One thing I've noticed about my Kindle, compared to a book, is that having a one-page view, as opposed to a two-page view, makes it a lot easier to light. With a book at night with a book light, you've got the problem if needing to illuminate pages at two different positions. I've not been happy with any book light I've seen for that. A one-page approach does not suffer from this problem.
What is the point of being sure that no one can intercept your communication all the way from your browser to the server if you don't know who you are talking to in the first place?
There are a couple points to it. First, sometimes you don't care who you talk to in the first place, but you want to know it is still them the SECOND time you talk to them.
Also, the fact that I'm talking to an effectively anonymous stranger doesn't mean I want everything I say to them public.
Why would a sandbox for Mail, Safari, etc. be necessary if the user isn't running these applications with root privileges?
Because root privileges are not necessary for malware that wants to:
Delete your files. All having root would add is that it could delete the system's files, too. For most people, their files are overwhelmingly more valuable to them than the system's files are.
Become part of a bot net.
Snoop your personal information and send it to spammers and scammers.
Marois found evidence of a "response selection bottleneck" that occurs when the brain is forced to respond to several stimuli at once.
I think the key here is forced. When I'm solving a problem or trying to learn something, I find that I am more effective if, after each noticeable success in my effort, I take a little break and do something else, such as read a Slashdot story, while my brain thinks about what I just learned or did. I'm much less effective if I have to work straight through on a long problem or learning task.
In other words, I multitask fine if I've picked N tasks, that I can switch among freely, whenever I want to switch. However, if the tasks are forced upon me, or I have to switch on a schedule or in response to interrupts, such as phone calls, then productivity goes down.
As far as I can see from Minerva's website, they don't produce any end-user products. Their products seem to consist of hardware and software that a cable company or other TV provider would buy to provide the back end systems for IPTV, and client software for leading set-top boxes, that the TV provider could load onto the boxes the TV provider provides.
Hence, I infer that he got the box from soneone other than Minerva, probably his service provider.
Close, but you missed one thing. The submitter did not receive any binaries from Minerva. He received his binaries from the company that made his IPTV box.
We have no idea how Minerva provided the code to that company. It is possible Minerva provided just source, and the box maker built the binary. Or it is possible that Minerva provided the binaries along with the source. In either of these cases, Minerva has fully satisfied their GPL obligations, and so owes nothing to the submitter.
The submitter needs to be asking the company that actually distributed the binaries to him for the source. Minerva is only on the hook if they distributed binaries to that company without source, opting for satisfying GPL via 3(b).
Actually, from what the post says, he didn't contact the people that owe him source code. As far as I can see from their web site, Minerva Networks just makes software, so it seems unlikely he got his box from them.
Hence, the people he should have talked to are the people that provided the box that contains the software. They are the ones that distributed GPL software to him, and therefore are the ones that may have to satisfy GPL.
Minvera Networks only comes into the picture if, when they supplied the box maker, they did not provide source, but rather took the GPL-approved alternative approach of making the software available to anyone who asks them. If, however, they took the other GPL-approved approach, and gave the source to the box maker when they gave the box maker the software, then Minerva Networks has completely satisfied their GPL obligations.
Though they have a point; my iPod won't charge in a universal USB charger, or even when connected to the computer it won't charge when its "dismounted" in Windows, and I am sure there's a reason for that
What iPod? I bought one of these dual port USB chargers and took it with me on a month long business trip, and it handily kept both my iPod Nano and my 4th generation 40 gig classic iPod charged. And my TomTom, my Treo650, and Nintendo DS. While on the trip, I replaced the Treo650 with an iPhone, and it kept that charged. Back home now, it continues to keep my iPhone charged.
In this case, I think the Chinese government actually got it right. They've forced all cell phone manufacturers to provide a USB port for charging the phones. Seems like a reasonable standard to me.
What about devices that want higher voltage, or want to draw more power, than USB allows? Such as external hard disks, for instance? They'll still need a power brick. Same with laptops. Hence, something like Green Plug is a good idea.
Why not support both. A device that otherwise is going to have a USB connector anyway might as well allow taking power over that, if USB can supply enough power. If it needs more power, it can use Green Plug.
Ideally, a device would allow both, taking power over Green Plug if available, otherwise over USB. Even better, the device should have a setting to disable taking power over USB. If I plug my cell phone into my laptop in order to sync contacts, say, I might prefer that the cell phone NOT take any power from the laptop. My laptop battery generally is going to run out before my phone runs out, so I'd just as soon have the phone treat that USB connection as purely for data, and run off the phone's battery.
Radioshack had "universal" adaptors, that basically had several different plugs, and you could select the voltage and polarity, so you could make it work with your device.
Green Plug uses the same plug for all devices, and when you plug in a device, the device and the power supply communicate. The device tells the power supply what its power needs are, and the power supply supplies that.
I've considered getting one of those chairs they put you in when you go to the dentist. They are comfortable, and you could use the arm that holds the x-ray machine to hold your monitor.
I spent a good 10 minutes on there, before finding the one with the woman with the naked boobs. This technology would be a great way to hide your porn.
That one is also using Silverlight. Except they botched the version check, and so it won't work if you have a later version than the one they coded for. Oops.
If someone knows they are genetically disposed to malady "x", there is now a law which guarantees that they can get insurance coverage at the same price as someone who is at less risk. What does Congress expect them to do, not take advantage of that fact? If insurance companies can't set pricing based on full knowledge and actuarial statistics, but people can, it will increase costs
So your theory is that if I know I'm genetically disposed to, say, heart attack, and you are not, and we both get insurance at the same rate, I'm going to go out and TRY to get a heart attack, to take advantage of the bargain I got on insurance?
This should ordinarily be a matter of convenience for all parties. In other words, there's no damn reason to sue everyone in the Eastern District of Texas when none of the parties have any business there
Actually, there's a damned good reason to sue there: speed.
I was involved in a case there as a witness. It was 16 months from filing suit to verdict. If it had been in, say, Washington (where defendant corporation resided, as well as the two inventors on the patent in suit) or California (where the corporation behind plaintiff resided), we'd probably still be working through claims construction with a judge with little patent experience--if we could even get on the calendar.
As a programmer who would have preferred to have nothing to do with the whole matter, I'm glad it took place where it would be a speedy process. Sure, I'd have rather had the trial in Seattle, which is a mere ferry ride away from my home, rather than in Texas, which was a long Amtrak ride away, but I'd much rather have it take 16 months rather than several years!
The summary is a bit misleading. Current Office 2007 documents fail to validate as transitional OOXML because of some very minor differences. For example, the final standard changed an attribute value from "yes/no" to "true/false".
All major ODF implementations, including OpenOffice, fail to validate against ISO ODF 1.0 for similar reasons.
Thus, to make some big deal of Microsoft not immediately slipstreaming in an update to Office to 100% conform to OOXML, while ignoring the fact that OpenOffice still doesn't fully conform to ODF so long after ODF 1.0 was ratified is a bit hypocritical.
Windows on the OLPC is an outrage and clear evidence that the OLPC project is no longer about helping children and only about making money and creating a new form "Microsoft Tax" for the poor and developing nations
Yeah, what were they thinking, using the OS that the vast majority of educational software runs on? You'd think they were actually trying to make the OLPC more suited to its primary task or something. Those traitorous bastards!
This is a key issue and I think it's been glossed over for too long. Although I agree that most desktop features are crap, linux just cant be mainstream until someone puts out a distro that DOES cater to the illiterates. We already have dozens of distros specifically designed for programmers and super users. Let's face it, most computer users are essentially computer illiterates - they're users, not programmers and they have no interest or reason to learn more than a few basic tasks
Your theory fails to explain the disproportionately high Mac use among the most technically skilled computer users. Ivan Krstic, explaining his switch to Mac, had this observation:
"My theory is that technical people, especially when younger, get a particular thrill out of dicking around with their software. Much like case modders, these folks see it as a badge of honor that they spent countless hours compiling and configuring their software to oblivion. Hey, I was there too. And the older I get, the more I want things to work out of the box. Ubuntu is getting better at delivering that experience for novice users. Serious power users seem to find that OS X is unrivaled at it."
He sure hit that nail on the head. I'm a programmer. Been one for a long time. I've done Unix ports, written operating systems, done firmware for I/O cards, and things like that. I can handle anything an OS can throw at me--but I don't want to. I'd rather the OS not throw things at me in the first place, so I can spend my time working on my projects.
As repugnant as child pornography is, this seems to be overstepping the realm of protecting children. Why should the alteration of an image, even to a repugnant end, be illegal? Possession of child porn is illegal, so it's in the interest of the "alterer" not to create fake child porn. I know we find it morally reprehensible, but there is no harm coming to anyone in and of the act of alteration itself. This seems a tad intrusive, and an undesirable precedent if nothing else.
Let's try a thought experiment. Pornographer #1 hides a camera, and manages to get a photo of a child masturbating. He distributes this.
Pornographer #2 is not so lucky. All he gets is photos of children clothed, not doing anything sexual, so uses his 'leet Photoshop skills to fix them.
Neither pornographer, in producing their photograph, has harmed his subjects. The harm comes from when the photographs are distributed. In the case of pornographer #1, the photo displays child #1 in a way that will cause great embarrassment, and could subject the child to ridicule or worse, and I doubt you'll find many people arguing that child porn should be OK to produce as long as the child is merely being spied on performing sexual or erotic acts on their own and don't realize they are being recorded.
But can't the same be said for pornographer #2? Will people believe child #2 when he says that the photo has been Photoshopped and he never did those things?
Basically, appearing in child porn is probably harmful to a child, as long as they are recognizable, even if the photos have been altered somewhat.
Also, note that if #2 is OK but #1 is not, pornographer #1 is just going to claim when caught that his photos aren't real. Sometimes, when something might not in itself be harmful, but it serves as a mask that allows people to get away with other, harmful, activity, it makes sense to ban the first, unless there is a compelling reason not to. And I can't think of a compelling reason for fake child porn made with photos of real children. I think we can produce all the fake child porn we need without using photos of real children--and that should be legal.
Asus alone, sells more than a million Eee PCs per quarter.
Huh? Asus reported 350k the last quarter of 2007, and 700k for first quarter 2008. They project 1.2 million for second quarter. However, a majority of that will be the models that come with Windows.
Consequently Linux laptops outsell Apple by a wide margin
Not even close. Apple sold 1.4 million laptops first quarter. Asus's 700k plus the rest of the Linux laptop vendors don't come anywhere near that.
Sorry, but as much as I'd like to think some pair of uber-geniuses managed to build one product (that runs on a portable Windows platorm, no less) that does all this[...]
Slashdot Mirror
One thing I've noticed about my Kindle, compared to a book, is that having a one-page view, as opposed to a two-page view, makes it a lot easier to light. With a book at night with a book light, you've got the problem if needing to illuminate pages at two different positions. I've not been happy with any book light I've seen for that. A one-page approach does not suffer from this problem.
There are a couple points to it. First, sometimes you don't care who you talk to in the first place, but you want to know it is still them the SECOND time you talk to them.
Also, the fact that I'm talking to an effectively anonymous stranger doesn't mean I want everything I say to them public.
Because root privileges are not necessary for malware that wants to:
Quote from the article:
I think the key here is forced. When I'm solving a problem or trying to learn something, I find that I am more effective if, after each noticeable success in my effort, I take a little break and do something else, such as read a Slashdot story, while my brain thinks about what I just learned or did. I'm much less effective if I have to work straight through on a long problem or learning task.
In other words, I multitask fine if I've picked N tasks, that I can switch among freely, whenever I want to switch. However, if the tasks are forced upon me, or I have to switch on a schedule or in response to interrupts, such as phone calls, then productivity goes down.
As far as I can see from Minerva's website, they don't produce any end-user products. Their products seem to consist of hardware and software that a cable company or other TV provider would buy to provide the back end systems for IPTV, and client software for leading set-top boxes, that the TV provider could load onto the boxes the TV provider provides.
Hence, I infer that he got the box from soneone other than Minerva, probably his service provider.
Close, but you missed one thing. The submitter did not receive any binaries from Minerva. He received his binaries from the company that made his IPTV box.
We have no idea how Minerva provided the code to that company. It is possible Minerva provided just source, and the box maker built the binary. Or it is possible that Minerva provided the binaries along with the source. In either of these cases, Minerva has fully satisfied their GPL obligations, and so owes nothing to the submitter.
The submitter needs to be asking the company that actually distributed the binaries to him for the source. Minerva is only on the hook if they distributed binaries to that company without source, opting for satisfying GPL via 3(b).
Actually, from what the post says, he didn't contact the people that owe him source code. As far as I can see from their web site, Minerva Networks just makes software, so it seems unlikely he got his box from them.
Hence, the people he should have talked to are the people that provided the box that contains the software. They are the ones that distributed GPL software to him, and therefore are the ones that may have to satisfy GPL.
Minvera Networks only comes into the picture if, when they supplied the box maker, they did not provide source, but rather took the GPL-approved alternative approach of making the software available to anyone who asks them. If, however, they took the other GPL-approved approach, and gave the source to the box maker when they gave the box maker the software, then Minerva Networks has completely satisfied their GPL obligations.
What iPod? I bought one of these dual port USB chargers and took it with me on a month long business trip, and it handily kept both my iPod Nano and my 4th generation 40 gig classic iPod charged. And my TomTom, my Treo650, and Nintendo DS. While on the trip, I replaced the Treo650 with an iPhone, and it kept that charged. Back home now, it continues to keep my iPhone charged.
What about devices that want higher voltage, or want to draw more power, than USB allows? Such as external hard disks, for instance? They'll still need a power brick. Same with laptops. Hence, something like Green Plug is a good idea.
Why not support both. A device that otherwise is going to have a USB connector anyway might as well allow taking power over that, if USB can supply enough power. If it needs more power, it can use Green Plug.
Ideally, a device would allow both, taking power over Green Plug if available, otherwise over USB. Even better, the device should have a setting to disable taking power over USB. If I plug my cell phone into my laptop in order to sync contacts, say, I might prefer that the cell phone NOT take any power from the laptop. My laptop battery generally is going to run out before my phone runs out, so I'd just as soon have the phone treat that USB connection as purely for data, and run off the phone's battery.
When did Radioshack have anything like this?
Radioshack had "universal" adaptors, that basically had several different plugs, and you could select the voltage and polarity, so you could make it work with your device.
Green Plug uses the same plug for all devices, and when you plug in a device, the device and the power supply communicate. The device tells the power supply what its power needs are, and the power supply supplies that.
I've considered getting one of those chairs they put you in when you go to the dentist. They are comfortable, and you could use the arm that holds the x-ray machine to hold your monitor.
Don't forget ProCD v. Zeidenberg, though, which upheld shrinkwrap licenses.
I spent a good 10 minutes on there, before finding the one with the woman with the naked boobs. This technology would be a great way to hide your porn.
That one is also using Silverlight. Except they botched the version check, and so it won't work if you have a later version than the one they coded for. Oops.
TFA appear to be wrong. It runs VxWorks 5.2.
The confusion probably arose because Wind River also sells a Linux version, and the press sometimes confuses that with VxWorks.
So your theory is that if I know I'm genetically disposed to, say, heart attack, and you are not, and we both get insurance at the same rate, I'm going to go out and TRY to get a heart attack, to take advantage of the bargain I got on insurance?
Actually, there's a damned good reason to sue there: speed.
I was involved in a case there as a witness. It was 16 months from filing suit to verdict. If it had been in, say, Washington (where defendant corporation resided, as well as the two inventors on the patent in suit) or California (where the corporation behind plaintiff resided), we'd probably still be working through claims construction with a judge with little patent experience--if we could even get on the calendar.
As a programmer who would have preferred to have nothing to do with the whole matter, I'm glad it took place where it would be a speedy process. Sure, I'd have rather had the trial in Seattle, which is a mere ferry ride away from my home, rather than in Texas, which was a long Amtrak ride away, but I'd much rather have it take 16 months rather than several years!
here.
The summary is a bit misleading. Current Office 2007 documents fail to validate as transitional OOXML because of some very minor differences. For example, the final standard changed an attribute value from "yes/no" to "true/false".
All major ODF implementations, including OpenOffice, fail to validate against ISO ODF 1.0 for similar reasons.
Thus, to make some big deal of Microsoft not immediately slipstreaming in an update to Office to 100% conform to OOXML, while ignoring the fact that OpenOffice still doesn't fully conform to ODF so long after ODF 1.0 was ratified is a bit hypocritical.
Yeah, what were they thinking, using the OS that the vast majority of educational software runs on? You'd think they were actually trying to make the OLPC more suited to its primary task or something. Those traitorous bastards!
Your theory fails to explain the disproportionately high Mac use among the most technically skilled computer users. Ivan Krstic, explaining his switch to Mac, had this observation:
"My theory is that technical people, especially when younger, get a particular thrill out of dicking around with their software. Much like case modders, these folks see it as a badge of honor that they spent countless hours compiling and configuring their software to oblivion. Hey, I was there too. And the older I get, the more I want things to work out of the box. Ubuntu is getting better at delivering that experience for novice users. Serious power users seem to find that OS X is unrivaled at it."
He sure hit that nail on the head. I'm a programmer. Been one for a long time. I've done Unix ports, written operating systems, done firmware for I/O cards, and things like that. I can handle anything an OS can throw at me--but I don't want to. I'd rather the OS not throw things at me in the first place, so I can spend my time working on my projects.
Let's try a thought experiment. Pornographer #1 hides a camera, and manages to get a photo of a child masturbating. He distributes this.
Pornographer #2 is not so lucky. All he gets is photos of children clothed, not doing anything sexual, so uses his 'leet Photoshop skills to fix them.
Neither pornographer, in producing their photograph, has harmed his subjects. The harm comes from when the photographs are distributed. In the case of pornographer #1, the photo displays child #1 in a way that will cause great embarrassment, and could subject the child to ridicule or worse, and I doubt you'll find many people arguing that child porn should be OK to produce as long as the child is merely being spied on performing sexual or erotic acts on their own and don't realize they are being recorded.
But can't the same be said for pornographer #2? Will people believe child #2 when he says that the photo has been Photoshopped and he never did those things?
Basically, appearing in child porn is probably harmful to a child, as long as they are recognizable, even if the photos have been altered somewhat.
Also, note that if #2 is OK but #1 is not, pornographer #1 is just going to claim when caught that his photos aren't real. Sometimes, when something might not in itself be harmful, but it serves as a mask that allows people to get away with other, harmful, activity, it makes sense to ban the first, unless there is a compelling reason not to. And I can't think of a compelling reason for fake child porn made with photos of real children. I think we can produce all the fake child porn we need without using photos of real children--and that should be legal.
Huh? Asus reported 350k the last quarter of 2007, and 700k for first quarter 2008. They project 1.2 million for second quarter. However, a majority of that will be the models that come with Windows.
Consequently Linux laptops outsell Apple by a wide marginNot even close. Apple sold 1.4 million laptops first quarter. Asus's 700k plus the rest of the Linux laptop vendors don't come anywhere near that.
This code is billions of years old, and still running.
RTFA
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