And this plug *is* stupid. Many folks who want a video plug on their *laptop* want to connect it to projectors, to give presentations, etc.; a regular VGA (dual with DVI?) would've been a lot more useful in that regard. By making it anything else, they're forcing apple folks to carry an adapter---and to look stupid in front of an audience when they fumble with their macbook and projector for 10 minutes.
As anybody who spends 10 full minutes fiddling with adapters to get their macbook connected to a projector *should* look stupid. As should anybody, not just mac users. Your argument that mac users look retarded for having an adapter is just ridiculous. I've always been taught to view those with adapters as "especially prepared". Now, show me someone that doesn't have an adapter, and I'll show you someone that looks stupid when they fail to get the job done.
Cell Phone carriers (such as AT&T, Verizon, et. al) should write phone firmware that indicates to the network when it is traveling at a high rate of speed (faster than can be humanly achieved... indicating that the user is either operating a vehicle or a passenger in a bus, train, plain, car, etc.).
Sure... being a passenger might suck... so they should have an option like... "Dial #MV on your phone to change the settings... permanently disable or disable for 24 hours".
People that don't own a car and are perpetually passengers in vehicles they don't operate will likely opt-out. However, people that own cars and operate speedy vehicles on a regular basis would likely prefer the feature... opting to have the carrier "hold my calls or texts while I'm driving".
Of course, the system wouldn't be fool-proof... for example, if you're sitting in traffic and traveling pretty slow, a flood of texts that have been held for you might dump on your phone... or incoming calls will be patched through rather than being held.
To solve that... maybe carriers should partner up with car makers... when the phone detects your Bluetooth car (such as a Prius)... the phone just locally holds your calls/texts... then when you get 20 feet away from your car... ALERT! 5 missed calls, 12 texts! If a smart phone... it could even do something like reply to the caller/texter... "Your friend is driving right now... please try again later" (either in that annoying automated voice, or in the form of a reply-text).
There just seems to be so much more that we can do about this rather than relying on some law that will ultimately be unaffective. Honestly now... how on Earth is a judge supposed to accurately determine (other than the cop's word against yours... unless perhaps there's another witness involved) that you WERE or WEREN'T texting/talking on your phone. After-all... were it me, I'd just say "I wasn't texting... I was just checking the time". Now, extenuating circumstances aside... such as if the police person was behind you watching you fiddle with your iPhone-in-hand for 60+ seconds... I really see these laws as silly. Either put a full ban on using a phone while driving period, or don't make legislation on the topic... out-lawing, say... texting, but not checking the weather, or calling but not e-mailing makes no sense. Even the hands-free paradigm doesn't work because "Hands-Free" doesn't mean "Eyes-Free". I can see a crash occur with a Hands-Free option if the user is required to look at the screen for longer than 3 seconds.
I think that the problem also extends further than just phones. My buddy just crashed into a parked car last week (and rolled his car, totaling it) because he was staring at his in-dash touch-screen trying to select a song to play. There's a reason that factory in-dash stereos are minimalist, people! It's so that you don't have to stare at the thing while driving!
Some cars with factory in-dash LCD screens are designed to turn off the display while driving, or have a minimalist display with large features so that you can interpret the data they display "at a glance".
In other words... in this day and age... there's no excuse why technology can't solve this problem. Technology started the problem... technology can solve it (because apparently, people are too stupid to know that when you're operating 2000+ pounds of steel with hundred(s) of kilograms of force/power behind it... you need to pay attention to what you're doing on not stare down at the shiny thing 3 inches from your face! but rather the destruction you're going to cause by not watching where you're going or what's going on around you).
There should be a mandate to stop selling technology that allows people to grossly endanger others and start selling technology that caters to the million-plus nimrods. -- Devin
I actually got System 7.6.1 shoe-horned into a Mac Classic with 50MB hard disk and 4MB RAM (originally came with 2MB). It took me a week of splitting up the Finder and various other elements across multiple 3.5" floppies and piecing them back-together again. Lol, I had that little Mac Classic singing tunes it thought it'd NEVER sing (I was a big resedit junkie and programmed AppleScript... as in actually programmed the aslt raw resources for implementing new dictionaries and such; you can even find some of my aete resources and tips on resexcellence from the early 90's).
I meant to say that you don't have to go to the store and buy it to get that warm-safe-fuzzy feeling (knowing that your copy is legit and not a back-doored/trojan'd piece of work like the "Black Edition" that's recently surfaced on BitTorrent), that there are other avenues. For example, if you happen to have an MSDN subscription and get them that way (as in, not through the retail chain).
There's no GUI element to the ZFS support in 10.6 non-Server. 10.6 Server has GUI elements for managing ZFS volumes... but rest-assured 10.6 client does indeed support ZFS (albeit if you have to do some leg-work yourself at the command-line; kernel support is there). Apple has promised that 10.7.x client later-on will have the necessary bits to manage ZFS volumes, but 10.6 does support fully using ZFS volumes that are created/managed on a 10.6 server. I think I want to say that kernel-level support in 10.6 client is read-only at the moment, with promises to make it read-write in 10.6.1 (the first update).
The reasoning stands... Microsoft, Mac, Linux, whatever, operating systems to not "spontaneously bloat-up and slow-down"... there is an impetus, a root-cause... the USER! Let's dismantle your silly argument line-by-line:
"The more you use your OS- the slower it gets." False... this may be the case when you use your computer, but it's not the case when I use my computer... hence, again, the problem is YOU.
"Browser histories get bigger"... well let's see... might that be because you allow it to? Don't you clear your history? Haven't you gone into gpedit.msc to modify the Group Policy settings, disabling the browser's history? User negligence does not equal self-bloat (aka spontaneous bloating).
"and take longer to open"... bloat is not the same thing as disk-sector fragmentation. Seek times will naturally degrade in minute quantities as your hard disk approaches capacity (and no, the decrease in seek time is not a factor of bloat, it's a factor of the level of entropy in respect to block contiguousness).
"Search bar suggestions take longer to load"... again, the USER's fault for allowing a search bar to be installed (for example, when you install Sun's Java JRE or JDK, it offers to install the google toolbar). Not to mention that this is not considered bloat as (a) the USER has to choose to install the option and (b) once installed the feature does not grow in perpetuity. Sorry, wrong again.
"My computer gets slower with every drive you add"... your computer does... not mine. Again, see gpedit.msc to disable automatic statistical analysis/tracking of internal disks.
"Sometimes programs install themselves to context menus"... solution: don't use said programs (I make it a point to not use programs that install unwanted/non-optional components... for example, any program that installs a Browser-Helper Object or BHO without my permission gets mercilessly killed immediately after install). Go to sysinternals.com (now owned and operated by Microsoft) and get yourself a copy of these four utilities: ProcessExplorer, AutoRuns, NTFileMon, and TCPView. These four utilities will help you to uninstall anything that is undesired and find any malware. Again, claiming that your computer spontaneously self-bloats without your interaction is both naive and a clear attempt at denying the user's negligence. Might you be referring to the WinRar context menu? You are allowed to uncheck the box for context menu items during install (which you probably neglected to look into, therefore YOU were the root-cause of any perceived bloat).
"How about programs that have background processes always running"... like I said... the operating system does not spontaneously bloat-up... it takes YOU to help it. Either you surfed some pr0n that you shouldn't have, allowing security exploits in your browser to install malware and make your system part of a bot-net (a zombie that does the bidding of a remote hacker on some IRC channel). It's not Microsofts fault that you love you some dirty hairy pr0n, so much so that you're willing to visit websites infected with malware. Oh, and you were too busy with that pr0n to take some responsibility for the ensuing bloat (which you yourself caused) by installing some Anti-Malware software (which can't be considered as bloat either, because you installed it because you needed protection from the dirty pr0n-sites). Oh, were you referring to legitimate software that runs background tasks? Well, presumably you clicked the button to install said software too, so once again, we're back to YOU as the problem. Java did not install itself. You had a hand in it's install, even if you didn't explicitly install Java (that is, you installed product XYZ that required Java, so you indirectly installed Java).
"And why can't more registry items slow down windows?" I know you're being sarcastic, so I'll answer as such. Again, things don't get added to the registry spontaneously. Do this exercise... install
Let's see... you can read the release notes to see what's new, or you can be lazy and ask the Slashdot Fanboys (btw, I'm a FreeBSD fanboy... which undoubtedly means I like Mac since it's based on BSD, but I do have a love for all Operating Systems; currently I recommend checking out MenuetOS which could give the old BeOS a run for it's money as "best realtime OS").
There's support for ZFS which I think is pretty amazing. What is it? It's kind of like software RAID, on steroids. Imagine being able to create a Logical Disk consisting of multiple variable-sized cheap disks, and being able to grow it on-the-fly. Definitely cool for anybody that needs a lot of contiguous disk-space but doesn't have a whole lot of money to spend all-at-once.
No, it happens because you (a) pirate the OS despite knowing full-well that somebody that goes through the arduous task of hacking the OS is also skilled enough to do anything else (back-door) he/she wants to put into your potential install and (b) you surf too much pr0n that leads to heaping piles of malware on disk and in your Registry. If you go to the store and pay actual $$$ for a retail copy (or get a release from a reputable supplier where you can be certain that it is an un-modified, non-back-doored copy), and practice proper security/safety measures, your system will not "get bloated" and "slow down"... that is a complete myth and falsification. Just about any OS you run, if you simply (a) install it (b) secure it and (c) maintain it in a secure state (if you even know what that means), then ANY OS will reasonably continue to operate in the same manner. It is when you go trolling for pr0n and start clicking "accept" on all the requests to Install/Run this-or-that is when your system starts slowing down. If you can reliably say that you have NEVER clicked "OK" or "Accept" on a dialog-box without reading it, then perhaps you ARE smart enough to understand why your computer has slowed down. Otherwise, let me spell it out for you... YOU ARE THE PROBLEM!
"Steal an idea from Microsoft"... excuse me? I think you may be referring to the infamous "Registry" which, were you dealing with uninstalling an application on Windows, you would have a MUCH more difficult time of tracking down your user preferences and deleting them. And, I'm sorry to inform you, but Apple did no such thing. The standard practice of storing a file with configuration options within the User's configured directory hierarchy actually dates back to the late 1960's from Bell Labs on UNIX System V when the precursor to BSD-style user-account processing was introduced (which pre-dates Microsoft Windoze *AND* Mac OS). You might as well get your facts right... they BOTH stole from UNIX (which probably stole from VAX, which probably stole from... ad nauseum). And if anybody is going to be called out as the black-sheep for doing things nonsensically, it's going to be Microsoft with the, again, the infamous "Registry" (which I believe to be the most counter-productive waste of cycles ever conceived; with perhaps goatse.cx running a close second).
Except that it's not a Service Pack. If you really want to equate Microsoft Windows (commonly associated with the "Service Pack" jargon), then Snow Leopard is to Windows 7 what Leopard is to Vista. The fact is that Snow Leopard brings in new features (such as support for Sun Microsystem's Zetta File-System [ZFS]) and more in addition to refining the Operating System. A "service pack" is, well, a pack of updates to a service (that or a pack that performs a service, but that doesn't sound nearly as canonical). It doesn't matter what meaning you assign to "service pack," Snow Leopard does not qualify under this title.
My favorite publisher of all-time is Que. They come in a variety of flavors... including the "Complete Idiot's Guide to (insert topic here)", "Special Edition using (topic)", and "Platinum Edition using (topic)". I've at least found that the "Complete Idiot's Guides" go much further in-depth than one might think (at least more-so than IDG's "For Dummies" series which seem to often be good for nothing-more-than writing "Hello World" applications). I've always been impressed with the level of quality, depthness, and even humor contained in all the Que-published titles. O'Reilly actually earns second-place behind Que in my book, while being utterly invaluable for the fact that they (O'Reilly) publish on topics that nobody else does.
I commented on this a while ago. Copy-paste from my blog:
Improving CAPTCHA and Hand-Writing Analysis (Friday, January 02, 2009):
For anybody who has used a Tablet PC, drawing stylus, smart phone or any other device that translates hand-written text into computer text, you may have noticed that hand-writing analysis needs work. When I used to work at Dell, we used to demo the PDAs with this technology. Depending on the quality of hand-writing, each person had a different experience. Accuracy of the translation varied from poor-to-moderate.
I have an idea that just might help.
In an alternate paradigm, programmers in the online-services industry are continually trying to obfuscate text for the purpose of verifying that a human is behind the keyboard. You might recognize this when signing up for digital services, such as e-mail, at a site like Hotmail. Often, during the sign-up process at one of these sites, you will be shown an image containing altered text and be required to verify the meaning of said-text. This image is commonly known as a CAPTCHA (a contrived acronym that could be said to stand for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart."). What the CAPTCHA folks are doing can be viewed as similar to what the hand-writing analysis folks are doing (though diametrically opposed).
There is a way that we can marry the two paradigms in a single concerted effort to make improvements for both. The process of effectively implementing CAPTCHA on a site is not very significant when trying to relate CAPTCHA to the process of efficiently analyzing hand-written text. Rather, it is the mere existence of CAPTCHA that could very well lead to advances in hand-writing analysis.
The sole-purpose of CAPTCHA is to verify that the entity supplying information to a website is indeed a person and not a computer. That is to say, the reason-for-being for CAPTCHA is to prevent automated abuse of an online-service by computer(s). For example, CAPTCHA can be instrumental in preventing hackers from using computers to further proliferate spam (an already staggering problem in online communities).
The only reason that CAPTCHA is able to tell the difference between man-and-machine is due solely to the assumption that it is difficult for a computer to interpret obfuscated text in an image. That is to say, that human-beings are particularly adept at reliably determining alphabetic letters in an image despite many factors such as angle, skew, noise, color, rotation, and simple distortion. To a certain degree, this assumption is basically correct. However, computers are only lacking in this ability because humans have not yet programmed them to be adept in this area. However...
Hackers have devised ways to reliably translate the distorted text or at least reduce the number of odds. Today, it has become common to see in the news that occasionally a particular site's CAPTCHA algorithm will be broken. In fact, a friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) is quite adept in breaking CAPTCHA and was likely the first to achieve reliable results. He published his work in 2003.
As hackers build better programs to defeat CAPTCHA, it should become more obvious that CAPTCHA will never last. In fact, some websites now use Audio-based CAPTCHA where digital-noise, distortion and other obfuscation technique may be added. Unfortunately, this new form of CAPTCHA has also been broken. It's unfortunate that CAPTCHA developers must increasingly make their system more complex but there is an upside. With each new revision of CAPTCHA, we are actually making computers smarter (by way of challenging the hackers to overcome deficiencies). Each new version attempts to find tasks which are simple to a human but difficult for a computer, meanwhile hackers look to defeat each new revision and close the gap.
Naturally, should CAPTCHA systems start making use of hand-written samples rather than purposefully computer-distorted images, hackers will eventually crack that system too (and, unk
Isn't it the 5th 'fundamental element' of integrated circuits? Correct me if I'm wrong, but what about thermistors?
Thermistors are resistors that vary their resistance based on temperature. Yeah, I can hear you already, saying that if it's a type of resistor, then it's not fundamental. Well, if you're going to argue that, then why is a memristor considered fundamental when it's a type of transistor?
I'd say that the list looks more like this:
Transistor
Resistor
Capacitor
Thermistor
Memristor
and, FTGP, where does "inductor" fit in there? Does it? I don't really consider inductors as part of the basic fundamental electrical components that can be used in integrated circuitry.
For desktop use, I find this to be an accurate test (as many desktop users will likely use the default configuration). However, I feel this to be a generalized test only suited for the purpose of picking a Desktop OS.
For Servers and anybody that has intimate knowledge of the capabilities of each OS, it should be duly noted that Linux and FreeBSD could have performed better. Linux could have been configured to use the EXT-4 file-system, which may or may-not have performed better (or at least on-par) with Solaris' ZFS. Similarly, I would have liked to see the results if FreeBSD-7 was configured to use ZFS, so we could have seen an Apples-to-Apples comparison between Solaris and FreeBSD. I also wonder if FreeBSD's implementation of ZFS is faster than Solaris'.
I find these basic shell features to be invaluable (and amazes people).
Press Ctrl-A to go to the beginning of the line (works in any readline-based program, not just shells).
Press Ctrl-E to go to the end of the line
Press Ctrl-K to erase everything to the right of the cursor.
Reminiscent of emacs, but very useful when the terminal doesn't like your HOME or END keys (which, if your terminal emulation isn't working properly, will dump control characters to your terminal rather than repositioning the cursor).
And last, but definitely not least, the ability to act on multiple files that have similar names without retyping the name twice. For example:
echo Arg{1,2,3}
produces:
Arg1 Arg2 Arg3
So, let's say for example, you want to delete a file and it's backup (same name but has a '.bak' suffix). You could accomplish this with 3 normal ways:
rm -f foo # remove the original
rm -f foo.bak # remove the backup
- or -
rm -f foo foo.bak # remove both original and backup
- or - (my favorite, which many people forget)
rm -f foo{,.bak}
The last command will expand "foo{,.bak}" into "foo foo.bak" before executing the entire command. Thus, you have deleted both the original and backup with minimal typing.
This works GREAT for making backups prior to editing a source file. For example:
cp file{,.orig}
Also great for generating differentials:
diff -u file{1,2}
The above command will give you the differences between the files named "file1" and "file2".
Clear, irrefutable proof that trolls never die. Fixed that for you.
Mod parent -1 (troll).
It is apparent that your guilty-pleasure is to present your secret desires as unfounded facts. I think we all know that every-time news is posted about *BSD, there's at least one troll that simply must fling forth some flame-bait claiming that BSD is dying.
Define "dying".
As an update, I found on his blog (follow the click-trail) that he programmed a version of bejeweled from scratch! Pfffftttt... that's not uber! It's commendable, but the way I see it is,... he probably tried every which way that he could to modify the game and then gave up and programmed it from scratch. Normally, I would say "bravo! Excellent job!"... BUT somebody in an article (and also on NPR this morning, I heard about this on the radio hours before/. got it) referred to this guy as a "hacker" and on NPR, they mentioned that the makers of bejeweled were "impressed by the hack".
I just want to be very clear that what he did does NOT classify him as a "hacker" nor should what he did be termed "a hack." Based on this one deed, he should be classified as a "programmer" and the end result should be termed a "program" or "game."
One thing I still can't grok however, is why the Bejeweled makers did not consider this as an infringement! The only answer I can come up with is that the story inspires tears in the eyes of sex-depraved geeks at the Bejeweled head-quarters. After all, who doesn't like a happy ending?
However, I'll leave you with this... couldn't it be said that Bernie Peng "profited" from his infringement upon the company's rights? It was said that "he won the woman!" Therefore, can't PopCap sue for over ownership of said woman (aka. profits)? After all, the woman in question (no name is ever given) was already a Bejeweled NUT-JOB, and would likely have accepted a proposal from any number of PopCap employees/programmers if given the chance. Mr. Peng undoubtedly has taken that away from the Seattle-based workers by infringing upon their IP rights.
How pray-tell did he "re-program" the app? I don't believe that Bejeweled is an open-source application. What I'm thinking is, he did one of:
- De-compiled, modified and re-compiled
- Used DLL injection
- Wrote a monitoring program that ran in the background
- Did a Rube Goldberg approach
- Found a leaked copy of the source
- Modified the compiled binary using a hex editor and wrote some assembly
- Used some other sort of injection
- Found some way of exploiting a security hole that allowed him to alter the applications behavior through external means
Any theories on which?
We can see stars with a redshift of 6.3, meaning that it is moving away from us at 21 million miles a minute
If you assume that we are a stationary object and also assuming that space is flat. We know that both of those are incorrect. We are not stationary in space and space is not flat but a function of space-time. The earth may have a calculable velocity within our own space-time environment but the redshift of 6.3 which could attribute a perceived velocity of 21 million miles per minute is still less than double the speed of light (24 million miles per minute) which could be attributed to two objects moving away from each other at light speed.
Make sense? Show me a redshift higher than 8 and I'll be amazed.
Having read TFA, I do agree that some people can gain an "addiction" to not the Internet itself, but an underlying facet. My fear is that this could very well turn out to be the all encompassing re-enactment of the "ADD Era." In the 80's, there was an epidemic of doctors prescribing Ritalin to children under the guise of the vague disorder known as ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) or ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder). Even I was mislabeled as one of those problem children affected (incorrectly, as my Mom, may she rest in peace, was smarter than that). Luckily, soon-thereafter it was found that I was "gifted" and only spent a total of one week on the hellish "medication". How many others were not so lucky and spent a lifetime caught in the self-perpetuating circle of being classified as ADHD? Probably many, as a normal, unaffected child that is put on Ritalin becomes unwieldy as it should be known that it acts similar to Amphetamines in persons without the disorder (thus, making them appear as though they have ADHD). It is not unfathomable to believe that a doctor at that point would simply recommend to UP the dosage because it would appear to not be working.
I can see an epidemic coming where psychiatrists mislabel many curious or inquisitive (even "gifted") children as being addicted to the Internet. I myself, when I was younger, neglected food, water, sleep, and many other social activities in favor of gaining an online presence with the open-source community. You might say, "that's not an addiction to the Internet, because you were actively learning and producing worthwhile substance for which you can earn a living." However, fellow/.'ers may recognize such a feat as being "dedicated" and "tenacious" (not addicted), try explaining that to a psychiatrist who knows nothing of technology. Worse off is the fact that many parents of a supposed problem child are also equally inept when it comes to understanding when technology. A parent will see that their child, male or female, which appear to be obsessed with the computer will use such blanket terms when describing the problem to others that it will easily condone the [mis]diagnosis of "Internet Addiction."
Further, I would say that based on how society views gender roles in relation to the tech-field, we could start seeing an overwhelming number of females under some sort of psychoactive regimen because it is deemed acceptable for males to have a high preoccupation with computers and not females.
Personally, I believe that this guy is a quack and should be rebuked by his peers. Any well read or decent psychiatrist knows that there are addictive personalities. These types of personalities crave the by-product of the detrimental activity. Simply because the Internet is pervasive, doesn't mean it is the driving force behind the addiction nor does it mean that it is the subject of the addiction in every person. His reasoning behind making such a remark is probably founded by, and even possibly bolstered by such statements as "every person who drinks or enjoys alcohol to the point that it impacts their life in a negative way, is an alcoholic." Though I would agree with the latter statement, I would disagree that it is a relative relationship. You cannot, and more importantly should not, try to link the two. Alcoholism is closer to a chemical addiction as the driving force behind the withdrawals is not a mere mental apparition as it is in the supposed "Internet Addiction" diagnosis. Though you may crave the dopamine produced into your body from participating in a successful RAID in your favorite MMORPG or by fragging your friends in a hairy dog-fight, this is not the same as an addiction to Nicotine, Alcohol, or Amphetamines. The dopamine produced from these activities can easily be achieve through other activities and the underlying embodiment needs to be studied by these crack psychiatrists instead of trying to invent a fictitious global pandemic for which the privatized health industry (U.S.A.) can profit from.
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And this plug *is* stupid. Many folks who want a video plug on their *laptop* want to connect it to projectors, to give presentations, etc.; a regular VGA (dual with DVI?) would've been a lot more useful in that regard. By making it anything else, they're forcing apple folks to carry an adapter---and to look stupid in front of an audience when they fumble with their macbook and projector for 10 minutes.
As anybody who spends 10 full minutes fiddling with adapters to get their macbook connected to a projector *should* look stupid. As should anybody, not just mac users. Your argument that mac users look retarded for having an adapter is just ridiculous. I've always been taught to view those with adapters as "especially prepared". Now, show me someone that doesn't have an adapter, and I'll show you someone that looks stupid when they fail to get the job done.
Cell Phone carriers (such as AT&T, Verizon, et. al) should write phone firmware that indicates to the network when it is traveling at a high rate of speed (faster than can be humanly achieved... indicating that the user is either operating a vehicle or a passenger in a bus, train, plain, car, etc.).
Sure... being a passenger might suck... so they should have an option like... "Dial #MV on your phone to change the settings... permanently disable or disable for 24 hours".
People that don't own a car and are perpetually passengers in vehicles they don't operate will likely opt-out. However, people that own cars and operate speedy vehicles on a regular basis would likely prefer the feature... opting to have the carrier "hold my calls or texts while I'm driving".
Of course, the system wouldn't be fool-proof... for example, if you're sitting in traffic and traveling pretty slow, a flood of texts that have been held for you might dump on your phone... or incoming calls will be patched through rather than being held.
To solve that... maybe carriers should partner up with car makers... when the phone detects your Bluetooth car (such as a Prius)... the phone just locally holds your calls/texts... then when you get 20 feet away from your car... ALERT! 5 missed calls, 12 texts! If a smart phone... it could even do something like reply to the caller/texter... "Your friend is driving right now... please try again later" (either in that annoying automated voice, or in the form of a reply-text).
There just seems to be so much more that we can do about this rather than relying on some law that will ultimately be unaffective. Honestly now... how on Earth is a judge supposed to accurately determine (other than the cop's word against yours... unless perhaps there's another witness involved) that you WERE or WEREN'T texting/talking on your phone. After-all... were it me, I'd just say "I wasn't texting... I was just checking the time". Now, extenuating circumstances aside... such as if the police person was behind you watching you fiddle with your iPhone-in-hand for 60+ seconds... I really see these laws as silly. Either put a full ban on using a phone while driving period, or don't make legislation on the topic... out-lawing, say... texting, but not checking the weather, or calling but not e-mailing makes no sense. Even the hands-free paradigm doesn't work because "Hands-Free" doesn't mean "Eyes-Free". I can see a crash occur with a Hands-Free option if the user is required to look at the screen for longer than 3 seconds.
I think that the problem also extends further than just phones. My buddy just crashed into a parked car last week (and rolled his car, totaling it) because he was staring at his in-dash touch-screen trying to select a song to play. There's a reason that factory in-dash stereos are minimalist, people! It's so that you don't have to stare at the thing while driving!
Some cars with factory in-dash LCD screens are designed to turn off the display while driving, or have a minimalist display with large features so that you can interpret the data they display "at a glance".
In other words... in this day and age... there's no excuse why technology can't solve this problem. Technology started the problem... technology can solve it (because apparently, people are too stupid to know that when you're operating 2000+ pounds of steel with hundred(s) of kilograms of force/power behind it... you need to pay attention to what you're doing on not stare down at the shiny thing 3 inches from your face! but rather the destruction you're going to cause by not watching where you're going or what's going on around you).
There should be a mandate to stop selling technology that allows people to grossly endanger others and start selling technology that caters to the million-plus nimrods.
--
Devin
I actually got System 7.6.1 shoe-horned into a Mac Classic with 50MB hard disk and 4MB RAM (originally came with 2MB). It took me a week of splitting up the Finder and various other elements across multiple 3.5" floppies and piecing them back-together again. Lol, I had that little Mac Classic singing tunes it thought it'd NEVER sing (I was a big resedit junkie and programmed AppleScript... as in actually programmed the aslt raw resources for implementing new dictionaries and such; you can even find some of my aete resources and tips on resexcellence from the early 90's).
I meant to say that you don't have to go to the store and buy it to get that warm-safe-fuzzy feeling (knowing that your copy is legit and not a back-doored/trojan'd piece of work like the "Black Edition" that's recently surfaced on BitTorrent), that there are other avenues. For example, if you happen to have an MSDN subscription and get them that way (as in, not through the retail chain).
There's no GUI element to the ZFS support in 10.6 non-Server. 10.6 Server has GUI elements for managing ZFS volumes... but rest-assured 10.6 client does indeed support ZFS (albeit if you have to do some leg-work yourself at the command-line; kernel support is there). Apple has promised that 10.7.x client later-on will have the necessary bits to manage ZFS volumes, but 10.6 does support fully using ZFS volumes that are created/managed on a 10.6 server. I think I want to say that kernel-level support in 10.6 client is read-only at the moment, with promises to make it read-write in 10.6.1 (the first update).
You, sir, are an argumentative idiot.
The reasoning stands... Microsoft, Mac, Linux, whatever, operating systems to not "spontaneously bloat-up and slow-down"... there is an impetus, a root-cause... the USER! Let's dismantle your silly argument line-by-line:
"The more you use your OS- the slower it gets." False... this may be the case when you use your computer, but it's not the case when I use my computer... hence, again, the problem is YOU.
"Browser histories get bigger"... well let's see... might that be because you allow it to? Don't you clear your history? Haven't you gone into gpedit.msc to modify the Group Policy settings, disabling the browser's history? User negligence does not equal self-bloat (aka spontaneous bloating).
"and take longer to open"... bloat is not the same thing as disk-sector fragmentation. Seek times will naturally degrade in minute quantities as your hard disk approaches capacity (and no, the decrease in seek time is not a factor of bloat, it's a factor of the level of entropy in respect to block contiguousness).
"Search bar suggestions take longer to load"... again, the USER's fault for allowing a search bar to be installed (for example, when you install Sun's Java JRE or JDK, it offers to install the google toolbar). Not to mention that this is not considered bloat as (a) the USER has to choose to install the option and (b) once installed the feature does not grow in perpetuity. Sorry, wrong again.
"My computer gets slower with every drive you add"... your computer does... not mine. Again, see gpedit.msc to disable automatic statistical analysis/tracking of internal disks.
"Sometimes programs install themselves to context menus" ... solution: don't use said programs (I make it a point to not use programs that install unwanted/non-optional components... for example, any program that installs a Browser-Helper Object or BHO without my permission gets mercilessly killed immediately after install). Go to sysinternals.com (now owned and operated by Microsoft) and get yourself a copy of these four utilities: ProcessExplorer, AutoRuns, NTFileMon, and TCPView. These four utilities will help you to uninstall anything that is undesired and find any malware. Again, claiming that your computer spontaneously self-bloats without your interaction is both naive and a clear attempt at denying the user's negligence. Might you be referring to the WinRar context menu? You are allowed to uncheck the box for context menu items during install (which you probably neglected to look into, therefore YOU were the root-cause of any perceived bloat).
"How about programs that have background processes always running" ... like I said... the operating system does not spontaneously bloat-up... it takes YOU to help it. Either you surfed some pr0n that you shouldn't have, allowing security exploits in your browser to install malware and make your system part of a bot-net (a zombie that does the bidding of a remote hacker on some IRC channel). It's not Microsofts fault that you love you some dirty hairy pr0n, so much so that you're willing to visit websites infected with malware. Oh, and you were too busy with that pr0n to take some responsibility for the ensuing bloat (which you yourself caused) by installing some Anti-Malware software (which can't be considered as bloat either, because you installed it because you needed protection from the dirty pr0n-sites). Oh, were you referring to legitimate software that runs background tasks? Well, presumably you clicked the button to install said software too, so once again, we're back to YOU as the problem. Java did not install itself. You had a hand in it's install, even if you didn't explicitly install Java (that is, you installed product XYZ that required Java, so you indirectly installed Java).
"And why can't more registry items slow down windows?" I know you're being sarcastic, so I'll answer as such. Again, things don't get added to the registry spontaneously. Do this exercise... install
Let's see... you can read the release notes to see what's new, or you can be lazy and ask the Slashdot Fanboys (btw, I'm a FreeBSD fanboy... which undoubtedly means I like Mac since it's based on BSD, but I do have a love for all Operating Systems; currently I recommend checking out MenuetOS which could give the old BeOS a run for it's money as "best realtime OS").
There's support for ZFS which I think is pretty amazing. What is it? It's kind of like software RAID, on steroids. Imagine being able to create a Logical Disk consisting of multiple variable-sized cheap disks, and being able to grow it on-the-fly. Definitely cool for anybody that needs a lot of contiguous disk-space but doesn't have a whole lot of money to spend all-at-once.
No, it happens because you (a) pirate the OS despite knowing full-well that somebody that goes through the arduous task of hacking the OS is also skilled enough to do anything else (back-door) he/she wants to put into your potential install and (b) you surf too much pr0n that leads to heaping piles of malware on disk and in your Registry. If you go to the store and pay actual $$$ for a retail copy (or get a release from a reputable supplier where you can be certain that it is an un-modified, non-back-doored copy), and practice proper security/safety measures, your system will not "get bloated" and "slow down"... that is a complete myth and falsification. Just about any OS you run, if you simply (a) install it (b) secure it and (c) maintain it in a secure state (if you even know what that means), then ANY OS will reasonably continue to operate in the same manner. It is when you go trolling for pr0n and start clicking "accept" on all the requests to Install/Run this-or-that is when your system starts slowing down. If you can reliably say that you have NEVER clicked "OK" or "Accept" on a dialog-box without reading it, then perhaps you ARE smart enough to understand why your computer has slowed down. Otherwise, let me spell it out for you... YOU ARE THE PROBLEM!
"Steal an idea from Microsoft" ... excuse me? I think you may be referring to the infamous "Registry" which, were you dealing with uninstalling an application on Windows, you would have a MUCH more difficult time of tracking down your user preferences and deleting them. And, I'm sorry to inform you, but Apple did no such thing. The standard practice of storing a file with configuration options within the User's configured directory hierarchy actually dates back to the late 1960's from Bell Labs on UNIX System V when the precursor to BSD-style user-account processing was introduced (which pre-dates Microsoft Windoze *AND* Mac OS). You might as well get your facts right... they BOTH stole from UNIX (which probably stole from VAX, which probably stole from... ad nauseum). And if anybody is going to be called out as the black-sheep for doing things nonsensically, it's going to be Microsoft with the, again, the infamous "Registry" (which I believe to be the most counter-productive waste of cycles ever conceived; with perhaps goatse.cx running a close second).
Except that it's not a Service Pack. If you really want to equate Microsoft Windows (commonly associated with the "Service Pack" jargon), then Snow Leopard is to Windows 7 what Leopard is to Vista. The fact is that Snow Leopard brings in new features (such as support for Sun Microsystem's Zetta File-System [ZFS]) and more in addition to refining the Operating System. A "service pack" is, well, a pack of updates to a service (that or a pack that performs a service, but that doesn't sound nearly as canonical). It doesn't matter what meaning you assign to "service pack," Snow Leopard does not qualify under this title.
My favorite publisher of all-time is Que. They come in a variety of flavors... including the "Complete Idiot's Guide to (insert topic here)", "Special Edition using (topic)", and "Platinum Edition using (topic)". I've at least found that the "Complete Idiot's Guides" go much further in-depth than one might think (at least more-so than IDG's "For Dummies" series which seem to often be good for nothing-more-than writing "Hello World" applications). I've always been impressed with the level of quality, depthness, and even humor contained in all the Que-published titles. O'Reilly actually earns second-place behind Que in my book, while being utterly invaluable for the fact that they (O'Reilly) publish on topics that nobody else does.
I commented on this a while ago. Copy-paste from my blog:
Improving CAPTCHA and Hand-Writing Analysis (Friday, January 02, 2009):
For anybody who has used a Tablet PC, drawing stylus, smart phone or any other device that translates hand-written text into computer text, you may have noticed that hand-writing analysis needs work. When I used to work at Dell, we used to demo the PDAs with this technology. Depending on the quality of hand-writing, each person had a different experience. Accuracy of the translation varied from poor-to-moderate.
I have an idea that just might help.
In an alternate paradigm, programmers in the online-services industry are continually trying to obfuscate text for the purpose of verifying that a human is behind the keyboard. You might recognize this when signing up for digital services, such as e-mail, at a site like Hotmail. Often, during the sign-up process at one of these sites, you will be shown an image containing altered text and be required to verify the meaning of said-text. This image is commonly known as a CAPTCHA (a contrived acronym that could be said to stand for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart."). What the CAPTCHA folks are doing can be viewed as similar to what the hand-writing analysis folks are doing (though diametrically opposed).
There is a way that we can marry the two paradigms in a single concerted effort to make improvements for both. The process of effectively implementing CAPTCHA on a site is not very significant when trying to relate CAPTCHA to the process of efficiently analyzing hand-written text. Rather, it is the mere existence of CAPTCHA that could very well lead to advances in hand-writing analysis.
The sole-purpose of CAPTCHA is to verify that the entity supplying information to a website is indeed a person and not a computer. That is to say, the reason-for-being for CAPTCHA is to prevent automated abuse of an online-service by computer(s). For example, CAPTCHA can be instrumental in preventing hackers from using computers to further proliferate spam (an already staggering problem in online communities).
The only reason that CAPTCHA is able to tell the difference between man-and-machine is due solely to the assumption that it is difficult for a computer to interpret obfuscated text in an image. That is to say, that human-beings are particularly adept at reliably determining alphabetic letters in an image despite many factors such as angle, skew, noise, color, rotation, and simple distortion. To a certain degree, this assumption is basically correct. However, computers are only lacking in this ability because humans have not yet programmed them to be adept in this area. However...
Hackers have devised ways to reliably translate the distorted text or at least reduce the number of odds. Today, it has become common to see in the news that occasionally a particular site's CAPTCHA algorithm will be broken. In fact, a friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) is quite adept in breaking CAPTCHA and was likely the first to achieve reliable results. He published his work in 2003.
As hackers build better programs to defeat CAPTCHA, it should become more obvious that CAPTCHA will never last. In fact, some websites now use Audio-based CAPTCHA where digital-noise, distortion and other obfuscation technique may be added. Unfortunately, this new form of CAPTCHA has also been broken. It's unfortunate that CAPTCHA developers must increasingly make their system more complex but there is an upside. With each new revision of CAPTCHA, we are actually making computers smarter (by way of challenging the hackers to overcome deficiencies). Each new version attempts to find tasks which are simple to a human but difficult for a computer, meanwhile hackers look to defeat each new revision and close the gap.
Naturally, should CAPTCHA systems start making use of hand-written samples rather than purposefully computer-distorted images, hackers will eventually crack that system too (and, unk
Isn't it the 5th 'fundamental element' of integrated circuits? Correct me if I'm wrong, but what about thermistors?
Thermistors are resistors that vary their resistance based on temperature. Yeah, I can hear you already, saying that if it's a type of resistor, then it's not fundamental. Well, if you're going to argue that, then why is a memristor considered fundamental when it's a type of transistor?
I'd say that the list looks more like this:
and, FTGP, where does "inductor" fit in there? Does it? I don't really consider inductors as part of the basic fundamental electrical components that can be used in integrated circuitry.
For desktop use, I find this to be an accurate test (as many desktop users will likely use the default configuration). However, I feel this to be a generalized test only suited for the purpose of picking a Desktop OS.
For Servers and anybody that has intimate knowledge of the capabilities of each OS, it should be duly noted that Linux and FreeBSD could have performed better. Linux could have been configured to use the EXT-4 file-system, which may or may-not have performed better (or at least on-par) with Solaris' ZFS. Similarly, I would have liked to see the results if FreeBSD-7 was configured to use ZFS, so we could have seen an Apples-to-Apples comparison between Solaris and FreeBSD. I also wonder if FreeBSD's implementation of ZFS is faster than Solaris'.
I find these basic shell features to be invaluable (and amazes people).
Reminiscent of emacs, but very useful when the terminal doesn't like your HOME or END keys (which, if your terminal emulation isn't working properly, will dump control characters to your terminal rather than repositioning the cursor).
And last, but definitely not least, the ability to act on multiple files that have similar names without retyping the name twice. For example:
produces:
So, let's say for example, you want to delete a file and it's backup (same name but has a '.bak' suffix). You could accomplish this with 3 normal ways:
- or -
- or - (my favorite, which many people forget)
The last command will expand "foo{,.bak}" into "foo foo.bak" before executing the entire command. Thus, you have deleted both the original and backup with minimal typing.
This works GREAT for making backups prior to editing a source file. For example:
Also great for generating differentials:
The above command will give you the differences between the files named "file1" and "file2".
Perhaps the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag should be added?
As an update, I found on his blog (follow the click-trail) that he programmed a version of bejeweled from scratch! Pfffftttt... that's not uber! It's commendable, but the way I see it is, ... he probably tried every which way that he could to modify the game and then gave up and programmed it from scratch. Normally, I would say "bravo! Excellent job!"... BUT somebody in an article (and also on NPR this morning, I heard about this on the radio hours before /. got it) referred to this guy as a "hacker" and on NPR, they mentioned that the makers of bejeweled were "impressed by the hack".
I just want to be very clear that what he did does NOT classify him as a "hacker" nor should what he did be termed "a hack." Based on this one deed, he should be classified as a "programmer" and the end result should be termed a "program" or "game."
One thing I still can't grok however, is why the Bejeweled makers did not consider this as an infringement! The only answer I can come up with is that the story inspires tears in the eyes of sex-depraved geeks at the Bejeweled head-quarters. After all, who doesn't like a happy ending?
However, I'll leave you with this... couldn't it be said that Bernie Peng "profited" from his infringement upon the company's rights? It was said that "he won the woman!" Therefore, can't PopCap sue for over ownership of said woman (aka. profits)? After all, the woman in question (no name is ever given) was already a Bejeweled NUT-JOB, and would likely have accepted a proposal from any number of PopCap employees/programmers if given the chance. Mr. Peng undoubtedly has taken that away from the Seattle-based workers by infringing upon their IP rights.
How pray-tell did he "re-program" the app? I don't believe that Bejeweled is an open-source application. What I'm thinking is, he did one of: - De-compiled, modified and re-compiled - Used DLL injection - Wrote a monitoring program that ran in the background - Did a Rube Goldberg approach - Found a leaked copy of the source - Modified the compiled binary using a hex editor and wrote some assembly - Used some other sort of injection - Found some way of exploiting a security hole that allowed him to alter the applications behavior through external means Any theories on which?
... with spherical chickens in a vacuum!
Having read TFA, I do agree that some people can gain an "addiction" to not the Internet itself, but an underlying facet. My fear is that this could very well turn out to be the all encompassing re-enactment of the "ADD Era." In the 80's, there was an epidemic of doctors prescribing Ritalin to children under the guise of the vague disorder known as ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) or ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder). Even I was mislabeled as one of those problem children affected (incorrectly, as my Mom, may she rest in peace, was smarter than that). Luckily, soon-thereafter it was found that I was "gifted" and only spent a total of one week on the hellish "medication". How many others were not so lucky and spent a lifetime caught in the self-perpetuating circle of being classified as ADHD? Probably many, as a normal, unaffected child that is put on Ritalin becomes unwieldy as it should be known that it acts similar to Amphetamines in persons without the disorder (thus, making them appear as though they have ADHD). It is not unfathomable to believe that a doctor at that point would simply recommend to UP the dosage because it would appear to not be working.
/.'ers may recognize such a feat as being "dedicated" and "tenacious" (not addicted), try explaining that to a psychiatrist who knows nothing of technology. Worse off is the fact that many parents of a supposed problem child are also equally inept when it comes to understanding when technology. A parent will see that their child, male or female, which appear to be obsessed with the computer will use such blanket terms when describing the problem to others that it will easily condone the [mis]diagnosis of "Internet Addiction."
I can see an epidemic coming where psychiatrists mislabel many curious or inquisitive (even "gifted") children as being addicted to the Internet. I myself, when I was younger, neglected food, water, sleep, and many other social activities in favor of gaining an online presence with the open-source community. You might say, "that's not an addiction to the Internet, because you were actively learning and producing worthwhile substance for which you can earn a living." However, fellow
Further, I would say that based on how society views gender roles in relation to the tech-field, we could start seeing an overwhelming number of females under some sort of psychoactive regimen because it is deemed acceptable for males to have a high preoccupation with computers and not females.
Personally, I believe that this guy is a quack and should be rebuked by his peers. Any well read or decent psychiatrist knows that there are addictive personalities. These types of personalities crave the by-product of the detrimental activity. Simply because the Internet is pervasive, doesn't mean it is the driving force behind the addiction nor does it mean that it is the subject of the addiction in every person. His reasoning behind making such a remark is probably founded by, and even possibly bolstered by such statements as "every person who drinks or enjoys alcohol to the point that it impacts their life in a negative way, is an alcoholic." Though I would agree with the latter statement, I would disagree that it is a relative relationship. You cannot, and more importantly should not, try to link the two. Alcoholism is closer to a chemical addiction as the driving force behind the withdrawals is not a mere mental apparition as it is in the supposed "Internet Addiction" diagnosis. Though you may crave the dopamine produced into your body from participating in a successful RAID in your favorite MMORPG or by fragging your friends in a hairy dog-fight, this is not the same as an addiction to Nicotine, Alcohol, or Amphetamines. The dopamine produced from these activities can easily be achieve through other activities and the underlying embodiment needs to be studied by these crack psychiatrists instead of trying to invent a fictitious global pandemic for which the privatized health industry (U.S.A.) can profit from.