Frankly, the author of mIRC doesn't seem very interested in standards.
Instead of using the same color attribute codes as other clients at the time, he came up with his own design for color codes - arguably a poorer design, since it's harder to parse, and harder to read in a client that doesn't process color codes. (Thanks to mIRC's popularity, the other systems died out.)
His design for DCC Resume contradicts the uses of PRIVMSG and NOTICE set forth in the RFC: PRIVMSG is never supposed to be sent as an automated client response.
I'm a little concerned that mIRC won't ever embrace DCC2, and will perhaps come up with a different, inferior, incompatible solution to the problems that DCC2 is designed to solve.
Hey, that's a great idea. You know, if Sony made a network adapter, they could have multiplayer GTA on PS2! It could have a phone jack, so the people without broadband aren't left out, and maybe even an IDE connector so you could plug in a hard drive. Sweet!
Too bad Microsoft(tm) XBOX(tm) is the only console with those features, right?
Actually, as a former Saturn SC2 owner, I probably would have given the car a review like that. When you look at it objectively, it's not a bad car - it was fast, efficient, and pretty reliable. But subjectively, it was a flimsy piece of crap; although it worked, it constantly *felt* like it was about to break.
... is that I have to jump through a bunch of stupid hoops just to listen to the music I paid for.
My car stereo plays MP3s. My DVD player plays MP3s. My portable Rio Volt plays MP3s. I didn't spend $500 on all that stuff just to listen to music 74 minutes at a time!
If DRM means that in order to listen to music the way I want to, I have to pay a buck, download the track (5 minutes), burn my tracks to a CD (10 minutes), rip it back to MP3 (10 minutes), then burn the MP3s to another CD (10 minutes), then what exactly is the incentive for me to use iTunes?
And if iTunes has a way to easily bypass the DRM, by converting the tracks straight to MP3s, then what the hell is the DRM good for? To keep people from sniffing my internet traffic and saving the song as I download it?
CDMA and frequency hopping
on
Cracking GSM
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· Score: 1
Yes, but the way I understand it, GSM doesn't hop nearly as fast or as randomly as CDMA technologies do.
CDMA, if I understand it correctly, doesn't just "hop" frequencies: it uses many frequencies simultaneously.
Each spreading code tells your phone which group of frequencies to use, and each bit of the audio stream is translated to a "chip", which is a pattern of bits on different frequencies. So when your phone broadcasts a 0 chip, it might actually send a 0 bit on frequencies X, Y, Z, and a 1 bit on frequencies A, B, C. (I'm simplifying here.. there are a lot more than 6 bits in a chip.) This is what allows for "soft handoffs" where your phone is talking to two towers at the same time: the other tower only needs to know your spreading code, it doesn't have to reserve a frequency/timeslot for you as in GSM.
Some codes use some of the same frequencies as other codes. Normally that isn't a problem, because there are enough frequencies that the tower can correct errors: if it sees a 0 on X, Y, Z, a 1 on A and B, and a 0 on C, it can decide that someone else is colliding with your C and that you really wanted to broadcast a 0 chip. A very busy cell will eventually get to a point where any extra users would cause too much interference for the phone and towers to correct those collisions, which is what causes CDMA's soft limit.
Because interference is such a key point in CDMA, the network controls everyone's broadcast power with an iron fist, to prevent users from interfering with each other or with other towers. This is useful for portable towers, among other things... the wireless carrier can put a tower in the back of a truck and park it near the stadium on Super Bowl Sunday, and the portable tower will make sure all the handsets are only using as much power as they need to reach the truck. Other towers in the area won't be overloaded by all the phone users in the stadium.
No, it's not even true in the US. Contrary to popular EuroBelief(tm), we do in fact have digital cell phones in the United States. Even phones with high-speed data connections (1xRTT/EV-DO anybody?), downloadable ringtones/wallpaper/crapplets, and yes, mobile originated SMS/EMS.
Many providers have calling plans with unlimited text messaging, or a generous monthly allowance. If you send more than two messages a day, it's worth the $6 a month to get a Mobile Web plan with 200 free messages per month.
If you print enough, you get fast at it. I stopped seriously using cursive in about 3rd grade (well, I still sign my name in cursive, and I tend to doodle things like "hello world" or "cursive sucks" in cursive), and I can print just as fast as I've seen anyone write in cursive.
Heck, the same is true of typing. I don't type the "standard" way... I've been typing since I was 5, and my hands just know where the keys are. I move my hands all over the keyboard, which made my computer teacher throw a fit in junior high, but I was able to type 60 WPM then and I can type 110 WPM now.
I bought some RAM at CompUSA with a $20 mail-in rebate. I filled out the rebate form and mailed it in, only to receive a reply that I didn't purchase the product during the rebate dates--even though I did, according to the receipt and the sign at CompUSA. My attempts to contact the company since then and clear up the dates have failed.
WordStar lives on - many of today's editors, most obviously JOE, still use keystrokes directly from WordStar. ^KB and ^KK to mark the beginning and end of a block (get it? B-loc-K?), ^Y to delete lines, and so on.
Even the MS-DOS editor supports a few: ^QF for find, ^QA for replace, ^QY for "delete to end". And of course it supports ^Y... I refuse to use any editor that doesn't!
They live in a small rural town, and the cable company doesn't offer internet (and likely won't for quite some time
They live in a small rural town, and the phone company doesn't offer DSL (and likely won't for quite some time
They live several miles outside of a rural town, and the only option is dial-up or satellite (my parents fall into this category - they live 5miles outside a Wisconsin town of 2600. No broadband anywhere!
They live near a medium-sized city, but not quite near enough for the local monopolies.
I live a couple miles from downtown Spokane, Washington (2nd largest city in the state; about 1/3 the population of Seattle) and there's no DSL or cable modem available for me or any of my neighbors. Qwest stops offering DSL about 3000 feet from my house, and AT&T Broadband has been promising that cable Internet will come "in a few months" for the past two years.
Anyway, for closing Roys and for denying Boston Market, my kids decided--quite on their own--that they prefered Wendy's and Burger King. We haven't been in a MacDonald's since.
Spokane has about the poorest per capita in the country, but there is SOMEWHAT of a tech sector up here.
I live less than five minutes from downtown Spokane, and neither Qwest nor AT&T Broadband can give me high-speed Internet access. Even with dialup, the best I can get is 28.8.
And only "SOMEWHAT" of a tech sector? Have you heard of a little game called Myst?:)
Source code is available for BIRC, the Bisual IRC Client, and a source release for ViRC (available on the same site) is planned sometime in the next few months.
If you want a political bend to go along with your new music, a good place to start is with Radiohead.
Radiohead's music is overhyped whining. It'd be top-notch if they put out an instrumental album, but the music is ruined by Thom Yorke's piercing castrato.
Not true, for a number of years there have been techniques for creating entirely computer generated holograms. The biggest problem so far is getting a printer with a high enough resolution to do this directly.
But come on, if all US providers started using GSM tomorrow, what would be different? Text messaging and roaming would work a little better, that's it.
With Verizon, I can use my tri-mode CDMA phone anywhere in the US without paying for long distance or roaming--because of my calling plan, not the technology. The price structure is why cell phones aren't more widely adopted.
I have 300 "anytime" minutes and 4000 "night and weekend" minutes. How often do I really need to make a call during "night" hours of 9 PM to 7 AM? If I gave out my number and got calls during the day, I'd be paying an extra $50/mo for overusing the daytime minutes.
The characters all have a common set of fundamental moves, but the range and timing of each is different enough that choosing a character is a strategy all of its own. Your opponent loves to block? Pick Kitana and sweep him before he knows what's coming. He attacks up close? Pick Sub-Zero and maintain the distance with a roundhouse from a few steps back.
Or if you're a true master, pick Shang Tsung and switch characters during the match to counter your opponent's changing tactics.. but you'd better know how to use every other character.
Now if you want to complain about Mortal Kombat, look at MK3's dial-a-combo system. 5 button presses to do a 15-hit combo that deals 10% damage.
Instead of learning creative, critical thinking, students are learning how to memorize what will be on the final exam, and to learn formulaic approaches to solving problems, instead of creative ones.
That's nothing new. Think of every test you've had over a book you were supposed to read - mostly covers meaningless details about events that took place. They don't test whether you read or understood the book, only whether you memorized the book.
Similarly, history exams usually test whether you've memorized events described in the chapter, not whether you understand the historical motivations, consequences, or lessons.
In almost every class I took in high school, the whole quarter went something like this: (1) Read the chapter. (2) Answer end-of-chapter questions by flipping through the chapter looking for answers. (3) Memorize enough details to get a good score on the test. (4) Take the test. (5) Forget all those details and move on to the next chapter.
The exceptions were math and computers (!), because each new concept was an extension of what we'd already learned. Instead of teaching students to cram for the test, those classes made sure we knew the material - to understand differentiation, you have to understand functions, which means you have to understand algebra, and so on.
The problem isn't with the teaching style, it's with the subject matter itself. Knowing the dates of famous Revolutionary War battles doesn't teach critical thinking or creativity, or even help you get a job.
The solution is to eliminate mundane memorization classes and add more important classes. How about requiring philosophy, logic, or debate? A little critical thinking (dare I say cynical thinking?) would help keep people from being suckered in by urban legends, pyramid schemes, cults, double-talking politicians, etc.
(Why hasn't it been done yet? Insert your favorite karma-whoring conspiracy theory here.)
The very same thing happened to me... kinda sucks since it's the name of a popular application that I maintain. The domain expired before the Florida election fiasco, the contact addresses and nameservers are no longer valid, but it's still unavailable for me to register. I know the guy who registered it, but he won't lift a finger. He knows exactly how pointless it is to try to get anything from NSI.
Their phone and email techs say "it's automated, we can't do anything about it" -- what, do they live in a world where hats go on your feet and computers program people? All they have to do is delete the record.
I paid some ridiculous $50 to SnapNames (at NSI's recommendation) to have a chance at getting it back, if and when it finally "expires" for real. If someone signs up on the waiting list and gets it before me, do you suppose I'd have grounds for a lawsuit?
Why do you need defense against "Magic Lantern" if you're not doing anything illegal? That's like telling a cop that you refuse to give him access to your home to search it without a warrent.
You're damn right I'd refuse access. If all he's going to give me is his word that the search is for a lawful purpose, all he's going to get is my word that I'm not doing anything wrong.
Honestly, think of what your statement implies: that nobody deserves privacy because law-abiding citizens have nothing to hide. The next step is "Why do you need encryption if you're not talking about anything illegal?" And then perhaps "Why do you need blinds in your windows if you're not doing anything illegal?" We may as well put everyone under video surveillance -- after all, if they aren't doing anything illegal, they have nothing to hide. Right?
Come on. You'd allow the government to break into your computer (or the computers at your place of work, your school, your bank...) just to make sure you're being good? Grow some balls.
My only concern is that this whole thing is going to end up in the wrong place once the scares are over
It won't end up in the wrong place when the scares are over -- it'll end up in the wrong place immediately.
I also love my Rio Volt, but it has a few problems... first, tiny little bumps that wouldn't faze a real Discman make the Rio go nuts. The Rio buffers most of the song, but if I'm driving and I hit a small bump at the beginning of a song, I have to lift it up in the air and wait several seconds.
Second, it takes a long time (2-3 blocks of driving) to load the track list on MP3 CDs. That's better than the Brand X MP3 CD player I had before, but still much slower than a RAM-based player.
Third, the cheapest Rio (the blue one) has no backlight, M3U support, AC adapter, or car adapter, and the firmware can't be upgraded.
But it's still worth getting the Rio instead of a RAM-based player, simply because a $1 CD-RW will hold 700 MB and the disc can be used in any computer, car MP3 CD player, or DVD/MP3 player.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, the author of mIRC doesn't seem very interested in standards.
Instead of using the same color attribute codes as other clients at the time, he came up with his own design for color codes - arguably a poorer design, since it's harder to parse, and harder to read in a client that doesn't process color codes. (Thanks to mIRC's popularity, the other systems died out.)
His design for DCC Resume contradicts the uses of PRIVMSG and NOTICE set forth in the RFC: PRIVMSG is never supposed to be sent as an automated client response.
I'm a little concerned that mIRC won't ever embrace DCC2, and will perhaps come up with a different, inferior, incompatible solution to the problems that DCC2 is designed to solve.
Hey, that's a great idea. You know, if Sony made a network adapter, they could have multiplayer GTA on PS2! It could have a phone jack, so the people without broadband aren't left out, and maybe even an IDE connector so you could plug in a hard drive. Sweet!
Too bad Microsoft(tm) XBOX(tm) is the only console with those features, right?
Actually, as a former Saturn SC2 owner, I probably would have given the car a review like that. When you look at it objectively, it's not a bad car - it was fast, efficient, and pretty reliable. But subjectively, it was a flimsy piece of crap; although it worked, it constantly *felt* like it was about to break.
That's what BurnProof/JustLink/SuperLink/etc is for.
... is that I have to jump through a bunch of stupid hoops just to listen to the music I paid for.
My car stereo plays MP3s. My DVD player plays MP3s. My portable Rio Volt plays MP3s. I didn't spend $500 on all that stuff just to listen to music 74 minutes at a time!
If DRM means that in order to listen to music the way I want to, I have to pay a buck, download the track (5 minutes), burn my tracks to a CD (10 minutes), rip it back to MP3 (10 minutes), then burn the MP3s to another CD (10 minutes), then what exactly is the incentive for me to use iTunes?
And if iTunes has a way to easily bypass the DRM, by converting the tracks straight to MP3s, then what the hell is the DRM good for? To keep people from sniffing my internet traffic and saving the song as I download it?
CDMA, if I understand it correctly, doesn't just "hop" frequencies: it uses many frequencies simultaneously.
Each spreading code tells your phone which group of frequencies to use, and each bit of the audio stream is translated to a "chip", which is a pattern of bits on different frequencies. So when your phone broadcasts a 0 chip, it might actually send a 0 bit on frequencies X, Y, Z, and a 1 bit on frequencies A, B, C. (I'm simplifying here.. there are a lot more than 6 bits in a chip.) This is what allows for "soft handoffs" where your phone is talking to two towers at the same time: the other tower only needs to know your spreading code, it doesn't have to reserve a frequency/timeslot for you as in GSM.
Some codes use some of the same frequencies as other codes. Normally that isn't a problem, because there are enough frequencies that the tower can correct errors: if it sees a 0 on X, Y, Z, a 1 on A and B, and a 0 on C, it can decide that someone else is colliding with your C and that you really wanted to broadcast a 0 chip. A very busy cell will eventually get to a point where any extra users would cause too much interference for the phone and towers to correct those collisions, which is what causes CDMA's soft limit.
Because interference is such a key point in CDMA, the network controls everyone's broadcast power with an iron fist, to prevent users from interfering with each other or with other towers. This is useful for portable towers, among other things... the wireless carrier can put a tower in the back of a truck and park it near the stadium on Super Bowl Sunday, and the portable tower will make sure all the handsets are only using as much power as they need to reach the truck. Other towers in the area won't be overloaded by all the phone users in the stadium.
No, it's not even true in the US. Contrary to popular EuroBelief(tm), we do in fact have digital cell phones in the United States. Even phones with high-speed data connections (1xRTT/EV-DO anybody?), downloadable ringtones/wallpaper/crapplets, and yes, mobile originated SMS/EMS.
Many providers have calling plans with unlimited text messaging, or a generous monthly allowance. If you send more than two messages a day, it's worth the $6 a month to get a Mobile Web plan with 200 free messages per month.
If you print enough, you get fast at it. I stopped seriously using cursive in about 3rd grade (well, I still sign my name in cursive, and I tend to doodle things like "hello world" or "cursive sucks" in cursive), and I can print just as fast as I've seen anyone write in cursive.
Heck, the same is true of typing. I don't type the "standard" way... I've been typing since I was 5, and my hands just know where the keys are. I move my hands all over the keyboard, which made my computer teacher throw a fit in junior high, but I was able to type 60 WPM then and I can type 110 WPM now.
I bought some RAM at CompUSA with a $20 mail-in rebate. I filled out the rebate form and mailed it in, only to receive a reply that I didn't purchase the product during the rebate dates--even though I did, according to the receipt and the sign at CompUSA. My attempts to contact the company since then and clear up the dates have failed.
WordStar lives on - many of today's editors, most obviously JOE, still use keystrokes directly from WordStar. ^KB and ^KK to mark the beginning and end of a block (get it? B-loc-K?), ^Y to delete lines, and so on.
Even the MS-DOS editor supports a few: ^QF for find, ^QA for replace, ^QY for "delete to end". And of course it supports ^Y... I refuse to use any editor that doesn't!
And, on top of that, what other UNIX allows you blast processes with various armaments?
Oh, come on... Sega had blast processing back in 1992!
As a Washington resident, I already pay sales tax to online retailers - most recently Amazon and Half.com.
I live a couple miles from downtown Spokane, Washington (2nd largest city in the state; about 1/3 the population of Seattle) and there's no DSL or cable modem available for me or any of my neighbors. Qwest stops offering DSL about 3000 feet from my house, and AT&T Broadband has been promising that cable Internet will come "in a few months" for the past two years.
Anyway, for closing Roys and for denying Boston Market, my kids decided--quite on their own--that they prefered Wendy's and Burger King. We haven't been in a MacDonald's since.
Um, McDonald's owns Boston Market.
Spokane has about the poorest per capita in the country, but there is SOMEWHAT of a tech sector up here.
:)
I live less than five minutes from downtown Spokane, and neither Qwest nor AT&T Broadband can give me high-speed Internet access. Even with dialup, the best I can get is 28.8.
And only "SOMEWHAT" of a tech sector? Have you heard of a little game called Myst?
Source code is available for BIRC, the Bisual IRC Client, and a source release for ViRC (available on the same site) is planned sometime in the next few months.
Not true, for a number of years there have been techniques for creating entirely computer generated holograms. The biggest problem so far is getting a printer with a high enough resolution to do this directly.
How does 1000 dpi, full color sound?
Not GSM.
But come on, if all US providers started using GSM tomorrow, what would be different? Text messaging and roaming would work a little better, that's it.
With Verizon, I can use my tri-mode CDMA phone anywhere in the US without paying for long distance or roaming--because of my calling plan, not the technology. The price structure is why cell phones aren't more widely adopted.
I have 300 "anytime" minutes and 4000 "night and weekend" minutes. How often do I really need to make a call during "night" hours of 9 PM to 7 AM? If I gave out my number and got calls during the day, I'd be paying an extra $50/mo for overusing the daytime minutes.
The characters all have a common set of fundamental moves, but the range and timing of each is different enough that choosing a character is a strategy all of its own. Your opponent loves to block? Pick Kitana and sweep him before he knows what's coming. He attacks up close? Pick Sub-Zero and maintain the distance with a roundhouse from a few steps back.
Or if you're a true master, pick Shang Tsung and switch characters during the match to counter your opponent's changing tactics.. but you'd better know how to use every other character.
Now if you want to complain about Mortal Kombat, look at MK3's dial-a-combo system. 5 button presses to do a 15-hit combo that deals 10% damage.
Instead of learning creative, critical thinking, students are learning how to memorize what will be on the final exam, and to learn formulaic approaches to solving problems, instead of creative ones.
That's nothing new. Think of every test you've had over a book you were supposed to read - mostly covers meaningless details about events that took place. They don't test whether you read or understood the book, only whether you memorized the book.
Similarly, history exams usually test whether you've memorized events described in the chapter, not whether you understand the historical motivations, consequences, or lessons.
In almost every class I took in high school, the whole quarter went something like this: (1) Read the chapter. (2) Answer end-of-chapter questions by flipping through the chapter looking for answers. (3) Memorize enough details to get a good score on the test. (4) Take the test. (5) Forget all those details and move on to the next chapter.
The exceptions were math and computers (!), because each new concept was an extension of what we'd already learned. Instead of teaching students to cram for the test, those classes made sure we knew the material - to understand differentiation, you have to understand functions, which means you have to understand algebra, and so on.
The problem isn't with the teaching style, it's with the subject matter itself. Knowing the dates of famous Revolutionary War battles doesn't teach critical thinking or creativity, or even help you get a job.
The solution is to eliminate mundane memorization classes and add more important classes. How about requiring philosophy, logic, or debate? A little critical thinking (dare I say cynical thinking?) would help keep people from being suckered in by urban legends, pyramid schemes, cults, double-talking politicians, etc.
(Why hasn't it been done yet? Insert your favorite karma-whoring conspiracy theory here.)
The very same thing happened to me... kinda sucks since it's the name of a popular application that I maintain. The domain expired before the Florida election fiasco, the contact addresses and nameservers are no longer valid, but it's still unavailable for me to register. I know the guy who registered it, but he won't lift a finger. He knows exactly how pointless it is to try to get anything from NSI.
Their phone and email techs say "it's automated, we can't do anything about it" -- what, do they live in a world where hats go on your feet and computers program people? All they have to do is delete the record.
I paid some ridiculous $50 to SnapNames (at NSI's recommendation) to have a chance at getting it back, if and when it finally "expires" for real. If someone signs up on the waiting list and gets it before me, do you suppose I'd have grounds for a lawsuit?
Why do you need defense against "Magic Lantern" if you're not doing anything illegal? That's like telling a cop that you refuse to give him access to your home to search it without a warrent.
You're damn right I'd refuse access. If all he's going to give me is his word that the search is for a lawful purpose, all he's going to get is my word that I'm not doing anything wrong.
Honestly, think of what your statement implies: that nobody deserves privacy because law-abiding citizens have nothing to hide. The next step is "Why do you need encryption if you're not talking about anything illegal?" And then perhaps "Why do you need blinds in your windows if you're not doing anything illegal?" We may as well put everyone under video surveillance -- after all, if they aren't doing anything illegal, they have nothing to hide. Right?
Come on. You'd allow the government to break into your computer (or the computers at your place of work, your school, your bank...) just to make sure you're being good? Grow some balls.
My only concern is that this whole thing is going to end up in the wrong place once the scares are over
It won't end up in the wrong place when the scares are over -- it'll end up in the wrong place immediately.
I also love my Rio Volt, but it has a few problems... first, tiny little bumps that wouldn't faze a real Discman make the Rio go nuts. The Rio buffers most of the song, but if I'm driving and I hit a small bump at the beginning of a song, I have to lift it up in the air and wait several seconds.
Second, it takes a long time (2-3 blocks of driving) to load the track list on MP3 CDs. That's better than the Brand X MP3 CD player I had before, but still much slower than a RAM-based player.
Third, the cheapest Rio (the blue one) has no backlight, M3U support, AC adapter, or car adapter, and the firmware can't be upgraded.
But it's still worth getting the Rio instead of a RAM-based player, simply because a $1 CD-RW will hold 700 MB and the disc can be used in any computer, car MP3 CD player, or DVD/MP3 player.