GTK for OSX allows you to write CROSS PLATFORM software - write once in GTK, run on Windows, Numerous 'nixes, including Linux, and now, OSX.
That is, unless Apple has released Aqua for Windows/Linux/Unix?
I look forward to this, since I'm now committed to using PHP-GTK for a number of smallish applications, and loving it, but the missing piece right now is Mac...
Some TLDs will be well known - much like when you buy at McDonalds, you know you'll get a greasy, sugary burger "thing" they call a sandwich.
Others will be less well known, such as "Kasey's house of delictable delights" as a restaurant.
What is wrong with that? Why should we have all "commercial" entities in ".com" (even though if you registered "mickey.info" you'd have a beer company and an entertainment giant on your ass in seconds)
If there was no limit to TLDs, then "www.beer.mickey" wouldn't/shouldn't conflict with "www.mouse.mickey". "Mickey's beer" and "Mickey mouse" get along just fine in the wide-open verbal namespace, why should we artificially restrict DNS?
The basic problem with the DNS system IS NOT the trademark issue, anbd IS NOT the used of words to replace fixed IPs.
The problem is ICANN. Why are we limited to so few TLDs? Why can't anybody willing to put up a shingle put together their own TLD in a cooperative fashion?
There's certainly no TECHNICAL reason not to... The fact that we have a limited number of root nameservers is already shown to be a potential problem.
DNS root servers should operate in a quasi p2p fashion, and, if anything, ICANN should register only the actual TLDs, not the 2nd layer.
If I want to host a TLD like.trash I should be able to. It's certainly not a problem using Bind! Many corporations have their own "private" TLDs for internal LAN use.
All that's needed is a method to coordinate these multitudinous TLDs and the DNS "issue" can be fixed for once and for all!
(sighs, goes back to moderating)
Implications are severe and unforseen
on
NYTimes Year in Ideas
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
What happens if WalMart (or an "unrelated" corporation) were to put these things into poor, 3rd world natives?
What if by providing just enough food to survive, squalor for sleeping quarters, and no particular pay, but lots of "pushing the pleasure button" they were to get a group of people willing to work for free?
Would it be cruel? You talk to these people, and they are smiling, happy, and working 16 hour days in relatively dangerous conditions, with their "happy button" being pressed anytime their output increases some small amount.
How long before our "free market" makes this a reality? How many people would sign up, knowing that they will be forever "happy"?
How many people are willing to do this using drugs, to get the same effect, despite the risks?
This is not something that's possible, it's inevitable, as there is a clear financial reward. Making it illegal won't prevent it.
Where do we draw the line? As somebody who's frequently rather sure I have the answer, I have to say this one baffles me.
Toto, we aren't in Kansas anymore!
Re:solution for one of the problems..
on
The New IT Crisis
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Another solution? RHN!
Red Hat Network allows you to do the same - a couple of clicks, and away you go!
The advantage is that RHN is here now, and works very, very well. I've never seen a Red Hat Network update break anything. Ever.
The windows in the house were chosen by free choice. The contractors could buy whatever window best fit the need and at the best price, from a number of competing vendors.
If Corning were to say to the contractor: "We'll give you a discount if you only sell houses with Pfister plumbing", there'd be an outrage!
If I were having a house built, I could easily ask for "only Corning glass" or "only Dia glass" and the Contractor would simply nod, and order Corning or Dia glass.
But, many computer vendors CAN'T nod because they've signed agreements to "only sell houses with Pfister plumbing" (Windows).
They had to - since MS has a monopoly on desktop O/S's, they've been able to force these kinds of deals.
This whole refund day is about trying to effect or at least highlight the need for positive change.
It's not about bundling, it about the un-natural lack of diversity in the available bundles, forced by MS on the industry.
If I publish something on a web site, it's because I want people to see it. If that means that alot of people want to see it, oh well. Such is the price of potential success...
The Internet is comprised of logical peers. Why are we using a purely client/server model for web sites?
Once a packet has been downloaded, it's then available to be served to other systems. All you really need is a method of co-ordinating it all.
Bit torrent has tremendous potential - imagine serving hundreds of copies of a gigabyte file per day, with decent transfer rates - over a 128k DSL line.
It's possible! (and no, I didn't write it, or even know who the guy is)
When the porn hosters discover this one out, it just might become a standard!
I have Verizon cellular. I'll go for it when I can get decent (100kb+) data for ~ $50/month (or less) with enough time/data to make it truly worthwhile.
My "killer application" would be the ability to plug my laptop into my cell phone and get a decent connection speed, EG: 56k, 128k would be nice, 512k would be sweet.
14.4 with high latency just doesn't cut it. Paying rediculous prices per MB won't cut it, either.
Currently, 14.4 connection rate, 1000 minutes, $45/mo (fairly standard prices) means you are really paying, (if you get sustained 14.4 connection) about $3.25 per MB.
Make that $0.50 per MB and I'll be an evangelist.
Best would be "always on" (with digital networks this shouldn't be a problem) and pay for quantities of data transferred.
This whole minutes thing is kinda stupid since about 1/3 of the time I get charged for is spent with me saying: "hello? hello!? Are you there?" and that just sucks.
When DSL service first became available in my area 3 years ago, I signed up immediately. I owned a small computer store at the time, and I figured that the time saved downloading drivers (as we had to do frequently) would more than pay for the DSL service.
I was right - it radically changed our outlook on drivers, which were, up to that point, carefully hoarded on floppies or CDs.
But what surprised me was that suddenly, streaming video and audio where completely options! Imagine, tens of millions of computers' content available for cheap to free, and available instantly!
Mp3.com is what then made me get DSL service at home. Music from anywhere and everywhere - like having the world's largest collection of indep. band CDs...
Oh, and remember Napster?
It was just a few months later that I signed up at home, and I will not ever turn back. (I sold said computer store. Now I telecommute as my line of work - I love it!)
I guess it's sorta like the Tivo - it's hardly exciting until you've lived with it for a while. Then, it becomes something you'll not want to live without!
Guys, in these pages I've many times read about the benefits of Spam Assassin to get rid of SPAM.
I can vouch for it working, getting rid of some 99% of the SPAM I *used* to get.
How is this any different? I understand that using S/A still means I get one or two SPAMs per day, and I know that I shouldn't "delete" them, but set them aside and check periodically in case something legit got filtered.
It's give and take, guys. Rules based web filtering works rather well. I've been using Dan's Guardian (free for noncommercial use!) and after a bit o' tweaking, it's working rather well for me.
I know, I can't look up "tits" in an online thesaurus, but it's rules+scoring method, similar to Spam Assassin, does give me > 99% just fine.
99.1% of these folks who were initially awe-inspired by Open Source turn severely sour on it and give up. They then reinstall Windows and go along their merry way.
... that is, until you get a "weird one", such as "I have 110 Domain names, can you transfer them all?" or perhaps "Can you get all the email addresses out of this text file?", or how about: "How can I send stuff my my webserver direct to my printer?" or something similar, where a few seconds at a bash prompt gets you what you want.
This doesn't just happen sometimes, it happens to me all the time - and I'm truly glad I have a command line available from anywhere. (via ssh)
1) Bandwidth from others within your ISP wasn't counted. 2) There's an "after hours" - 9PM to 9AM... just like my cell phone. 3) Bandwidth served by the typical invisible web proxy isn't counted. 4) They aren't "hard" caps, they instead slow the connection down a bit, with a baseline around 128k. 5) The cap costs are directly related to the actual cost of delivery - as bandwidth prices come down, so should the prices for capping.
I get ~1.5/.320 Mbit with my ADSL.I don't expect to be able to saturate $800/mo T1 lines 24x7, and at $50, I shouldn't expect to be able to.
But, even if I *were* using all sorts of bandwidth, and my bandwidth was gradiently scaled down to 128k, I *still* would be able to function in my line of work. (which is my reason for having DSL =)
Then, I could pay for higher caps. If I only want 1-2 GB/mo, I should be paying $25-$30/month. If I want 5, $50 is reasonable. If I want 100, well...
And these numbers should change and come down as cost of bandwidth drops, EG:
P2P most certainly DOES have legitimate applications... Ever hear of Bit Torrent?
Essentially, the idea is this: When you are downloading a file, when you receive a packet of data, you now have that packet of data, and there's no reason you can't immediately share that packet of data.
So, people downloading something from a Bit-Torrent capable site are themselves distributing the content... as it is being downloaded!
The end result is that a huge number of clients can download content (iso images, etc) from a site without increasing the total bandwidth usage of the site by much at all.
I have two clients uing SBC/Yahoo DSL and Windows 95. It works just dandy with RAS PPPOE software. I also have a Linux gateway/firewall/proxy set up with Roaring Penguin. In both cases, I've had no issues once it's set up.
The hard part!?! Getting the login/pw.
I called and told them that the install disk had crashed, wouldn't run again, but the icons were on the desktop, and "Can you just give me a login and password?".
They eventually did, I punched it in, and everything's been fine ever since.
Did you bother to even look before going ahead with the "upgrade"?
This article is halfway down the home page at/., and there are HUNDREDS of posts like "Yeah, well I have a band and will sell CDRs..." or "I legitimately listen to my CDs in my computer" or a million other variations of the theme.
Listen, people. Posting on slashdot is like shouting real loud in a closet. It might make you feel good, but it does virtually nothing for your cause.
If you really, REALLY have any intention of being heard by those evil people at RIAA/MPAA, write them a honest-to-god printed-on-paper letter.
Phone calls disappear the moment you hang up your phone. EMail is usually considered too easy to send to be taken seriously. But letters get noticed.
If you mean what you say, warm up your ink jet, spend $0.37, and write a letter. Otherwise, you're just talking out your ass.
Slashdot Mirror
From their website...
"XviD is an ISO MPEG-4 compliant video codec. "
MPEG4 is a framework for video codecs - not an algorithm in its own right.
With MPEG4 video codecs (COmpression/DECompression algorithms) are handled "plugin" style, much like the plugins to WinAmp or XMMS.
Using XviD would still require you to use the MPEG4 video framework, and thus you are still choosing between WM or MPEG4!
-Ben
All artists on MP3.com will have to reduce their pages to a maximum of 3 tracks as of January 15th, or PAY for their once free-offered service.
What's really sad is that this simply means the further demise of mp3.com. The site would be just awesome if they'd introduce some form of moderation.
As it is, you have some real gems mixed in with casio-keyboards-and-a-tapedeck style recordings... and it's just awful.
-Ben
GTK for OSX allows you to write CROSS PLATFORM software - write once in GTK, run on Windows, Numerous 'nixes, including Linux, and now, OSX.
That is, unless Apple has released Aqua for Windows/Linux/Unix?
I look forward to this, since I'm now committed to using PHP-GTK for a number of smallish applications, and loving it, but the missing piece right now is Mac...
-Ben
Take a look at this article on ZDnet I read recently about Flash MX.
.NET. This review shows it's not quite there yet, but it's certainly a step in this direction.
It seems that in some cases, Flash can be used to build REAL APPLICATIONS like this one here that are:
1) Easy to use.
2) Cross platform (windows, mac, unix, palm, etc)
3) Easy to build
In this regard, this puts pressure on VB and/or
What does MS do whenever it runs into something that outperforms their own products?
Buy the company, of course.
1) The guy sounds like a sub-atomic particle. Muon, Voron...
2) He names his book after a popular video game containing alien characters. Coincidence?
3) In the book, he assumes things that aren't known to be true, such as "Aliens exist". This allows him to avoid things like, eh, facts.
4) It was reviewed on Slashdot, home of unbiased content!
So what is wrong with that?
Some TLDs will be well known - much like when you buy at McDonalds, you know you'll get a greasy, sugary burger "thing" they call a sandwich.
Others will be less well known, such as "Kasey's house of delictable delights" as a restaurant.
What is wrong with that? Why should we have all "commercial" entities in ".com" (even though if you registered "mickey.info" you'd have a beer company and an entertainment giant on your ass in seconds)
If there was no limit to TLDs, then "www.beer.mickey" wouldn't/shouldn't conflict with "www.mouse.mickey". "Mickey's beer" and "Mickey mouse" get along just fine in the wide-open verbal namespace, why should we artificially restrict DNS?
-My $0.02
(I'd just moderated a bunch in this forum, too)
.trash I should be able to. It's certainly not a problem using Bind! Many corporations have their own "private" TLDs for internal LAN use.
The basic problem with the DNS system IS NOT the trademark issue, anbd IS NOT the used of words to replace fixed IPs.
The problem is ICANN. Why are we limited to so few TLDs? Why can't anybody willing to put up a shingle put together their own TLD in a cooperative fashion?
There's certainly no TECHNICAL reason not to... The fact that we have a limited number of root nameservers is already shown to be a potential problem.
DNS root servers should operate in a quasi p2p fashion, and, if anything, ICANN should register only the actual TLDs, not the 2nd layer.
If I want to host a TLD like
All that's needed is a method to coordinate these multitudinous TLDs and the DNS "issue" can be fixed for once and for all!
(sighs, goes back to moderating)
What if by providing just enough food to survive, squalor for sleeping quarters, and no particular pay, but lots of "pushing the pleasure button" they were to get a group of people willing to work for free?
Would it be cruel? You talk to these people, and they are smiling, happy, and working 16 hour days in relatively dangerous conditions, with their "happy button" being pressed anytime their output increases some small amount.
How long before our "free market" makes this a reality? How many people would sign up, knowing that they will be forever "happy"?
How many people are willing to do this using drugs, to get the same effect, despite the risks?
This is not something that's possible, it's inevitable, as there is a clear financial reward. Making it illegal won't prevent it.
Where do we draw the line? As somebody who's frequently rather sure I have the answer, I have to say this one baffles me.
Toto, we aren't in Kansas anymore!
Another solution? RHN!
Red Hat Network allows you to do the same - a couple of clicks, and away you go!
The advantage is that RHN is here now, and works very, very well. I've never seen a Red Hat Network update break anything. Ever.
And they are quick about getting updates ready!
The difference...
The windows in the house were chosen by free choice. The contractors could buy whatever window best fit the need and at the best price, from a number of competing vendors.
If Corning were to say to the contractor: "We'll give you a discount if you only sell houses with Pfister plumbing", there'd be an outrage!
If I were having a house built, I could easily ask for "only Corning glass" or "only Dia glass" and the Contractor would simply nod, and order Corning or Dia glass.
But, many computer vendors CAN'T nod because they've signed agreements to "only sell houses with Pfister plumbing" (Windows).
They had to - since MS has a monopoly on desktop O/S's, they've been able to force these kinds of deals.
This whole refund day is about trying to effect or at least highlight the need for positive change.
It's not about bundling, it about the un-natural lack of diversity in the available bundles, forced by MS on the industry.
If you can't see that, you are clueless.
If I publish something on a web site, it's because I want people to see it. If that means that alot of people want to see it, oh well. Such is the price of potential success...
But what I find more interesting is that technology has existed for some time that could all but eliminate the problem.
The Internet is comprised of logical peers. Why are we using a purely client/server model for web sites?
Once a packet has been downloaded, it's then available to be served to other systems. All you really need is a method of co-ordinating it all.
Bit torrent has tremendous potential - imagine serving hundreds of copies of a gigabyte file per day, with decent transfer rates - over a 128k DSL line.
It's possible! (and no, I didn't write it, or even know who the guy is)
When the porn hosters discover this one out, it just might become a standard!
-The Klan
-The Rosie O'Donnel Fan club
... And don't forget the best one:
CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY...
Billy boy did as good as he could with the lame, suck-ass questions that were presented to him.
Why couldn't we come up with some halfway DECENT questions? ("Seriously... are we cool?")
Query by committee, I guess, produced borked results like these above.
Why isn't there a "Cringely" icon for slashdot? It seems that every time he publishes something, it ends up here!
Come on, guys!
I have Verizon cellular. I'll go for it when I can get decent (100kb+) data for ~ $50/month (or less) with enough time/data to make it truly worthwhile.
My "killer application" would be the ability to plug my laptop into my cell phone and get a decent connection speed, EG: 56k, 128k would be nice, 512k would be sweet.
14.4 with high latency just doesn't cut it. Paying rediculous prices per MB won't cut it, either.
Currently, 14.4 connection rate, 1000 minutes, $45/mo (fairly standard prices) means you are really paying, (if you get sustained 14.4 connection) about $3.25 per MB.
Make that $0.50 per MB and I'll be an evangelist.
Best would be "always on" (with digital networks this shouldn't be a problem) and pay for quantities of data transferred.
This whole minutes thing is kinda stupid since about 1/3 of the time I get charged for is spent with me saying: "hello? hello!? Are you there?" and that just sucks.
When DSL service first became available in my area 3 years ago, I signed up immediately. I owned a small computer store at the time, and I figured that the time saved downloading drivers (as we had to do frequently) would more than pay for the DSL service.
I was right - it radically changed our outlook on drivers, which were, up to that point, carefully hoarded on floppies or CDs.
But what surprised me was that suddenly, streaming video and audio where completely options! Imagine, tens of millions of computers' content available for cheap to free, and available instantly!
Mp3.com is what then made me get DSL service at home. Music from anywhere and everywhere - like having the world's largest collection of indep. band CDs...
Oh, and remember Napster?
It was just a few months later that I signed up at home, and I will not ever turn back. (I sold said computer store. Now I telecommute as my line of work - I love it!)
I guess it's sorta like the Tivo - it's hardly exciting until you've lived with it for a while. Then, it becomes something you'll not want to live without!
Guys, in these pages I've many times read about the benefits of Spam Assassin to get rid of SPAM.
I can vouch for it working, getting rid of some 99% of the SPAM I *used* to get.
How is this any different? I understand that using S/A still means I get one or two SPAMs per day, and I know that I shouldn't "delete" them, but set them aside and check periodically in case something legit got filtered.
It's give and take, guys. Rules based web filtering works rather well. I've been using Dan's Guardian (free for noncommercial use!) and after a bit o' tweaking, it's working rather well for me.
I know, I can't look up "tits" in an online thesaurus, but it's rules+scoring method, similar to Spam Assassin, does give me > 99% just fine.
-Ben
... that is, until you get a "weird one", such as "I have 110 Domain names, can you transfer them all?" or perhaps "Can you get all the email addresses out of this text file?", or how about: "How can I send stuff my my webserver direct to my printer?" or something similar, where a few seconds at a bash prompt gets you what you want.
This doesn't just happen sometimes, it happens to me all the time - and I'm truly glad I have a command line available from anywhere. (via ssh)
at all IF:
1) Bandwidth from others within your ISP wasn't counted.
2) There's an "after hours" - 9PM to 9AM... just like my cell phone.
3) Bandwidth served by the typical invisible web proxy isn't counted.
4) They aren't "hard" caps, they instead slow the connection down a bit, with a baseline around 128k.
5) The cap costs are directly related to the actual cost of delivery - as bandwidth prices come down, so should the prices for capping.
I get ~1.5/.320 Mbit with my ADSL.I don't expect to be able to saturate $800/mo T1 lines 24x7, and at $50, I shouldn't expect to be able to.
But, even if I *were* using all sorts of bandwidth, and my bandwidth was gradiently scaled down to 128k, I *still* would be able to function in my line of work. (which is my reason for having DSL =)
Then, I could pay for higher caps. If I only want 1-2 GB/mo, I should be paying $25-$30/month. If I want 5, $50 is reasonable. If I want 100, well...
And these numbers should change and come down as cost of bandwidth drops, EG:
Cat5 network cable.
1985=1.2 Mbit
1990=10Mbit
1995=100Mbit
2000=1000Mbit
Same cable, different hub. This should be reflected in the caps.
P2P most certainly DOES have legitimate applications... Ever hear of Bit Torrent?
Essentially, the idea is this: When you are downloading a file, when you receive a packet of data, you now have that packet of data, and there's no reason you can't immediately share that packet of data.
So, people downloading something from a Bit-Torrent capable site are themselves distributing the content... as it is being downloaded!
The end result is that a huge number of clients can download content (iso images, etc) from a site without increasing the total bandwidth usage of the site by much at all.
Check it out - it's pretty amazing!
Searched the web for linux bugs. Results 1 - 10 of about 1,450,000.
Sadly, this is NOT an exaggeration!
Knowing that this might be a vulnerability issue, I immediately logged into my main servers and typed, in each, "up2date -du --tmpdir=/home/tmpdir".
Before I even realized that this doesn't apply to me, (I'm using Bind 9) all the updates had been downloaded and applied.
And, I guess, in a week or so, I'll get an email from Red Hat letting me know that I should be running up2date again...
-Ben
I have two clients uing SBC/Yahoo DSL and Windows 95. It works just dandy with RAS PPPOE software. I also have a Linux gateway/firewall/proxy set up with Roaring Penguin. In both cases, I've had no issues once it's set up.
The hard part!?! Getting the login/pw.
I called and told them that the install disk had crashed, wouldn't run again, but the icons were on the desktop, and "Can you just give me a login and password?".
They eventually did, I punched it in, and everything's been fine ever since.
Did you bother to even look before going ahead with the "upgrade"?
This article is halfway down the home page at /., and there are HUNDREDS of posts like "Yeah, well I have a band and will sell CDRs..." or "I legitimately listen to my CDs in my computer" or a million other variations of the theme.
Listen, people. Posting on slashdot is like shouting real loud in a closet. It might make you feel good, but it does virtually nothing for your cause.
If you really, REALLY have any intention of being heard by those evil people at RIAA/MPAA, write them a honest-to-god printed-on-paper letter.
Phone calls disappear the moment you hang up your phone. EMail is usually considered too easy to send to be taken seriously. But letters get noticed.
If you mean what you say, warm up your ink jet, spend $0.37, and write a letter. Otherwise, you're just talking out your ass.
Eh, your sigline has a bug in it!
:)
It should read: Making computers faster to the nth power only makes code that's worse to the (n+1)th power
Otherwise, what you have is n+(1th) power...