So what they are saying is that even at a ridiculous resolution, either card is capable of a higher framerate than your monitor, and your eyes.
With frame-rate to spare, you can achieve really silky-smooth images by syncing with the monitor's refresh. This prevents those ugly redraw lines that can occur from the next frame being drawn right as the display refreshes. So, having a rate higher than your refresh can be useful.
Do not partner with Microsoft. Do not become inolved with a company that has a long, pathetic history of screwing-over anyone and everyone they even remotely deal with.
Learn, people! If you play with fire, you'll get burned! Instead, choose to deal with organizations that are friendly because they understand the concept of doing good work to stay in business (open source vendors for example).
If it did, that'd be great, but it never will. The point however, would be moot if a genuine attempt was not made.
The point is thus: to resist technologies that limit what consumers can do with what they legally own.
Microsoft is a very visible example of an entity trying to tell consumers "you may not do this or that with what you have purchased." In no other industry (save the closely related entertainment industry in this case) do there exist similar shenanigan. If I purchase a computer, I should be damn well permitted to run any type of software on that computer I see fit. The XBox, amongst consoles, is the closest device to a personal computer you can get. And yet, the manufacturer is trying to make it impossible for you to use it how you see fit.
This project is a protest of such consumer-unfriendly tactics. They will never crack the key, but they are still trying and Microsoft as well as many others will be well aware that they are trying. This is resistance. Microsoft, we will put forth the same effort against DRM technologies like Palladium. We'll never stop.
Of course, we could all just not buy XBoxes, Windows, Office, and switch to unencumbered/open technologies, but... I digress.
The evil girl-Terminator can be seen in this photo where she is using her striking appearance to gather intelligence on the primative life forms.
Some how, I think from this image, I can tell there is a much deeper, more hate-filled conflict being developed here. Anything could happen before this war hits.
I *have* seen Divx at high bitrate. Actually, I have the file right here, and it's a trailer for a game. 4.6Mbit/s, 400x300x24, divx5. It's full of rapid high motion sequences; it's in-game video.
If it's a stream of real-time, in-game graphics, we can make three assertions:
1. From frame to frame, there may not necessarily be smooth transitions. For example, a high-action, high-speed scene, done real-time, is likely to be very "choppy" (low FPS). As a result, frames N and N + 1 may have such huge deltas that little common data can be found. This would butcher the quality for most video encoders.
2. A typical game scene typically has very little static imagery. A movie will have actors standing around talking, with the background unchanging, or there may be long sequences where the delta between frames is minimal. Games on the other hand are constantly in motion, often the backgrounds will be moving and special effects, which are more discrete than those seen in movies, will occur.
3. Video games have a higher number of sharp edges than live action film or artificial sequences that are designed to be photorealistic. Real life, when photographed, looks "blurry" (attributed largely to the short-comings of photography equipment). Many codecs use this fact to their advantage of throw out data that does not contribute to the images.
These three things in mind, any MPEG-like codec will probably produce fairly poor quality output or will require high-bitrates.
It's been my personal observation that divx does not give you much improvement in quality past a certain point. The 4.6Mbit video here still isn't anywhere near as good as I'd expect at this bitrate - there are certain imperfections that are just inherent in the format, and I suspect that encoding at 3Mbit would give you almost exactly the same output.
Are you talking about a bit rate or size of the file?
Throwing extra bitrate at divx often yields very little improvement.
I highly disagree. I've found when encoding video that slight increases in bitrate may push the quality of a DiVX;-) encoding way up. At least, this is with using XviD -- a somewhat superior encoder to commercial DiVX;-).
The reason I bring this up is when I got LotR:FotR Special Edition, I wanted to encode the MTV parody of the Council of Elrond. I made a number of different versions, and since it encoded so quickly (being short;) I spent a lot of time tweaking.
MPEG4 in general is optimized for streaming applications and low-bandwidth use. There are certain design descisions in a codec that make it ideal for some applications and suboptimal for others. Try encoding MPEG2 at 500kbit for a dramatic example, the codec is *optimized* for high bitrate applications. Yes, quality is a function of bitrate, but different codecs have different optimum points - the best quality/size compromise. It's really not that difficult a concept.
I know it's not a difficult concept. That's why I pointed it out.
I've seen MPEG-2 streams at low bitrates. Yes, they are inferior to MPEG-4, but in the higher-end, they are easily on par. Another experiment I performed was encoding a dual-layered DVD to ~4.7Gb using MPEG-4 (the standard capasity of DVD+/-R). Aside from the failings of encoding an already encoded stream (video artifacts become more pronounced from the first round) it looked nearly identical.
Now, blizzard is probably settling for an inferior video codec with divx because they got a better licensing deal. Obviously they wouldn't have chosen divx if it truly looked like ass, it doesn't, but I think they made a quality/cost descision more than anything. Slightly less quality, slightly less developed SDK, for a large reduction in cost. It's a good business descision I suppose.
Why does one need a heavy-weight SDK to play a movie in a game in the first place? You're not a general-purpose media player, so you've got limited scope. The process of decoding and blitting MPEG-4 is border-line trivial (relatively). It makes no sense to use something like Bink. Of course it's a good business decision!:)
Now, the fact that you needed to rip on me rather than just set me straight, says something. Maybe my attack on divx offended you at a personal level. My, aren't we protective of our favorite piece of code... unless you wrote part of it yourself, you have no reason to be this argumentative. If you did, then you would consider how such petty bickering reflects on the product you wrote and the company you represent. Maybe you just can't stand to see ignorance in the world and feel it's your duty to arrogantly berate everyone as if you're the final authority on everything.
I prefer Xvid.
If my comment was so full of ignorant rambling, why did you feel the need to correct me in such a vicious manner? Why not simply dismiss my nonsensical rambling? Because I was modded up, because you think I have nothing better to do than validate my existence by trolling or karma-whoring?
Oops, I've just replied to flamebait.
Now really, we have to get that sand out of your vagina. It's making you cranky.
Well, I am sorry for the "reaming". I didn't mean for my response to be so vicious, it just comes out like that sometimes. I'm sure you know how what it's like to start typing feverishly away to defend or attack a viewpoint.
Divx is a joke as far as commercial products go...
Troll. The quality of a compressed video, using any codec is going to be shit if the encoder used an extremely low bitrate. The only DiVX;-) you've seen has probably warez movies. If you encode DiVX (MPEG-4 actually) at high bitrates, the quality is astonishing and the size surprisingly small.
Don't knock technologies you clearly don't understand. DiVX would be great for commercial products!
Quicktime/sorenson is the only thing that even approaches an acceptable compromise for video in a game, due to its high quality at reasonable bitrate. On the other hand, it's pretty CPU heavy and it doesn't give you very fine control over the encoding process.
Wait a minute, you just reamed on DiVX -- which has very high quality and a very reasonable bitrate. Note that MPEG-4 decoding is not very CPU intensive, which makes it a better choice than QuickTime for games of all applications. Perhaps you want a video playing while something interactive is taking place. Furthermore, having a fine-controlled codec is hardly specific to QuickTime. You make no sense.
Bink is PC and mac compatible out of the box, it's optimized for animation, the encoding process is very tweakable, it gives great quality at a range of bitrates, and the SDK is very well developed with games as the primary application. So really, I can see why they would have chosen it - not to mention that it's basically been the standard for any game with cutscenes since PCs gained the ability to play video.
Bink works on N platforms, eh? Trust me, there are plenty of other video codecs that work on at least N + 1 platforms. For the uninformed (the parent), DiVX;-) would be one of those. It's optimized for animation? Yes, all video codecs are optimized for animation. That's kind of the whole point of a video codec. So Bink gives great quality at a range of bitrates? What the hell does that mean? So you have to be sure you use between 100Kb/sec-271.5Kb/sec or something otherwise it will look like shit? The bitrate of any media stream is directly proportional to its quality. More data, more detail. It's just that simple. You're talking like there's some secret magic to getting a well chosen bitrate and that only some codecs do it. As for why Bink is used for games -- only because it's marketed that way. Many companies clearly choose technologies without being clueful as to why they are choosing them. That's certainly the case here (read the story). There's no reason for them to have chosen Bink aside from someone saw an ad for it somewhere and immediately assumed it was the answer to their prayers.
You sir, are a troll. I cannot believe the moderators rewarded your clueless meanderings though the world of video encoding. You probably picked up a few sparsely scattered jargon terms in you day to day life and now fancy yourself an expert.
I knew it was bad from the intro credits...
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
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· Score: 2
When the gothic font reared its head, I feared I had been cast into Diablo: The Movie somehow. Then the reversed letters and it was all about Toys 'R Us. It just went steadily downhill from there.
If, on the other hand, he opens your freezer and finds the head, that's a search, and it requires a warrant in order to be legal.
That's no longer true. Thanks to HR5710, any law enforcement, local, state, or federal, may come into your home and search without first obtaining a warrant. Furthermore, you never need be informed that your home was searched. The same goes for wiretapping, digital and otherwise.
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe"
Spare me your "theories" of a harsh surface! If our democratically elected President believes we can breathe there, we can!
I couldn't agree with you more. Anyone where with a high-school history lesson under her belt will remember a few things about factories back in the day:
- Employees would frequently lose digits of their hands, whole limbs, or even be killed on the job. As a result, they were simply replaced with someone else with no compensation to the original employee or their family. It's not so far off today.
- If employees didn't like their conditions, and went on strike, factory owners would often choose to just ignore them, and then bring in Pinkerton guards. These would then bust up the unions, force employees away at gun-point while the factory brought on cheaper people. Even today, factory workers complaining of insufficient compensation are ignored.
- Now while some tech jobs require exposure to nasty chemicals (chip manufacturing for example), most certainly do not. People working in factories, even today, are exposed to substances that cause severe birth defects, mental illness, and a plethora of other nasty side-effects.
So, do you think you geeks really have it so bad on the job? I highly disagree. I have never worked in a factory (and I consider myself fortunate), but from a tiny little research, it's easy to see how much worse it is for people who aren't working in Tech.
I've never ran accross a site that "forced" its software on me. I've ran accross "gator" a few times which tries to install without my permission, but I still have to hit OK. This article has a hint of FUD.
There are two examples that come to mind, although I cannot remember their URLs (so I'm hoping someone else will follow me up). One installs software that adds special effects to your cursor. It runs as a daemon and you can see an icon for it in your tray. It appears in the Add/Removes Program dialogue, but it is a hassle ot remove nonetheless. Another similar piece of software adds skins to Internet Explorer itself (Slashdot has even carried ads for this very product). Both install automatically and without any user interaction (although you may get a trust message for the first of these). This, by the way, is with default security settings in IE.
IE is horribly fully of security holes, even to the point where some (stupid) companies offer products that depend on them! They can do this because they know Microsoft cannot patch these wholes without horribly crippling Internet Explorer (without ActiveX, it's nothing -- and even then, it's still stupid).
Let's face it, there is always going to be some security holes in the most popular and widely used browser. Even if that browser ever becomes Mozilla
These types of security holes are not possible. Mozilla has no more priveledges than the user herself. The typical user logged into most any box cannot, without exploiting some vulnerability in the operating system, run a piece of software that trashes the entire disk, and have the operation completed successfully. Why? Because the user and the software the user runs do not have the same privs as the operating system. Mozilla runs 100% in user-space. It is not part of the operating system and it is not trusted by the operating system. Internet Explorer on the otherhand, is part of the operating system, ergo is fully trusted.
If you find an exploit in Mozilla, you can only harm the user's data. If you find an exploit in Internet Explorer, you can delete the hard disk. Big difference.
(which I doubt will happen any time soon- I run Mozilla but speed wise it just doesn't compare with IE).
Oh boy, the MS FUD team is working hard this morning. It is not a decent web browser. The only reason most people use it is because of Microsoft's absuse of monopoly power. IE is a rather poor browser, for many reasons including the fact that it doesn't really browse the web. It is primary geared towards mark-up that Microsoft created without public review on the process. Therefore, not Web. As for people who want to browse the Web, they should get a browser that adheres to Web standards. You'll find Opera and Mozilla to be excellent choices on virtually any platform.
Aside from that, IE is chock full of rendering errors on even simple elements, has very poor JavaScript, comes bundled with 8-year-old Java technology, is loaded with security holes, has nothing by the way of tabbed browsing, no built-in pop-up blocking, a horrid caching mechanism, slow as hell and hogs memory,......
Does that mean that these products are now free to distribute since Microsoft no longer sells/supports them? Are they public domain? Can a school install 500 copies of Windows 9x across a bunch of donated computers and not worry about the MS Schutzstaffel XP raiding them?
I think not.
This is only Microsoft leaving plenty of customers high-and-dry without any compensation wahtsoever.
I don't even know why this is front-page worthy. Of course, it gives Microsoft more exposure. I find it interesting that the last FIVE articles I've read here had big, Microsoft advertisements on them. Way to Sellout Slashdot.
You've missed the point.
on
Fresco M1 Released
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· Score: 4, Informative
When you're developing software, having "transparent spinny" thingies is part of testing what you're trying to accomplish. But you probably wouldn't realize that.
The point of Fresco is very similar to the point of Quartz on MacOS X. It's a composited windowing system that doesn't "fake" sophisticated rendering like X currently does. Translucent windows now work by taking a "screenshot" of the area occluded by the window, then adding the color values together. This is a hack. A composited render draws things from back to front, taking into account a Z axis position and the alpha bits in a color block (RGBA) (this is fairly layman, but gets my point across).
I don't know why you're considered insightful for this, but rest-assured, we need a project like Fresco to develop a better windowing system. In the future, computer displays aren't going to be treated as fixed-pixel dimentions with static elements. A computer screen will be like a piece of paper. Elements will be drawn by real-world measurements (x centimeters versus x pixels) such that the number of "dots" will become arbitrary. Things will have to rotate freely. Alpha-blending will be absolutely necessary for proper hinting. And so on and so forth.
X11 is great, but very arcaic. It must go away in the future. Apple's got a good lead -- and pretty soon Microsoft will duplicate their efforts. We've got to be in that game too.
MS Rep1: Hmm, some dumbshit is logging in with sequental serial numbers from IP address 123.456.789.012.
In Microsoft's own little world, this is a valid assertion. Luckily, in the real world, such an IP address doesn't exist, so there is no risk to anyone. We should be quite safe. Start the DoS.
Uh, sorry, but this is just plain wrong. Microsoft took the code they had from OS/2 and made it into Windows NT.
Uh, sorry, but this is just plain wrong. NT is the product of VMS engineers bringing their talents and experience into a different product.
Ever wonder why the first release of Windows NT was called '3.1'?
No, actually. It was to avoid maturity confusion between NT and Windows 3.1. Releasing Windows NT as 1.0 would have made marketing less effective. Given it had the same UI as Windows 3.1 was another reason.
While your last paragraph is true, it hardly constitutes receiving a score of 5. Moderators need less crack.
So wait, the University of Twente NOC caught fire. Why? Was there a story posted on Slashdot's front page that linked to a server at their location? Or was this fire caused by something other than a hardy slashdotting?
The idea is to positively ID people working in the transporation business.
TSA has made important progress in selecting a uniform system of identification, a card-based biometric information system, that will support positive identification of individuals working in the transportation sector and encompassing the aviation, train, shipping, and trucking industries.
This is bad for several reasons. First, it won't solve anything. All it will do is further infringe upon the privacy of people working in this sector. The terrorists did not strike at us by impersonating workers, but just regular travellers.
It also won't do any good if/when it's used on people just going from place to place. Once again, the terrorists did not forge any identification. They didn't have to. Replacing one form of ID with another in this case is just stupid.
Nonsense like this is just bringing us closer to a locked down state where you must have your papers in order to go anywhere. And to think, at one point, this nation mocked the Russians for this kind of crap.
Slashdot Mirror
Viable systems micropay YOU.
So what they are saying is that even at a ridiculous resolution, either card is capable of a higher framerate than your monitor, and your eyes.
With frame-rate to spare, you can achieve really silky-smooth images by syncing with the monitor's refresh. This prevents those ugly redraw lines that can occur from the next frame being drawn right as the display refreshes. So, having a rate higher than your refresh can be useful.
Do not partner with Microsoft. Do not become inolved with a company that has a long, pathetic history of screwing-over anyone and everyone they even remotely deal with.
Learn, people! If you play with fire, you'll get burned! Instead, choose to deal with organizations that are friendly because they understand the concept of doing good work to stay in business (open source vendors for example).
If it did, that'd be great, but it never will. The point however, would be moot if a genuine attempt was not made.
The point is thus: to resist technologies that limit what consumers can do with what they legally own.
Microsoft is a very visible example of an entity trying to tell consumers "you may not do this or that with what you have purchased." In no other industry (save the closely related entertainment industry in this case) do there exist similar shenanigan. If I purchase a computer, I should be damn well permitted to run any type of software on that computer I see fit. The XBox, amongst consoles, is the closest device to a personal computer you can get. And yet, the manufacturer is trying to make it impossible for you to use it how you see fit.
This project is a protest of such consumer-unfriendly tactics. They will never crack the key, but they are still trying and Microsoft as well as many others will be well aware that they are trying. This is resistance. Microsoft, we will put forth the same effort against DRM technologies like Palladium. We'll never stop.
Of course, we could all just not buy XBoxes, Windows, Office, and switch to unencumbered/open technologies, but... I digress.
My childhood garage probably still has purple and black stains all over it
Usually those stains are kind of yellowish. What the hell are you?
The evil girl-Terminator can be seen in this photo where she is using her striking appearance to gather intelligence on the primative life forms.
Some how, I think from this image, I can tell there is a much deeper, more hate-filled conflict being developed here. Anything could happen before this war hits.
Towers Two The!
I *have* seen Divx at high bitrate. Actually, I have the file right here, and it's a trailer for a game. 4.6Mbit/s, 400x300x24, divx5. It's full of rapid high motion sequences; it's in-game video.
;-) encoding way up. At least, this is with using XviD -- a somewhat superior encoder to commercial DiVX ;-).
;) I spent a lot of time tweaking.
:)
If it's a stream of real-time, in-game graphics, we can make three assertions:
1. From frame to frame, there may not necessarily be smooth transitions. For example, a high-action, high-speed scene, done real-time, is likely to be very "choppy" (low FPS). As a result, frames N and N + 1 may have such huge deltas that little common data can be found. This would butcher the quality for most video encoders.
2. A typical game scene typically has very little static imagery. A movie will have actors standing around talking, with the background unchanging, or there may be long sequences where the delta between frames is minimal. Games on the other hand are constantly in motion, often the backgrounds will be moving and special effects, which are more discrete than those seen in movies, will occur.
3. Video games have a higher number of sharp edges than live action film or artificial sequences that are designed to be photorealistic. Real life, when photographed, looks "blurry" (attributed largely to the short-comings of photography equipment). Many codecs use this fact to their advantage of throw out data that does not contribute to the images.
These three things in mind, any MPEG-like codec will probably produce fairly poor quality output or will require high-bitrates.
It's been my personal observation that divx does not give you much improvement in quality past a certain point. The 4.6Mbit video here still isn't anywhere near as good as I'd expect at this bitrate - there are certain imperfections that are just inherent in the format, and I suspect that encoding at 3Mbit would give you almost exactly the same output.
Are you talking about a bit rate or size of the file?
Throwing extra bitrate at divx often yields very little improvement.
I highly disagree. I've found when encoding video that slight increases in bitrate may push the quality of a DiVX
The reason I bring this up is when I got LotR:FotR Special Edition, I wanted to encode the MTV parody of the Council of Elrond. I made a number of different versions, and since it encoded so quickly (being short
MPEG4 in general is optimized for streaming applications and low-bandwidth use. There are certain design descisions in a codec that make it ideal for some applications and suboptimal for others. Try encoding MPEG2 at 500kbit for a dramatic example, the codec is *optimized* for high bitrate applications. Yes, quality is a function of bitrate, but different codecs have different optimum points - the best quality/size compromise. It's really not that difficult a concept.
I know it's not a difficult concept. That's why I pointed it out.
I've seen MPEG-2 streams at low bitrates. Yes, they are inferior to MPEG-4, but in the higher-end, they are easily on par. Another experiment I performed was encoding a dual-layered DVD to ~4.7Gb using MPEG-4 (the standard capasity of DVD+/-R). Aside from the failings of encoding an already encoded stream (video artifacts become more pronounced from the first round) it looked nearly identical.
Now, blizzard is probably settling for an inferior video codec with divx because they got a better licensing deal. Obviously they wouldn't have chosen divx if it truly looked like ass, it doesn't, but I think they made a quality/cost descision more than anything. Slightly less quality, slightly less developed SDK, for a large reduction in cost. It's a good business descision I suppose.
Why does one need a heavy-weight SDK to play a movie in a game in the first place? You're not a general-purpose media player, so you've got limited scope. The process of decoding and blitting MPEG-4 is border-line trivial (relatively). It makes no sense to use something like Bink. Of course it's a good business decision!
Now, the fact that you needed to rip on me rather than just set me straight, says something. Maybe my attack on divx offended you at a personal level. My, aren't we protective of our favorite piece of code... unless you wrote part of it yourself, you have no reason to be this argumentative. If you did, then you would consider how such petty bickering reflects on the product you wrote and the company you represent. Maybe you just can't stand to see ignorance in the world and feel it's your duty to arrogantly berate everyone as if you're the final authority on everything.
I prefer Xvid.
If my comment was so full of ignorant rambling, why did you feel the need to correct me in such a vicious manner? Why not simply dismiss my nonsensical rambling? Because I was modded up, because you think I have nothing better to do than validate my existence by trolling or karma-whoring?
Oops, I've just replied to flamebait.
Now really, we have to get that sand out of your vagina. It's making you cranky.
Well, I am sorry for the "reaming". I didn't mean for my response to be so vicious, it just comes out like that sometimes. I'm sure you know how what it's like to start typing feverishly away to defend or attack a viewpoint.
DiVX ;-) is only an implementation of MPEG-4. If you want a DiVX-like encoder that is open source, try here.
Divx is a joke as far as commercial products go...
;-) you've seen has probably warez movies. If you encode DiVX (MPEG-4 actually) at high bitrates, the quality is astonishing and the size surprisingly small.
;-) would be one of those. It's optimized for animation? Yes, all video codecs are optimized for animation. That's kind of the whole point of a video codec. So Bink gives great quality at a range of bitrates? What the hell does that mean? So you have to be sure you use between 100Kb/sec-271.5Kb/sec or something otherwise it will look like shit? The bitrate of any media stream is directly proportional to its quality. More data, more detail. It's just that simple. You're talking like there's some secret magic to getting a well chosen bitrate and that only some codecs do it. As for why Bink is used for games -- only because it's marketed that way. Many companies clearly choose technologies without being clueful as to why they are choosing them. That's certainly the case here (read the story). There's no reason for them to have chosen Bink aside from someone saw an ad for it somewhere and immediately assumed it was the answer to their prayers.
Troll. The quality of a compressed video, using any codec is going to be shit if the encoder used an extremely low bitrate. The only DiVX
Don't knock technologies you clearly don't understand. DiVX would be great for commercial products!
Quicktime/sorenson is the only thing that even approaches an acceptable compromise for video in a game, due to its high quality at reasonable bitrate. On the other hand, it's pretty CPU heavy and it doesn't give you very fine control over the encoding process.
Wait a minute, you just reamed on DiVX -- which has very high quality and a very reasonable bitrate. Note that MPEG-4 decoding is not very CPU intensive, which makes it a better choice than QuickTime for games of all applications. Perhaps you want a video playing while something interactive is taking place. Furthermore, having a fine-controlled codec is hardly specific to QuickTime. You make no sense.
Bink is PC and mac compatible out of the box, it's optimized for animation, the encoding process is very tweakable, it gives great quality at a range of bitrates, and the SDK is very well developed with games as the primary application. So really, I can see why they would have chosen it - not to mention that it's basically been the standard for any game with cutscenes since PCs gained the ability to play video.
Bink works on N platforms, eh? Trust me, there are plenty of other video codecs that work on at least N + 1 platforms. For the uninformed (the parent), DiVX
You sir, are a troll. I cannot believe the moderators rewarded your clueless meanderings though the world of video encoding. You probably picked up a few sparsely scattered jargon terms in you day to day life and now fancy yourself an expert.
When the gothic font reared its head, I feared I had been cast into Diablo: The Movie somehow. Then the reversed letters and it was all about Toys 'R Us. It just went steadily downhill from there.
Rick Berman must be found and shot.
from the department-of-redundancy-department.
If, on the other hand, he opens your freezer and finds the head, that's a search, and it requires a warrant in order to be legal.
That's no longer true. Thanks to HR5710, any law enforcement, local, state, or federal, may come into your home and search without first obtaining a warrant. Furthermore, you never need be informed that your home was searched. The same goes for wiretapping, digital and otherwise.
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe"
Spare me your "theories" of a harsh surface! If our democratically elected President believes we can breathe there, we can!
I couldn't agree with you more. Anyone where with a high-school history lesson under her belt will remember a few things about factories back in the day:
- Employees would frequently lose digits of their hands, whole limbs, or even be killed on the job. As a result, they were simply replaced with someone else with no compensation to the original employee or their family. It's not so far off today.
- If employees didn't like their conditions, and went on strike, factory owners would often choose to just ignore them, and then bring in Pinkerton guards. These would then bust up the unions, force employees away at gun-point while the factory brought on cheaper people. Even today, factory workers complaining of insufficient compensation are ignored.
- Now while some tech jobs require exposure to nasty chemicals (chip manufacturing for example), most certainly do not. People working in factories, even today, are exposed to substances that cause severe birth defects, mental illness, and a plethora of other nasty side-effects.
So, do you think you geeks really have it so bad on the job? I highly disagree. I have never worked in a factory (and I consider myself fortunate), but from a tiny little research, it's easy to see how much worse it is for people who aren't working in Tech.
I've never ran accross a site that "forced" its software on me. I've ran accross "gator" a few times which tries to install without my permission, but I still have to hit OK. This article has a hint of FUD.
There are two examples that come to mind, although I cannot remember their URLs (so I'm hoping someone else will follow me up). One installs software that adds special effects to your cursor. It runs as a daemon and you can see an icon for it in your tray. It appears in the Add/Removes Program dialogue, but it is a hassle ot remove nonetheless. Another similar piece of software adds skins to Internet Explorer itself (Slashdot has even carried ads for this very product). Both install automatically and without any user interaction (although you may get a trust message for the first of these). This, by the way, is with default security settings in IE.
IE is horribly fully of security holes, even to the point where some (stupid) companies offer products that depend on them! They can do this because they know Microsoft cannot patch these wholes without horribly crippling Internet Explorer (without ActiveX, it's nothing -- and even then, it's still stupid).
Let's face it, there is always going to be some security holes in the most popular and widely used browser. Even if that browser ever becomes Mozilla
These types of security holes are not possible. Mozilla has no more priveledges than the user herself. The typical user logged into most any box cannot, without exploiting some vulnerability in the operating system, run a piece of software that trashes the entire disk, and have the operation completed successfully. Why? Because the user and the software the user runs do not have the same privs as the operating system. Mozilla runs 100% in user-space. It is not part of the operating system and it is not trusted by the operating system. Internet Explorer on the otherhand, is part of the operating system, ergo is fully trusted.
If you find an exploit in Mozilla, you can only harm the user's data. If you find an exploit in Internet Explorer, you can delete the hard disk. Big difference.
(which I doubt will happen any time soon- I run Mozilla but speed wise it just doesn't compare with IE).
You were making accusations of FUD?
Oh boy, the MS FUD team is working hard this morning. It is not a decent web browser. The only reason most people use it is because of Microsoft's absuse of monopoly power. IE is a rather poor browser, for many reasons including the fact that it doesn't really browse the web. It is primary geared towards mark-up that Microsoft created without public review on the process. Therefore, not Web. As for people who want to browse the Web, they should get a browser that adheres to Web standards. You'll find Opera and Mozilla to be excellent choices on virtually any platform.
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Aside from that, IE is chock full of rendering errors on even simple elements, has very poor JavaScript, comes bundled with 8-year-old Java technology, is loaded with security holes, has nothing by the way of tabbed browsing, no built-in pop-up blocking, a horrid caching mechanism, slow as hell and hogs memory,
Car manufacturers do not require you to agree to licensing terms that order you to buy a new car when your car's life cycle has been declared "over".
Does that mean that these products are now free to distribute since Microsoft no longer sells/supports them? Are they public domain? Can a school install 500 copies of Windows 9x across a bunch of donated computers and not worry about the MS Schutzstaffel XP raiding them?
I think not.
This is only Microsoft leaving plenty of customers high-and-dry without any compensation wahtsoever.
I don't even know why this is front-page worthy. Of course, it gives Microsoft more exposure. I find it interesting that the last FIVE articles I've read here had big, Microsoft advertisements on them. Way to Sellout Slashdot.
When you're developing software, having "transparent spinny" thingies is part of testing what you're trying to accomplish. But you probably wouldn't realize that.
The point of Fresco is very similar to the point of Quartz on MacOS X. It's a composited windowing system that doesn't "fake" sophisticated rendering like X currently does. Translucent windows now work by taking a "screenshot" of the area occluded by the window, then adding the color values together. This is a hack. A composited render draws things from back to front, taking into account a Z axis position and the alpha bits in a color block (RGBA) (this is fairly layman, but gets my point across).
I don't know why you're considered insightful for this, but rest-assured, we need a project like Fresco to develop a better windowing system. In the future, computer displays aren't going to be treated as fixed-pixel dimentions with static elements. A computer screen will be like a piece of paper. Elements will be drawn by real-world measurements (x centimeters versus x pixels) such that the number of "dots" will become arbitrary. Things will have to rotate freely. Alpha-blending will be absolutely necessary for proper hinting. And so on and so forth.
X11 is great, but very arcaic. It must go away in the future. Apple's got a good lead -- and pretty soon Microsoft will duplicate their efforts. We've got to be in that game too.
MS Rep1: Hmm, some dumbshit is logging in with sequental serial numbers from IP address 123.456.789.012.
In Microsoft's own little world, this is a valid assertion. Luckily, in the real world, such an IP address doesn't exist, so there is no risk to anyone. We should be quite safe. Start the DoS.
Uh, sorry, but this is just plain wrong. Microsoft took the code they had from OS/2 and made it into Windows NT.
Uh, sorry, but this is just plain wrong. NT is the product of VMS engineers bringing their talents and experience into a different product.
Ever wonder why the first release of Windows NT was called '3.1'?
No, actually. It was to avoid maturity confusion between NT and Windows 3.1. Releasing Windows NT as 1.0 would have made marketing less effective. Given it had the same UI as Windows 3.1 was another reason.
While your last paragraph is true, it hardly constitutes receiving a score of 5. Moderators need less crack.
So wait, the University of Twente NOC caught fire. Why? Was there a story posted on Slashdot's front page that linked to a server at their location? Or was this fire caused by something other than a hardy slashdotting?
The idea is to positively ID people working in the transporation business.
TSA has made important progress in selecting a uniform system of identification, a card-based biometric information system, that will support positive identification of individuals working in the transportation sector and encompassing the aviation, train, shipping, and trucking industries.
This is bad for several reasons. First, it won't solve anything. All it will do is further infringe upon the privacy of people working in this sector. The terrorists did not strike at us by impersonating workers, but just regular travellers.
It also won't do any good if/when it's used on people just going from place to place. Once again, the terrorists did not forge any identification. They didn't have to. Replacing one form of ID with another in this case is just stupid.
Nonsense like this is just bringing us closer to a locked down state where you must have your papers in order to go anywhere. And to think, at one point, this nation mocked the Russians for this kind of crap.
Ripping only takes about 15 minutes per disc. 8 hours is plenty of time to make a backup before the disc goes bad.
Is it just me, or do these kooks do everything they can to encourage movie piracy?