Although he didn't mention it, a lot of those same people who have passed up Linux have turned to the BSDs - I don't need to go on out Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. in a Slashdot forum. I know why they do this - faster TCP/IP, supposedly more stable, a bit more secure, etcetera - but what I'm curious is what are the BSD folks doing that the Linux aren't? Aside from some minor changes in the development process (e.g. the twelve person committee), license, etc., they're both Open Source Unix implementations. Certainly it isn't by just random chance that these speed and stability refinements made it into the *BSD kernels. What has happened to make the BSD distros the OS of choice for the really massive sites? Who/what is pushing BSD in that direction, and why isn't Linux being pushed in that direction? Just a different philosophy in their respective niches? e.g. does Linus prefers a more versatile OS to a more robust, but more stable, one?
On that note, wouldn't it be smart to at least fork a kernel that is dedicated only to high-availability applications?
Okay.. the guy is young, talented, and has been a high level exec at several of the hottest tech companies around. Let's just assume for a second that money isn't an issue here (it probably isn't).
What are the chances that he can hire a "legal dream team" (I though that term died in `96) and get out of this. Hell, OJ stabbed his wife and friend, bled everywhere, and still got out, and there were no FBI agents asking to be murdered either. This guy was propositioned by the agent first, which to me sounds like good old-fashioned entrapment. My question is, what are the legal ramifications of this? Will he get out on a technicality? Or, do you think he'll be able to hire enough good lawyers that they can convince a jury that the guy got screwed?
Well.. quit whining and move on. What's the only that wastes more time than an overmoderated post? A followup comment where someone bitches about it. If it really ruined your day, metamoderate down.
What is your point? I explicitly stated in my post that I had qualms about working full-time under an NDA. Congratulations - you win. And win. And win.
However, that's all completely irrelevant. In this capacity, Loki will never be your "previous employer." They're not employing anyone. If you want to argue a broad-scale philsophy on the merits (of lack thereof) of working, for money, under an NDA, why not pick a post that pertains to just that? My point, which still stands, is that this is no more than a fun, even charitable, way to give back to the OSS community (last time a checked, not all of the programmers who GPL their code could afford such a box) and at the same time recieve a little help from some experts in the field.
And you've made it out to be malicious - Loki are the crooks, we're their pawns. A true supporter of the open source philosophy, as you've so eloquently made yourself out to be, should be a lot more supportive of Loki for having the guts to even support an open-source operating system. Linux supporting games don't exactly line the shelves at CompUSA. And yet you villify it. No, you do worse - you spread FUD about it. It's hard to reconcile these actions with those of a liberal license zealot.
You can sit atop your pedestal and decree your "creative professional" status all you want, but it doesn't make up for the fact that you are incorrect. In the meantime, don't bother lecturing me of the ramifications of an NDA, especially in a context that I a.) wasn't even commenting on and b.) don't really care about. Obviously, as evident by the last paragraph of your post, you have an agenda to push here, and it's in your personal interest to scare as many as possible away from signing these contracts. I think that's a pretty sleazy thing to do - pose as a concerned member of the community when in reality it's your own interests that motivate you. Lame.
But that brings up an entirely different subject. Since the contestants have to be able to look at their current closed source, they will probably reqire the contestants to sign all sorts of 'Non-Disclosure - Non-Compete' forms. And trust me, NO computer or contest (or job for that matter) is worth all that.
This is just more OSS snobbery and bluster. Really? You hack code for two days under an NDA - so what! The cosmos haven't realigned, and no one really cares. You won't be better or worse off, and believe it or not your virgin mind might not be poisoned by looking at (ghasp!) closed-source code.
Half of your argument is right. Personally, I don't agree with taking a job where all the code you write is closed and NDAd. But by claiming that doing so for a mere 48 hours is just not worth it is blowing it pathetically out of proportions. I'm a liberal-license zealot just like the next guy, but to be honest hacking C++ for a day or two under and NDA doesn't bother me. And I can't see why it would bother you.
People shouldn't dismiss this stuff too quick because it seems too "sci-fi-ey." I wasn't around, but I hear that the whole concept of global, two way television communications (in color, no less) was pretty laughable in 1949 when Orwell published 1984, too. Ideas in sci-fi novels are becoming reality all the time (well, the rational ones anyways). I used videoconferencing not ten minutes ago. So deal.:)
I don't think anyone can really appreciate the uses for this until they've lived in a truly bustling metropolis. In New York it takes literally an hour to go two miles. Not to state the obvious, but that's how it is. I would guess that many a monied stockbrocker, lawyer, or accountant with a sense for adventure would jump at the chance to buy one. Oh yeah, and me. I'd buy one too.:) Heh and bicycle couriering would suddenly go from a low paying, pretty cruddy job to a you-pay-us, well-let-you-fly type deal available only to playboys with money to burn.
I can send mail to people that's obscene, insulting, misleading - whatever - under the name 'slashdot@hotmail.com' right now and I always will be able to. Sendmail has no authentication to determine if the from address you're telling it is really who you are (duh). Instead of slashdot@hotmail.com, I could send two million e-mails marked "From: clinton@whitehouse.gov". And guess what? Those same one percent who you mentioned will be the people who actually believe it.
Bottom line, the ability to recieve mail under a domain, in all but a few exceptions, is not the be-all end-all of security breaches. The only people who would be fooled by this aren't going to take the time to reply back; they're going to take it at face value.
Hotmail was a security breach. This is stupidity, but on a far more minute level.
Becker's 3Com drivers have worked flawlessly for as long as I can remember. I don't want to harp on 3Com for GLPing their driver - hell, it brightens my day, what with them being the one of the largest networking companies in the world - but the whole thing seems a little redundant.
This is more of a software issue, IMO. You could buy a fancy whiz-bang server but configure Apache wrong, and it's toast. Check all the Apache tuning guides.
Secondly, consider the BSDs. (Moderators: this is not flamebait. I have a valid point). Their TCP/IP implementation is a good deal faster than the Linux equivalent, and while the Linux stack is maxing out on concurrent TCP/IP connections (which is a possibility, especially with lots of images, etc. on your site) BSD will keep on chugging. I'm not sure how much of an issue this will be here, though. I think for the most part, unless you're Yahoo.com, you should be okay with Linux. But hey, you're the judge.
Finally, be sure to think outside the box when it comes to HTTP servers. There are other servers besides Apache, believe it or not. And in your case, there are ones that are a lot more optimized than Apache for serving up static content (I think it's static, save the webcam. You didn't really say). thttpd and Zeus (it's not free, shoot me) come to mind.
Hah yeah right. Sony's problem is just plain greed. Perhaps you've heard of "Sony Music," the biggest of the big five record companies, IIRC. You'll see an MP3 player of any sorts coming from Sony at about the same time that Microsoft Open Sources the Windows 2k kernel. At least Panasonic is just dumb.
I especially liked MS Federal Systems IT Chief Quazi Zaman's attempt to save grace:
"Zaman added that Microsoft has been considering making some of its software products open source for two years."
Well congratu-fsckin-lations! I guess that proves that MS really is innovative - they've known about this newfangled "Open Source" thing for two years! Woohoo! Let's all go buy more proprietary software - Microsoft has known about Open Source for two years - before it became popular!
So how stable is 2.3.18? I remember back in the mid 2.1.100s everything was pretty much stable and we all went ahead and switched over to the devel kernel, just because it had a grip of cool new features. Now, I have my eyes set on USB support in 2.3.18. Is this thing stable enough to go ahead and use? When will it be, if it's not.
Also, a more editorial comment - is anyone a little disappointed with the shortened release cycles? Nothing breeds anticipation like waiting for Linus to finally give the go ahead, after four months of bugfix releases, etc. But still, remember the madness when 2.2.0 was released? It was a damn fervor.. me and every Linux geek I know in RL had a party.. hehe. Now it seems like we've lost yet another cause for celebration. I don't see how the shortened devel cycles could possibly help, anyways. All that excitement spilled over into the media, and most of the major computer newsmags (A lot of ZD pubs, for example), ran a story on Linux just because 2.2 was released and it was such a momentous achievement. Now 2.4 is around the corner and no one seems really worked up, which means less press for us. What were Linus's reasons for doing this?
I'm about to buy a Palm IIIsomething, and now I see this. Should I wait for the Visor? Bear I mind I'm actually going to use this thing, and not just toy with it. Does the Visor have the same contact/scheduling management/etc. software that the Palms do? I want a Palm, but they are *damn* expensive - the new ones, anyways. Not the III.
No, that's not what I meant. Quality is very obviously *not* linear - 128kbps sounds *much* better than 64kbps, but 256kbps (doubling again) produces less of a difference. Personally I can't distinguish between 256kbps and 192, but 128kbps is easily distinguishable. A lot of percussion can exploit the weaknesses of 128kbps - cymbals sound like they've been hit with a wet rag or they hiss like a snake. At 192kbps this simple doesn't happen. For most "new" MP3 users, I don't think they'll notice it, but use it for a couple of years and you'll soon yearn for an audio library that's >=160kbps, preferably 192.
Bzzt. No cookie. This is a common misconception - people can't understand why anyone would encode at 192kbps until they realize that a CD is 1411kbps - 44.1khz x 2 stereo channels x 16 bits per channel = ~1411kbps. So, encoding at 128kbps means losing over 90% of your audio data. Now you see why every bit counts, and why 192kbps is so much better than 128kbps.
Why haven't more of your books made it online? A fair amount have, but it's still a fraction of the total offering. Certainly piracy could be an issue, but isn't there still some real profit to be made here? I don't think I know a single geek-sysadmin that wouldn't jump at the chance to, for example, have his company buy him an "O'Reilly Support Contract" for a couple hundred a year, which would enable him to browse and search - with regex's, of course:) - of every book you have online. Let's face it - several hundred dollars is a lot more than many of us spent on ORA books in the last year. And of course this opens up the doorway for tons of new features - books that update themselves through the notes that other readers would be able to leave on their virtual pages, etc. And how about the ability to create possibly the most comprehensive, one-stop shop for computer info on the planet? I think we'll find soon enough that most of the technically oriented progamming terms in your books will actually have chapters in other books that document them in that easy-to-digest, ORA vernacular that we've all come to know and love. Going for the obvious, imagine if you linked all the regular expression discussions in 'Progamming Perl' to their corresponding lengthier, better documented examples in 'Mastering Regular Expressions.' I can't imagine what a Perl/Regex guru I would've been by now if I had had the latter at my side while reading the former. Well, anyways, these are just some of the possiblities I see. Keep up the great work, and when you get a chance put a marmoset on one of your books.:)
*Rant* One little niggle: doubt if that's actually S/PDIF. In a move that would make even MS proud, Creative has decided to create their own proprietary digital audio output form, DIN. There's no difference between DIN and S/PDIF, performance wise - they just don't work together:) This sucks because we, the consumer, get screwed - Creative, recall, just bought Cambridge Soundworks, the makers of (what else?) the sweetest (for the money) set of PC surround sound speakers & subwoofer, the FPS2000s. Anyways, what it boils down to is that if you want to use the cool new digital audio inputs on your 2000s, you've got to buy Creative's most expensive card, the SB Live!, which happens to be the only thing on the market with a DIN output. Ahh.. doncha just love closed standards?
BTW that reminds me - does anyone on/. know of the existence of a DIN -> S/PDIF converter? Anyone smart enough to make one? You'd make an absolute killing, guaranteed.
That's true. However, last I check, MS Office Premium was selling for $675, while Quake 2 went for a scant $28.95. The bottom line is that more time, manpower, R&D, and ultimately, money, goes into office apps. Look at iD Software, probably the premier game shop in the world. They have what, 4 lead coders? 6? I personally know of many a business app worked on by teams of ten, even twenty times that. For game companies, yes piracy is bad, but in the grand scheme of things, the software copyright laws are to protect businesses from other businesses.
I'm surprised you made no mention of size and bitrate, which in the end will have much more to do with the quality of your music than the encoder. Any of several good encoders (Xing, Fraunhoffer (sp?)) will get the job done, but they'll be a noticeable difference in quality between 128kbps, 160kbps, and 192kbps. Contrary to popular belief, 128kbps is not CD quality. CD quality is about 1440kbps, IIRC. So already you can see that you're losing over 90% of your music data just going from WAV to MP3. Hopefully this illustrates why encoding at higher rates is so important - every last bit counts. If I were going to convert my entire CD collection to MP3 and then (god forbid) possibly get rid of the CDs, there's no way I'd do it at anything below 192kbps - maybe even 256kbps if I just stuck everything on CD-R. Bitrate is that important. I don't even keep any downloaded MP3s under 160 anymore; I just delete them all. Get the good MP3 encoder, to be sure, but then make sure you encode at a high enough bitrate. Try it for yourself; encode some MP3s at 96, 128, 160, and 192. It's possible that years of being an audiophile has made my ears picky, so it's basically personal preference. You'll probably notice quite a bit of difference going from 128kbps higher.
Eheh. No. What I (and *any* constituitional scholar you might approach on this subject) (oh yeah, and the framers of the constiution) deem 'cruel and unusual' punishment would be something more along the lines of:
burning in oil and/or at the stake being crushed to death under stones chinese water torture etcetera, etcetera.
This is about as far from cruel and unusual as it's gonna get. The kid is convicted of a white collar crime, and if somehow he's lucky enough to actually see the inside of a jail cell it will be a minimum security resort, probably with rowing and ping-pong teams. Of course, just when he's getting acclimated they'll paroll his ass to make room for actually dangerous offenders.
And also, I can name people a lot worse off to have to pay $250k in restituitions than a 'wet behind the ears' college kid who happens to be about to hit the peak of his earning potential, and with a freshly minted CS degree to boot. No, I'd say this punishment is about as far from cruel as it gets.
Lastly, what *were* these damn lawmakers thinking when they passed laws prohibiting people from stealing the hard work of others. I mean jeez! Listen up. You and all your friends, and maybe every damn citizen in the US could pirate software, and it wouldn't make that much difference to some companies. These laws are in place mainly to guard against corporate piracy. Big corporations spend more on software purchases in a year than you or I combined will in a lifetime. And they always, always do it by the book. I one auto company who is probably more vigorous about rooting out piracy in their organization than the feds would be if they had to do it themselves. With lawsuit weary corporate lawyers on your back, you would be too. My point is that those laws are in place because if they weren't, software piracy would quickly skyrocket to a hundred billion dollar issue. Everyone you know may have an illegal copy of Windows, but that's hardly representative of the software market as a whole; most buyers still go through legal channels (because the bulk of the buyers are businesses.) This is why you can pirate every piece of software you own, yet the companies who make the software still remain in the black. *Somebody* has to be paying for it, and if these laws didn't exist *nobody* would.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm.. www.transmeta.com makes this site look like a Picasso. If you have to bag on the guy, do it for form. Not content.
Although he didn't mention it, a lot of those same people who have passed up Linux have turned to the BSDs - I don't need to go on out Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. in a Slashdot forum. I know why they do this - faster TCP/IP, supposedly more stable, a bit more secure, etcetera - but what I'm curious is what are the BSD folks doing that the Linux aren't? Aside from some minor changes in the development process (e.g. the twelve person committee), license, etc., they're both Open Source Unix implementations. Certainly it isn't by just random chance that these speed and stability refinements made it into the *BSD kernels. What has happened to make the BSD distros the OS of choice for the really massive sites? Who/what is pushing BSD in that direction, and why isn't Linux being pushed in that direction? Just a different philosophy in their respective niches? e.g. does Linus prefers a more versatile OS to a more robust, but more stable, one?
On that note, wouldn't it be smart to at least fork a kernel that is dedicated only to high-availability applications?
Okay.. the guy is young, talented, and has been a high level exec at several of the hottest tech companies around. Let's just assume for a second that money isn't an issue here (it probably isn't).
What are the chances that he can hire a "legal dream team" (I though that term died in `96) and get out of this. Hell, OJ stabbed his wife and friend, bled everywhere, and still got out, and there were no FBI agents asking to be murdered either. This guy was propositioned by the agent first, which to me sounds like good old-fashioned entrapment. My question is, what are the legal ramifications of this? Will he get out on a technicality? Or, do you think he'll be able to hire enough good lawyers that they can convince a jury that the guy got screwed?
Well.. quit whining and move on. What's the only that wastes more time than an overmoderated post? A followup comment where someone bitches about it.
If it really ruined your day, metamoderate down.
What is your point? I explicitly stated in my post that I had qualms about working full-time under an NDA. Congratulations - you win. And win. And win.
However, that's all completely irrelevant. In this capacity, Loki will never be your "previous employer." They're not employing anyone. If you want to argue a broad-scale philsophy on the merits (of lack thereof) of working, for money, under an NDA, why not pick a post that pertains to just that? My point, which still stands, is that this is no more than a fun, even charitable, way to give back to the OSS community (last time a checked, not all of the programmers who GPL their code could afford such a box) and at the same time recieve a little help from some experts in the field.
And you've made it out to be malicious - Loki are the crooks, we're their pawns. A true supporter of the open source philosophy, as you've so eloquently made yourself out to be, should be a lot more supportive of Loki for having the guts to even support an open-source operating system. Linux supporting games don't exactly line the shelves at CompUSA. And yet you villify it. No, you do worse - you spread FUD about it. It's hard to reconcile these actions with those of a liberal license zealot.
You can sit atop your pedestal and decree your "creative professional" status all you want, but it doesn't make up for the fact that you are incorrect. In the meantime, don't bother lecturing me of the ramifications of an NDA, especially in a context that I a.) wasn't even commenting on and b.) don't really care about. Obviously, as evident by the last paragraph of your post, you have an agenda to push here, and it's in your personal interest to scare as many as possible away from signing these contracts. I think that's a pretty sleazy thing to do - pose as a concerned member of the community when in reality it's your own interests that motivate you. Lame.
But that brings up an entirely different subject. Since the contestants have to be able to look at their current closed source, they will probably reqire the contestants to sign all sorts of 'Non-Disclosure - Non-Compete' forms. And trust me, NO computer or contest (or job for that matter) is worth all that.
This is just more OSS snobbery and bluster. Really? You hack code for two days under an NDA - so what! The cosmos haven't realigned, and no one really cares. You won't be better or worse off, and believe it or not your virgin mind might not be poisoned by looking at (ghasp!) closed-source code.
Half of your argument is right. Personally, I don't agree with taking a job where all the code you write is closed and NDAd. But by claiming that doing so for a mere 48 hours is just not worth it is blowing it pathetically out of proportions. I'm a liberal-license zealot just like the next guy, but to be honest hacking C++ for a day or two under and NDA doesn't bother me. And I can't see why it would bother you.
People shouldn't dismiss this stuff too quick because it seems too "sci-fi-ey." I wasn't around, but I hear that the whole concept of global, two way television communications (in color, no less) was pretty laughable in 1949 when Orwell published 1984, too. Ideas in sci-fi novels are becoming reality all the time (well, the rational ones anyways). I used videoconferencing not ten minutes ago. So deal. :)
:) Heh and bicycle couriering would suddenly go from a low paying, pretty cruddy job to a you-pay-us, well-let-you-fly type deal available only to playboys with money to burn.
I don't think anyone can really appreciate the uses for this until they've lived in a truly bustling metropolis. In New York it takes literally an hour to go two miles. Not to state the obvious, but that's how it is. I would guess that many a monied stockbrocker, lawyer, or accountant with a sense for adventure would jump at the chance to buy one. Oh yeah, and me. I'd buy one too.
I can send mail to people that's obscene, insulting, misleading - whatever - under the name 'slashdot@hotmail.com' right now and I always will be able to. Sendmail has no authentication to determine if the from address you're telling it is really who you are (duh). Instead of slashdot@hotmail.com, I could send two million e-mails marked "From: clinton@whitehouse.gov". And guess what? Those same one percent who you mentioned will be the people who actually believe it.
Bottom line, the ability to recieve mail under a domain, in all but a few exceptions, is not the be-all end-all of security breaches. The only people who would be fooled by this aren't going to take the time to reply back; they're going to take it at face value.
Hotmail was a security breach. This is stupidity, but on a far more minute level.
Why, pray tell, does only Hemos own shares in Redhat? What happened, Rob?
Becker's 3Com drivers have worked flawlessly for as long as I can remember. I don't want to harp on 3Com for GLPing their driver - hell, it brightens my day, what with them being the one of the largest networking companies in the world - but the whole thing seems a little redundant.
Secondly, consider the BSDs. (Moderators: this is not flamebait. I have a valid point). Their TCP/IP implementation is a good deal faster than the Linux equivalent, and while the Linux stack is maxing out on concurrent TCP/IP connections (which is a possibility, especially with lots of images, etc. on your site) BSD will keep on chugging. I'm not sure how much of an issue this will be here, though. I think for the most part, unless you're Yahoo.com, you should be okay with Linux. But hey, you're the judge.
Finally, be sure to think outside the box when it comes to HTTP servers. There are other servers besides Apache, believe it or not. And in your case, there are ones that are a lot more optimized than Apache for serving up static content (I think it's static, save the webcam. You didn't really say). thttpd and Zeus (it's not free, shoot me) come to mind.
Hah yeah right. Sony's problem is just plain greed. Perhaps you've heard of "Sony Music," the biggest of the big five record companies, IIRC. You'll see an MP3 player of any sorts coming from Sony at about the same time that Microsoft Open Sources the Windows 2k kernel. At least Panasonic is just dumb.
"Zaman added that Microsoft has been considering making some of its software products open source for two years."
Well congratu-fsckin-lations! I guess that proves that MS really is innovative - they've known about this newfangled "Open Source" thing for two years! Woohoo! Let's all go buy more proprietary software - Microsoft has known about Open Source for two years - before it became popular!
Also, a more editorial comment - is anyone a little disappointed with the shortened release cycles? Nothing breeds anticipation like waiting for Linus to finally give the go ahead, after four months of bugfix releases, etc. But still, remember the madness when 2.2.0 was released? It was a damn fervor.. me and every Linux geek I know in RL had a party.. hehe. Now it seems like we've lost yet another cause for celebration. I don't see how the shortened devel cycles could possibly help, anyways. All that excitement spilled over into the media, and most of the major computer newsmags (A lot of ZD pubs, for example), ran a story on Linux just because 2.2 was released and it was such a momentous achievement. Now 2.4 is around the corner and no one seems really worked up, which means less press for us. What were Linus's reasons for doing this?
I'm about to buy a Palm IIIsomething, and now I see this. Should I wait for the Visor? Bear I mind I'm actually going to use this thing, and not just toy with it. Does the Visor have the same contact/scheduling management/etc. software that the Palms do? I want a Palm, but they are *damn* expensive - the new ones, anyways. Not the III.
Does anyone here not know that we have to login to NYT? Can't we just, like, assume that everyone knows and save ourselves the redundancy?
No, that's not what I meant. Quality is very obviously *not* linear - 128kbps sounds *much* better than 64kbps, but 256kbps (doubling again) produces less of a difference. Personally I can't distinguish between 256kbps and 192, but 128kbps is easily distinguishable. A lot of percussion can exploit the weaknesses of 128kbps - cymbals sound like they've been hit with a wet rag or they hiss like a snake. At 192kbps this simple doesn't happen. For most "new" MP3 users, I don't think they'll notice it, but use it for a couple of years and you'll soon yearn for an audio library that's >=160kbps, preferably 192.
Bzzt. No cookie. This is a common misconception - people can't understand why anyone would encode at 192kbps until they realize that a CD is 1411kbps - 44.1khz x 2 stereo channels x 16 bits per channel = ~1411kbps. So, encoding at 128kbps means losing over 90% of your audio data. Now you see why every bit counts, and why 192kbps is so much better than 128kbps.
Why haven't more of your books made it online? A fair amount have, but it's still a fraction of the total offering. Certainly piracy could be an issue, but isn't there still some real profit to be made here? I don't think I know a single geek-sysadmin that wouldn't jump at the chance to, for example, have his company buy him an "O'Reilly Support Contract" for a couple hundred a year, which would enable him to browse and search - with regex's, of course :) - of every book you have online. Let's face it - several hundred dollars is a lot more than many of us spent on ORA books in the last year. And of course this opens up the doorway for tons of new features - books that update themselves through the notes that other readers would be able to leave on their virtual pages, etc. :)
And how about the ability to create possibly the most comprehensive, one-stop shop for computer info on the planet? I think we'll find soon enough that most of the technically oriented progamming terms in your books will actually have chapters in other books that document them in that easy-to-digest, ORA vernacular that we've all come to know and love. Going for the obvious, imagine if you linked all the regular expression discussions in 'Progamming Perl' to their corresponding lengthier, better documented examples in 'Mastering Regular Expressions.' I can't imagine what a Perl/Regex guru I would've been by now if I had had the latter at my side while reading the former.
Well, anyways, these are just some of the possiblities I see. Keep up the great work, and when you get a chance put a marmoset on one of your books.
Consider this ironically timed story on the front page of www.zdnet.com:
Microso ft Makes Reading Easier.
Yes. It seems they do.
Pardon my ignorance, but what is so damn special about that?
One little niggle: doubt if that's actually S/PDIF. In a move that would make even MS proud, Creative has decided to create their own proprietary digital audio output form, DIN. There's no difference between DIN and S/PDIF, performance wise - they just don't work together
BTW that reminds me - does anyone on /. know of the existence of a DIN -> S/PDIF converter? Anyone smart enough to make one? You'd make an absolute killing, guaranteed.
That's true. However, last I check, MS Office Premium was selling for $675, while Quake 2 went for a scant $28.95. The bottom line is that more time, manpower, R&D, and ultimately, money, goes into office apps. Look at iD Software, probably the premier game shop in the world. They have what, 4 lead coders? 6? I personally know of many a business app worked on by teams of ten, even twenty times that. For game companies, yes piracy is bad, but in the grand scheme of things, the software copyright laws are to protect businesses from other businesses.
I'm surprised you made no mention of size and bitrate, which in the end will have much more to do with the quality of your music than the encoder. Any of several good encoders (Xing, Fraunhoffer (sp?)) will get the job done, but they'll be a noticeable difference in quality between 128kbps, 160kbps, and 192kbps. Contrary to popular belief, 128kbps is not CD quality. CD quality is about 1440kbps, IIRC. So already you can see that you're losing over 90% of your music data just going from WAV to MP3. Hopefully this illustrates why encoding at higher rates is so important - every last bit counts. If I were going to convert my entire CD collection to MP3 and then (god forbid) possibly get rid of the CDs, there's no way I'd do it at anything below 192kbps - maybe even 256kbps if I just stuck everything on CD-R. Bitrate is that important. I don't even keep any downloaded MP3s under 160 anymore; I just delete them all. Get the good MP3 encoder, to be sure, but then make sure you encode at a high enough bitrate. Try it for yourself; encode some MP3s at 96, 128, 160, and 192. It's possible that years of being an audiophile has made my ears picky, so it's basically personal preference. You'll probably notice quite a bit of difference going from 128kbps higher.
burning in oil and/or at the stake
being crushed to death under stones
chinese water torture
etcetera, etcetera.
This is about as far from cruel and unusual as it's gonna get. The kid is convicted of a white collar crime, and if somehow he's lucky enough to actually see the inside of a jail cell it will be a minimum security resort, probably with rowing and ping-pong teams. Of course, just when he's getting acclimated they'll paroll his ass to make room for actually dangerous offenders.
And also, I can name people a lot worse off to have to pay $250k in restituitions than a 'wet behind the ears' college kid who happens to be about to hit the peak of his earning potential, and with a freshly minted CS degree to boot. No, I'd say this punishment is about as far from cruel as it gets.
Lastly, what *were* these damn lawmakers thinking when they passed laws prohibiting people from stealing the hard work of others. I mean jeez! Listen up. You and all your friends, and maybe every damn citizen in the US could pirate software, and it wouldn't make that much difference to some companies. These laws are in place mainly to guard against corporate piracy. Big corporations spend more on software purchases in a year than you or I combined will in a lifetime. And they always, always do it by the book. I one auto company who is probably more vigorous about rooting out piracy in their organization than the feds would be if they had to do it themselves. With lawsuit weary corporate lawyers on your back, you would be too. My point is that those laws are in place because if they weren't, software piracy would quickly skyrocket to a hundred billion dollar issue. Everyone you know may have an illegal copy of Windows, but that's hardly representative of the software market as a whole; most buyers still go through legal channels (because the bulk of the buyers are businesses.) This is why you can pirate every piece of software you own, yet the companies who make the software still remain in the black. *Somebody* has to be paying for it, and if these laws didn't exist *nobody* would.