If you hear that your bank will be sending out CDs and then you receive one, I think pretty much anyone might be fooled into trying it - even most techys. After all it's not like it's a common way to distribute a trojan, so you won't be expecting one. I mean, would you scan a Knoppix CD that you got from the front cover of a Linux magazine? Probably not. But who's to say that someone hasn't replaced the cover CD for one of their own? After all - the magazine's just been sitting there in a public place for a few days with no "firewall" on it - anything could be on that disc.
You can't validate the CD even if you want to unless the bank has the bank has put the MD5 sum on their homepage. Add to that, the fact that no users will receive any kind of virus/trojan warnings and you're going to get a far higher "return on investment" that would by just spamming. For that very reason, you don't NEED to send out 1,000,000 CDs - just a few dozen to some people who have got some money. Even if only 5% of them fall for it (unrealisiticly low I think) it's still way more than the 0.01% of people that fall for phishing scams (or whatever the latest figure is).
If the whole OS is supplied on a CD, that means that when you boot from it, there will be NOTHING on the PC to validate that the CD doesn't contain a virus or trojan. While this won't be a problem for the bank's real CDs, it will be a matter of days before people start being spammed AOL style with fake CDs though their doors which look exactly like the ones their bank sent out and some with a covering later saying that it's an upgrade or something.
Because you're BOOTING from the CD rather than using it to install something, you'll be bypassing your antivirus software and software firewall and there's no way that anything can warn you that the CD you're using is a trojan. It can litterally slip in right though your letterbox and into your CD-ROM drive without any checks whereas downloaded or web based applications have to go through your firewall and be scanned by your virus scanner in order to get onto your machine.
The CD could be set up to transfer your money into some else's account and because it was done by your machine on your IP with your user/pass it will be very difficult to pursuade your bank that you didn't do it.
This is an absolutely crap idea and most of the posts above seem to miss this point entirely. These CDs better have some pretty cunning holograms on them or something and the users need to know EXACTLY what they're going to look like before they get them.
If you leave it on the same partition as all your other stuff, it will become massively fragmented and extremely slow to page stuff out to disk. I've come across machines where the swap file is in several thousand chunks.
My preferred method is to simply fix the size of the swap file instead of letting windows increase and decrease the size when it wants to. I'm pretty sure this works just as well and doesn't require a seperate partition.
You're an idiot... That doesn't affect the price of the book and isn't evil in any way. Why do you care if he makes a few cents? Hardly a reason to mod someone down. It's not like he put a banner advert up to advertise the book.
> Ironically though, the 'new' Top Gear is crap *because* it's 1 hour > (not 30 mins) of "Jeremy Clarkson and chums present a 'zoo' format' > TV programme
I strongly disagree. The old programme was just review after review of boring everyday cars. If you want car reviews - buy a car magazine, because televised reviews of normal cars are hardly entertaining.
The new program is great. The format is great, the guests are great, the humour is great - I love it.
I suspect that maybe you're not in their target demographic? I'm 26 and most people around my age seem to think the new format is much better and less like all the other car programmes/magazines.
*Some* of their articles are admittedly quite stupid, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.
In a few years Apple will invent something called a "pan wheel" which allows you to pan up and down in documents... They'll probably try and patent it as well.
> Prove me wrong after you download it and try it (for free of course).
It's horrendously slow and unstable. Three of us at work tried it and we all uninstalled it within 2 days. Typically you'd come in in the morning to find that the Copernic process was using 1GB of RAM (my machine only has 1gb of ram) and that the whole machine had locked up.
The response from support was useless - they suggested I limit the sizes of the files it cached to a couple of MB (which I'd already done anyway). When I said the problem still existed they sent me instructions for how to uninstall. So I did.
> What, exactly does it do? Find files by name? I already have a tool to do that.
What tool? Windows has something built in, but it will take half an hour to find the file but Google Desktop Search can do it in a few milliseconds.
> Tell me something neat and impressive that I can make it do,
Search your entire email in 20ms.
> I tried searching, for example, for some phrases that I know are in > some sourcecode files I have. It didn't find the files containing the code.
You were using a BETA. Ever heard that word before? The new version searches anything you want if you install the "any file plugin".
> If found stuff in a word doc that i made just to test it, but the built > in search already does that.
You can search word document you already have open, but if you have 100 word documents, it will take several minutes if not hours to search inside them for the phrase you are after. You do NOT have a tool which can search them in a sensible amount of time.
> So, what's it do? Why do I need it? Why does this need to be > integrated into every app on my desktop?
If you install things that you don't even know what they do, your computer must be so full of crap that I'm surprised you can find anything without Google Desktop!
Of course it is. That's called functional programming! What did he want them to do? Write the whole thing again from scratch in ASM?
Somewhere further down this page someone's going to write "In other news, Win32 is a thin wrapper for Assembly Language".
I'm a.NET developer and in general, I think it's great - it's a very fast platform to devlop for - and your developments run very fast.
Sure it has some problems with the fact that some parts are just wrappers. For example the SMTP functionality is really bad and always gives you exactly the same error message no matter what actually went wrong. But we're still very early in.NET development, and I'm sure.NET 2.0 and future versions will fix many issues that exist with the current version.
You're NOT breaking the law. I think you just made that up. The device has to receive the TV signal. You don't need a license for a computer monitor or a TV which isn't tuned in to any channels. But you do need a "TV" license for ANY device which utilises the TV channels, even if it isn't a TV. Eg you need a licence even if you ONLY have a video and no TV.
The TV licensing website says this:
"If you use a TV or any other device to receive or record TV programmes (for example, a VCR, set-top box, DVD recorder or PC with a broadcast card) - you need a TV Licence. You are required by law to have one." (source)
Why are there always the inevitable jokes about BSODs? They're from like, Windows 95 or 98 which is now at least 7 years old. I've NEVER seen 2000 or XP produce a blue screen of death EVER - and use it all day every day in many different capacities as a software developer.
I know it's physically capable of a BSOD, but really, has anyone ever seen XP or 2000 SP3 actually BSOD on a regular basis. My experience is that XP itself is incredibly stable. Infinitely more so than 95 or 98.
They are stored uncompressed in the frame buffer while it compresses them. The camera needs somewhere to store the RAW images while it's doing the compression. And yes, the frame buffers are fairly big. Usually 64mb + in a DSLR.
If the camera had to store the images in a small frame buffer designed for compressed images, then you wouldn't be able to save RAW images (or maybe only one - but that would make for a useless camera as they are 16mb + big and would take aaages to write out). So to me it was fairly obvious that the framebuffer was for RAW images.
Sorry that doesn't work either! What on earth is going on? That's the URL that I get when I search for "fractal image compression" on amazon.com - but it seems it doesn't work a second time round!
Oh well - just go to amazon.com and search for fractal image compression and you'll get a lovely long list of relevant books.
If you make something 100% bigger then it's twice the size. Somehow I thought that if you made the same file it 100% smaller again it'll be half the size:) Doh!
> I'm dubious about any claims to some mysterious program > which compresses anything amazingly well without strong evidence.
It's hardly mysterious. You can download trial versions and try it yourself - it's a well known compression technique that there are whole books about
There is near infinite evidence that it works so I don't know why you're doubting it. The issue isn't whether or not it works, it's why hasn't somebody made an opensource algorithm that we can all use.
The problem is that the existing fractal formats are all patented by companies that probably charge a fortune to license it.
Most existing DSLRs are at least this slow. They only seem faster because they have a frame buffer which can store 4-8 uncompressed images. The main cause of delay is writing out the images to the memory card rather than compressing the images. You can see this by looking at the flashy red light on the back of your EOS after you take 4 shots in sports mode... The camera is busy writing for several seconds after the last shot has been taken.
If the image compression algorithm was more efficient then there would be less data to write to the card and perhaps overall, it would actually be faster - even though the image compression algorithm might be slower.
I realise that. My point was that their effort has only reduced the file size by 30% (if that). Creating a better algorithm might reduce it by 50% or 100% AND produce an image that looks better (less compressed) as is the case with the fractal image format I mentionned.
The FIF program I was using at the time came from here but it seems to be down at the moment...
I would have thought that rather than 'zipping' an existing image format to create a new one just to save 30%, they'd be better off improving the original image compression algorithm or coming up with a new one.
Quite a while ago (years!) I had a program which could compress images into a fractal image format. It was amazing - the files were much smaller than JPEGs but looked a lot better. The only drawback was that it took ages to compress the images. But with the extra CPU horsepower we have today I'm surprised fractal image compression hasn't become more prevailant. It would still probably be useless for digital cameras though as it would probably be impossible to implement the compression in hardware/firmware such that it could compress a 6+ megapixel image within the requisit 1-2 seconds.
Does anyone know what happened to fractal image format files (.fif) and why they never took off?
Now that slashdot has linked to the site (which is hosted on the George Foreman grill PC itself) I think the even the grilling functionality of the case will be restored. Just slap a burger on the heatsink and wait a few seconds...
Slashdot Mirror
If you hear that your bank will be sending out CDs and then you receive one, I think pretty much anyone might be fooled into trying it - even most techys. After all it's not like it's a common way to distribute a trojan, so you won't be expecting one. I mean, would you scan a Knoppix CD that you got from the front cover of a Linux magazine? Probably not. But who's to say that someone hasn't replaced the cover CD for one of their own? After all - the magazine's just been sitting there in a public place for a few days with no "firewall" on it - anything could be on that disc.
You can't validate the CD even if you want to unless the bank has the bank has put the MD5 sum on their homepage. Add to that, the fact that no users will receive any kind of virus/trojan warnings and you're going to get a far higher "return on investment" that would by just spamming. For that very reason, you don't NEED to send out 1,000,000 CDs - just a few dozen to some people who have got some money. Even if only 5% of them fall for it (unrealisiticly low I think) it's still way more than the 0.01% of people that fall for phishing scams (or whatever the latest figure is).
I don't see how this improves security at all.
If the whole OS is supplied on a CD, that means that when you boot from it, there will be NOTHING on the PC to validate that the CD doesn't contain a virus or trojan. While this won't be a problem for the bank's real CDs, it will be a matter of days before people start being spammed AOL style with fake CDs though their doors which look exactly like the ones their bank sent out and some with a covering later saying that it's an upgrade or something.
Because you're BOOTING from the CD rather than using it to install something, you'll be bypassing your antivirus software and software firewall and there's no way that anything can warn you that the CD you're using is a trojan. It can litterally slip in right though your letterbox and into your CD-ROM drive without any checks whereas downloaded or web based applications have to go through your firewall and be scanned by your virus scanner in order to get onto your machine.
The CD could be set up to transfer your money into some else's account and because it was done by your machine on your IP with your user/pass it will be very difficult to pursuade your bank that you didn't do it.
This is an absolutely crap idea and most of the posts above seem to miss this point entirely. These CDs better have some pretty cunning holograms on them or something and the users need to know EXACTLY what they're going to look like before they get them.
What kind of idiot wants a *slower* swapfile???
If you leave it on the same partition as all your other stuff, it will become massively fragmented and extremely slow to page stuff out to disk. I've come across machines where the swap file is in several thousand chunks.
My preferred method is to simply fix the size of the swap file instead of letting windows increase and decrease the size when it wants to. I'm pretty sure this works just as well and doesn't require a seperate partition.
You're an idiot... That doesn't affect the price of the book and isn't evil in any way. Why do you care if he makes a few cents? Hardly a reason to mod someone down. It's not like he put a banner advert up to advertise the book.
> Ironically though, the 'new' Top Gear is crap *because* it's 1 hour
> (not 30 mins) of "Jeremy Clarkson and chums present a 'zoo' format'
> TV programme
I strongly disagree. The old programme was just review after review of boring everyday cars. If you want car reviews - buy a car magazine, because televised reviews of normal cars are hardly entertaining.
The new program is great. The format is great, the guests are great, the humour is great - I love it.
I suspect that maybe you're not in their target demographic? I'm 26 and most people around my age seem to think the new format is much better and less like all the other car programmes/magazines.
*Some* of their articles are admittedly quite stupid, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.
In a few years Apple will invent something called a "pan wheel" which allows you to pan up and down in documents... They'll probably try and patent it as well.
*She* I meant to say. Sorry Milka.
He's a *designer* and his website looks like *that*?!
If I was going to stand at the top of a building and point this device at people I'd have *definitely* made it look much less like a gun!
> Prove me wrong after you download it and try it (for free of course).
It's horrendously slow and unstable. Three of us at work tried it and we all uninstalled it within 2 days. Typically you'd come in in the morning to find that the Copernic process was using 1GB of RAM (my machine only has 1gb of ram) and that the whole machine had locked up.
The response from support was useless - they suggested I limit the sizes of the files it cached to a couple of MB (which I'd already done anyway). When I said the problem still existed they sent me instructions for how to uninstall. So I did.
Eh?! Because it's called "Google Desktop Search". GMail isn't on your desktop - it's on the web. If you want to search Gmail, use Gmail! (doh!)
Imagine how slow your machine would be if it had to start pulling down ALL your existing e-mail from GMail so it can index it...
If you want your e-mail on your local machine, then don't sign up for web e-mail.
> What, exactly does it do? Find files by name? I already have a tool to do that.
What tool? Windows has something built in, but it will take half an hour to find the file but Google Desktop Search can do it in a few milliseconds.
> Tell me something neat and impressive that I can make it do,
Search your entire email in 20ms.
> I tried searching, for example, for some phrases that I know are in
> some sourcecode files I have. It didn't find the files containing the code.
You were using a BETA. Ever heard that word before? The new version searches anything you want if you install the "any file plugin".
> If found stuff in a word doc that i made just to test it, but the built
> in search already does that.
You can search word document you already have open, but if you have 100 word documents, it will take several minutes if not hours to search inside them for the phrase you are after. You do NOT have a tool which can search them in a sensible amount of time.
> So, what's it do? Why do I need it? Why does this need to be
> integrated into every app on my desktop?
If you install things that you don't even know what they do, your computer must be so full of crap that I'm surprised you can find anything without Google Desktop!
".NET is merely thin wrappers to Win32 calls"
.NET developer and in general, I think it's great - it's a very fast platform to devlop for - and your developments run very fast.
.NET development, and I'm sure .NET 2.0 and future versions will fix many issues that exist with the current version.
Of course it is. That's called functional programming! What did he want them to do? Write the whole thing again from scratch in ASM?
Somewhere further down this page someone's going to write "In other news, Win32 is a thin wrapper for Assembly Language".
I'm a
Sure it has some problems with the fact that some parts are just wrappers. For example the SMTP functionality is really bad and always gives you exactly the same error message no matter what actually went wrong. But we're still very early in
You're NOT breaking the law. I think you just made that up. The device has to receive the TV signal. You don't need a license for a computer monitor or a TV which isn't tuned in to any channels. But you do need a "TV" license for ANY device which utilises the TV channels, even if it isn't a TV. Eg you need a licence even if you ONLY have a video and no TV.
The TV licensing website says this:
"If you use a TV or any other device to receive or record TV programmes (for example, a VCR, set-top box, DVD recorder or PC with a broadcast card) - you need a TV Licence. You are required by law to have one." (source)
Why are there always the inevitable jokes about BSODs? They're from like, Windows 95 or 98 which is now at least 7 years old. I've NEVER seen 2000 or XP produce a blue screen of death EVER - and use it all day every day in many different capacities as a software developer.
I know it's physically capable of a BSOD, but really, has anyone ever seen XP or 2000 SP3 actually BSOD on a regular basis. My experience is that XP itself is incredibly stable. Infinitely more so than 95 or 98.
They are stored uncompressed in the frame buffer while it compresses them. The camera needs somewhere to store the RAW images while it's doing the compression. And yes, the frame buffers are fairly big. Usually 64mb + in a DSLR.
If the camera had to store the images in a small frame buffer designed for compressed images, then you wouldn't be able to save RAW images (or maybe only one - but that would make for a useless camera as they are 16mb + big and would take aaages to write out). So to me it was fairly obvious that the framebuffer was for RAW images.
What an idiot. He's posted almost word for word exactly what I said! Did you only read the first sentence?!
Me: The main cause of delay is writing out the images to the memory card rather than compressing the images.
You: What takes time, is writing to the memory card, not compressing the JPEG's.
etc etc....
Sorry that doesn't work either! What on earth is going on? That's the URL that I get when I search for "fractal image compression" on amazon.com - but it seems it doesn't work a second time round!
Oh well - just go to amazon.com and search for fractal image compression and you'll get a lovely long list of relevant books.
Try this then - which may prevent the problem.
I was being stupid :)
:) Doh!
If you make something 100% bigger then it's twice the size. Somehow I thought that if you made the same file it 100% smaller again it'll be half the size
> I'm dubious about any claims to some mysterious program
> which compresses anything amazingly well without strong evidence.
It's hardly mysterious. You can download trial versions and try it yourself - it's a well known compression technique that there are whole books about
There is near infinite evidence that it works so I don't know why you're doubting it. The issue isn't whether or not it works, it's why hasn't somebody made an opensource algorithm that we can all use.
The problem is that the existing fractal formats are all patented by companies that probably charge a fortune to license it.
Most existing DSLRs are at least this slow. They only seem faster because they have a frame buffer which can store 4-8 uncompressed images. The main cause of delay is writing out the images to the memory card rather than compressing the images. You can see this by looking at the flashy red light on the back of your EOS after you take 4 shots in sports mode... The camera is busy writing for several seconds after the last shot has been taken.
If the image compression algorithm was more efficient then there would be less data to write to the card and perhaps overall, it would actually be faster - even though the image compression algorithm might be slower.
I realise that. My point was that their effort has only reduced the file size by 30% (if that). Creating a better algorithm might reduce it by 50% or 100% AND produce an image that looks better (less compressed) as is the case with the fractal image format I mentionned.
The FIF program I was using at the time came from here but it seems to be down at the moment...
I would have thought that rather than 'zipping' an existing image format to create a new one just to save 30%, they'd be better off improving the original image compression algorithm or coming up with a new one.
Quite a while ago (years!) I had a program which could compress images into a fractal image format. It was amazing - the files were much smaller than JPEGs but looked a lot better. The only drawback was that it took ages to compress the images. But with the extra CPU horsepower we have today I'm surprised fractal image compression hasn't become more prevailant. It would still probably be useless for digital cameras though as it would probably be impossible to implement the compression in hardware/firmware such that it could compress a 6+ megapixel image within the requisit 1-2 seconds.
Does anyone know what happened to fractal image format files (.fif) and why they never took off?
Now that slashdot has linked to the site (which is hosted on the George Foreman grill PC itself) I think the even the grilling functionality of the case will be restored. Just slap a burger on the heatsink and wait a few seconds...