Here's the funny thing about English as it is used today: the written form and the spoken form aren't as closely unified as they are in other languages. I was really rather surprised when I took my first job after graduation with a large Swedish multinational company to discover that formal written Swedish (at least, as far as I could tell) is literally identical to informal spoken Swedish. Punctuation marks, such as commas, are used to denote where a speaker may pause for a breath. They don't seem to bear any formal relationship to the grammatical structure of the sentence.
Written English as I learned it is far more proscriptive in where it places punctuation. In formal "Queen's English," a comma is not a "short pause," nor is a period a "long pause." Sure, that's how you'll typically read them, but that's not how English has used them since about the 17th century. For the past several hundred years, English has used punctuation as a grammatical construct, not an elocutionary one. Periods end sentences. Commas separate clauses. And so on.
If it's a MacBook, then there's a little flap at the end of the audio jack. Behind that flap is an LED that is used to transmit SPDIF audio over fiber. (The Apple SPDIF adapter is longer than a standard audio jack, and pushes past the jack to the LED).
If you are exceptionally violent with the machine, I suppose it's possible to damage or dislodge the flap, which would cause red light to shine out the audio jack whenever the sound card is on. Between this, a broken keyboard, and a "ton of bad sectors," it sounds like they took the Israeli approach to handling people it thinks don't agree with its tactics. Except the TSA managed to actually destroy data.
Unfortunately the ads blockers catch all of the other ads too. I don't mind ads that behave but the moving/talking ones are so annoying that I will block everything to get rid of them.
I agree 100%. I feel bad about blocking huge swaths of ads (e.g., everything from doubleclick) just for one or two bad apples -- but I tried playing whack-a-mole by blocking only the annoying ones for a while. It simply didn't work. The hyperactive flashing, jumping, talking ads simply are created too quickly to block each of them as a one-off. So I have rules that, for example, block all of doubleclick.net. And anything with/ads/ in the URL. And 245 similar other rules.
I've even had to block the small, boutique ad providers -- like projectwonderful.com -- that I'd really like to see succeed. But they end up serving up too many animated and/or risqué ads, so I had to block them as well.
So, as much as I'd like to believe what Upson has to say about adblockers destroying the market for annoying ads, I just haven't seen it happen. And I've been watching for well over a decade now.
The exploit allows users to choose an arbitrary location in memory -- including kernel space -- and write 8 bytes to it at a time. The 8 bytes are chosen by the terminal program attached to the TTY that the system call is made on. So, if a local program attaches to a TTY in the same way that a terminal does, and then makes this system call, it can load executable code into the kernel (or anywhere else, for that matter).
In other words, it makes it ridiculously simple to run any code you want as root.
In North America, most service is 120/240. The house I grew up in -- just down the street from the substation -- had three phase 120/208 power in it. You got 120 by hooking one phase to ground, and 208 by connecting between any two phases.
Yes, I'm still waiting for somebody to explain which part was blacked out that should not have been?
Section 4.1 on page 81 is a good example of something that is redacted with no plausible reason. All the redactions on pages 83 through 89 are similarly questionable. These sections -- could we read them -- ostensibly would deal with how the website itself is specified to behave.
How on earth is that information subject to FOIA exemptions?
Just another perspective on wireless keyboard and mice: your experience mirrors mine, EXCEPT for Bluetooth devices. Our main TV right now has a Mac Mini hooked up to it, using an Apple Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Batteries in both are going on 6 months of pretty heavy use, and they still work from the front lawn (!), about 50 feet from the computer.
The Logitech Bluetooth keyboard and mouse have similar range on them, but scream through batteries at a terrifying pace.
At least in the U.S., cover versions of any publicly-distributed songs are covered by compulsory licensing, which means the copyright holder is legally compelled to license the song to anyone who asks properly. The recordings are not, which is why sampling and mash-ups run into sticky licensing issues. But there is absolutely nothing whatsoever that the song (lyrics and melody) copyright holder can do to prevent you from recording and selling a cover of a song, as long as you comply with certain conditions prior to the sale of the song, and pay the judicially-set royalties.
In fact, this is quite probably why Rock Band has a number of tracks that aren't performed by the original artist -- the publisher can refuse to license the recording, but can't do squat to stop use of the song.
You can find even better examples than that. Your example arises from an automated crawling process. Here's a page on Microsoft's website that contains several human-inserted links to pages on Apple's website.
Wait... what? You open by telling us that you have to perform custom tuning on the filesystem for certain applications, and later assert that "ZFS is extremely simple to use."
[cue the car analogy]
That's like claiming you have to open the hood on a car and tinker with the engine depending on what kind of road you're driving on, and then asserting that the car is "extremely easy to use." If you mess with your engine on a regular basis, it might seem that way -- but if you're a normal user, it's an unspeakable pain in the ass.
Why, it's almost as if Microsoft don't want to inter-operate...
You're comparing them to whom? Apple? Have you tried to mount an ext2/ext3 partition under OS X? The best you can get is some Panther-era third-party driver that causes frequent kernel panics on modern systems.
"I don't think I've ever heard an argument that was serious for the other side of this issue."
Over here in the states, the counter arguments generally run something like, "Good day, Senator So-and-so. Here's a pile of cash the size of Rhode Island. We would encourage you to let ISPs run roughshod over consumers. Sound good?"
"I don't know the first thing about replacing the roof on my house; does this mean I have to know how to replace it simply because I own it?"
No -- but if there's water coming in from that big flat white surface above your head, you probably know well enough that it's probably something wrong with your roof (or maybe your plumbing), and not your foundation. And even if you didn't, you wouldn't be as specific as saying there's something wrong with your foundation -- you'd say there's something wrong with your house. Which you probably have a functioning knowledge of as something more than "some kind of magic box that stays cool in the summer, warm in the winter, contains mysterious glowing orbs, and produces infinite quantities of water through some form of unknown sorcery."
Replace "foundation" with "hard drive," "house" with "computer," and make the obvious other adjustments; the same really should apply. We're talking about having a basic functional model of the world you interact with, and the ability to draw reasonable conclusions based on that model.
Hmmm... they translate some of them, don't bother with others.
For example, #2 on the Chinese fastest-rising list apparently means "Olympic games opening ceremony"; while #4 translates to "Substandard milk powder list" (at least, by Google's own translation engine). There are other interesting things in there, too, if you run the lists through an autotranslator.
Yes, and the movie studios should certainly go out of their way to annoy those customers who have spent $5,000 to $10,000 on their products. Tailoring the model towards the people who have spent merely $50 or $100 makes more sense. I mean, who wants all that money, anyway?
There is also at least one company that gleans this kind of information from various file-sharing networks and sells it as market data. Their focus is music, but it certainly could have been quietly expanded to include other media (and/or other companies may be doing the same kind of data mining).
Yes, let's get into a pissing contest. I was born in Houston and live in Dallas. I just went through a multi-million dollar transaction earlier this year that involved several non-competes being written and executed, with one of the more expensive lawyers in Dallas sitting by my side to clarify what is and is not binding. I was the primary contact on our company's side for the drafting of agreement terms, so I was shoulder-deep in the most infuriatingly trivial details.
I'm certain you've been following the topic closely enough to be aware of the massive, sweeping changes the Texas Supreme Court handed down in 2006, right? The huge pendulum swing away from employee rights towards employer rights? You've read the Sheshunoff v. Johnson ruling?
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the funny thing about English as it is used today: the written form and the spoken form aren't as closely unified as they are in other languages. I was really rather surprised when I took my first job after graduation with a large Swedish multinational company to discover that formal written Swedish (at least, as far as I could tell) is literally identical to informal spoken Swedish. Punctuation marks, such as commas, are used to denote where a speaker may pause for a breath. They don't seem to bear any formal relationship to the grammatical structure of the sentence.
Written English as I learned it is far more proscriptive in where it places punctuation. In formal "Queen's English," a comma is not a "short pause," nor is a period a "long pause." Sure, that's how you'll typically read them, but that's not how English has used them since about the 17th century. For the past several hundred years, English has used punctuation as a grammatical construct, not an elocutionary one. Periods end sentences. Commas separate clauses. And so on.
If it's a MacBook, then there's a little flap at the end of the audio jack. Behind that flap is an LED that is used to transmit SPDIF audio over fiber. (The Apple SPDIF adapter is longer than a standard audio jack, and pushes past the jack to the LED).
If you are exceptionally violent with the machine, I suppose it's possible to damage or dislodge the flap, which would cause red light to shine out the audio jack whenever the sound card is on. Between this, a broken keyboard, and a "ton of bad sectors," it sounds like they took the Israeli approach to handling people it thinks don't agree with its tactics. Except the TSA managed to actually destroy data.
Unfortunately the ads blockers catch all of the other ads too. I don't mind ads that behave but the moving/talking ones are so annoying that I will block everything to get rid of them.
I agree 100%. I feel bad about blocking huge swaths of ads (e.g., everything from doubleclick) just for one or two bad apples -- but I tried playing whack-a-mole by blocking only the annoying ones for a while. It simply didn't work. The hyperactive flashing, jumping, talking ads simply are created too quickly to block each of them as a one-off. So I have rules that, for example, block all of doubleclick.net. And anything with /ads/ in the URL. And 245 similar other rules.
I've even had to block the small, boutique ad providers -- like projectwonderful.com -- that I'd really like to see succeed. But they end up serving up too many animated and/or risqué ads, so I had to block them as well.
So, as much as I'd like to believe what Upson has to say about adblockers destroying the market for annoying ads, I just haven't seen it happen. And I've been watching for well over a decade now.
I'd mod myself, but I don't have points. "Informative" would be what you're looking for.
Yes, you are.
The exploit allows users to choose an arbitrary location in memory -- including kernel space -- and write 8 bytes to it at a time. The 8 bytes are chosen by the terminal program attached to the TTY that the system call is made on. So, if a local program attaches to a TTY in the same way that a terminal does, and then makes this system call, it can load executable code into the kernel (or anywhere else, for that matter).
In other words, it makes it ridiculously simple to run any code you want as root.
In North America, most service is 120/240. The house I grew up in -- just down the street from the substation -- had three phase 120/208 power in it. You got 120 by hooking one phase to ground, and 208 by connecting between any two phases.
Absolutely. Brilliant.
Best thing I've seen on slashdot in years.
You've never worked with a scanner that OCRs the text and inserts it into the PDF document before, have you?
Yes, I'm still waiting for somebody to explain which part was blacked out that should not have been?
Section 4.1 on page 81 is a good example of something that is redacted with no plausible reason. All the redactions on pages 83 through 89 are similarly questionable. These sections -- could we read them -- ostensibly would deal with how the website itself is specified to behave.
How on earth is that information subject to FOIA exemptions?
Just another perspective on wireless keyboard and mice: your experience mirrors mine, EXCEPT for Bluetooth devices. Our main TV right now has a Mac Mini hooked up to it, using an Apple Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Batteries in both are going on 6 months of pretty heavy use, and they still work from the front lawn (!), about 50 feet from the computer.
The Logitech Bluetooth keyboard and mouse have similar range on them, but scream through batteries at a terrifying pace.
So my iTunes visualizer is violating copyright law whenever I play a cover song?
Have you already contacted the Stones' publisher?
He doesn't need to.
At least in the U.S., cover versions of any publicly-distributed songs are covered by compulsory licensing, which means the copyright holder is legally compelled to license the song to anyone who asks properly. The recordings are not, which is why sampling and mash-ups run into sticky licensing issues. But there is absolutely nothing whatsoever that the song (lyrics and melody) copyright holder can do to prevent you from recording and selling a cover of a song, as long as you comply with certain conditions prior to the sale of the song, and pay the judicially-set royalties.
In fact, this is quite probably why Rock Band has a number of tracks that aren't performed by the original artist -- the publisher can refuse to license the recording, but can't do squat to stop use of the song.
We used to have posted minimums on the interstates in Texas -- they took them down sometime in the early '90's for some reason...
You can find even better examples than that. Your example arises from an automated crawling process. Here's a page on Microsoft's website that contains several human-inserted links to pages on Apple's website.
89%? Umm... you understand that percentages are multiplied together -- not added together -- when applied to each other, right?
I don't know about what you see in your area, but I get a crapton of tabloid-like ads at the bottom of your MSNBC link:
Just about everything online is dredging the bottom...
That's odd... Their website appears to be at odds with your reality.
Wait... what? You open by telling us that you have to perform custom tuning on the filesystem for certain applications, and later assert that "ZFS is extremely simple to use."
[cue the car analogy]
That's like claiming you have to open the hood on a car and tinker with the engine depending on what kind of road you're driving on, and then asserting that the car is "extremely easy to use." If you mess with your engine on a regular basis, it might seem that way -- but if you're a normal user, it's an unspeakable pain in the ass.
You're comparing them to whom? Apple? Have you tried to mount an ext2/ext3 partition under OS X? The best you can get is some Panther-era third-party driver that causes frequent kernel panics on modern systems.
"I don't think I've ever heard an argument that was serious for the other side of this issue."
Over here in the states, the counter arguments generally run something like, "Good day, Senator So-and-so. Here's a pile of cash the size of Rhode Island. We would encourage you to let ISPs run roughshod over consumers. Sound good?"
"I don't know the first thing about replacing the roof on my house; does this mean I have to know how to replace it simply because I own it?"
No -- but if there's water coming in from that big flat white surface above your head, you probably know well enough that it's probably something wrong with your roof (or maybe your plumbing), and not your foundation. And even if you didn't, you wouldn't be as specific as saying there's something wrong with your foundation -- you'd say there's something wrong with your house. Which you probably have a functioning knowledge of as something more than "some kind of magic box that stays cool in the summer, warm in the winter, contains mysterious glowing orbs, and produces infinite quantities of water through some form of unknown sorcery."
Replace "foundation" with "hard drive," "house" with "computer," and make the obvious other adjustments; the same really should apply. We're talking about having a basic functional model of the world you interact with, and the ability to draw reasonable conclusions based on that model.
Hmmm... they translate some of them, don't bother with others.
For example, #2 on the Chinese fastest-rising list apparently means "Olympic games opening ceremony"; while #4 translates to "Substandard milk powder list" (at least, by Google's own translation engine). There are other interesting things in there, too, if you run the lists through an autotranslator.
Yes, and the movie studios should certainly go out of their way to annoy those customers who have spent $5,000 to $10,000 on their products. Tailoring the model towards the people who have spent merely $50 or $100 makes more sense. I mean, who wants all that money, anyway?
There is also at least one company that gleans this kind of information from various file-sharing networks and sells it as market data. Their focus is music, but it certainly could have been quietly expanded to include other media (and/or other companies may be doing the same kind of data mining).
Yes, let's get into a pissing contest. I was born in Houston and live in Dallas. I just went through a multi-million dollar transaction earlier this year that involved several non-competes being written and executed, with one of the more expensive lawyers in Dallas sitting by my side to clarify what is and is not binding. I was the primary contact on our company's side for the drafting of agreement terms, so I was shoulder-deep in the most infuriatingly trivial details.
I'm certain you've been following the topic closely enough to be aware of the massive, sweeping changes the Texas Supreme Court handed down in 2006, right? The huge pendulum swing away from employee rights towards employer rights? You've read the Sheshunoff v. Johnson ruling?