Let's just hope those in government don't see fit to pass legislation mandating DRM in products...combined with this patent, that would give Microsoft not only their OS monopoly, but the ability to stop anyone foolish enough to try to challenge them.
No, they might have found an underwater city. It sounds like their trying to make their discovery sound more impressive than it really is. They pull a date out of their ass and then compare it to a date when the egyptian civilization was flourishing. There's no mention of the date compared to, say, the first egyptian cities/settlements or even the pyramids at Saqara (which were built long before the pyramids at Giza).
Anyone want to lay odds that they need funding to study what they found?
I don't own an iPod, but from what I've been told by people who work at Apple, you can use the iPod with any computer/OS that is firewire compatible.
The iTunes software is Mac only (thank god!;), but I've been told if you use it in "external HD" mode, there is a hidden folder that holds all of the songs for the iPod to play. Just copy your mp3s to/from that folder. I think Apple was only interested in the illusion of SDMI compliance.
"...peer-to-peer technology is getting bad rap." (page 5)
Maybe if the record companies would stop suing people and start creating some decent music, then we we could get *good rap* from our peer-to-peer technologies.
Just off the top of my head, they forgot exploits involving the '&' character (or its hex encoding). I've seen this one used in much the same way as the ';' (basically, to execute an extra command in UNIX).
I totally agree...is it that hard to realize that all you need to do is disable 3rd party cookies?
If I go to http://www.yahoo.com, how hard would it be to only accept cookies from yahoo.com? Is there any legitimate reason that another company should be setting a cookie in this instance?
Microsoft could solve the "cookie problem" with a single if statemet. Once IE started disallowing 3rd party cookies, no one would try it anymore.
However, too many companies have based their entire business model on the security holes in the current implementation of cookies. DoubleClick would spend a lot of money to keep a solution like this from ever being implemented.
Virtual machines may have been around a while, but no one's ever implemented them below (or as a part of) the OS layer. They've always been an application running on top of an existing OS.
Moving the VM to below the OS level would truly allow the "write once, run everywhere" claim that Sun made about Java. The current problem with Java code running everywhere is not incompatability with the underlying machine, it is incompatability with the underlying OS.
It also significantly lowers the bar to writing your own OS. I'm not sure about the rest of you, but assembly and low-level c code make my head hurt...OO code doesn't. Very similar to what the Linux Kernel + X windows allows. Do you think we'd see so many WM's if they had to implement the entire OS themselves? I'm looking forward to playing around with the Platform module to see how hard it is to write my own OS on top of that!
Sexy = Intelligent + Cool
setting up servers = intelligence
being on a tv show = cool
so, asking an actor whether setting up servers helps him score babes is like asking a geek whether being on a tv show helps him score babes...
That viceral reaction that you're feeling will pass and eventually America will realize the folly of giving in to the hysteria that is being created. By 2007-2008, being able to say, "I stood against those who were trying to take advantage of a horrible tragedy" will be much better received.
Arundhati Roy covers that and some other disturbing connections in this article. Really interesting read.
In response to the parent post, I am an American and I consider myself to be as well or better informed about world events as most Europeans. However, I agree with you that this would not be the case if I swallowed all the crap that the major American news agencies try to spoon feed us. Most Americans do not expend the effort to find articles like the one I mentioned above.
For most Americans, the wtc tragedy will mean buying an american flag, and coming together with other Americans to support a war that, while diminishing the fear that we feel in the short term, will only engender hatred against America into a new generation of people around the world. I am only slightly worried about terrorism today. I am petrified about terrorism twenty years from now.
I find it shameful that the people running America do this. And by this, I don't just mean bombing a country that is barely out of the stone age back into it. I also mean using the fear and pain of its citizens as a means of obtaining further profits for American companies and even themselves (read the article above...it details how Bush himself will literally make *millions* off this war). This country founded on such lofty ideals which have so much potential. We just need to realize again that capitalism is a result of freedom, not vice versa.
Did you ever work at a.bomb? I did (4 of them!). In each case, the fact that they went out of business wasn't due to the technical people there, it was the executive decisions that were made and the excess money spent on unneeded things like lavish dinners and excess marketing.
It is sad that this era (if you can call a period less than a decade an era) will be remembered for it's failures. Some really bright people accopmlished some amazing things that were thrown away because investors pulled out or because the purpose for which they were developed wasn't necessary.
Couldn't agree more...I'm 24 and I started programming professionally part-time while I was still in high school. I put myself through college doing that. I have 8 years of industry experience and I'm only 2 years removed from school.
My situation is slightly different from yours (24 yrs old and I was hired into the position instead of being promoted). Here's some of what I experienced.
I do a lot more programming that I thought I would. It is an architect's job to visualize the project as a whole and come up with the best solutions possible. It is then necessary to express those solutions to everyone else involved. For coders, you can give all the presentations you want, but for them to truly understand it, they need code. I now spend a good deal of my time programming the "proof of concept" code. The size of the comments that I write is easily triple what I used to do as a developer (can't say that I was always good about commenting my code, but more often than not, I was). It takes a while to get used to creating code whose primary purpose is to be clear...not just to compile/run.
One of the other big adjustments that I had to make was the amount I had to deal with non-engineers. I deal with the people Marketing and Product Planning a lot. They look to me for acurate assesments of whether feature x is feasible and if it can be completed by date y. As an architect, they expect a much more "plain english" response from me than from someone in development. If I'm telling them news they don't want to hear (which is fairly often, since it is in their nature to think big), I need to give them an answer that they can understand well enough to report back to their superiors. This is harder than it sounds and has been a challenge for me (tho I think I'm getting better;).
It took a while to get used to all the extra meetings, but I now find my current position much more enjoyable than when I was in a development role. An architect role gives you the freedom to fulfill that urge to implement something as cleanly as possible (also known as the right way in the "right way v. fast way" debate).
An architect position is definitely the next logical step. Management is not the only end of this progression. Many companies have Product Planning departments or R&D departments. And believe it or not, you might get tired of coding...and if you do, it is nice to have the option of moving into a managerial position.
To me, this article sheds light on a disturbing trend that I've noticed in the internet space. Like many geeks in the.com arena, I've had quite a few jobs in the past few years. At nearly every single position I've had, I saw way too many misspellings and problems with grammar in the online content that the companies produced. As a member of the technical staff, I should *not* have the best knowledge of the english language.
My question about the posted article is, "Why is a journalist so dependant on a spell checker?" Spell checkers are tools for people who have weak language skills. A journalist, or any other online content creator, should not need them. There was a time, before computers, when people typed things out on a typewriter, then *re-read* them to make sure there weren't typos, incorrect spellings or problems with grammar.
Having errors in spelling and grammar are then journalistic equivalent of O(n^2) algorithms in code. Anyone worth their salary should be able to avoid them. While a quality spell checker might be a good reason for some random user to choose M$ over Linux, it is *no* excuse for a professional journalist.
Well...at the time, there were certain rules of engagement which everyone followed during wartimes. Armies would line up, face each other, and start shooting until one side felt the need to run away. The revolutionary Americans employed guerilla warfare tactics. At the time, these were considered terrorist acts.
As times and military equipment change, so do tactics. Just as the American revolutionaries realized that they could not win a war with Britain if they played by Britain's rules, so does Osama Bin Laden realize that he cannot win a war with the US military. But he does realize that he can hijack a couple of planes, crash them, and incite enough fear that the country will destroy itself (or at a minimum, the ideals on which it was founded).
History is full of the powerful complaining that their weaker opponents are not playing by the rules. Think about it...could you beat Kasparov in chess...no way. But if you changed the rules, with you creating new rules as you went along, you'd stand a much better chance.
America needs to drop this "holier than thou" attitude that we seem to have. Someone hurt us, and we want so strike back...fine. But as for this righteous indignation that anyone should do something we don't like...please...we play the bully far more often than we play the victim.
Another great way to get "face time" with politicians is to volunteer to work on their campaigns. Politicians will listen to anyone who is helping them to get/stay elected. Usually this takes the form of monetary donations, but other types of campaign contributions are just as important...especially if you have something extra, like tech saaviness.
Is there any topic that can't be turned into an Emacs/Vi argument???
The future of the GUI (see above)
Middle East? (nope...too easy...the term "holy war" would be used and then the emacs/vi debate would be the next logical step.
George Bush? (nope...another easy one...someone is bound to say "he's dumber than your average (emacs|vi) user"
World Series? (nope...people would start talking about how one team would win because of its superior speed. Others would disagree with them, stating that the opposing team had more power...with the speed vs. power debate, emacs vs. vi is just around the corner)
Hollywood? (nope...in addition to the inevitable DMCA argument, someone would mention that actresses are too skinny, and then it would be inevitable that someone would say that vi is too skinny)
You'd think that people here would be smart enough to just drop the subject...do any of you actaully think you'll be able to convince an emacs user that vi is better (or vice versa)?
</$0.02>
Besides...everyone know that ed far and away the best;P
I don't think that people on/. are against technology patents per se. If someone comes up with a non-obvious solution to a current problem, then more power to them. But that isn't the case here. The patent in question was useless until a point in time when other technology allowed it to become useful. In essence, there was no point in even thinking about the issue until hard drive technology progressed to the point where it could become useful.
If it was a replayTV patent filed while both machines were in R&D, the story would be completely different. In that case, the patent would have been filed in response to a current problem and I think that everyone on/. would consider it a valid patent.
What if I filed a patent for a 3-dimensional stop light? This would be a completely useless patent. But if in 10 years, GM creates a flying car, should I be able to make millions off my idea because I came up with the idea before there was a need for it? Even though it may not seem like common sense at the time, it still may be a common sense extension of the work of others.
That seems to be the case here. Pausing live media streams is a logical extension of having hardware capable of streaming media.
The music industry wants to maintain it's profits. It has two avenues it can pursue. It can try to put everyone in jail by paying for horrible legislation, or it can try to find some technological solution. It's fairly obvious that the first solution is a bad one and must be fought tooth and nail. But why does everyone on slashdot demonize the RIAA for choosing the second option. I am more than happy for them to choose that one, especially if it keeps them from pursuing the first further than they have already pursued.
IMHO, the record industry should be free to choose whatever crappy standard that they want, and I should be free to try to hack it. So long as I don't distribute their content, I shouldn't be breaking the law.
If you object to measures such as these, you lose credibility in the fight against unfair legislation and simply show that you don't want to pay for the content that you use.
Remember, the an MPEG header has bits for that say whether the file is copyrighted, whether it is protected and whether it is original.
This license agreement would theoretically allow them to install an os component that made copying of mp3 files different than a straight bitwise copy. They could refuese to copy mp3 files with the copyrighted bit turned on. They could flip the bit telling whether the file is original or a copy (thus making a file that is both copyrighted and a copy illegal).
Slashdot Mirror
Let's just hope those in government don't see fit to pass legislation mandating DRM in products...combined with this patent, that would give Microsoft not only their OS monopoly, but the ability to stop anyone foolish enough to try to challenge them.
true...but you'd also have access to every shoutcast stream available on the net...which is exactly the same media.
Imagine that...someone on /. calling a clever idea "obvious"...
;)
(and this time it wasn't me
Did they find an underwater pyramid?
No, they might have found an underwater city. It sounds like their trying to make their discovery sound more impressive than it really is. They pull a date out of their ass and then compare it to a date when the egyptian civilization was flourishing. There's no mention of the date compared to, say, the first egyptian cities/settlements or even the pyramids at Saqara (which were built long before the pyramids at Giza).
Anyone want to lay odds that they need funding to study what they found?
I don't own an iPod, but from what I've been told by people who work at Apple, you can use the iPod with any computer/OS that is firewire compatible.
;), but I've been told if you use it in "external HD" mode, there is a hidden folder that holds all of the songs for the iPod to play. Just copy your mp3s to/from that folder. I think Apple was only interested in the illusion of SDMI compliance.
The iTunes software is Mac only (thank god!
But the pdf says,
"...peer-to-peer technology is getting bad rap." (page 5)
Maybe if the record companies would stop suing people and start creating some decent music, then we we could get *good rap* from our peer-to-peer technologies.
Just off the top of my head, they forgot exploits involving the '&' character (or its hex encoding). I've seen this one used in much the same way as the ';' (basically, to execute an extra command in UNIX).
This could just as easily be modded as "Interesting" depending on how cynical you are.
so I would assume that, unless your statmenet is an extremely rare (like, say, 1% ;) case, what you just said is wrong or misleading.
// stupid_geek_humor()
don't you just love paradoxes?
}
I totally agree...is it that hard to realize that all you need to do is disable 3rd party cookies?
If I go to http://www.yahoo.com, how hard would it be to only accept cookies from yahoo.com? Is there any legitimate reason that another company should be setting a cookie in this instance?
Microsoft could solve the "cookie problem" with a single if statemet. Once IE started disallowing 3rd party cookies, no one would try it anymore.
However, too many companies have based their entire business model on the security holes in the current implementation of cookies. DoubleClick would spend a lot of money to keep a solution like this from ever being implemented.
Virtual machines may have been around a while, but no one's ever implemented them below (or as a part of) the OS layer. They've always been an application running on top of an existing OS.
Moving the VM to below the OS level would truly allow the "write once, run everywhere" claim that Sun made about Java. The current problem with Java code running everywhere is not incompatability with the underlying machine, it is incompatability with the underlying OS.
It also significantly lowers the bar to writing your own OS. I'm not sure about the rest of you, but assembly and low-level c code make my head hurt...OO code doesn't. Very similar to what the Linux Kernel + X windows allows. Do you think we'd see so many WM's if they had to implement the entire OS themselves? I'm looking forward to playing around with the Platform module to see how hard it is to write my own OS on top of that!
Sexy = Intelligent + Cool
setting up servers = intelligence
being on a tv show = cool
so, asking an actor whether setting up servers helps him score babes is like asking a geek whether being on a tv show helps him score babes...
That viceral reaction that you're feeling will pass and eventually America will realize the folly of giving in to the hysteria that is being created. By 2007-2008, being able to say, "I stood against those who were trying to take advantage of a horrible tragedy" will be much better received.
Arundhati Roy covers that and some other disturbing connections in this article. Really interesting read.
In response to the parent post, I am an American and I consider myself to be as well or better informed about world events as most Europeans. However, I agree with you that this would not be the case if I swallowed all the crap that the major American news agencies try to spoon feed us. Most Americans do not expend the effort to find articles like the one I mentioned above.
For most Americans, the wtc tragedy will mean buying an american flag, and coming together with other Americans to support a war that, while diminishing the fear that we feel in the short term, will only engender hatred against America into a new generation of people around the world. I am only slightly worried about terrorism today. I am petrified about terrorism twenty years from now.
I find it shameful that the people running America do this. And by this, I don't just mean bombing a country that is barely out of the stone age back into it. I also mean using the fear and pain of its citizens as a means of obtaining further profits for American companies and even themselves (read the article above...it details how Bush himself will literally make *millions* off this war). This country founded on such lofty ideals which have so much potential. We just need to realize again that capitalism is a result of freedom, not vice versa.
Did you ever work at a .bomb? I did (4 of them!). In each case, the fact that they went out of business wasn't due to the technical people there, it was the executive decisions that were made and the excess money spent on unneeded things like lavish dinners and excess marketing.
It is sad that this era (if you can call a period less than a decade an era) will be remembered for it's failures. Some really bright people accopmlished some amazing things that were thrown away because investors pulled out or because the purpose for which they were developed wasn't necessary.
Couldn't agree more...I'm 24 and I started programming professionally part-time while I was still in high school. I put myself through college doing that. I have 8 years of industry experience and I'm only 2 years removed from school.
I've even met people who started before me!
My situation is slightly different from yours (24 yrs old and I was hired into the position instead of being promoted). Here's some of what I experienced.
;).
I do a lot more programming that I thought I would. It is an architect's job to visualize the project as a whole and come up with the best solutions possible. It is then necessary to express those solutions to everyone else involved. For coders, you can give all the presentations you want, but for them to truly understand it, they need code. I now spend a good deal of my time programming the "proof of concept" code. The size of the comments that I write is easily triple what I used to do as a developer (can't say that I was always good about commenting my code, but more often than not, I was). It takes a while to get used to creating code whose primary purpose is to be clear...not just to compile/run.
One of the other big adjustments that I had to make was the amount I had to deal with non-engineers. I deal with the people Marketing and Product Planning a lot. They look to me for acurate assesments of whether feature x is feasible and if it can be completed by date y. As an architect, they expect a much more "plain english" response from me than from someone in development. If I'm telling them news they don't want to hear (which is fairly often, since it is in their nature to think big), I need to give them an answer that they can understand well enough to report back to their superiors. This is harder than it sounds and has been a challenge for me (tho I think I'm getting better
It took a while to get used to all the extra meetings, but I now find my current position much more enjoyable than when I was in a development role. An architect role gives you the freedom to fulfill that urge to implement something as cleanly as possible (also known as the right way in the "right way v. fast way" debate).
An architect position is definitely the next logical step. Management is not the only end of this progression. Many companies have Product Planning departments or R&D departments. And believe it or not, you might get tired of coding...and if you do, it is nice to have the option of moving into a managerial position.
Hope you enjoy your new position!
To me, this article sheds light on a disturbing trend that I've noticed in the internet space. Like many geeks in the .com arena, I've had quite a few jobs in the past few years. At nearly every single position I've had, I saw way too many misspellings and problems with grammar in the online content that the companies produced. As a member of the technical staff, I should *not* have the best knowledge of the english language.
My question about the posted article is, "Why is a journalist so dependant on a spell checker?" Spell checkers are tools for people who have weak language skills. A journalist, or any other online content creator, should not need them. There was a time, before computers, when people typed things out on a typewriter, then *re-read* them to make sure there weren't typos, incorrect spellings or problems with grammar.
Having errors in spelling and grammar are then journalistic equivalent of O(n^2) algorithms in code. Anyone worth their salary should be able to avoid them. While a quality spell checker might be a good reason for some random user to choose M$ over Linux, it is *no* excuse for a professional journalist.
2 or 4 phone lines... what the hell would i use them for!?
your own mini ISP?
Well...at the time, there were certain rules of engagement which everyone followed during wartimes. Armies would line up, face each other, and start shooting until one side felt the need to run away. The revolutionary Americans employed guerilla warfare tactics. At the time, these were considered terrorist acts.
As times and military equipment change, so do tactics. Just as the American revolutionaries realized that they could not win a war with Britain if they played by Britain's rules, so does Osama Bin Laden realize that he cannot win a war with the US military. But he does realize that he can hijack a couple of planes, crash them, and incite enough fear that the country will destroy itself (or at a minimum, the ideals on which it was founded).
History is full of the powerful complaining that their weaker opponents are not playing by the rules. Think about it...could you beat Kasparov in chess...no way. But if you changed the rules, with you creating new rules as you went along, you'd stand a much better chance.
America needs to drop this "holier than thou" attitude that we seem to have. Someone hurt us, and we want so strike back...fine. But as for this righteous indignation that anyone should do something we don't like...please...we play the bully far more often than we play the victim.
Another great way to get "face time" with politicians is to volunteer to work on their campaigns. Politicians will listen to anyone who is helping them to get/stay elected. Usually this takes the form of monetary donations, but other types of campaign contributions are just as important...especially if you have something extra, like tech saaviness.
Is there any topic that can't be turned into an Emacs/Vi argument???
;P
The future of the GUI (see above)
Middle East? (nope...too easy...the term "holy war" would be used and then the emacs/vi debate would be the next logical step.
George Bush? (nope...another easy one...someone is bound to say "he's dumber than your average (emacs|vi) user"
World Series? (nope...people would start talking about how one team would win because of its superior speed. Others would disagree with them, stating that the opposing team had more power...with the speed vs. power debate, emacs vs. vi is just around the corner)
Hollywood? (nope...in addition to the inevitable DMCA argument, someone would mention that actresses are too skinny, and then it would be inevitable that someone would say that vi is too skinny)
You'd think that people here would be smart enough to just drop the subject...do any of you actaully think you'll be able to convince an emacs user that vi is better (or vice versa)?
</$0.02>
Besides...everyone know that ed far and away the best
I don't think that people on /. are against technology patents per se. If someone comes up with a non-obvious solution to a current problem, then more power to them. But that isn't the case here. The patent in question was useless until a point in time when other technology allowed it to become useful. In essence, there was no point in even thinking about the issue until hard drive technology progressed to the point where it could become useful.
/. would consider it a valid patent.
If it was a replayTV patent filed while both machines were in R&D, the story would be completely different. In that case, the patent would have been filed in response to a current problem and I think that everyone on
What if I filed a patent for a 3-dimensional stop light? This would be a completely useless patent. But if in 10 years, GM creates a flying car, should I be able to make millions off my idea because I came up with the idea before there was a need for it? Even though it may not seem like common sense at the time, it still may be a common sense extension of the work of others.
That seems to be the case here. Pausing live media streams is a logical extension of having hardware capable of streaming media.
The music industry wants to maintain it's profits. It has two avenues it can pursue. It can try to put everyone in jail by paying for horrible legislation, or it can try to find some technological solution. It's fairly obvious that the first solution is a bad one and must be fought tooth and nail. But why does everyone on slashdot demonize the RIAA for choosing the second option. I am more than happy for them to choose that one, especially if it keeps them from pursuing the first further than they have already pursued.
IMHO, the record industry should be free to choose whatever crappy standard that they want, and I should be free to try to hack it. So long as I don't distribute their content, I shouldn't be breaking the law.
If you object to measures such as these, you lose credibility in the fight against unfair legislation and simply show that you don't want to pay for the content that you use.
This affects *way* more than just WMA files.
Remember, the an MPEG header has bits for that say whether the file is copyrighted, whether it is protected and whether it is original.
This license agreement would theoretically allow them to install an os component that made copying of mp3 files different than a straight bitwise copy. They could refuese to copy mp3 files with the copyrighted bit turned on. They could flip the bit telling whether the file is original or a copy (thus making a file that is both copyrighted and a copy illegal).