You might want to concider using the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC). Especially since your oggs already support FLAC "libOggFLAC and libOggFLAC++, which wrap the encoders and decoders of libFLAC and libFLAC++, respectively, to allow access to FLAC streams in an Ogg container" At just slightly over 2:1 compression it's enough to turn that uncompressed best-quality 2304 kbps (48khz stereo 24-bit).wav into a ~1220 kbps.ogg. Keep in mind that DVD-quality 1536 kbps (48khz stereo 16-bit) would reduce to ~814 Kbps, in a FLACed OGG. BTW where did you come up with 1024? CD quality is 1411 Kbps (~605kbps FLACed). just for fun, that's ~5916 hours of FLACed CD audio per 1.5 TB DVD. Just under 247 days worth of audio. Mathematically lossless Audio+video compression possibly in HD format could finally be realistically possible. At 63.1 Mbps (Hufyuv+FLACed 720x480 30 fps) you can fit ~50-55 hours of DVD resolution, lossless quality audio+video on the 1.5 TB dvd (depending on audio quality). 1920x1080 HDTV is 380Mbps so expect 8-9 hours of lossless full-resolution HDTV.
perhaps they were thinking of this? But seriously, eggs are seperated, and often the whites only or in some recipies both the whites and the yolks are called for. Some recipies may call for using the yolks in the batter while using the whites in the frosting. It just depends on the recipie of cake.
There is nothing special about 180-210MB (21-24 minute) 80 MM CD-r. They're industry standard. you can buy a 10 pack at wal-mart. But yes, DRM isn't needed, all that they need is to make absolutely sure that when 'images' are enhanced that the original remains available and untouched. Manipulating pictures with filters should never ever be the sole piece of evidence in a case. It should be just one of many pieces that leave no room for doubt.
How about another possibility? that microsoft actually manges to catch Almost all the in-house buffer overun problems but in by sloppy temp agency programmers, but that the ones that slip past are the minority? For instance in this particular case the buffer overflow is not found in windows media player, but only in explorer itself. So obviously the WMP code was checked better, and no overflow was left when checking the id3v2 tags. windows has a lot of code going into it, the more code that needs to be reviewed the more bugs that will slip past watchful eyes.
Which is what makes this exploit so important. A malicious virus could easily connect to gnutella or kazza and start replying to mp3 queries and claim 'oh i have that mp3' and only accept downloads for the 'start' of the mp3, and give them a bogus id3v2 tag, complete with self-propigating code. It then cuts off the user so they have to finish thier DL elsewhere, and they end up with a valid mp3 with an invalid id3v2 tag that auto-infects and self replicates.
Good thing there are patches out there... so we don't have to have a repeat situation like code-red of the various outlook virus. Doh, there were patches for almost all of those virus when they propigated too!
Windows XP constantly monitors all files writen to an local parition, or to a mounted network share. it will generate thumbnails in the background on 'new' image files (or try to, that features is broken, as it always tries to see if the file has changed, and somehow decideds the old thumbnails aren't good enough and makes new ones Very annoying when you have 1000 images in one directory on a slow HD -- the thumbs.db file is supposed to Eliminate the lag time in generating thumbnails on the fly isn't it?) the finder/WMP tool in windows also keeps a database of files, for finder it needs to open text files and id3 tags so you can search for files 'containing' whatever. it does this in the backrground, not on 'mouseover' it does it all the time. for WMP it adds the files to the 'media library' if it's in a directory you specified, but I suspect it keeps track of all media files, not just the ones you've told it to tell you it's monitoring. That's right With windows XP not only do you not have to open the folder you just have to finish downloading it -- and then windows goes "oh look a new file! let's see what we can monitor about it! *HD grinds as XP reads metadata*" if you want to disable the service that does this go to http://blkviper.com/ he lists all the XP services and what they do.
and hey 30 minutes ago The Highly reputable news organization The Inquirer also picked up this 'hot' lead. I mean come one they've had such wonderful articles as: Man walks up to Clawhammer, benchmarks it http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=4965 and Man sells last breath on Ebay http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=4456 an d Mad modder sticks a 1.2GHz Pentium III in his Commodore SX 64 http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=5959 and Jeans to prevent mobile phones frying your nadgers http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=5389
"Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy." We could all be using a 200 KHz 60,000 instruction per second, 16K of adressable memory 8008 CPU!!! 16K is enough for anyone, maybe? I'm sorry but in 30 years when computers come with 47,906 THz processors and 1024 TB of RAM I really really don't think a P-4 3.06 GHz with 4 GB of ram is going to be satisfying.
That might have worked at one time. but now to 'retrieve' a forgotten password you have to know one or two of the following: Your forgotten password hint (usually from choices like mother's maiden name, pet's name, city of birth etc..) and if they have it things like your home mailing address, or bank account or credit card number, possibly your SSN. In the case of paypay, you need to know 2 + they will only send to the e-mail you set up when you knew the password. I'm not sure how much hotmail requires, but I know they have a 'password hint' at a minimum to be 'mailed' your replacement password. yup, you can be signed up for Hotmail/paypal/yahoo/ebay spam from any one and even though it's coming to your e-mail account you can't stop it, because you can't possibly know the password hints/personal information.
Money talks, but only when people are aware of what's going on. True, anyone who's shopped at sears or radio shack is well aware of the harvesting of personal info. Still, this sounds like a potential buisness opportunity. Providing valid fake apartment numbers and valid fake telephone numbers via extentions. "don't want those 'special offers' from local retailers? fed up with fliers being delivered to your home address? Valid Fake Address makes sure you never have to give out your home phone of apartment number again... Our low introductry subscription rate is only $1.99 a month!" Slashdot users wishing to franchise a local VFA business can contact me on aim just add 21 to the end of my slashdot id for franchise/pricing information.
That would be what the solar powered motors would be there for. These are also flying above the jetstream. It's not perfectly calm up there, but at that height you can get blown a few miles off course and noone should suffer an interupt in services, just as long as you can fly back to the center of your zone. they're also designed to stay up there for only a year at a time, before coming down for servicing. most of the equiplent can be recycled, but for saftey reasons they would want to replace the parts that take the most wear and tear. Oh, and being round helps too -- remember the payload rides Inside the sphere. being a near-perfect sphere they have the least possible wind drag from any direction in a lighter-than-airship. remember wind is unpredictable, which is why a cigar shaped airship has such a hard time in wind -- it can only handle winds head or tail on. any other direction and it's causing more turbulence than can be handled for precise handling. Yes these will work, and they're a great idea. the millitary is also interested in these for deploying the benefits of a satelite over the battlefield without the cost, and with 365 times the flight duration of strotospheric planes.
They use it for the little ad banners in the channel change pop-up, and for the ad bar in the menu guide. But as far as I know, they are NOT able to change your channel. They can change the channels you're allowed to view with a simple signal to the box, too. And to think, they expect people to pay $5 a month to rent a little box that serves up Ads and engages in targeted advertising.
True, but you make it harder for less sophisticated scamers. As it is now, some sophisticated criminal could take advantage of less intelligent ones, by having them run this relatively simple E-bay COD scam. They'd take a percentage, and if the patsy got caught they wouldn't know enough about you (maybe) to finger you... If you don't even need a fake ID it's far too simple. At least requiring a Good fake-id adds perhaps a hundred dollar fee to get one that doesn't look fake. if they have to use a new one for every crime, they'd have a hard time making any money at all! Remember, if they're liquidating the Laptop same-day they're probablly getting $600 at most, especially if they're using some place that doesn't care if they really own it. yes, it can still be done. but it still would make a minor improvement.
I guess they should start requiring a quick Scan of a Valid state driver license for CODs -- when payment is not by cash. At least then they'd have a scan of all the data on the drivers license/State ID Card (for people who don't drive) to turn over to the victims/police.
This is probablly the best time to unlicense spectrum. All the telcos are hurting, and unless they really feel this is a threat lobbying against it would be a waste of money they need right now. Pretty much what it sounds like the spectrum would actually get used for is say, products like video baby monitors, or the drive-thru at the local fast food. and not really on products that directly compete with the telcos at all. even though the spectrum could be used to deploy a local 2-way ISP, like you pointed out, the problem with that is in providing the towers to operate the network. unless you can convince your early adopter crowd to site the WAN repeaters on thier property it's going to cost too much money to compete. so basically, anywhere that hasn't already been served by wireless broadband providers probablly won't be just by unlicensing this spectrum. due to a lack of demand, or due to the high cost of competing with the entrenched broadband offerings.
The major proponets of DRM have used the phrase "keeping honest people honest." This is so far from the truth that it should be "Making honest people Crooks." I don't need to remind slashdot readers about napster. Before intervention, CD sales were booming, After action to shut them down (before the recession even) CD sales immediately see a drop. So why is this? How do countries in asia manage to have cinema or software stores when pirate releases are available for $1? The truth of the matter is this. Honest people will justify illigitimate sources of material by _Buying_ the material they find to be the best, as much as they can afford. On the other hand, we have DRM, DRM makes you a 'crook' if you try to make a copy of your friend's wedding DVD. You, as an End user CANNOT burn a DVD-r that can be copied. The drives are and software have been crippled, so that even if the encryption were broken, and someone burned a commercial DVD to DVD-r and sold it to someone else that person wouldn't have the slighetst clue how to make a copy of the illigitimate copy. So as a side effect, when you send out a DVD of your own wedding, it carries copy-protection flags, and can only be viewed, and never used to make a copy, without the same knowledge needed to make a copy of a holywood block buster. Not to mention that 'honest' users feel they OWN anything they buy(as opposed to 'renting'), and they feel entitled to the right to copy it for thier own archival use. So an 'honest' user would find themselves force to become a 'criminal' because of DRM to do what they felt were 'legitimate' uses. If those users then start to look into the matter, it's quite logical that they could become Angry, and upset at the media industry. which Turns a 'honest' user into a Criminal. DRM... Making honest people criminals... Oh and for what it's worth, in eastern philosophy it is common for intelectual property to be viewed as belonging not to any individual or group, but rather to society at general. So, realistically Asia isn't a land full of 'dishonest' pirates, but rather people who justify IP 'theft' by the principal that all IP belongs to everyone, and cannot be owned, reguardless of what the law says. This parallels very well with moonshiners justifying thier actions by believing that revenuers are evil... and america has a 200+ year history (since the tax on distilled liquor started) of moonshining. So it's pretty clear that these kind of philosphies don't get rooted out. Not with DRM, not by sending armed police with the revenuers, and certainly not with laws. The only way to win is to be more attractive to consumers than the alternative. If you do that, it doesn't matter what price the inferior product is available at, most people just won't use it, especially if they feel strongly that it is unethical to do so.
Minor correction. the 14.6666...% is a 1/6.8181818181818181... when expressed fractionally It took me a while to realize what fraction it was, manually.
why 14.6666...% what's wrong with 12.5% (1/8th size) or 16.66666...% (1/6th size) What's with the somwhere between 1/7th and 1/6th size, closer to 1/7th so that a lossy image becomes lossier? wouldn't you want an even number of pixels to be used in resizing? and since the images are 1600x1200 resolution you shouldn't use a multiple of 3 either. They're only both evenly divsible by multiples of 2. eg: 1/2 800x600; 1/4 400x300; 1/8th 200x150 both of the options you choose result in odd sized pixel conversions. 1/6.814...ths 300x199; 1/3rd 533x400. I'm just curious. Did you base these on the resolution of the sensor in the sony cybershot hemos used (apparently a 2 megapixel model, or one set to 2 megapixel mode) or did you just like the final output sizes better?
If you have windows XP, save one of the original images to Disk, right click on the saved image, choose properties, choose the summary tab, choose advanced tab. All modern digital cameras generate a slew of useful tags like Camera Model, Color reperesentation, Shutter speed, the Lens aperature, if flash was used, the F-stop, Exposure time, and even a date stamp of when the photo was taken by the camera. In Hemos' case (thoughfulrob.jpg) the camera in question is a Sony Cybershot using sRGB color reperesentation, no flash was used, focal length was 7 mm, with a F/2, exposure time was 1/30th a second, using ISO speed 320, and the picture was taken 08/12/2002 (apparently in DD/MM/YYYY format.) Hope this helped.
True, but there is a one armed bandit or a seat at a gaming table in a casino with the name 'Hemos' stamped all over it. The wedding Was in Vegas, after all.
That is the DSL myth. Most people in the united states Live within 2 miles of the telco's switching station. This is because the telco has redundant copper loops, even if the 'old' loop is too far away, often, one or more of the redundant loops were put in later, as part of regulation of the telephone industry. Most of the US population is capable of being switched over to DSL, because it is cheaper for the telephone company to have multiple locations that are spaced out for the swtitching stations. Even the routing station under the world trade center only routed somewhere between 1/4 to 1/2 the islands land lines. It doesn't make sense to run 25 miles of copper and cover an entire city with one switching center. So realistically about 75-90% of city/suburb dwellers are within 2 miles of the local switching center, while far fewer rural residents are. and considering that 90-95% of the population live in non-rural areas, it's pretty clear that well over half of america is theoretically within DSL coverage areas. What is hindering DSL adoption is that the telcos are incapable of telling a customer what it would cost to have DSL service, much less it they're in the 85-90% of the country that is theoretically DSL capable. I've seen DSL lines offering flat 64 killobits/second for $10 a month, but since you then have to pay the telco $10 a month, and then have to pay setup and equipment fees, to both the ISP and telco, it makes it unworth the hassle to most people. Hopefully 256kbit DSL and deals like 'MSN Broadband' deals that provide equipment and waive fees will help more people decide to get broadband, but as long as the telcos are standing in the way (and they are, both through incompetance and perhaps intentional sabatoge) it will be hard for people who want DSL to get it.
It depends, really, I mean sure, most people couldn't afford an oc-192 hooked up in the utility room or whatever, but if a a group of hotels with a (total of) 3000 room capacity can afford one, when only a Minority of buisness travelers are demanding high-speed internet in their rooms it can't be That astronomically expensive, that someone living on a lake shore absolutely couldn't afford the equipment. And remember you could have started a buisness. solicit the neighbors to join a Neighborhood network, at 100 megabit, with internet access at the same speed. With an OC-192 you could hook up 10 gigabit 10 port 100mbit switches to provide 99 neighbors with dedicate 100 mbit internet, and still have 170 Mbit/s left over for yourself. If you're in the right neighboorhood you could make some money. Considering it was 5 years ago, he could have started a web hosting services company, and the pipe would be big enough to handle a slashdotting, as long as the servers were too. 5 years ago there would have been plenty of venture capital, too.
Where is the -1 wrong when you need it... "Someone always owns everything, nothing of value is unowned." Not even remotely close to true. you don't have to go to mars or even the moon to find vast stretches of land that is unowned, just sail 14 miles off the coast, and viola you're there... vast quantities (2/3rds the surface of the earth) unowned, unless somone has managed to strike an oil deposit, and put up an off-shore oil rig. it's more than likely declared as international waters, meaning that it doesn't belong to anyone at all, despite the intrinsic value that is has. And even on land, there are vast stretches of land that are for all practical purposes unowned. since squatter laws allow a citizen who improves the value of the land to claim ownership. Also, keep in mind that america has more houses available than we have people to live in them, because banks tend to sit on properties they aquire if they can't make a profit selling them. So while this isn't the case with dark fiber yet, it's entirely possible that banks will end up holding on to dark fiber until the telcos find they have need for it, and at which point they might be unwilling to sell it at a price the telcos are willing to pay, at which point it will be wasted, just like up to 20% of houses are in some US cities.
They are though. if DSL were 'too easy' to get they'd risk loosing out on the lucrative 'teen line' market which has already eroded due to the increased availability of cell phones. Since the teenagers are the ones using the internet the most, they're the ones tying up the main line if dial-up is being used, and causing the parents to consider buying a second phone line, for the computer to use. And remember the dial-up ISPs are buying phone lines to hook up to thier equipment at wholesale rates too, which includes a profit margin for the telco. Meanwhile the telco has to buy expensive hardware to convert lines to DSL capability, and consumers are mainly unwilling to pay a huge fee for the DSL, since they want it to be as cheap or cheaper as having a second line + dialup to go with DSL service, or else they will 'make due' with dial-up service. So do the math the telco is making $44 a month for a dial-up user who chooses to buy a dedicated line, but $32 a month for a DSL subscriber, and has a higher expense for a DSL customer than a 2-line analog subscriber. (these numbers are a case in point with Qwest DSL service.) True, if they can convince a single-line home to go to DSL they're making an extra $10 a month in income, but they're still looking at 1-2 years before they break even on that DSL customer over the cost of equipment. So they TELL all customer "We'd need to send a tech out to check the line" (which costs the customer $50-75) Because they can make an extra $15-$30 profit and have a shorter time to a break-even point, while effectively discouraging people from getting DSL in the first place. I certainly wasn't willing to spend $75 to Find out if I could get DSL, not even to have it all hooked up, that was $150+ equipment costs. Even if they know a user is within range for DSL they won't tell you over the phone (even if your neighbors already have DSL) that you can get DSL, without having the line checked. So yes, at least One Evil telco IS preventing people from getting DSL. Fortunately, to get cable modem service all you do is buy a modem from an authorized reseller (or lease one from the cable company) and follow the setup guide the authorized resellers have to give you when they sell you the cable modem. They don't test your line, the cable modem does that, if the line is sub-par the cable company gets feedback from the modem itself, and can send out a tech to resolve the issue. The reason why cable modem is so much easier to get than DSL is because cable companies don't loose any money if people move from dial-up to cable modem. And they also have a lot of infrastructure they built up in the 90s that they're itching to use for 2-way cable services, like cable modem. So the telcos prefer the status quo, while the cable companies are itching to use infrstructure they started rolling out a decade ago.
I'd just like to make one point.. I realize that 1 mbit capable copper is hard to find... But most people looking at moving to get DSL are looking at 256kbit plans, because ~$20-$30 a month == cheaper than dialup on a dedicated phone line. 256kbit DSL isn't particularly fast, as far as what DSL is capable of, but it's such a quantum leap ahead of dial-up that almost anyone who knows how slow dialup is would be willing to pay such a small premium for the advantages. But as you said, the telco is really trying to discourage DSL customers. I wanted DSL service, but the telco couldn't or wouldn't give me a straight answer on if my line qualified. They wanted me to pay $50-75 out of pocket to have them send a tech out with equipment to determine if my line could be used for DSL. Eventually I just went with cable modem, because of the hassle. My sister recently went to DSL, and she had the same problem with a runaround from the telco, but her neighbor works for the local telco, and Told her she would be able to get DSL. Even though they couldn't (or wouldn't) tell her that over the phone. Another thing to remember is that the reason the telco is discouraging the advancment of DSL is two fold. dial-up ISPs have to lease a large amount or phone line space in oreder to service customers, and the most active dial-up customers might end up buying a dedicated residential line, unless they use a cell-phone as thier primary line . So in effect the telcos are looking at loosing lucrative extra line revenue if there is widespread adoption of DSL/broadband. A market already hit hard by cell-phones. On the other hand, if they don't offer DSL they could loose residential customers to cable modem/cell-phone combos. I know that I have no need for a land line anymore. Since it's illegal to prevent a telelphone line from being able to dial 911 in an emergency, even if the person is unwilling/unable to pay for a phone line. Also, it's interesting you bring up internet telephony, because the largest user of the technology are actually cellular telephone companies. Which is why you see 'free long distance' on so many cell phone plans.
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You might want to concider using the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC). .wav into a ~1220 kbps .ogg. Keep in mind that DVD-quality 1536 kbps (48khz stereo 16-bit) would reduce to ~814 Kbps, in a FLACed OGG. BTW where did you come up with 1024? CD quality is 1411 Kbps (~605kbps FLACed).
Especially since your oggs already support FLAC
"libOggFLAC and libOggFLAC++, which wrap the encoders and decoders of libFLAC and libFLAC++, respectively, to allow access to FLAC streams in an Ogg container"
At just slightly over 2:1 compression it's enough to turn that uncompressed best-quality 2304 kbps (48khz stereo 24-bit)
just for fun, that's ~5916 hours of FLACed CD audio per 1.5 TB DVD. Just under 247 days worth of audio. Mathematically lossless Audio+video compression possibly in HD format could finally be realistically possible. At 63.1 Mbps (Hufyuv+FLACed 720x480 30 fps) you can fit ~50-55 hours of DVD resolution, lossless quality audio+video on the 1.5 TB dvd (depending on audio quality). 1920x1080 HDTV is 380Mbps so expect 8-9 hours of lossless full-resolution HDTV.
perhaps they were thinking of this?
But seriously, eggs are seperated, and often the whites only or in some recipies both the whites and the yolks are called for. Some recipies may call for using the yolks in the batter while using the whites in the frosting. It just depends on the recipie of cake.
There is nothing special about 180-210MB (21-24 minute) 80 MM CD-r. They're industry standard. you can buy a 10 pack at wal-mart.
But yes, DRM isn't needed, all that they need is to make absolutely sure that when 'images' are enhanced that the original remains available and untouched.
Manipulating pictures with filters should never ever be the sole piece of evidence in a case. It should be just one of many pieces that leave no room for doubt.
How about another possibility? that microsoft actually manges to catch Almost all the in-house buffer overun problems but in by sloppy temp agency programmers, but that the ones that slip past are the minority?
For instance in this particular case the buffer overflow is not found in windows media player, but only in explorer itself. So obviously the WMP code was checked better, and no overflow was left when checking the id3v2 tags. windows has a lot of code going into it, the more code that needs to be reviewed the more bugs that will slip past watchful eyes.
Which is what makes this exploit so important. A malicious virus could easily connect to gnutella or kazza and start replying to mp3 queries and claim 'oh i have that mp3' and only accept downloads for the 'start' of the mp3, and give them a bogus id3v2 tag, complete with self-propigating code. It then cuts off the user so they have to finish thier DL elsewhere, and they end up with a valid mp3 with an invalid id3v2 tag that auto-infects and self replicates.
Good thing there are patches out there... so we don't have to have a repeat situation like code-red of the various outlook virus. Doh, there were patches for almost all of those virus when they propigated too!
Windows XP constantly monitors all files writen to an local parition, or to a mounted network share.
it will generate thumbnails in the background on 'new' image files (or try to, that features is broken, as it always tries to see if the file has changed, and somehow decideds the old thumbnails aren't good enough and makes new ones Very annoying when you have 1000 images in one directory on a slow HD -- the thumbs.db file is supposed to Eliminate the lag time in generating thumbnails on the fly isn't it?) the finder/WMP tool in windows also keeps a database of files, for finder it needs to open text files and id3 tags so you can search for files 'containing' whatever. it does this in the backrground, not on 'mouseover' it does it all the time. for WMP it adds the files to the 'media library' if it's in a directory you specified, but I suspect it keeps track of all media files, not just the ones you've told it to tell you it's monitoring.
That's right With windows XP not only do you not have to open the folder you just have to finish downloading it -- and then windows goes "oh look a new file! let's see what we can monitor about it! *HD grinds as XP reads metadata*"
if you want to disable the service that does this go to http://blkviper.com/ he lists all the XP services and what they do.
and hey 30 minutes ago The Highly reputable news organization The Inquirer also picked up this 'hot' lead. n d
I mean come one they've had such wonderful articles as:
Man walks up to Clawhammer, benchmarks it
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=4965
and
Man sells last breath on Ebay
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=4456
a
Mad modder sticks a 1.2GHz Pentium III in his Commodore SX 64
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=5959
and
Jeans to prevent mobile phones frying your nadgers
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=5389
"Now if only computer manufacturers could make equipment even remotely this sturdy."
We could all be using a 200 KHz 60,000 instruction per second, 16K of adressable memory 8008 CPU!!!
16K is enough for anyone, maybe?
I'm sorry but in 30 years when computers come with 47,906 THz processors and 1024 TB of RAM I really really don't think a P-4 3.06 GHz with 4 GB of ram is going to be satisfying.
That might have worked at one time. but now to 'retrieve' a forgotten password you have to know one or two of the following: Your forgotten password hint (usually from choices like mother's maiden name, pet's name, city of birth etc..) and if they have it things like your home mailing address, or bank account or credit card number, possibly your SSN. /ebay spam from any one and even though it's coming to your e-mail account you can't stop it, because you can't possibly know the password hints/personal information.
In the case of paypay, you need to know 2 + they will only send to the e-mail you set up when you knew the password. I'm not sure how much hotmail requires, but I know they have a 'password hint' at a minimum to be 'mailed' your replacement password.
yup, you can be signed up for Hotmail/paypal/yahoo
Money talks, but only when people are aware of what's going on. True, anyone who's shopped at sears or radio shack is well aware of the harvesting of personal info.
Still, this sounds like a potential buisness opportunity. Providing valid fake apartment numbers and valid fake telephone numbers via extentions.
"don't want those 'special offers' from local retailers? fed up with fliers being delivered to your home address? Valid Fake Address makes sure you never have to give out your home phone of apartment number again... Our low introductry subscription rate is only $1.99 a month!"
Slashdot users wishing to franchise a local VFA business can contact me on aim just add 21 to the end of my slashdot id for franchise/pricing information.
That would be what the solar powered motors would be there for. These are also flying above the jetstream. It's not perfectly calm up there, but at that height you can get blown a few miles off course and noone should suffer an interupt in services, just as long as you can fly back to the center of your zone. they're also designed to stay up there for only a year at a time, before coming down for servicing. most of the equiplent can be recycled, but for saftey reasons they would want to replace the parts that take the most wear and tear. Oh, and being round helps too -- remember the payload rides Inside the sphere. being a near-perfect sphere they have the least possible wind drag from any direction in a lighter-than-airship. remember wind is unpredictable, which is why a cigar shaped airship has such a hard time in wind -- it can only handle winds head or tail on. any other direction and it's causing more turbulence than can be handled for precise handling.
Yes these will work, and they're a great idea.
the millitary is also interested in these for deploying the benefits of a satelite over the battlefield without the cost, and with 365 times the flight duration of strotospheric planes.
They use it for the little ad banners in the channel change pop-up, and for the ad bar in the menu guide.
But as far as I know, they are NOT able to change your channel. They can change the channels you're allowed to view with a simple signal to the box, too.
And to think, they expect people to pay $5 a month to rent a little box that serves up Ads and engages in targeted advertising.
True, but you make it harder for less sophisticated scamers. As it is now, some sophisticated criminal could take advantage of less intelligent ones, by having them run this relatively simple E-bay COD scam. They'd take a percentage, and if the patsy got caught they wouldn't know enough about you (maybe) to finger you... If you don't even need a fake ID it's far too simple. At least requiring a Good fake-id adds perhaps a hundred dollar fee to get one that doesn't look fake. if they have to use a new one for every crime, they'd have a hard time making any money at all!
Remember, if they're liquidating the Laptop same-day they're probablly getting $600 at most, especially if they're using some place that doesn't care if they really own it. yes, it can still be done. but it still would make a minor improvement.
I guess they should start requiring a quick Scan of a Valid state driver license for CODs -- when payment is not by cash. At least then they'd have a scan of all the data on the drivers license/State ID Card (for people who don't drive) to turn over to the victims/police.
This is probablly the best time to unlicense spectrum. All the telcos are hurting, and unless they really feel this is a threat lobbying against it would be a waste of money they need right now.
Pretty much what it sounds like the spectrum would actually get used for is say, products like video baby monitors, or the drive-thru at the local fast food. and not really on products that directly compete with the telcos at all. even though the spectrum could be used to deploy a local 2-way ISP, like you pointed out, the problem with that is in providing the towers to operate the network.
unless you can convince your early adopter crowd to site the WAN repeaters on thier property it's going to cost too much money to compete.
so basically, anywhere that hasn't already been served by wireless broadband providers probablly won't be just by unlicensing this spectrum. due to a lack of demand, or due to the high cost of competing with the entrenched broadband offerings.
The major proponets of DRM have used the phrase "keeping honest people honest." This is so far from the truth that it should be "Making honest people Crooks." I don't need to remind slashdot readers about napster. Before intervention, CD sales were booming, After action to shut them down (before the recession even) CD sales immediately see a drop. So why is this? How do countries in asia manage to have cinema or software stores when pirate releases are available for $1? The truth of the matter is this. Honest people will justify illigitimate sources of material by _Buying_ the material they find to be the best, as much as they can afford. On the other hand, we have DRM, DRM makes you a 'crook' if you try to make a copy of your friend's wedding DVD. You, as an End user CANNOT burn a DVD-r that can be copied. The drives are and software have been crippled, so that even if the encryption were broken, and someone burned a commercial DVD to DVD-r and sold it to someone else that person wouldn't have the slighetst clue how to make a copy of the illigitimate copy. ..
So as a side effect, when you send out a DVD of your own wedding, it carries copy-protection flags, and can only be viewed, and never used to make a copy, without the same knowledge needed to make a copy of a holywood block buster.
Not to mention that 'honest' users feel they OWN anything they buy(as opposed to 'renting'), and they feel entitled to the right to copy it for thier own archival use. So an 'honest' user would find themselves force to become a 'criminal' because of DRM to do what they felt were 'legitimate' uses. If those users then start to look into the matter, it's quite logical that they could become Angry, and upset at the media industry. which Turns a 'honest' user into a Criminal. DRM... Making honest people criminals.
Oh and for what it's worth, in eastern philosophy it is common for intelectual property to be viewed as belonging not to any individual or group, but rather to society at general. So, realistically Asia isn't a land full of 'dishonest' pirates, but rather people who justify IP 'theft' by the principal that all IP belongs to everyone, and cannot be owned, reguardless of what the law says.
This parallels very well with moonshiners justifying thier actions by believing that revenuers are evil... and america has a 200+ year history (since the tax on distilled liquor started) of moonshining. So it's pretty clear that these kind of philosphies don't get rooted out. Not with DRM, not by sending armed police with the revenuers, and certainly not with laws.
The only way to win is to be more attractive to consumers than the alternative. If you do that, it doesn't matter what price the inferior product is available at, most people just won't use it, especially if they feel strongly that it is unethical to do so.
Minor correction. the 14.6666...% is a 1/6.8181818181818181... when expressed fractionally It took me a while to realize what fraction it was, manually.
why 14.6666...%
what's wrong with 12.5% (1/8th size) or 16.66666...% (1/6th size) What's with the somwhere between 1/7th and 1/6th size, closer to 1/7th so that a lossy image becomes lossier? wouldn't you want an even number of pixels to be used in resizing?
and since the images are 1600x1200 resolution you shouldn't use a multiple of 3 either. They're only both evenly divsible by multiples of 2. eg: 1/2 800x600; 1/4 400x300; 1/8th 200x150
both of the options you choose result in odd sized pixel conversions. 1/6.814...ths 300x199; 1/3rd 533x400.
I'm just curious. Did you base these on the resolution of the sensor in the sony cybershot hemos used (apparently a 2 megapixel model, or one set to 2 megapixel mode) or did you just like the final output sizes better?
If you have windows XP, save one of the original images to Disk, right click on the saved image, choose properties, choose the summary tab, choose advanced tab. All modern digital cameras generate a slew of useful tags like Camera Model, Color reperesentation, Shutter speed, the Lens aperature, if flash was used, the F-stop, Exposure time, and even a date stamp of when the photo was taken by the camera.
In Hemos' case (thoughfulrob.jpg) the camera in question is a Sony Cybershot using sRGB color reperesentation, no flash was used, focal length was 7 mm, with a F/2, exposure time was 1/30th a second, using ISO speed 320, and the picture was taken 08/12/2002 (apparently in DD/MM/YYYY format.)
Hope this helped.
True, but there is a one armed bandit or a seat at a gaming table in a casino with the name 'Hemos' stamped all over it. The wedding Was in Vegas, after all.
That is the DSL myth. Most people in the united states Live within 2 miles of the telco's switching station. This is because the telco has redundant copper loops, even if the 'old' loop is too far away, often, one or more of the redundant loops were put in later, as part of regulation of the telephone industry. Most of the US population is capable of being switched over to DSL, because it is cheaper for the telephone company to have multiple locations that are spaced out for the swtitching stations. Even the routing station under the world trade center only routed somewhere between 1/4 to 1/2 the islands land lines. It doesn't make sense to run 25 miles of copper and cover an entire city with one switching center. So realistically about 75-90% of city/suburb dwellers are within 2 miles of the local switching center, while far fewer rural residents are. and considering that 90-95% of the population live in non-rural areas, it's pretty clear that well over half of america is theoretically within DSL coverage areas.
What is hindering DSL adoption is that the telcos are incapable of telling a customer what it would cost to have DSL service, much less it they're in the 85-90% of the country that is theoretically DSL capable.
I've seen DSL lines offering flat 64 killobits/second for $10 a month, but since you then have to pay the telco $10 a month, and then have to pay setup and equipment fees, to both the ISP and telco, it makes it unworth the hassle to most people.
Hopefully 256kbit DSL and deals like 'MSN Broadband' deals that provide equipment and waive fees will help more people decide to get broadband, but as long as the telcos are standing in the way (and they are, both through incompetance and perhaps intentional sabatoge) it will be hard for people who want DSL to get it.
It depends, really, I mean sure, most people couldn't afford an oc-192 hooked up in the utility room or whatever, but if a a group of hotels with a (total of) 3000 room capacity can afford one, when only a Minority of buisness travelers are demanding high-speed internet in their rooms it can't be That astronomically expensive, that someone living on a lake shore absolutely couldn't afford the equipment.
And remember you could have started a buisness.
solicit the neighbors to join a Neighborhood network, at 100 megabit, with internet access at the same speed. With an OC-192 you could hook up 10 gigabit 10 port 100mbit switches to provide
99 neighbors with dedicate 100 mbit internet, and still have 170 Mbit/s left over for yourself. If you're in the right neighboorhood you could make some money.
Considering it was 5 years ago, he could have started a web hosting services company, and the pipe would be big enough to handle a slashdotting, as long as the servers were too. 5 years ago there would have been plenty of venture capital, too.
Where is the -1 wrong when you need it...
"Someone always owns everything, nothing of value is unowned."
Not even remotely close to true. you don't have to go to mars or even the moon to find vast stretches of land that is unowned, just sail 14 miles off the coast, and viola you're there... vast quantities (2/3rds the surface of the earth) unowned, unless somone has managed to strike an oil deposit, and put up an off-shore oil rig. it's more than likely declared as international waters, meaning that it doesn't belong to anyone at all, despite the intrinsic value that is has.
And even on land, there are vast stretches of land that are for all practical purposes unowned. since squatter laws allow a citizen who improves the value of the land to claim ownership.
Also, keep in mind that america has more houses available than we have people to live in them, because banks tend to sit on properties they aquire if they can't make a profit selling them. So while this isn't the case with dark fiber yet, it's entirely possible that banks will end up holding on to dark fiber until the telcos find they have need for it, and at which point they might be unwilling to sell it at a price the telcos are willing to pay, at which point it will be wasted, just like up to 20% of houses are in some US cities.
They are though. if DSL were 'too easy' to get they'd risk loosing out on the lucrative 'teen line' market which has already eroded due to the increased availability of cell phones. Since the teenagers are the ones using the internet the most, they're the ones tying up the main line if dial-up is being used, and causing the parents to consider buying a second phone line, for the computer to use.
And remember the dial-up ISPs are buying phone lines to hook up to thier equipment at wholesale rates too, which includes a profit margin for the telco.
Meanwhile the telco has to buy expensive hardware to convert lines to DSL capability, and consumers are mainly unwilling to pay a huge fee for the DSL, since they want it to be as cheap or cheaper as having a second line + dialup to go with DSL service, or else they will 'make due' with dial-up service.
So do the math the telco is making $44 a month for a dial-up user who chooses to buy a dedicated line, but $32 a month for a DSL subscriber, and has a higher expense for a DSL customer than a 2-line analog subscriber. (these numbers are a case in point with Qwest DSL service.)
True, if they can convince a single-line home to go to DSL they're making an extra $10 a month in income, but they're still looking at 1-2 years before they break even on that DSL customer over the cost of equipment. So they TELL all customer "We'd need to send a tech out to check the line" (which costs the customer $50-75) Because they can make an extra $15-$30 profit and have a shorter time to a break-even point, while effectively discouraging people from getting DSL in the first place. I certainly wasn't willing to spend $75 to Find out if I could get DSL, not even to have it all hooked up, that was $150+ equipment costs.
Even if they know a user is within range for DSL they won't tell you over the phone (even if your neighbors already have DSL) that you can get DSL, without having the line checked.
So yes, at least One Evil telco IS preventing people from getting DSL. Fortunately, to get cable modem service all you do is buy a modem from an authorized reseller (or lease one from the cable company) and follow the setup guide the authorized resellers have to give you when they sell you the cable modem.
They don't test your line, the cable modem does that, if the line is sub-par the cable company gets feedback from the modem itself, and can send out a tech to resolve the issue.
The reason why cable modem is so much easier to get than DSL is because cable companies don't loose any money if people move from dial-up to cable modem. And they also have a lot of infrastructure they built up in the 90s that they're itching to use for 2-way cable services, like cable modem. So the telcos prefer the status quo, while the cable companies are itching to use infrstructure they started rolling out a decade ago.
I'd just like to make one point.. I realize that 1 mbit capable copper is hard to find... But most people looking at moving to get DSL are looking at 256kbit plans, because ~$20-$30 a month == cheaper than dialup on a dedicated phone line.
256kbit DSL isn't particularly fast, as far as what DSL is capable of, but it's such a quantum leap ahead of dial-up that almost anyone who knows how slow dialup is would be willing to pay such a small premium for the advantages.
But as you said, the telco is really trying to discourage DSL customers. I wanted DSL service, but the telco couldn't or wouldn't give me a straight answer on if my line qualified. They wanted me to pay $50-75 out of pocket to have them send a tech out with equipment to determine if my line could be used for DSL. Eventually I just went with cable modem, because of the hassle.
My sister recently went to DSL, and she had the same problem with a runaround from the telco, but her neighbor works for the local telco, and Told her she would be able to get DSL. Even though they couldn't (or wouldn't) tell her that over the phone.
Another thing to remember is that the reason the telco is discouraging the advancment of DSL is two fold. dial-up ISPs have to lease a large amount or phone line space in oreder to service customers, and the most active dial-up customers might end up buying a dedicated residential line, unless they use a cell-phone as thier primary line . So in effect the telcos are looking at loosing lucrative extra line revenue if there is widespread adoption of DSL/broadband. A market already hit hard by cell-phones.
On the other hand, if they don't offer DSL they could loose residential customers to cable modem/cell-phone combos. I know that I have no need for a land line anymore. Since it's illegal to prevent a telelphone line from being able to dial 911 in an emergency, even if the person is unwilling/unable to pay for a phone line.
Also, it's interesting you bring up internet telephony, because the largest user of the technology are actually cellular telephone companies. Which is why you see 'free long distance' on so many cell phone plans.