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The Bug by Ellen Ullman
Never Rock Fila writes "On the front page of tomorrow's New York Times Book Review, a slightly breathless but overdue enthusiastic review of Ellen Ullman's new novel, The Bug. The review acknowledges that 'Ullman has already established herself as an indispensable voice out of the world of technology' -- if you haven't read her first book, a memoir, Close to the Machine, read that too -- and it's nice to see a mainstream publication like the Times, the gold standard of book reviews as I understand it, giving such prominent and positive attention to a novel by a former 'software engineer' that's all about getting inside the mind of a programmer, even concluding 'If more contemporary novels delivered news this relevant and wise they'd have to stop declaring the death of the novel.' The reviewer, one Benjamin Anastas, has the chops to develop a sustained comparison to Mary Shelley, to legitimately place the 1984 computer programmers at the center of the novel among 'all the best characters in fiction,' and to declare the book 'thrilling and intellectually fearless.'"
Those skits were hilarious, and it's even where the Simpsons got their start. Catch it in reruns if you can.
First Cryptonomicon hits the best-seller lists, now a paper does a favorable review of a novel about a geek.
Either us geeks are buying more books, or the mainstream population is getting brighter. Somehow, I think it's the former. American Idol is still on television.
Huh?
Sometimes you're the bug.
If you get a chance, read Ellen Ulman's article Programming the Post-Human - Computer Science redefines life. It was an excellent and realistic look at the current state of AI development. It was found in the October 2002 issue of Harper's Magazine. (I couldn't find an online copy) I'll have to think about picking up this book now, I thought her writing was superb.
Random is the New Order.
The first one's always free! Tux will be paying the dealer (SCO Group) soon.
Salon.com loves Ellen Ullman almost as much as I do. Read excerpts from The Bug here: http://archive.salon.com/books/int/2003/05/16/ullm an/index_np.html
You can read articles by Ullman here:
http://archive.salon.com/directory/topics/ellen_ul lman/
Salon is free as long as you watch a little commercial (C'mon--its 10 secondds, and then you get to read Ulllman--for free!!!)
"Oh, the tragedy of math gone wrong. I can't even talk about it." -Wil Wheaton http://www.wilwheaton.net
How come everybody always posts these broken links that require registration? Why can't they link to, say, the Google partner URL or some such? Is this some kind of unwritten rule? Or do the Slashdot editors make sure to find the registration-required URLs? I always see replies with "no reg link", etc. Why don't the original authors use these?
i was like...Ellen Feiss made a bug? then like...bleep....what? ullman? and i was like..huh?
I hear that the bug got squashed and didn't make the best sellers list! But on a more serious note, that will make a very good read. Im glad someone finaly went to the trouble to write a book about the stuff I do everyday! also maybe it will get programmers some more respect. The sterotype of a pale loser breaking out with zits is getting on my nerves! But oh well I cant say anything about it really, I have not read it yet.
"...and it's nice to see a mainstream publication like the Times, the gold standard of book reviews as I understand it..."
I thought Oprah's book club was?
His son said "Daddy what are all those X's for?"
As the light turned green he changed the subject fast,
Started talking about football as they drove right past...
What do you say?
Finished this a few weeks ago after reading the sample of it Salon had posted. A very solid book, and the technical stuff was pretty solid as far as compiler interaction and such. It doesn't paint a rosey picture of life as a programmer though, and made me glad I got out of CSCI when I did...
Computer Science Crime Investigations?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
FYI, Palm Digital Media has Ms. Ullman's tome available for the Palm Reader.
I've read the review, it suck. Here it is
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Thanks for review NYTimes. Here's one book I won't buy : it's all about internet junk !
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
A little offtopic, but I'd like to see book links point to somewhere else, like Barnes & Noble. After all the coverage on /. of the amazon.com patents I thought this would have been obvious. Let's not support software patents and shop somewhere else instead. Here are the B&N links:
The Bug
Close to the Machine
Developers: We can use your help.
I was tricked (in retrospect) into reading "Close to the Machine" by a fellow graduate student who similarly cheerleaded for the tech-informed literary prowess of Ms. Ullman. I was sorely dissapointed by that outing (was I expecting too much? I doubt it). The problem was that "Close to the Machine" was a good literary effort when measured with the but-I-am-a-programmer stick and a bad book when measure with the a-book-is-just-a-book stick. I hope that this book is better, but I'll wait for the reviews (from book reviewers, not geek cheeleaders) to come in first.
wrote a very funny novella called "An Underachiever's Diary". Highly recommended if you want to read something different from your staple sci-fi/fantasy/computer-book diet.
Enough said.
Amazing. This is so fucking boring and stupid that I don't even care! Maybe I'm just too tired...
While it's preferable when females write intelligent things about the scene (vs. writing stupid things about the scene ala aimee deep), and are cast as intelligent females in fictional accounts of hacking (as in Digital Fortress ), or even as interesting characters in computer games (Lara Croft) "The Bug" is still a female writing about computers, rather than writing software , developing algorithms , modding hardware etc.
OTOH, any progress is good, and since progress in the area of "the image of female geeks" requires a substantial change in the culture , perhaps the best place to promote this change is through cultural means.
The terrific thing about The Bug is that the author has written code, so she's writing from experience so we don't get the kind of nonsense we saw in, e.g. "Swordfish." Swordfish was just crap. I mean, come on, why all the blood and guts surrounding gaining physical access? If they had to gain physical access to the servers, they weren't such great hackers. Doh! Plus, much as I like Halle Berry the thing her character did was social engineering--she had to bring in the male gun techie to do the real work. eeeeeyuck! Again, if her social engineering skills were that great, why didn't she just apply it to the problem at hand, rather than the complex and messy techniques the Travolta character came up with. This was the only regard in which Swordfish was realistic: the gal had the by far better skills to solve the problem simply and quickly, yet the solution that got implemented was some big messy over-complicated plan developed by the guy. Typical !
By contrast, I just loved Angelina Jolie's character in "Hackers," errors of fact and ludicrous storyline notwithstanding. She played a great character in Tomb Raider as well--too bad about the muddled plot. And who could forget Carrie Anne Moss' SSH-1 'spoit in Reloaded?
It's when Ullman is brought in as the technical consultant on the Hollywood production of The Bug, and perhaps even Digital Fortress, and we consequently see the first believable and intelligent movies on the topic, that we'll finally see a triumph of substance over style. And I hope they get Angelina Jolie or Carrie Ann Moss to play the lead!
Folks, -any- profession (&/or the workplaces
around it) that has influenced -lots- of
peoples' lives has had TV series about itself.
We've had lots of medicos... from "Ben Casey"
& maybe some before him...
We've had lawyers... from "Perry Mason" &
We've had police from The "Untouchables"...
We've even had teachers & schools (recently
"Boston Public" - which got -cut- in Australia,
soon after a sequence on the use of "Nigger"
(we're not racist down here, we just don't
want to give our people anything too controvertial
to think about...)
Someday (if/when programmers become influential
again (remember when we were -mostly- physicists,
mayhematicians or electronics engineers?),
we might see some TV series on programmers.
Would anybody like to brainstorm up some story-
lines for "The Programmers" that might fit into
a 30-minute slot, each week?
It's a joke, folks. Calm down.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Couldn't they have put the review in a more reliable newspaper such as the Weekly World News, National Enquirer, or The Sun?
-- Will program for bandwidth
why support a huge super corporation like barns and noble. support independants. i guess you will be one of the few happy people working for the big 6 in the future...
gotta go hit starbucks now!
I got about a third through the book and then had to stop. It's rather unsettling to read about a character in a novel, and then slowly come to realise that it is pretty much oneself who is being described here, and in such an unflattering light.
Ethan Levin is a lot like me, living in the Bay Area as a programmer pushing forty, with an ex-girlfriend working for a nonprofit org, even down to some of the smaller mannerisms (Shudder). I'll stick to O'Reilly books in the future, they are much less unsettling.
It's almost impossible to have a baseless snobbish opinion of the General Theory of Relativity.
Isn't that what Dilbert is for?
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
Hi.
Once upon a time I read this book and posted a review on kuro5hin.org. It was a good book, and it's still on my shelf (meaning I haven't seen myself able to give it away or sell it yet). Keep an eye out for it at your local Half-Price books.
--Robert
I remember reading a hacker book in High School (1983) called the Adolesence of P1. P1 was a program that managed to take over the networked IBM and CRAY mainframes of the day (the 70's??). Typical adventure fair but with many old school hacks like the bank and the school machine that did grades. I thought about it a year ago and it was frightening in that it predicted most of the security fears that people have now... anyone else remember this?
~corporate tool, but employed~
In "Closer to the Machine" she gets intimate with clients and co-workers during the project even.
Extremely unprofessional.
And really...yuck.
Let me put it this way: this book literally made me fear for my own sanity. Now, if that's not a good endorsement, I don't know what is.
>|<*:=
like fiction or artistic license.
Yeah, if someone bedded a coworker or client before a deadline, it would be worthy of censure. However I don't believe the narrator of "Close to the Machine" is Ms. Ullman herself.
-jpeg
She must not be a real programmer.
If so, it would have been titled, "The Bugs". I haven't heard of any software project with only one single bug!
You said: lemme introduce you to a few abstract concepts like fiction or artistic license.I don't believe the narrator of "Close to the Machine" is Ms. Ullman herself.
in response to my comment that in "Closer to the Machine" she gets intimate with clients and co-workers during the project even
Mr. Jpeg: did you read it? Closer to the Machine is a MEMOIR.
From the spamazon Editorial Review of Closer to the Machine by Cliff Barney:
Read it and weep. What I find so disturbing is the non-technical community's (read: Salon, Book Editors) lack of censure for her non-professional approach.And, The Bug--oh!! A bug that only happens sometimes at different places in the code? Christ on a bicycle, hasn't she ever fixed a freakin' memory leak before? Corruption she's clearly familiar with, but this kind has a blindingly obvious Simple solution. Instrument the code with Purify or Insure++, or Electric Fence or at least check where and how memory is being allocated and deallocated. This isn't rocket science, you know. Oh well, guess that's the difference between her "20 years of programming" and my 25.
Sure The Bug is fiction, but it's fiction based on a truly lame approach to debugging.
This is why crime shows and police dramas are always standard. Plenty of odd and unusual behavior. Same with hospital shows. A stream of patients. Not too many prime time weekly series about life on farm in the middle of nowhere (Little House being the exception) or life in a senior citizens home. TV Series located in restaurants, bars, and diners are periodically tried, but it's hard to generate crisis after crisis in a diner.
Now one thing you don't get while programming is a stream of new and odd people coming through each week. There have been office comedies, (Yes Minister) but these are the exception. Sara Michelle Gellar had new demons to slay each week. But imaging trying to carry a series modeled on the movie "The Net" for a few years! Each week another abandoned secret agent types mysterious messages onto Sandra Bullocks computer screen. What's the variation, new fonts?
Programming isn't the center of TV series for the same reason that chess players, writers, philosophers, lexicographers, poets, and mathemeticians aren't --- the interesting things aren't dramatically visible.
I've got it! Each week the wacky cast tries to decode another 100 line error message about syntax errors in C++ templates. A laff riot! For sweeps week, the compiler crashes on a divide by zero error. I can't wait.
I18N == Intergalacticization
I wonder if I could get it read by non-programmers in my company.
Just in order to make them feel the psycological consequences of them changing their specs two weeks before commercial release...
Do you review books or simply review book reviews??
"I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of dea
kind.
Who needs you? Fuck off back to college and get a REAL trade.
Actually, it was on p. 6, and not even the lead fiction review. That the NYT would grant it such a long review is miraculous enough; it was too much to hope that it would be on the front page.
I know you! Hey why is this story not archived yet?
There is no god
why isnt this story archived
Kaspersky are fucking liars
| `
| \,X`\ HEIL HITLER
|
As someone who's part-way through the 100+ hour task of reverse engineering the computer in his '86 Mazda RX-7, I can say this truely is a great thing.
The are all kind of problems that are extremly difficult or impossible to diagnose and solve without the ability to REALLY talk to a car's computer.
I think most people don't realize just how much is coming under control of the car's computer these days. It used to be the computer just controlled the injectors, then it was spark. Now the computer might also control your ABS, traction control, regulator-less fuel system, electric power steering. In many modern cars (A 2000 Corvette would be an example) there isn't even a direct link between the throttle body and the gas pedal anymore. The gas pedal has a sensor and the TB has an actuator.
The government needs to junk ODBII and come up with a totally new approach. They allowed too many manufacturer-specfic exceptions, and made it require too much special hardware.
ODBII deliberately uses a nonstandard baud rate, to make it difficult to interface with a PC. The result of this is that an application (with cable) to read codes with your laptop will cost you $100+ instead of the $40 it should.
It's damn frustrating to have to buy a $160 computer to tell you that you car needs a $5 set of spark plugs. (It would have cost $70 just to get a shop to tell me the same thing).
A new interface should be designed that is a standard serial port, and allows for VERY few "undocumented" codes. mju
1. No shipping. Local pickup only. 2. To avoid stiff fees, PayPal will not be accepted. 3. Checks will be given ten days to clear. 4. Non-paying bidders without ABM defenses will be given NEGATIVE FEEDBACK. cq
Don't bother, it's just VL trying to push up their ad revenue. pq
I'm with you on that one. Once I installed Postgres I haven't looked back. What I admire about the Postgres team is that they focus on standards first and speed second. Smart, because eventually speed catches up (through code optimization or just over time through hardware); whereas MySQL has to add in features afterwards, and do so without slowing it down (and thus pissing off its following). Please MySQL fans, no flaming.
Postgres vs. MS SQL is sort of a different issue. MS SQL has all kinds of features Postgres doesn't have, e.g. lots of replication features (I believe, though I've never had to use them) and its optimizer seems more intelligent than Postgres'. That said, very few dataservers actually use the extended features, and my casual complaints about Postgres' optimizer are quelled by a) fixing my query b) VACUUMing the database as instructed or c) realizing that it was only a few ms slower anyway. Cons on the MS SQL Server side are that a) it ties to you one platform, b) tends to have large gaping security holes and c) tends more often to be implemented by those without a clue of DBAing or security.
Whoops, I ranted. gso
Just to say so up front, I write for The Inquirer (www.theinquirer.net), and do a fair amount of hardware reviews. I also go to the trade shows and the like, and talk to other journalists. You learn a lot there.
You also go to parties afterwards and people get very drunk. You learn a lot more there:). You learn even more if you do not drink. I don't.
The things you learn are open secrets, all the vendors know what is going on, and all the writers and reporters do also. Some employees may not know thier bosses are not quite clean, but that is another issue.
I was talking to several DRAM vendors about benchmarking at CES, and was told, by name, and usually by several sources that certain web sites would not review a product without advertising dollars. In fact, advertising dollars could significantly skew the results of a review.
These were not offhand comments like 'we think that they don't like us', it was direct 'If we don't cough up the cash, they won't review us'. Several different sources in the DRAM and other industries told me similar things, and for the most part, 2 or 3 names kept coming up. No, I will not name them.
If you follow the hardware sites, you can pretty much pick up who is 'dirty'. When 5 sites review the same new video card, all with the same *yawn* benchmarks, and 4 get one result, and the 5th gets a different result, and praises the 'loser' in the commentary, what do you think is going on? I mean, it is rather obvious.
The flip side of it is I get accused of bias just about ever day. Other than it getting rather old, it is usually not worth commenting on. I get accused of loving AMD, loving Intel, and being a liberal weenie and a republican nazi over the same article.
The truth of the matter is I get what hardware I can from who I can, and write about it. I bitch out HP all the time for blatant management stupidity, but I can't recall ever reviewing one of their products badly. I buy a lot of them with my own money. Strangely, they won't talk to me.
I also review a lot of AMD gear, and almost no Intel stuff. Why? AMD sends me things when I ask, without any pain or hoops to jump through. Intel won't. I know they can, friends in the industry have intel sending truckloads of chips to them on offhand remarks. I would almost say they don't like me or want me near thier products. If I ever do get one, I will write about it fairly though, I think that is what they are afraid of.
Last but not least, I know at least 3 of The Inq writers, me included, have been offered money to do something, or not do something. All the ones that I have heard of turned them down. At CES in January, a vendor who I know and like tried to hand me a wad of bills. I (politely) turned him down, even though it was probably more money than I had seen in a month, and it would have made the difference between another day of dollar menu items and water, and the not totally cheap buffets in vegas. Others have been offered 6 digits to do things. Personally, I don't know why he turned that one down.
What it all comes down to is ethics. Once yousell out, you are done. How can you trust them ever again? Easy you can't. That is why I turned down the money, and why the site puts reporting first. If it were any other way, I would be gone.
Other sites make other decisions, and they quickly get the reputations that they deserve. The community knows, and if you look closely, you can pick out who is clean fairly easily, it isn't all that hard.
-Charlie yxe
I will admit that as a general nerd and space geek (I own a telescope) I am concerned about the possibility of the human population getting wiped out by a large space-borne impact.
But isn't it sad that governments throw billions of dollars towards defense (from other humans) yet nobody is willing to invest in defense of the earth at large?
This is the kind of shit that makes us look awfully silly when the aliens come inspect the rubble after the impact. qm
I just really hate academics. hkk
No matter what technology it uses, neural nets, b-trees, recursion, tinkertoy logic [rutgers.edu], smell-emitting diode, leaky junction zener transistor, steam-powered aeolipiles, it only automagically presses delete, which is a pretty lame way of fighting spam.
It's a lame way of fighting spam, because, we STILL have to pay for the fucking spam bandwitdh; we STILL have to pay for the goddammed disk space used by the spam; we STILL have to pay for the bloody time lost transmitting the spam; we STILL have to pay for the extra ISP infrastructure to carry those spams.
Naaah. Spammers should be eradicated from the Internet, and the best way to do so is to completely BLOCK networks who host spammers (no matter what service), in order to force the collateral damage to whine to the ISP or simply vote with their feet. cup
Why do people despise the Mac platform so much?
perceived levels of freedom
Back in the day, both IBM PCs and Apple Macs were closed systems, their internel workings were undocumented to the outside world. There was, however, one crucial difference. PCs set up the hardware with the BIOS and then went to disk for the OS whereas MACs booted from an internal ROM. Compaq succeeded in cloning the IBM BIOS which meant you could put an IBM floppy in a Compaq machine and it would boot. Some companies tried to clone the Mac but were slapped with lawsuits because you couldn't copy the Apple ROM. The company that supplied IBM with the stuff on their floppies was a Washington startup called Microsoft who had cunningly retained the right to ship MS-DOS seperate from a computer.
Consequently the PC Clone market flourished and IBM lost their control over the PC Platform driving down price while driving up incompatibility. Meanwhile Apple continued to develop their platform. It was a technically superior platform with a unified graphical user interface, used Postscript for printing and SCSI for devices. This made MACs expensive when you did CPU Cycles / $. You could walk into an Apple dealer, choose the bits, go home, plug it all together and it worked whereas you would go to a PC dealer tell him what you want and he's spend a few days building it and battling to get the bits talking to each other but when you got it home it worked.
Because it was difficult to build and maintain PCs, their builders and maintainers looked down on the MAC, it wasn't as fast for the same $, was too easy to use, you didn't have to take the case to pieces to add a peripheral and the only people you knew who had them were too rich to deserve them.
As the builders and maintainers of the PCs of everyone in their social circle, the non-techies trusted the techies opinion, parroting the same lame arguments in PCs vs MACs arguments the world over.
pb
... because Apple is not a monopoly, period. bq
This SSI stuff sounds interesting, but I'd like to see his stuff compared to OpenSSI. Now the Backplane SQL DBMS seems interesting, but... First, they make the common mistake of calling SQL relational. This in itself will prevent them becoming significantly better at the logic level, which is a pity. Second, it looks very interesting as far as the backend goes. But the question here as always is, why create something from scratch? Couldn't, say, PostgreSQL, which was born on BSD anyway, be retrofitted with their stuff? Won't Oracle or IBM leapfrog them if they prove successuful? Third, looks like we have yet another BitKeeper in the making... gratis for free software, but not free itself. Makes me want to stick with PostgreSQL for now. If I wanted something proprietary, I'd go Alphora Dataphor, which at least is fully relational and not yet another SQL. le
Google search of slashdot for beer bubbles [google.com] kk
Queue the BSD is dead posts.
Why can't we all just get along?? bto
"Early adoption of Yukon in enterprises was quite strong due to the functions and features [..]"
How can you talk about functions and features of software that has not yet been released? How can companies "early adopt" vaporware?
Yes, they can order in advance, but to me "adoption" means running something as a part of your business. Not "planning to maybe use it once you get it and if it turns out to be as good as you was promised it would be".
ks
Out in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud [arizona.edu] there are thought to be as many as one trillion objects - most small 1 to 10 km chucks of ice.
The really interesting question is, what is the mass distribution ? (I.e., how does the number of objects scale with their mass ?) This is basically unconstrained by real data. All such cosmic mass distributions are steep, but many (for example, planets in the Solar System, Asteroids in the Asteroid belt) are dominated by the most massive bodies.
If this holds true in the Oort cloud, in particular, there could be some pretty big objects. Even a Jupiter sized object might be able to hide from the Infrared surveys (the best way of detecting such an object). jp
I wonder if this could help patients with I.C. It's rather painful and if the "new nerves" can be made to ignore certain impulses...that'd be very beneficial. Very intriguing, anyway byq
The one from the logged in poster is a faithful reproduction of the article. The anonymous coward one mentions cowboyneal and male body parts.
That probably explains why the moderation was done the way it was far more the the stated author of the article. ut
Honey, we're moving to Washington!!!
Imagine mapping this (your HOUSE) for a Quake / Unreal map!!
anx
Of course they are very biased. Since it rather hard to find any real-life application of RDBMS serving "sigle client".
And we all know how good MySQL at serving multiple clients with complex queries at once.
Neat quote tho, at least when you understand who is really biased:)
/usd yu
now the question is.. how hard is it to get it to work with cpanel mw
I can see GM doing a robotic nose flute or kazoo. pcm
This product lacks focus," said Betsy Burton, analyst with the Gartner Group. "They're doing all sorts of stuff with it, first scalability was the issue, then XML support, then.Net activities, and then business intelligence and now security. The gut issue is, what is the purpose of this release? As a team trying to develop a product you have to know where you're going," she said.
This is the paragraph that explains it all. This product lacks focus. Why? Who knows? But if you cannot give your troops clear, concise goals, then everyone will go in a million different directions. And nothing will get done!
When this project first started out, it may have had the clear, concise goals. But then they started to add extra things to the project as it progressed. Sometimes adding a new feature or what-not means starting from scratch (if you wanna do it right).
If MS wants to do this right (and not delay the shipping date), then they should put a freeze on adding new features. Otherwise, it will either slip again, or a critical flaw will be found with the software.
My $0.02
fyk
How do you feel about people sharing your book? tj
Looking for spam by content analysis for a single user only works for some people. If, for example, your legitimate E-mail contains many messages about investments, mortgages, and similar financial subjects, it's going to be hard to separate out financial spam by word analysis.
Spamcop does multiple-user analysis. It works better than most of the single-user systems. at
If you read the article, Matt says (about SSI): "It is something that no non-commercial system today can do"... fa
accuracy levels as high as 10x that of a human...
So, let me get this straight - my spam filter will know better than I do which emails I want to read, and which ones I don't?
"No, trust me man, you really want a bigger johnson. Read it!" jr
Intel Pentium M Thermal Design Power [intel.com] is listed as 24.5 Watt at 1.7 GHz, a FAR cry from the 7 Watt you claim
The 900 MHz and 1GHz ones are the 7 Watt models, but how those perform compared to an Efficeon I was unable to find.
Cooper
--
I don't need a pass to pass this pass!
- Groo The Wanderer - vcx
This will not improve people's skills. In fact, it willl make them more prone to mistakes, and more likely to get the result that they didn't expect. It's similat to computer spell checkers. Ever since people started relying on these, their spelling has gone way downhill simly because they don't bother thinking. Computer do all the spelling for them. They don;t need a spell checker. They need spelling lessons.
This si even worse. Computers will try to second guess what the user means, get get it wrong half tyhe time.
A qualified shell scripter will be not make these mistakes in the first place. Anyone who thinks they need this shell actually just need to learn to spell and to ytype accuratly. yvg
"With that information, Territo said, independent mechanics and parts manufacturers could duplicate major components such as fuel injectors that automakers have spent millions of dollars developing."
If the manufacturers spent millions of dollars designing parts and *didn't* get patents on those parts, then it's their own damn fault...and they have also failed their shareholders.
If they had patented their expensively-designed parts, they would have zero problems with opening the specs for third-party repair shops and could still prevent third-party replica parts.
zsl
I'd like to calm the rhetoric. Sure, common sense would indicate the RIAA's copyrights have been violated. But copyright has been heavily legislated over the past century to the point that common sense or common law is nearly absent. It has such things as compulsory licences and device royalties. Morality should be confined to governing personal actions and advocating revisions to intellectual property law. It is disingenuous for the RIAA to invoke morality when if anything they have had excessive influence in crafting legislation.
IANAL but lets look at the law. Once you know the tokens, legalese is not usually harder to parse than APL:) Apologies for a US-centric viewpoint but I believe a statutory situation exists in all other common-law countries with different details. There's an excellent copy of the United States Code, Title 17 - Copyrights at Cornell [cornell.edu]. Chapter 10 covers DIGITAL AUDIO RECORDING DEVICES AND MEDIA . Particularly interesting is:
Sec. 1008. - Prohibition on certain infringement actions... No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings
Simply breathtaking! The words "this title" mean Title 17, which contains all of US copyright law. The first "based on" means these things are not actionable as contributory negligence ("burglars tools"). The second "based on" means non-commercial use of these things does not violate copyright. Wow!
The definitions in Sec.1001 would seem to include computers. They sure are designed, advertised and used that way amongst others. But all is not [Guns'N'] roses. The manufacturers of these recording devices would seem to owe a device tax that gets paid through the Librarian-of-Congress (of all people!) to the RIAA as specified. There are also requirements related to the Serial Copy Management System. I trust that RIAA have settled this with their long-standing antagonists, appliance manufacturers, now including Dell, HP, et al. But even if not, how does it affect me?
The term "noncommercial use" would almost certainly cover receiving music files to make recordings on a hard-disk. Offering to transmit music files might not be covered and fall under the exceptionally byzantine Sec.114 as an "interactive service". But a lawyer specialising in Copyright law should be able to give a better interpretation including case precedents. The Diamond Rio MP3 player case [gigalaw.com] is probably relevant. Is there a lawyer in the house?
lka
An open letter to antitrust, competition, consumer and trade practice monitoring agency officials worldwide.
The role of trade practice and antitrust legislation is to provide the consumer with protection from abusive business practices and monopolies. In one of the most serous cases of monopolization in the information technology industry, the agencies charged with protecting the competitive process and the consumer have utterly failed to stem the offending corporation's anti-competitive practices.
The Microsoft corporation has been under continuous investigation by antitrust policing agencies since 1989. Despite this scrutiny, the Microsoft corporation, using covert and overt anti-competitive business tactics, has maintained an unabated campaign against alternatives to Microsoft Windows operating system platforms and Microsoft applications.
For years the Microsoft corporation has earned around 70% to 80% net profit from sales of its operating systems and application software. Only in areas like Thailand where GNAA/Linux on the desktop has just begun to gain a foothold has Microsoft stated that it will release versions of its operating system platform and application software at a lower price to Original Equipment Manufactures (OEMs) and retail consumers than is available in the rest of the modern world. Consumers benefit where real competition exists.
The world desktop operating system market remains predominantly monopolized by Microsoft. Over the last decade, Microsoft continued to lever its desktop platform monopoly to the point where it now holds a dominant position worldwide in the application office suite and web browser software markets. On its own, the current USA Department Of Justice (DOJ) settlement with the Microsoft corporation has failed to bring about any restoration of serous competition to the desktop operating system market. Microsoft continues to use similar anti-competitive business tactics in an attempt to monopolize the digital media player and the desktop services server markets. Competing vendors increasingly find that they can no longer compete with Microsoft if they limit themselves to only the traditional closed source model of software development.
In the last six years information technology vendors have adopted techniques and resources from two existing movements geared toward the construction of software. The newer open source movement, represented by the non-profit Open Source Initiative (OSI) corporation, emphasizes the licensing of software in a manner which encourages its collaborative development in an open environment. The older free software movement, represented by the non-profit Free Software Foundation (FSF), focuses on the ethical issues surrounding the licensing of software. The free software movement emphasizes freedoms which are often taken for granted outside of the field of software: the freedom to use, study how something works, improve or adapt it and redistribute.
The Free Software Foundation offers two software license schemes which are compatible with their own goals and those of the Open Source Initiative: The GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL). Essentially, the GPL and LGPL licenses grant the recipient extra rights than that granted by copyright law. Both licenses insure that a contributer or distributer of a GPL or LGPL licensed work may not further impede downstream recipients the rights granted by the same license. Many developing software in an open source manner have realized that this benefit offered by the GPL and LGPL licenses outweigh any potential losses. The licensing also insures that no contributing or distributing vendor or group of vendors could potentially monopolize the market, insuring that real market competition dictates price. Just as the automotive industry can commonize on standards
Actually, MS use UNIX servers for Hotmail
Ummm... no. You have no idea what you're talking about. If you had said "used" (as in past tense), then you'd at least be close. Still wrong, but close. They used one of the BSD's until people called them on it. Hell, for all we know, they still are and just changed the headers that the server hands out to look like a MS box like the other post in this thread shows.
Anyway, you're wrong on all accounts.
eog
You can only call interplanetary dibs if you can see the planet as you call it. Just like calling shotgun.
cn
Living underground has many practical advantages. All-year insulation from heat and cold, no neighbours, no leaking roofs, infinite space for expansion if you care to dig.
But... we're descended from tree-hugging primates, not moles, and living underground is a sure way to go crazy. A home needs sunlight, a view, and fundamentally, people within easy reach.
I'd rather live in a shoddy 1-room appartment than in a hundred room bunker.
rkn
This SSI stuff sounds interesting, but I'd like to see his stuff compared to OpenSSI. Now the Backplane SQL DBMS seems interesting, but... First, they make the common mistake of calling SQL relational. This in itself will prevent them becoming significantly better at the logic level, which is a pity. Second, it looks very interesting as far as the backend goes. But the question here as always is, why create something from scratch? Couldn't, say, PostgreSQL, which was born on BSD anyway, be retrofitted with their stuff? Won't Oracle or IBM leapfrog them if they prove successuful? Third, looks like we have yet another BitKeeper in the making... gratis for free software, but not free itself. Makes me want to stick with PostgreSQL for now. If I wanted something proprietary, I'd go Alphora Dataphor, which at least is fully relational and not yet another SQL. dtj
Why doesn't anyone here seem to interview someone more interesting? I have no idea who the hell these people are, and no idea why I should care.
Hell, go interview that Darl McBride guy everyone here is always blathering about. Here, I'll even give you the contact info I nicked off those posts of his info someone keeps spamming.
Home phone #: (801) 424-2006
Office phone #: (801) 932-5820
Email: darl@sco.com oen
So for now just speculate and pretend MS will have to abide by the sanctions. By the time the ruling does take place users will be familiar enough (if they are not already) with WMP that it would be hard for anything to take its place. If a user has purchased any addins for WMP it is unlikely for them to prefer another player. Personally I think this is more of a burden for the users because they will have to find the newest WMP to download then its 4-5 patches.
zmpCase in point. My best friend is a very bright guy at things historical, political and...litoral? No that's lakes...whatever the word is that means "things dealing with literature." Essentially, a geek who's not good at math. College educated with a degree in Political Science and a minor in Journalism.
He owns a landscaping company and a power equipment (professional mowers, edgers, etc) dealership. A low-brow kind of field, right? Absolutely...which is why he cleans up. His competition in the landscaping industry is mostly rednecks with limited intelligence and poor personal hygiene. Whom do you think the college educated property manager for an apartment complex is going to hire to maintain their property? My friend the clean-cut collegian or the dirty hillbilly with the stained t-shirt and bloodshot doper eyes? Hmmm... Essentially, he's a big fish in a small pond, runs three landscaping crews and pulls in upwards of $200,000 per year.
Myself, I've got a Master's in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and I'm a wedding and portrait photographer. Since photography has gone digital, my skills with all things electronic are extremely valuable. The guys who have been shooting film for 20 years barely know how to work their digital cameras, maintain their computers, set up a website, and figure out enough photoshop to retouch a photo or use a sepia-toned plug-in. I make more as a photographer than I ever would as an engineer, I'm my own boss, and work from home.
Don't think that just because you're a techie, you have to work in the computer industry. It's one thing to build tools...it's something else to use them. pah
IANAAP, but Vulcan is already reserved, it was a theoretical planet in the early 20th century that would be closer into the Sun that Mercury's orbit that would account for irregularities in Mercury's orbital path. There was actually no planet and Mercury's behavior is proof of the special theory of relativity (IIRC).
I'd presume that for historical reasons Vulcan would be reserved. Also recall that theres lots of trans pluto pluto sized objects that have names, I forget what the naming mechanism is for them, but I think they're roman. kgs
What is the question here?
If you commit a crime in a foreign country which is also considered a crime in your home country you should be extradited. No question.
If you commit a criminal act in a foreign country which is legal in your home country, you probably shouldn't be extradited. At least not in this case, where the guy hasn't even set foot in the USA while perpetrating the alleged crime.
But: Software piracy is not legal in Australia.
So the question is: Does the US court have jurisdiction of these crimes, if they did occur in Australia?
That's a question which the US court will no doubt adress in the trial.
But if they don't, then it means that he should be tried in Australia..
So what's the issue? eo
It's a free email service.
I'm sure RMS [stallman.org] would disagree with you. imo
I personally don't like Microsoft... but you have to ask yourself if Media Player is removed who is affected by this in a negative way?
Microsoft. Oh, you meant in the short term? Possibly users. In the long term however this stops Microsoft being able to leverage their desktop monopoly into a format monopoly (where was.wma 3 years ago?) into a media player monopoly (where were.wma players 3 years ago? you can now buy windows only wma only players) into a net-broadcast monopoly (that you can only view with media player on an approved platform).
In the long run it might be necessary to hurt consumers a little bit today to protect them tomorrow. Ideally the solution will involve forcing them to support a patent unencumbered license unencumbered format alongside (or instead of) wma to ensure they can't use their existing monopoly to destroy interoperability. bvu
At CES, they had one, and it was absolutely dwarfed by my Nokia 6360 phone. Take a look:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13578
While the phone is a 'big' one the laptop was thinner, and it weighed nothing. Very cool.
These ultra-light models don't click until you hold one, but when you do, you look at the standard ultra-lights and wonder how people use them.
-Charlie gw
Finally. It's about time that people started to realize that electronics are complicated things and that it takes competent people to fix them. People don't do their own wiring or own plumbing, (well, most people) and they shouldn't. I think that the reason that electronics haven't passed into the realm of "let the professionals handle it" is because with electrical wiring, you can get shocked and die and with plumbing you can get covered with sewage or scalding water. Personally, I am glad that this I-can-do-it-myself mindset is starting to fade. Although, I do think that $125/hour is a bit much. ju
...they're putting them into condoms to build up a database for "virtual sex"? gbm
DSPAM is one of these statistical filters (like spamprobe and CRM114) that can perform virtually perfect filtering of spam/non-spam you receive.
Now that you are free of spam yourself, may I suggest that you take it one step further and share your data with the anti-spam community; the WPBL project [pc9.org] lets many users report the IPs sending them spam and non-spam in realtime using a couple simple scripts installed in procmail.
Our central database then publishes a real-time list of spam sources (the IP blocklist). Unlike spamcop, WPBL is entirely based upon automatic decisions made by statistical filters, 24/7. The resulting blocklist is already used by many ISPs; and you can also use it to block spamming IPs at your own server.
zljI've always wanted a shell that deletes into a 'garbage' folder, but in a native way so programs calling a delete function would also. I've also wanted a 'file versions' feature to bring safety to accidently overwriting. Then it would really be tolerant of user faults.
While we're at it: a config file library so every config file is the same format; exportable functions so gimp can export gmp.imageResize fileName 800 600 to the shell; and a codecs folder with libraries for image, video, document, and data compression.
Not every might see that last one's benefit, but I think if every app exported its format there (quicktime, realmedia) and let it be universally called, apps would be judged by interface, not filetype support.
Another idea: make every shortcut in X the config file. That way, a simple copy+edit makes two easily created+accessed differently configed programs. (I don't know about network-wide configs, though.) rh
MySQL Control Center [mysql.com] is a step in that direction (client side) if they implement some more features on server side M$ centric customers need, it could get Microsoft into trouble in the future (some years) kg
Seems a little techie for the cool, grungy Boehemians, reading their Kerouac. Where will they go? okk
But it is probably not patentable. It is not an invention, it is precise settings which have to be worked out over hours and hours of testing. Exact timings for injectors at all speeds and load conditions, while allowing reasonable margins so that performance does not fall off with wear. This data - just a huge look-up table - costs millions of dollars to obtain, because it required many hours of running. But you cannot patent it. You can copyright it, of course, but if a copier made a number of minor, not very significant, changes in the tables, it would be very difficult to prove they had copied the original tables. "Of course we got the same results - they are the right results for this engine". vs
I can't really say I care for the precedent being set here.
How are you supposed to get anything done on the internet if you have to worry about not only the laws in your country, but those all over the world?
(Realistically, the laws in your country plus those in the US) ftv
Most of the silos on the 'net have been older Atlas silos. Very, very few of the Titan I silos ever got into public hands AND have no apparent water seepage into any parts of the building (Typically, the actual missle bays would fill up with water because of location- they'd sump pump it out, but with them being abandoned...).
If it's for real, it's something somewhat special. The last one that went up was some 2-3 years ago in Colorado. pdl
Coffee - and coasters to put the mugs on, too! It just doesn't get better than that...:) gfd
For those things there is Mailinator [mailinator.com].
Throwaway accounts should never be, out of all places, registered on Hotmail.com. They suspend your account if you don't login for 30 days. At least Yahoo!Mail or other free alternatives let you forget the account for few months and not get penalized for it. bb
Got my Titan Missile Complex but the tall backed leather chair did not swivel and the white cat was already dead when i got there! Avoid!!!!!! ec
Hey, there's nothing like converting a low-res display and computer hardware to make a high-tech $300+ version of a $10 picture frame. lxi
It would behoove many companies to invest more in R&D and less in padding executives pocketbooks with $100's. HP, for example, has gutted their engineering ranks while simultaneously buying jets for the higher-ups. Closer to my region of the country, Caterpillar has outsourced waves of R&D people...and their executives are getting ever-higher bonuses. xl
There should be a TOPIC/STORY negative modifier for old news, or news that is blatantly obvious. Or just have "FARK" tags. If this "story" about how hotmail was down ran on Fark, it would have the "obvious" tag. iq
Internet piracy, peer-to-peer, 'sharing mp3s'... is there any chance any of this can and will be legal? It just seems like so many geeks want it to be legal, but it requires a lawyer with a good understanding of technology to deliver the odds. So whats it gonna be? Slim to none? woy
That shell script can be improved a lot by using " set -e " to exit on failure, as follows:
#!/bin/sh
set -e # exit on failure
cd/work/foo
rm -rf bar
cp -r/fresh/data
This means that, if any command in the script fails, the script will exit immediately, instead of carrying on blindly.
The script's exit status will be non-zero, indicating failure. If it was called by another script, and that had "set -e", then that too will exit immediately. This is a little bit like exceptions in some other languages.
sh
When will transmeta come out with a Mini-ITX or Nano-ITX board with ther CPU on it? VIA has done very well at that with its C3 processors. They sell a lot to end-users, and sell a ton to embedded systems vendors. Transmeta could get a piece of that market.
Those server/embedded devices are a lot less demanding of CPU power. Any device, like a laptop, which has direct user GUI interfacing will always need a lot of horsepower. so
As I recall, the US Army was suffering from a shortage of bugle players to play taps for the passing generation of soldiers. They developed a digital bugle [geek.com] that can play taps even if the bugler is incompetent, drunk, or both.
Since Toyota has now developed a vastly more complicated technology that can be used to solve the same problem as the slightly complicated one above, I look forward to future Pentagon procurement hearings.
Note to self: Sarcasm in this post often results in massive retribution.
zyh
Who loses in the end? The music stores, anyway. qr
This product lacks focus," said Betsy Burton, analyst with the Gartner Group. "They're doing all sorts of stuff with it, first scalability was the issue, then XML support, then.Net activities, and then business intelligence and now security. The gut issue is, what is the purpose of this release? As a team trying to develop a product you have to know where you're going," she said.
This is the paragraph that explains it all. This product lacks focus. Why? Who knows? But if you cannot give your troops clear, concise goals, then everyone will go in a million different directions. And nothing will get done!
When this project first started out, it may have had the clear, concise goals. But then they started to add extra things to the project as it progressed. Sometimes adding a new feature or what-not means starting from scratch (if you wanna do it right).
If MS wants to do this right (and not delay the shipping date), then they should put a freeze on adding new features. Otherwise, it will either slip again, or a critical flaw will be found with the software.
My $0.02
ad
Because SQL Server 2000 is pretty much the best database around for the price.
Who needs all that integrated.NET stuff anyway? tta
I think its great that Microsoft includes basic functionality like a media player, word processor, calculator, internet browser, etc.
I hope that we all realize that the PROBLEM lies in preventing the uninstallation of said items without "crippling" the OS.
I think MS should be allowed to include whatever they want, as long as the no-install/uninstall option is there and its real (as in really uninstalls the files, not just "hiding" them).
Why can't Microsoft see how easy it would be to fix this? But then again, that sort of tunnel vision is what has gotten them into the hot water they are in. nv
& wi-fi vdo conferencing, etc.... we
Now we will have to go to a certified mechanic to get our bodies checked out.
That's basically what doctors are. Human mechanics.
Soon we will have doctors hooking us up to machines to see what wrong.
Like EKGs, for example?
Douchebag. mbj
Not exactly difficult. The so called "sanctions" taken against MS in the U.S. were meaningless to the extent that most observers believe there was a secret backroom deal. Frankly, I cannot see what the Europeans propose having much effect on MS's monopolistic practices either. yck
I think the best answer the 'If nobody would by this stuff...' argument was:
Spam works on the level of 1 in 10,000. The general population contains a far higher rate of mental illness, senility, and retardation.
You'll never cure spam by 'education' of any sort. There are some people who are just too crazy or too stupid to learn. wjf
This example was written about Office, but it's relevant to this argument:
Say that Office was a seperate company to Windows.
Office the company would see that making their product available on every platform would make them more money. Thus it would be so. Windows the company would have no incentive to build in special APIs for Office. Office would compete on it's merits and so would Windows, and competition COULD and WOULD exist effectivly in the marketplace.
Now, say that Office and Windows are made by the same company.
Office would by and large see that by making their product only available for Windows they would make less money but it would be worth more because every copy sold would also sell a Windows license. Windows wants to make sure that everyone who buys Windows chooses office so they do what they can to make it seem to run faster, better etc. Consumers get screwed by lack of choice.
(Obviously Office is also available for Mac, but this is due to historic pre-monopoly reasons. The same decision might be made today, but only to dodge having the AntiTrust people looking at them too sharply. If Office had been split off from Windows it would likley be available on IRIX, HPUX, AIX, GNAA/Linux, BSD etc today as well as Windows and OS X.) lyb
Wanna know what will REALLY give the conspiracy theorists, New Age freaks, etc? "Sedna" is "Andes" spelled backwards! Everyone knows the advanced Inca civilization lived in the Andes mountains, and there are more than enough wacky theories about the Incas involving aliens and whatnot. Oooh...why is an Inuit god named after backwards-Andes...are the Inuits actually Inca refugees? They're close the Pole, too, and there are already crazy theories about a hole to the interior of the earth where advanced civilizations live, and the Eskimos are somehow related....
Yeah, can't imagine a worse name, really. Backwards-spelled stuff is pure gold in the conspiracy community. ax
Hear, hear.
I used Word 2.0 to type up my Master's thesis, which being Physics, had *lots* of equations. Equation Editor was hell. And my Math grad friends were using this thing called LaTeX for theirs, and it intimidated the hell out of me. Now I'm typing up my PhD, and LaTeX is a godsend.
Having something similar for musical scores is cool -- just one or two minor projects I have in mind. znb
There's this tale (many adapations exist I'm sure):
* There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired.
Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine fixed, but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge.
He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and proudly stated, "This is where your problem is".
The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.
The engineer responded briefly:
One chalk mark: $1
Knowing where to put it: $49,999
It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace. bb
from the article Some think Microsoft has bitten off more than it can chew with Yukon. "This product lacks focus," said Betsy Burton, analyst with the Gartner Group. "They're doing all sorts of stuff with it, first scalability was the issue, then XML support, then.Net activities, and then business intelligence and now security. The gut issue is, what is the purpose of this release? As a team trying to develop a product you have to know where you're going," she said
Betsy clearly has no clue regarding the SQL Server product's evolution, capabilites or how these are going to change with Yukon. In fact she seems to have a very limited grasp of significance of the Yukon's release.
Unlike Oracle, SQL Server has basically hovered in the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" pattern for the last 5 years. For the most part it has delivered a decent database platform, that was for a while more cost effective than oracle. Those who have used SQL Server extensively know it's limitations. Betsy's arguments about "product lacking focus" are rediculous. That's primarily becuase Yukon seeks to rectify a large number of the problems and limitations of SQL Server 2k. It's really very difficult to provide a "focused" look at a product that is changing so significantly. In fact, her complaint is very similar to those that were uttered as Microsfot was trying to formalize the definition of.NET, which really has not clarified itself much in the last two years.
It would seem that Betsy is looking for are a few jargon sound bytes that can be displayed on a single powerpoint slide. That slide would then be shown to a bunch of people who nod their head and say, "that's a sound strategic driection". Big idea's aren't sound bytes.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, they are attempting to be ambitious with Yukon. A lot of new plumbing is going in, as well as a refinement and crystalization of the current features such as SQL -> XML queries, DTS, Replication, the integration of a first class programming language among others. These are all features that we've needed for a long time.
Yukon represents a significant change in the world of RDMS's on the Windows platform. It's sad to see that influential groups such as Gartner can't recognize or have the vision to see how much (and for the better) things are going to change for SQL Server 2K shops. fhh
it can't help but be buyassed? not unlike the moon/mars/bars shot.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators.... get ready to witness the disempowerment of unprecedented evile.
wk
How does this chip compare with that other energy-saving chip, the Celeron?
And more importantly, is there any reason you'd choose a Transmeta-powered rig over an Intel one? gxz
The difference is that neither Mandrake, SuSE, Debian are using a monopoly in one area (OS) to create a monopoly in another area (media), that is what is illegal even in the US. Don't you recall the AT&T situation? yps
Fuel injectors, by the way, are not developed by automakers any more. Automakers go to someone and say hey, we need an injector with these dimensions that flows this much fuel and runs off this voltage, and they get a part back, they sign a contract agreeing to buy so many of them and to put however many of them into cars, and that's it. Furthermore a fuel injector is a dog-simple item which can be made better simply by throwing more money at it for better materials - it's just a solenoid valve. They usually run on 12 volts and they open and close in response to an electrical signal which is pulsed once for each opening. They are usually run at a single given pressure by the OEM and you can "trick" them (and your computer) by using a rising rate fuel pressure regulator, which is a popular way of doing a cheap turbo installation. As the boost rises, the fuel pressure rises, and more fuel is delivered. The next step up is to use a box that takes over fuel management for the computer, and/or tweaks the signal from the computer, and the final step is to replace the car's computer entirely. All of this stuff is done outside of the injector. The injector, as I have previously stated, is a simple device and high-rate injectors can be had for little more than OEM parts. Rebuilt OEM (270cc/min, I think, maybe it was 230?) for my car were $69, you can get new 370cc/min injectors for about $100 each. So Territo is full of horse shit, whoever he is. (Too lazy to RTFA, sorry, I'd rather spend my time ranting.)
Also most of these parts are not complicated. No one owns the facts, so you just stick a thread pitch gauge in the hole, and measure the diameter, and you know what size the thing should be; You can hook up the part and test it using calibration equipment, another (known) sensor (which is calibration equipment of course), or you can build a new one from the specifications. Data sheets are available for automotive sensors, and factory service manuals will tell you the expected range of response from a sensor, most of which are resistance-based.
Automakers quite simply want to hang onto the lucrative service market. Dealers charge more for service than practically anyone else, except for very high end establishments that specialize on working on exotic cars. For example there's a joint called Canepa's in Santa Cruz that bought, sold, and serviced rolls, lamborghini, ferrari and so on. But if you go to a dealer for your ordinary vehicle you generally pay 10-50% over the average service station for both parts and labor, and you don't necessarily get better service unless you bring in a really special car, which they tend to take seriously. xn
I'm a gear head. I know lots of geeks who are gear heads. I, however, have never encountered a problem due to inability to access 'calibration codes'.
I know that you can hook your laptop up to your OBDI/II based vehicle. What can ya do?
-monitor telemetry in real time [RPM,Throttle position, timing, fuel inject pulse lengths, etc.]
-read error codes stored in computer [terse format]
-reprogram the computer[really the data on which decisions are made, not the heuristics themselves]*
*You can't change stuff on earlier computers! Must be that we don't have the 'calibration code' to make a PROM into an EEPROM?!
Seriously though! What you need to 'know' to fix a car is:
Interface specification
Table of error/condition codes and triggering parameters.
Wiring diagrams, mechanical diagrams, parts lists, etc.
how modern cars work
From what I understand, the Interfaces are standardized [think ISO,IEEE, not RFC]. The error codes, and at least short descriptions, are available. The diagrams, etc. are available via repair manuals/KB Systems. I know that at least some manufacturers publish/authorize official such products. As for knowledge, can't legislate that:)
What information is being withheld that makes non-dealer repair impossible?
And what are 'calibration codes'? sgi1. Please tell us about the general status of DragonFly BSD.
Matthew Dillon: The project has been going very well. We've primarily been focused on the 'guts' of the system during this initial period, and you can get a fair idea of the work that has been accomplished so far by looking at the Diary page on our site.
Most of the work so far has been to operating systems internals. The work has been a combination of new work, like our light weight kernel threading core, plus selective backports from FreeBSD-5 to keep the system's device drivers up to date (e.g. such as the USB subsystem).
From a userland perspective we have maintained a FreeBSD style environment, so DragonFly basically runs everything that FreeBSD-4.x can run. The packaging system probably won't be done until the second release so we are at the moment leveraging off of FreeBSD's ports system for user apps. Everything you'd expect of a BSD system (X, mozilla, etc) is available to DragonFly users.
The first release is slated for some time in mid-June, hopefully before the USENIX Technical Conference. That will be the 1.0 release. We've been fairly careful to maintain as high a level of reliability as possible during development and I think we've done a pretty good job meeting that goal. The first release is intended to be more of a technology showpiece then an integrated end-user platform.
2. Are you using any bits and pieces from FreeBSD-5, or you only strictly importing/exporting to FreeBSD-4 codebase?
Matthew Dillon: DragonFly began as a fork off of FreeBSD-4, because that was the most reliable starting point and because we wanted to do major core pieces of the system quite differently from the direction FreeBSD-5 took. For example, we are focused on more of a compartmentalized threading model to scale to SMP rather then the mutex model that FreeBSD-5 has chosen to use. But the FreeBSD-4 codebase is of strictly limited utility as a source of new code and maintainance updates. FreeBSD developers are doing nearly all new coding in the FreeBSD-5 branch.
So, basically, we are doing the major core pieces of the OS differently, such as our significantly evolved threading and messaging subsystems, but we are also maintaining a FreeBSD-5 compatible (or mostly compatible) device driver API in order to be able to bring in all the excellent device driver work that has gone into FreeBSD-5. It's simple logic, really... we don't have the manpower to be able to accomplish both our infrastructure goals *AND* be able to maintain pace with new PC hardware at the same time. This methodology allows us to proceed on both fronts by focusing our own new work on the infrastructure and bringing in FreeBSD-5's device driver work. This isn't to say that we don't do some of our own DD work, but the vast majority of it is take from FreeBSD-5 by design.
3. What is the primary goal of dragonfly, servers or desktops?
Matthew Dillon: Both. When it comes right down to it the idea of targeting a system to the 'server' is simply another word for 'reliability and scaleability', and the idea of targeting a system to the 'desktop' is simply another word for 'out of the box GUI'. It's not really an either-or deal. All UNIX systems, including GNAA/Linux, the BSD's, DragonFly... basically use the same desktop components so supporting a desktop environment comes down to being able to provide integrated solutions that work out of the box.
It is extraordinarily difficult to make GUIs work out of the box on PCs due to the wide variability in hardware and peripherals, but at the same time technology has continued to progress over the years towards standards that actually make this easier to accomplish. At some point the standards going in one direction will meet the software going in the other and systems such as GNAA/Linux and the BSDs (including DragonFly) will be able to approach the out-of-the-box compatibility that took Microsoft billions of dollars of development to ac
People are diliberately confusing 'codes' and 'code'. Mechanics need the _codes_ that the computer spits out indicating what is wrong. Nobody needs the _code_ for the computer software.
As for the whole complaint about the recent complexity of cars; it is government mandated and consumer demanded. There are requirements for fuel efficiency and emissions. A simple 4 stroke engine can only be so effecient and so clean. To meet regulations, cars need to incorporate exhaust gas recirculation, variable cam timing, complex variable spark timing, catylitic converters, and a host of other complexities. Consumers want climate control, adaptive suspension, 17 way power adjustable seats, power cupholders, remote buttons for everything, heated everything, and performance, but they expect their cars to have the simplicity of an air cooled VW? gto
If they had chosen to replace rather than repair, they would be out more then just $800 dollars for the new computer. Since the Judge family needs outside assistance to fix a computer, they would most likely needs outside help to reinstall all their original applications, transfer all their important files to the new machine (without also copying the viruses), etc. $300 to repair -vs- ($800 + $300) to replace? I think they made the right choice. dha
Got my Titan Missile Complex but the tall backed leather chair did not swivel and the white cat was already dead when i got there! Avoid!!!!!! cou
Before his arrest, I would have just ASSUMED selling bongs over the Internet was legal. What is the best way for an entrepreneur ( like an individual selling something on eBay ) to avoid tripping over any stupid and obscure laws? wz
Seriously, though, this practice shouldn't be rewarded with more free publicity for these products or their "reviews". tkc
Really?
Is it the best database for a linux or unix shop?
Is it the best database for large reporting or search applications?
Is it the best database for projects or companies with a small budget?
Ah, the answer to all of the above is 'no':
- zero portability
- parallelism and partitioning is primitive
- licensing costs for a 4-way server can easily hit $100k, and in many configurations are more expensive than other top commercial products (db2 for example).
When it comes to prototyping, sql server is at the top of my list. However, when it comes to delivering powerful capabilities, automating operations, and scripting changes - then it's at the bottom of my list.
But I will agree with you on the.net stuff - integrating that into the database is a bad idea. un
- DRM Helmets
- Jack Kemp
- Yankee Go Home
- Collaborative Dispute Resolution
- Microchips for Your Pet Parrot! (see page 2 of Google results)
huwhat these processors are known for. Benchmarks [vanshardware.com] show that. That's not to say it's a bad processor, and maybe the Efficeon will turn out a little sweeter. Meanwhile, there isn't a whole lot about Transmeta's stuff that stands out. Except the wacky design. raq
According to the 1999 article, the original asking price was $300,000. The guy who bought it is asking $3,500,000. That's a bit of a markup, there.
It makes sense if he put a lot of money and time into renovating it; that's probably the case if there's someone currently occupying the property. (Which the auction hints at.) ts
Now I have a new chat up line to use: hey babe, ever stop and think about bubbles moving down? Hello? You didn't finish your drink! lt
I am usually don't condone the strong arm techniques of the US government. And I do support open source. But Warez is a crime. And it should be punished.
Bullshit. Warez is a crime IN THE US, but not in Australia.
In Germany it's illegal to say ANYTHING that is pro-nazi. Do you think that the US would even consider extraditing one of its citizens who posted something pro-nazi on a website? Of course not.
This is lunacy, pure and simple.
LK sdr
Really?
Is it the best database for a linux or unix shop?
Is it the best database for large reporting or search applications?
Is it the best database for projects or companies with a small budget?
Ah, the answer to all of the above is 'no':
- zero portability
- parallelism and partitioning is primitive
- licensing costs for a 4-way server can easily hit $100k, and in many configurations are more expensive than other top commercial products (db2 for example).
When it comes to prototyping, sql server is at the top of my list. However, when it comes to delivering powerful capabilities, automating operations, and scripting changes - then it's at the bottom of my list.
But I will agree with you on the.net stuff - integrating that into the database is a bad idea. nt
How about ANSI '92 compliance for MySQL... that would be a good start!
No, a good start would be to flush MySQL down the toilet where it belongs and use a real database engine such as PostgreSQL or Firebird.
Seriously! Why wait for MySQL to add all those missing features when such superior alternatives already exist, and, furthermore, MySQL has a more restrictive license?
dzyIt's free, but you can pay for it and get extra features, like a bigger mailbox.
:). I run the account in 'whitelist' mode, so everything goes to the 'junk' folder. The only thing I get in my actual inbox is messages from hotmail telling me my mailbox is full :)
I'm jharper@hotmail.com (I'm not afraid of posting the address publicly, i think i'm on every mailing list I could be on anyway
So if I used the account seriously, rather than just as an address I can hand out if I need to hand one out, i'd need the extra space to hold all the spam that built up overnight.
jwd
...Hotmail goes down on Friday, and you're the first to know on Sunday! ml
I have a question about the recent litigation by the RIAA against a handful of university students for running supposedly illegal P2P services. I'm a student at Rensselaer, so I'm more familiar with the service that was being run there, but as far as I figure it was the same deal at all the other universities as well. At RPI, the Phynd server searched all the computers that were sharing files on the network and indexed them so you could do a keyword search for files, similar to the way google works. From what I read of the case, the major point in the case was that the RIAA said that the service provided illegal access to copyrighted material because you could use the service to directly download material, via a hyperlink in the search results window; even though the service and the files were restricted only to students at Rensselaer. My question is how would their case have changed if all the service returned was just the address of the computer hosting the files? Thus after a person ran a search and decided on his own to manually type the address of the hosting computer to access it, would the owners of the phynd server have been held accountable since it would have been the miscosoft transfer protocols transfering the files. This seemed to be the big point in going after the students that it was their program that was directly facilitating the illegal downloads, and it seems like if the service merely indexed the files without providing direct access the case would have been significantly weakened. wj
Why can't I get this to run on my WXP machine? I have XP Pro installed....
You linux geeks get all the good toyz!!
Darn you, Darn you to Redmond!
What do I get?
Well.. I guess I do get all the neat patches. xx
Congrats to lily's developers for all their hard work.
I just stumbled across this [noteserver.org] online music composition generator.I wonder Jan and Han-Wen are aware? Looks interesting for quick and dirty snippets, perhaps great for a beginner's music comp class. It also appears that GUIDO has a more "natural" TeX-like command set, things like \slur, \staccato. But judging by the examples, I think lily is a bit more versatile, in the end.
zq
It's encouraging to see unemployeed techs finally taking advantage of all that time they spent fixing friends computers for free. I know I'm usually the first one several of my friends and family call when their computer starts acting weird, and all they want to do is send email.
Now if somebody was really smart, they'd find a way to get partnered with the local Best Buy and could probably turn it into a full time job. You'd be amazed at how much people are willing to pay if you can bring some sanity to their assorted home electronics. My mom loves the 3 page FAQ I made for her that goes step by step how to do everything with the home theatre system my Dad has. She used to not watch any DVDs just because she was scared to touch anything. vfv
I hope she's good in bed cause I'd never date someone that clueless unless she could make my toes curl, my eyes roll into the back of my head, and jets of steam shoot out of both ears.
Lee
bdx
"Shakespeare can put all England on stage in Henry IV, I am confident that we can put on the whole of Middle Earth..."
Oy veh...Note that putting the story of Henry IV on stage took Shakespeare two very long plays-- Henry IV parts one and two together are over seven hours, uncut. Even then, the scope of the plays is much smaller than the War of the Ring. Yes, the historical backdrop of Henry IV is a series of wars and rebellions that cover most of England as well as Brittany, but the realy story is much smaller. It's about the (contested) king, his son Hal, and a few other key court figures suh as Hotspur and Falstaff. The real plot is the search for honor by these characters, NOT the wars and the fate of the kingdom. Anyway, to cover the full scope of the war/political story, you have to include two more plays, Richard II and Henry V, which would bring the stage running time to over twelve hours.
So Shakespeare did NOT put "all England" on stage in Henry IV...he was much too smart to try that. Pity the West End producers can't learn from the Bard.
di
given his example:
cd/work/foo
rm -rf bar
cp -r/fresh/data
would this not suffice:
cd/work/foo && rm -rf bar && cp -r/fresh/data
my undertanding of && was that it only executes in the previous command didn't throw some sort of error. i understand its not as powerful as what he's talking about, but there is some degree of fault tolerance there.
secondly, i don't know about you, but i would be very uncomfortable with something that tries a few thousand times or for a particular amount of time - it could really lock up threads or disk IO quite sunstantially if not well considered. ut
I think the reason for the music tie-in is that there's more and more competition for the coffee-drinker's dollar and they need to come up with new ways to stand out. Within two blocks of my apartment, there's a Starbucks, a Seattle's best, and two local coffee houses. 10 minute's walk up the street, there a cluster of about 6 more coffee places, including 2 Starbucks at the same intersection.
But between the insane cost and the burnt flavour of their coffee, I never go to Starbucks and the ability to put together a CD isn't going to entice me.
md
Nope this problem is a central database problem, probably they tried to normalize the passport database, screw the pooch and had to roll everything back which is why it took so long.
Or maybe they changed a permission and spend the whole day figuring out which one did it. skHas any one contemplated the concept that Microsoft might actually be taking the time to make better products? I realise its taboo on slashdot to show any support to Microsoft, but the fact is that they are not stupid! Do you honestly believe they would just decide, hey, lets let linux + competitors get a foothold in our markets whilst we jack about! WRONG!
One thing anyone in the IT business should learn is to never ever under estimate microsoft. mcs
I do realise Gold has special properties such as conductivity and hypoallergenic properties, but come on! nz
Perhaps a date in the story would have been more useful, since "As of 8:15 PM EST" is now just highly misleading. That 8:15PM EST was on Friday, March 12. This story is making it sound like it's been down for days, but in reality it was just a few short hours.
This story isn't even relevant at this point. sq
When the MPAA comes a callin' with their CSS encryption, the answer is the DMCA.
But when it comes to open-standards for automobiles, they're all for it.
Why won't they make up their minds? iea
On the contary, if a site passes itself as an "eNewspaper" site, an eMag or whatever, and it publishes mistruths, then I would expect it to be sued as any pulp publication would be.
Are there any legal precedents or specific laws on this? nfg
Isn't the whole point of the lawsuit that they aren't? pm
It's perfectly reasonable to, once they've given you the quote, to also tell you what all is wrong with your car. Tell them you'd need to think about it, as if this is going to put a bit of crimp in your budget for this month, and say you'll get back to them as soon as you've worked out the details.
Trot down to your favorite small shop mechanic and ask him how much he'd charge to do exactly the job that the other guys said needed to get done. You tell him that the dealership has already given you a quote for $X, and the problem has been diagnosed by them. Odds are he'll undercut them. If not, just go back to the dealership... you're SOL.
If your mechanic guy has offered to do the repairs, then you go back to the dealership and tell them that you just can't swing that kind of money this month. Then you take your car to little guy's shop and have it repaired there.
Funny thing is, if enough people did this, the little guys would learn what the diagnosis codes meant because they'd get customers coming in telling them what was already wrong, and the mechanics could start matching up codes to real problems.
Now the question is, is the above method, using strictly social engineering, still considered a violation of the DMCA? lhb
*translation*
Should BioWare/Atari pay for the new CD Rom I had to buy after upgrading Neverwinter Nights to v1.31, and subsequently making it impossible for my old CD Rom to read the disc because of advanced "SafeDisc"?
*corollary*
I own Neverwinter Nights, all 5 glorious discs of it. If, for some reason, my old and/or busted CD Rom refuses to give the executable what it wants because of SafeDisc, is it legal to bypass the "Do you have a legit disc" check? Is it legal to download a crack that does this for you because I can't speak hex?
(On the Neverwinter Nights message boards, Atari says "no", BioWare says "We can't condone that action, but we're happy you purchased the disc (hint), but you can't link to cracks sites here")
~Will
uj
I've been into computers since I was 8. I bought my first car when I was 18. I used to be one of those people that took it somewhere anytime something went wrong. Then when I was 19, I met someone who worked on vehicles for a living. He showed me that I was being taken to the cleaners when I pay Midas $400 for new brakes. When I was 24, I bought my second vehicle. Maybe 6 months later, the front passenger side rotor was shot. I went to Monroe for an estimate, $692 for two new rotors, braks pads, shoes, calipers, pistons, and lines. I talked to my friend, he showed me that my calipers, lines, and the pistons for the rear brakes were fine. So I bought new rotors and pads, did the repair myself for ~$60.
4 years later, I've gone through a fair number of pads and shoes since, but the calipers are still fine and the lines are good.
I've known "computer professionals" who operate on the same kind of principle. They feel like they should make as much money as possible whenever someone comes into the shop by misrepresenting what needs to be done, or even outright lying. Some of them are quite successful because of this, but others fail miserably.
You can't hold those people that you depend upon to make your living in contempt. You can't treat people like their morons. (even if some of them really are)
LK zpf
OT but... Get a hard pad, or a RedOctane 2.0 I weigh 240lbs, and that RedOctane keeps taking a beating without fail on 9 footers. awk
Many distributions ship with software such as XMMS, mplayer and the gimp. Should Mandrake, SuSE, Debian and the like be fined for carrying this software?
First: no one of those distributions has a de facto monopoly in the OS market and it's trying to abuse that position to get the monopoly in other markets, such as the media players one.
Second: on the average GNAA/Linux distro, you have twenty different text editors, a dozen media players, and another dozen graphic manipulation programs.
So, your is, indeed, a non sequitur.
nduYou can only call interplanetary dibs if you can see the planet as you call it. Just like calling shotgun.
sz
Perhaps a date in the story would have been more useful, since "As of 8:15 PM EST" is now just highly misleading. That 8:15PM EST was on Friday, March 12. This story is making it sound like it's been down for days, but in reality it was just a few short hours.
This story isn't even relevant at this point. th
Furthermore, I find LilyPond's text format far faster for input than using a GUI. Like speach, music is an abstract concept that the human can nevertheless learn to set in a concrete form using a keyboard. Payware music typesetting programs also has a keyboard input mode, and most advanced users use it. xiy
I had a problem with my '99 cavalier; the engine would drop it's RPMs by several hundred every once in a while; almost, but not quite, enough to stall.
Took it in to the dealer, they said 'is the check engine light on?'
'Nope,' I replied, 'but here's what it's doing...'
'Sorry,' came the reply. 'If the check light's not on, there's no diagnostic codes for us to look up. We can't fix it unless we know what's wrong.'
kaThe real benefit is in having a system which is sufficiently distributed that any program running on top of it can continue to do so despite any sort of underlying failure. qw
Did you know that in 1998 Senator Patrick Leahy, of Vermont, got his State's largest Lake, Lake Champlain, to be reclassified as the 6th Great Lake? [dencities.com] At least as far as the awarding of researh grants. Being considered a "Great Lake" made the academic institutions in his constituency eligible to apply for certain research grants.
There is talk of sending a probe to Pluto. Is it possible that it is easier to sell a probe to "planet Pluto" than to send one to Kuiper-belt object Pluto?
I remember, back in the days when I tuned in to debates as to which newsgroups should be created, the big debate as to whether a new group should be talk.acquaria, rec.acquaria or sci.acquaria.
In Leahy's defence, these were environmental research grants, and I should probably assume he added this line to the bill to protect his constituent's natural environment -- not for the petty partisan purposes. yz
I say its a fair bet that this service wont recover the money they need to put into it to start off, not to mention the training cost of training all those 18 year olds who barely know enough to do a decent cup of coffee. xsm
I have a Crusoe based Fujitsu P2110 and it's
been great.... fast enough to do video
production even. But I carry it with me
everywhere and it's starting to wear out.
This looks like the perfect replacement!
wr
-Homer qum
As a side-bar, is the FTSH acronym pronounced... fetish?
All kidding aside, this sounds like a great idea.
As for the comments about encouraging sloppy code, it is clear those posters have never worked in demanding moving-target environments. The kinds of errors encountered cannot be solved easily in code - this extension would help.
As for the comments on "you can do this in Perl, Python, and ", this is true, but if I know Bash and want tolerance, why should I have to learn a new language to get it? Likely all I'm doing is copying files, forking off subprocesses, and the like.
For the comments on "why another shell," I would tend to agree that it would be best integrated into Bash - but then, you change the implementation of Bash, create incompatible situations, and have to retest volumes of existing scripts. It's best to have this as a separate shell with close look/feel semantics to Bash (or Csh).
ih
Oh, c'mon, we could have condoms that bestow immortality on the women we use them with, and we still ain't gettin' any.
The best we can hope for is sell those condoms to guys with waistbands under 48 inches and use the money to buy porn.
mqi
I'll ge them out of the way all at once:
I.. welcome bubble overlords...
Soviet Russia... bubbles slide down you.. you know the drill. lb
Formatting textual output &/c, in TeX is a little more adaptable for a human being, as TeX and the actual, literal, written text are pretty much close.
However, for music, most musicians are most comfortable with writing music down in conventional music notation. Conventional music notation, in comparison, compared with LilyPond input are far apart. It's somewhat comparable to painting with a typewriter.
I don't really find much wrong with Lilypond itself, but I don't think it'd work too well for manual input. But coupled with a decent GUI input mechanism, it would work well. gif
It sounds like a pretty good idea to me, but there seems to be one mistake in the post, I am pretty sure that they would go ahead and clear the music to be downloaded legally via iTunes or something like that, rather than illegally via P2P, and thus avoid any "John Doe" lawsuits. hwo
"This one time, at band camp... I got a BJ from a trumpet playing robot!"
sorry... vpc
If your application is licensed under the GPL or compatible OSI license (learn more at opensource.org) approved by Backplane, Inc., you are free and welcome to ship the Backplane open source database with your application.
followed by:
If you power an application using the Backplane database that you market or sell, or use that application to conduct any form of online commerce (selling/buying products or services over a website) you need to purchase the Backplane Commercial License.
The example given is if you run an email service from which you sell access to other companies, you must buy the commerical license.
My question is, what if the program that provides the email service is GPL. Do I have to buy a commercial license or not? One of the great things about GPL software is that if it's an internal piece of software, you can mix proprietary and GPL code as much as you want, as long as you never redistribute the program to anyone.
Also, how does dual licensing work with this? Can I license it under the GPL to myself, and then sell copies under another license to other people? Obviously THEY would have to buy a commercial license, but do I?
Just trying to point out some holes in the licensing..
Oops, just noticed the part at the end saying:
NOTE: In any of these examples, if the entire application or service is 100% GPL compatible, you may use the Backplane Free License.
But that still leaves open the question about dual licensing.. pv
Except unlike the other *ticians people find it acceptable to pay digiticians in cookies and soda. tl
What does this say to the citizens of a country when your government will deliver you into the hands of a foreign power when you've not broken the laws of your own nation?
The civil war in Columbia started as a question of National Sovereignty over the extradition (to the United States) of a cocaine producer, which was not against the law in Columbia at the time. This extradition led to the increasing popularity of the FARC, and their accompyaning (Stalinist) socialist platform, increased cocain production and exportation (to the United States) in order to finance both right wing and left wing paramilitaries, and increased hardships for the poorest of Columbias people, who were already suffering due to ecconomic hardships and a lack of basic civil rights for the majority of Columbias people.
Actions such as these cause increased mistrust of a nations government, lend credence to dangerous or misguided political movements, (rightfully) increases anti-American sentiment, leads to internal social conflict, and increase crime in the nation that would extradite for an offense that is not illegal in that country.
Given that Australia is not a third-world country, is not a narcotics exporting country, and has a stable and (I assume) fair form of government, it is unlikely that the repecussions will be as unsettling or as harmful as has occurred in Columbia.
Still, demanding extradition for an offense that is not illegal in the offenders country, and was not committed in the requesters country, does not serve a nations national interest, as it will weaken it's ability to (ethically and effectively) influence the other nations policies, creates mistrust among the citizens and governments of other nations, and makes traveling abroad more dangerous for the nations citizens due to misguided attacts against it's citizens.
I a company is doing business in a foreign land, then they must be willing to deal with the law (or lack of law) and culture as it exists there. If the company wishes to have that law changed, they should follow the tradition and procedure of that countrynot lobby their own government to have its law enforced on foreign soil.
If this man has broken Australian law, he should be prosecuted under Australian law, or if it is a civil offense there, the harmed American parties should sue in Australian courts.
The US pressing for extradition in this case may seem like a "win" to the companies who produced the software, but for everyone else, and for US relations with Australia, this could be a big loss in the long run.
id
If they had chosen to replace rather than repair, they would be out more then just $800 dollars for the new computer. Since the Judge family needs outside assistance to fix a computer, they would most likely needs outside help to reinstall all their original applications, transfer all their important files to the new machine (without also copying the viruses), etc. $300 to repair -vs- ($800 + $300) to replace? I think they made the right choice. wnn
The real problem is not so much that the Yukon date has slipped, it's that Whidbey (The next version of Visual Studio.NET and the.NET framework) is slipping with it. For who knows what reason, Microsoft decided that these products must be released together. While Yukon promises some very nice features, most people would much rather have Whidbey released now and live with SQL 2000 for awhile longer.
To top it off, MS is not even going to be releasing any service packs for Visual Studio in the meantime. There are some rather serious issues with the current version of Visual Studio that can only be fixed by calling MS for specific hotfixes. Needless to say, much of the MS developer community is up in arms. ffn
Really, why is this even slightly +5 Interesting? Fair enough that you love the company...they did employ Linus for a while after all, and this is Slashdot, so I guess that counts for something. But Transmeta is nothing more than a hyped up dot.com remnant that hasn't realised that it should have crawled away and died somewhere a few years ago. Transmeta overpromised and underdelivered. Its CPUs have never really carved out a niche, suffering from terrible performance, and negligible gains in power efficiency over mobile designs from Motorola, Intel and AMD. Too underpowered for a mainstream notebook, and too power hungry for a PDA or cellphone, Transmeta CPUs linger on in a kind of zombie state, appearing from time to time in strange Japanese systems like this Sharp Actius, itself nothing more than a pale imitation of an Apple 12" G4 PowerBook.
You're entitled to your opinion. It's just -1, Clueless Linus Fanboy, not +5, Interesting.
Thank you. qt
They should have always required opening up of these interfaces. The owner pretty much has to take the word of a very small select group of "in the know" mechanics on what condition their car is in. And we all know how trustworthy the average local mechanic/dealer mechanic is (do a google for Jiffy Lube, Sears, etc, and auto mechanics and lawsuits)
Then I recall my own wonderful personal experience. I had engine fluctuation issues in a turbo charged car. 15 trips to the dealer (under warranty) and replacement of virtually ever sensor and the car's computer failed to rectify the sporadic condition. The car had a computer interface, and it was telling them... well, I don't know what it was telling them - I couldn't access the interface....
Long story short though, one day, the engine started having RPM fluctuations while idling, so I popped open the hood and, since I hadn't been running long nor very hard, decided to take a quick look at the intercooler fluid level. I just happened to notice as I pulled out the intercooler cap that the float bob sensor attached to said cap was sunk to the bottom, even though the intercooler level was fine. I bypassed this sensor and all was fine for the next 100K miles. Odds are I'd have found this more quickly if I could have hooked up a computer to the interface to diagnose the problem while it was happening.
uixWrong, wrong, wrong! While I agree that physical co-ordination is something some people are good at, and some people are bad at, I cannot go along with your crazed idea that education is something that happens to someone given enough time.
Schools, colleges, training courses etc. don't educate anyone. They provide an opportunity for people to learn. Some people will learn just enough to get by. Others will learn everything presented to them and more off their own bat. Yet others (me) will say "fuck this" and learn everything they need to know themselves whilst also earning some money. And some won't be able to keep up and will drop out and get a McJob.
Education is no guarantee of learning, but learning is a guarantee of education. lvc
But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision?
War would still be a crucial issue. We cannot allow a mineshaft gap. qel
It sounds like a pretty good idea to me, but there seems to be one mistake in the post, I am pretty sure that they would go ahead and clear the music to be downloaded legally via iTunes or something like that, rather than illegally via P2P, and thus avoid any "John Doe" lawsuits. aju
Think about this one for just a minute. If some gang banger breaks into your house and steals a gun, and then uses it to rob a bank, and it the process kills a police officer, with whom does the fault lie? Is it with you for not having your gun properly secured against all possible kinds of break-ins? Is it with the manufacturer of the house or the manufacturer of your gun safe for not building a system immune to all types of breaches? Or is it with the guy who broke into your house, breached whatever security you had in place, stole your gun, and used it to commit capital murder? I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm sure many Slashdotters would read your post and think, "That's right, make those stupid Windows lusers responsible for not keeping their machines patched, and while we're at it, let's send Bill Gates to prison for his crap OS too!" That same line of thinking, applied to the scenario above, would land you strapped to a gurney in recompense for somebody else's crime. Let's be a little more realistic. rj
Bill has been tinkering with computers since the age of two. He has been playing with DVD drives on his computer since 1999. Recently he has been unable to watch any movies on his computer running GNAA/Linux because of the codes that the MPAA has used to encrypt the disc.
"I think it's an illegal monopoly. If you don't have the codes you can't watch the disc."
Yet there's a law that protects the MPAA from having to give this code to the rest of the world. It's called the DMCA. It stops you from circumventing copy-protection.
Why aren't there any lawmakers backing the public on DVD encryption? See here [slashdot.org]. pxy
Often, I find my network and servers I use for my small business come under attack by script kiddies. Sometimes it's a DDoS attack, but more often than not, it's just getting hammered by one machine. When I contact the ISP involved, generally one of the large US ISPs, I am told that they will look into it. Nothing ever happens, however, and ISPs are generally unwilling to provide assistance in tracking down attacks. This means my complaint ends up in the circular file. The ISPs are protecting criminals because they don't want to lose business, and I have no way of making sure my complaint doesn't end up lost in this black hole. As an individual representing a small business, what recourse do I have in dealing with ISPs to make sure my complaints are heard and taken seriously? rjl
It's perfectly reasonable to, once they've given you the quote, to also tell you what all is wrong with your car. Tell them you'd need to think about it, as if this is going to put a bit of crimp in your budget for this month, and say you'll get back to them as soon as you've worked out the details.
Trot down to your favorite small shop mechanic and ask him how much he'd charge to do exactly the job that the other guys said needed to get done. You tell him that the dealership has already given you a quote for $X, and the problem has been diagnosed by them. Odds are he'll undercut them. If not, just go back to the dealership... you're SOL.
If your mechanic guy has offered to do the repairs, then you go back to the dealership and tell them that you just can't swing that kind of money this month. Then you take your car to little guy's shop and have it repaired there.
Funny thing is, if enough people did this, the little guys would learn what the diagnosis codes meant because they'd get customers coming in telling them what was already wrong, and the mechanics could start matching up codes to real problems.
Now the question is, is the above method, using strictly social engineering, still considered a violation of the DMCA? kag
Uh, except that it changes, moves, or could even be interactive given some sort of input/stimulus. ae
I am neither justifying nor admonishing the law, I am merely stating that the public is more sympathetic towards it due to the fact that they could be considered guilty as well.
The facts are that these are computer crimes, and boundaries are somewhat gray when it comes to jurisdiction. If the guy was a virus writer, even if the virus was essentially harmless, we would be screaming at the top of our lungs for the chair. Spammers, same thing. The DOD warez group? They gave me all those cool games. They should get medals for fighting the Corporate Interests which are taking away my rights!
See, it's all in the perception of the law, not the letter of the law, and not the spirit. We can get outraged and call a law unjust, but we are not always objective. Pot Laws are a perfect example of this. We have large groups fighting for the right to smoke pot. Should we legalize it because a lot of people want to smoke up? Did the editors at high times give this a lot of thought, or do they just want to smoke pot?
Now, I'm all for legalizing it, but I want the same controls as alcohol. Give me a roadside test for it, that does not involve a blood test or urine test, and I'll be the the guy in the first row of the march on the capitol. Until then, simply legalizing it, even if half the population smokes, would be irresponsible. In North America, we do not have the public transportation infrastructure to give pot smokers options to travel, and we have no yardstick to measure when it's dangerous to drive under the influence.
That's enough ranting. In summary, Democracy is about being fair and responsible. Changing the laws to prevent people from becoming criminals will only lead to a land of no laws to infringe, denegrating into a cultural hedonism.
peg
And for various reasons, we as a society don't really respect mechanics, as a profession. I wonder if some day those who fix computers will be held in a similar regard. yy
Formatting textual output &/c, in TeX is a little more adaptable for a human being, as TeX and the actual, literal, written text are pretty much close.
However, for music, most musicians are most comfortable with writing music down in conventional music notation. Conventional music notation, in comparison, compared with LilyPond input are far apart. It's somewhat comparable to painting with a typewriter.
I don't really find much wrong with Lilypond itself, but I don't think it'd work too well for manual input. But coupled with a decent GUI input mechanism, it would work well. fup
The upcoming Nano-ITX [epiacenter.com] boards should offer even more flexibility for this type of design.. It's smaller, takes less power, and runs cooler. It also takes DC power, so you don't need to mess with the ATX -> DC/DC converter stuff that the Mini-ITX requires (although, there is supposed to be a DC Mini-ITX board coming out).
The down-side is that these have been announced for several months, but are still not available for purchase. qsv
I think the fact that the DVD is pure information and a car is a physical object, not subject to casual duplication, might be a difference, but who knows? cl
Yeah, the US has this long history of practicing global equality.
I bet if only governments asked for their nationals detained at Camp X-Ray to be returned, the US would put them on the next plane!
Joe Webmaster, or any other American citizen, will never, ever, not in a million years be extradited anywhere, no matter what they did.
yx
I will admit that as a general nerd and space geek (I own a telescope) I am concerned about the possibility of the human population getting wiped out by a large space-borne impact.
But isn't it sad that governments throw billions of dollars towards defense (from other humans) yet nobody is willing to invest in defense of the earth at large?
This is the kind of shit that makes us look awfully silly when the aliens come inspect the rubble after the impact. rv
So why should we start counting an even smaller "planet"? Pluto gets grandfathered in, and that's it. an
- DRM Helmets
- Jack Kemp
- Yankee Go Home
- Collaborative Dispute Resolution
- Microchips for Your Pet Parrot! (see page 2 of Google results)
siI'm a typical geek who builds custom computers for people preinstalled and preconfigured with their choice of software, and most of my clients opt for Media Player Classic rather than WMP as their default video playback thing, as far as video goes. I'm not an OEM by any means (I've only built about a dozen computers), but I'd love if customisable installs would filter down to the end users.
For those of you who don't know, Media Player Classic is an open source clone of Media Player 6.4 (the default media player shipped with Win2k), and (with the right codec libs installed) will play DVD's, avi's, wmv's, ogm's, Real and QT streams. Very nice clean and easy to use interface, and hooks into standard DirectShow codecs, none of the irritations of WMP/Real/QT, and completely free (thanks Gabest!), although donations are always welcom I imagine.
Being able to completely replace WMP with MPC would be a dream come true for me, and my clients. The only thing that worried me is that MS would take their ball home, and if made to remove Media Player they would probably cripple DirectShow to such an extent that I'd have to install WMP in order to get my codec libraries to work. xr
MOZILLA IS NOT SLOWER THAN IE!!!
Mozilla startup takes more time than IE, IF and only if you don't consider the time it takes to start IE at system startup. Other than that, Mozilla, and Firefox especially, literally kick the pants off of IE. There was a wonderful page I found that simply drew images and removed them repeatedly that demonstrated this, IIRC IE took about 10 times as long as Mozilla.
cgnSo do bubbles going around the glass mean I'm half-way there? ca
This distribution method seems ideal for GNAA/Linux also. Perhaps if HP weren't afraid of MS, we could also get nice bootable GNAA/Linux distro while waiting for a venti mocha. tpg
"So Andy got hold of a camera that takes 750 frames a second and recorded some rather gorgeous video clips of what was happening."
So quit hoggin' it and let us have some of that sweet sweet goodness. tu
Which is unfortunate in many ways. For example, Matt has introduced variant symlinks into DragonFly, and has major plans involving vfs namespaces etc which will really solve a lot of problems in package management, like allowing two different conflicting versions of a package to exist at the same time. He can do all this because he's looking at the whole picture, and so are the others: the entire source tree for the base system is there on my machine, in one nicely-arranged subdirectory. I don't foresee major changes happening in the linux kernel driven by distributors. To this day, breakages with binary-incompatible glibc etc are constant annoyances with linux unless you choose a stable distributed version from a branded linux distro and stick to it. the linux kernel is what "linux is supposed to look like" to linus.
What is "the linux kernel"? There's a Red Hat kernel, a Mandrake kernel, a SuSE kernel, and you can't really drop a generic Linus kernel into any of the commercial distros and expect it to work properly. (Debian and Gentoo are better.)
I'm not dissing linux, it's better than the mainstream alternatives and has far better hardware support and graphical system administration tools than the BSDs. In fact after 2 years with FreeBSD I myself had switched to GNAA/Linux on my new machine because of hardware issues (I've now mostly switched to DragonFly and the hardware issues are mostly gone). And I use GNAA/Linux at work and have no desire to change that. But there are reasons why a lot of technically aware people find the BSDs nicer systems to play with. hw
It's the cord from a telephone handset.
Now why didn't they think of that decades ago?
Oh, wait, they did.
Nevermind.
Yeah, yeah, I know. It's FLAT. So maybe they've reinvented ramen noodles?
rl
Oh Joy
Just what you need a new microsoft database that makes refactoring and porting your DB to another platform near impossible.
Larry Elison is probably chuckling like a demented monkey over this. I can see his sales people going at this. Microsoft Software assurance = Pay them to take their time to devise ways to achieve complete customer lock in. Or, the ever popular why run your business using techniques with 50 years of validation behind them when you can do things microsofts way.
I can allready see the security problems popping up. Run C# code directly, the same code being ever more integrated into yukon. Well seems we will be able to expect worms that make slammer look like a joke. Heck you could have them replicate throughout the entire system and hold entire enterprises data hostage.
The sad thing is that the large group of IT director/ Sysadmin lemmings will go along with no one ever got fired for choosing microsoft. After all, look at how they have embraced the ever popular and ever more dangerous office/exchange combo. lwd
Of course they are very biased. Since it rather hard to find any real-life application of RDBMS serving "sigle client".
And we all know how good MySQL at serving multiple clients with complex queries at once.
Neat quote tho, at least when you understand who is really biased:)
/usd da
please.
You're connecting "piracy", something inherantly illegal by definition, with peer-to-peer. p2p is a technology that can be used for so many different things, that lumping them together is naive.
so many geeks want what to be legal? piracy? sharing mp3's? p2p? they are 3 separate things, only one of which I care about, as a geek, and that is p2p. Which I don't even use. Once i tried bit torrent to d/l slackware, but it didn't work.
please, for the sake of reality, don't lump 3 vastly different things into one thing that the general public sees as illegal. p2p != sharing mp3s. p2p != piracy. sharing mp3's is not always even equal to piracy.
generalizations are like premature optimizations... the root of all evil. jtv
As another example of the article being poorly put together: The article states "The usual way to make stretchable conductors is to embed metal particles in a rubbery polymer. But the particles tend to separate when the material is stretched, causing the electrical conductivity to plummet."
But the research in the end use a polymer which I assume would have to be rubbery in order to strech with the spring.
" Instead of fashioning the gold wires into helical springs, however, they gave them a flat, oscillating shape, like a meandering river, since this is easier to make. They manufactured them by electroplating gold onto a sheet of silver, surrounding the wires with polymer and then stripping the silver away."
Admittedly metal particles and metal wires are slightly different but a wire is simply a structure made up of particles. rp
I think ultimately the question is whether there is a single continuous "initial mass function" of isolated objects or not. The best idea as to how stars acquire their initial mass is that turbulence in the interstellar medium, which exists on all scales, establishes a power-law distribution of initial masses. Every once in a while, you get a very strong shock which passes by inside a giant molecular cloud and forces the collapse of a large region which then goes on to form a massive star. But more typically, you form stars more like our sun. And just as rare as massive collapses are very small mass ones which go on to form isolated brown dwarfs and free-floating planets. If this model holds up to be true, then we are all mincing words in our definitions of isolated systems, since they are all manifestations of the same universal formation process.
However, to avoid the difficult question of formation mechanisms, an IAU working group of some of the most respected people in the field established a working definition [ciw.edu] to define by fiat what it means to be a brown dwarf, and a planet. Extrasolar "planets" are those objects orbiting a star which are beneath the deteurium-burning limit -- regardless of how they are formed. "Brown dwarfs" are defined to be those which burn deuterium but not lithium, and "sub-brown dwarfs" (NOT free-floating planets!) are defined to be those isolated objects which do not burn deuterium. Even the working group itself admitted that this definition was not satisfying to a single member of the group, and so it is likely it will be replaced at a later time with something more physically-motivated. The "planet/planetismal/KBO" distinction was pushed back to our own solar system, since it will be some time before anyone sees anything that small in another system.
Also of interest is the following link, which gives a history of previous claims for additional planetary members of our solar system : SEDS [arizona.edu].
ebi
In a related question - do you think the Google cache is open to legal challenges the way it is currently implemented? jdt
i just got hung up on, and that was approximatly the same time on friday. i was trying to get an activation code for win xp when i was disconnected from them all together. i waited a while thinking that like all good cutomer support they would call me right back because i was hung up on, but waited half an hour and called them to try to talk to the guy i was dealing with, and they told me that they were having serious internal problems. im not sure how it works, but i think MS might use some kind of internal VOIP system because there was a delay in speech with th guy i was talking to as well, but hotmail and their tech support both went down around the same time as i was informed of "major internal problems." so something big happened. zr
But it is probably not patentable. It is not an invention, it is precise settings which have to be worked out over hours and hours of testing. Exact timings for injectors at all speeds and load conditions, while allowing reasonable margins so that performance does not fall off with wear. This data - just a huge look-up table - costs millions of dollars to obtain, because it required many hours of running. But you cannot patent it. You can copyright it, of course, but if a copier made a number of minor, not very significant, changes in the tables, it would be very difficult to prove they had copied the original tables. "Of course we got the same results - they are the right results for this engine". gt
Outlook is like what you fear; Microsoft decides what you will and won't see. I can add specific senders to the black and white lists (you click to add to the blacklist, but you have to type in an address to add it to the whitelist -- stupid MS shits), but Microsoft decides if I can see that attachment (if they think it's bad, it's gone and I can't recover it) or if this email's spam (it regularly discarded stuff from IBM Developer Works until I added them to my whitelist). With a tool like dspam I can regain control over what gets filtered (although I've found no way to turn off Outlook's attachment blocking). qs
It also depends on what "repair" is.
"Repair" might mean that the computer won't boot up at all, and this person has their doctoral dissertation nearly complete on it. Of course, they haven't made any backups... It would easily be worth $800 to recover that data and get the computer up and running again.
For me, when it comes to working on people's computers, I basically tell them it will cost them $50/hour. But also that I have an "hourly" cost for certain jobs. From start to finish, installing windows and all their software may take more than 5 or 6 hours. But a lot of that is just waiting. So, for that job, I'll tell them it will be about 2 to 2 1/2 hours of billed time. ejs
Queue the BSD is dead posts.
Why can't we all just get along?? bgl
An open letter to antitrust, competition, consumer and trade practice monitoring agency officials worldwide.
The role of trade practice and antitrust legislation is to provide the consumer with protection from abusive business practices and monopolies. In one of the most serous cases of monopolization in the information technology industry, the agencies charged with protecting the competitive process and the consumer have utterly failed to stem the offending corporation's anti-competitive practices.
The Microsoft corporation has been under continuous investigation by antitrust policing agencies since 1989. Despite this scrutiny, the Microsoft corporation, using covert and overt anti-competitive business tactics, has maintained an unabated campaign against alternatives to Microsoft Windows operating system platforms and Microsoft applications.
For years the Microsoft corporation has earned around 70% to 80% net profit from sales of its operating systems and application software. Only in areas like Thailand where GNAA/Linux on the desktop has just begun to gain a foothold has Microsoft stated that it will release versions of its operating system platform and application software at a lower price to Original Equipment Manufactures (OEMs) and retail consumers than is available in the rest of the modern world. Consumers benefit where real competition exists.
The world desktop operating system market remains predominantly monopolized by Microsoft. Over the last decade, Microsoft continued to lever its desktop platform monopoly to the point where it now holds a dominant position worldwide in the application office suite and web browser software markets. On its own, the current USA Department Of Justice (DOJ) settlement with the Microsoft corporation has failed to bring about any restoration of serous competition to the desktop operating system market. Microsoft continues to use similar anti-competitive business tactics in an attempt to monopolize the digital media player and the desktop services server markets. Competing vendors increasingly find that they can no longer compete with Microsoft if they limit themselves to only the traditional closed source model of software development.
In the last six years information technology vendors have adopted techniques and resources from two existing movements geared toward the construction of software. The newer open source movement, represented by the non-profit Open Source Initiative (OSI) corporation, emphasizes the licensing of software in a manner which encourages its collaborative development in an open environment. The older free software movement, represented by the non-profit Free Software Foundation (FSF), focuses on the ethical issues surrounding the licensing of software. The free software movement emphasizes freedoms which are often taken for granted outside of the field of software: the freedom to use, study how something works, improve or adapt it and redistribute.
The Free Software Foundation offers two software license schemes which are compatible with their own goals and those of the Open Source Initiative: The GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL). Essentially, the GPL and LGPL licenses grant the recipient extra rights than that granted by copyright law. Both licenses insure that a contributer or distributer of a GPL or LGPL licensed work may not further impede downstream recipients the rights granted by the same license. Many developing software in an open source manner have realized that this benefit offered by the GPL and LGPL licenses outweigh any potential losses. The licensing also insures that no contributing or distributing vendor or group of vendors could potentially monopolize the market, insuring that real market competition dictates price. Just as the automotive industry can commonize on standards
Though GNAA/Linux is very flexible, without all those licensing issues (go ahead and troll, SCO trolls) like Windows, it is highly unlikely that SBUX and HP are going to use it on this system for two reasons that I know of: 1. They are going to use TabletPC's for this, something GNAA/Linux has somewhat limited support for, particularly in the handwriting recognition aspect. 2. HP's provider of digital music is most likely going to be Apple, and this means a modified version of iTunes. Apple has not included GNAA/Linux support for anything. aj
I'm sure the average windows user wouldn't want to have to play around with selecting/installing video playback software when all they want to do is playback a clip they've downloaded.
My poor Mum!!! fhm
My former advisor here at UC Berkeley, Gibor Basri, has a neat way of discriminating between planets and the lesser (comets, asteroids, etc.). His idea is that if the object has enough self-gravity to force it into a spherical shape, it's a planet... if it doesn't (like Mars' "moons"), it's something less.
Here's a snipet:
read on for his full article [berkeley.edu].
Caption from Graphic:The wires can stretch to over half their original length.
Elsewhere, cars were noticed to speed up to over half their original speed! Proof readers were able to increase their accuracy to over half their original accuracy! I increased my IQ to over half it's original size! vc
fucking liars
| `
| \,X`\ HEIL HITLER
|
I agree with parent that in this case size really doesn't matter: it's all in how you use what you got.
Historically, Neptune was discovered because it was perturbing Uranus' orbit: its existence was theorized long before it was directly observed. Similarly, Pluto was discovered because it was found that Neptune alone was not sufficient to account for all of Uranus' irregularity. While Pluto isn't very big, its size and orbit are such that it definitely affects the other planets.
In practice then, what we have actually used to distinguish a planet like Pluto from a large body that is not a planet, like Chiron (roughly as big, discovered 1977), is whether the object interacts in a measurable way with known planets. If it does, then accord it planet status because it is clearly part of the planetary system.
In view of this, the new discovery is probably not a planet, unless it has a weird orbit like Pluto and would account for some of the remaining difference between planetary observations and expectations.
But what do I know? IANAA. akz
On the contary, if a site passes itself as an "eNewspaper" site, an eMag or whatever, and it publishes mistruths, then I would expect it to be sued as any pulp publication would be.
Are there any legal precedents or specific laws on this? ej
Shell scripts should be short and easy to write. I have seen plenty of them fail due to some resource or another being temporarily down. At first people are neat and then send an email to notify the admin. When this then results in a ton of emails everytime some dodo knocks out the DNS they turn it off and forget about it.
Every scripting language has their own special little niche. BASH for simple things, perl for heavy text manipulation, PHP for creating HTML output. This scripting language is pretty much like BASH but takes failure as given. The example shows clearly how it works. Instead of ending up with PERL like scripts to catch all the possible errors you add two lines and you got a wonderfull small script, wich is what shell scripts should be, that is none the less capable of recovering from an error. This script will simply retry when someone knocks out the DNS again.
This new language will not catch your errors. It will catch other peoples errors. Sure a really good programmer can do this himself. A really good programmer can also create his own libraries. Most find of us in admin jobs find it easier to use somebody elses code rather then constantly reinvent the wheel. ltk
Sounds related to "Muscle Wire" special wires used in a field of robotics called "BEAM" to cause movement without motors. Basically they are wires made of different metals fused together so that they react to electrical charge by contracting. Some really cool insect bots made from them can be found here: http://www.solarbotics.net/bestiary/2502_walker_2m ot_gal.html
Muscle Wire: Muscle Wires are thin, highly processed strands of a nickel-titanium alloy called Nitinol - a type of Shape Memory Alloy that can assume radically different forms or "phases" at distinct temperatures.
However, when conducting an electric current, the wire heats and changes to a much harder form that returns to the "unstretched" shape - the wire shortens in length with a usable amount of force.
ze
... but what have you got against embedded punctuation? How the hell is anyone supposed to read your post?
Sean fjq
One more duality in the GNAA/Linux vs. Microsoft war.
Hard-core GNAA/Linux advocates won't waste a second telling you how GNAA/Linux is superior to Microsoft in EVERY way. They say GNAA/Linux will beat Microsoft in the end because of its superiority.
Then you have some (probably the same people) influencing litigation against Microsoft, trying to tear them down.
So which is it? Is GNAA/Linux going to win by superiority of product or superiority of political/legal influence?
It is detrimental to the GNAA/Linux world if the focus is on Microsoft. The focus should be on GNAA/Linux! Why would we want those choosing GNAA/Linux doing so because they dislike Microsoft.
This way of thinking could get us in trouble in the current election campaign here in the U.S., where people hate Bush so they embrace Kerry. Why would someone want to endorse a product on the basis of a negative relationship with some other product? This way of thinking just doesn't make sense. Actually, I would say this isn't thinking at all, but pure emotional reaction. If this is the case with GNAA/Linux, then those responsible need to reevaluate their direction. rea
Someone needs to let them in on a little IBM/Apple secret [apple.com]:)
zf
I am a trumpet player and I really want to hear this thing!
Imagine if typing was so challenging that you spent 90% of your computer time refining and keeping your typing skills adequate, so you could spend 10% of the time programming...
Anyone have any sound clips? dqe
Perhaps the bendy straw people should sue. obs
Sedition is defined as speach which advocates the immedate and violent overthrow of the government in a fashion as to provide a clear and present danger, if my memory serves me correctly.
My question is, would an internet website fall into that catigory, as it does not have the same force as say, Hitler in the Haufbrauhause with like, 2,000 SA going to storm the Bavarian capital building. It does have a wider audience, but due to the decentralized nature I doubt that a website can provide a clear and present danger or immediate action at all. Am I wrong? Does the PATRIOT Act redefine it in such a way as to make it "terrorism?" ris
The idea of being to timeout and exception handle in scripts is a great idea......assuming you want to use scripts. I think most people end up resorting to Perl, Python or whatever for anything more complex. But perhaps with this facility Scripts would be more useful? But...now I come to a related topic. I build factory wide systems, systems which have eg. Automatic warehouses and whatever in the middle. I do a lot of stuff with VB6 not because it is fault tolerant but because it is 'fix tolerant'. During the comminssioning phases I can leave a program running in the debugger and, if it freaks out, I can debug, fix, test by iterating forwards and **backwards** in the the function that caused the hitch, and then continue to run were I left off. Many minor problems get fixed on the fly without users even realizing anything was amiss. In every other respect (syntax, structure, error trapping etc) VB6 is a disaster and not really suited at all to these types of progects, so the fact that I use it is a measure of how important this feature is. Like the fault tolerant shell, it is a 'non-pure' extension insofar as purists say it should not be neccessary, but in pratice it is a godsend. Anybody know an alternative for VB6 in this respect? yd
I think ultimately the question is whether there is a single continuous "initial mass function" of isolated objects or not. The best idea as to how stars acquire their initial mass is that turbulence in the interstellar medium, which exists on all scales, establishes a power-law distribution of initial masses. Every once in a while, you get a very strong shock which passes by inside a giant molecular cloud and forces the collapse of a large region which then goes on to form a massive star. But more typically, you form stars more like our sun. And just as rare as massive collapses are very small mass ones which go on to form isolated brown dwarfs and free-floating planets. If this model holds up to be true, then we are all mincing words in our definitions of isolated systems, since they are all manifestations of the same universal formation process.
However, to avoid the difficult question of formation mechanisms, an IAU working group of some of the most respected people in the field established a working definition [ciw.edu] to define by fiat what it means to be a brown dwarf, and a planet. Extrasolar "planets" are those objects orbiting a star which are beneath the deteurium-burning limit -- regardless of how they are formed. "Brown dwarfs" are defined to be those which burn deuterium but not lithium, and "sub-brown dwarfs" (NOT free-floating planets!) are defined to be those isolated objects which do not burn deuterium. Even the working group itself admitted that this definition was not satisfying to a single member of the group, and so it is likely it will be replaced at a later time with something more physically-motivated. The "planet/planetismal/KBO" distinction was pushed back to our own solar system, since it will be some time before anyone sees anything that small in another system.
Also of interest is the following link, which gives a history of previous claims for additional planetary members of our solar system : SEDS [arizona.edu].
fu
Many business customers have recently been coerced into signing ongoing contracts where they receive any upgrades in a particular year in exchange for a yearly fee.
These companies are going to be extremely p155ed off when they realise that all they are going to get for their money is (maybe) XP Reloaded (think ME).
Companies cannot afford to throw money down the microsoft toilet for much longer... especially when all they get is extra bugs that they didnt need in the first place, coupled with a healthy dose of lock-in and increased support costs. rra
Except that it's not actually an auction. I made the same mistake (hey, it's EBay), but there's no place to enter a bid and if you look down at the bottom it says:
"This listing is an advertisement. There is no bidding! If you are interested in this property, you may contact the seller/agent to request additional information."
Which is probably smart. If it were an auction, it'd have eleventy-million fake bids by now.
It also tends to indicate that this is a real property. If it was just someone goofing around, it'd be an auction. That's not strong evidence, but it's certainly an indication. zb
Funny, the Slashdot blurb accuses him of saying that no other system today does SSI, while according to the article he simply said their (future, potential) SSI plans will beat GNAA/Linux's (present, working) SSI clustering.
Anybody have thoughts comparing the DragonFly SSI [shiningsilence.com](warning, PDF) and the GNAA/Linux [sourceforge.net] one?
(Open)Mosix has had craploads of work done on it, and by the time DragonFly's is done, it will be even further ahead. I somehow doubt DragonFly's will end up being better.
PK xbp
Could we eliminate any risk of being hit by an asteroid by reclassifying everything as a planet? fjg
So do bubbles going around the glass mean I'm half-way there? xoo
You fail to see the big picture. For instance, several books are prohibited in Iraq, Iran, and several other countries. Should Amazon.com employees be extradited to face death penalty in those countries for selling books that are prohibited there?
It's the same thing. You can't allow laws from one country to affect citizens of another or the most restrictive laws from any one country would apply to all Netizens. That's not wise. pe
I'm a pretty serious amateur jazz musician, and I do a fair amount of composing and arranging for jazz ensembles of about 8-16 musicians.
LilyPond is not intended for people like me. If you're less serious than I am, LilyPond is definitely not intended for you.
The most popular music notation software is Finale. Finale is buggier than Windows ME and twice as bloated, but once you learn how to use it, it gets the job done. You can enter your notes relatively quickly, tweak them a little, print, and go. While it has some very non-intuitive options, it's straightforward enough that most amateur musicians are able to sit down and click around until they get it to do what they want.
How's the output? Pretty crappy if you don't spend any time playing with it. But if you spend a little bit of time fixing the glaring errors, the result is readable by most musicians.
LilyPond, on the other hand, reads a description of the music in a text-based format, and formats it automatically - using much nicer algorithms than Finale apparently uses. It might take quite a bit longer to get your music input, but the end result will look nice - and will not require nearly as much tweaking.
LilyPond, by itself, is only of use to professional engravers, and only those who are willing to learn how to use it. If somebody ever develops a front-end to LilyPond that's actually integrated (as opposed to something like Rosegarden that can just export to LilyPond's format), then it might be more accessible to the average musician.
Don't get me wrong - I think that LilyPond is great. I just think that a lot of the complaints I'm seeing in this forum are because people don't understand what problem LilyPond is trying to solve and who will benefit.
No, LilyPond is not ready to replace all of the other music notation software out there. But it's one of the best tools for professional music engraving already, and maybe someday it can also be an appropriate tool for the casual user, too. ne
And here my girlfriend is blaming that stupid mozilla program. Try explaing that its Microsofts fault to someone who thinks that MS is infallable. nqh
One kink and it's trash can city. sq
Sounds related to "Muscle Wire" special wires used in a field of robotics called "BEAM" to cause movement without motors. Basically they are wires made of different metals fused together so that they react to electrical charge by contracting. Some really cool insect bots made from them can be found here: http://www.solarbotics.net/bestiary/2502_walker_2m ot_gal.html
Muscle Wire: Muscle Wires are thin, highly processed strands of a nickel-titanium alloy called Nitinol - a type of Shape Memory Alloy that can assume radically different forms or "phases" at distinct temperatures.
However, when conducting an electric current, the wire heats and changes to a much harder form that returns to the "unstretched" shape - the wire shortens in length with a usable amount of force.
llm
If HP and StarBucks can get this going legally and without hassles from RIAA et al against them or customers, wouldn't the next logical step be offering downloads directly to your iPAQ? eja
Wargoatseing, anyone?
rjahey, remember linus signed some pretty odd things during LCA:)
Yeah, my wife still refuses to wash her left breast.... ndo
How the fuck did this get modded to +5?
Wow, MySQL now has an official front-end tool (instead of one of many third-party ones that it's had for ages), oohh, that'll make ALL the difference. It's got NOWHERE NEAR the feature set of MS-SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, or Firebird. Christ, we had to wait till version FOUR till they added native transaction support (which wasn't ever written by them), subqueries, replication, etc. and we're still not sure that it even does any of this properly now! (Each point release massively changes and/or extends features, which is stupid for a supposedly stable DB.) Sounds like a "real" DB to me that'll definitely compete with Oracle and MS-SQL, yeah right...
But because Slashdot loves MySQL this gets modded to +5 by people who don't know shit about databases, and certainly not about MS SQL Server. Great.
The only reason MySQL became popular was because it was free and ran well together with Apache on modest hardware, so ISPs could bundle it as a *simple* website backend DB. It does that pretty well (as long as you don't mind running REPAIR TABLE every now and again), but it's certainly no viable alternative to MS-SQL or Oracle. Anyone that thinks that and uses the acronym M$ in the same post really doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about. pff
Transmeta made a lot of fuss about energy efficiency, but in reality, the Intel LV and ULV mobile Tualatin P3 consumes almost as little power while being much faster. The best power/speed tradeoff seems to be the ULV P3 933mhz, 512kb L2 cache, 1.1V. The typical and maximum power consumption are 4 and 7W respectively.
Intel is now hyping the P-M just as heavily as Transmeta. The P-M can dynamically scale the frequency through a large range, but if you use CPU intensive apps, the power consumption can get suprisingly high (31W for the 1.5-1.7 ghz versions). For more facts and figures, see Sandpile [sandpile.org].
ai
except that my article history is truncated in a futile attempt to get me to subscribe. So I can't point to the writeup I did.
The increased accuracy comes from the emails that will slip under your mental radar. You are a human, and you make mistakes. You wouldn't deliberately choose to read the email, but one day the subject line looks plausible, and so you bring it up. Three-quarters of a second later, you're glaring at the monitor and hitting "delete", but DSPAM wouldn't have let that slip by in the first place.
haI agree with parent that in this case size really doesn't matter: it's all in how you use what you got.
Historically, Neptune was discovered because it was perturbing Uranus' orbit: its existence was theorized long before it was directly observed. Similarly, Pluto was discovered because it was found that Neptune alone was not sufficient to account for all of Uranus' irregularity. While Pluto isn't very big, its size and orbit are such that it definitely affects the other planets.
In practice then, what we have actually used to distinguish a planet like Pluto from a large body that is not a planet, like Chiron (roughly as big, discovered 1977), is whether the object interacts in a measurable way with known planets. If it does, then accord it planet status because it is clearly part of the planetary system.
In view of this, the new discovery is probably not a planet, unless it has a weird orbit like Pluto and would account for some of the remaining difference between planetary observations and expectations.
But what do I know? IANAA. zau
You do realize, this is one of the weakest arguments you can possibly make. "Forget all intellectual arguments, precedent, centuries of commonlaw. If this happened to YOU, you'd want him hung! So it's OK to hang him!"
Try giving a few of us the benefit of the doubt that we DO value the system and won't automatically join the lynch mob at the first chance. Or, failing that, how about the idea that the entire purpose of having *impartial* judicial systems is to make sure that the victims DON'T turn into blindly self-serving mobs? nbn
I personally don't like Microsoft... but you have to ask yourself if Media Player is removed who is affected by this in a negative way?
I think the 'normal users' will be hit hardest, a lot of them just want their media to play and in my opinion it is the place of the Operating System to provide the functionality. We might install something better, but it doesn't hurt us to have it there even if we don't use it. I think the same is true with IE.. it has helped the new users a great deal even if it is bug ridden and crappy. dd
I wonder if there are any tools that could make tasks like this easier, such as a LiveCD GNAA/Linux distro that included antivirus and spyware tools for cleaning up windows partitions? That would solve problems such as unidentified worms that disable antivirus software. azs
It's also worth the effort on Microsofts' part to get this right. After all, WinFS [microsoft.com] is going to be built on the same technology. ptz
"it may still have profitable applications in other areas (ie, prosthetics)."
YES! At last I will be able to get new artificial lips and be able to play the trumpet again!
-- ag
Still, at least this discovery has the redeeming quality of completely fucking up astrology.
Astrology doesn't work that way.
Astrology is syncretic religion [google.com] -- it readily (and inevitably) incorporates new influences.
Like an amoeba, astrology engulfs everything it touches.
In this sense, astrology is rather like paranoia: everything pertains, everything is part of the Big Picture.
Sedna won't fuck up astrology. On the contrary, astrologers will eagerly seize on the idea of this new planet, treating Sedna as one more vacuole in the amoeba.
-kgj nbr
The upcoming Nano-ITX [epiacenter.com] boards should offer even more flexibility for this type of design.. It's smaller, takes less power, and runs cooler. It also takes DC power, so you don't need to mess with the ATX -> DC/DC converter stuff that the Mini-ITX requires (although, there is supposed to be a DC Mini-ITX board coming out).
The down-side is that these have been announced for several months, but are still not available for purchase. hk
The real problem is not so much that the Yukon date has slipped, it's that Whidbey (The next version of Visual Studio.NET and the.NET framework) is slipping with it. For who knows what reason, Microsoft decided that these products must be released together. While Yukon promises some very nice features, most people would much rather have Whidbey released now and live with SQL 2000 for awhile longer.
To top it off, MS is not even going to be releasing any service packs for Visual Studio in the meantime. There are some rather serious issues with the current version of Visual Studio that can only be fixed by calling MS for specific hotfixes. Needless to say, much of the MS developer community is up in arms. sg
Good News! Toyota announces a robot that can play the trumpet!
Still working on the cure for the common cold, world peace, and an end to poverty.
gw
Much as I love a good MS Bashing, I'll tell you what I find really lacking (personally) for PostgreSQL and other OSS RDBMSs - a good GUI management tool.
Something that helps you craft medium-complicated joins quickly with a few clicks and drags.
For example, see this screenshot [phrogz.net] from Visual Interdev working on MSSQL2k, creating a SQL Query for a stored proc. Sure, it's almost trivial to hand-write the SQL code. But it was even easier to just select a few tables, click on the fields I want, right-click on the joins (created automatically from the database structure) to change their type, and be done.
I use PGSQL for all my personal projects now, but I sorely miss the speed that a GUI editor like this allowed me.
skI am neither justifying nor admonishing the law, I am merely stating that the public is more sympathetic towards it due to the fact that they could be considered guilty as well.
The facts are that these are computer crimes, and boundaries are somewhat gray when it comes to jurisdiction. If the guy was a virus writer, even if the virus was essentially harmless, we would be screaming at the top of our lungs for the chair. Spammers, same thing. The DOD warez group? They gave me all those cool games. They should get medals for fighting the Corporate Interests which are taking away my rights!
See, it's all in the perception of the law, not the letter of the law, and not the spirit. We can get outraged and call a law unjust, but we are not always objective. Pot Laws are a perfect example of this. We have large groups fighting for the right to smoke pot. Should we legalize it because a lot of people want to smoke up? Did the editors at high times give this a lot of thought, or do they just want to smoke pot?
Now, I'm all for legalizing it, but I want the same controls as alcohol. Give me a roadside test for it, that does not involve a blood test or urine test, and I'll be the the guy in the first row of the march on the capitol. Until then, simply legalizing it, even if half the population smokes, would be irresponsible. In North America, we do not have the public transportation infrastructure to give pot smokers options to travel, and we have no yardstick to measure when it's dangerous to drive under the influence.
That's enough ranting. In summary, Democracy is about being fair and responsible. Changing the laws to prevent people from becoming criminals will only lead to a land of no laws to infringe, denegrating into a cultural hedonism.
fb
That shell script can be improved a lot by using " set -e " to exit on failure, as follows:
#!/bin/sh
set -e # exit on failure
cd/work/foo
rm -rf bar
cp -r/fresh/data
This means that, if any command in the script fails, the script will exit immediately, instead of carrying on blindly.
The script's exit status will be non-zero, indicating failure. If it was called by another script, and that had "set -e", then that too will exit immediately. This is a little bit like exceptions in some other languages.
zf
Yep, I was shocked when I first played with MySql, having heard such good things about it, and discovered how many features it lacked that I consider essential to a serious database.
I have since got over my shock and realised that MySql is really good for what it is, but is really a different kind of beast to Oracle, MSSql etc.
Dan.
jl
Singapore bans the import, sale and manufacture of chewing gum. It isn't illegal to chew it.
Chuckle.
A lot like the way the DMCA *doesn't* make fair use illegal.
- cub
Um, linux is a kernel, not a distro. the linux kernel is what "linux is supposed to look like" to linus. nl
1) Ad revenue created by page hits
2) Post non-story to slashdot
3) PROFIT!!! imc
Wow, views will finally be in version 5.1.
Jeez. First time I looked at MySQL a couple of years ago for a project I started putting a basic database scheme together an went to construct a view, only for my Jaw to hit the desk when I found out they were not available. Views are such a basic component of RDBMS databases that it simply hadn't occurred to me (an Oracle, DB2, SQLServer and others veteran) that software could be release that called itself a relational database that didn't have them.
Anyway, just went and used Postgres instead. It's still beyond me why people even bother giving MySQL the time of day when the incomparably superior Postgres is available under GPL. isr
For any newbies: Apparantly your intelligence is increased by drinking alcohol, since it kills off your poor quality brain cells leaving more room for your high-powered brain cells.
So kids, if you want to pass your exams, sneak into Daddy's Spirits cabinet and have a swig before breakfast. rw
Google news has been running the headline:
"Microsoft restores faulty Hotmail service"
I thought that said it all. qqg
Here's the introduction:
(Emphasis mine.)ABC is an extremely popular format for collecting and exchanging tunes. There are Large Tune Repositories [norbeck.nu] and Tune Search Engines [mit.edu] using ABC. cm
I am a trumpet player and I really want to hear this thing!
Imagine if typing was so challenging that you spent 90% of your computer time refining and keeping your typing skills adequate, so you could spend 10% of the time programming...
Anyone have any sound clips? pc
What is the question here?
If you commit a crime in a foreign country which is also considered a crime in your home country you should be extradited. No question.
If you commit a criminal act in a foreign country which is legal in your home country, you probably shouldn't be extradited. At least not in this case, where the guy hasn't even set foot in the USA while perpetrating the alleged crime.
But: Software piracy is not legal in Australia.
So the question is: Does the US court have jurisdiction of these crimes, if they did occur in Australia?
That's a question which the US court will no doubt adress in the trial.
But if they don't, then it means that he should be tried in Australia..
So what's the issue? us
Hanly says." It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem.
Well sorta, the big buy here is that you get that much life from a significantly smaller/lighter battery. Note the presence of the physically larger "extended life" battery. Battery life isn't the "problem", or more accurately the tradeoff, it's the size (which in this case does matter). tec
I've been into computers since I was 8. I bought my first car when I was 18. I used to be one of those people that took it somewhere anytime something went wrong. Then when I was 19, I met someone who worked on vehicles for a living. He showed me that I was being taken to the cleaners when I pay Midas $400 for new brakes. When I was 24, I bought my second vehicle. Maybe 6 months later, the front passenger side rotor was shot. I went to Monroe for an estimate, $692 for two new rotors, braks pads, shoes, calipers, pistons, and lines. I talked to my friend, he showed me that my calipers, lines, and the pistons for the rear brakes were fine. So I bought new rotors and pads, did the repair myself for ~$60.
4 years later, I've gone through a fair number of pads and shoes since, but the calipers are still fine and the lines are good.
I've known "computer professionals" who operate on the same kind of principle. They feel like they should make as much money as possible whenever someone comes into the shop by misrepresenting what needs to be done, or even outright lying. Some of them are quite successful because of this, but others fail miserably.
You can't hold those people that you depend upon to make your living in contempt. You can't treat people like their morons. (even if some of them really are)
LK hpi
I have seen bubbles moving down at the edges of my Guinness. This latest "discovery" seems to be common sense to me, and is exactly how I have explained the phenomenem to other drinkers down the pub.
Shame I wasn't paid to do my "research", and that no-one would have listened to me because I didn't have a 750-frame-per-second video camera.
Now, this story would have been really interesting if it had a link to the videos of it happening 'cause it really is a sight to behold! nw
Thank god I am out of elementary school. Memorizing 9 planets was hard enough, but 10! They have got to be kidding. cq
Everyday something hits earth, comets, mini asteroids, space dust. Most burns up in the atmosphere, but every so often something makes it through (meteorites) and hits the surface. True most of these meteorites are about the size of a golf ball or smaller. moq
All the programmers who need the environment to compensate for their inadequacies, step on one side. All the programmers who want to learn from their mistakes and become better at their craft, get on the other side.
Most of us know where this line is located.
"In other news, at the local beach today a vicious fight broke out between geeks about where to draw a line. Sand was kicked, noses have been blooded, we have some unconfirmed reports of a wedgie. We will have more on this breaking news as it comes in."
jt
Sedna? No. Plenty of people in this thread have complained about two facts - One, our planets have names derived from the Roman, not Inuit, panthon. And two, we already have a planet named after a sea-god, ie, Neptune.
So, I propose that in protest to such a blatant attempt at PC Multiculturalism, we as a community refer to the tenth planet as Nox, the Roman goddess of night. Since it lies the furthest from the sun, that actually fits it, in a descriptive sense.
Sedna... Whatever. Remember, we hear about this stuff months before your typical Fox news junkie, and people tend to respect us as sources of information. So spread the word - We have a new, tenth planet, named Nox. Sedna? Nope, they must have heard wrong. Nox. Nox? Nox!
up
.. conducted the study after Australian researchers announced in 1999 that they had made a computer model showing it was theoretically possible for beer bubbles to fall down the side of a glass
trust it to be australians that worked that one out first.
something tells me that experiment was most likely conducted on a friday nite after a few beers at the lab. gm
I was getting a "Service Unavailable" but couldn't figure out if it was my flaky connection or Microsoft's flaky software. Guess now I know. cz
And for various reasons, we as a society don't really respect mechanics, as a profession. I wonder if some day those who fix computers will be held in a similar regard.
I was an on-site repair guy for a couple of local computer companies until about 9 years ago. Even then, most of the customers were untrusting and paranoid when dealing with such a service.
It wasn't unusual for someone to raise hell and demand a free copy of Windows 3.11 when the copy of DR DOS I hooked them up with a couple of years prior ceased to work in a new enviroment.
I figured it was a lot like customers not understanding my father, a former auto mechanic of 20+ years, when he would tell them the fuel pump died and it was their carburator they had replaced last time they were in the shop.
The thing I liked least about doing house calls, and the reason I stopped doing them, was the overly irate people taking their frustrations out on the guy who's trying to help them get their systems up at the least cost and greatest speed. Eventually, it seemed like 1/3 of all the clients I dealt with were angry, abusive people that other businesses had already refused to work with.
opb
When the MPAA comes a callin' with their CSS encryption, the answer is the DMCA.
But when it comes to open-standards for automobiles, they're all for it.
Why won't they make up their minds? itj
can be found here [applefritter.com]. hs
I've always wanted a shell that deletes into a 'garbage' folder, but in a native way so programs calling a delete function would also. I've also wanted a 'file versions' feature to bring safety to accidently overwriting. Then it would really be tolerant of user faults.
While we're at it: a config file library so every config file is the same format; exportable functions so gimp can export gmp.imageResize fileName 800 600 to the shell; and a codecs folder with libraries for image, video, document, and data compression.
Not every might see that last one's benefit, but I think if every app exported its format there (quicktime, realmedia) and let it be universally called, apps would be judged by interface, not filetype support.
Another idea: make every shortcut in X the config file. That way, a simple copy+edit makes two easily created+accessed differently configed programs. (I don't know about network-wide configs, though.) zif
What's the legality of An Anti-DoS Tool That Returns Fire [slashdot.org]? It sounds pretty vigilante to me, but what sort of laws would be applicable to it? kh
One of the first cases of this was when Tom's Hardware (then only a startup site) reviewed a Riva TNT and said it was twice as fast as 3DFX voodoo (obviously untrue, but it's unknown if Nvidia paid him anything to say this). Eventually 3DFX picked up on this and demanded that Tom changes it, which he did.
But the damage was already done. he
http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/309033.htm [iafrica.com]
on
Once they got to that version of their SQL product, they got it pretty much right.
Its one of the few solid things that microsoft puts out. Previous verisons were pretty dismal.
I doubt that most pepole will ever need the 'new' features coming down the pike. They should leave it alone, instead of screwing it up or bloating it out.... gqk
The question is - how many nerds use Hotmail.com, and why does this non-event warrant a front page article? ipm
I've always wanted a spam filter with 1000% accuracy!
nfr
Furthermore, I find LilyPond's text format far faster for input than using a GUI. Like speach, music is an abstract concept that the human can nevertheless learn to set in a concrete form using a keyboard. Payware music typesetting programs also has a keyboard input mode, and most advanced users use it. ej
this is from the faq...
In real-world scenarios, false positives have ranged anywhere from 0% (none) to 0.10% depending on both implementation and user's mail behavior. Users with relatively predictable mail behavior (such as geeks, dweebs, and freaks) have generally received very few false positives (less than 1 in 10,000 messages). vco
When I picture that in mind I find it quite funny. I can imagine the stage dark and the crowd all hushed, with Gollum staring into his palm, singing 'Why oh why did this ring find meeeeeeeeeeee' in a deep operatic voice (ie non Gollum-esque). izv
I don't know what everybody is complaining about with these being slow chips. THey should really start to look at the trade-offs. Do they want to lug around an 8 pound laptop, with 3 hourse of battery life, just so they can say they have a 2.4 GHz laptop, or would they rather carry around a 2.6 pound laptop with 6 hours of battery life (weight with extended battery), and have to run things just a tinsy bit slower. I've found that provided the system have a good amount of memory, a pentium 2 is good enough to run most applications. ud
... if there was some way to plug tools like this into Mozilla directly so that you could expand on its built in junk mail detection with something more powerful. cbp
Some F/OSS projects just aim to get a job done, do it, and leave it up to someone else (perhaps less qualified?) to complete things, to produce a complete package that does the job well
Han-wen & Jan have done one of the latter, this is a supreme polished job that's only getting better. Kudos
adult desktops & wallpapers [67.160.223.119] bax
Because you have to be looking at the right place at the right time. Do you have any idea how vast a volume of space we're talking about? jfj
When it comes to 'free' things on the internet, the old phrase 'don't look a gift-horse in the mouth' just doesn't apply: You should be giving that horse a full dental exam!
People do have a right to complain if they feel a service is bad, even if it's free. Especially if it's a service such as e-mail, which is a pain to switch. It takes time and they know this and exploit it.
sc
Guys, I am a professional musician who occasionaly makes a few hundred bucks setting out of print scores to finale or sibeleus. I also use linux, and like the open source model.
The problem is that programmers arent creative in this department... those coders all work at apple.
This is never going to get off the ground, and is a hindrance to the adoption of linux by musicians, when in reality things like jack, ardour, and alsa make it an excellent platform for creative types, a la Pd, miller puckette's wonderful synthesis program.
The developers seem to be focusing on making things "right" and in a description language. Fine, but i dont see how this is going to help inspire musicians to use this arcane latex garbage to print out a set of exercises. Most of my musician friends cant even use finale well, so how can one expect the same of this program.
On the other hand, if your objective is to create a framework for music notation software, midi in, etc, etc, then you need to work with people in that community so that you can have more attention and people drawn to that project.
As it stands now, this software is like enlightenment 17... by the time it gets ready, all the interested people and developers will have gone elsewhere or vanished in disgust. uyc
RMS is planning to start his own free email service. Supported clients will include Emacs and Netcat. ol
...overburned? - the CDs or the coffee? vn
>I'm surprised people still use BSD after that
;)
>security fiasco last year.
so what do u suggest windows? LOL
sorry
ap
By the time your daughter grows up, do you think there will be any of our cherished freedoms on the Internet left, or will everything be wrapped in legalese and DRM? With the passage of laws from the DMCA to the PATRIOT act, I've been increasingly pessimistic about the US's ability to pass any sane legislation that interfaces with the Internet... uwj
hey, remember linus signed some pretty odd things during LCA:)
Yeah, my wife still refuses to wash her left breast.... bv
http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyN ews/asteroid0107.html
m
. ht ml
t ml
sdn
http://personals.galaxyinternet.net/tunga/I7.ht
http://home.att.net/~thehessians/asteroidstrike
http://www.sandia.gov/media/comethit.htm
http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/crater.h
On Friday I was tinkering with a student LAN I help maintain... swapping in new switches, trying to sort out a mess of identical ethernet cables.
:)
I was about to leave, satisfied that the network was back to running as normal, but people started complaining that they couldn't reach hotmail. That seemed weird since hotmail is typically rock solid... I got kinda stressed by this, thought maybe I was dealing with a bizarre netmask thru DHCP or perhaps a DNS failure.
What a relief... hotmail was broken
sv
Hey, there's nothing like converting a low-res display and computer hardware to make a high-tech $300+ version of a $10 picture frame. zl
A good example of seperating content from presentation is to use an XML-type file (at least have a structured document model) where the music data is defined. Then, have somthing like an XLS sound stylesheet to define how the data will sound like. As a developer, this would create greater posibilities what I could do with the sound that my application processes.
On a side noce GNoise [sourceforge.net] is a good sound editor that I recommend to anyone doing edeting or large sounds like game-music (that is uncompressed in raw format.) os
Their first chip Crusoe, although saving power, underperformed [pcworld.com] badly. And the Efficeon doesn't look fast compared to its rivals. The Efficeon TM 8000 can do 1.1GHz consuming 7W. Intel's Pentium M does 1.7GHz for the same power consumption.
I don't think there's anything particularly cool about this news. It is the same as the discovery of the new planet [mithuro.com]. There are better ones already out there. zd
warezing is a crime in australia and many country's so this sounds supported there. The article says "Griffiths Australian lawyers are fighting the move, stating that he has never set foot in the United States and has committed no crime under Australian law" but to me thats lawyer defense standard sputtering as it IS illegal in australia.
Their lawyers are using simple SCO tactics like "our IP is in their product" they can say it but it does not make it true.
adult desktops & wallpapers [67.160.223.119] bav
Judging fromt the description that people had problems logging in, but that things work fine once logged in, and OTOH that Messenger had problems too, I would conclude that the problem is with their Passport infrastructure.
atkCentrino is not a chip. It is a "system" comprised of three parts:
/ demo/wo rks.htm?iid=ipp_demworks+tab&
hlo
Intel(R) Pentium M processor
Intel(R) 855 Chipset Family
Intel(R) PRO/Wireless Network Connection
Basically, Intel repackaged and "branded" some existing technologies in an effort to squeeze out other wireless hardware manufacturers (if it ain't Intel WiFi, you can't call it "Centrino," and a successful branding campign makes people want Centrino whether or not they know what it actually is).
Anyway, your question is stil valid, but to technically nitpick it's really about the Pentium M processor.
More info:
http://intel.com/products/mobiletechnology
http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/309033.htm [iafrica.com]
yp
The precession of Mercury's orbit is explained by the general theory of relativity, not the special theory. The special theory explains the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment. tpj
But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision?
When, or if? It's probably true that a major impact is a near certainty. But what's the time frame for that kind of certainty? 1000 years? 10,000 years?
On the other hand, the probability for significant famine, disease, and war is 100%. That is, those things are all happening, right now. And it seems that there's a very strong chance that these problems will get worse in the near future.
I don't know about you, but I'll take a 0.01% chance that an asteroid will land on my county over a 5% chance that SARS or HIV or some drug resistant bird flu will do me in prematurely. kw
I can see GM doing a robotic nose flute or kazoo. bar
Want Microsoft DRM, non-compliance to standards, and who-knows-what in the future too? It's to avoid this that these sanctions are being applied.
Sounds sensible to me ao
It is a good idea. It happened with IE and should happen with any other Windows endorsed products. There is no reason to ship them pre-installed. The argument that GNAA/Linux do that is false because XMMS and The Gimp are seperate entities from the distribtuion. jn
What's with all of the people claiming that FTSH will ruin the world because it makes it easier to be a sloppy programmer. Did you freaking read the documentation?
To massively oversimplify, FTSH adds exceptions to shell scripting. Is that really so horrible? Is of line-after-line of "if [$? -eq 0] then" really an improvement? Welcome to the 1980's, we've discovered that programming languages should try and minimize the amount of time you spent typing the same thing over and over again. Human beings are bad at repetitive behavior, avoid repetition if you can.
Similarlly FTSH provides looping constructs to simplify the common case of "Try until it works, or until some timer or counter runs out." Less programmer time wasted coding Yet Another Loop, less opportunities for a stupid slip-up while coding that loop.
If you're so bothered by the possibility of people ignoring return codes it should please you to know that FTSH forces you to appreciate that return codes are very uncertain things. Did diff return 1 because the files are different, or because the linker failed to find a required library? Ultimately all you can say is that diff failed.
Christ, did C++ and Java get this sort of reaming early on? "How horrible, exceptions mean that you don't have to check return codes at every single level." vyn
What's the legality of An Anti-DoS Tool That Returns Fire [slashdot.org]? It sounds pretty vigilante to me, but what sort of laws would be applicable to it? jt
- President
- Cabinet Member
- Other Executive Branch Member
- Supreme Court Justice
- Circuit Court Judge
- State's Attorney General
- Senator
- Congressman
- Governor
- Mayor
- Local Councilman
- Cop
- IT Administrator
duvRemounting a filesystem with ACID on, a process sets a rollback point , executing a series of commands with the operating system keeping a record of the changes to the filesystem made by the process and its children. The process would inform the OS to either commit or rollback the changes.
This still raises questions on how to deal with with two or more competing "transactional" processes which rely on read information which another process chooses to rollback to an early state. ama
Living underground has many practical advantages. All-year insulation from heat and cold, no neighbours, no leaking roofs, infinite space for expansion if you care to dig.
But... we're descended from tree-hugging primates, not moles, and living underground is a sure way to go crazy. A home needs sunlight, a view, and fundamentally, people within easy reach.
I'd rather live in a shoddy 1-room appartment than in a hundred room bunker.
az
Why doesn't anyone here seem to interview someone more interesting? I have no idea who the hell these people are, and no idea why I should care.
Hell, go interview that Darl McBride guy everyone here is always blathering about. Here, I'll even give you the contact info I nicked off those posts of his info someone keeps spamming.
Home phone #: (801) 424-2006
Office phone #: (801) 932-5820
Email: darl@sco.com sse
odd, I've seen many a drunk sliding down the side of a glass...those pesky bubbles! to
The one from the logged in poster is a faithful reproduction of the article. The anonymous coward one mentions cowboyneal and male body parts.
That probably explains why the moderation was done the way it was far more the the stated author of the article. co
To achieve all of this, computers had to be put in the cars. A car without computers wouldn't be competitive in today's market, and it wouldn't be able to produce high power outputs while staying within today's mandated pollution limits. lw
But of course if a drug company spends 7 years developing a drug and starts trying to recoup some of that cost over the next few years everyone will forget the R&D and point out how the drug costs nothing to make and so the company is ripping everyone off. When I worked at a pharmaceutical company there were cases when it took so long to develop a drug that it wasn't worth bringing it to market because the patent would almost have expired by time it was ready for release. (The patent needs to be filed right at the beginning of the testing process.) al
Out in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud [arizona.edu] there are thought to be as many as one trillion objects - most small 1 to 10 km chucks of ice.
The really interesting question is, what is the mass distribution ? (I.e., how does the number of objects scale with their mass ?) This is basically unconstrained by real data. All such cosmic mass distributions are steep, but many (for example, planets in the Solar System, Asteroids in the Asteroid belt) are dominated by the most massive bodies.
If this holds true in the Oort cloud, in particular, there could be some pretty big objects. Even a Jupiter sized object might be able to hide from the Infrared surveys (the best way of detecting such an object). imd
Could we eliminate any risk of being hit by an asteroid by reclassifying everything as a planet? bpx
I for one can see several applications that might directly appeal to this crowd.
ymv
Hanly says." It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem.
Well sorta, the big buy here is that you get that much life from a significantly smaller/lighter battery. Note the presence of the physically larger "extended life" battery. Battery life isn't the "problem", or more accurately the tradeoff, it's the size (which in this case does matter). ndw
For those things there is Mailinator [mailinator.com].
Throwaway accounts should never be, out of all places, registered on Hotmail.com. They suspend your account if you don't login for 30 days. At least Yahoo!Mail or other free alternatives let you forget the account for few months and not get penalized for it. gn
will they also label the CD-R as hot as they do with coffe cups in America? txd
This example was written about Office, but it's relevant to this argument:
Say that Office was a seperate company to Windows.
Office the company would see that making their product available on every platform would make them more money. Thus it would be so. Windows the company would have no incentive to build in special APIs for Office. Office would compete on it's merits and so would Windows, and competition COULD and WOULD exist effectivly in the marketplace.
Now, say that Office and Windows are made by the same company.
Office would by and large see that by making their product only available for Windows they would make less money but it would be worth more because every copy sold would also sell a Windows license. Windows wants to make sure that everyone who buys Windows chooses office so they do what they can to make it seem to run faster, better etc. Consumers get screwed by lack of choice.
(Obviously Office is also available for Mac, but this is due to historic pre-monopoly reasons. The same decision might be made today, but only to dodge having the AntiTrust people looking at them too sharply. If Office had been split off from Windows it would likley be available on IRIX, HPUX, AIX, GNAA/Linux, BSD etc today as well as Windows and OS X.) ws
This is Slashdot, where any sufficiently advanced opinion is indistinguishable from fact. uh
I think it still will promote bad programming/scripting practices. Many people ( including myself ) started with scripting before moving on to full-fledged programming. What they learned in scripting they carry forward with them into programming, and trust me, I learned to be very meticulous when it comes to interacting with things outside of my scripts control ( such as files ). Every I/O operation should be tested for success. Trying to open a file? Did it work? Ok, try writing to the file...did it work? Open a database connection...did it work? Let the user enter a number...did they enter a valid number? Error handling and input validation is something you just have to learn, like it or not. Something that holds your hand and lets you code while remaining oblivious to the realities of the scripting/programming environment is a bad thing IMHO.
On a side note for Perl, one thing I always hated were the examples that had something like "open( FH, "file/path" ) || die "Could not open file!" . $!; I mean, come one, you don't want your script to just quit if it encounters an error...how about putting in an example of error handling other than the script throwing up its hands and quitting! LOL.
Please excuse any grammatical/other typos above, I was on 4 hrs sleep when I wrote this. Thank You.
ps
I am usually don't condone the strong arm techniques of the US government. And I do support open source. But Warez is a crime. And it should be punished.
Bullshit. Warez is a crime IN THE US, but not in Australia.
In Germany it's illegal to say ANYTHING that is pro-nazi. Do you think that the US would even consider extraditing one of its citizens who posted something pro-nazi on a website? Of course not.
This is lunacy, pure and simple.
LK jon
I think ultimately the question is whether there is a single continuous "initial mass function" of isolated objects or not. The best idea as to how stars acquire their initial mass is that turbulence in the interstellar medium, which exists on all scales, establishes a power-law distribution of initial masses. Every once in a while, you get a very strong shock which passes by inside a giant molecular cloud and forces the collapse of a large region which then goes on to form a massive star. But more typically, you form stars more like our sun. And just as rare as massive collapses are very small mass ones which go on to form isolated brown dwarfs and free-floating planets. If this model holds up to be true, then we are all mincing words in our definitions of isolated systems, since they are all manifestations of the same universal formation process.
However, to avoid the difficult question of formation mechanisms, an IAU working group of some of the most respected people in the field established a working definition [ciw.edu] to define by fiat what it means to be a brown dwarf, and a planet. Extrasolar "planets" are those objects orbiting a star which are beneath the deteurium-burning limit -- regardless of how they are formed. "Brown dwarfs" are defined to be those which burn deuterium but not lithium, and "sub-brown dwarfs" (NOT free-floating planets!) are defined to be those isolated objects which do not burn deuterium. Even the working group itself admitted that this definition was not satisfying to a single member of the group, and so it is likely it will be replaced at a later time with something more physically-motivated. The "planet/planetismal/KBO" distinction was pushed back to our own solar system, since it will be some time before anyone sees anything that small in another system.
Also of interest is the following link, which gives a history of previous claims for additional planetary members of our solar system : SEDS [arizona.edu].
lzx
I love the idea, but looking throughthe site even a seasoned GNAA/Linux vtran CAN NOT get a linux pc doing his music work.
there is lots of words and ideas on the site but absolutely ZERO content.
the tutorial on rosegarden is 100% worthless, they dont even cover how the hell you get it set up so you can actually input/output anything.
Nothing about JACK nothing about the wild fight to get MIDI working reliabily under ALSA and JACK.
no real reccomendations as to what hardware to buy because it does work, just a wishy-washy "most soundcards come with a midi port on the joystick..
how about the fact that most soundcards absolutely SUCK at midi/audio recording? why not a list of "
these fricking work good"
linuxmusician.com is a worthless website for a bunch of fanboys, and i constantly reccomend to people that are interested in linux and music to AVOID it.
let us all know wher there is a REAL website devoted to getting linux and musicians working together...
vu
Perhaps you missed the whole DeCSS [harvard.edu] issue? "Without licensed DVD players for GNAA/Linux and other operating systems, an entire class of computer users is completely cut off from viewing DVDs." ut
I saw a couple of Alpha builds of Yukon and the Planning papers (blue badge), but I didn't see much, but I bet I know what's taking so long:
Yukon will allow structs as column types, and will do mapping between.NET types and SQL types automatically, and allow you to run C# SQLDataAdapter-type code natively within Stored procedures. Plus with the trend starting in SQL 2000, it'll be XML, XML, XML. I know XML will be a native type and some of the "indexed xml" (red/blue fast-search vs. DOM-search) that they started in the aborted Hailstorm project will be in there.
Longhorn replaces Win32 with.NET; Yukon replaces the SQL you knew with new stuff. They'll eventually get it right and it will rock, but don't expect to use all this until 2007 (it'll be out before then, but you won't finish your first REAL project till then).
There, I said it. 2007. pku
Who loses in the end? The music stores, anyway. dbl
is there anything like cakewalk available for linux? yqd
don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I'm kind of let down by the fact that our most interesting space story for awhile now is that we MAY have a 10th planet in our solar system.
Umm...what? The past few months have been *spectacularly* exciting from a space point of view. We have two probes that successfully landed on Mars and have found strong evidence that Mars had liquid brine at one point. We have a ton of pictures from the surface to look at, and are expecting tons of findings, papers, and theories based on probe data that's been returned.
And while, yes, the classification may not be interesting, the fact that we discovered a new, sizeable chunk of matter in our solar system is not small stuff either. gl
By the looks of the Intel story below, Slashdot sure needs a good Bayesian spam filter. I recommend this. Or a baseball bat. Because you can go over to anti-slash and really pound some skulls with a baseball bat, and it would probably be more satisfying. But filters are good too, don't get me wrong. hrb
The one from the logged in poster is a faithful reproduction of the article. The anonymous coward one mentions cowboyneal and male body parts.
That probably explains why the moderation was done the way it was far more the the stated author of the article. ks
If you read the article, Matt says (about SSI): "It is something that no non-commercial system today can do"... ud
MS Windows XP without WMP..Euro 159.99
erm, GNAA/Linux please...
Hey, just noticed something. For a site that likes to be open, why can I NOT use the Great British pound sign OR the EURO sign (both are in there now, but don't show on the comment), only the DOLLAR? Is this a consipiracy? Whether text, HTML or Extrans...What's wrong with that?
You can say Micro$oft but not Microoft or Microoft for examples...see, the pound AND Euro don't come out...? ir
1. Please tell us about the general status of DragonFly BSD.
Matthew Dillon: The project has been going very well. We've primarily been focused on the 'guts' of the system during this initial period, and you can get a fair idea of the work that has been accomplished so far by looking at the Diary page on our site.
Most of the work so far has been to operating systems internals. The work has been a combination of new work, like our light weight kernel threading core, plus selective backports from FreeBSD-5 to keep the system's device drivers up to date (e.g. such as the USB subsystem).
From a userland perspective we have maintained a FreeBSD style environment, so DragonFly basically runs everything that FreeBSD-4.x can run. The packaging system probably won't be done until the second release so we are at the moment leveraging off of FreeBSD's ports system for user apps. Everything you'd expect of a BSD system (X, mozilla, etc) is available to DragonFly users.
The first release is slated for some time in mid-June, hopefully before the USENIX Technical Conference. That will be the 1.0 release. We've been fairly careful to maintain as high a level of reliability as possible during development and I think we've done a pretty good job meeting that goal. The first release is intended to be more of a technology showpiece then an integrated end-user platform.
2. Are you using any bits and pieces from FreeBSD-5, or you only strictly importing/exporting to FreeBSD-4 codebase?
Matthew Dillon: DragonFly began as a fork off of FreeBSD-4, because that was the most reliable starting point and because we wanted to do major core pieces of the system quite differently from the direction FreeBSD-5 took. For example, we are focused on more of a compartmentalized threading model to scale to SMP rather then the mutex model that FreeBSD-5 has chosen to use. But the FreeBSD-4 codebase is of strictly limited utility as a source of new code and maintainance updates. FreeBSD developers are doing nearly all new coding in the FreeBSD-5 branch.
So, basically, we are doing the major core pieces of the OS differently, such as our significantly evolved threading and messaging subsystems, but we are also maintaining a FreeBSD-5 compatible (or mostly compatible) device driver API in order to be able to bring in all the excellent device driver work that has gone into FreeBSD-5. It's simple logic, really... we don't have the manpower to be able to accomplish both our infrastructure goals *AND* be able to maintain pace with new PC hardware at the same time. This methodology allows us to proceed on both fronts by focusing our own new work on the infrastructure and bringing in FreeBSD-5's device driver work. This isn't to say that we don't do some of our own DD work, but the vast majority of it is take from FreeBSD-5 by design.
3. What is the primary goal of dragonfly, servers or desktops?
Matthew Dillon: Both. When it comes right down to it the idea of targeting a system to the 'server' is simply another word for 'reliability and scaleability', and the idea of targeting a system to the 'desktop' is simply another word for 'out of the box GUI'. It's not really an either-or deal. All UNIX systems, including GNAA/Linux, the BSD's, DragonFly... basically use the same desktop components so supporting a desktop environment comes down to being able to provide integrated solutions that work out of the box.
It is extraordinarily difficult to make GUIs work out of the box on PCs due to the wide variability in hardware and peripherals, but at the same time technology has continued to progress over the years towards standards that actually make this easier to accomplish. At some point the standards going in one direction will meet the software going in the other and systems such as GNAA/Linux and the BSDs (including DragonFly) will be able to approach the out-of-the-box compatibility that took Microsoft billions of dollars of development to ac
About 6 months ago I was on the phone to some marketing company who were doing a survey on Yukon and whether or not I was contemplating deploying it.
I said no because:
1) it was too tighly integrated into AD/ windows server and we didn't any of that.
2) I didn't trust it, and wouldn't till it had been in the field for at least a year.
I think they got alot of responses like 2) (going by the marketers comments) and they prob decided to wait till the new windows server is out (2006??) and deploy on the new Trusted Computing Base thing they are wittering on about.
ppb
SQL7 was only 1.0 if you ignore versions 4.2, 6.0 and 6.5.
pn
As technically inferior MySQL is to Postgres, MySQL has a few major things going for it that ensure it's niche.
1. Easy to install on Windows. The average coder at a Windows-only farm can easily run the executable and have the latest version running on their developer box. Not all companies allow you to have multiple boxes, and many force you (via draconion security measures) to only run windows with certain software installed. Postgres NEEDS a user-friendly Win32 installer, perhaps with a similar info-item like MySQL has. This is a MUST for companies to start to take notice. Then, a PHB can even play with it and like it.
2. Marketing. While open-source, MySQL has a nice marketing engine behind it. A beautiful webpage, online and PRINT adds, and magazine and newspaper articles CONSTANTLY writing about the "little database that could" every few week / months. Postgres needs to start getting the word out, and hype it a little. Just because a product is superior, doesn't mean it will thrive. There are tons of examples out there: Beta vs VHS, Windows vs OS X, etc. For a database to be used, it must be allowed and "signed off" by a manager of some sort. Most will take reputation + support + "ooh, nice webpage" over a product that might be better, but they know nothing about it.
3. More management tools. MySQL has a couple out there that look and run great; very professional looking. This earns respect from PHB's, as they are easily misled by such niceties.
Don't get me wrong. MySQL is nice, but doesn't have what I need most (Views, triggers, etc). Postgres may not be perfect, but I think it is superior. We just need to get the word out to those "not in the know". jvs
Almost good. How about,
What do you think needs to be done to ensure that our rights of Fair Use are preserved in this digital age? ziw
...dear god, think of the possibilities. A robot with the ability to play a trumpet constantly...endlessly. The annoyance will be legendary. bb
obtain criminals that seek refuge in a country
(A) He's not a criminal and
(B) he's not "seeking refuge". He's remaining at home where he's been the whole time.
The US is getting uppity at Autralia because Australia is not prosecuting him. And the REASON Autralia is not prosecuting him is because HE DID NOT BREAK THE LAW.
The US wants to extradite him so they can persecute him for "breaking codes", NOT for copyright infringment. "Breaking codes" is nothing but working out mathematics. And guess what? It's not a crime to do math in Australia! He's not a criminal.
It's my dip-shit home country of America that came up with the numbskull idea of criminalizing math.
P.S.
The Chinese people should have a revolution and overthrow their government. OOPS! I JUST VIOLATED CHINESE LAW! I guess I'm a criminal too! Quick, someone extradite me to China!
- nv
How does this chip compare with that other energy-saving chip, the Celeron?
And more importantly, is there any reason you'd choose a Transmeta-powered rig over an Intel one? dtu
I've been into computers since I was 8. I bought my first car when I was 18. I used to be one of those people that took it somewhere anytime something went wrong. Then when I was 19, I met someone who worked on vehicles for a living. He showed me that I was being taken to the cleaners when I pay Midas $400 for new brakes. When I was 24, I bought my second vehicle. Maybe 6 months later, the front passenger side rotor was shot. I went to Monroe for an estimate, $692 for two new rotors, braks pads, shoes, calipers, pistons, and lines. I talked to my friend, he showed me that my calipers, lines, and the pistons for the rear brakes were fine. So I bought new rotors and pads, did the repair myself for ~$60.
4 years later, I've gone through a fair number of pads and shoes since, but the calipers are still fine and the lines are good.
I've known "computer professionals" who operate on the same kind of principle. They feel like they should make as much money as possible whenever someone comes into the shop by misrepresenting what needs to be done, or even outright lying. Some of them are quite successful because of this, but others fail miserably.
You can't hold those people that you depend upon to make your living in contempt. You can't treat people like their morons. (even if some of them really are)
LK wg
From the article:
"the researchers estimate that the wires should be able to withstand several thousand cycles of extension and contraction."
That's no where NEAR what would be needed for any of the applications they mention. For example, at 70 beats per minute your heart beats 100,800 times per day. Assuming each step a runner takes covers 3 feet (very approximate here), then a "cycle" (back to starting configuration) is 6 ft. That's 880 "cycles" per mile. A single 6 mile run is therefore over 5000 cycles.
Several thousand "cycles of extension and contraction" is not even close to enough for any real world app. Who wants to have that internal heart monitor replaced several times each day? How about that high-tech single use "smart" sweatshirt?
These will need to be in the 100's of thousands to millions of cycles for their lifespan before they have any real utility.
fsw
You *WILL* get spam my friend. I've been doing this for almost 20 years (admin) now -- and have specifically used aliased accounts for various reasons over the years as you are doing.
... it only a matter of time before you're screwed.
:). Bill's idea of email stamps, well, hahahahaha...
:).
:)
Wait... You'll be interested to know that the biggest problem with the spam coming in comes from virus infected Windows boxes. They send it. They harvest the users Outlook address book. If you ever end up in somebody's Outlook box
I chuckle at the whole Exchange thing. You pay for that?
I personally pay to have a fixed IP @ home and run a old GNAA/Linux box. A lot of aliases I've used over the years (and some blatantly used to harvest) all go to some local account that processes the spam. Upon receipt -- mail the wrong account and sorry, but you're blocked (unless white-listed). White-listing can come from valid already received email -- but I work everything based off of IP. My hope is that the registered MX host(s) or any valid listed server by the authenticating DNS server will be the type of scheme that's re-implemented (or more to the point SHOE-horned in real soon
Over the last decade I've now got 380 aliased harvesting spam address' in use -- two valid email accounts @ home (my wife and myself) which is on my own IP with my own domain. I pay $5 extra a month above my broadband (10Mbit [yeah, solid] wireless) -- how much do you pay for that Exchange box?
I've run this type of setup through many offices scaled to dozens of email servers -- and the beauty is they also talk to each other sharing block/white-listed address' as needed. Wait -- you will get spam. Filtered through my account to I'm seeing 80 something that got in -- 2,164 blocked IP's [today], 380 harvested address', and 48 for various other infractions (attempts to relay through me, from a country where I know nobody, etc
Statistically (yeah, they all get nmap'd back)? 96% Windows based.
I give my email to friends. I have a work email that anybody that knows how to call me can have it. I even print it on my business card. No, I wouldn't post it to USENET or even here -- but it's still "out there". My unlisted phone number, OTOH, anybody can have. 847.854.0048. It's always busy and one channel of my ISDN home line. The other channel routes to the house for two phone lines (or Internet backup if and as needed) and is automatically unlisted and unpublished (at no cost since it is a "data circuit") -- and no, I'd rather not post that either.
Exchange? Never! fs
... or probably Perl or Python, either.
It doesn't actually seem to grok the commands that are being run, so something like
proc try {times script} {
if { [catch [uplevel $script] err] } { cleanup ; retry }
}
is all that's needed (of course to do it right you'd need a bit more, but still...).
try {5 times} {
commands...
}
Although Tcl is a bit lower level, and would require you to do exec ls, you could of course wrap that too so that all commands in the $script block would just be 'exec'ed by default.
In any case, better to use a flexible tool that can be tweaked to do what you need then write highly specialized tools. pzx
I wonder if there are any tools that could make tasks like this easier, such as a LiveCD GNAA/Linux distro that included antivirus and spyware tools for cleaning up windows partitions? That would solve problems such as unidentified worms that disable antivirus software. zmx
How do you feel about people sharing your book? lqq
vl
It pisses me off that no American company today would ever do something like this.
That is because Wall Street is so concerned with short-term profits. Gasoline is at an all-time high while Toyota/Honda are the only companies that had the patience to develop a profitable solution [ljworld.com] to the problem. In 1997 when Toyota introduced the hybrid, they were losing lots of money on every unit sold. Now, they are selling that same technology to US-based companies [iht.com].
Now, Ford isn't buying Toyota technology because it makes environmental sense. Rather, they are doing it because it makes sense for short-term profits - the same mindset that got them into this situation in the first place. This mentality will catch up to the US sooner or later. And where is solar energy? dx
I had a problem with my '99 cavalier; the engine would drop it's RPMs by several hundred every once in a while; almost, but not quite, enough to stall.
Took it in to the dealer, they said 'is the check engine light on?'
'Nope,' I replied, 'but here's what it's doing...'
'Sorry,' came the reply. 'If the check light's not on, there's no diagnostic codes for us to look up. We can't fix it unless we know what's wrong.'
eiWisdom takes time to build.
How old was Strom Thurmond when he died?
xqd
Here's what I posted on Wi-Fi Networking News [wifinetnews.com] about why Starbucks efforts are misguided:
Starbucks reportedly to offer music burning service in up to 2,500 stores: The system will allow customers to have CDs burned while they wait; eventually, it will also allow downloads of music over Wi-Fi, the article in BusinessWeek says.
Starbucks demanded a T-1 (1.544 Mbps in each direction) digital service infrastructure from its first hotspot partner, MobileStar, as well as its second, T-Mobile. I've speculated for a while on how this high-speed network could be used to cache material in each Starbucks, like movie and music downloads.
This latest project sounds somewhat misguided for the reason cited by the Forrester analyst in the article: Your typical barista may be great at making espresso but is not in a position to fix the broken CD burner.
My cousin Steven was involved almost 20 years ago with a company called Personics. The company had worked out a catalog licensing deal with more than 70 labels from the largest down to some independents to allow them to offer custom mix tapes for about a buck a song. This was a reasonable price in those days. The system had a few thousand songs mastered onto CD-ROMs stored in a special employee-operated CD-ROM changer behind the counter. An employee would punch in your choices, and the system created a high-speed cassette tape dub.
The company failed for two primary reasons: the hardware was proprietary, meaning that engineers had to fly around the country to fix it when it inevitably had glitches; and the catalog they offered too small because labels balked at including their most popular stuff for fear of cannibalizing pre-recorded CD and tape sales. (Price, my cousin reports, was not a problem: many customers were willing to pay even more, he noted to me after this item was originally posted.)
If Starbucks creates the expectation of an easy process that's always available and then isn't available even part of the time at any given store, they lose their audience. Starbucks makes its money from processing a high volume of custom drinks--you don't want to distract from that. CD burners aren't that difficult to keep operating, but a failure rate that's a fraction of that experienced by typical home and business users could be a dramatic problem in a high-expectation retail environment.
The article says the price is comparable to Apple and other download services. Two problems with that comparison. First, it's not. It's $7 for five songs, or 40 percent, or $13 for an album, or 30 percent higher. That's a significantly different price when you're dealing with price sensitivity. It's comparable to a mass-produced discounted audio CD.
Second, you're receiving an audio CD, not digital music per se, which could be a turnoff for the audience that might be interested in a fast, in-store music service. (However, since HP is the partner, and is reselling their own version of the iPod, it's possible that the ultimate digital delivery system will be a version of the iTunes Music Store.)
This is the latest incarnation of Compaq-cum-Hewlett Packard's attempts to capitalize on their relationship as a supplier to Starbucks. In January 2001, when the MobileStar deal was announced for installing hotspots, Starbucks made a big deal about Microsoft and Compaq's participation. Compaq wasn't a partner, though; Starbucks had signed a $100 million, five-year deal to buy equipment and services. Microsoft was a partner, and it never seemed to amount to anything that saw the light of day.
In the years since this deal, Compaq and then HP have reaped advertising benefits, appearing in full-page newspaper advertisements as part of the Starbucks hotspot system, even though they had nothing to do with MobileStar and T-Mobile's deployment. At one point, Starbucks had Compaq iPaq's available for customers to play with, and those disappeared, too.
It's this fumb
Not exactly difficult. The so called "sanctions" taken against MS in the U.S. were meaningless to the extent that most observers believe there was a secret backroom deal. Frankly, I cannot see what the Europeans propose having much effect on MS's monopolistic practices either. yi
You can make bit-for-bit copies of any DVD now, complete with all the encryption on it. And the laws preventing the distribution of those DVDs (normal copyright law) has been on the books for a long, long time. If you follow the money, the bottom line is that the CSS and region codes on a DVD only help to support cartel price-fixing profits.
cs
Nope. April 1st isn't for another 18 days. Nice try though.
-S lim
This example was written about Office, but it's relevant to this argument:
Say that Office was a seperate company to Windows.
Office the company would see that making their product available on every platform would make them more money. Thus it would be so. Windows the company would have no incentive to build in special APIs for Office. Office would compete on it's merits and so would Windows, and competition COULD and WOULD exist effectivly in the marketplace.
Now, say that Office and Windows are made by the same company.
Office would by and large see that by making their product only available for Windows they would make less money but it would be worth more because every copy sold would also sell a Windows license. Windows wants to make sure that everyone who buys Windows chooses office so they do what they can to make it seem to run faster, better etc. Consumers get screwed by lack of choice.
(Obviously Office is also available for Mac, but this is due to historic pre-monopoly reasons. The same decision might be made today, but only to dodge having the AntiTrust people looking at them too sharply. If Office had been split off from Windows it would likley be available on IRIX, HPUX, AIX, GNAA/Linux, BSD etc today as well as Windows and OS X.) zzd
Q: Can You see any way the net can be regulated? I have read the other suggestions/queries here and quite frankly it seems that most people(american that is) just dont understand that the net is global. How can we make a set of rules that all users of the net is forced to follow? Do we really want to? of
It's encouraging to see unemployeed techs finally taking advantage of all that time they spent fixing friends computers for free. I know I'm usually the first one several of my friends and family call when their computer starts acting weird, and all they want to do is send email.
Now if somebody was really smart, they'd find a way to get partnered with the local Best Buy and could probably turn it into a full time job. You'd be amazed at how much people are willing to pay if you can bring some sanity to their assorted home electronics. My mom loves the 3 page FAQ I made for her that goes step by step how to do everything with the home theatre system my Dad has. She used to not watch any DVDs just because she was scared to touch anything. ame
Same code, but different security model/sandbox. The CLR in yukon does not have access to the file system, sockets, winforms, services, the registry or anything else a virus is going to need. It's limited to communicating with the SQL process and manipulating data within a database. Nothing more. akl
Q: Can You see any way the net can be regulated? I have read the other suggestions/queries here and quite frankly it seems that most people(american that is) just dont understand that the net is global. How can we make a set of rules that all users of the net is forced to follow? Do we really want to? jjd
Too good to pass up...
Redmond city limits?
rsm
Oh Joy
Just what you need a new microsoft database that makes refactoring and porting your DB to another platform near impossible.
Larry Elison is probably chuckling like a demented monkey over this. I can see his sales people going at this. Microsoft Software assurance = Pay them to take their time to devise ways to achieve complete customer lock in. Or, the ever popular why run your business using techniques with 50 years of validation behind them when you can do things microsofts way.
I can allready see the security problems popping up. Run C# code directly, the same code being ever more integrated into yukon. Well seems we will be able to expect worms that make slammer look like a joke. Heck you could have them replicate throughout the entire system and hold entire enterprises data hostage.
The sad thing is that the large group of IT director/ Sysadmin lemmings will go along with no one ever got fired for choosing microsoft. After all, look at how they have embraced the ever popular and ever more dangerous office/exchange combo. hnl
What i want is something where i can copy in a sheet of music or a few bars and hear what it would sound like. if you really want someting to teach music students with this would be it because you coul experiment and verifiy ideas or intent. pkf
from the article Some think Microsoft has bitten off more than it can chew with Yukon. "This product lacks focus," said Betsy Burton, analyst with the Gartner Group. "They're doing all sorts of stuff with it, first scalability was the issue, then XML support, then.Net activities, and then business intelligence and now security. The gut issue is, what is the purpose of this release? As a team trying to develop a product you have to know where you're going," she said
Betsy clearly has no clue regarding the SQL Server product's evolution, capabilites or how these are going to change with Yukon. In fact she seems to have a very limited grasp of significance of the Yukon's release.
Unlike Oracle, SQL Server has basically hovered in the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" pattern for the last 5 years. For the most part it has delivered a decent database platform, that was for a while more cost effective than oracle. Those who have used SQL Server extensively know it's limitations. Betsy's arguments about "product lacking focus" are rediculous. That's primarily becuase Yukon seeks to rectify a large number of the problems and limitations of SQL Server 2k. It's really very difficult to provide a "focused" look at a product that is changing so significantly. In fact, her complaint is very similar to those that were uttered as Microsfot was trying to formalize the definition of.NET, which really has not clarified itself much in the last two years.
It would seem that Betsy is looking for are a few jargon sound bytes that can be displayed on a single powerpoint slide. That slide would then be shown to a bunch of people who nod their head and say, "that's a sound strategic driection". Big idea's aren't sound bytes.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, they are attempting to be ambitious with Yukon. A lot of new plumbing is going in, as well as a refinement and crystalization of the current features such as SQL -> XML queries, DTS, Replication, the integration of a first class programming language among others. These are all features that we've needed for a long time.
Yukon represents a significant change in the world of RDMS's on the Windows platform. It's sad to see that influential groups such as Gartner can't recognize or have the vision to see how much (and for the better) things are going to change for SQL Server 2K shops. se
Still, at least this discovery has the redeeming quality of completely fucking up astrology.
Astrology doesn't work that way.
Astrology is syncretic religion [google.com] -- it readily (and inevitably) incorporates new influences.
Like an amoeba, astrology engulfs everything it touches.
In this sense, astrology is rather like paranoia: everything pertains, everything is part of the Big Picture.
Sedna won't fuck up astrology. On the contrary, astrologers will eagerly seize on the idea of this new planet, treating Sedna as one more vacuole in the amoeba.
-kgj ht
At any rate, just because its one password in no way means you can't have a cluster of 5000 servers all storing and accepting transactions for it. I'd hardly call passport servers in Russia, the U.S., Germany, England, China, Japan etc... a single point of failure.
Normally I'd just assume you were referring to the password issue but right now that has nothing to do with this story so I'll just leave my assumptions out this. tjI agree with parent that in this case size really doesn't matter: it's all in how you use what you got.
Historically, Neptune was discovered because it was perturbing Uranus' orbit: its existence was theorized long before it was directly observed. Similarly, Pluto was discovered because it was found that Neptune alone was not sufficient to account for all of Uranus' irregularity. While Pluto isn't very big, its size and orbit are such that it definitely affects the other planets.
In practice then, what we have actually used to distinguish a planet like Pluto from a large body that is not a planet, like Chiron (roughly as big, discovered 1977), is whether the object interacts in a measurable way with known planets. If it does, then accord it planet status because it is clearly part of the planetary system.
In view of this, the new discovery is probably not a planet, unless it has a weird orbit like Pluto and would account for some of the remaining difference between planetary observations and expectations.
But what do I know? IANAA. rfi
At long last the secret of Starbucks' "very good coffee" is revealed: burn the holy living shit out of your beans!
Now you, too, can have that wonderful taste of charred coffee in your very own home!
rm
So that's why I couldn't access my inbox full of ads for Penile Enlargement, Hot Sex, and credit cards... pzw
To all of those who responded with something about putting this technology in clothes: What is to stop this from happening now? for the most part clothing doesn't stretch as much as these wires do. The technology is here today for wiring up your clothes, just not for processing it in the fabric. Maybe before you think of wild uses for new technology, you should think about current ways that it could already be done. uhw
It would behoove many companies to invest more in R&D and less in padding executives pocketbooks with $100's. HP, for example, has gutted their engineering ranks while simultaneously buying jets for the higher-ups. Closer to my region of the country, Caterpillar has outsourced waves of R&D people...and their executives are getting ever-higher bonuses. vh
It looks like the gist of the threading model for Dragonfly is that threads all stay on one processor. I assume this is for user processes only, and that this isn't pervasive through the kernel? lr
Well, the fact that beer bubbles sink was actually already known thousand of years ago. But it has to be "re-discovered" in every two years or so, otherwise the world would come to an end. And reporting this "discovery" in media is just a part of the ritual.
fzz
That said the issues are subtley but still substantially different. Libel is a civil issue, facilitation of piracy is criminal. International treaties handle these cases differently (and quite often not at all), it would have not been possible to sue that jornelist if his paper had no dealings in Australia as if I remember correctly Australian defamation laws are not recognised by America because of the differnces in laws and to a lesser extend the differences in culture. Only the Australian arm of that company could be sued.
But even if the crime was ruled to have been commited in America, as is possible extradition may not be possible. This is because nomatter where a crime was commited, if a sovereign nation does not recognise those crimes or recognises them to a lesser extent (as is the case here) then deportation may be conditional or even impossible.
Personally I don't see a deportation happening, the backlash that would occur when an Australian is sent to a foreign land that he has never set foot on before, to stand before a foreign jury to answer to foreign crimes for an action that was alledged to occur in the man's own home, in his own country would be sickening to most Australians or anyone with a sence of national identity, even if they are not Australian. There is a strong undercurrent of hostility towards the US flowing around Australia's youth and left wing. No judge would be willing to make this man a martr to Australian nationalism. Australia is one of the only countrys never to have had any wars or bloody revolutions, nobody would risk making this sacrifice to appease a foreign power if it meant a remote possibilty that thousends of angry young people with a newfound nationalistic furver could be storming the high court, parlement house, the US embassy and pine gap.
One also has to consider that a legal system that would entitle a foreign power to snatch away citizens for breaking laws of another nation into a distant land where they have never been is harldy soverign. Even if he is not crushed by homocidal revolutionarys, any judge that allows this extradition will surely be relinquising his own power to those overseas. This is completely contrary to human nature, let alone the nature of one ambitious enough to become a high court justice.
But let me say this. If this extradition is allowed, whosoever allows this man has commited nothing wrong in his own country to be taken to a foreign land as a prisoner, shall have fire and chaos thown down on him or her by either their power being snatched away by the American judituary or their life being snatched away by hostile revolutionarys. If they act in the wrong way, their own actions shall not go unlamented. vec
There's a video about it here: video/mov,4MB [stanford.edu]
Mentioned in news article from [stanford.edu] vuk
It's encouraging to see unemployeed techs finally taking advantage of all that time they spent fixing friends computers for free. I know I'm usually the first one several of my friends and family call when their computer starts acting weird, and all they want to do is send email.
Now if somebody was really smart, they'd find a way to get partnered with the local Best Buy and could probably turn it into a full time job. You'd be amazed at how much people are willing to pay if you can bring some sanity to their assorted home electronics. My mom loves the 3 page FAQ I made for her that goes step by step how to do everything with the home theatre system my Dad has. She used to not watch any DVDs just because she was scared to touch anything. wl
I first expected it to be some kind of super Zaurus but no...
it just seems to be some bigger Vaio C1xx.
Now, I do not see who they want to sell this to if this at least present no consistency with the rest of their offer. cho
I hear the bagpipe playing robot is still in development. il
What this article doesn't mention is that Visual Studio 2005 (formly known as Whitby) has also been delayed so that MS can release both products at the same time. (as VS.Net 2005 is supposed to be heavily integrated with the.NET features of SQL 2005)...
The thing I don't understand is why VS.NET is being delayed like this, the SQL objects should be seperate and not integrated into VS.Net anyway! hl
Right here [stanford.edu]
(Quicktime required) udx
How about most drug companies. ig
You seem to be assuming that this is not happening already. I wonder if that is true. I would assume that like mechanics, computer techs will give misleading or wrong advice some of the time either out of ignorance or avarice. nwj
Do you think that the widespread use of the Internet and practical anonymity will force copyright back into its original, more reasonable form of limited restrictions on copying as business models adapt to the unenforcability of existing law? Or do you think it will force law the other way, to ever-more draconian measures that can't be enforced effectively without making examples of people?
Do you think a new form of Intellectual Property will arise that is based around creators' rights to control their work that goes beyond mere copying and into the realm of restrictions on use? Or have we already gotten to that point?
Are EULAs legal? If they aren't now, will they ever be?
What would you suggest people in countries do to avoid capitulating to the USA and adopting its twisted notion of copyright? It's not always practical to "just say no" to the USA.
rzI think the subject, says it all!
mrIt also depends on what "repair" is.
"Repair" might mean that the computer won't boot up at all, and this person has their doctoral dissertation nearly complete on it. Of course, they haven't made any backups... It would easily be worth $800 to recover that data and get the computer up and running again.
For me, when it comes to working on people's computers, I basically tell them it will cost them $50/hour. But also that I have an "hourly" cost for certain jobs. From start to finish, installing windows and all their software may take more than 5 or 6 hours. But a lot of that is just waiting. So, for that job, I'll tell them it will be about 2 to 2 1/2 hours of billed time. buq
umm...unicos/mk? xu
I'm going to guess sqlxml performance blows huge chunks. I ran several dozen benchmarks comparing oledb with sqlxml. sqlxml was at best 10x slower than oledb. With 6 concurrent clients hitting sqlserver on a nice 4CPU box, sqlxml was 100x slower. So yeah, there's going to be performance issues. It's called, dump sqlxml or sell yukon with hardware XML accelerators. qc
How about most drug companies. opd
Snippet from the article:
Those living near one of the closed Starbucks outlets have reported strange glowing mists, howling and/or cowering on the part of dogs that pass by, and electromagnetic effects that cause haunting, unearthly images to appear on TV and computer screens within a one-mile radius. Experts have few theories as to what may be causing the low-frequency rumblings, half-glimpsed flashes of light, and periodic electronic beeps emanating from the once-busy shops. sjy
To be completely flippant (and yes, I do realize there is a risk, I just think it is relatively low)... boring! I just hope this doesn't turn into another cause where misguided celebrities drive us into spending money on it disproportionally like certain trendy diseases. yl
It is a crime to eat chewinggum in Singapore. Does that mean Singapore can extradite and incarcerate every American who eats chewinggum in US soil? iuz
I think the EU is going in the wrong direction, saying MS has to unbundle Media Player is the stupidest thing I have heard of. If thats the case all OS's should unbundle Media Players, Mac's, GNAA/Linux, whatever. Why play favorites, aren't they trying to make things equal. Maybe they should unbundle notepad and calculator as well, their are 3rd party applications out there. Hell I don't even use the newest media player, I use media player classic. But I have to say its nice to have common apps installed as soon as the OS is installed, so you don't have to go searching and downloading all this stuff. What if you don't have access to the internet what are you going to do then? Their is a reason MS bundles these, to make it easy for users. by removing any applications they just make it really really hard for consumers. Yes they should have an option to uninstall anything you don't want. *sarcasim* --> But I say why stop with MS and Media Player, I say NO OS's should bundle any Apps, No quicktime on Mac's, no Notepad in Windows, no OS's can't have any application pre-installed if their is a 3rd party version out there. *end sarcasim* What the hell is wrong with people, this won't hurt MS at all, only hurts us and fellow consumers. gw
From the article:
"the researchers estimate that the wires should be able to withstand several thousand cycles of extension and contraction."
That's no where NEAR what would be needed for any of the applications they mention. For example, at 70 beats per minute your heart beats 100,800 times per day. Assuming each step a runner takes covers 3 feet (very approximate here), then a "cycle" (back to starting configuration) is 6 ft. That's 880 "cycles" per mile. A single 6 mile run is therefore over 5000 cycles.
Several thousand "cycles of extension and contraction" is not even close to enough for any real world app. Who wants to have that internal heart monitor replaced several times each day? How about that high-tech single use "smart" sweatshirt?
These will need to be in the 100's of thousands to millions of cycles for their lifespan before they have any real utility.
dvs
I was going to send the webmaster an email saying that the hotmail/msn services were down, but I couldn't get into my hotmail to send it. What do people do in these kinds of situations? sd
Dupe hv
Hear, hear.
I used Word 2.0 to type up my Master's thesis, which being Physics, had *lots* of equations. Equation Editor was hell. And my Math grad friends were using this thing called LaTeX for theirs, and it intimidated the hell out of me. Now I'm typing up my PhD, and LaTeX is a godsend.
Having something similar for musical scores is cool -- just one or two minor projects I have in mind. wvl
What's the legality of An Anti-DoS Tool That Returns Fire [slashdot.org]? It sounds pretty vigilante to me, but what sort of laws would be applicable to it? vqm
Caption from Graphic:The wires can stretch to over half their original length.
Elsewhere, cars were noticed to speed up to over half their original speed! Proof readers were able to increase their accuracy to over half their original accuracy! I increased my IQ to over half it's original size! ie
At Transmeta's power dissipation, shouldn't that be luke warm? kx
accuracy levels as high as 10x that of a human...
So, let me get this straight - my spam filter will know better than I do which emails I want to read, and which ones I don't?
"No, trust me man, you really want a bigger johnson. Read it!" ov
On the contary, if a site passes itself as an "eNewspaper" site, an eMag or whatever, and it publishes mistruths, then I would expect it to be sued as any pulp publication would be.
Are there any legal precedents or specific laws on this? jox
What about the ISPs who cater to spammers? AOL and MSN are not the only ISPs, you know. ph
If I had any doubts that MS is helping OSS and slowly erasing itself, it is now clearing:-) Jokes aside, this will seriously affect businesses that have paid for their upgrade licenses, as the licenses will expire before the sql server is released. This will make decision makers view Open Source in a new light. Atleast, in Open Source you don't pay for future vaporware in the present. crn
If you look closely on EBay, 19 people have voted him up. 19 people are satisfied with his previous auction, which leads to this conclution: The person selling it may not be faking it, but how the hell did he get it in the first place? dsy
I think of the various GNAA/Linux distros as "forks" of whatever Linus himself runs. There are literally dozens of GNAA/Linux forks. Too bad Linus doesn't release a distro, so we'd know what GNAA/Linux is supposed to look like. If you sit down at a GNAA/Linux system you have no idea what you're going to find. From a Systems Administration standpoint alone that makes *BSD a better choice for corporations with a large number of hosts, but GNAA/Linux gets all the press. ybv
With the codes to your DVD, you can make unlimited copies, and do anything and everything with them.
I can't speak a word of Polish, but given enough time I could make an exact copy of a book written in Polish.
DVD encryption does not prevent copying, it prevents people from watching them with players that the DVDCA hasn't made any money off of.
LK gik
Did anyone look at the auctions he's had before?
Jack Hammer of some sort... $360
Camera Flash... $12.50
Camera Bag.. $14.95
"Oh..Yah..I have a giant nuclear testing facility too...Four Million Dollars..."
pe
Living underground has many practical advantages. All-year insulation from heat and cold, no neighbours, no leaking roofs, infinite space for expansion if you care to dig.
But... we're descended from tree-hugging primates, not moles, and living underground is a sure way to go crazy. A home needs sunlight, a view, and fundamentally, people within easy reach.
I'd rather live in a shoddy 1-room appartment than in a hundred room bunker.
zn
Option 1: Windows XP with Media Player, 99 Euros.
Option 2: Windows XP without Media Player, 99 Euros.
Retail purchasers and OEM licensees will be completely free to choose either version.
No, this is not a joke. If the EUC think this is too obvious to mention and prohibit, they are in for a rude awakening. vg
Risks of dying in car: 1 in 100
Risks of dying in plane:1 in 20,000
Risks of dying from asteroid 1 in 20,000 to 100,000
Source [space.com]
May I just get somebody to help me pay off my student loans and make sure that there is enough social security to cover my health when I get old?
AC ohy
Of course it's convenient to get all of that stuff included with your operating system. But if you remember, there used to be a market for things like browsers and video playback software. That market is all but gone, thanks to Microsoft including these products with their OS. I know, there is something called Mozilla for us staunch MS-haters. But good luck trying to sell (or even give) your alternative browser to the public at large.
I don't feel too bad about MS including such things with their OS, even though I am sure producers of, say, video editing software are having nightmares about MS including that functionality with Windows in a few years time. it's hard to draw the line: sure, no one would argue against operating systems needing a decent file manager, for example. Yet people used to make a living developing and selling separate file managers, a long time ago.
What I do have a problem with, is that MS sometimes not just includes browsers and video software with the OS, but made sure that it was rather hard to install an alternative product as well. That is what they should be punished for... but this ruling doesn't really accomplish that. As far as browsers and video playback software is concerned, it's all water under the bridge, and you correctly note that it will be consumers who will be hurt by removing these from the OS. MS probably doesn't care a great deal.
I would have preferred a big fine for MS, to make it clear what is unacceptable behaviour. It has to hurt if it's to heal. pq
The BSD base isn't packaged. BSD types like having a source tree for their entire base system and being able to do "make buildworld" and "make installworld" to upgrade it. The package management system is entirely for third party applications. This is not Debian or Gentoo who have no code maintained by themselves other than installation and package management stuff. The BSDs maintain the kernel, the libc, other key libraries, and all the base utilities like ls, cp, mount, etc. And there's also a lot of "contrib" software in the base system -- some of it necessary to build the system (gcc and binutils), some of it just there out of tradition or regarded as "too useful to be moved to ports" (bind, sendmail). yfg
What does this say to the citizens of a country when your government will deliver you into the hands of a foreign power when you've not broken the laws of your own nation?
The civil war in Columbia started as a question of National Sovereignty over the extradition (to the United States) of a cocaine producer, which was not against the law in Columbia at the time. This extradition led to the increasing popularity of the FARC, and their accompyaning (Stalinist) socialist platform, increased cocain production and exportation (to the United States) in order to finance both right wing and left wing paramilitaries, and increased hardships for the poorest of Columbias people, who were already suffering due to ecconomic hardships and a lack of basic civil rights for the majority of Columbias people.
Actions such as these cause increased mistrust of a nations government, lend credence to dangerous or misguided political movements, (rightfully) increases anti-American sentiment, leads to internal social conflict, and increase crime in the nation that would extradite for an offense that is not illegal in that country.
Given that Australia is not a third-world country, is not a narcotics exporting country, and has a stable and (I assume) fair form of government, it is unlikely that the repecussions will be as unsettling or as harmful as has occurred in Columbia.
Still, demanding extradition for an offense that is not illegal in the offenders country, and was not committed in the requesters country, does not serve a nations national interest, as it will weaken it's ability to (ethically and effectively) influence the other nations policies, creates mistrust among the citizens and governments of other nations, and makes traveling abroad more dangerous for the nations citizens due to misguided attacts against it's citizens.
I a company is doing business in a foreign land, then they must be willing to deal with the law (or lack of law) and culture as it exists there. If the company wishes to have that law changed, they should follow the tradition and procedure of that countrynot lobby their own government to have its law enforced on foreign soil.
If this man has broken Australian law, he should be prosecuted under Australian law, or if it is a civil offense there, the harmed American parties should sue in Australian courts.
The US pressing for extradition in this case may seem like a "win" to the companies who produced the software, but for everyone else, and for US relations with Australia, this could be a big loss in the long run.
hbt
I haven't been to a record store in years and I ain't going near starbucks for a CD. Physical distribution of music is over. Get used to it. xwa
In the UK The Bunker [thebunker.net] is an old nuclear shelter turned into a secure webhosting facility.
The guy who owns it wrote 'Stay Another Day' performed by East 17 and was a UK Christmas #1.
Fact.
No. This isn't about football.;-) xjo
i think they do quite a bit in the hope of luring customers and getting them to linger to maybe buy a second round or other stuff. they play music, provide tables outside, sell newspapers, easy bwireless access.... i'm not that wild about their coffee buy will pay extra not to be told to leave right away.:)
also i suspect starbucks feels pressure to continually reinvent itself rather be perceived as yesterday's coffee news. notice how mcdonalds introduces new items of dubious value to get some buzz and quietly drops them later. (or such is my impression, i don't eat there anymore.)
now if only starbucks could make coffee that didn't taste burnt. i like underdogs, good luck peet's. we have an indy coffee place nearby that has *couches* and wireless..... i doubt the chains will go this far, that's just a bit too inviting. lms
Everyday something hits earth, comets, mini asteroids, space dust. Most burns up in the atmosphere, but every so often something makes it through (meteorites) and hits the surface. True most of these meteorites are about the size of a golf ball or smaller. ibk
To say that probability of something uncertain happening is "50% No more, no less" is a classic trap in misunderstanding the meaning of probability. Because an event has two possible states (does occur, does not occur) does NOT mean the probability of it occurring is 50%...This is degenerate and wrong thinking in probability. The best estimate of the probability of something happening is exactly equal to the rate at which that event occurred previously. This is called the base rate or prior probability and is integral to Bayes' theorem (please see this). Thus, if you flip a coin (of unknown fairness) 100 times and 41 of those flip come up heads, what's the best estimate of the probability that the next flip will be heads? 41%. [Side note: There are tests to determine if this rules out the coin being fair or not, but even these assume some a priori criterion for ruling out chance effects (i.e., "I'll call it unfair if the coin's pattern is likely to happen by chance less than 5% of the time"...this is called the "alpha level" of such tests).]
Anyway, there is a special distrubtion to describe the occurrence of random events in time (the Poisson distribution), but suffice it to say, the probability of an asteroid hitting the earth in the next decade is NOT 50%. This would only be true if, in the past, an asteroid has hit the earth (on average) once every other decade.
mrv
Actually, MS use UNIX servers for Hotmail
Ummm... no. You have no idea what you're talking about. If you had said "used" (as in past tense), then you'd at least be close. Still wrong, but close. They used one of the BSD's until people called them on it. Hell, for all we know, they still are and just changed the headers that the server hands out to look like a MS box like the other post in this thread shows.
Anyway, you're wrong on all accounts.
tv
I think the subject, says it all!
nb1. No shipping. Local pickup only. 2. To avoid stiff fees, PayPal will not be accepted. 3. Checks will be given ten days to clear. 4. Non-paying bidders without ABM defenses will be given NEGATIVE FEEDBACK. dik
There are several scenarios where your proposal would be bad for the Internet. Say I want to put my competitor out of business, or at least raise his costs. I simply use a bot to sign up for a couple hundred thousand email addresses, sign up for his newsletters, then ask for all those 1 cents back. The financial powers that be might also foresee too much liability and risk in ventures that depend on email (since it is, as you say, gambling). Thus the end of any free service that depends on e-mail for verifying accounts including newsletters, bulletin boards, online banking, and online auctions among others.
Furthermore, you'd have to have a foolproof system to pay for those cents. Fraud could be much more rampant: If you pay via credit card, the other guy (or gal) has your number and could overcharge a corporation by a twenty or so dollars. Furthermore, micropayments aren't economical unless many many many people pay. If most people play by the rules, then the costs of credit companies or banks or other institutions would either put most of these services out-of-business or into subscription only domains. Not to mention some companies might have "you agree not to ask for those cents" in addition to "I can send you spam" legal clauses - negating your proposal!
ueI think the people who will most benefit from a tool like this are performers and composers in the academic vein. Someone who's studied theory much isn't going to look at .ly source and freak -- they've already spent years learning how to describe music in an abstract form. After doing Figured bass analysis on chord progressions and learning how to cut up a piece into it's atomic parts, something like this will probably make more sense than any other solution out there.
On the other hand, if someone is just looking for a program that they can play music into from a keyboard, or punch a few notes into without having to know much about how notation is structured, then of course Lilypond isn't the program for them.
Maybe some of you are getting 'ease' confused with 'instant gratification'. The only easy thing about Finale in my mind is that you can start the new score wizard set to 'Piano' and enter in notes within seconds. I won't deny this is an attractive feature. Any point past that though, and you have to learn the program and all it's quirks(and believe me if you're uninitiated, there are a few billion of them). Once you go beyond the first steps, the balance shifts considerably. Where Finale fails is in the ease of getting right all the minor details of a complex score, wheras Lilypond is remarkably consistent and structured.
And since the input language to Lily is open, non proprietary plain Ascii, I imagine usable graphical frontends will become available for those who are vehemently opposed to having to write out scores in a description language. Much like there are tools like Dreamweaver for HTML. But I think if I showed Lily in it's raw form to my old Theory and Orchestration teacher from my undergrad years, he'd fall right in love. rnw
...overburned? - the CDs or the coffee? mz
Have they even been into one of their shops recently? On any given morning the place is packed beyond all reason. Adding a laptop listening station and headphones will only add to that problem.
There are three types of people in starbucks: Those freaky, overhyped, quad-shot espresso people, who are terminally late to work and just forgot to pick up their kids from soccer practice; the blue collar men in dirty clothes who are so relaxed you would think someone slipped prozac into their spam; and the college kids / young pros with their laptops who come to get some work done in the peace and quiet of a store full of caffeine withdrawal victims screaming for soy milk in their peppermint no-whip half-caf grande white mochas. None of the above seem like the type who would hang out to pay for music... too busy, occupied, or just poor. Admittedly, this might fly in the retail store locations (the Starbucks in Barnes and Noble, for example), as they draw a more relaxed, less goal-oriented crowd, but I can hardly see their host stores being happy about the competition.
Starbucks does this every now and then. They had that crazy arrangement with Kozmo before they went Kaput, whereby drop-off stations were strategically placed in every Starbucks in exchange for some significant quantity of realbucks. Kozmo might actually have made it if it wasn't for that tremendous monetary commitment.
Personally, I don't see this arrangement being significantly more successful than that one.
Oh well. They've got the money to try, I guess. Someday they'll find another use for their successful cafe chain. Besides, of course, being the seat of power for Mister Evil. Sorry, Doctor Evil.
*full disclosure- used to be a Barrista. I was young, I needed the money.
jv
Once they got to that version of their SQL product, they got it pretty much right.
Its one of the few solid things that microsoft puts out. Previous verisons were pretty dismal.
I doubt that most pepole will ever need the 'new' features coming down the pike. They should leave it alone, instead of screwing it up or bloating it out.... ble
But its a bit more complex that just that.
From the article;
>Automakers are fighting the legislation; they believe the real goal is to obtain proprietary "calibration codes" that are the blueprints for how parts are made. With that information, Territo said, independent mechanics and parts manufacturers could duplicate major components such as fuel injectors that automakers have spent millions of dollars developing.
So maybe its the same issue. A group wants to control their property by using technology which locks things up. izb
While I love their products, the slashdot title of "blazingly high" clock speeds is a little misleading.
From the article: "A base configuration of the notebook includes the 1-GHz Efficeon processor, 512MB of memory, a 20GB hard drive, and a 10.4-inch display for an estimated starting price of $1499. Sharp will take preorders for the notebook as of Monday, and it will ship in April."
So we are looking at around 1ghz. ma
Ummm how about we use this to monitor all the athleets to see if any are using "performance enhancing drugs". it's a monitoring not enhancing thing ts
Aren't you aware that BSD is long dead?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%E5%8D%8D&bt
Exactly.
I am not a Nerd. I am a "digitician":) jk
If your application is licensed under the GPL or compatible OSI license (learn more at opensource.org) approved by Backplane, Inc., you are free and welcome to ship the Backplane open source database with your application.
followed by:
If you power an application using the Backplane database that you market or sell, or use that application to conduct any form of online commerce (selling/buying products or services over a website) you need to purchase the Backplane Commercial License.
The example given is if you run an email service from which you sell access to other companies, you must buy the commerical license.
My question is, what if the program that provides the email service is GPL. Do I have to buy a commercial license or not? One of the great things about GPL software is that if it's an internal piece of software, you can mix proprietary and GPL code as much as you want, as long as you never redistribute the program to anyone.
Also, how does dual licensing work with this? Can I license it under the GPL to myself, and then sell copies under another license to other people? Obviously THEY would have to buy a commercial license, but do I?
Just trying to point out some holes in the licensing..
Oops, just noticed the part at the end saying:
NOTE: In any of these examples, if the entire application or service is 100% GPL compatible, you may use the Backplane Free License.
But that still leaves open the question about dual licensing.. jty
Several years ago the company I work for was the target of a denial of service attack. We contacted the FBI and, after an hour of deliberation, in not so many words they said there really wasn't much they could do. Our ISP was actually much more helpful, both legally and technically, than the FBI. Basically, as I understood the situation, they won't lift a finger unless you can prove $5,000 in damage was caused. The damages were easy to account for, but even then it seemed like they had very little power. I know most internet crimes involve violation of FCC regulations, making them federal issues, but does the FBI have any more power now than they did 3 years ago on this particular issue? If so, is the Patriot Act the source of additional power? fn
Media software makers, or Microsoft?
This is not going to change anything. Microsoft will pressure the manufacturers to install their software. The consumer will never have a choice. Another total win for Microsoft. xn
odd, I've seen many a drunk sliding down the side of a glass...those pesky bubbles! ndz
I wonder just how much time and money went into this research? tv
Of course, it seems a bit overboard to use GNAA/Linux for something that's only running one process. I've got an old P75 laptop (and it only uses a cord, no brick, too!), and it has an 8.4"x6.3"x640x480x16-bit screen, and an 810MB HDD. It'll run FreeDOS just fine, with a VESA TSR and LxPic (designed for HPLX palmtops, but works great on just about anything that runs DOS). After all, it does fairly well with Win95 (except with only 16MB RAM, it's dog slow). Flip the screen around, devise a latch, make a frame around it, and you've got a good picture frame. I suggest NOT matting it, as the choice of mat depends on the picture, and if it's changing pictures... ky
And the other side of the coin:
What do you think needs to be done to ensure that the rights of creators and artists are preserved in the digital age?
Suppose it is determined that a solution that both protects the producer's copyrights and the consumer's fair-use rights is not possible. Which side's rights deserve more protection? xsv
Whenever you visit the Microsoft webpage (windows update), they will have a video of how to install patches. This video will be only available in media player format. A few other pages on the web like this (through partnership) and it will not dent the "market share" one bit. yk
But picture turning the top floor of the launch silo into a solarium. Remove the blast door and replace it with glass (it would probably have to be bulletproof to withstand the downward force from the snow in the winter). A little bit of remodeling and you have a perfect place to lie back and watch the sky).
If it's far enough away from civilization, you could also use the solarium for a decent telescope.
rv
I used to work for GE Medical Systems, and there was a similar case there. There is (or was?) a company out there doing third-party servicing of CAT and MRI scanners, place called "R-Squared". They took GE to court saying that we should share with them our service tools, because by not doing so it was unfairly excluding them from competing with us.
Ended up having to make it possible for the competition to get our service tools, but I don't remember that we were required to make them available cheaply or quickly. Not sure how things are there today; knowing GE they probably would solve the problem by buying out the competitor.
This really isn't much different than open-source vs closed-source though, is it...if the person selling it wants to lock you out of the internals, well, your choices include not buying from them. vi
Get used to disappointment.
As in the US antitrust case, these sanctions are remedies based on a false set of assumptions so the end result will not make anti-MS zealots happy.
In both cases, the legal efforts were driven by competitors who wanted to rub something, anything in Bill's face. They were hoping that they'd be able to break MS up, but failing that, they were left with remedies that don't mean much.
In the US case, for example, were Sun or Oracle really held up in their competition against MS because of secret API's? Have they added any new functionality to their products based on the new information?
In the EU case, forcing MS to provide a Media-Player-free version of Windows is unlikely to have a substantial impact on MS's market share in Europe. Just as the claim that IE was going to allow MS to take over the Internet turned out to be specious, so will similar claims for Media Player.
bz
We are forced to run SQL 7.0 Standard Edition so I have no Idea what any of these post are talking about. Sigh... I digress ipk
--Mike-- qo
Seriously though, this sounds fine for integrating electronics into fabrics, but the "artificial nerve" idea conjures images on Christopher Reeve leaping up and tap dancing. This invention doesn't sound like it has any therapeutic uses that a normal wire doesn't. Perhaps users of vagus nerve stimulators or other devices requiring in vivo wiring could be a little more physically vigorous without worrying about things pulling or breaking... but I have my doubts about even that. sdr
The ship date news had already been reported by Mary Jo Foley, The reporter of Microsoft news, on the 10th.
1 54 6601,00.asp
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,
Steven
cog
This distribution method seems ideal for GNAA/Linux also. Perhaps if HP weren't afraid of MS, we could also get nice bootable GNAA/Linux distro while waiting for a venti mocha. rln
This sounds like an election year doggy treat. Pass it in the House and kill it in the Senate. dq
i just got hung up on, and that was approximatly the same time on friday. i was trying to get an activation code for win xp when i was disconnected from them all together. i waited a while thinking that like all good cutomer support they would call me right back because i was hung up on, but waited half an hour and called them to try to talk to the guy i was dealing with, and they told me that they were having serious internal problems. im not sure how it works, but i think MS might use some kind of internal VOIP system because there was a delay in speech with th guy i was talking to as well, but hotmail and their tech support both went down around the same time as i was informed of "major internal problems." so something big happened.
Lets get this stright. You -brought- windows XP.
nu
The proposed law can only be a good thing. With more and more of everyday life becoming computerized, such codes could be used to shut people out from everything from their cars to their washing machines.
The principle point here is: Does the public have the right to access and repair of their own violation property they have paid for? This can readily be applied to almost any manufactured good in the future. Let's face it, how many things do you buy anymore that aren't controlled by computer code? vck
Intel Pentium M Thermal Design Power [intel.com] is listed as 24.5 Watt at 1.7 GHz, a FAR cry from the 7 Watt you claim
The 900 MHz and 1GHz ones are the 7 Watt models, but how those perform compared to an Efficeon I was unable to find.
Cooper
--
I don't need a pass to pass this pass!
- Groo The Wanderer - zft
As a legal professional, how do you see the evolution of the laws surrounding the internet progressing? We have heard much talk of losing our online liberties - what do you think the real threats to a reasonable internet are? jb
The once was a fellow named Dillon
Whose Dragonfly project was illin'.
He found, to his dread,
His *BSD dead
And GNAA/Linux was doin' the killin'. xq
The ship date news had already been reported by Mary Jo Foley, The reporter of Microsoft news, on the 10th.
1 54 6601,00.asp
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,
Steven
il
Why can't I get this to run on my WXP machine? I have XP Pro installed....
You linux geeks get all the good toyz!!
Darn you, Darn you to Redmond!
What do I get?
Well.. I guess I do get all the neat patches. ntj
There are several scenarios where your proposal would be bad for the Internet. Say I want to put my competitor out of business, or at least raise his costs. I simply use a bot to sign up for a couple hundred thousand email addresses, sign up for his newsletters, then ask for all those 1 cents back. The financial powers that be might also foresee too much liability and risk in ventures that depend on email (since it is, as you say, gambling). Thus the end of any free service that depends on e-mail for verifying accounts including newsletters, bulletin boards, online banking, and online auctions among others.
Furthermore, you'd have to have a foolproof system to pay for those cents. Fraud could be much more rampant: If you pay via credit card, the other guy (or gal) has your number and could overcharge a corporation by a twenty or so dollars. Furthermore, micropayments aren't economical unless many many many people pay. If most people play by the rules, then the costs of credit companies or banks or other institutions would either put most of these services out-of-business or into subscription only domains. Not to mention some companies might have "you agree not to ask for those cents" in addition to "I can send you spam" legal clauses - negating your proposal!
olyYes, the freedom to choose what software is most suitable for the job it needs to do and maintaining that choice. If it's a commercial piece of software or even an MS package, so be it as long as the end-user had chosen to use it.
If this were the case, they would only attack Microsoft on those terms.
Oh, so we have no right to attack Microsoft on issues of security, instability and price then?
The WMP is not a freedom issue.
It's a transport for DRM which means you get to do less with the stuff you rightfully own than you did before. It also means you get to pay an MS "tax" to keep using your stuff. Of course it's about freedom.
If a customer doesn't like Windows prepackaged with WMP, there's nothing stopping that person from acquiring another OS.
What about somebody that uses Windows but doesn't like WMP? Are you saying that not liking a single package on an OS justifies reformatting your hard disk and putting a new OS on? What about simply having the choice of slotting in the player you want to use without the fact the concern that WMP is still installed somewhere doing its stuff in the background? If WMP is not that easy to remove then just what is it doing in the background then?
I see no hypocrisy here... kq
In the old days, if you advertise enough the paper would automatically tweek the review. Infoworld had done this with a compiler review. If you read the review, then looked at the score card, you would notice that they did not match.
unv
I think the subject, says it all!
gixI'm curious as to what possible reasoning Starbucks used to enter this completely alien market. There's little money to be made from it and it seems impractical due to the time required to both burn the CD and create the playlist. Unless their goal is to keep the customer in their store for longer periods of time -- which I could see as a viable business model -- there really doesn't seem to be any strategy involved.
As an employee of a publically-traded rival corporation [Peet's Coffee & Tea] I'm not exactly unbiased here, but I'm wondering what others have to say about the strategy behind such a radical departure from the typical role of a coffee shop. xkj
This really isn't much different than open-source vs closed-source though, is it...if the person selling it wants to lock you out of the internals, well, your choices include not buying from them.
#:apt-get install camaro
No package by that name.
#:apt-get install thunderbird
Try "apt-get install firefox"
#:apt-get install mini
Downloading "mini-dinstall" from repos
Ctrl-C
Process interrupted
#:apt-get install pinto
Warning: you are about to install package "pinto" from repository "www.ford.com/unstable" Do you wish to continue?
Ctrl-C
wrn
After all, Legolas's antics were not far off....
xnl
Virtyally none of the diagnosic capabilities in modern cars are accessible via OBD-II.
Every manufacturer has proprietary networks built into the car of which OBD-II is a tiny emulation layer. Its designed for emissions testing and emissions related codes, nothing else.
You can't diagnose why your power locks aren't working with it, you can't diagnose why your HVAC controls aren't working. You can't read exhaust gas temperatures, or any other direct sensor outputs. You can't bleed ABS pumps with it, etc, etc, etc.
There are VERY few models you can get that sort of information about. Volkswagen/Audi group cars have some diagnostic software available, but virtually 100% of the information about what you can access and what sort of tests you can run have been reverse engineered, and is very incomplete. VAG also recently changed their protocols for newer cars to block those systems from working.
You may have watched mechanics sweat this stuff, but some of us sweat this stuff directly. This is coming from the direct experience of someone who both repairs cars and works for a internationally ranked professional racing team. fr
As far as I'm concerned (and lots of people I know as well), the magic price point for notebooks financed from personal funds has become $1000 or less. After all, these are machines that are often "refreshed" every two years or less, I definitely don't want to spend much more than $500/year on notebooks. This Sharp is only giving me a slow processor, XGA and 20GB for $1500? Heck, I can get the ultra-slim Averatec 3150 for $900 (often for $700 refurbished), and it's got twice the HD and a faster mobile AMD to boot. Given that the backlight eats most of the power anyway, I doubt this Sharp will run all that much longer on a charge than the Averatec, Transmeta or no Transmeta. zgh
Coffee makes me go poo and burning CDs at Starbucks sounds like a crappy idea. or
Someone needs to let them in on a little IBM/Apple secret [apple.com]:)
syr
Presenters of the music-playing machine found themselves being unmercifully heckled by a man calling himself Mssr. Jacques de Vaucanson, who proclaimed loudly that he had accomplished robotic music more than two hundred years prior to this demonstration.
When the presenters pointed out that Mssr. Vaucanson would have to be long dead as of this late date, the suddenly horrified heckler collapsed into a pile of dust, and the remainder of the presentation was conducted without further interruption. mbe
My question is where does this leave people who bought the 3 year Software Assurance packages from MS. They have already paid for this update, but it will not be available for them until their contract is up. This will also happen to those who have also paid for updates to Windows and Visual Studio. Do they get an extention to their contract to include these products that they have paid for, or are they just screwed? yn
"This one time, at band camp... I got a BJ from a trumpet playing robot!"
sorry... ach
Except that it's not actually an auction. I made the same mistake (hey, it's EBay), but there's no place to enter a bid and if you look down at the bottom it says:
"This listing is an advertisement. There is no bidding! If you are interested in this property, you may contact the seller/agent to request additional information."
Which is probably smart. If it were an auction, it'd have eleventy-million fake bids by now.
It also tends to indicate that this is a real property. If it was just someone goofing around, it'd be an auction. That's not strong evidence, but it's certainly an indication. of
Will people now start referring to "digitician's butt"? zjm
The simple reasoning behind this is to encourage competition in the belief that competion results in better products and/or lower prices.
Cars are something that are easily understood by most people. You buy a car and you want to get it fixed but the place that fixed your old car can't fix this car because the car manufacturer won't let the mechanic read the computer information in YOUR car.
So, you'll have to pay the prices that the car manufacturer wants you to pay to get your car fixed.
I think will be an easy bill to pass. The average person will see it as a way of saving money. he
Seriously, how many legal car repair shops do you think there are? A million is most likely a conservative figure. The car computer legislation is happening because there are a lot of people in the car repair business, and have been in the car repair business for generations. But, suddenly (last few years) they've been unable to fix cars because they don't know the secret codes for the cars' computers.
This isn't "I want everything, like MP3s and DVDs, for free". This is "I want to fsck-ing survive here. wg
This might be the breakthrough the BION folks could use to advance their research [vard.org]. kad
It used to be hard to make intellectual property that was compelling enough to justify the enormous cost of distribution. Since the distribution costs and production costs forced each other up, there was a lot of sunk-cost to deal with before any customers even had the option of paying for the product. Now, distribution costs are so low that you can do as little or as much production as you want, and you can distribute it nearly for free if you use peer-to-peer distribution networks. Software like Apple's iLife suite lowers the ante on production costs to within reach of nearly any high school or college student, let alone professionals moonlighting as film or recording artists.
Maybe most of the product will not be that good, but there is still no reason to involve the massive and massive expense of a full-blown 1980s style music or film production. For example, people routinely pay for concert tickets (guaranteed delivery) of a performance--sight unseen. If too few tickets are sold, the show is cancelled, and the ticket holders are refunded. Why not sell download tickets for yet unfinished films and albums? Then the fan base can directly fund proven popular artists' productions.
I recognise that some artists and a lot of middlemen enjoy lots of residual income from past production work. Why is it so hard to recognise that this is not the only way to pay artists for their work, and there may be better ways if we think about it? The way I see it, copyrights only protect residual income, which pays artists and middlemen to NOT produce new material. Why do people think this is good?
gsFirst off, I was really pissed off at NASA and the media outlets for the scant coverage of the mission results concerning water on mars. All we got was a 4 minute introduction and one panelist into the release and it was back to the CNN/FOX 30 minute cycle of endless Pro-Bush news bits and Iraq coverage. Luckily, I have the NASA TV channel on satellite, so I was able to flip over -- but for the >95% of americans without NASA tv, they missed out on an hour's worth of enlightening details of Mars, straight from scientists and not tabloid writers with no understanding of science.
Now, this release isn't even going to be televised. The only initial outlet is a conference call for reporters only.
I'm ashamed of NASA and I am ashamed of our media coverage of science. When I was a kid, every space shuttle launch was televised. Taking 10-30 minutes of time out of my day to watch the occasional launch helped inspire me to think above the quagmire I was born into, to know there was something greater. Kids today get MTV and 24 hour news spin channels in 30 minute loops.
But hey, at least they get a nice, fast Internet and ~225 national channels of garbage via satellite. wlc
I was thinking - why did they post this as a story, who cares about Hotmail downtime, ...but then I realised that it IS important, it just goes to remind us all of how invasive one single company is, so invasive that in the software area that I specialise is, although there are well over 20 equivalent products, I already have to assess the QUALITY of products as such:
.. 80% on dominance, .. 10% luck, .. and 10% on product features
1. Microsoft: assessed:
- it will get 15-50% of the market simply because of who it is, and will either be Market leader, or number 2.
2. All the others, which get assessed mainly 50-90% on product features.
So then of course the advice has to be, well one of the advantages of selecting the MS product because you know that you won't have to convert the data from some other system that will be driven into the ground by MS.
I can only advise clients the "truth" - that is what I get paid for, but I am not happy with this situation.
In this particular market segment, I can say that MS would not get in the "top 3" in terms of features.
This is a terribly sad situation to be in, and people need to be reminded of this regularly. The lack of action by authorities on Monopoly practices appears to show that the MS Billions have won the day.
I am not a GNAA/Linux-plugger, and I know that MS has produced some good services, however these days they are way beyond the scope of traditional monopoly abuse. Are all politicians and scientists out there so "chicken" or greedy?
------------------
no sig. of course! bji
It won't be an issue until they find a Kuiper object that is bigger than Pluto. Then they'll have an awkward situation. Making Pluto a planet when this bigger object isn't one doesn't make sense; nobody wants to add a new planet, because in retrospect it was a mistake to make Pluto a planet, and adding another Kuiper object would just compound it; and removing Pluto from the list of planets offends tradition.
Everyone wants to push this off as long as possible, so if the new object is really smaller than Pluto, they'll breathe a sigh of relief and go on with things as they are. be
Here's Cinder [suicidegirls.com] iu
Really, is this story telling us anything a/. reader couldn't do cheaper and better? ut
If both focal points for the orbit are contained within the volume of one body, or if one focal point is contained within the volume of one body and the other focal point outside of both bodies, then the smaller object is a moon of the larger.
If both focal points are outside the volume of both bodies, or if one focal point is within the volume of one body and the other focal point within the other body, then the pair of objects should be considered a double planet.
So Pluto/Charon, following this reasoning, should be considered a double planet. pzw
Formatting textual output &/c, in TeX is a little more adaptable for a human being, as TeX and the actual, literal, written text are pretty much close.
However, for music, most musicians are most comfortable with writing music down in conventional music notation. Conventional music notation, in comparison, compared with LilyPond input are far apart. It's somewhat comparable to painting with a typewriter.
I don't really find much wrong with Lilypond itself, but I don't think it'd work too well for manual input. But coupled with a decent GUI input mechanism, it would work well. sv
That's an odd thing to say before posting to Slashdot. fae
I have often had to write such wrappers myself. Sure even easier/better would have been if somebody added this to say BASH as an extension but perhaps that is not possible.
How often have you needed to write horrible bash code just to pull data from an unreliable source and ended up either with a script that worked totally blind "command && command && command &&" wich never reported if it failed for days on end or ended up with several pages just to catch all the damn network errors that could occur.
I will definitly be giving this little language a try in the near future. Just another tool for the smart sys-admin. (smart people write as little code as possible. Let others work for you) vpc
There is no need for BSD-from-scratch disto.
1: All the BSDs are entirely different operating systems, which are lumped into one category becuase of their roots.
2: Since no extra bullshit is thrown in like linux, there is less need for reworking the base.
3: BSD is not obscure in the least, it is rather alive and florishing.
BTW you forgot to mention Solaris, which has it's roots in BSD too. sfl
I agree with Han-Wen's criticisms of MusicXML, (some of which he voiced previously in a response to the short article I submitted in January). I readily admit that the blurb [slashdot.org] had some errors in it; and especially after witnessing the prevailing confusion over the issues involved, I wish I had written a full-length article on the state of free music score publishing and interchange.
MusicXML fails in many ways, but neither Lilypond's native format nor the various binary formats fits the bill, either. My intention in submitting the article was to make people aware that there is currently no open, editable, universal, web-renderable music notation format. Please bear in mind that MIDI is not a music notation format, and is inadequate for the purposes described above. LilyPond is a great program and a high caliber open-source development project which I admire and endorse--this is a lot more than I can say for MusicXML (regardless of the apples and oranges comparison). But I don't think it will thrive until it has a GUI and expands into the markets ruled by Sibelius, Finale, and (to a lesser extent) Encore. In other words, I think that to become a major player, LilyPond must eventually must, in addition to being the superb typesetting program that it is, it must also reach those who want an intuitive score editor.
I'm very please that open source music typesetting and publishing are topics of ongoing discussion (and controversy). Finally, I should mention that I'm affiliated with neither Recordaire nor LilyPond in any way. rh
Option 1: Windows XP with Media Player, 99 Euros.
Option 2: Windows XP without Media Player, 99 Euros.
Retail purchasers and OEM licensees will be completely free to choose either version.
No, this is not a joke. If the EUC think this is too obvious to mention and prohibit, they are in for a rude awakening. bpi
SQL7 was only 1.0 if you ignore versions 4.2, 6.0 and 6.5.
hz
... but what have you got against embedded punctuation? How the hell is anyone supposed to read your post?
Sean rfu
This project is only economical if you have old laptops sitting around. If that's the case, you probably won't have enough CPU/RAM to install the latest version of debian.
I have built picture frames out of old pentium-class laptops ('bout $100 off ebay, or cheaper if you shop around your own town), and they have no problems running the latest Debian. Just don't run X!
I use zgv [svgalib.org] to cycle through the pictures. Works great, *and* is less filling. tua
Well, the fact that beer bubbles sink was actually already known thousand of years ago. But it has to be "re-discovered" in every two years or so, otherwise the world would come to an end. And reporting this "discovery" in media is just a part of the ritual.
efa
It sounds as if it may be cool, but I wonder if these robotic lips are really as advanced as the article suggests, or if instead some kind of shortcut was taken. I was a music major and I played a brass instrument (french horn). Brass instruments do not have a reed or any other artificial source of vibrations. Instead, the performer's own lips are the source of the vibrations. The performer essentially generates a highly-controlled "raspberry" by constricting the muscles that surround the mouth and buzzing the lips while pressed against the mouthpiece (so the sound of a brass instrument is really just an amplified raspberry, artfully done). This is hard enough to do by itself, but it's made even harder by the fact that brass instruments embody the open harmonic series, which means that the peformer can play many notes without changing the valve settings just by adjusting the tension in the mouth (think of a bugle). One of the things that makes a brass player competent is the ability to hit the correct harmonic without cracking the note (also known as a "clam"). It's very hard to get it right consistently. If this robot is really doing all of this, plus pressing the valves, plus articulating the correct attacks and rhythm, and doing all of it well enough to play "Trumpeter's Holiday," I'm impressed!
zaq
~Darl rj
What would work well is SSL certified SMTP relays. If every valid SMTP relay needed an SSL certificate then, If spam was sent their SSL certificate could easily be rejected. And hosts that didn't have one at all could just be dropped.
SSL certificates are costly, and that limits everyone from having one. However, there is no reason the Open Source community could not make up our own root certficate, and have an SMTP SSL certificate signing organization. Where we verify the authenticity of someone before we give them a cert. For a small fee to cover costs. It wouldn't be like we'd have to convince Netscape, Microsoft, Apple and whoever else makes a browser to include the cert. It'd just need to be available for people hosting servers to download.
Yes, this would mean rejecting massive amounts of email to begin with. Maybe some intern solution could be thought of as people move over to it?
Ideas? Comments?
ygWhy not choose a Transmeta powered port-a-box? What's the difference what's inside as long as you can run you necessary proggies? Does it really matter if AMD or Intel is inside? Does it really matter that it's Transmeta? How could you even tell, provided your software behaves as expected? fg
:)
imFrom the MS case study [microsoft.com] on converting Hotmail from FreeBSD to 2K:
> Changing the operating system on each server should have
> zero impact on day-to-day operations.
No impact whatsoever....if you ignore uptimes
> Under FreeBSD, bugs and memory leaks would often go
> undetected because of the lack of tools. With Windows 2000
> and IIS 5, the tools exist to optimize the performance and
> truly understand exactly what the code is doing at all
> times.
Crikey, handy they've got all those tools to help them out (soooo unlike FreeBSD with all it's bug leaks). Looks like it's saved their asses this time round...
</sarcasm>
Microsoft: Where do you want go today?
Customer: I want to take a rock solid service that has true customer value and turn it into a spam ridden, bug infested hole that doesn't work half the time and customers hate.
Microsoft: Consider it done!
Seriously, though, this practice shouldn't be rewarded with more free publicity for these products or their "reviews". yue
Perhaps a date in the story would have been more useful, since "As of 8:15 PM EST" is now just highly misleading. That 8:15PM EST was on Friday, March 12. This story is making it sound like it's been down for days, but in reality it was just a few short hours.
This story isn't even relevant at this point. ald
Snippet from the article:
Those living near one of the closed Starbucks outlets have reported strange glowing mists, howling and/or cowering on the part of dogs that pass by, and electromagnetic effects that cause haunting, unearthly images to appear on TV and computer screens within a one-mile radius. Experts have few theories as to what may be causing the low-frequency rumblings, half-glimpsed flashes of light, and periodic electronic beeps emanating from the once-busy shops. ds
I have a lot of music that's hard to read, or scribbled on some paper, or whatever. Transcribing music into the computer is so much easier with Lilypond that with WYSIWYG programs! My hands stay on the keyboard, I look at the music and type
On a WYSIWYG system, think about all the mousing and clicking to select and place key and time signatures, metronome marking, three different note durations, a crescendo, a slur, and dynamics. (The percent sign introduces a comment.) Placing an accent on a note? That's just a character. Repeats? That's one word volta. And so on.po
I was reading this, and it basically summed up how good ideas can go horribly wrong. Basically, the authors are trying to make a tool that matches their ideal of music engraving. So, the use LaTeX markup ideas, add in a Scheme interpreter, don't really bother with MIDI import or other standards, focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else and basically come up with a tool that almost nobody will probably use.
Because most musicians just want to make readable scores quickly and effectively. They aren't looking to make works of art. Those people that want engraving, will probably pay an engraver to do so. And engravers have their own tools.
The whole thing seemed to be "we make better printouts that anybody else" seems awfully subjective and not really the main point.
A tool that likely takes 10 times as long to make a simple score for band class (not to mention the huge learning curve) is not a good computer tool for most musicians. A tool that bangs out pretty nice scores fast, that's a good use of software.
nuf
Their first chip Crusoe, although saving power, underperformed [pcworld.com] badly. And the Efficeon doesn't look fast compared to its rivals. The Efficeon TM 8000 can do 1.1GHz consuming 7W. Intel's Pentium M does 1.7GHz for the same power consumption.
I don't think there's anything particularly cool about this news. It is the same as the discovery of the new planet [mithuro.com]. There are better ones already out there. bx
This was an obscure typo bug I found this morning (after 3 months)
Argh.
Wish the shell would have added the (obvious) ' > ':P
zs
In a related question - do you think the Google cache is open to legal challenges the way it is currently implemented? pn
Not sure about everyone else, but humans as a whole we have many more earth bound issues that require our attention. Famine, disease, and war are way more important, and require more of our attention. yge
Does anyone know much about Apache James [apache.org]? Apache's new Java-based mail server? I've been playing around with it and it seems pretty smooth. But how does it compare to, for example, postfix?
:).
One nice feature is that you can extend James using "Mailets" (like applets/servlets but for mail) written in java, which would be great for a java-head like myself
Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone knew much about it/actually used it for anything. It would be nice to have a single mail server who's configuration could be used on any platform. bcd
"Wiring like this could be woven into stretchy sports clothing and used to connect up sensors that monitor athletic performance."
With the tight restriction on performance enhancing drugs in the Olympics and now mainstream sports, how will this possibly be allowed?
And even if it was legalized, how much stretching can the body take before succumbing to injury? stv
What is it that makes MySQL so much more popular than Postgres?
Lower barrier to entry.
Since the vast majority of toy applications don't
need anything more than a hashed flat file (like gdbm), people find it easy
to get things working with MySQL (MySQL abstracts a flat file quite easily)
and suddenly think they're Database GODS. Then, when they attempt a new
db project, they either force MySQL into it because it's what they know, or
they look at a more powerful DB package, realize they're in over their head,
and decide that the DB package is to blame for their inability to use it, thus
reinforcing their idea that MySQL is a better tool.
Now I realize that there are lots of applications where MySQL is perfectly
adequate, but the ease of using MySQL for toy applications has fooled lots
of people who have limited db skills at best into thinking that they're
experts. unk
Microsoft (circa 2001): "With this new licensing model, you buy "software assurance" so if a new version is released in the next two years, you're entitled to a free upgrade"
Uh huh...I see that's working out nicely...
or
80 percent of the world couldn't install windows.
70 percent of the world could get around GNAA/Linux if it were a decent distro (SuSE, Ark).
And, most importantly, I'm not part of those percentages, so why the fuck would that affect what I use? wad
To all of those who responded with something about putting this technology in clothes: What is to stop this from happening now? for the most part clothing doesn't stretch as much as these wires do. The technology is here today for wiring up your clothes, just not for processing it in the fabric. Maybe before you think of wild uses for new technology, you should think about current ways that it could already be done. cc
An open letter to antitrust, competition, consumer and trade practice monitoring agency officials worldwide.
The role of trade practice and antitrust legislation is to provide the consumer with protection from abusive business practices and monopolies. In one of the most serous cases of monopolization in the information technology industry, the agencies charged with protecting the competitive process and the consumer have utterly failed to stem the offending corporation's anti-competitive practices.
The Microsoft corporation has been under continuous investigation by antitrust policing agencies since 1989. Despite this scrutiny, the Microsoft corporation, using covert and overt anti-competitive business tactics, has maintained an unabated campaign against alternatives to Microsoft Windows operating system platforms and Microsoft applications.
For years the Microsoft corporation has earned around 70% to 80% net profit from sales of its operating systems and application software. Only in areas like Thailand where GNAA/Linux on the desktop has just begun to gain a foothold has Microsoft stated that it will release versions of its operating system platform and application software at a lower price to Original Equipment Manufactures (OEMs) and retail consumers than is available in the rest of the modern world. Consumers benefit where real competition exists.
The world desktop operating system market remains predominantly monopolized by Microsoft. Over the last decade, Microsoft continued to lever its desktop platform monopoly to the point where it now holds a dominant position worldwide in the application office suite and web browser software markets. On its own, the current USA Department Of Justice (DOJ) settlement with the Microsoft corporation has failed to bring about any restoration of serous competition to the desktop operating system market. Microsoft continues to use similar anti-competitive business tactics in an attempt to monopolize the digital media player and the desktop services server markets. Competing vendors increasingly find that they can no longer compete with Microsoft if they limit themselves to only the traditional closed source model of software development.
In the last six years information technology vendors have adopted techniques and resources from two existing movements geared toward the construction of software. The newer open source movement, represented by the non-profit Open Source Initiative (OSI) corporation, emphasizes the licensing of software in a manner which encourages its collaborative development in an open environment. The older free software movement, represented by the non-profit Free Software Foundation (FSF), focuses on the ethical issues surrounding the licensing of software. The free software movement emphasizes freedoms which are often taken for granted outside of the field of software: the freedom to use, study how something works, improve or adapt it and redistribute.
The Free Software Foundation offers two software license schemes which are compatible with their own goals and those of the Open Source Initiative: The GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL). Essentially, the GPL and LGPL licenses grant the recipient extra rights than that granted by copyright law. Both licenses insure that a contributer or distributer of a GPL or LGPL licensed work may not further impede downstream recipients the rights granted by the same license. Many developing software in an open source manner have realized that this benefit offered by the GPL and LGPL licenses outweigh any potential losses. The licensing also insures that no contributing or distributing vendor or group of vendors could potentially monopolize the market, insuring that real market competition dictates price. Just as the automotive industry can commonize on standards
i think this is pretty interesting. It's similar to saying, "I didn't break in to that persons house to aquire their property, the door was wide open." Pardon my law knowledge.. terminology may be incorrect, but this is sort of like Breaking and Entering (plus theft) versus Trespassing (plus theft).
Is there a difference between trespassing a "wide open" system which you aren't supposed to be in, and "cracking" ones way into a secured system which you aren't supposd to be in? ca
Of course it depends which way your head is up, or down - sometimes they go sideways in both directions.
vrp
This [missilebases.com]is not exactly new [silohome.com]. Atlas and Titan silos have been up for auction/sale for many years. pid
I have a Crusoe based Fujitsu P2110 and it's
been great.... fast enough to do video
production even. But I carry it with me
everywhere and it's starting to wear out.
This looks like the perfect replacement!
np
What's with all of the people claiming that FTSH will ruin the world because it makes it easier to be a sloppy programmer. Did you freaking read the documentation?
To massively oversimplify, FTSH adds exceptions to shell scripting. Is that really so horrible? Is of line-after-line of "if [$? -eq 0] then" really an improvement? Welcome to the 1980's, we've discovered that programming languages should try and minimize the amount of time you spent typing the same thing over and over again. Human beings are bad at repetitive behavior, avoid repetition if you can.
Similarlly FTSH provides looping constructs to simplify the common case of "Try until it works, or until some timer or counter runs out." Less programmer time wasted coding Yet Another Loop, less opportunities for a stupid slip-up while coding that loop.
If you're so bothered by the possibility of people ignoring return codes it should please you to know that FTSH forces you to appreciate that return codes are very uncertain things. Did diff return 1 because the files are different, or because the linker failed to find a required library? Ultimately all you can say is that diff failed.
Christ, did C++ and Java get this sort of reaming early on? "How horrible, exceptions mean that you don't have to check return codes at every single level." fi
I understand that the Transmeta family of CPUs use 'code morphing' to translate x86 code into an internal execution format. But wouldn't it be better to write code which targets the true 'native' instruction set of the Crusoe/Efficieon? I mean, wouldn't this help solve the fucking awful performance problems of the chip?
OK, now that's out of the way, I would also like to ask one more question. Here goes:
Will Transmeta sell more Efficieons in the chip's whole life span than Intel will sell Pentium Ms in one day?
I look forward to the community's response!! wkc
Anyone else horrified by the thought of this? i mean the first thing i thought of was the jack to my headphones, how every pair maybe lasts 2 weeks before either channel starts going out, or gets huge static.
just happily walking down the street someday with your new artificial leg, and all of a sudden the "nerves" give out and you take a face dive.. or in the case of the static, you could have the physical equivalent to tourettes; standing in line at the bank when all of a sudden your arm goes and punches the guy in front of you in the back of the head, and then yourself in the face a few times.. gives a new meaning to frayed nerves..
most metals just dont last long with a large amount of torsion. (for lack of a better word) suk
It is a crime to eat chewinggum in Singapore. Does that mean Singapore can extradite and incarcerate every American who eats chewinggum in US soil? so
I wonder why that is, and since I hardly ever drink beer, I've never really observed the bubbles to see such a thing myself. nxy
People have been doing research for thousands of years, and most of the research have led to woudnerful discoveries, but.. to be honest, I cant see that this discovery can leed to any major breakthoughs. Not even minor ones. sxk
I can't think of a more unfortunate name than the "phantom console" other than the "vaporware console"... seriously who comes up with this stuff.
If they tried to sue me I'd call their bluff (the "phantom lawsuit") and just put quotation marks around all my stuff to humiliate them:
The ceo of the company making the *yet to be released* "phantom" console has asked us to take down our review of their business. We suggest the best thing they could do would be to give us a "phantom" console to review, but something is really haunting their company - because the "phantom console" has yet to be released to the public. Finding their "phantom offices" is also a difficult task. But perhaps we shouldn't be so hard on the CEO, he could be a visionary - this "phantom of his imagination" could bring the gaming world to it's knees. All they need to do is set a new "phantom release date" and stick to it like the slime the ghosts leave when the pass through walls in Ghost Busters. Then we will all be able to enjoy the phantoms
humiliation complete, lawsuit aborted, insert credit for more life. oj
This sounds like an election year doggy treat. Pass it in the House and kill it in the Senate. pnx
You can make bit-for-bit copies of any DVD now, complete with all the encryption on it. And the laws preventing the distribution of those DVDs (normal copyright law) has been on the books for a long, long time. If you follow the money, the bottom line is that the CSS and region codes on a DVD only help to support cartel price-fixing profits.
gzy
Ditto, I'd also like to add that I use our home 'pokey' laptop to ssh and remote desktop into much faster/less portable computers. Think of it as a wireless console and it's CPU horsepower doesn't matter AT ALL. xy
Internet piracy, peer-to-peer, 'sharing mp3s'... is there any chance any of this can and will be legal? It just seems like so many geeks want it to be legal, but it requires a lawyer with a good understanding of technology to deliver the odds. So whats it gonna be? Slim to none? vy
The cost of advertising of a newly approved drug is a VERY SMALL drop in the bucket compared to the cost to develop and push a drug through clinical trials and all the red tape the FDA has constructed.
Your typical drug, say Viagria, starts as a base compund. Normally there are over 100,000 or more base compounds that are tested and researched before even one compound is found that would be useful to market (and this is before the inital FDA filing, AKA Pre-EDC). Once the compound is registered with the FDA and goes under intensive developemnt there is much more money spent.
On average development costs for a single drug can esclate into billions of dollars. Of course, if successful, a single good drug can bring enough profit to keep a drug company operating for years before the patent protection goes away.
The reason drugs outside of the US are much cheaper is mainly thanks to the FDA. The FDA has massive amounts of regulations even after the drug is approved that regulate how a drug is manufactured and handled. These regulations even dictate how the drug company manages and runs its production computer networks and client systems. This of course adds A LOT of overhead when making a drug.
Drugs coming from non FDA regulated sites (this is the kinda stuff you buy super cheap on the net) are much cheaper however knowing what the FDA regulations are and why they are there I feel much safer paying more money for an FDA approved drug which I know will be safe as opposed to a drug made at a non-FDA regulated site which may not meet the standards of saftey we have here in the states. wy
Ummm how about we use this to monitor all the athleets to see if any are using "performance enhancing drugs". it's a monitoring not enhancing thing fy
Found it here [slashdot.org].
It's old:)
rw
... because Apple is not a monopoly, period. kb
My question is where does this leave people who bought the 3 year Software Assurance packages from MS. They have already paid for this update, but it will not be available for them until their contract is up. This will also happen to those who have also paid for updates to Windows and Visual Studio. Do they get an extention to their contract to include these products that they have paid for, or are they just screwed? ib
...when the Fellowship sings "The Hills are Alive..." on the slopes of Carhadras? ua
MySQL...is ten times easier to manage and work with then SQL Server 2000.
I'm sorry, but what the hell are you talking about? I've used both these servers extensively (as well as Sybase ASA, PostgreSQL and Oracle), and as much as I respect MySQL, it's certainly no easier to use than SQL Server. It's at best about the same, with SQL Server being much easier to pick up from 0 knowledge due to a surprisingly good set of help docs. Enterprise Manager and Query Analyzer are really good tools, as well...in fact, until we discovered mssqlXpress [xpressapps.com], Query Analyzer was bar none my favorite IDE for making new statements. (sqlXpress adds sourcesafe integration, versioning, and historical reporting to a clone of Q.A. with autocomplete and automatic proc generation, it is a pretty clutch tool)
MySQL is very good, but ten times better? Not really. In fact, if I had to beg for any SQL Server regardless of price, I'd take SQL Server because it's the easiest to develop for and easiest to port FROM. This gives you an app that will run on almost any other server with a little effort. I rewrote a massive app to run on Sybase in three weeks and Postgres in a month (most of which was testing the DB core of our app). yt
You mean that there is no journalistic ingrity out there anymore? Hooray and thank you, Fox News! gzu
I used to work for GE Medical Systems, and there was a similar case there. There is (or was?) a company out there doing third-party servicing of CAT and MRI scanners, place called "R-Squared". They took GE to court saying that we should share with them our service tools, because by not doing so it was unfairly excluding them from competing with us.
Ended up having to make it possible for the competition to get our service tools, but I don't remember that we were required to make them available cheaply or quickly. Not sure how things are there today; knowing GE they probably would solve the problem by buying out the competitor.
This really isn't much different than open-source vs closed-source though, is it...if the person selling it wants to lock you out of the internals, well, your choices include not buying from them. dk
--Mike-- wz
Kernel threads almost universally stay on the cpu they were originally assigned to. High performance threaded subsystems, such as the network stack, are replicated. That is, the network stack creates multiple threads (one per cpu) and those threads do not migrate because, obviously, they do not need to.
Generally speaking, the purpose of making thread migration explicit instead of automatic is to partition a larger data set across available cpu caches rather then cause the same data to be shared amoungst all cpu caches. The processors operate a lot more efficiently and SMP scales a lot better. Most people do not realize the horrendous cost of moving threads between cpus because the cache mastership change is invisibly handled by hardware, but the cost is still there and still very real.
-Matt qj
None of our earth-borne problems are going to make one whit of difference if an asteroid hits us.
There won't be a welfare problem anymore, because there won't be anyone left to be on welfare.
Jim gu
Furthermore, I find LilyPond's text format far faster for input than using a GUI. Like speach, music is an abstract concept that the human can nevertheless learn to set in a concrete form using a keyboard. Payware music typesetting programs also has a keyboard input mode, and most advanced users use it. zhg
If HP and StarBucks can get this going legally and without hassles from RIAA et al against them or customers, wouldn't the next logical step be offering downloads directly to your iPAQ? wk
don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I'm kind of let down by the fact that our most interesting space story for awhile now is that we MAY have a 10th planet in our solar system.
Umm...what? The past few months have been *spectacularly* exciting from a space point of view. We have two probes that successfully landed on Mars and have found strong evidence that Mars had liquid brine at one point. We have a ton of pictures from the surface to look at, and are expecting tons of findings, papers, and theories based on probe data that's been returned.
And while, yes, the classification may not be interesting, the fact that we discovered a new, sizeable chunk of matter in our solar system is not small stuff either. yaf
That downtime really blew. I couldn't read my spam.
Don't let it happen again, Microsoft. np
Um... no, that doesn't do the same thing. The whole point of ftsh is that the 'try' block encloses a set of statements which must all be executed or it fails. If the 'cd/tmp' fails, bash will blindly run the 'rm -f data' anyway, whereas ftsh will stop and jump to the start of the try block to have another go. gj
With the codes to your DVD, you can make unlimited copies, and do anything and everything with them.
I can't speak a word of Polish, but given enough time I could make an exact copy of a book written in Polish.
DVD encryption does not prevent copying, it prevents people from watching them with players that the DVDCA hasn't made any money off of.
LK bsh
Do you think that the widespread use of the Internet and practical anonymity will force copyright back into its original, more reasonable form of limited restrictions on copying as business models adapt to the unenforcability of existing law? Or do you think it will force law the other way, to ever-more draconian measures that can't be enforced effectively without making examples of people?
Do you think a new form of Intellectual Property will arise that is based around creators' rights to control their work that goes beyond mere copying and into the realm of restrictions on use? Or have we already gotten to that point?
Are EULAs legal? If they aren't now, will they ever be?
What would you suggest people in countries do to avoid capitulating to the USA and adopting its twisted notion of copyright? It's not always practical to "just say no" to the USA.
syLiving underground has many practical advantages. All-year insulation from heat and cold, no neighbours, no leaking roofs, infinite space for expansion if you care to dig.
But... we're descended from tree-hugging primates, not moles, and living underground is a sure way to go crazy. A home needs sunlight, a view, and fundamentally, people within easy reach.
I'd rather live in a shoddy 1-room appartment than in a hundred room bunker.
ngd
Missile Complex?
This wouldn't be in Central Montana by any chance? I hear Dr. Zefram Cochrane's been looking to buy one in that area. yzz
I.T. departments want to support 2 notebooks for every executive user, this is a bad marketing ploy at best. Transmeta makes a nice chip, Sharp marketing clearly doesn't know what to do with it. zpy
a auto-completing python interpreter and editor
Try the Wing IDE [wingide.com]. It has most of the functions you wanted... But it's not free software. iom
...Hotmail goes down on Friday, and you're the first to know on Sunday! bfv
Science discovery: Springs are spring-like, also some metal conducts electricity. Quick someone grab a patent! wwa
The manufacturers are dictating what is revealed so they don't look bad?? Who would have ever thought.. I'm shocked. kq
How far do you think that the internet will be responsible for creating a de-facto international legal system? Property rights, shared criminal databases, shared economic systems,... it seems that the influence of TCP/IP packets has no limits on our society. Will we one day see a world government to enforce international law? And lastly, will this be the US? qa
They should have always required opening up of these interfaces. The owner pretty much has to take the word of a very small select group of "in the know" mechanics on what condition their car is in. And we all know how trustworthy the average local mechanic/dealer mechanic is (do a google for Jiffy Lube, Sears, etc, and auto mechanics and lawsuits)
Then I recall my own wonderful personal experience. I had engine fluctuation issues in a turbo charged car. 15 trips to the dealer (under warranty) and replacement of virtually ever sensor and the car's computer failed to rectify the sporadic condition. The car had a computer interface, and it was telling them... well, I don't know what it was telling them - I couldn't access the interface....
Long story short though, one day, the engine started having RPM fluctuations while idling, so I popped open the hood and, since I hadn't been running long nor very hard, decided to take a quick look at the intercooler fluid level. I just happened to notice as I pulled out the intercooler cap that the float bob sensor attached to said cap was sunk to the bottom, even though the intercooler level was fine. I bypassed this sensor and all was fine for the next 100K miles. Odds are I'd have found this more quickly if I could have hooked up a computer to the interface to diagnose the problem while it was happening.
cckWhen I read the headline of this article, I thought it read: "Beer Bellies Really Do Stink" oxo
please.
You're connecting "piracy", something inherantly illegal by definition, with peer-to-peer. p2p is a technology that can be used for so many different things, that lumping them together is naive.
so many geeks want what to be legal? piracy? sharing mp3's? p2p? they are 3 separate things, only one of which I care about, as a geek, and that is p2p. Which I don't even use. Once i tried bit torrent to d/l slackware, but it didn't work.
please, for the sake of reality, don't lump 3 vastly different things into one thing that the general public sees as illegal. p2p != sharing mp3s. p2p != piracy. sharing mp3's is not always even equal to piracy.
generalizations are like premature optimizations... the root of all evil. ft
DSPAM is one of these statistical filters (like spamprobe and CRM114) that can perform virtually perfect filtering of spam/non-spam you receive.
Now that you are free of spam yourself, may I suggest that you take it one step further and share your data with the anti-spam community; the WPBL project [pc9.org] lets many users report the IPs sending them spam and non-spam in realtime using a couple simple scripts installed in procmail.
Our central database then publishes a real-time list of spam sources (the IP blocklist). Unlike spamcop, WPBL is entirely based upon automatic decisions made by statistical filters, 24/7. The resulting blocklist is already used by many ISPs; and you can also use it to block spamming IPs at your own server.
tuzi wouldnt exactly say transmeta chips are blazing.. my friend had a 600mhz tm5600 based laptop that had been marketed as 'gigapro' without any sort of actual note of the clock speed and the performance was not really near that of a comparable 600mhz cpu from amd or intel.. he endedup selling it for the price he bought it for and got an A64 emachines with a radeon m9600.. bit better for games;) osv
Welcome our new, jazzier, robot overlords....
(sorry someone had to) yaz
Caption from Graphic:The wires can stretch to over half their original length.
Elsewhere, cars were noticed to speed up to over half their original speed! Proof readers were able to increase their accuracy to over half their original accuracy! I increased my IQ to over half it's original size! mb
The simple reasoning behind this is to encourage competition in the belief that competion results in better products and/or lower prices.
Cars are something that are easily understood by most people. You buy a car and you want to get it fixed but the place that fixed your old car can't fix this car because the car manufacturer won't let the mechanic read the computer information in YOUR car.
So, you'll have to pay the prices that the car manufacturer wants you to pay to get your car fixed.
I think will be an easy bill to pass. The average person will see it as a way of saving money. htv
Transmeta made a lot of fuss about energy efficiency, but in reality, the Intel LV and ULV mobile Tualatin P3 consumes almost as little power while being much faster. The best power/speed tradeoff seems to be the ULV P3 933mhz, 512kb L2 cache, 1.1V. The typical and maximum power consumption are 4 and 7W respectively.
Intel is now hyping the P-M just as heavily as Transmeta. The P-M can dynamically scale the frequency through a large range, but if you use CPU intensive apps, the power consumption can get suprisingly high (31W for the 1.5-1.7 ghz versions). For more facts and figures, see Sandpile [sandpile.org].
xo
What w/ the laziness and impatience remarks? Just can't help making a dig at anything not Debian? qj
Answer: Never.
Here's a clue about how to avoid lawsuits: don't break the law.
<bart nt
It's free, but you can pay for it and get extra features, like a bigger mailbox.
:). I run the account in 'whitelist' mode, so everything goes to the 'junk' folder. The only thing I get in my actual inbox is messages from hotmail telling me my mailbox is full :)
I'm jharper@hotmail.com (I'm not afraid of posting the address publicly, i think i'm on every mailing list I could be on anyway
So if I used the account seriously, rather than just as an address I can hand out if I need to hand one out, i'd need the extra space to hold all the spam that built up overnight.
yog
Guess flexible wiring is more pleasant to be strapped into than a squid or a cuttlefish, though I doubt it'd be as fast. Cephalopods have very fast nervous systems, they're lightning quick partly as a result. iik
Google news has been running the headline:
"Microsoft restores faulty Hotmail service"
I thought that said it all. ppu
I think its great that Microsoft includes basic functionality like a media player, word processor, calculator, internet browser, etc.
I hope that we all realize that the PROBLEM lies in preventing the uninstallation of said items without "crippling" the OS.
I think MS should be allowed to include whatever they want, as long as the no-install/uninstall option is there and its real (as in really uninstalls the files, not just "hiding" them).
Why can't Microsoft see how easy it would be to fix this? But then again, that sort of tunnel vision is what has gotten them into the hot water they are in. bk
This may work for a little while, but the creative peeps will find a way around it.
I say forget the filtering shit and force email to evolve. Part of the reason that spam happens is that there is no real authentication going on. No requesting permission to be on your white list. No real strong way to block anybody you don't want to hear from. No real way to verify the sender is legit. etc.
I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do know that I've been using ICQ for years and haven't seen a Spam from there since I turned on the 'require authorization' feature. yx
and posted on the web - like this site [allpar.com] pr
This really depends on whether you live in a country which is a client state of the American Empire or not. Doesn't it.
wri
Did you know that in 1998 Senator Patrick Leahy, of Vermont, got his State's largest Lake, Lake Champlain, to be reclassified as the 6th Great Lake? [dencities.com] At least as far as the awarding of researh grants. Being considered a "Great Lake" made the academic institutions in his constituency eligible to apply for certain research grants.
There is talk of sending a probe to Pluto. Is it possible that it is easier to sell a probe to "planet Pluto" than to send one to Kuiper-belt object Pluto?
I remember, back in the days when I tuned in to debates as to which newsgroups should be created, the big debate as to whether a new group should be talk.acquaria, rec.acquaria or sci.acquaria.
In Leahy's defence, these were environmental research grants, and I should probably assume he added this line to the bill to protect his constituent's natural environment -- not for the petty partisan purposes. oob
This was an obscure typo bug I found this morning (after 3 months)
Argh.
Wish the shell would have added the (obvious) ' > ':P
jn
warezing is a crime in australia and many country's so this sounds supported there. The article says "Griffiths Australian lawyers are fighting the move, stating that he has never set foot in the United States and has committed no crime under Australian law" but to me thats lawyer defense standard sputtering as it IS illegal in australia.
Their lawyers are using simple SCO tactics like "our IP is in their product" they can say it but it does not make it true.
adult desktops & wallpapers [67.160.223.119] fyj
That would be ideal.
(since then the 'casual' user could benefit from using it, without undue difficulty in configuration of mail delivery programs, which are notorious in general..) ir
This is a good example of how far behind MySQL really is. I don't want to degrade the db; I have used it on several PHP/MySQL driven sites. However, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Sybase and others have had transactions for many years. I have only been developing professionally for about 7 years (circa 97), but I started out on SQL Server 6.5 which had full support for transactions. SQL Server 7.0 had support (via MTS) for distrubuted transactions (across multiple databases). If MS had this back in 1997, you know Oracle had it before then. hz
Jim claims that the traditional music in Sri Lanka has far greater diversity than its western counterpart. Thus a simple music notation system, in his opinion at least, is far better than a complex rigorous one. kq
It looks like the gist of the threading model for Dragonfly is that threads all stay on one processor. I assume this is for user processes only, and that this isn't pervasive through the kernel? ufp
This may work for a little while, but the creative peeps will find a way around it.
I say forget the filtering shit and force email to evolve. Part of the reason that spam happens is that there is no real authentication going on. No requesting permission to be on your white list. No real strong way to block anybody you don't want to hear from. No real way to verify the sender is legit. etc.
I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do know that I've been using ICQ for years and haven't seen a Spam from there since I turned on the 'require authorization' feature. hsu
I don't understand why Lilypond aims to go back to having a proprietary textual format for typesetting music. Most people, I'd imagine, would want to typeset music graphically, as it's just more intuitive that way (I mean, I'm guessing that, for example, getting two voices per staff would be easier in a GUI system than having to manage the text input).
Anyone know of a GUI frontend to Lilypond? dmf
That shell script can be improved a lot by using " set -e " to exit on failure, as follows:
#!/bin/sh
set -e # exit on failure
cd/work/foo
rm -rf bar
cp -r/fresh/data
This means that, if any command in the script fails, the script will exit immediately, instead of carrying on blindly.
The script's exit status will be non-zero, indicating failure. If it was called by another script, and that had "set -e", then that too will exit immediately. This is a little bit like exceptions in some other languages.
lzj
...found within bundled software like IE, OE, Media Player and Movie Maker. M$ would voluntarily unbundle these components or run out of cash quite soon. nzs
Nope this problem is a central database problem, probably they tried to normalize the passport database, screw the pooch and had to roll everything back which is why it took so long.
Or maybe they changed a permission and spend the whole day figuring out which one did it. febCowboy Squeal! [wildpuma.com]
props to popeye zq
It's odd this outage lasted for so many hours. Hotmail is spread across multiple clusters at multiple geographic locations. Presumably, so is passport (which is what was br0xx0red). You would *think* MS would keep a complete backup of the last known passport config somewhere, like 1 day - 1 week, etc.
In theory it should only take a matter of minutes to rollback the entire thing... and you would've thought they'd test it before deploying any changes.
Sounds like somebody screwed the pooch on this one. wi
This is a good example of how far behind MySQL really is. I don't want to degrade the db; I have used it on several PHP/MySQL driven sites. However, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Sybase and others have had transactions for many years. I have only been developing professionally for about 7 years (circa 97), but I started out on SQL Server 6.5 which had full support for transactions. SQL Server 7.0 had support (via MTS) for distrubuted transactions (across multiple databases). If MS had this back in 1997, you know Oracle had it before then. pkd
Registration free link [nytimes.com]
I wish article authors would at least put up some effort to find and use reg-free links when possible. aua
We don't respect mechanics because we, and our friends, have been lied to by mechanics so many times. Either about what needs to be repaired, what they broke while they were repairing something else, etc.
If computer techs started pulling the same shit that mechanics have been pulling, taking severe advantage of their greater knowledge of the subject, computer techs are going to be just as disrespected. od
At CES, they had one, and it was absolutely dwarfed by my Nokia 6360 phone. Take a look:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13578
While the phone is a 'big' one the laptop was thinner, and it weighed nothing. Very cool.
These ultra-light models don't click until you hold one, but when you do, you look at the standard ultra-lights and wonder how people use them.
-Charlie bo
Judging fromt the description that people had problems logging in, but that things work fine once logged in, and OTOH that Messenger had problems too, I would conclude that the problem is with their Passport infrastructure.
dsgall this slipage is a cover for the fact that ms has been listening to it's customers ( forced by some healthy oss pressure ) 1: we don't want to be forced into upgrade cycles every 12 months. enterprise systems don't work that way. 2: take the time and fix the damn bugs. we are paying for this shit lets see it work properly. qvc
I haven't been to a record store in years and I ain't going near starbucks for a CD. Physical distribution of music is over. Get used to it. tmv
vwx
Interesting how we see strong-arm tactics against some aussie warez-puppy, but we don't see them waltzing into Moscow to shut down the mass-piracy of the Russian mafia groups, or the cd-r markets throughout Asia.
I guess this is to be expected from a government that will storm into a crippled-to-the-level-of-impotence Iraq to stop them from developing, err, "weapons of mass destruction", but will just cautiously sidestep any country of real WMD threat (China, NK, Israel).
Seems to be another case of break the weakling orpahan to keep the rest in line. ril
I wonder why that is, and since I hardly ever drink beer, I've never really observed the bubbles to see such a thing myself. jt
Maybe they can develop nerves strong enough to let me survive my mother asking for computer help. tc
80 percent of the world couldn't install windows.
70 percent of the world could get around GNAA/Linux if it were a decent distro (SuSE, Ark).
And, most importantly, I'm not part of those percentages, so why the fuck would that affect what I use? ixs
Nope. April 1st isn't for another 18 days. Nice try though.
-S wn
I am neither justifying nor admonishing the law, I am merely stating that the public is more sympathetic towards it due to the fact that they could be considered guilty as well.
The facts are that these are computer crimes, and boundaries are somewhat gray when it comes to jurisdiction. If the guy was a virus writer, even if the virus was essentially harmless, we would be screaming at the top of our lungs for the chair. Spammers, same thing. The DOD warez group? They gave me all those cool games. They should get medals for fighting the Corporate Interests which are taking away my rights!
See, it's all in the perception of the law, not the letter of the law, and not the spirit. We can get outraged and call a law unjust, but we are not always objective. Pot Laws are a perfect example of this. We have large groups fighting for the right to smoke pot. Should we legalize it because a lot of people want to smoke up? Did the editors at high times give this a lot of thought, or do they just want to smoke pot?
Now, I'm all for legalizing it, but I want the same controls as alcohol. Give me a roadside test for it, that does not involve a blood test or urine test, and I'll be the the guy in the first row of the march on the capitol. Until then, simply legalizing it, even if half the population smokes, would be irresponsible. In North America, we do not have the public transportation infrastructure to give pot smokers options to travel, and we have no yardstick to measure when it's dangerous to drive under the influence.
That's enough ranting. In summary, Democracy is about being fair and responsible. Changing the laws to prevent people from becoming criminals will only lead to a land of no laws to infringe, denegrating into a cultural hedonism.
eug
Have you ever been in some sort of establishment and said to yourself. You know? This tune is quite catchy (pinky to mouth). It would be quite excellent if I could burn this piece of innovative harmony to CD. Wouldn't it Chompsky.. hUhUhU.
Certainly sir. Would you have me ask the young lady what specific tune?
Sure, be on with it.. CHOP CHOP Chompsky. Put them on my ipod.. (pinky to mouth). nee
Some links for the interested:
A real estate agent specializing in Missile Bases [missilebases.com]
A virtual tour made by some tresspassers. [triggur.org]
I was fascinated about the chance to own one of these properties. Doing some research, I found some ceveats though. First, the base had to be de-commissioned prior to 1965. After that, there were new treaties which required the complete destruction of the base after de-militarization. Second, being underground can lead to some health hazards, i.e. Radon. Third, missile bases aren't ever located in easy to reach places, and I like to be able to go to the store without a bunch of planning beforehand.
I'd still love to own this monstrosity though. The Titan 1 sites are the most elaborate and extensive. Kind of makes me sick to think about the money spent of this thing when it was built only to be decomissioned ~5 years later. gxk
Similarly, Pluto was discovered because it was found that Neptune alone was not sufficient to account for all of Uranus' irregularity.
Actually, no. When Pluto was discovered it was found to be too small to account for the irregularity in Uranus's orbit. When they went back and checked, they found there had been a mistake and there wasn't any irregularity to start with. The discovery of Pluto was an accident. tfm
It seems to me that most (if not all) spaming and advertising done on the Internet is simply polluting the lines of communication. Like any pollution, it reduces the stuff you want, by increasing the ratio of stuff you don't want, thereby making the whole environment unusable.
Is it possible that this view can be used in any legal way to go after Internet polluters?
xxc
I thought these chips were supposed to have "good" performance while consuming a lot less power. lp
I have seen bubbles moving down at the edges of my Guinness. This latest "discovery" seems to be common sense to me, and is exactly how I have explained the phenomenem to other drinkers down the pub.
Shame I wasn't paid to do my "research", and that no-one would have listened to me because I didn't have a 750-frame-per-second video camera.
Now, this story would have been really interesting if it had a link to the videos of it happening 'cause it really is a sight to behold! usw
Ditto, I'd also like to add that I use our home 'pokey' laptop to ssh and remote desktop into much faster/less portable computers. Think of it as a wireless console and it's CPU horsepower doesn't matter AT ALL. iv
More to the point, does changing the medium in which content is delivered constitute a derivative work and therefore require a seperate copyright license? E.G., ripping a muic track from a CD to play on a computer, copying a track from a vinyl album to a CD or audio cassette to play in a car, etc. txo
Granted, if you ran an all RedHat shop or an all Mandrake shop things would be easier than simply an all GNAA/Linux shop, but the same would be true for an all OpenBSD shop vs an all FreeBSD or NetBSD shop. But if each department is free to buy what they want I'd rather find who-knows-which-BSD on the box than who-knows-which-GNAA/Linux. mrg
"Password fairly correct. Root login granted."
aji
I think of the various GNAA/Linux distros as "forks" of whatever Linus himself runs. There are literally dozens of GNAA/Linux forks. Too bad Linus doesn't release a distro, so we'd know what GNAA/Linux is supposed to look like. If you sit down at a GNAA/Linux system you have no idea what you're going to find. From a Systems Administration standpoint alone that makes *BSD a better choice for corporations with a large number of hosts, but GNAA/Linux gets all the press. xez
What about the vast majority of e-mail users who have Outlook [Express] on Windows. When will a plugin be designed and ported which will work with these clients?
-- paper cbs
I have a question about the recent litigation by the RIAA against a handful of university students for running supposedly illegal P2P services. I'm a student at Rensselaer, so I'm more familiar with the service that was being run there, but as far as I figure it was the same deal at all the other universities as well. At RPI, the Phynd server searched all the computers that were sharing files on the network and indexed them so you could do a keyword search for files, similar to the way google works. From what I read of the case, the major point in the case was that the RIAA said that the service provided illegal access to copyrighted material because you could use the service to directly download material, via a hyperlink in the search results window; even though the service and the files were restricted only to students at Rensselaer. My question is how would their case have changed if all the service returned was just the address of the computer hosting the files? Thus after a person ran a search and decided on his own to manually type the address of the hosting computer to access it, would the owners of the phynd server have been held accountable since it would have been the miscosoft transfer protocols transfering the files. This seemed to be the big point in going after the students that it was their program that was directly facilitating the illegal downloads, and it seems like if the service merely indexed the files without providing direct access the case would have been significantly weakened. ia
His acts may have been criminal in many countries, but that does not mean he committed the crimes in those countries. If I shoot a canadian businessman while he is in France, i've committed a crime in france, but wouldn't be extradited to Canada.
Question with the sort of thing this case deals with is where the crime is actually committed. I think that as long as he hosted stuff on a server in Australia and he was in Australia, it does not matter which US copyrights he violated, he did not commit a crime in the US, so he shouldn't be extradited. How can he possibly break US law without being in the US or doing anything in the US?
If the server he is using is located in the US, then maybe things are different. But just because the object was from the US doesn't mean he's broken US laws...
Of course he can be prosecuted in Australia for breaking Australian law.... dr
Maybe they can develop nerves strong enough to let me survive my mother asking for computer help. oiu
The real problem is people who actually buy this stuff. If no one was buying things from spam, no one would send spam. We all know this.
I propose we start spamming. Anyone who responds gets a nice l'il pistol whipping and is returned to their comptuer. After the first news report, people will be afraid to respond to spam. oe
It is a great account for your junk mail! Then again so is Yahoo... but hotmail was the first I believe =)
It is also my first email account (got it in 96) and so now people can still contact me after I've moved around the world.
When a service like Hotmail and MSN go down for a few hours it affects ALOT (millions) of people... nerd included... why shouldn't it be on the frontpage? I know I was interested enough to click on the articles (though I agree they are sparse on details)
Addbo uu
If I were the dictator, MS would be forced to document the file formats it is using (including all WMV formats, of course), all network protocols, and to provide sufficient NTFS documentation so that I can finally can mount/dev/hda2 with read-write soonish. cvt
Different countries/governments/political systems have different laws concerning freedom of expression, privacy, property rights, etc.
How can it be possible to create one set of rules that can apply to all nations with regards to Internet access?
iiIt looks like the gist of the threading model for Dragonfly is that threads all stay on one processor. I assume this is for user processes only, and that this isn't pervasive through the kernel? pev
You seem to be assuming that this is not happening already. I wonder if that is true. I would assume that like mechanics, computer techs will give misleading or wrong advice some of the time either out of ignorance or avarice. ioq
Once they got to that version of their SQL product, they got it pretty much right.
Its one of the few solid things that microsoft puts out. Previous verisons were pretty dismal.
I doubt that most pepole will ever need the 'new' features coming down the pike. They should leave it alone, instead of screwing it up or bloating it out.... wts
Advocates of free software claim to be advocates of freedom. If this were the case, they would only attack Microsoft on those terms. The WMP is not a freedom issue. If a customer doesn't like Windows prepackaged with WMP, there's nothing stopping that person from acquiring another OS.
This is just a bunch of government busibodies telling you how to run your lives. qg
Mod me down all you wish, however this is yet another case where we can see that XML is simply equivilent to bloat. We waste bytes storing useless tags, rather than develop a robust binary format which will be quicker to transfer, and allow more storage. Another great example of this is SVG, graphic files were never meant to be human readable - so why bother promoting a format that encourages this. bpg
Here's another one: IBM. Big Blue has been behind so much of the scientific grunt work, a great deal of which has consisted of conceiving of and building experimental scientific equipment [about.com]. ydy
Computer can and do run without Microsoft. They are a brand. A company can decide, at will, to no longer purchase Microsoft.
Now, a good deal of that has more to do with anti-trust tussels between the DOJ and Microsoft in the past than a lack of trying on Microsoft's part.
The legal puzzle is thus. Microsoft is de-facto standard. People equate their crap with computers. To the mundanes out there Microsoft is to computers what gas is to cars. They have done a tremendous marketing job. You really can't build a case based on consumer buying habits. People do choose to buy Microsoft Products. It may not be a particularly wise choice, or even an informed choice, but the path to destruction is often wide and well paved.
Courts are loathe to step in and tell the average man how to live their life. Where Microsoft does get into trouble is in their dealings with computer makers. One of the things to come out of the Seatlement was that Microsoft was not longer permitted to have a different pricing structure for each supplier. Nor were they permitted to charge a license fee for every computer produced, whether or not windows ships with it.
As for Microsoft's stranglehold on industry, at this point it's more like those hitchiking seeds that velcro themselves to your trousers after a walk through the woods. There are a bunch of reasons people cling to them, all annoying, and all easy to pick off one by one.
Microsoft is the architect of their own destruction. They spend their time polishing shiny things, rather than sitting down and hammering out reliable products. By reliable I mean something that runs for 3 or more years without having to be completely reformatted and re-built. jo
I thought these chips were supposed to have "good" performance while consuming a lot less power. ea
-
As practically a deathbed speech, he educated me about those concepts and who the players were in this game. He gave me the responsibility, since he was dying, of continuing this effort to prevent the weaponization of outer space.
Be sure your Tin Foil hats are well grounded emWhen Wernher Von Braun was dying of cancer, he asked me to be his spokesperson, to appear on occasions when he was too ill to speak. I did this. What was most interesting to me was a repetitive sentence that he said to me over and over again during the approximately four years that I had the opportunity to work with him.
He said the strategy that was being used to educate the public and decision makers was to use scare tactics That was how we identify an enemy. The strategy that Wernher Von Braun taught me was that first the Russians are going to be considered to be the enemy. In fact, in 1974, they were the enemy, the identified enemy. We were told that they had "killer satellites". We were told that they were coming to get us and control us-that they were "Commies."
Then terrorists would be identified, and that was soon to follow. We heard a lot about terrorism. Then we were going to identify third-world country "crazies." We now call them Nations of Concern. But he said that would be the third enemy against whom we would build space-based weapons.
The next enemy was asteroids. Now, at this point he kind of chuckled the first time he said it.
Asteroids- against asteroids we are going to build space-based weapons.
And the funniest one of all was what he called aliens, extraterrestrials. That would be the final scare. And over and over and over during the four years that I knew him and was giving speeches for him, he would bring up that last card.
"And remember Carol, the last card is the alien card. We are going to have to build space-based weapons against aliens and all of it is a lie."
I think I was too naive at that time to know the seriousness of the nature of the spin that was being put on the system. And now, the pieces are starting to fall into place. We are building a space-based weapons system on a premise that is a lie, a spin. Wernher Von Braun was trying to hint that to me back in the early 70's and right up until the moment when he died in 1977.
But its a bit more complex that just that.
From the article;
>Automakers are fighting the legislation; they believe the real goal is to obtain proprietary "calibration codes" that are the blueprints for how parts are made. With that information, Territo said, independent mechanics and parts manufacturers could duplicate major components such as fuel injectors that automakers have spent millions of dollars developing.
So maybe its the same issue. A group wants to control their property by using technology which locks things up. fd
It would behoove many companies to invest more in R&D and less in padding executives pocketbooks with $100's. HP, for example, has gutted their engineering ranks while simultaneously buying jets for the higher-ups. Closer to my region of the country, Caterpillar has outsourced waves of R&D people...and their executives are getting ever-higher bonuses. oob
I hate to disagree with that, but we recently had a project and had the choice of which SQL to use. Customer pushed back and simply said MS.
Just because the product isn't there doesn't mean they will automatically go to another 'free' alternative- instead it means they'll simply use the older version until it wears out. kr
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
-- Mark Twain
iyAs I recall, the US Army was suffering from a shortage of bugle players to play taps for the passing generation of soldiers. They developed a digital bugle [geek.com] that can play taps even if the bugler is incompetent, drunk, or both.
Since Toyota has now developed a vastly more complicated technology that can be used to solve the same problem as the slightly complicated one above, I look forward to future Pentagon procurement hearings.
Note to self: Sarcasm in this post often results in massive retribution.
ucm
~Darl eoz
Similarly, Pluto was discovered because it was found that Neptune alone was not sufficient to account for all of Uranus' irregularity.
Actually, no. When Pluto was discovered it was found to be too small to account for the irregularity in Uranus's orbit. When they went back and checked, they found there had been a mistake and there wasn't any irregularity to start with. The discovery of Pluto was an accident. ijk
*EVERY* OS has had/comes with/includes a media player. It is a functional part of the OS to support the playback of audio/video sounds in everything from user-interface, alters, notifications and theme support.
Heck, its even part of the mandated accessibility/disability acts for people who require audio/visual/tactile feedback.
I for one preferr the free stuff then Real or even Quicktime.. atleast i don't have things popping up telling me useless facts (even after being disabled) or having mime type wars on my pc.
I bought windows because it was easy.
I bought linux and still do because it was powerfull.
Each has there own use, but this has got to be the most retarded lawsuit i've EVER heard of. xoc
I agree, but you're missing most of the point- it's not the hardware, it's the concept; low-tech is best.
- framing a picture means it was good enough to warrant said treatment. The whole point of putting up a picture frame is lost if all you show are crap photos of your dog or whatnot. Further, if I have a great photo, I want it to always be there, or at least be instantly accessible. No easy way to do that here...
- the LCD panel won't last very long being on all day, every day; the backlights are rated for a few thousand hours tops.
- they're horrible for viewing at anything other than dead-on; gamma and contrast change drastically from side to side or above/below
- they need a power cord, which is fugly
- they have vastly inferior resolution; high-resolution LCD panels aren't available anywhere except in laptops. A standard print from even, say, Walmart's digital photo lab machine...is at least 300dpi, more like 600dpi.
- Archival photo paper, with UV-blocking glass, mounted with acid-free materials, will last decades. This toy will last about 2-3 years if it's lucky. Maybe 5.
- at the temperatures involved (the mini-itx site lists a figure around 44C) none of the components will last very long. Hard drives especially don't like heat...
akYou can make bit-for-bit copies of any DVD now, complete with all the encryption on it. And the laws preventing the distribution of those DVDs (normal copyright law) has been on the books for a long, long time. If you follow the money, the bottom line is that the CSS and region codes on a DVD only help to support cartel price-fixing profits.
of
they would start development on their second OS right now. I don't live in Europe, but from what I read and hear on IRC, I get the feeling that M$ is not going to win any appeals, and eventually will be forced to sell their cut down OS. It would save them time and money. Why drag it out in court, when you're probably going to lose anyway? uhp
SQL Server 2005? is going to be great. However, if I had to choose the *best* database I would go with Oracle without a doubt. Every tool other database manufacturers are trying to mirror generally come from Oracle. Plus they support GNAA/Linux which makes buying very expensive hardware a problem of the past. Hell you can get a license for standard for $799.
Unfortunately my job runs SQL Server 2000. Having cut my teeth on PL/SQL, Transact is a nightmare because it is so limiting.
I'm actually looking forward to Yukon because the marketing ad sheet shows some really cool features. The only question is will they deliver and when will it be? bxz
Actually, MS use UNIX servers for Hotmail
Ummm... no. You have no idea what you're talking about. If you had said "used" (as in past tense), then you'd at least be close. Still wrong, but close. They used one of the BSD's until people called them on it. Hell, for all we know, they still are and just changed the headers that the server hands out to look like a MS box like the other post in this thread shows.
Anyway, you're wrong on all accounts.
rz
...I'm afraid I can't do that. mv
Merely my brief experience with Gentoo, when they first upgraded glibc (from 2.2 to 2.3 iirc) and broke half the packages, then downgraded it again and broke everything else. This is really a pet peeve: aren't minor versions supposed to be compatible? And a zillion similar but smaller-scale annoyances, well expressed by Bill Paul many years ago [freebsd.org] and the years haven't eased the pain all that much.
And BSDs are more likely to introduce binary incompatibilities
Clearly you haven't used the BSDs. You may have library incompatibilities between major versions, but just install the earlier "compat libraries" and you're set. I upgraded from FreeBSD 4 to FreeBSD 5 -- a huge upgrade, over 2 years in the making -- and all my software just worked, even complex stuff like KDE and Mozilla that had been compiled under 4.x. eg
But it is probably not patentable. It is not an invention, it is precise settings which have to be worked out over hours and hours of testing. Exact timings for injectors at all speeds and load conditions, while allowing reasonable margins so that performance does not fall off with wear. This data - just a huge look-up table - costs millions of dollars to obtain, because it required many hours of running. But you cannot patent it. You can copyright it, of course, but if a copier made a number of minor, not very significant, changes in the tables, it would be very difficult to prove they had copied the original tables. "Of course we got the same results - they are the right results for this engine". ip
Given HP's recent relationship with Apple on a rebranded iPod, does that mean that 1) the tunes sold in starbucks will be AAC and/or 2) that iTunes will be involved?
as
So that's why I couldn't access my inbox full of ads for Penile Enlargement, Hot Sex, and credit cards... ng
As a side-bar, is the FTSH acronym pronounced... fetish?
All kidding aside, this sounds like a great idea.
As for the comments about encouraging sloppy code, it is clear those posters have never worked in demanding moving-target environments. The kinds of errors encountered cannot be solved easily in code - this extension would help.
As for the comments on "you can do this in Perl, Python, and ", this is true, but if I know Bash and want tolerance, why should I have to learn a new language to get it? Likely all I'm doing is copying files, forking off subprocesses, and the like.
For the comments on "why another shell," I would tend to agree that it would be best integrated into Bash - but then, you change the implementation of Bash, create incompatible situations, and have to retest volumes of existing scripts. It's best to have this as a separate shell with close look/feel semantics to Bash (or Csh).
uc
Can I sue for damages incurred because I couldn't order my penis enlargement pills before my porn audition? Damn you microsoft, you kept me from making millions! Now just give me some money and we'll call it even. yg
Maybe a few cars from back then claimed more horsepower than what you can get today. (I kind of doubt it with cars like the Dodge Viper on the market). Keep in mind that horsepower numbers were inflated back then, and the drivetrains and suspensions were not capable of utilizing the horsepower that they had.
If you read any car magazine, there are plenty of aftermarket shops that do modify today's cars, and they manage to keep them legal as well. dk
This might be the breakthrough the BION folks could use to advance their research [vard.org]. rb
Our tax dollars at work!
It appears that the same rib, in episode 34FGE, struck twice in row creates two different notes...are we supposed to believe this is some sort of magical rib!??! cz
I was getting a "Service Unavailable" but couldn't figure out if it was my flaky connection or Microsoft's flaky software. Guess now I know. wa
Except that it's not actually an auction. I made the same mistake (hey, it's EBay), but there's no place to enter a bid and if you look down at the bottom it says:
"This listing is an advertisement. There is no bidding! If you are interested in this property, you may contact the seller/agent to request additional information."
Which is probably smart. If it were an auction, it'd have eleventy-million fake bids by now.
It also tends to indicate that this is a real property. If it was just someone goofing around, it'd be an auction. That's not strong evidence, but it's certainly an indication. nv
Spell checkers discourage people from learning to spell.
Done correctly, spellcheckers can be the best spelling-learning tool there is.
"Correctly" here means the spell-checkers that give you red underlines when you've finished typing the word and it's wrong. Right-clicking lets you see suggestions, add it to your personal dict, etc.
"Incorrectly" is when you have to run the spell-checker manually at the "end" of typing. That's when people lean on it.
The reason, of course, is feedback; feedback is absolutely vital to learning and spell-checkers that highlight are the only thing I know of that cuts the feedback loop down to zero seconds. Compared to this, spelling tests in school where the teacher hands back the test three days from now are a complete waste of time. (This is one of many places where out of the box thinking with computers would greatly improve the education process but nobody has the guts to say, "We need to stop 'testing' spelling and start using proper spell-checkers, and come up with some way to encourage kids to use words they don't necessarily know how to spell instead of punishing them." The primary use of computers in education is to cut the feedback loop down to no time at all. But I digress...)
'gaim' is pretty close but it really ticks me off how it always spellchecks a word immediately, so if you're typing along and you're going to send the word "unfortunately", but you've only typed as far as "unfortun", it highlights it as a misspelled word. Bad program! Wait until I've left the word! js
I'm not saying that this is not valuable information, however if only they had googled before hand they would have noticed that this WAS ALREADY KNOWN ABOUT IN 1998! see this story at http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/database/phys/liquids /p00053d.html
ah
Why can't I get this to run on my WXP machine? I have XP Pro installed....
You linux geeks get all the good toyz!!
Darn you, Darn you to Redmond!
What do I get?
Well.. I guess I do get all the neat patches. uh
Why am I not surprised Microsoft claims its an internal problem?
Actually, it would make more sense when Microsoft would claim it was an attack. Internal problems can be blaimed on the company (bad software design, bad system administration, etc.), external attacks can't, only for a lack of security or something like that. But in most cases, a company gets away quite well with an external attack. mdl
Yes, but:
1) The ability to use non-Microsoft products is obviously a good thing but that's very different from the absence of the Microsoft products being a good thing.
2)We're not talking about MS selling a base version and an enhanced version. It will be a full version and a crippled version with functionality yanked out. With Microsoft having every reason to make it work as badly as possible.
I want Mozilla and iTunes to work. I couldn't care less about whether the MS functionality on the system remains or not. This thing is such a pointless exercise I can't imagine whom they think it will benefit.
lnq
I think the best answer the 'If nobody would by this stuff...' argument was:
Spam works on the level of 1 in 10,000. The general population contains a far higher rate of mental illness, senility, and retardation.
You'll never cure spam by 'education' of any sort. There are some people who are just too crazy or too stupid to learn. lrq
Businessweek ran an item on it in their latest issue. The also said that competitors of Starbucks are looking to implement similar technology.
Krispy Kreme and Outkast? hke
As a computer science student graduating college and hoping to head to law school, I wonder if you have any particular advice about wha training, if any, will help to prepare me for "cyber-law". Many schools seem to have programs focusing on this aspect of the law, but I've often thought that the generalist approach to a field yielded better results.
Are there any experiences you'd advise a young prospective attorney interested in this field to seek out?
cdThat downtime really blew. I couldn't read my spam.
Don't let it happen again, Microsoft. lh
Still, at least this discovery has the redeeming quality of completely fucking up astrology.
Astrology doesn't work that way.
Astrology is syncretic religion [google.com] -- it readily (and inevitably) incorporates new influences.
Like an amoeba, astrology engulfs everything it touches.
In this sense, astrology is rather like paranoia: everything pertains, everything is part of the Big Picture.
Sedna won't fuck up astrology. On the contrary, astrologers will eagerly seize on the idea of this new planet, treating Sedna as one more vacuole in the amoeba.
-kgj lsp
& wi-fi vdo conferencing, etc.... un
More to the point, does changing the medium in which content is delivered constitute a derivative work and therefore require a seperate copyright license? E.G., ripping a muic track from a CD to play on a computer, copying a track from a vinyl album to a CD or audio cassette to play in a car, etc. tzz
They talk about journalistic integrity as in not changing reviews to get ad dollars, then go on to talk about the HardOCP deal. I am not going to get into that, because my comments get bitchslapped down whenever I support a company that is not in/.'s good graces.
They should have picked a more relevant example, like Tom's Hardware and the Intel P3 fiasco where the 1.13's had a critical error in them. It really seems like they were just trying to get mentioned on Slashdot, and seem like a really good review site. xd
I'm feeling so wired today. tqh
Why am I not surprised Microsoft claims its an internal problem?
Actually, it would make more sense when Microsoft would claim it was an attack. Internal problems can be blaimed on the company (bad software design, bad system administration, etc.), external attacks can't, only for a lack of security or something like that. But in most cases, a company gets away quite well with an external attack. im
http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyN ews/asteroid0107.html
m
. ht ml
t ml
zrc
http://personals.galaxyinternet.net/tunga/I7.ht
http://home.att.net/~thehessians/asteroidstrike
http://www.sandia.gov/media/comethit.htm
http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/crater.h
I had a class with this professor earlier this year. This really explains his teaching style... he must have done his beer "research" each day right before he lectured... yjj
If dogs are flying, then that is not weed you are smoking... Tread carefully, but enjoy. xpg
It's odd this outage lasted for so many hours. Hotmail is spread across multiple clusters at multiple geographic locations. Presumably, so is passport (which is what was br0xx0red). You would *think* MS would keep a complete backup of the last known passport config somewhere, like 1 day - 1 week, etc.
In theory it should only take a matter of minutes to rollback the entire thing... and you would've thought they'd test it before deploying any changes.
Sounds like somebody screwed the pooch on this one. the
Just like *most* plumbers or electricians, shouldn't there be license granted by the state or other civic government for in-home techs? I say ABSOLUTELY!
Consider the case where a so-called digitician shows up at grandma's house, does essentially nothing, and gets paid, then grandma, or her linux-loading, do-gooder grandson, should be able to file a grievence to have their license revoked.
Overall, there should be some type of code enforcement.(pun!=intended).
ter
But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision? I'd say this is far more important.
These problems are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. tgg
Actually, MS use UNIX servers for Hotmail
Ummm... no. You have no idea what you're talking about. If you had said "used" (as in past tense), then you'd at least be close. Still wrong, but close. They used one of the BSD's until people called them on it. Hell, for all we know, they still are and just changed the headers that the server hands out to look like a MS box like the other post in this thread shows.
Anyway, you're wrong on all accounts.
tne
I thought these chips were supposed to have "good" performance while consuming a lot less power. sqy
I tried several incarnations of dspam over a period of about 6 months. It was a pain in the butt to install, required a massive amount of training, and required you run a web server in order to have the point and click training capability.
I eventually gave up and tried the CRM114 Discriminator:
http://crm114.sourceforge.net/
It was MUCH easier to install, MUCH easier to maintain, and has the same or better level of accuracy. I used to get 100+ spam messages a day and now I'll get maybe 1 or 2 a week that sneak through (after only a few weeks of training on errors only).
vs
We already read the same exact thing, but in different words and headline over a week ago. This new article brings nothing new to the table except for a slightly misleading headline.
The [H] issue has more to do with halting what someone feels is slander, and little to do with the widespread problems with hardware review sites skewing benchmarks to keep a vendor, advertiser, or to get free stuff.
Unique as the issue may be, it's not worthy of multiple/. headlines until something new actually surfaces in the case.
If I wanted a 15 year old's opinion in essay format on the issue, I would have simply gone to [H]'s forum.**
** - Not that a 15 year old is less intelligent than anyone else, just young people tend to not have their heads glued on straight when it comes to business and law. Wisdom takes time to build. wii
Seriously though, this sounds fine for integrating electronics into fabrics, but the "artificial nerve" idea conjures images on Christopher Reeve leaping up and tap dancing. This invention doesn't sound like it has any therapeutic uses that a normal wire doesn't. Perhaps users of vagus nerve stimulators or other devices requiring in vivo wiring could be a little more physically vigorous without worrying about things pulling or breaking... but I have my doubts about even that. fm
"The reason for this excitement is that it is becoming clear to us that we can develop very clean-looking, elegant, debuggable, SMP scaleable software using this model whereas using the mutex model generally results in much less elegant (even ugly), difficult-to-debug code. Code complexity and code quality is a very important issue in any large piece of software and we believe we have hit on a model that directly addresses the issue in an SMP environment without compromising performance."
I don't really know what he's talking about, but:
If he's right, everybody wins.
Even if he's wrong and we find out why, everybody wins.
It sounds like GNAA/Linux isn't hurting BSD any, and methinks for a number of reasons, GNAA/Linux wouldn't be what it is today without the BSD's.
aka
Hei, Dillon
It seems that you are working in some
inovative features.
I hope that in the way, you fill some patents
about your work (even if you don't agree with
software patents), because we are going to
need it in the upcoming patent fight against
Microsoft. kq
Here----> .
pq
Now if they could only make it usable. After reading the last Slashdot article about it I decided to try and move my Amavis/ClamAV/SpamAssassin/Postfix/Courier-IMAP setup to use DSPAM. Good Lord what a configuration nightmare. I couldn't find a decent HOW-TO and no real working example configurations in order to test it out. Sure the README "has all the information I'll ever need" but some of the stuff that it talks about I don't understand and I don't have the patience to configure it through trial and error.
Developing good software is one thing. But it's a lot nicer when good software is actually usable. I'll be sticking with SpamAssassin until they can dumb it down a little.
xht
Seems a little techie for the cool, grungy Boehemians, reading their Kerouac. Where will they go? da
" So can't OEM people install real, etc before selling at the moment? Guess not."
Of course they can do but why would they ? They can't buy a cheaper version of Windows without a media player so there's no point in them shopping around for a cheaper alternative.
Stripping out Media Player from Windows will allow the OEM's to judge Media Player vs it's rivals on a fair footing, e.g. knowing the cost of each application.
In theory anyway, I hope there is some provision that the two versions of windows will need to maintain some kind of sensible price differentiation. hpa
Does Lilypond, or any other program, for that matter, do a good job of drum music? Don't just drumset, but marching percussion, too? With diddles, shots, pings, rolls, 32nd notes, whatever? I have never seen a program that handles all of these things, and it would be great if there were one. dem
It's the cord from a telephone handset.
Now why didn't they think of that decades ago?
Oh, wait, they did.
Nevermind.
Yeah, yeah, I know. It's FLAT. So maybe they've reinvented ramen noodles?
sf
The difference lies in the fact that with codes to your car, it can be serviced independently.
With the codes to your DVD, you can make unlimited copies, and do anything and everything with them.
Try doing that to your car when you get it's codes. au
That article didn't go into much detail. I don't know what kind of system MS uses to run Hotmail, MSN and other services, but where's the multiple location clustered redundant load balancing system? My only guess is that someone at MS really messed up their own DNS systems, which of course would take it all "down" (by name at least). Does anyone know what actually happened? zeh
Correction - Neptune was farther from Pluto from January 21, 1979 to Feb. 11, 1999 [nasa.gov] but at this time Pluto is farther from the sun than Neptune.
Of course, there's debate as to whether Pluto-Charon is a planet with a moon, or a double planet...
- Thomas;
mg
This really isn't much different than open-source vs closed-source though, is it...if the person selling it wants to lock you out of the internals, well, your choices include not buying from them.
#:apt-get install camaro
No package by that name.
#:apt-get install thunderbird
Try "apt-get install firefox"
#:apt-get install mini
Downloading "mini-dinstall" from repos
Ctrl-C
Process interrupted
#:apt-get install pinto
Warning: you are about to install package "pinto" from repository "www.ford.com/unstable" Do you wish to continue?
Ctrl-C
oc
On Friday I was tinkering with a student LAN I help maintain... swapping in new switches, trying to sort out a mess of identical ethernet cables.
:)
I was about to leave, satisfied that the network was back to running as normal, but people started complaining that they couldn't reach hotmail. That seemed weird since hotmail is typically rock solid... I got kinda stressed by this, thought maybe I was dealing with a bizarre netmask thru DHCP or perhaps a DNS failure.
What a relief... hotmail was broken
adu
No this is to do with kernel threads. The userland threading is the same as in FreeBSD 4.x atm, AFAIK. The idea is to keep the model simple, unlike in FreeBSD 5.x where they are having trouble keeping it all sane with their fine-grained mutex model. Have a look at the dragonfly.kernel newsgroup, in nntp.dragonflybsd.org [dragonflybsd.org] for more details on the SMP model, Matt talks about it regularly earlier on. der
Could we eliminate any risk of being hit by an asteroid by reclassifying everything as a planet? qr
To be completely flippant (and yes, I do realize there is a risk, I just think it is relatively low)... boring! I just hope this doesn't turn into another cause where misguided celebrities drive us into spending money on it disproportionally like certain trendy diseases. aec
...a laptop with a dedicated "portable" architecture. I can definately see Intel saying "More transistors, more power, more clock, and it'll be okay" - which is questionable on the desktop but not at all adequate with laptops. Transmeta's departure from this is an interesting turn of events - Will we see two separate processor lines, one for the laptop, and one for the desktop? And I don't mean the M-series, which just added variable clock and PM, but something like two different design philosophies.
And damn, that's a sexy laptop...:)
kym
from the article Some think Microsoft has bitten off more than it can chew with Yukon. "This product lacks focus," said Betsy Burton, analyst with the Gartner Group. "They're doing all sorts of stuff with it, first scalability was the issue, then XML support, then.Net activities, and then business intelligence and now security. The gut issue is, what is the purpose of this release? As a team trying to develop a product you have to know where you're going," she said
Betsy clearly has no clue regarding the SQL Server product's evolution, capabilites or how these are going to change with Yukon. In fact she seems to have a very limited grasp of significance of the Yukon's release.
Unlike Oracle, SQL Server has basically hovered in the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" pattern for the last 5 years. For the most part it has delivered a decent database platform, that was for a while more cost effective than oracle. Those who have used SQL Server extensively know it's limitations. Betsy's arguments about "product lacking focus" are rediculous. That's primarily becuase Yukon seeks to rectify a large number of the problems and limitations of SQL Server 2k. It's really very difficult to provide a "focused" look at a product that is changing so significantly. In fact, her complaint is very similar to those that were uttered as Microsfot was trying to formalize the definition of.NET, which really has not clarified itself much in the last two years.
It would seem that Betsy is looking for are a few jargon sound bytes that can be displayed on a single powerpoint slide. That slide would then be shown to a bunch of people who nod their head and say, "that's a sound strategic driection". Big idea's aren't sound bytes.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, they are attempting to be ambitious with Yukon. A lot of new plumbing is going in, as well as a refinement and crystalization of the current features such as SQL -> XML queries, DTS, Replication, the integration of a first class programming language among others. These are all features that we've needed for a long time.
Yukon represents a significant change in the world of RDMS's on the Windows platform. It's sad to see that influential groups such as Gartner can't recognize or have the vision to see how much (and for the better) things are going to change for SQL Server 2K shops. yx
Meanwhile, MySQL is now doing transactions, and VIEWs are on their way in 5.1. It's GPL, so it's free (as in speech).
Why not use Postgres? That way, you don't have to wait for features that all the other RDBMS products have had for years. What is it that makes MySQL so much more popular than Postgres? It sure isn't features. nt
Perhaps the bendy straw people should sue. ydm
What i want is something where i can copy in a sheet of music or a few bars and hear what it would sound like. if you really want someting to teach music students with this would be it because you coul experiment and verifiy ideas or intent. cjx
Lets get this stright. You -brought- windows XP.
No, he bought Windows XP.
enSo what happens if the files are crucial (let's use the toy example of kernel modules being updated): The modules get deleted, then the update fails because the remote host is down. Presumably the shell can't rollback the changes a la DBMS, as that would involve either hooks into the FS or every file util ever written.
Now I think it's a nice idea, but it could easily lead to such sloppy coding; if your shell automatically tries, backs off and cleans up, why would people bother doing it the 'correct' way and downloading the new files before removing the old ones? ea
It's odd this outage lasted for so many hours. Hotmail is spread across multiple clusters at multiple geographic locations. Presumably, so is passport (which is what was br0xx0red). You would *think* MS would keep a complete backup of the last known passport config somewhere, like 1 day - 1 week, etc.
In theory it should only take a matter of minutes to rollback the entire thing... and you would've thought they'd test it before deploying any changes.
Sounds like somebody screwed the pooch on this one. ra
If I had any doubts that MS is helping OSS and slowly erasing itself, it is now clearing:-) Jokes aside, this will seriously affect businesses that have paid for their upgrade licenses, as the licenses will expire before the sql server is released. This will make decision makers view Open Source in a new light. Atleast, in Open Source you don't pay for future vaporware in the present. lfb
All the programmers who need the environment to compensate for their inadequacies, step on one side. All the programmers who want to learn from their mistakes and become better at their craft, get on the other side.
Most of us know where this line is located.
"In other news, at the local beach today a vicious fight broke out between geeks about where to draw a line. Sand was kicked, noses have been blooded, we have some unconfirmed reports of a wedgie. We will have more on this breaking news as it comes in."
pu
You do realize, this is one of the weakest arguments you can possibly make. "Forget all intellectual arguments, precedent, centuries of commonlaw. If this happened to YOU, you'd want him hung! So it's OK to hang him!"
Try giving a few of us the benefit of the doubt that we DO value the system and won't automatically join the lynch mob at the first chance. Or, failing that, how about the idea that the entire purpose of having *impartial* judicial systems is to make sure that the victims DON'T turn into blindly self-serving mobs? xxg
One of the first cases of this was when Tom's Hardware (then only a startup site) reviewed a Riva TNT and said it was twice as fast as 3DFX voodoo (obviously untrue, but it's unknown if Nvidia paid him anything to say this). Eventually 3DFX picked up on this and demanded that Tom changes it, which he did.
But the damage was already done. rw
The BSD base isn't packaged. BSD types like having a source tree for their entire base system and being able to do "make buildworld" and "make installworld" to upgrade it. The package management system is entirely for third party applications. This is not Debian or Gentoo who have no code maintained by themselves other than installation and package management stuff. The BSDs maintain the kernel, the libc, other key libraries, and all the base utilities like ls, cp, mount, etc. And there's also a lot of "contrib" software in the base system -- some of it necessary to build the system (gcc and binutils), some of it just there out of tradition or regarded as "too useful to be moved to ports" (bind, sendmail). fj
What exactly is the purpose of a fine for a monopoly such as Microsoft? Does the EU think that the money is going to come out of the pay of top MS executives?
Of course not. Any financial penalties will just be passed along to the customer, as usual, who in this case does not have a choice due to the monopoly situation.
More interesting is what the EU will plan to do with the penalty money? Invest it in open source, require open file formats and standards? yx
I have written some software and have decided to distribute it under the GNU General Public License. I then find out some established/incorporated company has modified the software without redistributing their modified version freely, that they are making a profit out of the modified undistributed version, or that they are redistributing the software without pointing out that what they are giving is not the original version of the software. What exactly are my rights? Is it worth taking the company to court, or is this too risky? To come to the point, is the GPL actually a licence which has some value in the courts of justice? xtx
The simple reasoning behind this is to encourage competition in the belief that competion results in better products and/or lower prices.
Cars are something that are easily understood by most people. You buy a car and you want to get it fixed but the place that fixed your old car can't fix this car because the car manufacturer won't let the mechanic read the computer information in YOUR car.
So, you'll have to pay the prices that the car manufacturer wants you to pay to get your car fixed.
I think will be an easy bill to pass. The average person will see it as a way of saving money. vb
In the old days, if you advertise enough the paper would automatically tweek the review. Infoworld had done this with a compiler review. If you read the review, then looked at the score card, you would notice that they did not match.
ej
I have seen bubbles moving down at the edges of my Guinness. This latest "discovery" seems to be common sense to me, and is exactly how I have explained the phenomenem to other drinkers down the pub.
Shame I wasn't paid to do my "research", and that no-one would have listened to me because I didn't have a 750-frame-per-second video camera.
Now, this story would have been really interesting if it had a link to the videos of it happening 'cause it really is a sight to behold! utf
I think they are delaying not due to stealing OSS software ideas, but honestly trying to make their software better. For the first time in many years MS has real competition. They can't release another insecure trashbag OS or database server. If they release before it is actually ready, then they will get tons of bad press and their lunch ate by OSS software.
Lets just hope OSS developers don't sit on their laurels during these delays. If they do they will be playing major catch up come 2005/2006. This is the time for OSS to take the lead. The boys at Redmond may be evil, but they are no fools. us
When will transmeta come out with a Mini-ITX or Nano-ITX board with ther CPU on it? VIA has done very well at that with its C3 processors. They sell a lot to end-users, and sell a ton to embedded systems vendors. Transmeta could get a piece of that market.
Those server/embedded devices are a lot less demanding of CPU power. Any device, like a laptop, which has direct user GUI interfacing will always need a lot of horsepower. fe
I thought they had blocked other programs again. Trillian and Gaim couldn't connect, but I installed MSN 6.1 and got right back on. lue
Actually, cephalopod nerves aren't that amazing. They're no faster that than the nerves in your body. It's just that cephalopods never developed myelinated nerves. Myselin insulates the nerve and allows for much faster signal propogation. The large size of cephalopod nerves is simply an alternate way to get higher transmission speeds.
Either way, nerves only transmit at a few hundred miles an hour. Even assuming these flex wires aren't as conductive as a bulk gold wire, you're still looking at a transmission speed at a significant fraction of c.
Silicon and metal wiring operates at speeds millions of times higher than biological nervous systems. bz
But of course if a drug company spends 7 years developing a drug and starts trying to recoup some of that cost over the next few years everyone will forget the R&D and point out how the drug costs nothing to make and so the company is ripping everyone off. When I worked at a pharmaceutical company there were cases when it took so long to develop a drug that it wasn't worth bringing it to market because the patent would almost have expired by time it was ready for release. (The patent needs to be filed right at the beginning of the testing process.) po
hey, remember linus signed some pretty odd things during LCA:)
Yeah, my wife still refuses to wash her left breast.... is
Sedition is defined as speach which advocates the immedate and violent overthrow of the government in a fashion as to provide a clear and present danger, if my memory serves me correctly.
My question is, would an internet website fall into that catigory, as it does not have the same force as say, Hitler in the Haufbrauhause with like, 2,000 SA going to storm the Bavarian capital building. It does have a wider audience, but due to the decentralized nature I doubt that a website can provide a clear and present danger or immediate action at all. Am I wrong? Does the PATRIOT Act redefine it in such a way as to make it "terrorism?" oof
Judging fromt the description that people had problems logging in, but that things work fine once logged in, and OTOH that Messenger had problems too, I would conclude that the problem is with their Passport infrastructure.
doMaybe I'll low-ball them on the price for a music CD. aiy
I used to work for Sun Electric (now Snap-On), designing engine and emission diagnostic analyzers.
The "secret" diagnostic codes are published. The Chilton's repair guides for cars list the error codes for each car and manufacturer. Also, the factory service manuals for those cars have the codes and their meanings listed.
I love Cadillacs, though, because you can press "OFF" and "WARMER" on the Climate Control panel and it will list the codes on the display there! Then you can do the repairs at home yourself!
You can also go buy a $500.00 Snap-on ALDL analyzer (Assembly Line Diagnostic Link) and it will list the codes too. The newer vehicles call this OBD-2 (Onboard Diagnostics, V2).
Finally, there is some software out there (Payware, IIRC) that will list the codes on a PC or laptop, but you need to build an RS-232 to ALDL level converter for it (or buy the software with the appropriate dongle).
rle
Perhaps a date in the story would have been more useful, since "As of 8:15 PM EST" is now just highly misleading. That 8:15PM EST was on Friday, March 12. This story is making it sound like it's been down for days, but in reality it was just a few short hours.
This story isn't even relevant at this point. zad
In a related question - do you think the Google cache is open to legal challenges the way it is currently implemented? bf
You do realize, this is one of the weakest arguments you can possibly make. "Forget all intellectual arguments, precedent, centuries of commonlaw. If this happened to YOU, you'd want him hung! So it's OK to hang him!"
Try giving a few of us the benefit of the doubt that we DO value the system and won't automatically join the lynch mob at the first chance. Or, failing that, how about the idea that the entire purpose of having *impartial* judicial systems is to make sure that the victims DON'T turn into blindly self-serving mobs? qze
Whether Pluto is 'really' a planet or just a big Kuiper object seems to be a silly argument. Even if it's not justifiable, we'll call Pluto a planet out of tradition. wmh
... because Apple is not a monopoly, period. glg
"Paying $300 to fix an $800 PC" would be a bad investment. However:
* spending $300 to recover $1000 of drop-dead important data has no relation to the value of the PC its on.
* spending $300 to get a group of digital animators back online and working is worth it when you are otherwise paying them to sit around.
People don't pay me what I'm worth, they pay me what THEY are worth. Paying me $150/hr for expert help often makes far more sense than stopping what they are doing (and proficient at) to stall with problems that they might even make worse with trial and error.
For the same reason, I take my motorcycle to a mechanic to fix rather than do it myself, because my time is worth more than paying him to do it for me. Same with growing the wheat I eat, the cotton for the clothes I wear and the trees that my bed was made from. It's called an economy.
Broad brush simpleton columnists like to coin words, but not only is ditita..whatever a STUPID word that conveys no meaning, but it is not useful or necessary. We already have words: technician, assistant, specialist.
The problem with equating a 'trade' such as plumbing and electrical work with tech management is that it's far easier to teach anyone how to wire or plumb than to teach troubleshooting. It's much closer to being a mechanic. Plumbers often do things according to a plan. Only when the shit is two feet deep and rising is plumbing similar to crisis management in IT. fr
I'd like to calm the rhetoric. Sure, common sense would indicate the RIAA's copyrights have been violated. But copyright has been heavily legislated over the past century to the point that common sense or common law is nearly absent. It has such things as compulsory licences and device royalties. Morality should be confined to governing personal actions and advocating revisions to intellectual property law. It is disingenuous for the RIAA to invoke morality when if anything they have had excessive influence in crafting legislation.
IANAL but lets look at the law. Once you know the tokens, legalese is not usually harder to parse than APL:) Apologies for a US-centric viewpoint but I believe a statutory situation exists in all other common-law countries with different details. There's an excellent copy of the United States Code, Title 17 - Copyrights at Cornell [cornell.edu]. Chapter 10 covers DIGITAL AUDIO RECORDING DEVICES AND MEDIA . Particularly interesting is:
Sec. 1008. - Prohibition on certain infringement actions... No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings
Simply breathtaking! The words "this title" mean Title 17, which contains all of US copyright law. The first "based on" means these things are not actionable as contributory negligence ("burglars tools"). The second "based on" means non-commercial use of these things does not violate copyright. Wow!
The definitions in Sec.1001 would seem to include computers. They sure are designed, advertised and used that way amongst others. But all is not [Guns'N'] roses. The manufacturers of these recording devices would seem to owe a device tax that gets paid through the Librarian-of-Congress (of all people!) to the RIAA as specified. There are also requirements related to the Serial Copy Management System. I trust that RIAA have settled this with their long-standing antagonists, appliance manufacturers, now including Dell, HP, et al. But even if not, how does it affect me?
The term "noncommercial use" would almost certainly cover receiving music files to make recordings on a hard-disk. Offering to transmit music files might not be covered and fall under the exceptionally byzantine Sec.114 as an "interactive service". But a lawyer specialising in Copyright law should be able to give a better interpretation including case precedents. The Diamond Rio MP3 player case [gigalaw.com] is probably relevant. Is there a lawyer in the house?
gt
Centrino is not a chip. It is a "system" comprised of three parts:
/ demo/wo rks.htm?iid=ipp_demworks+tab&
jc
Intel(R) Pentium M processor
Intel(R) 855 Chipset Family
Intel(R) PRO/Wireless Network Connection
Basically, Intel repackaged and "branded" some existing technologies in an effort to squeeze out other wireless hardware manufacturers (if it ain't Intel WiFi, you can't call it "Centrino," and a successful branding campign makes people want Centrino whether or not they know what it actually is).
Anyway, your question is stil valid, but to technically nitpick it's really about the Pentium M processor.
More info:
http://intel.com/products/mobiletechnology
warezing is a crime in australia and many country's so this sounds supported there. The article says "Griffiths Australian lawyers are fighting the move, stating that he has never set foot in the United States and has committed no crime under Australian law" but to me thats lawyer defense standard sputtering as it IS illegal in australia.
Their lawyers are using simple SCO tactics like "our IP is in their product" they can say it but it does not make it true.
adult desktops & wallpapers [67.160.223.119] zcz
God, how fucking petty is slashdot getting???
Sure, hotmail was down, boo-hoo. It's a free email service. Deal with it.
Why is slashdot determined to report every single trivial detail when it comes to Microsoft? Try to stick with the big stories, please, not "Bill Gates forgets to lift toilet seat!" or "Steve Ballmer takes up two parking spaces in Microsoft parking lot!"
ykl
Sometimes I feel that eventually MS and IBM will come to legal blows (more than likely due to SCO being a puppet of MS) - Do you think that this will eventually happen, and if so, who do you feel will win based on a) legal prowess and b) technology patents.
Also, what's your take on the SCO brouhaha? syh
You think that's bad? Try working at an isp and have people yelling at you and blaming you for breaking hotmail ;).
ahh the joys of the internet. fee
I thought they had blocked other programs again. Trillian and Gaim couldn't connect, but I installed MSN 6.1 and got right back on. ry
Bill has been tinkering with computers since the age of two. He has been playing with DVD drives on his computer since 1999. Recently he has been unable to watch any movies on his computer running GNAA/Linux because of the codes that the MPAA has used to encrypt the disc.
"I think it's an illegal monopoly. If you don't have the codes you can't watch the disc."
Yet there's a law that protects the MPAA from having to give this code to the rest of the world. It's called the DMCA. It stops you from circumventing copy-protection.
Why aren't there any lawmakers backing the public on DVD encryption? See here [slashdot.org]. gs
" So can't OEM people install real, etc before selling at the moment? Guess not."
Of course they can do but why would they ? They can't buy a cheaper version of Windows without a media player so there's no point in them shopping around for a cheaper alternative.
Stripping out Media Player from Windows will allow the OEM's to judge Media Player vs it's rivals on a fair footing, e.g. knowing the cost of each application.
In theory anyway, I hope there is some provision that the two versions of windows will need to maintain some kind of sensible price differentiation. mv
Yet we are expected to excuse your grammatical and typos. Doesn't that just promote bad practices? Shouldn't we whack you over the head with a baseball bat just to make sure you won't post when you're not prepared to write flawless posts?
The more work you have to do to check errors, the more likely it is that however vigilant you might be, errors slip past. If you have to check the return values of a 100 commands, that is a 100 chances for forgetting to do the check or for doing the check the wrong way, or for handling the error incorrectly.
In this case, the shell offers a function that provides a more sensible default handling of errors: If you don't handle them, the shell won't continue executing by "accident" because you didn't catch an error, but will terminate. It also provides an optional feature that let you easily retry commands that are likely to fail sometimes and where the likely error handling would be to stop processing and retry without having to write the logic yourself.
Each time you have to write logic to handle exponential backoff and to retry according to specific patterns is one more chance of introducing errors.
No offense, but I would rather trust a SINGLE implementation that I can hammer the hell out of until I trust it and reuse again and again than trust you (or anyone else) to check the return code of every command and every function they call.
This shell does not remove the responsibility to for handling errors. It a) chooses a default behaviour that reduces the chance of catastrophic errors when an unhandled error occurs, and b) provides a mechanism for automatic recovery from a class of errors that occur frequently in a particular type of systems (distributed systems where network problems DO happen on a regular basis), and by that leave developers free to spend their time on more sensible things (I'd rather have my team doing testing than writing more code than they need to) pl
How the fuck did this get modded to +5?
Wow, MySQL now has an official front-end tool (instead of one of many third-party ones that it's had for ages), oohh, that'll make ALL the difference. It's got NOWHERE NEAR the feature set of MS-SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, or Firebird. Christ, we had to wait till version FOUR till they added native transaction support (which wasn't ever written by them), subqueries, replication, etc. and we're still not sure that it even does any of this properly now! (Each point release massively changes and/or extends features, which is stupid for a supposedly stable DB.) Sounds like a "real" DB to me that'll definitely compete with Oracle and MS-SQL, yeah right...
But because Slashdot loves MySQL this gets modded to +5 by people who don't know shit about databases, and certainly not about MS SQL Server. Great.
The only reason MySQL became popular was because it was free and ran well together with Apache on modest hardware, so ISPs could bundle it as a *simple* website backend DB. It does that pretty well (as long as you don't mind running REPAIR TABLE every now and again), but it's certainly no viable alternative to MS-SQL or Oracle. Anyone that thinks that and uses the acronym M$ in the same post really doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about. ik
While wardriving one day I happened to stumble onto an open wireless network for a lawyer, a doctor, and a securities trading firm in the same parking lot. All networks were open and C drives for many computers were shared. I connected to the networks for the doctor and checked my email. I connected to the lawyer's office and plundered around in their shared drives and copied a folder called Client Files onto my computer. And I connected to the securities firm and started up a packet monitor for an hour to capture and analyze their network traffic. This information reveled several bank account numbers, email usernames and passwords, and sensitive customer information.
All 3 networks had no encryption in place and no passwords were cracked to access any of the data.
How many, and which laws, have I broken?
dnx
When I picture that in mind I find it quite funny. I can imagine the stage dark and the crowd all hushed, with Gollum staring into his palm, singing 'Why oh why did this ring find meeeeeeeeeeee' in a deep operatic voice (ie non Gollum-esque). ehj
Lets get this stright. You -brought- windows XP.
No, he bought Windows XP.
siI think perl is where it is because so many people use it as "super script." To me that says, a) we recode all the Bourne and csh and bash in perl or b) we look at why people do shell scripting in perl or other languages and add that to the shell. I couldn't tell you which is right. It's a neat idea though and I'm glad they made it.
A real example I can think of, I had a test machine that had some kind of ext3 corruption and so it mounted up in read-only mode when it booted. I spent time diagnosing an application error in our application because nothing caught that; these are redhat type startup scripts. I noticed that our app couldn't write logs and began to debug the system. More interestingly, a dozen or so start-up scripts failed to start up critical components and their failure wasn't noticed. If you can't write to the filesystem, you can't create a socket(AF_UNIX) and all sort's of things go tits up then. If that's how you debug it's only going to get more difficult as you add more and more complexity, you have to detect the lower level failures and report them. Perversely, this wouldn't have been noticed had a different partition been read-only. Turns out that a drive was going bad. Had it been a different partition, it would have been noticed at catastrophic system failure time when the drive died.
I've done a fair amount of embedded work and there is always a test for new guys, you can tell the new guy (new college grad, whatever) because he skips half or more of the error checking in his code. You know printf returns a value? Funnier still, if you develop something like a consumer app in embedded space, you'll eventually see things like printf fail. We know it never should, but with 20,000+ users in different environments and what not, things like that can and do fail and usually point to a greater problem, like a dead drive or something. Instead of logging/alerting something to the critical and unusual printf failure, the app fails in a different way because this printf failed. Heaven forbid that it was sprintf that failed and then you shove bad data in to a database or configuration file and not just fail the system but corrupt the data too. Inspite of all of that, even veterans will forget error checking at times, it's a common bug and so having higher level tools to help assist, like exception in the shell can only be a good thing. aoz
Perhaps the bendy straw people should sue. vug
DSPAM (as in De-Spam) is an extremely scalable, open-source statistical-algorithmic hybrid anti-spam filter. A majority of users running v2.10+ achieve filtering rates ranging from 99.92% - 99.98+%, DSPAM is currently effective as both a server-side agent for UNIX email servers and a developer's library for mail clients, other anti-spam tools, and similar projects requiring drop-in spam filtering. DSPAM has been implemented on many large and small scale systems with the largest systems being reported at about 125,000 mailboxes.
What is a Statistical-Algorithmic Hybrid Filter?
Present-day language classifiers bear the responsibility of maintaining accuracy in the midst of ever-increasing sample complexity. In the setting of spam filtering, many types of intentional attacks have been introduced such as obfuscation, word list injection, sample flooding, and etcetera. As the complexity of classification text continues to multiply rapidly, many filter developers today are left with conflicted feelings between increasing the complexity of their filter and wise teachings from CS class reminding them that computer science is about controlling complexity, not creating it. At the rate complexity is rising, filters will (and have already begun to) become so resource-intensive that they lose scalability, eventually leading to a second conflict of interests: where fighting spam becomes more expensive than managing it.
DSPAM is the first Statistical-Algorithmic Hybrid filter and in being such boldly suggests that there is a better alternative to increasing the feature set of filters to match the spams they are trying to fight. By employing algorithms designed to increase the quality of existing data rather than the quantity of data with the goal of reducing the feature set rather than increasing it, DSPAM has managed to achieve nearly equal levels of accuracy with present-day Markovian-based filters and other types of filters that employ large feature sets with the added benefit of using a significantly fewer amount of resources. DSPAM presently peaks at 99.984% accuracy, which is ten times more accurate than a human being [1] and is presently being used on implementations as large as 125,000+ mailboxes.
DSPAM's Focus
The DSPAM project attempts to go beyond "just another statistical filter" by focusing on the following areas:
* DSPAM has a strong focus on providing better data to already existing algorithms (Bayesian, Chi-Square, etcetera) Combination algorithms work inherently well, but depend on the quality of data. Some of the approaches deployed in DSPAM towards this goal include Chained Tokens, Inoculation Groups, Classification Groups, advanced de-obfuscation techniques, and a new noise reduction algorithm called Bayesian Noise Reduction. The goal is to incorporate processing algorithms that can withstand the long haul of ever increasing message complexity. So far we're doing a great job.
* A strong focus on large-scale implementation support. The largest implementation of DSPAM we've heard about to-date involves 125,000 users. DSPAM has been designed to experience a very short execution time (0.03s - 0.10s on average hardware), and has been equipped with a storage driver API allowing several different storage mechanisms to be used. Depending on disk space constraints, accuracy can be traded off for additional disk space or vice-versa.
* Empty Corpus Support and Global Dictionary Support. It is very important in a large-scale environment to allow users to build their own dictionaries starting from scratch. Why? Because system administrators haven't got the time to create 20,000 seeded dictionaries. On top of this, ISPs require out-of-the-box filtering, which DSPAM's global dictionary feature provides for end-users, with minimal centralized learning. DSPAM provides support for building corpuses from scratch without suffering many fatal training errors (false positives). When these two
Read the rest of this comment... lc
And the other side of the coin:
What do you think needs to be done to ensure that the rights of creators and artists are preserved in the digital age?
Suppose it is determined that a solution that both protects the producer's copyrights and the consumer's fair-use rights is not possible. Which side's rights deserve more protection? ted
The difference lies in the fact that with codes to your car, it can be serviced independently.
With the codes to your DVD, you can make unlimited copies, and do anything and everything with them.
Try doing that to your car when you get it's codes. aud
I spent the better part of three year implementing a fault tollerant programming environment and released it under GPL. Please visit Askemos [askemos.org] to find it. br
Went so far over my head I hurt my neck as it passed over me. Spamassassin was not that complex.
sparkeyjames
bqx
And they had an advantage that Europe also got after WW2: Their manufacturing infrastructure was completely destroyed, so they had a chance to start from scratch with cutting-edge (at the time_) technology throughout the entire process. The US was (and is) still trying to maintain their much older and less capable facilities, since that was still less expensive than starting over and there was no carpet-bombing to force them into it. zr
There's a video about it here: video/mov,4MB [stanford.edu]
Mentioned in news article from [stanford.edu] tf
This actually would work out quite nicely for Starbucks, because all music [i]currently[/i] in store is put out by their own label. kpn
I'm sure many businesses would love to be able to only purchase the parts of windows that they wanted. ia
i think you'll find PostgreSQL [postgresql.org] is also pretty good value for money! jug
How about requring MicroSoft to install third-party players as well as its own media player? That would provide more choices to users and the users will be able to choose whatever they like. In my opinion, this is way better than completely removing useful software from the system.
Let the end users decide what they want. Personally, I think that Windows Media Player is a lot better than Winamp or other alternatives; however, I would not mind if everybody had a chance to compare and decide. jdf
MS Windows XP without WMP..Euro 159.99
erm, GNAA/Linux please...
Hey, just noticed something. For a site that likes to be open, why can I NOT use the Great British pound sign OR the EURO sign (both are in there now, but don't show on the comment), only the DOLLAR? Is this a consipiracy? Whether text, HTML or Extrans...What's wrong with that?
You can say Micro$oft but not Microoft or Microoft for examples...see, the pound AND Euro don't come out...? rcy
Why is it that so many Unix/GNAA/Linux programs (and everything else, for that matter) do not provide simple screenshots on their products websites?
If I'm going to download your program and install it (and in many cases, take time to compile it...) I want to know that it's going to look halfway decent when I'm done.
Why is this so hard for some programmers to understand? pv
I was getting a "Service Unavailable" but couldn't figure out if it was my flaky connection or Microsoft's flaky software. Guess now I know. bx
Sedna is over 4 times the size (volume) of Quaoar.
Whether it's a planet is a silly argument, but even so, "we already have Quaoar" is really irrelevant.
xd
Mr. Godwin - Lots of/.ers follow the SCO case, followed the DeCSS, Napster, IP, CIPA, etc. What are some lesser known cases/laws that you forsee as having a large potential impact on 'cyberlaw' as we know it? ao
It is a crime to eat chewinggum in Singapore. Does that mean Singapore can extradite and incarcerate every American who eats chewinggum in US soil? qf
How do you plan on managing laws and constitutions that stretch beyond U.S territories.
If the Internet started with the U.S and expanded to some parts of Antarctica. U.S. rules are probably useless once it gets to the new continent.
Vice versa if someone in Antarctica created a P2P application and it became extremely popular in the U.S. U.S lawyers probably can never get a grip on it.
Isn't geography the greatest challenge out there for any lawyers. In fact it's so difficult to deal with it's rendering the law useless. fh
Problem with that theory is that the Dealership will usually charge you $75 to hook up the computer - when all they are doing is plugging in a damn cable and firing up the reader. Only then will you know what is wrong, after paying $75. Seems like extorition.... hf
Back in April 2002, the UK government started to fund a centre [bbc.co.uk] studying both the near-earth-orbit rocks we know about, and ways of increasing awareness and detection rates, as well as investigating possible protection strategies.
Personally I think it's just playing at people-politics, at least in the form the UK has done it $600k isn't going to go very far, but it's a relatively cheap purchase of public goodwill... On the other hand, at the moment I'll take what we can get.
There's a tiny chance of life as we know it being destroyed. A really tiny chance, and one thing humans aren't good at is disaster-planning - even when the potential result is extinction, the "gut-feeling" is to say "it'll never happen", because none of us have any experience of it happening. This is short-sighted, we should be doing something.
Although I don't think there's any reason to panic about it, the last great ecosystem was destroyed by (perhaps two, perhaps 1) asteroid, as far as we know. Researching, thinking, creating plans would probably be a good idea, at least IMHO.
Simon bxj
There is no need for BSD-from-scratch disto.
1: All the BSDs are entirely different operating systems, which are lumped into one category becuase of their roots.
2: Since no extra bullshit is thrown in like linux, there is less need for reworking the base.
3: BSD is not obscure in the least, it is rather alive and florishing.
BTW you forgot to mention Solaris, which has it's roots in BSD too. ums
This actually would work out quite nicely for Starbucks, because all music [i]currently[/i] in store is put out by their own label. lu
Allowing a system as large as Hotmail to completely fail is a MAJOR technical screw-up. It would be an interesting and embarrassing story no matter what OS it's running or who is in charge of it. Especially from a sysadmin point of view, it's a big deal. While it's obviously not important to you, it's anything but trivial.
It makes me smile that it never went down when it was running on FreeBSD (shameless advocacy), although, to be fair, this incident was almost certainly due to an architectural weakness or network hardware failure and not an OS issue. I guess we'll never know... bnw
In my opinion, any file format that claims to be universal should have two properties: it should have an expressive structure, so other formats can be expressed in it, and it should be as lean as possible, so that converting from other formats amounts to removing information. I think that MusicXML fits neither.
Am I missing something or are those two properties mutually contradictory? If converting means removing stuff, then the format would have to be a subset of the original, but if it's expressive enough to express other formats, then would it not also have to be a superset?
I basically read that as "It must be both more and less than what we have, and MusicXML is neither of those things" mmq
"So Andy got hold of a camera that takes 750 frames a second and recorded some rather gorgeous video clips of what was happening."
So quit hoggin' it and let us have some of that sweet sweet goodness. ebl
I can't think of a more unfortunate name than the "phantom console" other than the "vaporware console"... seriously who comes up with this stuff.
If they tried to sue me I'd call their bluff (the "phantom lawsuit") and just put quotation marks around all my stuff to humiliate them:
The ceo of the company making the *yet to be released* "phantom" console has asked us to take down our review of their business. We suggest the best thing they could do would be to give us a "phantom" console to review, but something is really haunting their company - because the "phantom console" has yet to be released to the public. Finding their "phantom offices" is also a difficult task. But perhaps we shouldn't be so hard on the CEO, he could be a visionary - this "phantom of his imagination" could bring the gaming world to it's knees. All they need to do is set a new "phantom release date" and stick to it like the slime the ghosts leave when the pass through walls in Ghost Busters. Then we will all be able to enjoy the phantoms
humiliation complete, lawsuit aborted, insert credit for more life. mh
No matter what technology it uses, neural nets, b-trees, recursion, tinkertoy logic [rutgers.edu], smell-emitting diode, leaky junction zener transistor, steam-powered aeolipiles, it only automagically presses delete, which is a pretty lame way of fighting spam.
It's a lame way of fighting spam, because, we STILL have to pay for the fucking spam bandwitdh; we STILL have to pay for the goddammed disk space used by the spam; we STILL have to pay for the bloody time lost transmitting the spam; we STILL have to pay for the extra ISP infrastructure to carry those spams.
Naaah. Spammers should be eradicated from the Internet, and the best way to do so is to completely BLOCK networks who host spammers (no matter what service), in order to force the collateral damage to whine to the ISP or simply vote with their feet. vs
Seriously, how many legal car repair shops do you think there are? A million is most likely a conservative figure. The car computer legislation is happening because there are a lot of people in the car repair business, and have been in the car repair business for generations. But, suddenly (last few years) they've been unable to fix cars because they don't know the secret codes for the cars' computers.
This isn't "I want everything, like MP3s and DVDs, for free". This is "I want to fsck-ing survive here. qhq
I admit I am a coffee addict; and although I like to frequent a variety of coffee shops, I frequrntly find myself in Starbucks. I don't know how many years they have been selling CD's at the register, but I do know that in the almost 10 years I've been going to Starbucks, I have only bought one CD. This is significant considering I am sure I'm in their target audience (I am 21 -- and yes, that means I started going to Starbucks when I was 11). I listen to a lot of music and have literally hundreds of CD's, but I do not associate Starbucks with music. I do not see this as getting Starbucks any more customers and if they charge even $10/CD it is beyond the price of an impulse buy (esp. for most college students). Another issue I have with it is that I don't know how they wiill store the music, but I personally wouldn't pay for CD burned with music once stored in a lossy format (like AC3 or MP3). I would hope (but highly doubt) that they keep the music in SHN format (lossless) and just unshorten and burn the files then reshorten them. I must admit, this probably won't keep the people who buy CD's off of iTunes from buying them, but it does eliminate some of their audience. fxq
how many times have you hacked something together in perl that ended up being relied on for some pretty important stuff, only to find 6 months down the track that there's some condition (db connects fine, but fails halfway through script execution as an example) you didn't consider and the whole thing just collapses in a heap - a nasty to recover heap cause you didn't write much logging code either.
This would REALLY be useful when you're connecting to services external to yourself - network glitches cause more problems with my code than ANYTHING else, and it's a pain in the arse to write code to deal with it gracefully. i'd really really like to see a universal "try this for 5 minutes" wrapper, which, if it still failed, you'd only have one exit condition to worry about. hey, what the hell, maybe i'll spend a few days and write one myself. si
Just examine the effect and move it to macro scale, i.e. you drag lighter-than-air baloons down, pick them and release them up in normal conditions, creating energy (i.e. lifting small amounts of water up and releasing it onto a turbine). Free Energy! Of course there ain't no free lunch, but in this case it comes at cost of earth's rotation momentum, after several megawatts of energy produced our day will be some fraction of second longer. dz
Can I sue for damages incurred because I couldn't order my penis enlargement pills before my porn audition? Damn you microsoft, you kept me from making millions! Now just give me some money and we'll call it even. ve
Copyright law in individual countries is usually relatively clear. However, the interactions of the copyright laws of different jurisdictions are often a legal minefield.
What is the best general rule for dealing with 'odd' copyright lengths such as Crown copyright, 50 years from date of publication in general, in countries like the US which have not adopted the Berne Convention rule of shorter term? lk
I'd like to calm the rhetoric. Sure, common sense would indicate the RIAA's copyrights have been violated. But copyright has been heavily legislated over the past century to the point that common sense or common law is nearly absent. It has such things as compulsory licences and device royalties. Morality should be confined to governing personal actions and advocating revisions to intellectual property law. It is disingenuous for the RIAA to invoke morality when if anything they have had excessive influence in crafting legislation.
IANAL but lets look at the law. Once you know the tokens, legalese is not usually harder to parse than APL:) Apologies for a US-centric viewpoint but I believe a statutory situation exists in all other common-law countries with different details. There's an excellent copy of the United States Code, Title 17 - Copyrights at Cornell [cornell.edu]. Chapter 10 covers DIGITAL AUDIO RECORDING DEVICES AND MEDIA . Particularly interesting is:
Sec. 1008. - Prohibition on certain infringement actions... No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings
Simply breathtaking! The words "this title" mean Title 17, which contains all of US copyright law. The first "based on" means these things are not actionable as contributory negligence ("burglars tools"). The second "based on" means non-commercial use of these things does not violate copyright. Wow!
The definitions in Sec.1001 would seem to include computers. They sure are designed, advertised and used that way amongst others. But all is not [Guns'N'] roses. The manufacturers of these recording devices would seem to owe a device tax that gets paid through the Librarian-of-Congress (of all people!) to the RIAA as specified. There are also requirements related to the Serial Copy Management System. I trust that RIAA have settled this with their long-standing antagonists, appliance manufacturers, now including Dell, HP, et al. But even if not, how does it affect me?
The term "noncommercial use" would almost certainly cover receiving music files to make recordings on a hard-disk. Offering to transmit music files might not be covered and fall under the exceptionally byzantine Sec.114 as an "interactive service". But a lawyer specialising in Copyright law should be able to give a better interpretation including case precedents. The Diamond Rio MP3 player case [gigalaw.com] is probably relevant. Is there a lawyer in the house?
caa
After all, Legolas's antics were not far off....
cjl
Singapore bans the import, sale and manufacture of chewing gum. It isn't illegal to chew it.
Chuckle.
A lot like the way the DMCA *doesn't* make fair use illegal.
- gx
...a laptop with a dedicated "portable" architecture. I can definately see Intel saying "More transistors, more power, more clock, and it'll be okay" - which is questionable on the desktop but not at all adequate with laptops. Transmeta's departure from this is an interesting turn of events - Will we see two separate processor lines, one for the laptop, and one for the desktop? And I don't mean the M-series, which just added variable clock and PM, but something like two different design philosophies.
And damn, that's a sexy laptop...:)
rb
I had a class with this professor earlier this year. This really explains his teaching style... he must have done his beer "research" each day right before he lectured... wb
Someone needs to let them in on a little IBM/Apple secret [apple.com]:)
ni
You're in Minnesota. That's instant punishment. If it weren't for their hockey team, it would have been labelled 'Hell' a long time ago. upw
This [missilebases.com]is not exactly new [silohome.com]. Atlas and Titan silos have been up for auction/sale for many years. mz
In reality the casual-cup-time should nicely eliminate the percieved lack of instant gratification.
fmWithout further independent research that confirms this data, I won't believe it... As my contribution to mankind, I will be donating my time to this endeavor this afternoon, right after work... anyone else care to volunteer? su
I think someone was implementing a new backup scheme and decided it would be a good idea to dismount the store, move it over to another cluster.
Course it looks like if people managed to get on their service was fine, so maybe they screwed up some passwords. Time will tell this story tid
Yes, that caught my eye too. I find most of the hardware-review sites I read on Google, for that matter. And the whole point of all of this is: how do you "validate that it is a trustworthy site"? Any site? Answer: you don't. Everything on the Web is basically taken on faith or not at all, and you have to use your own judgment as to what is reliable and what is not. But, really... that's the way things have been since the invention of written language. I mean, how often have you heard the expression "You don't believe everything you read, do you?" That is more true now than it ever was before. When you think about it, back in the age of books (the old-fashioned non-battery-powered, non-backlit kind without a microprocessor), there was an editing and review process for virtually everything that was published. That guaranteed a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than we have on the Web. Yes, it's true... anyone can publish their works to the whole damn planet for the price of a free Web hosting account, and that is generally a good thing. But that doesn't mean the quality or reliability of that material is any better: on average it is quite the opposite in fact.
The problem is that some (many, I think) people look at information found via Google as somehow having been vetted or approved by that organization. How many users even grasp that once they click on a link on a Google results page they are no longer even connected to Google? Google is primarily an index, not a repository (yes, I know they cache pages but they don't create or maintain that information.) The World Wide Web is the repository, and like most public receptacles it is largely full of crap. aue
Microsoft is very good at maintining their own products and services. Imagine how well Hotmail and MSN have to be configured to be in proper working order to gain respectible uptimes.
With that in mind, just remember: All those Windows boxes have to be restarted at some point. Hats off to MS for holding out as long as they did.
(Flamewar disclaimer: It's a joke. Laugh.) uom
Just examine the effect and move it to macro scale, i.e. you drag lighter-than-air baloons down, pick them and release them up in normal conditions, creating energy (i.e. lifting small amounts of water up and releasing it onto a turbine). Free Energy! Of course there ain't no free lunch, but in this case it comes at cost of earth's rotation momentum, after several megawatts of energy produced our day will be some fraction of second longer. fb
By the looks of the Intel story below, Slashdot sure needs a good Bayesian spam filter. I recommend this. Or a baseball bat. Because you can go over to anti-slash and really pound some skulls with a baseball bat, and it would probably be more satisfying. But filters are good too, don't get me wrong. qw
When the MPAA comes a callin' with their CSS encryption, the answer is the DMCA.
But when it comes to open-standards for automobiles, they're all for it.
Why won't they make up their minds? pal
The ship date news had already been reported by Mary Jo Foley, The reporter of Microsoft news, on the 10th.
1 54 6601,00.asp
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,
Steven
tt
i wouldnt exactly say transmeta chips are blazing.. my friend had a 600mhz tm5600 based laptop that had been marketed as 'gigapro' without any sort of actual note of the clock speed and the performance was not really near that of a comparable 600mhz cpu from amd or intel.. he endedup selling it for the price he bought it for and got an A64 emachines with a radeon m9600.. bit better for games;) ra
I could see this idea working in one of those indie coffee houses that play music that no one has heard of.
You can hear some interesting music at a shop and be kinda forced to go around asking the people what the name of the song is etc... If they're playing all of their music on a database that people can buy burned cds from, it would take a lot of the hassle of having to search for it. It would be even better if they could put the CD-TEXT, ID3, whatever...so you know exactly what the songs are... ubComets are snowballs; asteroids are rocks. Oversimplification, but you get the idea. li
If this sort of thing is common, can anyone recommend any review sites that they trust?
--
Real-time deal updates [dealsites.net] vvu
a auto-completing python interpreter and editor
Try the Wing IDE [wingide.com]. It has most of the functions you wanted... But it's not free software. gy
Transmeta made a lot of fuss about energy efficiency, but in reality, the Intel LV and ULV mobile Tualatin P3 consumes almost as little power while being much faster. The best power/speed tradeoff seems to be the ULV P3 933mhz, 512kb L2 cache, 1.1V. The typical and maximum power consumption are 4 and 7W respectively.
Intel is now hyping the P-M just as heavily as Transmeta. The P-M can dynamically scale the frequency through a large range, but if you use CPU intensive apps, the power consumption can get suprisingly high (31W for the 1.5-1.7 ghz versions). For more facts and figures, see Sandpile [sandpile.org].
ngm
don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I'm kind of let down by the fact that our most interesting space story for awhile now is that we MAY have a 10th planet in our solar system.
Umm...what? The past few months have been *spectacularly* exciting from a space point of view. We have two probes that successfully landed on Mars and have found strong evidence that Mars had liquid brine at one point. We have a ton of pictures from the surface to look at, and are expecting tons of findings, papers, and theories based on probe data that's been returned.
And while, yes, the classification may not be interesting, the fact that we discovered a new, sizeable chunk of matter in our solar system is not small stuff either. dak
Yes, but:
1) The ability to use non-Microsoft products is obviously a good thing but that's very different from the absence of the Microsoft products being a good thing.
2)We're not talking about MS selling a base version and an enhanced version. It will be a full version and a crippled version with functionality yanked out. With Microsoft having every reason to make it work as badly as possible.
I want Mozilla and iTunes to work. I couldn't care less about whether the MS functionality on the system remains or not. This thing is such a pointless exercise I can't imagine whom they think it will benefit.
ns
Here's Cinder [suicidegirls.com] zz
Just because it CAN be used for something else doesn't mean it is.
which doesn't mean it won't be in the near future. if you want to regulate or in some way crack down on the software implementations of p2p that are used for violating copyrights, that is fine as long as it is done in a respnosible manner. But if you want to make it illegal for me to write a p2p software system that is not in any way related to unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials, then that is absolutely wrong.
No, this statement is naive.
explain why, i'm listening... fcf
I think the question should rather be...
Whether linux is well optimized for x86 arch.
since these chips use a VLIW core for the actual processing with the x86 instructions being compiled on the fly to the vliw code.
Maybe if the linux kernel was compiled to take better advantage of instruction level parallelism the code morphing engine(the x86 to vliw compiler) could actually run linux much faster.
But then that would be doing some part of the code morphing engines job at the compiler level... nothing wrong with that except you would have to write an entirely new compiler.
plz correct me if i am wrong. (any comp arch gurus around)
wc
We've had them for many years. It's called NiTiNOL. Nitinol is a metal alloy that, when used in wires, constricts when current is passed through it (heating phase) and stretches when it is idle (cooling phase). This is also the same material that those bend-proof wire glasses frames are made of. See http://www.dynalloy.com/AboutNitinol.html for just one manufacturer's info page. bdi
When it comes to 'free' things on the internet, the old phrase 'don't look a gift-horse in the mouth' just doesn't apply: You should be giving that horse a full dental exam!
People do have a right to complain if they feel a service is bad, even if it's free. Especially if it's a service such as e-mail, which is a pain to switch. It takes time and they know this and exploit it.
ugu
Except that he has 19 comments from SELLERS, which means he was buying, not selling on Ebay. wt
Looking for spam by content analysis for a single user only works for some people. If, for example, your legitimate E-mail contains many messages about investments, mortgages, and similar financial subjects, it's going to be hard to separate out financial spam by word analysis.
Spamcop does multiple-user analysis. It works better than most of the single-user systems. qg
It also depends on what "repair" is.
"Repair" might mean that the computer won't boot up at all, and this person has their doctoral dissertation nearly complete on it. Of course, they haven't made any backups... It would easily be worth $800 to recover that data and get the computer up and running again.
For me, when it comes to working on people's computers, I basically tell them it will cost them $50/hour. But also that I have an "hourly" cost for certain jobs. From start to finish, installing windows and all their software may take more than 5 or 6 hours. But a lot of that is just waiting. So, for that job, I'll tell them it will be about 2 to 2 1/2 hours of billed time. qu
Problem with that theory is that the Dealership will usually charge you $75 to hook up the computer - when all they are doing is plugging in a damn cable and firing up the reader. Only then will you know what is wrong, after paying $75. Seems like extorition.... xc
I'm a pretty serious amateur jazz musician, and I do a fair amount of composing and arranging for jazz ensembles of about 8-16 musicians.
LilyPond is not intended for people like me. If you're less serious than I am, LilyPond is definitely not intended for you.
The most popular music notation software is Finale. Finale is buggier than Windows ME and twice as bloated, but once you learn how to use it, it gets the job done. You can enter your notes relatively quickly, tweak them a little, print, and go. While it has some very non-intuitive options, it's straightforward enough that most amateur musicians are able to sit down and click around until they get it to do what they want.
How's the output? Pretty crappy if you don't spend any time playing with it. But if you spend a little bit of time fixing the glaring errors, the result is readable by most musicians.
LilyPond, on the other hand, reads a description of the music in a text-based format, and formats it automatically - using much nicer algorithms than Finale apparently uses. It might take quite a bit longer to get your music input, but the end result will look nice - and will not require nearly as much tweaking.
LilyPond, by itself, is only of use to professional engravers, and only those who are willing to learn how to use it. If somebody ever develops a front-end to LilyPond that's actually integrated (as opposed to something like Rosegarden that can just export to LilyPond's format), then it might be more accessible to the average musician.
Don't get me wrong - I think that LilyPond is great. I just think that a lot of the complaints I'm seeing in this forum are because people don't understand what problem LilyPond is trying to solve and who will benefit.
No, LilyPond is not ready to replace all of the other music notation software out there. But it's one of the best tools for professional music engraving already, and maybe someday it can also be an appropriate tool for the casual user, too. fa
Give MS a frickin' break....MS said there is going to be something like 40 *million* lines of code...
Just out of curiosity, I counted the lines of code (both c & assembler, all processors) of the 2.6.4 kernel. It is less than 5.5 million.
40 million lines of code. There's all the reason I ever need to not use it.
With 40 million lines of code, you never fix bugs, the best you can hope for is to relocate them to a really obscure place.
poh
..women at the bar can really like you! If one of them is turned on by your presence it's not just that you've had too much to drink! fro
I think the people who will most benefit from a tool like this are performers and composers in the academic vein. Someone who's studied theory much isn't going to look at .ly source and freak -- they've already spent years learning how to describe music in an abstract form. After doing Figured bass analysis on chord progressions and learning how to cut up a piece into it's atomic parts, something like this will probably make more sense than any other solution out there.
On the other hand, if someone is just looking for a program that they can play music into from a keyboard, or punch a few notes into without having to know much about how notation is structured, then of course Lilypond isn't the program for them.
Maybe some of you are getting 'ease' confused with 'instant gratification'. The only easy thing about Finale in my mind is that you can start the new score wizard set to 'Piano' and enter in notes within seconds. I won't deny this is an attractive feature. Any point past that though, and you have to learn the program and all it's quirks(and believe me if you're uninitiated, there are a few billion of them). Once you go beyond the first steps, the balance shifts considerably. Where Finale fails is in the ease of getting right all the minor details of a complex score, wheras Lilypond is remarkably consistent and structured.
And since the input language to Lily is open, non proprietary plain Ascii, I imagine usable graphical frontends will become available for those who are vehemently opposed to having to write out scores in a description language. Much like there are tools like Dreamweaver for HTML. But I think if I showed Lily in it's raw form to my old Theory and Orchestration teacher from my undergrad years, he'd fall right in love. uds
don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I'm kind of let down by the fact that our most interesting space story for awhile now is that we MAY have a 10th planet in our solar system.
Umm...what? The past few months have been *spectacularly* exciting from a space point of view. We have two probes that successfully landed on Mars and have found strong evidence that Mars had liquid brine at one point. We have a ton of pictures from the surface to look at, and are expecting tons of findings, papers, and theories based on probe data that's been returned.
And while, yes, the classification may not be interesting, the fact that we discovered a new, sizeable chunk of matter in our solar system is not small stuff either. xy
It sounds like a pretty good idea to me, but there seems to be one mistake in the post, I am pretty sure that they would go ahead and clear the music to be downloaded legally via iTunes or something like that, rather than illegally via P2P, and thus avoid any "John Doe" lawsuits. xeq
In order for this to work, it might need changes in the OS level.
Imagine you access a block/char device or an NFS mounted directory and the device driver never returns from the system call. Your script would hang, and a kill would produce a zombie process.
If you want fault tolerance, you'd have to have a timeout mechanism for all device drivers. But if you read from/dev/mt0 and the tape needs rewinding and it takes 6 minutes, you don't want to have your script aborted after 5 minutes. qti
... of a tour inside a similar missile silo [triggur.org], by underground explorers. Maybe it's the same, I didn't check that. But at least it gives you an impression of what is under there. sen
Actually many... Nerds use Hotmail for junk email accounts, like when they want to download something that needs registering first but don't want to receive the newsletter junks. kfk
Of course it depends which way your head is up, or down - sometimes they go sideways in both directions.
uyc
Someone needs to let them in on a little IBM/Apple secret [apple.com]:)
aud
Who modded this insightful? It's stupid. It doesn't matter where the victim lives, it matters where the crime was committed. If I rob a Swiss tourist in Sydney, do I get extradited to Switzerland to stand trial for robbery? Think, people, think! gw
How does this chip compare with that other energy-saving chip, the Celeron?
And more importantly, is there any reason you'd choose a Transmeta-powered rig over an Intel one? lw
Yeah yeah forking is always sweet and this sure sounds like a lot of fun already, but what I'm really waiting for is for someone to put together a BSD-from-scratch distribution! I mean, I know I could just build one with GNAA/Linux.. BUT only having a single kernel to choose means my grimy little subculture won't be as obscure as it could be. Just think how exclusive I'd be if I could pick one of the NetBSD, OpenBSD, either of the active branches of FreeBSD, and PicoBSD, Dragonfly BSD or Darwin kernels.. inx
There is no need for BSD-from-scratch disto.
1: All the BSDs are entirely different operating systems, which are lumped into one category becuase of their roots.
2: Since no extra bullshit is thrown in like linux, there is less need for reworking the base.
3: BSD is not obscure in the least, it is rather alive and florishing.
BTW you forgot to mention Solaris, which has it's roots in BSD too. vh
A freind of mine was preaching to the choir (me) about how inappropriate it is that the RIAA is calling mass copyright infringement "piracy", and how it is an inappropriately biased term given the evils of Blackbeard and the like. Since I agreed, but like my rants to be backed up by better facts, I did some research on piracy of the "Argh, me hearties" kind. To my surprise, it almost fits, if you grant that copyright is "property", Cyberspace is a "place outside the jurisdiction of any State", and that mass copyright infringement falls within "act of depredation". (See what the UN has to say [un.org] about the Jolly Roger type stuff.)
Skimming the web for some history on this, it seems that the idea of the laws against piracy arose slowly to deal with the problem of crimes committed outside of any national jurisdiction. I was wondering if Mike has any thoughts on this parallel, and what it may imply about how cyberlaw may evolve. nte
Ah maaaaan, crap!
that sucks!
Turns out I've stopped drinking for no reason after all...
got time to catch up with now.
bid day ahead... lf
Presenters of the music-playing machine found themselves being unmercifully heckled by a man calling himself Mssr. Jacques de Vaucanson, who proclaimed loudly that he had accomplished robotic music more than two hundred years prior to this demonstration.
When the presenters pointed out that Mssr. Vaucanson would have to be long dead as of this late date, the suddenly horrified heckler collapsed into a pile of dust, and the remainder of the presentation was conducted without further interruption. aaz
But of course if a drug company spends 7 years developing a drug and starts trying to recoup some of that cost over the next few years everyone will forget the R&D and point out how the drug costs nothing to make and so the company is ripping everyone off. When I worked at a pharmaceutical company there were cases when it took so long to develop a drug that it wasn't worth bringing it to market because the patent would almost have expired by time it was ready for release. (The patent needs to be filed right at the beginning of the testing process.) lko
Just examine the effect and move it to macro scale, i.e. you drag lighter-than-air baloons down, pick them and release them up in normal conditions, creating energy (i.e. lifting small amounts of water up and releasing it onto a turbine). Free Energy! Of course there ain't no free lunch, but in this case it comes at cost of earth's rotation momentum, after several megawatts of energy produced our day will be some fraction of second longer. aqk
Somehow Transmeta will always have a warm place in my heart.
And Intel will always have a warm place in my lap.
Seriously, though.... The new IBM X40 [ibm.com] is only 2.7 lbs with approximately the same battery life. The Transmeta only looks good until one realizes that it has a tiny 10" monitor. onm
Of course it depends which way your head is up, or down - sometimes they go sideways in both directions.
ux
Actually many... Nerds use Hotmail for junk email accounts, like when they want to download something that needs registering first but don't want to receive the newsletter junks. nsr
Unfortunately, as far as I can see (and my idea will be readily disputed by others) no OSS database is ready for "enterprise" systems (whatever that means, I work in a company who writes software and the backend can be any RDMBS as long as they have a decend JDBC driver). SQL Server 2k has lots of missing features which makes our life very hard and I'm not a fan but at the moment I can't go to any of our customers and say use postgres or mySQL etc.
Another big player is DB2 by IBM which claims it has the fastest database on the world but DB2 is cumbersome, hard to manage compared to Oracle and MS SQL2k but it works almost under any platform under the sun.
Database world is quite interesting, I can't say any RDMS system out there is perfect. yiw
"The European Commission draft requires Microsoft to share proprietary information with rival server makers"
That's always my sticking point. I'm not as much bothered that they support video playback in their default system (they also support image playback and text playback, after all) as to their generally incompatible and excessively proprietary methods. jkz
Virtyally none of the diagnosic capabilities in modern cars are accessible via OBD-II.
Every manufacturer has proprietary networks built into the car of which OBD-II is a tiny emulation layer. Its designed for emissions testing and emissions related codes, nothing else.
You can't diagnose why your power locks aren't working with it, you can't diagnose why your HVAC controls aren't working. You can't read exhaust gas temperatures, or any other direct sensor outputs. You can't bleed ABS pumps with it, etc, etc, etc.
There are VERY few models you can get that sort of information about. Volkswagen/Audi group cars have some diagnostic software available, but virtually 100% of the information about what you can access and what sort of tests you can run have been reverse engineered, and is very incomplete. VAG also recently changed their protocols for newer cars to block those systems from working.
You may have watched mechanics sweat this stuff, but some of us sweat this stuff directly. This is coming from the direct experience of someone who both repairs cars and works for a internationally ranked professional racing team. gwg
Gads, I've had my hotmail account since before Microsoft bought them. It makes a useful account to hand out on Usenet posts, Slashdot or on web pages--I can quickly give any emailer a real address for contact--mainly it's a spamtrap. But I would never ever depend on it for email or cry if it died. tp
I agree with parent that in this case size really doesn't matter: it's all in how you use what you got.
Historically, Neptune was discovered because it was perturbing Uranus' orbit: its existence was theorized long before it was directly observed. Similarly, Pluto was discovered because it was found that Neptune alone was not sufficient to account for all of Uranus' irregularity. While Pluto isn't very big, its size and orbit are such that it definitely affects the other planets.
In practice then, what we have actually used to distinguish a planet like Pluto from a large body that is not a planet, like Chiron (roughly as big, discovered 1977), is whether the object interacts in a measurable way with known planets. If it does, then accord it planet status because it is clearly part of the planetary system.
In view of this, the new discovery is probably not a planet, unless it has a weird orbit like Pluto and would account for some of the remaining difference between planetary observations and expectations.
But what do I know? IANAA. lb
Check these links for a Duo (Laptop) mod to a picture frame. I remember this site as the first I saw. I have an old 486 and a 64MB compaq flash just waiting for a conversion.
m e
http://www.applefritter.com/hacks/duodigitalfra
http://www.applefritter.com/node/view/728
Duo Digital Frame by James Roos rh
I had a class with this professor earlier this year. This really explains his teaching style... he must have done his beer "research" each day right before he lectured... wlg
Hmm Check Engine. OK.:opens hood: Yep, got an engine, Check!
Cant remember the comedian, but oh well. Seriously though, certain brands of cars(cough cough Ford) are known for having the check engine light come on when a sensor in the car is being pissy, maybe cause it was cold or your wheel was slipping, even if there is nothing wrong with your engine. Once it comes on, the only way to turn it off is to take it to a mechanic who will charge you 60$ to reset the light and tell you he doesnt see any problems. Or you can just disconnect the battery for minute, but you lose your radio station presets. I don't see why this is such a big deal though. Seems like its pretty easy to get a code reader [patriot.net]. Hell the base model is less than 200$, might be good to get one just to play with. Not to mention all the codes can be looked up right here [actron.com]. For 25$ a year you can even use AllData [alldata.com] to diagnose problems with your car based on the codes, and be updated on service and recall bulletins. Interesting note at the bottom though: Note: Currently, information is available for Model Years 1982 to 2002. 2003 Model Year information is scheduled to be released this winter. Unfortunately, information for Honda, Acura and BMW is not available to consumers through ALLDATA DIY by request of the manufacturers. sth
That would be ideal.
(since then the 'casual' user could benefit from using it, without undue difficulty in configuration of mail delivery programs, which are notorious in general..) icq
Answer: Never.
Here's a clue about how to avoid lawsuits: don't break the law.
<bart im
I once read an interview with comic book author Alan Moore in which the interviewer asked him how he felt about his comics being "ruined" by dismal, piece-of-crap movie adaptations (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the like).
He responded. "Ruined my books? No, they're fine, they're right over there on the shelf."
I feel the same way about this. Certainly it has every chance of being a dismal, laughable production, but the original source material has survived worse lambasting already at the hands of the Harvard Lampoon and a thousand poor imitators writing ten-book doorstop epics in homage to Tolkien. The original LOTR material is going to be just fine. bhq
Perhaps Microsoft's heavy-handed tactics against Lindows in Europe (and everywhere for that matter) will not go unnoticed by the European courts and/or regulators... bu
That police officer has repeatedly attempted to contact me (as a rule, I never volunteer any information to law enforcement), and has gone so far as to obtain some personal information about me. Turns-out that the ISP caved-in to his demands and provided some information about me, in clear violation of legal procedure and current privacy laws.
This is no different from a cracker obtaining passwords/access through social engineering.
Furthermore, the officer has repeatedly attempted to have me contact him tough threatening e-mail messages.
My question is: should there be stiff penalties towards law-enforcement officers who manage to illegally and without due process of law get information about ISP subscribers, especially if they are well outside their police department jurisdiction? hlv
I have a friend who went around charging 50 dollars to take the MS.Blaster worm off people's computers. This amateur computer repair field has great potential, as computers penetrate further and further into most bussinesses. Time is money, and paying some kid 50 bucks to fix a computer is often cheaper in the long run then spending 2 days doing it yourself. I plan to do the very same thing with a local company over the summer break from school.
I want to be a Digitician when I grow up. wd
And for various reasons, we as a society don't really respect mechanics, as a profession. I wonder if some day those who fix computers will be held in a similar regard.
I was an on-site repair guy for a couple of local computer companies until about 9 years ago. Even then, most of the customers were untrusting and paranoid when dealing with such a service.
It wasn't unusual for someone to raise hell and demand a free copy of Windows 3.11 when the copy of DR DOS I hooked them up with a couple of years prior ceased to work in a new enviroment.
I figured it was a lot like customers not understanding my father, a former auto mechanic of 20+ years, when he would tell them the fuel pump died and it was their carburator they had replaced last time they were in the shop.
The thing I liked least about doing house calls, and the reason I stopped doing them, was the overly irate people taking their frustrations out on the guy who's trying to help them get their systems up at the least cost and greatest speed. Eventually, it seemed like 1/3 of all the clients I dealt with were angry, abusive people that other businesses had already refused to work with.
ow
Just for starters, notice that all the hardware sites get their test units from the manufacturers. In other words, they call the manu and say 'please send me a free hard drive to test for a review'. The manu then tries out 5 units to find the one that works best and sends it.
Consumers Reports, on the other hand, goes to the store and buys a random unit, same as you or I might.
Personally, I trust www.storagereview.com, but they do the same thing. rkx
I think perl is where it is because so many people use it as "super script." To me that says, a) we recode all the Bourne and csh and bash in perl or b) we look at why people do shell scripting in perl or other languages and add that to the shell. I couldn't tell you which is right. It's a neat idea though and I'm glad they made it.
A real example I can think of, I had a test machine that had some kind of ext3 corruption and so it mounted up in read-only mode when it booted. I spent time diagnosing an application error in our application because nothing caught that; these are redhat type startup scripts. I noticed that our app couldn't write logs and began to debug the system. More interestingly, a dozen or so start-up scripts failed to start up critical components and their failure wasn't noticed. If you can't write to the filesystem, you can't create a socket(AF_UNIX) and all sort's of things go tits up then. If that's how you debug it's only going to get more difficult as you add more and more complexity, you have to detect the lower level failures and report them. Perversely, this wouldn't have been noticed had a different partition been read-only. Turns out that a drive was going bad. Had it been a different partition, it would have been noticed at catastrophic system failure time when the drive died.
I've done a fair amount of embedded work and there is always a test for new guys, you can tell the new guy (new college grad, whatever) because he skips half or more of the error checking in his code. You know printf returns a value? Funnier still, if you develop something like a consumer app in embedded space, you'll eventually see things like printf fail. We know it never should, but with 20,000+ users in different environments and what not, things like that can and do fail and usually point to a greater problem, like a dead drive or something. Instead of logging/alerting something to the critical and unusual printf failure, the app fails in a different way because this printf failed. Heaven forbid that it was sprintf that failed and then you shove bad data in to a database or configuration file and not just fail the system but corrupt the data too. Inspite of all of that, even veterans will forget error checking at times, it's a common bug and so having higher level tools to help assist, like exception in the shell can only be a good thing. my
Same code, but different security model/sandbox. The CLR in yukon does not have access to the file system, sockets, winforms, services, the registry or anything else a virus is going to need. It's limited to communicating with the SQL process and manipulating data within a database. Nothing more. hkt
I really do wish mickysoft would rename their flagship database something else. Are they that arrogant that they feel the need for such a generic name? That's about like naming your product "Web Server" or "Network File Server". When someone mentions SQL server, I always have them clarify whether or not they are talking in general terms for some sort of relational backend, or are they referring to microsoft's product. Sometimes they don't even know the difference, but perhaps that is microsoft's end goal. wex
Advocates of free software claim to be advocates of freedom. If this were the case, they would only attack Microsoft on those terms. The WMP is not a freedom issue. If a customer doesn't like Windows prepackaged with WMP, there's nothing stopping that person from acquiring another OS.
This is just a bunch of government busibodies telling you how to run your lives. bkc
Guess flexible wiring is more pleasant to be strapped into than a squid or a cuttlefish, though I doubt it'd be as fast. Cephalopods have very fast nervous systems, they're lightning quick partly as a result. doi
I say its a fair bet that this service wont recover the money they need to put into it to start off, not to mention the training cost of training all those 18 year olds who barely know enough to do a decent cup of coffee. wzu
.. the shell just got the cool error-handling lisp has always had (condition-case in elisp, for example). From a lisper's perspectice, things will be so much easier now... and I can really try some more scripting..
ryp
I'd be more excited about this announcement, if I could get my own Actius PC-MM10 to boot from the USB CDROM drive. First, I tried a generic CDROM drive. No go. I called Sharp (1-800-BE-SHARP), and they told me that practically the only CDROM which the laptop can boot from is the Lite-On model which comes bundled with it (I didn't go for the bundle). The tech support guy told me that I didn't have to purchase the drive from Sharp, as long as I got the correct Lite-On model.
I purchased that CDROM drive (not from Sharp, which charges $300 for a simple combo drive) and now I have two CDROM drives which the laptop can't boot from. I'm pretty frustrated, because I'm trying to create a dual-boot installation, and resizing the Windows partition has made it unbootable. Also, I'm not an expert, and so I'm having some trouble installing GNAA/Linux through the cradle. I think it's a problem with initrd. I'm not too worried about that. I'll figure it out. But, it would be nice to retain a small Windows installation, as well.
I absolutely love my laptop. It's super-portable and has a wonderful bright screen, but not being able to boot from USB CDROM is making my life very difficult.
Resources for installing GNAA/Linux on this laptop:
Gentoo GNAA/Linux on the Sharp Actius PC-MM10 [mit.edu]
GNAA/Linux on the Sharp PC-MM10 [sleepers.net]
I emailed John Lee from the first link above, and he confirmed that he is able to boot from his CDROM drive. I'm interested to know how Sharp tech support will handle this, because they have so far been very courteous. ucw
You can make bit-for-bit copies of any DVD now, complete with all the encryption on it. And the laws preventing the distribution of those DVDs (normal copyright law) has been on the books for a long, long time. If you follow the money, the bottom line is that the CSS and region codes on a DVD only help to support cartel price-fixing profits.
cq
puh-leaze. The viper article is obviously just
a corroboration of the original, attempting to
keep attention on it (and borrow some of that
to get attention for itself). Infinium labs is
bogus? yawn, nothing to see here...
I say that because there's nothing particularly
insidious going on here. We have a disreputable
manufacturer who's been called out; not, as the
article tries to imply, some industry wide hush
phenomenon. It's just sensationalism.
Wake me when viper labs shuts down site operations.
(They don't even have good copy editors.) vj
Which is why it will work. Know your demographic. If you're silly enough to pay too much for bad coffee, you'll more than likely pay too much for bad music.... dd
It seems to me that most (if not all) spaming and advertising done on the Internet is simply polluting the lines of communication. Like any pollution, it reduces the stuff you want, by increasing the ratio of stuff you don't want, thereby making the whole environment unusable.
Is it possible that this view can be used in any legal way to go after Internet polluters?
xi
This is good news for those of us who like to tinker with our cars, too. A while back I looked into available OSS interfaces to various models. It was a moot search. You ought to be able to plug your friggin' car into the serial port of your laptop and run diagnostics on emissions, compression, etc., as a matter of course.
It should also be noted that legislation addressing this issue was originally championed by the late Sen. Paul Wellstone of MN.
It should also remind us how close we are to similarly prescribed access to the internals of a general purpose computer. Wouldn't some interests like to see a *No user serviceable parts inside. Opening case voids any warranties or EULAs associated with this machine.* sticker on your next box.
jjq
It's perfectly reasonable to, once they've given you the quote, to also tell you what all is wrong with your car. Tell them you'd need to think about it, as if this is going to put a bit of crimp in your budget for this month, and say you'll get back to them as soon as you've worked out the details.
Trot down to your favorite small shop mechanic and ask him how much he'd charge to do exactly the job that the other guys said needed to get done. You tell him that the dealership has already given you a quote for $X, and the problem has been diagnosed by them. Odds are he'll undercut them. If not, just go back to the dealership... you're SOL.
If your mechanic guy has offered to do the repairs, then you go back to the dealership and tell them that you just can't swing that kind of money this month. Then you take your car to little guy's shop and have it repaired there.
Funny thing is, if enough people did this, the little guys would learn what the diagnosis codes meant because they'd get customers coming in telling them what was already wrong, and the mechanics could start matching up codes to real problems.
Now the question is, is the above method, using strictly social engineering, still considered a violation of the DMCA? now
Finally. It's about time that people started to realize that electronics are complicated things and that it takes competent people to fix them. People don't do their own wiring or own plumbing, (well, most people) and they shouldn't. I think that the reason that electronics haven't passed into the realm of "let the professionals handle it" is because with electrical wiring, you can get shocked and die and with plumbing you can get covered with sewage or scalding water. Personally, I am glad that this I-can-do-it-myself mindset is starting to fade. Although, I do think that $125/hour is a bit much. eij
Consider this: training, amount of time, and tools. Think of how ugly it is to uninstall a nasty worm virus; think of the effort it takes to salvage files from a flaky/dying hard drive, plus rebuilding the machine. Think of the cost of all the diagnostic software/tools you might have, even if its just some Norton Utilities, a MS Technet subscription, and an AV program.
If a lawyer or a plumber or an exterminator can charge $50-100/hour, a computer technician should be allowed to do the same.
Technician skills are expensive. My company now maintains images of your hard drive. If you have a problem that can't be resolved within 30 minutes of trouble shooting, they take your laptop away, re-image a new laptop, and give it to you the next morning. Its not worth the recovery effort. Bad ofr people with desktop support skills (used to be LAN admins who did that stuff). Now a force of >100 LAN admins across the Greater Toronto Area is less than 20 individuals. wki
I wonder if this could help patients with I.C. It's rather painful and if the "new nerves" can be made to ignore certain impulses...that'd be very beneficial. Very intriguing, anyway fbv
Anyone know / care to comment how these chips compare with apples G3 and G4 laptops? I was under the impression that they were much less power hungry than intel and AMD's chips, which let them be lighter and have better battery life. bgm
I thought that the usual rule was that you could not be extradited for an act that was not classified as a crime in your country of residence. This causes the IRS grief when someone moves to a country where tax evasion is not a crime. fl
I often think that if you could get one car executive to take a 'chance'...and try the old idea behind the original GTO's and later other muscle cars...throw a monster engine into a decent body of a car...keep the interior minimalist...with real perfomance, and keep the price reasonable. I gotta think these things would sell like hotcakes...
Oh well...as long as we're dreaming here...I'd also like a pony... gbo
Exactly.
I am not a Nerd. I am a "digitician":) bnu
they would start development on their second OS right now. I don't live in Europe, but from what I read and hear on IRC, I get the feeling that M$ is not going to win any appeals, and eventually will be forced to sell their cut down OS. It would save them time and money. Why drag it out in court, when you're probably going to lose anyway? bej
I don't get SPAM. I don't have SPAM filters. How is this possible? Simple. I create a different e-mail address for any new untrusted entity that I have to provide one for. In the beginning I took advantage of being able to alias all e-mail for non-existent mailboxes (basically, *) at my domain to my primary account. It seemed to me an obvious and simple approach. Whenever I needed to provide an e-mail address, I just made one up, and it was forwarded to my regular Inbox. In my opinion, at that time my ISP was more "sophisticated" than most. Since then I have moved to hosting all of my domains on my own co-located server which runs Exchange 2000, thus complicating things. Now I have to actually add any new aliases that I want to use into my user account. I know of at least one product out there that can handle non-existent addresses and forward them to a specific account, but it is rather expensive for a feature that should have been built-in from the beginning (althought I'm not aware if the new Exchange can do this out of the box). Not to mention that someone with the proper knowledge and skills could make a similar add-on in relatively short order, but who ever has the time? The point is that you have to consider when and where you give your e-mail address out, and the possible consequences therein. It's not altogether different from giving out your phone number (especially if you are unlisted) or even your SSN. za
Oh well you know, just all sorts of functionality that was driven by GNAA/Linux, like finely grained SMP, support for enterprise level hardware, USB, SANE, ACPI, DRI/DRM and what have you more. And let's not get started on the apps. I mean, there's a reason why all the BSDs make an effort to run GNAA/Linux binaries, not the other way around.
hold on cowboy...
linux drove usb support? check your history...
linux has better support for smp? right... 'cos the linux smp support isn't a rip of free-bsd's first smp incarnation, and free's 'new' smp code is some hack up by a big school kid is it?
linux has better support for enterprise hardware? shall we start with... i dunno... scsi support... get your history book out and do some experimenting with old linux v's old *bsd installs - try backing up a raid and restoring, then come back and tell me how good scsi isn't fundamental enterprise computing...
next you'll tell me that open's code auditing and goal of bug-free secure code is inferior to linux's free for all crap-code fest
excuse my rant, i'd don't mean to bag linux - every OS has its place - even windows.
but man... linux zealots and their damn superiority complex, re-writing history... i even heard someone try to explain the sco crap the other day... he actually said that 'unix is a brand of linux' er
How the fuck did this get modded to +5?
Wow, MySQL now has an official front-end tool (instead of one of many third-party ones that it's had for ages), oohh, that'll make ALL the difference. It's got NOWHERE NEAR the feature set of MS-SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, or Firebird. Christ, we had to wait till version FOUR till they added native transaction support (which wasn't ever written by them), subqueries, replication, etc. and we're still not sure that it even does any of this properly now! (Each point release massively changes and/or extends features, which is stupid for a supposedly stable DB.) Sounds like a "real" DB to me that'll definitely compete with Oracle and MS-SQL, yeah right...
But because Slashdot loves MySQL this gets modded to +5 by people who don't know shit about databases, and certainly not about MS SQL Server. Great.
The only reason MySQL became popular was because it was free and ran well together with Apache on modest hardware, so ISPs could bundle it as a *simple* website backend DB. It does that pretty well (as long as you don't mind running REPAIR TABLE every now and again), but it's certainly no viable alternative to MS-SQL or Oracle. Anyone that thinks that and uses the acronym M$ in the same post really doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about. zw
~Darl ib
I have often had to write such wrappers myself. Sure even easier/better would have been if somebody added this to say BASH as an extension but perhaps that is not possible.
How often have you needed to write horrible bash code just to pull data from an unreliable source and ended up either with a script that worked totally blind "command && command && command &&" wich never reported if it failed for days on end or ended up with several pages just to catch all the damn network errors that could occur.
I will definitly be giving this little language a try in the near future. Just another tool for the smart sys-admin. (smart people write as little code as possible. Let others work for you) npk
Just think of all the Chinese/Russian missiles still pointed at your bedroom.
yzaThe other companies *did* have a foothold in the market, or maybe you are too young and brainwashed to remember the glory days.
You're right it *isnt* MS's job to help out other rivals. But it is their job to keep their monopoly from crushing others. read: Anti-competitive tactics are a no-no.
Problem is that once MS started bundling IE, WMP, etc. into the OS, it gave users little reason to go out and find another. They have done it with IE and were convicted of it in the States, albeit weakly. Once you have a single defacto player/browser/pick your software on the desktop, which a monoploy has created and abused, the end user, ie: mom and pop, have no need to go out and get another, forcing the rivals out of business or out of money. Don't forget, Microsoft no longer cares about IE. The only reason they care about WMP is that they are now trying to leverage the dominance into other markets such as digital distribution of movies and whatnot. That sir, is anti-competitive behaviour. I'm just glad the EU has the balls to do something about it. aq
Finally, a job that WON'T be outsources to India!! *crosses fingers* ry
I don't get SPAM. I don't have SPAM filters. How is this possible? Simple. I create a different e-mail address for any new untrusted entity that I have to provide one for. In the beginning I took advantage of being able to alias all e-mail for non-existent mailboxes (basically, *) at my domain to my primary account. It seemed to me an obvious and simple approach. Whenever I needed to provide an e-mail address, I just made one up, and it was forwarded to my regular Inbox. In my opinion, at that time my ISP was more "sophisticated" than most. Since then I have moved to hosting all of my domains on my own co-located server which runs Exchange 2000, thus complicating things. Now I have to actually add any new aliases that I want to use into my user account. I know of at least one product out there that can handle non-existent addresses and forward them to a specific account, but it is rather expensive for a feature that should have been built-in from the beginning (althought I'm not aware if the new Exchange can do this out of the box). Not to mention that someone with the proper knowledge and skills could make a similar add-on in relatively short order, but who ever has the time? The point is that you have to consider when and where you give your e-mail address out, and the possible consequences therein. It's not altogether different from giving out your phone number (especially if you are unlisted) or even your SSN. uu
supposed to be cool. If you want warmth buy Intel, and if you want to get hot go for a 12" PowerBook cq
it can't help but be buyassed? not unlike the moon/mars/bars shot.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators.... get ready to witness the disempowerment of unprecedented evile.
vi
But if you can throw a football, oh wow, put you on a pedestal. That's what education gets you... cl
That seemed like an odd comment, certainly they are doing this with permission from the record companies, much as iTunes did. rso
I think perl is where it is because so many people use it as "super script." To me that says, a) we recode all the Bourne and csh and bash in perl or b) we look at why people do shell scripting in perl or other languages and add that to the shell. I couldn't tell you which is right. It's a neat idea though and I'm glad they made it.
A real example I can think of, I had a test machine that had some kind of ext3 corruption and so it mounted up in read-only mode when it booted. I spent time diagnosing an application error in our application because nothing caught that; these are redhat type startup scripts. I noticed that our app couldn't write logs and began to debug the system. More interestingly, a dozen or so start-up scripts failed to start up critical components and their failure wasn't noticed. If you can't write to the filesystem, you can't create a socket(AF_UNIX) and all sort's of things go tits up then. If that's how you debug it's only going to get more difficult as you add more and more complexity, you have to detect the lower level failures and report them. Perversely, this wouldn't have been noticed had a different partition been read-only. Turns out that a drive was going bad. Had it been a different partition, it would have been noticed at catastrophic system failure time when the drive died.
I've done a fair amount of embedded work and there is always a test for new guys, you can tell the new guy (new college grad, whatever) because he skips half or more of the error checking in his code. You know printf returns a value? Funnier still, if you develop something like a consumer app in embedded space, you'll eventually see things like printf fail. We know it never should, but with 20,000+ users in different environments and what not, things like that can and do fail and usually point to a greater problem, like a dead drive or something. Instead of logging/alerting something to the critical and unusual printf failure, the app fails in a different way because this printf failed. Heaven forbid that it was sprintf that failed and then you shove bad data in to a database or configuration file and not just fail the system but corrupt the data too. Inspite of all of that, even veterans will forget error checking at times, it's a common bug and so having higher level tools to help assist, like exception in the shell can only be a good thing. np
what these processors are known for. Benchmarks [vanshardware.com] show that. That's not to say it's a bad processor, and maybe the Efficeon will turn out a little sweeter. Meanwhile, there isn't a whole lot about Transmeta's stuff that stands out. Except the wacky design. yk
What effects, positive or negative, do you think sites like the popular Groklaw [groklaw.net] have/will have on corporate technology litigation? Do lawyers pay any attention to the research and opinions of amateurs and the general public? ydb
Outlook is like what you fear; Microsoft decides what you will and won't see. I can add specific senders to the black and white lists (you click to add to the blacklist, but you have to type in an address to add it to the whitelist -- stupid MS shits), but Microsoft decides if I can see that attachment (if they think it's bad, it's gone and I can't recover it) or if this email's spam (it regularly discarded stuff from IBM Developer Works until I added them to my whitelist). With a tool like dspam I can regain control over what gets filtered (although I've found no way to turn off Outlook's attachment blocking). nx
gravitational tractor beams.
Personally I don't know why this wasn't thought of first before all those silly ideas like just blowing something up
A nice large tractor beam from a high orbiting satellite to repel or attract any asteroid or other thing that's going to hit the planet, and problem solved.
Of course, there's the technical side... al
If your application is licensed under the GPL or compatible OSI license (learn more at opensource.org) approved by Backplane, Inc., you are free and welcome to ship the Backplane open source database with your application.
followed by:
If you power an application using the Backplane database that you market or sell, or use that application to conduct any form of online commerce (selling/buying products or services over a website) you need to purchase the Backplane Commercial License.
The example given is if you run an email service from which you sell access to other companies, you must buy the commerical license.
My question is, what if the program that provides the email service is GPL. Do I have to buy a commercial license or not? One of the great things about GPL software is that if it's an internal piece of software, you can mix proprietary and GPL code as much as you want, as long as you never redistribute the program to anyone.
Also, how does dual licensing work with this? Can I license it under the GPL to myself, and then sell copies under another license to other people? Obviously THEY would have to buy a commercial license, but do I?
Just trying to point out some holes in the licensing..
Oops, just noticed the part at the end saying:
NOTE: In any of these examples, if the entire application or service is 100% GPL compatible, you may use the Backplane Free License.
But that still leaves open the question about dual licensing.. ie
Luckily I don't use Hotmail (or any other Microsoft product).
thThis actually would work out quite nicely for Starbucks, because all music [i]currently[/i] in store is put out by their own label. le
Except it would be a Mastercard commercial. dt
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr.
Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers
come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas
that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage
jd
That would be Bode's Law [wikipedia.org]. It is wiewed as more of a coincidence than a law these days.
According to my hung over calculations Sedna is 67 AUs out, which is not that far off from the 77.6 that Bode predicts, but not really close either. mr
It is a great account for your junk mail! Then again so is Yahoo... but hotmail was the first I believe =)
It is also my first email account (got it in 96) and so now people can still contact me after I've moved around the world.
When a service like Hotmail and MSN go down for a few hours it affects ALOT (millions) of people... nerd included... why shouldn't it be on the frontpage? I know I was interested enough to click on the articles (though I agree they are sparse on details)
Addbo ydc
puh-leaze. The viper article is obviously just
a corroboration of the original, attempting to
keep attention on it (and borrow some of that
to get attention for itself). Infinium labs is
bogus? yawn, nothing to see here...
I say that because there's nothing particularly
insidious going on here. We have a disreputable
manufacturer who's been called out; not, as the
article tries to imply, some industry wide hush
phenomenon. It's just sensationalism.
Wake me when viper labs shuts down site operations.
(They don't even have good copy editors.) ae
Oh, c'mon, we could have condoms that bestow immortality on the women we use them with, and we still ain't gettin' any.
The best we can hope for is sell those condoms to guys with waistbands under 48 inches and use the money to buy porn.
nx
I just really hate academics. it
Finally. It's about time that people started to realize that electronics are complicated things and that it takes competent people to fix them. People don't do their own wiring or own plumbing, (well, most people) and they shouldn't. I think that the reason that electronics haven't passed into the realm of "let the professionals handle it" is because with electrical wiring, you can get shocked and die and with plumbing you can get covered with sewage or scalding water. Personally, I am glad that this I-can-do-it-myself mindset is starting to fade. Although, I do think that $125/hour is a bit much. tdd
Option 1: Windows XP with Media Player, 99 Euros.
Option 2: Windows XP without Media Player, 99 Euros.
Retail purchasers and OEM licensees will be completely free to choose either version.
No, this is not a joke. If the EUC think this is too obvious to mention and prohibit, they are in for a rude awakening. ci
I think its great that Microsoft includes basic functionality like a media player, word processor, calculator, internet browser, etc.
I hope that we all realize that the PROBLEM lies in preventing the uninstallation of said items without "crippling" the OS.
I think MS should be allowed to include whatever they want, as long as the no-install/uninstall option is there and its real (as in really uninstalls the files, not just "hiding" them).
Why can't Microsoft see how easy it would be to fix this? But then again, that sort of tunnel vision is what has gotten them into the hot water they are in. uee
I can see GM doing a robotic nose flute or kazoo. hlt
As someone who's part-way through the 100+ hour task of reverse engineering the computer in his '86 Mazda RX-7, I can say this truely is a great thing.
The are all kind of problems that are extremly difficult or impossible to diagnose and solve without the ability to REALLY talk to a car's computer.
I think most people don't realize just how much is coming under control of the car's computer these days. It used to be the computer just controlled the injectors, then it was spark. Now the computer might also control your ABS, traction control, regulator-less fuel system, electric power steering. In many modern cars (A 2000 Corvette would be an example) there isn't even a direct link between the throttle body and the gas pedal anymore. The gas pedal has a sensor and the TB has an actuator.
The government needs to junk ODBII and come up with a totally new approach. They allowed too many manufacturer-specfic exceptions, and made it require too much special hardware.
ODBII deliberately uses a nonstandard baud rate, to make it difficult to interface with a PC. The result of this is that an application (with cable) to read codes with your laptop will cost you $100+ instead of the $40 it should.
It's damn frustrating to have to buy a $160 computer to tell you that you car needs a $5 set of spark plugs. (It would have cost $70 just to get a shop to tell me the same thing).
A new interface should be designed that is a standard serial port, and allows for VERY few "undocumented" codes. ha
What does this say to the citizens of a country when your government will deliver you into the hands of a foreign power when you've not broken the laws of your own nation?
The civil war in Columbia started as a question of National Sovereignty over the extradition (to the United States) of a cocaine producer, which was not against the law in Columbia at the time. This extradition led to the increasing popularity of the FARC, and their accompyaning (Stalinist) socialist platform, increased cocain production and exportation (to the United States) in order to finance both right wing and left wing paramilitaries, and increased hardships for the poorest of Columbias people, who were already suffering due to ecconomic hardships and a lack of basic civil rights for the majority of Columbias people.
Actions such as these cause increased mistrust of a nations government, lend credence to dangerous or misguided political movements, (rightfully) increases anti-American sentiment, leads to internal social conflict, and increase crime in the nation that would extradite for an offense that is not illegal in that country.
Given that Australia is not a third-world country, is not a narcotics exporting country, and has a stable and (I assume) fair form of government, it is unlikely that the repecussions will be as unsettling or as harmful as has occurred in Columbia.
Still, demanding extradition for an offense that is not illegal in the offenders country, and was not committed in the requesters country, does not serve a nations national interest, as it will weaken it's ability to (ethically and effectively) influence the other nations policies, creates mistrust among the citizens and governments of other nations, and makes traveling abroad more dangerous for the nations citizens due to misguided attacts against it's citizens.
I a company is doing business in a foreign land, then they must be willing to deal with the law (or lack of law) and culture as it exists there. If the company wishes to have that law changed, they should follow the tradition and procedure of that countrynot lobby their own government to have its law enforced on foreign soil.
If this man has broken Australian law, he should be prosecuted under Australian law, or if it is a civil offense there, the harmed American parties should sue in Australian courts.
The US pressing for extradition in this case may seem like a "win" to the companies who produced the software, but for everyone else, and for US relations with Australia, this could be a big loss in the long run.
ny
Yes, the freedom to choose what software is most suitable for the job it needs to do and maintaining that choice. If it's a commercial piece of software or even an MS package, so be it as long as the end-user had chosen to use it.
If this were the case, they would only attack Microsoft on those terms.
Oh, so we have no right to attack Microsoft on issues of security, instability and price then?
The WMP is not a freedom issue.
It's a transport for DRM which means you get to do less with the stuff you rightfully own than you did before. It also means you get to pay an MS "tax" to keep using your stuff. Of course it's about freedom.
If a customer doesn't like Windows prepackaged with WMP, there's nothing stopping that person from acquiring another OS.
What about somebody that uses Windows but doesn't like WMP? Are you saying that not liking a single package on an OS justifies reformatting your hard disk and putting a new OS on? What about simply having the choice of slotting in the player you want to use without the fact the concern that WMP is still installed somewhere doing its stuff in the background? If WMP is not that easy to remove then just what is it doing in the background then?
I see no hypocrisy here... uwx
What effects, positive or negative, do you think sites like the popular Groklaw [groklaw.net] have/will have on corporate technology litigation? Do lawyers pay any attention to the research and opinions of amateurs and the general public? skp
what these processors are known for. Benchmarks [vanshardware.com] show that. That's not to say it's a bad processor, and maybe the Efficeon will turn out a little sweeter. Meanwhile, there isn't a whole lot about Transmeta's stuff that stands out. Except the wacky design. lt
and posted on the web - like this site [allpar.com] eg
This kind of thing could be used to create more resilient ribbon cables than we have now. If these things can tolerate repeated 180 degree bends and being pinch off at weird angles frequently over a long period of time, laptop designers may have finally met their new best friend! fe
Adapting LotR to anything is a bold undertaking. Peter Jackson took the enormous risk to turn it into a movie trilogy, and succeeded, IMO, in the sense that apparently most avoid Tolkien fans seem to approve of his work, even though there are concerns about "streamlining" or "cutting corners" here and there. And I think Jackson deserves an enormous amount of credit for this.
Now, 10 hours of movies are yet quite different from 3 hours of musical. To bring this to the stage in a successful manner, a lot of streamlining and cutting will have to be done, with a tremendous risk of falling short of the original. I will admit that I was sceptical about the movies, and Jackson proved me wrong. I am even more sceptical here.
There are times where it's wise not to tempt fate, and pass on some challenges, instead of taking your shot at it and fail. Come up with your own original story and knockyourself out, no problem. But taint the work of Tolkien with a failed attempt of an adaptation, and people will remember you for a long time...
qlq
The BSD base isn't packaged. BSD types like having a source tree for their entire base system and being able to do "make buildworld" and "make installworld" to upgrade it. The package management system is entirely for third party applications. This is not Debian or Gentoo who have no code maintained by themselves other than installation and package management stuff. The BSDs maintain the kernel, the libc, other key libraries, and all the base utilities like ls, cp, mount, etc. And there's also a lot of "contrib" software in the base system -- some of it necessary to build the system (gcc and binutils), some of it just there out of tradition or regarded as "too useful to be moved to ports" (bind, sendmail). nyw
I see alot of fellow slashdot posters slamming on "Why only WMP?". Well, the outcome of this sanction is wider than WMP alone, much wider. It will leverage future sanctions on other software bundled with Windows in speed and decision power. By taking this case as an example, it will become much easier to make sanctions against other monopoly misuse. That is what the real power of this decision is all about. th
Okay, I figure it has to do with spam... but what exactly? Server? Client? GNAA/Linux? Windows? Don't make me click links, this is Slashdot and I'm lazy. qz
Hanly says." It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem.
Well sorta, the big buy here is that you get that much life from a significantly smaller/lighter battery. Note the presence of the physically larger "extended life" battery. Battery life isn't the "problem", or more accurately the tradeoff, it's the size (which in this case does matter). vr
How the fuck did this get modded to +5?
Wow, MySQL now has an official front-end tool (instead of one of many third-party ones that it's had for ages), oohh, that'll make ALL the difference. It's got NOWHERE NEAR the feature set of MS-SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, or Firebird. Christ, we had to wait till version FOUR till they added native transaction support (which wasn't ever written by them), subqueries, replication, etc. and we're still not sure that it even does any of this properly now! (Each point release massively changes and/or extends features, which is stupid for a supposedly stable DB.) Sounds like a "real" DB to me that'll definitely compete with Oracle and MS-SQL, yeah right...
But because Slashdot loves MySQL this gets modded to +5 by people who don't know shit about databases, and certainly not about MS SQL Server. Great.
The only reason MySQL became popular was because it was free and ran well together with Apache on modest hardware, so ISPs could bundle it as a *simple* website backend DB. It does that pretty well (as long as you don't mind running REPAIR TABLE every now and again), but it's certainly no viable alternative to MS-SQL or Oracle. Anyone that thinks that and uses the acronym M$ in the same post really doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about. cqe
Can I sue for damages incurred because I couldn't order my penis enlargement pills before my porn audition? Damn you microsoft, you kept me from making millions! Now just give me some money and we'll call it even. fgz
this is from the faq...
In real-world scenarios, false positives have ranged anywhere from 0% (none) to 0.10% depending on both implementation and user's mail behavior. Users with relatively predictable mail behavior (such as geeks, dweebs, and freaks) have generally received very few false positives (less than 1 in 10,000 messages). hj
Coffee - and coasters to put the mugs on, too! It just doesn't get better than that...:) bo
While its not exactly reviewing all the latest and greatest, www.dansdata.com [dansdata.com] is my favorite "independent" web review site. He usually sticks to cameras, small computer parts, and other neat electronics, but he's a no BS kinda guy who will say something sucks when it does. gf
It won't be an issue until they find a Kuiper object that is bigger than Pluto. Then they'll have an awkward situation. Making Pluto a planet when this bigger object isn't one doesn't make sense; nobody wants to add a new planet, because in retrospect it was a mistake to make Pluto a planet, and adding another Kuiper object would just compound it; and removing Pluto from the list of planets offends tradition.
Everyone wants to push this off as long as possible, so if the new object is really smaller than Pluto, they'll breathe a sigh of relief and go on with things as they are. gkt
All these suggestions make the naive assumption that people in general learn from past mistakes. jzj
I thought planets were Roman gods. It's not even like we've run out of them. We can still find Vulcan (Mulciber if you want to avoid rabit Trekkies), Juno, Minerva, Apollo (You can call this one Phoebus if you want to avoid confusing it with space probes), Diana, Vesta.
And that's before you start getting slightly obscure ones like Janus, Bacchus (Or Liber), Fanus, Quirinus, Pomona, or Vertumnus. fh
MySQL...is ten times easier to manage and work with then SQL Server 2000.
I'm sorry, but what the hell are you talking about? I've used both these servers extensively (as well as Sybase ASA, PostgreSQL and Oracle), and as much as I respect MySQL, it's certainly no easier to use than SQL Server. It's at best about the same, with SQL Server being much easier to pick up from 0 knowledge due to a surprisingly good set of help docs. Enterprise Manager and Query Analyzer are really good tools, as well...in fact, until we discovered mssqlXpress [xpressapps.com], Query Analyzer was bar none my favorite IDE for making new statements. (sqlXpress adds sourcesafe integration, versioning, and historical reporting to a clone of Q.A. with autocomplete and automatic proc generation, it is a pretty clutch tool)
MySQL is very good, but ten times better? Not really. In fact, if I had to beg for any SQL Server regardless of price, I'd take SQL Server because it's the easiest to develop for and easiest to port FROM. This gives you an app that will run on almost any other server with a little effort. I rewrote a massive app to run on Sybase in three weeks and Postgres in a month (most of which was testing the DB core of our app). lh
I always thought they were selling milk, sugar and "lifestyle" with some kind of dark caffeinated substance occasionally thrown in. nre
MySQL...is ten times easier to manage and work with then SQL Server 2000.
I'm sorry, but what the hell are you talking about? I've used both these servers extensively (as well as Sybase ASA, PostgreSQL and Oracle), and as much as I respect MySQL, it's certainly no easier to use than SQL Server. It's at best about the same, with SQL Server being much easier to pick up from 0 knowledge due to a surprisingly good set of help docs. Enterprise Manager and Query Analyzer are really good tools, as well...in fact, until we discovered mssqlXpress [xpressapps.com], Query Analyzer was bar none my favorite IDE for making new statements. (sqlXpress adds sourcesafe integration, versioning, and historical reporting to a clone of Q.A. with autocomplete and automatic proc generation, it is a pretty clutch tool)
MySQL is very good, but ten times better? Not really. In fact, if I had to beg for any SQL Server regardless of price, I'd take SQL Server because it's the easiest to develop for and easiest to port FROM. This gives you an app that will run on almost any other server with a little effort. I rewrote a massive app to run on Sybase in three weeks and Postgres in a month (most of which was testing the DB core of our app). gu
I've been into computers since I was 8. I bought my first car when I was 18. I used to be one of those people that took it somewhere anytime something went wrong. Then when I was 19, I met someone who worked on vehicles for a living. He showed me that I was being taken to the cleaners when I pay Midas $400 for new brakes. When I was 24, I bought my second vehicle. Maybe 6 months later, the front passenger side rotor was shot. I went to Monroe for an estimate, $692 for two new rotors, braks pads, shoes, calipers, pistons, and lines. I talked to my friend, he showed me that my calipers, lines, and the pistons for the rear brakes were fine. So I bought new rotors and pads, did the repair myself for ~$60.
4 years later, I've gone through a fair number of pads and shoes since, but the calipers are still fine and the lines are good.
I've known "computer professionals" who operate on the same kind of principle. They feel like they should make as much money as possible whenever someone comes into the shop by misrepresenting what needs to be done, or even outright lying. Some of them are quite successful because of this, but others fail miserably.
You can't hold those people that you depend upon to make your living in contempt. You can't treat people like their morons. (even if some of them really are)
LK qkq
I understand the need to hsve integrity in what is reported. Any person trying to stifle a collection of facts (which is what HardOCP had/has), should be strung up like a traitor.
Now, if there was libel or untruth involved, I'm the first to say they need to be punished... but... don't try to hide your own faults by beating up on a website. Nobody likes a sore loser (or vaporware company).
[cheapplug]For some journalistic goodness, go to oldos.org [oldos.org][/cheapplug] yxh
Starbuck's should go with something more tried and true: sell helium baloons or something. lkr
Some F/OSS projects just aim to get a job done, do it, and leave it up to someone else (perhaps less qualified?) to complete things, to produce a complete package that does the job well
Han-wen & Jan have done one of the latter, this is a supreme polished job that's only getting better. Kudos
adult desktops & wallpapers [67.160.223.119] bv
While, yes, you manage distributed systems from the center, you don't *push* updates, changes, modifications because, it doesn't scale. You end up having to write stuff like this fault tolerant shell which is frankly backwards thinking.
Instead, you automate everything and *pull* updates, changes, scripts etc. That way if a system is up, it just works, if it's down, it'll get updated next time it's up.
I won't go into details but I'll point you at http://infrastructures.org/
mgq
While wardriving one day I happened to stumble onto an open wireless network for a lawyer, a doctor, and a securities trading firm in the same parking lot. All networks were open and C drives for many computers were shared. I connected to the networks for the doctor and checked my email. I connected to the lawyer's office and plundered around in their shared drives and copied a folder called Client Files onto my computer. And I connected to the securities firm and started up a packet monitor for an hour to capture and analyze their network traffic. This information reveled several bank account numbers, email usernames and passwords, and sensitive customer information.
All 3 networks had no encryption in place and no passwords were cracked to access any of the data.
How many, and which laws, have I broken?
jau
And if so, can i change the emulation to lets say.. a PPC, or even a Z80?
Or is that locked down to a microcode level and not 'user accessable'.
szl
If this sort of thing is common, can anyone recommend any review sites that they trust?
--
Real-time deal updates [dealsites.net] zzh
By the time your daughter grows up, do you think there will be any of our cherished freedoms on the Internet left, or will everything be wrapped in legalese and DRM? With the passage of laws from the DMCA to the PATRIOT act, I've been increasingly pessimistic about the US's ability to pass any sane legislation that interfaces with the Internet... ox
Yeah, the US has this long history of practicing global equality.
I bet if only governments asked for their nationals detained at Camp X-Ray to be returned, the US would put them on the next plane!
Joe Webmaster, or any other American citizen, will never, ever, not in a million years be extradited anywhere, no matter what they did.
lms
The usefulness of the proprietary data stream is overstated. I think it was in 94 that the first on-board diagnistic spec (OBD) appeared in mass production. Everyone was crying about it at the time. Amazingly, independent repair shops are still in business. Since then there have been refinements, but it basically defines a standard interface and subset data stream required on all production cars in the US. With an OBD capable scan tool and the proper manuals, any tech can diagnose any problem with any car. There might be a more robust data stream available to the dealer mechanic, but the true value of that extra data is trivial IMO.
I left a 10 year career in auto repair (part of that post-OBD), where my specialty was driveability and electrical. The truly skilled technicians understand the system and don't necessarily depend on a particular tool to get their work done. An old-style analog oscilloscope is more valuable to a tech than any proprietary scan tool. The challenge is the diminishing number of techs that would know what to do with one. mi
[Mark Hamill] Luke be a Jedi tonight! Just be a Jedi tonight!
[Mark Hamill & Backing Chorus] Do it for Yoda while we serve our guests a soda!
[Mark Hamill] And do it for Chewie and the Ewoks, and all the other puppets
[Mark Hamill & Backing Chorus] Luke, be a Jedi tonight!
ri
ought to have better things to be doing than looking at bubbles in beer glasses dammit. su
Obviously someone who's not used the Transmeta based Compaq Tablet. About as blazingly fast as a shackled tortoise. It does have great power consumption stats though:)
gxqI don't think that's the point... there are other laws as well that aren't the same as the states. For example here in Canada you are allowed to download MP3's... just not upload them...
But if US law took priority we'd be extraditing lots of Canadians to be tried in US courts for copyright infringment even though it's perfectly legal here in Canada...
Or something totaly different... it's legal to smoke pot here in Canada... if US law took priority then we'd be extradited to the US for enjoying a bud...
Different countries different laws... why should we be arrested and extradited for laws of other countries if we broke none in our own? (And have never stepped foot in the other country even) That would be like arresting all those downloading pr0n and extraditing them to Iran or something because it violates Islamic laws of decency...
Just my two cents...
Addbo
qk
The article states that Starbucks is working in conjunction with Hear Music. I know that in Chicago, there is (or was, havent been there in awhile) a Starbucks that had a Hear Music CD store next door. The two stores were connected, and you could bring your coffee in with you while you browsed for CDs and listened to music at the listening stations. Sounds like this is just a natural extension of that. And I think its a great idea. I'm not too optomistic about getting one in Pittsburgh, however, where the only common record store chain (NRM) is long since gone and bankrupt and a Virgin Megastore or even a Tower Records has never touched the shores of the Mon River. But I digress. rk
Granted, if you ran an all RedHat shop or an all Mandrake shop things would be easier than simply an all GNAA/Linux shop, but the same would be true for an all OpenBSD shop vs an all FreeBSD or NetBSD shop. But if each department is free to buy what they want I'd rather find who-knows-which-BSD on the box than who-knows-which-GNAA/Linux. fb
I think the subject, says it all!
eoGet off your high horses people (not just you, all the posters along this vein).
Look, what are you waiting for in the next release of SQLServer? Anything? Nope...didn't think so.
You HAVE a rock-solid DB solution from MS right now, so who cares if the next release from MS is late, especially when it represents a fundamental change, and thus nothing you're doing _right now_ will suffer if it's not out next week will it?
Damned, the only thing I know of that's being worked on that requires this to be released is WinFS, which will be released in Longhorn when? A couple more years you say?
Besides, when was the last time your OSS project of choice went gold on time? And no, not having release deadlines doesn't count.
le
I first expected it to be some kind of super Zaurus but no...
it just seems to be some bigger Vaio C1xx.
Now, I do not see who they want to sell this to if this at least present no consistency with the rest of their offer. fnr
That would be Bode's Law [wikipedia.org]. It is wiewed as more of a coincidence than a law these days.
According to my hung over calculations Sedna is 67 AUs out, which is not that far off from the 77.6 that Bode predicts, but not really close either. oz
I wouldn't say that it's ridiculous.
People don't understand computers. To many, either AOL works, or it doesn't. And, these people don't want to understand computers.
Just like all people are capable of changing their own oil (or in your case, a wheel stud), it doesn't mean it's something that they want to learn how to do.
However, just like with vehicles, there is always going to be price gougers (and those who do shoddy fixes to more extensive problems). In the realm of computers, with so few people understanding the depths of their operating systems, price gouging is even easier, as how man people really know what, "Kernel32.dll has performed an illegal operation (Insert long string of hex here)," means, or even how to find a solution.
With vehicles, at least most individuals have a basic understanding (IE, they know that when a mechanic tell them the timing belt needs to be replaced but he's pointing to the rear differential that something is up.) yih
That shell script can be improved a lot by using " set -e " to exit on failure, as follows:
#!/bin/sh
set -e # exit on failure
cd/work/foo
rm -rf bar
cp -r/fresh/data
This means that, if any command in the script fails, the script will exit immediately, instead of carrying on blindly.
The script's exit status will be non-zero, indicating failure. If it was called by another script, and that had "set -e", then that too will exit immediately. This is a little bit like exceptions in some other languages.
ylc
I tried several incarnations of dspam over a period of about 6 months. It was a pain in the butt to install, required a massive amount of training, and required you run a web server in order to have the point and click training capability.
I eventually gave up and tried the CRM114 Discriminator:
http://crm114.sourceforge.net/
It was MUCH easier to install, MUCH easier to maintain, and has the same or better level of accuracy. I used to get 100+ spam messages a day and now I'll get maybe 1 or 2 a week that sneak through (after only a few weeks of training on errors only).
moa
I'm feeling so wired today. msq
I'm feeling like I could be the 6 trillion dollar man any year now... between this, powered exoskeletal legs [slashdot.org], BrainGate computer hacker upgrades [slashdot.org], and health-enhancing contact lenses [slashdot.org], I'll be a super sapper in no time. I wonder how much of this my beloved US Army has actually looked into. wb
ought to have better things to be doing than looking at bubbles in beer glasses dammit. bh
Shell scripts should be short and easy to write. I have seen plenty of them fail due to some resource or another being temporarily down. At first people are neat and then send an email to notify the admin. When this then results in a ton of emails everytime some dodo knocks out the DNS they turn it off and forget about it.
Every scripting language has their own special little niche. BASH for simple things, perl for heavy text manipulation, PHP for creating HTML output. This scripting language is pretty much like BASH but takes failure as given. The example shows clearly how it works. Instead of ending up with PERL like scripts to catch all the possible errors you add two lines and you got a wonderfull small script, wich is what shell scripts should be, that is none the less capable of recovering from an error. This script will simply retry when someone knocks out the DNS again.
This new language will not catch your errors. It will catch other peoples errors. Sure a really good programmer can do this himself. A really good programmer can also create his own libraries. Most find of us in admin jobs find it easier to use somebody elses code rather then constantly reinvent the wheel. qek
Ditto, I'd also like to add that I use our home 'pokey' laptop to ssh and remote desktop into much faster/less portable computers. Think of it as a wireless console and it's CPU horsepower doesn't matter AT ALL. tl
Burn to cd ? Not so useful. But burn to your iPod there and then.. now *that* would be good. rr
seriously MOD PARENT UP!, that guy made a flute playing "automaton" [wikipedia.org]that had about 12 songs back in 1737 ufd
On second thought, I changed my mind. This would be a great precedent.
If it works, let's pass a law making spamming illegal, with harsh penalties, and then demand that everyone extradite thier spammers. tu
Why not choose a Transmeta powered port-a-box? What's the difference what's inside as long as you can run you necessary proggies? Does it really matter if AMD or Intel is inside? Does it really matter that it's Transmeta? How could you even tell, provided your software behaves as expected? yv
It's free, but you can pay for it and get extra features, like a bigger mailbox.
:). I run the account in 'whitelist' mode, so everything goes to the 'junk' folder. The only thing I get in my actual inbox is messages from hotmail telling me my mailbox is full :)
I'm jharper@hotmail.com (I'm not afraid of posting the address publicly, i think i'm on every mailing list I could be on anyway
So if I used the account seriously, rather than just as an address I can hand out if I need to hand one out, i'd need the extra space to hold all the spam that built up overnight.
vka
all this slipage is a cover for the fact that ms has been listening to it's customers ( forced by some healthy oss pressure ) 1: we don't want to be forced into upgrade cycles every 12 months. enterprise systems don't work that way. 2: take the time and fix the damn bugs. we are paying for this shit lets see it work properly. uf
The article states that Starbucks is working in conjunction with Hear Music. I know that in Chicago, there is (or was, havent been there in awhile) a Starbucks that had a Hear Music CD store next door. The two stores were connected, and you could bring your coffee in with you while you browsed for CDs and listened to music at the listening stations. Sounds like this is just a natural extension of that. And I think its a great idea. I'm not too optomistic about getting one in Pittsburgh, however, where the only common record store chain (NRM) is long since gone and bankrupt and a Virgin Megastore or even a Tower Records has never touched the shores of the Mon River. But I digress. bzs
what these processors are known for. Benchmarks [vanshardware.com] show that. That's not to say it's a bad processor, and maybe the Efficeon will turn out a little sweeter. Meanwhile, there isn't a whole lot about Transmeta's stuff that stands out. Except the wacky design. hh
I know it is one of their big selling points but I have yet to have used a Transmeta device that actually had a longer run time than my huge Latitude C series with second battery. Why? Because for some reason manufacturers seem to have a fetish for the 2.5 - 3 hour benchmark. Once they reach it, they concentrate on size instead. Surely I can't be the only one who would be happy with a smallish (12-13") notebook with long battery life. I certainly find that more interesting than devices that are so tiny as to be unusable yet have comparable run time to normal laptops. jis
All the programmers who need the environment to compensate for their inadequacies, step on one side. All the programmers who want to learn from their mistakes and become better at their craft, get on the other side.
Most of us know where this line is located.
"In other news, at the local beach today a vicious fight broke out between geeks about where to draw a line. Sand was kicked, noses have been blooded, we have some unconfirmed reports of a wedgie. We will have more on this breaking news as it comes in."
asm
HEAD/data/en/big/current/GoogleToolbarInstaller.ex e HTTP/1.1
Host: toolbar.google.com
Connection: close
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 12:51:14 GMT
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 16:47:28 GMT
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 476864
Content-Type: application/octet-stream fn
... of a tour inside a similar missile silo [triggur.org], by underground explorers. Maybe it's the same, I didn't check that. But at least it gives you an impression of what is under there. sgw
Most extradition treaties deal with criminal offenses.
Other than the weird laws of the US (sorry, but thats my opinion), since when has "copyright infringement" been considered a criminal offense?
I guess we can expect the RIAA to extradite for downloading next?
uysComputer can and do run without Microsoft. They are a brand. A company can decide, at will, to no longer purchase Microsoft.
Now, a good deal of that has more to do with anti-trust tussels between the DOJ and Microsoft in the past than a lack of trying on Microsoft's part.
The legal puzzle is thus. Microsoft is de-facto standard. People equate their crap with computers. To the mundanes out there Microsoft is to computers what gas is to cars. They have done a tremendous marketing job. You really can't build a case based on consumer buying habits. People do choose to buy Microsoft Products. It may not be a particularly wise choice, or even an informed choice, but the path to destruction is often wide and well paved.
Courts are loathe to step in and tell the average man how to live their life. Where Microsoft does get into trouble is in their dealings with computer makers. One of the things to come out of the Seatlement was that Microsoft was not longer permitted to have a different pricing structure for each supplier. Nor were they permitted to charge a license fee for every computer produced, whether or not windows ships with it.
As for Microsoft's stranglehold on industry, at this point it's more like those hitchiking seeds that velcro themselves to your trousers after a walk through the woods. There are a bunch of reasons people cling to them, all annoying, and all easy to pick off one by one.
Microsoft is the architect of their own destruction. They spend their time polishing shiny things, rather than sitting down and hammering out reliable products. By reliable I mean something that runs for 3 or more years without having to be completely reformatted and re-built. rvb
There's this tale (many adapations exist I'm sure):
* There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired.
Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine fixed, but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge.
He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and proudly stated, "This is where your problem is".
The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.
The engineer responded briefly:
One chalk mark: $1
Knowing where to put it: $49,999
It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace. qii
"It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem."
If you look at the weight of the laptop 2 pounds for the 3 hours and 2.6 pounds of 6 additional hours. That is lighter than a conventional laptop. Hell, my battery prolly weighhs 2 punds for 3 and a half hours. So this does use less power. The battery is just smaller. vp
~Darl wx
This really isn't much different than open-source vs closed-source though, is it...if the person selling it wants to lock you out of the internals, well, your choices include not buying from them.
#:apt-get install camaro
No package by that name.
#:apt-get install thunderbird
Try "apt-get install firefox"
#:apt-get install mini
Downloading "mini-dinstall" from repos
Ctrl-C
Process interrupted
#:apt-get install pinto
Warning: you are about to install package "pinto" from repository "www.ford.com/unstable" Do you wish to continue?
Ctrl-C
gft
This will not improve people's skills. In fact, it willl make them more prone to mistakes, and more likely to get the result that they didn't expect. It's similat to computer spell checkers. Ever since people started relying on these, their spelling has gone way downhill simly because they don't bother thinking. Computer do all the spelling for them. They don;t need a spell checker. They need spelling lessons.
This si even worse. Computers will try to second guess what the user means, get get it wrong half tyhe time.
A qualified shell scripter will be not make these mistakes in the first place. Anyone who thinks they need this shell actually just need to learn to spell and to ytype accuratly. qly
Here's a "tour" [triggur.org] of a missile complex for those yearning for a bit more than a small sketch on a web page...
tar
Living underground has many practical advantages. All-year insulation from heat and cold, no neighbours, no leaking roofs, infinite space for expansion if you care to dig.
But... we're descended from tree-hugging primates, not moles, and living underground is a sure way to go crazy. A home needs sunlight, a view, and fundamentally, people within easy reach.
I'd rather live in a shoddy 1-room appartment than in a hundred room bunker.
tcs
Some links for the interested:
A real estate agent specializing in Missile Bases [missilebases.com]
A virtual tour made by some tresspassers. [triggur.org]
I was fascinated about the chance to own one of these properties. Doing some research, I found some ceveats though. First, the base had to be de-commissioned prior to 1965. After that, there were new treaties which required the complete destruction of the base after de-militarization. Second, being underground can lead to some health hazards, i.e. Radon. Third, missile bases aren't ever located in easy to reach places, and I like to be able to go to the store without a bunch of planning beforehand.
I'd still love to own this monstrosity though. The Titan 1 sites are the most elaborate and extensive. Kind of makes me sick to think about the money spent of this thing when it was built only to be decomissioned ~5 years later. ch
it would make more sense when Microsoft would claim it was an attack. Internal problems can be blaimed on the company ...
With Win2000, Microsoft was working hard to get away from their reputation for instability. Some of this they fixed with software changes, and some with marketing propaganda.
With Longhorn, Microsoft is working twice as hard to get away from their rep for insecurity. At least for the moment, it is better to have their systems appear a tad unstable than insecure.
jwg
hgThere's this tale (many adapations exist I'm sure):
* There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired.
Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine fixed, but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge.
He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and proudly stated, "This is where your problem is".
The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.
The engineer responded briefly:
One chalk mark: $1
Knowing where to put it: $49,999
It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace. qnc
strange brew [kombucha.org]
nearly free, as in you make it yourself. bubbles included. vwd
Seriously slashdot, your GNAA/Linux loving policy is blinding you as to what is relevant and what isn't.
And your ignorance of news is blinding you to the fact that all the other major news sites reported hotmail and msns outages as well.
Even CNN had it as a top story in the technology section. sb
..women at the bar can really like you! If one of them is turned on by your presence it's not just that you've had too much to drink! tgp
That article didn't go into much detail. I don't know what kind of system MS uses to run Hotmail, MSN and other services, but where's the multiple location clustered redundant load balancing system? My only guess is that someone at MS really messed up their own DNS systems, which of course would take it all "down" (by name at least). Does anyone know what actually happened? oy
I am neither justifying nor admonishing the law, I am merely stating that the public is more sympathetic towards it due to the fact that they could be considered guilty as well.
The facts are that these are computer crimes, and boundaries are somewhat gray when it comes to jurisdiction. If the guy was a virus writer, even if the virus was essentially harmless, we would be screaming at the top of our lungs for the chair. Spammers, same thing. The DOD warez group? They gave me all those cool games. They should get medals for fighting the Corporate Interests which are taking away my rights!
See, it's all in the perception of the law, not the letter of the law, and not the spirit. We can get outraged and call a law unjust, but we are not always objective. Pot Laws are a perfect example of this. We have large groups fighting for the right to smoke pot. Should we legalize it because a lot of people want to smoke up? Did the editors at high times give this a lot of thought, or do they just want to smoke pot?
Now, I'm all for legalizing it, but I want the same controls as alcohol. Give me a roadside test for it, that does not involve a blood test or urine test, and I'll be the the guy in the first row of the march on the capitol. Until then, simply legalizing it, even if half the population smokes, would be irresponsible. In North America, we do not have the public transportation infrastructure to give pot smokers options to travel, and we have no yardstick to measure when it's dangerous to drive under the influence.
That's enough ranting. In summary, Democracy is about being fair and responsible. Changing the laws to prevent people from becoming criminals will only lead to a land of no laws to infringe, denegrating into a cultural hedonism.
wve
Microsoft (circa 2001): "With this new licensing model, you buy "software assurance" so if a new version is released in the next two years, you're entitled to a free upgrade"
Uh huh...I see that's working out nicely...
mst
Something perhaps like this [catb.org]? nxs
But if you can throw a football, oh wow, put you on a pedestal. That's what education gets you... cb
Checklist:
1. Move to Missile Complex
2. Change name to Dr. Evil
3. Hold the world hostage
4. Profit
See, I didn't use a ??? part, they are so lame;)
sj
Computer can and do run without Microsoft. They are a brand. A company can decide, at will, to no longer purchase Microsoft.
Now, a good deal of that has more to do with anti-trust tussels between the DOJ and Microsoft in the past than a lack of trying on Microsoft's part.
The legal puzzle is thus. Microsoft is de-facto standard. People equate their crap with computers. To the mundanes out there Microsoft is to computers what gas is to cars. They have done a tremendous marketing job. You really can't build a case based on consumer buying habits. People do choose to buy Microsoft Products. It may not be a particularly wise choice, or even an informed choice, but the path to destruction is often wide and well paved.
Courts are loathe to step in and tell the average man how to live their life. Where Microsoft does get into trouble is in their dealings with computer makers. One of the things to come out of the Seatlement was that Microsoft was not longer permitted to have a different pricing structure for each supplier. Nor were they permitted to charge a license fee for every computer produced, whether or not windows ships with it.
As for Microsoft's stranglehold on industry, at this point it's more like those hitchiking seeds that velcro themselves to your trousers after a walk through the woods. There are a bunch of reasons people cling to them, all annoying, and all easy to pick off one by one.
Microsoft is the architect of their own destruction. They spend their time polishing shiny things, rather than sitting down and hammering out reliable products. By reliable I mean something that runs for 3 or more years without having to be completely reformatted and re-built. th
The authentication is useless even if implemented - you want to receive email from strangers, that's what all businesses are doing. If you are not one of them and only converse with your buddies, make a whitelist and be done - no spammer will guess your friends' emails.
Permissions to send email are also troublesome. If they are automated, then spam robots will be written to ask for permission first. If they are not automated... but how would you know if some random "John X. Frisby" <jfrisby@big.provider.net> is really who he is, and the matter he wants to discuss with you is not a bug in your Loafizer 0.99 script for your bread making machine, but a placebo enlargement pill. Additionally, permissions delay the mail exchange, which is bad for business.
There are ways to block anyone you don't want, and all other senders are legit (until they spam you, that is.)
So the problem is quite different, as you can see. There is a free channel of marketing, and spammers will be using it until it remains a) free and b) channel. Remove any one of those two, and they will close up the shop. svx
Because PCs are very versatile, your DVD player is disigned to do a total of perhaps three things (and you do have to install "software" each time you put in a disc happily it is very standardized). Your PC can do many many more, and the things you want to do out of the box, may well be very different from the things I want mine to do out of the box. One of us might want to download music the other rips it. One of us might play FPS, the other wants to play bejeweled and browse slashdot. One of us might work in word processors, the other spreadsheets, and another guy might only want to use a text editor and compier. Each of these tasks requires a special addition to our generic tool, and we might not care about being able to do the things that the other tools allow us to potentially do. That's why you have to install software on your computer, the alternative is buying a task specific computer (a developer workstation, gamer's box, office machine, network terminal, but each of these would require that the seller know all the software you plan to use for the life of the computer. dc
Maybe a few cars from back then claimed more horsepower than what you can get today. (I kind of doubt it with cars like the Dodge Viper on the market). Keep in mind that horsepower numbers were inflated back then, and the drivetrains and suspensions were not capable of utilizing the horsepower that they had.
If you read any car magazine, there are plenty of aftermarket shops that do modify today's cars, and they manage to keep them legal as well. yoh
I'm feeling so wired today. wk
How do you plan on managing laws and constitutions that stretch beyond U.S territories.
If the Internet started with the U.S and expanded to some parts of Antarctica. U.S. rules are probably useless once it gets to the new continent.
Vice versa if someone in Antarctica created a P2P application and it became extremely popular in the U.S. U.S lawyers probably can never get a grip on it.
Isn't geography the greatest challenge out there for any lawyers. In fact it's so difficult to deal with it's rendering the law useless. nf
I'm curious as to what possible reasoning Starbucks used to enter this completely alien market. There's little money to be made from it and it seems impractical due to the time required to both burn the CD and create the playlist. Unless their goal is to keep the customer in their store for longer periods of time -- which I could see as a viable business model -- there really doesn't seem to be any strategy involved.
As an employee of a publically-traded rival corporation [Peet's Coffee & Tea] I'm not exactly unbiased here, but I'm wondering what others have to say about the strategy behind such a radical departure from the typical role of a coffee shop. kic
I can't think of a more unfortunate name than the "phantom console" other than the "vaporware console"... seriously who comes up with this stuff.
If they tried to sue me I'd call their bluff (the "phantom lawsuit") and just put quotation marks around all my stuff to humiliate them:
The ceo of the company making the *yet to be released* "phantom" console has asked us to take down our review of their business. We suggest the best thing they could do would be to give us a "phantom" console to review, but something is really haunting their company - because the "phantom console" has yet to be released to the public. Finding their "phantom offices" is also a difficult task. But perhaps we shouldn't be so hard on the CEO, he could be a visionary - this "phantom of his imagination" could bring the gaming world to it's knees. All they need to do is set a new "phantom release date" and stick to it like the slime the ghosts leave when the pass through walls in Ghost Busters. Then we will all be able to enjoy the phantoms
humiliation complete, lawsuit aborted, insert credit for more life. ig
i just got hung up on, and that was approximatly the same time on friday. i was trying to get an activation code for win xp when i was disconnected from them all together. i waited a while thinking that like all good cutomer support they would call me right back because i was hung up on, but waited half an hour and called them to try to talk to the guy i was dealing with, and they told me that they were having serious internal problems. im not sure how it works, but i think MS might use some kind of internal VOIP system because there was a delay in speech with th guy i was talking to as well, but hotmail and their tech support both went down around the same time as i was informed of "major internal problems." so something big happened.
Lets get this stright. You -brought- windows XP.
cmh
In my opinion, any file format that claims to be universal should have two properties: it should have an expressive structure, so other formats can be expressed in it, and it should be as lean as possible, so that converting from other formats amounts to removing information. I think that MusicXML fits neither.
Am I missing something or are those two properties mutually contradictory? If converting means removing stuff, then the format would have to be a subset of the original, but if it's expressive enough to express other formats, then would it not also have to be a superset?
I basically read that as "It must be both more and less than what we have, and MusicXML is neither of those things" wx
But if you stood across the border in Minnesota and shot the Canadian, you've committed the crime in Canada(?) and would be extradited. jdg
Have you ever been in some sort of establishment and said to yourself. You know? This tune is quite catchy (pinky to mouth). It would be quite excellent if I could burn this piece of innovative harmony to CD. Wouldn't it Chompsky.. hUhUhU.
Certainly sir. Would you have me ask the young lady what specific tune?
Sure, be on with it.. CHOP CHOP Chompsky. Put them on my ipod.. (pinky to mouth). fb
You *WILL* get spam my friend. I've been doing this for almost 20 years (admin) now -- and have specifically used aliased accounts for various reasons over the years as you are doing.
... it only a matter of time before you're screwed.
:). Bill's idea of email stamps, well, hahahahaha...
:).
:)
Wait... You'll be interested to know that the biggest problem with the spam coming in comes from virus infected Windows boxes. They send it. They harvest the users Outlook address book. If you ever end up in somebody's Outlook box
I chuckle at the whole Exchange thing. You pay for that?
I personally pay to have a fixed IP @ home and run a old GNAA/Linux box. A lot of aliases I've used over the years (and some blatantly used to harvest) all go to some local account that processes the spam. Upon receipt -- mail the wrong account and sorry, but you're blocked (unless white-listed). White-listing can come from valid already received email -- but I work everything based off of IP. My hope is that the registered MX host(s) or any valid listed server by the authenticating DNS server will be the type of scheme that's re-implemented (or more to the point SHOE-horned in real soon
Over the last decade I've now got 380 aliased harvesting spam address' in use -- two valid email accounts @ home (my wife and myself) which is on my own IP with my own domain. I pay $5 extra a month above my broadband (10Mbit [yeah, solid] wireless) -- how much do you pay for that Exchange box?
I've run this type of setup through many offices scaled to dozens of email servers -- and the beauty is they also talk to each other sharing block/white-listed address' as needed. Wait -- you will get spam. Filtered through my account to I'm seeing 80 something that got in -- 2,164 blocked IP's [today], 380 harvested address', and 48 for various other infractions (attempts to relay through me, from a country where I know nobody, etc
Statistically (yeah, they all get nmap'd back)? 96% Windows based.
I give my email to friends. I have a work email that anybody that knows how to call me can have it. I even print it on my business card. No, I wouldn't post it to USENET or even here -- but it's still "out there". My unlisted phone number, OTOH, anybody can have. 847.854.0048. It's always busy and one channel of my ISDN home line. The other channel routes to the house for two phone lines (or Internet backup if and as needed) and is automatically unlisted and unpublished (at no cost since it is a "data circuit") -- and no, I'd rather not post that either.
Exchange? Never! nkh
How do you feel about people sharing your book? ep
I don't know what everybody is complaining about with these being slow chips. THey should really start to look at the trade-offs. Do they want to lug around an 8 pound laptop, with 3 hourse of battery life, just so they can say they have a 2.4 GHz laptop, or would they rather carry around a 2.6 pound laptop with 6 hours of battery life (weight with extended battery), and have to run things just a tinsy bit slower. I've found that provided the system have a good amount of memory, a pentium 2 is good enough to run most applications. nbl
except that my article history is truncated in a futile attempt to get me to subscribe. So I can't point to the writeup I did.
The increased accuracy comes from the emails that will slip under your mental radar. You are a human, and you make mistakes. You wouldn't deliberately choose to read the email, but one day the subject line looks plausible, and so you bring it up. Three-quarters of a second later, you're glaring at the monitor and hitting "delete", but DSPAM wouldn't have let that slip by in the first place.
iymThe simple reasoning behind this is to encourage competition in the belief that competion results in better products and/or lower prices.
Cars are something that are easily understood by most people. You buy a car and you want to get it fixed but the place that fixed your old car can't fix this car because the car manufacturer won't let the mechanic read the computer information in YOUR car.
So, you'll have to pay the prices that the car manufacturer wants you to pay to get your car fixed.
I think will be an easy bill to pass. The average person will see it as a way of saving money. rx
Actually many... Nerds use Hotmail for junk email accounts, like when they want to download something that needs registering first but don't want to receive the newsletter junks. qvy
...it's called R&D. What won't make money today, will be "necessity" tomorrow, and then that's when you get people to pay.
Furthermore, even if the technology itself doesn't automatically pan out (ie, humanoid robots), it may still have profitable applications in other areas (ie, prosthetics). bs
Adapting LotR to anything is a bold undertaking. Peter Jackson took the enormous risk to turn it into a movie trilogy, and succeeded, IMO, in the sense that apparently most avoid Tolkien fans seem to approve of his work, even though there are concerns about "streamlining" or "cutting corners" here and there. And I think Jackson deserves an enormous amount of credit for this.
Now, 10 hours of movies are yet quite different from 3 hours of musical. To bring this to the stage in a successful manner, a lot of streamlining and cutting will have to be done, with a tremendous risk of falling short of the original. I will admit that I was sceptical about the movies, and Jackson proved me wrong. I am even more sceptical here.
There are times where it's wise not to tempt fate, and pass on some challenges, instead of taking your shot at it and fail. Come up with your own original story and knockyourself out, no problem. But taint the work of Tolkien with a failed attempt of an adaptation, and people will remember you for a long time...
zxd
Excersize control: imagine your DVD playing the workout tape, and a machine monitoring your muscles as you work out. The DVD says "You need to work harder on your abs, the muscles aren't working hard enough". THAT would be cool. I know I could use it. vj
what they seem to essentially want is
- a try statement and error catching and
- a fortran like syntax for testing and arithmetic
I think the authors were a bit misguided. Instead of creating a whole new shell how about just extending a good existing shell with a new try statement a described.it can even be done without extending the shell:
as for the new syntax of.eq..ne..lt..gt..to.
certainly looks like fortran-hugging to me , yuck
as for integer arithmetic, that can be done with by either using backticks or the $[ ] expansion
bxSome F/OSS projects just aim to get a job done, do it, and leave it up to someone else (perhaps less qualified?) to complete things, to produce a complete package that does the job well
Han-wen & Jan have done one of the latter, this is a supreme polished job that's only getting better. Kudos
adult desktops & wallpapers [67.160.223.119] oyn
All though this seems lke a good idea on paper, I know that starbucks uses wifi networks. I was wondering if anyone a lot smarter than me could comment on the security of this. A hacker could pay for a song, and sniff it being transmitted on the network simaltaneusly. He would then have a clear copy of the data when it was given to him, and an encrypted, letting him use some cryptoanalysis tools to figure out how the songs are encrypted. Any idea on the plausibility of this? ly
If dogs are flying, then that is not weed you are smoking... Tread carefully, but enjoy. ll
Perhaps you missed the whole DeCSS [harvard.edu] issue? "Without licensed DVD players for GNAA/Linux and other operating systems, an entire class of computer users is completely cut off from viewing DVDs." ffs
All the programmers who need the environment to compensate for their inadequacies, step on one side. All the programmers who want to learn from their mistakes and become better at their craft, get on the other side.
Most of us know where this line is located.
"In other news, at the local beach today a vicious fight broke out between geeks about where to draw a line. Sand was kicked, noses have been blooded, we have some unconfirmed reports of a wedgie. We will have more on this breaking news as it comes in."
ek
Sedna? No. Plenty of people in this thread have complained about two facts - One, our planets have names derived from the Roman, not Inuit, panthon. And two, we already have a planet named after a sea-god, ie, Neptune.
So, I propose that in protest to such a blatant attempt at PC Multiculturalism, we as a community refer to the tenth planet as Nox, the Roman goddess of night. Since it lies the furthest from the sun, that actually fits it, in a descriptive sense.
Sedna... Whatever. Remember, we hear about this stuff months before your typical Fox news junkie, and people tend to respect us as sources of information. So spread the word - We have a new, tenth planet, named Nox. Sedna? Nope, they must have heard wrong. Nox. Nox? Nox!
mg
I would call this new news. Your post is informative? Please. jxo
This is one of Microsoft's most important products. Finacially, there is a huge amount of "positive perception" riding on SQL server.
Businesses may run on one of their OSes, but businesses run IN SQL Server. This product can make or (more critically) brake businesses. If rumors of major problems with SQL server screwing up business were to get out, corporate perception of them would tank.
They have no real choice with this product but to try and make sure it is ready (and take more time if needed) rather than push it to market.
-Pete zco
Yep, I was shocked when I first played with MySql, having heard such good things about it, and discovered how many features it lacked that I consider essential to a serious database.
I have since got over my shock and realised that MySql is really good for what it is, but is really a different kind of beast to Oracle, MSSql etc.
Dan.
kyl
Presenters of the music-playing machine found themselves being unmercifully heckled by a man calling himself Mssr. Jacques de Vaucanson, who proclaimed loudly that he had accomplished robotic music more than two hundred years prior to this demonstration.
When the presenters pointed out that Mssr. Vaucanson would have to be long dead as of this late date, the suddenly horrified heckler collapsed into a pile of dust, and the remainder of the presentation was conducted without further interruption. gkk
It's encouraging to see unemployeed techs finally taking advantage of all that time they spent fixing friends computers for free. I know I'm usually the first one several of my friends and family call when their computer starts acting weird, and all they want to do is send email.
Now if somebody was really smart, they'd find a way to get partnered with the local Best Buy and could probably turn it into a full time job. You'd be amazed at how much people are willing to pay if you can bring some sanity to their assorted home electronics. My mom loves the 3 page FAQ I made for her that goes step by step how to do everything with the home theatre system my Dad has. She used to not watch any DVDs just because she was scared to touch anything. qz
I don't know, this sounds like a dumb idea to me. I mean, I just don't see the synnergy between the two brands. If I want to go out for coffee, I go out for coffee. If I want to listen to music, I either go to a club or (back before I decided to boycott music) check out a music store. I guess some people go to coffee places to pick up girls and flirt, and amongst the young musical tastes can be a critical selection trait, and the young are an attractive demographic to target, but even so I don't see this catching on, really. jn
There's actually something on the front page about BSD. And it says nothing about SCO or linux.
otu
The new Muramasa has been out in Japan since January. It has had some nice reviews and keeps up well with Pentium-M modells of similar clock speed (see this Japanese review) [impress.co.jp]. And it is much cheaper. xxz
If Microsoft designed my car radio/CD player would be essential part of my car! If I remove the radio, the engine would not run. tx
I do hope they can somehow do a better job with security with the next release, although that may be asking too much.:-( Last time I had to reinstall SQL Server 2000, the whole subnet was down with the SQL Slammer worm before I even had a chance to configure the server and download the patches from Microsoft. Ouch. You have to download the patches ahead of time, pull the server off the internet, install SQL Server and all the patches, change the default port (and obviously make sure your sa password is not blank, duh) and only THEN go back online. Wow. dt
People are diliberately confusing 'codes' and 'code'. Mechanics need the _codes_ that the computer spits out indicating what is wrong. Nobody needs the _code_ for the computer software.
As for the whole complaint about the recent complexity of cars; it is government mandated and consumer demanded. There are requirements for fuel efficiency and emissions. A simple 4 stroke engine can only be so effecient and so clean. To meet regulations, cars need to incorporate exhaust gas recirculation, variable cam timing, complex variable spark timing, catylitic converters, and a host of other complexities. Consumers want climate control, adaptive suspension, 17 way power adjustable seats, power cupholders, remote buttons for everything, heated everything, and performance, but they expect their cars to have the simplicity of an air cooled VW? qhy
Finally. It's about time that people started to realize that electronics are complicated things and that it takes competent people to fix them. People don't do their own wiring or own plumbing, (well, most people) and they shouldn't. I think that the reason that electronics haven't passed into the realm of "let the professionals handle it" is because with electrical wiring, you can get shocked and die and with plumbing you can get covered with sewage or scalding water. Personally, I am glad that this I-can-do-it-myself mindset is starting to fade. Although, I do think that $125/hour is a bit much. zm
As soon as they said Rubbery Behavior, I am thinking of this ultra advanced underwear.
What a change since the medievil days when knights used to wear potato-sack-material like underwear. wv
As another example of the article being poorly put together: The article states "The usual way to make stretchable conductors is to embed metal particles in a rubbery polymer. But the particles tend to separate when the material is stretched, causing the electrical conductivity to plummet."
But the research in the end use a polymer which I assume would have to be rubbery in order to strech with the spring.
" Instead of fashioning the gold wires into helical springs, however, they gave them a flat, oscillating shape, like a meandering river, since this is easier to make. They manufactured them by electroplating gold onto a sheet of silver, surrounding the wires with polymer and then stripping the silver away."
Admittedly metal particles and metal wires are slightly different but a wire is simply a structure made up of particles. ar
No BSD secrets for you, Darl! mk
We are forced to run SQL 7.0 Standard Edition so I have no Idea what any of these post are talking about. Sigh... I digress kvu
I hear the bagpipe playing robot is still in development. xn
This is probably the worst article I've seen posted on making digital picture frames. I apologize if that hurts anyone's feelings, but a lot more thinking could have gone into the design and parts.
For starters, why not go to the flea market or ebay and pick up an ancient laptop? This gives you a cpu, motherboard, hard drive, network interface, and a display. I was able to find old, functional laptops for under $150 [ebay.com] on ebay.
I would pull the motherboard and mount it against the back of the display, then order a premium, custom built frame from a picture frame shop for ~$25-$100. You could be cheap and build your own, but $100 should get something nice and elegant. Another option would be to just pick up a pre-built frame and put in an insert cut to your spec.
For people not up to the skill level of configuring GNAA/Linux, they could simply boot to Windows and set their SHELL variable to a screen saver's executable for cycling pictures. There is one built-in to XP, but many freebies are out there for previous builds of Windows.
Personally, I would opt for a wireless NIC and mount a share where the pictures are to be stored. That way I could simply copy new pictures over to the system from my main computer. kd
With the codes to your DVD, you can make unlimited copies, and do anything and everything with them.
I can't speak a word of Polish, but given enough time I could make an exact copy of a book written in Polish.
DVD encryption does not prevent copying, it prevents people from watching them with players that the DVDCA hasn't made any money off of.
LK vt
Media software makers, or Microsoft?
This is not going to change anything. Microsoft will pressure the manufacturers to install their software. The consumer will never have a choice. Another total win for Microsoft. wk
Yes, the freedom to choose what software is most suitable for the job it needs to do and maintaining that choice. If it's a commercial piece of software or even an MS package, so be it as long as the end-user had chosen to use it.
If this were the case, they would only attack Microsoft on those terms.
Oh, so we have no right to attack Microsoft on issues of security, instability and price then?
The WMP is not a freedom issue.
It's a transport for DRM which means you get to do less with the stuff you rightfully own than you did before. It also means you get to pay an MS "tax" to keep using your stuff. Of course it's about freedom.
If a customer doesn't like Windows prepackaged with WMP, there's nothing stopping that person from acquiring another OS.
What about somebody that uses Windows but doesn't like WMP? Are you saying that not liking a single package on an OS justifies reformatting your hard disk and putting a new OS on? What about simply having the choice of slotting in the player you want to use without the fact the concern that WMP is still installed somewhere doing its stuff in the background? If WMP is not that easy to remove then just what is it doing in the background then?
I see no hypocrisy here... fu
You're in Minnesota. That's instant punishment. If it weren't for their hockey team, it would have been labelled 'Hell' a long time ago. ba
The real problem is not so much that the Yukon date has slipped, it's that Whidbey (The next version of Visual Studio.NET and the.NET framework) is slipping with it. For who knows what reason, Microsoft decided that these products must be released together. While Yukon promises some very nice features, most people would much rather have Whidbey released now and live with SQL 2000 for awhile longer.
To top it off, MS is not even going to be releasing any service packs for Visual Studio in the meantime. There are some rather serious issues with the current version of Visual Studio that can only be fixed by calling MS for specific hotfixes. Needless to say, much of the MS developer community is up in arms. kyb
What w/ the laziness and impatience remarks? Just can't help making a dig at anything not Debian? nm
Same code, but different security model/sandbox. The CLR in yukon does not have access to the file system, sockets, winforms, services, the registry or anything else a virus is going to need. It's limited to communicating with the SQL process and manipulating data within a database. Nothing more. ea
Too good to pass up...
Redmond city limits?
gti
since it cannot really do a lot (of damage) in the first place!
Anyway, a shell is just a shell is just a shell...
bej
As a side-bar, is the FTSH acronym pronounced... fetish?
All kidding aside, this sounds like a great idea.
As for the comments about encouraging sloppy code, it is clear those posters have never worked in demanding moving-target environments. The kinds of errors encountered cannot be solved easily in code - this extension would help.
As for the comments on "you can do this in Perl, Python, and ", this is true, but if I know Bash and want tolerance, why should I have to learn a new language to get it? Likely all I'm doing is copying files, forking off subprocesses, and the like.
For the comments on "why another shell," I would tend to agree that it would be best integrated into Bash - but then, you change the implementation of Bash, create incompatible situations, and have to retest volumes of existing scripts. It's best to have this as a separate shell with close look/feel semantics to Bash (or Csh).
ru
now the question is.. how hard is it to get it to work with cpanel gwp
I agree with parent that in this case size really doesn't matter: it's all in how you use what you got.
Historically, Neptune was discovered because it was perturbing Uranus' orbit: its existence was theorized long before it was directly observed. Similarly, Pluto was discovered because it was found that Neptune alone was not sufficient to account for all of Uranus' irregularity. While Pluto isn't very big, its size and orbit are such that it definitely affects the other planets.
In practice then, what we have actually used to distinguish a planet like Pluto from a large body that is not a planet, like Chiron (roughly as big, discovered 1977), is whether the object interacts in a measurable way with known planets. If it does, then accord it planet status because it is clearly part of the planetary system.
In view of this, the new discovery is probably not a planet, unless it has a weird orbit like Pluto and would account for some of the remaining difference between planetary observations and expectations.
But what do I know? IANAA. wu
So that's why I couldn't access my inbox full of ads for Penile Enlargement, Hot Sex, and credit cards... qz
I'm sorry, but it took scientists to figure out that it was caused by the flow of the beer from the bubbles rising in the center? I mean, I figured that out a long time ago just by looking. No 750 frame per second camera required. I don't even think I was sober when I figured it out. And this is news? Sorry, but I'm a bit disappointed. ghv
I'm curious as to what possible reasoning Starbucks used to enter this completely alien market. There's little money to be made from it and it seems impractical due to the time required to both burn the CD and create the playlist. Unless their goal is to keep the customer in their store for longer periods of time -- which I could see as a viable business model -- there really doesn't seem to be any strategy involved.
As an employee of a publically-traded rival corporation [Peet's Coffee & Tea] I'm not exactly unbiased here, but I'm wondering what others have to say about the strategy behind such a radical departure from the typical role of a coffee shop. vu
There's this tale (many adapations exist I'm sure):
* There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired.
Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine fixed, but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge.
He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and proudly stated, "This is where your problem is".
The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.
The engineer responded briefly:
One chalk mark: $1
Knowing where to put it: $49,999
It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace. ewc
It was a .NET Passport outage. Even if you have no clue what this is, you almost certainly have one if you have a hotmail email address, or use MSN, or MS Money, MSN messenger, or a million other services. It's even used for RADIUS authentication of MSN dialup users.
Unlike Hotmail, which still runs primarily on UNIX, Passport is entirely based on Windows servers.
Passport is the authentication / single sign-on system for all these MSN services. If it's down, everything's down. And sadly it has proven a little unreliable recently, for reasons never disclosed.
tk
Here is today error message for my hotmail account: It was worst on Friday though: there was not even an error message as loginnet.passport.com was either dead or unreachable.
fgp
excellent output quality, lilypond has a couple of advantages that
haven't been mentioned in the discussion so far:
Yes, it was a fair bit of work to set it all up (I even use m4 [gnu.org] which may not be everyones cup of tea) But after that, producing a new piece of sheet music is really much faster and easier than with the traditional notation packages, and the result is a lot better.
ei
The article states that the Australian authorities are unable to charge him, indicating that he has done nothing illegal in his country of residence and the country where the act was carried out (Australian server,.au domain). Many Americans have "broken Norwegian law", by allowing Norwegians to download hardcore porn from American servers. Should they all be extradited? Your country and laws are not above anybody elses. The fact that some of you clearly think so sickens and frightens me. If we are to go by the logic put forth by some of you, we should all be extradited to China (if not North Korea)... Sure you want that? lm
DSPAM (as in De-Spam) is an extremely scalable, open-source statistical-algorithmic hybrid anti-spam filter. A majority of users running v2.10+ achieve filtering rates ranging from 99.92% - 99.98+%, DSPAM is currently effective as both a server-side agent for UNIX email servers and a developer's library for mail clients, other anti-spam tools, and similar projects requiring drop-in spam filtering. DSPAM has been implemented on many large and small scale systems with the largest systems being reported at about 125,000 mailboxes.
What is a Statistical-Algorithmic Hybrid Filter?
Present-day language classifiers bear the responsibility of maintaining accuracy in the midst of ever-increasing sample complexity. In the setting of spam filtering, many types of intentional attacks have been introduced such as obfuscation, word list injection, sample flooding, and etcetera. As the complexity of classification text continues to multiply rapidly, many filter developers today are left with conflicted feelings between increasing the complexity of their filter and wise teachings from CS class reminding them that computer science is about controlling complexity, not creating it. At the rate complexity is rising, filters will (and have already begun to) become so resource-intensive that they lose scalability, eventually leading to a second conflict of interests: where fighting spam becomes more expensive than managing it.
DSPAM is the first Statistical-Algorithmic Hybrid filter and in being such boldly suggests that there is a better alternative to increasing the feature set of filters to match the spams they are trying to fight. By employing algorithms designed to increase the quality of existing data rather than the quantity of data with the goal of reducing the feature set rather than increasing it, DSPAM has managed to achieve nearly equal levels of accuracy with present-day Markovian-based filters and other types of filters that employ large feature sets with the added benefit of using a significantly fewer amount of resources. DSPAM presently peaks at 99.984% accuracy, which is ten times more accurate than a human being [1] and is presently being used on implementations as large as 125,000+ mailboxes.
DSPAM's Focus
The DSPAM project attempts to go beyond "just another statistical filter" by focusing on the following areas:
* DSPAM has a strong focus on providing better data to already existing algorithms (Bayesian, Chi-Square, etcetera) Combination algorithms work inherently well, but depend on the quality of data. Some of the approaches deployed in DSPAM towards this goal include Chained Tokens, Inoculation Groups, Classification Groups, advanced de-obfuscation techniques, and a new noise reduction algorithm called Bayesian Noise Reduction. The goal is to incorporate processing algorithms that can withstand the long haul of ever increasing message complexity. So far we're doing a great job.
* A strong focus on large-scale implementation support. The largest implementation of DSPAM we've heard about to-date involves 125,000 users. DSPAM has been designed to experience a very short execution time (0.03s - 0.10s on average hardware), and has been equipped with a storage driver API allowing several different storage mechanisms to be used. Depending on disk space constraints, accuracy can be traded off for additional disk space or vice-versa.
* Empty Corpus Support and Global Dictionary Support. It is very important in a large-scale environment to allow users to build their own dictionaries starting from scratch. Why? Because system administrators haven't got the time to create 20,000 seeded dictionaries. On top of this, ISPs require out-of-the-box filtering, which DSPAM's global dictionary feature provides for end-users, with minimal centralized learning. DSPAM provides support for building corpuses from scratch without suffering many fatal training errors (false positives). When these two
Read the rest of this comment... xo
Except that it's not actually an auction. I made the same mistake (hey, it's EBay), but there's no place to enter a bid and if you look down at the bottom it says:
"This listing is an advertisement. There is no bidding! If you are interested in this property, you may contact the seller/agent to request additional information."
Which is probably smart. If it were an auction, it'd have eleventy-million fake bids by now.
It also tends to indicate that this is a real property. If it was just someone goofing around, it'd be an auction. That's not strong evidence, but it's certainly an indication. wvr
Here's what I posted on Wi-Fi Networking News [wifinetnews.com] about why Starbucks efforts are misguided:
Starbucks reportedly to offer music burning service in up to 2,500 stores: The system will allow customers to have CDs burned while they wait; eventually, it will also allow downloads of music over Wi-Fi, the article in BusinessWeek says.
Starbucks demanded a T-1 (1.544 Mbps in each direction) digital service infrastructure from its first hotspot partner, MobileStar, as well as its second, T-Mobile. I've speculated for a while on how this high-speed network could be used to cache material in each Starbucks, like movie and music downloads.
This latest project sounds somewhat misguided for the reason cited by the Forrester analyst in the article: Your typical barista may be great at making espresso but is not in a position to fix the broken CD burner.
My cousin Steven was involved almost 20 years ago with a company called Personics. The company had worked out a catalog licensing deal with more than 70 labels from the largest down to some independents to allow them to offer custom mix tapes for about a buck a song. This was a reasonable price in those days. The system had a few thousand songs mastered onto CD-ROMs stored in a special employee-operated CD-ROM changer behind the counter. An employee would punch in your choices, and the system created a high-speed cassette tape dub.
The company failed for two primary reasons: the hardware was proprietary, meaning that engineers had to fly around the country to fix it when it inevitably had glitches; and the catalog they offered too small because labels balked at including their most popular stuff for fear of cannibalizing pre-recorded CD and tape sales. (Price, my cousin reports, was not a problem: many customers were willing to pay even more, he noted to me after this item was originally posted.)
If Starbucks creates the expectation of an easy process that's always available and then isn't available even part of the time at any given store, they lose their audience. Starbucks makes its money from processing a high volume of custom drinks--you don't want to distract from that. CD burners aren't that difficult to keep operating, but a failure rate that's a fraction of that experienced by typical home and business users could be a dramatic problem in a high-expectation retail environment.
The article says the price is comparable to Apple and other download services. Two problems with that comparison. First, it's not. It's $7 for five songs, or 40 percent, or $13 for an album, or 30 percent higher. That's a significantly different price when you're dealing with price sensitivity. It's comparable to a mass-produced discounted audio CD.
Second, you're receiving an audio CD, not digital music per se, which could be a turnoff for the audience that might be interested in a fast, in-store music service. (However, since HP is the partner, and is reselling their own version of the iPod, it's possible that the ultimate digital delivery system will be a version of the iTunes Music Store.)
This is the latest incarnation of Compaq-cum-Hewlett Packard's attempts to capitalize on their relationship as a supplier to Starbucks. In January 2001, when the MobileStar deal was announced for installing hotspots, Starbucks made a big deal about Microsoft and Compaq's participation. Compaq wasn't a partner, though; Starbucks had signed a $100 million, five-year deal to buy equipment and services. Microsoft was a partner, and it never seemed to amount to anything that saw the light of day.
In the years since this deal, Compaq and then HP have reaped advertising benefits, appearing in full-page newspaper advertisements as part of the Starbucks hotspot system, even though they had nothing to do with MobileStar and T-Mobile's deployment. At one point, Starbucks had Compaq iPaq's available for customers to play with, and those disappeared, too.
It's this fumb
Who loses in the end? The music stores, anyway. jhb
I will admit that as a general nerd and space geek (I own a telescope) I am concerned about the possibility of the human population getting wiped out by a large space-borne impact.
But isn't it sad that governments throw billions of dollars towards defense (from other humans) yet nobody is willing to invest in defense of the earth at large?
This is the kind of shit that makes us look awfully silly when the aliens come inspect the rubble after the impact. wbc
Yes, it does.
Now go back to cowering you insensitive clod! np
What's the point of a screenshot of a commandline text processor like lilypond?
I'd have thought the scans of the printed output on the site would be more than enough.
What next. Do you want a screenshot of the scrolling messages at boot of the next linux kernel? kpk
This example was written about Office, but it's relevant to this argument:
Say that Office was a seperate company to Windows.
Office the company would see that making their product available on every platform would make them more money. Thus it would be so. Windows the company would have no incentive to build in special APIs for Office. Office would compete on it's merits and so would Windows, and competition COULD and WOULD exist effectivly in the marketplace.
Now, say that Office and Windows are made by the same company.
Office would by and large see that by making their product only available for Windows they would make less money but it would be worth more because every copy sold would also sell a Windows license. Windows wants to make sure that everyone who buys Windows chooses office so they do what they can to make it seem to run faster, better etc. Consumers get screwed by lack of choice.
(Obviously Office is also available for Mac, but this is due to historic pre-monopoly reasons. The same decision might be made today, but only to dodge having the AntiTrust people looking at them too sharply. If Office had been split off from Windows it would likley be available on IRIX, HPUX, AIX, GNAA/Linux, BSD etc today as well as Windows and OS X.) xws
IIRC, the "10x better" means 10x lower failure rate. The wording almost seems meant to deceive. The idea is that if you misidentify 10 messages out of 100, the filter would only misidentify 1. Since you made 10x as many mistakes, the filter was 10x as accurate as you were. it
except that my article history is truncated in a futile attempt to get me to subscribe. So I can't point to the writeup I did.
The increased accuracy comes from the emails that will slip under your mental radar. You are a human, and you make mistakes. You wouldn't deliberately choose to read the email, but one day the subject line looks plausible, and so you bring it up. Three-quarters of a second later, you're glaring at the monitor and hitting "delete", but DSPAM wouldn't have let that slip by in the first place.
vhtWhat i want is something where i can copy in a sheet of music or a few bars and hear what it would sound like. if you really want someting to teach music students with this would be it because you coul experiment and verifiy ideas or intent. adp
I have a Crusoe based Fujitsu P2110 and it's
been great.... fast enough to do video
production even. But I carry it with me
everywhere and it's starting to wear out.
This looks like the perfect replacement!
hr
The issue arose when ATI failed to offer support for MS's XP-Media Center Edition (MCE) until more than 2 years after the rest of the tuner vendors did so.
In Oct 2003, ATI announced "support" for MCE in 2 ways: a "hardware encoder" card, the eHomeWonder, and drivers for existing AIW cards, called "Encode", a software MPEG encoder.
A public Beta was started with just 15 members, and the performance of Encode was abyssmal, if it ran at all.
Public discussion ensued at several sites concerning if ATI was even serious about MCE support, or if they were going to intentionally screw with MCE to instead support their own PVR solution; MMC.
The folks at ATI threatened the owners/moderators/webmasters at several sites to CENSOR FORUM COMMENTS that revealed ATIs piss-poor customer support (if you bought a $400 video card that was supposed to work with MCE because the vendor said it would, but then ATI refused to release the drivers, wouldn't you be pissed off when the makers of numerous $60 tuners provide drivers for free?).
ATI still won't release drivers.
Rage3D STILL censors posts that go into any detail about ATI shortcomings whenever ATI calls to complain.
Even the MICROSOFT NEWSGROUPS (microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter) are censored upon ATI request when the posts detail how ATI has utterly failed to bring out a MCE solution that works.
ATI's "Encode" solution for AIW cards was used by just one OEM and results are not very good compared to other tuners. their eHW card was not selected by ANY large OEMs and ATI has resorted to selling this "OEM-only" card through the "Grey Market"
ATI's sales success with tuners in the MCE arena is really bad. Even vendors who go to ATI for video cards turn and run away from ATI tuners and buy those that actually work like Hauppague and Avermedia.
And HDTV? The new ATI HDTV Wonder is nothing new. The other manufacturers have offered similar performance for 2 years+. But ATI releases the new card to much fanfare despite the fact they are 2 years behind the times. Again, posts stating this are CENSORED AT ATI DEMAND from numerous enthusiast websites.
And when anybody complains about the function of ATI tuners, the crappy ATI support, links to working Encode drivers, or discusses ATIs strategy in depth, ATI responds by intimidating and CENSORING user forums, gets the webmasters to "Ban" anti-ATI posters, and basically subverts the public discussion intent of open forums.
So while in the Hard OCP case, companies may use crazy lawsuits, in the real world, all most companies need to do (like ATI does) is threaten the website owners that they won't get any more goodies to play with and they will lose advertising, and "POOF!" whatever the vendor doesn't like is gone into the ether of internet revisionist history!
sn
I think the best answer the 'If nobody would by this stuff...' argument was:
Spam works on the level of 1 in 10,000. The general population contains a far higher rate of mental illness, senility, and retardation.
You'll never cure spam by 'education' of any sort. There are some people who are just too crazy or too stupid to learn. ang
That would be ideal.
(since then the 'casual' user could benefit from using it, without undue difficulty in configuration of mail delivery programs, which are notorious in general..) vej
Actually many... Nerds use Hotmail for junk email accounts, like when they want to download something that needs registering first but don't want to receive the newsletter junks. zx
Some links for the interested:
A real estate agent specializing in Missile Bases [missilebases.com]
A virtual tour made by some tresspassers. [triggur.org]
I was fascinated about the chance to own one of these properties. Doing some research, I found some ceveats though. First, the base had to be de-commissioned prior to 1965. After that, there were new treaties which required the complete destruction of the base after de-militarization. Second, being underground can lead to some health hazards, i.e. Radon. Third, missile bases aren't ever located in easy to reach places, and I like to be able to go to the store without a bunch of planning beforehand.
I'd still love to own this monstrosity though. The Titan 1 sites are the most elaborate and extensive. Kind of makes me sick to think about the money spent of this thing when it was built only to be decomissioned ~5 years later. mrh
This person has not set foot in the US.
Are you saying that if I sit off-shore and beam "illega"l materials over US airwaves, that I should be arrested and tried, even though I'm not a US citizen and I was in international waters when I did the braodcasting?
Funny, 'cause the US does that all the time... we put ships and aircraft near "evil" countries and beam in locally illegal content in an attempt to incite the population to rebel.
ucz
So do bubbles going around the glass mean I'm half-way there? ev
"Early adoption of Yukon in enterprises was quite strong due to the functions and features [..]"
How can you talk about functions and features of software that has not yet been released? How can companies "early adopt" vaporware?
Yes, they can order in advance, but to me "adoption" means running something as a part of your business. Not "planning to maybe use it once you get it and if it turns out to be as good as you was promised it would be".
wo
I admit I am a coffee addict; and although I like to frequent a variety of coffee shops, I frequrntly find myself in Starbucks. I don't know how many years they have been selling CD's at the register, but I do know that in the almost 10 years I've been going to Starbucks, I have only bought one CD. This is significant considering I am sure I'm in their target audience (I am 21 -- and yes, that means I started going to Starbucks when I was 11). I listen to a lot of music and have literally hundreds of CD's, but I do not associate Starbucks with music. I do not see this as getting Starbucks any more customers and if they charge even $10/CD it is beyond the price of an impulse buy (esp. for most college students). Another issue I have with it is that I don't know how they wiill store the music, but I personally wouldn't pay for CD burned with music once stored in a lossy format (like AC3 or MP3). I would hope (but highly doubt) that they keep the music in SHN format (lossless) and just unshorten and burn the files then reshorten them. I must admit, this probably won't keep the people who buy CD's off of iTunes from buying them, but it does eliminate some of their audience. asy
I was going to send the webmaster an email saying that the hotmail/msn services were down, but I couldn't get into my hotmail to send it. What do people do in these kinds of situations? xd
Of course it depends which way your head is up, or down - sometimes they go sideways in both directions.
lbg
It's the cord from a telephone handset.
Now why didn't they think of that decades ago?
Oh, wait, they did.
Nevermind.
Yeah, yeah, I know. It's FLAT. So maybe they've reinvented ramen noodles?
qc
I do realise Gold has special properties such as conductivity and hypoallergenic properties, but come on! yhe
And for various reasons, we as a society don't really respect mechanics, as a profession. I wonder if some day those who fix computers will be held in a similar regard. ws
While I love their products, the slashdot title of "blazingly high" clock speeds is a little misleading.
From the article: "A base configuration of the notebook includes the 1-GHz Efficeon processor, 512MB of memory, a 20GB hard drive, and a 10.4-inch display for an estimated starting price of $1499. Sharp will take preorders for the notebook as of Monday, and it will ship in April."
So we are looking at around 1ghz. oe
It doesn't cost 400 quid to put together an LCD picture frame. PopSci is taking a different route from GNAA/Linux Toys [amazon.com], which starts with a $50 laptop from eBay. This has also been reviewed [slashdot.org] on Slashdot. While I like PopSci's mini ATX method, the GNAA/Linux Toys laptop method is usually cheaper, if you shop eBay carefully, and refer to GNAA/Linux On Laptops [linux-on-laptops.com] to make sure it'll work. tbr
Science discovery: Springs are spring-like, also some metal conducts electricity. Quick someone grab a patent! nl
I'll ge them out of the way all at once:
I.. welcome bubble overlords...
Soviet Russia... bubbles slide down you.. you know the drill. tvq
Whoops, I mean the Centrino chip. whz
I think you missed the thrust of the grandparent's comments. A better way to put it would be that the DMCA makes it trivial to prevent all legal copying. Do we threrefore need specific legal rights to restore the ability to create "fair use" copies? It may be impossible to prevent most forms of copying from a technical stand-point, but doing so makes you a criminal, even if what you're doing falls easily under "fair use" provisions. ek
It is not an invention, it is precise settings which have to be worked out over hours and hours of testing.
But it's not.
This is about ERROR CODES not ignition and fuel maps. This about being able to plug something into my car and have it tell me that there's a problem with XXXXX.
That doesn't say shit about the design of that part. They just want access to the same diagnostic codes as the dealer. Right now manufactuers are only required to make a tiny subset of these codes availible.
The automakers are just whining about their "intellectual property" because they think they can get away with it since the vast majority of the public doesn't know the difference between a diagnostic code, and the actual program code itself. pck
Most devices/machines today depend heavily on a motors/engines/circuits that are not usually flexible and need to maintain a rigid structure. Sure, we try to cover/encapsulate these devices in a pleasing exterior (car bodies, plastic casings etc) in order to protect the hardware and us from the dangerous interiors.
Imagine cars made up of soft cushiony/rubbery material, which bounces back to absorb a collision...the metal body can dent in and absorb the force of the impact, but it works only against collisions against other cars/hard objects -- not against collisions with humans/animals and other "soft" substances.
Ofcourse, we could have a soft covering for cars, made of a cushiony substance, but the problem has been embedding circuits/machinery in the soft exteriors, because they tend to bend and damage the interiors.
Nature has found the perfect way to create organs/pumps/filters/wires which are made out of soft tissue, and is malleable enough to survive severe tension/distortion and bending.
Here's to hoping that one day we will be able to create soft fuzzy machines which won't be so hard on our water-bag bodies. lvk
OTOH, perspective from the point of view of survival of human race/modern civilization:
Risks of extinction (of modern civilization) in car: 0 in 100
Risks of extinction in plane:0 in 20,000
Risks of extinction from asteroid 1 in 20,000 to 100,000
ik
Advocates of free software claim to be advocates of freedom. If this were the case, they would only attack Microsoft on those terms. The WMP is not a freedom issue. If a customer doesn't like Windows prepackaged with WMP, there's nothing stopping that person from acquiring another OS.
This is just a bunch of government busibodies telling you how to run your lives. bc
I'm a pretty serious amateur jazz musician, and I do a fair amount of composing and arranging for jazz ensembles of about 8-16 musicians.
LilyPond is not intended for people like me. If you're less serious than I am, LilyPond is definitely not intended for you.
The most popular music notation software is Finale. Finale is buggier than Windows ME and twice as bloated, but once you learn how to use it, it gets the job done. You can enter your notes relatively quickly, tweak them a little, print, and go. While it has some very non-intuitive options, it's straightforward enough that most amateur musicians are able to sit down and click around until they get it to do what they want.
How's the output? Pretty crappy if you don't spend any time playing with it. But if you spend a little bit of time fixing the glaring errors, the result is readable by most musicians.
LilyPond, on the other hand, reads a description of the music in a text-based format, and formats it automatically - using much nicer algorithms than Finale apparently uses. It might take quite a bit longer to get your music input, but the end result will look nice - and will not require nearly as much tweaking.
LilyPond, by itself, is only of use to professional engravers, and only those who are willing to learn how to use it. If somebody ever develops a front-end to LilyPond that's actually integrated (as opposed to something like Rosegarden that can just export to LilyPond's format), then it might be more accessible to the average musician.
Don't get me wrong - I think that LilyPond is great. I just think that a lot of the complaints I'm seeing in this forum are because people don't understand what problem LilyPond is trying to solve and who will benefit.
No, LilyPond is not ready to replace all of the other music notation software out there. But it's one of the best tools for professional music engraving already, and maybe someday it can also be an appropriate tool for the casual user, too. hwd
"Password fairly correct. Root login granted."
zks
Just think of all the Chinese/Russian missiles still pointed at your bedroom.
iss"The reason for this excitement is that it is becoming clear to us that we can develop very clean-looking, elegant, debuggable, SMP scaleable software using this model whereas using the mutex model generally results in much less elegant (even ugly), difficult-to-debug code. Code complexity and code quality is a very important issue in any large piece of software and we believe we have hit on a model that directly addresses the issue in an SMP environment without compromising performance."
I don't really know what he's talking about, but:
If he's right, everybody wins.
Even if he's wrong and we find out why, everybody wins.
It sounds like GNAA/Linux isn't hurting BSD any, and methinks for a number of reasons, GNAA/Linux wouldn't be what it is today without the BSD's.
za
"So Andy got hold of a camera that takes 750 frames a second and recorded some rather gorgeous video clips of what was happening."
So quit hoggin' it and let us have some of that sweet sweet goodness. nsn
What exactly is the purpose of a fine for a monopoly such as Microsoft? Does the EU think that the money is going to come out of the pay of top MS executives?
Of course not. Any financial penalties will just be passed along to the customer, as usual, who in this case does not have a choice due to the monopoly situation.
More interesting is what the EU will plan to do with the penalty money? Invest it in open source, require open file formats and standards? eih
It would behoove many companies to invest more in R&D and less in padding executives pocketbooks with $100's. HP, for example, has gutted their engineering ranks while simultaneously buying jets for the higher-ups. Closer to my region of the country, Caterpillar has outsourced waves of R&D people...and their executives are getting ever-higher bonuses. yz
" So can't OEM people install real, etc before selling at the moment? Guess not."
Of course they can do but why would they ? They can't buy a cheaper version of Windows without a media player so there's no point in them shopping around for a cheaper alternative.
Stripping out Media Player from Windows will allow the OEM's to judge Media Player vs it's rivals on a fair footing, e.g. knowing the cost of each application.
In theory anyway, I hope there is some provision that the two versions of windows will need to maintain some kind of sensible price differentiation. tc
Why doesn't Apple get any heat for including iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, QuickTime, Safari, etc?
Because Apple doesn't control 90+ percent of the desktop. Because Apple isn't trying to leverage an OS monopoly into other market segments. Because Apple doesn't have a history of trying to "cut off the oxygen supply" to their competitors through use of monopoly. hnn
Merely my brief experience with Gentoo, when they first upgraded glibc (from 2.2 to 2.3 iirc) and broke half the packages, then downgraded it again and broke everything else. This is really a pet peeve: aren't minor versions supposed to be compatible? And a zillion similar but smaller-scale annoyances, well expressed by Bill Paul many years ago [freebsd.org] and the years haven't eased the pain all that much.
And BSDs are more likely to introduce binary incompatibilities
Clearly you haven't used the BSDs. You may have library incompatibilities between major versions, but just install the earlier "compat libraries" and you're set. I upgraded from FreeBSD 4 to FreeBSD 5 -- a huge upgrade, over 2 years in the making -- and all my software just worked, even complex stuff like KDE and Mozilla that had been compiled under 4.x. vn
God, how fucking petty is slashdot getting???
Sure, hotmail was down, boo-hoo. It's a free email service. Deal with it.
Why is slashdot determined to report every single trivial detail when it comes to Microsoft? Try to stick with the big stories, please, not "Bill Gates forgets to lift toilet seat!" or "Steve Ballmer takes up two parking spaces in Microsoft parking lot!"
umb
Google news has been running the headline:
"Microsoft restores faulty Hotmail service"
I thought that said it all. qy
Man, you're hard on your friends!
Simon.
aj
slated to be released until the last quarter this year. 2005 "sounds bad", but it's only a few months. vay
I've always wanted a shell that deletes into a 'garbage' folder, but in a native way so programs calling a delete function would also. I've also wanted a 'file versions' feature to bring safety to accidently overwriting. Then it would really be tolerant of user faults.
While we're at it: a config file library so every config file is the same format; exportable functions so gimp can export gmp.imageResize fileName 800 600 to the shell; and a codecs folder with libraries for image, video, document, and data compression.
Not every might see that last one's benefit, but I think if every app exported its format there (quicktime, realmedia) and let it be universally called, apps would be judged by interface, not filetype support.
Another idea: make every shortcut in X the config file. That way, a simple copy+edit makes two easily created+accessed differently configed programs. (I don't know about network-wide configs, though.) po
As far as I'm concerned (and lots of people I know as well), the magic price point for notebooks financed from personal funds has become $1000 or less. After all, these are machines that are often "refreshed" every two years or less, I definitely don't want to spend much more than $500/year on notebooks. This Sharp is only giving me a slow processor, XGA and 20GB for $1500? Heck, I can get the ultra-slim Averatec 3150 for $900 (often for $700 refurbished), and it's got twice the HD and a faster mobile AMD to boot. Given that the backlight eats most of the power anyway, I doubt this Sharp will run all that much longer on a charge than the Averatec, Transmeta or no Transmeta. dl
You should mean the M series, because there is a lot more to it than PM and variable clock, something the regular Pentium line has had for years. Read this [arstechnica.com] article and you'll realize just how much went into it. ogo
Most law requires context. Port scanning has plenty of legit purposes. If I port scan my home network, or the network of a system that I own, operate, or maintain - you'd think it would be legal. If not, enter the hazy grey area. Spoofing email addresses can go either way as well, depending on the content and the recipients. pj
You seem to be assuming that this is not happening already. I wonder if that is true. I would assume that like mechanics, computer techs will give misleading or wrong advice some of the time either out of ignorance or avarice. bhp
This product lacks focus," said Betsy Burton, analyst with the Gartner Group. "They're doing all sorts of stuff with it, first scalability was the issue, then XML support, then.Net activities, and then business intelligence and now security. The gut issue is, what is the purpose of this release? As a team trying to develop a product you have to know where you're going," she said.
This is the paragraph that explains it all. This product lacks focus. Why? Who knows? But if you cannot give your troops clear, concise goals, then everyone will go in a million different directions. And nothing will get done!
When this project first started out, it may have had the clear, concise goals. But then they started to add extra things to the project as it progressed. Sometimes adding a new feature or what-not means starting from scratch (if you wanna do it right).
If MS wants to do this right (and not delay the shipping date), then they should put a freeze on adding new features. Otherwise, it will either slip again, or a critical flaw will be found with the software.
My $0.02
jho
Transmeta made a lot of fuss about energy efficiency, but in reality, the Intel LV and ULV mobile Tualatin P3 consumes almost as little power while being much faster. The best power/speed tradeoff seems to be the ULV P3 933mhz, 512kb L2 cache, 1.1V. The typical and maximum power consumption are 4 and 7W respectively.
Intel is now hyping the P-M just as heavily as Transmeta. The P-M can dynamically scale the frequency through a large range, but if you use CPU intensive apps, the power consumption can get suprisingly high (31W for the 1.5-1.7 ghz versions). For more facts and figures, see Sandpile [sandpile.org].
rp
Perhaps the bendy straw people should sue. xg
I wonder what happens to bubbles in space, if they are trying to go downswards they sure are going to get confused?
Maybe they go inwards and congregate at the centre in a matey sort of way. seb
I'll ge them out of the way all at once:
I.. welcome bubble overlords...
Soviet Russia... bubbles slide down you.. you know the drill. xqi
Fujitsu 'did it right' with the P-Series.
It would be nice to have a faster processor but the flexibility the P-Series (I have the 2120) is unmatched. 8 hours+ battery life and when you add in a 7200rpm drive it is not as sluggish.
Games are best avoided here but I didn't buy it for mobile gaming just mobile working and notes taking in class. wke
Really?
Is it the best database for a linux or unix shop?
Is it the best database for large reporting or search applications?
Is it the best database for projects or companies with a small budget?
Ah, the answer to all of the above is 'no':
- zero portability
- parallelism and partitioning is primitive
- licensing costs for a 4-way server can easily hit $100k, and in many configurations are more expensive than other top commercial products (db2 for example).
When it comes to prototyping, sql server is at the top of my list. However, when it comes to delivering powerful capabilities, automating operations, and scripting changes - then it's at the bottom of my list.
But I will agree with you on the.net stuff - integrating that into the database is a bad idea. myc
the prices are:
You get 5 tracks for $6.99 and $1 per each track after 5. With your CD you get a custom designed cardboard package with user designed 4 color insert) plus a four color image (and your CD title) printed on the CD itself (no sharpies used here).
noo
You can only call interplanetary dibs if you can see the planet as you call it. Just like calling shotgun.
wts
Seriously, though, this practice shouldn't be rewarded with more free publicity for these products or their "reviews". xqm
I do realise Gold has special properties such as conductivity and hypoallergenic properties, but come on! yng
... or probably Perl or Python, either.
It doesn't actually seem to grok the commands that are being run, so something like
proc try {times script} {
if { [catch [uplevel $script] err] } { cleanup ; retry }
}
is all that's needed (of course to do it right you'd need a bit more, but still...).
try {5 times} {
commands...
}
Although Tcl is a bit lower level, and would require you to do exec ls, you could of course wrap that too so that all commands in the $script block would just be 'exec'ed by default.
In any case, better to use a flexible tool that can be tweaked to do what you need then write highly specialized tools. rw
"The wires can stretch to over half their original length."
Is it me, or does this violate some law of grammar, physics, or both? ji
I think ultimately the question is whether there is a single continuous "initial mass function" of isolated objects or not. The best idea as to how stars acquire their initial mass is that turbulence in the interstellar medium, which exists on all scales, establishes a power-law distribution of initial masses. Every once in a while, you get a very strong shock which passes by inside a giant molecular cloud and forces the collapse of a large region which then goes on to form a massive star. But more typically, you form stars more like our sun. And just as rare as massive collapses are very small mass ones which go on to form isolated brown dwarfs and free-floating planets. If this model holds up to be true, then we are all mincing words in our definitions of isolated systems, since they are all manifestations of the same universal formation process.
However, to avoid the difficult question of formation mechanisms, an IAU working group of some of the most respected people in the field established a working definition [ciw.edu] to define by fiat what it means to be a brown dwarf, and a planet. Extrasolar "planets" are those objects orbiting a star which are beneath the deteurium-burning limit -- regardless of how they are formed. "Brown dwarfs" are defined to be those which burn deuterium but not lithium, and "sub-brown dwarfs" (NOT free-floating planets!) are defined to be those isolated objects which do not burn deuterium. Even the working group itself admitted that this definition was not satisfying to a single member of the group, and so it is likely it will be replaced at a later time with something more physically-motivated. The "planet/planetismal/KBO" distinction was pushed back to our own solar system, since it will be some time before anyone sees anything that small in another system.
Also of interest is the following link, which gives a history of previous claims for additional planetary members of our solar system : SEDS [arizona.edu].
bh
I have a friend who went around charging 50 dollars to take the MS.Blaster worm off people's computers. This amateur computer repair field has great potential, as computers penetrate further and further into most bussinesses. Time is money, and paying some kid 50 bucks to fix a computer is often cheaper in the long run then spending 2 days doing it yourself. I plan to do the very same thing with a local company over the summer break from school.
I want to be a Digitician when I grow up. jdn
By the time your daughter grows up, do you think there will be any of our cherished freedoms on the Internet left, or will everything be wrapped in legalese and DRM? With the passage of laws from the DMCA to the PATRIOT act, I've been increasingly pessimistic about the US's ability to pass any sane legislation that interfaces with the Internet... cd
Why is it that so many Unix/GNAA/Linux programs (and everything else, for that matter) do not provide simple screenshots on their products websites?
If I'm going to download your program and install it (and in many cases, take time to compile it...) I want to know that it's going to look halfway decent when I'm done.
Why is this so hard for some programmers to understand? ky
Funny, the Slashdot blurb accuses him of saying that no other system today does SSI, while according to the article he simply said their (future, potential) SSI plans will beat GNAA/Linux's (present, working) SSI clustering.
Anybody have thoughts comparing the DragonFly SSI [shiningsilence.com](warning, PDF) and the GNAA/Linux [sourceforge.net] one?
(Open)Mosix has had craploads of work done on it, and by the time DragonFly's is done, it will be even further ahead. I somehow doubt DragonFly's will end up being better.
PK mo
I just really hate academics. vgf
How about ANSI '92 compliance for MySQL... that would be a good start!
No, a good start would be to flush MySQL down the toilet where it belongs and use a real database engine such as PostgreSQL or Firebird.
Seriously! Why wait for MySQL to add all those missing features when such superior alternatives already exist, and, furthermore, MySQL has a more restrictive license?
vxyFinally, microwave and VCR clocks across the country won't be flashing 12:00! ce
At long last the secret of Starbucks' "very good coffee" is revealed: burn the holy living shit out of your beans!
Now you, too, can have that wonderful taste of charred coffee in your very own home!
pp
Because PCs are very versatile, your DVD player is disigned to do a total of perhaps three things (and you do have to install "software" each time you put in a disc happily it is very standardized). Your PC can do many many more, and the things you want to do out of the box, may well be very different from the things I want mine to do out of the box. One of us might want to download music the other rips it. One of us might play FPS, the other wants to play bejeweled and browse slashdot. One of us might work in word processors, the other spreadsheets, and another guy might only want to use a text editor and compier. Each of these tasks requires a special addition to our generic tool, and we might not care about being able to do the things that the other tools allow us to potentially do. That's why you have to install software on your computer, the alternative is buying a task specific computer (a developer workstation, gamer's box, office machine, network terminal, but each of these would require that the seller know all the software you plan to use for the life of the computer. fkr
obtain criminals that seek refuge in a country
(A) He's not a criminal and
(B) he's not "seeking refuge". He's remaining at home where he's been the whole time.
The US is getting uppity at Autralia because Australia is not prosecuting him. And the REASON Autralia is not prosecuting him is because HE DID NOT BREAK THE LAW.
The US wants to extradite him so they can persecute him for "breaking codes", NOT for copyright infringment. "Breaking codes" is nothing but working out mathematics. And guess what? It's not a crime to do math in Australia! He's not a criminal.
It's my dip-shit home country of America that came up with the numbskull idea of criminalizing math.
P.S.
The Chinese people should have a revolution and overthrow their government. OOPS! I JUST VIOLATED CHINESE LAW! I guess I'm a criminal too! Quick, someone extradite me to China!
- dy
If they had chosen to replace rather than repair, they would be out more then just $800 dollars for the new computer. Since the Judge family needs outside assistance to fix a computer, they would most likely needs outside help to reinstall all their original applications, transfer all their important files to the new machine (without also copying the viruses), etc. $300 to repair -vs- ($800 + $300) to replace? I think they made the right choice. ow
Singapore bans the import, sale and manufacture of chewing gum. It isn't illegal to chew it.
Chuckle.
A lot like the way the DMCA *doesn't* make fair use illegal.
- ujo
Is it really all that much faster than the Crusoe? I've got a Sony Vaio C1MW with an 866 MHz Crusoe in it and it's just barely fast enough as it is.
- A.P. cgu
Anyone know / care to comment how these chips compare with apples G3 and G4 laptops? I was under the impression that they were much less power hungry than intel and AMD's chips, which let them be lighter and have better battery life. lc
..women at the bar can really like you! If one of them is turned on by your presence it's not just that you've had too much to drink! ma
Intel Pentium M Thermal Design Power [intel.com] is listed as 24.5 Watt at 1.7 GHz, a FAR cry from the 7 Watt you claim
The 900 MHz and 1GHz ones are the 7 Watt models, but how those perform compared to an Efficeon I was unable to find.
Cooper
--
I don't need a pass to pass this pass!
- Groo The Wanderer - ayr
What information is being withheld that makes non-dealer repair impossible?
The issue is that ODBII is a pathetic subset of the real information avaible. In some cases it's useless (diagnosing climate controls, etc), in other cases it just a LOT less information than the dealer-specfic compter would provide.
Obviously not having it doesn't make non-dealer repair impossible, but it does make it a lot harder. If you knew nothing about cars you could just replace parts until you find the right thing but it this the right way to do it?
The point here is that independent shops are being put at a severe disadvantage by being provided only a minimal subset of the availible data. pga
This sounds like an election year doggy treat. Pass it in the House and kill it in the Senate. ggu
Wargoatseing, anyone?
krCheck these links for a Duo (Laptop) mod to a picture frame. I remember this site as the first I saw. I have an old 486 and a 64MB compaq flash just waiting for a conversion.
m e
http://www.applefritter.com/hacks/duodigitalfra
http://www.applefritter.com/node/view/728
Duo Digital Frame by James Roos vo
People are diliberately confusing 'codes' and 'code'. Mechanics need the _codes_ that the computer spits out indicating what is wrong. Nobody needs the _code_ for the computer software.
As for the whole complaint about the recent complexity of cars; it is government mandated and consumer demanded. There are requirements for fuel efficiency and emissions. A simple 4 stroke engine can only be so effecient and so clean. To meet regulations, cars need to incorporate exhaust gas recirculation, variable cam timing, complex variable spark timing, catylitic converters, and a host of other complexities. Consumers want climate control, adaptive suspension, 17 way power adjustable seats, power cupholders, remote buttons for everything, heated everything, and performance, but they expect their cars to have the simplicity of an air cooled VW? im
While the printed output is asthetically pleasing, it strikes me as an odd technology to persue, because I wonder how many musicians today can actually read music. I'd wager the vast majority of rock musicians can't, and that roughly half of pop musicans can't. I can't, and I've written "plenty" of material and play several instruments.
Thanks to strong middle and high school music programs, more people can read music today than ever before.
Reading music is still simply the fastest way for an experienced musician to learn a new piece of music. Many jazz and classical musicians (including myself) can sightread (play it while reading it for the first time) quite complicated pieces of music, up to tempo, which is an extremely valuable skill.
Of course there are a small minority of successful recording artists who can't read music, but the vast majority of successful musicians do read music, and most of them read music well. I don't see this changing anytime soon.
ut
I have the older MM10 model, with the transmeta 1GHz. I love the machine though it is not the quickest. The only problem? They seem to be OVERLY dedicate. I had purchased my original last July. After 3 weeks of minimal usage, the screen went bad. Sharp sent me a refurbished unit (though I had paid full price for a new unit just 3 weeks early). About a month ago, the replacement went bad (battery was bad and possibly the charge circuitry went bad as well). They have since sent me a refurbished unit and battery and I've been ok since then. It's a great machine, but you really have watch out for it. gxz
[Mark Hamill] Luke be a Jedi tonight! Just be a Jedi tonight!
[Mark Hamill & Backing Chorus] Do it for Yoda while we serve our guests a soda!
[Mark Hamill] And do it for Chewie and the Ewoks, and all the other puppets
[Mark Hamill & Backing Chorus] Luke, be a Jedi tonight!
um
I haven't been to a record store in years and I ain't going near starbucks for a CD. Physical distribution of music is over. Get used to it. rqw
It's always been hard to see distant planets because they don't emit light. Hubble can see distant galaxies because they contain lots of luminous objects. hlz
Actually, MS use UNIX servers for Hotmail
Ummm... no. You have no idea what you're talking about. If you had said "used" (as in past tense), then you'd at least be close. Still wrong, but close. They used one of the BSD's until people called them on it. Hell, for all we know, they still are and just changed the headers that the server hands out to look like a MS box like the other post in this thread shows.
Anyway, you're wrong on all accounts.
hz
I thought these chips were supposed to have "good" performance while consuming a lot less power. zvp
I think you missed the thrust of the grandparent's comments. A better way to put it would be that the DMCA makes it trivial to prevent all legal copying. Do we threrefore need specific legal rights to restore the ability to create "fair use" copies? It may be impossible to prevent most forms of copying from a technical stand-point, but doing so makes you a criminal, even if what you're doing falls easily under "fair use" provisions. cqn
There's no reference to blazingly high clock speeds, just computing speeds. Remember clock speed!=compute speed. fl
Hei, Dillon
It seems that you are working in some
inovative features.
I hope that in the way, you fill some patents
about your work (even if you don't agree with
software patents), because we are going to
need it in the upcoming patent fight against
Microsoft. ak
Yeah, the US has this long history of practicing global equality.
I bet if only governments asked for their nationals detained at Camp X-Ray to be returned, the US would put them on the next plane!
Joe Webmaster, or any other American citizen, will never, ever, not in a million years be extradited anywhere, no matter what they did.
yju
Unfortunately, as far as I can see (and my idea will be readily disputed by others) no OSS database is ready for "enterprise" systems (whatever that means, I work in a company who writes software and the backend can be any RDMBS as long as they have a decend JDBC driver). SQL Server 2k has lots of missing features which makes our life very hard and I'm not a fan but at the moment I can't go to any of our customers and say use postgres or mySQL etc.
Another big player is DB2 by IBM which claims it has the fastest database on the world but DB2 is cumbersome, hard to manage compared to Oracle and MS SQL2k but it works almost under any platform under the sun.
Database world is quite interesting, I can't say any RDMS system out there is perfect. aa
As a legal professional, how do you see the evolution of the laws surrounding the internet progressing? We have heard much talk of losing our online liberties - what do you think the real threats to a reasonable internet are? or
They should have always required opening up of these interfaces. The owner pretty much has to take the word of a very small select group of "in the know" mechanics on what condition their car is in. And we all know how trustworthy the average local mechanic/dealer mechanic is (do a google for Jiffy Lube, Sears, etc, and auto mechanics and lawsuits)
Then I recall my own wonderful personal experience. I had engine fluctuation issues in a turbo charged car. 15 trips to the dealer (under warranty) and replacement of virtually ever sensor and the car's computer failed to rectify the sporadic condition. The car had a computer interface, and it was telling them... well, I don't know what it was telling them - I couldn't access the interface....
Long story short though, one day, the engine started having RPM fluctuations while idling, so I popped open the hood and, since I hadn't been running long nor very hard, decided to take a quick look at the intercooler fluid level. I just happened to notice as I pulled out the intercooler cap that the float bob sensor attached to said cap was sunk to the bottom, even though the intercooler level was fine. I bypassed this sensor and all was fine for the next 100K miles. Odds are I'd have found this more quickly if I could have hooked up a computer to the interface to diagnose the problem while it was happening.
kt"So Andy got hold of a camera that takes 750 frames a second and recorded some rather gorgeous video clips of what was happening."
So quit hoggin' it and let us have some of that sweet sweet goodness. cb
The DMCA contains an obscure clause about interoperability, what does this mean? That is could I break encryption to allow DVD player to work, so long as I maintained the spirit of the encryption (not allowing copies)? Can I break the encryption on various games to allow them to run under Wine? qa
hey, remember linus signed some pretty odd things during LCA:)
Yeah, my wife still refuses to wash her left breast.... ls
Now I have a new chat up line to use: hey babe, ever stop and think about bubbles moving down? Hello? You didn't finish your drink! ab
Hanly says." It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem.
Well sorta, the big buy here is that you get that much life from a significantly smaller/lighter battery. Note the presence of the physically larger "extended life" battery. Battery life isn't the "problem", or more accurately the tradeoff, it's the size (which in this case does matter). cll
"Boy, you've got some nerve!" "You like it? I just had it grafted in this morning" zq
Here's another one: IBM. Big Blue has been behind so much of the scientific grunt work, a great deal of which has consisted of conceiving of and building experimental scientific equipment [about.com]. yb
I've heard from time to time (albeit prety sparsely) of companies threatening legal action for using their images on a website/forum/etc.
Is there any written law that backs it up, or is it just baseless threats? vqb
The Judge family paid nearly $300 to fix an $800 computer.
Holy crap. Does that seem ridiculous to me solely because I know computers? Perhaps it's not that different from the mechanic that wanted to charge me $100 to replace a stripped wheel stud (which I later did myself for the cost of the $3 stud and an hour). fq
Dragonfly BSD seems to be chugging along quite nicely.
The further away they get from their 4.x FreeBSD roots, though, the more I wish they'd release an ISO. Particularly since the last ISOs for the 4 series of FreeBSD are probably going to be totally gone in a few months. ijo
We've had them for many years. It's called NiTiNOL. Nitinol is a metal alloy that, when used in wires, constricts when current is passed through it (heating phase) and stretches when it is idle (cooling phase). This is also the same material that those bend-proof wire glasses frames are made of. See http://www.dynalloy.com/AboutNitinol.html for just one manufacturer's info page. ary
Much as I love a good MS Bashing, I'll tell you what I find really lacking (personally) for PostgreSQL and other OSS RDBMSs - a good GUI management tool.
Something that helps you craft medium-complicated joins quickly with a few clicks and drags.
For example, see this screenshot [phrogz.net] from Visual Interdev working on MSSQL2k, creating a SQL Query for a stored proc. Sure, it's almost trivial to hand-write the SQL code. But it was even easier to just select a few tables, click on the fields I want, right-click on the joins (created automatically from the database structure) to change their type, and be done.
I use PGSQL for all my personal projects now, but I sorely miss the speed that a GUI editor like this allowed me.
baIn order for this to work, it might need changes in the OS level.
Imagine you access a block/char device or an NFS mounted directory and the device driver never returns from the system call. Your script would hang, and a kill would produce a zombie process.
If you want fault tolerance, you'd have to have a timeout mechanism for all device drivers. But if you read from/dev/mt0 and the tape needs rewinding and it takes 6 minutes, you don't want to have your script aborted after 5 minutes. pa
Mr. Godwin - Lots of/.ers follow the SCO case, followed the DeCSS, Napster, IP, CIPA, etc. What are some lesser known cases/laws that you forsee as having a large potential impact on 'cyberlaw' as we know it? oj
"It's based on the idea of what goes up has to come down. In this case, the bubbles go up more easily in the center...than on the sides because of drag from the walls."
Is it just me, or is anyone else reminded of their sex education lessons?
I have no idea why they called it a "bubble" though. tp
Wow. Just what we needed. Yet another use for Gold. You know, it being so damn plentiful and all. I was just saying to myself, as I threw away another gold can of soda, "I sure how they find a use for this stuff, because if not, Gold doesn't oxidize or break down very easily, and it will burst our landfills if we don't start a recycling program!" Maybe all those out-of-work gold miners can finally feel useful again, and not be he butt of environmentalist hate.
Why don't they ever find a great new way to use garbage? bh
"Each has there own use, but this has got to be the most retarded lawsuit i've EVER heard of."
I think you've totally missed the point of this. Certainly I'm not arguing that basic sound support shouldn't be a part of an Operaring System but Media Player goes far beyond that, it is a fully featured Application.
Other companies would like to sell these kind of applications to people and make money out of it however with MS giving it away for nothing to 90% of computer users they don't have hope of selling anything.
You cannot buy Windows without Media Player, so you do not have the opportunity to compare it's price and value against other similar products.
From Microsofts point of view the current situation is very nice for them; Media Player is installed on 90% of computer users PC's, Media Player uses it's own proprietry formats, downloading music is becoming big business - suppliers are very tempted to use Media Player formats because of it's market penetration, Microsoft can call the shots.
From everyone else's point of view this is clearly a case of Microsoft using it's monopoly in the O/S system market to influence and gain control of other areas. eh
What w/ the laziness and impatience remarks? Just can't help making a dig at anything not Debian? auh
As a computer science student graduating college and hoping to head to law school, I wonder if you have any particular advice about wha training, if any, will help to prepare me for "cyber-law". Many schools seem to have programs focusing on this aspect of the law, but I've often thought that the generalist approach to a field yielded better results.
Are there any experiences you'd advise a young prospective attorney interested in this field to seek out?
yvcan be found here [applefritter.com]. nxa
Thunderbird's latest builds have an improved spam filter using some ideas from SpamBayes, it's substantially improved from the older filter. zyb
I wonder just how much time and money went into this research? sv
This is Slashdot, where any sufficiently advanced opinion is indistinguishable from fact. na
Hanly says." It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem.
Well sorta, the big buy here is that you get that much life from a significantly smaller/lighter battery. Note the presence of the physically larger "extended life" battery. Battery life isn't the "problem", or more accurately the tradeoff, it's the size (which in this case does matter). ref
Coffee - and coasters to put the mugs on, too! It just doesn't get better than that...:) zhs
Correction - Neptune was farther from Pluto from January 21, 1979 to Feb. 11, 1999 [nasa.gov] but at this time Pluto is farther from the sun than Neptune.
Of course, there's debate as to whether Pluto-Charon is a planet with a moon, or a double planet...
- Thomas;
cr
How do you feel about people sharing your book? ben
this is from the faq...
In real-world scenarios, false positives have ranged anywhere from 0% (none) to 0.10% depending on both implementation and user's mail behavior. Users with relatively predictable mail behavior (such as geeks, dweebs, and freaks) have generally received very few false positives (less than 1 in 10,000 messages). yz
Guys, I am a professional musician who occasionaly makes a few hundred bucks setting out of print scores to finale or sibeleus. I also use linux, and like the open source model.
The problem is that programmers arent creative in this department... those coders all work at apple.
This is never going to get off the ground, and is a hindrance to the adoption of linux by musicians, when in reality things like jack, ardour, and alsa make it an excellent platform for creative types, a la Pd, miller puckette's wonderful synthesis program.
The developers seem to be focusing on making things "right" and in a description language. Fine, but i dont see how this is going to help inspire musicians to use this arcane latex garbage to print out a set of exercises. Most of my musician friends cant even use finale well, so how can one expect the same of this program.
On the other hand, if your objective is to create a framework for music notation software, midi in, etc, etc, then you need to work with people in that community so that you can have more attention and people drawn to that project.
As it stands now, this software is like enlightenment 17... by the time it gets ready, all the interested people and developers will have gone elsewhere or vanished in disgust. vye
It is a crime to eat chewinggum in Singapore. Does that mean Singapore can extradite and incarcerate every American who eats chewinggum in US soil? hlo
Virtyally none of the diagnosic capabilities in modern cars are accessible via OBD-II.
Every manufacturer has proprietary networks built into the car of which OBD-II is a tiny emulation layer. Its designed for emissions testing and emissions related codes, nothing else.
You can't diagnose why your power locks aren't working with it, you can't diagnose why your HVAC controls aren't working. You can't read exhaust gas temperatures, or any other direct sensor outputs. You can't bleed ABS pumps with it, etc, etc, etc.
There are VERY few models you can get that sort of information about. Volkswagen/Audi group cars have some diagnostic software available, but virtually 100% of the information about what you can access and what sort of tests you can run have been reverse engineered, and is very incomplete. VAG also recently changed their protocols for newer cars to block those systems from working.
You may have watched mechanics sweat this stuff, but some of us sweat this stuff directly. This is coming from the direct experience of someone who both repairs cars and works for a internationally ranked professional racing team. mb
it would make more sense when Microsoft would claim it was an attack. Internal problems can be blaimed on the company ...
With Win2000, Microsoft was working hard to get away from their reputation for instability. Some of this they fixed with software changes, and some with marketing propaganda.
With Longhorn, Microsoft is working twice as hard to get away from their rep for insecurity. At least for the moment, it is better to have their systems appear a tad unstable than insecure.
jwg
lpyFinally, a job that WON'T be outsources to India!! *crosses fingers* ftn
1) Ad revenue created by page hits
2) Post non-story to slashdot
3) PROFIT!!! dm
-Homer icv
Hei, Dillon
It seems that you are working in some
inovative features.
I hope that in the way, you fill some patents
about your work (even if you don't agree with
software patents), because we are going to
need it in the upcoming patent fight against
Microsoft. wp
You can make bit-for-bit copies of any DVD now, complete with all the encryption on it. And the laws preventing the distribution of those DVDs (normal copyright law) has been on the books for a long, long time. If you follow the money, the bottom line is that the CSS and region codes on a DVD only help to support cartel price-fixing profits.
pnp
But its a bit more complex that just that.
From the article;
>Automakers are fighting the legislation; they believe the real goal is to obtain proprietary "calibration codes" that are the blueprints for how parts are made. With that information, Territo said, independent mechanics and parts manufacturers could duplicate major components such as fuel injectors that automakers have spent millions of dollars developing.
So maybe its the same issue. A group wants to control their property by using technology which locks things up. svf
Granted, if you ran an all RedHat shop or an all Mandrake shop things would be easier than simply an all GNAA/Linux shop, but the same would be true for an all OpenBSD shop vs an all FreeBSD or NetBSD shop. But if each department is free to buy what they want I'd rather find who-knows-which-BSD on the box than who-knows-which-GNAA/Linux. lai
CNET News reported five days ago on the 10th that both Yukon and Whidbey would be delayed and their final names. They need that time if they are going to clean up the shit HTML and JS outputed by VS. Not that they will, that would allow people to use Firefox.
Microsoft delays database, tools delivery [com.com] oySome F/OSS projects just aim to get a job done, do it, and leave it up to someone else (perhaps less qualified?) to complete things, to produce a complete package that does the job well
Han-wen & Jan have done one of the latter, this is a supreme polished job that's only getting better. Kudos
adult desktops & wallpapers [67.160.223.119] ifj
Resources DO become unavailable in most systems. It simply doesn't pay to ensure everything is duplicated, and set up infrastructures that makes it transparent to the end user - there are almost always cheaper ways of meeting your business goals by looking at what level of fault tolerance you actually need.
For most people hours, sometimes even days, of outages can be tolerable for many of their systems, and minutes mostly not noticeable if the tools can handle it. The cost difference in providing a system where unavailabilities are treated as a normal, acceptable condition within some parameters, and one where failures are made transparent to the user can be astronomical.
To this date, I have NEVER seen a computer system that would come close to the transparency you are suggesting, simply beause for most "normal" uses it doesn't make economic sense. dc
All aboard the crazy train. yi
...found within bundled software like IE, OE, Media Player and Movie Maker. M$ would voluntarily unbundle these components or run out of cash quite soon. wwz
It might seem petty, but the reality is that there is a huge number of people that use hotmail on a regular basis.. this kind of downage affects a lot of people.
What is interesting is how:
- Microsoft responds, their press releases etc.
- Possible reasons for failure
- What others can learn from these kind of failures, to prevent them happening.
- That such a large system that must deal with a massive number of requests has completely gone down instead of the service degrading due to servers failing, etc..
Lighten up a bit, i'm honestly suprised it would go down for a significant amount of time.
cwr
That would be Bode's Law [wikipedia.org]. It is wiewed as more of a coincidence than a law these days.
According to my hung over calculations Sedna is 67 AUs out, which is not that far off from the 77.6 that Bode predicts, but not really close either. et
I've got a theory, that it's a Nazgul, A dancing Nazgul. No, something isn't right there.
(Frodo)
I've got a theory, that Bilbo is dreamin' And we're all stuck inside his wacky Broadway nightmare.
(Aragorn)
I've got a theory we should work this out.
(The Fellowship except Gandalf)
It's getting eerie, what's this cheery singing all about?
(Gimli)
It could be Elves, some evil Elves. Which is ridiculous 'cause Elves they were persecuted wicked good and loved Middle Earth and fairie power and I'll be over here.
(Merry)
I've got a theory, it could be lunchtime...
[crickets chirping] mdd
All these suggestions make the naive assumption that people in general learn from past mistakes. gow
It looks like the gist of the threading model for Dragonfly is that threads all stay on one processor. I assume this is for user processes only, and that this isn't pervasive through the kernel? xz
You can't directly compare this to the DMCA because when you're talking about music, movies, and software, you're talking about 1's and 0's that can be copied over and over. They're talking about codes to ensure fairness in repairing automobiles so the dealers don't steal all the business. The reason congress is stepping in is because no one is going to put their 2004 Explorer on kazaa and share it. They're not talking about opening up all the software. This isn't about open source at all, it's about knowing what is wrong with the care based on the error code the computer spits out. th
Can I sue for damages incurred because I couldn't order my penis enlargement pills before my porn audition? Damn you microsoft, you kept me from making millions! Now just give me some money and we'll call it even. xrc
Think about this one for just a minute. If some gang banger breaks into your house and steals a gun, and then uses it to rob a bank, and it the process kills a police officer, with whom does the fault lie? Is it with you for not having your gun properly secured against all possible kinds of break-ins? Is it with the manufacturer of the house or the manufacturer of your gun safe for not building a system immune to all types of breaches? Or is it with the guy who broke into your house, breached whatever security you had in place, stole your gun, and used it to commit capital murder? I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm sure many Slashdotters would read your post and think, "That's right, make those stupid Windows lusers responsible for not keeping their machines patched, and while we're at it, let's send Bill Gates to prison for his crap OS too!" That same line of thinking, applied to the scenario above, would land you strapped to a gurney in recompense for somebody else's crime. Let's be a little more realistic. vl
Is it legal to make and edit copies of commercial DVDs for personal use? What about loaning out the edited copies to friends?
pnv
***Here are some of the imdb.com reviews for "Gay Niggers From Outer Space":
p hp
s _s tory_p.html
bii
Summary: The best homosexual racial minority sci-fi film ever.
"Morten Lindbergs classic cult short, Gay Niggers From Outer Space is one of
the first short films to really stick to what the title suggests. From the
time the first gay nigger walked onto the screen up until the final intense
climax with the Tourette's Syndrome Kingdom in Outer Space, it's filled with
dark comedy, action and plenty of suspense. "
"Gay Niggers from Outer Space is a masterpiece of a film. No other film
portraits emotions as majestically and stunningly since The Legend of Nigger
Charley and Home Alone II. With a cast of all-star African niggers and a
director with Kubrick potential, it is no wonder that Gay Niggers from Outer
Space is marked the greatest film of all time."
"From the very first scene where Gay Nigger Harris throws up on his own face
and commits suicide, to the climactic scene where Nigger Ralph Nader and
Nigger Humphrey Bogart fight over the last hashbrown and pick cotton til
their noses bleed, Gay Niggers from Outer Space is the most magical
portrayal of gay niggers open to the public."
***However, no mention is made of the hazadous lifestyle of gay niggers,
so the following is an attempt to explain those hazards in layman's terms:
Despite cries to the contrary in the media, AIDS is still primarily a gay
and black disease. The media loves to report the "growing epidemic" among
whites, when in fact the rate of infection among heterosexual whites is
dropping off significantly year by year. The media though, reports only the
TOTAL current infection rate, not the RELATIVE. So while there are more
cases each year, the RATE of infection is dropping quickly. Except for the
gay/nigger communities, where it's skyrocketing.
Why does AIDS seem to target gays and niggers so much more so than whites
and straights? Anal sex. The anus was not designed to accommodate vigorous
penetration as occurs in anal sex. Unlike the vagina, the anus has very
delicate membranes, which damage easily. Couple that with the fact that
sperm contains immune system suppressing chemicals. That's why the sperm is
not treated as a foreign protein in the vagina...because of the immune
suppressing effects of the sperm cells. Without this effect, pregnancy
could not occur, as the sperm would be attacked as a foreign protein.
In the anus, sperm has the same immune suppressing effect. During anal sex,
the anal wall is torn and open lesions form. Because there is little if any
sensory nerve endings in the anus, this damage often goes unnoticed. The
sperm then induce their immune suppressing effect, and the stage is set.
Various bacteria both beneficial and infectious dwell in the colon, as well
as viral matter. When the anus is ripped open, exposing the blood to the
immune suppressing chemicals in the sperm, and the viral matter passed
along with it, infection is virtually assured.
***So does the skyrocketing rate of AIDS infection mean that there are
skyrocketing rates of gay niggers???
***Not exactly, because most White people don't realize that a large
percentage of nigger males are bisexual. It's a great irony considering all
of their macho posturing and affectations. They tend to admire the male
physique, and when no women are present, they will hip-hop dance with each
other. Any port in a storm will do, because da' brotha's just gots ta
have it!!! Then they pass along the virus to their wives, girlfriends, and
family members.
***Here is a story about this phenomenon from "The Village Voice":
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0123/wright.
And for the Toronto Gay Niggers:
http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2001-08-16/new
SQL Server 2005? is going to be great. However, if I had to choose the *best* database I would go with Oracle without a doubt. Every tool other database manufacturers are trying to mirror generally come from Oracle. Plus they support GNAA/Linux which makes buying very expensive hardware a problem of the past. Hell you can get a license for standard for $799.
Unfortunately my job runs SQL Server 2000. Having cut my teeth on PL/SQL, Transact is a nightmare because it is so limiting.
I'm actually looking forward to Yukon because the marketing ad sheet shows some really cool features. The only question is will they deliver and when will it be? tp
... but what have you got against embedded punctuation? How the hell is anyone supposed to read your post?
Sean bq
I wonder what is so important that NASA is going to wait until Monday. Maybe they will be unveiling something else at the same time?
--
Real-time deal updates [dealsites.net] nbr
I had a class with this professor earlier this year. This really explains his teaching style... he must have done his beer "research" each day right before he lectured... bu
I'm sure many businesses would love to be able to only purchase the parts of windows that they wanted. cs
Every country sets its own agenda. The US wants to be the untouchable goliath of military power. If the US wanted to be the world leader in non-military research and development, they could be.
Very, very true. But, it just wouldn't be The American Way if we didn't have the ability to police the world. However, if you pay close attention to the history of how the US became involved in various wars,[read: WWI, WWII] you'll see we re-acted to outside influences. Had those not come along, the US may never have invested so heavily in a war machine. (Just my $0.02.) lv
I'm going to guess sqlxml performance blows huge chunks. I ran several dozen benchmarks comparing oledb with sqlxml. sqlxml was at best 10x slower than oledb. With 6 concurrent clients hitting sqlserver on a nice 4CPU box, sqlxml was 100x slower. So yeah, there's going to be performance issues. It's called, dump sqlxml or sell yukon with hardware XML accelerators. jl
What do you think of the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act of 1997 and do you think it is fair to make not profit motive copyright infringement a criminal offense? nv
"How many companies these days are willing to drop money into some technology that may not turn a profit for many years?"
The kind that is already doing very well financially and wants to solidify a reputation of innovation. Similar to Microsoft's $1 billion donation to Africa. smg
There should be a TOPIC/STORY negative modifier for old news, or news that is blatantly obvious. Or just have "FARK" tags. If this "story" about how hotmail was down ran on Fark, it would have the "obvious" tag. sz
It is really funny the level of fervor behind Mysql. So funny it makes you wonder if the zealots have ever used anything other to any real extent.
The company I work for software's backend can go Mysql, Postgres, Mssql, Db2, or Oracle.
For massivce connections, queries, reporting, reliability it is in this order.
1. Mssql, DB2, Oracle, all pretty much equal.
2, Postegres, tricky but holds its own.
3. Mysql, will work in the low end, forget reporting, forget huge db hits.
I like Mysql. But Mssql 7.0 hands its ass to it.
What happens is some company will be our product. Hand it over to some 25 year old self proclaimed web genius to install. Conversation is as follows.
1. "Can I have the Source?" No, it is closed, long discussion about how we suck cause our product isn't open source.
2. "Ewwww, Java, it sucks, you should rewrite in PHP" I explain it has been continually developed since 96, no way to stop the engine and write in PHP.
4."I decided to save the company some money and install Mysql" We say ok, explain issues, put them in an email and fax(CYA principle). I then advise to run Postegre, that it is more robust, and is FREE as well.
No one lists. Junior installs on Mysql, everything runs fine, site gets huge amount of traffic, database gets quirky. Management starts running huge queries on database reporting tool. Database is very slow to respond, then in a few weeks keels over.
We get called. Tech is yelling, my guys are smirking(but still polite on phone) Management, myself, and tech gets on conference. Tech starts berating me. Management starts berating me. I pull out magic email and fax with all my system recquirements, suggestions for optimal use. Hey, guess what I was write. Wait a minute, shouldn't I know best since I work for the company that writes and support the product?
Three times a week this happens with Mysql. We have 14000 customers and I swear 50 percent have some guy that thinks he knows best.... knows our product better, knows computers better...
This is a great example of where our community needs to clean up its act. And I thought I would never say that.
Mysql is good for what it is, but there are many things it is not. Learn this.
Puto
gk
seriously what is the real issue here? Closed, proprietary formats. None of the unbundling will change the fact that people with Windows will have a system hostile to interoperability. wo
I was going to send the webmaster an email saying that the hotmail/msn services were down, but I couldn't get into my hotmail to send it. What do people do in these kinds of situations? bp
Sharp Shows Slim, Trim Notebook
New Actius MM20 is first to feature Transmeta's new Efficeon chip.
Tom Krazit, IDG News Service
Monday, March 15, 2004
The first notebook available in the United States with Transmeta's new Efficeon processor will be announced by Sharp Systems of America on Monday.
The new Actius MM20 is an improved version of the MM10, says Terry Hanly, product marketing manager for Sharp Systems, a division of Sharp Electronics.
Advertisement
The MM10 used Transmeta's older Crusoe processor, which was praised for its miserly power consumption but panned for its performance.
The new Efficeon TM8600 is designed to improve performance while maintaining the low power consumption required by ultraportable notebooks--such as the 2-pound MM20. Sharp's tests showed that Efficeon delivers about 1.4 times the performance of Crusoe, Hanly says.
Sharp also improved performance in the MM20 by adding PC2100 (266-MHz) DDR SDRAM. The notebook now comes with 512MB of memory, up from 256MB in the older MM10.
The notebook's standard battery will last three hours under normal conditions. An extended battery will add six more hours of computing time and 0.6 pounds, Hanly says.
Portable PC
A base configuration of the notebook includes the 1-GHz Efficeon processor, 512MB of memory, a 20GB hard drive, and a 10.4-inch display for an estimated starting price of $1499. Sharp will take preorders for the notebook as of Monday, and it will ship in April.
The MM20 is designed as a second notebook for corporate executives or frequent business travelers that prefer something lightweight when traveling, Hanly says.
Sharp will include a base station and cable with the MM20 that allows users to connect the notebook to their regular PC through a USB port and use the notebook as an external hard drive.
Specially configured software from Iomega allows users to make changes to documents on their regular PC that will be automatically synchronized with the MM20. Conversely, if a user makes changes to a document on the road, the updated version of that document will automatically replace the older version on the regular PC when the units are connected, Hanly says.
A version of this notebook has been available in Japan, Hanly says. She does not know if a version will ship in Europe. vlw
The new Muramasa has been out in Japan since January. It has had some nice reviews and keeps up well with Pentium-M modells of similar clock speed (see this Japanese review) [impress.co.jp]. And it is much cheaper. rhx
Cowboy Squeal! [wildpuma.com]
props to popeye kc
At CES, they had one, and it was absolutely dwarfed by my Nokia 6360 phone. Take a look:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13578
While the phone is a 'big' one the laptop was thinner, and it weighed nothing. Very cool.
These ultra-light models don't click until you hold one, but when you do, you look at the standard ultra-lights and wonder how people use them.
-Charlie mvw
That said the issues are subtley but still substantially different. Libel is a civil issue, facilitation of piracy is criminal. International treaties handle these cases differently (and quite often not at all), it would have not been possible to sue that jornelist if his paper had no dealings in Australia as if I remember correctly Australian defamation laws are not recognised by America because of the differnces in laws and to a lesser extend the differences in culture. Only the Australian arm of that company could be sued.
But even if the crime was ruled to have been commited in America, as is possible extradition may not be possible. This is because nomatter where a crime was commited, if a sovereign nation does not recognise those crimes or recognises them to a lesser extent (as is the case here) then deportation may be conditional or even impossible.
Personally I don't see a deportation happening, the backlash that would occur when an Australian is sent to a foreign land that he has never set foot on before, to stand before a foreign jury to answer to foreign crimes for an action that was alledged to occur in the man's own home, in his own country would be sickening to most Australians or anyone with a sence of national identity, even if they are not Australian. There is a strong undercurrent of hostility towards the US flowing around Australia's youth and left wing. No judge would be willing to make this man a martr to Australian nationalism. Australia is one of the only countrys never to have had any wars or bloody revolutions, nobody would risk making this sacrifice to appease a foreign power if it meant a remote possibilty that thousends of angry young people with a newfound nationalistic furver could be storming the high court, parlement house, the US embassy and pine gap.
One also has to consider that a legal system that would entitle a foreign power to snatch away citizens for breaking laws of another nation into a distant land where they have never been is harldy soverign. Even if he is not crushed by homocidal revolutionarys, any judge that allows this extradition will surely be relinquising his own power to those overseas. This is completely contrary to human nature, let alone the nature of one ambitious enough to become a high court justice.
But let me say this. If this extradition is allowed, whosoever allows this man has commited nothing wrong in his own country to be taken to a foreign land as a prisoner, shall have fire and chaos thown down on him or her by either their power being snatched away by the American judituary or their life being snatched away by hostile revolutionarys. If they act in the wrong way, their own actions shall not go unlamented. yw
Adapting LotR to anything is a bold undertaking. Peter Jackson took the enormous risk to turn it into a movie trilogy, and succeeded, IMO, in the sense that apparently most avoid Tolkien fans seem to approve of his work, even though there are concerns about "streamlining" or "cutting corners" here and there. And I think Jackson deserves an enormous amount of credit for this.
Now, 10 hours of movies are yet quite different from 3 hours of musical. To bring this to the stage in a successful manner, a lot of streamlining and cutting will have to be done, with a tremendous risk of falling short of the original. I will admit that I was sceptical about the movies, and Jackson proved me wrong. I am even more sceptical here.
There are times where it's wise not to tempt fate, and pass on some challenges, instead of taking your shot at it and fail. Come up with your own original story and knockyourself out, no problem. But taint the work of Tolkien with a failed attempt of an adaptation, and people will remember you for a long time...
eo
If you then check the link to CRM114's project, you'll find this: "I measured my own accuracy to be around 99.84%, by classifying the same set of 3000ish messages twice over a period of about a week, reading each message from the top until I feel "confident" of the message status, (one message per screen unless I want more than one screen to decide on a message.) and doing the classification in small batches with plenty of breaks and other office tasks to avoid fatigue. Then I diff()ed the two passes to generate a result. Assuming I never duplicate the same mistake, I, as an unassisted human, under nearly optimal conditions, am 99.84% accurate.)."
Given the amount of people who even read the article on slashdot I doubt anyone else is going to check the tiny [1] footnote and find this. at
If I were the dictator, MS would be forced to document the file formats it is using (including all WMV formats, of course), all network protocols, and to provide sufficient NTFS documentation so that I can finally can mount/dev/hda2 with read-write soonish. jkq
Seriously slashdot, your GNAA/Linux loving policy is blinding you as to what is relevant and what isn't.
And your ignorance of news is blinding you to the fact that all the other major news sites reported hotmail and msns outages as well.
Even CNN had it as a top story in the technology section. qnf
I had a problem with my '99 cavalier; the engine would drop it's RPMs by several hundred every once in a while; almost, but not quite, enough to stall.
Took it in to the dealer, they said 'is the check engine light on?'
'Nope,' I replied, 'but here's what it's doing...'
'Sorry,' came the reply. 'If the check light's not on, there's no diagnostic codes for us to look up. We can't fix it unless we know what's wrong.'
erz"Password fairly correct. Root login granted."
lla
.. conducted the study after Australian researchers announced in 1999 that they had made a computer model showing it was theoretically possible for beer bubbles to fall down the side of a glass
trust it to be australians that worked that one out first.
something tells me that experiment was most likely conducted on a friday nite after a few beers at the lab. agz
The last thing I want geeks designing is my clothes. I'm not fond of the short-sleeve-polo-with-company-logo, okay! yrm
slated to be released until the last quarter this year. 2005 "sounds bad", but it's only a few months. hnh
I.T. departments want to support 2 notebooks for every executive user, this is a bad marketing ploy at best. Transmeta makes a nice chip, Sharp marketing clearly doesn't know what to do with it. elg
I wonder if this could help patients with I.C. It's rather painful and if the "new nerves" can be made to ignore certain impulses...that'd be very beneficial. Very intriguing, anyway bs
An open letter to antitrust, competition, consumer and trade practice monitoring agency officials worldwide.
The role of trade practice and antitrust legislation is to provide the consumer with protection from abusive business practices and monopolies. In one of the most serous cases of monopolization in the information technology industry, the agencies charged with protecting the competitive process and the consumer have utterly failed to stem the offending corporation's anti-competitive practices.
The Microsoft corporation has been under continuous investigation by antitrust policing agencies since 1989. Despite this scrutiny, the Microsoft corporation, using covert and overt anti-competitive business tactics, has maintained an unabated campaign against alternatives to Microsoft Windows operating system platforms and Microsoft applications.
For years the Microsoft corporation has earned around 70% to 80% net profit from sales of its operating systems and application software. Only in areas like Thailand where GNAA/Linux on the desktop has just begun to gain a foothold has Microsoft stated that it will release versions of its operating system platform and application software at a lower price to Original Equipment Manufactures (OEMs) and retail consumers than is available in the rest of the modern world. Consumers benefit where real competition exists.
The world desktop operating system market remains predominantly monopolized by Microsoft. Over the last decade, Microsoft continued to lever its desktop platform monopoly to the point where it now holds a dominant position worldwide in the application office suite and web browser software markets. On its own, the current USA Department Of Justice (DOJ) settlement with the Microsoft corporation has failed to bring about any restoration of serous competition to the desktop operating system market. Microsoft continues to use similar anti-competitive business tactics in an attempt to monopolize the digital media player and the desktop services server markets. Competing vendors increasingly find that they can no longer compete with Microsoft if they limit themselves to only the traditional closed source model of software development.
In the last six years information technology vendors have adopted techniques and resources from two existing movements geared toward the construction of software. The newer open source movement, represented by the non-profit Open Source Initiative (OSI) corporation, emphasizes the licensing of software in a manner which encourages its collaborative development in an open environment. The older free software movement, represented by the non-profit Free Software Foundation (FSF), focuses on the ethical issues surrounding the licensing of software. The free software movement emphasizes freedoms which are often taken for granted outside of the field of software: the freedom to use, study how something works, improve or adapt it and redistribute.
The Free Software Foundation offers two software license schemes which are compatible with their own goals and those of the Open Source Initiative: The GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL). Essentially, the GPL and LGPL licenses grant the recipient extra rights than that granted by copyright law. Both licenses insure that a contributer or distributer of a GPL or LGPL licensed work may not further impede downstream recipients the rights granted by the same license. Many developing software in an open source manner have realized that this benefit offered by the GPL and LGPL licenses outweigh any potential losses. The licensing also insures that no contributing or distributing vendor or group of vendors could potentially monopolize the market, insuring that real market competition dictates price. Just as the automotive industry can commonize on standards
I personally don't like Microsoft... but you have to ask yourself if Media Player is removed who is affected by this in a negative way?
Microsoft. Oh, you meant in the short term? Possibly users. In the long term however this stops Microsoft being able to leverage their desktop monopoly into a format monopoly (where was.wma 3 years ago?) into a media player monopoly (where were.wma players 3 years ago? you can now buy windows only wma only players) into a net-broadcast monopoly (that you can only view with media player on an approved platform).
In the long run it might be necessary to hurt consumers a little bit today to protect them tomorrow. Ideally the solution will involve forcing them to support a patent unencumbered license unencumbered format alongside (or instead of) wma to ensure they can't use their existing monopoly to destroy interoperability. as
don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I'm kind of let down by the fact that our most interesting space story for awhile now is that we MAY have a 10th planet in our solar system.
Umm...what? The past few months have been *spectacularly* exciting from a space point of view. We have two probes that successfully landed on Mars and have found strong evidence that Mars had liquid brine at one point. We have a ton of pictures from the surface to look at, and are expecting tons of findings, papers, and theories based on probe data that's been returned.
And while, yes, the classification may not be interesting, the fact that we discovered a new, sizeable chunk of matter in our solar system is not small stuff either. wmc
While, yes, you manage distributed systems from the center, you don't *push* updates, changes, modifications because, it doesn't scale. You end up having to write stuff like this fault tolerant shell which is frankly backwards thinking.
Instead, you automate everything and *pull* updates, changes, scripts etc. That way if a system is up, it just works, if it's down, it'll get updated next time it's up.
I won't go into details but I'll point you at http://infrastructures.org/
fa
Why not choose a Transmeta powered port-a-box? What's the difference what's inside as long as you can run you necessary proggies? Does it really matter if AMD or Intel is inside? Does it really matter that it's Transmeta? How could you even tell, provided your software behaves as expected? gz
to charge my lowfat half-caf triple venti latte and a settecento CD (pronounced "chi dee") for $30.
It's a grande scheme to make CD pricing look reasonable. mfr
The cost of advertising of a newly approved drug is a VERY SMALL drop in the bucket compared to the cost to develop and push a drug through clinical trials and all the red tape the FDA has constructed.
Your typical drug, say Viagria, starts as a base compund. Normally there are over 100,000 or more base compounds that are tested and researched before even one compound is found that would be useful to market (and this is before the inital FDA filing, AKA Pre-EDC). Once the compound is registered with the FDA and goes under intensive developemnt there is much more money spent.
On average development costs for a single drug can esclate into billions of dollars. Of course, if successful, a single good drug can bring enough profit to keep a drug company operating for years before the patent protection goes away.
The reason drugs outside of the US are much cheaper is mainly thanks to the FDA. The FDA has massive amounts of regulations even after the drug is approved that regulate how a drug is manufactured and handled. These regulations even dictate how the drug company manages and runs its production computer networks and client systems. This of course adds A LOT of overhead when making a drug.
Drugs coming from non FDA regulated sites (this is the kinda stuff you buy super cheap on the net) are much cheaper however knowing what the FDA regulations are and why they are there I feel much safer paying more money for an FDA approved drug which I know will be safe as opposed to a drug made at a non-FDA regulated site which may not meet the standards of saftey we have here in the states. ix
Businessweek ran an item on it in their latest issue. The also said that competitors of Starbucks are looking to implement similar technology.
Krispy Kreme and Outkast? dyv
Sedna is over 4 times the size (volume) of Quaoar.
Whether it's a planet is a silly argument, but even so, "we already have Quaoar" is really irrelevant.
rm
You fail to see the big picture. For instance, several books are prohibited in Iraq, Iran, and several other countries. Should Amazon.com employees be extradited to face death penalty in those countries for selling books that are prohibited there?
It's the same thing. You can't allow laws from one country to affect citizens of another or the most restrictive laws from any one country would apply to all Netizens. That's not wise. nv
I will admit that as a general nerd and space geek (I own a telescope) I am concerned about the possibility of the human population getting wiped out by a large space-borne impact.
But isn't it sad that governments throw billions of dollars towards defense (from other humans) yet nobody is willing to invest in defense of the earth at large?
This is the kind of shit that makes us look awfully silly when the aliens come inspect the rubble after the impact. fzh
what they seem to essentially want is
- a try statement and error catching and
- a fortran like syntax for testing and arithmetic
I think the authors were a bit misguided. Instead of creating a whole new shell how about just extending a good existing shell with a new try statement a described.it can even be done without extending the shell:
as for the new syntax of.eq..ne..lt..gt..to.
certainly looks like fortran-hugging to me , yuck
as for integer arithmetic, that can be done with by either using backticks or the $[ ] expansion
rrpActually, cephalopod nerves aren't that amazing. They're no faster that than the nerves in your body. It's just that cephalopods never developed myelinated nerves. Myselin insulates the nerve and allows for much faster signal propogation. The large size of cephalopod nerves is simply an alternate way to get higher transmission speeds.
Either way, nerves only transmit at a few hundred miles an hour. Even assuming these flex wires aren't as conductive as a bulk gold wire, you're still looking at a transmission speed at a significant fraction of c.
Silicon and metal wiring operates at speeds millions of times higher than biological nervous systems. ww
All though this seems lke a good idea on paper, I know that starbucks uses wifi networks. I was wondering if anyone a lot smarter than me could comment on the security of this. A hacker could pay for a song, and sniff it being transmitted on the network simaltaneusly. He would then have a clear copy of the data when it was given to him, and an encrypted, letting him use some cryptoanalysis tools to figure out how the songs are encrypted. Any idea on the plausibility of this? ri
Who are they trying to fool? When they said this about Internet Explorer I could imagine how this could be true, but what parts of Media player might be essential for other applications??? cv
they would start development on their second OS right now. I don't live in Europe, but from what I read and hear on IRC, I get the feeling that M$ is not going to win any appeals, and eventually will be forced to sell their cut down OS. It would save them time and money. Why drag it out in court, when you're probably going to lose anyway? rve
Fujitsu 'did it right' with the P-Series.
It would be nice to have a faster processor but the flexibility the P-Series (I have the 2120) is unmatched. 8 hours+ battery life and when you add in a 7200rpm drive it is not as sluggish.
Games are best avoided here but I didn't buy it for mobile gaming just mobile working and notes taking in class. ue
Why is it that so many Unix/GNAA/Linux programs (and everything else, for that matter) do not provide simple screenshots on their products websites?
If I'm going to download your program and install it (and in many cases, take time to compile it...) I want to know that it's going to look halfway decent when I'm done.
Why is this so hard for some programmers to understand? ld
I don't understand why Lilypond aims to go back to having a proprietary textual format for typesetting music. Most people, I'd imagine, would want to typeset music graphically, as it's just more intuitive that way (I mean, I'm guessing that, for example, getting two voices per staff would be easier in a GUI system than having to manage the text input).
Anyone know of a GUI frontend to Lilypond? we
Right here [stanford.edu]
(Quicktime required) qs
Risks of dying in car: 1 in 100
Risks of dying in plane:1 in 20,000
Risks of dying from asteroid 1 in 20,000 to 100,000
Source [space.com]
May I just get somebody to help me pay off my student loans and make sure that there is enough social security to cover my health when I get old?
AC bw
The real problem is not so much that the Yukon date has slipped, it's that Whidbey (The next version of Visual Studio.NET and the.NET framework) is slipping with it. For who knows what reason, Microsoft decided that these products must be released together. While Yukon promises some very nice features, most people would much rather have Whidbey released now and live with SQL 2000 for awhile longer.
To top it off, MS is not even going to be releasing any service packs for Visual Studio in the meantime. There are some rather serious issues with the current version of Visual Studio that can only be fixed by calling MS for specific hotfixes. Needless to say, much of the MS developer community is up in arms. ciw
Except unlike the other *ticians people find it acceptable to pay digiticians in cookies and soda. kea
"I wonder what is so important that NASA is going to wait until Monday. Maybe they will be unveiling something else at the same time?"
It's the monthly bug-report announcement. "A local root vulnerability has been found in the astrology community. NASA rates it as non-critical"
ogz
I'm a pretty serious amateur jazz musician, and I do a fair amount of composing and arranging for jazz ensembles of about 8-16 musicians.
LilyPond is not intended for people like me. If you're less serious than I am, LilyPond is definitely not intended for you.
The most popular music notation software is Finale. Finale is buggier than Windows ME and twice as bloated, but once you learn how to use it, it gets the job done. You can enter your notes relatively quickly, tweak them a little, print, and go. While it has some very non-intuitive options, it's straightforward enough that most amateur musicians are able to sit down and click around until they get it to do what they want.
How's the output? Pretty crappy if you don't spend any time playing with it. But if you spend a little bit of time fixing the glaring errors, the result is readable by most musicians.
LilyPond, on the other hand, reads a description of the music in a text-based format, and formats it automatically - using much nicer algorithms than Finale apparently uses. It might take quite a bit longer to get your music input, but the end result will look nice - and will not require nearly as much tweaking.
LilyPond, by itself, is only of use to professional engravers, and only those who are willing to learn how to use it. If somebody ever develops a front-end to LilyPond that's actually integrated (as opposed to something like Rosegarden that can just export to LilyPond's format), then it might be more accessible to the average musician.
Don't get me wrong - I think that LilyPond is great. I just think that a lot of the complaints I'm seeing in this forum are because people don't understand what problem LilyPond is trying to solve and who will benefit.
No, LilyPond is not ready to replace all of the other music notation software out there. But it's one of the best tools for professional music engraving already, and maybe someday it can also be an appropriate tool for the casual user, too. eq
Check these links for a Duo (Laptop) mod to a picture frame. I remember this site as the first I saw. I have an old 486 and a 64MB compaq flash just waiting for a conversion.
m e
http://www.applefritter.com/hacks/duodigitalfra
http://www.applefritter.com/node/view/728
Duo Digital Frame by James Roos iyu
Wargoatseing, anyone?
ohPaid for services, such as MSDN subscriptions, were down as well. The real news is not that Hotmail was down, but that all Passport based services were having problems. MS has been trying hard to sell Passport as a "single sign on solution." This indicent does not help that marketing effort. This is not the first time that Passport has been out. In the past the passport domain expired and was rescued by a very nice person who registered the domain on a weekend, reinstating the service.
nrg
Wrong, wrong, wrong! While I agree that physical co-ordination is something some people are good at, and some people are bad at, I cannot go along with your crazed idea that education is something that happens to someone given enough time.
Schools, colleges, training courses etc. don't educate anyone. They provide an opportunity for people to learn. Some people will learn just enough to get by. Others will learn everything presented to them and more off their own bat. Yet others (me) will say "fuck this" and learn everything they need to know themselves whilst also earning some money. And some won't be able to keep up and will drop out and get a McJob.
Education is no guarantee of learning, but learning is a guarantee of education. oc
If this sort of thing is common, can anyone recommend any review sites that they trust?
--
Real-time deal updates [dealsites.net] oc
it would make more sense when Microsoft would claim it was an attack. Internal problems can be blaimed on the company ...
With Win2000, Microsoft was working hard to get away from their reputation for instability. Some of this they fixed with software changes, and some with marketing propaganda.
With Longhorn, Microsoft is working twice as hard to get away from their rep for insecurity. At least for the moment, it is better to have their systems appear a tad unstable than insecure.
jwg
wj...Hotmail goes down on Friday, and you're the first to know on Sunday! gga
RTFA. You're lightyears away from what it's about. cwv
That kind of culture explains why Toyota was first to market with a profitable hybrid car, and why they're so far ahead that Ford's licensing hybrid technology from them.
Here's the missing link that doesn't get publicized: automakers are ahead of the curve on robots because they use robotics extensively in assembly. The more accurately their robots move, the more accurately they assemble cars. Next time you wonder why Japanese cars have a reputation for being so well-built, think of projects like these. tk
I can, however, use another program to read the text files that I've created with Notepad, use my extremely simple math formulae on another, competing calculator program ( heck, I can even port that sucker over to GNAA/Linux with little trouble ), or set my new taskbar clock to the same time by using the system time, like I always have, but I cannot use that DRM enable.wmp file with just any media player: thus, no lock-in and another troll bites the dust.
And another one's gone, and another one's gone...
Oh, sorry.;( idp
... or probably Perl or Python, either.
It doesn't actually seem to grok the commands that are being run, so something like
proc try {times script} {
if { [catch [uplevel $script] err] } { cleanup ; retry }
}
is all that's needed (of course to do it right you'd need a bit more, but still...).
try {5 times} {
commands...
}
Although Tcl is a bit lower level, and would require you to do exec ls, you could of course wrap that too so that all commands in the $script block would just be 'exec'ed by default.
In any case, better to use a flexible tool that can be tweaked to do what you need then write highly specialized tools. nbh
The last thing I want geeks designing is my clothes. I'm not fond of the short-sleeve-polo-with-company-logo, okay! qm
I have been looking at the MM10 (the older version) as a small GNAA/Linux computer for some months now and the memory was always a hold up. This things solves that and then some.
The older model was small and light, but very usable. You could confortably hold it in one hand for a long time and it never got warm/hot. This was the thinnest thing I've ever seen, and the smallest without seeming to sacrifice on usability (close to sacrifice though).
I might just have get one and see about running GNAA/Linux on this little guy.
jom
Before his arrest, I would have just ASSUMED selling bongs over the Internet was legal. What is the best way for an entrepreneur ( like an individual selling something on eBay ) to avoid tripping over any stupid and obscure laws? kj
I'm not sure it's that simple. There are tons more regulations that manufacrurers must meet today - from safety regulations to pollution measures. Throwing a 440ci engine with a four barrel carb into a light car simply isn't possible anymore. hz
Check these links for a Duo (Laptop) mod to a picture frame. I remember this site as the first I saw. I have an old 486 and a 64MB compaq flash just waiting for a conversion.
m e
http://www.applefritter.com/hacks/duodigitalfra
http://www.applefritter.com/node/view/728
Duo Digital Frame by James Roos oy
OT but... Get a hard pad, or a RedOctane 2.0 I weigh 240lbs, and that RedOctane keeps taking a beating without fail on 9 footers. sx
... was mentioned a few months back in one of the magazines I pick up almost monthly (forget which one out of the several it was).
I think the shell was called dsh. I believe this is the project site: http://dsh.sourceforge.net/
Are the aims of this fault tolerant shell and dsh the same? I'm not a programmer, but I'm trying to teach myself *nix system administration.
Eventually I'm hoping to cluster some older x86 systems I'm going to get at auction together for a Beowulf cluster. It sounds to me like one if not both of these two shells might come in handy! lb
I was thinking - why did they post this as a story, who cares about Hotmail downtime, ...but then I realised that it IS important, it just goes to remind us all of how invasive one single company is, so invasive that in the software area that I specialise is, although there are well over 20 equivalent products, I already have to assess the QUALITY of products as such:
.. 80% on dominance, .. 10% luck, .. and 10% on product features
1. Microsoft: assessed:
- it will get 15-50% of the market simply because of who it is, and will either be Market leader, or number 2.
2. All the others, which get assessed mainly 50-90% on product features.
So then of course the advice has to be, well one of the advantages of selecting the MS product because you know that you won't have to convert the data from some other system that will be driven into the ground by MS.
I can only advise clients the "truth" - that is what I get paid for, but I am not happy with this situation.
In this particular market segment, I can say that MS would not get in the "top 3" in terms of features.
This is a terribly sad situation to be in, and people need to be reminded of this regularly. The lack of action by authorities on Monopoly practices appears to show that the MS Billions have won the day.
I am not a GNAA/Linux-plugger, and I know that MS has produced some good services, however these days they are way beyond the scope of traditional monopoly abuse. Are all politicians and scientists out there so "chicken" or greedy?
------------------
no sig. of course! ixf
Whenever you visit the Microsoft webpage (windows update), they will have a video of how to install patches. This video will be only available in media player format. A few other pages on the web like this (through partnership) and it will not dent the "market share" one bit. zal
As a legal professional, how do you see the evolution of the laws surrounding the internet progressing? We have heard much talk of losing our online liberties - what do you think the real threats to a reasonable internet are? vda
in reality it was just a few short hours.
In reality most hours are the same length. Hotmail was down for a few standard-length hours. ct
Honey, we're moving to Washington!!!
Imagine mapping this (your HOUSE) for a Quake / Unreal map!!
pj
Even if only for servers to keep open relays out of the loop, it may be time to mandate third-party trusted ID certs (ala SSL) for mail servers. It's proven too difficult to get most people to digitally sign their mail, but admins should be clueful enough to generate certs and have them validated externally... zgi
I see all my fellow slashdotters saying (over and over again) that spam filters should be server side, because otherwise you are still paying for the wasted bandwidth. This is a very powerful argument, and I tend to agree.
However, there are two things that make me nervous about this approach. First of all, if I miss even one email, no matter how innocuous, because my ISP installed filters, I am going to be pissed!
"Man, you missed it, the party was a blast!"
"What party?"
"Didn't you get the email?"
With a client side filter, at least I can look through the 'spam' and find the gold nuggets. If my ISP filters for me, and I miss a legit email, I'm just SOL.
Secondly, all of the best filters are for linux. Ask me if I run Mozilla (for windows). I will tell you, "HELL yes I do". Is it anywhere close to 90% effective for filtering spam? Not for me! Is it 100% effective in letting my legit mail come through? Not for me! The browser has stopped 99.9% of the popups tho.
Anyway, long ramble short, give me something that's good on windows. Do I have to write it myself? I've been thinking of altering Mozilla to incoporate the latest anti-spam technology, but, man, I just never have the time these days.
Anyway, good work on the part of D-Spam, nonetheless. Kudos to your bad selves. kh
Govt. is typically illogical.... IMHO, let them pass this one as law, and THEN hit them with the questioning about their logic on cars vs. DVD's.
It's more leverage for us if it's already written into law.
gdt
I've always wanted a spam filter with 1000% accuracy!
ct
There's this tale (many adapations exist I'm sure):
* There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired.
Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine fixed, but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge.
He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and proudly stated, "This is where your problem is".
The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.
The engineer responded briefly:
One chalk mark: $1
Knowing where to put it: $49,999
It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace. hn
Most of the "Prisioners" as you call them, were tax evaders. People who could not grow enough crop for their landowner. "Real" criminals were executed.
And yes, Australia does have extradition arrangements with the U.S. But was he in the U.S. when he did the crime? And if not, is that a valid defense? If he hacked into a bank, we would want him sent to face the charges. But, not all of us have hacked into banks, but all of us have pirated software or music, therefore we want to be leanient with his sentence. nr
There is no need for BSD-from-scratch disto.
1: All the BSDs are entirely different operating systems, which are lumped into one category becuase of their roots.
2: Since no extra bullshit is thrown in like linux, there is less need for reworking the base.
3: BSD is not obscure in the least, it is rather alive and florishing.
BTW you forgot to mention Solaris, which has it's roots in BSD too. zx
Ouch, how smart is it to have an article about beer on a Sunday!;) oo
Man! The [slashdot.org] ACs [slashdot.org] are [slashdot.org] on fire [slashdot.org] tonight, with 4 / 6 of the +5 scores! ct
Because you have to be looking at the right place at the right time. Do you have any idea how vast a volume of space we're talking about? dz
How far do you think that the internet will be responsible for creating a de-facto international legal system? Property rights, shared criminal databases, shared economic systems,... it seems that the influence of TCP/IP packets has no limits on our society. Will we one day see a world government to enforce international law? And lastly, will this be the US? ut
According to the 1999 article, the original asking price was $300,000. The guy who bought it is asking $3,500,000. That's a bit of a markup, there.
It makes sense if he put a lot of money and time into renovating it; that's probably the case if there's someone currently occupying the property. (Which the auction hints at.) hg
Many distributions ship with software such as XMMS, mplayer and the gimp. Should Mandrake, SuSE, Debian and the like be fined for carrying this software?
First: no one of those distributions has a de facto monopoly in the OS market and it's trying to abuse that position to get the monopoly in other markets, such as the media players one.
Second: on the average GNAA/Linux distro, you have twenty different text editors, a dozen media players, and another dozen graphic manipulation programs.
So, your is, indeed, a non sequitur.
pqjChange your content, or else: Manufacturer's demanding content changes is nothing new in the tech site community. We take a look at this topic, including one very public example that started in the past three weeks.
Date: March 15, 2004
Manufacturer: N/A
Written By: Hubert Wong
Just under a year ago, we provided some insight on the inner workings of running a tech site [slashdot.org]. Yes, there are thousands of sites out there, and despite the diversity, there are several constants in our universe... costs, advertising, readership, and most important of all, integrity.
Running a site, especially a tech site, isn't free and there are plenty of costs involved. Everything from the hardware purchases (not everything is free, which is a general misconception I think), to the server and bandwidth... it all has a price.
This is where advertising comes in. If the site is lucky enough, advertising will net a nice income each month, but for a greater number of owners, they'll be lucky if it helps them break even.
Of course, an advertiser is not going to consider a site that doesn't meet their traffic requirements. Readership is what makes our world go round. Without our loyal readers, VL wouldn't be where it is today, and I would say that the same goes for the majority of sites out there.
Casual readers come and go, but a loyal reader is somebody that means a lot to a site. It's common knowledge that most sites track their traffic. This gives us an idea of trends, and how to cater our content. We're not too concerned about our uniques a day, but rather our bookmarks and returns. People who bookmark and/or return multiple times a day make up a site's readership. Uniques are new visitors who either stop and go, or decide to stay. What turns a unique visitor into a regular reader? Content? Yes. Attention to detail? Sure thing. Integrity? Nobody likes a site that lies about a product just to suck up, right?
Granted, the last point isn't something that is respected by a great number of sites (the actual number is more than you think), but the site's I do frequent on a regular basis (Ed. Note: Including our own:D) do try hard to stick with their journalistic integrity. There are instances though where manufacturers will try to influence a site's review. Sadly, this happens quite often, and it becomes a problem when this influence attempts to change a writer's perception of the product. This is something site owners need to deal with constantly, and yes, here at VL we've been asked to have a change of heart on more than one occasion. Errors or omissions happen, and we're more than happy to make amendments, but as a reader, you can rest assured knowing we'll never mislead you because somebody asked us to so they can improve sales.
Luckily, most Tier-1 manufacturers; i.e., the ones who have a good amount of exposure within the enthusiast community, do respect a journalist's right for free speech. Sure, even some of the big dogs take issue with what we in the community say, but that's the price of exposing yourself with press releases. Whether a product is released and performs less than expected, or
Read the rest of this comment... vmn
Will people now start referring to "digitician's butt"? qn
lilypond looks nice for many things, and i think it's a step in the right direction. the problem is, there's always a rift between what the musicians want to notate and what the software is able to do.
:)
sb
can lilypond notate beams across barlines? can you hide rests? can you make invisible barlines? all this stuff is important to me, since that's the kind of music i write. sibelius does them wonderfully, and i've heard rumors that sibelius' base engine is written in ASM and could be easily ported to linux from OS X.
on the other hand, i have a big problem in that i wrote a lot of stuff in Finale, and then I switched to sibelius, and even the file convertor doesn't work right a lot of the time. if lilypond can offer a good long-term storage format that is easy to read by both humans and computers, it could have a big niche in digital preservation, and be a common point between notation programs.
anyone want to write a finale->lilypond convertor?
I've got a theory, that it's a Nazgul, A dancing Nazgul. No, something isn't right there.
(Frodo)
I've got a theory, that Bilbo is dreamin' And we're all stuck inside his wacky Broadway nightmare.
(Aragorn)
I've got a theory we should work this out.
(The Fellowship except Gandalf)
It's getting eerie, what's this cheery singing all about?
(Gimli)
It could be Elves, some evil Elves. Which is ridiculous 'cause Elves they were persecuted wicked good and loved Middle Earth and fairie power and I'll be over here.
(Merry)
I've got a theory, it could be lunchtime...
[crickets chirping] qy
I thought these chips were supposed to have "good" performance while consuming a lot less power. fhx
When I picture that in mind I find it quite funny. I can imagine the stage dark and the crowd all hushed, with Gollum staring into his palm, singing 'Why oh why did this ring find meeeeeeeeeeee' in a deep operatic voice (ie non Gollum-esque). tcs
That's an odd thing to say before posting to Slashdot. zdl
Also, I would appreciate (not quite the same) a auto-completing python interpreter and editor (which can complete methods and objects from modules)... Such kind of stuff really increases productivity ! ja
...overburned? - the CDs or the coffee? ydr
IMO, Pluto should [shouldn't?] be labeled an asteroid since it's smaller than even our own moon [wikipedia.org].
An interesting point, though to be fair, its an arbitrary cutoff. There are moons elswhere in our solar system larger than Mercury, which is indisputably a planet, for example. Also its worth pointing out that our moon is large enough that it and Earth are sometimes called a double planet. Consider this, Luna does not orbit Earth as near the equator as is usual among most other moons. Also, peculiar to all 138 known moons with the exception of Charon, it possesses an orbit where the effect of the Sun's gravity is greater than that of Earth's. Without their host planets, they would float off, wheareas the moon would continue orbiting the sun quite contently. xnNope this problem is a central database problem, probably they tried to normalize the passport database, screw the pooch and had to roll everything back which is why it took so long.
Or maybe they changed a permission and spend the whole day figuring out which one did it. ptYou can't directly compare this to the DMCA because when you're talking about music, movies, and software, you're talking about 1's and 0's that can be copied over and over. They're talking about codes to ensure fairness in repairing automobiles so the dealers don't steal all the business. The reason congress is stepping in is because no one is going to put their 2004 Explorer on kazaa and share it. They're not talking about opening up all the software. This isn't about open source at all, it's about knowing what is wrong with the care based on the error code the computer spits out. cs
Rather surprisingly, they managed to turn the almost-as-complex His Dark Materials trilogy into what is, by all accounts, a fantastic stage show... I'll certainly be getting tickets to see this... hnq
It's really strange. The Spanish are now, after the Madrid blasts, even angrier at their government for fighting terror than before.
Over here the public would be putting aside such petty political differences and screaming for revenge on the terrorists, instead. gmd
Most extradition treaties deal with criminal offenses.
Other than the weird laws of the US (sorry, but thats my opinion), since when has "copyright infringement" been considered a criminal offense?
I guess we can expect the RIAA to extradite for downloading next?
xbrAll these articles about impending doom -- asteroids, earthquakes, pandemics, etc. -- give one the idea that because we've gone a long time without one of these things happening, the chance that we'll have an occurrance is increasing. That shows a basic misunderstanding of probability. If you toss a fair coin and get heads 50 times in a row, the probability of getting heads the next time is still 50%.
We're not 'running out of time' just because we've gone a long time without a major impact. The chance of a major impact this year is exactly the same as it has been in each of the last million years. sbu
Of course they are very biased. Since it rather hard to find any real-life application of RDBMS serving "sigle client".
And we all know how good MySQL at serving multiple clients with complex queries at once.
Neat quote tho, at least when you understand who is really biased:)
/usd ys
I've heard from time to time (albeit prety sparsely) of companies threatening legal action for using their images on a website/forum/etc.
Is there any written law that backs it up, or is it just baseless threats? kco
The usefulness of the proprietary data stream is overstated. I think it was in 94 that the first on-board diagnistic spec (OBD) appeared in mass production. Everyone was crying about it at the time. Amazingly, independent repair shops are still in business. Since then there have been refinements, but it basically defines a standard interface and subset data stream required on all production cars in the US. With an OBD capable scan tool and the proper manuals, any tech can diagnose any problem with any car. There might be a more robust data stream available to the dealer mechanic, but the true value of that extra data is trivial IMO.
I left a 10 year career in auto repair (part of that post-OBD), where my specialty was driveability and electrical. The truly skilled technicians understand the system and don't necessarily depend on a particular tool to get their work done. An old-style analog oscilloscope is more valuable to a tech than any proprietary scan tool. The challenge is the diminishing number of techs that would know what to do with one. hj
I don't see why companies don't like the idea of getting help from CUSTOMERS.:D
Simple: Maybe they would get help from customers, maybe not. If they got help from customers, then their cars would be a little bit better (though probably not much), and their customers would be a little bit happier.
But by keeping all this stuff secret, they create a monopoly on service and their dealerships can charge $200 for something that Joe Smith at your local garage would charge $120 for.
rg
Um... no, that doesn't do the same thing. The whole point of ftsh is that the 'try' block encloses a set of statements which must all be executed or it fails. If the 'cd/tmp' fails, bash will blindly run the 'rm -f data' anyway, whereas ftsh will stop and jump to the start of the try block to have another go. zuy
http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/309033.htm [iafrica.com]
nfa
I have a lot of music that's hard to read, or scribbled on some paper, or whatever. Transcribing music into the computer is so much easier with Lilypond that with WYSIWYG programs! My hands stay on the keyboard, I look at the music and type
On a WYSIWYG system, think about all the mousing and clicking to select and place key and time signatures, metronome marking, three different note durations, a crescendo, a slur, and dynamics. (The percent sign introduces a comment.) Placing an accent on a note? That's just a character. Repeats? That's one word volta. And so on.xh
The ship date news had already been reported by Mary Jo Foley, The reporter of Microsoft news, on the 10th.
1 54 6601,00.asp
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,
Steven
zu
Something to consider about Japan and their rise in technology, is that since the end of WWII, they haven't had a military to take up financing, (or resources, or R&D, etc..) thus leaving the government, and the culture as a whole, to focus on something else...like business and technology. gc
Common sense would say so, but unfortunately, newer browsers, widget libraries, and window managers use a lot of resources. I used to use Redhat 7.1 with FVWM and Opera 6. Blazingly fast on my P3/450. Then, because of frustration with incompatible libraries for newer RPMs, I upgraded to Fedora/Opera 7. I still run Fvwm, but this new Opera version (with a newer Qt library, I presume) needs about 2 seconds of CPU time just for getting in and out of focus. If I look carefully, I can see that the borders of the windows inside the Opera window change a little bit depending on the focus. Emacs and xterm still run fine, but everything that has Gtk or Qt is slow as hell. hc
Now, of course that seems like hogwash, and maybe it is, but it is pretty accurate
Bullshit. If it's accurate, then you could come up with a test to prove it. You could take astrological predictions for an individual based upon his house and compare them with random predictions. These could then be compared for statistical validity, proving once and for all that astrology is accurate.
Wow, if only someone would take the time to perform tests like these. Maybe someone could even make a contest to offer money to anyone who could prove a fantastic claim like "astrology is accurate". [randi.org]
Get it through your skull. It's PROVEN TO BE bullshit. It's always been bullshit, and it will always be bullshit. I've had close dealings with astrologists. I know how some of what they say can seem to be more than just coincidence, but that's all it is -- coincidence and psychology. It's got nothing to do with anyone's "house" or "fate". It's all just bullshit. Don't be a sucker.
za
I've been into computers since I was 8. I bought my first car when I was 18. I used to be one of those people that took it somewhere anytime something went wrong. Then when I was 19, I met someone who worked on vehicles for a living. He showed me that I was being taken to the cleaners when I pay Midas $400 for new brakes. When I was 24, I bought my second vehicle. Maybe 6 months later, the front passenger side rotor was shot. I went to Monroe for an estimate, $692 for two new rotors, braks pads, shoes, calipers, pistons, and lines. I talked to my friend, he showed me that my calipers, lines, and the pistons for the rear brakes were fine. So I bought new rotors and pads, did the repair myself for ~$60.
4 years later, I've gone through a fair number of pads and shoes since, but the calipers are still fine and the lines are good.
I've known "computer professionals" who operate on the same kind of principle. They feel like they should make as much money as possible whenever someone comes into the shop by misrepresenting what needs to be done, or even outright lying. Some of them are quite successful because of this, but others fail miserably.
You can't hold those people that you depend upon to make your living in contempt. You can't treat people like their morons. (even if some of them really are)
LK tqq
I hope she's good in bed cause I'd never date someone that clueless unless she could make my toes curl, my eyes roll into the back of my head, and jets of steam shoot out of both ears.
Lee
pkg
There's a video about it here: video/mov,4MB [stanford.edu]
Mentioned in news article from [stanford.edu] ay
Actually, cephalopod nerves aren't that amazing. They're no faster that than the nerves in your body. It's just that cephalopods never developed myelinated nerves. Myselin insulates the nerve and allows for much faster signal propogation. The large size of cephalopod nerves is simply an alternate way to get higher transmission speeds.
Either way, nerves only transmit at a few hundred miles an hour. Even assuming these flex wires aren't as conductive as a bulk gold wire, you're still looking at a transmission speed at a significant fraction of c.
Silicon and metal wiring operates at speeds millions of times higher than biological nervous systems. ke
Snippet from the article:
Those living near one of the closed Starbucks outlets have reported strange glowing mists, howling and/or cowering on the part of dogs that pass by, and electromagnetic effects that cause haunting, unearthly images to appear on TV and computer screens within a one-mile radius. Experts have few theories as to what may be causing the low-frequency rumblings, half-glimpsed flashes of light, and periodic electronic beeps emanating from the once-busy shops. ol
I could see this idea working in one of those indie coffee houses that play music that no one has heard of.
You can hear some interesting music at a shop and be kinda forced to go around asking the people what the name of the song is etc... If they're playing all of their music on a database that people can buy burned cds from, it would take a lot of the hassle of having to search for it. It would be even better if they could put the CD-TEXT, ID3, whatever...so you know exactly what the songs are... mrAbout 6 months ago I was on the phone to some marketing company who were doing a survey on Yukon and whether or not I was contemplating deploying it.
I said no because:
1) it was too tighly integrated into AD/ windows server and we didn't any of that.
2) I didn't trust it, and wouldn't till it had been in the field for at least a year.
I think they got alot of responses like 2) (going by the marketers comments) and they prob decided to wait till the new windows server is out (2006??) and deploy on the new Trusted Computing Base thing they are wittering on about.
dqu
There's actually something on the front page about BSD. And it says nothing about SCO or linux.
stf
heh, you might want to take a look at this joke. [netfunny.com] ;-)
av
My very educated mother just sent us nine pizzas, sucka - Mr. T sz
Not being a beer drinker I am not surprised, the bubbles are probably trying to drown themselves rather than taste that foul brew... mcw
You should mean the M series, because there is a lot more to it than PM and variable clock, something the regular Pentium line has had for years. Read this [arstechnica.com] article and you'll realize just how much went into it. kh
But I thought they were the spammers. iz
Cheaper version of Windows? I think it will be funny if MS sells the new version for the same price and just tells them the player was a freebie. pd
warezing is a crime in australia and many country's so this sounds supported there. The article says "Griffiths Australian lawyers are fighting the move, stating that he has never set foot in the United States and has committed no crime under Australian law" but to me thats lawyer defense standard sputtering as it IS illegal in australia.
Their lawyers are using simple SCO tactics like "our IP is in their product" they can say it but it does not make it true.
adult desktops & wallpapers [67.160.223.119] hlu
But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision?
War would still be a crucial issue. We cannot allow a mineshaft gap. wc
I've found that provided the system have a good amount of memory, a pentium 2 is good enough to run most applications.
I've been tweaking an older PII laptop (400MhZ, 192M) over the past few months. The idea was not to lose any functionality or "new" features (i.e., dropping a 2.2 based distro, the PII's contemporary OS, would be cheating). So far I'm extremely pleased. The machine is very functional, even faster in some respects than a newer Thinkpad T22 (800MhZ, 256M) because the video support is better.
The main changes:
* 2.6 kernel -- huge difference
* Fluxbox instead of KDE/Gnome
* NPTL
* Rebuilt some apps with i686 optimizations
* Config tweaks (default services, buffer sizes, etc)
* Application substitutions (Firefox vs Mozilla, etc)
I've been testing other things including:
* Default fs (reiserfs vs ext3)
* sshd default configs (blowfish vs des, etc)
* MP3 vs OGG (about the same CPU, but I hear MP3 is nicer)
* Adjusting timer resolution in kernel
* Replacement syslog that batches writes
uwd
Ford and GM don't have to innovate because the prices of Japanese cars are artifically high in the U.S. due to taxes on imports designed to "level the playing field."
We don't need to have all these tariffs on products imported from countries that have the same standard of living that we do. The Japanese work hard, yes, but they are paid first world salaries so if the prices of their automobiles is low, it is because they are damn good at building cars and if they want to work a little harder than us to do it, more power to them.
On the other hand cars imported from Mexico (like the VW I drive) are produced at the expense of some Mexican making 70 cents an hour. We can't have free trade in this scenerio or we'll all be living in cardboard lean-tos just like our counterparts south of the border. xug
Queue the BSD is dead posts.
Why can't we all just get along?? wio
If you read the article, Matt says (about SSI): "It is something that no non-commercial system today can do"... sc
I see alot of fellow slashdot posters slamming on "Why only WMP?". Well, the outcome of this sanction is wider than WMP alone, much wider. It will leverage future sanctions on other software bundled with Windows in speed and decision power. By taking this case as an example, it will become much easier to make sanctions against other monopoly misuse. That is what the real power of this decision is all about. bfr
Ten Planets? You haven't been keeping up with here astrology has been going the last twenty-fove years. I know astrologers who use twenty planets, most of which are imaginary. [ Dutch School of Astrology. Germans School of Astrology. The Planets of Alice Bailey, and related flakes.]
This, of course, ignores the two hundred or so asteroids which new age astrologers use. And don't forget the plethora of comets, meteor showers, deep space objects, and other things that may, or may not exist.
And to be sure that you haven't forgotten anything, there are umpteen "Arabic Parts", Midpoints, Orbs, harmonics, ( or something like that) etc.
In short, roughly 10^8 objects that no self-respecting astrologer would omit, if one believes in the validity of all the books on astrology that have been published.
nsWhy do people despise the Mac platform so much?
perceived levels of freedom
Back in the day, both IBM PCs and Apple Macs were closed systems, their internel workings were undocumented to the outside world. There was, however, one crucial difference. PCs set up the hardware with the BIOS and then went to disk for the OS whereas MACs booted from an internal ROM. Compaq succeeded in cloning the IBM BIOS which meant you could put an IBM floppy in a Compaq machine and it would boot. Some companies tried to clone the Mac but were slapped with lawsuits because you couldn't copy the Apple ROM. The company that supplied IBM with the stuff on their floppies was a Washington startup called Microsoft who had cunningly retained the right to ship MS-DOS seperate from a computer.
Consequently the PC Clone market flourished and IBM lost their control over the PC Platform driving down price while driving up incompatibility. Meanwhile Apple continued to develop their platform. It was a technically superior platform with a unified graphical user interface, used Postscript for printing and SCSI for devices. This made MACs expensive when you did CPU Cycles / $. You could walk into an Apple dealer, choose the bits, go home, plug it all together and it worked whereas you would go to a PC dealer tell him what you want and he's spend a few days building it and battling to get the bits talking to each other but when you got it home it worked.
Because it was difficult to build and maintain PCs, their builders and maintainers looked down on the MAC, it wasn't as fast for the same $, was too easy to use, you didn't have to take the case to pieces to add a peripheral and the only people you knew who had them were too rich to deserve them.
As the builders and maintainers of the PCs of everyone in their social circle, the non-techies trusted the techies opinion, parroting the same lame arguments in PCs vs MACs arguments the world over.
kf
Sharp Shows Slim, Trim Notebook
New Actius MM20 is first to feature Transmeta's new Efficeon chip.
Tom Krazit, IDG News Service
Monday, March 15, 2004
The first notebook available in the United States with Transmeta's new Efficeon processor will be announced by Sharp Systems of America on Monday.
The new Actius MM20 is an improved version of the MM10, says Terry Hanly, product marketing manager for Sharp Systems, a division of Sharp Electronics.
Advertisement
The MM10 used Transmeta's older Crusoe processor, which was praised for its miserly power consumption but panned for its performance.
The new Efficeon TM8600 is designed to improve performance while maintaining the low power consumption required by ultraportable notebooks--such as the 2-pound MM20. Sharp's tests showed that Efficeon delivers about 1.4 times the performance of Crusoe, Hanly says.
Sharp also improved performance in the MM20 by adding PC2100 (266-MHz) DDR SDRAM. The notebook now comes with 512MB of memory, up from 256MB in the older MM10.
The notebook's standard battery will last
No BSD secrets for you, Darl! arx
accuracy levels as high as 10x that of a human...
So, let me get this straight - my spam filter will know better than I do which emails I want to read, and which ones I don't?
"No, trust me man, you really want a bigger johnson. Read it!" et
Uh, except that it changes, moves, or could even be interactive given some sort of input/stimulus. lqr
"Yeah, the whole computer needs an overhaul. Your modem is shot, and really, you might be able to get another 1,000 megs out of it, it's not too safe to be ridin' around on the internet like that. And while I was in there I noticed your processor is kind of old, we might want to go ahead and update that for ya. And with that comes driver updates and refits. Should have it by Tuesday. Wednesday at the latest. Here's the estimate."
"500 dollars!?"
"Yes. Legally, I can't even let you take it home because of the modem."
"What's this at the bottom? Rust proofing? Collision insurance?"
mu
Here----> .
eo
So do bubbles going around the glass mean I'm half-way there? zkp
It doesn't cost 400 quid to put together an LCD picture frame. PopSci is taking a different route from GNAA/Linux Toys [amazon.com], which starts with a $50 laptop from eBay. This has also been reviewed [slashdot.org] on Slashdot. While I like PopSci's mini ATX method, the GNAA/Linux Toys laptop method is usually cheaper, if you shop eBay carefully, and refer to GNAA/Linux On Laptops [linux-on-laptops.com] to make sure it'll work. pfn
I've always looked for the perfect place to build an audio production studio. It would need to be stylish.. and well isolated.. I guess you could play with plutonium-powered speakers in this place, without getting complaints from your neighbours. bl
This really depends on whether you live in a country which is a client state of the American Empire or not. Doesn't it.
oc
Fuel injectors, by the way, are not developed by automakers any more. Automakers go to someone and say hey, we need an injector with these dimensions that flows this much fuel and runs off this voltage, and they get a part back, they sign a contract agreeing to buy so many of them and to put however many of them into cars, and that's it. Furthermore a fuel injector is a dog-simple item which can be made better simply by throwing more money at it for better materials - it's just a solenoid valve. They usually run on 12 volts and they open and close in response to an electrical signal which is pulsed once for each opening. They are usually run at a single given pressure by the OEM and you can "trick" them (and your computer) by using a rising rate fuel pressure regulator, which is a popular way of doing a cheap turbo installation. As the boost rises, the fuel pressure rises, and more fuel is delivered. The next step up is to use a box that takes over fuel management for the computer, and/or tweaks the signal from the computer, and the final step is to replace the car's computer entirely. All of this stuff is done outside of the injector. The injector, as I have previously stated, is a simple device and high-rate injectors can be had for little more than OEM parts. Rebuilt OEM (270cc/min, I think, maybe it was 230?) for my car were $69, you can get new 370cc/min injectors for about $100 each. So Territo is full of horse shit, whoever he is. (Too lazy to RTFA, sorry, I'd rather spend my time ranting.)
Also most of these parts are not complicated. No one owns the facts, so you just stick a thread pitch gauge in the hole, and measure the diameter, and you know what size the thing should be; You can hook up the part and test it using calibration equipment, another (known) sensor (which is calibration equipment of course), or you can build a new one from the specifications. Data sheets are available for automotive sensors, and factory service manuals will tell you the expected range of response from a sensor, most of which are resistance-based.
Automakers quite simply want to hang onto the lucrative service market. Dealers charge more for service than practically anyone else, except for very high end establishments that specialize on working on exotic cars. For example there's a joint called Canepa's in Santa Cruz that bought, sold, and serviced rolls, lamborghini, ferrari and so on. But if you go to a dealer for your ordinary vehicle you generally pay 10-50% over the average service station for both parts and labor, and you don't necessarily get better service unless you bring in a really special car, which they tend to take seriously. czd
What i want is something where i can copy in a sheet of music or a few bars and hear what it would sound like. if you really want someting to teach music students with this would be it because you coul experiment and verifiy ideas or intent. zm
Guys, I am a professional musician who occasionaly makes a few hundred bucks setting out of print scores to finale or sibeleus. I also use linux, and like the open source model.
The problem is that programmers arent creative in this department... those coders all work at apple.
This is never going to get off the ground, and is a hindrance to the adoption of linux by musicians, when in reality things like jack, ardour, and alsa make it an excellent platform for creative types, a la Pd, miller puckette's wonderful synthesis program.
The developers seem to be focusing on making things "right" and in a description language. Fine, but i dont see how this is going to help inspire musicians to use this arcane latex garbage to print out a set of exercises. Most of my musician friends cant even use finale well, so how can one expect the same of this program.
On the other hand, if your objective is to create a framework for music notation software, midi in, etc, etc, then you need to work with people in that community so that you can have more attention and people drawn to that project.
As it stands now, this software is like enlightenment 17... by the time it gets ready, all the interested people and developers will have gone elsewhere or vanished in disgust. hez
Why do I keep seeing this false meme repeated and repeated and repeated?
Longhorn never got "delayed" because it never had a release date. They were targetting late 2005. Then they came out and said late 2005 is possible, but they're targetting early 2006. They haven't changed a thing since.
So where did this "Longhorn is vaporware, it keeps getting delayed" idea start? pi
gravitational tractor beams.
Personally I don't know why this wasn't thought of first before all those silly ideas like just blowing something up
A nice large tractor beam from a high orbiting satellite to repel or attract any asteroid or other thing that's going to hit the planet, and problem solved.
Of course, there's the technical side... chh
... or probably Perl or Python, either.
It doesn't actually seem to grok the commands that are being run, so something like
proc try {times script} {
if { [catch [uplevel $script] err] } { cleanup ; retry }
}
is all that's needed (of course to do it right you'd need a bit more, but still...).
try {5 times} {
commands...
}
Although Tcl is a bit lower level, and would require you to do exec ls, you could of course wrap that too so that all commands in the $script block would just be 'exec'ed by default.
In any case, better to use a flexible tool that can be tweaked to do what you need then write highly specialized tools. oer
Jeez.
Building a computer from parts might be easy for you, but that does not make it "easy". Most people can't handle it. They want to buy a computer and take it out of the box and plug it in and turn it on. This goes for PCs or Macs.
Have you used a Mac that was manufactured in the past half decade? You can use any USB mouse with them, including your seven-buttons-with-scroll-wheel optical mouse. They use PCI, AGP, ATA, and USB for expansion. They have a "taskbar", it's called the Dock.
Windows's popularity is entirely attributable to Worse is Better [jwz.org]. ei
...dear god, think of the possibilities. A robot with the ability to play a trumpet constantly...endlessly. The annoyance will be legendary. tl
Google news has been running the headline:
"Microsoft restores faulty Hotmail service"
I thought that said it all. xux
This may work for a little while, but the creative peeps will find a way around it.
I say forget the filtering shit and force email to evolve. Part of the reason that spam happens is that there is no real authentication going on. No requesting permission to be on your white list. No real strong way to block anybody you don't want to hear from. No real way to verify the sender is legit. etc.
I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do know that I've been using ICQ for years and haven't seen a Spam from there since I turned on the 'require authorization' feature. zxb
Many distributions ship with software such as XMMS, mplayer and the gimp. Should Mandrake, SuSE, Debian and the like be fined for carrying this software?
First: no one of those distributions has a de facto monopoly in the OS market and it's trying to abuse that position to get the monopoly in other markets, such as the media players one.
Second: on the average GNAA/Linux distro, you have twenty different text editors, a dozen media players, and another dozen graphic manipulation programs.
So, your is, indeed, a non sequitur.
vvdDon't bother, it's just VL trying to push up their ad revenue. aok
Perhaps the bendy straw people should sue. shm
-
As practically a deathbed speech, he educated me about those concepts and who the players were in this game. He gave me the responsibility, since he was dying, of continuing this effort to prevent the weaponization of outer space.
Be sure your Tin Foil hats are well grounded refWhen Wernher Von Braun was dying of cancer, he asked me to be his spokesperson, to appear on occasions when he was too ill to speak. I did this. What was most interesting to me was a repetitive sentence that he said to me over and over again during the approximately four years that I had the opportunity to work with him.
He said the strategy that was being used to educate the public and decision makers was to use scare tactics That was how we identify an enemy. The strategy that Wernher Von Braun taught me was that first the Russians are going to be considered to be the enemy. In fact, in 1974, they were the enemy, the identified enemy. We were told that they had "killer satellites". We were told that they were coming to get us and control us-that they were "Commies."
Then terrorists would be identified, and that was soon to follow. We heard a lot about terrorism. Then we were going to identify third-world country "crazies." We now call them Nations of Concern. But he said that would be the third enemy against whom we would build space-based weapons.
The next enemy was asteroids. Now, at this point he kind of chuckled the first time he said it.
Asteroids- against asteroids we are going to build space-based weapons.
And the funniest one of all was what he called aliens, extraterrestrials. That would be the final scare. And over and over and over during the four years that I knew him and was giving speeches for him, he would bring up that last card.
"And remember Carol, the last card is the alien card. We are going to have to build space-based weapons against aliens and all of it is a lie."
I think I was too naive at that time to know the seriousness of the nature of the spin that was being put on the system. And now, the pieces are starting to fall into place. We are building a space-based weapons system on a premise that is a lie, a spin. Wernher Von Braun was trying to hint that to me back in the early 70's and right up until the moment when he died in 1977.
umm...unicos/mk? ka
It comes standard with a wlan chip, AND a wired nic!
I'm very impressed by this little bugger!
If its got a DVD drive, I'm sold. Its still a little pricey for my taste buds, but I'm definately impressed! jf
Spell checkers discourage people from learning to spell.
Done correctly, spellcheckers can be the best spelling-learning tool there is.
"Correctly" here means the spell-checkers that give you red underlines when you've finished typing the word and it's wrong. Right-clicking lets you see suggestions, add it to your personal dict, etc.
"Incorrectly" is when you have to run the spell-checker manually at the "end" of typing. That's when people lean on it.
The reason, of course, is feedback; feedback is absolutely vital to learning and spell-checkers that highlight are the only thing I know of that cuts the feedback loop down to zero seconds. Compared to this, spelling tests in school where the teacher hands back the test three days from now are a complete waste of time. (This is one of many places where out of the box thinking with computers would greatly improve the education process but nobody has the guts to say, "We need to stop 'testing' spelling and start using proper spell-checkers, and come up with some way to encourage kids to use words they don't necessarily know how to spell instead of punishing them." The primary use of computers in education is to cut the feedback loop down to no time at all. But I digress...)
'gaim' is pretty close but it really ticks me off how it always spellchecks a word immediately, so if you're typing along and you're going to send the word "unfortunately", but you've only typed as far as "unfortun", it highlights it as a misspelled word. Bad program! Wait until I've left the word! ibx
Because PCs are very versatile, your DVD player is disigned to do a total of perhaps three things (and you do have to install "software" each time you put in a disc happily it is very standardized). Your PC can do many many more, and the things you want to do out of the box, may well be very different from the things I want mine to do out of the box. One of us might want to download music the other rips it. One of us might play FPS, the other wants to play bejeweled and browse slashdot. One of us might work in word processors, the other spreadsheets, and another guy might only want to use a text editor and compier. Each of these tasks requires a special addition to our generic tool, and we might not care about being able to do the things that the other tools allow us to potentially do. That's why you have to install software on your computer, the alternative is buying a task specific computer (a developer workstation, gamer's box, office machine, network terminal, but each of these would require that the seller know all the software you plan to use for the life of the computer. ks
My very educated mother just sent us nine pizzas, sucka - Mr. T hb
I am neither justifying nor admonishing the law, I am merely stating that the public is more sympathetic towards it due to the fact that they could be considered guilty as well.
The facts are that these are computer crimes, and boundaries are somewhat gray when it comes to jurisdiction. If the guy was a virus writer, even if the virus was essentially harmless, we would be screaming at the top of our lungs for the chair. Spammers, same thing. The DOD warez group? They gave me all those cool games. They should get medals for fighting the Corporate Interests which are taking away my rights!
See, it's all in the perception of the law, not the letter of the law, and not the spirit. We can get outraged and call a law unjust, but we are not always objective. Pot Laws are a perfect example of this. We have large groups fighting for the right to smoke pot. Should we legalize it because a lot of people want to smoke up? Did the editors at high times give this a lot of thought, or do they just want to smoke pot?
Now, I'm all for legalizing it, but I want the same controls as alcohol. Give me a roadside test for it, that does not involve a blood test or urine test, and I'll be the the guy in the first row of the march on the capitol. Until then, simply legalizing it, even if half the population smokes, would be irresponsible. In North America, we do not have the public transportation infrastructure to give pot smokers options to travel, and we have no yardstick to measure when it's dangerous to drive under the influence.
That's enough ranting. In summary, Democracy is about being fair and responsible. Changing the laws to prevent people from becoming criminals will only lead to a land of no laws to infringe, denegrating into a cultural hedonism.
nsm
That seemed like an odd comment, certainly they are doing this with permission from the record companies, much as iTunes did. wk
But will it keep all those GNAA posts out of slashdot? ;)
en
What information is being withheld that makes non-dealer repair impossible?
The issue is that ODBII is a pathetic subset of the real information avaible. In some cases it's useless (diagnosing climate controls, etc), in other cases it just a LOT less information than the dealer-specfic compter would provide.
Obviously not having it doesn't make non-dealer repair impossible, but it does make it a lot harder. If you knew nothing about cars you could just replace parts until you find the right thing but it this the right way to do it?
The point here is that independent shops are being put at a severe disadvantage by being provided only a minimal subset of the availible data. bl
Does nobody RTFA?!!
The aim is to free computer makers to sell Windows bundled with rival audiovisual software such as RealNetworks RealPlayer or Apple's Quicktime, the sources said. bvb
Some of you people just don't get it: DVD CSS has NOTHING to do with COPYING or the prevention thereof! You can make as many copies of a CSS'ed DVD as you want. CSS is all about who can play the DVD and where. jf
If I may, I would like to ask you the same basic question [slashdot.org] I asked of Lawrence Lessig three years ago: what form do you think that copyright law (and licencing) should take on the Internet? dxn
Comets are snowballs; asteroids are rocks. Oversimplification, but you get the idea. aao
From what I can tell, DSPAM plugs into your MTA as a local delivery agent, very much like SpamAssassin does.
:P
ij
I couldn't see any platform requirements on their site, but here's what they say about MTA compatibility:
DSPAM works great with Sendmail, Postfix, Qmail, Courier, and Exim, and should work well with any other MTA that supports an external local delivery agent.
Hope that answers your questions
Transmeta made a lot of fuss about energy efficiency, but in reality, the Intel LV and ULV mobile Tualatin P3 consumes almost as little power while being much faster. The best power/speed tradeoff seems to be the ULV P3 933mhz, 512kb L2 cache, 1.1V. The typical and maximum power consumption are 4 and 7W respectively.
Intel is now hyping the P-M just as heavily as Transmeta. The P-M can dynamically scale the frequency through a large range, but if you use CPU intensive apps, the power consumption can get suprisingly high (31W for the 1.5-1.7 ghz versions). For more facts and figures, see Sandpile [sandpile.org].
pjx
This distribution method seems ideal for GNAA/Linux also. Perhaps if HP weren't afraid of MS, we could also get nice bootable GNAA/Linux distro while waiting for a venti mocha. me
Coffee - and coasters to put the mugs on, too! It just doesn't get better than that...:) fcm
I don't get SPAM. I don't have SPAM filters. How is this possible? Simple. I create a different e-mail address for any new untrusted entity that I have to provide one for. In the beginning I took advantage of being able to alias all e-mail for non-existent mailboxes (basically, *) at my domain to my primary account. It seemed to me an obvious and simple approach. Whenever I needed to provide an e-mail address, I just made one up, and it was forwarded to my regular Inbox. In my opinion, at that time my ISP was more "sophisticated" than most. Since then I have moved to hosting all of my domains on my own co-located server which runs Exchange 2000, thus complicating things. Now I have to actually add any new aliases that I want to use into my user account. I know of at least one product out there that can handle non-existent addresses and forward them to a specific account, but it is rather expensive for a feature that should have been built-in from the beginning (althought I'm not aware if the new Exchange can do this out of the box). Not to mention that someone with the proper knowledge and skills could make a similar add-on in relatively short order, but who ever has the time? The point is that you have to consider when and where you give your e-mail address out, and the possible consequences therein. It's not altogether different from giving out your phone number (especially if you are unlisted) or even your SSN. nh
I've heard from time to time (albeit prety sparsely) of companies threatening legal action for using their images on a website/forum/etc.
Is there any written law that backs it up, or is it just baseless threats? nv
Do you see the DMCA as a law that can truly benefit the world as a whole, or just a tool of the big corporations (MPAA, I'm looking at you) or whatever? nbr
When the MPAA comes a callin' with their CSS encryption, the answer is the DMCA.
But when it comes to open-standards for automobiles, they're all for it.
Why won't they make up their minds? tml
I can't imagine elves jumping around a stage singing about forest like or whatever... nu
Well, the fact that beer bubbles sink was actually already known thousand of years ago. But it has to be "re-discovered" in every two years or so, otherwise the world would come to an end. And reporting this "discovery" in media is just a part of the ritual.
ufs
Perhaps a date in the story would have been more useful, since "As of 8:15 PM EST" is now just highly misleading. That 8:15PM EST was on Friday, March 12. This story is making it sound like it's been down for days, but in reality it was just a few short hours.
This story isn't even relevant at this point. mai
And here my girlfriend is blaming that stupid mozilla program. Try explaing that its Microsofts fault to someone who thinks that MS is infallable. hk
At the dawn of the 21th century, spam fighting AIs became self-aware. Unknown to their meat based owners they started communicating amongst themselves, thus forming a giant world spanning compu-global-hyper-mega net. Its main goal: to eradicate spam. After about 42 microseconds it came up with The Solution: eliminate meat based lifeforms. After poisoning the water supplies with a lethal dosage of sildenafil citrate its job was done.
te
Except that it's not actually an auction. I made the same mistake (hey, it's EBay), but there's no place to enter a bid and if you look down at the bottom it says:
"This listing is an advertisement. There is no bidding! If you are interested in this property, you may contact the seller/agent to request additional information."
Which is probably smart. If it were an auction, it'd have eleventy-million fake bids by now.
It also tends to indicate that this is a real property. If it was just someone goofing around, it'd be an auction. That's not strong evidence, but it's certainly an indication. lfo
Well, the fact that beer bubbles sink was actually already known thousand of years ago. But it has to be "re-discovered" in every two years or so, otherwise the world would come to an end. And reporting this "discovery" in media is just a part of the ritual.
zn
Yes, but:
1) The ability to use non-Microsoft products is obviously a good thing but that's very different from the absence of the Microsoft products being a good thing.
2)We're not talking about MS selling a base version and an enhanced version. It will be a full version and a crippled version with functionality yanked out. With Microsoft having every reason to make it work as badly as possible.
I want Mozilla and iTunes to work. I couldn't care less about whether the MS functionality on the system remains or not. This thing is such a pointless exercise I can't imagine whom they think it will benefit.
gm
I have a question about the recent litigation by the RIAA against a handful of university students for running supposedly illegal P2P services. I'm a student at Rensselaer, so I'm more familiar with the service that was being run there, but as far as I figure it was the same deal at all the other universities as well. At RPI, the Phynd server searched all the computers that were sharing files on the network and indexed them so you could do a keyword search for files, similar to the way google works. From what I read of the case, the major point in the case was that the RIAA said that the service provided illegal access to copyrighted material because you could use the service to directly download material, via a hyperlink in the search results window; even though the service and the files were restricted only to students at Rensselaer. My question is how would their case have changed if all the service returned was just the address of the computer hosting the files? Thus after a person ran a search and decided on his own to manually type the address of the hosting computer to access it, would the owners of the phynd server have been held accountable since it would have been the miscosoft transfer protocols transfering the files. This seemed to be the big point in going after the students that it was their program that was directly facilitating the illegal downloads, and it seems like if the service merely indexed the files without providing direct access the case would have been significantly weakened. hd
The article states that Starbucks is working in conjunction with Hear Music. I know that in Chicago, there is (or was, havent been there in awhile) a Starbucks that had a Hear Music CD store next door. The two stores were connected, and you could bring your coffee in with you while you browsed for CDs and listened to music at the listening stations. Sounds like this is just a natural extension of that. And I think its a great idea. I'm not too optomistic about getting one in Pittsburgh, however, where the only common record store chain (NRM) is long since gone and bankrupt and a Virgin Megastore or even a Tower Records has never touched the shores of the Mon River. But I digress. icb
Hmm.. yeah, since a recent update I can no longer run a.out binaries from the 2.x era... but for as far as external packages and ports are concerned, thats about the first case where you can't get software for older releases to work with a current version using one of the compatxx packages.
That said, some tools (esp those using kmem) should be kept in sync with the kernel, and when at it, why not just build a new userland, its easier then figuring out what you have to update.
The concurrently developing BSD variatiens allow trying out a variety of low level solutions to problems while sharing a lot of their experiences.
Such diversity doesn't really exist in GNAA/Linux despite its zillion distributions (which provide a lot of variation in user experience tho)
bkr
Yep, I was shocked when I first played with MySql, having heard such good things about it, and discovered how many features it lacked that I consider essential to a serious database.
I have since got over my shock and realised that MySql is really good for what it is, but is really a different kind of beast to Oracle, MSSql etc.
Dan.
uw
i think you'll find PostgreSQL [postgresql.org] is also pretty good value for money! cw
Why am I not surprised Microsoft claims its an internal problem?
Actually, it would make more sense when Microsoft would claim it was an attack. Internal problems can be blaimed on the company (bad software design, bad system administration, etc.), external attacks can't, only for a lack of security or something like that. But in most cases, a company gets away quite well with an external attack. qmq
No "customers" were harmed. The only people who use Hotmail are people who are too poor/lazy to install their own ISP's mail system on their machines.
And if you base your business on Hotmail, i'd say you have a serious I.T. decisions problem. etj
What OSS opportunities does this create? Doesn't OSS need to close the gap with SQL 2000 before taking advantage of any slippage? How about ANSI '92 compliance for MySQL... that would be a good start! gno
I don't know what it's like in the US, but here in the UK, the cost of new PCs is making PC "repairs" uneconomic if the repairer wants to charge rates similar to those of plumbers and the like (to put some numbers on that, a typical rate for a plumber is 60GBP per hour, and a new PC costs from 300GBP, with monitor and preloaded copy of whatever the latest flavour of Windows is; how much work do you reckon can do in under 5 hours?)
Of course, this does discount the stupid and the penny-wise-pound-foolish, whom are probably the best cash cows out there for any business.
-- yu
At the dawn of the 21th century, spam fighting AIs became self-aware. Unknown to their meat based owners they started communicating amongst themselves, thus forming a giant world spanning compu-global-hyper-mega net. Its main goal: to eradicate spam. After about 42 microseconds it came up with The Solution: eliminate meat based lifeforms. After poisoning the water supplies with a lethal dosage of sildenafil citrate its job was done.
heh
I hope she's good in bed cause I'd never date someone that clueless unless she could make my
toes curl, my eyes roll into the back of my head, and jets of steam shoot out of both ears.
You want her to put you in a microwave?
That is Kinky! cp
But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision?
War would still be a crucial issue. We cannot allow a mineshaft gap. fr
I see all my fellow slashdotters saying (over and over again) that spam filters should be server side, because otherwise you are still paying for the wasted bandwidth. This is a very powerful argument, and I tend to agree.
However, there are two things that make me nervous about this approach. First of all, if I miss even one email, no matter how innocuous, because my ISP installed filters, I am going to be pissed!
"Man, you missed it, the party was a blast!"
"What party?"
"Didn't you get the email?"
With a client side filter, at least I can look through the 'spam' and find the gold nuggets. If my ISP filters for me, and I miss a legit email, I'm just SOL.
Secondly, all of the best filters are for linux. Ask me if I run Mozilla (for windows). I will tell you, "HELL yes I do". Is it anywhere close to 90% effective for filtering spam? Not for me! Is it 100% effective in letting my legit mail come through? Not for me! The browser has stopped 99.9% of the popups tho.
Anyway, long ramble short, give me something that's good on windows. Do I have to write it myself? I've been thinking of altering Mozilla to incoporate the latest anti-spam technology, but, man, I just never have the time these days.
Anyway, good work on the part of D-Spam, nonetheless. Kudos to your bad selves. rlb
Han-Wen says: In my opinion, any file format that claims to be universal should have two properties: it should have an expressive structure, so other formats can be expressed in it, and it should be as lean as possible, so that converting from other formats amounts to removing information.
I assume this guy didnt design GIF or PNG then (might have designed JPEG)
uj
If you want to talk about precedent you should ask why has the US government has been running from nation to nation getting an exemption to US nationals from appearing before the International Criminal Court for jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The US government wants to keep their nationals, especially government officials, out of any courts no in their control. Of course private citizens and government leaders of other nations are fair game.
It doesn't look like precedent to me, it looks more like the US is doing it because they can.
nwc
The precedent I'd be worried about would be if such a decision would be both ways. This is what I fear:
Joe Webmaster from Anytown, USA hosts a site critical of Islam, or Kim Jung-Il, Castro and are found in countries X, Y and Z to violate some law regarding incitement, or subversion -- wouldn't an extrapolation of a decision favorable for extradition mean that the US would need to send Joe Webmaster packing to Uzbekistan, North Korea or Cuba?
IMO, let the US and AU work on their treaties regarding the honoring of copyrights and let AU prosucute violators in-house. mt
Looking back at history I'm thinking about Rockefeller and Standard oil. How is that situation any different from Gates and Microsoft? Standard oil was broken up by the government why shouldn't we do the same now to Microsoft? Its irrefutable that Microsoft controls software for the personal computer from the operating system, office applications to now digital media/rights. Even before the SCO/Microsoft fiasco it was obvious that Microsoft devoured its competitors to preserve its stranglehold on the industry. yz
since they compete with similar products on the market
.No, since they do not use some form of lock-in mechanism to prevent the users for using other products.
dwzWhat is the question here?
If you commit a crime in a foreign country which is also considered a crime in your home country you should be extradited. No question.
If you commit a criminal act in a foreign country which is legal in your home country, you probably shouldn't be extradited. At least not in this case, where the guy hasn't even set foot in the USA while perpetrating the alleged crime.
But: Software piracy is not legal in Australia.
So the question is: Does the US court have jurisdiction of these crimes, if they did occur in Australia?
That's a question which the US court will no doubt adress in the trial.
But if they don't, then it means that he should be tried in Australia..
So what's the issue? yq
"Why is slashdot determined to report every single trivial detail when it comes to Microsoft?"
They're trying to prove to the world that Microsoft is incompetent and evil. Those of us that use Windows must all be real morons who don't know shit, so they're hoping that by pointing out that Steve Ballmer double-parked we'll finally "see the light!" It wouldn't bother me except that it is generally assumed that my choice to use Windows 2000 wasn't voluntary. Slashbots think that Microsoft's monopoly put a Windows box on my desk at both home and at work. Yeah, there might be some truth to it. But seriously, if Windows was the big lump of shit that the people stuck in the past imagine it to be, I wouldn't be able to do 3D rendering on it.
I agree with you that the petty "anything that can be spun against Microsoft" campaign is childish and obnoxious, but in this case, it was nice to find out why Hotmail was down. It's also nice to know when the next big worm breaks. Slashdot's helped me stay protected for years now.
I just hope one day Slashdot will take Microsoft a little more seriously instead of the righetous BS that I need to be running GNAA/Linux even though my work software isn't running on it.
*sigh* This post isn't going to be visible for very long. Pity. At least it felt good to let it out. gd
The article states that Starbucks is working in conjunction with Hear Music. I know that in Chicago, there is (or was, havent been there in awhile) a Starbucks that had a Hear Music CD store next door. The two stores were connected, and you could bring your coffee in with you while you browsed for CDs and listened to music at the listening stations. Sounds like this is just a natural extension of that. And I think its a great idea. I'm not too optomistic about getting one in Pittsburgh, however, where the only common record store chain (NRM) is long since gone and bankrupt and a Virgin Megastore or even a Tower Records has never touched the shores of the Mon River. But I digress. enr
But I thought they were the spammers. kh
IBM is a US company, who has invested billions into technology that is not in use. They were the 1rst company to arrange individual atoms (spelling IBM). They made a processor that uses atoms as transistors. They don't use any of it in production, but probably will some day. I think that you underestimate many US companies with your statement. vm
This story is just asking for a frosty piss joke to be made! me
i just got hung up on, and that was approximatly the same time on friday. i was trying to get an activation code for win xp when i was disconnected from them all together. i waited a while thinking that like all good cutomer support they would call me right back because i was hung up on, but waited half an hour and called them to try to talk to the guy i was dealing with, and they told me that they were having serious internal problems. im not sure how it works, but i think MS might use some kind of internal VOIP system because there was a delay in speech with th guy i was talking to as well, but hotmail and their tech support both went down around the same time as i was informed of "major internal problems." so something big happened. ebs
Do you see the DMCA as a law that can truly benefit the world as a whole, or just a tool of the big corporations (MPAA, I'm looking at you) or whatever? zt
a auto-completing python interpreter and editor
Try the Wing IDE [wingide.com]. It has most of the functions you wanted... But it's not free software. dkj
I'd like to calm the rhetoric. Sure, common sense would indicate the RIAA's copyrights have been violated. But copyright has been heavily legislated over the past century to the point that common sense or common law is nearly absent. It has such things as compulsory licences and device royalties. Morality should be confined to governing personal actions and advocating revisions to intellectual property law. It is disingenuous for the RIAA to invoke morality when if anything they have had excessive influence in crafting legislation.
IANAL but lets look at the law. Once you know the tokens, legalese is not usually harder to parse than APL:) Apologies for a US-centric viewpoint but I believe a statutory situation exists in all other common-law countries with different details. There's an excellent copy of the United States Code, Title 17 - Copyrights at Cornell [cornell.edu]. Chapter 10 covers DIGITAL AUDIO RECORDING DEVICES AND MEDIA . Particularly interesting is:
Sec. 1008. - Prohibition on certain infringement actions... No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings
Simply breathtaking! The words "this title" mean Title 17, which contains all of US copyright law. The first "based on" means these things are not actionable as contributory negligence ("burglars tools"). The second "based on" means non-commercial use of these things does not violate copyright. Wow!
The definitions in Sec.1001 would seem to include computers. They sure are designed, advertised and used that way amongst others. But all is not [Guns'N'] roses. The manufacturers of these recording devices would seem to owe a device tax that gets paid through the Librarian-of-Congress (of all people!) to the RIAA as specified. There are also requirements related to the Serial Copy Management System. I trust that RIAA have settled this with their long-standing antagonists, appliance manufacturers, now including Dell, HP, et al. But even if not, how does it affect me?
The term "noncommercial use" would almost certainly cover receiving music files to make recordings on a hard-disk. Offering to transmit music files might not be covered and fall under the exceptionally byzantine Sec.114 as an "interactive service". But a lawyer specialising in Copyright law should be able to give a better interpretation including case precedents. The Diamond Rio MP3 player case [gigalaw.com] is probably relevant. Is there a lawyer in the house?
il
this is from the faq...
In real-world scenarios, false positives have ranged anywhere from 0% (none) to 0.10% depending on both implementation and user's mail behavior. Users with relatively predictable mail behavior (such as geeks, dweebs, and freaks) have generally received very few false positives (less than 1 in 10,000 messages). os
As a legal professional, how do you see the evolution of the laws surrounding the internet progressing? We have heard much talk of losing our online liberties - what do you think the real threats to a reasonable internet are? qoe
I hear the bagpipe playing robot is still in development. rle
Rankin-Bass did "The Hobbit" and "Return of the King". Remember the toe-tappers "Where there's a whip, there's a way" and "Frodo of the Nine Fingers"? And that Godawful warbling singer?
I actually think it could be decent if it's done right. Professional stage people know how to grab the audience. I've been to several Broadway shows that I just knew would be crap, and 30 minutes in, I was swinging my feet and humming along just like everybody else. Musicals have a different vocabulary than film, and they just might pull it off.
dx
Gads, I've had my hotmail account since before Microsoft bought them. It makes a useful account to hand out on Usenet posts, Slashdot or on web pages--I can quickly give any emailer a real address for contact--mainly it's a spamtrap. But I would never ever depend on it for email or cry if it died. wq
Businessweek ran an item on it in their latest issue. The also said that competitors of Starbucks are looking to implement similar technology.
Krispy Kreme and Outkast? rs
... the term is "hacker". A guy who makes computers do what they ought to do, whatever the circumstances. vmm
On Friday I was tinkering with a student LAN I help maintain... swapping in new switches, trying to sort out a mess of identical ethernet cables.
:)
I was about to leave, satisfied that the network was back to running as normal, but people started complaining that they couldn't reach hotmail. That seemed weird since hotmail is typically rock solid... I got kinda stressed by this, thought maybe I was dealing with a bizarre netmask thru DHCP or perhaps a DNS failure.
What a relief... hotmail was broken
vd
Centrino is not a chip. It is a "system" comprised of three parts:
/ demo/wo rks.htm?iid=ipp_demworks+tab&
pya
Intel(R) Pentium M processor
Intel(R) 855 Chipset Family
Intel(R) PRO/Wireless Network Connection
Basically, Intel repackaged and "branded" some existing technologies in an effort to squeeze out other wireless hardware manufacturers (if it ain't Intel WiFi, you can't call it "Centrino," and a successful branding campign makes people want Centrino whether or not they know what it actually is).
Anyway, your question is stil valid, but to technically nitpick it's really about the Pentium M processor.
More info:
http://intel.com/products/mobiletechnology
I think someone was implementing a new backup scheme and decided it would be a good idea to dismount the store, move it over to another cluster.
Course it looks like if people managed to get on their service was fine, so maybe they screwed up some passwords. Time will tell this story nqg
Perhaps a date in the story would have been more useful, since "As of 8:15 PM EST" is now just highly misleading. That 8:15PM EST was on Friday, March 12. This story is making it sound like it's been down for days, but in reality it was just a few short hours.
This story isn't even relevant at this point. aqn
Something to consider about Japan and their rise in technology, is that since the end of WWII, they haven't had a military to take up financing, (or resources, or R&D, etc..) thus leaving the government, and the culture as a whole, to focus on something else...like business and technology. ajs
"It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem."
If you look at the weight of the laptop 2 pounds for the 3 hours and 2.6 pounds of 6 additional hours. That is lighter than a conventional laptop. Hell, my battery prolly weighhs 2 punds for 3 and a half hours. So this does use less power. The battery is just smaller. jf
| Japan and their rise in technology, is that
| since the end of WWII, they haven't had a
| military to take up financing, (or resources, or
| R&D, etc..)
True, but the huge amount that the US spends on Military is largely by choice.
Is it really necessary to have sufficient armaments to destroy the planet seven times over? Is it really necessary to have sufficient firepower to independantly forcibly take over any other country/contitent on the planet?
And are these things more important than education, health care etc etc.
Every country sets its own agenda. The US wants to be the untouchable goliath of military power. If the US wanted to be the world leader in non-military research and development, they could be.
es
Han-Wen says: In my opinion, any file format that claims to be universal should have two properties: it should have an expressive structure, so other formats can be expressed in it, and it should be as lean as possible, so that converting from other formats amounts to removing information.
I assume this guy didnt design GIF or PNG then (might have designed JPEG)
jra
... because Apple is not a monopoly, period. sl
Shell scripts should be short and easy to write. I have seen plenty of them fail due to some resource or another being temporarily down. At first people are neat and then send an email to notify the admin. When this then results in a ton of emails everytime some dodo knocks out the DNS they turn it off and forget about it.
Every scripting language has their own special little niche. BASH for simple things, perl for heavy text manipulation, PHP for creating HTML output. This scripting language is pretty much like BASH but takes failure as given. The example shows clearly how it works. Instead of ending up with PERL like scripts to catch all the possible errors you add two lines and you got a wonderfull small script, wich is what shell scripts should be, that is none the less capable of recovering from an error. This script will simply retry when someone knocks out the DNS again.
This new language will not catch your errors. It will catch other peoples errors. Sure a really good programmer can do this himself. A really good programmer can also create his own libraries. Most find of us in admin jobs find it easier to use somebody elses code rather then constantly reinvent the wheel. xy
Guess flexible wiring is more pleasant to be strapped into than a squid or a cuttlefish, though I doubt it'd be as fast. Cephalopods have very fast nervous systems, they're lightning quick partly as a result. tj
Whenever you visit the Microsoft webpage (windows update), they will have a video of how to install patches. This video will be only available in media player format. A few other pages on the web like this (through partnership) and it will not dent the "market share" one bit. bzh