Am I the first person in this thread to mention the Science of Cambridge MK14?
8 digits of LED display, hex keyboard, 256 bytes of RAM.
I kind of inherited it from my school (they were replacing two faulty ones, and I managed to cobble together one working one from the two). It was the expanded version, with I/O lines and an extra 128 bytes of RAM.
Yes! Bring it all back! The inquisition! Clamps on free thought! An end to funding of that eeeevil physics stuff! Public executions of Witches! Decriminalisation of murder of Gays, Heathens and Single Mothers! A theocratic president telling you how to think! The whole enchilada!
But meanwhile, over here in England, we'll be watching, waiting for the inevitable collapse of your economic and social systems, and then, under the inspired leadership of Good King Harry, we'll load up the warships and TAKE BACK THE COLONIES!
Pat Buchanan will be promoted to Court Jester! New York will be renamed Chittingfold-on-Sea! Tea will be the only drink available in Boston! Everyone in Florida will be forced to wear knotted hankies on their heads and complain about the heat! Automobile production lines will be retooled to build Morris Minors! Beer will be served at slightly above room temperature! The decimal currency system will be replaced with a sensible system using mixed base-12 and base-20 arithmetic! Bowler hats will be available on the National Health!
Land of Hope and Gloryyyy, Mother of the Free....
</rant>
Sorry about that. We now return you to your regular programming...
I've never understood this. Why would hardware manufacturers not reveal information that would help stimulate market growth for their products? Color translation tables aren't exactly trade secret stuff, or of much use to your competitors.
A particularly stubborn piece of malware was the reason I finally took the plunge and switched to Linux (Mandriva) at home. Plus, as a bonus, suddenly my computer was interesting again.
I often find that my Windows machine appears to be cacheing a whole load of stuff from disk in RAM, and at the same time paging the rest of the RAM out to disk.
So, we have disk data sitting in RAM which is pretending to be a disk, while transient data are being paged out to disk pretending to be RAM. And now that disk actually is RAM pretending to be a disk pretending to be RAM. What is this? An episode of Scooby Doo?
Mr Ram tears off a rubber mask. "Haha! I'm really Mr Disk, the janitor! Shaggy tears off a second level of rubber mask, revealing Old Ma Gigabyte, who was trying to scare off rogue mobo manufacturers by pretending to be a spooky Maxtor drive... And she would have got away with it were it not for those pesky Slashdotters.
All right then, perhaps not exactly like Scooby Doo. But you get my point.
Wouldn't it just be simpler to disable paging to disk and add the RAM to the mobo?
The easiest way to avoid problems with case sensitivity is to use a consistent case rule. The easiest one, from a typing point of view, is "all identifiers are lower case". This seems to be the general rule in all the MySQL examples I've seen, too, so you at least have convention on your side...
As for the Windows/Linux thing, I'm just starting to use MySQL, and haven;t noticed any real differences. However, I am just running a couple of little websites, not Slashdot or the IRS.
I concur with the others who have talked about ground problems, but here's an extra question:
Is the computer plugged into anything else when it's being glitchy? Printer? LAN? Modem? It may be that there's a difference in ground potential between the computer and the peripheral that's causing a current flow between the two.
If not, ignore the above but check the grounding anyway.
This may seem like an odd thing for a Slashdot reader to say, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we should get the computers out of the classrooms until, say, age 11.
There's no point having a computer if the kids can't read, write, add up, or concentrate on a task. The £1000 it would cost to kit out a decent computer and train the teacher to use it properly would buy much more effective basic educational tools made of paper and ink.
Or buy paper and ink and let the kids make their own educational tools!
This will either rain on your parade or make your day, but the phallus behind the girl is not a prop, but is actually a building in London. I can't remember its proper name, as it is universally referred to as "The Gherkin".
Congratulations, Sir, on your familiarity with the work of Mr. John Percival Hackworth.
This too crossed my mind, although unfortunately when I voiced it aloud, I was then forced to explain to my regrettably ill-informed colleagues what a "mediatron" was.
The Thunderbirds Movie vehicles were like that. You got a single piece of Thunderbird 5 with each of Thunderbirds 1, 2, 3 and 4.
This masterful marketing move was, however, countered at source by making the movie suck so badly no-one wanted to buy them. Instead it just rekindled the interest in the classic Thunderbirds TV series.
...but Adblock along with the excellent Filterset.G Updater. Also NoScript and BugMeNot.
Since I'm a web weenie, I also have View Formatted Source and Copy Plain Text.
Add Bookmark Here is very useful too.
One thing worthy of particular praise is NoScript's user interface - you can easily unblock items on a page temporarily or permanently, from the status bar of page itself. Now, why can't the cookie manager do this? I run with cookies blocked normally, but when I want to allow a site to use cookies, I have to go to a menu item, the site name isn't filled in, there's no "Use Current Site" button, and I can't even cut-and-paste from the address bar because it's a modal dialog.
Strange. I'm as skeptical about the US as the next guy (and I live just across from France, dont'cha know?), but I never even considered SCO's corporate asininity as an "American thing" until you mentioned it.
After a little reflection, I still don't view it that way. IBM, after all, are the good guys here and they're American too.
IMO, it's a "stupid company thing". And believe me, there are quite a few of those outside the US, too.
If the goal is to kill it, then why keep spending the money on construction if it's never going to be finished?
I'd say cut your losses, mothball it now and spend the money on robotic missions to Europa, a prototype asteroid mining mission that actually produces real product (e.g. water for reaction mass), orbiters for Uranus and Neptune, advanced nuclear (ooh, the n-word!) propulsion systems so that deep space missions that don't take decades, and actually get some science done.
I guess it's all a bit moot, though, since by 2020 everyone will be buying elevator tickets from Liftport instead...:-)
Imagine your cable guy had gotten into your house and surreptitiously installed new locks on your doors, so that he could check that you weren't stealing channels. But, the lockes would let anyone in with an appropriate key. One of your security-savvy friends notices and blows the whistle. Now the cable guy comes back and says "I didn't do anything wrong. But you can't remove the locks. Let me come and do it. Oh, and you'll need to leave everything unlocked while I do it."
This is effectively what Sony are saying. They installed a massive security hole on your system, covered it up, and then require you to use the least secure browser, and enable its least secure technology, in order to "fix" it for you.
Sony should have to pay for an independent service engineer to visit every computer that has this malware installed and remove it.
I thought that we on Slashdot are supposed to intellgent beings, not the kind of L33T D00DZ who have to have obvious humor put in <joke></joke> tags, with a liberal helping of:-);-) after everything and topped off with a LOL!!1!11!!
But look like I'm wrong (joke, LOL!ll111!11,:-), rimshot, etc. Sigh.)
Can you imagine the lively, engaging style of Pixar stuggling to survive the diktats for formulaic plot heaped upon it by Disney execs? Think "The Emperor's New Groove" but done with shiny new CG. Ugh.
Well, it arrived this morning and I spent lunchtime fitting it into my Ford, with the help of an adapter kit I bought from eBay for about £15. Piece of cake, even for a clumsy software-jockey like me.
So, here are some fleeting initial impressions. I've only tried it with a USB stick so far, but it quite happily played a stick full of OGGs at ~128kbps (44.1KHz, Stereo). I therefore don't see that it would have any problem with CDs. It picked up the ID3 tags quite nicely, and the scrolling display is muted enough that it doesn't catch your eye when you're supposed to be looking at the road.
Sound quality is certainly better than my old tape deck (not difficult, I'll admit), with an obviously flatter frequency response and better bass. There is audible amp hiss when the volume is very very low, although you wouldn't notice this with the engine running. The tuner also doesn't seem to be as sensitive as the original Ford radio. The entire front panel comes off, which is quite bulky, especially when compared to the nice design of the Fords where one row of buttons comes off.
Overall: £80 well spent, and no need to re-rip my audio collection. Hurrah!
According to Amazon, mine's in the post and should arrive monday. The OGG support isn't made obvious, but if you go to the manufacturer's website and download the manual, it's there in the back. NOT a high profile promo for OGG, but it's a nice cheap unit and my tape player was dying anyway.
In the article you refer to, Mikael Baros writes: The best one is that the Loader class can load much more than M3G files, it can basically deserialize any class that inherits from Object3D.
If true, this would open up a security hole. Fortunately, he is incorrect. The Loader will only deserialize the classes in the spec that are derived from Object3D. That's a very different claim.
The file format does not use standard Java serialization and instead uses a compact binary encoding of the specific data from the classes defined in the spec. Loading the file consists of reading the type ID for each object, verifying that that ID corresponds to one of the 24 known object types, and if so creating an object of that type using an internal factory function. The new object can then be populated using the following chunk of data.
Since the factory does not have a method of creating arbitrary classes outside the set of 24 mandated by the specification, the loader cannot be used for exploits in the way you describe.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the first person in this thread to mention the Science of Cambridge MK14?
8 digits of LED display, hex keyboard, 256 bytes of RAM.
I kind of inherited it from my school (they were replacing two faulty ones, and I managed to cobble together one working one from the two). It was the expanded version, with I/O lines and an extra 128 bytes of RAM.
A working emulator can be found at http://users.aol.com/mk14emu/index.htm.
Then ZX81, Jupiter Ace (another obscure Cambridge-originated computer that used Forth), Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, then a succession of PCs.
Ahh, but I did it first! Thank goodness there's no "-1 Smug" moderation option...
(Actually, the Chittingfold-on-Sea bit is lifted from Harry Enfield, so not quite so smug after all.)
Yes! Bring it all back! The inquisition! Clamps on free thought! An end to funding of that eeeevil physics stuff! Public executions of Witches! Decriminalisation of murder of Gays, Heathens and Single Mothers! A theocratic president telling you how to think! The whole enchilada!
But meanwhile, over here in England, we'll be watching, waiting for the inevitable collapse of your economic and social systems, and then, under the inspired leadership of Good King Harry, we'll load up the warships and TAKE BACK THE COLONIES!
Pat Buchanan will be promoted to Court Jester! New York will be renamed Chittingfold-on-Sea! Tea will be the only drink available in Boston! Everyone in Florida will be forced to wear knotted hankies on their heads and complain about the heat! Automobile production lines will be retooled to build Morris Minors! Beer will be served at slightly above room temperature! The decimal currency system will be replaced with a sensible system using mixed base-12 and base-20 arithmetic! Bowler hats will be available on the National Health!
Land of Hope and Gloryyyy, Mother of the Free....
</rant>
Sorry about that. We now return you to your regular programming...
I've never understood this. Why would hardware manufacturers not reveal information that would help stimulate market growth for their products? Color translation tables aren't exactly trade secret stuff, or of much use to your competitors.
... Linux.
A particularly stubborn piece of malware was the reason I finally took the plunge and switched to Linux (Mandriva) at home. Plus, as a bonus, suddenly my computer was interesting again.
I often find that my Windows machine appears to be cacheing a whole load of stuff from disk in RAM, and at the same time paging the rest of the RAM out to disk.
So, we have disk data sitting in RAM which is pretending to be a disk, while transient data are being paged out to disk pretending to be RAM. And now that disk actually is RAM pretending to be a disk pretending to be RAM. What is this? An episode of Scooby Doo?
Mr Ram tears off a rubber mask. "Haha! I'm really Mr Disk, the janitor! Shaggy tears off a second level of rubber mask, revealing Old Ma Gigabyte, who was trying to scare off rogue mobo manufacturers by pretending to be a spooky Maxtor drive... And she would have got away with it were it not for those pesky Slashdotters.
All right then, perhaps not exactly like Scooby Doo. But you get my point.
Wouldn't it just be simpler to disable paging to disk and add the RAM to the mobo?
The easiest way to avoid problems with case sensitivity is to use a consistent case rule. The easiest one, from a typing point of view, is "all identifiers are lower case". This seems to be the general rule in all the MySQL examples I've seen, too, so you at least have convention on your side...
As for the Windows/Linux thing, I'm just starting to use MySQL, and haven;t noticed any real differences. However, I am just running a couple of little websites, not Slashdot or the IRS.
If it is a black hole, it's comforting to see that Hawking was right and they do evaporate, rather than sit at the Earth's core devouring us all.
Even if it's not a black hole, experiments that produce surprising results are always welcome.
I concur with the others who have talked about ground problems, but here's an extra question:
Is the computer plugged into anything else when it's being glitchy? Printer? LAN? Modem? It may be that there's a difference in ground potential between the computer and the peripheral that's causing a current flow between the two.
If not, ignore the above but check the grounding anyway.
This may seem like an odd thing for a Slashdot reader to say, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we should get the computers out of the classrooms until, say, age 11.
There's no point having a computer if the kids can't read, write, add up, or concentrate on a task. The £1000 it would cost to kit out a decent computer and train the teacher to use it properly would buy much more effective basic educational tools made of paper and ink.
Or buy paper and ink and let the kids make their own educational tools!
This will either rain on your parade or make your day, but the phallus behind the girl is not a prop, but is actually a building in London. I can't remember its proper name, as it is universally referred to as "The Gherkin".
"And it had an amazing mix of emotional moments and hilarious comedy."
Agreed. I'm afraid to say I actually shed a tear over the fate of Seymour the dog.
Congratulations, Sir, on your familiarity with the work of Mr. John Percival Hackworth.
This too crossed my mind, although unfortunately when I voiced it aloud, I was then forced to explain to my regrettably ill-informed colleagues what a "mediatron" was.
The Thunderbirds Movie vehicles were like that. You got a single piece of Thunderbird 5 with each of Thunderbirds 1, 2, 3 and 4.
This masterful marketing move was, however, countered at source by making the movie suck so badly no-one wanted to buy them. Instead it just rekindled the interest in the classic Thunderbirds TV series.
...but Adblock along with the excellent Filterset.G Updater. Also NoScript and BugMeNot.
Since I'm a web weenie, I also have View Formatted Source and Copy Plain Text.
Add Bookmark Here is very useful too.
One thing worthy of particular praise is NoScript's user interface - you can easily unblock items on a page temporarily or permanently, from the status bar of page itself. Now, why can't the cookie manager do this? I run with cookies blocked normally, but when I want to allow a site to use cookies, I have to go to a menu item, the site name isn't filled in, there's no "Use Current Site" button, and I can't even cut-and-paste from the address bar because it's a modal dialog.
Strange. I'm as skeptical about the US as the next guy (and I live just across from France, dont'cha know?), but I never even considered SCO's corporate asininity as an "American thing" until you mentioned it.
After a little reflection, I still don't view it that way. IBM, after all, are the good guys here and they're American too.
IMO, it's a "stupid company thing". And believe me, there are quite a few of those outside the US, too.
If the goal is to kill it, then why keep spending the money on construction if it's never going to be finished?
:-)
I'd say cut your losses, mothball it now and spend the money on robotic missions to Europa, a prototype asteroid mining mission that actually produces real product (e.g. water for reaction mass), orbiters for Uranus and Neptune, advanced nuclear (ooh, the n-word!) propulsion systems so that deep space missions that don't take decades, and actually get some science done.
I guess it's all a bit moot, though, since by 2020 everyone will be buying elevator tickets from Liftport instead...
Imagine your cable guy had gotten into your house and surreptitiously installed new locks on your doors, so that he could check that you weren't stealing channels. But, the lockes would let anyone in with an appropriate key. One of your security-savvy friends notices and blows the whistle. Now the cable guy comes back and says "I didn't do anything wrong. But you can't remove the locks. Let me come and do it. Oh, and you'll need to leave everything unlocked while I do it."
This is effectively what Sony are saying. They installed a massive security hole on your system, covered it up, and then require you to use the least secure browser, and enable its least secure technology, in order to "fix" it for you.
Sony should have to pay for an independent service engineer to visit every computer that has this malware installed and remove it.
Even I could see the tongue in cheek from here.
:-) ;-) after everything and topped off with a LOL!!1!11!!
:-), rimshot, etc. Sigh.)
I thought that we on Slashdot are supposed to intellgent beings, not the kind of L33T D00DZ who have to have obvious humor put in <joke></joke> tags, with a liberal helping of
But look like I'm wrong (joke, LOL!ll111!11,
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Can you imagine the lively, engaging style of Pixar stuggling to survive the diktats for formulaic plot heaped upon it by Disney execs? Think "The Emperor's New Groove" but done with shiny new CG. Ugh.
Vista - 1980's technology today^H^H^H^H^Hsometime next year.
Like most other people, I finally found a problem where Linux was the solution.
I finally got fed up with the cleanup, despite having antivirus, malware scanning, etc.
Well, it arrived this morning and I spent lunchtime fitting it into my Ford, with the help of an adapter kit I bought from eBay for about £15. Piece of cake, even for a clumsy software-jockey like me.
So, here are some fleeting initial impressions. I've only tried it with a USB stick so far, but it quite happily played a stick full of OGGs at ~128kbps (44.1KHz, Stereo). I therefore don't see that it would have any problem with CDs. It picked up the ID3 tags quite nicely, and the scrolling display is muted enough that it doesn't catch your eye when you're supposed to be looking at the road.
Sound quality is certainly better than my old tape deck (not difficult, I'll admit), with an obviously flatter frequency response and better bass. There is audible amp hiss when the volume is very very low, although you wouldn't notice this with the engine running. The tuner also doesn't seem to be as sensitive as the original Ford radio. The entire front panel comes off, which is quite bulky, especially when compared to the nice design of the Fords where one row of buttons comes off.
Overall: £80 well spent, and no need to re-rip my audio collection. Hurrah!
Amazon UK sells the Yakumo Hypersound car, an ogg-capable in-dash CD unit with USB and SD card support, for £80.
Link to Amazon Page
According to Amazon, mine's in the post and should arrive monday. The OGG support isn't made obvious, but if you go to the manufacturer's website and download the manual, it's there in the back. NOT a high profile promo for OGG, but it's a nice cheap unit and my tape player was dying anyway.
In the article you refer to, Mikael Baros writes: The best one is that the Loader class can load much more than M3G files, it can basically deserialize any class that inherits from Object3D.
If true, this would open up a security hole. Fortunately, he is incorrect. The Loader will only deserialize the classes in the spec that are derived from Object3D. That's a very different claim.
The file format does not use standard Java serialization and instead uses a compact binary encoding of the specific data from the classes defined in the spec. Loading the file consists of reading the type ID for each object, verifying that that ID corresponds to one of the 24 known object types, and if so creating an object of that type using an internal factory function. The new object can then be populated using the following chunk of data.
Since the factory does not have a method of creating arbitrary classes outside the set of 24 mandated by the specification, the loader cannot be used for exploits in the way you describe.