If you're wrapping the whole stream in encrypted DRM-crap, and you're using a low-level buffer grab to save the audio, then stream rippers will lose out on the metadata embedded in streams. This means that you won't be able to separate a stream into individual songs, which would really suck for Joe User. It's fine if you're listening to mixed sets, but I personally like separate mp3 files for each song.
And before anyone suggests it, there is no way to blindly separate a stream accurately into individual songs (some songs have quiet/silent sections).
He states now it's not a big problem, (guessing because it's summer and not as many students there). Then expecting it to be a BIG problem once students arrive. So to me this says that the iPhones using their service aren't students at all.
Little leap of logic there. Most campuses have a decent number of students on campus during summer for any of the following reasons:
(i) summer classes
(ii) research (i.e. most grad students who don't even realize its summer)
(iii) friggin professors
Most unis give out net access to students, faculty AND staff. overwhelmed access points don't necessarily point to lack of AP security.
Here you go, a pointer to the summary for one who "read the whole article":
unless the user pays Microsoft a fee in order to continue to listen to the track, with a percentage going to the person who provided the song. As the abstract puts it, "even [the] resale of pirated media content [can] benefit... the copyright holder."'"
The key point is that you have a chance to convert "pirated" media to "unpirated" by paying for it. The difference seems to be that the MP3 in question could have been illegally obtained from a file sharing network rather than as the product of another Zune user's legal squirt onto you.
First of all, your analogy is flawed. Child porn is not equivalent to the hammer -- child porn would be bloodied remnants of the skull that you're carrying around after someone else has smashed a skull. Taking the hammer analogy the other way, you would be carrying around a camera used to make child porn. And yes, if you're carrying around bloodied skull remnants, it SHOULD probably be suspicious. At the least because you could tell the police who or where you got the smashed skull remnants from.
But I understand your point. I'm not sure I completely agree, but it definitely is an interesting perspective. Your argument seems to be basically that creation, not possession, of something illegal should be the crime, because the latter can easily be abused. However, keep in mind, a possessor of something illegal can often offer part of a trail back to the creator, so it's not like it doesn't warrant attention at all.
And just to make this clear, there was nothing "think about the children"-inspired in my original response, or any offense taken.
This may be unpopular, but how can numbers possibly be a significant enough threat to land one in prison? (A digital image file is a very large number.)
This is a pointless, albeit technically correct, analogy. A digital image can be seen as a very large number, but it is a strained analogy because you're not firing up photoshop to admire a number. In digital land, EVERYTHING is a very large number. And when you can convert so many real-world things (music, video, books, images, etc.) into "very large numbers", you can't suddenly expect the laws that govern their possession to change. Just as you can't expect an audio recording to lose all its rights once it gets converted into "a very large circular scratch on a piece of vinyl".
However, once a society makes owning a number a crime, it makes it very easy to "frame" people who hold unpopular-but-not-illegal beliefs: just push some child pornography into their computer, or easier, "find" some photos in their car.
The flaw with your point here is that say I have a large collection of physical child porn, which is illegal. I can, by your logic, circumvent the law simply by scanning in said porn into JPEG files and using the "large number" defense, or the "it was planted" defense. Furthermore, if you're NOT going to treat finding child porn on someone as serious, then you've automatically given true offenders a plausible way out.
Sometimes math-major idealism/reductionism can run amok in ugly ways.
My prediction is that in 10 years the place will be functionally obsolete as a result of processing advancements elsewhere.
NCSA has been around for a long time and will be around for a long time more. Your prediction is based on the assumption that the systems at NCSA are static, which is completely untrue. If the government decides to start up a mega-super-quantum-ultra-computing project, NCSA is pretty high on the list of places that are going to get the grant.
Spew enough garbage at a program and it will probably die.
But if you can spew garbage at a program and make it die during development, perhaps you can figure out what exactly made it die and fix it. You get the +1 Obvious award, not fuzz testing.
Can we please stop getting all warm and cosy about candidates because they throw out "tech-savvy" words and we're supposed to be nerds? I find it more likely that Edwards is keen about open-source because the proprietary voting software is one possible scapegoat for his 2004 election loss, rather than open-source as a moral, ideological principle. The fact that he supports "open source for election systems" means crap because (a) it's in his own interest and nothing more (b) it's absolutely no indicator of his views or open-source friendly intentions IF ELECTED and (c) congress makes laws, not the president...in case anyone forgot. sure, he can veto, but this man is a LAWYER. And one who has one some pretty big (and sometimes even controversial) cases. He's goal-oriented, sacrificing his presidential stake for a vice-presidency with Kerry. Here. FOSS evangelist somehow just doesn't fit.
Absolutely, but I think the point is that although NASA laid a lot of the groundwork, it may have become administratively challenged over the years. No one can deny the immense contribution of NASA to science in general, but I think this research group proves that NASA isn't as nible, and certainly not as cost-effective, as it can be. Imagine the crazy sh** we'd see if it were.
There's an interesting solution to this problem -- the "scientist at Carnegie Mellon" is Luis von Ahn who was recently awarded a MacArthur genius award. In optical recognition tasks like this where the "true" answer is not known, how do you verify that a human agent correctly did the recognition? Just see if a bunch of other users type the same thing. It's a clever twist on consensus voting, and was recently snatched up by Google as "Google image labeler" here.
Could this be Novell trying to get back in the good graces of Linux users?
Oh grow up. Novell doesn't give a rats a** if its "in the good graces" of Linux users. If MS gets serious about pursuing litigation (however unlikely), Novell is sitting on a plump little target -- Suse. MS (or anyone else who has a bone to pick with FOSS) won't go after end users -- it'll go after the cash cow that is Novell.
This isn't so bad -- as long as the video footage is produced promptly in court when you invariably appeal the fine. In fact, for fines imposed by these walking cameras, if the government can't produce video of the offense, the case should be dropped instantly.
Not necessarily. There's a good chance the "." is being stripped, so what you're searching for is "com". Microsoft Component Object Module (COM) comes up first, but that's not surprising because it's been around for years.
Forcing people to enter their credit card and billing address details was a form of SECURITY.
It seems you're using security as an argument against implementing 1-click. If thats the case, the argument isn't very well thought out. Even without 1-click, most sites offer to save your credit card and billing address, so it's just a matter of selecting which credit card to use without typing it in again. Furthermore, if someone comes up to your computer and rings up a bunch of stuff with 1-click, (a) the stuff's coming to your address anyway so they better be snooping your postal mail too (b) they would have to be authenticated with a username/password first to establish the cookie/session, unless you're in the habit of leaving un-expired sessions open on a public terminal and (c) if they had (b), they could do exactly the same thing without 1-click with... TADA... just a few more clicks and your saved billing info!
So it seems your reasons for not pioneering 1-click have more to do with saving credit/billing information on your own supposedly secure server rather than with the idea of 1-click itself. I don't see how that translates to 1-click being a BAD IDEA.
In fact, this could be exactly what we need. This is clearly such a ludicrous measure that if it goes into law everywhere, the apathy-riddled consumer might actually sit up and notice. When average Jimbo down the street gets hit with fees and taxes and fingerprints and anal probes while trying to sell his old stash of CDs, there should at least be a little more awareness about what the RIAA f**kheads are trying to do. Hopefully, that will lead to consumer action and eventually enough agitation to overturn this measure and also place some iron clamps on what the RIAA can and cannot do.
In other words, the more ludicrous the little battles are, the better chance we have of winning the war. Now the lawyers here can strike me down.
Which is why you don't work at MERL. In large, complex buildings, having only the signs that lead you out of the building in the quickest possible way would definitely be a benefit. Especially if, for example, one particular exit route was blocked for any reason.
PIDGIN is *NOT* a geeky reference to the RFC about carrier pidgeons.
"PIDGIN" is a local dialect of English used in Hawaii Wiki. I know because I just got back from a conference there. Hang loose, brah....
In the words of the immortal Hunter S. Thomson, Bill Carey is obviously a perfect example of a "drunken pig farmer". The thing about democracy is that sometimes you have to live with decisions that you abhor. I just wish we could apply Carey's reasoning to the 2001 presidential elections.
To the good residents of the county...smoke on....
I don't think your analogy holds, because you're not "teaching" the computer to do something. You're giving it explicit orders and it has absolutely no choice but to follow them exactly. If you drive your car over an old lady crossing the street, you're the one who gave the instruction, you're to blame -- not the car. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
The number of H1B visas is already quite restrictive. I think a loosening up on the annual quota is what he was talking about. Seems like there's more demand than supply.
I suggest that to change this image, for every H-1b Microsoft hires, Bill Gates donates a $60,000 scholarship to an American high school student to study computer science, or a $50,000 scholarship to an unemployed American programmer to update their skillset and get a higher degree.
Why...why...that's the most un-American post I've ever seen!! You sound like one of 'em stinkin' socialists. But seriously, America has always been about (1) capitalism and (2) good business. What you suggest is quite the opposite -- it would be bad for business and is anything but capitalism. You're talking protectionism, which goes against the American ideal of "best price/quality ratio wins". Perhaps a lot of outsourced work is crap, but a lot of it isn't, and if it was ALL crap, well then business wouldn't exist anymore would it? Protectionism by any other name is still protectionism, except now that we're talking people it feels a lot more personal. Doesn't change the facts though.
p.s. i just noticed your nickname -- your post makes a lot more sense now.
I don't see your point. If you take multiple short exposures, you're using more time than taking an equivalent long exposure (by adding the time to open and close the shutter). Short exposures don't fix your blur problem either. You're going to get multiple underexposed images -- trying to do some sort of software amplification is just asking for trouble. There's a lack of information in the image itself, and it would have to be some pretty damn smart algorithm that can interpolate as good as a long exposure. A more viable option would be lenses with larger apertures so that you can keep the exposure time down, but even that has a limit. Or more intelligent flashes with adaptive color tones (no idea how that would work).
a lot of "techies" don't have artistic ability, but would you really want an artist to design your perl scripts? a plumber can go to his local library and learn about prescription drugs, but you take his medical advice? people are good at different things. no artist is going to replace a techie's job unless they're also geeks, in which case calling them "artist" does not imply "not geek".
Al Pacino -- surprisingly -- was also in a very mediocre movie like that. It was called S1m0ne and was about two guys creating a virtual actress who everyone thought was real. Although it had the Pacino Monologue (tm), it was overall a pretty crappy movie that I watched on the overhead monitor on an ancient 737 while stuck on a 10 hour flight. I think they killed her in the end.
Slashdot Mirror
And before anyone suggests it, there is no way to blindly separate a stream accurately into individual songs (some songs have quiet/silent sections).
Little leap of logic there. Most campuses have a decent number of students on campus during summer for any of the following reasons:
(i) summer classes
(ii) research (i.e. most grad students who don't even realize its summer)
(iii) friggin professors
Most unis give out net access to students, faculty AND staff. overwhelmed access points don't necessarily point to lack of AP security.
unless the user pays Microsoft a fee in order to continue to listen to the track, with a percentage going to the person who provided the song. As the abstract puts it, "even [the] resale of pirated media content [can] benefit... the copyright holder."'"
The key point is that you have a chance to convert "pirated" media to "unpirated" by paying for it. The difference seems to be that the MP3 in question could have been illegally obtained from a file sharing network rather than as the product of another Zune user's legal squirt onto you.
First of all, your analogy is flawed. Child porn is not equivalent to the hammer -- child porn would be bloodied remnants of the skull that you're carrying around after someone else has smashed a skull. Taking the hammer analogy the other way, you would be carrying around a camera used to make child porn. And yes, if you're carrying around bloodied skull remnants, it SHOULD probably be suspicious. At the least because you could tell the police who or where you got the smashed skull remnants from.
But I understand your point. I'm not sure I completely agree, but it definitely is an interesting perspective. Your argument seems to be basically that creation, not possession, of something illegal should be the crime, because the latter can easily be abused. However, keep in mind, a possessor of something illegal can often offer part of a trail back to the creator, so it's not like it doesn't warrant attention at all.
And just to make this clear, there was nothing "think about the children"-inspired in my original response, or any offense taken.
This is a pointless, albeit technically correct, analogy. A digital image can be seen as a very large number, but it is a strained analogy because you're not firing up photoshop to admire a number. In digital land, EVERYTHING is a very large number. And when you can convert so many real-world things (music, video, books, images, etc.) into "very large numbers", you can't suddenly expect the laws that govern their possession to change. Just as you can't expect an audio recording to lose all its rights once it gets converted into "a very large circular scratch on a piece of vinyl".
However, once a society makes owning a number a crime, it makes it very easy to "frame" people who hold unpopular-but-not-illegal beliefs: just push some child pornography into their computer, or easier, "find" some photos in their car.
The flaw with your point here is that say I have a large collection of physical child porn, which is illegal. I can, by your logic, circumvent the law simply by scanning in said porn into JPEG files and using the "large number" defense, or the "it was planted" defense. Furthermore, if you're NOT going to treat finding child porn on someone as serious, then you've automatically given true offenders a plausible way out.
Sometimes math-major idealism/reductionism can run amok in ugly ways.
NCSA has been around for a long time and will be around for a long time more. Your prediction is based on the assumption that the systems at NCSA are static, which is completely untrue. If the government decides to start up a mega-super-quantum-ultra-computing project, NCSA is pretty high on the list of places that are going to get the grant.
But if you can spew garbage at a program and make it die during development, perhaps you can figure out what exactly made it die and fix it. You get the +1 Obvious award, not fuzz testing.
It's just rhetoric, not worth a story on /.
Absolutely, but I think the point is that although NASA laid a lot of the groundwork, it may have become administratively challenged over the years. No one can deny the immense contribution of NASA to science in general, but I think this research group proves that NASA isn't as nible, and certainly not as cost-effective, as it can be. Imagine the crazy sh** we'd see if it were.
There's an interesting solution to this problem -- the "scientist at Carnegie Mellon" is Luis von Ahn who was recently awarded a MacArthur genius award. In optical recognition tasks like this where the "true" answer is not known, how do you verify that a human agent correctly did the recognition? Just see if a bunch of other users type the same thing. It's a clever twist on consensus voting, and was recently snatched up by Google as "Google image labeler" here.
Oh grow up. Novell doesn't give a rats a** if its "in the good graces" of Linux users. If MS gets serious about pursuing litigation (however unlikely), Novell is sitting on a plump little target -- Suse. MS (or anyone else who has a bone to pick with FOSS) won't go after end users -- it'll go after the cash cow that is Novell.
This isn't so bad -- as long as the video footage is produced promptly in court when you invariably appeal the fine. In fact, for fines imposed by these walking cameras, if the government can't produce video of the offense, the case should be dropped instantly.
Not necessarily. There's a good chance the "." is being stripped, so what you're searching for is "com". Microsoft Component Object Module (COM) comes up first, but that's not surprising because it's been around for years.
It seems you're using security as an argument against implementing 1-click. If thats the case, the argument isn't very well thought out. Even without 1-click, most sites offer to save your credit card and billing address, so it's just a matter of selecting which credit card to use without typing it in again. Furthermore, if someone comes up to your computer and rings up a bunch of stuff with 1-click, (a) the stuff's coming to your address anyway so they better be snooping your postal mail too (b) they would have to be authenticated with a username/password first to establish the cookie/session, unless you're in the habit of leaving un-expired sessions open on a public terminal and (c) if they had (b), they could do exactly the same thing without 1-click with ... TADA... just a few more clicks and your saved billing info!
So it seems your reasons for not pioneering 1-click have more to do with saving credit/billing information on your own supposedly secure server rather than with the idea of 1-click itself. I don't see how that translates to 1-click being a BAD IDEA.
In fact, this could be exactly what we need. This is clearly such a ludicrous measure that if it goes into law everywhere, the apathy-riddled consumer might actually sit up and notice. When average Jimbo down the street gets hit with fees and taxes and fingerprints and anal probes while trying to sell his old stash of CDs, there should at least be a little more awareness about what the RIAA f**kheads are trying to do. Hopefully, that will lead to consumer action and eventually enough agitation to overturn this measure and also place some iron clamps on what the RIAA can and cannot do.
In other words, the more ludicrous the little battles are, the better chance we have of winning the war. Now the lawyers here can strike me down.
Which is why you don't work at MERL. In large, complex buildings, having only the signs that lead you out of the building in the quickest possible way would definitely be a benefit. Especially if, for example, one particular exit route was blocked for any reason.
PIDGIN is *NOT* a geeky reference to the RFC about carrier pidgeons. "PIDGIN" is a local dialect of English used in Hawaii Wiki. I know because I just got back from a conference there. Hang loose, brah....
Wait....a luddite website??? Isn't that an oxymoron?
To the good residents of the county...smoke on....
I don't think your analogy holds, because you're not "teaching" the computer to do something. You're giving it explicit orders and it has absolutely no choice but to follow them exactly. If you drive your car over an old lady crossing the street, you're the one who gave the instruction, you're to blame -- not the car. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
The number of H1B visas is already quite restrictive. I think a loosening up on the annual quota is what he was talking about. Seems like there's more demand than supply.
Why...why...that's the most un-American post I've ever seen!! You sound like one of 'em stinkin' socialists. But seriously, America has always been about (1) capitalism and (2) good business. What you suggest is quite the opposite -- it would be bad for business and is anything but capitalism. You're talking protectionism, which goes against the American ideal of "best price/quality ratio wins". Perhaps a lot of outsourced work is crap, but a lot of it isn't, and if it was ALL crap, well then business wouldn't exist anymore would it? Protectionism by any other name is still protectionism, except now that we're talking people it feels a lot more personal. Doesn't change the facts though.
p.s. i just noticed your nickname -- your post makes a lot more sense now.
I don't see your point. If you take multiple short exposures, you're using more time than taking an equivalent long exposure (by adding the time to open and close the shutter). Short exposures don't fix your blur problem either. You're going to get multiple underexposed images -- trying to do some sort of software amplification is just asking for trouble. There's a lack of information in the image itself, and it would have to be some pretty damn smart algorithm that can interpolate as good as a long exposure. A more viable option would be lenses with larger apertures so that you can keep the exposure time down, but even that has a limit. Or more intelligent flashes with adaptive color tones (no idea how that would work).
a lot of "techies" don't have artistic ability, but would you really want an artist to design your perl scripts? a plumber can go to his local library and learn about prescription drugs, but you take his medical advice? people are good at different things. no artist is going to replace a techie's job unless they're also geeks, in which case calling them "artist" does not imply "not geek".
Al Pacino -- surprisingly -- was also in a very mediocre movie like that. It was called S1m0ne and was about two guys creating a virtual actress who everyone thought was real. Although it had the Pacino Monologue (tm), it was overall a pretty crappy movie that I watched on the overhead monitor on an ancient 737 while stuck on a 10 hour flight. I think they killed her in the end.