The other reason of course is that as soon as a "encrypted CD -> mp3 ripper" is created (and you know it will) they can prosecute users of this under the DCMA. The RIAA of course, having their own herd of lawyers, can afford to do this, while most users don't have gobs of money and will simply buckle. You'll note that the User is not who the RIAA cares about. They are basically saying 'fuck the user, let him lick our nut-sweat' or something similar. They only care about profit and control.
Linus Torvalds actually has great commentary on this whole state of things in his book just for fun, and he talks about how the RIAA and their predessesors have been doing this since cassette tapes were invented, and before. Hey, why let the user get the music that THEY WANT when we can force them to buy the albums we want them to buy and not give them the choice.
</rant>
Sorry, I'm a little steamed at this whole thing.
A browser plugin. Have it put a little button beside every banner ad that says 'this ad sucks' and when clicked, it automatically sends emails to the ad agency and advertiser telling them just that. This is negative feedback. A 'this ad doesn't suck' button would be the opposite, something that can be clicked instead of or as well as, clicking the ad. It should be ad specific as well... thinkgeek has some really good, unobtrusive and polite ads, and some of the standard 'if we flash it fast enough they'll click!' ads.
So who wants to start writing it? Maybe even a little app you just drag an ad link to from your browser...
An interesting thing I noticed that was quoted of Marissa Gluck was that they were trying to "emulate television" by having a short spot before a news broadcast (or similar anaology).
Had to break it to you, but this is the net, not television! Why are you trying to shoe-horn advertising methods invented 30+ years ago into the new technology of today? Why try to continue on with the same old shit of "barrage the customers with flashing graphics and maybe they'll buy something." Actually, the stupidity is multi-tiered. The Companies using the advertising agency are convinced that if enough people see their ads they'll get more sales (sadly the argument is that this is true) and the advertising company wants to do everything it can to stick the ad in front of your face so it can tell the companies that they are advertising for that they got X click throughs or Y impressions.
Last time I clicked on a banner ad it was an accident, even on sites that I like. Even the thinkgeek ad above offends me, and I will type 'thinkgeek.com' in the url bar instead of clicking on it. It's not that I don't like/. and want to support it, but I'm not going to support/. by supporting something that I find offensive and 'rude'.
If companies would come out of the fucking stone age they (like the RIAA) would realize that the technology is there to do some amazing things that, wow bring their services to the people who want them, and make peoples lives easier, instead of just annoying them.
I've got a better idea. Don't patronize salon.com anymore? Sure, they have great articles, and I enjoy reading them, but if they are going to do the equivelant of screaming in my face when I go up to them for a conversation (not an unreasonable analogy IMHO) I'm not going to talk to them. Sucks to be me I guess, and it's too bad, because I enjoy them, but unless they start getting less and less visitors because of this sort of activity, they're going to see this as a plus.
For example, assuming that ad companies pay more for the more annoying ads:
Normal ads = 10000 visitors @ 0.01/view
Annoying ads=10000 visitors @ 0.02/view
Why the heck not? But if the # of visitors suddenly dropped by 7000 with the annoying ads, well, suddenly it doesn't sound like that good an idea. I don't really care about all this BS about how the economy is coming down, or how they "have" to use new ad technologies because of the current market. Bending over backwards and letting them "give it to you straight" so to speak, is not something I personally do.
It's been said before, but I think it would work. "Vote with your feet." Don't visit the site, and send (polite) letters to the highest up people that you can telling them that you are doing just that. A few hundred thousand "I'm sorry, I enjoy your site but I will not visit it anymore if you are going to be embracing this very annoying ad style."
Depends on the crime. Cracking a big DB of credit cards yes, but how about reverse engineering say, a copyright'd protocol? Maybe the people who made programs like gaim, gnapster, knaptser, kicq, gnomeicu, etc should get thrown in jail for their evil "hacking"?
I'm not against bad things being a crime, but who gets to define what is a crime or not? And what about when new types of hacking/cracking come out? Maybe windows virus authors should be made criminals? How about websites that use cookies to track you (doubleclick anyone?).
The problem with computers and hacking in general is that it's very hard to narrowly define what is and isn't a crime. Mitnick is a sure sign of this, as is Dimitri. On one side ($$) it's a crime of epic proportions, on the other side it's harmless fun, investigation, proving a point, whatever. This has been a problem since phreaking and probably far before....
This brings up a big bitch of mine... And I realize I'm being a linux bigot here, and that my dis-like of MS will be evident, but...
Why do you need a web browser on a server????
I've been in computers for 10+ years now, and using linux in part of exclusively for 5 or more (pre kernel 1.0 young 'uns), and I've never understood why a machine that does NOTHING but server mail/news/http/whatever needs all the shit that MS forces you to install, such as a web browser. I realize that these days it's "built in" to the OS, but back in the '95 days it was the same way IIRC, when you installed IIS (or MS Dev Studio) you were asked/required to install a web browser...
That's part of the reason I like *nix, is that if I want to server webpages from a server with nothing running in it but a user account and httpd, I can. Yes, I need libc, libraries, and various support binaries, but if I want to delete df, du, cut, tr, and the rest of the 2 and 3 letter utils, I can!
I dont bother ripping mp3 anymore - I go WMA and turn off copy protection. works like a charm. Flies are a touch large, but playback is superb. Also can burn direct to CD-R if you have one. That is very nice.
That's great, except that there are no WMA players for any other OS than windows (oh, ok, and the derivatives of windows, but I'm talking linux/unix/mac/etc here), and that the devices that I use in my day to day life (like my Kenwood MP3 CD playing car deck) don't support WMA, so WMA is completly fscking useless to me.
I guess in a way it's like beta vs vhs (and forgive me if it seems that I'm saying WMA is better), where the more common and proliferant (sp?) format is the one that "wins", not the better or more marketed one.
Actually, I guess previously the more/better marketed one (vhs vs beta, windows 95 vs os/2...) won in the end, but I think that WMA is working at a distinct disadvantage here. They are not as widespread, not as open, not as common, not as free, and not used in the wide range of devices (rio, empeg, phones, car decks, mp3-cd discmen) that mp3s are. There's not a lot of inspriation for the non-computer devices to change either. Not only do you have to pay the ms-tax, and deal with non-open standards, but there isn't a lot that MS can threaten a company like Kenwood with like they could to someone like Compaq (where they can say 'unless you do X for us we won't let you sell our products' or something).
From what I've heard, after about 900Mhz or so there is really no point in throwing extra cpu cycles at a game like quake. Classic quake would probably look about the same as well. I think at a certain point you need to either throw more video power at it or just realize that you've got room to spare for when the next game comes out (quake5 @ 2G anyone?)
Re:It's easy to see why nobody is buying these
on
No One Wants The Not-Coms
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I mentioned that to someone at work and he said he didn't think it was a good idea, as that makes things easier to filter out (or attack). I'm not saying I want my kids looking at pr0n, but I don't want a university or cable company or library (places where information should flow freely, even if it is jiggly bits) just banning *.sex I also don't want the spammers targetting the *.kids domains as they are "easy" targets....
Re:And here comes Carnivore...
on
More WTC News
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· Score: 1
I'm not sure if you know what you're referncing, but I believe that they do already put tracking devices on aircraft black boxes.
As I actually read the document, I found the following line interesting:
"Only someone who violates the law "willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain" can be convicted. "
So even with the law in place, you have to abuse it for financial gain to be convicted. Oh, don't get me wrong, the idea of this scares the fuck out of me, but the actual wording is interesting to read.
Oh I understand this, and any true audiophile would mock mp3, wma, and even wav as sounding like crap. But for the average person (such as myself) a nice high bitrate (160 or 192+) mp3 sounds just fine on my car stereo. Even a bit crappier sound is outweighed for me by the ability to carry around a cd folder with 5 disks containing all my favorite music (including one labeled "stand up" which has 700 mb worth of stand up (each about 50 minutes +) which I could only fit 1 per CD on using normal CD encoding. And stand up doesn't need to be high sound quality, so the advantage outweighs any disadvantage.
Remember that old joke about how it will be like when microsoft runs everything? Well, this is just a step closer isn't it? MS already owns your computer and periferals, soon it will be your game console, but while they are doing that, why not just make your entire entertainment center MS? All your stereo components will talk nicely togeather, and the increase in functionality (video on demand, auto-ripping/availability of cds from your MS-cd player to your MS-pda (WinCE) and your computer and your car (auto-pc) will all be automatic? And MS has the budget for R&D to do this as well.
I may be a cynic and grasping at conspiricy theories here, but this is the start of a big strategic positioning for them (now they have that silly DOJ thing bought off^w^wdealt with. This is why MS has to be stopped as soon as possible, or at least handcuffed like IBM and AT&T were when they were found to be manopolies. Of course, the fact that MS-election paid off well and MS-president will make sure that nothing happens to them will mean that that's just a pipe dream:(
You own the physical disk, and have the rights to listen to it. I think the issue in question is "what devices do you have the rights to listen to it on". According to what the RIAA is saying it seems you have the rights to listen to it on any "normal" CD player (home or computer or car or mobile).
According to this company you do not have the rights to listen to it on ANYTHING but a home CD player. You aren't allowed to convert it to another form to listen to it (ie: rip to mp3 to play in my car mp3 player) and you have to register with them if you want to play it on a computer CD player.
Since I got myself a MP3 CD player for my car the idea of being able to buy mp3s instead of CDs is stronger and stronger. I rarely listen to normal CDs anymore... why would I want a format where I can only fit 10-20 songs on a disk instead of 200+ songs?
I'm interested to hear if this is a windows only thing or if a linux CD player would play the CD normally?
Re:On asm vs "proper" programming
on
MenuetOS Debuts
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· Score: 1
I agree, but it's still a great feat to be able to do that (write an OS in asm ):)
Re:On asm vs "proper" programming
on
MenuetOS Debuts
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· Score: 5, Interesting
So you know enough about assembler to write your own OS? Nice intimate knowledge of x86 hardware? And who says the abacus isn't a useful thing to know? Do you want your children to only learn how to punch 2+2 on a calculator and never learn how, and more importantly, *why* adding and subtracting and multiplication tables work?
I think the main point is that this is a *personal* achievement, not one for the computer community as a whole. Sure, there's no great need to do this, but man, if I had the time I'd love to try to do this, simply to see if I could. I wouldn't go down as the first anything, but the project would not be for fame or advancement of computing, but for personal advancement.
On asm vs "proper" programming
on
MenuetOS Debuts
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Ok, most of the responses to this so far have been "assembler doesn't give you that much improvement" , "assembler is a bad way to do things if you're trying to do them The Right Way".
Well, why can't he use asm? If I want to write an OS is BINARY that's a cool-ass hack, even if it is not The Right Way to do it. Come on guys, give the guy a break... he did something *awsome* and something probably 98% of us can't do (I know I certainly can't) and he should be credited for that. I'm not saying that this OS is something that should be taught in OS design courses, but it's still very very VERY cool:)
The first would be that users don't "install" the software that does the link spamming. This is done by other software, eg: Kaz-whatever. It's done secretly because IMHO no one would willingly say "yes, install this on my system" if they knew what it actually was. So IMHO it's basically the same as a trogan or a virus (and should be included in the virus updates from anti-virus makers).
The second would be that maybe this is where Mozilla/Netscape and/or other browsers suddenly get their chance back. Since they are not so closely tied to the OS, and are not as popular, they don't get this sort of stuff. Same with Linux. I've been surfing with galeon for ages and have never had to worry about smart-tags, spyware, or anything like that. Because of the fact that IE is everywhere, included free with every copy, it's so much of a more attractive target for these "virus" makers. Solution (well, a temporary one until we can go to these guys houses and pistol whip them into submission): use a different browser.
Slashdot Mirror
The other reason of course is that as soon as a "encrypted CD -> mp3 ripper" is created (and you know it will) they can prosecute users of this under the DCMA. The RIAA of course, having their own herd of lawyers, can afford to do this, while most users don't have gobs of money and will simply buckle. You'll note that the User is not who the RIAA cares about. They are basically saying 'fuck the user, let him lick our nut-sweat' or something similar. They only care about profit and control.
Linus Torvalds actually has great commentary on this whole state of things in his book just for fun, and he talks about how the RIAA and their predessesors have been doing this since cassette tapes were invented, and before. Hey, why let the user get the music that THEY WANT when we can force them to buy the albums we want them to buy and not give them the choice.
</rant>
Sorry, I'm a little steamed at this whole thing.
Not that I'd encourage anyone to do such a thing. But it'd be kinda nice to see if someone were to independently come up with the idea of doing it.
Or even better, put them in some sort of de-centralized system (freenet? gnutella?) that isn't susceptable as someone like napster and the like.
Sadly, I didn't mirror anything from the original server, though it got me a lot of the information I needed at the time...
A browser plugin. Have it put a little button beside every banner ad that says 'this ad sucks' and when clicked, it automatically sends emails to the ad agency and advertiser telling them just that. This is negative feedback. A 'this ad doesn't suck' button would be the opposite, something that can be clicked instead of or as well as, clicking the ad. It should be ad specific as well... thinkgeek has some really good, unobtrusive and polite ads, and some of the standard 'if we flash it fast enough they'll click!' ads.
So who wants to start writing it? Maybe even a little app you just drag an ad link to from your browser...
An interesting thing I noticed that was quoted of Marissa Gluck was that they were trying to "emulate television" by having a short spot before a news broadcast (or similar anaology).
/. and want to support it, but I'm not going to support /. by supporting something that I find offensive and 'rude'.
Had to break it to you, but this is the net, not television! Why are you trying to shoe-horn advertising methods invented 30+ years ago into the new technology of today? Why try to continue on with the same old shit of "barrage the customers with flashing graphics and maybe they'll buy something." Actually, the stupidity is multi-tiered. The Companies using the advertising agency are convinced that if enough people see their ads they'll get more sales (sadly the argument is that this is true) and the advertising company wants to do everything it can to stick the ad in front of your face so it can tell the companies that they are advertising for that they got X click throughs or Y impressions.
Last time I clicked on a banner ad it was an accident, even on sites that I like. Even the thinkgeek ad above offends me, and I will type 'thinkgeek.com' in the url bar instead of clicking on it. It's not that I don't like
If companies would come out of the fucking stone age they (like the RIAA) would realize that the technology is there to do some amazing things that, wow bring their services to the people who want them, and make peoples lives easier, instead of just annoying them.
I've got a better idea. Don't patronize salon.com anymore? Sure, they have great articles, and I enjoy reading them, but if they are going to do the equivelant of screaming in my face when I go up to them for a conversation (not an unreasonable analogy IMHO) I'm not going to talk to them. Sucks to be me I guess, and it's too bad, because I enjoy them, but unless they start getting less and less visitors because of this sort of activity, they're going to see this as a plus.
For example, assuming that ad companies pay more for the more annoying ads:
Normal ads = 10000 visitors @ 0.01/view
Annoying ads=10000 visitors @ 0.02/view
Why the heck not? But if the # of visitors suddenly dropped by 7000 with the annoying ads, well, suddenly it doesn't sound like that good an idea. I don't really care about all this BS about how the economy is coming down, or how they "have" to use new ad technologies because of the current market. Bending over backwards and letting them "give it to you straight" so to speak, is not something I personally do.
It's been said before, but I think it would work. "Vote with your feet." Don't visit the site, and send (polite) letters to the highest up people that you can telling them that you are doing just that. A few hundred thousand "I'm sorry, I enjoy your site but I will not visit it anymore if you are going to be embracing this very annoying ad style."
"If you have programming skills, get the fuck out of the States and take your skills with you. Your country obviously doesn't want you anymore."
:)
:)
(Am I now a felon?)
Not only a felon, but a bastardly non-patriotic felon obviously trying to destroy this proud and wondeful nation!
Actually you're right, us up in Canada wouldn't mind to do a bit of reverse-brain draining
... so the entire IIS team will be in the slammer RSN huh? :)
Depends on the crime. Cracking a big DB of credit cards yes, but how about reverse engineering say, a copyright'd protocol? Maybe the people who made programs like gaim, gnapster, knaptser, kicq, gnomeicu, etc should get thrown in jail for their evil "hacking"?
I'm not against bad things being a crime, but who gets to define what is a crime or not? And what about when new types of hacking/cracking come out? Maybe windows virus authors should be made criminals? How about websites that use cookies to track you (doubleclick anyone?).
The problem with computers and hacking in general is that it's very hard to narrowly define what is and isn't a crime. Mitnick is a sure sign of this, as is Dimitri. On one side ($$) it's a crime of epic proportions, on the other side it's harmless fun, investigation, proving a point, whatever. This has been a problem since phreaking and probably far before....
This brings up a big bitch of mine... And I realize I'm being a linux bigot here, and that my dis-like of MS will be evident, but...
Why do you need a web browser on a server????
I've been in computers for 10+ years now, and using linux in part of exclusively for 5 or more (pre kernel 1.0 young 'uns), and I've never understood why a machine that does NOTHING but server mail/news/http/whatever needs all the shit that MS forces you to install, such as a web browser. I realize that these days it's "built in" to the OS, but back in the '95 days it was the same way IIRC, when you installed IIS (or MS Dev Studio) you were asked/required to install a web browser...
That's part of the reason I like *nix, is that if I want to server webpages from a server with nothing running in it but a user account and httpd, I can. Yes, I need libc, libraries, and various support binaries, but if I want to delete df, du, cut, tr, and the rest of the 2 and 3 letter utils, I can!
</rant>
I dont bother ripping mp3 anymore - I go WMA and turn off copy protection. works like a charm. Flies are a touch large, but playback is superb. Also can burn direct to CD-R if you have one. That is very nice.
That's great, except that there are no WMA players for any other OS than windows (oh, ok, and the derivatives of windows, but I'm talking linux/unix/mac/etc here), and that the devices that I use in my day to day life (like my Kenwood MP3 CD playing car deck) don't support WMA, so WMA is completly fscking useless to me.
I guess in a way it's like beta vs vhs (and forgive me if it seems that I'm saying WMA is better), where the more common and proliferant (sp?) format is the one that "wins", not the better or more marketed one.
Actually, I guess previously the more/better marketed one (vhs vs beta, windows 95 vs os/2...) won in the end, but I think that WMA is working at a distinct disadvantage here. They are not as widespread, not as open, not as common, not as free, and not used in the wide range of devices (rio, empeg, phones, car decks, mp3-cd discmen) that mp3s are. There's not a lot of inspriation for the non-computer devices to change either. Not only do you have to pay the ms-tax, and deal with non-open standards, but there isn't a lot that MS can threaten a company like Kenwood with like they could to someone like Compaq (where they can say 'unless you do X for us we won't let you sell our products' or something).
My $0.02
From what I've heard, after about 900Mhz or so there is really no point in throwing extra cpu cycles at a game like quake. Classic quake would probably look about the same as well. I think at a certain point you need to either throw more video power at it or just realize that you've got room to spare for when the next game comes out (quake5 @ 2G anyone?)
I mentioned that to someone at work and he said he didn't think it was a good idea, as that makes things easier to filter out (or attack). I'm not saying I want my kids looking at pr0n, but I don't want a university or cable company or library (places where information should flow freely, even if it is jiggly bits) just banning *.sex I also don't want the spammers targetting the *.kids domains as they are "easy" targets....
I'm not sure if you know what you're referncing, but I believe that they do already put tracking devices on aircraft black boxes.
Or even easier, there is a program called "ssh-copy-id" (in debian anyway) that does just that :)
:)
Actually, it only does it for ssh1 keys, but that's easy enough to change
$ vi .xsession
:) That's what I did on my unstable box anyway.
(creates new file)
(paste from above)
:x
$
Now you do
As I actually read the document, I found the following line interesting:
"Only someone who violates the law "willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain" can be convicted. "
So even with the law in place, you have to abuse it for financial gain to be convicted. Oh, don't get me wrong, the idea of this scares the fuck out of me, but the actual wording is interesting to read.
Even compared to hearing it live? :)
You are right of course, I was being sarcastic and got carried away, a thousand pardons.
Oh I understand this, and any true audiophile would mock mp3, wma, and even wav as sounding like crap. But for the average person (such as myself) a nice high bitrate (160 or 192+) mp3 sounds just fine on my car stereo. Even a bit crappier sound is outweighed for me by the ability to carry around a cd folder with 5 disks containing all my favorite music (including one labeled "stand up" which has 700 mb worth of stand up (each about 50 minutes +) which I could only fit 1 per CD on using normal CD encoding. And stand up doesn't need to be high sound quality, so the advantage outweighs any disadvantage.
Remember that old joke about how it will be like when microsoft runs everything? Well, this is just a step closer isn't it? MS already owns your computer and periferals, soon it will be your game console, but while they are doing that, why not just make your entire entertainment center MS? All your stereo components will talk nicely togeather, and the increase in functionality (video on demand, auto-ripping/availability of cds from your MS-cd player to your MS-pda (WinCE) and your computer and your car (auto-pc) will all be automatic? And MS has the budget for R&D to do this as well.
:(
I may be a cynic and grasping at conspiricy theories here, but this is the start of a big strategic positioning for them (now they have that silly DOJ thing bought off^w^wdealt with. This is why MS has to be stopped as soon as possible, or at least handcuffed like IBM and AT&T were when they were found to be manopolies. Of course, the fact that MS-election paid off well and MS-president will make sure that nothing happens to them will mean that that's just a pipe dream
alan, not a nut
You own the physical disk, and have the rights to listen to it. I think the issue in question is "what devices do you have the rights to listen to it on". According to what the RIAA is saying it seems you have the rights to listen to it on any "normal" CD player (home or computer or car or mobile).
According to this company you do not have the rights to listen to it on ANYTHING but a home CD player. You aren't allowed to convert it to another form to listen to it (ie: rip to mp3 to play in my car mp3 player) and you have to register with them if you want to play it on a computer CD player.
Since I got myself a MP3 CD player for my car the idea of being able to buy mp3s instead of CDs is stronger and stronger. I rarely listen to normal CDs anymore... why would I want a format where I can only fit 10-20 songs on a disk instead of 200+ songs?
I'm interested to hear if this is a windows only thing or if a linux CD player would play the CD normally?
I agree, but it's still a great feat to be able to do that (write an OS in asm ) :)
So you know enough about assembler to write your own OS? Nice intimate knowledge of x86 hardware? And who says the abacus isn't a useful thing to know? Do you want your children to only learn how to punch 2+2 on a calculator and never learn how, and more importantly, *why* adding and subtracting and multiplication tables work?
I think the main point is that this is a *personal* achievement, not one for the computer community as a whole. Sure, there's no great need to do this, but man, if I had the time I'd love to try to do this, simply to see if I could. I wouldn't go down as the first anything, but the project would not be for fame or advancement of computing, but for personal advancement.
Ok, most of the responses to this so far have been "assembler doesn't give you that much improvement" , "assembler is a bad way to do things if you're trying to do them The Right Way".
:)
Well, why can't he use asm? If I want to write an OS is BINARY that's a cool-ass hack, even if it is not The Right Way to do it. Come on guys, give the guy a break... he did something *awsome* and something probably 98% of us can't do (I know I certainly can't) and he should be credited for that. I'm not saying that this OS is something that should be taught in OS design courses, but it's still very very VERY cool
That's the one form that I'd approve of jarjar.
The first would be that users don't "install" the software that does the link spamming. This is done by other software, eg: Kaz-whatever. It's done secretly because IMHO no one would willingly say "yes, install this on my system" if they knew what it actually was. So IMHO it's basically the same as a trogan or a virus (and should be included in the virus updates from anti-virus makers).
The second would be that maybe this is where Mozilla/Netscape and/or other browsers suddenly get their chance back. Since they are not so closely tied to the OS, and are not as popular, they don't get this sort of stuff. Same with Linux. I've been surfing with galeon for ages and have never had to worry about smart-tags, spyware, or anything like that. Because of the fact that IE is everywhere, included free with every copy, it's so much of a more attractive target for these "virus" makers. Solution (well, a temporary one until we can go to these guys houses and pistol whip them into submission): use a different browser.
My $0.02