Microsoft then screwed up their next natural keyboard called the Microsoft Natural Multimedia. It defaulted to using the specialized keyset MS had introduced (help, undo, redo, new, open, etc) rather than the standard function keys, which were on the same physical keys. Brilliant and forward thinking, right? Because soon everyone will be using those instead of the stodgy old F1-F12 keys. *bzzzt* Wrong! And of course, there was no way to change the default in software, so every time you turn it on or reset the computer, you had to remember to turn on your damned function keys. That keyboard sits on my audio workstation, because apparently I'm too cheap to replace an otherwise perfectly good keyboard that has just one irritating flaw.
I currently use the MS Natural 4000 model on my main workstation, and really love it. Hopefully they'll continue selling it for a long time to come. If not, I'll probably buy a dozen of them and hoard them for the rest of my life.
I also like and use the MS Natural 4000, but it has the same "F lock" behavior that you dislike about the MS Natural Multimedia. The F keys default to being Help, Undo, etc... and you have to press the F lock key for them to work as regular F keys. And apparently F lock always defaults to off and can't be changed through software (though apparently you can kludge something up with the Intellitype software that remaps MS's special keys back to F keys--but it doesn't work for programs that use the raw scancodes, e.g., games that use DirectInput).
How many primaries are closed? I remember when I first voted in Texas, the primaries were open, then the Republicans closed theirs. I left before the Democrats closed theirs, and don't know if the Republicans ever un-closed theirs. And they weren't "closed". They were closed to registered democrats, but not closed to undeclared/undecided.
Texas has never had closed primaries, at least not as long as I've been voting (which is over 20 years)--and neoritter's wikipedia link lists Texas as an open primary state. There's also no official party registration in Texas. Sure, you can send some money to the Republicans or the Democrats and they'll send you a card so you can be a card-carrying [whatever], but at voting time, the state doesn't know or care. There is a restriction during the primaries: if you've voted in one party's primary during the election cycle, you may not also vote in the other party's primary during that same election cycle. But during the next election cycle, you're again free to choose which primary you want to vote in.
The subject is their washing machines, not HVAC systems. While Nortek may use the Maytag brand name on air conditioners, Whirlpool owns Maytag the washing machine/home appliance company. See, for example, their About page which has a link to Whirlpool captioned "Find out more about our parent company."
It's not uncommon for large companies to split off a division and sell it to another company.
Workers who are in positions where they are 'tipped' earn a minimum wage of a little over $2/hour, plus those tips. They pay taxes on those earnings plus an IRS-calculated percentage based on the receipts from their tables, whether they were tipped or not. Tips are an excuse to underpay staff.
The minimum direct wage is about $2/hour; however, the minimum total wage is still $7.25/hour. If direct wages + tips end up less than $7.25/hour, the employer pays the difference so that the employee makes $7.25/hour. See http://www.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm
Inkscape 0.91 64-bit uses 0% CPU (as far as Task Manager is concerned) when idling on my computer. I did uninstall 0.48 and tell it to delete my personal preferences though.
When you come back from the bathroom, you want to regain access to your own computer. Think about exactly how you do that. Do you press the power button and reboot, and then enter your authentication credentials into a dialog that you know is your login screen, because you know that every step from boot to login, is intended to protect your interests?
You're stuck there anyways because you can never be sure someone didn't reboot the system, run a keylogger designed to act like the lock screen, and then send your password and reboot the machine.
As the guy you're replying to said, "you know that every step from boot to login, is intended to protect your interests." If you're concerned about someone rebooting the system and running some malware, you should make use of the various features designed to mitigate against that. All PCs these days let you password-protect the BIOS settings, so if you've configured it to only boot from the HD, it's not as simple as an attacker putting in a CD or plugging in a USB flash drive with their keylogger. And for even more protection, you can get a computer with more "enterprisey" features, such as a physical case lock and a chassis intrusion detection switch. If the attacker thinks they'll just open the box up and do a quick hard drive swap or something like that, that's not gonna work. And these days, there's also UEFI Secure Boot. Sure, there are ways to attack all of this, but a BIOS password plus case lock is sufficient for the vast majority of people. If you need more than that, you should probably focus on keeping intruders from getting access to your computer in the first place.
Whether it's user mode per se or not, there are tools to change the behavior of ctrl-alt-delete.
As far as I can tell, that's just a utility that changes the options that are already available in Windows--they're normally controlled via Group Policy. It's not actually running any new code, it's just changing behavior in a way that MS has already allowed. It actually is possible to write your own code that runs when the user presses Ctrl+Alt+Del though; it's called a custom GINA DLL. Of course, if an intruder already has Admin access to install their GINA DLL, it's already too late... The point of Ctrl+Alt+Del is to thwart malware running as an unprivileged user.
PS - The other major thing is that Ctrl-Alt-Delete was originally a DOS-ism that had more to do with dealing with misbehaving, yet not malicious, programs and trying to regain some level of control.
That key combo was selected because no application uses it. Other than that, there's no relation to its use in DOS. Bill Gates has said that he (or Microsoft in general) had wanted a dedicated key for it, but IBM (which was a major keyboard manufacturer at the time) didn't want to add a key for MS. I guess MS eventually had enough clout to get everyone to add the Windows and Context Menu keys, but it wasn't worth changing Ctrl+Alt+Del to use the new keys.
And? This is about a blizzard that was supposed to hit the US northeast and... didn't really happen. It was hyped as "Snowmageddon 2015" and instead of dropping a couple of feet of snow it's dropping inches. The weather reports were completely wrong yet again.
Uh, what? It most certainly did happen. Multiple feet of snow. In the US northeast. Where did you hear that it didn't happen?
But that's not a Windows program. That's a Java program and that is the coder's issue not MS. The Windows API that returns the Marketing Name have been deprecated as far as I know.
I don't what distinction you're trying to make between a Windows program and a Java program. Windows is an OS, Java is a programming language. Java programs can run on Windows. And sure, it's a problem with the code, but Java programs are popular in big "enterprise" apps, so MS is especially interested in keeping those apps running. The last thing they want is for some company to not upgrade thousands of copies of Windows because a program that company needs won't run on the new version. "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run" is a myth; MS jumps through a lot of hoops to make sure that almost all programs that run on an older version of Windows will continue running on the new version, even when the coder did something stupid.
Personally I think it's just an excuse. How many Win 9x programs still exist that would be tripped up by Windows 9?
Lots of programs that were written when Win9x was still popular are still around... an example given in the last/. story about MS skipping Windows 9 is jEdit. As of right now, the current revision of that file (r23738), last modified about a year ago, still detects the OS as Windows 9x if the OS name supplied by Java contains either "Windows 9" or "Windows M".
This "sheds" (gets rid of) the "load" (electricity on the line).
No, an electrical load is something that uses electricity, not electricity itself. E.g., "that circuit can handle a 20 amp load." And "load shedding" is shutting off electricity to certain users so that there are fewer loads on the system. See this definition, for example.
The person you replied to didn't say it was difficult; he said it wasn't convenient: "it... is simply not convenient to use compared to swiping a credit card." And it's not. You have to wake up your phone, unlock it, and then enter the Google Wallet PIN. With Apple Pay, you just have to hold the phone with your thumb at the correct location; the phone display doesn't need to be turned on first, and the fingerprint reader takes the place of the unlock and PIN entry.
I've tried Google Wallet a few times for the novelty value, but using a regular credit card takes fewer steps, and hence is faster.
It was only 7 days before cases in the US skyrocketed, and no one with a brain would dare to repeat his retarded comment about how Ebola can't spread in the US.
Keep trying though.
When did the cases in the US skyrocket? The number has always been extremely low. It's currently at 1, and the 21-day monitoring period for those in contact with the Dallas nurses ends tomorrow. Face it, your perverse wish for an Ebola outbreak in the US didn't come true. While I know you're disappointed, the rest of us are glad to see Ebola on the decline.
Which is why I objected to saying "It. Just. Works."
That's a silly objection. Errors that can be detected and corrected without much difficulty qualifies as working. As opposed to the electronic voting machines that are currently used in the US, where you have no idea if it recorded your vote correctly.
"CurrentC Allegedly Breached" would have been a more appropriate headline, that also doesn't necessarily expose anyone to a lawsuit if it turns out to be bullshit.
Did you read the fine article? MCX confirmed that "unauthorized third parties obtained the e-mail addresses of some of our CurrentC pilot program participants and individuals who had expressed interest in the app." They also sent emails notifying their users, No "allegedly" needed; it's not bullshit.
Hey sexconker, it's been another week, so time for a reminder that the number of Ebola cases in the US hasn't skyrocketed. Both Dallas nurses are out of the hospital. The only infected person in the US is this doctor, who didn't catch it from someone in the US.
Well, yeah, most people don't know what any of that smells like. I'm reminded of the Wikipedia article on Saffron, which says it smells like iodoform. Only chemists are going to know what iodoform is, much less what it smells like.
You very clearly didn't see the die exposure article.
The counterfeit chip is in fact WAY more complex. It's not off the shelf, so to speak. They custom-modified. It's obvious once you start looking at the physical silicon.
Oh, Khyber, Khyber... when will stop pretending to know things? It's "off the shelf" in the sense that they didn't have to design anything... they just grabbed an existing microcontroller design and added an extra module or two to it. tibit didn't say that it was cheaper because it's less complex; he said it's cheaper because, "Whoever packages it didn't have to do all the silicon and driver R&D." Just like there are software libraries that a software developer can grab and use without having to do a lot of work, there are hardware libraries that hardware designers can grab and use without having to do a lot of work. You need to do some AES encryption? No need to design that yourself; grab an AES core. You need to do some low-pass digital filtering? Get a filter core. There's even a site that has open-source hardware cores you can use: OpenCores
If you break language into four tasks: speaking, listening, reading and writing, then speaking is by far the easiest.
I'd say that depends on what you consider "reading and writing". For Westerners, Mandarin is difficult to speak and listen to because of the tones--it takes a lot of practice for them to pronounce the tones properly, and also a lot of practice to distinguish the tones. Reading and writing is difficult because of the large number of characters that need to be memorized. However, if you're allowed to have computer assistance, reading and writing becomes much easier; I'd say easier than speaking and listening. You can easily look up a word in an online dictionary, and when typing, the IME will present you a list of possible characters, and you choose the one you want. The latter is a huge simplification, since you don't have to remember exactly how to write a character; you just need to have a general idea of what it looks like, and the IME will take care of the details. This is even affecting the current generation of Chinese people... it's not uncommon for even a college-educated person to draw a blank on how to hand-write a character: "Character Amnesia"
Nope, no skyrocketing, and his own fiancee and family, who had the closest contact with him other than healthcare providers, are out of the 21-day window and are confirmed to be Ebola-free. You were wrong:)
So is ESR trying to convert the NetBSD CVS repo in some weird and special way or something, and that's why it failed? Because it has already been converted and is on Github; if he needs info on how it was done, there's probably someone on the tech-repository mailing list that can help. It's been converted to Fossil too.
But last week it was reported that Sgt. Michael Monning contracted ebola while trying to get the quarantine order signed.
No, it says a possible second Ebola victim. He didn't actually have the symptoms of Ebola, but felt sick, and since he had been in Thomas Duncan's apartment, he went to get checked out just in case. But his test for Ebola was negative.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft then screwed up their next natural keyboard called the Microsoft Natural Multimedia. It defaulted to using the specialized keyset MS had introduced (help, undo, redo, new, open, etc) rather than the standard function keys, which were on the same physical keys. Brilliant and forward thinking, right? Because soon everyone will be using those instead of the stodgy old F1-F12 keys. *bzzzt* Wrong! And of course, there was no way to change the default in software, so every time you turn it on or reset the computer, you had to remember to turn on your damned function keys. That keyboard sits on my audio workstation, because apparently I'm too cheap to replace an otherwise perfectly good keyboard that has just one irritating flaw.
I currently use the MS Natural 4000 model on my main workstation, and really love it. Hopefully they'll continue selling it for a long time to come. If not, I'll probably buy a dozen of them and hoard them for the rest of my life.
I also like and use the MS Natural 4000, but it has the same "F lock" behavior that you dislike about the MS Natural Multimedia. The F keys default to being Help, Undo, etc... and you have to press the F lock key for them to work as regular F keys. And apparently F lock always defaults to off and can't be changed through software (though apparently you can kludge something up with the Intellitype software that remaps MS's special keys back to F keys--but it doesn't work for programs that use the raw scancodes, e.g., games that use DirectInput).
How many primaries are closed? I remember when I first voted in Texas, the primaries were open, then the Republicans closed theirs. I left before the Democrats closed theirs, and don't know if the Republicans ever un-closed theirs. And they weren't "closed". They were closed to registered democrats, but not closed to undeclared/undecided.
Texas has never had closed primaries, at least not as long as I've been voting (which is over 20 years)--and neoritter's wikipedia link lists Texas as an open primary state. There's also no official party registration in Texas. Sure, you can send some money to the Republicans or the Democrats and they'll send you a card so you can be a card-carrying [whatever], but at voting time, the state doesn't know or care. There is a restriction during the primaries: if you've voted in one party's primary during the election cycle, you may not also vote in the other party's primary during that same election cycle. But during the next election cycle, you're again free to choose which primary you want to vote in.
The subject is their washing machines, not HVAC systems. While Nortek may use the Maytag brand name on air conditioners, Whirlpool owns Maytag the washing machine/home appliance company. See, for example, their About page which has a link to Whirlpool captioned "Find out more about our parent company."
It's not uncommon for large companies to split off a division and sell it to another company.
Workers who are in positions where they are 'tipped' earn a minimum wage of a little over $2/hour, plus those tips. They pay taxes on those earnings plus an IRS-calculated percentage based on the receipts from their tables, whether they were tipped or not. Tips are an excuse to underpay staff.
The minimum direct wage is about $2/hour; however, the minimum total wage is still $7.25/hour. If direct wages + tips end up less than $7.25/hour, the employer pays the difference so that the employee makes $7.25/hour. See http://www.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm
Inkscape 0.91 64-bit uses 0% CPU (as far as Task Manager is concerned) when idling on my computer. I did uninstall 0.48 and tell it to delete my personal preferences though.
You're stuck there anyways because you can never be sure someone didn't reboot the system, run a keylogger designed to act like the lock screen, and then send your password and reboot the machine.
As the guy you're replying to said, "you know that every step from boot to login, is intended to protect your interests." If you're concerned about someone rebooting the system and running some malware, you should make use of the various features designed to mitigate against that. All PCs these days let you password-protect the BIOS settings, so if you've configured it to only boot from the HD, it's not as simple as an attacker putting in a CD or plugging in a USB flash drive with their keylogger. And for even more protection, you can get a computer with more "enterprisey" features, such as a physical case lock and a chassis intrusion detection switch. If the attacker thinks they'll just open the box up and do a quick hard drive swap or something like that, that's not gonna work. And these days, there's also UEFI Secure Boot. Sure, there are ways to attack all of this, but a BIOS password plus case lock is sufficient for the vast majority of people. If you need more than that, you should probably focus on keeping intruders from getting access to your computer in the first place.
Whether it's user mode per se or not, there are tools to change the behavior of ctrl-alt-delete.
As far as I can tell, that's just a utility that changes the options that are already available in Windows--they're normally controlled via Group Policy. It's not actually running any new code, it's just changing behavior in a way that MS has already allowed. It actually is possible to write your own code that runs when the user presses Ctrl+Alt+Del though; it's called a custom GINA DLL. Of course, if an intruder already has Admin access to install their GINA DLL, it's already too late... The point of Ctrl+Alt+Del is to thwart malware running as an unprivileged user.
PS - The other major thing is that Ctrl-Alt-Delete was originally a DOS-ism that had more to do with dealing with misbehaving, yet not malicious, programs and trying to regain some level of control.
That key combo was selected because no application uses it. Other than that, there's no relation to its use in DOS. Bill Gates has said that he (or Microsoft in general) had wanted a dedicated key for it, but IBM (which was a major keyboard manufacturer at the time) didn't want to add a key for MS. I guess MS eventually had enough clout to get everyone to add the Windows and Context Menu keys, but it wasn't worth changing Ctrl+Alt+Del to use the new keys.
And? This is about a blizzard that was supposed to hit the US northeast and ... didn't really happen. It was hyped as "Snowmageddon 2015" and instead of dropping a couple of feet of snow it's dropping inches. The weather reports were completely wrong yet again.
Uh, what? It most certainly did happen. Multiple feet of snow. In the US northeast. Where did you hear that it didn't happen?
But that's not a Windows program. That's a Java program and that is the coder's issue not MS. The Windows API that returns the Marketing Name have been deprecated as far as I know.
I don't what distinction you're trying to make between a Windows program and a Java program. Windows is an OS, Java is a programming language. Java programs can run on Windows. And sure, it's a problem with the code, but Java programs are popular in big "enterprise" apps, so MS is especially interested in keeping those apps running. The last thing they want is for some company to not upgrade thousands of copies of Windows because a program that company needs won't run on the new version. "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run" is a myth; MS jumps through a lot of hoops to make sure that almost all programs that run on an older version of Windows will continue running on the new version, even when the coder did something stupid.
Personally I think it's just an excuse. How many Win 9x programs still exist that would be tripped up by Windows 9?
Lots of programs that were written when Win9x was still popular are still around... an example given in the last /. story about MS skipping Windows 9 is jEdit. As of right now, the current revision of that file (r23738), last modified about a year ago, still detects the OS as Windows 9x if the OS name supplied by Java contains either "Windows 9" or "Windows M".
And "Bing"?
This "sheds" (gets rid of) the "load" (electricity on the line).
No, an electrical load is something that uses electricity, not electricity itself. E.g., "that circuit can handle a 20 amp load." And "load shedding" is shutting off electricity to certain users so that there are fewer loads on the system. See this definition, for example.
But difficulty? You haven't used it have you?
The person you replied to didn't say it was difficult; he said it wasn't convenient: "it ... is simply not convenient to use compared to swiping a credit card." And it's not. You have to wake up your phone, unlock it, and then enter the Google Wallet PIN. With Apple Pay, you just have to hold the phone with your thumb at the correct location; the phone display doesn't need to be turned on first, and the fingerprint reader takes the place of the unlock and PIN entry.
I've tried Google Wallet a few times for the novelty value, but using a regular credit card takes fewer steps, and hence is faster.
It was only 7 days before cases in the US skyrocketed, and no one with a brain would dare to repeat his retarded comment about how Ebola can't spread in the US. Keep trying though.
When did the cases in the US skyrocket? The number has always been extremely low. It's currently at 1, and the 21-day monitoring period for those in contact with the Dallas nurses ends tomorrow. Face it, your perverse wish for an Ebola outbreak in the US didn't come true. While I know you're disappointed, the rest of us are glad to see Ebola on the decline.
What's so difficult about a recount? Can you be less handwavey?
Optical scan ballots just work. You have not provided any evidence otherwise.
There will always be errors.
Which is why I objected to saying "It. Just. Works."
That's a silly objection. Errors that can be detected and corrected without much difficulty qualifies as working. As opposed to the electronic voting machines that are currently used in the US, where you have no idea if it recorded your vote correctly.
"CurrentC Allegedly Breached" would have been a more appropriate headline, that also doesn't necessarily expose anyone to a lawsuit if it turns out to be bullshit.
Did you read the fine article? MCX confirmed that "unauthorized third parties obtained the e-mail addresses of some of our CurrentC pilot program participants and individuals who had expressed interest in the app." They also sent emails notifying their users, No "allegedly" needed; it's not bullshit.
Hey sexconker, it's been another week, so time for a reminder that the number of Ebola cases in the US hasn't skyrocketed. Both Dallas nurses are out of the hospital. The only infected person in the US is this doctor, who didn't catch it from someone in the US.
Well, yeah, most people don't know what any of that smells like. I'm reminded of the Wikipedia article on Saffron, which says it smells like iodoform. Only chemists are going to know what iodoform is, much less what it smells like.
You very clearly didn't see the die exposure article.
The counterfeit chip is in fact WAY more complex. It's not off the shelf, so to speak. They custom-modified. It's obvious once you start looking at the physical silicon.
Oh, Khyber, Khyber... when will stop pretending to know things? It's "off the shelf" in the sense that they didn't have to design anything... they just grabbed an existing microcontroller design and added an extra module or two to it. tibit didn't say that it was cheaper because it's less complex; he said it's cheaper because, "Whoever packages it didn't have to do all the silicon and driver R&D." Just like there are software libraries that a software developer can grab and use without having to do a lot of work, there are hardware libraries that hardware designers can grab and use without having to do a lot of work. You need to do some AES encryption? No need to design that yourself; grab an AES core. You need to do some low-pass digital filtering? Get a filter core. There's even a site that has open-source hardware cores you can use: OpenCores
I found this Wikipedia page with an audio clip of someone pronouncing "ma" using those four tones. Is he pronouncing mother, numb, horse and insult in that order?
Yes
If you break language into four tasks: speaking, listening, reading and writing, then speaking is by far the easiest.
I'd say that depends on what you consider "reading and writing". For Westerners, Mandarin is difficult to speak and listen to because of the tones--it takes a lot of practice for them to pronounce the tones properly, and also a lot of practice to distinguish the tones. Reading and writing is difficult because of the large number of characters that need to be memorized. However, if you're allowed to have computer assistance, reading and writing becomes much easier; I'd say easier than speaking and listening. You can easily look up a word in an online dictionary, and when typing, the IME will present you a list of possible characters, and you choose the one you want. The latter is a huge simplification, since you don't have to remember exactly how to write a character; you just need to have a general idea of what it looks like, and the IME will take care of the details. This is even affecting the current generation of Chinese people... it's not uncommon for even a college-educated person to draw a blank on how to hand-write a character: "Character Amnesia"
Nope, no skyrocketing, and his own fiancee and family, who had the closest contact with him other than healthcare providers, are out of the 21-day window and are confirmed to be Ebola-free. You were wrong :)
So is ESR trying to convert the NetBSD CVS repo in some weird and special way or something, and that's why it failed? Because it has already been converted and is on Github; if he needs info on how it was done, there's probably someone on the tech-repository mailing list that can help. It's been converted to Fossil too.
But last week it was reported that Sgt. Michael Monning contracted ebola while trying to get the quarantine order signed.
No, it says a possible second Ebola victim. He didn't actually have the symptoms of Ebola, but felt sick, and since he had been in Thomas Duncan's apartment, he went to get checked out just in case. But his test for Ebola was negative.