What I don't understand is why anyone would want a DRM'd straightjacket. I read PDFs on my Droid, which at 480x852 is sufficiently high res to read a full page in one screen. I can do anything I want with my files, and I can get new material online without let or hindrance. The reader fits in my pocket and I carry it anyhow, even if I don't plan to read. It was cheaper than a Kindle, and it also makes phone calls, let's me ssh to a server, plays music, downloads music, does IM, SMS, HD video recording, 5 MPixel photos, voice recording, syncs with Google docs, calendar, contacts and gmail, &c ad infinutum.
The technical environment is constantly changing. The value of this article to the Slashdot community lies in the variety of perspectives and unfamiliar solutions suggested by the respondents. You may be a master today, but in 2 years your knowledge will be obsolete. It still works, your old solution, but until you get clued by another Ask Slashdot, you don't even know that it is now the wrong answer. Not only do answers change, but the questions themselves change. Often merely parametric, at some point the change becomes a phase change, which changes the way things are done, the kinds of things that are done, and how these things affect people's lives.
The perspective of years of experience coping with technical change and complexity is very different from the perspective of new mastery. I design systems to be maintainable and supportable. I also design my own mental processes to be maintainable and supportable over the long haul. Part of that involves mundane, quotidian exercises in fundamentals review.
> Let's not jump to conclusions based on half-truths and distorted views of a single piece of the puzzle.
Right. Let's not. Let's not impose economic burdens on developing countries which will result in the deaths of untold numbers of people due to preventable causes, by robbing nations of the funds to provide medical care. Let's not impose global systems of unelected governance without checks or balances such as are required in order to remove the freedom to conduct economic development. Let's not contribute to the oppression of the subjugated peoples of the world by legitimizing and collaborating with tyrannical regimes to impose ever increasing systems of monitoring and control. Let's not despoil the futures of our children in order to scare away the AGW bogey-man. At least not until it is feasible to determine that one actually exists, let's not.
Accusations of "paranoid conspiracy theory" is the last great refuge which one can resort to when faced with condemning facts.
H2O vapor is the primary greenhouse gas, and utterly dominates every other possible source of greenhouse warming. If activists would focus on H2O, where the real issue (if any exists) lies, they would not be a threat to mankind. Unfortunately, there is more power to be gained by control of economic activity, no matter how destructive, than by actually taking effective measures to manage climate change, so CO2 is inflated in importance by obsessive focus.
This is not a job for software. The proper solution is a device that interposes between the keyboard and the host computer, accepts signals from applications to the effect that the current entry is a password, and records the context/password pair, or alternatively accepts a keyboard signal or an application request for a password that most closely corresponds to a given context (application case, with user approval) or provides a (probability-ordered) prompt to select a known password (user case). The device is independent of operating system, portable between computers, and trivial to backup/edit/configure/restore via usb.
I can't understand why Manhattan hasn't been domed. It's an obvious slam-dunk case. The air quality would skyrocket, the energy costs of operating the city would plummet, tourism would go off the charts, the place would be actually livable in the summer and winter, and prosperity would abound.
There is a distinction to be made between a material resource budget and an information resource budget. Information is free. Rocket propellant is not free.
U-238 is available in bulk from the disused counterweights in retired B747 aircraft. I guess all you need now is a hydro plant and you're a world power.
I moved from software engineering to quantitative financial analysis, and my pay scale tripled. Now most of my colleagues have been let go in the past year, and switched to hotel motel restaraunt management or some such, but those of us who are left are still making more than 20 year software engineers. No one is hiring in this area, however.
In fact, going to traffic court is worse punishment than the fine, in most cases. Unless your driving rights are under threat, it never makes sense to fight it. That's why the argument that "due care" rules place an onerous burden of proof on the law enforcement agent are bogus: Anyone who fights the ticket has been punished much more than if they just paid it.
It is part of a new regime of law enforcement. The idea is that if everyone is in constant fear of being arrested, harrassed, fined, jailed, beaten up, or shaken down, then they will all behave very very carefully. It works too. Crime goes down, public safety goes up.
Then some genocidal maniac assumes the reins of the police state, and millions die.
This is your cockroach brain, whinging about the confusing irony of that comment which inspires ontological despair at the incomprehensible injustice of the world: `@:%%%
wikis are self-moderating, intrinsically, until the point at which everyone just gives up. then the wikimaker shuts it down.
the great merit of sidewiki is not that the content is controlled, but that it is uncontrolled. it enables peer-review of closed web pages, and prevents the owner of the press from controlling the message, against the public interest.
unfortunately it comes bundled with the google toolbar. if someone comes up with a firefox 3.5 plugin or a chrome plugin which does not involve the toolbar, then i will run it.
They should take a tip from the DEC Alpha, and compile x86 code to ARM, run windows natively without any support from uSoft. This would be vastly easier today due to the paravirtualization work of the past decade.
Now this is a reasonable criticism, unlike all the other "I'm too dumb to come up with an explanation for how it could work, therefore it can't" complaints. This is how legitimate skepticism works, kids. Just sneering at everything unfamiliar is not skepticism, it is a mindless arrogance that proves itself unjustified by its very structure.
Slashdot Mirror
I suggest adding that feature to an open source PDF reader, and using a google phone instead.
What I don't understand is why anyone would want a DRM'd straightjacket. I read PDFs on my Droid, which at 480x852 is sufficiently high res to read a full page in one screen. I can do anything I want with my files, and I can get new material online without let or hindrance. The reader fits in my pocket and I carry it anyhow, even if I don't plan to read. It was cheaper than a Kindle, and it also makes phone calls, let's me ssh to a server, plays music, downloads music, does IM, SMS, HD video recording, 5 MPixel photos, voice recording, syncs with Google docs, calendar, contacts and gmail, &c ad infinutum.
The technical environment is constantly changing. The value of this article to the Slashdot community lies in the variety of perspectives and unfamiliar solutions suggested by the respondents. You may be a master today, but in 2 years your knowledge will be obsolete. It still works, your old solution, but until you get clued by another Ask Slashdot, you don't even know that it is now the wrong answer. Not only do answers change, but the questions themselves change. Often merely parametric, at some point the change becomes a phase change, which changes the way things are done, the kinds of things that are done, and how these things affect people's lives.
The perspective of years of experience coping with technical change and complexity is very different from the perspective of new mastery. I design systems to be maintainable and supportable. I also design my own mental processes to be maintainable and supportable over the long haul. Part of that involves mundane, quotidian exercises in fundamentals review.
> Let's not jump to conclusions based on half-truths and distorted views of a single piece of the puzzle.
Right. Let's not. Let's not impose economic burdens on developing countries which will result in the deaths of untold numbers of people due to preventable causes, by robbing nations of the funds to provide medical care. Let's not impose global systems of unelected governance without checks or balances such as are required in order to remove the freedom to conduct economic development. Let's not contribute to the oppression of the subjugated peoples of the world by legitimizing and collaborating with tyrannical regimes to impose ever increasing systems of monitoring and control. Let's not despoil the futures of our children in order to scare away the AGW bogey-man. At least not until it is feasible to determine that one actually exists, let's not.
Accusations of "paranoid conspiracy theory" is the last great refuge which one can resort to when faced with condemning facts.
H2O vapor is the primary greenhouse gas, and utterly dominates every other possible source of greenhouse warming. If activists would focus on H2O, where the real issue (if any exists) lies, they would not be a threat to mankind. Unfortunately, there is more power to be gained by control of economic activity, no matter how destructive, than by actually taking effective measures to manage climate change, so CO2 is inflated in importance by obsessive focus.
This is not a job for software. The proper solution is a device that interposes between the keyboard and the host computer, accepts signals from applications to the effect that the current entry is a password, and records the context/password pair, or alternatively accepts a keyboard signal or an application request for a password that most closely corresponds to a given context (application case, with user approval) or provides a (probability-ordered) prompt to select a known password (user case). The device is independent of operating system, portable between computers, and trivial to backup/edit/configure/restore via usb.
I can't understand why Manhattan hasn't been domed. It's an obvious slam-dunk case. The air quality would skyrocket, the energy costs of operating the city would plummet, tourism would go off the charts, the place would be actually livable in the summer and winter, and prosperity would abound.
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9909/03/windows.nsa.02/
Warning for the US which has >90% of its call processing run by Israeli devices.
There is a distinction to be made between a material resource budget and an information resource budget. Information is free. Rocket propellant is not free.
U-238 is available in bulk from the disused counterweights in retired B747 aircraft. I guess all you need now is a hydro plant and you're a world power.
I moved from software engineering to quantitative financial analysis, and my pay scale tripled. Now most of my colleagues have been let go in the past year, and switched to hotel motel restaraunt management or some such, but those of us who are left are still making more than 20 year software engineers. No one is hiring in this area, however.
In fact, going to traffic court is worse punishment than the fine, in most cases. Unless your driving rights are under threat, it never makes sense to fight it. That's why the argument that "due care" rules place an onerous burden of proof on the law enforcement agent are bogus: Anyone who fights the ticket has been punished much more than if they just paid it.
It is part of a new regime of law enforcement. The idea is that if everyone is in constant fear of being arrested, harrassed, fined, jailed, beaten up, or shaken down, then they will all behave very very carefully. It works too. Crime goes down, public safety goes up.
Then some genocidal maniac assumes the reins of the police state, and millions die.
> 4. Use autoconf...
OMFG.
Sweet. The hourly consultant's prayer: Please, Lord, let the CIO decide to run the business on Microsoft.
...to discover that the director of the FBI considers himself too stupid to safely operate a web browser.
> Jamie Zawinski
Ah, the maestro has struck again.
This is your cockroach brain, whinging about the confusing irony of that comment which inspires ontological despair at the incomprehensible injustice of the world: `@:%%%
It's called freedom: You get to choose which monopoly owns your ass.
You mean, like a wiki?
wikis are self-moderating, intrinsically, until the point at which everyone just gives up. then the wikimaker shuts it down.
the great merit of sidewiki is not that the content is controlled, but that it is uncontrolled. it enables peer-review of closed web pages, and prevents the owner of the press from controlling the message, against the public interest.
unfortunately it comes bundled with the google toolbar. if someone comes up with a firefox 3.5 plugin or a chrome plugin which does not involve the toolbar, then i will run it.
Now can I get that on a snapdragon 1.5GHz please?
They should take a tip from the DEC Alpha, and compile x86 code to ARM, run windows natively without any support from uSoft. This would be vastly easier today due to the paravirtualization work of the past decade.
mu is not a constant.
Try the '*' key again. Copy and paste from TFA this time.
Now this is a reasonable criticism, unlike all the other "I'm too dumb to come up with an explanation for how it could work, therefore it can't" complaints.
This is how legitimate skepticism works, kids. Just sneering at everything unfamiliar is not skepticism, it is a mindless arrogance that proves itself unjustified by its very structure.