They didn't pay, he shut down the site.
Explain the part of that you consider
"unreasonable", please?
Whether or not you consider the magnitude
of his bill to the county as reasonable, it
boils down simply to "he provided a service,
sent a bill, bill went unpaid, he stopped
providing the service". Nothing more than
that.
Theft of service also breaks the law. Key
difference, a private individual doesn't have
the power to abuse to have people from the
country government frivolously arrested.
Also, RTFA (in particular, the second link).
He did not send them a bill for $300k...
He said his total expenses came out to $300k
(not unreasonable, if he actually worked
something resembling full-time for 2-3 years...
That alone gives $200k+ depending on the going
rate in his area for a network admin). He
didn't even attempt to recover any of his
past expenses on the project. He merely requested
they start paying for his services, and when they
refused, he stopped providing the service.
If this counts as extortion, it sets a VERY
dangerous precedent... A precedent that basically
makes slavery legal, by making it a crime to stop
performing a voluntary service.
On the bright side, assuming he doesn't end
up in prison for a few years, he has a fairly
good case for harassment, with monetary damages
resulting. He could end up getting considerably
more than his $300k (which, again, he did not
actually try to bill the county for).
I think they mean that large companies like
AT&T and MCI were required to allow OTHER
companies to offer local phone service.
Nope, they got it right...
For example, look into MCI's "Neighborhood
Complete" package, which I currently use. Rather
than having Verizon for my local service and MCI
for my LD carrier, this rule allowed me to use
MCI as my local carrier as well - Meaning that
I pay only one phone bill per month, for
$15 more than I paid to just Verizon each month,
and I get unlimited free LD as a bonus (along
with voicemail, CID, CW, 3-way, and I think a
few others).
I for one will feel VERY pissed off if
I get a call in the next few days from Verizon,
telling me that if I don't sign back on with
them I will have no phone service. But that
seems like precisely the implication
of this ruling.
Whaddya know, for once I find myself on the
same side of an issue as the FCC. Ah
well, I suppose this will finally give me
the incentive to switch to 100% cellular.
It's not just sustainability, it's getting it to react.
You need intense pressures, and the only ways to do this
previously, require very large (read: industrial) bits of
equipment, just for the proof-of-concept.
If you mean "fusion in general", I'll accept that.
If you only mean to refer to sonoluminescence, then no,
you do not nead large and expensive industrial
equipment - You can do it in your basement with roughly
$100 in equipment (though having a low-end oscilliscope
helps, you don't absolutely need it, you could
get away with a simple analog meter).
Not exactly rocked science - As the basic idea, you
make a flask of degassed water resonate at roughly
25khz. Insert a tiny air bubble, and bingo, with a bit
of trial and error, you have sonoluminescence.
Of course, I agree that getting energy out of
such a system may take some doing, but as a proof of
concept (and just a really cool experiment in general),
any advanced-amateur EE geek would already have all
the parts they need.
Also, most people that go beyond 2 procs go
with a real computer, and not a PC.
True, for a reason totally unrelated
to architectural constraints...
I can get a 2-way motherboard for under $100.
A 4-way motherboard starts at over $1500.
I can't even find a price for an 8-way
PC-style system, but I take that as a sign that
they don't come cheap.
Now, I currently run a dual P3/933 as my main
machine (yeah, about time for an upgrade, but
only because I can get a much better replacement
dirt cheap, it still runs just fine). The
motherboard cost me $120, the CPUs $55 each at
the time - Less than half the cost of the board
itself. If I could have found a decently
priced 4-way motherboard, I'd have used that
in a heartbeat for a mere $110 more in CPUs
(yes, I realize that the non-Xeon P3 didn't
support a quad config, but that actually works
to support my point, as I'll explain).
Commodity-level 4-way, I see, as the big advantage
that the Opteron may finally give us (apart from
greater than 4GB of memory per process). To get
the top-of-the-line chip usually costs 3-4x last
year's best offerings, for only 10-25% better
performance. For the same price (in terms of just
the CPU), you can get a dual or even quad system.
Now that a PC-level chip exists that does
support 4-way and above, I believe we may
finally see reasonably priced motherboards
supporting that many CPUs.
The "big boys" will always spring for their
top-of-the-line 8-way systems. For the rest of
us, a quad system based on last year's CPUs
would make for a truly sweet machine,
and (if the 4-way motherboards become reasonably
available), wouldn't break the bank.
Sorry, but on this point HardOCP are
(potentially) in the wrong. They state he
was not an employee, but his resume says
otherwise.
Actually, although I initially agreed with you,
on re-reading the relevant section of HardOCP's
article (HardOCP only changed the name of the
company, as per point 5 on the
nastygram, despite having
originally quoted TR's resume accurately
to get the "wrong" name), that simply does
not hold true. HardOCP did not say
TR did or did not work for, or direct, MedHire.
The nastygram makes the claim that they
did, but I would recommend you re-read the relevant
section of the
original article as well.
Not a single "allegation" of anything,
HardOCP does nothing more than relate an anecdote,
of sorts. The wording does have a certain sarcastic
sense of disbelief to it, but they don't ever say
TR did or did not work there, just that two different
people who did work there, both named Lo/au/ra
Roberts (ie, his own mother), had no contact info for
him (and one had never heard of him).
Offhand, I'd say that point 8 counted as the only
truly libellous one - And on that one, HardOCP agreed
to change the wording to something less speculative
(though more damning, I have no doubt intentionally).
Additionally, I can see how an overly zealous lawyer
could stretch point 12 into a copyright violation (though
any even remotely fair court would dismiss it with
prejudice a fair use)... But on that one, again, HardOCP
agreed to back down slightly, and remove IL's logos from
their site.
I'll add one more point of interest to this... HardOCP
does claim that "Mr. Roberts is the registered
contact on the MEDHIRE, LLC. website", and they provide
a screenshot of their whois query
to prove it (as an aside, notice that the
screenshot amusingly shows the domain name as
"emedhire.com", the same name that appeared in
TR's resume, and that point 5 in the nastygram demanded
they change). So, this company, including TR's mother,
has no way to contact TR, the registered administrative
contact for their domain name?
How are they supposed to request changes be
made to an article and retractions written?
For starters, try only accepting clients with a
firm grip on reality.
I've followed this situation from the beginning
(well, from long before Slashdot got involved,
anyway), and basically, HardOCP prepared their
article directly from "facts" (true or
not), including in-context quotes, derived
from IL's press releases and Tim Roberts'
own resume.
It's not a freedom of speech or press issue
when you lie about people with intent to harm
their business.
While the concepts presented may disagree
with reality, they do so entirely because
TR and IL presented them that way. Their office
doesn't exist? Why, of course it makes
perfect sense that they would want potential
contracts, whether via US mail or a sales rep,
forwarded to the USPS's/dev/null (or left on an
empty floor). The executive secretary of a company
(owned by TR's mommy, how cute) doesn't know if
TR works there, and has no contact info? And
had a different story next time they called? Why,
perfectly rational, HardOCP should have simply
have take such a setback as a minor annoyance,
certainly not indicative of anything fishy. HardOCP
claimes X (which occurred no less than five times
in the threatening legal letter), based only on
concrete evidence of X? Shockingly libelous (not
slander, BTW)! How dare HardOCP infer the
glaringly obvious from the available facts! "Your
name starts with a 'Bo', and forms a palindrome?
Why, I would feel remiss if I simply assumed it
as 'Bob', rather than considering such possibilities
as 'Boxob' and 'Bo'a'man'a'plan'a'canal'panama'ob',
please forgive my presumptiveness". Hmm, how about
"boob"?
The criticisms of this legal scare-o-gram have
nothing to do with its choice of jargon. It
quite simply reads like a joke, all but stating
outright "You trusted TR's resume, you sucker...
W3 0wn2 j00!". So TR lied on his resume. Does
that make TR, or HardOCP, liable for that
info?
If what these guys are saying is true, he
did not lie on his resume, and HardOCP is guilty
of slander
If TR didn't lie on his resume, then HardOCP has
truthfully reported the facts. If he did lie on his
resume, then HardOCP has truthfully outed him as a
fraud. Neither counts as LIBEL (not!!! slander).
It seems to me that this letter provides clear
and in a lot of cases reasonable requests for factual
changes to be made to an article.
I do so hate to resort to ad hominem, but if
you consider that nastygram as even remotely
"reasonable", you need to check into a first-semester
"logic and rhetoric" class ASAP. Really sad, that
HardOCP needs to take something that pathetic
as a dire threat to their freedom and financial
security).
I'm not saying the whole lawsuit threat is a
smart way of doing business
You've got that much dead-on... IL's console
model wouldn't appeal to the typical gamer; it appeals
to geeks who enjoy retrogaming with a few hot new hits
thrown into the mix. By making it to the Slashdot FP,
IL has effectively destroyed its potential user base - Of
course, that assumes the "phantom" exists in any more
tangibe form than its name suggests, which appears
doubtful at this point in time.
one could just take eight AAA cells.
8x1,5V=12V bingo!
I had the same thought, and it kinda surprises
me that the author of the linked article
didn't, since his goal of a "cheap"
replacement will eat the non-rechargeable
9v's like candy.
However, you wouldn't actually get 12V out of
8 AA NiMH rechargeables - They usually only put
out 1.2 to 1.3V (the reason many batter meters
on lower-end electronics will detect a fresh
one as half-empty). But, since the iPod will
deal with as low as 8V, your suggestion would
still work.
As an aside, since this hack requires an
external battery pack anyway, why go for
something so exotic as a custom battery
pack? Hook up the smallest motorcycle/ATV
battery you can find (12-18V, still in the
range the iPod will deal with), and you
have somewhere on the order of 10k-20k mAh.
A tad bit more expensive (though 8 2100mAh
NiMH AA's will cost you $20, plus another
$20 for a charger), but the battery and a
DC charger (ie, cigarette lighter plugin)
will still cost less than a real iPod
replacement.
That means a medium sophisticated mechanical
assembly to scan them, and over 60! possible
combinations to scan.
You don't "get" the problem...
If it unlocks based on a set of side-2 elements
detecting a signal, you need only flood all
of side-2 with the output of the active fiber
on side-1. That corresponds to an O(1)
operation.
In the worst case, where significantly lossy
transmission matters, you still only need to
perform (N+(N-1)+(N-2)+...+1) possible checks,
which does not equal N!, but rather,
N(N-1)/2, possible combinations. From your own
example of 60 pins, that means the number of
brute-force checks drops from 8.3E81 (60!) to
a mere 1770 possible combinations.
Quite a lot easier to pick than a "normal"
lock, where as you point out, you have 60!
combinations (though in practice, you do not
see infinite slope between notches (that
would mean you could not insert or remove
the key), giving only three or four possible
valid positions (relative to the previous
position) per pin.
the government may require that up to 70%
of software on Chinese computers is produced
domestically.
I see a great opportunity here for some
clever Chinese student to make a fortune...
Write and sell a fairly cheap (whatever would
compare to USD$20?) set of a few thousand
"utility" programs, that do basically nothing
(such as "print-a", which "inserts the ASCII
character 0x41 into the standard output stream,
for use in automated scripting requiring the
letter 'A'", as an example of what I mean),
but absolutely guarantee that a company can
remain in compliane with this quota no matter
how much imported US software they use.
The only problem involves the definition of "percent"
as relating to software - Does it mean "per 100
packages" or "per 100 bytes"? If the latter, a
similar approach would work (such as "lib-a",
which fills exactly 70% of your hard-drive with
readily-accessible "A" characters), but would
certainly seem a lot more wasteful of a large
HDD...
And you might just as easily use one of the
many packages which don't contain DeCSS.
The point of DeCSS is single fold, to decrypt
commercial DVDs.
So, just to make sure I have this correct...
If I use a standalone DeCSS implementation to
rip the disk, then use a remastering program
that lacks any concept of CSS, I can make my
fair-use-rights backup without violating the
DMCA?
Somehow I doubt so obvious a solution would
work, but that does seem like the only
logical conclusion we can get from combining
the two cases finding DVD X-Copy illegal but
DeCSS kosher...
Does anybody have some info on making
the fastest cluster for the cheapest cost?
Especially for somebody just wanting to
get their feet wet?
Checking Pricewatch just now...
Pick up as many Althon XP 1700 combo MBs ($66)
as you want, Throw in 256MB of PC2700 ($26),
add a 30GB IDE HDD ($25), 6ft of cat-5 cable
($3, far less if you get a spool and make
them yourself), and get a 400W PS ($10).
You'll also need a few switches ($15 for 8-port
10/100 FD) (NOT hubs, you definitely want the
full N-to-N FD bandwidth). Now, go to Home
Depot and buy a bag of a few hundred nylon
standoffs ($10?) and a few dozen metal
standoffs of the same size ($5?). I'll assume
you have a working monitor and keyboard that
you can temporarily stick on each node to set
up the bios (ie, to tell it it doesn't have a
keyboard or monitor <G>).
Mount the MBs to each other, with as many
standoffs between each as it takes to give the
CPU fan a bit of clearance. Use the metal
standoffs on the grounding holes (Usually the
center rear ones).
Lay the entire hideous tower-o'-motherboards
on its side (make sure to put it on something
reasonably non-conductive and non-static-prone -
smooth wood will suffice, carpet or styrofoam
or stainless steel would not). Now just hook up
the PSs in a neat row behind the MBs, and the
HDDs on top of the PSs. You should also run a
wire between the PS case, the HDD case, and the
shared ground on the MBs (the metal standoffs),
just for safety, but you can probably get away
with not doing so (I wouldn't recommend
skipping it, for just the cost of a few feet
of cheap copper wire).
Poof, you have a working cluster for $50-$100
plus $133 per node. You can probably do a tad
better due to quantity, and if you can find
any of the above used (HDDs or memory pulls),
all the better.
Also, one alternative that may save you quite
a lot of effort and a few bucks - Instead of
one HDD per node, get a second network card
with a bootrom ($12) for each machine. Use one
NIC exclusively for the clustering app, and the
other (the one with the bootrom) for booting,
accessing a Samba share, ssh'ing in, and any
other incidental network activity.
You might also want to spring for a few
box fans (the kind you stick in a window in
the summer), since this sucker will keep your
computer room nice and toasty (think "one
hairdryer on high per 10 nodes).
The other part of the DMCA says stripping
copyright information or other identifying marks
from a copyrighted work in an attempt to avoid
proper attribution is also a violation.
But that implies intent to do so, which considering
the very nature of this "crime", will basically
take an outright confession to prove in court.
When PS'ing (or Gimping, just to avoid
argument) an image, you usually separate
it/them into a number of layers, perform a
few affine transformations, possibly some
non-linear enhancements to make the different
sources match, then glue them all together,
perhaps apply a weak smoothing filter, then
finally save it in a lossy format (ie, jpeg).
If Corbis uses a watermark that will survive
that, they need to change their core
business away from photo archiving - I can
think of at least two **AA groups that would
pay handsomely to use such a resilient proof
of ownership in their media.
So, I would say that the claim that anyone
intended to remove the watermark will
hold no water in court. Just an advanced-amateur
doing a cut-and-paste digital image workup
would tend to remove any trace of a watermark,
purely by coincidence. The person who made the
Kerry/Fonda picture in question may well not
have even known Corbis uses watermarking (I'll
admit, I didn't until this story), yet
I have little doubt they managed to passively
remove it.
they weren't always free, dumbass. ask
someone who was there before you start peeing
in your fucking pants.
I doubt you'll read this (god I hate ACs, I
really should just start ignoring them completely),
but...
Tell me how much Mosaic cost, "Before" Microsoft
drove it off the market. Oh, gee, both "zero"
and "it came LOOOONG before MSIE"? Oh well,
on to the next one...
How about the original price of MSIE? Or
anything that even came close to
competing with it, before Winamp 3? You
may as well say that "calculator" pushed the
abacus makers out of business.
Perhaps you would prefer to approach this from
a different angle - Could you explain to me how
giving away a browser benefitted Microsoft? As
much as I go on about the evils of corporate
America, companies do not cause damage for its
own sake - They'll destroy anyone and anything
to make a buck, but not just for fun. So tell
me, what did MS get by crushing an "opponent"
that didn't actually compete with them for any
actual source of revenue?
it sucks and it's illegal, and the law is
not being enforced. and people like you have
absolutely no idea what benefits you have from
being able to choose from a variety of vendors
Sorry, could you make a few more baseless
broad generalizations? I don't think you've
managed to insult me quite enough yet. Anyway...
I most certainly do realize the advantage
of choices. Unlike yourself, I also realize the
benefit of standards. Some balance between
the two makes our PCs useable, rather than a
nightmare of conflicting ways to do the same
thing (and if you think that exists anyway, I
can guarantee you that, if not for MS, we'd have
a far worse mess).
Basically, you failed to address any of
my points, and just went off on how stupid you
consider me. Feel free to respond with something
actually resembling a rebuttal. Until then,
I'd recommend you learn the difference between
"assertion" and "argument".
I mean, fair point, but let's consider what
products we deal with here...
MSIE, a free web browser, vs Netscape/Mozilla,
a free web browser.
WMP, a free all-in-one multimedia playing
app, vs Winamp3/5, Quicktime, RealOne, and a
few other free all-in-one multimedia playing
apps.
As for Word and Excel... Well, I didn't
get them for free with Windows... What deal
did you get?
I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but
telling them they can't include a free product
to compete with other free products? No. That
just doesn't work for me. If they started
packaging MS office, or VC++, I might
care. But the idea of "abusing" monopoly
power to crush other free tools makes no sense.
"No, let us give you software!" "No, us!"
"No fair, you abused your position as a monopoly!"
"Whatever".
And where do you draw the line, if MSIE and
WMP "abuse" their position? Does Notepad
compete with other text editing programs?
Calculator? CD player? Solitaire?
CDs are luxury items, and as such they're
worth whatever people are willing to pay for
them.
True. But this doesn't involve "how much people
will pay", it involves fraud by way of screwing
with the "Minimum Advertized Price".
If the music industry sold their CDs to retail
outlets for $30, and the stores then sold for $50,
that alone would not have caused the RIAA to
lose this case. They lost because they played
pricing games, which violate the Sherman
antitrust act.
Think what you will, but they cheated and got
caught, end of story.
Trouble is that both these programs are in
that shareware/minimal support camp
Except, they already work as close to "perfectly"
as you could hope for. So various lawsuits cause
new versions and support to vanish? Until the
MPAA decides we all need to upgrade to a new
media format to replace DVDs, tools like DVD Shrink
do everything you could ask for. So aside from the
offensiveness of depriving us of our fair use rights
(which does bother me a lot, don't get me
wrong), I say, "So what?". Use the free tools, they
work. Anyone that pays for DVD backup software
does nothing but throw away their money.
Yes, but your DVD-R drive has no hope of
creating a double-layered DVD like the kind
Hollywood makes
Not true. Pioneer has already shown a live
demo where a mere A06 with hacked firmware can
write dual-layer. Whether or not they will
release such firmware for older drives seems
another matter entirely, but the as the more
important issue, dual-layer writeables do
exist.
Additionally, although most discs do use dual
layer, the movie itself often comes to under
4.7GiB. So, removing the useless French and
Spanish audio, and making a movie-only copy,
you can frequently get a 100% main-movie copy.
Now, if you care about extras (I do not,
personally, nor do I care about "director's
commentary" audio where you have mindless
chatter for fifteen minutes which tapers off
to "Uh, yeah, I remember this scene" once
every five minutes or so until the end), such
a "copy" might not satisfy you. Myself, I
buy DVDs the main feature, not for trailers,
ads, idiotic babbling, or anything of that
nature.
Sure, you can reverse engineer it. But is
it worth the effort?
Exactly the core issue with this entire topic...
Anything that can run, you can reverse engineer.
I don't care how complicated the author
makes it, if all else fails, you can always run
it in an emulator and step through, instruction
by instruction.
So, having personally done that as a firmware
engineer, what would it take to make it "worth"
doing, particularly on deliberately opaque
code?
How about cracking DRM? Considering that MS
dominates the market, whatever scheme they
eventually go with will represent the
DRM to defeat. Think of the fame that "CSS Jon"
won, just for fronting the guy that traced
through the CSS algorithm... Imagine the same,
for something far more ubiquitous and difficult.
Then, you also have the illegal profit motive,
which though unkosher, we cannot rule out.
If tech-X uses protection-Y, where piracy of
tech-X stands to make a lot of money, do
you suppose some of the "big" players, such as
the Mafia, might feel willing to spend the time
and money to crack it?
So, while I agree, we should ask "does run-time
obfuscation of my code make sense", we also need
to ask ourselves "Should I bother, since this may
prove so important that someone will
crack it?". Interestingly, this seems like an
almost symmetric arms-race - The more important
(and thus needing protection) a given section of
code seems, the more time and resources people will
devote to reverse engineer it. Net result? No
change in the availability of ready-made cracks.
So, why bother?
...makes you just want to rip it to DivX,
doesn't it?
Yes and no...
If more players supported it, and as the
internal compression method (ie, keep the
existing DVD structure, using MPEG-4 rather than
MPEG-2), I'd rip to DivX in a heartbeat. Few
players currently support DivX at all, however,
and I know of none that will handle it as
the internal compression rather than as a
standalone.avi or.divx file on the disc.
Re:This existed long before the DMCA...
on
FBI Anti-Piracy Seal
·
· Score: 3, Funny
That's why this logo is stupid, printing a
silly message is NOT protection. It's just a
scare tactic.
So by the Patriot act, doesn't that make
both the MPAA and the FBI technically
"terrorist" organizations?
It sounds like you buy used DVDs from rental places,
since I've never seen a retail DVD with unskippable
commercials, but that doesn't really matter - Just
because you paid less for it, you did buy
it, why the hell shouldn't you have the right to
enjoy it without ads or annoying FBI warning?
Personally, my biggest peeve comes from the imports.
Not only do they have an FBI warning, but a similar
warning from half a dozen countries, in as many
languages. Talk about pissing the customer off...
Yeah, it is all pretty retarded. Come on,
we have to deal with half a minute of
remote-locked FBI video warnings, what
the heck does this new seal do any
differently?
All the more reason to backup your DVDs (as
if the risk of them delaminating in under
five years doesn't do it for you)...
Every major ripping tool out there now allows
you to disable both IFO and VOB P-UOPs (the
things that lock out buttons). So just back
up your DVDs, put the originals away somewhere
for safe keeping, and only use the copies.
They'll also remove Macrovision and RCE, as well
(the latter you don't even have a choice on,
since no non-pressed DVD format includes
a writeable CSS ring).
Personally, I don't watch the originals
even once, anymore. As soon as I buy,
into the PC it goes, and an hour later, out
comes a copy without all the crap. Or more
accurately, out comes a copy with all
the crap, but nothing to stop me from hitting
"menu" the second it starts.
I think the parent post was saying "That's
just wrong." as in "That's just wrong for the
U.S. to do that." and then cites examples in
other countries where the penalties are more
in line with reality.
Hmm, re-reading it, I have to agree.
My bad... Sorry, GP, if you read this.
but of course, why bother to enforce
existing law when you can simply pass new
ones?
I think you've just hit the heart of the
problem... Social problems, such as drinking
excessively, uncontrolled drug use, even
downloading things we don't have a legal
right to, have rarely, in the history of
mankind, found solution by making new laws.
Such laws invariably prove difficult to
enforce and unpopular. We can regulate
certain aspects of them, such as
DUI, but these don't (and can't) address
the "hard" issues, only the fringes.
The FP about the CAN-SPAM act just today
nicely illustrated that. We all hate spam,
so congress passed a law about it. I even
support such a law, conceptually, but as a
geek, I know perfectly well that such a law
will have absolutely no effect.
It's a travesty that U.S. law has become so
complex no person could ever understand it all,
leave alone be able to obey it all.
Agreed. And, even if someone could
learn it all, the Patriot act paved the way
for "secret" laws - Even ignoring your
(completely valid) point about us all counting
as criminals if the government decides to come
after us, we can now break laws we don't even
know exist. Scary as hell, IMO.
Slashdot Mirror
His actions certainly are not reasonable.
They didn't pay, he shut down the site. Explain the part of that you consider "unreasonable", please?
Whether or not you consider the magnitude of his bill to the county as reasonable, it boils down simply to "he provided a service, sent a bill, bill went unpaid, he stopped providing the service". Nothing more than that.
Theft of service also breaks the law. Key difference, a private individual doesn't have the power to abuse to have people from the country government frivolously arrested.
Also, RTFA (in particular, the second link). He did not send them a bill for $300k... He said his total expenses came out to $300k (not unreasonable, if he actually worked something resembling full-time for 2-3 years... That alone gives $200k+ depending on the going rate in his area for a network admin). He didn't even attempt to recover any of his past expenses on the project. He merely requested they start paying for his services, and when they refused, he stopped providing the service.
If this counts as extortion, it sets a VERY dangerous precedent... A precedent that basically makes slavery legal, by making it a crime to stop performing a voluntary service.
On the bright side, assuming he doesn't end up in prison for a few years, he has a fairly good case for harassment, with monetary damages resulting. He could end up getting considerably more than his $300k (which, again, he did not actually try to bill the county for).
Heh, how odd... We seem to have independantly chosen the same subject line for our response. :-)
I think they mean that large companies like AT&T and MCI were required to allow OTHER companies to offer local phone service.
Nope, they got it right...
For example, look into MCI's "Neighborhood Complete" package, which I currently use. Rather than having Verizon for my local service and MCI for my LD carrier, this rule allowed me to use MCI as my local carrier as well - Meaning that I pay only one phone bill per month, for $15 more than I paid to just Verizon each month, and I get unlimited free LD as a bonus (along with voicemail, CID, CW, 3-way, and I think a few others).
I for one will feel VERY pissed off if I get a call in the next few days from Verizon, telling me that if I don't sign back on with them I will have no phone service. But that seems like precisely the implication of this ruling.
Whaddya know, for once I find myself on the same side of an issue as the FCC. Ah well, I suppose this will finally give me the incentive to switch to 100% cellular.
It's not just sustainability, it's getting it to react. You need intense pressures, and the only ways to do this previously, require very large (read: industrial) bits of equipment, just for the proof-of-concept.
If you mean "fusion in general", I'll accept that.
If you only mean to refer to sonoluminescence, then no, you do not nead large and expensive industrial equipment - You can do it in your basement with roughly $100 in equipment (though having a low-end oscilliscope helps, you don't absolutely need it, you could get away with a simple analog meter).
Check out the Single Bubble Sonoluminescence HOWTO for a nice, detailed example of a functional experimental setup.
Not exactly rocked science - As the basic idea, you make a flask of degassed water resonate at roughly 25khz. Insert a tiny air bubble, and bingo, with a bit of trial and error, you have sonoluminescence.
Of course, I agree that getting energy out of such a system may take some doing, but as a proof of concept (and just a really cool experiment in general), any advanced-amateur EE geek would already have all the parts they need.
Also, most people that go beyond 2 procs go with a real computer, and not a PC.
True, for a reason totally unrelated to architectural constraints...
I can get a 2-way motherboard for under $100. A 4-way motherboard starts at over $1500. I can't even find a price for an 8-way PC-style system, but I take that as a sign that they don't come cheap.
Now, I currently run a dual P3/933 as my main machine (yeah, about time for an upgrade, but only because I can get a much better replacement dirt cheap, it still runs just fine). The motherboard cost me $120, the CPUs $55 each at the time - Less than half the cost of the board itself. If I could have found a decently priced 4-way motherboard, I'd have used that in a heartbeat for a mere $110 more in CPUs (yes, I realize that the non-Xeon P3 didn't support a quad config, but that actually works to support my point, as I'll explain).
Commodity-level 4-way, I see, as the big advantage that the Opteron may finally give us (apart from greater than 4GB of memory per process). To get the top-of-the-line chip usually costs 3-4x last year's best offerings, for only 10-25% better performance. For the same price (in terms of just the CPU), you can get a dual or even quad system. Now that a PC-level chip exists that does support 4-way and above, I believe we may finally see reasonably priced motherboards supporting that many CPUs.
The "big boys" will always spring for their top-of-the-line 8-way systems. For the rest of us, a quad system based on last year's CPUs would make for a truly sweet machine, and (if the 4-way motherboards become reasonably available), wouldn't break the bank.
Sorry, but on this point HardOCP are (potentially) in the wrong. They state he was not an employee, but his resume says otherwise.
Actually, although I initially agreed with you, on re-reading the relevant section of HardOCP's article (HardOCP only changed the name of the company, as per point 5 on the nastygram, despite having originally quoted TR's resume accurately to get the "wrong" name), that simply does not hold true. HardOCP did not say TR did or did not work for, or direct, MedHire. The nastygram makes the claim that they did, but I would recommend you re-read the relevant section of the original article as well.
Not a single "allegation" of anything, HardOCP does nothing more than relate an anecdote, of sorts. The wording does have a certain sarcastic sense of disbelief to it, but they don't ever say TR did or did not work there, just that two different people who did work there, both named Lo/au/ra Roberts (ie, his own mother), had no contact info for him (and one had never heard of him).
Offhand, I'd say that point 8 counted as the only truly libellous one - And on that one, HardOCP agreed to change the wording to something less speculative (though more damning, I have no doubt intentionally). Additionally, I can see how an overly zealous lawyer could stretch point 12 into a copyright violation (though any even remotely fair court would dismiss it with prejudice a fair use)... But on that one, again, HardOCP agreed to back down slightly, and remove IL's logos from their site.
I'll add one more point of interest to this... HardOCP does claim that "Mr. Roberts is the registered contact on the MEDHIRE, LLC. website", and they provide a screenshot of their whois query to prove it (as an aside, notice that the screenshot amusingly shows the domain name as "emedhire.com", the same name that appeared in TR's resume, and that point 5 in the nastygram demanded they change). So, this company, including TR's mother, has no way to contact TR, the registered administrative contact for their domain name?
How are they supposed to request changes be made to an article and retractions written?
/dev/null (or left on an
empty floor). The executive secretary of a company
(owned by TR's mommy, how cute) doesn't know if
TR works there, and has no contact info? And
had a different story next time they called? Why,
perfectly rational, HardOCP should have simply
have take such a setback as a minor annoyance,
certainly not indicative of anything fishy. HardOCP
claimes X (which occurred no less than five times
in the threatening legal letter), based only on
concrete evidence of X? Shockingly libelous (not
slander, BTW)! How dare HardOCP infer the
glaringly obvious from the available facts! "Your
name starts with a 'Bo', and forms a palindrome?
Why, I would feel remiss if I simply assumed it
as 'Bob', rather than considering such possibilities
as 'Boxob' and 'Bo'a'man'a'plan'a'canal'panama'ob',
please forgive my presumptiveness". Hmm, how about
"boob"?
For starters, try only accepting clients with a firm grip on reality.
I've followed this situation from the beginning (well, from long before Slashdot got involved, anyway), and basically, HardOCP prepared their article directly from "facts" (true or not), including in-context quotes, derived from IL's press releases and Tim Roberts' own resume.
It's not a freedom of speech or press issue when you lie about people with intent to harm their business.
While the concepts presented may disagree with reality, they do so entirely because TR and IL presented them that way. Their office doesn't exist? Why, of course it makes perfect sense that they would want potential contracts, whether via US mail or a sales rep, forwarded to the USPS's
The criticisms of this legal scare-o-gram have nothing to do with its choice of jargon. It quite simply reads like a joke, all but stating outright "You trusted TR's resume, you sucker... W3 0wn2 j00!". So TR lied on his resume. Does that make TR, or HardOCP, liable for that info?
If what these guys are saying is true, he did not lie on his resume, and HardOCP is guilty of slander
If TR didn't lie on his resume, then HardOCP has truthfully reported the facts. If he did lie on his resume, then HardOCP has truthfully outed him as a fraud. Neither counts as LIBEL (not!!! slander).
It seems to me that this letter provides clear and in a lot of cases reasonable requests for factual changes to be made to an article.
I do so hate to resort to ad hominem, but if you consider that nastygram as even remotely "reasonable", you need to check into a first-semester "logic and rhetoric" class ASAP. Really sad, that HardOCP needs to take something that pathetic as a dire threat to their freedom and financial security).
I'm not saying the whole lawsuit threat is a smart way of doing business
You've got that much dead-on... IL's console model wouldn't appeal to the typical gamer; it appeals to geeks who enjoy retrogaming with a few hot new hits thrown into the mix. By making it to the Slashdot FP, IL has effectively destroyed its potential user base - Of course, that assumes the "phantom" exists in any more tangibe form than its name suggests, which appears doubtful at this point in time.
one could just take eight AAA cells. 8x1,5V=12V bingo!
I had the same thought, and it kinda surprises me that the author of the linked article didn't, since his goal of a "cheap" replacement will eat the non-rechargeable 9v's like candy.
However, you wouldn't actually get 12V out of 8 AA NiMH rechargeables - They usually only put out 1.2 to 1.3V (the reason many batter meters on lower-end electronics will detect a fresh one as half-empty). But, since the iPod will deal with as low as 8V, your suggestion would still work.
As an aside, since this hack requires an external battery pack anyway, why go for something so exotic as a custom battery pack? Hook up the smallest motorcycle/ATV battery you can find (12-18V, still in the range the iPod will deal with), and you have somewhere on the order of 10k-20k mAh. A tad bit more expensive (though 8 2100mAh NiMH AA's will cost you $20, plus another $20 for a charger), but the battery and a DC charger (ie, cigarette lighter plugin) will still cost less than a real iPod replacement.
That means a medium sophisticated mechanical assembly to scan them, and over 60! possible combinations to scan.
You don't "get" the problem...
If it unlocks based on a set of side-2 elements detecting a signal, you need only flood all of side-2 with the output of the active fiber on side-1. That corresponds to an O(1) operation.
In the worst case, where significantly lossy transmission matters, you still only need to perform (N+(N-1)+(N-2)+...+1) possible checks, which does not equal N!, but rather, N(N-1)/2, possible combinations. From your own example of 60 pins, that means the number of brute-force checks drops from 8.3E81 (60!) to a mere 1770 possible combinations.
Quite a lot easier to pick than a "normal" lock, where as you point out, you have 60! combinations (though in practice, you do not see infinite slope between notches (that would mean you could not insert or remove the key), giving only three or four possible valid positions (relative to the previous position) per pin.
the government may require that up to 70% of software on Chinese computers is produced domestically.
I see a great opportunity here for some clever Chinese student to make a fortune...
Write and sell a fairly cheap (whatever would compare to USD$20?) set of a few thousand "utility" programs, that do basically nothing (such as "print-a", which "inserts the ASCII character 0x41 into the standard output stream, for use in automated scripting requiring the letter 'A'", as an example of what I mean), but absolutely guarantee that a company can remain in compliane with this quota no matter how much imported US software they use.
The only problem involves the definition of "percent" as relating to software - Does it mean "per 100 packages" or "per 100 bytes"? If the latter, a similar approach would work (such as "lib-a", which fills exactly 70% of your hard-drive with readily-accessible "A" characters), but would certainly seem a lot more wasteful of a large HDD...
And you might just as easily use one of the many packages which don't contain DeCSS.
The point of DeCSS is single fold, to decrypt commercial DVDs.
So, just to make sure I have this correct...
If I use a standalone DeCSS implementation to rip the disk, then use a remastering program that lacks any concept of CSS, I can make my fair-use-rights backup without violating the DMCA?
Somehow I doubt so obvious a solution would work, but that does seem like the only logical conclusion we can get from combining the two cases finding DVD X-Copy illegal but DeCSS kosher...
Does anybody have some info on making the fastest cluster for the cheapest cost? Especially for somebody just wanting to get their feet wet?
Checking Pricewatch just now...
Pick up as many Althon XP 1700 combo MBs ($66) as you want, Throw in 256MB of PC2700 ($26), add a 30GB IDE HDD ($25), 6ft of cat-5 cable ($3, far less if you get a spool and make them yourself), and get a 400W PS ($10).
You'll also need a few switches ($15 for 8-port 10/100 FD) (NOT hubs, you definitely want the full N-to-N FD bandwidth). Now, go to Home Depot and buy a bag of a few hundred nylon standoffs ($10?) and a few dozen metal standoffs of the same size ($5?). I'll assume you have a working monitor and keyboard that you can temporarily stick on each node to set up the bios (ie, to tell it it doesn't have a keyboard or monitor <G>).
Mount the MBs to each other, with as many standoffs between each as it takes to give the CPU fan a bit of clearance. Use the metal standoffs on the grounding holes (Usually the center rear ones).
Lay the entire hideous tower-o'-motherboards on its side (make sure to put it on something reasonably non-conductive and non-static-prone - smooth wood will suffice, carpet or styrofoam or stainless steel would not). Now just hook up the PSs in a neat row behind the MBs, and the HDDs on top of the PSs. You should also run a wire between the PS case, the HDD case, and the shared ground on the MBs (the metal standoffs), just for safety, but you can probably get away with not doing so (I wouldn't recommend skipping it, for just the cost of a few feet of cheap copper wire).
Poof, you have a working cluster for $50-$100 plus $133 per node. You can probably do a tad better due to quantity, and if you can find any of the above used (HDDs or memory pulls), all the better.
Also, one alternative that may save you quite a lot of effort and a few bucks - Instead of one HDD per node, get a second network card with a bootrom ($12) for each machine. Use one NIC exclusively for the clustering app, and the other (the one with the bootrom) for booting, accessing a Samba share, ssh'ing in, and any other incidental network activity.
You might also want to spring for a few box fans (the kind you stick in a window in the summer), since this sucker will keep your computer room nice and toasty (think "one hairdryer on high per 10 nodes).
The other part of the DMCA says stripping copyright information or other identifying marks from a copyrighted work in an attempt to avoid proper attribution is also a violation.
But that implies intent to do so, which considering the very nature of this "crime", will basically take an outright confession to prove in court.
When PS'ing (or Gimping, just to avoid argument) an image, you usually separate it/them into a number of layers, perform a few affine transformations, possibly some non-linear enhancements to make the different sources match, then glue them all together, perhaps apply a weak smoothing filter, then finally save it in a lossy format (ie, jpeg).
If Corbis uses a watermark that will survive that, they need to change their core business away from photo archiving - I can think of at least two **AA groups that would pay handsomely to use such a resilient proof of ownership in their media.
So, I would say that the claim that anyone intended to remove the watermark will hold no water in court. Just an advanced-amateur doing a cut-and-paste digital image workup would tend to remove any trace of a watermark, purely by coincidence. The person who made the Kerry/Fonda picture in question may well not have even known Corbis uses watermarking (I'll admit, I didn't until this story), yet I have little doubt they managed to passively remove it.
they weren't always free, dumbass. ask someone who was there before you start peeing in your fucking pants.
I doubt you'll read this (god I hate ACs, I really should just start ignoring them completely), but...
Tell me how much Mosaic cost, "Before" Microsoft drove it off the market. Oh, gee, both "zero" and "it came LOOOONG before MSIE"? Oh well, on to the next one...
How about the original price of MSIE? Or anything that even came close to competing with it, before Winamp 3? You may as well say that "calculator" pushed the abacus makers out of business.
Perhaps you would prefer to approach this from a different angle - Could you explain to me how giving away a browser benefitted Microsoft? As much as I go on about the evils of corporate America, companies do not cause damage for its own sake - They'll destroy anyone and anything to make a buck, but not just for fun. So tell me, what did MS get by crushing an "opponent" that didn't actually compete with them for any actual source of revenue?
it sucks and it's illegal, and the law is not being enforced. and people like you have absolutely no idea what benefits you have from being able to choose from a variety of vendors
Sorry, could you make a few more baseless broad generalizations? I don't think you've managed to insult me quite enough yet. Anyway...
I most certainly do realize the advantage of choices. Unlike yourself, I also realize the benefit of standards. Some balance between the two makes our PCs useable, rather than a nightmare of conflicting ways to do the same thing (and if you think that exists anyway, I can guarantee you that, if not for MS, we'd have a far worse mess).
Basically, you failed to address any of my points, and just went off on how stupid you consider me. Feel free to respond with something actually resembling a rebuttal. Until then, I'd recommend you learn the difference between "assertion" and "argument".
Why did this get a "+5 insightful"?
I mean, fair point, but let's consider what products we deal with here...
MSIE, a free web browser, vs Netscape/Mozilla, a free web browser.
WMP, a free all-in-one multimedia playing app, vs Winamp3/5, Quicktime, RealOne, and a few other free all-in-one multimedia playing apps.
As for Word and Excel... Well, I didn't get them for free with Windows... What deal did you get?
I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but telling them they can't include a free product to compete with other free products? No. That just doesn't work for me. If they started packaging MS office, or VC++, I might care. But the idea of "abusing" monopoly power to crush other free tools makes no sense. "No, let us give you software!" "No, us!" "No fair, you abused your position as a monopoly!" "Whatever".
And where do you draw the line, if MSIE and WMP "abuse" their position? Does Notepad compete with other text editing programs? Calculator? CD player? Solitaire?
Absurd.
CDs are luxury items, and as such they're worth whatever people are willing to pay for them.
True. But this doesn't involve "how much people will pay", it involves fraud by way of screwing with the "Minimum Advertized Price".
If the music industry sold their CDs to retail outlets for $30, and the stores then sold for $50, that alone would not have caused the RIAA to lose this case. They lost because they played pricing games, which violate the Sherman antitrust act.
Think what you will, but they cheated and got caught, end of story.
Trouble is that both these programs are in that shareware/minimal support camp
Except, they already work as close to "perfectly" as you could hope for. So various lawsuits cause new versions and support to vanish? Until the MPAA decides we all need to upgrade to a new media format to replace DVDs, tools like DVD Shrink do everything you could ask for. So aside from the offensiveness of depriving us of our fair use rights (which does bother me a lot, don't get me wrong), I say, "So what?". Use the free tools, they work. Anyone that pays for DVD backup software does nothing but throw away their money.
Yes, but your DVD-R drive has no hope of creating a double-layered DVD like the kind Hollywood makes
Not true. Pioneer has already shown a live demo where a mere A06 with hacked firmware can write dual-layer. Whether or not they will release such firmware for older drives seems another matter entirely, but the as the more important issue, dual-layer writeables do exist.
Additionally, although most discs do use dual layer, the movie itself often comes to under 4.7GiB. So, removing the useless French and Spanish audio, and making a movie-only copy, you can frequently get a 100% main-movie copy.
Now, if you care about extras (I do not, personally, nor do I care about "director's commentary" audio where you have mindless chatter for fifteen minutes which tapers off to "Uh, yeah, I remember this scene" once every five minutes or so until the end), such a "copy" might not satisfy you. Myself, I buy DVDs the main feature, not for trailers, ads, idiotic babbling, or anything of that nature.
Sure, you can reverse engineer it. But is it worth the effort?
Exactly the core issue with this entire topic...
Anything that can run, you can reverse engineer. I don't care how complicated the author makes it, if all else fails, you can always run it in an emulator and step through, instruction by instruction.
So, having personally done that as a firmware engineer, what would it take to make it "worth" doing, particularly on deliberately opaque code?
How about cracking DRM? Considering that MS dominates the market, whatever scheme they eventually go with will represent the DRM to defeat. Think of the fame that "CSS Jon" won, just for fronting the guy that traced through the CSS algorithm... Imagine the same, for something far more ubiquitous and difficult.
Then, you also have the illegal profit motive, which though unkosher, we cannot rule out. If tech-X uses protection-Y, where piracy of tech-X stands to make a lot of money, do you suppose some of the "big" players, such as the Mafia, might feel willing to spend the time and money to crack it?
So, while I agree, we should ask "does run-time obfuscation of my code make sense", we also need to ask ourselves "Should I bother, since this may prove so important that someone will crack it?". Interestingly, this seems like an almost symmetric arms-race - The more important (and thus needing protection) a given section of code seems, the more time and resources people will devote to reverse engineer it. Net result? No change in the availability of ready-made cracks. So, why bother?
...makes you just want to rip it to DivX, doesn't it?
.avi or .divx file on the disc.
Yes and no...
If more players supported it, and as the internal compression method (ie, keep the existing DVD structure, using MPEG-4 rather than MPEG-2), I'd rip to DivX in a heartbeat. Few players currently support DivX at all, however, and I know of none that will handle it as the internal compression rather than as a standalone
That's why this logo is stupid, printing a silly message is NOT protection. It's just a scare tactic.
So by the Patriot act, doesn't that make both the MPAA and the FBI technically "terrorist" organizations?
Hmm...
Yeah, but you sure as shit can't do it with DVDs. Lost in Translation came with a nice warning followed by 10 minutes of trailers I couldn't skip.
Sure you can...
See my other comment on this topic.
It sounds like you buy used DVDs from rental places, since I've never seen a retail DVD with unskippable commercials, but that doesn't really matter - Just because you paid less for it, you did buy it, why the hell shouldn't you have the right to enjoy it without ads or annoying FBI warning?
Personally, my biggest peeve comes from the imports. Not only do they have an FBI warning, but a similar warning from half a dozen countries, in as many languages. Talk about pissing the customer off...
Yeah, it is all pretty retarded. Come on, we have to deal with half a minute of remote-locked FBI video warnings, what the heck does this new seal do any differently?
All the more reason to backup your DVDs (as if the risk of them delaminating in under five years doesn't do it for you)...
Every major ripping tool out there now allows you to disable both IFO and VOB P-UOPs (the things that lock out buttons). So just back up your DVDs, put the originals away somewhere for safe keeping, and only use the copies. They'll also remove Macrovision and RCE, as well (the latter you don't even have a choice on, since no non-pressed DVD format includes a writeable CSS ring).
Personally, I don't watch the originals even once, anymore. As soon as I buy, into the PC it goes, and an hour later, out comes a copy without all the crap. Or more accurately, out comes a copy with all the crap, but nothing to stop me from hitting "menu" the second it starts.
I think the parent post was saying "That's just wrong." as in "That's just wrong for the U.S. to do that." and then cites examples in other countries where the penalties are more in line with reality.
Hmm, re-reading it, I have to agree. My bad... Sorry, GP, if you read this.
but of course, why bother to enforce existing law when you can simply pass new ones?
I think you've just hit the heart of the problem... Social problems, such as drinking excessively, uncontrolled drug use, even downloading things we don't have a legal right to, have rarely, in the history of mankind, found solution by making new laws. Such laws invariably prove difficult to enforce and unpopular. We can regulate certain aspects of them, such as DUI, but these don't (and can't) address the "hard" issues, only the fringes.
The FP about the CAN-SPAM act just today nicely illustrated that. We all hate spam, so congress passed a law about it. I even support such a law, conceptually, but as a geek, I know perfectly well that such a law will have absolutely no effect.
It's a travesty that U.S. law has become so complex no person could ever understand it all, leave alone be able to obey it all.
Agreed. And, even if someone could learn it all, the Patriot act paved the way for "secret" laws - Even ignoring your (completely valid) point about us all counting as criminals if the government decides to come after us, we can now break laws we don't even know exist. Scary as hell, IMO.
In the UK
<snip>
In Holland
<snip>
US != UK
US != Holland