What do you mean? Did you miss the awesome part where when you mouse over the links* in the top row they go from being nice white-on-black text to light-blue-on-white with a drop shadow in a box with no padding? *gag*
Proving once again that it's better to have talent and bad tools than good tools but no talent.
* note: the first bit of text, which looks EXACTLY like the other bits of text in that row, is not a link, just like the e*trade example here. Actually, whichever page you're on gets the this-isn't-a-link treatment, but nothing else about the text indicates that it's the page you're on. So I guess to figure out which page you're on, just mouse over all the links and see which one doesn't change. Oh, wait, I see--there's also the little pixel-y graphic that moves. I see. But the little graphic just looks like a fancy bullet on the first page since it's all the way on the left. Wait, let me check Firefox (I'm using Safari) to make sure I'm not missing anything. [checks] Nope, the only difference is Firefox doesn't show the drop shadow. Nice.
Which is better design: - having distinct things which look distinct when you first see them--tabs, for example** - having distinct things with small visual distinctions which only become apparent when you do a few different things and look closely for differences, like those spot-the-six-differences-in-these-two-pictures things in the Sunday comics.
** note: for as good as Apple is, I'm super-pissed that they ditched tabs in favor of blue buttons starting in OS X 10.3. Tabs are WAY easier to differentiate, especially when there's only 2 choices. And they don't almost disappear when the tabbed-item-in-question isn't the foreground app.
Being the owner of a 640x480 Dell Axim PDA I can tell you that 200 DPI LCD screens kick ass. Text on this thing is GORGEOUS. (Too bad the web browsers I've tried on it mostly suck.) There's a company that makes a ~20" 200 DPI LCD monitor but it costs six or ten grand and I haven't been able to convince my company (I work for a book publisher) that I need one to test.:-\
I wrote to google and yahoo a year or two ago suggesting they implement this but never heard back from either and have not seen it implemented. (Please, everyone WRITE!*) It would be the COOLEST THING EVER for a number of reasons. Say you downloaded a picture off the web. A year later, you stumble across it and decide you want to see if the site has any more similar pics. You could just md5 the image and search for that. (Of course this could be made very easy for non-technical users: Google could have a little 'search for this file' page, with an upload button just like you use for webmail attachments.)
Of course it would also be easy to see if anyone else is offering a file you created, and there are bunches and bunches of other uses, too. If you're downloading a file and the hosting server is slow, you could learn it's md5sum (from google, the same way you can see cached pages) and then search for that md5sum and see if anyone else is hosting it and know that you're getting exactly the file you want. (Very useful when you know that version x.y.n of a program works for you and x.y.(n+/-1) doesn't.) Plus, with a huge catalog of checksums, Google could also do some interesting research on real-world hash collisions as well.
Yes, any time someone changes the image, the md5sum would be different, so it wouldn't be the be-all, end-all of course, but it would still be very useful in a lot of ways. Just because it isn't perfect is no reason not to do it.
They're still common enough to make md5-based searching a very useful tool. And, in fact, a lot of stuff does just get downloaded form here and posted there with no change.
Wouldn't it be pretty trivial to cp/mnt/cdrom/md5/sbin/ each night before running the tool? Or, as someone else suggested, leave md5 on with another name? I'm sure most rootkits wouldn't notice if 'zsh' was actually a copy of 'md5.'
I'm not talking about a bulletproof tool for the NSA. I'm just interested in something basic that would do the trick for most people.
Spotlight-style fast searching was one of the benefits of WinFS. (BeOS, with a database-like filesystem, also produced very fast search results--on 150 MHz Pentiums in 1998.) But they were able to get fast searching without it, so it was dropped. Well, not for that reason alone, but I'm sure that the fact that they were able to get one of the key WinFS benefits of without actually having it is one of the big reasons they chose to drop it when they were looking for features to cut so they could release sooner.
Windows and Macs have both had varying amounts of full-content searching for ages--Windows since '95 (there was a 'search content' option in one of the tabs) and Mac since '98 maybe (OS 8.5, I think.) Windows' was slow (like doing `find *txt | grep whatever...`) and Mac's required an index to be built, which took AGES, and tons of CPU time. (Which SUCKED in the cooperative-multitasking world of pre-X Mac OS.) The point is, Spotlight was pretty much the first to market to do it all FAST.
Tiger, with Spotlight: April 29, 2005. (According to Wikipedia. I was at the 2004 WWDC and the Developer Preview handed out that day had working Spotlight.) Google Desktop Search Beta 2: August 22, 2005 (also from Wikipedia)
MS demoed their search in 2003 (according to Wikipedia) but iTunes had Spotlight-like searching from version 1 in 2001* and Steve Jobs said in 2004 that the idea came from iTunes' search ability. BeOS also had fast searching in 1998 (due to its database-like filesystem) though I think its content-searching was limited to user-added metadata. Basically, the concept of 'good search with fast results' is not new. Most wouldn't argue that Mac OS X with Spotlight was the first to deliver an integrated, OEM-provided fast search solution.
That said, I hate Spotlight. I never use it. I keep 10.3 on any machine that will run it.** For example, if I'm looking for a php file that I know I named table-something, I just want Find to return a list of all files NAMED *table*, not every single freaking document with the word 'table' in it. Yes, I know things can be tweaked here and there, but I like the DEFAULT behaviors of 'Find' in 10.3 (and Windows, for that matter) MUCH better for what I use Search for--and I use search several times a day. (And there are other things--like the path display--that I also don't like about 10.4's searching.)
* I think. I'm pretty sure. Too lazy to dig up an iTunes 1.0 review, but AFAIK it was always there. Wiki notes that 4.0 had improved' search in April 2003. ** anything with 10.4 will go to 10.5 ASAP because Time Machine kicks freaking ass.
> You say there were five rounds -- were the results announced at the end of each round?
Yes. With a big scoreboard on a blackboard or whiteboard, with a column for each group and a row for each round, and another table to keep score.
> Did this affect the way people voted next time?
I'm sure it did.:-)
> Was it anonymous -- so if you voted red, no-one knew/ no-one would "punish" you? (However lightheartedly).
Stupid language--I'm not sure which 'you' you mean.:-) I hope a bit more detail will help: - the groups are separated enough so they can't really hear each other's internal discussions - within the group, I forget if voting is anonymous or not. I think not. I don't remember any pencil-and-paper voting. In fact, now that I think about it, I think they point was actually to reach consensus. (Another 'learning point' of the game. Though if a group decided to just do a quick show-of-hands vote, they could. But still, they all have to agree that that's how it will be decided.) - each group has a 'spokesperson' (not a leader, just the one who submits the group's vote.) - there is a time limit on each round--short, like 2-3 minutes. (Adjust the limits for more fun!;-) ) - Devise a way for each group to be able to vote, and not be able to change their vote at the last second. One way is to have two envelopes, one with a green piece of paper inside and one with a red piece. When the round is up, each spokesperson walks to the front of the room with their envelope. The envelopes are then opened and their decision is written on the board for that round. - Usually between each round, the game's leaders would try to emphasis how great it would be if everyone voted green. Sometimes they'd take one person from each group and give them a little side session and say "really, try to get your group to vote green his time."
I don't remember any type of 'punishment' ever being a problem, other than the general theme of "I'm voting red, so the worst that happens is if I go down, you all come with me."
Basically, what happens, is the discussion eternally goes in circles: If we vote green, and everyone else does, then we gain. If someone else votes red, we lose. If someone else votes red and we do, we gain, unless everyone votes red, then we lose--but at least we tie with everyone else.
Unfortunately, all the words associated with this game--red, green, vote, consensus--are too common for any worthwhile Google searches. But if you're in a school, church, etc. and have access to materials about activities for retreats, you can probably find more information. It's not quite a 'party' game since no one at a party wants to learn.:-) But for retreats, schools, classes, etc., it's great.
How hard is it to build a basic but worthwhile rootkit detection tool with common tools? Like run `md5/bin/*` and then ship the output of that to another machine every day for comparison to yesterday's output of that command? (Looking at other directories as well, of course.) My understanding is that many rootkits come with hacked versions of tools like 'ps' to hide themselves.
On the one hand, yeah, let's not reinvent the wheel, but on the other hand, there are advantages to building your own tools: - you know exactly what they're doing--more complicated pre-existing tools might do more, but if you don't understand their output, they're no good. - you don't have to trust*/audit someone else's code - they don't do more than you need - they don't have features that you don't know about or might misuse - at the very least, it's a great way to learn
* yes, I know about this. but there are reasonable limits--I do trust that my distro came with a clean copy of gcc. OTOH, I'd rather write my own 20-line script that download someone else's that says it does the same thing as what I would write myself but that I'd have to audit for even the smallest things, like sneaking in an if ($rooted="no") instead of if ($rooted=="no")
> So, you can do something with a computer with NO OS on it?
Yes. I can bring it home, pop in my Ubuntu CD, and it'll do exactly what I want. Who says a computer has to do what someone else wants to be considered functional?
> Interesting. I had no idea that staring at "O/S Not Found" was that interesting. Do tell me more.
How do you stare at it--does HP include a monitor with every single computer they sell? No? OH NOES! They're selling non-working computers!
This is starting to sound too much like a game we used to play at retreats. The leader breaks the group into smaller groups--say, 6 groups of 5. He then writes on a blackboard "The object of the game is for you to get as many points as possible" and explains the rules:
- There will be five rounds. - Each group has to choose a color (red or green) - If every group votes green, everyone gets 100 points. - If some groups vote green and some vote red, the green groups lose 100 points and the red groups gain 100 points. - If every group votes red, everyone loses 100 points. - (Scores can be varied, Interesting, on a split vote, if the scores are -50/+100, or -100/+50, instead of +100/-100.)
Everyone quickly realizes that if they vote red, they'll either a) gain points or b) lose points but be just as bad off as everyone else. Of course, if everyone would just vote green, everyone would always win, but of course that never ever happens--each group thinks "well, someone might vote red, so we better vote red too, because if someone else votes green, we win; whereas if we vote green and someone else votes red they win and we lose."
The leader then adds up the scores--some high, some low, some negative, some positive--and the total itself isn't even always positive. (There's always at least one group that goes out in a blaze of glory--it's all in fun, just points, not like it's actual money--voting green every time and losing 500 points.) Then they show that if everyone would have voted green, everyone would have had 500 points, and the room would have 3000 points (using my example of six groups). They then point out that the object of the game was for YOU to get as many points as possible, where 'you' = the whole room. (Not sure how that works in languages with different words for 2nd person plural.) Everyone learns a little something about cooperation--or human behavior and self-interest, at least.
In any case, this whole lunch-deciding system sounds interesting as an academic exercise but I can't imagine anyone doing this crazy money/voting thing. Any group that organized (or anal) would probably make a rotating schedule of local places, or let one person choose each time, or some up with some other scheme. I just take a book to lunch and eat alone.:-)
I love harping on clueless Lusers as much as anyone, but I don't think there's anyone who thinks buying music from the iTMS is the only way to fill an iPod. In fact, I'd wager it goes quite the other way--tons of people probably buy iPods not even knowing that the iTMS exists, unless they happen to leave the default 'take me to the iTMS' button set and go there instead of their library. Even so, they probably just think it's an ad for something and pop in a CD and start ripping, or they call their friends with iPods and ask them how to get all their downloaded music onto it.
But I've got a family, and we can't all play a DS at once. I'd buy a Wii in a second if there were any around--$250 isn't bad at all. I will get one eventually but I'd love to get one for the family for XMas--too bad there aren't enough. With the great reviews and the great price I think it'd be the winner if there were more.
In general, if you're going to question any of the documents our founding fathers put together, get constitutional scholars and historians, not people who don't realize that words change their meanings over the centuries. ("Militia" == "The National Guard" now, so therefore the constitution was talking about the national guard! Er...) And remember: the founders weren't idiots. They had debates over these things for years. They didn't just whip them up in an afternoon.
A couple things to note: 1) Washington has some of the strongest gun laws in the country, along with some of the highest rates of violent crime. Hmm, is it possible that strict(er) gun laws aren't the answer? Anytime someone in DC talks says "X" about gun violence, I instantly see merit in "not X." Physician, heal thyself before you throw stones in your glass house, or something. 2) Criminals are called criminals because they don't follow the law. Let that roll around in your head a little. Will making guns illegal(er) mean that criminals won't get them? People always say "If guns are outlawed, then you can arrest anyone with a gun! w00t!" Yeah... 'cause criminals are too dumb to ever think of HIDING them. Make guns illegal and you'll never see one--until you're woken up one night with one in your face.
You can put 22" rims onto a Pinto or Corvair but that won't make anybody want one. Similarly, you can hire all the PhDs you want, but if you can't produce products that are secure, stable, or even responsive, then it just doesn't matter. I came into work today to see signs posted saying "MS patches are being deployed. Your PC may ask to reboot itself."
Additionally, you need smart people throughout the company. Xerox PARC had a lot of brains and made world-changing products decades ago but it didn't do them much good since no one knew what to do with them.
R and D are good, of course, but anyone interested in these types of things should read this about Apple in the 1990s.
"These projects snowballed into horrific disasters that were so complex they could never be completed, but which also contributed highly touted features that were tightly woven into Apple's increasingly widening strategies. That made them impossible to deliver but difficult to kill."
Erm, what about MOST OF THE FUCKING UNIVERSE, who just wants to play Flash games online, and for whom integrated graphics are JUST FUCKING FINE? Why do we NEED to have more expensive, hotter-running, battery-draining dedicated graphics? Oh, right, because some snobby geek on Slashdot things integrated graphics are the spawn of the Devil himself.
You realize that integrated graphics today are better than the best standalone cards of just a few years ago, right? So, what, NOBODY should have been using computers a few years ago? It is NOT the job of the OS to needlessly soak up hardware for no good reason. Win95/Office97 run about as well on a P233 than WinXP/OfficeXP do on a PC with 10x the CPU.* Sure, there are some nice new features in the newer versions, but enough to negate a 10x speed increase and a decade's worth of advancement? Not in my opinion.
* not just pulling numbers out of my ass--I recently built a machine like that and was amazed at how it compares to the 2.4 GHz Dell on my desk at work.
A typical MP3 is better than the next most common format--FM radio--but I don't remember hearing people bitching about FM radio for the last few decades.
A better question: are audiophiles *ever* happy? I think the answer is "no." Gamers are never happy with how fast their rigs are, hot rodders want better cars, horny teens want more sex, hippies want more wood chips in their granola, etc etc etc. Basically, most people are never happy with what's most important to them.
And this particular question is as dumb as they come. A 6-GB MP3 player held a certain number of 128k MP3s. A 60 GB player today holds the same number of WAVs or AIFFs. So the answer, OBVIOUSLY, is "Yes, you can carry around perfect CD-quality songs." The only question is how many. Not enough? Wait a couple years.
Sounds like a very artificial limitation. (If you say it's for security, I'll die laughing. Same response if your answer is "share components, save disk space.") And it can't be just dragged around? Hmm...
OK, I fired up Parallels and launched my dual-boot 98/2k image. C:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe (win98) shows a 64k file, version 4.72.3110.0; e:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe is about 60k and shows version 5.0.2920.0. Clicking on either launches IE 5. My understanding is (long story short) that iexplore.exe just grabs a bunch of stuff from around the system and turns it into a browser. The entire 'Internet Explorer' folder on my XP box (version 6) is only about 2 MB, over half of which is plugins and the internet connection wizard.
By the way, I've also got MSIE2 on that box. (Dragged the folder over from an old NT4 machine.) Runs at the same time as MSIE6 just fine, and the executable is 725k. Man, the IE team sure did some amazing work, packing 4 versions worth of new features into an executable 1/10 the size!:-p
No matter how you slice it, something odd is going on. What's so special about MSIE that it doesn't look or behave like nearly every other application released for Windows in the last 10 years, including previous versions of the same app???
... who keep saying IE doesn't have its hooks buried deep in Windows: this is pretty much proof, is it not? I've got several versions of Photoshop, from 3 to CS, on my W2K box at home. I've also got several versions of Firefox (and Firebird, and Phoenix) as well. Plus Netscape 3.* And a few Acrobat Readers. I've even got MSIE2--back when it was a *gasp* standalone app. And a bunch more apps I could list if I cared to. My XP box at work has Office 2003 and the beta of 2007.
So: MS has to go out of their way to "let" people run more than one instance of Internet Explorer?** Two conclusions: a) why would this be so hard, if IE weren't so ingrained in the OS? b) And is this the "innovation" Scoble was talking about? "Letting" me run programs?
* I remember an old trick from back when NS3 was new: I knew it would crash sometimes, so if I had a lot of windows open, instead of opening another, I'd launch another instance of the app. One instance could crash, taking its windows with it, but the other would be fine, as if nothing ever happened. Now *that's* programming!
** Besides all the technical issues--they don't even charge for the fscking thing! It's not like you bought the "upgrade" version at a discount, compared to buying a full copy of the new version at full retail price. I understand if they don't want me running Win95 anymore if I bought the upgrade version of Win98. But if I buy the full versions of both, shouldn't I be able to run them both? This is like saying if I get the CD, I can't listen to the tape any more. And the tape and CD were both free to begin with.
Oh, wait, let me guess--since I didn't pay for them, I have no right to decide how I want to use them?
Hate to reply to my own post but I just can't let this pass.
Scoble: Ahh, have you ever played Halo? That's from Microsoft too.
YOU FUCKING DIPSHIT! Microsoft BOUGHT Bungie!!!!! Innovation == writing a check? Aaaagh! *head asplodes*
Winer actually responded in a manner similar to mine, and Scoble said "Yes, and there's always room for a company that innovates through acquisitions."
I hearby define breathing as innovating. Therefore, I innovate ALL THE FUCKING TIME. This guy is officially from another planet. I mean, it's not like they were out scouring dark alleys for smart young companies to buy--Bungie gave well-publicized demos at huge-ass trade shows. (Remember when it was going to be a Mac-only title?) I refuse to continue reading and working myself up over this. Seriously. Scoble's out there with fucking Dvorak now.
Well, duh. First of all, there is obviously no single yes or no answer. MS innovates some, so yeah, obviously you can't literally say they never innovate, but good God, look at the examples Scoble gives--freaking "friendly" error messages (which suck ass) and ClearType are the best he can come up with as counter-examples? Everybody borrows from everyone else and builds on the work of others, but anybody who has been paying attention to the industry for the last couple decades knows that MS has not been doing much innovating, no matter how you define it.
I could spend all morning picking apart his arguments but I don't have the time. A couple highlights:
As to security problems in Windows, yes, Microsoft deserves blame there. But it has made huge strides.
He then goes on to say how fucking wonderful MS is that they were able to fix problems that other vendors had solved decades ago. (OMG! Don't automatically run scripts from web pages and emails! We're fucking GENIUSES!!!!11) That's innovation--cleaning up your own mess?
As to security problems in Windows, yes, Microsoft deserves blame there. But it has made huge strides... Very few [interns and college graduates] had more than a single class on security in college or universities. Our industry just hasn't cared about security either.
So, because computer security isn't taught in school, that equals innovating?* And which fucking "industry" does he think "doesn't care" about security? Obviously he's never been within a thousand miles of an IT department. Or IBM. Or Cisco. Or Sun.
And, although I love Apple (I have three Macs and three PCs in my house right now) I can't display full HDTV images through mine onto my HDTV screen (I have a slightly older Sony screen than Dave does). But with Xbox 360 and Media Center I can.
So, MS is innovating because you have an old TV? Uh-huh. Wow--backwards compatability, component outputs. Yeah, REAL fucking innovative. Unlike that non-innovator Apple, who's leaving analog outputs in the past where they belong and moving forward with pure digital goodness.** Besides, who brought A/V to the desktop in the first place?
I love the smell of flamebait in the morning. God, reading Scoble's lame-ass arguments makes me want to gouge out my eyes with a titanium spork.
* hint: maybe... just MAYBE... "innovation" = thinking up shit that's NOT taught in schools!!! Eh? Eh? My fucking God, this guy is as dumb as a bag of hammers. ** watch me change my tune in 2 months when Apple releases the iTV with component outputs.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
What do you mean? Did you miss the awesome part where when you mouse over the links* in the top row they go from being nice white-on-black text to light-blue-on-white with a drop shadow in a box with no padding? *gag*
Proving once again that it's better to have talent and bad tools than good tools but no talent.
* note: the first bit of text, which looks EXACTLY like the other bits of text in that row, is not a link, just like the e*trade example here. Actually, whichever page you're on gets the this-isn't-a-link treatment, but nothing else about the text indicates that it's the page you're on. So I guess to figure out which page you're on, just mouse over all the links and see which one doesn't change. Oh, wait, I see--there's also the little pixel-y graphic that moves. I see. But the little graphic just looks like a fancy bullet on the first page since it's all the way on the left. Wait, let me check Firefox (I'm using Safari) to make sure I'm not missing anything. [checks] Nope, the only difference is Firefox doesn't show the drop shadow. Nice.
Which is better design:
- having distinct things which look distinct when you first see them--tabs, for example**
- having distinct things with small visual distinctions which only become apparent when you do a few different things and look closely for differences, like those spot-the-six-differences-in-these-two-pictures things in the Sunday comics.
** note: for as good as Apple is, I'm super-pissed that they ditched tabs in favor of blue buttons starting in OS X 10.3. Tabs are WAY easier to differentiate, especially when there's only 2 choices. And they don't almost disappear when the tabbed-item-in-question isn't the foreground app.
Being the owner of a 640x480 Dell Axim PDA I can tell you that 200 DPI LCD screens kick ass. Text on this thing is GORGEOUS. (Too bad the web browsers I've tried on it mostly suck.) There's a company that makes a ~20" 200 DPI LCD monitor but it costs six or ten grand and I haven't been able to convince my company (I work for a book publisher) that I need one to test. :-\
I wrote to google and yahoo a year or two ago suggesting they implement this but never heard back from either and have not seen it implemented. (Please, everyone WRITE!*) It would be the COOLEST THING EVER for a number of reasons. Say you downloaded a picture off the web. A year later, you stumble across it and decide you want to see if the site has any more similar pics. You could just md5 the image and search for that. (Of course this could be made very easy for non-technical users: Google could have a little 'search for this file' page, with an upload button just like you use for webmail attachments.)
y , http://feedback.yahoo.com/?prop=SiteExplorer (I think)
Of course it would also be easy to see if anyone else is offering a file you created, and there are bunches and bunches of other uses, too. If you're downloading a file and the hosting server is slow, you could learn it's md5sum (from google, the same way you can see cached pages) and then search for that md5sum and see if anyone else is hosting it and know that you're getting exactly the file you want. (Very useful when you know that version x.y.n of a program works for you and x.y.(n+/-1) doesn't.) Plus, with a huge catalog of checksums, Google could also do some interesting research on real-world hash collisions as well.
Yes, any time someone changes the image, the md5sum would be different, so it wouldn't be the be-all, end-all of course, but it would still be very useful in a lot of ways. Just because it isn't perfect is no reason not to do it.
* http://www.google.com/support/pages/bin/request.p
They're still common enough to make md5-based searching a very useful tool. And, in fact, a lot of stuff does just get downloaded form here and posted there with no change.
Wouldn't it be pretty trivial to /mnt/cdrom/md5 /sbin/
cp
each night before running the tool? Or, as someone else suggested, leave md5 on with another name? I'm sure most rootkits wouldn't notice if 'zsh' was actually a copy of 'md5.'
I'm not talking about a bulletproof tool for the NSA. I'm just interested in something basic that would do the trick for most people.
Spotlight-style fast searching was one of the benefits of WinFS. (BeOS, with a database-like filesystem, also produced very fast search results--on 150 MHz Pentiums in 1998.) But they were able to get fast searching without it, so it was dropped. Well, not for that reason alone, but I'm sure that the fact that they were able to get one of the key WinFS benefits of without actually having it is one of the big reasons they chose to drop it when they were looking for features to cut so they could release sooner.
Windows and Macs have both had varying amounts of full-content searching for ages--Windows since '95 (there was a 'search content' option in one of the tabs) and Mac since '98 maybe (OS 8.5, I think.) Windows' was slow (like doing `find *txt | grep whatever...`) and Mac's required an index to be built, which took AGES, and tons of CPU time. (Which SUCKED in the cooperative-multitasking world of pre-X Mac OS.) The point is, Spotlight was pretty much the first to market to do it all FAST.
Tiger, with Spotlight: April 29, 2005. (According to Wikipedia. I was at the 2004 WWDC and the Developer Preview handed out that day had working Spotlight.)
Google Desktop Search Beta 2: August 22, 2005 (also from Wikipedia)
MS demoed their search in 2003 (according to Wikipedia) but iTunes had Spotlight-like searching from version 1 in 2001* and Steve Jobs said in 2004 that the idea came from iTunes' search ability. BeOS also had fast searching in 1998 (due to its database-like filesystem) though I think its content-searching was limited to user-added metadata. Basically, the concept of 'good search with fast results' is not new. Most wouldn't argue that Mac OS X with Spotlight was the first to deliver an integrated, OEM-provided fast search solution.
That said, I hate Spotlight. I never use it. I keep 10.3 on any machine that will run it.** For example, if I'm looking for a php file that I know I named table-something, I just want Find to return a list of all files NAMED *table*, not every single freaking document with the word 'table' in it. Yes, I know things can be tweaked here and there, but I like the DEFAULT behaviors of 'Find' in 10.3 (and Windows, for that matter) MUCH better for what I use Search for--and I use search several times a day. (And there are other things--like the path display--that I also don't like about 10.4's searching.)
* I think. I'm pretty sure. Too lazy to dig up an iTunes 1.0 review, but AFAIK it was always there. Wiki notes that 4.0 had improved' search in April 2003.
** anything with 10.4 will go to 10.5 ASAP because Time Machine kicks freaking ass.
> You say there were five rounds -- were the results announced at the end of each round?
:-)
:-) I hope a bit more detail will help: ;-) )
:-) But for retreats, schools, classes, etc., it's great.
Yes. With a big scoreboard on a blackboard or whiteboard, with a column for each group and a row for each round, and another table to keep score.
> Did this affect the way people voted next time?
I'm sure it did.
> Was it anonymous -- so if you voted red, no-one knew/ no-one would "punish" you? (However lightheartedly).
Stupid language--I'm not sure which 'you' you mean.
- the groups are separated enough so they can't really hear each other's internal discussions
- within the group, I forget if voting is anonymous or not. I think not. I don't remember any pencil-and-paper voting. In fact, now that I think about it, I think they point was actually to reach consensus. (Another 'learning point' of the game. Though if a group decided to just do a quick show-of-hands vote, they could. But still, they all have to agree that that's how it will be decided.)
- each group has a 'spokesperson' (not a leader, just the one who submits the group's vote.)
- there is a time limit on each round--short, like 2-3 minutes. (Adjust the limits for more fun!
- Devise a way for each group to be able to vote, and not be able to change their vote at the last second. One way is to have two envelopes, one with a green piece of paper inside and one with a red piece. When the round is up, each spokesperson walks to the front of the room with their envelope. The envelopes are then opened and their decision is written on the board for that round.
- Usually between each round, the game's leaders would try to emphasis how great it would be if everyone voted green. Sometimes they'd take one person from each group and give them a little side session and say "really, try to get your group to vote green his time."
I don't remember any type of 'punishment' ever being a problem, other than the general theme of "I'm voting red, so the worst that happens is if I go down, you all come with me."
Basically, what happens, is the discussion eternally goes in circles: If we vote green, and everyone else does, then we gain. If someone else votes red, we lose. If someone else votes red and we do, we gain, unless everyone votes red, then we lose--but at least we tie with everyone else.
I just realized this seems to be a variant of the Prisoner's Dilemma.
Unfortunately, all the words associated with this game--red, green, vote, consensus--are too common for any worthwhile Google searches. But if you're in a school, church, etc. and have access to materials about activities for retreats, you can probably find more information. It's not quite a 'party' game since no one at a party wants to learn.
How hard is it to build a basic but worthwhile rootkit detection tool with common tools? Like run `md5 /bin/*` and then ship the output of that to another machine every day for comparison to yesterday's output of that command? (Looking at other directories as well, of course.) My understanding is that many rootkits come with hacked versions of tools like 'ps' to hide themselves.
On the one hand, yeah, let's not reinvent the wheel, but on the other hand, there are advantages to building your own tools:
- you know exactly what they're doing--more complicated pre-existing tools might do more, but if you don't understand their output, they're no good.
- you don't have to trust*/audit someone else's code
- they don't do more than you need
- they don't have features that you don't know about or might misuse
- at the very least, it's a great way to learn
* yes, I know about this. but there are reasonable limits--I do trust that my distro came with a clean copy of gcc. OTOH, I'd rather write my own 20-line script that download someone else's that says it does the same thing as what I would write myself but that I'd have to audit for even the smallest things, like sneaking in an
if ($rooted="no")
instead of
if ($rooted=="no")
Mod parent +1,000,000. No sense mentioning that the test wasn't performed with a phone with a QWERTY keyboard, of which there are many.
> So, you can do something with a computer with NO OS on it?
Yes. I can bring it home, pop in my Ubuntu CD, and it'll do exactly what I want. Who says a computer has to do what someone else wants to be considered functional?
> Interesting. I had no idea that staring at "O/S Not Found" was that interesting. Do tell me more.
How do you stare at it--does HP include a monitor with every single computer they sell? No? OH NOES! They're selling non-working computers!
This is starting to sound too much like a game we used to play at retreats. The leader breaks the group into smaller groups--say, 6 groups of 5. He then writes on a blackboard "The object of the game is for you to get as many points as possible" and explains the rules:
:-)
- There will be five rounds.
- Each group has to choose a color (red or green)
- If every group votes green, everyone gets 100 points.
- If some groups vote green and some vote red, the green groups lose 100 points and the red groups gain 100 points.
- If every group votes red, everyone loses 100 points.
- (Scores can be varied, Interesting, on a split vote, if the scores are -50/+100, or -100/+50, instead of +100/-100.)
Everyone quickly realizes that if they vote red, they'll either a) gain points or b) lose points but be just as bad off as everyone else. Of course, if everyone would just vote green, everyone would always win, but of course that never ever happens--each group thinks "well, someone might vote red, so we better vote red too, because if someone else votes green, we win; whereas if we vote green and someone else votes red they win and we lose."
The leader then adds up the scores--some high, some low, some negative, some positive--and the total itself isn't even always positive. (There's always at least one group that goes out in a blaze of glory--it's all in fun, just points, not like it's actual money--voting green every time and losing 500 points.) Then they show that if everyone would have voted green, everyone would have had 500 points, and the room would have 3000 points (using my example of six groups). They then point out that the object of the game was for YOU to get as many points as possible, where 'you' = the whole room. (Not sure how that works in languages with different words for 2nd person plural.) Everyone learns a little something about cooperation--or human behavior and self-interest, at least.
In any case, this whole lunch-deciding system sounds interesting as an academic exercise but I can't imagine anyone doing this crazy money/voting thing. Any group that organized (or anal) would probably make a rotating schedule of local places, or let one person choose each time, or some up with some other scheme. I just take a book to lunch and eat alone.
I love harping on clueless Lusers as much as anyone, but I don't think there's anyone who thinks buying music from the iTMS is the only way to fill an iPod. In fact, I'd wager it goes quite the other way--tons of people probably buy iPods not even knowing that the iTMS exists, unless they happen to leave the default 'take me to the iTMS' button set and go there instead of their library. Even so, they probably just think it's an ad for something and pop in a CD and start ripping, or they call their friends with iPods and ask them how to get all their downloaded music onto it.
But I've got a family, and we can't all play a DS at once. I'd buy a Wii in a second if there were any around--$250 isn't bad at all. I will get one eventually but I'd love to get one for the family for XMas--too bad there aren't enough. With the great reviews and the great price I think it'd be the winner if there were more.
One of my favorite pages on the subject, a mere eleven years old.
In general, if you're going to question any of the documents our founding fathers put together, get constitutional scholars and historians, not people who don't realize that words change their meanings over the centuries. ("Militia" == "The National Guard" now, so therefore the constitution was talking about the national guard! Er...) And remember: the founders weren't idiots. They had debates over these things for years. They didn't just whip them up in an afternoon.
A couple things to note:
1) Washington has some of the strongest gun laws in the country, along with some of the highest rates of violent crime. Hmm, is it possible that strict(er) gun laws aren't the answer? Anytime someone in DC talks says "X" about gun violence, I instantly see merit in "not X." Physician, heal thyself before you throw stones in your glass house, or something.
2) Criminals are called criminals because they don't follow the law. Let that roll around in your head a little. Will making guns illegal(er) mean that criminals won't get them? People always say "If guns are outlawed, then you can arrest anyone with a gun! w00t!" Yeah... 'cause criminals are too dumb to ever think of HIDING them. Make guns illegal and you'll never see one--until you're woken up one night with one in your face.
No, no, no, you've got it all wrong--the Mac OS itself was the virus. :-)
You can put 22" rims onto a Pinto or Corvair but that won't make anybody want one. Similarly, you can hire all the PhDs you want, but if you can't produce products that are secure, stable, or even responsive, then it just doesn't matter. I came into work today to see signs posted saying "MS patches are being deployed. Your PC may ask to reboot itself."
Additionally, you need smart people throughout the company. Xerox PARC had a lot of brains and made world-changing products decades ago but it didn't do them much good since no one knew what to do with them.
R and D are good, of course, but anyone interested in these types of things should read this about Apple in the 1990s.
"These projects snowballed into horrific disasters that were so complex they could never be completed, but which also contributed highly touted features that were tightly woven into Apple's increasingly widening strategies. That made them impossible to deliver but difficult to kill."
Holy crap, that works! Right after two sponsored links, there it is--Google.
:-)
Well, at least the people who run Yahoo's search engine are honest. If it were me, I'd look for strings like that and return 'Yahoo.'
Erm, what about MOST OF THE FUCKING UNIVERSE, who just wants to play Flash games online, and for whom integrated graphics are JUST FUCKING FINE? Why do we NEED to have more expensive, hotter-running, battery-draining dedicated graphics? Oh, right, because some snobby geek on Slashdot things integrated graphics are the spawn of the Devil himself.
You realize that integrated graphics today are better than the best standalone cards of just a few years ago, right? So, what, NOBODY should have been using computers a few years ago? It is NOT the job of the OS to needlessly soak up hardware for no good reason. Win95/Office97 run about as well on a P233 than WinXP/OfficeXP do on a PC with 10x the CPU.* Sure, there are some nice new features in the newer versions, but enough to negate a 10x speed increase and a decade's worth of advancement? Not in my opinion.
* not just pulling numbers out of my ass--I recently built a machine like that and was amazed at how it compares to the 2.4 GHz Dell on my desk at work.
A typical MP3 is better than the next most common format--FM radio--but I don't remember hearing people bitching about FM radio for the last few decades.
A better question: are audiophiles *ever* happy? I think the answer is "no." Gamers are never happy with how fast their rigs are, hot rodders want better cars, horny teens want more sex, hippies want more wood chips in their granola, etc etc etc. Basically, most people are never happy with what's most important to them.
And this particular question is as dumb as they come. A 6-GB MP3 player held a certain number of 128k MP3s. A 60 GB player today holds the same number of WAVs or AIFFs. So the answer, OBVIOUSLY, is "Yes, you can carry around perfect CD-quality songs." The only question is how many. Not enough? Wait a couple years.
Next?
Holy crap--you forgot the link but the mods followed your instructions anyway.
Mods: I want +5, Funny for this. No, no, wait: +5, Informative. No, wait, anyone can google something and be "informative." I want a +5, Interesting.
Thanks.
"IE will install to one place only."
:-p
Sounds like a very artificial limitation. (If you say it's for security, I'll die laughing. Same response if your answer is "share components, save disk space.") And it can't be just dragged around? Hmm...
OK, I fired up Parallels and launched my dual-boot 98/2k image. C:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe (win98) shows a 64k file, version 4.72.3110.0; e:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe is about 60k and shows version 5.0.2920.0. Clicking on either launches IE 5. My understanding is (long story short) that iexplore.exe just grabs a bunch of stuff from around the system and turns it into a browser. The entire 'Internet Explorer' folder on my XP box (version 6) is only about 2 MB, over half of which is plugins and the internet connection wizard.
By the way, I've also got MSIE2 on that box. (Dragged the folder over from an old NT4 machine.) Runs at the same time as MSIE6 just fine, and the executable is 725k. Man, the IE team sure did some amazing work, packing 4 versions worth of new features into an executable 1/10 the size!
No matter how you slice it, something odd is going on. What's so special about MSIE that it doesn't look or behave like nearly every other application released for Windows in the last 10 years, including previous versions of the same app???
... who keep saying IE doesn't have its hooks buried deep in Windows: this is pretty much proof, is it not? I've got several versions of Photoshop, from 3 to CS, on my W2K box at home. I've also got several versions of Firefox (and Firebird, and Phoenix) as well. Plus Netscape 3.* And a few Acrobat Readers. I've even got MSIE2--back when it was a *gasp* standalone app. And a bunch more apps I could list if I cared to. My XP box at work has Office 2003 and the beta of 2007.
So: MS has to go out of their way to "let" people run more than one instance of Internet Explorer?** Two conclusions: a) why would this be so hard, if IE weren't so ingrained in the OS? b) And is this the "innovation" Scoble was talking about? "Letting" me run programs?
* I remember an old trick from back when NS3 was new: I knew it would crash sometimes, so if I had a lot of windows open, instead of opening another, I'd launch another instance of the app. One instance could crash, taking its windows with it, but the other would be fine, as if nothing ever happened. Now *that's* programming!
** Besides all the technical issues--they don't even charge for the fscking thing! It's not like you bought the "upgrade" version at a discount, compared to buying a full copy of the new version at full retail price. I understand if they don't want me running Win95 anymore if I bought the upgrade version of Win98. But if I buy the full versions of both, shouldn't I be able to run them both? This is like saying if I get the CD, I can't listen to the tape any more. And the tape and CD were both free to begin with.
Oh, wait, let me guess--since I didn't pay for them, I have no right to decide how I want to use them?
Hate to reply to my own post but I just can't let this pass.
Scoble: Ahh, have you ever played Halo? That's from Microsoft too.
YOU FUCKING DIPSHIT! Microsoft BOUGHT Bungie!!!!! Innovation == writing a check? Aaaagh! *head asplodes*
Winer actually responded in a manner similar to mine, and Scoble said "Yes, and there's always room for a company that innovates through acquisitions."
I hearby define breathing as innovating. Therefore, I innovate ALL THE FUCKING TIME. This guy is officially from another planet. I mean, it's not like they were out scouring dark alleys for smart young companies to buy--Bungie gave well-publicized demos at huge-ass trade shows. (Remember when it was going to be a Mac-only title?) I refuse to continue reading and working myself up over this. Seriously. Scoble's out there with fucking Dvorak now.
Well, duh. First of all, there is obviously no single yes or no answer. MS innovates some, so yeah, obviously you can't literally say they never innovate, but good God, look at the examples Scoble gives--freaking "friendly" error messages (which suck ass) and ClearType are the best he can come up with as counter-examples? Everybody borrows from everyone else and builds on the work of others, but anybody who has been paying attention to the industry for the last couple decades knows that MS has not been doing much innovating, no matter how you define it.
:-)
I could spend all morning picking apart his arguments but I don't have the time. A couple highlights:
As to security problems in Windows, yes, Microsoft deserves blame there. But it has made huge strides.
He then goes on to say how fucking wonderful MS is that they were able to fix problems that other vendors had solved decades ago. (OMG! Don't automatically run scripts from web pages and emails! We're fucking GENIUSES!!!!11) That's innovation--cleaning up your own mess?
As to security problems in Windows, yes, Microsoft deserves blame there. But it has made huge strides... Very few [interns and college graduates] had more than a single class on security in college or universities. Our industry just hasn't cared about security either.
So, because computer security isn't taught in school, that equals innovating?* And which fucking "industry" does he think "doesn't care" about security? Obviously he's never been within a thousand miles of an IT department. Or IBM. Or Cisco. Or Sun.
And, although I love Apple (I have three Macs and three PCs in my house right now) I can't display full HDTV images through mine onto my HDTV screen (I have a slightly older Sony screen than Dave does). But with Xbox 360 and Media Center I can.
So, MS is innovating because you have an old TV? Uh-huh. Wow--backwards compatability, component outputs. Yeah, REAL fucking innovative. Unlike that non-innovator Apple, who's leaving analog outputs in the past where they belong and moving forward with pure digital goodness.** Besides, who brought A/V to the desktop in the first place?
I love the smell of flamebait in the morning. God, reading Scoble's lame-ass arguments makes me want to gouge out my eyes with a titanium spork.
* hint: maybe... just MAYBE... "innovation" = thinking up shit that's NOT taught in schools!!! Eh? Eh? My fucking God, this guy is as dumb as a bag of hammers.
** watch me change my tune in 2 months when Apple releases the iTV with component outputs.