It's my understanding that since the MPAA completely controls the DVD, they're charging huge fees for the 'sdk' of DVD creation -- the platform to create movie DVDs. Is this incorrect?
Also, I don't think that DVDRAM will play in regular DVD players, but I could be way off on this too.
Have you ever worked in retail? Especially at Christmas time? How about answering phones? It might be just that the idiots stand out in the noise, but there seemed to be a lot more idiots than intelligent people when I did these things.
"And you wondered why so many people are joining the libertarian party"
I was looking at the Canadian libertarian party before our election, and after careful consideration, I've decided that libertarianism will never work.
Libertarianism is WAY to idealistic to be practical. I don't mean to sound elitist, but a lot of slashdotters are clearly intellectually above-the-norm (obvious idiots aside). The general population are sheep. They depend on the glass-fronted box that faces their couch to tell them what to buy, what's popular, and how to think. In a libertarian society, people would go absolutely insane because there would be less obtrusive media telling them how to go about life.
It's unfortunate, but it's true. People are dumb.
(and yes, I KNOW this is offtopic, that's what it's No Score +1 Bonused)
In Orwell's 1984, Winston Smith's job was to edit old records, in newspapers for example, to reflect 'the truth'. For example, if 'the Party' announced that there would be a surplus of clothing in the coming year, and it turned out the there was a defecit of clothing in that year, Smith would edit the record to show that either the party announced a defecit, or that that there was actually a surplus, as the party stated.
I'm being a little confusing here, but my point is that if the records are controlled by the company they're offending, and users aren't allowed to make copies of the advisories, other than ethics, which we all know that a certain company is in dire need of, there isn't any mechanism to keep the vendor honest.
Then again, is there anything stopping me from saying "Hey, I read on the [Microsoft/l0pht] site today that [package in question] has a buffer overflow, simple fix is to edit [file in question]." without actually quoting the site?
Among college students, the more technically inclined ("geeks", if you will) are probably the only social group who don't binge drink on a regular basis.
I know you were joking.. but: This is not true.. There are significant Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship groups at many campuses accross the continent, who, generally speaking, abstain from 'binge drinking on a regular basis'.
In 1996, I bought an extremely overpriced Acer Aspire from Future Shop in Moncton, NB, Canada.
The salesman told me that the New Cyrix 6x86's were great, so I bought it, and took it home. (mistake number 1, although, I never had trouble with the chip, other than being extremely slow).
Pulled the tower out of the styro-foam, and heard "clunk". Sounded like an ISA card was loose or something. Took the machine back to Future Shop, and they gave me another machine. Took that machine home, BSOD'd on the first boot, and I kept getting BSODs. Called Acer tech support, waited for 45 minutes on hold, got a tech who barely spoke english, explained the problem, and he declared that the RAM in my machine was bad. Gave me a number to call to have it replaced. Called the number, the repair shop told me that it would be up to 2 weeks before I could have the machine I've never used fixed, so I took it back to Future Shop, and had it replaced after arguing with the sales manager.
So, I'm on machine 3, which is working alright, but I notice that the hard drive is incredibly slow, so next time I'm in the store (a week later), I mention that to the salesman, and he tells me "oh yeah, the Acer techs were in here earlier this week, and they did some stuff to the hard drives. Bring your machine in, and I'll switch you for a good one." Machine number 4.
6 months later, my CDRom fails.. I sold the machine after having the CDRom fixed.
Needless to say, I think twice before buying Acer, now.
Well, for starters, we don't have a electoral college system, so, living in Quebec, my vote is no less than that of when I was living in New Brunswick. So it is much less likely in a 'tie' like that. Anyway, I was just poking fun at you 'mercuns.
*ahem* just like to point out that we Canadians had an election last week, and something amazing happened.
We knew who our Prime Minister was, ON THE SAME DAY. (-:
--
Anyway, I'm not saying that this whole presidential thing is a media creation, but does anyone else notice that every few months, the media jump on the bandwagon for some cause, and that's all the mass media will talk about for the next few weeks? Every time I flip through the american networks (most of our television is crap), I'm bombarded by special after in-depth-report after late-breaking-news after 60-minute-exclusive of some cause. Gulf War, Elian Gonzalez, OJ, Clinton Impeachment, etc.
Sure, these are often important issues, but it's like "Hey Dan, what should we talk about tonight. -I dunno, what happened today? -Nothing important. -OK, wanna rehash the Election Results? I think I can paraphrase last night's coverage so that the sheeple won't notice what's going on."
I signed up for Microcell Fido service in Canada about a month ago, because they were the only carrier in my area who would be offering true WAP any time in the near future. Little did I know that I was signing up for GSM. But I love it.
My phone is small, very good quality, and cost me $25 (includes a cell modem, and features such as a phone book (which gets stored on my SIM card, and can travel with me when I change phones), calculator, alarm clock, and, of course, 'snake' (nibbles)). The best part, though, is bi-directional SMS.
Users can send me SMS through ICQ2000b, and I can reply directly to their ICQ. It's amazing for when I'm not in the office.
Also, I've set up some nifty perl scripts (that I'll share if anyone wants) that interface with mtnsms and Canada411.com to allow me to make 411 requests via SMS without paying the $.95. It's great. I'm planning on setting it up to allow me to request slashdot headlines and articles.
The major drawback to SMS on GSM is the 160 character/message limit. Since I pay a flat rate of $3/month for SMS, I just send multiple SMSs when the size exceeds 160B.
Heaven forbid someone should find out what size pants someone wears. Ok, sure the gnomes might find such information useful, but generally speaking, who cares? I don't.
We seem to be forgetting that every time you buy pants, the cashier has FULL ACCESS to your personal inseam information! Or how about the tailor? Do people still get custom clothes made? I should think so. The tailor not only gets your inseam measurement, but also *gasp* your WAIST SIZE!
We also seem to be forgetting that on certain brands of jeans, the size is printed on the OUTSIDE of the pants, where ANYONE can see it.
Yes I'm being sarcastic, but is it really worth complaining that some small e-tailer MIGHT be collecting 'personal' information like neck measurements?
Not directly, but with storage being so cheap (as the FAQ says), and the number of freenet nodes growing, it's VERY likely that the document in question will stay available, perhaps not infinitely, but at least for a long time.
On that note, I just read the FAQ and didn't read anything about how they're dealing with duplicate informtion. Sure, reduncancy is good, but just looking at something like Napster, one could make the assumption that a LOT of 'content' on a given freenet node will be the duplicate of another piece of 'content' on the same node. Back to the napster thing: it reports almost 7 terrabytes of 'content,' but we all know that a large portion of that is a seemingly infinite number of duplicates of the same top40 song.
Maybe there's really only 2 terrabytes of unique data on Napster. It would be great if I could search for "Phish Live" and not have 90% of the results be files of the same name, bitrate, length and filesize. This seems trivial to implement.
I think it's rather closed-minded to expect the target market of this service to be only geeks. 'Regular' consumers are used to dialing *[anything] for various services from traffic emergencies, to weather info, to call forwarding.
I suspect that the general target market for this service is the market who currently already buys the most radio-played CDs, and with the most disposable income. Teens, and 20-30 yr. olds.
Even more fun if your keyboard have long enough cable to place the keyboard infront of the machine beside it, while still plugged into the original (-:
So in short, is this whole thing just a moot point? Who would Carnivore really catch?
---
Any electronic eavesdropping technique or system is subject to frustration by new technologies.
It is appropriate for law enforcement and national security agencies constantly to be developing new technology to keep pace with technological developments generally.
Uh, it would be nice if he would answer the question, I'd really like to know. It's pretty obvious that law enforcement and national security agencies will keep up on technology, but he didn't make ANY reference to the practicality of a system like carnivore.
First, not to shamelessly plug them -- in fact I've never bought from them, but buy.com has a Montreal office, and if you live in Montreal, you get your order tomorrow.
The other, EBay Canada is a piece of crap. Sure, we don't have to pay a huge currency exchange rate, but there's barely anything on there. I buy from Canadians when I can, but I usually can't find stuff I'm looking for in the country.
This is true. I drive a 4 door, 4 cylinder 2.0L Chrysler Neon. It's not a sports car, or an SUV, it's probably got less than 100HP in normal driving conditions (tops out at 132HP at 5600RPM, but anyone who drives this thing at 5600RPM is going to burn out their engine within a few months.)
I used to drive a 1987 k-car and I was paying $208/month for JUST LIABILITY. I only paid $700 for the car. Comprehensive Fire/Theft and Collision insurance don't cost me that much. It's all about liability, and when they determine liability, age, driving experience and gender are important factors.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds a lot like Coldfusion Studio, which I use daily to develop coldfusion, html, javascript, css, perl and php.
Block folding is GREAT for finding unmatched brackets (or 'where did I forget to close that <TABLE>, Netscape is puking').
I'm definately going to check this out, though. CF Studio has a few nasty bugs, and isn't cheap.
It's my understanding that since the MPAA completely controls the DVD, they're charging huge fees for the 'sdk' of DVD creation -- the platform to create movie DVDs. Is this incorrect?
Also, I don't think that DVDRAM will play in regular DVD players, but I could be way off on this too.
No no.. they've got it all wrong..
Our archaic time/date system should switch over to metric. 10 months. 10 hours per day. 100 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute.
It only makes sense..
Have you ever worked in retail? Especially at Christmas time? How about answering phones? It might be just that the idiots stand out in the noise, but there seemed to be a lot more idiots than intelligent people when I did these things.
"And you wondered why so many people are joining the libertarian party"
I was looking at the Canadian libertarian party before our election, and after careful consideration, I've decided that libertarianism will never work.
Libertarianism is WAY to idealistic to be practical. I don't mean to sound elitist, but a lot of slashdotters are clearly intellectually above-the-norm (obvious idiots aside). The general population are sheep. They depend on the glass-fronted box that faces their couch to tell them what to buy, what's popular, and how to think. In a libertarian society, people would go absolutely insane because there would be less obtrusive media telling them how to go about life.
It's unfortunate, but it's true. People are dumb.
(and yes, I KNOW this is offtopic, that's what it's No Score +1 Bonused)
I have a pending 'lifetime' warranty claim on my 3DFX Voodoo3, I wonder what's going to happen with that..
*looks out the window at the Matrox bldg.*
In Orwell's 1984, Winston Smith's job was to edit old records, in newspapers for example, to reflect 'the truth'. For example, if 'the Party' announced that there would be a surplus of clothing in the coming year, and it turned out the there was a defecit of clothing in that year, Smith would edit the record to show that either the party announced a defecit, or that that there was actually a surplus, as the party stated.
I'm being a little confusing here, but my point is that if the records are controlled by the company they're offending, and users aren't allowed to make copies of the advisories, other than ethics, which we all know that a certain company is in dire need of, there isn't any mechanism to keep the vendor honest.
Then again, is there anything stopping me from saying "Hey, I read on the [Microsoft/l0pht] site today that [package in question] has a buffer overflow, simple fix is to edit [file in question]." without actually quoting the site?
Among college students, the more technically inclined ("geeks", if you will) are probably the only social group who don't binge drink on a regular basis.
I know you were joking.. but: This is not true.. There are significant Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship groups at many campuses accross the continent, who, generally speaking, abstain from 'binge drinking on a regular basis'.
I live by myself.
I don't have a landline. I don't need one. I don't talk on the phone enough to warrant paying an extra $20-30/month for a landline.
Unfortunately, I can't get DSL as a result.
And Look seems to not be offering residential Ultrafast2 service anymore (which is REALLY too bad - 3Mb over sattelite, with a wireless backchannel).
P90 for $600 is quite expensive, I would say it was worth maybe $100-$150 realistically then.
It was a notebook. A Pentium classed ThinkPad for $600 isn't a TERRIBLY bad deal.
In 1996, I bought an extremely overpriced Acer Aspire from Future Shop in Moncton, NB, Canada.
The salesman told me that the New Cyrix 6x86's were great, so I bought it, and took it home. (mistake number 1, although, I never had trouble with the chip, other than being extremely slow).
Pulled the tower out of the styro-foam, and heard "clunk". Sounded like an ISA card was loose or something. Took the machine back to Future Shop, and they gave me another machine. Took that machine home, BSOD'd on the first boot, and I kept getting BSODs. Called Acer tech support, waited for 45 minutes on hold, got a tech who barely spoke english, explained the problem, and he declared that the RAM in my machine was bad. Gave me a number to call to have it replaced. Called the number, the repair shop told me that it would be up to 2 weeks before I could have the machine I've never used fixed, so I took it back to Future Shop, and had it replaced after arguing with the sales manager.
So, I'm on machine 3, which is working alright, but I notice that the hard drive is incredibly slow, so next time I'm in the store (a week later), I mention that to the salesman, and he tells me "oh yeah, the Acer techs were in here earlier this week, and they did some stuff to the hard drives. Bring your machine in, and I'll switch you for a good one." Machine number 4.
6 months later, my CDRom fails.. I sold the machine after having the CDRom fixed.
Needless to say, I think twice before buying Acer, now.
Well, for starters, we don't have a electoral college system, so, living in Quebec, my vote is no less than that of when I was living in New Brunswick. So it is much less likely in a 'tie' like that. Anyway, I was just poking fun at you 'mercuns.
*ahem* just like to point out that we Canadians had an election last week, and something amazing happened.
We knew who our Prime Minister was, ON THE SAME DAY. (-:
--
Anyway, I'm not saying that this whole presidential thing is a media creation, but does anyone else notice that every few months, the media jump on the bandwagon for some cause, and that's all the mass media will talk about for the next few weeks? Every time I flip through the american networks (most of our television is crap), I'm bombarded by special after in-depth-report after late-breaking-news after 60-minute-exclusive of some cause. Gulf War, Elian Gonzalez, OJ, Clinton Impeachment, etc.
Sure, these are often important issues, but it's like "Hey Dan, what should we talk about tonight. -I dunno, what happened today? -Nothing important. -OK, wanna rehash the Election Results? I think I can paraphrase last night's coverage so that the sheeple won't notice what's going on."
My phone cost me $25. It's fine, and has most of the features I want. Airtime costs me ~$40/month.
I'm thinking that people who can't afford phones can't afford airtime.. am I missing something?
Two-way SMS is INCREDIBLY useful on my GSM phone.
I signed up for Microcell Fido service in Canada about a month ago, because they were the only carrier in my area who would be offering true WAP any time in the near future. Little did I know that I was signing up for GSM. But I love it.
My phone is small, very good quality, and cost me $25 (includes a cell modem, and features such as a phone book (which gets stored on my SIM card, and can travel with me when I change phones), calculator, alarm clock, and, of course, 'snake' (nibbles)). The best part, though, is bi-directional SMS.
Users can send me SMS through ICQ2000b, and I can reply directly to their ICQ. It's amazing for when I'm not in the office.
Also, I've set up some nifty perl scripts (that I'll share if anyone wants) that interface with mtnsms and Canada411.com to allow me to make 411 requests via SMS without paying the $.95. It's great. I'm planning on setting it up to allow me to request slashdot headlines and articles.
The major drawback to SMS on GSM is the 160 character/message limit. Since I pay a flat rate of $3/month for SMS, I just send multiple SMSs when the size exceeds 160B.
...and watching a movie all at the same time
I don't think the "Embedded QT" refered to QuickTime.
Heaven forbid someone should find out what size pants someone wears. Ok, sure the gnomes might find such information useful, but generally speaking, who cares? I don't.
We seem to be forgetting that every time you buy pants, the cashier has FULL ACCESS to your personal inseam information! Or how about the tailor? Do people still get custom clothes made? I should think so. The tailor not only gets your inseam measurement, but also *gasp* your WAIST SIZE!
We also seem to be forgetting that on certain brands of jeans, the size is printed on the OUTSIDE of the pants, where ANYONE can see it.
Yes I'm being sarcastic, but is it really worth complaining that some small e-tailer MIGHT be collecting 'personal' information like neck measurements?
It doesnt!
Not directly, but with storage being so cheap (as the FAQ says), and the number of freenet nodes growing, it's VERY likely that the document in question will stay available, perhaps not infinitely, but at least for a long time.
On that note, I just read the FAQ and didn't read anything about how they're dealing with duplicate informtion. Sure, reduncancy is good, but just looking at something like Napster, one could make the assumption that a LOT of 'content' on a given freenet node will be the duplicate of another piece of 'content' on the same node. Back to the napster thing: it reports almost 7 terrabytes of 'content,' but we all know that a large portion of that is a seemingly infinite number of duplicates of the same top40 song.
Maybe there's really only 2 terrabytes of unique data on Napster. It would be great if I could search for "Phish Live" and not have 90% of the results be files of the same name, bitrate, length and filesize. This seems trivial to implement.
I think it's rather closed-minded to expect the target market of this service to be only geeks. 'Regular' consumers are used to dialing *[anything] for various services from traffic emergencies, to weather info, to call forwarding.
I suspect that the general target market for this service is the market who currently already buys the most radio-played CDs, and with the most disposable income. Teens, and 20-30 yr. olds.
Even more fun if your keyboard have long enough cable to place the keyboard infront of the machine beside it, while still plugged into the original (-:
ty oqrrqtp/ Q;a svqtp qh bqkzh tyx~
(no kidding. I'm using it right now!)
So in short, is this whole thing just a moot point? Who would Carnivore really catch?
---
Any electronic eavesdropping technique or system is subject to frustration by new technologies.
It is appropriate for law enforcement and national security agencies constantly to be developing new technology to keep pace with technological developments generally.
Uh, it would be nice if he would answer the question, I'd really like to know. It's pretty obvious that law enforcement and national security agencies will keep up on technology, but he didn't make ANY reference to the practicality of a system like carnivore.
Way to play safe...
First, not to shamelessly plug them -- in fact I've never bought from them, but buy.com has a Montreal office, and if you live in Montreal, you get your order tomorrow.
The other, EBay Canada is a piece of crap. Sure, we don't have to pay a huge currency exchange rate, but there's barely anything on there. I buy from Canadians when I can, but I usually can't find stuff I'm looking for in the country.
I actually live in New Brunswick, Canada.
This is true. I drive a 4 door, 4 cylinder 2.0L Chrysler Neon. It's not a sports car, or an SUV, it's probably got less than 100HP in normal driving conditions (tops out at 132HP at 5600RPM, but anyone who drives this thing at 5600RPM is going to burn out their engine within a few months.)
I used to drive a 1987 k-car and I was paying $208/month for JUST LIABILITY. I only paid $700 for the car. Comprehensive Fire/Theft and Collision insurance don't cost me that much. It's all about liability, and when they determine liability, age, driving experience and gender are important factors.