Federal law requires that any copyrighted sound must be stored at the library.
Is this the same government who has been busy giving god-like status to content creators? I can just see somebody suing the LoC to keep their content away from eyes/ears who aren't paying for it. But of course, they may let it slide if they put DRM on the content. Maybe. If they're in a good mood. Oh, but wait....
"We have every format you can imagine and every problem with every format," said Michael Taft, who helps run the program. "What we have to do is find a way of taking sound off of all of these different media and storing them as computer files in such a way that they will be readable and accessible not just today, but 100, 200 years from now."
"I'm sorry sir, but that part of history has been lost due to money grubbing companies who revoked our playback key (or they went out of business, the timed key is lost because it can no longer be renewed, and nobody knows what format the file is stored in), and the guy who tried to crack the file is currently serving a 500 year prison term for attempted circumvention. Have a nice day!"
I won't touch Realplayer since they rolled out RealOne. Installing it is like dropping a bomb in your system...Its tentacles spread out and take over your box. Popups, beg screens, download managers, spyware, and association takeovers are par for the course, if I remember right (It's been awhile since I installed it last). I still use G2, at least it's a little more managable. And if the content requires RealOne, I just move right along.
The same is true in California as well, and I daresay it is true in all states with sales tax. Theoretically, you need to send the tax of anything you purchased out of state to the government, but who does? Now that the state goverments are a little strapped for cash they're starting to pay attention to this new potential source of income. But it's one thing to say "Tax the Internet!" but quite another to do it. Where will the burden of tax collection lie? With the seller? The buyer? The state? Taxation of interstate commerce (at least on an individual level) has been held back for exactly this reason...The logistics of who collects the tax and sends it to the appropriate state is a big problem. Most retailers don't want to bother with these complications, and their home states are letting them get away with it because the money isn't going into their pockets anyway. For instance, why should Texas spend money to enforce tax collection for California?
Re:So will they blame terrorists...
on
Droning On
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· Score: 1
I think this goes far beyond that. DirecTV's business model revolves around these cards. Remember they are the only thing standing between you and the content they are broadcasting. What this person did was steal documents detailing how they worked from a law firm he was employed at and released them to hackers. That sounds like corporate espionage to me. Had this guy reverse engineered the P4 card on his own I would be pissed off over this, but this guy is nothing but an opportunist who violated the trust of his employer.
Your microwave consists of a whoop-ass transformer, a capacitor, and a magnetron. It also can't tell the difference between a 5lb hunk of meat and a taco. If it could, what do you think the odds would be of it getting it right?
I've seen the Seven Dwarves naming scheme done once, but in my opinion it's not that scalable. (well, I guess it doesn't really need to be unless you run a datacenter) Besides that, a $10,000 box deserves a name better than "Dopey".
I've seen a lot of suggestions in this thread to include server names with spaces, but in my opionion putting spaces in server/workstation names is a cardinal sin, particularly when you have to reference the computer when messing with a CGI script or writing a program that depends on the name...I've gotten myself in to some big trouble with spaces in server names.
So, I name my boxen after characters from Greek myths. I like to name the servers loosely after the function they and the character would perform. For instance, Cerberus, the three headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades, could be my firewall. Hermes, the messenger of the gods, could be an SMTP/POP3 server. Athena, the goddess of wisdom, could be an SQL server or data repository. Sisyphus, the king who was punished by forever having to roll a rock up a hill, only to have it slip from his grasp just before he got it to the top, could be a test or debugging system.
And so it goes on, dozens to choose from, no annoying spaces, and cool names!
I use Windows as my desktop because X chugs too much, even with the accelerated nVidia drivers. X just doesn't make for a good desktop unless you are willing to spend a week trying to get it to work right. Not to mention I like to take in the occasional game every now and then, and given the choice between TuxRacer and GTA3... Also, as iterated before in this discussion, w2k and XP are pretty stable.
But then there's Linux. I use Linux because it's a rock solid server that I don't have to reboot every time software gets installed, a patch is released, or the IP needs to be changed. If it crashes (usually because I screwed something up), it's not some black hole that I have to guess what's wrong with it (Is it AD? The file system? The registry? Some rogue driver? The boot sector???)
As much as it might burn your ears to hear me say it, until X and its desktops evolve some more, my mantra will be "Windows on the desktop, Linux as the server". That is, unless otherwise dictated by corporate policy:)
Well, I wasn't saying that djbdns is perfect, but my overall impression is that it's less invasive than BIND. My biggest hangup with BIND was its huge size...all it's doing is DNS. How big does it really need to be? This is my impression, and I'm not saying BIND sucks, in fact it's a great DNS server and I've run several systems on it. It's just overkill for what I'm doing.
Used to run Bind9, but BIND seems to be suffering from the Microsoft bloat phenomenon. How many megs do you need for serving up DNS?? The BIND 9 decompressed tar file comes out to 2100+ files at 21MB. If I recall the installation process, it took forever to compile and then loaded the system with a bunch of superfluous directories and files. For more complicated installations with more exotic requirements than I have, maybe I can see using BIND9, but for my wimpy little web server that has maybe two or three A records to its name, there's no point, so I use djbdns.
I've been sitting behind a terminal on average for at least 5 hours a day for the last 18 years and have no problems, other than being slightly overweight:) I never get headaches, and sleep habits? I can pound three cans of Dew before bedtime and still sleep like a baby. I don't know what these "researchers" are smoking, but then again maybe some people are better suited for being planted behind a terminal than others.
Gamespy: The future is FPS! Peter Molyneux: The future is god games! Lots of them!
*sigh* Doesn't anybody like adventure games anymore?
Re:What the hell...it's only karma...
on
Blogger Hacked
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· Score: 1
It has nothing to do with being elitist or "Holier than thou", it has to do with the fact that a) The name is dumb, and b) Most blogs ARE the product of 12-year-old girlie bloggers discussing the drab details of their lives. Does this mean that all blogs suck? No. In fact, your idea seems pretty cool. And hats off to you for referring to it as a "weblog". Blog just seems to have such a... negative connotation.
Let's just bite the bullet and call it RMS/X11/Apache/GNU/Linux. Then we can continue to tag names onto it like a stock car, as every programmer who's programs are included with most distributions make a bid to have his name attached. Where does it end? Heck, this was even addressed by the FAQ, and what I got out of it was "We don't care about everyone else. We just want it called GNU/Linux". Seriously, this is major hair-splitting. I don't think that anyone who uses Linux doesn't recognize that GNU has made a major contribution. Nobody says "Who's GNU?" But I don't understand the reason for this FAQ. It looks like they are attacking Linux Torvalds for being an opportunist. Was it his decision to package GNU programs with the kernel? I thought that rested with the creators of the distributions. Regardless, isn't the whole point of the GNU project to provide these programs for exactly this purpose, and without strings attached? This comes off like renting a place for 15 years and then telling your landlord you own half the equity. GNU would just be another speedbump in free software land if it wasn't for the exposure that the explosive growth of Linux has given them. This is their bid to make sure that nobody makes the mistake of thinking Linus did it all himself. But in my opinion, they should call it even and stop whining. Nobody's going to start calling it GNU/Linux.
Aha, you would think so. But think about it for a minute...Wouldn't such a device, which is designed to convert digital to analog, and thus strip out any "do not record" flags that Hollywood is so fond of, be illegal under the DMCA? You can bet they're going to raise that argument. I really, really hope this happens. Here's why: If such devices are illegal, it would certainly force every couch potato in America to buy new sets. I don't think this will ever happen. If anything, it will bring to light what a horrible law the DMCA is. Hillary, Jack, and their paid off lapdogs in Congress can do as much celebrating as they want. They will sing a different tune when hordes of angry Survivor addicts beat down their doors wondering why they are being forced to buy new TVs that cost three times more than their old ones.
The thing is, the DMCA lives because Joe Average American hasn't been affected by it. Who cares if a few research scientists and hackers get thrown in the can because of it? But having to buy a new electronic babysitter when the old one is perfectly good, well that's another story altogether.
By protecting vaults of data and the pathways that transfer them within the PC, LaGrande will prevent viruses from infecting central parts of the computer, make it harder for hackers to take over computers remotely, and allow for more secure e-commerce transactions, Otellini said in a speech at Intel's twice-yearly developer forum yesterday.
Ah yes. Let's sell this crippleware by telling the sheeple that it will protect them from viruses and hackers. No one will ever ask how LaGrande is supposed to be able to tell the difference between a virus and an unsigned program. Unless they made it so it was impossible to run unsigned programs...Draw your own conclusions.
Same old story. Compuserve tried to do the same thing with.GIF. MP3 is out of Fraunhofer's hands. It's pretty much defacto public domain. They can charge all the licence fees they want, but if they are to enforce it, I hope they have the money to sue the planet.
No joke, I was up at the restaurant show in the San Francisco convention center over the weekend and Pepsi was giving out 20oz bottles for free. Good thing too, because after the first sip I would have been _really_ ticked had I paid for it. After a second sip I couldn't stomach it anymore and the whole bottle went into the trash. I can't believe they're trying to sell this filth.
Slashdot Mirror
Federal law requires that any copyrighted sound must be stored at the library.
Is this the same government who has been busy giving god-like status to content creators? I can just see somebody suing the LoC to keep their content away from eyes/ears who aren't paying for it. But of course, they may let it slide if they put DRM on the content. Maybe. If they're in a good mood. Oh, but wait....
"We have every format you can imagine and every problem with every format," said Michael Taft, who helps run the program. "What we have to do is find a way of taking sound off of all of these different media and storing them as computer files in such a way that they will be readable and accessible not just today, but 100, 200 years from now."
"I'm sorry sir, but that part of history has been lost due to money grubbing companies who revoked our playback key (or they went out of business, the timed key is lost because it can no longer be renewed, and nobody knows what format the file is stored in), and the guy who tried to crack the file is currently serving a 500 year prison term for attempted circumvention. Have a nice day!"
phantom also fantom ( P ) (fntm)n.
1. Something apparently seen, heard, or sensed, but having no physical reality
2. An image that appears only in the mind; an illusion.
Apparently, the Segway is too gay even for San Francisco.
I won't touch Realplayer since they rolled out RealOne. Installing it is like dropping a bomb in your system...Its tentacles spread out and take over your box. Popups, beg screens, download managers, spyware, and association takeovers are par for the course, if I remember right (It's been awhile since I installed it last). I still use G2, at least it's a little more managable. And if the content requires RealOne, I just move right along.
Seems like when an organization is about dying off, they sue the hell out of everybody.
Like the RIAA/MPAA? (Putting on my hopeful face)
The same is true in California as well, and I daresay it is true in all states with sales tax. Theoretically, you need to send the tax of anything you purchased out of state to the government, but who does?
Now that the state goverments are a little strapped for cash they're starting to pay attention to this new potential source of income. But it's one thing to say "Tax the Internet!" but quite another to do it. Where will the burden of tax collection lie? With the seller? The buyer? The state? Taxation of interstate commerce (at least on an individual level) has been held back for exactly this reason...The logistics of who collects the tax and sends it to the appropriate state is a big problem. Most retailers don't want to bother with these complications, and their home states are letting them get away with it because the money isn't going into their pockets anyway. For instance, why should Texas spend money to enforce tax collection for California?
Now all we need is a pilotless government :)
I think this goes far beyond that. DirecTV's business model revolves around these cards. Remember they are the only thing standing between you and the content they are broadcasting. What this person did was steal documents detailing how they worked from a law firm he was employed at and released them to hackers. That sounds like corporate espionage to me.
Had this guy reverse engineered the P4 card on his own I would be pissed off over this, but this guy is nothing but an opportunist who violated the trust of his employer.
Your microwave consists of a whoop-ass transformer, a capacitor, and a magnetron. It also can't tell the difference between a 5lb hunk of meat and a taco.
If it could, what do you think the odds would be of it getting it right?
I've seen the Seven Dwarves naming scheme done once, but in my opinion it's not that scalable. (well, I guess it doesn't really need to be unless you run a datacenter) Besides that, a $10,000 box deserves a name better than "Dopey".
I've seen a lot of suggestions in this thread to include server names with spaces, but in my opionion putting spaces in server/workstation names is a cardinal sin, particularly when you have to reference the computer when messing with a CGI script or writing a program that depends on the name...I've gotten myself in to some big trouble with spaces in server names.
So, I name my boxen after characters from Greek myths. I like to name the servers loosely after the function they and the character would perform. For instance, Cerberus, the three headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades, could be my firewall. Hermes, the messenger of the gods, could be an SMTP/POP3 server. Athena, the goddess of wisdom, could be an SQL server or data repository. Sisyphus, the king who was punished by forever having to roll a rock up a hill, only to have it slip from his grasp just before he got it to the top, could be a test or debugging system.
And so it goes on, dozens to choose from, no annoying spaces, and cool names!
Make love, not war!
I use Windows as my desktop because X chugs too much, even with the accelerated nVidia drivers. X just doesn't make for a good desktop unless you are willing to spend a week trying to get it to work right. Not to mention I like to take in the occasional game every now and then, and given the choice between TuxRacer and GTA3...
:)
Also, as iterated before in this discussion, w2k and XP are pretty stable.
But then there's Linux. I use Linux because it's a rock solid server that I don't have to reboot every time software gets installed, a patch is released, or the IP needs to be changed. If it crashes (usually because I screwed something up), it's not some black hole that I have to guess what's wrong with it (Is it AD? The file system? The registry? Some rogue driver? The boot sector???)
As much as it might burn your ears to hear me say it, until X and its desktops evolve some more, my mantra will be "Windows on the desktop, Linux as the server". That is, unless otherwise dictated by corporate policy
Well, I wasn't saying that djbdns is perfect, but my overall impression is that it's less invasive than BIND. My biggest hangup with BIND was its huge size...all it's doing is DNS. How big does it really need to be? This is my impression, and I'm not saying BIND sucks, in fact it's a great DNS server and I've run several systems on it. It's just overkill for what I'm doing.
Used to run Bind9, but BIND seems to be suffering from the Microsoft bloat phenomenon. How many megs do you need for serving up DNS?? The BIND 9 decompressed tar file comes out to 2100+ files at 21MB. If I recall the installation process, it took forever to compile and then loaded the system with a bunch of superfluous directories and files. For more complicated installations with more exotic requirements than I have, maybe I can see using BIND9, but for my wimpy little web server that has maybe two or three A records to its name, there's no point, so I use djbdns.
I've been sitting behind a terminal on average for at least 5 hours a day for the last 18 years and have no problems, other than being slightly overweight :) I never get headaches, and sleep habits? I can pound three cans of Dew before bedtime and still sleep like a baby. I don't know what these "researchers" are smoking, but then again maybe some people are better suited for being planted behind a terminal than others.
Here's a better link from Wired, it has more technical meat and explains better why this technology is newsworthy.
Gamespy: The future is FPS!
Peter Molyneux: The future is god games! Lots of them!
*sigh* Doesn't anybody like adventure games anymore?
It has nothing to do with being elitist or "Holier than thou", it has to do with the fact that a) The name is dumb, and b) Most blogs ARE the product of 12-year-old girlie bloggers discussing the drab details of their lives. Does this mean that all blogs suck? No. In fact, your idea seems pretty cool. And hats off to you for referring to it as a "weblog". Blog just seems to have such a ... negative connotation.
....but it's hella fast :)
Here is a good article about that.
Anyone who's planning on moving soon (like me) could most definitely use some of this info.
Let's just bite the bullet and call it RMS/X11/Apache/GNU/Linux. Then we can continue to tag names onto it like a stock car, as every programmer who's programs are included with most distributions make a bid to have his name attached. Where does it end? Heck, this was even addressed by the FAQ, and what I got out of it was "We don't care about everyone else. We just want it called GNU/Linux".
Seriously, this is major hair-splitting. I don't think that anyone who uses Linux doesn't recognize that GNU has made a major contribution. Nobody says "Who's GNU?"
But I don't understand the reason for this FAQ. It looks like they are attacking Linux Torvalds for being an opportunist. Was it his decision to package GNU programs with the kernel? I thought that rested with the creators of the distributions. Regardless, isn't the whole point of the GNU project to provide these programs for exactly this purpose, and without strings attached? This comes off like renting a place for 15 years and then telling your landlord you own half the equity. GNU would just be another speedbump in free software land if it wasn't for the exposure that the explosive growth of Linux has given them. This is their bid to make sure that nobody makes the mistake of thinking Linus did it all himself. But in my opinion, they should call it even and stop whining. Nobody's going to start calling it GNU/Linux.
Aha, you would think so. But think about it for a minute...Wouldn't such a device, which is designed to convert digital to analog, and thus strip out any "do not record" flags that Hollywood is so fond of, be illegal under the DMCA? You can bet they're going to raise that argument. I really, really hope this happens. Here's why: If such devices are illegal, it would certainly force every couch potato in America to buy new sets. I don't think this will ever happen. If anything, it will bring to light what a horrible law the DMCA is. Hillary, Jack, and their paid off lapdogs in Congress can do as much celebrating as they want. They will sing a different tune when hordes of angry Survivor addicts beat down their doors wondering why they are being forced to buy new TVs that cost three times more than their old ones.
The thing is, the DMCA lives because Joe Average American hasn't been affected by it. Who cares if a few research scientists and hackers get thrown in the can because of it? But having to buy a new electronic babysitter when the old one is perfectly good, well that's another story altogether.
Ah yes. Let's sell this crippleware by telling the sheeple that it will protect them from viruses and hackers. No one will ever ask how LaGrande is supposed to be able to tell the difference between a virus and an unsigned program. Unless they made it so it was impossible to run unsigned programs...Draw your own conclusions.
Same old story. Compuserve tried to do the same thing with .GIF. MP3 is out of Fraunhofer's hands. It's pretty much defacto public domain. They can charge all the licence fees they want, but if they are to enforce it, I hope they have the money to sue the planet.
No joke, I was up at the restaurant show in the San Francisco convention center over the weekend and Pepsi was giving out 20oz bottles for free. Good thing too, because after the first sip I would have been _really_ ticked had I paid for it. After a second sip I couldn't stomach it anymore and the whole bottle went into the trash. I can't believe they're trying to sell this filth.