Me too, I've used git for about 18 months synchronising files between my desktop, laptop, netbook and server.
I only use it for documents really, but it works extremely well.
I've got a simple script which is the same on all systems:
#!/bin/sh
cd ~/Documents
git add.
git commit -a -m sync
git pull
git push
and I've added this as a custom app to my top panel, so a single click kicks off a full sync with the server.
Your comment also highlights that you misunderstand exactly what the BBC were proposing. Their plan was to encrypt the EPG, not the actual programming. Anybody who wanted to pirate the material still could - they just needed to know what time the program was on, the transponder frequency and PID to record the whole MPEG stream. So, this wasn't actually an effective technical measure against piracy. All it would have achieved is making life difficult for people who wanted to use open source software to access the EPG in order to actually discover what programs are on and when, enabling them to enjoy the TV that was being shown rather than expecting them to just flick through all channels until they found something that looked interesting.
It was a definite step backwards in terms of usability and offered nothing to protect broadcasts from pirates. What it did offer was a guaranteed revenue stream for the BBC by selling licenses to set-top box manufacturers.
So... it's not a tax and not government-controlled, but your only options are to pay it or not watch television? I guess there's no vehicle tax either, since you could always walk everywhere. Or is there some way to shut off whatever part of the TV is devoted to picking up broadcast signals, so that you can legally have a TV without paying this "optional" fee?
Yes, if you can prove that the TV is not used to receive broadcasts, then you do not need a license. However, if they inspect your TV and discover that it's tuned in to any stations or there's an aerial lead "nearby" or there's a tuned in video nearby, etc. then they are allowed to assume that you do in fact watch TV. Technically, they need to get the police involved in order to get a warrant to enter the premises unless they can actually see or hear you watching TV.
My experience on this in practice is divided, though.
Personally, when I first moved into my new house I decided I didn't want to watch TV for about a year. I simply wrote to them saying that I'd de-tuned the set and that I only used the TV with a SCART connection to my DVD player. They wrote back saying they'd come round and check, but they never did.
I know of other people that have been continually hassled by the TV licensing people. They visited one friend about 3 days after she moved in when everything was still in boxes. She said she didn't have a TV and allowed them in the house to check. 2 days later they appeared again because they didn't believe her the first time ("How can anybody not have a TV?" and "It was probably still packed") and again she let them in to check and by now everything was unpacked and still there was no TV. Despite that, they came round again on the next day to check again. She told them to get lost and they were never seen again.
Another friend hasn't had a TV for about the 14 years I've known him. For about the first 5 years, they sent him a threatening letter every year, each time he responded simply that he didn't have a TV. He hasn't mentioned it recently, so I guess they gave up.
So, it appears being proactive and telling them outright that you have a TV but it can't receive broadcasts is sufficient or maybe I just slipped through their intimidation loophole. Hard to tell. In any case, now that people can download shows from the BBC directly via a computer, there's been talk of turning it into a license for "anything capable of watching TV at all" including internet-capable PCs. This has met with a lot of resistance (obviously), although I'm sure there are many people who do think it's OK to download TV shows via iplayer without actually owning a TV license.
Demo versions of software are just that - meant so you can test out the software to see if it fits your needs. If you're going to be using this software year after year to teach a course at university, you should get a licence, one per user. Obviously, this makes more sense if it's installed on a university machine, in which case what platform they're using is irrelevant anyway. Alternatively, if you really want the students to install it on their own machines, why not contact the vendor and ask them if they'll license it for educational use so it covers the students for the duration of the time they're on that course / degree / whatever.
If you're not willing the license the software you want to use for teaching, then you'd be best to look at open source. As numerous people have suggested, spice is an option and has been around for a long time now. It's also very widely used in this field, so not only would the students get it for free and able to keep it, you'd be teaching them skills they can re-use rather than teaching them how to use proprietary software.
I also use git. I've got a script checked into the documents folder itself with an icon on my task bar to launch it. Basically, this:
git add.
git commit -a -m sync
git pull
git push
will add any new files to the repository and synchronise with the repository. It works pretty well, except for when a binary file has been modified on 2 computers as then you need to drop to the shell to resolve the merge. But I use it to sync between my desktop, laptop, netbook and server and never had any problems.
That 50p extra per month they want to charge me is exactly the 50p they gave me back a few months ago when they dropped the VAT on my £20 pcm broadband bill from £3 to £2.50. And now they want that back...
Oh wait, aren't they getting that back in December when they hike the VAT rate back up again? And that's assuming that it only goes back up to 17.5% rather than the 20% everyone's expecting...:(
As I have an entire domain thats forwarded to my main account, I use different e-mail address for each company I have to deal with.
I have on a number of occasions asked a company why they've given my e-mail address to another company and they seem very surprised when there realise they've been caught out.
Doing it this way also makes it very easy to block e-mail from any address that has been compromised and is being used for spam.
Similar experience for me. I was running a slug (basically NAS device with network and 2 USB ports) as a general server using a USB memory stick.
After about 6 months of fairly heavy use (with only 32Mb RAM I needed to swap to flash), one day the USB flash drive just stopped working, and it's no longer even detected when I plug it into any system now.
I'd done all the obvious things such as mounting with noatime and have the swapiness to 0, but ultimately discovered that flash really doesn't like being constantly written to.
Fortunately, even large capacity USB sticks are pretty cheap, so they're still quite good for as long as they last.
I've just sent an email to the Conservative Party (via their website) telling them that they are right, stick to their guns. I've told them we are a small UK developer who rely on OSS from major vendors to deliver a cost effective product
Then surely you've misread the article. They are arguing against OSS saying that it is insecure and slow to be patched.
How about we criticise the summary instead. It's experimenters not "experimentalists"... An experimentalist is surely someone who's prejudiced against experimental things...
[...] So they blame Linux instead of them selves for such a half-ass implementation of sending out packets from multiple threads with a single socket.[...]
Sorry for my ranting, but it just pisses me off when moron programmers blame the operating system for their own stupidity.
The point is that it wasn't their own stupidity. They took someone's open source project and improved it so it could better handle high loads. I don't see them blaming Linux, I see them recognising the limitations of the system they are using and coming up with a solution and then sharing it. Normally, this is cause to say "Yay! Open source!" rather than calling them "moron programmers".
I too discovered Wingware when I tried out a few IDEs for Python. It was by far the best of the ones I tried, and they even let you use it free on open source projects...
Well worth trying out.
I too buy almost all my books from amazon.com instead of amazon.co.uk. Even factoring in shipping of $7.98 on each order for a single book compared to free shipping from the UK, it's still usually at least 10% cheaper to buy from the US, even for books printed in the UK itself.
A recent example I've ordered is "Real-Time Rendering, Third Edition" which is $59.63 from amazon.com, shipping takes it up to $67.71 or £34.19. The same book here from amazon.co.uk is £49.88.
I've complained many times about this to amazon.co.uk who just say they operate independently. The only way I can vote is to buy from the US store consistently, but even that doesn't seem to make them change their policies. Well, actually it does. It now offers the opportunity to pay in GBP from amazon.com, for a healthy 5% more than the credit card charges for the conversion of course...
This is hardly the first 2-player homebrew game on the PS3.
I released my Puzzle Bobble clone pubble almost a year ago. That actually supports 2-5 players.
What's more, it's open-source and written in Python using my PS3 2D sprite library, python-ps3 which has a good library of SPU-accelerated sprite and alpha-blending routines, wireless sixaxis support and rumble support on a dualshock 3. I'm currently working on 3D rasterisation too, although that will be some months off yet...
Actually, this article is almost completely fallacious... Let's look at the facts quoted:
McGrattan boasts that 70% to 80% of the time, she can look at a chunk of computer code and tell if it was written by a man or a woman.
...at Ingres because only about 20% of the engineers are women, McGrattan says. (Most of them are in jobs involving quality assurance or adapting the product to a new locale, she says, and not the "heavy lifting" of writing code.)
So, basically, she'd get a higher score if she guessed "man" every time than if she tries to be clever. Clearly, then, she does think some men's code looks like it's been written by a woman, which invalidates to point of the article.
Bad form to reply to my own post, but having just looked at the patent it is also somewhat different to Linux patch mechanism anyway. Claim 20 involves checking the filename of currently running modules, claim 21 invloves checking a hash, etc...
That said, the patent basically describes simple patching of a function entry points with a few consitency checks. There is a ton of prior art on this, as someone else mentioned the Amiga OS was designed for this, it was common on Mac extensions in the 80s, it's the basic mechanism for DOS-based TSRs and viruses, etc... It's also clearly not non-obvious.
Solaris also supported in-place kernel patching a long while before this patent - I remember learning about it in 1997, but I think it had existed for quite some time before this.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's just that they couldn't see beyond their noses...
I only use it for documents really, but it works extremely well.
I've got a simple script which is the same on all systems: .
#!/bin/sh
cd ~/Documents
git add
git commit -a -m sync
git pull
git push
and I've added this as a custom app to my top panel, so a single click kicks off a full sync with the server.
As one of those who responded, I'm glad I did.
Your comment also highlights that you misunderstand exactly what the BBC were proposing. Their plan was to encrypt the EPG, not the actual programming. Anybody who wanted to pirate the material still could - they just needed to know what time the program was on, the transponder frequency and PID to record the whole MPEG stream. So, this wasn't actually an effective technical measure against piracy. All it would have achieved is making life difficult for people who wanted to use open source software to access the EPG in order to actually discover what programs are on and when, enabling them to enjoy the TV that was being shown rather than expecting them to just flick through all channels until they found something that looked interesting.
It was a definite step backwards in terms of usability and offered nothing to protect broadcasts from pirates. What it did offer was a guaranteed revenue stream for the BBC by selling licenses to set-top box manufacturers.
So... it's not a tax and not government-controlled, but your only options are to pay it or not watch television? I guess there's no vehicle tax either, since you could always walk everywhere. Or is there some way to shut off whatever part of the TV is devoted to picking up broadcast signals, so that you can legally have a TV without paying this "optional" fee?
Yes, if you can prove that the TV is not used to receive broadcasts, then you do not need a license. However, if they inspect your TV and discover that it's tuned in to any stations or there's an aerial lead "nearby" or there's a tuned in video nearby, etc. then they are allowed to assume that you do in fact watch TV. Technically, they need to get the police involved in order to get a warrant to enter the premises unless they can actually see or hear you watching TV.
My experience on this in practice is divided, though.
Personally, when I first moved into my new house I decided I didn't want to watch TV for about a year. I simply wrote to them saying that I'd de-tuned the set and that I only used the TV with a SCART connection to my DVD player. They wrote back saying they'd come round and check, but they never did.
I know of other people that have been continually hassled by the TV licensing people. They visited one friend about 3 days after she moved in when everything was still in boxes. She said she didn't have a TV and allowed them in the house to check. 2 days later they appeared again because they didn't believe her the first time ("How can anybody not have a TV?" and "It was probably still packed") and again she let them in to check and by now everything was unpacked and still there was no TV. Despite that, they came round again on the next day to check again. She told them to get lost and they were never seen again.
Another friend hasn't had a TV for about the 14 years I've known him. For about the first 5 years, they sent him a threatening letter every year, each time he responded simply that he didn't have a TV. He hasn't mentioned it recently, so I guess they gave up.
So, it appears being proactive and telling them outright that you have a TV but it can't receive broadcasts is sufficient or maybe I just slipped through their intimidation loophole. Hard to tell. In any case, now that people can download shows from the BBC directly via a computer, there's been talk of turning it into a license for "anything capable of watching TV at all" including internet-capable PCs. This has met with a lot of resistance (obviously), although I'm sure there are many people who do think it's OK to download TV shows via iplayer without actually owning a TV license.
HACF?
OK, I'm gonna bite as no-one else has so far...
Demo versions of software are just that - meant so you can test out the software to see if it fits your needs. If you're going to be using this software year after year to teach a course at university, you should get a licence, one per user. Obviously, this makes more sense if it's installed on a university machine, in which case what platform they're using is irrelevant anyway. Alternatively, if you really want the students to install it on their own machines, why not contact the vendor and ask them if they'll license it for educational use so it covers the students for the duration of the time they're on that course / degree / whatever.
If you're not willing the license the software you want to use for teaching, then you'd be best to look at open source. As numerous people have suggested, spice is an option and has been around for a long time now. It's also very widely used in this field, so not only would the students get it for free and able to keep it, you'd be teaching them skills they can re-use rather than teaching them how to use proprietary software.
Why does this guy think people will miss Vista? Because he expects Windows 7 to piss people off worse than Vista?
"Oh, if only we had Vista then we'd be able to run more than 3 applications at once..." *sigh*
git add .
git commit -a -m sync
git pull
git push
will add any new files to the repository and synchronise with the repository. It works pretty well, except for when a binary file has been modified on 2 computers as then you need to drop to the shell to resolve the merge. But I use it to sync between my desktop, laptop, netbook and server and never had any problems.
That 50p extra per month they want to charge me is exactly the 50p they gave me back a few months ago when they dropped the VAT on my £20 pcm broadband bill from £3 to £2.50. And now they want that back...
Oh wait, aren't they getting that back in December when they hike the VAT rate back up again? And that's assuming that it only goes back up to 17.5% rather than the 20% everyone's expecting... :(
New labour, new (stealth) taxes.
I have on a number of occasions asked a company why they've given my e-mail address to another company and they seem very surprised when there realise they've been caught out.
Doing it this way also makes it very easy to block e-mail from any address that has been compromised and is being used for spam.
After about 6 months of fairly heavy use (with only 32Mb RAM I needed to swap to flash), one day the USB flash drive just stopped working, and it's no longer even detected when I plug it into any system now.
I'd done all the obvious things such as mounting with noatime and have the swapiness to 0, but ultimately discovered that flash really doesn't like being constantly written to.
Fortunately, even large capacity USB sticks are pretty cheap, so they're still quite good for as long as they last.
I've just sent an email to the Conservative Party (via their website) telling them that they are right, stick to their guns. I've told them we are a small UK developer who rely on OSS from major vendors to deliver a cost effective product
Then surely you've misread the article. They are arguing against OSS saying that it is insecure and slow to be patched.
Only from outside the UK. We in the UK don't get advertisements because we've already paid for it.
How about we criticise the summary instead. It's experimenters not "experimentalists"... An experimentalist is surely someone who's prejudiced against experimental things...
[...] So they blame Linux instead of them selves for such a half-ass implementation of sending out packets from multiple threads with a single socket.[...]
Sorry for my ranting, but it just pisses me off when moron programmers blame the operating system for their own stupidity.
The point is that it wasn't their own stupidity. They took someone's open source project and improved it so it could better handle high loads. I don't see them blaming Linux, I see them recognising the limitations of the system they are using and coming up with a solution and then sharing it. Normally, this is cause to say "Yay! Open source!" rather than calling them "moron programmers".
I thought of this as apparently in December 2005, Sony had shipped over 1.87 billion games and surely they can't have been outdone by AOL...
I too discovered Wingware when I tried out a few IDEs for Python. It was by far the best of the ones I tried, and they even let you use it free on open source projects... Well worth trying out.
That's considered normal for games in most PAL territories...
Oh, and I forgot to mention that books are zero-rated in the UK, both for VAT and import duty.
I too buy almost all my books from amazon.com instead of amazon.co.uk. Even factoring in shipping of $7.98 on each order for a single book compared to free shipping from the UK, it's still usually at least 10% cheaper to buy from the US, even for books printed in the UK itself.
A recent example I've ordered is "Real-Time Rendering, Third Edition" which is $59.63 from amazon.com, shipping takes it up to $67.71 or £34.19. The same book here from amazon.co.uk is £49.88.
I've complained many times about this to amazon.co.uk who just say they operate independently. The only way I can vote is to buy from the US store consistently, but even that doesn't seem to make them change their policies. Well, actually it does. It now offers the opportunity to pay in GBP from amazon.com, for a healthy 5% more than the credit card charges for the conversion of course...
This is hardly the first 2-player homebrew game on the PS3.
I released my Puzzle Bobble clone pubble almost a year ago. That actually supports 2-5 players.
What's more, it's open-source and written in Python using my PS3 2D sprite library, python-ps3 which has a good library of SPU-accelerated sprite and alpha-blending routines, wireless sixaxis support and rumble support on a dualshock 3. I'm currently working on 3D rasterisation too, although that will be some months off yet...
Actually, this article is almost completely fallacious... Let's look at the facts quoted:
McGrattan boasts that 70% to 80% of the time, she can look at a chunk of computer code and tell if it was written by a man or a woman.
...at Ingres because only about 20% of the engineers are women, McGrattan says. (Most of them are in jobs involving quality assurance or adapting the product to a new locale, she says, and not the "heavy lifting" of writing code.)So, basically, she'd get a higher score if she guessed "man" every time than if she tries to be clever. Clearly, then, she does think some men's code looks like it's been written by a woman, which invalidates to point of the article.
Agreed. I've been using andLinux for some weeks now and it's integration with Windows is very good indeed.
Bad form to reply to my own post, but having just looked at the patent it is also somewhat different to Linux patch mechanism anyway. Claim 20 involves checking the filename of currently running modules, claim 21 invloves checking a hash, etc... That said, the patent basically describes simple patching of a function entry points with a few consitency checks. There is a ton of prior art on this, as someone else mentioned the Amiga OS was designed for this, it was common on Mac extensions in the 80s, it's the basic mechanism for DOS-based TSRs and viruses, etc... It's also clearly not non-obvious.
Solaris also supported in-place kernel patching a long while before this patent - I remember learning about it in 1997, but I think it had existed for quite some time before this.