My point, oh 733'|'ish one, is that he said he needed to publish some audio files. It usually stands to reason that if you intend to publish something, then you have the original raw version (or something of comparable quality), in your posession.
If you can get those audio files into WAV or CD format you can get them to OGG effortlessly. Just head on over to CDex on sourceforge and download their CD ripper.
Not only does it quickly and effectively rip CDs but it can turn WAV files into the encoding format of choice just as painlessly.
Good luck with your publishing by the way, would you care to describe what you're publishing?
It feels really cool when somethign you've been into for like over a year starts to become popular in a mainstream way.
Think about what you just said, then observe your own minor complaints about its popularity that come immediately therafter. That list of complaints will only grow as it becomes more popular.
Take it from a goth: when something you're into goes wildly mainstream, it is not cool.
Do you understand how the slash program works? This isn't like CNN. It's a glorified message board that does a fairly good job of keeping people on topic with thoughtful and relevant conversation.
I'm not trolling either. I think slashdot is a good thing, I just don't think it should be considered journalism...
As many of you may know, the U.S. Armed forces have been researching a silent velcro, pretty much ever since velcro was invented. If we could recreate the effect the gecko displays I'm sure it would solve that problem. What other technical applications might recreating this process apply to?
So for all the trolling yuppies (I can please everyone, really) out there with the "cloudy" jokes (thanks, by the way, for making known your expertise on convection currents) here's how it saves a United States hospital money. Pay attention now:
Two high-intensity light beams!
No, really they can have redundant systems. Use the solar power on a sunny day and the electrical on a cloudy day (or the late hours). They still save money while sacrificing no reliability.
With all the database and server administration talk around here you'd think a few slashdotters would pick up the concept of redundant systems...
Have you been paying attention? OpenSource releases patches quicker than any closed development method.
Like a remote hole on OpenBSD with a patch released merely six days later.
Get your lovable, huggable, faceless corporation to do that...
I'll bet you $20,000 it will take 24 hours before the next MS vulnerability is discovered. Then I'll give Andreas Sandblad $10,000 and have him find another one. It was supposedly a fairly trivial process...
When you're fighting for the free speech of megalomaniac run corporations, I ask that you always keep in mind what they would do with your free speech.
I'm not trying to change your opinion. Just try to remember that information has become a commodity. So that means anyone with the capability of distributing information (everyone) is a target for people who wish to base their business on such actions. Just keep it in mind. This is war. Corporations are becoming more militant in their push for legislation while individuals are using more civil disobediance.
Personally, I value the individual's right to free speech before any group's right to free speech.
You're forgetting the "Carmack Factor" though. Id Software's games are still, today, the benchmark for video cards and even entire computer systems. As long as John Carmack (our ray of hope, benevolent leader, Arena Master) stays with OpenGL, hardware manufacturers must support it.
Noone wants to be the company that is mentioned in a review like this:
"Well, we tried to test this machine against Quake3. Sadly, it only supports DirectX 9 with the default setup. I suppose you'll have to buy this rig plus a graphics card if you're a gamer..."
It's marketing suicide. And we all know that marketing must have the features they want, even if rival specifications have more technical merit.
You're right, we should launch one of our atomic clocks into rotation around the earth and launch another into space and keep it stationary (in relation to what noone could tell you, but that's not important right now). Then we'll just pick it up and observe the time difference some billion years later.
Two underrated pieces of entertainment for something cool?
Easy!
Brittney Spears and the Discovery Channel show: Man Eaters.
Putting two really crappy entertainment pieces together to constitute a degree of suckiness which forever kills all entertainment you might experience for the rest of your life is hard. Sims + Survivor comes real close...
Re:Internet is a peer-to-peer network...
on
RIAA Smacked by DoS
·
· Score: 1
The ironic twist is that, given the RIAA infringes on copyrights in addition to the people they seek to target, it doesn't matter what phrase you replace "peer-to-peer" with, they're still a target.
So unless they can pass legislation saying "The RIAA may legally be vigilantes" or some other rediculous decree, they're shooting themselves in the foot with a magnum while shooting a room full of 40 million people with a pellet gun. All we need is one abused artist to give us the go ahead... one artist to pull that trigger on the magnum...
Since they use colocated servers like most large websites to share up-to-date data, they can be considered a peer-to-peer network. If you look at the definition of the phrase.
Think of it, they're already "sharing" "samples" of music tracks on almost every CD sold through their site, and they do so through independant servers connected on a central network. They're peer-to-peer, just not in the public user sense most people associate with the phrase.
Fundamentally, what the RIAA is doing and what the public is doing for itself are almost exactly alike. The difference (and unmistakably the percieved kick in the balls from the RIAA's point of view) is that the RIAA holds no control over these public networks.
Their problem isn't the "piracy" issue for them. This isn't a moral battle they're fighting. As many have already mentioned, their motivation is money, pure and simple. The problem, from the RIAA's point of view, is that people aren't hearing what the RIAA wants them to hear. Consider the fact that top 40 lists by BillBoard and radio stations hold few similarities to the most popular downloads on peer-to-peer networks and you'll see what I'm talking about.
People are listening to the music they want to listen to, rather than buying what record labels tell them is good. Their control has been taken from them.
Now I already mentioned money. Many of you are already aware that CD sales have been either steady or steadily increasing for the RIAA's members with peer-to-peer network sharing. So many people are confused on how the RIAA could claim a loss of revenue when their CD sales were up for the year. Allow me to give you my opinion on this apparent conundrum:
There's a remarkable amount of costs involved in the creation of music. Record labels must sign artists, record their music, promote their music, re-license their music, distribute it, etc. etc. The advertising, above all, is the primary cost in this industry. Now all of a sudden people are listening to lesser-known artists (lesser-known because they're under-advertised) and liking them. Now people want this CD that they previously didn't know about. Now the RIAA has to start producing more merchandise and advertising for it.
Basically, peer-to-peer networks encourage diversity, and it's this diversity that hurts the recording industry (though it does not have to).
But the RIAA might be in for some trouble if the bill is passed.
Think about it: The RIAA has (and still does) sell works created by independant copyright owners. They don't keep perfect track of their signings with artists and are, sometimes, selling records which they don't hold the copyright to. Artists have come forth in the courts and said this.
Given that this is the case, an artist can give a group (in this case the public at large) permission to attack any server network participating in the distribution of their copyrighted works. This is not limited to riaa.org. If CDNow.com is selling the CD that the RIAA is distributing illegally they're open to attack too. I mean, just look at how loose the wording is:
"...use of technologies to prevent infringement of copyrighted works on peer-to-peer computer networks"
Translation: any copyright owner can technologically attack anyone infringing upon their copyrights as long as the target of their attack can be described as a "peer-to-peer computer network."
Besides that, the RIAA is acting no less childish than the people that DoS'ed them. Their current actions in regards to this legislation are equivelant to signing onto a Cult of the Dead Cows message board and proclaiming a hacker war. It doesn't matter if it's legal or not you can't expect them to just sit there and take whatever you throw at them.
A: Forks are not negative, don't put them in that light, forks are a natural occurance when two people have different goals. It doesn't hurt your project, it allows people who have simlilar goals with you to work on your project, and people who have similar goals with the other project to work on it. If you program isn't scratching my itch, I am not going to work on it anyway, so don't feel like you lost me, someone else just gained me. You can't assume competetion, if the projects are different enough to generate a fork, they are different enough to get different types of developers with different goals.
I'd like to add that this improves the quality of the developers which join your main fork. With less people working under a different vision on the other fork, you'll get more people with a vision similar to yours working on your project. Essentially what would seem like trash to you, but isn't with the other fork, is conveniently routed their way. It also makes feedback easy to handle, you merely say "You might be interested in the work of 'x' project..."
The part I don't get about all the complaining that's done these days is that reading and responding to slashdot posts is completely optional. Someone obviously thought it better, for themselves and others of like interests, to collect what one expects to be high calibur opinions into one point of reference, rather than get a hail storm of vaguely relevant web pages. Naturally the editor probably thought it a valid point for discussion as well.
I'm also under the distinct impression that users may ignore any topic type they feel is not entertaining in some way via the control panel.
It's common courtesty to provide constructive feedback, or none at all. I, myself, have found this topic very informative. I imagine many other developers who are in the position of considering open sourcing their projects feel the same.
Hell, why don't you go have your fun looking up everything on google (everything we see on slashdot can be found there afterall) and we'll have our fun discussing these issues in a somewhat constructive manner...
It's imperative that we always remember the importance of the extremists. They broaden our options and force the opposition to reconsider their approach.
While I agree that the vocalism of the activists was a poor representation of many reasonable consumers' true concerns, taking a "all or nothing" approach makes sense in light of something as controversial as the DRM.
No, I don't think content should be uncopyrighted. Afterall, what comes with free in relation to the internet and television? Advertisements, many of them. We save with our pocketbooks and pay with a decrease in entertainment value. Businesses have to make money, and they will find a way. So why not pay for what entertains you?
Whether or not the extremists agree with this reasoning is beside the point. The items on their agenda that they're most likely to acquire ( such as the fair use/single backup copy guarantee to consumers being upheld ) is in-line with what the majority wants.
I guess my point, in summary, is that in the face of large companies attempting to create unfair legislation, it helps to have people directly opposing them loudly and rudely.
It's my understanding that the human eye sees at approximately 60fps, not that it can't tell the difference between 60fps and 120fps. It COULD be smooth if the monitor was synced with your brain but we all know its not. I don't know about the rest of you but I have an easy time telling between 90 FPS and 120 FPS.
Who came up with these numbers anyways? They could easily be referring to movie or television framerates (which IIRC are approximately 60 FPS). The diffence here is that television is blurry as all hell with quite a crapload of noise. It becomes quite difficult to tell any theoretical difference in framerates while watching television. With video games we see solid colors and high resolutions. Which makes movement easier to distinguish, and therefore, easier to gauge with the naked eye.
Re:Not if the trademark lawyers have a say
on
Robot Wars
·
· Score: 1
Are you saying the lawyers would go head to head with two tons of projectile launching, bone-crushing, homicidal, robotic machines of war?
Oh wait, they're lawyers; they don't fear anything...
Slashdot Mirror
I finally found something more overwhelming than HTML 4.01 (transitional) validation of Microsoft's website.
My point, oh 733'|'ish one, is that he said he needed to publish some audio files. It usually stands to reason that if you intend to publish something, then you have the original raw version (or something of comparable quality), in your posession.
If you can get those audio files into WAV or CD format you can get them to OGG effortlessly. Just head on over to CDex on sourceforge and download their CD ripper.
Not only does it quickly and effectively rip CDs but it can turn WAV files into the encoding format of choice just as painlessly. Good luck with your publishing by the way, would you care to describe what you're publishing?
Think about what you just said, then observe your own minor complaints about its popularity that come immediately therafter. That list of complaints will only grow as it becomes more popular.
Take it from a goth: when something you're into goes wildly mainstream, it is not cool.
Do you understand how the slash program works? This isn't like CNN. It's a glorified message board that does a fairly good job of keeping people on topic with thoughtful and relevant conversation.
I'm not trolling either. I think slashdot is a good thing, I just don't think it should be considered journalism...
As many of you may know, the U.S. Armed forces have been researching a silent velcro, pretty much ever since velcro was invented. If we could recreate the effect the gecko displays I'm sure it would solve that problem. What other technical applications might recreating this process apply to?
Let's look at it this way:
High power lasers suck up a lot of juice right?
So for all the trolling yuppies (I can please everyone, really) out there with the "cloudy" jokes (thanks, by the way, for making known your expertise on convection currents) here's how it saves a United States hospital money. Pay attention now:
Two high-intensity light beams!
No, really they can have redundant systems. Use the solar power on a sunny day and the electrical on a cloudy day (or the late hours). They still save money while sacrificing no reliability.
With all the database and server administration talk around here you'd think a few slashdotters would pick up the concept of redundant systems...
(Okay so I didn't please everybody.)
Have you been paying attention? OpenSource releases patches quicker than any closed development method. Like a remote hole on OpenBSD with a patch released merely six days later. Get your lovable, huggable, faceless corporation to do that...
I'll bet you $20,000 it will take 24 hours before the next MS vulnerability is discovered. Then I'll give Andreas Sandblad $10,000 and have him find another one. It was supposedly a fairly trivial process...
When you're fighting for the free speech of megalomaniac run corporations, I ask that you always keep in mind what they would do with your free speech.
I'm not trying to change your opinion. Just try to remember that information has become a commodity. So that means anyone with the capability of distributing information (everyone) is a target for people who wish to base their business on such actions. Just keep it in mind. This is war. Corporations are becoming more militant in their push for legislation while individuals are using more civil disobediance.
Personally, I value the individual's right to free speech before any group's right to free speech.
I reccomend the Samsung Yepp for your needs. Small as all hell with 64 Megs of ram.
It may come to replace my current Rio 500 soon.
There's also an under-publicized 128 meg version I found on pricewatch here.
So you're a disciple of Quake 3 too?
You're forgetting the "Carmack Factor" though. Id Software's games are still, today, the benchmark for video cards and even entire computer systems. As long as John Carmack (our ray of hope, benevolent leader, Arena Master) stays with OpenGL, hardware manufacturers must support it.
Noone wants to be the company that is mentioned in a review like this:
"Well, we tried to test this machine against Quake3. Sadly, it only supports DirectX 9 with the default setup. I suppose you'll have to buy this rig plus a graphics card if you're a gamer..."
It's marketing suicide. And we all know that marketing must have the features they want, even if rival specifications have more technical merit.
You're right, we should launch one of our atomic clocks into rotation around the earth and launch another into space and keep it stationary (in relation to what noone could tell you, but that's not important right now). Then we'll just pick it up and observe the time difference some billion years later.
Two underrated pieces of entertainment for something cool?
Easy!
Brittney Spears and the Discovery Channel show: Man Eaters.
Putting two really crappy entertainment pieces together to constitute a degree of suckiness which forever kills all entertainment you might experience for the rest of your life is hard. Sims + Survivor comes real close...
The ironic twist is that, given the RIAA infringes on copyrights in addition to the people they seek to target, it doesn't matter what phrase you replace "peer-to-peer" with, they're still a target.
So unless they can pass legislation saying "The RIAA may legally be vigilantes" or some other rediculous decree, they're shooting themselves in the foot with a magnum while shooting a room full of 40 million people with a pellet gun. All we need is one abused artist to give us the go ahead... one artist to pull that trigger on the magnum...
Since they use colocated servers like most large websites to share up-to-date data, they can be considered a peer-to-peer network. If you look at the definition of the phrase.
Think of it, they're already "sharing" "samples" of music tracks on almost every CD sold through their site, and they do so through independant servers connected on a central network. They're peer-to-peer, just not in the public user sense most people associate with the phrase.
Fundamentally, what the RIAA is doing and what the public is doing for itself are almost exactly alike. The difference (and unmistakably the percieved kick in the balls from the RIAA's point of view) is that the RIAA holds no control over these public networks.
Their problem isn't the "piracy" issue for them. This isn't a moral battle they're fighting. As many have already mentioned, their motivation is money, pure and simple. The problem, from the RIAA's point of view, is that people aren't hearing what the RIAA wants them to hear. Consider the fact that top 40 lists by BillBoard and radio stations hold few similarities to the most popular downloads on peer-to-peer networks and you'll see what I'm talking about.
People are listening to the music they want to listen to, rather than buying what record labels tell them is good. Their control has been taken from them.
Now I already mentioned money. Many of you are already aware that CD sales have been either steady or steadily increasing for the RIAA's members with peer-to-peer network sharing. So many people are confused on how the RIAA could claim a loss of revenue when their CD sales were up for the year. Allow me to give you my opinion on this apparent conundrum:
There's a remarkable amount of costs involved in the creation of music. Record labels must sign artists, record their music, promote their music, re-license their music, distribute it, etc. etc. The advertising, above all, is the primary cost in this industry. Now all of a sudden people are listening to lesser-known artists (lesser-known because they're under-advertised) and liking them. Now people want this CD that they previously didn't know about. Now the RIAA has to start producing more merchandise and advertising for it.
Basically, peer-to-peer networks encourage diversity, and it's this diversity that hurts the recording industry (though it does not have to).
But the RIAA might be in for some trouble if the bill is passed.
Think about it: The RIAA has (and still does) sell works created by independant copyright owners. They don't keep perfect track of their signings with artists and are, sometimes, selling records which they don't hold the copyright to. Artists have come forth in the courts and said this.
Given that this is the case, an artist can give a group (in this case the public at large) permission to attack any server network participating in the distribution of their copyrighted works. This is not limited to riaa.org. If CDNow.com is selling the CD that the RIAA is distributing illegally they're open to attack too. I mean, just look at how loose the wording is:
"...use of technologies to prevent infringement of copyrighted works on peer-to-peer computer networks"
Translation: any copyright owner can technologically attack anyone infringing upon their copyrights as long as the target of their attack can be described as a "peer-to-peer computer network."
Besides that, the RIAA is acting no less childish than the people that DoS'ed them. Their current actions in regards to this legislation are equivelant to signing onto a Cult of the Dead Cows message board and proclaiming a hacker war. It doesn't matter if it's legal or not you can't expect them to just sit there and take whatever you throw at them.
It's childish to declare a hacker war.
It's foolish to declare a war on all hackers.
It's pure ignorance to believe you can win.
I stand corrected, thank you. Though I swear I saw such a spec on that "ProPNG" website...
I'd like to add that this improves the quality of the developers which join your main fork. With less people working under a different vision on the other fork, you'll get more people with a vision similar to yours working on your project. Essentially what would seem like trash to you, but isn't with the other fork, is conveniently routed their way. It also makes feedback easy to handle, you merely say "You might be interested in the work of 'x' project..."
The part I don't get about all the complaining that's done these days is that reading and responding to slashdot posts is completely optional. Someone obviously thought it better, for themselves and others of like interests, to collect what one expects to be high calibur opinions into one point of reference, rather than get a hail storm of vaguely relevant web pages. Naturally the editor probably thought it a valid point for discussion as well.
I'm also under the distinct impression that users may ignore any topic type they feel is not entertaining in some way via the control panel.
It's common courtesty to provide constructive feedback, or none at all. I, myself, have found this topic very informative. I imagine many other developers who are in the position of considering open sourcing their projects feel the same.
Hell, why don't you go have your fun looking up everything on google (everything we see on slashdot can be found there afterall) and we'll have our fun discussing these issues in a somewhat constructive manner...
The AC is right. The PNG specs include instructions for lossy compression. Doesn't anyone read specs these days?
I mean, noone realizes that you're not really writing HTML 4.01 compliant code when you use the FONT tag...
It's imperative that we always remember the importance of the extremists. They broaden our options and force the opposition to reconsider their approach. While I agree that the vocalism of the activists was a poor representation of many reasonable consumers' true concerns, taking a "all or nothing" approach makes sense in light of something as controversial as the DRM. No, I don't think content should be uncopyrighted. Afterall, what comes with free in relation to the internet and television? Advertisements, many of them. We save with our pocketbooks and pay with a decrease in entertainment value. Businesses have to make money, and they will find a way. So why not pay for what entertains you? Whether or not the extremists agree with this reasoning is beside the point. The items on their agenda that they're most likely to acquire ( such as the fair use/single backup copy guarantee to consumers being upheld ) is in-line with what the majority wants. I guess my point, in summary, is that in the face of large companies attempting to create unfair legislation, it helps to have people directly opposing them loudly and rudely.
It's my understanding that the human eye sees at approximately 60fps, not that it can't tell the difference between 60fps and 120fps. It COULD be smooth if the monitor was synced with your brain but we all know its not. I don't know about the rest of you but I have an easy time telling between 90 FPS and 120 FPS.
Who came up with these numbers anyways? They could easily be referring to movie or television framerates (which IIRC are approximately 60 FPS). The diffence here is that television is blurry as all hell with quite a crapload of noise. It becomes quite difficult to tell any theoretical difference in framerates while watching television. With video games we see solid colors and high resolutions. Which makes movement easier to distinguish, and therefore, easier to gauge with the naked eye.
Are you saying the lawyers would go head to head with two tons of projectile launching, bone-crushing, homicidal, robotic machines of war?
Oh wait, they're lawyers; they don't fear anything...