Slashdot Mirror

"Q: What is 2 + 5? A: It is 5 + 2 of course."

My blog posting a year ago on how a community college classroom of 20-year-olds will be utterly stunned when presented with this information: http://angrymath.blogspot.com/2009/03/never-ending-amazement.html

as for Stardock the CEO has stated that he purposely targets a subsection of pc gaming that doesn't have as high of piracy rates.
But even he wasn't able to ignore piracy as planned. Pirates overloaded demigod servers after all: http://drmnewsbits.blogspot.com/2009/04/demigod-servers-pounded-by-pirates.html
Big companies are not going to shrug their shoulders at 9:1 piracy rates on the pc when consoles and MMOs don't even come close. As the Unreal CEO pointed out there's a big overlap between people that install $200 video cards and people that pirate games. PC games like Nancy Drew have sales that aren't affected by piracy because a 12 year old girl is far less likely to pirate than a 24 year old male who has a gaming pc that is decked out with neon lights. The 'core' audience is pretty lousy when it comes to sales unless it is an MMO.

A lot of authors (and I'm one) would agree with you on the pricing issue -- if not on the "right" to take it for free. Some of them will give it to you if you ask nicely (or visit their website) though.

Author J.A. Konrath has been blogging recently about how much he's been making ($4200 last month) off of his low priced ($1.99, $2.99) e-books on Kindle (books he's selling directly, vs others of his that his publisher is selling at higher prices). Unsurprisingly, lower priced books sell better than higher priced ones -- and in his and a few other authors' cases, they're selling pro-quality, professionally edited stories, not unreadable crud by a newbie author. His view is that the high prices publishers want to charge for e-books is a serious mistake, and in his next book deals he's not going to give e-rights to the publisher unless they fork over some serious (six-figure) cash for them, and a better percentage royalty.

This very much parallels what some bands are doing with distributing their music themselves rather than going through RIAA companies. Indeed the term "indie author" is catching on.

There still needs to be some vetting of an unknown author's work, either by traditional publishing or word of mouth and reviews from early readers, but the change is coming. I'm certainly considering making some of my own work (initially previously-published stuff to which I have e-rights) available that way. Even a little success that way gives a bit more leverage with a traditional publisher (which is still the most profitable route to go and will be for a few more years yet).

It's false news. The crack doesn't actually work - just read this forum thread. You get all kinds of weird problems like cannot accept quests, cannot advance in the game, cant use items and so on... Or this: http://filenetworks.blogspot.com/2010/04/ipaki-group-aftermath.html

As you can see, new Tweets are glorifying UBISoft DRM which has so far been successful against PC game pirates. But is it the best future protection? We don’t think so. “It withstood all the efforts to get cracked.” All? Not all. Several folks in a well known Russian underground community (CS.RIN.RU) are working on a server emulation patch – and they’ve been partially successful so far and have apparently got the game to work until sequence 5. Their method involves playing a legit copy of the game, logging all responses that come from UBISoft servers and building a complete server emulator. However to make the emulator complete, they will have to explore the game 100% which is a time consuming process. Be that as it may, this clearly shows that UBI’s DRM is not as invincible as it is claimed to be.

It has taken them over a month now. And all that is needed from Ubisoft part is to make their games more open sandbox like with even more server-side stuff and you cannot ever get a complete working version.

(Java architect) Gilad Bracha writes,

Support for tail recursion should be required by the language specification

Guido says you don't need it! (/me ducks)

Erlang programmers might disagree ;-)

Guido says you don't need it! (/me ducks)

Erlang programmers might disagree ;-)

Kinda interesting that Google limits themselves to 4 languages:
C/C++
Java
JavaScript
Python
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html
"One of the (hundreds of) cool things about working for Google is that they let teams experiment, as long as it's done within certain broad and well-defined boundaries. One of the fences in this big playground is your choice of programming language. You have to play inside the fence defined by C++, Java, Python, and JavaScript."

And for GAE, JavaScript and Java/Rhino look great.

I think JavaScript is due for a huge burst of popularity as soon as folks "get it". JS on the server and on the client, and JSON for data/ajax. Brilliant. But it takes a lot to understand JS .. the Good Parts.

These guys http://deepakphatak.blogspot.com/2008/05/this-is.html should be feeling at least partly vindicated too. (Long post, describing how dirty MS plays - esp sec 3.2 and a couple of pages up and down).

I hate how people who should know better assume that everybody runs the same Linux distro that they do and fail to write HOWTO instructions intended for a wide audience in a generic manner.

At http://maximumhoyt.blogspot.com/2010/04/quake2-in-browser-in-mandriva-2010.html there are Mandriva-ized abbreviated instructions which are useful if you use Mandriva (or a Mandriva derivative) and want to try this out as well.

But I do have an error and Quake2 won't display (I get an Aw, Snap! in Chrome), so any feedback will be appreciated.

airlines are a private industry - there's nothing that states they have to let you fly.

Therein lies the rub, individual airlines should be the ones to set security procedures not the government. I as a passenger should be able to decide if I want to board an airline's flight that requires ID or one that does not. If an airlines wants to do an anal exam, they should be allowed to require one. Then if a passenger doesn't like that requirement s/he could then fly on an airliner that does not require it. Oh, and there's nothing that states government can't prevent passengers from flying either.

If you're not a US citizen, you're not protected by the Constitution.

Can you point out to be where in the Constitution of the USA it limits rights to only US citizens? Here's what James Madison had to say about Constitutional Rights of Non-Citizens. Thomas Jefferson said "An equal application of law to every condition of man is fundamental." It would have been quite easy for the Founding Fathers to exclude foreigners from having rights too, but did they? No! They said the opposite.

Falcon

Actually, you’re wrong; the YouTube blog only says that it works on “most” videos.

---

Internet Future UK

The issue that MS is pointing out is that because Chrome combines the address bar and the search box, when you start typing hotmidgetoatmealpor, that information is sent directly to Google so they can do auto-completion/auto-searching. Where it is associated with you. And saved. Forever.

When you go to the privacy options in Chrome, there's a link to more information about privacy options. There they state that the information that's transmitted for the suggest feature is anonymized within 24 hours. I have no reason not to believe Google, since they haven't betrayed my trust so far. See: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/update-to-google-suggest.html Apparently, the concern was raised, and Google responded by implementing changes to protect your privacy.

...choongiri is going on the offensive against Microsoft, accusing the convicted monopolist of creating a browser that just SUCKS ASS!

The issue that MS is pointing out is that because Chrome combines the address bar and the search box, when you start typing hotmidgetoatmealpor, that information is sent directly to Google so they can do auto-completion/auto-searching. Where it is associated with you. And saved. Forever.

From Google's Privacy Blog (in 2008):

That's what occurs on the surface of Google Suggest. Here's what happens under the hood. To provide its recommendations Google Suggest needs to know what you've already typed, so these partial queries are sent to Google. For 98% of these requests, we don't log any data at all and simply return the suggestions. For the remaining 2% of cases (which we select randomly), we do log data, like IP addresses, in order to monitor and improve the service.

However, given the concerns that have been raised about Google storing this information -- and its limited potential use -- we decided that we will anonymize it within about 24 hours (basically, as soon as we practically can) in the 2% of Google Suggest requests we use. This will take a little time to implement, but we expect it to be in place before the end of the month.

Google will be bundling both Flash and PDF reader with Chrome as internal plug-ins. The user will be able to disable them in the options menu. You can check out the article here at the Google Operation System blog.

Obviously if you run the same code on the same data you will get the same result But what happens when you run it on the other data?

I don't have sex. I use MakeHuman.

My first reaction when I learned of this last night was that it must be a twisted April Fools joke. But I went on PACER & actually found the documents in one of the suits. Here 's my blog post, which links to the complaint, ex parte discovery order, and ex parte declaration.

Incredibly, the Court's order:

-makes no provision for the customers to be notified;
-relies on a representation that the plaintiff has "proprietary" evidence which shows the infringement;
-required no evidence or detailed allegation as to why jurisdiction and venue could be placed in that district; and
-allows 2094 defendants to be joined in 1 case, although there is no basis for doing so under the federal rules.

Per my subject-line above. & this quote from the article here on /.:

"The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 passed a Senate panel, giving the president unprecedented power to issue a nation-wide blackout or restriction on websites without congressional approval" - by Akido37 (1473009) on Tuesday March 30, @10:49AM (#31670706)

?

Well, then from the SOUND of it @ least, I am ALL FOR IT personally!

Why??

Well, because online attacks DO go on, & they DO exist, & they DO INTERFERE WITH PEOPLE'S LIVES IN SERIOUS WAYS IS WHY!

(AND, in many ways, because a LOT goes over "the public internet" people, a lot more than say, slashdot webpages, whether you know it or not)...

E.G.-> Such as databases' drivers & libs using ports on the net, like:

----

A.) SQLServer = default ports usually used -> 1433/1434/4022/2382/2382/443 (SSL)/135 (RPC) & on both UDP & TCP/IP

B.) Oracle = default ports usually used -> 66/1521/1525/1526/1527/1529/1571/1575/1630/1748/1754/1808/1809/1830/2481/2482/2483/2484/3872/3891/3938

C.) IBM DB/2 = default ports usually used -> 523/532/6789/50000/60000 (probably more here, this is the one I am LEAST familiar with, sorry I could not be more "complete" here)

D.) MySQL = default ports usually used -> 3306 (probably more here too, I am JUST "getting into" this one lately (hey, it's FREE man!!!)

----

(Those tools, as I am sure MOST of you know, are for businesses where YOU yourself do business, which means YOUR MONIES or other life-crucial information, for instance - which again, is a LOT more than & of most likely far greater import than merely the web's HTML data alone you use, while you browse websites, in other words...)

And, then there are things like POWER PLANTS (which, like it or not, DO conduct things over the public internet), & even life-monitoring devices + security systems.

SHOULD THE GOV'T. TAKE ACTIVE MEASURES vs. ATTACKS ON THESE THINGS NOTED ABOVE? Hey guys...?? ABSOLUTELY!

(Especially IF they're being "cyber-attacked", OR, just to prepare for such an event, JUST IN CASE!)

APK

P.S.=> See- The past 12 yrs. now or so, I've taken a more than "somewhat" active interest in things 'security-related' online... &, know what sort of "spooks me" (& yes, even shocks me, because of the cultures/nations I see it coming from mainly)?

CHINA...

Yes - It really "blows my mind" that a culture w/ more than 5,000++ yrs. of recorded history behind it is showing up, & MORE THAN ANY OTHER NATION BY FAR, in the lists I use to populate my HOSTS file here, & here are the sources (all known & reputable) I typically utilize, so you can check this yourselves (or, perhaps, even USE THEM yourselves for hosts file population to block out known bogus sites &/or servers):

-----

http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/
http://www.malwareurl.com/listing-urls.php?page=1&urls=off&rp=
http://www.malware.com.br/lists.shtml
http://securitylabs.websense.com/content/alerts.aspx
http://blog.fireeye.com/
http://mtc.sri.com/
http://www.scansafe.com/threat_center/threat_alerts
http://news.netcraft.com/
http://www.shadowserver.org/
https://zeustracker.abuse.ch/monitor.php?filter=online
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file

aka, what the world just experiences in 2008 (on a much smaller scale so far)

FTFY. In the early 1930's the world had no idea how far their economy would fall before it could be rebuilt. We've had our crash like in 1929, but it's going to take a few years for the true reality of our current situation to set in.

Wait, wut? Did I get that wrong?

Major corporations don't play April's fools? Seriously? Not even a little bit?

Wait, wut? Did I get that wrong?

Major corporations don't play April's fools? Seriously? Not even a little bit?

It will, and it did. Already.

As for the artists, I've come across several indie musicians/movie-makers/software developers with anti-pirate sentiments. Certainly considerably more than I've come across who support piracy, or explicitly allow their work to be pirated.

Anyway, I did a quick google search for "indie piracy" and turned up this guy:

http://yetanotherstrugglingwriter.blogspot.com/2010/03/piracy-its-wrong-dont-do-it-pt-1.html

So yeah, these artists are fighting obscurity, but they also know that fame is useless if it doesn't put food on the table.

classes, inheritence, abstraction, encapsulation, polymorphism, and decoupling.

It's possible the parent was (correctly) trying to say that a lot of the ActionScript features the GP mentioned actually weren't necessary to make JavaScript an OO language -- all of these things were (and are) quite possible in JS before ActionScript introduced various keyword-based mechanisms.

Yes, but this compilation is JIT as you point out. JIT is not the same thing as a compiled language.

While that's certainly a distinction, I don't think it takes much away from the larger point is that JavaScript as a language is pretty much running "fast enough" for most of the things Flash does, and in some cases competitively w/regards to speed.

Anyone who has worked in a particularly large codebase (1000+kloc) would not agree.

I am a counterexample. So is Steve Yegge, who seems about as familiar with large codebases and a certain popular statically typed language as anybody, and has made a great observation about how statically typed languages (particularly the common manifestly typed variety) might actually drive code size as much as help you work with it.

Historically, (as in 200 years ago), if you were defined as a Jew, that meant you practiced Judaism, hence when the Jews of Spain converted, they weren't called Jews. Plus, I'm pretty sure that our DNA is pretty close to that of the surrounding population, a few generations of inbreeding should cure any "ethnic" connection.

You translation of "Natsionalnost" is strange, since if you were a Tatarin from Uzbekistan, your passport would say, "Uzbek", right?

Since at least 19th century, large numbers of Russian intellectuals, plenty of them Jewish, were not religious.

Yes, as soon as they could assimilate, they did. So what, as soon as they could change "Natsionalnost" to Russian, they did so. Self-hating behavior is not limited to modern society.

The word "Jew" was usurped by people who practice Judaism, and "Jewish" religious organizations make massive amount of effort to create an impression that they represent all Jews. Russian Jews studied crash courses in Judaism, so they could claim on their political asylum applications that they were "religiously persecuted" in Russia -- despite the fact that each and every person that I have seen going through this process was an atheist. Of my whole family I am the only one who didn't do it. Seeing other Jews doing it was the most shameful experience in my life.

Wow, I can't even parse that. Those who try to speak for those who have no voice deserve our thanks not our derision. You think you'd be in America, without the effort of American Jewry in forcing the US to put pressure on the USSR to open the borders? From what I remember of the emigration process, and you'll have to forgive me, I was only 7, my parents only spoke the truth. There were jobs my father couldn't get, schools my brothers couldn't go to, specialties my mom was closed off from. I know a lot of Jews in USSR lost their connection to Judaism, but my family (warning, selection bias) kept to the major holidays. My grandmother strove to keep a kosher house, my mother fasted on Yom Kippur, we avoided leavened products on Passover (Happy Pesach everyone!) and try to get matzo through certain contact. That your family choose to turn their back on their heritage and yet wants to retain the historical context of "Jew" is your prerogative.

Because American culture is racist at its core.

??? Because they don't jump on your bandwagon? To judge is human, show me a society that doesn't. But the part I love about America, is most of the time, we strive to grow and better ourselves as a society. Hard to see in the short-term, but over time the good things emerge. Now xenophobic Russia is another matter, don't forget Vysotsky's great satire song "Anti-Semite" (english version of the lyrics - http://trans-int.blogspot.com/2004/12/song-of-anti-semite.html ).

overinflated sense of pride in one's ancestry

Why is in overinflated? Everyone is allowed to be proud, except Jews?

Honestly, your hostility to America and Judaism (as a religious designation), makes me ask 2 question: (1) Why identify as a Jew? and (2) Why are you in America, if you are so oppressed? If Russia is so great, why not return? Many have done so. After all, if Americans don't hate you for being a Jew, I'm sure the nice non-oppressing Russians will be more then happy to fulfill that old slogan "bey zhidov spasai Rossiyu" ("Beat the Jews and save Russia").

PERTAMAX!!!

movie2satu | download all movie

Personally, I don't think the space lab's religion is any of our business.

like this :top

movie2satu | download all movie

It worked out pretty well for Gabe Newell, too....

Just helping others out:

It's geohot.

GeoHot's hack was obviously way easier to do because he had a powerful userspace to work from.

Perhaps this is what's spooking Sony.

Clearly you haven't read the piece. He would have had to forfeit his fee to get his name off the movie. That's not something a writer can usually afford...

Then he wasn't prepared, as Harlan Ellison was, with a registered pseudonym that he could insist they use instead of his own name; Ellison would use his 'Cordwainer Bird' pseudonym to both distance himself from work that he felt had been mangled beyond repair by others, as he did for the TV series 'The Starlost'.

I wonder if the next version of Battlefield Earth was written by school children for a competition.

Toyota's software is still to blame because it failed to react properly to anomalies. If the software is written properly, the parts that are still working should be able to detect any anomaly and react accordingly. Toyota's software research managers need to read this: How to Construct 100% Bug-Free Software.

An interested person might start here: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/

This is interesting reading: http://socghop.appspot.com/

Chrome and/or Chromium browser: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome

Whatever your interest is in open source, try googling it. Not everything in the labs is open source, but some is - check that out: http://www.googlelabs.com/

Want code to play with? You'll get more from Google than you'll EVER get from Microsoft. Maybe I exxagerated with the word "most" - but they have given away a lot of stuff, and they help with a lot more. One of the things you'll see when you click the links above is Gnome. They contribute, but, of course, Gnome doesn't belong to Google - that capital "g" is just coincidental.

So, go look around.

Ask Toyota. But there is no need to despair. Toyota software researchers or anybody else who writes safety-critical applications should read this: How to Construct 100% Bug-Free Software. It can be done but we will need to change to a synchronous and reactive software model.

That's not true in my experience. I have switched from Google to Scroogle (.org) which doesn't track me. I lose the geolocation (hits from my own country first), but everything else is fine.

I think you are sorely missing the point. If Google doesn't track a few users like you that doesn't hurt. If a search engine stopped tracking *everyone* (which is what you are suggesting) then you would get terrible results. Read this blog post if you want to learn more why this data is useful and what you would miss out on.

good read, but not convincing
NeerraaZZ

Israel was started with a clean slate, the backing of the United States and one of the world's largest immigrant populations who were already used to a certain sense of liberty in society; however it is not doing nearly as well as other countries in the EU in respecting human and civil rights. This is not just about apartheid in Palestine, religious courts or the numerous violations of the Geneva convention Israel has committed over the years but goes to the heart and soul of the government of Israel and its current majority Jewish population, " What happens when Jews are the minority in Israel? " This is going to happen sooner than later and from the past acts against the Israeli religious minorities esp the Muslims it looks like they will do everything in their power to ensure that the country is always run by Jewish laws, customs and politics. That is not a democracy, that is a theocracy. The only way you can do that is through the denial of civil rights, esp the right to participate fully in an openly democratic process and look, that is exactly what is happening .

  Turkey for better or worse is one of the most progressive Muslim majority states in the region and has a per capita GDP less than 1/5th that of Israel. Yes they have atrocious history and current operations against minorities as well that they have to account for, but I have far higher hopes that eventually Turkey will admit Genocide than Israel in my lifetime to admit its own mistakes and stop oppressing its own minorities.

http://xkcdsucks.blogspot.com/2009/12/comic-670-on-scale-from-1-to-awesome.html

I suspect that local subsidence and/or erosion is responsible.

Subsidence is typical in deltas if there has been any kind of civil engineering projects such as diversion of freshwater for human use, dykes, or other flood control projects. And indeed, this has occurred in the Ganges delta.

This link claims that subsidence in the Ganges delta is 4mm/year, while sea level rise is only 1.4mm/year.

I can see how this might be interesting in that it's related to a "writing class", but it's an on-line writing class! It is good to see that they are stressing some of the basics that may be somewhat lacking in some on-line (esp. non-journalistic) writing.

We had assignments to write articles for Wikipedia for several years as part of an electronic music class - each student submitted several articles (totals in the hundreds over the years the class ran) on music or music technology to Wikipedia. See http://wayneandwax.blogspot.com/2006/06/electro-class-of-06.html for more details.

http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2010/03/where-have-all-hackers-gone.html

I did embellish I admit but the latest figures I could get were from a Google blog in March of 09 (via IResearch) and put them at 25%:

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/03/googles-market-share-in-your-country.html

http://www.search-engine-feng-shui.com/parts-de-marche/ (in French)

Others have reported 30%-40% but I have yet to see any clear figures. If anyone has some post them, I'm kind of curious now.

and it works... http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2009/11/stunning-breakthrough-in-wireless.html

Sadly the CIA gave him that sway when they unsuccessfully tried to launch a coup against him in 2002 after he nationalized oil production.

Uh, [citation needed]. PDVSA was a state-owned company. What he did was sweeping the whole board of directors to place his loyals.

Very similar to what happened the coup against Mohommad Mossadegh in Iran in the 1950's. The downside is we got caught with our hand in the cookie jar this time around

Again, [citation needed]; it's too easy to paint your favourite bad guys behind everything bad that happens to you. Now tell me these people were all rallied, prodded and herded by CIA operators.

and Chavez has been very carte blanche about dragging it out every time anything critical of him comes out. Its only gotten worse as Chavez has gotten... umm... how to put it nicely... battier?

"Bolder" is the word you're looking for. He was a fan of Castro well before getting elected (he flew frequently to Cuba to meet him, and copied his style in speeches and rallies) but he kept mum about it when he was campaigning in '98. At that time, he slammed corruption, weak governments and selling out to the IMF as the root of Venezuela's evils, and he flatly denied being a socialist or any plans to nationalize companies. Shortly after election, it was all about "savage, inhuman neoliberalism" and put military cronies including fellow coup-mongers in key government positions. A few years later he vowed that Venezuela would sail the same "sea of happiness" as Cuba and started dropping references to socialism. Now he is all for socialism against capitalism in all its forms, and he claims to be marxist (though he admits he hasn't read The Capital).

Its a shame, he was a cool leader when he began; and had a number of revolutionary ideas (even if he completely understood the history of Simon Bolivar).

Oh, that. The Bolívar pseudo-cult. It's been taught in schools since... forever, and it's mostly hot air. HCh promised to rescue his "true" ideals and put them to work in public administration. When he assumed, it was all "Bolivarian This" and "Bolívar That". Now that he shifted his focus to socialism, Bolívar has been silently left out of the name of new projects, and everything is "Socialist X". See the pattern?

If they just stick a clause in the EULA the prohibits people from doing just that, they could stop it. Although I am not sure if they could go after the author, just those who use it. How they would detect that, I'm not sure, but I know there are a few sites that can detect AdBlock.

Firefox extensions can be detected through Javascript, including Greasemonkey. I don't think they would be able to detect specific Greasemonkey script though and the extension detection can be defeated.

As to the morality of blocking a client with a specific feature set: how many people here block IE from their site ? There are a lot of precedents, you don't need to put it in the EULA. It has always been the webserver's business what code he serves to which clients.

Chrome (on Windows) came out of beta back in 2008.

Gmail (again by Google) took over 5 years to leave Beta, so I could see it.

Chrome (on Windows) came out of beta back in 2008.

This doesn't surprise me at all. This is what Geek Squad does. They convince you that you are unable to install anything yourself because you are not a "geek". Then they charge you out the wazoo for a service a child could figure out. See: http://ruleroftheinterwebs.blogspot.com/2009/09/geek-squad-up-to-their-usual.html