Having just returned from climbing Mt. Everest, I can attest that my MacBook Air (2011 model) worked perfectly fine at base-camp, which at 5400 metres, is over 17,700 feet. They are simply certified as working to 10,000 feet as most users are unlikely to go any higher. As it is, I suspect that this is a redundant limitation as it only really applies to computers with HD's - the lower air pressure at higher altitudes causes the disk heads to crash (they rely on air to float above the spinning disk platter) whereas this obviously doesn't apply for an SSD.
Can't believe no one has mentioned these books yet. Engineering Mathematics by K. A. Stroud was the book that got me through my maths course for my (Electronics & Computing) degree. It's probably got more of a UK bias, seeing as there are hardly any reviews on amazon.com, but more on amazon.co.uk. Links here:
(I'll re-post this as I couldn't spot the link on their site.)
Thats not true. The MCPS-PRS Alliance is a non-profit organisation whose sole purpose is to collect royalties on behalf of artists. I know this because my girlfriend works for them. If you read their About Us page you'd know this too.
Thats not true. The MCPS-PRS Alliance is a non-profit organisation whose sole purpose is to collect royalties on behalf of artists. I know this because my girlfriend works for them.
That's big - but if you are into large engines/pistons (and are in the area) then go to the Kew Bridge Steam Museum - they have two of the largest beam engines in the world (90" and 100") - the 90" still works and is started up on special occasions.
So what? If an existing customer/needs/ floppy support or serial port support they have a very simple option: Don't buy a new PC. Let's face it, they only reason you buy a PC these days is to run the 'latest and greatest' - legacy applications, by definition, are not this, so there is no need to update the hardware.
One thing that seems to have been overlooked in all of the hoo-ha about the new Intel machines is that there is a new iPod Radio Remote that acts as both a replacement for the old iPod remote, and adds radio functionality!
Pfft. I currently use eclipse at work - our code base is split across 24 projects and there are 57,658 files and it is not slow. (My workstation is similar to yours - 2.2Ghz CPU/1Gb RAM)
One of the best things you can do is to increase the available RAM to eclipse on startup by passing arguments onto the VM (-Xms512M -Xmx1024M) I can't remember the exact way to do this as I use eclipselauncher.
If you are writing a software key logger then you would simply write a small program that would 'install' what is called a 'windows hook' to 'hook' into the event stack of the OS. I've written one in the past that was launched via a (signed) java application (the overhead of all the JNI stuff and hidden message windows (to get past thread boundaries between windows/jni) would make me posting a code example confusing - I don't want to post a slimmed down example as it would probably be wrong and I'd be modded to oblivion!)
Of course, the real trick is not writing the code, but in getting it onto the target machine and getting the user to somehow run it, not forgetting the really hard part of getting the keystroke log off the machine (assuming it is stored locally) and analyzing it!
As someone who worked up from a green badge to management level at McDonalds I can also attest to having spent a fair amount in the restaurant business too! (For the record I've also done a stint at Burger King.) I can hazard a guess that the actual conditions and how you are treated vary from store to store and region to region. I certainly never treated anyone (when a manager) with less respect than that which I would have liked to receive.
However, that period of my life is now almost 10 years ago (and in the UK) so it is possible that things have changed over that time. Historically, McDonalds was 'a good' company to work for as a manager, as it was expanding aggressively and you could get trained and promoted quickly. However, as the company is contracting in size due to falling market share it is less able to attract and keep good managers, hence it is probably on a permanent downward spiral to be recorded as a footnote in the history of fast food restaurateurs.
Actually, w.r.t. working conditions at fast food restaurants you will find that they are the same as for any other catering establishment. If you've ever watched any cooking shows involving life in a celebrity chef's restaurant you'll notice the same thing - hot sweaty working conditions, employees shouting at you (esp. the chef), unsociable hours, and a general malaise at being but a small, insignificant, cog in the front line of the catering industry. McDonalds has a high turnover because of all these factors, plus they are the primary employers of students and school leavers. Once those people have found a 'real' job they move on. So in that respect you can say that McDonalds provides a very good social service by being the stepping stone for many people into the ranks of employment.
The problem with having an air breathing engine is that it is 'dead-weight' once the rocket engine is in use. However, it is possible to design a single engine that is both air breathable and can then be used as a conventional rocket engine.
Such a thing has already been designed - it was for a failed UK project called HOTOL. The british government of the day (in their infinite wisdom) decided that the engine design was a military secret and thus classified it. I believe the engine designer worked for Rolls-Royce and was not too happy about it, if I remember correctly!
Our glorious government was also responsible for classifying public-key cryptography when it was discovered - some 5-10 years before it was (re-)discovered by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman.
Where I used to work we used to call VSS 'Visual Sourceunsafe'. We would always get database corruptions - and you know why? because the damn thing is based on netbios. This means that anyone browsing the network drive via Windoze Explorer can accidentally trash the source repository, by inadvertantly dragging and dropping a folder to the wrong place. (Which is a very easy thing to do with explorer).
1. Using HTTP and (may all the little gods defend us) XML to shuttle data between application components is so fundamentally brain-dead, I'm suprised anyone's even taking it seriously.
I couldn't agree more - the only people to benefit are Cisco ('cos we will all need faster networks and routers) and Intel ('cos XML is processor intensive to parse). No wonder these two are keepting schtum and not jumping on the bandwagon and saying how wonderful it is - they know this too.
The only problem is, is that no one is going to fix CORBA, so we will be stuck with the new slower technology. What we really need is for one of the big CORBA vendors, like Iona, to re-market CORBA, as it is perfectly capable of providing the equivalent of web services, its just that no-one is thinking 'out of the box'.
The interesting thing about these so called copy-protection schemes is that all they do is piss off consumers - professional pirates already have specialised equipment for doing 'bit-by-bit' copies - mucking with the audio data, or the control data is going to do squat.
In any case, unless it is a HUGE amount of bum data that they are putting on the disc, it should'nt damage the hi-fi - CD players are designed to check the data words they read and interpolate if a data word is way off wack from the data words either side of the bad word. (Trust me, I used to work for a Hi-Fi company that makes decent stuff: Meridian Audio)
For them to put so much bad data on a disc is grossly irresponsible, as it is poorer people that will suffer the most, as it is cheaper CD players that are likely to not have over designed error correction circuitry like the high end players.
It's kind of funny - when I went to Cape Canaveral last year I asked a whole bunch of questions regarding language and whether the design and construction (of modules) had common elements. The lady said that they did, but somehow I now don't believe her... Lets face it, the different shaped air filters on appollo was a major cock-up - any they still don't appear to have solved it. Can you imagine having to rip some bits off one module to fix a critical component on another - only to find the manual in swahili and the connectors to be a funny shape. Cripes, all that money, and the same mistakes are being made...
Yep, sounds crazy, but hear me out. Suppliers of media would like to prevent un-authorized copying. Users of media (especially their own) want to be able to distribute their media. To me the solution (certainly in the digital realm) is for PGP to be used to create copies of whatever it is that a consumer wants. For example:
Consumer goes to a store/web site (from here on referred to as the supplier) and say 'here is my PGP public key' - the supplier then uses their (private) key and your key to create your own personal copy of whatever it is that you bought(CD/DVD/book/whatever).
From here on in, only you can hear/watch/read whatever it is you bought and you are not able to gain access to the un-encrypted data because this is handled in hardware. This meets the needs of the supplier as only the consumer can use that media.
Consumer records their wedding on digital tape and wants to give copies to the guests. Each guest that wants a copy has to give their public key to the consumer, and runs off a copy as needed.
Naturally, I'm glossing over the details, and some problems can be spotted immeadiately. For example, a pirate may give out their private key so that any old joe can use the media. The only rational solution to this is that private keys must be hard wired into a chip that is on the PGP encoding/decoding hardware built into the media player/computer, or stored in someother format that isn't easily distributed (on an https webserver?). Another problem (perhaps) is whether a user has a public key for each media player or just one single public/private key. The problem with the hardwired approach is that you can't take the media to a friends house and use it there. Perhaps it'd be nice to have a smartcard/CD with the public key on it - and then automatically download the private key to their friends media player for the duration that the smartcard is plugged into it. (yes, I know there are security risks inherant in that - maybe the media should just be streamed to the friends house?) Another problem is if a suppliers key is compromised - what does the supplier do? Re-issue the content to all of their registered users with a new key? If a consumers key is compromised, what do they do? Reflash a new private key to their hardware? What about their existing media? Do they have to get new copies of that or would it be handled automatically? (Potentially possible, if every household has a sealed 'black box' in their basement that is their 'media-server'.)
I agree that these are crazy suggestions, but if you cancel out all other solutions to this problem, then only one, no matter how crazy, is the answer.
Everybody connected to the web surely must be connected via a subnet, so even if the DDOS attack is from many subnets there will also be many legitimate requests from those subnets - hence bandwidth will be reduced to each of those subnets. I agree this isn't ideal, but then people will insist on being anarchists and try to bring 'the system' down (whatever that is).....
Yep, I agree on that, but as most people know, (well,/.'ers at least) not everything on the web is dynamic. I beleive Amazon et al, all cache their dynamic pages on a periodical basis so that what appears to be dynamic is actually a static page. Obviously this is going to work with all sites - but it was the big commercial sites that were targetted....
Forgive my naivety, but surely one way of reducing the bandwidth problems on the web and I guess DOS attacks is to use broadcast IP packets from the webserver. I guess the webserver would have to cache all incoming page requests and (periodically) see which hosts are requesting which page, and then it would then send a single set of broadcast packets containing the page data to all machines that requested it (and then purge its cache). If a D/DOS attack is under way, surely the page will only be transmitted once (so to speak) Am I talking rubbish, or does this suggestion hold some water??
just to let you know, there's also traditional VCR's that are able to stop taping once a commercial comes on, and pick up once the programming starts again. ...yeah but that feature is reliant on the broadcaster/program maker actually providing it. The way that it works is by detecting a 'signal' in the same manner that teletext works (ie transmitting the information to stop/start recording in the vertical blanking interval of the signal) - if you are a broadcaster reliant on advertising income, are you going to go out of your way to transmit this signal? Hum, thought not.
The points about the DMCA were well made...
on
Perens on Patents
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...one of the things that I hadn't realized was that this could lead to having 'encrypted web pages'. Where would this leave Mozilla? Would it be illegal to have a browser that did not allow the features mentioned? (For those that didn't read the article: Print button disabling & HTML source encryption) Obviously, you could do a build that worked around these features - but, so what? Everyone else, with their AOL-ised Mozilla, won't notice nor care. Ok, you could say that 'those web sites that insist on content protection simply won't get the same hit count as those that don't'. But is that really true? If IE and AOL-zilla support the features mentioned, those of us with a 'self rolled' browser would be in the minority. This is a pretty serious implication - it's almost as if you buy a book but have to wear 'special' de-cryption glasses to read it. Scary.
This link is pretty interesting, considering that it is nearly 3 years old. Anyone know who Luciano Aprilia is and what happened to his GPL source release?
...look at the copyright notices of most media and you'll find that it is illegal to copy/store whatever it is (book/CD/Cassette/DVD/etc. etc) to/in another medium.
This is outright theivery on the part of the copyright holders. Why should I have to pay to buy an album on CD AND on Cassette AND on Vinyl (or whatever other medium) to remain 'legal'. Surely I should be able to buy the RIGHT to listen/read to something just ONCE and then I can do with it what I will. If I want to copy a book (well, part of!) so I can read it on my Palm Pilot I should be able to and not feel guilty for breaking the law. If I've bought an album on CD I should be able to copy it to Cassette/MP3 legally also. Until the laws are changed so that this is a possibility, then we will have these arguments for every 'new' format that threatens this monopoly, which is exactly what it is.
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Having just returned from climbing Mt. Everest, I can attest that my MacBook Air (2011 model) worked perfectly fine at base-camp, which at 5400 metres, is over 17,700 feet. They are simply certified as working to 10,000 feet as most users are unlikely to go any higher. As it is, I suspect that this is a redundant limitation as it only really applies to computers with HD's - the lower air pressure at higher altitudes causes the disk heads to crash (they rely on air to float above the spinning disk platter) whereas this obviously doesn't apply for an SSD.
Can't believe no one has mentioned these books yet. Engineering Mathematics by K. A. Stroud was the book that got me through my maths course for my (Electronics & Computing) degree. It's probably got more of a UK bias, seeing as there are hardly any reviews on amazon.com, but more on amazon.co.uk. Links here:
http://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Mathematics-K-Stroud/dp/0831133279/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-7700355-0295828?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192519415&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Engineering-Mathematics-6th-K-Stroud/dp/1403942463/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/026-6301190-6658802?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192519745&sr=8-1
It's also worth getting his second book, Further Engineering Mathematics.
(I'll re-post this as I couldn't spot the link on their site.)
Thats not true. The MCPS-PRS Alliance is a non-profit organisation whose sole purpose is to collect royalties on behalf of artists. I know this because my girlfriend works for them. If you read their About Us page you'd know this too.
Thats not true. The MCPS-PRS Alliance is a non-profit organisation whose sole purpose is to collect royalties on behalf of artists. I know this because my girlfriend works for them.
That's big - but if you are into large engines/pistons (and are in the area) then go to the Kew Bridge Steam Museum - they have two of the largest beam engines in the world (90" and 100") - the 90" still works and is started up on special occasions.
Apple Insider (no, I am not affiliated with them) has a better summary here.
So what? If an existing customer /needs/ floppy support or serial port support they have a very simple option: Don't buy a new PC. Let's face it, they only reason you buy a PC these days is to run the 'latest and greatest' - legacy applications, by definition, are not this, so there is no need to update the hardware.
One thing that seems to have been overlooked in all of the hoo-ha about the new Intel machines is that there is a new iPod Radio Remote that acts as both a replacement for the old iPod remote, and adds radio functionality!
Pfft. I currently use eclipse at work - our code base is split across 24 projects and there are 57,658 files and it is not slow. (My workstation is similar to yours - 2.2Ghz CPU/1Gb RAM)
One of the best things you can do is to increase the available RAM to eclipse on startup by passing arguments onto the VM (-Xms512M -Xmx1024M) I can't remember the exact way to do this as I use eclipselauncher.
If you are writing a software key logger then you would simply write a small program that would 'install' what is called a 'windows hook' to 'hook' into the event stack of the OS. I've written one in the past that was launched via a (signed) java application (the overhead of all the JNI stuff and hidden message windows (to get past thread boundaries between windows/jni) would make me posting a code example confusing - I don't want to post a slimmed down example as it would probably be wrong and I'd be modded to oblivion!)
= /library/en-us/winui/winui/windowsuserinterface/wi ndowing/hooks.asp
Anyway, start reading about windows hooks here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url
Of course, the real trick is not writing the code, but in getting it onto the target machine and getting the user to somehow run it, not forgetting the really hard part of getting the keystroke log off the machine (assuming it is stored locally) and analyzing it!
As someone who worked up from a green badge to management level at McDonalds I can also attest to having spent a fair amount in the restaurant business too! (For the record I've also done a stint at Burger King.) I can hazard a guess that the actual conditions and how you are treated vary from store to store and region to region. I certainly never treated anyone (when a manager) with less respect than that which I would have liked to receive.
However, that period of my life is now almost 10 years ago (and in the UK) so it is possible that things have changed over that time. Historically, McDonalds was 'a good' company to work for as a manager, as it was expanding aggressively and you could get trained and promoted quickly. However, as the company is contracting in size due to falling market share it is less able to attract and keep good managers, hence it is probably on a permanent downward spiral to be recorded as a footnote in the history of fast food restaurateurs.
Actually, w.r.t. working conditions at fast food restaurants you will find that they are the same as for any other catering establishment. If you've ever watched any cooking shows involving life in a celebrity chef's restaurant you'll notice the same thing - hot sweaty working conditions, employees shouting at you (esp. the chef), unsociable hours, and a general malaise at being but a small, insignificant, cog in the front line of the catering industry. McDonalds has a high turnover because of all these factors, plus they are the primary employers of students and school leavers. Once those people have found a 'real' job they move on. So in that respect you can say that McDonalds provides a very good social service by being the stepping stone for many people into the ranks of employment.
The problem with having an air breathing engine is that it is 'dead-weight' once the rocket engine is in use. However, it is possible to design a single engine that is both air breathable and can then be used as a conventional rocket engine.
Such a thing has already been designed - it was for a failed UK project called HOTOL. The british government of the day (in their infinite wisdom) decided that the engine design was a military secret and thus classified it. I believe the engine designer worked for Rolls-Royce and was not too happy about it, if I remember correctly!
Our glorious government was also responsible for classifying public-key cryptography when it was discovered - some 5-10 years before it was (re-)discovered by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman.
Where I used to work we used to call VSS 'Visual Sourceunsafe'. We would always get database corruptions - and you know why? because the damn thing is based on netbios. This means that anyone browsing the network drive via Windoze Explorer can accidentally trash the source repository, by inadvertantly dragging and dropping a folder to the wrong place. (Which is a very easy thing to do with explorer).
If you have a choice to use VSS - just say no.
1. Using HTTP and (may all the little gods defend us) XML to shuttle data between application components is so fundamentally brain-dead, I'm suprised anyone's even taking it seriously.
I couldn't agree more - the only people to benefit are Cisco ('cos we will all need faster networks and routers) and Intel ('cos XML is processor intensive to parse). No wonder these two are keepting schtum and not jumping on the bandwagon and saying how wonderful it is - they know this too.
The only problem is, is that no one is going to fix CORBA, so we will be stuck with the new slower technology. What we really need is for one of the big CORBA vendors, like Iona, to re-market CORBA, as it is perfectly capable of providing the equivalent of web services, its just that no-one is thinking 'out of the box'.
The interesting thing about these so called copy-protection schemes is that all they do is piss off consumers - professional pirates already have specialised equipment for doing 'bit-by-bit' copies - mucking with the audio data, or the control data is going to do squat.
In any case, unless it is a HUGE amount of bum data that they are putting on the disc, it should'nt damage the hi-fi - CD players are designed to check the data words they read and interpolate if a data word is way off wack from the data words either side of the bad word. (Trust me, I used to work for a Hi-Fi company that makes decent stuff: Meridian Audio)
For them to put so much bad data on a disc is grossly irresponsible, as it is poorer people that will suffer the most, as it is cheaper CD players that are likely to not have over designed error correction circuitry like the high end players.
It's kind of funny - when I went to Cape Canaveral last year I asked a whole bunch of questions regarding language and whether the design and construction (of modules) had common elements. The lady said that they did, but somehow I now don't believe her...
Lets face it, the different shaped air filters on appollo was a major cock-up - any they still don't appear to have solved it. Can you imagine having to rip some bits off one module to fix a critical component on another - only to find the manual in swahili and the connectors to be a funny shape.
Cripes, all that money, and the same mistakes are being made...
- Consumer goes to a store/web site (from here on referred to as the supplier) and say 'here is my PGP public key' - the supplier then uses their (private) key and your key to create your own personal copy of whatever it is that you bought(CD/DVD/book/whatever).
- Consumer records their wedding on digital tape and wants to give copies to the guests. Each guest that wants a copy has to give their public key to the consumer, and runs off a copy as needed.
Naturally, I'm glossing over the details, and some problems can be spotted immeadiately. For example, a pirate may give out their private key so that any old joe can use the media. The only rational solution to this is that private keys must be hard wired into a chip that is on the PGP encoding/decoding hardware built into the media player/computer, or stored in someother format that isn't easily distributed (on an https webserver?). Another problem (perhaps) is whether a user has a public key for each media player or just one single public/private key.From here on in, only you can hear/watch/read whatever it is you bought and you are not able to gain access to the un-encrypted data because this is handled in hardware. This meets the needs of the supplier as only the consumer can use that media.
The problem with the hardwired approach is that you can't take the media to a friends house and use it there. Perhaps it'd be nice to have a smartcard/CD with the public key on it - and then automatically download the private key to their friends media player for the duration that the smartcard is plugged into it. (yes, I know there are security risks inherant in that - maybe the media should just be streamed to the friends house?)
Another problem is if a suppliers key is compromised - what does the supplier do? Re-issue the content to all of their registered users with a new key? If a consumers key is compromised, what do they do? Reflash a new private key to their hardware? What about their existing media? Do they have to get new copies of that or would it be handled automatically? (Potentially possible, if every household has a sealed 'black box' in their basement that is their 'media-server'.)
I agree that these are crazy suggestions, but if you cancel out all other solutions to this problem, then only one, no matter how crazy, is the answer.
Everybody connected to the web surely must be connected via a subnet, so even if the DDOS attack is from many subnets there will also be many legitimate requests from those subnets - hence bandwidth will be reduced to each of those subnets.
I agree this isn't ideal, but then people will insist on being anarchists and try to bring 'the system' down (whatever that is).....
Yep, I agree on that, but as most people know, (well, /.'ers at least) not everything on the web is dynamic. I beleive Amazon et al, all cache their dynamic pages on a periodical basis so that what appears to be dynamic is actually a static page. Obviously this is going to work with all sites - but it was the big commercial sites that were targetted....
Forgive my naivety, but surely one way of reducing the bandwidth problems on the web and I guess DOS attacks is to use broadcast IP packets from the webserver.
I guess the webserver would have to cache all incoming page requests and (periodically) see which hosts are requesting which page, and then it would then send a single set of broadcast packets containing the page data to all machines that requested it (and then purge its cache). If a D/DOS attack is under way, surely the page will only be transmitted once (so to speak)
Am I talking rubbish, or does this suggestion hold some water??
just to let you know, there's also traditional VCR's that are able to stop taping once a commercial comes on, and pick up once the programming starts again.
...yeah but that feature is reliant on the broadcaster/program maker actually providing it. The way that it works is by detecting a 'signal' in the same manner that teletext works (ie transmitting the information to stop/start recording in the vertical blanking interval of the signal) - if you are a broadcaster reliant on advertising income, are you going to go out of your way to transmit this signal? Hum, thought not.
...one of the things that I hadn't realized was that this could lead to having 'encrypted web pages'.
Where would this leave Mozilla? Would it be illegal to have a browser that did not allow the features mentioned? (For those that didn't read the article: Print button disabling & HTML source encryption)
Obviously, you could do a build that worked around these features - but, so what? Everyone else, with their AOL-ised Mozilla, won't notice nor care. Ok, you could say that 'those web sites that insist on content protection simply won't get the same hit count as those that don't'. But is that really true? If IE and AOL-zilla support the features mentioned, those of us with a 'self rolled' browser would be in the minority.
This is a pretty serious implication - it's almost as if you buy a book but have to wear 'special' de-cryption glasses to read it. Scary.
This link is pretty interesting, considering that it is nearly 3 years old. Anyone know who Luciano Aprilia is and what happened to his GPL source release?
...look at the copyright notices of most media and you'll find that it is illegal to copy/store whatever it is (book/CD/Cassette/DVD/etc. etc) to/in another medium.
This is outright theivery on the part of the copyright holders. Why should I have to pay to buy an album on CD AND on Cassette AND on Vinyl (or whatever other medium) to remain 'legal'. Surely I should be able to buy the RIGHT to listen/read to something just ONCE and then I can do with it what I will. If I want to copy a book (well, part of!) so I can read it on my Palm Pilot I should be able to and not feel guilty for breaking the law. If I've bought an album on CD I should be able to copy it to Cassette/MP3 legally also.
Until the laws are changed so that this is a possibility, then we will have these arguments for every 'new' format that threatens this monopoly, which is exactly what it is.