This area of the firmware contains only settings, not code. The only Wi-Fi-related code in the DS firmware is code for the ad-hoc protocols used by PictoChat and DS Download Play, which don't use WEP or WPA.
That's actually in some battery-backed up SRAM - remove the battery and you'll see your DS reset to defaults (a good way to clear it before selling it).
There are several parts of the wifi puzzle. The first is the WiFi driver itself, which is probably in DS ROM since it's needed by ROM based utilities. Then there's the Nintendo protocol itself (non-IP based, and not routable without assistance), which probably also exists in DS ROM. The WiFI chipset is agnostic to the protocol used, being at a lower layer. This fuels the game downloads, pictochat, and all the multiplayer wireless gaming. The Nintendo WiFi Connect stuff incorporate a TCP/IP stack inside the Game ROM, and also the ability to connect to an infrastructure network, thus limiting it to WEP (though newer games can support WPA if Nintendo releases an update to the library before the game is manufactured, but I don't expect that to happen).
Of course, a game itself can use its own drivers instead of ROM-provided functions, but I'm sure bypassing the WFC restrictions is done in very limited circumstances due to the potential for abuse
i'm not completely sure, but i believe that anti-virus makers often classify keygens and cracks as viruses. it's a way of posturing to scare the public away from using these programs despite their innocuous nature.
Unfortunately, a large number of cracks/keygens contain malware. Maybe not from the big groups, but there's so many cracks and keygens out there, that it's hard to really identify which ones are "legit" and which ones work, but will also infect your machine with tons of spyware and adware. The tools work for what they do, but they also do a lot more in the background - I found one because it kept crashing on my machine - the keygens worked, but they also installed a downloader.
I guess it's a way for the less reputable crackers to gain some money for their work (or more likely, ripping off another group's crack/keygen and rewrapping it in their malware laden wrapper.
If nothing else, it's a good reason to have VMWare around since you can always rollback its disks.
I've also seen a pile of keygens and cracks mass-spammed across Usenet. I doubt those are anything but malware vehicles...
Oh holy spagetti monster, every IT person and CS person absolutely rapes the IP when they leave.
In my boxes that I used to clean out my desk is at least 30 confidential documents that were packed there by the moving company, (I got to keep my desk! that was cool!) and I know I have copies of all the code I wrote when I was there as well as all the SQL queries I wrote.
I have yet to meet someone that says, "I just left company X, no I don't have anything from my old job..." or " I cant fix that, I fixed that at company Y and they own the IP to that fix."
All of you rape and pillage IP when you leave. Accidentally or on purpose, you do it. Being a moron and trying to SELL that or taking it with malicious intent? that is the kicker. if he had it because that is how his desk was packed up for him then it's not his fault, nor is he liable for anything.
Except, in this case, he joined AMD while still employed at Intel. He joined AMD June 2. He gave Intel his resignation JUne 11 (and used vacation instead of working through the 2 weeks). Thus he was under the employment of both companies (who we all know are competitors) for a period of time. This goes beyond innocent "rape and pillage" of IP. At least that's part of your cleanup of your stuff, which you do before you start employment at your new employer. And anything you take is covered under NDA or other confidentiality agreeement. But this guy could not only have taken stuff from Intel and gave them to AMD, he could've (unlikely, but possible) taken stuff from AMD given them to Intel, too, and done it quite surreptitiously.
AMD would have to fire this guy because this would "taint" him, and by association, AMD, who then might have to battle Intel in some lawsuit alleging they used some of those designs in their next processor. AMD might not have, but because this guy has been working at both companies, it's very hard to tell, and AMD really has to do some house cleaning on anything this guy touched to make sure it's clean, and even then, it's hard to tell (the irony is, they can't tell if they're using that stolen IP without knowing what the stolen IP is...
In todays world most of the time in most places in most frequency bands there is no energy in the air, but it is still reserved for somebody. Even busy spots in city centers have a lot of radio energy only on limited bands in any given moment in time. There exists easily usable spectrum from 100 MHz to 5 Ghz. And it is trivial to pack more than one bit per Herz. The reason that we don't have gigabit radio communications is that a device certified to standard X can not use more than a tiny fraction of that sepctrum, even if the hundred bands reserved for other standards are idle at that spot in space and time.
And then, we run into a problem - the standard phantom transmitter. You have three stations, A talking to B on frequency F. Then we have your station, C, closer to B than A, and as such, can't pick up A's transmission. But C starts saying "F isn't used, I'll use it!" and blasts something out. If you use the same power as A, it's unlikely that A will notice, but B certainly will.
The big problem is, this can happen a lot on the "unused" frequencies. Also, you have the issue that they may suddenly be in use at a random time, and you really shouldn't wipe out its transmissions (it may be a fleapower transmitter from some remote sensor - one way, so it can't even detect if there's interference).
To do this properly requires cooperation from everyone, and bi-directional control, which means battery powered transmitters now need receivers and processors to "slot in nicely". And radios that are somewhat frequency agile so they can move to another frequency if their primary one is jammed.
And we all know from 802.11 how well things cooperate. When it works, it works great. But then you get people who twist the spec about ("Super G", "Turbo G") so they can sell "faster!" or "more range!". Or early first-gen N devices that were reknown for wiping out the entire band by not cooperating with existing installations. Sure they conformed to the spec, provided you were on their network, but damned be everyone else. (Which is unusual, since 802.11 forces the MAC to cooperate with everyone, including those using the band but on another network, but as usual, it's an implementation problem, not a spec problem. The same happens for the 40MHz channels issue on present-gen draft-N - the radios don't listen on the sub channel, and just assume it's free when the main channel is free).
"That is why I always early vote. It is on paper where I vote and that stands a better chance of getting counted correctly."
Don't be so smug. Early voting gives those who would deny your vote more time to tamper.
Let's say you mail in your ballot 2 weeks ahead of time. They are collected and sorted by precinct, and then held until election day to be opened.
Just sitting there.
And then someone drops some of the ballots from certain precincts in the shredder - you know, the ones that vote overwhelmingly for one party? Not enough to cause a lot of suspicion, but enough to make a difference in a tight race. Now, not only is your vote gone, you don't even know it - the tampering happened before election day. AND, even if it is discovered early enough, they won't know exactly WHO got screwed, so you won't get another shot.
E-voting makes it easy for small numbers of people to tamper on a large scale. That doesn't mean that good old fashioned vote rigging has disappeared. Spam hasn't eliminated junk mail, has it?
I thought early votes were treated like absentee votes. I.e., they're not even counted at all. Once the vote is closed, and the vote tallys are computed, only if the amount of absentee and early votes exceed the lead do they bother counting those votes?
(After all, if there were 500 absentee/early votes, and the guy won by 1,000 votes, those absentee votes don't really count for much. The only thing they can be used for is determining if a recount is needed because the margin of the lead ends up lower than the possible counting error...).
Or are early votes counted, but not absentee ballots?
Region encoding is the biggest bullshit ever. I moved from Canada to Germany, brought my DVDs over, and my friends can't play them because of region encoding. Great. And they wonder why people download? Fuck you MPAA.
Not so much the MPAA, but the film companies and distributors worldwide. We already had a region-free experiment ("HD-DVD"), and while consumer opinion was one thing, theatre owners worldwide were much more upset because the HD-DVD would be released in one region (e.g., North America) while it was still in theatres, or had yet to even premier in another region! (There apparently was a small bit of business importing and exporting HD-DVDs around) This led to studios refusing to release the HD-DVD version of a movie when the DVD came out, and was one of the many reasons for its demise (after all, the DVD was already out, who'd want to wait for the high-def version? Delaying the DVD release was a no-go, too).
Can't say the DVD Forum folks didn't try in removing a number of the more objectionable parts of the DVD spec...
briefly, the reason you don't see MobileIP deployed is because MobileIPv4 requires a Foreign Agent in the foreign network, ie in the network where your Mobile Node is right now. as there's no clear incentive to the foreign networks administrator to provide such a thing for you, it seems unlikely that this will become commonplace.
MobileIP may not be used much on the live Internet, but it's certainly very popular and used by a number of people (though they often get ravaged on fees for the privilege, like that $19k phone bill). Yes, the cellular network uses it, not for intra-carrier packet routing (the cell network already handles handoffs and such within a carrier), but for inter-carrier packet routing (i.e., roaming data). This is because you may have a data session in progress, and all of a sudden, move into a roaming cell. It would be quite annoying if one's IP session was reset because of the switch (and thus having to get a new IP, etc. etc. etc), so they use MobileIP to ensure that existing connections aren't reset.
This also happens if you're roaming and establish a data connection - your packets are sent back to your home carrier for transmission to the Internet.
Which makes it possible for carriers to figure out how much traffic you're using and how much is roaming, and thus being able to warn you before the bill arrives.
Ok, maybe someone can explain this to me. a cookie is just a file on your computer right?. So how is the isp (or router sniffing the packets), going to retrieve this cookie and not target ads at me. Not all my packets may not go through the same router every time (though I'm sure usually they do). So are they going to request this cookie for every packet? keep a big local list on the router of ip addresses to not sniff and have to check against that list everytime and hope the ip of my non-static ip address doesn't change ever?
A bit more insidious than that - think something along the lines of a transparent Squid proxy, except that instead of proxying, it monitors connections (and injects its own data). You make a request, it goes through this proxy who sees the request, logs it, then forwards the packets on. On the return trip, it then decides it has better ads, and rewrites the webpage enroute back to you (maintaining all necessary TCP state information so your PC and the server you connect to suddenly have different values for things like the sequence number). It doesn't actually send the ad or embed a link, it really replaces the ad HTML with its own HTML that points your webbrowser at a different ad server.
That ad server gets the "opt-out" cookie, and returns the ad you were supposed to see (being embedded in the link that sent you to the third-party ad server).
Thus, you have this box that's monitoring all your HTTP connections, and bouncing ad requests to a third-party server who serves up their own ads. Not only is the box knowing every site you visit, but that third party webserver too.
Has anyone written a program to trick it into working properly via the Internet? --
Someone did that about a decade ago, fortunately it is still available, for $20 for pretty much forever.
Man, that's the longest $20 (or less) that I've paid for shareware that's still available going forward... it's actually longer than a decade - close to a decade and a half! (And I still remember the initial requests for help with a Mac port in basically replacing MacIPX).
Trivia: It was originally written to allow people to play Doom over the Internet, way back then.
Why would a business pay for software that benefits everybody else? Why not just wait for someone else to do it?
Depends on the product.
For silicon manufacturers (Intel, Marvell, Freescale, TI, etc), there is a benefit to investing in OSS development - it helps them sell more chips. Some manufacturesrs, Marvell and Freescale in particular, require NDAs in order to develop software. (For Marvell, this is particularly funny, since the PXA25x, PXA27x CPU manuals used to be available freely via Intel's site, but for Marvell, it now requires an NDA). Freescale and TI also require NDA to get manuals.
So if "someone else" is some random kernel hacker, they won't be able to get these datasheets.
The other reason is when it's time to pick a chip for a new product, OS support is often a consideration. A company could develop Linux for an unsupported processor, but then again, it depends how much time, money and manpower that will take versus the cost of picking a different processor where all its features are already supported. Given that time to market is an important consideration, the time it takes to develop Linux could mean the difference between first to release and also-ran.
So it's effectively in these company's interest to develop Linux - they help sell product.
That's the business model on how to cope with piracy. Release a product, and only let legit users update the product. Pirates will just have to keep downloading new versions of the product (or find someone distributing the patch).
I see nothing wrong with this - patches can be considered "support" and pirates don't deserve support. If they wanted support, they can buy the product and get the updates with no issues, or just log onto their favorite site and grab the update that way.
They know people will pirate their software. So they make it worthwhile to be a legit owner - patches, updates, etc. Let the cheapskates get their way, and let the legit owners know they're appreciated. In effect, it boils down to, is your time hunting for updates (and fixing any viruses/trojans/etc that get installed) on your favorite pirate sites worth it compared to just buying a copy and having it do the updates for you without any worries. Seems a fair trade.
DRM on audio is going away, partly thanks to Apple forcing the labels to release DRM-free music to compete with the iTunes store.
However, people have accepted rights management on video storage and playback for over a quarter century now, and there's no evidence that they will stop. Sure, most of the schemes have been broken, but they still technically are protected.
First, there was the VHS tape. Then came VHS tape with Macrovision, analog rights management (by screwing with the signal on the tape). People seem happy with this, renting more and more videos and buying tons of pre-recorded tapes. Nevermind that there's a ton of devices out there that will help fix the video signal and thus bypass the protection, most people don't use 'em.
Second, the DVD. Oh wait, it has encryption on it (DRM), as well as locking the analog outputs (the video encoder of a DVD player has to support Macrovision). DVD's have surpassed VHS as the dominant video format these days. Sure the encryption is broken, and ripping a DVD is trivially easy, but it's still protected media, and most uses of DVDs don't involve breaking the DRM.
Next-gen media also still has DRM - encryption on the defunct HD-DVD, encryption, media locks, and special VM on Blu-Ray. Again, it's possible to break it, but most people still don't bother.
People have accepted rights management on video playback devices, and it's unlikely to change anytime soon. Even video download services don't seem to raise much of a fuss, compared to music.
I believe all cell phones should be equipped with emergency failover frequencies to function in the event of an emergency or natural disaster The US government should be maintaining cell equipment to handle overflow calls should the main cell providers be overwhelmed in the event of a natural disaster. The government should have discretion on activating this failover network. Cell providers should be required to pay for the operation of this failover network if it needs to be used. They should not be able to pass costs over to customers. This would function as a deterrent for these providers so they don't oversell their network capacity by a certain amount.
Except such an emergency communications network already exists, with their own frequencies and emergency communications capability. Activation is automatic, so the government doesn't have to do anything, and testing is done on a regular basis during non-emergencies. And the participants pay for the equipment, testing, etc. themselves.
It's called "amateur radio".
Primary purpose is providing emergency communications. During off times, the equipment is tested by regular communications, contests, and field days (the latter basically practicing "roughing it" - generators, portable antennas, etc).
For local communications, there's the VHF/UHF and other bands, and the HF bands to help pass communications long distances easily. (Only problem with the HF bands is BPL, which disables the receiver from being able to receive and pass on messages...)
Costs the government nothing, and emergency messages passed from surviving families to relatives outside the area are often passed on cost free (absorbed by the message-passer).
No, pay *me* $1,000 or I'll make "Meet the Spartans 2" and release it in metroplexes across the country!
So that's how Uwe Boll gets his money to make movies... though, everyone seems to keep falling for it, for he's still releasing movies even after everyone pays to make him stop...
(Though... wasn't there something that one could do to make him stop?)
3. You can make each terminal incompatible with opposite polarity terminal, allowing for suspending those batteries in a liquid, or, if the batteries can bond with each other through (weak) hydrogen bonds, a large mass of them might already be in liquid form.
While that seems like a great idea, I don't see how it can prevent loops from happening - while it keeps the + and - terminals of each battery connected in series properly, it doesn't keep it from eventually forming a huge loop and shorting itself out...
This cannot happen. Once something is published, nobody can claim a patent on it at a later date... Even for the authors to apply for a patent, the application has to predate the publication.
Except in the US, where you have up to 1 year to file after initial public disclosure. Of course, the problem is that you can't get a foreign patent (because while the initial filing date is recognized by them, the fact it was published potentially nullifies any foreign patent. However, there are probably tons of exceptions and rules and ways for people to get around it).
Seriously, just print them. Unless we somehow evolve new sensory organs in the next 25 years, I suspect that photographs won't be rendered useless through obsolescence. They can always scan them into new digital files afterwards.
"Just print them" shifts the nature of the question to "how do I make it last" I wouldn't expect most photo printer paper to last 25 years.
Perhaps the best solution is, "take them to the store to print them". Seriously. Stores like Costco and the like use a real photo printer to print photos - they aren't always just souped up inkjet printers. But you need to go to a store that a) has a photo lab, b) has their digital printout stuff handled by the lab. Basically, the new machines can either process regular film, then expose it onto photo paper and develop that the traditional way, or direct-exposure using the digital image as the source. The exposed photo paper is again output through the regular chemical print process. The end result are photo prints that are real prints, except that the source material was a digital file, rather than film.
The other benefit is that this method is really, really, really cheap to do - it's been optimized over the years for cost since until recently, people took lots of photos on film. In fact, it's far cheaper to print to photo paper, than use the inkjet method, and you get far superior output. You may even be able to specify archival quality photo paper, which should last longer (better dyes that don't break down, and paper that's of higher quality).
just tested again; I can't seem to re-create it, it was an observation I made a couple days ago, apparently missed something doesn't change the fact that you just need to plug it into a computer to get the data anyways
It depends. If the phone is unlocked and you receive a call, the iPhone will remain unlocked. If the phone is idle, and it rings, it'll wake up, you answer call, then when call is finished, it'll turn off again. NOw, during the call, it may be unlocked (haven't tried) since you can do other things while on a call (and it puts up that "tap to return to call" banner), so that may be an entry point.
However, iTunes will only sync with an iPhone that it previously synced with. If you plug it into a new iTunes, it'll erase the old synced content first before allowing you to sync iTunes. (It asks first, though, if you want to sync the iPhone with that iTunes, so you can't just erase it by plugging into a random iTunes and doing nothing).
I've briefly tried RamDoubler on Windows, but on MacOS, RamDoubler actually was very effective. On Windows, I didn't seem to notice much of a difference, but on MacOS, it was essential.
The reason is that MacOS's memory manager, to be honest, sucked. The basis of the memory management scheme was "Minimum Memory"/"Preferred Memory" - the OS will check RAM free, and if it was greater than minimum, would start the app. If not, it wouldn't. If there was more RAM free than Preferred, it would give the app that amount, if not, it would give it somewhere in-between. Mac apps were responsible for monitoring how much RAM was free, and to not do operations when they were running low. Problem is, if you have a big document, or big dataset (email inbox, say), the "minimum" wasn't often enough, and enlarging both was a task that was necessary.
So now you have the problem in MacOS - if you set it too big, you can't launch the app when you need it. If you set it too small, it crashed or error'd out. Too big and the app does't need it, and it becomes wasted.
Using swap wasn't always an option, for it inevitably made MacOS slower, so many people ran MacOS without swap.
What RAMDoubler did, effectively, was manage this more effectively. It first created a swapfile as big as RAM (so it can "double" it if things went badly), then managed the free space more effectively - if an app wasn't using the RAM it was allocated, RD would reclaim it as its buffers to compress unused pages. It worked remarkably well - if you kept the app's "minimum" and "preferred" sizes to under the physical memory size, it had a very small impact on system performance (much less than MacOS' swapfile). You only got thrashing when you tried to use an app that had it's memory allocations higher than physical memory.
In the end, the general recommendations was that the tool was to let you keep more apps running at once, rather than let you launch apps with less physical RAM than you actually had. In that regard, it actually succeeded fairly well, but only because the general awfulness of the MacOS memory model. Not entirely MacOS' fault, for it ran on systems without an MMU.
Windows 3.1 (protected mode), I'm not so sure if it had that great of an effect - sure the Windows memory manager was horrible, but RD on Windows didn't actually improve matters much.
MacOS though, it was needed. There was even a hack that you could apply to it to change the multiplier it used, so you could use it for boasting. Of course, it used more disk space as swapfile and caused more slowdowns, but still an improvement. Its life ended shortly after Apple moved to the PowerPC chips, where to the surprise of most people, you wanted to turn ON the swapfile on MacOS if you had a PowerPC machine - the system ran markedly faster (but only if the swapfile was between a certain range of values). RD worked (I believe it was available as a fat binary), but it didn't accomplsh much over what PowerPC MacOS could do, and the benefit wasn't worth the cost.
Because it uses a closed source program to play the proprietary.riff files along with the patent-encumbered MPEG2 files on the copyrighted DVD. Duh!
While you're right, you can get the audio available in a "freer" (still patented) mp3 format.
The only thing the.riff files and player have over the mp3 is the synchronization information built-in. I.e., you open the.tiff file in the player, stick in the DVD, and it automagically syncs the audio and video. Prior to this, you had to start your MP3 player, mute your DVD player, press play on one, and listen to the cueing marks to sync.
Anyhow..riff is just an MP3 file with the special encoding marks in them, as well.
The one where you can change tabs, load a page, or have a page reflow and it doesn't repaint the screen correctly?
Sometimes you swap tabs, and the new tab's contents don't appear, but you see the last tab. If you scroll down then up, the new contents are drawn over. I would've thought it was the Windows desktop heap thing, but it apparently happens in Linux as well.
Or during a page load, as it reflows the page, it forgets to erase the old page first, so it ends up being a mess with text everywhere as it was redrawn multiple times, graphics overlayed as they shifted around, etc.
I wish I could easily swap between installations to see if firefox fixed this bug. Installing FF3, then testing it, then finding it's not fixed and reinstalling ff2 gets to be a pain in a while.
Seriously, blocking ads and javascript and flash stuff is like a game for me now, I get a little thrill of victory every time I block one of those things, it's great.
May I suggest a solution that's better, and doesn't leech?
It doesn't leech since static banner ads load up just fine, but NoScript blocks flash, java, and other plug-ins (PDF, etc) by default. It also disables javascript on a per-domain basis (plus detects and blocks XSS attacks).
And yet, if you want to see that YouTube video, just click the placeholder, and it'll ask if you really want to load whatever it is. For Javascript, click the icon and you can enable and disable the various scripts that may exist on a page (many across many domains). Nothing more fun than allowing javascript from the primary site, but disable javascript that loads ads and other junk.
Plus, having javascript off by default makes the web go much faster. It can always be re-enabled later on, leaving horrible CPU-wasting scripts from even running.
Me personally, I run a combination of FlashBlock + NoScript. This has a wierd effect as NoScript blocks the flash, click it, and then FlashBlock blocks it, then sometimes NoScript blocks it again. Sometimes a hassle, but saves me from inadvertent clicks.
The only XSS at times I find annoying is when purchasing from sites that use Paypal. But that's simply a click, then "Unsafe Reload" (reload the page with XSS), which fixes it.
It's amazing how many sites work great with NoScript, and how many sites are so poorly coded they need javascript to handle a hyperlink.
And good luck with upgrading the storage on this one, it has a PCI Express minicard SSD instead of a standard SATA drive.
Nothing wrong with that - it's just a standard PCIe SATA controller plus flash (it appears as a regular disk). The deal is these things are smaller and a standard formfactor than a regular SATA disk. (Most drives in the 1.8" class have ZIF-IDE or CE-ATA interfaces - very few have SATA and if so, they're proprietary connectors).
Many netbooks these days use the PCIe minicard as SSD (the Eee 90x's do, Acers, etc), so expect to see more of them on the market shortly.
And yes, these usually use the PCIe part of the minicard connector. If you really couldn't wait, go and solder something to the USB 2.0 part of it (the minicard connector, like Expresscard, has both USB 2.0 and PCIe interfaces. WWAN and Bluetooth cards normally use the USB side, while the WLAN, SSD, etc use the PCIe side). Many an interesting hack can be done by taking advantage of that fact.
Re:The Pinball games where made by sega pinball no
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Yeah, I know. I've written rants before on the asshattery of Stern pinball, and I may again at some point. It's a shame that Stern ended up with the rights to the Data East platform. And I guess I have a big imagination when it comes to envisioning rooms full of wonderfulness.:)
Better than Gottlieb - they actually requested sites like the IPDB remove all the ROMs (that were once downloadable from Gottlieb's website). Said ROMs were also removed from the website. The reason? All the Gottlieb retailers complained, so the only way to get ROM updates is to pay (through the nose) for them via one of these resellers.
They've actually sent C+D orders taking down any website that had 'em up. It should be noted that other manufacturers still make the ROMs available.
I can't use HDMI anyway. At least with my hardware, closed captioning does not work through HDMI. And we need closed captioning in our household. When I first bought my HDMI-capable 46" LCD TV, I bought HDMI cables. I took them back the next day when I realized closed captioning didn't work.
So I use normal DVD, normal cable box, and standard analog cables to the 46" LCD TV. Looks fine to us.
HDMI doesn't support closed captions (in the Line-21 sense), because on HDMI, there is no "Line 21" or overscan signalling for closed captioning at all. HDMI is just a lightly modified version of DVI (slightly more robust signalling, but otherwise identical save the connector and digital audio).
The only captioning available via HDMI is that produced by the source - e.g. high-def TiVos generate captioning over the video source before outputting it over HDMI, and DVDs/Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD) offer standard subtitling support. The annoyance comes from the fact that MPEG-2 has an actual transport for line-21 captions, but the studio masters don't make DVD subtitle overlays with the same content. (New DVDs tend to have it as overlays - you'll see it as "English SDH" under subtitles, rather than as part of line-21 MPEG captions, but old DVDs don't, and it's annoying). Alas, most players don't have caption generators to overlay the caption text prior to output via HDMI.
Also, there's only one Blu-Ray player on the market that's worth getting (the Playstation 3), partly due to HD-DVD having forced Blu-Ray's hand in releasing players before technology had matured enough to make HD-DVD features affordable in Blu-Ray players. And unfortunately, the PS3 doesn't integrate nicely into a home theatre (lack of consumer IR being the big issue, so you can't use your fancy universal remote).
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That's actually in some battery-backed up SRAM - remove the battery and you'll see your DS reset to defaults (a good way to clear it before selling it).
There are several parts of the wifi puzzle. The first is the WiFi driver itself, which is probably in DS ROM since it's needed by ROM based utilities. Then there's the Nintendo protocol itself (non-IP based, and not routable without assistance), which probably also exists in DS ROM. The WiFI chipset is agnostic to the protocol used, being at a lower layer. This fuels the game downloads, pictochat, and all the multiplayer wireless gaming. The Nintendo WiFi Connect stuff incorporate a TCP/IP stack inside the Game ROM, and also the ability to connect to an infrastructure network, thus limiting it to WEP (though newer games can support WPA if Nintendo releases an update to the library before the game is manufactured, but I don't expect that to happen).
Of course, a game itself can use its own drivers instead of ROM-provided functions, but I'm sure bypassing the WFC restrictions is done in very limited circumstances due to the potential for abuse
Unfortunately, a large number of cracks/keygens contain malware. Maybe not from the big groups, but there's so many cracks and keygens out there, that it's hard to really identify which ones are "legit" and which ones work, but will also infect your machine with tons of spyware and adware. The tools work for what they do, but they also do a lot more in the background - I found one because it kept crashing on my machine - the keygens worked, but they also installed a downloader.
I guess it's a way for the less reputable crackers to gain some money for their work (or more likely, ripping off another group's crack/keygen and rewrapping it in their malware laden wrapper.
If nothing else, it's a good reason to have VMWare around since you can always rollback its disks.
I've also seen a pile of keygens and cracks mass-spammed across Usenet. I doubt those are anything but malware vehicles...
Except, in this case, he joined AMD while still employed at Intel. He joined AMD June 2. He gave Intel his resignation JUne 11 (and used vacation instead of working through the 2 weeks). Thus he was under the employment of both companies (who we all know are competitors) for a period of time. This goes beyond innocent "rape and pillage" of IP. At least that's part of your cleanup of your stuff, which you do before you start employment at your new employer. And anything you take is covered under NDA or other confidentiality agreeement. But this guy could not only have taken stuff from Intel and gave them to AMD, he could've (unlikely, but possible) taken stuff from AMD given them to Intel, too, and done it quite surreptitiously.
AMD would have to fire this guy because this would "taint" him, and by association, AMD, who then might have to battle Intel in some lawsuit alleging they used some of those designs in their next processor. AMD might not have, but because this guy has been working at both companies, it's very hard to tell, and AMD really has to do some house cleaning on anything this guy touched to make sure it's clean, and even then, it's hard to tell (the irony is, they can't tell if they're using that stolen IP without knowing what the stolen IP is...
And then, we run into a problem - the standard phantom transmitter. You have three stations, A talking to B on frequency F. Then we have your station, C, closer to B than A, and as such, can't pick up A's transmission. But C starts saying "F isn't used, I'll use it!" and blasts something out. If you use the same power as A, it's unlikely that A will notice, but B certainly will.
The big problem is, this can happen a lot on the "unused" frequencies. Also, you have the issue that they may suddenly be in use at a random time, and you really shouldn't wipe out its transmissions (it may be a fleapower transmitter from some remote sensor - one way, so it can't even detect if there's interference).
To do this properly requires cooperation from everyone, and bi-directional control, which means battery powered transmitters now need receivers and processors to "slot in nicely". And radios that are somewhat frequency agile so they can move to another frequency if their primary one is jammed.
And we all know from 802.11 how well things cooperate. When it works, it works great. But then you get people who twist the spec about ("Super G", "Turbo G") so they can sell "faster!" or "more range!". Or early first-gen N devices that were reknown for wiping out the entire band by not cooperating with existing installations. Sure they conformed to the spec, provided you were on their network, but damned be everyone else. (Which is unusual, since 802.11 forces the MAC to cooperate with everyone, including those using the band but on another network, but as usual, it's an implementation problem, not a spec problem. The same happens for the 40MHz channels issue on present-gen draft-N - the radios don't listen on the sub channel, and just assume it's free when the main channel is free).
I thought early votes were treated like absentee votes. I.e., they're not even counted at all. Once the vote is closed, and the vote tallys are computed, only if the amount of absentee and early votes exceed the lead do they bother counting those votes?
(After all, if there were 500 absentee/early votes, and the guy won by 1,000 votes, those absentee votes don't really count for much. The only thing they can be used for is determining if a recount is needed because the margin of the lead ends up lower than the possible counting error...).
Or are early votes counted, but not absentee ballots?
Not so much the MPAA, but the film companies and distributors worldwide. We already had a region-free experiment ("HD-DVD"), and while consumer opinion was one thing, theatre owners worldwide were much more upset because the HD-DVD would be released in one region (e.g., North America) while it was still in theatres, or had yet to even premier in another region! (There apparently was a small bit of business importing and exporting HD-DVDs around) This led to studios refusing to release the HD-DVD version of a movie when the DVD came out, and was one of the many reasons for its demise (after all, the DVD was already out, who'd want to wait for the high-def version? Delaying the DVD release was a no-go, too).
Can't say the DVD Forum folks didn't try in removing a number of the more objectionable parts of the DVD spec...
MobileIP may not be used much on the live Internet, but it's certainly very popular and used by a number of people (though they often get ravaged on fees for the privilege, like that $19k phone bill). Yes, the cellular network uses it, not for intra-carrier packet routing (the cell network already handles handoffs and such within a carrier), but for inter-carrier packet routing (i.e., roaming data). This is because you may have a data session in progress, and all of a sudden, move into a roaming cell. It would be quite annoying if one's IP session was reset because of the switch (and thus having to get a new IP, etc. etc. etc), so they use MobileIP to ensure that existing connections aren't reset.
This also happens if you're roaming and establish a data connection - your packets are sent back to your home carrier for transmission to the Internet.
Which makes it possible for carriers to figure out how much traffic you're using and how much is roaming, and thus being able to warn you before the bill arrives.
A bit more insidious than that - think something along the lines of a transparent Squid proxy, except that instead of proxying, it monitors connections (and injects its own data). You make a request, it goes through this proxy who sees the request, logs it, then forwards the packets on. On the return trip, it then decides it has better ads, and rewrites the webpage enroute back to you (maintaining all necessary TCP state information so your PC and the server you connect to suddenly have different values for things like the sequence number). It doesn't actually send the ad or embed a link, it really replaces the ad HTML with its own HTML that points your webbrowser at a different ad server.
That ad server gets the "opt-out" cookie, and returns the ad you were supposed to see (being embedded in the link that sent you to the third-party ad server).
Thus, you have this box that's monitoring all your HTTP connections, and bouncing ad requests to a third-party server who serves up their own ads. Not only is the box knowing every site you visit, but that third party webserver too.
Man, that's the longest $20 (or less) that I've paid for shareware that's still available going forward... it's actually longer than a decade - close to a decade and a half! (And I still remember the initial requests for help with a Mac port in basically replacing MacIPX).
Trivia: It was originally written to allow people to play Doom over the Internet, way back then.
Depends on the product.
For silicon manufacturers (Intel, Marvell, Freescale, TI, etc), there is a benefit to investing in OSS development - it helps them sell more chips. Some manufacturesrs, Marvell and Freescale in particular, require NDAs in order to develop software. (For Marvell, this is particularly funny, since the PXA25x, PXA27x CPU manuals used to be available freely via Intel's site, but for Marvell, it now requires an NDA). Freescale and TI also require NDA to get manuals.
So if "someone else" is some random kernel hacker, they won't be able to get these datasheets.
The other reason is when it's time to pick a chip for a new product, OS support is often a consideration. A company could develop Linux for an unsupported processor, but then again, it depends how much time, money and manpower that will take versus the cost of picking a different processor where all its features are already supported. Given that time to market is an important consideration, the time it takes to develop Linux could mean the difference between first to release and also-ran.
So it's effectively in these company's interest to develop Linux - they help sell product.
That's the business model on how to cope with piracy. Release a product, and only let legit users update the product. Pirates will just have to keep downloading new versions of the product (or find someone distributing the patch).
I see nothing wrong with this - patches can be considered "support" and pirates don't deserve support. If they wanted support, they can buy the product and get the updates with no issues, or just log onto their favorite site and grab the update that way.
They know people will pirate their software. So they make it worthwhile to be a legit owner - patches, updates, etc. Let the cheapskates get their way, and let the legit owners know they're appreciated. In effect, it boils down to, is your time hunting for updates (and fixing any viruses/trojans/etc that get installed) on your favorite pirate sites worth it compared to just buying a copy and having it do the updates for you without any worries. Seems a fair trade.
DRM on audio is going away, partly thanks to Apple forcing the labels to release DRM-free music to compete with the iTunes store.
However, people have accepted rights management on video storage and playback for over a quarter century now, and there's no evidence that they will stop. Sure, most of the schemes have been broken, but they still technically are protected.
First, there was the VHS tape. Then came VHS tape with Macrovision, analog rights management (by screwing with the signal on the tape). People seem happy with this, renting more and more videos and buying tons of pre-recorded tapes. Nevermind that there's a ton of devices out there that will help fix the video signal and thus bypass the protection, most people don't use 'em.
Second, the DVD. Oh wait, it has encryption on it (DRM), as well as locking the analog outputs (the video encoder of a DVD player has to support Macrovision). DVD's have surpassed VHS as the dominant video format these days. Sure the encryption is broken, and ripping a DVD is trivially easy, but it's still protected media, and most uses of DVDs don't involve breaking the DRM.
Next-gen media also still has DRM - encryption on the defunct HD-DVD, encryption, media locks, and special VM on Blu-Ray. Again, it's possible to break it, but most people still don't bother.
People have accepted rights management on video playback devices, and it's unlikely to change anytime soon. Even video download services don't seem to raise much of a fuss, compared to music.
Except such an emergency communications network already exists, with their own frequencies and emergency communications capability. Activation is automatic, so the government doesn't have to do anything, and testing is done on a regular basis during non-emergencies. And the participants pay for the equipment, testing, etc. themselves.
It's called "amateur radio".
Primary purpose is providing emergency communications. During off times, the equipment is tested by regular communications, contests, and field days (the latter basically practicing "roughing it" - generators, portable antennas, etc).
For local communications, there's the VHF/UHF and other bands, and the HF bands to help pass communications long distances easily. (Only problem with the HF bands is BPL, which disables the receiver from being able to receive and pass on messages...)
Costs the government nothing, and emergency messages passed from surviving families to relatives outside the area are often passed on cost free (absorbed by the message-passer).
So that's how Uwe Boll gets his money to make movies... though, everyone seems to keep falling for it, for he's still releasing movies even after everyone pays to make him stop...
(Though... wasn't there something that one could do to make him stop?)
While that seems like a great idea, I don't see how it can prevent loops from happening - while it keeps the + and - terminals of each battery connected in series properly, it doesn't keep it from eventually forming a huge loop and shorting itself out...
Except in the US, where you have up to 1 year to file after initial public disclosure. Of course, the problem is that you can't get a foreign patent (because while the initial filing date is recognized by them, the fact it was published potentially nullifies any foreign patent. However, there are probably tons of exceptions and rules and ways for people to get around it).
http://www.chillingeffects.org/patent/faq.cgi#QID355
Perhaps the best solution is, "take them to the store to print them". Seriously. Stores like Costco and the like use a real photo printer to print photos - they aren't always just souped up inkjet printers. But you need to go to a store that a) has a photo lab, b) has their digital printout stuff handled by the lab. Basically, the new machines can either process regular film, then expose it onto photo paper and develop that the traditional way, or direct-exposure using the digital image as the source. The exposed photo paper is again output through the regular chemical print process. The end result are photo prints that are real prints, except that the source material was a digital file, rather than film.
The other benefit is that this method is really, really, really cheap to do - it's been optimized over the years for cost since until recently, people took lots of photos on film. In fact, it's far cheaper to print to photo paper, than use the inkjet method, and you get far superior output. You may even be able to specify archival quality photo paper, which should last longer (better dyes that don't break down, and paper that's of higher quality).
It depends. If the phone is unlocked and you receive a call, the iPhone will remain unlocked. If the phone is idle, and it rings, it'll wake up, you answer call, then when call is finished, it'll turn off again. NOw, during the call, it may be unlocked (haven't tried) since you can do other things while on a call (and it puts up that "tap to return to call" banner), so that may be an entry point.
However, iTunes will only sync with an iPhone that it previously synced with. If you plug it into a new iTunes, it'll erase the old synced content first before allowing you to sync iTunes. (It asks first, though, if you want to sync the iPhone with that iTunes, so you can't just erase it by plugging into a random iTunes and doing nothing).
I've briefly tried RamDoubler on Windows, but on MacOS, RamDoubler actually was very effective. On Windows, I didn't seem to notice much of a difference, but on MacOS, it was essential.
The reason is that MacOS's memory manager, to be honest, sucked. The basis of the memory management scheme was "Minimum Memory"/"Preferred Memory" - the OS will check RAM free, and if it was greater than minimum, would start the app. If not, it wouldn't. If there was more RAM free than Preferred, it would give the app that amount, if not, it would give it somewhere in-between. Mac apps were responsible for monitoring how much RAM was free, and to not do operations when they were running low. Problem is, if you have a big document, or big dataset (email inbox, say), the "minimum" wasn't often enough, and enlarging both was a task that was necessary.
So now you have the problem in MacOS - if you set it too big, you can't launch the app when you need it. If you set it too small, it crashed or error'd out. Too big and the app does't need it, and it becomes wasted.
Using swap wasn't always an option, for it inevitably made MacOS slower, so many people ran MacOS without swap.
What RAMDoubler did, effectively, was manage this more effectively. It first created a swapfile as big as RAM (so it can "double" it if things went badly), then managed the free space more effectively - if an app wasn't using the RAM it was allocated, RD would reclaim it as its buffers to compress unused pages. It worked remarkably well - if you kept the app's "minimum" and "preferred" sizes to under the physical memory size, it had a very small impact on system performance (much less than MacOS' swapfile). You only got thrashing when you tried to use an app that had it's memory allocations higher than physical memory.
In the end, the general recommendations was that the tool was to let you keep more apps running at once, rather than let you launch apps with less physical RAM than you actually had. In that regard, it actually succeeded fairly well, but only because the general awfulness of the MacOS memory model. Not entirely MacOS' fault, for it ran on systems without an MMU.
Windows 3.1 (protected mode), I'm not so sure if it had that great of an effect - sure the Windows memory manager was horrible, but RD on Windows didn't actually improve matters much.
MacOS though, it was needed. There was even a hack that you could apply to it to change the multiplier it used, so you could use it for boasting. Of course, it used more disk space as swapfile and caused more slowdowns, but still an improvement. Its life ended shortly after Apple moved to the PowerPC chips, where to the surprise of most people, you wanted to turn ON the swapfile on MacOS if you had a PowerPC machine - the system ran markedly faster (but only if the swapfile was between a certain range of values). RD worked (I believe it was available as a fat binary), but it didn't accomplsh much over what PowerPC MacOS could do, and the benefit wasn't worth the cost.
While you're right, you can get the audio available in a "freer" (still patented) mp3 format.
The only thing the .riff files and player have over the mp3 is the synchronization information built-in. I.e., you open the .tiff file in the player, stick in the DVD, and it automagically syncs the audio and video. Prior to this, you had to start your MP3 player, mute your DVD player, press play on one, and listen to the cueing marks to sync.
Anyhow. .riff is just an MP3 file with the special encoding marks in them, as well.
The one where you can change tabs, load a page, or have a page reflow and it doesn't repaint the screen correctly?
Sometimes you swap tabs, and the new tab's contents don't appear, but you see the last tab. If you scroll down then up, the new contents are drawn over. I would've thought it was the Windows desktop heap thing, but it apparently happens in Linux as well.
Or during a page load, as it reflows the page, it forgets to erase the old page first, so it ends up being a mess with text everywhere as it was redrawn multiple times, graphics overlayed as they shifted around, etc.
I wish I could easily swap between installations to see if firefox fixed this bug. Installing FF3, then testing it, then finding it's not fixed and reinstalling ff2 gets to be a pain in a while.
Other than that, ff3 is nice.
May I suggest a solution that's better, and doesn't leech?
Try NoScript - http://noscript.net/
It doesn't leech since static banner ads load up just fine, but NoScript blocks flash, java, and other plug-ins (PDF, etc) by default. It also disables javascript on a per-domain basis (plus detects and blocks XSS attacks).
And yet, if you want to see that YouTube video, just click the placeholder, and it'll ask if you really want to load whatever it is. For Javascript, click the icon and you can enable and disable the various scripts that may exist on a page (many across many domains). Nothing more fun than allowing javascript from the primary site, but disable javascript that loads ads and other junk.
Plus, having javascript off by default makes the web go much faster. It can always be re-enabled later on, leaving horrible CPU-wasting scripts from even running.
Me personally, I run a combination of FlashBlock + NoScript. This has a wierd effect as NoScript blocks the flash, click it, and then FlashBlock blocks it, then sometimes NoScript blocks it again. Sometimes a hassle, but saves me from inadvertent clicks.
The only XSS at times I find annoying is when purchasing from sites that use Paypal. But that's simply a click, then "Unsafe Reload" (reload the page with XSS), which fixes it.
It's amazing how many sites work great with NoScript, and how many sites are so poorly coded they need javascript to handle a hyperlink.
Nothing wrong with that - it's just a standard PCIe SATA controller plus flash (it appears as a regular disk). The deal is these things are smaller and a standard formfactor than a regular SATA disk. (Most drives in the 1.8" class have ZIF-IDE or CE-ATA interfaces - very few have SATA and if so, they're proprietary connectors).
Many netbooks these days use the PCIe minicard as SSD (the Eee 90x's do, Acers, etc), so expect to see more of them on the market shortly.
And yes, these usually use the PCIe part of the minicard connector. If you really couldn't wait, go and solder something to the USB 2.0 part of it (the minicard connector, like Expresscard, has both USB 2.0 and PCIe interfaces. WWAN and Bluetooth cards normally use the USB side, while the WLAN, SSD, etc use the PCIe side). Many an interesting hack can be done by taking advantage of that fact.
Better than Gottlieb - they actually requested sites like the IPDB remove all the ROMs (that were once downloadable from Gottlieb's website). Said ROMs were also removed from the website. The reason? All the Gottlieb retailers complained, so the only way to get ROM updates is to pay (through the nose) for them via one of these resellers.
They've actually sent C+D orders taking down any website that had 'em up. It should be noted that other manufacturers still make the ROMs available.
HDMI doesn't support closed captions (in the Line-21 sense), because on HDMI, there is no "Line 21" or overscan signalling for closed captioning at all. HDMI is just a lightly modified version of DVI (slightly more robust signalling, but otherwise identical save the connector and digital audio).
The only captioning available via HDMI is that produced by the source - e.g. high-def TiVos generate captioning over the video source before outputting it over HDMI, and DVDs/Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD) offer standard subtitling support. The annoyance comes from the fact that MPEG-2 has an actual transport for line-21 captions, but the studio masters don't make DVD subtitle overlays with the same content. (New DVDs tend to have it as overlays - you'll see it as "English SDH" under subtitles, rather than as part of line-21 MPEG captions, but old DVDs don't, and it's annoying). Alas, most players don't have caption generators to overlay the caption text prior to output via HDMI.
Also, there's only one Blu-Ray player on the market that's worth getting (the Playstation 3), partly due to HD-DVD having forced Blu-Ray's hand in releasing players before technology had matured enough to make HD-DVD features affordable in Blu-Ray players. And unfortunately, the PS3 doesn't integrate nicely into a home theatre (lack of consumer IR being the big issue, so you can't use your fancy universal remote).