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Actually, anyone serious about investing will buy and hold for a long period of time - say 10 to 15 years or more.

So, you want the Star Trek display panels that only display the relevant buttons for the present activity? :-)

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

I find RMS's views to be more imperical than necessary. He seems to want to force freedom on people as though they all wanted it. Some people would rather live in a prison and get free food than work for a living (yeah, really). It's probably a bad example, but the point is that true freedom comes from the choice of the programmer or the company to create what they want to create and be limited only in extreme cases (monopoly, etc.). This lack of restrictions includes being allowed to use the GPL or a closed-source MS style license ...

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

I am pro-choice because it is not up to the government to decide what a woman can and cannot do with her own body.

Why don't you just only read messages rated 2 and up? That gets you most of the good ones ... an no "first post" comment gets rated a 2 or 3 ...

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

As one of the probably many people who sent E-mail to ATI requesting specs and telling them about the convenience and benefits of open source, I'm thrilled :)

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

And on a conveniently offtopic note, killing Jews was perfectly legal in Nazi Germany, just as killing preborn children is in North America. The fact that one mother will lament a stillborn infant and another will have a premature baby after 6 months that the hospital will keep alive (not as part of the mother's body, I might add) and yet another "owns" her baby (as opposed to being responsible for it) because its still dependant on her for survival (which the government sees all children as being until 14 or so) and decides to have its head destroyed, cut open and sucked down a vacuum tube is proof our society is screwed up.

Anyway ... freedom for all! Suffering for most!

(And we wonder why the communists think capitalist society is screwed up?)

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

You want technical?

Video card produces a stream of data at a certain pair of frequencies for V/Hsync ... the cable going into the DVD card has this data and it is then passed through to the monitor untouched 99% of the time (depending on how often you watch DVD movies that is).

If you're watching a DVD movie, that section of the screen is rendered blue by the video card (as per the instructions of the software). The DVD card, being synchronized to the current V/Hsync of the video card (done at initialization for each resolution) produces data for the DVD image at the points where the data for the blue signal from the video card are ...

Video output = V
DVD output = D

Video DVD Combined

VVVVV DDD VVDDD
VVVVV DDD VVDDD
VVVVV DDD VVDDD
VVVVV VVVVV


The video signal is being mutated by the DVD card in one sense, but the DVD output of the DXR2 card is not affected one bit. If you think it is, you're crazy. If you want proof, just unhook your video card from the DVD card while its running a movie (not recommended!) and the picture will stay ... assuming you're full-screen (or else there won't be enough data for multisync monitors).

Have a great day ;)

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

I think my favorite feature of this would be to push a window away from me for a minute ... making it smaller but still visible, etc. It would also be nice if there were clear definitions in window creation of peer windows vs. modal child windows because a child could cause the parent to be "pushed away" a little, making "stacking" obvious. Peer windows, OTOH could sit on top of another window normally.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

What is needed is for digital signtures to get more prevalence in companies and have a legal challenge so that a body of case-law can be built to support digital signatures. More software that's well marketed and publicized will get us to that point.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

You're clueless (no offense :). The DXR2 is connected directly to the monitor, the video card is in turn plugged into the DXR2 card. Sure, the video from your usual VGA cis of slightly lower quality, but the DVD output is perfect (at least as far as extra cables goes).

Also, (on a completely different note), reading Creative's notes, the DXR2 driver is attempting to comply with the current open video specs. This is quite impressive (aside from them opening the interface in the first place).

Lastly of course, I own a DXR2 card and am quite interested in seeing it on Linux with overlay support (through X/DGA maybe?).

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

What I'm more interested in is the fact that any company actually interested in porting their apps to Linux can take WINE and work with it to make it work the way they want.

Sure, people like out-of-the-box solutions; that's why they buy Redhat (or Windows for that matter). But the point is that with open source solutions, those who find problems can fix them. This isn't about the religion of open source (or it shouldn't be, at least), but the reasoning for open source.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

Considering this article is relating ONLY to the workstation/server versions of Windows 2000, you're partially correct.

The point is that only users needing authentication need a license. Netscape server always priced itself against MS because it didn't do NT authentication of users, so you didn't need to buy the licensing. Ditto if you run Apache on NT (for some odd reason).

At any rate ... the customer upgrade to 2000 (Workstation/Server) is interesting ... but the gaming people will still be on 2000 home ...

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

The basic premise of Christianity is to love. Loving includes giving yourself over to others to do with as they see fit. For instance, for all the people to abuse my personal beliefs and religion -- to attack and denounce things I hold more sacred than they is hurful and unthought of in my mind. However, it is my duty as a Christian to believe that they have equal worth to myself as a human being before a God who loves all even though we are all unholy people. This explains why we are told to continue to be slaves if we are already slaves -- do not desire to be what you are not, simply be the best you can be at what you are is well stated there and elsewhere.

Also note that the Old Testament Law (an understanding of which is presumed in many NT texts) states that every 7 years, all slaves are to be released, no matter what their debt. That, and slaves were only to be made slaves because of military conquest or a debt that could not be paid (better than repo-ing my house!).

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

no better than just accepting religion

I know Slashdot repatriates articles for some people, but please read what I was replying to. There were several people concerned with the issue of incompatibity with browsers. I want people to use PNGs and not use GIFs. However, in deference to those who NEED GIF support, use this method and GIFs will no longer be as prevelant (sp?). If Netscape 3 supported PNGs, I'd use them exclusively (because that's what many Unicies are running).

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

We see many examples of people who believe things without proof. That is faith. We see them do stupid things because of their belief in that faith. That is the proof that faith is bad.

This is different though. When you consider the FSF, you're not seeing a commercial entity that is actually making money on open source strategies. For all these multiple groups put out interesting articles and rant lots, RedHat is in a position to be heard and to make a dent in how corporate america thinks about and does business. Lets support them so that those other multimillion dollar companies will move toward open source instead of infighting so much.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

Very true. And GIMP is not licensed. And many of us use GIMP. Thus endeth story.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

You can use some simple Javascript to use both GIFs and PNGs (or JPGs and PNGs) if you want to test for browser compatibility. Remember that a non-Javascript browser should receive the non PNG graphic for good measure. This could be a pain, but could be implemented as a script to convert entire pages (anyone?):


<script language="JavaScript"> <!--
if (navigator.mimeTypes &&
navigator.mimeTypes["image/png"] != null && navigator.mimeTypes["image/png"].enabledPlugin)
document.write('<img src="image.png">');
else
document.write('<img src="image.gif">');
// -->
</script>
<noscript>
<img src="image.gif">
</noscript>


The .enabledPlugin isn't strictly necessary -- it will simply prevent software like Netscape from attempting (or prompting) to download a plugin to support the type if not native.

Again, a simple wrapper could probably be made for this if anyone else finds it useful.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

... that, and we just gave them more publicity by posting their URL on Slashdot than they got in a day's spamming.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

Wonderful details; thank-you very much. I figured that an intelligent company (which I've presumed TurboLinux is produced by :) would maintain a patch-based system to stay up to speed with current kernels. I'm glad to hear that's happening.

I'm just hoping that even if the entirety of the patches aren't accepted that parts of them will be, seperate from the whole (if that's possible) and made into either compilation options or /proc/ settings.

Thank-you for the information.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

The moderation page should simply state that offtopic yet interesting and/or too deep in the thread to matter should be ignored by the moderator. Besides, that's what meta-moderating is for ... "no, that wasn't fair!"

My pet peave with moderation is that I have to read the articles three or four days late to see what the highscoring responses are ... and two weeks late to catch the posts by the people who don't read things right away.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

It's a simple typo ... Redhat 6.1 comes with 2.2.12 ... but I love your sig ;)

Gnome -- I use ... for the three panels I have running (autohiding) with clock / stats / etc.

I may get rid of them entirely at some point as Enlightenment's support for Epplets allows me to do the same things (and its root menus drop down the Gnome and KDE menus so I don't need little feet :).

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

The Distribution HOWTO is probably a good start. Distributions, to summarize, are packages of software, including a Linux base operating system.

Think of Windows without all the extra software (IE, WordPad, etc.). Then think of Microsoft selling the base Windows system to any company who wanted it (Symantec comes to mind) and those companies selling packages of Windows + Office + Extra software all together.

Distributions are basically that; they take the Linux kernel (the common denominator) and package software around it in a typical Unix style (sometimes they change how the files are laid out on the drive, etc.) and sometimes add their own custom software to make life easier for configuration and installation.

As long as distributions are testing the software they're packaging together and making life easier for those of us who want to keep an up-to-date Linux box, distributions (and paying for the support) are a good thing.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

Please consider visiting Tom's Hardware Guide for information on the difference between chipsets, memory types and chips themselves. Very informative and fairly easy to follow.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

Pepsi is my preference too, and their marketing's been much better in the last 20 years (think Coke's "new coke" concept). Mind you, Barq's is good ... it doesn't bite ;).
</Offtopicsh>

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

I guess you don't understand how little bandwidth even heavy users account for. If all users are online at once, and they're heavy users, some stats would show as little as 5% bandwidth per user on average (over time, not instantaneously). Therefore, if you have 1 meg of bandwidth with 20 people, each will probably receive full 1 M/s transfers -WHEN THEY FETCH- because they aren't fetching simultaneously (especially seeing as the fetches finish almost instantaneously).

Yes, if everyone is downloading the redhat ISO at once, you will notice aggregate speed decreases, but for normal web use, even online gaming, you're not going to notice each other at all. That's the gamble that all ISPs work on. You ALWAYS sell more bandwidth than you have ... because it won't be all used at once.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

I just rifled off an E-mail to turbolinux yesterday re: maintenance of their patches. I was wondering if they would receive approval for their patches from Linus and if not, if they would continue to maintain their patches as patches against the kernel, not as complete kernel releases. In this way, some, if not all of their patches can be incorporated, and others can be downloaded and applied as necessary by those who want them (such as the secure linux patches at kerneli.org).

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

Definitely - there seems to be a level of paranoia about 12-year-old "superhackers" that makes people think they're a danger to society. The punishment should be the same as punishment for any other sort of vandalism that caused about $2 in damage that's easily fixed. Whatever punishment you'd give to somebody who sprayed shaving cream on your car is what you should give to this kid...

In an earlier article someone cited the use of piracy to refer to copying software. Considering its original use as meaning the attack of pirates on large ships, carrying off their wares and killing lots of crew members (and each other).

This type of term usage may evolve "naturally" but doesn't always "fit the crime" as well noted by Trepidity. I would like to see appropriate media coverage of these issues. After all, the kid in my hometown (Sudbury, Ontario) who broke into NASA's computers by a backdoor modem deserves to be called a malicious (or at least highly curious) hacker. He probably deserves what the FBI are going to do to him (extradition and all).

Part of the problem is that large companies don't want to say "oh look, we have a common security problem that was exploited by an easily downloaded script -- let's fix it". They'd much rather state that "a malicious and very talented hacker got through our almost impenetrable firewalls and routers and managed somehow to get access to our webservers!" Let's make the media realise that these exploits are common and simple to implement so there is some public recognition of the delinquent but not horrific nature of script kiddies (in general).

PS, some people consider spray-painting bridges to be a serious offense. Personally, it's not. However, websites are more easily restored (in general) than bridges are repainted, and at much lower costs.

My encryption and security ...

... links

... books list

Definitely - there seems to be a level of paranoia about 12-year-old "superhackers" that makes people think they're a danger to society. The punishment should be the same as punishment for any other sort of vandalism that caused about $2 in damage that's easily fixed. Whatever punishment you'd give to somebody who sprayed shaving cream on your car is what you should give to this kid...

In an earlier article someone cited the use of piracy to refer to copying software. Considering its original use as meaning the attack of pirates on large ships, carrying off their wares and killing lots of crew members (and each other).

This type of term usage may evolve "naturally" but doesn't always "fit the crime" as well noted by Trepidity. I would like to see appropriate media coverage of these issues. After all, the kid in my hometown (Sudbury, Ontario) who broke into NASA's computers by a backdoor modem deserves to be called a malicious (or at least highly curious) hacker. He probably deserves what the FBI are going to do to him (extradition and all).

Part of the problem is that large companies don't want to say "oh look, we have a common security problem that was exploited by an easily downloaded script -- let's fix it". They'd much rather state that "a malicious and very talented hacker got through our almost impenetrable firewalls and routers and managed somehow to get access to our webservers!" Let's make the media realise that these exploits are common and simple to implement so there is some public recognition of the delinquent but not horrific nature of script kiddies (in general).

PS, some people consider spray-painting bridges to be a serious offense. Personally, it's not. However, websites are more easily restored (in general) than bridges are repainted, and at much lower costs.

My encryption and security ...

... links

... books list

Definitely - there seems to be a level of paranoia about 12-year-old "superhackers" that makes people think they're a danger to society. The punishment should be the same as punishment for any other sort of vandalism that caused about $2 in damage that's easily fixed. Whatever punishment you'd give to somebody who sprayed shaving cream on your car is what you should give to this kid...

In an earlier article someone cited the use of piracy to refer to copying software. Considering its original use as meaning the attack of pirates on large ships, carrying off their wares and killing lots of crew members (and each other).

This type of term usage may evolve "naturally" but doesn't always "fit the crime" as well noted by Trepidity. I would like to see appropriate media coverage of these issues. After all, the kid in my hometown (Sudbury, Ontario) who broke into NASA's computers by a backdoor modem deserves to be called a malicious (or at least highly curious) hacker. He probably deserves what the FBI are going to do to him (extradition and all).

Part of the problem is that large companies don't want to say "oh look, we have a common security problem that was exploited by an easily downloaded script -- let's fix it". They'd much rather state that "a malicious and very talented hacker got through our almost impenetrable firewalls and routers and managed somehow to get access to our webservers!" Let's make the media realise that these exploits are common and simple to implement so there is some public recognition of the delinquent but not horrific nature of script kiddies (in general).

PS, some people consider spray-painting bridges to be a serious offense. Personally, it's not. However, websites are more easily restored (in general) than bridges are repainted, and at much lower costs.

My encryption and security ...

... links

... books list

Much of the research done in the research community doesn't directly produce anything consumer-useable. You'd be surprised, however, at how many of those supposedly useless research projects end up giving us the understanding necessary to go the next mile and get somewhere important.

For instance, there are nanotech facilities that create little bugs -- this doesn't help us as a society a lot as most of us aren't too fond of bugs (sorry to all you entymology people). But since this experimentation and research slowly brings down the sizes of componentry, we get ever closer to being able to work at thos sizes effectively, at which point we start making useful consumer technologies.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

I think the issue should not be that "it's not available on Linux, so it sucks", but rather, "it's not the only format, why do people only use it?" After all, high bandwidth realvideo is a pretty good codec, and Intel's multiple bandwidth video codecs are very nice as well. It would be nice, IMHO, to see better QT support on Linux, but I wouldn't say the moderators were wrong to post this article.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

Yes, colour LCDs are getting their chance now that they're actually useable (anyone looked at an old 386 laptop recently?)

The Psion series 7 is available now as a larger version of the Series 5 with full colour as well.

I'm not actually that big on the difference between colour and grayscale on a handheld (coming from someone who owns a Messagepad), but as they get cheaper, it'll be nice for the sake of what we'll be doing with them.

For the sake of browsing the web, etc. though, I'd still rather be using a Psion type machine than a Palm although a Palm is definately better for "in your pocket" quickly writing in an appointment.

- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>

I'm closer to being British than you (as I am a Canadian) -- and I'm quite proud of the fact that I don't have to bear arms. In fact, it's almost always been illegal to carry a gun in Canada. Guess what, we all feel safer for it. No one who knows their stuff feels safer carrying a gun -- all it means is you can shoot back. It's not going to stop you from getting shot. No one carrying a gun does make you safer ... those who do? Law enforcement should (and pretty much does) handle them, not vigilanteism.

If you break into my house, I can call the police or have an alarm system (that costs less than a Colt 45). What good does it do me to own a gun?

Personal privacy, on the other hand, is a different matter -- so don't alienate those who believe in personal privacy by bringing unrelated matters into it. I know that CSIS - <http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca> does random wiretaps and that doesn't bother me much. I'm more worried about keeping drug lords and other large crime rings under control than my personal privacy to that extent. There is, after all, no way for the national security agencies to know if you're a criminal or not until you're caught. Unless, of course, you're saying that criminals are all caught (ha!).

CSIS actually has a well-written statement on that subject in their 1998 report: (emphases mine)

The bombings of American embassy buildings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam are an indication that terrorists will target a country or system that is perceived to be the least defended. Canada cannot afford to be viewed as such a place. Canada's (and the US') long border and coastlines appeal to terrorist organizations.... As with other democracies, Canada's openness and respect for individual rights and freedoms preclude the suppression of terrorism by ruthless methods. While distance and moderation may make Canada a less likely target than other countries, Canada can also be seen as a relatively safe haven for the same reasons. Finally, the open nature of Canadian society makes us particularly vulnerable to terrorist influence and activities within expatriate communities. Canadians are not immune to violent acts driven by political or religious extremism.

< http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/en g/publicrp/pub1998e.html>

At any rate, use PGP for E-mail ... protect yourself the right way.