You're right to berate the parent comment based on his assertion that violent game == good game. And I also agree that a well designed game is a well designed game, and just because it's fun for kids doesn't preclude it being fun for me (at 23).
However, there are definitely different target markets for Sony and Nintendo. Sony tends to market to a more mature audience, and while, yes, that means that the games are more violent, it also means that the games involve more story and character development, as well as more complex puzzle solving. The parent (ninenine) cited Silent Hill 2 as one of these wonderful violent games. What ninenine failed to mention was the engrossing story, incredible character development, and great gameplay. It's games like this that don't get developed for Nintendo, and this is the reason I chose my PS2 over GameCube (Xbox I didn't buy because it's Microsoft, and I don't like it when my console crashes).
---
It seems that there is confusion here between the two:
Globalism: a national policy of treating the whole world as a proper sphere for political influence (this from Merriam Webster, my emphasis).
Globalization: a set of business practices that allow corporations to move cash, production facilities, and products around the globe unfettered by financial penalties from the nations that they don't move them to (this is my personal definition).
For a good leftist article on the distinction of the two, I found this link.
It should be noted that I am partial more to the political right than left, and I refer you to the above article in an effort of impartiality. If competition alone could foster the proper treatment of employees on a global scale, I'd be all for globalization. I don't think it will, though, so I think that corporations should be allowed to set up shop wherever they want as long as there are provisions in place to make sure that the workers in Indonesia or wherever aren't exploited. I'll let that be the extent of my rant.
Yes, well, as of 3 days ago, they developed a program that scans ips at random to find FT nodes, and then compiles a list of those nodes' files. It can then initiate a search of the FT network. This is the shadowFT program that the parent talked about. Perhaps you should take a minute to look at the link provided before you go critisizing.
What this thing really needs is DivX compatibility. As far as doing things an Xbox or PS2 + HD cannot, can either of these play MP3, MPG, WMA, or WMV? I know with the Linux-PS2 kit, one could do most of this, but what about the Xbox? Is it going to have an OS port? And would the PS2's processor be able to keep up with MPEG-4 decompression?
Kleinrock conceded that Davies invented the term packet-switching, but not the concept of packet switching. William Gibson is credited with coining the term "cyberspace", yet he is not involved in this debate of who invented the internet.
To see if PS2 can compete, just check out the same site's review of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3. PS2 is the console that I've chosen, and I'm happy based on THPS3 alone. After a lackluster first year (only game of note was SSX), Sony's catching up with Devil May Cry, Silent Hill 2, Metal Gear Solid 2, and THPS3.
Yes, except an open source program that is currently WORKING. The giFT project was a great initiative, and even had a wonderful GUI frontend (kift), but the current versions of Morpheus/KaZaA lock it out. There was talk of an open source network (one independant of FastTrack), but then KaZaA brought out a linux client (you can pick it up here), which had the giFT project wondering what the main focus of the project should be. I haven't seen any news posted on the giFT project site in a few weeks. I hope they follow through on their OpenFT initiative.
I believe that homonyms are words that are spelled the same and pronounced the same, but have different meanings. The condition of identical spelling is sometimes relaxed, but "then" and "than" are both spelled differently and pronounced differently, therefore I don't think they can be classed as "homonyms".
Consider writeable CDs. Some are dirt cheap, $1 each or so. Others are $10 or more. The difference, a few bits on the CD itself? The $10 kind are the only kind that work in consumer electronics and are designed for copying music. This makes two CDs that are physically essentially identical into two different products that are taxed and priced differently.
What? I write audio CDs on the $1 variety, and they play fine in my consumer electronics (ie. my old cd player). Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you're talking about, but it comes as news to me that there are CD-Rs designed specifically for audio.
As far as your points about "music" CDs with "software" on them, these are good questions. I think that in most cases there is an obvious intent to the disc, either as a "music" vehicle, or as a "software" vehicle, and that this governs how it should be designated. If there's a band that releases a "music" cd that starts selling mad copies because of its software, I would just be amused at how shitty this band is, rather than revamping my definition of what a "music" cd is.
The RIAA is going after the FastTrack network (KaZaA, Morpheus, and Grokster) next. This is going to be the next big battle, as this network isn't centralized (at least, not as centralized as Napster was), so the RIAA will have a harder time proving that FT is responsible. Another intesting thing about the FT network is that the latest version locks out the open source client that the giFT project is developing (it worked again briefly over the weekend, but now it's broken again). While they try to get it up and running with the new FT network, they say that they're also developing and their own open source network (OpenFT).
In parallel with the FT assault, the RIAA, as of Monday, decided to go after AudioGalaxy (read about it in the NY Post over here). AudioGalaxy has filters in place, but the RIAA says they aren't good enough.
I see some others posting explanations about physics behind this, but it seems a bit unsatisfactory for some. Here's my best shot at it:
There are two orthogonal polarization modes that propagate down fiber, meaning the there's a sort of up-down oscillation of the electric field (one mode), and a left-right oscillation (other mode). If fiber were perfect, you could send a signal along each polarization, and they wouldn't bother (interfere with) one another, but it's not. If you send polarized light down a fiber, it will not keep the same polarization (unless you use polarization-maintaining fiber, but that's a pain, and you can only send one polarization down).
So people generally send down (relavitively) unpolarized light. They modulate this one signal as fast as they can (getting about 40Gb/s), and then deal with dispersion as best they can.
Dispersion results from the spread in frequencies (colours) of your signal (each colour travels a different speed in the fiber) and also from the fact that a fiber has polarization mode dispersion (the part of the signal along one polarization axis travels at a different speed than the other part, called PMD from here on in). Both of these effects cause a pulse that you send down the fiber to be distorted (part of the pulse travels at a different speed than the other part). Chromatic dispersion (the first kind) has been dealt with (fibers have a wavelength at which the loss is lowest and a wavelength at which the chromatic dispersion is lowest, and it's been worked such that these two things are at basically the same wavelength), but PMD is a big limitation to pushing the capabilities of fiber. This was stated on the front page post:
They say the only big problem was the dispersal of the light waves which limits the data rate.
I think that should read "dispersion", not "dispersal".
So, what these guys have done is made a PMD compensator. Somehow it automatically makes sure that a given polarization of light stays in that polarization as it travels down the fiber. If one can preserve the polarization of both modes (which is different than polarization maintaining fiber, which takes ONE polarization of light and keeps it polarized), and then send a signal along each polarization axis, then one doesn't need to deal with PMD, because within a given signal, all the pulses are travelling at the same rate.
Then, if you don't have to deal with PMD, then there's very little to slow you down in pushing data through the fiber, basically just how fast you can modulate your laser (I think you could drive a LiNbO3 Mach-Zhender modulator up to about 80Gb/s or so, whereas I think in the article they were driving it at 40Gb/s). That's why they say the data rate was only limited by available equipment. I'm not sure how the PMD compensator works, I'll have to read the actual article more closely. I hope this helps!
I don't know about the ISP protocol, but people have cracked the AOL Instant Messenger protocol, so you can use AIM in Linux (along with various other protocols, it's fantastic). It's called Gaim, and it's available over at Sourceforge (link here). Happy chatting!
I don't think so, although someone with more experience with MEMS can correct me here. Anything in italics is cut and pasted from the main article:
Rerouting light with MEMS switches not only breaks the electronic bottleneck, it has many other advantages as well.
These mirrors flip up and down mechanically, right? That can't be much faster than KHz, whereas electronics switch on the order of MHz, I thought...
It is data rate independent in the sense that a mirror's behavior is independent of how fast the light turns on and off. Likewise, a mirror's behavior is wavelength independent.
Hmmm... seems to me that the faster the light turns on and off, the wider the bandwidth of the signal. I don't know if this is a big effect compared with the wavelength sensitivity of the mirror, but then they go and claim that mirrors are wavelength insensitive. Perhaps regular mirrors are, but aren't high reflectivity mirrors wavelength sensitive (using interference effects from thin film coatings)? If they didn't use high reflectivity mirrors, wouldn't there be a huge loss to this switch?
This is just me asking more questions than I'm answering, I realize, but maybe somebody who's been in the field of photonics longer than I can provide some answers. Are there any companies currently using MEMS in commercial systems?
OK, moderators getting friends to mod down on-topic stuff they don't agree with is rough, but what do you do to prevent this (besides diligent meta-moderation)?
I agree that the lameness filter should be turned off. Maybe they can start giving people special "lameness moderation points", although this could be dangerous as well as cumbersome.
I think you raise good points, but I still disagree. I don't know how many stories the editors have to handle, but I bet it's quite a few, and I can understand the level of spelling/grammar/form mistakes that I see, and I think I have an above average command of the english language (aside from this run-on sentence)...
If you don't like the AC's posting level of 0, then don't post annonymously. When is it necessary?
It seems to me that the admins do a good job of keeping the site up. They kept it running when they were getting 3x the traffic after Sept. 11th, if I remember correctly. I have had occasional problems logging in lately, though.
Group think? Maybe you've got a point, but I think the Meta-Moderation system is in place to combat this. Most of the comments I see labeled as Trolls are pretty fair.
I can't comment on the lameness filter. I know people complain about it, and I do see the occasional ASCII art, but I've never had anything filtered.
Anyway, overall this is my favorite site to visit first thing in the morning. I think that when you try and implement something as idealistic as/., there are always shortcomings, and people are going to gripe about those shortcomings. If you don't like it, start your own site with a modified slashcode, or whatever. Your opinion is well stated, though, and if I were a moderator, I would mod you up.
I think they should get George Carlin to do a cameo, or maybe even Alex Winter... Pop quiz, hotshot. Somebody asks you which one played Bill and which one played Ted. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?
My main question is, has the RIAA gone after AudioGalaxy yet? It seems like they have a better case against them than against FT.
Why the hell did these programs move one step closer to a central file server system? It seems to me to be a colossal act of stupidity, not just a major pain in my ass as my giFT client stopped working last Friday (and kift was working soooo nicely).
Even with this move by KaZaa/Morpheus/Grokster, what does the RIAA expect these programs to do? I think that they're logging supernode ips, not file transactions, so they have no way of controlling who transfers what. It seems like they still have a "plausible deniability" of sorts...
On a more positive note, the people at the giFT project say that it will be working again soon with the existing FT network, and that in the meantime, they're planning on creating a FT equivalent, open source network. Read a bit about it here, and check it out on irc.openprojects.net at #gift.
I'm curious how much it will cost per month. Flat rate, or will they charge per bit? Hmmm... streaming a movie on a laptop via my cel during a long commute or something would be nice, but I don't think 600 or 700 megs @ 384k/s comes cheap.
I am soooo tired of the presumption that the only reason I want to rip something to mp3 is to illegally trade it. I just purchased a couple cds in the past week (one of them a Blackalicious cd that is incredible, hip-hop fans, check out this great underground artist), and I ripped them so I could listen to them at the office without carting the cds back and forth every day.
"The purpose of these releases is to test consumer satisfaction," said Macrovision President Bill Krepick. The labels "obviously don't want to do anything to turn off consumers...There's a lot of risk aversion right now."
Hmmm... Seems like this protection serves only to turn off consumers (I hope they don't place this protection on any Barry White albums). Those who don't rip don't notice a difference, and those who do have this annoying crap to deal with.
Also, I work in linux, and I don't know of a way to play WMA files in linux, although I've never tried to (never had a reason to...).
From our standpoint, we are designing the software for the 99 percent of the people who don't want to steal the music but instead (want to) use it for whatever means--for whatever personal use that's allowed by the artist and the record label.
99% of the general populion don't want to make mp3s of their cds?
From CNET's stats, it seems like about 13 million people have downloaded Kazaa, and about another 20 million have downloaded Morpheus (not to mention various other file sharing programs talked about on/. here). Therefore I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that at least 10 million individuals out there are trading mp3s with software that your average Joe can use. In the year 2000, 2.5 billion CDs were sold (according to this link). Assuming that average Joe buys, say, a couple CDs a month (reasonabe?), this comes out to about 100 million average Joes buying cds each year. Using my super-human mathmatical capabilities, I figure about 10% of the general cd-purchasing population wish to make mp3s with their cds. He's an order of magnitude off! In physics or chemistry this is fine, but for the CEO of a business, isn't it a bit much?
Perhaps reading the article would be recommended.
on
Brian West Update
·
· Score: 2, Informative
It seems like those posting comments so far haven't read the article.
It seems that West exploited the security flaw to his own benefit before reporting it to the competitors. THAT was why he was charged, and THAT is why he plead guilty.
It also says that he hacked the Potea Daily News website, downloaded some files, then claimed that his intrusion was accidental... Oops, my cat stepped on my keyboard, and it happened to be the correct user name and password!
Ah, a fellow U of T student... Seems that Toronto is becoming a bastion of advertising. The article mentions that this system was first used here.
I'm one who doesn't like to be subjected to advertising any more than necessary. I can understand banner ads at websites you don't have to pay for, or 5 minutes of commercials for every 30 minutes of television, but things like this bother me (despite the point made above that screen saver ads are useless). I'm also annoyed at commercials being played on the big screen when I go to see a movie now. I really don't like seeing that Mazda zoom-zoom kid projected on a massive screen and in booming surround sound...
Anyway, if they were to knock a hundred bucks off of my tuition (currently about $5700 CDN), I'd be ok, but something tells me that's not what would happen. The threat of corporate control over academics is another worry, but I haven't seen that happening here at U of T, although I haven't tried to publish my "Rogers Cable Can Lick My Balls" manuscript.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right to berate the parent comment based on his assertion that violent game == good game. And I also agree that a well designed game is a well designed game, and just because it's fun for kids doesn't preclude it being fun for me (at 23).
However, there are definitely different target markets for Sony and Nintendo. Sony tends to market to a more mature audience, and while, yes, that means that the games are more violent, it also means that the games involve more story and character development, as well as more complex puzzle solving. The parent (ninenine) cited Silent Hill 2 as one of these wonderful violent games. What ninenine failed to mention was the engrossing story, incredible character development, and great gameplay. It's games like this that don't get developed for Nintendo, and this is the reason I chose my PS2 over GameCube (Xbox I didn't buy because it's Microsoft, and I don't like it when my console crashes).
---
It seems that there is confusion here between the two:
Globalism: a national policy of treating the whole world as a proper sphere for political influence (this from Merriam Webster, my emphasis).
Globalization: a set of business practices that allow corporations to move cash, production facilities, and products around the globe unfettered by financial penalties from the nations that they don't move them to (this is my personal definition).
For a good leftist article on the distinction of the two, I found this link.
It should be noted that I am partial more to the political right than left, and I refer you to the above article in an effort of impartiality. If competition alone could foster the proper treatment of employees on a global scale, I'd be all for globalization. I don't think it will, though, so I think that corporations should be allowed to set up shop wherever they want as long as there are provisions in place to make sure that the workers in Indonesia or wherever aren't exploited. I'll let that be the extent of my rant.
Yes, well, as of 3 days ago, they developed a program that scans ips at random to find FT nodes, and then compiles a list of those nodes' files. It can then initiate a search of the FT network. This is the shadowFT program that the parent talked about. Perhaps you should take a minute to look at the link provided before you go critisizing.
What this thing really needs is DivX compatibility. As far as doing things an Xbox or PS2 + HD cannot, can either of these play MP3, MPG, WMA, or WMV? I know with the Linux-PS2 kit, one could do most of this, but what about the Xbox? Is it going to have an OS port? And would the PS2's processor be able to keep up with MPEG-4 decompression?
Kleinrock conceded that Davies invented the term packet-switching, but not the concept of packet switching. William Gibson is credited with coining the term "cyberspace", yet he is not involved in this debate of who invented the internet.
To see if PS2 can compete, just check out the same site's review of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3. PS2 is the console that I've chosen, and I'm happy based on THPS3 alone. After a lackluster first year (only game of note was SSX), Sony's catching up with Devil May Cry, Silent Hill 2, Metal Gear Solid 2, and THPS3.
Yes, except an open source program that is currently WORKING. The giFT project was a great initiative, and even had a wonderful GUI frontend (kift), but the current versions of Morpheus/KaZaA lock it out. There was talk of an open source network (one independant of FastTrack), but then KaZaA brought out a linux client (you can pick it up here), which had the giFT project wondering what the main focus of the project should be. I haven't seen any news posted on the giFT project site in a few weeks. I hope they follow through on their OpenFT initiative.
I believe that homonyms are words that are spelled the same and pronounced the same, but have different meanings. The condition of identical spelling is sometimes relaxed, but "then" and "than" are both spelled differently and pronounced differently, therefore I don't think they can be classed as "homonyms".
Consider writeable CDs. Some are dirt cheap, $1 each or so. Others are $10 or more. The difference, a few bits on the CD itself? The $10 kind are the only kind that work in consumer electronics and are designed for copying music. This makes two CDs that are physically essentially identical into two different products that are taxed and priced differently.
What? I write audio CDs on the $1 variety, and they play fine in my consumer electronics (ie. my old cd player). Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you're talking about, but it comes as news to me that there are CD-Rs designed specifically for audio.
As far as your points about "music" CDs with "software" on them, these are good questions. I think that in most cases there is an obvious intent to the disc, either as a "music" vehicle, or as a "software" vehicle, and that this governs how it should be designated. If there's a band that releases a "music" cd that starts selling mad copies because of its software, I would just be amused at how shitty this band is, rather than revamping my definition of what a "music" cd is.
The RIAA is going after the FastTrack network (KaZaA, Morpheus, and Grokster) next. This is going to be the next big battle, as this network isn't centralized (at least, not as centralized as Napster was), so the RIAA will have a harder time proving that FT is responsible. Another intesting thing about the FT network is that the latest version locks out the open source client that the giFT project is developing (it worked again briefly over the weekend, but now it's broken again). While they try to get it up and running with the new FT network, they say that they're also developing and their own open source network (OpenFT).
In parallel with the FT assault, the RIAA, as of Monday, decided to go after AudioGalaxy (read about it in the NY Post over here). AudioGalaxy has filters in place, but the RIAA says they aren't good enough.
I see some others posting explanations about physics behind this, but it seems a bit unsatisfactory for some. Here's my best shot at it:
There are two orthogonal polarization modes that propagate down fiber, meaning the there's a sort of up-down oscillation of the electric field (one mode), and a left-right oscillation (other mode). If fiber were perfect, you could send a signal along each polarization, and they wouldn't bother (interfere with) one another, but it's not. If you send polarized light down a fiber, it will not keep the same polarization (unless you use polarization-maintaining fiber, but that's a pain, and you can only send one polarization down).
So people generally send down (relavitively) unpolarized light. They modulate this one signal as fast as they can (getting about 40Gb/s), and then deal with dispersion as best they can.
Dispersion results from the spread in frequencies (colours) of your signal (each colour travels a different speed in the fiber) and also from the fact that a fiber has polarization mode dispersion (the part of the signal along one polarization axis travels at a different speed than the other part, called PMD from here on in). Both of these effects cause a pulse that you send down the fiber to be distorted (part of the pulse travels at a different speed than the other part). Chromatic dispersion (the first kind) has been dealt with (fibers have a wavelength at which the loss is lowest and a wavelength at which the chromatic dispersion is lowest, and it's been worked such that these two things are at basically the same wavelength), but PMD is a big limitation to pushing the capabilities of fiber. This was stated on the front page post:
They say the only big problem was the dispersal of the light waves which limits the data rate.
I think that should read "dispersion", not "dispersal".
So, what these guys have done is made a PMD compensator. Somehow it automatically makes sure that a given polarization of light stays in that polarization as it travels down the fiber. If one can preserve the polarization of both modes (which is different than polarization maintaining fiber, which takes ONE polarization of light and keeps it polarized), and then send a signal along each polarization axis, then one doesn't need to deal with PMD, because within a given signal, all the pulses are travelling at the same rate.
Then, if you don't have to deal with PMD, then there's very little to slow you down in pushing data through the fiber, basically just how fast you can modulate your laser (I think you could drive a LiNbO3 Mach-Zhender modulator up to about 80Gb/s or so, whereas I think in the article they were driving it at 40Gb/s). That's why they say the data rate was only limited by available equipment. I'm not sure how the PMD compensator works, I'll have to read the actual article more closely. I hope this helps!
I don't know about the ISP protocol, but people have cracked the AOL Instant Messenger protocol, so you can use AIM in Linux (along with various other protocols, it's fantastic). It's called Gaim, and it's available over at Sourceforge (link here). Happy chatting!
I don't think so, although someone with more experience with MEMS can correct me here. Anything in italics is cut and pasted from the main article:
Rerouting light with MEMS switches not only breaks the electronic bottleneck, it has many other advantages as well.
These mirrors flip up and down mechanically, right? That can't be much faster than KHz, whereas electronics switch on the order of MHz, I thought...
It is data rate independent in the sense that a mirror's behavior is independent of how fast the light turns on and off. Likewise, a mirror's behavior is wavelength independent.
Hmmm... seems to me that the faster the light turns on and off, the wider the bandwidth of the signal. I don't know if this is a big effect compared with the wavelength sensitivity of the mirror, but then they go and claim that mirrors are wavelength insensitive. Perhaps regular mirrors are, but aren't high reflectivity mirrors wavelength sensitive (using interference effects from thin film coatings)? If they didn't use high reflectivity mirrors, wouldn't there be a huge loss to this switch?
This is just me asking more questions than I'm answering, I realize, but maybe somebody who's been in the field of photonics longer than I can provide some answers. Are there any companies currently using MEMS in commercial systems?
Oh, and I'm still wondering when it's necessary to post anonymously.
OK, moderators getting friends to mod down on-topic stuff they don't agree with is rough, but what do you do to prevent this (besides diligent meta-moderation)?
I agree that the lameness filter should be turned off. Maybe they can start giving people special "lameness moderation points", although this could be dangerous as well as cumbersome.
I think you raise good points, but I still disagree. I don't know how many stories the editors have to handle, but I bet it's quite a few, and I can understand the level of spelling/grammar/form mistakes that I see, and I think I have an above average command of the english language (aside from this run-on sentence)...
/., there are always shortcomings, and people are going to gripe about those shortcomings. If you don't like it, start your own site with a modified slashcode, or whatever. Your opinion is well stated, though, and if I were a moderator, I would mod you up.
If you don't like the AC's posting level of 0, then don't post annonymously. When is it necessary?
It seems to me that the admins do a good job of keeping the site up. They kept it running when they were getting 3x the traffic after Sept. 11th, if I remember correctly. I have had occasional problems logging in lately, though.
Group think? Maybe you've got a point, but I think the Meta-Moderation system is in place to combat this. Most of the comments I see labeled as Trolls are pretty fair.
I can't comment on the lameness filter. I know people complain about it, and I do see the occasional ASCII art, but I've never had anything filtered.
Anyway, overall this is my favorite site to visit first thing in the morning. I think that when you try and implement something as idealistic as
I think they should get George Carlin to do a cameo, or maybe even Alex Winter... Pop quiz, hotshot. Somebody asks you which one played Bill and which one played Ted. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?
Creating a pipe in Windows:
//
// Create named pipe in Windows
// nbytes -- block size from command line arguments.
//
// two connections
// input buffer size
// output buffer size
// timeout
// security
int mult = 1;
int x;
x = mult*nbytes + 24;
handleA = CreateNamedPipe(pipeAdult,
PIPE_ACCESS_DUPLEX,
PIPE_TYPE_BYTE,
2,
x,
x,
INFINITE,
NULL);
if(handleA == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) {
printf("CreateNamedPipe() FAILED: err=%d
", GetLastError());
return 1;
}
handleB = CreateFile(pipeAdult,
GENERIC_READ|GENERIC_WRITE,
FILE_SHARE_READ|FILE_SHARE_WRITE,
NULL,
OPEN_EXISTING,
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL,
NULL);
if(handleB == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) {
printf("CreateFile() FAILED: err=%d
", GetLastError());
return 1;
}
Creating a pipe in Linux:
int fd1[2];
if(pipe(fd1)) {
printf("pipe() FAILED: errno=%d
",errno);
return 1;
}
My main question is, has the RIAA gone after AudioGalaxy yet? It seems like they have a better case against them than against FT.
Why the hell did these programs move one step closer to a central file server system? It seems to me to be a colossal act of stupidity, not just a major pain in my ass as my giFT client stopped working last Friday (and kift was working soooo nicely).
Even with this move by KaZaa/Morpheus/Grokster, what does the RIAA expect these programs to do? I think that they're logging supernode ips, not file transactions, so they have no way of controlling who transfers what. It seems like they still have a "plausible deniability" of sorts...
On a more positive note, the people at the giFT project say that it will be working again soon with the existing FT network, and that in the meantime, they're planning on creating a FT equivalent, open source network. Read a bit about it here, and check it out on irc.openprojects.net at #gift.
I'm curious how much it will cost per month. Flat rate, or will they charge per bit? Hmmm... streaming a movie on a laptop via my cel during a long commute or something would be nice, but I don't think 600 or 700 megs @ 384k/s comes cheap.
I am soooo tired of the presumption that the only reason I want to rip something to mp3 is to illegally trade it. I just purchased a couple cds in the past week (one of them a Blackalicious cd that is incredible, hip-hop fans, check out this great underground artist), and I ripped them so I could listen to them at the office without carting the cds back and forth every day.
"The purpose of these releases is to test consumer satisfaction," said Macrovision President Bill Krepick. The labels "obviously don't want to do anything to turn off consumers...There's a lot of risk aversion right now."
Hmmm... Seems like this protection serves only to turn off consumers (I hope they don't place this protection on any Barry White albums). Those who don't rip don't notice a difference, and those who do have this annoying crap to deal with.
Also, I work in linux, and I don't know of a way to play WMA files in linux, although I've never tried to (never had a reason to...).
From our standpoint, we are designing the software for the 99 percent of the people who don't want to steal the music but instead (want to) use it for whatever means--for whatever personal use that's allowed by the artist and the record label.
/. here). Therefore I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that at least 10 million individuals out there are trading mp3s with software that your average Joe can use. In the year 2000, 2.5 billion CDs were sold (according to this link). Assuming that average Joe buys, say, a couple CDs a month (reasonabe?), this comes out to about 100 million average Joes buying cds each year. Using my super-human mathmatical capabilities, I figure about 10% of the general cd-purchasing population wish to make mp3s with their cds. He's an order of magnitude off! In physics or chemistry this is fine, but for the CEO of a business, isn't it a bit much?
99% of the general populion don't want to make mp3s of their cds?
From CNET's stats, it seems like about 13 million people have downloaded Kazaa, and about another 20 million have downloaded Morpheus (not to mention various other file sharing programs talked about on
It seems like those posting comments so far haven't read the article.
It seems that West exploited the security flaw to his own benefit before reporting it to the competitors. THAT was why he was charged, and THAT is why he plead guilty.
It also says that he hacked the Potea Daily News website, downloaded some files, then claimed that his intrusion was accidental... Oops, my cat stepped on my keyboard, and it happened to be the correct user name and password!
Ah, a fellow U of T student... Seems that Toronto is becoming a bastion of advertising. The article mentions that this system was first used here.
I'm one who doesn't like to be subjected to advertising any more than necessary. I can understand banner ads at websites you don't have to pay for, or 5 minutes of commercials for every 30 minutes of television, but things like this bother me (despite the point made above that screen saver ads are useless). I'm also annoyed at commercials being played on the big screen when I go to see a movie now. I really don't like seeing that Mazda zoom-zoom kid projected on a massive screen and in booming surround sound...
Anyway, if they were to knock a hundred bucks off of my tuition (currently about $5700 CDN), I'd be ok, but something tells me that's not what would happen. The threat of corporate control over academics is another worry, but I haven't seen that happening here at U of T, although I haven't tried to publish my "Rogers Cable Can Lick My Balls" manuscript.
Why in the world is "gay" in the list?! Does the list go on as: polygamist, child-sodomizer, murderer, rapist?
yeah, then homophobe... Anonymous Coward indeed.