I suspect in a lot of places where Snort is used, it's mostly just sitting there quietly generating thousands of mostly '(http_inspect) DOUBLE DECODING ATTACK' alerts and being completely ignored. It's easy enough to set it up, but out of the box it typically generates an awful lot of noise in the form of largely useless alerts, so it takes some configuring (and understanding of exactly what those alerts are) to get it to a point where it's really useful.
And yes, I reckon that the commercial aspect to Snort probably is a key factor in this argument. They push that quite heavily IMO with (e.g.) new rules only being available to subscribers and other users having to register and wait until they're 30 days old to download them.
I'm curious as to whether Suricata is any good, I might have to check it out. Also, meerkats.
If you'd checked the link, you'd realise that as far as Zalman go, you're comparing a $3400 63" 3D Plasma TV with a < $500 21.5" LCD 3D monitor. They're not really directly comparable I'd say...
The main point I was making, though, is just that LCD displays which use circular polarization exist.
For larger 3D LCD displays using circular polarization, as another poster (jagsta) mentioned LG manufacture some. I'm not sure they're available to the home user yet (they're in pubs in the UK using Sky's 3D service), but the indications are the displays will be a bit cheaper than the active glasses equivalent, and more so when you account for the cost of additional pairs of glasses if you have family/friends.
Zalman make 3D LCD displays that use circular polarization (using horizontal interlacing). You can use the same cheap light glasses that cinemas provide with them.
I have one myself - http://www.zalman.com/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=384 - and it works, but there are quite a few limitations. Obviously there's the consequences you'd expect from horizontal interlacing, less resolution to each eye. For PC gaming the Nvidia drivers are pretty good, but, they only work with the earlier Zalman monitor. Zalman didn't cough up the cash to Nvidia for them to continue support, so even though the Nvidia drivers are quite capable of supporting the newer Zalman monitors, they won't (although unofficially, it is possible to get them to work with a bit of hackery). Otherwise there are 3rd party drivers (http://www.iz3d.com/ for example) which have their own issues, e.g. variable quality and being detected by PunkBuster as a hack.
There's also quite extreme limitations on the vertical viewing angle for 3D, a 10-12 degree range. Move your head up or down out of that and the image splits.
As for the PS3, it won't detect this monitor as being 3D enabled at the moment. It relies entirely on automatic detection, there's apparently no way to manually configure it, so if it doesn't detect the display as 3D, that's it, no 3D for you. I'm not sure the PS3 even supports horizontally interlaced 3D output at the moment either.
I wouldn't really recommend it at the moment. It does work, the effect is great with the Nvidia drivers, and it is a bit cheaper than active shutter glasses solutions, but I expect (hope?) the technology to improve quite rapidly over the next year or so, so I'd hold off going down this route at the moment (if I didn't already have one).
It has to be no, given the way the question is phrased. I find it hard to even envisage a hypothetical scenario where the answer could be provably yes.
If a creative work financially fails, there's likely to be multiple factors that could be blamed. Quality, advertising, reviews, distribution, piracy...
How exactly could it be proven that piracy was a significant factor?
Have a look here: http://lcg.web.cern.ch/LCG/image.htm for Google Earth based dashboards showing WLCG live grid sites, links, data transfer and job activity.
I was arguing against the notion that letting demand of entertainment determine pricing is some kind of cultural evil... it isn't.
Isn't it? As opposed to other approaches, it effectively and consistently excludes particular groups from particular events, biasing attendance towards other groups. It's hard to see how that could be a good thing, culturally...
Leaving aside points about merchandise sales, diversity of attendance, size of fan base, and the difference between specific and generic entertainment, look at it this way.
Say an artist wants to sell tickets to his gigs at a fixed price he considers fair, that the majority of his fans would be able to afford. Bear in mind this is about who actually attends the gig as much as it is anything else.
Why exactly should he not be allowed to do that? How is it fair, to the artist, to circumvent his intentions and require demand-set pricing (whether directly, or indirectly by allowing scalping)?
Well, I'm not real sure that someone who can afford to attend a concert for $100 a seat would be priced out by tickets that were $150 (or $20 and $30, you get the idea).
That basically boils down to, "if someone has $100, they must have $150". You can see the problem with that, right?
As for luck being more 'virtuous' than $50, it's not really about virtue, it depends what you're aiming for. If you want diversity in terms of attendance - and there are good reasons for that - then yes, luck is going to be a better system than 'most money wins'.
And in terms of cheaper tickets becoming available, I don't think that's really likely to be the case to any significant extent. If tickets sold out previously, they're unlikely to become cheaper, and if they weren't selling out previously it's often the case that they would have been available cheaply on the door or through promotions towards the date of the event anyway.
In that case it would make sense for the promoter to sell tickets off cheap (an unsold ticket gets you nothing); that'd be a saving for the customer compared to fixed pricing.
Fixed pricing doesn't preclude the promoter dropping that price if the tickets haven't sold. That already happens.
You are making an awful lot of assumptions (the biggest one being that every single show will sell well enough that people that can afford fixed prices will be priced out).
Not really, no. I think you're confusing 'reasoned conclusion' with 'assumption' there.
With a demand-based pricing system, prices would inevitably rise for any popular event where demand exceeds supply. A rise in prices will price out some people who could have afforded the lower fixed prices, inherently so (the exact degree to which that is true will depend on the extent of the rise which will in turn depend on the particular supply/demand siutation of a particular event, but it will be true to some degree for any popular event).
There are of course events where demand doesn't exceed supply, but those aren't really relevant in this context I think. Getting tickets to unpopular not-sold-out shows isn't usually a problem...
Artifical scarcity? Get a grip. It's actual scarcity. There are only so many tickets available. It is impossible for everyone to be able to attend every event they want.
Demand-based pricing wouldn't change that ('make things better for everyone?' Are you nuts?) except for the richest. But instead of ability to attend being based on timing and luck, essentially, it biases attendance towards wealth. This would make it worse for many. Further, it would reduce the diversity of those attending. That would be bad, both culturally, and for the artists/teams/etc., if you think about it. It is not a good idea.
And just FYI, front row seats are often held back from the initial sale for friends and family of the artist, etc. In those cases, they go on sale later if and when they're not taken up.
So then how do you distribute tickets, other than having a mad, random rush to sell them in the first few seconds they are on sale?
Registries of interest. Membership sales and similar schemes. Lotteries. Pre-sales. Phased sales. You know, any of the many ways that are already used.
There isn't a perfect solution where everyone who wants to go to an event where demand exceeds capacity can go. But pricing according to demand is probably, culturally speaking, just about the worst solution you could come up with.
Sellers could cut them out by raising their prices so that demand matches supply.
And wouldn't that be great? Instead of the venue, artists, promoters, ticketing agencies, etc., all covering their costs and making a healthy profit, they could... make a bigger profit. Woohoo!
Of course, for the millions of people attending events, they'd be spending a lot more than they were, or able to attend fewer events, especially if they want to sit in anything remotely resembling a good seat. And front row seats would only be affordable by billionaires and the five richest kings of Europe. But hey, people who were already making a healthy profit would make even more! Hurrah!
Or, maybe, just maybe, in the interests of culture, fixed price ticketing is actually a good thing...
No, they don't. Lossy rips are simply not bit-for-bit identical, and you're being completely disingenuous (no shock, based on the remainder of your reply) if you claim that they are. We're not talking FLAC here.
No. Lossy rips may not be bit-for-bit identical, and if they're encoded differently they certainly won't be. But if they're ripped with decent software/hardware (so you get identical wavs) and encoded with the same software and the same settings they will be identical. I have identical mp3s right here (identical md5sums) that were ripped at different times on different PCs but encoded with the same software and settings.
I'm not really clear on why you think lossy rips would be 'simply not bit-for-bit identical'. If you take an identical source and apply an algorithm to it, unless there's some random or other variable element to the algorithm, you're going to get the same result every time. The only variation here is going to come from errors reading the source CD (resulting in different wavs) and the use of different encoders. That's still a lot of potentially identical MP3s though.
Prototype C is the actual model they're using for demos, but you're right, that 'near-final industrial design' does appear to have a higher res. 1680x1050 at a guess which would fit with your estimates as well.
Getting a screen of that resolution on something like this isn't outside the realms of probability. But if they can do that within a $300 price range, that'd be impressive. I'd certainly consider getting one with that resolution.
The thing about the Nokia is, it only has a 800x480 resolution (I believe - correct me if I'm wrong). That's fine for some purposes, but if I'm reading a lengthy document, or trying to look at a large detailed image* I find that 800x480 is a low enough resolution to be irritating. That's what's put me off getting one.
This device looks like it has a 12" screen with a 1280x800 resolution (might be a bit less, I'm just estimating), so it has the potential to be more appropriate for some kinds of usage. Depends what you're looking for really.
Then the $100 buyer need not wait in line all night and sleep in the rain to get a ticket
Personally, I avoid waiting in line all night and sleeping in the rain by buying from one of those ticket sites they have on this new-fangled internet thing you've probably heard so much about. There's also often the option of using those devices that let you talk to people from distant locations, what're they called... oh yes. Phones.
I can't remember the last event I went to that required me to queue and buy tickets from an actual box office.
If you want to buy the domain make an offer, but a fair one or you will be added to ignore list after the first message. We get loads of offers which are too low by two-three orders of magnitude and reading all off them is not really an option.
Riiiiight... if you really wanted 'fair offers', wouldn't it be more productive to give some actual indication of what you think a fair offer is? It's all well and good to say "it's based on this, this, and this" and "we get offers that are two-three orders of magnitude out", but that's not saying much really without any kind of starting point (are people offering you one instead of a 1000 dollars/euros/whatevers or what?). If you can't/won't give an actual example of a fair offer, or even an indication of the ranges a fair offer might fall into, how can you expect others to?
You gave examples of three domains, "ghdn.com, geen.com, geek.com", what would you regard as fair offers - ballpark figures - on those for example?
Having asked that, I reckon you're trying for more of a generic "There's loads of demand, honest! Offer me loads of money or you won't get it! Muahahahaha!" approach here, rather than an actually helpful and informative approach, so I'm not really expecting an answer.
Spot on. And the Brits will be happier about helping out too I reckon.
Bill Bailey (British comedian) described how it was from the British perspective:
"I don't know why we're hanging out with America, it's embarrassing, we're like some nerdy kid hanging around with this sort of lummocking great bully. It's just really embarrassing. America's like the bully of the world, going up to countries going, "Give us your sweets or I'll smash your face in!" and Britain leans round the back and goes, "Yeah!"
I'm optimistic we won't have to be embarrassed about hanging out with America in the future. Or at least, not as much.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect in a lot of places where Snort is used, it's mostly just sitting there quietly generating thousands of mostly '(http_inspect) DOUBLE DECODING ATTACK' alerts and being completely ignored. It's easy enough to set it up, but out of the box it typically generates an awful lot of noise in the form of largely useless alerts, so it takes some configuring (and understanding of exactly what those alerts are) to get it to a point where it's really useful.
And yes, I reckon that the commercial aspect to Snort probably is a key factor in this argument. They push that quite heavily IMO with (e.g.) new rules only being available to subscribers and other users having to register and wait until they're 30 days old to download them.
I'm curious as to whether Suricata is any good, I might have to check it out. Also, meerkats.
If you'd checked the link, you'd realise that as far as Zalman go, you're comparing a $3400 63" 3D Plasma TV with a < $500 21.5" LCD 3D monitor. They're not really directly comparable I'd say...
The main point I was making, though, is just that LCD displays which use circular polarization exist.
For larger 3D LCD displays using circular polarization, as another poster (jagsta) mentioned LG manufacture some. I'm not sure they're available to the home user yet (they're in pubs in the UK using Sky's 3D service), but the indications are the displays will be a bit cheaper than the active glasses equivalent, and more so when you account for the cost of additional pairs of glasses if you have family/friends.
Zalman make 3D LCD displays that use circular polarization (using horizontal interlacing). You can use the same cheap light glasses that cinemas provide with them.
I have one myself - http://www.zalman.com/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=384 - and it works, but there are quite a few limitations. Obviously there's the consequences you'd expect from horizontal interlacing, less resolution to each eye. For PC gaming the Nvidia drivers are pretty good, but, they only work with the earlier Zalman monitor. Zalman didn't cough up the cash to Nvidia for them to continue support, so even though the Nvidia drivers are quite capable of supporting the newer Zalman monitors, they won't (although unofficially, it is possible to get them to work with a bit of hackery). Otherwise there are 3rd party drivers (http://www.iz3d.com/ for example) which have their own issues, e.g. variable quality and being detected by PunkBuster as a hack.
There's also quite extreme limitations on the vertical viewing angle for 3D, a 10-12 degree range. Move your head up or down out of that and the image splits.
As for the PS3, it won't detect this monitor as being 3D enabled at the moment. It relies entirely on automatic detection, there's apparently no way to manually configure it, so if it doesn't detect the display as 3D, that's it, no 3D for you. I'm not sure the PS3 even supports horizontally interlaced 3D output at the moment either.
I wouldn't really recommend it at the moment. It does work, the effect is great with the Nvidia drivers, and it is a bit cheaper than active shutter glasses solutions, but I expect (hope?) the technology to improve quite rapidly over the next year or so, so I'd hold off going down this route at the moment (if I didn't already have one).
It has to be no, given the way the question is phrased. I find it hard to even envisage a hypothetical scenario where the answer could be provably yes.
If a creative work financially fails, there's likely to be multiple factors that could be blamed. Quality, advertising, reviews, distribution, piracy...
How exactly could it be proven that piracy was a significant factor?
Have a look here: http://lcg.web.cern.ch/LCG/image.htm for Google Earth based dashboards showing WLCG live grid sites, links, data transfer and job activity.
Correct. Tier 3 is local batch farm facilities, etc., which aren't really part of the project as such.
*sigh* Don't be such a tool.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_pricing
Read the first two sentences. Then shut up.
That was referring to ticketed events, where demand exceeds supply.
I don't think anyone's selling tickets for you to sit in your underwear watching cat videos somehow.
Isn't it? As opposed to other approaches, it effectively and consistently excludes particular groups from particular events, biasing attendance towards other groups. It's hard to see how that could be a good thing, culturally...
Leaving aside points about merchandise sales, diversity of attendance, size of fan base, and the difference between specific and generic entertainment, look at it this way.
Say an artist wants to sell tickets to his gigs at a fixed price he considers fair, that the majority of his fans would be able to afford. Bear in mind this is about who actually attends the gig as much as it is anything else.
Why exactly should he not be allowed to do that? How is it fair, to the artist, to circumvent his intentions and require demand-set pricing (whether directly, or indirectly by allowing scalping)?
That basically boils down to, "if someone has $100, they must have $150". You can see the problem with that, right?
As for luck being more 'virtuous' than $50, it's not really about virtue, it depends what you're aiming for. If you want diversity in terms of attendance - and there are good reasons for that - then yes, luck is going to be a better system than 'most money wins'.
And in terms of cheaper tickets becoming available, I don't think that's really likely to be the case to any significant extent. If tickets sold out previously, they're unlikely to become cheaper, and if they weren't selling out previously it's often the case that they would have been available cheaply on the door or through promotions towards the date of the event anyway.
Yes, in this context, it is.
Fixed pricing doesn't preclude the promoter dropping that price if the tickets haven't sold. That already happens.
Not really, no. I think you're confusing 'reasoned conclusion' with 'assumption' there.
With a demand-based pricing system, prices would inevitably rise for any popular event where demand exceeds supply. A rise in prices will price out some people who could have afforded the lower fixed prices, inherently so (the exact degree to which that is true will depend on the extent of the rise which will in turn depend on the particular supply/demand siutation of a particular event, but it will be true to some degree for any popular event).
There are of course events where demand doesn't exceed supply, but those aren't really relevant in this context I think. Getting tickets to unpopular not-sold-out shows isn't usually a problem...
Artifical scarcity? Get a grip. It's actual scarcity. There are only so many tickets available. It is impossible for everyone to be able to attend every event they want.
Demand-based pricing wouldn't change that ('make things better for everyone?' Are you nuts?) except for the richest. But instead of ability to attend being based on timing and luck, essentially, it biases attendance towards wealth. This would make it worse for many. Further, it would reduce the diversity of those attending. That would be bad, both culturally, and for the artists/teams/etc., if you think about it. It is not a good idea.
And just FYI, front row seats are often held back from the initial sale for friends and family of the artist, etc. In those cases, they go on sale later if and when they're not taken up.
Registries of interest. Membership sales and similar schemes. Lotteries. Pre-sales. Phased sales. You know, any of the many ways that are already used.
There isn't a perfect solution where everyone who wants to go to an event where demand exceeds capacity can go. But pricing according to demand is probably, culturally speaking, just about the worst solution you could come up with.
And wouldn't that be great? Instead of the venue, artists, promoters, ticketing agencies, etc., all covering their costs and making a healthy profit, they could... make a bigger profit. Woohoo!
Of course, for the millions of people attending events, they'd be spending a lot more than they were, or able to attend fewer events, especially if they want to sit in anything remotely resembling a good seat. And front row seats would only be affordable by billionaires and the five richest kings of Europe. But hey, people who were already making a healthy profit would make even more! Hurrah!
Or, maybe, just maybe, in the interests of culture, fixed price ticketing is actually a good thing...
No. Lossy rips may not be bit-for-bit identical, and if they're encoded differently they certainly won't be. But if they're ripped with decent software/hardware (so you get identical wavs) and encoded with the same software and the same settings they will be identical. I have identical mp3s right here (identical md5sums) that were ripped at different times on different PCs but encoded with the same software and settings.
I'm not really clear on why you think lossy rips would be 'simply not bit-for-bit identical'. If you take an identical source and apply an algorithm to it, unless there's some random or other variable element to the algorithm, you're going to get the same result every time. The only variation here is going to come from errors reading the source CD (resulting in different wavs) and the use of different encoders. That's still a lot of potentially identical MP3s though.
I hadn't seen the page with that image ( http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/crunchpad-the-launch-prototype/ ).
Prototype C is the actual model they're using for demos, but you're right, that 'near-final industrial design' does appear to have a higher res. 1680x1050 at a guess which would fit with your estimates as well.
Getting a screen of that resolution on something like this isn't outside the realms of probability. But if they can do that within a $300 price range, that'd be impressive. I'd certainly consider getting one with that resolution.
The thing about the Nokia is, it only has a 800x480 resolution (I believe - correct me if I'm wrong). That's fine for some purposes, but if I'm reading a lengthy document, or trying to look at a large detailed image* I find that 800x480 is a low enough resolution to be irritating. That's what's put me off getting one.
This device looks like it has a 12" screen with a 1280x800 resolution (might be a bit less, I'm just estimating), so it has the potential to be more appropriate for some kinds of usage. Depends what you're looking for really.
*Like comic book pages. What were you thinking?
Judging by prototype C, it looks like a 1280x800 display to me.
Whether the final product will have that resolution I don't know, but given that it's a 12" screen, I'd say it needs it.
OK, obviously I was being a bit too cynical with my last comment then. :-) I appreciate the clarification.
Personally, I avoid waiting in line all night and sleeping in the rain by buying from one of those ticket sites they have on this new-fangled internet thing you've probably heard so much about. There's also often the option of using those devices that let you talk to people from distant locations, what're they called... oh yes. Phones.
I can't remember the last event I went to that required me to queue and buy tickets from an actual box office.
Riiiiight... if you really wanted 'fair offers', wouldn't it be more productive to give some actual indication of what you think a fair offer is? It's all well and good to say "it's based on this, this, and this" and "we get offers that are two-three orders of magnitude out", but that's not saying much really without any kind of starting point (are people offering you one instead of a 1000 dollars/euros/whatevers or what?). If you can't/won't give an actual example of a fair offer, or even an indication of the ranges a fair offer might fall into, how can you expect others to?
You gave examples of three domains, "ghdn.com, geen.com, geek.com", what would you regard as fair offers - ballpark figures - on those for example?
Having asked that, I reckon you're trying for more of a generic "There's loads of demand, honest! Offer me loads of money or you won't get it! Muahahahaha!" approach here, rather than an actually helpful and informative approach, so I'm not really expecting an answer.
Bill Bailey (British comedian) described how it was from the British perspective:
I'm optimistic we won't have to be embarrassed about hanging out with America in the future. Or at least, not as much. :-)