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How on earth did this post get modded up to "informative"???? Practically everything in it is either partially or wholly inaccurate.

>This is the prime error Atari made. Back
>in the day, they let everyone make carts
>for the system.

Eh? The VCS was one of the first home gaming system with interchangeable games. I don't think anyone had given the slightest consideration at that point to locking down the system so that only the manufacturer could produce games for it. Atari didn't, "let everyone make carts for the system." The VCS came out in '77, and didn't have a huge hit until 1980, when Atari licensed Space Invaders. That was the same year the 1st 3rd party developer came online - Activision.

Check out this site for a capsule history of the VCS.

>The console remained on the market too long.
>Atari sat on its ass until sometime around late 83-84.

Huh? The 5200 came out in early-mid 1982. It was a huge improvement on the VCS, being based on Atari's line of 8-bit computers. Probably its only major failing - and this helped killed the system in the market - were the large, non-centering joysticks that were difficult to use in many games (Pac-Man being a fine example) and prone to failure.

Again, check out the same site for a capsule history of the 5200.

>Tramiel's bumbling. Jack Tramiel proved in 1983 that
>he was the worst manager in recorded history. He took
>a company that controlled 95% of its market and flushed
>it down the crapper. In 1983, Atari lost over 500 million
>dollars (and the whole industry at the time was only worth
>about (3 billion at best). At some points Atari was losing
>millions of dollars a day.

How could you be MORE wrong??? Warner Communications unloaded Atari on Jack Tramiel *because* it was losing $500 million and they had no idea how to stop the bleeding. Tramiel didn't even arrive at Atari until July of 1984, after he'd lost a fight with the board of directors at Commodore and left the company he'd started. It's a little hard to blame him for Atari's losing $500 million in 1983 . . .

Actually, maybe you CAN pin the blame on him, since a lot of Atari's home videogame and computer sales were probably being lost to a little personal computer Tramiel's Commodore made. Perhaps you've heard of it. It was called the Commodore 64.

Again, here's yet another site, this one detailing the history of Atari's 8-bit computers, that brings up Tramiel's role in all of this (and some of the stuff he really did probably do wrong at Atari).

There are several other factual errors in your post, but I don't have the time this morning to correct the remainder. If Atari had made as many mistakes as your post did, they'd have gone out of business in the mid-'70s and we'd have never heard from them again.

Well Sympatico High Speed Edition has always been ~1 Mb/s, and recently (this month) they reconfigured the DSLAMs to run at ~1.5 Mb/s.

OLD
Download Sync Rate: 1184 kilobits/second
Upload Sync Rate: 160 kilobits/second

NEW
Download Sync Rate: 1728 kilobits/second
Upload Sync Rate: 384 kilobits/second

broadbandreports.com notice
Bell Sympatico bulletin

The download caps were totally removed this month!!!

http://forums.sympatico.ca/WebX?50@179.GKHmaFgJY3D .2@.1de43fc8

For what it's worth, Sympatico has dropped it's bandwidh cap as of July 4th.

Although they removed the cap earlier this month. And they mention it in a rather large font.

Bell Sympatico's site.

Still, sell your Bell stock!, I too say.

Correction. My bill is just under 50$CAD. Check out the Prices

Bell removed their bandwidth cap a few months ago. See This page for details. My guess is that they were getting killed by Rogers.

Ironically, Rogers was thinking of implementing a bandwidth cap, but In response to Bell eliminating their cap, they backed down.

In some cases, capitalist competition really works!

As for the speed, I've used both and found the two comparable, with Rogers a little faster. Bell (as all DSLs) varies depending on where you are in relation to the phone switching station. Rogers (as in all Cable internet) varies depending on how many people in your vicinity are actively using a cable internet connection.

Bell Canada has been a thorn in my side for years. During the dailup years Bell was late to recognize the Internet. In an attempt to catch up it is rumoured that Bell tried to heavly increase the cost of the phone lines owned by ISPs. I believe there were some court cases and the business plan was dropped. Later, I found myself using a new TV system called LookTV. Just when things where going well for them (including a blazing fast wireless Internet access plan) it is rumoured that Bell bought out Look's biggest financial backer and cut their funding. That was a few years ago and Look has yet to recover. The final straw is ADSL. No matter who your ISP is (and there are a few) Bell owns all the lines. At one point it is rumoured that Bell was leasing it's lines to it's own ISP branch at cost in order to drive the other ISPs out of business. I think there was a court case.

A PDF of the full message can be found on the CETI page.

A PDF of the full message can be found on the CETI page.

I think that was a mistake.

It wasn't. The strange thing is that it doesn't apply to dialup (the FAQ explicitly says that) - I transfer ~15 GB a month on my $23 Sympatico dialup account. That would cost me $40 (5 GB overlimit x $8) on top of the basic fee if I was on Sympatico DSL.

Why do people always bash those who run servers? I run mail and web servers, yet I don't use much bandwidth.

Since my ISP started including my bandwidth consumption on my bill on January 2002, my Min = 737MB, Max = 4,712MB and Avg = 2,372MB. I work from home, I download CDROMs from MSDN and for Linux. I run a server. Using ifconfig on my Debian server typically indicates that eth0 transfers less data in a week than I used to do in a single evening playing Quake 2 over dial up. That includes all my LAN traffic such as DNS, not just what goes out over the internet.

Incidentally, I have a "good" ISP who gives me a 15GB quota, with virtually unlimited usage off-peak. Plus excess is only CAD$2/GB. Compared with the big bad telco who we've heard about on /., this exceptional. They recently raised their 5GB quota to 10GB, but they still charge something like $10/GB for excess.

clicky

Bah, close enough. ;)

[...] what I would really love would be a comparision to RISC (UltraSPARC, POWER, ARM) processors and VLIW (EPIC: IPF) ones.

If you mean general architecture, then this isn't a bad overview.

Ah, but for how long? :-(

I was hoping for something that mentioned the Packer/Pac-man connection. The closest I could come was this page, which says that Pac-Man creators Namco had a role in funding Troma's Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD. Fascinating, but going from there to Packer/Pac-Man is quite a leap, especially since Kabukiman was made before Cannibal.

Spam filters like Spam Inspector [giantcompany.com] remove around 99% of junk email... You need to have one to make using your e-mail account worth using again...

They claim 99%, but statistical methods may only give 90 to 95% which is next to useless.

I use a different method of analyzing the headers and looking for mistakes that spammers make. This gives me 100% accuracy, at between 300 and 3,000 messages per second.

When a spammer comes up with a new trick, it takes only a short time to code and any new spam containing that flaw is instantly recognized and filtered out.

I will upload the latest version later this evening, but if you'd like to see how it's done, get my source at

http://www3.sympatico.ca/add.automation/misc/spa2e 921.zip

Best Regards,

Mike Monett

None? As in absolutely 0%?

None. I tried posting the actual test results but perhaps it was too long and SlashDot forgot to update. You can see the test results at
http://www3.sympatico.ca/add.automation/misc/spamm ain.pas

One of the important tests is the spammers do not know your identity, but your friends do. If I find my name in the body of the message, it is not from a spammer. But if a message Cc's several messages to the same isp, I know it is dictionary spam.

There are other tests to identify if email is valid or spam, but the key idea is you can analyze the headers very quickly.

Best Regards,

Mike Monett

Agree. Ain't gonna happen. The major isp's do a tremendous job keeping most of the spam out of our mailbox. For the few that slip through, there are various filtering programs like SpamAssassin that can help.

For those interested in higher accuracy and more speed, you can write your own filtering program that analyzes the headers and responds to your unique name and email address.

I just uploaded my version written in Borland Pascal running in DOS.

My spam program filters valid messages at up to 3,000 msg/sec, detects spam messages and decodes base64 at 200 to 300 msg/sec, and has no false positives or false negatives.

The nice thing is it is easy to update when spammers change their tactics. If you are interested in seeing how I do it, download the source file at

http://www3.sympatico.ca/add.automation/misc/spa2e 921.zip

Best Regards,

Mike Monett

(Who tried to re-register but cannot get SlashDot to remember my name and password:)

That's the best answer - another one is to use the built in firewalling of the internet connected OS X box. Look here. In the long run though I thought it was easier to spend like 100 bucks and get a cheap wireless Router / Firewall setup.

as soon as this virus gets to the Western side of the planet

"As soon as"?

GameTab - Game Reviews Database

Do the math, you are better off. For 85$ CAN (about 35 GBP), you can get 1.5 Mbps (bits, not bytes) service, unlimited upload AND download from a national provider and keep a healthy 50$ in your pocket after taxes. I completely understand the ire of those british people. Of course, shopping around is a good idea because some people want to rip you off and cap you to death.

I gotta say I agree.. it's the 1GB/day thing that makes it slightly unreasonable. It's pretty easy to do a gig in a day with some ISOs or what not. But I'm currently on Bell Sympatico and I have a 10GB/month transfer limit (up + down combined). I'm only on Sympatico because it's all there was in my area (I don't have cable TV and didn't want to get it just for the 'net). I thought the bandwidth was going to be a huge problem, but it totally hasn't been. There have been some days when I've used a lot (I use Gentoo and an emerge -up world can suck in a lot of stuff) but I'm almost at the end of my first month and I've only used 1.6GB down and 0.1GB up. I use Kazaa Lite on Linux too, for ST eps. So I gotta say, somebody doing more than a gig per day *on average* is probably abusing the service. But just doing more than a gig in a day once in a while.. I don't think that should be a problem.

As an aside, in most areas in Canada you can still get unlimited broadband for like $30-$40 Canuck bucks per month.. I don't know how long it'll be before that changes though.. I sure hope things stay this good.

More specifically, it "EXTENDED DOS" to the 32 bit flat address model. The problem was that the entire DOS API was 16 bit, and assumed that everything happened in the first 640K. So if you wanted to use the DOS services with your data that was not in the first 640K, you needed a translation layer -- this is what the DOS Extender (typically via an API called "DPMI" -- DOS Protected Mode Interface) provides.

You can run 32 bit code in dos without the restrictions and performance penalty of DPMI. It's called Flat Real mode, and has been around since 1988. Himem and Smartdrv use it to access extended memory.

But you don't have to go through Himem to access memory above 1 meg. You can do it yourself and eliminate the time wasted.

The problem is debugging your code to ensure data is transferred correctly. DOS debuggers cannot recognize 32-bit addresses, so you cannot verify data is stored correctly or that you are pointing to the correct area in memory.

Here's the solution

http://www3.sympatico.ca/add.automation/flat/frm.h tm

Best Regards,

Mike Monett

IBM has released a couple BIOS updates for the thinkpad that address this issue. My group had a few of these thinkpads and updating the BIOS seemed to help, although we didn't replace the batteries any more after that point so we didn't really get a clean test out of it.

Google also revealed a collaborative web page devoted to this issue, which I hadn't noticed until now:

http://www3.sympatico.ca/milnoc/TP600Battery/

It does a good job explaining symptoms, why it occurs, and how to tell if the BIOS problem is what's killing your battery prematurely.

-- Scott

I am rather suprised I don't see many people using proxies to deal with the "wild wild web" of spyware and malicious javascript/java/flash.

I have found a good combination is Proxomitron and JD5000 filterset. Both can be found here

http://home.satx.rr.com/jd5000/

It works with all browsers that support proxies (EG IE, Moz, Opera, Netscape) and best of all beside's ad blocking it does some rather cool features.

First filter I find handy is

Convert - Flash to Links.

Visit a site that has flash crap on it and it will say Flash removed/disabled. Next to it will be a option to turn on flash for the selected website only. This website URL will go into a blockfile named Allow - Flash.txt

Disable - Applet, Object, and Embed.

Now this is really damn handy as it will disable java applets, embedded crap and activeX objects, IE How Xupiter manages to get through.

If I need a site that has been verified by me that absolutely needs java or activex I can add it to the Allow - ActiveX blockfile.

THIS is basically how Proxomitron and JD5000 work's. It has a lot of features for security/ad blocking and more. Has also the usual filters to disable javascript or tame it down entirely, prevent nasty IE exploit's, etcetra.

To give everyone a idea at what exactly the filters the latest JD5000 update has, below are two pictures showing *ALL* the filters. First is the web page filters, second is the Browser Header filters. Filters that are in black are what I have turned on for day to day use.

Proxomitron's JD500 Web Filters (Jan 13th Release)

Proxomitron's JD500 Browser Header Filters (Jan 13th Release)

If configured right, Proxomitron+JD5000 can secure any browser a lot more, especially IE from all the nasties that rely on Activex to try and get through to your machine.

I am rather suprised I don't see many people using proxies to deal with the "wild wild web" of spyware and malicious javascript/java/flash.

I have found a good combination is Proxomitron and JD5000 filterset. Both can be found here

http://home.satx.rr.com/jd5000/

It works with all browsers that support proxies (EG IE, Moz, Opera, Netscape) and best of all beside's ad blocking it does some rather cool features.

First filter I find handy is

Convert - Flash to Links.

Visit a site that has flash crap on it and it will say Flash removed/disabled. Next to it will be a option to turn on flash for the selected website only. This website URL will go into a blockfile named Allow - Flash.txt

Disable - Applet, Object, and Embed.

Now this is really damn handy as it will disable java applets, embedded crap and activeX objects, IE How Xupiter manages to get through.

If I need a site that has been verified by me that absolutely needs java or activex I can add it to the Allow - ActiveX blockfile.

THIS is basically how Proxomitron and JD5000 work's. It has a lot of features for security/ad blocking and more. Has also the usual filters to disable javascript or tame it down entirely, prevent nasty IE exploit's, etcetra.

To give everyone a idea at what exactly the filters the latest JD5000 update has, below are two pictures showing *ALL* the filters. First is the web page filters, second is the Browser Header filters. Filters that are in black are what I have turned on for day to day use.

Proxomitron's JD500 Web Filters (Jan 13th Release)

Proxomitron's JD500 Browser Header Filters (Jan 13th Release)

If configured right, Proxomitron+JD5000 can secure any browser a lot more, especially IE from all the nasties that rely on Activex to try and get through to your machine.

Was SPACEWAR (this version is via PDP-1 assembler running on a java PDP-1 emulator) written in 1962 by a group calling themselves something like "The Hingham Institute for Space Warfare" the lead programmer was Stephen "Slug" Russell. The program was developed on a PDP-1 computer (the first "minicomputer" which cost 1/10th of other computers of the day (only $100,000)) donated by Digital Equipment Corp. to the students of MIT. More of the history. Steve got to testify on his prior art when Magnavox sued Atari on some related patents.

Atari basic could do one shorter than that:

10 L.

Early marijuana use can lead to harder drugs, says Australian twin study

Ford car at auto show...

wierd, I really think I have seen this _thing_ before... ...is it legal to recycle another car company's old cars??

Ford sure hasn't made much progress in design in the last _24 years_

-v

My ISP does block outbound port 25. The problem is that they still end up in the RBL Lists all the time as a multi-hop spam relay. All blocking outbound port 25 does is prevent people like me from running a legit amateur mail server.

At least my ISP doesn't block inbound port 25 too, like some others do!

-Ben

PS: I can still set a static SMTP route, but things such as mail bouncing, etc don't work properly in this situation.

Do you have any evidence that HP was more involved in the design of IA-64 than Intel?

The design itself came from designers at HP who estimated in 1992 that complexity would prohibit more than 4-way issue PA-RISC designs. Also, HP had just bought Cydrome which had experience in designing VLIW systems, and engineers from VLIW producer Multiflow,. The decision was made that the PA-RISC would be replaced with a VLIW initially called SP-PA (Super Parallel Precision Architecture) or PA-WW (Precision Architecture-Wide Word). Intel, which had started fabricating PA-RISC CPUs for HP, was approached as a development partner to share the cost and increase its popularity.

#!/bin/sh
ipfw add 1000 pipe 1 ip from any to any
ipfw pipe 1 config bw 300Kbit/s queue 50KBytes
ipfw add allow ip from any to any

man ipfw

Be prerpared to have your mailbox blasted with spam from the Bell sympatico.ca domain!

2) Staying online with dialup ties up your phone line. Staying online with broadband doesn't.

I would assume that both of these apply in Canada as much as they do in Britain."

1) The first one applies only depending on your ISP. Mine really does allow you to stay online all the time but after something like 8 hours, the idling threshold gets smaller before they cut you off. My ISP is actually pretty cool because we have a multilink account so you can use two modems and can dial in and get 2 X 28.8 K for better speed at night, and as well they officially support linux.

If you have dialup from Symcraptico (provided by Bell Canada) you can expect to get cut off after being online for a while, as their service is probably as crapy as BTInternet.

2) Of course dialup takes up a phone line but when you have 2 lines, it's usually not an issue.

There's a list in English available here.

Great stuff. (Anacoluthons! Hydrocarbon! Technocrat! Odd-toed ungulate!)

Worst of all, no realistic simulated customized porno. There goes my 3-breasted Klingon babe fantasy (sniff).

Weep no longer. Here's a sixer

http://www3.sympatico.ca/add.automation/misc/perfe ct.jpg

Cheers!

Ammunition ship explosion:

link
another link
and another link

That ship was carrying 2,500 tons of high explosives. That means a 2.5 kiloton blast. That's about 10% of the Hiroshima atom bomb. I hope those lifeboats have powerful outboard motors attached, because they need to get at least a mile away quick.

Google indexes 2.5Billion web sites, and I swear all you get for the first 1500 results on any topic is corporate sites w/ a *lot* of advertising.

I spend most of my time doing computing research, and I'm happy to use a low key engine like Lookerup for research on development, computing, IT stuff etc.

When it comes down to generic searches that *aren't* for technology, you'll laugh but my own ISP has a better search algorithm than google.

I've always loved google, but recently they're just spidering too many of the wrong resources ; or they're not weighting the right resources properly. Go with a specific engine for what you're doing - and you'll get the information you want faster. I mean, "installing apache web server" - I don't need 8,000,000 results for that, 10 would be just fine cuz I'm only gonna read 2 or 3.

-WebMonkey

I've already told my rep what I think of DRM, though I don't suppose it would hurt to tell him again. I believe DRM is 21st century solution to a 21st century problem. We need to have some way of protecting innovation from those, like the inhabitants of Slashdot, that choose to steal rather than create. If this means that I lose a little convience in the pursuit of a larger good, well then so be it.

I whole heartedly agree. I will gladly give up a little convenience in order to help out artists - or Physicists that write important papers.

I will not, however, give up my personal freedoms in order to help out artists. This is a "larger good" than making sure artists get paid. There is a subtle but important difference, Mr. PhysicsGenius. DRM must accomodate what I want to do within the confines of the Law as well, or it is worthless.

I'm a computer guy, so my future is in (for lack of a better term) cyberspace. DRM must not package up the keys to the digital future solely for the use of those already in power. To just stand idly by and let my personal freedoms be trampled on just to ensure the status quo in a market segment would be an insult to all those who have fought for my freedom in the past will have done so for naught. If you feel that your right to money exceeds my right to freedom, so be it - we will have to agree to be at odds then.

Soko

P.S. - No, I'm not a hypocrite. I own the CD to every MP3 on my computers, paid for the licenses of the software that requires doing so and P2P networking is nowhere to be seen on my systems.

See

Santa Claus 1836 - 2000

Ask Naughty Natalie a Question

A brief Google search reveals this comparison.

I'm sorry, even though his evil corporate machine might be guilty of a lot of things, I think it's a stretch to believe that money's better off in treas.us.gov.

Old reference here, might be of interest to you.

Jack

>I'm in Ontario as well. I'm tempted to pay a visit to his offices..

Here's a map of his hometown (you can zoom in if you want). He lives in the middle of nowhere, Ontario.

This might be his home address and phone number (I can't be sure, so you make sure). Note that if it is, he's just a country bumpkin, and that houses in the country don't have buried lines (bring your pole climbing boots). :-)

Wrong.

6800 (Aug '74) was an 8-bit chip.

68000 (Sep 79) was a 16/24/32 bit chip (16 data 24 address 32 everything else. It was the first consumer available chip capable of 32 bit math.

Wrong.

6800 (Aug '74) was an 8-bit chip.

68000 (Sep 79) was a 16/24/32 bit chip (16 data 24 address 32 everything else. It was the first consumer available chip capable of 32 bit math.