It is useless - more to the point, the only thing you need to do to avoid any chance of downloading a virus via bluetooth is to... disable bluetooth when you're not using it! This also extends battery life. In fact, I'd image just about any phone would have BT disabled by default to help conserve power, and any that didn't would certainly have it set to not advertise the phones presence.
Sounds to me like a company trying to scam the technically ignorant average phone user...
I took the RHCE (one week fast-track course) as the company were paying, and it was a week off at their expense as far as I was concerned. I found it pretty easy to pass, but since it's a performance based exam (ie, you actually have to solve real problems with the machine in front of you, or configure things to spec to a pretty tight schedule) you do have to know your stuff to have any chance in passine. This is unlike most "certifications" where at most you need to simply parrot what you've been trained, or just tick boxes.
I can't say I actually learned anything during the course, (maybe had my memory refreshed though!) but I'd consider it at least an indication of a person's ability to configure a system, have some idea of the general system layout and how to troubleshoot common problems.
As far as I remember, the image had the wrong aspect ratio (eg, 300x200, and I needed it scaled to 150x150). So I scaled it to 150x100, then set the image size to 150x150. Problem then was that the background was transparent (original image had a background colour). No problem, I thought, just set the canvas colour - no option for that that I could find. So I decided to create a new layer the size of the image, fill it with colour and move it below the original. New problem: no way to change z-stacking of layers. I've since found out that unless the layers have alpha-channels set, the restacking is disabled (why?!) That was the point on that occasion that I said "screw it", and used an old copy of Paintshop Pro 5, which allowed me to handle the job in all of 20 seconds...
I don't think I'll be using Gimp again. I'm sure it's more productive to spend an hour installing PS or Fireworks under Wine than several hours looking up various Gimp idiosyncrasies and hidden "features" on Google.
Now the "usability" people will ruin GIMP the same way they ruined GNOME.
Somehow I doubt that's possible - unless they add "Spacial layers" so that you have to edit each one in a separate window;-).
I use Linux on my desktop at work, and have Gimp installed, and I've found it the least usable program I've ever seen. Admittedly it's rare that I need to work with images at work (I use Fireworks and PS at home) but even operations such as resizing and adding a background to an image are ridiculously long-winded. For instance, I had to Google to find out why the option to change the stacking order of layers is greyed out by default - there's no sane reason for it...
Every time I've attempted to use it I've found it so frustrating; it feels as though you're fighting the program rather than using it; that I've ended up giving up in disgust and found a spare Windows machine to do the job. I'm sure it have some great features, but it's viciously protective of them and doesn't want anyone to use them!
Why not fight fire with fire? These scum have placed themselves outside of the "law" (such as it is when applied to the 'net), and so should not be protected by it. I say do whatever works. The sort of scum who send spam and run spamvertised sites care about nothing other than making money, no matter what the damage is. The only thing they will respond to is a force that affects their ability to make money. Forcing them to pay stratospheric bandwidth bills, or wade through tens of thousands of garbage "sales enquiries" will affect their "business model".
As for the hand-wringers and navel gazers claiming it's "vigilantism", I'm assuming they also considered the US' attack on Afghanistan after 9/11 "vigilantism", or Europe fighting back against the Nazi's as "vigilantism" too? Yeah, we should just sit down and have nice pleasant debates with scum... sure... that'll work... <rolls eyes>
It's rubbish to say that it was impossible for you to email your users. You could easily have set up another account at another colo for a few bucks and set up a simple script to accept and relay the mail out.
I think the SBLs are great, as the administrator of several relays, they save me a lot of work (along with URL BLs). They DO encourage hosts to ditch the scumbags in double quick time - I've been phoned by web hosts within minutes after emailing to inform them I was about to submit their domains/netblocks and spammy customers to the RBLs, with them promising to fix the problem if I hold off. In some cases the same netblock was spewing spam the next day, in which case they were straight on the RBL, but in some cases something probably got done.
Yes, if my sites were BL'd, it might be a little irritating for the half hour or so it would take to set up a relay, but it's not the end of the world...
is when people who are very intelligent compared to the rest of the public think they know it all. I think there is probably nothing worse than arguing with someone who thinks that because they are brilliant in one area that they are now all of a sudden uniquely qualified to render an opinion in all areas.
Welcome to Slashdot...
Re:It's a copy. NO! Copy won't transfer. Goes like
on
Download Your Brain
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Become one with the machine. Be the machine. But in this case, machine becomes you instead...
I think that only happens in Soviet Russia...
Speed up the interface a bit!
on
Just a Phone?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
This probably sounds a bit hypocrytical coming from someone who has written java apps for phones, but one thing that does annoy me about the modern handsets is the sluggish interface due to the anti-aliased true-type fonts, animation, heavy operating system overhead (relative to the CPU), colour menus and other crap that gets in the way when you just want to make a quick call. I've lost cound of the number of times I've called directory enquiries, got a number and tried to type it in before forgetting it, (I'm too lazy to use a pen) and after tapping away, realise it's missed the first one or two digits. My 7 year old wireless home phone handset can take the digits as fast as I can punch them in, so why can't a mobile costing 300-400 pounds?
While I'm at it, am I the only one who wishes that directory enquiries could beam a number to your phone in a specific format, so that you could just call by viewing the text message and using a "convert to number" type option (in the UK we do get a text message, but it's a case of reading the message, remembering the number, backing out back to the main interface and typing it in)? Maybe other countries do this?
Back to the topic, why not have "Advanced user", "Normal user" and "Dimwit" settings. Default to "Dimwit", mode which would have by default two menu options "stored numbers" and "settings". If stored numbers was picked, it would show a list of 9 numbers (maximum, or whatever will fit on the display) and a prompt text telling the user to just press key 1-9 to call, or 0 to cancel. If from the main menu the user starts typing in a number, the two options are "Store number", or "Cancel". The settings menu for the "Dimwit" user would only allow a change to another user type. Probably best not to use the word "Dimwit" in the option list though I guess...
Really, it's not rocket surgery, using a phone though, and as long as the extras don't get in the way of normal functionality, who cares how many bells and whistles there are? If you don't want to use them, then don't. You wouldn't decide not to buy a car simply because it had too many gadgets, would you? Defaulting to predictive text is one of my pet hates though I hate predictive text, and always disable it, but plenty of handsets make doing so difficult or at least non-obvious.
Excuse me, just how do YOU know how many people complained to the advertisers? I personally complained to Google (politely), and received a response that they were in fact investigating the matter. This would suggest that I wasn't alone......It also makes me a bigger fan of Google;-)
Talk to a couple of your more violent friends. Organise a meeting between them and your boss after he leaves work. If he's in hospital for 2 weeks, he'll cease to be your problems.
I don't think you'd need to be a genius to do that. I remember back in the day when I was learning x86 assembler on my old 486. This was back when WFW+DOS was the standard install, and I decided to write my own DOS program to connect to bulletin boards - no, I didn't have to as there plenty to download, but the sheer thrill of finally getting something to work after days of writing the low level interrupt handler for the UART, the flow control, and finally the front end (which to be honest was pretty rough and ready!) was well worth it.
Shortly after I went on to write a TCP/IP stack with simple telnet client built in to access my first real ISP (demon internet). It's kind of like building your own kit car, and then blasting it around the roads - sure, it'll likely have problems, and maybe fall apart, but while it's working, it's hard to keep a grin off of your face.
Somehow, calling someone elses code to do everything for you just doesn't have the same kick...
I'm surprised that Slashdot actually posted this drivel on the front page (well actually the real surprise was the lack of spelling errors!) As has been the case for several months now, O'Gara's articles have become deliberately more provocative and frankly ridiculous as she attempts to push up the banner hits on the LBW/LBN website. I don't think she even bothers to cite anything resembling a fact anymore, but simply blurts out the most ridiculous thoughts that she finds stomping around the inside of her head.
For anyone who isn't aware, one of the other regular "writers" for LBW/LBN was recently outed, caught trolling on the SCOX message board to pull in more hits with his crackpot theories. It's looking like a company policy.
There's no doubt that MOG is simply using this Wallace fellow to help finance the ailing website. Personally I'm not going to visit it, and I'd suggest anyone else with any sense also not bother. The slashdot effect is exactly the thing they wish for over there... unless everyone visits with Lynx, or images turned off, of course;-)
LBW/LBN is fast becoming the "Jerry Springer show" of the tech news sites...
If you can't put the bad users on a slow switch, and force them through an even slower proxy to make their life hell, then see if you can't organise a minimum disconnection period. Say 10 days or so to reconnect the idiots who keep getting infected. Since you control the dhcp server, you could filter them out by their mac address so they can't wander over to someone elses room to connect. Yes, they could probably circumvent this with a little knowhow, but let's face it, an idiot who's managing to become a virus writer's bitch every week isn't likely to have too much in the way of technical knowledge...
I second this, I always build apache+php from source on any distro to ensure my servers always have the same setup and config no matter which base distro is running under them.
Gentoo is probably actually worse than Redhat (the only other distro I use) at breaking services after an update; especially when libraries change which seems frequent; so I almost always reboot after a major update to see what fails to start up;-)
I still like Gentoo (use it on my desktop and personal server), but I wouldn't use it on any company server due to the problems with updates leaving the system in an unstable state.
I have built (and sold) many applications which took less than 4 hours to develop - these include a webbrowser, email client, contacts database, file searching tools and a image viewer.
If I had tried to do this in C, C++, or even java it would have taken weeks.
If you honestly think it would take "weeks" to write any of those apps in Java, then maybe it's best you do stick to basic.
What amazes me is that someone actually paid you for any of these apps, since they're all freely available in many different forms already - and probably a lot more robust than your 4 hour VB efforts...
Russia, China, India... Who'd have thought these would be new sources of spam?! I routinely block these domains/net blocks from sending email into our networks (along with a few of the other well known spam sludge pits), so would it really be that difficult to firewall out all VOIP traffic from these places too? Maybe if enough people just cut them off they'd change their attitudes to providing havens for (mostly) American spam "companies".
In fact, I'd imagine these call centres would be easier to firewall off the 'net than spammers, as it would be harder to switch net blocks once a blackhole service was set up to list the offending address ranges.
Well, it seems that you're either completely misguided, a rabid Apple apologist who seems to feel the need to defend them to the death, or someone simply looking for an argument, with that utter rubbish.
1. GNU is open source. So yes, the Open Source community does "roll back" code into GNU projects. See how it works?
2. Pretty pathetic attempt at a troll. Doesn't warrant any more of a response than a straight "grow up".
3+4 (the same point). They wouldn't have to build a special version for each distro/desktop - you're either trolling here, or completely ignorant (I strongly suspect the former). Opera manage to make their web browser work just fine, so do Oracle, Mozilla and a raft of other projects. I use proprietory software on Linux, and don't mind one bit - in fact I'd wager a great many Linux desktop users run with a closed source video driver.
5. You either didn't read my article, or forgot that I mentioned it wouldn't have to be open source, and so ramble on with some ridiculous argument that allowing more people to use iTunes would somehow reduce Apple's audience.
A lot of people appear to have misunderstood my original comment. What I'm saying is that Apple could; as a gesture of goodwill (or even thanks/acknowledgement to the Opensource crowd) produce a version of iTunes to run on *BSD/Linux. It doesn't have to be open, or even supported. I bought my iPod, and yes, I can boot into Windows or OSX to use iTunes, but it's annoying to me (and I suspect others).
Apple give the software away in any case, and one would think that making it available on as many platforms as possible would increase their sales.
Slashdot Mirror
It is useless - more to the point, the only thing you need to do to avoid any chance of downloading a virus via bluetooth is to... disable bluetooth when you're not using it! This also extends battery life. In fact, I'd image just about any phone would have BT disabled by default to help conserve power, and any that didn't would certainly have it set to not advertise the phones presence.
Sounds to me like a company trying to scam the technically ignorant average phone user...
I took the RHCE (one week fast-track course) as the company were paying, and it was a week off at their expense as far as I was concerned. I found it pretty easy to pass, but since it's a performance based exam (ie, you actually have to solve real problems with the machine in front of you, or configure things to spec to a pretty tight schedule) you do have to know your stuff to have any chance in passine. This is unlike most "certifications" where at most you need to simply parrot what you've been trained, or just tick boxes.
I can't say I actually learned anything during the course, (maybe had my memory refreshed though!) but I'd consider it at least an indication of a person's ability to configure a system, have some idea of the general system layout and how to troubleshoot common problems.
Clearly that janitor is secretly a superhero with super-strength which Google will use to eliminate all crime on earth!
You mean this janitor! As we all know though, the cat was the real hero...
As far as I remember, the image had the wrong aspect ratio (eg, 300x200, and I needed it scaled to 150x150). So I scaled it to 150x100, then set the image size to 150x150. Problem then was that the background was transparent (original image had a background colour). No problem, I thought, just set the canvas colour - no option for that that I could find. So I decided to create a new layer the size of the image, fill it with colour and move it below the original. New problem: no way to change z-stacking of layers. I've since found out that unless the layers have alpha-channels set, the restacking is disabled (why?!) That was the point on that occasion that I said "screw it", and used an old copy of Paintshop Pro 5, which allowed me to handle the job in all of 20 seconds...
I don't think I'll be using Gimp again. I'm sure it's more productive to spend an hour installing PS or Fireworks under Wine than several hours looking up various Gimp idiosyncrasies and hidden "features" on Google.
Now the "usability" people will ruin GIMP the same way they ruined GNOME.
;-).
Somehow I doubt that's possible - unless they add "Spacial layers" so that you have to edit each one in a separate window
I use Linux on my desktop at work, and have Gimp installed, and I've found it the least usable program I've ever seen. Admittedly it's rare that I need to work with images at work (I use Fireworks and PS at home) but even operations such as resizing and adding a background to an image are ridiculously long-winded. For instance, I had to Google to find out why the option to change the stacking order of layers is greyed out by default - there's no sane reason for it...
Every time I've attempted to use it I've found it so frustrating; it feels as though you're fighting the program rather than using it; that I've ended up giving up in disgust and found a spare Windows machine to do the job. I'm sure it have some great features, but it's viciously protective of them and doesn't want anyone to use them!
Good job that this was posted on the internet, as most women can't use computers, so we should be safe ;-)
Tell me about it, when I worked for myself I got fired for sexual harrassment...
Two or three more like this and I'll be too retarded to type.
Try browsing at -1, you'll find many posters who seem to have overcome that particular disability...
Why not fight fire with fire? These scum have placed themselves outside of the "law" (such as it is when applied to the 'net), and so should not be protected by it. I say do whatever works. The sort of scum who send spam and run spamvertised sites care about nothing other than making money, no matter what the damage is. The only thing they will respond to is a force that affects their ability to make money. Forcing them to pay stratospheric bandwidth bills, or wade through tens of thousands of garbage "sales enquiries" will affect their "business model".
As for the hand-wringers and navel gazers claiming it's "vigilantism", I'm assuming they also considered the US' attack on Afghanistan after 9/11 "vigilantism", or Europe fighting back against the Nazi's as "vigilantism" too? Yeah, we should just sit down and have nice pleasant debates with scum... sure... that'll work... <rolls eyes>
Hmm, you know I was thinking the opposite, but now I've completely reversed my opinion! Well said!
It's rubbish to say that it was impossible for you to email your users. You could easily have set up another account at another colo for a few bucks and set up a simple script to accept and relay the mail out.
I think the SBLs are great, as the administrator of several relays, they save me a lot of work (along with URL BLs). They DO encourage hosts to ditch the scumbags in double quick time - I've been phoned by web hosts within minutes after emailing to inform them I was about to submit their domains/netblocks and spammy customers to the RBLs, with them promising to fix the problem if I hold off. In some cases the same netblock was spewing spam the next day, in which case they were straight on the RBL, but in some cases something probably got done.
Yes, if my sites were BL'd, it might be a little irritating for the half hour or so it would take to set up a relay, but it's not the end of the world...
is when people who are very intelligent compared to the rest of the public think they know it all. I think there is probably nothing worse than arguing with someone who thinks that because they are brilliant in one area that they are now all of a sudden uniquely qualified to render an opinion in all areas.
Welcome to Slashdot...
Become one with the machine. Be the machine. But in this case, machine becomes you instead...
I think that only happens in Soviet Russia...
This probably sounds a bit hypocrytical coming from someone who has written java apps for phones, but one thing that does annoy me about the modern handsets is the sluggish interface due to the anti-aliased true-type fonts, animation, heavy operating system overhead (relative to the CPU), colour menus and other crap that gets in the way when you just want to make a quick call. I've lost cound of the number of times I've called directory enquiries, got a number and tried to type it in before forgetting it, (I'm too lazy to use a pen) and after tapping away, realise it's missed the first one or two digits. My 7 year old wireless home phone handset can take the digits as fast as I can punch them in, so why can't a mobile costing 300-400 pounds?
While I'm at it, am I the only one who wishes that directory enquiries could beam a number to your phone in a specific format, so that you could just call by viewing the text message and using a "convert to number" type option (in the UK we do get a text message, but it's a case of reading the message, remembering the number, backing out back to the main interface and typing it in)? Maybe other countries do this?
Back to the topic, why not have "Advanced user", "Normal user" and "Dimwit" settings. Default to "Dimwit", mode which would have by default two menu options "stored numbers" and "settings". If stored numbers was picked, it would show a list of 9 numbers (maximum, or whatever will fit on the display) and a prompt text telling the user to just press key 1-9 to call, or 0 to cancel. If from the main menu the user starts typing in a number, the two options are "Store number", or "Cancel". The settings menu for the "Dimwit" user would only allow a change to another user type. Probably best not to use the word "Dimwit" in the option list though I guess...
Really, it's not rocket surgery, using a phone though, and as long as the extras don't get in the way of normal functionality, who cares how many bells and whistles there are? If you don't want to use them, then don't. You wouldn't decide not to buy a car simply because it had too many gadgets, would you? Defaulting to predictive text is one of my pet hates though I hate predictive text, and always disable it, but plenty of handsets make doing so difficult or at least non-obvious.
Excuse me, just how do YOU know how many people complained to the advertisers? I personally complained to Google (politely), and received a response that they were in fact investigating the matter. This would suggest that I wasn't alone... ...It also makes me a bigger fan of Google ;-)
Talk to a couple of your more violent friends. Organise a meeting between them and your boss after he leaves work. If he's in hospital for 2 weeks, he'll cease to be your problems.
;-)
Buy him some grapes
I don't think you'd need to be a genius to do that. I remember back in the day when I was learning x86 assembler on my old 486. This was back when WFW+DOS was the standard install, and I decided to write my own DOS program to connect to bulletin boards - no, I didn't have to as there plenty to download, but the sheer thrill of finally getting something to work after days of writing the low level interrupt handler for the UART, the flow control, and finally the front end (which to be honest was pretty rough and ready!) was well worth it.
Shortly after I went on to write a TCP/IP stack with simple telnet client built in to access my first real ISP (demon internet). It's kind of like building your own kit car, and then blasting it around the roads - sure, it'll likely have problems, and maybe fall apart, but while it's working, it's hard to keep a grin off of your face.
Somehow, calling someone elses code to do everything for you just doesn't have the same kick...
I'm surprised that Slashdot actually posted this drivel on the front page (well actually the real surprise was the lack of spelling errors!) As has been the case for several months now, O'Gara's articles have become deliberately more provocative and frankly ridiculous as she attempts to push up the banner hits on the LBW/LBN website. I don't think she even bothers to cite anything resembling a fact anymore, but simply blurts out the most ridiculous thoughts that she finds stomping around the inside of her head.
;-)
For anyone who isn't aware, one of the other regular "writers" for LBW/LBN was recently outed, caught trolling on the SCOX message board to pull in more hits with his crackpot theories. It's looking like a company policy.
There's no doubt that MOG is simply using this Wallace fellow to help finance the ailing website. Personally I'm not going to visit it, and I'd suggest anyone else with any sense also not bother. The slashdot effect is exactly the thing they wish for over there... unless everyone visits with Lynx, or images turned off, of course
LBW/LBN is fast becoming the "Jerry Springer show" of the tech news sites...
If you can't put the bad users on a slow switch, and force them through an even slower proxy to make their life hell, then see if you can't organise a minimum disconnection period. Say 10 days or so to reconnect the idiots who keep getting infected. Since you control the dhcp server, you could filter them out by their mac address so they can't wander over to someone elses room to connect. Yes, they could probably circumvent this with a little knowhow, but let's face it, an idiot who's managing to become a virus writer's bitch every week isn't likely to have too much in the way of technical knowledge...
I second this, I always build apache+php from source on any distro to ensure my servers always have the same setup and config no matter which base distro is running under them.
;-)
Gentoo is probably actually worse than Redhat (the only other distro I use) at breaking services after an update; especially when libraries change which seems frequent; so I almost always reboot after a major update to see what fails to start up
I still like Gentoo (use it on my desktop and personal server), but I wouldn't use it on any company server due to the problems with updates leaving the system in an unstable state.
I have built (and sold) many applications which took less than 4 hours to develop - these include a webbrowser, email client, contacts database, file searching tools and a image viewer.
If I had tried to do this in C, C++, or even java it would have taken weeks.
If you honestly think it would take "weeks" to write any of those apps in Java, then maybe it's best you do stick to basic.
What amazes me is that someone actually paid you for any of these apps, since they're all freely available in many different forms already - and probably a lot more robust than your 4 hour VB efforts...
Russia, China, India... Who'd have thought these would be new sources of spam?! I routinely block these domains/net blocks from sending email into our networks (along with a few of the other well known spam sludge pits), so would it really be that difficult to firewall out all VOIP traffic from these places too? Maybe if enough people just cut them off they'd change their attitudes to providing havens for (mostly) American spam "companies".
In fact, I'd imagine these call centres would be easier to firewall off the 'net than spammers, as it would be harder to switch net blocks once a blackhole service was set up to list the offending address ranges.
... man, it is so sad that I actually recognise that as the scene from family guy... I really need to get out more...
Well, it seems that you're either completely misguided, a rabid Apple apologist who seems to feel the need to defend them to the death, or someone simply looking for an argument, with that utter rubbish.
;-)...
1. GNU is open source. So yes, the Open Source community does "roll back" code into GNU projects. See how it works?
2. Pretty pathetic attempt at a troll. Doesn't warrant any more of a response than a straight "grow up".
3+4 (the same point). They wouldn't have to build a special version for each distro/desktop - you're either trolling here, or completely ignorant (I strongly suspect the former). Opera manage to make their web browser work just fine, so do Oracle, Mozilla and a raft of other projects. I use proprietory software on Linux, and don't mind one bit - in fact I'd wager a great many Linux desktop users run with a closed source video driver.
5. You either didn't read my article, or forgot that I mentioned it wouldn't have to be open source, and so ramble on with some ridiculous argument that allowing more people to use iTunes would somehow reduce Apple's audience.
Don't feek compelled to respond, BTW
A lot of people appear to have misunderstood my original comment. What I'm saying is that Apple could; as a gesture of goodwill (or even thanks/acknowledgement to the Opensource crowd) produce a version of iTunes to run on *BSD/Linux. It doesn't have to be open, or even supported. I bought my iPod, and yes, I can boot into Windows or OSX to use iTunes, but it's annoying to me (and I suspect others).
Apple give the software away in any case, and one would think that making it available on as many platforms as possible would increase their sales.