". Today, being "standard compliant" is being HTML 4 compliant. No ?
AFAIK, the ALT tags were not a part of there initial contract.
Many things are not in the initial contract. ALT tags are technical materials. IBM was/is the technical part of the project. So IBM had to use ALT tags.
When you build a house, you are not an architect. So you hire an architect. You say him you want an house, with two floors, with this, this an this. He draws you a plan, he shows you it. OK, this seems to be correct, you sign the contract. When the house is finished, you notice that there is no glass with the windows, the walls are 2cm larges and the roof is not water-proof. You call the architect and he brings you the contract : you don't ask for a water proof roof, you don't ask to have glasses with your windows and tou don't ask for larger walls. Do you think that all that is correct ? Like a water-proof roof for an house, ALT tags are mandatory for a "usable" web site.
In a perfect world where chocolate has negative calories, we'd digital music downloads where fingerprints were added to downloaded files to identify the user that paid for them. That way they wouldn't want to distribute them since there was a fingerprint that could trace to them.
Since the project seems to be "open" (or somewhat open), there will be a way to remove this fingerprint (or to alterate it). Now, music majors could modify this system to force it to become closed. Then, I don't see why users will rely on this system. I won't buy some piece of music which contains obscure info on me. A neighbour could record the music while I am playing it and retrieve some info on me (my credit card number, where I have bought this, etc).
It is like these new protected formats that doesn't allow music to be copied more than once. Who use them ?
Could the MPAA force Napster to recognize their "fingerprints" and deny users the ability to download music with those specific fingerprints?
To allow this, Napster (or any other) will have to download the MP3 and compute the fingerprint. Downloading all MP3s which are exchanged via Napster will need a huge bandwidth update. Moreover, I think that computing a fingerprint which doesn't change with compression/resampling can take many time (5 seconds on a Pentium III class ?). They will need a super computer to compute each MP3 fingerprints.
The last solution is to force user to compute fingerprints and to transmit them. But, with an open source project, a user can transmit a false finger print. And even if there were a way to force user to transmit a true finger print, most users will go to another system like GNUtella where there is no central point.
Well, I think that this kind of technology could help web hosters to find illegal MP3 (but do they want to ?). But what I would like to see is a new CDDB system which doesn't rely on some mystic parameters on the CD (which aren't very reliable) and which works with MP3.
Slashdot Mirror
Airport Extreme likely will never be supported. And Apple does not care at all. There is a bunch of 802.11g cards supported by Linux and even a greater number for x86 platform since you can use ndiswrapper.
Java is embeddable in smart cards...
Why a password-protected RSA key would be worse than the actual situation ? The private key is encrypted by some password, it is more secure than encryption scheme used in password and shadow and the private key (encrypted) is set to be only readable by the user owning it, so what's the point ?
Why don't you just use DOS which fits on a single floppy ?
(About other PDF producers)
Most of which are crappy, and produce essentially "jpeg" PDF's - where the document is rendered as an image and stored in an PDF. Lame.
You are false. There are tools which are using Type 3 fonts (bitmapped). These kind of fonts are rendered badly by Acrobat Reader (whereas other products like ghostscript can render them smoothly).
And there are tools which are able to substitute Type3 fonts by Type1 fonts. pdflatex generates PDF with Type 1 fonts and dvips can generate PS with Type1 fonts (which in turn will become, via ps2pdf, a PDF with Type 1 fonts).
As said in some other posts, some startup tried to do the same : i2bp. VHS quality with sound in 2 kilobytes/s. This article gives a partial view on this.
Here is a short summary :
- Someone hire two or three students and ask them to work on this project (none of them are specialist of video compression). They are presented as "experts".
- He then announces that they have found some revolutionary compression format based first on MPEG-2, then on MPEG-4 and then on some fractal technology. This technology allow DVD quality on 2 KBytes/s then only VHS quality.
- He gives demo on a closed network to some journalist, without any mean to control. A public demo in flash is given on the site. Well, if we can call this a demo.
- He postpones the realease of the commercial product for some obscure patents (patents are pending on some countries, patents need to be updated, etc)
- He says that the developpers are somewhere in France with their bodyguard. Additionnaly, there is some story with the Mossad.
- He cancels a demo since many people think that their algorithm is inexistant. He says that this technology will be sold hundreds billion of dollars and say that Microsoft is interested.
- He talks about a player in Java which is only 50 bytes long. Yes. But, it could be optimized.
Finally, we have never heared of this startup since some months.Well, actually, it's some stupid minister who decided a tax on CD-Rs was needed.
In France, there is some old law (1989 ?) which is aimed at giving to "artists" a little part of recording media sells. The tax on the CD-R is a reactualisation of this law.
However, in 1989, this law presented some exceptions : recording media which were aimed at profesional use (some king of cassettes) were not taxed. In the reactualisation, professional use is not mentionned any more : the tax may be extended to hard disks or flash memory.
What is the worse in this tax is that you have no mean to avoid it, even if you proove that you have not used the CD for musical copy. Moreover, a study showed that, in France, only 20% of the usage of CD-R was for piracy.
This tax is collected by a private organism who have to redistribute it to "artists". In fact, this organism (SACEM) is not controlled and may do what it wants to. The tax is said to be redistributed regarding the amount of sales and to disk labels : only the most "famous" artists may gain something of this tax.
Software maker are not eligible to get this tax.
The problem is more general. Here, in France (and in some other countries), we have people who think that governement have to pay for anything : a flood, bad sales, etc. They don't seem to know anything about insurances for example. When a supermarket is striked by some thefts, it seems "logic" to raise the prices. For some "people", it is not the good way : it is far more easier to take money directly from the "contribuable". For example, you are selling some kind of gadget and half of your production is burned (accidental or criminal, don't know). In some normal world, you will call your insurer and see how many he can give you and you will slighlty increase your prices. In some odd world, you will ask a tax for matches since they are used to set a fire. And you will increase your prices too.
Simply use one of the Sony CD recorder to make the copy and a Sony CD-R. It is easier to find who is liable in this case.
CDFreak's software is really neat, from what i've read about it. It reads in the audio track into RAM and mounts it as a volume, and involved creating a custom VXD, sounds pretty innovative.
This kind of CDFS VXD already exists : it comes with some plextor drive or was reverse engineered from some kind of source, we are not sure. However, a VXD like this has existed at least since 1997. It was one of the best way to rip a CD and it was amazingly fast and able to cope with "bad drive".
You can still send a fake bounce message.
It is just for commodity. The developers can then drag many more users and feedback. And since everything is automatized, this doesn't require any effort.
You and your Front National buddies[...]
[About Zinedine Zidane] Funny you should mention him, considering he's about as French as Victor Hugo, whom I'm sure you also consider part of the great French literature. Yes, he is as French as I am, as M. Chirac is and more than 60 millions of french people are. Why mention Front National if you take their propaganda ?
Not exactly. Everyone can have its own service. But you need to pay to have a "3615 Squid" number by opposition to a classic number.
We don't have democratic judges and republican ones. We have far more independant justice than you have (if you are american).
You can't try to assimilate a judgement to a politic vision.
If the government wanted to stop this case, he wouldn't able to.
Open your mind.
Open technology.
Even if this company ports its format on a variety of OS, I won't be able to use it in my own products, I won't be able to use it with my favorite browser, etc. See what happened with GIF.
Microsoft sells Windows 2000 Server, Advanced Server and Terminal Server and Windows Me. Do they have different interfaces ? No.
IBM realeased Aurora, the last version of OS/2. OS/2 Warp 4 support will be out next january. You can buy additional support or buy a new version sold by a new company under a new name (eComStation). IBM won't release any new version of OS/2.
I don't know under what condition Yast could overwrite custom config, but I have seen many times the opposite. For example, I have modified manually my configuration for Postfix. The next time I have used Yast, it said me that it hadn't modified the postfix config file because it seems changed manually and that it had write a possible config file in some other file.
Moreover, in many config file like /etc/csh.cshrcn, it is clearly explained that you must not change this file manually but that you need to change another file.
SuSE is full of these checks. I think it is very well done. You just must pay attention to comments. If some file is marked do not change, there is another file to modify and if not, you can.
I am progressively installing manually (not using RPM) apps on my SuSE box. Yast has never changed files that I have manually modified.
Since one year, I have heared many comments about Al Gore claiming Internet paternity. Can someone point me to a document explaining why ?
Here is a simple idea to fake a server. Suppose you want to serve a MP3 of Metallica. If you transmit the right hash, you will be banned. Well, the idea is very simple. You want the hash and a 1k random block of the file ? OK, I take an MP3 free of rights, I "rename" it to the target MP3, I send you its hash and the 1k block you want. Everything is fine. And when I must send the entire file, I send the true one.
For short : yes. Like someone else stated, ALT tags are needed to make the document HTML 4 "compliant". I suppose that the contract stated that the site would have to be "standard compliant". Today, being "standard compliant" is being HTML 4 compliant. No ?
Many things are not in the initial contract. ALT tags are technical materials. IBM was/is the technical part of the project. So IBM had to use ALT tags.
When you build a house, you are not an architect. So you hire an architect. You say him you want an house, with two floors, with this, this an this. He draws you a plan, he shows you it. OK, this seems to be correct, you sign the contract. When the house is finished, you notice that there is no glass with the windows, the walls are 2cm larges and the roof is not water-proof. You call the architect and he brings you the contract : you don't ask for a water proof roof, you don't ask to have glasses with your windows and tou don't ask for larger walls. Do you think that all that is correct ?
Like a water-proof roof for an house, ALT tags are mandatory for a "usable" web site.
CSS2 "implements" many things for disabled people. Mozilla just need to implements them.
Since the project seems to be "open" (or somewhat open), there will be a way to remove this fingerprint (or to alterate it).
Now, music majors could modify this system to force it to become closed. Then, I don't see why users will rely on this system. I won't buy some piece of music which contains obscure info on me. A neighbour could record the music while I am playing it and retrieve some info on me (my credit card number, where I have bought this, etc).
It is like these new protected formats that doesn't allow music to be copied more than once. Who use them ?
To allow this, Napster (or any other) will have to download the MP3 and compute the fingerprint. Downloading all MP3s which are exchanged via Napster will need a huge bandwidth update.
Moreover, I think that computing a fingerprint which doesn't change with compression/resampling can take many time (5 seconds on a Pentium III class ?). They will need a super computer to compute each MP3 fingerprints.
The last solution is to force user to compute fingerprints and to transmit them. But, with an open source project, a user can transmit a false finger print. And even if there were a way to force user to transmit a true finger print, most users will go to another system like GNUtella where there is no central point.
Well, I think that this kind of technology could help web hosters to find illegal MP3 (but do they want to ?). But what I would like to see is a new CDDB system which doesn't rely on some mystic parameters on the CD (which aren't very reliable) and which works with MP3.