SPAMHAUS Record on Scelson
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I, Spammer
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· Score: 5, Informative
... is here. He must not be doing all that well if he can't scrape together the dough to get his fat ass out of Slidell, Louisiana, a town I had the misfortune of driving through a year ago and whose only redeeming feature is the Lake Ponchartrain bridge/causeway leading out of it and to New Orleans.
My Windows XP box, which is my fileserver, has been up for 5 months so far.
Rendering you open to any vulnerabilities less than 5 months old. Patch your box!
My uptime in MacOS X is the time between patches requiring reboots, which is usually the latest update to 10.2.x, although QuickTime 6.2 also required a reboot IIRC. I had some crashes back in 10.2.3 when my PowerBook would kernel panic at logout, but 10.2.4 fixed the issue. My iMac has never crashed (requiring a reboot and fsck -y), and only occasionally the UI has hung, requiring me to SSH in and kill the 'loginwindow' process.
He seems to just let it pass as a page in his life story.
Exactly. He's got much more embarassing/humiliating things to go through when he gets shoved into a cubicle. For now, his reaction was much the same as Ellen Feiss: "Oh, whatever, I think it's kind of funny. These people don't have lives..." They're kids. The fact that they get this flash-in-the-pan fame says more about us than them.
The first matrix after the Utopic failure was set in the 14th century, i.e. the beginnings of the Renaissance.
That's an interesting idea, and it could fit well with "Program" from Animatrix. I was initially confused about why they were fighting in medieval Japan, and eventually decided it was just for style. But if what you say is true, then they were from an earlier iteration of the One, and the metaphorical/construct timeline was appropriately set.
Since the Matrix is just metaphor, they could presumably interact with it / hack into it using something other than rotary-dial phones as entry points.
...exploits it using the SSH1 CRC32 exploit from 2001.
I'm sure there will be lots of funny jokes posted about using a 2001 exploit far into the future, patching systems, etc. etc. However, while the Matrix films are set in the future, the Matrix is set in the present, at the "peak of your civilization" according to Agent Smith. So it is appropriate for Trinity to hack a present-day system using a present-day exploit. She could even be ahead of her time, if the first movie was set in 1999 and it's only 6 months later, then the Matrix might not even have gotten through Y2K yet (did I just spoil the third movie).
Aside from the amusing idea of having someone hack a computer program using their avatar inside the computer-generated construct of the Matrix, this sameness of the Matrix over long time periods raises an unanswered question in my mind. Why don't the people notice the lack of advancement in the Matrix? Over a hundred years of 1999-ness... no stunning advances in CGI, or science, or anything!
At the top of the release notes it says "Mozilla Firebird 0.6 (Glendale)" and at the bottom it lists earlier names of Pescadero, Santa Cruz, Lucia, Oceano, and Naples.
Glendale is making progress towards a trashy cityname, but for true consistency with Camino I suggest the code name for the final release of Bakersfield, or perhaps Fresno.
Under "What's New" it says "Mozilla Firebird is available for Mac OS X. It's still quite rough around the edges but it's a start." Under "Known Issues" it says "Firebird on Mac OS X is new and still very rough around the edges. Expect platform inconsistencies."
Also, several annoying features (such as auto image resizing) require user.js hacks, which is a minor hassle. I already have Mozilla 1.3.1, Safari (v.74), and Camino 0.7. I switched to Camino from Mozilla, and Safari is starting to catch up. I might download Mozilla Firebird to check it out, but I doubt I'll get much use out of it right now. And each of these browsers has its own settings and bookmarks. It would be nice to have some sort of somewhat automated sync-ability of bookmarks between these different browsers for MacOS X, especially the 3 (!) Mozilla-based ones.
Re:More to transactions than number of coins.
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Making Change
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· Score: 1
Rounding prices to the nickel would be simpler, easier, and more efficient.
This is done at a deli and a cafe across the street from where I work. No pennies, and they round down.
One owner told me the time savings of not dealing with pennies at the register, especially during lunch crowds, beats the hit of rounding down prices. He can move customers through one register and doesn't have to open another one (and pay another employee) to count pennies.
The other restructured his prices to come out to the nearest 5 cents. He never had room for an extra register and the line no longer goes out the door.
The original article is mathematically interesting, but totally impractical because it utterly neglects these costs of counting.
Nice review. I saw it last night as well and wrote up a review in my journal. I enjoyed the metaphysical discussion but will need to see the movie again to more fully digest its meaning. I also caught what you said about the video screen, although I misplaced where we saw it.
What floored me was the action. It is so much better than the previews imply, and some of the best parts about the previews were the least interesting aspects of the action sequences. The filmmakers are working with combat in this film like a painter of landscapes. Each swing is a tiny drop of paint, and the combined effect washes over you like a wave. You cannot possibly absorb all the little details, even though they are there. In one fight scene cups of noodles are one-by-one knocked off of dining tables by individual moves. I could occasionally recognize a CGI combatant in one scene, mostly from faces not being rendered perfectly. But that's just a detail. If you stare close at any great painting, you will see the drops and grain of the canvas. See this movie, sit back, and appreciate.
Let's assume that you're right and that publishing your iTunes library to stream files to five people you may not know at all is still "for personal use" (which is debatable). Ok, so that's not piracy...
Look at the iPod... it's been out for 27 months and its capacity is up to 30GB from 5GB, or 6x. That is, on average, a doubling in size every 9 months!
In general the problem is that while capacities have lept up, the rate at which we can read/write to those drives has not kept pace. It's not so bad for the iPod in particular, but at some point it's going to be a real problem for desktops and laptops, assuming our appetite for capacity grows as the capacity does.
- Why are the permisions not installed correctly in the first place?
- Why is it called 'repair permissions', when it actually runs a slew of other tests like fsck?
Right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. The permissions/privs get mucked up when an installer or coder doesn't set them up correctly. "Repairing" them checks the existing permissions of your MacOS X install against a canonical listing of "the way permissions should be" that Disk Utility has.
It's worth noting that that listing has changed, and if you repair permissions while booted from a MacOS X 10.2 CD it will make "fixes" that a later version of Disk Utility will fix back. Permissions war! Also, don't run the standalone "Repair Priviledges" program in MacOS X 10.2; that software was for 10.1.5 only.
"Repair permissions" is one task that Disk Utility does, separate from verify/repair disk volumes (aka fsck) or formatting/partitioning. It also runs on the command line (type 'diskutil' for a list of options; it has no 'man' page).
Lastly, IMO this is something of a "voodoo" fix. I have run many Software Updates and not seen broken permissions after the installation. Sometimes I do see them. It's never caused me much concern but I still do it. Better go run it now, bye!
Interface is critical. The iPod works with just one hand (size helps here too unless you have mutant freak hands or TK powers). Hold it and work the wheel and buttons with your thumb. It's very tough for the 2.5" hard drive based players to compete with that.
Also, out today (or maybe yesterday?) is a multi-page article in the print magazine, and a flash-laden online version at Time.com about The Matrix: Reloaded.
Watch out for spoilers -- there's a multi-page section discussing the plot which is well-marked with warnings.
While I won't say I'm loving it, it definitely shows signs of promise this season. "Cogenitor" and "The Breach" were both actually thought-provoking and well-written science fiction episodes that were not merely about the existence of cool tech or weird aliens, but explored their impacts. "Cogenitor" from the ads in particular looked like it was going to be pathetic and obvious, but it was not. And "Future Tense" was a very good science fiction action episode. It got me watching again.
So, I may not be loving, but I'm watching. Hopefully whatever this "new direction" is, it isn't back in the direction of more decontamination gel rubdowns.
Does anyone here recall when Apple released the iPod? The story here on slashdot contained two sentences after the submission. One of which simply read (and I quote): "Lame."
Actually, it had three sentences: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."
Note that the the high-moderated comments largely drowned out those three sentences. So while your thesis about Slashdot's finger and the pulse of consumer-oriented technology might apply to the writer of those 3 sentences, it doesn't apply to the community as a whole.
I'm not even sure what the "wireless" comment was all about - probably driven by rumors. But is anyone demanding or even talking about a wireless iPod now? What would it use, Bluetooth? Bah.
If you go to an upscale restaurant (or a restaurant that wants to be thought of as upscale, at least) you'll notice that the prices drop the decimals altogether.
You order from a menu? And it has prices? Peasant!
From the link you submitted: "Note: Initializing the drive will not deauthorize the computer. If you will be initializing the drive, deauthorize the computer first, then initialize the drive. " How the hell to they do that? Firmware?
I am guessing that by "deauthorize," Apple means "make a connection to our servers to remove this machine from the list of 3 machines."
So if you initialize your drive, you wipe out the computer's knowledge that it was authorized, but Apple still has it listed as authorized, and won't accept later attempts to deauthorize the machine. But it's just a guess.
How about for Cool Site of the Day which started in 1994, mentioned Slashdot on Dec. 13th, 1997 and gave it coolest zine site of the year for 1998. I remember it used to have a comment about how they tried to get in touch with sites they mentioned in advance because they'd often get taken down. Oh, and the oldest "cool site" that's still online is the Froggy Page -- let's go Slashdot it!
In my opinion this is much like having your CD case stolen. You wouldn't be able to call the store where you purchased the CDs and ask for new copies right?
No, because having the case smashed/stolen does not prevent you from playing the CD. It (I presume "it" in this case is what we were discussing, a crashed/stolen Mac) is also unlike having the actual CD smashed/stolen, since presumably we still have the AAC audio purchased from the Apple Store on 2 other Macs.
No, what this is like is saying you can only play that CD on 3 different machines that you have authorized with whomever sold you the CD. Furthermore, if you want to deauthorize one of those machines, you can only do it while the machine is functional.
Assuming we accept that magic number of 3 (which is debatable but outside the scope of this discussion), you are arguing that if my CD player breaks, I cannot call the store where I purchased the CD and get permission to play it on my new CD player. I say that "sucks."
Furthermore, to continue the analogy, I was saying in my earlier post that if the store were to allow me to call, they would have no way of telling whether I a) really did have a broken CD player or b) was trying to get them to enable a 4th machine for me to use.
Slashdot Mirror
... is here. He must not be doing all that well if he can't scrape together the dough to get his fat ass out of Slidell, Louisiana, a town I had the misfortune of driving through a year ago and whose only redeeming feature is the Lake Ponchartrain bridge/causeway leading out of it and to New Orleans.
My uptime in MacOS X is the time between patches requiring reboots, which is usually the latest update to 10.2.x, although QuickTime 6.2 also required a reboot IIRC. I had some crashes back in 10.2.3 when my PowerBook would kernel panic at logout, but 10.2.4 fixed the issue. My iMac has never crashed (requiring a reboot and fsck -y), and only occasionally the UI has hung, requiring me to SSH in and kill the 'loginwindow' process.
Of course, YMMV.
Since the Matrix is just metaphor, they could presumably interact with it / hack into it using something other than rotary-dial phones as entry points.
Aside from the amusing idea of having someone hack a computer program using their avatar inside the computer-generated construct of the Matrix, this sameness of the Matrix over long time periods raises an unanswered question in my mind. Why don't the people notice the lack of advancement in the Matrix? Over a hundred years of 1999-ness... no stunning advances in CGI, or science, or anything!
Glendale is making progress towards a trashy cityname, but for true consistency with Camino I suggest the code name for the final release of Bakersfield, or perhaps Fresno.
Also, several annoying features (such as auto image resizing) require user.js hacks, which is a minor hassle. I already have Mozilla 1.3.1, Safari (v.74), and Camino 0.7. I switched to Camino from Mozilla, and Safari is starting to catch up. I might download Mozilla Firebird to check it out, but I doubt I'll get much use out of it right now. And each of these browsers has its own settings and bookmarks. It would be nice to have some sort of somewhat automated sync-ability of bookmarks between these different browsers for MacOS X, especially the 3 (!) Mozilla-based ones.
One owner told me the time savings of not dealing with pennies at the register, especially during lunch crowds, beats the hit of rounding down prices. He can move customers through one register and doesn't have to open another one (and pay another employee) to count pennies.
The other restructured his prices to come out to the nearest 5 cents. He never had room for an extra register and the line no longer goes out the door.
The original article is mathematically interesting, but totally impractical because it utterly neglects these costs of counting.
What floored me was the action. It is so much better than the previews imply, and some of the best parts about the previews were the least interesting aspects of the action sequences. The filmmakers are working with combat in this film like a painter of landscapes. Each swing is a tiny drop of paint, and the combined effect washes over you like a wave. You cannot possibly absorb all the little details, even though they are there. In one fight scene cups of noodles are one-by-one knocked off of dining tables by individual moves. I could occasionally recognize a CGI combatant in one scene, mostly from faces not being rendered perfectly. But that's just a detail. If you stare close at any great painting, you will see the drops and grain of the canvas. See this movie, sit back, and appreciate.
I did miscalculate, but the doubling time is still about 10.5 months, not 18 months. It's still faster than Moore's Law.
Oops. Ok, make that doubling every 10 or 11 months. Depending on the strength of Steve Job's RDF.
It will be a 3gig version of IIS, .Net, or whatever. The extra 2.9gigs are bundled data so you can buffer overrun yourself.
In general the problem is that while capacities have lept up, the rate at which we can read/write to those drives has not kept pace. It's not so bad for the iPod in particular, but at some point it's going to be a real problem for desktops and laptops, assuming our appetite for capacity grows as the capacity does.
It's worth noting that that listing has changed, and if you repair permissions while booted from a MacOS X 10.2 CD it will make "fixes" that a later version of Disk Utility will fix back. Permissions war! Also, don't run the standalone "Repair Priviledges" program in MacOS X 10.2; that software was for 10.1.5 only.
"Repair permissions" is one task that Disk Utility does, separate from verify/repair disk volumes (aka fsck) or formatting/partitioning. It also runs on the command line (type 'diskutil' for a list of options; it has no 'man' page).
Lastly, IMO this is something of a "voodoo" fix. I have run many Software Updates and not seen broken permissions after the installation. Sometimes I do see them. It's never caused me much concern but I still do it. Better go run it now, bye!
Watch out for spoilers -- there's a multi-page section discussing the plot which is well-marked with warnings.
So, I may not be loving, but I'm watching. Hopefully whatever this "new direction" is, it isn't back in the direction of more decontamination gel rubdowns.
Note that the the high-moderated comments largely drowned out those three sentences. So while your thesis about Slashdot's finger and the pulse of consumer-oriented technology might apply to the writer of those 3 sentences, it doesn't apply to the community as a whole.
I'm not even sure what the "wireless" comment was all about - probably driven by rumors. But is anyone demanding or even talking about a wireless iPod now? What would it use, Bluetooth? Bah.
You order from a menu? And it has prices? Peasant!
So if you initialize your drive, you wipe out the computer's knowledge that it was authorized, but Apple still has it listed as authorized, and won't accept later attempts to deauthorize the machine. But it's just a guess.
How about for Cool Site of the Day which started in 1994, mentioned Slashdot on Dec. 13th, 1997 and gave it coolest zine site of the year for 1998. I remember it used to have a comment about how they tried to get in touch with sites they mentioned in advance because they'd often get taken down. Oh, and the oldest "cool site" that's still online is the Froggy Page -- let's go Slashdot it!
No, what this is like is saying you can only play that CD on 3 different machines that you have authorized with whomever sold you the CD. Furthermore, if you want to deauthorize one of those machines, you can only do it while the machine is functional.
Assuming we accept that magic number of 3 (which is debatable but outside the scope of this discussion), you are arguing that if my CD player breaks, I cannot call the store where I purchased the CD and get permission to play it on my new CD player. I say that "sucks."
Furthermore, to continue the analogy, I was saying in my earlier post that if the store were to allow me to call, they would have no way of telling whether I a) really did have a broken CD player or b) was trying to get them to enable a 4th machine for me to use.