Thats a feeble excuse for switching to Vorbis regardless of the merits of this format. It's like saying "They found vulnerabilities in Apache so i'm gonna change my webserver to something else"
I'm sure there are exploitable buffer overflows in Vorbis too but as the format is so little used (relatively), hackers ain't looking for them. The day Vorbis is more popular than mp3 is the day the hackers change what they're targeting.
Very true. Using open-source code in part of the design might have the beneficial side-effect, to them, of pacifying people who want to tinker - in the example of SACD players they could for example allow us to use their visualisation API to draw nice pretty pictures to go with the music, but you can guarantee we wouldn't get access to the bitstream itself. Sly buggers.
So what do we reckon the chances are of them embedding open source software in secure hardware devices such as SACD players, digital TVs, palladium PCs and set top boxes? I'd say with, for example, Sonys hardware and software interests the chances are less than nil.
Reminds me of when I was at college - we had a load of BBC Micros as terminals to our Prime minicomputer and they had their disk drives removed so we couldn't play games on them... so we hacked the Prime, FTPd every BBC game we could find onto there and fitted every BBC with roms that used the Prime as a virtual hard drive. The tutor could never work out how we managed to play games on them without any obvious means of getting the game there...
That's the sort of attitude which makes people prefer to run Windows. I can find the answer to *any* windows problem I have within ten minutes on google - Linux isn't there yet. So surely you should be helping people?
Surely the most sensible way of sorting this out would be to have a trusted member of staff in each building/department/whatever with the authority to reset passwords. Note, I said *reset* passwords - not the ability to read them.
True. For users in the UK at least, www.cdwow.com charges ukp8.99 for a cd, including postage. They buy the cds from wherever is cheapest, hence why an order of 2xcds will be posted individually from Iraq and Nigeria, but they're pretty fast and the service is great.
But I would trade cdwow for a cheaper, downloadable and *lossless* alternative straightaway.
Damn right! IUMA is a fine service but pretty irrelevant in the great scheme of things - What most people want is major music, downloadable in a form of their choice, cheaply, online. IUMA is not that service. Universals service is nearer to this goal, but not quite - when they offer lossless encoding (monkeys, flac, whatever) cheaply and compatible with any platform then I will *definitely* subscribe to this service.
*Most* people want a service that is better than p2p. Universal are nearer this than IUMA but they need encouragement, not flaming, to offer us this.
Funnily enough you're so correct. I used to work for a major european bank in Cheltenham UK and was subcontracted to IBM UK.
We had to build a system that replaced the paper in the process of a salesman going to your house, signing a deal for life assurance or whatever and that going onto the banks internal systems. This involved a web UI at the salesman end, another UI at the bank end (for validating date and manual approval) and a transport. The transport was the usual IBM MQ, bits of xml validation, PDF generation and database shenanigans. I wrote that bit. The simplest bit was the UI - a simple VB program that showed important bits from the xml for the operator to check (that had to do this due to UK law). One of IBMs programmers, fresh out of college with a certificate for everything, used no parameters in the VB code at all - he put parameters in XML throughout the code, with all the sloowwww parsing involved. To view a new policy took *45 seconds* on a decent pc rather than the sub-second response for a properly written app.
He had done the usual dumb schmuck consultant error - he assumed because something was on his CV HE HAD TO USE IT. XML is a hot skill. So rather than pass an integer to a subroutine, he create a new xmldocument, added the integer to it (under numerous levels of XML), passed this, decoded the xml and retrieved the integer.
Big consultancies like IBM are full of n00b graduates who know everything but only superficially. The world would be better without them.
Agreed, this isn't a stupid question at all. Maybe the USB mouse could expose two devices to the USB controller (generic mouse plus barcode scanner). A problem is that they usually only scan when the mouse is pressed down on a surface (there is a microswitch on the base) and I think the IR beam is fixed, so you would have to run it over the barcode fully rather than wave the barcode in front like is done with a normal barcode scanner. It's gonna be a hardware / firmware mod but isn't a big development and would be a unique selling point - maybe one of the smaller taiwanese companies will develop it.
Yes but how many motherboard companies actually make much money?
I'm not usually the worlds greatest open-source fan but there is as much engineering in a modern operating system as in a car. If the design can be done with brains (lots of) and software, then the mobo companies can simply copy these designs and mass produce them... cheaply. Is the difference between open software and hardware really that much?
And another good things about open hardware dev is that geeks here would find companies to bitch about other than Microsoft, probably Sony or Matshita...;-)
You're right, they absolutely ruled. Some of the colour effects would be difficult to do on a PC today.
I learned how to program on a 600XL when my (expensive, proprietary) Atari 1010 tape player bust and my dad would have gone mad if he found out, so I wrote out my own. Spent 2 days without sleep at a time drawing redefined character sets and writing code, my brothers would play it for a couple of hours then... poof!!! It was gone forever. I'd love to see some of my old code...
Oh and not forgetting they had the best-named custom chips in the business - POKEY, GTIA, ANTIC...
Yes but they run dog-slow, especially on a 80's vintage 680000 @ 4mhz.
Also the ST didn't have any hardware scrolling, but demo groups such as mine and TEX worked out how to fug around with 50/60hz switching in the graphics chip, which was essentially just a DAC, to emulate hardware scrolling.
Now it may seem primitive to most of you guys but THAT was a hardware hack. In these days of APIs for this and wrappers round that, you don't get anywhere near the metal. In those days we did and it was a nice way of distinguishing your work from someone elses.
And here I am on Slashdot, assuming that a topic which shows vulnerabilities in both Konqueror and IE would refrain from the IE bashing, or maybe bash both?
But no some dumbass comes out and says something stupid anyway. You gonna bash Konqueror now??
Mod this guy up! Finally, someone who knows what they're on about.
The encryption strategy they use is going to be pretty interesting. Are they going to use a secure method that's open to scrutiny or something closed, but crap, again? And if they do use the secure-to-the-display route, you can kiss your Linux player goodbye.
You might need a new DVD drive too to copy with the enhanced encryption. It depends how they'd implement it but you can bet the main reason red laser is being pushed is because they want a better encryption system.
True but the cloning will be more underground. As I said, you can go to a market stall and get your phone chipped at the moment. Once they're gone, or at least less visible, the problem will be reduced.
Say, for example, I walked past your desk now while you're in the loo. If your mobile was there I could pick it up, get it chipped and end up with 40gbp in my pocket. If the unlocking software/cables were harder to get hold of I might think twice.
Also, yes there are lots of unlocking kits at the moment but I would assume they'd be harder to find for the next generation of phones as once this bill is passed there would be no market for them.
It matters to a thief because they'll find it harder to get hold of cloning equipment and if they are found with it, police can nick them and they can't claim they bought it 'for a laugh' or whatever.
It matters to *me* as a user because it means my phone loses value, being harder to clone, therefore a thief isn't going to make as much effort to steal it.
It'll matter to the buyer but - who cares?! Maybe if they spend money on a phone from a man-in-a-pub and then find it doesn't work they'll learn a lesson and stop encouraging these twats that nick phones. Supply and demand and all that...
Slashdot Mirror
Thats a feeble excuse for switching to Vorbis regardless of the merits of this format. It's like saying "They found vulnerabilities in Apache so i'm gonna change my webserver to something else"
I'm sure there are exploitable buffer overflows in Vorbis too but as the format is so little used (relatively), hackers ain't looking for them. The day Vorbis is more popular than mp3 is the day the hackers change what they're targeting.
seany
Very true. Using open-source code in part of the design might have the beneficial side-effect, to them, of pacifying people who want to tinker - in the example of SACD players they could for example allow us to use their visualisation API to draw nice pretty pictures to go with the music, but you can guarantee we wouldn't get access to the bitstream itself. Sly buggers.
seany
So what do we reckon the chances are of them embedding open source software in secure hardware devices such as SACD players, digital TVs, palladium PCs and set top boxes? I'd say with, for example, Sonys hardware and software interests the chances are less than nil.
seany
Reminds me of when I was at college - we had a load of BBC Micros as terminals to our Prime minicomputer and they had their disk drives removed so we couldn't play games on them... so we hacked the Prime, FTPd every BBC game we could find onto there and fitted every BBC with roms that used the Prime as a virtual hard drive. The tutor could never work out how we managed to play games on them without any obvious means of getting the game there...
Use it as a voodoo doll and stick pins in the wretched thing!
That's the sort of attitude which makes people prefer to run Windows. I can find the answer to *any* windows problem I have within ten minutes on google - Linux isn't there yet. So surely you should be helping people?
Surely the most sensible way of sorting this out would be to have a trusted member of staff in each building/department/whatever with the authority to reset passwords. Note, I said *reset* passwords - not the ability to read them.
seany
You map what?
True. For users in the UK at least, www.cdwow.com charges ukp8.99 for a cd, including postage. They buy the cds from wherever is cheapest, hence why an order of 2xcds will be posted individually from Iraq and Nigeria, but they're pretty fast and the service is great.
But I would trade cdwow for a cheaper, downloadable and *lossless* alternative straightaway.
seany
Damn right! IUMA is a fine service but pretty irrelevant in the great scheme of things - What most people want is major music, downloadable in a form of their choice, cheaply, online. IUMA is not that service. Universals service is nearer to this goal, but not quite - when they offer lossless encoding (monkeys, flac, whatever) cheaply and compatible with any platform then I will *definitely* subscribe to this service.
*Most* people want a service that is better than p2p. Universal are nearer this than IUMA but they need encouragement, not flaming, to offer us this.
Funnily enough you're so correct. I used to work for a major european bank in Cheltenham UK and was subcontracted to IBM UK.
We had to build a system that replaced the paper in the process of a salesman going to your house, signing a deal for life assurance or whatever and that going onto the banks internal systems. This involved a web UI at the salesman end, another UI at the bank end (for validating date and manual approval) and a transport. The transport was the usual IBM MQ, bits of xml validation, PDF generation and database shenanigans. I wrote that bit. The simplest bit was the UI - a simple VB program that showed important bits from the xml for the operator to check (that had to do this due to UK law). One of IBMs programmers, fresh out of college with a certificate for everything, used no parameters in the VB code at all - he put parameters in XML throughout the code, with all the sloowwww parsing involved. To view a new policy took *45 seconds* on a decent pc rather than the sub-second response for a properly written app.
He had done the usual dumb schmuck consultant error - he assumed because something was on his CV HE HAD TO USE IT. XML is a hot skill. So rather than pass an integer to a subroutine, he create a new xmldocument, added the integer to it (under numerous levels of XML), passed this, decoded the xml and retrieved the integer.
Big consultancies like IBM are full of n00b graduates who know everything but only superficially. The world would be better without them.
seany
No he meant nobhead, nobhead.
Agreed, this isn't a stupid question at all. Maybe the USB mouse could expose two devices to the USB controller (generic mouse plus barcode scanner). A problem is that they usually only scan when the mouse is pressed down on a surface (there is a microswitch on the base) and I think the IR beam is fixed, so you would have to run it over the barcode fully rather than wave the barcode in front like is done with a normal barcode scanner. It's gonna be a hardware / firmware mod but isn't a big development and would be a unique selling point - maybe one of the smaller taiwanese companies will develop it.
Yes but how many motherboard companies actually make much money?
;-)
I'm not usually the worlds greatest open-source fan but there is as much engineering in a modern operating system as in a car. If the design can be done with brains (lots of) and software, then the mobo companies can simply copy these designs and mass produce them... cheaply. Is the difference between open software and hardware really that much?
And another good things about open hardware dev is that geeks here would find companies to bitch about other than Microsoft, probably Sony or Matshita...
seany
so non-geeks are losers? You are so beyond help.
seany
You're right, they absolutely ruled. Some of the colour effects would be difficult to do on a PC today.
I learned how to program on a 600XL when my (expensive, proprietary) Atari 1010 tape player bust and my dad would have gone mad if he found out, so I wrote out my own. Spent 2 days without sleep at a time drawing redefined character sets and writing code, my brothers would play it for a couple of hours then... poof!!! It was gone forever. I'd love to see some of my old code...
Oh and not forgetting they had the best-named custom chips in the business - POKEY, GTIA, ANTIC...
seany
Yes but they run dog-slow, especially on a 80's vintage 680000 @ 4mhz.
Also the ST didn't have any hardware scrolling, but demo groups such as mine and TEX worked out how to fug around with 50/60hz switching in the graphics chip, which was essentially just a DAC, to emulate hardware scrolling.
Now it may seem primitive to most of you guys but THAT was a hardware hack. In these days of APIs for this and wrappers round that, you don't get anywhere near the metal. In those days we did and it was a nice way of distinguishing your work from someone elses.
seany
And here I am on Slashdot, assuming that a topic which shows vulnerabilities in both Konqueror and IE would refrain from the IE bashing, or maybe bash both?
But no some dumbass comes out and says something stupid anyway. You gonna bash Konqueror now??
Has your government signed up to Kyoto recently?!
Alt-F4 works fine if, like me, you have all your browser windows pop up in a seperate process...
seany
Mod this guy up! Finally, someone who knows what they're on about.
The encryption strategy they use is going to be pretty interesting. Are they going to use a secure method that's open to scrutiny or something closed, but crap, again? And if they do use the secure-to-the-display route, you can kiss your Linux player goodbye.
seany
You might need a new DVD drive too to copy with the enhanced encryption. It depends how they'd implement it but you can bet the main reason red laser is being pushed is because they want a better encryption system.
Ah, the obligatory 'diss Microsoft' post in the comments of a completely unrelated story.
Are there IRC style robots behind some of these posts I wonder?
sean
True but the cloning will be more underground. As I said, you can go to a market stall and get your phone chipped at the moment. Once they're gone, or at least less visible, the problem will be reduced.
Say, for example, I walked past your desk now while you're in the loo. If your mobile was there I could pick it up, get it chipped and end up with 40gbp in my pocket. If the unlocking software/cables were harder to get hold of I might think twice.
Also, yes there are lots of unlocking kits at the moment but I would assume they'd be harder to find for the next generation of phones as once this bill is passed there would be no market for them.
seany
Er, you're being so dense.
It matters to a thief because they'll find it harder to get hold of cloning equipment and if they are found with it, police can nick them and they can't claim they bought it 'for a laugh' or whatever.
It matters to *me* as a user because it means my phone loses value, being harder to clone, therefore a thief isn't going to make as much effort to steal it.
It'll matter to the buyer but - who cares?! Maybe if they spend money on a phone from a man-in-a-pub and then find it doesn't work they'll learn a lesson and stop encouraging these twats that nick phones. Supply and demand and all that...
seany