...and that can basically amount to a denial-of-service attack.
Unfortunately for me, I discovered this effect last year at school. I was doing a project on Mozilla's first 30 months (or so), and I decided to grab the entire bug database, one bug per thread, 25 threads at a time. Big mistake.
Soon I had swamped the entire server (load > 100) and my account was revoked. Oops. Needless to say, I was embarassed...
What they fail to mention is that users were only allowed to download songs on CDs that they owned. You had to run MP3.com's "beam-it" software on your PC and insert each CD that you wanted to be able to use with their service before you could download any music from that CD. Nothing here was "bootlegged".
As I'm sure countless others have said here, all you had to do was claim that you owned the CD, by putting it into your CD-player. I for one borrowed hundreds of CDs from friends for this purpose. It was REALLY easy, too, and when it was done, the CD-player would open up, ready for the next CD. No purchase required.
Is there something that you would actually pay an extra $30 to add to your small battery-operated device, something that you wouldn't just use a cable or infrared for?
IMHO, the most compelling use for Bluetooth is the Wireless/Land-line phone (I've read about it in other articles, but I can't think of any now) -- your cellphone hooks into bluetooth access at work to allow your phone calls to be free when you are at work, but use your cellphone for dialing, etc. Also, you could have different "quick-dial" numbers at work or on the road.
Considering the price of cell-phone service, yes, I would pay $30 more for a bluetooth enabled cellphone if it did this switching on the fly.
I'd even pay $30 for a home base-station so the same functionality would work at home.
Can anyone think of other useful features
Yeah, I can think of a few, but I'm afraid that the first one that will be added is advertising.
"You have selected George W. Bush. Please enjoy this informational video by the NRA."
There is a set of extensions to HTTP designed for precisely this kind of file sharing.
The protocol is called WebDAV.
WebDAV, a set of extensions to HTTP provide the following additional things that are especially useful for file-sharing: locking, versioning, logging, access-control lists, and searching (yes, with different grammars, too), and it runs over HTTPS along with HTTP.
Most people don't realize it, but A TON of products((by such luminaries as Adobe, Macromedia, and Microsoft) support WebDAV (which is an extension of HTTP).
It was mentioned in the Halloween Document as a decommoditizing protocol.
Furthermore, there are plenty of open-source implementations of webDAV on both the client- and server-side including:
mod_dav (an apache module that makes it into a DAV-enabled server)
and
davfs (a module for linux that makes dav folders seem like normal directories)
Check it all out!
-Michael
p.s. By the way, it runs over HTTPS as well as HTTP, so don't get scared.
p.p.s. In the interests of full-disclosure, I work for Xythos Software and we make a robust, scalable WebDAV-enabled server.
I think it behooves the Linux community as a whole to stop longing for compatibility with Microsoft (they obviously dont want it anyway) and build products that outclass theirs instead. Do you honestly think a non-bloated word processor couldnt be made that would beat out Word? Stop trying to support word's format and build your own wp app. (or maybe a better one already exists, I don't use wp apps, hooray for vi)
This seems like a reasonable statement, but I'm not impressed. Companies with a dominant position attempt to achieve incompatibility because it results in lock-in, and monopoly pricing, etc. On the other hand, companies at a disadvantage should attempt to achieve compatibility, so as to improve the market-share of their superior components. (See Katz and Shapiro's "Systems Competition and Network Effects" from Journal of Economic Perspectives - Volume 8, Number 2, Spring 1994 - pages 93-115)
Do we have some evidence that Microsoft has lost it's dominant position? I'd say no, so for now, compatibility is still a necessity.
-marick
Do we really need a free replacement for exchange server? I don't know, but I bet we're pretty close already.
Here's what a company called Bynari sells for about $600 and bills as a replacement for exchange:
Insight Server incorporates RFC standards based protocols, open source software and Bynari's web based management interface which makes a powerful messaging and collaboration tool for your organization. Insight Server provides support for messaging and collaboration functions of Exchange without the usage of closed protocols. Components include IMAP, LDAP, iCalendar, SMTP, and POP3. The management and administration tool and the install/configuration scripts provide a value-add many UNIX and Linux administrators appreciate. BONUS* Use Insight Server as your messaging and collaboration tool for Microsoft(tm) Outlook. Our configuration guide can help you set up Outlook to work with and use Insight server as it's service provider.
I bet it would be pretty easy to set up the programs yourself. Bynari even provides a pdf-file that explains how to set-up Outlook to speak to the free products.
here's a partial list that their product installs for you:
exim
sendmail
IMAP -- There are a lot of these around, but they don't mention which one.
Point of clarification: Nautilus runs Mozilla embedded! So Nautilus IS Mozilla, at least for html display.
And (of course) that's the point of Mozilla. It's not just a browser. It's a set of cross-platform components that can be embedded in other applications. Sounds like a platform to me, not a browser at all.
The point is that you can use the "vibrating" option, that most phones have these days.
I wonder who's phone that is buzzing in my crotch...
Definitely worth seeing if you are fully awake...
on
Review: Memento
·
· Score: 1
I just saw this movie last night. Momento is 1)confusing, 2)disturbing, and 3)worth seeing, but only if you're prepared to concentrate hard.
I went with my parents, and at the end, we had an interesting conversation with this other group
of people about what had happened and what it all meant. Definitely that kind of movie, and worth
the 7.50.
Incidentally, before I went to bed, I was convinced that there would be a Slashdot article about it, and I searched and searched, but to no avail. I guess I'm ahead of the curve this time (albeit by only 8 hours or so).
And what about Windows? Simple installer. Sometimes these installers aren't very good - but almost always the software will be installed and will run.
I've written a few windows installers in my time, and I have to say that while what you are saying is true, it is a bit inaccurate to suggest that it is easy to make these beautiful installers.
There are several major issues when writing an installer for a Windows program. DLLs are different from one Windows to another. I (We?) call this DLL-Hell. Furthermore, IF the installer is written wrong, you can break the machine's registry settings.
So why do the installers work so well? Because people like me are paid to write them and test them and fix them repeatedly until they work! On windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000!
So just remember - Linux software is free! You want to make some game install well? Write an installer. Installshield for linux has been around for a while (although I've never used it myself, I hear it's pretty good). Furthermore, there's a installer package from LOKI that does setup for all their games. And by the way, those games install fine.
The Internet will never again be as interesting, stimulating, challenging and refreshing as it was back at the tail end of the '80s and beginning of the '90s.
Ok, maybe this is true, but on the other hand, I can find out about snow back east without paying any long-distance phone charges and I can do literature research (IEEE and ACM digital libraries) for free and without wasting paper.
Furthermore, my grandmother, who can't really get around anymore, can play bridge from the comfort of her bed.
So I ask you - does what you miss from the 80s and early 90s even compare?
And are very succeptable to the suggestion that anyone who deviates from this path must be a 'evil nerd/hacker' to be despised, bullied and then called a coward by lame presidents when they finally snap.
In case someone out there is confused by this quote, the "in-credible" U.S. President Bush called the boy who shot-up his high school (in Santee, CA, outside San Diego) a coward.
Here's the quote:
Bush called the shooting "a disgraceful act of cowardice," adding, "When America teaches our children right from wrong and teaches values that respect life in our country, we'll be better off."
OK, fine, so open source software projects tend not to have regression test suites. I'll give you that.
On the other hand, OSS's main benefit is huge amounts of code review. In my years of software engineering experience, I've never even seen ONE closed-source company that has a regime of code review even half as developed as Mozilla's, for example. And that's just one example. Almost all OS projects have code reviewed by SOMEONE. At most development houses, you're lucky if your design is reviewed. Code is assumed to be well-written.
So, yes, Open Source Software has flaws as a development model. No regression testing is just one of them. But that doesn't mean it's making software worse.
-marick
p.s. yes, I know there are closed source companies that have code review! There are plenty of others that do not, and it is those that I am referring to!
Hey, just a few thoughts on your reasons to dislike Java:
- No multiple inheritance. None. Which means you either klidge your design, or use aggregation. Neither of which is pretty in a case where multiple inheritance would work best.
As I understand it, multiple inheritance makes code less maintainable. In fact, in many cases, multiple inheritance is used for API reuse anyway, and Java interfaces do this just fine for me.
- Memory management. If you have a larger application, with complex processing, the memory manager can stall your application for hundreds of milliseconds during the full sweep garbage collection. They still have not solved this satisfactorilly. If your application has tight time contraints, this can be a severe problem.
Yes, this is a problem.
Of course, most people don't even realize that you can write your own garbage collector (and JIT compiler, for that matter) and plug it in at run-time to the 1.3 JVM. This makes a lot of sense for people writing complex memory-intensive Java code, that's for sure.
Of course, it would be much better if there was some kind of profiling memory manager that would learn good memory management for a class as it is used in some environment. I think TowerJ's static Java compiler does this.
In particular, it would be possible, maybe even easy, to put watermarks into the "masked" frequencies that normallly get removed in MP3 files.
Let me explain: The way MP3 encoders work is, each sound that comes through "masks" some group of sound frequencies at up to X decibels where X depends on the initial sound. Picture the way you can't hear talking at a concert, and you get the idea. Anyway, masking can be used to great benefit in compression.
Now, let's suppose that someone watermarked an MP3 by putting back in frequencies that would normally be masked by the other sounds. This wouldn't be detectable by "most" humans, but would definitely last through D->A conversion and probably back to D.
On the other hand, it would probably be easy enough to write an A->D encoder that removes them if you know where they are being put. In fact, it's possible that a normal MP3 encoder (LAME, etc.) might automatically remove or degrade the watermarks anyway.
A friend of mine is running Mac OS9 on an IMac and Netscape 6's installer (by default) put >300 files on his desktop. Not just icons, either - mostly XUL files!
Has anybody else seen this behavior? Is it because the root directory on the Mac is the desktop?
Well, one possible market would be businesses in the computer industry that might want lecture notes from a class offered at a university for their employees. For example, I have lecture notes from an architecture class that I would imagine would be worth money to many co-workers who went to college in the 80's.
I'm a former Netscape supporter. I didn't leave because of the Monopoly. I left because Netscape hadn't released anything that didn't suck in well over a year, and Mozilla was ages away from being usable.
That's a rather simplistic argument, don't you think?
I'd make the claim that a major reason there were no new releases of Netscape over that year had a lot to do with lack of resources (and the buyout by AOL)...
which had a lot to do with Netscape's dropping stock price...
which was likely caused by dropping market share...
which was (at least partly) because of THE MONOPOLY and Microsoft's abuse thereof
-Michael
Maybe it isn't so cut and dried, fine, but don't make excuses for Microsoft or claim that they haven't had an effect on other companies ability to produce competing products.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately for me, I discovered this effect last year at school. I was doing a project on Mozilla's first 30 months (or so), and I decided to grab the entire bug database, one bug per thread, 25 threads at a time. Big mistake.
Soon I had swamped the entire server (load > 100) and my account was revoked. Oops. Needless to say, I was embarassed...
As I'm sure countless others have said here, all you had to do was claim that you owned the CD, by putting it into your CD-player. I for one borrowed hundreds of CDs from friends for this purpose. It was REALLY easy, too, and when it was done, the CD-player would open up, ready for the next CD. No purchase required.
Am I the only one who did that?
IMHO, the most compelling use for Bluetooth is the Wireless/Land-line phone (I've read about it in other articles, but I can't think of any now) -- your cellphone hooks into bluetooth access at work to allow your phone calls to be free when you are at work, but use your cellphone for dialing, etc. Also, you could have different "quick-dial" numbers at work or on the road.
Considering the price of cell-phone service, yes, I would pay $30 more for a bluetooth enabled cellphone if it did this switching on the fly.
I'd even pay $30 for a home base-station so the same functionality would work at home.
Can anyone think of other useful features Yeah, I can think of a few, but I'm afraid that the first one that will be added is advertising. "You have selected George W. Bush. Please enjoy this informational video by the NRA."
There is a set of extensions to HTTP designed for precisely this kind of file sharing.
The protocol is called WebDAV.
WebDAV, a set of extensions to HTTP provide the following additional things that are especially useful for file-sharing: locking, versioning, logging, access-control lists, and searching (yes, with different grammars, too), and it runs over HTTPS along with HTTP.
Most people don't realize it, but A TON of products((by such luminaries as Adobe, Macromedia, and Microsoft) support WebDAV (which is an extension of HTTP).
It was mentioned in the Halloween Document as a decommoditizing protocol.
Furthermore, there are plenty of open-source implementations of webDAV on both the client- and server-side including:
mod_dav (an apache module that makes it into a DAV-enabled server)
and
davfs (a module for linux that makes dav folders seem like normal directories) Check it all out! -Michael p.s. By the way, it runs over HTTPS as well as HTTP, so don't get scared. p.p.s. In the interests of full-disclosure, I work for Xythos Software and we make a robust, scalable WebDAV-enabled server.
This seems like a reasonable statement, but I'm not impressed. Companies with a dominant position attempt to achieve incompatibility because it results in lock-in, and monopoly pricing, etc. On the other hand, companies at a disadvantage should attempt to achieve compatibility, so as to improve the market-share of their superior components. (See Katz and Shapiro's "Systems Competition and Network Effects" from Journal of Economic Perspectives - Volume 8, Number 2, Spring 1994 - pages 93-115)
Do we have some evidence that Microsoft has lost it's dominant position? I'd say no, so for now, compatibility is still a necessity. -marick
Here's what a company called Bynari sells for about $600 and bills as a replacement for exchange:
Insight Server incorporates RFC standards based protocols, open source software and Bynari's web based management interface which makes a powerful messaging and collaboration tool for your organization. Insight Server provides support for messaging and collaboration functions of Exchange without the usage of closed protocols. Components include IMAP, LDAP, iCalendar, SMTP, and POP3. The management and administration tool and the install/configuration scripts provide a value-add many UNIX and Linux administrators appreciate. BONUS* Use Insight Server as your messaging and collaboration tool for Microsoft(tm) Outlook. Our configuration guide can help you set up Outlook to work with and use Insight server as it's service provider.
I bet it would be pretty easy to set up the programs yourself. Bynari even provides a pdf-file that explains how to set-up Outlook to speak to the free products. here's a partial list that their product installs for you:
- exim
- sendmail
- IMAP -- There are a lot of these around, but they don't mention which one.
- OpenLDAP
- Calendaring -- Again, they don't say which one.
-marickI understand that tatooing is getting quite popular among the "unable to make new long-term memories" set.
Perhaps that could be used here as well?
Point of clarification: Nautilus runs Mozilla embedded! So Nautilus IS Mozilla, at least for html display.
And (of course) that's the point of Mozilla. It's not just a browser. It's a set of cross-platform components that can be embedded in other applications. Sounds like a platform to me, not a browser at all.
The point is that you can use the "vibrating" option, that most phones have these days. I wonder who's phone that is buzzing in my crotch...
I just saw this movie last night. Momento is 1)confusing, 2)disturbing, and 3)worth seeing, but only if you're prepared to concentrate hard.
I went with my parents, and at the end, we had an interesting conversation with this other group
of people about what had happened and what it all meant. Definitely that kind of movie, and worth
the 7.50.
Incidentally, before I went to bed, I was convinced that there would be a Slashdot article about it, and I searched and searched, but to no avail. I guess I'm ahead of the curve this time (albeit by only 8 hours or so).
-marick
And what about Windows? Simple installer. Sometimes these installers aren't very good - but almost always the software will be installed and will run.
I've written a few windows installers in my time, and I have to say that while what you are saying is true, it is a bit inaccurate to suggest that it is easy to make these beautiful installers.
There are several major issues when writing an installer for a Windows program. DLLs are different from one Windows to another. I (We?) call this DLL-Hell. Furthermore, IF the installer is written wrong, you can break the machine's registry settings.
So why do the installers work so well? Because people like me are paid to write them and test them and fix them repeatedly until they work! On windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000!
So just remember - Linux software is free! You want to make some game install well? Write an installer. Installshield for linux has been around for a while (although I've never used it myself, I hear it's pretty good). Furthermore, there's a installer package from LOKI that does setup for all their games. And by the way, those games install fine.
The Internet will never again be as interesting, stimulating, challenging and refreshing as it was back at the tail end of the '80s and beginning of the '90s.
Ok, maybe this is true, but on the other hand, I can find out about snow back east without paying any long-distance phone charges and I can do literature research (IEEE and ACM digital libraries) for free and without wasting paper.
Furthermore, my grandmother, who can't really get around anymore, can play bridge from the comfort of her bed.
So I ask you - does what you miss from the 80s and early 90s even compare?
And are very succeptable to the suggestion that anyone who deviates from this path must be a 'evil nerd/hacker' to be despised, bullied and then called a coward by lame presidents when they finally snap.
In case someone out there is confused by this quote, the "in-credible" U.S. President Bush called the boy who shot-up his high school (in Santee, CA, outside San Diego) a coward.
Here's the quote:
Bush called the shooting "a disgraceful act of cowardice," adding, "When America teaches our children right from wrong and teaches values that respect life in our country, we'll be better off."
But what about open source napster clients? Can't they be hacked so as to NOT ADD the extra layer?
On the other hand, OSS's main benefit is huge amounts of code review. In my years of software engineering experience, I've never even seen ONE closed-source company that has a regime of code review even half as developed as Mozilla's, for example. And that's just one example. Almost all OS projects have code reviewed by SOMEONE. At most development houses, you're lucky if your design is reviewed. Code is assumed to be well-written.
So, yes, Open Source Software has flaws as a development model. No regression testing is just one of them. But that doesn't mean it's making software worse.
-marick
p.s. yes, I know there are closed source companies that have code review! There are plenty of others that do not, and it is those that I am referring to!
- No multiple inheritance. None. Which means you either klidge your design, or use aggregation. Neither of which is pretty in a case where multiple inheritance would work best.
As I understand it, multiple inheritance makes code less maintainable. In fact, in many cases, multiple inheritance is used for API reuse anyway, and Java interfaces do this just fine for me.
- Memory management. If you have a larger application, with complex processing, the memory manager can stall your application for hundreds of milliseconds during the full sweep garbage collection. They still have not solved this satisfactorilly. If your application has tight time contraints, this can be a severe problem.
Yes, this is a problem.
Of course, most people don't even realize that you can write your own garbage collector (and JIT compiler, for that matter) and plug it in at run-time to the 1.3 JVM. This makes a lot of sense for people writing complex memory-intensive Java code, that's for sure.
Of course, it would be much better if there was some kind of profiling memory manager that would learn good memory management for a class as it is used in some environment. I think TowerJ's static Java compiler does this.
-marick
oops... that should read: static void debug(String debugtext)... Java is case sensitive, I know... (that's what I get for not previewing) -marick
Ok, well, my favorite solution is to write a method in to each of my classes for debugging. The code I use is:
static boolean debug = true;
static void Debug(String debugtext)
{
if (debug)
{
System.out.println(debugtext);
}
}
This way, I can write:
debug("This is a test");
In my code and when I'm done debugging, set the static debug to false.
Please try this at home!
-marick
In particular, it would be possible, maybe even easy, to put watermarks into the "masked" frequencies that normallly get removed in MP3 files.
Let me explain: The way MP3 encoders work is, each sound that comes through "masks" some group of sound frequencies at up to X decibels where X depends on the initial sound. Picture the way you can't hear talking at a concert, and you get the idea. Anyway, masking can be used to great benefit in compression.
Now, let's suppose that someone watermarked an MP3 by putting back in frequencies that would normally be masked by the other sounds. This wouldn't be detectable by "most" humans, but would definitely last through D->A conversion and probably back to D.
On the other hand, it would probably be easy enough to write an A->D encoder that removes them if you know where they are being put. In fact, it's possible that a normal MP3 encoder (LAME, etc.) might automatically remove or degrade the watermarks anyway.
A friend of mine is running Mac OS9 on an IMac and Netscape 6's installer (by default) put >300 files on his desktop. Not just icons, either - mostly XUL files!
Has anybody else seen this behavior? Is it because the root directory on the Mac is the desktop?
You have a point there, Roy. And they're doing a manual recount in Volusia as we speak.
Nader does not support (at least not publicly) a maximum wage.
There are people who DO support a MAXIMUM WAGE, but Ralph Nader is not one of them.
Well, one possible market would be businesses in the computer industry that might want lecture notes from a class offered at a university for their employees. For example, I have lecture notes from an architecture class that I would imagine would be worth money to many co-workers who went to college in the 80's.
That's a rather simplistic argument, don't you think?
I'd make the claim that a major reason there were no new releases of Netscape over that year had a lot to do with lack of resources (and the buyout by AOL)...
which had a lot to do with Netscape's dropping stock price...
which was likely caused by dropping market share ...
which was (at least partly) because of THE MONOPOLY and Microsoft's abuse thereof
-Michael
Maybe it isn't so cut and dried, fine, but don't make excuses for Microsoft or claim that they haven't had an effect on other companies ability to produce competing products.