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User: alannon

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  1. Re:Sony releases another "Beta" format?!?! on New Audio Disc Formats and Copyrights · · Score: 2

    Pardon? How is a Beta cart less convenient than VHS? I'm not talking about availability of recordings, just the format itself.

    What took VHS beyond the saturation threshold to ensure that Beta would not catch up was there was no licensing required to publish a title. Sony, if I remember correctly, would not license Beta to porn companies.

  2. Re:163-bit keys bill begin to break when... on Weak Elliptic Curve Cryptography Brute-Forced · · Score: 2

    Not to be offensive to the original poster, but how did this get moderated as 'Insightful'? Brute-forcing encryption algorithms do not require ANY significant amount of RAM to do. It involves doing many, many, many TINY calculations very quickly. RAM size and memory bandwidth have no effect on it, since almost certainly all the data and instructions to do the calculations fits either inside L1 or L2 cache.

    Moving from 32 bit to 64 bit functional units on the CPU MIGHT give you a doubling of computational speed, but so will waiting 18 months for the processors that will be twice as fast. So would using 2 32 bit processors instead of 1 64 bit one (which would be more expensive.)

    When it comes to the scale of time it takes to do these calculations, simply cutting the required time in half is barely a scratch in the surface.

  3. Re:How many concurrent users, total bandwidth ? on Possible Big Boost in WiFi Range · · Score: 2

    The fact that it comes with a gigbit ethernet port in the back of it is an indication that it's probably more than 10 (~110mbps) and less than 100 (1.1gbps)

  4. Re:So, let me get this straight. on Installing/Configuring ALSA Sound Modules In Debian · · Score: 2

    Just a tip if you want to get stuff compiled in OSX.

    Fink.

    http://fink.sf.net/

    It's an OSX packaging project based on the debian packaging system but with some other goodies thrown into it. In fact, from what I read about Gentoo, it has some similarites to it. As of last count, it has over 1400 packages in the system with more being added every day. Perhaps the BEST part of this is that it makes it trivial for upstream maintainers to get their software compiling clean out of the box on OSX. Since 10.1, most common packages compile clean 'out of the box'. Others will work fine with the addition of a few command line options to turn off precompiled headers and two-level linking namespaces.

    If you go to the fink project home page, look in the documentation under 'porting', it will give you a few tips. For the most part, OSX is a very 'vanilla' UNIX flavor with few surprises. Really the only thing of note is how it handles shared/dynamic libraries, and there is even a library that will 'fake' the library loading behavior of other linux platforms.

  5. Re:Pretty low-tech on Using R44 And A PowerBook To Bust Illegal Seawalls · · Score: 2

    What would be the point? It would get done any faster and you need two people to do the job in any case, since one person flies and one person either takes the photographs or has to monitor the camera that's taking the photographs automatically. I would think this way he would get better images.

  6. Re:Don't store money on PayPal! on Slashback: Epson, AbiWord, Justification · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The issue is that EACH of the stockmarket, 401k plans and social security plans are regulated as a SPECIAL CASE by the government. In fact, in the US, there's an entire portion of the government dedicated to regulating financial institutions, the Securities and Exchange Commission. In fact, I can't think of any company or institution that can move around large sums of OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY without some sort of special regulation or dispensation. This means banks, clearing houses, wire transfer service companies, credit unions, insurance sellers, investment institutions of all sorts. Why are these institutions regulated? Because in the past, before they were not regulated, they did enough terrible things to people to cause the government to have to pass laws to put in some checks an balances to keep things from getting that bad.

    And that's just malicious things that companies can do. What about if things go south with the company itself? What happens to your money? Paypal cares so much about the safety of your money that they are not even FDIC (Federal Desposit Insurance Corporation) insured. This is considered the minimum standard of safety with any corporation that stores or moves around any consumer money.

    I'm sort of happy their tipjar was broken in to as well, since it gives me a concrete example of how insecure PayPal is. I'm also glad they got it back, though I'm sure if there was not so much PR about it, it would not have happened. It should be obvious that most people or companies do not have the ability to raise as big of a stink as AbiWord.

    My next question is, though: What the heck were they doing leaving all that money in their paypal account? Most people I know that use paypal for business at least have the sense to get all the money out of there ASAP.

  7. Re:For the freaking 10,000th time... on Darwin 6.0.2 for x86 Released · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Several replies to this:
    Do you really believe that software developers are going to switch in droves to a proprietary, single platform set of APIs that requires the use of a 20 year old unsafe programming language?
    1) I can only assume by '20 year old unsafe programming language' you refer to C. Since you talk about only Cocoa for the rest of what you say (not Carbon) I can only assume you are referring to it when you say 'single platform set of APIs'.
    Since the 'standard' for Windows programming is in C++ (arguably LESS safe than C, since you can over-ride operators), and the 'standard' API is MFC, I fail to see your point, when compared to Windows.
    Since the 'standard' programming language for Linux is C, and OSX and Linux share the vast majority of the basic API's and the rest (X11) are available as a free download, I fail to see your point in comparison to Linux/BSD.

    I think Cocoa and Quartz are a dead end, with no prospect of widespread adoption by software developers, outside a die-hard community of Mac developers... Open sourcing Cocoa and Quartz wouldn't make the APIs technically more attractive, but at least they would ensure their continued existence.
    2) You state that Cocoa and Quartz are a dead end, with no prospect of adoption software developers outside the 'die-hard' community of Mac developers. First, Quartz is rarely accessed as an API on its own, unless you are doing eye-candy. Usually it is called by the application-level API you are writing in (Cocoa or Carbon). You are really only showing your lack of familiarity with these APIs by mentioning it in the same context.
    Second, the Cocoa API is more or less source-code compatable with GNUStep. What is GNUStep? It's an open-source implementation of the Objective-C OpenStep APIs on top of X11. What's OpenStep? It's the open standard that NeXT released and implemented and eventually became Cocoa. You can write full-fledged OSX applications that cross-compile for GNUStep on Linux TODAY.
    Third, as a professional developer who is experienced on (Classic) MacOS, OSX, UNIX/Linux and Windows, I will state my opinion that I find the Cocoa APIs to be the most attractive to use. If these APIs were unattractive to use, why would anyone have gone to all the trouble to do a complete re-engineering of them in the form of GNUStep?

    In any case, I don't actually want Apple to open source Cocoa and Quartz--I think it would just prolong the agony... unless Apple goes out of business first.
    Damn! I've been trolled.

  8. Re:Question on Design Philosophy of the IBM PowerPC 970 · · Score: 2

    My guess was that he meant "for 32-bit compatability". As far as I know, the Power4 is not binary-compatable with 32-bit PPC executables. IBM would be foolish to release a DESKTOP PowerPC chip that was off-the-bat incompatable with all current software made for Apple's brand new OSX.

  9. Re:Here's the problem. on Cellphones On Airplanes · · Score: 2

    Electrical equipment?

    You mean, like, -GOSH-! a car's ignition system when it starts back up after refilling?

    Quick! Let's ban cars from gas stations! They might be dangerous! At the very least, attendants should be required to push the vehicle out of the station before the drivers starts the car.

    </scarcasm>

  10. Re:It's not technically feasible on Microsoft: No Xbox for You! · · Score: 2

    On the other hand, Connectix made the Virtual Game Station, which played most PS1 games just perfectly. Sony tried to sue them, and lost. Unfortunately the law process made them unable to produce copies of it for about a year and at the end of the legal suit, Sony simply purchased the whole division and IP from Connectix in order to keep them from selling it any longer.

  11. Re:Interesting, but ... on OpenBSD Gains Privilege Elevation · · Score: 5, Informative

    chroot jails are almost completely unrelated to system-call security, unless the system call is to the file-system. chroot simply allows you to change the root of the file system so that the application cannot access part of the file-system beneath it. If the process is running as root, this helps nothing, since there are many ways of accessing the complete file-system bypassing the normal means if you are root.

  12. Re:Giant Flywheels? on Danish Goal: 50% of Electricity from Wind · · Score: 2

    The problem with using super-conductors as energy storage devices, as I understand them (with my limited knowledge), is that the superconductive properties of all known materials break down when a certain density of magentic field (flux?) is reached in the material. The more power (amps) you put in the material, the more magnetic force is created. At a certain point, the super-conductor cannot take any more of it, and it becomes a regular conductor. And that's the end of that. (*boom*). As I understand it, this property of superconductors makes them impractical for use as power storage devices.

  13. Frikkin' crossbow? on Dan Looks at Office Toys · · Score: 2

    I'd like to work in an office that has a fish tank of red-bellied piranhas in them, with frikkin' crossbows on their heads.

  14. Re:The games. on Slashback: Boeing, Fraud, Fundage · · Score: 2

    As far as I knew, the source to the Doom 2 engine (and Quake 1, and Quake 2) was open sourced by ID many, many years ago. Only the art (.wad) files are commercial.

  15. Re:anyone else notice the history of SAP on PostgreSQL vs. SAP? · · Score: 2

    Wow. From the look of it, SAP was developed as a government military research program! At least those are the same black marks that black out all the important parts of government documents released under the Freedom of Information act.
    Maybe the blacked-out parts are the names of an advanced alien race that the government stole the technology from using Jeff Goldblum and a laptop.

  16. Re:Completely legal? on Xbox Runs Its First Legal Homebrew App · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My guess would be, RUNNING the program itself is not legal, since you need to mod your X-Box to do that, and you 'agreed' not to do that when you opened the box (yes, the whole idea of that is under legal dispute right now), but distributing the program itself is completely legal, since it does not use any copyrighted Microsoft code.

  17. Re:Not exactly crimp but... (somewhat O/T) on Category 6 UTP Standard is (finally) Here · · Score: 2

    I see. There's a practical reason why it's unoptimal to do this, though.

    If you look at the knives in the ends of the RJ45, the ones that cut through the insulation, you'll see that for each conductor, it's a single knife that cuts through the middle of the wire.

    With stranded cable, this works perfectly, since the wire is soft and it cuts right into it.

    With solid cable, the knives rarely cut directly INTO the table, but instead just slice into the insulation and fall to the SIDE of the conductor. This leads to a relatively fragile electrical connection. The ends also fall off much more frequently.

    If you see how the knives are designed in 110 patches, you'll see that there are TWO of them, forming a v-shape that the conductor slides down into, cutting in on two sides, and wedging it there. Quite clever. Stranded cable has a tendency to be sliced completely in two by these knives, though.

  18. Re:Not exactly crimp but... (somewhat O/T) on Category 6 UTP Standard is (finally) Here · · Score: 3, Informative

    You make patch cables out of the same cable that you run through your house? While you might have gotten lots of experience crimping cables in doing your house, you obviously didn't do very much research. If you are going to lay semi-permanent cable through your house, you should be using solid-cored cable. First of all, it is less expensive than stranded cable, which is important since you're using it for long lengths. Secondly, the keystone jacks and punch-down blocks are designed to cut through the insulation into SOLID cable. On the other hand, the knives in the crimps for patch cable are designed to cut down into STRANDED cable. If you try to use one type of cable for the other's purpose, you can end up with poor connections at the crimps and the punch-down blocks.
    When I wire offices, I always make sure I have a spool of each type of wire.

  19. Re:Atlas Shrugged on New Alloy Stronger Than Fe And Ti · · Score: 2

    I think $10-$15 per pound, the railroads would be more concerned with people pulling up tracks to sell the raw materials. That would lead to derailments pretty quickly, I'd think.

  20. Re:Yet ANOTHER standard. on Serial ATA and AGP 8X motherboards · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, SCSI stands for "Small Computer SYSTEM Interface", and almost all SCSI standards are parallel implementations. Firewire was designed to be more or less protocol-compatable with SCSI, while changing the physical implementation of it.

  21. Re:Yet ANOTHER standard. on Serial ATA and AGP 8X motherboards · · Score: 2

    Isn't this a problem that can be fixed simply in the BIOS? Modern BIOS's can be set up to boot from ID HD, SCSI HD, floppy, network adaptor, even USB mass storage devices. Why would it be difficult for a BIOS maker to allow someone to boot over Firewire? In fact, Firewire is more or less just the SCSI protocol over a serial interface.

  22. Re:yes they did - case-sensitivity IS the problem on Apple Introduces Xserve Rackmount Servers · · Score: 2

    And one of the first things you'll notice when playing with the shell in OSX is that the shells ARE case sensitive when it comes to tab-completion. The only disadvantage is that you cannot have same-named files in one directory with different caps. There have also been some problems with programs that rely on case-sensitivity for their security model and need to be patched to overcome this. Apache comes to mind.

  23. Re:Anyone else surprised? on Darwin Streaming Server Beats Real, Windows Media · · Score: 2

    You've got to be kidding!

    As a professional WebObjects developer, this finally gives me a chance to deploy my WebObjects applications on platforms OTHER than WinNT/2k, MacOSX Server and Solaris. This includes Linux, FreeBSD and any other OS that has a Java2 1.3 JVM. This gives me a chance to peddle my skills to companies that support open source software, or other companies that cannot afford pricy hardware (Sun) just to avoid having to use Win2k as a server.

    The problems that Apple's drop of ObjC and WebScript HAS created is that it leaves companies with legacy ObjC WebObjects code having to either port to Java or stick with WebObjects 4.5 (which is still supported by Apple, but has no updates other than bug fixes).

  24. Re:but aren't we already using mpeg4? on Apple Delays QuickTime 6 Over Proposed MPEG-4 Licenses · · Score: 2

    One thing that you should keep in mind, though, is that the Quicktime container format has a published standard that is free to use and implement. As far as I can tell, Microsoft does not give away any documents describing the .AVI file format. Also, the 'official' MPEG4 format uses Quicktime as its container format, so your concerns about cross-platform compatibility, while possibly valid now, will surely go away.

  25. Re:quicktime on New MPEG-4 Licensing Scheme · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually, it's the other way around. The MPEG group went shopping around for a base file format to use for MPEG-4 and they chose the Quicktime file format as the basis for all MPEG-4 files. I believe they chose it because it is a simple, flexible and (most importantly) free and well-documented standard. Note that this has nothing to do with any of the Quicktime codecs (I know the Sorenson codec is a particular point of contention here on /.) but instead the base file format for all quicktime media. An analogous file format would be the .avi file format. It's simply a wrapper.

    Also, note that they said 'service providers'. I would assume this would mean providers that use MPEG-4 for content delivery, such as VOD, much like MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 are used for VOD right now.

    I could hardly believe they would so horribly cripple the usefulness of the format by making it so that any player that used the codec would have to report back the time used to some organization so that someone can be billed for it. That's just dumb and I don't see why anyone would touch it with a 10-foot pole if that was the case.