There's a great place a few buildings over from here. The registration process is a pain (you have to give them various bits of personal information), but the books you can get are almost unlimited -- they've had almost everything I've looked for, including some fairly obscure SF -- and it's free.
The real advantage is the books you get can be read with no special equipment. (Some people use special glasses, but I've never needed them)
It's called a library.
Or did you mean books you can keep, and only in electronic format?
1) Draw a floorplan. Make sure your dimensions are accurate. 2) On a seperate page, draw your furniture. 3) Cut the furniture out. Then you can try a lot of different layouts with minimum waste. When you've got what you want, tape the cutouts to the floorplan.
I've found it to be better than almost any other option.
Yes, but an unmodified install doesn't let you do anything, because there's nothing installed and no services running.
Add to that their severely broken DHCP server, and I'm less then thrilled with the newest version of OpenBSD. (The dhcpd isn't technically broken, I suppose; they just removed basically all of the flags and options from it, including the "test my config" option which made it simple to see if your re-written dhcpd.conf would work WITHOUT killing the server.)
That said, I'm seriously considing moving my web/mail server to OpenBSD from gentoo, since the portage system seems to be getting further and further from simple and stable...
"Locking people into a platform or upgrade path is bad! I hate $software_package, because it only runs on M$ Windoze! All software should be free! But no way in hell should anyone make FOSS available to Windoze users, because the lazy bastards don't deserve a choice!"
Does anyone else see the problem with this argument? These are all things I've heard people say (in some cases stretched slightly, but I've kept true to their sentiment), and I've never understood it. If your goal is to make good software, and prove to people it's good, you have to make it available for them.
Most people won't be willing to switch to a new OS. Those who will, won't be willing to switch to one which bears very little resemblance to the one their used to, and which they have no way of knowing they can use. If they can't even try any of the apps before switching, it ain't going to happen.
Software and politics is like religion and politics; they mix all to easily, and it causes problems when they do.
Or, to put it more offensively (since I've had a bad day): Get off your fucking high horse, and stop thinking you're better than everyone else because you don't use a mainstream platform. If you really think putting good Open Source software on a proprietary platform hurts your "movement," then you're a fucking moron, and you'll never accomplish anything because people will be too busy hating you to try your software.
Looking at the Fingkey Hamster website, I see that it supports "Various OS and USB interfaces." Interesting! Must work on lots of different platforms, then... Where's the list? Oh... I see. They meant lots of Windows operating systems; Win 95, 98, NT4.0, 2000, ME, and XP. And it supports USB 1.0 and 1.1. Well, that's a wide variety....
Now then, what is this good for? Oh... "PC-infra security applications." PC-infra? What the heck is that? I would assume, based on the word-roots, that they mean security on one PC, but where did they come up with the word?
Between those, and the name ("Fingkey Hamster"?! Are you serious?), I have to wonder if these people are legit. They CERTAINLY don't have a native English (or even American English -- yes, they are different) speaker writing their text, but did they have to get someone who didn't know the language?
Re:Free [books|music|stuff] is not a basic right.
on
Breaking Google's DRM
·
· Score: 1
Granted it's kind of sad that I'm replying to my own post, but...
Whoever modded this "insightful" is insane. this isn't insightful. This is basic common sense.
And even if it wasn't, it was really just me letting off steam by mocking slashdot readers... I fully expected a (-5, Troll) rating. On the other hand, getting modded insightful gave me a laugh today when I needed one, so I won't complain. 8-)
Re:Free [books|music|stuff] is not a basic right.
on
Breaking Google's DRM
·
· Score: 1
Regardless of the "natural state" of information (a somewhat ambiguous phrase which I'm not going to comment further on), my point has nothing to do with it. My point is that the law is the law; if you don't like it, lobby to get it changed. Don't start stealing stuff because you don't like the law.
There are no basic rights; there are societal conventions. In some places and time periods, killing any stranger who offended you was a "basic right." In others, it was a "basic right" of adult men to "train" young boys. Do I agree with them? That doesn't matter, any more than it matters whether I agree with the law that stops me from running over jay-walkers. If I don't like it, I can start a campaign to change it; but if I violate the law, I have to accept that I'm (probably) going to suffer the penalty if caught.
Free [books|music|stuff] is not a basic right.
on
Breaking Google's DRM
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
...the ability for a remote attacker to disable critical browser features like save, right-click, copy and cut...
These are critical features? What alternate universe are you living in? Since when is the ability to save a web page that someone else wrote a "critical feature"? Not to mention copying and pasting?
Good lord, people... get over yourselves! The things you're complaining you can't copy and print are COPYRIGHTED WORKS. I don't care whether you don't like the law. It's STILL THE LAW. I don't like the law that says I'm not allowed to carry a sword, or run over people who step out in front of my car without looking. The police don't care whether I like those laws; they're going to arrest me if I break them.
Publishers (and Google) don't care whether you like the current copyright laws. Their goal is to make it hard for you to steal from them. Yes, I said steal! If you take something without paying for it, you've stolen it. You want to scream "Fair Use!"? Fine. You've got a text editor. you've got a computer that can run it at the same time as a web-browser. Do it by hand. What? You DON'T have a computer that can run both at once. I feel for you. Somewhere, out in that place with the (sometimes) blue ceiling, there's a place where you can buy this outmoded things called "pens" and "paper." Go buy some, and do the copying by hand. It won't kill you, trust me.
Sorry to rant, but this "I have the right to anything I want, and I shouldn't have to pay for it because The Man is just trying to keep me down by stealing my hard-earned money" ethos pisses me off. People like you are the reason Loki went under. People like you are the reason several bands I liked broke up. People like you, only a little less tech-savvy, are the reason store owners have to put $5000 security systems in their stores so their merchandise doesn't get stolen. People like you are, in general, a bunch of fucking jackasses. Go out and get a job, then buy the freaking book. Or get it from a library if you don't want to pay, but give it back to them when you're done.
I'll run right out and spend 3 weeks learning to use it, just so I can make a simple line graph! Oh, wait. I can do that in 45 seconds (plus data entry time) in Excel.
Honestly, after hearing the buzz about latex, I went and looked at it. Unless you're doing print setting for professional use, it's far too complicated and powerful. Most people don't WANT to learn a new formatting language to draw graphs for the boss, they want to click on the little graph button, hit "next" a bunch of times, and then print it out. Unless latex has gotten a lot easier to use, I'm not going to use it anytime soon.
I live in a townhouse condo, shared with a friend, which is about 1000 square feet. I've solved the "too much stuff" problem by throwing away (or, really, donating to charities such at Salvation Army) all the stuff I don't need.
It's amazing how much stuff in your house you simply don't use. That said, I had the place completely filled up until said friend moved in in May...
Depends where you live, actually. I'm a locksmith (which is to say, I took a correspondance course, and then did a whole lot of reasearch on my own), and according to Massachusetts (USA) law, owning a set of picks isn't illegal. Owning them with intent to commit a crime is what's illegal. Now... you can probably see the problem here. Go ahead, prove you're not intending to commit a crime...
Basically, if the police want an excuse to harass you, they have one. If you stay out of their way, and don't make it obvious, usually no one will care. Further, if you can prove you need them for your job, you're even less likely to get hassled.
Sorry... broadband is not a necessity. When everyone in the country (I could say world, but let's limit this to whatever country you live in -- that's enough of an issue for the moment) has adequate housing, food, medical care, etc, THEN broadband becomes a necessity. While there are still people on the streets, people who can't get medical care for whatever reason, people who are starving to death -- and don't pretend it doesn't happen; there's not a country in the world with 100% housing/food/med. care supplies -- any kind of internet connection is a luxury.
While I generally don't comment on here, I thought I'd respond to this.
I'm an IT professional, and I've run Windows since 3.1. I currently run WindowsXP and SuSE Linux on my home desktop, and use whatever is handy when I'm elsewhere. I'm mentioning this to support my statement that, whatever else I may be, I'm definately NOT an open-source or linux zealot.
Perhaps your computer hasn't been bitten yet by a virus, or adware, or spyware, but the odds are good that you wouldn't know if it did. I went through a computer that was acting perfectly, no problems at all, and found a half-dozen spyware programs installed, one of which may or may not have been pulling data entered on "secure" websites.
Do you have a modem, or broadband? What do you do when someone finds the open port on your computer, which hasn't been closed because you haven't installed the patch yet? Congratulations, they're now using your computer to send spam... and if your ISP is Earthlink, ComCast, or Verizon, they may shut you down for it. Yes, it doesn't affect your daily use (until you lose your connection), but then you're offline until you can convince them to let you back on. And without a virus scanner, or anti-spy/adware program, you're going to have to reformat your drive and reinstall Windows to get rid of the spambot.
Yes, it's possible to avoid being infected by using your brain. But that includes installing protection. I don't plan to be in a car accident, but I still wear my seatbelt -- and when my car was rear-ended by a car with failed brakes, I was glad of it. Also, judging by experience, most computer users lack brains completely -- half of them will click on a link that says "Click here to install a virus, trash your data, and send an anonymous note to the police claiming you molest goats."
Was I the only one who read this and thought "Great! Now I have a way to detect radiation and all those annoying Public Displays of Affection"? (Or did they mean it also detects Personal Digital Assistants? Damn multi use acronym....)
For a view specifically of the early days of the internet (back when it was the ARPAnet, and even a bit before), you might also try "Where Wizards Stay Up Late" by Kate Haffner and Matt Lyon.
Why would anyone NEED their personal site (ie, here's who I am, here are links to my friends pages, etc) to be dynamically generated? For that matter, why should a page be written to be dynamic if it only changes, say, every 6-8 months? I've seen a lot of people build their sites using php/flash/perl/java/etc when it could have been done more easily and just as effectively with plain html.
I'll grant you, though, that for a business page, or something that updates on a daily/weekly basis, static html is pretty stupid.
I don't find most of his article hard to disagree with. Actually, I find some of it to be blatantly wrong.
Personally, I find my linux desktop to be nothing like windows; ok, granted, it's got a mouse, a pointer, and windows, but that's about it. I've always thought that the beauty of linux was that you could make the decision yourself as to how much like Windows/Mac you wanted things to be. I run WindowMaker: nut much like either. Sure, a lot of people make their system look like Windows -- I don't use them, they don't have to use mine. Besides, people are trying to market to Windows users.
...does anyone need a MOUSE (or any pointint device!) on their cellphone? Frankly, I don't use much more than the number keys and the "start call" button. I honestly can't imagine why anyone would WANT to use their phone for something else. If I want to play games, I go find a computer or a console - or a deck of cards!
When you can get a cell phone free with most service plans, and a good PDA for under $200, why is this worthwhile?
Honestly, while I'm always in favour of new geek toys, this one holds no interest at all. Frankly, I'd be more interested in a lower cost version of something like the Edge or Deluxe (Yes, I know the deluxe is available for $100 if you get it refurbished... that doesn't change the fact that it's still $200 for the cheapest of the new Visors). As a college student, most of my money is going to textbooks and bills, not buying new cell-phone/PDAs.
With every article I read about a new law in Vermont, I'm tempted to move. I only live about 20 miles from the Vermont border anyway, and now I find myself wondering whether driving 30-40 miles to school would really be any worse than driving 10...
Slashdot Mirror
There's a great place a few buildings over from here. The registration process is a pain (you have to give them various bits of personal information), but the books you can get are almost unlimited -- they've had almost everything I've looked for, including some fairly obscure SF -- and it's free.
The real advantage is the books you get can be read with no special equipment. (Some people use special glasses, but I've never needed them)
It's called a library.
Or did you mean books you can keep, and only in electronic format?
Another worthwhile thing to try:
1) Draw a floorplan. Make sure your dimensions are accurate.
2) On a seperate page, draw your furniture.
3) Cut the furniture out. Then you can try a lot of different layouts with minimum waste. When you've got what you want, tape the cutouts to the floorplan.
I've found it to be better than almost any other option.
Yes, but an unmodified install doesn't let you do anything, because there's nothing installed and no services running.
Add to that their severely broken DHCP server, and I'm less then thrilled with the newest version of OpenBSD. (The dhcpd isn't technically broken, I suppose; they just removed basically all of the flags and options from it, including the "test my config" option which made it simple to see if your re-written dhcpd.conf would work WITHOUT killing the server.)
That said, I'm seriously considing moving my web/mail server to OpenBSD from gentoo, since the portage system seems to be getting further and further from simple and stable...
"Locking people into a platform or upgrade path is bad! I hate $software_package, because it only runs on M$ Windoze! All software should be free! But no way in hell should anyone make FOSS available to Windoze users, because the lazy bastards don't deserve a choice!"
Does anyone else see the problem with this argument? These are all things I've heard people say (in some cases stretched slightly, but I've kept true to their sentiment), and I've never understood it. If your goal is to make good software, and prove to people it's good, you have to make it available for them.
Most people won't be willing to switch to a new OS. Those who will, won't be willing to switch to one which bears very little resemblance to the one their used to, and which they have no way of knowing they can use. If they can't even try any of the apps before switching, it ain't going to happen.
Software and politics is like religion and politics; they mix all to easily, and it causes problems when they do.
Or, to put it more offensively (since I've had a bad day): Get off your fucking high horse, and stop thinking you're better than everyone else because you don't use a mainstream platform. If you really think putting good Open Source software on a proprietary platform hurts your "movement," then you're a fucking moron, and you'll never accomplish anything because people will be too busy hating you to try your software.
Looking at the Fingkey Hamster website, I see that it supports "Various OS and USB interfaces." Interesting! Must work on lots of different platforms, then... Where's the list? Oh... I see. They meant lots of Windows operating systems; Win 95, 98, NT4.0, 2000, ME, and XP. And it supports USB 1.0 and 1.1. Well, that's a wide variety....
Now then, what is this good for? Oh... "PC-infra security applications." PC-infra? What the heck is that? I would assume, based on the word-roots, that they mean security on one PC, but where did they come up with the word?
Between those, and the name ("Fingkey Hamster"?! Are you serious?), I have to wonder if these people are legit. They CERTAINLY don't have a native English (or even American English -- yes, they are different) speaker writing their text, but did they have to get someone who didn't know the language?
Granted it's kind of sad that I'm replying to my own post, but...
Whoever modded this "insightful" is insane. this isn't insightful. This is basic common sense.
And even if it wasn't, it was really just me letting off steam by mocking slashdot readers... I fully expected a (-5, Troll) rating. On the other hand, getting modded insightful gave me a laugh today when I needed one, so I won't complain. 8-)
Regardless of the "natural state" of information (a somewhat ambiguous phrase which I'm not going to comment further on), my point has nothing to do with it. My point is that the law is the law; if you don't like it, lobby to get it changed. Don't start stealing stuff because you don't like the law.
There are no basic rights; there are societal conventions. In some places and time periods, killing any stranger who offended you was a "basic right." In others, it was a "basic right" of adult men to "train" young boys. Do I agree with them? That doesn't matter, any more than it matters whether I agree with the law that stops me from running over jay-walkers. If I don't like it, I can start a campaign to change it; but if I violate the law, I have to accept that I'm (probably) going to suffer the penalty if caught.
...the ability for a remote attacker to disable critical browser features like save, right-click, copy and cut...
These are critical features? What alternate universe are you living in? Since when is the ability to save a web page that someone else wrote a "critical feature"? Not to mention copying and pasting?
Good lord, people... get over yourselves! The things you're complaining you can't copy and print are COPYRIGHTED WORKS. I don't care whether you don't like the law. It's STILL THE LAW. I don't like the law that says I'm not allowed to carry a sword, or run over people who step out in front of my car without looking. The police don't care whether I like those laws; they're going to arrest me if I break them.
Publishers (and Google) don't care whether you like the current copyright laws. Their goal is to make it hard for you to steal from them. Yes, I said steal! If you take something without paying for it, you've stolen it. You want to scream "Fair Use!"? Fine. You've got a text editor. you've got a computer that can run it at the same time as a web-browser. Do it by hand. What? You DON'T have a computer that can run both at once. I feel for you. Somewhere, out in that place with the (sometimes) blue ceiling, there's a place where you can buy this outmoded things called "pens" and "paper." Go buy some, and do the copying by hand. It won't kill you, trust me.
Sorry to rant, but this "I have the right to anything I want, and I shouldn't have to pay for it because The Man is just trying to keep me down by stealing my hard-earned money" ethos pisses me off. People like you are the reason Loki went under. People like you are the reason several bands I liked broke up. People like you, only a little less tech-savvy, are the reason store owners have to put $5000 security systems in their stores so their merchandise doesn't get stolen. People like you are, in general, a bunch of fucking jackasses. Go out and get a job, then buy the freaking book. Or get it from a library if you don't want to pay, but give it back to them when you're done.
Great!
I'll run right out and spend 3 weeks learning to use it, just so I can make a simple line graph! Oh, wait. I can do that in 45 seconds (plus data entry time) in Excel.
Honestly, after hearing the buzz about latex, I went and looked at it. Unless you're doing print setting for professional use, it's far too complicated and powerful. Most people don't WANT to learn a new formatting language to draw graphs for the boss, they want to click on the little graph button, hit "next" a bunch of times, and then print it out. Unless latex has gotten a lot easier to use, I'm not going to use it anytime soon.
Does anyone else keep reading "Blu-Ray" as "BluRry"?
I live in a townhouse condo, shared with a friend, which is about 1000 square feet. I've solved the "too much stuff" problem by throwing away (or, really, donating to charities such at Salvation Army) all the stuff I don't need.
It's amazing how much stuff in your house you simply don't use. That said, I had the place completely filled up until said friend moved in in May...
Depends where you live, actually. I'm a locksmith (which is to say, I took a correspondance course, and then did a whole lot of reasearch on my own), and according to Massachusetts (USA) law, owning a set of picks isn't illegal. Owning them with intent to commit a crime is what's illegal. Now... you can probably see the problem here. Go ahead, prove you're not intending to commit a crime...
Basically, if the police want an excuse to harass you, they have one. If you stay out of their way, and don't make it obvious, usually no one will care. Further, if you can prove you need them for your job, you're even less likely to get hassled.
So. What you want is a WORD PROCESSOR that can open powerpoint and excel documents? Which part of "Word Processor" didn't you get?
I don't know if anyone else got it, but I'm entertained!
If I had any mod points, you'd get 'em!
Sorry... broadband is not a necessity. When everyone in the country (I could say world, but let's limit this to whatever country you live in -- that's enough of an issue for the moment) has adequate housing, food, medical care, etc, THEN broadband becomes a necessity. While there are still people on the streets, people who can't get medical care for whatever reason, people who are starving to death -- and don't pretend it doesn't happen; there's not a country in the world with 100% housing/food/med. care supplies -- any kind of internet connection is a luxury.
While I generally don't comment on here, I thought I'd respond to this.
I'm an IT professional, and I've run Windows since 3.1. I currently run WindowsXP and SuSE Linux on my home desktop, and use whatever is handy when I'm elsewhere. I'm mentioning this to support my statement that, whatever else I may be, I'm definately NOT an open-source or linux zealot.
Perhaps your computer hasn't been bitten yet by a virus, or adware, or spyware, but the odds are good that you wouldn't know if it did. I went through a computer that was acting perfectly, no problems at all, and found a half-dozen spyware programs installed, one of which may or may not have been pulling data entered on "secure" websites.
Do you have a modem, or broadband? What do you do when someone finds the open port on your computer, which hasn't been closed because you haven't installed the patch yet? Congratulations, they're now using your computer to send spam... and if your ISP is Earthlink, ComCast, or Verizon, they may shut you down for it. Yes, it doesn't affect your daily use (until you lose your connection), but then you're offline until you can convince them to let you back on. And without a virus scanner, or anti-spy/adware program, you're going to have to reformat your drive and reinstall Windows to get rid of the spambot.
Yes, it's possible to avoid being infected by using your brain. But that includes installing protection. I don't plan to be in a car accident, but I still wear my seatbelt -- and when my car was rear-ended by a car with failed brakes, I was glad of it. Also, judging by experience, most computer users lack brains completely -- half of them will click on a link that says "Click here to install a virus, trash your data, and send an anonymous note to the police claiming you molest goats."
"PDA/Radiation Detector"
Was I the only one who read this and thought "Great! Now I have a way to detect radiation and all those annoying Public Displays of Affection"? (Or did they mean it also detects Personal Digital Assistants? Damn multi use acronym....)
For a view specifically of the early days of the internet (back when it was the ARPAnet, and even a bit before), you might also try "Where Wizards Stay Up Late" by Kate Haffner and Matt Lyon.
Why would anyone NEED their personal site (ie, here's who I am, here are links to my friends pages, etc) to be dynamically generated? For that matter, why should a page be written to be dynamic if it only changes, say, every 6-8 months? I've seen a lot of people build their sites using php/flash/perl/java/etc when it could have been done more easily and just as effectively with plain html.
I'll grant you, though, that for a business page, or something that updates on a daily/weekly basis, static html is pretty stupid.
Yes, but making insecure software is not a crime. Bad business practice, yes. Obnoxious, yes. Dangerous, yes. Illegal... sadly, no.
I don't find most of his article hard to disagree with. Actually, I find some of it to be blatantly wrong.
Personally, I find my linux desktop to be nothing like windows; ok, granted, it's got a mouse, a pointer, and windows, but that's about it. I've always thought that the beauty of linux was that you could make the decision yourself as to how much like Windows/Mac you wanted things to be. I run WindowMaker: nut much like either. Sure, a lot of people make their system look like Windows -- I don't use them, they don't have to use mine. Besides, people are trying to market to Windows users.
...does anyone need a MOUSE (or any pointint device!) on their cellphone? Frankly, I don't use much more than the number keys and the "start call" button. I honestly can't imagine why anyone would WANT to use their phone for something else. If I want to play games, I go find a computer or a console - or a deck of cards!
May your lives together be long and filled with joy. 8-)
-Carik
When you can get a cell phone free with most service plans, and a good PDA for under $200, why is this worthwhile?
Honestly, while I'm always in favour of new geek toys, this one holds no interest at all. Frankly, I'd be more interested in a lower cost version of something like the Edge or Deluxe (Yes, I know the deluxe is available for $100 if you get it refurbished... that doesn't change the fact that it's still $200 for the cheapest of the new Visors). As a college student, most of my money is going to textbooks and bills, not buying new cell-phone/PDAs.
-Carik
With every article I read about a new law in Vermont, I'm tempted to move. I only live about 20 miles from the Vermont border anyway, and now I find myself wondering whether driving 30-40 miles to school would really be any worse than driving 10...