A fresh install of Win98 is fairly stable, but with the wrong software installed, the system becomes much less stable. Unfortunately, Windows doesn't make any real attempt to stop this from happening (user programs easily modify the system setup). That spyware software (stuff from kazaa and bonzai buddy) really wrecks the system beyond repair.
I noticed a few of these spyware programs after my brother installed kazaa and bonzai buddy. I found most of them, but my computer was *really* unstable afterwards. None of the games on the computer would start and DirectX was having some problems as well. One puzzle that I didn't figure out was a file called "Explorer.exe" hidden in the C:/Windows/Explorer directory (I'd expect that it was interfering with the normal explorer.exe, but I couldn't figure out what it was supposed to do... it did interact with another program called dlder.exe which was also hidden).
An easy way out would be to put two account numbers with every card. One is printed on the card and is used for the 1-800 number to check the balance. The other number could be on the magnetic strip and be used to redeem the card. All that's left is to watch for shoplifters.
The name is not "Windows" but "Lindows" which gives the impression that it's not Windows but somehow connected to Windows.
If this was a program intended to run Linux programs under Windows, there wouldn't be a fight from Microsoft. Instead, this program gives you another way to avoid giving Microsoft money in order to run whatever Windows programs you happen to like. Ignoring the generic term issue, this program is using MS's trademark to hurt their business (in theory anyway, this program wouldn't really affect MS much).
PicoGUI is exactly what I though of when I saw this article. I'm maintaining the Agenda VR3 port of PicoGUI right now. You'd think that tiling windows wouldn't be good on a handheld, but it actually seems more intuitive than overlapping.
I live in the US, but I find myself reading BBC and CBC more than CNN at times. CBC provides a different perspective, but BBC has a whole lot of content that doesn't quite make it to CNN. I think it has to do with being removed from the situation. A reporter can be more objective when it's another country involved. I imagine it's difficult for CNN to objectively cover suspected anthrax attacks at ABC and NBC. From what I understand the reporters at ABC had a difficult time reporting on the situation.
Re:When will Mozilla Innovate?
on
Mozilla 0.9.5
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· Score: 1
I don't think you'd want those two features together. Autocomplete when it's displaying "*****" might be rather useless. It would be fine if you just had one possible entry for that dialog box, but what if you had two different usernames that you used?
I'm not sure, but I think this is done when creating symlinks for a filesystem with a fake root directory. When creating a file system for my Linux PDA, everything goes in a ~/romdisk/root/ directory on the PC (so you have ~/romdisk/root/usr/bin, etc). If you want symlinks they will have to point to the final file name (/usr/bin/whatever, etc). After creating the filesystem, everything in the fake root directory will be the real root directory and the symlinks will point to real files when mounted on the PDA.
Thanks, I didn't realize that this Linux variant didn't use RAM for program execution. My only PDA experience has been with LinuxVR and PocketPC, both of which use RAM for run-time program execution (PocketPC on a 32MB Jornada uses 16MB for data storage and the other 16MB for running programs).
It's a MIPS processor (NEC VR4181) not a StrongARM.
Anyway, the Agenda VR3 is definitely a better hacker's pda. The 16MB of flash give you a lot of room to create your own PDA. This new pda only has 2MB of flash, so things are going to be fairly limited. Storing things in RAM is not the smartest idea in my opinion... I like the fact that my VR3 will retain all of the programs and data, even if the batteries die while it's in use.
A cheap Linux PDA is certainly an interesting path to go, but there are some issues based on that data sheet:
"6 month Linux DA O/S software upgrade" - This better be a stable OS if you only get 6 months of upgrades (setting aside whatever license restrictions there are)
8MB RAM and 2MB flash seems a bit small. Doubling the RAM wouldn't be very expensive, but you'd see a large performance increase (speaking from my work with the Agenda VR3). I'm not suggesting that Linux can't run in that space, but it might prevent much in the way of third party applications (assuming that it doesn't contain any software on a ROM chip).
For the price, however, it would be a good choice for a regular user (read: non-hacker). Most of the people who use it probably won't care that it's Linux anyway.
This is what I gathered from their website as well. It's not very clearly written, but this quote seems to match what you're saying:
"Based on sophisticated monitoring of cellular network activity, the team has been able to determine that numerous reports could not possibly be from the Ground Zero site, and have thus helped avoiding putting rescue workers at risk."
I don't really see how it avoids putting them at risk, though. The rescue workers still have to search for everyone else, just as blindly as before. It should be of more immediate use to relatives, as you suggested, for finding out if someone made it out, but was severely injured to the point where no identification could be made.
It does serve a purpose here. If they had said they were switching from the SH3 to the StrongARM it would be unclear how this PDA compares to other StrongARM-based PDA's. You're right in that it doesn't give you a direct comparison, but it allows you to make a more accurate comparison among other PocketPC PDA's (ignoring any speed improvents/decreases that might come in this new version).
So you really don't want to get caught violating the DMCA with freely distributed software. Man... can you imagine a judge handing down a 5000 year sentence for copyright violation?
Given the choice of OS's to telnet to, I'd choose Linux. Linux is maintains much of its usefulness through the command line interface. Many of the reasons that you'd want to be emulating Windows involve having a GUI.
It's cool that this idea came out of their failed test of a more traditional rover. Some of the best lessons are learned by seeing what doesn't work. Although it would have been a bit disappointing to have been the guy that designed the rover. His design broke, but at least the wheel worked!
Great... so now we can have GNU/HP-UX as well. Hewlett-Packard happens to use gcc and GNOME on their Unix workstations.
Why don't we just append the name of every contributor to every software program in existence? Pretty soon it'll all become meaningless. Once your name gets added to everything, people will stop associating any importance with it. If I see the occasional program that has GNU in it (gnome, gcc, etc) I'll recognize the work that an organization put into it. If I see GNU everywhere, I'll pay far less attention to the work that they actually do.
I have a Jornad 548 and it gets about 10 hours on it's batteries. But it doesn't really bother me because the batteries are internal (like most WinCE devices I've seen) and they charge quite quickly when left in the cradle. And for traveling I use a power supply along with a CompactFlash card for backups.
On the other hand, 40 hours is quite impressive, especially when it uses replaceable batteries (I wouldn't want to replace my Jornada's batteries every day). One of the big differences is that the backlit screen burns a lot more power (and is a bit hard to read when you're outside; similar to laptop screens).
Multitasking can be very useful once you fit more than one application on the screen. This is not generally done on the Palm or even on the Agenda VR3. However, I've been working with a different GUI that encourages multitasking. Take a look at these pictures (this is a work in progress, so these don't represent how it'll look when finished):
You might say that it's not worthwhile running multiple applications at once due to the small screen. I agree that it isn't practical to run two full applications at once. But how about a spellchecker/dictionary that has a small UI running at the same time as your typical Notes application. Or a search box that looks up names and email addresses for you.
And that's why Agenda Computing has released 99.9% of their source code to the public. The only piece that you can't download is the bootloader (partly because no one outside of Agenda has the equipment to debug it).
As far as being compliant to standards, the Agenda VR3 can do an IR transfer to and from any device that PalmOS can. It can even transfer to PocketPC without any problem. And the networking is all done using PPP. I've connected to my VR3 from Windows using Internet Explorer to view webpages served off of the VR3. In order to sync with a desktop PC, the VR3 uses rsync. Again, this works with Linux, MacOS, Windows, etc.
And finally, Agenda doesn't really care if other people use their software. From what I've heard, there is another Linux PDA that has Agenda's PIM applications. (Probably the iPaq, but I'm not sure).
You're right about standards being important. Agenda has made sure to follow that idea. I'm not sure about others. Does anyone know if the Yopy is actually opensource (beyond the kernel and minimal parts of their distribution)?
That's quite an in-depth explanation. It surprises me that they could figure it out. How many hours did they sit there going: "Hmm... maybe if we added those numbers together and then added the odd ones again... no wait... lets do the even ones. And to finish it off lets to the sum % 3. Oh wait... that should be sum % 7... Yeah, that gives us the check digit!"
-Sean
Remember the Constitution by itself does not determine the way the US court system works. Instead, courts are intended to interpret the law. They allow us to make case by case decisions. So the right to freedom of speech has various degrees of strength depending on the exact situation involved. (I agree with what you're saying about protection of information. I'm just clarifying what the courts think)
To quote the attorney that Slashdot interviewed recently:
The amount of protection given particular speech depends upon it's content. While some speech can easily be categorized as political, commercial, verbal acts or otherwise, First Amendment analysis often looks at the speech's expressiveness as opposed to its functionality to determine the corresponding level of protection. Purely expressive speech regarding public affairs, politics and government (think "F--- the draft!" on the back of a jacket worn by an individual with no intent to cause imminent lawlessness) gets heightened First Amendment protection, while purely functional speech (think "Do you have any drugs?" to an undercover police officer or "I accept" to a party which has offered a contract) gets little First Amendment protection. This leaves speech which is both expressive and functional, such as commercial speech (think "Eat at Joe's!"), lying somewhere in the middle. Further, indecent speech (think adult porn) gets very little protection while obscene speech (think child porn) gets no protection whatsoever.
Since source code is by its nature functional, it seems unlikely that any court would ever find that it is purely expressive. However, the courts which have addressed the issue have concluded that source code can also be expressive. In fact, in 1999 a federal court in California wrote, "While source code can be easily compiled into object code by a user, ignoring the distinction between source and object code obscures the important fact that source code is not meant solely for the computer, but is rather written in a language intended also for human analysis and understanding." Therefore, there is no universal answer to the question of how much First Amendment protection applies to source code. Rather, the issue depends in part on the particular expressive versus functional nature of the source code in question.
Software is math in the sense that you give it input (which at its heart is numeric) and it gives you some output (which is also numeric). Much in the same way that formulas and equations work in math. Note that I'm limiting the software to single algorithms here, which are what you'd try to patent. These single algorithms can be combined to create more complex systems (eg. games, word processors, etc.). In math, your single equations can be combined into much more complex systems of equations.
Software becomes speech when is expressive rather than simply functional. This is really difficult to judge though. In my opinion, if it is just functional, it should be protected in the way that math is. In this sense, you could ban DeCSS. It isn't really expressing an idea, just running an decryption algorithm. So it isn't really speech. But a program that used some AI programming to create unique anti-government cartoons. While the government wouldn't like this very much, it would be much more likely to be protected under free speech.
In the end, you can't really create laws that'll accurately apply to all examples of software. It involves the intent of the programmer and the purpose of the program.
>If this "modification" is viewer-controlled, then I cannot see how it can be violating copyright.
The keyword is "if." Knowing Microsoft, the only choice a user might have is whether or not they are running a Microsoft OS.
Your other examples have the common thread that they are not turned on by default. The user (or his school, company, etc) has to add that "feature" to the browser. Smart Tags will most likely be added by default. This means that the pages will be modified unless the user can hunt down the option to turn it off in the maze of mysteriously-titled options that Microsoft software tends to have.
Leaving out any legal questions, I think the ethical thing to do is deliver the content that the author intended. That should be the default action. The user could then have the option of modifying the content. The same should apply to the author of the page. They should have the option of allowing Smart Tags, but the tags should be disabled by default.
Slashdot Mirror
A fresh install of Win98 is fairly stable, but with the wrong software installed, the system becomes much less stable. Unfortunately, Windows doesn't make any real attempt to stop this from happening (user programs easily modify the system setup). That spyware software (stuff from kazaa and bonzai buddy) really wrecks the system beyond repair.
I noticed a few of these spyware programs after my brother installed kazaa and bonzai buddy. I found most of them, but my computer was *really* unstable afterwards. None of the games on the computer would start and DirectX was having some problems as well. One puzzle that I didn't figure out was a file called "Explorer.exe" hidden in the C:/Windows/Explorer directory (I'd expect that it was interfering with the normal explorer.exe, but I couldn't figure out what it was supposed to do... it did interact with another program called dlder.exe which was also hidden).
An easy way out would be to put two account numbers with every card. One is printed on the card and is used for the 1-800 number to check the balance. The other number could be on the magnetic strip and be used to redeem the card. All that's left is to watch for shoplifters.
A Breakthrough of a Magnetic Barebone System
I think I'd be hesitant about putting a hard drive in a magnetic box!
If this was a program intended to run Linux programs under Windows, there wouldn't be a fight from Microsoft. Instead, this program gives you another way to avoid giving Microsoft money in order to run whatever Windows programs you happen to like. Ignoring the generic term issue, this program is using MS's trademark to hurt their business (in theory anyway, this program wouldn't really affect MS much).
PicoGUI is exactly what I though of when I saw this article. I'm maintaining the Agenda VR3 port of PicoGUI right now. You'd think that tiling windows wouldn't be good on a handheld, but it actually seems more intuitive than overlapping.
I live in the US, but I find myself reading BBC and CBC more than CNN at times. CBC provides a different perspective, but BBC has a whole lot of content that doesn't quite make it to CNN. I think it has to do with being removed from the situation. A reporter can be more objective when it's another country involved. I imagine it's difficult for CNN to objectively cover suspected anthrax attacks at ABC and NBC. From what I understand the reporters at ABC had a difficult time reporting on the situation.
I don't think you'd want those two features together. Autocomplete when it's displaying "*****" might be rather useless. It would be fine if you just had one possible entry for that dialog box, but what if you had two different usernames that you used?
I'm not sure, but I think this is done when creating symlinks for a filesystem with a fake root directory. When creating a file system for my Linux PDA, everything goes in a ~/romdisk/root/ directory on the PC (so you have ~/romdisk/root/usr/bin, etc). If you want symlinks they will have to point to the final file name (/usr/bin/whatever, etc). After creating the filesystem, everything in the fake root directory will be the real root directory and the symlinks will point to real files when mounted on the PDA.
-Sean
Thanks, I didn't realize that this Linux variant didn't use RAM for program execution. My only PDA experience has been with LinuxVR and PocketPC, both of which use RAM for run-time program execution (PocketPC on a 32MB Jornada uses 16MB for data storage and the other 16MB for running programs).
-Sean
It's a MIPS processor (NEC VR4181) not a StrongARM.
Anyway, the Agenda VR3 is definitely a better hacker's pda. The 16MB of flash give you a lot of room to create your own PDA. This new pda only has 2MB of flash, so things are going to be fairly limited. Storing things in RAM is not the smartest idea in my opinion... I like the fact that my VR3 will retain all of the programs and data, even if the batteries die while it's in use.
-Sean
A cheap Linux PDA is certainly an interesting path to go, but there are some issues based on that data sheet:
"6 month Linux DA O/S software upgrade" - This better be a stable OS if you only get 6 months of upgrades (setting aside whatever license restrictions there are)
8MB RAM and 2MB flash seems a bit small. Doubling the RAM wouldn't be very expensive, but you'd see a large performance increase (speaking from my work with the Agenda VR3). I'm not suggesting that Linux can't run in that space, but it might prevent much in the way of third party applications (assuming that it doesn't contain any software on a ROM chip).
For the price, however, it would be a good choice for a regular user (read: non-hacker). Most of the people who use it probably won't care that it's Linux anyway.
-Sean
This is what I gathered from their website as well. It's not very clearly written, but this quote seems to match what you're saying:
"Based on sophisticated monitoring of cellular network activity, the team has been able to determine that numerous reports could not possibly be from the Ground Zero site, and have thus helped avoiding putting rescue workers at risk."
I don't really see how it avoids putting them at risk, though. The rescue workers still have to search for everyone else, just as blindly as before. It should be of more immediate use to relatives, as you suggested, for finding out if someone made it out, but was severely injured to the point where no identification could be made.
-Sean
It does serve a purpose here. If they had said they were switching from the SH3 to the StrongARM it would be unclear how this PDA compares to other StrongARM-based PDA's. You're right in that it doesn't give you a direct comparison, but it allows you to make a more accurate comparison among other PocketPC PDA's (ignoring any speed improvents/decreases that might come in this new version).
-Sean
So you really don't want to get caught violating the DMCA with freely distributed software. Man... can you imagine a judge handing down a 5000 year sentence for copyright violation?
-Sean
-Sean
It's cool that this idea came out of their failed test of a more traditional rover. Some of the best lessons are learned by seeing what doesn't work. Although it would have been a bit disappointing to have been the guy that designed the rover. His design broke, but at least the wheel worked!
Why don't we just append the name of every contributor to every software program in existence? Pretty soon it'll all become meaningless. Once your name gets added to everything, people will stop associating any importance with it. If I see the occasional program that has GNU in it (gnome, gcc, etc) I'll recognize the work that an organization put into it. If I see GNU everywhere, I'll pay far less attention to the work that they actually do.
-Sean
On the other hand, 40 hours is quite impressive, especially when it uses replaceable batteries (I wouldn't want to replace my Jornada's batteries every day). One of the big differences is that the backlit screen burns a lot more power (and is a bit hard to read when you're outside; similar to laptop screens).
-Sean
Pic1
Pic2
You might say that it's not worthwhile running multiple applications at once due to the small screen. I agree that it isn't practical to run two full applications at once. But how about a spellchecker/dictionary that has a small UI running at the same time as your typical Notes application. Or a search box that looks up names and email addresses for you.
-Sean
As far as being compliant to standards, the Agenda VR3 can do an IR transfer to and from any device that PalmOS can. It can even transfer to PocketPC without any problem. And the networking is all done using PPP. I've connected to my VR3 from Windows using Internet Explorer to view webpages served off of the VR3. In order to sync with a desktop PC, the VR3 uses rsync. Again, this works with Linux, MacOS, Windows, etc.
And finally, Agenda doesn't really care if other people use their software. From what I've heard, there is another Linux PDA that has Agenda's PIM applications. (Probably the iPaq, but I'm not sure).
You're right about standards being important. Agenda has made sure to follow that idea. I'm not sure about others. Does anyone know if the Yopy is actually opensource (beyond the kernel and minimal parts of their distribution)?
-Sean
That's quite an in-depth explanation. It surprises me that they could figure it out. How many hours did they sit there going: "Hmm... maybe if we added those numbers together and then added the odd ones again... no wait... lets do the even ones. And to finish it off lets to the sum % 3. Oh wait... that should be sum % 7... Yeah, that gives us the check digit!" -Sean
To quote the attorney that Slashdot interviewed recently:
The amount of protection given particular speech depends upon it's content. While some speech can easily be categorized as political, commercial, verbal acts or otherwise, First Amendment analysis often looks at the speech's expressiveness as opposed to its functionality to determine the corresponding level of protection. Purely expressive speech regarding public affairs, politics and government (think "F--- the draft!" on the back of a jacket worn by an individual with no intent to cause imminent lawlessness) gets heightened First Amendment protection, while purely functional speech (think "Do you have any drugs?" to an undercover police officer or "I accept" to a party which has offered a contract) gets little First Amendment protection. This leaves speech which is both expressive and functional, such as commercial speech (think "Eat at Joe's!"), lying somewhere in the middle. Further, indecent speech (think adult porn) gets very little protection while obscene speech (think child porn) gets no protection whatsoever.
Since source code is by its nature functional, it seems unlikely that any court would ever find that it is purely expressive. However, the courts which have addressed the issue have concluded that source code can also be expressive. In fact, in 1999 a federal court in California wrote, "While source code can be easily compiled into object code by a user, ignoring the distinction between source and object code obscures the important fact that source code is not meant solely for the computer, but is rather written in a language intended also for human analysis and understanding." Therefore, there is no universal answer to the question of how much First Amendment protection applies to source code. Rather, the issue depends in part on the particular expressive versus functional nature of the source code in question.
Software is math in the sense that you give it input (which at its heart is numeric) and it gives you some output (which is also numeric). Much in the same way that formulas and equations work in math. Note that I'm limiting the software to single algorithms here, which are what you'd try to patent. These single algorithms can be combined to create more complex systems (eg. games, word processors, etc.). In math, your single equations can be combined into much more complex systems of equations.
Software becomes speech when is expressive rather than simply functional. This is really difficult to judge though. In my opinion, if it is just functional, it should be protected in the way that math is. In this sense, you could ban DeCSS. It isn't really expressing an idea, just running an decryption algorithm. So it isn't really speech. But a program that used some AI programming to create unique anti-government cartoons. While the government wouldn't like this very much, it would be much more likely to be protected under free speech.
In the end, you can't really create laws that'll accurately apply to all examples of software. It involves the intent of the programmer and the purpose of the program.
The keyword is "if." Knowing Microsoft, the only choice a user might have is whether or not they are running a Microsoft OS.
Your other examples have the common thread that they are not turned on by default. The user (or his school, company, etc) has to add that "feature" to the browser. Smart Tags will most likely be added by default. This means that the pages will be modified unless the user can hunt down the option to turn it off in the maze of mysteriously-titled options that Microsoft software tends to have.
Leaving out any legal questions, I think the ethical thing to do is deliver the content that the author intended. That should be the default action. The user could then have the option of modifying the content. The same should apply to the author of the page. They should have the option of allowing Smart Tags, but the tags should be disabled by default.