What I don't get is you don't have to drop ship to use/support Linux. Make your game engine and your rendering engine(s) modular and while you may spend a bit extra time you can support multiple platforms with the same content and game engine.
It's a matter of finding a clean cut point for the program so you can stick a different interface on it.
This of course lets you target your games at Linux, MacOS, Windows, the various game consoles, etc...
I'm not saying DirectX is good or bad [my take is it's messy and a hack so bad] but it's not the be-all of the computing world. People wrote games before DX and they'll write games [and are] without it.
If you think DX is the hangup sure ok. But why are *NEW* games using it?
Why don't they collectively pressure Windows to support GL better?
I didn't have to "attack kooks" to draw them out. I could do something as simple as do a release announcement or review a program. [sometimes just answering a question politely would do it].
The problem is you have people who sit around and don't accomplish anything they're proud of. So they feel the need to troll and rip on other people to try and feel better. So you don't have to do anything negative to attract them you just have to be most popular at the moment.
When I started doing my LTC project I was ignored. Then I started getting a bit of attention [we're talking ~2002/2003] and all of a sudden I was getting a few regular trolls attacking my posts. Something as simple as a release announcement or public bug disclosure would be ripped on as being "ego stroking" or just "attention whoring".
All while these same people were not known for any public contributions. They felt justified making fun of me in public for being an amateur, incompetent, no good, ego stroking jerk all while they did nothing positive of their own. And of course I received little support from the respected others. In fact because of the negative attention I drew they KILLFILED ME. So for the most part I was on my own.
So you know what, good bye usenet. What possible good does it serve when all you feel like is closing up shop, giving up and ending it all [if you know what I mean] just for giving out free software that you support in a vain attempt to contribute to society. If what I get for my trouble is harrassment what's my incentive to keep on going?
Usenet is not a place to have professional discussions. It's hardly a place to have fun.
Could you imagine how Linus would feel if after every release he was called a wannabe, hack amateur ego whore? I'm sure if he had no positive reinforcement from anyone else he wouldn't be working on Linux [imagine what would happen if this happened to him in the early 90s].
Sure my projects aren't on the scale of Linux but you'd be hard pressed to not see them used somewhere [in fact if all goes to plan millions of servers starting next year will have my software as part of their IPMI firmware!]. They're used in video games, routers, embedded software of all shapes and sizes, desktop applications like bitkeeper, etc.
I tell myself I've done good and I'm helping others. But when you have people doing things like the joe-job attacks and the trolling you just feel about | | this small. Suicide is a thought I have often in bouts of depression. I get over it but the bouts can last weeks and in that time I get little work done [which makes me feel even worse].
Part of the cost is also the monopoly flavoured CPU.
Get a Pentium M laptop for $800 or a celeron for $399? What the hell is that? Does the cpu really cost $400 more for the non-celeron version? Price fixing who?
If you had a real choice of what cpu and what OS you'd run you'd see GOOD sub-$1000 laptops more often.
Tools? Like GNU make? GNU binutils? GNU compiler collection? GNU debugger? X windows? the COMPLETE SOURCE CODE TO EVERYTHING? Yes there aren't 3d modellers and the like for Linux, again that is THEIR FAULT not that of Linux.
Though, there is no reason why you can't do your modelling on a mac or windows box then just export it and use it in your Linux program [or your cross-platform program].
So really your reply is bunk. Specially in light of games like Doom3, Quake4 and Unreal2K4 which work fine in Linux with distros like Gentoo.
But you keep your negative ignorant viewpoints! They'll serve you well when you're shelling out money for the next copy of windows [or leaching off some P2P site and do pray it's not virus ridden!].
Like people would just stop drinking coke if they weren't in your face every 3 seconds...
Or use kleenex [or TP]....
Ads are everywhere [which is annoying] but they're not effective anymore which is just a byproduct of being trained.
Ads used to be something "new" and they would catch your attention. Now we're trained to take bathroom breaks during the commercials or discuss what we just heard during radio station breaks or just plain yell at the screen during movie theater commercials [or is that just me?]
It's bad enough I have to install 3rd party tools to make windows useful. [some of which are ad-laden themselves] Why would I endure more ads?
***HEY MICROSOFT*** The Linux kernel is FREE.
Get over it. The "value" of Windows is that it's all nicely bundled and even that's rapidly becoming moot. Why would I put up with a half-ass kernel, nagware utils, etc when I can just "emerge" anything I need?
MSFT should really just bite the fucking bullet already. Linux distros are very mature [certainly ahead of things like FreeBSD which I recently installed, it's similar to Gentoo but less user friendly] and already the OS of choice for quite a few servers. I seriously doubt Vista will have as much impact as they think [or even the lasting power].
A proper [e.g. license compliant] MSFT distro would be a welcome addition since they certainly have the money to release a polished distribution.
It beats getting 100s of "die canadian commie bastard" emails because someone is posting anti-bush rhetoric to 1000s of usenet groups.:-)
I delete most of the emails but once in a while I'll reply with "how hard do you think it would be for me to post in your name?" They reply saying "that's not the point" then I ask them "would you like me to post as you?" and they quietly go away.
The only reason joe-jobs work is for two reasons
1. The joe-job usually insights rage [e.g. spam, kiddie porn, political rhetoric] which clouds judgement
2. People don't understand how computers work.
I often speak of why people should learn more about their computers [e.g. better buying power, better use of free software, better use of commercial software, etc] and people often shoot me down saying "it's a tool, why do I care how it works?" until they get victimized... then they care.
But that's like all crimes, people don't care so long as they're not personally involved.
Yeah that doesn't help since I talk about my projects once and a while. I don't want to completely hide who I am since that's how I make a living.
Point is, if someone is depraved enough to spam 4000 usenet groups in your name it won't take too long to sort out who you are. And that's just the point, if you're just going to a group as a pseudonym and not offering anything then what's the point? If usenet is only full of questions why read it?
I stopped posting in usenet [two weeks sober yesterday] and generally I don't look back. It was a huge waste of time since everything I said was subject to a flamewar, spamming or just plain public ridicule. The way I see it if the other "regulars" wouldn't step up and defend me then I was doing something wrong and they deserve the trolls of the group.
To be honest, SMTP is flawed as well. Why can someone not from rogers.com send email to your server claiming to be rogers.com? For the most part though SMTP is easier to track because most servers do store the senders IP. That makes it easier to tell if it's fake or not [e.g. if it's not gmail.com it isn't me].
I *AM* for improvements in mail as well. Hashcash is one thing I'm all for. It can be added to the existing framework *without* changing the servers AT ALL only the clients [and even then it would be optional].
I am for things like ISPs helping users setup and use PGP and GPG.
I am for educating users to be more net savvy to understand the technology so they're less likely to fall for joe-jobs, phishing and other attacks.
Problem is many others are against change because it would "cost money". So they rather put up with the same costly and lossy methods of doing work...
Really? I find most of the sci.* and comp.* groups to be fairly light on content and heavy on the flamewars. Hell just my NAME can insight a flamewar [even if I'm being totally agreeable at the time]. Moderated groups may be better but they're often even more dead than their freely accessible counterparts.
The best solution I think is a properly moderated email list. It's hard to joe-job or spam and the content is on-topic.
Try reading sci.crypt or comp.compression for two weeks. Most of the posts are off-topic or redundant then you have the bots posting nonsense and let's not forget the regulars!
To me usenet was an addiction. Having to read every post and draw out a flamewar till the bitter end. I'm not sad to see less ISPs sporting it.
As a recent "joe-job" victim [google for my gmail address in google groups] I totally agree. There just isn't sufficient guarantee that usenet posts are authentic. It's too easy to joe-job people.
I've received phone calls, letter mail and calls from the police [the last joe-job against me had kiddie porn in it]. While it hasn't been seriously traumatic it is enough of a nusiance.
However, the ideal solution would be a usenet like service where your headers aren't arbitrary [e.g. IPs are listed in the headers ALWAYS]. Have other providers throwaway untrustworthy [or forged] messages, etc. How hard would it be to say "no valid IP or trace data? deleted." to each received email?
Maybe also a good idea to integrate GPG into the thinking of users? E.g. make them want to [and learn to] use GPG or PGP. Not trust unsigned messages, etc.
It's sad that people can't just play nice and that we have to do things like sign all our posts...
You clearly have no idea who I am. Which isn't that surprising if you're not into cryptography at all.
Let's just say I do a "bit" of development.
And in your world you may like using a laptop all the time. Personally I like using a desktop. I have a normal keyboard, mouse. A 17" LCD monitor, etc. And my desk is normally very clutter free. You just have to buy the right desk. At staples I picked up a 180$ computer desk that has three levels [including a keyboard tray and case tray at the bottom. It has tons of room on it that I can put anything I want [including a digital cable box, laptop, five speakers, LCD monitor three books, NiMH charger, cell phone, spare IDE HD, poker set and nicnacs].
My main point was about the lack of user fixable/upgradable parts in the typical laptop. Why would I shell out a fortune for a machine I can't fix and can't upgrade. I'd rather have a half-way decent laptop [e.g. my laptop is a two year old 1.8Ghz Athlon-XP-M] and powerful desktops I can fixup whenever then only a laptop.
That said, my desktops are also RAID enabled [well software raid...] and act as file stores [RAID-1 and RAID-5]. Last I checked not too many laptops could handle being in a RAID-1 let alone RAID-5 configuration, unless you toted along HD enclosures which defeats the purpose of being portable. [fwiw on the road I use a USB flash disk as a secondary storage device].
What have I done that tops AC? Um, how about, this? *stands on hands*. That's much more entertaining.
How about supporting open source PUBLIC DOMAIN crypto projects for the last five years? With free support and targetted development? Including buying things like a Pentium 820D system [even though I hate intel] or a Blackdog PPC [even though it's a 400$ device with as much computing power as a Gameboy]?
How about sending speakers to conferences with my own money?
How about donating my computer time to projects [Hint: how do you think Dan Kaminsky is manipulating his 18GB of DNS and IP data?]?
I do shit for the crypto and security community mostly outside the realm of MAINSTREAM PRESS simply because I get a kick out of being useful. Sure I ego-stroke [like this] but I don't go to the extents of being in the press over EVERY SINGLE NEWSWORTHY EVENT.
Bruce at his best was a tag-along with Dave Wagner, John Kelsey and Niels Fergusson. He produced most of his papers when Dave was a PhD student, ever since he gradudated and stopped publishing [as much] Bruce did too [even though he had his degree before then]... odd eh?
I too have a patent [well application filed, it'll probably be granted knowing the state of affairs]. I too think it's crap. It was part of my work at my former $EMPLOYER. But whatever, occasionally I got to do a cool hack or two.. It was an ok job.
In my work [crypto development] I just ignore them. Any of the protocols I use are either freely available or possible patents are so fucking ludicrous that they would never be brought against my public domain projects.:-)
Tom
Re:Isn't this like what happened with GIFs?
on
JPEG Patent Challenged
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The problem is most good image codecs are a patent mindfield [e.g. wavelets]. You can still do things like 5/9 [or whatever] and then typical entropy encoding. I think... not 100% on top of the graphics scene.
Though a simple Haar wavelet can be effective [and with a tweak lossless].
Actually you can perform bincoding and/or lifting to most domain transforms [e.g. DCT] and wavelet based codecs to get a transform that works with integers only and can be lossless. The "bindct" papers of a few years ago are a good example. They showed how to do DCT type IV [i think, whatever JPEG uses] using only integer transforms [shifts,adds,subs] that got coding gains close to the traditional DCT.
For raster images PNG is as good as it gets at the moment. You could do a block sorting codec to get a slight better compression ratio but not by much [and it wouldn't be good for progressive images].
As for truecolour images there really isn't much unfortunately.
This is cute and all but copyright protection is only afforded to LEGAL products.
If I take your music and put my name on it am I afforded copyright protection? Hell no.
This rootkit is clearly illegal [at least in some states] and is therefore not eligible for copyright protection status. Therefore, it's legal to remove it.
What's more, Sony would be really stupid as to sue people trying to remove it.
Dan Kaminsky's research shows that it's 560,000 DNS servers have cached the DNS entries for the sites the rootkit hits to report back home.
Bruce is just a mouthpiece presswhoring wannabe who is trying to get more attention by taking other peoples work and pandering it as if it was original.
Bruce didn't claim that he found it, he had something to say about it, and he did a fine job of writing about it for the non-technical audience that reads Wired.
If there is something in the crypto or security world happening Bruce is obviously an authority on it.
I'm so tired of that bullshit. You know for a fact the only reason he writes those bullshit cover articles is to get press for himself and his company.
If he was just a journalist I would tolerate it. He's not. And what's more he's not the only cryptographer out there. Why didn't Wired just contact people doing the actual research, oh wait they did that already.
I'm tired of reading articles by Bruce of which he's not the actual person doing the work.
Either quit counterpane and become an objective journalist or shut the fuck up once and a while.
Slashdot Mirror
I stand corrected. You're right of course.
What I don't get is you don't have to drop ship to use/support Linux. Make your game engine and your rendering engine(s) modular and while you may spend a bit extra time you can support multiple platforms with the same content and game engine.
It's a matter of finding a clean cut point for the program so you can stick a different interface on it.
This of course lets you target your games at Linux, MacOS, Windows, the various game consoles, etc...
But I guess that's too much thought?
Tom
My question would be "how?". How do you write client software that has a remote execute bug in it?
Simple people, recv() call should have a sizeof() call [ok it's not a call... you know what I mean] somewhere in it.
I've released software with bugs in it, but never buffer overflows and what not like this.
Lame lame lame.
Tom
DirectX came out *cough* AFTER *cough* OpenGL.
I'm not saying DirectX is good or bad [my take is it's messy and a hack so bad] but it's not the be-all of the computing world. People wrote games before DX and they'll write games [and are] without it.
If you think DX is the hangup sure ok. But why are *NEW* games using it?
Why don't they collectively pressure Windows to support GL better?
Oh that's right, cuz they don't care.
Tom
I didn't have to "attack kooks" to draw them out. I could do something as simple as do a release announcement or review a program. [sometimes just answering a question politely would do it].
The problem is you have people who sit around and don't accomplish anything they're proud of. So they feel the need to troll and rip on other people to try and feel better. So you don't have to do anything negative to attract them you just have to be most popular at the moment.
When I started doing my LTC project I was ignored. Then I started getting a bit of attention [we're talking ~2002/2003] and all of a sudden I was getting a few regular trolls attacking my posts. Something as simple as a release announcement or public bug disclosure would be ripped on as being "ego stroking" or just "attention whoring".
All while these same people were not known for any public contributions. They felt justified making fun of me in public for being an amateur, incompetent, no good, ego stroking jerk all while they did nothing positive of their own. And of course I received little support from the respected others. In fact because of the negative attention I drew they KILLFILED ME. So for the most part I was on my own.
So you know what, good bye usenet. What possible good does it serve when all you feel like is closing up shop, giving up and ending it all [if you know what I mean] just for giving out free software that you support in a vain attempt to contribute to society. If what I get for my trouble is harrassment what's my incentive to keep on going?
Usenet is not a place to have professional discussions. It's hardly a place to have fun.
Could you imagine how Linus would feel if after every release he was called a wannabe, hack amateur ego whore? I'm sure if he had no positive reinforcement from anyone else he wouldn't be working on Linux [imagine what would happen if this happened to him in the early 90s].
Sure my projects aren't on the scale of Linux but you'd be hard pressed to not see them used somewhere [in fact if all goes to plan millions of servers starting next year will have my software as part of their IPMI firmware!]. They're used in video games, routers, embedded software of all shapes and sizes, desktop applications like bitkeeper, etc.
I tell myself I've done good and I'm helping others. But when you have people doing things like the joe-job attacks and the trolling you just feel about | | this small. Suicide is a thought I have often in bouts of depression. I get over it but the bouts can last weeks and in that time I get little work done [which makes me feel even worse].
Fuck usenet.
Tom
Part of the cost is also the monopoly flavoured CPU.
Get a Pentium M laptop for $800 or a celeron for $399? What the hell is that? Does the cpu really cost $400 more for the non-celeron version? Price fixing who?
If you had a real choice of what cpu and what OS you'd run you'd see GOOD sub-$1000 laptops more often.
Tom
Tools? Like GNU make? GNU binutils? GNU compiler collection? GNU debugger? X windows? the COMPLETE SOURCE CODE TO EVERYTHING? Yes there aren't 3d modellers and the like for Linux, again that is THEIR FAULT not that of Linux.
Though, there is no reason why you can't do your modelling on a mac or windows box then just export it and use it in your Linux program [or your cross-platform program].
So really your reply is bunk. Specially in light of games like Doom3, Quake4 and Unreal2K4 which work fine in Linux with distros like Gentoo.
But you keep your negative ignorant viewpoints! They'll serve you well when you're shelling out money for the next copy of windows [or leaching off some P2P site and do pray it's not virus ridden!].
Tom
And just look how effective they are!!!
Like people would just stop drinking coke if they weren't in your face every 3 seconds...
Or use kleenex [or TP]....
Ads are everywhere [which is annoying] but they're not effective anymore which is just a byproduct of being trained.
Ads used to be something "new" and they would catch your attention. Now we're trained to take bathroom breaks during the commercials or discuss what we just heard during radio station breaks or just plain yell at the screen during movie theater commercials [or is that just me?]
Tom
I hate posts like this.
Linux distros are quite capable of playing games. [or letting you play games].
***GAME DEVELOPERS*** do not support Linux. Not the other way around.
The minute you stop thinking that way you'll soon realize the problem with the scene. [same for device drivers].
Tom
It's bad enough I have to install 3rd party tools to make windows useful. [some of which are ad-laden themselves] Why would I endure more ads?
***HEY MICROSOFT*** The Linux kernel is FREE.
Get over it. The "value" of Windows is that it's all nicely bundled and even that's rapidly becoming moot. Why would I put up with a half-ass kernel, nagware utils, etc when I can just "emerge" anything I need?
MSFT should really just bite the fucking bullet already. Linux distros are very mature [certainly ahead of things like FreeBSD which I recently installed, it's similar to Gentoo but less user friendly] and already the OS of choice for quite a few servers. I seriously doubt Vista will have as much impact as they think [or even the lasting power].
A proper [e.g. license compliant] MSFT distro would be a welcome addition since they certainly have the money to release a polished distribution.
Tom
Difference is it doesn't take 100s of GBs *PER DAY* to have a decent retention period to host /.
What's more it's OSDL that hosts slashdot not ISPs around the world.
USENET hosting is a waste of time. Why have millions of mirrors of a usenet feed when a localized server [like google] can host it all?
Tom
It beats getting 100s of "die canadian commie bastard" emails because someone is posting anti-bush rhetoric to 1000s of usenet groups. :-)
... then they care.
I delete most of the emails but once in a while I'll reply with "how hard do you think it would be for me to post in your name?" They reply saying "that's not the point" then I ask them "would you like me to post as you?" and they quietly go away.
The only reason joe-jobs work is for two reasons
1. The joe-job usually insights rage [e.g. spam, kiddie porn, political rhetoric] which clouds judgement
2. People don't understand how computers work.
I often speak of why people should learn more about their computers [e.g. better buying power, better use of free software, better use of commercial software, etc] and people often shoot me down saying "it's a tool, why do I care how it works?" until they get victimized
But that's like all crimes, people don't care so long as they're not personally involved.
Tom
Yeah that doesn't help since I talk about my projects once and a while. I don't want to completely hide who I am since that's how I make a living.
Point is, if someone is depraved enough to spam 4000 usenet groups in your name it won't take too long to sort out who you are. And that's just the point, if you're just going to a group as a pseudonym and not offering anything then what's the point? If usenet is only full of questions why read it?
I stopped posting in usenet [two weeks sober yesterday] and generally I don't look back. It was a huge waste of time since everything I said was subject to a flamewar, spamming or just plain public ridicule. The way I see it if the other "regulars" wouldn't step up and defend me then I was doing something wrong and they deserve the trolls of the group.
Tom
To be honest, SMTP is flawed as well. Why can someone not from rogers.com send email to your server claiming to be rogers.com? For the most part though SMTP is easier to track because most servers do store the senders IP. That makes it easier to tell if it's fake or not [e.g. if it's not gmail.com it isn't me].
...
I *AM* for improvements in mail as well. Hashcash is one thing I'm all for. It can be added to the existing framework *without* changing the servers AT ALL only the clients [and even then it would be optional].
I am for things like ISPs helping users setup and use PGP and GPG.
I am for educating users to be more net savvy to understand the technology so they're less likely to fall for joe-jobs, phishing and other attacks.
Problem is many others are against change because it would "cost money". So they rather put up with the same costly and lossy methods of doing work
Tom
For the research impaired...
Tom
Really? I find most of the sci.* and comp.* groups to be fairly light on content and heavy on the flamewars. Hell just my NAME can insight a flamewar [even if I'm being totally agreeable at the time]. Moderated groups may be better but they're often even more dead than their freely accessible counterparts.
The best solution I think is a properly moderated email list. It's hard to joe-job or spam and the content is on-topic.
Try reading sci.crypt or comp.compression for two weeks. Most of the posts are off-topic or redundant then you have the bots posting nonsense and let's not forget the regulars!
To me usenet was an addiction. Having to read every post and draw out a flamewar till the bitter end. I'm not sad to see less ISPs sporting it.
Goodbye!
As a recent "joe-job" victim [google for my gmail address in google groups] I totally agree. There just isn't sufficient guarantee that usenet posts are authentic. It's too easy to joe-job people.
...
I've received phone calls, letter mail and calls from the police [the last joe-job against me had kiddie porn in it]. While it hasn't been seriously traumatic it is enough of a nusiance.
However, the ideal solution would be a usenet like service where your headers aren't arbitrary [e.g. IPs are listed in the headers ALWAYS]. Have other providers throwaway untrustworthy [or forged] messages, etc. How hard would it be to say "no valid IP or trace data? deleted." to each received email?
Maybe also a good idea to integrate GPG into the thinking of users? E.g. make them want to [and learn to] use GPG or PGP. Not trust unsigned messages, etc.
It's sad that people can't just play nice and that we have to do things like sign all our posts
Tom
The slow adoption of JPG2000 comes from two parts
1. License fees [cuz everything useful should be costly]
2. No need, JPEG works fine thank you.
Tom
1. Group standards. E.g. install and setup OOo once and install it the same everywhere else [e.g. disk image].
or my fav
2. Use LaTeX and be fucking done with.
Tom
You clearly have no idea who I am. Which isn't that surprising if you're not into cryptography at all.
...] and act as file stores [RAID-1 and RAID-5]. Last I checked not too many laptops could handle being in a RAID-1 let alone RAID-5 configuration, unless you toted along HD enclosures which defeats the purpose of being portable. [fwiw on the road I use a USB flash disk as a secondary storage device].
Let's just say I do a "bit" of development.
And in your world you may like using a laptop all the time. Personally I like using a desktop. I have a normal keyboard, mouse. A 17" LCD monitor, etc. And my desk is normally very clutter free. You just have to buy the right desk. At staples I picked up a 180$ computer desk that has three levels [including a keyboard tray and case tray at the bottom. It has tons of room on it that I can put anything I want [including a digital cable box, laptop, five speakers, LCD monitor three books, NiMH charger, cell phone, spare IDE HD, poker set and nicnacs].
My main point was about the lack of user fixable/upgradable parts in the typical laptop. Why would I shell out a fortune for a machine I can't fix and can't upgrade. I'd rather have a half-way decent laptop [e.g. my laptop is a two year old 1.8Ghz Athlon-XP-M] and powerful desktops I can fixup whenever then only a laptop.
That said, my desktops are also RAID enabled [well software raid
Tom
What have I done that tops AC? Um, how about, this? *stands on hands*. That's much more entertaining.
How about supporting open source PUBLIC DOMAIN crypto projects for the last five years? With free support and targetted development? Including buying things like a Pentium 820D system [even though I hate intel] or a Blackdog PPC [even though it's a 400$ device with as much computing power as a Gameboy]?
How about sending speakers to conferences with my own money?
How about donating my computer time to projects [Hint: how do you think Dan Kaminsky is manipulating his 18GB of DNS and IP data?]?
I do shit for the crypto and security community mostly outside the realm of MAINSTREAM PRESS simply because I get a kick out of being useful. Sure I ego-stroke [like this] but I don't go to the extents of being in the press over EVERY SINGLE NEWSWORTHY EVENT.
Bruce at his best was a tag-along with Dave Wagner, John Kelsey and Niels Fergusson. He produced most of his papers when Dave was a PhD student, ever since he gradudated and stopped publishing [as much] Bruce did too [even though he had his degree before then]... odd eh?
Tom
I too have a patent [well application filed, it'll probably be granted knowing the state of affairs]. I too think it's crap. It was part of my work at my former $EMPLOYER. But whatever, occasionally I got to do a cool hack or two.. It was an ok job.
:-)
In my work [crypto development] I just ignore them. Any of the protocols I use are either freely available or possible patents are so fucking ludicrous that they would never be brought against my public domain projects.
Tom
The problem is most good image codecs are a patent mindfield [e.g. wavelets]. You can still do things like 5/9 [or whatever] and then typical entropy encoding. I think ... not 100% on top of the graphics scene.
Though a simple Haar wavelet can be effective [and with a tweak lossless].
Actually you can perform bincoding and/or lifting to most domain transforms [e.g. DCT] and wavelet based codecs to get a transform that works with integers only and can be lossless. The "bindct" papers of a few years ago are a good example. They showed how to do DCT type IV [i think, whatever JPEG uses] using only integer transforms [shifts,adds,subs] that got coding gains close to the traditional DCT.
For raster images PNG is as good as it gets at the moment. You could do a block sorting codec to get a slight better compression ratio but not by much [and it wouldn't be good for progressive images].
As for truecolour images there really isn't much unfortunately.
Tom
This is cute and all but copyright protection is only afforded to LEGAL products.
If I take your music and put my name on it am I afforded copyright protection? Hell no.
This rootkit is clearly illegal [at least in some states] and is therefore not eligible for copyright protection status. Therefore, it's legal to remove it.
What's more, Sony would be really stupid as to sue people trying to remove it.
So while the sentiment is there the joke isn't.
Tom
Dan Kaminsky's research shows that it's 560,000 DNS servers have cached the DNS entries for the sites the rootkit hits to report back home.
Bruce is just a mouthpiece presswhoring wannabe who is trying to get more attention by taking other peoples work and pandering it as if it was original.
Tom
Bruce didn't claim that he found it, he had something to say about it, and he did a fine job of writing about it for the non-technical audience that reads Wired.
If there is something in the crypto or security world happening Bruce is obviously an authority on it.
I'm so tired of that bullshit. You know for a fact the only reason he writes those bullshit cover articles is to get press for himself and his company.
If he was just a journalist I would tolerate it. He's not. And what's more he's not the only cryptographer out there. Why didn't Wired just contact people doing the actual research, oh wait they did that already.
I'm tired of reading articles by Bruce of which he's not the actual person doing the work.
Either quit counterpane and become an objective journalist or shut the fuck up once and a while.
Tom