DVD-RAM/RW etc are too expensive. You are talking up to $3000 per player, for 5Gb of storage.
That's funny... I bought my DVD-RAM for the equivalent of just under US$400 last year. I doubt these Sony drives are going to be significantly cheaper than that at launch. If they sell well, then no doubt the price will drop, but then so will the writable DVD formats.
I've been wondering for some time, what actually is GNOME? It has many facets, but at what point can I be said to be running GNOME? If I take a GNOME desktop, and start removing bits, at what point does it cease to be GNOME? For example, I don't find any of the GNOME compliant window managers give me the control I want (at least, not in an easy manner). As such, I run fvwm2, yet I still have a GNOME panel running. What if I dropped the panel? Would GNOME session management still work, and would the resulting mess still be called GNOME?
I believe France has recently 'lightened up' on the use of encryption
Yes, they have. In fact, they've gone quite a long way, much further than was needed to pacify French businesses. As a result, they've changed from being one of the most oppressive countries in Europe with regards to encyption, to one of the most liberal. See http://www.info-sec.com/cr ypto/99/crypto_020699a_j.shtml.
If your applications require no support then the money spent on support contracts is all profit!
Correct. Thinking from a home user's point of view is fundamentally flawed. How many home users will buy a support contract? Companies, on the other hand, will buy support contracts, and the ease of use of the software has no bearing on that decision. The purpose of a support contract is not usually to enable users to ask for help when they don't understand something. It's to protect the business in the event of a bug or other failure. Think of a support contract as an insurance policy. It's a good thing to have, even if you never make a claim. Make your product as fully featured and easy to use as you want. You support revenue will be unaffected, and your support costs will be lower.
Am I the only one that thought of usenet when reading this?
No, you're not. I read the word "news" and immediately thought usenet.
The internet was so much nicer when the general population wasn't on it.
I couldn't agree more. I used to long for the day when everyone would be online. It was a very civilised place to be, and a nice way to communicate with others. Well, now they're all here, and I wish they weren't. The unwashed masses have changed the character of the net. It's not the same place it used to be:-(
start rant I would love to reward myself with a big 21" Sony monitor! endrant
#ifdef RANT Noooo. Why do people always do this? A 21" monitor will give you around 211 square inches of screen real estate. A dual headed setup with two 17" monitors gives you around 277 square inches. That's 30% more usable screen space. Two 17" Iiyama VM410 Pro monitors are also 25% cheaper than the Iiyama 22" VM510 Pro. That's more than enough to cover the cost of a dual headed video card (like the Matrox G400 MAX) or a second regular video card. So tell me again why you want a 21" monitor? Of course, if you can afford it, a dual-headed setup using 21" monitors would be rather nice... #endif/* RANT */
Wouldn't making sure the network was totally isolated from all other networks prevent this sort of thing from happening?
Yes, it would, and if the story is true, then I'm absolutely stunned. When I worked for the MoD, we had one machine connected to the Internet, and it was in it's own room, required clearance to even use it, and it wasn't connected to any other machines. The concept that the main servers would be even physically connected to the Internet was laughable. It just doesn't happen. I guess NASA doesn't have the same standards as the military...
It also has a user interface which is far far better than the GIMP's.
That's just your personal preference. I prefer the GIMP UI. I just couldn't get the hang of PhotoPaint. With GIMP, everything is in an intuitive place (for me). I just didn't find the same with PhotoPaint. Still, it has some nice effects that GIMP doesn't (yet), and I have been using both, and will continue to do so...
London also has one of the most kicking club scenes out. Pretty much everything is catered for, from rawk to hardcore techno.
Really? Please tell me more about the rock scene in London. From what I've seen, it's pretty grim. Yes, things have got better recently, with the advent of Asylum, and the rock nights at The Metro, but it's still got a long way to go. Rockscene hasn't (IMHO) been worth visiting since it left the Astoria, and the only really good club is The Pit at the John Bull in Chiswick. London has no end of clubs catering to the dance / techno scene, but it's seriously lacking when it comes to rock. It does, however, have quite a respectable smattering of live rock venues. If bands are going to play in the UK, they tend to at least play London and Nottingham.
Basically, he's right. All he's saying is that with no formal design spec or test process, a system can't be considered secure. Yes, we have some design specs in the form of RFCs, POSIX and so on, but we certainly don't do rigorous compliance testing for them with each new release. For systems that aren't done that way, though (a category which applies to more than 99% of all available software, at a guess) I'd much rather take an open source one than a closed source one.
I've been running my machines 24x7 for about 8 years now, without problems. All I can really do is echo what others have said. Make sure the machine is in a well ventilated location, away from direct sunlight, and clean out the dust every once in a while. My "machine room" at home currently has four 24x7 boxen, and the only real problem is the amount of heat they generate, though that is significantly reduced when the monitors are off (although the machines themselves are 24x7, I don't leave the monitors on all the time).
Rumors of Wine's slowness are greatly exaggerated.
Yes and no. Recent versions of Wine run Word 97 with some slowdown, but not enough to be a problem. However, I agree with the review. CorelDRAW 9 beta 2 is unacceptably sluggish. It's better than beta 1, which gives some hope for the final release version, but they've got a long way to go. Note that AFAIK CorelDRAW isn't a Windows application running under WINE, it's a native Linux application that's been compiled against Winelib.
I have a similar problem with CD-ROMs. Far too many apps use/dev/cdrom, and assume it'll be pointing to the right place. I have both a CD-ROM and a CD-RW in my machine, and obviously can't have/dev/cdrom pointing to both...
I've always wondered, shouldn't it be a simple function to convert RGBCMYK?
No, it's not. There are some simple algorithms to give you an close approximation, but that's not good enough for prepress work. The conversion needs to take account of the characteristics of the output device, such as the gamut, amount of ink bleed and so on. Yes, you can do it without worrying about these things, but the colours won't look as good in the final printed image.
Re:I wrote that code - I'll tell you what it does
on
Mattel Spyware
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· Score: 2
So yeah, your modem will dial once a day. You have the inactivity timeout set to hang up after 5 minutes or so, right?
Yep, but then I'm in the UK, so that extra phone call once a day costs me money. Phone calls (local or otherwise) are not free here.
The only think keeping x86 alive is the fact that if people tried to ditch it today, 90% of the world's desktop software wouldn't have anyplace to run tomorrow.
Agreed. However, the server market isn't quite so dependent on x86 compatibility (yet). Do the high end chips (Xeon, Itanium etc.) still contain the full instruction set, or have they dumped any of the legacy instructions that were only present to support backwards compatibility? After all, how many people actually run MS-DOS 2.x on a Xeon? My guess is that if they don't already do this, future generations of processors probably will, as extreme backwards compatibility becomes less important. Of course, Win2K could prove to be the wildcard here, as MS try to blur the boundaries between desktop and server. Yes, Linux does the same, but Linux has never had to run 16-bit code...
Of course, there is a line in the GPL which keeps you from being able to attach any extra restrictions to the license. I've known of a few places, Slashdot being one of them, who have tried to violate that, probably unknowingly. For instance, take a look at the code page for Slashdot, and notice where Rob says you have to link back to Slashdot.
There's no violation there at all. Since Rob originally wrote the code, he gets to choose the license it's released under, and his license of choice was "GPL with an extra you-must-link-to-slashdot condition". What that line (clause 6 in the GPL) says is that if you recevied a work licensed under the GPL, then you may not add additional restrictions. That's not the case here. No one has ever received the slash code under the vanilla GPL. Interestingly, that makes the slash licence incompatible with the GPL. Mixing slash code with code licensed under the vanilla GPL would be in violation of one of the licenses (which one would depend on whether you insisted on the extra clause or not).
For some real fun scanning your face, start with your left cheek on the scanner
Yep, been there, done that. For some more fun, try keeping your head perfectly still, and moving your eyes. Start with them looking in one direction, and change them as the scanner goes past your nose. Perfect for that Marty Feldman look...
Not that mattell is RIGHT, but sueing someone over a $3 phonebill?
For some reason, you're assuming that it's only going to try and make one phone call. I would guess that it checks for new information on a regular basis (every time you fire up the app? every hour? who knows...)
Re:They can pay for the phone calls...
on
Mattel Spyware
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· Score: 2
Actually, I belive there's a windows API hook to tell if you're dialed up.
No, there's not. Or if there is, it can't work reliably. All the windows box sees is a network connection, and a gateway address. Unless it has some clever way of interrogating my gateway machine and finding out if it's connected (hint: it doesn't), there's no way for windows to know if it's online on not. It may be able to tell if it's Windows that's doing the dialling, but in my case, it's not.
This is vastly simpler then trying to fit yourself into your buddies' flat bed scanner.
Actually, I've got some pretty good results from scanning myself directly on my scanner. Face only, of course, but surprisingly good, nonetheless. All this talk of photorealistic skins reminds me of a former job where we used to play doom at lunchtime. We scanned a picture of one guy's baby in, and used that in place of the flaming skulls. He could never quite bring himself to blow his baby away with a shotgun, which gave the rest of us an advantage in multiplayer games with monsters...
This is a perfect example of why most sane people have such a low opinion of lawyers. The number of times that Mr. Cooper spouted the word "ambiguous" is quite unbelievable, particularly when there was no ambiguity. Questions like "do you recall such and such" are not ambiguous. Either he does, or he doesn't. It's quite simple, really.
Slashdot Mirror
That's funny... I bought my DVD-RAM for the equivalent of just under US$400 last year. I doubt these Sony drives are going to be significantly cheaper than that at launch. If they sell well, then no doubt the price will drop, but then so will the writable DVD formats.
Yes, but the basic OS is still only single user, unless you're prepared to spend bucketloads extra on Terminal Server or Citrix stuff.
I've been wondering for some time, what actually is GNOME? It has many facets, but at what point can I be said to be running GNOME? If I take a GNOME desktop, and start removing bits, at what point does it cease to be GNOME? For example, I don't find any of the GNOME compliant window managers give me the control I want (at least, not in an easy manner). As such, I run fvwm2, yet I still have a GNOME panel running. What if I dropped the panel? Would GNOME session management still work, and would the resulting mess still be called GNOME?
Yes, they have. In fact, they've gone quite a long way, much further than was needed to pacify French businesses. As a result, they've changed from being one of the most oppressive countries in Europe with regards to encyption, to one of the most liberal. See http://www.info-sec.com/cr ypto/99/crypto_020699a_j.shtml.
Well, in the best "my pedantry's better than your pedantry" mode, surely you mean Kg, not KG :-)
As a non-USian, surely you mean "Aluminium" :-)
Correct. Thinking from a home user's point of view is fundamentally flawed. How many home users will buy a support contract? Companies, on the other hand, will buy support contracts, and the ease of use of the software has no bearing on that decision. The purpose of a support contract is not usually to enable users to ask for help when they don't understand something. It's to protect the business in the event of a bug or other failure. Think of a support contract as an insurance policy. It's a good thing to have, even if you never make a claim. Make your product as fully featured and easy to use as you want. You support revenue will be unaffected, and your support costs will be lower.
No, you're not. I read the word "news" and immediately thought usenet.
The internet was so much nicer when the general population wasn't on it.
I couldn't agree more. I used to long for the day when everyone would be online. It was a very civilised place to be, and a nice way to communicate with others. Well, now they're all here, and I wish they weren't. The unwashed masses have changed the character of the net. It's not the same place it used to be :-(
#ifdef RANT /* RANT */
Noooo. Why do people always do this? A 21" monitor will give you around 211 square inches of screen real estate. A dual headed setup with two 17" monitors gives you around 277 square inches. That's 30% more usable screen space. Two 17" Iiyama VM410 Pro monitors are also 25% cheaper than the Iiyama 22" VM510 Pro. That's more than enough to cover the cost of a dual headed video card (like the Matrox G400 MAX) or a second regular video card. So tell me again why you want a 21" monitor? Of course, if you can afford it, a dual-headed setup using 21" monitors would be rather nice...
#endif
Yes, it would, and if the story is true, then I'm absolutely stunned. When I worked for the MoD, we had one machine connected to the Internet, and it was in it's own room, required clearance to even use it, and it wasn't connected to any other machines. The concept that the main servers would be even physically connected to the Internet was laughable. It just doesn't happen. I guess NASA doesn't have the same standards as the military...
That's just your personal preference. I prefer the GIMP UI. I just couldn't get the hang of PhotoPaint. With GIMP, everything is in an intuitive place (for me). I just didn't find the same with PhotoPaint. Still, it has some nice effects that GIMP doesn't (yet), and I have been using both, and will continue to do so...
Really? Please tell me more about the rock scene in London. From what I've seen, it's pretty grim. Yes, things have got better recently, with the advent of Asylum, and the rock nights at The Metro, but it's still got a long way to go. Rockscene hasn't (IMHO) been worth visiting since it left the Astoria, and the only really good club is The Pit at the John Bull in Chiswick. London has no end of clubs catering to the dance / techno scene, but it's seriously lacking when it comes to rock. It does, however, have quite a respectable smattering of live rock venues. If bands are going to play in the UK, they tend to at least play London and Nottingham.
Basically, he's right. All he's saying is that with no formal design spec or test process, a system can't be considered secure. Yes, we have some design specs in the form of RFCs, POSIX and so on, but we certainly don't do rigorous compliance testing for them with each new release. For systems that aren't done that way, though (a category which applies to more than 99% of all available software, at a guess) I'd much rather take an open source one than a closed source one.
I've been running my machines 24x7 for about 8 years now, without problems. All I can really do is echo what others have said. Make sure the machine is in a well ventilated location, away from direct sunlight, and clean out the dust every once in a while. My "machine room" at home currently has four 24x7 boxen, and the only real problem is the amount of heat they generate, though that is significantly reduced when the monitors are off (although the machines themselves are 24x7, I don't leave the monitors on all the time).
Yes and no. Recent versions of Wine run Word 97 with some slowdown, but not enough to be a problem. However, I agree with the review. CorelDRAW 9 beta 2 is unacceptably sluggish. It's better than beta 1, which gives some hope for the final release version, but they've got a long way to go. Note that AFAIK CorelDRAW isn't a Windows application running under WINE, it's a native Linux application that's been compiled against Winelib.
I have a similar problem with CD-ROMs. Far too many apps use /dev/cdrom, and assume it'll be pointing to the right place. I have both a CD-ROM and a CD-RW in my machine, and obviously can't have /dev/cdrom pointing to both...
No, it's not. There are some simple algorithms to give you an close approximation, but that's not good enough for prepress work. The conversion needs to take account of the characteristics of the output device, such as the gamut, amount of ink bleed and so on. Yes, you can do it without worrying about these things, but the colours won't look as good in the final printed image.
Yep, but then I'm in the UK, so that extra phone call once a day costs me money. Phone calls (local or otherwise) are not free here.
Agreed. However, the server market isn't quite so dependent on x86 compatibility (yet). Do the high end chips (Xeon, Itanium etc.) still contain the full instruction set, or have they dumped any of the legacy instructions that were only present to support backwards compatibility? After all, how many people actually run MS-DOS 2.x on a Xeon? My guess is that if they don't already do this, future generations of processors probably will, as extreme backwards compatibility becomes less important. Of course, Win2K could prove to be the wildcard here, as MS try to blur the boundaries between desktop and server. Yes, Linux does the same, but Linux has never had to run 16-bit code...
There's no violation there at all. Since Rob originally wrote the code, he gets to choose the license it's released under, and his license of choice was "GPL with an extra you-must-link-to-slashdot condition". What that line (clause 6 in the GPL) says is that if you recevied a work licensed under the GPL, then you may not add additional restrictions. That's not the case here. No one has ever received the slash code under the vanilla GPL. Interestingly, that makes the slash licence incompatible with the GPL. Mixing slash code with code licensed under the vanilla GPL would be in violation of one of the licenses (which one would depend on whether you insisted on the extra clause or not).
Yep, been there, done that. For some more fun, try keeping your head perfectly still, and moving your eyes. Start with them looking in one direction, and change them as the scanner goes past your nose. Perfect for that Marty Feldman look...
For some reason, you're assuming that it's only going to try and make one phone call. I would guess that it checks for new information on a regular basis (every time you fire up the app? every hour? who knows...)
No, there's not. Or if there is, it can't work reliably. All the windows box sees is a network connection, and a gateway address. Unless it has some clever way of interrogating my gateway machine and finding out if it's connected (hint: it doesn't), there's no way for windows to know if it's online on not. It may be able to tell if it's Windows that's doing the dialling, but in my case, it's not.
Actually, I've got some pretty good results from scanning myself directly on my scanner. Face only, of course, but surprisingly good, nonetheless. All this talk of photorealistic skins reminds me of a former job where we used to play doom at lunchtime. We scanned a picture of one guy's baby in, and used that in place of the flaming skulls. He could never quite bring himself to blow his baby away with a shotgun, which gave the rest of us an advantage in multiplayer games with monsters...
Mr. Cooper: Ambiguous. Please reread the question
This is a perfect example of why most sane people have such a low opinion of lawyers. The number of times that Mr. Cooper spouted the word "ambiguous" is quite unbelievable, particularly when there was no ambiguity. Questions like "do you recall such and such" are not ambiguous. Either he does, or he doesn't. It's quite simple, really.