Odd...I do all my edits anonymously. I don't get messages about my account being deleted, because I don't have one. If they allow anonymous posts, they can't really censor *you*, because they don't knw who *you* are...they just evaluate the changes based on what they say, rather than who made them.
Using that logic, very little on the web can ever be trusted.
Hackers often change websites, accounts get hacked (Gabe Newell?), people lie in posts all the time, whole websites can be designed to mislead you...
But this shows one important thing: you don't have to be able to trust a source for it to be useful. I don't trust most of the web, but if I do research and 15 websites agree on a fact, even though I don't trust each individual website, I can trust the consensus of 15 independent websites.
This phenomenon is present in Wikipedia because there are so many folks contributing. The liklihood is that errors will be corrected over time, and that even though you cannot trust it as infalliable, it proves to be an extremely useful tool. Further, it at least has a policy on accuracy and NPOV, whereas most other internet-based sources do not, or at least do not publish one publicly.
Hmmm...802.11g is not backwards compatible with 802.11b.
I have a zaurus, laptop, and desktop all wirelessly linked to a LinkSys WRT54G. My desktop is b/g compatible as is my laptop. But my Zaurus uses a Ambicom CF wireless card, 802.11b only.
Unless I put my router in "mixed" mode or "b" only, my Zaurus cannot see it it all. So unless there is an implementation error in either the router or the AmbiCom card, g is NOT backwards compatible with b.
You may be thinking that because you have a 802.11g router that it isn't implementing 802.11b, but as is the case with mine, its actually the router that is backwards compatible (not the protocol), since it is allowing both protocols, not ONLY 802.11g.
TG support is provided through their forums. You need a username and password to get in. Support is in no way tied to the watermark on the binaries you're using.
'Nuff said. Its just a watermark, not in the actual files. If you do a:
$diff -rs usr1 usr2
it'll report that every file is identical, just to verify.
Then, make an unwatermarked version:
$mv usr1 usr $tar czf cedega_clean.tgz usr
Sadly, if you compress the *exact* same folder twice with tar czf it will not md5sum the same (try it!). I can't say I know why. So basically, this helps with piracy but not with the verification problem. =( Don't know how to fix the ebuild problem. Anyone that knows more about why the md5sums for two.tgzs of the same data would be different?
I beg to differ...I was an ROTC student because I couldn't afford tuition, and I saved my monthly stipends of $100 for a year and did a $1000 or so upgrade on my computer in college. Just because his priorities don't match yours doesn't mean that his are screwed up.
To some of us (like me, currently unemployed), I still went out an upgraded to the tune of a few hundred dollars for Doom 3. And no, I'm not rich...I just love building computers, working with hardware, playing games, and programming. I had some money saved up from my time in the Navy and I chose to use it that way.
"They are the only good video card for Linux, so I'm whiling to put up with their inferior propriatory drivers..."
Without addressing the rest of your post, I would certainly take issue with saying that nVidia's video drivers are "inferior"...which begs the question:
Inferior to whom?
Please educate me, because as far as I'm concerned, nVidia makes the best damn video drivers in the world. ATI's certainly aren't better, and well, what else is there?
I may be a Linux user, but that doesn't mean that proprietary == bad. Yes, I like open source, but I canot blame nVidia for keeping their drivers closed...especially when they're so good.
Oh, and for reference, nVidia *does* support Linux...they have had good Linux video drivers for longer than anyone else, and are still the best, IMHO.
I'll be honest with you - I have no idea why you wrote that.
As far as I'm concerned, online Music stores are simply not worth it, exactly because of all this. When I pay for music, then I want the music. I want to play it on my computer, and on any player I buy, and be able to copy it to my new computer or laptop, and burn CDs of it forever, especially since CD-Rs don't last more than a couple of years.
The idea of paying for something and then KNOWING you have to pay for it again if you want to continue using it annoys me, and that's not how I'll spend my money. This is exactly like the MPAA tactic of changing formats every decade or so, making it very tempting to re-purchase your video collection. One of the beauties of digital music is that it DOES last, and I only have to buy it ONCE. For now, I'll stick to allofmp3.com and my CDs.
Why does my opinion matter? Well, because its people like me that Real is trying to cater to, and they're only helping the iPod market (though they may be hurting iTunes...but hey, competition is good.)
I use gentoo on amd64 and NONE of the 32 bit windows codecs work. Emerge does nothing. Similarly with Firefox and ANY 3rd party plugins. So I have to go 32-bit binary when available and basically run two copies of things like Firefox (32 and 64) and MPlayer...if only I could get my hands on Mplayer in binary form for x86...
The folks over at TomsHardware, HardOCP, whatever tech site you want to pick on are in a WHOLE DIFFERENT LEAGUE than the idiots that work or shop and CompUSA, Circuit City, whatever.
Those sites cater to folks that want specs on high end hardware. Everyone knows that there is a sweet spot in computer hardware somewhere between cutting edge and one generation old. Performance vs cost in computer hardware (as in cars, machinery, whatever) is exponential, and most people realize this. Those that have a lot of money, spend accordingly, probably knowing its not the best "deal".
That said, of all the articles I've read over at HardOCP, this one gives the most recognition to gamers who don't want to spend a boatload of money. I say:
Give HardOCP credit...they did a very comprehensive and useful review, even for the more casual gamer.
From my experience, I doubt those programs are running on government machines...what probably happened was people copied them from government machines and shared them on their private machines. I'm highlighting ther problem that they should have never come off the government machines.
Just so my position is clear: don't legislate against P2P, make the military fix it's security problem.
Glen doesn't go one way or the other, and that's my problem. I want him to take a position on what should be done.
I'm not sure who you are, but I was a US Naval Officer, and I did deploy to the Arabian gulf three times (2001, 2003, 2004).
Whatever comprehensive security program you mention (no, I haven't heard it) didn't make it down to the deckplates on my ship, which was commisioned in 1995.
Since you know so much about military security, can you tell me if this program took care of glaring discrepancies in the SIPRNET/NIPRNET information exchange? How about something simple, like I suggested - not providing removable media on secret computers...
You are correct...there is NIPRNET (public internet) and SIPRNET (an entirely seperate, secret and very large network for military). The problem is that sometimes presentation computers are NIPRNET, and sometimes you have to give secret briefs. Or sometimes someone doesn't have SIPRNET set up correctly (its an involved process), so some idiot copies secret files to a floppy. As I said above in my email: SIPRNET computers shouldn't have floppies or zip. No removable media. Oh, and while youre at it, can we ditch all the MS contracts too, and move to something secure? This is the case all over, and I got tired of it when I was in the military...the security is not where it should be an no one cares.
As a former member of our armed forces, and an avid technophile as well as outspoken supporter of freedom in all its forms, I have a question:
What exactly are you advocating?
It sounds an awful lot like you're complaining, but you have absolutely no idea how to solve the problem you've raised. This is not constructive...it is merely whining. Do you want to ban P2P services? Do you want to attempt to make yet more copy protection systems? Or are you doing what Michael Moore does and complaining about a situation while having no solution whatsoever?
As for my view: it is the price of freedom. If you don't want Secret/NOFORN documents distributed on the web, then don't hand them out to people! Make sure the only machines that have them are on SIPRNET and take out the damn floppy and zip disk drives.
My position: people are stupid, and until we decide to take real measures to protect secret data (i.e. not providing removable media for secret computers), we'll get burned. A nation at war? Yes, I went to Iraq three times in the past three years. But don't blame the soldiers, or the P2P programs. Blame the idiots that make the information available and the idiots who build the computers and set IT policy for the DoD.
Peer to peer filesharing is NOT a security risk. The lack of a comprehensive security program within our military is a security risk.
This was approved in 2002, but filed in 1999...that would make prior art difficult to find. It is quite specific, and mentions real-time shadows in a time before they were really around - certainly Doom 3 hadn't been acnnounced.
Don't get me wrong, I still hate Creative's tactics, and I wrote them an email telling them so. Why the hell does Creative have this patent, of all companies? I mean, nVidia, ATI, Intel even I could see, but Creative??
We need to banish software patents, or come up with something that works better than this mess.
What? Carmack doesn't work for you...he isn't somehow responsible to fight the fight that you would. Why should he suffer losses because *you* think it's right to not ship Doom 3?
You should just upgrade as planned and NOT buy a creative card. As was said earlier...don't get this backwards: Creative did the wrong thing, and Mr. Carmack is the good guy.
Umm, just because the competition has a trademark doesn't mean I can't say my processor is compatible with it, even in my advertising. People use trademarked names of their competitors in their advertisments all the time.
As I recall, Cyrix was onto the 586/686 naming scheme and Intel switched to Pentium to distinguish their product.
I still have trouble believing that AMD fell into the same trap Intel fell into with Pentium. IMHO, Pentium M should have never been so named: it was new technology and it should have been marketed as such. AMD did the same thing with AthlonXP and Athlon64...a shame, because people *don't* understand the difference at a basic consumer level.
I understand that name-brand does have value, but you still want to give the public a good idea (via your naming scheme) when one product breaks away from the others on a technology/performance level.
JM2C...
That's interesting, because the idea of a program trying to guess what I want does not strike me as a feature. In fact, I have two main problems:
1) It seems it would require YET ANOTHER login and password and links that to all my news habits
2) The history of algorithms trying to guess what I'm interested has been exceedingly poor.
Maybe the reason I'm not interested is because of point #2, and that said, I'll go visit memigo.com and see what I think. Somehow I like the purity of Google News - its anonymous, clean (I like text only mode on my Zaurus), and puts all its engine power to scouring the web for interesting news stories, rather than trying to guess which ones I want to see.
I think the point was that Microsoft's news site would be set as the default...amazing as it may seem to the readers of slashdot (and I don't mean to be sarcastic), most people who use computers actually don't change the defaults (as we do so often). I'm not sure why, but I'm constantly amazed at how pervasive the "default" is.
Case and point: IE comes with windows, it's icon is put on the desktop. It has, what, 90% market share? It was considered big inroads for Firefox the other week when Firefox gained 1%. I bet MS could ship Firefox with windows and bury it in a menu somewhere and people would STILL use IE, so long as it was the icon that appeared on the desktop.
Spent three years on a ship based out of San Diego, and did three deployments to the middle east. I was reading slashdot almost every day all around the globe on the ship - in 2001 off the coast of Kuwait, in 2003 in Sydney and Townsville, Australia, and in 2004 in Goa, India (there were others, obviously, but those were some interesting ones).
I suppose there are other people that read it from all those places, so its not that strange, but at least I had variety! =)
Now I'm out of the Navy, and I read it at home at my desk, and on the crapper using WiFi and my Zaurus. That's a bit less interesting.
Not really. That's like saying the SD slot on the Sharp Zaurus would "have to support the DRM features of the SD card", which it doesn't. It just ignores the DRM related functions and treats it like a MMC slot.
Similarly, if you have OSS in the BIOS and OSS for your OS, you can "pretend" to follow DRM procedures, but in point of fact, do whatever you want...all the DRM calls can go to:
int preventcopy(){
return 1;
}
Its not adverbial - its as though you were in a meeting to discuss the ad campaign and a guy kept showing you trees with apples on them, and orchards and word play with apple. The CEO says:
"I dont want any of this - its all the same. Start over."
The ad campaign guy says:
"But, where do are start?"
The CEO replys:
"Think Different."
Or, as the post above says:
Think "Different"
Slashdot Mirror
Odd...I do all my edits anonymously. I don't get messages about my account being deleted, because I don't have one. If they allow anonymous posts, they can't really censor *you*, because they don't knw who *you* are...they just evaluate the changes based on what they say, rather than who made them.
Using that logic, very little on the web can ever be trusted.
Hackers often change websites, accounts get hacked (Gabe Newell?), people lie in posts all the time, whole websites can be designed to mislead you...
But this shows one important thing: you don't have to be able to trust a source for it to be useful. I don't trust most of the web, but if I do research and 15 websites agree on a fact, even though I don't trust each individual website, I can trust the consensus of 15 independent websites.
This phenomenon is present in Wikipedia because there are so many folks contributing. The liklihood is that errors will be corrected over time, and that even though you cannot trust it as infalliable, it proves to be an extremely useful tool. Further, it at least has a policy on accuracy and NPOV, whereas most other internet-based sources do not, or at least do not publish one publicly.
Hmmm...802.11g is not backwards compatible with 802.11b.
I have a zaurus, laptop, and desktop all wirelessly linked to a LinkSys WRT54G. My desktop is b/g compatible as is my laptop. But my Zaurus uses a Ambicom CF wireless card, 802.11b only.
Unless I put my router in "mixed" mode or "b" only, my Zaurus cannot see it it all. So unless there is an implementation error in either the router or the AmbiCom card, g is NOT backwards compatible with b.
You may be thinking that because you have a 802.11g router that it isn't implementing 802.11b, but as is the case with mine, its actually the router that is backwards compatible (not the protocol), since it is allowing both protocols, not ONLY 802.11g.
TG support is provided through their forums. You need a username and password to get in. Support is in no way tied to the watermark on the binaries you're using.
Apparently it is watermarking...I downloaded two copies:
.tgzs of the same data would be different?
$tar xvzf cedega1.tgz
$ls
cedega1.tgz cedega2.tgz usr
$mv usr usr1
$tar xvzf cedgea2.tgz
$mv usr usr2
$ls
cedega1.tgz cedega2.tgz usr1 usr2
$diff -r usr1 usr2
$
'Nuff said. Its just a watermark, not in the actual files. If you do a:
$diff -rs usr1 usr2
it'll report that every file is identical, just to verify.
Then, make an unwatermarked version:
$mv usr1 usr
$tar czf cedega_clean.tgz usr
Sadly, if you compress the *exact* same folder twice with tar czf it will not md5sum the same (try it!). I can't say I know why. So basically, this helps with piracy but not with the verification problem. =( Don't know how to fix the ebuild problem. Anyone that knows more about why the md5sums for two
I beg to differ...I was an ROTC student because I couldn't afford tuition, and I saved my monthly stipends of $100 for a year and did a $1000 or so upgrade on my computer in college. Just because his priorities don't match yours doesn't mean that his are screwed up.
To some of us (like me, currently unemployed), I still went out an upgraded to the tune of a few hundred dollars for Doom 3. And no, I'm not rich...I just love building computers, working with hardware, playing games, and programming. I had some money saved up from my time in the Navy and I chose to use it that way.
"They are the only good video card for Linux, so I'm whiling to put up with their inferior propriatory drivers..."
Without addressing the rest of your post, I would certainly take issue with saying that nVidia's video drivers are "inferior"...which begs the question:
Inferior to whom?
Please educate me, because as far as I'm concerned, nVidia makes the best damn video drivers in the world. ATI's certainly aren't better, and well, what else is there?
I may be a Linux user, but that doesn't mean that proprietary == bad. Yes, I like open source, but I canot blame nVidia for keeping their drivers closed...especially when they're so good.
Oh, and for reference, nVidia *does* support Linux...they have had good Linux video drivers for longer than anyone else, and are still the best, IMHO.
I'll be honest with you - I have no idea why you wrote that.
As far as I'm concerned, online Music stores are simply not worth it, exactly because of all this. When I pay for music, then I want the music. I want to play it on my computer, and on any player I buy, and be able to copy it to my new computer or laptop, and burn CDs of it forever, especially since CD-Rs don't last more than a couple of years.
The idea of paying for something and then KNOWING you have to pay for it again if you want to continue using it annoys me, and that's not how I'll spend my money. This is exactly like the MPAA tactic of changing formats every decade or so, making it very tempting to re-purchase your video collection. One of the beauties of digital music is that it DOES last, and I only have to buy it ONCE. For now, I'll stick to allofmp3.com and my CDs.
Why does my opinion matter? Well, because its people like me that Real is trying to cater to, and they're only helping the iPod market (though they may be hurting iTunes...but hey, competition is good.)
Just for the sake of rigor:
I use gentoo on amd64 and NONE of the 32 bit windows codecs work. Emerge does nothing. Similarly with Firefox and ANY 3rd party plugins. So I have to go 32-bit binary when available and basically run two copies of things like Firefox (32 and 64) and MPlayer...if only I could get my hands on Mplayer in binary form for x86...
Crossover Office works well though... =)
OK, lets not jump the gun here...
The folks over at TomsHardware, HardOCP, whatever tech site you want to pick on are in a WHOLE DIFFERENT LEAGUE than the idiots that work or shop and CompUSA, Circuit City, whatever.
Those sites cater to folks that want specs on high end hardware. Everyone knows that there is a sweet spot in computer hardware somewhere between cutting edge and one generation old. Performance vs cost in computer hardware (as in cars, machinery, whatever) is exponential, and most people realize this. Those that have a lot of money, spend accordingly, probably knowing its not the best "deal".
That said, of all the articles I've read over at HardOCP, this one gives the most recognition to gamers who don't want to spend a boatload of money. I say:
Give HardOCP credit...they did a very comprehensive and useful review, even for the more casual gamer.
I was talking about Bowling For Columbine.
And besides, the *other* movie isn't even worth serious consideration. Its just propogranda.
Check here. .
From my experience, I doubt those programs are running on government machines...what probably happened was people copied them from government machines and shared them on their private machines. I'm highlighting ther problem that they should have never come off the government machines.
Just so my position is clear: don't legislate against P2P, make the military fix it's security problem.
Glen doesn't go one way or the other, and that's my problem. I want him to take a position on what should be done.
I'm not sure who you are, but I was a US Naval Officer, and I did deploy to the Arabian gulf three times (2001, 2003, 2004).
Whatever comprehensive security program you mention (no, I haven't heard it) didn't make it down to the deckplates on my ship, which was commisioned in 1995.
Since you know so much about military security, can you tell me if this program took care of glaring discrepancies in the SIPRNET/NIPRNET information exchange? How about something simple, like I suggested - not providing removable media on secret computers...
You are correct...there is NIPRNET (public internet) and SIPRNET (an entirely seperate, secret and very large network for military). The problem is that sometimes presentation computers are NIPRNET, and sometimes you have to give secret briefs. Or sometimes someone doesn't have SIPRNET set up correctly (its an involved process), so some idiot copies secret files to a floppy. As I said above in my email: SIPRNET computers shouldn't have floppies or zip. No removable media. Oh, and while youre at it, can we ditch all the MS contracts too, and move to something secure?
This is the case all over, and I got tired of it when I was in the military...the security is not where it should be an no one cares.
Glen Breakwater-
As a former member of our armed forces, and an avid technophile as well as outspoken supporter of freedom in all its forms, I have a question:
What exactly are you advocating?
It sounds an awful lot like you're complaining, but you have absolutely no idea how to solve the problem you've raised. This is not constructive...it is merely whining. Do you want to ban P2P services? Do you want to attempt to make yet more copy protection systems? Or are you doing what Michael Moore does and complaining about a situation while having no solution whatsoever?
As for my view: it is the price of freedom. If you don't want Secret/NOFORN documents distributed on the web, then don't hand them out to people! Make sure the only machines that have them are on SIPRNET and take out the damn floppy and zip disk drives.
My position: people are stupid, and until we decide to take real measures to protect secret data (i.e. not providing removable media for secret computers), we'll get burned. A nation at war? Yes, I went to Iraq three times in the past three years. But don't blame the soldiers, or the P2P programs. Blame the idiots that make the information available and the idiots who build the computers and set IT policy for the DoD.
Peer to peer filesharing is NOT a security risk. The lack of a comprehensive security program within our military is a security risk.
Regards,
This was approved in 2002, but filed in 1999...that would make prior art difficult to find. It is quite specific, and mentions real-time shadows in a time before they were really around - certainly Doom 3 hadn't been acnnounced.
Don't get me wrong, I still hate Creative's tactics, and I wrote them an email telling them so. Why the hell does Creative have this patent, of all companies? I mean, nVidia, ATI, Intel even I could see, but Creative??
We need to banish software patents, or come up with something that works better than this mess.
What? Carmack doesn't work for you...he isn't somehow responsible to fight the fight that you would. Why should he suffer losses because *you* think it's right to not ship Doom 3? You should just upgrade as planned and NOT buy a creative card. As was said earlier...don't get this backwards: Creative did the wrong thing, and Mr. Carmack is the good guy.
Umm, just because the competition has a trademark doesn't mean I can't say my processor is compatible with it, even in my advertising. People use trademarked names of their competitors in their advertisments all the time.
As I recall, Cyrix was onto the 586/686 naming scheme and Intel switched to Pentium to distinguish their product.
I still have trouble believing that AMD fell into the same trap Intel fell into with Pentium. IMHO, Pentium M should have never been so named: it was new technology and it should have been marketed as such. AMD did the same thing with AthlonXP and Athlon64...a shame, because people *don't* understand the difference at a basic consumer level. I understand that name-brand does have value, but you still want to give the public a good idea (via your naming scheme) when one product breaks away from the others on a technology/performance level. JM2C...
That's interesting, because the idea of a program trying to guess what I want does not strike me as a feature. In fact, I have two main problems:
1) It seems it would require YET ANOTHER login and password and links that to all my news habits
2) The history of algorithms trying to guess what I'm interested has been exceedingly poor.
Maybe the reason I'm not interested is because of point #2, and that said, I'll go visit memigo.com and see what I think. Somehow I like the purity of Google News - its anonymous, clean (I like text only mode on my Zaurus), and puts all its engine power to scouring the web for interesting news stories, rather than trying to guess which ones I want to see.
I think the point was that Microsoft's news site would be set as the default...amazing as it may seem to the readers of slashdot (and I don't mean to be sarcastic), most people who use computers actually don't change the defaults (as we do so often). I'm not sure why, but I'm constantly amazed at how pervasive the "default" is.
Case and point: IE comes with windows, it's icon is put on the desktop. It has, what, 90% market share? It was considered big inroads for Firefox the other week when Firefox gained 1%. I bet MS could ship Firefox with windows and bury it in a menu somewhere and people would STILL use IE, so long as it was the icon that appeared on the desktop.
Spent three years on a ship based out of San Diego, and did three deployments to the middle east. I was reading slashdot almost every day all around the globe on the ship - in 2001 off the coast of Kuwait, in 2003 in Sydney and Townsville, Australia, and in 2004 in Goa, India (there were others, obviously, but those were some interesting ones).
I suppose there are other people that read it from all those places, so its not that strange, but at least I had variety! =)
Now I'm out of the Navy, and I read it at home at my desk, and on the crapper using WiFi and my Zaurus. That's a bit less interesting.
No...Quake 4 has been in the works for months over at Raven Software. This will be a new franchise. RTFA.
Not really. That's like saying the SD slot on the Sharp Zaurus would "have to support the DRM features of the SD card", which it doesn't. It just ignores the DRM related functions and treats it like a MMC slot. Similarly, if you have OSS in the BIOS and OSS for your OS, you can "pretend" to follow DRM procedures, but in point of fact, do whatever you want...all the DRM calls can go to: int preventcopy(){ return 1; }
Its not adverbial - its as though you were in a meeting to discuss the ad campaign and a guy kept showing you trees with apples on them, and orchards and word play with apple. The CEO says: "I dont want any of this - its all the same. Start over." The ad campaign guy says: "But, where do are start?" The CEO replys: "Think Different." Or, as the post above says: Think "Different"