I'm responding to flamebait here, but your comment is practically a non-sequiteur. How does switching the RENDERING ENGINE for their internal browser make anything more difficult or complicated for the user? Oh yeah, it *doesn't*.
It's a matter of user perception. A huge percentage of web sites out there are designed around IE's rendering bugs and faulty CSS model. If Joe User views one of those sites with a Gecko-based browser, and it looks broken, who will he blame? Not the web designer, because it looked fine in IE.
To deal with this, Gecko has a wonderful feature - 'quirks' mode. When handling a web page that doesn't have a strict DTD declaration, Gecko emulates the rendering bugs of IE (especially those with spacing and the CSS box model). So a page that is not standards compliant but works with IE will probably look OK in Gecko too.
As others have noted, the problem lies in precision. Most of the performance gains with vectorizaion are with the use of floats, but at a substantial loss of precision. The P4's SSE2 instructions would really be the only useful optimizations for the scientific community.
Synonyms of ignoble include disgraceful, shameful, and degenerate. I'm pretty sure this is not related to the more widely recognized Nobel Prize awards.
Microsoft's ClearType technology is really very simple, and contrary to what they say, it doesn't use direct sub-pixel addressing. At least not in the way they make you think it does.
It simply relies on the fact that each LCD pixel has three separate cells (for red, green, blue). It adjusts the colors of any pixels that border glyphs, lowering or removing color components depending on which area of the pixel should be darkened. There are some color adjustments to neighboring pixels as well, to avoid obvious color distortion.
But as long as a LCD display is made of sub-elements for RGB, and that display can take raw RGB data, ClearType will work.
I think he's reffering to secure MP3 players (software and hardware), those that have digital rights management built-in. Of course those DRM techniques can be defeated, but as he says in other places, this is only a theft-deterrent system. He knows that dedicated people will always be able to de-protect the content.
I think that what he means is that it serves as a theft-deterrent. People who don't normally steal would be discouraged from doing so with these new protected CDs, because of the effort and technical knowledge involved. It's like a speedbump at the wrong-way exit of the parking lot, I suppose.
From the top of page 2:
Ours is the only copy-protection scheme that doesn't violate fair-use rights...We allow (people) to make copies for their own personal use: for their computer, for their compilation disc and for their MP3 player, so they can have portable use of their music. The only fair use that's left--and it's not fair use at all--is the "fair use" of sending thousands of copies to file-sharing services to be copied hundreds of thousands or millions of times. That's the only use we've limited and so that's not fair use; it's certainly not fair to the artist.
Even if it's bullshit, either this guy or his PR agent has his head pointed in the right direction.
Being a computer geek does not releive you of aneed to use good grammar. It's "dEspite"..
Being a nitpicker does not relieve you of the need to spell properly (releive?), use correct spacing (aneed?), or punctuate correctly (is it . or...?).
About 95% of the target audience for MMORPGs has access to a Windows computer. An additional 5% gain in revenue cannot justify the cost and maintainance of ports to alternate platforms.
I'll take you on:) Last I heard, Warcraft III is nearing code-completion, all that remains is play-balance and the final UI art. The core engine and network code has been done for almost a year.
Beta testing is supposed to start in late October, but I'll bet that's just for signups and the beta won't begin until late November.
Blizzard HQ (South) in Irvine, CA, has two product development teams. Team 1 is their RTS team, composed of many of the developers who brought us Warcraft II and Starcraft. Team 2 is comprised of mainly new hires (from companies such as Activision and ID) as well as some previous members of Team 1.
Blizzard North is taking a short break after working on Diablo games for six years. They have not announced what their next project will be, but their design team has probably begun story-boarding it already.
This being a minor spelling flame, there is at least one mistake in this message - it's a law!
I don't know about your one mistake, but you seem to be posting on very shaky ground:) The etymology of the phrase is completely unclear, to the point where anyone's interpretation or usage could be considered correct.
Time to go digging for prior art. Shouldn't be hard, this is such an obvious method of 'encryption' that someone must have used it at least once before.
SMB = Server Message Block, also known as the Windows file-sharing protocol. When you double-click on Network Neighborhood, you are sending SMB queries.
CIFS = Common Internet File System, also known as a slightly updated version of SMB, also known as the Windows file-sharing protocol. There is nothing really Common or Internet about it. (Did Microsoft give it this name?)
SAMBA = the SAMBA project, a free implementation of an SMB file server for non-Microsoft systems. SAMBA also includes directory services and other Windows NT Server features, so you could theoretically replace a WinNT box with an old Pentium running Linux.
By adding proprietary and patented encryption into the next version of the SMB protocol, SAMBA will no longer be able to emulate a Windows NT file server. At best, Microsoft clients would warn the user that they are not using a 'secure' connection, scaring management and IT support into buying a new Microsoft server. At worst, it could mean that Windosw XP cannot connect to SAMBA servers at all, forcing people to switch to Microsoft servers.
This is another effort by Microsoft to lock you into using their products. You will no longer be able to choose the type of server you want to run, if you want Windows XP compatibility.
There are two possible hopes: 1) Microsoft doesn't make this encryption a requirement to connect 2) Someone writes a SMB-compliant network driver for Windows XP
No no, the other way around! He means that if Microsoft breaks SAMBA compatability, why doesn't someone just write a new SMB protocol client for Windows?
It should be possible, after all...
You have obviously forgotten the possibility that whoever wants to emulate you could be tapping your phone lines, planting microphones in your car/house/garden, etc. It may not be studio quality but damn if it won't get enough samples to work with...
Anonymous Coward wrote: > I dont know ANYONE who played D2 as single player except when bnet was down.
It's not our fault you don't have any friends.
> The majority of people who play on bnet play ONLY on bnet. THEY bought it specifically for BNET access. Prove it.
>Whatever YOU bought it for doesn't matter. You can whine about them whining when YOU BUY IT FOR THEM.
I didn't see anyone imply that the whiners should shut up - just that they should find some facts to whine about instead of assuming that everyone bought the game solely for online play.
Excuse me, but you are talking about soemthing completely unrelated. Blizzard has not removed a feature. You are not suddenly unable to play on Battle.Net. Yes, there was a server goof. Yes, some items may have been lost or some characters corrupted. You can still create new characters, you can still find new items. The game itself has not been reduced or made less complete in any way.
As far as I can tell, the point that was being made was that the service is FREE because you have not paid for it. This is not the same thing as the service being NEGLECTABLE or REMOVABLE. Blizzard still has an obligation to keep the service running in a reasonable manner.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm responding to flamebait here, but your comment is practically a non-sequiteur. How does switching the RENDERING ENGINE for their internal browser make anything more difficult or complicated for the user? Oh yeah, it *doesn't*.
It's a matter of user perception. A huge percentage of web sites out there are designed around IE's rendering bugs and faulty CSS model. If Joe User views one of those sites with a Gecko-based browser, and it looks broken, who will he blame? Not the web designer, because it looked fine in IE.
To deal with this, Gecko has a wonderful feature - 'quirks' mode. When handling a web page that doesn't have a strict DTD declaration, Gecko emulates the rendering bugs of IE (especially those with spacing and the CSS box model). So a page that is not standards compliant but works with IE will probably look OK in Gecko too.
As others have noted, the problem lies in precision. Most of the performance gains with vectorizaion are with the use of floats, but at a substantial loss of precision. The P4's SSE2 instructions would really be the only useful optimizations for the scientific community.
I don't know about the linux crowd, but any Windows user knows that the middle finger just has to be CTL-ALT-DEL
Synonyms of ignoble include disgraceful, shameful, and degenerate.
I'm pretty sure this is not related to the more widely recognized Nobel Prize awards.
As soon as you upgrade to Mozilla 0.9.4.
Why, are we afraid of flooding the porn site with too many customers? It's the under-18's that we need to worry about :P
Microsoft's ClearType technology is really very simple, and contrary to what they say, it doesn't use direct sub-pixel addressing. At least not in the way they make you think it does.
It simply relies on the fact that each LCD pixel has three separate cells (for red, green, blue). It adjusts the colors of any pixels that border glyphs, lowering or removing color components depending on which area of the pixel should be darkened. There are some color adjustments to neighboring pixels as well, to avoid obvious color distortion.
But as long as a LCD display is made of sub-elements for RGB, and that display can take raw RGB data, ClearType will work.
I think he's reffering to secure MP3 players (software and hardware), those that have digital rights management built-in. Of course those DRM techniques can be defeated, but as he says in other places, this is only a theft-deterrent system. He knows that dedicated people will always be able to de-protect the content.
I think that what he means is that it serves as a theft-deterrent. People who don't normally steal would be discouraged from doing so with these new protected CDs, because of the effort and technical knowledge involved. It's like a speedbump at the wrong-way exit of the parking lot, I suppose.
Ours is the only copy-protection scheme that doesn't violate fair-use rights...We allow (people) to make copies for their own personal use: for their computer, for their compilation disc and for their MP3 player, so they can have portable use of their music. The only fair use that's left--and it's not fair use at all--is the "fair use" of sending thousands of copies to file-sharing services to be copied hundreds of thousands or millions of times. That's the only use we've limited and so that's not fair use; it's certainly not fair to the artist.
Even if it's bullshit, either this guy or his PR agent has his head pointed in the right direction.
Being a nitpicker does not relieve you of the need to spell properly (releive?), use correct spacing (aneed?), or punctuate correctly (is it . or ...?).
Your copy is incomplete - 35.1 mb out of 60+ in the original. You could at least complete the download before posting it as a mirror.
Don't worry about posting a pun. When the story is about black holes, there's no escaping it.
About 95% of the target audience for MMORPGs has access to a Windows computer. An additional 5% gain in revenue cannot justify the cost and maintainance of ports to alternate platforms.
I'll take you on :) Last I heard, Warcraft III is nearing code-completion, all that remains is play-balance and the final UI art. The core engine and network code has been done for almost a year.
Beta testing is supposed to start in late October, but I'll bet that's just for signups and the beta won't begin until late November.
Blizzard HQ (South) in Irvine, CA, has two product development teams. Team 1 is their RTS team, composed of many of the developers who brought us Warcraft II and Starcraft. Team 2 is comprised of mainly new hires (from companies such as Activision and ID) as well as some previous members of Team 1.
Blizzard North is taking a short break after working on Diablo games for six years. They have not announced what their next project will be, but their design team has probably begun story-boarding it already.
I don't know about your one mistake, but you seem to be posting on very shaky ground :) The etymology of the phrase is completely unclear, to the point where anyone's interpretation or usage could be considered correct.
And what is the Pa4M8beddSQ in that cache url? And why does a lynx -source | grep comp-u-geek return matches? Someone needs a karma slap in the face.
Time to go digging for prior art. Shouldn't be hard, this is such an obvious method of 'encryption' that someone must have used it at least once before.
CIFS = Common Internet File System, also known as a slightly updated version of SMB, also known as the Windows file-sharing protocol. There is nothing really Common or Internet about it. (Did Microsoft give it this name?)
SAMBA = the SAMBA project, a free implementation of an SMB file server for non-Microsoft systems. SAMBA also includes directory services and other Windows NT Server features, so you could theoretically replace a WinNT box with an old Pentium running Linux.
By adding proprietary and patented encryption into the next version of the SMB protocol, SAMBA will no longer be able to emulate a Windows NT file server. At best, Microsoft clients would warn the user that they are not using a 'secure' connection, scaring management and IT support into buying a new Microsoft server. At worst, it could mean that Windosw XP cannot connect to SAMBA servers at all, forcing people to switch to Microsoft servers.
This is another effort by Microsoft to lock you into using their products. You will no longer be able to choose the type of server you want to run, if you want Windows XP compatibility.
There are two possible hopes:
1) Microsoft doesn't make this encryption a requirement to connect
2) Someone writes a SMB-compliant network driver for Windows XP
No no, the other way around! He means that if Microsoft breaks SAMBA compatability, why doesn't someone just write a new SMB protocol client for Windows? It should be possible, after all...
You have obviously forgotten the possibility that whoever wants to emulate you could be tapping your phone lines, planting microphones in your car/house/garden, etc. It may not be studio quality but damn if it won't get enough samples to work with...
Anonymous Coward wrote:
> I dont know ANYONE who played D2 as single player except when bnet was down.
It's not our fault you don't have any friends.
> The majority of people who play on bnet play ONLY on bnet. THEY bought it specifically for BNET access.
Prove it.
>Whatever YOU bought it for doesn't matter. You can whine about them whining when YOU BUY IT FOR THEM.
I didn't see anyone imply that the whiners should shut up - just that they should find some facts to whine about instead of assuming that everyone bought the game solely for online play.
Excuse me, but you are talking about soemthing completely unrelated. Blizzard has not removed a feature. You are not suddenly unable to play on Battle.Net. Yes, there was a server goof. Yes, some items may have been lost or some characters corrupted. You can still create new characters, you can still find new items. The game itself has not been reduced or made less complete in any way.
As far as I can tell, the point that was being made was that the service is FREE because you have not paid for it. This is not the same thing as the service being NEGLECTABLE or REMOVABLE. Blizzard still has an obligation to keep the service running in a reasonable manner.