Such an ability would make it easier for novice users to try other alternative operating systems.
If the objective is to let users try alternative operating systems, consider using the new ConnectixVirtual PC for Windows. It allows you to install another OS (DOS, Linux, BeOS, etc.) under Windows, where you can try it out just as though it were the native OS. Connectix is offering a free trial download that will work thru July 1.
"That should reduce the need for highly skilled workers who are in increasingly short supply."
I recall a big ad campaign touting "The Last One," this revolutionary software package that would eliminate the need for a professional programmer. You couldn't pick up a computer mag without seeing a full-page ad for this thing (which apparently fit on a single floppy, if you believed the picture). Intended to get some buzz going around this soon-to-be-released product, it was short on details but long on hype. The discussion among many of my programmer collegues was, "can this be real?" This was, oh, around 1978. Which is my long-winded way of saying, I'll believe it when I see it.
Saudi Arabia is trying to filter out porn and anything else the government deems offensive (like criticism of the royal family), as detailed in this New York Times story (free registration required). They're having as little luck as China is going to.
Nice rant (I happen to agree with your assessment of the protestors, by the way), but the issue isn't whether these people are neo-luddites. It's whether the government ought to be going through logs of a web site and checking out every visitor. My own opinion is that this is casting too wide a net. If they suspect specific people of specific crimes, then let them request only the relevant records, not an entire visitor log. And if a site doesn't maintain logs as was discussed on another thread, then that should be its privilege.
What really galls me about this whole episode is how NASA tried to put the kibosh on it. This from an organization that allowed itself to be used by Jake Garn and John Glenn for what amounted to space junkets for Senators. If NASA was smart, they'd be selling seats to generate some revenue. But noooooooo, they're too high-minded for that. </rant>
Quoting:
Seumas writes "Check out the Durapoint stainless steel industrial mouse which has bee thrown off a five-story building, submerged for hours, run-over by an 18-wheel truck, beaten with a hammer, used as a hockey puck, thrown across a room and stepped on countless times. It's even theft-proof. Even the pentagon is considering using it. At $279, it isn't cheap -- and it sure isn't an ergonomic wonder, but it might be your ticket if you do your computing strapped to the underside of a Mac truck." If only it had 3 mouse buttons!
Orrin Hatch has said that he might introduce legislation in response to threats to Napster. He said that 50 million constituents writing to him and his collegues would compel it. I suggest that we start writing those letters.
Does anyone else share my suspicion of a company that needs dynamically-generated org charts? I always think of such outfits as either constantly reorganizing, or excessively self-absorbed with the class hierarchy. And who is it that needs a diagram of an organization anyway? I've never worked anywhere where a question aboout who was in charge of what section couldn't be answered by looking in the company phone book.
This is why, hypothetically of course, that one might want to tell a census worker that one is one's own relative, and that the relative who is the actual owner of the house is overseas and that one is just visiting the place to look after it. No one is presently residing there. Poof, no census form required. Not that I'd ever do this, nosiree. I trust my government.
It is one of three or four great movies about AI. The others being "Terminator," "War Games," and "The Matrix."
I certainly wouldn't rank The Matrix among those. While technically well-done, the preposterousness of the plot really grated on me. The machines were keeping humans around as some sort of power source. And humans had to be kept conscious (though occupying a pseudo-reality) to boot. Sheesh. At least 2001 had a storyline that was plausible. Now if someone would just make a movie out of Rendezvous With Rama...
The armored case is made out of highly flammable magnesium, which would make for an even more secure machine. Attach an igniter to the sucker and when powered on, give the user 20 seconds to enter a password before melting the machine to slag. If Irwin Jacobs had one of these when his laptop got snatched, well... just think of the satisfaction he would have that not only were Qualcomm's secrets safe, but the thief now has a hole thru both floors of his condo:-).
I'd also like to have 'live effects' (essentially effects like drop shadow, etc. that can be applied, removed, and modified at will without making a permanent change to the image). I find that I use this feature a lot with Photoshop. Support for vector types would be good too. The best overall image editor that I've been using lately is Fireworks 3. It can do much of what both Photoshop and Illustrator can do, has a superior scripting capability, and is much cheaper. Each editor has it's strong points, but I could have only one, Fireworks would be it. If Gimp is going to pick a direction to go in, aiming to reproduce the Fireworks feature set would be a good start.
In light of Network Solution's recent behaviour in not releasing domain names after they expire, I can't see how this service is going to work too well. Looks to me like it'll be a big flag to NetSol that here's a bunch of popular names that people are queuing up for. I made the mistake of letting an old domain 'expire' so that I could switch it to a new registrar. Big mistake. After dealing with the slack-jawed morons that answer NetSol's email ("That domain is still unavailable." Well no shit, Sherlock. It hasn't been paid for in months. FIX YOUR RECORDS), it took 6 months before it finally was released. How's SnapNames going to hop on an 'expired' name that remains unavailable for months? And are they going to refund my money if someone else manages to beat them to it?
Even if they were to take on this mammoth enterprise, and actually get it to work, how does logging transactions act as a serious blow to democracy? I mean really, having the right to elect your officials has nothing to do with how they conduct the business and security of they country unless you are unable to vote again.
Dear Mr glebite. We here in the Government Surveillance Service noticed your presence at a rally that was called to protest the new Housing and Urban Development low-income housing in your neighborhood. Please be aware that HUD considers these sorts of activities to be discriminatory in nature, and under U.S. law you are subject to a $50,000 fine and a year in a federal prison. We will overlook your transgression this time, but any future participation in these sorts of activities will be dealt with in the harshest possible terms. We will be watching. Sincerely, the GSS.
Obviously the above is a parody, but HUD really did threaten some homeowners for organizing to oppose low-income housing. The nature of government is to use every tool at its disposal to get its way. Letting goverment keep records of your every movement and telephone conversation is just begging them to use them against you. I offer the Clinton administration trashing of people's reputations using 'confidential' government records as prime evidence of just how this sort of thing can be abused.
On another note, we're not, in general, as concerned with privacy here in the UK as much as you guys are in the US. We've had thousands of Closed Circuit cameras installed throughout our streets since the '80s (What with IRA bombing campaigns etc...) and for many people, especially women, it has instilled security for the general public as opposed to fear. Are we mis-guided? I'm not saying that I agree that my telephone conversations can be recorded, but if they're just going to be archived to tape then it doesn't bother me extremely. Hell, I would think that they are just as likely to protect me as they might incriminate me.
Even if you completely trust the government right now (and that would be quite a stretch for me, but let's assume it for the moment), the day may come when the government falls into the wrong hands and these tools start to be used for oppression. If the wrong folks are controlling the cameras and recording devices, these could be used to suppress opposition. Think how helpful it would be for a government bent on destroying its detractors to have video of every person's movements or communications. J. Edgar Hoover's FBI records were a good example of how such material can be misused. He retained his job by having dirt on the presidents and every member of congress. I think it's a mistake to hand these tools to governments, no matter how benign they presently appear to be. However, since this is probably an inevitable path we're on, our only salvation may be to require that all material collected be made publicly available. That way, people would be made aware of what's being collected and would presumably be more likely to restrain it.
You see, they got everything into this movie, but it's a lot of stuff. EVERY SINGLE LINE is important in the movie. If you miss a single line, you're lost. Coupled with the fact that there is a lot of "whispering" to indicate private thoughts, it's easy to miss a line. I think that's why people don't like it. Otherwise I think the movie is a masterpiece and is relatively faithful to the book.
I have to agree with nearly everything that you said, although I have a slightly different take why the movie was unpopular. I think to understand the plot without having read the book requires much more attention than can be reasonably expected of the average audience member these days. Most of the theater-going audience consists of people in their twenties or younger, and I think that their attention spans are shot. Watching Dune is too much work for them.
This problem, which allegedly can happen to any AIM user, was first made public by Inside-AOL.com months ago, but AOL decided not to respond until this Thursday under increased pressure from Inside-AOL.com and other media."
This sort of thing astounds me. Not only is it unbelievably bad business, but it's blood in the water for the litigation sharks circling out there. A big juicy target like AOL would be ripe for a class action suit as we've seen targeted against so many other businesses in the past.
What would be a surprise is if an organization of the size and ubiquity of Intel didn't have some major screwups on its plate. As my old law professor used to say, "If you see a prosecutor with a 100% conviction rate, he's not taking any risks and not doing his job." Same deal with Intel. If you're aggressive and competetive, you'll make some mistakes, and some of them will be whoppers. That said, even though I'm a big stockholder, I'm not above tweaking Intel on their bloopers. Ever since some Intel salesdweeb at Wescon said to me, "We don't have to compete" I've had an ambivalent attitude toward them.
From the article: "You can't forge MD5," Weekly said via instant message. "Napster uses MD5 to fingerprint each song. The thing is, if you change one bit in the song, you get a different MD5. Meaning that if you try and track songs by their MD5s, and the users find out, they will be able to very easily modify their songs to have wildly different MD5s."
My suggestion would be to construct a Napster client (there's a list of many open source Napster-type clients at OpenNap) that slightly altered each MP3 when transferring it, effectively randomizing the MD5. Sort of like Active Server Pages - the MP3 would be constructed 'on the fly'.
I can't get to Yahoo cuz all the IPs france are blocked. Fine. I'll just dial out to my US ISP and browse from there.
Not necessary. You can use a non-French proxy if you have accesss to one, or you could even get an account at Anonymizer for $15 per quarter. (Anonymizer even lets you surf for free if you feel like putting up with the delay). This ruling isn't going to prevent anyone who seriously wants access to this material from seeing it. What's most perturbing is that a judge felt he had the ability/authority/right to do so.
What I find particularly disturbing about this ruling is that the judge said that simply letting someone in France look at the material is illegal. A ruling like this lends legitimacy to a government like China or North Korea forbidding access to material it deems unsuitable. This ruling says that goverments can limit access to certain types of information, and I consider that unacceptable. Access to information is a fundamental underpinning of liberty, and anything that would block it is dangerous.
I knew a manager of a large and successful high-tech company. He told me that his company had a conscious strategy of bringing in pizzas late in the day so that their workers would stay around and put in more hours. They had a number of other perks like this, designed to keep their employees chained to the oars. They also had a policy of giving one-time bonuses and using them to guilt-trip employees who wanted actual pay raises. All-in-all, I'd rather have the money and provide my own benefits (although it certainly makes it attractive that some benefits like day-care aren't taxable). Ever since talking to him, I've been been inclined to look corporate gift-horses in the mouth.
I'm expecting at least localized outages. Particularly the drudgereport.com site, since Drudge has pledged to post the results of exit polling. Slate and National Review, which in the past have posted this only-available-to-the-press (i.e. not supposed to be released to the public) data, but have said they won't this time. This will cause a great deal of traffic at the Drudge site, which has been crashed in the past by some breaking stories. It wouldn't surprise me if that resulted in related 'spill-over' outages, like everyone trying to call a particular telephone exchange at one time.
Slashdot Mirror
Good one.
If the objective is to let users try alternative operating systems, consider using the new Connectix Virtual PC for Windows. It allows you to install another OS (DOS, Linux, BeOS, etc.) under Windows, where you can try it out just as though it were the native OS. Connectix is offering a free trial download that will work thru July 1.
I recall a big ad campaign touting "The Last One," this revolutionary software package that would eliminate the need for a professional programmer. You couldn't pick up a computer mag without seeing a full-page ad for this thing (which apparently fit on a single floppy, if you believed the picture). Intended to get some buzz going around this soon-to-be-released product, it was short on details but long on hype. The discussion among many of my programmer collegues was, "can this be real?" This was, oh, around 1978. Which is my long-winded way of saying, I'll believe it when I see it.
Saudi Arabia is trying to filter out porn and anything else the government deems offensive (like criticism of the royal family), as detailed in this New York Times story (free registration required). They're having as little luck as China is going to.
that I can't register icanncankissmychairshiner.com? Damn.
Nice rant (I happen to agree with your assessment of the protestors, by the way), but the issue isn't whether these people are neo-luddites. It's whether the government ought to be going through logs of a web site and checking out every visitor. My own opinion is that this is casting too wide a net. If they suspect specific people of specific crimes, then let them request only the relevant records, not an entire visitor log. And if a site doesn't maintain logs as was discussed on another thread, then that should be its privilege.
What really galls me about this whole episode is how NASA tried to put the kibosh on it. This from an organization that allowed itself to be used by Jake Garn and John Glenn for what amounted to space junkets for Senators. If NASA was smart, they'd be selling seats to generate some revenue. But noooooooo, they're too high-minded for that. </rant>
Quoting:
Seumas writes "Check out the Durapoint stainless steel industrial mouse which has bee thrown off a five-story building, submerged for hours, run-over by an 18-wheel truck, beaten with a hammer, used as a hockey puck, thrown across a room and stepped on countless times. It's even theft-proof. Even the pentagon is considering using it. At $279, it isn't cheap -- and it sure isn't an ergonomic wonder, but it might be your ticket if you do your computing strapped to the underside of a Mac truck." If only it had 3 mouse buttons!
Orrin Hatch has said that he might introduce legislation in response to threats to Napster. He said that 50 million constituents writing to him and his collegues would compel it. I suggest that we start writing those letters.
Does anyone else share my suspicion of a company that needs dynamically-generated org charts? I always think of such outfits as either constantly reorganizing, or excessively self-absorbed with the class hierarchy. And who is it that needs a diagram of an organization anyway? I've never worked anywhere where a question aboout who was in charge of what section couldn't be answered by looking in the company phone book.
This is why, hypothetically of course, that one might want to tell a census worker that one is one's own relative, and that the relative who is the actual owner of the house is overseas and that one is just visiting the place to look after it. No one is presently residing there. Poof, no census form required. Not that I'd ever do this, nosiree. I trust my government.
I certainly wouldn't rank The Matrix among those. While technically well-done, the preposterousness of the plot really grated on me. The machines were keeping humans around as some sort of power source. And humans had to be kept conscious (though occupying a pseudo-reality) to boot. Sheesh. At least 2001 had a storyline that was plausible. Now if someone would just make a movie out of Rendezvous With Rama ...
The armored case is made out of highly flammable magnesium, which would make for an even more secure machine. Attach an igniter to the sucker and when powered on, give the user 20 seconds to enter a password before melting the machine to slag. If Irwin Jacobs had one of these when his laptop got snatched, well ... just think of the satisfaction he would have that not only were Qualcomm's secrets safe, but the thief now has a hole thru both floors of his condo :-).
I'd also like to have 'live effects' (essentially effects like drop shadow, etc. that can be applied, removed, and modified at will without making a permanent change to the image). I find that I use this feature a lot with Photoshop. Support for vector types would be good too. The best overall image editor that I've been using lately is Fireworks 3. It can do much of what both Photoshop and Illustrator can do, has a superior scripting capability, and is much cheaper. Each editor has it's strong points, but I could have only one, Fireworks would be it. If Gimp is going to pick a direction to go in, aiming to reproduce the Fireworks feature set would be a good start.
In light of Network Solution's recent behaviour in not releasing domain names after they expire, I can't see how this service is going to work too well. Looks to me like it'll be a big flag to NetSol that here's a bunch of popular names that people are queuing up for. I made the mistake of letting an old domain 'expire' so that I could switch it to a new registrar. Big mistake. After dealing with the slack-jawed morons that answer NetSol's email ("That domain is still unavailable." Well no shit, Sherlock. It hasn't been paid for in months. FIX YOUR RECORDS), it took 6 months before it finally was released. How's SnapNames going to hop on an 'expired' name that remains unavailable for months? And are they going to refund my money if someone else manages to beat them to it?
Dear Mr glebite. We here in the Government Surveillance Service noticed your presence at a rally that was called to protest the new Housing and Urban Development low-income housing in your neighborhood. Please be aware that HUD considers these sorts of activities to be discriminatory in nature, and under U.S. law you are subject to a $50,000 fine and a year in a federal prison. We will overlook your transgression this time, but any future participation in these sorts of activities will be dealt with in the harshest possible terms. We will be watching. Sincerely, the GSS.
Obviously the above is a parody, but HUD really did threaten some homeowners for organizing to oppose low-income housing. The nature of government is to use every tool at its disposal to get its way. Letting goverment keep records of your every movement and telephone conversation is just begging them to use them against you. I offer the Clinton administration trashing of people's reputations using 'confidential' government records as prime evidence of just how this sort of thing can be abused.
Even if you completely trust the government right now (and that would be quite a stretch for me, but let's assume it for the moment), the day may come when the government falls into the wrong hands and these tools start to be used for oppression. If the wrong folks are controlling the cameras and recording devices, these could be used to suppress opposition. Think how helpful it would be for a government bent on destroying its detractors to have video of every person's movements or communications. J. Edgar Hoover's FBI records were a good example of how such material can be misused. He retained his job by having dirt on the presidents and every member of congress. I think it's a mistake to hand these tools to governments, no matter how benign they presently appear to be. However, since this is probably an inevitable path we're on, our only salvation may be to require that all material collected be made publicly available. That way, people would be made aware of what's being collected and would presumably be more likely to restrain it.
I have to agree with nearly everything that you said, although I have a slightly different take why the movie was unpopular. I think to understand the plot without having read the book requires much more attention than can be reasonably expected of the average audience member these days. Most of the theater-going audience consists of people in their twenties or younger, and I think that their attention spans are shot. Watching Dune is too much work for them.
This sort of thing astounds me. Not only is it unbelievably bad business, but it's blood in the water for the litigation sharks circling out there. A big juicy target like AOL would be ripe for a class action suit as we've seen targeted against so many other businesses in the past.
What would be a surprise is if an organization of the size and ubiquity of Intel didn't have some major screwups on its plate. As my old law professor used to say, "If you see a prosecutor with a 100% conviction rate, he's not taking any risks and not doing his job." Same deal with Intel. If you're aggressive and competetive, you'll make some mistakes, and some of them will be whoppers. That said, even though I'm a big stockholder, I'm not above tweaking Intel on their bloopers. Ever since some Intel salesdweeb at Wescon said to me, "We don't have to compete" I've had an ambivalent attitude toward them.
"You can't forge MD5," Weekly said via instant message. "Napster uses MD5 to fingerprint each song. The thing is, if you change one bit in the song, you get a different MD5. Meaning that if you try and track songs by their MD5s, and the users find out, they will be able to very easily modify their songs to have wildly different MD5s."
My suggestion would be to construct a Napster client (there's a list of many open source Napster-type clients at OpenNap) that slightly altered each MP3 when transferring it, effectively randomizing the MD5. Sort of like Active Server Pages - the MP3 would be constructed 'on the fly'.
Not necessary. You can use a non-French proxy if you have accesss to one, or you could even get an account at Anonymizer for $15 per quarter. (Anonymizer even lets you surf for free if you feel like putting up with the delay). This ruling isn't going to prevent anyone who seriously wants access to this material from seeing it. What's most perturbing is that a judge felt he had the ability/authority/right to do so.
What I find particularly disturbing about this ruling is that the judge said that simply letting someone in France look at the material is illegal. A ruling like this lends legitimacy to a government like China or North Korea forbidding access to material it deems unsuitable. This ruling says that goverments can limit access to certain types of information, and I consider that unacceptable. Access to information is a fundamental underpinning of liberty, and anything that would block it is dangerous.
I knew a manager of a large and successful high-tech company. He told me that his company had a conscious strategy of bringing in pizzas late in the day so that their workers would stay around and put in more hours. They had a number of other perks like this, designed to keep their employees chained to the oars. They also had a policy of giving one-time bonuses and using them to guilt-trip employees who wanted actual pay raises. All-in-all, I'd rather have the money and provide my own benefits (although it certainly makes it attractive that some benefits like day-care aren't taxable). Ever since talking to him, I've been been inclined to look corporate gift-horses in the mouth.
I'm expecting at least localized outages. Particularly the drudgereport.com site, since Drudge has pledged to post the results of exit polling. Slate and National Review, which in the past have posted this only-available-to-the-press (i.e. not supposed to be released to the public) data, but have said they won't this time. This will cause a great deal of traffic at the Drudge site, which has been crashed in the past by some breaking stories. It wouldn't surprise me if that resulted in related 'spill-over' outages, like everyone trying to call a particular telephone exchange at one time.