Second, I've always had this complaint with the whole external javascript files. When you're already downloading a 50K html page, another 10K of javascript code in the same file inline downloads at full-speed. The external file requires yet another hit to the server, and everything involved therein. It almost never makes any sense. Even as a locally cached file, on a broadband connection, downloading the extra 10K is typically faster than opening and reading the locally cached file!
That's not the reason that I generally use external JavaScript files. The reason is code reuse, pure and simple. Generally speaking it's far easier to just link to the file (especially for static HTML pages) than it is to try and inline it. That way when you fix a bug that effects Internet Explorer 6.0.5201 on Windows XP SP1.5 or whatever you don't have to copy it to all your static files as the code is in a single location.
Sure, you could use server-side includes, but then you need to make sure that your JavaScript code doesn't include "</script>" anywhere. The requirements are even more strict for (true) XHTML.
It's also code separation. It separates the JavaScript code from the display, which generally makes it far easier to work with, especially with syntax-highlighting editors that get retarded when they see JavaScript in HTML.
But anyway:
The external file requires yet another hit to the server, and everything involved therein.
Your web client sucks then. Get one that understands persistent HTTP connections. If you actually look at a network sniffer while any modern browser accesses a webpage you should see them all use the same socket.
The other option is that the web server sucks or is configured not to use persistent HTTP connections. In any case, this shouldn't be a real problem.
In general cases, yes, people would probably want to access data.
This entire thread stems from the fact that in my specific single case, no one cared about the data on the machine. I mentioned off-hand that in this case I could have also just reinstalled the OS from scratch since no one cared about the data on the machine. But since resetting the root password was faster, I did that instead.
Plus there's a whole class of people who don't care enough about the data on a machine to try and retrieve it if it's encrypted: thieves. Encrypting your hard disk or running Linux will probably keep your data safe if someone steals the physical computer (removing identity theft opportunities), but it won't stop them from reinstalling the OS and using the machine as they see fit.
The single user mode asked for the root password. It was the first thing I tried.
As for "init=/bin/bash" I wasn't sure that would actually work and was reluctant to try it. Skipping everything that runs on boot just doesn't seem like a good idea. I don't understand exactly how the distro actually boots prior to setting a runlevel, and I'm not sure what state the machine would wind up in. I'm fairly sure it was using an initrd and I have no idea what that would throw into the mix. This process just seemed safer.
Unless you deleted the partition containing the data...but wouldn't that defeat the purpose of breaking into the system?
Nope. Know how most worms don't actually care about the data on the machine? They just want enough control to make the machine join a bot-net and start spamming.
In this scenario I don't care about the data on the machine. All I want to do is run programs on the machine. Sadly, the OS is password protected and I don't know the password. So I can't run programs. But if I were to replace the existing OS with a new one that I do have access to, I've done a successful attack: I now have the access I desired. I've started with no access and ended with full access.
Yes, all encrypted data would remain unknown. But for this "attack" I don't actually care about the data. I just want to be able to run programs on the machine. (Specifically in this case, it was a lab machine that had been moved from one project to another. Whoever originally set up the machine either couldn't be contacted or had forgotten the password, I don't remember which. There's no useful data on the machine, but the machine is still useful - if only we could access it.)
The entire point is that this is a somewhat lame attack - just like the attack in the article. It starts by assuming you manage to gain full read/write access to the drive. Amazingly enough, if you have full read/write access, gaining root access isn't terribly difficult...
No kidding. I once "hacked" into a Linux machine that had an unknown root password by booting off a live CD, sudo bashing to become root, and then it's just mount, chroot and passwd to reset the root password. (I could have also manually edited/etc/shadow but this was easier.)
Linux is horribly insecure! I was able to reset the root password with just a live CD and complete access to the machine!
Now of course if the hard drive had been encrypted, this "attack" wouldn't have worked. (Although in this case at least, a different attack would have worked: reinstalling the OS. Resetting the root password was faster. The data on the machine wasn't important. We just needed a working Linux installation with a known root password.)
I just found that amusing. That and I think the "red crystal" symbol is both a horrible name and somewhat ugly. (It's essentially a red square tilted 45 degrees.)
[1] Originally I wrote "Googling for red crystal" but seeing as this is a story about a trademark dispute, I decided to be kind a respect Google's trademark.
These were the CUA shortcuts. The new Ctrl-Z/X/C/V shortcut set was stolen off the Mac, because unlike the CUA set, it makes sense. Unlike the CUA, it's always Control-Something. X and C make perfect sense for Cut and Copy. Z and V make less sense unless you think of them as little icons, in which case the Z is a Zig-Zag backwards and the V is a down-arrow pasting into the document. Ultimately, though, they're used because they're next to each other on the keyboard. All your common edit actions in a nice little row.
If you want a non-Wikipedia source, you can try this page. The CUA keys still work in most Windows applications, it's just that the Mac keys also work since they don't overlap. Alt-F4 remains as probably the most-used CUA shortcut.
What I love about Outlook 2007 is that the main window uses a standard menu and toolbar setup, while the compose email/appointment window uses the office "ribbon" thing. Yes, that's right: Outlook manages to be inconsistent with itself. Office 2007 is even worse under XP, since it doesn't even use the standard Windows XP window border.
Also fun are realizing that almost no Microsoft application actually uses native controls. Notepad in that screenshot is the only Microsoft application using native controls.
Internet Explorer 7 doesn't even use native Windows scrollbars, emulating them horribly. Try it out if you have it installed - none of the mouse-over animations trigger. (This also happens in XP, although it's much less noticeable, but it's there. Open a Windows Explorer window and an Internet Explorer window and move the mouse over the scroll bars and compare.)
I don't really care about being charged minutes to receive calls - it seems fair enough, I'm using air time. I can check the caller ID and refuse the call if I don't want to be charged. It hasn't been a big deal.
Getting dinged $0.20 per spam SMS? That's a bit more annoying. There's no way to refuse a text message (on Sprint, at least). And thanks to the email-to-SMS gateway, the spammer doesn't get charged a penny. (I'm noticing that a huge percentage of spam I receive on my regular account is, for some strange reason, under 160 characters.)
It's even more annoying because I have an unlimited data plan - I can send and receive unlimited email from my Gmail account. I can view satellite imagery on Google Maps, which I'm fairly sure involves more data transfer than an SMS. But receive one text message? Boom, $0.20 charge.
It's not the same thing - Microsoft helpfully reused the name. Technically Shadow Copy is just the NTFS feature that the Previous Versions feature uses to access previous versions. And persistent Shadow Copy wasn't added until Windows Server 2003 - the Shadow Copy feature in XP only allows access to locked files for backup purposes. At least, according to the Wikipedia and this technet article.
In the US you're just dumped into it if it's a home phone line. Cell phones are never added to the directory.
If you want an unlisted number, you have to pay extra. Verizon (local telecom monopoly where I live) charges some monthly fee if you want out of the phonebook and a higher fee (about $5?) if you want out of the 411 directory.
Sadly these fees vary by area and Verizon's website sucks so I can't link to it. But it's called a "non-published number" if you want to Google a thousand websites claiming to be able to look them up anyway.
It's not the same thing. Yes, it has the same name (thanks Microsoft) but it's different. The Wikipedia article you mentioned makes this clear: only Windows 2003 and Vista have the ability to actually save the Shadow Copy to disk. Under XP, it's just a copy in memory. (Sort of like how files work in Linux.)
The Previous Version feature in Windows Vista uses the Shadow Copy feature in NTFS to pull older versions. But only Vista actually runs the service that makes the backup copies. Windows XP does not have this feature.
Which is why Apple did a great thing with Time Machine. That's exactly the kind of stuff you need for home users: A total nobrainer, invisible, transparent, automatic. And it allows you to restore only the one file you need, not do a full rollback.
Vista has this feature, there's a tab called "Previous Versions" in the properties dialog for files and folders. Microsoft calls this feature Shadow Copy on the list of Vista features.
The problem is that MS has stopped thinking about "advantage for the user" at least 10 years ago.
But it's a great feature (despite the crappy slow and flaky UI), and one that should be available on all versions of Vista if Microsoft was intelligent and not trying to nickel-and-dime their customers. It's the only feature of Vista I've ever used that made me think "I'm glad I'm using Vista, I'd have been screwed in XP."
Considering my general hatred of the Pidgin UI, no, I don't find this ridiculous.
Let's start with Pidgin's UI Sucks, which details some of the weird UI decisions made back around version 2.1. Fortunately they've fixed almost all the issues listed in that post.
If I ever had the time to, I'd like to write a new UI for libpurple, Pidgin's backend. I have some ideas - but not enough time to actually learn how to use libpurple.
Maybe I can help with this fork, called... uh. Hm. The summary doesn't appear to mention it.
I remember once when playing around with distros, I wound up doing something to GRUB such that it lost its menu.lst. (I can't remember exactly what I did, since it was still able to find the Stage 1.5 and Stage 2 files. I must have just accidentally deleted menu.lst.) Rather than bothering to, you know, fix it, I just booted "manually" by entering the GRUB commands to boot whenever I needed to reboot - which, being Linux, was basically limited to kernel updates.
In any case, it made it so that the computer was essentially only bootable by me, since only I knew the magic commands to start it. (Something like root (hd2,7), kernel/boot/vmlinuz, boot - a relatively simple configuration that wasn't really that hard to remember once you knew the magic numbers.)
So just delete/boot/grub/menu.lst after memorizing the magic commands to boot your system, and leave the customs agents staring at the GRUB> prompt.
In my high school, we got as far as the Civil War in our History of America class. By which I mean, on the last day of actual classes before finals, our history teacher talked about the Civil War.
And that was the last required history course, meaning that quite a lot of things that happened were sort of, well, skipped in my high school history education. World War II could be learned from the History Channel, but I did have to wonder about the "II" as if it were a sequel...
To be fair to the history teacher, though, we did at one point discuss the location of the stars in Super Mario 64. (Which kind of dates me.)
Digital sound output already exists. I have a USB headset where the DAC is in a little bundle away from the USB plug.
Not to mention that my current motherboard on my desktop has SPDIF in and out on-board (which is what I'm using after getting fed up with Creative a good two years ago).
Of course, I don't actually use the digital plugs on my motherboard, because analog speakers cost like $20-$50 while a receiver capable of handling SPDIF is a bit more.
So if you want to go all-digital for your sound, you can do it today. Well, almost all-digital, since you still have the final DAC to interface with the human brain.:)
It's annoyingly easy to go through "computers" when you realize that "computer" actually means "OS install."
I've gone through something like 3 authorized "computers" in a week thanks to failing hardware necessitating first a reinstall attempt (computer #2, couldn't deauthorize #1 since it wouldn't boot) and finally a new computer (computer #3, couldn't deauthorize #2 since it wouldn't boot).
Before anyone asks about "why reinstall if the hardware failed" the first attempt I figured that Windows XP was simply being an old Windows XP installation and some program had trashed something. It was only after the reinstall that I realized something was really wrong with the hardware - I never did debug it down to what. Possibly memory related, possibly motherboard related.
So, yes, it's entirely possible to go through quite a few "computers" within a year. If you want to go the "trash Microsoft" route we can blame that on Windows. Fortunately for me that was a single instance, but along with an unrecoverable work laptop (computer #4, computer #5 being the replacement), I'm up to five "authorized" computers and only two which really exist and can be deauthorized.
No, the article just wasn't clear. It actually means 6-bits per color channel per pixel. In other words, 18-bits per pixel instead of full 24-bits per pixel. And the reduction from 2^24 to 2^18 does indeed reduce the number of colors from about 16 million to 262,144 - a reduction of about 98% of the entire color space.
And as someone who owns a 18-bits per pixel monitor, trust me, you can tell when working with static imagery. Maybe not when playing games or playing movies, but you can tell. The little gradients on Slashdot look terrible on that monitor. It helps that it doesn't do any form of dithering, but even on my cheap Acer laptop that also only does 18bpp, you can clearly see the dithering.
Since Apples are frequently used for photo work and print work, using only 6 bits per color channel is simply unacceptable. Coders probably won't care, but graphic artists most certainly will.
First off, both Safari and iTunes could require the same Mac OS compatibility layers that provide that brushed-metal Aqua look under Windows. Looking at the two, it's clear that they don't use the same libraries, but they could and arguably should and I'll bet in the future they will.
Secondly, and most importantly, the iTunes Music Store under Windows has used WebKit of some form since before Safari was released on Windows. Instead of embedding Internet Explorer, they went with their own software which makes perfect sense since it means that they don't have to build two versions of the store for both Internet Explorer and WebKit.
So, yes, iTunes requires a specific browser component. At this point it appears that the two don't share any libraries, but it makes perfect sense for iTunes to embed Safari and not Internet Explorer or Mozilla. In the future, it's probably going to move to the point where there's no point in not including the Safari shell since most of the browser is there anyway as libraries for iTunes.
While I agree that it does seem kind of lame that a show titled "BattleBots" featured no actual robots, I highly doubt that a show featuring autonomous bots would actually be interesting to watch.
To borrow a quote from bash.org, all you'd end up watching are robots that "collect data about the surrounding environment, then discard it and drive into walls."
But even assuming that the AI could match the human-controlled bots, it wouldn't make it any more interesting. Instead of watching a bunch of human-controlled wedges attempt to flip each other over, you'd be watching a bunch of computer-controlled wedges attempting to flip each other over. Intellectually more interesting, I suppose, but really no more fun.
The real problem with BattleBots is that it's just boring. I don't want to watch a bunch of robots attempt to score points on each other and then watch the judges declare one the winner, I want to watch robots destroy each other. In BattleBots, the destruction was generally limited to "something's bent and it no longer moves."
I doubt BattleBots will ever really be all that interesting. Ultimately it's going to remain a bunch of bots hitting each other until one craps out or time runs out.
Hopefully I'm wrong and ESPN will surprise me, but BattleBots strikes me as one of those concepts that sounds like fun to watch but proves not to be, regardless of what actually controls the bots.
You mean the part where they take existing maps and, here's the exciting part, display them in Google Earth?
The only really interesting part is updating the position of public service vehicles in real time. The other stuff is just presenting existing data via Google Earth. Things like being able to look up the trash collection schedule by Google Earth is "kinda neat" but really no more useful than a simple table. I can get that information for my town online - just not via Google Earth.
I haven't looked through the data to check to see if I can get all the same data online already but it looks like I can already get the majority of it. Just not through Google Earth.
Seriously, there's something about this idea that seems kind of silly. I don't know - tracking public services does make some sort of sense, I guess. I wouldn't want to pay for the cost, but if Google's willing to foot the bill, I guess I'd have no problem with it were it done locally. It's not something I'd like the local government to spend money on though - too little benefit for the cost.
I guarantee that this will never happen in the US, though, over concerns that knowing where fire trucks are could potentially allow terr'ists to strike areas where the firefighters are all busy elsewhere or something silly like that.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not the reason that I generally use external JavaScript files. The reason is code reuse, pure and simple. Generally speaking it's far easier to just link to the file (especially for static HTML pages) than it is to try and inline it. That way when you fix a bug that effects Internet Explorer 6.0.5201 on Windows XP SP1.5 or whatever you don't have to copy it to all your static files as the code is in a single location.
Sure, you could use server-side includes, but then you need to make sure that your JavaScript code doesn't include "</script>" anywhere. The requirements are even more strict for (true) XHTML.
It's also code separation. It separates the JavaScript code from the display, which generally makes it far easier to work with, especially with syntax-highlighting editors that get retarded when they see JavaScript in HTML.
But anyway:
The external file requires yet another hit to the server, and everything involved therein.Your web client sucks then. Get one that understands persistent HTTP connections. If you actually look at a network sniffer while any modern browser accesses a webpage you should see them all use the same socket.
The other option is that the web server sucks or is configured not to use persistent HTTP connections. In any case, this shouldn't be a real problem.
In general cases, yes, people would probably want to access data.
This entire thread stems from the fact that in my specific single case, no one cared about the data on the machine. I mentioned off-hand that in this case I could have also just reinstalled the OS from scratch since no one cared about the data on the machine. But since resetting the root password was faster, I did that instead.
Plus there's a whole class of people who don't care enough about the data on a machine to try and retrieve it if it's encrypted: thieves. Encrypting your hard disk or running Linux will probably keep your data safe if someone steals the physical computer (removing identity theft opportunities), but it won't stop them from reinstalling the OS and using the machine as they see fit.
The single user mode asked for the root password. It was the first thing I tried.
As for "init=/bin/bash" I wasn't sure that would actually work and was reluctant to try it. Skipping everything that runs on boot just doesn't seem like a good idea. I don't understand exactly how the distro actually boots prior to setting a runlevel, and I'm not sure what state the machine would wind up in. I'm fairly sure it was using an initrd and I have no idea what that would throw into the mix. This process just seemed safer.
Nope. Know how most worms don't actually care about the data on the machine? They just want enough control to make the machine join a bot-net and start spamming.
In this scenario I don't care about the data on the machine. All I want to do is run programs on the machine. Sadly, the OS is password protected and I don't know the password. So I can't run programs. But if I were to replace the existing OS with a new one that I do have access to, I've done a successful attack: I now have the access I desired. I've started with no access and ended with full access.
Yes, all encrypted data would remain unknown. But for this "attack" I don't actually care about the data. I just want to be able to run programs on the machine. (Specifically in this case, it was a lab machine that had been moved from one project to another. Whoever originally set up the machine either couldn't be contacted or had forgotten the password, I don't remember which. There's no useful data on the machine, but the machine is still useful - if only we could access it.)
The entire point is that this is a somewhat lame attack - just like the attack in the article. It starts by assuming you manage to gain full read/write access to the drive. Amazingly enough, if you have full read/write access, gaining root access isn't terribly difficult...
No kidding. I once "hacked" into a Linux machine that had an unknown root password by booting off a live CD, sudo bashing to become root, and then it's just mount, chroot and passwd to reset the root password. (I could have also manually edited /etc/shadow but this was easier.)
Linux is horribly insecure! I was able to reset the root password with just a live CD and complete access to the machine!
Now of course if the hard drive had been encrypted, this "attack" wouldn't have worked. (Although in this case at least, a different attack would have worked: reinstalling the OS. Resetting the root password was faster. The data on the machine wasn't important. We just needed a working Linux installation with a known root password.)
Searching on Google for red crystal[1] comes up with a World of Warcraft quest as the first result. The Red Cross is the second result found.
I just found that amusing. That and I think the "red crystal" symbol is both a horrible name and somewhat ugly. (It's essentially a red square tilted 45 degrees.)
[1] Originally I wrote "Googling for red crystal" but seeing as this is a story about a trademark dispute, I decided to be kind a respect Google's trademark.
No, they're not. The Wikipedia article even lists the correct keys that actually were in the CUA. They were the ever-so-intuitive:
Copy: Ctrl-Ins
Cut: Shift-Del
Paste: Shift-Ins
Undo: Alt-Backspace
These were the CUA shortcuts. The new Ctrl-Z/X/C/V shortcut set was stolen off the Mac, because unlike the CUA set, it makes sense. Unlike the CUA, it's always Control-Something. X and C make perfect sense for Cut and Copy. Z and V make less sense unless you think of them as little icons, in which case the Z is a Zig-Zag backwards and the V is a down-arrow pasting into the document. Ultimately, though, they're used because they're next to each other on the keyboard. All your common edit actions in a nice little row.
If you want a non-Wikipedia source, you can try this page. The CUA keys still work in most Windows applications, it's just that the Mac keys also work since they don't overlap. Alt-F4 remains as probably the most-used CUA shortcut.
I guess the ones in computers can't be too good for the spelling center of the brain. :P
What I love about Outlook 2007 is that the main window uses a standard menu and toolbar setup, while the compose email/appointment window uses the office "ribbon" thing. Yes, that's right: Outlook manages to be inconsistent with itself. Office 2007 is even worse under XP, since it doesn't even use the standard Windows XP window border.
Also fun are realizing that almost no Microsoft application actually uses native controls. Notepad in that screenshot is the only Microsoft application using native controls.
Internet Explorer 7 doesn't even use native Windows scrollbars, emulating them horribly. Try it out if you have it installed - none of the mouse-over animations trigger. (This also happens in XP, although it's much less noticeable, but it's there. Open a Windows Explorer window and an Internet Explorer window and move the mouse over the scroll bars and compare.)
I don't really care about being charged minutes to receive calls - it seems fair enough, I'm using air time. I can check the caller ID and refuse the call if I don't want to be charged. It hasn't been a big deal.
Getting dinged $0.20 per spam SMS? That's a bit more annoying. There's no way to refuse a text message (on Sprint, at least). And thanks to the email-to-SMS gateway, the spammer doesn't get charged a penny. (I'm noticing that a huge percentage of spam I receive on my regular account is, for some strange reason, under 160 characters.)
It's even more annoying because I have an unlimited data plan - I can send and receive unlimited email from my Gmail account. I can view satellite imagery on Google Maps, which I'm fairly sure involves more data transfer than an SMS. But receive one text message? Boom, $0.20 charge.
It's not the same thing - Microsoft helpfully reused the name. Technically Shadow Copy is just the NTFS feature that the Previous Versions feature uses to access previous versions. And persistent Shadow Copy wasn't added until Windows Server 2003 - the Shadow Copy feature in XP only allows access to locked files for backup purposes. At least, according to the Wikipedia and this technet article.
In the US you're just dumped into it if it's a home phone line. Cell phones are never added to the directory.
If you want an unlisted number, you have to pay extra. Verizon (local telecom monopoly where I live) charges some monthly fee if you want out of the phonebook and a higher fee (about $5?) if you want out of the 411 directory.
Sadly these fees vary by area and Verizon's website sucks so I can't link to it. But it's called a "non-published number" if you want to Google a thousand websites claiming to be able to look them up anyway.
It's not the same thing. Yes, it has the same name (thanks Microsoft) but it's different. The Wikipedia article you mentioned makes this clear: only Windows 2003 and Vista have the ability to actually save the Shadow Copy to disk. Under XP, it's just a copy in memory. (Sort of like how files work in Linux.)
The Previous Version feature in Windows Vista uses the Shadow Copy feature in NTFS to pull older versions. But only Vista actually runs the service that makes the backup copies. Windows XP does not have this feature.
Vista has this feature, there's a tab called "Previous Versions" in the properties dialog for files and folders. Microsoft calls this feature Shadow Copy on the list of Vista features.
The problem is that MS has stopped thinking about "advantage for the user" at least 10 years ago.Except that it's only available on the Ultimate and Business editions (footnote D as of the time I linked it). Home users don't get it.
But it's a great feature (despite the crappy slow and flaky UI), and one that should be available on all versions of Vista if Microsoft was intelligent and not trying to nickel-and-dime their customers. It's the only feature of Vista I've ever used that made me think "I'm glad I'm using Vista, I'd have been screwed in XP."
Considering my general hatred of the Pidgin UI, no, I don't find this ridiculous.
Let's start with Pidgin's UI Sucks, which details some of the weird UI decisions made back around version 2.1. Fortunately they've fixed almost all the issues listed in that post.
More Pidgin Bashing is just a bug, so let's skip ahead to Pidgin's Crappy Formatting Icons which they have not fixed.
If I ever had the time to, I'd like to write a new UI for libpurple, Pidgin's backend. I have some ideas - but not enough time to actually learn how to use libpurple.
Maybe I can help with this fork, called... uh. Hm. The summary doesn't appear to mention it.
Ah, here we go: funpidgin.
I remember once when playing around with distros, I wound up doing something to GRUB such that it lost its menu.lst. (I can't remember exactly what I did, since it was still able to find the Stage 1.5 and Stage 2 files. I must have just accidentally deleted menu.lst.) Rather than bothering to, you know, fix it, I just booted "manually" by entering the GRUB commands to boot whenever I needed to reboot - which, being Linux, was basically limited to kernel updates.
In any case, it made it so that the computer was essentially only bootable by me, since only I knew the magic commands to start it. (Something like root (hd2,7), kernel /boot/vmlinuz, boot - a relatively simple configuration that wasn't really that hard to remember once you knew the magic numbers.)
So just delete /boot/grub/menu.lst after memorizing the magic commands to boot your system, and leave the customs agents staring at the GRUB> prompt.
In my high school, we got as far as the Civil War in our History of America class. By which I mean, on the last day of actual classes before finals, our history teacher talked about the Civil War.
And that was the last required history course, meaning that quite a lot of things that happened were sort of, well, skipped in my high school history education. World War II could be learned from the History Channel, but I did have to wonder about the "II" as if it were a sequel...
To be fair to the history teacher, though, we did at one point discuss the location of the stars in Super Mario 64. (Which kind of dates me.)
Digital sound output already exists. I have a USB headset where the DAC is in a little bundle away from the USB plug.
Not to mention that my current motherboard on my desktop has SPDIF in and out on-board (which is what I'm using after getting fed up with Creative a good two years ago).
Of course, I don't actually use the digital plugs on my motherboard, because analog speakers cost like $20-$50 while a receiver capable of handling SPDIF is a bit more.
So if you want to go all-digital for your sound, you can do it today. Well, almost all-digital, since you still have the final DAC to interface with the human brain. :)
It's annoyingly easy to go through "computers" when you realize that "computer" actually means "OS install."
I've gone through something like 3 authorized "computers" in a week thanks to failing hardware necessitating first a reinstall attempt (computer #2, couldn't deauthorize #1 since it wouldn't boot) and finally a new computer (computer #3, couldn't deauthorize #2 since it wouldn't boot).
Before anyone asks about "why reinstall if the hardware failed" the first attempt I figured that Windows XP was simply being an old Windows XP installation and some program had trashed something. It was only after the reinstall that I realized something was really wrong with the hardware - I never did debug it down to what. Possibly memory related, possibly motherboard related.
So, yes, it's entirely possible to go through quite a few "computers" within a year. If you want to go the "trash Microsoft" route we can blame that on Windows. Fortunately for me that was a single instance, but along with an unrecoverable work laptop (computer #4, computer #5 being the replacement), I'm up to five "authorized" computers and only two which really exist and can be deauthorized.
No, the article just wasn't clear. It actually means 6-bits per color channel per pixel. In other words, 18-bits per pixel instead of full 24-bits per pixel. And the reduction from 2^24 to 2^18 does indeed reduce the number of colors from about 16 million to 262,144 - a reduction of about 98% of the entire color space.
And as someone who owns a 18-bits per pixel monitor, trust me, you can tell when working with static imagery. Maybe not when playing games or playing movies, but you can tell. The little gradients on Slashdot look terrible on that monitor. It helps that it doesn't do any form of dithering, but even on my cheap Acer laptop that also only does 18bpp, you can clearly see the dithering.
Since Apples are frequently used for photo work and print work, using only 6 bits per color channel is simply unacceptable. Coders probably won't care, but graphic artists most certainly will.
Of course iTunes requires Safari in some form.
First off, both Safari and iTunes could require the same Mac OS compatibility layers that provide that brushed-metal Aqua look under Windows. Looking at the two, it's clear that they don't use the same libraries, but they could and arguably should and I'll bet in the future they will.
Secondly, and most importantly, the iTunes Music Store under Windows has used WebKit of some form since before Safari was released on Windows. Instead of embedding Internet Explorer, they went with their own software which makes perfect sense since it means that they don't have to build two versions of the store for both Internet Explorer and WebKit.
So, yes, iTunes requires a specific browser component. At this point it appears that the two don't share any libraries, but it makes perfect sense for iTunes to embed Safari and not Internet Explorer or Mozilla. In the future, it's probably going to move to the point where there's no point in not including the Safari shell since most of the browser is there anyway as libraries for iTunes.
While I agree that it does seem kind of lame that a show titled "BattleBots" featured no actual robots, I highly doubt that a show featuring autonomous bots would actually be interesting to watch.
To borrow a quote from bash.org, all you'd end up watching are robots that "collect data about the surrounding environment, then discard it and drive into walls."
But even assuming that the AI could match the human-controlled bots, it wouldn't make it any more interesting. Instead of watching a bunch of human-controlled wedges attempt to flip each other over, you'd be watching a bunch of computer-controlled wedges attempting to flip each other over. Intellectually more interesting, I suppose, but really no more fun.
The real problem with BattleBots is that it's just boring. I don't want to watch a bunch of robots attempt to score points on each other and then watch the judges declare one the winner, I want to watch robots destroy each other. In BattleBots, the destruction was generally limited to "something's bent and it no longer moves."
I doubt BattleBots will ever really be all that interesting. Ultimately it's going to remain a bunch of bots hitting each other until one craps out or time runs out.
Hopefully I'm wrong and ESPN will surprise me, but BattleBots strikes me as one of those concepts that sounds like fun to watch but proves not to be, regardless of what actually controls the bots.
So the article is at ... uh, nowhere. The source reveals the link to be: <a>
Great.
Thankfully we have the Firehose submission, which contains the actual link.
So I guess the theory behind subscriptions is that subscribers are paying to catch mistakes like that? :P
You mean the part where they take existing maps and, here's the exciting part, display them in Google Earth?
The only really interesting part is updating the position of public service vehicles in real time. The other stuff is just presenting existing data via Google Earth. Things like being able to look up the trash collection schedule by Google Earth is "kinda neat" but really no more useful than a simple table. I can get that information for my town online - just not via Google Earth.
I haven't looked through the data to check to see if I can get all the same data online already but it looks like I can already get the majority of it. Just not through Google Earth.
Ambulance chasers rejoice!
Seriously, there's something about this idea that seems kind of silly. I don't know - tracking public services does make some sort of sense, I guess. I wouldn't want to pay for the cost, but if Google's willing to foot the bill, I guess I'd have no problem with it were it done locally. It's not something I'd like the local government to spend money on though - too little benefit for the cost.
I guarantee that this will never happen in the US, though, over concerns that knowing where fire trucks are could potentially allow terr'ists to strike areas where the firefighters are all busy elsewhere or something silly like that.