I dissagree with your comments, that children should be taught not to talk to strangers online. I believe that the ability to converse with people they have never met, and most likely will never meet, is one of the most important things your child can be taught.
Thanks to the Internet, your child can make acquaintances with people from a multitude of countries, beliefs, and religions. They can learn about cultures, differences between societies, and problems or struggles people experience in everyday life. And they can do this safely.
There are still people who would rather deny their child communication with "online strangers" than educate their child about doing so responsibly. There are still parents who know so little about the Internet that they will accept the miconception that all "chat rooms" are undeground grooming places for paedophiles. Five minutes of guidance is enough to make your child understand that joining #12yroldz on AOL and repeatedly asking "wanna cyber?" is a bad idea.
The key is making your child *understand* that people hidden behind a chat room can lie. Simple as that. They need to be taught to keep their online acquaintances seperate from the real world. Make them understand that they WILL meet people who will try to harm them. With a little education, the Internet becomes a "virtual sandbox". Your child will be exposed to people - both good and bad, in a controlled and safe enviroment. There is no better way to teach your child about human nature.
I say this from personal experience. I am presently 18. During my 'childhood' I had always enjoyed the freedom of unrestricted online communication. I belive the results from this are only positive. I have learned so much, from so many...
My lifetime passion has always been programming. While in the 'real world', very few of the people around me shared this interest, online I was able to find a haven. I was able to interact with hundreds of thousands of people who not only shared my interests, but were willing to share their knowledge. I learnt to share my knowlede in return. I could collaborate on projects with people I had never met. It didn't matter that I was 12, noone knew or cared. My age was irrelevant. It was an environment in which skin color, gender, age, and nationallity are all irrelevant. A place where knowledge, contribution, and respect are honoured.
This has changed my approach in the real world. In a society where racism and religious discrimination are commonplace, children learn the negative attitudes from their peers. Having made contacts in practically every country, I didn't give in to the temptation to tag along. I actually knew the societies and people which others would criticise for no other reason than "because they're different".
I don't believe that your child will have their mind warped by pornography or bad language on the internet. If you believe they won't be exposed to these two 'evils' at their schools, you have perhaps lost contact with reality. The difference is that in the online world, attacking people with profanities results in rejection from a community, rather than cheap support from immature peers. The "u wanna fuck?" messages are frowned upon - "I'm sorry, I'd rather not sustain a sexual relationship over a 56k modem link".
I learnt, from first-hand experience, that trust takes years to build, and seconds to break. I learned to respect others, not because it was 'forbidden' to be disrespectful, but because mutual respect is what created the greatest acheivements and communities. I learned how to act when in a position of power, how to diminish rather than fuel dissagreements. Online communities, be they forums, IRC channels, or simply e-mail, have one thing in common; they are environments in which decisions aren't made with fists or knives, but via wit, intellect, and understanding. If children weren't sheided from this "for their own protection", they would grow to become better people.
Besides, if you have dynamic IP on your box, you probably shouldn't be running an SMTP server to begin with.
Why not? I have a dynamic IP, although since I rarely reconnect, my IP often stays the same for months. I have a script that simply updates my MX records whenever my IP changes, essentially making sure people can send me emails without interruption.
And running my own SMTP server has helped me reduce the amount of spam I get. When I give out my email addy, I leave in a reference to the site. Eg me@ebay.mydomain.com and me@someforum.mydomain.com. If someone leaks my addy 1) I know who, 2) I just blacklist that subdomain.
Ignoring the fact the above post is clearly flamebait...
The two theories you mentioned - Evolution and the Big Bang, are both just that - scientific theories. Based on observations, scientists have been able to come up with a 'best-fit' theory, which makes sense, and helps explain and model the world we see around us.
So far all evidence (background microwave radiation, expanding universe, etc) seems to confirm the theory of the big bang. Of course there are still some occurances which we do not understand, but unless you have a better theory to offer, try and understand why centuries of research by our best scientists has yielded the conclusions it has.
Evolution is practically common sense. We UNDERSTAND genetics. We know that physical characteristics are INHERITED. We know that creatures not adapted to their surrounding will simply die. Anyone capable of logical thinking can conclude that over generations, species will adapt to cope with their surroundings. It's not so much of a theory than it is fact which can be proven by anything from mathematical models, to observing real life phenomenon.
"The only thing that has stayed constant for all time is the Word of God."
Right, umm, yes. Of course we haven't found major indiscrepencies between the bible and reality, once we gained the technology to observe it. We still know that heaven happens to be just above the clouds, ligtning is a result of God's angwer rather than electrostatic potential buildup, and that noah saved life on planet earth by transporting every species on a giant ship. Oh, wait. What we now know to be bullshit is claimed to be "symbolic" of the deeper meaning in the bible.
You say "everything we get wrong or can't explain is the work of someone superior", and claim you can't be disproved. Scientists do their best to actually EXPLAIN the world in which we live in rather than saying "I dont know a thing, so the explanation is god". And I don't know how the moon-ice theory relates to evolution and secular cosmology. I assume that you don't either.
I think ignorance should be a crime. When electricity was first becomming mainstream, groups of people were organising huge protests about the harmful effects of being in a room with a power socket in it. There will always be small groups of retards on a crusade against technology.
There were some pseudo-scientific experminents conducted by groups of people looking to expoit naive organisations to gain funding. Upon reading their reports, it turns out their scientific basis for concluding that mobile phones are harmful was sticking mice in microwave ovens and noting low survival rates. And of course they decided that since phones also emit waves in the microwave spectrum, they must be no different!.
Unfortunatly the media, looking for sensations, hypes up these ridicioulous claims, claiming that "experts" have found new "evidence" of the danger of microwave "radiation" to people. This immediatly spawned mass hysteria amongst the clueless public. Thanks to this behaviour I now have usless mobile phone coverage in my area - plans for the erection of a new mobile phone mast were abbandoned due to a huge protest about the effects on a nearby school, and revolts organised by "concerned parents" who frankly deserve to be shot.
All *credible* scientific research into the effects of electromagnetic waves on living tissue find the following conclusion.
1) The risks associated with exposure to EM waves rise exponentially with the frequency. --- Long wave radio signals can be pumped out with the power of many killowats right next to a human brain, and after a lifetime of exposure the risks are negligable. If we increase the frequency to, for example, visible light, exposure to much lower levels can be harmfull. Increasing it still further to ultaviolet, increases the risk of cancer by a large factor. And the same dosage of alpha/beta/gamma rays and you are dead on the spot. Microwave 'radiation' in fact has a frequency approx 10 times lower than visible light. Sitting for a long time with a 60W lightbulb next to your head would put you in a lot more danger... go figure.
And people comparing mobile phones with their ovens because both rely on "microwave radiation" deserve to have their testicles jammed in a microwave oven in the name of science. A very specific frequency in the microwave range causes tissue to heat up because it matches a mode of resonance of the water molecules. Same goes for infrared light (hence similar heating effects). Mobile phones and wireless networks do NOT use this frequency (and even if they did, all you would get is very slight warming of nearby tissue - probably unnoticable at the exposure levels mobile phones use - and certainly not harmful).
2) Harmful effects increase linearly with the power output --- Mobile phones use 0.5Watts, and peak at 1 watt. TV masts output 2 million watts of power. Wireless lans output 0.1 watts. Your microwave oven leaks many times more. Go figure.
3) Your exposure decays with the inverse cube of the distance --- What matters is the power you are exposed to, divided by your surface area. If people are worried about a wireless lan access point sitting on a wall/desk 10m away, then it is obscure many of them have come to accept using a mobile phone which generates 5 times more power right next to their head. We are talking about a 5000-fold lower exposure level with wireless lans. If these fanatics had any clue about basic physics, they would be refusing to allow their children to be in the same town as someone using a mobile phone!
END RANT. lol./me thinks of novel ways to inflict slow and painful death upon all the people who think their lack of knowledge gives them the right to sabotage the development and acceptance of technology.
If you are using any version of windows NT, it is not always wise to open untrusted telnet links. By default windows will send the NTLM hash of the logged in user to the remote server, which could be auditted to recover the password in usually less than a day.
It's been done before (www.dti3d.com and others) for quite a while now, although its never really caught on much for the general public, perhaps because the price of "normal" lcd panels at the time was high enough, never mind specialised 3d panels which are little more than a cool toy. They have found limited use in the graphics industry tho.
LOL, no... the screen doesn't track the position of your head, so you cannoy in fact peek around objects. The image sent to your left and right eye is fixed, and the display is only effective when looking at it straight on... as with every similar technology, the 3d effect is only perceived.
And it hasnt been implemented in laptops FIRST... Desktop 3d screens have existed for quite a while now, although they cost a fortune and are rarely used outside the graphics industry.
What the girl did might well be illegal. This does not however mean that extorting damages of $2000 was just. Law, justice, and morallity are often three entirely different things. I, and the majority of the EFF supporters strongly believe that people involved in file sharing should not be considered criminals. There are many legitimate applications for P2P - conveniently obtaining a copy of music you own onto your PC, a decentralised backup of all the music files in case the originals become damaged, just to mention a few.
Of course if you share a file on P2P networks, many of the people who download it will not own a legal copy - but thats thir business. I belive that individual P2P users should never be held responsible for the actions of those who download from them. Shops are permitted to sell VCRs, firearms, tape recorders, whatever - each item can be used for good and bad purposes, for legal and illegal purposes - but this is the responsibility of the person who obtains the items. It is impractical for the RIAA to go after people downloading music without owning originals, so instead they hold everyone SHARING the music to be responsible! Yes, I believe this is unjust, and I believe that the EFF as a group predominantly are against the mass lawsuits against filesharers.
You would think that with such an important and PR-intensive case, one of the priorities of the EFF would be to at least step in and help cover the fine, sending the public message that they are willing to help against unjust lawsuits.
In fact if I remember correctly, just yesterday the EFF sent a strong warning to people NOT to accept the amnesty settlements from the RIAA, because they would simply be admitting guilt. I think this is a crucial case which should have been fought. If there is any case the EFF should have stepped in to help, it would have been this one.
I wonder how long it will be till they attempt to use the DMCA to silence him - this is after all a typical scenario for the DMCA to be exploited in order to gag scientists and cryptology experts.
Sadly, I wouldn't at all be surprised to see this end up on chillingeffects in the near future.
Bootable USB support is actually included in most modern bioses. It emulates a HDD. Since windows 95 uses standard bios interrupts to access devices, this shouldnt be much of a problem.
Every other comment bitches about how there are no uses for this. I can think of one interesting application straight away.
USB pendrives are becomming cheaper and more popular. Most of them support booting. Copying a mini distro of windows 95 would be quite a useful feature - you pop your stick into any PC, and have your own customised GUI with a few programs you use regularly, programs you need to open documents stored on your pendrive preinstalled, etc.
Which used to be a pain in the ass until someone made a nice free utility called DVDShrink (freeware).
It rips the DVD, and reencodes it on the fly. Keeps all the extras unless you choose otherwise.
On my pc ripping a DVD and reencoding it takes 30 mins or so. Burning takes 40. In 1:30 mins my computer spits out a copy which hardly ever expires. And on a 4.3GB DVD-R the bitrate is still high enough for me not to notice any compression artifacts.
Probably wont work that well, as people who keep them in a moderatly dark area will end up with a much longer life, and if someone accidentally leaves a disk for a minute on a table in direct sunlight might end up with a borked disk.
Exposure to air sounds more reasonable. They likened it to rust. I assume oxidation causes the data area to deteriorate.
Problem is this will be a gradual proccess however its done, and you will be likely to end up with DVDs which have a lot or read errors after a while, rather than being fully watchable, or not at all.
Not that I care much. Ripping and reencoding a DVD to fit on a DVD-R takes all of 30 mins using DVDShrink. If this technology means I can get good films as cheap promos, and I can easilly defeat the protection, im all for it;)
* gosh, they will delete my legal MP3s too * The bastards are resorting to illegal tactics, ill sure * They will sabotage my pc
But who here really thinks they will succeed? Im just laughing at it. The RIAA of all people who cant even keep their website up, pwning my computer? Doubt it.
Maybe it will get rid of the n00bs who decide to open "Geri Halliwell - Really good - REAL!!!.RIAAFix.EXE", which is a good thing for P2P networks;)
Ummm, I dont think its targeted at the average john doe. There are many people doing scientific reaserch which needs to be carried out for an extended period in a weightless environment.
Just because you personally have no use for it, doesnt immediatly justifying it as pointless.
Yes, and even if you do have an anti-virus program installed, a script you write yourself wont exactly match any definitions the AV proggie has in its database.
Register your own domain or get an address like blah.ath.cx. Then host an SMTP server. You will get email addressed to anything under that domain.
If you need to give a site your email addy, leave in a reference to that site. eg slashdot@myname.ath.cx. That way if someone sells your address, an address leaks, or whatver, you know EXACTLY who is responsible, and you can block junk mail without affecting legitimate email.
Ive been using this technique for quite a while. I can check my email and be confident I have no spam whatsoever. At times when I got spam, it always turned out it was a single site that leaked my addy, and I easilly identified and blocked it.
I think you got screeners and cams confused. Cam copies are poor quality recordings of the cinema screen using a hidden camera.
Screeners - which you mentioned are copies from media (usually DVD) sent to rental stores, etc well in advance before a film starts showing. They have perfect quality, and dont differe much from the final DVD excapt that they may lack some extra/bonus features.
Total bandwidth globally on the spectrum isnt limited as wi-fi has a limited range. The only limit would be the DENSITY of users vs the density of access points. Areas with many simultaneous users might need several access points. You would only approach the limit if you had 50 simultaneous users per access point, and access points on all four channels used in the same area. Thats 200 users in a 100m radius, im sure we can live with it.
Surprised its not been mentioned before. Assuming its 802.11b, I get 5MBps speeds right next to the AP. In a room next door with my laptop I get 2MBps over wifi. A room further away is an erratic 0.5MBps.
Now a 120GB hard drive over a wireless link? Possibly enough to stream DivX, forget about DVD, and to fill the drive would take over two days!
Slashdot Mirror
I dissagree with your comments, that children should be taught not to talk to strangers online. I believe that the ability to converse with people they have never met, and most likely will never meet, is one of the most important things your child can be taught.
Thanks to the Internet, your child can make acquaintances with people from a multitude of countries, beliefs, and religions. They can learn about cultures, differences between societies, and problems or struggles people experience in everyday life. And they can do this safely.
There are still people who would rather deny their child communication with "online strangers" than educate their child about doing so responsibly. There are still parents who know so little about the Internet that they will accept the miconception that all "chat rooms" are undeground grooming places for paedophiles. Five minutes of guidance is enough to make your child understand that joining #12yroldz on AOL and repeatedly asking "wanna cyber?" is a bad idea.
The key is making your child *understand* that people hidden behind a chat room can lie. Simple as that. They need to be taught to keep their online acquaintances seperate from the real world. Make them understand that they WILL meet people who will try to harm them. With a little education, the Internet becomes a "virtual sandbox". Your child will be exposed to people - both good and bad, in a controlled and safe enviroment. There is no better way to teach your child about human nature.
I say this from personal experience. I am presently 18. During my 'childhood' I had always enjoyed the freedom of unrestricted online communication. I belive the results from this are only positive. I have learned so much, from so many...
My lifetime passion has always been programming. While in the 'real world', very few of the people around me shared this interest, online I was able to find a haven. I was able to interact with hundreds of thousands of people who not only shared my interests, but were willing to share their knowledge. I learnt to share my knowlede in return. I could collaborate on projects with people I had never met. It didn't matter that I was 12, noone knew or cared. My age was irrelevant. It was an environment in which skin color, gender, age, and nationallity are all irrelevant. A place where knowledge, contribution, and respect are honoured.
This has changed my approach in the real world. In a society where racism and religious discrimination are commonplace, children learn the negative attitudes from their peers. Having made contacts in practically every country, I didn't give in to the temptation to tag along. I actually knew the societies and people which others would criticise for no other reason than "because they're different".
I don't believe that your child will have their mind warped by pornography or bad language on the internet. If you believe they won't be exposed to these two 'evils' at their schools, you have perhaps lost contact with reality. The difference is that in the online world, attacking people with profanities results in rejection from a community, rather than cheap support from immature peers. The "u wanna fuck?" messages are frowned upon - "I'm sorry, I'd rather not sustain a sexual relationship over a 56k modem link".
I learnt, from first-hand experience, that trust takes years to build, and seconds to break. I learned to respect others, not because it was 'forbidden' to be disrespectful, but because mutual respect is what created the greatest acheivements and communities. I learned how to act when in a position of power, how to diminish rather than fuel dissagreements. Online communities, be they forums, IRC channels, or simply e-mail, have one thing in common; they are environments in which decisions aren't made with fists or knives, but via wit, intellect, and understanding. If children weren't sheided from this "for their own protection", they would grow to become better people.
Besides, if you have dynamic IP on your box, you probably shouldn't be running an SMTP server to begin with.
Why not? I have a dynamic IP, although since I rarely reconnect, my IP often stays the same for months. I have a script that simply updates my MX records whenever my IP changes, essentially making sure people can send me emails without interruption.
And running my own SMTP server has helped me reduce the amount of spam I get. When I give out my email addy, I leave in a reference to the site. Eg me@ebay.mydomain.com and me@someforum.mydomain.com. If someone leaks my addy 1) I know who, 2) I just blacklist that subdomain.
Ignoring the fact the above post is clearly flamebait...
The two theories you mentioned - Evolution and the Big Bang, are both just that - scientific theories. Based on observations, scientists have been able to come up with a 'best-fit' theory, which makes sense, and helps explain and model the world we see around us.
So far all evidence (background microwave radiation, expanding universe, etc) seems to confirm the theory of the big bang. Of course there are still some occurances which we do not understand, but unless you have a better theory to offer, try and understand why centuries of research by our best scientists has yielded the conclusions it has.
Evolution is practically common sense. We UNDERSTAND genetics. We know that physical characteristics are INHERITED. We know that creatures not adapted to their surrounding will simply die. Anyone capable of logical thinking can conclude that over generations, species will adapt to cope with their surroundings. It's not so much of a theory than it is fact which can be proven by anything from mathematical models, to observing real life phenomenon.
"The only thing that has stayed constant for all time is the Word of God."
Right, umm, yes. Of course we haven't found major indiscrepencies between the bible and reality, once we gained the technology to observe it. We still know that heaven happens to be just above the clouds, ligtning is a result of God's angwer rather than electrostatic potential buildup, and that noah saved life on planet earth by transporting every species on a giant ship. Oh, wait. What we now know to be bullshit is claimed to be "symbolic" of the deeper meaning in the bible.
You say "everything we get wrong or can't explain is the work of someone superior", and claim you can't be disproved. Scientists do their best to actually EXPLAIN the world in which we live in rather than saying "I dont know a thing, so the explanation is god". And I don't know how the moon-ice theory relates to evolution and secular cosmology. I assume that you don't either.
This project is currently not implemented in the longhorn pre-beta released at the PDC.
For those interested in longhorn, take a look at a review I made:
I think ignorance should be a crime. When electricity was first becomming mainstream, groups of people were organising huge protests about the harmful effects of being in a room with a power socket in it. There will always be small groups of retards on a crusade against technology.
/me thinks of novel ways to inflict slow and painful death upon all the people who think their lack of knowledge gives them the right to sabotage the development and acceptance of technology.
There were some pseudo-scientific experminents conducted by groups of people looking to expoit naive organisations to gain funding. Upon reading their reports, it turns out their scientific basis for concluding that mobile phones are harmful was sticking mice in microwave ovens and noting low survival rates. And of course they decided that since phones also emit waves in the microwave spectrum, they must be no different!.
Unfortunatly the media, looking for sensations, hypes up these ridicioulous claims, claiming that "experts" have found new "evidence" of the danger of microwave "radiation" to people. This immediatly spawned mass hysteria amongst the clueless public. Thanks to this behaviour I now have usless mobile phone coverage in my area - plans for the erection of a new mobile phone mast were abbandoned due to a huge protest about the effects on a nearby school, and revolts organised by "concerned parents" who frankly deserve to be shot.
All *credible* scientific research into the effects of electromagnetic waves on living tissue find the following conclusion.
1) The risks associated with exposure to EM waves rise exponentially with the frequency.
---
Long wave radio signals can be pumped out with the power of many killowats right next to a human brain, and after a lifetime of exposure the risks are negligable. If we increase the frequency to, for example, visible light, exposure to much lower levels can be harmfull. Increasing it still further to ultaviolet, increases the risk of cancer by a large factor. And the same dosage of alpha/beta/gamma rays and you are dead on the spot. Microwave 'radiation' in fact has a frequency approx 10 times lower than visible light. Sitting for a long time with a 60W lightbulb next to your head would put you in a lot more danger... go figure.
And people comparing mobile phones with their ovens because both rely on "microwave radiation" deserve to have their testicles jammed in a microwave oven in the name of science. A very specific frequency in the microwave range causes tissue to heat up because it matches a mode of resonance of the water molecules. Same goes for infrared light (hence similar heating effects). Mobile phones and wireless networks do NOT use this frequency (and even if they did, all you would get is very slight warming of nearby tissue - probably unnoticable at the exposure levels mobile phones use - and certainly not harmful).
2) Harmful effects increase linearly with the power output
---
Mobile phones use 0.5Watts, and peak at 1 watt. TV masts output 2 million watts of power. Wireless lans output 0.1 watts. Your microwave oven leaks many times more. Go figure.
3) Your exposure decays with the inverse cube of the distance
---
What matters is the power you are exposed to, divided by your surface area. If people are worried about a wireless lan access point sitting on a wall/desk 10m away, then it is obscure many of them have come to accept using a mobile phone which generates 5 times more power right next to their head. We are talking about a 5000-fold lower exposure level with wireless lans. If these fanatics had any clue about basic physics, they would be refusing to allow their children to be in the same town as someone using a mobile phone!
END RANT. lol.
If you are using any version of windows NT, it is not always wise to open untrusted telnet links. By default windows will send the NTLM hash of the logged in user to the remote server, which could be auditted to recover the password in usually less than a day.
I do not believe that the human eyes can be actually fooled into believing this image is real and not on a screen if the picture is 2 dimensional.
I am sure the impression of nausea in fact the conflict between seeing detail as in real life, yet the image lacking all depth.
It's been done before (www.dti3d.com and others) for quite a while now, although its never really caught on much for the general public, perhaps because the price of "normal" lcd panels at the time was high enough, never mind specialised 3d panels which are little more than a cool toy. They have found limited use in the graphics industry tho.
LOL, no... the screen doesn't track the position of your head, so you cannoy in fact peek around objects. The image sent to your left and right eye is fixed, and the display is only effective when looking at it straight on... as with every similar technology, the 3d effect is only perceived.
And it hasnt been implemented in laptops FIRST... Desktop 3d screens have existed for quite a while now, although they cost a fortune and are rarely used outside the graphics industry.
What the girl did might well be illegal. This does not however mean that extorting damages of $2000 was just. Law, justice, and morallity are often three entirely different things. I, and the majority of the EFF supporters strongly believe that people involved in file sharing should not be considered criminals. There are many legitimate applications for P2P - conveniently obtaining a copy of music you own onto your PC, a decentralised backup of all the music files in case the originals become damaged, just to mention a few.
Of course if you share a file on P2P networks, many of the people who download it will not own a legal copy - but thats thir business. I belive that individual P2P users should never be held responsible for the actions of those who download from them. Shops are permitted to sell VCRs, firearms, tape recorders, whatever - each item can be used for good and bad purposes, for legal and illegal purposes - but this is the responsibility of the person who obtains the items. It is impractical for the RIAA to go after people downloading music without owning originals, so instead they hold everyone SHARING the music to be responsible! Yes, I believe this is unjust, and I believe that the EFF as a group predominantly are against the mass lawsuits against filesharers.
You would think that with such an important and PR-intensive case, one of the priorities of the EFF would be to at least step in and help cover the fine, sending the public message that they are willing to help against unjust lawsuits.
In fact if I remember correctly, just yesterday the EFF sent a strong warning to people NOT to accept the amnesty settlements from the RIAA, because they would simply be admitting guilt. I think this is a crucial case which should have been fought. If there is any case the EFF should have stepped in to help, it would have been this one.
I wonder how long it will be till they attempt to use the DMCA to silence him - this is after all a typical scenario for the DMCA to be exploited in order to gag scientists and cryptology experts.
Sadly, I wouldn't at all be surprised to see this end up on chillingeffects in the near future.
Bootable USB support is actually included in most modern bioses. It emulates a HDD. Since windows 95 uses standard bios interrupts to access devices, this shouldnt be much of a problem.
Every other comment bitches about how there are no uses for this. I can think of one interesting application straight away.
USB pendrives are becomming cheaper and more popular. Most of them support booting. Copying a mini distro of windows 95 would be quite a useful feature - you pop your stick into any PC, and have your own customised GUI with a few programs you use regularly, programs you need to open documents stored on your pendrive preinstalled, etc.
Which used to be a pain in the ass until someone made a nice free utility called DVDShrink (freeware).
It rips the DVD, and reencodes it on the fly. Keeps all the extras unless you choose otherwise.
On my pc ripping a DVD and reencoding it takes 30 mins or so. Burning takes 40. In 1:30 mins my computer spits out a copy which hardly ever expires. And on a 4.3GB DVD-R the bitrate is still high enough for me not to notice any compression artifacts.
Probably wont work that well, as people who keep them in a moderatly dark area will end up with a much longer life, and if someone accidentally leaves a disk for a minute on a table in direct sunlight might end up with a borked disk.
;)
Exposure to air sounds more reasonable. They likened it to rust. I assume oxidation causes the data area to deteriorate.
Problem is this will be a gradual proccess however its done, and you will be likely to end up with DVDs which have a lot or read errors after a while, rather than being fully watchable, or not at all.
Not that I care much. Ripping and reencoding a DVD to fit on a DVD-R takes all of 30 mins using DVDShrink. If this technology means I can get good films as cheap promos, and I can easilly defeat the protection, im all for it
The general reaction seems to be:
;)
* gosh, they will delete my legal MP3s too
* The bastards are resorting to illegal tactics, ill sure
* They will sabotage my pc
But who here really thinks they will succeed? Im just laughing at it. The RIAA of all people who cant even keep their website up, pwning my computer? Doubt it.
Maybe it will get rid of the n00bs who decide to open "Geri Halliwell - Really good - REAL!!!.RIAAFix.EXE", which is a good thing for P2P networks
Ummm, I dont think its targeted at the average john doe. There are many people doing scientific reaserch which needs to be carried out for an extended period in a weightless environment.
Just because you personally have no use for it, doesnt immediatly justifying it as pointless.
Yes, and even if you do have an anti-virus program installed, a script you write yourself wont exactly match any definitions the AV proggie has in its database.
Register your own domain or get an address like blah.ath.cx. Then host an SMTP server. You will get email addressed to anything under that domain.
If you need to give a site your email addy, leave in a reference to that site. eg slashdot@myname.ath.cx. That way if someone sells your address, an address leaks, or whatver, you know EXACTLY who is responsible, and you can block junk mail without affecting legitimate email.
Ive been using this technique for quite a while. I can check my email and be confident I have no spam whatsoever. At times when I got spam, it always turned out it was a single site that leaked my addy, and I easilly identified and blocked it.
Vibrations into energy?
;)
You've just invented the 'microphone'
I think you got screeners and cams confused. Cam copies are poor quality recordings of the cinema screen using a hidden camera.
Screeners - which you mentioned are copies from media (usually DVD) sent to rental stores, etc well in advance before a film starts showing. They have perfect quality, and dont differe much from the final DVD excapt that they may lack some extra/bonus features.
Total bandwidth globally on the spectrum isnt limited as wi-fi has a limited range. The only limit would be the DENSITY of users vs the density of access points. Areas with many simultaneous users might need several access points. You would only approach the limit if you had 50 simultaneous users per access point, and access points on all four channels used in the same area. Thats 200 users in a 100m radius, im sure we can live with it.
Surprised its not been mentioned before. Assuming its 802.11b, I get 5MBps speeds right next to the AP. In a room next door with my laptop I get 2MBps over wifi. A room further away is an erratic 0.5MBps.
Now a 120GB hard drive over a wireless link? Possibly enough to stream DivX, forget about DVD, and to fill the drive would take over two days!
From what I gather after reading the artitcle, they arent suing the campus network admins but the students who run and admin P2P servers on their PCs.
Solution: Use a decentralised method.