Some insiders within the industry say that SunnComm's DRM technology is far superior to that of MacroVision in that it allows for more customization into how many times a CD can be copied onto a PC or moved to a portable device.
What I don't understand is how they can limit the number of copies. The vast majority of CD players are exactly that - players only, not writers. It's a read-only medium, so they can't be updating a copy count on the CD itself. They have to be assuming that you only ever use a single computer to play/copy the CD, so they can keep a copy count somewhere on disk, and don't ever take the disk to a different computer to copy it more times than allowed.
Or have I missed something vital?? And how would the copy know that it hadn't been cloned??
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
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Nuclear Batteries
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· Score: 1
Hah! Wretched cut'n'paste!! I copied that from the article, including the symbol for micro-. Guess that got filtered out, even though it showed up in the preview... I searched the text for both alpha and beta and only came up with beta. Dunno - maybe I spelled it wrong. It's been a long night...:)
Re:I used to have a nuclear wristwatch
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Nuclear Batteries
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· Score: 1
My physics teacher in school had a radium dial wristwatch that was more active than the "safe" radiation sources he kept in a big lead box, locked away in an under-stairs cupboard. And yes, the cupboard had a big radiation warning sign on it.
However, neither the sources nor his watch were as active as one of the standard reagents in the organic chemistry lab upstairs. IIRC, it was a bottle of uranyl acetate - acetate of uranium. I don't remember what test it was used for, but it just sat on an open shelf in the classroom, waiting to be picked up and used.
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
on
Nuclear Batteries
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· Score: 1
In one of the devices the radioactive source is a 4-square-millimeter thin film of nickel-63. According to the article, it's a beta-emitter, not an alpha-emitter, though I suppose the authors of the article could be hallucinating... Anyway, snide remarks aside, they say that the beta particles travel a maximum of 21 m in silicon before disintegrating so provided the thing is fairly solid and has a 21 m silicon wrapper around it, it ought to be safe.
Which would be faster, to send a text message, or to call and say, "Britney's on the corner of 1st & Main"?? Is it possible to bulk-text, like spamming a mailing list? Just asking - I don't use text messaging myself.
Traffic lights restrain your freedom to cross a street whenever you wish. But this restraint gives you the freedom from being run over by a truck.
I think it would be truer to say that traffic lights are purely advisory in nature. They don't actually prevent you from crossing the street, they just let you know when you are least likely to get run over by a truck. Your decision to cross, or not to cross, must always be taken in conjunction with a good look in both directions, so that you're not surprised by the mad fool who decided to run the lights, or who's brakes have failed, or who just had a heart attack and is dead at the wheel...
They'll probably release them as "commemorative editions" and charge up the wazoo for them as well.
You missed a step - reduce issues of the older media. I haven't really looked recently, because there's nothing I care to buy, but I don't think new vinyl LPs are commonly available. I doubt if you could get a new LP of either Beethoven or Britney.
I'm not trying to start a war over the relative merits of vinyl, CD, valve amps, etc, I'm just pointing out that both old and new stuff will be released on the new media, the price will be held artificially high, the artists still won't get much, if any, of a slice, and people who want to replace scratched or dog-bitten CDs will find it ever more difficult, until they're eventually forced to upgrade to the new media player.
Some long time ago I had a Gateway 28k8 modem that came with a callcenter application. You'd plug a regular telephone handset into the modem as well as the cord to the wall. From the callcenter app you could set up multiple voice mailboxes, with an outgoing message that said: "Press 1 for X; press 2 for Y; press 3 for Z, etc". Voicemail was stored on the PC and could be played back through the handset, just like a regular answering machine. It could also send and receive faxes. I think I got a similar app with a 56K PCI modem a couple of years back.
My point?? The app was "talking" down the phone line to the caller by copying to the phone line an audio file it recorded from the handset... No modem or fax tones, unless you used the builtin terminal or fax machine. The dialler doesn't have to be making a modem connection. It could simply say "yadayadayada" to its friend overseas. Your telco is charged by the remote telco based on length of call and the cost of the routing, not on the call content...
The fact they're unlikely to subscribers to an Irish telephone company...
And the telco could make it a rule only to open outgoing calls if the subscriber calls them from the line he wants enabled. Caller-id or a call back from the telco to the subscriber would verify ownership. Some extra effort for the telco, but how many non-business subscribers are likely to want to dial direct to Nigeria??
MBolongo: Hello, this is Michael at Cork 555-1234. Please to be allowing dis list of numbers to be calling to my brothers in Nigeria and China. Operator: Pull the other one, Bwana. Caller-id shows you're in West Africa. MBolongo: May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits!!!
Haven't they discovered the advantages of shared objects and dynamic linking yet?
I thought that was the whole point of DLLs?? Dynamic Link Library, right?? Or maybe the DLLs were just a way to insinuate little pieces of Internet Explorer into most apps so that it would be difficult to remove...
But that's the whole point - why are software companies allowed to get away with saying, "Give us money for this product that may or may not work, and if it does something unexpected, we're not responsible"??
If you buy a TV and find that it occasionally spontaneously switches channels or powers itself off, you'd take it back to the store real quick. Same thing with a VCR that randomly ejects a tape part way through recording something. Why have companies like Microsoft been able to get away with taking our money and shrugging off bugs with, "Oh well, shit happens. Pay for maintenance and we'll send you bugfixes, eventually. Buy the new improved version with some bugs fixed and a whole slew of new ones".
I suppose the answer is that they (Microsoft, at least) have more money than Croesus and liberally shovel it out into election campaign warchests.
Putting mission critical applications on Windows 95 is just plain stupid.
Not just stupid, it's a violation of the EULA. Or did they finally remove the bit that says something like: "not for use in life-or-death situations"??
Do you have to enter a pin on the token to get it to work?? I have an Axent Defender token which, if you get the pin wrong 3 times in a row, locks you out. It has be sent back to the company Security folks to be unlocked... Hours of fun for AOLers and their kids...:)
Whether there is or not, they could certainly have some fun with the MPAA. If it were me, I'd write back telling them, in the most insulting but respectable terms possible, that I had no intention of taking down anything whatsoever, and if they didn't like it they could bite me.
At the same time, I'd go visit my ISP and make sure that they were completely aware of the situation, that the content was in no way infringing, and ask them to reject any harassment from the MPAA.
I'm not sure I'd bother telling the MPAA that the content was not theirs to regulate, as the main purpose of the insulting reply would be to goad them into going to court... Shouldn't take more than about 30 seconds in front of any reasonable judge to show that the content wasn't any kind of movie. Then sit back and watch him tear strips off the prosecution...
Why wouldn't you at least have real people double checking for false positives?
Errrm, because you'd have to actually pay them?? Don't forget that motion picture studios aren't in the business of giving money away, which is why, through creative accounting, no movie shows a profit. Never mind the umpteen bazillion dollar box office take on the opening weekend, somehow the expenses almost exactly match the costs...
IIRC, that's how they screwed over the original artist who drew (and owned copyright on) the original Spiderman comics. He was offered, and accepted, a percentage of the profits, which turned out to be almost worthless. Or something very similar - it's been a while since I read that.
I'm with you on the "stupid and deliberate attempt to be shocking" theory. I just think that the media should have left it alone, with maybe a 5 second sound bite along the lines of "Ms Jackson's right tit was briefly exposed, but she was so far away that nobody got a good look". As usual, it was completely blown up out of all proportion in the mad scramble to attract just a few more viewers.
Slashdot Mirror
Unlike Gmail, this one appears to have pop3 access. That should make something like GmailFS easier to implement...
What I don't understand is how they can limit the number of copies. The vast majority of CD players are exactly that - players only, not writers. It's a read-only medium, so they can't be updating a copy count on the CD itself. They have to be assuming that you only ever use a single computer to play/copy the CD, so they can keep a copy count somewhere on disk, and don't ever take the disk to a different computer to copy it more times than allowed.
Or have I missed something vital?? And how would the copy know that it hadn't been cloned??
Hah! Wretched cut'n'paste!! I copied that from the article, including the symbol for micro-. Guess that got filtered out, even though it showed up in the preview... I searched the text for both alpha and beta and only came up with beta. Dunno - maybe I spelled it wrong. It's been a long night... :)
However, neither the sources nor his watch were as active as one of the standard reagents in the organic chemistry lab upstairs. IIRC, it was a bottle of uranyl acetate - acetate of uranium. I don't remember what test it was used for, but it just sat on an open shelf in the classroom, waiting to be picked up and used.
In one of the devices the radioactive source is a 4-square-millimeter thin film of nickel-63. According to the article, it's a beta-emitter, not an alpha-emitter, though I suppose the authors of the article could be hallucinating... Anyway, snide remarks aside, they say that the beta particles travel a maximum of 21 m in silicon before disintegrating so provided the thing is fairly solid and has a 21 m silicon wrapper around it, it ought to be safe.
Which would be faster, to send a text message, or to call and say, "Britney's on the corner of 1st & Main"?? Is it possible to bulk-text, like spamming a mailing list? Just asking - I don't use text messaging myself.
Suppose for a moment that Prince Harry prefers men with guns...
I think it would be truer to say that traffic lights are purely advisory in nature. They don't actually prevent you from crossing the street, they just let you know when you are least likely to get run over by a truck. Your decision to cross, or not to cross, must always be taken in conjunction with a good look in both directions, so that you're not surprised by the mad fool who decided to run the lights, or who's brakes have failed, or who just had a heart attack and is dead at the wheel...
So in this case, jump ship means that the scammers will target another country to get their calls from...
My point?? The app was "talking" down the phone line to the caller by copying to the phone line an audio file it recorded from the handset... No modem or fax tones, unless you used the builtin terminal or fax machine. The dialler doesn't have to be making a modem connection. It could simply say "yadayadayada" to its friend overseas. Your telco is charged by the remote telco based on length of call and the cost of the routing, not on the call content...
And the telco could make it a rule only to open outgoing calls if the subscriber calls them from the line he wants enabled. Caller-id or a call back from the telco to the subscriber would verify ownership. Some extra effort for the telco, but how many non-business subscribers are likely to want to dial direct to Nigeria??
MBolongo: Hello, this is Michael at Cork 555-1234. Please to be allowing dis list of numbers to be calling to my brothers in Nigeria and China.
Operator: Pull the other one, Bwana. Caller-id shows you're in West Africa.
MBolongo: May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits!!!
I thought that was the whole point of DLLs ?? Dynamic Link Library, right?? Or maybe the DLLs were just a way to insinuate little pieces of Internet Explorer into most apps so that it would be difficult to remove...
So maybe the corporate funeral fund should include some kind of trust fund to assist ex-employees in getting re-employed?
If you buy a TV and find that it occasionally spontaneously switches channels or powers itself off, you'd take it back to the store real quick. Same thing with a VCR that randomly ejects a tape part way through recording something. Why have companies like Microsoft been able to get away with taking our money and shrugging off bugs with, "Oh well, shit happens. Pay for maintenance and we'll send you bugfixes, eventually. Buy the new improved version with some bugs fixed and a whole slew of new ones".
I suppose the answer is that they (Microsoft, at least) have more money than Croesus and liberally shovel it out into election campaign warchests.
Yep! You got that exactly right! Je ne habla Esperanto, bitte :)
Hey, cool! I speak Esperanto like a native! :)
Any bets on when the backup was last booted?? Just after the primary, perhaps??
Not just stupid, it's a violation of the EULA. Or did they finally remove the bit that says something like: "not for use in life-or-death situations"??
And it's not all cool scientific shit either - IBM also does research on some less serious stuff, such as Burr Puzzles
The cat's undead...
Do you have to enter a pin on the token to get it to work?? I have an Axent Defender token which, if you get the pin wrong 3 times in a row, locks you out. It has be sent back to the company Security folks to be unlocked... Hours of fun for AOLers and their kids... :)
At the same time, I'd go visit my ISP and make sure that they were completely aware of the situation, that the content was in no way infringing, and ask them to reject any harassment from the MPAA.
I'm not sure I'd bother telling the MPAA that the content was not theirs to regulate, as the main purpose of the insulting reply would be to goad them into going to court... Shouldn't take more than about 30 seconds in front of any reasonable judge to show that the content wasn't any kind of movie. Then sit back and watch him tear strips off the prosecution...
Errrm, because you'd have to actually pay them?? Don't forget that motion picture studios aren't in the business of giving money away, which is why, through creative accounting, no movie shows a profit. Never mind the umpteen bazillion dollar box office take on the opening weekend, somehow the expenses almost exactly match the costs...
IIRC, that's how they screwed over the original artist who drew (and owned copyright on) the original Spiderman comics. He was offered, and accepted, a percentage of the profits, which turned out to be almost worthless. Or something very similar - it's been a while since I read that.
I'm with you on the "stupid and deliberate attempt to be shocking" theory. I just think that the media should have left it alone, with maybe a 5 second sound bite along the lines of "Ms Jackson's right tit was briefly exposed, but she was so far away that nobody got a good look". As usual, it was completely blown up out of all proportion in the mad scramble to attract just a few more viewers.