Although most of the focus centers on the mp3 encoder, people often forget that the CD ripper is important as well. While bad encoding may be annoying, skips in mp3s are infinitely more annoying.
For rippers that work on IDE CD-ROM drives, I've personally found all the ones integrated with encoders to be crap. On my (fairly bad) CD-ROM drive, they almost always produce mp3s with skips in them. Worse yet, they don't do much of any error checking to let me know of this.
So I use CD-R-Win (for Windows). It's designed for CD-to-CD copying with a CD-R drive, but can also do CD-to-WAV ripping with any CD-ROM drive. It actually does extensive error checking, and NEVER produces a file with a skip, no matter how small, in it. You have an option of having it abort in an error, or having it retry reading the skipped area a certain number of times to correct the error. To the best of my knowledge, no other ripper has this option. With every other ripper I've tried, I've gotten at least one or two mp3s with skips in them, while cdrwin is 100% perfect.
That said, I'd prefer a ripper integrated with an encoder and CDDB lookup. However, the ripper must be 100% perfect, and NEVER produce a skip. Does anybody know of a ripper other than cdrwin that can do this? So far I've been unable to do so, though I'll continue looking.
I agree with most of what you say except for the "gimmicky variable bit rate option." Variable Bit Rate (VBR) is a Good Thing(tm). It allows the encoder to use fewer bits for unimportant sections (like complete silence) and more bits for complex portions using many frequencies. This makes for a better sound quality given the same filesize.
The only disadvantage I see with it is that it messes up some crappy mp3 players, but that's a problem with the mp3 player, not the encoder.
I agree with your comment about mitigating circumstances. These is something that are a result of the person's actions. They, in effect, give the person some sort of excuse for their actions.
However, making an example of somebody has nothing to do with their actions. Two people who committed identical crimes, with identical sets of mitigating circumstances, should receive the same sentences. If one receives a greater sentence because of a desire to make an example of that person, then that is an injustice.
I have no problem with people informally calling their operating system "Linux." I certainly don't expect people to say "GNU/Linux" each time. However, I do object to blatantly wrong statements such as "I run the Linux Operating System." There is no such thing. Saying "I run Linux," would, however, be correct.
In addition, implying that the Linux kernel is the entire OS, and that those who created the kernel created the OS, is disrespectful to the many people who spent the previous 10+ years writing the operating system that the Linux kernel plugged into.
I saw the opposite in these numbers. Considering the large number of Windows developers answering the survey, these answers surprised me: 45.8% would license their code under an open source license 54.8% would distribute source in some form with their program
That's good to see - even Windows users are interested in Open Source. I've seen this as well in many shareware authors that I've talked to. Many wouldn't mind giving away the source to their program, or even using some sort of free software license, but >95% of their users don't have the right compiler, so it'd be pointless to do so.
Actually, this sample draws from the/. readers. If you look, over 40% of the respondents read slashdot regularly, and it was actually mentioned in the slashdot front page. Despite this possible skewing by Linux zealots who have no intention of actually buying a Borland product for $400, these results still came up.
Sure, it's a narrow segment, but it's an extremely important segment. Current Borland customers planning on supporting Linux in the future are what they care about. They do not care about Joe Hacker who writes his CLI programs in C using gcc, because that guy is unlikely to buy their product anyway.
The repetitive shoot-em-up games are not "what people want". They are what stereotypical 14-year-old boys want.
Incorrect. The majority of the fanbase for games such as Quake is composed of college students. They're the ones with the 10mbps Internet links and LAN parties.
The reason games are marketed to those 17-25 is simply because they buy the games. My parents do not buy computer games. Not even supposedly "intellectual" games. They use the computer to do taxes, spreadsheets, and look up stuff on the internet, not to play games. I'd imagine a lot of adults over 40 are like that, and hence that demographic is not a good one to market your game towards.
Making examples of people is most certainly injustice. Punishment should be solely determined by the crime committed. If you are trying to make an example of somebody, you are admitting that the punishment is in part determined by your desire for a certain public image, not entirely by the crime actually committed. This is an injustice to the person who receives a greater punishment, not because of what he did, but because of your desire for some PR.
1. The GNU OS is a high quality operating system created by a group of talented people. Unfortunately, it is not yet complete. 2. Linux is a high quality kernel created by a group of talented people, thus completing the GNU OS. 3. Both the GNU OS and the Linux kernel are available for free. 4. Because of 1-3, most people consider GNU/Linux systems a Good Thing. 5. Red Hat sells a "value-added" product that includes the GNU/Linux OS. 6. Red Hat is successful. 7. Red Hat issues an IPO, offering shares to some of the people involved in 2 (above). Some of those people accept the offer. (Did they offer any to those involved in 1 (above)?)
Anyone who's ever had to install Windows will tell you that the Linux install process is generally easier.
I beg to differ. I installed Windows for the first time without a hitch. It auto-detected my non-IDE CD-ROM (and installed drivers), set up my video card, set up my monitor, set up my network card and basically did everything else.
Then I installed Linux for the first time. I had to make a special boot disk (sbpcd.i) to enable me to use my non-IDE CD-ROM, manually configure the ethernet card, and mess around in XF86Setup for about 45 minutes (plus two reboots) before getting my video card and monitor set up.
Dropping WinNT support for the Alpha will probably have a short term effect of decreasing Alpha sales. If Linux and other UNIXes catch on more, the Alpha sales could rebound, except this time with UNIXes instead of NT on them. However, if they don't, Compaq could just shift its focus to Wintel and drop the Alpha entirely.
So, this could be one of two things: 1) Compaq signalling they'd rather concentrate on UNIX than WinNT 2) Compaq signalling they'd rather concentrate on Intel-compatible chips than Alpha
Well, sure, it'd always be possible to use the GPL'd portions freely, and pass them around. I was just mentioning that Red Hat could easily cut down on 99% of that. If, for example, they made their installation program proprietary, you could pass around your CD to your friends, but they'd have to install the distro without the installation program, since the installation program would probably come with a one-computer license. You'd probably also have to do without things like RPM.
Yes, as long as the GPL holds up in court, the base Linux kernel and the GNU OS is still freely available, but Red Hat could do their best to make it very difficult to obtain it freely through them.
For those of us who like having a few hundred (or a few thousand) songs on our hard drives to listen to without the annoyance of switching CDs, compression is a good solution. Buying 100 gigs of hard drive space is not.
1) I thought freshmeat was for the announcement of game/app/utility releases/ports. Slashdot, as far as I understand it, is supposed to be for newsworthy things, not simple port announcements. Perhaps the original release of Descent 3 was newsworthy, but an announcement of an incomplete port to another OS is certainly not.
2) Why would you want to play Descent 3 without a joystick?
Eh. "linn-ucks" is just a natural compression of "lee-nooks" in American. They're close enough that most people won't even notice the difference.
I suppose that's an explanation, it makes sense to me now. Americans tend to do the same thing with words like football (which should be f-ooh-t-ball, not fut-ball).
Or the Greek "gyros" -- do you say "YOU-rohss", "GHEE-rohss", or "JY-rose"? Most of the people who sell them are just happy you're buying.;-)
Well, since I speak Greek, I say "YEE-rohss" (the "y" is really something between a "gh" and a "y" that you Americans can't pronounce), and I really dislike it when people pronounce it "jie-rose". "ghee-rose" (with a hard gh as in "ghetto") is not difficult to pronounce, and at least better than "jie-rose" is.
Red Hat and its shareholders can limit the distribution as well, not just the courts. All Red Hat has to do is put one proprietary app on the CD, and it becomes illegal for you to copy the CD, pass it along to your friends and colleagues, etc. Sure, you can copy the GPL'd contents of the CD and burn them onto another CD, but that'd be more work than most people are willing to do (not to mention the additional work of replacing the proprietary program if it's something important like a package manager or installation program).
While this was an interesting article, it wasn't a good defence against STO. The author appears to be arguing that STO, while isn't a good security defence, it can make a good security buffer. These are totally different things. So really he's saying that STO is good to have in your toolbox, it's not a good defence - this is what we've been saying all along.
It's not what I've been seeing all along. I've seen countless articles and rants as to how STO is evil and should be completely abolished, since it keeps people from finding problems to be fixed. I consider this wrong. Problems and such should be fixed, and the system kept as secure as possible, but there is nothing wrong with using obscurity as an additional security measure. For example, running your FTP server on port 22875. Anybody who needs to access your FTP server knows what port it's on (or follows a link with that information in it), but the various script kiddies with their buffer overflow exploits scanning for open port 21's don't find you. You should still patch for all the exploits, of course, but this security through obscurity measure could buy you a few days, months, or years before one of your unpatched vulnerabilities (if you missed one, or are behind) actually gets exploited.
Well, 50x is generally considered a high Price/Earnings ratio. Anything above 100x is grossly overvalued. Since Red Hat is actually *losing* money ($130k in the last quarter) it doesn't even have a P/E ratio, since there are no earnings.
Most likely the latter option. This isn't a one-day fluke either, it's the second straight day that RHAT is down over 10%. It's currently at around $67/share, around 25% below its peak value. So if you short-sold Red Hat two days ago, you made money =)
No it doesn't, it says it must be available for a nominal fee covering the cost of media and distribution. This means that Red Hat could offer the source on a separate $4 CD that you could mail-order from them.
Not if they were trying to encourage people to buy the CDs at the store. The GPL allows them to charge for the cost of media plus distribution, so Red Hat could fulfill their obligations by offering RH CDs (minus an installer and anything else they chose to make non-GPL) for mail-order for $4 or something.
Slashdot Mirror
Although most of the focus centers on the mp3 encoder, people often forget that the CD ripper is important as well. While bad encoding may be annoying, skips in mp3s are infinitely more annoying.
For rippers that work on IDE CD-ROM drives, I've personally found all the ones integrated with encoders to be crap. On my (fairly bad) CD-ROM drive, they almost always produce mp3s with skips in them. Worse yet, they don't do much of any error checking to let me know of this.
So I use CD-R-Win (for Windows). It's designed for CD-to-CD copying with a CD-R drive, but can also do CD-to-WAV ripping with any CD-ROM drive. It actually does extensive error checking, and NEVER produces a file with a skip, no matter how small, in it. You have an option of having it abort in an error, or having it retry reading the skipped area a certain number of times to correct the error. To the best of my knowledge, no other ripper has this option. With every other ripper I've tried, I've gotten at least one or two mp3s with skips in them, while cdrwin is 100% perfect.
That said, I'd prefer a ripper integrated with an encoder and CDDB lookup. However, the ripper must be 100% perfect, and NEVER produce a skip. Does anybody know of a ripper other than cdrwin that can do this? So far I've been unable to do so, though I'll continue looking.
I agree with most of what you say except for the "gimmicky variable bit rate option." Variable Bit Rate (VBR) is a Good Thing(tm). It allows the encoder to use fewer bits for unimportant sections (like complete silence) and more bits for complex portions using many frequencies. This makes for a better sound quality given the same filesize.
The only disadvantage I see with it is that it messes up some crappy mp3 players, but that's a problem with the mp3 player, not the encoder.
I agree with your comment about mitigating circumstances. These is something that are a result of the person's actions. They, in effect, give the person some sort of excuse for their actions.
However, making an example of somebody has nothing to do with their actions. Two people who committed identical crimes, with identical sets of mitigating circumstances, should receive the same sentences. If one receives a greater sentence because of a desire to make an example of that person, then that is an injustice.
I have no problem with people informally calling their operating system "Linux." I certainly don't expect people to say "GNU/Linux" each time. However, I do object to blatantly wrong statements such as "I run the Linux Operating System." There is no such thing. Saying "I run Linux," would, however, be correct.
In addition, implying that the Linux kernel is the entire OS, and that those who created the kernel created the OS, is disrespectful to the many people who spent the previous 10+ years writing the operating system that the Linux kernel plugged into.
I saw the opposite in these numbers. Considering the large number of Windows developers answering the survey, these answers surprised me:
45.8% would license their code under an open source license
54.8% would distribute source in some form with their program
That's good to see - even Windows users are interested in Open Source. I've seen this as well in many shareware authors that I've talked to. Many wouldn't mind giving away the source to their program, or even using some sort of free software license, but >95% of their users don't have the right compiler, so it'd be pointless to do so.
Actually, this sample draws from the /. readers. If you look, over 40% of the respondents read slashdot regularly, and it was actually mentioned in the slashdot front page. Despite this possible skewing by Linux zealots who have no intention of actually buying a Borland product for $400, these results still came up.
Sure, it's a narrow segment, but it's an extremely important segment. Current Borland customers planning on supporting Linux in the future are what they care about. They do not care about Joe Hacker who writes his CLI programs in C using gcc, because that guy is unlikely to buy their product anyway.
The repetitive shoot-em-up games are not "what people want". They are what stereotypical 14-year-old boys want.
Incorrect. The majority of the fanbase for games such as Quake is composed of college students. They're the ones with the 10mbps Internet links and LAN parties.
The reason games are marketed to those 17-25 is simply because they buy the games. My parents do not buy computer games. Not even supposedly "intellectual" games. They use the computer to do taxes, spreadsheets, and look up stuff on the internet, not to play games. I'd imagine a lot of adults over 40 are like that, and hence that demographic is not a good one to market your game towards.
Making examples of people is most certainly injustice. Punishment should be solely determined by the crime committed. If you are trying to make an example of somebody, you are admitting that the punishment is in part determined by your desire for a certain public image, not entirely by the crime actually committed. This is an injustice to the person who receives a greater punishment, not because of what he did, but because of your desire for some PR.
Some corrections,
1. The GNU OS is a high quality operating system created by a group of talented people. Unfortunately, it is not yet complete.
2. Linux is a high quality kernel created by a group of talented people, thus completing the GNU OS.
3. Both the GNU OS and the Linux kernel are available for free.
4. Because of 1-3, most people consider GNU/Linux systems a Good Thing.
5. Red Hat sells a "value-added" product that includes the GNU/Linux OS.
6. Red Hat is successful.
7. Red Hat issues an IPO, offering shares to some of the people involved in 2 (above). Some of those people accept the offer. (Did they offer any to those involved in 1 (above)?)
Anyone who's ever had to install Windows will tell you that the Linux install process is generally easier.
I beg to differ. I installed Windows for the first time without a hitch. It auto-detected my non-IDE CD-ROM (and installed drivers), set up my video card, set up my monitor, set up my network card and basically did everything else.
Then I installed Linux for the first time. I had to make a special boot disk (sbpcd.i) to enable me to use my non-IDE CD-ROM, manually configure the ethernet card, and mess around in XF86Setup for about 45 minutes (plus two reboots) before getting my video card and monitor set up.
Compared to win95/8, that just plain sucks.
It could still turn out that way, unfortunately.
Dropping WinNT support for the Alpha will probably have a short term effect of decreasing Alpha sales. If Linux and other UNIXes catch on more, the Alpha sales could rebound, except this time with UNIXes instead of NT on them. However, if they don't, Compaq could just shift its focus to Wintel and drop the Alpha entirely.
So, this could be one of two things:
1) Compaq signalling they'd rather concentrate on UNIX than WinNT
2) Compaq signalling they'd rather concentrate on Intel-compatible chips than Alpha
Well, sure, it'd always be possible to use the GPL'd portions freely, and pass them around. I was just mentioning that Red Hat could easily cut down on 99% of that. If, for example, they made their installation program proprietary, you could pass around your CD to your friends, but they'd have to install the distro without the installation program, since the installation program would probably come with a one-computer license. You'd probably also have to do without things like RPM.
Yes, as long as the GPL holds up in court, the base Linux kernel and the GNU OS is still freely available, but Red Hat could do their best to make it very difficult to obtain it freely through them.
For those of us who like having a few hundred (or a few thousand) songs on our hard drives to listen to without the annoyance of switching CDs, compression is a good solution. Buying 100 gigs of hard drive space is not.
1) I thought freshmeat was for the announcement of game/app/utility releases/ports. Slashdot, as far as I understand it, is supposed to be for newsworthy things, not simple port announcements. Perhaps the original release of Descent 3 was newsworthy, but an announcement of an incomplete port to another OS is certainly not.
2) Why would you want to play Descent 3 without a joystick?
Eh. "linn-ucks" is just a natural compression of "lee-nooks" in American. They're close enough that most people won't even notice the difference.
;-)
I suppose that's an explanation, it makes sense to me now. Americans tend to do the same thing with words like football (which should be f-ooh-t-ball, not fut-ball).
Or the Greek "gyros" -- do you say "YOU-rohss", "GHEE-rohss", or "JY-rose"? Most of the people who sell them are just happy you're buying.
Well, since I speak Greek, I say "YEE-rohss" (the "y" is really something between a "gh" and a "y" that you Americans can't pronounce), and I really dislike it when people pronounce it "jie-rose". "ghee-rose" (with a hard gh as in "ghetto") is not difficult to pronounce, and at least better than "jie-rose" is.
Red Hat and its shareholders can limit the distribution as well, not just the courts. All Red Hat has to do is put one proprietary app on the CD, and it becomes illegal for you to copy the CD, pass it along to your friends and colleagues, etc. Sure, you can copy the GPL'd contents of the CD and burn them onto another CD, but that'd be more work than most people are willing to do (not to mention the additional work of replacing the proprietary program if it's something important like a package manager or installation program).
I did.
While this was an interesting article, it wasn't a good defence against STO. The author appears to be arguing that STO, while isn't a good security defence, it can make a good security buffer. These are totally different things. So really he's saying that STO is good to have in your toolbox, it's not a good defence - this is what we've been saying all along.
It's not what I've been seeing all along. I've seen countless articles and rants as to how STO is evil and should be completely abolished, since it keeps people from finding problems to be fixed. I consider this wrong. Problems and such should be fixed, and the system kept as secure as possible, but there is nothing wrong with using obscurity as an additional security measure. For example, running your FTP server on port 22875. Anybody who needs to access your FTP server knows what port it's on (or follows a link with that information in it), but the various script kiddies with their buffer overflow exploits scanning for open port 21's don't find you. You should still patch for all the exploits, of course, but this security through obscurity measure could buy you a few days, months, or years before one of your unpatched vulnerabilities (if you missed one, or are behind) actually gets exploited.
Yes, it's based on his name, which is why you are wrong.
If you're an American, Linus is pronounced lie-nus, so Linux should be pronounced Lie-nucks.
If you're a Finn, Linus is pronounced lee-noose, so Linux should be pronounced lee-nooks.
NOBODY should pronounce it linn-ucks. That's just ludicrous.
Well, 50x is generally considered a high Price/Earnings ratio. Anything above 100x is grossly overvalued. Since Red Hat is actually *losing* money ($130k in the last quarter) it doesn't even have a P/E ratio, since there are no earnings.
Most likely the latter option. This isn't a one-day fluke either, it's the second straight day that RHAT is down over 10%. It's currently at around $67/share, around 25% below its peak value. So if you short-sold Red Hat two days ago, you made money =)
No it doesn't, it says it must be available for a nominal fee covering the cost of media and distribution. This means that Red Hat could offer the source on a separate $4 CD that you could mail-order from them.
Not if they were trying to encourage people to buy the CDs at the store. The GPL allows them to charge for the cost of media plus distribution, so Red Hat could fulfill their obligations by offering RH CDs (minus an installer and anything else they chose to make non-GPL) for mail-order for $4 or something.
They can make the next version of RPM closed-source, as long as it doesn't use any non-RedHat GPL'd code.