Every server singles out every user. This is a fact of life.
Do you honestly expect that everyone sees the same pages you do, just because they entered in the same URL or clicked the same link?
The fact is, there is (and has been for some time) a disparity between what an IE user sees and what a Netscape user sees. The same can be said of Netscape and Amoeba, or even different versions of the same browser. For example, the IE 4.0.2222 that came on the Win95 CD that you could install separately didn't even support frames and tables properly.
Because of these issues, it is (more or less) a common practice to attempt to distinguish browsers from each other, and serve similar (but not identical) pages to differing browsers. Further, with PHP and DHTML (server-side) and the joys of javascript and vbscript(browser-side), these pages can be made to look different.
Back in the day when the "supercookie" vulnerability in Media Player was found, one of my client's servers was configured to identify the Windows installation by the Globally Unique IDentifier, and that was cross-referenced with a profile that the user willingly provided upon visiting the site. Finally that profile's browser-selection option was matched against the browser reference string that was sent in the page request, and the user was prompted if there was a discrepancy. If there wasn't, the page sent to the user was chosen according to what browser the server identified.
And thus we didn't force gobble-de-gook onto our Netscape Users just because we provided Active Desktop Support for our IE users, just as our IE users didn't get confused by an icon on their status bar indicating errors on the page because we supported SmartUpdate through Netscape.
Our solution was a little more convoluted than necessary, yes, but it also allowed us to track individual systems/users' browsing, and we could then email them with links to stuff on the site that they hadn't seen yet.
Now, surely you wouldn't trust my client's server/service, because I told you what we'd deployed and that we tracked our visitors. But that system has long since been taken down in favor of static pages.
All that said, I don't think it's appropriate to lambast web hosting companies for trying to give you more functionality, even though they have to identify your browser and/or OS to prevent unexpected errors from creeping in.
Now, don't get me wrong, though. If my client used either of the SmartUpdate or ActiveDesktop stuff to try and force spyware on the users to harvest email addresses, or sold the addresses freely supplied in the profiles, I would have eliminated the ability to collect it. Nefarious activities are unacceptable in any case, and we the public are to only assume that the nature of singling out Opera to feed it an (assumed intentionally) incorrect page was to inconvenience the user to switch. After all, Microsoft has been known to pull this stuff. Who remembers MS blocking Mozilla, other browsers from MSN nigh on a year ago now? MS has demonstrated that they're not above kicking their competition and forcing users to IE.
That should put to rest the theory that it's a bugfix on MS' part to maintain compatibility with an old browser--we at/. prefer to not believe in such crackpot theories. Instead, we assume that known troublemakers are still causing trouble.
And as it's made news all over the Internet that MSN is again causing problems for another browser, we simply find the Bork a humorous retaliation. Hey, you can't fault us for rooting for the underdog, can you?:)
Finally, since the logic behind the Swedish chef hasn't yet surfaced on/., I'll explain it. We hackers adopted a bit of slang, changing "broken" to "borked". Some script kiddies even say it "b0rk3d". So, in a fit of rage, developers sometimes say "This thing is borked! Borked borked borked!!!" You'd be surprised just how much that sounds like the Swedish Chef saying "bork! bork! bork!" And thus was the starting impetus for the hidden joke behind the Swedish Chef.
Hmm. Well, when space is an issue (ever try building your own linux-on-one-floppy distribution?) you'll find that good ol' strip is your friend.:)
Now, in their situation I'd say that space is certainly an issue (With the tough goal of fitting all of the supporting software and
applications for the IYONIX computer into just 4Mbytes of ROM, from the press release), so it's not worth jumping to the conclusion that they're hiding something.
Further, I note that the press release mentions specific, new versions, and that the email to LKML never stated which version was checked for the match.
Further, how was it found, in absence of the source, that it still contained the actual working code? I'd like to know that, because many compilers commonly spit out some boiler-plate binary code.
Now, your comment indicates a slight misconception (but another program of theirs (called the HAL)) about kernels. 'HAL' stands for "Hardware Abstraction Layer", and is an integral part in modern kernels. For most operating systems less primitive than *cough* DOS *cough cough*, the HAL provides functions for device drivers and software applications, such that the kernel is the only software that directly manipulates the hardware. That said, these functions are an integral part of the kernel (without regard to where it's a microkernel, exokernel, or monolithic), not things which can be considered a separate work and put into public view by itself. In fact, this is the section of the GPL that M$ likes to FUD about regularly: the "viral" part of the license. It indicates explicitly that if you use ANY GPL'd code in your project, the whole thing inherits the GNU License (and thus, must be distributed with source.) After all, by the terms of the GPL, the RiscOS kernel can be considered a derivative work, under the admission of the PCI and bridge setup functions.
Thus, as best as I can determine, the press release seems quite self-contradictory. I suppose that's why they used the wording "should like to respond" instead of the more common "would like to respond". In so doing, it could be construed that the statements about versions 5.x are, indeed, false, and that the truth in the release comes after the phrase "For the avoidance of doubt".
To place the separation there, though, also leaves the line above it (There are no plans to use GPL derived code...) in question, and can thus be interpreted as "hey, we violated the GPL in our RiscOS. And we reserve the right to do it again..."
On the other hand, perhaps the announcement that the code is available and conforms to the license, in their minds, is to be inferred by the press release...
Now for the good ol' disclaimer: IANAL. I don't even try to be.:)
As I recall, this was covered here on/. before, under vigilantism, relating to Code Red.
Yeah it works--I got some pretty upset phone calls last year at my university, when my box had shut down an NT "corridor" machine to the scripted, dynamic "student accounts pages"... They pulled my internet connection for 3 days (it happened over a weekend) with an order to fix it before they restored my connection.
They also threatened to bill me for their damages--an estimated $700. (I have no idea where they dreamed up that number.)
I'm just too lazy to go find a link--there has been declared today a "low brain activity advisory" by the National Weather Service.:)
Speaking of being hard--I think they did it the hard way. At my university, we have an Artificial Intelligence class and in almost all student projects, there is merely one computer. Seems that the project was complicated unnecessarily by the webcam-recognition phase. I mean, why two computers? Seems to me that a single computer could do the job--but they might need to use an open-source version (tetris for terminals, anyone?) in order to get the program to pass the entire playing field out, in order to interact with it. I mean, why go to the expense of an extra computer and a webcam, when you could run both programs on the same machine?
Just seems a little extra work there, that's all..
Hmm. Well, at the University I used to attend, DNS service was quite problematic, on their very young ethernet network. My solution was to play with dig a little bit and enter a couple root servers into my/etc/resolv.conf.
I guess you could argue that it was unnecessary--but I was the one laughing when everyone else thought "the internet was down" when they couldn't get to Yahoo Games, Hotmail, and Google.
Of course, it might be noteworthy to mention I find far more "relevant" uses of my Internet connection.:)
My understanding of my Hauppauge WinTV card might just be a little weak, but...
Last time I forgot to install the bttv module in my kernel, all I got in xawtv was a purple-ish picture. Further, even after I got the modules loaded, my 'top' load averages didn't seem to indicate that my computer was completely I/O bound, even when I was recording direct to disk in AVI format.
Somewhere I read that the winTV actually did do DMA transfers across the PCI bus, so I don't really think that polling is really necessary here.
That said, here in the US at least, TV signals have a framerate of around 19-20 fps, and the composite signal is really at a resolution of about 320x200. So, your PVR card really should not be swamping your PCI bus, unless you're attempting to capture the non-demultiplexed digital cable signal in real time (or you're capturing HDTV--but I've yet to see an HDTV-ready PVR card.).
But I think someone could build a multichannel PVR in a more embedded solution. An old, small processor, such as even the Motorola 6809, should be sufficient to instruct some custom TV tuner/disk controller cards to start recording. And the whole box wouldn't need to be any larger than a typical VCR, unless it had more than 8 3.5" disk drives in it.
Playback, on the other hand, might be a little trickier. Here we'd need a single central processor, capable of reading the data on all the disks and converting it back to NTSC. If necessary, this processor would have to handle any software decompression, so we might need a bigger processor for it--say, 486-class. A custom video card with a TV output could cheaply handle the NTSC conversion, further lowering the demands on the output processor. Sure, some pretty serious design work would need to be done here, but it seems feasible, at least to my way of thinking.
My oldest brother put a car alternator on the back sprocket of an old exercise bike, and connected it to the kit. He connected up the relay in the kit to a couple strands of TV coax-- one to the antenna, one to the TV.
Net result? To watch TV you had to ride the bike. Stop pedaling, and the TV goes to snow. Start pedaling again and the picture returns. It was a great way of forcing exercise...:)
As an over-active 6-year-old, though, I was often the one to get all the exercise while Mom watched her daily soaps. I remember trying to pace myself so I wouldn't miss anything when I was watching my nightly Star Trek--but I was usually dead-tired when it was over... To this day (I'm 23 now) I can't wear shorts because of how large and powerful my thighs are. People just won't stop staring!
And the best part was, this particular experiment didn't even require batteries to power the whole thing! The thing was eventually dismantled, though--mostly because Mom got mad that she couldn't see Days of Our Lives while I was at school! But, theoretically, that switch in the relay would wear out--but relays are pretty cheap anyways...
HAARP is an endeavor by the US gov't to attempt to tweak the ionosphere by the way of something akin to a huge electromagnet, near the North Pole.It's a wonder they haven't downed Santa's sleigh!:)
Seriously, though, this is one project that has been accused of causing El Nino.
As you've seen from my links, there are many zealots who would claim that HAARP causes weather disturbances. The Official HAARP FAQ, though, claims quite the contrary.
Personally, I tend to take the side of the zealots; the US gov't is well-known to hide issues of widespread importance and, in many cases, outright mislead its citizens. Hence my opening statement.
The article says exactly nothing about redeeming the cost of "retrofitting" older vehicles.
And as I pointed out in my parent post, my cars together aren't even worth one third the cost of retrofitting just one of them. So I'd be losing a lot of money in the process. Sure, if I could track my car on a map at the end of the day, if I had a newer car I'd consider it. Especially for the kids-when they get old enough to drive...
Besides, they'd have me on that one--I don't keep track of stuff like that. Do *you* keep all your receipts? Do you even get a receipt when you buy gas? At my local gas station, often times you don't.
So no, I'll be examining the new law--no doubt like the others (I have a cousin who said that this was a new city ordinance in his KS town) there'll be an exclusionary rule (in his case, he said that new cars had to be GPS-equipped, but pre-1994 cars were exempt from the GPS-requirement. They only required GPS and the revealing of the GPS-id numbers at the courthouse--they never said what it was for... but no "road use tax" or anything like that.)
By tracking you via GPS they can determine that you're buying gas out-of-state and circumventing the tax. No doubt the road-usage-tax would incur a fee/fine for such maneuvers.
This way, they can get you coming and going, by taxing you for being smart enough to beat the gas tax. The GPS would provide proof--and with it the state gov't can exact from you the taxes that they surely think they deserve.
For as we all know, all your hard-earned money belongs to the gov't!
But I truly enjoyed this part:
Owners of older cars would be allowed to take part by retrofitting them.
Now, I own 2 cars. One is an 85, the other an 86. I do my best to maintain them, and they get 28-32 mpg, so I don't complain about the tax at the pump. Neither car is worth $400; together, they're not worth $600. So, me being an Oregonian, tell me why I would pay ~$2k for a basic GPS system, so I could pay MORE in taxes? Allowed? By jove, they'd have to require me to upgrade to GPS!
Of course, next there'll be a law saying we can't drive cars more than 4 years old.. Doh!
Here's what got me on the #1 problem. Behold, two quotes, from the beginning of each paragraph:
No B2C ecommerce site would make this mistake, but it's rife in B2B
...
Even B2C sites often make the associated mistake of forgetting prices
My brain broke on this one--isn't that a direct contradiction? Maybe I should go reread it a few times and go draw up some truth tables, but this looks like quite horrible editing.
When I read the article, I just couldn't get over the subliminal troll...
Francisco Mingorance, European policy director for the Business Software Alliance (BSA)
Now, that guy's name was seen repeatedly in the article in its last-name-only form. Compare: Mingorance and Mignorance.
When I read portions of the article aloud to the family, I had trouble NOT saying "'em ignorants."
Imagine a redneck saying that name:
"'Francisco? 'em Ignorants!" (And just how far is San Francisco from HollyWood? Or even Silicon Valley?)
All that said, considering the fact that CD prices never seemed to fall from the ~US$16 that they started at, and that the artists only get about US$.04 per copy, and the manufacturing costs around US$2/disc, that leaves some US$13.96 per copy that goes into the deep pockets of the RIAA. That's over 87%! No doubt at least some of that goes to support the BSA. That leads me to a new parsing of this acronym, which seems to be a rather common sentiment here on Slashdot:(Greedy) Bastards Suck Ass!
My C skills are a little rusty, but I can see at least one case where base can be left uninitialized.
Were it so simple as an if/else condition, entirely encapsulated in the loop, the compiler wouldn't fuss at all. But it's not. No, instead it's only partially nested inside a loop (and indeed, never so clear as a good ol' all-conditions-covered if/else expression), and so we must consider the loop condition as we grab the flyswatter and go bug-hunting. If numrows is in fact <=0, the for loop's contents are not executed, and indeed base could be left uninitialized. And that's to say nothing about the cases where this could be done in concurrent code, where the value of f_sortacross could change while this is executing! And thus we'd have instead:
for (row = 0; row < numrows; ++row) { endcol = colwidth;
if (f_sortacross) { base = 0; } else { base = row; } }/* Sorry for breaking the pretty indentation.*/ And this should (theoretically) compile without a warning. It is, however, arguably less efficient if f_sortacross == 0 and numrows > 1; we've just turned an O(1) evaluation into an O(N) in that case.
Trust your compiler. If you have a warning, you should probably re-think your code a bit. That compiler is the product of the experience of C coders quite likely more skilled than you are giving them credit for--and the "many eyes make problems shallow" philosophy of OSS would suggest that if it were a compiler bug, it probably would have been squashed long ago....
Well, I guess no one else has said it, but I'm pretty sure that Rob Malda gave a little thought to it. After all, he did create a frontend to MAME for his homemade cabinet. Frankly, I'm surprised that this story wasn't posted by CmdrTaco himself.
But as for the roms, I think you've got about as much luck getting them GPL'd as you'd have trying to GPL Office. I just don't see it happening anytime soon.
Now, on the other hand, I seem to recall a copyright restriction about the loss of copyright by the owner after x years. Now, x may be 20 or so, so the only roms that might fall under this category may be those from Atari (think the 2600), but seeing how a lot of the companies that made the 8-bit Nintendo games are now out of business, this particular clause may come in handy in finding "legal" roms, now or a few years down the road. But alas, IANAL....:(
How very Microsoftian. Name something of theirs after an OSS project. I can see it already. Tomorrow there'll be an article about how Microsoft is suing the Plex86 people for trademark infringement.
There has been a good deal of commentary in the past to say that when mice went gyroscopic, they'd look like phasers from Star Trek.
This thing seems to have a bit more of a pug nose than that of a phaser, but it seems like a start.
From the article:
Beyond the obvious application for those who willfully lay Powerpoint presentations on their fellow human beings, those whose wrists hurt when they mouse ought to give this a look.
Hmm, well--I recently had my shoulder dislocated. My wrists have been carpal-tunneled since I was 14 (I've been using computers extensively since the age of 3) but I'm used to the wrist pain. But when I reach for the mouse and my shoulder slips out of the socket a bit--I'm not used to that pain! I tend to use the keyboard everywhere I can though, to avoid the mouse. I just wish there were more keybd shortcuts for most X11 functions; win3.x/9x/NT/2000 I can do most everything (except navigate a page with Flash) without ever reaching for the mouse and screaming in agony.
I found a workaround for my mouse problems; I bought a light pen. And for novelty sake, when in linux I've used the kernel driver for a controller to connect a the 8-bit Nintendo Zapper(R) to my PC. It also makes for some fun--when I get mad, what could possibly be better than to shoot harmlessly at my PC?:) Then I feel better, and no harm done.
Finally, it seems like a great idea to get away from the constantly-dirty-mouse paradox; no moving parts are exposed that can prevent the mouse from stopping and skipping around. Of course the trick will be to learn to keep it charged...:)
I heard on CNN/Headline News this morning that the site was taken down, because it hadn't gone well. Gee, where would they have gotten any feedback on it?
CNN also said that the "freelance writer" was in a PR affiliate of M$, so we're not seeing anything new here. Just yet another M$ "embrace and extend."
I was under the impression that Dmitry Skylarov was the Diablo II hacking pioneer. I have no idea where I dreamed that up, but it sounds right.
And anyway, isn't Bioware gonna tear these guys a new one in the courts for decompiling or reverse-engineering their proprietary product?
Perhaps they will use the DMCA in their arguments, stating that [a portion of] their code was unchanged in the binary representation, and thus the unauthorized distribution of their hack is in violation of the DMCA. After all, it seems the court system bows down in fear at the use of that acronym, just like Congress bows down for anything GWB wants to do/put into law.
So if that's the case, the TeleZapper uses a very false advertisement in the US. Constantly monitoring the phone line and sending out a tone to cancel automated calls is NOT how it was advertised. We should sue them for that!:)
dependency issues really only come into play from the distribution of binary-only packages, a la the.rpm or.deb.
There is a nice and simple way around this, though; gcc has a -static flag that compiles required library functions into the binary, removing library dependencies. Thus, if you were designing a compiled-only, work-for-almost-all-linux-distros, you keep your binaries (relatively) small, and compile them statically.
So--if you can find a good remote-root linux exploit that's rather common, write your virus and compile it with no machine optimizations, ELF binary format, stripped, and static. That should be sufficient to get your payload down to a few kb, if you're not being really extreme. (No optimizations because you don't want to limit yourself to a specfic processor--why target only a Pentium III or higher, when you could target the whole i386/ia64 architecture family?:) Disclaimer: I do not advocate virus-writing; nor do I, or have ever in the past, actually written malicious code. I am only stating that there's a workaround for dependency issues, even if you aren't gonna pass around the sources. (The virus reference is mostly to keep on topic.)
But '-static' does still make for a larger binary.... This is where you can still shrink it down, though, by specifying that you originally compile your code using the -I/{path-to-library}/ form; use a smaller library, like uClib.
Self-signing will almost certainly cause errors that are going to scare away your remote (outside) users/customers. So to go SSL with the least fuss for these persons, I think the easiest way is to choose from the owners that are considered "trusted" in a fresh, out-of-the-box Windows installation. To wit:
Verisign
Microsoft
GTE CyberTrust
KeyWitness 2048
Thawte
And if you still use Netscape (or expect your users to) then the Certificate Authorities are (Communicator 4.75):
ABA.Ecom
AddTrust
American Express
Baltimore CyberTrust
BankEngine
BelSign
CertEngine
Digit al Signature Trust Co.
E-Certify
Entrust.net
Equifax
FortEngine
GTE CyberTrust
GlobalSign
MailEngine
TC TrustCenter
Thawte
TraderEngine
USPS
ValiCert
Verisign
Visa International
Xcert
beTRUSTed
These certificates are trusted by default, and most (if not all) are self-signed.
To see these under IE, Pull down the Tools menu, Choose "Internet Options", choose the "Content" tab, and click the "Certificates" button. Finally select the Intended Purpose labelled "Client Authorization", and use the right arrow to scroll over and choose "Trusted Root Certification Authorities". The list of certificates will be displayed in the box there, for your easy perusal. In Netscape Communicator: Communicator menu, Tools, Security Info, Certificates, Signers.
But for proper compatibility, I think we're kinda stuck with IE's smaller list, minus M$ and KeyWitness 2048. So, that leaves:
Verisign
GTE CyberTrust
Thawte
Thawte is also quite pricey, at about US$150 for the first year.
Although, if I remember correctly, you could get away by getting into the "circle of trust" even if your certificate isn't signed by one of these companies. Just get it signed by some company that is signed by one of those listed in the third list above, and theoretically that should be good enough. Although, I'm just speculating here, based on a little too much schooling...:) (Of course, I've skipped over the whole 40/48/64/128-bit encryption hassles with IE, but that's more an issue for webmasters and a bit outside the scope of this discussion.)
Even without the use of some win32-equivalent of LVM to "join" multiple drives on the same drive letter, win95 uses the DOS-like nomenclature of hard drives starting at C and going to Z. Hardest part is finding controllers to drive it--and you can have 4 or more IDE hard drives using standard controllers, and 7 with SCSI 1, 15 with SCSI 2, and even more with SCSI 3, without daisy-chaining controllers. If you daisy-chain you can have this many drives per controller (so with 3 SCSI-1 cards in the slots and the dual IDE controller on the MB, I could easily pull this off.) So, as I see it, if the drives all have a single partition, all you'd really need is a really big case and power supply(or several cases with their own power supplies--if there's some dummy motherboard in there, the MB isn't gonna care that there's a drive powered by that supply that it can't access.)
But to finish my point, there's no guarantee that drive B is used; most PCs of today don't have a second floppy disk drive. For that matter, the first floppy drive isn't essential, either--a single change in the CMOS settings on the computer, and most PCs can be configured to boot from a hard disk without even throwing an error code if the floppy fails/doesn't exist.
24 drives? Yeah, I've done that--with a single disk and lots of logical partitions.
Re:Chips, Dips, Taco and the Dot
on
Slashdot Turns 5
·
· Score: 1
Or, for that matter, "Taco Hell"?
I got a lot of enjoyment out of that easter-egg on this site. That said, I (perhaps like so many other readers) even complained to the famous malda@slashdot.org when it disappeared, nigh on about 2-3 months ago now.
It was nice reading about him burning his mouth on hot pizza cheese, suffering from lost airport luggage, and so on. It really gave this site, as a whole, a more personal touch, I thought.
So here's my obligatory post: Kudos to the/. team. A new milestone. Alas, I started reading/. in Aug 1998. As the archive links posted above indicate, "Chips n Dips" was only a glorious rumour even then. But I'm still convinced, despite the ACs' comments to the contrary, that apple.slashdot.org is not an easter egg.
That said, has anyone else ripped through the HTML on the standard pages and/or templates, looking for "web beacons" or "single-pixel images"? I'm still convinced/. gets more ad revenue than is from the banner at the top.
Slashdot Mirror
The Monster Machine: G4/PC Hybrid on TechTV? you must be talking about this... :)
Do you honestly expect that everyone sees the same pages you do, just because they entered in the same URL or clicked the same link?
The fact is, there is (and has been for some time) a disparity between what an IE user sees and what a Netscape user sees. The same can be said of Netscape and Amoeba, or even different versions of the same browser. For example, the IE 4.0.2222 that came on the Win95 CD that you could install separately didn't even support frames and tables properly.
Because of these issues, it is (more or less) a common practice to attempt to distinguish browsers from each other, and serve similar (but not identical) pages to differing browsers. Further, with PHP and DHTML (server-side) and the joys of javascript and vbscript(browser-side), these pages can be made to look different.
Back in the day when the "supercookie" vulnerability in Media Player was found, one of my client's servers was configured to identify the Windows installation by the Globally Unique IDentifier, and that was cross-referenced with a profile that the user willingly provided upon visiting the site. Finally that profile's browser-selection option was matched against the browser reference string that was sent in the page request, and the user was prompted if there was a discrepancy. If there wasn't, the page sent to the user was chosen according to what browser the server identified.
And thus we didn't force gobble-de-gook onto our Netscape Users just because we provided Active Desktop Support for our IE users, just as our IE users didn't get confused by an icon on their status bar indicating errors on the page because we supported SmartUpdate through Netscape.
Our solution was a little more convoluted than necessary, yes, but it also allowed us to track individual systems/users' browsing, and we could then email them with links to stuff on the site that they hadn't seen yet.
Now, surely you wouldn't trust my client's server/service, because I told you what we'd deployed and that we tracked our visitors. But that system has long since been taken down in favor of static pages.
All that said, I don't think it's appropriate to lambast web hosting companies for trying to give you more functionality, even though they have to identify your browser and/or OS to prevent unexpected errors from creeping in.
Now, don't get me wrong, though. If my client used either of the SmartUpdate or ActiveDesktop stuff to try and force spyware on the users to harvest email addresses, or sold the addresses freely supplied in the profiles, I would have eliminated the ability to collect it. Nefarious activities are unacceptable in any case, and we the public are to only assume that the nature of singling out Opera to feed it an (assumed intentionally) incorrect page was to inconvenience the user to switch. After all, Microsoft has been known to pull this stuff. Who remembers MS blocking Mozilla, other browsers from MSN nigh on a year ago now? MS has demonstrated that they're not above kicking their competition and forcing users to IE.
That should put to rest the theory that it's a bugfix on MS' part to maintain compatibility with an old browser--we at /. prefer to not believe in such crackpot theories. Instead, we assume that known troublemakers are still causing trouble.
And as it's made news all over the Internet that MSN is again causing problems for another browser, we simply find the Bork a humorous retaliation. Hey, you can't fault us for rooting for the underdog, can you? :)
Finally, since the logic behind the Swedish chef hasn't yet surfaced on /., I'll explain it. We hackers adopted a bit of slang, changing "broken" to "borked". Some script kiddies even say it "b0rk3d". So, in a fit of rage, developers sometimes say "This thing is borked! Borked borked borked!!!" You'd be surprised just how much that sounds like the Swedish Chef saying "bork! bork! bork!" And thus was the starting impetus for the hidden joke behind the Swedish Chef.
Now, in their situation I'd say that space is certainly an issue (With the tough goal of fitting all of the supporting software and applications for the IYONIX computer into just 4Mbytes of ROM, from the press release), so it's not worth jumping to the conclusion that they're hiding something.
Further, I note that the press release mentions specific, new versions, and that the email to LKML never stated which version was checked for the match.
Further, how was it found, in absence of the source, that it still contained the actual working code? I'd like to know that, because many compilers commonly spit out some boiler-plate binary code.
Now, your comment indicates a slight misconception (but another program of theirs (called the HAL)) about kernels. 'HAL' stands for "Hardware Abstraction Layer", and is an integral part in modern kernels. For most operating systems less primitive than *cough* DOS *cough cough*, the HAL provides functions for device drivers and software applications, such that the kernel is the only software that directly manipulates the hardware. That said, these functions are an integral part of the kernel (without regard to where it's a microkernel, exokernel, or monolithic), not things which can be considered a separate work and put into public view by itself. In fact, this is the section of the GPL that M$ likes to FUD about regularly: the "viral" part of the license. It indicates explicitly that if you use ANY GPL'd code in your project, the whole thing inherits the GNU License (and thus, must be distributed with source.) After all, by the terms of the GPL, the RiscOS kernel can be considered a derivative work, under the admission of the PCI and bridge setup functions.
Thus, as best as I can determine, the press release seems quite self-contradictory. I suppose that's why they used the wording "should like to respond" instead of the more common "would like to respond". In so doing, it could be construed that the statements about versions 5.x are, indeed, false, and that the truth in the release comes after the phrase "For the avoidance of doubt".
To place the separation there, though, also leaves the line above it (There are no plans to use GPL derived code...) in question, and can thus be interpreted as "hey, we violated the GPL in our RiscOS. And we reserve the right to do it again..."
On the other hand, perhaps the announcement that the code is available and conforms to the license, in their minds, is to be inferred by the press release...
Now for the good ol' disclaimer: IANAL. I don't even try to be. :)
Yeah it works--I got some pretty upset phone calls last year at my university, when my box had shut down an NT "corridor" machine to the scripted, dynamic "student accounts pages"... They pulled my internet connection for 3 days (it happened over a weekend) with an order to fix it before they restored my connection.
They also threatened to bill me for their damages--an estimated $700. (I have no idea where they dreamed up that number.)
I'm just too lazy to go find a link--there has been declared today a "low brain activity advisory" by the National Weather Service. :)
Just seems a little extra work there, that's all..
I guess you could argue that it was unnecessary--but I was the one laughing when everyone else thought "the internet was down" when they couldn't get to Yahoo Games, Hotmail, and Google.
Of course, it might be noteworthy to mention I find far more "relevant" uses of my Internet connection. :)
Last time I forgot to install the bttv module in my kernel, all I got in xawtv was a purple-ish picture. Further, even after I got the modules loaded, my 'top' load averages didn't seem to indicate that my computer was completely I/O bound, even when I was recording direct to disk in AVI format.
Somewhere I read that the winTV actually did do DMA transfers across the PCI bus, so I don't really think that polling is really necessary here.
That said, here in the US at least, TV signals have a framerate of around 19-20 fps, and the composite signal is really at a resolution of about 320x200. So, your PVR card really should not be swamping your PCI bus, unless you're attempting to capture the non-demultiplexed digital cable signal in real time (or you're capturing HDTV--but I've yet to see an HDTV-ready PVR card.).
But I think someone could build a multichannel PVR in a more embedded solution. An old, small processor, such as even the Motorola 6809, should be sufficient to instruct some custom TV tuner/disk controller cards to start recording. And the whole box wouldn't need to be any larger than a typical VCR, unless it had more than 8 3.5" disk drives in it.
Playback, on the other hand, might be a little trickier. Here we'd need a single central processor, capable of reading the data on all the disks and converting it back to NTSC. If necessary, this processor would have to handle any software decompression, so we might need a bigger processor for it--say, 486-class. A custom video card with a TV output could cheaply handle the NTSC conversion, further lowering the demands on the output processor. Sure, some pretty serious design work would need to be done here, but it seems feasible, at least to my way of thinking.
My oldest brother put a car alternator on the back sprocket of an old exercise bike, and connected it to the kit. He connected up the relay in the kit to a couple strands of TV coax-- one to the antenna, one to the TV.
Net result? To watch TV you had to ride the bike. Stop pedaling, and the TV goes to snow. Start pedaling again and the picture returns. It was a great way of forcing exercise... :)
As an over-active 6-year-old, though, I was often the one to get all the exercise while Mom watched her daily soaps. I remember trying to pace myself so I wouldn't miss anything when I was watching my nightly Star Trek--but I was usually dead-tired when it was over... To this day (I'm 23 now) I can't wear shorts because of how large and powerful my thighs are. People just won't stop staring!
And the best part was, this particular experiment didn't even require batteries to power the whole thing! The thing was eventually dismantled, though--mostly because Mom got mad that she couldn't see Days of Our Lives while I was at school! But, theoretically, that switch in the relay would wear out--but relays are pretty cheap anyways...
HAARP is an endeavor by the US gov't to attempt to tweak the ionosphere by the way of something akin to a huge electromagnet, near the North Pole.It's a wonder they haven't downed Santa's sleigh! :)
Seriously, though, this is one project that has been accused of causing El Nino.
For you who haven't followed my links, HAARP stands for High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, and is run by the Naval Research Laborarory.
As you've seen from my links, there are many zealots who would claim that HAARP causes weather disturbances. The Official HAARP FAQ, though, claims quite the contrary.
Personally, I tend to take the side of the zealots; the US gov't is well-known to hide issues of widespread importance and, in many cases, outright mislead its citizens. Hence my opening statement.
And as I pointed out in my parent post, my cars together aren't even worth one third the cost of retrofitting just one of them. So I'd be losing a lot of money in the process.
Sure, if I could track my car on a map at the end of the day, if I had a newer car I'd consider it. Especially for the kids-when they get old enough to drive...
Besides, they'd have me on that one--I don't keep track of stuff like that. Do *you* keep all your receipts? Do you even get a receipt when you buy gas? At my local gas station, often times you don't.
So no, I'll be examining the new law--no doubt like the others (I have a cousin who said that this was a new city ordinance in his KS town) there'll be an exclusionary rule (in his case, he said that new cars had to be GPS-equipped, but pre-1994 cars were exempt from the GPS-requirement. They only required GPS and the revealing of the GPS-id numbers at the courthouse--they never said what it was for... but no "road use tax" or anything like that.)
For as we all know, all your hard-earned money belongs to the gov't!
But I truly enjoyed this part:
Now, I own 2 cars. One is an 85, the other an 86. I do my best to maintain them, and they get 28-32 mpg, so I don't complain about the tax at the pump. Neither car is worth $400; together, they're not worth $600. So, me being an Oregonian, tell me why I would pay ~$2k for a basic GPS system, so I could pay MORE in taxes? Allowed? By jove, they'd have to require me to upgrade to GPS!Of course, next there'll be a law saying we can't drive cars more than 4 years old.. Doh!
My brain broke on this one--isn't that a direct contradiction? Maybe I should go reread it a few times and go draw up some truth tables, but this looks like quite horrible editing.
Mingorance and Mignorance.
When I read portions of the article aloud to the family, I had trouble NOT saying "'em ignorants."
Imagine a redneck saying that name: "'Francisco? 'em Ignorants!"
(And just how far is San Francisco from HollyWood? Or even Silicon Valley?)
All that said, considering the fact that CD prices never seemed to fall from the ~US$16 that they started at, and that the artists only get about US$.04 per copy, and the manufacturing costs around US$2/disc, that leaves some US$13.96 per copy that goes into the deep pockets of the RIAA. That's over 87%! No doubt at least some of that goes to support the BSA. That leads me to a new parsing of this acronym, which seems to be a rather common sentiment here on Slashdot:(Greedy) Bastards Suck Ass!
based on your teergrube link, I am to estimate that this is an in-the-works plan; there is a mention of adding "stuttering" to the fake MTA...
Were it so simple as an if/else condition, entirely encapsulated in the loop, the compiler wouldn't fuss at all. But it's not. No, instead it's only partially nested inside a loop (and indeed, never so clear as a good ol' all-conditions-covered if/else expression), and so we must consider the loop condition as we grab the flyswatter and go bug-hunting. If numrows is in fact <=0, the for loop's contents are not executed, and indeed base could be left uninitialized. And that's to say nothing about the cases where this could be done in concurrent code, where the value of f_sortacross could change while this is executing! And thus we'd have instead:
for (row = 0; row < numrows; ++row) { /* Sorry for breaking the pretty indentation.*/
endcol = colwidth;
if (f_sortacross) { base = 0; } else { base = row; }
}
And this should (theoretically) compile without a warning. It is, however, arguably less efficient if f_sortacross == 0 and numrows > 1; we've just turned an O(1) evaluation into an O(N) in that case.
Trust your compiler. If you have a warning, you should probably re-think your code a bit. That compiler is the product of the experience of C coders quite likely more skilled than you are giving them credit for--and the "many eyes make problems shallow" philosophy of OSS would suggest that if it were a compiler bug, it probably would have been squashed long ago....
But as for the roms, I think you've got about as much luck getting them GPL'd as you'd have trying to GPL Office. I just don't see it happening anytime soon.
Now, on the other hand, I seem to recall a copyright restriction about the loss of copyright by the owner after x years. Now, x may be 20 or so, so the only roms that might fall under this category may be those from Atari (think the 2600), but seeing how a lot of the companies that made the 8-bit Nintendo games are now out of business, this particular clause may come in handy in finding "legal" roms, now or a few years down the road. But alas, IANAL.... :(
How very Microsoftian. Name something of theirs after an OSS project. I can see it already. Tomorrow there'll be an article about how Microsoft is suing the Plex86 people for trademark infringement.
Hey, nothing's too low when it comes to M$...
This thing seems to have a bit more of a pug nose than that of a phaser, but it seems like a start.
From the article:
Hmm, well--I recently had my shoulder dislocated. My wrists have been carpal-tunneled since I was 14 (I've been using computers extensively since the age of 3) but I'm used to the wrist pain. But when I reach for the mouse and my shoulder slips out of the socket a bit--I'm not used to that pain! I tend to use the keyboard everywhere I can though, to avoid the mouse. I just wish there were more keybd shortcuts for most X11 functions; win3.x/9x/NT/2000 I can do most everything (except navigate a page with Flash) without ever reaching for the mouse and screaming in agony.
I found a workaround for my mouse problems; I bought a light pen. And for novelty sake, when in linux I've used the kernel driver for a controller to connect a the 8-bit Nintendo Zapper(R) to my PC. It also makes for some fun--when I get mad, what could possibly be better than to shoot harmlessly at my PC? :) Then I feel better, and no harm done.
Finally, it seems like a great idea to get away from the constantly-dirty-mouse paradox; no moving parts are exposed that can prevent the mouse from stopping and skipping around. Of course the trick will be to learn to keep it charged... :)
CNN also said that the "freelance writer" was in a PR affiliate of M$, so we're not seeing anything new here. Just yet another M$ "embrace and extend."
And anyway, isn't Bioware gonna tear these guys a new one in the courts for decompiling or reverse-engineering their proprietary product?
Perhaps they will use the DMCA in their arguments, stating that [a portion of] their code was unchanged in the binary representation, and thus the unauthorized distribution of their hack is in violation of the DMCA.
After all, it seems the court system bows down in fear at the use of that acronym, just like Congress bows down for anything GWB wants to do/put into law.
False advertising is unlawful, by US federal law.
There is a nice and simple way around this, though; gcc has a -static flag that compiles required library functions into the binary, removing library dependencies.
Thus, if you were designing a compiled-only, work-for-almost-all-linux-distros, you keep your binaries (relatively) small, and compile them statically.
So--if you can find a good remote-root linux exploit that's rather common, write your virus and compile it with no machine optimizations, ELF binary format, stripped, and static. That should be sufficient to get your payload down to a few kb, if you're not being really extreme. (No optimizations because you don't want to limit yourself to a specfic processor--why target only a Pentium III or higher, when you could target the whole i386/ia64 architecture family? :)
Disclaimer: I do not advocate virus-writing; nor do I, or have ever in the past, actually written malicious code. I am only stating that there's a workaround for dependency issues, even if you aren't gonna pass around the sources. (The virus reference is mostly to keep on topic.)
But '-static' does still make for a larger binary.... This is where you can still shrink it down, though, by specifying that you originally compile your code using the -I/{path-to-library}/ form; use a smaller library, like uClib.
- Verisign
- Microsoft
- GTE CyberTrust
- KeyWitness 2048
- Thawte
And if you still use Netscape (or expect your users to) then the Certificate Authorities are (Communicator 4.75):- ABA.Ecom
- AddTrust
- American Express
- Baltimore CyberTrust
- BankEngine
- BelSign
- CertEngine
- Digi
t al Signature Trust Co. - E-Certify
- Entrust.net
- Equifax
- FortEngine
- GTE CyberTrust
- GlobalSign
- MailEngine
- TC TrustCenter
- Thawte
- TraderEngine
- USPS
- ValiCert
- Verisign
- Visa International
- Xcert
- beTRUSTed
These certificates are trusted by default, and most (if not all) are self-signed.To see these under IE, Pull down the Tools menu, Choose "Internet Options", choose the "Content" tab, and click the "Certificates" button. Finally select the Intended Purpose labelled "Client Authorization", and use the right arrow to scroll over and choose "Trusted Root Certification Authorities". The list of certificates will be displayed in the box there, for your easy perusal.
In Netscape Communicator: Communicator menu, Tools, Security Info, Certificates, Signers.
But for proper compatibility, I think we're kinda stuck with IE's smaller list, minus M$ and KeyWitness 2048. So, that leaves:
- Verisign
- GTE CyberTrust
- Thawte
Thawte is also quite pricey, at about US$150 for the first year.Although, if I remember correctly, you could get away by getting into the "circle of trust" even if your certificate isn't signed by one of these companies. Just get it signed by some company that is signed by one of those listed in the third list above, and theoretically that should be good enough. Although, I'm just speculating here, based on a little too much schooling... :)
(Of course, I've skipped over the whole 40/48/64/128-bit encryption hassles with IE, but that's more an issue for webmasters and a bit outside the scope of this discussion.)
Even without the use of some win32-equivalent of LVM to "join" multiple drives on the same drive letter, win95 uses the DOS-like nomenclature of hard drives starting at C and going to Z. Hardest part is finding controllers to drive it--and you can have 4 or more IDE hard drives using standard controllers, and 7 with SCSI 1, 15 with SCSI 2, and even more with SCSI 3, without daisy-chaining controllers. If you daisy-chain you can have this many drives per controller (so with 3 SCSI-1 cards in the slots and the dual IDE controller on the MB, I could easily pull this off.) So, as I see it, if the drives all have a single partition, all you'd really need is a really big case and power supply(or several cases with their own power supplies--if there's some dummy motherboard in there, the MB isn't gonna care that there's a drive powered by that supply that it can't access.)
But to finish my point, there's no guarantee that drive B is used; most PCs of today don't have a second floppy disk drive. For that matter, the first floppy drive isn't essential, either--a single change in the CMOS settings on the computer, and most PCs can be configured to boot from a hard disk without even throwing an error code if the floppy fails/doesn't exist.
24 drives? Yeah, I've done that--with a single disk and lots of logical partitions.
I got a lot of enjoyment out of that easter-egg on this site.
That said, I (perhaps like so many other readers) even complained to the famous malda@slashdot.org when it disappeared, nigh on about 2-3 months ago now.
It was nice reading about him burning his mouth on hot pizza cheese, suffering from lost airport luggage, and so on. It really gave this site, as a whole, a more personal touch, I thought.
So here's my obligatory post: Kudos to the /. team. A new milestone. /. in Aug 1998. As the archive links posted above indicate, "Chips n Dips" was only a glorious rumour even then.
Alas, I started reading
But I'm still convinced, despite the ACs' comments to the contrary, that apple.slashdot.org is not an easter egg.
That said, has anyone else ripped through the HTML on the standard pages and/or templates, looking for "web beacons" or "single-pixel images"? I'm still convinced /. gets more ad revenue than is from the banner at the top.