I believe that "we" is meant to be a collective; i.e., "we", as the world of 2005, now have faster hardware, more Internet content and users.
The submitter is a Chinese PhD student blogger, legitimately trying to source for more opinions from Slashdot about this issue.
If you had read his blog linked from his submission, you'll see he has done some of his own analysis. Quite a bit more than what most posters here have so far, and it's not very much yet.
Just because a company called "Digital Cinema Limited" had its first customer doesn't mean that customer is now the "first country in the world to have completely digital cinema."
The likes of IBM, Sun, MS, Oracle, et al could all contribue what to them would be a pitance. So long as all the big companies were involved, there wouldn't be any undue influence by any one of them
I think that's a bit naive. Once business gets involved, the IEEE would become bogged down in politics. Already, standards don't get finalised because of politics. IEEE standards are valuable documents, and you can be sure that having big companies play a formal and larger role in the organisation will only be a recipe for disaster.
I think they figure: if you need to download BitTorrent, you probably don't already have it.
Plus, the download is so small (the RPM's 256k), and the number of people downloading using BitTorrent's probably relatively few, so the gains from using BT might not be that great.
# 2005-03-07: 4.0.0 is now available.
Changes since the last stable release:
All new queue-based user interface
Many options are now modifiable from the interface, including upload rate
Lots of other interface improvements
Extra stats are visible, for those who like it
Remembers what it was doing across restarts
New.torrent maker "btmaketorrentgui" replaces "btcompletedir"
Better performance, as always
License has changed to the BitTorrent Open Source License
Torrent fields are correctly created and interpreted as utf8
Too many little things to list
A few technical notes, for those interested:
Single port: launchmany can seed and client can download many files from a single port and thread
Interface now uses GTK instead of wxWidgets
BitTorrent packets are marked as bulk data to make traffic shaping easier
We are really very happy with this server solution, because it does show very high stability, reliability and performance. I believe that you can notice it yourselves by the short time it takes to load X-bit's pages today... We have had good experience with this server and see it working reliably and fast...
Let's see how well their MSI MS-9204 2U server stands up against a/.ing...:p
Motorola to Build "Skype Ready" Cell Phones, Headsets.
Handset Maker Motorola to Build Skype into Phones
by Anton Shilov
Motorola, a leading maker of mobile phones, and Skype, a leading Internet telephony company, said this week at 3GSM World Congress that Motorola would launch a lineup of products that are dubbed "Skype Ready", including cell phones and handsets.
The two companies will explore opportunities broadly across both companies, leveraging Motorola's strength in seamless mobility, advanced technologies, mobile devices and accessories and Skype's rapidly-growing global user base and rich voice and messaging communication tools. The initial focus of the collaboration will be on co-marketing of new optimized Motorola "Skype Ready" companion products, such as Bluetooth headsets, dongles, and speakerphones, as well as delivery of the Skype Internet Telephony experience on "select Motorola mobile devices".
Peculiarities and specifications of "Skype Ready" products were not touched upon.
Skype takes communications to a new and global era with its free, multi-faceted and rich communication tools, enabling users to make free, or very cheap, voice calls and rich messaging connections via the Internet. Skype currently has more than 25 million registered users.
While headsets, dongles and speakerphones are natural enhancements for PCs or PDAs that have Skype installed on them, cell phones with Skype capability may usher a new era in mobile communications, as whenever users have Internet access, e.g., via WLAN or GPRS, they will be able to make long-distance calls at a price much lower compared to that offered by cellular network operators. Still, the cost of GPRS traffic from some operators particularly in the EU is very high and may limit benefits Skype provides in terms of cost.
Motorola "Skype Ready" companion products are expected to be available in the first half of 2005.
You're right, it isn't. The agencies that failed got F. I was going to make a spiel on how/.ers never read the article, when I realised that the article didn't clearly state this.
I did something like this for my office, streaming Christmas music using Icecast, Lame, and Shout. Here's one possible installation:
1) Setup Icecast as usual. Take note of the encoding password.
2) Install the Shout Perl libraries.
3) Use the example2.pl that comes with Shout.
For the example2.pl, I think it comes with the basic Perl library installation).
By default it takes it the MP3 files specified on the command line, uses LAME to
convert them to a bitrate you specify, and sends them to a mountpoint on the LAME server.
I modified mine so that it loops indefinitely, and of course I hardcoded my Icecast IP address,
mount point, and encoder password. You'll probably need to tweak it a bit to convert OGG / WMA / RM
streams as well, but it should be fairly straightforward.
Legally, there's nothing wrong since both projects are GPL'ed (I presume).
Ethically, I don't see anything wrong with it. In the end, it's your design decisions
that are going to make a difference, which is why the code split in the first place. In fact,
there's no reason why both projects shouldn't take code from each other; if there are common
areas where there's actually no disagreement, this will help to reduce duplication of effort.
Quick summary for all those too lazy to read the article:
Content needed WMP9 with InterActual Player, which required a license, which could only be retrieved if you connected from US or Canada. And, the content could only be played for 5 days. Author concludes "Shame on you Artisan Home Entertainment Inc. and may this serve as a prime example of DRM at its worst."
I'm sure it's only loaded into pages they've served themselves. The p0rn sites just grab the image, then display from their own sites to the users directly. When the users send the correct text back to the p0rn site, the site then sends it back to the website. It's actually quite trivial, but ingenious.
The problem with English translations is that your mileage may vary. Of course, some Christian fundamentalists might claim that the KJB is the only valid translation, but I'd beg to differ. When you're trying to look for what the writer actually said, you should really look at the original Hebrew/Greek.
Failing which, you could look for a literal translation (ie, one that doesn't try to do the interpretation for you). Other issues like cultural nuances can also have an effect.
Let me illustrate. The following passage is from Young's Literal Translation (YLT):
16 And it maketh all, the small, and the great, and the rich, and the poor, and the freemen, and the servants, that it may give to them a mark
upon their right hand or upon their foreheads, 17 and that no one may be able to buy, or to sell, except he who is having the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18 Here is the wisdom! He who is having the understanding, let him count the number of the beast, for the number of a man it is, and its number [is] 666. Revelations 13:16-18
As highlighted, it seems as if the original text actually said "upon" rather than "in."
Bayesian filtering is a bit like fuzzy-logic. Right now, it's best known for filtering spam. SpamAssassin uses a whole long list of tests and assigns +ve or -ve scores to each test that comes out positive (a bit like Slashdot's moderation).
I know someone who did a project on classifying video using Bayesian filtering. It looked at stuff like brightness, contrast, volume, basically everything they could extract from the movie file and give a value to. The concept itself is quite powerful; the difficulty is getting a list of tests that can accurately predict / classify what you have (spam/non-spam, or for video, thriller/drama/etc).
If you're interested in finding out more about actually coding Bayesian filters, you can check out the Bayes ++ project page.
I run a mail server at home on a Linux box, with Postfix and Spamassassin 2.60. I have it configured to label mail as spam once it hits 8 points, and to automatically chuck it into/dev/null once it hits 12 (using Postfix's header_checks).
It works pretty well for me -- the mail server's only for my personal use so I don't really have to worry about irate subscribers sueing me for dropping them legit mail =p and the 8-12 point range in the spam marking gives me a chance to vet through those suspicious mails briefly before deleting them.
I've never tried any other spam filters on the server-side, so I can't really compare. I guess I'm also a bit of a Linux hacker so I don't mind tweaking all those config files along the lines of the FAQ and other hints on forums to get it to work the way I want it to.
Many people here have already commented that the voice isn't quite there yet in terms of realism. Many here have pointed out that the technology doesn't seem new -- they're just taking more sound samples and blending them together (albeit in the frequency domain, with smoothing).
One area that really needs quite a bit more work is the vowels. When singers sing "ee" (as in "saved a wretch like me," for example), they usually soften it so it sounds a bit more like "meh." When I used synthesized voices before on a Mac, I had to specifically spell the lyrics as "meh" so that the program would articulate those vowels properly.
Of course, maybe the sample of "Amazing Grace" I heard was recorded by a singer who really liked to pronounce such vowels as "ee" rather than soften them to "meh," but it doesn't seem likely.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that "we" is meant to be a collective; i.e., "we", as the world of 2005, now have faster hardware, more Internet content and users.
The submitter is a Chinese PhD student blogger, legitimately trying to source for more opinions from Slashdot about this issue.
If you had read his blog linked from his submission, you'll see he has done some of his own analysis. Quite a bit more than what most posters here have so far, and it's not very much yet.
...all your TV are belong to us!
That's true, but look where NT 4.0 got them eventually -- Windows XP.
Bloat? Check.
Widespread popularity? Check.
Just because a company called "Digital Cinema Limited" had its first customer doesn't mean that customer is now the "first country in the world to have completely digital cinema."
Previous comments above have noted that digital cinemas have existed in other countries since 2004. A local cinema in Singapore reported that they were converting to digital cinemas as early as 2003. I highly doubt they're the only ones, too.
I think they figure: if you need to download BitTorrent, you probably don't already have it.
Plus, the download is so small (the RPM's 256k), and the number of people downloading using BitTorrent's probably relatively few, so the gains from using BT might not be that great.
The actual link is to the download is here.
The changelog:
Handset Maker Motorola to Build Skype into Phones
by Anton Shilov
Motorola, a leading maker of mobile phones, and Skype, a leading Internet telephony company, said this week at 3GSM World Congress that Motorola would launch a lineup of products that are dubbed "Skype Ready", including cell phones and handsets.
The two companies will explore opportunities broadly across both companies, leveraging Motorola's strength in seamless mobility, advanced technologies, mobile devices and accessories and Skype's rapidly-growing global user base and rich voice and messaging communication tools. The initial focus of the collaboration will be on co-marketing of new optimized Motorola "Skype Ready" companion products, such as Bluetooth headsets, dongles, and speakerphones, as well as delivery of the Skype Internet Telephony experience on "select Motorola mobile devices".
Peculiarities and specifications of "Skype Ready" products were not touched upon.
Skype takes communications to a new and global era with its free, multi-faceted and rich communication tools, enabling users to make free, or very cheap, voice calls and rich messaging connections via the Internet. Skype currently has more than 25 million registered users.
While headsets, dongles and speakerphones are natural enhancements for PCs or PDAs that have Skype installed on them, cell phones with Skype capability may usher a new era in mobile communications, as whenever users have Internet access, e.g., via WLAN or GPRS, they will be able to make long-distance calls at a price much lower compared to that offered by cellular network operators. Still, the cost of GPRS traffic from some operators particularly in the EU is very high and may limit benefits Skype provides in terms of cost.
Motorola "Skype Ready" companion products are expected to be available in the first half of 2005.
You're right, it isn't. The agencies that failed got F. I was going to make a spiel on how /.ers never read the article, when I realised that the article didn't clearly state this.
More info in links below:
Washington Post
Report Card
Statement and links
I did something like this for my office, streaming Christmas music using Icecast, Lame, and Shout. Here's one possible installation:
1) Setup Icecast as usual. Take note of the encoding password.
2) Install the Shout Perl libraries.
3) Use the example2.pl that comes with Shout.
For the example2.pl, I think it comes with the basic Perl library installation). By default it takes it the MP3 files specified on the command line, uses LAME to convert them to a bitrate you specify, and sends them to a mountpoint on the LAME server. I modified mine so that it loops indefinitely, and of course I hardcoded my Icecast IP address, mount point, and encoder password. You'll probably need to tweak it a bit to convert OGG / WMA / RM streams as well, but it should be fairly straightforward.
Legally, there's nothing wrong since both projects are GPL'ed (I presume).
Ethically, I don't see anything wrong with it. In the end, it's your design decisions that are going to make a difference, which is why the code split in the first place. In fact, there's no reason why both projects shouldn't take code from each other; if there are common areas where there's actually no disagreement, this will help to reduce duplication of effort.
Coralized link of the DRM'ed T2 Extreme DVD
Quick summary for all those too lazy to read the article:
Content needed WMP9 with InterActual Player, which required a license, which could only be retrieved if you connected from US or Canada. And, the content could only be played for 5 days. Author concludes "Shame on you Artisan Home Entertainment Inc. and may this serve as a prime example of DRM at its worst."
frequency analyzer
caesar cipher cracker
some other tools also available here
What about just plain more evil? =)
I'm sure it's only loaded into pages they've served themselves. The p0rn sites just grab the image, then display from their own sites to the users directly. When the users send the correct text back to the p0rn site, the site then sends it back to the website. It's actually quite trivial, but ingenious.
Looks like some /.ers need to update their anti-virus software.
Failing which, you could look for a literal translation (ie, one that doesn't try to do the interpretation for you). Other issues like cultural nuances can also have an effect.
Let me illustrate. The following passage is from Young's Literal Translation (YLT):
As highlighted, it seems as if the original text actually said "upon" rather than "in."
Bayesian filtering is a bit like fuzzy-logic. Right now, it's best known for filtering spam. SpamAssassin uses a whole long list of tests and assigns +ve or -ve scores to each test that comes out positive (a bit like Slashdot's moderation).
I know someone who did a project on classifying video using Bayesian filtering. It looked at stuff like brightness, contrast, volume, basically everything they could extract from the movie file and give a value to. The concept itself is quite powerful; the difficulty is getting a list of tests that can accurately predict / classify what you have (spam/non-spam, or for video, thriller/drama/etc).
If you're interested in finding out more about actually coding Bayesian filters, you can check out the Bayes ++ project page.
Yes, I believe you can. That's certainly a neater regex than the one I used. =)
You can also find out more about Postfix's filtering.
I run a mail server at home on a Linux box, with Postfix and Spamassassin 2.60. I have it configured to label mail as spam once it hits 8 points, and to automatically chuck it into /dev/null once it hits 12 (using Postfix's header_checks).
It works pretty well for me -- the mail server's only for my personal use so I don't really have to worry about irate subscribers sueing me for dropping them legit mail =p and the 8-12 point range in the spam marking gives me a chance to vet through those suspicious mails briefly before deleting them.
I've never tried any other spam filters on the server-side, so I can't really compare. I guess I'm also a bit of a Linux hacker so I don't mind tweaking all those config files along the lines of the FAQ and other hints on forums to get it to work the way I want it to.
Many people here have already commented that the voice isn't quite there yet in terms of realism. Many here have pointed out that the technology doesn't seem new -- they're just taking more sound samples and blending them together (albeit in the frequency domain, with smoothing).
One area that really needs quite a bit more work is the vowels. When singers sing "ee" (as in "saved a wretch like me," for example), they usually soften it so it sounds a bit more like "meh." When I used synthesized voices before on a Mac, I had to specifically spell the lyrics as "meh" so that the program would articulate those vowels properly.
Of course, maybe the sample of "Amazing Grace" I heard was recorded by a singer who really liked to pronounce such vowels as "ee" rather than soften them to "meh," but it doesn't seem likely.