You can view the source to this (if you can stand reading past all of the slashcode)
If you're using a Mozilla that's anything close to recent, you can select the body of mhesseltine's post, right-click, and select "View Selection Source".
Why do you think this machine uses a Crusoe processor? IIRC, this sort of application was what the chip was designed for: low power, low heat, long battery life.
Does Alan Cox use BitKeeper, and if so, does he pay for his copy? I would imagine not, given his stances on free software and intellectual property.
I'd like to point out that Alan Cox works for RedHat, whose operating system includes CVS. I would venture to guess that RedHat hackers have contributed to CVS, at the very least with a 1-line diff here or there. This makes RedHat both a reseller and a developer of CVS, and even if he doesn't personally have anything to do with CVS (doubtful) he is forbidden from using the openlogging version.
I find it ironic that at a time when BitKeeper is trying to sway developers toward their product, they create onerous conditions which prevent a prominent developer and political spokesman from using said product on any sort of trial basis.
Technically, I suppose I'm not allowed to use BitKeeper either, since I've written (and released, I think; I'll have to double-check) an add-on to CVS which parses and cross-references checkin logs.
The really funny thing is that CVS is quite prevalent in the free software world, where it is extremely common to create patches and add-ons. The most effective referrals to BitKeeper would be from CVS hackers or those otherwise extremely experienced with it, but by preventing precisely these people from trying BitKeeper out, the one thing that could help BitKeeper the most -- a public defection from a "pet project" -- is verboten.
It's rare that we get to see such an obvious case of shooting oneself in the foot.
Re:my experience... good then (hopefully) bad
on
Careers After Tech?
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps, but I'm getting paid for posting this comment, and I don't even have to look busy.
my experience... good then (hopefully) bad
on
Careers After Tech?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
After being laid off from Wego Systems I hunted around in vain for another tech job, eventually landing in the pit of despair that is Office Depot. I just recently quit and hunted around for another 3 months, finally today (yay) getting a job at a hotel. I start out as the night desk clerk, then get promoted to night auditor. We'll see how it works out.
My advice: stay away from retail at all costs. Try something secretarial, in hospitality, or even manual labor. Anything is better than being told all day why your reservations about hard-selling extended warranties are invalid, and that if a product is carried by the company, there can't ever be anything wrong with it, etc. Keep your dignity at all costs.
Oh, and find a job with consistent shifts, if it's hourly. Nothing sucks more than noon one day, 8am the next, 3pm the next. Especially when instead of giving you the schedule the Wednesday before, like you were promised, they decide that Sunday morning is a better time.
I'm optimistic, personally... 23:00-07:00 5 nights a week, with a 2-day break, and no micromanaging bosses.
To scale an image in Photoshop, ALT-I, S. Quick. GIMP I had to use the mouse, or hit the arrow keys a crapload of times.. Thats the one major thing that GNOME is lacking (haven't tried KDE since 2.1 or something.. so I can't say if KDE has it) is nice keyboard shortcuts for the menues.
This is just inconsiderate interface-design. Nobody really wants to have to hover-and-peek before every click.
A few minor points:
The Web site isn't supposed to dictate interface. Interface is up to the browser. Web sites consist of text and links. It's up to the user agent to determine how to present the embedded metadata.
That's the point of the status bar. If you find it too difficult to glance at the bottom of the screen, use a browser that lets you reposition the status bar. Or you could hack an existing one.
Dude, for an Apple zealot you really don't know your Apple history. Apple had a little trademark trouble when first starting out, due to Apple Records's previously existing trademark. However, since Apple Records was in the music business and Apple Computer was in the computer business, it was decided that Apple Computer could keep their name as long as they didn't go into any sort of musical business.
When Apple added the sound you speak of, it was the first time that any of their products could produce reasonable music-like sounds, which could be construed as infringing on the trademark, so they called it "Sosumi", thereby snubbing the executives and lawyers of Apple Records.
Either that, or quit my job and move somewhere else, pretty risky in this market.
What I should have asked was, "Since when is preschool a government-mandated curriculum?" You said yourself there weren't any secular preschools in the area.
This was mostly because in the town I moved to, there are no secular preschools, so I was forced to send him to one of the brainwashing kinds, with the accompaning trashy Christian kids.
Forced to? Forced to?
They developed when he started going to one particular school, and interacted with peers that were very rough and physical on average.
If you're so sure of this that you can pinpoint the exact moment when his problems started, why didn't you pull him out of the school?
and given what i remember about fork, isn't it the case that you memcopy the entire address space of the forking process for each fork() (barring optimizations such as perhaps shared text segments) ?
Ever hear of copy-on-write? This kind of technique is why that's a big deal. The point of that, if I understand correctly, is that while the program thinks its memory space has been copied, it's still in the exact same place until it actually tries to write to that memory. At that point, I imagine the system would still only copy the page being written to.
This is where Linux memory allocation (used to; I'm pretty sure I saw an article about them fixing it recently) fall down under stress sometimes. Programs could allocate all sorts of memory, but until they tried to write to it, the memory wouldn't be taken out of free space. If software suddenly starts claiming nonexistant memory it was promised, the system runs out of memory and it has to kill things off.
Except that threads, as far as I am aware, share the same address space. Multiple processes need to arrange to share memory, and therefore are less likely to trample on one another or careen out of control.
What follows is an email I sent to friends and family based on a WSJ article I read.
:
My comments follow. Please note that the quotes included are only excerpts; I strongly advise reading the whole article.
Communications
Previously, the government had to show probable cause that a crime
had been or was about to be committed to obtain a warrant. Now, it
only needs to show that the surveillance is relevant to a current
investigation.
However, the 4th amendment to the US Constitution states quite explicitly that "...no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause".
"The existing law was written in the era of rotary telephones," said
President Bush when he signed the Patriot Act. Now, he said, "we'll
be able to better meet the technological challenges posed by this
proliferation of communications technology."
I'm rather curious what the "existing law" Bush refers to is, considering that the probable cause requirement was written in the days before the telegraph, let alone telephones, rotary or touch-tone.
It's also rather troubling that new technology is always assumed to create a situation where existing principles do not apply. While I am not one to rabidly and unthinkingly defend American superiority, it must be acknowledged that the founding fathers were not utter fools. The sheer volume of their writing evidences the fact that much thought was spent first determining the effects of their initial regulations, as well as laying out their reasoning for establishing them.
I find it difficult to imagine a situation where the existing rules are unworkable. The only reason not to show probable cause is to cast a dragnet, the catch of which can later be data-mined at leisure. Of course, it is well-known that one can find evidence of nearly any conspiracy if he is looking for it, and it's important that suspicion of a crime be established before investigation is begun.
It is not difficult to obtain a warrant; a judge's signature is all that is required. But the judge must first be satisfied that the constitutional requirements have been met, lest the evidence later be thrown out. This is a process which takes some time and consideration, and I am not overly concerned by this. Better that one piece of "crucial evidence" be occasionally lost than that the specter of random searches begins to frighten every citizen. If a deluge of warrants should be required, appoint more judges and set up more efficient pipelines for obtaining one. However, this situation should ideally act more as a warning flag than anything else.
I would also like to point out that, for better or for worse, the demand for probable cause is not absolute and inflexible. The doctrine of exigent circumstances has been established for some time now.
Libraries
The FBI can demand from bookstores and libraries the names of books
bought or borrowed by anyone suspected of terrorism. Librarians may
be prosecuted if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed
information related to a terror investigation. [...] Library and
book records were previously only available to prosecutors if a
judge issued a subpoena for the records.
Once again, this is a clear violation of the 4th amendment. In addition, courts have previously held that this sort of action creates a chilling effect on activities protected by the 1st amendment; see the Colorado Supreme Court's decision on the Tattered Cover issue:
Search warrants directed to bookstores, demanding information about
the reading history of customers, intrude upon the First Amendment
rights of customers and bookstores because compelled disclosure of
book-buying records threatens to destroy the anonymity upon which
many customers depend.
Detention
The Immigration and Naturalization Service can now detain aliens
suspected of terrorism for a week before bringing criminal
charges. The INS can hold terrorist suspects for up to six months
without bringing charges if their country of origin won't take them
back.
Writ of habeas corpus, anyone?
The accumulation of these civil rights violations, including others not discussed in the article, coupled with the secret police/informers John Ashcroft wishes to set up across the country (see http://news.com.com/2102-1023-944555.html, for example), creates an environment where not only terrorists need fear for their rights. It is reminiscent of Orwell's 1984, where the faade of the war with Eurasia/Eastasia is used to mask the totalitarian actions of the government. Reminiscent of the empires of Commodus, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and others, for that matter.
This needs to be fought.
---- Permission is given to redistribute this commentary verbatim, as long as credit is given to Tim Howe (vsync@quadium.net).
Quotations are from the "A Look at the Patriot Act, Nearly One Year Later", Stephanie Miles, The Wall Street Journal Online, 6 September 2002.
********************
If you are having trouble with any of the links in this message, or if the URL's are not appearing as links, please follow the instructions at the bottom of this email.
Title: WSJ.com - A Look at the Patriot Act, Nearly One Year Later
Copy and paste the following into your Web browser to access the sent link: http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/et/em ailThis ?clickMap=viewThis&etMailToID=2046431354&p t=Y
Price and time aren't the only consideration. When you build it yourself, you get the option of picking all the parts that go into the system -- and don't give me that Office-Depot-configure-to-order-custom-system crap; I used to be forced to sell those heaps -- from the brand of hard drive to the exact chipset on the motherboard. This does a lot in terms of optimizing for the performance you need and eliminating problems later.
And on the quote, AFAIK credit belongs to JWZ, for saying: "Linux is only free if your time has no value".
You need to put your full faith in the package management system and the vendor to release timely releases or you might as well build a Gentoo or OpenBSD system and just recompile EVERYTHING anyway.
Or you could just use FreeBSD. The ports collection will allow you to compile and install new software. The compilation process will use whatever libraries you have installed, whether from source or from binary packages. Everything ends up optimized for your system, and you still get the goodness of automatic updates and software availability.
"MSIE" in the User-agent (necessary to prevent some sites from claiming "We deny Mozilla users access to this page. Spoofing your user agent is a violation of the DMCA.")
However in the computer world, consumers expect an explaination of the risks when they press a button that can cost them $25 each time they press it.
Whenever I'm filling out something that asks for my routing and account numbers, computer or no, I triple-check the fields, because it's fairly obvious that an error will cause money to be debited either from someone else's account or a nonexistant account. I would expect problems to arise from this, ranging from delays in the transaction to fees for the inconvenience. If I wanted details ahead of time, I would *gasp* read the terms of service.
Plus, you would only write a cheque to bounce once, while you may double click a button without thinking twice.
No offense, but how long have you been using computers? Buttons are not meant to be double clicked. Web links are not meant to be double clicked. This behavior has been standard since, well, forever, as far as I know. (Now, that's not to say they couldn't set up something like Slashdot's FORMKEYS variable. I don't know if they do that or not; I'm not about to go double-clicking buttons to find out.)
PayPal doesn't even have bank branches, nor adaquate telephone support for instances like this.
Well, my policy in such cases is to just whois their domain, call the phone number, and ask for customer service.:-) It worked with Hotwire...
We are not talking math errors, I mean getting a bank routing number wrong. The transaction will fail, and the good forgiving folks at PayPal ding you $25US each time you hit the transfer button.
Do you complain when your bank charges you $20 for bouncing a check? It's the exact same thing.
However, in this day and age is there really a need for people to learn it?
If they want to be anything above mediocre, I believe so.
I mean it gives them a far better understanding of what their computer's actually doing, but people don't want to bother learning the low level stuff that they'll never directly work with. It's easier and cheaper to jump to learn to the high level languages like C, VB, Java, and whatnot.
Of course, but just because it's easier and cheaper doesn't obviate the need for a deep and fundamental understanding of the way computers actually work. Like it or not, every programming language is a fancy assembly language with some more abstraction layered on top, and regardless of how much "background information" is given in the class, it's going to make much more sense if the student actually works in some assembly language for a little while. It doesn't matter which, and the student doesn't have to become an expert, but how else to explain, for example, that certain operations will be more costly than others, without knowing what an opcode is?
I'd like to take issue with several of your comments, by the way. I don't think it's "easier" by any means to skip learning some assembly. My current programming experience is continually enriched by what I learned from my real-mode x86 days, and I'm sure if I took the time to learn modern protected-mode techniques I'd be able to understand some of the Linux error messages and such a little better. The more you know as background information, the less time it should take to figure out a particular solution, and if time is money, it's certainly not "cheaper" to skip it either.
C isn't "high level", either. It's a portable assembly language.
Wow, you mean like <meta name="description" value="...">?
The standard already exists; and I wish Google would support it, just not to the exclusion of their current results. Perhaps an option in the (cookie-based, oh no!) preferences to display the page's description below the keyword matches, or in lieu of it?
I believe I have read that any post office's largest cost is manpower to deliver the mail to individual addresses.
I'm currently staying with my girlfriend at her grandmother's house in Hayden, a piddledink little Colorado town. There is no USPS pickup or delivery.
I was under the impression that the USPS, while not obligated to pick up mail, is required by some sort of contract to deliver mail to every US address, but I was unable to find anything about this in their (badly organized) FAQs.
What gets me even more is that everyone in town pays for a PO Box. Is this necessary? I would think that at the very least, the post office would hold each address's mail until pickup, without requiring additional payment.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're using a Mozilla that's anything close to recent, you can select the body of mhesseltine's post, right-click, and select "View Selection Source".
Why do you think this machine uses a Crusoe processor? IIRC, this sort of application was what the chip was designed for: low power, low heat, long battery life.
At least I can be proud that I live in the land of the free (when it comes to getting the daily commercial brainwashing without hassle, that is).
Ignore him.
I'd like to point out that Alan Cox works for RedHat, whose operating system includes CVS. I would venture to guess that RedHat hackers have contributed to CVS, at the very least with a 1-line diff here or there. This makes RedHat both a reseller and a developer of CVS, and even if he doesn't personally have anything to do with CVS (doubtful) he is forbidden from using the openlogging version.
I find it ironic that at a time when BitKeeper is trying to sway developers toward their product, they create onerous conditions which prevent a prominent developer and political spokesman from using said product on any sort of trial basis.
Technically, I suppose I'm not allowed to use BitKeeper either, since I've written (and released, I think; I'll have to double-check) an add-on to CVS which parses and cross-references checkin logs.
The really funny thing is that CVS is quite prevalent in the free software world, where it is extremely common to create patches and add-ons. The most effective referrals to BitKeeper would be from CVS hackers or those otherwise extremely experienced with it, but by preventing precisely these people from trying BitKeeper out, the one thing that could help BitKeeper the most -- a public defection from a "pet project" -- is verboten.
It's rare that we get to see such an obvious case of shooting oneself in the foot.
Perhaps, but I'm getting paid for posting this comment, and I don't even have to look busy.
My advice: stay away from retail at all costs. Try something secretarial, in hospitality, or even manual labor. Anything is better than being told all day why your reservations about hard-selling extended warranties are invalid, and that if a product is carried by the company, there can't ever be anything wrong with it, etc. Keep your dignity at all costs.
Oh, and find a job with consistent shifts, if it's hourly. Nothing sucks more than noon one day, 8am the next, 3pm the next. Especially when instead of giving you the schedule the Wednesday before, like you were promised, they decide that Sunday morning is a better time.
I'm optimistic, personally... 23:00-07:00 5 nights a week, with a 2-day break, and no micromanaging bosses.
So remap them.
A few minor points:
When Apple added the sound you speak of, it was the first time that any of their products could produce reasonable music-like sounds, which could be construed as infringing on the trademark, so they called it "Sosumi", thereby snubbing the executives and lawyers of Apple Records.
See "Fuck Warner Bros. with a Pickaxe!" for only 1 of the results an extremely simple Google search turned up.
Pathetic.
What I should have asked was, "Since when is preschool a government-mandated curriculum?" You said yourself there weren't any secular preschools in the area.
Forced to? Forced to?
If you're so sure of this that you can pinpoint the exact moment when his problems started, why didn't you pull him out of the school?
Ever hear of copy-on-write? This kind of technique is why that's a big deal. The point of that, if I understand correctly, is that while the program thinks its memory space has been copied, it's still in the exact same place until it actually tries to write to that memory. At that point, I imagine the system would still only copy the page being written to.
This is where Linux memory allocation (used to; I'm pretty sure I saw an article about them fixing it recently) fall down under stress sometimes. Programs could allocate all sorts of memory, but until they tried to write to it, the memory wouldn't be taken out of free space. If software suddenly starts claiming nonexistant memory it was promised, the system runs out of memory and it has to kill things off.
Except that threads, as far as I am aware, share the same address space. Multiple processes need to arrange to share memory, and therefore are less likely to trample on one another or careen out of control.
What follows is an email I sent to friends and family based on a WSJ article I read.
m ailThis ?clickMap=viewThis&etMailToID=2046431354&p t=Y
:
My comments follow. Please note that the quotes included are only
excerpts; I strongly advise reading the whole article.
Communications
Previously, the government had to show probable cause that a crime
had been or was about to be committed to obtain a warrant. Now, it
only needs to show that the surveillance is relevant to a current
investigation.
However, the 4th amendment to the US Constitution states quite
explicitly that "...no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause".
"The existing law was written in the era of rotary telephones," said
President Bush when he signed the Patriot Act. Now, he said, "we'll
be able to better meet the technological challenges posed by this
proliferation of communications technology."
I'm rather curious what the "existing law" Bush refers to is,
considering that the probable cause requirement was written in the
days before the telegraph, let alone telephones, rotary or touch-tone.
It's also rather troubling that new technology is always assumed to
create a situation where existing principles do not apply. While I am
not one to rabidly and unthinkingly defend American superiority, it
must be acknowledged that the founding fathers were not utter fools.
The sheer volume of their writing evidences the fact that much thought
was spent first determining the effects of their initial regulations,
as well as laying out their reasoning for establishing them.
I find it difficult to imagine a situation where the existing rules
are unworkable. The only reason not to show probable cause is to cast
a dragnet, the catch of which can later be data-mined at leisure. Of
course, it is well-known that one can find evidence of nearly any
conspiracy if he is looking for it, and it's important that suspicion
of a crime be established before investigation is begun.
It is not difficult to obtain a warrant; a judge's signature is all
that is required. But the judge must first be satisfied that the
constitutional requirements have been met, lest the evidence later be
thrown out. This is a process which takes some time and
consideration, and I am not overly concerned by this. Better that one
piece of "crucial evidence" be occasionally lost than that the specter
of random searches begins to frighten every citizen. If a deluge of
warrants should be required, appoint more judges and set up more
efficient pipelines for obtaining one. However, this situation should
ideally act more as a warning flag than anything else.
I would also like to point out that, for better or for worse, the
demand for probable cause is not absolute and inflexible. The
doctrine of exigent circumstances has been established for some time
now.
Libraries
The FBI can demand from bookstores and libraries the names of books
bought or borrowed by anyone suspected of terrorism. Librarians may
be prosecuted if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed
information related to a terror investigation. [...] Library and
book records were previously only available to prosecutors if a
judge issued a subpoena for the records.
Once again, this is a clear violation of the 4th amendment. In
addition, courts have previously held that this sort of action creates
a chilling effect on activities protected by the 1st amendment; see
the Colorado Supreme Court's decision on the Tattered Cover issue:
Search warrants directed to bookstores, demanding information about
the reading history of customers, intrude upon the First Amendment
rights of customers and bookstores because compelled disclosure of
book-buying records threatens to destroy the anonymity upon which
many customers depend.
Detention
The Immigration and Naturalization Service can now detain aliens
suspected of terrorism for a week before bringing criminal
charges. The INS can hold terrorist suspects for up to six months
without bringing charges if their country of origin won't take them
back.
Writ of habeas corpus, anyone?
The accumulation of these civil rights violations, including others
not discussed in the article, coupled with the secret police/informers
John Ashcroft wishes to set up across the country (see
http://news.com.com/2102-1023-944555.html, for example), creates an
environment where not only terrorists need fear for their rights. It
is reminiscent of Orwell's 1984, where the faade of the
war with Eurasia/Eastasia is used to mask the totalitarian actions of
the government. Reminiscent of the empires of Commodus, Hitler,
Stalin, Mao, and others, for that matter.
This needs to be fought.
----
Permission is given to redistribute this commentary verbatim,
as long as credit is given to Tim Howe (vsync@quadium.net).
Quotations are from the "A Look at the Patriot Act, Nearly One Year
Later", Stephanie Miles, The Wall Street Journal Online, 6 September
2002.
********************
If you are having trouble with any of the links in this message, or if the URL's are not appearing as links, please follow the instructions at the bottom of this email.
Title: WSJ.com - A Look at the Patriot Act, Nearly One Year Later
Copy and paste the following into your Web browser to access the sent link:
http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/et/e
And on the quote, AFAIK credit belongs to JWZ, for saying: "Linux is only free if your time has no value".
Or you could just use FreeBSD. The ports collection will allow you to compile and install new software. The compilation process will use whatever libraries you have installed, whether from source or from binary packages. Everything ends up optimized for your system, and you still get the goodness of automatic updates and software availability.
Mmm, ports.
Uh-oh.
Whenever I'm filling out something that asks for my routing and account numbers, computer or no, I triple-check the fields, because it's fairly obvious that an error will cause money to be debited either from someone else's account or a nonexistant account. I would expect problems to arise from this, ranging from delays in the transaction to fees for the inconvenience. If I wanted details ahead of time, I would *gasp* read the terms of service.
No offense, but how long have you been using computers? Buttons are not meant to be double clicked. Web links are not meant to be double clicked. This behavior has been standard since, well, forever, as far as I know. (Now, that's not to say they couldn't set up something like Slashdot's FORMKEYS variable. I don't know if they do that or not; I'm not about to go double-clicking buttons to find out.)
Well, my policy in such cases is to just whois their domain, call the phone number, and ask for customer service. :-) It worked with Hotwire...
Do you complain when your bank charges you $20 for bouncing a check? It's the exact same thing.
Also he has to transfer $250 from his bank account to his PayPal account.
If they want to be anything above mediocre, I believe so.
Of course, but just because it's easier and cheaper doesn't obviate the need for a deep and fundamental understanding of the way computers actually work. Like it or not, every programming language is a fancy assembly language with some more abstraction layered on top, and regardless of how much "background information" is given in the class, it's going to make much more sense if the student actually works in some assembly language for a little while. It doesn't matter which, and the student doesn't have to become an expert, but how else to explain, for example, that certain operations will be more costly than others, without knowing what an opcode is?
I'd like to take issue with several of your comments, by the way. I don't think it's "easier" by any means to skip learning some assembly. My current programming experience is continually enriched by what I learned from my real-mode x86 days, and I'm sure if I took the time to learn modern protected-mode techniques I'd be able to understand some of the Linux error messages and such a little better. The more you know as background information, the less time it should take to figure out a particular solution, and if time is money, it's certainly not "cheaper" to skip it either.
C isn't "high level", either. It's a portable assembly language.
The standard already exists; and I wish Google would support it, just not to the exclusion of their current results. Perhaps an option in the (cookie-based, oh no!) preferences to display the page's description below the keyword matches, or in lieu of it?
DirecPC introduced 2-way satellite some time ago. Lag still sucks, but they did up the bandwidth from, I believe, 128kb/s to 400kb/s.
I'm currently staying with my girlfriend at her grandmother's house in Hayden, a piddledink little Colorado town. There is no USPS pickup or delivery.
I was under the impression that the USPS, while not obligated to pick up mail, is required by some sort of contract to deliver mail to every US address, but I was unable to find anything about this in their (badly organized) FAQs.
What gets me even more is that everyone in town pays for a PO Box. Is this necessary? I would think that at the very least, the post office would hold each address's mail until pickup, without requiring additional payment.