That would work for the original image (at least until someone figured out how to extract the private key). It doesn't help for images that have been cropped/color-balanced/equalized/etc. So to prove that photos you have are "real" you'd need to both keep the original image and a complete journal of every operation you performed on it since. (Then other people could review the journal, confirm that it leads to your final image, and doesn't contain any operations that distort the truth.)
The real drawback of this is that there are already a zillion digital cameras in the field that do not have this feature, and they won't all be replaced with these new cameras any time soon.
This is like me punching someone in the nose and saying "Why didn't you take karate lessons, for crying out loud? It's your own fault it's so easy for me to punch you. You should consider this assault a personal favor."
This isn't telling us anything we don't know already.
You mean like "We hold these truths to be self-evident..."?
It might seem obvious to you or me or the guy in the next cubicle over, but to the rest of the world this is a new and (hopefully) revolutionary idea. If you write it down, it's easier to communicate and codify.
Um, did you actually read how they got those numbers, or did you just look at the big table? They're guessing, and they even admit it.
First, they use different tests (and different kinds of tests in different countries. Second, when they don't have data, they would rather guess than leave a spot in their table blank:
... To obtain a figure for South Africa, the authors used a study done on White South African students and averaged it with what they believed to be the IQ of the Black population, resulting in a figure of 72.... For the PRC, the authors used a figure of 106 from a study done in Singapore and adjusted it down by an arbitrary 6 points because they believed the average in China's rural areas was probably less than that in Singapore.
For about half of the 185 nations that appear in the book, no studies are available. In those cases, the authors estimated by taking averages of the IQs of surrounding nations. For example, the authors arrived at a figure of 84 for El Salvador by averaging their calculations of 79 for Guatemala and 88 for Colombia.
For large quantities, tapes are probably the way to go, but the hassle of dealing with tapes is something to consider. So for small quantities (a TB a month or so) offline disks make sense. You can get a 1 TB self-contained firewire array from LaCie for ~$1,300 (and there are probably competitors in this space). These are nice because they allow you to store the data in a normal file system. Just remember to keep the drives in a safe place, and power them up every month or so to keep the moving parts happy.
The real nuisance with backups is if you need to keep them for several generations of hardware/software. In this case you need to keep a copy of everything you need to read them. Firewire is probably good for another few years before they start to fade into obscurity (unless it suddenly blossoms into popularity, reversing the apparent trend) but my guess at this point is that your new PC ten years from now won't support them in any way. Jump backup technologies before they become obsolete, but don't jump too soon either -- wait until the technology is stable and has shown that it is likely to have a long life-span.
I'm not going to argue about the quality of any particular format, because what people hear is quite subjective (for phsyiological and psychological reasons). My point is that there is a difference. Let's assume that the current coding (pick your favorite flavor) is acceptable. Let's not let it get any worse. In particular, don't let other people decide, on your behalf, to trade noticeable amounts of quality for bandwidth. If CDs are slightly better than format A and format A is slightly better than B,... by the time we get to format Z it's going to sound like crap. (if you can't hear the difference, that's your business.)
They lost me in the first paragraph, with "a new worn" In fact the English is uniformly stilted throughout.
Upon more investigation -- noting that every article on the page is written by the same person, and that person is the person who registered the domain, and nearly every article contains the same info (and sometimes the same text) as available from other widely known sources -- I wonder whether this site exists only to generate ad revenues from people who trip over it. Well, thanks to SlashDot, it's payday for Mr. Hora.
I think it would be more accurate to say that most politicians don't even know what software is running on their web sites. It's more a question of who they've hired to build the web site. Bush's people probably hired someone that they've known since IIS was a popular choice. Kerry's web site is newer and so OSS was a more likely choice.
There might be something interesting about wi-fi on a boat (all that steel might make things complicated) but from what's written in the article, it was about as complicated as setting up wifi in any other context. C'mon, editors.
I still fail to see the connection between heavy downloading of a film and it's lack of profit.
On the off chance that this is an honest question and not simply a troll... Of course the most popular movies make the most money and are the most downloaded. They are pirated and they make money because they are popular and people want to see them, but the fact that they are popular is not caused by the fact that they are pirated (or by the fact that they make a lot of money). Downloading and profits are both linked to the same factors.
The bottom line isn't in the red anymore, and the studio is perfectly fine with that.
My (limited) understanding is that the studios don't expect to make money on every film -- they rely on a blockbuster every once in a while to cover the costs of the duds. So, by not milking the profits on the rare profitable documentary-ish film, they are limiting the number of films they can make in the future (and the degree of risk they are willing to take that those films will not make money).
It's not surprising that Moore permits this; he's an activist and he's looking for the best soapbox he can get. All he cares about is how many people he can get to watch it.
It's much more interesting that the studio is OK with this. I don't see how this benefits them in any way (unless all they do is activist films and don't care about their bottom line either). I'm curious to see how all this plays out.
Of course, the joke could be on us; perhaps Moore's next film will be about how downloaders are undermining the american way of life, or something to that effect. The fact that people will take time out of their busy schedules of pirating Spiderman2 and whatnot in order to download a long, mostly un-entertaining political polemic has interesting implications -- these aren't irresponsible kiddies (who couldn't care less about this stuff). These are adults who presumably have a conscience. Downloaders are everywhere.
Let's not permit the music download stores to get into a pissing match over who's downloads are smaller/faster. They should compete on quality. Otherwise, today it's 128k, tomorrow it's 96k, and before we know it the stuff we download will sound like it's being played over a cell phone.
I say boycott any format that is any worse than the modern 192k (preferably better). If they can really do 128k without sounding any worse, that's fine. But based on the reviews I've seen, they haven't, so it's not.
Catching someone isn't as good as preventing from doing it in the first place, of course.
True, but convincing them they're going to get caught is an excellent way to prevent them from doing it in the first place.
Why go to such lengths; didn't they catch someone last year using only simple watermarking? Is there any conclusive evidence that the academy members are responsible for enough piracy to make this worthwhile?
Of course, they could just say they were doing this, and then send everyone an el-cheapo DVD player with a special decal on the front. That might be enough to psych out someone.
Seriously, I think that they are making a valid point; MS (or your favorite software mill) is expected to turn out monolithic applications that make most users happy most of the time (partly by lowering the expectations of their users, when necessary). If they shipped five web browsers or six media players, their customers would simply be confused and/or demand that they all share the same preferences, etc. Most lusers feel the same way about making such choices as other people feel about buying a car -- the choices seem infinite, confusing, and there's always a suspicion in the back of your mind that you're letting the salesman have too much influence on your decision.
They're jealous that Linux has users who are willing to weigh the options and make choices rather than blindly choose a one-size-fits-all solution.
Golly, that's news to me. My experience with mushrooms was that they were fun for a while (after it started to kick in, which took more than an hour) but after about eight hours I'd start to hope that the magical light show would end and I'd be able to get some sleep before having to face the next day of classes or work! If LSD lasts longer than that, no thank you. Even during college I couldn't afford to lose a whole day tripping.
Yes, he was a lobbyist for them. What I meant by connected was that I thought he'd actually be involved with some aspect of production work. I guess that's a pretty naive view, akin to expecting that a car salesman would actually know something about how cars are built.
It looks like this guy knows how to lobby very effectively. The MPAA is an organization whose primary purpose is to lobby for the interests of the motion picture industry. Were you really expecting someone who would take things in a new direction? (he was probably hired based on his ability to keep things the way they are!)
The only thing that's surprising to me is that he doesn't seem to have much connection to the industry. I would have expected an insider to be promoted instead of someone being hired in.
The names "Vic" and "Pet" will resonate with former Commodore users, perhaps, but since these represent a tiny fraction of the market, I think it would have been in their best interest to choose names that had more "meaning" to a broader market. (looking at the eVIC, the name "iPodKnockoff" comes to mind, although this might get them in trouble).
On a possibly unrelated note, I loved my Commodore 64 so of course I clicked on the link for "C64 DTV". This crashed my Mozilla. Since the people who hacked on old commodores are probably more likely to use Mozilla than IE, this worries me.
No, it's just common sense. Whether or not the neutral third party opines that the code was not stolen from Affinity has no legal meaning unless the two parties agree ahead of time to binding arbitration, which Google does not appear to be. So all that this would accomplish is to buy time for Orkut (or someone else) to rewrite the code so that if this suit ever goes to trial they can trot out the new code and show that it's different (although being bug-compatible is harder than it sounds).
Affinity dropped the ball by waiting so long. Their case would have been a lot stronger if they'd made a stink as soon as they'd learned about orkut.com. That would have let Google settle this before it gained visibility.
Well, the Apple-is-pretty (and Google-is-blessed, and SCO-is-evil) articles do serve one useful purpose: they remind us that the success of the personal computer and related techno-gizmos has brought powerful forces to bear on the nerdly world. It no longer matters how clean the code is; it matters how nifty the case is. It's no longer just enough to come up with a good idea; it must be marketed. And it's no longer as easy as creating something useful and sharing it with the world; now there are lawyers involved.
On the other hand, if TVs start telling people that they should get a little more exercise and fresh air after they've been watching TV non-stop for three hours, that might be a good thing.
It's true that aomeone who can't decode gcc error messages probably isn't a very experienced coder, but in this case we're really talking about g++, which is capable of emitting some amazingly baffling messages.
But this is beside the point. To run benchmarks well a person must be diligent, methodical, and objective. Being a hacker is not a prerequisite. These benchmarks look a lot better than many I've seen. They might turn out to be flawed, but not for the reason you mention.
Slashdot Mirror
The real drawback of this is that there are already a zillion digital cameras in the field that do not have this feature, and they won't all be replaced with these new cameras any time soon.
This is like me punching someone in the nose and saying "Why didn't you take karate lessons, for crying out loud? It's your own fault it's so easy for me to punch you. You should consider this assault a personal favor."
You mean like "We hold these truths to be self-evident..."?
It might seem obvious to you or me or the guy in the next cubicle over, but to the rest of the world this is a new and (hopefully) revolutionary idea. If you write it down, it's easier to communicate and codify.
For about half of the 185 nations that appear in the book, no studies are available. In those cases, the authors estimated by taking averages of the IQs of surrounding nations. For example, the authors arrived at a figure of 84 for El Salvador by averaging their calculations of 79 for Guatemala and 88 for Colombia.
The real nuisance with backups is if you need to keep them for several generations of hardware/software. In this case you need to keep a copy of everything you need to read them. Firewire is probably good for another few years before they start to fade into obscurity (unless it suddenly blossoms into popularity, reversing the apparent trend) but my guess at this point is that your new PC ten years from now won't support them in any way. Jump backup technologies before they become obsolete, but don't jump too soon either -- wait until the technology is stable and has shown that it is likely to have a long life-span.
I'm not going to argue about the quality of any particular format, because what people hear is quite subjective (for phsyiological and psychological reasons). My point is that there is a difference. Let's assume that the current coding (pick your favorite flavor) is acceptable. Let's not let it get any worse. In particular, don't let other people decide, on your behalf, to trade noticeable amounts of quality for bandwidth. If CDs are slightly better than format A and format A is slightly better than B, ... by the time we get to format Z it's going to sound like crap. (if you can't hear the difference, that's your business.)
Hope that helps.
Upon more investigation -- noting that every article on the page is written by the same person, and that person is the person who registered the domain, and nearly every article contains the same info (and sometimes the same text) as available from other widely known sources -- I wonder whether this site exists only to generate ad revenues from people who trip over it. Well, thanks to SlashDot, it's payday for Mr. Hora.
I think it would be more accurate to say that most politicians don't even know what software is running on their web sites. It's more a question of who they've hired to build the web site. Bush's people probably hired someone that they've known since IIS was a popular choice. Kerry's web site is newer and so OSS was a more likely choice.
There might be something interesting about wi-fi on a boat (all that steel might make things complicated) but from what's written in the article, it was about as complicated as setting up wifi in any other context. C'mon, editors.
On the off chance that this is an honest question and not simply a troll... Of course the most popular movies make the most money and are the most downloaded. They are pirated and they make money because they are popular and people want to see them, but the fact that they are popular is not caused by the fact that they are pirated (or by the fact that they make a lot of money). Downloading and profits are both linked to the same factors.
My (limited) understanding is that the studios don't expect to make money on every film -- they rely on a blockbuster every once in a while to cover the costs of the duds. So, by not milking the profits on the rare profitable documentary-ish film, they are limiting the number of films they can make in the future (and the degree of risk they are willing to take that those films will not make money).
It's much more interesting that the studio is OK with this. I don't see how this benefits them in any way (unless all they do is activist films and don't care about their bottom line either). I'm curious to see how all this plays out.
Of course, the joke could be on us; perhaps Moore's next film will be about how downloaders are undermining the american way of life, or something to that effect. The fact that people will take time out of their busy schedules of pirating Spiderman2 and whatnot in order to download a long, mostly un-entertaining political polemic has interesting implications -- these aren't irresponsible kiddies (who couldn't care less about this stuff). These are adults who presumably have a conscience. Downloaders are everywhere.
I say boycott any format that is any worse than the modern 192k (preferably better). If they can really do 128k without sounding any worse, that's fine. But based on the reviews I've seen, they haven't, so it's not.
Of course, they could just say they were doing this, and then send everyone an el-cheapo DVD player with a special decal on the front. That might be enough to psych out someone.
Seriously, I think that they are making a valid point; MS (or your favorite software mill) is expected to turn out monolithic applications that make most users happy most of the time (partly by lowering the expectations of their users, when necessary). If they shipped five web browsers or six media players, their customers would simply be confused and/or demand that they all share the same preferences, etc. Most lusers feel the same way about making such choices as other people feel about buying a car -- the choices seem infinite, confusing, and there's always a suspicion in the back of your mind that you're letting the salesman have too much influence on your decision.
They're jealous that Linux has users who are willing to weigh the options and make choices rather than blindly choose a one-size-fits-all solution.
Golly, that's news to me. My experience with mushrooms was that they were fun for a while (after it started to kick in, which took more than an hour) but after about eight hours I'd start to hope that the magical light show would end and I'd be able to get some sleep before having to face the next day of classes or work! If LSD lasts longer than that, no thank you. Even during college I couldn't afford to lose a whole day tripping.
Yes, he was a lobbyist for them. What I meant by connected was that I thought he'd actually be involved with some aspect of production work. I guess that's a pretty naive view, akin to expecting that a car salesman would actually know something about how cars are built.
It looks like this guy knows how to lobby very effectively. The MPAA is an organization whose primary purpose is to lobby for the interests of the motion picture industry. Were you really expecting someone who would take things in a new direction? (he was probably hired based on his ability to keep things the way they are!)
The only thing that's surprising to me is that he doesn't seem to have much connection to the industry. I would have expected an insider to be promoted instead of someone being hired in.
On a possibly unrelated note, I loved my Commodore 64 so of course I clicked on the link for "C64 DTV". This crashed my Mozilla. Since the people who hacked on old commodores are probably more likely to use Mozilla than IE, this worries me.
Affinity dropped the ball by waiting so long. Their case would have been a lot stronger if they'd made a stink as soon as they'd learned about orkut.com. That would have let Google settle this before it gained visibility.
Well, the Apple-is-pretty (and Google-is-blessed, and SCO-is-evil) articles do serve one useful purpose: they remind us that the success of the personal computer and related techno-gizmos has brought powerful forces to bear on the nerdly world. It no longer matters how clean the code is; it matters how nifty the case is. It's no longer just enough to come up with a good idea; it must be marketed. And it's no longer as easy as creating something useful and sharing it with the world; now there are lawyers involved.
On the other hand, if TVs start telling people that they should get a little more exercise and fresh air after they've been watching TV non-stop for three hours, that might be a good thing.
But this is beside the point. To run benchmarks well a person must be diligent, methodical, and objective. Being a hacker is not a prerequisite. These benchmarks look a lot better than many I've seen. They might turn out to be flawed, but not for the reason you mention.