Maybe. Let's go check to see what people really voted for and compare that against what the machine reported.
Except we can't, and that's the whole point. It casts doubt on the entire election process. More doubt is cast based on the fact that a member of Party A produced the machines and then another member of Party A won the election even though it was expected that Party B would win.
That's the entire point - we don't know. It makes absolutely no difference what "Party A" and "Party B" are - which some other posters seem to have been attacking the above premise with. All we know is that a result has been produced that does not match the expected result. Further, we know that the makers of the measuring device favored the party that the measure device ultimately declared as the winner. This is suspicious.
So could the results be correct? Of course. Could the be wrong? Well, yes. And there's no way to tell. That is what the problem is. There needs to be a way to ensure that the machines did indeed produce the proper result, and right now, there isn't. Doubt has been cast, and there really is no way to resolve that without "maybes."
Maybe the vote was measured correctly. But maybe it instead skewed the vote - and until that possiblity can be reasonably discounted, a problem exists. (Regardless of which party is doing the cheating - it's still a problem, Party A or Party B.)
Re:What about those of us
on
CNet on WinFS
·
· Score: 2, Informative
As an AC above me said, you probably should check your facts.
In order to display the contents of C:\Foo\ the system has to search the entire File Allocation Table to look for files that reside in C:\Foo\.
This is wrong. To look up the files in C:\FOO is first looks up the FOO entry on C: off the root drive, and then it loads the FOO directory information directly. No searching the file allocation table, just searching the root directory entry and then the FOO directory entry. With 1000s of files under FAT, then some 1000s of FAT entries do need to be traversed, but definately not the entire table.
NTFS works far more similarly to the way traditional UNIX file systems look up files. It starts with a root node, looks for the directory list of that node, finds the entry it's looking for in that list, and heads off to that node to pick out the list of files in the given directory.
Granted, this is simplifying the matter a bit, but the fact remains that the entire FAT is not searched to look up a single file or even a directory.
The real reason that directories under Windows Explorer take a long time to display is that after Windows Explorer loads the directory it then loads the metadata about the file and in some cases scans the file to check which icon it should display. It's this action that causes the system to go slowly and causes network shares to slow down, not the file system. If you go to the CMD prompt and run a DIR on a given directory, you should notice that it goes by quite speedily with little disk action. Browse to it in Windows Explorer and it could take a while longer depending on the type of files stored in the directory.
Everything I've heard about XML and WinFS has been so vague that what I'm hoping they mean is the file system information is going to be exported as XML and the underlying system for storing it won't be XML.
This makes an amount of sense - if you want to send a file and maintain the metadata about it, you package it into something that contains the XML file to make it future proof (supposing the format changes, say, because another OS comes too close to being able to read/write WinFS) and the actual data stream. The system on the other end can then restore the XML metadata and then the file data.
Unfortunately, this is wild speculation. I have no idea what they really mean when the say stuff about it being based on a RDBS or XML. So I could be way off - they might be storing XML resource forks for each file or something like that. I have no idea of what they're really doing, but "XML support" could actually be a good idea if it's for data transport and not actually used to store the data on the system. XML was really intended to offer data transport between systems as a kind of Lingua Franca, and this would be a good use of that.
But, as before, this is wild speculation, and we're talking about Microsoft. Every WinFS thing I've heard so far makes it sound like someone's playing Buzzword Bingo. Longhorn is still three years away, so we'll just have to wait for more details as the system actually gets implemented to find out where XML fits into WinFS.
OK, so the analogy to shareware was a little off. But the entire point of the Personal Learning Edition is just that - an Edition of the software for Personal use to allow you to Learn how to use the software.
If you try and do anything "professional" with it you're missing the point. It's supposed to be a way to learn the software without requiring the paying of hefty license fees. Once you're proficient with the software, then maybe when you go to work in a professional field you'll advocate using Maya.
Yes, anything done with Personal Learning Edition is irrevocably stuck in it, and I didn't make that clear. But that's part of the point of the edition - it's there to learn on. If you want to do something "professional" you'll have to shell out money for the full version and create it with that. Using the Personal Learning Edition for commerical work is against the entire purpose of the Personal Learning Edition. It's for learning, not for doing anything important.
The two most important features you lose in the PLE is the ability to save "professional" Maya files and the ability to use plugins. (Mind you there was a deal with UT2003, so you did get the UT2003 plugin with the PLE included through that. That's where this information comes through, my playing with the PLE included with UT2003. You can't use "professional" plugins and I don't think it's possible to write any new ones without some deal with Alias, but I'm not 100% sure.)
I think some other features are missing too, but those are the two biggest that I can remember seeing. The other biggest "feature" you lose is the ability to render without a "watermark" or to model without a "watermark" on the screen at all times.
Basically, this edition is exactly what it says it is: a version for learning Maya on. It's "shareware" in the commercial world - try it before you decide to buy it. Learn on it and then convince your boss to buy it, I guess.
Wifi is great, but it has all of the baggage of TCP/IP...
By WiFi you mean 802.11b, right? Because 802.11b runs Ethernet natively, not TCP/IP. (Well, sort of. It's actually "wireless ethernet" and has distinct differences between "wired ethernet" which is IEEE 802.3.) Any protocol that can be run over Ethernet, like TCP/IP, can be run over 802.11b.
So it is conceivably possible to create a new protocol that isn't TCP/IP that would run over 802.11b links to offer something like bluetooth. However:
...quite a lot of power consumption, and is designed to connect complete devices. Wifi isn't meant to attach your keyboard to your desktop, for example.
Is still true. So while it might be possible to create a new protocol to connect devices using 802.11b, I really can't see it being really practical. But 802.11b does not demand TCP/IP.
Geez, I'm from Massachusetts and I think Pedro should have been charged with attacking a 70 year old guy. It sickens me to hear people defend these assholes who make up the Red Sox team this year. We've got Manny who tried to pretend that Clemmens was trying to hit him. We've got Pedro who viciously shoved an old man to the dirt for yelling at him. OK, so the 70 year old man was running at him yelling stuff. That's definately a reason to viciously shove him to the ground. If you've got the maturity of a two-year-old.
Then we have the Red Sox groundkeeper who was harrassing the Yankees players. Eventually he jumps on top of them and gets hurt in the process. He deserved what was coming.
Throughout this series the Yankees have been a real class act while the Red Sox have been bitching and whining the entire time. The Red Sox fans have to be the most unsportsmanlike fans I've ever heard, trying to psyche out the opponents team by chanting things like "Clemmens" or "Jailbird." I mean, come on. Really mature. I'll note that it also didn't work and that despite the fans being immature assholes, the Yankees still won those games.
So in game seven tonight, I can only hope that the Yankees win and that the Red Sox can think about their immaturity and hopefully mature a little for the next season. It's been what, 85 years without a World Series victory? Let's make it 86. The Red Sox shouldn't have any success until the fans and players mature.
Well, this is a pointless post, but I might as well make it anyway.
Originally, Slashcode (on Slashdot) would accept any international character. It would even accept HTML entities so you could easily enter these characters in a way that even if the database could only store 7-bit ASCII, they would still come out to the user. And I knowSlashcode is capable ofinternational characters.
Only recently has this ability been removed. It always used to be capable of international characters. I don't know why, but I would guess they decided to remove accents "due to trolls" or something. But there's no reason why Slashcode can't display or accept international characters, because it used to accept international characters.
So calling Slashdot arrogant for their removal of characters is completely warrented. They are aware of international issues, but they actually took action to remove accents and foreign characters.
(And may calling them "internation characters" is a real example of American arrogance:).)
It's probably going to be an IE-based browser. Take a peak at www.netscape.com. Imagine you've never heard of Netscape before and try and figure out what Netscape is. It appears to be some kind of crappy portal like MSN or even Yahoo, which is what this service would probably center around.
But based on "the Netscape service would be a smaller download" I have to assume that it would be a Netscape-branded Internet Explorer that users would use. Just imagine... "Internet Explorer powered by Netscape" as the IE window title...
This is going to cause so many support headaches, no matter what they do. I really hope they name it something distinct, but I bet you the real thought was to tie it into Netscape the portal and not Netscape the browser.
This is almost causing headaches without thinking about it... "What browser do you use?" "Netscape." "Is that the browser Netscape, the Netscape homepage, or the Netscape service?" I really hope they change the name... so confusing...
Does he think Linksys would get such leniency from the BSA, Microsoft's hitmen?
Yes, he does:
In some ways, these Free Software Foundation "enforcement actions" can be more dangerous than a typical copyright spat, because usually copyright holders seek money--say, royalties on the product that infringing companies are selling. But the Free Software Foundation doesn't want royalties--it wants you to burn down your house, or at the very least share it with cloners.
He thinks that releasing the code is a far worse penalty than having to pay money. And, here's the scary thing: he's right. Most companies would much rather spend a couple million to make the license problem go away then have to release any intellectual property.
Granted, they should have known what they were getting into before they used the license. Because they are using a product that has a license for use, and they implicitly demonstrate agreement with that license (by distributing the work), then they should follow the terms of that license. It just happens that in this case the terms of the license may require them to do more than they really want to do.
Actually, they aren't. They're 80mm DVDs, which is a standard size. While I couldn't find any at CompUSA, the media is a standard format. You can place a GameCube disc into your PS2, if you really want to. Pop open your CD-ROM drive. Look at the smaller circle groove. That's for 80mm discs. A GameCube disc will fit nicely in there. I haven't actually tried reading one through a DVD drive, but it will fit.
[C]onventional burning software wouldn't write [a GameCube game] properly if you did.
This is probably true. As far as I know, they do something screwy to the way tracks are written so that while conventional DVD pressing facilities can handle the GameCube games, a DVD-R/+R can't write them. But I could be wrong, I don't really know and don't have any urge to find out. But the size of the disc is a standard size, there's nothing "custom" about the small discs.
Actually, I've succeeded in crashing it in both Mozilla 1.4 and Mozilla 1.4.1. So it happens in the latest Mozilla build, with the latest bug fixes - just a single click away, and the browser dies. I haven't tried 1.5RC2, but right now I don't want to play around with beta software as my main browser.
This is both under Windows, but it shouldn't matter. The important part is new Packages.sun.plugin.javascript.navig5.JSObject(1,1 ) which, obviously, shouldn't crash the browser. I think this is really a problem with the Java plugin, but I can't guarentee that. (So this may really be a plugin problem, not a Mozilla problem. Or it may be a Mozilla problem with the Javascript/plugin interface. I don't really know.)
Well, that's good for you. You can throttle your own bandwidth, so you don't flood your own connection. When I'm at school, there are some 2000 or so student computers connected to the network at any given time. (I think.) The reason BitTorrent was blocked is that no one was throttling their connection, either due to ignorance or greed.
So, for a site that has a signfigant number of people using BitTorrent at once, something must be done to ensure every user gets Internet access: an increase in infrastructure to allow them to operate at full speed (not feasible in the least), some method of allowing the network infrastructure to enforce QoS so that BitTorrent connections have the lowest priority (my ultimate suggestion with a transparent proxy as the implementation), or to flat out block it (easiest).
If BitTorrent gets used by more and more users, guess what the solution will be. I'll give you a hint: it'll be the cheapest, easiest solution that satisfies the most customers. In other words, block it.
So while you can throttle your BitTorrent usage locally, something needs to be done to make sure that everybody throttles their connection so that every user gets network service.
BitTorrent is an exception, because it hasn't taken off yet (lil billy teh h4xxor isn't using it)
And if it ever does, it will be its death. It's already blocked where I go to school. BitTorrent has this nasty tendancy to completely and totally flood networks. And because of this, as it becomes more popular, more sites are going to block it to try and keep bandwidth available for other users.
Try it on your home broadband link. As you hit higher and higher upload/download links, try and do anything else and notice that it appears ungodly slow. This is because BitTorrent is already saturating your network, and everything else has to fight with it to get an openning. On larger networks, the solution becomes simple: outright block it.
Read my much longer rant about it in my journal. Basically, something needs to be done to prevent sites from just blocking it as a bandwidth hog. As it stands, using BitTorrent as the only distribution means will block a fair number of users.
Here's a fun thought: what if he was trying to mimic Illiads style of humor? That would explain why it was nearly undetectable! >:)
Seriously, though, I stopped reading UserFriendly ages ago. About the only reason I read this review was to see if other people agreed with me about how poor his work is. It stopped being funny when he kept on repeating the same tired old jokes like "Windows sucks" and "marketers are stupid" - it's like a lame, Linux-oriented Dilbert.
And, just like UserFriendly repeats the same lame old jokes, this review seemed to sport a similar lame humor that you can only see if you assume that it's supposed to be funny but never really becomes something more than slightly amusing. Ah well - I wouldn't have gotten the book anyway.
I'm really, really, really honestly hoping that this article was a parody of the "I tried Linux after being a Windows user for 23 years!" type of articles we see in the "mainstream press." (And, yes, the number of years is intentionally wrong.)
If taken in that light, it could be a kind of amusing parody showing someone coming from the Linux viewset getting annoyed at features that Linux applications have that Windows applications do not. Like authors who seem to go out of their way to not understand some Linux-ism, he's going out of his way to strictly apply the way Linux works to a Windows desktop, and showing where it fails.
Given articles decrying Linux basically for being Linux, a parody article decrying Windows for being Windows could be rather amusing. I'm hoping this article was a joke, but I can't find anything within it that would suggest that it was. If it's not a joke, then I agree with you 100% - this article was annoying drek and not worth the time I spent to read it.
At least you got the choice - I didn't know there was a CD until after visiting my Mom's house. They had decided we had canceled the order and it took them a week or so before they would accept that we really did want Internet service through them. So we were unable to use anything besides the web form due to their little database glitch. (Apparently it takes them 3-5 buisness days to reverse a cancellation. You'd think they'd be a little more eager to get customers than that.)
I'd really rather support another broadband provider, but, surprise!, there are no other broadband providers available in our area. So it's Comcast or dialup. *sigh*
Uh, you are aware that it was - hold on, let me look this up - a joke.
The entire article is a joke, and a very poorly written one to. At least, I hope it's a joke because if it isn't then it has to be one of the worst articles I've ever read, and I've read some Jon Katz articles before. (See, that's a joke.)
Basically, it's a "parody" on the "I switched from Windows to OS x" where x is one of Linux, yBSD, or MacOS X. (y can be Open or Free, and rarely Net.) So the "Most people know what GNU/Linux is..." line is a parody on the common starting line "Most people know what Windows is. Today we're going to try a competitor to the ubiquitous operating system..."
I know that was "guess it" - I can look through the "back" pages and see it. I've known that some packets have been getting just a little mangled through Comcast, and they managed to strike down one of the packets headed for that post. (Presumably the error correction for "Hs#" and "es " match? Just my luck.)
It's kinda amusing, though. "I guess it works" and Comcast zaps it for me. It's be even funnier if we weren't paying for this.
So, any typos in this post, blame it on wire noise.
The really annoying thing about the Comcast software is that it's completely unnecessary.
My Mom recently got a new computer (bought through a computer show) so I put it together for her and set it up. After installing Windows XP and activating the firewall (why isn't that thing on by default?), I plugged her into the Comcast cable modem, and set up networking to use DHCP.
That's it. That's all you have to do. If I had left it plugged in, Windows XP probably would have set up the network automatically on install.
Of course, I did this without the CD. My mom was kinda surprised - she thought she'd need to do something with it. Nope. Of course, we have Comcast at home (ah, monopoly...), and we're using a LinkSys "router" box that does NAT. It doesn't need any special software either - just DHCP.
The Comcast CD is totally and completely worthless. You can even sign up for the service without it - we had to reschedule the install, so Comcast decided we had "cancelled" our order and it took them about a week to agree to sell us service again, so no CD for us - just a web form. (We were plugged in, but no service was set up, so we could access a web form through the cable modem but nothing else.)
Since I'm current connected through Comcast, I guHs#it worked...
I can make a PNG with a color like #3366CC and IE will render it closer to #0066CC. Very subtle difference but noticeable.
First of all, I think the difference between #3366CC and #0066CC is quite noticible, but that's beside the point. The reality is that IE is actually operating the way it's supposed to - the PNG standard includes a feature called "gamma correction" where a gamma number is stored into the PNG image and the given viewer is supposed to correct for the gamma on their system.
Obviously, something's wrong with the gamma support in one of the applications - either Photoshop is saving an incorrect gamma value, or IE is using an incorrect gamma correction routine and is making the image darker than it really is.
For web use, you should disable gamma correction by not saving it to the PNG file - this will prevent gamma correction from taking place and make a #3366CC color come out as #3366CC in any viewer so that it matches an HTML #3366CC. It's a simple checkbox in the Gimp (where I do most of my simple PNG editing - I'm a programmer, not a graphic artist), but I don't know how to do it through Photoshop. I'd imagine it's possible, though.
They're right, sort of. It's an incompatible version of JavaScript between NS4 and Mozilla. Yes, Mozilla broke every single page written for Netscape 4 in existance. In this case, that page uses the ancient Netscape <LAYER> tag, which was removed for no really good reason with Mozilla (or Gecko, or whatever).
This has really pissed me off and forced me in "web designer" mode to choose between supporting IE and either Netscape 4 or Mozilla. (Well, not really - you can support all three, but it's much more work for the 5% of users that might care.)
Basically, that page was written to support Netscape 4.x and Internet Explorer. Mozilla is not backwards compatible with Netscape 4.x, and will actually break the page. Mozilla is designed around the W3C DOM, while Netscape 4.x used several "collections" to handle things. Detecting the difference between the two in script is non-trivial, although possible.
I got 500 bounced emails from a university in Canada once, should I sue them using this as a precedent?:)
I could *really* use $365,000. I'd even accept it in Canadian dollars (in fact, that would be easier, given that I am Canadian).
Uh, unless something happened recently that I'm not aware of, the United States has yet to annex our neighbors to the north. So I think you'd probably be out of luck on that one.
But if Bush gets reelected next year and can't get any other country to help support his War On Countries That Might Possibly Maybe Have Weapons of Mass Destruction Now Or In The Future, you might get a case after we take over Canada. You've got oil up there somewhere, right?
Slashdot Mirror
Except we can't, and that's the whole point. It casts doubt on the entire election process. More doubt is cast based on the fact that a member of Party A produced the machines and then another member of Party A won the election even though it was expected that Party B would win.
That's the entire point - we don't know. It makes absolutely no difference what "Party A" and "Party B" are - which some other posters seem to have been attacking the above premise with. All we know is that a result has been produced that does not match the expected result. Further, we know that the makers of the measuring device favored the party that the measure device ultimately declared as the winner. This is suspicious.
So could the results be correct? Of course. Could the be wrong? Well, yes. And there's no way to tell. That is what the problem is. There needs to be a way to ensure that the machines did indeed produce the proper result, and right now, there isn't. Doubt has been cast, and there really is no way to resolve that without "maybes."
Maybe the vote was measured correctly. But maybe it instead skewed the vote - and until that possiblity can be reasonably discounted, a problem exists. (Regardless of which party is doing the cheating - it's still a problem, Party A or Party B.)
In order to display the contents of C:\Foo\ the system has to search the entire File Allocation Table to look for files that reside in C:\Foo\.
This is wrong. To look up the files in C:\FOO is first looks up the FOO entry on C: off the root drive, and then it loads the FOO directory information directly. No searching the file allocation table, just searching the root directory entry and then the FOO directory entry. With 1000s of files under FAT, then some 1000s of FAT entries do need to be traversed, but definately not the entire table.
NTFS works far more similarly to the way traditional UNIX file systems look up files. It starts with a root node, looks for the directory list of that node, finds the entry it's looking for in that list, and heads off to that node to pick out the list of files in the given directory.
Granted, this is simplifying the matter a bit, but the fact remains that the entire FAT is not searched to look up a single file or even a directory.
The real reason that directories under Windows Explorer take a long time to display is that after Windows Explorer loads the directory it then loads the metadata about the file and in some cases scans the file to check which icon it should display. It's this action that causes the system to go slowly and causes network shares to slow down, not the file system. If you go to the CMD prompt and run a DIR on a given directory, you should notice that it goes by quite speedily with little disk action. Browse to it in Windows Explorer and it could take a while longer depending on the type of files stored in the directory.
This makes an amount of sense - if you want to send a file and maintain the metadata about it, you package it into something that contains the XML file to make it future proof (supposing the format changes, say, because another OS comes too close to being able to read/write WinFS) and the actual data stream. The system on the other end can then restore the XML metadata and then the file data.
Unfortunately, this is wild speculation. I have no idea what they really mean when the say stuff about it being based on a RDBS or XML. So I could be way off - they might be storing XML resource forks for each file or something like that. I have no idea of what they're really doing, but "XML support" could actually be a good idea if it's for data transport and not actually used to store the data on the system. XML was really intended to offer data transport between systems as a kind of Lingua Franca, and this would be a good use of that.
But, as before, this is wild speculation, and we're talking about Microsoft. Every WinFS thing I've heard so far makes it sound like someone's playing Buzzword Bingo. Longhorn is still three years away, so we'll just have to wait for more details as the system actually gets implemented to find out where XML fits into WinFS.
If you try and do anything "professional" with it you're missing the point. It's supposed to be a way to learn the software without requiring the paying of hefty license fees. Once you're proficient with the software, then maybe when you go to work in a professional field you'll advocate using Maya.
Yes, anything done with Personal Learning Edition is irrevocably stuck in it, and I didn't make that clear. But that's part of the point of the edition - it's there to learn on. If you want to do something "professional" you'll have to shell out money for the full version and create it with that. Using the Personal Learning Edition for commerical work is against the entire purpose of the Personal Learning Edition. It's for learning, not for doing anything important.
I think some other features are missing too, but those are the two biggest that I can remember seeing. The other biggest "feature" you lose is the ability to render without a "watermark" or to model without a "watermark" on the screen at all times.
Basically, this edition is exactly what it says it is: a version for learning Maya on. It's "shareware" in the commercial world - try it before you decide to buy it. Learn on it and then convince your boss to buy it, I guess.
Stupid Red Sox couldn't win a game if they were facing a pitching machine.
(Also, I haven't heard about Yankees fans flipping cars after winning an inconsequential game. Red Sox fans, on the other hand...)
By WiFi you mean 802.11b, right? Because 802.11b runs Ethernet natively, not TCP/IP. (Well, sort of. It's actually "wireless ethernet" and has distinct differences between "wired ethernet" which is IEEE 802.3.) Any protocol that can be run over Ethernet, like TCP/IP, can be run over 802.11b.
So it is conceivably possible to create a new protocol that isn't TCP/IP that would run over 802.11b links to offer something like bluetooth. However:
Is still true. So while it might be possible to create a new protocol to connect devices using 802.11b, I really can't see it being really practical. But 802.11b does not demand TCP/IP.
Then we have the Red Sox groundkeeper who was harrassing the Yankees players. Eventually he jumps on top of them and gets hurt in the process. He deserved what was coming.
Throughout this series the Yankees have been a real class act while the Red Sox have been bitching and whining the entire time. The Red Sox fans have to be the most unsportsmanlike fans I've ever heard, trying to psyche out the opponents team by chanting things like "Clemmens" or "Jailbird." I mean, come on. Really mature. I'll note that it also didn't work and that despite the fans being immature assholes, the Yankees still won those games.
So in game seven tonight, I can only hope that the Yankees win and that the Red Sox can think about their immaturity and hopefully mature a little for the next season. It's been what, 85 years without a World Series victory? Let's make it 86. The Red Sox shouldn't have any success until the fans and players mature.
Originally, Slashcode (on Slashdot) would accept any international character. It would even accept HTML entities so you could easily enter these characters in a way that even if the database could only store 7-bit ASCII, they would still come out to the user. And I know Slashcode is capable of international characters.
Only recently has this ability been removed. It always used to be capable of international characters. I don't know why, but I would guess they decided to remove accents "due to trolls" or something. But there's no reason why Slashcode can't display or accept international characters, because it used to accept international characters.
So calling Slashdot arrogant for their removal of characters is completely warrented. They are aware of international issues, but they actually took action to remove accents and foreign characters.
(And may calling them "internation characters" is a real example of American arrogance :).)
But based on "the Netscape service would be a smaller download" I have to assume that it would be a Netscape-branded Internet Explorer that users would use. Just imagine... "Internet Explorer powered by Netscape" as the IE window title...
This is going to cause so many support headaches, no matter what they do. I really hope they name it something distinct, but I bet you the real thought was to tie it into Netscape the portal and not Netscape the browser.
This is almost causing headaches without thinking about it... "What browser do you use?" "Netscape." "Is that the browser Netscape, the Netscape homepage, or the Netscape service?" I really hope they change the name... so confusing...
Yes, he does:
He thinks that releasing the code is a far worse penalty than having to pay money. And, here's the scary thing: he's right. Most companies would much rather spend a couple million to make the license problem go away then have to release any intellectual property.Granted, they should have known what they were getting into before they used the license. Because they are using a product that has a license for use, and they implicitly demonstrate agreement with that license (by distributing the work), then they should follow the terms of that license. It just happens that in this case the terms of the license may require them to do more than they really want to do.
Actually, they aren't. They're 80mm DVDs, which is a standard size. While I couldn't find any at CompUSA, the media is a standard format. You can place a GameCube disc into your PS2, if you really want to. Pop open your CD-ROM drive. Look at the smaller circle groove. That's for 80mm discs. A GameCube disc will fit nicely in there. I haven't actually tried reading one through a DVD drive, but it will fit.
[C]onventional burning software wouldn't write [a GameCube game] properly if you did.
This is probably true. As far as I know, they do something screwy to the way tracks are written so that while conventional DVD pressing facilities can handle the GameCube games, a DVD-R/+R can't write them. But I could be wrong, I don't really know and don't have any urge to find out. But the size of the disc is a standard size, there's nothing "custom" about the small discs.
"It still can't manipulate a doorknob, but we've solved that problem. Watch."
*SMACK* *BANG* *clatter-clatter*
This is both under Windows, but it shouldn't matter. The important part is new Packages.sun.plugin.javascript.navig5.JSObject(1,1 ) which, obviously, shouldn't crash the browser. I think this is really a problem with the Java plugin, but I can't guarentee that. (So this may really be a plugin problem, not a Mozilla problem. Or it may be a Mozilla problem with the Javascript/plugin interface. I don't really know.)
So, for a site that has a signfigant number of people using BitTorrent at once, something must be done to ensure every user gets Internet access: an increase in infrastructure to allow them to operate at full speed (not feasible in the least), some method of allowing the network infrastructure to enforce QoS so that BitTorrent connections have the lowest priority (my ultimate suggestion with a transparent proxy as the implementation), or to flat out block it (easiest).
If BitTorrent gets used by more and more users, guess what the solution will be. I'll give you a hint: it'll be the cheapest, easiest solution that satisfies the most customers. In other words, block it.
So while you can throttle your BitTorrent usage locally, something needs to be done to make sure that everybody throttles their connection so that every user gets network service.
And if it ever does, it will be its death. It's already blocked where I go to school. BitTorrent has this nasty tendancy to completely and totally flood networks. And because of this, as it becomes more popular, more sites are going to block it to try and keep bandwidth available for other users.
Try it on your home broadband link. As you hit higher and higher upload/download links, try and do anything else and notice that it appears ungodly slow. This is because BitTorrent is already saturating your network, and everything else has to fight with it to get an openning. On larger networks, the solution becomes simple: outright block it.
Read my much longer rant about it in my journal. Basically, something needs to be done to prevent sites from just blocking it as a bandwidth hog. As it stands, using BitTorrent as the only distribution means will block a fair number of users.
Seriously, though, I stopped reading UserFriendly ages ago. About the only reason I read this review was to see if other people agreed with me about how poor his work is. It stopped being funny when he kept on repeating the same tired old jokes like "Windows sucks" and "marketers are stupid" - it's like a lame, Linux-oriented Dilbert.
And, just like UserFriendly repeats the same lame old jokes, this review seemed to sport a similar lame humor that you can only see if you assume that it's supposed to be funny but never really becomes something more than slightly amusing. Ah well - I wouldn't have gotten the book anyway.
If taken in that light, it could be a kind of amusing parody showing someone coming from the Linux viewset getting annoyed at features that Linux applications have that Windows applications do not. Like authors who seem to go out of their way to not understand some Linux-ism, he's going out of his way to strictly apply the way Linux works to a Windows desktop, and showing where it fails.
Given articles decrying Linux basically for being Linux, a parody article decrying Windows for being Windows could be rather amusing. I'm hoping this article was a joke, but I can't find anything within it that would suggest that it was. If it's not a joke, then I agree with you 100% - this article was annoying drek and not worth the time I spent to read it.
I'd really rather support another broadband provider, but, surprise!, there are no other broadband providers available in our area. So it's Comcast or dialup. *sigh*
The entire article is a joke, and a very poorly written one to. At least, I hope it's a joke because if it isn't then it has to be one of the worst articles I've ever read, and I've read some Jon Katz articles before. (See, that's a joke.)
Basically, it's a "parody" on the "I switched from Windows to OS x" where x is one of Linux, yBSD, or MacOS X. (y can be Open or Free, and rarely Net.) So the "Most people know what GNU/Linux is..." line is a parody on the common starting line "Most people know what Windows is. Today we're going to try a competitor to the ubiquitous operating system..."
Nice.
I know that was "guess it" - I can look through the "back" pages and see it. I've known that some packets have been getting just a little mangled through Comcast, and they managed to strike down one of the packets headed for that post. (Presumably the error correction for "Hs#" and "es " match? Just my luck.)
It's kinda amusing, though. "I guess it works" and Comcast zaps it for me. It's be even funnier if we weren't paying for this.
So, any typos in this post, blame it on wire noise.
My Mom recently got a new computer (bought through a computer show) so I put it together for her and set it up. After installing Windows XP and activating the firewall (why isn't that thing on by default?), I plugged her into the Comcast cable modem, and set up networking to use DHCP.
That's it. That's all you have to do. If I had left it plugged in, Windows XP probably would have set up the network automatically on install.
Of course, I did this without the CD. My mom was kinda surprised - she thought she'd need to do something with it. Nope. Of course, we have Comcast at home (ah, monopoly...), and we're using a LinkSys "router" box that does NAT. It doesn't need any special software either - just DHCP.
The Comcast CD is totally and completely worthless. You can even sign up for the service without it - we had to reschedule the install, so Comcast decided we had "cancelled" our order and it took them about a week to agree to sell us service again, so no CD for us - just a web form. (We were plugged in, but no service was set up, so we could access a web form through the cable modem but nothing else.)
Since I'm current connected through Comcast, I guHs#it worked...
First of all, I think the difference between #3366CC and #0066CC is quite noticible, but that's beside the point. The reality is that IE is actually operating the way it's supposed to - the PNG standard includes a feature called "gamma correction" where a gamma number is stored into the PNG image and the given viewer is supposed to correct for the gamma on their system.
Obviously, something's wrong with the gamma support in one of the applications - either Photoshop is saving an incorrect gamma value, or IE is using an incorrect gamma correction routine and is making the image darker than it really is.
For web use, you should disable gamma correction by not saving it to the PNG file - this will prevent gamma correction from taking place and make a #3366CC color come out as #3366CC in any viewer so that it matches an HTML #3366CC. It's a simple checkbox in the Gimp (where I do most of my simple PNG editing - I'm a programmer, not a graphic artist), but I don't know how to do it through Photoshop. I'd imagine it's possible, though.
This has really pissed me off and forced me in "web designer" mode to choose between supporting IE and either Netscape 4 or Mozilla. (Well, not really - you can support all three, but it's much more work for the 5% of users that might care.)
Basically, that page was written to support Netscape 4.x and Internet Explorer. Mozilla is not backwards compatible with Netscape 4.x, and will actually break the page. Mozilla is designed around the W3C DOM, while Netscape 4.x used several "collections" to handle things. Detecting the difference between the two in script is non-trivial, although possible.
I could *really* use $365,000. I'd even accept it in Canadian dollars (in fact, that would be easier, given that I am Canadian).
Uh, unless something happened recently that I'm not aware of, the United States has yet to annex our neighbors to the north. So I think you'd probably be out of luck on that one.
But if Bush gets reelected next year and can't get any other country to help support his War On Countries That Might Possibly Maybe Have Weapons of Mass Destruction Now Or In The Future, you might get a case after we take over Canada. You've got oil up there somewhere, right?