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I recently used ndiswrapper to get a Winbook mini-pci wireless card working on my Dell laptop. It wasn't all that difficult, really - just required a little patience. I wrote up some instructions for setting it up for the OSU wireless network, but put a bunch of references at the bottom, including this one on the fedora forums that should give you a pretty good idea of how to get it setup on your network.

I have to admit that I was really tempted to get dragged into an argument on this one, but I'm still going to try to address this without resorting to the same level of vitriol that you employed. First I want to ensure that we're on the same ground with respect to FEC here. Based on the latter half of your post you seem to have some understanding of Reed Solomon codes for forward error correction on arbitrary data packets of equivalent size. It should also be apparent that I am not suggesting a simple parity check or basic hamming code on top of the TCP transfer. There's obviously no value in that and I think your attempt to cling to it for argument's sake is why you're failing to understand what I'm proposing. Also, I'm fairly sure I have a good grasp of the core Bittorrent protocol, however I did assume the semantic equivalence of "chunk" and "piece". I would have guessed that it was obvious from context, but from now on I will use the term "piece" and you can assume that it is interchangeable with "chunk" in my earlier post.

If this has all been cleared up, I will move on to the real point. Based on your response it appears that your understanding of Reed Solomon FEC is from PAR files. So I'll try to put it in the most directly relevant context for you. I am *absolutely* suggesting an extension to the BitTorrent file format that would include entries for redundancy pieces, similar to the way PAR files are used. For example, take a 10% redundancy on a single 10mb file with 256kb pieces. In addition to the 40 (10mb / 256kb) pieces that make up the content, I'm proposing an extended section that would include entries for 4 additional redundancy pieces in this case. Because this is implemented as an extension, earlier clients will simply ignore it. However, the additional piece entries will increase the size of the torrent file roughly equivalent to the additional redundancy (10% in this case).

Now, you really don't seem to grasp why I consider this useful, so I'm going to try to explain the value to me personally. First, this is not an issue in a constantly seeded torrent, hence my suggestion to not distribute the FEC pieces when the there are more than a certain number of distributed copies visible or when you know a seed will always be available. The problem that I've run into is when a torrent's activity hits a trough, and the seeds start to drop out due to lack of activity (this is further exacerbated by any leeching that may have occurred previously). If activity later starts to rise, you encounter a situation where the remaining seeds have to exceed significantly more than a 1.0 share ratio in order to get the torrent back to health. I've hit this type of scenario on a few occasions where all the seeds drop out and the remaining peers sit for weeks with +95% of the content completed because the rarest first algorithm didn't quite work and too many peers dropped. However, by distributing the redundancy pieces and content as a set, using the same rarest first algorithm, you should drastically reduce the chances of this happening.

And if you look at this a little further, it should also be pretty beneficial for initial seeding. If both the content and redundancy pieces are distributed as a set, the initial seed can force a higher level of redundancy in the clients by applying the same rarest first algorithm to all peers. This means that the early sets of peers may have to stay in the channel a bit longer, but it significantly increases the redundancy of the swarm. And once the visible complete files pass a threshold, you can stop distributing the redundancy data because the swarm will have enough inherent redundancy to compensate for any issues. If it drops below the threshold, however, redundancy content should agin be distributed. And now that I look around a bit, it appears that Bram Cohen has even mentioned the same basic approach. If you scroll down the page you should find the following:

"I comitted suicide and you used it an opportunity to attack me."

Don't forget his politicization of death. He's done it many times before but this time he hit way too close, and I never even knew Mitch before he took his life. Or his attacks on Kuja's friends, or his (reported) attempts to contact his family about finding a lawyer to sue the developers of MGS, even though it was clear no game was involved. (I asked him whether he'd do this, and he replied with 'why on earth would I do that?', calling GP.com posters 'crazy' for even thinking he would, and then he delivers some 'apology' wrapped in an I-told-you-so satirical attack in which he 'apologizes in advance' for telling them to get a laywer, not necessarially him. Unbelievable...) He also slammed GP.com for running the story, making allegations of the blog being 'for-profit', even though it was done at the request of a MGS.net regular. Toward the end he even drafted up a fake C+D type letter to send to the Pennsylvania FBI, like with Penny-Arcade, but (like the first one) it's unclear whether he actually sent it.

He isn't the issue, though, so forget about him.

People like JT are why I wouldn't go to church anymore if you paid me to.

I have a bit of a problem with this. See, many people have been trying to mitigate Jack's damage to the religion he claims to follow for the past few months, and with this receiving a bunch of press I'm actually starting to believe that someone, somewhere out there is stupid enough to think Jack (or Falwell, or Roberts, or Chick, name any crazy ego-trip out there really) represents Christianity. Here's an article that I hope will change your mind about Jack's actions as they relate to the religion, from the same site:

http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/183225.html#cu tid1

And for what it's worth, I'm not entirely sure what I am.

BSD actually (see bottom of script):

http://www.livejournal.com/js/core.js

Please feel free to send it to me, email address at http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=davem an692. Thanks

Is Six Apart that incompetent that they can't prevent such attacks after they have been going for days, or is this bantown group really that good?

Your answer is yes for the first part, no for the second.

I have almost NO programming knowledge/experience. However, with my analytical abilities, I called them out on their telling *ME* to change my password (because it's too easy to guess.. my ass) by telling them they had no reasonable idea about security. I KNEW THIS SHIT WOULD HAPPEN SOONER OR LATER. I hate being right.

For those curious what was done with said accounts, they were also used to post a number of comments on the following posts: here here here Look at the comments.

For those curious what was done with said accounts, they were also used to post a number of comments on the following posts: here here here Look at the comments.

Mod parent up, it's true. A user posted an email he got from bantown saying that on his LJ, too.

Any intelligent fool can make things
bigger / more complex / and more violent
It takes a touch of genius
and a lot of courage
to move in the opposite direction
(Einstein)

I'd like an explanation of why Flash isn't allowed beyond "shit coding". BTW, You cannot use JavaScript [...] These scripts pose a security risk [..] and are automatically stripped [...] (Last Updated: October 30th, 2005)

It would've been nice if LJ's news post on starting to fix this vulnerability had said which "popular browser" was affected.

Also, I somehow find myself suspecting that the anonymous person calling this 'Bantown' group 'notorious' is probably a member of it.

Details are scarce; all I could find in the LJ_Dev community relating to this wasone post about the effects of the first phase of the fix. Especially check Brad's comments.

They also don't tell us which browser is affected on the newspost. How can we be safe if we are not informed? Can Six Apart actually deal with this in a professional way? I've been noticing LiveJournal is really slow and it hangs a lot lately. It seems that they know nothing about security and are just randomly mashing buttons in a attempt to hit the nail in the head.

Is Six Apart that incompetent that they can't prevent such attacks after they have been going for days, or is this bantown group really that good?

JOURNAL CONTENT

Guidelines for posting to your online journal shall be as follows:

1. All Content posted to LiveJournal.com in any way, is the responsibility and property of the author. LiveJournal is committed to keeping the Service in decent standing for all audiences but is not responsible for the monitoring or filtering of any journal Content. Within the confines of international and local law, LiveJournal.com will generally not place a limit on the type, or appropriateness of user content within journals. Those users posting material not suitable for all audiences must agree that they are fully responsible for all the content they have posted anywhere on the service. Should content be deemed illegal by such law having jurisdiction over the user, LiveJournal.com is committed to submitting all necessary information to the proper authorities; ....

MODIFICATIONS TO SERVICE

LiveJournal.com reserves the right to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Service (or any part thereof) with or without notice at any time. You agree that LiveJournal.com shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any modification, suspension or discontinuance of the Service.

He recently demanded(scroll down) yesterday that CEO Paul Eibeler, of Take-Two Interactive, remove all copies of GTA, The Warriors and Manhunt because of their obvious link to the weapon used by two "Murder-Simulator" game playing teenagers in the beating of a homeless man.

The weapon that proves the video game connection beyond a doubt? Baseball bats, a Rockstar Games exclusive weapon! Oh man, hopefully Paul will meet his 5:00 1/17/05 pm deadline, or Jack is going to do .... something. Maybe it was hold his breath, spam a bunch of people, write another long winded masturbation-like rant, or etc, I just don't know.

Oh wait, that was yesterday.... Hummmm and didn't he claim he was stinking up CA this week, something to do with police officers and him removing "25 to life" off the shelves since it is a "public nuisance"? Wonder what is up with that....

The word "fuel". What does it MEAN?! The oil cartels, oil companies, oil barons and grandma's stockbroker all think fuel has to be something that combusts. Even nuclear energy is the same burning swill being fed the American Public.

These people do not want you to know about my engine systems that don't use their burning fuels. The new oil company TV commercials by Kerr-McGee & Philips Petroleum are doing a great brainwash job on the American Consumer. hehehehe THEY know about my engines. THEY run like the antelope & the deer trying to escape my engines... knowing the hunter is closing in, knowing their time on Earth is short. Check my links on this page. Learn about engines that totally do away with American subservience and slavery to oil cartels. http://free.seekon.com/NonNuclearFusionEngines/ And if you think Saudi Arabians don't know about my engines, you're wrong. They visit my webpages every day. United Arab Emirates? Ditto. Venezuela & Tel Aviv are there.

Why do you think Alaska is winning the fight to stop destruction of their A.N.W.R. Nature Preserve?! They visit my pages & THEY KNOW WE DON'T NEED NO MORE STINKING PETROLEUM TO RUN OUR VEHICLES. Ever watch the movie Soldier when Gary Busey advises his superior officer of the advantage of using a hammer? It isn't pretty but it's EFFECTIVE.
So are my engines right now, early forge hammers.
My pictures and animations are crude but effective.
We stand poised on the edge of total Energy Freedom >
http://www.renewamerica.us/bb/viewtopic.php?t=3975 .

Not selling; just telling. The engines are free to whoever wants to build one. They are your property. I'm just the messenger. If the government won't build them, so what? What young buck wouldn't want to have a home for his new wife that doesn't have a monthly electric bill? hahaha The engines will get built. What young buck doesn't want to spend more on his gal & less for gasoline? Yep, the engines will get built & the builders won't be in Detroit. They'll be the next generation who demands something new ie: a better life for their family, affordable. Woodrow Riley, Open Sourcing a Future that isn't using crude oil or sitting around a fire praying for more firewood. Consider this too. There's a REASON my personal websites are being converted by Google into other languages. People want to be free & freedom from energy slavery is what I have brought them. Not by 2050. Not by 2025. Not by 2012. Energy freedom has been dropped inthe world's lap before 2006. Ask the bloggers over on http://www.livejournal.com/ they hit my pages daily by the hundreds because they know, they know they have found the pot of gold we've been searching for. Politicians in Washington, D.C. have found my pages but so far little has happened but that's okay. It's early yet. Sometimes the Ford lightbulb wants to be turned on slow & be savored like a fine wine.

http://www.newpath4.com/WorldwideClimateEngineMsg. htm . Yeah, they know.

> As for me, I'm cutting out the middleman and jumping right to Web 3.0.
> Why wait?

You're not the first, man. Here's Web 3.0 description by Twisted's architect extraordinaire Glyph Lefkowitz:

"Web 3.0", or Why Mantissa is What the Web is Missing
http://www.livejournal.com/users/glyf/47582.html

I agree fully that Freecycle doesn't scale well for getting stuff off of it, as it takes huge swaths of time to look through everything, find something you actually want, and be fast and lucky enough to actually get the item.

So I don't do that. It's not worth it.

But, when I had six cases and a couple of bags full of old, mostly worthless, computer crap that would have been an absolute pain to eBay, I freecycled it, got four or five offers, and a day later I had freed up 10+ square feet of floor space.

Frankly, it's utterly amazing the kind of crap people will take when it's free.

The Best of Freecycle

"Spying on nude beach babes" probably won't qualify. Any other ideas?

Unrelated note:
At this point, everyone is talking about something you'll be surprised about, too.

They let their postal employee husband earn a living, while they, in their idiocy and stupor, blog away happily at the cable modem connected computer they own believing their lives to be just happy wonderlands in which bancrupty is "the government's" problem to solve for them, not society's (sp? or is it societies?) problem. I mean, after all, everyone deserves shelter, food, and warmth, right? (Even when their own bad purchasing decisions put them in the position they're in, in the first place.)

> How has mathematics, statistics and other number driven aspects
> of life impacted you in the last decade?"

I don't get laid. http://jwz.livejournal.com/284187.html

Testing the system?

I wrote this post a while ago and posted it on my blog and I didn't change it before posting. The error I inserted has since been fixed and the article has been expanded.

Brad at LiveJournal recommends Silicon Mechanics. I know other people who have been very happy with them as well. Their hardware is reliable, their prices are great, and so is their support.

Check out this thread on his blog for more commentary.

I'm pretty sure LiveJournal handles more load than most web sites run by the average slashdotter.

shoe

Brad at LiveJournal recommends Silicon Mechanics. I know other people who have been very happy with them as well. Their hardware is reliable, their prices are great, and so is their support.

Check out this thread on his blog for more commentary.

I'm pretty sure LiveJournal handles more load than most web sites run by the average slashdotter.

shoe

I wouldn't call landing a spot with EA the most awesome job.

How many companies do you call 'awesome' that have workers suing their employer?

companies like Google and EA Games

Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary has a hillarious review.

Best bit, IMO:

I'm not trying to tear this movie a new anal orifice. I assure you, the film already has SEVERAL, and it defecates simultaneously through all of them. You don't want to get any of this on you.

Cool. So then, someone gave you tickets to this lame concert?

from the detailed article: http://www.livejournal.com/users/groovychk/85968.h tml "This will require a huge rotating ring placed above a superconducting coil to create an intense magnetic field."

http://www.livejournal.com/users/groovychk/85968.h tml

This guy seems less of a kook than most...

Original article from New Scientist - (also) stolen from digg.com :)

This was on Game Politics a week ago.

I'm a developer of Seahorse, a project that integrates encryption into the GNOME desktop. Because I have friends that use webmail almost exclusively, including another Seahorse dev, I was always being told they couldn't read or send encrypted mail. To solve that problem, I created a panel applet that is capable of performing OpenPGP operations on the text contents of the clipboard. It works with both the ctrl-c/v and the select/middle click clipboards as well as provides a(n optional) window with the encrypted or plain text for when no entry field is immediately available.

It was recently blogged about HERE.

I realize this isn't the cross platform solution requested, but we did receive a patch for building on Cygwin(YMMV, but patches are welcome).

It's a small excerpt from my book "Possibility Thinking: Explorations in Logic and Thought", the rough draft of which is available for anyone to look at for free online @ http://livejournal.com/~justincoslor

The Church of Jack "God's foot soldier" Thompson

Also, whenever a programmer thinks, "Hey, skins, what a cool idea", their computer's speakers should create some sort of cock-shaped soundwave and plunge it repeatedly through their skulls. - makali

HA! I fully support your proposed audio-cock technology. - jwz

Also, whenever a programmer thinks, "Hey, skins, what a cool idea", their computer's speakers should create some sort of cock-shaped soundwave and plunge it repeatedly through their skulls. - makali

HA! I fully support your proposed audio-cock technology. - jwz

Things that happen when you say 'X Windows':

I was digging through some old papers, and ran across a 15 year old "XNextEvent" newsletter, "The Official Newsletter of XUG, the X User's Group", Volume 1 Number 2, from June 1988. Here's an article that illustrates how far the usage of the term "X Windows" has evolved over the past 15 years. (Too bad The Window System Improperly Known as X Windows itself hasn't evolved.)

Someone on slashdot asks, "Why is it still called X-Windows?". Predictably, the first reply says: "It isn't. It's called 'The X Window System.' Or simply 'X'. 'X Windows' is a misnomer."

He didn't ask why it is "X-Windows". He asked why it's called "X-Windows". You're wrong that it isn't called "X-Windows". It is! It's just that it isn't "X-Windows". Being something is independent of being called something.

The answer to the question 'Why is it still called X-Windows?' is: It's still called X-Windows in order to annoy the X-Windows Fanatics, who take it upon themselves to correct you every time you call it X-Windows. That's why it's called X-Windows.

The following definitive guide to the consequences of saying "X Windows" is from the June 1988 "XNextEvent" newsletter, "The Official Newsletter of XUG, the X User's Group", Volume 1 Number 2:

Things That Happen When You Say 'X Windows'

THE OFFICAL NAMES
The official names of the software described herein are:
X
X Window System
X Version 11
X Window System, Version 11
X11

Note that the phrases X.11, X-11, X Windows or any permutation thereof, are explicitly excluded from this list and should not be used to describe the X Window System (window system should be thought of as one word).

The above should be enough to scare anyone into using the proper terminology, but sadly enough, it's not. Recently, certain people, lacking sufficient motivation to change their speech patterns, have fallen victim to various 'accidents', or 'misfortune'. I've compiled a short list of happenings, some of which I have witnessed, others which remain heresay. I'm not claiming any direct connection between their speech habits and the reported incidents, but you be the judge... And woe betide any who set the cursed phrase into print!

You are forced to explain toolkit programming to X neophytes.

Bob Schiefler says, "You should know better than that!"

The Power Supply (and unknown boards) on your workstation mysteriously give up the ghost.

Ditto for the controller board for the disk on your new Sun.

Your hair falls out.

xmh refuses to come up in a useful size, no matter what you fiddle.

You inexplicitly lose both of your complete Ultrix Doc sets.

R2 won't build.

Bob Schiefler says "Type 'man X'".

Your nifty new X screen saver just won't go away.

The window you're working in loses input focus. Permanently.

Work on Xorg 7.0 for Debian is ongoing, but it's not at the point of going in to experimental yet. 6.9 has been in experimental for months now (the 6.8.99.903 is in fact 6.9 Release Candidate 3), and is very nearly ready to go in to unstable. Hopefully within a week, depending on how much time the holiday season steals away. If you're interested in the modular work, the latest updates are here and here. It's sitting in the X Strike Force subversion repository, and once 6.9 gets all settled in the focus will shift entirely to getting the modular stuff ready to go for etch.

Gentoo users are in for an looooong run-up to Christmas. Especially if there is a bug in the e-build.

That's why the developers package.mask and keyword the packages as ~arch (testing/"unstable") and have a set time they must in Portage marked as testing with no major bugs before being moved to the stable tree. Donnie Berkholz has been working very hard with other Gentoo devs to get the new modular X.org into portage (7RC4 is currently package.mask'ed).

Fedora Core users will suffer greatly, unless the RPM specs correctly instruct RPM to deinstall legacy components from the old structure. Fedora users will also need to be careful about any RPM files that refer specifically to the old X11 RPMs. The same is true for other package-based distributions - package dependencies may not be tracked correctly, leading to outdated dependencies. At best, updates might fail unexpectedly.
 
That's what the Provides: and Obsoletes: tags in the RPM spec files are for. Also, Fedora users most likely won't see any update to this until Core 5 release circa early March 2006, except driver updates and bugfixes to the current 6.8.2 packaging. X.org 7.0 release candidates have been in Fedora Rawhide (the development tree) for quite a while now for those who like testing and hacking on that stuff.

Because ID is not science (it makes no testable predictions), science says absolutely nothing about whether it is true or false. ID may be true, it may be false, it may even use evolution via descent with modification via natural selection as a mechanism. There is no way to know using the tools of science.

Hasn't Joss Whedon given up on Firefly? (link lifted straight from digg)

"Whenever a programmer thinks, 'Hey, skins, what a cool idea', their computer's speakers should create some sort of cock-shaped soundwave and plunge it repeatedly through their skulls."

Look for legislated audio-cock-waves to be plugging your analog hole by this time next year.

Looks like this antisocial person might be on it: http://www.livejournal.com/users/antisocial_shdw/2 73658.html

1. OH THANK GOD! I hate that aspect of MSN. In fact, I find it to be lacking as a service in general.

2. Yeah, neat effect. However, I want GoogleTalk support/the Gaim-vv merge first.

And because I can stick this in, I've got a screenshot gallery of the new version, as it regards changes.

Apparently, working with the Gaim project leads can be a exceedingly unrewarding task. The work on gaim-vv for video and voice support was ignored, dropped, reaplced with sub-standard code for the Google (Talk) overlords and then programmer was insulted (although there may now still be a chance of something still being integrated).

"Death of gaim-vv" November 11th, 2005 http://www.livejournal.com/users/bleeter/

Short version -- Google should use an algorithm similar to AdSense to automatically pick keywords most relevant to the advertiser's URL.

You should have to pay less to bid on keywords that are relevant to your web site's content. It should be expensive to outbid Mr. Cringely on the keyword "Cringely".

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

I don't know why Quinn et al don't use Saugus, Massachusetts as an example more often of how open formats can be successful. The effort in Saugus predated the rest of Massachusetts by years (largely the work of one Saugus advocate of open formats apparently) but it looks like they've already successfully switched with no major issues.