* Much better than OGG and MP3
* Picture perfect at 128 kbit/s
* Supported by hardware (unlike ogg)
* Next version (Corona) will sport 5.1 Dolby, 24 bit samples, 96khz sampling rate, better compression.
* Existing hardware will update firmware to support Corona
There's nothing wrong with wanting to have more options to choose from.
The real question is are you ready to face the fact that Microsoft IS the best solution?
The only consideration is: Which is the best format for my end-users to use? Which format will give the most pleasing viewable results?
The fact is the Microsoft makes the best codecs today. Theirs is the only commercially available (not to mention deployed) MPEG-4 video format.
Nobody cares about Linux in this context. You need Windows & Mac support at the client level, and guess who has Media player for both of those OSes? Right: Microsoft.
Quicktime/Real are no option because their codecs/formats suck when compared to WMA/WMV (has anyone seen WMA/WMV version 8? It's AMAZING!)
As for the streaming server, in here there is some room for flexability. All you REALLY need is HTTP streaming of WMV files. This basically means that Apache could to it for you. There are some advantages to installing Microsoft's streaming media server, as it can adapt to the client's connection speed and send different streams according to bandwidth.
FYI, NTFS has had a somewhat obscure
feature since its very birth that was named
STREAMS. NTFS streams allow you to insert an
unlimited byte stream and assign a name for that stream which will accompany the file as long
as it stays on NTFS.
For example: copy con: > a.txt:$mymp3data
And one more thing: NFSv4 will also have support
for the same style of metadata (called attributes
in NFS).
Unix systems handle the largest databases known to mandkind as we speak. Databases managed by unix systems have been known to be in the vicinity of around 2-6TB.
Your question seems to refer to Unix on x86 databases that have that size. Of course that running unix on x86 systems usually boils down to running Linux...
Linux is officially supported by both Oracle, Informix and I think that even Sybase altough I'm not completely sure about that.
Obviously running it on the same RDBMS would be an easier to accomlish, so you'd probably want Sybase to support Linux.
You'd also want RAID 5, preferably hardware which is supported by Linux.
You'd probably want to use some sort of journaling file systems. I myself have no problem trusting the beta versions of ReiserFS. I've also ran oracle on them witout any problem.
If you feel reluctant in using bleeding edge kernel patches for a production environment, I can only recomend that you use SMALL ext2 partitions to avoid catastrophic FSCK times, and let Oracle / RDMS do it's magic in managing a single 30GB database over smaller files...
There could be quite a few ways to take Napster down or at least render it unusable...
1. Pollute their database: Napster have to be using some sort of a database. probably Oracle / Informix or whatever. What they probably do is store the users files in their database and retrieve the file to a query only if that user is currently online. In my opinion that's the most logical way of storing a large (and mind you the 20 million users, each with 100 MP3's counts as large) database and stilll be able to query it in a relatively normal time.
A hacked version of gnapster (the GNU Napster) which is GPL'd can be created by a mediocre programmer hired by the RIAA to spoof their database. Let's face it: They have only so many disks, and Oracle can grow only so large before the site starts choking.
I can hear your rants: "But napster can delete record created by the bogus user..." - Millions of users can be created by the attacker (that alone would probably f**k the napster system) - The attacker can use a pool of IP's run the attack - The attacker can be become relatively untraceable by using a large set of accounts, each with a sall number of mp3's
2. Pollute their database (iteration 2) But why indeed settle for just making life tough for Napster adiministrators whan you can go for the real perpatrators? The users! If the napster database can be polluted in an "online" manner: Create a few thousands of online connections from around the globe, each running a version of the hacked napster client, publicizing the avaiablitiy of many mp3 files. Whenever a user starts downloading a file, the hacked client always sends auto-generated "white-noise"... Assuming that the attacker could fund (and of course it would cost quite a lot of money) enough "hacked clients" to be always online (they would have to switch user id's all the time to avoid detection) he could make the process aof downloading copyrighted musci one big pain for the pirates: Theoretically, the number of spoofed entries would overcome the number of "real" ones... Most users will finally give up after a single digit number of attempts to downlod a song.
Any attempt by Napster INC. to actually make sure that the files that you are reporting on are really the files you claim they are would basically force them take one more step into the legal mess they are already in: They will no longer be able to hide behind those lame excuses of: "We're just publicizing lists, we're no responsible" "We are not participatin in the actuall downlod..."
Any attempt by the user community to "rate" other users like in E-Bay, or basically anything else could be matched by a compotent attacker.
The deficiency in Napster is basically what makes them so strong: The are free, and they only hold lists of files which they do not validate.
Slashdot Mirror
This release is not a fina stable release.
It's just the RC:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/download.html
It's been there for the past two weeks.
You call this news?
* Much better than OGG and MP3
* Picture perfect at 128 kbit/s
* Supported by hardware (unlike ogg)
* Next version (Corona) will sport 5.1 Dolby, 24 bit samples, 96khz sampling rate, better compression.
* Existing hardware will update firmware to support Corona
There's nothing wrong with wanting to have more options to choose from.
The real question is are you ready to face the fact that Microsoft IS the best solution?
The only consideration is: Which is the best format for my end-users to use? Which format will give the most pleasing viewable results?
The fact is the Microsoft makes the best codecs today. Theirs is the only commercially available (not to mention deployed) MPEG-4 video format.
Nobody cares about Linux in this context. You need Windows & Mac support at the client level, and guess who has Media player for both of those OSes? Right: Microsoft.
Quicktime/Real are no option because their codecs/formats suck when compared to WMA/WMV (has anyone seen WMA/WMV version 8? It's AMAZING!)
As for the streaming server, in here there is some room for flexability. All you REALLY need is HTTP streaming of WMV files. This basically means that Apache could to it for you. There are some advantages to installing Microsoft's streaming media server, as it can adapt to the client's connection speed and send different streams according to bandwidth.
FYI, NTFS has had a somewhat obscure
feature since its very birth that was named
STREAMS. NTFS streams allow you to insert an
unlimited byte stream and assign a name for that stream which will accompany the file as long
as it stays on NTFS.
For example: copy con: > a.txt:$mymp3data
And one more thing: NFSv4 will also have support
for the same style of metadata (called attributes
in NFS).
More over that, the first demo compressor / netscape plugin that AT&T released was for Linux... And this was two years ago... :)
Unix systems handle the largest databases known to mandkind
as we speak.
Databases managed by unix systems have been known to be in
the vicinity of around 2-6TB.
Your question seems to refer to Unix on x86 databases that
have that size.
Of course that running unix on x86 systems usually boils
down to running Linux...
Linux is officially supported by both Oracle, Informix and
I think that even Sybase altough I'm not completely sure
about that.
Obviously running it on the same RDBMS would be an easier
to accomlish, so you'd probably want Sybase to support Linux.
You'd also want RAID 5, preferably hardware which is supported
by Linux.
You'd probably want to use some sort of journaling file systems.
I myself have no problem trusting the beta versions of ReiserFS.
I've also ran oracle on them witout any problem.
If you feel reluctant in using bleeding edge kernel patches
for a production environment, I can only recomend that you use
SMALL ext2 partitions to avoid catastrophic FSCK times, and let
Oracle / RDMS do it's magic in managing a single 30GB database
over smaller files...
This idea is basically right...
There could be quite a few ways to take Napster down or at
least render it unusable...
1. Pollute their database:
Napster have to be using some sort of a database. probably
Oracle / Informix or whatever.
What they probably do is store the users files in their database
and retrieve the file to a query only if that user is currently
online. In my opinion that's the most logical way of storing a
large (and mind you the 20 million users, each with 100 MP3's
counts as large) database and stilll be able to query it in
a relatively normal time.
A hacked version of gnapster (the GNU Napster) which is GPL'd
can be created by a mediocre programmer hired by the RIAA to
spoof their database. Let's face it: They have only so many disks,
and Oracle can grow only so large before the site starts choking.
I can hear your rants:
"But napster can delete record created by the bogus user..."
- Millions of users can be created by the attacker (that
alone would probably f**k the napster system)
- The attacker can use a pool of IP's run the attack
- The attacker can be become relatively untraceable by using
a large set of accounts, each with a sall number of mp3's
2. Pollute their database (iteration 2)
But why indeed settle for just making life tough for Napster
adiministrators whan you can go for the real perpatrators? The users!
If the napster database can be polluted in an "online" manner:
Create a few thousands of online connections from around the
globe, each running a version of the hacked napster client,
publicizing the avaiablitiy of many mp3 files. Whenever a user
starts downloading a file, the hacked client always sends
auto-generated "white-noise"...
Assuming that the attacker could fund (and of course it would
cost quite a lot of money) enough "hacked clients" to be always
online (they would have to switch user id's all the time to
avoid detection) he could make the process aof downloading
copyrighted musci one big pain for the pirates: Theoretically,
the number of spoofed entries would overcome the number of
"real" ones... Most users will finally give up after a single
digit number of attempts to downlod a song.
Any attempt by Napster INC. to actually make sure that the files
that you are reporting on are really the files you claim they are
would basically force them take one more step into the legal mess
they are already in:
They will no longer be able to hide behind those lame excuses of:
"We're just publicizing lists, we're no responsible"
"We are not participatin in the actuall downlod..."
Any attempt by the user community to "rate" other users
like in E-Bay, or basically anything else could be matched
by a compotent attacker.
The deficiency in Napster is basically what makes them so strong:
The are free, and they only hold lists of files which they do not
validate.
Sorry for the length...