reducing the interference on military radars by Wi-Fi equipment
Investigate Best Buy! It's kind of pathetic when all Saddam and the rest of the United States' enemies need to do is pop down to Best Buy and buy a wireless hub to protect themselves from the military might of world's largest army.
All the Iraqi airforce needs to do now is jetison wireless hubs and GeForce FX cards and they'll be immune to both radar and heat-seeking missiles.
What's next? CAT-5 cable found to defeat stealth technology?
Who has an estimate on how long it will take for the Army to outfit its troops with anti-personnel rocket launchers?
OICW - Entering service late this decade You can chain fire grenades, set them to explode on impact, just after impact (for penetrating windows) or at a set distance (for exploding over people's heads).
Alternatively, if you want a BIG F***ING GUN, nothing says I love you quite like a GMG (Grenade Machine Gun) - yeah, that's right, a Grenade MG - 40mmx53 grenades, 350 cyclic rate. If I remember rightly, it comes with an optional nightsight (Oh so useful if 350 grenades a minute don't light the target up enough for you)
and LORAN, which Loomis personally invented, guided all aircraft navigation in Europe, the Atlantic, and Pacific for the second half of the war.
It even guided the Germans and Japanese? Bloody sell out!
I realise this may come as a shock to some US readers, but the Second World War started in '39, not December 7th 1941. Half way through therefore being 41/42 as opposed to 1943. At that point the Germans were very definitely still bombing a lot and the Japanese (who'd been fairly busy for a decade already) were just getting started on Pearl Harbour.
Don't get me wrong, everyone (well, except possibly the Germans and Japanese) appreciate you turning up at all, just stop taking so much damn offence when all the Europeans turn up to your wars (like Iraq) two years late.
Extensive professional experience with all major versions of Microsoft Windows (including 95, NT, 2000, XP variants) and Linux (RedHat), [providing departmental expertise/supporting 2n users] with a friendly and polite attitude, even in times of stress.
First off, you're claiming extensive professional experience. Who the hell knows what "extensive" means but it reassures them that you really know the subject and have actually worked with it rather than are claiming it from having seen a friend run it twice.
Next you're listing "all major versions of". That way, when they have ME listed, even though you don't cover it specifically, you're still reasonably covered.
"Microsoft" Windows, as opposed to Windows, is listed - yes HR departments really are often stupid enough to think they're different.
The including list improves your odds if they're still too stupid to realise NT is a version of Windows.
With Linux, you're covering a brand name too.
Next you're showing that you didn't just work on your own but you were the department expert or that you supported a large number of people.
By 2n, what I mean is exagerate the numbers - they'll almost certainly never check up as it's such a subjective concept anyway. Even if they do, you can argue that you provided casual help outside the team which is what you were counting in your figures. Either way, it's free extra credit.
Finally, you mention a friendly and polite attitude, even in times of stress. This lets the business degree manager or the HR flunky know that you're a wonderful person who will make work more pleasant for everyone, rather than a pain-in-the-ass ubernerd. Depressing as it is, and for all they'll swear it's not true, way too many managers want an easy life more than they want the last 10% performance.
That's possibly on the long side. You can trim it to what you're comfortable with (a lot of the personal skills only need mentioning on one or two points throughout the resume) but it gives you a basis to work from. Still, with a smallish font, it's only two full lines.
I know it sounds trivial and off topic but I'm serious. Check your resume.
Unless you're horribly unqualified or applying for jobs that're totally out of your league, you should have got at least a few responses off 800 resumes - assuming they're great resumes.
I went through 6 months of searching, ending a little over a year ago. About the only thing that really changed from the beginning, where I was getting no responses, to the end, where I was getting [relatively] regular ones, was the resume. Sure, I worked on my skillsets but self-taught Perl wasn't what made the difference.
The point is, I started by writing great resumes that focused on everything I, as a tech, thought was valuable. Unfortunately, what's valuable to a tech and what gets you employed as a tech are two totally different things.
You put down that you have JSP, the HR department that're told to look for a web programmer with Java&JSP will discount you because you don't have "Java" - the other techs will never see the resume to realise the mistake. You put down a list of dry technical skills (because it's a tech position, after all) and the "manager" of the department who has a business degree and no IT experience won't hire you because they're looking for a team player. You try listing every technical skill and spill on to a third page - it gets thrown in the trash by someone who's received 300 resumes and doesn't want the hassle of reading to the last page where you mention the valuable stuff or they skip straight to the middle and miss the things you carefully put at the front.
Those O'Reilly books that have been tempting you will be one of the best investments you've ever made once you're working. Until then, a really good resume book is probably more valuable.
I honestly believe that, stupid as it may be, a perfect resume will get a significantly less skilled person a job much faster in the current flooded market than a significantly more skilled person with an "adequate" resume.
Like I said at the start, unless you're applying way out of your league, with 800 refusals, your resume is almost certainly good but not the perfect example that you need in the current market.
I just can't wait for the days when things are $1/TB
Moore's law: Doubles every 18 months. MB to TB = 1024 times = 2^10 10x18 months = 15 years.
Of course you've got inflation to factor in... What's $100 today will probably be closer to $200-$300 then (though it will still feel like $100 does now). So that probably adds another 18 months or so.
So, $1/TB - should be on shelves just before 2020. Time to file that/. article now so you can claim FIRST!
Yes, I know Moore's law is technically about silicon. Yes, I know the predictions of doom. Equally, it seems to hold largely true for most aspects of computing and, for all a given tech hits its limits, a replacement tech always seems to turn up.
How long had there been automechanics and hairdressers before either industry was regulated?
How long have people been repairing home PCs? (Maybe 20 years?)
[Home] Computing's still a very young industry. A lot of the experience is still self taught, rather than learned on courses (though it's shifting), much like with cars in their early days.
While it wouldn't suprise me in the least to see legally required certifications around the centenary of the home PC, just like we see for the centenary of the car, does every other industry get regulated this quickly either?
Now if they just add in car black boxes and a two way feature, you can have the local news programs doing up to the moment reports on drives who crash while watching the local news programs on drivers who crash while watching the local news programs on drivers who.....
Seeing as I can't see anyone who has posted it already: "What would you do if you had a million dollars?" "I tell you what I'd do man, two chicks at the same time man" "That's it? You had a million dollars, you'd do two chicks at the same time?" "Damn straight I always wanted to do that man, I think that if I was a millionaire I could hook that up, cause chicks dig dudes with money" "Not all chicks" "Well, type of chicks, that would double up on a dude like me dude." "Good point." "Now what about you now? What would you do?" "Besides two chicks at the same time?" "Well yeah." "Nothing" "Nuthin huh?" "I would relax, I would sit on my ass all day, I would do nothing." "Well you don't need a million dollars to do nothin man... Take a look at my cousin, he's broke don't do shit"
There's always the argument that the basic purpose of any organism is to reproduce, ideally creating a marginally better environment for the next generation.
Unfortunately, that puts the average trailer park dwelling redneck ahead of most of the intellectual nerds reading/. so let's just pretend I didn't say that.
Wow. Apple now watch Bond movies for patent inspiration. Western civilization really is in decline.
For those of you who haven't seen the new Bond movie, Bond's Aston Martinuses a technology the military have been messing about with for a while: Active camoflage. The idea being that you record the image on one side of a vehical and display it on the other making it appear [from a distance at least] largely transparent - or invisible.
I'd love to see the prior art submission "It was in a Bond movie." Would it (will anything) be enough for the US patent office to realise it's become a joke?
My earliest memory is writing a FOR NEXT loop in BBC BASIC to move my name across the screen, using a CLEAR after each itteration. I'd have been about four or five at the time.
The curious thing is, I can remember it too well. That's what leads me to feel that memory is associative: I remember what the programming language looked like, the characters on the old screen, what the code would have looked like and I can remember that I did it. Combined, I have a vivid memory of exactly what that code from that specific instance would have looked like. I can remember too exactly, making me think I have a memory formed of the recombined elements rather than the specific instance.
Alternatively, I've spent too much time working with relational databases and they're affecting my world view WAY too much.
Out of curiousity, when did anything mention they were bowing to the RIAA's demands?
What they're addressing is that some users leave a large p2p repository available, 24/7. That results in vastly disproportionate upstream usage compared to the average non-comercial user as users from all over the net are requesting files all of the time.
A typical home user accesses the web, primarily for downloads, for several hours a day. A typical web server provide relatively large bandwidth uploads all day, every day, even when the user is out of the house. Which does a popular p2p repository function more like? The web server.
Non-comercial home users sign contracts that say they're not going to run a server, that they're not going to expect same day engineer service etc. If you want a full service web host, you pay a very different amount. What OO are saying is that if you run a set up that is [effectively] a server, they may stop you.
To their credit, they're not even saying they will stop you, they're saying they might. They're still going to turn a blind eye to those users whose machines do a small amount of uploading because they're not abusing anything - it's the ones who're using a masively disproportionate amount who're going to get capped to bring them back in to line.
Out of curiousity, how's this any different to a water company selling $x/month service to residential users but threatening to cap people who're running a car wash service from their home? It's a business saying it'll stop abusive users.
So, the letter actually has nothing whatsoever to do with the RIAA or OO bowing to them. It had everything to do with them stopping some users from abusing a business model. Still, it's always good to jump to accusing the "bad" guys, even when they're not involved.
Re:Faithful to Tolkien's writings?
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LOTR: The Two Towers
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· Score: 5, Insightful
It's not different from the book so it's automatically crap. It just happens to be so.
Actually, most of the movie was very good. It's just the bits that strayed from the book in to obvious Holywood teritory that let it down.
Gimili: Started off as a tough, gnarled, Dwarf warrior. In the first movie, he was a little bewildered and had the one joke ("Nobody tosses this Dwarf"). In the second he is JUST there for comedy. He can't keep up on the run; he's keeps falling over; he gets to wear comically oversized mail; he is the butt of endless short-jokes etc. There's just no validity to him. What sucks is he's not written that way (he actually keeps up just fine on the run in the book) but they decided to sell him out to lighten the "dark second part of the trilogy". It's like making Chewie do song and dance routines to stop Empire being so depressing.
Frodo and Sam: OK, what the hell's up with their "new and improved" journey? Why are they in that city? Why does Frodo need to go and try and surrender himself to the ringwraith? Why did we need to see Sam doing his running, diving, savior thing? Why did we need to turn Faramir in to an exact clone of his brother, Boromir, rather than leave him the way he was written as the ultimately stronger of the two? OK, so not a lot happens with them, that translates well to the screen, in the book. Even so, do we really need cliche'd holywood crap?
Speaking of holywood crap - Aragorn: Why did he need to fall off that cliff? It's not in the book. Just because Robin Hood once dramatically jumped off a high cliff in to a river, it doesn't mean Aragorn has to. He's not Kevin Costner. It's not a Kevin Costner movie. It adds absolutely nothing beyond a mopey Eowyn moment (see my next comment). It's just cheesy holywood, mid movie, something dramatic needs to happen here, crap.
Eowyn and Arwen: OK, I'll admit, I liked Arwen in the first movie. Even so, this one makes it really obvious that she's stolen everything Eowyn's supposed to be in terms of the pained love story with Aragorn. So now we have Eowyn moping around with no sympathy because she's invading on the relationship we've already learned to care about. You can't get rid of her because she's needed later so, instead, we end up with stupid scenes like the cliff fall in order to give her something to do now we've given away what she's supposed to be doing.
Ninja Ents: Was is just me or did the Ents ONLY redirect the river Isen in the book? The whole "Ents stomp!" fight was just unnecessary and left the already underexplained race feeling like some cheesy Disney reject. The book builds them up in to stately, dignified, sad characters who act in their own way. The movie abandons all of that. Granted, you have to make cuts for time, but cut the holywood added big Ent fight and leave the depth of character stuff.
So, most of it really was a good movie. The problem is: The first one stayed [largely] true to the book and really felt like it was obviously saying, "Fuck holywood, we're going to make this one right." This one feels much more like, "Hey, we made a really successful movie, so we are God. Let's fuck with whatever we need to to get the holywood weaned audience in and happy." The stupid thing is, the first one was so good exactly because they DIDN'T pander to holywood style.
On the positive side, Gollum/Smeagol was just about perfect. I knew the direction they were going in and he still amazed me. The fights were spectacular, the Ents were really nicely rendered, it was appropriately rousing in the right places (which is no mean feat at 3am). It just sucks that what was a fanboy franchise, and turned out to be great for being unappologetically so, seems to have turned around and chased holywood style that it never needed at its own expense.
The book remains great. The parts of the movie that come from the book remain incredible. Every failing in the movie comes from the movie makers deliberately shooting themselves in the foot (feet?).
The data was stored on 2 video disks, not a large amount of data - quite pheasable to have a project to recover the data. What about the data that we might want to store today ? What about the data that will be generated over the next 1000 years ?
Moore's law should take care of that one.
Think back to 20 years ago when this thing was being created - two laser discs were a massive amount of information for a system that, as standard, used cassettes. If you were lucky, you had a 360k disc drive. If you were truly lucky, you had a double sided, double density one.
Twenty years later, two laser discs are a trivial amount. Our terrabyte raid arrays will be equally laughable in another 20 years.
Even in a thousand years, the quantities of data will seem laughable in a thousand and twenty years. Of course that assumes Moore's law holds up. But then I've been listening to people announce Moore's law can't hold up for more than another few years, every year, for the last ten or twenty.
The problem's not the volume of data, it's the formats (db formats etc. as well as shiny physical formats).
Which leads me on to the obvious one: If they'd just asked, I've got a still working BBC sitting around. Now I've finally got the hang of docking, I'm hoping to become Elite any day now.;)
Normally I'd agree with you but there's the argument that this book really is that good (I've been using the first edition as my [very nearly] exclusive reference for a couple of years now).
One of the problems with the way most people used to learn HTML is that they picked apart other people's examples, trying to figure out how things worked, with no formal guide. The end result was most people knew a <p> tag worked fine on its own but had no understanding of what it was really doing, why you may want to use a </p> tag or any of the other issues.
This book [1st ed. not 2nd - I'll admit, I've not seen the 2nd yet] works by giving a very clear introduction to the concepts and then simply laying out exactly the information you need, with a quick explanation and a short example.
Can that replace all of the experience you'd gain through working? Of course not. But it really does save the time spent acquiring a vast amount of it: All of those additional parameters that you'd need to chance upon seeing somewhere else are laid out, giving you the inspiration; the complete specifications are laid out (so things like regexps that I'd never seen in JavaScript were covered; "pure" examples are given so you're not hacking apart an example hacked apart from someone else's hacked apart example; the clear layout and concise explanations mean you understand how everything fits together that much more easily, giving you a head start on the whole "common sense" side.
So no, no one anything can give you a complete grounding: The perfect knowledge of HCI, the perfect knowledge of photoshop, the perfect knowledge of HTML structure and tags, none of those things alone make you a well balanced expert. But, for the price (~$45) and the speed (how quickly you can find exactly the information you're after in this well laid out book), it's a better (more efficient) investment than anything else I've come across.
As this post points out, they're hosting out of Salt Lake City.
Either way, once you openly do business with people in a given country, you open yourself up to the laws of that country. Hell, the US is suing Elcomsoft, or whoever they were, for making a product that's legal in their home country [Russia] and only selling it in countries where it was legal.
Actually WANTing MS to change their EULA
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First Worm with a EULA?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Now worms are "legal", maybe it's time to go begging to Microsoft?
"Hi, could you add the following term to your EULA?..."
Third parties: You agree not to reverse engineer or exploit Microsoft Outlook in such a way as to create "worms" [define to your lawyers hearts' content] on penalty of $1trillion US, to be paid to [add deserving fund].
Now they can make their worms as legal as they like and, by expecting others to live to their EULA, they have to abide by Microsoft's and file for bankruptcy.
Under US law, storing personally identifiable information about children is [largely] illegal.
The EULA, as far as I can tell, makes NO mention about this product not being allowed for under 13s.
With its infection (uh, I mean, transmission) mechanism, it makes no attempt to discover the age of the user before beginning to log their personal information.
So, as soon as you discover your child has installed this program, sue them for failing to make any attempt to avoid violating their rights. Their EULA get out clauses don't work either as, being a child, they couldn't legally agree to the EULA anyway.
Hopefully it'll spread better than they ever hoped. A class action lawsuit for every child in America would probably make a fairly clear point to anyone else trying this.
I have friends in the S&M scene who have their submissives hold things out at arm's length for long periods of time as a painful punishment. You'd be amazed how quickly just the weight of your own arm starts to hurt.
Next : a mouse, shaped like a dime, that you have to press against the wall with your nose?
Windows menu
Windows 1.01
Windows 1.03
Windows 2.03
Windows 2.10
Windows 3.1
Windows 1-3x were not OSs, you had to have a DOS OS installed and boot in to DOS before running Windows - they were systems that ran over the top. That's excluding 95 still technically working that way but making you boot in to Windows then exit out (dressed up as logging out) to DOS.
It's the equivalent of calling RedHat two different OSs because it comes with Gnome and KDE.
Slashdot Mirror
reducing the interference on military radars by Wi-Fi equipment
Investigate Best Buy! It's kind of pathetic when all Saddam and the rest of the United States' enemies need to do is pop down to Best Buy and buy a wireless hub to protect themselves from the military might of world's largest army.
All the Iraqi airforce needs to do now is jetison wireless hubs and GeForce FX cards and they'll be immune to both radar and heat-seeking missiles.
What's next? CAT-5 cable found to defeat stealth technology?
Who has an estimate on how long it will take for the Army to outfit its troops with anti-personnel rocket launchers?
OICW - Entering service late this decade You can chain fire grenades, set them to explode on impact, just after impact (for penetrating windows) or at a set distance (for exploding over people's heads).
Alternatively, if you want a BIG F***ING GUN, nothing says I love you quite like a GMG (Grenade Machine Gun) - yeah, that's right, a Grenade MG - 40mmx53 grenades, 350 cyclic rate. If I remember rightly, it comes with an optional nightsight (Oh so useful if 350 grenades a minute don't light the target up enough for you)
Al Gore is the father of video games!
and LORAN, which Loomis personally invented, guided all aircraft navigation in Europe, the Atlantic, and Pacific for the second half of the war.
It even guided the Germans and Japanese? Bloody sell out!
I realise this may come as a shock to some US readers, but the Second World War started in '39, not December 7th 1941. Half way through therefore being 41/42 as opposed to 1943. At that point the Germans were very definitely still bombing a lot and the Japanese (who'd been fairly busy for a decade already) were just getting started on Pearl Harbour.
Don't get me wrong, everyone (well, except possibly the Germans and Japanese) appreciate you turning up at all, just stop taking so much damn offence when all the Europeans turn up to your wars (like Iraq) two years late.
Try:
Extensive professional experience with all major versions of Microsoft Windows (including 95, NT, 2000, XP variants) and Linux (RedHat), [providing departmental expertise/supporting 2n users] with a friendly and polite attitude, even in times of stress.
First off, you're claiming extensive professional experience. Who the hell knows what "extensive" means but it reassures them that you really know the subject and have actually worked with it rather than are claiming it from having seen a friend run it twice.
Next you're listing "all major versions of". That way, when they have ME listed, even though you don't cover it specifically, you're still reasonably covered.
"Microsoft" Windows, as opposed to Windows, is listed - yes HR departments really are often stupid enough to think they're different.
The including list improves your odds if they're still too stupid to realise NT is a version of Windows.
With Linux, you're covering a brand name too.
Next you're showing that you didn't just work on your own but you were the department expert or that you supported a large number of people.
By 2n, what I mean is exagerate the numbers - they'll almost certainly never check up as it's such a subjective concept anyway. Even if they do, you can argue that you provided casual help outside the team which is what you were counting in your figures. Either way, it's free extra credit.
Finally, you mention a friendly and polite attitude, even in times of stress. This lets the business degree manager or the HR flunky know that you're a wonderful person who will make work more pleasant for everyone, rather than a pain-in-the-ass ubernerd. Depressing as it is, and for all they'll swear it's not true, way too many managers want an easy life more than they want the last 10% performance.
That's possibly on the long side. You can trim it to what you're comfortable with (a lot of the personal skills only need mentioning on one or two points throughout the resume) but it gives you a basis to work from. Still, with a smallish font, it's only two full lines.
I know it sounds trivial and off topic but I'm serious. Check your resume.
Unless you're horribly unqualified or applying for jobs that're totally out of your league, you should have got at least a few responses off 800 resumes - assuming they're great resumes.
I went through 6 months of searching, ending a little over a year ago. About the only thing that really changed from the beginning, where I was getting no responses, to the end, where I was getting [relatively] regular ones, was the resume. Sure, I worked on my skillsets but self-taught Perl wasn't what made the difference.
The point is, I started by writing great resumes that focused on everything I, as a tech, thought was valuable. Unfortunately, what's valuable to a tech and what gets you employed as a tech are two totally different things.
You put down that you have JSP, the HR department that're told to look for a web programmer with Java&JSP will discount you because you don't have "Java" - the other techs will never see the resume to realise the mistake. You put down a list of dry technical skills (because it's a tech position, after all) and the "manager" of the department who has a business degree and no IT experience won't hire you because they're looking for a team player. You try listing every technical skill and spill on to a third page - it gets thrown in the trash by someone who's received 300 resumes and doesn't want the hassle of reading to the last page where you mention the valuable stuff or they skip straight to the middle and miss the things you carefully put at the front.
Those O'Reilly books that have been tempting you will be one of the best investments you've ever made once you're working. Until then, a really good resume book is probably more valuable.
I honestly believe that, stupid as it may be, a perfect resume will get a significantly less skilled person a job much faster in the current flooded market than a significantly more skilled person with an "adequate" resume.
Like I said at the start, unless you're applying way out of your league, with 800 refusals, your resume is almost certainly good but not the perfect example that you need in the current market.
I just can't wait for the days when things are $1/TB
/. article now so you can claim FIRST!
Moore's law: Doubles every 18 months.
MB to TB = 1024 times = 2^10
10x18 months = 15 years.
Of course you've got inflation to factor in... What's $100 today will probably be closer to $200-$300 then (though it will still feel like $100 does now). So that probably adds another 18 months or so.
So, $1/TB - should be on shelves just before 2020. Time to file that
Yes, I know Moore's law is technically about silicon. Yes, I know the predictions of doom. Equally, it seems to hold largely true for most aspects of computing and, for all a given tech hits its limits, a replacement tech always seems to turn up.
How long had there been automechanics and hairdressers before either industry was regulated?
How long have people been repairing home PCs? (Maybe 20 years?)
[Home] Computing's still a very young industry. A lot of the experience is still self taught, rather than learned on courses (though it's shifting), much like with cars in their early days.
While it wouldn't suprise me in the least to see legally required certifications around the centenary of the home PC, just like we see for the centenary of the car, does every other industry get regulated this quickly either?
Now if they just add in car black boxes and a two way feature, you can have the local news programs doing up to the moment reports on drives who crash while watching the local news programs on drivers who crash while watching the local news programs on drivers who.....
Those ludites may have had a point.
Seeing as I can't see anyone who has posted it already:
"What would you do if you had a million dollars?"
"I tell you what I'd do man, two chicks at the same time man"
"That's it? You had a million dollars, you'd do two chicks at the same time?"
"Damn straight I always wanted to do that man, I think that if I was a millionaire I could hook that up, cause chicks dig dudes with money"
"Not all chicks"
"Well, type of chicks, that would double up on a dude like me dude."
"Good point."
"Now what about you now? What would you do?"
"Besides two chicks at the same time?"
"Well yeah."
"Nothing"
"Nuthin huh?"
"I would relax, I would sit on my ass all day, I would do nothing."
"Well you don't need a million dollars to do nothin man... Take a look at my cousin, he's broke don't do shit"
There's always the argument that the basic purpose of any organism is to reproduce, ideally creating a marginally better environment for the next generation.
/. so let's just pretend I didn't say that.
Unfortunately, that puts the average trailer park dwelling redneck ahead of most of the intellectual nerds reading
Wow. Apple now watch Bond movies for patent inspiration. Western civilization really is in decline.
For those of you who haven't seen the new Bond movie, Bond's Aston Martin uses a technology the military have been messing about with for a while: Active camoflage. The idea being that you record the image on one side of a vehical and display it on the other making it appear [from a distance at least] largely transparent - or invisible.
I'd love to see the prior art submission "It was in a Bond movie." Would it (will anything) be enough for the US patent office to realise it's become a joke?
My earliest memory is writing a FOR NEXT loop in BBC BASIC to move my name across the screen, using a CLEAR after each itteration. I'd have been about four or five at the time.
The curious thing is, I can remember it too well. That's what leads me to feel that memory is associative: I remember what the programming language looked like, the characters on the old screen, what the code would have looked like and I can remember that I did it. Combined, I have a vivid memory of exactly what that code from that specific instance would have looked like. I can remember too exactly, making me think I have a memory formed of the recombined elements rather than the specific instance.
Alternatively, I've spent too much time working with relational databases and they're affecting my world view WAY too much.
Out of curiousity, when did anything mention they were bowing to the RIAA's demands?
What they're addressing is that some users leave a large p2p repository available, 24/7. That results in vastly disproportionate upstream usage compared to the average non-comercial user as users from all over the net are requesting files all of the time.
A typical home user accesses the web, primarily for downloads, for several hours a day. A typical web server provide relatively large bandwidth uploads all day, every day, even when the user is out of the house. Which does a popular p2p repository function more like? The web server.
Non-comercial home users sign contracts that say they're not going to run a server, that they're not going to expect same day engineer service etc. If you want a full service web host, you pay a very different amount. What OO are saying is that if you run a set up that is [effectively] a server, they may stop you.
To their credit, they're not even saying they will stop you, they're saying they might. They're still going to turn a blind eye to those users whose machines do a small amount of uploading because they're not abusing anything - it's the ones who're using a masively disproportionate amount who're going to get capped to bring them back in to line.
Out of curiousity, how's this any different to a water company selling $x/month service to residential users but threatening to cap people who're running a car wash service from their home? It's a business saying it'll stop abusive users.
So, the letter actually has nothing whatsoever to do with the RIAA or OO bowing to them. It had everything to do with them stopping some users from abusing a business model. Still, it's always good to jump to accusing the "bad" guys, even when they're not involved.
It's not different from the book so it's automatically crap. It just happens to be so.
Actually, most of the movie was very good. It's just the bits that strayed from the book in to obvious Holywood teritory that let it down.
Gimili: Started off as a tough, gnarled, Dwarf warrior. In the first movie, he was a little bewildered and had the one joke ("Nobody tosses this Dwarf"). In the second he is JUST there for comedy. He can't keep up on the run; he's keeps falling over; he gets to wear comically oversized mail; he is the butt of endless short-jokes etc. There's just no validity to him. What sucks is he's not written that way (he actually keeps up just fine on the run in the book) but they decided to sell him out to lighten the "dark second part of the trilogy". It's like making Chewie do song and dance routines to stop Empire being so depressing.
Frodo and Sam: OK, what the hell's up with their "new and improved" journey? Why are they in that city? Why does Frodo need to go and try and surrender himself to the ringwraith? Why did we need to see Sam doing his running, diving, savior thing? Why did we need to turn Faramir in to an exact clone of his brother, Boromir, rather than leave him the way he was written as the ultimately stronger of the two? OK, so not a lot happens with them, that translates well to the screen, in the book. Even so, do we really need cliche'd holywood crap?
Speaking of holywood crap - Aragorn: Why did he need to fall off that cliff? It's not in the book. Just because Robin Hood once dramatically jumped off a high cliff in to a river, it doesn't mean Aragorn has to. He's not Kevin Costner. It's not a Kevin Costner movie. It adds absolutely nothing beyond a mopey Eowyn moment (see my next comment). It's just cheesy holywood, mid movie, something dramatic needs to happen here, crap.
Eowyn and Arwen: OK, I'll admit, I liked Arwen in the first movie. Even so, this one makes it really obvious that she's stolen everything Eowyn's supposed to be in terms of the pained love story with Aragorn. So now we have Eowyn moping around with no sympathy because she's invading on the relationship we've already learned to care about. You can't get rid of her because she's needed later so, instead, we end up with stupid scenes like the cliff fall in order to give her something to do now we've given away what she's supposed to be doing.
Ninja Ents: Was is just me or did the Ents ONLY redirect the river Isen in the book? The whole "Ents stomp!" fight was just unnecessary and left the already underexplained race feeling like some cheesy Disney reject. The book builds them up in to stately, dignified, sad characters who act in their own way. The movie abandons all of that. Granted, you have to make cuts for time, but cut the holywood added big Ent fight and leave the depth of character stuff.
So, most of it really was a good movie. The problem is: The first one stayed [largely] true to the book and really felt like it was obviously saying, "Fuck holywood, we're going to make this one right." This one feels much more like, "Hey, we made a really successful movie, so we are God. Let's fuck with whatever we need to to get the holywood weaned audience in and happy." The stupid thing is, the first one was so good exactly because they DIDN'T pander to holywood style.
On the positive side, Gollum/Smeagol was just about perfect. I knew the direction they were going in and he still amazed me. The fights were spectacular, the Ents were really nicely rendered, it was appropriately rousing in the right places (which is no mean feat at 3am). It just sucks that what was a fanboy franchise, and turned out to be great for being unappologetically so, seems to have turned around and chased holywood style that it never needed at its own expense.
The book remains great. The parts of the movie that come from the book remain incredible. Every failing in the movie comes from the movie makers deliberately shooting themselves in the foot (feet?).
Moore's law should take care of that one.
Think back to 20 years ago when this thing was being created - two laser discs were a massive amount of information for a system that, as standard, used cassettes. If you were lucky, you had a 360k disc drive. If you were truly lucky, you had a double sided, double density one.
Twenty years later, two laser discs are a trivial amount. Our terrabyte raid arrays will be equally laughable in another 20 years. Even in a thousand years, the quantities of data will seem laughable in a thousand and twenty years. Of course that assumes Moore's law holds up. But then I've been listening to people announce Moore's law can't hold up for more than another few years, every year, for the last ten or twenty.
The problem's not the volume of data, it's the formats (db formats etc. as well as shiny physical formats).
Which leads me on to the obvious one: If they'd just asked, I've got a still working BBC sitting around. Now I've finally got the hang of docking, I'm hoping to become Elite any day now. ;)
One of the problems with the way most people used to learn HTML is that they picked apart other people's examples, trying to figure out how things worked, with no formal guide. The end result was most people knew a <p> tag worked fine on its own but had no understanding of what it was really doing, why you may want to use a </p> tag or any of the other issues.
This book [1st ed. not 2nd - I'll admit, I've not seen the 2nd yet] works by giving a very clear introduction to the concepts and then simply laying out exactly the information you need, with a quick explanation and a short example.
Can that replace all of the experience you'd gain through working? Of course not. But it really does save the time spent acquiring a vast amount of it: All of those additional parameters that you'd need to chance upon seeing somewhere else are laid out, giving you the inspiration; the complete specifications are laid out (so things like regexps that I'd never seen in JavaScript were covered; "pure" examples are given so you're not hacking apart an example hacked apart from someone else's hacked apart example; the clear layout and concise explanations mean you understand how everything fits together that much more easily, giving you a head start on the whole "common sense" side.
So no, no one anything can give you a complete grounding: The perfect knowledge of HCI, the perfect knowledge of photoshop, the perfect knowledge of HTML structure and tags, none of those things alone make you a well balanced expert. But, for the price (~$45) and the speed (how quickly you can find exactly the information you're after in this well laid out book), it's a better (more efficient) investment than anything else I've come across.
It really is that good.
As this post points out, they're hosting out of Salt Lake City.
Either way, once you openly do business with people in a given country, you open yourself up to the laws of that country. Hell, the US is suing Elcomsoft, or whoever they were, for making a product that's legal in their home country [Russia] and only selling it in countries where it was legal.
"Hi, could you add the following term to your EULA?..."
Third parties: You agree not to reverse engineer or exploit Microsoft Outlook in such a way as to create "worms" [define to your lawyers hearts' content] on penalty of $1trillion US, to be paid to [add deserving fund].
Now they can make their worms as legal as they like and, by expecting others to live to their EULA, they have to abide by Microsoft's and file for bankruptcy.
Never thought I'd like Microsoft having EULAs.
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Under US law, storing personally identifiable information about children is [largely] illegal.
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The EULA, as far as I can tell, makes NO mention about this product not being allowed for under 13s.
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With its infection (uh, I mean, transmission) mechanism, it makes no attempt to discover the age of the user before beginning to log their personal information.
So, as soon as you discover your child has installed this program, sue them for failing to make any attempt to avoid violating their rights. Their EULA get out clauses don't work either as, being a child, they couldn't legally agree to the EULA anyway.Hopefully it'll spread better than they ever hoped. A class action lawsuit for every child in America would probably make a fairly clear point to anyone else trying this.
Next : a mouse, shaped like a dime, that you have to press against the wall with your nose?
"NO! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! SPEAK UP! I'M IN A CINEMA"
Ah yes. The asshole's over there.
Well, the odds are one smaller, now.
[Paraphrased]"Realistically, IPv6 is necessary but it isn't going to happen until Microsoft move their Operating Systems to support it."
Windows 1.01
Windows 1.03
Windows 2.03
Windows 2.10
Windows 3.1
Windows 1-3x were not OSs, you had to have a DOS OS installed and boot in to DOS before running Windows - they were systems that ran over the top. That's excluding 95 still technically working that way but making you boot in to Windows then exit out (dressed up as logging out) to DOS.
It's the equivalent of calling RedHat two different OSs because it comes with Gnome and KDE.