Just because the profit margin for operating an ISP on ad revenue wasn't too good, doesn't mean that ad-supported wifi won't work out. Wifi is just about as close to zero upkeep cost as Internet access gets. I mean, you get an access point, a smallish server hooked to it if you want to get fancy, and pay for a business DSL line. All you have to do is bring in more than the cost of the physical Internet connection+fixed business expences+pay off the access point and you're in the clear. Operating a Dial-up ISP on the other hand would be much more cost prohibitive both in initial cost and recurring costs. A physical CoLo facility, enough phone lines to support all the users that could be logged on at once at peak hours, a decent sized pipe to the Internet, a couple web/email servers in that CoLo. There is kind of a lot of recurring cost there.
Dude, turn dma on for your harddrive. Its this great invention that allows your computer to have Direct Memory Access to the harddrive so that it can write from memory to the harddrive, instead of using a Programmed Input Output mode where all data being transferred must be sent through the Central Processing Unit, hence the horrible slowdown. The fact that your computer's processor usage is spiked when copying a file should have been the first thing that tipped you off. DMA is probably off because you didn't install the driver for whatever Intergrated Drive Electronics cntroller chipset you're using. The same thing would happen in NT4 if you don't install the IDE chipset driver for whatever motherboard you have. As for BSD being slow: I've found it slight slower in some multimedia applications than running Linux on the same system, but in other respects its faster. Its only fair to give it half a chance by at least setting the machine up correctly. I mean, you couldn't compare an NT4 machine with no graphics card drivers installed to the same machine running Linux with all of the optimizations turned on and the hardware setup right. Plus, if you have to use this computer for work, it might at least make it tolerable.
Looking at the website, it seems to indicate that the banner would appear in a separate window. Would it be possible for it to work the way you described it in that situation? I'm not flaming/trolling, I'm just curious because I'm behind on hacking around in proxies, I've always just used NAT...
I'm going to sounds old (though I'm actually not), but I really miss the days when pictures were few and far between on the web. You could browse in lynx all day, and for the most part all the pages rendered correctly, except for that one guy who had to get fancy and use tables. Anyways, my point being that most of the web pages I visit are about the function (ie the content, which is usually text) not the form (ie the animated javascript sidebar). So, I hope you enjoy your fancy graphics, you young hooligan!
Not that anyone has actually visited the website, but all this is is a banner ad in its own window. Its not spam. Its not a trick to steal your immortal soul. It will not kill your first born child. Its like demanding free email without banner ads on the page. Just like free email, if you don't want to use it there is always non-free alternative. The only thing I'm worried about is if it will be compatible with Macs and the multitude of different handhelds that are also wireless enabled (Palms, Zaurus, iPaq, etc).
Even better prior art: On my Zaurus (linux handheld) if I tap the stylus on an icon it launches the associated program. If I hold the stylus on that icon it will bring me to a properties screen about the shortcut for that application (change icon, change the name of the shortcut, rotate the screen when the application is launched). As for the hardware buttons. All 4 of the main hardware buttons have alternate functions if held instead of tapped quickly. The first Zaurus with these functions (Zaurus SL-500D) was released in 2000 or early 2001 if I do recall correctly. I'm sure the software was around before then internally at TrollTech and Sharp Japan. I think that takes care of at least this rediculous patent. One down, 5,234,302 to go.
That's why you should have installed joe when the Internet connection was working! If joe is your favorite editor you should already have it installed on a server that you're admining. I know I do. I know exactly enough of vi (not vim, not nvi) to open a file, edit the text in it, then save and quit. If vi is your favorite editor, fine, but a lot of us beleive that mode editors died along with the PDP11. Plus, I think there are joe binaries for just about every conceivable platform by now. Its not like you'd have to compile joe, just put it on a floppy disk, and copy the binary onto the machine, or use sftp, or kermit or whatever is available on this mythical non-Internet connected machine.
-Mr. Lizard
Re:Uh, nope, not when ...
on
JOE Hits 3.0
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· Score: 0
Ok, I'll bite. What distro was that? RedHat 4.2? Debian 1.1? Seriously, every distro that I've installed in the last 2 years that made any claim to be userfriendly has handled network settings through a nice little GUI. In fact Gnome has a built in network settings program that should work nicely for that purpose. I imagine KDE has one as well. If you're saying that Gentoo or Slackware doesn't have an fancy network config, then who cares. Those are distros aimed at more advanced users. Plus, any Windows user trying to install Gentoo wouldn't even get to the network config. They'd get stuck at "Edit your compiler flags to suit your processor." I mean, let's be realistic here.
-Mr. Lizardo
Re:Have you heard of the internet?
on
JOE Hits 3.0
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· Score: 0
That reminds me of the first time I was forced to really sit down and learn vi was when I couldn't get my wireless card working right. Now I can trudge through vi fairly efficiently, but joe is by far my favorite editor. In fact I install joe on every server that I admin. Sure I could use vi but I'm much less likely to make a dumb error in joe. By the way here's something to add to the flamewar:
john@Schala:~$ du -h/usr/bin/nvi 320K/usr/bin/nvi john@Schala:~$ du -h/usr/bin/joe 168K/usr/bin/joe
Too bad vi is so bloated compared to joe. Really is a shame. I mean if it wasn't twice the size I might actually use it. j/k. I just found that interesting.
I just went into dselect and did a search for nvidia. Their glx driver and kernel driver sources were listed, along with precompiled kernel modules for different kernels. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and bet that you don't use Debian. If you do you'd have heard of non-free, where all of the non open source software resides.
Just charge CPU cycle credits. Start everyone off with an allowance of a certain amount of CPU time. The more CPU time they contribute the more they get in return. The first week everyone will waste all of their CPU cycles encoding MP3s, then they'll have to earn them back by contributing before they can use any more. Granted this would create the need for a huge centralized server to keep track of this, and cryptographically signed clients, so that people wouldn't hack up their clients to claim they've done more work than they have.
Its not really a "commons." Its a capatalism with the computers as the workers. The computers do work and for that work they earn credit. They can use the credit to hire other computers to work for them. It would get rid of the anonynimity, but it would prevent the "tragedy of the commons" scenario you suggested.
Hmm, it would be very interesting if it could be used as a form of payment. For example at a University you might be able to run the a client that would do the number crunching on some of the on campus research projects. In return you'd get $500 waved off of your housing fees. The money that the University didn't have to pay to buy another super computer could be used to help lower tuition, or cost of books or cost of food. On a more global scale, you could, say get DSL through AT&T, install AT&T's distributed computing client and get $10 a month knocked off your bill.
It would also help us geeks justify the rediculously fast hardware we buy. It would almost make computer hardware closer to an investment than a money sink. Now I'm just dreaming.
Nextel is a cell phone provider here in the US. Unlike in Europe, us USians use a medley of protocols and frequencies to get our cell phone service. We have at least one frequency for GSM, but we also have CDMA (code division multiple access) and older TDMA (time division multiple access. Now I have a question: It seems like more than one company is using the 800MHz band, is there a reason why Nextel is the only one having problems with interference?
A perfect illustration of how much things have changed in a couple years.
Example: UT2004. Put the CD in. In your file browser click on the CD-ROM drive, then click on linux-installer. No need to be root. All recent Linux distros have support for 3D cards, and sound from the first time they boot. Hardest part of the install: Where did they hide the #$*&ing CD-key?! I'll be the first to admit that Linux has been far from newbie friendly in the past. Getting my sound card and my modem to work at the same time took nearly a month the first time I installed Linux in 1998 (Granted Windows had trouble with them too. ISA-PNP was one thing I'm glad to have seen die long ago.)
Now for Windows Zealot (sequel to Linux zealot) User: How do I get UT2004 to install on Linux? Windows Zealot: Its sooo hard. You have to put the shiney disc thing in the drive thing...And you have to put it in picture side up! That is so ghey. It took my like 2 hours to figure this out and the whole time Linux was going "There is no disc in the drive!" The instructions didn't say anywhere you had to put it picture side up! If Linux is so advanced why doesn't it support putting the CD in both ways? Anyways after I got the disc in right I had to actually click on the CD icon that showed up, the click on the installer. Then I had to click next like 4 times. I'm not even kidding! Then it gets to the end and it didn't ask me to reboot, it just tried to start the game! So I quick hit the power button and rebooted a couple times to make sure it installed right. It was tough. Linux is too hard for anyone but advanced users like me.
User: How do I get UT2004 to install on Linux? Windows Zealot: Well first you have to make sure that you have the latest version of DirectX. You need DirectX 9.0b summer release*, then you need to get the latest drivers for your video card, unless you have an nvidia card, in which case don't get the latest get the 4491.4594.2223 drivers, get the 4491.4594.2218 drivers. The 4491.4594.2223 drivers don't support the color blue. Then reboot. Then make sure you have the latest drivers for your sound card. Just look in Start->Settings->Control Panel->System->Hardware, click on the Devices button, then look for the chipset of your sound card, then search on google for their website. If its in Taiwanese, Japanese or Korean learn that language first so you can understand the website. Download the drivers, then reboot. put in the disc picture side up, click next a whole bunch of times, click finish. Reboot for no apparent reason even if the installer doesn't ask you to. Then start the game. If there's a problem with the copy protection being incompatible with you CD-ROM drive, then you can't play the game. See, easy!
OK, so I made up some stuff about the nVidia drivers not supporting the color blue. But I did not make up DirectX 9.0b "summer release." My friend in a Windows programming class ran into that trying to get a DX dev environment setup. There is a DirectX 9, 9.0a, 9.0b, and 9.0b summer. It turns out that naming things with numbers, letters and seasons must be the most user friendly practice out there. After all MS is doing it. Some simple Windows things don't make sense to us Linux heads. Flame on!
Argh! Why does Windows give anonymous websites full access to my computer! It is a terd Argh! Why doesn't X give anonymous programs full access to my video hardware! Its a terd.
This has been a pseudo-troll brought to you by Mr. Lizard's excess karma. It just keeps building up. Can someone help me cut it down to a sane level?
You must have already been cracked! Someone probably deleted that help file off your system so you wouldn't realize that the help system is in fact insecure.
As long as you're behind a firewall and you don't surf any websites that you don't trust 100% or ever follow any off site links, or don't receive email at all, or don't use that little browser thing in Winamp, you'll probably be OK. The CERT advisory suggests that it may be possible for virus writers to get other Windows browsers to use explorer to view the chm file, without prompting. And removing IE won't help because its just frontend to some dll files. Removing those will most likely destroy the file browser, and possibly a load of other fun stuff. Also, the code executed can be arbitrary so any number of viruses can appear out of this. The only solution is a patch from MS. Virus Scanners will most likely be largely inefective in dealing with the results of this. In reality, you're probably ok if you lay low and don't click on anything that's not linked to from a major site.
Completely offtopic: In the 2.6 kernels ACPI works a lot better than it used to. It might a good time to kill some time waiting for MS to patch this by trying out a couple new distro releases.
First of all: We're not talking about Lunix vs. Windows! We're talking about Linux vs. Windows. There's a fairly big difference. Linux is a fully featured UNIX clone. Lunix is an OS for the Commodore 64/128. Second: Its been out for 1 month and MS hasn't made an announcement! There are already exploits in the wild before MS admitted this existed! That's kind of a problem. I have no problem that its there in the first place. It just needs to be fixed sometime before there are already viruses exploiting it.
-Mr. Lizardo (Responding to Slashdot trolls since 1998)
Well it depends on how long you want something kept private. My ( credit card number | social security number | drivers license number ) don't change all that often. If someone, somewhere who sold identities could crack mine in 2 years I'd be a little worried. Heck, if some government got interested in something I said, I'm sure they wouldn't think twice about applying some CPU time to it. The longer it lasts, the better
It seems that users these days are going more the other way. Most Windows users (no idea about Mac-heads) seem to not realize that they have a file browser. It really comes down to whether the modern GUI is application-centric or file-centric, and I can see that for most basic home users it is heading towards application-centric. Unless people know they need to put something on a floppy disk or usb drive to take with them, it seems that in almost all cases they just save to the default location or a subdirectory thereof. IMHO, this is a good thing: It means all their files are in one place to be backed up, and that if their profile/home directory/whatever is stored on a server that they don't have to worry about saving their files someplace where they can access them from any machine. Unless they need to transfer a file somewhere, in which case they resort to using a floppy or emailing it to themselves. Most of Thomas' points are already dealt with in some manner, or a matter of personal opinion. If he had used Word in the last 7 years he would realize that it already auto-saves after the first time. If he had used a non-Mac computer he would realize that increasingly programs are heading towards an SDI instead of MDI. No more quit to close programs, just close any open windows! As for the issue of copying/moving files around: This is a symptom of another issue. The core issue that needs to be resolved is that you have to move your files around to have access to them everywhere in the first place. Different people have different ideas, one being a portable personal server that has all your files on it. The other idea is Internet connected file storage. Both have their own ups and downs but I believe that soon one or the other will become mainstream. I think a more progressive model for a user interface is a more verb based one if you will, rather than noun based. With cheap, fast, pervasive Internet connections it's no longer important where your files are (or hopefully it won't be soon). Its more important what you want to do. For example, say you have a JPEG image: What you want to do with it is more important than what the file is named/where it is. When you find the file that you want among an assortment of different files, you still have to choose whether you want to edit it, view it, add it to another document, etc. I would argue that having to know where all your files are is the outdated cruft, not having open/save dialogs. Personally, though I think that more choices for ways to do things is usually better, as long as one doesn't get in the way of another. There are definitely situations in which I find it easier to use a file browser than to use an open dialog.
Ok, this is kinda fragmented but I have to go to class now.
Another example: Apple's ROM chips installed into there machines. Mac OS used to (still does?) look for this ROM before it will boot up. This prevents Mac OS from running on standard PPC hardware. Apple developed their own special monitor connector so that the studio display cannot be connected to a PC without buying an additional adapter from Apple at premium price.
Apple is putting the firmware on: Identical 4GB drives in Creative Muvo2s do not appear to have anything on them preventing them from being used in anything that can read the compactflash cards.
If I understand correctly, the ipod mini has shock proofing installed around the hard drive. I know that the bigger ipod did. Cameras however with compact flash slots made to accept flash memory do not have any shock proofing at all.
dist-upgrade is a little severe in that it can remove packages whose dependencies cannot be met with the latest update. This is almost certainly not what you would want in a non-interactive setup.:)
Praise Ryan "icculus" of icculus.org fame for both the Linux port and the Linux AMD64 build. The guy is a like a freaking one man lokigames except, he doesn't steel money from himself...or something. Its late.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because the profit margin for operating an ISP on ad revenue wasn't too good, doesn't mean that ad-supported wifi won't work out. Wifi is just about as close to zero upkeep cost as Internet access gets. I mean, you get an access point, a smallish server hooked to it if you want to get fancy, and pay for a business DSL line. All you have to do is bring in more than the cost of the physical Internet connection+fixed business expences+pay off the access point and you're in the clear. Operating a Dial-up ISP on the other hand would be much more cost prohibitive both in initial cost and recurring costs. A physical CoLo facility, enough phone lines to support all the users that could be logged on at once at peak hours, a decent sized pipe to the Internet, a couple web/email servers in that CoLo. There is kind of a lot of recurring cost there.
-Mr. Lizardo
Dude, turn dma on for your harddrive. Its this great invention that allows your computer to have Direct Memory Access to the harddrive so that it can write from memory to the harddrive, instead of using a Programmed Input Output mode where all data being transferred must be sent through the Central Processing Unit, hence the horrible slowdown. The fact that your computer's processor usage is spiked when copying a file should have been the first thing that tipped you off. DMA is probably off because you didn't install the driver for whatever Intergrated Drive Electronics cntroller chipset you're using. The same thing would happen in NT4 if you don't install the IDE chipset driver for whatever motherboard you have. As for BSD being slow: I've found it slight slower in some multimedia applications than running Linux on the same system, but in other respects its faster. Its only fair to give it half a chance by at least setting the machine up correctly. I mean, you couldn't compare an NT4 machine with no graphics card drivers installed to the same machine running Linux with all of the optimizations turned on and the hardware setup right. Plus, if you have to use this computer for work, it might at least make it tolerable.
Looking at the website, it seems to indicate that the banner would appear in a separate window. Would it be possible for it to work the way you described it in that situation? I'm not flaming/trolling, I'm just curious because I'm behind on hacking around in proxies, I've always just used NAT...
-Mr. Lizardo
I'm going to sounds old (though I'm actually not), but I really miss the days when pictures were few and far between on the web. You could browse in lynx all day, and for the most part all the pages rendered correctly, except for that one guy who had to get fancy and use tables. Anyways, my point being that most of the web pages I visit are about the function (ie the content, which is usually text) not the form (ie the animated javascript sidebar). So, I hope you enjoy your fancy graphics, you young hooligan!
-Mr. Lizardo
Not that anyone has actually visited the website, but all this is is a banner ad in its own window. Its not spam. Its not a trick to steal your immortal soul. It will not kill your first born child. Its like demanding free email without banner ads on the page. Just like free email, if you don't want to use it there is always non-free alternative. The only thing I'm worried about is if it will be compatible with Macs and the multitude of different handhelds that are also wireless enabled (Palms, Zaurus, iPaq, etc).
-Mr. Lizardo
Even better prior art: On my Zaurus (linux handheld) if I tap the stylus on an icon it launches the associated program. If I hold the stylus on that icon it will bring me to a properties screen about the shortcut for that application (change icon, change the name of the shortcut, rotate the screen when the application is launched). As for the hardware buttons. All 4 of the main hardware buttons have alternate functions if held instead of tapped quickly. The first Zaurus with these functions (Zaurus SL-500D) was released in 2000 or early 2001 if I do recall correctly. I'm sure the software was around before then internally at TrollTech and Sharp Japan. I think that takes care of at least this rediculous patent. One down, 5,234,302 to go.
-Mr. Lizard
That's why you should have installed joe when the Internet connection was working! If joe is your favorite editor you should already have it installed on a server that you're admining. I know I do. I know exactly enough of vi (not vim, not nvi) to open a file, edit the text in it, then save and quit. If vi is your favorite editor, fine, but a lot of us beleive that mode editors died along with the PDP11. Plus, I think there are joe binaries for just about every conceivable platform by now. Its not like you'd have to compile joe, just put it on a floppy disk, and copy the binary onto the machine, or use sftp, or kermit or whatever is available on this mythical non-Internet connected machine.
-Mr. Lizard
Ok, I'll bite. What distro was that? RedHat 4.2? Debian 1.1? Seriously, every distro that I've installed in the last 2 years that made any claim to be userfriendly has handled network settings through a nice little GUI. In fact Gnome has a built in network settings program that should work nicely for that purpose. I imagine KDE has one as well. If you're saying that Gentoo or Slackware doesn't have an fancy network config, then who cares. Those are distros aimed at more advanced users. Plus, any Windows user trying to install Gentoo wouldn't even get to the network config. They'd get stuck at "Edit your compiler flags to suit your processor." I mean, let's be realistic here.
-Mr. Lizardo
That reminds me of the first time I was forced to really sit down and learn vi was when I couldn't get my wireless card working right. Now I can trudge through vi fairly efficiently, but joe is by far my favorite editor. In fact I install joe on every server that I admin. Sure I could use vi but I'm much less likely to make a dumb error in joe. By the way here's something to add to the flamewar:
/usr/bin/nvi /usr/bin/nvi /usr/bin/joe /usr/bin/joe
john@Schala:~$ du -h
320K
john@Schala:~$ du -h
168K
Too bad vi is so bloated compared to joe. Really is a shame. I mean if it wasn't twice the size I might actually use it. j/k. I just found that interesting.
-Mr. Lizard
I think one season and two episodes from the second that weren't even aired in the US. I should know. I have them all. :)
-Mr. Lizard
I just went into dselect and did a search for nvidia. Their glx driver and kernel driver sources were listed, along with precompiled kernel modules for different kernels. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and bet that you don't use Debian. If you do you'd have heard of non-free, where all of the non open source software resides.
-Mr. lizard
Just charge CPU cycle credits. Start everyone off with an allowance of a certain amount of CPU time. The more CPU time they contribute the more they get in return. The first week everyone will waste all of their CPU cycles encoding MP3s, then they'll have to earn them back by contributing before they can use any more. Granted this would create the need for a huge centralized server to keep track of this, and cryptographically signed clients, so that people wouldn't hack up their clients to claim they've done more work than they have.
Its not really a "commons." Its a capatalism with the computers as the workers. The computers do work and for that work they earn credit. They can use the credit to hire other computers to work for them. It would get rid of the anonynimity, but it would prevent the "tragedy of the commons" scenario you suggested.
-Mr. Lizard
Hmm, it would be very interesting if it could be used as a form of payment. For example at a University you might be able to run the a client that would do the number crunching on some of the on campus research projects. In return you'd get $500 waved off of your housing fees. The money that the University didn't have to pay to buy another super computer could be used to help lower tuition, or cost of books or cost of food. On a more global scale, you could, say get DSL through AT&T, install AT&T's distributed computing client and get $10 a month knocked off your bill.
It would also help us geeks justify the rediculously fast hardware we buy. It would almost make computer hardware closer to an investment than a money sink. Now I'm just dreaming.
-Mr. Lizard
Nextel is a cell phone provider here in the US. Unlike in Europe, us USians use a medley of protocols and frequencies to get our cell phone service. We have at least one frequency for GSM, but we also have CDMA (code division multiple access) and older TDMA (time division multiple access. Now I have a question: It seems like more than one company is using the 800MHz band, is there a reason why Nextel is the only one having problems with interference?
-Mr. Lizard
A perfect illustration of how much things have changed in a couple years.
Example: UT2004. Put the CD in. In your file browser click on the CD-ROM drive, then click on linux-installer. No need to be root. All recent Linux distros have support for 3D cards, and sound from the first time they boot. Hardest part of the install: Where did they hide the #$*&ing CD-key?! I'll be the first to admit that Linux has been far from newbie friendly in the past. Getting my sound card and my modem to work at the same time took nearly a month the first time I installed Linux in 1998 (Granted Windows had trouble with them too. ISA-PNP was one thing I'm glad to have seen die long ago.)
Now for Windows Zealot (sequel to Linux zealot)
User: How do I get UT2004 to install on Linux?
Windows Zealot: Its sooo hard. You have to put the shiney disc thing in the drive thing...And you have to put it in picture side up! That is so ghey. It took my like 2 hours to figure this out and the whole time Linux was going "There is no disc in the drive!" The instructions didn't say anywhere you had to put it picture side up! If Linux is so advanced why doesn't it support putting the CD in both ways? Anyways after I got the disc in right I had to actually click on the CD icon that showed up, the click on the installer. Then I had to click next like 4 times. I'm not even kidding! Then it gets to the end and it didn't ask me to reboot, it just tried to start the game! So I quick hit the power button and rebooted a couple times to make sure it installed right. It was tough. Linux is too hard for anyone but advanced users like me.
User: How do I get UT2004 to install on Linux?
Windows Zealot: Well first you have to make sure that you have the latest version of DirectX. You need DirectX 9.0b summer release*, then you need to get the latest drivers for your video card, unless you have an nvidia card, in which case don't get the latest get the 4491.4594.2223 drivers, get the 4491.4594.2218 drivers. The 4491.4594.2223 drivers don't support the color blue. Then reboot. Then make sure you have the latest drivers for your sound card. Just look in Start->Settings->Control Panel->System->Hardware, click on the Devices button, then look for the chipset of your sound card, then search on google for their website. If its in Taiwanese, Japanese or Korean learn that language first so you can understand the website. Download the drivers, then reboot. put in the disc picture side up, click next a whole bunch of times, click finish. Reboot for no apparent reason even if the installer doesn't ask you to. Then start the game. If there's a problem with the copy protection being incompatible with you CD-ROM drive, then you can't play the game. See, easy!
OK, so I made up some stuff about the nVidia drivers not supporting the color blue. But I did not make up DirectX 9.0b "summer release." My friend in a Windows programming class ran into that trying to get a DX dev environment setup. There is a DirectX 9, 9.0a, 9.0b, and 9.0b summer. It turns out that naming things with numbers, letters and seasons must be the most user friendly practice out there. After all MS is doing it. Some simple Windows things don't make sense to us Linux heads.
Flame on!
-Mr. Lizard
To summarize:
Argh! Why does Windows give anonymous websites full access to my computer! It is a terd
Argh! Why doesn't X give anonymous programs full access to my video hardware! Its a terd.
This has been a pseudo-troll brought to you by Mr. Lizard's excess karma. It just keeps building up. Can someone help me cut it down to a sane level?
-Mr. Lizardo
You must have already been cracked! Someone probably deleted that help file off your system so you wouldn't realize that the help system is in fact insecure.
-Mr. Lizardo!
As long as you're behind a firewall and you don't surf any websites that you don't trust 100% or ever follow any off site links, or don't receive email at all, or don't use that little browser thing in Winamp, you'll probably be OK. The CERT advisory suggests that it may be possible for virus writers to get other Windows browsers to use explorer to view the chm file, without prompting. And removing IE won't help because its just frontend to some dll files. Removing those will most likely destroy the file browser, and possibly a load of other fun stuff. Also, the code executed can be arbitrary so any number of viruses can appear out of this. The only solution is a patch from MS. Virus Scanners will most likely be largely inefective in dealing with the results of this. In reality, you're probably ok if you lay low and don't click on anything that's not linked to from a major site.
Completely offtopic: In the 2.6 kernels ACPI works a lot better than it used to. It might a good time to kill some time waiting for MS to patch this by trying out a couple new distro releases.
-Mr. Lizard
First of all: We're not talking about Lunix vs. Windows! We're talking about Linux vs. Windows. There's a fairly big difference. Linux is a fully featured UNIX clone. Lunix is an OS for the Commodore 64/128. Second: Its been out for 1 month and MS hasn't made an announcement! There are already exploits in the wild before MS admitted this existed! That's kind of a problem. I have no problem that its there in the first place. It just needs to be fixed sometime before there are already viruses exploiting it.
-Mr. Lizardo
(Responding to Slashdot trolls since 1998)
Well it depends on how long you want something kept private. My ( credit card number | social security number | drivers license number ) don't change all that often. If someone, somewhere who sold identities could crack mine in 2 years I'd be a little worried. Heck, if some government got interested in something I said, I'm sure they wouldn't think twice about applying some CPU time to it. The longer it lasts, the better
-Mr. Lizard
It seems that users these days are going more the other way. Most Windows users (no idea about Mac-heads) seem to not realize that they have a file browser. It really comes down to whether the modern GUI is application-centric or file-centric, and I can see that for most basic home users it is heading towards application-centric. Unless people know they need to put something on a floppy disk or usb drive to take with them, it seems that in almost all cases they just save to the default location or a subdirectory thereof. IMHO, this is a good thing: It means all their files are in one place to be backed up, and that if their profile/home directory/whatever is stored on a server that they don't have to worry about saving their files someplace where they can access them from any machine. Unless they need to transfer a file somewhere, in which case they resort to using a floppy or emailing it to themselves. Most of Thomas' points are already dealt with in some manner, or a matter of personal opinion. If he had used Word in the last 7 years he would realize that it already auto-saves after the first time. If he had used a non-Mac computer he would realize that increasingly programs are heading towards an SDI instead of MDI. No more quit to close programs, just close any open windows! As for the issue of copying/moving files around: This is a symptom of another issue. The core issue that needs to be resolved is that you have to move your files around to have access to them everywhere in the first place. Different people have different ideas, one being a portable personal server that has all your files on it. The other idea is Internet connected file storage. Both have their own ups and downs but I believe that soon one or the other will become mainstream.
I think a more progressive model for a user interface is a more verb based one if you will, rather than noun based. With cheap, fast, pervasive Internet connections it's no longer important where your files are (or hopefully it won't be soon). Its more important what you want to do. For example, say you have a JPEG image: What you want to do with it is more important than what the file is named/where it is. When you find the file that you want among an assortment of different files, you still have to choose whether you want to edit it, view it, add it to another document, etc. I would argue that having to know where all your files are is the outdated cruft, not having open/save dialogs.
Personally, though I think that more choices for ways to do things is usually better, as long as one doesn't get in the way of another. There are definitely situations in which I find it easier to use a file browser than to use an open dialog.
Ok, this is kinda fragmented but I have to go to class now.
-Mr Lizard
Another example: Apple's ROM chips installed into there machines. Mac OS used to (still does?) look for this ROM before it will boot up. This prevents Mac OS from running on standard PPC hardware. Apple developed their own special monitor connector so that the studio display cannot be connected to a PC without buying an additional adapter from Apple at premium price.
Apple is putting the firmware on: Identical 4GB drives in Creative Muvo2s do not appear to have anything on them preventing them from being used in anything that can read the compactflash cards.
QED.
-Mr Lizardo
If I understand correctly, the ipod mini has shock proofing installed around the hard drive. I know that the bigger ipod did. Cameras however with compact flash slots made to accept flash memory do not have any shock proofing at all.
-Mr Lizardo
I suggest apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
:)
dist-upgrade is a little severe in that it can remove packages whose dependencies cannot be met with the latest update. This is almost certainly not what you would want in a non-interactive setup.
-Mr Lizard
Praise Ryan "icculus" of icculus.org fame for both the Linux port and the Linux AMD64 build. The guy is a like a freaking one man lokigames except, he doesn't steel money from himself...or something. Its late.
-Mr Lizardo