I don't even know why spammers bother. Does anyone really fall for 'Have a bigger penis in 3 days' or 'Lose 50 pounds in 23.2 seconds' or any of the other common spams?
Unfortunately a lot of people actually do fall for it - that is, enough of them to make spamming 15 million people worthwhile.
Until those sort of people stop replying and purchasing these "products" from spammers, then we will continue to see spam in one form or another.
Gator just fires up some adverts on a users PC based on certain pages they go to. That's not interferring with a websites content at all in the slightest.
Now, if Gator took the HTML from the website, parsed out the adverts and replaced it with their own then i can understand that the companies might be a bit pissed because Gator would be passing its own ads off as theirs...
.. but by the wording of the article Gator isn't. It just fires the adverts up and people assume it came from that page.
Never have I seen such a pathetic display of whinging. Bug was found, 3 choices:
1. Tell you lot nothing, get the fix done and released (in which case you wouldn't have known about it until the fix came out).
2. Or tell you there is a bug, you can fix it temporarily by doing this until we get the fix out. In which case you decide either to follow him or do nothing (because after all, thats what you'd have been doing if nothing was said)
3. Or say, we have a bug, it's this and this and this is how you exploit it and then you lot all either scramble to install something else or sit around praying you don't get rooted whilst they compose a fix because now everyone and their dog know exactly how to exploit it.
Geeesh, be thankful he actually told you number 1. Next time, I think he should probably stick with number 2 and just tell you when the fix is out - at least then you can't whinge about it.
I had a plan once to create a page that generated Jon Katz articles (fed by the existing pool of articles). Would be interesting to see how it turned out:)
Eh? OpenOffice.org reads/writes Word/Excel docs perfectly. Aside from some bullet-point font issues
(emphasis mine)
So they don't read/write them perfectly then.
I used to have Excel timesheets submitted to me using OpenOffice. Yes, they're readable but some of the formatting is wrong or borders missing or other little bits and pieces.
It's pretty close, but i'd never call it "perfect" and by your own comment, neither should you.
It's taken off a lot slower than people were saying. In the end a lot of people overhyped Linux on the desktop and it was doomed to fall short of that.
Personally I think Linux will suceed on the server way before it ever suceeds on the desktop. I think in the future we'll see a 20% market share of Linux on the desktop - but it'll be many years before that realistically happens.
In short, it was over-hyped. Now is the time to be realistic and not fall into the same trap again. But writing it off, is a tad premature.
Version 2.*.* - C - for linux and windoze desktops
For something coming out of Cambridge University I wouldn't expect them to mutilate the spelling of "Windows".
We wouldn't like it if people wrote "Linsux" so why write MicroShaft, M$ or any other variants out there?
It doesn't help the cause in the slightest however "amusing" you might think it is. It just makes you look like a 14 year old with bad spelling. In fact, it'll probably do more harm than good.
For more useful tips check out the Linux Advocacy FAQ.
This is exactly how Dasher works, except for one crucial point: we alter the SIZE of the shelf space devoted to each book in proportion to the probability of the corresponding text
Basically they use a markov chain which has in it the probabilities that one letter will appear after another. It's very similar to the disassociated press generators you can find out there.
For example, here is one I wrote which generates new random words based on the probabilities of one pair of letters appearing after another pair. I used pairs because it generates more English-like words.
It was "taught" using the contents of/usr/dict/words and written in Perl.
I've had an iPod since January and never felt that I needed to refresh it with more songs half way through the day.
:o)
I have a 56k modem at home and a big fat pipe at work. Therefore it would make more sense to download and place the music on the ipod at work, rather than home.
The only thing Mitnick is better at than hacking (or possibly eating pizza!) is publicity grubbing. Let's face it, there have been thousands of better crackers...
Of course there are. We don't know who they are though because they haven't been caught.
I'd love an ipod and to use it on both my work PC and my home PC. Installing a firewire card on my home PC is not a problem - but totally out for my work PC.
So unless there is some sort of Firewire -> USB convertor then I'll never be able to transfer files to/from machines which don't have a firewire card in. I simply can't pop open my work PC and stick a card in - they'd have hysterics.
Shame really for me, but for a lot of people this probably won't be a problem.
Very cute, however for the home user this won't be a hit, unless it's reasonably priced. Otherwise most people will just stick with a perminant OHP pen and write on the CD. It's cheap and it works.
For smaller companies, now that is a different matter and something likw that would be rather neat and useful.
Plus, isn't the market moving more and more towards DVD burners? I have a 4x CD burner at the moment and when I upgrade i'll be looking more and more at a hybrid CDR/RW/DVD combination job and not a 32x CDRW with the ability to burn pictures on it.
We are aware that PXA250 (XScale)-based devices are not demonstrating the huge performance gains that were anticipated. That said, Pocket PCs continue to offer the best performance and the richest functionality vs. other handhelds on the market today.
Translation:
We know your new car only goes 40mph instead of the 65mph you old car did, but it beats a bicycle, doesn't it? (credits to Jim S for that one).
Even better:
I think the market expectation of what performance on a 400 MHz processor vs. 206 MHz processor has been unreasonable.
Not at all. The process is almost twice as fast, I don't think it is utterly unreasonable to expect the product to be at least one and a half times faster.
But my question is, how is the battery life on one of these things? If it really is the 12-16 hours instead of the 8 currently then the XScale is still a worthwhile bet.
This contrasts to a large number of individuals in an organisation who know the code very well and work with it day in day out.
Whoops, this doesn't contrast at all. What I was trying to say is that in a closed organisation you have a number of people who know the code very well, some that could in a couple of hours and thousands of people who are no help at all.
In other words, pretty much the same as OSS. Just because in OSS everyone has access to the code doesn't mean that they know where to look and how to fix it.
4) Open source software can have bugs discovered due the sheer numbers of people with access to the source.
True, but just because they can doesn't mean that they do. One of the great myths about open source is that *anyone* can just dip in and discover a bug and how to fix it. That simply isn't true.
I can find bugs in closed and open source bugs in exactly the same way, by using the product until something wrong or unexpected happens. But just because I have access to the source doesn't mean that I could actually fix the bug.
If you look at projects such as Apache and Mozilla, they tend to have a number of people who know the code very very well and a few that given a couple of hours might be able to work something out and a very large number of people who, in the whole grand scale of things, are of no use at all in providing a fix to a bug.
This contrasts to a large number of individuals in an organisation who know the code very well and work with it day in day out.
Finally let us not forget that whenever people talk about security they often use Apache and IIS as their examples. Be aware that these are not really good examples. Not all OSS projects are of Apache's quality and not all closed projects are of IIS' quality.
You've ended up picking one of the best in the OSS world vs one of the worst in the closed world. It would be a little like compairing Ford's best car with Vauxhalls worst. Just because the Ford won all the time, does it mean that all Ford's are always better than all Vauxhalls?
Looks good to me. I'd love an ipod however I need to also purchase a firewire card. Now this isn't a problem for my home pc because it's mine and I can do what I want with it.
But my work pc is a different matter entirely. I don't work for a software house and the IT support department (whilst being very clueful) would have hysterics at the idea of me opening my PC and sticking a card in.
So my only option is either find something like a firewire to USB adaptor cable or look at alternatives. I asked this question in the last ipod topic and everyone told me to buy a firewire card which, again, for my work PC is totally 100% absolutely without-a-doubt out of the question.
So unless there is such a thing, Ipod (for me) is out.
Nearly half of all mobile phone users are unlikely to use their
handsets for anything other than basic voice calls, according to
detailed research into consumer demands.
Since I can't run anything from my work computer I need to resort to installing something in my Linux account and ssh'ing to there and using that.
Since I used to run the audiogalaxy satellite on my Linux box and control it via the website - it worked rather well.
As I can't do that any more, can anyone suggest an alternative? Note that it needs to be runnable from a Linux terminal - so no graphical display (unless you control it via the website) and I absolutely positivily cannot install anything on my work PC.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm looking for an MP3 player which is small, light, can be taken running and has several gigs capacity.
Maybe no such thing exists, but if it does, then importing from Japan would seem to be the most obvious choice.
Oh, I'm pretty damn sure that piracy is the bane of the music industry.
It's just that they sell truck loads of absolute rubbish to 14 year old Britany Fans/N-Sync/Backstreet Boys/etc who don't go and download their music.
This is what makes up a very good proportion of the vast amount of money they make.
Unfortunately a lot of people actually do fall for it - that is, enough of them to make spamming 15 million people worthwhile.
Until those sort of people stop replying and purchasing these "products" from spammers, then we will continue to see spam in one form or another.
Now, if Gator took the HTML from the website, parsed out the adverts and replaced it with their own then i can understand that the companies might be a bit pissed because Gator would be passing its own ads off as theirs ...
Assumption is the mother of all fuckups.
They did? Are you saying that someone physically came around to your house, put a gun to your head and forced you to upgrade?
If not (and I suspect not) then you weren't forced to do anything.
1. Tell you lot nothing, get the fix done and released (in which case you wouldn't have known about it until the fix came out).
2. Or tell you there is a bug, you can fix it temporarily by doing this until we get the fix out. In which case you decide either to follow him or do nothing (because after all, thats what you'd have been doing if nothing was said)
3. Or say, we have a bug, it's this and this and this is how you exploit it and then you lot all either scramble to install something else or sit around praying you don't get rooted whilst they compose a fix because now everyone and their dog know exactly how to exploit it.
Geeesh, be thankful he actually told you number 1. Next time, I think he should probably stick with number 2 and just tell you when the fix is out - at least then you can't whinge about it.
Probably a lot more readable.
(emphasis mine)
So they don't read/write them perfectly then.
I used to have Excel timesheets submitted to me using OpenOffice. Yes, they're readable but some of the formatting is wrong or borders missing or other little bits and pieces.
It's pretty close, but i'd never call it "perfect" and by your own comment, neither should you.
Personally I think Linux will suceed on the server way before it ever suceeds on the desktop. I think in the future we'll see a 20% market share of Linux on the desktop - but it'll be many years before that realistically happens.
In short, it was over-hyped. Now is the time to be realistic and not fall into the same trap again. But writing it off, is a tad premature.
For something coming out of Cambridge University I wouldn't expect them to mutilate the spelling of "Windows".
We wouldn't like it if people wrote "Linsux" so why write MicroShaft, M$ or any other variants out there?
It doesn't help the cause in the slightest however "amusing" you might think it is. It just makes you look like a 14 year old with bad spelling. In fact, it'll probably do more harm than good.
For more useful tips check out the Linux Advocacy FAQ.
Basically they use a markov chain which has in it the probabilities that one letter will appear after another. It's very similar to the disassociated press generators you can find out there.
For example, here is one I wrote which generates new random words based on the probabilities of one pair of letters appearing after another pair. I used pairs because it generates more English-like words.
It was "taught" using the contents of /usr/dict/words and written in Perl.
I have a 56k modem at home and a big fat pipe at work. Therefore it would make more sense to download and place the music on the ipod at work, rather than home.
Of course there are. We don't know who they are though because they haven't been caught.
So unless there is some sort of Firewire -> USB convertor then I'll never be able to transfer files to/from machines which don't have a firewire card in. I simply can't pop open my work PC and stick a card in - they'd have hysterics.
Shame really for me, but for a lot of people this probably won't be a problem.
For smaller companies, now that is a different matter and something likw that would be rather neat and useful.
Plus, isn't the market moving more and more towards DVD burners? I have a 4x CD burner at the moment and when I upgrade i'll be looking more and more at a hybrid CDR/RW/DVD combination job and not a 32x CDRW with the ability to burn pictures on it.
We are aware that PXA250 (XScale)-based devices are not demonstrating the huge performance gains that were anticipated. That said, Pocket PCs continue to offer the best performance and the richest functionality vs. other handhelds on the market today.
Translation: We know your new car only goes 40mph instead of the 65mph you old car did, but it beats a bicycle, doesn't it? (credits to Jim S for that one).
Even better:
I think the market expectation of what performance on a 400 MHz processor vs. 206 MHz processor has been unreasonable.
Not at all. The process is almost twice as fast, I don't think it is utterly unreasonable to expect the product to be at least one and a half times faster.
But my question is, how is the battery life on one of these things? If it really is the 12-16 hours instead of the 8 currently then the XScale is still a worthwhile bet.
As opposed to doing what with them?
Whoops, this doesn't contrast at all. What I was trying to say is that in a closed organisation you have a number of people who know the code very well, some that could in a couple of hours and thousands of people who are no help at all.
In other words, pretty much the same as OSS. Just because in OSS everyone has access to the code doesn't mean that they know where to look and how to fix it.
True, but just because they can doesn't mean that they do. One of the great myths about open source is that *anyone* can just dip in and discover a bug and how to fix it. That simply isn't true.
I can find bugs in closed and open source bugs in exactly the same way, by using the product until something wrong or unexpected happens. But just because I have access to the source doesn't mean that I could actually fix the bug.
If you look at projects such as Apache and Mozilla, they tend to have a number of people who know the code very very well and a few that given a couple of hours might be able to work something out and a very large number of people who, in the whole grand scale of things, are of no use at all in providing a fix to a bug.
This contrasts to a large number of individuals in an organisation who know the code very well and work with it day in day out.
Finally let us not forget that whenever people talk about security they often use Apache and IIS as their examples. Be aware that these are not really good examples. Not all OSS projects are of Apache's quality and not all closed projects are of IIS' quality.
You've ended up picking one of the best in the OSS world vs one of the worst in the closed world. It would be a little like compairing Ford's best car with Vauxhalls worst. Just because the Ford won all the time, does it mean that all Ford's are always better than all Vauxhalls?
(I think Vauxhall is Opal in the US)
Pity they forgot to register the co.uk domain :o)
A nerd doesn't need a house, just a big fat T1 into his cardboard box. Pfah, homes are for wusses.
But my work pc is a different matter entirely. I don't work for a software house and the IT support department (whilst being very clueful) would have hysterics at the idea of me opening my PC and sticking a card in.
So my only option is either find something like a firewire to USB adaptor cable or look at alternatives. I asked this question in the last ipod topic and everyone told me to buy a firewire card which, again, for my work PC is totally 100% absolutely without-a-doubt out of the question.
So unless there is such a thing, Ipod (for me) is out.
Read the whole article on ft.com
In fact, it was really a client server application which only on downloading a file did it actually make any connection with any other user.
True P2P has no server and needs no server. Napster had and needed such a thing to work.
Personally I wouldn't call it peer-to-peer at all, but if I was forced to, I'd far rather call it a hybrid P2P and Client/Server solution.
Since I used to run the audiogalaxy satellite on my Linux box and control it via the website - it worked rather well.
As I can't do that any more, can anyone suggest an alternative? Note that it needs to be runnable from a Linux terminal - so no graphical display (unless you control it via the website) and I absolutely positivily cannot install anything on my work PC.