While some might argue that this sets a dangerous precedent, I think using this sort of satellite imagery to investigate an insurance claim is probably much less intrusive than the conventional invetigations insurance companies pursue.
Having the insurance company confirm that there is no fraud occuring by using satellite images (hopefully with the authorization of the farmer making the claim), involves really no-one else other than the farmer and the company.
On the other hand, if they investigate by asking around the community, obtaining possibly irrelevant financial records, etc., very quickly everyone in the farmer's community will know about it. News (especially juicy gossip like an accusation of insurance fraud) travels fast in a small town. Unless the farmer *wants* other people to know that he's making an insurance claim, nobody really has the right to know this.
I feel using this sort of technology does a better job of *protecting* the farmer's privacy than it does of invading it.
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
While the article does make some interesting points (you *did* read it, didn't you?), I'm not quite sure I'd go so far as to see this as a huge consipiracy to draw our attention away from "authentication services".
It's probably true that Microsoft isn't as concerned with the GPL as it appears in previous articles here, but I think their "concern" with it is a pretty good indication that they are taking it seriously. Aside from the fact that this is classic MS FUD-mongering, I'd imagine that before they went and made any such statements that their lawyers had taken a very, very close look at the wording and workings of the GPL.
Rather than the current smear tactics (comparing something a "cancer" is *not* playing nice) being a diversion, I think they are being carried out because Microsoft actually believes that the GPL could stand up in a court of law, and that their corporate lawyers *probably* couldn't fight it effectively.
Of course if you want a real conspiracy, you could even go so far as to conclude that MS has already (secretly) violated the GPL, or is planning to do so...
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
- the screen : those things run from 70 to 150 Watts/hour depending of size, which is really huge. A flat panel will go 20 to 30 Watts.
For conventional CRT monitors, don't get to carried away with the powersaving settings. Having the interval before DPMS kicks in set too short will cause the monitor to cycle on and off *much* more frequently throughout the day if the computer gets used a lot.
This could eventually cause something to break (unlikely), but the real issue is that on power-up, a monitor will draw quite a bit more power than when it is running normally. Do this enough times in a day, and you'll end up using more power, even though the total time the CRT spends in "sleep" mode (or whatever you want to call it) is a bit more than it was before...
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
We have Jon Katz doing two features on Microsoft back-to-back. That's bound to generate a "few" responses!
So did/. get new hardware that needs to be stress tested? Were some secret improvements made to the backend code or database that need testing? Or perhaps CmdrTaco has found a banner ad server that still pays out per viewing, and he really needs the cash right now (for his pr0n addiction, of course!)...
There's more to this than they'd have us believe!!!
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
Ugh. One of the reasons I enjoy biking (mountain biking) as much as I do is that it gets me as far away from computers as possible. I've considered getting a bike computer to keep track of mileage etc, but if I didn't break the damn thing in a crash I know I'd end up just riding *against* the computer and all the wonderful statistics it could provide. I'd rather *not* know how far or fast I've gone.
The sentiment of getting geeks into biking is good, though. In a way, I see biking as an extremely addictive videogame that's also good for you! A good technical trail is like a puzzle that is asking to be solved, and we all know us geeks love our puzzles...
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
Re:Cheap, useable competition
on
GIMP And OS X
·
· Score: 1
And I like the animated GIMP! Is that a first for/.?
Both the dustpuppy icon (for the userfriendly link if you have it turned on) and the gimp icon are animated. Having the dustpuppy move around is OK, it's pretty obvious what's going on.
The gimp animation is pure evil, though. It seems to run very slowly, moving its eyes infrequently. But you know it's watching-- watching you, waiting for you to turn your back. If you stare at it, it just stares back unblinking, unmoving. Only when you look away does it catch the corner of your eye. Forget the NSA, forget Echelon. *This* evil monstrosity is what's been watching me write my emails! But now we know the truth! We can do som1!@$$!!!@#%%@#@!#$@#$NO CARRIER
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
This all great and wonderful, but you have to have installed mutt, installed pgp or gpg, have setup your PGP keyring, and it doesn't hurt to have registered with pgp.net so that everyone can find it. That's not hard to do if you have instructions, but it isn't clear and easy for most users.
Using mutt in and of itself isn't clear and easy for most users! I've casually tried it, and while it's very obvious that there is a lot of power under the hood, the aesthetics and user interface leave something to be desired. I can only imagine that a newbie would be completely lost before even typing "mutt" at the console...
Personally, I try and be pragmatic about these sorts of things. From a text console and remote sessions, I use pine (with pgp filters, of course). In X, I've started using kmail lately. It seems to do a very good job of dealing with pgp encryption, and was a no-brainer to set up. With a couple strategically placed symlinks, pine and kmail easily share folders, including the sent mail.
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
Ah, but the telephone is far from the only alternative to the internet for sending data.
You could burn the key to a CD or copy it to a floppy and courier or mail it over to the other party. With a bit of effort, your package could be made tamperproof, or at least make any attempts to open it by a third party very obvious.
Another relatively secure method of transmitting data which is often overlooked is a direct modem connection. I realize not too many people remember doing this, but if you just fire up your favourite terminal app and dial the other party's number, you can just copy the key across using Z-modem (or whatever catches your fancy).
This *could* also be intercepted and modified along the way, but the likely hood of this is much less than sending keys across the internet.
If you're exceptionally paranoid, you could just use a combination of different methods, and diff them to make sure the public keys came through the same.
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
It would cause unprecedented development around the world. People would no longer be hampered by fascist laws and life saving drugs would suddenly be affordable to third world countries.
I find this very hard to believe. If some of the patents on various drugs were dropped today, this probably would benefit some 3d world countries, but I can't see too many large pharma companies investing their resources in developing new drugs. If that happened, when the current generation of drugs becomes obsolete (evolution, y'know), we'd be pretty much screwed.
Of course, in moderation this could work-- and well! Several developing nations *do* allow companies to make generic copies of drugs that help with many of the problem diseases. A recent UN resolution (check your favourite news sites) actually condones this practice to some degree. For example, South Africa manufactures copies of various AIDS drugs to help people who could *never* afford these drugs. They were being sued by serveral of the large American pharma companies for this, but the suits have since been dropped.
The real problem with patents on medicines is that in order to design and test a new drug (to make sure it works and is safe!), a pharma company needs to invest huge amounts of money. To turn a profit on this investment before their patent runs out, they *have* to charge such high prices on the drug. This puts the drug out of reach of people living in essentially all developing countries, and many people in the so-called developed countries. Only those fortunate enought to be wealthy or have exceptional healthcare coverage have access to them.
Short of a global, socialist healthcare system (yeah right), I don't seem much of an effective solution other than the current one-- i.e. enforce patent laws on drugs here to allow the companies to turn a profit, and ignore any "violations" by developing countries. Kind of depressing in a way...
Where's the spoiler in that? I haven't seen the movie yet (and I don't plan to), but I got that much out of just the previews I've seen! I guess that does say a lot about the plot, or lack of it!
Could someone please stop Jon Katz from reviewing movies here?
You may want to take a closer look at your preferences page. Last time I checked, you can turn off stories based on the category they fall under, or by author. With just a few clicks, you'll never see a story by Katz on the front page again. Personally, I like seeing the occasional story from him, if just for the entertainment value in some of the comments following it!
...Microsoft didn't invent subpixel rendering! Instead, this technique was used on Apple computers 26 years ago...
I'm not sure about it being done 26 years ago, but I do remember doing this on the Apple//e in the early 80s. In fact, Nibble magazine published some assembly routines that did exactly this, although simply doing some calculations from Applesoft Basic (ugh) and plotting the points using hplot gave you the same effect for lines and shapes.
Basically, by setting the colour of the pixel you were plotting, you could move it by a third of a column's width on the screen.
Of course with CRTs of the day and with Apple's hi-res graphics mode, this looked hideous unless you turned the colour all the way down. Text and lines looked smoother, but had freakish colour halos around them. In monochrome, though, it was pretty good. Fast too, if done in assembly (vs. basic!)
Decreasing the number of calories you take in is a start for losing weight, but in and of itself, it's not the way to go. You also need to find a way to increase the amount of exercise you get.
A few years ago, I noticed that I was turning into a bit of a "clydesdale". Not good at all. I tried running, but in my mind that is just a silly thing to do. I found it insanely boring, and it felt too much like exercise. Going to a gym to work out also has never been my thing.
So, one day some friends of mine took me out mountain biking on some of the easy local trails. Since that day, I've basically been hooked. In my mind, bikes are probably the most versatile machines humans have ever invented. They're toys for children and adults. They're a super-efficient mode of transportation on the road. They're a serious sport both on and off the road. And most of all, they're healthy.
Now, whether I'm commuting on an old beater of a road-bike or going through trails on my mountain bike, I'm always having a good time. And even though it doesn't feel dreary enough to be healthy, I *am* getting (almost) enough exercise in my life that I feel good about myself.
I've never looked for technical literature in any language other than English, so I obviously have never come across anything that could help you there. That said, however, I'd be fairly surprised if there is a significant amount of literature translated into the various local languages of your area.
While the marketplace for computer books is growing, it is still relatively small and changing very rapidly when compared to something like mainstream classic literature. Publishing companies are out there to make money above all else, and as sad as it is, catering for a niche market within a niche market just isn't one of their priorities.
The way I see it, you have two options to help out, and would probably be best served pursuing *both* of them:
1. Teach the students English. It's one of the major languages in use on the internet, and doing so would open up many, many more resources to them. Also, having a second (or third) language has never hurt anyone; in fact, it'd probably make their future job prospects a lot healthier.
2. Translate some documents yourself. There's a wealth of public-domain documentation out there that does what you want it too, unfortunately it's in English. If you and some other multilingual people you know go and start translating them into the local languages, you would not only be helping the students you are doing this for directly, but also all other native speakers of these languages. This'd probably be fairly time consuming, but if a community grows around this effort on-line, progress should pick up quickly.
I realize that this isn't really the sort of info you were looking for, but hopefully it does help a bit.
How soon until I get this sort of thing to write my English papers for me?
But it's already been done! Quick, go to megahal.sourceforge.net and grab the latest sourcecode. Build it, and then run some sample english papers through it. Feed it some other miscellaneous stuff for good measure (how about the script to the movie Terminator and a few of the better Slashdot trolls), and let 'er rip! Sure, it may not make *logical* sense, but since this is for an English course, you'll get graded higher for originality and "thinking outside the box". Just don't mention my name when they come to take you away to your padded cell.
I would say you should use a code standard in addition to a doc standard, but really, the two are virtually inseparable. Any project that is more than just you and possibly a couple friends playing around in your spare time can benefit greatly from a code standard. As much as we all hate being told how to write code (it's my style, my creativity, man!!!), the benefits of a good standard should be pretty obvious when things get large.
In the code standard specify everything, from indentation style to what types of comments should be in the code. For more advanced documentation systems, have the standard describe *exactly* what is expected-- file headers, function declarations, the works! Provide templates and examples. Even write a tutorial if you're working with people that *still* don't get what's expected of them. Just make the standard as unambiguous and detailed as possible.
And of course, make sure it's used. Unfortunately being excessively fascist about it will make you unpopular (so don't do that!), but make the standard come across as important and make sure it does get followed.
Thank god that we're now well into implementing Four-Letter Extended Acronyms (FLEAs). Careful planning and thoughtfulness such as this has helped avert a disaster of Y2Kian proportions. As a bonus incentive, early adopters get first dibs at FLEAs that spell out actual real words, and we all know that in the English language, the good words all have four letters!
hdparm can be a great little utility for speeding up your system-- if used carefully! Before doing *anything* with it (other than simple benchmarking), make sure you have backups of all your data. Putting a drive/controller combination into a mode they don't support can completely mess up your system. Believe me, I've done it twice already, and even with backups it's still a huge pain in the ass to reinstall.
Well... I know I'm a bit of a "fool" for replying to an april fool's day posting, especially after the day has ended, but I suppose that if "decimal" were taken to mean "binary-coded decimal" and "hex" as just being the binary representation of the number, then hex would obviously be faster. Many CPUs still support BCD operations directly (for legacy support), but they're hardly optimized for that. So yeah, hex will be much faster than decimal!
I know this article really was about content filters on *email*, so this idea would be a bit more difficult to implement in this case... For web pages that are being filtered, though, shouldn't SSL encryption of the http connection beat pretty much *any* censor's filter? As long as the actual text of the URL is kept unoffensive enough, all data transmitted between server and browser should be encrypted. Even a light enough encryption (low number of bits per key) that could easily be broken by someone determined enough should still fool any censorship filter out there.
The only technical issue I could see with this is that the overhead associated with encryption of larger binary data (images) might be a bit too much for some of the smaller web servers. In that case, encryption of only the text (html) data should still provide the same amount of protection.
Unless filtering is done on a per-site basis, I don't see why this shouldn't work against pretty much all content-based filters out there.
A somewhat cheaper alternative to *magnetic* cards would be optical bar-codes. I have little experience in this, but the reader part of it should be on-par with magnetic readers. For writing the barcodes, you have quite a few options-- a custom "printer" that prints right on a plastic card (similar to some newer driver's licenses), printing with a laser printer onto stickers and placing these onto cards, or just printing onto light cardboard stock and laminating it.
Of course this doesn't do much to answer the original question, but with more things to choose from, a usable solution may present itself more readily.
For a while I was thinking of doing the same thing myself, but it's really not worthwhile. Here's why:
Cost: X-terminals are cool, but very expensive for what they do. New ones will run you about as much as a fairly high-end x86 box, while used ones will be about the same as a used Pentium MMX type machine.
Colours: Most only support 8-bit colour. That's a real pain in the ass unless all you're running is a bunch of xterms. If you run netscape + other graphical apps, you're bound to either have to deal with a hideous display, or deal with colour flashing when you switch focus. Even if you limit yourself to one colourful app at a time you'll still have to deal with the uglyness of 8-bit colour.
Sound: There *are* protocols for getting sound from a server to some of the NCD x-terminals, but that's yet another headache to deal with.
Software: Even though the hardware is relatively easy to get used, you'll still need an x-server to boot the terminal from. Depending on the model you get, you may have to actually go and buy this, or find an "unscrupulous" copy on the 'net somewhere. Also you'll have to jump through a few hoops to configure your linux box as a boot server, although there is a HOWTO on that floating around somewhere.
Unless you absolutely *need* to have the linux box up 24/7 as a server, I'd recommend just shutting down at night when you don't need it. Sure, you won't be able to claim huge uptimes, but IMO, that's kind of a silly excuse. If you just need a smallish web-server running, do what I did and get an older box and put it in a closet somewhere; I've got an old 486 running apache and mysql for some web stuff, and it works great for what I need. My desktop box (which *is* in my bedroom right now) gets turned off at night. This also helps with the power-bill slightly.
Slashdot Mirror
While some might argue that this sets a dangerous precedent, I think using this sort of satellite imagery to investigate an insurance claim is probably much less intrusive than the conventional invetigations insurance companies pursue.
Having the insurance company confirm that there is no fraud occuring by using satellite images (hopefully with the authorization of the farmer making the claim), involves really no-one else other than the farmer and the company.
On the other hand, if they investigate by asking around the community, obtaining possibly irrelevant financial records, etc., very quickly everyone in the farmer's community will know about it. News (especially juicy gossip like an accusation of insurance fraud) travels fast in a small town. Unless the farmer *wants* other people to know that he's making an insurance claim, nobody really has the right to know this.
I feel using this sort of technology does a better job of *protecting* the farmer's privacy than it does of invading it.
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
While the article does make some interesting points (you *did* read it, didn't you?), I'm not quite sure I'd go so far as to see this as a huge consipiracy to draw our attention away from "authentication services".
It's probably true that Microsoft isn't as concerned with the GPL as it appears in previous articles here, but I think their "concern" with it is a pretty good indication that they are taking it seriously. Aside from the fact that this is classic MS FUD-mongering, I'd imagine that before they went and made any such statements that their lawyers had taken a very, very close look at the wording and workings of the GPL.
Rather than the current smear tactics (comparing something a "cancer" is *not* playing nice) being a diversion, I think they are being carried out because Microsoft actually believes that the GPL could stand up in a court of law, and that their corporate lawyers *probably* couldn't fight it effectively.
Of course if you want a real conspiracy, you could even go so far as to conclude that MS has already (secretly) violated the GPL, or is planning to do so...
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
For conventional CRT monitors, don't get to carried away with the powersaving settings. Having the interval before DPMS kicks in set too short will cause the monitor to cycle on and off *much* more frequently throughout the day if the computer gets used a lot.
This could eventually cause something to break (unlikely), but the real issue is that on power-up, a monitor will draw quite a bit more power than when it is running normally. Do this enough times in a day, and you'll end up using more power, even though the total time the CRT spends in "sleep" mode (or whatever you want to call it) is a bit more than it was before...
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
We have Jon Katz doing two features on Microsoft back-to-back. That's bound to generate a "few" responses!
/. get new hardware that needs to be stress tested? Were some secret improvements made to the backend code or database that need testing? Or perhaps CmdrTaco has found a banner ad server that still pays out per viewing, and he really needs the cash right now (for his pr0n addiction, of course!)...
So did
There's more to this than they'd have us believe!!!
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
Ugh. One of the reasons I enjoy biking (mountain biking) as much as I do is that it gets me as far away from computers as possible. I've considered getting a bike computer to keep track of mileage etc, but if I didn't break the damn thing in a crash I know I'd end up just riding *against* the computer and all the wonderful statistics it could provide. I'd rather *not* know how far or fast I've gone.
The sentiment of getting geeks into biking is good, though. In a way, I see biking as an extremely addictive videogame that's also good for you! A good technical trail is like a puzzle that is asking to be solved, and we all know us geeks love our puzzles...
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
And I like the animated GIMP! Is that a first for /.?
Both the dustpuppy icon (for the userfriendly link if you have it turned on) and the gimp icon are animated. Having the dustpuppy move around is OK, it's pretty obvious what's going on.
The gimp animation is pure evil, though. It seems to run very slowly, moving its eyes infrequently. But you know it's watching-- watching you, waiting for you to turn your back. If you stare at it, it just stares back unblinking, unmoving. Only when you look away does it catch the corner of your eye. Forget the NSA, forget Echelon. *This* evil monstrosity is what's been watching me write my emails! But now we know the truth! We can do som1!@$$!!!@#%%@#@!#$@#$NO CARRIER
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
This all great and wonderful, but you have to have installed mutt, installed pgp or gpg, have setup your PGP keyring, and it doesn't hurt to have registered with pgp.net so that everyone can find it. That's not hard to do if you have instructions, but it isn't clear and easy for most users.
Using mutt in and of itself isn't clear and easy for most users! I've casually tried it, and while it's very obvious that there is a lot of power under the hood, the aesthetics and user interface leave something to be desired. I can only imagine that a newbie would be completely lost before even typing "mutt" at the console...
Personally, I try and be pragmatic about these sorts of things. From a text console and remote sessions, I use pine (with pgp filters, of course). In X, I've started using kmail lately. It seems to do a very good job of dealing with pgp encryption, and was a no-brainer to set up. With a couple strategically placed symlinks, pine and kmail easily share folders, including the sent mail.
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
Ah, but the telephone is far from the only alternative to the internet for sending data.
You could burn the key to a CD or copy it to a floppy and courier or mail it over to the other party. With a bit of effort, your package could be made tamperproof, or at least make any attempts to open it by a third party very obvious.
Another relatively secure method of transmitting data which is often overlooked is a direct modem connection. I realize not too many people remember doing this, but if you just fire up your favourite terminal app and dial the other party's number, you can just copy the key across using Z-modem (or whatever catches your fancy).
This *could* also be intercepted and modified along the way, but the likely hood of this is much less than sending keys across the internet.
If you're exceptionally paranoid, you could just use a combination of different methods, and diff them to make sure the public keys came through the same.
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
I find this very hard to believe. If some of the patents on various drugs were dropped today, this probably would benefit some 3d world countries, but I can't see too many large pharma companies investing their resources in developing new drugs. If that happened, when the current generation of drugs becomes obsolete (evolution, y'know), we'd be pretty much screwed.
Of course, in moderation this could work-- and well! Several developing nations *do* allow companies to make generic copies of drugs that help with many of the problem diseases. A recent UN resolution (check your favourite news sites) actually condones this practice to some degree. For example, South Africa manufactures copies of various AIDS drugs to help people who could *never* afford these drugs. They were being sued by serveral of the large American pharma companies for this, but the suits have since been dropped.
The real problem with patents on medicines is that in order to design and test a new drug (to make sure it works and is safe!), a pharma company needs to invest huge amounts of money. To turn a profit on this investment before their patent runs out, they *have* to charge such high prices on the drug. This puts the drug out of reach of people living in essentially all developing countries, and many people in the so-called developed countries. Only those fortunate enought to be wealthy or have exceptional healthcare coverage have access to them.
Short of a global, socialist healthcare system (yeah right), I don't seem much of an effective solution other than the current one-- i.e. enforce patent laws on drugs here to allow the companies to turn a profit, and ignore any "violations" by developing countries. Kind of depressing in a way...
Where's the spoiler in that? I haven't seen the movie yet (and I don't plan to), but I got that much out of just the previews I've seen! I guess that does say a lot about the plot, or lack of it!
Could someone please stop Jon Katz from reviewing movies here?
You may want to take a closer look at your preferences page. Last time I checked, you can turn off stories based on the category they fall under, or by author. With just a few clicks, you'll never see a story by Katz on the front page again. Personally, I like seeing the occasional story from him, if just for the entertainment value in some of the comments following it!
I'm not sure about it being done 26 years ago, but I do remember doing this on the Apple
Basically, by setting the colour of the pixel you were plotting, you could move it by a third of a column's width on the screen.
Of course with CRTs of the day and with Apple's hi-res graphics mode, this looked hideous unless you turned the colour all the way down. Text and lines looked smoother, but had freakish colour halos around them. In monochrome, though, it was pretty good. Fast too, if done in assembly (vs. basic!)
Sigh. Enough reminiscing for today...
Decreasing the number of calories you take in is a start for losing weight, but in and of itself, it's not the way to go. You also need to find a way to increase the amount of exercise you get.
A few years ago, I noticed that I was turning into a bit of a "clydesdale". Not good at all. I tried running, but in my mind that is just a silly thing to do. I found it insanely boring, and it felt too much like exercise. Going to a gym to work out also has never been my thing.
So, one day some friends of mine took me out mountain biking on some of the easy local trails. Since that day, I've basically been hooked. In my mind, bikes are probably the most versatile machines humans have ever invented. They're toys for children and adults. They're a super-efficient mode of transportation on the road. They're a serious sport both on and off the road. And most of all, they're healthy.
Now, whether I'm commuting on an old beater of a road-bike or going through trails on my mountain bike, I'm always having a good time. And even though it doesn't feel dreary enough to be healthy, I *am* getting (almost) enough exercise in my life that I feel good about myself.
I've never looked for technical literature in any language other than English, so I obviously have never come across anything that could help you there. That said, however, I'd be fairly surprised if there is a significant amount of literature translated into the various local languages of your area.
While the marketplace for computer books is growing, it is still relatively small and changing very rapidly when compared to something like mainstream classic literature. Publishing companies are out there to make money above all else, and as sad as it is, catering for a niche market within a niche market just isn't one of their priorities.
The way I see it, you have two options to help out, and would probably be best served pursuing *both* of them:
1. Teach the students English. It's one of the major languages in use on the internet, and doing so would open up many, many more resources to them. Also, having a second (or third) language has never hurt anyone; in fact, it'd probably make their future job prospects a lot healthier.
2. Translate some documents yourself. There's a wealth of public-domain documentation out there that does what you want it too, unfortunately it's in English. If you and some other multilingual people you know go and start translating them into the local languages, you would not only be helping the students you are doing this for directly, but also all other native speakers of these languages. This'd probably be fairly time consuming, but if a community grows around this effort on-line, progress should pick up quickly.
I realize that this isn't really the sort of info you were looking for, but hopefully it does help a bit.
How soon until I get this sort of thing to write my English papers for me?
But it's already been done! Quick, go to
megahal.sourceforge.net and grab the latest sourcecode. Build it, and then run some sample english papers through it. Feed it some other miscellaneous stuff for good measure (how about the script to the movie Terminator and a few of the better Slashdot trolls), and let 'er rip! Sure, it may not make *logical* sense, but since this is for an English course, you'll get graded higher for originality and "thinking outside the box". Just don't mention my name when they come to take you away to your padded cell.
-1: Sleep Deprived
I would say you should use a code standard in addition to a doc standard, but really, the two are virtually inseparable. Any project that is more than just you and possibly a couple friends playing around in your spare time can benefit greatly from a code standard. As much as we all hate being told how to write code (it's my style, my creativity, man!!!), the benefits of a good standard should be pretty obvious when things get large.
In the code standard specify everything, from indentation style to what types of comments should be in the code. For more advanced documentation systems, have the standard describe *exactly* what is expected-- file headers, function declarations, the works! Provide templates and examples. Even write a tutorial if you're working with people that *still* don't get what's expected of them. Just make the standard as unambiguous and detailed as possible.
And of course, make sure it's used. Unfortunately being excessively fascist about it will make you unpopular (so don't do that!), but make the standard come across as important and make sure it does get followed.
Thank god that we're now well into implementing Four-Letter Extended Acronyms (FLEAs). Careful planning and thoughtfulness such as this has helped avert a disaster of Y2Kian proportions. As a bonus incentive, early adopters get first dibs at FLEAs that spell out actual real words, and we all know that in the English language, the good words all have four letters!
hdparm can be a great little utility for speeding up your system-- if used carefully! Before doing *anything* with it (other than simple benchmarking), make sure you have backups of all your data. Putting a drive/controller combination into a mode they don't support can completely mess up your system. Believe me, I've done it twice already, and even with backups it's still a huge pain in the ass to reinstall.
One might say they're Viagra for laptops!
(groan)
Kick it once-- that's single booting.
Kick it twice, that's dual booting.
Anything more and you're multi-booting.
Chances are it'll work as poorly for a mac as it does for a PC, but it just might make you feel a bit better.
Well... I know I'm a bit of a "fool" for replying to an april fool's day posting, especially after the day has ended, but I suppose that if "decimal" were taken to mean "binary-coded decimal" and "hex" as just being the binary representation of the number, then hex would obviously be faster. Many CPUs still support BCD operations directly (for legacy support), but they're hardly optimized for that. So yeah, hex will be much faster than decimal!
I know this article really was about content filters on *email*, so this idea would be a bit more difficult to implement in this case... For web pages that are being filtered, though, shouldn't SSL encryption of the http connection beat pretty much *any* censor's filter? As long as the actual text of the URL is kept unoffensive enough, all data transmitted between server and browser should be encrypted. Even a light enough encryption (low number of bits per key) that could easily be broken by someone determined enough should still fool any censorship filter out there.
The only technical issue I could see with this is that the overhead associated with encryption of larger binary data (images) might be a bit too much for some of the smaller web servers. In that case, encryption of only the text (html) data should still provide the same amount of protection.
Unless filtering is done on a per-site basis, I don't see why this shouldn't work against pretty much all content-based filters out there.
I do believe I have been inspired... I am going to begin coding immediately and the entire implementation shall be written in.... ash!
Parrot is obviously the language this should be implemented in!
A somewhat cheaper alternative to *magnetic* cards would be optical bar-codes. I have little experience in this, but the reader part of it should be on-par with magnetic readers. For writing the barcodes, you have quite a few options-- a custom "printer" that prints right on a plastic card (similar to some newer driver's licenses), printing with a laser printer onto stickers and placing these onto cards, or just printing onto light cardboard stock and laminating it.
Of course this doesn't do much to answer the original question, but with more things to choose from, a usable solution may present itself more readily.
For a while I was thinking of doing the same thing myself, but it's really not worthwhile. Here's why:
Cost: X-terminals are cool, but very expensive for what they do. New ones will run you about as much as a fairly high-end x86 box, while used ones will be about the same as a used Pentium MMX type machine.
Colours: Most only support 8-bit colour. That's a real pain in the ass unless all you're running is a bunch of xterms. If you run netscape + other graphical apps, you're bound to either have to deal with a hideous display, or deal with colour flashing when you switch focus. Even if you limit yourself to one colourful app at a time you'll still have to deal with the uglyness of 8-bit colour.
Sound: There *are* protocols for getting sound from a server to some of the NCD x-terminals, but that's yet another headache to deal with.
Software: Even though the hardware is relatively easy to get used, you'll still need an x-server to boot the terminal from. Depending on the model you get, you may have to actually go and buy this, or find an "unscrupulous" copy on the 'net somewhere. Also you'll have to jump through a few hoops to configure your linux box as a boot server, although there is a HOWTO on that floating around somewhere.
Unless you absolutely *need* to have the linux box up 24/7 as a server, I'd recommend just shutting down at night when you don't need it. Sure, you won't be able to claim huge uptimes, but IMO, that's kind of a silly excuse. If you just need a smallish web-server running, do what I did and get an older box and put it in a closet somewhere; I've got an old 486 running apache and mysql for some web stuff, and it works great for what I need. My desktop box (which *is* in my bedroom right now) gets turned off at night. This also helps with the power-bill slightly.