Slashback: OpenDocument, Intelligent Design, More DRM 399
Sony still not "getting it". c writes "Mark Russinovich continues his investigation of Sony's DRM as he tries out the official uninstaller. His verdict? 'I've analyzed virulent forms of spyware/adware that provide more straightforward means of uninstall.'" Relatedly Cronos1388 writes "According to the Inquirer an Italian group is also suing Sony over the rootkit." Also, an unexpected side effect of this technology is that script kiddies have been able to leverage Sony's tool to hide unauthorized cheat programs from the watchful eye of MMO creators.
Intelligent design supporters ousted. PMuse writes "The Register and others are reporting that all eight of the members of the Dover, PA school board that had required Intelligent Design to be taught alongside Evolution have been canned by voters in yesterday's election."
What does avian flu look like? DevL writes "Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson has managed to capture images of a H5N1 (bird flu) virus entering and taking control of a cell. While the text is in Swedish, the images speak for themselves."
Torrent user goes up the river. stinerman writes to tell us that the Hong Kong man who was recently arrested for making several movies available via BitTorrent has had his sentence handed down. Chan aka "Big Crook" uploaded Daredevil, Red Planet, and Miss Congeniality which landed him 3 months in jail.
Golden weighs in on OpenDocument debate. OSS_ilation writes "With so much FUD and anti-FUD flying in the face of Massachusetts' decision to go with OpenDocument, it's no surprise that open source advocate Bernard Golden weighs in with his take on current events."
User says new downloadable television just plain "sucks." Thomas Hawk writes "In the past few weeks the three major studios have all announced deals to begin offering downloadable television for consumers -- Apple/ABC, DirecTV/NBC, and Comcast/CBS. The problem with each of these respective offerings is that they largely suck. Apple sells expensive low res limited television from ABC. NBC's new service will only work on DirecTV DVRs (uh hello McFly, why pay money for this service when I can just record it for free). And CBS' downloadable programming could contain commercials."
Apple video SUCKS (Score:5, Informative)
Go to TorrentSpy.com and download a 350 meg episode of Prison Break. With just DSL you can download faster than you can watch. Or go for a 700 meg version, which is insane quality.
These are just words, and words can not describe the bullshit that Apple is selling.
You Forgot to Mention the California Class Action (Score:5, Informative)
From the article: "A class-action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of California consumers who may have been harmed by anti-piracy software installed by some Sony music CDs. A second, nationwide class-action lawsuit is expected to be filed against Sony in a New York court on Wednesday seeking relief for all U.S. consumers who have purchased any of the 20 music CDs in question [slashdot.org].
The suit alleges that Sony's software violates at least three California statutes, including the "Consumer Legal Remedies Act," which governs unfair and/or deceptive trade acts; and the "Consumer Protection against Computer Spyware Act," which prohibits -- among other things -- software that takes control over the user's computer or misrepresents the user's ability or right to uninstall the program. The suit also alleges that Sony's actions violate the California Unfair Competition law, which allows public prosecutors and private citizens to file lawsuits to protect businesses and consumers from unfair business practice."
The Post also has a PDF of the California filing [washingtonpost.com] and suggests another nationwide class action will be filed in New York shortly.
Re:Downloadable TV (Score:4, Informative)
Actually... (Score:5, Informative)
Its neither of those resolutions.
Take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC#Technical_detai
and you'll see that while NTSC allows for up to 525 scan lines, only 480 are used due to their use for specific purposes (i.e. sync, vertical retrace)
For the horizontal resolution, the limit is really how small the dots that can be made, but in practice, that amouts to 440 (http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/vidres.htm [aol.com]).
Thus, the maximum resolution of NTSC is 480x440.
Re:Look guys: intelligent design is NOT SCIENCE (Score:4, Informative)
There are no theories in evolution about how life began. You're yet another example of why people who don't know what they're talking about should keep it shut.
Re:Downloadable TV (Score:3, Informative)
Us old time satelite dish guys still remember the dead air "holes" the networks leave in place for the locals to insert local spots in. You can tell the locals, they are the ones with real prices, real dates, locations you recognize, etc. Sometimes you can hear the little tweedle-chirp that triggers the local tape players on and off.
Re:Look guys: intelligent design is NOT SCIENCE (Score:5, Informative)
How do you propose to prove that God spontaneously emerged from nothing? And let's not have the "oh he was always there" chickenshit answer - if that can happen with God, it can happen with the Universe.
Plus, evolution makes no comment on the origin of life. It is a theory on the origin of new species, which is a different thing entirely.
If scientific observation indicates that current theories are inadequate to explain the complexities biological structures, why would you want to supress that information?
That information is not being surpressed. Scientists acknowledge that, for example, we don't know what was around prior to the Big Bang. Scientists acknowledge that we're not sure of the exact mechanism of the beginning of biological life. Scientists acknowledge that we're still learning bits about how evolution works.
Intelligent design is being surpressed, but that's a different story alltogether. ID is just saying "we don't know how this works yet, so LET'S MAKE SHIT UP!"
EFF's list of Sony DRM'd CDs (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the list as of this post:
==========
Trey Anastasio, Shine (Columbia)
Celine Dion, On ne Change Pas (Epic)
Neil Diamond, 12 Songs (Columbia)
Our Lady Peace, Healthy in Paranoid Times (Columbia)
Chris Botti, To Love Again (Columbia)
Van Zant, Get Right with the Man (Columbia)
Switchfoot, Nothing is Sound (Columbia)
The Coral, The Invisible Invasion (Columbia)
Acceptance, Phantoms (Columbia)
Susie Suh, Susie Suh (Epic)
Amerie, Touch (Columbia)
Life of Agony, Broken Valley (Epic)
Horace Silver Quintet, Silver's Blue (Epic Legacy)
Gerry Mulligan, Jeru (Columbia Legacy)
Dexter Gordon, Manhattan Symphonie (Columbia Legacy)
The Bad Plus, Suspicious Activity (Columbia)
The Dead 60s, The Dead 60s (Epic)
Dion, The Essential Dion (Columbia Legacy)
Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten (Epic)
Ricky Martin, Life (Columbia) (labeled as XCP, but, oddly, our disc had no protection)
Several other Sony-BMG CDs are protected with a different copy-protection technology, sourced from SunnComm, including:
My Morning Jacket, Z
Santana, All That I Am
Sarah McLachlan, Bloom Remix Album
==========
Re:Hey, wait a minute (Score:3, Informative)
A good portion of the voting Americans are crazy anti-science religious zealots, who are well-organized, and write lots of letters to Congressmen. How do you think Bush got elected? Well, a good portion of the Bush electorate are simply rich people who want to keep their tax breaks and ability to pollute without repercussion (specifically his homies in Texas--I'm looking at you, ALCOA [txpeer.org]).
Re:Either way they win... (Score:1, Informative)
That word does not mean what you think it means.
Re:Actually... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Congratulations Kansas (Score:4, Informative)
I'll do my part, and I'm sure my fellow Kansans will help me in trying to earn back a bit of the credibility we just lost.
Re:Actually... (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't believe that when I read it, and was ready to call it bull.
But I looked up the facts, and found that the broadcast NTSC luminance bandwidth is 4.2Mhz [ntsc-tv.com] even when using a comb filter, and the active time of a single line is 52.66 of 63.555 s [arachnotron.nl], resulting in:
2*4.2e6/525/29.97*52.66/63.555 = 442.35 active pixels per line.
Wow.
Directly at the camera/dvd player, and using S-Video, that is usually more though. You're just not looking at all the pixels on a normal TV monitor, plus you're making them more fuzzy if you hook it up using a simple composite cable...
But when your are receiving analog TV signals from air or cable, and displaying on your big glass tube, only 442 pixels is what you get...
Ugh.
By the way, 2*5e6/525/29.97 = 636, so even from a 5Mhz luminance signal and no inactive pixels, you don't get to 640 individual pixels.
Now, of course, when sampling close to the Nyquist-Shannon frequency [wikipedia.org], you get aliasing problems, so that should explain why we're digitizing analog video into more pixels than what the analog source can contain.