Re:So very, very true.
on
The Virus Squad
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· Score: 3, Informative
You can click on advanced in the TCP/IP setup during setup, and activate IP filtering, and deny all TCP connections (it blocks inbound only). It doesn't work during booting, so don't be hooked up to the internet during that.
It's inexcusable that things like DCOM even listen to non-localhost connections by default, even moreso as windows NT/2k/XPproper firewalling. The times I've wished for ipchains on these things..
Yes they have said that the GPL is invalid. However with respect to NMap and SAMBA they appear to be in compliance with their obligations.
I doubt that their statements would constitute a breach of the GPL under the law. However, IANAL.
When it comes to testing the GPL, it will have to happen in court. What would happen in court is that SCO would argue that they accepted the GPL in nmap's and SAMBA's case. Then, Fyodor's councel would call shenanigans, or as it's legally known estoppel. What the doctrine of estoppel says, is that you can't claim one thing to benefit from it, and then turn around to claim the exact opposite, which is what SCO would be doing; they claim the GPL is invalid as it applies to the kernel, then suddenly valid for nmap. You can't have your cake and eat it.
Besides, the GPL is not a contract; it's a license. SCO doesn't have to agree with it, they just have to abide by it. If they don't abide by it, fine, then get another license; many authors dual-license their code, as the GPL is a non-exclusive license anyway.
But the case gets even more twisted; you see, SCO is distributing the kernel, but at the same time, claims that it has rights to stuff that's in there, that they will not license under the terms of the GPL. Now, it's fine to claim some one stole your stuff. But the only right SCO has to then go and distribute the kernel is the GPL, which says, if distribute stuff tied into our stuff, you can't put any additional restraints or conditions on whomever you distribute it to.
SCO might claim that it's "no fair" to make people who distribute the kernel, or a derivative work, can't apply more restrictions. But that's certainly not true. But, it it were true, then the entire GPL would be invalid, since the principal reason of the GPL is to do precisely this. Yes, there's a "if any portion is found to be invalid, the balance shall apply", but the balance of the license is exactly the open source bit! So, no license for SCO. Again, can't have your cake and eat it; estoppel 101.
I've actually had good luck with SysInternal's Page Defrag program for getting back that "fresh from the install" feeling. Defrags both the paging files and the registry files.
It only defrags the files the registry is stored in; you want to use ntregopt to defrag the registry itself. The registry is a kind of filesystem-in-a-file; deleted registry keys does not free up information, the space is just marked as available, and so the thing fragments.
Running a registry cleaner like regseeker and then using ntregopt made a 15-20% difference in my case. Not bad.
"The guys who write the tools would not consider themselves to be criminals by any measure," he said, "but the tools are also being picked up by people with criminal intent."
I guess that explains why Windows doesn't include a "diff" function...
Apparently there's a wide range of information available on there somewhere
Also, communication between civil people. I guess you've not been exposed to that part.
Must be awful to get stiffed by the BBC, in the UK we can';t get enough continental TV - all my friends watch it, too
If you don't like British TV, stop stealing it. If you DO like it - why not get yourself some sat gear and get watching. Seems to me that complaining about it on Slashdot is just about the only thing that WON'T help you out.
I'm not stealing it, I can't watch it without stealing it, which is what I'd be doing if I would get satellite gear, which is what you're suggesting. Twisting my words? Simply obtuse? Nope. Troll.
You said it! I'm sure we'll all regret using a standard format for hierarchically arranged tuples of name-value pairs. I only have to use this type of data in maybe 99% of my projects.
Nothing wrong with agreeing. Agreeing on a standard that's cruddy will bite you in the ass. There are many, many standards, and most of them are cruddy.
And "name-value pairs"? How do attributes figure into that? Well.. Cruddily, that's how! Perhaps you're thinking of RDF (which has issues of it's own.. A lot..).
And the output files sure are difficult to understand if you've never seen any markup language before and don't have a file viewer that understands ASCII text.
XML allows for a lot more than ASCII.. Which is the reason a fully compliant XML parser is enormously bloated.
Instead why doesn't everyone just make up their own format that is uniquely tailored for the individual application? You can leave off the attribute names since the recipient of the data should just know what they are anyway. And you can use a binary encoding to really add efficiency to the process. And developers love the challenge of trying to figure out new data formats on top of interpreting the data itself.
Slippery slope? Or straw man? The latter. I never said no standard should be agreed upon. I would have preferred if it had not been something as complex and cruddy as XML. I even specifically gave S-expressions as an example that would be much simpler; you might note how that's not a binary format.
One day, ASN.1 was what XML is now (well, it still holds telecommunications and cryptography in its stranglehold). Do you propose we use ASN.1 because it's so well accepted and standardized and there are so many tools? Or do you recoil in shock at how bloated the featureset is, how convoluted the encoding, how shockingly incomprehensible the parsing process? XML is simpler than ASN.1, and XML is better than ASN.1 (except that ASN.1 has a cute way of compiling parsers from its syntax/schema language, which is a nice feature); but that does not mean XML is the best general purpose meta-syntactic language imaginable. It's not.
This observant Sky subscriber seems rather more aware than you that the Astra Satellites are in SPACE, and that there are a great many people outside the UK who buy themselves a Sky receiver in the UK and then use it abroad.
Digital channels more than make it across the channel numb nuts, the do a whole 72000km journey before being watched even in the UK....and on that bombshell!
Is BBC4 on Astra? I was assuming you were on about terrestrial Sky digital, since you didn't mention the particulars (and expect everyone, everywhere to know the exact offerings of your broadcasters (we don't see 'em, I just done tole you) apparently). So let me check.. Why yes, BBC4 *IS* on satellite! conditional access satellite.. Which means I'll have to fraudulently obtain a chipcard that decodes it by pretending to be a UK resident in order to watch it.. As I've said before, the BBC won't even let cable operators carry the channel, preferring to pimp out programs one-by-one, and stiffing the rest of Europe with their crappy BBC1&2 programming.. Unless you get yourself some illegal access, of course. Well duh.
True, XML is overkill for many many uses, but the matter of fact upside is ubiquity. I disagree in that a DTD gives you anything other than validation. Even if you have a DTD you can only validate the STRUCTURE of the XML...you still can't glean any MEANING from it. Which is why a lot of platforms simply choose to parse XML loosely with regular expressions and just treat it as a simple hierarchical format.
I did make the distinction between syntax ("STRUCTURE") and semantics ("MEANING") in my post, thank you very much:-P
There are certain discrepencies [prescod.net] between XML and S-expressions.
Particularly entertaining it say there that S-expressions don't have a notion of attributes. Which is a very astute observation, since attributes suck the big one.
It is true that any of these other formats "would do", and believe me, I am by no means an advocate of inappropriate, and over- use of XML, but the reality is that the proposed format is so tiny to begin with, and XML is so universally accepted, that it is practically moot whether this or that format would be "better". There are already a wealth of tools to index, mine, translate, etc. etc. XML.
I'm not claiming otherwise, just that XML is horribly overcomplicated and that it really ought not to be used as widely as it is. It would make no sense to say "it really ought not to be used as widely as it is", if it wasn't used widely.
XML is one of those historical errors that will bite us all in the ass from time to time for all time to come..
Sort of. You don't REALLY need a DTD - you only need one if you are validating the XML. XML can still be used as a generic ad-hoc hierarchical data format... of course you'd only want to do so because by now XML parsers are pretty ubiquitous and it makes it as good a choice as P-lists, or any other ad-hoc format.
Assuming you don't have a DTD, you don't have a specification of what's in the files syntactically, let alone semantically. Maybe you can reverse engineer most of this (the tag "name" is likely to contain a name, etc.) but there will always be freakish exceptions and ambiguities that even DTDs and XML-Schemas don't address.
And the overhead of using XML is enormous.. All those possible encodings, character sets, namespaces, etc. S-expressions are really much, much nicer is you just want to parse without a formal syntax specification. And they've been around "forever".
Most irksome though, are so-called "XML databases".. Argh! I suppose the people who think that's a good idea also love "CSV databases" or "XLS databases"..
Why not get a Sky Digital reciever, then?...and on that bombshell!
Observant readers will have noticed that I'm not located in the UK and digital channels don't make it across the channel, so my Belgian or Flushing-based friends aren't able to pick it up either.
If I want to watch BBC 4 programming (and as I've mentioned, anything good is instantly banished to the digital channels, there wasn't even anything good on 1&2 at Christmas ferchrissakes) it would have to be purchased from BBC Worldwide (the commercial/sublicensing dudes) by a Dutch channel - the BBC won't even allow cable operators to make any deals for digital channels (except BBC World, if that's even on freeview in the UK, I suspect you only get news24 terrestrially?)
(No, I don't pay your license fees, but I pay my cable operator, and they pay the BBC directly).
That's odd, because most of the stuff I see coming out of the BBC is interesting and different programming. Especially, as another poster said, BBC4.
But you wouldn't know that, since you don't have a TV.
I have a TV. I watch the BBC. But only 1 and 2, because that's all they deem fit for international distribution. BBC 4 is one of them digital thingamajiggies that you can't receive unless you get a digital tuner, or you have cable, and digital doesn't travel very far over the channel.
So yes, all the interesting stuff has moved to BBC 4, and 1&2 are horrid, drab, commercial channels with the same old shit on them as any other channel, and that's what they choose to export as well. Yay, BBC!
Google should at least have the ability to search for for words within a certain margin, such as "limit scope of search to within 100 words of other search terms" or such, to limit such abuse and increase results.
Altavista was renowned in its day for it's NEAR operator which did this.
Before an IPO, the management of a private company has a responsibility to maximize the value of the stock.
After an IPO, the management of a public company has a responsibility to maximize the value of the stock.
And you can only be sued by your stockholders if you don't.
If you're in charge of a private company, it's easy to get your stockholders to agree on a course that doesn't maximize the value of the stock. Just call 'em up and say "Hey Bob, we thought it would be nice to do X, even though that won't maximize our stock's value".
If you're a public company, you're publicly traded, and every Schmoe you don't even know with a few certificates of your stock can sue your ass for not grasping at every opportunity for making a buck (such as outsourcing to sweatshops, if you're Nike).
Also, private investors tend to be in it for the long term; they know that you need money to make money, which is why they sunk a butt-load of investments into your enterprise in the first place - that's gambling money, pure and simple. People who trade on the open market usually have much shorter term views, even for IPOs.
Ever heard of Gorilla Arm? Do you want the police to tumble down in swathes, grabbing their arms and yelping from touchscreen induced pain?
The best interface would be simply a QWERTY keyboard. Police have been using keyboards since.. well, since ages. They do paperwork, you see? No windows and widgets, just simple menus (like a wizzard!) with every option labelled with a letter or number.. So that a few keystrokes give them access to a screen where you input a license plate and you get a list of owner and outstanding tickets.. No pictures, just text - it's easily the most effective interface..
I have a serious beef with touchscreen graphical systems that are so full of whizz-bangy "user friendly" animation and menus that the GUI is what's slowing the thing down..
Case in point; old machines to buy traintickets had a list of codes (identical to zipcodes!) of all destinations on them, enter the 4-digit zipcode, select method of payment, and you get your ticket.
On new machines I have to first select the first letter of the city I want to go to, and then pick it out of a list of cities (and press cancel if I tapped the wrong letter because it uses the real estate of the entire screen).. This is "easier" only if you go to a different destination every time you use it because it's way easier to blindly(!) tap in a zipcode..
Last time I checked, my bank still had a text-only DOS-like interface on their computers.. Why? Because simply tapping in "ANNC" to enter a new customer account is way faster than navigating through wizzards and menus and "most recently used" lists..
Try for yourself; try finding that app you installed last week in your overcrowded start menu.. Now just tap in windowsflaggykey+r, c:\pro(autocomplete)\nameofprogr(autocomplete)\nam eoffile(autocomplete).exe
1. NASA legal counsel requires that all NASA releases of software include indemnification of the U.S. Government from any third party liability arising from use or distribution of the software.
NASA legal counsel is wrong, all software released by NASA is public domain anyway (pursuant to US code title 17 sec 105), and the GPL includes no-warranty/indemnification anyway.
2. Federal Statute mandates that the U.S. Government can only be held subject to United States federal law. Last time I checked the copyright law the GPL uses is federal law.
3. NASA policy requires an effort to accurately track usage of released software for documentation and benefits realized?purposes. But any thing they release is public domain (pursuant to US code title 17 sec 105) so the policy is wrong.
4. Federal Statutes and NASA regulations requires a prohibition in NASA contracts against representations by others that may be deemed to be an endorsement by NASA. Since the works are public domain (pursuant to US code title 17 sec 105) by definition, there is no contract needed. Besides, a license is not a contract. Even if it were, no "NASA regulations" are required because it's spelled out in Federal Statutes. So even if it were a contract, any failure to prohibit representations etc. would be void anyway.
5. Because it is important that each of the aforementioned clauses be a part of each open source agreement relating to NASA released software, the proposed agreement must mandate that distribution and redistribution of the software be done under the aegis of NOSA (mandatory domination similar to GPL). This is a stupid clause; it purports to be both a "all of the above applies" clause and a conclusion, which is actually not supported by the facts. A software license is not an agreement, nor a contract, beside of which, NASA cannot claim ANY copyrights whatsoever (pursuant to US code title 17 sec 105).
In fact, if NASA try to make you click an "agree" button, or sign anything, just hit them with a Freedom Of Information Act requests for their proprietary secret stuff, and you don't have to enter into any agreement or license; because it's all public domain. In fact, you can slap them with FOIA at any time you wish to get out of any contract or agreement you signed and get the stuff you already have under an existing contract (except secret stuff) for Free (beer and speech) because it's all public domain.
Now we are going to hear a whole bunch of silly comments like "Just release it to public domain" and "why not gpl". If you would have RTFAs you'd know that nasa has some internal requirements for anything it releases such as NASA legal counsel requires that all NASA releases of software include indemnification of the U.S. Government from any third party liability arising from use or distribution of the software. See 4.B.
This is just an example, and the reason why they can't release as PD.
And their legal counsel is plainly wrong. Just because they're legal eagles doesn't mean they're omnipotent and above any and all criticism, even if it's just from the lowly slashdot crowd. NASA is a government agency, so they should release their stuff as PD anyway. Now THAT'S the law..
Besides, open source licenses such as the GPL also include no-warranty/indemnification clauses.
Next time, try not to use the "because the smart people say so" argument, because it insults our intelligence (and your own).
(Since this is not coming straight from Apple, confirmation -- or debunking -- would be helpful.)
How about you call them? They're required, as any public company is, to release information that may affect their stocks' value in a timely manner, especially if it has leaked - to avoid insider trading. That's a very firm legal obligation.
Have any of you ever tried calling their PR/Investor line and saying "Hi, I'm an editor for slashdot.org, we get x amount of hits, and I'm about to publish y bit of information"?
As others mentions, memtest86 and knoppix are invaluable tools.
Other tools you might be interested in; Aida32 basically lists all of your devices, drivers, wmi software entries, pci devices, etc. for windows - needs an install, though.
OnTrack sell Easy Recovery Professional; the "file repair" options are pretty crappy, but for serious, near-forensic recovery on fscked up filesystems, ERP is a fine tool. Some of OnTrack's software (i.e. SMART tests, usually) may be licensed by the manufacturer of your harddrive, so check those pages out.
SiSoft Sandra is recommended a lot, but I don't find it offers a lot of diagnostics, though it is prone to crashing.
On windows, you might want to check out the Event Viewer, hidden in the Computer Management section of the (classic) Control Panel -- it will list all sorts of errors and notifications, kind of like/var/log/messages;-)
Using the host processor "to make on the fly corrections to the image" would be madness as you would have to transfer the whole frame buffer off the GFX card to host mem and then back again. An incredible waste of bandwidth when you can do pretty much most things with pixel shaders anyway, without the round trip.
Even more ridiculous if you consider this; what would you check against? The host processor would then have to also render an image to compare the output of th gpu with, but rendering those images is exactly what the gpu is for in the first place!
Even there they had to cheat a bit, by doing the beam-forming for the phased array multiple access antenna on the ground instead of on the TDRS spacecraft.
I'll admit my ignorance, to me this sounds a bit like "they had to split the dylithium crystal array into a 4 dimensional plexus to feed the antimatter containment tubes"..
Perhaps you could elaborate a bit foor poor souls like me?
A linux loving friend of mine who's not short on smarts (but perhaps a little behind on cluefulness when it comes to anyone but pure geeks) would say "It takes three seconds to mount the camera as a drive. duh". For Joe Average, finding out HOW to do that in 3 seconds can be 2 days of frustrated chasing information on how the OS works on a device level around the net.
On the one hand, yes, this is a problem (for distributions that don't automount it right away) - this should be default on any distribution, and for non-USB-mass-storage cameras, gphoto should be included in an obvious way, if only a link to the installer in some sort of control panel's "digital camera options" section.
On the other hand; linux is now better at detecting hardware, and having the pertinent drivers installed out-of-the-box than windows is, except for the most proprietary of hardware. For example, my FujiFilm S304 required extra "USB Mass Storage" drivers to be installed, even though USB Mass Storage is pretty much a standard. My non-standard archos jukebox requires drivers to be installed on every windows box I want to hook it up to. Again, linux recognized its fairly oddball chipset out of the box, and I the only thing I had to do is mount it (the machine I tried it on doesn't have no steeking gui installed, so no biggy;-))
And the number of times I wished windows had a/proc/pci list just this week (yes, there are multiple pci listing tools on the web, but they usually do not work, and in interesting ways..)
Interestingly, the subject line is still correct. The TV license flies in the face of the European Treaty on Human and Political Rights; it contains an article on the right to receive signals; this was put in specifically because the Nazis required you to have a license to operate a radio receiver, so they could be sure only Nazis had radios, and not the sort of people who would listen to foreign broadcasts (broadcasts, incidentally, by the British).
This is one of the reasons why The Netherlands switched from a license fee to just paying the public channels out of taxes, apart from the obvious cost of enforcing licenses.
Slashdot Mirror
You can click on advanced in the TCP/IP setup during setup, and activate IP filtering, and deny all TCP connections (it blocks inbound only). It doesn't work during booting, so don't be hooked up to the internet during that.
It's inexcusable that things like DCOM even listen to non-localhost connections by default, even moreso as windows NT/2k/XPproper firewalling. The times I've wished for ipchains on these things..
Is there an advantage to those flags over
wget -m -np http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/
?
Yes they have said that the GPL is invalid.
However with respect to NMap and SAMBA they appear to be in compliance with their obligations.
I doubt that their statements would constitute a breach of the GPL under the law. However, IANAL.
When it comes to testing the GPL, it will have to happen in court. What would happen in court is that SCO would argue that they accepted the GPL in nmap's and SAMBA's case. Then, Fyodor's councel would call shenanigans, or as it's legally known estoppel. What the doctrine of estoppel says, is that you can't claim one thing to benefit from it, and then turn around to claim the exact opposite, which is what SCO would be doing; they claim the GPL is invalid as it applies to the kernel, then suddenly valid for nmap. You can't have your cake and eat it.
Besides, the GPL is not a contract; it's a license. SCO doesn't have to agree with it, they just have to abide by it. If they don't abide by it, fine, then get another license; many authors dual-license their code, as the GPL is a non-exclusive license anyway.
But the case gets even more twisted; you see, SCO is distributing the kernel, but at the same time, claims that it has rights to stuff that's in there, that they will not license under the terms of the GPL. Now, it's fine to claim some one stole your stuff. But the only right SCO has to then go and distribute the kernel is the GPL, which says, if distribute stuff tied into our stuff, you can't put any additional restraints or conditions on whomever you distribute it to.
SCO might claim that it's "no fair" to make people who distribute the kernel, or a derivative work, can't apply more restrictions. But that's certainly not true. But, it it were true, then the entire GPL would be invalid, since the principal reason of the GPL is to do precisely this. Yes, there's a "if any portion is found to be invalid, the balance shall apply", but the balance of the license is exactly the open source bit! So, no license for SCO. Again, can't have your cake and eat it; estoppel 101.
I've actually had good luck with SysInternal's Page Defrag program for getting back that "fresh from the install" feeling. Defrags both the paging files and the registry files.
It only defrags the files the registry is stored in; you want to use ntregopt to defrag the registry itself. The registry is a kind of filesystem-in-a-file; deleted registry keys does not free up information, the space is just marked as available, and so the thing fragments.
Running a registry cleaner like regseeker and then using ntregopt made a 15-20% difference in my case. Not bad.
"The guys who write the tools would not consider themselves to be criminals by any measure," he said, "but the tools are also being picked up by people with criminal intent."
I guess that explains why Windows doesn't include a "diff" function...
Sysdiff.exe: Automated Installation Tool...
They have this thing called the "internet" now
Apparently there's a wide range of information available on there somewhere
Also, communication between civil people. I guess you've not been exposed to that part.
Must be awful to get stiffed by the BBC, in the UK we can';t get enough continental TV - all my friends watch it, too
If you don't like British TV, stop stealing it. If you DO like it - why not get yourself some sat gear and get watching. Seems to me that complaining about it on Slashdot is just about the only thing that WON'T help you out.
I'm not stealing it, I can't watch it without stealing it, which is what I'd be doing if I would get satellite gear, which is what you're suggesting.
Twisting my words? Simply obtuse? Nope. Troll.
You said it! I'm sure we'll all regret using a standard format for hierarchically arranged tuples of name-value pairs. I only have to use this type of data in maybe 99% of my projects.
Nothing wrong with agreeing. Agreeing on a standard that's cruddy will bite you in the ass. There are many, many standards, and most of them are cruddy.
And "name-value pairs"? How do attributes figure into that? Well.. Cruddily, that's how!
Perhaps you're thinking of RDF (which has issues of it's own.. A lot..).
And the output files sure are difficult to understand if you've never seen any markup language before and don't have a file viewer that understands ASCII text.
XML allows for a lot more than ASCII.. Which is the reason a fully compliant XML parser is enormously bloated.
Instead why doesn't everyone just make up their own format that is uniquely tailored for the individual application? You can leave off the attribute names since the recipient of the data should just know what they are anyway. And you can use a binary encoding to really add efficiency to the process. And developers love the challenge of trying to figure out new data formats on top of interpreting the data itself.
Slippery slope? Or straw man? The latter. I never said no standard should be agreed upon. I would have preferred if it had not been something as complex and cruddy as XML. I even specifically gave S-expressions as an example that would be much simpler; you might note how that's not a binary format.
One day, ASN.1 was what XML is now (well, it still holds telecommunications and cryptography in its stranglehold). Do you propose we use ASN.1 because it's so well accepted and standardized and there are so many tools? Or do you recoil in shock at how bloated the featureset is, how convoluted the encoding, how shockingly incomprehensible the parsing process? XML is simpler than ASN.1, and XML is better than ASN.1 (except that ASN.1 has a cute way of compiling parsers from its syntax/schema language, which is a nice feature); but that does not mean XML is the best general purpose meta-syntactic language imaginable. It's not.
This observant Sky subscriber seems rather more aware than you that the Astra Satellites are in SPACE, and that there are a great many people outside the UK who buy themselves a Sky receiver in the UK and then use it abroad.
Digital channels more than make it across the channel numb nuts, the do a whole 72000km journey before being watched even in the UK.
Is BBC4 on Astra? I was assuming you were on about terrestrial Sky digital, since you didn't mention the particulars (and expect everyone, everywhere to know the exact offerings of your broadcasters (we don't see 'em, I just done tole you) apparently). So let me check..
Why yes, BBC4 *IS* on satellite! conditional access satellite.. Which means I'll have to fraudulently obtain a chipcard that decodes it by pretending to be a UK resident in order to watch it..
As I've said before, the BBC won't even let cable operators carry the channel, preferring to pimp out programs one-by-one, and stiffing the rest of Europe with their crappy BBC1&2 programming..
Unless you get yourself some illegal access, of course. Well duh.
True, XML is overkill for many many uses, but the matter of fact upside is ubiquity. I disagree in that a DTD gives you anything other than validation. Even if you have a DTD you can only validate the STRUCTURE of the XML...you still can't glean any MEANING from it. Which is why a lot of platforms simply choose to parse XML loosely with regular expressions and just treat it as a simple hierarchical format.
:-P
I did make the distinction between syntax ("STRUCTURE") and semantics ("MEANING") in my post, thank you very much
There are certain discrepencies [prescod.net] between XML and S-expressions.
Particularly entertaining it say there that S-expressions don't have a notion of attributes. Which is a very astute observation, since attributes suck the big one.
It is true that any of these other formats "would do", and believe me, I am by no means an advocate of inappropriate, and over- use of XML, but the reality is that the proposed format is so tiny to begin with, and XML is so universally accepted, that it is practically moot whether this or that format would be "better". There are already a wealth of tools to index, mine, translate, etc. etc. XML.
I'm not claiming otherwise, just that XML is horribly overcomplicated and that it really ought not to be used as widely as it is. It would make no sense to say "it really ought not to be used as widely as it is", if it wasn't used widely.
XML is one of those historical errors that will bite us all in the ass from time to time for all time to come..
Sort of. You don't REALLY need a DTD - you only need one if you are validating the XML. XML can still be used as a generic ad-hoc hierarchical data format... of course you'd only want to do so because by now XML parsers are pretty ubiquitous and it makes it as good a choice as P-lists, or any other ad-hoc format.
Assuming you don't have a DTD, you don't have a specification of what's in the files syntactically, let alone semantically. Maybe you can reverse engineer most of this (the tag "name" is likely to contain a name, etc.) but there will always be freakish exceptions and ambiguities that even DTDs and XML-Schemas don't address.
And the overhead of using XML is enormous.. All those possible encodings, character sets, namespaces, etc. S-expressions are really much, much nicer is you just want to parse without a formal syntax specification. And they've been around "forever".
Most irksome though, are so-called "XML databases".. Argh! I suppose the people who think that's a good idea also love "CSV databases" or "XLS databases"..
Why not get a Sky Digital reciever, then? ...and on that bombshell!
Observant readers will have noticed that I'm not located in the UK and digital channels don't make it across the channel, so my Belgian or Flushing-based friends aren't able to pick it up either.
If I want to watch BBC 4 programming (and as I've mentioned, anything good is instantly banished to the digital channels, there wasn't even anything good on 1&2 at Christmas ferchrissakes) it would have to be purchased from BBC Worldwide (the commercial/sublicensing dudes) by a Dutch channel - the BBC won't even allow cable operators to make any deals for digital channels (except BBC World, if that's even on freeview in the UK, I suspect you only get news24 terrestrially?)
(No, I don't pay your license fees, but I pay my cable operator, and they pay the BBC directly).
That's odd, because most of the stuff I see coming out of the BBC is interesting and different programming. Especially, as another poster said, BBC4.
But you wouldn't know that, since you don't have a TV.
I have a TV. I watch the BBC. But only 1 and 2, because that's all they deem fit for international distribution. BBC 4 is one of them digital thingamajiggies that you can't receive unless you get a digital tuner, or you have cable, and digital doesn't travel very far over the channel.
So yes, all the interesting stuff has moved to BBC 4, and 1&2 are horrid, drab, commercial channels with the same old shit on them as any other channel, and that's what they choose to export as well. Yay, BBC!
Google should at least have the ability to search for for words within a certain margin, such as "limit scope of search to within 100 words of other search terms" or such, to limit such abuse and increase results.
Altavista was renowned in its day for it's NEAR operator which did this.
Before an IPO, the management of a private company has a responsibility to maximize the value of the stock.
After an IPO, the management of a public company has a responsibility to maximize the value of the stock.
And you can only be sued by your stockholders if you don't.
If you're in charge of a private company, it's easy to get your stockholders to agree on a course that doesn't maximize the value of the stock. Just call 'em up and say "Hey Bob, we thought it would be nice to do X, even though that won't maximize our stock's value".
If you're a public company, you're publicly traded, and every Schmoe you don't even know with a few certificates of your stock can sue your ass for not grasping at every opportunity for making a buck (such as outsourcing to sweatshops, if you're Nike).
Also, private investors tend to be in it for the long term; they know that you need money to make money, which is why they sunk a butt-load of investments into your enterprise in the first place - that's gambling money, pure and simple. People who trade on the open market usually have much shorter term views, even for IPOs.
Searched the web for tipicle. Results 1 - 10 of about 406. Search took 0.17 seconds
Did you mean: typical
Ever heard of Gorilla Arm? Do you want the police to tumble down in swathes, grabbing their arms and yelping from touchscreen induced pain?
m eoffile(autocomplete).exe
The best interface would be simply a QWERTY keyboard. Police have been using keyboards since.. well, since ages. They do paperwork, you see? No windows and widgets, just simple menus (like a wizzard!) with every option labelled with a letter or number.. So that a few keystrokes give them access to a screen where you input a license plate and you get a list of owner and outstanding tickets.. No pictures, just text - it's easily the most effective interface..
I have a serious beef with touchscreen graphical systems that are so full of whizz-bangy "user friendly" animation and menus that the GUI is what's slowing the thing down..
Case in point; old machines to buy traintickets had a list of codes (identical to zipcodes!) of all destinations on them, enter the 4-digit zipcode, select method of payment, and you get your ticket.
On new machines I have to first select the first letter of the city I want to go to, and then pick it out of a list of cities (and press cancel if I tapped the wrong letter because it uses the real estate of the entire screen).. This is "easier" only if you go to a different destination every time you use it because it's way easier to blindly(!) tap in a zipcode..
Last time I checked, my bank still had a text-only DOS-like interface on their computers.. Why? Because simply tapping in "ANNC" to enter a new customer account is way faster than navigating through wizzards and menus and "most recently used" lists..
Try for yourself; try finding that app you installed last week in your overcrowded start menu.. Now just tap in windowsflaggykey+r, c:\pro(autocomplete)\nameofprogr(autocomplete)\na
Which is faster?
1. NASA legal counsel requires that all NASA releases of software include indemnification of the U.S. Government from any third party liability arising from use or distribution of the software.
NASA legal counsel is wrong, all software released by NASA is public domain anyway (pursuant to US code title 17 sec 105), and the GPL includes no-warranty/indemnification anyway.
2. Federal Statute mandates that the U.S. Government can only be held subject to United States federal law.
Last time I checked the copyright law the GPL uses is federal law.
3. NASA policy requires an effort to accurately track usage of released software for documentation and benefits realized?purposes.
But any thing they release is public domain (pursuant to US code title 17 sec 105) so the policy is wrong.
4. Federal Statutes and NASA regulations requires a prohibition in NASA contracts against representations by others that may be deemed to be an endorsement by NASA.
Since the works are public domain (pursuant to US code title 17 sec 105) by definition, there is no contract needed. Besides, a license is not a contract. Even if it were, no "NASA regulations" are required because it's spelled out in Federal Statutes. So even if it were a contract, any failure to prohibit representations etc. would be void anyway.
5. Because it is important that each of the aforementioned clauses be a part of each open source agreement relating to NASA released software, the proposed agreement must mandate that distribution and redistribution of the software be done under the aegis of NOSA (mandatory domination similar to GPL).
This is a stupid clause; it purports to be both a "all of the above applies" clause and a conclusion, which is actually not supported by the facts.
A software license is not an agreement, nor a contract, beside of which, NASA cannot claim ANY copyrights whatsoever (pursuant to US code title 17 sec 105).
In fact, if NASA try to make you click an "agree" button, or sign anything, just hit them with a Freedom Of Information Act requests for their proprietary secret stuff, and you don't have to enter into any agreement or license; because it's all public domain. In fact, you can slap them with FOIA at any time you wish to get out of any contract or agreement you signed and get the stuff you already have under an existing contract (except secret stuff) for Free (beer and speech) because it's all public domain.
Now we are going to hear a whole bunch of silly comments like "Just release it to public domain" and "why not gpl". If you would have RTFAs you'd know that nasa has some internal requirements for anything it releases such as
NASA legal counsel requires that all NASA releases of software include indemnification of the U.S. Government from any third party liability arising from use or distribution of the software. See 4.B.
This is just an example, and the reason why they can't release as PD.
And their legal counsel is plainly wrong. Just because they're legal eagles doesn't mean they're omnipotent and above any and all criticism, even if it's just from the lowly slashdot crowd. NASA is a government agency, so they should release their stuff as PD anyway. Now THAT'S the law..
Besides, open source licenses such as the GPL also include no-warranty/indemnification clauses.
Next time, try not to use the "because the smart people say so" argument, because it insults our intelligence (and your own).
(Since this is not coming straight from Apple, confirmation -- or debunking -- would be helpful.)
How about you call them? They're required, as any public company is, to release information that may affect their stocks' value in a timely manner, especially if it has leaked - to avoid insider trading. That's a very firm legal obligation.
Have any of you ever tried calling their PR/Investor line and saying "Hi, I'm an editor for slashdot.org, we get x amount of hits, and I'm about to publish y bit of information"?
As others mentions, memtest86 and knoppix are invaluable tools.
/var/log/messages ;-)
Other tools you might be interested in;
Aida32 basically lists all of your devices, drivers, wmi software entries, pci devices, etc. for windows - needs an install, though.
OnTrack sell Easy Recovery Professional; the "file repair" options are pretty crappy, but for serious, near-forensic recovery on fscked up filesystems, ERP is a fine tool. Some of OnTrack's software (i.e. SMART tests, usually) may be licensed by the manufacturer of your harddrive, so check those pages out.
SiSoft Sandra is recommended a lot, but I don't find it offers a lot of diagnostics, though it is prone to crashing.
On windows, you might want to check out the Event Viewer, hidden in the Computer Management section of the (classic) Control Panel -- it will list all sorts of errors and notifications, kind of like
Using the host processor "to make on the fly corrections to the image" would be madness as you would have to transfer the whole frame buffer off the GFX card to host mem and then back again. An incredible waste of bandwidth when you can do pretty much most things with pixel shaders anyway, without the round trip.
Even more ridiculous if you consider this; what would you check against? The host processor would then have to also render an image to compare the output of th gpu with, but rendering those images is exactly what the gpu is for in the first place!
Even there they had to cheat a bit, by doing the beam-forming for the phased array multiple access antenna on the ground instead of on the TDRS spacecraft.
I'll admit my ignorance, to me this sounds a bit like "they had to split the dylithium crystal array into a 4 dimensional plexus to feed the antimatter containment tubes"..
Perhaps you could elaborate a bit foor poor souls like me?
A linux loving friend of mine who's not short on smarts (but perhaps a little behind on cluefulness when it comes to anyone but pure geeks) would say "It takes three seconds to mount the camera as a drive. duh". For Joe Average, finding out HOW to do that in 3 seconds can be 2 days of frustrated chasing information on how the OS works on a device level around the net.
On the one hand, yes, this is a problem (for distributions that don't automount it right away) - this should be default on any distribution, and for non-USB-mass-storage cameras, gphoto should be included in an obvious way, if only a link to the installer in some sort of control panel's "digital camera options" section.
On the other hand; linux is now better at detecting hardware, and having the pertinent drivers installed out-of-the-box than windows is, except for the most proprietary of hardware. For example, my FujiFilm S304 required extra "USB Mass Storage" drivers to be installed, even though USB Mass Storage is pretty much a standard. My non-standard archos jukebox requires drivers to be installed on every windows box I want to hook it up to. Again, linux recognized its fairly oddball chipset out of the box, and I the only thing I had to do is mount it (the machine I tried it on doesn't have no steeking gui installed, so no biggy
And the number of times I wished windows had a
Interestingly, the subject line is still correct. The TV license flies in the face of the European Treaty on Human and Political Rights; it contains an article on the right to receive signals; this was put in specifically because the Nazis required you to have a license to operate a radio receiver, so they could be sure only Nazis had radios, and not the sort of people who would listen to foreign broadcasts (broadcasts, incidentally, by the British).
This is one of the reasons why The Netherlands switched from a license fee to just paying the public channels out of taxes, apart from the obvious cost of enforcing licenses.
"So far, uncappers are apparently the primary consumers, and they're downloading up to 400 copies a day."
If they just downloaded it once, maybe they wouldn't exceed their cap?