One of the recurring themes with Media providers is that they need a way to make more money of the sam variety of product with each new inovation.
Examples from the RIAA include the fact that a lp record would cost $8, and a casette tape of the same recording would be sold for $9. When CD's came out they upped the price immediately to $10, then over the next 15 years ramped it up to $15 per album. As they realized they could add features onto the CD, such as data tracks with atrax compressed editions of the music, and possibly video clips in mpeg format, they bumped the prices up to $18-$20 for an Album. (More if they could find a way to make it multi-disk.)
Similarly going from vhs, (which I realize the movie industry did not want to use at all initially) where a movie would cost between $5.99 and $20, (at a time when the same movie was shown 6 or more months previously in theaters for $4.00, $2.50 Matinee) to DVD, the Movie industry generally bumped the price up to between $9 and $29 depending upon the features they decided to include, and their take on the potential market for that movie.
Broadband is their next target. They want to sell you the option of watching any of most of their library of videos. However they do not trust the existing platform because it is altogether too easy to pirate the videos that they would like to provide for you to watch.
Yes the current boom is largely due to piracy of one sort or another. Whether it is MP3 audio, or Divix video, is only peripherally important. They believe that there is a much larger market for them if they can get to the vast majority of customers who will not pirate their material.
If they can charge $4.99 to ppv a movie they released last year, and $2.99 for a movie from 5 years or more ago, or $.50 to p4p an audio track from the last year, and $.25 for more than 5 years ago, they think that they could be making significantly more money. They may even be willing to sell you a copy of the same movie for 3 times the ppv, or an audio track for 4 times the p4p cost.
The disadvantage for them is that they need an even larger potential customer base than they can get from the current broadband customers. They realize that they are not going to be able to charge those prices to people who can get copies of their material free for the download from some pirate site or network.
Since they believe that their ability to provide content is what will continue the boom in sales of broadband, they think that they have a serious voice when it comes to what the users of that network should be restricted to attaching to the network.
I am not saying I agree with them. Just giving the logic behind it. I happen to think that there is a sufficient market for broadband without video or audio on demand from the members of the MPAA and RIAA, and their equivalents in other countries.
DSL is one of two monopolies that can provide Broadband in populus areas. CableModem would be the alternative.
Both are still too expensive, but considering that the prices for each are regulated, you have to get the regulators to recognize that fact, and get them to force the prices down.
For rural areas, there is really only one method of getting anything like broadband service, and that is Sat service. Unfortunately there is a higher up front instalation cost, and monthly costs are at least as high as dsl or cable modems. On top of that the equipment uses a modified network stack that in most cases requires a Windows based PC to communicate. (Yes there are exceptions, especially if you are willing to spend a couple hundred more for the install.)
Now if you are willing to do a co-op with the rest of the people on your block, you could get a T1 or DS3 brought in, and use WiFi to share the connection with other people on the block. Personally I say good luck, but it might be feasable.
It's also known as leveraging a monopoly to expand it.
But since Microsoft effectively gets off scott free for doing this, SBC has probably decided they can probably get away with it too. Unfortunately, as noted elsewhere, SBC is in a regulated market, and Microsoft is not. This may be an interesting case to watch.
As far as the first point goes. The fact that this developer has a BSD based machine that he can migrate to is wonderful in my opinion.
Exactly how many of the people running Linux, that he is recomending create a similar setup, 1) have the available hardware to do so, and 2) should expect all the bleading edge software they have been running on Linux will run on BSD?
This is not saying that having a fallback plan isn't a good idea. I just don't happen to think that everyon should consider this to be the only option.
Apparently you have not been reading the stories that have been being referenced here. Might want to go back to This story and follow the thread "SCO Hates BSD Too."
Two issues. Not everything that runs on Linux runs on BSD, even in the server environment. If you can live with that and work around it, there is still the hazard that SCO has indicated that they do not believe that BSD is necesarily free and clear either.
At the moment this does not seem to be a significant issue, SCO is much more interested in slowing down Linux deployment, or getting money from companies that they believe are violating their intelectual property, and are "bigger fish".
The fact that the school will not install WiFi should not limit the students. Simply set the WiFi card to ad-hoc rather than structured, and use the 169.254.x.x/16 address space (Windows and some linux dhcp clients will configure for this if they do not find a dhcp server) and start communicating.
If you really need access to the Internet in class, a single ethernet-WiFi bridge should connect anyone in the classroom if both a ethernet and power jack are close enough or in the room.
One of my journal entries reflects my own experience up to a year ago. I will need to update it one of these days.
Walking was a big part of my own success. There are other parts as well.
My only serious recomendation to do, outside of what I did, is talk your plans through with your doctor.
Additionally work with your doctor to find realistic goals. If you have crossed the age of 30 and are over weight or otherwise out of shape, you will have a harder time getting back into shape than if you start at 20 and have a plan you can live with to stay in shape. Even more so if you are over 40. Of course you could use that statement as a challenge to rise to. Your choice.
...to the products that Microsoft actually does well at.
If Microsoft would stick to hardware, such as keyboards, mice and joysticks, elements that Linux and the Open Source movement, and Free Software Foundation has no interest in, Microsoft would soon realize that their only competition is Logitech.
Certainly it qualifies. MSN Messenger 6 is available for anyone to use, without requiring you to purchase a copy of MSN Messenger at any version. MSN Messenger itself is free, so there is no purchase required.
Granted you have to have an operating system that MSN Messenger will run on to actually win, which I believe restricts you to Windows and possibly OS X, but that is no fault of the promotions people.
Probably the same reason they believe that the President will read paper mail that is sent to the Whitehouse.
I don't think most people believe that he will read either. I think most people believe that he has a team of people who get paid to screen both his paper and e-mail. A few people may get their messages past the screening process, because they are friends, etc. but the vast majority will be screened.
Of the messages that get sent in, well over 90% are going to fit into either supporting or opposing some view held by the president, and will be summarized as statistics. From what I understand all paper mail, and most e-mail gets a response thanking the submitter for their views.
A small portion of the mail is a request to have a family member get an autographed picture from the president for their birthday. I don't know if this is something that they are doing via e-mail at all. It may be one of the web form options however.
I am sorry, he is not alledged to be the President. Since the Federal Court system was involved, we have to come to the conclusion that he was Convicted. With good behaviour he may be parolled after 4 years.
...Tom Clancies rendition of finding out who is selling the secrets.
Assuming you have agents in your enemies area, you provide each of your local agents with a slightly different copy of the material. Each copy is worded slightly differently, or contains a different trivial but interesting fact as part of the document.
If one of the local agents is selling information to the enemy, and one of your agents in the enemies area is spotting the material comming in, the wording, or trivia that gets back to you will indicate which of your local people is passing the material on.
If you have time, you generate two slightly different reports each time, and start doing psuedo random distribution of the copies, and track who had which copies that made it to the other side.
If you do not have an agent on the other side, you can sometimes cause your enemies themselves to show their hand by how they react to "wrong" information.
-Rusty
Re:The troll in me asks...
on
Slackware Turns 10
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Believe me, I was only being denigrating to Slackware in jest.
Slackware was where I cut my teeth on Linux and GNU shell software. I did compile my own kernel, as the compiled kernel that was distributed didn't provide support for anything beyond a text mode shell. If you wanted to run X, or access one of the supported sound cards, you compiled the kernel, and it ended up being very stable.
I have since moved off the hardware I started with Slackware on, and in the process have moved onto other distributions. I can honestly say that I don't spend much time remenising about Slackware, as I don't think I want to go back to answering a questionair about the hardware to get to a kernel to support that hardware. I much prefer the module design that came along about the time I moved off of slackware.
If you put the computer with Windows 2k on it, in a box, turned it on, and closed up and sealed the box while the bios was turned on, would you have two computers in the box, one running, one BSODed? Too bad the working one would not get anything done, it doesn't have any applications on it.
Anyone ever figure out how to *permanently* close those idiotic admin shares?
Um, overwrite the disk and put [Open|Free|Net]BSD on it?
No, I don't happen to use any of them either. I happily converted over to Linux some time ago, and don't see any good reason to switch back to a Microsoft product. At the moment I don't see a good reason to switch to BSD either, as my systems do pretty much exactly what I expect of them.
It is possible that in the future, differential thrust may be an effective means of moving things through space near a body that has sufficent atmosphere density to work with.
A couple of questions come up however.
1)Is the material that works well for differential thrust, (preferably a material that will cause nearby mollecules to warm up, and bounce off of the surface) function well as a solar sail? My suspicion is that it does not, as I believe that a solar sail is going to function best as a means of changing the direction of solar wind particles with mass, rather than as a means of either absorbing them, or changing their velocity by increasing their heat value.
2) How large of a "sail" (for lack of a better word, though either 'radiator' or 'furnace' come to mind) will you need to effect acceleration by increasing the heat level of the nearby mollecules? Remember that in the radiometer experiment the propulsion method relied upon both heat and gravity. Heating the molecules on one side of the vane caused the molecule to become lighter than the molecules on the other side of the vane. Gravity caused the heated molecule to rise in relation to the cooler molecules, causing a low pressure to exist on the black side of the vane. The lower pressure on this side of the vane caused the higher pressure on the light side of the vane to move the vane towards the lower pressure area to equalize the system. Gold misinterpreted the situation by believing that reflecting photons provided an acceleration source compared to absorbing them.
The concept of Solar Sails relies upon reflecting, or possibly absorbing the energy of the solar wind. The mass involved in the radometer experiments compared to the available acceleration is unlikely to have been high enough to exceed the co-efficent of friction posed by the needle in the radiometer.
Then again, I haven't read the article, am writing off the cuff, and don't have any credentials to claim to know what I am talking about.
My suspicion would be that the hacker involved works at a game company that created the game that he found a way to include the method of bypassing the security for.
If that is the case, he would want to hide the fact that the exploit exists, as well as hiding the fact that he installed the exploit.
He would then have to make sure that the exploit made it through QA, and the game made it to the market. Next he has to verify for himself that he can take advantage of the exploit in the wild, then he can make others aware that the exploit is possible, preferably without revealing his identity.
But that's just one possibility. Maybe he did it just to see how obtuse he could make an exploit.
Disclaimer, the above are mearly ideas, I don't work at a game company, or for any company that I know has production involvement with any computer games, or any Microsoft products related to gaming.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the recurring themes with Media providers is that they need a way to make more money of the sam variety of product with each new inovation.
Examples from the RIAA include the fact that a lp record would cost $8, and a casette tape of the same recording would be sold for $9. When CD's came out they upped the price immediately to $10, then over the next 15 years ramped it up to $15 per album. As they realized they could add features onto the CD, such as data tracks with atrax compressed editions of the music, and possibly video clips in mpeg format, they bumped the prices up to $18-$20 for an Album. (More if they could find a way to make it multi-disk.)
Similarly going from vhs, (which I realize the movie industry did not want to use at all initially) where a movie would cost between $5.99 and $20, (at a time when the same movie was shown 6 or more months previously in theaters for $4.00, $2.50 Matinee) to DVD, the Movie industry generally bumped the price up to between $9 and $29 depending upon the features they decided to include, and their take on the potential market for that movie.
Broadband is their next target. They want to sell you the option of watching any of most of their library of videos. However they do not trust the existing platform because it is altogether too easy to pirate the videos that they would like to provide for you to watch.
Yes the current boom is largely due to piracy of one sort or another. Whether it is MP3 audio, or Divix video, is only peripherally important. They believe that there is a much larger market for them if they can get to the vast majority of customers who will not pirate their material.
If they can charge $4.99 to ppv a movie they released last year, and $2.99 for a movie from 5 years or more ago, or $.50 to p4p an audio track from the last year, and $.25 for more than 5 years ago, they think that they could be making significantly more money. They may even be willing to sell you a copy of the same movie for 3 times the ppv, or an audio track for 4 times the p4p cost.
The disadvantage for them is that they need an even larger potential customer base than they can get from the current broadband customers. They realize that they are not going to be able to charge those prices to people who can get copies of their material free for the download from some pirate site or network.
Since they believe that their ability to provide content is what will continue the boom in sales of broadband, they think that they have a serious voice when it comes to what the users of that network should be restricted to attaching to the network.
I am not saying I agree with them. Just giving the logic behind it. I happen to think that there is a sufficient market for broadband without video or audio on demand from the members of the MPAA and RIAA, and their equivalents in other countries.
Then again, I have been known to be wrong.
-Rusty
DSL is one of two monopolies that can provide Broadband in populus areas. CableModem would be the alternative.
Both are still too expensive, but considering that the prices for each are regulated, you have to get the regulators to recognize that fact, and get them to force the prices down.
For rural areas, there is really only one method of getting anything like broadband service, and that is Sat service. Unfortunately there is a higher up front instalation cost, and monthly costs are at least as high as dsl or cable modems. On top of that the equipment uses a modified network stack that in most cases requires a Windows based PC to communicate. (Yes there are exceptions, especially if you are willing to spend a couple hundred more for the install.)
Now if you are willing to do a co-op with the rest of the people on your block, you could get a T1 or DS3 brought in, and use WiFi to share the connection with other people on the block. Personally I say good luck, but it might be feasable.
-Rusty
It's also known as leveraging a monopoly to expand it.
But since Microsoft effectively gets off scott free for doing this, SBC has probably decided they can probably get away with it too. Unfortunately, as noted elsewhere, SBC is in a regulated market, and Microsoft is not. This may be an interesting case to watch.
As far as the first point goes. The fact that this developer has a BSD based machine that he can migrate to is wonderful in my opinion.
Exactly how many of the people running Linux, that he is recomending create a similar setup, 1) have the available hardware to do so, and 2) should expect all the bleading edge software they have been running on Linux will run on BSD?
This is not saying that having a fallback plan isn't a good idea. I just don't happen to think that everyon should consider this to be the only option.
-Rusty
Apparently you have not been reading the stories that have been being referenced here. Might want to go back to This story and follow the thread "SCO Hates BSD Too."
Two issues. Not everything that runs on Linux runs on BSD, even in the server environment. If you can live with that and work around it, there is still the hazard that SCO has indicated that they do not believe that BSD is necesarily free and clear either.
At the moment this does not seem to be a significant issue, SCO is much more interested in slowing down Linux deployment, or getting money from companies that they believe are violating their intelectual property, and are "bigger fish".
-Rusty
Hm... attached to the wrong comment... Oh well.
The fact that the school will not install WiFi should not limit the students. Simply set the WiFi card to ad-hoc rather than structured, and use the 169.254.x.x/16 address space (Windows and some linux dhcp clients will configure for this if they do not find a dhcp server) and start communicating.
If you really need access to the Internet in class, a single ethernet-WiFi bridge should connect anyone in the classroom if both a ethernet and power jack are close enough or in the room.
-Rusty
First of all, set some goals, and interim goals.
One of my journal entries reflects my own experience up to a year ago. I will need to update it one of these days.
Walking was a big part of my own success. There are other parts as well.
My only serious recomendation to do, outside of what I did, is talk your plans through with your doctor.
Additionally work with your doctor to find realistic goals. If you have crossed the age of 30 and are over weight or otherwise out of shape, you will have a harder time getting back into shape than if you start at 20 and have a plan you can live with to stay in shape. Even more so if you are over 40. Of course you could use that statement as a challenge to rise to. Your choice.
-Rusty
...to the products that Microsoft actually does well at.
If Microsoft would stick to hardware, such as keyboards, mice and joysticks, elements that Linux and the Open Source movement, and Free Software Foundation has no interest in, Microsoft would soon realize that their only competition is Logitech.
-Rusty
That's why the tractors follow the plows around, isn't it?
-Rusty
Certainly it qualifies. MSN Messenger 6 is available for anyone to use, without requiring you to purchase a copy of MSN Messenger at any version. MSN Messenger itself is free, so there is no purchase required.
Granted you have to have an operating system that MSN Messenger will run on to actually win, which I believe restricts you to Windows and possibly OS X, but that is no fault of the promotions people.
-Rusty
Probably the same reason they believe that the President will read paper mail that is sent to the Whitehouse.
I don't think most people believe that he will read either. I think most people believe that he has a team of people who get paid to screen both his paper and e-mail. A few people may get their messages past the screening process, because they are friends, etc. but the vast majority will be screened.
Of the messages that get sent in, well over 90% are going to fit into either supporting or opposing some view held by the president, and will be summarized as statistics. From what I understand all paper mail, and most e-mail gets a response thanking the submitter for their views.
A small portion of the mail is a request to have a family member get an autographed picture from the president for their birthday. I don't know if this is something that they are doing via e-mail at all. It may be one of the web form options however.
-Rusty
Any idea how much spam they are getting? Of that, how much do they really read?
I wonder how many times they have gotten the Nigerian Official's e-mail?
I suspect that the offer's for generic Viagra, HGH, Weight Loss, International Drivers Licence, etc. should also be falling on deaf ears.
I have enough trouble with my own e-mail, and I do not have one of the world's most well known e-mail addresses.
Granted the worst of the offenders have probably excluded all "@*.gov" addresses from their mailing lists, but I am sure they get enough of the rest.
-Rusty
I am sorry, he is not alledged to be the President. Since the Federal Court system was involved, we have to come to the conclusion that he was Convicted. With good behaviour he may be parolled after 4 years.
...Tom Clancies rendition of finding out who is selling the secrets.
Assuming you have agents in your enemies area, you provide each of your local agents with a slightly different copy of the material. Each copy is worded slightly differently, or contains a different trivial but interesting fact as part of the document.
If one of the local agents is selling information to the enemy, and one of your agents in the enemies area is spotting the material comming in, the wording, or trivia that gets back to you will indicate which of your local people is passing the material on.
If you have time, you generate two slightly different reports each time, and start doing psuedo random distribution of the copies, and track who had which copies that made it to the other side.
If you do not have an agent on the other side, you can sometimes cause your enemies themselves to show their hand by how they react to "wrong" information.
-Rusty
Believe me, I was only being denigrating to Slackware in jest.
Slackware was where I cut my teeth on Linux and GNU shell software. I did compile my own kernel, as the compiled kernel that was distributed didn't provide support for anything beyond a text mode shell. If you wanted to run X, or access one of the supported sound cards, you compiled the kernel, and it ended up being very stable.
I have since moved off the hardware I started with Slackware on, and in the process have moved onto other distributions. I can honestly say that I don't spend much time remenising about Slackware, as I don't think I want to go back to answering a questionair about the hardware to get to a kernel to support that hardware. I much prefer the module design that came along about the time I moved off of slackware.
-Rusty
... and exactly how is it better today?
Slackware is the first Linix Distro I used, though I admit it was a bit further along.
-Rusty
If you put the computer with Windows 2k on it, in a box, turned it on, and closed up and sealed the box while the bios was turned on, would you have two computers in the box, one running, one BSODed? Too bad the working one would not get anything done, it doesn't have any applications on it.
-Rusty
Anyone ever figure out how to *permanently* close those idiotic admin shares?
Um, overwrite the disk and put [Open|Free|Net]BSD on it?
No, I don't happen to use any of them either. I happily converted over to Linux some time ago, and don't see any good reason to switch back to a Microsoft product. At the moment I don't see a good reason to switch to BSD either, as my systems do pretty much exactly what I expect of them.
-Rusty
On top of not having credentials, the second to last paragraph is worded poorly enough to get me kicked. Even if it is just me doing the kicking.
-Rusty
It is possible that in the future, differential thrust may be an effective means of moving things through space near a body that has sufficent atmosphere density to work with.
A couple of questions come up however.
1)Is the material that works well for differential thrust, (preferably a material that will cause nearby mollecules to warm up, and bounce off of the surface) function well as a solar sail? My suspicion is that it does not, as I believe that a solar sail is going to function best as a means of changing the direction of solar wind particles with mass, rather than as a means of either absorbing them, or changing their velocity by increasing their heat value.
2) How large of a "sail" (for lack of a better word, though either 'radiator' or 'furnace' come to mind) will you need to effect acceleration by increasing the heat level of the nearby mollecules? Remember that in the radiometer experiment the propulsion method relied upon both heat and gravity. Heating the molecules on one side of the vane caused the molecule to become lighter than the molecules on the other side of the vane. Gravity caused the heated molecule to rise in relation to the cooler molecules, causing a low pressure to exist on the black side of the vane. The lower pressure on this side of the vane caused the higher pressure on the light side of the vane to move the vane towards the lower pressure area to equalize the system. Gold misinterpreted the situation by believing that reflecting photons provided an acceleration source compared to absorbing them.
The concept of Solar Sails relies upon reflecting, or possibly absorbing the energy of the solar wind. The mass involved in the radometer experiments compared to the available acceleration is unlikely to have been high enough to exceed the co-efficent of friction posed by the needle in the radiometer.
Then again, I haven't read the article, am writing off the cuff, and don't have any credentials to claim to know what I am talking about.
-Rusty
My suspicion would be that the hacker involved works at a game company that created the game that he found a way to include the method of bypassing the security for.
If that is the case, he would want to hide the fact that the exploit exists, as well as hiding the fact that he installed the exploit.
He would then have to make sure that the exploit made it through QA, and the game made it to the market. Next he has to verify for himself that he can take advantage of the exploit in the wild, then he can make others aware that the exploit is possible, preferably without revealing his identity.
But that's just one possibility. Maybe he did it just to see how obtuse he could make an exploit.
Disclaimer, the above are mearly ideas, I don't work at a game company, or for any company that I know has production involvement with any computer games, or any Microsoft products related to gaming.
-Rusty
2-3= -1, Without duplicating the story it has already posted two to many times...
-Rusty
He proposed it as a way of suggesting that it was the wrong way to do physics. He may have been wrong as well, but his intentions were not honorable.
-Rusty