It varies depending on the album. Recent purchases I've made have been encoded using LAME 3.97 with its V0 setting (~245 kbps VBR), this seems to be the default for MP3s encoded by Amazon. One self-published album I grabbed that was MP3 only was 320 kbps CBR. The MP3's I've downloaded via the site and via the downloader are bit-for-bit identical.
It's a pitty Amazon isn't more forthcoming on what the encoding is before you buy it, but I'd imagine whatever album you grabbed was simply provided to them as a 128 kbps file from the source.
While it may be true that different colored borders are supposed to mean varying levels of "trust", as in what component is running, I don't think any user would know that. The text in the dialogs doesn't appear to be different (that I can tell)
The text in the dialog is different. The two being talked about in this article say "Windows needs your permission to continue" and "A program needs your permission to continue". You can see an example of these dialogs here. Scroll about a third of the way down to a flow chart showing the dialogs.
Though, I think this is all much ado about nothing. Computer users these days have been trained to find and click on the "Continue" button as quickly as possible, I have yet to see why the UAC dialog will be any different.
Even without the income tax in Washington state, you're still supposed to pay use tax on items bought from out of state.
You can fill out a PDF form here that will calculate how much you owe. Now that you know, you can join the rest of Washington residents that ignore this.
This can be easily countered if the free e-mail sites configure their servers, so that the 'captchas' can only be loaded into pages that they've served themselves.
I've seen it done with something like this in a.htaccess:
SetEnvIf REFERER "mywebsitename\.com" linked_from_here
<Files *jpg>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from env=linked_from_here
ErrorDocument 403/fakeimage.jpg
</Files>
In other words, it's somewhat useful to prevent someone from trying to get at the image directly or link to the image from another page. However, it's nearly completly useless trying to prevent someone from blocking a script. All the script needs to do is feed the REFERER and the server won't be able to know it's not an interactive browser loading the image as part of a standard page load.
Re:Where are the receivers? This smells like a sha
on
Track a Soda Can with GPS?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
That article too, is light on details, but it claims that Coors Light was able to use a GPS based device in a bottle to locate winners and give them their prize.
Does anyone have any more details on how this system works? Does it only work if I decide to drink my Coke/Coors outside in an area with a good cell phone signal, and then only if I don't move for a minute after activating the GPS receiver?
That's what Audible is for. It's not free like AvantGo, but you can get news and talk to your PocketPC and listen to it during your commute.
I do it, and despite the quirky software Audible uses, it's nice. A lot better than the spotty radio around here, and like TiVo, I'm not stuck to someone's broadcast schedule.
Actually, traffic lights can be a real problem for some colorblind people. In my case it's not because I can't tell red from green so much as it's the green traffic light looks white to me. This is a real issue downtown, where it's common to have lights for pedestrians in the middle of a block. Unless I'm paying very careful attention I can easily confuse those lights with street lights, and ignore them, thus missing them when they turn yellow. I've long ago learned to only drive roads at night that I've memorized the location of traffic lights. If I need to go somewhere new at night, someone else drives.
My grandfather, who was considerably more colorblind than I am, once get a ticket for blazing through a red light. Whatever state he was in had their lights upside down from everyone else. No clue what state it was, or if they're still different than everyone else.
I don't know how much of that story is true (my grandfater liked to tell stories), but I can easily understand it. I'm rather colorblind, and I've learned not to trust my sense of colors over other things, since it's so often wrong.
if I re-learned those languages now, 30 years later? Would memories flood back?
No clue, I don't really know how memory works. Given that I remember seeing Les Miserables with spoken English (it's a French version, I know I saw it with subtitles, but I could speak enough French at the time to follow along), I suspect what language you know now doesn't really matter that much.
Yes you can. It's mentioned in the thread being linked to that you can drop in your own hash (or more precisely, the hash from the last software rev), and use that code.
Why are people still buying these devices if they don't offer the features they want or expect out of the box?
Hi. I'm Scott Seligman, the "Windows" link.
I can only speak for my motivation in doing this. For me the back door code is more of a toy than anything else. Some of the settings can be fun to experiment with. For the most part though, I'd still be a happy TiVo user without the back door code.
Heck, I personally own a DirecTiVo, so I'll never even get the version of the software being dealt with, though hopefully the same sort of system can be applied to whatever version I do end up. Mostly, it's a "the mountain was there" sort of challenge. I just wanted to see if I could do it. When I started work on the original version of the Windows port, I expected that the code would be found long before I had a working version.
This is cute and all, but imo, it'll end up doing the same thing that the 2x120gb upgrades do to the TiVo: Just show how miserable the TiVo is at dealing with a big number of programs.
It does work, but the results aren't something I'd like to deal with. One big list (at least you can change the sort order with the latest version of the software). No folders, no searching. Oh, and from what I hear, it can really slow down the TiVo. My un-hacked TiVo takes minutes to exit the season pass manager, and often stumbles for a few seconds pulling up the now playing list. I'd hate to think how long I'm staring at the "Please Wait" display if I had one of these uber-upgrades. Heck, it's bad enough on my unit: Which of the four South Parks is the one I haven't watched yet, and which three are the ones I'm saving for my SO to watch? No way to know from the list, and since it's a show on Comedy Central, there's no way to know without going into the program itself because guide data is sketchy.
Until TiVo really speeds up there system (assuming they can, there's not a lot of horsepower in your average TiVo box), and adds some more advanced options to organize and maintain shows, I think I'll just stick with my ~35 hours. 100+ hours is a nice idea, but IMO, TiVo just doesn't scale that well yet.
There is one thing I've heard about elections in the UK that Americans really need to grasp.
If a ballot is incorrectly marked, be it a "hanging chad" or a illegable mark on a pen-and-paper ballot, then it's tossed. They don't try and argue what the voter intended, or anything stupid like that, they just ignore the vote and move on with their life.
Actually, according to my friends that know more about laws than I do, that's actually how it's supposed to be here, but something got screwed up in all the lawsuits.
While GigaNews isn't an ISP, they got this whole bandwidth problem right. First off, they don't claim to give you unlimited bandwidth, but have different levels you can buy into. The thing they really do well, imo, is they offer a recycling option. If you want, they'll automatically send you an email when you get near your limit. Go over the limit, and they'll kick off into another month's billing cycle. So, you can intelligently plan your bandwidth usage, and if you want, you can pay to go over easily, without even doing anything. And best of all, changing plans is easy and painless to do. If ISPs are going to start capping user's bandwidth usage, I hope they do something like this.
Microsoft actually has a web server for the PocketPC 2002. Here's a bit of information on it.
The basic idea was to be able to port your existing ASP applications to the PocketPC quickly, so you can run them on the device without needing access to a net connection.
As far as file format goes, there exists a standard DV format (for Windows, at least) that allows lossless compression without the file shenanigans of this Creative board (and most others).
You often see the term loseless near DV stuff since the transfer from cam to computer, and editing, can all be done loselessly, but the initially recording is done with a bit of lost quailty with the DV codec.
You won't be able to download all the data you need from the cable broadcast.
For one thing, it's likely some local channels won't be included in that. It's my understanding that only the data that most of the country needs (national channels) will be included, but I could be wrong about that.
The really big problem, however, is the encryption. The data downloaded in the video signal is encrypted. The TiVo will still need to call in everyday and download the code to decrypt it (I'm guessing that's something like a private key, but who knows).
And that doesn't include the fact all TiVo's (even the DirecTV ones, which get nearly all the data from the satellite) still want to call in every day to verify account status (even for lifetime accounts), and upload the anonymous viewing stats. There are various hacks floating around for DirecTV people to get around this.. only time will tell if anyone comes out with a similiar hack for the stand alone unites.
We have a similiar sort of theater (minus the 802.11 junk) called Cinema Grill around here. It's a cute idea, but at least in this case, very poorly pulled off. The food was crappy, service was terrible.
To me, it's an intersting idea. You almost get to recreate the home theater expereince, only with new movies. IMO, even if it's pulled off well, it'll still fail, there's no pause button:)
The original poster was talking about the DirecTiVo (ie, the TiVo with integrated DirecTV service). These units do get the guide data off of the satellite, from DirecTV's APG.
Generally you don't have to use QWest or MSN as the ISP for DSL. I use QWest DSL, and I have about a dozen ISPs to pick from, including MSN. I went with someone else that would just give me a static IP address and leave me alone. They could care less what operating system I use.
There are already several attempts at this. One of my favorites is Musicbox. It's probably everything that's anti-Slashdot, but I still think it's a slick solution to playing MP3's on a computer connected to a home-theater system.
They offer replacement fans, power supplies (with fans that can turn themselves off), and little sound enclosures for hard drives.
I'm reasonably happy with their products (not sure what the enclosure will do to my hard drive's life, but I've had no problems yet). While my two computer apartment hasn't become perfectly quiet, virtually any noise source renders the computer's inaudible. Before I could always hear the hum of the computers, now I can actually watch TV without the background noise.
There's one big problem with gaming on the iPaq right now. You can't press two buttons at the same time. So you can't hold down fire and press any directional button. It's not clear if this is a hardware limitation, or a driver problem that could be fixed with a flash update, but it makes playing games quite less fun.
Slashdot Mirror
It varies depending on the album. Recent purchases I've made have been encoded using LAME 3.97 with its V0 setting (~245 kbps VBR), this seems to be the default for MP3s encoded by Amazon. One self-published album I grabbed that was MP3 only was 320 kbps CBR. The MP3's I've downloaded via the site and via the downloader are bit-for-bit identical.
It's a pitty Amazon isn't more forthcoming on what the encoding is before you buy it, but I'd imagine whatever album you grabbed was simply provided to them as a 128 kbps file from the source.
I missed NCD too. So I wrote CCD, for Windows' console users.
The text in the dialog is different. The two being talked about in this article say "Windows needs your permission to continue" and "A program needs your permission to continue". You can see an example of these dialogs here. Scroll about a third of the way down to a flow chart showing the dialogs.
Though, I think this is all much ado about nothing. Computer users these days have been trained to find and click on the "Continue" button as quickly as possible, I have yet to see why the UAC dialog will be any different.
You can fill out a PDF form here that will calculate how much you owe. Now that you know, you can join the rest of Washington residents that ignore this.
That article too, is light on details, but it claims that Coors Light was able to use a GPS based device in a bottle to locate winners and give them their prize.
Does anyone have any more details on how this system works? Does it only work if I decide to drink my Coke/Coors outside in an area with a good cell phone signal, and then only if I don't move for a minute after activating the GPS receiver?
I do it, and despite the quirky software Audible uses, it's nice. A lot better than the spotty radio around here, and like TiVo, I'm not stuck to someone's broadcast schedule.
Actually, traffic lights can be a real problem for some colorblind people. In my case it's not because I can't tell red from green so much as it's the green traffic light looks white to me. This is a real issue downtown, where it's common to have lights for pedestrians in the middle of a block. Unless I'm paying very careful attention I can easily confuse those lights with street lights, and ignore them, thus missing them when they turn yellow. I've long ago learned to only drive roads at night that I've memorized the location of traffic lights. If I need to go somewhere new at night, someone else drives.
My grandfather, who was considerably more colorblind than I am, once get a ticket for blazing through a red light. Whatever state he was in had their lights upside down from everyone else. No clue what state it was, or if they're still different than everyone else.
I don't know how much of that story is true (my grandfater liked to tell stories), but I can easily understand it. I'm rather colorblind, and I've learned not to trust my sense of colors over other things, since it's so often wrong.
No clue, I don't really know how memory works. Given that I remember seeing Les Miserables with spoken English (it's a French version, I know I saw it with subtitles, but I could speak enough French at the time to follow along), I suspect what language you know now doesn't really matter that much.
Or, I could just be an anomaly.
Yes you can. It's mentioned in the thread being linked to that you can drop in your own hash (or more precisely, the hash from the last software rev), and use that code.
Hi. I'm Scott Seligman, the "Windows" link.
I can only speak for my motivation in doing this. For me the back door code is more of a toy than anything else. Some of the settings can be fun to experiment with. For the most part though, I'd still be a happy TiVo user without the back door code.
Heck, I personally own a DirecTiVo, so I'll never even get the version of the software being dealt with, though hopefully the same sort of system can be applied to whatever version I do end up. Mostly, it's a "the mountain was there" sort of challenge. I just wanted to see if I could do it. When I started work on the original version of the Windows port, I expected that the code would be found long before I had a working version.
He lives on the coast of Lake Washington, which this project doesn't cover.
This is cute and all, but imo, it'll end up doing the same thing that the 2x120gb upgrades do to the TiVo: Just show how miserable the TiVo is at dealing with a big number of programs.
It does work, but the results aren't something I'd like to deal with. One big list (at least you can change the sort order with the latest version of the software). No folders, no searching. Oh, and from what I hear, it can really slow down the TiVo. My un-hacked TiVo takes minutes to exit the season pass manager, and often stumbles for a few seconds pulling up the now playing list. I'd hate to think how long I'm staring at the "Please Wait" display if I had one of these uber-upgrades. Heck, it's bad enough on my unit: Which of the four South Parks is the one I haven't watched yet, and which three are the ones I'm saving for my SO to watch? No way to know from the list, and since it's a show on Comedy Central, there's no way to know without going into the program itself because guide data is sketchy.
Until TiVo really speeds up there system (assuming they can, there's not a lot of horsepower in your average TiVo box), and adds some more advanced options to organize and maintain shows, I think I'll just stick with my ~35 hours. 100+ hours is a nice idea, but IMO, TiVo just doesn't scale that well yet.
There is one thing I've heard about elections in the UK that Americans really need to grasp.
If a ballot is incorrectly marked, be it a "hanging chad" or a illegable mark on a pen-and-paper ballot, then it's tossed. They don't try and argue what the voter intended, or anything stupid like that, they just ignore the vote and move on with their life.
Actually, according to my friends that know more about laws than I do, that's actually how it's supposed to be here, but something got screwed up in all the lawsuits.
While GigaNews isn't an ISP, they got this whole bandwidth problem right. First off, they don't claim to give you unlimited bandwidth, but have different levels you can buy into. The thing they really do well, imo, is they offer a recycling option. If you want, they'll automatically send you an email when you get near your limit. Go over the limit, and they'll kick off into another month's billing cycle. So, you can intelligently plan your bandwidth usage, and if you want, you can pay to go over easily, without even doing anything. And best of all, changing plans is easy and painless to do. If ISPs are going to start capping user's bandwidth usage, I hope they do something like this.
TiVo isn't a great example. They're not profitable, and don't look to be anytime soon.
And the only firewall company I personally know anything about, Watchguard, isn't profitable either.
The basic idea was to be able to port your existing ASP applications to the PocketPC quickly, so you can run them on the device without needing access to a net connection.
While DV might be good, it's not a lossless compression format. Here's some more information.
You often see the term loseless near DV stuff since the transfer from cam to computer, and editing, can all be done loselessly, but the initially recording is done with a bit of lost quailty with the DV codec.
You won't be able to download all the data you need from the cable broadcast.
.. only time will tell if anyone comes out with a similiar hack for the stand alone unites.
For one thing, it's likely some local channels won't be included in that. It's my understanding that only the data that most of the country needs (national channels) will be included, but I could be wrong about that.
The really big problem, however, is the encryption. The data downloaded in the video signal is encrypted. The TiVo will still need to call in everyday and download the code to decrypt it (I'm guessing that's something like a private key, but who knows).
And that doesn't include the fact all TiVo's (even the DirecTV ones, which get nearly all the data from the satellite) still want to call in every day to verify account status (even for lifetime accounts), and upload the anonymous viewing stats. There are various hacks floating around for DirecTV people to get around this
To me, it's an intersting idea. You almost get to recreate the home theater expereince, only with new movies. IMO, even if it's pulled off well, it'll still fail, there's no pause button :)
The original poster was talking about the DirecTiVo (ie, the TiVo with integrated DirecTV service). These units do get the guide data off of the satellite, from DirecTV's APG.
Generally you don't have to use QWest or MSN as the ISP for DSL. I use QWest DSL, and I have about a dozen ISPs to pick from, including MSN. I went with someone else that would just give me a static IP address and leave me alone. They could care less what operating system I use.
There are already several attempts at this. One of my favorites is Musicbox. It's probably everything that's anti-Slashdot, but I still think it's a slick solution to playing MP3's on a computer connected to a home-theater system.
They offer replacement fans, power supplies (with fans that can turn themselves off), and little sound enclosures for hard drives.
I'm reasonably happy with their products (not sure what the enclosure will do to my hard drive's life, but I've had no problems yet). While my two computer apartment hasn't become perfectly quiet, virtually any noise source renders the computer's inaudible. Before I could always hear the hum of the computers, now I can actually watch TV without the background noise.
There's one big problem with gaming on the iPaq right now. You can't press two buttons at the same time. So you can't hold down fire and press any directional button. It's not clear if this is a hardware limitation, or a driver problem that could be fixed with a flash update, but it makes playing games quite less fun.