Posts filed under News

The 4K Video Enabler

Differences in resolution

The biggest thing during The Consumers Electronics Show in Vegas (CES) was the 4K televisions. 4K is a reference to the resolution. Current TV's (LCD/LED/OLED/Plasma) usually have a resolution of 1920*1080 pixels (1080p). The 4K versions have 4 times the resolution. Capable of displaying UltraHD content at an affordable price. These TV's sell for $1000 - $2000.

NaughtyAmerica offers 4K downloads

All very nice, but the average Joe has no real access to 4K content. Sure, there are some videos on YouTube in 4K, but most of the time it's just plain old 1080p (if you're lucky). The current HD media (BluRay) isn't officially certified for 4k content, so the only alternative at the moment is downloadable content. Guess which industry is on top of things? (pun intended).

As with almost everything in the past (VHS / Internet / DVD), the porn industry is one of the first to embrace the new technology. Now all we need is fiber to the home with a minimum of 100Mbps to enjoy the new format.

Posted on February 8, 2014 and filed under News, Personal, TV, Video.

Apple Sued For Porn Addiction

Chris Sevier, a 36-year-old man from Tennessee, got so addicted to porn videos that his wife took his children and left him. Now he has sued Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), saying the Cupertino, Calif.-based company failed to install any filter in its devices to prevent his affliction.
— http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-sued-porn-addiction-man-says-macbook-cost-his-marriage-kids-1345831

Why stop at Apple? There's also something as your Internet Service Provider. Those are the 'bastards' that transport the stuff from the Interwebs to your home. Or the actual sites for allowing people to see these appalling (for some) images / videos without a dozen age/religion/whatever security checks?

One of the best parts is the following: 

Sevier claims that his addiction started when he “accidentally” replaced the “a-c-e” in Facebook with a “u-c-k.” Sevier said this F***book site “appealed to his biological sensibilities as a male,” and he started to prefer the images on the screen to his own wife.

The 'a' is nowhere near the 'u', and the 'k' is nowhere near the 'e' (on my keyboard), so how the hell is it possible to 'accidentally' type f-u-c-k instead of f-a-c-e

At least I learned something; I learned about the existence of a website that wasn't in my bookmarks already :-)

Posted on July 15, 2013 and filed under Apple, Fun, News.

A Couple Of Days On SQSP6

(SQSP6 == the new Squarespace 6 platform)

I think I fixed most of the bugs I encountered when I imported my old website into the new platform. Some links might not work, but my custom 404 - page not found page should guide the unfortunate visitors to the correct content (I hope).

The platform is still in development (@squarespace6), so new features are added continuously. The things I miss most at this moment are the following:

  • Decent editor for writing posts / pages.
    I miss HTML view, font selection, and some other text attributes (like strike-through, and font coloring).
  • Add IP filters on the logging to exclude certain IP addresses.
    Since I test with several browsers on different locations I have a lot of my own traffic polluting the logs.
  • A file manager for uploading (small files) to serve to the audiences.

When you're used to the old Squarespace platform, it takes a while to getting used to the new (management) interface. It definitely is a complete redesign of the (user)interface. (which is NOT a bad thing).

Posted on November 28, 2012 and filed under Website, News.

Moved From Squarespace 5 to 6

In case you're wondering; I 'upgraded' my Squarespace 5 website to the new Squarespace 6 platform.
Most of the data had been migrated, but there might some some files/photos/posts left behind. For those items, you can still access the old website through beta.redelijkheid.com. Just replace the www for beta, and everything should work.

If you have questions, you can contact me through the contact page.

Posted on November 22, 2012 and filed under Website, News, Personal.

Nicotine Vaccine... WTF?!

While browsing the news sites, I stumbled upon this Nicotine Vaccine video on Reuters. Nicotine (smoking)... Vaccine? Since when is smoking caused by a virus?

A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism, and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as foreign, destroy it, and "remember" it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters.

What's next? A vaccine for Kleptomania? Bad driving? Being obnoxious? This is (in my opinion) nothing more than an effort of Big Pharma to have us take more and more drugs. They have to do something to keep their investors happy since more and more drug patents are expiring.

Posted on July 27, 2012 and filed under News, No Way!!!.

The Leica M-Monochrom and More

Last Tuesday (May 10th), Leica announced a couple of new Leica goodies to the world. Of the items, the Leica X2 was the least shocking (IMO). The other two items, a monochrome version of the M9-P (Leica M-Monochrom) and a new 50mm Summicron-M f/2, were quite the news. The Leica M9-P Hermès Special Editions were just overpriced versions of the current M9-P for the filthy rich (@ $50,000 USD).

Posted on May 14, 2012 and filed under News, Personal, Photography.

Hollywood's Next DRM Failure in the Making

Later this week several Hollywood-related companies will announce a new digital media distribution system that's suppose to ignite digital downloads of movies (and possible other digital content). They call it DECE (Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem). The key-feature being 'portability'.

This time a name without 'protection' or 'rights' in its name, but the result is much the same.
In the 'old' days DRM was implemented by protecting the resource with a key, and if you had the proper 'key' on your device the content was playable. Downside was that playback was mainly limited to only one device, or it was OS/player dependent (Windows -> Windows Media Player, or Apple iTunes, OSX -> Itunes).

If you wanted it to play on another device you had a problem, since you lacked the proper key to 'unlock' the digital content. Thankfully Apple has lot's of DRM-free mp3's in it's iTunes store, but not everything (like the movies / TV Shows) is DRM free, or watchable on lots of devices.

Posted on January 4, 2010 and filed under Copyrights, DRM, Movies, News.

Mobile Phone Communication Codes Cracked

The German scientist Karsten Nohl published his findings this week on the CCC (Chaos Communications Congress) in Berlin. The CCC is an annual hacking convention, which is being held in Berlin, Germany.

Normally, the GSM communication switches frequency regularly, and therefor it's hard to listen in, but if you can crack the frequency switching algorithm..... Which is exactly what Karsten Nohl and his team did.
They cracked the so-called stream-cipher A5/1 which protects the voice conversations, and published details off it on the CCC in Berlin.

Posted on December 29, 2009 and filed under News, Security.

Buma/Stemra Changes Licensing Fees 2010

The all knowing, and all wise Dutch music copyright organisation BUMA/Stemra (BS, and yes, pun intended) decides to charge €130 (for copyright infringement) euros per embedded copyrighted file (do your own math). You are allowed 6 embedding violations/files for €130,00 (original pdf).
No need to mention that this caused a massive uproar in the (worldwide) blogosphere, news and politics.
Posted on October 10, 2009 and filed under Annoying, Copyrights, News.