Basically, gmail does a fairly good job of keeping conversations together. This is nothing new, it's called threading, and a heap of e-mail clients are great at it. Just not the ones you mention. (Free) Agent, also a newsreader, truly excelled at this sort of thing; in e-mail as well as newsgroups. Kill filters, Watch filters, sort by date or thread, thread by reference-headers and/or subject, and a few million other options.
Pegasus mail also did some nice threading (and had insanely configurable filtering. you could have conditional goto's in your numbered filters).
Yes, it was the VIA chipset. Trip to memory lane, now you mentions "4-in-1 drivers". They managed to get one of the versions right at least, so it did work in the end. Only the soundblaster would work intermittently, but I blame that on the SB itself. I now have an MSI board with a via chipset, but I'm still not touching soundblaster, ever again.
There are lots of countries that have WMD. The US government has no problem with WMD per se, just problems in the hands of those who might attack the US or its allies.
Right. Yes. And that doesn't strike you in any way as hypocritical? "It's OK for ME to do, but not for YOU? So I'll sign this treaty and keep you to it, but not myself?".
Mental exersize; replace "The US government" with "The Kremlin", and see how you feel about it. Then, with "Osama Bin Laden". See how that works?
Nevertheless the Secure Attention Key is a good idea, also because it's a key combination you might want to give extra scheduling priority so you can bring up a task manager (like windows) or output debugging info instanteneously (like linux).
While it's bad security practice, don't discount the enormous number of desktops left unattended each lunch hour, to which people have abundant access. Or kiosk-mode terminals.
Having a Secure Attention Key is also a DOD requirement (one of the rainbow books coined the term SAK, if I recall correctly).
A simple scenario is when you're logged in as a user with execute rights, you fire up a dummy login program, and leave the room. Colleague or other student enters the room, logs in, the login "fails", and the fake program reboots the machine after logging the password. Happened quite a bit in the old unix days at university.
There's a good reason; although Windows XP Home does let you click on a cute picture and enter your password, it's trivial for someone to write a little app that fakes the password entry screen. By pressing ctrl+alt+del you can be sure you're typing into the OS's password screeny, because no other application can trap ctrl+alt+del. (Assuming your opponent doesn't have kernel/admnistrator access to your PC, which he does, if you're running as administrator, which you do, by default, on XP home, which is why it has the cute pictures).
The windows key would have been the logical choice as SAK on XP, though, to supplant ctrl+alt+del.
When Microsoft added the windows keys, they just needed to create a new keyboard layout and map two (three?) new scan codes - something trivial to do. Making the windows key generate a hardware interrupt would have required modifying the BIOS - something a lot harder for MS to do.
It's trivial to wire the windows key in such a way that pressing it has the same effect as pressing ctrl, alt and del simultaneously.
In fact, it's easier than adding a new scancode. Just have the ctrl, alt and del circuits on the keyboard run through the windows key as well.
As a side benefit, you could now be sure that the start menu is always the OSes start menu.
Never mind the fact that once windows takes over, the BIOS doesn't have a thing to say about ctrl+alt+del anymore. (If it did, your computer would reset) Windows could just as easily make a different scancode, or a combination like Alt+SysReq, the secure attention key. In fact, Alt+SysReq is what linux kernels trap for debugging purposes; no user mode program can intercept Alt+SysReq.
So, I have to disagree here. The windows key is just marketing. They could've also added copy and paste buttons, and volume up+down buttons to the windows approved layout, but didn't. Now those keys are all over the place in all sorts of "multimedia" keyboards, along with insane buttons for checking e-mail etc.
If they don't know that the big Novell login screen with the buttons saying 'Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to begin.' is telling them they should press those keys to get started, what chance is there they'll know what to do with one of the somewhat useless messages Gnome generates when an application crashes?
These days, the login screen for windows show a little animation of three buttons being pressed simultaneously. Which prevents people from misinterpreting the message to "press ctrl+alt+del" to mean to press the keys in sequence, to press ctrl, then the plus key, then alt, etc. Having to press three keys simultaneously (or rather, depressing them simultaneously) to make something extremely ordinary happen just isn't intuitive.
It's quite possible for some one to be of (above) average intelligence, diligently following instructions such as "don't download silly cursor changing or weather reporting programs, don't open suspicious attachments" and knowing why; but to still misinterpret the "ctrl+alt+del" instruction.
Microsoft had the chance to make the windows-flag-logo key the Secure Attention Key (which would leave ctrl+alt+del for resetting, yay) but they passed it up.
You're confusing "Windows Messenger" with the "Messenger Service".
MSN Messenger - instant messenger with a lot of doodads, a new version to be downloaded every day. AKA "msn".
Windows Messenger - instant messenger that can log on to the MSN Messenger network, but also to Exchange/SIP servers, doesn't have many doodads. AKA "that crappy ancient version of msn that won't go away even if you install the newest version".
Messenger Service - runs in the background on NT and higher, displays irritating "press OK" dialogs with spam from viagra sellers or system administrators. AKA "winpopup".
I wasn't speaking about surveys in general, hence the final paragraph, in which I stated, in so many words, that I wasn't speaking about surveys in general. Also not the first phrase where I mentioned the Dutch National Bureau of Statistics researching their polling, not everyone's web poll.
Just one of the factor influencing the error rate in online polls is how carelessly people seem to read online.
Not only is this article just 2 links to some other slashdot articles, but the "comparison" of mysql and postgres article from 6 years ago.. Doesn't compare them! It's an article, like this one, asking for some comments.. So not only does this article add no news for nerds, it even misrepresents links to this very site, which the editors, again, are too lazy to even follow? Come on, people!
This sort of whoring-for-comments article should be a poll.
The data is a lot less useful than I think you may be giving it credit for. I go over this occasionally with social scientist PhDs who have at most one or two semesters of formal statistics training. They also think that it is fair to generalize from mailed questionaires. If you do not know the degree of the bias, you really have no idea of the skew of your results.
The Dutch National Bureau of Statistics actually researches the skew in their polling once in a while; they hunt down people who did NOT respond to questionnaires, going to them in person with a bunch of flowers, explaining why they need to research skew. On average, it takes 2 calls and 1 visit to get to the pesky non-respondents. Amazingly, the research indicates that the usual means of selecting respondents (they usually don't go for purely randomized samples, but stratified samples; i.e. a fair selection of people distributed over different variable - such as age group, income, etc. - in the same pattern as the general populace) actually holds up well. People who don't respond usually only do so because they don't feel like it at the time.
(Of course, that won't be true for many other surveys and the type of (self)selection they employ.)
this is capitalism. this isn't lovey dovey bunnies and spices and shit. part of a corporation IS the legal tactics, the bribes, and illegality---that has a direct impact on this vague "healthy competition" that you mention.
Your view of things is naive to say the least, and ill-informed at best.
So, just because it's immoral and illegal, that's not to say that it's wrong?
But in a essence, markets are about anarchy, markets are about killing competitors, in a way that's allowed by authorities, and it's all good and dandy.
But how do you go about determining what should be allowed by authorities, if you have zero framework for reference other than "greed is good"? (and dandy).
You see, there are reasons, which I won't repeat here, why really big companies with monopoly powers can't "abuse" those powers. Under "greed is good"/AynRand-esque theories a company can never abuse its position in any way, because if it works out good for the company, it's good, if it works out bad for the company, it's good for other people (no matter who gets killed in the process) - there is no referential framework of things like "the greater good".
To cross from factual reporting of court procedings into libel isn't too hard; if you keep up bringing 1 guys testimony a hundred times, while twenty others testified the other way, that's selectively quoting your way into a libelsuit.
Nope, Kodak did the first consumer camera with wifi (send karma here).
Some nokia phones can work as a webcam and connect over bluetooth, which is wifi-esque -- not too mention wifi-enabled IP web/securitycameras, like the ones from axis. Doesn't really fit the bill, but a wifi/ip-enabled security camera actually makes more sense than a wified digital camera. To me, at least.
If they keep *telling* the various special interest groups what we're using to rape their respective industries, no fucking wonder there are new rounds of lawsuits every time large groups of people jump from one sinking ship to another...
Bastard media, be on our side for once.
You do realise that it's the media industry you're raping, right?
Uhhh, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't those instructions for removing some or all of you own site from Google? What good would that do if someone stole their images and posted them on their own site? McFly?
How about you go after them, not google? (They say they lodged a DMCA request with google, but it's unclear if it was framed correctly; i.e. with the DMCA agent, with specific URLs, by certified letter, etc. Also, I doubt they filed 3000 pornographic images with the Library of Congress for copyright, so how do they prove they own the copyright? (though that's not strictly necessary with a DMCA takedown)).
Which brand of laptop do you think people buy? "Centrino"? Or "Dell"? Even "Centrino" is too much under-the-hood. Too most people, if centrino means anything at all, it just means "wireless network".
At the moment, the only mediacenter brand with any clout in the market is the Windows XP MediaCenter Edition brand (in fact, before MCE, did you call it a mediacenter? Or a pc-with-tuner-and-encoder-decoder? Or a PVR/PVR-PC? Microsoft marketing now ensures slashdot headlines with "Media Center" rather than any of those descriptive terms).
So, intel spending bucks on branding in the media center arena is only a counterweight to microsoft branding. In the end people will be faced with the choice between different OEM vendors anyway; Dell, Apple (some day soon now, surely), HP, and somethingelse (e.g. Walmart/Medion/white-label, some linuxy thingamajig, Kiss/Cisco). something like "VIIV" will only mean something to some nerdy types, who will use it as a benchmark ("you should get one with a VIIV chipset or something better inside, like a pinnacle pvrdrr234512").
As the research is not yet published there's nothing more to go on than the press reports
But, by god, we aren't going to let that stop us, are we?!
To be fair, that's entirely the fault of researchers announcing results without having the articles published to back them up. If you spout out baseless assertions, well, they will be fought with baseless counter-assertions, like "you're just a media-attention whoring racist with childhood mother-issues talking crap". That argument is, scientifically, at least as valid as "like, I did some research, and so, like, it's true, mmkay?".
I'd love to have multiple VoIP phone lines once I have two or three teenage crotch goblins, but I can't do that if the upstream speed is only 768kbps (or whatever it is with Comcast).
While it's in everyone's interest to have better upstream capacities, VOIP only takes 64kbps and a bit for the least compressed codec (G.711). You could, in theory, run about 10 lines on 768kbps worth of bandwidth. And the likes of skype (iLBC; 14kbps) and other VOIP apps (G.729(A), G.723, GSM etc) use way less bandwidth than 64kbps.
Slashdot Mirror
Basically, gmail does a fairly good job of keeping conversations together. This is nothing new, it's called threading, and a heap of e-mail clients are great at it. Just not the ones you mention. (Free) Agent, also a newsreader, truly excelled at this sort of thing; in e-mail as well as newsgroups. Kill filters, Watch filters, sort by date or thread, thread by reference-headers and/or subject, and a few million other options.
Pegasus mail also did some nice threading (and had insanely configurable filtering. you could have conditional goto's in your numbered filters).
Yes, it was the VIA chipset. Trip to memory lane, now you mentions "4-in-1 drivers". They managed to get one of the versions right at least, so it did work in the end. Only the soundblaster would work intermittently, but I blame that on the SB itself. I now have an MSI board with a via chipset, but I'm still not touching soundblaster, ever again.
More than half of registered consumers say they're still getting unwanted calls, recent phone survey.
I take it the other half just threw down the phone in disgust at being called in a phone survey? Or perhaps half of those surveyed were in coma?
There are lots of countries that have WMD. The US government has no problem with WMD per se, just problems in the hands of those who might attack the US or its allies.
Right. Yes. And that doesn't strike you in any way as hypocritical? "It's OK for ME to do, but not for YOU? So I'll sign this treaty and keep you to it, but not myself?".
Mental exersize; replace "The US government" with "The Kremlin", and see how you feel about it. Then, with "Osama Bin Laden". See how that works?
BlueTooth also operates in the 2.4Ghz ISM range over Radio Frequencies (RF). Bluetooth is RF, though RF is not always Bluetooth.
Nevertheless the Secure Attention Key is a good idea, also because it's a key combination you might want to give extra scheduling priority so you can bring up a task manager (like windows) or output debugging info instanteneously (like linux).
While it's bad security practice, don't discount the enormous number of desktops left unattended each lunch hour, to which people have abundant access. Or kiosk-mode terminals.
Having a Secure Attention Key is also a DOD requirement (one of the rainbow books coined the term SAK, if I recall correctly).
A simple scenario is when you're logged in as a user with execute rights, you fire up a dummy login program, and leave the room. Colleague or other student enters the room, logs in, the login "fails", and the fake program reboots the machine after logging the password. Happened quite a bit in the old unix days at university.
Also, spyware.
There's a good reason; although Windows XP Home does let you click on a cute picture and enter your password, it's trivial for someone to write a little app that fakes the password entry screen. By pressing ctrl+alt+del you can be sure you're typing into the OS's password screeny, because no other application can trap ctrl+alt+del. (Assuming your opponent doesn't have kernel/admnistrator access to your PC, which he does, if you're running as administrator, which you do, by default, on XP home, which is why it has the cute pictures).
The windows key would have been the logical choice as SAK on XP, though, to supplant ctrl+alt+del.
When Microsoft added the windows keys, they just needed to create a new keyboard layout and map two (three?) new scan codes - something trivial to do. Making the windows key generate a hardware interrupt would have required modifying the BIOS - something a lot harder for MS to do.
It's trivial to wire the windows key in such a way that pressing it has the same effect as pressing ctrl, alt and del simultaneously.
In fact, it's easier than adding a new scancode. Just have the ctrl, alt and del circuits on the keyboard run through the windows key as well.
As a side benefit, you could now be sure that the start menu is always the OSes start menu.
Never mind the fact that once windows takes over, the BIOS doesn't have a thing to say about ctrl+alt+del anymore. (If it did, your computer would reset) Windows could just as easily make a different scancode, or a combination like Alt+SysReq, the secure attention key. In fact, Alt+SysReq is what linux kernels trap for debugging purposes; no user mode program can intercept Alt+SysReq.
So, I have to disagree here. The windows key is just marketing. They could've also added copy and paste buttons, and volume up+down buttons to the windows approved layout, but didn't. Now those keys are all over the place in all sorts of "multimedia" keyboards, along with insane buttons for checking e-mail etc.
If they don't know that the big Novell login screen with the buttons saying 'Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to begin.' is telling them they should press those keys to get started, what chance is there they'll know what to do with one of the somewhat useless messages Gnome generates when an application crashes?
These days, the login screen for windows show a little animation of three buttons being pressed simultaneously. Which prevents people from misinterpreting the message to "press ctrl+alt+del" to mean to press the keys in sequence, to press ctrl, then the plus key, then alt, etc. Having to press three keys simultaneously (or rather, depressing them simultaneously) to make something extremely ordinary happen just isn't intuitive.
It's quite possible for some one to be of (above) average intelligence, diligently following instructions such as "don't download silly cursor changing or weather reporting programs, don't open suspicious attachments" and knowing why; but to still misinterpret the "ctrl+alt+del" instruction.
Microsoft had the chance to make the windows-flag-logo key the Secure Attention Key (which would leave ctrl+alt+del for resetting, yay) but they passed it up.
You're confusing "Windows Messenger" with the "Messenger Service".
MSN Messenger - instant messenger with a lot of doodads, a new version to be downloaded every day. AKA "msn".
Windows Messenger - instant messenger that can log on to the MSN Messenger network, but also to Exchange/SIP servers, doesn't have many doodads. AKA "that crappy ancient version of msn that won't go away even if you install the newest version".
Messenger Service - runs in the background on NT and higher, displays irritating "press OK" dialogs with spam from viagra sellers or system administrators. AKA "winpopup".
I wasn't speaking about surveys in general, hence the final paragraph, in which I stated, in so many words, that I wasn't speaking about surveys in general. Also not the first phrase where I mentioned the Dutch National Bureau of Statistics researching their polling, not everyone's web poll.
Just one of the factor influencing the error rate in online polls is how carelessly people seem to read online.
Not only is this article just 2 links to some other slashdot articles, but the "comparison" of mysql and postgres article from 6 years ago.. Doesn't compare them! It's an article, like this one, asking for some comments.. So not only does this article add no news for nerds, it even misrepresents links to this very site, which the editors, again, are too lazy to even follow? Come on, people!
This sort of whoring-for-comments article should be a poll.
The data is a lot less useful than I think you may be giving it credit for. I go over this occasionally with social scientist PhDs who have at most one or two semesters of formal statistics training. They also think that it is fair to generalize from mailed questionaires. If you do not know the degree of the bias, you really have no idea of the skew of your results.
The Dutch National Bureau of Statistics actually researches the skew in their polling once in a while; they hunt down people who did NOT respond to questionnaires, going to them in person with a bunch of flowers, explaining why they need to research skew. On average, it takes 2 calls and 1 visit to get to the pesky non-respondents. Amazingly, the research indicates that the usual means of selecting respondents (they usually don't go for purely randomized samples, but stratified samples; i.e. a fair selection of people distributed over different variable - such as age group, income, etc. - in the same pattern as the general populace) actually holds up well. People who don't respond usually only do so because they don't feel like it at the time.
(Of course, that won't be true for many other surveys and the type of (self)selection they employ.)
this is capitalism. this isn't lovey dovey bunnies and spices and shit. part of a corporation IS the legal tactics, the bribes, and illegality---that has a direct impact on this vague "healthy competition" that you mention.
Your view of things is naive to say the least, and ill-informed at best.
So, just because it's immoral and illegal, that's not to say that it's wrong?
Your momma ought to have spanked you.
But in a essence, markets are about anarchy, markets are about killing competitors, in a way that's allowed by authorities, and it's all good and dandy.
But how do you go about determining what should be allowed by authorities, if you have zero framework for reference other than "greed is good"? (and dandy).
You see, there are reasons, which I won't repeat here, why really big companies with monopoly powers can't "abuse" those powers. Under "greed is good"/AynRand-esque theories a company can never abuse its position in any way, because if it works out good for the company, it's good, if it works out bad for the company, it's good for other people (no matter who gets killed in the process) - there is no referential framework of things like "the greater good".
To cross from factual reporting of court procedings into libel isn't too hard; if you keep up bringing 1 guys testimony a hundred times, while twenty others testified the other way, that's selectively quoting your way into a libelsuit.
Nope, Kodak did the first consumer camera with wifi (send karma here).
Some nokia phones can work as a webcam and connect over bluetooth, which is wifi-esque -- not too mention wifi-enabled IP web/securitycameras, like the ones from axis. Doesn't really fit the bill, but a wifi/ip-enabled security camera actually makes more sense than a wified digital camera. To me, at least.
Yahoo relies for its news content on third party suppliers, like for instance in this case, Mercury News.
Also, Yahoo owns 5% of google stock.
If they keep *telling* the various special interest groups what we're using to rape their respective industries, no fucking wonder there are new rounds of lawsuits every time large groups of people jump from one sinking ship to another...
Bastard media, be on our side for once.
You do realise that it's the media industry you're raping, right?
All lies! The play order is too complex to occur naturally; there must be some intelligence that selects the order of the songs!
And, of course, looking into the origins of said intelligence is blasphemy.
Ah but is it not manifest that this intelligence must be attributed to the FSM? May his noodly appendage touch our hearts, RAmen.
Uhhh, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't those instructions for removing some or all of you own site from Google? What good would that do if someone stole their images and posted them on their own site? McFly?
How about you go after them, not google? (They say they lodged a DMCA request with google, but it's unclear if it was framed correctly; i.e. with the DMCA agent, with specific URLs, by certified letter, etc. Also, I doubt they filed 3000 pornographic images with the Library of Congress for copyright, so how do they prove they own the copyright? (though that's not strictly necessary with a DMCA takedown)).
Which brand of laptop do you think people buy? "Centrino"? Or "Dell"? Even "Centrino" is too much under-the-hood. Too most people, if centrino means anything at all, it just means "wireless network".
At the moment, the only mediacenter brand with any clout in the market is the Windows XP MediaCenter Edition brand (in fact, before MCE, did you call it a mediacenter? Or a pc-with-tuner-and-encoder-decoder? Or a PVR/PVR-PC? Microsoft marketing now ensures slashdot headlines with "Media Center" rather than any of those descriptive terms).
So, intel spending bucks on branding in the media center arena is only a counterweight to microsoft branding. In the end people will be faced with the choice between different OEM vendors anyway; Dell, Apple (some day soon now, surely), HP, and somethingelse (e.g. Walmart/Medion/white-label, some linuxy thingamajig, Kiss/Cisco). something like "VIIV" will only mean something to some nerdy types, who will use it as a benchmark ("you should get one with a VIIV chipset or something better inside, like a pinnacle pvrdrr234512").
As the research is not yet published there's nothing more to go on than the press reports
But, by god, we aren't going to let that stop us, are we?!
To be fair, that's entirely the fault of researchers announcing results without having the articles published to back them up. If you spout out baseless assertions, well, they will be fought with baseless counter-assertions, like "you're just a media-attention whoring racist with childhood mother-issues talking crap". That argument is, scientifically, at least as valid as "like, I did some research, and so, like, it's true, mmkay?".
I'd love to have multiple VoIP phone lines once I have two or three teenage crotch goblins, but I can't do that if the upstream speed is only 768kbps (or whatever it is with Comcast).
While it's in everyone's interest to have better upstream capacities, VOIP only takes 64kbps and a bit for the least compressed codec (G.711). You could, in theory, run about 10 lines on 768kbps worth of bandwidth. And the likes of skype (iLBC; 14kbps) and other VOIP apps (G.729(A), G.723, GSM etc) use way less bandwidth than 64kbps.