I like this product, and it's free for personal use, so I'll rant a minute:
One of the best tools for removing web advertising is Webwasher. Unfortunately, it's a Windows-only program, however it can serve as a proxy server, so you can still serve your Linux box.
Webwasher does some nice things which none of the 'nix tools yet do. It can filter out Javascript cued on opening/closing windows, remove pop-ups entirely, and reclaim space which would have been used by banner ads. It can even remove entire frames if it suspects that advertising was their only use. It also periodically updates its own block list if you allow it to.
As a plus, if you have a bizarre Microsoft Proxy Server in your office that isn't configured in a Linux-friendly manner, this is an excellent way of helping yourself out.
Early on, many discovered that they could use DAT audio tapes in their DAT backups with just a few modifications.
A little later on, many discovered that DAT audio tapes had nothing like the quality of DAT backups. One bit in a million is an acceptable error rate for an audio DAT. Even with matrix row/column checksumming and similar space-eating data safeguarding schemes, one bit in a million can be disasterous.
If these video cameras follow the model of digital music devices, they are going to be quite forgiving of errors in the media. It's easy to fudge a few bits here and there when you only need to be accurate enough to fool a human ear through a couple thousandths of a second, or a human eye for 1/60th.
I'll be wary of this until someone can verify that a situation similar to that of DATs doesn't exist here.
A long time ago, I was at Greenbrier's Radio observitory and saw a VCR sitting in a rack. I asked what it was doing, and the
guy replied that it was for recording data from the scope.
"Hm?" I said.
It turns out that they had sitting in the back of some 286 PC a card which would output digital signal over RCA cables and feed
them to a VCR, which they would then mail the tape to Califoria. Damn cheap too.
Now why hasn't anyone out there made a standard 'backup' device akin to a VCR or Super 8 is beyond me.
There was actually a commercial backup program based on this hardware, circa 1987 or so. I'm not turning up any links, but it was pretty much a composite video adapter for your CGA card plus an adapter which could read the mad strobings resulting. It would let you back up your entire hard drive assuming:
Your hard drive was < 6hrs long - about 40 megs
You trusted VHS tapes enough to do the job.
Under 7 megs an hour? *shudder* That makes a bloody parallel port Zip drive look like greased lightning.
I assume Lotus, with their bloody copy-protection schemes of the day, must have had Macrovision in Lotus 1-2-3.
But backporting is not easy! The time would be better spent getting 2.4 into better shape, making those who MUST live on the
cutting edge be able to do so.
Alan Cox has pointed out that backporting is a wonderful tool for finding bugs and reviewing code. Makes a lot of sense, and if it means a more stable 2.4 in the long run, it's definitely a worthwhile investment.
Many of us would be happy if 2.4 was still another year away if it's better architected as a result.
It sees banner adverts. So what? How much work is it to change the domain resolution for its adverts after you've downloaded?
Would it really be so hard to find a few amusing banners to place where the others had been? You could even get clever about it, and use the banner advert space to display entries from your bookmarks which you hadn't visisted in a while.
Come on - turn this into a plus and have a bit of fun with it, people.
There has to be a way to implement some manner of encryption between the keyboard and the OS, in which the
keyboard mapping is jumbled and re-constructed via a random mapping once it reaches the OS. I'm no hardware
expert but I would think some sort of device could act as an interface which the keyboard plugs into. Add some
software to the PC and there you go.
If you're really that paranoid, carry a laptop, or at least carry your own keyboard with you. You could easily slip a Pfuca Happy Hacker keyboard in your briefcase.
One of the biggest problems in general office use Linux-vs-MS TCO calculations is that the cost of running Linux this year is substantially higher than the cost of running Linux next year, and the year after, etc.
Yes, there's additional training involved. Yes, this means training for office staff, not just the back room administrators.
But when it's all said and done, you're not paying through the nose for updated MS products as often as they deem fit to bump a version number.
If you're not cautious enough to click "Preview" before putting your company reputation on the line, you're not certainly not careful enough to handle my servers.
I feel kind of funny admitting it, but - pair it with a good retirement plan and I'd probably do it too. But if you really wanted to seal the deal, I say: give me a personal trainer 2 or 3 days a week and access to those college girls the AC ranted about.
Unless your use is tied to current MP3 technology ONLY, you're being very short-sighted by making MP3 compression your primary concern.
Your concern should be about how you can read and store as many CDs in raw format so you're always ready to convert the library to the current audio format, be it MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMF or whatever else tomorrow's standard may become.
Many programmers are so obsessed with programming that this is ALL they'd like to do. Period.
If you can set up an environment where food, shelter, taxes, doctors appointments, etc are all taken care of - all a person has to do is wake up, shower (maybe) and sit in front of the computer, you'll likely find that the money isn't too much of an issue. "Pay" could even consist of a $50 taped to the side of their monitor each work day (which is Sun-Sat for this type).
Then again, to whatever degree you feel responsible for their puffy pasty cave-dwellerness, you'll have your conscience to deal with.
What about the old segment/paragraph memory architecture which chewed up memory by having *4096* redundant addresses for most addresses?
For you young whippersnappers, in the memory model used by all 8086 chips, and the default mode of the 80286 on up, the default addressing mode works like this: 12 of the 16 bits of the top half of an address overlaps the bottom half.
0x0010:0000 is the same as 0x0000:0100 is the same as 0x0008:0080 is the same as... you get the picture. Anyone care to guess how many bugs this caused, or what kind of fun people had with far (>64k) pointers?
The concept is similar to that of the X Box, and I have to wonder if that's where MS got the idea. The X Box also requires that programs be signed. This ensures that MS can collect royalties (bad) but also ensures that MS can run software through quality control (good, and something MS desperately needs to rework THEMSELVES before they start forcing their idea of it on others!)
Let me get this straight you are going to have something with the memory footprint and processing power that quake needs and add that to a window manager? Isn't Enlightenment powerful/wasteful enough?
One word for you: antialiasing. Finally a way to have antialiased text in X. That's worth two 3D accelerators and another DIMM if you ask me - if you spend as much time staring at a display as I do, you may agree.
Sure be nice if there were a cheaper way to do it though.:P
Slashdot Mirror
I like this product, and it's free for personal use, so I'll rant a minute:
One of the best tools for removing web advertising is Webwasher. Unfortunately, it's a Windows-only program, however it can serve as a proxy server, so you can still serve your Linux box.
Webwasher does some nice things which none of the 'nix tools yet do. It can filter out Javascript cued on opening/closing windows, remove pop-ups entirely, and reclaim space which would have been used by banner ads. It can even remove entire frames if it suspects that advertising was their only use. It also periodically updates its own block list if you allow it to.
As a plus, if you have a bizarre Microsoft Proxy Server in your office that isn't configured in a Linux-friendly manner, this is an excellent way of helping yourself out.
Early on, many discovered that they could use DAT audio tapes in their DAT backups with just a few modifications.
A little later on, many discovered that DAT audio tapes had nothing like the quality of DAT backups. One bit in a million is an acceptable error rate for an audio DAT. Even with matrix row/column checksumming and similar space-eating data safeguarding schemes, one bit in a million can be disasterous.
If these video cameras follow the model of digital music devices, they are going to be quite forgiving of errors in the media. It's easy to fudge a few bits here and there when you only need to be accurate enough to fool a human ear through a couple thousandths of a second, or a human eye for 1/60th.
I'll be wary of this until someone can verify that a situation similar to that of DATs doesn't exist here.
There was actually a commercial backup program based on this hardware, circa 1987 or so. I'm not turning up any links, but it was pretty much a composite video adapter for your CGA card plus an adapter which could read the mad strobings resulting. It would let you back up your entire hard drive assuming:
- Your hard drive was < 6hrs long - about 40 megs
- You trusted VHS tapes enough to do the job.
Under 7 megs an hour? *shudder* That makes a bloody parallel port Zip drive look like greased lightning.I assume Lotus, with their bloody copy-protection schemes of the day, must have had Macrovision in Lotus 1-2-3.
Alan Cox has pointed out that backporting is a wonderful tool for finding bugs and reviewing code. Makes a lot of sense, and if it means a more stable 2.4 in the long run, it's definitely a worthwhile investment.
Many of us would be happy if 2.4 was still another year away if it's better architected as a result.
I dare you to tell me that Opera doesn't desperately need some anti-aliasin' lovin'.
Would it really be so hard to find a few amusing banners to place where the others had been? You could even get clever about it, and use the banner advert space to display entries from your bookmarks which you hadn't visisted in a while.
Come on - turn this into a plus and have a bit of fun with it, people.
If you're really that paranoid, carry a laptop, or at least carry your own keyboard with you. You could easily slip a Pfuca Happy Hacker keyboard in your briefcase.
Good god, that's a lot of bandwidth. For once, I don't think the linked site will be slashdotted to its knees.
One of the biggest problems in general office use Linux-vs-MS TCO calculations is that the cost of running Linux this year is substantially higher than the cost of running Linux next year, and the year after, etc.
Yes, there's additional training involved. Yes, this means training for office staff, not just the back room administrators.
But when it's all said and done, you're not paying through the nose for updated MS products as often as they deem fit to bump a version number.
Whoo hoo! Crusoe performs like a P4!!!
If there was any lingering doubt about the accuracy of Transmeta's Intel emulation... :)
If you're not cautious enough to click "Preview" before putting your company reputation on the line, you're not certainly not careful enough to handle my servers.
Does anyone still make monochrome laptops? I'd like the additional battery life that might give.
We've made up since this posting. Now AC and I are butt buddies.
Wife: Hon? It's still busy...
Husband: *snicker* Keeeeep tryin'. Call again.
Wife: (dialing aloud) 1-2-7, 0, 0, 1... damn! Busy!
Husband: Dear, I gave you the number earlier. You're the one who wanted to eat at Chez Expensif. Why didn't you make reservations?
Wife: I've been dialing ALL DAY!!!
Just think - to them, the world must be a wash of mismatched colors and terrifying ugliness. It's like living in an early WIRED!
"AHA, I say! So THAT'S how you make money when you give your code away..." - Snow's PHB
I feel kind of funny admitting it, but - pair it with a good retirement plan and I'd probably do it too. But if you really wanted to seal the deal, I say: give me a personal trainer 2 or 3 days a week and access to those college girls the AC ranted about.
Unless your use is tied to current MP3 technology ONLY, you're being very short-sighted by making MP3 compression your primary concern.
Your concern should be about how you can read and store as many CDs in raw format so you're always ready to convert the library to the current audio format, be it MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMF or whatever else tomorrow's standard may become.
Many programmers are so obsessed with programming that this is ALL they'd like to do. Period.
If you can set up an environment where food, shelter, taxes, doctors appointments, etc are all taken care of - all a person has to do is wake up, shower (maybe) and sit in front of the computer, you'll likely find that the money isn't too much of an issue. "Pay" could even consist of a $50 taped to the side of their monitor each work day (which is Sun-Sat for this type).
Then again, to whatever degree you feel responsible for their puffy pasty cave-dwellerness, you'll have your conscience to deal with.
What about the old segment/paragraph memory architecture which chewed up memory by having *4096* redundant addresses for most addresses?
For you young whippersnappers, in the memory model used by all 8086 chips, and the default mode of the 80286 on up, the default addressing mode works like this: 12 of the 16 bits of the top half of an address overlaps the bottom half.
0x0010:0000 is the same as 0x0000:0100 is the same as 0x0008:0080 is the same as... you get the picture. Anyone care to guess how many bugs this caused, or what kind of fun people had with far (>64k) pointers?
Why does Slashdot only value funny, informative and insightful? I want +1 touching, damnit!
Moderate this up - +1 hearwarming - I always cry at weddings!!!
The concept is similar to that of the X Box, and I have to wonder if that's where MS got the idea. The X Box also requires that programs be signed. This ensures that MS can collect royalties (bad) but also ensures that MS can run software through quality control (good, and something MS desperately needs to rework THEMSELVES before they start forcing their idea of it on others!)
One word for you: antialiasing. Finally a way to have antialiased text in X. That's worth two 3D accelerators and another DIMM if you ask me - if you spend as much time staring at a display as I do, you may agree.
Sure be nice if there were a cheaper way to do it though. :P