When people lean on my car door etc. I don't usually get upset or anything - I just wonder how much dirt they'd get on the back of their trousers;). I'd only get upset if they dent or scratch it (scratch = more likely to rust).
You try lean on a spanking clean shiny just polished expensive car in front of its owner and we'll see how far that gets you.
Re:Peddling booze to students?
on
Reverse Graffiti
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Yeah, coz the UK students appear to start out with a bit more brain cells.
Whether they end up with more or less than the US students remains a matter of debate.
But if the US students drink enough they could end up being the President of the United States of America;).
I may use firefox once things have settled down a bit. As you say things have improved greatly. I'll wait for some more great improvements;). Are the same coders who coded the old Netscape writing firefox? The fact that Mozilla originally targeted bloat (yeah they called it something else, but whatever) was not a good sign to me.
Meanwhile since I use windows for desktop stuff and have to put up with risks of IE anyway, I've got it locked down pretty much - most IE exploits are unlikely to work on my setup - I've got IE running as a different and more restricted user account from my main user (nonadmin) account, and the My Computer zone has reasonably secure settings. Downloads would naturally have to be to a location that my main user account can access.
Even if I use firefox I'd probably still run it as a different user in a similar manner. Netscape really wasn't significantly more secure than IE, just less popular.
"Or you can simply download and install Mozilla. Much simpler and safer."
Coz if you use windows, you are likely to use windows explorer or anything similar, you may also use 3rd party software that use MS stuff to display things.
Switch to Linux Desktop? In many places not using windows is not an option especially since Linux Desktop is still not ready.
1) OpenOffice is good, but it ain't that good. MS Office doesn't run on Linux the last I checked.
2) Mozilla was a real resource HOG the last I checked. Bloatware. StarOffice was bloatware too - a bit more bloat than MS Office, but less features (OK no clippy/doggie = good ). I doubt OpenOffice is less bloaty than StarOffice.
3) Linux GUI ppl still can't get simple stuff like copy and paste right. Just do it the Mac OSX way OK? Assume there is zero Unix/Linux Desktop , throw everything out (and just have a "compatibility/legacy desktop" for those who just must have it). Coz it isn't really such a big loss chucking away the crap people are pushing as Linux Desktop. Too many silly people be fixated on "Themes" etc -similar to those who play games for the graphics and sound and not the gameplay. You are less likely to get significant network effects/installed base from such people coz they'd switch to the next "gee whiz" thing as it hits CVS or whatever.
4) Gnome is bloatware. And for the bloat, people who use it seem to have to resort to gconf rather often - you'd think with the bloat would come gui equivalents.
5) KDE is doesn't appear as bloaty as gnome, but it's not really that much better bloatwise. I do prefer it to Gnome, but I suppose I'm biased or something.
Quotes: "Half of the population isn't having input into what's being created... And the one thing that I learned is that people make games they like to play. Having a diverse opinion helps games"
Contrast with: "Digital Praise Takes Up Christian Gaming Cause" (that's this story) Quotes: "those smug, fundamentalistic Christian types never seem to change"
Read the various comments on both articles.
Sure they're not about the same thing. But it sure is enlightening if you really think about it.
What's wrong with having a single point of failure in itself? IMO one should ask whether it is acceptable to have a particular thing as a single point of failure or not.
People hype the benefits of centralized management all the time. Not much better than "single point of failure" if you really think about it. One system administrator = "single point of failure", many admins = multiple points of failure.
We're all living in on Planet Earth. The odds of a catastrophic astronomical event in our lifetimes is not negligible.
Change Flags from 0x21 to 0x01 to make it visible.
Once you do that you can more easily change the security settings for the My Computer zone.
You could also add your own custom zone, but if you have to ask me how to do it, you shouldn't.
Note that while disabling javascript and stuff in the My Computer zone protects you from numerous IE exploits[1], the web style windows explorer and other stuff require active scripting and other stuff to be enabled. So you would have to switch to the classic style. I don't see what benefits the web style has - other than make monitor/LCD vendors happy - it takes up more screen space.
[1] many attacks involve cross zone exploits with the aim of running the exploit in the My Computer zone which has lower security levels by default - raising the security levels e.g. requiring prompts before active-X stuff is run, disabling active scripting (I see very little need for scripts to be enabled on locally stored HTML pages, heck I see very little need for most websites to use javascript).
Hmm. But AFAIK in Linux total system memory = real mem + swap. In which case there could be probs right?
For some other O/S total system mem = swap size. In these O/S the swap has to be larger than RAM to work and be useful. And in these O/S you could more easily do hibernation the way you mention.
Just do a search of errata and the cpu you're interested in.
Most people won't encounter these bugs because the CPU makers would have tested the CPUs on a superset of what most people do. And nowadays most people don't write new code and of the code that people write, most of it is actually written by compilers, so genuinely novel machine code could be quite rare.
Thus it would be pretty poor QA to release something with a bug that prevents _boot_up_ in a significant percentage of cases. While most people may not do some rare computer operation followed by some weird stuff that doesn't do anything really useful 99.999% of the time, most people do have to _boot_ their PCs at least once in a while.
Maybe the issue did not show up on Intel's reference boards and only shows up on some 3rd party boards. If it actually showed up on Intel's boards then it is a very bad sign.
So far Intel and AMD's x86 CPUs have been pretty OK in my experience. Sun's UltraSPARC IIs were/are crap tho - 2nd lev cache probs.
It's similar but not really swap tho. Something like that might work - but may need a lot fancier cooperation from the O/S. If you want to use your bloaty app right after you resume you'd still have to wait for it.
But the main problem still remains - drives aren't that fast - the drive speed improvements haven't been as impressive as the improvements in almost everywhere else - CPU, RAM, drive capacity etc.
Hibernation = very quick boot? That depends on how much memory you have doesn't it?
Speed of typical single 7200 rpm drive = 50MB/sec.
Assuming the typical naive resume: RAM = 512MB, resume from disk = 10 seconds. RAM = 1GB, resume from disk = 20 seconds RAM = 2GB, resume from disk = 40 seconds.
A non naive resume would involve rapid compresion of the contents of memory and streaming the results to disk + checksum (you'd still have to allocate space for worst case scenario), but I haven't seen anyone do this yet. And you need a pretty fast compression routine- coz some CPUs can't even do 30MB/sec with the typical LZ style compression.
Unless I misunderstand the research PDF/paper, to judge the initial set of spam + ham as spam or ham, the person sifted through what was already sifted through by _Spam_Assassin_ into ham and spam. So this is likely to bias things towards spam assassin.
Whereas if X sifted through all the thousands of messages manually then the bias would be to X's uninfluenced standards, which arguably could be still useful - then at least we'd see which antispam solution is more suitable to X.
A more thorough but tedious approach would be the initial classification of spam/ham by a team of humans - each going through _all_ the messages without any skipping, with discrepancies being resolved by the team.
Legend has it when he was a baby he killed two snakes one in each hand.
Babies already have quite a decent grip strength, and often if you put something in their hand, they'll grip it almost automatically. I wonder whether what this kid's grip strength was like when he was born.
Enough to kill a small snake? I doubt it takes much to kill a small snake, and looking at his muscles, could just be enough.
Zdziarski claims Cormack mainly used Spamassassin to classify the corpus into the ham and spam groups.
If this is true then to me this is a critical flaw in Cormack's methodology.
Not saying there are, or aren't other flaws. But this to me is the main one to consider. Zdziarski should have just put this at the top of his response, instead of putting a lot of waffle about stuff that does "not appear to have been a problem with Cormack's tests".
There's some prior art for data transmission: http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/user/ pan/pan.html
Where MS patent is different is they claim to do _power_ transmission as well.
I wonder about a Mr Tesla...
That said, I'm personally not comfortable with the idea of transmitting significant amounts of electrical power through my body- even low level power. Not sure what the side effects would be.
Already there are some studies that indicate that electromagnetic fields do affect the body AND brain.
Hey it's not like men wouldn't be useful in those fields. It's probably easier for male nurses to develop upper body strength - which helps when you need to move/shift bedridden incapacitated patients - to avoid bedsores, etc.
So where's the push to even out the gender imbalances in those areas?
The barriers to _entry_ for programming/software development aren't high. PCs are cheap. Internet connections are cheap. Info about programming is paid for (internet). Write a game/program, stick it on the net and if people think it's good enough they may even pay you for it. Heck contribute to an opensource project while you're at it.
There's nothing really stopping girls/women from taking up programming except themselves.
If they are so easily discouraged (parents/peers/teachers) from programming, then it's VERY LIKELY that programming is NOT the field they should be in. Try something else, for everyone's sake. Please. Really. We need better programmers, not more.
A common complaint is lack of _women_ role models. A good programmer is someone who writes great programs. If anyone is still thinking gender then they're not getting it.
By all means give people opportunities, but if they aren't interested, there are millions of other things they can do. If they think they have better things to do, then for everybody's sake let them do it.
I think MWI has some good points, but not quantum suicide.
Believing "you won't die if your death depends on a quantum measurement" seems quite farfetched. It could be in the resulting infinite Many Worlds, you are 100% dead, and there's no other possible result.
If you block off BOTH light slits, there ain't gonna be light and dark stripes, it's just going to be pretty dark. You better hope there's a universe where you didn't decide to try blocking off both light slits;).
Slashdot Mirror
"Yes or no. If no, then fine, we need to get a permit system"
Nah, we need less laws and more reasonable people.
It doesn't have to be a yes or no. There are other useful responses.
One could always add a "... sucks!".
;). I'd only get upset if they dent or scratch it (scratch = more likely to rust).
When people lean on my car door etc. I don't usually get upset or anything - I just wonder how much dirt they'd get on the back of their trousers
You try lean on a spanking clean shiny just polished expensive car in front of its owner and we'll see how far that gets you.
Yeah, coz the UK students appear to start out with a bit more brain cells.
;).
Whether they end up with more or less than the US students remains a matter of debate.
But if the US students drink enough they could end up being the President of the United States of America
I may use firefox once things have settled down a bit. As you say things have improved greatly. I'll wait for some more great improvements ;). Are the same coders who coded the old Netscape writing firefox? The fact that Mozilla originally targeted bloat (yeah they called it something else, but whatever) was not a good sign to me.
Meanwhile since I use windows for desktop stuff and have to put up with risks of IE anyway, I've got it locked down pretty much - most IE exploits are unlikely to work on my setup - I've got IE running as a different and more restricted user account from my main user (nonadmin) account, and the My Computer zone has reasonably secure settings. Downloads would naturally have to be to a location that my main user account can access.
Even if I use firefox I'd probably still run it as a different user in a similar manner. Netscape really wasn't significantly more secure than IE, just less popular.
One system administrator = "single point of failure", many admins = multiple points of failure :).
:).
[1]# rm -rf / opt/stufftouninstall
"Oops!"
No matter what you still have to trust something/someone in the end. The entity you HAVE to trust is the entity that can break policy/things.
[1] Sure there'd be backups, but it's still gonna hurt a fair bit
Not a windows guru.
But: try google.
search= site:microsoft.com registry internet explorer security zones
search= site:microsoft.com securing windows
Some of the info may be a bit inaccurate, so you'll have to test things out first.
"Or you can simply download and install Mozilla. Much simpler and safer."
Coz if you use windows, you are likely to use windows explorer or anything similar, you may also use 3rd party software that use MS stuff to display things.
Switch to Linux Desktop? In many places not using windows is not an option especially since Linux Desktop is still not ready.
1) OpenOffice is good, but it ain't that good. MS Office doesn't run on Linux the last I checked.
2) Mozilla was a real resource HOG the last I checked. Bloatware. StarOffice was bloatware too - a bit more bloat than MS Office, but less features (OK no clippy/doggie = good ). I doubt OpenOffice is less bloaty than StarOffice.
3) Linux GUI ppl still can't get simple stuff like copy and paste right. Just do it the Mac OSX way OK? Assume there is zero Unix/Linux Desktop , throw everything out (and just have a "compatibility/legacy desktop" for those who just must have it). Coz it isn't really such a big loss chucking away the crap people are pushing as Linux Desktop. Too many silly people be fixated on "Themes" etc -similar to those who play games for the graphics and sound and not the gameplay. You are less likely to get significant network effects/installed base from such people coz they'd switch to the next "gee whiz" thing as it hits CVS or whatever.
4) Gnome is bloatware. And for the bloat, people who use it seem to have to resort to gconf rather often - you'd think with the bloat would come gui equivalents.
5) KDE is doesn't appear as bloaty as gnome, but it's not really that much better bloatwise. I do prefer it to Gnome, but I suppose I'm biased or something.
Compare a previous rather similar Slashdot story:
Recruit More Women Developers, Attract Women Gamers?
Quotes: "Half of the population isn't having input into what's being created... And the one thing that I learned is that people make games they like to play. Having a diverse opinion helps games"
Contrast with: "Digital Praise Takes Up Christian Gaming Cause" (that's this story)
Quotes: "those smug, fundamentalistic Christian types never seem to change"
Read the various comments on both articles.
Sure they're not about the same thing. But it sure is enlightening if you really think about it.
What's wrong with having a single point of failure in itself? IMO one should ask whether it is acceptable to have a particular thing as a single point of failure or not.
People hype the benefits of centralized management all the time. Not much better than "single point of failure" if you really think about it. One system administrator = "single point of failure", many admins = multiple points of failure.
We're all living in on Planet Earth. The odds of a catastrophic astronomical event in our lifetimes is not negligible.
And while you are at it you may wish to change the security settings for your "My Computer" zone.
u rr entVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\0
Read this:
Description of Internet Explorer security zones registry entries
Then edit the relevant key (if you don't know how, then you should just switch to using a different O/S or browser):
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\C
Change Flags from 0x21 to 0x01 to make it visible.
Once you do that you can more easily change the security settings for the My Computer zone.
You could also add your own custom zone, but if you have to ask me how to do it, you shouldn't.
Note that while disabling javascript and stuff in the My Computer zone protects you from numerous IE exploits[1], the web style windows explorer and other stuff require active scripting and other stuff to be enabled. So you would have to switch to the classic style. I don't see what benefits the web style has - other than make monitor/LCD vendors happy - it takes up more screen space.
[1] many attacks involve cross zone exploits with the aim of running the exploit in the My Computer zone which has lower security levels by default - raising the security levels e.g. requiring prompts before active-X stuff is run, disabling active scripting (I see very little need for scripts to be enabled on locally stored HTML pages, heck I see very little need for most websites to use javascript).
Try this Darwin Award nominee.
Wrong time, wrong place, wrong everything...
Hmm. But AFAIK in Linux total system memory = real mem + swap. In which case there could be probs right?
For some other O/S total system mem = swap size. In these O/S the swap has to be larger than RAM to work and be useful. And in these O/S you could more easily do hibernation the way you mention.
All the modern x86 CPUs I know of have bugs. It's a matter of how serious they are and whether you can fix them without a recall.
See: Prescott bugs
Itanium bugs
Opteron bugs
Just do a search of errata and the cpu you're interested in.
Most people won't encounter these bugs because the CPU makers would have tested the CPUs on a superset of what most people do. And nowadays most people don't write new code and of the code that people write, most of it is actually written by compilers, so genuinely novel machine code could be quite rare.
Thus it would be pretty poor QA to release something with a bug that prevents _boot_up_ in a significant percentage of cases. While most people may not do some rare computer operation followed by some weird stuff that doesn't do anything really useful 99.999% of the time, most people do have to _boot_ their PCs at least once in a while.
Maybe the issue did not show up on Intel's reference boards and only shows up on some 3rd party boards. If it actually showed up on Intel's boards then it is a very bad sign.
So far Intel and AMD's x86 CPUs have been pretty OK in my experience. Sun's UltraSPARC IIs were/are crap tho - 2nd lev cache probs.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
It's similar but not really swap tho. Something like that might work - but may need a lot fancier cooperation from the O/S. If you want to use your bloaty app right after you resume you'd still have to wait for it.
But the main problem still remains - drives aren't that fast - the drive speed improvements haven't been as impressive as the improvements in almost everywhere else - CPU, RAM, drive capacity etc.
I think a lot of people have been trolled by the story.
Hmm, slashdot's filters are pretty annoying too. I have to type slower in order to post successfully. Gack.
Hibernation = very quick boot? That depends on how much memory you have doesn't it?
Speed of typical single 7200 rpm drive = 50MB/sec.
Assuming the typical naive resume:
RAM = 512MB, resume from disk = 10 seconds.
RAM = 1GB, resume from disk = 20 seconds
RAM = 2GB, resume from disk = 40 seconds.
A non naive resume would involve rapid compresion of the contents of memory and streaming the results to disk + checksum (you'd still have to allocate space for worst case scenario), but I haven't seen anyone do this yet. And you need a pretty fast compression routine- coz some CPUs can't even do 30MB/sec with the typical LZ style compression.
Unless I misunderstand the research PDF/paper, to judge the initial set of spam + ham as spam or ham, the person sifted through what was already sifted through by _Spam_Assassin_ into ham and spam. So this is likely to bias things towards spam assassin.
Whereas if X sifted through all the thousands of messages manually then the bias would be to X's uninfluenced standards, which arguably could be still useful - then at least we'd see which antispam solution is more suitable to X.
A more thorough but tedious approach would be the initial classification of spam/ham by a team of humans - each going through _all_ the messages without any skipping, with discrepancies being resolved by the team.
Heh, I wonder if his mom breastfed...
Legend has it when he was a baby he killed two snakes one in each hand.
Babies already have quite a decent grip strength, and often if you put something in their hand, they'll grip it almost automatically. I wonder whether what this kid's grip strength was like when he was born.
Enough to kill a small snake? I doubt it takes much to kill a small snake, and looking at his muscles, could just be enough.
Zdziarski claims Cormack mainly used Spamassassin to classify the corpus into the ham and spam groups.
If this is true then to me this is a critical flaw in Cormack's methodology.
Not saying there are, or aren't other flaws. But this to me is the main one to consider. Zdziarski should have just put this at the top of his response, instead of putting a lot of waffle about stuff that does "not appear to have been a problem with Cormack's tests".
There's some prior art for data transmission:/ pan/pan.html
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/user
Where MS patent is different is they claim to do _power_ transmission as well.
I wonder about a Mr Tesla...
That said, I'm personally not comfortable with the idea of transmitting significant amounts of electrical power through my body- even low level power. Not sure what the side effects would be.
Already there are some studies that indicate that electromagnetic fields do affect the body AND brain.
As kindergarten teachers or nurses?
Most aren't interested? Wow what a concept eh?
Hey it's not like men wouldn't be useful in those fields. It's probably easier for male nurses to develop upper body strength - which helps when you need to move/shift bedridden incapacitated patients - to avoid bedsores, etc.
So where's the push to even out the gender imbalances in those areas?
The barriers to _entry_ for programming/software development aren't high. PCs are cheap. Internet connections are cheap. Info about programming is paid for (internet). Write a game/program, stick it on the net and if people think it's good enough they may even pay you for it. Heck contribute to an opensource project while you're at it.
There's nothing really stopping girls/women from taking up programming except themselves.
If they are so easily discouraged (parents/peers/teachers) from programming, then it's VERY LIKELY that programming is NOT the field they should be in. Try something else, for everyone's sake. Please. Really. We need better programmers, not more.
A common complaint is lack of _women_ role models. A good programmer is someone who writes great programs. If anyone is still thinking gender then they're not getting it.
By all means give people opportunities, but if they aren't interested, there are millions of other things they can do. If they think they have better things to do, then for everybody's sake let them do it.
Sims is a super expandable doll house with moving dolls!
Seriously tho, AFAIK the killer computer app for most females I know is chat/instant messaging. That's what they seem to really like.
Guys? They seem to have a lot of fun playing "kill each other".
I think MWI has some good points, but not quantum suicide.
;).
Believing "you won't die if your death depends on a quantum measurement" seems quite farfetched. It could be in the resulting infinite Many Worlds, you are 100% dead, and there's no other possible result.
If you block off BOTH light slits, there ain't gonna be light and dark stripes, it's just going to be pretty dark. You better hope there's a universe where you didn't decide to try blocking off both light slits
IANAQP.