Accountability? well Microsoft deny they have any in their EULA.
And you believe them? Here's an idea: look up 'non-excludable warranty of fitness for purpose of sale' (different legal jurisdictions may use different terms but the effect is generally the same -- anything a company sells to a consumer MUST be suitable for any purpose that the company has described to the consumer that it could be used for). Unfortunately you may find your rights of recourse limited to what you paid for the software in the first place...
lot of the tech's that work at schools in Australia are just out of school and are in traineeships, who is going to teach them to use a Novell server or to configure a Linux desktop?
Adding users is pretty easy: log in using a user account, select the admin option from the menu, enter root password, select users from the list of things you can change, and add away. I suspect all of this will be pretty well automated based on existing systems (e.g. enrollment databases) anyway -- that's the benefit you get of using a primarily consulting oriented IT supplier like Novell over a shifting-CDs-in-boxes one like MS.
Not sure where you went to school, but mine was full of "RM Nimbus" PCs with MSDOS and Windows 3.0 (some of the older ones had a heavily customised version of Windows 2 instead). This would have been in around 1989-1992. They upgraded straight to these when it became clear that their 8 bit systems (primarily acorns) were obsolete. They had a brief play with 16 bit acorn machines, but decided they were too expensive.
You and your browser know and trust the certifying authority of Verisign, and according to Verisign, this site [your bank name here] is who they claim to be. Chances are you're safe."
1. Too verbose. People will read as far as "trust" and think, yeah, that's good enough. When it goes as far as saying "this site https://random.ip.address.here/ is who they claim to be", nobody's going to notice that that's not where they expect to be.
2. Who needs to click on the lock icon? The information in your toolbar is all already there, in the address bar and in the fact that the lock is showing.
instead of a pop-up box with three relatively cryptic security alerts to which everyone has been trained to say "yes" regardless of understanding, try simply "The identity of this site cannot be confirmed. Click for details, proceed with caution."
I get a message like this from firefox:
You have attempted to establish a connection with "yourbank.com". However, the security certificate presented belongs to "evilhacker.org". It is possible, though unlikely, that someone may be trying to intercept your communication with this web site.
Knowing how much my PC slows down when the VNC server has a client connected, I think I'd notice if a trojan started doing similar stuff.
Every trick like this makes the sniffers' job harder. If they have to examine your screen to see what you're doing, then they have to do more work, transfer more data, and there's more chance you'll notice what they're doing before it's too late.
No, I don't think so. It has no elements that seem designed to improve understanding. It lacks elements that help with understanding the standard chart (e.g. most charts have the element name printed under the symbol, the new one only has the atomic weight in the circles with the symbol and a key to look up the name along the right hand side). All it is is a pretty picture.
It also seems to imply some kind of cyclic property, that moving from the right hand side of the table back to the left is equivalent to moving one cell right, in a standard table. I'm not particularly strong on elemental properties, but I don't believe this is true.
I really don't see any benefit. Sorry.
Yes, the whole 'galaxy' thing is most likely to get children interested in science. They'd have probably worked a dinosaur in there, too, if someone hadn't pointed out that it'd then be sexist, and appeal to boys more than girls, but if it gets the kids interested, and maybe they then move to what we think of as the 'normal' periodic table (being that it's much more dense with its information), it doesn't really hurt anyone.
True, but by targeting it at secondary schools (which teach kids from 12-16), I think they're missing the mark. They should be aiming it more at the 'junior' school level (10-12, IIRC), I think.
I'm not sure about all of those, but good job proving the GP's point: Buffy, Angel, Firefly and B5 all had most of their episodes written by a very small team.
Because the clients cache the addresses that the tracker gives them, but the tracker doesn't rescind them. They ought to be doing some kind of backoff algorithm, so each client with your address will try after 1 minute, 2 minutes, 4 minutes, and so on. They'll probably stop when they get to a few hours. Or finish downloading the file. Or whatever.
Doesn't work if you post AC. You need those two points to start with, or nobody'll try your link, out of fear of something... well... I'd rather not think about it, to be frank. Yes, yes, I got suckered into it. The mirror was new at the time.
the one after that by D.C. Fontana, who wrote 11 original series episodes, six Next Generations, not to mention a load of other great TV show episodes.
And was script editor for a season of TOS, and for the animated series. New Voyages is really attracting a lot of attention from the people behind the scenes, isn't it?
It's probably entirely coincidental. In the words of Isaac Asimov:
As nearly as I can make out from my knowledge of women, the menstrual cycle is often irregular, sometimes extremely so. Even the average period is not exactly equal to the Lunar cycle, and it's certainly not the case that the onset of menstruation invariably comes at the full Moon or at any other phase. Rather, on any given week, regardless of the phase of the Moon, roughly one quarter of the women of the appropriate age are menstruating. Why, then, is the menstrual period nearly equal to the Lunar cycle? Might there not be such a thing as coincidence? (The menstrual periods of other primates are widely removed from the Lunar cycle, by the way.)
I've read it and I'm not really impressed. For a start it's in first-person, which strikes me as being a gimmick, and gimmicks are usually a sign of a lack of ideas, or a lack of confidence in the material by the author. A good book doesn't need gimmicks.
First person a gimmick? Give me a break. First person novels are a great tradition, and until very recently were more common than 3rd person. OK, it's in present tense, which is less common, but hardly a gimmick; scores of very popular stories have been written like that.
Over-describing everything, throwing in adjectives and technical jargon in every other word just to appeal to geeks, without any of it actually contributing to the story.
I disagree that there's an overuse of adjectives. OK, the 3rd sentence is pretty rich, but the rest seems fine. I'll agree there's a lot of jargon. I'm not sure what Charlie was trying to achieve there, but I suspect it was less "appeal to geeks" and more "give a realistic flavour of the future he has envisioned". As in, "I have seen the future and it's full of jargon."
In fact there's so much jargon, by the time you've got to the next sentence you've forgotten what was in the last one.
When reading something like this, I find it easiest not to try to follow the jargon. If you spot something you don't quite understand, just let the context give you a hazy idea of the meaning. That way you're not constantly looking for the dictionary; but you'll understand enough to understand the story.
That's not true. The BBC is an independent company that receives funding from the government, and is dependent on the government for the grant of a licence to allow it to broadcast TV and radio signals, but it is not a unit of the government.
There's "crown copyright", but that's limited to certain types of materials.
As discussed here, even if the BBC were a government body, this recording would not come under crown copyright (see particularly paragraph 10). Crown copyright isn't limited by the type of material, but by who produced it. Only bodies on this list produce material for crown copyright; others receive standard copyright protection just as you or I would.
Obviously they can't enforce these Terms, so I wonder what their purpose was:
Why can't they enforce them? Everything there seems OK to me.
The BBC granted you a 7-day, non-exclusive licence to download this Beethoven Experience audio.
Download is a process which makes a copy, so they can restrict this however they want.
You may not copy, reproduce, (restriction on copying -- allowed by copyright law) edit, adapt, alter, (restriction on making derivitive works -- allowed by copyright law) republish, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, (restriction on rebroadcasting and public performance, allowed by copyright law) or otherwise use this audio in any way (obviously this is partially unenforceable because fair use rights contradict it in some respects, but it is still a useful clause because it may cover other protected activities that they haven't mentioned, e.g. storage in an information retrieval system, unless that's what is meant by 'post') except for your own personal, non-commercial use. (limits the restrictions previously applied to allow the use they intend the files for -- a grant of rights, so doesn't need to be backed up by law)
Dunno. Mine has a little green icon in the top right corner, and if I mouseover it, it says "Update(s) available". I'll admit it would be nice if it informed me they were critical...
To have a war, you need two armies. The USA and most countries only have one federally-owned/funded/operated army.
Yes, but it is entirely impossible for a divisive issue to split that army into two: one loyal to the state, one that rebels in some way. It would only take an order that is extremely distasteful to the majority of the officers in the army, and I think you'd see such a split.
Of course, the government ought to be smart enough to realise they couldn't get away with issuing such an order. But if they ever lost that touch with reality...
Yes, but I was assuming that the original poster was talking about running speed (performance) rather than start speed.
From the original post I replied to:
there is no additional performance, memory or disc cost
I'll admit the biggest cost here is in disc space, but it is a cost, and is part of the reason the JRE download is so f'ing huge. (I recently had to port a web system that used an applet to flash because the client felt the JRE download was too big to justify it...)
Also, there is going to be very little impact on memory, as this information is stored per-class, not per-instance.
Well, that's true, but there is a *lot* of that information. I've done some work on an experimental JVM, and I have a switch to tell it not to load the reflection information: if I use it, memory usage drops by about 2Mb for most applications.
Slashdot Mirror
Accountability? well Microsoft deny they have any in their EULA.
And you believe them? Here's an idea: look up 'non-excludable warranty of fitness for purpose of sale' (different legal jurisdictions may use different terms but the effect is generally the same -- anything a company sells to a consumer MUST be suitable for any purpose that the company has described to the consumer that it could be used for). Unfortunately you may find your rights of recourse limited to what you paid for the software in the first place...
lot of the tech's that work at schools in Australia are just out of school and are in traineeships, who is going to teach them to use a Novell server or to configure a Linux desktop?
Adding users is pretty easy: log in using a user account, select the admin option from the menu, enter root password, select users from the list of things you can change, and add away. I suspect all of this will be pretty well automated based on existing systems (e.g. enrollment databases) anyway -- that's the benefit you get of using a primarily consulting oriented IT supplier like Novell over a shifting-CDs-in-boxes one like MS.
Not sure where you went to school, but mine was full of "RM Nimbus" PCs with MSDOS and Windows 3.0 (some of the older ones had a heavily customised version of Windows 2 instead). This would have been in around 1989-1992. They upgraded straight to these when it became clear that their 8 bit systems (primarily acorns) were obsolete. They had a brief play with 16 bit acorn machines, but decided they were too expensive.
During the install, the screen would go blank and nothing would happen. I solved this by using the following install line at the boot prompt:
linux vga=771
You see, this is why you'd want suse. The install disk's boot menu has a 'use text mode during the installation' option for situations like this.
You and your browser know and trust the certifying authority of Verisign, and according to Verisign, this site [your bank name here] is who they claim to be. Chances are you're safe."
1. Too verbose. People will read as far as "trust" and think, yeah, that's good enough. When it goes as far as saying "this site https://random.ip.address.here/ is who they claim to be", nobody's going to notice that that's not where they expect to be.
2. Who needs to click on the lock icon? The information in your toolbar is all already there, in the address bar and in the fact that the lock is showing.
instead of a pop-up box with three relatively cryptic security alerts to which everyone has been trained to say "yes" regardless of understanding, try simply "The identity of this site cannot be confirmed. Click for details, proceed with caution."
I get a message like this from firefox:
You have attempted to establish a connection with "yourbank.com". However, the security certificate presented belongs to "evilhacker.org". It is possible, though unlikely, that someone may be trying to intercept your communication with this web site.
Seems clear enough to me.
Knowing how much my PC slows down when the VNC server has a client connected, I think I'd notice if a trojan started doing similar stuff.
Every trick like this makes the sniffers' job harder. If they have to examine your screen to see what you're doing, then they have to do more work, transfer more data, and there's more chance you'll notice what they're doing before it's too late.
I have a rebuttal to your rebuttal, but it it is too large to fit in the width of this much-indented comment thread. (Sorry)
Because it isn't entirely clear how far a statistical model of chess games will get you in actually playing them?
Yeah, but by statistical methods? This is interesting. Ultimately doomed to failure, but interesting.
Geez. Don't forget to add a KLAATU BARADA NIKTO at the end to awaken the dead.
Don't you mean "Suse vivo vixi victum reduco is ea id creatura absit decessus a facultas Linux! Dev root, dev root!"?
Is it easier for children to understand?
No, I don't think so. It has no elements that seem designed to improve understanding. It lacks elements that help with understanding the standard chart (e.g. most charts have the element name printed under the symbol, the new one only has the atomic weight in the circles with the symbol and a key to look up the name along the right hand side). All it is is a pretty picture.
It also seems to imply some kind of cyclic property, that moving from the right hand side of the table back to the left is equivalent to moving one cell right, in a standard table. I'm not particularly strong on elemental properties, but I don't believe this is true.
I really don't see any benefit. Sorry.
Yes, the whole 'galaxy' thing is most likely to get children interested in science. They'd have probably worked a dinosaur in there, too, if someone hadn't pointed out that it'd then be sexist, and appeal to boys more than girls, but if it gets the kids interested, and maybe they then move to what we think of as the 'normal' periodic table (being that it's much more dense with its information), it doesn't really hurt anyone.
True, but by targeting it at secondary schools (which teach kids from 12-16), I think they're missing the mark. They should be aiming it more at the 'junior' school level (10-12, IIRC), I think.
I'm not sure about all of those, but good job proving the GP's point: Buffy, Angel, Firefly and B5 all had most of their episodes written by a very small team.
Because the clients cache the addresses that the tracker gives them, but the tracker doesn't rescind them. They ought to be doing some kind of backoff algorithm, so each client with your address will try after 1 minute, 2 minutes, 4 minutes, and so on. They'll probably stop when they get to a few hours. Or finish downloading the file. Or whatever.
Doesn't work if you post AC. You need those two points to start with, or nobody'll try your link, out of fear of something... well... I'd rather not think about it, to be frank. Yes, yes, I got suckered into it. The mirror was new at the time.
the one after that by D.C. Fontana, who wrote 11 original series episodes, six Next Generations, not to mention a load of other great TV show episodes.
And was script editor for a season of TOS, and for the animated series. New Voyages is really attracting a lot of attention from the people behind the scenes, isn't it?
It's probably entirely coincidental. In the words of Isaac Asimov:
As nearly as I can make out from my knowledge of women, the menstrual cycle is often irregular, sometimes extremely so. Even the average period is not exactly equal to the Lunar cycle, and it's certainly not the case that the onset of menstruation invariably comes at the full Moon or at any other phase. Rather, on any given week, regardless of the phase of the Moon, roughly one quarter of the women of the appropriate age are menstruating. Why, then, is the menstrual period nearly equal to the Lunar cycle? Might there not be such a thing as coincidence? (The menstrual periods of other primates are widely removed from the Lunar cycle, by the way.)
I've read it and I'm not really impressed. For a start it's in first-person, which strikes me as being a gimmick, and gimmicks are usually a sign of a lack of ideas, or a lack of confidence in the material by the author. A good book doesn't need gimmicks.
First person a gimmick? Give me a break. First person novels are a great tradition, and until very recently were more common than 3rd person. OK, it's in present tense, which is less common, but hardly a gimmick; scores of very popular stories have been written like that.
Over-describing everything, throwing in adjectives and technical jargon in every other word just to appeal to geeks, without any of it actually contributing to the story.
I disagree that there's an overuse of adjectives. OK, the 3rd sentence is pretty rich, but the rest seems fine. I'll agree there's a lot of jargon. I'm not sure what Charlie was trying to achieve there, but I suspect it was less "appeal to geeks" and more "give a realistic flavour of the future he has envisioned". As in, "I have seen the future and it's full of jargon."
In fact there's so much jargon, by the time you've got to the next sentence you've forgotten what was in the last one.
When reading something like this, I find it easiest not to try to follow the jargon. If you spot something you don't quite understand, just let the context give you a hazy idea of the meaning. That way you're not constantly looking for the dictionary; but you'll understand enough to understand the story.
I finished reading it yesterday. Good stuff, thanks for sharing. :)
If these same charges were leveled against Hitachi they'd vanish without a trace.
You see, the problem is, Intel isn't a Japanese company, so it doesn't get the protection from the law that some Japanese companies enjoy...
The BBC is a unit of the British Government
That's not true. The BBC is an independent company that receives funding from the government, and is dependent on the government for the grant of a licence to allow it to broadcast TV and radio signals, but it is not a unit of the government.
There's "crown copyright", but that's limited to certain types of materials.
As discussed here, even if the BBC were a government body, this recording would not come under crown copyright (see particularly paragraph 10). Crown copyright isn't limited by the type of material, but by who produced it. Only bodies on this list produce material for crown copyright; others receive standard copyright protection just as you or I would.
Obviously they can't enforce these Terms, so I wonder what their purpose was:
Why can't they enforce them? Everything there seems OK to me.
The BBC granted you a 7-day, non-exclusive licence to download this Beethoven Experience audio.
Download is a process which makes a copy, so they can restrict this however they want.
You may not copy, reproduce, (restriction on copying -- allowed by copyright law) edit, adapt, alter, (restriction on making derivitive works -- allowed by copyright law) republish, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, (restriction on rebroadcasting and public performance, allowed by copyright law) or otherwise use this audio in any way (obviously this is partially unenforceable because fair use rights contradict it in some respects, but it is still a useful clause because it may cover other protected activities that they haven't mentioned, e.g. storage in an information retrieval system, unless that's what is meant by 'post') except for your own personal, non-commercial use. (limits the restrictions previously applied to allow the use they intend the files for -- a grant of rights, so doesn't need to be backed up by law)
Seems like a thoroughly reasonable EULA to me.
The Guardian, a small circulation not for profit UK newspaper
Huh? The Guardian is hardly what I'd call small circulation (average 368,337 copies), and according to their corporate web site they made £32.7 million profit after amortisation and exceptional items in 2004. Maybe you're confusing them with someone else?
Oh, and you know why the Guardian's web site is so popular? Largely because they were the first British newspaper to set up an online edition.
Except that all British Citizens have paid for this music whether they chose to or not.
Actually, I choose not to. I don't watch TV and don't listen to radio, so I have no need of paying a licence fee.
(Although making the TV Licensing people understand this can be a bit tricky at times)
Dunno. Mine has a little green icon in the top right corner, and if I mouseover it, it says "Update(s) available". I'll admit it would be nice if it informed me they were critical...
To have a war, you need two armies. The USA and most countries only have one federally-owned/funded/operated army.
Yes, but it is entirely impossible for a divisive issue to split that army into two: one loyal to the state, one that rebels in some way. It would only take an order that is extremely distasteful to the majority of the officers in the army, and I think you'd see such a split.
Of course, the government ought to be smart enough to realise they couldn't get away with issuing such an order. But if they ever lost that touch with reality...
Yes, but I was assuming that the original poster was talking about running speed (performance) rather than start speed.
From the original post I replied to:
there is no additional performance, memory or disc cost
I'll admit the biggest cost here is in disc space, but it is a cost, and is part of the reason the JRE download is so f'ing huge. (I recently had to port a web system that used an applet to flash because the client felt the JRE download was too big to justify it...)
Also, there is going to be very little impact on memory, as this information is stored per-class, not per-instance.
Well, that's true, but there is a *lot* of that information. I've done some work on an experimental JVM, and I have a switch to tell it not to load the reflection information: if I use it, memory usage drops by about 2Mb for most applications.