... after all, it wouldn't do to make a BIOS hack that would check for the 'correct' OS without also including some encryption, right? just to be on the safe side...
in our household, we have a zaurus, running linux (bought last week) and two cassiopeia e-125's (bought several months ago)...
we're all programmers. each of us with a pda. but i can tell you, if you wanna program on the damn things, linux beats windows... why? well, you've got more options.
for the casio's, we've got: -python 1.x interpreter (hey, it's amusing, okay?) -the microsoft SDK (3.0 and 4.0, more on that later.) -vb (don't... just don't.)
for the zaurus, we've got: -everything you could imagine.
let me expand on that -- because the linux pda runs Qt natively, you can use the Qt-[Borland-Builder-esque] designer to build applications. it's great. it's c++, and the framework doesn't suck. didn't take long, and if you're used to Borland Builder... you're all set (how did they not get sued?) You can also shrug off the help of a GUI, and use your favorite gcc, with cross-compilation support. You can also install all sorts of interpreters on it. You can install a webserver and php, for example. Python, perl... whatever. Recompile, and push to the pda. Or even better, install gcc on the pda, and compile there! (okay, maybe not -- it's not the fastest thing around.)
Now, for windows... how many of you actually -love- win32api calls that are broken, the ability to develop -only- under nt/w2k/xp (yes, we're running it, but c'mon... choices?) and the fact that you pretty much have to use eMbedded Visual Studio to do your work? It's a pain... but it does work. You just don't have many options. The VB thing is easy to use, but for those of us who hate VB, there's still C++... only... it's really not helpful. At all. It would help if we had a bit more experience with visual studio... but as we use it only for command-line apps, and run to builder for anything window-y... well... we've already got a bias against it.
Okay, so maybe we suck at visual studio. But at least the Zaurus offers a -lot- of options for creating your own programs. No, you won't be able to just port your X apps to it directly (it -is- Qt, not X.)
Did i mention it was cool to just ftp to your zaurus, etc.? Cassiopeia support under linux is this: take the CF card out... insert into CF card reader, mount it (in my case, it thinks it's sda1) and have fun that way.
... it's about the data. yes, the US has Social Security Numbers. most countries have something similar, if they've managed to stop the killing in the streets. it's just too handy...
a) in the united states, i believe there is a law the prevents (in theory) different branches of the government from centralizing all of the data they have about you. not that any of you have been checking recently to make -sure- they're not... but in theory, this is supposed to somehow prevent your privacy from being totally breached. bah. it's the government. it already owns you from birth anyway... if you can't escape laws, why escape identification?...
b) without the use of id numbers guaranteed by the government to be semi-unique (SSN's are not actually unique -- there have been quite a few reported cases of the same SSN being assigned to multiple physical beings at once, even while both were alive. that wasn't supposed to happen, but it did)... most places would have to rely on a hash of your name (spelling, order, chunks) and birthday (just make sure you give it to them in mm/dd/yyyy if you're in the states, or dd/mm/yyyy elsewhere.) it's already bad enough in databases as it is... do you -really- want DBA's who don't know what they're doing setting up those constraints?
c) theft of the id number is a problem. but that's not exactly your government's fault -- the main cases i've known of involve the use of an SSN in the credit arena -- registering for new credit cards, etc. my roommate has, so far, had i think 5 different cases of people opening bank accounts in his name. the dork, however, didn't realize that the bank might use the address linked to the SSN in order to verify the information. the banks called him, and he was able to shutdown the operation before it got expensive.
d) consider theft of other id -- credit card number? doesn't it make you somewhat ancy when you pay with a credit card at a restaurant... and leave a signed slip of paper, often containing your full 16-digit account number -and- expiration date on the table? for one thing, if someone walks off with it... the restaurant is pissed at you for not paying. and then... well... that random person can now buy online, under your name (unless the site happens to required the 3 (sometimes 4?) digit number on the back of the card) or checks your shipping address vociferally.)
so then... does the lack of numeric primary keys -really- lead to a lack of privacy? i'd say no. if anything, it leads to privacy. with HIPAA (government-enforced medical privacy act) you -may- release information from your medical database to random parties, so long as it is impossible for those random parties to link the data back to actual people. you are allowed, however, to include your own information with it, to help -you- link it back to the original individual if necessary. sequentially-numbered primary keys work quite well for that, and users usually don't even have to notice that records aren't linked by a concatenation of 16 fields involving all sorts of text fields (yes, i had to replace a DB built by an idiot)... in fact, my users quite enjoyed it! (what? you mean i can change info... and it won't get confused! oh my!)
so really, grow up. identification is one thing to worry about... but not the biggest. you should be worried about where that information goes, and who has it... and why. consider, for example, something you (arguably) have less control over than your records with the U.S. federal government: your credit history. hard to see, hard to interpret... and a pain to do anything about. why? because they can. and there, it's about money... (okay, so taxes are money too -- but there's gotta be a difference somewhere... right?)... what are you doing that you need privacy for? you make me suspicious... maybe i should stick some extra cameras on your house. and watch you.
i was having trouble believing nobody so far remembered ZZT -- you're right, it was neat. btw, noticed there's a windows version? don't think they improved the graphics much... but hey, text was versatile enough, right? textures and all... 16 colors of doom...
shouldn't that be when, say,... a judge or jury does? lawyers are not the law. even laws don't say what -you- are doing is wrong. courts hold that position, by comparing your actions against and template, matching them up and judging the severity of the bitmask.
same reason for not listening to people telling you what god thinks of you. but that's another story.
yes. they are not allowed to ever describe anything they see, visually or not, for fear of copyright violation. in fact, they are required never to think about what they know, especially if it's an mp3, past the 24 hour period after initial contact with a copyrightable entity. they must be careful when quoting lines from movies: they might be reproducing without permission from the copyright holders.
no, seriously. the human mind is the next place they'll start looking for copyright issues. once the RIAA and MPAA eliminate the "analog" forms of data so they can help microsoft setup palladium... they'll want to change humans too, so they can control their digital rights. can't have you describing what you saw in a movie, other people might not pay to go see it! whistling tunes in your car, etc.? think it's fair use now... yes. but if we continue to let people think copyrights are themselves a -right- that you have, rather than a -gift- collectively given by the community to -encourage- production and dessimination of good, new media (that does -not- include popular teenage-level music)... we're going to loose all our rights to such media. it's bad enough copyrights are pretty sure not to run out during your lifetime on anything produced during said lifetime: you never get to say 'i remember when that came out' in the same sentence as 'you want a legal copy?'...
palladium: enabling media-generators to expire and lock down your knowledge two weeks after you start knowing it. human ingenuity indeed. yup.
so, do we actually know the physics of nuclear explosions well enough that such a powerful computer can serve us? last i knew, we were a bit shaky on the whole quantum-level interactions... wouldn't those show up fairly well here? or are more classical (newtonian) physics sufficient for this?
i'd just hate to waste all that cpu power on an equation that isn't accurate... quake is a much better use for it.
did anybody else get the spam snail-mail from microsoft a few months back claiming that XML, Win2k, etc. would solve every problem that ever came my way?
Effectively, microsoft claimed that having XML capabilities for import/export in your company would make it immediately possible to interface to other companies with XML data in/out.
Not -once- did they mention that, say, your databases wouldn't contain compatible information? that your table layouts wouldn't match? that your lookup tables would need to be patched, or maybe that they just plain don't keep the information you want? No. XML made it all work.
It's sad to see something as potentially useful as XML turned into something it's not, so that even its legitimate uses might be forgotten. It's happened before, it will happen again.
it's a many-to-many. what's so hard about that? while you're at it, store when they read it and what they thought of it...
rdbms' can model anything, given thought. the main problem is recognizing derivation-type relationships within their structures. i'm a bit irritated that i have slightly different types of information being kept in a single table, with indicators as to which "type" of object the rows are. it's a bit like Unions in C, or the way X does its messaging. On the other hand, it's really easy to run queries, and the forms that handle those tables that contain multiple "derived" types have trivial code to identify and handle the slightly different requirements of each "type."
i'd like to see object-oriented databases. i'd like to model my objects that way. i'd gladly give up PK's/FK's for "pointers" and a simpler way of life. but i've read the specs for OODBMS', and it looks like they don't fully grasp what OO entails. it's sad.
until then, i'll rely on an rdms, because it works, and most of the time, it does what i want it to do...
our school uses CyberPatrol... i've actually found myself blocked for legit. sites... so i used their webpage to ask the database -why- the site was blocked? the answer, a category that isn't even listed as one of the possible categories, even less one that our school would have subscribed to... the category? computer-related. amusing, eh?
I think you should take into account that the 'rape of innocent minds' is happening every day, whether it be in church, school, on the computer, in front of the tv, or listening to parents.
Authority, in all its forms, rapes the innocent mind of its ability to make its own decisions based on variety. Authority, as you put forward, is a fall-back position for those who seek forward for new horizons, find none, are scared, or feel inhibited, and need to fall back onto something safe.
It's good for you that you have your beliefs. I held them too, once, for years. In fact, I was planning on being the missionary of the computer gaming industry. But do you realize that it is Christians, of all people, that made me loose my faith, because they were the most intolerant, narrow minded bigots I had ever been around? There was no such thing as objectivity, or justice, or thought, or decision: all was but authority and belief.
If you want to build a world based on thoughtlessly following ancient traditions for no other reason than because you were told about them so many times that you finally gave in to them, fine... but allow those who would like to play constructive games in which they are forced to think for themselves, invent solutions, and be creative and positively social to do so, without calling into question whether they're headed to a plausible but totally unnecessary (in the grand scheme of things) heaven or hell...
Slashdot Mirror
... after all, it wouldn't do to make a BIOS hack that would check for the 'correct' OS without also including some encryption, right? just to be on the safe side ...
in our household, we have a zaurus, running linux (bought last week) and two cassiopeia e-125's (bought several months ago) ...
... why? well, you've got more options.
... just don't.)
... you're all set (how did they not get sued?) You can also shrug off the help of a GUI, and use your favorite gcc, with cross-compilation support. You can also install all sorts of interpreters on it. You can install a webserver and php, for example. Python, perl ... whatever. Recompile, and push to the pda. Or even better, install gcc on the pda, and compile there! (okay, maybe not -- it's not the fastest thing around.)
... how many of you actually -love- win32api calls that are broken, the ability to develop -only- under nt/w2k/xp (yes, we're running it, but c'mon ... choices?) and the fact that you pretty much have to use eMbedded Visual Studio to do your work? It's a pain ... but it does work. You just don't have many options. The VB thing is easy to use, but for those of us who hate VB, there's still C++ ... only ... it's really not helpful. At all. It would help if we had a bit more experience with visual studio ... but as we use it only for command-line apps, and run to builder for anything window-y ... well ... we've already got a bias against it.
... insert into CF card reader, mount it (in my case, it thinks it's sda1) and have fun that way.
we're all programmers. each of us with a pda. but i can tell you, if you wanna program on the damn things, linux beats windows
for the casio's, we've got:
-python 1.x interpreter (hey, it's amusing, okay?)
-the microsoft SDK (3.0 and 4.0, more on that later.)
-vb (don't
for the zaurus, we've got:
-everything you could imagine.
let me expand on that -- because the linux pda runs Qt natively, you can use the Qt-[Borland-Builder-esque] designer to build applications. it's great. it's c++, and the framework doesn't suck. didn't take long, and if you're used to Borland Builder
Now, for windows
Okay, so maybe we suck at visual studio. But at least the Zaurus offers a -lot- of options for creating your own programs. No, you won't be able to just port your X apps to it directly (it -is- Qt, not X.)
Did i mention it was cool to just ftp to your zaurus, etc.? Cassiopeia support under linux is this: take the CF card out
i've got moderator privileges ... can i not mark this entire article as trollbait (-1)? damn it ...
... it's about the data. yes, the US has Social Security Numbers. most countries have something similar, if they've managed to stop the killing in the streets. it's just too handy ...
... but in theory, this is supposed to somehow prevent your privacy from being totally breached. bah. it's the government. it already owns you from birth anyway ... if you can't escape laws, why escape identification? ...
... most places would have to rely on a hash of your name (spelling, order, chunks) and birthday (just make sure you give it to them in mm/dd/yyyy if you're in the states, or dd/mm/yyyy elsewhere.) it's already bad enough in databases as it is ... do you -really- want DBA's who don't know what they're doing setting up those constraints?
... and leave a signed slip of paper, often containing your full 16-digit account number -and- expiration date on the table? for one thing, if someone walks off with it ... the restaurant is pissed at you for not paying. and then ... well ... that random person can now buy online, under your name (unless the site happens to required the 3 (sometimes 4?) digit number on the back of the card) or checks your shipping address vociferally.)
... does the lack of numeric primary keys -really- lead to a lack of privacy? i'd say no. if anything, it leads to privacy. with HIPAA (government-enforced medical privacy act) you -may- release information from your medical database to random parties, so long as it is impossible for those random parties to link the data back to actual people. you are allowed, however, to include your own information with it, to help -you- link it back to the original individual if necessary. sequentially-numbered primary keys work quite well for that, and users usually don't even have to notice that records aren't linked by a concatenation of 16 fields involving all sorts of text fields (yes, i had to replace a DB built by an idiot) ... in fact, my users quite enjoyed it! (what? you mean i can change info ... and it won't get confused! oh my!)
... but not the biggest. you should be worried about where that information goes, and who has it ... and why. consider, for example, something you (arguably) have less control over than your records with the U.S. federal government: your credit history. hard to see, hard to interpret ... and a pain to do anything about. why? because they can. and there, it's about money ... (okay, so taxes are money too -- but there's gotta be a difference somewhere ... right?) ... what are you doing that you need privacy for? you make me suspicious ... maybe i should stick some extra cameras on your house. and watch you.
a) in the united states, i believe there is a law the prevents (in theory) different branches of the government from centralizing all of the data they have about you. not that any of you have been checking recently to make -sure- they're not
b) without the use of id numbers guaranteed by the government to be semi-unique (SSN's are not actually unique -- there have been quite a few reported cases of the same SSN being assigned to multiple physical beings at once, even while both were alive. that wasn't supposed to happen, but it did)
c) theft of the id number is a problem. but that's not exactly your government's fault -- the main cases i've known of involve the use of an SSN in the credit arena -- registering for new credit cards, etc. my roommate has, so far, had i think 5 different cases of people opening bank accounts in his name. the dork, however, didn't realize that the bank might use the address linked to the SSN in order to verify the information. the banks called him, and he was able to shutdown the operation before it got expensive.
d) consider theft of other id -- credit card number? doesn't it make you somewhat ancy when you pay with a credit card at a restaurant
so then
so really, grow up. identification is one thing to worry about
i was having trouble believing nobody so far remembered ZZT -- you're right, it was neat. btw, noticed there's a windows version? don't think they improved the graphics much ... but hey, text was versatile enough, right? textures and all ... 16 colors of doom ...
shouldn't that be when, say, ... a judge or jury does? lawyers are not the law. even laws don't say what -you- are doing is wrong. courts hold that position, by comparing your actions against and template, matching them up and judging the severity of the bitmask.
same reason for not listening to people telling you what god thinks of you. but that's another story.
yes. they are not allowed to ever describe anything they see, visually or not, for fear of copyright violation. in fact, they are required never to think about what they know, especially if it's an mp3, past the 24 hour period after initial contact with a copyrightable entity. they must be careful when quoting lines from movies: they might be reproducing without permission from the copyright holders.
... they'll want to change humans too, so they can control their digital rights. can't have you describing what you saw in a movie, other people might not pay to go see it! whistling tunes in your car, etc.? think it's fair use now ... yes. but if we continue to let people think copyrights are themselves a -right- that you have, rather than a -gift- collectively given by the community to -encourage- production and dessimination of good, new media (that does -not- include popular teenage-level music) ... we're going to loose all our rights to such media. it's bad enough copyrights are pretty sure not to run out during your lifetime on anything produced during said lifetime: you never get to say 'i remember when that came out' in the same sentence as 'you want a legal copy?' ...
no, seriously. the human mind is the next place they'll start looking for copyright issues. once the RIAA and MPAA eliminate the "analog" forms of data so they can help microsoft setup palladium
palladium: enabling media-generators to expire and lock down your knowledge two weeks after you start knowing it. human ingenuity indeed. yup.
so, do we actually know the physics of nuclear explosions well enough that such a powerful computer can serve us? last i knew, we were a bit shaky on the whole quantum-level interactions ... wouldn't those show up fairly well here? or are more classical (newtonian) physics sufficient for this?
... quake is a much better use for it.
i'd just hate to waste all that cpu power on an equation that isn't accurate
I don't socialize with C coders who use goto. Didn't Dijkstra teach you not to say naughty things like that?
In true OOP form, it should be...
this->Go(location);
Damn you coders and your stinky habits... beer and goto's... will this never end?
did anybody else get the spam snail-mail from microsoft a few months back claiming that XML, Win2k, etc. would solve every problem that ever came my way?
Effectively, microsoft claimed that having XML capabilities for import/export in your company would make it immediately possible to interface to other companies with XML data in/out.
Not -once- did they mention that, say, your databases wouldn't contain compatible information? that your table layouts wouldn't match? that your lookup tables would need to be patched, or maybe that they just plain don't keep the information you want? No. XML made it all work.
It's sad to see something as potentially useful as XML turned into something it's not, so that even its legitimate uses might be forgotten. It's happened before, it will happen again.
-Philip
it's a many-to-many. what's so hard about that? while you're at it, store when they read it and what they thought of it...
rdbms' can model anything, given thought. the main problem is recognizing derivation-type relationships within their structures. i'm a bit irritated that i have slightly different types of information being kept in a single table, with indicators as to which "type" of object the rows are. it's a bit like Unions in C, or the way X does its messaging. On the other hand, it's really easy to run queries, and the forms that handle those tables that contain multiple "derived" types have trivial code to identify and handle the slightly different requirements of each "type."
i'd like to see object-oriented databases. i'd like to model my objects that way. i'd gladly give up PK's/FK's for "pointers" and a simpler way of life. but i've read the specs for OODBMS', and it looks like they don't fully grasp what OO entails. it's sad.
until then, i'll rely on an rdms, because it works, and most of the time, it does what i want it to do...
firebird!
-philip
our school uses CyberPatrol... i've actually found myself blocked for legit. sites... so i used their webpage to ask the database -why- the site was blocked? the answer, a category that isn't even listed as one of the possible categories, even less one that our school would have subscribed to... the category? computer-related. amusing, eh?
I think you should take into account that the 'rape of innocent minds' is happening every day, whether it be in church, school, on the computer, in front of the tv, or listening to parents. Authority, in all its forms, rapes the innocent mind of its ability to make its own decisions based on variety. Authority, as you put forward, is a fall-back position for those who seek forward for new horizons, find none, are scared, or feel inhibited, and need to fall back onto something safe. It's good for you that you have your beliefs. I held them too, once, for years. In fact, I was planning on being the missionary of the computer gaming industry. But do you realize that it is Christians, of all people, that made me loose my faith, because they were the most intolerant, narrow minded bigots I had ever been around? There was no such thing as objectivity, or justice, or thought, or decision: all was but authority and belief. If you want to build a world based on thoughtlessly following ancient traditions for no other reason than because you were told about them so many times that you finally gave in to them, fine... but allow those who would like to play constructive games in which they are forced to think for themselves, invent solutions, and be creative and positively social to do so, without calling into question whether they're headed to a plausible but totally unnecessary (in the grand scheme of things) heaven or hell...