Apparently it has "an ethernet port that can be linked directly to a music store."
I don't particularly want my hi-fi to stick out the side of a music store and nor do I want to buy miles of ethernet cable and a whole lot of repeaters.
I've spent a fair bit of time playing with various pieces of software, and here's what I keep running on my home PC:
Virus Killer
AVG Anit-Virus, a virus killer from Grisoft where a gratis version (free edition) is available. I'm not sure of its protection level but updates are available fairly frequently.
It's also quite poor in its appearance but it's hard to complain at a free virus killer when it must take a lot of time to maintain such a project. However, I'd not put all your trust in it, keep a wary eye on your system, a false sense of security is not a good thing!
Firewalls
Of the firewalls, I use an old version of Tiny Personal Firewall. They used to do a free version but unfortunately they now charge leaving you with few options other than the 'firewall for dummies' known as Zone Alarm.
Virtual Desktops
For desktop switching, a very useful thing you you program or work with graphics or CAD, there is an app called Multidesk from Tech Superior.
Unlike other products, it's light and onobtrusive. It puts an icon (or several -- your choice) in the system tray and you can switch desktop with a click of the icon or the keyboard shortcuts.
Web Browser
For web browsing, it's hard to beat Mozilla Firebird (formerly Phoenix). It's fast, supports tabbed browsing as is open source. You can get it from Mozilla.org
Web Filtering
Proximitron, a web filtering and page alteration proxy that lets you remove annoyances and even rewrite web-sites on the fly. The product is no longer supported or developed but some sites still have the download, best look at Proximitron.info.
The product is great in that you can match any HTML and replace it with whatever you like. The Proximitron author provides many such filters with the product and clever use of JavaScript allows all sorts of annoyances such as adverts, pop-ups, pop-unders, browser unloads, right mouse disabling to be removed or altered. I'm very sad it is no longer maintained.
Email Client
A good email client is really hard to find. I've been using an old build of the Mozilla suite but Mozilla Thunderbird is looking promising. I've used many other free clients including Outlook Express (discontinued), Sylpheed Claws (poor), et al but they are all flawed in some way. I'm not using Thunderbird yet but I soon will be. You can get it from Mozilla.org.
Email Spam Protection
POPFile, a great, free, open source baysian filter for email, hosted on Sourceforge.
TweakUI
I'm not sure if they do one for XP, I've never upgraded for political reasons but TweakUI has been available for other versions of Windows since Windows 95 at least. It provides a lot of advanced features that Microsoft left out of the rest of the user interface and allows you fix a lot of the common problems such as corrupted icon cache, manually removed applications as well as setting advanced preferances such as double-click rectangle size, etc. A must for any seasoned user running Windows. Available in PowerToys from the MS website.
Cygwin
Ports of many popular tools from GNU etc. that are normally available on a Linux/BSD environment. If you're dual booting Windows and Linux, then these are a must. Available from the Cygwin website.
Virtual Machine Emulation
If you're serious about dual booting, then you may want to cosider VMWare. It's very pricey but a fantastically cool product than effectively emulates an I386 PC and its hardware, allowing a second OS to run in a window on the native OS.
Layering came about because of the inflexibility of systems administrators to react to the need for new services to be accessible. HTTP is one of the few protocols that are allowed through firewalls because of over-zealous blocking. Because of the need for applications to work, people have realised that the only way forward is to get their protocol to run over HTTP, hence SOAP and the rise of XML. I've experienced this need to layer first-hand on many occasions.
Developers tend to do the least work necessary to achieve the result they desire. The fact that so many protocols run over HTTP now indicates that the developers of the applications that use these protocols have been unable to persuade the systems administrators to open ports so that they could their necessary applications to work. Instead they resorted to the harder task of layering to avoid the blocks.
The sysadmin that said "I like people to do some work to convince me" says it all. The attitude is that of a power-monger. A pragrmatic sysadmin would work with the applications developers to find a solution. Maybe they frown upon opening ports for applications, but they should at least put the effort in to explore the options otherwise we'll always end up with this layering effect for every networked application. I wonder how long it takes before we end up with protocols running over HTML/HTTP to avoid the application firewalls that start blockting non-HTML HTTP traffic.
I really don't believe they would be allowed to do this without prior consent. Calls are typically prefixed with a "this call may be recorded for training purposes" but I doubt they would be able to do the same thing for detecting fraud.
More likely, one would have to consent in writing which they may offer a reduced premium to encourage people to sign up. (In reality, the money they save will possibly not be passed on: instead the 'reduced premium' could end up as being the usual price and those not signing up will pay a penalty).
follow good programming concepts (such as forced catching of exceptions)
It's arguable whether this is actually good practice. Neither C++ nor C# have the concept of checked exceptions and, after programming Java for many years, I've been toying in my head with the merits myself.
At the very least, I think that the checked exception baseclass should be a sub-class of the unchecked exception rather than the other way around like it is in Java (RuntimeException=unchecked is subclass of Exception=checked).
Re:Food, drink, but no "log" log?
on
Space Blog
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
In their suits I think they wear catheters (spel?) for urinal excretions and I found this link after a little insert-verb-that-means-same-as-Googling-but-withou t-using-trademark.
My favourite quote
on
Space Blog
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
When talking about 'flying' in space:
I am ignoring the effect of air resistance and air currents because it doesn't have too much effect on human flying (it does for much lighter objects).
Lighter objects? In zero-G? I think he may mean objects with large surface areas compared to their mass,:)
I saw a documentary on this once on television. A geologist by the name of Dr. Schwarz N Edgar discovered the undergound ice reserves. He also discovered an alien contraption that melts the ice to create a Martian atmopshere but it appeared never to be used. Then he got chased by some mutants, pressed the start button and got ejected to the planet's surface where he took rather a long time to not die only to be saved by the new atmosphere.
Seriously though, as more product based (manufacturing and farming) companies turn to wireless technology the potential for disaster grows. Someone spoofing these plants' state could seriously write-off the crop. I'm counting the days until I see the first wireless industrial sabotage.
This is rather presumptuous. I recycle paper by walking over to the printer where I work and picking up a wad of sheets from the bottom of the unclaimed pile that accumulates there. I then proceed to tear them in half and place them, unprinted side up, in a pad fastened with a bulldog clip.
I use this pad for my day-to-day notes. This saves on paper, chemicals, fuel and ink that would have been spent transporting and converting the paper into new, branded, boxed and distributed recycled paper -- a cost everyone seems happy to ignore.
Ticket switching is not a problem. A price on a ticket is just an 'offer to treat'. Both parties must agree to the sale at an agreed price (and other conditions) before it is contractually binding. I'm not a lawer, solicitor or otherwise law savvy but I know that I agreed to commit my money and they committed to sending me 10 iPaqs...they sent me a 'contract' by email stating that.
I'm not expecting to receive a large, juicy box of iPaqs so I won't be going blue from holding my breath. However, I do expect an appology from Amazon (that I won't be getting my order) and financial compensation of some sort -- as a goodwill gesture and pacifier.
It is fairly trivial to implement sale throttling and alerting on mispriced products. The fact that they haven't means they should be in some way responsible for this mishap. The quantity of orders should not factor into it.
Because they chose to offer me a 'right' beyond my legal rights. I did not choose to offer them a reciprocal right (unless it's in the terms and conditions). It's up to both parties to choose during the lead up to a formal contract what the terms will be. Amazon offered me the right to cancel as they thought that would make the audience more likely to purchase with them i.e. they thought that the (long term) cost of offering this right is less than not to do so.
I didn't choose to offer them the right to change their mind about the price as I didn't have the facility or the need (they would have sold to me whether I offered that right or not).
Anyhow, I'm soon to read the T+C so it could be I did offer them that right in the T+C I accepted when I placed my order -- it could be that Amazon decided what rights I'd offer them as part of the condition of selling to me. That I'm going to find out. All I do know is that they sent me what, in their own words, they called a 'contract' so I feel we are both legally bound to the sale now -- i.e. I owe them 80 quid, they owe me 10 iPaqs.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently it has "an ethernet port that can be linked directly to a music store."
I don't particularly want my hi-fi to stick out the side of a music store and nor do I want to buy miles of ethernet cable and a whole lot of repeaters.
I've spent a fair bit of time playing with various pieces of software, and here's what I keep running on my home PC:
Virus Killer
AVG Anit-Virus, a virus killer from Grisoft where a gratis version (free edition) is available. I'm not sure of its protection level but updates are available fairly frequently.
It's also quite poor in its appearance but it's hard to complain at a free virus killer when it must take a lot of time to maintain such a project. However, I'd not put all your trust in it, keep a wary eye on your system, a false sense of security is not a good thing!
Firewalls
Of the firewalls, I use an old version of Tiny Personal Firewall. They used to do a free version but unfortunately they now charge leaving you with few options other than the 'firewall for dummies' known as Zone Alarm.
Virtual Desktops
For desktop switching, a very useful thing you you program or work with graphics or CAD, there is an app called Multidesk from Tech Superior.
Unlike other products, it's light and onobtrusive. It puts an icon (or several -- your choice) in the system tray and you can switch desktop with a click of the icon or the keyboard shortcuts.
Web Browser
For web browsing, it's hard to beat Mozilla Firebird (formerly Phoenix). It's fast, supports tabbed browsing as is open source. You can get it from Mozilla.org
Web Filtering
Proximitron, a web filtering and page alteration proxy that lets you remove annoyances and even rewrite web-sites on the fly. The product is no longer supported or developed but some sites still have the download, best look at Proximitron.info.
The product is great in that you can match any HTML and replace it with whatever you like. The Proximitron author provides many such filters with the product and clever use of JavaScript allows all sorts of annoyances such as adverts, pop-ups, pop-unders, browser unloads, right mouse disabling to be removed or altered. I'm very sad it is no longer maintained.
Email Client
A good email client is really hard to find. I've been using an old build of the Mozilla suite but Mozilla Thunderbird is looking promising. I've used many other free clients including Outlook Express (discontinued), Sylpheed Claws (poor), et al but they are all flawed in some way. I'm not using Thunderbird yet but I soon will be. You can get it from Mozilla.org.
Email Spam Protection
POPFile, a great, free, open source baysian filter for email, hosted on Sourceforge.
TweakUI
I'm not sure if they do one for XP, I've never upgraded for political reasons but TweakUI has been available for other versions of Windows since Windows 95 at least. It provides a lot of advanced features that Microsoft left out of the rest of the user interface and allows you fix a lot of the common problems such as corrupted icon cache, manually removed applications as well as setting advanced preferances such as double-click rectangle size, etc. A must for any seasoned user running Windows. Available in PowerToys from the MS website.
Cygwin
Ports of many popular tools from GNU etc. that are normally available on a Linux/BSD environment. If you're dual booting Windows and Linux, then these are a must. Available from the Cygwin website.
Virtual Machine Emulation
If you're serious about dual booting, then you may want to cosider VMWare. It's very pricey but a fantastically cool product than effectively emulates an I386 PC and its hardware, allowing a second OS to run in a window on the native OS.
It's a
And just think how many Opterons you could make from the silicon...
Just buy a bloody label printer ;)
Or you could just buy Abby FineReader and scan your mails yourself.
What would do it for me is if the scanner companies brought out cheap, multi-sheet feeder scanners.
Layering came about because of the inflexibility of systems administrators to react to the need for new services to be accessible. HTTP is one of the few protocols that are allowed through firewalls because of over-zealous blocking. Because of the need for applications to work, people have realised that the only way forward is to get their protocol to run over HTTP, hence SOAP and the rise of XML. I've experienced this need to layer first-hand on many occasions.
Developers tend to do the least work necessary to achieve the result they desire. The fact that so many protocols run over HTTP now indicates that the developers of the applications that use these protocols have been unable to persuade the systems administrators to open ports so that they could their necessary applications to work. Instead they resorted to the harder task of layering to avoid the blocks.
The sysadmin that said "I like people to do some work to convince me" says it all. The attitude is that of a power-monger. A pragrmatic sysadmin would work with the applications developers to find a solution. Maybe they frown upon opening ports for applications, but they should at least put the effort in to explore the options otherwise we'll always end up with this layering effect for every networked application. I wonder how long it takes before we end up with protocols running over HTML/HTTP to avoid the application firewalls that start blockting non-HTML HTTP traffic.
Seven years and they're still making sites that have a fixed width. Really glad I bought that 23" monitor ;)
Technically, linguistically and everyway (except for wrongly) it is 'viruses'.
Oh great, show them you approve.....by spamming them!!! ;)
I really don't believe they would be allowed to do this without prior consent. Calls are typically prefixed with a "this call may be recorded for training purposes" but I doubt they would be able to do the same thing for detecting fraud.
More likely, one would have to consent in writing which they may offer a reduced premium to encourage people to sign up. (In reality, the money they save will possibly not be passed on: instead the 'reduced premium' could end up as being the usual price and those not signing up will pay a penalty).
It's arguable whether this is actually good practice. Neither C++ nor C# have the concept of checked exceptions and, after programming Java for many years, I've been toying in my head with the merits myself.
At the very least, I think that the checked exception baseclass should be a sub-class of the unchecked exception rather than the other way around like it is in Java (RuntimeException=unchecked is subclass of Exception=checked).
In their suits I think they wear catheters (spel?) for urinal excretions and I found this link after a little insert-verb-that-means-same-as-Googling-but-withou t-using-trademark.
Space Toilet Picture
Space Toilet Description.
Lighter objects? In zero-G? I think he may mean objects with large surface areas compared to their mass,
I saw a documentary on this once on television. A geologist by the name of Dr. Schwarz N Edgar discovered the undergound ice reserves. He also discovered an alien contraption that melts the ice to create a Martian atmopshere but it appeared never to be used. Then he got chased by some mutants, pressed the start button and got ejected to the planet's surface where he took rather a long time to not die only to be saved by the new atmosphere.
Mine happens to be HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{dee35061-506b-11cf-b1aa-0 0aa00b8de95} if anyone happens to want to send me a letter.
I can't say I've ever known a wine with wires.
Seriously though, as more product based (manufacturing and farming) companies turn to wireless technology the potential for disaster grows. Someone spoofing these plants' state could seriously write-off the crop. I'm counting the days until I see the first wireless industrial sabotage.
I'd put my security camera in my Microsoft Barney. I'd say he'd be around taking snapshots throughout the whole afair.
Yep, sorry, only read the first paragraph before replying making me the presumptuous one!
This is rather presumptuous. I recycle paper by walking over to the printer where I work and picking up a wad of sheets from the bottom of the unclaimed pile that accumulates there. I then proceed to tear them in half and place them, unprinted side up, in a pad fastened with a bulldog clip.
I use this pad for my day-to-day notes. This saves on paper, chemicals, fuel and ink that would have been spent transporting and converting the paper into new, branded, boxed and distributed recycled paper -- a cost everyone seems happy to ignore.
When you can wait 14 years and get it for free?
I know some pretty short people but I guess size is not one of the shared characteristics
The GNU Classpath project is completely free Java.
I'm not expecting to receive a large, juicy box of iPaqs so I won't be going blue from holding my breath. However, I do expect an appology from Amazon (that I won't be getting my order) and financial compensation of some sort -- as a goodwill gesture and pacifier.
It is fairly trivial to implement sale throttling and alerting on mispriced products. The fact that they haven't means they should be in some way responsible for this mishap. The quantity of orders should not factor into it.
I didn't choose to offer them the right to change their mind about the price as I didn't have the facility or the need (they would have sold to me whether I offered that right or not).
Anyhow, I'm soon to read the T+C so it could be I did offer them that right in the T+C I accepted when I placed my order -- it could be that Amazon decided what rights I'd offer them as part of the condition of selling to me. That I'm going to find out. All I do know is that they sent me what, in their own words, they called a 'contract' so I feel we are both legally bound to the sale now -- i.e. I owe them 80 quid, they owe me 10 iPaqs.
Read this Legal precedent in consumers' favour