You could, but that's not giving you the compressed stream, you're going to have to reencode it - and at that point, you might as well just connect a digital output (S/PDIF or DVI) to a recording device.
Because having to change media is that little bit *too* inconvenient, and access is slow enough to be a problem. As the GP said, modern magnetic drives are fast enough; if you can play HD video and the latest FPS in realtime from them, what benefit will a home user see from upping the transfer speed? I've brought four hard drives in the past two years, and not one of them was because my current drive was too slow, or power consuming, or anything like that, but because my drives were full.
That makes a lot of sense as well in a less competitive environment - it's worth keeping up the diversity of the population in order to be able to respond to changes in environment. If people were under much harsher selection pressure (as was the case through much of human history), you'd see much more of people staying within their groups.
Beyond that, single-bit errors in encoded data streams (e.g. MPEG2, AVC, MP3, AC3) can lead to large distortions in the decoded data. You really have to store everything raw in order to reduce the chances of severe corruption and increase the chances of recovery.
Or, you can store things encoded and add some well-designed error correction. Rather like optical media already does, really.
I don't think there's any conspiracy - rather, it's just market demand. Back when floppies cost $2, you started getting cheap taiwanese ones for $1; three out of every ten went bad by the end of the month, but guess which variety sold? Media manufacturers have sacrificed quality for cost, because that's what the market wants.
Assume a completely even playing field where each of the three main consumer OS's, Windows, linux, and OS-X each has 33.3% of the market. Which environment would a trojan/botnet writer target and why?
Even if marketshare was the same, there are still other variables to consider: how useful is the OS, and what is the userbase like? My instinct would be to go for linux - it's (marginally, and in my experience) more stable, systems are more likely to be left running 24/7, and systems programming for it is easier - you don't have to e.g. jump through hoops to get raw sockets, and the open source might make things better - I don't know how good the documentation of windows/osx interals is. As against that there is the distribution fragmentation and the somewhat higher technical competence of average users.
Ultimately there's not much to choose between them - all three OSes have their vulnerabilities, all three can be programmed by anyone competent, and this kind of malware could easily be written for all three. In fact, it probably already has been.
The thing is, though, you can do all that wonderful transformational stuff in far more normal syntax, with e.g. python. If you have to compare your language to Java, the most horribly verbose and stupid language I have had the misfortune to program in (including assembler), to show that it's good, you're doing something wrong.
the Tklet browser plugins again, so that I can write in-browser applications in a sensible programming language. Why Java won that market I can't possibly fathom.
The problem lies in the fact that ISPs control your communication with certificate authorities too. Theoretically, they can fool you into thinking whatever they want. How can you verify keys when all of your communications run through a single authority?
No, SSL was designed with this in mind from the beginning. Operating systems ship with SSL root certificates, by which they can verify that verisign really is verisign, etc. Unless your ISP starts modifying your windows CDs, it can't get anywhere by MiTMing. Unless, of course, you blindly click yes to the "the certificate for this page is not signed" dialogue.
Admittedly, what is lacking (at last in Linux) is some easy software to do this, at least as far as I'm aware.
ffmpeg, the solution to all your transcoding problems.
it would be much more convenient if you could just select part of your music library for syncing with other devices, then have the transcoding happen automatically.
Already there; there are any number of amarok scripts you can enable that will make this happen.
Eww, no. XML sucks, it's full of bad compromises that come out of trying to be all things to all people, as you must get from a standards committee. All the best standards come from being used first, then openly standardised once experience has shown what should and should not go in the actual standard.
IE's non-support of xhtml is utterly irrelevant to what we're talking about. There is no need for xhtml in this case - the svg/mathml/etc. could have been done perfectly well without it.
Slashdot Mirror
You could, but that's not giving you the compressed stream, you're going to have to reencode it - and at that point, you might as well just connect a digital output (S/PDIF or DVI) to a recording device.
There's no real need for it to though; only starbucks is trendy enough for iphone users.
Bollocks is it out. Neither of those factors are significant enough to matter - and remind me just how common firewire 800 is, hmm?
Yes, but Joe Enduser doesn't have anything like that much.
That would explain why it's taken 15 billion years to do anything useful
What happens when you punch it with Dragonforce?
Because having to change media is that little bit *too* inconvenient, and access is slow enough to be a problem. As the GP said, modern magnetic drives are fast enough; if you can play HD video and the latest FPS in realtime from them, what benefit will a home user see from upping the transfer speed? I've brought four hard drives in the past two years, and not one of them was because my current drive was too slow, or power consuming, or anything like that, but because my drives were full.
No, you get called unscientific if you start from a conclusion and then look for the data to back it up. Just like the ID folks.
That makes a lot of sense as well in a less competitive environment - it's worth keeping up the diversity of the population in order to be able to respond to changes in environment. If people were under much harsher selection pressure (as was the case through much of human history), you'd see much more of people staying within their groups.
That's what you get for writing a universe in C.
This thread is worthless without pics
Or, you can store things encoded and add some well-designed error correction. Rather like optical media already does, really.
I don't think there's any conspiracy - rather, it's just market demand. Back when floppies cost $2, you started getting cheap taiwanese ones for $1; three out of every ten went bad by the end of the month, but guess which variety sold? Media manufacturers have sacrificed quality for cost, because that's what the market wants.
Even if marketshare was the same, there are still other variables to consider: how useful is the OS, and what is the userbase like? My instinct would be to go for linux - it's (marginally, and in my experience) more stable, systems are more likely to be left running 24/7, and systems programming for it is easier - you don't have to e.g. jump through hoops to get raw sockets, and the open source might make things better - I don't know how good the documentation of windows/osx interals is. As against that there is the distribution fragmentation and the somewhat higher technical competence of average users.
Ultimately there's not much to choose between them - all three OSes have their vulnerabilities, all three can be programmed by anyone competent, and this kind of malware could easily be written for all three. In fact, it probably already has been.
So you'll dismiss the whole language because of one wart? Yes, the parsing of comments is a stupid mistake, but the language is actually good, really.
Oh, cool. Last I knew the only releases were for about IE5/NN4.
The thing is, though, you can do all that wonderful transformational stuff in far more normal syntax, with e.g. python. If you have to compare your language to Java, the most horribly verbose and stupid language I have had the misfortune to program in (including assembler), to show that it's good, you're doing something wrong.
the Tklet browser plugins again, so that I can write in-browser applications in a sensible programming language. Why Java won that market I can't possibly fathom.
No, SSL was designed with this in mind from the beginning. Operating systems ship with SSL root certificates, by which they can verify that verisign really is verisign, etc. Unless your ISP starts modifying your windows CDs, it can't get anywhere by MiTMing. Unless, of course, you blindly click yes to the "the certificate for this page is not signed" dialogue.
If even slashdot won't bother serving on https, I don't see it happening anytime soon.
Yes and no; XML was standardised as a new standard, rather than implemented and then standardised upon, and it suffers from it.
Note that Sun isn't really a proprietary unix vendor any more, what with having opened up solaris and all.
ffmpeg, the solution to all your transcoding problems.
it would be much more convenient if you could just select part of your music library for syncing with other devices, then have the transcoding happen automatically.
Already there; there are any number of amarok scripts you can enable that will make this happen.
Eww, no. XML sucks, it's full of bad compromises that come out of trying to be all things to all people, as you must get from a standards committee. All the best standards come from being used first, then openly standardised once experience has shown what should and should not go in the actual standard.
IE's non-support of xhtml is utterly irrelevant to what we're talking about. There is no need for xhtml in this case - the svg/mathml/etc. could have been done perfectly well without it.