I was under the impression patent examiners had to be in the know about the subject they're granting patents on.. The dude granting pharamaceutical patents isn't the same dude granting patents on video cards. I just hope they do some (minimal) research, which should show the patent is bullshit.
Don't laugh, but I'm running gentoo on an old Pentium II...took 36 hours to build a base system from stage1. I did not install X, as I didn't have the HD space or the patience.
Word to the wise, stay the hell away from cpu-specific optimizations.. they will come back to haunt you.
The anti-aliasing stands out much less on a win32 desktop then on a linux desktop.. kind of like the difference between a Sharp anti-alias (Win32) and a Smooth (Linux) one in photoshop..
As for the bug, it happens to me all the time.. several times a day. More and more so lately.. (using firefox 0.9.3).
Here is a screenshot of what happens to story pages sometimes... reloading fixes it. The above poster is right as well, it happens to the front page sometimes too.
Maybe he should have tried a more desktop-centric distribution, such as Mandrake? Lots of stuff magically worked on my laptop, and the rest of it took a few package installations..
Disclaimer: I run gentoo on my server.. but I think the server is where gentoo belongs.
My last motherboard was AGP4x (ECS K7S5A), and the card performed very poorly at high resolutions (1024x768 and above. 1280x1024 was unthinkable, it ran at 5fps)
Upgrading to an AGP8x system (ASUS A7N8X-E) has made a world of difference.. UT2k4 looks awesome in 1280x1024.
In short.. yes, current video cards have no trouble using the extra bandwidth, but it only makes a difference if you like to crank the resolution.
A patent isn't for an idea, it is for an method to implement a feature.
I agree with this statement, but disagree with everything that comes after it.
If software patents were really a method to implement an idea, then we'd be patenting the code (method) to make tabbed browsing (idea) work.
This is not the case. The IDEA of tabbed browsing (none of this "grouping web pages" business? what about bookmarks? they group web pages. What if I replaced the tabs with buttons? what about circles?) is what has been patented..
You simply cannot draw parallels between real patents and software patents. There are many hinge designs, actuators, hydrolic methods, whatever, to implement wide swinging doors. It's fine by me that these _methods_ are patentable. Don't like the patent? Keep the idea, change the implementation, and you're done.
With software, the situation is completely different. Tabbed Browsing the IDEA has been patended.. in all of it's possible implementations. You can't just design your own code to do tabbed browsing and be in the clear, as you can design your own hinge.
This is why I'm totally 100% against software patents.. they stifle innovation. A software engineer cannot simply re-implement a patended software feature as an automotive engineer can re-implement a patended hinge.
Not all debugging methods are created equal.. lots of extra printf calls will only get you so far. I can't count the number of fellow students whom I had to teach to use a debugger in my algorithms class.
Debugging should definitely be taught in classes.. at least the basics of what a debugger is, how it can help you, and how to compile your program so a debugger can read it and give you source-level breakpoints.
In fact, that's one of the major shortcomings of your Marxist view, it assumes "classes" are somehow innate, assigned at birth, and immutable. The theory is at odds with reality.
But classes are assigned at birth. You are born into a poor family, or a rich family. You were born to a Jewish family, or a Christian family. The truth of the matter remains that you will _most likely_ continue to lead the same lifestyle as your parents and family.
However, nobody said anything about classes being immutable.. lots of children rebel against their parent's ways, and decide to do something completely different.
"The delays are quality driven," a Microsoft statement said. The company needs more time for tuning and testing "in order to meet the high quality requirements of our customers."
VIA has made some major leaps in quality since then as well
VIA sucks. I have a KT400 based board that's been flaky from the get-go, the onboard USB seems to crash the system after about 20 minutes of use. Very unstable with Radeon cards, unless you don't mind AGP4x (and you HAVE to disable Fast Writes).
You're in the IT section of the site, which uses different graphics and color scheme from the rest of/. (same with the Apache, Games, BSD, YRO, etc.. sections)
HTML's purpose, and the reason it grew so quikly, was to be an easily understood markup language that could be used by less technical people. [snip] Now we have XHTML and CSS. Neither of these are easy to learn.
One of my tutoring clients is a woman in her 50s. She's not computer illiterate, having been using macs since before I even saw a PC. I've been slowly working with her to design a website for an organization she's involved in.
We first started with HTML. She simply couldn't wrap her head around the idea of nested tables. They frustrated her to no end, and we gave up on it.
A few months ago, she expressed a growing interest in getting the new website project done, and we decided to use XHTML+CSS. Once I had explained the box model, and she had purchased a good CSS reference, she actually understood it. We've now got a basic layout done, and most of what's left is the final graphics and content.
In summary.. With original HTML, it was not possible for this everyday-person to learn how to make an attractive looking page, the hacks required were too un-natural. With XHTML+CSS, a few hours of going through how CSS works and the mindset needed to seperate content and layout, and now she's very excited about making her standards-compliant pages in a text editor, and all the neat stuff she can do without learning JavaScript!
I run Windows 2000 on all my desktop systems (server runs Gentoo, laptop runs Mandrake), and recommend it to all the clients I build systems for. The most useful Win2k security tool I've ever found is XPCreate. Don't be fooled by it's name, it works great with Win2k. Insert your original Win2K cd, run the.cmd file, do anything special to your configuration (read the docs, you can do things like including your SATA/UATA controller's driver, installing apps automagically, and more) then run the.cmd file again.. 2 hours later you have a bootable.ISO ready to burn that includes a slipstreamed SP4 and all the latest updates and hotfixes installed already when the system comes up the first time.
Systems installed from this CD are ok to throw on the net without a firewall (to hit up Windows Update for the remaining few patches, and get Firefox and a firewall), they don't get insta-0wned by worms like systems installed from the original media do.
Having struggled to get my own working just recently (I certainly can't imagine it being easier with mandrake)
I've just setup a Linksys/Broadcom 802.11g PCMCIA card on a fresh installation of Mandrake 10.0 Official and no, it's not particulary easy. The version of ndiswrapper included in Mandrake is quite old (v0.4, the newest release is v0.8) and doesn't have the ndiswrapper command at all.. so I couldn't figure out how to load an.inf file.
First thing I did was removed the ndiswrapper package, and installed the kernel source package. Downloaded ndiswrapper from the site, and looked on their page of supported chipsets (checking lspci for which card I really had) for which driver I should get, in my case it was the Dell driver.
Compiled, installed ndiswrapper no problem. Tried to install.inf file, the thing borked. Look in the.inf file, it's in unicode. Remebered seeing something in the FAQ about converting.inf files from unicode to ascii.. went back to the page, and there it was. Typed in the command, my.inf file shrunk in half (but still over 500k! holy inf file), and successfully installed.
Upon a modprobe, the driver loaded! I didn't have to iwconfig, it found my access point and essid automagically. After a quick ipconfig (I use static IPs, DHCP isn't for me), a creation of an ipup-wlan0 script to do this automatically for me next time, and one line added to modprobe.conf and modules.conf, my network now magically comes up whenever I start up my laptop. Total time taken, about 2 hours (mostly figuring out how to get my urpmi in a workable state).
My only complaint is that when I come back from a suspend, I have to open a root shell and "ipup wlan0".. but windows had the exact same problem, so I figure the card looses it's config when it powers down.. I'll have to look for a way to automatically run the ipup when I come back from a suspend.
You hit the nail on the head, ActiveX is not the problem.
The main problem with IE is that the whole "Security Zones" concept is fundamentally flawed. A web browser should simply not have the functionality necessary to write to files, install applications, mask parts of the interface, etc. This was all added so that explorer could be used for the OS shell. When you open My Computer, that's really a web page that's being genereated by Windows and shown, in the "Local System" trusted zone, by Internet Explorer.
The overwhelming majority of the latest exploits have been ways to trick IE into running external code in the trusted zone. And these will just keep on coming.
That's why moving to a browser without this functionality is a good idea, and it really has very little to do with ActiveX (which was actually once a decent alternative to writing Java applets, if you wanted something that could run in a browser window and was easily installable).
All good suggestions.. I also like Toolbarcop.. to see if anything snuck itself in. Great for cleaning systems infected to the tits with BHOs that Adaware/Spybot don't find (yes, these do exist).
Norton Internet Security is shit. As you found out, it doesn't really protect you against anything.
I run Spybot S&D v1.3 with TeaTimer (aka Resident System Settings Protection) enabled. It watches the 235 places in windows things can make themselves auto-launch at startup, and a few important registry keys (such as the one where BHOs install themselves), and if anything so much as thinks about installing itself, you get a nice confirmation dialog.
As an added bonus, it actively monitors for 1,161 blacklisted malware processes and terminates them instantly upon detection (subsequently popping up a dialog informing you of what it's done and allowing you to undo it).
Slashdot Mirror
I was under the impression patent examiners had to be in the know about the subject they're granting patents on.. The dude granting pharamaceutical patents isn't the same dude granting patents on video cards. I just hope they do some (minimal) research, which should show the patent is bullshit.
I have emails dating back to 1998, and Gmail lets me find the information I need quickly
How did you import your archive? My e-mails are in Thunderbird format..
Don't laugh, but I'm running gentoo on an old Pentium II...took 36 hours to build a base system from stage1. I did not install X, as I didn't have the HD space or the patience.
Word to the wise, stay the hell away from cpu-specific optimizations.. they will come back to haunt you.
The anti-aliasing stands out much less on a win32 desktop then on a linux desktop.. kind of like the difference between a Sharp anti-alias (Win32) and a Smooth (Linux) one in photoshop..
As for the bug, it happens to me all the time.. several times a day. More and more so lately.. (using firefox 0.9.3).
Here is a screenshot of what happens to story pages sometimes... reloading fixes it. The above poster is right as well, it happens to the front page sometimes too.
Maybe he should have tried a more desktop-centric distribution, such as Mandrake? Lots of stuff magically worked on my laptop, and the rest of it took a few package installations..
Disclaimer: I run gentoo on my server.. but I think the server is where gentoo belongs.
Daddy do you want some sausage?
Couldn't resist.. but really, it wasn't that bad. I guess you've just never seen Ricky Oh...
I have an AGP8x Radeon9600 Pro.
My last motherboard was AGP4x (ECS K7S5A), and the card performed very poorly at high resolutions (1024x768 and above. 1280x1024 was unthinkable, it ran at 5fps)
Upgrading to an AGP8x system (ASUS A7N8X-E) has made a world of difference.. UT2k4 looks awesome in 1280x1024.
In short.. yes, current video cards have no trouble using the extra bandwidth, but it only makes a difference if you like to crank the resolution.
Open console (alt+ctrl+~)
Type r_gamma 1.4
I've had much more fun with that setting, and it doesn't have the ugly effect that cranking up brightness gives.
if you do want to do drugs, read erowid.org first =)
Yes! Yes! Yes!
For the link impaired, that's read erowid.org. Get the whole truth. Know the risks, and choose for yourself.
And donate money to help pay for server bills.
A patent isn't for an idea, it is for an method to implement a feature.
I agree with this statement, but disagree with everything that comes after it.
If software patents were really a method to implement an idea, then we'd be patenting the code (method) to make tabbed browsing (idea) work.
This is not the case. The IDEA of tabbed browsing (none of this "grouping web pages" business? what about bookmarks? they group web pages. What if I replaced the tabs with buttons? what about circles?) is what has been patented..
You simply cannot draw parallels between real patents and software patents. There are many hinge designs, actuators, hydrolic methods, whatever, to implement wide swinging doors. It's fine by me that these _methods_ are patentable. Don't like the patent? Keep the idea, change the implementation, and you're done.
With software, the situation is completely different. Tabbed Browsing the IDEA has been patended.. in all of it's possible implementations. You can't just design your own code to do tabbed browsing and be in the clear, as you can design your own hinge.
This is why I'm totally 100% against software patents.. they stifle innovation. A software engineer cannot simply re-implement a patended software feature as an automotive engineer can re-implement a patended hinge.
Not all debugging methods are created equal.. lots of extra printf calls will only get you so far. I can't count the number of fellow students whom I had to teach to use a debugger in my algorithms class.
Debugging should definitely be taught in classes.. at least the basics of what a debugger is, how it can help you, and how to compile your program so a debugger can read it and give you source-level breakpoints.
Where do I get some of these complication CDs? Do they come in electronica flavours? I'm willing to pay..
In fact, that's one of the major shortcomings of your Marxist view, it assumes "classes" are somehow innate, assigned at birth, and immutable. The theory is at odds with reality.
.. lots of children rebel against their parent's ways, and decide to do something completely different.
But classes are assigned at birth. You are born into a poor family, or a rich family. You were born to a Jewish family, or a Christian family. The truth of the matter remains that you will _most likely_ continue to lead the same lifestyle as your parents and family.
However, nobody said anything about classes being immutable
"The delays are quality driven," a Microsoft statement said. The company needs more time for tuning and testing "in order to meet the high quality requirements of our customers."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...
But seriously.. this could be a good thing.
VIA has made some major leaps in quality since then as well
VIA sucks. I have a KT400 based board that's been flaky from the get-go, the onboard USB seems to crash the system after about 20 minutes of use. Very unstable with Radeon cards, unless you don't mind AGP4x (and you HAVE to disable Fast Writes).
Mozilla - Bloated everything and the kitchen sink browser+mail+news..
Netscape - Same as above, but full of AOL branding.. built-in AIM, and all of their other bullshit.
FireFox - A lightweight, fast, extendable browser that's right for 98% of people who just watch to ditch IE.
You're in the IT section of the site, which uses different graphics and color scheme from the rest of /. (same with the Apache, Games, BSD, YRO, etc.. sections)
HTML's purpose, and the reason it grew so quikly, was to be an easily understood markup language that could be used by less technical people.
[snip]
Now we have XHTML and CSS. Neither of these are easy to learn.
One of my tutoring clients is a woman in her 50s. She's not computer illiterate, having been using macs since before I even saw a PC. I've been slowly working with her to design a website for an organization she's involved in.
We first started with HTML. She simply couldn't wrap her head around the idea of nested tables. They frustrated her to no end, and we gave up on it.
A few months ago, she expressed a growing interest in getting the new website project done, and we decided to use XHTML+CSS. Once I had explained the box model, and she had purchased a good CSS reference, she actually understood it. We've now got a basic layout done, and most of what's left is the final graphics and content.
In summary.. With original HTML, it was not possible for this everyday-person to learn how to make an attractive looking page, the hacks required were too un-natural. With XHTML+CSS, a few hours of going through how CSS works and the mindset needed to seperate content and layout, and now she's very excited about making her standards-compliant pages in a text editor, and all the neat stuff she can do without learning JavaScript!
I run Windows 2000 on all my desktop systems (server runs Gentoo, laptop runs Mandrake), and recommend it to all the clients I build systems for. The most useful Win2k security tool I've ever found is XPCreate. Don't be fooled by it's name, it works great with Win2k. Insert your original Win2K cd, run the .cmd file, do anything special to your configuration (read the docs, you can do things like including your SATA/UATA controller's driver, installing apps automagically, and more) then run the .cmd file again.. 2 hours later you have a bootable .ISO ready to burn that includes a slipstreamed SP4 and all the latest updates and hotfixes installed already when the system comes up the first time.
Systems installed from this CD are ok to throw on the net without a firewall (to hit up Windows Update for the remaining few patches, and get Firefox and a firewall), they don't get insta-0wned by worms like systems installed from the original media do.
Having struggled to get my own working just recently (I certainly can't imagine it being easier with mandrake)
.inf file.
.inf file, the thing borked. Look in the .inf file, it's in unicode. Remebered seeing something in the FAQ about converting .inf files from unicode to ascii .. went back to the page, and there it was. Typed in the command, my .inf file shrunk in half (but still over 500k! holy inf file), and successfully installed.
I've just setup a Linksys/Broadcom 802.11g PCMCIA card on a fresh installation of Mandrake 10.0 Official and no, it's not particulary easy. The version of ndiswrapper included in Mandrake is quite old (v0.4, the newest release is v0.8) and doesn't have the ndiswrapper command at all.. so I couldn't figure out how to load an
First thing I did was removed the ndiswrapper package, and installed the kernel source package. Downloaded ndiswrapper from the site, and looked on their page of supported chipsets (checking lspci for which card I really had) for which driver I should get, in my case it was the Dell driver.
Compiled, installed ndiswrapper no problem.
Tried to install
Upon a modprobe, the driver loaded! I didn't have to iwconfig, it found my access point and essid automagically. After a quick ipconfig (I use static IPs, DHCP isn't for me), a creation of an ipup-wlan0 script to do this automatically for me next time, and one line added to modprobe.conf and modules.conf, my network now magically comes up whenever I start up my laptop. Total time taken, about 2 hours (mostly figuring out how to get my urpmi in a workable state).
My only complaint is that when I come back from a suspend, I have to open a root shell and "ipup wlan0".. but windows had the exact same problem, so I figure the card looses it's config when it powers down.. I'll have to look for a way to automatically run the ipup when I come back from a suspend.
Your post actually prompted me to look up the history of duct tape, and find out just who did invent duct/duck tape..
:)
The readers digest version is that it was a faceless employee of Johnson&Johnson, and we'll never really know who to knight
You hit the nail on the head, ActiveX is not the problem.
The main problem with IE is that the whole "Security Zones" concept is fundamentally flawed. A web browser should simply not have the functionality necessary to write to files, install applications, mask parts of the interface, etc. This was all added so that explorer could be used for the OS shell. When you open My Computer, that's really a web page that's being genereated by Windows and shown, in the "Local System" trusted zone, by Internet Explorer.
The overwhelming majority of the latest exploits have been ways to trick IE into running external code in the trusted zone. And these will just keep on coming.
That's why moving to a browser without this functionality is a good idea, and it really has very little to do with ActiveX (which was actually once a decent alternative to writing Java applets, if you wanted something that could run in a browser window and was easily installable).
All good suggestions.. I also like Toolbarcop .. to see if anything snuck itself in. Great for cleaning systems infected to the tits with BHOs that Adaware/Spybot don't find (yes, these do exist).
Norton Internet Security is shit. As you found out, it doesn't really protect you against anything.
I run Spybot S&D v1.3 with TeaTimer (aka Resident System Settings Protection) enabled. It watches the 235 places in windows things can make themselves auto-launch at startup, and a few important registry keys (such as the one where BHOs install themselves), and if anything so much as thinks about installing itself, you get a nice confirmation dialog.
As an added bonus, it actively monitors for 1,161 blacklisted malware processes and terminates them instantly upon detection (subsequently popping up a dialog informing you of what it's done and allowing you to undo it).