I have done my own listening tests on the equipment I actually use to listen to music (because that's what really matters for my personal self) and ogg is superior. Typically, high bitrate 256kbit+ mp3, midrange effects like quiet strumming of a guitar don't come out very well over light percussion and vocals. Slight variance effects and changes in intonation in high pitched instruments (celtic flutes, violins on the really high frets, vocals from women with really high voices) sound VERY tinny on high bitrate mp3.
Ogg is better on all fronts. It's Free as in speech. It sounds better. I have done such tests on most vorbis releases and I think that it surpassed mp3 back in the beta3 (not RC3) release of November 2000. That's when I think OGG came into its own as a true alternate digital music encoding system. That is when I switched to OGG for my general encoding purposes and it has only gotten better since that time.
"How do you define "alive"? In Asimov's books robots were definitely alive. They could think, interact with their environment, and even evolve and reproduce because they were smart enough to operate a factory."
Well on the Trek episode, they distinguishing factor was the desire for self-preservation. There was also an extended debate about adaptation to environment, repeoduction, etc. But in this case, I agree with the self-preservation phenomenon.
And just to make myself clear, I am NOT tying to say that this self organisaing circuit in the article is alive. Sure, it can perform well within its given situation, but that is just a characteristic of AI. I was just pointing out that there were similarities in the Trek case and this case, suggesting that maybe this is one tiny step to machines where we can really debate whether or not they are sentient.
"it's kinda amusing that instead of creating an ocillator, it "cheated", and grabbed signals from another computer. i wonder how the game theorists would explain that?"
I'm surprised that nobody yet has mentioned that Star Trek TNG episode "The Quality of Life" . (*) Was an issue like this predicted by Star Trek writers back in 1992?
(*) Warning, this site loads strangely for me in Mozilla 1.1. It's better but not totally un-strange in Opera 6.05.
(For the forgetful, it's the robot where Data thinks that those little 'exocomp' robots a scientist is using to help work on a space mining station are sentient so he sets up a little experiment. He sends the robot to work to fix a problem, and also generates a simulated problem where the robot would have been destroyed if it stayed to finish the test. Later, he discovered that the exocomp 'saw right through the test' and it not only fixed the problem, but it also turned off the false emergency signal. He eventually risks the lives of human scientists in an order to protect the exocomps from destruction because he is the only one who believes in their rights as sentient beings.)
Other good guesses are that the password is the same as the login ID, or that it's the login ID with a 1 attached on the end. Maybe the password was null.
"I agree with other posters - hardware manufacturers will pay the cost and raise their prices by a buck or two. But as for software decoders, only companies like MS will be able to afford the licensing fees. This spells the end of GPL MP3 decoders."
In true/. style, you have not read the article:
Arland says Thomson not only allows but encourages the use of MP3 technology in free client-side players, that "it is in our best interest to have as many freely distributed MP3 players as possible" available to users, because this helps keep MP3 popular. He also says Thomson has no plans to start charging royalties to producers of freely-distributed MP3 player software, and that "it would not be in our best interests to do so." But, he says several times -- using slightly different words each time -- the second you sell software or hardware that contains Thomson's patented technology, the company wants money, and this is not negotiable, GPL or no GPL.
"I have been getting a lot of spam lately on an address I only give out to my friends.
They all seem to keep it in their hotmail and yahoo address books.
Is that the spam leak?"
Many spammers just try random user names and hope they reach an inbox. And even if you open just one random spam with HTML 'phone come' code embedded in it, you are exposed and the spam starts rolling in.
"Perhaps the solution is to practise typing in rot13?:)"
Why learn something that can easily be decoded?
Try taking classes and learning another real language, perhaps Russian or Nederlands (sp?) or Korean. Most admins except in those regions will not be able to read it AND you will have learned a valuable skill which increases your personal job marketability.
"I teach in the public schools in NY state and we have had all free email sites (yahoo, netscape, etc) blocked by the damn firewall. The reason given is that such things allow for malicious attacks on the network. Is there any truth to this?"
With many children accessing free e-mail, there would be huge infection by virus downloads from clueless kids who really think they are being sent a loveletter.vbs or free pr0n. At the office where I work, once free webmail was blocked at the firewall, virus infections on the network dropped to 1/8th intensity.
As much as we don't like it, users needed to be protected from themselves because in any large group, you are guaranteed to have some stupid idiots who cannot easily be educated in these matters and will feck up the network and open the klez virus every time. IMHO, the aggravation saved from having the network down half the time is an acceptable tradeoff for having no free webmail.
Furthermore, the high school I went to was just getting internet before I graduated, and it was always unusable because kids were in the open lab using their hotmail all the time and surfing pr0n until the admin set up netbus. We only had 128k for 100+ computers and if all unacceptable things were not blocked, then the system was useless because of free games, hotmail, etc. Unless your school has huge bandwidth, there is no other option than to block the sh~t, otherwise the resources will be useless.
"Besides, if they really knew their kids they'd be able to guess their password;D"
These days, it's more likely that if the kids know the parents well enough, they will be able to guess the parent's password.
Chances are it's the name of the family's dog/cat, the word 'password' , the first letters of the kids' names concatenated together, the parents' initals + birthdate, the home address + last 4 digits of phone number and so on. Most PARENTS don't know how to use proper passwords and can never remember them so they use 1 password for everything from their bank account PIN to ISP logon.
(Now my dad on the other hand... he has been a UNIX admin (real unix mind you, not linux) since the 70s... he uses STRONG passwords.)
I don't normally use the +1 bonus for 'mod this up' messages but in this case I will make an exception. Feel free to mod this down as long as you mod the parent up.
"It's a Ketstroke logger that then forwards them on.
How is any form of encryption going to work?"
The keylogger probably detects that hotmail is open and then monitors keystrokes to the web browser. Now this suggestion is security by obscurity, but it's better than nothing. You could just type your e-mail in word and then encrpyt and then paste into hotmail. They keylogger probably won't log Word-created documents as e-mail.
"The previous company I worked at did this [block webmail] as well. Pissed the hell out of me, since I could no longer get to my email and I prefer to not give out my work email out over the net to avoid the spam.
The really idiotic think is that they blocked sites like Sneakemail [sneakemail.com] too, which is just a redirector service."
Yes, blocking sneakemail is just anal. The setup here doen't bother me too much because I use an obscure free webmail provider (20MB, IMAP4!!) that I will not name when posting from the office. Fortunately they only block the big webmail providers that most lusers use plus the instant messengers.
In the large company where I work, all access to Hotmail, Yahoo, etc is blocked at the firewall. This is because too many lusers kept downloading klez, hybris, (random vbs trojan), etc and executing them.
After this was done, all virus problems on the network dropped from one incident per 2 weeks to maybe 1 incident per 4 months.
As to the privacy issue, the easy solution is to NOT SEND PRIVATE E-MAIL FROM WORK (or at least use GnuPG or PGP!)
"I dont think the problem would be finding a layer to take on God (as they all think they are God), I think the problem is where is God going to get a layer in heaven?"
I dunno, but it would probably take almost as long as it would to find a lawyer in heaven;-) I mean really, I bet the firewall at the pearly gates blocks all.ho domains.
"I don't know what you're arguing, but even regardless of all that, you earned some $$$ out of it. A lot of people have to work dead-end jobs in which Money is the only thing they can get out of it, and they're happy about it. Don't brush off the money like that. So just being able to earn PAY is a very important opportunity that shouldn't be brushed off. You never sounded too happy in what you posted, that's why I felt I should remind you:)"
OK now I see what you mean. Thank you for replying. I do agree that everybody wins (except the company gets slightly screwed because they paid for more than they got.)
I had previously thought you were implying that people like me were 'cheap labour' in the sense that we have no value. By saying that my employer was investing some time/education in me, I'm just making the point that sometimes it's more than that. (I do believe that this does not quite relate to the point that you are making.)
Of course money is valuable and I will now be able to pay tuition to continue my studies, but especially for someone just starting out, other things like exposure to real buisness and real work can be very valuable too.
"Whether consultants first, cheap labor second, or reverse, both parties benefit, the company finally is satisfied, and the BOSS has a good story to tell other bosses about the "Iffy's" of software contracting.:-)"
Hey man, their definition of 'cheap labour' was my definition of a dynamite learning experience and a higher paid co-op job than most people with 2 more years of university than me in a bum job market. That is not cheap. They really invested a lot of time in educating ME about the industry and business in general. Now THAT is very valuable. (See my latest journal entry if you're interested in reading more.)
"Don't get me wrong, it's always nice to hear about a release based on the above three things. But what about a new game that nobody's heard of before that's really, really good?"
I suggest you go look a game called "Arx Fatailis" and download the demo. It has an Ultima Underworld kind of feel and it is a breath of fresh air.
As to the lack of 'new stuff' I blame that on the demise of Looking Glass Studios. The people from LGS were always injecting something unexpected and original into the gaming market. All the way back to the Ultima Underworlds and System shock to Thief: The Dark Project and the very original System Shock 2, LGS always danced to their own beat. Too bad they had a bunch of financial problems appear at the same time. They were truly a giant among giants.
"thanks slashdot, I've been trying to get the original on ebay for the last couple months now. This asures me of not finding a copy for under the original face value for a few more months to come now!"
You should look for "The Lucasarts Archives Volume III" which sometimes still appears in retail stores. It comes with a bunch of LEC games including MI1 and MI2. But there's no way in heck I'm gonna sell you my original boxed Monkey Island 2 with original code wheel on 5.25" floppies;-)
"It's one of the most well-designed games of all time. The puzzles are very inventive and the characters are actually engaging."
Well I have played the GrimFD demo... do you know if there's any way to turn off that silly console-style joystick type navigation? That is also the reason I did not get Monkey Island 4.
Slashdot Mirror
I have done my own listening tests on the equipment I actually use to listen to music (because that's what really matters for my personal self) and ogg is superior. Typically, high bitrate 256kbit+ mp3, midrange effects like quiet strumming of a guitar don't come out very well over light percussion and vocals. Slight variance effects and changes in intonation in high pitched instruments (celtic flutes, violins on the really high frets, vocals from women with really high voices) sound VERY tinny on high bitrate mp3.
Ogg is better on all fronts. It's Free as in speech. It sounds better. I have done such tests on most vorbis releases and I think that it surpassed mp3 back in the beta3 (not RC3) release of November 2000. That's when I think OGG came into its own as a true alternate digital music encoding system. That is when I switched to OGG for my general encoding purposes and it has only gotten better since that time.
Well on the Trek episode, they distinguishing factor was the desire for self-preservation. There was also an extended debate about adaptation to environment, repeoduction, etc. But in this case, I agree with the self-preservation phenomenon.
And just to make myself clear, I am NOT tying to say that this self organisaing circuit in the article is alive. Sure, it can perform well within its given situation, but that is just a characteristic of AI. I was just pointing out that there were similarities in the Trek case and this case, suggesting that maybe this is one tiny step to machines where we can really debate whether or not they are sentient.
I'm surprised that nobody yet has mentioned that Star Trek TNG episode "The Quality of Life" . (*) Was an issue like this predicted by Star Trek writers back in 1992?
(*) Warning, this site loads strangely for me in Mozilla 1.1. It's better but not totally un-strange in Opera 6.05.
(For the forgetful, it's the robot where Data thinks that those little 'exocomp' robots a scientist is using to help work on a space mining station are sentient so he sets up a little experiment. He sends the robot to work to fix a problem, and also generates a simulated problem where the robot would have been destroyed if it stayed to finish the test. Later, he discovered that the exocomp 'saw right through the test' and it not only fixed the problem, but it also turned off the false emergency signal. He eventually risks the lives of human scientists in an order to protect the exocomps from destruction because he is the only one who believes in their rights as sentient beings.)
Because I am implying that they are more valuable ... :P
When your karma gets to "good" (formerly 25 points) you get an optional +1 bonus. You should read the karma faq.
Yes it is the same situation at my place of employment and I feel your pain. But I have to do it all on NT4.
Other good guesses are that the password is the same as the login ID, or that it's the login ID with a 1 attached on the end. Maybe the password was null.
In true /. style, you have not read the article:
There's a Cirrus chip model CS7410 available that supposedly can decode OGGs.
Note: The purpose of the chip is not specifically for decoding OGGs - it just seems to have the right silicon in it to do the job.
Many spammers just try random user names and hope they reach an inbox. And even if you open just one random spam with HTML 'phone come' code embedded in it, you are exposed and the spam starts rolling in.
Why learn something that can easily be decoded?
Try taking classes and learning another real language, perhaps Russian or Nederlands (sp?) or Korean. Most admins except in those regions will not be able to read it AND you will have learned a valuable skill which increases your personal job marketability.
With many children accessing free e-mail, there would be huge infection by virus downloads from clueless kids who really think they are being sent a loveletter.vbs or free pr0n. At the office where I work, once free webmail was blocked at the firewall, virus infections on the network dropped to 1/8th intensity.
As much as we don't like it, users needed to be protected from themselves because in any large group, you are guaranteed to have some stupid idiots who cannot easily be educated in these matters and will feck up the network and open the klez virus every time. IMHO, the aggravation saved from having the network down half the time is an acceptable tradeoff for having no free webmail.
Furthermore, the high school I went to was just getting internet before I graduated, and it was always unusable because kids were in the open lab using their hotmail all the time and surfing pr0n until the admin set up netbus. We only had 128k for 100+ computers and if all unacceptable things were not blocked, then the system was useless because of free games, hotmail, etc. Unless your school has huge bandwidth, there is no other option than to block the sh~t, otherwise the resources will be useless.
Yeah I saw your name and immediately knew it would be a joke. (I'm that guy who wrote 'h3ll' way back when.)
send me an e-mail ;-)
These days, it's more likely that if the kids know the parents well enough, they will be able to guess the parent's password.
Chances are it's the name of the family's dog/cat, the word 'password' , the first letters of the kids' names concatenated together, the parents' initals + birthdate, the home address + last 4 digits of phone number and so on. Most PARENTS don't know how to use proper passwords and can never remember them so they use 1 password for everything from their bank account PIN to ISP logon.
(Now my dad on the other hand ... he has been a UNIX admin (real unix mind you, not linux) since the 70s ... he uses STRONG passwords.)
I don't normally use the +1 bonus for 'mod this up' messages but in this case I will make an exception. Feel free to mod this down as long as you mod the parent up.
You are encrypting to send to someone else. No private key is required. If you really need one, generate a new key for work purposes.
The keylogger probably detects that hotmail is open and then monitors keystrokes to the web browser. Now this suggestion is security by obscurity, but it's better than nothing. You could just type your e-mail in word and then encrpyt and then paste into hotmail. They keylogger probably won't log Word-created documents as e-mail.
Yes, blocking sneakemail is just anal. The setup here doen't bother me too much because I use an obscure free webmail provider (20MB, IMAP4!!) that I will not name when posting from the office. Fortunately they only block the big webmail providers that most lusers use plus the instant messengers.
After this was done, all virus problems on the network dropped from one incident per 2 weeks to maybe 1 incident per 4 months.
As to the privacy issue, the easy solution is to NOT SEND PRIVATE E-MAIL FROM WORK (or at least use GnuPG or PGP!)
I dunno, but it would probably take almost as long as it would to find a lawyer in heaven ;-) I mean really, I bet the firewall at the pearly gates blocks all .ho domains.
OK now I see what you mean. Thank you for replying. I do agree that everybody wins (except the company gets slightly screwed because they paid for more than they got.)
I had previously thought you were implying that people like me were 'cheap labour' in the sense that we have no value. By saying that my employer was investing some time/education in me, I'm just making the point that sometimes it's more than that. (I do believe that this does not quite relate to the point that you are making.)
Of course money is valuable and I will now be able to pay tuition to continue my studies, but especially for someone just starting out, other things like exposure to real buisness and real work can be very valuable too.
Hey man, their definition of 'cheap labour' was my definition of a dynamite learning experience and a higher paid co-op job than most people with 2 more years of university than me in a bum job market. That is not cheap. They really invested a lot of time in educating ME about the industry and business in general. Now THAT is very valuable. (See my latest journal entry if you're interested in reading more.)
I suggest you go look a game called "Arx Fatailis" and download the demo. It has an Ultima Underworld kind of feel and it is a breath of fresh air.
As to the lack of 'new stuff' I blame that on the demise of Looking Glass Studios. The people from LGS were always injecting something unexpected and original into the gaming market. All the way back to the Ultima Underworlds and System shock to Thief: The Dark Project and the very original System Shock 2, LGS always danced to their own beat. Too bad they had a bunch of financial problems appear at the same time. They were truly a giant among giants.
You should look for "The Lucasarts Archives Volume III" which sometimes still appears in retail stores. It comes with a bunch of LEC games including MI1 and MI2. But there's no way in heck I'm gonna sell you my original boxed Monkey Island 2 with original code wheel on 5.25" floppies ;-)
Well I have played the GrimFD demo ... do you know if there's any way to turn off that silly console-style joystick type navigation? That is also the reason I did not get Monkey Island 4.