and the above two replies are exactly why this old, old commentary ("it's all been done before anyway") should cease to be modded up. It's not insightful at all - it's no more insightful than commenting that ice melts above 0C.
Yes, every movie's been done before. Either as a movie, or a play, or a novel, or whatever. Just look at the number of "boy meets girl, boy engages bet that he can get the girl, he gets the girl and is cray about her, girl finds out about bet and thins the boy's just been acting, boy has to prove that he really is crazy about her"-movies. Heck, "Yes Man" fits that category, and so does "She's the Man". Yet only an idiot would argue that the two movies are the same and that if you've seen one, you've seen the other.
It's never about whether or not the story is completely original (when it comes down to it, every movie is either a comedy or a tragedy), but about how the story is told, and about the finer details of that story.
But to those who still think "meh.. there's nothing original anymore".. please, by all means, swear off movies, tv, radio, books, etc. Go hiking, have your own unique experiences doing so. But keep in mind that odds are somebody hiked that path before you did, and your taking a hike is hardly original.
I'm a huge fan of that method, actually:) unfortunately it typically does mean loss of both half your horizontal -and- vertical resolution ( unless you shoot a portrait mode movie:) )
I take some stereoscopic side-by-side photos from time to time, and cross-eye is definitely the best way to view them. However, some people seem to have problems with focusing right when they cross their eyes; their brain is too wired into thinking that whatever is at the point where your eyes' sightlines cross, must be what should be in focus.
yup - that's why 3D live action movies are a ways off for now.. CG is easier (See another post of mine on that; it's still a lot of extra work); with live action you have to deal with physical cameras.. whether or not you can even place them in the spot you want, or whether that would place one camera halfway into a wall, etc.
and with a generation practically being raised on "I want it my way, I want it now, and I want it free - legal or otherwise", I think it'll drop right off the cliff at the bottom of that hill.
Yes, but keep in mind that the lenticular cover is typically permanent (if it's not, you have to *very carefully* re-align any time you put it back over the screen).. which means your resolution is cut in half at best (say, every even vertical column of pixels for the left eye, every odd vertical column for the right eye). And even if you don't move your head very much, go find a lenticular display or even just one of those little cards that came in cereal boxes or whatever.. the smallest movement can cause ghosting at best, or flipping at worst. What I mean by 'the smallest movement' is, roughly, half the distance between your eyes at the ideal distance (yes, every lenticular display also has an ideal distance). I'm sure you'll agree, that's not a lot of distance at all.
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2D Movies into 3D is partially bunk - see posts up above.
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CG Movies *can* be made in '3D' (stereoscopic) and *are* being made in 3D. See: Beowulf, Caroline, Up, etc. Speaking of Pixar... soon to come: Toy Story 1 (and 2, I think), re-done in 3D.
Don't think it costs 'almost nothing', though.
It effectively doubles your rendertime - at 8 hours to a day per frame for some scenes, that's something to cinsider (they probably have more than double the speed now that they did back then, but there ya go).
But moreover, you have to plan your scenes much more carefully. You don't want thinks popping into screen for the left eye but not for the right eye. If you're doing any post-process compositing, all of your effects have to be composited into a 3D space, as any cheat of "eh, this looks about right" on a single 2D plate, when transferred to two 2D plates, can cause the effect to either float in front of where it should be, or sit behind it... both are very confusing for the brain to deal with (the latter more so).
All this takes plenty of additional man-hours (artists, but even the tech guys who keep the farm up and running, for example). That's also partially why more and more 'CG' studios are trying to get things out of the rendering pipeline directly with as little need for post-compositing as possible. Color keying and such you can do on both plates at the same time without issue, of course.
The easiest way to get a stereo 3D movie is actually by taking advantage of camera motion.
1. Detect camera motion 2. Detect the direction 3. Detect the velocity 4. display frame t=N for one eye 5. display frame t=+-x for the other eye, depending on 2, and x depending on 4.
If you've got the movie Swordfish, you can apply this technique to the action sequence in the beginning where a camera orbits the scene. In fact, try here*: http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=2a6tw82&s=5
It's in cross-eyed stereoscopic format, so just cross your eyes, focus, and enjoy the scene in stereoscopic 3D.
It also shows (slightly) the pitfalls... 1. If there's no camera motion, this doesn't work. 2. If there's too much non-camera motion, this shows ghosting (as e.g. a person will be in place A at t=N, and place B at t=N+x) 3. If there's any post effects, they will stick out like a sore thumb if they are not accurately composited in. In that video, for example, the explosion-y bits halfway in look like they're kind of floating at a place in the scene they shouldn't be. It doesn't show so much in the original (just watch either left/right alone), but it shows up easily once made stereoscopic 3d.
It is a cute method, just not well-suited to any and all movies at all.
Other methods that might be employed are detecting fog and using the fog as a depth cue, or parent poster's method; but that will take a more hefty processor (most of the above steps can easily be derived from e.g. an mpeg processor, which already does motion estimation).
( *original material copyright Village Roadshow Pictures, Silver Pictures, NPV Entertainment and Jonathan Krane Group and Warner Bros (distributor). Broadcast by SBS Broadcasting, a subsidiary of ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG. Used only to demonstrate a 2D to stereographic 3D conversion method, for educational purposes. )
Okay.. so on one hand, you've got... - red/green red/cyan red/blue - polarized - shutter - chromadepth - etc....glasses. Nobody likes these, because you have to wear them.
On the other hand, you've got.. - lenticular - uhm. nope, that's pretty much it....displays. Which most people don't like either, as you practically have to sit in a single spot to make it work well. There -are- displays where you can view from a few more angles (any 'tween' angles show ghosting), but always at a loss of (horizontal) resolution, as more and more images get displayed at the same time.
This only counts -stereographic- 3D methods. So a bunch of panels behind eachother (medical imaging-look, and your laptop would be as thick as a printed encyclopedia..), or displays that track where your face is so as to show a different viewpoint (doesn't give depth cues except for the illusion when you move your head side to side like some sort of pigeon on drugs), don't count.
Neither of the above 2 methods are very appealing, but if I had to take my pick, I'll take glasses *any* time. Combined with the head tracker, all the more awesome. Displays that don't take glasses simply aren't there yet for any extended use.
( See an older post of mine for various other '3d display' methods; though I'm sure wikipedia's got 'm all covered, too )
Well of course it has fundamentally changed the game. Let's not forget that recording a radio/tv show onto tape (casette/video) -is- still perfectly legal. You -can- still borrow your neighbor's DVD, play it back, and record it to tape legally.
However, I have a sneaking suspicion (or call it insight from history) that if that were the -only- available method (lossy transfer, can only transfer slightly above real-time or else the recording gets too distorted for the tape technology, etc.), casual piracy would be much more incidental rather than systemic and on the scale we're looking at today. From time taken to make the copy, to having to purchase the storage (and keep in mind that tapes tend to have a levy to do with home copies already), to having to actually store it all somewhere.
Let's face it, the 'convenience' factor is extremely powerful. Be it related to getting upset if somebody takes away the convenience of downloading, or hating on the government because of automated speed traps (being more okay with it if it were a live copper that actually had to pay attention, give chase, etc.; only to complain "don't you have murderers to catch!?" once caught, of course).
It's that convenience that the RIAA/MPAA are worried about the most when it comes to piracy. They don't mind so much if you have to go way out of your way to make a copy, nor do they worry about convenient (iTunes not even being the most convenient) -legal- alternatives online.
Anybody writing plugins for 3ds Max 2010 will have upgraded to 2008, as you practically need 2008 to compile your code into plugins compatible with that release of 3ds Max.
That's a small market, but it serves as a demonstration that there's probably more people using 2008 - maybe not altogether by choice, as in this case - than you'd think.
Granted, the earlier networks didn't have NickServs so you had to/whois to semi-make sure the person you were talking to was actually the person you think you're talking to, but in terms of instant messaging, IRC is certainly by far a predecessor to all of the IM apps.
and I'm guessing there were near-instant messaging utilities for BBS's back in the day; I know I chatted with a SysOp once through... Terminat, I think? Ahhh, Bi-Modem protocol... no carrier indeed.
Speaking of which... what's a good alternative to CHM?
PDF woefully lacks proper indexing, searching, etc. and the file tends to bloat up pretty crazily. a bunch of loose HTML files doesn't do searching at all unless you host the thing on your server with a server-side search.. and it's a bunch of loose HTML files.
Checking Google, I see lots of alternative viewers and some compilers, but nothing in the way of an alternative format (the search terms may be too generic - who knows). If one exists, I'd love pointers.
For what it's worth - you can actually rename "hello" to "Hello" in Windows Explorer just fine - using either the in-place renaming facility with F2, or right-click, choose properties, and change the name in the folder's properties pane.
I'm guessing the entire distinction is what was explained in two posts in that thread... one guy says that you can't do this in windows itself, giving the example: "mv hello Hello" to which another guy says that he's silly for using a move command when trying to -rename- an entry, and gives the working example: "ren hello Hello"
I'm not a filesystem expert, so I can't say whether or not case sensitivity would be an issue (I'm just imagining that if you already have a directory called "Hello", and you're trying to rename (not move, rename) "hello" to "Hello", it will tell you the folder already exists, same as would happen if you renamed "foo" to "Hello"; but, again, not an expert).
Regardless.. everything in any other app I know of lets you rename folders and files to the same name with a different case, so I'm just surprised that in ThunderBird, one cannot. If I knew C++ -and- had enough knowledge of where my changes might affect things, I'd write a patch myself. But I don't, sadly.
"I damn well *expect* there to be thousands, if not more, bugs that are not and will never be fixed in Windows until someone "finds" them and posts about them publically, security related or not"
Hell, I expect there to be thousands, if not more, bugs that are not and will never be fixed in open source software, until somebody -other than those actually responsible for the code- submit a patch. I'm looking at you, silly little Thunderbird bug #92165 from 2001/Jul/24.
does your user work with important documents? Now they're hosed. does your user work with other people using a shared network resource? Now those are hosed. ( yes, I'm sure they keep backups. But do they keep live, instant backups? ) does your user use e-mail? Great, that machine is now a spam service zombie. does your user have access to the internet at large? Now that machine is part of a DDoS network, too. In addition, those important documents just got sent do the hoodlums' stashing place.
Congratulations on having a more difficult - if not impossible - to access root account, thus preventing problems with any other accounts on the machine, let alone some manner of domain-wide issue, but you can still be well and truly f'ed even in a lowly user account. That's not to say steps 1, 2 and maybe 3, aren't good steps to take... but they do nothing against the most common attack vector of all time: users doing stuff they shouldn't do, and can't be prevented from doing technologically because it would prevent them from doing what they -need- to do.
This argument's been had before and others have explained all this far more eloquently than I can, so just search around / on slashdot.
Well sure, if you take into account wages, standards of living, infrastructure maintenance, laws and regulations regarding work, laws and regulations regarding pollution, etc. and so on and so forth, then you can have things for cheap*
Heck, as it is, things in the U.S. tend to be cheaper than in Europe.
'Unfortunately', not everybody lives in Poland / India / China / whichever place happens to be cheap because, well, they're cheap, at the time.
So any comparison there is absolutely moot unless one can actually -order- these things -from- India, and have them delivered to them, still for cheap, with support. But try that and in most countries you get a huge shipping fee and import duties and taxes applied - if they don't just send it back altogether because of import prohibitions.
A compositor usually does more than a little touch-up. These days, a compositor may very well be expected to add rim lighting to an output render using nothing but the original output render with its auxiliary data (normals, z-depth, etc.)
I agree with GP poster than compositors usually don't get very much attention, even though the compositors are often the ones who make a render 'work'. Granted, this is more true when it needs to integrate with physical effects or a live action plate, but it still applies to full-on CG shots as well.
The ING Bank, formerly Postbank, in The Netherlands does a TAN over phone, for one, but only optionally*; you have to sign up for it.
It's actually reasonably secure. You need to log in with username/password first, then you have to set up the transaction, then you have to wait for the TAN by phone, and then enter that. It's quite nice when, say, abroad and you do need to do some banking while abroad. If you're away for a month or more, you might have rent to pay, for example; not everybody accepts 2 months' rent, or allow you to pay upon your return. Odds are that you'll have your phone with you - so why lug around another (USB) device, a card, etc. Worse yet, who says you can actually plug a USB device into the internet cafe you happen to be at?
Combine that convenience with the odds that somebody 1. has your username/password and 2. has a copy of your phone in terms of what would be needed to pull this off, are so tiny that - as per other replies - I think there's something more going on here than just duping the network and getting the TANs intended for another person, somehow; it would be far -more- likely a burglar took your actual phone and found your username/password written down on it or something.
The networks don't just authenticate the phones here, they will simply -not- allow a second copy of an IMEI on the networks. If that happens, they -will- investigate, triangulate, and send in the forces to find out wtf happened that they got a duplicate IMEI. Obviously that may be different outside of the nl-be region (i.e. I'm not even sure how they handle it in germany; but it was my understanding that practically all networks only allow a single ID and red flags get raised when a duplicate pops up)
* That said, I don't use it. My phone could die, and I would be f'n stuck until I got a new phone to drop the SIM in. Worse yet, I could lose my phone - which is always a possibility for any goods you take with you everywhere, all the time.
I just work with the long list of TAN numbers printed out on a sheet of paper** The bank asks me for the TAN number corresponding to a given index, I type it in, transaction completed. The only way for that to be intercepted is for it to be done so somewhere along the snailmail line, and any tampering with the envelope/etc. would be glaringly obvious. Yes, that paper can be stolen (which would be noticeable) or even copied, and -if- they then have my login information as well, I'm still screwed. But at least there's no possibility of some manner of 'eavesdropping', short of a high powered telescope aimed at my window from an undisclosed location, and I can't easily 'lose' it as I might a phone, as I'm not carrying that list with me all the time. Slight sacrifice of convenience, but I'll live.
** Ideally they would send two pages, one with the indices randomized, one with the TAN numbers, that could then be kept in separate locations and simply overlaid to find the TAN corresponding to an index, but this can be done manually if one were just shy of a tinfoil hat.
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I have yet to be convinced by anybody that one of those 'calculators' / USB devices + a card + lord knows what else is actually more secure without being glaringly less convenient, than what I'm working with now. But maybe I haven't heard the right arguments yet.
I choose this one... FruitWorm writes in with word of a vulnerability in Java that has been patched by everyone but Apple.
So essentially... All Apple users who have left JAVA enabled, and all -other- users who have not yet patched their JAVA installations. Yes, that does include Microsoft Windows, flavor-of-the-month Linux, etc. users who decided to disable auto-updating - if any - of their JAVA installation.
Just to note... BREIN is more like the RIAA (music), MPAA (movies(/TV?)) and whatever software interest group in U.S. exists for entertainment titles (so not the BSA, as that's all business such as Photoshop, AutoCAD, Office, etc.) rolled into one.
Each of those do have their actual equivalents (RIAA = BUMA/STEMRA, MPAA = NVPI, ???? = B.I.G.), but BREIN can be seen as the 'parent' organization, but without many of the legal things tying them together.
to respond to the parent: No they're not - disable the plugin path that allows this.
"But then people will just hack it about!" yes, but then certainly their software was hacked and they're clearly not just allowing this.
as for the grandparent and point of the subject: even with music and movies out of the way, there's still software downloads as well.. BREIN 'represents' its members there as well, and downloading software that is being distributed by somebody other than the person(s) or group(s) allowed to distribute it, is illegal - so BREIN still have a case even if a judge were to definitively declare that downloading music and software is legal.
Note that I mention 'definitively declare'. The law is slightly ambiguous about this and a lower court ruled some time ago that if the source is illegal, so is downloading from that source. I.e. in NL, you're not allowed to upload, as per GP, so how is one supposed to 'download' if nobody 'uploads'?
I don't recall if they appealed that decision or not, but the law simply isn't too clear on this, and I'm guessing that eventually it will get cleared up - and I don't expect it to be cleared up in favor of the pirates (arrrrr!)
You sir are a genius. Let's start to track down politician cars
I'm note sure if you meant police (as per GP) or politician, but okay... so far so good, seems to be legal, all that. At least as long as you're a cop. I'm guessing there's laws against private citizens attaching random item X to other person's property Y.
and update their locations real time to a web site.
and there's definitely all sorts of laws against that one.
It's a cute thought-experiment, bound to get you all sorts of populistic "YEA!"-voters, and might even be used to demonstrate the inequality between what some people (such as law enforcement officers, licenses private investigators, licensed bounty hunters, etc.) can do and others (joe schmoe) can't do, but fails to be realistic.
That said - go for it, I'd love to see what happens, the media attention, all that.. I just hope it doesn't end badly for you.
*beeeeep* *beeeeep* *beeeeep* "Hello, you have reached the voicemail of... BIKE HELMET...to page this user now, press pound, or leave a message after the tone" *biiiiip* - "Hi honey! Hey, could you tell me what brand hemorrhoid cream you always get? You mentioned you were out and I'll be at the pharmacy later for my allergy medicine."...
"You have... ONE...new voice mail." - "Hi honey! Hey, could you tell me what brand hemmorhoid cream... NEED PREPARATION? NOW AT WALGREENS - ONLY $4.95!...you always get? You mentioned you were out and I'll be at the pharmacy... Trusted 0nline Pharmacy, ED pills save up to 80%. ViagraCialisLevita and more. CheapestPrice & 100% satisfaction guaranteed...later for my allergy medicine... ALSO AT WALGREENS - ZYRTIC, 20 PROCENT OFF!." "end of messages"
Yeah, not gonna happen, nobody would use it if that started happening. That said - trust Google not to store/parse your voicemail->text messages and use them to deliver targeted ads to you online / to your Account / etc.?
Correct - usually these sites are targeted under a "facilitating [whatever]" type thing;
"Hij benadrukt daarbij dat er, volgens hem, niets grijs is aan illegale torrentsites en trackers. 'Zij faciliteren de inbreuk en de torrents zijn ook een onmisbaar bestanddeel van de inbreuk. Dat is onrechtmatig, en een strafbaar feit,'" - citing Tim Kuik, BREIN (kinda like the riaa and mpaa and whatnot rolled into one).
To translate.. "He stresses that, according to him, torrentsites and trackers do not operate in a gray area. 'They facilitate the infringements and the torrents are a necessary part of the infringement. That is unlawful and a criminal act,'"
So regardless of whether mininova hosts the data, or even hosts the torrent files, if BREIN so wishes, they can sue under Dutch law.. and they are suing (court case upcoming). Whether the judge will agree with BREIN is another matter - but realistically, he would, and the arguments would be more about what damages are to be awarded.
Slashdot Mirror
and the above two replies are exactly why this old, old commentary ("it's all been done before anyway") should cease to be modded up. It's not insightful at all - it's no more insightful than commenting that ice melts above 0C.
Yes, every movie's been done before. Either as a movie, or a play, or a novel, or whatever. Just look at the number of "boy meets girl, boy engages bet that he can get the girl, he gets the girl and is cray about her, girl finds out about bet and thins the boy's just been acting, boy has to prove that he really is crazy about her"-movies. Heck, "Yes Man" fits that category, and so does "She's the Man".
Yet only an idiot would argue that the two movies are the same and that if you've seen one, you've seen the other.
It's never about whether or not the story is completely original (when it comes down to it, every movie is either a comedy or a tragedy), but about how the story is told, and about the finer details of that story.
But to those who still think "meh.. there's nothing original anymore".. please, by all means, swear off movies, tv, radio, books, etc. Go hiking, have your own unique experiences doing so. But keep in mind that odds are somebody hiked that path before you did, and your taking a hike is hardly original.
I'm a huge fan of that method, actually :) unfortunately it typically does mean loss of both half your horizontal -and- vertical resolution ( unless you shoot a portrait mode movie :) )
I take some stereoscopic side-by-side photos from time to time, and cross-eye is definitely the best way to view them. However, some people seem to have problems with focusing right when they cross their eyes; their brain is too wired into thinking that whatever is at the point where your eyes' sightlines cross, must be what should be in focus.
yup - that's why 3D live action movies are a ways off for now.. CG is easier (See another post of mine on that; it's still a lot of extra work); with live action you have to deal with physical cameras.. whether or not you can even place them in the spot you want, or whether that would place one camera halfway into a wall, etc.
and with a generation practically being raised on "I want it my way, I want it now, and I want it free - legal or otherwise", I think it'll drop right off the cliff at the bottom of that hill.
Yes, but keep in mind that the lenticular cover is typically permanent (if it's not, you have to *very carefully* re-align any time you put it back over the screen).. which means your resolution is cut in half at best (say, every even vertical column of pixels for the left eye, every odd vertical column for the right eye). And even if you don't move your head very much, go find a lenticular display or even just one of those little cards that came in cereal boxes or whatever.. the smallest movement can cause ghosting at best, or flipping at worst. What I mean by 'the smallest movement' is, roughly, half the distance between your eyes at the ideal distance (yes, every lenticular display also has an ideal distance). I'm sure you'll agree, that's not a lot of distance at all.
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2D Movies into 3D is partially bunk - see posts up above.
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CG Movies *can* be made in '3D' (stereoscopic) and *are* being made in 3D. See: Beowulf, Caroline, Up, etc. Speaking of Pixar... soon to come: Toy Story 1 (and 2, I think), re-done in 3D.
Don't think it costs 'almost nothing', though.
It effectively doubles your rendertime - at 8 hours to a day per frame for some scenes, that's something to cinsider (they probably have more than double the speed now that they did back then, but there ya go).
But moreover, you have to plan your scenes much more carefully. You don't want thinks popping into screen for the left eye but not for the right eye. If you're doing any post-process compositing, all of your effects have to be composited into a 3D space, as any cheat of "eh, this looks about right" on a single 2D plate, when transferred to two 2D plates, can cause the effect to either float in front of where it should be, or sit behind it... both are very confusing for the brain to deal with (the latter more so).
All this takes plenty of additional man-hours (artists, but even the tech guys who keep the farm up and running, for example). That's also partially why more and more 'CG' studios are trying to get things out of the rendering pipeline directly with as little need for post-compositing as possible. Color keying and such you can do on both plates at the same time without issue, of course.
The easiest way to get a stereo 3D movie is actually by taking advantage of camera motion.
1. Detect camera motion
2. Detect the direction
3. Detect the velocity
4. display frame t=N for one eye
5. display frame t=+-x for the other eye, depending on 2, and x depending on 4.
If you've got the movie Swordfish, you can apply this technique to the action sequence in the beginning where a camera orbits the scene. In fact, try here*:
http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=2a6tw82&s=5
It's in cross-eyed stereoscopic format, so just cross your eyes, focus, and enjoy the scene in stereoscopic 3D.
It also shows (slightly) the pitfalls...
1. If there's no camera motion, this doesn't work.
2. If there's too much non-camera motion, this shows ghosting (as e.g. a person will be in place A at t=N, and place B at t=N+x)
3. If there's any post effects, they will stick out like a sore thumb if they are not accurately composited in. In that video, for example, the explosion-y bits halfway in look like they're kind of floating at a place in the scene they shouldn't be. It doesn't show so much in the original (just watch either left/right alone), but it shows up easily once made stereoscopic 3d.
It is a cute method, just not well-suited to any and all movies at all.
Other methods that might be employed are detecting fog and using the fog as a depth cue, or parent poster's method; but that will take a more hefty processor (most of the above steps can easily be derived from e.g. an mpeg processor, which already does motion estimation).
( *original material copyright Village Roadshow Pictures, Silver Pictures, NPV Entertainment and Jonathan Krane Group and Warner Bros (distributor). Broadcast by SBS Broadcasting, a subsidiary of ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG. Used only to demonstrate a 2D to stereographic 3D conversion method, for educational purposes. )
Okay.. so on one hand, you've got... ...glasses. Nobody likes these, because you have to wear them.
- red/green red/cyan red/blue
- polarized
- shutter
- chromadepth
- etc.
On the other hand, you've got.. ...displays. Which most people don't like either, as you practically have to sit in a single spot to make it work well. There -are- displays where you can view from a few more angles (any 'tween' angles show ghosting), but always at a loss of (horizontal) resolution, as more and more images get displayed at the same time.
- lenticular
- uhm. nope, that's pretty much it.
This only counts -stereographic- 3D methods. So a bunch of panels behind eachother (medical imaging-look, and your laptop would be as thick as a printed encyclopedia..), or displays that track where your face is so as to show a different viewpoint (doesn't give depth cues except for the illusion when you move your head side to side like some sort of pigeon on drugs), don't count.
Neither of the above 2 methods are very appealing, but if I had to take my pick, I'll take glasses *any* time. Combined with the head tracker, all the more awesome. Displays that don't take glasses simply aren't there yet for any extended use.
( See an older post of mine for various other '3d display' methods; though I'm sure wikipedia's got 'm all covered, too )
Well of course it has fundamentally changed the game. Let's not forget that recording a radio/tv show onto tape (casette/video) -is- still perfectly legal. You -can- still borrow your neighbor's DVD, play it back, and record it to tape legally.
However, I have a sneaking suspicion (or call it insight from history) that if that were the -only- available method (lossy transfer, can only transfer slightly above real-time or else the recording gets too distorted for the tape technology, etc.), casual piracy would be much more incidental rather than systemic and on the scale we're looking at today.
From time taken to make the copy, to having to purchase the storage (and keep in mind that tapes tend to have a levy to do with home copies already), to having to actually store it all somewhere.
Let's face it, the 'convenience' factor is extremely powerful. Be it related to getting upset if somebody takes away the convenience of downloading, or hating on the government because of automated speed traps (being more okay with it if it were a live copper that actually had to pay attention, give chase, etc.; only to complain "don't you have murderers to catch!?" once caught, of course).
It's that convenience that the RIAA/MPAA are worried about the most when it comes to piracy. They don't mind so much if you have to go way out of your way to make a copy, nor do they worry about convenient (iTunes not even being the most convenient) -legal- alternatives online.
Anybody writing plugins for 3ds Max 2010 will have upgraded to 2008, as you practically need 2008 to compile your code into plugins compatible with that release of 3ds Max.
That's a small market, but it serves as a demonstration that there's probably more people using 2008 - maybe not altogether by choice, as in this case - than you'd think.
Granted, the earlier networks didn't have NickServs so you had to /whois to semi-make sure the person you were talking to was actually the person you think you're talking to, but in terms of instant messaging, IRC is certainly by far a predecessor to all of the IM apps.
and I'm guessing there were near-instant messaging utilities for BBS's back in the day; I know I chatted with a SysOp once through... Terminat, I think?
Ahhh, Bi-Modem protocol... no carrier indeed.
Speaking of which... what's a good alternative to CHM?
PDF woefully lacks proper indexing, searching, etc. and the file tends to bloat up pretty crazily.
a bunch of loose HTML files doesn't do searching at all unless you host the thing on your server with a server-side search.. and it's a bunch of loose HTML files.
Checking Google, I see lots of alternative viewers and some compilers, but nothing in the way of an alternative format (the search terms may be too generic - who knows). If one exists, I'd love pointers.
For what it's worth - you can actually rename "hello" to "Hello" in Windows Explorer just fine - using either the in-place renaming facility with F2, or right-click, choose properties, and change the name in the folder's properties pane.
I'm guessing the entire distinction is what was explained in two posts in that thread...
one guy says that you can't do this in windows itself, giving the example: "mv hello Hello"
to which another guy says that he's silly for using a move command when trying to -rename- an entry, and gives the working example: "ren hello Hello"
I'm not a filesystem expert, so I can't say whether or not case sensitivity would be an issue (I'm just imagining that if you already have a directory called "Hello", and you're trying to rename (not move, rename) "hello" to "Hello", it will tell you the folder already exists, same as would happen if you renamed "foo" to "Hello"; but, again, not an expert).
Regardless.. everything in any other app I know of lets you rename folders and files to the same name with a different case, so I'm just surprised that in ThunderBird, one cannot. If I knew C++ -and- had enough knowledge of where my changes might affect things, I'd write a patch myself. But I don't, sadly.
"I damn well *expect* there to be thousands, if not more, bugs that are not and will never be fixed in Windows until someone "finds" them and posts about them publically, security related or not"
Hell, I expect there to be thousands, if not more, bugs that are not and will never be fixed in open source software, until somebody -other than those actually responsible for the code- submit a patch.
I'm looking at you, silly little Thunderbird bug #92165 from 2001/Jul/24.
does your user work with important documents? Now they're hosed.
does your user work with other people using a shared network resource? Now those are hosed.
( yes, I'm sure they keep backups. But do they keep live, instant backups? )
does your user use e-mail? Great, that machine is now a spam service zombie.
does your user have access to the internet at large? Now that machine is part of a DDoS network, too. In addition, those important documents just got sent do the hoodlums' stashing place.
Congratulations on having a more difficult - if not impossible - to access root account, thus preventing problems with any other accounts on the machine, let alone some manner of domain-wide issue, but you can still be well and truly f'ed even in a lowly user account.
That's not to say steps 1, 2 and maybe 3, aren't good steps to take... but they do nothing against the most common attack vector of all time: users doing stuff they shouldn't do, and can't be prevented from doing technologically because it would prevent them from doing what they -need- to do.
This argument's been had before and others have explained all this far more eloquently than I can, so just search around / on slashdot.
Well sure, if you take into account wages, standards of living, infrastructure maintenance, laws and regulations regarding work, laws and regulations regarding pollution, etc. and so on and so forth, then you can have things for cheap*
Heck, as it is, things in the U.S. tend to be cheaper than in Europe.
'Unfortunately', not everybody lives in Poland / India / China / whichever place happens to be cheap because, well, they're cheap, at the time.
So any comparison there is absolutely moot unless one can actually -order- these things -from- India, and have them delivered to them, still for cheap, with support. But try that and in most countries you get a huge shipping fee and import duties and taxes applied - if they don't just send it back altogether because of import prohibitions.
A compositor usually does more than a little touch-up. These days, a compositor may very well be expected to add rim lighting to an output render using nothing but the original output render with its auxiliary data (normals, z-depth, etc.)
I agree with GP poster than compositors usually don't get very much attention, even though the compositors are often the ones who make a render 'work'. Granted, this is more true when it needs to integrate with physical effects or a live action plate, but it still applies to full-on CG shots as well.
Step 4: watch a lower ranking employee click on the HappyFunTime executable in their mail
Step 5: Priceless.
The ING Bank, formerly Postbank, in The Netherlands does a TAN over phone, for one, but only optionally*; you have to sign up for it.
It's actually reasonably secure. You need to log in with username/password first, then you have to set up the transaction, then you have to wait for the TAN by phone, and then enter that. It's quite nice when, say, abroad and you do need to do some banking while abroad. If you're away for a month or more, you might have rent to pay, for example; not everybody accepts 2 months' rent, or allow you to pay upon your return.
Odds are that you'll have your phone with you - so why lug around another (USB) device, a card, etc. Worse yet, who says you can actually plug a USB device into the internet cafe you happen to be at?
Combine that convenience with the odds that somebody 1. has your username/password and 2. has a copy of your phone in terms of what would be needed to pull this off, are so tiny that - as per other replies - I think there's something more going on here than just duping the network and getting the TANs intended for another person, somehow; it would be far -more- likely a burglar took your actual phone and found your username/password written down on it or something.
The networks don't just authenticate the phones here, they will simply -not- allow a second copy of an IMEI on the networks. If that happens, they -will- investigate, triangulate, and send in the forces to find out wtf happened that they got a duplicate IMEI. Obviously that may be different outside of the nl-be region (i.e. I'm not even sure how they handle it in germany; but it was my understanding that practically all networks only allow a single ID and red flags get raised when a duplicate pops up)
* That said, I don't use it. My phone could die, and I would be f'n stuck until I got a new phone to drop the SIM in. Worse yet, I could lose my phone - which is always a possibility for any goods you take with you everywhere, all the time.
I just work with the long list of TAN numbers printed out on a sheet of paper** The bank asks me for the TAN number corresponding to a given index, I type it in, transaction completed. The only way for that to be intercepted is for it to be done so somewhere along the snailmail line, and any tampering with the envelope/etc. would be glaringly obvious.
Yes, that paper can be stolen (which would be noticeable) or even copied, and -if- they then have my login information as well, I'm still screwed. But at least there's no possibility of some manner of 'eavesdropping', short of a high powered telescope aimed at my window from an undisclosed location, and I can't easily 'lose' it as I might a phone, as I'm not carrying that list with me all the time. Slight sacrifice of convenience, but I'll live.
** Ideally they would send two pages, one with the indices randomized, one with the TAN numbers, that could then be kept in separate locations and simply overlaid to find the TAN corresponding to an index, but this can be done manually if one were just shy of a tinfoil hat.
=====
I have yet to be convinced by anybody that one of those 'calculators' / USB devices + a card + lord knows what else is actually more secure without being glaringly less convenient, than what I'm working with now. But maybe I haven't heard the right arguments yet.
Very well...
I choose this one...
FruitWorm writes in with word of a vulnerability in Java that has been patched by everyone but Apple.
So essentially... All Apple users who have left JAVA enabled, and all -other- users who have not yet patched their JAVA installations. Yes, that does include Microsoft Windows, flavor-of-the-month Linux, etc. users who decided to disable auto-updating - if any - of their JAVA installation.
Just to note... BREIN is more like the RIAA (music), MPAA (movies(/TV?)) and whatever software interest group in U.S. exists for entertainment titles (so not the BSA, as that's all business such as Photoshop, AutoCAD, Office, etc.) rolled into one.
Each of those do have their actual equivalents (RIAA = BUMA/STEMRA, MPAA = NVPI, ???? = B.I.G.), but BREIN can be seen as the 'parent' organization, but without many of the legal things tying them together.
to respond to the parent:
No they're not - disable the plugin path that allows this.
"But then people will just hack it about!"
yes, but then certainly their software was hacked and they're clearly not just allowing this.
as for the grandparent and point of the subject:
even with music and movies out of the way, there's still software downloads as well.. BREIN 'represents' its members there as well, and downloading software that is being distributed by somebody other than the person(s) or group(s) allowed to distribute it, is illegal - so BREIN still have a case even if a judge were to definitively declare that downloading music and software is legal.
Note that I mention 'definitively declare'. The law is slightly ambiguous about this and a lower court ruled some time ago that if the source is illegal, so is downloading from that source. I.e. in NL, you're not allowed to upload, as per GP, so how is one supposed to 'download' if nobody 'uploads'?
I don't recall if they appealed that decision or not, but the law simply isn't too clear on this, and I'm guessing that eventually it will get cleared up - and I don't expect it to be cleared up in favor of the pirates (arrrrr!)
I'm note sure if you meant police (as per GP) or politician, but okay... so far so good, seems to be legal, all that. At least as long as you're a cop.
I'm guessing there's laws against private citizens attaching random item X to other person's property Y.
and there's definitely all sorts of laws against that one.
It's a cute thought-experiment, bound to get you all sorts of populistic "YEA!"-voters, and might even be used to demonstrate the inequality between what some people (such as law enforcement officers, licenses private investigators, licensed bounty hunters, etc.) can do and others (joe schmoe) can't do, but fails to be realistic.
That said - go for it, I'd love to see what happens, the media attention, all that.. I just hope it doesn't end badly for you.
*beeeeep* ...to page this user now, press pound, or leave a message after the tone" ...
*beeeeep*
*beeeeep*
"Hello, you have reached the voicemail of... BIKE HELMET
*biiiiip*
- "Hi honey! Hey, could you tell me what brand hemorrhoid cream you always get? You mentioned you were out and I'll be at the pharmacy later for my allergy medicine."
"You have... ONE ...new voice mail." ...you always get? You mentioned you were out and I'll be at the pharmacy... Trusted 0nline Pharmacy, ED pills save up to 80%. ViagraCialisLevita and more. CheapestPrice & 100% satisfaction guaranteed ...later for my allergy medicine... ALSO AT WALGREENS - ZYRTIC, 20 PROCENT OFF!."
- "Hi honey! Hey, could you tell me what brand hemmorhoid cream... NEED PREPARATION? NOW AT WALGREENS - ONLY $4.95!
"end of messages"
Yeah, not gonna happen, nobody would use it if that started happening. That said - trust Google not to store/parse your voicemail->text messages and use them to deliver targeted ads to you online / to your Account / etc.?
Correct - usually these sites are targeted under a "facilitating [whatever]" type thing;
"Hij benadrukt daarbij dat er, volgens hem, niets grijs is aan illegale torrentsites en trackers. 'Zij faciliteren de inbreuk en de torrents zijn ook een onmisbaar bestanddeel van de inbreuk. Dat is onrechtmatig, en een strafbaar feit,'" - citing Tim Kuik, BREIN (kinda like the riaa and mpaa and whatnot rolled into one).
To translate..
"He stresses that, according to him, torrentsites and trackers do not operate in a gray area. 'They facilitate the infringements and the torrents are a necessary part of the infringement. That is unlawful and a criminal act,'"
So regardless of whether mininova hosts the data, or even hosts the torrent files, if BREIN so wishes, they can sue under Dutch law.. and they are suing (court case upcoming). Whether the judge will agree with BREIN is another matter - but realistically, he would, and the arguments would be more about what damages are to be awarded.
quite possibly so
But at least you -can- download that legally without restrictions from the copyright holder itself; unlike the other results.
that's all I meant, really, but you're absolutely right that Microsoft probably hasn't authorized alternative distribution channels /nokarma