I have zero knowledge in this area, but is it possible to write an algorithm with would allow easy seek'ing withing a compressed file? It may be as simple as caching a block either side of the current position. Maybe the format would have to include information stating what block or other unit in the compressed file contains. (i.e. block 3 contains data for the 3004-7094'th bytes in the decompressed file). When seek'ing the file, you would have to scan throug the blocks to find which block contains your data.
As a previous poster pointed out, it would probably be hard to have R/W aceess to a tar.gz file or a.zip file. What would be nice (maybe the tool already exists, I don't know) would be to mount a file to/dev/loop* and have everything going to/from that device pass through gzip, bzip, bzip2, or whatever your favorite compression program happens to be.
I should have included this in my first post, but what I meant to say was not that no compression is needed, but that the gains of fractal compression over JPEG, etc. is small compared to the ease of use of JPEG, since it is supported by nearly everyting.
The differences between a fractal compressed image and other compression schemes (JPEG, RLE, LZW) are much less significant on modern hardware than on the older hardware. I certainly have no argument that I don't need or want any image compression at all. That would be way to inefficient, especially on my college connection already bogged down with MP3's. Thank god they're compressed!
In 1995, I couldn't easily transfer or store large files. The hassel-factor of dealing with compressing and decompressing files was negligable compared to the hassel-factor transfering the files to my PC and storing the files on removable media. Today, I can transfer large files to my computer by a number of network protocols, and can store them on a CD-R very easily. It just dosen't make sense for me (or, I think, for your average computer user) to compress image files, given the currently available hardware.
Put together a number or random pads and a contrived pad which when XOR'ed with a commonly available html (or similar) version of Hamlet would result in the DeCSS code. Easy.
One of the issues facing many areas of modern science is that the science evolves faster than the legal and ethical questions can be resolved. I would probably be reluctant to volunteer my DNA for such a repository until there are clear legal and ethacal standards detailing who would have the right to that infomration. Even then, I would only be willing to donate a specimen if I retained control over who was given access to that information.
These cars are open-wheeled electric race cars. At up to 140MPH (as Ohio State's car recently hit), these cars certainly arn't wimpy or slow.
One of the problems with pure electric cars is that of range and recharge time. Our car, for example, runs for only 10-20min on a set of batteries. Since it take so long to recharge them, we simply swap out all 56 sealed-lead acid batteries during a pit stop (1200+ lbs). One interesting note: electric motors develop peak torque at low RPM's giving good accelleration and great burn-outs.:)
I was browsing throught the archives, and they seemed a bit empty. Not from the small number of posts, but more like a big empty hole.
I though about this for a while, then it hit me: the alt.flame, alt.duche-bag, and alt.hairy.duche-bag groups are missing enitrely! Not only that, but no SPAM!
Me, I envy those of you who had the privilage of using the internet while it was still primarily an information source, not a marketing media.
I was only about a year old when this archive was created.
Bandwidth:
I believe, based on the height of its orbit, that a geostationary sat would have a fairly large footprint. In fact, I doubt you could place a sat so that its footprint covered a portion of the US without having it include a major urban area.
Security:
Sure, there would probably be encryption on the up and downlinks, but most encrypyion schemes can be cracked if someone wants to bad enough (although that someone may have to be the CIA or similar). Your right, though, the sat can't point its antenna at individual users, that's impractical, so technically, anyone with the right hardware within the sat's footprint can receive anyones data.
Uplinks:
This could be tough. One solution is to have a wide band of uplink frequencies. Since the bandwitdh required is proportional to the bitrate, you could work out a scheme where the uplink speed dropped as the number of simultaneous uplinks increased. If only a small number of uplink channels were available, you may have to wait for a channel to become available.
Yeah, but that takes much more power, and unless your in the middle of nowhere, neighbors complain about interfearance to their tv's, phones, toasters, etc.
<BR>
Moonbounce is something I want to try, however as a college student, funds fall _way_ short.
(With credit and apolgies to the/.'er who I stole the title from.)
Hmmm...
Our government writes a software package with a built-in security flaw and sees that it is deployed within the Canadian government. In spite of this, we should trust them when they want to deploy a software package within our borders?
Makes you wonder what kind of "back-doors" may have been build into Carnivore, and who in our government has access to them.
There can be some problems with reception of the signals in heavy weather. Our campus cable systems is provided through DirectTV, and every once and a while, we will get a heavy rain storm during which the dishes lose their signal from the sat. (Of course this could also be due to bad outdoor wiring...)
There are a lot of services where individuals are allowed to transmit without a specific licence: cell-phones, CB, family radio service, varios part 15 devices, etc.
Generally, frequencies are allocated to various services. In many cases, some sort of a licence is required. This is often to prevent massive interfearence that occurs when anyone is allowed to transmit a signal which is likely to interfear with everyone else's signal. In other cases, licencing is either not required (i.e. Citizens Band) or is given to a specific company (i.e. Family Radio Service).
Also, the signal these dishes use for uplink is not likely to create interfearance. The dishes are highly directional, and it is in the users best interest to point the dish at the sat, not at their neighbor's house. Additionally, because of line of sight, it takes relativly low power to transmit the signal to the satilite.
You may be right. I think someone may have found a way to trick remarq's system into showing their message in the message spotlight, rather than the message intended by the admin.
Re:Threat to "secret ballot"?
on
Online Voting?
·
· Score: 1
Wasn't this tried in one of the primaries?
Anyway, I think what they did to maintain secracy was to submit the user's indentification to one machine, which recorded that they had voted, and to sumbit the actual vote to another, supposedly with no way to reconnect the two pieces of information.
I think the real problem, from the MPAA standpoint, is that technology is changing so fast that they are loosing control of the industry and its revenue.
The MPAA will continue to fight all forms of new technology until one of two things happen: either the MPAA will find an electronic distribution technology that both they and the consumer find acceptable, or they are driven out of buisness by new technology.
I know this seems pessimistic, but unless the MPAA changes there tactics, I see no other alternatives.
In the US, apathy is a common trait. I think many people will simply take the attitude that "If I don't make a donation, someone else will. The music/game/movie/etc will be published whether I donate or not, so why sould I donate?" The solution to this problem may be to reward donors with special perks when the media is released.
For example, the donors to a novel may receive a high-quality, hard-bound edition of the novel. Although anyone would be able to obtain a free electronic copy of the book, and eventually, without copyrights, anyone woud be aboe to obtain a printed copy of the book, there would be a large number of people who would be willing to pay a premium to have a hard-copy edition as soon as the book is released. Additionally, if the quantity of this origional release is limited, it may become a collector's item, further increasing the tendency of people to donate.
The perks may be more difficult to award for other media types, such as music, games, or movies, where there may not be any significant advantage to having a physical copy. For a game or on-line service, donors may be given, based on the amount of their donation, the right to pick their usernames, nicks, or aliases first. Many people would be willing to pay extra to be JohnSmith rather than J-Smith-56382.
Personally, I think The Street Performer Protocol is an interesting concept which is much better than micropayment or MPAA tactics which, sadly, is the way electronic media appears to be heading.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, there are many who would trust the medical advice of an aborginal tribesman. (So maybe your in the wrong field.)
I have zero knowledge in this area, but is it possible to write an algorithm with would allow easy seek'ing withing a compressed file? It may be as simple as caching a block either side of the current position. Maybe the format would have to include information stating what block or other unit in the compressed file contains. (i.e. block 3 contains data for the 3004-7094'th bytes in the decompressed file). When seek'ing the file, you would have to scan throug the blocks to find which block contains your data.
Then again, I may be talking out of my ass.
You would, though, still need a user-space utility (probably actually a shell script) to create a file, run mke2fs, and copy the data over.
As a previous poster pointed out, it would probably be hard to have R/W aceess to a tar.gz file or a .zip file. What would be nice (maybe the tool already exists, I don't know) would be to mount a file to /dev/loop* and have everything going to/from that device pass through gzip, bzip, bzip2, or whatever your favorite compression program happens to be.
Does this already exist in some form?
I should have included this in my first post, but what I meant to say was not that no compression is needed, but that the gains of fractal compression over JPEG, etc. is small compared to the ease of use of JPEG, since it is supported by nearly everyting.
The differences between a fractal compressed image and other compression schemes (JPEG, RLE, LZW) are much less significant on modern hardware than on the older hardware. I certainly have no argument that I don't need or want any image compression at all. That would be way to inefficient, especially on my college connection already bogged down with MP3's. Thank god they're compressed!
66Mhz 486
8MB Ram
1GB HD
3.5" 1.44MB Floppy
5.25" Floppy
4x CD-ROM
Slow (I forget how slow) modem.
My current Computer:
533MHz Celeron
128MB RAM
13GB Hard-Drive (Two Drives)
3.5" Floppy
4x4x32 CD-RW
T1 Internet Access (College LAN)
In 1995, I couldn't easily transfer or store large files. The hassel-factor of dealing with compressing and decompressing files was negligable compared to the hassel-factor transfering the files to my PC and storing the files on removable media. Today, I can transfer large files to my computer by a number of network protocols, and can store them on a CD-R very easily. It just dosen't make sense for me (or, I think, for your average computer user) to compress image files, given the currently available hardware.
Put together a number or random pads and a contrived pad which when XOR'ed with a commonly available html (or similar) version of Hamlet would result in the DeCSS code. Easy.
As much as I try to find spelling and grammer mistakes before I post, I sometimes miss some. I'll look harder next time.
Thanks.
One of the issues facing many areas of modern science is that the science evolves faster than the legal and ethical questions can be resolved. I would probably be reluctant to volunteer my DNA for such a repository until there are clear legal and ethacal standards detailing who would have the right to that infomration. Even then, I would only be willing to donate a specimen if I retained control over who was given access to that information.
Wouldn't put almost any *nix system with a /dev/'whatever' architecture in violation of the DMCA?
Ripped-Off: An individual forced to pay more for a CD than a casette (even considering any possible differnce in manufacturing cost)
Harassed: Individuals who excercised their right to the free expression on an idea by linking/posting the DeCSS code
Bottom-Feeding Scumsukers: Lawers for the recording and motion-picture industries
These cars are open-wheeled electric race cars. At up to 140MPH (as Ohio State's car recently hit), these cars certainly arn't wimpy or slow.
:)
One of the problems with pure electric cars is that of range and recharge time. Our car, for example, runs for only 10-20min on a set of batteries. Since it take so long to recharge them, we simply swap out all 56 sealed-lead acid batteries during a pit stop (1200+ lbs). One interesting note: electric motors develop peak torque at low RPM's giving good accelleration and great burn-outs.
I was browsing throught the archives, and they seemed a bit empty. Not from the small number of posts, but more like a big empty hole.
I though about this for a while, then it hit me: the alt.flame, alt.duche-bag, and alt.hairy.duche-bag groups are missing enitrely! Not only that, but no SPAM!
Me, I envy those of you who had the privilage of using the internet while it was still primarily an information source, not a marketing media.
I was only about a year old when this archive was created.
Very true.
Assuming that the Carnivore code itself has been examined for security holes, how do we know that it hasn't been linked to a hacked library.
Also, I imaging that you could modifiy gcc or any other compiler or interpreter to add certain back-doors to code as it is interpreted or compiled.
Bandwidth:
I believe, based on the height of its orbit, that a geostationary sat would have a fairly large footprint. In fact, I doubt you could place a sat so that its footprint covered a portion of the US without having it include a major urban area.
Security:
Sure, there would probably be encryption on the up and downlinks, but most encrypyion schemes can be cracked if someone wants to bad enough (although that someone may have to be the CIA or similar). Your right, though, the sat can't point its antenna at individual users, that's impractical, so technically, anyone with the right hardware within the sat's footprint can receive anyones data.
Uplinks:
This could be tough. One solution is to have a wide band of uplink frequencies. Since the bandwitdh required is proportional to the bitrate, you could work out a scheme where the uplink speed dropped as the number of simultaneous uplinks increased. If only a small number of uplink channels were available, you may have to wait for a channel to become available.
Then again, I may be talking out of my ass...
Oops... Sorry about the mispaces tags.
Yeah, but that takes much more power, and unless your in the middle of nowhere, neighbors complain about interfearance to their tv's, phones, toasters, etc.
<BR>
Moonbounce is something I want to try, however as a college student, funds fall _way_ short.
KC8DEI
<BR>
(With credit and apolgies to the /.'er who I stole the title from.)
Hmmm...
Our government writes a software package with a built-in security flaw and sees that it is deployed within the Canadian government. In spite of this, we should trust them when they want to deploy a software package within our borders?
Makes you wonder what kind of "back-doors" may have been build into Carnivore, and who in our government has access to them.
There can be some problems with reception of the signals in heavy weather. Our campus cable systems is provided through DirectTV, and every once and a while, we will get a heavy rain storm during which the dishes lose their signal from the sat. (Of course this could also be due to bad outdoor wiring...)
There are a lot of services where individuals are allowed to transmit without a specific licence: cell-phones, CB, family radio service, varios part 15 devices, etc.
Generally, frequencies are allocated to various services. In many cases, some sort of a licence is required. This is often to prevent massive interfearence that occurs when anyone is allowed to transmit a signal which is likely to interfear with everyone else's signal. In other cases, licencing is either not required (i.e. Citizens Band) or is given to a specific company (i.e. Family Radio Service).
Also, the signal these dishes use for uplink is not likely to create interfearance. The dishes are highly directional, and it is in the users best interest to point the dish at the sat, not at their neighbor's house. Additionally, because of line of sight, it takes relativly low power to transmit the signal to the satilite.
You may be right. I think someone may have found a way to trick remarq's system into showing their message in the message spotlight, rather than the message intended by the admin.
Wasn't this tried in one of the primaries?
Anyway, I think what they did to maintain secracy was to submit the user's indentification to one machine, which recorded that they had voted, and to sumbit the actual vote to another, supposedly with no way to reconnect the two pieces of information.
I think the real problem, from the MPAA standpoint, is that technology is changing so fast that they are loosing control of the industry and its revenue.
The MPAA will continue to fight all forms of new technology until one of two things happen: either the MPAA will find an electronic distribution technology that both they and the consumer find acceptable, or they are driven out of buisness by new technology.
I know this seems pessimistic, but unless the MPAA changes there tactics, I see no other alternatives.
In the US, apathy is a common trait. I think many people will simply take the attitude that "If I don't make a donation, someone else will. The music/game/movie/etc will be published whether I donate or not, so why sould I donate?" The solution to this problem may be to reward donors with special perks when the media is released.
For example, the donors to a novel may receive a high-quality, hard-bound edition of the novel. Although anyone would be able to obtain a free electronic copy of the book, and eventually, without copyrights, anyone woud be aboe to obtain a printed copy of the book, there would be a large number of people who would be willing to pay a premium to have a hard-copy edition as soon as the book is released. Additionally, if the quantity of this origional release is limited, it may become a collector's item, further increasing the tendency of people to donate.
The perks may be more difficult to award for other media types, such as music, games, or movies, where there may not be any significant advantage to having a physical copy. For a game or on-line service, donors may be given, based on the amount of their donation, the right to pick their usernames, nicks, or aliases first. Many people would be willing to pay extra to be JohnSmith rather than J-Smith-56382.
Personally, I think The Street Performer Protocol is an interesting concept which is much better than micropayment or MPAA tactics which, sadly, is the way electronic media appears to be heading.