First, edit your cookies file and take out all the cookies you don't want.
Second, copy the cookies file somewhere else.
Third, write a script, batch file, etc. to copy the copied cookies.txt into your browser's directory before you run your browser.
Fourth, if you find a site thta gives you a cookie you want, copy that line to the cookies.txt file that gets copied over.
That way, while you *do* get cookies, and they *do* get set and sent back to whatever site, every time you open up your browser, you effectively become a new person since there's no cookie to track you between sessions anymore.
You can also get it in.PDF format if you give B&N your email address. It's the choice that scrolls off the page (on lower-res monitors). Under the rocket eBook link.
Just tell your mailer to put everything from barnesandnoble.com in/dev/null and they won't bother you ever again.
Nobody said you had to write in html 4.0 here. Yes, the newer spec requires certain things like that. HTML 1.0 on the other hand, had lots less to worry about.
This morning, I was looking for a keyboard file at microsoft's page, and noticed that the main page said something like 'this page is under construction' which is obviously BS: they'd just copy the new HTML over, and there'd be no downtime. Besides, none of the rest of the site was affected...wonder what's up.
Actually, contrary to what the article says, there is no such product. I'm not saying you're lying (or even that techweb is lying), since it's such an old article. Anyway, the only link on the page to the player goes to www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/download/uni x.html which appears innocent enough, except that that bounces to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/downl oad/default.asp which in turn bounces to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/en/do wnload/Win32Otherx86.asp (just like you'd expect from microsoft...). THAT page has a link for 'other operating systems' since it takes you to a windows-only download page (again, figures, especially since the original link was for unix!!)
The 'other operating systems' page lists versions for NT4, 98, 95, win3.x (As if any machine running win3.x would play anything but mono sound anyway...). Way at the bottom, there's a player for the mac. (version 6.3, not 6.4 like the rest of them). *NOWHERE* is there a linux version.
From opendvd.org - a message written to them and posted:
"Look, it's like this - a DVD Movie is basically just a message [the movie] written in secret code on a piece of paper. To read the message [watch the movie,] you need a secret decoder ring. To be a pirate, you need a photocopier, but you don't need a decoder ring because you don't really care what the secret message is, as long as your photocopier makes nice, crisp copies that your client (who has a decoder ring) can read. All these guys did was make a decoder ring that works under linux, because all the commercial decoder rings only run on Windows [or standalone DVD players."
The issue of whether DeCSS (and its ilk) help pirates has been bandied about a bit. Regardless of DVD players not reading certain sectors or not, and the fact that blank DVDs are more expensive than ones w/movies on them, this should clarify the issue some and gives a good analogy to share with (non-geek) friends.
On the other hand, the current and prospective harm to the Plaintiff, if the Court does not enjoin the display of their trade secret, will be irreparable. It is undisputed that the Plaintiff's predecessor-in-interest expended considerable time, effort and money in creating the intellectual property at issue in order to protect the copyrighted information contained on DVDs. As Plaintiff conceded at the hearing on the TRO, once this information gets into the hands of an innocent party, the Plaintiff loses their ability to enjoin the use of their trade secret. If the Court does not immediately enjoin the posting of this proprietary information, the Plaintiff's right to protect this information as secret will surely be lost, given the current power of the Internet to disseminate information and the Defendants' stated determination to do so. Religious Technology Center v. Netcom on-Line.com (N.D. Cal 1995) 923 F.Supp, 1231 In that event, the protection afforded by the encryption system licenced by the Plaintiff, whether to limit DVD hardware and software suppliers or to control unauthorized copying and distribution of DVD content will become completely meaningless.
Well, he got it partly right. "Given the power of the internet <...." Isn't he paying attention to what he's saying?!? Given the power of the internet and given distribution approximately since release (end of Oct.) and certainly since the first legal action (end of Nov.), there's no way in hell all the restraining orders in the world will stop the dissemination of the information.
And what's this about 'innocent parties'?!? Aren't we all innocent until proven guilty? Regardless of you all, what about me? I don't even own a DVD player for god's sake! (neither a stereo component OR a PC drive) How much more innocent could I be? And yes, I have a copy of DeCSS, and LiViD, and a few other things, just so if they win this rediculous thing, I can still give people copies.
Note to the DVD-CCA: The cat's out of the bag folks! Now go home and stop embarrassing yourselves, please. Yup. Your precious trade secret is a secret now within a community of millions--not much of a secret, eh? You're all powerless in this case. Sucks, doesn't it? We hate it too, which is why we're writing software to play DVDs on Linux. Yup, to play them.
If by electronic mail: Send to ``1201@loc.gov' '' a message containing the name of the person making the submission, his or her title, organization, mailing address, telephone number, telefax number and e-mail address. The message should also identify the document clearly as either a comment or reply comment. The document itself must be sent as a MIME attachment, and must be in a single file in either Adobe Portable Document File (PDF) format (preferred), or in Microsoft Word Version 7.0 or earlier, or in WordPerfect 7 or earlier.
If by regular mail or hand delivery: Send, to the appropriate address listed above, two copies, each on a 3.5-inch write-protected diskette, labeled with the name of the person making the submission, his or her title and organization. The document tself must be in a single file in either Adobe Portable Document File (PDF) format (preferred), or in Microsoft Word Version 7.0 or earlier, or in WordPerfect Version 7 or earlier.
Anyone who is unable to submit a comment in electronic form should submit an original and fifteen paper copies by hand or by mail to the appropriate address listed above. It may not be feasible for the Office to place these comments on its website.
All written comments (in electronic or nonelectronic form) should contain the name of the person making the submission, his or her title, organization, mailing address, telephone number, telefax number and e-mail address.
They don't want plain emails people. If you send comments, please try to put them in the preferred formats. Please try to write concisely and stick to the DMCA topic, not copyrights or DVD in general.
First: I can understand their concern that the agreement be as binding as possible. This is most effeciently guaranteed by limiting users to those 18 years of age or older.
Second: If I were to violate the license (and were 18- years old) I would not care about a clause saying I was not allowed to have the software in the first place. If I'm violating one part of the agreement, why not both?
Third: What about the rest of the license. If you live in Canada, you are bound by the laws of Quebec. Anywhere else however, and you are bound by the laws in Ireland?!? What particular Irish law does Corel have in mind here? Is Corel based in Ireland, and I just haven't heard about it yet?
Fourth: "All right, title and interest in the Software Programs, including source code, documentation, appearance, structure and organization, are held by Corel Corporation, Corel Corporation Limited, and others and are protected by copyright and other laws." Which is reasonable until you remember how "software programs" was defined: "Corel LINUX is a modular operating system made up of individual software components that were created by various individuals and entities ("Software Programs")." This definition clearly includes GPL'd code, the rights to which, by definition, cannot be "held by Corel Corporation, Corel Corporation Limited, and others" as the license says.
These concerns have been made known to Corel via email. I will keep you all posted re their response.
If the patent office is unable to properly review patent applications because of a lack of funding, have the corporations filing patents pay to have them reviewed. Patents that is, not THEIR patents per se.
If the patent office properly reviewed every patent, an enormous backlog would inevitably result. This would pressure companies to do something about it because their pet patents would not be reviewed until years after they were filed. The obvious recourse is to pay to have their patents reviewed. This has obvious problems of favoritism, so companies should be given the option of 'donating' money to the USPTO to have patents reviewed. Note, not their own. Corporate donations would be anonymised by being put into a big pool of available cash (by government agents not affiliated with the USPTO). Therefore, the individuals most affected by the lack of sufficient funding (companies that wouldn't get their patents) would provide the necessary funding for purely selfish reasons. Another victory for capitalism. USPTO employees could be paid a reasonable salary and be motivated to do their job well by pay raises and other options (read: treated like real employees), all on the companies' tab.
This would also help the lone entrepreneur (read: person-without-enormous-corporate-financial-backin g). Because the corporate donations would improve the quality of patent review, the entrepreneur would be assured a more fair evaluation of his or her work.
This system combines the central idea of capitalism (you pay what you consider reasonable for a service rendered) with the traditional idea of the patent office (government protection of ideas) while avoiding many of the current flaws in the patent application process (rubber-stamp approval of rediculous patents).
I don't know about the rest of you, but 'back in the day' when I had no better place to put a webpage than on Geocities, I too was required to register. I'm sure they kept every scrap of information I gave them, and I'd like them to know that it was all bullshit.
According to geocities, my name is John A. Doe. I live at 1234 main street, LA California. I make over $150,000 per year, am married, and am female.
Though I'm not going to tell you the truth either, I will say that I'm male, live far far away from LA california, make a small fraction of the listed income, am not married, and don't even know anyone whose initials are JAD.
The USPS is happy to provide the zip+4 address that many registration programs require to verify that you really do live there. Go to http://www.usps.gov/ncsc/lookups/lookup_zip+4.html and give them an address. Many sites also require you to enter an area code for similar reasons. This is also easily spoofed. Go to http://www.555-1212.com/area_codes.html and list the place you've decided to tell them you live at. Some place (LA, for example) have several area codes. All will be listed, and you'll have to try them until they work. For example, LA has 323, 213, 310, and 424 so you'll be shooting in the dark. Fortunately, not many places are as big as LA, and if it's only got 4 area codes, your favorite burg likely has only 1.
In short, while I'm distressed by the business practice of grabbing what info they can however they can so you don't know about it, I've developed ways to give them verifiable but totally useless information to satisfy registration requirements. As a matter of course, I provide such bogus information even to reputable institutions like the new york times, where I have over a half-dozen registrations for myself and various friends.
But wait! you say. What about scams where I have to provide an email address so I can get a registration key? That brings us back to geocities. Or hotmail. Or any one of a hundred different similar services. Hotmail and their ilk are probably the best in this instance because they're webmail (as opposed to geocities' pop server, which while slow is very nice if it's your main email address) and don't require any re-configuring of your mail settings to get at. Send the key there. Then ignore all the mail you get. If you don't use the service anymore, it'll delete you. If you do keep using it, just ignore the junk mail that piles up and grab the keys you need.
The OS needs to be usable to a new user - on the same level as Windows.
Linux needs to be easy to install, easy to uninstall, able to sense hardware without the user needing to open the PC to read numbers off of chips.
Windows is easy to install and uninstall?!? While I agree that a prettier and better-explained (what're services, and why do I need them running at startup, for example) installer would be nice, the option exists to have linux pre-installed. I doubt many windows users could install and configure windows unless (miraculously) it ran flawlessly. Linux needs to support the latest and greatest hardware, like USB (USB2), firewire, parallel port scanners, WinModems... USB is (more or less) here. USB2 will follow. Firewire is less important than you seem to think. Parallel port scanners? Parallel ports won't even be around in a few years. USB and its ilk are more important. Linux needs to have GAMES! Linux has a few games, and will get more when we can find more users. It's not a matter of the linux community here, we have to rely on others for our games.
I'd comment on a few more of your points, but it's my birthday, and I'm going to celebrate now. -ottffssent
The gene in question (or something similar) is patched into E. coli all the time in HS and college biology classes. The resulting bacteria sit in a suspension and do not glow. Only when the flask is shaken do they glow, because that's the only time they get enough oxygen to metabolize enough energy.
A quick look at the average xmas tree configuration reveals: 1) The trees are cut and screwed into a base. 2) The screws puncture the phloem (or whatever it's called) that carries the actual nutrients. 3) In combination with these two factors, most trees are put in plain water, which has precious little energy in it.
Seems to me that any tree that's going to glow reasonably well is going to have to be at least in miracle-gro, and probably in something more special than that to get any real benefit.
Not only that, but these are first-run products. My guess is that people will buy them, set them up, wonder why they don't glow, call the company, get told to feed them something nutritious, and be disappointed when they only glow a little bit.
I won't deny the neatness factor of staying up until 1 in the morning and turning all the lights off for an hour so your eyes adjust enough to see your tree glow, but don't expect anything spectacular for your $300, folks!
So it's not entirely about speed but about how the strokes are physically distributed. It's not hard to see that a design which distributes the load to prevent jamming could also have a beneficial effect on typing efficiency.
So it's entirely about how the strokes are physically distributed: They're NOT. Every key (regardless of where it is on the keyboard or in the typewriter) is on a lever which hits the paper at EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE. It's not hard to see that a design which has all the keys going to the same place has to slow typists down to prevent jaming, having a deliberately detrimental effect on typing efficiency.
Now that we've cleared up your obvious fallacy, let me point out that the plan didn't work. Typists were capable of typing just as fast with the qwerty keyboard, it just took them a month or so to be re-trained. Accuracy is what suffered. The typists' hands suffered. Society also suffered, but they don't seem to want to acknowledge it.
As a dvorak typist, I can attest to the benefits of this layout. Though there is some hastle using other peoples' computers b/c of not knowing qwerty, I must say that it's still worth it. I have never known qwerty; I learned dvorak as my 'first language' at the age of 10. Though it's been a while since then and I can't be sure, I would estimate that it took about 2 months of practicing about a half hour a day to be able to type 40-50 wpm. Now (I don't practice, only type when there's a reason to) I type about 80wpm with very few errors. My main reason for continuing to use the dvorak keyboard is because I'm not interested in RSI or carpal tunnel syndrome, which both my parents had to have surgery for.
To address Cliff's query diretly, YES, DVORAK keyboards are available. DvortyBoards makes a keyboard that is hard-wired for both dvorak and qwerty. The keyboard I use is from their company, though it's an older model. It is a MS Natural-esque keyboard with a rocker switch to switch from dvorak to qwerty. The newer model has an extra key (actually, it's borrowed from one of the legacy keys though I can't remember which one) that switches.
For those of you using linux, this keyboard is an excellent choice. There is no need to mess with keysym files, set up bash (csh, tsch, sh, etc.) and X separately, just hit the toggle key. For windows users, no need to screw around with the control panels or bitch at MS when you use a dos app (dos requires a separate driver, and MS didn't think to trap keyboard events and convert to the appropriate keyboard layout before passing the key to the dos app, so all of dos is in qwerty).
I'd cite statistics / etc. to show that dvorak is the superior layout but statistics can be so easily argued, so I'll just say that only a few thousand words can be typed on the qwerty keyboard without moving fingers to the top or bottom rows. With dvorak, over 30,000 words can be typed without moving the hands.
The article says that this device has a 10-second anti-shock buffer. Hopefully, that is 10 seconds worth of data, not 10 seconds of audio. Assuming 128kbps (about the best you'll be able to hear through headphones), a buffer capable of holding 10 seconds of CD audio can really hold about 2 minutes of audio if it's compressed as an MP3.
To consider further, if the buffer can hold that much, the CD only needs to read 10 seconds' worth of data every 2 minutes. Assuming the CD drives in a portable like that run at about 2x (otherwise, how would a conventional CD player fill up that buffer), that means the MP3 player only needs to be able to read the CD for 5 seconds out of every 2 minutes. That sounds like a MUCH better idea than to try to pack in 30 or 40 seconds worth of buffer in a regular CD player. It probably saves the batteries too. Saves them for the chip decoding the MP3.
Which brings me to my final thought: what's the runtime on these things? Portable CD players now will run anywhere from about 10-20 hours, depending on buffer size, shock, batteries, etc.
Personally, I would recommend the Xing technology mp3 encoder. It is available for linux, and costs about $20. On a P-233 w/32mb ram, running the windows version under win95, it encodes at approx. 1.5X on an IDE drive. Bitrate variable from 8 - 256 kpbs as.mp3, and up to 384kpbs as.mp2. Anything higher than about 192kpbs is overkill: you can't tell the difference even on excellent speakers. Even then, the differences are only noticeable in classical or other similar music with more pure tones.
Crack this site!?! Why? It's already broken. Go check out the page with the rules on it. It looks to me like the page begins with a footer, followed by the begining of the page. Also, the javascript is broken.
(from Netscape 4.5) JavaScript Error: http://www.windows2000test.com/ground_rules.htm, line 91:
Windows is not defined. (end Netscape)
I'm sure many of us wish that were true!
Despite deficiencies in the HTML, microsoft is to be commended for their effort to solicit outside assistance, and beaten over the head with a dead cow for too little, too late. If win2k is anything like the rest of the MS products we know and love, it'll take a damn sight longer than 5 months to fix it, regardless of how much we help them.
On a related note, why do we care? Idea for next poll: who cares about win2k? I don't. My computer's coming in a few months, and it won't ever have windows-anything on it. I certainly don't want win2k. If I ever did put windows on it, it'd be win95 so I don't have to bother with all the shit M$ lumped into 98 and is sure to include with 2000.
Well, that was supposed to be somewhat well-reasoned and insightful, and it turned into a rant. Oh well...I feel better now, and thanks for reading it:)
/. is not tracking your reading habits, it is tracking ywwg's habits.
Granted that you may be interested in your privacy but may also have entered personal information into/.'s user database, you can delete your user and become a 'named' AC by becoming a different user totally unrelated to your real self. As long as your username does not connect with yourself, you have your privacy.
You have stated that you trust/. to be responsable with their database, and inherent in this trust would be the trust that they would not cross-index their database with anyone else's to come up with a useful profile. (In an MS-esque way) It seems to me that/.'s gathering of data is in no way a threat to privacy because the data is used purely internally. Never-the-less, I think there should also be an "I don't want/. collecting data on me" button in preferences. Perhaps this could be keyed to the "I don't want to be a moderator" button because it seems one is used strictly for determining eligibility for the other.
If this is truly an issue for you (or others) simply remain an AC and accept the -1 relative priority. You'll just have to write better comments to be heard. -12345678910
Slashdot Mirror
First, edit your cookies file and take out all the cookies you don't want.
Second, copy the cookies file somewhere else.
Third, write a script, batch file, etc. to copy the copied cookies.txt into your browser's directory before you run your browser.
Fourth, if you find a site thta gives you a cookie you want, copy that line to the cookies.txt file that gets copied over.
That way, while you *do* get cookies, and they *do* get set and sent back to whatever site, every time you open up your browser, you effectively become a new person since there's no cookie to track you between sessions anymore.
You can also get it in .PDF format if you give B&N your email address. It's the choice that scrolls off the page (on lower-res monitors). Under the rocket eBook link.
/dev/null and they won't bother you ever again.
Just tell your mailer to put everything from barnesandnoble.com in
DTD and alt= statements?
Nobody said you had to write in html 4.0 here. Yes, the newer spec requires certain things like that. HTML 1.0 on the other hand, had lots less to worry about.
This morning, I was looking for a keyboard file at microsoft's page, and noticed that the main page said something like 'this page is under construction' which is obviously BS: they'd just copy the new HTML over, and there'd be no downtime. Besides, none of the rest of the site was affected...wonder what's up.
Actually, contrary to what the article says, there is no such product. I'm not saying you're lying (or even that techweb is lying), since it's such an old article. Anyway, the only link on the page to the player goes to www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/download/uni x.html which appears innocent enough, except that that bounces to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/downl oad/default.asp which in turn bounces to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/en/do wnload/Win32Otherx86.asp (just like you'd expect from microsoft...). THAT page has a link for 'other operating systems' since it takes you to a windows-only download page (again, figures, especially since the original link was for unix!!)
The 'other operating systems' page lists versions for NT4, 98, 95, win3.x (As if any machine running win3.x would play anything but mono sound anyway...). Way at the bottom, there's a player for the mac. (version 6.3, not 6.4 like the rest of them). *NOWHERE* is there a linux version.
"Look, it's like this - a DVD Movie is basically just a message [the movie] written in secret code on a piece of paper. To read the message [watch the movie,] you need a secret decoder ring. To be a pirate, you need a photocopier, but you don't need a decoder ring because you don't really care what the secret message is, as long as your photocopier makes nice, crisp copies that your client (who has a decoder ring) can read. All these guys did was make a decoder ring that works under linux, because all the commercial decoder rings only run on Windows [or standalone DVD players."
The issue of whether DeCSS (and its ilk) help pirates has been bandied about a bit. Regardless of DVD players not reading certain sectors or not, and the fact that blank DVDs are more expensive than ones w/movies on them, this should clarify the issue some and gives a good analogy to share with (non-geek) friends.
On the other hand, the current and prospective harm to the Plaintiff, if the Court does not enjoin the display of their trade secret, will be irreparable. It is undisputed that the Plaintiff's predecessor-in-interest expended considerable time, effort and money in creating the intellectual property at issue in order to protect the copyrighted information contained on DVDs. As Plaintiff conceded at the hearing on the TRO, once this information gets into the hands of an innocent party, the Plaintiff loses their ability to enjoin the use of their trade secret. If the Court does not immediately enjoin the posting of this proprietary information, the Plaintiff's right to protect this information as secret will surely be lost, given the current power of the Internet to disseminate information and the Defendants' stated determination to do so. Religious Technology Center v. Netcom on-Line.com (N.D. Cal 1995) 923 F.Supp, 1231 In that event, the protection afforded by the encryption system licenced by the Plaintiff, whether to limit DVD hardware and software suppliers or to control unauthorized copying and distribution of DVD content will become completely meaningless.
Well, he got it partly right. "Given the power of the internet <...." Isn't he paying attention to what he's saying?!? Given the power of the internet and given distribution approximately since release (end of Oct.) and certainly since the first legal action (end of Nov.), there's no way in hell all the restraining orders in the world will stop the dissemination of the information.
And what's this about 'innocent parties'?!? Aren't we all innocent until proven guilty? Regardless of you all, what about me? I don't even own a DVD player for god's sake! (neither a stereo component OR a PC drive) How much more innocent could I be? And yes, I have a copy of DeCSS, and LiViD, and a few other things, just so if they win this rediculous thing, I can still give people copies.
Note to the DVD-CCA:
The cat's out of the bag folks! Now go home and stop embarrassing yourselves, please. Yup. Your precious trade secret is a secret now within a community of millions--not much of a secret, eh? You're all powerless in this case. Sucks, doesn't it? We hate it too, which is why we're writing software to play DVDs on Linux. Yup, to play them.
If by electronic mail: Send to ``1201@loc.gov' '' a message containing the name of the person making the submission, his or her title, organization, mailing address, telephone number, telefax number and e-mail address. The message should also identify the document clearly as either a comment or reply comment. The document itself must be sent as a MIME attachment, and must be in a single file in either Adobe Portable Document File (PDF) format (preferred), or in Microsoft Word Version 7.0 or earlier, or in WordPerfect 7 or earlier.
If by regular mail or hand delivery: Send, to the appropriate address listed above, two copies, each on a 3.5-inch write-protected diskette, labeled with the name of the person making the submission, his or her title and organization. The document tself must be in a single file in either Adobe Portable Document File (PDF) format (preferred), or in Microsoft Word Version 7.0 or earlier, or in WordPerfect Version 7 or earlier.
Anyone who is unable to submit a comment in electronic form should submit an original and fifteen paper copies by hand or by mail to the appropriate address listed above. It may not be feasible for the Office to place these comments on its website.
All written comments (in electronic or nonelectronic form) should contain the name of the person making the submission, his or her title, organization, mailing address, telephone number, telefax number and e-mail address.
They don't want plain emails people. If you send comments, please try to put them in the preferred formats. Please try to write concisely and stick to the DMCA topic, not copyrights or DVD in general.
First: I can understand their concern that the agreement be as binding as possible. This is most effeciently guaranteed by limiting users to those 18 years of age or older.
Second: If I were to violate the license (and were 18- years old) I would not care about a clause saying I was not allowed to have the software in the first place. If I'm violating one part of the agreement, why not both?
Third: What about the rest of the license. If you live in Canada, you are bound by the laws of Quebec. Anywhere else however, and you are bound by the laws in Ireland?!? What particular Irish law does Corel have in mind here? Is Corel based in Ireland, and I just haven't heard about it yet?
Fourth: "All right, title and interest in the Software Programs, including source code, documentation, appearance, structure and organization, are held by Corel Corporation, Corel Corporation Limited, and others and are protected by copyright and other laws." Which is reasonable until you remember how "software programs" was defined: "Corel LINUX is a modular operating system made up of individual software components that were created by various individuals and entities ("Software Programs")." This definition clearly includes GPL'd code, the rights to which, by definition, cannot be "held by Corel Corporation, Corel Corporation Limited, and others" as the license says.
These concerns have been made known to Corel via email. I will keep you all posted re their response.
If the patent office is unable to properly review patent applications because of a lack of funding, have the corporations filing patents pay to have them reviewed. Patents that is, not THEIR patents per se.
n g). Because the corporate donations would improve the quality of patent review, the entrepreneur would be assured a more fair evaluation of his or her work.
If the patent office properly reviewed every patent, an enormous backlog would inevitably result. This would pressure companies to do something about it because their pet patents would not be reviewed until years after they were filed. The obvious recourse is to pay to have their patents reviewed. This has obvious problems of favoritism, so companies should be given the option of 'donating' money to the USPTO to have patents reviewed. Note, not their own. Corporate donations would be anonymised by being put into a big pool of available cash (by government agents not affiliated with the USPTO). Therefore, the individuals most affected by the lack of sufficient funding (companies that wouldn't get their patents) would provide the necessary funding for purely selfish reasons. Another victory for capitalism. USPTO employees could be paid a reasonable salary and be motivated to do their job well by pay raises and other options (read: treated like real employees), all on the companies' tab.
This would also help the lone entrepreneur (read: person-without-enormous-corporate-financial-backi
This system combines the central idea of capitalism (you pay what you consider reasonable for a service rendered) with the traditional idea of the patent office (government protection of ideas) while avoiding many of the current flaws in the patent application process (rubber-stamp approval of rediculous patents).
I don't know about the rest of you, but 'back in the day' when I had no better place to put a webpage than on Geocities, I too was required to register. I'm sure they kept every scrap of information I gave them, and I'd like them to know that it was all bullshit.
/lookup_zip+4.html and give them an address. Many sites also require you to enter an area code for similar reasons. This is also easily spoofed. Go to http://www.555-1212.com/area_codes.html and list the place you've decided to tell them you live at. Some place (LA, for example) have several area codes. All will be listed, and you'll have to try them until they work. For example, LA has 323, 213, 310, and 424 so you'll be shooting in the dark. Fortunately, not many places are as big as LA, and if it's only got 4 area codes, your favorite burg likely has only 1.
According to geocities, my name is John A. Doe. I live at 1234 main street, LA California. I make over $150,000 per year, am married, and am female.
Though I'm not going to tell you the truth either, I will say that I'm male, live far far away from LA california, make a small fraction of the listed income, am not married, and don't even know anyone whose initials are JAD.
The USPS is happy to provide the zip+4 address that many registration programs require to verify that you really do live there. Go to http://www.usps.gov/ncsc/lookups
In short, while I'm distressed by the business practice of grabbing what info they can however they can so you don't know about it, I've developed ways to give them verifiable but totally useless information to satisfy registration requirements. As a matter of course, I provide such bogus information even to reputable institutions like the new york times, where I have over a half-dozen registrations for myself and various friends.
But wait! you say. What about scams where I have to provide an email address so I can get a registration key? That brings us back to geocities. Or hotmail. Or any one of a hundred different similar services. Hotmail and their ilk are probably the best in this instance because they're webmail (as opposed to geocities' pop server, which while slow is very nice if it's your main email address) and don't require any re-configuring of your mail settings to get at. Send the key there. Then ignore all the mail you get. If you don't use the service anymore, it'll delete you. If you do keep using it, just ignore the junk mail that piles up and grab the keys you need.
The OS needs to be usable to a new user - on the same level as Windows.
Linux needs to be easy to install, easy to uninstall, able to sense hardware without the user needing to open the PC to read numbers off of chips.
Windows is easy to install and uninstall?!? While I agree that a prettier and better-explained (what're services, and why do I need them running at startup, for example) installer would be nice, the option exists to have linux pre-installed. I doubt many windows users could install and configure windows unless (miraculously) it ran flawlessly.
Linux needs to support the latest and greatest hardware, like USB (USB2), firewire, parallel port scanners, WinModems...
USB is (more or less) here. USB2 will follow. Firewire is less important than you seem to think. Parallel port scanners? Parallel ports won't even be around in a few years. USB and its ilk are more important.
Linux needs to have GAMES!
Linux has a few games, and will get more when we can find more users. It's not a matter of the linux community here, we have to rely on others for our games.
I'd comment on a few more of your points, but it's my birthday, and I'm going to celebrate now. -ottffssent
The gene in question (or something similar) is patched into E. coli all the time in HS and college biology classes. The resulting bacteria sit in a suspension and do not glow. Only when the flask is shaken do they glow, because that's the only time they get enough oxygen to metabolize enough energy.
A quick look at the average xmas tree configuration reveals:
1) The trees are cut and screwed into a base.
2) The screws puncture the phloem (or whatever it's called) that carries the actual nutrients.
3) In combination with these two factors, most trees are put in plain water, which has precious little energy in it.
Seems to me that any tree that's going to glow reasonably well is going to have to be at least in miracle-gro, and probably in something more special than that to get any real benefit.
Not only that, but these are first-run products. My guess is that people will buy them, set them up, wonder why they don't glow, call the company, get told to feed them something nutritious, and be disappointed when they only glow a little bit.
I won't deny the neatness factor of staying up until 1 in the morning and turning all the lights off for an hour so your eyes adjust enough to see your tree glow, but don't expect anything spectacular for your $300, folks!
So it's not entirely about speed but about how the strokes are physically distributed. It's not hard to see that a design which distributes the load to prevent jamming could also have a beneficial effect on typing efficiency.
So it's entirely about how the strokes are physically distributed: They're NOT. Every key (regardless of where it is on the keyboard or in the typewriter) is on a lever which hits the paper at EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE. It's not hard to see that a design which has all the keys going to the same place has to slow typists down to prevent jaming, having a deliberately detrimental effect on typing efficiency.
Now that we've cleared up your obvious fallacy, let me point out that the plan didn't work. Typists were capable of typing just as fast with the qwerty keyboard, it just took them a month or so to be re-trained. Accuracy is what suffered. The typists' hands suffered. Society also suffered, but they don't seem to want to acknowledge it.
As a dvorak typist, I can attest to the benefits of this layout. Though there is some hastle using other peoples' computers b/c of not knowing qwerty, I must say that it's still worth it. I have never known qwerty; I learned dvorak as my 'first language' at the age of 10. Though it's been a while since then and I can't be sure, I would estimate that it took about 2 months of practicing about a half hour a day to be able to type 40-50 wpm. Now (I don't practice, only type when there's a reason to) I type about 80wpm with very few errors. My main reason for continuing to use the dvorak keyboard is because I'm not interested in RSI or carpal tunnel syndrome, which both my parents had to have surgery for.
To address Cliff's query diretly, YES, DVORAK keyboards are available. DvortyBoards makes a keyboard that is hard-wired for both dvorak and qwerty. The keyboard I use is from their company, though it's an older model. It is a MS Natural-esque keyboard with a rocker switch to switch from dvorak to qwerty. The newer model has an extra key (actually, it's borrowed from one of the legacy keys though I can't remember which one) that switches.
For those of you using linux, this keyboard is an excellent choice. There is no need to mess with keysym files, set up bash (csh, tsch, sh, etc.) and X separately, just hit the toggle key.
For windows users, no need to screw around with the control panels or bitch at MS when you use a dos app (dos requires a separate driver, and MS didn't think to trap keyboard events and convert to the appropriate keyboard layout before passing the key to the dos app, so all of dos is in qwerty).
I'd cite statistics / etc. to show that dvorak is the superior layout but statistics can be so easily argued, so I'll just say that only a few thousand words can be typed on the qwerty keyboard without moving fingers to the top or bottom rows. With dvorak, over 30,000 words can be typed without moving the hands.
The article says that this device has a 10-second anti-shock buffer. Hopefully, that is 10 seconds worth of data, not 10 seconds of audio. Assuming 128kbps (about the best you'll be able to hear through headphones), a buffer capable of holding 10 seconds of CD audio can really hold about 2 minutes of audio if it's compressed as an MP3.
To consider further, if the buffer can hold that much, the CD only needs to read 10 seconds' worth of data every 2 minutes. Assuming the CD drives in a portable like that run at about 2x (otherwise, how would a conventional CD player fill up that buffer), that means the MP3 player only needs to be able to read the CD for 5 seconds out of every 2 minutes. That sounds like a MUCH better idea than to try to pack in 30 or 40 seconds worth of buffer in a regular CD player. It probably saves the batteries too. Saves them for the chip decoding the MP3.
Which brings me to my final thought: what's the runtime on these things? Portable CD players now will run anywhere from about 10-20 hours, depending on buffer size, shock, batteries, etc.
Personally, I would recommend the Xing technology mp3 encoder. It is available for linux, and costs about $20. On a P-233 w/32mb ram, running the windows version under win95, it encodes at approx. 1.5X on an IDE drive. Bitrate variable from 8 - 256 kpbs as .mp3, and up to 384kpbs as .mp2. Anything higher than about 192kpbs is overkill: you can't tell the difference even on excellent speakers. Even then, the differences are only noticeable in classical or other similar music with more pure tones.
Crack this site!?! Why? It's already broken. Go check out the page with the rules on it. It looks to me like the page begins with a footer, followed by the begining of the page. Also, the javascript is broken.
(from Netscape 4.5) JavaScript Error:
http://www.windows2000test.com/ground_rules.htm, line 91:
Windows is not defined. (end Netscape)
I'm sure many of us wish that were true!
Despite deficiencies in the HTML, microsoft is to be commended for their effort to solicit outside assistance, and beaten over the head with a dead cow for too little, too late. If win2k is anything like the rest of the MS products we know and love, it'll take a damn sight longer than 5 months to fix it, regardless of how much we help them.
On a related note, why do we care? Idea for next poll: who cares about win2k? I don't. My computer's coming in a few months, and it won't ever have windows-anything on it. I certainly don't want win2k. If I ever did put windows on it, it'd be win95 so I don't have to bother with all the shit M$ lumped into 98 and is sure to include with 2000.
Well, that was supposed to be somewhat well-reasoned and insightful, and it turned into a rant. Oh well...I feel better now, and thanks for reading it:)
Long live the penguin!
Don't worry:
/. is not tracking your reading habits, it is tracking ywwg's habits.
/.'s user database, you can delete your user and become a 'named' AC by becoming a different user totally unrelated to your real self. As long as your username does not connect with yourself, you have your privacy.
/. to be responsable with their database, and inherent in this trust would be the trust that they would not cross-index their database with anyone else's to come up with a useful profile. (In an MS-esque way) It seems to me that /.'s gathering of data is in no way a threat to privacy because the data is used purely internally. Never-the-less, I think there should also be an "I don't want /. collecting data on me" button in preferences. Perhaps this could be keyed to the "I don't want to be a moderator" button because it seems one is used strictly for determining eligibility for the other.
Granted that you may be interested in your privacy but may also have entered personal information into
You have stated that you trust
If this is truly an issue for you (or others) simply remain an AC and accept the -1 relative priority. You'll just have to write better comments to be heard. -12345678910
unmask the John Does?!?
I have a geocities acct that lists my address in LA. I live in WI, and used various sites to get the correct ZIP and area codes for "1234 Main St."
There is no way to trace these people if they seriously want to be annonymous.
Any open source is good open source. Bring it on!