How much would that amount of energy in batteries to power a hypothetical anti-gravity drive weigh?
And it's this limitation, IMHO, that is going to be the stumbling block for major breakthroughs in the near future. We simply don't have access to the quantities of energy necessary (and corresponding storage/distribution methods) to experimentally test many of the theories that are out there, at least not at anything resembling a reasonable cost.
It's long been an instinctive belief of mine that once we get the hang of routinely producing anti-matter and using it for energy production, a great many mysteries will be solved in a relatively brief period of time.
We've learned a lot about how the world around us works. In order to learn significantly more, we need to expand our tool collection.
(And by "we", I mean the human race in general. I'm, of course, in no way trying to include myself amongst the elite group of the worlds' top physicists, just in case anyone was planning to rant about such grammatical trivialities.)
Get the cops involved. Track him down, try to recover your possesions, then let the courts have their way with him.
Once he's back on the streets, keep tabs on him but don't do anything right away. Wait 6 months, maybe even a year. You want to let the situation fade from everyone's mind so that you're not the first name that pops into their heads when the thief turns up in the ER. After sufficient time has passed, sic Radek on the prick. I'd even recommend tagging along and getting a few shots in yourself.
Where as if anything had actually happened to the computers he would have been able to fix them immediately - hence costing nothing.
That depends on what the "official" purpose of the computer was. I've personally been in charge of machines where downtime cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour. This makes even the time required for a quick reboot quite expensive.
Some of you kids need to realize that computers do actually get used to do real work. And that using up processor cycles on a machine that's doing real work costs real money.
On the other hand, I think the penalties they're discussing are excessive, but what he did was still wrong.
First of all, they're not "my" secrets. I never had a copy of the tools, nor did I really want them. If I had asked nicely, I probably could have gotten ahold of them, but they're certainly not "my" secrets.
And I understood perfectly well what your point was. No need for you to clarify. I was simply pointing out that you are flat out wrong.
I'd be more than happy to explain *why* you're wrong, but since you blindly insist on missing a point that's been spelled out clearly on many occasions, I'd probably just be wasting my breath.
I can't speak for sorphin, but as someone who knows the "secret handshake" I can tell you what it is that I'm pissed about.
I'm pissed that this is quite likely going to force TiVo to take action against modified boxes. I'm pissed that the modifications I've been enjoying on my TiVos up until now will, in all likelihood, not be possible in the future.
I'm pissed that the next time I buy a 20 hour TiVo, it will probably have to remain a 20 hour TiVo.
I'm pissed that I'll probably have to install a land line again, since running serial PPP over my cable modem probably won't be an option anymore.
And I'm sure that the folks who dropped a hundred bucks to add ethernet are going to be pissed when that little circuit board is rendered useless.
In short, there are plenty of reasons to be disturbed by this that have nothing to do with elitism, exclusivity, or "secret handshakes".
The thing is that they CAN'T change the codec. All of the encoding/decoding is handled in hardware, and the processor isn't nearly powerful enough to implement a software codec.
More likely they'll just change the software so that it refuses to operate on a modified box.
I was simply stating that it is more difficult to hack your linux-based Tivo appliance, then it is to install the window-based Napster client.
My logic does not allow you to conclude "the only people who are able to use Napster are those who were able to write their own client from scratch."
Let me clarify. You're stating that applying these tools today is beyond the reach of the average idiot. I agree completely. My point is not about the state of things today, but the direction that things are now headed.
My point is that this brings us a step closer to the day when the average idiot will be able to use his TiVo to easily trade video over the 'net. Sure, he may have to recruit a technically oriented buddy to install the ethernet, but the software side could be made every bit as simple as Napster.
I hardly think that the same people who could install napster are going to be able to hack napster, get linux up and running, etc - its too much trouble for your average idiot.
By your logic, the only people who are able to use Napster are those who were able to write their own client from scratch. Sooner or later, one bright guy makes it easy enough for the average idiot. Then the shit hits the fan.
Gotta agree with sorphin on this one. Beneath the cheers of all the people shouting about what a great thing this is, there are a handful of folks who understand the probable ramifications, and are truly dismayed that this software was released.
Sure, it's useful, and a cool thing to be able to do. But having this stuff out there will likely have negative repurcussions that could have been avoided if things had been handled properly.
You can scream your "Information wants to be free" battle cry at the top of your lungs all you want. It doesn't change the reality that the people who own the rights to that information DON'T want it to be free, and will fight to maintain control.
My bet is that the public availability of this software will end up being a lose/lose situation.
How many people get injured in car accidents because of a cellphone
The last time I saw any statistics, cell phones rated somewhere underneath "adjusting the radio" as a cause of accidents. Sure, it happens, but not enough to get alarmed about.
What DOES piss me off, though, are the people who, for some inexplicable reason, feel the need to slow down an entire lane of traffic by 15 mph once they get on their phone.
My startac is either clipped to my belt or in one of my pockets at all times. I've gotten to the point where it's like a wallet or a watch. Its' become one of my "feel naked without it" items.
Instead of it being silly to carry it around all the time, with a small enough phone it becomes silly to even put forth the effort to set it down someplace.
I don't know about the models that are sold in Oz and NZ, but I've had several Nokia phones. Each and every one was a piece of crap. Lousy reception inside buildings, lost the tower WAY earlier than anyone elses phone, horrible sound quality.
On the other hand, I've never had a single reason to complain about any of the three StarTacs I've had. They're great little phones.
So why did we not receive any signals from other civilisations? That's what I'm bothering with. Is noone using radio waves to communicate outthere?
Perhaps it's only during a short technological infancy that it makes sense to haphazardly broadcast RF in all directions. After a while, communication shifts to wire / fiber based connections, or the RF becomes much more focused and directional (and thus much more difficult, if not impossible to detect from a distance).
Perhaps a great many stars to host intelligent civilizations, but many of them stopped broadcasting long before we started listening, and many haven't started broadcasting yet.
Plus, we're not doing ANY form of listening on more technologically advanced communications methods that the most interesting civilizations would likely be using.
Heh, you have to educate your reflexes to become as slow as after 2 cases of beer!
That's a whole lot of beer. It would consume entirely too much time do down two cases every time I wanted to watch TV. Not to mention the expense involved. And the hangovers...
Maybe weed is the answer. If I remember my partying days correctly, it always slowed my reflexes WAY more than alcohol.
Now instead of being able to see the whole name of a show, I can see adds for digital cable. Yay!
Almost as good as the local electric company running big ad campaigns on TV. I'm so very pleased that my rates are higher than necessary in order to allow them to advertise to what is a captive market anyway.
You can hardly equate this to the forced commercial watching that ReplayTV added. ReplayTV removed one of the key selling points of the unit. The feature that TiVo removed wasn't a selling point, was never mentioned in the marketing literature or owner's manual, and was not even accesible on an unmodified box. In fact, the general public was never even supposed to know it was there. It was simply some left over code for a feature that was apparently toyed, with but never meant for inclusion in the released product. So some clever folks figured out how to activate it, big deal. You still can't insinuate any evil-doing on TiVo's part for removing it.
Capacity reduction for hacked TiVos
Not even worth mentioning. The amount of space lost is fairly trivial. I only lost about 4 hours on mine. It's OK, I've got plenty of space to spare, I still never manage to fill the thing up anyway.
Autocorrection jump-back changes
Yep, you're right. The new setting for this feature sucks ass. Hard. Apparently, though, some "focus group" preferred it this way. One has to wonder if the focus group was made up of quad-amputees who were operating the remote with their noses. Even after a case of beer, my reflexes still aren't slow enough to accomodate the new settings.
1.Make a skip-forward-15-seconds button (the only feature of ReplayTV I envy)?
If you still have software version 1.3, you can enable this functionality by setting the appropriate environment variable. Details should be here somewhere. Try the search engine.
Sadly, this ability seems to have been removed in software version 2.0.1. Sucks, but it's not quite as evil as what this article talks about, since it was never an official feature anyway, just some leftover code that wasn't really supposed to be there.
2.Make it so that when you press record mid-way through a show that you've been watching it doesn't discard what you've already watched?
The guy above me is correct. Software version 2.0.1 adds this ability, with one caveat: If you want to include the buffer in your recording, you have to also record the rest of the show in Best quality. Apparently, switching qualities in mid-recording proved too troublesome to deal with.
You're making a pretty clear decision by making it available to anyone on Napster.
Yes. If, however, Napster incorporated the user info I mentioned, then I could make a clear decision to only display my info to private individuals, and to exclude the other entities.
As copyright holder to the list, I'm sure the RIAA would agree that it's within my rights to make those restrictions.
And individual file results would not be covered under copyright regardless of your licensing statements (or else it would be illegal for me to look up a phone number in the book and tell it to you!)
By that logic, it would only be illegal for me to transmit an entire CD to you. Transmitting only track 3 should be just fine.
According to the article I read, the 72 hour clock doesn't start ticking until the RIAA submits their list to Napster. Since the ruling was just made this morning, I doubt they've handed the list over yet. Even if they have, Napster still has ~3 days before they have to "flick the switch."
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How much would that amount of energy in batteries to power a hypothetical anti-gravity drive weigh?
And it's this limitation, IMHO, that is going to be the stumbling block for major breakthroughs in the near future. We simply don't have access to the quantities of energy necessary (and corresponding storage/distribution methods) to experimentally test many of the theories that are out there, at least not at anything resembling a reasonable cost.
It's long been an instinctive belief of mine that once we get the hang of routinely producing anti-matter and using it for energy production, a great many mysteries will be solved in a relatively brief period of time.
We've learned a lot about how the world around us works. In order to learn significantly more, we need to expand our tool collection.
(And by "we", I mean the human race in general. I'm, of course, in no way trying to include myself amongst the elite group of the worlds' top physicists, just in case anyone was planning to rant about such grammatical trivialities.)
Here's how you do it:
Get the cops involved. Track him down, try to recover your possesions, then let the courts have their way with him.
Once he's back on the streets, keep tabs on him but don't do anything right away. Wait 6 months, maybe even a year. You want to let the situation fade from everyone's mind so that you're not the first name that pops into their heads when the thief turns up in the ER. After sufficient time has passed, sic Radek on the prick. I'd even recommend tagging along and getting a few shots in yourself.
Um, no.
Where as if anything had actually happened to the computers he would have been able to fix them immediately - hence costing nothing.
That depends on what the "official" purpose of the computer was. I've personally been in charge of machines where downtime cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour. This makes even the time required for a quick reboot quite expensive.
Some of you kids need to realize that computers do actually get used to do real work. And that using up processor cycles on a machine that's doing real work costs real money.
On the other hand, I think the penalties they're discussing are excessive, but what he did was still wrong.
First of all, they're not "my" secrets. I never had a copy of the tools, nor did I really want them. If I had asked nicely, I probably could have gotten ahold of them, but they're certainly not "my" secrets.
And I understood perfectly well what your point was. No need for you to clarify. I was simply pointing out that you are flat out wrong.
I'd be more than happy to explain *why* you're wrong, but since you blindly insist on missing a point that's been spelled out clearly on many occasions, I'd probably just be wasting my breath.
I can't speak for sorphin, but as someone who knows the "secret handshake" I can tell you what it is that I'm pissed about.
I'm pissed that this is quite likely going to force TiVo to take action against modified boxes. I'm pissed that the modifications I've been enjoying on my TiVos up until now will, in all likelihood, not be possible in the future.
I'm pissed that the next time I buy a 20 hour TiVo, it will probably have to remain a 20 hour TiVo.
I'm pissed that I'll probably have to install a land line again, since running serial PPP over my cable modem probably won't be an option anymore.
And I'm sure that the folks who dropped a hundred bucks to add ethernet are going to be pissed when that little circuit board is rendered useless.
In short, there are plenty of reasons to be disturbed by this that have nothing to do with elitism, exclusivity, or "secret handshakes".
The thing is that they CAN'T change the codec. All of the encoding/decoding is handled in hardware, and the processor isn't nearly powerful enough to implement a software codec.
More likely they'll just change the software so that it refuses to operate on a modified box.
t's not pointless and stupid if you want to use this new hack. It doesn't work with the 2.0 version of the software.
I'm sure it will soon.
I was simply stating that it is more difficult to hack your linux-based Tivo appliance, then it is to install the window-based Napster client.
My logic does not allow you to conclude "the only people who are able to use Napster are those who were able to write their own client from scratch."
Let me clarify. You're stating that applying these tools today is beyond the reach of the average idiot. I agree completely. My point is not about the state of things today, but the direction that things are now headed.
My point is that this brings us a step closer to the day when the average idiot will be able to use his TiVo to easily trade video over the 'net. Sure, he may have to recruit a technically oriented buddy to install the ethernet, but the software side could be made every bit as simple as Napster.
Yeah, I've read it. A bunch of whining and crying about, essentially, nothing.
I hardly think that the same people who could install napster are going to be able to hack napster, get linux up and running, etc - its too much trouble for your average idiot.
By your logic, the only people who are able to use Napster are those who were able to write their own client from scratch. Sooner or later, one bright guy makes it easy enough for the average idiot. Then the shit hits the fan.
Gotta agree with sorphin on this one. Beneath the cheers of all the people shouting about what a great thing this is, there are a handful of folks who understand the probable ramifications, and are truly dismayed that this software was released.
Sure, it's useful, and a cool thing to be able to do. But having this stuff out there will likely have negative repurcussions that could have been avoided if things had been handled properly.
You can scream your "Information wants to be free" battle cry at the top of your lungs all you want. It doesn't change the reality that the people who own the rights to that information DON'T want it to be free, and will fight to maintain control.
My bet is that the public availability of this software will end up being a lose/lose situation.
Well, yes, that's (normally) rather easy to do. Pointless and stupid, but rather easy.
Sorry, it's part of a larger project which I'm not free to redistribute.
My autoripper goes ahead and rips the disc with generic track names, but goes a step further.
Once a day, it will attempt to lookup the track names again, once they appear in freedb, the tracks get named and stored appropriately.
How many people get injured in car accidents because of a cellphone
The last time I saw any statistics, cell phones rated somewhere underneath "adjusting the radio" as a cause of accidents. Sure, it happens, but not enough to get alarmed about.
What DOES piss me off, though, are the people who, for some inexplicable reason, feel the need to slow down an entire lane of traffic by 15 mph once they get on their phone.
My startac is either clipped to my belt or in one of my pockets at all times. I've gotten to the point where it's like a wallet or a watch. Its' become one of my "feel naked without it" items.
Instead of it being silly to carry it around all the time, with a small enough phone it becomes silly to even put forth the effort to set it down someplace.
I don't know about the models that are sold in Oz and NZ, but I've had several Nokia phones. Each and every one was a piece of crap. Lousy reception inside buildings, lost the tower WAY earlier than anyone elses phone, horrible sound quality.
On the other hand, I've never had a single reason to complain about any of the three StarTacs I've had. They're great little phones.
So why did we not receive any signals from other civilisations? That's what I'm bothering with. Is noone using radio waves to communicate outthere?
Perhaps it's only during a short technological infancy that it makes sense to haphazardly broadcast RF in all directions. After a while, communication shifts to wire / fiber based connections, or the RF becomes much more focused and directional (and thus much more difficult, if not impossible to detect from a distance).
Perhaps a great many stars to host intelligent civilizations, but many of them stopped broadcasting long before we started listening, and many haven't started broadcasting yet.
Plus, we're not doing ANY form of listening on more technologically advanced communications methods that the most interesting civilizations would likely be using.
Heh, you have to educate your reflexes to become as slow as after 2 cases of beer!
That's a whole lot of beer. It would consume entirely too much time do down two cases every time I wanted to watch TV. Not to mention the expense involved. And the hangovers...
Maybe weed is the answer. If I remember my partying days correctly, it always slowed my reflexes WAY more than alcohol.
:-)
Now instead of being able to see the whole name of a show, I can see adds for digital cable. Yay!
Almost as good as the local electric company running big ad campaigns on TV. I'm so very pleased that my rates are higher than necessary in order to allow them to advertise to what is a captive market anyway.
Removal of the 30-second skip backdoor
You can hardly equate this to the forced commercial watching that ReplayTV added. ReplayTV removed one of the key selling points of the unit. The feature that TiVo removed wasn't a selling point, was never mentioned in the marketing literature or owner's manual, and was not even accesible on an unmodified box. In fact, the general public was never even supposed to know it was there. It was simply some left over code for a feature that was apparently toyed, with but never meant for inclusion in the released product. So some clever folks figured out how to activate it, big deal. You still can't insinuate any evil-doing on TiVo's part for removing it.
Capacity reduction for hacked TiVos
Not even worth mentioning. The amount of space lost is fairly trivial. I only lost about 4 hours on mine. It's OK, I've got plenty of space to spare, I still never manage to fill the thing up anyway.
Autocorrection jump-back changes
Yep, you're right. The new setting for this feature sucks ass. Hard. Apparently, though, some "focus group" preferred it this way. One has to wonder if the focus group was made up of quad-amputees who were operating the remote with their noses. Even after a case of beer, my reflexes still aren't slow enough to accomodate the new settings.
1.Make a skip-forward-15-seconds button (the only feature of ReplayTV I envy)?
If you still have software version 1.3, you can enable this functionality by setting the appropriate environment variable. Details should be here somewhere. Try the search engine.
Sadly, this ability seems to have been removed in software version 2.0.1. Sucks, but it's not quite as evil as what this article talks about, since it was never an official feature anyway, just some leftover code that wasn't really supposed to be there.
2.Make it so that when you press record mid-way through a show that you've been watching it doesn't discard what you've already watched?
The guy above me is correct. Software version 2.0.1 adds this ability, with one caveat: If you want to include the buffer in your recording, you have to also record the rest of the show in Best quality. Apparently, switching qualities in mid-recording proved too troublesome to deal with.
You're making a pretty clear decision by making it available to anyone on Napster.
Yes. If, however, Napster incorporated the user info I mentioned, then I could make a clear decision to only display my info to private individuals, and to exclude the other entities.
As copyright holder to the list, I'm sure the RIAA would agree that it's within my rights to make those restrictions.
And individual file results would not be covered under copyright regardless of your licensing statements (or else it would be illegal for me to look up a phone number in the book and tell it to you!)
By that logic, it would only be illegal for me to transmit an entire CD to you. Transmitting only track 3 should be just fine.
According to the article I read, the 72 hour clock doesn't start ticking until the RIAA submits their list to Napster. Since the ruling was just made this morning, I doubt they've handed the list over yet. Even if they have, Napster still has ~3 days before they have to "flick the switch."