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I must be doing something wrong? I'm using OmniWeb and also proxied through Privoxy (pop-up blocking implemented in both).
I clicked the link for folks WITH a pop-up blocker, and the citibank page opened in a new window, and a javascript alert appeared that reads "You do not have a pop-up blocker enabled".. uh, I have TWO actually. But never mind that. Dismiss the alert, and I then click on the "Consumer Alert" graphic and absolutely nothing happens.
Okay actually, OmniWeb showed a blocked pop-up in the *Secunia* window, behind the citibank window. Odd. Let's see what that window is.
Okay, it's the citibank pop-up aobut "spoofs". No message from Secunia. So I guess I'm not vulnerable this way.
Now I close the citibank window and reload the secunia window to try the "WITHOUT pop-up blocker" link. Again, the citibank page opens in another window. I click on the "Consumer Alert" graphic.
This time, the content of the Secunia window is *replaced* with the citibank pop-up (back button disabled, because it replaced the contents, and I opened the original secunia link in a new window so it doesn't have slashdot in the history either). And no pop-op indicator, no message from Secunia.
So does that mean I'm not vulnerable? Is it OmniWeb or is it privoxy that's "protecting" me?
Note: It also doesn't work in Lynx, my other favorite browser.:^)
then reload the homepage and copy that "rss" link at the very bottom of the page. It will be customized to your exact specs!
This doesn't work for me, I get just "http://slashdot.org/index.rss".. the top of the page says "This page was generated by a Squadron of Attack Elephants for Dr. Awktagon (233360)" so I must be logged in, right?
Also like a poster above I was developing an RSS reader and testing on slashdot's feed and I got shut out after like 5-10 hits, I guess you check for a RATE exceeding 50 hits/hour, rather than actually waiting an hour, right?
My "gut feeling" is that the signed version cannot be distributed under the terms of the GPL unless the recipient can generate it herself from the source code, including a signature.
Then again, if the unsigned version is functionally equivalent to the signed version, then someone savvy enough to compile it would also probably not need the signed version to begin with, they would turn off the signature checking (or whatever... I'm not familiar with the platform).
Probably the easiest thing to do is to contact the copyright holder(s), since it's their work, they will let you know if distributing code-signed versions is okay with them, regardless of the GPL. Basically they could give you a separate license, or include an exception in their license that allows code-signed versions if an identical non-signed version is available.
As for charging money, you can charge whatever you like. You could offer three versions: the signed one for $X, the unsigned for $Y, and the unsigned for $0. The last two would be identical and 100% GPL. The first one could just be a simple "no warranty, don't copy" non-free license to save yourself headaches.. if you get permission to do this from the gnuboy folks of course.
The "hard-line Free Software" approach would be to not distribute any kind of signed version at all, since it would interfere with people's rights to modify and re-distribute.
Re:ProTools is a large reason modern music sucks
on
Cheap Audio Production
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Nonsense...
Over-compression is a problem with many recordings, sure, that's not because of Pro Tools. Many amateurs over-compress too, and they have been since they figured out how.
"Voice-tuning" is usually done by a product made by Antares and has nothing to do with Pro Tools. It's available for every other recording software too, and is available as an external box. Auto-Tune is actually used on many recordings these days to clean up the singing. Again, this is the fault of the people using Pro Tools, and has nothing to do with Pro Tools. Pro Tools doesn't do this out of the box (at least, last I used it).
In fact all your complaints have nothing to do with Pro Tools. Popular music was faddish and homogeneous long before Pro Tools.
PT is a great program and turns any machine into a flexible multi-track recorder. It reminds me a lot of Photoshop in that it has a good interface, it helps you get your work done, it opens up huge new possibilities, and certain features of it are cliched and over-used by a lot of folks (are we sick of drop-shadows yet? over-sharpened photos? "funky borders"?)
There's nothing "evil" about PT. It doesn't "do" anything unless someone pushes the buttons and slides the sliders.
You could argue that any music tech is bad... tape recorders (no live music!)... soundproof studios (where's the ambience?)... electric guitars (all the sound is effects).. microphones (they color the sound!)... but you'd be wrong.. Pro tools like any other music tech has opened up a lot of possibilities, and popular music aside, I love to hear the things people can do when they start to push the boundaries of those possibilities.
Hey, just did a "view source" because the page was rendering all wrong... the whole interview is in plain text within a comment at the beginning of the HTML source code (do a view source).
Cool! Plain ol' text is so much easier to read.. is this a common gamespot thing?
Personally, my vote goes for the GE Monogram NetRange.. the world's first combination microwave oven and 802.11 access point. Since microwave ovens and 802.11 operates in the same unlicensed band, it makes perfect sense! Just take the original GE Monogram microwave oven, add a data modulator, remove the door, and you have a convenient, high-power* access point the whole family can use**!
* 800W transmitter may exceed FCC limits.
** Electromagnetic interference is unpredictable. Unit may cause death.
Ah, I wish I had time to photoshop up a fake ad for this....
I think the person from the Cato institute is WAY off the mark when he implies that labeling requirements are just as onerous as mandated copy protection:
The better alternative to federal mandates on either side of this debate is to instead just encourage a technological free-for-all in the marketplace
When I studied economics, one of the conditions of competition was perfect information distribution. I.e., customers have to know what is available, and they have to know what it is. That makes sense.
We're not talking 5-inch flourescent yellow stickers here, just that SOMEWHERE on the box, it needs to state what's inside. Or even just having a list on the manufacturer's web site. This list could be compiled by a third-party site, but they don't know if their list is accurate for each and every version of a CD.
If I don't know what's in the box, I'm going to avoid it. When I buy CDs, I "install" them on my computer, and I put the CD in the closet. I have to know if this is possible when I get a CD.
Simple labeling requirements are *essential* here. I know congress should probably stay out of this debate whenever possible, but if they don't pass something like this now, consumers will demand it anyway later on.
Technology is getting to the point where even the most innocent thing like a CD can contain code, spyware, copy protections that damage your CD drive, etc., etc. I'd like to be able to make intelligent buying decisions (i.e., AVOID buying any of these CDs), and if I don't know what I'm buying, I'll just avoid ALL CDs and get them from filesharing networks or wait until a friend gets it.
I support any reasonable law that creates more information in the marketplace, including trademarks, labeling requirements, SEC disclosure rules, etc. That's the governments role in regulating free markets (and yes, free markets have to be regulated, otherwise there would be no copyright in the first place! I wonder what the Cato guy thinks about copyrights in general).
..is the 1.5m range on these things a function of the tag itself or the antenna that "probes" it? i.e., could I get a big fat antenna and go, I guess, war-driving for RF tags? ("Oh look, my neighbor Bob just bought a thong. Better go tease him about it. Wait, he doesn't even have a girlfriend. I better not")
Radio waves are funny, sometimes they bounce around and show up in places you don't expect them!
Well, I listen to electronic music a lot at the moment, and much of it comes from overseas. I find some of the music on filesharing and eBay, but most of it I get from small online stores like s://kimo or Bent Crayon. There have been others, they come and go. Usually it's one or two guys operating out of their bedroom or a small storefront someplace. If you ask around mailing lists, etc., for your favorite music (i.e., jazz, techno, etc) they will give you pointers.
I also buy directly from the labels sometimes, they usually don't have a problem shipping to the USA (I've ordered from Australia for a few bucks shipping, for instance).
Your best bet is to contact the label itself and ask them if they sell directly, or ask who distributes their stuff (preferably somebody in the USA). Then email *those* folks and buy from them, or ask them what stores they distribute to. At some point along the chain you'll find somebody willing to sell you something.
I've had the best luck with the UK, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, etc., you might have to search a little harder for other parts of asia or the middle east, but you should be able to find someone who will exchange money for CDs.
Feline kidney transplants have been performed in the USA for a while now, in a number of locations. I read about a hospital in Florida, perhaps the same one referenced by the poster above.
I recently had one of my cats euthanized for chronic renal failure (he had a blood clot in his legs and tail and couldn't walk, among other things) and I learned how some people spent thousands of dollars to transplant kidneys or perform regular dialysis.
I didn't read about any particular ethical concerns, just the vets shrugging and saying "if you really want to do it, and you have the money, it's possible".
But my belief is that 1) it's just a cat, you'll get over any grief; and 2) there comes a point when treating your pet that you are no longer doing it *for* the animal, you're doing it *to* the animal for your own selfish wishes. At that point it's better to euthanize.
A cat with transplanted kidneys will never be the same anyway, he will have to take constant immunosuppressants and other drugs just to stay alive, and will have constant complications and will not be a very happy cat.
Agreed.. I've had enough headaches with FTP and firewalls/NAT, let's just let it die. For robust downloading of large files rsync is the protocol to use.
For those not familiar: rsync can copy or synchronize files or directories of files. it divides the files into blocks and only transfers the parts of the file that are different or missing. It's awesome for mirrored backups, among other things. There is even a Mac OS X version that tranfers the Mac-specific metadata of each file.
Just today I had to transfer a ~400MB file to a machine over a fairly slow connection. The only way in was SSH and the only way out was HTTP.
First I tried HTTP and the connection dropped. No problem, I thought, I'll just use "wget -c" and it will continue fine. Well, it continued, but the archive was corrupt.
I remembered that rsync can run over SSH and I rsync'd the file over the damaged one. It took a few moments for it to find the blocks with the errors, and it downloaded just thost blocks.
Rsync should be built into every program that downloads large files, including web browsers. Apple or someone should pick up this technology, give it some good marketing ("auto-repair download" or something) and life will be good.
Rsync also has a daemon mode that allows you to run a dedicated rsync server. This is good for public distribution of files.
Rsync is the way to go! I guess this really doesn't 100% answer the poster's question, but people really should be thinking about rsync more.
I played with it a little bit. I wanted to make a slideshow out of some (big) photoshop files, with some pan & zoom, nice transitions, music, etc.
The main problem was that 80% of the PSD files came in wrong.. they were "folded over" as if you shifted the pixels over and they wrapped around. Bizarre.
Also at random times (maybe when an effect was still rendering) it gave me an error message about "unable to convert to JPEG, but was imported anyway" which means it couldn't apply the pan & zoom, but it still showed up in the movie. Bizarre again...
I also couldn't figure out an easy way to turn OFF the pan & zoom and just have a static still image.
Finally, I just exported a plain slideshow from iPhoto and left it at that.
On a related note, I hope Apple takes a look at Photoshop Album for ideas for a future version of iPhoto. Album looks like iPhoto on steroids.
Into electronic music? Try Monotonik.. they have maybe a gig or more of "freely spreadable" MP3's, all great stuff. Some live sets and stuff hiding on their FTP servers as well. Awesome music, if you like artists like Thug, Lackluster, Sense, etc, or any kind of electronic/ambient/IDM stuff.
Look around for more MP3-only free labels, there are some others out there I can't remember right now, but they all encourage distribution. DJ sets are particularly nice (big) but most of them don't have permission to redistribute the songs in the first place, use your judgement on how "legal" those are.
I bet there are online movie outfits that give away stuff in a similar spirit.
I think this is a good idea, maybe someone will download one of your files and learn about a new artist who deserves their money rather than the the big labels.
* HTTPS doesn't work at all for me over a proxy. I think it is using SSL to talk to the proxy which isn't right. It should connect to the proxy in the clear and then issue a CONNECT and then use SSL. Anybody seen this one?
* "don't use proxy for these hosts/domains" setting is treated as hosts only (so if you put in "foo.com" then you visit "www2.ecommerce.foo.com" the proxy gets used anyway).
* keychain entries of the form "http://host.com:80" are ignored, and it adds its own "http://host.com" entry.
If you examine Tom Murphy's program, you'll see that he neglects to update the file checksum and
actually miscalculates the OS/2 table checksum. When I asked him how it was that his program
still worked, he indicated that most applications seem to simply ignore the checksum values.
Well, heck, I was looking at it and if I take out the checksum that makes it a scant 64 bytes:
His one-liner doesn't seem to update the checksum? There is a checksum someplace in there.
How do I know this interesting fact? Because last year I tried writing my own one-liner, but couldn't squeeze it down to one line because of the checksum.
Here's what I came up with at the time, which according to diff produces identical output to the C code:
121 bytes if you take out the newlines. And any slashdot-inserted spaces.
No, I have no idea how it works any more. The code is placed in $_, the '-' is not as it seems, eval() runs the code in $_, and that's all I can tell you. Welcome to Perl!
A small company I work for has discovered that a domain name has been registered with their U.S.-trademarked (since 1980) name. Requests to the owner of the site (a U.S. citizen) have gone unanswered, so we're now moving on to filing an ICANN dispute.
People like you worry me. You didn't say they had any kind of a web site, only that they registered the domain.
I hope you meant that "they had a web site up that might confuse our customers" or "we have a famous mark and they are diluting it" or something like that. Not just that your trademark is stored on some hard drive at the domain registrar database and you really would like it for yourself.
I have a couple domains with short non-word names that I registered many years ago. For a while I had a stupid "hello, here are links to my friends' home page" kind of thing, but decided I would just use them for email, which I do.
And I occasionally wonder if some low-life that wants the name is going sue me (or even worst, arbitrate me) just because he wants the domain, and not because I'm actually affecting his business. In court that would be easy to win, but in arbitration I would probably lose.
Heck, that low-life might be YOU (though I doubt it since my contact info is up-to-date and I haven't seen any messages about them).
Please, register your domain in.biz or something for now and don't sue this guy unless he is actually *infringing on your trademark* or he bought the domain *in bad faith*. I don't know how generic the term in question is, but if it's something generic like "ProComputers.com", I doubt it's bad faith.
The Linux Development Platform: Configuring, Usin and Mainting a Complete Programming Environment
Heh, open source is always full of bugs.:-)
Seriously, this looks great, it's good to see a large publisher trying this. It makes a lot of sense to me, especially for computer docs (I own many of the books I read on Safari in paper form for instance). Heck, I wish all books came with a plaintext version of the text on CD or something, just for the grep value.
I'll definitely be getting the Snort book, and keeping my eye on the series. Kudos all around.
Please don't say "lower prices" because that's just a rationalization that they're somehow forcing pirates to do it.
Making a moral argument that "Folks who create intangibles are as entitled to compensation as people who build bridges." doesn't remove the problem. I think it creates problems because people will try and hammer reality to fit their beliefs.
Information costs almost ZERO to duplicate. This will always be the case. It costs something to create, but not to duplicate. To me, that suggests that the price of copies should very low, and the price of originals (concerts, let's say) should be higher.
Now, you don't want anyone to say "lower prices", how about "higher value"? I have no idea what that would be, but maybe they should just stop selling "CDs" and start selling something collectible that happens to have music in it, I have no idea. I buy all my CDs out of principle (NO major labels though) so I personally don't need this incentive.
Which brings me to another point, will people stop buying music completely if both legit and non-legit copies are available? I don't think so. I think there will always be people who PAY for their copies, for various reasons. But the music corps have to lower their expectations.
Another point: Why do we even HAVE a global music industry? Why isn't music a local thing: you go to a concert, you talk to the band, you buy their CD out of loyalty and excitement. Why are there superstars at all?
If you're against intellectual property in general, just skip this, because the industry is never going to work for free, nor accept your suggestion, nor IMHO should they.
Well, I'm not against trademarks or (most) patents, but I definitely think the concept of copyright is completely broken. It should last 20-30 years, and it should not be a crime to copy without profit. To my mind, this is an capitalistic puzzle: why do you punish people who create a more efficient market? (Yes I understand the argument about giving incentive but there's a balance between giving incentives and forcing people to find their own incentives).
Maybe we should just let things alone, and let people who grew up in this environment figure out a way to benefit from it. Let the principles of capitalism find a way. I believe that forcing people to TRY to make money will be much better than creating a market through government regulation. And we shouldn't be afraid to say "what if it's NOT POSSIBLE to have a music industry any more? what if the music industry has to come back down to earth? what if people can only reliably be paid for creating, not for copying (commissioning a song for a TV commercial, for instance)? What if there IS NO BUSINESS MODEL for albums?".
But, ranting aside, you and I both know that the music industry will regulate and legislate. And their legislation will not strike any balances, and it won't create any new opportunities, and it won't give incentives to anyone unless they use the old business models. Too bad.
Well, I was going to make some comments about this program, and why should I give, and how might the money be used (paying programmers, pro-actively building a "legal defense fund", buying advertising in computer publications to explain the benefits of Free software, etc).
But looking over the comments I see everybody's getting in the "free" nit-picking argument. Now, really, I know only like 1% of the slashdot population engages in this bickering, but just in case someone is learning about Free software through these comments alone, let me throw a few ideas into the mix. All of this is explained on the FSF web page but of course they insist on being precise and pedantic so it's hard to cut right to the soundbites.
Here we go:
* The GPL is a good example of a Free software license. So is the modified BSD license, the X11 license, the W3C license, and many others. Even placing your code into the public domain will grant users the same freedoms. And even the Apache and Perl licenses are basically Free, though the FSF discourages using them on new code for various nit-picky reasons.
So, if you use the BSD license or place your code into public domain your software is just as free, according to the FSF, as it would be under the GPL. Even the GPL defenders seem to forget that the GPL is only one of many licenses that ensure software freedom. When someone says "I'm using the BSD license, because it's really free and the GPL isn't and the FSF has a stupid name" you should just smile politely and nod your head, because they are the ones making the distinction, not the FSF.
* The FSF uses the term "copyleft" for the viral nature of the GPL. This is actually what many people (including Microsoft) dislike. The FSF themselves describe this is as a rather abstract concept, which is why they gave its own own made-up name and keep the concept separate from software freedom. Freedom is more concrete: it lets you do more with the software on your computer, and it gives the copyright holder less power over you.
When you argue against the FSF's definition of "free software", make sure you're not really arguing about "copyleft". But also remember that the freedoms are what's important, not the copyleft. That's why it's the Free Software Foundation and not the Copyleft Software Foundation.
Copyleft is a tricky way to keep software Free, by adding some redistribution restrictions. Note that non-Free licenses are themselves under a sort of "ironic copyleft" already: it's just as illegal for you to copy your neighbor's illegal Windows CDR as it was for him to download it from a P2P network and run it.
So when flaming the FSF, please remember that the goal we mostly agree on is to make software licenses less restrictive and less obnoxious. Both the BSD and GPL licenses are less obnoxious than the license on, say, any Microsoft/Adobe/etc product, so why focus on the copyleft provisions of the GPL?
Now, if the above makes your "GPL isn't really free" argument less useful, don't forget, you can still make ad hominem attacks on Richard Stallman's inflexible personality, leftist political views, and questionable personal hygiene.:-)
But that won't make the software licenses you accept at home and at work any better for you. You do that by 1) writing and using Free software; 2) letting your vendors know that you prefer freedom with your software; and 3) not accepting licenses you don't agree with (and note that you don't have to accept the GPL unless you want to distribute copies of the GPL'd software).
* Anytime you use encryption or digital signatures, it's not "DRM". It's not like these folks want to restrict copying of the pictures, or track people who see the photos, they do that by keeping the pictures within their labs. The encryption is so they can show in court that the picture was not tampered with. When you check the signature in your linux package files, that's not DRM, that's something for your own benefit.
* I was recently looking at Canon's latest EOS-1Ds camera, which has a "Data Verification Kit" encryption module available. You put a smart card in a reader and every shot is digitally signed in the camera. So this stuff is available and hopefully the forensic photographers will begin using it. Of course a malicious photographer might change the software in the camera somehow but hopefully the module checks for that.
* Dodge & Burn tools should probably *not* be used.. they allow you to darken/lighten specific *areas* of the photo, which could be dangerous. When enhancing evidence they should only allow *global* changes like overall brightness or contrast, etc. Or at least they should send the evidence to three or more independent labs, who don't know anything about the case, and let each version be seen in court. That way there's less of a chance that someone will doctor the evidence for a specific outcome. And of course the whole workflow needs encryption and signatures.
* Evidence can always be tampered with. The digital signatures just make it harder, and hopefully at least as hard as it is now in the non-digital world.
Slashdot Mirror
velcro detachable sideburns
Shit.
*crumples and throws away patent application*
You have paid for a total of 19000 pages and so far 16835 have been used up (10 today). Thank you for supporting Slashdot! We appreciate your contribution very much.
I must be doing something wrong? I'm using OmniWeb and also proxied through Privoxy (pop-up blocking implemented in both).
.. uh, I have TWO actually. But never mind that. Dismiss the alert, and I then click on the "Consumer Alert" graphic and
:^)
I clicked the link for folks WITH a pop-up blocker, and the citibank page opened in a new window, and a javascript alert appeared that reads "You do not
have a pop-up blocker enabled"
absolutely nothing happens.
Okay actually, OmniWeb showed a blocked pop-up in the *Secunia* window, behind the citibank window. Odd. Let's see what that window is.
Okay, it's the citibank pop-up aobut "spoofs". No message from Secunia. So I guess I'm not vulnerable this way.
Now I close the citibank window and reload the secunia window to try the "WITHOUT pop-up blocker" link. Again, the citibank page opens in another
window. I click on the "Consumer Alert" graphic.
This time, the content of the Secunia window is *replaced* with the citibank pop-up (back button disabled, because it replaced the contents, and I opened
the original secunia link in a new window so it doesn't have slashdot in the history either). And no pop-op indicator, no message from Secunia.
So does that mean I'm not vulnerable? Is it OmniWeb or is it privoxy that's "protecting" me?
Note: It also doesn't work in Lynx, my other favorite browser.
then reload the homepage and copy that "rss" link at the very bottom of the page. It will be customized to your exact specs!
This doesn't work for me, I get just "http://slashdot.org/index.rss" .. the top of the page says "This page was generated by a Squadron of Attack Elephants for Dr. Awktagon (233360)" so I must be logged in, right?
Also like a poster above I was developing an RSS reader and testing on slashdot's feed and I got shut out after like 5-10 hits, I guess you check for a RATE exceeding 50 hits/hour, rather than actually waiting an hour, right?
@ssh0le
How do you pronounce that? Atsshzerole?
yeah, it's just like public domain.
My "gut feeling" is that the signed version cannot be distributed under the terms of the GPL unless the recipient can generate it herself from the source code, including a signature.
Then again, if the unsigned version is functionally equivalent to the signed version, then someone savvy enough to compile it would also probably not need the signed version to begin with, they would turn off the signature checking (or whatever... I'm not familiar with the platform).
Probably the easiest thing to do is to contact the copyright holder(s), since it's their work, they will let you know if distributing code-signed versions is okay with them, regardless of the GPL. Basically they could give you a separate license, or include an exception in their license that allows code-signed versions if an identical non-signed version is available.
As for charging money, you can charge whatever you like. You could offer three versions: the signed one for $X, the unsigned for $Y, and the unsigned for $0. The last two would be identical and 100% GPL. The first one could just be a simple "no warranty, don't copy" non-free license to save yourself headaches.. if you get permission to do this from the gnuboy folks of course.
The "hard-line Free Software" approach would be to not distribute any kind of signed version at all, since it would interfere with people's rights to modify and re-distribute.
Nonsense...
... tape recorders (no live music!) ... soundproof studios (where's the ambience?) ... electric guitars (all the sound is effects) .. microphones (they color the sound!) ... but you'd be wrong .. Pro tools like any other music tech has opened up a lot of possibilities, and popular music aside, I love to hear the things people can do when they start to push the boundaries of those possibilities.
Over-compression is a problem with many recordings, sure, that's not because of Pro Tools. Many amateurs over-compress too, and they have been since they figured out how.
"Voice-tuning" is usually done by a product made by Antares and has nothing to do with Pro Tools. It's available for every other recording software too, and is available as an external box. Auto-Tune is actually used on many recordings these days to clean up the singing. Again, this is the fault of the people using Pro Tools, and has nothing to do with Pro Tools. Pro Tools doesn't do this out of the box (at least, last I used it).
In fact all your complaints have nothing to do with Pro Tools. Popular music was faddish and homogeneous long before Pro Tools.
PT is a great program and turns any machine into a flexible multi-track recorder. It reminds me a lot of Photoshop in that it has a good interface, it helps you get your work done, it opens up huge new possibilities, and certain features of it are cliched and over-used by a lot of folks (are we sick of drop-shadows yet? over-sharpened photos? "funky borders"?)
There's nothing "evil" about PT. It doesn't "do" anything unless someone pushes the buttons and slides the sliders.
You could argue that any music tech is bad
Hey, just did a "view source" because the page was rendering all wrong... the whole interview is in plain text within a comment at the beginning of the HTML source code (do a view source).
Cool! Plain ol' text is so much easier to read.. is this a common gamespot thing?
Translucent plastic? USB?
.. the world's first combination microwave oven and 802.11 access point. Since microwave ovens and 802.11 operates in the same unlicensed band, it makes perfect sense! Just take the original GE Monogram microwave oven, add a data modulator, remove the door, and you have a convenient, high-power* access point the whole family can use**!
That's SO year 2000.
These days, it's matte white and WiFi.
Personally, my vote goes for the GE Monogram NetRange
* 800W transmitter may exceed FCC limits.
** Electromagnetic interference is unpredictable. Unit may cause death.
Ah, I wish I had time to photoshop up a fake ad for this....
I think the person from the Cato institute is WAY off the mark when he implies that labeling requirements are just as onerous as mandated copy protection:
When I studied economics, one of the conditions of competition was perfect information distribution. I.e., customers have to know what is available, and they have to know what it is. That makes sense.
We're not talking 5-inch flourescent yellow stickers here, just that SOMEWHERE on the box, it needs to state what's inside. Or even just having a list on the manufacturer's web site. This list could be compiled by a third-party site, but they don't know if their list is accurate for each and every version of a CD.
If I don't know what's in the box, I'm going to avoid it. When I buy CDs, I "install" them on my computer, and I put the CD in the closet. I have to know if this is possible when I get a CD.
Simple labeling requirements are *essential* here. I know congress should probably stay out of this debate whenever possible, but if they don't pass something like this now, consumers will demand it anyway later on.
Technology is getting to the point where even the most innocent thing like a CD can contain code, spyware, copy protections that damage your CD drive, etc., etc. I'd like to be able to make intelligent buying decisions (i.e., AVOID buying any of these CDs), and if I don't know what I'm buying, I'll just avoid ALL CDs and get them from filesharing networks or wait until a friend gets it.
I support any reasonable law that creates more information in the marketplace, including trademarks, labeling requirements, SEC disclosure rules, etc. That's the governments role in regulating free markets (and yes, free markets have to be regulated, otherwise there would be no copyright in the first place! I wonder what the Cato guy thinks about copyrights in general).
..is the 1.5m range on these things a function of the tag itself or the antenna that "probes" it? i.e., could I get a big fat antenna and go, I guess, war-driving for RF tags? ("Oh look, my neighbor Bob just bought a thong. Better go tease him about it. Wait, he doesn't even have a girlfriend. I better not")
Radio waves are funny, sometimes they bounce around and show up in places you don't expect them!
Well, I listen to electronic music a lot at the moment, and much of it comes from overseas. I find some of the music on filesharing and eBay, but most of it I get from small online stores like s://kimo or Bent Crayon. There have been others, they come and go. Usually it's one or two guys operating out of their bedroom or a small storefront someplace. If you ask around mailing lists, etc., for your favorite music (i.e., jazz, techno, etc) they will give you pointers.
I also buy directly from the labels sometimes, they usually don't have a problem shipping to the USA (I've ordered from Australia for a few bucks shipping, for instance).
Your best bet is to contact the label itself and ask them if they sell directly, or ask who distributes their stuff (preferably somebody in the USA). Then email *those* folks and buy from them, or ask them what stores they distribute to. At some point along the chain you'll find somebody willing to sell you something.
I've had the best luck with the UK, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, etc., you might have to search a little harder for other parts of asia or the middle east, but you should be able to find someone who will exchange money for CDs.
Feline kidney transplants have been performed in the USA for a while now, in a number of locations. I read about a hospital in Florida, perhaps the same one referenced by the poster above.
I recently had one of my cats euthanized for chronic renal failure (he had a blood clot in his legs and tail and couldn't walk, among other things) and I learned how some people spent thousands of dollars to transplant kidneys or perform regular dialysis.
I didn't read about any particular ethical concerns, just the vets shrugging and saying "if you really want to do it, and you have the money, it's possible".
But my belief is that 1) it's just a cat, you'll get over any grief; and 2) there comes a point when treating your pet that you are no longer doing it *for* the animal, you're doing it *to* the animal for your own selfish wishes. At that point it's better to euthanize.
A cat with transplanted kidneys will never be the same anyway, he will have to take constant
immunosuppressants and other drugs just to stay alive, and will have constant complications and will not be a very happy cat.
My $0.02 as a cat lover.
Agreed.. I've had enough headaches with FTP and firewalls/NAT, let's just let it die. For robust downloading of large files rsync is the protocol to use.
For those not familiar: rsync can copy or synchronize files or directories of files. it divides the files into blocks and only transfers the parts of the file that are different or missing. It's awesome for mirrored backups, among other things. There is even a Mac OS X version that tranfers the Mac-specific metadata of each file.
Just today I had to transfer a ~400MB file to a machine over a fairly slow connection. The only way in was SSH and the only way out was HTTP.
First I tried HTTP and the connection dropped. No problem, I thought, I'll just use "wget -c" and it will continue fine. Well, it continued, but the archive was corrupt.
I remembered that rsync can run over SSH and I rsync'd the file over the damaged one. It took a few moments for it to find the blocks with the errors, and it downloaded just thost blocks.
Rsync should be built into every program that downloads large files, including web browsers. Apple or someone should pick up this technology, give it some good marketing ("auto-repair download" or something) and life will be good.
Rsync also has a daemon mode that allows you to run a dedicated rsync server. This is good for public distribution of files.
Rsync is the way to go! I guess this really doesn't 100% answer the poster's question, but people really should be thinking about rsync more.
I played with it a little bit. I wanted to make a slideshow out of some (big) photoshop files, with some pan & zoom, nice transitions, music, etc.
The main problem was that 80% of the PSD files came in wrong.. they were "folded over" as if you shifted the pixels over and they wrapped around. Bizarre.
Also at random times (maybe when an effect was still rendering) it gave me an error message about "unable to convert to JPEG, but was imported anyway" which means it couldn't apply the pan & zoom, but it still showed up in the movie. Bizarre again...
I also couldn't figure out an easy way to turn OFF the pan & zoom and just have a static still image.
Finally, I just exported a plain slideshow from iPhoto and left it at that.
On a related note, I hope Apple takes a look at Photoshop Album for ideas for a future version of iPhoto. Album looks like iPhoto on steroids.
Into electronic music? Try Monotonik .. they have maybe a gig or more of "freely spreadable" MP3's, all great stuff. Some live sets and stuff hiding on their FTP servers as well. Awesome music, if you like artists like Thug, Lackluster, Sense, etc, or any kind of electronic/ambient/IDM stuff.
Look around for more MP3-only free labels, there are some others out there I can't remember right now, but they all encourage distribution. DJ sets are particularly nice (big) but most of them don't have permission to redistribute the songs in the first place, use your judgement on how "legal" those are.
I bet there are online movie outfits that give away stuff in a similar spirit.
I think this is a good idea, maybe someone will download one of your files and learn about a new artist who deserves their money rather than the the big labels.
The bugs I reported haven't been fixed:
* HTTPS doesn't work at all for me over a proxy. I think it is using SSL to talk to the proxy which isn't right. It should connect to the proxy in the clear and then issue a CONNECT and then use SSL. Anybody seen this one?
* "don't use proxy for these hosts/domains" setting is treated as hosts only (so if you put in "foo.com" then you visit "www2.ecommerce.foo.com" the proxy gets used anyway).
* keychain entries of the form "http://host.com:80" are ignored, and it adds its own "http://host.com" entry.
Anybody notice any concrete differences?
If you examine Tom Murphy's program, you'll see that he neglects to update the file checksum and actually miscalculates the OS/2 table checksum. When I asked him how it was that his program still worked, he indicated that most applications seem to simply ignore the checksum values.
Well, heck, I was looking at it and if I take out the checksum that makes it a scant 64 bytes:
And since the eval trick is gone, it's a little less obfuscated. I'm sure a bona-fide perl guru could shrink it by a few more bytes.
I know nothing about TrueType so who knows if that always works.
His one-liner doesn't seem to update the checksum? There is a checksum someplace in there.
How do I know this interesting fact? Because last year I tried writing my own one-liner, but couldn't squeeze it down to one line because of the checksum.
Here's what I came up with at the time, which according to diff produces identical output to the C code:
121 bytes if you take out the newlines. And any slashdot-inserted spaces.
No, I have no idea how it works any more. The code is placed in $_, the '-' is not as it seems, eval() runs the code in $_, and that's all I can tell you. Welcome to Perl!
A small company I work for has discovered that a domain name has been registered with their U.S.-trademarked (since 1980) name. Requests to the owner of the site (a U.S. citizen) have gone unanswered, so we're now moving on to filing an ICANN dispute.
People like you worry me. You didn't say they had any kind of a web site, only that they registered the domain.
I hope you meant that "they had a web site up that might confuse our customers" or "we have a famous mark and they are diluting it" or something like that. Not just that your trademark is stored on some hard drive at the domain registrar database and you really would like it for yourself.
I have a couple domains with short non-word names that I registered many years ago. For a while I had a stupid "hello, here are links to my friends' home page" kind of thing, but decided I would just use them for email, which I do.
And I occasionally wonder if some low-life that wants the name is going sue me (or even worst, arbitrate me) just because he wants the domain, and not because I'm actually affecting his business. In court that would be easy to win, but in arbitration I would probably lose.
Heck, that low-life might be YOU (though I doubt it since my contact info is up-to-date and I haven't seen any messages about them).
Please, register your domain in .biz or something for now and don't sue this guy unless he is actually *infringing on your trademark* or he bought the domain *in bad faith*. I don't know how generic the term in question is, but if it's something generic like "ProComputers.com", I doubt it's bad faith.
The Linux Development Platform: Configuring, Usin and Mainting a Complete Programming Environment
Heh, open source is always full of bugs. :-)
Seriously, this looks great, it's good to see a large publisher trying this. It makes a lot of sense to me, especially for computer docs (I own many of the books I read on Safari in paper form for instance). Heck, I wish all books came with a plaintext version of the text on CD or something, just for the grep value.
I'll definitely be getting the Snort book, and keeping my eye on the series. Kudos all around.
Please don't say "lower prices" because that's just a rationalization that they're somehow forcing pirates to do it.
Making a moral argument that "Folks who create intangibles are as entitled to compensation as people who build bridges." doesn't remove the problem. I think it creates problems because people will try and hammer reality to fit their beliefs.
Information costs almost ZERO to duplicate. This will always be the case. It costs something to create, but not to duplicate. To me, that suggests that the price of copies should very low, and the price of originals (concerts, let's say) should be higher.
Now, you don't want anyone to say "lower prices", how about "higher value"? I have no idea what that would be, but maybe they should just stop selling "CDs" and start selling something collectible that happens to have music in it, I have no idea. I buy all my CDs out of principle (NO major labels though) so I personally don't need this incentive.
Which brings me to another point, will people stop buying music completely if both legit and non-legit copies are available? I don't think so. I think there will always be people who PAY for their copies, for various reasons. But the music corps have to lower their expectations.
Another point: Why do we even HAVE a global music industry? Why isn't music a local thing: you go to a concert, you talk to the band, you buy their CD out of loyalty and excitement. Why are there superstars at all?
If you're against intellectual property in general, just skip this, because the industry is never going to work for free, nor accept your suggestion, nor IMHO should they.
Well, I'm not against trademarks or (most) patents, but I definitely think the concept of copyright is completely broken. It should last 20-30 years, and it should not be a crime to copy without profit. To my mind, this is an capitalistic puzzle: why do you punish people who create a more efficient market? (Yes I understand the argument about giving incentive but there's a balance between giving incentives and forcing people to find their own incentives).
Maybe we should just let things alone, and let people who grew up in this environment figure out a way to benefit from it. Let the principles of capitalism find a way. I believe that forcing people to TRY to make money will be much better than creating a market through government regulation. And we shouldn't be afraid to say "what if it's NOT POSSIBLE to have a music industry any more? what if the music industry has to come back down to earth? what if people can only reliably be paid for creating, not for copying (commissioning a song for a TV commercial, for instance)? What if there IS NO BUSINESS MODEL for albums?".
But, ranting aside, you and I both know that the music industry will regulate and legislate. And their legislation will not strike any balances, and it won't create any new opportunities, and it won't give incentives to anyone unless they use the old business models. Too bad.
Well, I was going to make some comments about this program, and why should I give, and how might the money be used (paying programmers, pro-actively building a "legal defense fund", buying advertising in computer publications to explain the benefits of Free software, etc).
:-)
But looking over the comments I see everybody's getting in the "free" nit-picking argument. Now, really, I know only like 1% of the slashdot population engages in this bickering, but just in case someone is learning about Free software through these comments alone, let me throw a few ideas into the mix. All of this is explained on the FSF web page but of course they insist on being precise and pedantic so it's hard to cut right to the soundbites.
Here we go:
* The GPL is a good example of a Free software license. So is the modified BSD license, the X11 license, the W3C license, and many others. Even placing your code into the public domain will grant users the same freedoms. And even the Apache and Perl licenses are basically Free, though the FSF discourages using them on new code for various nit-picky reasons.
So, if you use the BSD license or place your code into public domain your software is just as free, according to the FSF, as it would be under the GPL. Even the GPL defenders seem to forget that the GPL is only one of many licenses that ensure software freedom. When someone says "I'm using the BSD license, because it's really free and the GPL isn't and the FSF has a stupid name" you should just smile politely and nod your head, because they are the ones making the distinction, not the FSF.
* The FSF uses the term "copyleft" for the viral nature of the GPL. This is actually what many people (including Microsoft) dislike. The FSF themselves describe this is as a rather abstract concept, which is why they gave its own own made-up name and keep the concept separate from software freedom. Freedom is more concrete: it lets you do more with the software on your computer, and it gives the copyright holder less power over you.
When you argue against the FSF's definition of "free software", make sure you're not really arguing about "copyleft". But also remember that the freedoms are what's important, not the copyleft. That's why it's the Free Software Foundation and not the Copyleft Software Foundation.
Copyleft is a tricky way to keep software Free, by adding some redistribution restrictions. Note that non-Free licenses are themselves under a sort of "ironic copyleft" already: it's just as illegal for you to copy your neighbor's illegal Windows CDR as it was for him to download it from a P2P network and run it.
So when flaming the FSF, please remember that the goal we mostly agree on is to make software licenses less restrictive and less obnoxious. Both the BSD and GPL licenses are less obnoxious than the license on, say, any Microsoft/Adobe/etc product, so why focus on the copyleft provisions of the GPL?
Now, if the above makes your "GPL isn't really free" argument less useful, don't forget, you can still make ad hominem attacks on Richard Stallman's inflexible personality, leftist political views, and questionable personal hygiene.
But that won't make the software licenses you accept at home and at work any better for you. You do that by 1) writing and using Free software; 2) letting your vendors know that you prefer freedom with your software; and 3) not accepting licenses you don't agree with (and note that you don't have to accept the GPL unless you want to distribute copies of the GPL'd software).
some thoughts..
* Anytime you use encryption or digital signatures, it's not "DRM". It's not like these folks want to restrict copying of the pictures, or track people who see the photos, they do that by keeping the pictures within their labs. The encryption is so they can show in court that the picture was not tampered with. When you check the signature in your linux package files, that's not DRM, that's something for your own benefit.
* I was recently looking at Canon's latest EOS-1Ds camera, which has a "Data Verification Kit" encryption module available. You put a smart card in a reader and every shot is digitally signed in the camera. So this stuff is available and hopefully the forensic photographers will begin using it. Of course a malicious photographer might change the software in the camera somehow but hopefully the module checks for that.
* Dodge & Burn tools should probably *not* be used.. they allow you to darken/lighten specific *areas* of the photo, which could be dangerous. When enhancing evidence they should only allow *global* changes like overall brightness or contrast, etc. Or at least they should send the evidence to three or more independent labs, who don't know anything about the case, and let each version be seen in court. That way there's less of a chance that someone will doctor the evidence for a specific outcome. And of course the whole workflow needs encryption and signatures.
* Evidence can always be tampered with. The digital signatures just make it harder, and hopefully at least as hard as it is now in the non-digital world.