*** Disclamer *** I finished my studies in Industrial Engineering at PSU, worked there for 6 years, and still live and work in the area) ***/Disclaimer ***
I'm almost ashamed to be a Penn State Alumnus. Graham Spanier is most likely the WORST President the university has had in a LONG time. He is hypocritical and so out of touch with the students, the community, and society in general that it defies logic.
***warning*** long post ahead ***warning***
For those that don't know about Penn State, Let me give some background. Penn State is the largest university in Pennsylvania (~45,000 students total). It is located in the geographical center of PA, 3hrs from the closest major city (Pittsburgh,Philadelphia), and at least 90 minutes from the closest minor cities (Johnstown, Harrisburg). There are more cows than people in the 50 mile radius around campus, you cannot get to campus without driving at least 10 miles on 2-lane hiway, and the bar to church ratio here is roughly 30:4. We have the largest single student dorm complex (East Halls)in the nation (2nd largest in the world) and the largest Greek system in the country.
With all that in mind, there is a lot of drinking and partying that occurs here. This year, we were voted the #1 and #3 party school by CNN and Playboy respectively. 40% of students ADMIT to binge drinking 4 or more drinks when they drink (though, I bet that number is actually much higher). In my 9 years in the town (I work locally now), there have been at least 8 riots I can remember (3 serious, 6 not) for things such as "We're #1 in the nation at football!" (x2), "Our basketball team does suck this year!" (x1), "There's art all over our streets!" (x4). We're a fun loving (and sometimes destructive) crowd.
With all that in mind, we do do some things involving alcohol for good causes. The most noted is the "Rathskeller Case Race." In the Case Race, the 'Skeller sells cases of Rolling Rock pony (7oz) bottles to patrons who, as longa s they're drinking, can stay. Soon as they stop, they have to leave and more are let in. All proceeds benefit the American Red Cross. The line will extend out the door, around the block, down to the next block, around the corner, DOWN the third block, and halfway down the side of another block. It is one of the top things on the "100 things a true PSU student does."
This year in his infinite wisdom, Graham decided that it would be better for the students (and alumni and faculty) to binge drink on their own, rather than support a cause. He had the race cancelled. He has also tried to make campus dry (except for home football games, of course. Can't stop the rich alumni from tailgating. that my hit into the donations.) In the ime he was fighting to make campus dry (which he accomplished at his last university) he had a fully stocked liquor cabinet installed in his, and all the other higher-ups, offices.
The student activity fee is another great fiasco of his tenure. Every student is charged a $50 "activity fee" that is supposed to go towards the clubs you join and other campus supported stuff that you go to. The original point of this was to help provide activities other than drinking. The majority of mine when I was in school was used to renevate our Student Uunion Building (the HUB) which most students were fine with, but then they added a multi-million dollar cultural center on (which, if you go up at any random time, has 10 people in it, most of which got lost trying to find their way out of the HUB's east wing). A large portion of this center was paid from donations and the Student Activity Fee. The funds were so mismanaged that even some of the oldest, most populous, and most active clubs on campus were unable to collect their stipends from the campus cause the funds had run out.
Now he wants to charge for using music? The students already pay a rather substantial "computer lab" fee and they're reward? Having on campus bandwidth throttled at 56K in the dorms. Th
Re:New Distributed Computing Project : DDoS spamme
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I, Spammer
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm in.
Suggestion: rephrase it and put it on Ask Slashdot
-Ab
Re:Even worse than being spammed
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I, Spammer
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· Score: 1
Same here. Email account for nearly 9 years has been joe-jobbed. I have to delete 100+ rejections per day from his crap... all for the same penis enlargement ad. Fuck him with a red wiffle ball bat until his ears bleed.
Are you as assinine as you sound? We (collectively) can most certainly pick and choose parts of items that we like.
I like the power in my new Mustang, but I don't like the layout of the console.
I like the girl in the cubicle beside me's cute face and pert breasts. I don't care for her dumpy ass and chunky thighs.
I like the concept of Open Source. I hate the mainly user unfriendliness and lack of support of the software I've tried.
I like slashdot. I hate trolls.
I like the smell of a fresh thunderstorm. I hate the water on the ground that prevents me from rollerblading.
I love my cell phone. I hate when people call me when I don't want to talk to them.
This doesn't make me a hypocrite. It makes me able to appreciate different factors of things and evaluate them all seperately as a basis for rating the whole. To suggest that because I hat one part of one thing means that I MUST hate the rest is ludicrous. To suggest even more that because I disliked something in the past, that I must dislike it forever is even worse. Under that theory, I'd still hate beer (mmm... beer) nor would I have ever forgiven the guy that beat me up when we were in 3rd grade (who is now one of my best friends and drinking buddies).
I value anonymity as much as the next guy, but I spent 6 hours of my work day today trying to sort through nearly 30,000 received by my company. I'm creating a DB for Spam/Ham so with a little script, I can show my bosses how effective a bayesian filter can be and I can get on with my life.
I prefer to use anonymous mail (hotmail, yahoo, etc...) for a lot of things. My work email is for just that: work. My home email is for friends and family. My hotmail is for everything else. You can still have anonymity and be regulated. I heard a rumor recently that Hotmail put limits on the number of mails you can send a day (I think it was 100) and the number of TO:, CC:, and BCC:s you can have (again, i think 100). This still allows us Joe Users to send what mail we need to anonymously, but still makes spamming from them difficult (but not impossible).
This may get a little too philosophical, but I'm going to give it a try. What is the key difference between programming and parenting?
There is a very fundamental difference. When was the last time your program told you "NO!" for some reason other than human error? I know it may seem like your computer has a mind of it's own, but in reality, it can only do what it is EXPLICITLY told to do. Actual intelligence is capable of not only making rational decisions based on pre-defined rules, but also extrapolating those rules to unrelated circumstances as well as making decisions completely AGAINST reason.
I was very heavily into robotics and AI in college, and the fundamental difference between AI and real intelligence is NOT the ability to learn, but the ability to make abstract choices based on a prior, yet not exact (or often even similar) rule set.
For example: Paul Graham's "A Plan For Spam" contains software that, after some initial conditioning, will recognize new spam based on old rules and adapt those rules to continue to do it's job. Is it true AI? No. It cannot function outside it's exact rule set. Send it a spam message in russian, and I bet it has no idea what to do, even if there are porn pictures in it. Even more apt would be whether it could identify spam websites without additional human coding.
Currently, the method for AI research, especially among those not in the field, is "how many rules can we pass it until it seems real." This, IMHO, is a poor schema without much hope for success. Evolutionary programming seems to have a much more realistic and probable chance towards succeeding. For some good reading on the subject, check out Blondie24: Playing at the Edge of AI
They may very well have a state income tax (I know my state does), but let's look at it this way... would you rather:
A. Tax your own people (income tax of residents) just to give it back to them in the forms of social services (roads, schools, etc...) and allow others to use these for free.
or...
B. Try and spread that tax around (sales tax) so that people visiting the state and driving on the roads, walking on the side walks, etc... have to pay a share, too.
Sales tax was basically formed in states to try and get people who don't necessarily live in that state to foot some of the bill. The more money politicians can take out of 'foreigners', the less they need from their constituants (including businesses), which helps keep them in office. hence, taxing internet sales to people outside of california makes perfect sense to them. (personally, I think it blows and I've only bought things from CA online stores 3 times, all 3 times something went wrong, including one time when I ended up with 2X 80G drives that were illegally smuggled into the states sans-tarriff from Europe).
1x clear plastic picture cover from picture frame. (3"X5")
First 4 parts are available from RadioShack for a total less than $10. The junction box is available at Lowe's for $1.66. The picture cover you can get with any cheap picture frame.
step 1: lay the junction box upside down on a piece of paper and trace. Cut out the outline.
step 2: lay out the jacks and switches on the paper. the 4 jacks go with the 4 outputs (or inputs as you see fit) and the odd jack out is your static out/in.
step 3: glue the paper to the plastic
step 4: drill and dremel the plastic according to the paper pattern.
step 5: screw/glue all audio parts in.
step 6: flip over and solder all left channel and right channel negatives together.
step 6: solder wires from your static jack right channel to the middle-left side of each switch and the left channel to the top left of each switch.
step 7: solder the middle right of each switch to the CORRESPONDING input/output jack's right channel and the top right to the jacks left channel.
step 8: place the plastic on the junction box and seal with glue or screws
To use as a multi-out: place the output from your computer into the static jack. Run lines from the other jacks to your computer speakers, stereo, tv, headphones... When a switch is in the on position, that jack will get signal. When it is off, it won't.
To use as a multi input, connect your speakers to the static jack. Connect all inputs to the other 4 jacks. When the switch for a jack is on, it's signal will goto the speakers. When it is off, it wont.
I built this cause I was sick of switching my sound cables everytime I wanted to switch from my computer speakers (when playing games) to my TV (when watching DVDs on my DVD out) to my headphones (when listening to music while coding and my roommate was sleeping).
CAUTION: this is a PASSIVE system. IF you are using it as a multi-out, there isn't much danger. You will just get decreased volume as you turn on more outputs because the signal will be split. If you are using it as a multi-INPUT system and try to input several signals to the speakers at once, you can run the risk of blowing them.
If you have any questions, reply. I'll give you my ICQ and write up some clearer diagrams.
I disagree slightly with your premise. I don't feel that Apple has debunked any 'myths' about the DMCA. What Apple has done is what the big 5 and the RIAA (and for that matter, the MPAA) have refused to attempt in a truly marketable way, and that is "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."
Apple looked and said, "We have this great new electronic distribution method for releasing media. PRO: It's extremely low cost, popular, and we can make money off of it by providing a low cost alternative to our target audience. CON: Copyrighting LAWS make it a gray area and difficult to impliment. Solution: iTunes"
This is where the others have failed. They have tried to either squash the technology, or have provided subscription services that are more expensive than the actual cost of purchasing CDs and ripping them yourself. Even worse, most of these services worked more on a rental system and only allowed you to keep the music as long as you were still a member. This is a business model doomed to fail from the start.
Apple's true lesson here is that those that refuse to grow, adapt, and evolve will eventually find themselves dying out and becoming extict."
Thank you for your opinion, Hillary. I'll be sure to keep it in mind when I'm out not buying music. Unfortunately, your posting as an AC will prolly get the post filtered out from the vast majority of readers.
In the last 9 years, I've HAD over 230 GIGS of mp3s. Now, I have less than 150 MEGS, and those are all live shows of comedians or local acts. The only copyrighted material on cd/tape I own are of local bands, things I won off the radio, and greatest hits/compilation albums. I learned when I was 12 and got suckered into a BMG music club that mainstream music sucks. Why the hell should I pay $10 (at the time, $20 now) for 1 song that I like and 9-13 tracks of complete and udder crap?? If I had a MAC, I'd be all over iTunes. $1 a song? That's not a bad deal. Until then, if I feel like listening to a song, I'll download it, listen, and delete. Kinda like running my own personal radio station where it's all request, all the time.
BTW, there was a court ruling in the mid-late 90s that said downloading (C) material was legal for previewing purposes, but that it had to be deleted with in 24(48?)hrs. What ever happened to that?
Gonna have to agree to disagree with you on this one. I am Scottish and yes, Mac* is a familiar Scottish prefix for last names (though my clan's was "Byrne"). Mc* is most definitely Irish, though, as shown by several families around me with the last name McHale who can trace their lineage back to 14th century Ireland, long before their 'ancesters' came to America in the 1860s.
Mac, Mc, O', de, Del, von, -son all stem from the same thing. They all mean in their language (or translated into another) "The son of..." or "from". People used to say (pardon my anachronism of using modern english to explain old languages), "Hi. I'm Samuel, John's son" This became "Samuel Johnson." "I'm Sean of Hare" --> "Sean O'Hare". Mac/Mc is gaelic for the same thing.
Look on the bright side, at least they went with the Scottish convention and didn't name it after an Irish guy, McIntosh. Then everyone would be calling them MCs and the model releases would be "Hammer", "Lyte", and "P" (for our Tron fans/freaks out there).:)
Btw, where did the name MacIntosh come from?
Re:Wait a min...
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The Law and P2P
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· Score: 5, Informative
Did you RTFA? If you had, you would have noted the "Compare and Contrast" nature. For brevity's sake:
It also compared them to other RIAA sanctioned online music systems that are failing miserably because of their price structure. The fact that the article finishes with a very viable (IMO) business model that would not only increase the distribution and profits for the MPAA and RIAA backers, but also lower the price for consumers is a welcome change from the rampant "RIAA BAD! MPAA BAAAAAD!" arguments I see.
The article is a how-to for both sides. It points out the flaws of failed file sharing systems as well as what the current ones are doing right (and why the corporate strongmen hate them for it). It also looks at the other side as to why the corporate anti-piracy measures and their on-line distribution methods are both failing and why Apple sold 1,000,000 songs in it's first week.
From the article, only apple users can use their service. Apple has 4% of the computer market. I'd guess about 20% of the world is on the net. 5,000,000,000 people on the planet. This leads to:
5,000,000,000 *.2 *.04 = 40,000,000
At 1 million songs, that's 1 song for every 40 MAC users. Now consider that MACs have a heavy niche in primary and secondary education facilities where kids under the age of 18 can't use the service or in college computer labs where the users can't keep the songs or play them at their fancy (at least not like a home computer). All in all, the overwhelming early success of MACs new service shows that at a reasonable price, people ARE willing to pay for music online, but only if it is quality sounding, fairly priced, and their's to own after purchase.
I can't tell if you actually know what you are talking about or whether you are a PHB that used some techno-babble-speak generation script to try and sound 'hip and cool' to today's/. youth.:)
We're a company of 500+ scattered from Florida to Maine and based in PA. We used a MS Netmeeting server in our VPN. Surprisingly, it runs well on a crappy machine (P2 333 w/256 ram). We put a similar machine in each office and attached a camera to it. We use a spider phone at the same time for audio.
You could skip the whole server part and just do direct IP connections if you wanted. A bit more difficult for the lay user, but highly effective, and cheaper.
Someone had to say it ...
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Brain Privacy
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· Score: 1
Seriously, get an EE intern. I had to build simple systems like this in college using a National Instruments interface board and some basic thermostats, humidistats, and even digital photo-eyes. You can write a simple LabView program to read in the data and output it to a database. Total cost would be ~$500 in hardware (assuming you have a server somewhere that has a spare parallel/com port in the room). You can place the devices anywhere in the room and run the wires back to the interface board. You can even place multiple devices of each in various places around the room for 3D modelling of the temp/humidity.
And you are right, NW passwords are case insensitive, but there is an option to force the local (read: Windoze) login to be the same username and password. This allows NW users to have more secure passwords because NT based systems have case sensitive passwords. If you don't put in the right case, the local machine will not let you in. (note: this does not protect server access)
But this leads to the problem of being able to scan the registry from elsewhere on the network, which leads back to the other security measures to protect from the outside world.
I work for a moderate sized engineers consultation company (500+ employees all over the east coast). We have over a dozen offices from Florida to Maine. All are connected by a VPN using frame relay. At each access node, there is a Sisco Router/switch controlling what traffic can come in and out. Behind that is a firewall, NAT, and DHCP server (each office runs on a seperate private IP group). All external traffic (i.e. not on the VPN) must go to the main headquarters and pass through the proxy before making out to the "real world." We also have several web, ftp, and email servers in the private IP realm that are NAT'd to the outside. All incoming packets from the outside worled must go through the Router, Firewall, NAT, Virus Scanner, Mail Content Scanner (read: anti-spam detector) before making it to the target machine.
Software-wise, we are Novell users (mod me down if you want, but it is a hell of a lot better than M$). Every user has 1 concurrent log-in with very few exceptions (IT staff being 1 of them). Users cannot pass through the proxy or access any file servers without full LDAP authentication. this includes email, web browsing, ftp, etc. All logins are fully logged to time, machine and duration. Passworded screen savers automatically kick in after 10 minutes of idleness and users are auto-logged off after 30 minutes of idleness. Strong passwords are enforced (9+ charaters, 3 of 4 ({CAPS, lower, 1234, !@#$}), no repeating of past passwords, no dictionary words). L0phtcrack is used randomly to check for weak passwords.
I consider our systems to be fairly secure, given that most of the system is redundant as well as obscure to all but a few people in IS. It's a combination of cyber-armor and security through obscurity.
No state does this anymore. Most use local or state tax records (with a few exceptions that use Driver's/non-drivers license registrations). So, if you want to keep up your mis-directed apprehension towards not voting, I suggest you stop driving and earning money as well, otherwise, get out and help with the write-in campaign for CowboyNeal.
Slashdot Mirror
*** Disclamer *** /Disclaimer ***
I finished my studies in Industrial Engineering at PSU, worked there for 6 years, and still live and work in the area)
***
I'm almost ashamed to be a Penn State Alumnus. Graham Spanier is most likely the WORST President the university has had in a LONG time. He is hypocritical and so out of touch with the students, the community, and society in general that it defies logic.
***warning*** long post ahead ***warning***
For those that don't know about Penn State, Let me give some background. Penn State is the largest university in Pennsylvania (~45,000 students total). It is located in the geographical center of PA, 3hrs from the closest major city (Pittsburgh,Philadelphia), and at least 90 minutes from the closest minor cities (Johnstown, Harrisburg). There are more cows than people in the 50 mile radius around campus, you cannot get to campus without driving at least 10 miles on 2-lane hiway, and the bar to church ratio here is roughly 30:4. We have the largest single student dorm complex (East Halls)in the nation (2nd largest in the world) and the largest Greek system in the country.
With all that in mind, there is a lot of drinking and partying that occurs here. This year, we were voted the #1 and #3 party school by CNN and Playboy respectively. 40% of students ADMIT to binge drinking 4 or more drinks when they drink (though, I bet that number is actually much higher). In my 9 years in the town (I work locally now), there have been at least 8 riots I can remember (3 serious, 6 not) for things such as "We're #1 in the nation at football!" (x2), "Our basketball team does suck this year!" (x1), "There's art all over our streets!" (x4). We're a fun loving (and sometimes destructive) crowd.
With all that in mind, we do do some things involving alcohol for good causes. The most noted is the "Rathskeller Case Race." In the Case Race, the 'Skeller sells cases of Rolling Rock pony (7oz) bottles to patrons who, as longa s they're drinking, can stay. Soon as they stop, they have to leave and more are let in. All proceeds benefit the American Red Cross. The line will extend out the door, around the block, down to the next block, around the corner, DOWN the third block, and halfway down the side of another block. It is one of the top things on the "100 things a true PSU student does."
This year in his infinite wisdom, Graham decided that it would be better for the students (and alumni and faculty) to binge drink on their own, rather than support a cause. He had the race cancelled. He has also tried to make campus dry (except for home football games, of course. Can't stop the rich alumni from tailgating. that my hit into the donations.) In the ime he was fighting to make campus dry (which he accomplished at his last university) he had a fully stocked liquor cabinet installed in his, and all the other higher-ups, offices.
The student activity fee is another great fiasco of his tenure. Every student is charged a $50 "activity fee" that is supposed to go towards the clubs you join and other campus supported stuff that you go to. The original point of this was to help provide activities other than drinking. The majority of mine when I was in school was used to renevate our Student Uunion Building (the HUB) which most students were fine with, but then they added a multi-million dollar cultural center on (which, if you go up at any random time, has 10 people in it, most of which got lost trying to find their way out of the HUB's east wing). A large portion of this center was paid from donations and the Student Activity Fee. The funds were so mismanaged that even some of the oldest, most populous, and most active clubs on campus were unable to collect their stipends from the campus cause the funds had run out.
Now he wants to charge for using music? The students already pay a rather substantial "computer lab" fee and they're reward? Having on campus bandwidth throttled at 56K in the dorms. Th
I'm in.
Suggestion: rephrase it and put it on Ask Slashdot
-Ab
Same here. Email account for nearly 9 years has been joe-jobbed. I have to delete 100+ rejections per day from his crap ... all for the same penis enlargement ad. Fuck him with a red wiffle ball bat until his ears bleed.
This doesn't make me a hypocrite. It makes me able to appreciate different factors of things and evaluate them all seperately as a basis for rating the whole. To suggest that because I hat one part of one thing means that I MUST hate the rest is ludicrous. To suggest even more that because I disliked something in the past, that I must dislike it forever is even worse. Under that theory, I'd still hate beer (mmm
Things change, people change.
-Ab
This assumes you can get your legislation to stay in session long enough to do something about it.
:)
Seems to me as soon as the going gets tough, the Texans become Oklahomans
-Ab
I value anonymity as much as the next guy, but I spent 6 hours of my work day today trying to sort through nearly 30,000 received by my company. I'm creating a DB for Spam/Ham so with a little script, I can show my bosses how effective a bayesian filter can be and I can get on with my life.
...) for a lot of things. My work email is for just that: work. My home email is for friends and family. My hotmail is for everything else. You can still have anonymity and be regulated. I heard a rumor recently that Hotmail put limits on the number of mails you can send a day (I think it was 100) and the number of TO:, CC:, and BCC:s you can have (again, i think 100). This still allows us Joe Users to send what mail we need to anonymously, but still makes spamming from them difficult (but not impossible).
I prefer to use anonymous mail (hotmail, yahoo, etc
-Ab
AI really has gone to the dogs.
This may get a little too philosophical, but I'm going to give it a try. What is the key difference between programming and parenting?
There is a very fundamental difference. When was the last time your program told you "NO!" for some reason other than human error? I know it may seem like your computer has a mind of it's own, but in reality, it can only do what it is EXPLICITLY told to do. Actual intelligence is capable of not only making rational decisions based on pre-defined rules, but also extrapolating those rules to unrelated circumstances as well as making decisions completely AGAINST reason.
I was very heavily into robotics and AI in college, and the fundamental difference between AI and real intelligence is NOT the ability to learn, but the ability to make abstract choices based on a prior, yet not exact (or often even similar) rule set.
For example: Paul Graham's "A Plan For Spam" contains software that, after some initial conditioning, will recognize new spam based on old rules and adapt those rules to continue to do it's job. Is it true AI? No. It cannot function outside it's exact rule set. Send it a spam message in russian, and I bet it has no idea what to do, even if there are porn pictures in it. Even more apt would be whether it could identify spam websites without additional human coding.
Currently, the method for AI research, especially among those not in the field, is "how many rules can we pass it until it seems real." This, IMHO, is a poor schema without much hope for success. Evolutionary programming seems to have a much more realistic and probable chance towards succeeding. For some good reading on the subject, check out Blondie24: Playing at the Edge of AI
-Ab
They may very well have a state income tax (I know my state does), but let's look at it this way ... would you rather:
...
... have to pay a share, too.
A. Tax your own people (income tax of residents) just to give it back to them in the forms of social services (roads, schools, etc...) and allow others to use these for free.
or
B. Try and spread that tax around (sales tax) so that people visiting the state and driving on the roads, walking on the side walks, etc
Sales tax was basically formed in states to try and get people who don't necessarily live in that state to foot some of the bill. The more money politicians can take out of 'foreigners', the less they need from their constituants (including businesses), which helps keep them in office. hence, taxing internet sales to people outside of california makes perfect sense to them. (personally, I think it blows and I've only bought things from CA online stores 3 times, all 3 times something went wrong, including one time when I ended up with 2X 80G drives that were illegally smuggled into the states sans-tarriff from Europe).
-Ab
3x female 1/8" stereo jacks
4x female RCA mono jacks
4x SP/DT slide switches (3/16" x 1/2")
2' jumper wire
1x plastic electrical junction box
1x clear plastic picture cover from picture frame. (3"X5")
First 4 parts are available from RadioShack for a total less than $10. The junction box is available at Lowe's for $1.66. The picture cover you can get with any cheap picture frame.
step 1: lay the junction box upside down on a piece of paper and trace. Cut out the outline.
step 2: lay out the jacks and switches on the paper. the 4 jacks go with the 4 outputs (or inputs as you see fit) and the odd jack out is your static out/in.
step 3: glue the paper to the plastic
step 4: drill and dremel the plastic according to the paper pattern.
step 5: screw/glue all audio parts in.
step 6: flip over and solder all left channel and right channel negatives together.
step 6: solder wires from your static jack right channel to the middle-left side of each switch and the left channel to the top left of each switch.
step 7: solder the middle right of each switch to the CORRESPONDING input/output jack's right channel and the top right to the jacks left channel.
step 8: place the plastic on the junction box and seal with glue or screws
... When a switch is in the on position, that jack will get signal. When it is off, it won't.
To use as a multi-out: place the output from your computer into the static jack. Run lines from the other jacks to your computer speakers, stereo, tv, headphones
To use as a multi input, connect your speakers to the static jack. Connect all inputs to the other 4 jacks. When the switch for a jack is on, it's signal will goto the speakers. When it is off, it wont.
I built this cause I was sick of switching my sound cables everytime I wanted to switch from my computer speakers (when playing games) to my TV (when watching DVDs on my DVD out) to my headphones (when listening to music while coding and my roommate was sleeping).
CAUTION: this is a PASSIVE system. IF you are using it as a multi-out, there isn't much danger. You will just get decreased volume as you turn on more outputs because the signal will be split. If you are using it as a multi-INPUT system and try to input several signals to the speakers at once, you can run the risk of blowing them.
If you have any questions, reply. I'll give you my ICQ and write up some clearer diagrams.
-Ab
I disagree slightly with your premise. I don't feel that Apple has debunked any 'myths' about the DMCA. What Apple has done is what the big 5 and the RIAA (and for that matter, the MPAA) have refused to attempt in a truly marketable way, and that is "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."
Apple looked and said, "We have this great new electronic distribution method for releasing media. PRO: It's extremely low cost, popular, and we can make money off of it by providing a low cost alternative to our target audience. CON: Copyrighting LAWS make it a gray area and difficult to impliment. Solution: iTunes"
This is where the others have failed. They have tried to either squash the technology, or have provided subscription services that are more expensive than the actual cost of purchasing CDs and ripping them yourself. Even worse, most of these services worked more on a rental system and only allowed you to keep the music as long as you were still a member. This is a business model doomed to fail from the start.
Apple's true lesson here is that those that refuse to grow, adapt, and evolve will eventually find themselves dying out and becoming extict."
Change or die.
-Ab
Thank you for your opinion, Hillary. I'll be sure to keep it in mind when I'm out not buying music. Unfortunately, your posting as an AC will prolly get the post filtered out from the vast majority of readers.
In the last 9 years, I've HAD over 230 GIGS of mp3s. Now, I have less than 150 MEGS, and those are all live shows of comedians or local acts. The only copyrighted material on cd/tape I own are of local bands, things I won off the radio, and greatest hits/compilation albums. I learned when I was 12 and got suckered into a BMG music club that mainstream music sucks. Why the hell should I pay $10 (at the time, $20 now) for 1 song that I like and 9-13 tracks of complete and udder crap?? If I had a MAC, I'd be all over iTunes. $1 a song? That's not a bad deal. Until then, if I feel like listening to a song, I'll download it, listen, and delete. Kinda like running my own personal radio station where it's all request, all the time.
BTW, there was a court ruling in the mid-late 90s that said downloading (C) material was legal for previewing purposes, but that it had to be deleted with in 24(48?)hrs. What ever happened to that?
tr.v. accessed, accessing, accesses
thank you dictionary.com
-Ab
Gonna have to agree to disagree with you on this one. I am Scottish and yes, Mac* is a familiar Scottish prefix for last names (though my clan's was "Byrne"). Mc* is most definitely Irish, though, as shown by several families around me with the last name McHale who can trace their lineage back to 14th century Ireland, long before their 'ancesters' came to America in the 1860s.
..." or "from". People used to say (pardon my anachronism of using modern english to explain old languages), "Hi. I'm Samuel, John's son" This became "Samuel Johnson." "I'm Sean of Hare" --> "Sean O'Hare". Mac/Mc is gaelic for the same thing.
Mac, Mc, O', de, Del, von, -son all stem from the same thing. They all mean in their language (or translated into another) "The son of
Look on the bright side, at least they went with the Scottish convention and didn't name it after an Irish guy, McIntosh. Then everyone would be calling them MCs and the model releases would be "Hammer", "Lyte", and "P" (for our Tron fans/freaks out there). :)
Btw, where did the name MacIntosh come from?
Did you RTFA? If you had, you would have noted the "Compare and Contrast" nature. For brevity's sake:
.2 * .04 = 40,000,000
Compare =({"music", "file-sharing"});
Contrast = ({"p2p", "client-server", "free/$.99"});
It also compared them to other RIAA sanctioned online music systems that are failing miserably because of their price structure. The fact that the article finishes with a very viable (IMO) business model that would not only increase the distribution and profits for the MPAA and RIAA backers, but also lower the price for consumers is a welcome change from the rampant "RIAA BAD! MPAA BAAAAAD!" arguments I see.
The article is a how-to for both sides. It points out the flaws of failed file sharing systems as well as what the current ones are doing right (and why the corporate strongmen hate them for it). It also looks at the other side as to why the corporate anti-piracy measures and their on-line distribution methods are both failing and why Apple sold 1,000,000 songs in it's first week.
From the article, only apple users can use their service. Apple has 4% of the computer market. I'd guess about 20% of the world is on the net. 5,000,000,000 people on the planet. This leads to:
5,000,000,000 *
At 1 million songs, that's 1 song for every 40 MAC users. Now consider that MACs have a heavy niche in primary and secondary education facilities where kids under the age of 18 can't use the service or in college computer labs where the users can't keep the songs or play them at their fancy (at least not like a home computer). All in all, the overwhelming early success of MACs new service shows that at a reasonable price, people ARE willing to pay for music online, but only if it is quality sounding, fairly priced, and their's to own after purchase.
Computer: AMD Athlon 1Ghz, 768M DDR RAM, 400Gb storage, wireless keyboard, wireless mouse: $1500 (when purchased)
Video: 33" Sony flat screen TV connected to ATI All-in-wonder Radeon 64 via Svideo cables: $1000
sound: 6.1 surround Jafa X-speaker system powered by JVC amp and Stereo. SoundBlaster Audigy Gamer connected via thick, shielded RCA cables: $1700
Shaking the neighbors' pictures off the wall while playing UT from my couch: priceless
I can't tell if you actually know what you are talking about or whether you are a PHB that used some techno-babble-speak generation script to try and sound 'hip and cool' to today's /. youth. :)
http://homestarrunner.com/sbemail69.html \P
We're a company of 500+ scattered from Florida to Maine and based in PA. We used a MS Netmeeting server in our VPN. Surprisingly, it runs well on a crappy machine (P2 333 w/256 ram). We put a similar machine in each office and attached a camera to it. We use a spider phone at the same time for audio.
You could skip the whole server part and just do direct IP connections if you wanted. A bit more difficult for the lay user, but highly effective, and cheaper.
...All your brain are belong to us.
Seriously, get an EE intern. I had to build simple systems like this in college using a National Instruments interface board and some basic thermostats, humidistats, and even digital photo-eyes. You can write a simple LabView program to read in the data and output it to a database. Total cost would be ~$500 in hardware (assuming you have a server somewhere that has a spare parallel/com port in the room). You can place the devices anywhere in the room and run the wires back to the interface board. You can even place multiple devices of each in various places around the room for 3D modelling of the temp/humidity.
Sorry, I did spell Cisco wrong. Sue me.
And you are right, NW passwords are case insensitive, but there is an option to force the local (read: Windoze) login to be the same username and password. This allows NW users to have more secure passwords because NT based systems have case sensitive passwords. If you don't put in the right case, the local machine will not let you in. (note: this does not protect server access)
But this leads to the problem of being able to scan the registry from elsewhere on the network, which leads back to the other security measures to protect from the outside world.
... I'll give a serious answer.
I work for a moderate sized engineers consultation company (500+ employees all over the east coast). We have over a dozen offices from Florida to Maine. All are connected by a VPN using frame relay. At each access node, there is a Sisco Router/switch controlling what traffic can come in and out. Behind that is a firewall, NAT, and DHCP server (each office runs on a seperate private IP group). All external traffic (i.e. not on the VPN) must go to the main headquarters and pass through the proxy before making out to the "real world." We also have several web, ftp, and email servers in the private IP realm that are NAT'd to the outside. All incoming packets from the outside worled must go through the Router, Firewall, NAT, Virus Scanner, Mail Content Scanner (read: anti-spam detector) before making it to the target machine.
Software-wise, we are Novell users (mod me down if you want, but it is a hell of a lot better than M$). Every user has 1 concurrent log-in with very few exceptions (IT staff being 1 of them). Users cannot pass through the proxy or access any file servers without full LDAP authentication. this includes email, web browsing, ftp, etc. All logins are fully logged to time, machine and duration. Passworded screen savers automatically kick in after 10 minutes of idleness and users are auto-logged off after 30 minutes of idleness. Strong passwords are enforced (9+ charaters, 3 of 4 ({CAPS, lower, 1234, !@#$}), no repeating of past passwords, no dictionary words). L0phtcrack is used randomly to check for weak passwords.
I consider our systems to be fairly secure, given that most of the system is redundant as well as obscure to all but a few people in IS. It's a combination of cyber-armor and security through obscurity.
Hope this helps.
No state does this anymore. Most use local or state tax records (with a few exceptions that use Driver's/non-drivers license registrations). So, if you want to keep up your mis-directed apprehension towards not voting, I suggest you stop driving and earning money as well, otherwise, get out and help with the write-in campaign for CowboyNeal.