This could be a coincidence, but Bill Gates just announced that he will be going to India early next month. In fact, GoI's Linux announcement seems to have come out the day after Bill announced his trip. Ouch!
Yah, but it is a "scorpion"; if they had put 6 legs on it people would be complaining "but scorpions have 8 legs!". What if Mother Nature sues you under the DMCA??
I even seem to remember pressed CDs being distributed with trojans.
Surely these can't be Microsoft CDs!?! According to a KB article at Microsoft.com, "Disks are duplicated on a variety of industrial strength, quality focused systems. Most of these systems are
UNIX-based. The UNIX-based duplication systems used in manufacturing are
impervious to MS-DOS-based, Windows-based, and Macintosh-based viruses."
Why not? Buy ten of them, then smash them to bits. Every one you buy takes money directly out of Bill-n-Steve's pockets and away from their DRM project. Just don't buy any games
sigh... this comes up every time there's a discussion on the X-box. Your logic would make sense if there was an infinite supply of X-boxes. The fact is, the number of X-boxes being manufactured is limited (and finite, as are all things in this Universe except, possibly, human stupidity). If you buy an X-box, it moves off the shelf and the manufacturer gets $300 ($100 from MS, and $200 from you). If you don't buy it, it sits on the shelf and the manufacturer is out $300. An X-box sitting on the shelf for 1 year will end up costing the manufacturer an additional (say) $50 in interest and other costs, maybe much more.
If you really want to hurt MS (and I am not saying that one should; I'm just answering this hypothetically), then the best way to do it is to (a) not buy X-box at all, (b) convince others to not buy either, and (c) (this might be illegal) buy an X-box and return it after opening it.
In a wierd and twisted way this makes sense. The BIll of Rights (and the constitution as a whole) technicaly only applies to american citizens or those people that are permitted as gueats in this country.
Please point out where in the constitution does it say that it applies to US citizens only?
Humor me if you will, but why the heck would any self-respecting "hacker"-wannabe take an "Ultimate hacking" course? Isn't that somewhat like watching a documentary on hiking in order to learn hiking?
'Hacking' is learnt by doing. Maybe I'm from the old school and I don't know any better.
Patenting obvious stuff is bad enough; what bothers me is the fact that people can "add" stuff to their original patent applications. This guy seems to have done that, maybe after Ebay took off.
Old hands will recall that RAMBUS used to do that too, and got nailed by that.
The sad part about this story is that the company (EBay) will realise that its not worth their time to fight this, and just settle out of court for a couple of million bucks; a trivial amount to them, but a non-trivial amount to the likes of Mr. Woolston, who will continue to indulge in such "submarine patenting".
According to the ETS, significant numbers of questions from the GRE Computer Science Subject Test have been illegally revealed to test takers in recent months despite students signing an agreement they would not share questions from the test.
It is extremely naive to assume that students will keep their mouths shut after taking an exam. Of course they'll talk, discuss solutions and see how well they did compared to others.
I took the CS "AGRE" (as it was called then) in the 80s, and after we came out of the exam, we were discussing the questions and were able to reconstruct the entire exam (including the multiple choices) in a manner of minutes. An astute listener who was scheduled to take the exam months later could easily have obtained the list of 80 questions that we had. Of course, not all of them would have been repeated; but some might have.
This is the biggest problem with Linux
on
Linux Kernel 3.0?
·
· Score: 5, Funny
In the time that Linux has gone from 0.9 to 2.5, Windows has gone from 3.11 to 2000 ! In other words, Windows development is proceeding at 1331.26 times the development of Linux! No wonder Microsoft is light-years ahead of Linux.
I think we should speed up development and annoint a dedicated "version czar" who will make sure that the Linux kernels stay ahead of Windows. Hard as it may be, I'm willing to ``do my share'' and volunteer for this position. My first step would be to shift the decimal point 3 places to the right. This decimal has been hogging the #2 spot in the release number for too long; it is time it got relegated to the #5 spot, where it rightfully belongs.
Alternately, "b" may represent "bit", and someone may be inclined to write "Kbs" as a plural for "Kb".
It is certainly within the realm of possibility...
Re:Saw this LAN cam at show, $139, but where can b
on
LAN Camera Review
·
· Score: 2
From their specs:
Transmission Speed:
High Resolution (320x240): maximum 2.15 frames/second
No wonder Tom didn't review it..
you're implying that because they sell crippled hardware that they should be able to control what you do with it thereafter.
By the same token, Microsoft should be able to do anything with the hardware before you've bought it. If, for whatever reason, that prevents you from "hacking" it after you've bought it, then don't buy it!
As a taxpayer (I assume), I sure hope your interest in this issue is more than just in making snide remarks.
As a taxpayer, I don't like the idea of my tax dollars being used to get locked into some monopoly; and I'm not talking about MS' business monopoly here. For example: all the documents created in Office2K or whatever will not readable (faithfully) by any other software, including OpenOffice.
If USDOI wants to go with MS exclusively, then they should have a plan in place to be able to use replacement software in an emergency situation. In other words, make MS release the specs for the documents created using MSOffice before finalising this deal.
I urge all the readers to contact your local congressperson and state Senator about this.
Here's a list of the senators in the Interior subcommittee (the department comes under Appropriations):
Senators Byrd, Leahy, Hollings, Reid, Dorgan, Feinstein, Murray, Inouye, Burns, Stevens, Cochran, Domenici, Bennett, Gregg, Campbell.
Of these, Sen Feinstein may be the one who can be most influenced by the geeks here.
If possible, write (deadtree letter) or FAX them; an email just doesn't cut it.
Why can't a professor just video tape the damn lesson and catalogue the class participation? After a few years, I'd assume that there would be a complete class as well as the entire set of questions/clarification that could possibly be asked.
Because then we'd all be still programming in Algol or Snobol or Cobol or ***ol.
From the ensuing discussion on the list:
Ingo:...Anton tested 1 million concurrent
threads on one of his bigger PowerPC
boxes, which started up in around 30 seconds.
I think he saw a load average of around 200
thousand. [ie. the runqueue was probably a
few hundred thousand entries long at times.]
Wow.. this is pretty good.The ability to spawn & run 1 million concurrent threads should keep even the most demanding users happy for a few years...
OTOH, I hope this post doesn't become the butt of jokes a few months from now ("and you thought 1 million was a lot! Ha! My Palm 5000XL does more than that!")...
My Theory(tm) is that the cost of a computing device should be proportional to its targetted end-use. For example: I can buy a full-fledged PC from some mega-vendor for about $500. Now, why would I pay $300 for some super-slim version, which can be used as either a firewall or an Xterminal or something? If the functionality (or typical use) of the device is limited thusly, so should the price! For this kind of device, I'd pay at most $100, tops. You can't sell these devices en masse based just on the novelty factor, ignoring the cost.
IIRC, you can download a demo of Abbyy's OCR program and try it out yourself, on your own docs.
If you want free, head on over to the National Library of Medicine's DocMorph page. You can upload TIFF files, and have them converted to plain text in about 15 seconds. Not bad for 'free', I think.
The Window Cleaners Union should take a leaf out of RIAA's book and (a) ask Congress to pass the DWCA (Dirt Window Cleaners Act), and (b) sue Pilkington. After all, this new-fangled glass will put them out of business!
I read Andy's post, and it highlights one of Linux's strengths: the fact that an enduser was able to tweak the kernel parameters, take third-party patches (Ben's) and in general muck around the kernel to get the best performance. You will never see Microsoft give this kind of freedom to its customers ("we know best! just give us the money and we'll take care of it... sometime!").
Slashdot Mirror
What we need is an 'Ask Slashdot' on this topic. Collect your questions, and then ask Val what the real deal is.
... but Microsoft does have a monopoly there.
This could be a coincidence, but Bill Gates just announced that he will be going to India early next month. In fact, GoI's Linux announcement seems to have come out the day after Bill announced his trip. Ouch!
Yah, but it is a "scorpion"; if they had put 6 legs on it people would be complaining "but scorpions have 8 legs!". What if Mother Nature sues you under the DMCA??
Surely these can't be Microsoft CDs!?! According to a KB article at Microsoft.com, "Disks are duplicated on a variety of industrial strength, quality focused systems. Most of these systems are UNIX-based. The UNIX-based duplication systems used in manufacturing are impervious to MS-DOS-based, Windows-based, and Macintosh-based viruses."
sigh... this comes up every time there's a discussion on the X-box. Your logic would make sense if there was an infinite supply of X-boxes. The fact is, the number of X-boxes being manufactured is limited (and finite, as are all things in this Universe except, possibly, human stupidity). If you buy an X-box, it moves off the shelf and the manufacturer gets $300 ($100 from MS, and $200 from you). If you don't buy it, it sits on the shelf and the manufacturer is out $300. An X-box sitting on the shelf for 1 year will end up costing the manufacturer an additional (say) $50 in interest and other costs, maybe much more.
If you really want to hurt MS (and I am not saying that one should; I'm just answering this hypothetically), then the best way to do it is to (a) not buy X-box at all, (b) convince others to not buy either, and (c) (this might be illegal) buy an X-box and return it after opening it.
Please point out where in the constitution does it say that it applies to US citizens only?
Can't find it? I thought so.
I have 2 questions? 1. .. .. .. ..
2.
3.
4.
I think you have a bigger problem.
'Hacking' is learnt by doing. Maybe I'm from the old school and I don't know any better.
Old hands will recall that RAMBUS used to do that too, and got nailed by that.
The sad part about this story is that the company (EBay) will realise that its not worth their time to fight this, and just settle out of court for a couple of million bucks; a trivial amount to them, but a non-trivial amount to the likes of Mr. Woolston, who will continue to indulge in such "submarine patenting".
It is extremely naive to assume that students will keep their mouths shut after taking an exam. Of course they'll talk, discuss solutions and see how well they did compared to others.
I took the CS "AGRE" (as it was called then) in the 80s, and after we came out of the exam, we were discussing the questions and were able to reconstruct the entire exam (including the multiple choices) in a manner of minutes. An astute listener who was scheduled to take the exam months later could easily have obtained the list of 80 questions that we had. Of course, not all of them would have been repeated; but some might have.
The ``easter egg'' will be on the Bimmer's face when it tries to race against the real boys.
I think we should speed up development and annoint a dedicated "version czar" who will make sure that the Linux kernels stay ahead of Windows. Hard as it may be, I'm willing to ``do my share'' and volunteer for this position. My first step would be to shift the decimal point 3 places to the right. This decimal has been hogging the #2 spot in the release number for too long; it is time it got relegated to the #5 spot, where it rightfully belongs.
Alternately, "b" may represent "bit", and someone may be inclined to write "Kbs" as a plural for "Kb". It is certainly within the realm of possibility...
From their specs:
Transmission Speed:
High Resolution (320x240): maximum 2.15 frames/second
No wonder Tom didn't review it..
By the same token, Microsoft should be able to do anything with the hardware before you've bought it. If, for whatever reason, that prevents you from "hacking" it after you've bought it, then don't buy it!
Whats good for the gander, is good for the goose.
As a taxpayer, I don't like the idea of my tax dollars being used to get locked into some monopoly; and I'm not talking about MS' business monopoly here. For example: all the documents created in Office2K or whatever will not readable (faithfully) by any other software, including OpenOffice.
If USDOI wants to go with MS exclusively, then they should have a plan in place to be able to use replacement software in an emergency situation. In other words, make MS release the specs for the documents created using MSOffice before finalising this deal.
I urge all the readers to contact your local congressperson and state Senator about this. Here's a list of the senators in the Interior subcommittee (the department comes under Appropriations):
Senators Byrd, Leahy, Hollings, Reid, Dorgan, Feinstein, Murray, Inouye, Burns, Stevens, Cochran, Domenici, Bennett, Gregg, Campbell.
Of these, Sen Feinstein may be the one who can be most influenced by the geeks here.
If possible, write (deadtree letter) or FAX them; an email just doesn't cut it.
Why can't a professor just video tape the damn lesson and catalogue the class participation? After a few years, I'd assume that there would be a complete class as well as the entire set of questions/clarification that could possibly be asked.
Because then we'd all be still programming in Algol or Snobol or Cobol or ***ol.
Ingo:...Anton tested 1 million concurrent threads on one of his bigger PowerPC boxes, which started up in around 30 seconds. I think he saw a load average of around 200 thousand. [ie. the runqueue was probably a few hundred thousand entries long at times.]
Wow.. this is pretty good.The ability to spawn & run 1 million concurrent threads should keep even the most demanding users happy for a few years...
OTOH, I hope this post doesn't become the butt of jokes a few months from now ("and you thought 1 million was a lot! Ha! My Palm 5000XL does more than that!")...
My Theory(tm) is that the cost of a computing device should be proportional to its targetted end-use. For example: I can buy a full-fledged PC from some mega-vendor for about $500. Now, why would I pay $300 for some super-slim version, which can be used as either a firewall or an Xterminal or something? If the functionality (or typical use) of the device is limited thusly, so should the price! For this kind of device, I'd pay at most $100, tops. You can't sell these devices en masse based just on the novelty factor, ignoring the cost.
<fires up Gnucleus>
already on it, boss!
500 years from now, with spaceships and all sorts of cool gadgetry, they still use revolvers and handguns??
If you want free, head on over to the National Library of Medicine's DocMorph page. You can upload TIFF files, and have them converted to plain text in about 15 seconds. Not bad for 'free', I think.
The Window Cleaners Union should take a leaf out of RIAA's book and (a) ask Congress to pass the DWCA (Dirt Window Cleaners Act), and (b) sue Pilkington. After all, this new-fangled glass will put them out of business!
I read Andy's post, and it highlights one of Linux's strengths: the fact that an enduser was able to tweak the kernel parameters, take third-party patches (Ben's) and in general muck around the kernel to get the best performance. You will never see Microsoft give this kind of freedom to its customers ("we know best! just give us the money and we'll take care of it... sometime!").