WebDyne - another embedded Perl interpretation. See the examples here. Just a hobby project, but it scratches an itch - and makes active web pages easier for me to make at least..
As has been noted some of these systems work without wireless transmission - by measuring minute differences in tyre rotation speed.
Some work by sending a warning only when the tyre pressure falls below a certain level (28psi generally).
Even the high-end devices that transmit the exact tyre pressure to a central console will not be transmitting continually - smart ones will only transmit either when the pressure changes, or at a fixed polling interval.
So triggering an IED when a particular car drives past ? Not likely - only if you are unlucky enough for one of the sensors to be transmitting at the exact time the car drives past.
Same goes for monitoring movement of an individual car - the chances of the pressure sensor transmitting at the exact time it drives over/past a sensor is pretty remote.
except workstation is expensive and does slightly less
VMWare workstation actually does more than VMWare server, which is why it is not free. You can look up the comparison table on the VMWare site, but Workstation is usually more attractive to developers because it has (amongst other things):
Multiple Snapshots - You can only take and rollback to one snapshot with the Server Product, Workstation allows you to go back to many different points in time.
Shared folders - Not available with Server. Very handy for accessing the host filesystem when the networking setup of the guest does not allow connectivity to the host (think test LAN or similar)
The above features are "cream" on top of the core of virtualisation. If you just want to run a virtualized host, and things like snapshots or shared folders don't matter to you, use VMWare Server.
My understanding is KVM provides the infrastructure for userland programs (such as VMWare, Xen) etc to access hardware virtualization services provided by late model Intel and AMD processors. Asking if KVM is a reasonable alternative to VMWare Server is not really a good way to frame the question - one day VMWare may use KVM for virtualisation. A better questions may be "which user-space virtualisation tool provides the best features for me as a user/developer/admin - Xen, VMWare, WidgetWorks" etc.
From the shameless self-promotion department - if you use LAMP in that configuration (ie the M stands for mod_perl), then take a look at WebDyne which I specifically wrote to make developing with Apache/mod_perl a little easier.
It is YAWF (Yet Another Web Framework) that lets you embed perl into HTML pages. However it also lets you separate code from content by keeping the perl code in packages, and allows you to render "blocks" of HTML in a page depending on your program logic.
If you used to program in Perl, but switched to PHP because it was "easier" to write Web apps then this tool may give you an incentive to change back. If you don't like WebDyne there are plenty of other Perl frameworks, including HTML::Mason, EmbPerl and Gantry.
I think you are hinting at the requirement of VMWare Workstation and Player to "need" a display before they will run a VM.
You can work around this requirement using the X Virtual Frame Buffer (Xvfb). Install Xvfb and the associated xvfb-run script (google it if it is not part of your distro - it comes with Debian but can be downloaded separately).
Your VM will start in a virtual display, and run for as long as that display does. If you use VNC or similar you should be able to connect to both the virtual display and the VM session (theoretically - I have not tried that part of it).
The article says that the caps have "... a letter "X" stamped on the top." They are not stamped with the letter "X" - they are stamped to allow the caps to deform and vent the boiling liquid contents in a predictable manner when it fails. That is why the top of a failing cap bulges and not the sides.
Not that it always works - plenty of caps still just "pop" violently and spew their content across the electronics anyway.
So don't look for a stamped "X", chances are all your caps have them..
I really don't see the problem with Roland's stories being submitted to Slashdot. I actually find the majority of them fairly interesting, and if he did not submit them then I probably would not see them at all.
The vitriolic critism dished out to him seems to be undeserved, or at least hypocritical - many other story submissions are self-serving, not just Roland's.
The objections seem to be that he is making money via ad impressions when Slashdot runs a story. How much can he really be making - $5, $10 extra max ? Big deal - I hardly see that as a lot of money, and probably only offsets bandwidth costs anyway.
Probably the only valid complaint I can see is that some people wish to filter out stories by submitter - sounds like a good idea that would keep everyone happy.
I am not affiliated with Roland, and have never met or communicated with him.. this is just my 2 cents.
<Cthon98> hey, if you type in your pw, it will show as stars
<Cthon98> ********* see!
<AzureDiamond> hunter2
<AzureDiamond> doesnt look like stars to me
<Cthon98> <AzureDiamond> *******
<Cthon98> thats what I see
<AzureDiamond> oh, really?
<Cthon98> Absolutely
<AzureDiamond> you can go hunter2 my hunter2-ing hunter2
<AzureDiamond> haha, does that look funny to you?
<Cthon98> lol, yes. See, when YOU type hunter2, it shows to us as *******
<AzureDiamond> thats neat, I didnt know IRC did that
<Cthon98> yep, no matter how many times you type hunter2, it will show to us as *******
<AzureDiamond> awesome!
<AzureDiamond> wait, how do you know my pw?
<Cthon98> er, I just copy pasted YOUR ******'s and it appears to YOU as hunter2 cause its your pw
<AzureDiamond> oh, ok.
Have a Perl program that uses NTLM to authenticate to an IIS server and download pages ? Prepare for it to break when the IIS server has the above mentioned patch installed, if your app used the CPAN Authen::NTLM module.
See Google thread here for further info, and possible fix.
My biggest hassle is not distributing the patches, it is the fact that they do not become effective until the machine is rebooted. Some people leave their machines on for weeks at a time without rebooting, and until they do so their machine is vulnerable.
Try to force a reboot, then sit back and listen to the whining about "lost an all night experiment" or similar. I am a somewhat a BOFH and would like not to give users a choice, but management wants a softly, softly approach.
So Microsoft, to try and keep both of us happy how about getting patches to at least hook (intercept) the vulnerable system call at install time, acting as a shim to filter out exploits, even if it means slowing the machine down slighty. Then at next reboot time install and activate the fully patched replacement DLL.
There was a documentary on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) TV about two early Australian hackers/crackers, Electron and Phoenix. It was called "Breaking into The Realm".
You can read an article/review about it here in the Melbourne Age. Eugene Spafford was interviewed in the documentary, and was a target of the above-mentioned hackers.
I will use the term hacker from now on, but you can substitute the term cracker if you think it is the more "correct" term.
My recollection of the documentary says that one of the hackers did claim to compromise one of Eugene Spafford's machines, albeit briefly. I cannot recall if Eugene Spafford confirmed this in the interview, but I doubt it (his confirmation, that is).
Whilst it is impossible to verify what was claimed by the hackers the tone in which it was told was not "boastful", and given the other systems that they were convicted of getting into (NASA etc), it does not seem fanciful that they did indeed compromise his machione for a short period of time - which does kind of go against what he claims in the article.
In terms of the documentary, it was excellent viewing. It did not appear sensationalised or biased, and laid out the people and (sometimes) the motives behind some of these early attacks. Recommended viewing, if you can find it.
Having mis-spent my youth employed as a petrol pump jockey for several years, I can state with certainty that no matter how big the PETROL and WATER stickers are, it will only be a matter of time before petrol goes where the water should and vice-versa.
And I am not singling out females here, it could just be as easily be a male. I once saw a guy who had both the radiator and oil caps off (because they were both low) proceed to put *oil* into to radiator. He (almost) immediately realised the mistake, but it was too late to do anything but flush the radiator.
Also hope they have some sort of interlock where only one can open at a time, or what is stopping you accidentally splashing water into the petrol outlet when filling up the washer tank ?
Not that I really care that much, can't really see this taking off..
Instead of building all that complexity into the switch/router, how about an option that allows the switch to send a snmp trap event to a "gatekeeper" machine on the network whenever a port comes live.
The gatekeeper can run all the checks/tests it wants, then allow/disallow the device network access, signifying access allowed/denied via an snmp put to the switch (or some other simple protocol).
During the time between link up and the gatekeeper machine allowing/disallowing access, the switch/router would be configured to only allow comms to certain devices, eg a dhcp server and perhaps (for MS clients) a domain controller etc.
Of course for every complex problem there is one answer that is simple, clear and wrong. This post probably proves that there may be more than one wrong answer to a problem. What happens when a hub is cascaded off a switch for example ?
I am not across the feature set of Cisco switches (my site is managed by EDS - no playing with switches for me), but I would like even the simple functionality of approving/denying access based on MAC address from a central machine. The gatekeeper concept would be the extension to that wish... however feel free to slap me around if a similar feature already exists in Cisco switches.
Yep, We are really original here. Once Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales, Northern Territory and Tasmania were named it must of been pretty close to beer o'clock. You can imagine the conversation:
Pioneer 1: So, we have two states left, one in the South and one in the West. Ideas ?
Pioneer 2: South Australia and Western Australia - now for *^%* sake lets hit the pub.
On the ABC (*Australian* Broadcasting Corporation) tonight was a piece about how Australian scientists may release a gentically engineered virus (possible a world first for this type of release) into the wild.
The virus is a genetically engineered strain of the herpes virus from a mouse, and has been modified to induce an immune reaction in female mice around the egg, causing them to become infertile for around 6 months.
Obviously this virus is targeted at mice only, and is aimed at reducing (if not eliminating) the frequency and severity of mice plagues in Australia.
If successful it would remove the need for the literal tonnes of highly poisinous rodenticides that are now applied around farms, grain silos etc. Not to mention the economic benefit from an increase grain harvest quantity and quality.
The results of an unsuccessful trial are left to the imagination of the reader..
They are now nearly at the stage where a permit is to be applied for that would allow for field trials of this virus.
Of note is that last time similar field trials were undertaken (of a Calaci (sp?) virus) for rabbits, the virus escaped from the control area and rapidly spread across the entire continent. Luckily it appears to have had no adverse affects on native wildlife, although several childen lost pet rabbits to the virus (a vaccine is now available to protect the "Fluffys" of this world).
You can read more about the virus in this transcript from a local Science show.
Should make for interesting debate when/if the permit application becomes reality.
Yes, the securid code is sent over the network in plain text *but* if you try to use a code you just saw (even within the 60 second window) then the server flags that a replay attack has occurred and denies your l33t attempt to gain access to the system.
However the token PIN is the first 4 digits of the code, which you *can* get with a sniffer. Physically steal the token and you have access. You would need to be pretty determined though..
Although you cannot use the handwriting recognition, the unit would make an excellent portable device with the keyboard attachment (which includes a mouse pointer).
I too do not expect much from Open Source handwriting recognition - it is one of those apps that seems to be in the "really hard" class (similar to voice and image recognition) - you need a lot of money, determination and research to present a reasonable product, and even then it is only adopted by a niche market.
Doing it as an Open Source project is even harder. Only a limited number of people understand how to do even basic handwriting recognition, and any advances to the art are usually heavily protected by the companies that invent them. It would be a full time commitment to try and bring even the most basic graffiti like product to fruition.
A quick google search located one potential commercial product for linux
here
, but it does not appear to be available for purchase yet, more a technology demonstration.
However this device + keyboard station + Linux would still make an excellent portable unit.
Depending on the way the pen hardware works, it may "look" to the OS as a standard mouse, so you could still use it as such, just not in conjunction with handwriting recognition.
I had a chance to use the
Compaq TC1000
Tablet PC for about half a day at work. It is easy to dismiss these products if you have not used them (I did), but they do have some fairly innovative features (note that innovative in this context means "new to this form factor of x86/Windows computer" - I am not trying to start a Newton-was-first flame war)
I found the stylus (pen) interface extremely good - the mouse will follow the stylus even if the stylus is not physically touching the screen up to a height of about 1.5 inches. This makes things a lot easier than having to drag the stylus physically across the screen when moving, say, a folder. A single click is acheived by just touching the stylus to the screen for most applications. The stylus on this machine was apparently "active", requiring one AAAA battery - I did not take it apart to verify this, and have no idea how long the battery would last, but it must be a fair while.
The "lazy susan" type keyboard (note: not full docking) station is extremely space efficient, and the key feel is (for me) not too bad for the form factor. The tablet is "smart" enough to know when it has been plugged in to the keyboard base, and rotate the screen from portrait to landscape mode automatically. I was sold - it would be a great setup to take on the road, as it would actually be quite usable in an aircraft, on your lap etc.
Apparently there is a full docking station available (with CD/DVD ROM etc), but we did not have access to it. Under most circumstances, given the inbuilt WLAN interface, the keyboard station would be sufficient.
For those wanting to support Transmeta, this device contains the new 1Ghz Crusoe TM5800 processor. Battery life was claimed "up to five hours", realistically about 3.5-4hr max. Not stunning, but quite good considering the form factor. Speed was not lightning fast, but probably acceptable for most tasks you would envisage for this type of device. ZDNet bagged it in this review, but I did not find it as bad as they make out
I hardly used the digital ink features, so cannot comment on them, but others in my section who tried the journal feature seemed to like it.
When I first saw this device, I pretty much blew it off as a "toy" laptop with a detachable screen, but they really are a bit more than that. After using it for a short while I had to revise my initial hasty opinion, and by the end I did not want to give it back. I would use it in place of a "full" laptop without hesitation.
Naturally for a new product the price is a bit steep for what you get, and since as far as I know no Linux geeks have had a chance to check it out, its Linux readiness is unknown - it is a given that Linux probably cannot support the software augmented hardware features such as the digital ink/journal etc - but even if the device supported a standard linux install with X, and the mouse and wireless card worked, these would be a great portable. workstation.
If I can get my hands on one for a bit longer I will try a Linux install, but will need to be carefult to not blow away the OS if possible - it did not look easy to reinstall the base OS, given the lack of inbuilt CDROM device. Comments from anyone who has tried (even at this early stage) to install Linux are welcome.
Whilst Sun hardware seems to be built to a markedly higher standard than Intel hardware, there are always risks in going it alone. For all those people toutings Sun's "legendary reliability" it would pay to remember the hardware problems they had a couple of years ago with the UltraSparc II, as reported:
here and
here in ComputerWorld.
Whilst towards the end they got their act together, the inital response was the same (perhaps even more dubious) than any other vendor. First, deny any problem exists - then try and cover it up (some customers had to sign non-disclosure agreements about the problem, apparently in return for Sun's commitment to fix it in a timely manner). Lastly, claim that the problem caused "no data loss" and was someone elses fault anyway.
If your Compaq server is giving you problems, in the worst case you can ditch it for another brand, eg Dell. If your Sun hardware has an endemic problem, and all your software is build around Solaris, where do you go ?
This is not a tirade against Sun, in general their hardware is a lot better than most, and Solaris remains one of the benchmarks against which other *nix's are judged. It is just a reminder that even the big boys can have quality control and/or reliability problems.
Similar story, but rougher. I used to work for Memorex, who made IBM 3270 compatible terminals. During a stint in Western Australia, we used to get terminals in for repair that were used in many of the mine sites in that state.
Needless to say they were literally caked inside with various sorts of dirt and dust. Standard procedure was to take the cover off, take the unit outside in the morning and literally hose it out with a big garden hose. As Perth is a very sunny city with many days over 30oC, the terminals would be dry by 5pm.
Take the inside, leave overnight and power up the next day. That "fixed" a good percentage of the devices !
I only enter my email address in web forms when I really have to, and even then I customise it in the following way.. Say I am filling in a form at HP's web site (HP picked for ease of typing only), I use the email address:
myrealaddress+hp@myrealdomain.com
Note the +. Sendmail (and probably other MTA's) will ignore the + part of the address, and still deliver the email to my normal inbox. The advantages:
1.. Really easy filtering into folders. Just look for destination myrealaddress+hp and jam it into the HP folder.
2.. Good tracking of who is selling your address to who. If someone else starts sending to my +hp address, most likely HP sold it on (excluding cases - like messageboards - where it might have been html harvested).
3.. Ease of blocking. If I give up on that email address because of excess spam, I can filter it easily. Or I just just say "exclude all email to this address that does not originate from *.hp.com"
When used with other measures it seems to keep my SPAM down to manageable levels
I have not tried the DXR3 support in Xine, but in mplayer it has an annoying habit of getting out of sync with the video. I have patched my version of mplayer to fix this, but the sync problem seems to depend on the DXR3 board rev - some people have no problems, others (like me) get the problem.
My friends are underwhelmed that I have managed to turn a $2000 PC into a DVD player that does not work quite as well as a $200 dedicated device. However the big advantage of mplayer+ dxr3 is the ability to play *any supported media format* to the TV. DivX included. That is the real win for me - If I could not do that I would have thrown in the towel by now and bought a "real" DVD player.
With this facility I can capture TV broadcasts from a BT878 card, save in the disk space economical DIVX format, then play back at leisure. So I have now turned my $2000 PC into a bad version of a $500 TIVO device ! Actually if I could buy a TIVO I would, except they are not available where I live (Australia).
Konqueror has had keywords since at least KDE 2.2.2. They are an excellent shortcut which I use all them time. For example:
gg:slashdot = search Google for "slashdot" dj:perl segfault = search DejaNews (now Google Groups) for those keywords
They are customisable reasonably easily from the preferences menu, so making your own shortcuts (eg to lookup names in your local on-line phonebook etc) is quite easy.
As another poster has pointed out, Mozilla also has this feature available. When the Mozilla keywords feature is enabled (off by default), you can also do things like type: "goto nike", or "quote msft" in the location bar and Mozilla will "do" those things.
So yes - there are at least a couple of Linux compatible browsers that have the feature you want, and with the bonus of not having to edit arcane regististry entries (Q: Is it "Preferences", or "Preferances" as a registry key ? A: It depends. Thanks MS )
Slashdot Mirror
WebDyne - another embedded Perl interpretation. See the examples here. Just a hobby project, but it scratches an itch - and makes active web pages easier for me to make at least ..
As has been noted some of these systems work without wireless transmission - by measuring minute differences in tyre rotation speed.
Some work by sending a warning only when the tyre pressure falls below a certain level (28psi generally).
Even the high-end devices that transmit the exact tyre pressure to a central console will not be transmitting continually - smart ones will only transmit either when the pressure changes, or at a fixed polling interval.
So triggering an IED when a particular car drives past ? Not likely - only if you are unlucky enough for one of the sensors to be transmitting at the exact time the car drives past.
Same goes for monitoring movement of an individual car - the chances of the pressure sensor transmitting at the exact time it drives over/past a sensor is pretty remote.
VMWare workstation actually does more than VMWare server, which is why it is not free. You can look up the comparison table on the VMWare site, but Workstation is usually more attractive to developers because it has (amongst other things):
- Multiple Snapshots - You can only take and rollback to one snapshot with the Server Product, Workstation allows you to go back to many different points in time.
- Shared folders - Not available with Server. Very handy for accessing the host filesystem when the networking setup of the guest does not allow connectivity to the host (think test LAN or similar)
The above features are "cream" on top of the core of virtualisation. If you just want to run a virtualized host, and things like snapshots or shared folders don't matter to you, use VMWare Server.My understanding is KVM provides the infrastructure for userland programs (such as VMWare, Xen) etc to access hardware virtualization services provided by late model Intel and AMD processors. Asking if KVM is a reasonable alternative to VMWare Server is not really a good way to frame the question - one day VMWare may use KVM for virtualisation. A better questions may be "which user-space virtualisation tool provides the best features for me as a user/developer/admin - Xen, VMWare, WidgetWorks" etc.
It is YAWF (Yet Another Web Framework) that lets you embed perl into HTML pages. However it also lets you separate code from content by keeping the perl code in packages, and allows you to render "blocks" of HTML in a page depending on your program logic.
If you used to program in Perl, but switched to PHP because it was "easier" to write Web apps then this tool may give you an incentive to change back. If you don't like WebDyne there are plenty of other Perl frameworks, including HTML::Mason, EmbPerl and Gantry.
I am genuinely curious what (if any) performance gains I would see by upgrading the video card to one of those mentioned in the article ?
Are these mid/high end card only beneficial when running 3D games or OpenGL apps, or do "Joe Sixpack" users such as myself gain something as well ?
I think you are hinting at the requirement of VMWare Workstation and Player to "need" a display before they will run a VM.
/usr/bin/vmplayer /data/vmware/wxp-cv/winXPPro.vmx
You can work around this requirement using the X Virtual Frame Buffer (Xvfb). Install Xvfb and the associated xvfb-run script (google it if it is not part of your distro - it comes with Debian but can be downloaded separately).
Then run vmplayer/workstation thus:
xvfb-run
Your VM will start in a virtual display, and run for as long as that display does. If you use VNC or similar you should be able to connect to both the virtual display and the VM session (theoretically - I have not tried that part of it).
The article says that the caps have "... a letter "X" stamped on the top." They are not stamped with the letter "X" - they are stamped to allow the caps to deform and vent the boiling liquid contents in a predictable manner when it fails. That is why the top of a failing cap bulges and not the sides.
..
Not that it always works - plenty of caps still just "pop" violently and spew their content across the electronics anyway.
So don't look for a stamped "X", chances are all your caps have them
I really don't see the problem with Roland's stories being submitted to Slashdot. I actually find the majority of them fairly interesting, and if he did not submit them then I probably would not see them at all.
.. this is just my 2 cents.
The vitriolic critism dished out to him seems to be undeserved, or at least hypocritical - many other story submissions are self-serving, not just Roland's.
The objections seem to be that he is making money via ad impressions when Slashdot runs a story. How much can he really be making - $5, $10 extra max ? Big deal - I hardly see that as a lot of money, and probably only offsets bandwidth costs anyway.
Probably the only valid complaint I can see is that some people wish to filter out stories by submitter - sounds like a good idea that would keep everyone happy.
I am not affiliated with Roland, and have never met or communicated with him
How do you modify the registry without logging out the local user? How do you add printers to the machine without logging out the user?
I know you are not really looking for the answer, but it can be done:All without logging out the current user. But I still substantially agree with you, it has a long way to go
See Google thread here for further info, and possible fix.
My biggest hassle is not distributing the patches, it is the fact that they do not become effective until the machine is rebooted. Some people leave their machines on for weeks at a time without rebooting, and until they do so their machine is vulnerable.
Try to force a reboot, then sit back and listen to the whining about "lost an all night experiment" or similar. I am a somewhat a BOFH and would like not to give users a choice, but management wants a softly, softly approach.
So Microsoft, to try and keep both of us happy how about getting patches to at least hook (intercept) the vulnerable system call at install time, acting as a shim to filter out exploits, even if it means slowing the machine down slighty. Then at next reboot time install and activate the fully patched replacement DLL.
You can read an article/review about it here in the Melbourne Age. Eugene Spafford was interviewed in the documentary, and was a target of the above-mentioned hackers.
I will use the term hacker from now on, but you can substitute the term cracker if you think it is the more "correct" term.
My recollection of the documentary says that one of the hackers did claim to compromise one of Eugene Spafford's machines, albeit briefly. I cannot recall if Eugene Spafford confirmed this in the interview, but I doubt it (his confirmation, that is).
Whilst it is impossible to verify what was claimed by the hackers the tone in which it was told was not "boastful", and given the other systems that they were convicted of getting into (NASA etc), it does not seem fanciful that they did indeed compromise his machione for a short period of time - which does kind of go against what he claims in the article.
In terms of the documentary, it was excellent viewing. It did not appear sensationalised or biased, and laid out the people and (sometimes) the motives behind some of these early attacks. Recommended viewing, if you can find it.
Having mis-spent my youth employed as a petrol pump jockey for several years, I can state with certainty that no matter how big the PETROL and WATER stickers are, it will only be a matter of time before petrol goes where the water should and vice-versa.
..
And I am not singling out females here, it could just be as easily be a male. I once saw a guy who had both the radiator and oil caps off (because they were both low) proceed to put *oil* into to radiator. He (almost) immediately realised the mistake, but it was too late to do anything but flush the radiator.
Also hope they have some sort of interlock where only one can open at a time, or what is stopping you accidentally splashing water into the petrol outlet when filling up the washer tank ?
Not that I really care that much, can't really see this taking off
Instead of building all that complexity into the switch/router, how about an option that allows the switch to send a snmp trap event to a "gatekeeper" machine on the network whenever a port comes live.
... however feel free to slap me around if a similar feature already exists in Cisco switches.
The gatekeeper can run all the checks/tests it wants, then allow/disallow the device network access, signifying access allowed/denied via an snmp put to the switch (or some other simple protocol).
During the time between link up and the gatekeeper machine allowing/disallowing access, the switch/router would be configured to only allow comms to certain devices, eg a dhcp server and perhaps (for MS clients) a domain controller etc.
Of course for every complex problem there is one answer that is simple, clear and wrong. This post probably proves that there may be more than one wrong answer to a problem. What happens when a hub is cascaded off a switch for example ?
I am not across the feature set of Cisco switches (my site is managed by EDS - no playing with switches for me), but I would like even the simple functionality of approving/denying access based on MAC address from a central machine. The gatekeeper concept would be the extension to that wish
Yep, We are really original here. Once Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales, Northern Territory and Tasmania were named it must of been pretty close to beer o'clock. You can imagine the conversation:
Pioneer 1: So, we have two states left, one in the South and one in the West. Ideas ?
Pioneer 2: South Australia and Western Australia - now for *^%* sake lets hit the pub.
Pioneer 1: I like it. Lets go.
The virus is a genetically engineered strain of the herpes virus from a mouse, and has been modified to induce an immune reaction in female mice around the egg, causing them to become infertile for around 6 months.
Obviously this virus is targeted at mice only, and is aimed at reducing (if not eliminating) the frequency and severity of mice plagues in Australia.
If successful it would remove the need for the literal tonnes of highly poisinous rodenticides that are now applied around farms, grain silos etc. Not to mention the economic benefit from an increase grain harvest quantity and quality.
The results of an unsuccessful trial are left to the imagination of the reader ..
They are now nearly at the stage where a permit is to be applied for that would allow for field trials of this virus.
Of note is that last time similar field trials were undertaken (of a Calaci (sp?) virus) for rabbits, the virus escaped from the control area and rapidly spread across the entire continent. Luckily it appears to have had no adverse affects on native wildlife, although several childen lost pet rabbits to the virus (a vaccine is now available to protect the "Fluffys" of this world).
You can read more about the virus in this transcript from a local Science show.
Should make for interesting debate when/if the permit application becomes reality.
Yes, the securid code is sent over the network in plain text *but* if you try to use a code you just saw (even within the 60 second window) then the server flags that a replay attack has occurred and denies your l33t attempt to gain access to the system.
..
However the token PIN is the first 4 digits of the code, which you *can* get with a sniffer. Physically steal the token and you have access. You would need to be pretty determined though
I too do not expect much from Open Source handwriting recognition - it is one of those apps that seems to be in the "really hard" class (similar to voice and image recognition) - you need a lot of money, determination and research to present a reasonable product, and even then it is only adopted by a niche market.
Doing it as an Open Source project is even harder. Only a limited number of people understand how to do even basic handwriting recognition, and any advances to the art are usually heavily protected by the companies that invent them. It would be a full time commitment to try and bring even the most basic graffiti like product to fruition.
A quick google search located one potential commercial product for linux here , but it does not appear to be available for purchase yet, more a technology demonstration.
However this device + keyboard station + Linux would still make an excellent portable unit. Depending on the way the pen hardware works, it may "look" to the OS as a standard mouse, so you could still use it as such, just not in conjunction with handwriting recognition.
I found the stylus (pen) interface extremely good - the mouse will follow the stylus even if the stylus is not physically touching the screen up to a height of about 1.5 inches. This makes things a lot easier than having to drag the stylus physically across the screen when moving, say, a folder. A single click is acheived by just touching the stylus to the screen for most applications. The stylus on this machine was apparently "active", requiring one AAAA battery - I did not take it apart to verify this, and have no idea how long the battery would last, but it must be a fair while.
The "lazy susan" type keyboard (note: not full docking) station is extremely space efficient, and the key feel is (for me) not too bad for the form factor. The tablet is "smart" enough to know when it has been plugged in to the keyboard base, and rotate the screen from portrait to landscape mode automatically. I was sold - it would be a great setup to take on the road, as it would actually be quite usable in an aircraft, on your lap etc.
Apparently there is a full docking station available (with CD/DVD ROM etc), but we did not have access to it. Under most circumstances, given the inbuilt WLAN interface, the keyboard station would be sufficient.
For those wanting to support Transmeta, this device contains the new 1Ghz Crusoe TM5800 processor. Battery life was claimed "up to five hours", realistically about 3.5-4hr max. Not stunning, but quite good considering the form factor. Speed was not lightning fast, but probably acceptable for most tasks you would envisage for this type of device. ZDNet bagged it in this review, but I did not find it as bad as they make out
I hardly used the digital ink features, so cannot comment on them, but others in my section who tried the journal feature seemed to like it.
When I first saw this device, I pretty much blew it off as a "toy" laptop with a detachable screen, but they really are a bit more than that. After using it for a short while I had to revise my initial hasty opinion, and by the end I did not want to give it back. I would use it in place of a "full" laptop without hesitation.
Naturally for a new product the price is a bit steep for what you get, and since as far as I know no Linux geeks have had a chance to check it out, its Linux readiness is unknown - it is a given that Linux probably cannot support the software augmented hardware features such as the digital ink/journal etc - but even if the device supported a standard linux install with X, and the mouse and wireless card worked, these would be a great portable. workstation.
If I can get my hands on one for a bit longer I will try a Linux install, but will need to be carefult to not blow away the OS if possible - it did not look easy to reinstall the base OS, given the lack of inbuilt CDROM device. Comments from anyone who has tried (even at this early stage) to install Linux are welcome.
Whilst towards the end they got their act together, the inital response was the same (perhaps even more dubious) than any other vendor. First, deny any problem exists - then try and cover it up (some customers had to sign non-disclosure agreements about the problem, apparently in return for Sun's commitment to fix it in a timely manner). Lastly, claim that the problem caused "no data loss" and was someone elses fault anyway.
If your Compaq server is giving you problems, in the worst case you can ditch it for another brand, eg Dell. If your Sun hardware has an endemic problem, and all your software is build around Solaris, where do you go ?
This is not a tirade against Sun, in general their hardware is a lot better than most, and Solaris remains one of the benchmarks against which other *nix's are judged. It is just a reminder that even the big boys can have quality control and/or reliability problems.
Unless you run a porn site. Then it is "pantybytes" ..
Similar story, but rougher. I used to work for Memorex, who made IBM 3270 compatible terminals. During a stint in Western Australia, we used to get terminals in for repair that were used in many of the mine sites in that state.
Needless to say they were literally caked inside with various sorts of dirt and dust. Standard procedure was to take the cover off, take the unit outside in the morning and literally hose it out with a big garden hose. As Perth is a very sunny city with many days over 30oC, the terminals would be dry by 5pm.
Take the inside, leave overnight and power up the next day. That "fixed" a good percentage of the devices !
I only enter my email address in web forms when I really have to, and even then I customise it in the following way .. Say I am filling in a form at HP's web site (HP picked for ease of typing only), I use the email address:
.. Really easy filtering into folders. Just look for destination myrealaddress+hp and jam it into the HP folder.
.. Good tracking of who is selling your address to who. If someone else starts sending to my +hp address, most likely HP sold it on (excluding cases - like messageboards - where it might have been html harvested).
.. Ease of blocking. If I give up on that email address because of excess spam, I can filter it easily. Or I just just say "exclude all email to this address that does not originate from *.hp.com"
myrealaddress+hp@myrealdomain.com
Note the +. Sendmail (and probably other MTA's) will ignore the + part of the address, and still deliver the email to my normal inbox. The advantages:
1
2
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When used with other measures it seems to keep my SPAM down to manageable levels
I have not tried the DXR3 support in Xine, but in mplayer it has an annoying habit of getting out of sync with the video. I have patched my version of mplayer to fix this, but the sync problem seems to depend on the DXR3 board rev - some people have no problems, others (like me) get the problem.
My friends are underwhelmed that I have managed to turn a $2000 PC into a DVD player that does not work quite as well as a $200 dedicated device. However the big advantage of mplayer+ dxr3 is the ability to play *any supported media format* to the TV. DivX included. That is the real win for me - If I could not do that I would have thrown in the towel by now and bought a "real" DVD player.
With this facility I can capture TV broadcasts from a BT878 card, save in the disk space economical DIVX format, then play back at leisure. So I have now turned my $2000 PC into a bad version of a $500 TIVO device ! Actually if I could buy a TIVO I would, except they are not available where I live (Australia).
Konqueror has had keywords since at least KDE 2.2.2. They are an excellent shortcut which I use all them time. For example:
gg:slashdot = search Google for "slashdot"
dj:perl segfault = search DejaNews (now Google Groups) for those keywords
They are customisable reasonably easily from the preferences menu, so making your own shortcuts (eg to lookup names in your local on-line phonebook etc) is quite easy.
As another poster has pointed out, Mozilla also has this feature available. When the Mozilla keywords feature is enabled (off by default), you can also do things like type: "goto nike", or "quote msft" in the location bar and Mozilla will "do" those things.
So yes - there are at least a couple of Linux compatible browsers that have the feature you want, and with the bonus of not having to edit arcane regististry entries (Q: Is it "Preferences", or "Preferances" as a registry key ? A: It depends. Thanks MS )