The fact that some studies have failed to pick up such an association provides further reason for skepticism
One that would not be directly or indirectly financed by a party that has nothing to loose if cellphones are banned from our lives?
Let's get realistic over here, all these studies have been potentially biaised, just as the current one. That said, there were numerous scandals over here in France and Spain of schools who rented their rooftop to cell phone companies and three years later the percentage of leucemia over the kiddos skyrocketted by 700%. Of course, there may have been other factors, but three of such scandals were publically related in the press.
It makes you think. And be sure that if they don't want us to know (and the government neither because they get sh*tloads of money out of it) we'll have a hard hard time finding it out.
Of course, it will eventually come out.
Re:Dual boot? How about virtualization, too!
on
Going To Boot Camp
·
· Score: 1
There is no point trying to illustrate this with already existing holes in VMWare. Just re-read the sentence I bolded out alone. The sheer naïveté in it should strike you right away. If the guy believes this philisophy, his product is as good as swiss cheese: full of holes!
Re:Dual boot? How about virtualization, too!
on
Going To Boot Camp
·
· Score: 1
As has already been said, it is very likely to happen if the platform becomes very popular. Period.
The approach consisting to say that 'it is unlikely so let's forget about it' is probably very very close to the approach that led MS to where they are now in terms of security.
If there is a vector for attack and enough incentive to exploit it, it will be exploited. You can count on that, no matter how hard it is to do it.
Re:Dual boot? How about virtualization, too!
on
Going To Boot Camp
·
· Score: -1, Redundant
Sure, you could argue that someone could make Windows malware that specifically also targets an unknown vulnerability in a particular piece of virtual machine software, thereby somehow gaining access to the host side. But that is *extremely* unlikely to the point that it's not even worth mentioning.
Ah ah ah ah ah !!!!! AH AH AH ah aha ha ha ha ha !!! *cough* *cough* AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH !!!!
That's probably the funniest approach about security I have seen yet!!!!!
This is an issue that has not changed one bit since the dawn of the web: Everything that comes in your server through an HTTP(S) request is to be assumed 'insecure' by definition. The only assumption one can make about such data is that it comes from a specific user if a proper session id is provided, nothing else.
This is a very very very common misconception in almost every application I have worked on. People (devs) seems all to think that a javascript consistency check is all it takes to ensure the user will not submit an amount too high, or anything else for that matter.
The approach is flawed because of one thing: Everything that runs out of your box can be fooled with. And JavaScript is so easy to fool with that it is a shame that ANYONE would rely on any piece of JavaScript without any security/safety check on the server side.
AJAX is just another extension based on the same principle. Anyone can fool an HTTP request. Anyone can fool a Browser. Anyone can execute arbitrary Javascript code in your browser to modify its behavior: Just type the code in the address bar.
This issue is just insane!
Is Your AJAX App Secure?: As secure as any webapp. Consistency and security checks needs to be made on every data coming in your system. Short of that, it is just swiss cheese: Full of holes.
So you basically suggest that we buy a book from Amazon, which patented the "One Click Shopping", to get some awareness about the patent system being broken?
1. You haven't heard of any decent mini-cd players. I have.
2. "The Sony kit generally has much higher quality DACs than most other consumer MP3 players", so you acknowledge it's not better than all MP3 players. "ATRAC is definitely superior at any given bitrate than MP3", tested on those bad MP3 players you are talking about, I am pretty sure you're right. Those listening test are based on the format itself, not the hardware to play it on. And as you said, there are MP3 players on par with MD players on that front.
3. "MD HiFi units": The lack of recorders in the MP3 world is a fact, and IMO the only advantage that remains to MD units. That said, I see it as a very little value. MP3 (and ATRAC) is a lossy compressed format, made to be listened to, and nothing else. MP3 made from CDs (for example) will be great for listening purposes but very little else (mixing, editing, etc...) and I find the ripping/encoding process of making MP3s much faster than recording a piece of music on a MD recorder - but you need a computer. And for music that has to have archival quality, MP3 is as bad as ATRAC for the purpose.
I see this as a great opportunity. But Google will only ever have the same leverage that Apple has over the Majors. What we really need, is Google (or another well-publicized company) to become a music label. They have the guts to do their own promotion, they can distribute non-DRM stuff and they can easily attract existing well-known artists with attractive deals.
This IMO is the only short-term hope against the majors.
Basically, we need a Good Guy (TM) with deep pockets to raise a middle finger to the majors.
However, I fear this is not going to happen anytime soon.
Okay, I see what you're doing here. You basically take all downsides of various MP3 players and compare them with a MD player. But that is what makes MP3 great: The variety of offerings. Flash, HDD, CD based, DVD players, computer interaction is what makes MP3 the greatest choice around.
Basically, your only complaint is that there is no portable player with an extractible media that can record, and it is a valid one. But no other advantage can be found to MD today. None.
As far as home is concerned, I don't even have a player anymore. I have an HTPC, linked by SPDIF to my amp and everything is on my HDD. Physical media is a thing of the past. I don't even have CDs anymore exept for my car.
And when I want to listen to music in the subway, I plug my iPod in my puter and transfer my files at a speed that would leave your MD in the dust.
Basically, MP3 is not a metter of players or recorders, it's a state of mind. Many players for many needs (but yours of a recorder that can record on a media readable on your living room).
Oh, and about your listening test comment, here is some infos:
a blind test is a test where one will be presented with three pieces of music (the same piece usually the original, ATRAC ad MP3 in our example) and will be asked to rate them in order of quality. But the listeners does not know which is which - except for the original which they are asked to rate the others against.
That way, there is no bias either conscious or inconscious. A huge number of people couldn't believe what a 'placebo' effect is. It is the fact that your brain can very well tell you there are differences between two files when there are none.
Maybe you didn't have a decent MP3 in all those MP3 players you reviewed. I can tell you you are living in a lie. ATRAC is very similar to MP3 in that it is a lossy compression format, based on the same general principles. Of course a crappy 128kbps MP3 downloaded from Napster 5 years ago will sound horrible in ANY MP3 player. But here you don't test the player.
But if it pleases you to think ATRAC is greater than MP3, then let it be. It's like saying MPEG2 is inferior to MPEG. This is just plain wrong, it just depends on the bitrate. a good MPEG file is much better than a bad MPEG2 one. And yet MP2 is better than MPG in many respects.
ATRAC has this advantage that it is locked in, so you cannot do anything with it. MP3 is much more open. You can make a very good MP3 as easily as a terrible one.
In EMULE and TORRENT, the behavior is that whatever you are currently downloading is shared. There is no opt-out for this. When the DL is done, you can remove it, for sure, but while it's downloading, it's also seeding.
Compared to CDs, minidisc is small You got that one allright. Although there are mini-cd MP3 players quite cheap that fit that requirement equally well, if not better.
Compared to MP3 players, the sound quality is vastly better This is just FUD, nothing else. It would depend on the player and the MP3, for sure, but trust me, I can get you an MP3 that you will be just unable to tell from the source, let alone ATRAC. In fact, many listening tests have proven ATRAC to be inferior to MP3 at equal bitrate. And you can choose your bitrate with most MP3 players, hence defining YOURSELF the perfect quality.
You can also get MD hifi units to put next to your CD player, which I've yet to see for MP3 Virtually ANY DVD player on the market will play MP3-CDs. Where have you been in the last 5 years?
I like listening to music on my stereo, not my computer Dude, there is no comparison on hardware support. MP3 is way out of reach on this area. Most CD/DVD players will play MP3s, even at $30. You are just out of your league out here.
Lastly, you exaggerated the price for MD units Still, it much more expensive than a an AIWA Z3C, which is a mini-CD MP3 player. $50 (although I don't think you can still find one).
My current MD portable is about the size of an Ipod nano, give or take This is not one manufactured by SONY then... The MZ-RH10 is 80x19x84 and the Nano is 89x41x7... That's about 5 times bigger !!!! Have you ever had a look at a Nano?
I know none of these reasons are likely to hold much weight with 95% of consumers Of course, since none of them are valid (or at least still valid). You need to look around: The MP3 world has also evolved in the last 5 years.
I'm certain that Freenet in native code could be orders of magnitude better than what it is now. Bad code is bad code (I'm not saying Freenet is bad code, but making a point). In Java, bad code will be rendered as a hungry app, in C/C++ an app that core dumps every now and then.
Of course, this is just a general observation, it is perfectly possible to core a Java app or to make a C app hungry. But the general consensus is the opposite in general.
And what exactly happens to those DRM files when the original copywrite has expired??? When's the last time you've seen a copyright expire? That's right -- a long time ago.
Don't worry about these issues, it the laws don't change, nothing produced today will see its copyright expire in your lifetime.
I've said for a long time that we should have dropped UK a long time ago. They have nothing to do in the EU - heck! They're not even on the same piece of land!;)
Drawbacks of your setup: A. No possibility to make a backup of anything "easily". B. Multiple Remotes or expensive universal remote. A PC can have IR blasters that control everythinng in your room and out of. C. Content is not indexed in any way easy to access through a remote (At any time, I am just 6-10 keystrokes away from viewing all the movies with Tom Hanks lying on my HDD) D. Multiple bulky boxes lying around. E. Any change means a long and painful migration of media. I mean, if your Jukebox dies you have to extract 400 discs from it and load a new one... Whew... F. Content not accessible from anywhere else than the box connected to your TiVO/Jukebox (My content is accessible from any computer on my LAN)
Oh my, how much will the 401th disk will cost you...
When a 300GB HDD costs less than 100Eur, the PC is the obvious solution, not mentionning it serves as a backup as well. All my DVDs, CDs, home movies, pictures,... everything on a couple of HDDs. Backup is trivial (for pics and home movies, the rest still has its original media).
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that some studies have failed to pick up such an association provides further reason for skepticism
One that would not be directly or indirectly financed by a party that has nothing to loose if cellphones are banned from our lives?
Let's get realistic over here, all these studies have been potentially biaised, just as the current one. That said, there were numerous scandals over here in France and Spain of schools who rented their rooftop to cell phone companies and three years later the percentage of leucemia over the kiddos skyrocketted by 700%. Of course, there may have been other factors, but three of such scandals were publically related in the press.
It makes you think. And be sure that if they don't want us to know (and the government neither because they get sh*tloads of money out of it) we'll have a hard hard time finding it out.
Of course, it will eventually come out.
There is no point trying to illustrate this with already existing holes in VMWare. Just re-read the sentence I bolded out alone. The sheer naïveté in it should strike you right away. If the guy believes this philisophy, his product is as good as swiss cheese: full of holes!
As has already been said, it is very likely to happen if the platform becomes very popular. Period.
The approach consisting to say that 'it is unlikely so let's forget about it' is probably very very close to the approach that led MS to where they are now in terms of security.
If there is a vector for attack and enough incentive to exploit it, it will be exploited. You can count on that, no matter how hard it is to do it.
Sure, you could argue that someone could make Windows malware that specifically also targets an unknown vulnerability in a particular piece of virtual machine software, thereby somehow gaining access to the host side. But that is *extremely* unlikely to the point that it's not even worth mentioning.
Ah ah ah ah ah !!!!! AH AH AH ah aha ha ha ha ha !!! *cough* *cough* AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH !!!!
That's probably the funniest approach about security I have seen yet!!!!!
Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah !!! Dude!! Ah ah ah ah !!!!!! ah ah ah ah !!!! *cough* *cough* *cough* *cough*
So how exactly do you store a file that would be 1 bit long? You can't.
No matter what, you can't store three values inside a unique bit.
I guess that if you have three choices (1, 0, or else) you will need more than one bit to store it!
I feel like I am entering the twilight zone...
This is an issue that has not changed one bit since the dawn of the web: Everything that comes in your server through an HTTP(S) request is to be assumed 'insecure' by definition. The only assumption one can make about such data is that it comes from a specific user if a proper session id is provided, nothing else.
This is a very very very common misconception in almost every application I have worked on. People (devs) seems all to think that a javascript consistency check is all it takes to ensure the user will not submit an amount too high, or anything else for that matter.
The approach is flawed because of one thing: Everything that runs out of your box can be fooled with. And JavaScript is so easy to fool with that it is a shame that ANYONE would rely on any piece of JavaScript without any security/safety check on the server side.
AJAX is just another extension based on the same principle. Anyone can fool an HTTP request. Anyone can fool a Browser. Anyone can execute arbitrary Javascript code in your browser to modify its behavior: Just type the code in the address bar.
This issue is just insane!
Is Your AJAX App Secure?: As secure as any webapp. Consistency and security checks needs to be made on every data coming in your system. Short of that, it is just swiss cheese: Full of holes.
So you basically suggest that we buy a book from Amazon, which patented the "One Click Shopping", to get some awareness about the patent system being broken?
Do I smell some irony here?
The real question would rather be: Why on earth would anyone buy a SONY DVD player?
1. You haven't heard of any decent mini-cd players. I have.
2. "The Sony kit generally has much higher quality DACs than most other consumer MP3 players", so you acknowledge it's not better than all MP3 players. "ATRAC is definitely superior at any given bitrate than MP3", tested on those bad MP3 players you are talking about, I am pretty sure you're right. Those listening test are based on the format itself, not the hardware to play it on. And as you said, there are MP3 players on par with MD players on that front.
3. "MD HiFi units": The lack of recorders in the MP3 world is a fact, and IMO the only advantage that remains to MD units. That said, I see it as a very little value. MP3 (and ATRAC) is a lossy compressed format, made to be listened to, and nothing else. MP3 made from CDs (for example) will be great for listening purposes but very little else (mixing, editing, etc...) and I find the ripping/encoding process of making MP3s much faster than recording a piece of music on a MD recorder - but you need a computer. And for music that has to have archival quality, MP3 is as bad as ATRAC for the purpose.
I see this as a great opportunity. But Google will only ever have the same leverage that Apple has over the Majors. What we really need, is Google (or another well-publicized company) to become a music label. They have the guts to do their own promotion, they can distribute non-DRM stuff and they can easily attract existing well-known artists with attractive deals.
This IMO is the only short-term hope against the majors.
Basically, we need a Good Guy (TM) with deep pockets to raise a middle finger to the majors.
However, I fear this is not going to happen anytime soon.
--
XviD review
Okay, I see what you're doing here. You basically take all downsides of various MP3 players and compare them with a MD player. But that is what makes MP3 great: The variety of offerings. Flash, HDD, CD based, DVD players, computer interaction is what makes MP3 the greatest choice around.
Basically, your only complaint is that there is no portable player with an extractible media that can record, and it is a valid one. But no other advantage can be found to MD today. None.
As far as home is concerned, I don't even have a player anymore. I have an HTPC, linked by SPDIF to my amp and everything is on my HDD. Physical media is a thing of the past. I don't even have CDs anymore exept for my car.
And when I want to listen to music in the subway, I plug my iPod in my puter and transfer my files at a speed that would leave your MD in the dust.
Basically, MP3 is not a metter of players or recorders, it's a state of mind. Many players for many needs (but yours of a recorder that can record on a media readable on your living room).
Oh, and about your listening test comment, here is some infos:
a blind test is a test where one will be presented with three pieces of music (the same piece usually the original, ATRAC ad MP3 in our example) and will be asked to rate them in order of quality. But the listeners does not know which is which - except for the original which they are asked to rate the others against.
That way, there is no bias either conscious or inconscious. A huge number of people couldn't believe what a 'placebo' effect is. It is the fact that your brain can very well tell you there are differences between two files when there are none.
Here is a public listening test comparing MP3 to ATRAC at 128kbps.
Maybe you didn't have a decent MP3 in all those MP3 players you reviewed. I can tell you you are living in a lie. ATRAC is very similar to MP3 in that it is a lossy compression format, based on the same general principles. Of course a crappy 128kbps MP3 downloaded from Napster 5 years ago will sound horrible in ANY MP3 player. But here you don't test the player.
But if it pleases you to think ATRAC is greater than MP3, then let it be. It's like saying MPEG2 is inferior to MPEG. This is just plain wrong, it just depends on the bitrate. a good MPEG file is much better than a bad MPEG2 one. And yet MP2 is better than MPG in many respects.
ATRAC has this advantage that it is locked in, so you cannot do anything with it. MP3 is much more open. You can make a very good MP3 as easily as a terrible one.
In EMULE and TORRENT, the behavior is that whatever you are currently downloading is shared. There is no opt-out for this. When the DL is done, you can remove it, for sure, but while it's downloading, it's also seeding.
Compared to CDs, minidisc is small
You got that one allright. Although there are mini-cd MP3 players quite cheap that fit that requirement equally well, if not better.
Compared to MP3 players, the sound quality is vastly better
This is just FUD, nothing else. It would depend on the player and the MP3, for sure, but trust me, I can get you an MP3 that you will be just unable to tell from the source, let alone ATRAC. In fact, many listening tests have proven ATRAC to be inferior to MP3 at equal bitrate. And you can choose your bitrate with most MP3 players, hence defining YOURSELF the perfect quality.
You can also get MD hifi units to put next to your CD player, which I've yet to see for MP3
Virtually ANY DVD player on the market will play MP3-CDs. Where have you been in the last 5 years?
I like listening to music on my stereo, not my computer
Dude, there is no comparison on hardware support. MP3 is way out of reach on this area. Most CD/DVD players will play MP3s, even at $30. You are just out of your league out here.
Lastly, you exaggerated the price for MD units
Still, it much more expensive than a an AIWA Z3C, which is a mini-CD MP3 player. $50 (although I don't think you can still find one).
My current MD portable is about the size of an Ipod nano, give or take
This is not one manufactured by SONY then... The MZ-RH10 is 80x19x84 and the Nano is 89x41x7... That's about 5 times bigger !!!! Have you ever had a look at a Nano?
I know none of these reasons are likely to hold much weight with 95% of consumers
Of course, since none of them are valid (or at least still valid). You need to look around: The MP3 world has also evolved in the last 5 years.
The real question is that most P2P programs force you to share whatever you download, so technically spaeking any downloader is also an uploader...
How does that work?
After a few weeks in France you'll really wish you didn't leave for Paris, trust me... I live there.
I'm certain that Freenet in native code could be orders of magnitude better than what it is now.
Bad code is bad code (I'm not saying Freenet is bad code, but making a point). In Java, bad code will be rendered as a hungry app, in C/C++ an app that core dumps every now and then.
Of course, this is just a general observation, it is perfectly possible to core a Java app or to make a C app hungry. But the general consensus is the opposite in general.
And what exactly happens to those DRM files when the original copywrite has expired???
When's the last time you've seen a copyright expire? That's right -- a long time ago.
Don't worry about these issues, it the laws don't change, nothing produced today will see its copyright expire in your lifetime.
To be fair with Bill Gates, Microsoft's success has much more to do with him than Paul Allen!
I've said for a long time that we should have dropped UK a long time ago. They have nothing to do in the EU - heck! They're not even on the same piece of land! ;)
Drawbacks of your setup:
A. No possibility to make a backup of anything "easily".
B. Multiple Remotes or expensive universal remote. A PC can have IR blasters that control everythinng in your room and out of.
C. Content is not indexed in any way easy to access through a remote (At any time, I am just 6-10 keystrokes away from viewing all the movies with Tom Hanks lying on my HDD)
D. Multiple bulky boxes lying around.
E. Any change means a long and painful migration of media. I mean, if your Jukebox dies you have to extract 400 discs from it and load a new one... Whew...
F. Content not accessible from anywhere else than the box connected to your TiVO/Jukebox (My content is accessible from any computer on my LAN)
Oh well, no point trying to convince you I guess.
Oh my, how much will the 401th disk will cost you...
... everything on a couple of HDDs. Backup is trivial (for pics and home movies, the rest still has its original media).
When a 300GB HDD costs less than 100Eur, the PC is the obvious solution, not mentionning it serves as a backup as well. All my DVDs, CDs, home movies, pictures,
There is NO MATCH to that as of today, anywhere.
If they run Vista for controls
Well, that's a far reach, assuming that Vista will be out when these things get shipped...