True, but just keep in mind it could either be the CCFL or the inverter that powers it. The inverter is often much easier to replace than the CCFL, and in the case of laptops, it's a part that can usually be ordered separately from the LCD panel. CCFL tubes are usually considered to be part of the LCD panel by laptop manufacturers, and they will repair it by replacing the entire panel.
Nah, it means you can attach Micheal Moore, Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter to it. Any of them easily produce enough hot air and bullshit to power the device for the foreseeable future.
Indeed, but don't forget to represent the fat, balding couch potatos. Really, no one wants to see normal people in TV, movies or games. We see and interact with normal people every day.
Perhaps I didn't state this clearly enough. I'm talking about interdependancies within a single package. It's not unreasonable for the internal API of a package to change without the external API/ABI changing. As an example, libc6 includes libc.so and the NSS modules. An internal API change between libc.so and NSS could prevent NSS lookups from working properly until all programs using NSS are restarted. The Debian libc6 package specifically warns about this when upgrading it. libc6 is well behaved in this situation because it handles NSS failures gracefully by avoiding the library that doesn't work. Other programs and libraries may not be as tolerant.
Assume you have package libxyz-1.2.3 which provides/usr/lib/libxyz.so.1.2.3 and/usr/lib/libxyz_plugins.so.1.2.3. Now, also assume that libxyz_plugins.so is loaded on-demand at runtime by libxyz.so. Now, if you upgrade the libxyz package to version 1.2.4, and then a program that was still using the 1.2.3 version tries to load libxyz_plugins.so, but gets version 1.2.4 instead. There's no guarantee that libxyz_plugins.so.1.2.4 is compatible with libxyz.so.1.2.3. This is the breakage that can happen by replacing library files that are in-use. Mozilla suffers a similar breakage when you upgrade its files without restarting the program (although, it's probably for a different reason).
Re:There are several competing systems like this
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High-Tech RepoMan
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· Score: 1
That's what tampering with the box enables. Auto theft, plain and simple.
Things that are "plain and simple" are rarely plain and never simple. I don't believe that removing the device necessarily equals theft. What you do with the vehicle AFTER you remove the device very well could be. If you remove the device, but otherwise make all your payments on time until the end of the contract, are you a criminal? Probably not, but you could certainly be in breach of contract.
Then again, is this even theft? There are a lot of measures creditors can use to get the money that they're owed, even if you do stop paying. They could garnish your wages, or file a lawsuit and try to convince a court to let them seize some of your other assets. There may be criminal charges that are able to be filed such as fraud. As others have mentioned, when you finance something, you own the title to the item, but it has a lien against it. I imagine some very nasty things can happen in the case of a creditor going into bankruptcy that still has the title to your vehicle.
Yeah, but a glacier would have to plow over Canada to get to the states, and we DID sign the Kyoto protocol. Unless you just mean Alaska under a glacier, but would they even notice out there?
Open an interoperable means documented and freely usable. The fact that XML is usually human readable means very little. Unless you understand how the data is structured, and how those structures interact with each other, the fact it's XML is really meaningless. Take this bogus example:
Same document as what you posted, but encoded in yet another way. I base64 encoded all the text, and put all formatting in a special tag, used extremely short tag names everywhere and removed the structure of having a title separate from the document. While I exaggerated this a little (Base64 encoding isn't used, and the tags are sometimes a little longer than what I used), this is the type of format that Microsoft uses for their Word XML format. The Microsoft XML format resembles a stream of commands, whereas the ODF format is more like the HTMLish structure that you posted.
What about ca.eBay, or LosAngeles.US.Ebay? Wouldn't that make more sense?
Except is that "ca" Canada, California, Cambodia, or something else? You can't enforce policy on subdomains. ebay.ca explicitly reads eBay Canada. Perhaps a more compelling argument would be to do away with all the gTLDs (.com,.net,.edu, etc) and stick with ccTLDs instead. What about regional small businesses? Are they to be left out of this? There is a LOT of overlap on business names, but mybiz.mb.ca doesn't need to conflict with mybiz.ny.us or with mybiz.com.
Try not to think about a DNS name as a name, but rather an address. Your physical address is very rigidly defined. You start with the name, street address, city, state/province, country (sometimes optional), and postal/zip code. Domain names are simplified addresses for finding certain companies and individuals easier. They are not names or identities, no matter how much you may want them to be.
One word -- Dell. Dell sells nothing but Intel chips, and they're the biggest PC manufacturer. Plenty of manufacturers got a bad taste in their mouth after the K5, K6, and K6-2. The chips/chipsets were not stable, and prompted a lot of returns. Some of them are starting to sell AMD chips again, but it took a long time to regain their confidence.
Microsoft has also recently insisted on only releasing patches once a month, which also affects how many patches they need to provide. Patches that might all target MSHTML.DLL can all be rolled into a single patch and provided on Windows Update. Frankly, I don't know of anyone except for Microsoft who gets away with that demand.
Vista is being delayed because they are finally refactoring the spaghetti mess that windows has become over the decades.
Not really true. Vista is being delayed because Microsoft promised the moon, and as always can't deliver on all their promises. Now, they need to clean up the half-features that got embedded into the OS, and produce something deliverable. Since Microsoft's core business strategy depends on "integrated innovation" or tightly coupled features, cleaning up that mess will take some time. Even if they do manage to clean it up, it remains unknown if they've actually come up with something worth spending your time and money on.
the little legal action they took increased cross-browser PNG compatibility to the point that people can safely put non-transparent PNG images on their web pages today.
Only if you use Firefox/Opera/anything-but-IE. Internet explorer still puts up an ugly brown blotch behind transparent PNGs even with IE6 (I haven't tested the IE7 beta, so maybe it's better). There are various nasty hacks to fix this, but it's still broken.
But let's look at C#. It's completely standardized by the ECMA, both the language itself as well as the underlying virtual machine bytecode. MS cannot change C# or the CLI without running it past ECMA and making the changes publicly specified. They can of course write, build, and publish non-standard assemblies like Windows.Forms, but so can anyone else.
Yes, C# and the CLI are standardized. However, it's false that Microsoft can't change the language without running it past ECMA or specifying their changes publicly. Microsoft can do whatever they want to their version of C# and CLI, but if they do, they might invalidate some of the benefits of having an ECMA standard. It would be stupid for Microsoft to extend C#/CLI in ways that violate the standard because it'd give Sun free ammo to use against them.
MS can never attack Mono legally (and have promised not to try).
Not true. Mono's XSP (ASP.Net compatible)features may or may not be covered by a patent that Microsoft holds. Microsoft has whispered about this patent but never really come out with any real details about what it entails. Mono's developers have said that if Microsoft makes a fuss about it, they're prepared to rip out XSP provided there's no way to work around the patent. C#/CLI/Gtk#/etc are all unencumbered, or properly licensed, so there's very little Microsoft could do about their inclusion in Mono.
And hell, it gets better -- because the CLI is open and publicly specified, there are a ton of languages built on CLI you can use if you don't like C#, including a number of Lisp and ML variants, if that's your thing.
heh. Even Java bytecode. To be fair, there are a lot of Java VM languages (virtually all of them are just "research projects", aka toys), but no one uses anything other than Java for any real work in it. I doubt people use much other than VB.Net and C# (and maybe a few holdouts that still use Delphi) to work with.Net, too.
The biggest challenges for Mono aren't technical. Getting people to write programs that target Mono/Gtk# and getting distributors to include it in their distribution are probably even bigger challenges. Simply, these are social problems which can't be fixed with technology (as is often the case).
Which Microsoft financials are you looking at? The Home and Entertainment department (which is what the Xbox is part of) posted losses of 1.2B in 2003, 1.2B in 2004, and 391M in 2005. That's hardly profitable for two years. You could read MSFT's 10-K report, or the manyarticles that have been written about it.
Nonsense. It's hugely profitable and gets more profitable every year
Of course they are. However, the RIAA released statistics and press releases show that record sales (and perhaps even gross revenue on CD sales) are down by some small percentage since 2000. In an normal industry, this would normally mean profits have become slim or non-existent. Because of this, people just automatically assume that unit sales and profits are linked. The RIAA never mentions if profits are down or not.
The RIAA is equal parts accountant and advertiser. This gives them an enormous grasp of the practice of distorting reality to serve their needs. They don't need to lie when they can pick and choose which figures suit their goals best.
I'm not sure I want to know where you learned to multiply, or where you got that formula from. 4x8GHz would be 32GHz of potential processor power. You'd never get that out of the system, of course.
The funny thing about fanboys is that they never really have a rational view of things. You have the Xbox fanboys that will recite the fill rates from memory in defense of their platform, PS2 fanboys that will recite marketing drivel about the Emotion Engine, and Nintendo fanboys that are just plain sad (sorry!). When everything is said and done, though, it's always about the games. At this time, I wouldn't purchase a Xbox 360 because the games simply do not interest me enough to shell out that kind of money. The PS2 and Xbox did not appeal to me at launch, either. I eventually did purchase a PS2 when some games were released that I simply had to play. Still debating on if I should get an Xbox since the only thing I'm interested in is the XBMC and maybe the possibility of running a mythtv frontend.
Except the PS2 and GC don't use cryptographic signatures to determine if it's allowed to run. For Playstation games, it's believed that the protection is encoded in the track wobble, so it's impossible to reproduce on any burner, but not so difficult if you can press discs. It reduces piracy, but can't prevent unlicensed individuals from pressing compatible discs. I don't know much about Gamecube discs, but I assume it's protection has similar limitations.
Of course, they're trying to bully Apple into raising their prices. It's a bit like a game of chicken. The studios know they need to keep the Apple contract because iPods and iTMS is so darned popular, but absolutely hate the fact that they're not the one in control of the relationship. On the other hand, Apple needs to keep its service running without interruption, and raising prices could drive people to Apple competitors. Stay tuned to see which one swerves out of the way first!
I complained about this once, and someone directed me to a thread from Raymond Chen on his blog which explains the rational behind this design. The basic part of the argument is that there can be intercommunication between components, and replacing one could cause a running program to suddenly malfunction. For an example of this, try an online update of Firefox or Thunderbird without restarting the programs. The program will act very strangly (about window won't work, options may not work, etc) until you restart.
Now, I don't fully agree with his conclusions, because if you take the argument to it's logical conclusion, it's never safe to overwrite a file on the system without a reboot. Microsoft decided to be conservative in their approach to files in-use to protect the user from himself. In the Linux world, the ability to replace files that are in-use does cause some problems. Replacing glibc and/or PAM can cause authentication problems without a restart of certain services. Replacing mozilla products cause some of the problems I mentioned above. Replacing certain Gnome/KDE desktop components can occasionally cause failures to communicate between the old and new version. For every one of these that cause problems, there are dozens more that don't. Letting you replace files for most services (Apache, MySQL, Samba, etc) means you can limit your downtime to seconds rather than tens of minutes. Most desktop apps will continue to run the old version until you actually restart the programs in question.
Raymond Chen's blog is probably one of the best sources of information on why some things are done the way they are in Windows, especially when they seem completely illogical. He talks about why Windows uses Ctrl-Z to end files, complaints about people wanting more ways to hide files, etc. He has some interesting tales to tell, and if you deal with Windows on a regular basis, it can also be quite revealing.
You could use something like WPKG (I haven't tried this), but the upgrade never happens while the users are working (it's not possible with Windows). You have two options - install during next reboot/logon or force a reboot and install during the next startup. If Samba supported GPOs, you might've been able to use that, but it doesn't at this time.
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True, but just keep in mind it could either be the CCFL or the inverter that powers it. The inverter is often much easier to replace than the CCFL, and in the case of laptops, it's a part that can usually be ordered separately from the LCD panel. CCFL tubes are usually considered to be part of the LCD panel by laptop manufacturers, and they will repair it by replacing the entire panel.
Nah, it means you can attach Micheal Moore, Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter to it. Any of them easily produce enough hot air and bullshit to power the device for the foreseeable future.
Indeed, but don't forget to represent the fat, balding couch potatos. Really, no one wants to see normal people in TV, movies or games. We see and interact with normal people every day.
Perhaps I didn't state this clearly enough. I'm talking about interdependancies within a single package. It's not unreasonable for the internal API of a package to change without the external API/ABI changing. As an example, libc6 includes libc.so and the NSS modules. An internal API change between libc.so and NSS could prevent NSS lookups from working properly until all programs using NSS are restarted. The Debian libc6 package specifically warns about this when upgrading it. libc6 is well behaved in this situation because it handles NSS failures gracefully by avoiding the library that doesn't work. Other programs and libraries may not be as tolerant.
Assume you have package libxyz-1.2.3 which provides /usr/lib/libxyz.so.1.2.3 and /usr/lib/libxyz_plugins.so.1.2.3. Now, also assume that libxyz_plugins.so is loaded on-demand at runtime by libxyz.so. Now, if you upgrade the libxyz package to version 1.2.4, and then a program that was still using the 1.2.3 version tries to load libxyz_plugins.so, but gets version 1.2.4 instead. There's no guarantee that libxyz_plugins.so.1.2.4 is compatible with libxyz.so.1.2.3. This is the breakage that can happen by replacing library files that are in-use. Mozilla suffers a similar breakage when you upgrade its files without restarting the program (although, it's probably for a different reason).
Then again, is this even theft? There are a lot of measures creditors can use to get the money that they're owed, even if you do stop paying. They could garnish your wages, or file a lawsuit and try to convince a court to let them seize some of your other assets. There may be criminal charges that are able to be filed such as fraud. As others have mentioned, when you finance something, you own the title to the item, but it has a lien against it. I imagine some very nasty things can happen in the case of a creditor going into bankruptcy that still has the title to your vehicle.
Yeah, but a glacier would have to plow over Canada to get to the states, and we DID sign the Kyoto protocol. Unless you just mean Alaska under a glacier, but would they even notice out there?
Depends on where you live. Here in Manitoba, if you're 18, you can drink, smoke, buy porn, or do just about anything else that is legal.
Try not to think about a DNS name as a name, but rather an address. Your physical address is very rigidly defined. You start with the name, street address, city, state/province, country (sometimes optional), and postal/zip code. Domain names are simplified addresses for finding certain companies and individuals easier. They are not names or identities, no matter how much you may want them to be.
One word -- Dell. Dell sells nothing but Intel chips, and they're the biggest PC manufacturer. Plenty of manufacturers got a bad taste in their mouth after the K5, K6, and K6-2. The chips/chipsets were not stable, and prompted a lot of returns. Some of them are starting to sell AMD chips again, but it took a long time to regain their confidence.
Really? So collusion and price fixing is a communist subplot? I'm dying to hear this one.
The biggest challenges for Mono aren't technical. Getting people to write programs that target Mono/Gtk# and getting distributors to include it in their distribution are probably even bigger challenges. Simply, these are social problems which can't be fixed with technology (as is often the case).
Which Microsoft financials are you looking at? The Home and Entertainment department (which is what the Xbox is part of) posted losses of 1.2B in 2003, 1.2B in 2004, and 391M in 2005. That's hardly profitable for two years. You could read MSFT's 10-K report, or the many articles that have been written about it.
The RIAA is equal parts accountant and advertiser. This gives them an enormous grasp of the practice of distorting reality to serve their needs. They don't need to lie when they can pick and choose which figures suit their goals best.
At the bottom of that big image, er, page, er, whatever is a pdf and text link in small text. Here's the text version if you're lazy.
I'm not sure I want to know where you learned to multiply, or where you got that formula from. 4x8GHz would be 32GHz of potential processor power. You'd never get that out of the system, of course.
The funny thing about fanboys is that they never really have a rational view of things. You have the Xbox fanboys that will recite the fill rates from memory in defense of their platform, PS2 fanboys that will recite marketing drivel about the Emotion Engine, and Nintendo fanboys that are just plain sad (sorry!). When everything is said and done, though, it's always about the games. At this time, I wouldn't purchase a Xbox 360 because the games simply do not interest me enough to shell out that kind of money. The PS2 and Xbox did not appeal to me at launch, either. I eventually did purchase a PS2 when some games were released that I simply had to play. Still debating on if I should get an Xbox since the only thing I'm interested in is the XBMC and maybe the possibility of running a mythtv frontend.
Except the PS2 and GC don't use cryptographic signatures to determine if it's allowed to run. For Playstation games, it's believed that the protection is encoded in the track wobble, so it's impossible to reproduce on any burner, but not so difficult if you can press discs. It reduces piracy, but can't prevent unlicensed individuals from pressing compatible discs. I don't know much about Gamecube discs, but I assume it's protection has similar limitations.
Of course, they're trying to bully Apple into raising their prices. It's a bit like a game of chicken. The studios know they need to keep the Apple contract because iPods and iTMS is so darned popular, but absolutely hate the fact that they're not the one in control of the relationship. On the other hand, Apple needs to keep its service running without interruption, and raising prices could drive people to Apple competitors. Stay tuned to see which one swerves out of the way first!
You must be new here? This is slashdot, after all.
Now, I don't fully agree with his conclusions, because if you take the argument to it's logical conclusion, it's never safe to overwrite a file on the system without a reboot. Microsoft decided to be conservative in their approach to files in-use to protect the user from himself. In the Linux world, the ability to replace files that are in-use does cause some problems. Replacing glibc and/or PAM can cause authentication problems without a restart of certain services. Replacing mozilla products cause some of the problems I mentioned above. Replacing certain Gnome/KDE desktop components can occasionally cause failures to communicate between the old and new version. For every one of these that cause problems, there are dozens more that don't. Letting you replace files for most services (Apache, MySQL, Samba, etc) means you can limit your downtime to seconds rather than tens of minutes. Most desktop apps will continue to run the old version until you actually restart the programs in question.
Raymond Chen's blog is probably one of the best sources of information on why some things are done the way they are in Windows, especially when they seem completely illogical. He talks about why Windows uses Ctrl-Z to end files, complaints about people wanting more ways to hide files, etc. He has some interesting tales to tell, and if you deal with Windows on a regular basis, it can also be quite revealing.
You could use something like WPKG (I haven't tried this), but the upgrade never happens while the users are working (it's not possible with Windows). You have two options - install during next reboot/logon or force a reboot and install during the next startup. If Samba supported GPOs, you might've been able to use that, but it doesn't at this time.