Ah yes, but, see, that 1% that's watchable or even good - it changes for every person.
I've got a collection of old VHS tapes from way back. Old shows I loved, old footage I wanted to preserve, and so on. I've undertaken a project to rip them all, clean them, and put them on VCD so that I can still watch them (I hope!) when the hardware incompatability act of 2006 rolls around. I want to make sure there's old school entertainment around for my future kids so they don't get completely stranded in the WTO-generated cultural wasteland I think I see on the horizon.
It's probably illegal. I don't share the files, I don't publicly broadcast the files, I don't sell copies of the CDs, but I expect it's illegal anyway, or will be soon enough.
Screw 'em. I prefer to think of it as time-shifting on a transgenerational scale. GMFTatsujin
My personal killer app for this is VirtualDub and TMPGEnc... cleaning up and encoding all that digital video takes a miniature eternity, even at 1ghz. Of course, I'm just using a regular old video capture card without any on-board MPEG encoding on it. I don't know how useful that would be to me anyway, as I put a lot of filters and effects on my video before I put it in MPEG form anyway. Blah.
I'm licking my lips at the prospect of someday having crushed the 4ghz barrier... GMFTatsujin
Do you know where the people who really, *really* know how to do tech support go to?
The answer is: Ding! Anywhere but tech support. Because tech support work blows, period. It's like working the fry line at McDonalds - once you've grown beyond the ability to do fries, you do whatever it takes to get out of having to do it. Like programming, sysadmin, or even nothing to do with computers at all.
In other words, the people who would make fantastic tech support people get away from tech support, because those very skills lend themselves to (one hopes) better employment, better pay, and less shackling to a phone line talking to dips who think they know more than you. What do you end up with after they all go away? The dregs. Hence, your problem.
Besides, the average geek should be able to track down whatever knowledge he needs without having to ask some anonymous person on the phone.
Most tech support people I know started out as curious geeks, and only became tech support because they found a job where they could get paid for their obscure knowledge. I was one of those guys, and I will never, never, never do tech support again. Ditto for the fry line.
My wife and I read to each other before bed, and this was one of the series we went through a few months ago.
The Golden Compass is a great little book. The world that Pullman creates is intriguing and detailed and self-consistant. It's when, in Subtle Knife, he gets into parallel worlds that the whole framework falls apart. And Amber Spyglass is just awful - it has the dubious honor of being one of three books that we had to throw away. The whole Dark Matter connection is just stupid. You hear me, Pullman? If it's magic, then let it be MAGIC. Don't try to justify magic by tying it to science in a poorly considered manner. Cripes - it's worse than if Tolkien had said the reason the Ring corrupted the wearer was because it was made of unshielded plutonium with a mercury coating.
Honestly, it was just insulting, the turn into absolute stupidity that book 2 took.
Read Golden Compass and make up your own story for the rest of it. You'll be far more satisfied. GMFTatsujin
Why is it *their* Internet all of a sudden? Just downloading an ISO of Redhat 7.2 takes a miniature eternity on my gigabit backbone with 100mbits to the desktop, because that's not all *my* traffic - can you imagine the sudden and continuous drain in bandwidth when anyone in my subnet decides to turn on the tube to watch Glitter?
Okay... bad example...
You hear about telecomm companies putting their own special networks together all the time. The entertainment industry needs to do the same. HDTVNet (or whatever they call it) can then be tightly controlled, with high-security copy protection devices all down the line, right down to the decoder on the TV. Make them completely inaccessable to the desktop - freaked out connectors, bizzare syncing and decoding strategies, whatever. No special legislation required - just technological consistancy in their own products.
The reasons they don't do this, of course, is two-fold. One, it would be hideously expensive (although will all that piracy suddenly gone, they'd suddenly be overflowing with revenue... right?), and two...
Well, I can't think of anybody who would go for it. Re-purchase every bit of audio/video equipment I own just to conform to the new services? I don't think so.
Of course, it's not like I won't have to do that in the next few years anyway... Thanks, incompatable HDTV standards! GMFTatsujin
I've got a Handspring Visor with a keyboard from Landware, and a little thought-organizing app called Bonzai, which does a nice job of putting data into a tree structure.
It blows pen and pad away, unless I *really* need to sketch something. Otherwise, I can take the ensemble to a meeting and dynamically organize the management-spew into a pretty cohesive order. It also lets me enter items from my outline directly into my To Do list. Pretty handy.
Meanwhile, our administrative assistant is wearing her fingers into nubs, trying to scribble down the minutes.
There's a good point to be made in here - Linux is the *kernel*, not the entire desktop experience.
To sum up the desktop, you have to start following the various distros, as they're aimed at satisfying different needs and styles. I use Redhat because it's the first name that lept out at me when I went looking for Linux distrobutions. I'm starting to think that Mandrake might suit me better, because Redhat has lots of fiddley technical bits that, while interesting in an acedemic "I can grok that, man" kind of way, I simply don't want to have to fuck them with all that much. I'm led to believe that Mandrake addresses a lot of the configuration options and makes them easier to deal with, so I'll give it a shot. If Lindows gets its act together, I may look at them too.
So the question is really, at least in my case, is Redhat doomed on the desktop where Mandrake is not? It's not a Linux question at all.
The kernel, the real Linux part, doesn't make a lick of difference to me. Why do I care if I'm looking at a FAT32 or an EXT3 partition? Everything's a file - great. Again, I grok it, man. Isn't the job of an operating system simply to make all my peripherals talk to each other in predictable ways?
Just checking. I may be wrong. GMFTatsujin
Re:This is a trojan horse, plain and simple.
on
Spy v. Spy
·
· Score: 1
See, the problem here is that I'm unlikely to install spyware on my own machine - I'm going to install it on *somebody else's*.
If I agree to an EULA to use spying software on somebody else's machine, does that make the owner of that machine accountable for the EULA? Especially if the point of the spyware is that my target *isn't supposed to know it's there?*
This is dirty pool, plain and simple. It's my goddamn machine, monkey-boy. Hands off. GMFTatsujin
This could be instrumental in clearing up some of the rampant wireless network security problems that have hit the net lately. Build the exterior of the building out of this stuff, and conventional materials inside. No more drive-bys.
I mean, hey, at least you'd have to walk in the door before phreaking the signal... GMFTatsujin
No no no, PORPOISEful. Heck, the dolphins are already well on their way...
Re:Hollywood's blessing necessary for broadband?
on
Chained Melodies
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Can I just ask a quick question here?
Who the hell do the entertainment companies think they are, sucking up EVERYONE ELSE'S BANDWIDTH?
I mean, compare it to another digital delivery system, the PCS network. Sprint built (if you believe their ads) their own digital network, expressly for the purpose of delivering high-quality voice transmissions between nodes on that network.
If Hollywood wants to have a high-speed digital delivery system for movies, tv, and whatever, that's fine and dandy, but first off, they're not entitled to hog a resource like the Internet. Let them build the HDTVNet and sell propriatary recieving hardware with all their jinky copyright control crap built in THERE.
Trying to suck the Internet up like this is just fucking lazy and cheap. GMFTatsujin
I think it may have something to do with the notion that a cartoon nudie chick can be interpreted as some sort of idealized version - her nipples perk up "just so," she can pose "just so," and unless she's some kind of mutant, she's basically flawless. In essence, a pin-up girl.
With real-life nudity, you have to deal with all the little blemishes, stretch-marks, warts, fuzz, or whatever.
I guess the point I'm trying to get at is that presenting an idealized nudie promotes an unrealistic standard of beauty, encourages objectification of the human form, and gets the censors too excited.
On the other hand, people seem to like all those neo-rennaisance Aphrodite statues. Something about it being art, I hear.
Perhaps there's another angle here too - that real-life nudity (on the prime networks, anyway) can be interpreted as having some kind of enhanced dramatic context - the actress OBVIOUSLY wouldn't go to such lengths if it didn't lend a certain something to the depth of the story. Animated nudies can be drawn up for no dramatic reason whatsoever.
Um... a shift in focus there has already happened, sad to say.
That's right, folks: THE TWO KIDS DID IT. Not the games, not society, and (gasp!) not even the parents. They're no more culpable in this whole fscked up mess than the parents of Adolf Hitler were for WWII. No kidding.
Absolutely. Our Medical Center uses Citrix to manage patient data - one server, many thin clients, and though it sounds great initially, there are issues with licensing. I'm not privvy to the details, but the fact that only so many people can be connected at a time means that a lot of doctors and nurses are pretty pissed off most of the time. All it takes is a couple of people forgetting to log out (or not logging out correctly so that the socket frees up, or accidentally shutting the SERVER down instead of their socket to it)... It's a nightmare.
Of course, we're dealing with something like 1000 people. If you're in a small, controlled environment where you can actually keep an eye on people as they log in and out, you will probably have better luck. Still, I really resent the idea of having to create and disseminate an entire desktop just for the sake of one little database.
At least they weren't doing this for the DC universe. How could you possibly choose? Pre- or post-Crisis? Earth 1? Earth 2? Earth pi? Red or Blue Superman, or both and split the difference? Green Lantern Hal, John, or Kyle?
Which Spider Man were they following contacts for, the real Parker or his clone?
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Read: Just because we didn't explicitly state you have the right to X, it doesn't mean you DON'T have the right to X. This amendment creates the possibility for debate over the extent of not only the other amendents (like four), but also creates wiggle room for preserving freedom in situations that the writers could not have forseen.
IANA Programmer, IANA Sysadmin, I'm just a user... Mod appropriately, please.
But still, this notice strikes me as excellent. First, it draws attention to a hole that can be patched, and I'm sure a number of programmers are grabbing down what source they can to implement a fix for it. Corporations who bitch and moan about how security flaws should not be broadcast to the world strike as not being willing to fix them quickly, or are willing to sell packages with flaws in them and hope to get away with it. Yay CERT!
Second, while the magnitude of impact may be great, it's sure a change from the near-weekly "a hole has been found in Microsoft Product X" announcements we get. It stands out because we don't get "Major security hole in basic technologies" announcements very often - usually they're linked to some broken MS implementation of it, or a proprietary protocol looking for adoption.
Plus, it goes to show that the Internet is an interdependent community that relies on basic technologies to work, rather than perpetuating the myth that Microsoft *is* the Internet. And the community will either fix the problem, or adopt a new, more rigorous standard.
And speaking of rigorous, isn't it nice that the basic standard has stood up this long under heavy usage? Can MAPI32 say the same thing? Or VBScripting? Or IIS? Or...
I love watching big stuff break for two reasons - I'm a pyromaniac who loves to see thinks go up in flames, and I'm always uplifted by a well-executed community response.
Slashdot Mirror
I honestly don't know. I really don't.
:)
I'm sure the Con will figure out a way though.
Actually, I'm really working to undo all that nasty magnetic degredation and store my vids on a more durable medium. For the apocalypse.
PREPARE...
GMFTatsujin
Ah yes, but, see, that 1% that's watchable or even good - it changes for every person.
I've got a collection of old VHS tapes from way back. Old shows I loved, old footage I wanted to preserve, and so on. I've undertaken a project to rip them all, clean them, and put them on VCD so that I can still watch them (I hope!) when the hardware incompatability act of 2006 rolls around. I want to make sure there's old school entertainment around for my future kids so they don't get completely stranded in the WTO-generated cultural wasteland I think I see on the horizon.
It's probably illegal. I don't share the files, I don't publicly broadcast the files, I don't sell copies of the CDs, but I expect it's illegal anyway, or will be soon enough.
Screw 'em. I prefer to think of it as time-shifting on a transgenerational scale.
GMFTatsujin
My personal killer app for this is VirtualDub and TMPGEnc... cleaning up and encoding all that digital video takes a miniature eternity, even at 1ghz. Of course, I'm just using a regular old video capture card without any on-board MPEG encoding on it. I don't know how useful that would be to me anyway, as I put a lot of filters and effects on my video before I put it in MPEG form anyway. Blah.
I'm licking my lips at the prospect of someday having crushed the 4ghz barrier...
GMFTatsujin
Oh, come on, there's always a penninsula or an isthmus, or something...
It's Knight Boat! The crime-fighting boat!
GMFTatsujin
*snerk*
Bwahhahahaha...
Oh, man, you are so deluded.
Do you know where the people who really, *really* know how to do tech support go to?
The answer is: Ding! Anywhere but tech support. Because tech support work blows, period. It's like working the fry line at McDonalds - once you've grown beyond the ability to do fries, you do whatever it takes to get out of having to do it. Like programming, sysadmin, or even nothing to do with computers at all.
In other words, the people who would make fantastic tech support people get away from tech support, because those very skills lend themselves to (one hopes) better employment, better pay, and less shackling to a phone line talking to dips who think they know more than you. What do you end up with after they all go away? The dregs. Hence, your problem.
Besides, the average geek should be able to track down whatever knowledge he needs without having to ask some anonymous person on the phone.
Most tech support people I know started out as curious geeks, and only became tech support because they found a job where they could get paid for their obscure knowledge. I was one of those guys, and I will never, never, never do tech support again. Ditto for the fry line.
GMFTatsujin
You betcha.
Terry Pratchett works out well for this... But then we ran out of Pratchett and had to go with something else.
If your Significant Other has insomnia, give 'em a dose of The Silmarillion. Works for me - she's out like a light.
GMFTatsujin
My wife and I read to each other before bed, and this was one of the series we went through a few months ago.
The Golden Compass is a great little book. The world that Pullman creates is intriguing and detailed and self-consistant. It's when, in Subtle Knife, he gets into parallel worlds that the whole framework falls apart. And Amber Spyglass is just awful - it has the dubious honor of being one of three books that we had to throw away. The whole Dark Matter connection is just stupid. You hear me, Pullman? If it's magic, then let it be MAGIC. Don't try to justify magic by tying it to science in a poorly considered manner. Cripes - it's worse than if Tolkien had said the reason the Ring corrupted the wearer was because it was made of unshielded plutonium with a mercury coating.
Honestly, it was just insulting, the turn into absolute stupidity that book 2 took.
Read Golden Compass and make up your own story for the rest of it. You'll be far more satisfied.
GMFTatsujin
...And representing the Great State of Evil, the distinguished Congressman from California.
Thanks to the long-post clipping feature of /. for this little peice of synchronous fun:
Sincerely,
Adam B. Schiff
Member of Con
The Con strikes again. Pra-Bob!
GMFTatsujin
Why is it *their* Internet all of a sudden? Just downloading an ISO of Redhat 7.2 takes a miniature eternity on my gigabit backbone with 100mbits to the desktop, because that's not all *my* traffic - can you imagine the sudden and continuous drain in bandwidth when anyone in my subnet decides to turn on the tube to watch Glitter?
Okay... bad example...
You hear about telecomm companies putting their own special networks together all the time. The entertainment industry needs to do the same. HDTVNet (or whatever they call it) can then be tightly controlled, with high-security copy protection devices all down the line, right down to the decoder on the TV. Make them completely inaccessable to the desktop - freaked out connectors, bizzare syncing and decoding strategies, whatever. No special legislation required - just technological consistancy in their own products.
The reasons they don't do this, of course, is two-fold. One, it would be hideously expensive (although will all that piracy suddenly gone, they'd suddenly be overflowing with revenue... right?), and two...
Well, I can't think of anybody who would go for it. Re-purchase every bit of audio/video equipment I own just to conform to the new services? I don't think so.
Of course, it's not like I won't have to do that in the next few years anyway... Thanks, incompatable HDTV standards!
GMFTatsujin
More likely they either knew what they were releasing, or when they were releasing it, but not both at the same time...
GMFTatsujin
I've got a Handspring Visor with a keyboard from Landware, and a little thought-organizing app called Bonzai, which does a nice job of putting data into a tree structure.
It blows pen and pad away, unless I *really* need to sketch something. Otherwise, I can take the ensemble to a meeting and dynamically organize the management-spew into a pretty cohesive order. It also lets me enter items from my outline directly into my To Do list. Pretty handy.
Meanwhile, our administrative assistant is wearing her fingers into nubs, trying to scribble down the minutes.
GMFTatsujin
There's a good point to be made in here - Linux is the *kernel*, not the entire desktop experience.
To sum up the desktop, you have to start following the various distros, as they're aimed at satisfying different needs and styles. I use Redhat because it's the first name that lept out at me when I went looking for Linux distrobutions. I'm starting to think that Mandrake might suit me better, because Redhat has lots of fiddley technical bits that, while interesting in an acedemic "I can grok that, man" kind of way, I simply don't want to have to fuck them with all that much. I'm led to believe that Mandrake addresses a lot of the configuration options and makes them easier to deal with, so I'll give it a shot. If Lindows gets its act together, I may look at them too.
So the question is really, at least in my case, is Redhat doomed on the desktop where Mandrake is not? It's not a Linux question at all.
The kernel, the real Linux part, doesn't make a lick of difference to me. Why do I care if I'm looking at a FAT32 or an EXT3 partition? Everything's a file - great. Again, I grok it, man. Isn't the job of an operating system simply to make all my peripherals talk to each other in predictable ways?
Just checking. I may be wrong.
GMFTatsujin
See, the problem here is that I'm unlikely to install spyware on my own machine - I'm going to install it on *somebody else's*.
If I agree to an EULA to use spying software on somebody else's machine, does that make the owner of that machine accountable for the EULA? Especially if the point of the spyware is that my target *isn't supposed to know it's there?*
This is dirty pool, plain and simple. It's my goddamn machine, monkey-boy. Hands off.
GMFTatsujin
Can you arrange for me to be able to play Neverwinter Nights on a Mac by 6/25/02?
Just checking. Neener.
GMFTatsujin
This could be instrumental in clearing up some of the rampant wireless network security problems that have hit the net lately. Build the exterior of the building out of this stuff, and conventional materials inside. No more drive-bys.
I mean, hey, at least you'd have to walk in the door before phreaking the signal...
GMFTatsujin
No no no, PORPOISEful. Heck, the dolphins are already well on their way...
Can I just ask a quick question here?
Who the hell do the entertainment companies think they are, sucking up EVERYONE ELSE'S BANDWIDTH?
I mean, compare it to another digital delivery system, the PCS network. Sprint built (if you believe their ads) their own digital network, expressly for the purpose of delivering high-quality voice transmissions between nodes on that network.
If Hollywood wants to have a high-speed digital delivery system for movies, tv, and whatever, that's fine and dandy, but first off, they're not entitled to hog a resource like the Internet. Let them build the HDTVNet and sell propriatary recieving hardware with all their jinky copyright control crap built in THERE.
Trying to suck the Internet up like this is just fucking lazy and cheap.
GMFTatsujin
Um... That's nice?
Seriously, Cat, I think I'm sensing issues here.
I think it may have something to do with the notion that a cartoon nudie chick can be interpreted as some sort of idealized version - her nipples perk up "just so," she can pose "just so," and unless she's some kind of mutant, she's basically flawless. In essence, a pin-up girl.
With real-life nudity, you have to deal with all the little blemishes, stretch-marks, warts, fuzz, or whatever.
I guess the point I'm trying to get at is that presenting an idealized nudie promotes an unrealistic standard of beauty, encourages objectification of the human form, and gets the censors too excited.
On the other hand, people seem to like all those neo-rennaisance Aphrodite statues. Something about it being art, I hear.
Perhaps there's another angle here too - that real-life nudity (on the prime networks, anyway) can be interpreted as having some kind of enhanced dramatic context - the actress OBVIOUSLY wouldn't go to such lengths if it didn't lend a certain something to the depth of the story. Animated nudies can be drawn up for no dramatic reason whatsoever.
GMFTatsujin
Um... a shift in focus there has already happened, sad to say.
That's right, folks: THE TWO KIDS DID IT. Not the games, not society, and (gasp!) not even the parents. They're no more culpable in this whole fscked up mess than the parents of Adolf Hitler were for WWII. No kidding.
Stay on target.
GMFTatsujin
Absolutely. Our Medical Center uses Citrix to manage patient data - one server, many thin clients, and though it sounds great initially, there are issues with licensing. I'm not privvy to the details, but the fact that only so many people can be connected at a time means that a lot of doctors and nurses are pretty pissed off most of the time. All it takes is a couple of people forgetting to log out (or not logging out correctly so that the socket frees up, or accidentally shutting the SERVER down instead of their socket to it) ... It's a nightmare.
Of course, we're dealing with something like 1000 people. If you're in a small, controlled environment where you can actually keep an eye on people as they log in and out, you will probably have better luck. Still, I really resent the idea of having to create and disseminate an entire desktop just for the sake of one little database.
GMFTatsujin
At least they weren't doing this for the DC universe. How could you possibly choose? Pre- or post-Crisis? Earth 1? Earth 2? Earth pi? Red or Blue Superman, or both and split the difference? Green Lantern Hal, John, or Kyle?
Which Spider Man were they following contacts for, the real Parker or his clone?
Where's Jonni DC when you need her...
GMFTatsujin
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Read: Just because we didn't explicitly state you have the right to X, it doesn't mean you DON'T have the right to X. This amendment creates the possibility for debate over the extent of not only the other amendents (like four), but also creates wiggle room for preserving freedom in situations that the writers could not have forseen.
Such as the Internet.
GMFTatsujin
IANA Programmer, IANA Sysadmin, I'm just a user... Mod appropriately, please.
But still, this notice strikes me as excellent. First, it draws attention to a hole that can be patched, and I'm sure a number of programmers are grabbing down what source they can to implement a fix for it. Corporations who bitch and moan about how security flaws should not be broadcast to the world strike as not being willing to fix them quickly, or are willing to sell packages with flaws in them and hope to get away with it. Yay CERT!
Second, while the magnitude of impact may be great, it's sure a change from the near-weekly "a hole has been found in Microsoft Product X" announcements we get. It stands out because we don't get "Major security hole in basic technologies" announcements very often - usually they're linked to some broken MS implementation of it, or a proprietary protocol looking for adoption.
Plus, it goes to show that the Internet is an interdependent community that relies on basic technologies to work, rather than perpetuating the myth that Microsoft *is* the Internet. And the community will either fix the problem, or adopt a new, more rigorous standard.
And speaking of rigorous, isn't it nice that the basic standard has stood up this long under heavy usage? Can MAPI32 say the same thing? Or VBScripting? Or IIS? Or...
I love watching big stuff break for two reasons - I'm a pyromaniac who loves to see thinks go up in flames, and I'm always uplifted by a well-executed community response.
GMFTatsujin