I've been running Windows XP RC2, and must admit I kind of like it. Since my needs these days (as a working pastor-in-training) run more towards word processing than development and web servers, it does what I need pretty well. However, I looked today at the license costs for it and I'm choking a bit. A single-user home *upgrade* is $99. Home full version is $199, and professional full is $299. None of these are designed for server use, but for individual users.
More interestingly, they appear to be actually planning to enforce licensing through an enforced registration (i.e. if you don't register in 14 days, it won't work.) I've often said that few people would put up with Windows if they had to pay for it. The truth of the matter is that many people do not bother with legal licenses for their home software, so don't get too excited when told the product sucks. I wonder if the high costs and no-pirating-allowed will cost Microsoft the market?
There used to be a web-browser that did this with Python called Grail. It is now defunct, but you can see what's left of it at http://grail.sourceforge.net/.
String? We had to CHEW through the mule. But then our teeth fell out, because we didn't get enough calcium back in those days, so we had to get through the second half of the mule with our GUMS. That was in aught-4, before the blizzard where I lost two of my toes to frost-bite while walking to school int he snow.
Anybody ever read Zodiac, by the always-popular Neil Stephenson? Short plot: the bad guys are dumping PCB's in Boston Harbor. They invent a genetically engineered bacteria to eat all the PCB's. They also invent one to make PCB's along the way, which accidentally gets loose and threatens to destroy the planet.
I wonder how long it's going to be before some good-hearted, but slightly insane, person writes a Virus to close security holes in Windows? Then what happens when it trashes every version other than Windows 95 OEMSR3.1 (or whatever -- I don't run windows.) Would Microsoft do such a thing to cover up their mistakes? Would we ever know if they did?
Incidentally, In my more evil moments, I had thought that a virus to change everyone's default web browser to Netscape would be kind of poetic justic. Let me say, up front, that I would not write one and am not advocating that anyone else does so. But it would be an interesting use of the sircam code.
Taco,
The logical response to your repeated complaints about Sircam is for a few of the trolls to start sending you unlimited numbers of the virus. Stop whining.
"just because blocking infringement is hard or impossible to do, the judge should just let Napster continue trafficking in infringing material "
Wow... That's original. Let's apply that in other areas, shall we?
How 'bout: just because blocking child pornography is hard or impossible to do, we should allow printing presses to continue to be sold?
Or: just because distinguishing between legitimate protected religious action and cult behavior is difficult to do, we should allow people to sacrifice goats?
Or: just because you're 99.9995% sure that this hunting rifle will be used on deer we should allow you to have it?
Or: just because hate-speech is impossible to distinguish from political expression, we should allow it?
Or: just because the PRIMARY USE of this hammer is to build houses, not kill people, we should allow you to own one?
Do you really believe that it's okay for government to restrict anything that MIGHT be used in an illegal way?
I see a lot of posts here from people who clearly don't understand the dangers of Nuclear power.
I'm scared of radiation because it does horrible things. It caused Braniac's head to grow and he couldn't even find a toupee after all his hair fell out. It made Dr. Octopus turn evil. It ruined Mr. Fantastic's sex life and made the Thing the fondest desire of all women everywhere. It was even responsible for the spider that bit Peter Parker and ruined his self-centered little life. Worst of all, it created the incredible Hulk, who is still roaming around the southwest wreaking havoc at great expense to the taxpayers.
Given this history, I think its perfectly reasonable to be scared of Nuclear anything, and especially of what will happen when a Nuclear Reactor is exposed to cosmic rays above the stratosphere. We JUST DON'T KNOW what will happen under these conditions!
The best thing about the Usenet, as opposed to the web, was that the Usenet had some structure and some sense of "governance." You couldn't (at least in the main trees) just start a group. You had to get some people to agree with you that it was a good idea. Thus, you avoided for a long time the "mySillyWebIdea.com" effect, where the signal was drowned in all the noise.
The spam is indeed unfortunate... I wonder if you could setup an extension of NNTP with authentication to prevent groups being killed in spam and restore the "ad-hocracy"?
So I'm thinking about this... It seems to me that RedHat is probably buying one of the smaller commercial database companies and planning to make its product open source. Otherwise, I can't see why we wouldn't have heard about this -- Redhat has not typically done high security for new development projects. I just hope they are not planning to announce without code being imminent.
If you have problems with your wrists, I highly recommend the IBM "clickity" Model M keyboard which shipped with AT and PS/2 systems, if only because it can be found fairly easily at flea markets and thrift stores or ebay for only a couple bucks. To minimize mouse usage, I'm currently using a "TrackPoint II" model, which is standard Model M with the thinkpad nipple on it. Also, learn as many keyboard shortcuts as possible to keep your wrists in the same location.
It was after using such a keyboard for two weeks that I first began to experience symptoms of CTS.
I love 'em too, but I can't use them.
"They claim it is a tool to increase productivity, but what are the chances it will be used to monitor people instead?" Chibi
"paranoia a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others" Merriam-Websters
No, it's not the keyboard. The misbegotten microsoft keyboard doesn't work any better than any other keyboard (so far as I can tell.)
It's the posture. The problem comes in when you have a hyper-extension of the wrist, which can be caused by a lot of different things. One especially common one is a seat that's too low. Another is people who slouch before their keyboards, placing their palms and wrists *below* the level of the enter key. Ever see a piano teacher? The wrists must be held straight.
The keyboard and mouse wrist rests *work* -- not because they pad the joint, but because they make it impossible to hyperextend your wrist.
I am learning to play the game of Go (kind of an oriental version of Chess, only much cooler.) One thing I have learned along the way is that its very easy to make strategy against where your opponent is -- and lose. You need to be planning for where your opponent is going, anticipating his moves and taking the places on the board he wants before he can get them. Otherwise, you will inevitably get slaughtered.
It seems to me that the open source community has not learned this lesson -- possibly because we are so unstructured. Like it or not, open source has not generally produced fundamentally new technologies at the rate Microsoft has. The one exception would lie in the Internet server market (and it is not coincidental that that is the main market where OSS is successful). We tend to spend all our time catching up in other areas.
For example, Microsoft has had a component based desktop for years, and we are just now starting to get workable ones. Microsoft has had easy GUI design for trivial apps (VB) since the early 90's -- and we are just starting to get it (QT Designer, Kylix). Microsoft still has us totally slaughtered in the groupware arena because we can't seem to really understand that groupware and email are not quite the same thing.
When Microsoft *does* miss a beat -- as with the Internet -- they follow up quickly. Once again, this is like Go. If your opponent gets you in an awkward strategic situation, you can often play through it tactically. Essentially, you end up playing just to stay in the game until your opponent makes a mistake. Then you strike out ahead and hopefully recover your strategic error. This is Microsoft's well known practice of always being the second-best product on the market until the competition screws up.
Anyway, one wonders if Bill Gates plays Go. It's relatively popular on the west coast thanks to the large oriental population. It's truly an awesome game -- the Japanese maintain that it teaches character and strategic thinking for real life. And, I think they're right. It penalizes both cowardice and foolhardiness equally, encourages you to think ahead, and has rules simple enough to teach my three-year-old with permutations complex enough to take a lifetime to understand.
Now you can build KDE on Mac OS X and experience a desktop ALMOST as good as Mac's AND expensive hardware simulaneously without having to go through the pain and suffering of downloading linux/PPC!
Progress is beautiful.
--
Bill Tauzin -- Country boy
on
Congress@Work
·
· Score: 2
I find the pictures amuzing. On the Cajun site, he's a smiling fool with a couple of big catfish in his boat. On the english site, he wears a suit in an office somewhere. interesting, eh?
How about Open Source distributions? Instead of having to wait for sourceforge or whatever (especially after VA finally goes under) you could download it peer to peer and distribute the cost of the bandwidth. This is kind of like the old Usenet gig where if you got a uucp link to an upstream site, you were considered honor-bound to provide a link to another site.
"Download redhat? Make it available to someone else!" The problem is that all p2p networks to date have been built on marginally legal materials. We need to change that. A p2p enabled browser might be a very good start.
Must be the damn religious right, trying to get in the way of all Rob's pr0n. When will those damn Christians stop picking on guys who just want to read the articles and behold beauty?
Oh, hold it. This is India. They outlaw Christian missionaries (and often murder them). In fact, they're mostly Hindus -- probably the world religion with the most relaxed attitudes towards sex. Wonder why THEY want to ban pornography? Could it be that they think it damages their society?
So that we can all talk civilly, I want to mention a few critical points:
Scientology is the only "religion" (at least in the US) that engages in these kinds of litigious tactics. Please don't blame "religion" in general for the actions of Scientology.
There is considerable reason to believe that scientology was started as a joke and/or a business. Many countries (e.g. Germany) do not regard Scientology as a religion but as a business.
By most accounts, one advances in Scientology by spending a lot of money. A Supreme Court case found that this money was not donations, but fee for service.
Most of all, scientology is in no way affiliated with any world religion. Please don't hold us accountable for their errors.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert on Scientology, and the above statements are based on things I have heard said in other forums over the years.
Of course you're supposed to use drugs -- if you're a slashdot editor. If government gets in the way of your drug habit, that's no better than them getting in the way of your porn habit or your addiction to other peoples' copyright work.
Damn the cost. We need freedom, and we need it now. If that freedom destroys society, destroys the economy, or even destroys us it's a small price to pay!
As always, I am most interested in the philosophical implications. If this ever-expanding universe idea is correct, then there is no "cosmic contraction" to provide the point of mass & energy which exploded in the big bang. That is, there is no never-ending cycle of "big bang/big crunch", and steady state is well and truly dead.
This leaves you with a singularity that exploded for no apparent reason and existed for no apparent reason. Where did it come from? Why did it explode?
How complex do things have to get before "God did it" becomes the best explanation?
Record companies and other rights holders are required to certify that they hold the rights to specific songs that are available on Napster. When we receive notices from them, Napster will take every step within the limits of our system to
exclude their copyrighted material from being shared.
Notice the order of operations:
The file is shared.
The record companies find it.
The record companies have to certify that they own copyright on it.
Napster must then attempt to stop sharing it.
This leaves an awful lot of wiggle room. Must the record company certify each iteration of the file, as identified by napsters checksumming algorithm? (I forget the details, but there is one.) If so, I can foul it up by adding three bytes of static to the end of the file and post it. The CRC is the only way that this can work, because as many have pointed out it is easy to misspell titles etc. Furthermore, live recordings are not necessarily under RIAA copyright and many artists *like* Napster. However, even the CRC can be subverted. How long will it take to come up with a napster client that automagically changes the CRC every time it advertises a file?
The point? All is not yet lost. The record companies do not have infinite resources (even if it does seem that way), and eventually they will get tired of playing wack-a-mole. I really think they are just trying to buy some time until they can come up with a post-Internet business model. By now, they've figured out that any copy protection can be broken, any law can be subverted, and that, as they currently stand, they will be about as useful as a chocolate covered wrist-watch in ten years. The Napster thing is at best a pyrrhic victory, and they know it. In the past, copyright infringement required a manufacturing facility to make a dubbing tape deck, a betamax, or whatever. Now it does not -- it's all in software -- so there's no fixed target they can go after.
If you really care about this (I don't) just make sure there are many, many moles to whack. Use OpenNap. Start an OpenNap server. Write that napster client that munges titles and crc's. Come up with something like Napster over IRC. Make all the clients advertise by logging into an IRC channel, chosen by a random protocol daily, then doing DCC connection to each other.
There are many, many ways around this that the RIAA will never be able to stop. So stop fretting.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been running Windows XP RC2, and must admit I kind of like it. Since my needs these days (as a working pastor-in-training) run more towards word processing than development and web servers, it does what I need pretty well. However, I looked today at the license costs for it and I'm choking a bit. A single-user home *upgrade* is $99. Home full version is $199, and professional full is $299. None of these are designed for server use, but for individual users.
More interestingly, they appear to be actually planning to enforce licensing through an enforced registration (i.e. if you don't register in 14 days, it won't work.) I've often said that few people would put up with Windows if they had to pay for it. The truth of the matter is that many people do not bother with legal licenses for their home software, so don't get too excited when told the product sucks. I wonder if the high costs and no-pirating-allowed will cost Microsoft the market?
There used to be a web-browser that did this with Python called Grail. It is now defunct, but you can see what's left of it at http://grail.sourceforge.net/.
String? We had to CHEW through the mule. But then our teeth fell out, because we didn't get enough calcium back in those days, so we had to get through the second half of the mule with our GUMS. That was in aught-4, before the blizzard where I lost two of my toes to frost-bite while walking to school int he snow.
Anybody ever read Zodiac, by the always-popular Neil Stephenson? Short plot: the bad guys are dumping PCB's in Boston Harbor. They invent a genetically engineered bacteria to eat all the PCB's. They also invent one to make PCB's along the way, which accidentally gets loose and threatens to destroy the planet.
I wonder how long it's going to be before some good-hearted, but slightly insane, person writes a Virus to close security holes in Windows? Then what happens when it trashes every version other than Windows 95 OEMSR3.1 (or whatever -- I don't run windows.) Would Microsoft do such a thing to cover up their mistakes? Would we ever know if they did?
Incidentally, In my more evil moments, I had thought that a virus to change everyone's default web browser to Netscape would be kind of poetic justic. Let me say, up front, that I would not write one and am not advocating that anyone else does so. But it would be an interesting use of the sircam code.
Taco, The logical response to your repeated complaints about Sircam is for a few of the trolls to start sending you unlimited numbers of the virus. Stop whining.
How 'bout: just because blocking child pornography is hard or impossible to do, we should allow printing presses to continue to be sold?
Or: just because distinguishing between legitimate protected religious action and cult behavior is difficult to do, we should allow people to sacrifice goats?
Or: just because you're 99.9995% sure that this hunting rifle will be used on deer we should allow you to have it?
Or: just because hate-speech is impossible to distinguish from political expression, we should allow it?
Or: just because the PRIMARY USE of this hammer is to build houses, not kill people, we should allow you to own one?
Do you really believe that it's okay for government to restrict anything that MIGHT be used in an illegal way?
--
I'm scared of radiation because it does horrible things. It caused Braniac's head to grow and he couldn't even find a toupee after all his hair fell out. It made Dr. Octopus turn evil. It ruined Mr. Fantastic's sex life and made the Thing the fondest desire of all women everywhere. It was even responsible for the spider that bit Peter Parker and ruined his self-centered little life. Worst of all, it created the incredible Hulk, who is still roaming around the southwest wreaking havoc at great expense to the taxpayers.
Given this history, I think its perfectly reasonable to be scared of Nuclear anything, and especially of what will happen when a Nuclear Reactor is exposed to cosmic rays above the stratosphere. We JUST DON'T KNOW what will happen under these conditions!
--
The spam is indeed unfortunate... I wonder if you could setup an extension of NNTP with authentication to prevent groups being killed in spam and restore the "ad-hocracy"?
--
--
It was after using such a keyboard for two weeks that I first began to experience symptoms of CTS. I love 'em too, but I can't use them.
--
"paranoia a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others" Merriam-Websters
--
It's the posture. The problem comes in when you have a hyper-extension of the wrist, which can be caused by a lot of different things. One especially common one is a seat that's too low. Another is people who slouch before their keyboards, placing their palms and wrists *below* the level of the enter key. Ever see a piano teacher? The wrists must be held straight.
The keyboard and mouse wrist rests *work* -- not because they pad the joint, but because they make it impossible to hyperextend your wrist.
--
--
It seems to me that the open source community has not learned this lesson -- possibly because we are so unstructured. Like it or not, open source has not generally produced fundamentally new technologies at the rate Microsoft has. The one exception would lie in the Internet server market (and it is not coincidental that that is the main market where OSS is successful). We tend to spend all our time catching up in other areas.
For example, Microsoft has had a component based desktop for years, and we are just now starting to get workable ones. Microsoft has had easy GUI design for trivial apps (VB) since the early 90's -- and we are just starting to get it (QT Designer, Kylix). Microsoft still has us totally slaughtered in the groupware arena because we can't seem to really understand that groupware and email are not quite the same thing.
When Microsoft *does* miss a beat -- as with the Internet -- they follow up quickly. Once again, this is like Go. If your opponent gets you in an awkward strategic situation, you can often play through it tactically. Essentially, you end up playing just to stay in the game until your opponent makes a mistake. Then you strike out ahead and hopefully recover your strategic error. This is Microsoft's well known practice of always being the second-best product on the market until the competition screws up.
Anyway, one wonders if Bill Gates plays Go. It's relatively popular on the west coast thanks to the large oriental population. It's truly an awesome game -- the Japanese maintain that it teaches character and strategic thinking for real life. And, I think they're right. It penalizes both cowardice and foolhardiness equally, encourages you to think ahead, and has rules simple enough to teach my three-year-old with permutations complex enough to take a lifetime to understand.
</Ramble>
--
do the install
bash# locate
bash# diff
Or, if you wanted to get fancier and check for changed files:
for i in `locate
do
echo $i:`sum $i` >>
done
install
for i in `locate
do
if grep -v $i:`sum $i`
echo $i >>
fi
done
###
Shell scripting is your friend. Learn it well.
--
Progress is beautiful.
--
I find the pictures amuzing. On the Cajun site, he's a smiling fool with a couple of big catfish in his boat. On the english site, he wears a suit in an office somewhere. interesting, eh?
--
"Download redhat? Make it available to someone else!" The problem is that all p2p networks to date have been built on marginally legal materials. We need to change that. A p2p enabled browser might be a very good start.
--
Oh, hold it. This is India. They outlaw Christian missionaries (and often murder them). In fact, they're mostly Hindus -- probably the world religion with the most relaxed attitudes towards sex. Wonder why THEY want to ban pornography? Could it be that they think it damages their society?
*boggle*
--
- Scientology is the only "religion" (at least in the US) that engages in these kinds of litigious tactics. Please don't blame "religion" in general for the actions of Scientology.
- There is considerable reason to believe that scientology was started as a joke and/or a business. Many countries (e.g. Germany) do not regard Scientology as a religion but as a business.
- By most accounts, one advances in Scientology by spending a lot of money. A Supreme Court case found that this money was not donations, but fee for service.
- Most of all, scientology is in no way affiliated with any world religion. Please don't hold us accountable for their errors.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert on Scientology, and the above statements are based on things I have heard said in other forums over the years.--
And how many people of my generation are out there who still know pascal?
--
Damn the cost. We need freedom, and we need it now. If that freedom destroys society, destroys the economy, or even destroys us it's a small price to pay!
--
This leaves you with a singularity that exploded for no apparent reason and existed for no apparent reason. Where did it come from? Why did it explode?
How complex do things have to get before "God did it" becomes the best explanation?
--
--
- The file is shared.
- The record companies find it.
- The record companies have to certify that they own copyright on it.
- Napster must then attempt to stop sharing it.
This leaves an awful lot of wiggle room. Must the record company certify each iteration of the file, as identified by napsters checksumming algorithm? (I forget the details, but there is one.) If so, I can foul it up by adding three bytes of static to the end of the file and post it. The CRC is the only way that this can work, because as many have pointed out it is easy to misspell titles etc. Furthermore, live recordings are not necessarily under RIAA copyright and many artists *like* Napster. However, even the CRC can be subverted. How long will it take to come up with a napster client that automagically changes the CRC every time it advertises a file?The point? All is not yet lost. The record companies do not have infinite resources (even if it does seem that way), and eventually they will get tired of playing wack-a-mole. I really think they are just trying to buy some time until they can come up with a post-Internet business model. By now, they've figured out that any copy protection can be broken, any law can be subverted, and that, as they currently stand, they will be about as useful as a chocolate covered wrist-watch in ten years. The Napster thing is at best a pyrrhic victory, and they know it. In the past, copyright infringement required a manufacturing facility to make a dubbing tape deck, a betamax, or whatever. Now it does not -- it's all in software -- so there's no fixed target they can go after.
If you really care about this (I don't) just make sure there are many, many moles to whack. Use OpenNap. Start an OpenNap server. Write that napster client that munges titles and crc's. Come up with something like Napster over IRC. Make all the clients advertise by logging into an IRC channel, chosen by a random protocol daily, then doing DCC connection to each other.
There are many, many ways around this that the RIAA will never be able to stop. So stop fretting.
--