The thing is, how can they really tell that I have a router behind my cable modem? Can they analyze my packets going out and see that there might be some NAT going on?
Offhand, I can think of a few possibilities:
A packet coming from port 80 on $PRIVATE_IP gets remapped so that it appears as some oddball port number on $PUBLIC_IP. If they see lots of activity involving strange port numbers, they might conclude that $PUBLIC_IP is assigned to a router or a firewall.
Maybe they can check the number of hops a packet has made. I would think that all of the packets coming from a machine would be allowed so many hops before they expire. Machines behind a firewall would use one hop to go from the machine to the firewall...so unless the firewall also rewrites that part of the packet, that's possibly another method by which a firewall could be sniffed out.
Something similar to the "OS identification" function in nmap ought to fairly easily tell the firewall appliances from Linksys and such apart from a computer. Just as the network stacks in Linux and Windows respond to the same types of traffic in different ways, there's no doubt a similar difference with the firewall appliances.
Unfortunately, the Jukebox Recorder only does VBR encoding, but with around 170kbps it is sufficent.
What's wrong with VBR? At a given (average) bitrate with a decent encoder, VBR will almost always produce a superior encoding as the parts that don't need as much detail can be encoded at a lower rate than the more demanding parts. I typically encode with LAME at 160 kbps VBR; for what I've thrown at it, I usually can't tell the MP3 from the source material. (I don't exactly claim to have "golden ears," though.:-) )
Getting somewhat back on-topic...as the original poster mentioned, probably the best way to avoid SDMI would be to get one of the MP3 CD players. I have an Apex AD600A and a Rio Volt SP90; neither of them are affected by any fair-use-denial technologies. (The Apex also plays DVDs from anywhere in the world, so it flips the bird at the MPAA as well as the RIAA.)
I tried. I have firewire drives on my linux box. The iPod does not work as a disk `out of the box'. When the driver goes to read the `config' page it gets back garbage. Maybe there is a special command to flip the device into disk mode, maybe there is a bug in my linux 1394 stack, but it sure doesn't mount as a disk.
From what I understand, the iPod's HD is formatted with an HFS+ filesystem. This is what currently keeps it from working with anything other than a Mac. If Apple had chosen a more widely-used filesystem (FAT32 would've been adequate for the intended purpose), you would be able to plug into just about any computer with a FireWire port and move files around.
If Linux supported HFS+, it should be possible for it to talk to an iPod. AFAIK, Linux only supports the older HFS. (I'm no expert on Macs, having only a Quadra 610, but I'm guessing that the difference between HFS+ and HFS is a bit more than the difference between FAT16 and FAT32.)
Here's a more general FireWire storage question. I remember reading something about the intelligent nature of FireWire devices; for instance, you're supposed to be able to hook a DV camcorder directly into a hard drive and dump video from tape to disk. What filesystem would be put on the drive to enable it to work in this manner...or is this a capability that isn't implemented in actual devices?
Are you joking? Did you read the article? ALL 13 BOARDS were tested with identical GeForce3 cards. And furthermore, the tested NForce boards DO NOT have integrated graphics.
Umm...they showed a picture of a doohickey that was bundled with the MSI motherboard that plugs into the AGP slot and provides S-video and composite video out. That relies on the onboard video, which must still be brought out to a VGA connector somewhere if they're going to convert the AGP slot to a simple video-out port.
Just because they might've chosen (I didn't notice) to put the same video card in each system to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison doesn't imply that the nForce-based motherboards don't do onboard video.
I cannot find any reference to stability, and my experience of Via chipsets, compared to Intel and AMD chipsets, is that they are less stable and more likely to have problems (the last Via based computer I had to set up took two people 5 days to get working correctly, compared to AMD and Intel based computers which have worked perfectly from first boot up).
FWIW, I've never run into stability problems with any of the VIA-chipset boards I've run, going back to an FIC PA-2007 (VP2) running a K6-200. VIA's IDE driver has had issues in the past, but the default drivers provided by Win98/Win2K/Linux work well enough. I've had a K6-III-450 on an FIC VA-503+ (MVP3) running my web/mail/etc. server for nearly a year with no hiccups, and the same board ran Linux and Win98 (the latter often under VMware) in workstation use for some time before that with no issues.
(That said, the board that replaced it in workstation use was a Biostar M7MIA (AMD 760) running a 1.0-GHz Athlon. The server will be replaced by a new one I'm building up around an Intel N440BX (the chipset should be obvious) and a pair of P!!!-500s. The former was just moving up to a faster processor; the latter is the result of finding something to do with a couple of freebie processors and having never done SMP under Linux before.)
If you don't want any compression, why not go down to Circuit City and buy a 400-disk CD jukebox for $300?
Those jukeboxes are hella unreliable. When I was working for The Man, there was rarely a day when the service techs didn't take in a jukebox that needed to be unjammed, have CDs fished out of it, or whatever.
(Yes, hard drives can fail, but as long as you stick with fairly decent drives and avoid junk, you should be OK...especially for something that more than likely won't be fired up all the time.)
You can fix most quality problems with audio on
your computer by carefully coloring the case of
your hard drive with a green marker. Too many
people give MP3s a bad rap because they don't
know this simple tip.
No...you need to open the hard drive and run the green marker around each of the platters. That'll get the bits to sound better.
(better throw in a:-) for the humor-impaired while I'm at it...)
Also you know there are less than 20 Sumatran Tigers left. AFAIC a that makes each Sumatran Tiger more valuable than every American one the planet (250million over 6 billon = 1/24). . Consequently (if I was put in such a position) I would kill 6000 Americans without hesitation, if it would save the life of a Sumatran tiger.
You are truly a sick and twisted bastard. Leaving aside nationalities for a moment, how anybody can put the lives of animals ahead of people never ceases to amaze me. I wouldn't be surprised if you bomb medical-research labs and bust animals out of zoos, either.
Since you also mentioned two-letter domain names in your post as being verboten, what about Hewlett-Packard or Texas Instruments? (You need the "www." in front of them, though, to access their websites. General Motors, OTOH, works without the "www.")
The SNES is a 16 bit machine... no chance of running linux, unless they use the ELKS project, or MINIX.
GNO might be a better start, given that the SNES and the Apple IIGS use the same processor...it's a multitasking shell that sits atop an OS that doesn't natively support multitasking.
Anyone who remembers computing in the early '80's should recognize that the industry wasn't going anywhere. $5000 for an Apple 2?
Your average Apple II system ran closer to $2000-$2500, nicely equipped. The base system (just the computer, no floppy drives or monitor) ran about $1000.
The only software is rudimentary databases and word processors. Games are less sophisticated than those on the Atari 2600.
Let me guess...you were a Commodore user, and you're taking the opportunity to bash the II since the younger folk (damn, I'm only 29 and I sound like an Olde Pfarte) won't know any better.
Apple is enforcing a closed source policy which improves the quality of the machines, but hampers development.
Now you're really showing off your ignorance for all to see. I have several books on the shelf with source code (!) for various bits of Apple II software and firmware. The Apple IIe technical reference, last revised in 1987, has the source code for all the ROMs in that machine (except BASIC, which Apple obtained from Microsoft) and complete schematics, timing diagrams, etc....basically everything you could possibly need to know to design hardware or bare-metal software for the Apple II, and a few more books (like the ProDOS 8 technical reference) would do the same for writing applications. Comparable documentation was available all the way back to the original Apple II that was introduced in 1977. Code that wasn't published in source form by Apple was often disassembled, analyzed, and published...Nibble magazine ran a series for a few years that took apart DOS 3.3 and ProDOS, for instance, and Apple never went after them for that. Even BASIC was disassembled (and the really odd bit is that Microsoft didn't go after the people who did that). Until the Macintosh came along, Apple was very much an open-architecture type of company (and the Mac didn't sell worth a damn until Apple loosened its grip somewhat).
The harder part will be writing drivers for the PC to mount FireWire drives (not common on that platform from what I understand)
My converted-from-IDE FireWire HD hot-plugs with Win2K with no problems at all...no additional drivers needed.
and read/write HFS+ formatted volumes (no idea if software to do this exists at all).
I don't know about HFS+ (what's the diff between it and HFS?), but Linux supports HFS and there's a Windows app called TransMac that copies between HFS and whatever you're using (FAT/NTFS/network share).
I've never done any programming work in BASIC so I can't speak for it's handlig of multidimensional arrays. I don't recall them being too hard from a program I looked at though, something to the effect of
DIM variable%type% AS array (x,y) or something.
Nothing like that at all...more like this for floats:
DIM A(20,10)
Append $ to the array name for strings or % for integers. At least that's how the old-school Microsoft BASIC on various 8-bit boxen worked...maybe Visual BASIC is different, but what little of that I've seen bears about as much resemblance to BASIC as Osama bin Laden does to a saint.
That's not a multidimensional array. That's an array of arrays. Two different creatures.
Strictly speaking, C doesn't do multidimensional arrays...but when you can access an element as (for instance) foo[1][6], what's the practical difference? It behaves in the same manner as the Java example (even to the point of having been dynamically allocated). Trying to access foo[0][6] will either return invalid data or will segfault (odds are good it'll return foo[1][3], but I wouldn't bet on it). The commands to set it up are somewhat nasty, but it wouldn't be C if they weren't. Does Java support accessing an element as foo[1,6]? That would be a true multidimensional array...I've run across those in Pascal and even in BASIC, but C and its descendants (including Java) AFAIK has no direct equivalent.
That will set up a jagged array with the same dimensions as in the given C#/Java example. It will be addressable in the same manner. It won't have the bounds checking, but I suspect that the comment regarding Real Programmers and strong typing could be extended to bounds checking.:-)
your new bicycle at this rate will probably have spam too, and it'll be powered by you pedalling!
...and who's under the impression that no costs are incurred by receiving spam? "It took me forever to get across town on my bike because of all the goddamn spam that kept flooding in on my Acme bike computer..."
How long before procmail gets ported to OnStar? Hey, Linux has been ported to everything under the sun; why not procmail?
A quick check of the HTML indicates that CSS positioning was used; Nutscrape...doesn't know how to implement CSS positioning. Internet Explorer works properly; Mozilla and Opera should work too
So, you're in agreement: It was a braindead web design. "Use my browser or don't view my webpage" is braindead web design. Period.
Umm...not exactly. Using browser-specific extensions (like IE's marquee tag) would be an example of brain-dead web design. Abusing a browser's scripting capability (such as requiring JavaScript to be able to navigate through a website instead of just using anchor tags...some sites do that) would be another example of brain-dead design. Sticking to publishedstandards, OTOH, is usually regarded as a Good Thing.
It's worth noting that a properly-designed page should render reasonably well in any browser, to the limit of the browser's capabilities. Try calling up the page given here in Lynx, for instance; I wouldn't be surprised if it renders properly in Lynx (sans images, of course).
If your browser doesn't render pages properly, you might want to consider upgradingtoabetterbrowser, one that properly implements the published standards.
All the text is there but all the images are scrunched up, overlapping, in the upper left hand corner. I'm interested but not so much that I'm going to download and fix this braindead web design.
I'm not the creator of that page, but let me guess...you're using Nutscrape 4.x as your web browser, right? A quick check of the HTML indicates that CSS positioning was used; Nutscrape is brain-dead and doesn't know how to implement CSS positioning (or most other things related to CSS, for that matter). Internet Explorer works properly; Mozilla and Opera should work too (and maybe some other browsers, but those are the ones I know of offhand that implement CSS more-or-less correctly).
I sold a server on Ebay and had it packaged at a "Mailboxes Etc." in Manhattan and shipped UPS to Pennsylvania. The person who got it says it looked like it had been dropped from at least four feet, enough to crack the entire (metal) case. I had bought insurance, and UPS sent someone over to the guy's house to examine it. They have to make sure it was packed to spec or they blame the sender (Mailboxes Etc. in this case).
On the mailing lists and message boards I used to track that cover vintage radios and similar equipment, the consensus opinion is that the pack-and-ship joints don't have a clue how to pack electronic equipment properly. You can usually do a much better job yourself, and save a significant amount of money as well. All you need is a sturdy box that's big enough to give you at least four inches of clearance on all sides, enough peanuts and/or bubble wrap, and a garbage bag (to enclose the item you're shipping so that peanuts don't get inside).
I brought an old Grundig radio back from Germany a few years ago as checked baggage. I packed it myself, with lots of sheet foam and peanuts around the radio and with the tubes pulled from their sockets and wrapped in more sheet foam. Airline baggage handlers, I suspect, are even worse than the gorillas who work for shipping companies, but the radio got through it without so much as a scratch. More recently, I sold a couple of computers through eBay. One was shipped UPS Ground; the other went by Priority Mail. Both arrived at their destinations with no damage.
Like most things in life, if you want it done right, you usually have to do it yourself.
It remains to be seen how people will react to having to 'refill' their laptops. It won't take too many methanol spills on the carpeting for somebody to bail on the whole idea.
At least it wouldn't raise the questions that an ethanol fuel cell would raise. "Honestly, boss, the Everclear is for my computer!"
The Palm's a great example, but even that only lasts 2 weeks tops on 2 AAA batteries.
2 weeks? Are you leaving it on all the time? I usually get at least as many months out of mine. Even when I was scribbling class notes into one, it still got fairly good battery life. It's set to shut off by itself after one minute of inactivity, though I usually shut it off before that kicks in.
I assume the less expensive drives obtain power from the port
I thought all firewire devices got there power from the bus not an external plug.
I stuck a 100GB Western Digital hard drive in an ADS Pyro 1394 Drive Kit. The case has its own power supply, as I doubt that FireWire is up to powering a 7200rpm hard drive (you could also install a CD burner, DVD-ROM drive, or other IDE devices (up to 5.25" half-height) in the case). Also, not all IEEE-1394 implementations provide power (Sony's i.Link comes to mind as an example).
Slashdot Mirror
Getting somewhat back on-topic...as the original poster mentioned, probably the best way to avoid SDMI would be to get one of the MP3 CD players. I have an Apex AD600A and a Rio Volt SP90; neither of them are affected by any fair-use-denial technologies. (The Apex also plays DVDs from anywhere in the world, so it flips the bird at the MPAA as well as the RIAA.)
If Linux supported HFS+, it should be possible for it to talk to an iPod. AFAIK, Linux only supports the older HFS. (I'm no expert on Macs, having only a Quadra 610, but I'm guessing that the difference between HFS+ and HFS is a bit more than the difference between FAT16 and FAT32.)
Here's a more general FireWire storage question. I remember reading something about the intelligent nature of FireWire devices; for instance, you're supposed to be able to hook a DV camcorder directly into a hard drive and dump video from tape to disk. What filesystem would be put on the drive to enable it to work in this manner...or is this a capability that isn't implemented in actual devices?
(BTW, you should lose the <br> tags that break your post a third of the way across the window...they're hella annoying.)
Just because they might've chosen (I didn't notice) to put the same video card in each system to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison doesn't imply that the nForce-based motherboards don't do onboard video.
(That said, the board that replaced it in workstation use was a Biostar M7MIA (AMD 760) running a 1.0-GHz Athlon. The server will be replaced by a new one I'm building up around an Intel N440BX (the chipset should be obvious) and a pair of P!!!-500s. The former was just moving up to a faster processor; the latter is the result of finding something to do with a couple of freebie processors and having never done SMP under Linux before.)
(Yes, hard drives can fail, but as long as you stick with fairly decent drives and avoid junk, you should be OK...especially for something that more than likely won't be fired up all the time.)
(better throw in a :-) for the humor-impaired while I'm at it...)
(That said, you're probably some sort of anti-American left-wing Euro-trash...just what part of Europe are you from?)
Since you also mentioned two-letter domain names in your post as being verboten, what about Hewlett-Packard or Texas Instruments? (You need the "www." in front of them, though, to access their websites. General Motors, OTOH, works without the "www.")
How long before procmail gets ported to OnStar? Hey, Linux has been ported to everything under the sun; why not procmail?
It's worth noting that a properly-designed page should render reasonably well in any browser, to the limit of the browser's capabilities. Try calling up the page given here in Lynx, for instance; I wouldn't be surprised if it renders properly in Lynx (sans images, of course).
If your browser doesn't render pages properly, you might want to consider upgrading to a better browser, one that properly implements the published standards.
I brought an old Grundig radio back from Germany a few years ago as checked baggage. I packed it myself, with lots of sheet foam and peanuts around the radio and with the tubes pulled from their sockets and wrapped in more sheet foam. Airline baggage handlers, I suspect, are even worse than the gorillas who work for shipping companies, but the radio got through it without so much as a scratch. More recently, I sold a couple of computers through eBay. One was shipped UPS Ground; the other went by Priority Mail. Both arrived at their destinations with no damage.
Like most things in life, if you want it done right, you usually have to do it yourself.