"It has long been our very public policy that when a service unleashes software that hacks into our system, and endangers the security of our system, we stop it," AOL spokeswoman Kathy McKiernan said.
Funny, that's about the same policy I use on my system, and the exact reason why I only use DeadAIM when I need to use AIM (which is very rarely). It's nice to be rid of the annoying mini-ads. I hope to try out Trillian sometime; it probably works better and has menus that aren't AOLified (they're not exactly "buddies" to me, Steve).
Sir, I salute you. However, a secure Windows won't appear overnight. At least it's good knowing that Bill Gates had an epiphany.
I'd like to say that free is the way to go...
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
·
· Score: 2
...however, I don't see a format shift happening too soon, since the majority of computer users (the "dumb masses", I like to call them) are being spoon-fed by the OEMs, and we all know what they're using in place of strained peas. Not even Winamp support is enough; nowadays, every Compaq/HP/Dell/eMachines/craputer is pre-configured with Windows Media Player or RealOne, and they don't support OGG or the others (mostly because no one can profit from them).
I go and find a much more suitable news site, and now you go and slashdot it. I guess that's the thanks I get from the elitist nerdy schmucks who think that They Might Be Giants are the best musicians around.
Therefore, since I can't stand the forum section of this website any longer, I hereby retire this account, with a karma of at least 46 (worst case, and I know that some of you pompous Slashdotters with mod points will lunge at the negative moderations like anons at a fresh thread). As for the heartless hinds who are clicking and clicking on the ShackES link, I hope your workstation segfaults or gets a kernel panic within the next week.
Besides, Xian is more interesting than John Carmack is. At least he presents his sense of humor to us.
So will the connector be backwards-compatible? Or will we return to the days of three different bus connectors? (I'm not counting AGP, since there's always just one of those).
This March, I found out that my Soldier of Fortune disk was scratched to the point where it couldn't be reinstalled at all. My Blue Shift CD already has a scratch on it which requires me to put it in my recorder to copy one stinking file to manually finish the installation. This damage was caused indirectly by the copy protection scheme (I was putting in and taking out the game disc and leaving it out of its case so many times that it got scratched). Thanks to no-CD cracks, I don't have those problems with my other games, and Valve, Id, and Epic all finally gave in with their latest titles and coded out the CD check routine.
And now there's a copy protection scheme that directly inflicts damage on my equipment? That's absolutely ridiculous, and something should be done to protect the consumer.
"Does this mean that future games will be hardware specific?"
If so, it won't be the first time; remember the days of 3dfx? Original Unreal would only run on Glide hardware acceleration; if you didn't have a 3dfx card, you were forced to run it in software. Of course, this didn't sit well with the growing NVidia user base who consistently pointed out that Quake 2 and Half-Life both rendered on anything running OpenGL (including 3dfx cards; remember those mini-driver days?), and OpenGL and Direct3D renderers were finally introduced in a patch. That's about when 3dfx started to go down the toilet; delaying product releases and missing features (32-bit color and large texture support being two of the most blatant omissions) eventually tainted the 3dfx brand to the point of extinction.
Since then, 3D gaming has been a less lopsided world. Linux gaming was taken seriously. Standardised APIs that could run on almost anything were the rule; if it wasn't OpenGL, it would at least be Direct3D. Then the GL extensions war heated up, with NVidia developing proprietary extensions that would work only on their cards. But this wasn't a problem; you could still run OpenGL games on anything that could run OpenGL; you'd just be missing out on a few features that would only slightly enhance the scenery.
Leave it to Microsoft to screw it all up with DirectX 8. They suddenly started talking about pixel shaders and other new ideas. John Carmack has already described the shortfalls and antics of DX8. And now 3D programmers will have to program for multiple rendering platforms, but at least you can still run it with anything.
Sure, this entire disagreement between ATI and NVidia is bad for the 3D industry, but things could be worse. A LOT worse.
I believe a call to your District Attorney should be adequate; remember to catalog as much identifiable information as you can about the offender. Also, the best offense is a good defense; be careful about who you give your phone number, and make sure that all e-commerce partners treat your personal information
responsibly
(i.e.; they don't give it away or sell it to telemarketers).
Just imagine how much less space some of the more involving computer games like Half-Life and Deus Ex would take up if all the dialog was synthesized with key samples from the voice actor (or, should I say, the "phoneme source"). That saved space could be used toward other things, like textures or ambient sounds. Of course, the biggest challenge would be to allocate some processing power for the synthesis. Still, it's probably in the works.
"(b) (1) It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States
(B) to initiate any telephone call to any residential telephone line using an artificial or prerecorded voice to deliver a message without the prior express consent of the called party, unless the call is initiated for emergency purposes or is exempted by rule or order by the Commission under paragraph (2)(B);..."
You hear that? There is to be no telemarketing use of this technology!
I don't know where you live, but here in the US the drinking age is 21. Therefore, they broke the law, plain and simple. IMHO that's the worst desecration of the presidential image since the Monica incident.
Ashcroft (I usually replace that "h" with another "s", but maybe not this time) might prosecute anyway. His motive would be to uphold the almighty DMCA, to protect corporate America's inalienable rights to strife, misery, and the pursuit of avarice. Dimitry would become an example, a symbol that the government "won't take any guff" from the "teenage slackers". However, President Bush is partially defeating this by failing to discipline his own children for their inebriated romp through Texas bars.
Oh yes, the government will crack down on those "hacker slackers", even though they still haven't installed the latest Microsoft security updates from 1997 on their web servers.
You forgot one detail: without Tim Willits, Quake wouldn't have shipped with the deathmatch maps. He was also the one who made E3M5 (The Wind Tunnels), IMO the Quake map that best takes advantage of all three dimensions.
It sums up everything, and also contains key (annotated) paragraphs from the PhoenixNet site (so if you're too afraid of evil scripts to visit the PhoenixNet site, you can see it safely from this site).
The main page of cexx.org (no relation to anything disgusting; it stands for Counterexploitation) has other helpful and interesting pages about spyware, foistware, backdoors, scams, and such. Most of it pertains to Windows, but there's some other cross-platform/no-platform topics there (including a way to make the CueCat output raw barcodes without requiring any software intervention.)
Winamp already does MP3 streaming; just hit Ctrl+L, feed it a URL, and it streams it. How about during downloads? You can point ANY application that plays MP3 files (Winamp, mplayer2.exe, XMMS, etc.) to an MP3 file that has been partially downloaded by a download utility (specifically, one that puts the file in the final destination even while it's still downloading), and it'll play perfectly, up until the current end of the file, at which point you can play again, and it'll be further down because of the download.
A patent on this type of thing is ludicrous, and I hope there are plenty of people around to challenge it. Apathy is the enemy of freedom.
http://www.slashdot.org
Contained a bug from the Open Source Development Network (OSDN.com)
Gotta pay the bills somehow, right? Also, they demonstrated their bad habit of sticking in "www", even though NONE of the links here have it. How dare they.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny, that's about the same policy I use on my system, and the exact reason why I only use DeadAIM when I need to use AIM (which is very rarely). It's nice to be rid of the annoying mini-ads. I hope to try out Trillian sometime; it probably works better and has menus that aren't AOLified (they're not exactly "buddies" to me, Steve).
Sir, I salute you. However, a secure Windows won't appear overnight. At least it's good knowing that Bill Gates had an epiphany.
...however, I don't see a format shift happening too soon, since the majority of computer users (the "dumb masses", I like to call them) are being spoon-fed by the OEMs, and we all know what they're using in place of strained peas. Not even Winamp support is enough; nowadays, every Compaq/HP/Dell/eMachines/craputer is pre-configured with Windows Media Player or RealOne, and they don't support OGG or the others (mostly because no one can profit from them).
It's "doubleclick.net", not "doubleclick.com". Also, someone forgot to close their italic tag.
I go and find a much more suitable news site, and now you go and slashdot it. I guess that's the thanks I get from the elitist nerdy schmucks who think that They Might Be Giants are the best musicians around.
Therefore, since I can't stand the forum section of this website any longer, I hereby retire this account, with a karma of at least 46 (worst case, and I know that some of you pompous Slashdotters with mod points will lunge at the negative moderations like anons at a fresh thread). As for the heartless hinds who are clicking and clicking on the ShackES link, I hope your workstation segfaults or gets a kernel panic within the next week.
Besides, Xian is more interesting than John Carmack is. At least he presents his sense of humor to us.
Now matter who hits 0.13 first, WE win.
Chewbacca: ROOOOOAR!!!!
(hallway patrol droid stops, does a reverse 180, and scoots away squeaking.)
So will the connector be backwards-compatible? Or will we return to the days of three different bus connectors? (I'm not counting AGP, since there's always just one of those).
And now there's a copy protection scheme that directly inflicts damage on my equipment? That's absolutely ridiculous, and something should be done to protect the consumer.
If so, it won't be the first time; remember the days of 3dfx? Original Unreal would only run on Glide hardware acceleration; if you didn't have a 3dfx card, you were forced to run it in software. Of course, this didn't sit well with the growing NVidia user base who consistently pointed out that Quake 2 and Half-Life both rendered on anything running OpenGL (including 3dfx cards; remember those mini-driver days?), and OpenGL and Direct3D renderers were finally introduced in a patch. That's about when 3dfx started to go down the toilet; delaying product releases and missing features (32-bit color and large texture support being two of the most blatant omissions) eventually tainted the 3dfx brand to the point of extinction.
Since then, 3D gaming has been a less lopsided world. Linux gaming was taken seriously. Standardised APIs that could run on almost anything were the rule; if it wasn't OpenGL, it would at least be Direct3D. Then the GL extensions war heated up, with NVidia developing proprietary extensions that would work only on their cards. But this wasn't a problem; you could still run OpenGL games on anything that could run OpenGL; you'd just be missing out on a few features that would only slightly enhance the scenery.
Leave it to Microsoft to screw it all up with DirectX 8. They suddenly started talking about pixel shaders and other new ideas. John Carmack has already described the shortfalls and antics of DX8. And now 3D programmers will have to program for multiple rendering platforms, but at least you can still run it with anything.
Sure, this entire disagreement between ATI and NVidia is bad for the 3D industry, but things could be worse. A LOT worse.
- responsibly
(i.e.; they don't give it away or sell it to telemarketers).Just imagine how much less space some of the more involving computer games like Half-Life and Deus Ex would take up if all the dialog was synthesized with key samples from the voice actor (or, should I say, the "phoneme source"). That saved space could be used toward other things, like textures or ambient sounds. Of course, the biggest challenge would be to allocate some processing power for the synthesis. Still, it's probably in the works.
You hear that? There is to be no telemarketing use of this technology!
I don't know where you live, but here in the US the drinking age is 21. Therefore, they broke the law, plain and simple. IMHO that's the worst desecration of the presidential image since the Monica incident.
After all, the PS2 is the official gaming console of Rob Malda, isn't it?
Ashcroft (I usually replace that "h" with another "s", but maybe not this time) might prosecute anyway. His motive would be to uphold the almighty DMCA, to protect corporate America's inalienable rights to strife, misery, and the pursuit of avarice. Dimitry would become an example, a symbol that the government "won't take any guff" from the "teenage slackers". However, President Bush is partially defeating this by failing to discipline his own children for their inebriated romp through Texas bars.
Oh yes, the government will crack down on those "hacker slackers", even though they still haven't installed the latest Microsoft security updates from 1997 on their web servers.
You forgot one detail: without Tim Willits, Quake wouldn't have shipped with the deathmatch maps. He was also the one who made E3M5 (The Wind Tunnels), IMO the Quake map that best takes advantage of all three dimensions.
It sums up everything, and also contains key (annotated) paragraphs from the PhoenixNet site (so if you're too afraid of evil scripts to visit the PhoenixNet site, you can see it safely from this site). The main page of cexx.org (no relation to anything disgusting; it stands for Counterexploitation) has other helpful and interesting pages about spyware, foistware, backdoors, scams, and such. Most of it pertains to Windows, but there's some other cross-platform/no-platform topics there (including a way to make the CueCat output raw barcodes without requiring any software intervention.)
Gee, I wonder what I'll see on Pud's page tomorrow morning...
A patent on this type of thing is ludicrous, and I hope there are plenty of people around to challenge it. Apathy is the enemy of freedom.
Gotta pay the bills somehow, right? Also, they demonstrated their bad habit of sticking in "www", even though NONE of the links here have it. How dare they.
...is that we the consumers end up winning no matter what happens.
"Oh yeah, HP has some Itanium servers, too. Win2K, yadda yadda, Bill Gates sucks."
Will it suffer from the click of death? Will it have nonstandard device drivers? Will it be released on FireWire and USB only?
Remember that commercial where Christopher Reeve stood up and walked around?