I'll throw in a shameless plug for DivX Stage6. It's in alpha, but you can publish DivX and XVID video files in their original quality all the way up to 1080p with 5.1 MP3 Surround. Stage6 also allows you to easily download the videos directly with no DRM (so long as the publisher permits it), and it's focused around building high-quality content communities.
DivX Web Player is required for in-browser playback on Windows and Mac (supporting all common browsers on each), and Linux users should be able to play most files in VLC or the like pending direct support for the platform.
Why would they bother? The details of the encryption are already public. This guy announced that he wrote some code to do it. How many other people with perhaps more sinister intent have already done the same unannounced?
We're talking about their _research_ depeartment. How do you propose Microsoft write secure software without ever researching all of the techniques malware is using these days? Sure, any developer can write code that they think looks secure, but try making your secure code interoperate with that of hundreds or thousands of modules from other contributing developers without any vulnerabilities arising.
Asking Microsoft to write a secure OS without doing this kind of R&D is like asking people to make safe cars without crash testing them.
Why even waste your time discussing this topic? Even if millimeter-wave devices were used for domestic crowd control tomorrow almost none of you would get off your fat assess and do anything about it. And hold up just a second before you race to mod me down - you know in your heart that it's true. To the few among us who actually make real effort to protest such things I commend you. To everyone else who has passively sat back and had 'discussions on the Internet' about everything the US administration has done over the recent years, either stfu or do something about it. I'm tired of the hypocrisy in your comments, of which I share the same guilt even in this very post, but it has to be said.
Its intent is to serve as a kind of triage: to let probation caseworkers concentrate most of their effort on the former offenders most likely to be most dangerous.
Five years later: "Lack of supervision from probation caseworker" becomes a checkbox for those the system cleared the first time around.
To begin with, a lot of music in certain genres is 100% digitally produced. Further, analog recordings are also lossy. They don't have infinite resolution and as sound travels through the studio system its character changes anyway. Different analog storage mediums have different characteristics for noise and frequency response. Which is better, high quality reel tape or 24-bit/96khz digital?
If you live in the UK, what happens if you submit a story linking to a UK website that you do not own, the server can't handle the resulting traffic, and the owner doesn't appreciate the attention?
Maybe you don't live in an area where there is a large population of target demographic, or else your area's vote is considered secure and so the auto-dialers are not cost effective.
It will be interesting to see if we'll also be able to 'format shift' from one DRM format to another. Although DVD is mentioned as a format I wonder if they went further and considered iPod and the like.
I'm not one for superstition, but when Friday the 13th comes around and Slashdot manages to actually publish an article on it before Saturday the 14th, well.. what can I say?
Listing your configuration is a) purely an ego trip, and b) unrepresentitive of 99% of personal computers/home networks, and therefor largely irrelevant to the discussion.
"We're going to have space, and lots of it. In fact, by the next election, we aim to fill most of the Universe with space. This space will create a defensive barrier between the United States and the terrorists who seek to harm us. It's my job to protect you and your family, and by surrounding Earth with space that's exactly what I'm doing, and I'm not going to let the laws or the Constitution of this country get in my way. The Constution is just a goddamned piece of paper filling up the very space we are trying to create. I am the decider and I have decided it!"
What makes you think that every hosting company is more competent at developing such interfaces than cPanel? And what makes you think that every hosting company would be equally competent in actually discovering exploits?
Look at the plus points of the cPanel exploit: One hosting company reports a problem, cPanel fixes it quickly, all hosting companies can simply update and be immune from this point forwards.
I for one do not want to have to manage my website through some random developers' CGI scripts or trust my site security to them. Imagine auditing 1001 custom implementations instead of auditing cPanel...
I'm an eMusic subscriber (no DRM, VBR MP3, but only independant artists), and I still buy CDs. In fact, I buy CDs that I have downloaded through eMusic. There are a lot of songs that I'm quite happy to have as MP3 only, but occasionally I'll find certain gems where a FLAC CD rip is in order. Especially true of with electronic music, you just don't get those crystal clear piercing synths and airy vocals with lossy codecs.
However, DRM is still a big issue, which is why I will forgo commercial artists in an iTunes like store and instead settle for the slightly more involved process of discovering equally good independant artists through eMusic.
"Similarly, these grannies didn't copy the CDs they bought, so I don't see how they violated anyone's copyright."
Sure, they didn't copy the CD's, but when they stiched from the digitized designs they reproduced/copied the design. Still, I feel that pursuing the elderly over something like this is very petty and disheartening.
"The bottom line, according to Mr Day, is that when you download free security software you cannot be certain what you get."
Can we not say the same for commercial software? How many people are still buying Norton Anti-virus despite it's somewhat public record because of it's brand name and price tag? What about firewall software? We've all seen plenty of reviews and comparisons showin firewall A to be better than firewall B and vice versa, but some of the best firewalls for Windows _are_ available for free (e.g. Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall [free version] or the rapidly developing Comodo Firewall).
Nothing guarantees that because a product has a price tag attached it is better than any other product.
How to find something reliable and trustworthy? The same way people have been doing it for years - identify knowledgable and reputable third-party reviewers, communities, and do a little research.
It's great that the Firefox codebase has been scanned, but surely Firefox also depends on other open-source libraries? If these are not also scanned then the analysis is incomplete (although still much better than nothing).
No, I maintain that the technology is demanded by the consumer, therefore it is essential to incorporate the technology in devices, and licensing fees have to be paid. If you used Vorbis _instead of_ MP3 it is reasonable to assume far fewer people would buy the device. The technology licensing is not "pushing up" the price, it is an unavoidable cost factor in producing a device that satisfies consumer demand.
Sure, the Ogg Vorbis codec might be free. Now all you have to do is make the majority of consumers want Ogg in place of MP3 and you won't have to pay licensing. Good luck with that.
In my opinion, it is not "pushing up the price" if the customer would not have bought the product at a lower price if the feature had been ommitted. With respect to MP3 and PMPs, I believe this to be the case.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll throw in a shameless plug for DivX Stage6. It's in alpha, but you can publish DivX and XVID video files in their original quality all the way up to 1080p with 5.1 MP3 Surround. Stage6 also allows you to easily download the videos directly with no DRM (so long as the publisher permits it), and it's focused around building high-quality content communities.
A couple of example channels launched recently:
http://stage6.divx.com/BT
http://stage6.divx.com/Witness
DivX Web Player is required for in-browser playback on Windows and Mac (supporting all common browsers on each), and Linux users should be able to play most files in VLC or the like pending direct support for the platform.
"How is this better than a mechanical USB switch"
;)
How is a 4-port router better than a manual ethernet switch?
Oh wait, stupid question
Why would they bother? The details of the encryption are already public. This guy announced that he wrote some code to do it. How many other people with perhaps more sinister intent have already done the same unannounced?
Nice knee-jerk reaction style comment there.
We're talking about their _research_ depeartment. How do you propose Microsoft write secure software without ever researching all of the techniques malware is using these days? Sure, any developer can write code that they think looks secure, but try making your secure code interoperate with that of hundreds or thousands of modules from other contributing developers without any vulnerabilities arising.
Asking Microsoft to write a secure OS without doing this kind of R&D is like asking people to make safe cars without crash testing them.
"Do not start Windows, even when using trusted computing"
I like Notepad better anyway.
Why even waste your time discussing this topic? Even if millimeter-wave devices were used for domestic crowd control tomorrow almost none of you would get off your fat assess and do anything about it. And hold up just a second before you race to mod me down - you know in your heart that it's true. To the few among us who actually make real effort to protest such things I commend you. To everyone else who has passively sat back and had 'discussions on the Internet' about everything the US administration has done over the recent years, either stfu or do something about it. I'm tired of the hypocrisy in your comments, of which I share the same guilt even in this very post, but it has to be said.
Its intent is to serve as a kind of triage: to let probation caseworkers concentrate most of their effort on the former offenders most likely to be most dangerous.
Five years later: "Lack of supervision from probation caseworker" becomes a checkbox for those the system cleared the first time around.
Not true.
To begin with, a lot of music in certain genres is 100% digitally produced. Further, analog recordings are also lossy. They don't have infinite resolution and as sound travels through the studio system its character changes anyway. Different analog storage mediums have different characteristics for noise and frequency response. Which is better, high quality reel tape or 24-bit/96khz digital?
This old argument is getting kind of weak.
Unfortunately there is already too much recursive prior art. See here.
If you live in the UK, what happens if you submit a story linking to a UK website that you do not own, the server can't handle the resulting traffic, and the owner doesn't appreciate the attention?
If half as many people contributed to ReactOS as do Linux then we'd have an alternative option that I would actually consider.
Maybe you don't live in an area where there is a large population of target demographic, or else your area's vote is considered secure and so the auto-dialers are not cost effective.
It will be interesting to see if we'll also be able to 'format shift' from one DRM format to another. Although DVD is mentioned as a format I wonder if they went further and considered iPod and the like.
I'm not one for superstition, but when Friday the 13th comes around and Slashdot manages to actually publish an article on it before Saturday the 14th, well.. what can I say?
I really hate posts like this.
Listing your configuration is a) purely an ego trip, and b) unrepresentitive of 99% of personal computers/home networks, and therefor largely irrelevant to the discussion.
"We're going to have space, and lots of it. In fact, by the next election, we aim to fill most of the Universe with space. This space will create a defensive barrier between the United States and the terrorists who seek to harm us. It's my job to protect you and your family, and by surrounding Earth with space that's exactly what I'm doing, and I'm not going to let the laws or the Constitution of this country get in my way. The Constution is just a goddamned piece of paper filling up the very space we are trying to create. I am the decider and I have decided it!"
"More than half a million computer users have installed Vista test software, and 450,000 of the systems have sent crash data back to Microsoft"
So the liklihood of a crash is near 100% ?
What makes you think that every hosting company is more competent at developing such interfaces than cPanel? And what makes you think that every hosting company would be equally competent in actually discovering exploits?
Look at the plus points of the cPanel exploit: One hosting company reports a problem, cPanel fixes it quickly, all hosting companies can simply update and be immune from this point forwards.
I for one do not want to have to manage my website through some random developers' CGI scripts or trust my site security to them. Imagine auditing 1001 custom implementations instead of auditing cPanel...
I'm an eMusic subscriber (no DRM, VBR MP3, but only independant artists), and I still buy CDs. In fact, I buy CDs that I have downloaded through eMusic. There are a lot of songs that I'm quite happy to have as MP3 only, but occasionally I'll find certain gems where a FLAC CD rip is in order. Especially true of with electronic music, you just don't get those crystal clear piercing synths and airy vocals with lossy codecs.
However, DRM is still a big issue, which is why I will forgo commercial artists in an iTunes like store and instead settle for the slightly more involved process of discovering equally good independant artists through eMusic.
"Similarly, these grannies didn't copy the CDs they bought, so I don't see how they violated anyone's copyright."
Sure, they didn't copy the CD's, but when they stiched from the digitized designs they reproduced/copied the design. Still, I feel that pursuing the elderly over something like this is very petty and disheartening.
If the chirman knew of the breach of law, or instructed it directly, then surely it is they who deserve the focus.
t ml .. uses the phrase "chairman's methods", and states that he attempted to notify the board of the issue several times.
Mr Perkins' letter here:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0905061hp1.h
"The bottom line, according to Mr Day, is that when you download free security software you cannot be certain what you get."
Can we not say the same for commercial software? How many people are still buying Norton Anti-virus despite it's somewhat public record because of it's brand name and price tag? What about firewall software? We've all seen plenty of reviews and comparisons showin firewall A to be better than firewall B and vice versa, but some of the best firewalls for Windows _are_ available for free (e.g. Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall [free version] or the rapidly developing Comodo Firewall).
Nothing guarantees that because a product has a price tag attached it is better than any other product.
How to find something reliable and trustworthy? The same way people have been doing it for years - identify knowledgable and reputable third-party reviewers, communities, and do a little research.
It's great that the Firefox codebase has been scanned, but surely Firefox also depends on other open-source libraries? If these are not also scanned then the analysis is incomplete (although still much better than nothing).
Kaspersky Anti-Virus already does this without proxies, it intercepts network traffic directly.
No, I maintain that the technology is demanded by the consumer, therefore it is essential to incorporate the technology in devices, and licensing fees have to be paid. If you used Vorbis _instead of_ MP3 it is reasonable to assume far fewer people would buy the device. The technology licensing is not "pushing up" the price, it is an unavoidable cost factor in producing a device that satisfies consumer demand.
Sure, the Ogg Vorbis codec might be free. Now all you have to do is make the majority of consumers want Ogg in place of MP3 and you won't have to pay licensing. Good luck with that.
In my opinion, it is not "pushing up the price" if the customer would not have bought the product at a lower price if the feature had been ommitted. With respect to MP3 and PMPs, I believe this to be the case.