Oh for goodness sake show a bit of backbone human. Whatever happened to the spirit of adventure, to curiosity, to self belief?
Slashdot amongst other things is a forum for discussion about topical technological subjects. There is no way on earth that you are going to have expertise on all the subjects covered and it would be tedious in the extreeme if subjects were avoided or dumbed down because they were obscure. So for goodness sake get off your fat lazy backside and invest some effort into your life rather than waiting to be spoon fed everything. I use google to find out more and I cannot understand why you dont want to.
The beauty of slashdot is that it is indiscriminate and can raise subjects that are arcane as well as trivial, use the content classification system if you do not want to see articles about indigestible subjects.
Telephony has always been a subject that is shrouded in mystery, mainly one suspects because of the monopoly that carriers enjoyed in the past. An article on one more step in the erosion of that secrecy and lingering monopoly has to be an interesting read for anyone aware of what is going on in the world of technology.
A VOIP PBX is almost as exciting as a VOIP PABX, an Apache of the VOIP world could be very disruptive.
You confuse the ability to participate in economic activity with state of development. The two things are different - A country can have universitys, business parks and industries and at the same time have very high levels of infant mortality, low levels of literacy and large numbers of people living at subsistance level. Such countries may be able to participate in reduced carbon emission technology development but will lack the infrastructure or working capital to implement them. The goose is not the same as the gander, developing countries should be setting targets - just not the same targets as developed ones. You should try getting out of your air conditioned hotel more.
Thanks for your comment and I am sorry I could not reply sooner.
This story was told by a folk singer called Derek Brimstone (a Jewish guy) as a joke in the 80's at a gig at the Who'd Have Thought It pub near Plymouth UK - its always stuck in my mind as an illustration of how easy it is to be distracted from the reality or truth about something - which to his 'aware' audience I believe he was commenting upon in the form of a joke. I should have mentioned this as a codacil to my post to explain why I was saying it about the Mall worker who candidly admitted to following a nonsensical order from authority.
I agree with your comments, to be human is to be fallable; responsible members of German society have done an outstanding job in educating sucessive generations about the mistake that their forefathers made in following the authority of the third reich in respect to their inhumanity towards fellow humanity. I think that you will find the average German person has a higher degree of self awareness of responsibilty towards other peoples than British or American persons for example.
This is one of the reasons that their politician had more doubt about instigating military action against Sadams Iraq than British or American politicians - the voters could not be expected to support war as a tool of international politics - quite apart from other factors that could be raised as reasons for this stance like 'trade is more important than political disagreement' or 'my children are not going to die for political theories'. It will be a matter of historical judgement as to whether British and Amerian politicians took the right decision on this in my judgement. Our politicians have been brave to act with the application of force.
Whether this turns out to have been a good thing in the long term for the Iraqui people and for the Western coalition is still in the balance, we should hope that the price paid will not exceed the outcome. But it is my view that the squeemishness of the Germans has to be respected precisely because of their self awareness about past mistakes and we should recognise that they have a point. They have a certain degree of authority in these matters.
That reminds me of a story I once heard about how nobody cares about the Jews.
Given that somebody could work for a Mall and leap upon people taking photographs and stop them for no apparant reason - You can understand why we have (mostly) forgiven the German people for turning 2 million Jews and a Postal Worker into land fill in the middle of the last century. Because it is all too easy to go along with authority.
Oh and before you ask I dont know why they killed the Postal Worker but your obvious interest in him proves my assertion about how nobody cares about the Jews.
Yes apart from laughing my tits off, I'm tempted to agree. Though I've said it before in reference to identity cards and commercial enterprises/governments owning more information on you than you can remember - Soon the only place where you might actualy be able to "quit" will be a third world country with a severe shortage of electricity. The USA is becoming more and more like the souless hell that was supposedly defeated in Soviet Russia. (and the UK isnt far behind).
This copyright / branding / advertising / patenting thing has gone too far and its high time we put a stop to it. Its quite simple - Dont buy anything you see advertised. Buy everything possible using a search engine to look for specifications. Use technology to resist brand monopoly. Buy no name clones of branded products and tivo advertising out of your life. Dont buy $150 training shoes, get them straight from the factory for the $5 it costs to make them, they all come off the same production line now anyway. Products from small and medium sized enterprises are just as good as the brand leaders these days, the only difference is the brand name, patent portfolio, advertising budget and back catalogue of copyright ownership. Buy a knock off Ipod, steal your music and pay top dollar to go see live performances by local unsigned bands. Run open source software and persuade other people to use it. Do business with small companies.
IMHO this stuff is far more important than Al Quaida, gay couples, aborted babies, saving the whales or signing up to the Kyoto agreement. this planet will soon have become unliveable on, long before the sea level rises over our heads and makes it uninhabitable.
Resist the scum in suits who make money by taking ownership of public spaces and have fun doing it!
I suspect his paymasters may not be too willing to pay up this week, once his normal clickrate goes from 200 a week to 666,000 a week for one week only...
US Military action in a good cause is always welcome, you outspent the old soviet union into giving up. Also absence of action for a nation so powerful is equivalent to encouragement to those whom action could be taken against. A difficult dilema.
However decades of somewhat self interested or careless Military action tend to lead one to doubt US motivation.
Please carry on backing your leaders when they use Military force to "sort out problems" but bare in mind that you are allowed to question your leaders judgement as to what constitutes a good cause.
Iraq was a judgement call that has yet to be evaluated by history. Vietnam has been judged by history and mostly found to have been a mistake. Its quite a good tourist destination now and the 'evil communists' have turned out to be not very evil and not very communist.
Burma and North Korea are both more in need of "Liberation" than Iraq ever was, apparantly Iran is next on the list though.
Yes - I'm relatively wrong and he is also relatively correct... Headwind or tail wind do not affect your airspeed at all, only your ground speed.
I could have been walking round for years not understanding that, just goes to prove that there is always stuff to learn that you thought you understood. I will now see if anybody I asked today has realised the correct answer to my question.
Is certainly possible, here I am at work posting on slashdot...
Is it just me or is the Glider analogy completely wrong?
Do you not find it easier to return to an airport from which the wind is blowing at you - so being downwind of the airport is a good thing.
If the wind is blowing at me I can climb, or I can maintain my altitude for longer with a less steep glide path giving me a greater range.
The article suggests that "Because a glider doesn't have an engine, you can't fly into the wind without losing a lot of altitude. If you let yourself get far downwind of good places to land, your options narrow uncomfortably. As a rule you want to stay upwind".
Curious that the map showing the geographical distribution of the network centres shows only the USA and Europe. Is this because the bulk of the audience is there?
Has anyone dug through the data and found country usage statistics?, now that I would find interesting.
Interesting that "no one thought the internet would be used for email and instant messaging when it was invented" Because I can quite clearly recall in 1981 using the South Western Computer network between Cardiff and several other universities in the UK to chat with the operators in other computer centers - using a teletype printer (because cathode ray monitors were expensive). And using VAX mail to leave messages for people. It was the most obvious fun thing to do with a network...
Frankly all I can see is christmas wrapping paper with built in flashing LED's and playing jingle bells.
On the other hand I could use some of this stuff to make a sail that generated enough welly to drive a toaster, that would be fun too. Where can I get a sample?
Another way of looking at it though is that monitors just arnt big enough - plugging two in at once is a help
My prediction for the year is the 27 inch flat screen monitor being a surprise hit...
Speadsheets wear out my wheel mouse, toolbars get disabled on every application, icon docks / start bars autohide and now we have twenty mdi window applications.
A very good suggestion, a small amount of money from a very large number of people will add up to something useful.
This is going to go on for a long time too, they talk about millions of people who have lost their livelyhoods and their homes. A big donation now when we see the sea full of dead bodies is not going to be the end of it. Promise yourself to give the survivors a bit more in six months time as well when we will all have become heartily fed up of the story...
I'm decidedly poor this year but I can spare the price of a good resturant meal and that is money well spent to my mind. Its also money well spent geopolitically, it makes the job of filling youngsters minds with the will of nasty political terroists a lot harder when the people look after other people.
Have a great new year everybody. life is for the living and if your not celebrating your life you are wasting a limited resource so have an excellent party tonight:-)
its interesting to note that beer can turn some people into dynamic sociable party monsters and others into withdrawn violent antisocials. If you are going to play with your brain take care to keep an eye on the effects it has on you. Chemical stimulation does not have the same affect on different people. Someone mentioned yin and yang earlier on in the thread, a sense of balance is a usefull touchstone.
Mind you catnip seems to do it for cats.... any cat...
Sorry to hear your cat died of the big C, I'd always assumed that Douglas Adams had it wrong about the white mice and it was the cats who were realy in charge. Sadly they turn out to be disapointingly mortal after all, despite the consumate ease with which they organise households around them
Hope your cat found the door into summer, and a merry winter solstice to you.
Though I'm enjoying the presumption that Patrick must be in league with or even the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler because he hasnt shared the gory details of his aparent recovery from illness.
I suggest that we pettiton mr Bush to load up some bombers and flatten the guy as soon as possible. After all in the "WAR ON TERROR" you cant be too sure. Heh, its even possible that his illness is some genetically modified disease implanted by Alien terroists in league with microsoft in a plot to infect the linux community with Anthrax distributed by Slack.
Dont you think we should be told???
On the other hand we could be worrying about whether the collapse in the dollar is going to cause a worldwide recession or something else of more import, couldnt we.
//rant on Its not anyones business to harrass the guy though, not as far as I am concerned anyway. He asked for help because he felt desperate, now he is back working on Slack. Thats enough information isnt it?
People may feel cheated that they dont know the gory details of his current state of health but I am sure that the majority of people are just glad to hear that he is back doing what he enjoys. "Publics business" my arse, you dont own the guy just because he asked for help. Go watch the tv if you want to see bodies being pulled from auto wrecks.
If I thought you were worried about the viability of Slackware and wanted to know who was going to take it on if its creator might be too ill to continue then I might think you had a valid worry. But if you just want to satisfy purient curiosity then thats just pointless bad manners. Rephrase the question or consider it withdrawn. rant off//
I have a bad cold so I'm probably being unecessarily grumpy but the guy was in distress and now he seems to be relatively ok. So please give him a break.
It rather depends if you could expect your ten holes to be duplicated by anybody else and whether you would then get fractions of the discovery...
The Prof lacks the ability to empathise with people from the sound of it. I expect he is suffering from a borderline mental illness. The price some people have to pay for great academic brilliance. I feel rather sorry for him, he must be a rather a lonely sort of chap.
He didnt express any particular method by which the student should discover a security hole in deployed UNIX software.
Should be simple enough to compile a list of security bug fixes in established software projects as they occur during the term.
Theres plenty to keep an eye on with all the supported distributions websites and everything on sourceforge. You only have to find one or two unique ones a week each for a ten week term. (I feel as if there are enough platform independant browser exploits to meet this discovery rate....)
The trick here is collaborating with fellow students to compile a single list of 400 exploits that you can all submit.
It all depends on the deffinition of "discover" "new" and "security holes" which is entirely arguable from the credit specification.
Of course you would probably have to ask what each hole consists of, the resulting list may even prove publishable if it shows any interesting patterns.
First and second degree murder are distinguished by an ethical judgement.
Corporations can and should pay for their misdemeanors. When you say that the company could be destroyed by paying - what you realy mean is that its current shareholders could lose their money and the assets could be sold to other management. The existing workforce would continue to work and the business should go on to prosper.
Responsible businesses can and do buy companies which have outstanding liabilities. An example is the european engineering company ABB which took on a company which had substantial asbestos related liabilities. ABB is paying for those liabilities at considerable cost to its shareholders and profit line. Dow Chemical is similarly liable and seeks to spend money in the courts defraying their responsibility into the future, because it is cheaper to their bottom line and with any luck the victims will all be dead in a few more decades. Dow Chemical took on a liability which it is trying to evade, I do not think they have ethical management.
If people spent as much time and energy on demanding regulation of abominations against natural justice in the capitalist system as they do getting moralistic about gay marriage and abortion then I might have more respect for their ethics.
Is Bohpal evidence that ethics is a commodity which has been bought and manipulated in the United States?
The free version should be enough to make almost any sundial you are capable of making - the paid for version is for ultra sophisticated types beyond the capability of mere mortals like you to construct:-)
Seriously its a brilliant piece of software, give it a try
Slashdot Mirror
I sure hope this one is protected by the GPL, otherwise SCO is going to be suing the asses off every paper maker in the world...
You drink 7 pints of beer a day....
awestruck...
Oh for goodness sake show a bit of backbone human. Whatever happened to the spirit of adventure, to curiosity, to self belief?
Slashdot amongst other things is a forum for discussion about topical technological subjects. There is no way on earth that you are going to have expertise on all the subjects covered and it would be tedious in the extreeme if subjects were avoided or dumbed down because they were obscure. So for goodness sake get off your fat lazy backside and invest some effort into your life rather than waiting to be spoon fed everything. I use google to find out more and I cannot understand why you dont want to.
The beauty of slashdot is that it is indiscriminate and can raise subjects that are arcane as well as trivial, use the content classification system if you do not want to see articles about indigestible subjects.
Telephony has always been a subject that is shrouded in mystery, mainly one suspects because of the monopoly that carriers enjoyed in the past. An article on one more step in the erosion of that secrecy and lingering monopoly has to be an interesting read for anyone aware of what is going on in the world of technology.
A VOIP PBX is almost as exciting as a VOIP PABX, an Apache of the VOIP world could be very disruptive.
You confuse the ability to participate in economic activity with state of development. The two things are different - A country can have universitys, business parks and industries and at the same time have very high levels of infant mortality, low levels of literacy and large numbers of people living at subsistance level. Such countries may be able to participate in reduced carbon emission technology development but will lack the infrastructure or working capital to implement them. The goose is not the same as the gander, developing countries should be setting targets - just not the same targets as developed ones.
You should try getting out of your air conditioned hotel more.
Thanks for your comment and I am sorry I could not reply sooner.
This story was told by a folk singer called Derek Brimstone (a Jewish guy) as a joke in the 80's at a gig at the Who'd Have Thought It pub near Plymouth UK - its always stuck in my mind as an illustration of how easy it is to be distracted from the reality or truth about something - which to his 'aware' audience I believe he was commenting upon in the form of a joke. I should have mentioned this as a codacil to my post to explain why I was saying it about the Mall worker who candidly admitted to following a nonsensical order from authority.
I agree with your comments, to be human is to be fallable; responsible members of German society have done an outstanding job in educating sucessive generations about the mistake that their forefathers made in following the authority of the third reich in respect to their inhumanity towards fellow humanity. I think that you will find the average German person has a higher degree of self awareness of responsibilty towards other peoples than British or American persons for example.
This is one of the reasons that their politician had more doubt about instigating military action against Sadams Iraq than British or American politicians - the voters could not be expected to support war as a tool of international politics - quite apart from other factors that could be raised as reasons for this stance like 'trade is more important than political disagreement' or 'my children are not going to die for political theories'. It will be a matter of historical judgement as to whether British and Amerian politicians took the right decision on this in my judgement. Our politicians have been brave to act with the application of force.
Whether this turns out to have been a good thing in the long term for the Iraqui people and for the Western coalition is still in the balance, we should hope that the price paid will not exceed the outcome. But it is my view that the squeemishness of the Germans has to be respected precisely because of their self awareness about past mistakes and we should recognise that they have a point. They have a certain degree of authority in these matters.
That reminds me of a story I once heard about how nobody cares about the Jews.
Given that somebody could work for a Mall and leap upon people taking photographs and stop them for no apparant reason - You can understand why we have (mostly) forgiven the German people for turning 2 million Jews and a Postal Worker into land fill in the middle of the last century. Because it is all too easy to go along with authority.
Oh and before you ask I dont know why they killed the Postal Worker but your obvious interest in him proves my assertion about how nobody cares about the Jews.
Aw now you have gone and spoiled everybodies self righteous fun!
Yes apart from laughing my tits off, I'm tempted to agree. Though I've said it before in reference to identity cards and commercial enterprises/governments owning more information on you than you can remember - Soon the only place where you might actualy be able to "quit" will be a third world country with a severe shortage of electricity. The USA is becoming more and more like the souless hell that was supposedly defeated in Soviet Russia. (and the UK isnt far behind).
This copyright / branding / advertising / patenting thing has gone too far and its high time we put a stop to it. Its quite simple - Dont buy anything you see advertised. Buy everything possible using a search engine to look for specifications. Use technology to resist brand monopoly. Buy no name clones of branded products and tivo advertising out of your life. Dont buy $150 training shoes, get them straight from the factory for the $5 it costs to make them, they all come off the same production line now anyway. Products from small and medium sized enterprises are just as good as the brand leaders these days, the only difference is the brand name, patent portfolio, advertising budget and back catalogue of copyright ownership. Buy a knock off Ipod, steal your music and pay top dollar to go see live performances by local unsigned bands. Run open source software and persuade other people to use it. Do business with small companies.
IMHO this stuff is far more important than Al Quaida, gay couples, aborted babies, saving the whales or signing up to the Kyoto agreement. this planet will soon have become unliveable on, long before the sea level rises over our heads and makes it uninhabitable.
Resist the scum in suits who make money by taking ownership of public spaces and have fun doing it!
I suspect his paymasters may not be too willing to pay up this week, once his normal clickrate goes from 200 a week to 666,000 a week for one week only...
US Military action in a good cause is always welcome, you outspent the old soviet union into giving up. Also absence of action for a nation so powerful is equivalent to encouragement to those whom action could be taken against. A difficult dilema.
However decades of somewhat self interested or careless Military action tend to lead one to doubt US motivation.
Please carry on backing your leaders when they use Military force to "sort out problems" but bare in mind that you are allowed to question your leaders judgement as to what constitutes a good cause.
Iraq was a judgement call that has yet to be evaluated by history. Vietnam has been judged by history and mostly found to have been a mistake. Its quite a good tourist destination now and the 'evil communists' have turned out to be not very evil and not very communist.
Burma and North Korea are both more in need of "Liberation" than Iraq ever was, apparantly Iran is next on the list though.
Yes - I'm relatively wrong and he is also relatively correct...
Headwind or tail wind do not affect your airspeed at all, only your ground speed.
I could have been walking round for years not understanding that, just goes to prove that there is always stuff to learn that you thought you understood. I will now see if anybody I asked today has realised the correct answer to my question.
Is certainly possible, here I am at work posting on slashdot...
Is it just me or is the Glider analogy completely wrong?
Do you not find it easier to return to an airport from which the wind is blowing at you - so being downwind of the airport is a good thing.
If the wind is blowing at me I can climb, or I can maintain my altitude for longer with a less steep glide path giving me a greater range.
The article suggests that "Because a glider doesn't have an engine, you can't fly into the wind without losing a lot of altitude. If you let yourself get far downwind of good places to land, your options narrow uncomfortably. As a rule you want to stay upwind".
Any glider pilots or physicists care to comment?
This is true. However I am surprised that there is no host in the Japan, India, Korea, Australia time zone
Curious that the map showing the geographical distribution of the network centres shows only the USA and Europe. Is this because the bulk of the audience is there?
Has anyone dug through the data and found country usage statistics?, now that I would find interesting.
Interesting that "no one thought the internet would be used for email and instant messaging when it was invented" Because I can quite clearly recall in 1981 using the South Western Computer network between Cardiff and several other universities in the UK to chat with the operators in other computer centers - using a teletype printer (because cathode ray monitors were expensive). And using VAX mail to leave messages for people. It was the most obvious fun thing to do with a network...
Frankly all I can see is christmas wrapping paper with built in flashing LED's and playing jingle bells.
On the other hand I could use some of this stuff to make a sail that generated enough welly to drive a toaster, that would be fun too. Where can I get a sample?
Another way of looking at it though is that monitors just arnt big enough - plugging two in at once is a help
My prediction for the year is the 27 inch flat screen monitor being a surprise hit...
Speadsheets wear out my wheel mouse, toolbars get disabled on every application, icon docks / start bars autohide and now we have twenty mdi window applications.
Give me more screen!!
A very good suggestion, a small amount of money from a very large number of people will add up to something useful.
:-)
This is going to go on for a long time too, they talk about millions of people who have lost their livelyhoods and their homes. A big donation now when we see the sea full of dead bodies is not going to be the end of it. Promise yourself to give the survivors a bit more in six months time as well when we will all have become heartily fed up of the story...
I'm decidedly poor this year but I can spare the price of a good resturant meal and that is money well spent to my mind. Its also money well spent geopolitically, it makes the job of filling youngsters minds with the will of nasty political terroists a lot harder when the people look after other people.
Have a great new year everybody. life is for the living and if your not celebrating your life you are wasting a limited resource so have an excellent party tonight
its interesting to note that beer can turn some people into dynamic sociable party monsters and others into withdrawn violent antisocials. If you are going to play with your brain take care to keep an eye on the effects it has on you. Chemical stimulation does not have the same affect on different people. Someone mentioned yin and yang earlier on in the thread, a sense of balance is a usefull touchstone.
Mind you catnip seems to do it for cats.... any cat...
Oh dear that means I lost - again!
Sorry to hear your cat died of the big C, I'd always assumed that Douglas Adams had it wrong about the white mice and it was the cats who were realy in charge. Sadly they turn out to be disapointingly mortal after all, despite the consumate ease with which they organise households around them
Hope your cat found the door into summer, and a merry winter solstice to you.
Boy this is all getting pretty humorless.
Though I'm enjoying the presumption that Patrick must be in league with or even the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler because he hasnt shared the gory details of his aparent recovery from illness.
I suggest that we pettiton mr Bush to load up some bombers and flatten the guy as soon as possible. After all in the "WAR ON TERROR" you cant be too sure. Heh, its even possible that his illness is some genetically modified disease implanted by Alien terroists in league with microsoft in a plot to infect the linux community with Anthrax distributed by Slack.
Dont you think we should be told???
On the other hand we could be worrying about whether the collapse in the dollar is going to cause a worldwide recession or something else of more import, couldnt we.
//rant on
Its not anyones business to harrass the guy though, not as far as I am concerned anyway. He asked for help because he felt desperate, now he is back working on Slack. Thats enough information isnt it?
People may feel cheated that they dont know the gory details of his current state of health but I am sure that the majority of people are just glad to hear that he is back doing what he enjoys. "Publics business" my arse, you dont own the guy just because he asked for help. Go watch the tv if you want to see bodies being pulled from auto wrecks.
If I thought you were worried about the viability of Slackware and wanted to know who was going to take it on if its creator might be too ill to continue then I might think you had a valid worry. But if you just want to satisfy purient curiosity then thats just pointless bad manners. Rephrase the question or consider it withdrawn.
rant off//
I have a bad cold so I'm probably being unecessarily grumpy but the guy was in distress and now he seems to be relatively ok. So please give him a break.
It rather depends if you could expect your ten holes to be duplicated by anybody else and whether you would then get fractions of the discovery...
The Prof lacks the ability to empathise with people from the sound of it. I expect he is suffering from a borderline mental illness. The price some people have to pay for great academic brilliance. I feel rather sorry for him, he must be a rather a lonely sort of chap.
Hmm
He didnt express any particular method by which the student should discover a security hole in deployed UNIX software.
Should be simple enough to compile a list of security bug fixes in established software projects as they occur during the term.
Theres plenty to keep an eye on with all the supported distributions websites and everything on sourceforge. You only have to find one or two unique ones a week each for a ten week term. (I feel as if there are enough platform independant browser exploits to meet this discovery rate....)
The trick here is collaborating with fellow students to compile a single list of 400 exploits that you can all submit.
It all depends on the deffinition of "discover" "new" and "security holes" which is entirely arguable from the credit specification.
Of course you would probably have to ask what each hole consists of, the resulting list may even prove publishable if it shows any interesting patterns.
Good luck.
First and second degree murder are distinguished by an ethical judgement.
Corporations can and should pay for their misdemeanors. When you say that the company could be destroyed by paying - what you realy mean is that its current shareholders could lose their money and the assets could be sold to other management. The existing workforce would continue to work and the business should go on to prosper.
Responsible businesses can and do buy companies which have outstanding liabilities. An example is the european engineering company ABB which took on a company which had substantial asbestos related liabilities. ABB is paying for those liabilities at considerable cost to its shareholders and profit line. Dow Chemical is similarly liable and seeks to spend money in the courts defraying their responsibility into the future, because it is cheaper to their bottom line and with any luck the victims will all be dead in a few more decades. Dow Chemical took on a liability which it is trying to evade, I do not think they have ethical management.
If people spent as much time and energy on demanding regulation of abominations against natural justice in the capitalist system as they do getting moralistic about gay marriage and abortion then I might have more respect for their ethics.
Is Bohpal evidence that ethics is a commodity which has been bought and manipulated in the United States?
The free version should be enough to make almost any sundial you are capable of making - the paid for version is for ultra sophisticated types beyond the capability of mere mortals like you to construct :-)
Seriously its a brilliant piece of software, give it a try