Well, I don't know about applications to recode to different formats, but I do use mp3 for transferring music to my Creative MuVo. It was just a simple script written in couple of minutes:
Well, I never claimed, that US is peace-loving, human-rights-advocating heaven. In fact, I always claimed that US notoriously abuses human rights of its own and foreign citizens, on its teritory and abroad. And though human rights abuses aren't on the same level as in (e.g.) China or Indonesia, "less wrong" isn't "right".
Robert
PS Don't even get me started about abuses of human rights, due process and other issues in my country: Poland.
Only under legal systems derived from British common law, others (including the US?) lay the burden of proof on you. They require you to prove that you are not an unwashed sodomite rather than the other way round.
OK, it got me thinking. How does one prove that he is not a sodomite, whashed or not? I mean, how do I prove, that I do not engane in anal sexual practices? Or how do I prove that I'm not stupid, or that I'm not a traitor?
Unfortunately this is one area where British law is sadly lacking (i.e. a libel defendant is presumed guilty until proven otherwise).
In this case "libelee" was presumed guilty of whatever the "libeler" found apropriate, wasn't he? So libel cases are really about "putting your money where your mouth is".
They require you to prove that you are not an unwashed sodomite rather than the other way round.
Luckily, in Polish codified law, the burden of proof is on the party that committed the libel. Moreover, in Poland (like in most of the EU countries) it is the norm, that in civil cases the loosing party pays all the bills.
Now, that's exactly why I am opposed to any and all kinds of censorship. Whether it is about Nazi, KKK, or someone claiming that Robert R. Wal (that is me) is unwashing sodomite. In the last case I would go to court and he would have to prove his accusations, or pay me damages, but in my opinion people have every right to have their opinions and to publish them.
Remember, that many despicable crimes of yesterday are normal things today. Like publishing research opposing church doctrine, advocating slavery abolition, homosexual relationships and extramarital sex. And remember, that many yesterday's terrorists are today's war heroes of new nations that fought for their freedom.
Even when everybody agrees that child abuse, paedophilia is such despicable crime, and there are no chances of it changing in the future (apart from age of consent, legal tests for consent etc), I don't see how anyone would be hurt by someone advocating paedophilia, or disseminating synthetic paedophiliac images.
Now, the cases like racism, terrorism or similar usually are (almost criminal) stupidity, but people have right to be stupid too. I mean, if stupidity was a crime, then most of the politicians and voting public would end up in jail in an instant;)
Robert
PS Yes, I am libertarian too (among other things). Did libertarian advocacy become a crime in some jurisdiction I frequent?
I mean, you can argue all you want about PKK being terrorist organisation or not, but this is just the issue of free speech! The guy wasn't sentenced for being a part of bombing or being a part of the plot to bomb anyone. He was sentenced for being editor of site that had public information about some organisation.
If this isn't fucking censorship and criminal prosecution for exercising free speech, I don't know what is.
It is prohibitively expensive to ship things from Earth to Moon. The reason is Earth's gravity well, which you have to escape. On the return trip Earth's gravity well works in your favour, and you have to escape Moon's gravity well, which you can do with electromagnetic catapult...
Re:TV is actually worse than movies...
on
TV Piracy is Next
·
· Score: 1
Do you also ignore region coding for games and prosecution of people importing CDs from markets with (legal) lower prices?
Re:TV is actually worse than movies...
on
TV Piracy is Next
·
· Score: 1
And how does dvd region coding fit in this weird universe of yours?
Re:TV is actually worse than movies...
on
TV Piracy is Next
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
TV providers seem to have missed this little thing called "globalization".
You misunderstood the term. Globalisation is for corporations to maximise their profit.
Globalisation is not for you (vide the intention of dvd region coding), and your attempts to use globalisation for your convenience or profit will meet strong oposition and prosecution with new laws written especially for that purpose.
Now that's actually a good idea. Filter with scripting to write all kinds of fancy rules like "don't ring calls other than VIP from 2200 to 0900" etc. No, simple phonebook groups won't do.
Been tired of the kids monkeying around on IRC years ago and switched to Jabber. Good luck in monitoring my conversations on private servers with SSL connections and end-to-end PGP encryption. Distributed networks of servers like email or jabber (and unlike msn messenger, yahoo, aim, icq etc) seem to have other advantages, besides the "load balancing".
Or good luck to listening to my Skype conversations. Although, knowing that Skype is closed source and proprietary, I have absolutely no guarantee, that their claim of AES encryption gives me any protection/privacy. Just recently there was thread on/. about "encrypted" usb-flash keys that kept password in plaintext on the key.
Or couple of years ago, I've had to convince my boss that "security" of MDaemon on Windows does not exist. I sat to its password files, noticed something peculiar about them and broke the "secret algorithm" in about 4hrs. Passwords were not even xored, they were summed[1] with "secret" and encoded with base64. The secret was "The setup process could not create the necessary system accout MDaemon".
Couple of years ago Motorola was announcing to everyone and his dog, that it will install drm-like chips in its batteries to "solve the problem of counterfeit, exploding batteries".
I don't know if they actually started to do this, but I'm sure that it had nothing to do with vendor's batteries being sometimes an order of magnitude more expensive than generic, good brand betteries of the same parameters.
Unfortunatelly, there's no way for the clients alone to initiate this transfer. They have to know:
Their external IP address
Who they want to communicate to
The ports on which to communicate
Now, there are some "middleman" servers like STUN that will take care of some of this, but requirement 3 may be impossible to to fulfill.
You see, normally when you send packets through NAT, it rewrites source port and address. In case of Linux, if the port is free on firewall/nat box, it leaves it unchanged. If it is taken, it assigns new, free port. Similarly, if you send UDP to address A and then send UDP to address B with the same source port, they may end up with different ports after natting. And the next problem is when several machines behind the same NAT send packets with the same source port: they have to have different ports after natting, in order to distinguish the returning packets.
Basically, you have no way of knowing what you source port will be behind a "hostile" NAT, since it can even change between your packets beeing sent to "middleman" server and packets beeing sent to proper recipient's NAT.
There's just no way to reliably communicate between natted machines, because this communication was never a goal. Rather, from day one, inability to communicate with machine behind NAT was the "security feature" and big selling point.
There's no easy way to communicate between two agents, both behind NAT. Period.
Having said that, where've you been for the last couple of years? There are free registrars that let you use rfc compliant VoIP like SIP: FWD, IPTel. You register there, but you communicate directly between your internet connections. This is really something like web page with your IPs, but automated. Kphone or Linphone are good for it on Linux.
You have to set up some kind of NAT traversal. You can set up port forwarding on the NAT and/or use STUN server.
Also, Skype isn't communicating via server. Skype only authenticates with server, but communication more or less is point to point. When the Skype client is unreachable directly, you communicate with it via third party (i.e. any Skype client with externally open ports). And the communication is encrypted with AES in order to avoid snooping by your,,proxy''.
There's also teamspeak which requires extrenally running server (there are some servers publically available) but works like a charm with every kind of NAT, because all the communication goes thru server.
There are places (like Poland, where I live) where you can cancel any transaction, if it was made outside of the company's quarters, within 10 days, without a reason, with full refund, box opened or not. So obviously this includes everything you buy online, over the phone or even in front of the shop (as opposed to inside the shop).
Just check your local consumer protection organisation.
Open source Solaris 10 will win big time in the corporate server area, thanks to its flawless inter-operation with Longhorn on desktop. Add to that seamless integration of Palm OS 6.0 Cobalt and my new home on Mars will be set.
Finally there will be some good platform to play Duke Nukem Forever in multiplayer mode with my friends. Thanks to FTL Internet I will even be able to attend realtime matches against Earthlings. And maybe against Jaffa, though they are one hard motherhumpers to beat, thanks to their larval Goa'uld symbionts.
Robert
PS Don't you just love those praising nonexistent products nowhere near the horizon, and how they will squash all the competition? When or if they arrive. Eventually.
Java with its JCP is more like ESR's Bazaar than Linux, which he dismissed as being "awfully cathedral-like" since Linus is the final arbiter (or Great Dictator), and not a committee."
you also do not spend on national defense because the US protects you.
Now, that's funny, because (similarly to Italian-American Businessmen offering you "protection") the only country Canada would need protection from is US. And US will have good reason for "Operation Canada Freedom" very soon -- Canada has world's largest deposits of oil. It is not economically viable at the moment to mine[1] them, but as soon as easy Middle East oil runs out we will see some developments in those areas[2].
Robert
[1] yes, it is mining, stripmining to be exact, because tar sands are more or less solid. [2] that is in the areas of mining them, and liberating Canada by US.
Evil Dead 3 (Army of Darkness) left things wide-open for more mayhem starting with S-MART in a (presumably) necronomicon-tainted suburbia.
You are referring to the "supermarket zombie" ending. I recently saw this one on the cheap-ass R2 4:3 edition. The SE R1 16:9 edition I own has the "end of civilisation" ending. Basically, after he takes one drop of the potion too much, he wakes up in a postapocaliptic, deserted world among the ruins of a modern city. And that's it, scrolling credits.
Robert (proud owner of SE R1 edition of ED, ED2 and AoD;)
Actually, according to Polish Central Bank it's 3.2582/3.2758/3.3240 (sell/mean/buy) today.
US dolar used to be even >4.0 some time ago (2002), but since the beginning of Dubya presidency it's constantly falling. Not that I claim that those two are related;)
Robert
PS You are welcome, vodka and caviar are cheap here (from 30pln for 1 litre of vodka), women are cute and the "age of consent" is 15;)
Re:Actually, there are two pillars of heracles...
on
Atlantis Found. Again.
·
· Score: 1
Very interesting.
Do you actually have any source/link for this? I just checked Wikipedia and they only mention Gibraltar as "Pillars of Hercules". So, I would gladly read about those other Pillars. That is, of course, if this isn't some pseudo-proof made up on the spot by some supporter of Mediterranean Atlantis.
Slashdot Mirror
Just use it as an example to create scripts converting to other formats.
Robert
Well, I never claimed, that US is peace-loving, human-rights-advocating heaven. In fact, I always claimed that US notoriously abuses human rights of its own and foreign citizens, on its teritory and abroad. And though human rights abuses aren't on the same level as in (e.g.) China or Indonesia, "less wrong" isn't "right".
Robert
PS Don't even get me started about abuses of human rights, due process and other issues in my country: Poland.
Only under legal systems derived from British common law, others (including the US?) lay the burden of proof on you. They require you to prove that you are not an unwashed sodomite rather than the other way round.
OK, it got me thinking. How does one prove that he is not a sodomite, whashed or not? I mean, how do I prove, that I do not engane in anal sexual practices? Or how do I prove that I'm not stupid, or that I'm not a traitor?
Unfortunately this is one area where British law is sadly lacking (i.e. a libel defendant is presumed guilty until proven otherwise).
In this case "libelee" was presumed guilty of whatever the "libeler" found apropriate, wasn't he? So libel cases are really about "putting your money where your mouth is".
Robert
They require you to prove that you are not an unwashed sodomite rather than the other way round.
Luckily, in Polish codified law, the burden of proof is on the party that committed the libel. Moreover, in Poland (like in most of the EU countries) it is the norm, that in civil cases the loosing party pays all the bills.
Robert
Now, that's exactly why I am opposed to any and all kinds of censorship. Whether it is about Nazi, KKK, or someone claiming that Robert R. Wal (that is me) is unwashing sodomite. In the last case I would go to court and he would have to prove his accusations, or pay me damages, but in my opinion people have every right to have their opinions and to publish them.
;)
Remember, that many despicable crimes of yesterday are normal things today. Like publishing research opposing church doctrine, advocating slavery abolition, homosexual relationships and extramarital sex. And remember, that many yesterday's terrorists are today's war heroes of new nations that fought for their freedom.
Even when everybody agrees that child abuse, paedophilia is such despicable crime, and there are no chances of it changing in the future (apart from age of consent, legal tests for consent etc), I don't see how anyone would be hurt by someone advocating paedophilia, or disseminating synthetic paedophiliac images.
Now, the cases like racism, terrorism or similar usually are (almost criminal) stupidity, but people have right to be stupid too. I mean, if stupidity was a crime, then most of the politicians and voting public would end up in jail in an instant
Robert
PS Yes, I am libertarian too (among other things). Did libertarian advocacy become a crime in some jurisdiction I frequent?
Exactly my thoughts...
I mean, you can argue all you want about PKK being terrorist organisation or not, but this is just the issue of free speech! The guy wasn't sentenced for being a part of bombing or being a part of the plot to bomb anyone. He was sentenced for being editor of site that had public information about some organisation.
If this isn't fucking censorship and criminal prosecution for exercising free speech, I don't know what is.
Robert
You forgot one thing.
It is prohibitively expensive to ship things from Earth to Moon. The reason is Earth's gravity well, which you have to escape. On the return trip Earth's gravity well works in your favour, and you have to escape Moon's gravity well, which you can do with electromagnetic catapult...
Do you also ignore region coding for games and prosecution of people importing CDs from markets with (legal) lower prices?
And how does dvd region coding fit in this weird universe of yours?
TV providers seem to have missed this little thing called "globalization".
You misunderstood the term. Globalisation is for corporations to maximise their profit.
Globalisation is not for you (vide the intention of dvd region coding), and your attempts to use globalisation for your convenience or profit will meet strong oposition and prosecution with new laws written especially for that purpose.
Robert
Now that's actually a good idea. Filter with scripting to write all kinds of fancy rules like "don't ring calls other than VIP from 2200 to 0900" etc. No, simple phonebook groups won't do.
Robert
Been tired of the kids monkeying around on IRC years ago and switched to Jabber. Good luck in monitoring my conversations on private servers with SSL connections and end-to-end PGP encryption. Distributed networks of servers like email or jabber (and unlike msn messenger, yahoo, aim, icq etc) seem to have other advantages, besides the "load balancing".
/. about "encrypted" usb-flash keys that kept password in plaintext on the key.
Or good luck to listening to my Skype conversations. Although, knowing that Skype is closed source and proprietary, I have absolutely no guarantee, that their claim of AES encryption gives me any protection/privacy. Just recently there was thread on
Or couple of years ago, I've had to convince my boss that "security" of MDaemon on Windows does not exist. I sat to its password files, noticed something peculiar about them and broke the "secret algorithm" in about 4hrs. Passwords were not even xored, they were summed[1] with "secret" and encoded with base64. The secret was "The setup process could not create the necessary system accout MDaemon".
Robert
[1] you know: (passwd[n] + secret[n]) & 0xff
Couple of years ago Motorola was announcing to everyone and his dog, that it will install drm-like chips in its batteries to "solve the problem of counterfeit, exploding batteries".
I don't know if they actually started to do this, but I'm sure that it had nothing to do with vendor's batteries being sometimes an order of magnitude more expensive than generic, good brand betteries of the same parameters.
Robert
Unfortunatelly, there's no way for the clients alone to initiate this transfer. They have to know:
Now, there are some "middleman" servers like STUN that will take care of some of this, but requirement 3 may be impossible to to fulfill.
You see, normally when you send packets through NAT, it rewrites source port and address. In case of Linux, if the port is free on firewall/nat box, it leaves it unchanged. If it is taken, it assigns new, free port. Similarly, if you send UDP to address A and then send UDP to address B with the same source port, they may end up with different ports after natting. And the next problem is when several machines behind the same NAT send packets with the same source port: they have to have different ports after natting, in order to distinguish the returning packets.
Basically, you have no way of knowing what you source port will be behind a "hostile" NAT, since it can even change between your packets beeing sent to "middleman" server and packets beeing sent to proper recipient's NAT.
There's just no way to reliably communicate between natted machines, because this communication was never a goal. Rather, from day one, inability to communicate with machine behind NAT was the "security feature" and big selling point.
Robert
There's no easy way to communicate between two agents, both behind NAT. Period.
,,proxy''.
Having said that, where've you been for the last couple of years? There are free registrars that let you use rfc compliant VoIP like SIP: FWD, IPTel. You register there, but you communicate directly between your internet connections. This is really something like web page with your IPs, but automated. Kphone or Linphone are good for it on Linux.
You have to set up some kind of NAT traversal. You can set up port forwarding on the NAT and/or use STUN server.
Also, Skype isn't communicating via server. Skype only authenticates with server, but communication more or less is point to point. When the Skype client is unreachable directly, you communicate with it via third party (i.e. any Skype client with externally open ports). And the communication is encrypted with AES in order to avoid snooping by your
There's also teamspeak which requires extrenally running server (there are some servers publically available) but works like a charm with every kind of NAT, because all the communication goes thru server.
Robert
There are places (like Poland, where I live) where you can cancel any transaction, if it was made outside of the company's quarters, within 10 days, without a reason, with full refund, box opened or not. So obviously this includes everything you buy online, over the phone or even in front of the shop (as opposed to inside the shop).
Just check your local consumer protection organisation.
Robert
Open source Solaris 10 will win big time in the corporate server area, thanks to its flawless inter-operation with Longhorn on desktop. Add to that seamless integration of Palm OS 6.0 Cobalt and my new home on Mars will be set.
Finally there will be some good platform to play Duke Nukem Forever in multiplayer mode with my friends. Thanks to FTL Internet I will even be able to attend realtime matches against Earthlings. And maybe against Jaffa, though they are one hard motherhumpers to beat, thanks to their larval Goa'uld symbionts.
Robert
PS Don't you just love those praising nonexistent products nowhere near the horizon, and how they will squash all the competition? When or if they arrive. Eventually.
Java with its JCP is more like ESR's Bazaar than Linux, which he dismissed as being "awfully cathedral-like" since Linus is the final arbiter (or Great Dictator), and not a committee."
Camel is a horse designed by a committee.
Robert
you also do not spend on national defense because the US protects you.
Now, that's funny, because (similarly to Italian-American Businessmen offering you "protection") the only country Canada would need protection from is US. And US will have good reason for "Operation Canada Freedom" very soon -- Canada has world's largest deposits of oil. It is not economically viable at the moment to mine[1] them, but as soon as easy Middle East oil runs out we will see some developments in those areas[2].
Robert
[1] yes, it is mining, stripmining to be exact, because tar sands are more or less solid.
[2] that is in the areas of mining them, and liberating Canada by US.
Evil Dead 3 (Army of Darkness) left things wide-open for more mayhem starting with S-MART in a (presumably) necronomicon-tainted suburbia.
;)
You are referring to the "supermarket zombie" ending. I recently saw this one on the cheap-ass R2 4:3 edition. The SE R1 16:9 edition I own has the "end of civilisation" ending. Basically, after he takes one drop of the potion too much, he wakes up in a postapocaliptic, deserted world among the ruins of a modern city. And that's it, scrolling credits.
Robert
(proud owner of SE R1 edition of ED, ED2 and AoD
3.98:1 exchange for Polish zloty to the dollar
;)
;)
Actually, according to Polish Central Bank it's 3.2582/3.2758/3.3240 (sell/mean/buy) today.
US dolar used to be even >4.0 some time ago (2002), but since the beginning of Dubya presidency it's constantly falling. Not that I claim that those two are related
Robert
PS You are welcome, vodka and caviar are cheap here (from 30pln for 1 litre of vodka), women are cute and the "age of consent" is 15
Very interesting.
Do you actually have any source/link for this? I just checked Wikipedia and they only mention Gibraltar as "Pillars of Hercules". So, I would gladly read about those other Pillars. That is, of course, if this isn't some pseudo-proof made up on the spot by some supporter of Mediterranean Atlantis.
Robert
/me feels his ears burning... ;)