I'm surprised that MSN messenger hasn't taken a sort-of google approach to advertising within instant messages...
Person X: What did you have for breakfast this morning? [MSN] THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY SANITARIUM CORNFLAKES Person Y: Toast with Butter [MSN] THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY NATURES FRESH BREAD in association with THE COMPANY THAT MAKES "I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT BUTTER!"
or of course, it could get really dodgy:
Person X: I'm sliding my hands up your thigh. [MSN] THIS MESSAGE BROUGH TO YOU BY TAMPAX TAMPONS Person Y: Oh, sorry that ruined the mood. [MSN] THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY SONY MUSIC - buy the CD "Moody Blues" at www........
Of course, that's assuming that noone else signs up, and we all post as normal. Don't forget that more comments etc means more links, means more recognition, means more traffic, means more signups when a whole bunch of other people want to post too.
That slowdown going from 9 to 10 million? Sorry, my fault.:) I wasn't able to be on the internet much for a couple of weeks in July...
I would really estimate that once we hit sort of 30 million, we will probably see massive acceleration in numbers of posts, and from million to million will probably start to go from ~120 days to ~100 to ~80 to ~60 to ~35 to ~20 etcetera, and we will probably hit 100 million before I turn 30 (End of 2014).
Who knows, I could be grossly under/over estimating...
Ahh... but what about 10GBPS ethernet? I remember looking at the standard being pretty much or nearly finalized back at the end of 2002... What about Cisco's new mega-routers that they demo'd at one of the recent conferences (circa June)?
Yes, I realize that he cracked Apple's fairplay. What I am saying is that you could simply convert the file type, meaning that even if the DRM remained, it would probably be easier to get DRM out of MP3 or something. But, cracking fairplay is fair enough if you want to take back control of the music you've paid for...
Heh. I got owned once... if you could call it that... back in about 1998 or 99 I accidentally on purpose put that trojan netbus on my machine to see what would happen.
I was only on a shoddy install of Win98 at the time, so I didn't really care - it gave me an excuse to reinstall the next day (needed it anyway), so meh...
Oh yeah, and I was on like, flash as 33.6k dialup due to the phonelines...
Anyway, someone came on and said "so you playing [insert random shitty windows card game here], huh?" and I'm like, "yeah, so? im bored as shit." and they're all like [opens cd-rom drive] "did your cd-rom drive just open?" and i'm like "shit your lame. using netbus to "haxor" my computer... you suck"
then i got their email address (iirc it was an @netscape.com address) and subsequently nuked their machine. (courtesy of winnuke. stupid kiddie script, but still fun...)
Yeah, Windows doesn't come with this stuff, but stupid dumb lusers install it all anyway... I've had PC's come back to me with the same problem - THE DAY AFTER I sent it back to them in perfect working condition - because they installed shitty software including, but not limited to MSN, WMP, Kazaa, Hotbar, Incredimail etcetera...
Remembering that Sun generally uses pretty good quality componentry, as well as possibly some enhancements to make these systems fly, of course... The opteron has a higher bus speed and memory control and 64-bit goodness and... well... the list goes on, no?
Part of the problem there is just that: they are all based on (is some cases) completely seperate architecture... Hell, for most people, it's hard enough trying to distinguish the "MHz ratings" differences between Intel (P4) and AMD (Athlon) or Intel (Xeon) and AMD (Opteron)... and so on and so forth.
I suppose one way to do it is, money providing, get absolute, top of the line everything...
So, the best PPC chip, best SPARC chip, best x86 from Intel, best x86 from AMD, best x86 from transmeta if you really want, best alpha if you wanted to include it and best mips if you wanted it...
OR: another thing you could do: get the most amount of CPU you can for a given amount of money... for example, up to $500 on P4, up to $500 on Xeon or if you wanted, Itanium, up to $500 on Athlon, up to $500 on Athlon64, up to $500 on opteron... and if you can get a SPARC/PPC/whatever for $500 then go for it (and of course, spend how ever much is needed on the rest of the system, so that you can get equivalent/same motherboards, ram, power supplies, graphics etc where possible, because of the proprietary nature of certain configurations - such as Mac and to an extent PPC or Sun SPARC processors)... so like, try and spend the same amount of money on each given system...
That would be an easy way for AMD to win, in most cases, though...
What you could do if you wanted to protect your online version, would be to either a) sell it seperately, and b) sell it as part of the book in print - have it as a free-download "alternative" for those of us who would rather read it on our PDAs or whatever.
Have like... a sticker inside the cover of each book with a number you use to download the book. When you first download the book, you put a 'password' of sorts on the book (3-4 digits or whatever, and user generated, rather than algorithm - this way its harder to electronically generate a combination that will work with the book) so that its still quick to open, but means that there is some form of protection on there, in case someone acquires themselves an illegitimate copy.
of course, this method won't necessarily stop piracy altogether - there is not much that will - and there would probably be little to stop someone from writing a brute force thing to crack the combination (4 tries and they're out for good without re-setting the code again using the same software/product id combo?)...
however, it probably wouldn't be worth the time for someone to write a program like that for breaking the password on a $10 ebook - would I be right in saying that there seems to be fewer cracks around for $10-30 software than there is for $50 to $5000 software?
Although, if you could really be bothered, you can convert from WMA to MP3 and then if you would like, from MP3 to MP3Pro, AAC/MP4, or even OGG. If you really wanted to completely remove DRM, you could always from from MP3 to WAV and back...
Of course, I would hate to think about the quality of the end-result... Personally, I quite like MP3Pro given its high quality, small(er) filesize. I also quite like OGG, except for the fact it is not as widely supported by default... otherwise they have a fine codec/format going there.
Lets face it. Compared to most other streaming formats (you all know which one I'm exempting here - **cough**realmedia**cough**), WMA is a pretty shoddy codec/format.
I may be wrong, I thought he worked for some major corperate IT place in Norway... he had to get time off for his court case(s) but still had/has a job there... no?
I have to wonder what kind of shoddy components are in a PC that, for under $600 includes a monitor and valid Windows XP licence...
Probably the only thing in there that wouldn't be dodgy is the CPU - being Intel and all.
Yeah yeah, troll troll... but as the former CTO (up till Feb 04) of a successful small computer manfacturer who watched competitors drop like flies, I've found in the ~1000 PC's a year we sent out, 1 or less came back every year with problems that could be traced to a dodgy Intel CPU), and FYI, I did a lot of tech work myself, and I was heavily involved with purchasing of parts and new technologies. As a general rule, Intel couldn't be beaten on quality of product.
I (as a web developer/web application developer) had on my laptop an slightly unusual Apache 1.3.29 install (W32, of course) so that I could faux-navigate a customers website without actually plugging in to anything (Often got "wow, how'd you do that" from them;))
Anyway, what I had was an abnormal set of IP addresses for the sites I was working on - 127.0.0.1 being like, the main/root site, 127.0.0.2 being my own site, 127.0.0.3 - 127.0.0.10 being sites I updated/tinkered with often, 127.0.0.11-127.0.0.x being other customer sites.
After I installed XP SP2 on the laptop, (even with the firewall turned off), all those lovely IP addresses (except 127.0.0.1 and 127.0.0.1/sitename) stopped working.
:(
So far, though, thats the only problem. I s'pose I could buy a Mac... or install Linux on it. Heh.
How would something like this affect the MD5 Sum of a file?
Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't it [MD5] take in to account the NUL(0) bytes of the file? So like, if this method of stenography was used to embed something in to a program - be it message or virus, would it not change the MD5 Sum, meaning it was thus possible to detect an anomoly [eg the message]?
While 120MB/s might be the upper limit, with solid state media, it's more likely that the average sustained transfer rate is going to be close to that upper limit.
As opposed to hard disks and all their micromechanics, where you would be pretty lucky to sustain 80% of their upper limits...
The company where I used to work assigned a [wait for it] _4_ letter password! How cool is that?
Oh, did I mention that the password was _the same as everyone elses?_ (So other people could log on to your workstation - part of it was a retail environment, so it was necessary, but I don't know why they didn't just set up roaming profiles... the place was a microsoft gold partner, after all - they had the facilities!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm surprised that MSN messenger hasn't taken a sort-of google approach to advertising within instant messages...
Person X: What did you have for breakfast this morning?
[MSN] THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY SANITARIUM CORNFLAKES
Person Y: Toast with Butter
[MSN] THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY NATURES FRESH BREAD in association with THE COMPANY THAT MAKES "I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT BUTTER!"
or of course, it could get really dodgy:
Person X: I'm sliding my hands up your thigh.
[MSN] THIS MESSAGE BROUGH TO YOU BY TAMPAX TAMPONS
Person Y: Oh, sorry that ruined the mood.
[MSN] THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY SONY MUSIC - buy the CD "Moody Blues" at www........
you get the idea...
Of course, that's assuming that noone else signs up, and we all post as normal. Don't forget that more comments etc means more links, means more recognition, means more traffic, means more signups when a whole bunch of other people want to post too.
:) I wasn't able to be on the internet much for a couple of weeks in July...
That slowdown going from 9 to 10 million? Sorry, my fault.
I would really estimate that once we hit sort of 30 million, we will probably see massive acceleration in numbers of posts, and from million to million will probably start to go from ~120 days to ~100 to ~80 to ~60 to ~35 to ~20 etcetera, and we will probably hit 100 million before I turn 30 (End of 2014).
Who knows, I could be grossly under/over estimating...
Ahh... but what about 10GBPS ethernet? I remember looking at the standard being pretty much or nearly finalized back at the end of 2002...
What about Cisco's new mega-routers that they demo'd at one of the recent conferences (circa June)?
This sounds like a job for:
ACTIONSCRIPT 2.0 FOR DUMMIES
heh.
Heh. Sucks to be average Joe computer user.
Yes, I realize that he cracked Apple's fairplay. What I am saying is that you could simply convert the file type, meaning that even if the DRM remained, it would probably be easier to get DRM out of MP3 or something. But, cracking fairplay is fair enough if you want to take back control of the music you've paid for...
Yes, but you'd never find anything like those players here down under. And to import them from the US or Japan incurs one helluva shipping fee...
I was being sarcastic :)
Heh. I got owned once... if you could call it that... back in about 1998 or 99 I accidentally on purpose put that trojan netbus on my machine to see what would happen.
I was only on a shoddy install of Win98 at the time, so I didn't really care - it gave me an excuse to reinstall the next day (needed it anyway), so meh...
Oh yeah, and I was on like, flash as 33.6k dialup due to the phonelines...
Anyway, someone came on and said "so you playing [insert random shitty windows card game here], huh?" and I'm like, "yeah, so? im bored as shit." and they're all like [opens cd-rom drive] "did your cd-rom drive just open?" and i'm like "shit your lame. using netbus to "haxor" my computer... you suck"
then i got their email address (iirc it was an @netscape.com address) and subsequently nuked their machine. (courtesy of winnuke. stupid kiddie script, but still fun...)
Yeah, Windows doesn't come with this stuff, but stupid dumb lusers install it all anyway... I've had PC's come back to me with the same problem - THE DAY AFTER I sent it back to them in perfect working condition - because they installed shitty software including, but not limited to MSN, WMP, Kazaa, Hotbar, Incredimail etcetera...
Remembering that Sun generally uses pretty good quality componentry, as well as possibly some enhancements to make these systems fly, of course... The opteron has a higher bus speed and memory control and 64-bit goodness and... well... the list goes on, no?
YAY! Does that mean we should all buy Jetway(r), ECS(r), Chaintech(r) and AsRock (AKA shitty thrown out Asus) motherboards again?
Part of the problem there is just that: they are all based on (is some cases) completely seperate architecture... Hell, for most people, it's hard enough trying to distinguish the "MHz ratings" differences between Intel (P4) and AMD (Athlon) or Intel (Xeon) and AMD (Opteron)... and so on and so forth.
I suppose one way to do it is, money providing, get absolute, top of the line everything...
So, the best PPC chip, best SPARC chip, best x86 from Intel, best x86 from AMD, best x86 from transmeta if you really want, best alpha if you wanted to include it and best mips if you wanted it...
OR: another thing you could do: get the most amount of CPU you can for a given amount of money... for example, up to $500 on P4, up to $500 on Xeon or if you wanted, Itanium, up to $500 on Athlon, up to $500 on Athlon64, up to $500 on opteron... and if you can get a SPARC/PPC/whatever for $500 then go for it (and of course, spend how ever much is needed on the rest of the system, so that you can get equivalent/same motherboards, ram, power supplies, graphics etc where possible, because of the proprietary nature of certain configurations - such as Mac and to an extent PPC or Sun SPARC processors)... so like, try and spend the same amount of money on each given system...
That would be an easy way for AMD to win, in most cases, though...
What you could do if you wanted to protect your online version, would be to either
a) sell it seperately, and
b) sell it as part of the book in print - have it as a free-download "alternative" for those of us who would rather read it on our PDAs or whatever.
Have like... a sticker inside the cover of each book with a number you use to download the book. When you first download the book, you put a 'password' of sorts on the book (3-4 digits or whatever, and user generated, rather than algorithm - this way its harder to electronically generate a combination that will work with the book) so that its still quick to open, but means that there is some form of protection on there, in case someone acquires themselves an illegitimate copy.
of course, this method won't necessarily stop piracy altogether - there is not much that will - and there would probably be little to stop someone from writing a brute force thing to crack the combination (4 tries and they're out for good without re-setting the code again using the same software/product id combo?)...
however, it probably wouldn't be worth the time for someone to write a program like that for breaking the password on a $10 ebook - would I be right in saying that there seems to be fewer cracks around for $10-30 software than there is for $50 to $5000 software?
Keeping in mind that he's 20 now ;)
Although, if you could really be bothered, you can convert from WMA to MP3 and then if you would like, from MP3 to MP3Pro, AAC/MP4, or even OGG. If you really wanted to completely remove DRM, you could always from from MP3 to WAV and back...
Of course, I would hate to think about the quality of the end-result... Personally, I quite like MP3Pro given its high quality, small(er) filesize. I also quite like OGG, except for the fact it is not as widely supported by default... otherwise they have a fine codec/format going there.
Lets face it. Compared to most other streaming formats (you all know which one I'm exempting here - **cough**realmedia**cough**), WMA is a pretty shoddy codec/format.
I may be wrong, I thought he worked for some major corperate IT place in Norway... he had to get time off for his court case(s) but still had/has a job there... no?
I often did wonder why I needed a fully fledged GUI on WinNT4/Win2k/Win2k3 Servers...
I have to wonder what kind of shoddy components are in a PC that, for under $600 includes a monitor and valid Windows XP licence...
Probably the only thing in there that wouldn't be dodgy is the CPU - being Intel and all.
Yeah yeah, troll troll... but as the former CTO (up till Feb 04) of a successful small computer manfacturer who watched competitors drop like flies, I've found in the ~1000 PC's a year we sent out, 1 or less came back every year with problems that could be traced to a dodgy Intel CPU), and FYI, I did a lot of tech work myself, and I was heavily involved with purchasing of parts and new technologies. As a general rule, Intel couldn't be beaten on quality of product.
I (as a web developer/web application developer) had on my laptop an slightly unusual Apache 1.3.29 install (W32, of course) so that I could faux-navigate a customers website without actually plugging in to anything (Often got "wow, how'd you do that" from them ;))
Anyway, what I had was an abnormal set of IP addresses for the sites I was working on - 127.0.0.1 being like, the main/root site, 127.0.0.2 being my own site, 127.0.0.3 - 127.0.0.10 being sites I updated/tinkered with often, 127.0.0.11-127.0.0.x being other customer sites.
After I installed XP SP2 on the laptop, (even with the firewall turned off), all those lovely IP addresses (except 127.0.0.1 and 127.0.0.1/sitename) stopped working.
:(
So far, though, thats the only problem. I s'pose I could buy a Mac... or install Linux on it. Heh.
What about 4x the war flying ?
How would something like this affect the MD5 Sum of a file?
Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't it [MD5] take in to account the NUL(0) bytes of the file? So like, if this method of stenography was used to embed something in to a program - be it message or virus, would it not change the MD5 Sum, meaning it was thus possible to detect an anomoly [eg the message]?
While 120MB/s might be the upper limit, with solid state media, it's more likely that the average sustained transfer rate is going to be close to that upper limit.
As opposed to hard disks and all their micromechanics, where you would be pretty lucky to sustain 80% of their upper limits...
The company where I used to work assigned a [wait for it] _4_ letter password! How cool is that?
Oh, did I mention that the password was _the same as everyone elses?_ (So other people could log on to your workstation - part of it was a retail environment, so it was necessary, but I don't know why they didn't just set up roaming profiles... the place was a microsoft gold partner, after all - they had the facilities!