I agree. The watermark is horrid.:p If the watermark was only 10-30% opaque (instead of nearly 100% opaque) then it would be *much* more usable.
I like the ElectricImage demo. http://www.electricimage.com it's much more functional and actually allows you to learn the software. A|W really did miss the boat with the PLE--they were too paranoid about the chances of someone taking a screenshot of the workspace and somehow using that to get around the limitations.
high pricepoint? Are you aware that they just dropped their prices quite dramatically in the past 6 months, and closed their NY and LA offices, laying off a bunch of their staff?
Cutbacks in price mean cutbacks in other areas--promotion, development, bandwidth, and support.
(And, by the way--it's called a "seat" of software. When you get into high-end software with 'ridiculous' pricepoints, it's not called a box or a copy anymore.)
If your only goal is to LEARN the software, Maya has a fully functional PLE available for free download.;) The only people that need to use the cracked version are people generating commercial-quality imagery. If they're making a profit selling images generated with A|W's software, then surely $2,000 is not all that much. (Hey- we're talking an industry where a freelancer can make that amount for one dinky little spinning logo that takes 20 minutes of work.)
I didn't say that software development costs more than companies are making in sales. I'm saying that the profit margin is not as extreme as people seem to think.
And your comparing hardware sales and software sales is a lousy comparision. I have yet to hear about Intel and AMD being hurt by the new P2P processor sharing, or about how they just spent the past 6 months patching a bug that caused their processor to crash when the user tried to save a file.
Software is a constant service, and a constant drain. Software developers must make enough profit to keep developing, and that is *hard*.
Software actually doesn't cost a whole lot at all. Think about it. Most companies have only one flagship product. Let's look at Alias|Wavefront, the makers of 3d Giant- Maya. Maya has a base price of $2,000.
3D graphics is a niche market--this means low numbers of sales. Couple that with the fact that there is apparently a number of working cracks and keygens spread out across the internet, and you're looking at seriously low sales.
Now, at the surface, $2,000 is a lot of money. It's 10 of those Walmart-Lindows computers... It's one mid-to-high range PC.
Look at it from A|W's point of view, though. $2,000--if you're paying one programmer a paltry sum of $10/hour (which we all know the best programmers won't accept), that's only 200 man-hours. Now, you need a staff of programmers, accountants, secretaries.. You need to pay your IT people, your connectivity bills, rent on offices, advertising costs, etc.
Cost-of-development far outweighs cost-of-software. The golden days of companies becoming rich off of software is over, even heavyweights like Microsoft are cutting back.
Yeah, software is still expensive for a consumer... But think of how expensive it is to *develop* that software.
No. For a period of one month, the Government needs to cease and desist anti-spam filters, and Bush needs to read his own email.
After the 908'th offer for viagra, he'll either cave and buy it (and then hire an intern) or get pissed off and do something about it.
Stopping the filters on the accounts of people who know about Spam isn't going to do a goddamned thing. WE're already pissed off by it. It's the gov't officials whose email is pre-filtered, sanitized, and delivered for their viewing pleasure, who need to experience the deluge.
Better yet- remove their filters, and put their email addresses on the internet. Someplace like Slashdot.
Hm. No. I disagree with your analogy (people who drive over the speed limit are killers)--driving over the speed limit, while it doesn't always result in death, is a dangerous activity that could more easily be classified as killing than the majority of gray-hat hacking could be called theivery or even illegal, if it weren't for the DMCA.
A more appropriate analogy would be "It is illegal to research into, and document the progress of a disease", or "It is illegal to test the security of the locks that the locksmith installs on your door."
Even 100% cotton white hats check the security of things, and attempt to make sure that they work on their systems--under the DMCA this could be considered attempts at hacking, and thus illegal.
If the DMCA just made it possible to crack down on "law benders", or "law breakers", I'd be unhappy about the law-bending category, but hey- they're laws. However, the DMCA outlaws things that it should not touch. Things that are beneficial for society, things that keep technology moving forward, and that keep the country's data safe. Gray hat hackers are *NECESSARY*, if only because black hat hackers exist, and at least gray hats are less malignant.
In a lot of ways, the DMCA is equivilent to the US Gov't outlawing a cure for aids because it caused people to have a cold for a week.
It's over-reaching, and goes beyond being restrictive--straight into the field of being suffocating and damaging.
White hat and black hat are necessary distinctions. Either someone intends to cause harm, or does not. Those terms are an easy way of explaining to the average layperson that there are 'good' and 'bad' hackers, otherwise they'll lump us all together.
The 'bull' is that there is no longer a 'gray hat' hacker. The elimination of the 'gray areas' is a legality, and a stupid one, at that. It is not a reality. Hackers will still walk the line, and things they do will still be thought of as "good", "bad", or "fuzzy line down the middle". The only difference is that the DMCA has moved the line of acceptable actions so far over, that people can be White Hat hackers and still end up being persecuted under the DMCA for doing something that even the majority of the population would consider "GOOD" as opposed to bad.
This doesn't mean that the hackers are "black hat", and it's stupid to imply so.
It would be great if there were a service like Brainbench, only free. "Open Certification" or something.
Problem is, with Brainbench and other testing groups online, you're not proving you KNOW the material--just that you're able to do a quick Google search.
No. It means that if someone gets your password, or hacks into the company's computers, you could walk away with your clothes shrunken, bleached, shredded, and swapped with the laundry of someone else.
And if they're using an MS OS and server software, you'll get the added pleasure of "HELLO! Welcome to http://www.worm.com! Hacked By Chinese!" dyed on your underwear.
The "patch" is the same as a "patch" that would allow the version of Nero that came bundled with a $150 24x Sony CDR-RW drive to work with every CDR-RW drive on your network.
It's extremely common to bundle software with a particular drive and attempt to limit the use to that drive only. If a retailer starts selling cheap no-name 24x burners bundled with a patch to make aforementioned copy of Nero work with it, you can bet Nero would go after them.
*laughs* Yes. My G3 is Betty. The Macs on the network are girls (fitting, I believe, since the Macs tend to be more stylish), and I break the 'rules' by naming the PC's as well. The PC's get geeky boy names. (Howard, Raymond, George, Lawrence, etc.)
It's a common occurence for someone to come to me and say "Sara, *name* isn't being my friend today. Can you speak to her/him?" or "I think that *file server name* took an unauthorized leave of absence." It's just much easier than saying "The 300mhz blue and white G3 with 512MB of memory" or "The Dell that workstations1-20 use for file sharing"
I never buy cutting-edge hardware, rather I wait until something has been out for a few months and some reviews have been released--so I pretty much come into things knowing which way is up. I know the mobo/chipset that goes into my computer, the graphics card, the hard drive, everything. Apple does not seem to like releasing in-depth information about their computers. The biggest problem I've had with a build-your-own was a mislabled front-panel connector on a mobo.
The first thing I do when I install a fresh OS (be it Linux, Windows, OS X, Solaris, BSD, or Irix...) is minimize the 'extras' that the system so likes to install. Cut out the extensions, turn off buggy features like Indexing and Sleep, kill off the half-dozen printers that are installed, and allocate the appropriate amounts of memory to my primary apps. (just mentioning the Mac-steps here!) I've had my Macs start crashing with just a basic system install, but naturally I don't so much blame the Mac OS as I blame the *software*-- "professional" software like Photoshop, MSIE, Office, 3d Applications... No Adware allowed. The problem is that the SYSTEM cannot recover from the crash and I have to reboot. Things crash under WinXP, but I only need to reboot perhaps once a month, if that. (This is not an exaggeration.)
I've got my hopes up for Jaguar, too. If it's really worth the money, I'll spend... I've just got my doubts after the past few releases.. So far my favorite release has been Rhapsody.
My G3 is the B/W 350. I've got 448MB of RAM. No processor upgrade. I am able to use Photoshop, processor-intensive 3d programs, and a nice array of other applications under 9 without too many issues.
OS X slows things down a bit, but I've heard Jaguar takes care of some of the slowing-down issues. It's also part perception on my end, since I always come over to the Mac from my speedy (vroom vroom) PC, and the Mac has some stylistic choices as far as how fast things move. (PC's feel like they do things before you tell the computer to do them. Mac's feel obedient.) The main issues I had with OS X on my G3 350 were in regards to crashing unacceptable amounts, and classic running slowly. (An issue because I had a large number of Classic apps, and no OS X apps.) So I reverted my G3 to OS 9.
Overall OS X runs well enough for nearly anyone's parents on even an old 300mhz B/W G3. I'd say that unless your parents are looking to invest in Mac Maya, they'd find OS X to be pretty fast, if a bit slower than 8.6--but it will make up for that by not being as crash-happy.)
I wouldn't reccomend using OS X without at least twice the minimum RAM requirement, but RAM is cheap these days--you can pick them up a 512 chip for less than the cost of 10.2. =]
One word to the wise: If there is anything that is "non-factory standard" on the system, check compatibility lists. My graphics card promptly committed suicide under OS X, and tape drives were none too happy, either.
*laughs* Oh, they're not all my machines--I just refer to them as "mine" because all the little electronic critters on the network are "mine". I set them up for the first time, take care of them when they're having problems, walk them through upgrades, etc. I've had exactly one Mac that was "my own"--the B/W G3 with one hard drive. I'm keeping it until it is so obsolete that it's not worth the room it takes up on the floor. I've never had a Mac under my care that didn't suffer from some form of annoyance--But then, all the PCs I had under my care until 1999 had similar problems. The PC has gotten past them, the Mac doesn't seem to have done so. I guess it's a byproduct of Apple always trying to push ahead in the design areas..
I absolutely DO like the Mac OS. It's charming, it's got a smooth feel that Windows never had. I'm just at a loss as to what to use it for, as it's slower than my PC and there are no Mac-only apps that I use.
I'm keeping my G3 as a pet, because there's no doubt that Macs get under your skin.
I'll check out the return policies on software and see if it's worth taking it for a trial run... I'm just loath to drop more money into Apple's pocket after so many blundering mistakes in the past. I bought 10.1 which was lousy-- I shouldn't have to buy 10.2 6 months later! Jeez. If Apple fixed the bugs for 10.1 users for free and offered the "killer apps" that I have no use for as a separate package, I'd almost be willing to buy both out of curiousity. Forced-upgrades of beta-quality software is not my idea of a kosher business practice.
People buy PC's because of price, Mac's because of style... Personally, I purchase PC's, not because of price, but because I can choose quality parts that I know will work. (Nothing like my Rev A B/W G3 that couldn't have a second hard drive because Apple used a faulty IDE controller... Or my first iMac which had a CD-Rom that liked to break every handful of months. (Remember those original laptop-style drives?) Or the beige G3 which wouldn't boot off a CD unless I went through an odd dance of putting the hard drive onto the CD-chain with CD as master, HD as slave... All of which Apple insisted they were not responsible for fixing. I choose PC's because I trust the hardware.
Then there's the OS. OS 9.2 crashes like a monkey on crack... 10.0--bought it, liked to cause kernel panics when I used it on any of the aforementioned machines... 10.1 slightly better, but didn't like my video card that Apple SWORE it would support (and then didn't.) Now if I buy 10.2 after just paying for 10.1 last year, I have to re-purchase the OS, even though none of the older OSes worked and I used them but a handful of times.
As far as style goes, my 10-bay black midtower is sleek with room for a kick-butt motherboard and anything my heart could desire... No stupid 1 5.25/1 3.5/3HD limits like the Macs.. and silent with multiple fans to keep it cool. I've only got one fan in my system--my processor/mobo combo (which run faster than anything Apple has to offer) runs cool enough with one case fan... The noise doesn't bother me--I live in NYC, nothing can compete with the honking... Besides, it runs more quietly than my B/W G3 which Apple equipped with a HD that sounds like a jet plane taking off. The Lian Li Aluminum case my friend uses to house his PC looks pretty damned sleek, too, and he didn't have to saw the plastic handles off to fit it on his computer desk.
Software/OS... I need professional quality tools and reliability that OS 10.1 just doesn't give me. (Damned if I re-buy 10.2. The first one didn't work, I'm not giving Apple any more money until they've had something out that works for a while.) Windows works, doesn't crash, and the Apps are available in the local stores for competitive pricing.
Apple definitely isn't targetting me. I demand top-notch hardware and software, reliable/proven OS's, and a companies that will answer my calls and honor my warrantees and stand by their hardware.
Motivation != ability. Deaf people can learn and are motivated to learn to lipread, but the success rate is startlingly low. Why? Multiple reasons. 1- ever look at a hearing person talk? They're all over the place. They bite their fingernails, turn the other way, mumble, chew their hair, wear large moustaches, paint their lips in ungodly colors, and do the whole song and dance. To top it off, only something like 30% of the sounds are visible on the human lips, and most of them look exactly the same.
I can lipread with about an 80% accuracy, and I'm one of the better lipreaders. Put me in a room with two people and I'm automatically the odd-man-out.
The communication problems are on the RECIEVING end more often than on the communicating end. I do much better when I'm the center of attention, I can shout from the rooftops because of my years of school-enforced speech therapy, but the minute someone else starts talking it's a shitload of effort to keep up. (this is *with* hearing aids.)
While it would be nice to be able to communicate in our 'native' language (sign) it's not going to happen. Sign has too many dialects, too many differences from English. We're not using a gestural-form of English, we have our own complex SPATIAL language that is not easily translated to English, even by a nationally certified HUMAN interpreter with years of experience in the field. Positioning of the signs in space is important. Facial expressions convey an entirely new meaning to the sign. Positioning of the body conveys meaning to the sign... These are things that are not going to hit the gloves. This device would need to be a full-body glove with the ability to interpret facial expression, size of the sign, position of the sign, and remember these things...
No technology exists or will exist within this lifetime that can translate a spatial language into a linear spoken language without making the AMAZINGLY expressive and literate communicator sound like a primate.
Some student already attempted this with limited success, I believe. Whatever.
I'm deaf, and the large problem is with RECIEVING information, not with communicating it.
The attentions of the scientist would be better aimed at minimizing the size of hearing aids, eliminating the painful earmolds they require (ever have a blister in your ear? It hurts like anything.), working on the technology to translate voices to text with more accuracy/figuring out how to provide this information in a convenient way...
Sign language is NOT translatable to English through anything but an extremely intelligent computer program (that's not gonna fit in gloves anytime this century). It is a SPATIAL language. English is a linear language. It's like attempting to translate a complex multi-dimensional operating system like Linux into javascript code. Not gonna happen all that easily, and not gonna happen in real-time unless, of course, you force the person to use Signed English, which is cumbersome and... quite frankly... moronic.
The misguided attempts of the hearing to bring communication to the deaf are amusing, particularly when most accessability methods that the deaf prefer are automatically disounted by the majority of the population as 'intrusive', 'distracting', etc. (I've had people tell me to turn off the closed captioning... Ask me if I could take their class without an interpreter...) Chances are that the public would object largely to the low-asthetic-appeal of the gloves.
Technologies that would help the deaf:
- Conversion of spoken english to sign language
- Conversion of spoken english to text amidst noise and clutter (ie: classroom environment)
- Some technology that would allow deaf people to watch movies in the movie theater without hearing people considering the technology invasive. (Open captions have been available for a LONG time, but hearing people don't liiiike them.)
- smaller, better hearing aids, and better ways of programming them.
- a material that is soft, non-shrinking, allows air to pass through but not sound, and can easily be formed into an earmold for use with hearing aids.
- improved background noise filters for hearing aids.
Attempts to translate sign to English are dead in the water before they're even launched. The languages are so different that it would require a beowulf cluster to be attached to the gloves to get even a non-realtime translation.
The mouse is so unweildy that I can't imagine being able to navigate it over a large flat piece of paper with a barcode--The "optical" part of the mouse isn't the whole bottom of the mouse, and because the mouse is so big, it's difficult to mentally picture where the mouse must be in order to scan the code.
Of course, if there were "guide lines" on the mouse, that would make it easier.
After the failure of similar devices, why would a manufacturer want to jump into a project like this? Perhaps because a mouse is something everyone has, you wouldn't have to put down your mouse and hunt around on your desk through the clutter to find a little stick that would scan the code--just grab and slide under your mouse..
It's definitely an interesting idea. Don't know if I'd buy into it, though. I'm pretty comfy with my ancient logitech mouse. =]
Err. Why is this a funny thing? They went to a public school and thus know what areas the public school is lacking.
If anything, I'd think that someone who didn't recieve a good education in certain areas would be more appreciative of the benefits that could be had by proper education.
The suggestions were good. Why take away from that with childish heckling about spelling/grammatical issues.
Spelling and grammar, while important, are NOT a sign of intelligence and it is foolish to percieve them as being such.::mutters "fscking moron" under my breath::
Most of the criticisms of MySQL that get modded down are modded down for a reason. Either they re-state something said half a dozen times before, or they take on a vehement bashing attitude.
When I bash Apple (and I love to bash Apple) I get modded down accordingly. When I say that I have legitimate complaints about Apple, I don't get modded down. If you say something like "MySQL lacks certain functionalities such as a, b, c, and d and for certain uses of databases such as scenario X, it just doesn't cut the cake. In comparision, Database Y really does the job well" You're not gonna get modded down. You'll probably get modded up as informative, and inspire some interesting conversations about "Well, yes. MySQL doesn't do that, you're right. But I don't see how the scenario you described requires that functionality".
If something's informative and deserves modding up, it gets modded up. If something bashes a program with little more than "It's evil because I say it's evil" or "It doesn't have half a bazillion functionalities" and then just assume those functionalities are completely wide-spread knowledge (in which case you're being terribly redundant...) then it's really not worth slugging through, and should be modded down accordingly.
People opposed to this insane measure taken by the Music Industry are not necessarily opposed to copyright. I don't beg for, borrow, or steal music but I'm COMPLETELY opposed to what the industry is requesting of the backbone service providers.
They are advocating CENSORSHIP, they are pushing and pulling with every muscle they have, and they are tying up our courts with frivilous lawsuits and innane complaints, and pursuing people who are not going out of their way to cause harm or break the law(backbone companies). Rather than pursuing these companies that provide American Citizens with much-valued connectivity (at already absurd prices which would only be driven up by the necessity of blocking certain sites) they should pursue the bootleggers who sell CDs at Times Square, those who sell their music without their permission, and the *actual offending parties*.
Censorship on a backbone level hasn't been done for even cases that most people would consider deserving, such as child pornography sites, terrorist sites, sites that advocate the hunting and killing of pro-choice doctors, and the list goes on. THE MUSIC INDUSTRY SHOULD NOT RECIEVE PRIORITY OVER THESE OTHER SITUATIONS, and I'd even be hard-pressed to say that censorship of these sites should rest on the backbone provider.
The recording industry has just proven that if anything, it is OVER-FUNDED and has too much money to spare to tie up the courts with airheaded legislation (DMCA) and lawsuits that should never see the light of day.
How long before they say that speaking up against the DMCA is a violation of the DMCA since it advocates the abolition of a copyright protection measure (the DMCA)? Oh, wait. It's already happened on a much more subtle level. I belong to this mailing list, and posted an innocuous question about how to copy a CD at a raw data level without having to mount it because some backup software I used (To create a backup of my own hard drive with my own personally-created information on it) creates backup CDs that are non-mountable. I could use the backup software to dupe the CD, but the read-write process it uses would take 3 hours with a 32x burner, and I had over 200 CDs that I wished to create a second backup set of to keep off site. (Being located in NYC, this would be a good idea, no?) Apparently this question was in too "murky" an area, and the list owner did not want to deal with the possiblity of the question being misconstrued by anyone who might be listening in.
Tell me that the "entertainment industry" isn't sounding a bit hitlerish, and having way too much control over way too many things?
But.... Shhh.. I didn't say that. I don't want anyone "listening in" to misconstrue things.
I'm not talking about the people asking for the patents. Everyone asks for patents, heck--someone would probably patent the ability to breathe if they were allowed to... Or the goatse.cx guys would patent their particular brand of charm and go after the "son of goatse.cx" (http://www.conhugeco.org/goatse.cx/) guys.
I'm merely saying that those that GRANT the patents should spend the time doing the minimal research necessary to determine whether or not the patent is complete fluff or not.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. The watermark is horrid. :p If the watermark was only 10-30% opaque (instead of nearly 100% opaque) then it would be *much* more usable.
I like the ElectricImage demo. http://www.electricimage.com it's much more functional and actually allows you to learn the software. A|W really did miss the boat with the PLE--they were too paranoid about the chances of someone taking a screenshot of the workspace and somehow using that to get around the limitations.
-Sara
high pricepoint? Are you aware that they just dropped their prices quite dramatically in the past 6 months, and closed their NY and LA offices, laying off a bunch of their staff?
;) The only people that need to use the cracked version are people generating commercial-quality imagery. If they're making a profit selling images generated with A|W's software, then surely $2,000 is not all that much. (Hey- we're talking an industry where a freelancer can make that amount for one dinky little spinning logo that takes 20 minutes of work.)
Cutbacks in price mean cutbacks in other areas--promotion, development, bandwidth, and support.
(And, by the way--it's called a "seat" of software. When you get into high-end software with 'ridiculous' pricepoints, it's not called a box or a copy anymore.)
If your only goal is to LEARN the software, Maya has a fully functional PLE available for free download.
-Sara
I didn't say that software development costs more than companies are making in sales. I'm saying that the profit margin is not as extreme as people seem to think.
And your comparing hardware sales and software sales is a lousy comparision. I have yet to hear about Intel and AMD being hurt by the new P2P processor sharing, or about how they just spent the past 6 months patching a bug that caused their processor to crash when the user tried to save a file.
Software is a constant service, and a constant drain. Software developers must make enough profit to keep developing, and that is *hard*.
-Sara
Software actually doesn't cost a whole lot at all. Think about it. Most companies have only one flagship product. Let's look at Alias|Wavefront, the makers of 3d Giant- Maya. Maya has a base price of $2,000.
3D graphics is a niche market--this means low numbers of sales. Couple that with the fact that there is apparently a number of working cracks and keygens spread out across the internet, and you're looking at seriously low sales.
Now, at the surface, $2,000 is a lot of money. It's 10 of those Walmart-Lindows computers... It's one mid-to-high range PC.
Look at it from A|W's point of view, though. $2,000--if you're paying one programmer a paltry sum of $10/hour (which we all know the best programmers won't accept), that's only 200 man-hours. Now, you need a staff of programmers, accountants, secretaries.. You need to pay your IT people, your connectivity bills, rent on offices, advertising costs, etc.
Cost-of-development far outweighs cost-of-software. The golden days of companies becoming rich off of software is over, even heavyweights like Microsoft are cutting back.
Yeah, software is still expensive for a consumer... But think of how expensive it is to *develop* that software.
-Sara
No. For a period of one month, the Government needs to cease and desist anti-spam filters, and Bush needs to read his own email.
After the 908'th offer for viagra, he'll either cave and buy it (and then hire an intern) or get pissed off and do something about it.
Stopping the filters on the accounts of people who know about Spam isn't going to do a goddamned thing. WE're already pissed off by it. It's the gov't officials whose email is pre-filtered, sanitized, and delivered for their viewing pleasure, who need to experience the deluge.
Better yet- remove their filters, and put their email addresses on the internet. Someplace like Slashdot.
-Sara
I don't want some. I'll start doing really stupid things and attempting to pass legislation against breathing. =]
Gimme some happy pills instead.
-Sara
Hah. I'd like to see Middle management trying to deal with the viruses that ex systems admins would write for that system. =]
The phone would ring... "Hello?"
"Hello, Norbert, the computer is broken."
"But you fired me. I don't work for you anymore."
"But it's BROKEN! I don't know what to DO!"
Yeah... They'd do a *sweet* job. >=] Most of them can't even figure out how to respond to an email.
-Sara
Hm. No. I disagree with your analogy (people who drive over the speed limit are killers)--driving over the speed limit, while it doesn't always result in death, is a dangerous activity that could more easily be classified as killing than the majority of gray-hat hacking could be called theivery or even illegal, if it weren't for the DMCA.
A more appropriate analogy would be "It is illegal to research into, and document the progress of a disease", or "It is illegal to test the security of the locks that the locksmith installs on your door."
Even 100% cotton white hats check the security of things, and attempt to make sure that they work on their systems--under the DMCA this could be considered attempts at hacking, and thus illegal.
If the DMCA just made it possible to crack down on "law benders", or "law breakers", I'd be unhappy about the law-bending category, but hey- they're laws. However, the DMCA outlaws things that it should not touch. Things that are beneficial for society, things that keep technology moving forward, and that keep the country's data safe. Gray hat hackers are *NECESSARY*, if only because black hat hackers exist, and at least gray hats are less malignant.
In a lot of ways, the DMCA is equivilent to the US Gov't outlawing a cure for aids because it caused people to have a cold for a week.
It's over-reaching, and goes beyond being restrictive--straight into the field of being suffocating and damaging.
-Sara
White hat and black hat are necessary distinctions. Either someone intends to cause harm, or does not. Those terms are an easy way of explaining to the average layperson that there are 'good' and 'bad' hackers, otherwise they'll lump us all together.
The 'bull' is that there is no longer a 'gray hat' hacker. The elimination of the 'gray areas' is a legality, and a stupid one, at that. It is not a reality. Hackers will still walk the line, and things they do will still be thought of as "good", "bad", or "fuzzy line down the middle". The only difference is that the DMCA has moved the line of acceptable actions so far over, that people can be White Hat hackers and still end up being persecuted under the DMCA for doing something that even the majority of the population would consider "GOOD" as opposed to bad.
This doesn't mean that the hackers are "black hat", and it's stupid to imply so.
-Sara
It would be great if there were a service like Brainbench, only free. "Open Certification" or something.
Problem is, with Brainbench and other testing groups online, you're not proving you KNOW the material--just that you're able to do a quick Google search.
-Sara
No. It means that if someone gets your password, or hacks into the company's computers, you could walk away with your clothes shrunken, bleached, shredded, and swapped with the laundry of someone else.
And if they're using an MS OS and server software, you'll get the added pleasure of "HELLO! Welcome to http://www.worm.com! Hacked By Chinese!" dyed on your underwear.
-Sara
The "patch" is the same as a "patch" that would allow the version of Nero that came bundled with a $150 24x Sony CDR-RW drive to work with every CDR-RW drive on your network.
It's extremely common to bundle software with a particular drive and attempt to limit the use to that drive only. If a retailer starts selling cheap no-name 24x burners bundled with a patch to make aforementioned copy of Nero work with it, you can bet Nero would go after them.
-Sara
*laughs* Yes. My G3 is Betty. The Macs on the network are girls (fitting, I believe, since the Macs tend to be more stylish), and I break the 'rules' by naming the PC's as well. The PC's get geeky boy names. (Howard, Raymond, George, Lawrence, etc.)
It's a common occurence for someone to come to me and say "Sara, *name* isn't being my friend today. Can you speak to her/him?" or "I think that *file server name* took an unauthorized leave of absence." It's just much easier than saying "The 300mhz blue and white G3 with 512MB of memory" or "The Dell that workstations1-20 use for file sharing"
-Sara
I never buy cutting-edge hardware, rather I wait until something has been out for a few months and some reviews have been released--so I pretty much come into things knowing which way is up. I know the mobo/chipset that goes into my computer, the graphics card, the hard drive, everything. Apple does not seem to like releasing in-depth information about their computers. The biggest problem I've had with a build-your-own was a mislabled front-panel connector on a mobo.
The first thing I do when I install a fresh OS (be it Linux, Windows, OS X, Solaris, BSD, or Irix...) is minimize the 'extras' that the system so likes to install. Cut out the extensions, turn off buggy features like Indexing and Sleep, kill off the half-dozen printers that are installed, and allocate the appropriate amounts of memory to my primary apps. (just mentioning the Mac-steps here!) I've had my Macs start crashing with just a basic system install, but naturally I don't so much blame the Mac OS as I blame the *software*-- "professional" software like Photoshop, MSIE, Office, 3d Applications... No Adware allowed. The problem is that the SYSTEM cannot recover from the crash and I have to reboot. Things crash under WinXP, but I only need to reboot perhaps once a month, if that. (This is not an exaggeration.)
I've got my hopes up for Jaguar, too. If it's really worth the money, I'll spend... I've just got my doubts after the past few releases.. So far my favorite release has been Rhapsody.
-Sara
My G3 is the B/W 350. I've got 448MB of RAM. No processor upgrade. I am able to use Photoshop, processor-intensive 3d programs, and a nice array of other applications under 9 without too many issues.
OS X slows things down a bit, but I've heard Jaguar takes care of some of the slowing-down issues. It's also part perception on my end, since I always come over to the Mac from my speedy (vroom vroom) PC, and the Mac has some stylistic choices as far as how fast things move. (PC's feel like they do things before you tell the computer to do them. Mac's feel obedient.) The main issues I had with OS X on my G3 350 were in regards to crashing unacceptable amounts, and classic running slowly. (An issue because I had a large number of Classic apps, and no OS X apps.) So I reverted my G3 to OS 9.
Overall OS X runs well enough for nearly anyone's parents on even an old 300mhz B/W G3. I'd say that unless your parents are looking to invest in Mac Maya, they'd find OS X to be pretty fast, if a bit slower than 8.6--but it will make up for that by not being as crash-happy.)
I wouldn't reccomend using OS X without at least twice the minimum RAM requirement, but RAM is cheap these days--you can pick them up a 512 chip for less than the cost of 10.2. =]
One word to the wise: If there is anything that is "non-factory standard" on the system, check compatibility lists. My graphics card promptly committed suicide under OS X, and tape drives were none too happy, either.
-Sara
*laughs* Oh, they're not all my machines--I just refer to them as "mine" because all the little electronic critters on the network are "mine". I set them up for the first time, take care of them when they're having problems, walk them through upgrades, etc. I've had exactly one Mac that was "my own"--the B/W G3 with one hard drive. I'm keeping it until it is so obsolete that it's not worth the room it takes up on the floor. I've never had a Mac under my care that didn't suffer from some form of annoyance--But then, all the PCs I had under my care until 1999 had similar problems. The PC has gotten past them, the Mac doesn't seem to have done so. I guess it's a byproduct of Apple always trying to push ahead in the design areas..
I absolutely DO like the Mac OS. It's charming, it's got a smooth feel that Windows never had. I'm just at a loss as to what to use it for, as it's slower than my PC and there are no Mac-only apps that I use.
I'm keeping my G3 as a pet, because there's no doubt that Macs get under your skin.
I'll check out the return policies on software and see if it's worth taking it for a trial run... I'm just loath to drop more money into Apple's pocket after so many blundering mistakes in the past. I bought 10.1 which was lousy-- I shouldn't have to buy 10.2 6 months later! Jeez. If Apple fixed the bugs for 10.1 users for free and offered the "killer apps" that I have no use for as a separate package, I'd almost be willing to buy both out of curiousity. Forced-upgrades of beta-quality software is not my idea of a kosher business practice.
-Sara
People buy PC's because of price, Mac's because of style... Personally, I purchase PC's, not because of price, but because I can choose quality parts that I know will work. (Nothing like my Rev A B/W G3 that couldn't have a second hard drive because Apple used a faulty IDE controller... Or my first iMac which had a CD-Rom that liked to break every handful of months. (Remember those original laptop-style drives?) Or the beige G3 which wouldn't boot off a CD unless I went through an odd dance of putting the hard drive onto the CD-chain with CD as master, HD as slave... All of which Apple insisted they were not responsible for fixing. I choose PC's because I trust the hardware.
Then there's the OS. OS 9.2 crashes like a monkey on crack... 10.0--bought it, liked to cause kernel panics when I used it on any of the aforementioned machines... 10.1 slightly better, but didn't like my video card that Apple SWORE it would support (and then didn't.) Now if I buy 10.2 after just paying for 10.1 last year, I have to re-purchase the OS, even though none of the older OSes worked and I used them but a handful of times.
As far as style goes, my 10-bay black midtower is sleek with room for a kick-butt motherboard and anything my heart could desire... No stupid 1 5.25/1 3.5/3HD limits like the Macs.. and silent with multiple fans to keep it cool. I've only got one fan in my system--my processor/mobo combo (which run faster than anything Apple has to offer) runs cool enough with one case fan... The noise doesn't bother me--I live in NYC, nothing can compete with the honking... Besides, it runs more quietly than my B/W G3 which Apple equipped with a HD that sounds like a jet plane taking off. The Lian Li Aluminum case my friend uses to house his PC looks pretty damned sleek, too, and he didn't have to saw the plastic handles off to fit it on his computer desk.
Software/OS... I need professional quality tools and reliability that OS 10.1 just doesn't give me. (Damned if I re-buy 10.2. The first one didn't work, I'm not giving Apple any more money until they've had something out that works for a while.) Windows works, doesn't crash, and the Apps are available in the local stores for competitive pricing.
Apple definitely isn't targetting me. I demand top-notch hardware and software, reliable/proven OS's, and a companies that will answer my calls and honor my warrantees and stand by their hardware.
-Sara
Problem with this, is that the slash-backer would be dismissed as a troll.
-Sara
Motivation != ability. Deaf people can learn and are motivated to learn to lipread, but the success rate is startlingly low. Why? Multiple reasons. 1- ever look at a hearing person talk? They're all over the place. They bite their fingernails, turn the other way, mumble, chew their hair, wear large moustaches, paint their lips in ungodly colors, and do the whole song and dance. To top it off, only something like 30% of the sounds are visible on the human lips, and most of them look exactly the same.
I can lipread with about an 80% accuracy, and I'm one of the better lipreaders. Put me in a room with two people and I'm automatically the odd-man-out.
The communication problems are on the RECIEVING end more often than on the communicating end. I do much better when I'm the center of attention, I can shout from the rooftops because of my years of school-enforced speech therapy, but the minute someone else starts talking it's a shitload of effort to keep up. (this is *with* hearing aids.)
While it would be nice to be able to communicate in our 'native' language (sign) it's not going to happen. Sign has too many dialects, too many differences from English. We're not using a gestural-form of English, we have our own complex SPATIAL language that is not easily translated to English, even by a nationally certified HUMAN interpreter with years of experience in the field. Positioning of the signs in space is important. Facial expressions convey an entirely new meaning to the sign. Positioning of the body conveys meaning to the sign... These are things that are not going to hit the gloves. This device would need to be a full-body glove with the ability to interpret facial expression, size of the sign, position of the sign, and remember these things...
No technology exists or will exist within this lifetime that can translate a spatial language into a linear spoken language without making the AMAZINGLY expressive and literate communicator sound like a primate.
-Sara
Some student already attempted this with limited success, I believe. Whatever.
I'm deaf, and the large problem is with RECIEVING information, not with communicating it.
The attentions of the scientist would be better aimed at minimizing the size of hearing aids, eliminating the painful earmolds they require (ever have a blister in your ear? It hurts like anything.), working on the technology to translate voices to text with more accuracy/figuring out how to provide this information in a convenient way...
Sign language is NOT translatable to English through anything but an extremely intelligent computer program (that's not gonna fit in gloves anytime this century). It is a SPATIAL language. English is a linear language. It's like attempting to translate a complex multi-dimensional operating system like Linux into javascript code. Not gonna happen all that easily, and not gonna happen in real-time unless, of course, you force the person to use Signed English, which is cumbersome and... quite frankly... moronic.
The misguided attempts of the hearing to bring communication to the deaf are amusing, particularly when most accessability methods that the deaf prefer are automatically disounted by the majority of the population as 'intrusive', 'distracting', etc. (I've had people tell me to turn off the closed captioning... Ask me if I could take their class without an interpreter...) Chances are that the public would object largely to the low-asthetic-appeal of the gloves.
Technologies that would help the deaf:
- Conversion of spoken english to sign language
- Conversion of spoken english to text amidst noise and clutter (ie: classroom environment)
- Some technology that would allow deaf people to watch movies in the movie theater without hearing people considering the technology invasive. (Open captions have been available for a LONG time, but hearing people don't liiiike them.)
- smaller, better hearing aids, and better ways of programming them.
- a material that is soft, non-shrinking, allows air to pass through but not sound, and can easily be formed into an earmold for use with hearing aids.
- improved background noise filters for hearing aids.
Attempts to translate sign to English are dead in the water before they're even launched. The languages are so different that it would require a beowulf cluster to be attached to the gloves to get even a non-realtime translation.
-Sara
The mouse is so unweildy that I can't imagine being able to navigate it over a large flat piece of paper with a barcode--The "optical" part of the mouse isn't the whole bottom of the mouse, and because the mouse is so big, it's difficult to mentally picture where the mouse must be in order to scan the code.
Of course, if there were "guide lines" on the mouse, that would make it easier.
After the failure of similar devices, why would a manufacturer want to jump into a project like this? Perhaps because a mouse is something everyone has, you wouldn't have to put down your mouse and hunt around on your desk through the clutter to find a little stick that would scan the code--just grab and slide under your mouse..
It's definitely an interesting idea. Don't know if I'd buy into it, though. I'm pretty comfy with my ancient logitech mouse. =]
-Sara
Err. Why is this a funny thing? They went to a public school and thus know what areas the public school is lacking.
::mutters "fscking moron" under my breath::
If anything, I'd think that someone who didn't recieve a good education in certain areas would be more appreciative of the benefits that could be had by proper education.
The suggestions were good. Why take away from that with childish heckling about spelling/grammatical issues.
Spelling and grammar, while important, are NOT a sign of intelligence and it is foolish to percieve them as being such.
-Sara
Most of the criticisms of MySQL that get modded down are modded down for a reason. Either they re-state something said half a dozen times before, or they take on a vehement bashing attitude.
When I bash Apple (and I love to bash Apple) I get modded down accordingly. When I say that I have legitimate complaints about Apple, I don't get modded down. If you say something like "MySQL lacks certain functionalities such as a, b, c, and d and for certain uses of databases such as scenario X, it just doesn't cut the cake. In comparision, Database Y really does the job well" You're not gonna get modded down. You'll probably get modded up as informative, and inspire some interesting conversations about "Well, yes. MySQL doesn't do that, you're right. But I don't see how the scenario you described requires that functionality".
If something's informative and deserves modding up, it gets modded up. If something bashes a program with little more than "It's evil because I say it's evil" or "It doesn't have half a bazillion functionalities" and then just assume those functionalities are completely wide-spread knowledge (in which case you're being terribly redundant...) then it's really not worth slugging through, and should be modded down accordingly.
-Sara
Err.
People opposed to this insane measure taken by the Music Industry are not necessarily opposed to copyright. I don't beg for, borrow, or steal music but I'm COMPLETELY opposed to what the industry is requesting of the backbone service providers.
They are advocating CENSORSHIP, they are pushing and pulling with every muscle they have, and they are tying up our courts with frivilous lawsuits and innane complaints, and pursuing people who are not going out of their way to cause harm or break the law(backbone companies). Rather than pursuing these companies that provide American Citizens with much-valued connectivity (at already absurd prices which would only be driven up by the necessity of blocking certain sites) they should pursue the bootleggers who sell CDs at Times Square, those who sell their music without their permission, and the *actual offending parties*.
Censorship on a backbone level hasn't been done for even cases that most people would consider deserving, such as child pornography sites, terrorist sites, sites that advocate the hunting and killing of pro-choice doctors, and the list goes on. THE MUSIC INDUSTRY SHOULD NOT RECIEVE PRIORITY OVER THESE OTHER SITUATIONS, and I'd even be hard-pressed to say that censorship of these sites should rest on the backbone provider.
The recording industry has just proven that if anything, it is OVER-FUNDED and has too much money to spare to tie up the courts with airheaded legislation (DMCA) and lawsuits that should never see the light of day.
How long before they say that speaking up against the DMCA is a violation of the DMCA since it advocates the abolition of a copyright protection measure (the DMCA)? Oh, wait. It's already happened on a much more subtle level. I belong to this mailing list, and posted an innocuous question about how to copy a CD at a raw data level without having to mount it because some backup software I used (To create a backup of my own hard drive with my own personally-created information on it) creates backup CDs that are non-mountable. I could use the backup software to dupe the CD, but the read-write process it uses would take 3 hours with a 32x burner, and I had over 200 CDs that I wished to create a second backup set of to keep off site. (Being located in NYC, this would be a good idea, no?) Apparently this question was in too "murky" an area, and the list owner did not want to deal with the possiblity of the question being misconstrued by anyone who might be listening in.
Tell me that the "entertainment industry" isn't sounding a bit hitlerish, and having way too much control over way too many things?
But.... Shhh.. I didn't say that. I don't want anyone "listening in" to misconstrue things.
-Sara
I'm not talking about the people asking for the patents. Everyone asks for patents, heck--someone would probably patent the ability to breathe if they were allowed to... Or the goatse.cx guys would patent their particular brand of charm and go after the "son of goatse.cx" (http://www.conhugeco.org/goatse.cx/) guys.
I'm merely saying that those that GRANT the patents should spend the time doing the minimal research necessary to determine whether or not the patent is complete fluff or not.
-Sara