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[Off-topic] Check that. I was in similar situation with Windows + US keyboard layout vs. German umlauts. fyi.

[Off-topic] Check that. I was in similar situation with Windows + US keyboard layout vs. German umlauts. fyi.

..use something different. I don't care what you use, or why you use it, as long as it works for you. And read this blogpost by Gilels Bowkett, which should tell you a thing or two about personal preferences. There will never be an agreement on this.

More info here. http://think-smarter.blogspot.com/2007/12/compusa-closing.html

People have discussed this over and over and over again. I presume you're talking about support for composite primary keys. They aren't necessarily a good thing. Go read http://rapidapplicationdevelopment.blogspot.com/2007/08/in-case-youre-new-to-series-ive.html

I don't even consider normalization taken to the extreme, to be a good thing. It's a trade off, just like everything else - what you gain by normalization, you might lose in the form of added application complexity, or perhaps even something else. Just because normalization is "good" according to ivory-tower database theory, doesn't mean that anything that isn't fully normalized is "bad" or "broken".

"Yes I know that a serial/autoincrementing key makes it easy for the app... it makes it a lot harder for the DBA in a lot of cases."

Can you explain what exactly it is that makes it a lot harder? (And isn't a DBA paid to do his job?)

You can find a list of the main actors, plus contact information for members of Parliament and news organizations here (scroll down).

The most important person to contact is your MP. I've heard it's better to get him or her to forward your letter to the minister responsible (Jim Prentice) than it is to send it to Prentice directly. Doing both can't hurt. Paper mail and faxes are the best, though phone calls are good too. Don't forget to contact newspapers big and small. In all cases, be polite and to the point.

You can find your MP's contact information by typing in your postal code here.

If you need sample letters, check out the Facebook group's list. My non-technical explanation of why this is a terrible law is here. I'll quote it in a reply to this post.

as mentioned here, http://o-smear.blogspot.com/2007/11/spam-what-spam.html - at least a portion of the "censored" content appeared to be links to Overstock.com products as advertised for sale. Hm, that reminds me.. I want a spam sammich!

While you are at it, why not suggest some alternate copyright laws. We can fix it, shall we?

http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html

Sorry for the double post, forgot to include the link in the first.

all the best,

drew

Bugs in the computer: Sun Microsystems, Inc. knows why Brazil is known to its native inhabitants as the kingdom of the ants.

Ants in yer... Pants? NOT! (Toshiba notebook/laptop); Ants Invade Apple iBook.

Ants In My Nokia (A Yahoo! account is required) 5210 Mobile Phone.

Ants in Omniview switchboxes: An e-mail story of ants invading a network switchbox.

Argentine ants invade a network hub.

A photograph showing ants nesting in a guy's phone box, affecting his DSL connection and phone system.

(a) Violano-virtuoso: Video link Considering it was made almost 100 years ago, isn't bad! This one used discs to rub against the strings to produce the sound. The Toyota robot uses the back and forth motion of a bow which is definitely more complex.

(b) The violobot: Pic and Text link Video Link Sucks!

(c) An attempt at Penn State from 10 years ago in a research project Link. Made mostly noise. Probably abandoned.

I wrote about the i-1 on my blog; there's some pictures there that might be interesting.

http://janneinosaka.blogspot.com/2007/11/i-1.html

Even after meeting online criminals in person, they still tried to rip me off. Fortunately, I tracked them down and got them. Stolen and Recovered 1949 Chevy Saga

Ladies and Gentlemen:

You have no idea...too late. There are MULTIPLE contamination (both accidental and intentional) problems already. We are rapidly moving to biological armageddon, for a number of reasons. But heck, don't take my word for it. Google for GMO seed contamination. I hope that you will be appropriately outraged and shocked by what you discover and hammer your politicians ASAP.

Here's a couple examples:
http://www.biotech-info.net/control_issues.html
http://bioseguridad.blogspot.com/2006/05/hawaiian-papaya-gmo-contaminated-by.html
http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl/est/99/dec/dec-news6.html

Et cetera, et cetera, unfortunately...

Well, that last sentence blew this comment up... Firefox most certainly does come with a spellchecker. http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/11/firefox-2-spelling-dictionary-hacks.html

Realistically, this is expected but not necessarily a big deal; had the DOJ presented some new argument here - one which was more powerful than the existing arguments - that would have been problematic. Here, they've done little more than endorse the existing arguments.

I know this is off topic BUT I began thinking about my situation. If I take Concast to court for terminating my Internet Account by the same argument, since it's hard to determine actual damages, I can pull a number out of thin air???

Cool :D

FYI.. in a nutshell, the company terminated the accounts of several people on my neighborhood for using the Internet too much but refused to say what that number is (how much is too much??). They've done this across the Salt Lake Valley and still refuse to state what is acceptable use.

Oh and yes, the advertisement DID say we had "Unlimited use for a flat monthly fee". Bait and switch / False Advertising basically.

I just find it strange an organization can just "guess" at their damages.

Unfortunately, Canada has a really bad track record for IT.
Remember the gun registry database? Not a terribly ambitious project... It was budgeted for $2 Million, and ended up running $748 Million over budget (seriously).

(Not the best link, didn't have much time to look for one).
http://cdnshooter.blogspot.com/2007/04/excellent-essay-on-cost-of-gun-control.html

The comments on http://poweryogi.blogspot.com/2005/03/hbsapplyyourself-admit-status-snafu.html sure seem to underline the lax approach to security...

This stuff really makes my wanna scream. I found a new logo for them in here.

If the motion is granted, there probably will not be an appeal.

Ah I picked a bad example although you have to admit that was a bit abusive of the spirit of copyright if not the letter.

Here is a study that suggests that as many as 1/3 of DMCA takedowns could readily be challenged in court on clear grounds.

Here is an outright abuse of the DMCA to silence discussion of a topic: DMCA Abused

AMD is fighting a losing battle. Intel defined the current market and AMD cannot beat them at their own game. They are condemned to always play second fiddle unless they can find a way to redefine the market or carve a new market that will supersede the old one. They can only do so by reassessing the current state of the art in multicore CPU architecture and computer programming and correct what is wrong with it. And there is a lot that is wrong with it. I call it The Age of Crappy Concurrency.

Now that the industry is transitioning to massive parallelism, AMD has the chance of a lifetime to change the computing landscape in its favor and leave Intel and everybody else in the dust. See also AMD Can Kick Intel's Ass and Half a Century of Crappy Computing.

AMD is fighting a losing battle. Intel defined the current market and AMD cannot beat them at their own game. They are condemned to always play second fiddle unless they can find a way to redefine the market or carve a new market that will supersede the old one. They can only do so by reassessing the current state of the art in multicore CPU architecture and computer programming and correct what is wrong with it. And there is a lot that is wrong with it. I call it The Age of Crappy Concurrency.

Now that the industry is transitioning to massive parallelism, AMD has the chance of a lifetime to change the computing landscape in its favor and leave Intel and everybody else in the dust. See also AMD Can Kick Intel's Ass and Half a Century of Crappy Computing.

AMD is fighting a losing battle. Intel defined the current market and AMD cannot beat them at their own game. They are condemned to always play second fiddle unless they can find a way to redefine the market or carve a new market that will supersede the old one. They can only do so by reassessing the current state of the art in multicore CPU architecture and computer programming and correct what is wrong with it. And there is a lot that is wrong with it. I call it The Age of Crappy Concurrency.

Now that the industry is transitioning to massive parallelism, AMD has the chance of a lifetime to change the computing landscape in its favor and leave Intel and everybody else in the dust. See also AMD Can Kick Intel's Ass and Half a Century of Crappy Computing.

"There were 16 patent cases filed in the Eastern District of Texas in January 2007. That's one every other day. 75% were filed by trolls. Why do trolls like the Eastern District of Texas? That's easy. That district, comprised of courts in Marshall, Tyler, Texarkana, and other locales, consists of conservative jurors who think the government (and, by extension, the Patent Office) can do no wrong, and who favor patentees more than anywhere else in the country."

With respect, Sir or Madam ... you just provided a classic example of knee-jerk ignorance.

I urge you to lurk on some of the threads involving these issues and educate yourself more thoroughly as to what the stakes really are, or if you would like to get up to speed more quickly, visit Ray Beckerman's blog (he regularly posts relevant material on Slashdot and is known as NewYorkCountryLawyer hereabouts. He's an attorney who defends people from these lawsuits, and has kindly provided a wealth of information on the situation and its legal ramifications. I strongly suggest you read it before you post on this topic again.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Eastern_District_of_Texas and http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2007/05/eastern-district-of-texas-january-2007.html for more details about why there.

Rob Weir is indeed an employee from IBM known for his anti-ooxml blogposts. And it seems his effort of spreading anti-ooxml information has now transgressed into the Google search engine. Google apperantly refuses to index Office Open XML files. See: http://ooxmlhoaxes.blogspot.com/2007/12/ooxml-google-search-engine-supports-ibm.html Where Google indexes tons or arbitrary fileformats it manages to find only 1 percent of Office Open XML files on the web.

The way the WikiClique works can be seen here. A Wikipedia editor, Ashibaka, has a legitimate concern about the copyright status of an image (one that was ultimately vindicated when the image was deleted later), but is ganged up on by SlimVirgin, Jayjg, and FeloniousMonk, all fervent supporters of the clique (and probably members of the secret "cyberstalking" list). At one point, FeloniousMonk has the chutzpah to say "What I've seen here is very one-sided bullying and intimidation of SV over a petty, contrived issue, and it's going to stop, Kelly included." Yes, it was a one-sided bullying and intimidation, but it's by him and his buddies. "Kelly" here is Kelly Martin, then an administrator (who was trying to step in and stop the fight in a fair and balanced way); she's since become a Wikipedia critic with a very incisive blog.

Another interesting Wikipedia-related blog

The way the WikiClique works can be seen here. A Wikipedia editor, Ashibaka, has a legitimate concern about the copyright status of an image (one that was ultimately vindicated when the image was deleted later), but is ganged up on by SlimVirgin, Jayjg, and FeloniousMonk, all fervent supporters of the clique (and probably members of the secret "cyberstalking" list). At one point, FeloniousMonk has the chutzpah to say "What I've seen here is very one-sided bullying and intimidation of SV over a petty, contrived issue, and it's going to stop, Kelly included." Yes, it was a one-sided bullying and intimidation, but it's by him and his buddies. "Kelly" here is Kelly Martin, then an administrator (who was trying to step in and stop the fight in a fair and balanced way); she's since become a Wikipedia critic with a very incisive blog.

Another interesting Wikipedia-related blog

Universities get targetted by the MPAA with claims that university students are responsible for 44% of their local domestic losses and even releasing a top 25 list of universities that are the worst but it ends up backfiring on them when they receive their own DMCA takedown notice for a tool they then want universities to deploy. They did not think this thing through very well. The toolkit was shabily put together and the website was hastily thrown together. I think it is pretty safe to say they really screwed up their relationships with universities and have now pissed off the open source community. PR stands for "Public Relations" not "Public Ridicule". They need to work on that.

And from http://mytakeonsecurity.blogspot.com/

If you google for site:mediadefender-defenders.com "edu ips" intitle:edu you will find 4 links. In those links they state between 0.65% to 2.5% were EDU addresses. They speculate that the number is low due to the fact a lot of the IP addresses are probably from NAT (private networks). If a University is using NAT then all traffic coming from the University will appear as a single IP address. The number of students that were in the file sharing network could be a bit higher than the numbers they state but this is just the number of IP addresses from EDU address space and not necessarily IP addresses of "illegal" file sharers.

It makes you wonder if attacking universities was really worth it.

It may be because he just recently became the richest man in the world... and If I recall correctly it is still not "official" untile Fortune publishes its anual list... not that it matters.

Talking about Slim (disclaimer? I am a Mexican) I usually held him in a low steem (sp?) because of the way he has made his fortune (or what everyone said). However, the more I read about him, the more I agree with his views (at least, with his views about sharing his fortune). For example, instead of just giving away his fortune, he is supposed to have this plan to create schools and improve overall education in Mexico. He once said, when asked about the Bill Gates and Warren Buffet donations, that he was not going to be like Santa Claus just giving away their money, he said that, doing these could create some leeches.

In that way, I agree with him, it is akin to the saying that goes, give a man a fish and he will eat today, show him how to fish and he will eat everyday (or somehting like that).

Anyway, if any of you wants to practice your spanish, here is a very interesting and up to date story about Slim:
La historia detrás de Slim written 08 - 2007.

The google translation to english can be found here

And, concerning the XO laptop, I have read that his plans are to give it to libraries first. Where kids can learn how to use them.

The problem with this kind of project (at least in Mexico I think) is that it is not just possible to handle the laptops to the kids, there must be some *plan* for teaching them something. However, the most difficult part is to teach the Teachers what to do with them and to make them adopt whatever plan is created.

Now, reasoning about the fear some people here has about the computer being stolen. Well, I am not very sure it is a problem. The computers are not state of the art, in a sense that they can not be sold for a lot of money. The better anyone who steals it can do is use it.

I believe it is similar to an issue that was raised when Lopez Obrador was major of Mexico city (and one of the things I think he did VERY right). He created a program in which there were free books for people to read in the underground (Metro) in Mexico D.F., the idea is that, when you were going to travel for some time in the underground, you could grab one of those books (with short stories in them) and read. I was really amazed and glad the times I used the metro and saw people actually reading the books, and even a lady reading to what I presume was his mother.

Now, one time I was with a friend in the Metro, he noted how there were very few books in the station and told me that it was very sad that people stole the books. But, what I told him is that, given that the books have no other use than to be read, the fact that someone got it meant that he (or whomever he gave it to) will be reading it, hence, the objective of the book was still accomplished. Of course those books could not really be sold as they were specially edited for the metro (and had covers indicating they were free) so, no one would buy them.

MS Office 2007 is like a Ferrari, if by Ferrari you mean huge resource consuming SUV, with all the agility of an overloaded dump truck and a propensity for locking it's doors randomly.

No, he's the one that sues you because your laptop (XO) interface looks like a game from many years ago. (Robotron)

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/11/another-xo-lawsuit-on-horizon.html

http://geekandhumor.blogspot.com/2007/12/first-dot-com-com-ever-in-world.html

I think you missed my point. If you get refused because the border guard thinks he needs to make a quota or is just having a pissy day, it means next time you'll be subject to higher scrutiny. And likely refused with the reason "was refused before".

Belgians don't need visas to enter the US, anyway:
http://theroadtothehorizon.blogspot.com/2007/02/day-i-got-exiled-from-us.html

You can argue "his papers weren't in order" but that's not how the system is supposed to work--the airports are supposed to make sure he has his papers in order _before_ he leaves.

This may not affect you--unless you go on holiday somewhere and when you return they decide your passport is a fake--but it affects me because my family will no longer visit me due to US rules. And they live in countries with visa waiver agreements with the US.

There are a great many stories out there regarding US refusing entry to people who otherwise look like they have no suspicion. And that google search I linked to can not seem to find most of them. My google-fu is weak today. :(

I think this one counts as "playing around"
http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-chocolate-printer-made-from-LEGO/

The RepRap guys have played around with the IDEA (and lots of other material ideas)
http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/MaterialsScience

And Fab@Home has been used with chocolate - shame it's the most expensive by far.
http://3dprinterusers.blogspot.com/2007/05/more-than-chocolate-cornells-fabhome.html

It's an entertainment industry. It even has its own financial markets in some cases. See my blog for examples as to what I mean.

http://dragonsbite.blogspot.com/

-Maelstrom Baphomet

While I agree with you that a few random passes will completely delete everything it touches, there is one tiny exception. As far as I remember, hard drives are built to be slightly larger than their advertised size, with firmware that recognizes and simply avoids bad sectors (given the size of modern hard drives, a bad sector or two is nothing). Occasionally, the HD Firmware will recognize an area going bad during daily use of the HD, copy the data to a good sector, and simply avoid the bad sector from then on, mapping it right out.

Performing a few random passes (or 35, for that matter) will never touch data in sectors that went bad during the use of the hard drive. The chance of that data being important and being recoverable is far less likely than you being struck by lighting twice (yes, I pulled that statistic out of my ass), so no one worries about it. But this is slashdot, so I felt a need to add to the conversation.

--
whereisstony.blogspot.com

There's been a particularly heated exchange going on in the developer's blogs which started with someone describing the new desktop/plasma as "useless crap." Aaron Seigo (the above mentioned core developer) then replies in the comments "i'm tired of this shit".

Now, one of the complaints leveraged was the lack of familiarity a KDE3 user would have with the alien and unfinished Plasma desktop due to a lack of migration path from the familiar kicker/kdesktop/kmenu. After a few more exchanges (which are displayed in all their sordid glory on Planet KDE, Mr. Seigo then announces that he already had some code written to implement a more traditional menu system, but in light of being pissed off by people pointing out some pretty glaring flaws, he will not work on it anymore. Classy.

The whole thing is just childish and immature on both parts and doesn't really fill me with confidence, especially in light of the unfinished and buggy RC.

But again, the only problem with the KDE4 platform so far seems to be Plasma, and it's unfortunate since the project as a whole really seems ready to shake up the Linux desktop. Unfortunately the most visible part of it isn't up to snuff.

There's been a particularly heated exchange going on in the developer's blogs which started with someone describing the new desktop/plasma as "useless crap." Aaron Seigo (the above mentioned core developer) then replies in the comments "i'm tired of this shit".

Now, one of the complaints leveraged was the lack of familiarity a KDE3 user would have with the alien and unfinished Plasma desktop due to a lack of migration path from the familiar kicker/kdesktop/kmenu. After a few more exchanges (which are displayed in all their sordid glory on Planet KDE, Mr. Seigo then announces that he already had some code written to implement a more traditional menu system, but in light of being pissed off by people pointing out some pretty glaring flaws, he will not work on it anymore. Classy.

The whole thing is just childish and immature on both parts and doesn't really fill me with confidence, especially in light of the unfinished and buggy RC.

But again, the only problem with the KDE4 platform so far seems to be Plasma, and it's unfortunate since the project as a whole really seems ready to shake up the Linux desktop. Unfortunately the most visible part of it isn't up to snuff.

There's been a particularly heated exchange going on in the developer's blogs which started with someone describing the new desktop/plasma as "useless crap." Aaron Seigo (the above mentioned core developer) then replies in the comments "i'm tired of this shit".

Now, one of the complaints leveraged was the lack of familiarity a KDE3 user would have with the alien and unfinished Plasma desktop due to a lack of migration path from the familiar kicker/kdesktop/kmenu. After a few more exchanges (which are displayed in all their sordid glory on Planet KDE, Mr. Seigo then announces that he already had some code written to implement a more traditional menu system, but in light of being pissed off by people pointing out some pretty glaring flaws, he will not work on it anymore. Classy.

The whole thing is just childish and immature on both parts and doesn't really fill me with confidence, especially in light of the unfinished and buggy RC.

But again, the only problem with the KDE4 platform so far seems to be Plasma, and it's unfortunate since the project as a whole really seems ready to shake up the Linux desktop. Unfortunately the most visible part of it isn't up to snuff.

There's been a particularly heated exchange going on in the developer's blogs which started with someone describing the new desktop/plasma as "useless crap." Aaron Seigo (the above mentioned core developer) then replies in the comments "i'm tired of this shit".

Now, one of the complaints leveraged was the lack of familiarity a KDE3 user would have with the alien and unfinished Plasma desktop due to a lack of migration path from the familiar kicker/kdesktop/kmenu. After a few more exchanges (which are displayed in all their sordid glory on Planet KDE, Mr. Seigo then announces that he already had some code written to implement a more traditional menu system, but in light of being pissed off by people pointing out some pretty glaring flaws, he will not work on it anymore. Classy.

The whole thing is just childish and immature on both parts and doesn't really fill me with confidence, especially in light of the unfinished and buggy RC.

But again, the only problem with the KDE4 platform so far seems to be Plasma, and it's unfortunate since the project as a whole really seems ready to shake up the Linux desktop. Unfortunately the most visible part of it isn't up to snuff.

For proof of just how big QR codes are in Japan, have a look at this. http://arity.blogspot.com/2007/12/information-density.html

And, I decided to put it in my knoppix remaster, replacing version 2.0.0.9.
Yes, I skipped over 2.0.0.10, since Slashdot did not tell me about it. I did test it for a while before I put it in the CD.

Exactly. There was an incident this past week where numerous websites registered under the .cn TLD but hosted somewhere near Chicago were finding their way into many Google search results. The only purpose of the sites was to gain high pagerank and infect unfortunate clicker-onners with malware. The problem was discovered and reported by folks outside Google, so Google wants to make sure that people have a way to report such problems before they get out of hand.

Whether this is a losing battle or not is anybody's guess.