The CRTC(our FCC) that seems to have supported this anti consumer situation is no longer friends with the government and thus the big players have lost their biggest weapon to stop annoying things like pro-consumer companies.
When I read this you rang a bell, and sure enough I had read a Globe and Mail article a couple of weeks about about how Harper's government is trying to neuter the CRTC. Here is the link.
After reading Slashdot for a decade I've finally got Linux on my home desktop and I'm very happy with it, I have it playing my movies and songs, interfacing with my iPhone, and playing World of Warcraft under Wine and connecting to Ventrilo with Mangler. I just installed a native version of Google Chrome a couple of days ago! None of this requiring text editing, and I got a default desktop that looks very pretty with the nVidia proprietary drivers. I'm running legal when there was no way I was going to pay for a Windows retail package.
So.. 2010 is my year of the Linux desktop, and someone is saying "hey here's how to hose your system so that it looks like Microsoft fucked a penguin". I'll pass on that one..
On the other hand, if anyone wants to point me to how to move the minimize/maximize/close buttons to the top right hand side of windows I'd appreciate it
The point being sandboxed applications which deal with unknown, insecure content (i.e. the web) can keep said content from affecting anything outside the sandbox.
Until someone comes up with a specially crafted PDF...;)
From the article, regarding re-implementation of assembly functions:
Most of the assembly functions were little things, like rectangle copy or bit mask matching, and did not take too much effort to write. First the menus, then the in-game graphics started to come into view. This part was pure joy - not so different from eating pistachio nuts: each bite takes a little effort, but has a huge payoff. I always wanted just one more, making it very difficult to call it a day.
I came into the office this morning and noticed that a forums thread I monitor on jailbreaking had exploded over my long weekend. I checked the iPhone dev team blog and they explained that there is a new jailbreak that you can visit with the browser on your phone.
I navigated to the page on my phone and it said "swipe here to jailbreak".
I swiped.
It took about 5 minutes to jailbreak my phone and install the Cydia unofficial app store.
Simply amazing work. Once I had Cydia I installed ultrasn0w from the repository and now my phone is carrier unlocked.
I haven't RTFA but this is Slashdot so I'm gonna respond to this line from the summary:
"Why is there so much strife in an industry ostensibly focused on having fun?"
People in general want to work in an industry that is "fun". That means the industry gets to skim the cream from every new year of graduates.
You guys have heard of Hollywood, right? Hollywood Accounting? Cocaine? It's a savage, SAVAGE industry and they chew up staff like candy because everyone wants to work in Hollywood. Game development is the same thing on a smaller scale, people literally think "I like games, therefore I will like working on games" when it is so far, far, brutally far from the truth.
Get a job in manufacturing and enjoy living your life outside of work.
Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?
on
The Scalability of Linus
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Supposing he does get hit by a bus, there will be months of infighting as big egos clash trying to decide who gets control of the kernel.
Respectfully, this isn't what I see happening. Linus seems to be a nose-to-the-grindstone pragmatist and the only person who hopes to succeed him will not arrive through politics. The currently official kernel organization might collapse in bickering if Linus gets hit by a bus, but the true workers will quickly find someone like Linus to quietly organize their efforts and it will be quickly apparent where the actual development is happening.
In fact, the official kernel already has leaders like Greg Kroah-Hartman that perform jobs similar to Linus' current role and could pick up almost seamlessly if Linus vanishes. This is such a non-story
You will want to use vanilla FAT32 but then beef up the data with par2 and/or sfv files for error recovery and checksumming respectively.
FAT32 isn't reliable as anything but a lowest common denominator between platforms, anything else will give you headaches especially if you need to share the drives outside your local ecosystem.
QuickPAR and QuickSFV are the Windows utilities I've used, there are probably versions available on all platforms.
Probably my one complaint is how carriers have all seemed to conspire to collectively try to hobble Android. Couldn't Google have done an iPhone and pretty much say "This is the way we're doing it, and if you don't like it, tough!" like Apple?
Unfortunately not. Google developed Android but then they gave it as a gift to the Open Handset Alliance. The members of the Open Handset Alliance include manufacturers like Motorola, Samsung, HTC.
The plan was that we'd have a pile of handsets with a compatible operating system for software developers to target, and making cell phones in general a lot less crappy. Unfortunately, the old broken cell phone system of locking down phones and abandoning firmware updates has stuck around like a bad smell.
I was able to update my iPhone 3GS to iOS4 last week because Apple produces a must-have device and tells the carriers what they are going to provide to their customers. Google got in bed with manufacturers but not so much with carriers, perhaps the open handset alliance should do something about that.
Yeah that's great, but if they continue following this path of disobeying Chinese law, then by 2020 Baidu will be the world's #1 company with 1.5 billion users while Google is just a has-been (like Atari or Amiga today). Baidu might even gain enough power to come to the US and dominate our market too.
I'm Canadian and I'm usually up for bashing the Americans, but I don't see this as the eventual outcome. The Internet and high technology are US-centric to the point that Russians write source code using English keywords and the English alphabet. I could see Baidu dominating the Asian markets but I don't see them making in-roads in the USA where there is brainpower (Google et al) providing legitimately better services.
Now I'm going to don my flame retarded suit to say this: at the end of it all, without idealizing competition, Americans can be almost as protectionist as the Chinese are behaving. If Baidu actually steps up and provides services that can compete fairly, there are many dirty tricks that can be pulled by the US government to keep things local. As of 2005 Canada was USA's largest trading partner and our countries have a list of trade disputes a mile long.
So.. with both those things in mind I think from either an idealized viewpoint or a more pragmatic viewpoint we aren't likely to see Baidu dominating the global search market by 2020. I don't have a crystal ball but I know the general distrust we have for the Chinese government in North America.
Bottom line: Einstein was a scientist who made great discoveries. Gates was a businessman who made great sales.
Simply trying to compare Gates to Einstein reeks of arrogance. Gates is a Rockefeller or, at best, an Edison. He's a titan of industry rather than a luminary thinker.
Trying to paint a cut-throat businessman as some sort of visionary is ridiculous and insulting. This is like proposing to have Stephen Hawking at the helm of reconstruction at General Motors..
The great thing if you want a "clean" case is that there is usually a manufacturer offering one, stock. If you want a great example of a cleanly designed Mini-ITX case, I'd suggest you check out the Lian Li PC-Q07B. It's very spartan, all aluminum, and has room for a regular ATX-sized power supply.
One of the weird down-sides to the case is that some Mini-ITX boards consume so little power that they come with laptop-style power supplies, which would end up leaving a big gaping hole.
Online gaming actually helped me understand real-life sports. When I was a kid my dad took me to Hockey and Soccer and other organized sports, and I never really "got it". I didn't have any aggression in my personality and when the parents were saying "it's not important to win, it's important to have fun" I actually took them to heart and didn't care about the game, at all.
I finally figured out the pleasure of cooperative sport playing Counterstrike in my bedroom. I actually got pretty decent and had moments that parallel great sports stories: one time I single-handedly cleared a team of 6 players, finishing the last one with my knife. It was my full-length touchdown run and there was actual human adrenaline pumping in my veins.
After my kinda-sorta epiphany, I actually left the house and joined a ball hockey team. I still suck at hockey but I understand the pleasure of the game and that everyone is working together to become better players.
Anyway, I'm not surprised that the top "cyber athletes" have the same mental processes as top athletes. Competition is competition..
- Apartment building key, I use it daily - Apartment key, I use it daily - Car key, I use it daily - Office key, I use it daily - Lock/unlock fob for car, I use it daily
Let's take a look at your keys:
- one for the outer [apt] door - probably daily - two for the inner [apt door] - probably daily - three more for my girlfriends place - probably NOT daily - one for the office - probably daily - one for the postbox - probably NOT daily - one for my bicycle - which do you use daily, car, motorbike or bicycle? - the car - the motorbike - the roof - probably NOT daily - a tiny Swiss Army knife - probably NOT daily
Trim your primary keyring to your apt keys, office key, and primary transport and you'll be down to 5 keys. Keep the others on separate keyring(s) that you can either keep in your backpack (girlfriends apt keys you want with you, but not pants pocket), or in your apt (roof key, postal key)
I want to mod up your comment. The Onion is top-rate satire, this particular article is a send-up of every glowing story you read about the "garage tech company" that grows into a sprawling billion-dollar business.
The horrible part is that The Onion posted it two weeks ago and Slashdot had to dredge it up to add some legit humour to this horrible April Fools day garbage on the front page:(
Slashdot Mirror
No transcoding but it plays close to all formats
http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/
When I read this you rang a bell, and sure enough I had read a Globe and Mail article a couple of weeks about about how Harper's government is trying to neuter the CRTC. Here is the link.
After reading Slashdot for a decade I've finally got Linux on my home desktop and I'm very happy with it, I have it playing my movies and songs, interfacing with my iPhone, and playing World of Warcraft under Wine and connecting to Ventrilo with Mangler. I just installed a native version of Google Chrome a couple of days ago! None of this requiring text editing, and I got a default desktop that looks very pretty with the nVidia proprietary drivers. I'm running legal when there was no way I was going to pay for a Windows retail package.
So.. 2010 is my year of the Linux desktop, and someone is saying "hey here's how to hose your system so that it looks like Microsoft fucked a penguin". I'll pass on that one..
On the other hand, if anyone wants to point me to how to move the minimize/maximize/close buttons to the top right hand side of windows I'd appreciate it
They can probably attract curiosity seekers wondering what the living hell a "spork" is in a development context
have you visited detroit lately
Are you implying Pwnz0r~[KLANWIKKID]~~ is not a real person???
Until someone comes up with a specially crafted PDF... ;)
From the article, regarding re-implementation of assembly functions:
That's the joy of programming in a nut shell!
I came into the office this morning and noticed that a forums thread I monitor on jailbreaking had exploded over my long weekend. I checked the iPhone dev team blog and they explained that there is a new jailbreak that you can visit with the browser on your phone.
I navigated to the page on my phone and it said "swipe here to jailbreak".
I swiped.
It took about 5 minutes to jailbreak my phone and install the Cydia unofficial app store.
Simply amazing work. Once I had Cydia I installed ultrasn0w from the repository and now my phone is carrier unlocked.
Great job, hackers!
I haven't RTFA but this is Slashdot so I'm gonna respond to this line from the summary:
"Why is there so much strife in an industry ostensibly focused on having fun?"
People in general want to work in an industry that is "fun". That means the industry gets to skim the cream from every new year of graduates.
You guys have heard of Hollywood, right? Hollywood Accounting? Cocaine? It's a savage, SAVAGE industry and they chew up staff like candy because everyone wants to work in Hollywood. Game development is the same thing on a smaller scale, people literally think "I like games, therefore I will like working on games" when it is so far, far, brutally far from the truth.
Get a job in manufacturing and enjoy living your life outside of work.
Respectfully, this isn't what I see happening. Linus seems to be a nose-to-the-grindstone pragmatist and the only person who hopes to succeed him will not arrive through politics. The currently official kernel organization might collapse in bickering if Linus gets hit by a bus, but the true workers will quickly find someone like Linus to quietly organize their efforts and it will be quickly apparent where the actual development is happening.
In fact, the official kernel already has leaders like Greg Kroah-Hartman that perform jobs similar to Linus' current role and could pick up almost seamlessly if Linus vanishes. This is such a non-story
You will want to use vanilla FAT32 but then beef up the data with par2 and/or sfv files for error recovery and checksumming respectively.
FAT32 isn't reliable as anything but a lowest common denominator between platforms, anything else will give you headaches especially if you need to share the drives outside your local ecosystem.
QuickPAR and QuickSFV are the Windows utilities I've used, there are probably versions available on all platforms.
Unfortunately not. Google developed Android but then they gave it as a gift to the Open Handset Alliance. The members of the Open Handset Alliance include manufacturers like Motorola, Samsung, HTC.
The plan was that we'd have a pile of handsets with a compatible operating system for software developers to target, and making cell phones in general a lot less crappy. Unfortunately, the old broken cell phone system of locking down phones and abandoning firmware updates has stuck around like a bad smell.
I was able to update my iPhone 3GS to iOS4 last week because Apple produces a must-have device and tells the carriers what they are going to provide to their customers. Google got in bed with manufacturers but not so much with carriers, perhaps the open handset alliance should do something about that.
I'm Canadian and I'm usually up for bashing the Americans, but I don't see this as the eventual outcome. The Internet and high technology are US-centric to the point that Russians write source code using English keywords and the English alphabet. I could see Baidu dominating the Asian markets but I don't see them making in-roads in the USA where there is brainpower (Google et al) providing legitimately better services.
Now I'm going to don my flame retarded suit to say this: at the end of it all, without idealizing competition, Americans can be almost as protectionist as the Chinese are behaving. If Baidu actually steps up and provides services that can compete fairly, there are many dirty tricks that can be pulled by the US government to keep things local. As of 2005 Canada was USA's largest trading partner and our countries have a list of trade disputes a mile long.
So.. with both those things in mind I think from either an idealized viewpoint or a more pragmatic viewpoint we aren't likely to see Baidu dominating the global search market by 2020. I don't have a crystal ball but I know the general distrust we have for the Chinese government in North America.
Simply trying to compare Gates to Einstein reeks of arrogance. Gates is a Rockefeller or, at best, an Edison. He's a titan of industry rather than a luminary thinker.
Trying to paint a cut-throat businessman as some sort of visionary is ridiculous and insulting. This is like proposing to have Stephen Hawking at the helm of reconstruction at General Motors..
You will have to migrate your servers with plain ext3 to LVM-based ext3. Short term pain for long term gain.
The great thing if you want a "clean" case is that there is usually a manufacturer offering one, stock. If you want a great example of a cleanly designed Mini-ITX case, I'd suggest you check out the Lian Li PC-Q07B. It's very spartan, all aluminum, and has room for a regular ATX-sized power supply.
Here's a youtube unboxing video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZceNJAW7AU
One of the weird down-sides to the case is that some Mini-ITX boards consume so little power that they come with laptop-style power supplies, which would end up leaving a big gaping hole.
Online gaming actually helped me understand real-life sports. When I was a kid my dad took me to Hockey and Soccer and other organized sports, and I never really "got it". I didn't have any aggression in my personality and when the parents were saying "it's not important to win, it's important to have fun" I actually took them to heart and didn't care about the game, at all.
I finally figured out the pleasure of cooperative sport playing Counterstrike in my bedroom. I actually got pretty decent and had moments that parallel great sports stories: one time I single-handedly cleared a team of 6 players, finishing the last one with my knife. It was my full-length touchdown run and there was actual human adrenaline pumping in my veins.
After my kinda-sorta epiphany, I actually left the house and joined a ball hockey team. I still suck at hockey but I understand the pleasure of the game and that everyone is working together to become better players.
Anyway, I'm not surprised that the top "cyber athletes" have the same mental processes as top athletes. Competition is competition..
When will scientists give up on getting the blind to see? Jesus did it two thousand years ago, this is not a new feat people
</Kentucky school board>
Oh cheer up.. the next Von Braun is simply another World War away..
I guess you'll be waiting for number two, eh?
i'm so sorry
I have four keys and the remote fob on my keyring
- Apartment building key, I use it daily
- Apartment key, I use it daily
- Car key, I use it daily
- Office key, I use it daily
- Lock/unlock fob for car, I use it daily
Let's take a look at your keys:
- one for the outer [apt] door - probably daily
- two for the inner [apt door] - probably daily
- three more for my girlfriends place - probably NOT daily
- one for the office - probably daily
- one for the postbox - probably NOT daily
- one for my bicycle - which do you use daily, car, motorbike or bicycle?
- the car
- the motorbike
- the roof - probably NOT daily
- a tiny Swiss Army knife - probably NOT daily
Trim your primary keyring to your apt keys, office key, and primary transport and you'll be down to 5 keys. Keep the others on separate keyring(s) that you can either keep in your backpack (girlfriends apt keys you want with you, but not pants pocket), or in your apt (roof key, postal key)
Alec Holowka of Bit Blot went on to form Infinite Ammo. He is very talented.
Do I really hate my news articles served with ridiculous and unfounded speculation?
I want to mod up your comment. The Onion is top-rate satire, this particular article is a send-up of every glowing story you read about the "garage tech company" that grows into a sprawling billion-dollar business.
The horrible part is that The Onion posted it two weeks ago and Slashdot had to dredge it up to add some legit humour to this horrible April Fools day garbage on the front page :(