Check out this article that I wrote some days ago. You know what else happened to me with Windows? I had to install SP4 of a Windows 2000 machine, because SP3 has a bug that prevents it from starting up. Something about services.exe starts at the same time as logon.exe, and some retarded registry key doesn't exist, so the system halts immediately and doesn't give you the ability to fix it.
It's basically a timing error. Well, Microsoft's own website explains, on a page devoted to this bug:
This bug will prevent Windows 2000 from starting up.
In order to fix it, you have to install SP4.
In order to install SP4, you must be able to get Windows started up.
In other words, you can see that Microsoft is really looking out for you. Sons of bitches.
Great comment... But today, instead of adopting the approach of sticking an extension onto the end of a filename in the same way that *nix and DOS-based stuff like Windows does it, why didn't Apple choose an approach similar to the one taken in BeOS?
To clarify, BeOS had/has what I believe is the best of all three worlds. Files on the BFS file system have "attributes", which are labeled bits of data that I suppose are a bit similar to the resource fork on Mac OS, but are also similar in many respects to the attributes where ACLs and other programmable metadata is stored on some filesystems that are appearing for various *nix systems now. There was an attribute that named the MIME-type of the file. If this existed, then when you clicked a file, BeOS would match the MIME-type to an application (and there was an interface where you could easily set up these relationships), and launch that app for you. If the attribute didn't exist, BeOS would look at several things: The extension, if one existed, was a good starting place. Also, the OS would look for magic numbers in the file to ascertain its type. There were a number of pre-programmed types that the OS knew about. I think they were planning to add an API where anybody could add other types to the system. Anyway, this recognition would happen almost instantaneously when a file was clicked. The attribute would be added at that time. And, furthermore, when the computer went idle, a daemon would go through the system, pick out files that didn't have the attribute, ascertain their type, and put the attribute there. In all, I never experienced a time when the system didn't know what to do with a file.
Attributes were also good for other purposes. When in detail view of a folder, you could set up the columns to be whatever you wanted. If it was a folder full of MP3s, for example, you didn't have to see filename, size, creation date, etc. You could set it up to show artist, genre, song name, duration, etc. In fact, you were not limited to pre-programmed types. You could add any attributes that you wanted to any file, even programmatically, and you could perform live Queries (like the Smart Folders in OSX), and you could set up the Detail view to show any columns... In all, the filesystem was very similar to a database. And the *nix-like part of the OS was integrated so well into the GUI part of the system that there was never a problem of kludginess when using both at the same time. 'course, it wasn't really *nix, but it was a beautiful OS design.
Personally, I believe that once the resource forks are treated well enough by all parts of OSX, Apple will find more uses for them once again. Perhaps when copying to a non-HFS system, you'll have the option of outputting a ZIP file that contains all of the information. Who knows. Apple is known for creativity.
But I don't understand: Where is file metadata stored if not in the resource fork? ACLs? Attributes? That kind of stuff? Is there a data fork, a resource fork, and then a place where attributes and non-HFS metadata (meaning not the file size, date created/modified, that kind of metadata, but rather the ACLs and other stuff) get stored?
With each error costing between $10K and 100K per month, one expert estimates corporate America loses in excess of $10B annually through the misuse and abuse of spreadsheets.
But if you switch from Microsoft Excel to OpenOffice.org today, the amount of errors in your spreadsheets will drop from $100,000.00 to $0.00.
Oh, and there was something I forgot to say: In addition to the vehicle control grid, there would be higher levels of central command computers that would make routing decisions. In other words, which route your vehicle takes would depend on many factors, such as which roads are more vacant than others. This will allow a more equal distribution of traffic across the many roads we already have.
And one final note: I'm sure that the software controlling all of this could undergo all sorts of optimizations. Imagine hearing on the news that your commute will henceforth take approximately 12% less time thanks to improvements in the vehicle routing algorithms...
This is just the first step towards what will ultimately be the future of individual transportation: Cars that drive themselves.
General Motors has been doing all sorts of experiments with cars that are driven by computer. They've shown some experiments on television where about eight or ten cars are driving eighty miles per hour on a road at "tailgating" distance from one another.
The idea is not that computers are better at driving than humans, but is a solution to the problem that the driver of each vehicle sees only those cars that are immediately around him on the road. This means that if the vehicle in front of him is stopped, he must stop, too. Imagine a stoplight at an intersection. The light turns green, but you're behind ten cars, so by the time you start going, the light turns yellow again. Why? This is happening because you can't go until the car immediately in front of you goes, and the driver of that car suffers from the same problem. What if all the drivers communicated, so that when the light turns green, everybody would push the gas at exactly the same time? And more specifically, if everybody pushed the gas exactly the right amount so as to accelerate at exactly the same rate? Many more cars would make it through the intersection before the light turns red. Also, we'd all get where we're going a lot faster. That is currently impossible because there is no "central command", no way to create an overall driving strategy for everyone on a given road. Everybody does what he believes is best, and this causes all sorts of bottlenecks that shouldn't otherwise exist.
A system that would essentially control all the vehicles on a road would do exactly that, and more. Now, I imagine that at first, this will only be available on a select few roads as an "experiment", and only people whose cars have the internal components to steer and control themselves at the instruction of external computers will be able to participate. I think the system would work by providing central control locations on a sort of grid, where each section of road has its own control system, and as cars leave one section of road and enter another, their information would be passed on to the next computer down the grid. Also, each vehicle would have to contain the additional sensors to "close the loop", essentially by providing an internal control inside the vehicle that would allow it to slow down or come to a stop in case there is something in the road that the central computer doesn't know about, or some other condition arises.
This system would have tremendous benefits:
Instead of driving to work, people could spend the time watching television, reading a book, working on the day's reports, or otherwise conducting meaningful business. Gone will be the days of people yacking on their cellphones and crashing into you in the process.
The commute will be a lot shorter. With all cars controlled in this manner, a distance of twenty miles will perhaps take twenty minutes to travel. Currently, the traffic situations in many cities mean that a twenty mile commute to work is a multihour affair. In the greater Los Angeles area, for example, the distances really aren't that great. The distance from Santa Monica to Anaheim is barely thirty miles, yet during rush hour, it will take well over two hours to travel that distance.
There will be no need for traffic enforcement or traffic tickets. There will be no speed limits. The speed of vehicles on a road will be programmed for various driving conditions, and therefore, civic problems like traffic enforcement will be a thing of the past. The police will have time to fight "real" crime.
There will be a significant reduction in traffic accidents. Nobody will accept such a system if cars will routinely crash into each other or fly off the road. These systems will undergo significant experimentation to make sure that they are absolutely reliable, in much the same way as airline traffic control is mission critical. Even if the system goes haywire, this wi
I really love the way articles on Slashdot's front page have a tendancy to be written in such an ambiguous way that the reader learns nothing from the article. Behold this excerpt from the present article:
Environmental engineers at Penn State University and a research scientist at Ion Power Inc. have created an electrically-assisted microbial fuel cell that can be used to produce hydrogen from organic material. The amount of electricity needed for the process is less than the amount required to power a standard cell phone.
It doesn't state how much hydrogen is produced. Are we discussing one molecule of hydrogen? (I know hydrogen is an element, but it floats around in the form of molecules.) And how much electricity is needed to power a cell phone? Are we talking about a fully-charged cell phone battery that becomes completely discharged? The description in this article doesn't tell you if:
One hundred thousand megatons of hydrogen are produced by less energy than is required to power a cell phone for one nanosecond.
One molecule of hydrogen is produced by less energy than is required to power a cell phone from the moment it is activated with a completely charged battery until the moment it shuts off because its battery becomes completely discharged.
Just to qualify myself here, I have 82 computers. Many are various versions of Macs; many are PCs running various BSDs and Linux OSes; a few SGIs and various RISC-based HP boxes; there are even two computers that run several versions of Windows.
I was recently helping a friend of mine shop for a new system. He had been using PCs with Windows for the longest time, and I never heard the end of the complaints about how Windows screwed this up and how Windows screwed that up. So finally, after trying to convince him for years, I helped him buy a new Mac. He had some money to spend (he's rollin' in dough) so he bought a Mac Mini with the faster processor and all the options, and got the wireless Apple keyboard. He already had a really nice Samsung display and a Logitech wireless trackball, along with a Firewire/USB hub with plenty of ports.
When he realized that he could plug in his digital camera and his digital video camera, the hard disk almost instantly filled up with stuff. So the next day, we went back to the store and picked up a Maxtor Firewire hard drive with a 250 gig capacity. He copied tons of digital photos and videos from his other computers. I introduced him to iTunes, so he just had to import all of his MP3s from two PCs, which were bursting at the seams with MP3s. The 250 gig drive filled up quite fast, so the day after that, he bought a second one; luckily there is an "available" firewire port on the Maxtor drive, so you can "daisy chain" them.
But that's not all! With the Mac Mini, the two external drives, the USB/Firewire hub, the display, keyboard, and mouse, his desk actually looked quite clean. (He's good at organizing cables.) It's amazing how much stuff fits into small boxes nowadays. So he had to go "shopping"... Picked up a new iPod, Final Cut Studio or whatever it's called, and Adobe Creative Suite for the Mac... I swear he dropped almost four grand on stuff for this Mac in a few days. This from a guy who thought Macs suck.
He was quite amazed when he found out that Final Cut is made by Apple. He knew it was a serious program, but he never thought about who made it. When I explained that Apple makes the computers, the operating system, and software that does just about every function you can dream of, he was amazed that one company can do all of these things, and do each one of them much better than any other company out there. Specifically, he was shocked and amazed that Microsoft, with thousands of times the resources that Apple has, can't even get their operating system working properly.
We came to the conclusion that the problem facing Microsoft and many other companies is simply that Microsoft is mediocre. It's an easy problem to fall into. Microsoft is simply mediocre because the quality of their work is not important to them. They are simply greedy for money. Now they'll tell you that they care, and they're working to fix the security flaws, etc., but only because they realized that those security flaws are impacting their bottom line. As long as those flaws did not affect Microsoft in any significant way, they would have continued to ignore them.
Personally, I believe that if security flaws did not impact the sales of Microsoft software at all, Microsoft would simply ignore them and not care that your data, your identity, your finances, etc., are at risk. Because they're mediocre.
Apple, on the other hand, is a first-class company. Say what you will about their stuff being more expensive, but believe me, you get what you pay for. Someone has to get paid for making true innovations. Even though some things in their OS existed in other OSes before them (Spotlight - Query in BeOS). I think they're constantly improving.
I'm one of those lucky persons who received Tiger early. Actually, I didn't know that I wasn't supposed to receive it. Heck, I pre-ordered, so I thought the April 28 date was just the final date, when it was guaranteed to be available at any location.
Anyway, I installed it already, and oh man, it is everything I thought it was going to be. Actually, those ten improvements (Spotlight, Dashboard, Automator, etc.) that everyone's talking about are all pretty cool, but the OS really is significantly faster and smoother than 10.3.x. And a lot cool stuff is changed under the surface. Check the man page for cp, etc., and you'll see what I mean.
I have to say, I really am impressed with this release. Every previous upgrade has been a big surprise and a big improvement, and I was skeptical that Tiger would be anything to jump up and down over, but I really have to say that I've been pleasantly surprised with this one.
Instead of randomly producing strings of
"245o2nroh4ijio2s" for users to remember as passwords (which all they'll do is write on the bottom of their keyboard, or on a post-it note stuck to the side of their monitor, or tattooed on their butt), why not produce passphrases that are complete sentences, produced by random, but nonetheless complete, that make some amount of sense. For example, a passphrase might be something like, "Joe's girlfriend screwed Joe's friend Bob." Now who in the "F" word is going to guess a password like that? It contains only letters, true, but it is long enough that it will take approximately n! computations to figure it out. If you'd like, you can make a passphrase like, "fuc|{ thoze damm y4nk33z, muthufucku!!!1111" or "Thoze RAIDERS r tha suxx0rzzzzzz!!!!!11111" That wouldn't be too difficult to remember, and if would survive any dictionary attack.
Any software that Microsoft makes is bound to be garbage. It only appears to work, sometimes. What's actually going on under the surface is the destruction of your computer hardware, your data, your patience, and your soul.
There is a conjecture that if an infinite number of monkeys were set pounding away on an infinite number of typewriters, and given an infinite amount of time, one monkey would eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare.
Others believe that a work such as Shakespeare's, which requires creative judgement to produce, could never emerge from randomness and chaos.
However, I believe that at Microsoft's campus, there are an infinite number of monkeys pounding away at an infinite number of computer keyboards, and whenever something that looks like computer software emerges from the chaos, Microsoft's marketing department packages and sells it.
He explains that Microsoft wanted to focus on fewer legislations and that the anti-discrimination bill was one of the bills that they didn't have the resources to follow.
Why in the "F" word does Microsoft need to focus on legislation? What is Microsoft, a government agency? Is it the legislative branch of the U.S. government? What is this, the United States of Microsoft? I can almost see it now:
For immediate release
April 20, 2005
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced that it has acquired the United States Government in an equity deal valued at $10 billion. The move comes after Microsoft CEO and now United States President Steve Ballmer announced that content providers would streamline compelling enterprise solutions more efficiently if Microsoft had more control over the legislative environment.
A spokesperson for the LCPAR, the Legal Corporation for the Protection of Artists' Rights, a legal company consisting of 100,000 lawyers and paid-off judges owned by the RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft, stated, "We are excited to bring consumers new freedoms in their use of intellectual property."
Microsoft announced that its first legislation makes it illegal to use any computer software not produced and sold by Microsoft, punishable by life in prison without the possibility of parole. Further legislation is being pushed through Microsoft's campus to force digital rights management technology into widespread use which will automatically debit bank accounts in a pay-per-use fashion whenever someone listens to music, watches a movie, or uses software. The money will go directly to Microsoft's revenue collection arm, the IRS. President Ballmer stated that by 2007, it will be illegal to possess, use, or traffic in any device capable of processing any kind of intellectual property whatsoever without providing payment to Microsoft.
"Consumers will be glad to know they have more freedom now that Microsoft is in control," stated Bill Gates.
Yeah, I think this is exactly the direction Microsoft would pursue if they could. 1984. Bill Gates is watching you.
Here's what I think. Want to patent software? Think you're the greatest programmer who ever lived and your code is something that nobody has ever thought of before? Ok. Here is what I propose: Allow software patents under the following conditions: The person or company filing for the patent must pay a much larger fee than for other patents so that a special task force in the USPTO can research the stuff in-depth to make sure that it really is unique, non-obvious, etc. And you have to give the USPTO access to the complete source code and complete documentation for the inner workings of that code, so that any programmer who goes through the material will learn exactly how and why it works and how and why it is so special. This source code, which so-called "content providers" have a way of calling "software blueprints", shall be made completely open and available along with all the other documentation for the patent, so that any programmer will be able to reproduce it completely, in exactly the same way as the blueprints for other types of devices are available. All of this is going on while the product is still being sold.
I don't think they should waste their time and money putting you in jail. I think that if someone is even accused of having anything to do with any copy of a movie or of music for which the RIAA or MPAA didn't get paid, that person should be put to death, and the family members, friends of the family members, and the family members of friends of the family members should all have everything they own confiscated and given directly to Bill Gates (last I heard, he was starving from hunger because he can't afford to buy bread; let him eat cake), and they should be sent to work as slaves in hard labor for the rest of their lives.
Yes, there are some things the guy I voted for twice is doing wrong. Nobody's perfect, I suppose.
You mean to tell me that beta software made by Microsoft is good enough for production use, when their release versions of software aren't even good enough to print on toilet paper?
Allow me to quote something I posted in a different story a moment ago:
This is what I love most in life: I have just spent the better part of the day trying to get what is otherwise a perfectly good machine, except that it is running software from Microsoft, which renders it less than useless (more on this later), to recognize some stupid printer. Once that was recognized, the aforementioned machine, which, remember, is less than useless, stopped recognizing the network. Then, I had to spend the other better part of the day fixing that. Then, I go on Slashdot, and the first article I see is about how Microsoft is going to release yet another version of their garbage, which they illegally claim is an operating system, under the false advertising rules, in order to make the lives of innocent bystanders like myself even worse than before.
Now about that machine being less than useless. Suppose there is a computer with no operating system on it. That machine is useless, because it cannot accomplish any tasks. Turn it on, and it will immediately halt and produce an error message saying you need to install an operating system. That's pretty useless. But it's much better than a machine running some of the disgusting, reeking, horrible, vomit that Microsoft calls software. Because a machine that contains no operating system performs no task, but it wastes not the time or resources of innocent bystanders such as myself. A machine running the aforementioned filth that I described above as something Microsoft illegally claims is software, does something much worse: Sometimes, it pretends to work, just to get your hopes up. Then, just as you think that maybe, just maybe Microsoft's infinite monkeys pounding away at infinite keyboards didn't do quite an awful job as you thought all your life, the machine proves to you, once again, that it is running software from Microsoft.
Let me repeat again: Microsoft is a horrible, unethical, lying, cheating company. It does nothing except create unnecessary costs for other businesses, unless it destroys those businesses first. I hate Microsoft. I hate everything that comes from that terrible company. Microsoft represents all that is evil, vile, and wicked. And their software is garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, et cetera, ad nauseum. Microsoft. Where do you want to waste your day?
Oh, and did I mention that the only reason we have that trash on this computer is that we have no choice? Yup, that's right. There is no open-source alternative to Autocad, a program we must use because our customers demand it. Even programs that can input and output Autocad's crooked file format won't work because they create certain problems. Only Autocad is effective at doing this work. And Autocad only works under Windows, as do most of the other serious CAD/CAM solutions. These companies, for some reason, continue to support Microsoft, and they refuse to create ports for other operating systems, not knowing that just about everybody in this industy to whom I spoke agrees that they would switch to anything else if only Autocad were available for that platform. So here we are, stuck using Windows, years after we decided to phase that trash out and use something that actually works. And then, after a day of completely wasting my time, when I had many, many things on the list that needed to get done, I open Slashdot and see an article about how Microsoft, may the devil curse the souls of everybody who works there, owns stock in Microsoft, or believes that their software is actually good, is going to release yet another version of their trash unto the world.
This is what I love most in life: I have just spent the better part of the day trying to get what is otherwise a perfectly good machine, except that it is running software from Microsoft, which renders it less than useless (more on this later), to recognize some stupid printer. Once that was recognized, the aforementioned machine, which, remember, is less than useless, stopped recognizing the network. Then, I had to spend the other better part of the day fixing that. Then, I go on Slashdot, and the first article I see is about how Microsoft is going to release yet another version of their garbage, which they illegally claim is an operating system, under the false advertising rules, in order to make the lives of innocent bystanders like myself even worse than before.
Now about that machine being less than useless. Suppose there is a computer with no operating system on it. That machine is useless, because it cannot accomplish any tasks. Turn it on, and it will immediately halt and produce an error message saying you need to install an operating system. That's pretty useless. But it's much better than a machine running some of the disgusting, reeking, horrible, vomit that Microsoft calls software. Because a machine that contains no operating system performs no task, but it wastes not the time or resources of innocent bystanders such as myself. A machine running the aforementioned filth that I described above as something Microsoft illegally claims is software, does something much worse: Sometimes, it pretends to work, just to get your hopes up. Then, just as you think that maybe, just maybe Microsoft's infinite monkeys pounding away at infinite keyboards didn't do quite an awful job as you thought all your life, the machine proves to you, once again, that it is running software from Microsoft.
Let me repeat again: Microsoft is a horrible, unethical, lying, cheating company. It does nothing except create unnecessary costs for other businesses, unless it destroys those businesses first. I hate Microsoft. I hate everything that comes from that terrible company. Microsoft represents all that is evil, vile, and wicked. And their software is garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, et cetera, ad nauseum. Microsoft. Where do you want to waste your day?
Oh, and did I mention that the only reason we have that trash on this computer is that we have no choice? Yup, that's right. There is no open-source alternative to Autocad, a program we must use because our customers demand it. Even programs that can input and output Autocad's crooked file format won't work because they create certain problems. Only Autocad is effective at doing this work. And Autocad only works under Windows, as do most of the other serious CAD/CAM solutions. These companies, for some reason, continue to support Microsoft, and they refuse to create ports for other operating systems, not knowing that just about everybody in this industy to whom I spoke agrees that they would switch to anything else if only Autocad were available for that platform. So here we are, stuck using Windows, years after we decided to phase that trash out and use something that actually works. And then, after a day of completely wasting my time, when I had many, many things on the list that needed to get done, I open Slashdot and see an article about how Microsoft, may the devil curse the souls of everybody who works there, owns stock in Microsoft, or believes that their software is actually good, is going to release yet another version of their trash unto the world.
This sucks. Macromedia was a good company. Adobe is an unethical and evil company. They got Dmitry Sklyarov arrested when all he did was discover how terribly insecure their software, which they all but claimed completely and utterly unbreakable security, was. All he did was help blind people read electronic books they bought and paid for. But Adobe would rather profit at the expense of those users. And Adobe refused to fix the problem for a long time afterwards. Then, they pretended to forgive Mr. Sklyarov after the matter was no longer in their hands, so that people would think they are ethical, when in fact what they did was get Mr. Sklyarov busted and then throw up their hands and say, "It's not our fault!" I didn't fall for it.
They advertised that Acrobat files can be read on "any platform" when all they offered was Mac and Losedows versions, even when there were quite a few operating systems out there, especially Linux, with millions of users at the time, that could have used Acrobat, and people were begging and pleading with them to support those operating systems, even at a cost.
They incorporated software into Photoshop CS to thwart the forgery of money, just to prove that they believe their customers are low-life criminals. Not that this necessarily inconveniences any legitimate user, except for the extra unnecessary processing overhead, but it shows what they think of their customers.
I don't like Adobe. Luckily, I am the one who specifies hardware and software purchases for our company. I buy software from Adobe's competition. The first item above, Mr. Sklyarov's arrest, is the primary reason that I do so, but the second and third items only show that Adobe thinks their customers are stupid (the "any platform" thing) and criminals (the money thing). Too bad. They could have been a first-class company.
Why not offer customers an alternative that has better performance instead of risking the lose of those customers to another vendor that does?
Along the same lines, how come all these vendors don't offer alternative operating systems preinstalled? I wouldn't be surprised if a company like SuSE would sell them copies at cost or less just to get the stuff out there. It would be cheaper than Windows at any price.
So why don't they do it? Why not offer better hardware? Why not offer better software? Because companies like Dell are still doing business in a retarded fashion where they don't consider what's actually good for their customers. They just want you to think that what they gave you is the best for you, but it's actually what's best for them, at your loss. Dell sucks. I wouldn't even bother to think about them.
Aside from the usual criticism of open source software, it contains a reference to a Symantec Internet Security Report which claims that more security vulnerabilities in the last six months of 2004 were found in Firefox than IE.
Hmmm... It must have read something like this:
There have been more vulnerabilities discovered in open-source software since the very beginnings of the Mozilla project than there have been in Microsoft Internet Explorer in the past nanosecond.
This doesn't mean anything: 100,000 vulnerabilities discovered across all open source software in the past decade compared to only 99,999 vulnerabilities discovered in IE in the past nanosecond is still a pretty good track record for open source software.
Also, keep in mind that Symantec's business model includes spinning FUD about hackers, viruses, malware, spyware, popups, and email attachments, so anything they say about any software is going to be with such a spin.
I can already see cold war style nucular* shelter companies going around and installing shelters underneath folks' houses.
But what the U.S. government is already doing may be the very same safety measure that is needed: The renewed interest in a moon base, missions to Mars, etc. This exact same space program, I believe, is being put into effect to install a gigantic weapons system in orbit, very similar to the Death Star in Star Wars. This type of weapons system will be sufficient to blow up this silly little asteroid.
There are about twenty years left to prepare. NASA, you can rest assured, will come up with all kinds of devices to blow this thing out of the sky. And I'd bet you that the government, with all its supercomputers and whatnot, knows exactly when and where this thing is going to strike, and they're not just sitting around waiting for it to happen.
In the meantime, I know I'll be stocking up on canned foods and bottled water, and I need to buy more ammo for my handguns. If this thing starts coming down in my back yard, I'll shoot at it myself. Or I'll shoot at any looters that come around looking for trouble.
* I spelled "nucular" correctly. It's spelled according to the pronunciation of the guy I elected.
This will only be a minor inconvenience to those who wish to illegally pirate the intellectual property of others. There are many ways to compute a hash. If you can compute, for each file, both an MD5 hash and an SHA1 hash, and also record the size of the file along with those two hashes, signing the resulting three values with a known-good PGP key, then you'll have something that is darn-near unbeatable. It will be so difficult to find another file that produces the same hash under both algorithms at the same time while producing a file of identical size.
However, this will prove to be a major inconvenience for honest people who are legally downloading things such as Linux, open source software, and free music, videos, and other items which are made available online for the purpose of the downloader's enjoyment at no cost.
New Scientist is reporting that a 'Minority Report' style interface is being developed by defense company Raytheon. Users don a pair of reflective gloves and manipulate images projected on a panoramic screen. A mounted camera keeps track of hand movements and a computer interprets gestures.
Uh, would someone mind telling me what all this '1337 legal-5p33k means? Does it mean SCO lost all of its cases against Linux users? Does it mean that the judge is forcing SCO to shutdown and give all its assets directly to OSDN? Does it mean that Darl is going to prison for life without parole? What the heck does it mean?!
In fact, I'm shocked that Apple ever released the Mac mini! Who wants to see some crappy old PC monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers next to the elegant Mac mini?
Apparently, I did. I wanted a Mac, but I didn't want to drop a grand on it. I was at Fry's. There was a deal for a computer case containing power supply, motherboard, cooling system, graphics, everything. All you had to add was the Sempron processor, memory, and SATA hard drive. It was a good deal, and it would have come out at just over a grand. Then I saw the Mac Mini. It looked cool, so I bought it. I already have a monitor--19", mind you--and a perfectly good USB hub, wireless trackball mouse, keyboard, USB floppy drive, USB DVD burner... So I spent half as much money and got a box that's a heck of a lot smaller than that PC would have been, for less money... and the OS is just freakin' beautiful. (I was gonna try and make FreeBSD or Linux work on the other box, but no need anymore
Slashdot Mirror
It's basically a timing error. Well, Microsoft's own website explains, on a page devoted to this bug:
- This bug will prevent Windows 2000 from starting up.
- In order to fix it, you have to install SP4.
- In order to install SP4, you must be able to get Windows started up.
In other words, you can see that Microsoft is really looking out for you. Sons of bitches.To clarify, BeOS had/has what I believe is the best of all three worlds. Files on the BFS file system have "attributes", which are labeled bits of data that I suppose are a bit similar to the resource fork on Mac OS, but are also similar in many respects to the attributes where ACLs and other programmable metadata is stored on some filesystems that are appearing for various *nix systems now. There was an attribute that named the MIME-type of the file. If this existed, then when you clicked a file, BeOS would match the MIME-type to an application (and there was an interface where you could easily set up these relationships), and launch that app for you. If the attribute didn't exist, BeOS would look at several things: The extension, if one existed, was a good starting place. Also, the OS would look for magic numbers in the file to ascertain its type. There were a number of pre-programmed types that the OS knew about. I think they were planning to add an API where anybody could add other types to the system. Anyway, this recognition would happen almost instantaneously when a file was clicked. The attribute would be added at that time. And, furthermore, when the computer went idle, a daemon would go through the system, pick out files that didn't have the attribute, ascertain their type, and put the attribute there. In all, I never experienced a time when the system didn't know what to do with a file.
Attributes were also good for other purposes. When in detail view of a folder, you could set up the columns to be whatever you wanted. If it was a folder full of MP3s, for example, you didn't have to see filename, size, creation date, etc. You could set it up to show artist, genre, song name, duration, etc. In fact, you were not limited to pre-programmed types. You could add any attributes that you wanted to any file, even programmatically, and you could perform live Queries (like the Smart Folders in OSX), and you could set up the Detail view to show any columns... In all, the filesystem was very similar to a database. And the *nix-like part of the OS was integrated so well into the GUI part of the system that there was never a problem of kludginess when using both at the same time. 'course, it wasn't really *nix, but it was a beautiful OS design.
Personally, I believe that once the resource forks are treated well enough by all parts of OSX, Apple will find more uses for them once again. Perhaps when copying to a non-HFS system, you'll have the option of outputting a ZIP file that contains all of the information. Who knows. Apple is known for creativity.
But I don't understand: Where is file metadata stored if not in the resource fork? ACLs? Attributes? That kind of stuff? Is there a data fork, a resource fork, and then a place where attributes and non-HFS metadata (meaning not the file size, date created/modified, that kind of metadata, but rather the ACLs and other stuff) get stored?
I don't drink di-hydrogen monoxide, you insensitive clod! I'm all about C2-H5-OH.
But if you switch from Microsoft Excel to OpenOffice.org today, the amount of errors in your spreadsheets will drop from $100,000.00 to $0.00.
Microsoft: Where do you want to go today?
And one final note: I'm sure that the software controlling all of this could undergo all sorts of optimizations. Imagine hearing on the news that your commute will henceforth take approximately 12% less time thanks to improvements in the vehicle routing algorithms...
General Motors has been doing all sorts of experiments with cars that are driven by computer. They've shown some experiments on television where about eight or ten cars are driving eighty miles per hour on a road at "tailgating" distance from one another.
The idea is not that computers are better at driving than humans, but is a solution to the problem that the driver of each vehicle sees only those cars that are immediately around him on the road. This means that if the vehicle in front of him is stopped, he must stop, too. Imagine a stoplight at an intersection. The light turns green, but you're behind ten cars, so by the time you start going, the light turns yellow again. Why? This is happening because you can't go until the car immediately in front of you goes, and the driver of that car suffers from the same problem. What if all the drivers communicated, so that when the light turns green, everybody would push the gas at exactly the same time? And more specifically, if everybody pushed the gas exactly the right amount so as to accelerate at exactly the same rate? Many more cars would make it through the intersection before the light turns red. Also, we'd all get where we're going a lot faster. That is currently impossible because there is no "central command", no way to create an overall driving strategy for everyone on a given road. Everybody does what he believes is best, and this causes all sorts of bottlenecks that shouldn't otherwise exist.
A system that would essentially control all the vehicles on a road would do exactly that, and more. Now, I imagine that at first, this will only be available on a select few roads as an "experiment", and only people whose cars have the internal components to steer and control themselves at the instruction of external computers will be able to participate. I think the system would work by providing central control locations on a sort of grid, where each section of road has its own control system, and as cars leave one section of road and enter another, their information would be passed on to the next computer down the grid. Also, each vehicle would have to contain the additional sensors to "close the loop", essentially by providing an internal control inside the vehicle that would allow it to slow down or come to a stop in case there is something in the road that the central computer doesn't know about, or some other condition arises.
This system would have tremendous benefits:
- One hundred thousand megatons of hydrogen are produced by less energy than is required to power a cell phone for one nanosecond.
- One molecule of hydrogen is produced by less energy than is required to power a cell phone from the moment it is activated with a completely charged battery until the moment it shuts off because its battery becomes completely discharged.
This is what I love about Slashdot articles.I was recently helping a friend of mine shop for a new system. He had been using PCs with Windows for the longest time, and I never heard the end of the complaints about how Windows screwed this up and how Windows screwed that up. So finally, after trying to convince him for years, I helped him buy a new Mac. He had some money to spend (he's rollin' in dough) so he bought a Mac Mini with the faster processor and all the options, and got the wireless Apple keyboard. He already had a really nice Samsung display and a Logitech wireless trackball, along with a Firewire/USB hub with plenty of ports.
When he realized that he could plug in his digital camera and his digital video camera, the hard disk almost instantly filled up with stuff. So the next day, we went back to the store and picked up a Maxtor Firewire hard drive with a 250 gig capacity. He copied tons of digital photos and videos from his other computers. I introduced him to iTunes, so he just had to import all of his MP3s from two PCs, which were bursting at the seams with MP3s. The 250 gig drive filled up quite fast, so the day after that, he bought a second one; luckily there is an "available" firewire port on the Maxtor drive, so you can "daisy chain" them.
But that's not all! With the Mac Mini, the two external drives, the USB/Firewire hub, the display, keyboard, and mouse, his desk actually looked quite clean. (He's good at organizing cables.) It's amazing how much stuff fits into small boxes nowadays. So he had to go "shopping"... Picked up a new iPod, Final Cut Studio or whatever it's called, and Adobe Creative Suite for the Mac... I swear he dropped almost four grand on stuff for this Mac in a few days. This from a guy who thought Macs suck.
He was quite amazed when he found out that Final Cut is made by Apple. He knew it was a serious program, but he never thought about who made it. When I explained that Apple makes the computers, the operating system, and software that does just about every function you can dream of, he was amazed that one company can do all of these things, and do each one of them much better than any other company out there. Specifically, he was shocked and amazed that Microsoft, with thousands of times the resources that Apple has, can't even get their operating system working properly.
We came to the conclusion that the problem facing Microsoft and many other companies is simply that Microsoft is mediocre. It's an easy problem to fall into. Microsoft is simply mediocre because the quality of their work is not important to them. They are simply greedy for money. Now they'll tell you that they care, and they're working to fix the security flaws, etc., but only because they realized that those security flaws are impacting their bottom line. As long as those flaws did not affect Microsoft in any significant way, they would have continued to ignore them.
Personally, I believe that if security flaws did not impact the sales of Microsoft software at all, Microsoft would simply ignore them and not care that your data, your identity, your finances, etc., are at risk. Because they're mediocre.
Apple, on the other hand, is a first-class company. Say what you will about their stuff being more expensive, but believe me, you get what you pay for. Someone has to get paid for making true innovations. Even though some things in their OS existed in other OSes before them (Spotlight - Query in BeOS). I think they're constantly improving.
Anyway, I installed it already, and oh man, it is everything I thought it was going to be. Actually, those ten improvements (Spotlight, Dashboard, Automator, etc.) that everyone's talking about are all pretty cool, but the OS really is significantly faster and smoother than 10.3.x. And a lot cool stuff is changed under the surface. Check the man page for cp, etc., and you'll see what I mean.
I have to say, I really am impressed with this release. Every previous upgrade has been a big surprise and a big improvement, and I was skeptical that Tiger would be anything to jump up and down over, but I really have to say that I've been pleasantly surprised with this one.
And no, I'm not sending it back!
Instead of randomly producing strings of "245o2nroh4ijio2s" for users to remember as passwords (which all they'll do is write on the bottom of their keyboard, or on a post-it note stuck to the side of their monitor, or tattooed on their butt), why not produce passphrases that are complete sentences, produced by random, but nonetheless complete, that make some amount of sense. For example, a passphrase might be something like, "Joe's girlfriend screwed Joe's friend Bob." Now who in the "F" word is going to guess a password like that? It contains only letters, true, but it is long enough that it will take approximately n! computations to figure it out. If you'd like, you can make a passphrase like, "fuc|{ thoze damm y4nk33z, muthufucku!!!1111" or "Thoze RAIDERS r tha suxx0rzzzzzz!!!!!11111" That wouldn't be too difficult to remember, and if would survive any dictionary attack.
There is a conjecture that if an infinite number of monkeys were set pounding away on an infinite number of typewriters, and given an infinite amount of time, one monkey would eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare.
Others believe that a work such as Shakespeare's, which requires creative judgement to produce, could never emerge from randomness and chaos.
However, I believe that at Microsoft's campus, there are an infinite number of monkeys pounding away at an infinite number of computer keyboards, and whenever something that looks like computer software emerges from the chaos, Microsoft's marketing department packages and sells it.
Why in the "F" word does Microsoft need to focus on legislation? What is Microsoft, a government agency? Is it the legislative branch of the U.S. government? What is this, the United States of Microsoft? I can almost see it now:
Yeah, I think this is exactly the direction Microsoft would pursue if they could. 1984. Bill Gates is watching you.Here's what I think. Want to patent software? Think you're the greatest programmer who ever lived and your code is something that nobody has ever thought of before? Ok. Here is what I propose: Allow software patents under the following conditions: The person or company filing for the patent must pay a much larger fee than for other patents so that a special task force in the USPTO can research the stuff in-depth to make sure that it really is unique, non-obvious, etc. And you have to give the USPTO access to the complete source code and complete documentation for the inner workings of that code, so that any programmer who goes through the material will learn exactly how and why it works and how and why it is so special. This source code, which so-called "content providers" have a way of calling "software blueprints", shall be made completely open and available along with all the other documentation for the patent, so that any programmer will be able to reproduce it completely, in exactly the same way as the blueprints for other types of devices are available. All of this is going on while the product is still being sold.
Yes, there are some things the guy I voted for twice is doing wrong. Nobody's perfect, I suppose.
Allow me to quote something I posted in a different story a moment ago:
That pretty much sums it all up.Now about that machine being less than useless. Suppose there is a computer with no operating system on it. That machine is useless, because it cannot accomplish any tasks. Turn it on, and it will immediately halt and produce an error message saying you need to install an operating system. That's pretty useless. But it's much better than a machine running some of the disgusting, reeking, horrible, vomit that Microsoft calls software. Because a machine that contains no operating system performs no task, but it wastes not the time or resources of innocent bystanders such as myself. A machine running the aforementioned filth that I described above as something Microsoft illegally claims is software, does something much worse: Sometimes, it pretends to work, just to get your hopes up. Then, just as you think that maybe, just maybe Microsoft's infinite monkeys pounding away at infinite keyboards didn't do quite an awful job as you thought all your life, the machine proves to you, once again, that it is running software from Microsoft.
Let me repeat again: Microsoft is a horrible, unethical, lying, cheating company. It does nothing except create unnecessary costs for other businesses, unless it destroys those businesses first. I hate Microsoft. I hate everything that comes from that terrible company. Microsoft represents all that is evil, vile, and wicked. And their software is garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, piled upon garbage, et cetera, ad nauseum. Microsoft. Where do you want to waste your day?
Oh, and did I mention that the only reason we have that trash on this computer is that we have no choice? Yup, that's right. There is no open-source alternative to Autocad, a program we must use because our customers demand it. Even programs that can input and output Autocad's crooked file format won't work because they create certain problems. Only Autocad is effective at doing this work. And Autocad only works under Windows, as do most of the other serious CAD/CAM solutions. These companies, for some reason, continue to support Microsoft, and they refuse to create ports for other operating systems, not knowing that just about everybody in this industy to whom I spoke agrees that they would switch to anything else if only Autocad were available for that platform. So here we are, stuck using Windows, years after we decided to phase that trash out and use something that actually works. And then, after a day of completely wasting my time, when I had many, many things on the list that needed to get done, I open Slashdot and see an article about how Microsoft, may the devil curse the souls of everybody who works there, owns stock in Microsoft, or believes that their software is actually good, is going to release yet another version of their trash unto the world.
They advertised that Acrobat files can be read on "any platform" when all they offered was Mac and Losedows versions, even when there were quite a few operating systems out there, especially Linux, with millions of users at the time, that could have used Acrobat, and people were begging and pleading with them to support those operating systems, even at a cost.
They incorporated software into Photoshop CS to thwart the forgery of money, just to prove that they believe their customers are low-life criminals. Not that this necessarily inconveniences any legitimate user, except for the extra unnecessary processing overhead, but it shows what they think of their customers.
I don't like Adobe. Luckily, I am the one who specifies hardware and software purchases for our company. I buy software from Adobe's competition. The first item above, Mr. Sklyarov's arrest, is the primary reason that I do so, but the second and third items only show that Adobe thinks their customers are stupid (the "any platform" thing) and criminals (the money thing). Too bad. They could have been a first-class company.
Along the same lines, how come all these vendors don't offer alternative operating systems preinstalled? I wouldn't be surprised if a company like SuSE would sell them copies at cost or less just to get the stuff out there. It would be cheaper than Windows at any price.
So why don't they do it? Why not offer better hardware? Why not offer better software? Because companies like Dell are still doing business in a retarded fashion where they don't consider what's actually good for their customers. They just want you to think that what they gave you is the best for you, but it's actually what's best for them, at your loss. Dell sucks. I wouldn't even bother to think about them.
Hmmm... It must have read something like this:
This doesn't mean anything: 100,000 vulnerabilities discovered across all open source software in the past decade compared to only 99,999 vulnerabilities discovered in IE in the past nanosecond is still a pretty good track record for open source software.Also, keep in mind that Symantec's business model includes spinning FUD about hackers, viruses, malware, spyware, popups, and email attachments, so anything they say about any software is going to be with such a spin.
But what the U.S. government is already doing may be the very same safety measure that is needed: The renewed interest in a moon base, missions to Mars, etc. This exact same space program, I believe, is being put into effect to install a gigantic weapons system in orbit, very similar to the Death Star in Star Wars. This type of weapons system will be sufficient to blow up this silly little asteroid.
There are about twenty years left to prepare. NASA, you can rest assured, will come up with all kinds of devices to blow this thing out of the sky. And I'd bet you that the government, with all its supercomputers and whatnot, knows exactly when and where this thing is going to strike, and they're not just sitting around waiting for it to happen.
In the meantime, I know I'll be stocking up on canned foods and bottled water, and I need to buy more ammo for my handguns. If this thing starts coming down in my back yard, I'll shoot at it myself. Or I'll shoot at any looters that come around looking for trouble.
* I spelled "nucular" correctly. It's spelled according to the pronunciation of the guy I elected.
However, this will prove to be a major inconvenience for honest people who are legally downloading things such as Linux, open source software, and free music, videos, and other items which are made available online for the purpose of the downloader's enjoyment at no cost.
Where will they get the pre-cogs from?
Uh, would someone mind telling me what all this '1337 legal-5p33k means? Does it mean SCO lost all of its cases against Linux users? Does it mean that the judge is forcing SCO to shutdown and give all its assets directly to OSDN? Does it mean that Darl is going to prison for life without parole? What the heck does it mean?!
Apparently, I did. I wanted a Mac, but I didn't want to drop a grand on it. I was at Fry's. There was a deal for a computer case containing power supply, motherboard, cooling system, graphics, everything. All you had to add was the Sempron processor, memory, and SATA hard drive. It was a good deal, and it would have come out at just over a grand. Then I saw the Mac Mini. It looked cool, so I bought it. I already have a monitor--19", mind you--and a perfectly good USB hub, wireless trackball mouse, keyboard, USB floppy drive, USB DVD burner... So I spent half as much money and got a box that's a heck of a lot smaller than that PC would have been, for less money... and the OS is just freakin' beautiful. (I was gonna try and make FreeBSD or Linux work on the other box, but no need anymore