IMEI-based phones don't have a SIM card to tie services (phone number, rate plan, etc.) to and are forced to use the IMEI.
As an example, the Motorolla V60 is a keen little SIM-based phone. You'll give the SIM number to your service provider. And they'll punch it in, mutter something about hating, you, their job, customers, and the company under their breath, and tell you to do a reset of some sort and send you on your way, never caring about the IMEI.
The Touchpoint 1100 has an ESN (IMEI by a different name). So I have to give this to Sprint so they'll activate my phone. It's tied to the little circuit board inside my phone. To change it I have to do some l33t h4x0ring.
Now. If I steal a V60, I can remove the sim chip, smash it into several pieces, and go buy a new one and activate it.
If I steal a 1100, I have to change the IMEI. Which sucks more?
I have to agree with the AC on this one, if you are really trying a piece of software then you should enter an email addr.
Why? If I want to purchase some professional piece of software, maybe the company will get my personal information. As a potential customer, I can see where they might like to have my email address, but wouldn't it be more useful to let me have the software for a a trial?
Companies that force me to enter an email address usually get 'spam@hell.no' as the address. And my name suddenly becomes 'Fred Flintstone' who lives at '123 Stone Quarry Road'. If I want to give out information, it should be on my terms, not the company's . It the company wants my email for a preview, I'm not getting the preview, and they're not getting my business.
Are you insane? Let the customer determine how important their own calls are with relation to the rest of the network?
Mrs. Smith, the businesswoman with anal retentive tendancies and most of a flagpole lodged up there is going to set her priority at '0' while Mr. Laid Back Construction worker who's calling home to have phone sex with his wife five hours a day will have it at '0'.
As will the teenybopper calling her friends after school to ask which eyeliner to get at Mervyn's.
Who, realisticly, doesn't think their calls are more important?
This was included in WinME as well as XP and 2000 (with service packs).
It doesn't work. Specifically, all the applications involved have to play nice with the OS when it says 'Stop what you're doing.' Norton is especially pissy.
My VISA Smart Card came with a reader. The pcsc packages, happily found at Freshmeat and RPM'd for my lazy butt, worked fine. That's right. I could put my card in. Type in the little access key (I presume the entire authentication method is a public key / private key thing) and got back my CC number.
Dell Dimension, as well as most other lines of Dell hardware, have Intel-manufactured motherboards, seeing as Dell is an Intel-friendly (and only) shop[1].
The Palm V, serial version and specifically the Dimension 4100, which has an Intel 815 chipset, will cause, if the computer is running in the cradle for the palm is plugged in and on, when plugged into the serial port the system to lock and the serial port will blow out.
The fault lies with the motherboard manufaturer, not Palm. Palm's serial design is conforms perfectly to the standard. The motherboard designers desiced to skimp on serial design because 'who uses them for anything these days?'
Re:For the ones complaining about the name:
on
Intel's Tualatin P3
·
· Score: 1
The Tualatin, just like the Willamette, and the Columbia, and the Deschutes, and some more I can't think of, are in fact, rivers.
The clever practice of naming chips after rivers has been revealed by someone who's fallen into the Tualatin River and survived without mutation.
According to the average consumer, Intel is the only game in town. And don't tell me that they're stupid for thinking that, or anything equally naive. They are simply uninformed, and it is not economical to them to become properly informed. For them, anything being sold now will be grossly overpowered for their web surfing and email writing.
What I don't understand, is why companies don't sell decent computers that are low powered and quiet for web surfing. I mean a "real" computer, not a stupid internet terminal (that are only useful for haxoring and installing free OSes). Something like a Celeron 400, 128 MB RAM, and 20 GB drive.
Customers don't really go with the 'Well, I must buy an Intel' processor when purchasing an OEM computer, their thought process is usually, "Hm, let's go to www.[oem].com and see what their top of the line is!'
Dell sells nothing but Intel procs and motherboards, Gateway does Athlons. I've not heard of too very many problems with the latest gateway systems, but a dimension 8100 is wrought with problems.
As to why companies don't sell decent computers.. because people will buy a WebPC. Don't forget, no one is in it to make the world a better place.
Actually, according to the 3rd Law of Anime Physics:
3.
Law of Sonic Amplification, First Law of Anime Accoustics - In space, loud sounds, like explosions, are even louder because there is no air to get in the way.
I own a Hollywood+ card, and I can tell you from as long ago as mid-1998, Sigma Designs has been uncooperative with the linux community with this card. They claim it's because they're currently working on an entirely new chipset that does everything, CSS included, in hardware.
What that means for linux users: Given a mpeg stream that's CSS encoded, you feed it directly into the card, and video comes out. Something along the lines of cat/dev/dvdrom >/dev/dvd_playback and it works. (I imagine there's more to it than that, but you get the idea)
The Hollywood+, however, is an mpeg card. It decodes mpeg streams and outputs them. CSS for the Hollywood+ DVD playback is done entirely in software, in their player. According to Sigma Designs, the reason they don't want to release the specs is because their video overlay technology is spiffy, new, cool, and secret. I don't belive them, but that's their story, and they're sticking to it.
I'd like to bring a different perspective to bear. That is, the view of the poor guy that has to administer the network at a school. I work at an grade school (K-8), and I'm not ashamed to admit that there's a filter on our network. And that we log every http request that passes through our proxy. And grep the results for yucky works like 'sex' and 'fuck' and 'boobs', and email those results to All The Right People to cover our butts.
Ah! The real reson behind filters appears! Butt coverage! That's right, it's there to keep the sue-happy parents from having something to whine about. We happily let the ESD run the software, and whever a complain comes to us (which it rarely does*) we can simply throw our hands up and say, "Welp, that filter should've blocked that, and we can't be held responsible. Thank you, come again! [ding]"
I think the primary reason any institution wants to implement filtering software is for the sole reaosn of apealing to the majority and preventing a lawsuit. Frankly, just about any public institution is running like a scared rabbit from a lawsuit. Seriously, can't you see Little Jimmy going to the library, finding pictures of naked ladies, printing them out, carrying them around in his backpack, taking them home where Mommy finds them and promptly sues the library? I, for one, don't find that very hard to imagine, and I don't think it's too far off in the future, either. Frankly, I think libraries should either implement some seriously strict filters, drop all 'net terminals entirely, or enforce some AUP things that result in harsh penalties. But free and total access in the library is -asking- to be sued.
I know, I know, that sounds like a major shot at freedom, but until this society learns to stop sueing people left and right for anything they find "wrong" it's about the only way to give some sembelance of 'net access in a public library.
* Belive it or not, -most- kids, I've found, aren't that interested in boobies while at school. As a matter of fact, the rule of thumb (no, not the wife-beating one, the metaphorical modernized one) for our network is 'Is it safe? Is it appropriate?' If either of those answers 'No.' then we ask the kid why they are doing what they're doing.
In this respect, I agree with companies like Disney being able to maintain their copyrights indefinitely. If Disney invests as much time and money on these characters as they do to keep them 'alive', they should be encouraged to do so.
On this point, I strongly disagree. Imagine all the Disney works (Hunchback of Notre Dame, Little Mermaid,...) that would never have been created if copyrights lasted indefinately. Disney's icons are a part of the popular cultural because of the limited monopoly grant bestowed by the government. They have an obligation to honor their side of the agreement and allow the works to enter the public domain.
I think what was being gotten at is this: If a company or artist, or whoever created some work uses that work on an active basis, then that work should be protected. Taking the Disney example, just because Mickey is old, even by copyright standards, does that mean that he should become public domain? Disney should have an incentive to keep those things that it created and still uses. Disney should not, however, be able to use some character in 1930 four times and then never let it out again.
Why is it that Slashdotters go ballistic over every minor technical GPL violation, but encourage breakingcommercial license agreements. Rather than "us vs. them" or "little guy vs. big guy", how about looking at "right vs. wrong".
I'd like it to go on record that if there was an instance when the GPL limited my freedom to do with software or other items that were rightfully mine to use as I please, I would advocate ignoring the GPL as much as I advocate spreading the DeCSS source.
Despite the prevailing opinion on Slashdot, it's my impression that you can't actually do a bit-by-bit copy of a DVD. The DVD reader hardware simply won't allow you to read the decryption keys off the disc. (It will only use them internally.) So if you tried to simply copy a DVD, you'd end up with a whole lot of encrypted data and no keys to decrypt it.
You are correct. The DVD has in it a "magic sector" (for purposes of this little post) that contains the encryption stuff. The drive[1] authenticates itself by doing some Cool Shit[2] and the drive saying "Ok, this is a valid disc. Go ahead and play it, using this key: xxxxx".
DVD-RAMs and DVD-Writers, according to spec, will not be able to write this sector. People have speculated that it's a firmware thing, others say the blank discs will come with that particular sector nulled, burned, or otherwise unwritable.
Once you understand this, there's no way you can belive that CSS is inteded to prevent copying, or even as a useful viewing protection method. There's also no way that a DVD could be bit-for-bit copied by the average consumer[3].
[1] Only DVD-ROM drives bother to do this.. Most set-top boxes don't even go this far [2] DeCSS does this for you. [3] Ignoring, of course, the truely resourceful, but they'll have the commercial-sized copiers anyway, regardless of CSS or not.
Did you suddenly learn how to travel forward in time and not share it with anyone? Take a look at this link.
I want a rock.
Re:Resent those comments! (not represent)
on
A Profile of Coders
·
· Score: 1
Hear, hear.
But then, I don't mind being constantly bothered. I tend to be the restless type, and my joints start to hate me if I don't get up and move about every hour.
For example, as I was typing this, the ringing antiquated method of communication (telephone) rang and I agreed to go help someone with a few "Things" in 15 minutes. It's a different mindset. At work, I do it constantly. At home, if someone tries to pester me while I'm coding, they get a Look, a curt response, and scurry out of the room.
The region-changing is part of the spec.. you can do it five times. And then you have to send your hardware back to the retailer and get them to reset it, which they can do five times. In theory, this is so you can transport your computer/player/card to a different region and still be able to take advantage of the local DVD selection.
The question arises however, what happens when you have a large collection of DVDs from two regions? Sigma Designs (makers of the Hollywood+) reccomend buying two cards and swapping them. I'm not lying. See for yourself. (Their page is brain-dead.. look for 'I need to switch between two regions')
I do. Have you any idea how cool it is to watch ST6 in a window next to a browser and terminal? (in windows, sigh. But not for long!)
DVD-Video is an added bonus to the highly cool aspect of DVD-ROM, for which I bought the drive. I *like* the idea of things like Riven fitting on one disc.
I find, however, the fact that I *have* to use windows to watch movies I paid for is brain-dead. If I were to buy a VHS tape, I could watch it in a VCR plugged into any TV or other viewing device I felt like. I could daisy-chain them and make a copy for backups (so the flawed magnetic tape doesn't get worn out). The list goes on. Try doing that with a DVD player.
GNOME is part of redhat, which is more known than just about any other distribution. Seriously. If you go down to say, Best Buy, wander over to the OS shelf, you'll see MacOS Whatever-the-hell-they're-up-to, Windows 98(SE), and RedHat 6.1
Personally, I like gnome's look. I have no idea what it is aside from someone long ago describing KDE as a desktop enviroment, and GNOME as a linux desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice idea.. but keep reading:
The gas tax would remain in effect. In paying the new tax, drivers would get credit for gas tax paid.
So you pay twice and (I assume) get your gas tax paid (which you kept track of, right?) back on your state tax forms in April.
Call your cell phone company.
You're getting SMS alerts, most likely, you're right, from the previous number's owner's "subscription."
And um. How would Yahoo! know when Sprint changed someone's phone number?
Call your cell phone company, they can fix this. Trust me. You could also just change your number.
Friend, not all phones are SIM-based.
IMEI-based phones don't have a SIM card to tie services (phone number, rate plan, etc.) to and are forced to use the IMEI.
As an example, the Motorolla V60 is a keen little SIM-based phone. You'll give the SIM number to your service provider. And they'll punch it in, mutter something about hating, you, their job, customers, and the company under their breath, and tell you to do a reset of some sort and send you on your way, never caring about the IMEI.
The Touchpoint 1100 has an ESN (IMEI by a different name). So I have to give this to Sprint so they'll activate my phone. It's tied to the little circuit board inside my phone. To change it I have to do some l33t h4x0ring.
Now. If I steal a V60, I can remove the sim chip, smash it into several pieces, and go buy a new one and activate it.
If I steal a 1100, I have to change the IMEI. Which sucks more?
I have to agree with the AC on this one, if you are really trying a piece of software then you should enter an email addr.
Why? If I want to purchase some professional piece of software, maybe the company will get my personal information. As a potential customer, I can see where they might like to have my email address, but wouldn't it be more useful to let me have the software for a a trial?
Companies that force me to enter an email address usually get 'spam@hell.no' as the address. And my name suddenly becomes 'Fred Flintstone' who lives at '123 Stone Quarry Road'. If I want to give out information, it should be on my terms, not the company's . It the company wants my email for a preview, I'm not getting the preview, and they're not getting my business.
Are you insane? Let the customer determine how important their own calls are with relation to the rest of the network?
Mrs. Smith, the businesswoman with anal retentive tendancies and most of a flagpole lodged up there is going to set her priority at '0' while Mr. Laid Back Construction worker who's calling home to have phone sex with his wife five hours a day will have it at '0'.
As will the teenybopper calling her friends after school to ask which eyeliner to get at Mervyn's.
Who, realisticly, doesn't think their calls are more important?
This was included in WinME as well as XP and 2000 (with service packs).
It doesn't work. Specifically, all the applications involved have to play nice with the OS when it says 'Stop what you're doing.' Norton is especially pissy.
Why should your computer manufacturer suffer you calling them about some 3rd party patch you applied that broke your computer?
Dell's (and just about every other OEM) inclues the magic words original configuration. That is, if you change it, you're screwed. ;)
My VISA Smart Card came with a reader. The pcsc packages, happily found at Freshmeat and RPM'd for my lazy butt, worked fine. That's right. I could put my card in. Type in the little access key (I presume the entire authentication method is a public key / private key thing) and got back my CC number.
It was very thrilling.
Dell Dimension, as well as most other lines of Dell hardware, have Intel-manufactured motherboards, seeing as Dell is an Intel-friendly (and only) shop[1].
The Palm V, serial version and specifically the Dimension 4100, which has an Intel 815 chipset, will cause, if the computer is running in the cradle for the palm is plugged in and on, when plugged into the serial port the system to lock and the serial port will blow out.
The fault lies with the motherboard manufaturer, not Palm. Palm's serial design is conforms perfectly to the standard. The motherboard designers desiced to skimp on serial design because 'who uses them for anything these days?'
The Tualatin, just like the Willamette, and the Columbia, and the Deschutes, and some more I can't think of, are in fact, rivers.
The clever practice of naming chips after rivers has been revealed by someone who's fallen into the Tualatin River and survived without mutation.
And it's pronounced 'too-wall-ah-tin'. There's a city. With a crawfish festival.
Customers don't really go with the 'Well, I must buy an Intel' processor when purchasing an OEM computer, their thought process is usually, "Hm, let's go to www.[oem].com and see what their top of the line is!'
Dell sells nothing but Intel procs and motherboards, Gateway does Athlons. I've not heard of too very many problems with the latest gateway systems, but a dimension 8100 is wrought with problems.
As to why companies don't sell decent computers.. because people will buy a WebPC. Don't forget, no one is in it to make the world a better place.
There is *no* sound in space. None at all.
Actually, according to the 3rd Law of Anime Physics:
I own a Hollywood+ card, and I can tell you from as long ago as mid-1998, Sigma Designs has been uncooperative with the linux community with this card. They claim it's because they're currently working on an entirely new chipset that does everything, CSS included, in hardware.
What that means for linux users: Given a mpeg stream that's CSS encoded, you feed it directly into the card, and video comes out. Something along the lines of cat /dev/dvdrom > /dev/dvd_playback and it works. (I imagine there's more to it than that, but you get the idea)
The Hollywood+, however, is an mpeg card. It decodes mpeg streams and outputs them. CSS for the Hollywood+ DVD playback is done entirely in software, in their player. According to Sigma Designs, the reason they don't want to release the specs is because their video overlay technology is spiffy, new, cool, and secret. I don't belive them, but that's their story, and they're sticking to it.
I want a rock.
The K12-Linux project, by PLUG (Portland Linux Users' Group) hosted at: http://www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux/.
k12linux.org proper.
There's the k12-linux mailing list here.
I want a rock.
I'd like to bring a different perspective to bear. That is, the view of the poor guy that has to administer the network at a school. I work at an grade school (K-8), and I'm not ashamed to admit that there's a filter on our network. And that we log every http request that passes through our proxy. And grep the results for yucky works like 'sex' and 'fuck' and 'boobs', and email those results to All The Right People to cover our butts.
Ah! The real reson behind filters appears! Butt coverage! That's right, it's there to keep the sue-happy parents from having something to whine about. We happily let the ESD run the software, and whever a complain comes to us (which it rarely does*) we can simply throw our hands up and say, "Welp, that filter should've blocked that, and we can't be held responsible. Thank you, come again! [ding]"
I think the primary reason any institution wants to implement filtering software is for the sole reaosn of apealing to the majority and preventing a lawsuit. Frankly, just about any public institution is running like a scared rabbit from a lawsuit. Seriously, can't you see Little Jimmy going to the library, finding pictures of naked ladies, printing them out, carrying them around in his backpack, taking them home where Mommy finds them and promptly sues the library? I, for one, don't find that very hard to imagine, and I don't think it's too far off in the future, either. Frankly, I think libraries should either implement some seriously strict filters, drop all 'net terminals entirely, or enforce some AUP things that result in harsh penalties. But free and total access in the library is -asking- to be sued.
I know, I know, that sounds like a major shot at freedom, but until this society learns to stop sueing people left and right for anything they find "wrong" it's about the only way to give some sembelance of 'net access in a public library.
* Belive it or not, -most- kids, I've found, aren't that interested in boobies while at school. As a matter of fact, the rule of thumb (no, not the wife-beating one, the metaphorical modernized one) for our network is 'Is it safe? Is it appropriate?' If either of those answers 'No.' then we ask the kid why they are doing what they're doing.
I want a rock.
I think what was being gotten at is this: If a company or artist, or whoever created some work uses that work on an active basis, then that work should be protected. Taking the Disney example, just because Mickey is old, even by copyright standards, does that mean that he should become public domain? Disney should have an incentive to keep those things that it created and still uses. Disney should not, however, be able to use some character in 1930 four times and then never let it out again.
I want a rock.
I'd like it to go on record that if there was an instance when the GPL limited my freedom to do with software or other items that were rightfully mine to use as I please, I would advocate ignoring the GPL as much as I advocate spreading the DeCSS source.
I want a rock.
Despite the prevailing opinion on Slashdot, it's my impression that you can't actually do a bit-by-bit copy of a DVD. The DVD reader hardware simply won't allow you to read the decryption keys off the disc. (It will only use them internally.) So if you tried to simply copy a DVD, you'd end up with a whole lot of encrypted data and no keys to decrypt it.
You are correct. The DVD has in it a "magic sector" (for purposes of this little post) that contains the encryption stuff. The drive[1] authenticates itself by doing some Cool Shit[2] and the drive saying "Ok, this is a valid disc. Go ahead and play it, using this key: xxxxx".
DVD-RAMs and DVD-Writers, according to spec, will not be able to write this sector. People have speculated that it's a firmware thing, others say the blank discs will come with that particular sector nulled, burned, or otherwise unwritable.
Once you understand this, there's no way you can belive that CSS is inteded to prevent copying, or even as a useful viewing protection method. There's also no way that a DVD could be bit-for-bit copied by the average consumer[3].
[1] Only DVD-ROM drives bother to do this.. Most set-top boxes don't even go this far
[2] DeCSS does this for you.
[3] Ignoring, of course, the truely resourceful, but they'll have the commercial-sized copiers anyway, regardless of CSS or not.
I want a rock.
Watching the millenium roll by made me realise...
Did you suddenly learn how to travel forward in time and not share it with anyone? Take a look at this link.
I want a rock.
Hear, hear.
But then, I don't mind being constantly bothered. I tend to be the restless type, and my joints start to hate me if I don't get up and move about every hour.
For example, as I was typing this, the ringing antiquated method of communication (telephone) rang and I agreed to go help someone with a few "Things" in 15 minutes. It's a different mindset. At work, I do it constantly. At home, if someone tries to pester me while I'm coding, they get a Look, a curt response, and scurry out of the room.
I want a rock.
The region-changing is part of the spec.. you can do it five times. And then you have to send your hardware back to the retailer and get them to reset it, which they can do five times. In theory, this is so you can transport your computer/player/card to a different region and still be able to take advantage of the local DVD selection.
The question arises however, what happens when you have a large collection of DVDs from two regions? Sigma Designs (makers of the Hollywood+) reccomend buying two cards and swapping them. I'm not lying. See for yourself. (Their page is brain-dead.. look for 'I need to switch between two regions')
I want a rock.
Does that mean you're not going to inflict upon us any more postings for an entire year?
link
I want a rock.
I do. Have you any idea how cool it is to watch ST6 in a window next to a browser and terminal? (in windows, sigh. But not for long!)
DVD-Video is an added bonus to the highly cool aspect of DVD-ROM, for which I bought the drive. I *like* the idea of things like Riven fitting on one disc.
I find, however, the fact that I *have* to use windows to watch movies I paid for is brain-dead. If I were to buy a VHS tape, I could watch it in a VCR plugged into any TV or other viewing device I felt like. I could daisy-chain them and make a copy for backups (so the flawed magnetic tape doesn't get worn out). The list goes on. Try doing that with a DVD player.
I want a rock.
Well, that's a fairly dumb question. :)
GNOME is part of redhat, which is more known than just about any other distribution. Seriously. If you go down to say, Best Buy, wander over to the OS shelf, you'll see MacOS Whatever-the-hell-they're-up-to, Windows 98(SE), and RedHat 6.1
Personally, I like gnome's look. I have no idea what it is aside from someone long ago describing KDE as a desktop enviroment, and GNOME as a linux desktop.
I want a rock.