Why don't we have a standard that says that the "header block" of a file determines its type.
This question ranks up there with, "Well, if the problem is that it takes a long time to download stuff over the Internet, why doesn't everybody just get DS-3 lines to their house? Duh."
The reason we're often dependent on the name to determine the type of a file is that so far, it seems to be the only thing that really makes sense. Requiring that an OS read the beginning of a file to determine its type isn't practical: consider the case when you open up a directory full of files, and every one has to be read in order to determine its type. Plus, any files you have that don't conform to your header standard - basically, anything that adheres to any other standard - won't show up correctly. And what do you do when the "file" is actually a block device on a *NIX system?
Using file extensions to determine the type of a file is a good idea in general, that was made into a requirement on the Windows platform. Maybe MS could have gone about it better, but I'm not going to fault them for the decision.
Oh, by the way: if you're really intent on escaping that "legacy" of DOS/Windows, just use Linux (or whatever). You can name executable files whatever you want. (although you may fuck up your terminal when you try to read it using "more". Been there, done that.)
Part of the problem is that the error messages are usually written in the most passive-voiced, weenie ways possible. For example, the MS Scandisk message I always see (which I assume Dave Barry is referring to) is, "Windows was not shut down correctly," or something very close.
Technically, that's perfectly true. Windows did not shut down correctly - the fact that this is because Windows crashed horribly and needed a cold boot to get back on its feet again is beside the point. Joe user will read that message and assume that the box is yelling at him.
Sorry, I'm backing Isldeur on this one. I have a Thunderbird, occasionally overclocked to 1.5. One intake fan, two exhaust fans. The only thing noisy about the whole setup is the power supply, which I'm going to replace. Today, hopefully.
That you list Jackson among the people MS "defeated" is pretty telling. Jackson wasn't supposed to be the adversary, but rather an impartial... well, Judge, duh.
But anyway: MS didn't win, although the fact that they're not getting punished as harshly as some people expected makes it seem as if they did. They now have to deal with a 3 person panel (of whom, Mr. Satchell may be one) overseeing a whole assload of technical decisions. If the panel decides that MS is acting outside the bounds of the settlement, they can always begin a procedure to find MS in contempt of court. That could mean anything from slap on the wrist, to god only knows what, given MS's previous record of failing to uphold settlements and consent decrees.
I was a little surprised not to see any mention in the posts already here about the Firewire capability. The Audigy MP3 and Platinmum eX models come with their own IEEE 1394 ports. (Actually, a whole bunch of them have ports, but it looks like they're crippled in several of the cheaper versions.)
Re:Big fans and ducting is the way to go...
on
Wriggling Heat Sinks
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· Score: 2
Where I come from "single point of failure" = "bad." The idea is to have complementary elements which can pick up the slack should something go wrong. On a WAN, that means multiple access points to the Internet for failover. With storage, it means RAID. In a case, it means multiple fans.
This may gradually become less of a problem. Some heatsink manufacturers (read - the ones making really huge blocks) are starting to abandon conventional ZIF socket clips in favor of bolting the damn thing directly to the mobo. The new Alpha PAL8045 is one such example.
Advantage - the thing is much more secure, and screwing the heatsink on and off can be a damn site easier than wrestling with those stupid clips. Disadvantage: not all mobos have holes drilled in the appropriate places, and taking a power tool to a motherboard right next to the CPU is not my idea of a relaxing pasttime.
Remember way back when VA (then called VA Research) snapped up Linux Hardware Solutions? They were acquired at the same time as "Enlightenment Solutions." Afterwards, they changed their name to "VA Linux Systems," probably because nobody knew what the hell "VA Research" meant.
A few months later, they announced their IPO. Folks there must have felt drunk when they saw their stock valuation vault to - well, it was the biggest first-day pop in history, let's just put it that way. Even Eric Raymond piped up about the windfall (salient points for the busy: "Wow. Thanks, Linux hackers. I'm buying a new gun. Charities can go fuck themselves.")
All this was only two years ago. How time flies. I'm looking at my comparatively antediluvean userID and feeling all nostaligic.
Make network admins another part of the executive branch, like the FBI, NSA, or ATF. Assign agents to every buisness with an internet connection
This is a suggestion so terrible that I suspect it may be a troll. Nevertheless:
Please, for the love of all that is good and right and doe-eyed cute, don't do this. Even I, a guy with somewhat leftist politics by any reasonable metric, think that this would be an awful idea.
First: you're either assigning existing officers to these tasks (they're already over-committed), hiring new ones (spending assloads of tax money to hire tens of thousands of new field agents), or federalizing private positions (taking private sector employees and slashing their salaries to government rates). None of these sounds like a recipe for success to me.
Second: law enforcement's supply of clueful computer people is shamefully low. I had the "pleasure" recently of attending a convention "CEO's dinner" at which an FBI agent working on computer security issues from our local branch office gave an "executive overview" of security issues from a law enforcement officer's point of view. In summary: it was terrible. It was clear that the guy was in over his head. For example, I usually accept it as a given that someone speaking on pirated software will understand that "warez" rhymes with "shares," and is not pronounced "Juarez."
I could go on, but the thought of all these new agents, coupled with the wasabi green peas I'm eating, is bringing tears to my eyes. I'm gonna go have a lie-down.
you install potato (the previous version), do a dist-upgrade, and you have woody.
Uh - well, yeah, but that's a bit of an oversimplification. Doing the "change the sources file, then upgrade" thing is a surefire way to wind up with an assload of broken dependencies on a system.
A better way to do it is to start with a minimal clean install of potato, change the/etc/apt/sources.list file, then:
apt-get update
apt-get install apt-utils debconf
apt-get dist-upgrade
At least, so sayeth "apt," the all-knowing bot on the #debian channel at irc.debian.org. Hoo-ah.
Well, to be fair - it'd probably be more like $400 for the Razor scooter, since you'd have to add an electric motor and controls for it. But still, your point is well taken.
Re:though the suggestions might be usefull...
on
Homepage Usability
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· Score: 3, Insightful
At least one of the points in the article you cite is no longer valid. Nielsen points out in the article that nearly 13% of browsers can't view frames. However, the article was written at the end of 1996, when Netscape 3 could claim almost half of the browser share.
His "Authoring Problems" issue strikes me, frankly, as baloney. Frames aren't significantly harder to use than tables, and yet I rarely hear people advocating the elimination of tables, unless it's for other reasons. Besides which, the state of the WYSIWYG authoring tools is such that at least they can produce frames reliably now.
In other respects, much of what he wrote five years ago still applies now, and personally, I hate writing frames. Just be aware of how the technology has changed.
Personally, though, I don't think that the "spam as theft" argument would stick. I think a stronger case could be made under the fraud statutes with regard to originator mis-representation.
Perhaps, but then you're trying to enforce something completely different. Generally, anti-spam legislation is designed to thwart a type of communication: the only qualification being that the communication has to be unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE). To fall afoul of anti-spam laws doesn't require that the commercial message endorse a product fradulently ("ENLARGE YOUR PENIS, UP TO 6 INCHES!!!"), or inappropriately ("Sister Mary, of Our Lady of the Assumption - do you want to see pics of real amateur sluts?"). So, anti-fraud actions aren't really going to address the problems that anti-spam legislation backers want to address.
The problem with treating is that it isn't obvious that e-mail spam is theft. Frequently, court cases against spam pushers are couched using "trespass to chattels" laws. But those laws aren't perfect for this - take a look here for a discussion of some of the problems associated with it.
There are just too many laws which (a) are redundant, (b) used to restrict otherwise acceptable activity in the name of the crime they seek to deter. So, It should not surprise that libertarians (myself included) are wary of more laws when existing ones might suffice.
You're right in that laws can be misapplied. However, the counterargument here is that you can't prosecute something which isn't illegal. Just as prosecutors can misapply laws to prosecute actions outside of the intent of the authors, defendants can argue that existing laws do not apply to their actions - for example, by arguing that a trespass to chattels law doesn't make sense in the context of e-mail spamming.
I'm currently involved in a domain name dispute, as a guy who has been accused unfairly.
Contrary to what some of the folks here seem to be saying, you do have a legitimate beef. Especially since these guys are clearly intending to sell the domain - hence, the nondescript porn and the "click here to buy this domain" link.
Ask around any lawyer friends you know, and see if they know anyone who does trademark / domain name dispute cases. Then contact that person and ask if they know anyone who would be willing to take such a case on a pro bono basis, or for a "de minimus" fee.
(i) circumstances indicating that you have registered or you have acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of your documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name; or...
(iv) by using the domain name, you have intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to your web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of your web site or location or of a product or service on your web site or location.
The "click here to buy" link is clear evidence of (i), and the selection of name is a pretty clear evidence of (iv), unless these people are seriously going to make an argument that they just liked the name.
Oh - IANAL, but I know far more about the law now than I ever wanted to.
Call me madcap, but I always thought that a heatsink *is* a radiator.
Well, yeah, it is, in the technical sense. In the article, though, they're using the term "radiator" to describe what you probably have in your house if you're not on central air: a long pipe through which they're moving a refrigerant. Essentially, this is a liquid-cooled system, minus all the crap that's usually involved in putting together a liquid-cooled system (external resevoirs and radiators, along with a couple feet of flexible tubing).
It's a shame the thing apparently has the worst mounting system in the world, because otherwise, it looks from the test results like the design worked pretty well.
On the day Windows XP shipped, it had no monopoly. The product was competing with the other operating systems out there: Win98, Win95, MacOS
Courts don't view software programs as having monopolies. They view companies as having monopolies. That's as it should be, and it's telling that in the example you cite, two of the three primary competitors to Windows XP are other Microsoft products.
Or in this case: If you have a lot of money and you don't give any of it to the party in power and all your competitors do, then the party in power is going to send lawyers after you.
You seem to be suggesting that Microsoft is either too naieve, too forthright, or too cash-strapped to make political donations in an effort to influence the party in power. Evidencesuggestsotherwise.
Slashdot Mirror
This question ranks up there with, "Well, if the problem is that it takes a long time to download stuff over the Internet, why doesn't everybody just get DS-3 lines to their house? Duh."
The reason we're often dependent on the name to determine the type of a file is that so far, it seems to be the only thing that really makes sense. Requiring that an OS read the beginning of a file to determine its type isn't practical: consider the case when you open up a directory full of files, and every one has to be read in order to determine its type. Plus, any files you have that don't conform to your header standard - basically, anything that adheres to any other standard - won't show up correctly. And what do you do when the "file" is actually a block device on a *NIX system?
Using file extensions to determine the type of a file is a good idea in general, that was made into a requirement on the Windows platform. Maybe MS could have gone about it better, but I'm not going to fault them for the decision.
Oh, by the way: if you're really intent on escaping that "legacy" of DOS/Windows, just use Linux (or whatever). You can name executable files whatever you want. (although you may fuck up your terminal when you try to read it using "more". Been there, done that.)
Part of the problem is that the error messages are usually written in the most passive-voiced, weenie ways possible. For example, the MS Scandisk message I always see (which I assume Dave Barry is referring to) is, "Windows was not shut down correctly," or something very close.
Technically, that's perfectly true. Windows did not shut down correctly - the fact that this is because Windows crashed horribly and needed a cold boot to get back on its feet again is beside the point. Joe user will read that message and assume that the box is yelling at him.
Sorry, I'm backing Isldeur on this one. I have a Thunderbird, occasionally overclocked to 1.5. One intake fan, two exhaust fans. The only thing noisy about the whole setup is the power supply, which I'm going to replace. Today, hopefully.
That you list Jackson among the people MS "defeated" is pretty telling. Jackson wasn't supposed to be the adversary, but rather an impartial... well, Judge, duh.
But anyway: MS didn't win, although the fact that they're not getting punished as harshly as some people expected makes it seem as if they did. They now have to deal with a 3 person panel (of whom, Mr. Satchell may be one) overseeing a whole assload of technical decisions. If the panel decides that MS is acting outside the bounds of the settlement, they can always begin a procedure to find MS in contempt of court. That could mean anything from slap on the wrist, to god only knows what, given MS's previous record of failing to uphold settlements and consent decrees.
I was a little surprised not to see any mention in the posts already here about the Firewire capability. The Audigy MP3 and Platinmum eX models come with their own IEEE 1394 ports. (Actually, a whole bunch of them have ports, but it looks like they're crippled in several of the cheaper versions.)
Where I come from "single point of failure" = "bad." The idea is to have complementary elements which can pick up the slack should something go wrong. On a WAN, that means multiple access points to the Internet for failover. With storage, it means RAID. In a case, it means multiple fans.
This may gradually become less of a problem. Some heatsink manufacturers (read - the ones making really huge blocks) are starting to abandon conventional ZIF socket clips in favor of bolting the damn thing directly to the mobo. The new Alpha PAL8045 is one such example.
Advantage - the thing is much more secure, and screwing the heatsink on and off can be a damn site easier than wrestling with those stupid clips. Disadvantage: not all mobos have holes drilled in the appropriate places, and taking a power tool to a motherboard right next to the CPU is not my idea of a relaxing pasttime.
Remember way back when VA (then called VA Research) snapped up Linux Hardware Solutions? They were acquired at the same time as "Enlightenment Solutions." Afterwards, they changed their name to "VA Linux Systems," probably because nobody knew what the hell "VA Research" meant.
A few months later, they announced their IPO. Folks there must have felt drunk when they saw their stock valuation vault to - well, it was the biggest first-day pop in history, let's just put it that way. Even Eric Raymond piped up about the windfall (salient points for the busy: "Wow. Thanks, Linux hackers. I'm buying a new gun. Charities can go fuck themselves.")
All this was only two years ago. How time flies. I'm looking at my comparatively antediluvean userID and feeling all nostaligic.
Incidentally - VA's stock has been doing not-so-badly since November. Interesting.
Or, as Douglas Adams put it: "OK, so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?"
Um: what "it" are you talking about? Assigning a law enforcement agent to observe every company whose operations may affect the enviornment?
Not even the greenest green I know has ever so much as suggested this to me, even in jest.
This is a suggestion so terrible that I suspect it may be a troll. Nevertheless:
Please, for the love of all that is good and right and doe-eyed cute, don't do this. Even I, a guy with somewhat leftist politics by any reasonable metric, think that this would be an awful idea.
First: you're either assigning existing officers to these tasks (they're already over-committed), hiring new ones (spending assloads of tax money to hire tens of thousands of new field agents), or federalizing private positions (taking private sector employees and slashing their salaries to government rates). None of these sounds like a recipe for success to me.
Second: law enforcement's supply of clueful computer people is shamefully low. I had the "pleasure" recently of attending a convention "CEO's dinner" at which an FBI agent working on computer security issues from our local branch office gave an "executive overview" of security issues from a law enforcement officer's point of view. In summary: it was terrible. It was clear that the guy was in over his head. For example, I usually accept it as a given that someone speaking on pirated software will understand that "warez" rhymes with "shares," and is not pronounced "Juarez."
I could go on, but the thought of all these new agents, coupled with the wasabi green peas I'm eating, is bringing tears to my eyes. I'm gonna go have a lie-down.
Why? I assume by reading your post that you're from the US, and yet you still managed to misspell "grammar."
Add to your list:
Uh - well, yeah, but that's a bit of an oversimplification. Doing the "change the sources file, then upgrade" thing is a surefire way to wind up with an assload of broken dependencies on a system.
A better way to do it is to start with a minimal clean install of potato, change the /etc/apt/sources.list file, then:
At least, so sayeth "apt," the all-knowing bot on the #debian channel at irc.debian.org. Hoo-ah.
Well, to be fair - it'd probably be more like $400 for the Razor scooter, since you'd have to add an electric motor and controls for it. But still, your point is well taken.
At least one of the points in the article you cite is no longer valid. Nielsen points out in the article that nearly 13% of browsers can't view frames. However, the article was written at the end of 1996, when Netscape 3 could claim almost half of the browser share.
His "Authoring Problems" issue strikes me, frankly, as baloney. Frames aren't significantly harder to use than tables, and yet I rarely hear people advocating the elimination of tables, unless it's for other reasons. Besides which, the state of the WYSIWYG authoring tools is such that at least they can produce frames reliably now.
In other respects, much of what he wrote five years ago still applies now, and personally, I hate writing frames. Just be aware of how the technology has changed.
If Carrot Top is actually arrested because someone used this technique, I will kiss you.
Perhaps, but then you're trying to enforce something completely different. Generally, anti-spam legislation is designed to thwart a type of communication: the only qualification being that the communication has to be unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE). To fall afoul of anti-spam laws doesn't require that the commercial message endorse a product fradulently ("ENLARGE YOUR PENIS, UP TO 6 INCHES!!!"), or inappropriately ("Sister Mary, of Our Lady of the Assumption - do you want to see pics of real amateur sluts?"). So, anti-fraud actions aren't really going to address the problems that anti-spam legislation backers want to address.
The problem with treating is that it isn't obvious that e-mail spam is theft. Frequently, court cases against spam pushers are couched using "trespass to chattels" laws. But those laws aren't perfect for this - take a look here for a discussion of some of the problems associated with it.
You're right in that laws can be misapplied. However, the counterargument here is that you can't prosecute something which isn't illegal. Just as prosecutors can misapply laws to prosecute actions outside of the intent of the authors, defendants can argue that existing laws do not apply to their actions - for example, by arguing that a trespass to chattels law doesn't make sense in the context of e-mail spamming.
Today is Veteran's Day in the US. I suspect that's why the date was picked.
...or at least, used to sell: "It's a tough job, but somebody said I had to do it."
Yeah - I noticed this shortly after the first screenshots of the blade-equipped Covenant forces came out.
I'm witholding judgement. But the first time I hear some Covenant grunt yell "En Taro Adun," I'm calling Blizzard's lawyers.
I'm currently involved in a domain name dispute, as a guy who has been accused unfairly.
Contrary to what some of the folks here seem to be saying, you do have a legitimate beef. Especially since these guys are clearly intending to sell the domain - hence, the nondescript porn and the "click here to buy this domain" link.
Ask around any lawyer friends you know, and see if they know anyone who does trademark / domain name dispute cases. Then contact that person and ask if they know anyone who would be willing to take such a case on a pro bono basis, or for a "de minimus" fee.
As a final note: brush up on ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Resolution Policy. The policy makes it pretty clear that a domain can be considered registered in bad faith if:
The "click here to buy" link is clear evidence of (i), and the selection of name is a pretty clear evidence of (iv), unless these people are seriously going to make an argument that they just liked the name.
Oh - IANAL, but I know far more about the law now than I ever wanted to.
Well, yeah, it is, in the technical sense. In the article, though, they're using the term "radiator" to describe what you probably have in your house if you're not on central air: a long pipe through which they're moving a refrigerant. Essentially, this is a liquid-cooled system, minus all the crap that's usually involved in putting together a liquid-cooled system (external resevoirs and radiators, along with a couple feet of flexible tubing).
It's a shame the thing apparently has the worst mounting system in the world, because otherwise, it looks from the test results like the design worked pretty well.
Courts don't view software programs as having monopolies. They view companies as having monopolies. That's as it should be, and it's telling that in the example you cite, two of the three primary competitors to Windows XP are other Microsoft products.
You seem to be suggesting that Microsoft is either too naieve, too forthright, or too cash-strapped to make political donations in an effort to influence the party in power. Evidence suggests otherwise.