...and it might make sense for them to create a "legal alternative" that makes it unnecessary for programs like VLC to contain CSS decoders.
Yeah, well, that's not good enough. Chances are any "legal alternative" they come up with would be your standard bloated skinned media player that doesn't follow any UI standards and eats up a ton of resources. Probably binary-only and would only run under certain conditions (i.e. exactly the right library versions & machine architecture).
I use mplayer because:
A) It doesn't have a GUI (I disable it during the compile), and doesn't require a mouse. It has consistent keyboard shortcuts that do everything I need. The keyboard shortcuts work over stdin, so I can launch it from a remote ssh session and have full capabilities.
B) It can be easily remote controlled from either another computer or any other device I set up.
C) It's small and fast
D) It runs on my preferred platform (FreeBSD)
E) By default it just plays the main DVD title and not any annoying menus / trailers / FBI warnings. It ignores the DVD's desire to disable my navigation functions. I highly doubt anything DVD-CCA approved would have this capability.
As far as I'm concerned, I acquired a legal right to use the content however I wish when I purchased the media. If the law disagrees, the law is wrong and needs to be changed. Until then, the media companies can suck it.
Of course, a lot of Buddhists these days are about as true to their religion as many Christians are. I mean, come on, they enshrined a bone from his finger in an elaborate gold and jeweled container which is carried around and basically worshipped by people. Somehow I don't think Buddha would approve.
FreeBSD uses it quite a bit in system code as well, mostly to simulate exception handling. For example, "goto bad;" after an error to jump to the end of the function which cleans up any memory allocations, etc. Much better than duplicating the cleanup 20 times after each error check.
Activation is of course a different matter. It is new with XP, and it is a major pain in the ***. But I guess for an OS it is acceptable, especially if you also receive free security updates. Registering every single CD before playing would be fun, hm?
No, it's not acceptable for an OS, and we shouldn't put up with it. For a single application maybe, but if your OS suddenly decides that it thinks you're a pirate and shuts down, it renders YOUR property (your computer) useless.
Some of my friends and family have purchased computers that came with legal copies of XP Profressional, but if they must use Windows I encourage them to wipe it out and install Win2k. The last thing they want is to have to call Microsoft to get permission to use THEIR computer again just because they added some hardware.
That's because CD audio has no DRM whatsoever built in to the format. In order to be compatible with the millions of CD players already in people's homes and vehicles, any "protection" add-on must depend only on the user being dumb enough to let it install.
This is an important problem on Windows because most of the time you cannot simply recompile the un-optimised software to suit your hardware, as you can in Linux, etc.
Which is probably why MS is so gung-ho about machine-independent bytecode (.NET) and JIT compiling these days...
Unfortunately you pay huge costs in startup time and memory usage for that.
Absolutely nothing requires both 'halves' of a hyperthreaded CPU to be executing 'threads' that belong to the same process. Which, in fact, makes those not threads, but that is what they are called.
Yes, but the idea of HT is to run threads from the same process on the logical cores. Otherwise you run into exactly the cache problem that is being discussed.
While the scheduler can run different processes on the logical cores, if it does performance will suffer compared to a non-HT system. The way to get any gains out of it is to only use the logical CPU for threading purposes, hence the name.
Check out Free/NetBSD. They have a standard net80211 layer that nearly all of the drivers interface with -- the only ones that don't are the old prism driver and anything closed source. wpa_supplicant on those platform doesn't require any knowledge of the particular driver you're using, and plain old ifconfig can set any of the wireless parameters (try "ifconfig [nic] scan" for a list of APs).
IIRC, the only time you have to do anything special with wpa_supplicant is if you're using Project Evil (this NDIS compatibility for Windows drivers).
Security: IPv6 mandates IPSec (which encrypts ALL streams, ALL of the time, so contextual information can't be used for cracking as it can with SSH or SSL streams, which are generally only used for specific segments of a transaction).
Overrated. IPv6 mandates IPSec support, but it's still an overengineered protocol that's a bitch to configure. Works okay for VPN-like scenarios, but will never work with random hosts you've never talked to before.
Authentication: X.509 within IPSec and the use of Extended Authentication protocols in IPv6 guarantee that all endpoints are who they say they are.
Overrated. See above. The PKI can-of-worms is bad enough with only servers, who's going to issue certificates for millions of end users and devices? How do you decide which root certificates to trust? How do you handle revocation?
Fragmented Packets: Firewalls don't handle fragmented packets well, as there is no header to check for later fragments. Fragmenting and re-assembly also adds latency. IPv6 defines per-connection MTUs, guaranteeing ALL packets are the largest supported between any two endpoints without fragmentation.
Cool. Fragmentation sucked anyway, and per-host MTU makes it possible to use jumbo frames in mixed 100/1000 LANs.
Latency: IPv6 headers don't have as many entries and are heirarchical, which makes routing much faster and much simpler. The lack of fragmentation and the presence of auto-MTU also helps.
Undetermined. Heirarchical routing makes things easier for the routers, harder for end-user sites (think renumbering when you switch ISPs). It's too early to tell how this will pan out in the real world.
Multicasting: IPv6 mandates multicasting and has a decent range of addresses for it.
Cool,if it works. There's still a lot of issues to hammer out in this area before we see any multicast capable BitTorrent implementations.
Anycasting: IPv6 mandates service location and resource location abilities, which means no more hunting for printers, routers, DNS servers, SMTP servers, POP/IMAP servers...
Very Cool. The all-zeros anycast address for routers means you don't have to worry about what your default gateway is. I'm eagerly awaiting standards for DNS over anycast, which can lead to all the service discovery features. The IPv4 anycast address for the closest 6-to-4 gateway is a neat trick, too.
Autoconfiguration: IPv6 uses autoconfiguration for routing and addressing as a standard, in a manner (almost) guaranteed to be free of conflicts and absolutely guaranteed to be fully scalable.
Cool. The only thing missing is configuration of DNS servers; hopefully anycast will take care of that. DHCPv6 may help also, but is there even a complete implementaiton of it yet?
Mobility: IPv6 mandates the ability for nodes or even entire networks to be totally mobile (ie: switch upstream routers without losing connectivity or existing connections) with upstream optimization of routing.
Overrated. I don't see how this can be practical on a global hierarchically routed network. The goals seem mutually exclusive. The work I've seen focuses on forwarding by an agent on your home network, which is horribly inefficient.
Advanced Headers: IPv6 allows an arbritary number of extended headers to be attached to packets, with controlled responses for unknown extended headers.
Scary. Potentially cool, but I'll bet all of the cell phones and random devices people want to be IPv6 enabled will be full of security holes relating to header parsing. I don't care how clearly the spec is defined, they'll still screw it up.
High Availability: IPv4's High Availability mechanisms require a lot of fancy manoevering, because t
or save your source code, comment it, and keep a versioned repository like CVS or SVN at your employer's site (in addition to your own copies). You're a lot more likely to find employment doing programming again that way...
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Why the hell was the disc authored with CSS encryption then?
DVD players will play unencrypted discs just fine. I do it all the time with home movies.
It's called QoS (Quality of Service), and it's completely irrelevant if you have sufficient bandwidth.
I forget who said it originally, but haven't you heard the axiom "Internet traffic expands to fill all available bandwidth" ?
Probably because the interstate commerce clause is abused and distorted a lot more today than it was then.
...and it might make sense for them to create a "legal alternative" that makes it unnecessary for programs like VLC to contain CSS decoders.
Yeah, well, that's not good enough. Chances are any "legal alternative" they come up with would be your standard bloated skinned media player that doesn't follow any UI standards and eats up a ton of resources. Probably binary-only and would only run under certain conditions (i.e. exactly the right library versions & machine architecture).
I use mplayer because:
A) It doesn't have a GUI (I disable it during the compile), and doesn't require a mouse. It has consistent keyboard shortcuts that do everything I need. The keyboard shortcuts work over stdin, so I can launch it from a remote ssh session and have full capabilities.
B) It can be easily remote controlled from either another computer or any other device I set up.
C) It's small and fast
D) It runs on my preferred platform (FreeBSD)
E) By default it just plays the main DVD title and not any annoying menus / trailers / FBI warnings. It ignores the DVD's desire to disable my navigation functions. I highly doubt anything DVD-CCA approved would have this capability.
As far as I'm concerned, I acquired a legal right to use the content however I wish when I purchased the media. If the law disagrees, the law is wrong and needs to be changed. Until then, the media companies can suck it.
and it's why I run weird odd-ball offbeat IM clients that nobody uses (naim, pork).
Hey, I use naim!
Only thing it's missing is a libgaim backend so that it can connect to MSN and Jabber also.
My only response is that Santa is a lie told to millions of gullible children around the world. And science has proved he can't exist.
Do you think it's just a coincidence that an anagram of Santa is SATAN?
/couldn't resist
Of course, a lot of Buddhists these days are about as true to their religion as many Christians are. I mean, come on, they enshrined a bone from his finger in an elaborate gold and jeweled container which is carried around and basically worshipped by people. Somehow I don't think Buddha would approve.
FreeBSD uses it quite a bit in system code as well, mostly to simulate exception handling. For example, "goto bad;" after an error to jump to the end of the function which cleans up any memory allocations, etc. Much better than duplicating the cleanup 20 times after each error check.
Seriously, though, how does a guy end up with a name like this in computer programming?
He doesn't happen to be a hovering black sphere, does he?
Yes, and between the surface of the earth, and the vacuum of space, there is a pretty large heat difference...
LOL. When I was NZ they were picking that up on satellite and I nicknamed it the "Communist China TeleVision" network.
Activation is of course a different matter. It is new with XP, and it is a major pain in the ***. But I guess for an OS it is acceptable, especially if you also receive free security updates. Registering every single CD before playing would be fun, hm?
No, it's not acceptable for an OS, and we shouldn't put up with it. For a single application maybe, but if your OS suddenly decides that it thinks you're a pirate and shuts down, it renders YOUR property (your computer) useless.
Some of my friends and family have purchased computers that came with legal copies of XP Profressional, but if they must use Windows I encourage them to wipe it out and install Win2k. The last thing they want is to have to call Microsoft to get permission to use THEIR computer again just because they added some hardware.
That's because CD audio has no DRM whatsoever built in to the format. In order to be compatible with the millions of CD players already in people's homes and vehicles, any "protection" add-on must depend only on the user being dumb enough to let it install.
Yeah, come on, didn't they watch Deep Space 9?
I mean seriously, I'm going to consume babies and then sue the Vatican because a passage in the Bible inspired me to do so*.
Anyone who reads that and then eats babies because of it isn't literate. It's not telling you to eat babies, it's telling you to not be a dumbass.
Common sense has been discontinued some years ago, this is simply another sign of common sense becoming increasingly scarce.
The problem is that the total amount of common sense in the universe is a constant. The population just keeps increasing...
This is an important problem on Windows because most of the time you cannot simply recompile the un-optimised software to suit your hardware, as you can in Linux, etc.
Which is probably why MS is so gung-ho about machine-independent bytecode (.NET) and JIT compiling these days...
Unfortunately you pay huge costs in startup time and memory usage for that.
Absolutely nothing requires both 'halves' of a hyperthreaded CPU to be executing 'threads' that belong to the same process. Which, in fact, makes those not threads, but that is what they are called.
Yes, but the idea of HT is to run threads from the same process on the logical cores. Otherwise you run into exactly the cache problem that is being discussed.
While the scheduler can run different processes on the logical cores, if it does performance will suffer compared to a non-HT system. The way to get any gains out of it is to only use the logical CPU for threading purposes, hence the name.
Check out Free/NetBSD. They have a standard net80211 layer that nearly all of the drivers interface with -- the only ones that don't are the old prism driver and anything closed source. wpa_supplicant on those platform doesn't require any knowledge of the particular driver you're using, and plain old ifconfig can set any of the wireless parameters (try "ifconfig [nic] scan" for a list of APs).
IIRC, the only time you have to do anything special with wpa_supplicant is if you're using Project Evil (this NDIS compatibility for Windows drivers).
im not sure how more increasingly corrupt you could be than working with the devil.
:-)
Huh? Since when has Bill Gates been working with Sony?
Bill Gates is working with the devil too?!?!
Yeah, I mean, come on. The appendix has been deprecated for millenia and we still haven't gotten a design update.
That is such a perversion of the original intent of copyright law, it makes me sick.
Security: IPv6 mandates IPSec (which encrypts ALL streams, ALL of the time, so contextual information can't be used for cracking as it can with SSH or SSL streams, which are generally only used for specific segments of a transaction).
Overrated. IPv6 mandates IPSec support, but it's still an overengineered protocol that's a bitch to configure. Works okay for VPN-like scenarios, but will never work with random hosts you've never talked to before.
Authentication: X.509 within IPSec and the use of Extended Authentication protocols in IPv6 guarantee that all endpoints are who they say they are.
Overrated. See above. The PKI can-of-worms is bad enough with only servers, who's going to issue certificates for millions of end users and devices? How do you decide which root certificates to trust? How do you handle revocation?
Fragmented Packets: Firewalls don't handle fragmented packets well, as there is no header to check for later fragments. Fragmenting and re-assembly also adds latency. IPv6 defines per-connection MTUs, guaranteeing ALL packets are the largest supported between any two endpoints without fragmentation.
Cool. Fragmentation sucked anyway, and per-host MTU makes it possible to use jumbo frames in mixed 100/1000 LANs.
Latency: IPv6 headers don't have as many entries and are heirarchical, which makes routing much faster and much simpler. The lack of fragmentation and the presence of auto-MTU also helps.
Undetermined. Heirarchical routing makes things easier for the routers, harder for end-user sites (think renumbering when you switch ISPs). It's too early to tell how this will pan out in the real world.
Multicasting: IPv6 mandates multicasting and has a decent range of addresses for it.
Cool, if it works. There's still a lot of issues to hammer out in this area before we see any multicast capable BitTorrent implementations.
Anycasting: IPv6 mandates service location and resource location abilities, which means no more hunting for printers, routers, DNS servers, SMTP servers, POP/IMAP servers...
Very Cool. The all-zeros anycast address for routers means you don't have to worry about what your default gateway is. I'm eagerly awaiting standards for DNS over anycast, which can lead to all the service discovery features. The IPv4 anycast address for the closest 6-to-4 gateway is a neat trick, too.
Autoconfiguration: IPv6 uses autoconfiguration for routing and addressing as a standard, in a manner (almost) guaranteed to be free of conflicts and absolutely guaranteed to be fully scalable.
Cool. The only thing missing is configuration of DNS servers; hopefully anycast will take care of that. DHCPv6 may help also, but is there even a complete implementaiton of it yet?
Mobility: IPv6 mandates the ability for nodes or even entire networks to be totally mobile (ie: switch upstream routers without losing connectivity or existing connections) with upstream optimization of routing.
Overrated. I don't see how this can be practical on a global hierarchically routed network. The goals seem mutually exclusive. The work I've seen focuses on forwarding by an agent on your home network, which is horribly inefficient.
Advanced Headers: IPv6 allows an arbritary number of extended headers to be attached to packets, with controlled responses for unknown extended headers.
Scary. Potentially cool, but I'll bet all of the cell phones and random devices people want to be IPv6 enabled will be full of security holes relating to header parsing. I don't care how clearly the spec is defined, they'll still screw it up.
High Availability: IPv4's High Availability mechanisms require a lot of fancy manoevering, because t
I wonder if they'll "fix" any of these the same way they "fixed" the xbm overflow in IE -- by removing support for the format completely.
Oh well, because of that smooth move, I managed to convert someone to firefox who otherwise would have never considered it...
or save your source code, comment it, and keep a versioned repository like CVS or SVN at your employer's site (in addition to your own copies). You're a lot more likely to find employment doing programming again that way...