You may be familiar with another trusted path mechanism in windows, the log in screen. It requires you to hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE to login, this is done to prevent fake login programs from fooling users.
If you live under the delusion that DOS is the only diskette-bootable OS that could host a fake login program, then you should certainly place your full trust in this Alt+Ctl+Delete feature.
If you don't live under such a delusion, then the main effecto of this feature is to make it harder to log in while you're trying to eat a sandwich.
Moreover, forget even playing the DVDs or CDs that you rightfully own unless you also pay for an otherwise unneeded operating system from a certain unwelcome third party that is butting itself in to the situation to skim some more of your cash.
Re:I've used genetic algorithms
on
Digital Darwin
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· Score: 1
While we don't specifically deny evolution, we posit that there was a Creator who started the process, and has and does attend to his creation.
That got me thinking... before the wide availability of video taping equipment, weren't a lot of TV shows shot on film? Maybe there's more detail in the original film than we've ever been able to see. I'm anxiously awaiting high-def broadcasts of Green Acres reruns.
Gets better resolution than doing the same shot with aspherical lens and cropping it since you use more of the film, but has trouble with some aspects of focus. Look at lights in teh distance in Fight Club and contrast them to other movies and you'll see the difference.
The first rule of filming Fight Club is: You do not use a low f-stop.
The second rule of filming Fight Club is: You do not use a low f-stop.
The refactor vs. rewrite argument never ends. However, there is something inbetween the two that I've found useful from time to time: go to all of your source files and comment out all of the code except "main()"; make sure it still builds and executes. Now, start adding back functionality one piece at a time, redoing the parts that need major rework.
This way, if you're rearchitecting big sections, you don't have to worry about keeping bidirectional compatiblity during the conversion. This approach also works well for porting between different languages.
However, you're not throwing away your old valuable work either. You rewrite most stuff by editing your old procedures. I usually find that I have huge chunks of code that simply get uncommented again because they work fine in the new incarnation.
2. A couple of feet will move out of the way of the ABM, but it won't make much difference on a city-sized target. Make sure the summed motion of the jets cancel to zero overall.
3. I wasn't talking about hardened. Setting off a nuke in the ionosphere makes for some crazy light effects. Kind of hard to see the warhead coming through that.
4. Hopefully these improved Patriots will shoot down fewer airliners than they did British fighter jets.
5. You're right on that one. The enemy just going to have to come up with the cash for a charter flight instead.
Forget decoys. What if they soak the warhead in liquid nitrogen just before placing it in the missile nosecone? As soon as the booster fairing is ejected, no infrared image to track.
What if they use gas jets to jockey the warhead around randomly as it travels?
What if they first nuke the airspace high over the pacific ocean to screw up all of the sensitive detection equipment?
What if they install a cruise missile on a fishing boat?
What if they mail the bomb by FedEx?
I could go on and on. There are literally thousands of things they could do to thwart this system. Most of them cost a tiny fraction of what we're spending. All this system does is create a false sense of security.
Re:Eliminate one problem; another will appear!
on
Hi-Tech Weed-Killer
·
· Score: 2, Funny
The problem is that there will be a class of weed that this thing won't be able to "see"... and that weed will thrive.
Just out of curiousity, is "plurality" a required word in patents?
Yes. I've been involved with several patent applications. The process basically consists of paying some attorneys $200/hr to read your design documents, reformat them in a monospaced courier font with line numbers added, edit your diagrams to replace all text labels with numbers, insert one of these index numbers after every noun in the document, and, most importantly, insert the phrase "a plurality of" in front of every plural noun.
After using a wireless setup in the house for a couple of years, I've given up on it. The constant security alerts, buggy drivers, dropped connections, and the need to read entire books to understand the security implications is just too much. Plain old ethernet usually just works out of the box, and I can understand the security model.
I ended up tacking a ethernet cable along the ceiling down to the kitchen. I told the wife that it is just temporary until I drill a hole in the ceiling to run a hidden cable. (I even meant it at the time.)
Of course, I never got around to that, but it seems she's gotten used to the cable. Another problem solved by procrastination.
These old-school legal systems usually try to fit the punishment to the crime. In order to more harmoniously integrate elements from Western IP law with the pre-existing system, I propose the following:
Pirate a movie: Gouge out eyes
Pirate a CD: Chop off ears
Pirate software: Amputate soft tissue: goodbye buttocks
Steal cable service: Death by hanging with coax cable noose
Hack into system: Hacked to death with meat cleaver
Mod-chipping game box: Death by soldering iron
Re:power consumption
on
Mini-Box M-100
·
· Score: 5, Funny
12V is some crazy low power consumption
That's nothing. My Athlon CPU uses only 1.75 volts of power! I'm taking the ugly heatsink and fan off of that sucker right now because a chip at this low voltage just doesn't need them. From now on, I'm going to run it bare to the world!
Wait a minute... I've almost got the heatsi3nk lo4ose*A#]]x(++.=-
And don't forget that the GPL makes it illegal to remove the copyright and warranty notice, which is all an EULA really is.
No, an EULA is an attempt to force the user to "sign" an additional "contract" before installing the software. This contract attempts to make the user waive rights he would otherwise have under copyright law (for example, restrictions on numbers of server connections a program may make, restrictions on which OSes an app may run on, restriction on number of concurrent CPUs an app may run on, or publishing benchmark results). Therefore, an EULA is not a copyright notice. Copyright law does not deal with such restrictions on the use of software, only with making additional copies of the software, so an EULA attempts to take away rights you would otherwise have. Most EULAs do contain a warranty notice as one part of their many terms.
Applying the GPL as an EULA does make it an EULA.
No it doesn't, because the GPL makes no restrictions on the End User, so it is not an End User License Agreement. It explicitely states that you do not have to agree to its terms in order to use the software, so the installer dialog box is irrelevant.
The GPL dictates terms only for those who want to become distributors. Note that with standard copyright law and standard EULAs, you can not become a distributor at all. If you - as a distributor - do not agree to the GPL, then your rights revert to standard copyright, which says you just can't distrubute the program. You can still use it, though (fair use allows you to make the copy in to main memory so it will run).
Actually, it depends on how you measure it. If you go on a 10-day shuttle mission, you orbits traverse somewhere around 6.4 million miles. Driving a car that far would certainly carry a greater than 1% risk of a fatality.
But you have to ask: is it worth taking on the risk of traveling around the earth 160 times just so that you can tend to a zero-g ant farm?
I need a damn job so I can get my paws on one... affordable 64 bit computing.
I was playing with 64-bit MIPS R4000s back in 1992. They failed to take over the workstation market, but I believe that they're popular today for use as cheap embedded controllers. There's your affordable 64-bit computing.
However, unless you have more than 3GB of physical RAM, you're not going to get much use out of 64 bits. I certainly didn't find the R4K to be very exciting.
To be more precise, I meant that their market is fast becoming a commodity. The alternatives are becoming more viable each day. Even if they aren't totally plugin compatible, they cheapen the value of an OS and Office suite in the view of customers. Add to that the fact that there is no room for further exponential growth in the PC market, and you're looking at a mature company, not a growth stock.
It's true that they are maintaining a very high barrier to entry today. However, when the intrinsic value they're protecting with their barrier is minimal, the situation becomes unstable. There have been many examples in the past where a market dominator is quickly dethroned once they make a mistake maintaining their position. Today, Microsof'ts best hope for maintaining their market share and profit margins is to change the architecture of PCs to lock customers in at the hardware level. They're trying to do this now; we shall see if the public accepts this move.
I don't think that is accurate. the concept of leap years is because the roman calendar sucks.
The concept of leap years is because the ratio of the length of a year divided by the length of an earth day is not an iteger. No calendar can get around that fact. You either add intercalation days whenever the remainders of your divisions exceed 1, or you keep track of huge numbers and cycles that greatly complicate your timekeeping.
The Julian roman calendar did suck because they didn't get the ratios quite right and it drifted. (The Gregorian calendar fixed this for all practical purposes.) However, prior to Julius Caesar, it sucked even more because there was no mathematical formula. Instead, priests were supposed to observe the sun each year and decide when leap days were needed.
The priests were also involved in politics, so they chose to shorten political terms more often than not by omitting leap days. IIRC, by the time the Julian calendar was instituted, the Romans were off by several months due to these partisan shenanigans.
Basic channels: $23.95 Premium channels: $12.95 Internet connection: $19.95 First system IP address: $17.95 Second system IP address: $15.95 Firewall IP address: $15.95 Video Recorder IP address: $15.95 Game box IP address: $15.95 Printer IP address: $8.95 VPN Fee (1 destination): $29.95 Voice over IP fee: $24.95 Local taxes: $17.54 Federal taxes: $22.45
The excuse given for the CBDTPA, which may apply to Pd as well, is that more authors would be willing to publish works in a digital restrictions management system than in a system that grants all fair use rights by default.
Many people throughout history have made great sacrifices to ensure our freedom. Now it seems there are some people willing sell everyone's freedom to use a general-purpose computing device in exchange for a few extra TV shows, video games and pop songs.
I say if the price of freedom is fewer published works, so be it. We're already wallowing in an ocean of media crap anyway; it's not even a big price to pay.
I've actually saved most of the copies of Scientific American that I've gotten over the past 20 years. I recently pulled out a couple of the oldest ones, and I was struck by the elegant minimalist design that they used to have. That magazine really used to stand out as something different and special.
The hand-painted cover art was usually much more aesthetically pleasing than today's Photoshop hacks.
I've grown somewhat used to the latest format (it doesn't physically grate on my nerves like it did at first), but I still can't say I like it.
They probably feel that they need all of the visual distractions and information tidbits to compete with the Internet.
The ironic part is that I often use the Internet to find an experience like the old Scientific American. I type a topic into Google and I find a nice boringly formatted academic paper to read.
Slashdot Mirror
If you live under the delusion that DOS is the only diskette-bootable OS that could host a fake login program, then you should certainly place your full trust in this Alt+Ctl+Delete feature.
If you don't live under such a delusion, then the main effecto of this feature is to make it harder to log in while you're trying to eat a sandwich.
Moreover, forget even playing the DVDs or CDs that you rightfully own unless you also pay for an otherwise unneeded operating system from a certain unwelcome third party that is butting itself in to the situation to skim some more of your cash.
Fine. Now who designed this Creator?
That got me thinking... before the wide availability of video taping equipment, weren't a lot of TV shows shot on film? Maybe there's more detail in the original film than we've ever been able to see. I'm anxiously awaiting high-def broadcasts of Green Acres reruns.
The first rule of filming Fight Club is: You do not use a low f-stop.
The second rule of filming Fight Club is: You do not use a low f-stop.
This way, if you're rearchitecting big sections, you don't have to worry about keeping bidirectional compatiblity during the conversion. This approach also works well for porting between different languages.
However, you're not throwing away your old valuable work either. You rewrite most stuff by editing your old procedures. I usually find that I have huge chunks of code that simply get uncommented again because they work fine in the new incarnation.
2. A couple of feet will move out of the way of the ABM, but it won't make much difference on a city-sized target. Make sure the summed motion of the jets cancel to zero overall.
3. I wasn't talking about hardened. Setting off a nuke in the ionosphere makes for some crazy light effects. Kind of hard to see the warhead coming through that.
4. Hopefully these improved Patriots will shoot down fewer airliners than they did British fighter jets.
5. You're right on that one. The enemy just going to have to come up with the cash for a charter flight instead.
What if they use gas jets to jockey the warhead around randomly as it travels?
What if they first nuke the airspace high over the pacific ocean to screw up all of the sensitive detection equipment?
What if they install a cruise missile on a fishing boat?
What if they mail the bomb by FedEx?
I could go on and on. There are literally thousands of things they could do to thwart this system. Most of them cost a tiny fraction of what we're spending. All this system does is create a false sense of security.
Workaround algorithm:
Yes. I've been involved with several patent applications. The process basically consists of paying some attorneys $200/hr to read your design documents, reformat them in a monospaced courier font with line numbers added, edit your diagrams to replace all text labels with numbers, insert one of these index numbers after every noun in the document, and, most importantly, insert the phrase "a plurality of" in front of every plural noun.
I ended up tacking a ethernet cable along the ceiling down to the kitchen. I told the wife that it is just temporary until I drill a hole in the ceiling to run a hidden cable. (I even meant it at the time.)
Of course, I never got around to that, but it seems she's gotten used to the cable. Another problem solved by procrastination.
Pirate a movie: Gouge out eyes
Pirate a CD: Chop off ears
Pirate software: Amputate soft tissue: goodbye buttocks
Steal cable service: Death by hanging with coax cable noose
Hack into system: Hacked to death with meat cleaver
Mod-chipping game box: Death by soldering iron
0100 lea edi, dma://foo.example.com:b8000h
0103 mov al, 65
0105 mov ecx, 2000
010a rep stosb
010b jmp 100
g=100
That's nothing. My Athlon CPU uses only 1.75 volts of power! I'm taking the ugly heatsink and fan off of that sucker right now because a chip at this low voltage just doesn't need them. From now on, I'm going to run it bare to the world!
Wait a minute... I've almost got the heatsi3nk lo4ose*A#]]x(++ .=-
When we get done bombing that piece-of-crap spheroid it's gonna look like a figgin' moonscape!
No, an EULA is an attempt to force the user to "sign" an additional "contract" before installing the software. This contract attempts to make the user waive rights he would otherwise have under copyright law (for example, restrictions on numbers of server connections a program may make, restrictions on which OSes an app may run on, restriction on number of concurrent CPUs an app may run on, or publishing benchmark results). Therefore, an EULA is not a copyright notice. Copyright law does not deal with such restrictions on the use of software, only with making additional copies of the software, so an EULA attempts to take away rights you would otherwise have. Most EULAs do contain a warranty notice as one part of their many terms.
Applying the GPL as an EULA does make it an EULA.
No it doesn't, because the GPL makes no restrictions on the End User, so it is not an End User License Agreement. It explicitely states that you do not have to agree to its terms in order to use the software, so the installer dialog box is irrelevant.
The GPL dictates terms only for those who want to become distributors. Note that with standard copyright law and standard EULAs, you can not become a distributor at all. If you - as a distributor - do not agree to the GPL, then your rights revert to standard copyright, which says you just can't distrubute the program. You can still use it, though (fair use allows you to make the copy in to main memory so it will run).
But you have to ask: is it worth taking on the risk of traveling around the earth 160 times just so that you can tend to a zero-g ant farm?
I was playing with 64-bit MIPS R4000s back in 1992. They failed to take over the workstation market, but I believe that they're popular today for use as cheap embedded controllers. There's your affordable 64-bit computing.
However, unless you have more than 3GB of physical RAM, you're not going to get much use out of 64 bits. I certainly didn't find the R4K to be very exciting.
It's true that they are maintaining a very high barrier to entry today. However, when the intrinsic value they're protecting with their barrier is minimal, the situation becomes unstable. There have been many examples in the past where a market dominator is quickly dethroned once they make a mistake maintaining their position. Today, Microsof'ts best hope for maintaining their market share and profit margins is to change the architecture of PCs to lock customers in at the hardware level. They're trying to do this now; we shall see if the public accepts this move.
MSFT P/E == 28.98. That's high for a producer of a commodity product. OSes and office suites aren't rocket science anymore.
The concept of leap years is because the ratio of the length of a year divided by the length of an earth day is not an iteger. No calendar can get around that fact. You either add intercalation days whenever the remainders of your divisions exceed 1, or you keep track of huge numbers and cycles that greatly complicate your timekeeping.
The Julian roman calendar did suck because they didn't get the ratios quite right and it drifted. (The Gregorian calendar fixed this for all practical purposes.) However, prior to Julius Caesar, it sucked even more because there was no mathematical formula. Instead, priests were supposed to observe the sun each year and decide when leap days were needed.
The priests were also involved in politics, so they chose to shorten political terms more often than not by omitting leap days. IIRC, by the time the Julian calendar was instituted, the Romans were off by several months due to these partisan shenanigans.
>> And I'll drop my NAT box in a heartbeat.
Your future monthly cable bill without NAT:
Basic channels: $23.95
Premium channels: $12.95
Internet connection: $19.95
First system IP address: $17.95
Second system IP address: $15.95
Firewall IP address: $15.95
Video Recorder IP address: $15.95
Game box IP address: $15.95
Printer IP address: $8.95
VPN Fee (1 destination): $29.95
Voice over IP fee: $24.95
Local taxes: $17.54
Federal taxes: $22.45
Total: 242.44
It was designed that way so that linemen could use it beat the crap out of teenaged punks who they caught trying to steal their equipment.
Many people throughout history have made great sacrifices to ensure our freedom. Now it seems there are some people willing sell everyone's freedom to use a general-purpose computing device in exchange for a few extra TV shows, video games and pop songs.
I say if the price of freedom is fewer published works, so be it. We're already wallowing in an ocean of media crap anyway; it's not even a big price to pay.
The hand-painted cover art was usually much more aesthetically pleasing than today's Photoshop hacks. I've grown somewhat used to the latest format (it doesn't physically grate on my nerves like it did at first), but I still can't say I like it.
They probably feel that they need all of the visual distractions and information tidbits to compete with the Internet. The ironic part is that I often use the Internet to find an experience like the old Scientific American. I type a topic into Google and I find a nice boringly formatted academic paper to read.