(Very likely a troll but I've seen this opinion legitimately expressed often enough to bite just in case someone's agreeing with it)
Think about this one a little more. Think supply and demand here.
If we end up with the entire US knowledge worker class being made unemployed due to the outsourcing of their work to India / China etc. then, by very definition, two things will happen:
1) US cost of doing such work will drop, due to increased supply against demand. Some workers will therefore leave this industry and move elsewhere.
2) US economic value as a whole goes down. So, along with it, down come land prices (lower demand for a fixed resource) so down come prices (lower rents / mortgages) so down comes the cost of living.
Now, think about the situation with all those outsourced workers in India. You get the exact reverse - people start to train in an industry as they see that jobs are available, which increases the pool of knowledge workers and jobs as a whole which increases the total economic value. So, the total spending power avaiable for fixed resources goes up, at which point the price of those fixed resources follows it. Which sends the cost of living and the cost of doing business up, too.
In other words, it's not the nightmare that you think it is, simply as market forces mean that the more you do this, the less the advantage of doing it is.
The other side, of course, is that the US - or anywhere else in the world for that matter, sitting in the nearly-as-rich UK, most definitely does not have an automatic right to be massively richer than the rest of the world. Why should I have money and opportunities just because I was lucky enough to be born in the UK, when the many thousands born at the same moment in less privelidged (sp?) parts of the world don't? Also, shouldn't I remember that a major source of hatred and violence is poverty and so by enforcing a situation where my country is richer, I'm only making it more likely that the poor people will try and knock my country down?
Be realistic - but also be reasonable. Poverty isn't nice, but if they can use poverty to give them a competitive advantage and haul themselves out then more power to them.
... I can't see this is the sort of thing you can generalise.
Some people here are saying they think cars are too messy, too noisy, too big, whatever. Personally, I just like finding out how _anything_ works. Yes, _anything_.
I'm the kid who dismantled half his toys to find out what was inside them, who dismantles every click-action biro he ever gets his hands on to see what the mechanism does this time (there's surprising variety)... you get the idea. I don't actually do any more severe work on my car than changing wheels, simply because I've never had the time or enthusiasm to learn and I don't trust myself not to get something wrong and cause a dangerous / expensive problem. But I can describe to you how most of the bits there work and talk about new advances in the technology. I've done almost all my own bicycle maintenance and I've spent hours working building model vechicles and components in Meccano. No dislike for the mechanical, just no incentive (yet) to work on my car.
We're all different, we're all attracted to computers for different reasons. My reason happens to be the same reason that I'm interested in cars - and, well, pretty much anything mechanical. Yours may not be. Welcome to the diverse world of Computing.
I'd been shown that before but thanks for reminding me. And in the mean time, I again register my disgust at a language which mutilates simple constructs like that. Swiss Army Chainsaw, definitely.
I have to admit that, early serious training being in Pascal I'm no fan of GOTOs;-) but my instinct would go for three nested do whiles, each with two stopping conditions. I'll only use a FOR loop if I'm certain I want it to execute that particular number of times, anything else always feels a little icky too me:-)
One thing, though - speed. I remember once getting frustrated with a program's slow performance, so I swapped a critical loop from for.. next to do while out of curiosity. Speed went through the roof.
Now, I can't believe that's globally applicable but it was curious and I'd be interested to know if anyone else had seen that sort of test.
Little thing - remember not all record companies are RIAA members. There are bands who aren't on that list but who we can support with a clear conscience.
(Disclaimer - I write in ASP for a living, so storing a session is easy, just declare an ID in your global.asa file and reference that... No, I don't like much about it but it keeps me solvent)
One thing jumps out at me from that - proxy servers. We've got 10 or so users sharing an IP behind a proxy here. Your technique won't differentiate between us...
What about just setting an ID cookie with a short timeout but making every page bump the expiry up? OK, you've got a job identifying images that way, but it handles proxy servers and you can still use IP addresses for them.
This is exactly what I was thinking of - a database-driven timetabled firewalling regime. Simple and automatic. Remember to take out Hotmail et al, though:-) Oh, the other advantage of this is it reduces the incentive to skip classes. If you know that you'll be offline during classes automatically, that has to help.
Why not make it more than that, though? Why not block all network traffic save user filestore access during classes unless a teacher explicitly enables it? If you want web access for a class, default to the proxy only letting through pre-approved URLs so you know they're reading the right sites. Only if they're doing wider research should free(er) access be provided.
If they're in NT/2k/XP, what about requiring them to log in as a particular user account with extremely limited priveledges (as in little more than their WP) every time they enter a class, and allow the teacher to pull up a list of who's logged in differently? Dunno if it's possible, but do that automatically and you've got an even stronger truancy preventer.
Anyway, there's lots to do (and without much imagination, so I'm a little surprised to see this question getting posted) and it's not going to be that hard...
What if I want a large workspace, but I'm working on multiple applications? I create two or more windows with a total surface area greater than the desktop size and overlap them. I can switch more easily than via a taskbar (not so far to move the mouse), I can still drag items between windows, I can see what's going on in different windows. Say I'm comparing two lists of contents. Each window may well contain rather more than the list, but that's all I need at that point. So, I lay it out so I can see both lists and compare away, without losing the larger workspace in the primary application.
Or maybe one is performing a task - by just displaying a portion of its GUI, I can monitor that task without losing a potentially large portion of my desktop for its full UI.
The day a desktop GUI bans me from overlapping windows is the day I look for new GUIs.
Thank you very much for the link, but I've tried that basic idea before. The best casefan I could get my hands on was an 80mm Coolermaster thing (anyone wish to comment on them?) but, even running on 12v (installed it'd be on 9) it couldn't come close to building up enough pressure in the skirt to inflate it, let alone lifting it off. And this was a smaller model (chassis based on a 4 litre ice cream tub). Whether it was shifting enough air I don't know, but it certainly couldn't sustain the pressure required.
Anyway, it looks like there's a bit more information than the last time I tried, so maybe I'll have another play over Christmas:-)
I had an idea a while ago for a permanent website of this type.
You log on, create a list of things you like, things you don't like, things you already have, things you like but you're so picky about that anyone buying for you is a bad idea:-) The site provides links to shopping sites, allows you to search by category, price etc. You then give people your site ID and your friends and family have access to a list of what you _actually_ want, making present giving potentially simpler. Wouldn't be that hard to set up, organise a small commision payment from the sites you send customers to and this could make money. Pity I don't have the time or energy to actually do it:-)
Anyway, what _I'd_ actually want:
* Sorry if this makes me sound like I'm trying too hard, but I'd be delighted if someone gave money to a charity I support (or one I didn't yet but whose aims I agreed with) as my present. Let's be honest, I make good enough money and there's only me to support, so I don't need generosity particularly and could get pretty much anything below myself if I put my mind to it (and in some cases, not for very long, either). Others need it more than I do.
* Pretty much impossible to give, but I wouldn't say no to a larger circle of friends. If I came out of the Christmas season with nothing listed below (or similar) but having met just one or two people whose company I genuinely enjoyed, I'd consider it a good Christmas. On the same line, I'm single, ladies, fuzzy photo at the out-of-date URL above...;-) <duck>
More traditionally:
* Books. Good fiction or several different non-fiction areas.
* Films. Has to be Widescreen, beyond that I'll try most films _once_:-)
* Music. Play it safe and get me rock or metal, play it slightly more adventurous and get me orchestral music, try pushing the boat out by getting me some jazz or blues. Pretty good chance I'll like any, though, in some places:-)
* Chocolate. Pretty difficult to go wrong with a big box full of chocolate:-)
* Model cars. Don't care what size (though bigger is preferrable:-) but any reasonable, boxed model car will be appreciated. Honestly, little £5-10 cars make me very happy...
* Camera equipment. I'd feel guilty if someone spent a fortune, but if you happen to see some M42 lenses, filters, tripods or gadget bags going cheap...;-) Or, if you happen to be determined to throw money at this one, an SLR body using a more modern lens mount than M42 please:-)
Less practically...
* Those desktop RC tanks with the laser tag are _too_ cool. 3 of them shipped to the UK and we could have some cool deathmatches at the office...
* My Psion 5 seems to have packed up:-( and I _prefer_ keyboarded PDAs. I want another.
* Hovercraft are cool. Either give me a working R/C model hovercraft, or a good set of plans and components. Or, let me know what will make a good liftfan because I can't find one so far when I'm trying to build my own:-(
* No DVD here yet, so, please, a region-switchable DVD with 5.1 out and ideally a Macrovision defeater so it'll work with a video projector. Oh, how about getting me that projector, I've already got a large empty white wall that would make a lovely screen...
* One of these days I'll get round to building a _serious_ video jukebox (thinking 100+ hours of storage here...) to replace large piles of VHS cassettes and just make it all more practical. If anyone sees them ready-made and upgradeable, that'd be cool.
* Left Europe for the first time this October, visiting my sister in Ontario, Canada. Loved it. All offers of trips to interesting parts of the world gratefully recieved, as long as they come at least half board and flights paid:-)
* Over in a recent poll thread (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23631&cid=256 0144) I was discussing what I'd enter into Robot Wars / Battlebots if I was up to it, had the time & ability and so on. I'd love to see a robot of that rough type built and entered, just to see how good an idea it would really be.
We were really surprised at work a little while ago. Bought a cheap midi tower case and it worked pretty much like that! Higed out from the side via a small latch. Really nice to work in.
Drives were then mounted via a system of clips and thumbscrews (could be fitted _so_ easily_) while there was a 3.5" bay for the HDD pointing to the side - which meant that the rear you need to get at was pointing straight out at the hole where the side had hinged down and the motherboard.
Of course, being a cheap case, details were missing. IDE cables fitted when it was out but were tight, but some bright spark hadn't remembered to include a power cable extension, so that stops it with about 30 degrees to go until you remove it. Still, it's a start.
I'm not sure which way I jump on this issue (honestly), so I'm only presenting options here. However...
Large quantities of the Muslim world are currently convinced that the USA and UK are out to destroy Islam and are just using this as a pretext. So, by attacking Afghanistan, we're currently providing a motivation for them to join organisations like al Quaeda (sp?) and increasing the available pool of terrorists. As a direct consequence of our attacking them, it's easier for them to attack us. Had we not attacked them (whether you believe it's justified retaliation or not), they'd have a smaller volunteer pool.
I have no sympathy with terrorism but I can see why people might be motivated this way.
BTW, there's also the other question of whether the current campaign can ever achieve its aims, even if they're clearly defined. I can't see that it can achieve what people want it to, or that the aims are nailed down particularly tightly...
It's a bit late in Britain for me to look up the references (sorry!) but from what I recall there was some research done as to how the Red Sea might have parted, and they found a really, really unusual but still predictable and perfectly possible wind system which could actually blow a dry channel in the Red Sea.
If anyone knows the details and wants to beat me to posting them tomorrow evening at the earliest...;-)
Re:Rather than whine about Mozilla...
on
Netscape 6.2
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· Score: 2
No, sorry, I still disagree.
Using 3 year old hardware, I would class it as fast in isolation and greased lightning in comparison with IE5. I haven't noticed a significant lag unless I was putting it under loads most users never will, either. I see the point about the widget set, but I personally quite like the new stuff and wouldn't say that it was too different when left in Classic theme. On that front I'd prefer the ability to use small toolbar icons, as I could with NS4, but nothing's perfect, sadly;-)
Look and feel I agree it's different, though I think we overestimate how much this will confuse people., it's close enough. Performance, I suspect the difference people will notice is that it's _faster_.
News sites, normally. I tend to browse several in parallel, and opening a whole series of stories in new windows. Gets round the slow speed of dialup a little, as I'm opening a whole heap of stories while I'm reading one.
Call me odd if you want, but I seem to make a pretty good browser stresstest:-)
Re:Rather than whine about Mozilla...
on
Netscape 6.2
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· Score: 5, Informative
I have to say, I really don't understand people's comments about speed. FWIW this experience is with, Windows 2000 on a P-II 128 MB, Win98 on P-II 350 and 400 (both 128 MB) and oddly behaving Duron 700 (256 MB). Nothing exactly cutting edge, in other words.
I started playing with Mozilla 0.9.5 last week, first Mozilla build in some time. It's not quite as fast as Netscape 4.7 but way, way faster than IE5. Blows it straight out of the water. IE will sometimes take 10+ seconds to render a window, Mozilla, as long as it's been loaded into memory before like IE, is less than a second. It's faster in operation, too.
It's not perfect - the back button has died a couple of times, while really, stupidly heavy session (20+ windows, new ones opening all the time) slowed it down a little and I've discovered today it's not too fond of mod points - but hey, neither's IE under W98. They smear all over the place, misplace themselves, eventually run out altogether and too many windows of that crashes the machine.
Anyway. Mozilla and XUL may have been slow once (dunno, didn't use it then), but it isn't any more. Lovely and fast, really.
That would very definitely be illegal under UK law. You and the likely recipents of your aid being in the US means that's not something to worry about, but my personal morality is similar to UK law on this point.
Basically, the Computer Misuse Act means that you can't use a computer system without permission, even if you've logged in. If a username and password for some interesting but off-limits computer dropped into my lap, I couldn't use it without first obtaining permission. Or, if I found an open share, I couldn't connect to it and perform an action over it.
You're trying to perform a civic duty by removing an infected machine from the internet. But you're also changing the configuration of a machine in a way that you can't guarantee won't harm the machine, and which will guarantee that you can't then get back in to check if the update was successful and correct any problems.
Maybe the greater public service should override this? Maybe, but one of the first worms to do damage was an autoupdate worm which had a bug in it. Someone meant well, believed they were doing good but caused trouble and demonstrated why worms and autoupdating aren't such hot ideas. Including an 'I was only trying to help' defence makes it rather hard to prosecute many proper viruses and worms - perhaps Outlook viruses are only trying to help by demonstrating exactly what can be done with Outlook to push people onto more secure mailers, and any destructive or disruptive payload is simply a motivation tool?
If I'm getting portscanned particularly often by a certain IP address, I'll normally forward a firewall log of the events to whichever ISP the traceroute finds. If I find out the offender's e-mail address, they'll get a mail from me. In this case I'd normally mail the ISP and let them deal with informing their user - who is, after all, causing problems for the ISP so it's in their interest to do something about it. I suppose I might bend the law a little by leaving a short text file on their system explaining the problem and how to fix it. Breaking the law, yes, but with no destructive possibility at all.
But I'd never run a patch for them, and I'm very glad that it's illegal to do that in this country.
OK, I've now seen it and I see what they're doing, I just don't see that it can work. And yes, I'm a computer programmer who plays with Meccano, not a mechanical engineer.
Let's think about what this has to do to get motion. Push an air and fuel mixture into a combustion chamber, ignite it and push it back out again. A normal machine will squash the mixture before igniting, which helps somewhat but could concievably be removed from the equation I suppose.
Now, let's look at this machine. There's no automatic force to suck the fuel-air mixture in or blow it out. The reciprocating motion of a piston works here, or the funny motion in a wankel engine squashes blocked off sections. This is simply rotating in the chamber.
OK, once every rotation (per side) it'll seal off one of those chambers in the end cone. Well, badly seal, because you have two convex surfaces against each other. You can fire at this point happily which, with a little momentum, will indeed force the wobbly plate to rise and so, with timing and repetition, to rotate. But, how do you actually get the fuel-air mixture in there? You can't compress it with this mechanism alone, nor will it suck it into the chamber by itself. You're going to have to push it in, already sufficiently compressed to fire efficiently, along with firing it, all in the small portion of the rotation when it's close to being sealed. Push in the mixture when it isn't sealed and it leaks out, creating inefficienty and emissions problems. Fire when it isn't sealed and there's no energy to rotate it because it all escapes by much easier means. You'll need massively precise timing for this to work at all, and I'm not massively confident about that. Now, open a valve somewhere fast enough and the exhaust gas should escape (the gas wanting to expand very quickly at that point, after all) but you'll need very low back pressure in the exhaust system if it's going to move out in any quantity and you can't get rid of it all, you're simply not pumping it you're just relying on it expanding and escaping quickly enough. Some can't, by definition, as the pressure inside the chamber will be lowered to outside pressure or below, at which point there's no reason for it to move.
Note the need for a seal. The surface of the cone and the wobbly plate need to touch (near as makes no difference) along the radius to seal the chamber. The only way for that to work is if the centre of the plate and the peak of the cone are the same point. The animation isn't clear but I'm not convinced they are. Which brings me to another point - why on earth is that central sphere there? It will reduce the internal volume of the combustion chamber while maintaining an outer diameter (if that's critical, no way I can tell without better physics or a sample to test). But why a sphere, if that's a useful end? Means you have to make three surfaces, each curved in two planes and precisely aligned. A simple cylinder would still reduce the internal volume but could be made very much more easily.
Another poster contended that this would wobble. I disagree - I can't see a single out-of-balance force. I agree, though, that the central plate would need to be very strong or it'll buckle.
It's concievable that this could work, but I'm not convinced and it seems to have some fundamental problems to overcome. A more promising engine, IMO, was by the Australian Orbital company (orbeng.com.au, IIRC). Closer to a conventional engine (still pistons) but a tiny number of moving parts again. This is all from memory, BTW, as I can't find details for this ATM:-) The cylinder block becomes O-shaped with the holes placed radially around the rim. As opposed to an old radial engine, the cylinders are parallel to the hole in the O. The powershaft runs through the centre. At one end you have a plate with holes in it to act as the valves, at the other a flange aligned with the bottom of the pistons but with a sinewave shaped edge. As the piston fires it pushes the ring round, and the rim then pushes the piston up with the next upsweep of its curve. Still very few moving parts, apparently benchtested very nicely. Still has the reciprocating masses of any piston engine and the inefficiencies associated with them but, frankly, McMaster's work is only going further to convince me that these are unavoidable in serious, practical applications.
All in all it's interesting but I'm far from convinced it's practical.
Hey, Chris' website has appeared here again! He seems to get a lot of traffic from Slashdot...
I've been, on and off, a member of the West London Meccano Society (featured somewhere in the link above) since I was ooh, too young to do anything serious with Meccano, as opposed to now being too busy... Introduced by my Dad, who's built more Meccano trucks and cranes than I care to remember, along with writing many modelplans for them and various texts on particular areas of model construction - a review of how to build different types of vehicle suspension system, for example. Sorry, no URL for his work but they're sold by MW Models under the Everything Automotive banner.
Anyway. I was fortunate enough to be at this year's SkegEx show in Skegness, England for a little while. Some absolutely stunning models were on show - if anyone wants to see more photos (though no plans I'm afraid) of some really, really good models, I can heartily recommend John Thorpe's page though there's a lot of photos so it's a little slow to load:-) Always difficult to call a favourite, but three stick out in my memory:
First off, I'm not an 'open source everything' person, as anyone who recognises me will know. And no, I'm not bigheaded enough to believe that more than a handful will recognise me, especially as I've recently changed signatures:-)
Anyway. By definition, an effective conduct remedy requires oversight. Telling them to play nice without checking they do is a total waste of time. Bush & Co don't want to break up but can't realistically do nothing, so they're overseeing.
Forcing open APIs, protocols and file formats is all well and good - but you need to check that they're accurate. Which means that someone needs to be able to get at the source and confirm that they're telling the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth.
If that's the case then, every time some new release is made then someone has to read the source, read the documentation and confirm that they're the same. This isn't going to be quick or simple. It requires a reasonable number of pretty well qualified staff to be employed by the US government, and it may well delay releases while they read and work with the source. It clearly slows Microsoft's business and so potentially harms their freedom to react, compete and innovate, while it's expensive for the government.
By far the simpler solution is to require the source to be open. Not necessarily under a modifiable license, read only would be fine. But, force the source to be visible and the compiler to be declared and available, and you can check all you want quickly, simply and easily. Compile the source, compare binaries...
I know it's going to be harder to get the information out from straight source than from documentation, so maybe more has to come out too. But that would seem the sensible baseline to work from. In terms of effectiveness and size of government involvement, it would seem to fit what the current US government would want.
Even if it has Microsoft sponsoring IOCC as a recruitment challenge;-)
Thinking of an extremely small sample set of femal friends & relatives, many have computers but dedicated audio equipment is often lacking. So, computers get used as CD players... So I'd concur with your assessment.
Let's hope this causes them (the record company, that is) problems:-)
Slashdot Mirror
(Very likely a troll but I've seen this opinion legitimately expressed often enough to bite just in case someone's agreeing with it)
Think about this one a little more. Think supply and demand here.
If we end up with the entire US knowledge worker class being made unemployed due to the outsourcing of their work to India / China etc. then, by very definition, two things will happen:
1) US cost of doing such work will drop, due to increased supply against demand. Some workers will therefore leave this industry and move elsewhere.
2) US economic value as a whole goes down. So, along with it, down come land prices (lower demand for a fixed resource) so down come prices (lower rents / mortgages) so down comes the cost of living.
Now, think about the situation with all those outsourced workers in India. You get the exact reverse - people start to train in an industry as they see that jobs are available, which increases the pool of knowledge workers and jobs as a whole which increases the total economic value. So, the total spending power avaiable for fixed resources goes up, at which point the price of those fixed resources follows it. Which sends the cost of living and the cost of doing business up, too.
In other words, it's not the nightmare that you think it is, simply as market forces mean that the more you do this, the less the advantage of doing it is.
The other side, of course, is that the US - or anywhere else in the world for that matter, sitting in the nearly-as-rich UK, most definitely does not have an automatic right to be massively richer than the rest of the world. Why should I have money and opportunities just because I was lucky enough to be born in the UK, when the many thousands born at the same moment in less privelidged (sp?) parts of the world don't? Also, shouldn't I remember that a major source of hatred and violence is poverty and so by enforcing a situation where my country is richer, I'm only making it more likely that the poor people will try and knock my country down?
Be realistic - but also be reasonable. Poverty isn't nice, but if they can use poverty to give them a competitive advantage and haul themselves out then more power to them.
Re-read, wrong bit is fast :-)
:-)
2.5 is for bleeding edge development, pushing linux into the future. 2.4-mjc is a funny 2.4 which is focussing on improving system performance.
Not sure whether this is a good idea (heck, doesn't affect me much, using Win2K here...) but that's what's going on here
... I can't see this is the sort of thing you can generalise.
Some people here are saying they think cars are too messy, too noisy, too big, whatever. Personally, I just like finding out how _anything_ works. Yes, _anything_.
I'm the kid who dismantled half his toys to find out what was inside them, who dismantles every click-action biro he ever gets his hands on to see what the mechanism does this time (there's surprising variety)... you get the idea. I don't actually do any more severe work on my car than changing wheels, simply because I've never had the time or enthusiasm to learn and I don't trust myself not to get something wrong and cause a dangerous / expensive problem. But I can describe to you how most of the bits there work and talk about new advances in the technology. I've done almost all my own bicycle maintenance and I've spent hours working building model vechicles and components in Meccano. No dislike for the mechanical, just no incentive (yet) to work on my car.
We're all different, we're all attracted to computers for different reasons. My reason happens to be the same reason that I'm interested in cars - and, well, pretty much anything mechanical. Yours may not be. Welcome to the diverse world of Computing.
Eww, ugly :-)
I'd been shown that before but thanks for reminding me. And in the mean time, I again register my disgust at a language which mutilates simple constructs like that. Swiss Army Chainsaw, definitely.
I have to admit that, early serious training being in Pascal I'm no fan of GOTOs ;-) but my instinct would go for three nested do whiles, each with two stopping conditions. I'll only use a FOR loop if I'm certain I want it to execute that particular number of times, anything else always feels a little icky too me :-)
.. next to do while out of curiosity. Speed went through the roof.
One thing, though - speed. I remember once getting frustrated with a program's slow performance, so I swapped a critical loop from for
Now, I can't believe that's globally applicable but it was curious and I'd be interested to know if anyone else had seen that sort of test.
Little thing - remember not all record companies are RIAA members. There are bands who aren't on that list but who we can support with a clear conscience.
(Disclaimer - I write in ASP for a living, so storing a session is easy, just declare an ID in your global.asa file and reference that... No, I don't like much about it but it keeps me solvent)
One thing jumps out at me from that - proxy servers. We've got 10 or so users sharing an IP behind a proxy here. Your technique won't differentiate between us...
What about just setting an ID cookie with a short timeout but making every page bump the expiry up? OK, you've got a job identifying images that way, but it handles proxy servers and you can still use IP addresses for them.
This is exactly what I was thinking of - a database-driven timetabled firewalling regime. Simple and automatic. Remember to take out Hotmail et al, though :-) Oh, the other advantage of this is it reduces the incentive to skip classes. If you know that you'll be offline during classes automatically, that has to help.
Why not make it more than that, though? Why not block all network traffic save user filestore access during classes unless a teacher explicitly enables it? If you want web access for a class, default to the proxy only letting through pre-approved URLs so you know they're reading the right sites. Only if they're doing wider research should free(er) access be provided.
If they're in NT/2k/XP, what about requiring them to log in as a particular user account with extremely limited priveledges (as in little more than their WP) every time they enter a class, and allow the teacher to pull up a list of who's logged in differently? Dunno if it's possible, but do that automatically and you've got an even stronger truancy preventer.
Anyway, there's lots to do (and without much imagination, so I'm a little surprised to see this question getting posted) and it's not going to be that hard...
Sorry, no.
What if I want a large workspace, but I'm working on multiple applications? I create two or more windows with a total surface area greater than the desktop size and overlap them. I can switch more easily than via a taskbar (not so far to move the mouse), I can still drag items between windows, I can see what's going on in different windows. Say I'm comparing two lists of contents. Each window may well contain rather more than the list, but that's all I need at that point. So, I lay it out so I can see both lists and compare away, without losing the larger workspace in the primary application.
Or maybe one is performing a task - by just displaying a portion of its GUI, I can monitor that task without losing a potentially large portion of my desktop for its full UI.
The day a desktop GUI bans me from overlapping windows is the day I look for new GUIs.
Seriously, wasn't Welsh used to help with encryption during WW2? On the grounds that, even if they could decrypt it, they couldn't read it...
So near yet so far...
:-)
Thank you very much for the link, but I've tried that basic idea before. The best casefan I could get my hands on was an 80mm Coolermaster thing (anyone wish to comment on them?) but, even running on 12v (installed it'd be on 9) it couldn't come close to building up enough pressure in the skirt to inflate it, let alone lifting it off. And this was a smaller model (chassis based on a 4 litre ice cream tub). Whether it was shifting enough air I don't know, but it certainly couldn't sustain the pressure required.
Anyway, it looks like there's a bit more information than the last time I tried, so maybe I'll have another play over Christmas
$90? Woah, that's tempting. I wouldn't have been surprised to see 5 times that price.
:-)
Greg, who collects computer encyclopedias
(seriously...)
I had an idea a while ago for a permanent website of this type.
:-) The site provides links to shopping sites, allows you to search by category, price etc. You then give people your site ID and your friends and family have access to a list of what you _actually_ want, making present giving potentially simpler. Wouldn't be that hard to set up, organise a small commision payment from the sites you send customers to and this could make money. Pity I don't have the time or energy to actually do it :-)
;-) <duck>
:-)
:-)
:-)
:-) but any reasonable, boxed model car will be appreciated. Honestly, little £5-10 cars make me very happy...
;-) Or, if you happen to be determined to throw money at this one, an SLR body using a more modern lens mount than M42 please :-)
:-( and I _prefer_ keyboarded PDAs. I want another.
:-(
:-)
6 0144) I was discussing what I'd enter into Robot Wars / Battlebots if I was up to it, had the time & ability and so on. I'd love to see a robot of that rough type built and entered, just to see how good an idea it would really be.
;-)
You log on, create a list of things you like, things you don't like, things you already have, things you like but you're so picky about that anyone buying for you is a bad idea
Anyway, what _I'd_ actually want:
* Sorry if this makes me sound like I'm trying too hard, but I'd be delighted if someone gave money to a charity I support (or one I didn't yet but whose aims I agreed with) as my present. Let's be honest, I make good enough money and there's only me to support, so I don't need generosity particularly and could get pretty much anything below myself if I put my mind to it (and in some cases, not for very long, either). Others need it more than I do.
* Pretty much impossible to give, but I wouldn't say no to a larger circle of friends. If I came out of the Christmas season with nothing listed below (or similar) but having met just one or two people whose company I genuinely enjoyed, I'd consider it a good Christmas. On the same line, I'm single, ladies, fuzzy photo at the out-of-date URL above...
More traditionally:
* Books. Good fiction or several different non-fiction areas.
* Films. Has to be Widescreen, beyond that I'll try most films _once_
* Music. Play it safe and get me rock or metal, play it slightly more adventurous and get me orchestral music, try pushing the boat out by getting me some jazz or blues. Pretty good chance I'll like any, though, in some places
* Chocolate. Pretty difficult to go wrong with a big box full of chocolate
* Model cars. Don't care what size (though bigger is preferrable
* Camera equipment. I'd feel guilty if someone spent a fortune, but if you happen to see some M42 lenses, filters, tripods or gadget bags going cheap...
Less practically...
* Those desktop RC tanks with the laser tag are _too_ cool. 3 of them shipped to the UK and we could have some cool deathmatches at the office...
* My Psion 5 seems to have packed up
* Hovercraft are cool. Either give me a working R/C model hovercraft, or a good set of plans and components. Or, let me know what will make a good liftfan because I can't find one so far when I'm trying to build my own
* No DVD here yet, so, please, a region-switchable DVD with 5.1 out and ideally a Macrovision defeater so it'll work with a video projector. Oh, how about getting me that projector, I've already got a large empty white wall that would make a lovely screen...
* One of these days I'll get round to building a _serious_ video jukebox (thinking 100+ hours of storage here...) to replace large piles of VHS cassettes and just make it all more practical. If anyone sees them ready-made and upgradeable, that'd be cool.
* Left Europe for the first time this October, visiting my sister in Ontario, Canada. Loved it. All offers of trips to interesting parts of the world gratefully recieved, as long as they come at least half board and flights paid
* Over in a recent poll thread (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23631&cid=25
* I need to replace my car at some point...
We were really surprised at work a little while ago. Bought a cheap midi tower case and it worked pretty much like that! Higed out from the side via a small latch. Really nice to work in.
Drives were then mounted via a system of clips and thumbscrews (could be fitted _so_ easily_) while there was a 3.5" bay for the HDD pointing to the side - which meant that the rear you need to get at was pointing straight out at the hole where the side had hinged down and the motherboard.
Of course, being a cheap case, details were missing. IDE cables fitted when it was out but were tight, but some bright spark hadn't remembered to include a power cable extension, so that stops it with about 30 degrees to go until you remove it. Still, it's a start.
Which motivates them more, though? Poverty or death?
Say 'Rich Americans are keeping you poor' and some will undoubtedly be motivated to kill Americans.
Say 'Rich Americans are killing your family and friends' and I'd bet rather more will want to kill Americans.
I'm not sure _what_ I'd have done, but I can see an awful lot of negative consequences to what we've done so far.
I'm not sure which way I jump on this issue (honestly), so I'm only presenting options here. However...
Large quantities of the Muslim world are currently convinced that the USA and UK are out to destroy Islam and are just using this as a pretext. So, by attacking Afghanistan, we're currently providing a motivation for them to join organisations like al Quaeda (sp?) and increasing the available pool of terrorists. As a direct consequence of our attacking them, it's easier for them to attack us. Had we not attacked them (whether you believe it's justified retaliation or not), they'd have a smaller volunteer pool.
I have no sympathy with terrorism but I can see why people might be motivated this way.
BTW, there's also the other question of whether the current campaign can ever achieve its aims, even if they're clearly defined. I can't see that it can achieve what people want it to, or that the aims are nailed down particularly tightly...
It's a bit late in Britain for me to look up the references (sorry!) but from what I recall there was some research done as to how the Red Sea might have parted, and they found a really, really unusual but still predictable and perfectly possible wind system which could actually blow a dry channel in the Red Sea.
;-)
If anyone knows the details and wants to beat me to posting them tomorrow evening at the earliest...
No, sorry, I still disagree.
;-)
Using 3 year old hardware, I would class it as fast in isolation and greased lightning in comparison with IE5. I haven't noticed a significant lag unless I was putting it under loads most users never will, either. I see the point about the widget set, but I personally quite like the new stuff and wouldn't say that it was too different when left in Classic theme. On that front I'd prefer the ability to use small toolbar icons, as I could with NS4, but nothing's perfect, sadly
Look and feel I agree it's different, though I think we overestimate how much this will confuse people., it's close enough. Performance, I suspect the difference people will notice is that it's _faster_.
News sites, normally. I tend to browse several in parallel, and opening a whole series of stories in new windows. Gets round the slow speed of dialup a little, as I'm opening a whole heap of stories while I'm reading one.
:-)
Call me odd if you want, but I seem to make a pretty good browser stresstest
I have to say, I really don't understand people's comments about speed. FWIW this experience is with, Windows 2000 on a P-II 128 MB, Win98 on P-II 350 and 400 (both 128 MB) and oddly behaving Duron 700 (256 MB). Nothing exactly cutting edge, in other words.
I started playing with Mozilla 0.9.5 last week, first Mozilla build in some time. It's not quite as fast as Netscape 4.7 but way, way faster than IE5. Blows it straight out of the water. IE will sometimes take 10+ seconds to render a window, Mozilla, as long as it's been loaded into memory before like IE, is less than a second. It's faster in operation, too.
It's not perfect - the back button has died a couple of times, while really, stupidly heavy session (20+ windows, new ones opening all the time) slowed it down a little and I've discovered today it's not too fond of mod points - but hey, neither's IE under W98. They smear all over the place, misplace themselves, eventually run out altogether and too many windows of that crashes the machine.
Anyway. Mozilla and XUL may have been slow once (dunno, didn't use it then), but it isn't any more. Lovely and fast, really.
Sorry to be a spoilsport, but...
That would very definitely be illegal under UK law. You and the likely recipents of your aid being in the US means that's not something to worry about, but my personal morality is similar to UK law on this point.
Basically, the Computer Misuse Act means that you can't use a computer system without permission, even if you've logged in. If a username and password for some interesting but off-limits computer dropped into my lap, I couldn't use it without first obtaining permission. Or, if I found an open share, I couldn't connect to it and perform an action over it.
You're trying to perform a civic duty by removing an infected machine from the internet. But you're also changing the configuration of a machine in a way that you can't guarantee won't harm the machine, and which will guarantee that you can't then get back in to check if the update was successful and correct any problems.
Maybe the greater public service should override this? Maybe, but one of the first worms to do damage was an autoupdate worm which had a bug in it. Someone meant well, believed they were doing good but caused trouble and demonstrated why worms and autoupdating aren't such hot ideas. Including an 'I was only trying to help' defence makes it rather hard to prosecute many proper viruses and worms - perhaps Outlook viruses are only trying to help by demonstrating exactly what can be done with Outlook to push people onto more secure mailers, and any destructive or disruptive payload is simply a motivation tool?
If I'm getting portscanned particularly often by a certain IP address, I'll normally forward a firewall log of the events to whichever ISP the traceroute finds. If I find out the offender's e-mail address, they'll get a mail from me. In this case I'd normally mail the ISP and let them deal with informing their user - who is, after all, causing problems for the ISP so it's in their interest to do something about it. I suppose I might bend the law a little by leaving a short text file on their system explaining the problem and how to fix it. Breaking the law, yes, but with no destructive possibility at all.
But I'd never run a patch for them, and I'm very glad that it's illegal to do that in this country.
OK, I've now seen it and I see what they're doing, I just don't see that it can work. And yes, I'm a computer programmer who plays with Meccano, not a mechanical engineer.
:-) The cylinder block becomes O-shaped with the holes placed radially around the rim. As opposed to an old radial engine, the cylinders are parallel to the hole in the O. The powershaft runs through the centre. At one end you have a plate with holes in it to act as the valves, at the other a flange aligned with the bottom of the pistons but with a sinewave shaped edge. As the piston fires it pushes the ring round, and the rim then pushes the piston up with the next upsweep of its curve. Still very few moving parts, apparently benchtested very nicely. Still has the reciprocating masses of any piston engine and the inefficiencies associated with them but, frankly, McMaster's work is only going further to convince me that these are unavoidable in serious, practical applications.
Let's think about what this has to do to get motion. Push an air and fuel mixture into a combustion chamber, ignite it and push it back out again. A normal machine will squash the mixture before igniting, which helps somewhat but could concievably be removed from the equation I suppose.
Now, let's look at this machine. There's no automatic force to suck the fuel-air mixture in or blow it out. The reciprocating motion of a piston works here, or the funny motion in a wankel engine squashes blocked off sections. This is simply rotating in the chamber.
OK, once every rotation (per side) it'll seal off one of those chambers in the end cone. Well, badly seal, because you have two convex surfaces against each other. You can fire at this point happily which, with a little momentum, will indeed force the wobbly plate to rise and so, with timing and repetition, to rotate. But, how do you actually get the fuel-air mixture in there? You can't compress it with this mechanism alone, nor will it suck it into the chamber by itself. You're going to have to push it in, already sufficiently compressed to fire efficiently, along with firing it, all in the small portion of the rotation when it's close to being sealed. Push in the mixture when it isn't sealed and it leaks out, creating inefficienty and emissions problems. Fire when it isn't sealed and there's no energy to rotate it because it all escapes by much easier means. You'll need massively precise timing for this to work at all, and I'm not massively confident about that. Now, open a valve somewhere fast enough and the exhaust gas should escape (the gas wanting to expand very quickly at that point, after all) but you'll need very low back pressure in the exhaust system if it's going to move out in any quantity and you can't get rid of it all, you're simply not pumping it you're just relying on it expanding and escaping quickly enough. Some can't, by definition, as the pressure inside the chamber will be lowered to outside pressure or below, at which point there's no reason for it to move.
Note the need for a seal. The surface of the cone and the wobbly plate need to touch (near as makes no difference) along the radius to seal the chamber. The only way for that to work is if the centre of the plate and the peak of the cone are the same point. The animation isn't clear but I'm not convinced they are. Which brings me to another point - why on earth is that central sphere there? It will reduce the internal volume of the combustion chamber while maintaining an outer diameter (if that's critical, no way I can tell without better physics or a sample to test). But why a sphere, if that's a useful end? Means you have to make three surfaces, each curved in two planes and precisely aligned. A simple cylinder would still reduce the internal volume but could be made very much more easily.
Another poster contended that this would wobble. I disagree - I can't see a single out-of-balance force. I agree, though, that the central plate would need to be very strong or it'll buckle.
It's concievable that this could work, but I'm not convinced and it seems to have some fundamental problems to overcome. A more promising engine, IMO, was by the Australian Orbital company (orbeng.com.au, IIRC). Closer to a conventional engine (still pistons) but a tiny number of moving parts again. This is all from memory, BTW, as I can't find details for this ATM
All in all it's interesting but I'm far from convinced it's practical.
I've been, on and off, a member of the West London Meccano Society (featured somewhere in the link above) since I was ooh, too young to do anything serious with Meccano, as opposed to now being too busy... Introduced by my Dad, who's built more Meccano trucks and cranes than I care to remember, along with writing many modelplans for them and various texts on particular areas of model construction - a review of how to build different types of vehicle suspension system, for example. Sorry, no URL for his work but they're sold by MW Models under the Everything Automotive banner.
Anyway. I was fortunate enough to be at this year's SkegEx show in Skegness, England for a little while. Some absolutely stunning models were on show - if anyone wants to see more photos (though no plans I'm afraid) of some really, really good models, I can heartily recommend John Thorpe's page though there's a lot of photos so it's a little slow to load :-) Always difficult to call a favourite, but three stick out in my memory:
Very, very impressive, all of them.
First off, I'm not an 'open source everything' person, as anyone who recognises me will know. And no, I'm not bigheaded enough to believe that more than a handful will recognise me, especially as I've recently changed signatures :-)
;-)
Anyway. By definition, an effective conduct remedy requires oversight. Telling them to play nice without checking they do is a total waste of time. Bush & Co don't want to break up but can't realistically do nothing, so they're overseeing.
Forcing open APIs, protocols and file formats is all well and good - but you need to check that they're accurate. Which means that someone needs to be able to get at the source and confirm that they're telling the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth.
If that's the case then, every time some new release is made then someone has to read the source, read the documentation and confirm that they're the same. This isn't going to be quick or simple. It requires a reasonable number of pretty well qualified staff to be employed by the US government, and it may well delay releases while they read and work with the source. It clearly slows Microsoft's business and so potentially harms their freedom to react, compete and innovate, while it's expensive for the government.
By far the simpler solution is to require the source to be open. Not necessarily under a modifiable license, read only would be fine. But, force the source to be visible and the compiler to be declared and available, and you can check all you want quickly, simply and easily. Compile the source, compare binaries...
I know it's going to be harder to get the information out from straight source than from documentation, so maybe more has to come out too. But that would seem the sensible baseline to work from. In terms of effectiveness and size of government involvement, it would seem to fit what the current US government would want.
Even if it has Microsoft sponsoring IOCC as a recruitment challenge
Thinking of an extremely small sample set of femal friends & relatives, many have computers but dedicated audio equipment is often lacking. So, computers get used as CD players... So I'd concur with your assessment.
:-)
Let's hope this causes them (the record company, that is) problems