Re:***Correction on Hotgrits.org story***
on
Hump Day Quickies
·
· Score: 1
Huh, I did not know that. I stand corrected again.
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
***Correction on Hotgrits.org story***
on
Hump Day Quickies
·
· Score: 2
On second look, it does not appear that hotgrits.org is running Slashcode, instead using a clever counterfeit written in PHP. Course, I'm not sure why they'd reinvent the wheel like that, but, hey, whatever works for them.
Mea culpa
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
It was my understanding that Metallica has always been supportive of non-commercial live show bootleg trading among fans. Was there any attempt to determine how much of the material available from Napster users was actually illegal material ripped from official CDs and how much was sanctioned show trading? Have you ever considered making fan bootlegs available from your official website in MP3 format, like other bands such as Primus have done?
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
Hmmm.... Well, I managed to get a P-166 system (including baby-AT case, 2.5 gig IDE hard drive, 16 MB SDRAM, a cheap Trident video card, USB, and a SB-AWE64 sound card) for $484.
I can play 256 kBps MP3s off a Samba server quite easily even while running Netscape and Star Office at the same time (after throwing in some more RAM and a network card).
Oh yeah - that price was more than two years ago.
bp
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
I mostly agree with you - this is why I've never gotten into most traditional sci-fi - but there are exceptions.
For instance, I just finished with the third book in William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive) and I found it very satisfying. Gibson had it figured out - make all the books able to stand on their own, but make it so that the trilogy together is bigger than the sum of it's parts. Not an easy thing to do, by any stretch, but worth noting when someone accomplishes it.
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
Last year I attended a presentation on intellectual property protection from my school's chapter of IEEE. The presenter (a patent lawyer) said specifically that this form of "protection" is a myth. Basically, for technological designs (including software and algorithms), it doesn't matter if you thought of something first, which is all that this method could possibly prove. What matters is who applied first with the full patent treatment, including working implementation. (It may work for creative works like music, I don't know for sure)
Sorry if it's unpleasant, but that's the way it is.
DISCLAIMER: IANAL
bp
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
You know, there's an interesting quote that sums up that post...
"Freedom of choice / Is what you got. Freedom from choice / Is what you want." - Devo, Freedom of Choice
bp
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
ease of use; was Re:Look for something amazing
on
New Desktop for Linux
·
· Score: 2
why is "easy to use" synonymous with "good" in so many folks' views?
Forgive me if I seem condescending here, but I think the answer is obvious. No matter the quality, a tool (of any kind) has absolutely no utility, and therefore no value, if no one can use it. That being said, there are places for both complex tools (requiring special training) and simple tools (requiring more than two brain cells). This isn't an attempt to steal away your ultra-flexible command prompt, just a way to get more functionality out of your computer without having to look at it should you be so inclined. If you're not, don't use it, but please don't gripe about it being there. This OS is not now, and never was, the exclusive property of you and your hacker kindred. Bring on the masses...
... The difference with the Christian Coalition is that they've replaced monetarily purchased advertising with the efforts of the religious. Unfortunately, hordes of well-meaning religious leaders have gone along with them, advancing their platforms and making it a de facto sin (in the minds of many) to not vote for them. Many churches today mention "hot-button" issues in sermons and post or pass out candidate lists at the behest of this group. The weaker-minded among the faithful don't give it a second thought and honestly believe that God wants them to vote for Candidate Jones.
Please don't get me wrong - I am not trying to be anti-religious here. Rather, I think religion can be a very good thing - a positive force in the lives of many. It's just that it saddens me greatly to see it perverted like this for political power. My more cycical side wants to say that maybe Karl Marx was right... I dearly hope it's wrong, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Someone here has already mentioned what a low reputation Nintendo Next has in the gaming world. I found more evidence of this in their "Why Dolphin will beat the Playstation 2" article which is linked to from the MS X-Box story. Now, I'm just a senior computer engineering student, but the "reasons" they give are pretty lame. ("Dolphin's CPU is made by IBM and PS2's is made by Toshiba. Of course, IBM's will be better because they're a better company.")
bp
TOOL - was, Re:No, it Is Not Shagadelic
on
Furry Cow Cases
·
· Score: 1
It also sounds a lot like "Disgustipated," the unlisted bonus track on Tool's second album, "Undertow."
"I have heard the cries of the carrots... You see, tomorrow is the harvest day, and to them, it is the holocaust. They have a soul! Damn it, let the rabbits wear glasses! Can I get a hallelujah?"
You know, I don't think that drug use is necessarily related to the computer / internet aspect so much as the experience that is professional education. Let's face it, college is conducive to drug use. There's caffeine (or stronger stimulants) for late nights and early morning classes, alcohol and/or pot for coming down after a four-hour final, and maybe a little acid and X for those times when a student is feeling a little "experimental" (as they are wont to do). You see it in engineering students of all types, but also in med and law students. Hell, I've swapped some good drinking stories with my dentist. The difference between them and students in other less-stressful majors is that they seem to be doing it to be better - to be able to pull off the impossible that is demanded of them.
"The flame that burns twice as bright burns only half as long" - Les Claypool.
There's been a lot of talk bandied around here about "if you can play it, you can copy it." This is true, but not in all cases.
This new CD format, I'm guessing (and I really am guessing - I can't get decent info about it), uses some kind of audio watermarking process. This would mean that they have applied extra information to the signal in a way that is masked by the music or whatever. This would create some distortion, but if they do it right, only audiophiles will notice. This may also screw up some older CD players if the process assumes some kind of reconstruction scheme that they are too old to have is used for the D/A conversion. Doing a bitwise copy of the music (using CDParanoia or cdda2wav, for example) and writing it to a CDR will result in a copy that is playable on any CD player on which the original is playable.
The "protection" comes into play when the track is converted to MP3. MP3 encoders remove a lot of information from a track in order to get the high compression rate they have. The trick, though, is that they only remove information that you're not likely to hear. If the watermark is somehow cleverly designed to stand out when this extra information is removed, then any MP3s made from the protected disc will be of poor quality. The solution would be to to remove the watermark in the encoder, but this would extremely difficult. No one would know how the watermark is generated, and that even if one did figure it out, the record companies could just switch watermarking methods every second or so.
The primary indication of this, McGrath said, is the high number of students dropping out after their freshman year.
The way I understand it, educational programs at large state schools tend to have large dropout rates because they have a "weeding out" process. Ever heard of this quote being given at a freshman orientation assembly? "Look to your left. Look to your right. Between those two people and yourself, only one will be here next year." State schools tend to have low admission requirements, which allows anyone who wants to have a go at it the chance. However, if they were to allow all these people to continue on all four years, the quality of their programs would suffer. Hence the weeding out - only the people who really are willing to make the effort necessary to succeed get through it.
And I'll bet it was worse back when Ms. McGrath was there.
Sorry if this is off-topic - just seemed like a glaring omission (especially considering that The Matrix has a lot of influence from Gibson). You want a scary view of corporatism? In Neuromancer (and the rest of the Sprawl trilogy, I assume - can't wait to read the other two) the corporations are almost nations in themselves, with their own military, their own anthems, and coportate-logo-tattooed employees/slaves-for-life for citizens.
Sorry if this is off-topic - just seemed like a glaring omission (especially considering that The Matrix has a lot of influence from Gibson). You want a scary view of corporatism? In Neuromancer (and the rest of the Sprawl trilogy, I assume - can't wait to read the other two) the corporations are almost nations in themselves, with their own military, their own anthems, and coportate-logo-tattooed empoloyees/slaves-for-life for citizens.
I'd just like to summarize the arguments that have been posted here in the past, in the hope that we don't have to hash them out all over again. Towards the goal of more rational arguments, let's be completely clear about the issues here. (And if I'm off base, please let me know)
- DeCSS does in fact make piracy of DVDs easier by making it easier to re-encode the material as.vcd's or otherwise. It doesn't, however, make something possible that was once impossible. Programs that extract the materials by listening in on video and audio hardware while a sanctioned player is in use have been around for some time now (Two years, I think someone said once.) Let's not get all up in arms about "You can't use it for piracy," because you can. The main use, however, is for playing material in a legal manner.
- This being said, it can be safely assumed that the DVD consortium is approaching this under false pretenses, and what they really want to do is maintain the profits they get from licensing players.
- This is evidenced by the fact that bit for bit copies can already be made of DVDs, thus circumventing the entire copy-protection scheme altogether. This, however, requires very expensive hardware, and would be done mainly by those in the realm of large-scale pirates, which are the ones that really do do harm and profit from someone else's work.
- The DeCSS code was not written with illegally obtained information. (i.e. employee of Zoran takes secret information home with him and writes the program, violating his NDA.)
- Reverse engineering for compatibility sake is legal in the USA. This is how Compaq et al created the first PC clones back in the 80's.
THEREFORE, both sides make valid points, and both have fallacies, but our side still holds the winning hand.
Disclaimer: I am not a philosophy major (getting paid matters too much to me).
I think the movie would best serve as illustration in this context. Descarte's theory of the Evil Genius? The evil computer network. Nietzche's Ubermann (who doesn't accept the common beliefs of his time)? Neo. Stretch it a bit and you can even include Plato's cave metaphor in this list. I think the idea of the class is to get modern, end-motivated students interested in philosophy, which can be fascinating and rewarding, if maybe not financially.
Just a thought
bp
What makes you think they'll _release_ their code?
on
China Banning Win2k
·
· Score: 1
Remember, the way GPL works is that someone who makes a fix or an improvement has to release their code. However, this is just a matter of playing by the rules, and seeing how dismal China's record for copyright rule enforcement has been, I think we'll be lucky if all that new Chinese code is released at all. My guess is that they'll make new programs where possible, fork major stuff like the kernel, and keep their own versions secret.
I have an HP 612C myself, and I'm in the same boat - GS as setup by RH printtool only does 300x300. What I did was edit/var/spool/lp/postscript.cfg and change the resolution in there to 600x600. It was kinda a shot in the dark, but it worked. (Note: if, after you do that, you edit your print queues with printtool again, it will change the resolution to 300x300. Just make sure to change it back afterwards.)
That being said, I think also that the normal linux print setup is really unecessarily complex and kludgey. I mean, I looked at some of the processing scripts for printing, and that stuff is bordering on black magic. God help you if you ever actually have to change that stuff.
This is a very interesting viewpoint on this subject, and I must admit I've never heard it stated so clearly before. I must, however, disagree with your viewpoint. You are correct in that ideas cannot happen in a vacuum, however, I must also point out that ideas also cannot spontaneously appear even in the best of environments. Bringing an idea to fruition takes work and pondering, and it's not just anyone who can do it. Intellectual property protection exists to reward those who can use their environment to create a new idea, and who are willing to use their talents and education to further it, hopefully for the common good.
I know it's cliched, but remember what Thomas Edison said: "Invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration"
You know, if it was coded in assembly, you have all the _source_ they have when you download the executable. Mind you, it doesn't have the comments or aliases, but hey, assembly code's damn near impossible to read anyway, even with those.
Slashdot Mirror
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
Mea culpa
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
I can play 256 kBps MP3s off a Samba server quite easily even while running Netscape and Star Office at the same time (after throwing in some more RAM and a network card).
Oh yeah - that price was more than two years ago.
bp
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
For instance, I just finished with the third book in William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive) and I found it very satisfying. Gibson had it figured out - make all the books able to stand on their own, but make it so that the trilogy together is bigger than the sum of it's parts. Not an easy thing to do, by any stretch, but worth noting when someone accomplishes it.
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
Commence groaning...
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
http://www.com edycentral.com/download/southpark/video/spmp_parro t.rm
Sorry - it's just a link to the stream, but now you can skip the rest of the page.
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
bp
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
Sorry if it's unpleasant, but that's the way it is.
DISCLAIMER: IANAL
bp
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
"Freedom of choice / Is what you got.
Freedom from choice / Is what you want."
- Devo, Freedom of Choice
bp
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
why is "easy to use" synonymous with "good" in so many folks' views?
Forgive me if I seem condescending here, but I think the answer is obvious. No matter the quality, a tool (of any kind) has absolutely no utility, and therefore no value, if no one can use it. That being said, there are places for both complex tools (requiring special training) and simple tools (requiring more than two brain cells). This isn't an attempt to steal away your ultra-flexible command prompt, just a way to get more functionality out of your computer without having to look at it should you be so inclined. If you're not, don't use it, but please don't gripe about it being there. This OS is not now, and never was, the exclusive property of you and your hacker kindred. Bring on the masses...
bp
... The difference with the Christian Coalition is that they've replaced monetarily purchased advertising with the efforts of the religious. Unfortunately, hordes of well-meaning religious leaders have gone along with them, advancing their platforms and making it a de facto sin (in the minds of many) to not vote for them. Many churches today mention "hot-button" issues in sermons and post or pass out candidate lists at the behest of this group. The weaker-minded among the faithful don't give it a second thought and honestly believe that God wants them to vote for Candidate Jones.
Please don't get me wrong - I am not trying to be anti-religious here. Rather, I think religion can be a very good thing - a positive force in the lives of many. It's just that it saddens me greatly to see it perverted like this for political power. My more cycical side wants to say that maybe Karl Marx was right... I dearly hope it's wrong, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
bp
Someone here has already mentioned what a low reputation Nintendo Next has in the gaming world. I found more evidence of this in their "Why Dolphin will beat the Playstation 2" article which is linked to from the MS X-Box story. Now, I'm just a senior computer engineering student, but the "reasons" they give are pretty lame. ("Dolphin's CPU is made by IBM and PS2's is made by Toshiba. Of course, IBM's will be better because they're a better company.")
bp
bp
You know, I don't think that drug use is necessarily related to the computer / internet aspect so much as the experience that is professional education. Let's face it, college is conducive to drug use. There's caffeine (or stronger stimulants) for late nights and early morning classes, alcohol and/or pot for coming down after a four-hour final, and maybe a little acid and X for those times when a student is feeling a little "experimental" (as they are wont to do). You see it in engineering students of all types, but also in med and law students. Hell, I've swapped some good drinking stories with my dentist. The difference between them and students in other less-stressful majors is that they seem to be doing it to be better - to be able to pull off the impossible that is demanded of them.
"The flame that burns twice as bright burns only half as long" - Les Claypool.
bp
There's been a lot of talk bandied around here about "if you can play it, you can copy it." This is true, but not in all cases.
This new CD format, I'm guessing (and I really am guessing - I can't get decent info about it), uses some kind of audio watermarking process. This would mean that they have applied extra information to the signal in a way that is masked by the music or whatever. This would create some distortion, but if they do it right, only audiophiles will notice. This may also screw up some older CD players if the process assumes some kind of reconstruction scheme that they are too old to have is used for the D/A conversion. Doing a bitwise copy of the music (using CDParanoia or cdda2wav, for example) and writing it to a CDR will result in a copy that is playable on any CD player on which the original is playable.
The "protection" comes into play when the track is converted to MP3. MP3 encoders remove a lot of information from a track in order to get the high compression rate they have. The trick, though, is that they only remove information that you're not likely to hear. If the watermark is somehow cleverly designed to stand out when this extra information is removed, then any MP3s made from the protected disc will be of poor quality. The solution would be to to remove the watermark in the encoder, but this would extremely difficult. No one would know how the watermark is generated, and that even if one did figure it out, the record companies could just switch watermarking methods every second or so.
It can be done.
bp
The primary indication of this, McGrath said, is the high number of students dropping out after their freshman year.
The way I understand it, educational programs at large state schools tend to have large dropout rates because they have a "weeding out" process. Ever heard of this quote being given at a freshman orientation assembly? "Look to your left. Look to your right. Between those two people and yourself, only one will be here next year." State schools tend to have low admission requirements, which allows anyone who wants to have a go at it the chance. However, if they were to allow all these people to continue on all four years, the quality of their programs would suffer. Hence the weeding out - only the people who really are willing to make the effort necessary to succeed get through it.
And I'll bet it was worse back when Ms. McGrath was there.
bp
Sorry if this is off-topic - just seemed like a glaring omission (especially considering that The Matrix has a lot of influence from Gibson). You want a scary view of corporatism? In Neuromancer (and the rest of the Sprawl trilogy, I assume - can't wait to read the other two) the corporations are almost nations in themselves, with their own military, their own anthems, and coportate-logo-tattooed employees/slaves-for-life for citizens.
bp
Sorry if this is off-topic - just seemed like a glaring omission (especially considering that The Matrix has a lot of influence from Gibson). You want a scary view of corporatism? In Neuromancer (and the rest of the Sprawl trilogy, I assume - can't wait to read the other two) the corporations are almost nations in themselves, with their own military, their own anthems, and coportate-logo-tattooed empoloyees/slaves-for-life for citizens.
bp
I'd just like to summarize the arguments that have been posted here in the past, in the hope that we don't have to hash them out all over again. Towards the goal of more rational arguments, let's be completely clear about the issues here. (And if I'm off base, please let me know)
.vcd's or otherwise. It doesn't, however, make something possible that was once impossible. Programs that extract the materials by listening in on video and audio hardware while a sanctioned player is in use have been around for some time now (Two years, I think someone said once.) Let's not get all up in arms about "You can't use it for piracy," because you can. The main use, however, is for playing material in a legal manner.
- DeCSS does in fact make piracy of DVDs easier by making it easier to re-encode the material as
- This being said, it can be safely assumed that the DVD consortium is approaching this under false pretenses, and what they really want to do is maintain the profits they get from licensing players.
- This is evidenced by the fact that bit for bit copies can already be made of DVDs, thus circumventing the entire copy-protection scheme altogether. This, however, requires very expensive hardware, and would be done mainly by those in the realm of large-scale pirates, which are the ones that really do do harm and profit from someone else's work.
- The DeCSS code was not written with illegally obtained information. (i.e. employee of Zoran takes secret information home with him and writes the program, violating his NDA.)
- Reverse engineering for compatibility sake is legal in the USA. This is how Compaq et al created the first PC clones back in the 80's.
THEREFORE, both sides make valid points, and both have fallacies, but our side still holds the winning hand.
bp
Disclaimer: I am not a philosophy major (getting paid matters too much to me).
I think the movie would best serve as illustration in this context. Descarte's theory of the Evil Genius? The evil computer network. Nietzche's Ubermann (who doesn't accept the common beliefs of his time)? Neo. Stretch it a bit and you can even include Plato's cave metaphor in this list. I think the idea of the class is to get modern, end-motivated students interested in philosophy, which can be fascinating and rewarding, if maybe not financially.
Just a thought
bp
Remember, the way GPL works is that someone who makes a fix or an improvement has to release their code. However, this is just a matter of playing by the rules, and seeing how dismal China's record for copyright rule enforcement has been, I think we'll be lucky if all that new Chinese code is released at all. My guess is that they'll make new programs where possible, fork major stuff like the kernel, and keep their own versions secret.
bp
I have an HP 612C myself, and I'm in the same boat - GS as setup by RH printtool only does 300x300. What I did was edit /var/spool/lp/postscript.cfg and change the resolution in there to 600x600. It was kinda a shot in the dark, but it worked. (Note: if, after you do that, you edit your print queues with printtool again, it will change the resolution to 300x300. Just make sure to change it back afterwards.)
That being said, I think also that the normal linux print setup is really unecessarily complex and kludgey. I mean, I looked at some of the processing scripts for printing, and that stuff is bordering on black magic. God help you if you ever actually have to change that stuff.
This is a very interesting viewpoint on this subject, and I must admit I've never heard it stated so clearly before. I must, however, disagree with your viewpoint. You are correct in that ideas cannot happen in a vacuum, however, I must also point out that ideas also cannot spontaneously appear even in the best of environments. Bringing an idea to fruition takes work and pondering, and it's not just anyone who can do it. Intellectual property protection exists to reward those who can use their environment to create a new idea, and who are willing to use their talents and education to further it, hopefully for the common good.
I know it's cliched, but remember what Thomas Edison said: "Invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration"
Comments welcome!
bp
You know, if it was coded in assembly, you have all the _source_ they have when you download the executable. Mind you, it doesn't have the comments or aliases, but hey, assembly code's damn near impossible to read anyway, even with those.
-----------
"