Not likely. MP3 is a lossy compression. The "secret bits" would be at the mercy of the MP3 compression scheme rendering them useless.
That is if they decided to use so-last-century technique of encoding the message in the least significant bits of data. There are numerous ways of encoding the message in the most important bits of data, and without adversely affecting the usability (visual or audio quality) of the material the message is encoded in.
I suggest some reading up of spread spectrum encoding techniques. Robust (tamper-resistant) watermarking technologies employ one or another implementation of that for a number of years now.
/. basicaly started as a place to bash microsoft, support linux, GNU, etc, so what drove you here?
Actually, the caption reads 'News for Nerds. Stuff that matters'. That would be my guess as to why the majority of the people some here.
Personally, I find childish MS bashing, trolling and zealotry as just icing on the cake. I'm a Windows power user & developer, and besides of being entertainment, it's always good to listen to differing opinions, ocassionally you get to learn something.
And, besides, I have this fondness for Linux evangelists. They remind me of myself some 10 years ago when I was an true-to-the-bone Amigan, and similarly despised everything Microsoftesque.;-)
The difference is, we (the few, the proud, the Amigans) had MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 to bash, so our jobs were much easier, and view of the world much clearer.;-)
My dumbass is actually running SQL Server 2000...my switch was lit up completely. I've never seen the traffic light glow more solid than the connection light.
Well if you took the time and installed the patches (which have been out for some time, also included in SP3, BTW), you wouldn't have been a part of the problem, you would have been a part of the solution.
My only question is that if this is so important, why do they banish it to parts unknown (pardon, the depths of their Technet site) rather than placing it in everybody's Start menu?
Actually, we already did this bit on Slashdot. It was back when MS released SP3 for Win2k which basically did just that (installed an automated patch collection/installation system, placed it in the start menu and system tray). And, IIRC, back then the consensus was that it's A Bad Thing(tm).:-)
Anyways, it's there if you want it. Ignorance is no excuse.
Re:Before everyone shouts global warming...
on
The Sky Is Rising
·
· Score: 2
try to remember we're just coming out of a frickin' ice age.
No, no, no... You got it wrong. We're just going into a new ice age. Global warming causes influx of excessive fresh water into the oceans (melting ice). Excessive fresh water in the Atlantic causes the Gulf stream to stop. With no Gulf stream to bring warmer waters to Europe, Europe freezes.
I suggest practicing winter sports if you're living in Europe. My plan is to relocate somewhere further south.:-)
Yes, provided they both run on the same clock speed. In this particular case they're not.:-)
When you ramp up the clock speed of the parallel bus you get all sorts of problems (synchronisation issues, multiple wires affecting each other's capacitance, inductivity and such). One way of avoiding those problems was UltraATA's 80 wire IDE cable. And that came with increased price tag, and didn't ultimately solve all the problems, it just postponed them for a generation or two.
The other way was to abandon parallel all the way and go serial. Since with serial (one pair of wires) you don't get any above mentioned problems you can ramp up the clock much higher, and thus get better thrhoughput, although you're transfering just one bit at a time.
At first it sounds counter-intuitive, but it just goes to how much intuition is worth.:-)
Anyone wanna take a bet, how long will it take before you see one of these in a rap video?
Re:You've yet to see station selling suitable fuel
on
239 MPG Car
·
· Score: 1
...I assume it's probably a government-mandated thing. Is this not the same in the US? I have no plans to travel to the USA, but should I be concerned about fuel quality for my VW in the USA?
Well, I live in Croatia, so I can only tell you the situation here. Yes, sulphur content in diesel fuel is a government-mandated thing. And, until recently, allowed level was significantly higher than the modern diesel engines require. Consequently, owners of new cars, including tourists, have had problems with their engines due to sub-par fuel. Which gave way to a minor public unrest, which gave way to new government mandates regarding the quality of the fuel.:-)
I don't know the situation in the US, but I hope the gas stations will have both kinds of diesel (here it's Diesel and EuroDiesel, the new, improved kind). Otherwise, you _could_ damage your engine.
Re:You've yet to see station selling suitable fuel
on
239 MPG Car
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The story poster had it right - there's new diesel fuels around which are less polluting, which makes this even better. But it'll still run just fine on plain old diesel.
Ummm... No.
The newest generation od diesel engines (common-rail turbo diesels) actually demand new environment-friendly fuel. Regular diesel has too much sulphur which damages the engine. But, they manage to squeeze ~80BHP from 1.5 liter engines, with ~5l/100km consumption. No wonder they sell like hot cakes in Europe.
Remember, incompetent editors, you can be replaced by a program.
Lately I've been thinking, so could the posters.
I mean, how hard would it be to program a bot to emulate an average/. poster? You could just scan the story for a few specific keywords and immediately fashion a on-topic, karma attracting post. Microsoft, OSS, Linux, GNU/Linux:-), RIAA, IE, Mozilla... Not to mention offtopic freebies like FPs, slashdotting comments, Beowulf jokes, dupe checking, karma comments... Too easy.
In fact, with some clever scripting one could easily automate all one's karma whoring activities.:-) I wonder how long it will take before someone actually does this. Or maybe they already have?
This is a posibility for a whole new class of script kiddies!
"We have calculated (in the Mileikowsky paper in Icarus (2000) that in order to protect spores for 1 million years against cosmic radiation, a 1-meter-thick layer of the meteorite is necessary."...how thick must it be for entry through an atmosphere?
According to materials I stumbled upon while researching Leonides a few days ago, in order to penetrate the Earth's atmosphere and impact the surface, an object needs to be 50+ meters in diameter.
So, if a strain of killer bacteria arrives on Earth, we'll surely notice.:-)
Re:Most immediate space challenge? Riiight....
on
Beaming into Space
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Wow. I always thought that the likelihood of an asteroid hitting Earth was low, at least low enough that ther are probably better things to spend one's time addressing... say, hunger, AIDS, yadda yadda yadda.
That very well may be, but as you yourself have pointed out in the subject, asteroids are the most immediate space threat. As opposed to AIDS, hunger and yadda yaddas (although yaddas may turn out to be of extraterrestrial origin:-)).
Besides, it is low probability, but as we will surely get hit by an asteroid sooner or later, the more time passes, the more probable it becomes. And the consequences of an asteroid hit (immediate devastation and secondary fallout, not excluding a new ice age) definitely warrant at least devising a game plan, if not immediately acting on it.
Remember, it's not a question of 'if', it's a question of 'when'.
Infamous in what sense? Just curious. I mean, it's not my favorite Metallica album, but God knows the thing sold. Someone liked it.
Infamous in a sense that it was commercial crap. Infamous in a sense that it was produced by the same guy (Bob Rock) that used to produce Poison and similar commercial crap. No wonder it sold. So did Britney, and does that tell us anything?
In short, why the heck would I use one, if I could just buy a DVD[-|+]R?
Well, for example, to use it as a storage device for a PDA. Or as a data source for a portable MP3 player. Or so I could hook it up to my home/work computer without having to shut it down.
Mind you, a removable disk is already a part of my combat gear. Wouldn't leave home without it.:-)
Let me bite the bullet and offer a differnt view...
I work for a small SW company. We distribute our products (children edutainment multimedia programs) on CDs, and we use SecuROM protection on them. Basically, SecuROM is what keeps my company afloat.
You see, without it, every Joe Average with a CD burner could make a copy for his friends and relatives. And there's no doubt that he would do that, if he easily could (our past experiences clearly demonstrate that). And that is what hurts the sales. Sure, mostly everyone reading this will be able to circumvent the copy protection. But, SecuROM is enough protection for the general public. And that is just what we need, to contain the piracy to real pirates only (since they are vulnerable to legal action). Unfortunately, in the world we live, we do need it.
And, regarding the 'backup copy' argument: If at any time your CD becomes defective, you mail it back to us, and you receive a replacement, free of charge. Besides, how many times did the real, pressed, CD really die on you? It was an understandable argument in the times of the shoddy floppy discs, but nowadays... C'mon...
> Amiga is dead. Get over it.
The Amiga may be dead, but it sure was the last computer worth the emotional attachment.
Which is why I have sympathy for all of you living and breathing Linux. Been there, done that.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Not likely. MP3 is a lossy compression. The "secret bits" would be at the mercy of the MP3 compression scheme rendering them useless.
That is if they decided to use so-last-century technique of encoding the message in the least significant bits of data. There are numerous ways of encoding the message in the most important bits of data, and without adversely affecting the usability (visual or audio quality) of the material the message is encoded in.
I suggest some reading up of spread spectrum encoding techniques. Robust (tamper-resistant) watermarking technologies employ one or another implementation of that for a number of years now.
/. basicaly started as a place to bash microsoft, support linux, GNU, etc, so what drove you here?
;-)
;-)
Actually, the caption reads 'News for Nerds. Stuff that matters'. That would be my guess as to why the majority of the people some here.
Personally, I find childish MS bashing, trolling and zealotry as just icing on the cake. I'm a Windows power user & developer, and besides of being entertainment, it's always good to listen to differing opinions, ocassionally you get to learn something.
And, besides, I have this fondness for Linux evangelists. They remind me of myself some 10 years ago when I was an true-to-the-bone Amigan, and similarly despised everything Microsoftesque.
The difference is, we (the few, the proud, the Amigans) had MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 to bash, so our jobs were much easier, and view of the world much clearer.
My dumbass is actually running SQL Server 2000...my switch was lit up completely. I've never seen the traffic light glow more solid than the connection light.
Well if you took the time and installed the patches (which have been out for some time, also included in SP3, BTW), you wouldn't have been a part of the problem, you would have been a part of the solution.
Leave it to Mircosoft to crash the internet.
Leave it to the lazy and incompetent, I say...
My only question is that if this is so important, why do they banish it to parts unknown (pardon, the depths of their Technet site) rather than placing it in everybody's Start menu?
:-)
Actually, we already did this bit on Slashdot. It was back when MS released SP3 for Win2k which basically did just that (installed an automated patch collection/installation system, placed it in the start menu and system tray). And, IIRC, back then the consensus was that it's A Bad Thing(tm).
Anyways, it's there if you want it. Ignorance is no excuse.
try to remember we're just coming out of a frickin' ice age.
:-)
No, no, no... You got it wrong. We're just going into a new ice age. Global warming causes influx of excessive fresh water into the oceans (melting ice). Excessive fresh water in the Atlantic causes the Gulf stream to stop. With no Gulf stream to bring warmer waters to Europe, Europe freezes.
I suggest practicing winter sports if you're living in Europe. My plan is to relocate somewhere further south.
I always thought parallel was faster
:-)
:-)
Yes, provided they both run on the same clock speed. In this particular case they're not.
When you ramp up the clock speed of the parallel bus you get all sorts of problems (synchronisation issues, multiple wires affecting each other's capacitance, inductivity and such). One way of avoiding those problems was UltraATA's 80 wire IDE cable. And that came with increased price tag, and didn't ultimately solve all the problems, it just postponed them for a generation or two.
The other way was to abandon parallel all the way and go serial. Since with serial (one pair of wires) you don't get any above mentioned problems you can ramp up the clock much higher, and thus get better thrhoughput, although you're transfering just one bit at a time.
At first it sounds counter-intuitive, but it just goes to how much intuition is worth.
Anyone wanna take a bet, how long will it take before you see one of these in a rap video?
...I assume it's probably a government-mandated thing. Is this not the same in the US? I have no plans to travel to the USA, but should I be concerned about fuel quality for my VW in the USA?
:-)
Well, I live in Croatia, so I can only tell you the situation here. Yes, sulphur content in diesel fuel is a government-mandated thing. And, until recently, allowed level was significantly higher than the modern diesel engines require. Consequently, owners of new cars, including tourists, have had problems with their engines due to sub-par fuel. Which gave way to a minor public unrest, which gave way to new government mandates regarding the quality of the fuel.
I don't know the situation in the US, but I hope the gas stations will have both kinds of diesel (here it's Diesel and EuroDiesel, the new, improved kind). Otherwise, you _could_ damage your engine.
The story poster had it right - there's new diesel fuels around which are less polluting, which makes this even better. But it'll still run just fine on plain old diesel.
Ummm... No.
The newest generation od diesel engines (common-rail turbo diesels) actually demand new environment-friendly fuel. Regular diesel has too much sulphur which damages the engine. But, they manage to squeeze ~80BHP from 1.5 liter engines, with ~5l/100km consumption. No wonder they sell like hot cakes in Europe.
Remember, incompetent editors, you can be replaced by a program.
/. poster? You could just scan the story for a few specific keywords and immediately fashion a on-topic, karma attracting post. Microsoft, OSS, Linux, GNU/Linux :-), RIAA, IE, Mozilla... Not to mention offtopic freebies like FPs, slashdotting comments, Beowulf jokes, dupe checking, karma comments... Too easy.
:-) I wonder how long it will take before someone actually does this. Or maybe they already have?
Lately I've been thinking, so could the posters.
I mean, how hard would it be to program a bot to emulate an average
In fact, with some clever scripting one could easily automate all one's karma whoring activities.
This is a posibility for a whole new class of script kiddies!
"We have calculated (in the Mileikowsky paper in Icarus (2000) that in order to protect spores for 1 million years against cosmic radiation, a 1-meter-thick layer of the meteorite is necessary." ...how thick must it be for entry through an atmosphere?
:-)
According to materials I stumbled upon while researching Leonides a few days ago, in order to penetrate the Earth's atmosphere and impact the surface, an object needs to be 50+ meters in diameter.
So, if a strain of killer bacteria arrives on Earth, we'll surely notice.
Wow. I always thought that the likelihood of an asteroid hitting Earth was low, at least low enough that ther are probably better things to spend one's time addressing... say, hunger, AIDS, yadda yadda yadda.
:-)).
That very well may be, but as you yourself have pointed out in the subject, asteroids are the most immediate space threat. As opposed to AIDS, hunger and yadda yaddas (although yaddas may turn out to be of extraterrestrial origin
Besides, it is low probability, but as we will surely get hit by an asteroid sooner or later, the more time passes, the more probable it becomes. And the consequences of an asteroid hit (immediate devastation and secondary fallout, not excluding a new ice age) definitely warrant at least devising a game plan, if not immediately acting on it.
Remember, it's not a question of 'if', it's a question of 'when'.
Infamous in what sense? Just curious. I mean, it's not my favorite Metallica album, but God knows the thing sold. Someone liked it.
Infamous in a sense that it was commercial crap. Infamous in a sense that it was produced by the same guy (Bob Rock) that used to produce Poison and similar commercial crap. No wonder it sold. So did Britney, and does that tell us anything?
In short, why the heck would I use one, if I could just buy a DVD[-|+]R?
:-)
Well, for example, to use it as a storage device for a PDA. Or as a data source for a portable MP3 player. Or so I could hook it up to my home/work computer without having to shut it down.
Mind you, a removable disk is already a part of my combat gear. Wouldn't leave home without it.
Let me bite the bullet and offer a differnt view...
I work for a small SW company. We distribute our products (children edutainment multimedia programs) on CDs, and we use SecuROM protection on them. Basically, SecuROM is what keeps my company afloat.
You see, without it, every Joe Average with a CD burner could make a copy for his friends and relatives. And there's no doubt that he would do that, if he easily could (our past experiences clearly demonstrate that). And that is what hurts the sales. Sure, mostly everyone reading this will be able to circumvent the copy protection. But, SecuROM is enough protection for the general public. And that is just what we need, to contain the piracy to real pirates only (since they are vulnerable to legal action). Unfortunately, in the world we live, we do need it.
And, regarding the 'backup copy' argument: If at any time your CD becomes defective, you mail it back to us, and you receive a replacement, free of charge. Besides, how many times did the real, pressed, CD really die on you? It was an understandable argument in the times of the shoddy floppy discs, but nowadays... C'mon...
> Amiga is dead. Get over it. The Amiga may be dead, but it sure was the last computer worth the emotional attachment. Which is why I have sympathy for all of you living and breathing Linux. Been there, done that. :-)