"It could never be made illegal...simply because it's a form of unwanted advertising. Ever take a trip on the highway and seen all the billboards? I don't like the way that the billboards cover up the country side. I think that billboards are a physical equivilent of email spam......see my point?"
No, I don't see your point. As a matter of fact, I think your metaphor is heavily flawed. As posted elsewhere in this thread, "billboards are passive and don't cost you resources to see."
As a matter of fact, Fax machine ads are more akin to e-mail SPAM than billboards. They've been outlawed too. Why? It costs people ink.
Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to make laws against unsolicited mail as they did for fax machines. The main reason being that it's a lot harder to prove that any significant amount of computer resources were used. It's easy to prove that somebody cost you a sheet of paper, you can even provide a mathematically sound cost for that resource. But that's a lot harder to do with digital bits. You don't pay for bandwidth, the electricity cost is negligable, and your e-mail address could have been acquired anywhere.
Worse yet, when somebody faxes you, you have an item on your phone bill that indicates where it came from. It's a lot harder to spoof a phone number than it is an e-mail address. (Isn't it irritating how fundamentally flawed the current e-mail system is today?)
What's my point? It's simple: The reason that law hasn't been passed is that nobody has a clear idea how it can be fairly enforced. It's too easy to send e-mail that's virtually untrackable. Even if they're tracked down, it's hard to enforce, especially if it's done overseas. And, it's relatively easy to block. The ones that don't get blocked... well pooey, it cost you a few seconds to delete.
I don't think the Gov't is going to get kicked into gear to deal with the SPAM until a corporate entity with thousands of comptuters claims it lost millions of dollars dealing with SPAM.
"Good for you. All consumers should join you in not buying CDs. [dontbuycds.org] Boycott the recording industry!"
The problem there is that a resulting sales decline will be attributed to P2P. What's that mean? Think SSSCA round 2.
An alternative approach would be a surge of spending with indie bands, or a surge of spending on used music that the RIAA gets no royalties on. You gotta send the message: "We're happy to pay for stuff, but we're unhappy with doing business with the RIAA."
"This might be due to the Klez virus or a variant. It forges the From address in email, using a random address from the victim's address book. "
You know, I thought about that. What puzzles me, though, is how they got a virus like that to watch web pages for email addresses. Have you heard of something like that? Nobody would have any reason to add that address to their address book.
"I just gave your email address to the jehovahs witness freaks that were at my door two minutes ago, enjoy the "awake" emails my friend."
Sorry to burst your bubble, my friend. Check out this rather important quote from the post you replied to:
"When this address is e-mailed, it automatically responds with "thanks for the unsolicited mail!" I don't read the messages unless somebody responds to it."
"The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has discovered (prepare to be amazed!) that revealing your email address in chat rooms can get you spammed. It claims to have taken action against spammers who harvest email addresses and use them to send fraudulent spam." Shocker! "
Revealing your email address on Slashdot can get you spammed. You may have noticed my sig says "Sig: I'm performing an experiment on the origination of SPAM, don't email me.". What I did was I set up a junkmail box and pointed my Slashdot email address at it. The only place this address has ever been made available is in my user address that is displayed whenever I comment. When this address is e-mailed, it automatically responds with "thanks for the unsolicited mail!" I don't read the messages unless somebody responds to it.
What prompted me to do this was the 'armor plate your email address' feature in my user settings here on Slashdot. It made me curious if having my e-mail address viewable in the comments I make would mean I'd recieve lots of Spam. My curiosity is satisfied: You can get a good deal of SPAM if you don't use the 'armor plating'.
You know what? They don't just look for e-mail addresses to send mail to. They also use the e-mail addresses as reply-to addresses. I found this out when I got an email from a guy who was puzzled by my auto-responder emailing him. It turns out that somebody sent a message to me and used his address as a reply-to address. Weird, Iddn't it? Fortunately he was very nice and we got that all settled, but it is a little disconcerting that the addresses are used in ways like that.
When I first started this experiment, I responded to the messages I got. I accused one guy of harvesting my address without really reading what the message said. Turns out, the guy ran a mailing list for local (to him) volunteer firefighters announcing a meeting. This wasn't the type of event that somebody would 'direct market'. Heh. Evidentally, somebody volunteered my user address only displayed on Slashdot to his list. How weird is that?
I am extremely curious if anybody has any insight into the motivations of people who'd use email addresses in these ways. I can understand somebody using my email addie as a reply to address, but I have no explanation for why somebody'd volunteer me for a volunteer firefighter's list.
"Then I realize Comcast is incompatible with Linux."
What are they doing that's proprietary? I don't know how Comcast works, but ATTBI uses a cable modem with an ethernet out port on it. It doesn't care what kind of computer is talking to it as long as it does TCP/IP.
I would understand if they were using a USB device or something, but I'm puzzled as to how it'd be incompatible with Linux. Could you please clarify?
*Note: I'm not challenging your information, I'm genuinely curious because I may end up being a Comcast customer as a result of this merger.*
Snapstream is a PC-based DVR. This is their solution to the satellite question. I'm not sure what it does for Mac, but it does show that Satellite users are not left out.:)
Re:Dumb Question.
on
Film Gimp
·
· Score: 5, Informative
"If a conventional monitor can't display the colors at that depth then how does the film editor know exactly what will end up on film after printing?"
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. It's not about what's displayed on the screen, it's about having enough color information to prevent color banding when doing things like brightness and contrast adjustments. The color banding is a result of rounding errors that stair-step the color values when adjusted too heavily. 16-bit images have a greater degree of accuracy, so rounding errors are reduced, as is the resulting color banding.
The end result is dithered down to 24-bits, but anything can look good at 24-bits. It's not a problem until you need to tighten in on information. It's kind of like resizing an image from 320 by 240 to 640 by 480. The image looks great at 320, but there are artifcacts to blowing it up to 640. If there was subpixel information in the original image, then the expansion to 640 would go a lot smoother. Try to imagine that in the color space.
*hoping I expressed that in a way that makes sense*
Re:You don't suppose the "viral" GPL plays here
on
Film Gimp
·
· Score: 2
"Of course, Scooby Doo would have been overpriced at "free", but that's completely beside the point."
Heh. What's the beef with Scooby Doo? I thought it was quite entertaining. Although I did see it shortly after Episode 2... Hmmmm. Come to think of it, I could probably find a root canal entertaining after AotC.
"I am probably not the only one who does not see the big deal with this, "so what" dragons layer is in 3d now, not exactly as revolutionary as it was when it first came out.."
Perhaps. Like Linux, though, this game's been on every piece of hardware imaginable.
"That's a very good point, assumming that public or possibly private building like the White House are made from mock-ups rather than on loacation, does credit need to be given?"
If you want to get technical, some model-makers use the original blueprints when they go into construction of a miniature. Do the architects who originally drew up those blueprints get credit? Heh.
"Um...what? Is their a correlational relationship between the technical wizardry of special effects and the art of storytelling?...They aren't "Storytelling Effects", they are "Visual Effects."
Lol! A few animation friends of mine had quite a laugh at that comment.
Consider this: How successful would Titanic have been if it had only half it's budget? It's a rethorical question. That means think about what I'm saying instead of trying to tell me the movie'd still work. It wouldn't.
I stand corrected, but I didn't think this bit was necessary:
"Honestly.. I hate to say it, but you seem to be doing nothing more than talking in circles."
I don't follow how I was 'talking in circles'. You obviously got my point, you even error corrected my post. (I appreciate that btw)
As for Linux's 'large user base', it's nowhere near what Windows' user base is, and that market is pretty well dilluted. Few PC Game companies are making more than a modest living. It's nowhere near as lucrative as the console market. Adding Linux to the mix is not going to do anything but make a game company's job a lot harder. If memory serves, one of the most prominent comapnies porting games to Linux sold games in the low tens of thousands. I'm not kidding.
Right now, Linux is not a gaming alternative. WineX is probably a far more interesting alternative than OpenGL if the game market is what Linux is after.
"The contiued success of OpenGL is vital for the survival of Linux on the desktop. Without it, making games for Linux is impractical. I don't think WineX can be counted on to keep up."
I think you make a good point. For the most part I agree with you, but I'd make one little change: Linux needs something like DirectX to succeed. Whether or not it is OpenGL is not crucial. The problem with OpenGL is it doesn't keep up with the features of new cards the way DirectX does.
Linux needs a developer who's on top of the game like MS is. The smart thing to do would be to mimick DirectX as much as possible, make it easier for a PC game developer using DirectX to port their game over to Linux. Let's be frank: With as few gamers running Linux as there are today, ports of existing games is all they're gonna get. Might as well work to make that transition easier.
"Does anybody else get the impression that "MJ" works for "XtremePcCentral"? I'm seeing a lot of this astroturfing on Slashdot lately, and it's lame. If you want to drive traffic to your site, buy an ad."
If the article is interesting to the/. Community, then who cares if it has a plug or not? Frankly, I thik it's lame getting modded as interesting when there are more importnt things about that article to discuss. Granted, I appreciate a breadth of perspectives, but whine whine whine.
"Weird. DirectX is the only Microsoft product that I know of that has made it to version 9.0 and not been renamed something like DirectX 2002 or DirectX.NET..."
I heard that they were going to start using Roman Numerals when DX 10 comes out. They'll call it DirectX X. Although, in light of the lowercase letter fad started by Apple, it'll probably be dIrect X x.
"IV, V and VI are NOT nearly as good from a visual point of view as I, II and very likely III are. Not even close."
Whoah I strongly disagree. With 4, 5, and 6, you knew what was going on. You knew who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. You knew who to feel sorrow for when the fell.
4, 5, and 6 may have had primitive effects, but the story telling was much better. In Episode II, people had no idea who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. It was clearer in Episode I, but they failed to make the audience emote. Nobody cared about the Gungans. Nobody cared about the Naboo pilots. Nobody was made to feel like they should care who wins.
The effects in the recent movies may be ahead technologically, but the lack of good storytelling with those effects ruined the movie's ability to make good use of those shots. Sorry, the VFX was better in the 4, 5, and 6 simply because the audience reacted to them.
Slashdot Mirror
"It could never be made illegal...simply because it's a form of unwanted advertising. Ever take a trip on the highway and seen all the billboards? I don't like the way that the billboards cover up the country side. I think that billboards are a physical equivilent of email spam......see my point?"
No, I don't see your point. As a matter of fact, I think your metaphor is heavily flawed. As posted elsewhere in this thread, "billboards are passive and don't cost you resources to see."
As a matter of fact, Fax machine ads are more akin to e-mail SPAM than billboards. They've been outlawed too. Why? It costs people ink.
Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to make laws against unsolicited mail as they did for fax machines. The main reason being that it's a lot harder to prove that any significant amount of computer resources were used. It's easy to prove that somebody cost you a sheet of paper, you can even provide a mathematically sound cost for that resource. But that's a lot harder to do with digital bits. You don't pay for bandwidth, the electricity cost is negligable, and your e-mail address could have been acquired anywhere.
Worse yet, when somebody faxes you, you have an item on your phone bill that indicates where it came from. It's a lot harder to spoof a phone number than it is an e-mail address. (Isn't it irritating how fundamentally flawed the current e-mail system is today?)
What's my point? It's simple: The reason that law hasn't been passed is that nobody has a clear idea how it can be fairly enforced. It's too easy to send e-mail that's virtually untrackable. Even if they're tracked down, it's hard to enforce, especially if it's done overseas. And, it's relatively easy to block. The ones that don't get blocked... well pooey, it cost you a few seconds to delete.
I don't think the Gov't is going to get kicked into gear to deal with the SPAM until a corporate entity with thousands of comptuters claims it lost millions of dollars dealing with SPAM.
"101. Giant Lizards are Cool - 'Nuff said."
What's ironic about that Giant Lizard is that it may get them sued out of existence. Yeah, that's a bonus. Whatever.
"That was me. Why didn't you respond to the last email I sent you?"
Did you send one? Send it again?
I've had mail disappear a few times this month, I thought I fixed that. I'm sorry.
"Good for you. All consumers should join you in not buying CDs. [dontbuycds.org] Boycott the recording industry!"
The problem there is that a resulting sales decline will be attributed to P2P. What's that mean? Think SSSCA round 2.
An alternative approach would be a surge of spending with indie bands, or a surge of spending on used music that the RIAA gets no royalties on. You gotta send the message: "We're happy to pay for stuff, but we're unhappy with doing business with the RIAA."
"This might be due to the Klez virus or a variant. It forges the From address in email, using a random address from the victim's address book. "
You know, I thought about that. What puzzles me, though, is how they got a virus like that to watch web pages for email addresses. Have you heard of something like that? Nobody would have any reason to add that address to their address book.
"I just gave your email address to the jehovahs witness freaks that were at my door two minutes ago, enjoy the "awake" emails my friend."
Sorry to burst your bubble, my friend. Check out this rather important quote from the post you replied to:
"When this address is e-mailed, it automatically responds with "thanks for the unsolicited mail!" I don't read the messages unless somebody responds to it."
I'll never see their messages, heh.
"The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has discovered (prepare to be amazed!) that revealing your email address in chat rooms can get you spammed. It claims to have taken action against spammers who harvest email addresses and use them to send fraudulent spam." Shocker! "
Revealing your email address on Slashdot can get you spammed. You may have noticed my sig says "Sig: I'm performing an experiment on the origination of SPAM, don't email me.". What I did was I set up a junkmail box and pointed my Slashdot email address at it. The only place this address has ever been made available is in my user address that is displayed whenever I comment. When this address is e-mailed, it automatically responds with "thanks for the unsolicited mail!" I don't read the messages unless somebody responds to it.
What prompted me to do this was the 'armor plate your email address' feature in my user settings here on Slashdot. It made me curious if having my e-mail address viewable in the comments I make would mean I'd recieve lots of Spam. My curiosity is satisfied: You can get a good deal of SPAM if you don't use the 'armor plating'.
You know what? They don't just look for e-mail addresses to send mail to. They also use the e-mail addresses as reply-to addresses. I found this out when I got an email from a guy who was puzzled by my auto-responder emailing him. It turns out that somebody sent a message to me and used his address as a reply-to address. Weird, Iddn't it? Fortunately he was very nice and we got that all settled, but it is a little disconcerting that the addresses are used in ways like that.
When I first started this experiment, I responded to the messages I got. I accused one guy of harvesting my address without really reading what the message said. Turns out, the guy ran a mailing list for local (to him) volunteer firefighters announcing a meeting. This wasn't the type of event that somebody would 'direct market'. Heh. Evidentally, somebody volunteered my user address only displayed on Slashdot to his list. How weird is that?
I am extremely curious if anybody has any insight into the motivations of people who'd use email addresses in these ways. I can understand somebody using my email addie as a reply to address, but I have no explanation for why somebody'd volunteer me for a volunteer firefighter's list.
"Seriously, linux w/ a touchscreen?? How useful is that?!"
You're asking the same crowd that thinks it's cool to install Linux on a watch.
.. they left out an important part of that sentence, let me fix it:
"The benefits of this transaction are considerable, the potential harm [to our margins] is negligible."
"Then I realize Comcast is incompatible with Linux."
What are they doing that's proprietary? I don't know how Comcast works, but ATTBI uses a cable modem with an ethernet out port on it. It doesn't care what kind of computer is talking to it as long as it does TCP/IP.
I would understand if they were using a USB device or something, but I'm puzzled as to how it'd be incompatible with Linux. Could you please clarify?
*Note: I'm not challenging your information, I'm genuinely curious because I may end up being a Comcast customer as a result of this merger.*
Wow, that was a nice thing to say. I really appreciate the note!
:)
Cheers man.
This link might be interesting to you:
p acks.html
:)
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/snapstreammedia/cable
Snapstream is a PC-based DVR. This is their solution to the satellite question. I'm not sure what it does for Mac, but it does show that Satellite users are not left out.
"If a conventional monitor can't display the colors at that depth then how does the film editor know exactly what will end up on film after printing?"
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. It's not about what's displayed on the screen, it's about having enough color information to prevent color banding when doing things like brightness and contrast adjustments. The color banding is a result of rounding errors that stair-step the color values when adjusted too heavily. 16-bit images have a greater degree of accuracy, so rounding errors are reduced, as is the resulting color banding.
The end result is dithered down to 24-bits, but anything can look good at 24-bits. It's not a problem until you need to tighten in on information. It's kind of like resizing an image from 320 by 240 to 640 by 480. The image looks great at 320, but there are artifcacts to blowing it up to 640. If there was subpixel information in the original image, then the expansion to 640 would go a lot smoother. Try to imagine that in the color space.
*hoping I expressed that in a way that makes sense*
"Of course, Scooby Doo would have been overpriced at "free", but that's completely beside the point."
Heh. What's the beef with Scooby Doo? I thought it was quite entertaining. Although I did see it shortly after Episode 2... Hmmmm. Come to think of it, I could probably find a root canal entertaining after AotC.
"No, ISPs should NOT be blocking ANY ports."
Why not have the ISP block the ports by default and give you an option to enable them via web interface?
Let the ISP be the firewall...
"I am probably not the only one who does not see the big deal with this, "so what" dragons layer is in 3d now, not exactly as revolutionary as it was when it first came out. ."
Perhaps. Like Linux, though, this game's been on every piece of hardware imaginable.
"for a full list see this web address: http://bigbuxmovie.com/credits"
a rw arsepisode2attackoftheclones/credits
You forgot the studio name:
http://www.lucasfilmfoundedbygeorgelucas.com/st
"That's a very good point, assumming that public or possibly private building like the White House are made from mock-ups rather than on loacation, does credit need to be given?"
If you want to get technical, some model-makers use the original blueprints when they go into construction of a miniature. Do the architects who originally drew up those blueprints get credit? Heh.
Imagine how long the credits of a movie would be!
"Um...what? Is their a correlational relationship between the technical wizardry of special effects and the art of storytelling?...They aren't "Storytelling Effects", they are "Visual Effects."
Lol! A few animation friends of mine had quite a laugh at that comment.
Consider this: How successful would Titanic have been if it had only half it's budget? It's a rethorical question. That means think about what I'm saying instead of trying to tell me the movie'd still work. It wouldn't.
I stand corrected, but I didn't think this bit was necessary:
"Honestly.. I hate to say it, but you seem to be doing nothing more than talking in circles."
I don't follow how I was 'talking in circles'. You obviously got my point, you even error corrected my post. (I appreciate that btw)
As for Linux's 'large user base', it's nowhere near what Windows' user base is, and that market is pretty well dilluted. Few PC Game companies are making more than a modest living. It's nowhere near as lucrative as the console market. Adding Linux to the mix is not going to do anything but make a game company's job a lot harder. If memory serves, one of the most prominent comapnies porting games to Linux sold games in the low tens of thousands. I'm not kidding.
Right now, Linux is not a gaming alternative. WineX is probably a far more interesting alternative than OpenGL if the game market is what Linux is after.
"The contiued success of OpenGL is vital for the survival of Linux on the desktop. Without it, making games for Linux is impractical. I don't think WineX can be counted on to keep up."
I think you make a good point. For the most part I agree with you, but I'd make one little change: Linux needs something like DirectX to succeed. Whether or not it is OpenGL is not crucial. The problem with OpenGL is it doesn't keep up with the features of new cards the way DirectX does.
Linux needs a developer who's on top of the game like MS is. The smart thing to do would be to mimick DirectX as much as possible, make it easier for a PC game developer using DirectX to port their game over to Linux. Let's be frank: With as few gamers running Linux as there are today, ports of existing games is all they're gonna get. Might as well work to make that transition easier.
"Does anybody else get the impression that "MJ" works for "XtremePcCentral"? I'm seeing a lot of this astroturfing on Slashdot lately, and it's lame. If you want to drive traffic to your site, buy an ad."
/. Community, then who cares if it has a plug or not? Frankly, I thik it's lame getting modded as interesting when there are more importnt things about that article to discuss. Granted, I appreciate a breadth of perspectives, but whine whine whine.
If the article is interesting to the
"Weird. DirectX is the only Microsoft product that I know of that has made it to version 9.0 and not been renamed something like DirectX 2002 or DirectX.NET..."
I heard that they were going to start using Roman Numerals when DX 10 comes out. They'll call it DirectX X. Although, in light of the lowercase letter fad started by Apple, it'll probably be dIrect X x.
"IV, V and VI are NOT nearly as good from a visual point of view as I, II and very likely III are. Not even close."
Whoah I strongly disagree. With 4, 5, and 6, you knew what was going on. You knew who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. You knew who to feel sorrow for when the fell.
4, 5, and 6 may have had primitive effects, but the story telling was much better. In Episode II, people had no idea who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. It was clearer in Episode I, but they failed to make the audience emote. Nobody cared about the Gungans. Nobody cared about the Naboo pilots. Nobody was made to feel like they should care who wins.
The effects in the recent movies may be ahead technologically, but the lack of good storytelling with those effects ruined the movie's ability to make good use of those shots. Sorry, the VFX was better in the 4, 5, and 6 simply because the audience reacted to them.
And my high school collegeues made fun of my lack of social life. Ha!