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User: doublem

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  1. Read the article on New Linux-based PVR from Sony: Cocoon · · Score: 2

    who cares about pictures of a STB dont they look like a box....
    what matters is what running inside is it a shoddy x86 or a nice MIPS/ARM chip


    "Cocoon uses the freely available Linux operating system and a microprocessor based on reduced instruction-set computing technology developed by MIPS Technology Inc"

    www.matthewmiller.net

  2. "Two weeks old" on Students Outpacing Teachers With Online Skills · · Score: 2

    Only two weeks old?

    Damn, didn't even get a chance to age. This is pretty young for a /. article.

    Normally, you only get fresh articles when they're links to Register stories

  3. namebase can't be THAT popular on Mr Anti-Google · · Score: 2

    How popular can http://www.namebase.org/ be if it goes down before 30 comments have been posted?

    For crying out loud, my PERSONAL web site can handle more traffic than that.

    What's he hosting it on, a dialup?

  4. Re:Elemental, Dr. Watson. on Hotmail: Not Safe For Work? · · Score: 2

    Only if your acocunt is part of the admin group. Many users can only see the processes they started in Windows. Services are blocked from a lot of views.

  5. Dangers of OSS Editing on Hotmail: Not Safe For Work? · · Score: 2

    Typing away in Emacs. "Damn, there's that blasted eBlaster again! Every time I try to run my HTML Tidy Lisp script...."

  6. My company already does this on Hotmail: Not Safe For Work? · · Score: 2

    All mail is opened before being delivered to the recipient. I have NEVER received a sealed mail while working here.

    Well, twice. They didn't bother opening some junk mail on a Novell training seminar.

    At a call center job four years ago (Inbound only, I answered a warranty line) calls were randomly monitored. Same at the job I have now. I once heard a rumor that the company was looking into the cost of recording cell calls, but I think (hope) it was all talk.

    IM logging and blocking is a priority for the network admin (Per orders from higher up). Yahoo and AIM are heavily abused.

    There are a number of people in this company who would LOVE to get their hands on a copy of this software if they knew it existed.

  7. Re:Already done on MST3K on Shop Till It Drops · · Score: 2

    Thank you!

    Some day I hope to be a hub on the MST3K Digital Archive Project.

    If my girlfriend were a MST3K fan, she would be perfect.

    Guess I'll have to settle for near perfect.

    "I want to decide who lives and dies." - Crow T. Robot.

  8. Already done on MST3K on Shop Till It Drops · · Score: 2

    The Mads already invented that on MST3K. Dr. Forester put TV's Frank's Liver in one for demo purposes.

    Don't remember which movie they were doing though. I think it was a Joel Episode...

  9. Re:What is this "training" you speak of? on Are You Getting Enough Say In Your Training? · · Score: 2

    I used to think that.

    These days, my coworkers take the opportunity to chew me out every time I answer a question asked by a manager. If I volunteer information I get lectured by my coworkers.

    Example: One of the databases slip into single user mode every morning. I look up the problem on Deja (Now Goggle Groups) while a developer and the network admin are trying to figure out the problem. In a minute and a half I have several descriptions of the problem, and a printout of the solution from the Microsoft Knowledge Base. I had the admin the printout and tell the developer.

    Developer replies, "Well, I'm glad we have a know it all."

    They ignored my solution. A few days later the network admin implemented my solution.

  10. What is this "training" you speak of? on Are You Getting Enough Say In Your Training? · · Score: 2

    Our Network Admin is getting a free MCSE.

    A FORMER employee is still having his tuition paid for.

    A part time programmer is having her tuition paid for.

    Me? Why, I'm getting squat. The only training I got was a beginners Cold Fusion training session a few years back.

    All requests for training have been rejected. Guess I'm not important enough to train.

    Gee, you think I'm on the short list for downsizing?

  11. Re:OK , OK, we get it on Microsoft Notes Critical Security Holes in Windows, Office · · Score: 2

    I love the fact that my baby sister knew the difference between an Operating System problem and an application problem at 6.

    My mother, who NEVER goes NEAR a computer has been known to scream "What do you mean it crashed and you lost your homework? There has to be something better than Windows."

    Of course, if I gave my family a Linux box, half my siblings' excuses for not doing homework would evaporate.

  12. Re:Sad state of affairs.... on Microsoft Notes Critical Security Holes in Windows, Office · · Score: 2

    "Linus put your hand down"

    Stallman, stop hopping around saying "I do! I do!"

    Raymond, stop throwing things at Stallman.

    Mad Dog, stop smirking, it scares me.

    Jobs, why are you crying?

    Gates. Mr. Gates, give Linus back his lunch box. Now Mr. Gates. That is not your lunch, stop tryi- Hey! You didn't draw that picture! You stole it from Steve and scratched his name out!

  13. "Windows is easier" claim based on 3 year old data on Microsoft Notes Critical Security Holes in Windows, Office · · Score: 2

    "the unfortunate truth is that hardly any casual computer user can set up and use an open source OS like they can with Windows"

    Same computer, same hardware, 5 operating systems:

    Windows ME: Decent drivers for half the hardware didn't exist. Never worked right. Lost count of install program reboots after 30. Had to download drivers from 5 sites, and let me tell you, the Creative Labs site is a POS.

    Windows 2000: 12 reboots to install drivers. Had to do things like configure obscure settings in the Device Manager to get the USB Drives working.

    Mandrake Linux: Everything was configured. Everything was working, no obscure options.

    SuSe Linux: Had to run a command line to get the sound card working.

    BEos: Didn't support half the hardware, and no drivers existed. No shock, I tried it just for fun.

    The argument about Linux being hard to install is an old chestnut that does not apply to most the current distros. Today Linux is easier to install and get up and running than Windows, even for beginners.

  14. Re:This wasn't FUD on Next-Generation Chip Fabs · · Score: 2

    Haven't tried it on Server, just Pro.

    If EVERYONE had massive problems, Microsoft wouldn't have released the patch, as they would have had the same issues. I have a feeling this is going to be one of those feast or famine patches. It'll either work or cause massive pain.

    Problems I had at home:

    Frequent freezes (Let's leave the MS bashing aside for now)

    Spontaneous reboots.

    Inability to access the RAID controller on the I-Will Motherboard (System would pause for 20 seconds waiting for data from drive, and then give me a "drive not responding" error before corrupting the file)

    Frequent crashes of explorer.exe (Of the kind I only saw in crufty Win98 installs before)

    Frequent Blue Screens when connected to the Internet.

    Uninstalling at home fixed most the problems, but I may need to do a full install and format to get my old stability back.

    Problems on my work computer:

    Forced to kill explorer.exe in the Task Manager to unfreeze system.

    Even after uninstalling SP 3, I still have Explorer crashing on shutdown, requiring about a dozen clicks to get through all the individual error messages that pop up.

    New memory leaks requiring at least a reboot a day, on a system that previously went a couple weeks between reboots.

    Problems our network admin had on a test system:

    Network connection issues.

    Mysterious freezes he didn't have time to track down.

    All in all, I'd say leave this one alone for a while. Three out of three installs had issues on systems that were running just fine before the install, and most the problems went away after the Service Packs were uninstalled. (I suspect the uninstall is less than 100% effective.)

    Most the issues seemed to center around network connectivity and the explorer.exe windows shell. If you're running lightstep as your shell and no network connections you should be fine. ;)

    All the issues I described were ones that did not exist before the Service Pack.

    If you don't need a specific fix in the Service Pack, I wouldn't install it.

    Good Luck.

  15. This wasn't FUD on Next-Generation Chip Fabs · · Score: 2

    It didn't read like FUD to me. It was a simple statement of fact. I've seen Windows do the yo-yo thing, and I've seen it do a passable impression of BSD style uptime. Same for Linux. Who knows why it went down? Nothing is said about the cause of the issues. Perhaps the developers were from a *nix background, and thus did a better job on the Linux version because it was closer to what they were used to. Perhaps the Windows Boxen had a device driver conflict that no one resolved. Perhaps they had to hack together some custom driver and happened to stumble across an interface that was easier to code in Linux than Windows.

    Or then again they could have just made the mistake of applying W2K Service Pack 3, in which case they're hosed no matter what they do. That patch killed every box we tried it on. Stay away from Service Pack Three! Stay Away!!!!!!

  16. IBM != Flair on Next-Generation Chip Fabs · · Score: 5, Funny

    "IBM" and "Flair" are two words that just don't go together.

    Oops. I was wrong Google says there are 12,100 hits.

  17. Half-Life has WHAT??? on New DOOM III Shots · · Score: 3, Funny

    Half Life has a single player mode?

    Dude! I gotta try it!

  18. Fast Forward Already Banned on Lessig @ OSCON · · Score: 2

    Just look at a Disney DVD.

    I'm really sick of the "That function is not permitted on this DVD" when I try to fast forward through the crap they put you through before the film.

    And I'm not just talking about the FBI warning either.

  19. Here's the text on Shrinkwrapped Books · · Score: 4, Informative

    Another one bites the ./ dust:

    wget is a wonderful thing:

    The Gripe Line
    Ed Foster
    Open with caution

    I SUPPOSE IT was inevitable. With sneakwrap terms showing up in everything from charity Web sites to pornographic spam, it was just a matter of time. Books with shrinkwrap license agreements have arrived.

    The first report of this phenomena to The Gripe Line came a few months ago when a reader who is a physician received an unsolicited tome in the mail entitled Geriatric Pharmaceutical Care Guidelines, 2002 Edition, from Omnicare. "This book arrived wrapped in plastic with a shrinkwrap license on the front," the doctor wrote. "It plainly says that by breaking the seal you agree to the terms of the license and if you don't agree you should return the book unopened. Is this what software licensing has led us to? This license says the book remains the property of Omnicare. Will they come up with a way to remotely disable the book if someone else reads it?"

    The doctor obligingly faxed me a copy of the license, and I saw that it was indeed a sneakwrap agreement worthy of Microsoft or VeriSign. "In the event that you do not agree with any terms of this agreement you should promptly return the material unopened to your local Omnicare pharmacy," it read in bold letters near the top.

    The license was nontransferable and would "terminate immediately if the Licensee or his or her employer ceased to be an Omnicare customer." And although the Omnicare "Guidelines are intended only to provide guidance as to which pharmaceutical products Omnicare believes to be most effective" the "licensee" was nonetheless prohibited from disclosing any of the information in the book to third parties.

    It struck me that this license put the doctor in an awkward position. As far as he knew, neither he nor any of the other doctors in his office (most of whom had received their own copies the book) were Omnicare customers, and he did not know where his "local Omnicare pharmacy" might be. Even if he wanted to keep the book, as a non-Omnicare customer the license prohibited him from doing so. And since Omnicare claimed to retain ownership of his copy, he couldn't destroy it either. If the license agreement was to be taken seriously, he either had to go to the trouble of trying to ship the book back or he had to become an Omnicare customer somehow.

    The doctor wondered if Omnicare was trying to make him feel obligated to them. "Sometimes my less-than-favorite charities send me greeting cards or stickers or a writing instrument in the mail," the doctor noted. "They are hoping to provoke enough sense of obligation in me to extract a contribution, but legally I am not required to acknowledge, or pay for, or return, or refrain from using what they send. So what is my obligation when sent an unsolicited book? Am I legally required not to use it or to return it if I don't agree with the sender's intended use?"

    So just what was Omnicare's purpose in putting a classic shrinkwrap agreement (it was even printed in small, poorly-contrasted type) on a book that was clearly intended to promote use of the company's pharmaceutical products? I hoped Omnicare officials might have a simple explanation, but if they did, they decided not to share it with me. After two months of going back and forth with their public relations staff, I did not even get an answer on the basic question of what a noncustomer was supposed to do with the book.

    While I was waiting in vain for answers from Omnicare, though, I heard from another reader with a shrinkwrapped book. Interestingly enough, he was also a doctor, but his book was a membership directory published by a medical society. I'm not going to identify the organization, partly because my deadline didn't allow them much time to respond to my questions and partly because their license was much less restrictive than Omnicare's. But their spokesperson was also unable to offer any explanations for why they felt it necessary to attach a license agreement to that book.

    As I thought about it, however, it occurred to me that it doesn't really matter why we're suddenly seeing these books in the medical field with shrinkwrap licenses. Perhaps the publishers have good reasons for using them, perhaps they don't. But if someone wants to slap some legalese of dubious merit on the front of a book, why shouldn't they? Software publishers have been doing it for years, after all, so it only seems fair that publishers of other forms of intellectual property should have the same right to try to put restrictions on how customers use their products.

    And, if there's no real justification for prohibiting book publishers from doing what software publishers do, how can we draw the line even at products containing intellectual property? Perhaps lamps will soon come with fine print legalese on the inside of the lampshade banning them from being resold at yard sales without the manufacturer's permission. And tearing that tag off your mattress really will bring the police pounding on your door.

    Last week we talked about how we've already lost some of the basic rights we used to enjoy under traditional interpretations of copyright law. Loaning a book to a friend is not yet one of them, but who knows how much longer we'll be able to say that. Today we might still reasonably expect that any sane judge would just laugh if someone tried to get him or her to enforce a license such as Omnicare's limited-use license agreement. We must remember though that there are very powerful forces in this country working to give all sneakwrap agreements the full force of a binding contract. Next week we'll pay them another visit.

    Have you received any sneakwrap agreements on books or other products? Write to Ed Foster, InfoWorld's reader advocate. You can reach him at gripe@infoworld.com.

  20. What is meant by "license on the cheap" on Game Engine Marketing Models Compared · · Score: 3, Informative

    A lot of people are tearing the following line: "Instead of waiting 2 more years and GPL'ing the full source, why not license it for cheap after Doom III comes out, then GPL later?"

    This hostility is clearly based on a misreading of the post.

    What the poster appears to be doing is suggesting id delay the GPL release of the engine in order to license it cheaply AFTER they are no longer charging a quarter million for it.

    This would mean the GPL version would be a couple of years later, and id's publisher would be licensing the QIII engine for a few hundred to a few thousand well after they would have otherwise released it as GPL.

    The idea is to have id squeeze a few more dollars out of the engine, instead of giving it away.

    And all the English challenged ./ers get their knickers in a twist, thinking the poster wants ID to give away something instead of charging for it.

    The poster is suggesting id charge for something that they would otherwise be giving away.

  21. Re:Obligatory "Read the Article" comment on HP Marries Inkjet and Robotic Technology to Cool Chips · · Score: 2

    You know, that's what I thought. Why not set in some long term equipment to monitor the temp and do whatever the robot would do instead?

    Would wiring really be that much more problematic than a blooming robot?

    Then I thought: coolness factor.

    Which is neater, an invisible system that does the job quietly and in the background, or Johnny 5 running around with a big temperature probe, shoving it behind servers?

    One is responsible and efficient, the other is neat looking and will bring up subconscious images of alien anal probing.

    The robot looks like overkill, but it also looks like a video game.

    Of course, an hour of programming is easier than running a few thousand feet of cabling and temperature sensors, so there is the speed of instillation factor. No dust floating around from drilling holes, no additional hookups to worry about and so on.

  22. Re:Huh? on HP Marries Inkjet and Robotic Technology to Cool Chips · · Score: 2

    Clearly, you didn't read the article.

    The robot doesn't spray anything. The ink jet based coolant is in the case against the chip.

    The robot is running around finding hot spots so the AC can be adjusted.

    They were only mentioned in the same article because they both revolve around HP's Datacenter Cooling technology.

  23. Obligatory "Read the Article" comment on HP Marries Inkjet and Robotic Technology to Cool Chips · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Guess What? The robot and the ink jet based cooling system are two different things. The robot adjusts the air conditioning in the room, the ink jet based coolant determines the specific parts of the chip that need cooling.

    One is on the Macro scale (sorts) and the other is on the micro scale.

    The robot will NOT be spraying ANYTHING!

  24. audible.com on Getting Your News as MP3s? · · Score: 2

    Audible.com has their own format for audio, but you can burn the Daily New York Times or Washington Post to CD, and Windows users can burn the audio to CD. Goldwave can convert the Audible.com files to WAV, MP3 or other formats. Trying the site and content is free.

    I'm a customer, not an employee.

    Windows only though. :(

  25. Congratulations Sir on Build Your Own Battlemech · · Score: 1

    Congratulations Sir, you just won the official "World's Coolest Dad" award.