I guess those (the fiction in programs like CSI) are the reasons why company managers tend to think that making X, Y or Z task with the computer should take just mintues... Darn, if L.A. police technology dept. can recognize a thief using the dust of its shoes in about 15 minutes why cant you do a simple "fix" in our MS-VBA-Excell-driven database?"
Then what you like is www.allofmp3.com + mail your favorite band $10 for each record you download (make sure you write a note telling them what you did and why).
After thinking for a while, my conclusion is that that is a fair way to back your artist. You may write them and tell them to give you a PayPal account to make them a deposit.
Why allofmp3 instead of p2p? because in allofmp3 you can download the music in several (mp3, ogg, flac, ape, mpc, wav, mp4... etc) codecs.
Believe it or not, I remember once I saw there was an experiment in which a company (I do not remember if it was Dell) gave away free computers to the users which where add suported (this was more than 8 years ago).
The thing worked this way, they gave you a PC with a 17 inches monitor with a resolution of 1024x768 pixels, but you only used 800x600 pixels , the rest was used for advertisment.
Back then, I remember wanting one of those (unfortunately, the offer was just for USA, and I am from outside) as I didnt had money for a new computer and I was frustrated with the my 200mhz compile times (djgpp). At that time I thought I didnt care for the ads, anyway, I was used to see ads in TV, and the computer they were offering was the the best technology available back then.
I do not know what happened with the experiment, did it worked? I think the problem back then was how to update the ads.
Now that I think, it may be a nice way for renting computers here at my undeveloped country (may be a nice buisness).
1. Offer ad space for computers 2. Rent (or even just offer for free) computers at a low cost to people. 3. Cash in ad money 4. Profit!
if you change a document it remains changed, just as a real world document would.
This effect can be achieved now, and without wasting a lot of system resources. If, OpenOffice had an option to update the file on EACH change you do (when working on a hard drive) it would be easy to achieve what you say (kind of persistend document). Something like putting the AUTOSAVE option at 1 second (wich is not possible of course).
Now, I think it won't get a lot of system resources as you would only save when there is a _delta_ (for example, each time you write a word/letter, or change the document format). And on those moments, you are looking at the OpenOffice screen , thus there is no worry of other programs decreasing their performance.
Of course it is slight different form the autosave thing I stated before, as with the autosave, It does not matter wheter you are writting or not, it woudl save each second (and that would mean the HD is accessed 60 times each minute, at least).
BTW, if you want your data to be safer may I recommend a RAID solution to help maintain your data,
I agree with GP in that Hard disk drive access time is the major bottleneck on today's personal computers. And while you state that users do not need faster hard drives, I do not agree with you.
Recently, I configured a PC for my brother. He wanted it for Audio/Video production. I made a nice config with AMD64/Asus/1GB-Ram etc. But the bottleneck of course was the Hard disk, because he will deal with GB of video data and that is usually done on the hard drive.
He wanted to use a 250 GB hard disk (he told me "put the bigger disk on the market!), but instead I bought 2 seagate-barracuda-120 and made a RAID-0 setup. It is the first time I have configured/used a machine with Raid0 and let me tell you it is really nice.
Of course I know the inherent RAID-0 unsecurity (if 1 disk crashes, bye bye), but anyway, it is the same as if your only disk crashes, and he is really delighted with the speed of his new system.
well well, seems to me that my Google gathered list was not very far and a bit better than the 20 disk EFF published list:).
Anyway, I think this one is over (at least for me). We won, and what we won is showing that it is possible to make enough noise from this place called internet in order to fight for our rights...
This should be useful for reference when someone thinks that it is not possible to fight the corrupted government/corporations being only a bunch of nerds/geeks.
I have been working in something which I think is similar. I am doing it on Java, and it is waaaay very pre-alpha stage (I just have a basic swing interface).
But overall, I use: - MySQL: As the database backend with some tables like
* labels (which I named SETS ala gmail labels)
> Attributes are: label_id and name
* files (which contain the actual info of the file in the file system)
> Attributes are: file_id and file_path
* labels_files: Which enumerate the different labels of a file
- Java Swing: To create a GUI with basically 3 areas:
* Label list: Containing the list of the available labels, more than one label
can be selected to show files which had been labeled with those labels (there are also predefined "ALL" and "NONE" labels which show all the files and the files that have no labels at all.
* File system view: Containing the tree view of the folders in the system (the same as the left side of the Windows Explorer)
* File label view list: Containing the list of files that match the label criteria selected on the label list.
* File system view list: Containing the files in the current selected directory on the file system view.
The idea is to make it possible for the use to drag and drop files into this place and to provide as many ways as possible to "labelize" his files. A search function may be useful too.
I started this because it is what I was looking for. As a lot of people have stated, I have spent a lot of time ordering my music into directories and subdirectories. I have also thousands of.pdf's (books and scientific articles) ordered (more or less) by subdirs.
This program must make it easy to get all those files and start "labelizing" them.
Of course I would love to make it as a win-explorer extension (or in linux as a KDE explorer extension) but, I am doing a PhD here and do not have the time to do it (and I have two other projects, and one of them has preference over this).
Anyway, I think that labels (or sets) are indeed the way to order data in computers for the future because they provide the same properties of folders plus others.
Analysis, Requirements specifications document. Design: Design Specification document [with or without UML, DTDs, etc]. Quality control/assurance: (Quality testing metrics documents).
Nobody (at least not programmers) likes to spend their time doing that, which results in a lot of good Open Source projects (just look at sf.net) that have only the source code available. So, when/if someone wants to start helping (be it a programmer or a non programmer) they must dive into the source code, reverse engineer it and (to their better understanding) see how is the program working.
When developing a propietary software for anyone, documentation is the one most important thing, and often the one that programmers hate to do. That is why System designers are better paid than programmers.
In open-source world, nobody cares about documenting [and mantaining the domcumentation] of their software. My personal experience is with VirtualDimension multi-desktop software. I wanted to enhance the program with some ideas I had, but I hated that the only place to understand how it worket was the CVS repository C++ files. Although I know C++ (and I am good at it if-u-ask-me) it is the "logic" of the program what I wanted to find and, well, my time is worth more than what I needed to understand the inners of the program.
The same happened with jabref. I would like to contribute to those projects with programming, but bah, at the end, all of them are just a mess.
Returning to the accessibility issue. The only way accessibility could be handled is by creating a base framework (from the GTK, or QT or JSwing or any other GUI toolkits) that provides accessiblity features to the interfaces. This means that the application developers will not need to worry (too much) about accessibility because the "text control" will contain the features by default*(and this is the "most-most-important-issue"*. And, the programmer will just have to addere to a set of minimum accessibility rules (like using system defined colors and fonts [something, the great Mark's sysinternals process explorer doesn't do for example, as after I changed my font DPI to 144, the process list font is not changed and I also use background color as Black and font as white, but it is not adopted by this program)).
* Talking on this "default state" of the features, it is the same story with accessibility as with security. For an example, I know that Java has some interfaces wich allow for accesibility properties (although I have not used them). It also has some classes for secure comunication. But these are not the DEFAULT classes which everyone uses.
Iff Java had implemented security and accessibility in the common controls/classes used by everyone, of course it would be more work for the developers but it would help them to LEARN to implement those features.
Just a small comment on your comment: Mods please avoid modding up the grandparent.
I think your comment (your GP) is still interesting although it may not be accurate, why?, if you see [your]parent comment, correcting you, you can see the poster did not quoted what he was correcting.
I stumble very often with these kind of comments, someone posted a comment which it has lots of replies, the replies are answering back to it and are modded 3 or 4, but the original post is at 1 or less, so I can not see it (as I always read at 2).
I think the mod system should give an +1 interesting when the post has some high (+4, +5) interesting/insighful modded replies.
There is a catch. To use the technology, viewers will have to agree to participate in a special file-sharing network.
Why precisely is this a catch? why is it something bad? isnt this somethig we have been looking for since I dont know when?
For me it is not a catch, it is the technology that allows WB to broadcast these videos on internet.
I only think about the advertisments, I guess we will only get Coca/Pepsi-cola and Microsoft adverts, since these adverts must be for a really wide audience (i.e. the whole world)
he average parent doesn't want to spend $400 to keep their child happy
Yup, but, what will make your child happy? a Revolution, a 360 or a PS3? These days I think it all depends on marketing as in what is everyone else playing.
So, what good would it be for parents to buy the Revolution to their sons, if they will just throw it in the corner and continue asking for that costly 360 thingy?
Because I really dont want you to remain ignorant, and I want to do you a favor providing you a way to get LEGAL non-DRM music (legal may not equal FAIR, the same way as Illegal does not equal UNFAIR), there are several ways to make payments on allofmp3:
"We accept payment made by credit or debit cards of the following payment systems: VISA, Euroard/MasterCard, JCB, Diners Club, Union Card.
PayPal: Sorry, service temporary unavailable. XROST Prepaid iCards. You can fund your account using this convenient and secure payment method. Besides Prepaid iCard service is FREE for allofmp3 customers. Pay your balance with Prepaid iCard. Your account will be updated momentarily. Promotion: Pay by Prepaid iCard now and get a bonus of 10%.
See? you do not need to give your money to those obscure maybe illegal companies... instead of giving them to those non questionable 100% trustable companies like hmhmm you know, Sony, Microsoft... etc.
Saying IBM or Sony is like saying United States of America. Are you talking about Texas or Hawaii or Massachusettes?
As a non-USA citizen I often think of USA as Geroge Bush and its government actions. I mean, that is the image you guys give to the world, it does not matter if you are trying to save the dolphins from the tuna nets down there... it is the overall image you give that counts.
Same thing for companies, look at Microsoft. They have several nice technologies and research (and its main CEO donates a hell lot of money to charity), but overall, their image is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad as in really really bad.
Btw, here is the BitDefender site information about the virus: The trojan apparently installs an IRC backdoor on the affected system and may have other functions.
Sure, you may think that music is really crapastic, but the reallity is that those artists are the ones that get the into the billboard 10 and get the platinium, titanium, uranium etc prizes for disc selling.
Of course, one could argue that, people which know how to actually copy CD's are the ones that do not listen to that music (i.e. the not average J6Pack). But, some of them use their knowledge to pirate & sell the illegal copies. I presume (*I hope*) those are the persons which sony was aiming when applying this (or any other) kind of DRM security.
Now, they really messed it when they blocked the ability to copy the music to the iPod since it is one 100% legit use of a ripper/mp3-encoder (Kudos go to Apple on this) and it is very, very, VERY widespread.
I would really love to see some of these lawsuits continue until a nice end. I hope this serves as the spark that was needed to show the USA people how invaded your privacy is. And how have your government took your rights and introduced them into i-dont-tell-you-where.
As some other slashdotter said before, USA citizens are lazy, they wont be pissed off about something until it trasspases their "lazzyness-level", the cable-with-advetisments, the game-consoles-without-chips, the DMCA, etc etc...
I have been monitoring this Sony matter for some days, and I am glad to see it has escalated in the SciTech Google news section, from an obscure search "intitle:Sony intitle:DRM" to a 3rd place in the list (just suprassed by bill gates self-leaked memo and some other digital election thing".
If the correct people (we) make things correctly, this could be that spark that we needed to shake those lazy sixpackers that are staring at the TV or at hallmark.com
So, logically, if people's only experience with iTunes comes by way of the ROKR and that experience is a negative one, logically that's going to lead customers to respond by going elsewhere for music and for a portable music player.
Which is what iPod is no?
The idea that people might get a ROKR and say "wow, this is cool, I want to buy an iPod now" seems more plausable
That only by your logic, the average person would buy a mp3-enabled-mobile and if it is good enough they would keep it. Why having to go out with 2 bricks if 1 can do everyting fine?.
So, after they see the ROKR does not work, they will have the bad taste of the cell phone mp3 and won't look for another in say... 2 or 3 years.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess those (the fiction in programs like CSI) are the reasons why company managers tend to think that making X, Y or Z task with the computer should take just mintues... Darn, if L.A. police technology dept. can recognize a thief using the dust of its shoes in about 15 minutes why cant you do a simple "fix" in our MS-VBA-Excell-driven database?"
Then what you like is www.allofmp3.com + mail your favorite band $10 for each record you download (make sure you write a note telling them what you did and why).
After thinking for a while, my conclusion is that that is a fair way to back your artist. You may write them and tell them to give you a PayPal account to make them a deposit.
Why allofmp3 instead of p2p? because in allofmp3 you can download the music in several (mp3, ogg, flac, ape, mpc, wav, mp4... etc) codecs.
Believe it or not, I remember once I saw there was an experiment in which a company (I do not remember if it was Dell) gave away free computers to the users which where add suported (this was more than 8 years ago).
The thing worked this way, they gave you a PC with a 17 inches monitor with a resolution of 1024x768 pixels, but you only used 800x600 pixels , the rest was used for advertisment.
Back then, I remember wanting one of those (unfortunately, the offer was just for USA, and I am from outside) as I didnt had money for a new computer and I was frustrated with the my 200mhz compile times (djgpp). At that time I thought I didnt care for the ads, anyway, I was used to see ads in TV, and the computer they were offering was the the best technology available back then.
I do not know what happened with the experiment, did it worked? I think the problem back then was how to update the ads.
Now that I think, it may be a nice way for renting computers here at my undeveloped country (may be a nice buisness).
1. Offer ad space for computers
2. Rent (or even just offer for free) computers at a low cost to people.
3. Cash in ad money
4. Profit!
sounds good (I guess)
I prefer using The Dasher it is way faster than the charmap approach.
if you change a document it remains changed, just as a real world document would.
This effect can be achieved now, and without wasting a lot of system resources. If, OpenOffice had an option to update the file on EACH change you do (when working on a hard drive) it would be easy to achieve what you say (kind of persistend document). Something like putting the AUTOSAVE option at 1 second (wich is not possible of course).
Now, I think it won't get a lot of system resources as you would only save when there is a _delta_ (for example, each time you write a word/letter, or change the document format). And on those moments, you are looking at the OpenOffice screen , thus there is no worry of other programs decreasing their performance.
Of course it is slight different form the autosave thing I stated before, as with the autosave, It does not matter wheter you are writting or not, it woudl save each second (and that would mean the HD is accessed 60 times each minute, at least).
BTW, if you want your data to be safer may I recommend a RAID solution to help maintain your data,
I agree with GP in that Hard disk drive access time is the major bottleneck on today's personal computers. And while you state that users do not need faster hard drives, I do not agree with you.
Recently, I configured a PC for my brother. He wanted it for Audio/Video production. I made a nice config with AMD64/Asus/1GB-Ram etc. But the bottleneck of course was the Hard disk, because he will deal with GB of video data and that is usually done on the hard drive.
He wanted to use a 250 GB hard disk (he told me "put the bigger disk on the market!), but instead I bought 2 seagate-barracuda-120 and made a RAID-0 setup. It is the first time I have configured/used a machine with Raid0 and let me tell you it is really nice.
Of course I know the inherent RAID-0 unsecurity (if 1 disk crashes, bye bye), but anyway, it is the same as if your only disk crashes, and he is really delighted with the speed of his new system.
Of all those Cd's the one I like mroe is the
G3 Live in Tokyo...
bad bad Mr. Satriani... =o)
well well, seems to me that my Google gathered list was not very far and a bit better than the 20 disk EFF published list :).
Anyway, I think this one is over (at least for me). We won, and what we won is showing that it is possible to make enough noise from this place called internet in order to fight for our rights...
This should be useful for reference when someone thinks that it is not possible to fight the corrupted government/corporations being only a bunch of nerds/geeks.
Viva la revolucion!
I agree,
.pdf's (books and scientific articles) ordered (more or less) by subdirs.
I have been working in something which I think is similar. I am doing it on Java, and it is waaaay very pre-alpha stage (I just have a basic swing interface).
But overall, I use:
- MySQL: As the database backend with some tables like
* labels (which I named SETS ala gmail labels)
> Attributes are: label_id and name
* files (which contain the actual info of the file in the file system)
> Attributes are: file_id and file_path
* labels_files: Which enumerate the different labels of a file
- Java Swing: To create a GUI with basically 3 areas:
* Label list: Containing the list of the available labels, more than one label
can be selected to show files which had been labeled with those labels (there are also predefined "ALL" and "NONE" labels which show all the files and the files that have no labels at all.
* File system view: Containing the tree view of the folders in the system (the same as the left side of the Windows Explorer)
* File label view list: Containing the list of files that match the label criteria selected on the label list.
* File system view list: Containing the files in the current selected directory on the file system view.
The idea is to make it possible for the use to drag and drop files into this place and to provide as many ways as possible to "labelize" his files. A search function may be useful too.
I started this because it is what I was looking for. As a lot of people have stated, I have spent a lot of time ordering my music into directories and subdirectories. I have also thousands of
This program must make it easy to get all those files and start "labelizing" them.
Of course I would love to make it as a win-explorer extension (or in linux as a KDE explorer extension) but, I am doing a PhD here and do not have the time to do it (and I have two other projects, and one of them has preference over this).
Anyway, I think that labels (or sets) are indeed the way to order data in computers for the future because they provide the same properties of folders plus others.
Agree.
Same thing happens with software documentation:
Analysis, Requirements specifications document.
Design: Design Specification document [with or without UML, DTDs, etc].
Quality control/assurance: (Quality testing metrics documents).
Nobody (at least not programmers) likes to spend their time doing that, which results in a lot of good Open Source projects (just look at sf.net) that have only the source code available. So, when/if someone wants to start helping (be it a programmer or a non programmer) they must dive into the source code, reverse engineer it and (to their better understanding) see how is the program working.
When developing a propietary software for anyone, documentation is the one most important thing, and often the one that programmers hate to do. That is why System designers are better paid than programmers.
In open-source world, nobody cares about documenting [and mantaining the domcumentation] of their software. My personal experience is with VirtualDimension multi-desktop software. I wanted to enhance the program with some ideas I had, but I hated that the only place to understand how it worket was the CVS repository C++ files. Although I know C++ (and I am good at it if-u-ask-me) it is the "logic" of the program what I wanted to find and, well, my time is worth more than what I needed to understand the inners of the program.
The same happened with jabref. I would like to contribute to those projects with programming, but bah, at the end, all of them are just a mess.
Returning to the accessibility issue. The only way accessibility could be handled is by creating a base framework (from the GTK, or QT or JSwing or any other GUI toolkits) that provides accessiblity features to the interfaces. This means that the application developers will not need to worry (too much) about accessibility because the "text control" will contain the features by default*(and this is the "most-most-important-issue"*. And, the programmer will just have to addere to a set of minimum accessibility rules (like using system defined colors and fonts [something, the great Mark's sysinternals process explorer doesn't do for example, as after I changed my font DPI to 144, the process list font is not changed and I also use background color as Black and font as white, but it is not adopted by this program)).
* Talking on this "default state" of the features, it is the same story with accessibility as with security. For an example, I know that Java has some interfaces wich allow for accesibility properties (although I have not used them). It also has some classes for secure comunication. But these are not the DEFAULT classes which everyone uses.
Iff Java had implemented security and accessibility in the common controls/classes used by everyone, of course it would be more work for the developers but it would help them to LEARN to implement those features.
Do you use Firefox?
Tell me ONE (1) extension you have installed that does not say "UNSIGNED" in red black font?
Do you panick when you see those? do you avoid installing such extensions.
What is the meaning of that field anyway?
4. $sys$profit
Just a small comment on your comment:
Mods please avoid modding up the grandparent.
I think your comment (your GP) is still interesting although it may not be accurate, why?, if you see [your]parent comment, correcting you, you can see the poster did not quoted what he was correcting.
I stumble very often with these kind of comments, someone posted a comment which it has lots of replies, the replies are answering back to it and are modded 3 or 4, but the original post is at 1 or less, so I can not see it (as I always read at 2).
I think the mod system should give an +1 interesting when the post has some high (+4, +5) interesting/insighful modded replies.
There is a catch. To use the technology, viewers will have to agree to participate in a special file-sharing network.
Why precisely is this a catch? why is it something bad? isnt this somethig we have been looking for since I dont know when?
For me it is not a catch, it is the technology that allows WB to broadcast these videos on internet.
I only think about the advertisments, I guess we will only get Coca/Pepsi-cola and Microsoft adverts, since these adverts must be for a really wide audience (i.e. the whole world)
Does it means $sys$HIV installed without asking when they inserted the media?
Oh man, that was a really nice one, you made me laough really loud... you should see my coworkers face when I started laughing!
:)
Thanks, for giving me a little fun
he average parent doesn't want to spend $400 to keep their child happy
Yup, but, what will make your child happy? a Revolution, a 360 or a PS3? These days I think it all depends on marketing as in what is everyone else playing.
So, what good would it be for parents to buy the Revolution to their sons, if they will just throw it in the corner and continue asking for that costly 360 thingy?
Because I really dont want you to remain ignorant, and I want to do you a favor providing you a way to get LEGAL non-DRM music (legal may not equal FAIR, the same way as Illegal does not equal UNFAIR), there are several ways to make payments on allofmp3:
"We accept payment made by credit or debit cards of the following payment systems: VISA, Euroard/MasterCard, JCB, Diners Club, Union Card.
PayPal: Sorry, service temporary unavailable.
XROST Prepaid iCards.
You can fund your account using this convenient and secure payment method. Besides Prepaid iCard service is FREE for allofmp3 customers. Pay your balance with Prepaid iCard. Your account will be updated momentarily.
Promotion: Pay by Prepaid iCard now and get a bonus of 10%.
See? you do not need to give your money to those obscure maybe illegal companies... instead of giving them to those non questionable 100% trustable companies like hmhmm you know, Sony, Microsoft... etc.
capish?
Saying IBM or Sony is like saying United States of America. Are you talking about Texas or Hawaii or Massachusettes?
As a non-USA citizen I often think of USA as Geroge Bush and its government actions. I mean, that is the image you guys give to the world, it does not matter if you are trying to save the dolphins from the tuna nets down there... it is the overall image you give that counts.
Same thing for companies, look at Microsoft. They have several nice technologies and research (and its main CEO donates a hell lot of money to charity), but overall, their image is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad as in really really bad.
Btw, here is the BitDefender site information about the virus:
The trojan apparently installs an IRC backdoor on the affected system and may have other functions.
And the technical analysis is here
It is virtually impossible for a normal user to detect presence of any files hidden by Sony DRM Software. blah blah.
Dont wait to much:
The First trojan is here.
Kudos for Sony... they blew it up HAAAARD. This time.
Sure, you may think that music is really crapastic, but the reallity is that those artists are the ones that get the into the billboard 10 and get the platinium, titanium, uranium etc prizes for disc selling.
Of course, one could argue that, people which know how to actually copy CD's are the ones that do not listen to that music (i.e. the not average J6Pack). But, some of them use their knowledge to pirate & sell the illegal copies. I presume (*I hope*) those are the persons which sony was aiming when applying this (or any other) kind of DRM security.
Now, they really messed it when they blocked the ability to copy the music to the iPod since it is one 100% legit use of a ripper/mp3-encoder (Kudos go to Apple on this) and it is very, very, VERY widespread.
I would really love to see some of these lawsuits continue until a nice end. I hope this serves as the spark that was needed to show the USA people how invaded your privacy is. And how have your government took your rights and introduced them into i-dont-tell-you-where.
As some other slashdotter said before, USA citizens are lazy, they wont be pissed off about something until it trasspases their "lazzyness-level", the cable-with-advetisments, the game-consoles-without-chips, the DMCA, etc etc...
I have been monitoring this Sony matter for some days, and I am glad to see it has escalated in the SciTech Google news section, from an obscure search "intitle:Sony intitle:DRM" to a 3rd place in the list (just suprassed by bill gates self-leaked memo and some other digital election thing".
If the correct people (we) make things correctly, this could be that spark that we needed to shake those lazy sixpackers that are staring at the TV or at hallmark.com
So, logically, if people's only experience with iTunes comes by way of the ROKR and that experience is a negative one, logically that's going to lead customers to respond by going elsewhere for music and for a portable music player.
Which is what iPod is no?
The idea that people might get a ROKR and say "wow, this is cool, I want to buy an iPod now" seems more plausable
That only by your logic, the average person would buy a mp3-enabled-mobile and if it is good enough they would keep it. Why having to go out with 2 bricks if 1 can do everyting fine?.
So, after they see the ROKR does not work, they will have the bad taste of the cell phone mp3 and won't look for another in say... 2 or 3 years.
Next, is a collection of messages telling that it is the fault of the system andministrators and not a problem of the Linux Distributions.
p.s. BURN KARMA BURN!
but I'm looking at the hole the processor goes into... :
Just imagine! One thousand, two hundred and seven holes!
woooooooah!
*head explodes*