... made by Diebold, it should be noted. They are the AccuVote OS models. This is not indicated in the article summary, however it is the case. I voted in Cambridge last night, and noted with mixed emotions the little Diebold logo as I slid my ballot in, and then the machine rejected it. (It worked on the second try)
I have a Win2K machine (SP 4), and I didn't have this problem. It did the usual registry association of audio CDs with iTunes, but WinAmp gladly changed it back to WinAmp for me, if I asked. I can play audio CDs with either application. (Haven't tried Media Player, but I dislike it anyway).
However, I wouldn't be surprised if this happened, because the GEAR software is crap. My gf had it on her computer because she used the Audible.com software for her audio books. It broke CD audio playing, and it also broke Easy CD Creator - I had to delete some registry keys to get it to work. The GEAR software also made a lot of coasters, where other CD burning software (Easy CD, cdrecord under Linux) worked fine, and it's a decent CD-RW drive, too. I came to the conclusion that the GEAR software just plain sucks, in all regards. I fail to see why they didn't contract with Adaptec (or Roxio now, I guess) for decent software.
Is it really too much to ask for a USB mass storage interface? It's so simple, and everyone who has a computer understands it- it's just a new disk.
Which is another benefit the iPod has going for it. It's a simple firewire disk drive (I think the second generation ones are USB2 drives or firewire drives - I have an older model). Plug it in, and your Mac (or PC, if you formatted it as FAT32) will see it as a plain vanilla firewire drive. You can dump files on there without affecting your its use as a music player at all (well, unless you specifically go in and erase the hidden directory structure containing the MP3s, but that takes effort and it's your own damn fault).
My iPod has saved my ass more than once - once when I had to take my laptop in for servicing, I simply backed up my important data to the iPod, and wiped the laptop drive (I don't trust the technicians). Again when I had to bring a large (read ~2.3GB) data set into work. I did not have a DVD burner (nor did work have a machine that reads DVD-ROMs), and uploading that much data via a cable modem that's throttled to 256Kbps upstream sucks hard. So, I could either have archived the data set with zip or rar and split it across several CDs, or used my iPod. The latter option was decidedly faster, and worked great.
A friend was telling me how I got screwed by spending twice as much on my iPod as he spent on his Nomad, but I told him, add up how much you spent on your Nomad and how much you spent on your 1GB pendrive, and now see who got the better deal. Of course, if you care about WMA audio, then maybe this Dell player or something similar is the way to go for you. Me, I prefer to keep my MP3s on an open filesystem.
For a reasonably efficient car, riding 25 miles per gallon, this translates to 4 tons of prehistoric plants per mile, or more than two tons per kilometer.
That's efficient by the standards of an SUV maybe. My car does about 31-35 mpg on the highway, and even that's considered pretty poor by European standards. I always marvel over the fuel efficiency of the cars my relatives in the UK own. 44-52 mpg - and not terribly small, either. Of course, they have to be fuel efficient due to the high gas prices there, but man, I wish I could get a car with European fuel efficiency in the US. (well, I can, but the savings on gas is offset by import and shipping costs). I'm beginning to think it's a conspiracy, like DVD region codes.
Are you telling me the next SoBig virus is going to make everyone's monitors explode?
Just because you have a splufty multisync monitor that has some logic in it to display "bad refresh rate" doesn't mean everyone does. I still use a plain-old VGA monitor for my router running linux. If I were to start up X with the wrong refresh rate, I could certainly destroy my monitor. Back when I installed the first version of Linux I ever used (RedHat 4.0), the documentation had huge warnings about picking the correct sync frequency otherwise your monitor would lose.
I'll be that the LG CD-ROM is a WinCDROM, kinda like some modems are WinModems. Mabye the drive knows how to get boot info off of the cd, but nothing else. It may rely on a windows driver to do its work for it. If it is a WinCDROM, what does that mean for other hardware? Are we now going to see WinHardDrives? This could cause a major problem in the desktop linux world.
I don't think that's the case. Manufacturers make WinDevices because they're cheaper. WinModems are cheaper because they're just sound cards hooked up to the phoneline, so they just imitate modem sounds. They don't have to shell out for expensive chips, etc. WinPrinters don't need to have a rendering engine in them - they just need to dump a bitmap to paper.
However, ATAPI is such a popular standard, and it's been around for years, and there are tons of controller chips, that I'd bet it would cost more money to _not_ implement ATAPI and use some proprietary thing. We haven't seen custom CD-ROM controllers since the days of the original Sound Blaster and the full length Sony 8-bit ISA controller cards.
I'd venture that the drive responds poorly to some signal on the bus. (I assume these are IDE/ATAPI drives, since SCSI CD-ROMs are not as popular in desktop computers). Perhaps it doesn't like being polled for its vendor info, or some other ATAPI command that Windows obviously doesn't send (or this flaw would have been noticed before now) but Mandrake does.
As another poster mentioned, what about other distros? Surely Mandrake does not rewrite the portion of the kernel that does I/O for ATAPI devices? Are there any other distros that cause this? Oh well, I'm glad I'm still using my ancient Sony 2x drive so I don't have to care.
I'm sure this'll get modded as troll simply because I raise a "what if" question that most folks won't like, but....
So, we all know the GPL says "No warranty..." etc. However, I'm willing to be this is the first time that an actual distribution -- something with a real company behind it (non-profits don't count, so don't post "you forgot GNU/FSF" as a reply) -- has put actual hardware at risk. I could easily see some small business, who installed Mandrake on their machines, get very upset that their CD-ROM drives released magic smoke. Yeah, ok, CD-ROM drives are dirt cheap these days, but that's not the point. This could lead to a test of the GPL in court. It will be interesting to see if anything happens.
No, I'm not saying anyone with a toasted CD-ROM drive has a valid case, but having a valid case is hardly required for filing suit. Will this lead to more disclaimers on packaging? At the very least, I'm sure the Microsoft PR folks are going have a field day with this, especially given the drives are found in a major manufacturer's computers (Dell), and not just some Joe's-computer-store brand. This will only fuel their "See, you lost a CD-ROM drive and because it's open-source, there's no one to cry to" argument.
Or perhaps someone will tell me this is not the first time a distro has created a risk for hardware, and this will all be moot.
Exactly how would such a law be enforced? It's not as if these companies sending all this SPAM readily identify themselves. And what about SPAM originating from outside of the U.S.?
The point is right now, the only way the government can go after spammers is if they are commiting fraud. And while a fair number of them are, others are not. The e-mail you get flaunting a new screensaver, cell phone, or home loan might be annoying, but it's not fraud if they deliver the product. Suppose you manage to catch a spammer who was, say, selling those Micro-RC cars. What can you do to him under federal law? Right now - nothing. With the new law, possibly something.
I agree the new law is unlikely to cut spam just be being enacted. I also agree that it's useless for overseas spammers. But a fair number of spammers are out there in plain view, because what they do is not (yet) illegal. So once this law passes, I'd say it's only a matter of time before notorious spammers like Alan Ralsky and Eddie Marin get a visit from some guys in black suits who say "Come with us, sir." Yes, international spam will still remain, but there are a not-insignificant number of spammers in the US, and these people might just get caught under the new law.
Apple IS selling a mechanism that locks you into Apple. If you buy from the iTunes store, you are locked into Apple. That's been Apple's strategy from day 1, and is one of the reasons I detest Apple.
Other player manufacturers are free to include AAC support. It's, like, an open standard. They just choose not to. Also, the Audiobooks offered via the iTMS are from audible.com, which has their own player, which does the DRM stuff, in addition to the iPod. The only reason other players don't support AAC files are because other manufacturers haven't bothered yet.
iTunes uses IE as its browser no matter what browser you choose. Maybe it's because the functionality of iTMS requires IE or Safari, as other browsers are not supported.
Are you sure about this, and do you have any references? I believe iTunes has it's own "browser" (it speaks XML, I think) built-in to it. At least, when using the iTMS on my Windows machine, the only application talking on the network is iTunes. IE is not being used, either directly or via ActiveX controls. At least, my firewall (which does MD5SUMs of applications) and lsof both seem to think that iTunes is the only thing talking on the network.
...but unless the users see through this, MS might just gain the upper hand. Yes, yes, it's all FUD, we know, but do the users know? These are the same users who upgrade just because something is newer, and when their 'net connection dies, they call the helpdesk saying "My Microsoft is broken".
Apple needs to fight this with some powerful prime-time adverisements. (Like they did for the "Switch" campaign, except without the annoying chick). They need to remind users that iTunes can play any MP3s (and WAV files), and their iPods can be used to take their entire CD collection on the road with them - not just purchased music from the iTunes Music store. (Heck, that was one of the major reasons why I bought one - you can easily press "Next track" on the iPod while driving, but it's hard to change CDs, and CD changers are expensive and only hold 6-10 CDs).
Apple also needs to do more plugging on the fact that users can burn any number of plain vanilla audio CDs containing their purchased tracks. (You can only burn the same _playlist_ 10 times if it contains purchased tracks, but you can burn the tracks themselves any number of times. The playlist restriction is to prevent you from downloading an album, making a playlist of that album, and burning 50 copies and selling/giving them to your friends. And really, that's not unreasonable - would you do that with CDs you purchased?)
This sounds a lot like the dot com days to me. They are selling songs for 99 cents a piece, nearly all of which the RIAA is taking back. Not to mention that the software's been downloaded 1,000,000 times and they've only sold about 1,000,000 songs for the same period. Not much if you ask me. The bandwidth probably costs more than their profit.
Except that it's totally different. The dot-com days were typified by huge numbers of venture capitalists, stupid ideas, and fly-by-nite products. Apple is a huge company (yeah, yeah, they're dying just like *BSD, we know, we know) with a lot of backing, and they have other products for sale which they do make a profit on.
Also, how do you know they're not making a profit from iTunes? I haven't seen any figures on what the licensing costs. I'd imagine they must be making _some_ profit on it - they're not stupid. They don't need to make a huge profit, since like I said before, they have other sources of income (AlBooks, anyone?). They can break even and still be in good financial shape. But I suspect they're not even close to being in the red.
It also looks like Apple is only supporting Windows 2000 and XP.
So? It doesn't make sense for Apple, when coming out with a new piece of software, to support versions that Microsoft doesn't even support. All the 9x series are legacy now, except perhaps 98/98SE which is in "extended support" or something for a few more months.
"We have examined our service, and we think it works fine, and we think users love it."
Well, duh. Did anyone actually expect something different? The ball is now firmly lodged in ICANN's court. They've done their legal blustering and letter writing - now they need to take it to court if Verisign continues flipping the bird to the Internet community.
Are you sure your company didn't inform you of this? Like, did you read all the fine print when you started your job? How about the employee handbook? (The one where I work is a 3" binder - I know I haven't read all of it) Are there Rules of Use you had to agree to when you got 'net access? Are you sure this wasn't in there?
Bottom line: if the company informs you of this, even if it's on page 356, Appendix B of the employee handbook or way down at the bottom of the Rules of Use, then you can't complain about this.
Now if they didn't inform you, that's bad. But before asking Slashdot, I'd ask your sysadmin. Or your BOFH. Or your PHB. Of course, that would involve admitting that you read/. at work, which may or may not be a problem at your company. You may find out it was some overzealous PFY in the systems group who was afraid that the PHB might see "lesbian" on an employee's computer and tomorrow there might be a FOX News story "Employees at Company Foo use corporate networks to access porn." Sure, that's a little far-out, but PHBs are primarily concerned about covering their asses.
While on the subject, is anybody still running old DOS programs in a DOS box on a Windows machine (e.g. a database) because your company is too poor/cheap to upgrade or doesn't want to bother with any free alternatives?"
Why the assumption that a company is too poor/cheap to upgrade or doesn't want to bother with free alternatives? Believe it or not, there is still some software for which free alternatives do not exist. And probably will never exist, because it is so specialized.
At one bio lab where I worked, I had to support a bunch of DOS machines connected to lab equipment, because the controller programs only worked in DOS, due to the age of the equipment. Replacing the device would cost more than your average waterfront condo, so it's not exactly as if the company was being "cheap". Besides, the old device worked fine - if it ain't broke... etc.
Another place I worked at used a proprietary database for storing patient records. The server was a 386SX/25 and was accessed from dumb terminals connected to a multiport serial board. Replacing/upgrading this woudl require spending a huge amount of money to obtain a new system, or a huge number of man-hours developing a new open-source system and getting it certified. (Such systems need to be certified what with privacy laws and the like.)
So, there are plenty of reasons why a company might keep old hardware arround - almost anything which has custom boards or software written for it is likely to be running on older hardware, simply because there's no reason to upgrade.
The Adobe/ElcomSoft/Dmitry thing was completely different. He actually wrote a program that modified the PDF (or created a modified copy, depending on how you want to look at it). All this guy did was say "hey, press your shift key". Even the most technologically incompetent person in the world will see this. No matter what the company says "This hacker terrorist using hacking to defeat our ironclad copy protection", the judge is going to want proof and or methods, and short of perjuring themselves in the court, there's no way the company can claim the kid did anything except press the shift key.
Of course, that doesn't mean this company won't very well perjure themselves and say "this kid dis-assembled our source, and using hacking tools obtained from Afghanistan, scientifically created a virus which, when triggered by the shift key, disables our software", but, well, there's not much anyone can do if the prosecution is willing to resort to outright lies and the judge is willing to believe them.
No, that is absolutely 100% wrong!!! Files *created* by iTunes when you rip your CDs are standard AAC files.
Only if you tell iTunes you want AAC. My iTunes rips to MP3. The MP3s it creates can be played anywhere, including WinAMP, mpg123, and any number of portable players, such as my Zaurus PDA. There's a setting in the preferences pane.
>MPEG 4 is an ISO standard. If other player
>manufacturers don't want to use standard formats
>and instead use WMA, that's not Apple's fault.
What a load of B.S. - who told you that?
Uh, you're kidding right? MPEG-4 is very much an ISO standard, as were MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. Perhaps you should go take a look at the MPEG site at
http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/index.htm, specifically this page.
[reading screen] "To Start Press Any Key". Where's the ANY key?
I see Esk ["ESC"], Catarl ["CTRL"], and Pig-Up ["PGUP"]. There
doesn't seem to be any ANY key. Woo! All this computer hacking
is making me thirsty. I think I'll order a TAB. [presses TAB
key] Awp...no time for that now, the computer's starting.
Alt Graph is a modifier key, like Shift, Control, Meta, etc. It existed on the PC platform too. If you look at non-US keyboard maps in the old IBM DOS manuals (like version 3.30), you'll see the that one of the "Alt" keys was labelled "AltGr" (guess what the "Gr" is an abbreviation for). You had to use the AltGr key to get things like accents and stuff if you used a non-US code page in DOS.
ISTR that AltGraph+Help did something on older Sun machines, but I can't recall what.
In the USA it's popular to confuse the idea of "freedom of speech" with the idea of "guarantee of an audience".
Right on. I wish more people realized this. The First Ammendment guarantees the right to free speech. It does not guarantee that anyone will listen to said speech.
Unless they make it so that nobody can listen to it, copy protection is an exersise in futility.
Or until such time as the analog hole is closed. Like when it's fed directly into our brains from the Matrix. Sure, you see Trinity using sshnuke and other l33t stuff, but does she ever rip any CDs? Of course not.
That's not what the article is about. What you are describing are called "cue dots". They tell the projectionist when to switch from one projector to another, in a 2-projector theater. (most cineplexes splice all the reels together on a platter system, so the cue dots are irrelevant). Yes, they have been there since movies lasted longer than 20 minutes. (a reel of film is 20 minutes).
This is something completely different. Cue dots are only in the last 5-10 seconds of a reel, and are located in the upper right corner of the screen (usually). These new dots are interspersed throughout the film, and appear in the middle of frames.
So, what happens if a kid brings their netgear MR814 router with them and every time he gets cut off, he simply changes the Internet-side MAC address of the router through the handy-dandy html-based admin tool?
What makes you think they're blocking by MAC address? I work at a fairly large university, and when we need to disabled access to a host (ie: when they get infected, by, say, Blaster), we turn off that switch/repeater port. Doesn't matter what your MAC address is or how many times you change it, if the repeater/switch port is disabled.
Slashdot Mirror
... made by Diebold, it should be noted. They are the AccuVote OS models. This is not indicated in the article summary, however it is the case. I voted in Cambridge last night, and noted with mixed emotions the little Diebold logo as I slid my ballot in, and then the machine rejected it. (It worked on the second try)
However, I wouldn't be surprised if this happened, because the GEAR software is crap. My gf had it on her computer because she used the Audible.com software for her audio books. It broke CD audio playing, and it also broke Easy CD Creator - I had to delete some registry keys to get it to work. The GEAR software also made a lot of coasters, where other CD burning software (Easy CD, cdrecord under Linux) worked fine, and it's a decent CD-RW drive, too. I came to the conclusion that the GEAR software just plain sucks, in all regards. I fail to see why they didn't contract with Adaptec (or Roxio now, I guess) for decent software.
Which is another benefit the iPod has going for it. It's a simple firewire disk drive (I think the second generation ones are USB2 drives or firewire drives - I have an older model). Plug it in, and your Mac (or PC, if you formatted it as FAT32) will see it as a plain vanilla firewire drive. You can dump files on there without affecting your its use as a music player at all (well, unless you specifically go in and erase the hidden directory structure containing the MP3s, but that takes effort and it's your own damn fault).
My iPod has saved my ass more than once - once when I had to take my laptop in for servicing, I simply backed up my important data to the iPod, and wiped the laptop drive (I don't trust the technicians). Again when I had to bring a large (read ~2.3GB) data set into work. I did not have a DVD burner (nor did work have a machine that reads DVD-ROMs), and uploading that much data via a cable modem that's throttled to 256Kbps upstream sucks hard. So, I could either have archived the data set with zip or rar and split it across several CDs, or used my iPod. The latter option was decidedly faster, and worked great.
A friend was telling me how I got screwed by spending twice as much on my iPod as he spent on his Nomad, but I told him, add up how much you spent on your Nomad and how much you spent on your 1GB pendrive, and now see who got the better deal. Of course, if you care about WMA audio, then maybe this Dell player or something similar is the way to go for you. Me, I prefer to keep my MP3s on an open filesystem.
That's efficient by the standards of an SUV maybe. My car does about 31-35 mpg on the highway, and even that's considered pretty poor by European standards. I always marvel over the fuel efficiency of the cars my relatives in the UK own. 44-52 mpg - and not terribly small, either. Of course, they have to be fuel efficient due to the high gas prices there, but man, I wish I could get a car with European fuel efficiency in the US. (well, I can, but the savings on gas is offset by import and shipping costs). I'm beginning to think it's a conspiracy, like DVD region codes.
Just because you have a splufty multisync monitor that has some logic in it to display "bad refresh rate" doesn't mean everyone does. I still use a plain-old VGA monitor for my router running linux. If I were to start up X with the wrong refresh rate, I could certainly destroy my monitor. Back when I installed the first version of Linux I ever used (RedHat 4.0), the documentation had huge warnings about picking the correct sync frequency otherwise your monitor would lose.
I don't think that's the case. Manufacturers make WinDevices because they're cheaper. WinModems are cheaper because they're just sound cards hooked up to the phoneline, so they just imitate modem sounds. They don't have to shell out for expensive chips, etc. WinPrinters don't need to have a rendering engine in them - they just need to dump a bitmap to paper.
However, ATAPI is such a popular standard, and it's been around for years, and there are tons of controller chips, that I'd bet it would cost more money to _not_ implement ATAPI and use some proprietary thing. We haven't seen custom CD-ROM controllers since the days of the original Sound Blaster and the full length Sony 8-bit ISA controller cards.
I'd venture that the drive responds poorly to some signal on the bus. (I assume these are IDE/ATAPI drives, since SCSI CD-ROMs are not as popular in desktop computers). Perhaps it doesn't like being polled for its vendor info, or some other ATAPI command that Windows obviously doesn't send (or this flaw would have been noticed before now) but Mandrake does.
As another poster mentioned, what about other distros? Surely Mandrake does not rewrite the portion of the kernel that does I/O for ATAPI devices? Are there any other distros that cause this? Oh well, I'm glad I'm still using my ancient Sony 2x drive so I don't have to care.
So, we all know the GPL says "No warranty..." etc. However, I'm willing to be this is the first time that an actual distribution -- something with a real company behind it (non-profits don't count, so don't post "you forgot GNU/FSF" as a reply) -- has put actual hardware at risk. I could easily see some small business, who installed Mandrake on their machines, get very upset that their CD-ROM drives released magic smoke. Yeah, ok, CD-ROM drives are dirt cheap these days, but that's not the point. This could lead to a test of the GPL in court. It will be interesting to see if anything happens.
No, I'm not saying anyone with a toasted CD-ROM drive has a valid case, but having a valid case is hardly required for filing suit. Will this lead to more disclaimers on packaging? At the very least, I'm sure the Microsoft PR folks are going have a field day with this, especially given the drives are found in a major manufacturer's computers (Dell), and not just some Joe's-computer-store brand. This will only fuel their "See, you lost a CD-ROM drive and because it's open-source, there's no one to cry to" argument.
Or perhaps someone will tell me this is not the first time a distro has created a risk for hardware, and this will all be moot.
The point is right now, the only way the government can go after spammers is if they are commiting fraud. And while a fair number of them are, others are not. The e-mail you get flaunting a new screensaver, cell phone, or home loan might be annoying, but it's not fraud if they deliver the product. Suppose you manage to catch a spammer who was, say, selling those Micro-RC cars. What can you do to him under federal law? Right now - nothing. With the new law, possibly something.
I agree the new law is unlikely to cut spam just be being enacted. I also agree that it's useless for overseas spammers. But a fair number of spammers are out there in plain view, because what they do is not (yet) illegal. So once this law passes, I'd say it's only a matter of time before notorious spammers like Alan Ralsky and Eddie Marin get a visit from some guys in black suits who say "Come with us, sir." Yes, international spam will still remain, but there are a not-insignificant number of spammers in the US, and these people might just get caught under the new law.
Other player manufacturers are free to include AAC support. It's, like, an open standard. They just choose not to. Also, the Audiobooks offered via the iTMS are from audible.com, which has their own player, which does the DRM stuff, in addition to the iPod. The only reason other players don't support AAC files are because other manufacturers haven't bothered yet.
Are you sure about this, and do you have any references? I believe iTunes has it's own "browser" (it speaks XML, I think) built-in to it. At least, when using the iTMS on my Windows machine, the only application talking on the network is iTunes. IE is not being used, either directly or via ActiveX controls. At least, my firewall (which does MD5SUMs of applications) and lsof both seem to think that iTunes is the only thing talking on the network.
Apple needs to fight this with some powerful prime-time adverisements. (Like they did for the "Switch" campaign, except without the annoying chick). They need to remind users that iTunes can play any MP3s (and WAV files), and their iPods can be used to take their entire CD collection on the road with them - not just purchased music from the iTunes Music store. (Heck, that was one of the major reasons why I bought one - you can easily press "Next track" on the iPod while driving, but it's hard to change CDs, and CD changers are expensive and only hold 6-10 CDs).
Apple also needs to do more plugging on the fact that users can burn any number of plain vanilla audio CDs containing their purchased tracks. (You can only burn the same _playlist_ 10 times if it contains purchased tracks, but you can burn the tracks themselves any number of times. The playlist restriction is to prevent you from downloading an album, making a playlist of that album, and burning 50 copies and selling/giving them to your friends. And really, that's not unreasonable - would you do that with CDs you purchased?)
Except that it's totally different. The dot-com days were typified by huge numbers of venture capitalists, stupid ideas, and fly-by-nite products. Apple is a huge company (yeah, yeah, they're dying just like *BSD, we know, we know) with a lot of backing, and they have other products for sale which they do make a profit on.
Also, how do you know they're not making a profit from iTunes? I haven't seen any figures on what the licensing costs. I'd imagine they must be making _some_ profit on it - they're not stupid. They don't need to make a huge profit, since like I said before, they have other sources of income (AlBooks, anyone?). They can break even and still be in good financial shape. But I suspect they're not even close to being in the red.
So? It doesn't make sense for Apple, when coming out with a new piece of software, to support versions that Microsoft doesn't even support. All the 9x series are legacy now, except perhaps 98/98SE which is in "extended support" or something for a few more months.
Well, duh. Did anyone actually expect something different? The ball is now firmly lodged in ICANN's court. They've done their legal blustering and letter writing - now they need to take it to court if Verisign continues flipping the bird to the Internet community.
Bottom line: if the company informs you of this, even if it's on page 356, Appendix B of the employee handbook or way down at the bottom of the Rules of Use, then you can't complain about this.
Now if they didn't inform you, that's bad. But before asking Slashdot, I'd ask your sysadmin. Or your BOFH. Or your PHB. Of course, that would involve admitting that you read /. at work, which may or may not be a problem at your company. You may find out it was some overzealous PFY in the systems group who was afraid that the PHB might see "lesbian" on an employee's computer and tomorrow there might be a FOX News story "Employees at Company Foo use corporate networks to access porn." Sure, that's a little far-out, but PHBs are primarily concerned about covering their asses.
Why the assumption that a company is too poor/cheap to upgrade or doesn't want to bother with free alternatives? Believe it or not, there is still some software for which free alternatives do not exist. And probably will never exist, because it is so specialized.
At one bio lab where I worked, I had to support a bunch of DOS machines connected to lab equipment, because the controller programs only worked in DOS, due to the age of the equipment. Replacing the device would cost more than your average waterfront condo, so it's not exactly as if the company was being "cheap". Besides, the old device worked fine - if it ain't broke... etc.
Another place I worked at used a proprietary database for storing patient records. The server was a 386SX/25 and was accessed from dumb terminals connected to a multiport serial board. Replacing/upgrading this woudl require spending a huge amount of money to obtain a new system, or a huge number of man-hours developing a new open-source system and getting it certified. (Such systems need to be certified what with privacy laws and the like.)
So, there are plenty of reasons why a company might keep old hardware arround - almost anything which has custom boards or software written for it is likely to be running on older hardware, simply because there's no reason to upgrade.
Tell that to Dmitry and his employer!
"Yes, but..."
The Adobe/ElcomSoft/Dmitry thing was completely different. He actually wrote a program that modified the PDF (or created a modified copy, depending on how you want to look at it). All this guy did was say "hey, press your shift key". Even the most technologically incompetent person in the world will see this. No matter what the company says "This hacker terrorist using hacking to defeat our ironclad copy protection", the judge is going to want proof and or methods, and short of perjuring themselves in the court, there's no way the company can claim the kid did anything except press the shift key.
Of course, that doesn't mean this company won't very well perjure themselves and say "this kid dis-assembled our source, and using hacking tools obtained from Afghanistan, scientifically created a virus which, when triggered by the shift key, disables our software", but, well, there's not much anyone can do if the prosecution is willing to resort to outright lies and the judge is willing to believe them.
Only if you tell iTunes you want AAC. My iTunes rips to MP3. The MP3s it creates can be played anywhere, including WinAMP, mpg123, and any number of portable players, such as my Zaurus PDA. There's a setting in the preferences pane.
>MPEG 4 is an ISO standard. If other player
>manufacturers don't want to use standard formats
>and instead use WMA, that's not Apple's fault.
What a load of B.S. - who told you that?
Uh, you're kidding right? MPEG-4 is very much an ISO standard, as were MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. Perhaps you should go take a look at the MPEG site at http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/index.htm, specifically this page.
Blatanly stolen from Simpsons episode 3f05.
ISTR that AltGraph+Help did something on older Sun machines, but I can't recall what.
Right on. I wish more people realized this. The First Ammendment guarantees the right to free speech. It does not guarantee that anyone will listen to said speech.
Or until such time as the analog hole is closed. Like when it's fed directly into our brains from the Matrix. Sure, you see Trinity using sshnuke and other l33t stuff, but does she ever rip any CDs? Of course not.
This is something completely different. Cue dots are only in the last 5-10 seconds of a reel, and are located in the upper right corner of the screen (usually). These new dots are interspersed throughout the film, and appear in the middle of frames.
What makes you think they're blocking by MAC address? I work at a fairly large university, and when we need to disabled access to a host (ie: when they get infected, by, say, Blaster), we turn off that switch/repeater port. Doesn't matter what your MAC address is or how many times you change it, if the repeater/switch port is disabled.
Not anymore, they don't.