...the assumption that there will be two distinct sources of reference information in the future - the Wikipedia style on-line "texts", which may contain far greater detail than the Encyclopedia in your library on modern day topics, recent developments, and the short but almost 100% factually correct entry in that reference book from your library.
Both have their place, and both have pros and cons.
An emulator is "a device that is built to work like another" (says the Google dictionary link). So what's WINE then - it's a software program that isn't Windows, but allows you to run programs that require Windows....sounds a lot like an emulator to me.
USB 2 has a max of 480Mbits/second. FireWire 400, fairly obviously, has a max of 400MB/s, and 800 has...800Mb/s. All in theory - in the real world, obviously varies according to device application.
John Cage's 4'33" isn't actually silence...OK?
on
DRM for 1'3" of Silence
·
· Score: 2, Informative
As a music student, I feel perhaps it is my duty to point out that a proper live performance of 4'33" isn't actually "silence". If you were to hear the piece live, you'd be hearing the sounds of the nervous shuffles, coughs, expectant wheezes of all the people around you. That's the point of the piece.
Seeing as 4'33" is actually written out in music, to record the piece you must perform it, using a piano. Even a studio recording will not be perfect silence, and a live recording will have a noticeable amount of background noise, maybe with the occassional cough, giggle etc.
Like so many here, IANAL - but how exactly would you mount such a case?
"Your Honour, I used this website to knowingly violate copyright law, and then gave the owner of said site some money in the belief it was in order to defend a case against him, and therefore keep the site up. I want my money back, because no such case existed".
Response: "So, you gave money in exchange for the possibility of continued use of an illegal service"
It would be very, very hard to argue that you gave money without previously using the site to download illegal material, or that when you parted with your money you had no hope at all it would result in the continued usage of the illegal service LokiTorrent provided.
It's Crown Copyright, meaning material "may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium provided it is reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context[...]the source of the material must be identified and the copyright status acknowledged.".
Which basically means, anyone is entitled to view information.
It's standard practice in the US to order reduced 1st Season runs of shows, purely because if the show bombs, you havn't lost as much money pulling it as you would if you had commissioned a full 20+ episode run. 13 episodes is around the standard for a first season - obviously there are a few exceptions, where you can safely assume the premise will be a hit or have the capital to risk. Interestingly, here in the UK most seasons are actually limited to 6, with only the really major dramas getting longer runs (typically 13). I guess that could be because the soap operas in the UK are far more popular than high budget dramas.
...interestingly, the demo won't run on IE (at least, the versions I've tried, being IE 6 on default settings).
Perhaps this is a sign of things to come - more and more applications just not running on IE, and preferring FireFox / Mozilla?
"So I say, I paid for it already, give it to me. I think it is legal for me to download the prisoner DVD rips (I have never seen this show, I want to) because I pay the license fees already."
You're a bit off the mark there - The Prisoner was not a BBC show. It was an ITC show, produced for Channel 3 (or whatever it was called then). It was nothing, repeat nothing, to do with the licence fee. If you actually bothered to look at the DVD box, you'd have noticed it was published by Carlton, not the BBC. So do you still think it's legal?
Increasingly, the BBC isn't publishing the DVDs - another company is. Take the Spooks (or MI-6, as it's called in the US) DVDs - they're published not by the BBC, but by the production company (Kudos), who get all the money.
And to be honest, I think some of the BBC dvds are very well priced - take the Red Dwarf DVDs, which retail for about £11 on Amazon for an entire season. I debate you pay "over the odds" for BBC DVDs - I think you pay the same as DVDs produced by any other company or studio.
You do raise some valid points though:
"So I say, I paid for it already, give it to me."
If you read the news, you'd see that's what the BBC want to do. It's even been posted on Slashdot before, for God's sake. The BBC actually WANTS you to be able to download TV shows and radio shows they produce for free. They're investing in P2P technology to try and make it possible. The thing stopping them is actually the issue of repeat fees for writers / producers etc.
"BBC make enough money to either a) scrap tv license or b) give us cheaper DVD's."
The TV license doesn't just pay for TV though...it pays for commercial free radio, one of the most popular internet sites in the world, educational programs and resources, transmission infrastructure, high tech R&D, etc. The DVDs the BBC produce are typically cheaper than other DVDs anyway, or at least around the same price.
"Most people spend more on BBC DVD's than they do on licenses nowwadays (only takes one or two Christmas prezzies of the office to do that)."
Erm. Let me see. Seasons 1 and 2 of The Office cost £15 on Amazon. £15. For 2 seasons. The licence fee is around £115. 15 x 2 doesn't = 115.
Perhaps you'd be interested in what the BBC actually spends the money on - they are accountable for it after all. See the website below:
"Until such time, I have the right to run the software under any OS I want."
True. But Microsoft clearly state you need a copy of Windows to run Outlook right on the box. They aren't obliged to support you if you're running it under the requirements they specify.
A flawed analogy (but the only one I can think of at the moment) would be thus: You buy a car. You can change the tires. You can change oil filters. You can change the upholstery. None of this stops your support. But lets say you put it diesel by accident, and broke up your engine. The car manufacturer said in the manual "this car runs on unleaded". Your fault, you pay.
Similarly in software - you run it on WINE...well, WINE isn't Windows. Microsoft clearly state on the box of outlook that you'll need Windows to run it.
So just why do you expect them to provide support to you???
Particularly true with Tiger (what with the new CoreImage technology), OS X really can push eye candy more than Windows (and Linux) for one main reason - the mac development team have a limited number of graphics cards to develop for, and the drivers are pretty much rock solid.
I just don't see that happening in Linux / Windows - developers must write for as wide a range of hardware as possible. One would therefore imagine that such eye candy being talked about in Linux would be optional, and you'd only get the full benefit with the highest powered and most compatible graphics card - whereas in OS X, most users can get the eye candy without any problems. Of course, there are certain graphics cards on macs that don't support Core Image, Quartz Extreme etc, particularly on the older macs people are upgrading, but I'm willing to bet the majority of macs will be able to run Core Image etc. Whereas here, the minority of PCs will be able to run the Linux eye candy.
Certainly in Britain, where "Pay As You Go" phones took off far, far earlier than the US, it's been like this for a very long time. A student can buy a pay as you go phone now for £20, and all the major networks do various bundles / deals enabling you to buy cheaper airtime etc. etc.
It's far more attractive than a contract, and calls are normally cheaper on the mobile than on the uni phone system anyway.
Is most of this really a scam though? It seems to me there are two levels to this type of behavior - the true scam, whereby a user is led to believe the site they are looking at really is the site they intended to go to, and therefore handing over personal details / card numbers etc.
However, most of what is described appears to be people capitalising on poor typing skills - a "lesser" scam if you will. I suspect the majority of these miss-spelt domain names don't claim to be the site you're looking for.
A scam is, after all, to defraud somebody. Mis-spelt domain names is akin to reading a map incorrectly, and ending up somewhere you didn't expect.
Of course, the fact that many of these sites will then go on to install malicious software etc, and that they generally intend to catch traffic from other sites probably works against this argument.
I know that a year back or so in the UK there was a call for all police assigned to the child protection unit who's job was to wade through thousands of images looking for clues to only be on the job for three years, before being transferred off to another department.
The argument was they would become mentally disturbed as a result of looking through these pictures for so long - however, the police refused, saying they'd lose many valuable experts.
"The girl next door to me is 14 and VERY hot (I'm in the UK she's legal in two years)."...and? Your point that she's legal in two years is irrelevant. Obviously I don't know how old you might be (which could make a huge difference - I could probably accept somebody of 18/19 doing that, but not a 40 year old), but my sister is 14 (and in the UK), and I'd be coming round to punch you if stared at her chest like that.
"I've looked at her chest as she walked past, didn't get caught and got a little giggle out of it at best. Is this a problem? Does that make me a child molester?"
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:9dT24A15Kf0J: ip odlinux.org/stories/piezo/+&hl=en>...it's a really neat hack - it reminds me of the espionage technique of decoding keyboard characters from the different noises each key makes...
"I have a hardware firewall (GTA GB500), 30 character password, and all remotely personal information stored on a 256bit AES encrypted volume. How far do you go to protect your information against 'Big Brother' or even your family/friends?"
You call that security? I have my computer rigged up to some C4, that's set to detonate you type in and incorrect password, all of my files are translated into swahili before being encrypted in 512bit encryption, before it's all put onto a hardrive enclosed in tin foil so the commies can't scan it using their radar (cos RADAR KNOWS EVERYTHING, cos I saw some film about it once), and if I ever need to print something out I print it in white ink so nobody can see it, and don't even get me started on software...
Slashdot Mirror
...the assumption that there will be two distinct sources of reference information in the future - the Wikipedia style on-line "texts", which may contain far greater detail than the Encyclopedia in your library on modern day topics, recent developments, and the short but almost 100% factually correct entry in that reference book from your library.
Both have their place, and both have pros and cons.
An emulator is "a device that is built to work like another" (says the Google dictionary link). So what's WINE then - it's a software program that isn't Windows, but allows you to run programs that require Windows. ...sounds a lot like an emulator to me.
USB 2 has a max of 480Mbits/second. FireWire 400, fairly obviously, has a max of 400MB/s, and 800 has...800Mb/s. All in theory - in the real world, obviously varies according to device application.
As a music student, I feel perhaps it is my duty to point out that a proper live performance of 4'33" isn't actually "silence". If you were to hear the piece live, you'd be hearing the sounds of the nervous shuffles, coughs, expectant wheezes of all the people around you. That's the point of the piece.
Seeing as 4'33" is actually written out in music, to record the piece you must perform it, using a piano. Even a studio recording will not be perfect silence, and a live recording will have a noticeable amount of background noise, maybe with the occassional cough, giggle etc.
Like so many here, IANAL - but how exactly would you mount such a case?
"Your Honour, I used this website to knowingly violate copyright law, and then gave the owner of said site some money in the belief it was in order to defend a case against him, and therefore keep the site up. I want my money back, because no such case existed".
Response:
"So, you gave money in exchange for the possibility of continued use of an illegal service"
It would be very, very hard to argue that you gave money without previously using the site to download illegal material, or that when you parted with your money you had no hope at all it would result in the continued usage of the illegal service LokiTorrent provided.
It's Crown Copyright, meaning material "may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium provided it is reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context[...]the source of the material must be identified and the copyright status acknowledged.". Which basically means, anyone is entitled to view information.
It's standard practice in the US to order reduced 1st Season runs of shows, purely because if the show bombs, you havn't lost as much money pulling it as you would if you had commissioned a full 20+ episode run. 13 episodes is around the standard for a first season - obviously there are a few exceptions, where you can safely assume the premise will be a hit or have the capital to risk. Interestingly, here in the UK most seasons are actually limited to 6, with only the really major dramas getting longer runs (typically 13). I guess that could be because the soap operas in the UK are far more popular than high budget dramas.
I can see it in court now:
Laywer: "Mr X claimed our software was "assware", a derogotary comment that damaged our business"
Defence: "It's Assware...it just, kicks ass man".
Isn't that kind of like asking if porn producers get off on their own material?
(quite how I've dumped Slashdot editors and porn producers in the same barrel, I'll never know...)
...interestingly, the demo won't run on IE (at least, the versions I've tried, being IE 6 on default settings). Perhaps this is a sign of things to come - more and more applications just not running on IE, and preferring FireFox / Mozilla?
I doubt er could Slashdot the Southampton Uni pages...still working fine for me.
"So I say, I paid for it already, give it to me. I think it is legal for me to download the prisoner DVD rips (I have never seen this show, I want to) because I pay the license fees already."
You're a bit off the mark there - The Prisoner was not a BBC show. It was an ITC show, produced for Channel 3 (or whatever it was called then). It was nothing, repeat nothing, to do with the licence fee. If you actually bothered to look at the DVD box, you'd have noticed it was published by Carlton, not the BBC. So do you still think it's legal?
Increasingly, the BBC isn't publishing the DVDs - another company is. Take the Spooks (or MI-6, as it's called in the US) DVDs - they're published not by the BBC, but by the production company (Kudos), who get all the money.
And to be honest, I think some of the BBC dvds are very well priced - take the Red Dwarf DVDs, which retail for about £11 on Amazon for an entire season. I debate you pay "over the odds" for BBC DVDs - I think you pay the same as DVDs produced by any other company or studio.
You do raise some valid points though:
"So I say, I paid for it already, give it to me."
If you read the news, you'd see that's what the BBC want to do. It's even been posted on Slashdot before, for God's sake. The BBC actually WANTS you to be able to download TV shows and radio shows they produce for free. They're investing in P2P technology to try and make it possible. The thing stopping them is actually the issue of repeat fees for writers / producers etc.
"BBC make enough money to either a) scrap tv license or b) give us cheaper DVD's."
The TV license doesn't just pay for TV though...it pays for commercial free radio, one of the most popular internet sites in the world, educational programs and resources, transmission infrastructure, high tech R&D, etc. The DVDs the BBC produce are typically cheaper than other DVDs anyway, or at least around the same price.
"Most people spend more on BBC DVD's than they do on licenses nowwadays (only takes one or two Christmas prezzies of the office to do that)."
Erm. Let me see. Seasons 1 and 2 of The Office cost £15 on Amazon. £15. For 2 seasons. The licence fee is around £115. 15 x 2 doesn't = 115.
Perhaps you'd be interested in what the BBC actually spends the money on - they are accountable for it after all. See the website below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/licencefee/
So what's your problem?
"Until such time, I have the right to run the software under any OS I want."
True. But Microsoft clearly state you need a copy of Windows to run Outlook right on the box. They aren't obliged to support you if you're running it under the requirements they specify.
A flawed analogy (but the only one I can think of at the moment) would be thus:
You buy a car. You can change the tires. You can change oil filters. You can change the upholstery. None of this stops your support. But lets say you put it diesel by accident, and broke up your engine. The car manufacturer said in the manual "this car runs on unleaded". Your fault, you pay.
Similarly in software - you run it on WINE...well, WINE isn't Windows. Microsoft clearly state on the box of outlook that you'll need Windows to run it.
So just why do you expect them to provide support to you???
"I'd be impressed if he was successful, but he doesn't need to succeed. He just needs to get closer than anyone else ever has."
...I think most people remember the Titanic as a disaster, not as an engineering triumph...same with other transport ideas...
Do you remember the Titanic as:
a) The largest steam ship of it's type at the time.
b) The biggest sailing disaster of its kind at the time.
c) A poor film
Particularly true with Tiger (what with the new CoreImage technology), OS X really can push eye candy more than Windows (and Linux) for one main reason - the mac development team have a limited number of graphics cards to develop for, and the drivers are pretty much rock solid.
I just don't see that happening in Linux / Windows - developers must write for as wide a range of hardware as possible. One would therefore imagine that such eye candy being talked about in Linux would be optional, and you'd only get the full benefit with the highest powered and most compatible graphics card - whereas in OS X, most users can get the eye candy without any problems. Of course, there are certain graphics cards on macs that don't support Core Image, Quartz Extreme etc, particularly on the older macs people are upgrading, but I'm willing to bet the majority of macs will be able to run Core Image etc. Whereas here, the minority of PCs will be able to run the Linux eye candy.
1. Take MacMini. 2. Place in Suitcase. 3. Turn on.
Certainly in Britain, where "Pay As You Go" phones took off far, far earlier than the US, it's been like this for a very long time. A student can buy a pay as you go phone now for £20, and all the major networks do various bundles / deals enabling you to buy cheaper airtime etc. etc.
It's far more attractive than a contract, and calls are normally cheaper on the mobile than on the uni phone system anyway.
Is most of this really a scam though? It seems to me there are two levels to this type of behavior - the true scam, whereby a user is led to believe the site they are looking at really is the site they intended to go to, and therefore handing over personal details / card numbers etc.
However, most of what is described appears to be people capitalising on poor typing skills - a "lesser" scam if you will. I suspect the majority of these miss-spelt domain names don't claim to be the site you're looking for.
A scam is, after all, to defraud somebody. Mis-spelt domain names is akin to reading a map incorrectly, and ending up somewhere you didn't expect.
Of course, the fact that many of these sites will then go on to install malicious software etc, and that they generally intend to catch traffic from other sites probably works against this argument.
I know that a year back or so in the UK there was a call for all police assigned to the child protection unit who's job was to wade through thousands of images looking for clues to only be on the job for three years, before being transferred off to another department. The argument was they would become mentally disturbed as a result of looking through these pictures for so long - however, the police refused, saying they'd lose many valuable experts.
"The girl next door to me is 14 and VERY hot (I'm in the UK she's legal in two years)." ...and? Your point that she's legal in two years is irrelevant. Obviously I don't know how old you might be (which could make a huge difference - I could probably accept somebody of 18/19 doing that, but not a 40 year old), but my sister is 14 (and in the UK), and I'd be coming round to punch you if stared at her chest like that.
"I've looked at her chest as she walked past, didn't get caught and got a little giggle out of it at best. Is this a problem? Does that make me a child molester?"
No. It makes you a voyeur.
Ooops...I meant
: ip odlinux.org/stories/piezo/+&hl=en
:)
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:9dT24A15Kf0J
I think that mistake deserves negative mod points
Slashdotted after what, 5 comments?
: ip odlinux.org/stories/piezo/+&hl=en> ...it's a really neat hack - it reminds me of the espionage technique of decoding keyboard characters from the different noises each key makes...
Google Cache here:
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:9dT24A15Kf0J
"I have a hardware firewall (GTA GB500), 30 character password, and all remotely personal information stored on a 256bit AES encrypted volume. How far do you go to protect your information against 'Big Brother' or even your family/friends?"
You call that security? I have my computer rigged up to some C4, that's set to detonate you type in and incorrect password, all of my files are translated into swahili before being encrypted in 512bit encryption, before it's all put onto a hardrive enclosed in tin foil so the commies can't scan it using their radar (cos RADAR KNOWS EVERYTHING, cos I saw some film about it once), and if I ever need to print something out I print it in white ink so nobody can see it, and don't even get me started on software...
Man, you have it easy - call that security?
Am I the only one who has this image of a bog standard Belkin router encased in a biscuit tin?
I've always wanted a headmounted "spy bot" release system :)
Go nanoaugmentation...