What these stupid law-makers never seem to get is that you could easily click on for example I disguised link on/. and be taken to a site where there is goatsex, or pr0n of a dubious nature, or any goddam webpage you like could have the complete source code for a virus hidden in a comment in it, so you'd never realise, but it would go in your cache and be on your hard drive. Oooh, watcha gonna do now ?
You can't blame people for what is on their hard drives- you just can't. It's stupid.
So now I can't even write viruses for my own amusement even if I have no intent to infect the world with them ?
I think I'd better get used to the idea that nothing I want to do is legal and concentrate on evading detection rather than staying legal.
Honestly, laws just fuck me off so badly. Who is some idiot lawyer/judge/politician to tell me I can't "posess" viruses ? Fuck them all- fuck them up their stupid asses.
Actually there is nothing to say that you have to use mp3 audio- the codec used for audio can be anything, though I have yet to see ogg. I have seen WMA, lame MP3 and Divx;) audio (whatever that is- it comes with divx3 dodgy version).
" In a few years you won't find a DIVX decoder anywhere either."
An interesting point. Currently the DIVX codec is free to download for playing (By that I mean divx 5), and free for encoding, but you have to suffer ads if you want the pro version. (Though everyone has a cracked version).
Now, what do you think would happen if DIVX started charging $hitload$ of money for encoders and decoders ?
Well, still a lot of rips use the old divx 3, and would continue to do so, although really the quality has been superseded by everything newer. There's XVID too, which is not bad. In my opinion DIVX 5 looks the nicest, but if you encode with all the funky options turned on it won't play on low-end PCs because it uses lotsa CPU.
The real difference between MP3 and DIVX with respect to licensing is that we are FULLY AWARE that DIVX could turn around at any minute and go all non-free on us, whereas with MP3 it was free for so many years for non-commercial use that we relaxed and got sloppy, and forgot.
Second- what is this going to mean for people already using mp3s ? E.g. Websites distributing free mp3s but taking revenue through adverts or something.
3rd: Here's a sneaky, semi-realistic way round it for authors of free mp3 playing software.
Make your player a game.
Yep. If you distribute less than 5000 copies of a title then you don't have to pay.
So- remember all those "9999 games" units you could get, where there were about 3 games but most of them just upped the difficulty level by giving you fewer lives or more asteroids or whatever ? Well, keep a counter of people downloading your mp3 player and every 4999 change the "game" slightly, and use a crappy perl script to generate random names that will end up like "danger turbo bang bang death circle" etc.
Note, the user doesn't have to play the game, and your title screen could have a groovy pattern or something that reacts to the music. And it's OK for games to let you use your own music in the game, right, like the Xbox ?
Anyway, got to go- I have to pull down the LAME sourcecode while you can still get that motherfucker.
Ah, yes, 5th Century BC Athens and Plato is writing eloquent prose such as this extract from "The Repulic" where he illustrates the Similie of the FPS.
"Suppose, Glaucon, that we have a 3D virtual environment where people kill each other endlessly in per-pixel-shaded surroundings. And let us further suppose that while in this environment they can talk to each other, saying things like: 'I 0wn j00, suX0r!'. Would the players in this world think that what they were experiencing was reality, or that they were merely interacting with shadows?
'Merely interacting with shadows, of course' Glaucon replied.
Well then. Couldn't it be the same with us in the real world ? Might there not be a higher plane, the plane of forms, viewed from which we would appear to be merely shooting at shadows ?
'I suppose it could be possible' replied Glaucon, mechanically.
graspee
Can't stand to be the same as the rest ?
on
KDE Gets The Hat
·
· Score: 2
How the fuck did you get over 25 karma ?
As everyone keeps pointing out, it's all about choice. "Microhat" - oh haha really clever.
You're obviously one of those people using linux because you hate Windows rather than because you love open source.
Now, being among like minded people you can't stand it and have to pick a side within a side, so you hate KDE and love gnome.
I bet when you go on gnome-loving forums you decide to hate mozilla and love opera (or vice versa).
graspee
Re:Mars Face
on
Marsoweb
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Nasa at first would not even speak about the face because they considered it perfectly obviously a natural formation, and therefore when they weren't considering it for a 2nd flyover the cospiricy theorists' alarms went off.
In the end there was a 2nd flyover of the region and pictures of the same "face" were taken that showed it only looked like a face from the exact angle and time of day the original pictures were taken...
I think the army/fbi/government should welcome people trying to crack their computers. They should give out prizees for people who find holes ala Knuth and errors.
Which would you rather have- "evil" albeit boastful white-hat crackers "on the loose" or gov/mil computers that are insanely easy for terrorists to get into ?
So- to everyone whining about "ohohohoh they did something illegal- they should pay...." SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU ARE WRONG!
Depends if you really think your life sucks because of your own evaluation of it, or whether you think that because of what society has lead you to believe based on what "everybody says".
If you think it's sad that it's Friday night and you're on/. then it's simple- go out and be where people are.
I personally couldn't give a shit. I spend all weekends in browsing the internet, watching anime, masturbating excessively and playing computer games. Now society will tell me that I don't have a life- but I say that society is a bunch of dumb-fucks and I know what I enjoy.
In the UK I don't think we are attempting to crack down on song swapping etc quite as drastically as the US, but in your example in the UK you can be put in prison for refusing to hand over your decryption keys.
I mean, Jesus Fucking Christ- It's possible in the US now to get less time in prison for killing someone than for downloading a load of mp3s. How fucking insane is that?
Note, I am not having a go at American citizens here, just the FUCKED-UP laws they have there.
"Even copying DVDs isn't exactly unheard of. As the prices for DVD-R(W) approach 2$ per disk, it will get more frequent if there isn't a value add in buying the original DVD (cut scenes, making of, etc.). "
How will extras on the disc make you consider buying it rather than copying it ? Unless of course you can fit slightly less on a DVD-RW- I haven't kept up on the features of the various DVD writable formats.
" A US agency is technically in violation of the DMCA because they want to make sure that astronauts who bring DVDs aboard the space station can play them."
Yes, but what region is space ? I would think it would be region 0 - aka region-free.
I found a site recently (after the slashdot pinball article). I can't unfortunately remember the url, but it offered pinball machine ROMs for download. It claimed to be using antipopupblocker or some such, and true enough, refused to let me download any ROMs unless I turned pop-ups back on.
Slashdot Mirror
" As people have said in other threads, Fraunhofer deserves the 75 Cents for their efforts and from this license change mp3 will not die out."
Nice troll- give my regards to "*BSD is dying" guy and "Steven King is dead" guy.
graspee
"Fucking bunch of nazi's"
That would be "nazis", not "nazi's".
Love and Hugs
A different kind of Nazi.
"Did you even bother to read the licensing terms?"
Duh- did you even bother to read the other posts before yours that pointed this out ?
graspee
What these stupid law-makers never seem to get is that you could easily click on for example I disguised link on /. and be taken to a site where there is goatsex, or pr0n of a dubious nature, or any goddam webpage you like could have the complete source code for a virus hidden in a comment in it, so you'd never realise, but it would go in your cache and be on your hard drive. Oooh, watcha gonna do now ?
You can't blame people for what is on their hard drives- you just can't. It's stupid.
graspee
So now I can't even write viruses for my own amusement even if I have no intent to infect the world with them ?
I think I'd better get used to the idea that nothing I want to do is legal and concentrate on evading detection rather than staying legal.
Honestly, laws just fuck me off so badly. Who is some idiot lawyer/judge/politician to tell me I can't "posess" viruses ? Fuck them all- fuck them up their stupid asses.
graspee
kawaiiiiiiiiii!
graspee
Well, with the modular approach of media players like Mplayer a codec won't stay unsupported for long. I mean, it can even use Win32 dlls!
graspee
All that linking reminded me of when the buzzword was HYPERTEXT. And hey! Your gecko is out of focus! (Or is that motion blur ? Zoom, gecko, zoom!).
graspee
Actually there is nothing to say that you have to use mp3 audio- the codec used for audio can be anything, though I have yet to see ogg. I have seen WMA, lame MP3 and Divx ;) audio (whatever that is- it comes with divx3 dodgy version).
graspee
" In a few years you won't find a DIVX decoder anywhere either."
An interesting point. Currently the DIVX codec is free to download for playing (By that I mean divx 5), and free for encoding, but you have to suffer ads if you want the pro version. (Though everyone has a cracked version).
Now, what do you think would happen if DIVX started charging $hitload$ of money for encoders and decoders ?
Well, still a lot of rips use the old divx 3, and would continue to do so, although really the quality has been superseded by everything newer. There's XVID too, which is not bad. In my opinion DIVX 5 looks the nicest, but if you encode with all the funky options turned on it won't play on low-end PCs because it uses lotsa CPU.
The real difference between MP3 and DIVX with respect to licensing is that we are FULLY AWARE that DIVX could turn around at any minute and go all non-free on us, whereas with MP3 it was free for so many years for non-commercial use that we relaxed and got sloppy, and forgot.
graspee
OK- first of all- "The Bastards!" etc.
Second- what is this going to mean for people already using mp3s ? E.g. Websites distributing free mp3s but taking revenue through adverts or something.
3rd: Here's a sneaky, semi-realistic way round it for authors of free mp3 playing software.
Make your player a game.
Yep. If you distribute less than 5000 copies of a title then you don't have to pay.
So- remember all those "9999 games" units you could get, where there were about 3 games but most of them just upped the difficulty level by giving you fewer lives or more asteroids or whatever ? Well, keep a counter of people downloading your mp3 player and every 4999 change the "game" slightly, and use a crappy perl script to generate random names that will end up like "danger turbo bang bang death circle" etc.
Note, the user doesn't have to play the game, and your title screen could have a groovy pattern or something that reacts to the music. And it's OK for games to let you use your own music in the game, right, like the Xbox ?
Anyway, got to go- I have to pull down the LAME sourcecode while you can still get that motherfucker.
graspee
So do we love Sony today ?
...
I love Sony, I love Sony not, I love Sony, I love Sony not
Actually, ever since Sony released the PCG-U1 I have officially been her bitch.
graspee
"It goes back as far as PLATO"
Ah, yes, 5th Century BC Athens and Plato is writing eloquent prose such as this extract from "The Repulic" where he illustrates the Similie of the FPS.
"Suppose, Glaucon, that we have a 3D virtual environment where people kill each other endlessly in per-pixel-shaded surroundings. And let us further suppose that while in this environment they can talk to each other, saying things like: 'I 0wn j00, suX0r!'. Would the players in this world think that what they were experiencing was reality, or that they were merely interacting with shadows?
'Merely interacting with shadows, of course' Glaucon replied.
Well then. Couldn't it be the same with us in the real world ? Might there not be a higher plane, the plane of forms, viewed from which we would appear to be merely shooting at shadows ?
'I suppose it could be possible' replied Glaucon, mechanically.
graspee
How the fuck did you get over 25 karma ?
As everyone keeps pointing out, it's all about choice. "Microhat" - oh haha really clever.
You're obviously one of those people using linux because you hate Windows rather than because you love open source.
Now, being among like minded people you can't stand it and have to pick a side within a side, so you hate KDE and love gnome.
I bet when you go on gnome-loving forums you decide to hate mozilla and love opera (or vice versa).
graspee
Nasa at first would not even speak about the face because they considered it perfectly obviously a natural formation, and therefore when they weren't considering it for a 2nd flyover the cospiricy theorists' alarms went off.
In the end there was a 2nd flyover of the region and pictures of the same "face" were taken that showed it only looked like a face from the exact angle and time of day the original pictures were taken...
graspee
I think the army/fbi/government should welcome people trying to crack their computers. They should give out prizees for people who find holes ala Knuth and errors.
Which would you rather have- "evil" albeit boastful white-hat crackers "on the loose" or gov/mil computers that are insanely easy for terrorists to get into ?
So- to everyone whining about "ohohohoh they did something illegal- they should pay...." SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU ARE WRONG!
heheheh Had to get it out of my system.
graspee
Depends if you really think your life sucks because of your own evaluation of it, or whether you think that because of what society has lead you to believe based on what "everybody says".
/. then it's simple- go out and be where people are.
If you think it's sad that it's Friday night and you're on
I personally couldn't give a shit. I spend all weekends in browsing the internet, watching anime, masturbating excessively and playing computer games. Now society will tell me that I don't have a life- but I say that society is a bunch of dumb-fucks and I know what I enjoy.
graspee
disarmingly honest since 1862
You don't know what SMS is ? Have you been in an underground bunker since the Cuban missile crisis ?
Hmm, if you have then you'll get to date Alicia Silverstone, so that's no bad thing...
Anyway, in all seriousness, SMS stands for Short Messages Suck.
graspee
Great fortune seen at the end of this story:
"An idealist is one who helps the other fellow to make a profit. -- Henry Ford"
graspee
In the UK I don't think we are attempting to crack down on song swapping etc quite as drastically as the US, but in your example in the UK you can be put in prison for refusing to hand over your decryption keys.
I mean, Jesus Fucking Christ- It's possible in the US now to get less time in prison for killing someone than for downloading a load of mp3s. How fucking insane is that?
Note, I am not having a go at American citizens here, just the FUCKED-UP laws they have there.
graspee
And yes, I over-ran by 2 in my last line due to my enthusiasm for doing it in Japanese. Suggestions for the last line are welcome.
graspee
ohayo ac
anata wa baka desu
arigatou gozaimasu!
graspee
PS- not sure with "desu" etc if the "u" counts, since it is written but not pronounced. Well, not pronounced in Tokyo anyway...
"Even copying DVDs isn't exactly unheard of. As the prices for DVD-R(W) approach 2$ per disk, it will get more frequent if there isn't a value add in buying the original DVD (cut scenes, making of, etc.). "
How will extras on the disc make you consider buying it rather than copying it ? Unless of course you can fit slightly less on a DVD-RW- I haven't kept up on the features of the various DVD writable formats.
graspee
" A US agency is technically in violation of the DMCA because they want to make sure that astronauts who bring DVDs aboard the space station can play them."
Yes, but what region is space ? I would think it would be region 0 - aka region-free.
graspee
I found a site recently (after the slashdot pinball article). I can't unfortunately remember the url, but it offered pinball machine ROMs for download. It claimed to be using antipopupblocker or some such, and true enough, refused to let me download any ROMs unless I turned pop-ups back on.
graspee