No, I'm talking about A to D. I know the difference, fer chrissake. I'm not talking about a commercially available item, it was just an example of how you could get around this in an evening for cheap.
And even for D to A (sound playback) the quality depends on who built it, doesn't it? Sure, if you use a dozen resistors from Radio Shack as a D to A (this is what most of them did) and it's only 4 bits mono, sure, sounds like hell.
The point is, it's not hard to build an A to D device. Whether it hooks to the parallel port, USB, or in a PCI card slot, it's still easy (use a developer kit for the USB/PCI, where for $40 you get all the interfaces and drivers and just need to hook up the A-D chip.
They can't get a watermarking system in place that stays the same for more than 6 months. What're they going to do, make law-abiding users buy a new sound card every time their watermarking system gets cracked?
It costs about $10 to build a 16 bit stereo A-D converter that would plug into a parallel port and can be controlled from a driver that would take all of an hour to write. They're thinking in terms of markets they can control such as CD players (it's pretty hard to make your own CD player). This is not such a market and they don't realize that.
This is getting amusing. The farther they go with this, the more crazy they sound. At this point it's just a question of whether they'll realize they're trying to dig a hole in water and try to make money off the new phenomenon rather than trying to suppress it, or will they just totally flip off the deep end?
I'm looking forward to seeing the movie as well, I will see it, but I don't really care if it's this week, next month, or next year. I'll get around to it. It'll be the same movie when it's playing in the discount theater for $2.50.
I'm planning on going to see LotR/FotR tomorrow, for the first time. At the $2.50 theater.
I also irritate my friends by refusing to buy book trilogies until all the books are in print.
Of course, if everyone were like me, the 2nd book would never get printed.
And somehow, we all manage to live through it. ...and the worst thing you can do is to start scrubbing down everything with antibacterial products. This will result in resistant strains of bacteria. Not nearly as bad as idiots demanding antibiotics for colds (it's a virus, idiot, antibiotics won't help), but bad enough. The problem is, it's getting more and more difficult to buy a non-antibacterial soap. There's always Ivory, though I don't like it much (dries my skin).
You're not destroying the electronics by heat, you're inducing a huge amount of current in it, instantly frying all electronics. The RF thing necessarily has an antenna lead (probably very short, but there) so that it can pick up the tiny RF signal that it uses for power. Now, you're feeding it many thousands of times more power than it's designed to take. Stick a CD or pop-tart wrapper in the microwave sometime and see what happens. The arcs are caused by the high voltage induced in the conductive parts. BTW this won't hurt the microwave but it does stink.
You could extend that to your photo, which is also biometric information. Why should you be required to put your photo on your driver's license? I'm sorry, but this seems to me to be a continuum. Your photo is biometric information. People, and increasingly, machines can look at the photo and look at you, and make a judgement as to whether the person standing in front of them is the person the card claims. Fingerprints, iris scans, etc are just more certain (not 100%) forms of ID. Note I don't personally like it. I won't get prints as long as there's an option not to, and I'll vote against people who try to get them instituted. But, I don't see how they're qualitatively different than photos.
I think you are confusing privacy and anonymity. A nationally unique form of ID doesn't remove privacy. In fact it does not necessarily remove anonymity. If it's abused, it could certainly remove anonymity. However, I'm not sure how an ID card removes your privacy, unless it's got a listening device built in.
SSN is not required for issue. In many states (Michigan, for instance) it's not even asked for. In other states, such as Illinois, it's normally on the driver's license, but you can refuse and have them issue an alternate ID number. There may be some states that require it, but there shouldn't be, since by law only the SSA can absolutely require you to provide your SSN.
It's still theoretically possible to withhold your SSN from any agency except the SSA. (yeah, right, and income tax was just for a couple of years, until we paid off the world war one debts).
I'm not sure where the SSN refusal is protected in the law, but I'm assuming it must be pretty deep, since people are talking about building a new ID system rather than trying to change the law so we can use that one.
Read the article. They're not claiming that they're not violating the DMCA. They're challenging the constitutionality of the DMCA. Much different argument, and one they have a chance at (I hope).
how can you be sure you have destroyed data on a harddrive/cd-rom/floppy/etc
Physically shred it and then incinerate it. If I had something I didn't want ANYONE to be able to get, that's the only method I'd trust. If you want to talk about people going to ANY extreme to recover your erased data, you can do microscopic analysis of the residual magnetic fields. You're talking thousands of hours and possibly millions of dollars to recover the data on a portion of a hard drive, but that's the only way to be SURE.
It's just a USB flash ram drive. Take a Zio! USB reader ($25 at buy.com) and plug in a CF card (512M = $180 at newegg.com), and you have the equivalent. The thumb drive just rearranges things a bit to make it physically smaller. Also I think the thumb drive uses the USB mass storage standard so no special drivers are necessary for Linux, Win ME/2k/XP, or Mac. The Zio! does need special drivers, I wish they'd fix that.
I owned a MicroDrive last year. I thought it was pretty cool, but I sold it when flash ram prices started dropping. With 512M type I CF cards selling for $185 (and still dropping) I don't think the MicroDrive is a good option anymore. When I bought mine, I paid $315 for the 1GB, and 512M CF was rare and $600 or so. It was worth the risk of damage to the MicroDrive to get that much storage that cheaply. However, now that the gap has narrowed, I'll gladly pay a little more (maybe 50-100% more) for the peace of mind of having my digital photos on a media that I could drop out of a speeding car onto concrete and it'd probably be just fine.
I assumed they were talking about Windows PCs, and my first thought was "How does memory keep the machine from crashing?" Then I realized that they meant "turn on the computer for the first time today" booting, not RE-booting. Doesn't affect me, the only machine I ever turn off anyway is my laptop.
Right. What if you define it as software that does harm to a computer system or erases or corrupts data? A bunch of Microsoft programs would then have to be considered viruses. If you inserted the words "intended to" - what about format.com? One of its intents is to wipe data. What about tape backup software? They have a "security erase" function. If they screw up the programming such that that function can be mistakenly triggered, then it's a program that was written partially with the intent of erasing data, and which did so without the consent of the user.
Code for a virus is no different than certain Stephen King books. Both can describe illegal action. Nobody is claiming that Stephen King did anything illegal, nor is it illegal for people to buy and read his books. It's illegal to try to do some of the things he describes, in sometimes tiny detail, exactly how to do.
Friend of a friend is a cop on cyber-patrol (no, really) in MI. He spends a lot of his time on IRC setting up stings. Mainly they persue child porn offenders, but just FYI, the cops ARE active in IRC and other IM clients, and could persue this if they wanted to.
The guy's got the right idea, there's no reason his basic idea isn't good (I was considering doing the same thing myself) but it looks like it was implemented by Bob Vila - totally hacked together without even any real attempt to think of the best way to do it. It looks like he walked into a hardware store and grabbed the first thing that looked like it might work.
I ordered an 8200 as well, but didn't get the Enhanced version of the display. This discussion is making me think I should call them up and dump the extra $100. The contrast ratio increase is quite significant.
I wish I could get it with LOWER resolution though. I'm afraid that 1600x1200 on a 15" monitor is going to kill my eyes. I think this stuff is just designed for Windows, where you are expected to bump the font size up. Oh well, I guess I can start 16 terminal sessions at once.
I know several people with the A7V133, and they are all sorry they bought it. I am a big Asus believer; I have a P5A with a K6-2 450, an A7A266, and now an A7V266-E, just bought 2 weeks ago. I only buy Asus. However, that one was a stinker. Some problems can be fixed by getting just the right BIOS (note: not necessarily the most recent bios, but the one that works in your situation), and some can't.
I have a friend with that MB. Though he and I are both Asus fans, he says that particular model is the buggiest MB he's ever had to put up with.
Re:Transfer speed isn't the only reason for it.
on
Usenet Encoding: yEnc
·
· Score: 2
Oops, sorry, I misread your comment.
This doesn't make any sense. The cost to the provider is primarily the bandwidth to get the data to me. In the agreements we have at work with our IP peers, I don't see anything that says "we're billing you for compressed data amounts, not actual data amounts." I assume the news providers have the same deal.
I don't really know, so I'll shut up about it until I can find out.
BTW the "add to the NNTP spec" argument is not terribly practical. First, most people don't have the knowledge to define a spec that would be acceptable to server operators (I'm sure there are a lot of things to be considered). And even if it was defined, you'd have to wait for the server software companies to implement it, and then wait for the news providers to roll it in. I bet it couldn't be done in less than 2 years.
By defining the yEnc spec as they did, it's totally in user-space and up to the user and user's programs to implement.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I'm talking about A to D. I know the difference, fer chrissake. I'm not talking about a commercially available item, it was just an example of how you could get around this in an evening for cheap.
And even for D to A (sound playback) the quality depends on who built it, doesn't it? Sure, if you use a dozen resistors from Radio Shack as a D to A (this is what most of them did) and it's only 4 bits mono, sure, sounds like hell.
The point is, it's not hard to build an A to D device. Whether it hooks to the parallel port, USB, or in a PCI card slot, it's still easy (use a developer kit for the USB/PCI, where for $40 you get all the interfaces and drivers and just need to hook up the A-D chip.
This is getting amusing. The farther they go with this, the more crazy they sound. At this point it's just a question of whether they'll realize they're trying to dig a hole in water and try to make money off the new phenomenon rather than trying to suppress it, or will they just totally flip off the deep end?
I'm looking forward to seeing the movie as well, I will see it, but I don't really care if it's this week, next month, or next year. I'll get around to it. It'll be the same movie when it's playing in the discount theater for $2.50.
I'm planning on going to see LotR/FotR tomorrow, for the first time. At the $2.50 theater.
I also irritate my friends by refusing to buy book trilogies until all the books are in print.
Of course, if everyone were like me, the 2nd book would never get printed.
And somehow, we all manage to live through it.
...and the worst thing you can do is to start scrubbing down everything with antibacterial products. This will result in resistant strains of bacteria.
Not nearly as bad as idiots demanding antibiotics for colds (it's a virus, idiot, antibiotics won't help), but bad enough.
The problem is, it's getting more and more difficult to buy a non-antibacterial soap. There's always Ivory, though I don't like it much (dries my skin).
You're not destroying the electronics by heat, you're inducing a huge amount of current in it, instantly frying all electronics. The RF thing necessarily has an antenna lead (probably very short, but there) so that it can pick up the tiny RF signal that it uses for power. Now, you're feeding it many thousands of times more power than it's designed to take.
Stick a CD or pop-tart wrapper in the microwave sometime and see what happens. The arcs are caused by the high voltage induced in the conductive parts.
BTW this won't hurt the microwave but it does stink.
You could extend that to your photo, which is also biometric information. Why should you be required to put your photo on your driver's license? I'm sorry, but this seems to me to be a continuum. Your photo is biometric information. People, and increasingly, machines can look at the photo and look at you, and make a judgement as to whether the person standing in front of them is the person the card claims. Fingerprints, iris scans, etc are just more certain (not 100%) forms of ID.
Note I don't personally like it. I won't get prints as long as there's an option not to, and I'll vote against people who try to get them instituted. But, I don't see how they're qualitatively different than photos.
I think you are confusing privacy and anonymity. A nationally unique form of ID doesn't remove privacy. In fact it does not necessarily remove anonymity. If it's abused, it could certainly remove anonymity. However, I'm not sure how an ID card removes your privacy, unless it's got a listening device built in.
SSN is not required for issue. In many states (Michigan, for instance) it's not even asked for. In other states, such as Illinois, it's normally on the driver's license, but you can refuse and have them issue an alternate ID number. There may be some states that require it, but there shouldn't be, since by law only the SSA can absolutely require you to provide your SSN.
It's still theoretically possible to withhold your SSN from any agency except the SSA. (yeah, right, and income tax was just for a couple of years, until we paid off the world war one debts).
I'm not sure where the SSN refusal is protected in the law, but I'm assuming it must be pretty deep, since people are talking about building a new ID system rather than trying to change the law so we can use that one.
That'd be fine, since retina prints change over time and are not a useable form of ID. Perhaps you mean IRIS print, or face or hand profile?
Read the article. They're not claiming that they're not violating the DMCA. They're challenging the constitutionality of the DMCA. Much different argument, and one they have a chance at (I hope).
Physically shred it and then incinerate it. If I had something I didn't want ANYONE to be able to get, that's the only method I'd trust. If you want to talk about people going to ANY extreme to recover your erased data, you can do microscopic analysis of the residual magnetic fields. You're talking thousands of hours and possibly millions of dollars to recover the data on a portion of a hard drive, but that's the only way to be SURE.
It's just a USB flash ram drive. Take a Zio! USB reader ($25 at buy.com) and plug in a CF card (512M = $180 at newegg.com), and you have the equivalent. The thumb drive just rearranges things a bit to make it physically smaller. Also I think the thumb drive uses the USB mass storage standard so no special drivers are necessary for Linux, Win ME/2k/XP, or Mac. The Zio! does need special drivers, I wish they'd fix that.
That's funny, it looks fine to me. Mozilla 1.0 RC1 under WinXP.
I owned a MicroDrive last year. I thought it was pretty cool, but I sold it when flash ram prices started dropping. With 512M type I CF cards selling for $185 (and still dropping) I don't think the MicroDrive is a good option anymore. When I bought mine, I paid $315 for the 1GB, and 512M CF was rare and $600 or so. It was worth the risk of damage to the MicroDrive to get that much storage that cheaply. However, now that the gap has narrowed, I'll gladly pay a little more (maybe 50-100% more) for the peace of mind of having my digital photos on a media that I could drop out of a speeding car onto concrete and it'd probably be just fine.
So, will they have to buy 1400 Windows licenses then throw them in the trash, like the rest of us do?
I assumed they were talking about Windows PCs, and my first thought was "How does memory keep the machine from crashing?"
Then I realized that they meant "turn on the computer for the first time today" booting, not RE-booting. Doesn't affect me, the only machine I ever turn off anyway is my laptop.
Right. What if you define it as software that does harm to a computer system or erases or corrupts data? A bunch of Microsoft programs would then have to be considered viruses.
If you inserted the words "intended to" - what about format.com? One of its intents is to wipe data. What about tape backup software? They have a "security erase" function. If they screw up the programming such that that function can be mistakenly triggered, then it's a program that was written partially with the intent of erasing data, and which did so without the consent of the user.
Code for a virus is no different than certain Stephen King books. Both can describe illegal action. Nobody is claiming that Stephen King did anything illegal, nor is it illegal for people to buy and read his books. It's illegal to try to do some of the things he describes, in sometimes tiny detail, exactly how to do.
Friend of a friend is a cop on cyber-patrol (no, really) in MI. He spends a lot of his time on IRC setting up stings. Mainly they persue child porn offenders, but just FYI, the cops ARE active in IRC and other IM clients, and could persue this if they wanted to.
The guy's got the right idea, there's no reason his basic idea isn't good (I was considering doing the same thing myself) but it looks like it was implemented by Bob Vila - totally hacked together without even any real attempt to think of the best way to do it. It looks like he walked into a hardware store and grabbed the first thing that looked like it might work.
I ordered an 8200 as well, but didn't get the Enhanced version of the display. This discussion is making me think I should call them up and dump the extra $100. The contrast ratio increase is quite significant.
I wish I could get it with LOWER resolution though. I'm afraid that 1600x1200 on a 15" monitor is going to kill my eyes. I think this stuff is just designed for Windows, where you are expected to bump the font size up. Oh well, I guess I can start 16 terminal sessions at once.
I know several people with the A7V133, and they are all sorry they bought it. I am a big Asus believer; I have a P5A with a K6-2 450, an A7A266, and now an A7V266-E, just bought 2 weeks ago. I only buy Asus. However, that one was a stinker. Some problems can be fixed by getting just the right BIOS (note: not necessarily the most recent bios, but the one that works in your situation), and some can't.
I have a friend with that MB. Though he and I are both Asus fans, he says that particular model is the buggiest MB he's ever had to put up with.
Oops, sorry, I misread your comment.
This doesn't make any sense. The cost to the provider is primarily the bandwidth to get the data to me. In the agreements we have at work with our IP peers, I don't see anything that says "we're billing you for compressed data amounts, not actual data amounts." I assume the news providers have the same deal.
I don't really know, so I'll shut up about it until I can find out.
BTW the "add to the NNTP spec" argument is not terribly practical. First, most people don't have the knowledge to define a spec that would be acceptable to server operators (I'm sure there are a lot of things to be considered). And even if it was defined, you'd have to wait for the server software companies to implement it, and then wait for the news providers to roll it in. I bet it couldn't be done in less than 2 years.
By defining the yEnc spec as they did, it's totally in user-space and up to the user and user's programs to implement.