Your analogy is way off. Usenet has always been propagated over the internet as a public discussion forum, anybody can join in and anybody can see what goes on. Your opinions, assistance and even rants are distributed globally to a variety of servers that are out of your control. A closer analogy would be an editorial in the local newspaper. Most likely the topic you're commenting on is only of local interest. There's nothing to stop somebody from cutting it out and placing it in a scrap book. There's nothing preventing a library, even if its in another country, from subscribing to the paper and keeping it in its archives.
Being able to remove your own articles from a public forum beyond the "Oh shit! I hope I can cancel that before it propogates" devalues the archive and makes me lose a lot of respect for the people behind google.com. I've posted things I wish I wouldn't have on usenet before. Big deal. There was a bit of embarassment when my dad discovered how to search for my name on groups.google.com, but there were a lot more things that he was proud of. He didn't necessarily understand them, but he could see that they were well received.
If you do things in public then you shouldn't be able to excise them from the publics memory, even if the thing you did was make a spectacular ass of yourself.
I don't know if its true that there's no point to DVD-R. I've yet to purchase a CD-RW disc for instance. I don't see the point. CD-R media is dirt cheap and there's multisession recording. For small archives of stuff I can just rewrite it as a new session. For larger volumes of stuff I can just toss the CD-R and burn a new one.
DVD-R and DVD-RW will be much the same way for a long time. A DVD-R is about 4 bucks, a DVD-RW is about 9 bucks. As DVD-RW drops so will DVD-R, if it has multisession (not at all sure it does) then I'd be inclined to stick with DVD-R.
I picked up a decent analog oscilliscope for 200 bucks. It's got 35 MHz bandwidth which is plenty for most things you can do in a home lab. This seems like a better option than the 350 dollar PC card that has 10 MHz analog bandwidth mentioned elsewhere.
In general, yes, there's a CODEC. In particular is there a CODEC for linux? Just becase a decoder exists doesn't mean that linux can decode or encode the stream.
2) Apple has always been very good about maintaining standards, and keeping their specifications open - the Sorenson codec definitely seems to be the exception to the rule.
The Sorensen codec isn't owned by Apple, just licensed, so it isn't theirs to publish.
Contrary to Timothy's rant, Quicktime itself is a published file format. The most commonly used CODEC used with Quicktime, Sorensen, isn't open or published however. There's ample published information on reading the Quicktime file format, there's even a couple of Open Source projects that can parse it. If the data the file format contains is Sorensen compressed then your S.O.L. for displaying it.
If MPEG4 is the CODEC then the data will be displayable assuming there are MPEG4 decoders, which I think there are.
A real life hacking school would be a good thing..
on
Hacker U.
·
· Score: 1
The real hackers don't need the school of course, they'll poke and prod and palpitate systems and software to learn far more than any school could ever teach. Most I/S people, even those in charge of security, aren't hackers though. They've taken MCSE, RHCE or other vendor specific training and have a mediocre background in computer science.
They're also usually the most draconian people when it comes to security, even though the security measures they impose usually are of questionable value. The running joke at the company where I work is that I/S will finally be happy with security when they've taken away our keyboards. Their own systems will be have modems with the telephone number on a piece of tape outside their office and no root or admin password.
At least with a crash course they'll learn to see what the real problems are and why its a good idea to keep a positive rapport with those in the companies who are hackers.
Well, the source code for linux is available online. There's some silly text that goes along with it saying what I can and can not do. If they really meant to protect linux from being rolled into proprietary products than they'd have gone to greater steps to protect it. It isn't necessarily immoral for me to release my own closed source operating system with a few of the text references to linux wiped out, afterall, I was given the source code.
though I don't think that maxfixit.com is in the wrong either. Providing instructions on how to turn the MacOS 10.1 upgrade into a full installer is no different than providing instructions in how to convert the Macromedia Flash demo into a full working version, or providing a CD crack for Quake. All of the examples exist. You can download the Flash demo and make it a fully functioning copy. You can download a file that disables copy protection.
Depending on how you use any of these instructions and/or pieces of software it may be illegal. It also might be legal, or at least grey. Suppose I've got a legitimate copy of MacOS 10. I've also legitimately purchased the 10.1 installer. My hard drive fails and I want to run 10.1 again. I can install MacOS 10, then install MacOS 10.1 - or - I can defeat the protection on MacOS 10.1 and install it in a single step. In this case the end result is the same, I've legally installed a copy of MacOS 10.1.
If I don't legally have MacOS X and use this trick to get a copy of MacOS 10.1 for 20 bucks then I'm at least doing something immoral, and possibly illegal. Apple has the right to try to prevent this (beyond that, they've got an obligation to as well, an obligation to their stock holders).
That said, it will also be ineffective. The crack will appear on some dyndns.org warez site and on gnutella etc. I had suspected that upgrade CD was a full install but didn't have a chance to verify it. I upgraded my sisters G4 over thanksgiving weekend. The CD seemed pretty full for an upgrade, and you could actually boot from it.
What an incredible double-standard there is here at Slashdot whenever the subject of Microsoft comes up.
If Redhat were to donate $1 billion in free software to all the poorest schools in America, they'd be hailed as saviors of the poor, and
nominated for sainthood. But when Microsoft does it, it's just another evil conspiracy.
Here at Slashdot, Microsoft is damned if they do, and damned if they don't.
The issue isn't that they're providing free software at all. The issue is that they're proposing giving away the software as a settlement for anti-trust suits against them. The actual cost to them is near zero yet they get to claim they settled for 1.1 billion dollars and in the mean time generate yet more good press. The 1.1 billion dollars in software to the poorest schools will most likely cost the schools actual hard-earned dollars. Their machines most won't run the donated software, so they're forced to upgrade (so as not to offend voters who'd accuse them of throwing away 1.1 billion in software), each machine upgraded gives Microsoft a little chunk of money for the operating system and any bundled software.
Right now the computers capable of this level of manipulation are out of the reach of mere mortals. What happens in a decade when people have enough compute power sitting on their desktops to do this? Sure, a real corporation might be detered by trademark and the possibility of a lawsuit but what about Joe Average, or Joe Below-Average? What happens when Stile of The Stileproject gets his hands on the technology and we've got a bukakke video starring the Bush twins and their dad?
I don't think there's any legal means to prevent this that won't be just as bad as the current anti-napster methodology, but I still find the practice and potential for abuse rather hideous.
I tried MP3.com and didn't find it all that useful. You really need an approval system closer to what kuro5hin has I think. You sign on as having preferences for say teenage boy bands and classical music. You log in periodically and are given a few tracks to review. You've got the simple part, a rating from 1 through 5 and the more complex part, a written review.
Then the reviewers are reviewed as well, again 1-5 is the easy bit and maybe other categories. Some people can choose really good music but not articulate their reasons for liking it well. Other people are very good at discerning the artistic influences on a musician (even if the musicians don't realize their own influences)
The biggest problem with Napster for unknown artists wasn't that files were too freely distributed, the problem was that nobody was searching for their music. If you haven't heard of a band you're not going to search for them and I don't know of any services that really review independant music.
If these unknown artists were really widely distributed over Napster they'd probably be in much better shape. Sure, most people wouldn't pay, but if only a small percentage payed or bought a CD then it would be additional income.
What somebody needs to do is set up an independant review site. You submit your mp3, or a unique filename and reviewers for that particular genre review it. It can be a community driven thing too, where you can sign up as a reviewer. Maybe implement a moderation system so you can rate reviewers as well. Your personal moderations and/or overall moderation can generate a list of tracks for you to try out with biographic details of the band, and most importantly, a means to pay them for their work or purchase a CD.
The important thing is that I think this would only work as a user driven process, you shouldn't be able to purchase a more favourable spot in the top 10, 100, 1000 or whatever.
Err... the horrible bit was CRC shutting down the online part of Mathworld. They already owned the rights to the intellectual "property" by virtue of purchasing it for physical publication from Eric. No details of the agreement have been published, but Wolfram already owned (and in fact published) the content on a CD-ROM.
This is already happening. When I installed a DVD drive in my linux box I browsed through a movie on DVD. One of the things included on the DVD was a copy of a Windows software DVD player. The DVD in question might have been The Iron Giant, but I'm not sure.
I don't think this should matter though, what is the primary intent of the DVDs, delivering movies or software? When Chocolate Coated Sugar Bombs includes a CD with a piece of software on it does its status as a food product end in favour of becoming a software package? Unfortunately as a number of people have pointed out, logic has no place in court, so cut and dry things are never cut and dry.
Since
I was going to be a lot of gaming on here this machine, in addition to work, and the gaming would
be in a Windows 98 environment (Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, The Sims) there
was very little reason to go with a dual processor machine. So, with that in mind, I ordered my
single Athlon 1.2 Ghz.
So, windows 98 for gaming and I'd assume linux for work.
It's even cheaper, at 7500 bucks, to rehabilitate them. Also, define thug? Not every gang member is a murderer. I know, lets execute grafiti artists and petty thieves! It'll let you sleep soundly at night.
If you were smart in your youth you wouldn't be a web developer. Web developers are a dime a baker's dozen and the fact that you're worried that a "2Pac wannabee" will learn it in a few weeks of study after going through drug rehabilitation proves it.
This isn't rewarding bad behaviour, this is rehabilitation.
Reporting on rumors is fine, they're even entertaining. However when the real device is going to be unveiled in a few hours its a bit pointless. Besides, everybody knows its going to be the iBrator!
Pseudonym's can be anonymous and yet still retain privacy. You only need an email address to get your password after account creation, so to make an anonymous pseudonym do something like the following:
Create a throw away Hotmail account, lie about any geographic or personal data.
Find an anonymous web browsing service, there are a bunch out there.
From there create a new user on slashdot pointing at your throw away hotmail account.
Retrieve your password, delete the mail, forget about the account. Better yet, post the account and password someplace so thousnand of script kiddies make use of it.
Post your comments that require anonymity.
Posting something as an Anonymous Coward that could get you in trouble is stupid, all it takes is a court order and the OSDN folks will bend over and give away all the information needed to track you down.
I've got a Sony TiVo (currently in shop due to shoddy engineering on the MODEM) and basic cable. All of the basic cable signals you listed are unscrambled, at least in my area, your mileage may vary. TiVo doesn't come with a cable descrambler, but if I remember correctly it can control a cable box, so the box would only need to be on the channel its recording while its recording.
I'm starting to put together a linux based digital VCR, there's not a lot of complete information out there, but I can answer some of your questions.
All of the capture boards I've seen are purely tuner/capture boards, they don't have S-video output. Some AGP video cards do have S-video output, and some of them are supported in linux.
The main problem I'm having now is noise from my Soundblaster Live. After hooking up the capture board I seem to have created a ground loop, making for really poor sound quality.
I haven't worked with the S-video output on my board yet, I'm not sure its supported, but my eventual intention is to build a tiny computer similar to the one posted on slashdot today that can sit on my home LAN and be a part of my entertainment system.
SMTP doesn't have to run on port 25 though, it won't help you now of course, because most/all do, but set up an SMTP server on port 80. Qwest would be hard pressed to block port 80 as a destination since thats where httpd usually resides.
Slashdot Mirror
Your analogy is way off. Usenet has always been propagated over the internet as a public discussion forum, anybody can join in and anybody can see what goes on. Your opinions, assistance and even rants are distributed globally to a variety of servers that are out of your control. A closer analogy would be an editorial in the local newspaper. Most likely the topic you're commenting on is only of local interest. There's nothing to stop somebody from cutting it out and placing it in a scrap book. There's nothing preventing a library, even if its in another country, from subscribing to the paper and keeping it in its archives.
If you do things in public then you shouldn't be able to excise them from the publics memory, even if the thing you did was make a spectacular ass of yourself.
DVD-R and DVD-RW will be much the same way for a long time. A DVD-R is about 4 bucks, a DVD-RW is about 9 bucks. As DVD-RW drops so will DVD-R, if it has multisession (not at all sure it does) then I'd be inclined to stick with DVD-R.
I picked up a decent analog oscilliscope for 200 bucks. It's got 35 MHz bandwidth which is plenty for most things you can do in a home lab. This seems like a better option than the 350 dollar PC card that has 10 MHz analog bandwidth mentioned elsewhere.
Be careful, the last expedition that explored ancient civilizations in the Antarctic didn't fare very well.
In general, yes, there's a CODEC. In particular is there a CODEC for linux? Just becase a decoder exists doesn't mean that linux can decode or encode the stream.
The Sorensen codec isn't owned by Apple, just licensed, so it isn't theirs to publish.
If MPEG4 is the CODEC then the data will be displayable assuming there are MPEG4 decoders, which I think there are.
They're also usually the most draconian people when it comes to security, even though the security measures they impose usually are of questionable value. The running joke at the company where I work is that I/S will finally be happy with security when they've taken away our keyboards. Their own systems will be have modems with the telephone number on a piece of tape outside their office and no root or admin password.
At least with a crash course they'll learn to see what the real problems are and why its a good idea to keep a positive rapport with those in the companies who are hackers.
Well, the source code for linux is available online. There's some silly text that goes along with it saying what I can and can not do. If they really meant to protect linux from being rolled into proprietary products than they'd have gone to greater steps to protect it. It isn't necessarily immoral for me to release my own closed source operating system with a few of the text references to linux wiped out, afterall, I was given the source code.
Depending on how you use any of these instructions and/or pieces of software it may be illegal. It also might be legal, or at least grey. Suppose I've got a legitimate copy of MacOS 10. I've also legitimately purchased the 10.1 installer. My hard drive fails and I want to run 10.1 again. I can install MacOS 10, then install MacOS 10.1 - or - I can defeat the protection on MacOS 10.1 and install it in a single step. In this case the end result is the same, I've legally installed a copy of MacOS 10.1.
If I don't legally have MacOS X and use this trick to get a copy of MacOS 10.1 for 20 bucks then I'm at least doing something immoral, and possibly illegal. Apple has the right to try to prevent this (beyond that, they've got an obligation to as well, an obligation to their stock holders).
That said, it will also be ineffective. The crack will appear on some dyndns.org warez site and on gnutella etc. I had suspected that upgrade CD was a full install but didn't have a chance to verify it. I upgraded my sisters G4 over thanksgiving weekend. The CD seemed pretty full for an upgrade, and you could actually boot from it.
The issue isn't that they're providing free software at all. The issue is that they're proposing giving away the software as a settlement for anti-trust suits against them. The actual cost to them is near zero yet they get to claim they settled for 1.1 billion dollars and in the mean time generate yet more good press. The 1.1 billion dollars in software to the poorest schools will most likely cost the schools actual hard-earned dollars. Their machines most won't run the donated software, so they're forced to upgrade (so as not to offend voters who'd accuse them of throwing away 1.1 billion in software), each machine upgraded gives Microsoft a little chunk of money for the operating system and any bundled software.
Nice scam if you can get away with it.
I don't think there's any legal means to prevent this that won't be just as bad as the current anti-napster methodology, but I still find the practice and potential for abuse rather hideous.
Wow, thanks a lot. This is pretty close to what I'm after.
Then the reviewers are reviewed as well, again 1-5 is the easy bit and maybe other categories. Some people can choose really good music but not articulate their reasons for liking it well. Other people are very good at discerning the artistic influences on a musician (even if the musicians don't realize their own influences)
If these unknown artists were really widely distributed over Napster they'd probably be in much better shape. Sure, most people wouldn't pay, but if only a small percentage payed or bought a CD then it would be additional income.
What somebody needs to do is set up an independant review site. You submit your mp3, or a unique filename and reviewers for that particular genre review it. It can be a community driven thing too, where you can sign up as a reviewer. Maybe implement a moderation system so you can rate reviewers as well. Your personal moderations and/or overall moderation can generate a list of tracks for you to try out with biographic details of the band, and most importantly, a means to pay them for their work or purchase a CD.
The important thing is that I think this would only work as a user driven process, you shouldn't be able to purchase a more favourable spot in the top 10, 100, 1000 or whatever.
Err... the horrible bit was CRC shutting down the online part of Mathworld. They already owned the rights to the intellectual "property" by virtue of purchasing it for physical publication from Eric. No details of the agreement have been published, but Wolfram already owned (and in fact published) the content on a CD-ROM.
I don't think this should matter though, what is the primary intent of the DVDs, delivering movies or software? When Chocolate Coated Sugar Bombs includes a CD with a piece of software on it does its status as a food product end in favour of becoming a software package? Unfortunately as a number of people have pointed out, logic has no place in court, so cut and dry things are never cut and dry.
So, windows 98 for gaming and I'd assume linux for work.
It's even cheaper, at 7500 bucks, to rehabilitate them. Also, define thug? Not every gang member is a murderer. I know, lets execute grafiti artists and petty thieves! It'll let you sleep soundly at night.
This isn't rewarding bad behaviour, this is rehabilitation.
Reporting on rumors is fine, they're even entertaining. However when the real device is going to be unveiled in a few hours its a bit pointless. Besides, everybody knows its going to be the iBrator!
Posting something as an Anonymous Coward that could get you in trouble is stupid, all it takes is a court order and the OSDN folks will bend over and give away all the information needed to track you down.
I'm starting to put together a linux based digital VCR, there's not a lot of complete information out there, but I can answer some of your questions.
All of the capture boards I've seen are purely tuner/capture boards, they don't have S-video output. Some AGP video cards do have S-video output, and some of them are supported in linux.
The main problem I'm having now is noise from my Soundblaster Live. After hooking up the capture board I seem to have created a ground loop, making for really poor sound quality.
I haven't worked with the S-video output on my board yet, I'm not sure its supported, but my eventual intention is to build a tiny computer similar to the one posted on slashdot today that can sit on my home LAN and be a part of my entertainment system.
SMTP doesn't have to run on port 25 though, it won't help you now of course, because most/all do, but set up an SMTP server on port 80. Qwest would be hard pressed to block port 80 as a destination since thats where httpd usually resides.