From a business standpoint, hardware license protection is an ineffective money pit.
So long as a single non-compliant piece of equipment exists that lets you record a screen or the output of a speaker, circumventing hardware protection is trivial.
Rather than repeating what I've already typed up a couple of times, my thinking about what's really going to have to happen is here.
The right answer is to have a cronjob entry that searches for important updates for any installed software and notifies the sysadmin.
This could be part of the package manager, or it could be a general purpose service of some sort that programs register themselves with on installation.
Not just register.com -- NetSol also moved much of its operations from UNIX systems to Windows systems, if you didn't have enough reason to question the sanity of NetSol already...
Did yahoo send out an email telling everyone this had occured? Or is this a marketing ploy of some sort?
From what we can tell here, they sent the notification only to people who previously had checked "yes" for service change notification preferences.
So the only people who got a note about the update were the ones who didn't care enough to turn these off in the first place.
Like many, I'm more than a little peeved by this. If this is "okay," then every website you've ever given contact info to can do the same, claiming "Of course we didn't tell you we were starting to sell your name again. You told us not to send unsolicited mail!"
I'd bet they'd be really receptive to a commercially-supported set of ports of the more common X-based tools.
There are already a couple X servers for Mac OS X. How much more would need to be done to see Ximian Red Carpet and the major components of Ximian Desktop up under Mac OS X?
Do you have more details on what bad power can do to electronics? (quared/spiked/etc?)
No specifics, but I'd wager a question posted to sci.electronics.repair would net you more replies than you can count.
UPS will help if it's not magnetic
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Flickering Monitors?
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· Score: 4, Informative
A good UPS will help rectify current and voltage oscillation if it's not magnetic interference, which is the most likely cause if it's not magnetic interference.
But if you're going to lay out that kind of cash, replacing the monitors with cheap analog LCDs will make them immune to most kinds of interference and cut your power consumption significantly. Replacing them with digital LCDs (DVI-D) will make them work properly in the middle of a pile of supercharged magnets.
That said, I'd find someone who's comfortable throwing a scope on the line and checking out your power situation. If your building's UPS is throwing out an imperfect signal, it may be slowly killing your machines if left unrepaired. PCs don't take well to current variation or screwy spiked or squared voltage waveforms.
No matter what you think of the man, he's like a broken record. Whether you think what that record that record is saying the wrong thing or the right thing, it's certainly anything but interesting.
A body shouldn't have to entertain to be interesting. He's interesting because he's picked a fight he believes in, and is fighting it continuously without giving an inch. That kind of conviction is all but dead today. IMHO, he'd be far less interesting if he were trying to pretty up the message and reframe and redecorate it until it was something more politically/publicly "fun and tasty."
I spent over an hour on the phone with a Dell salesman, trying to tell them I didn't want Windows or the MS Office/MS Works bundle, and would take Linux or no OS instead.
They offered me a $200 discount and said I could return the Microsoft CDs if I wanted, but would get the discount even if I changed my mind and kept them. They offered to include the discs but not install the Microsoft software. But they would not sell me an Inspiron 8000 laptop without Linux.
I eventually gave up and said that I wasn't ordering if I couldn't have Linux or no OS at all. Neither the salesman nor his immediate supervisor could complete the sale, and I spent my $3500 elsewhere.
If I had my way, there'd be a monthly-updated page of the 10 most-visited sites for each employee, and an indication of how much time they spent at each -- a sum of the 5-minute periods during which a web page from that location was loaded, for example. This would be trivial to generate from a squid log.
This would be a valuable tool for employees using the net properly, as looking at where people in similar positions are going will tell you where they're finding good material.
For the rest, most would think twice about abusing the web and having 20 hours of slutgoths.com and bdsmchat.com at the head of their lists.
Google is similar to a UNIX command-line tool. It's a well-defined and simple interface, and enough information is provided for you to use it effectively if you just do a little reading.
Read the excellent information Google has provided about how the engine works, and use the engine with its inner-workings in mind. When you meet the machine half-way instead of trying to dumb it down for the user, you'll get a hell of a lot more done.
In Google's case, taking half a minute to think about what you're looking for, then tossing in a few related bits of jargon or other words relevant to the context you're after does amazing things. With a little forethought, you can almost always find what you're after and be down to a page with nothing but relevant links with just an extra word or two added as filters.
I guess that's why they used Pascal-based APIs for so many years? The only reason Mac OS X exists is because "Classic" Mac OS did not have programming correctness.
Isn't a Katz story perhaps long enough for two or three ads?
Re:NetBSD stopped being useful once I forked OpenB
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NetBSD 1.5ZB
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· Score: 2
*cough* the fact that OpenSBD and FreeBSD regularly take code (and whole ports) from NetBSD should make you rather wonder what good the latter two are.:)
The better project will know when something's good enough to steal, rather than insisting on spending limited manpower developing every last thing from scratch.
Nice. How many times have we all seen "Linux does that better than Windows" craziness modded to the moon and yet here we have the exact same thing in reverse instantly silenced.
Wow, good thing there's no groupthink around Slashdot. You all must be very proud of those open minds. Pfft.
It would probably have been moderated more kindly if it weren't voiced with so much sarcasm. While many wear their anti-MS blinders here, that doesn't seem to be what came into play here.
It's not just a kernel compile. It's also bzipping, which takes a few seconds alone on most machines, and which can't effectively be done in parallel.
Very nice.:)
Re:NetBSD stopped being useful once I forked OpenB
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NetBSD 1.5ZB
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Frankly, I think that NetBSD has reached its endgame. There are only so many platforms you can port to until you have it running on your toaster. And frankly, I think its unprofessional to let things like SMP support or a decent packaging system slide while focusing on porting to platform after deficient platform.
When comparing BSDs, extreme portability is the one thing that's always listed with NetBSD's positive assets. Being able to port quickly is indeed a valuable thing when bootstrapping new or custom hardware, and if NetBSD is uniquely positioned in this regard, it's got some value yet.
Out of curiosity, how real is this advantage? Are there things that make NetBSD more portable than OpenBSD?
Notice how much the author uses the word "I" and speaks in flowery speech?...
The parent was moderated down as a troll. Rightfully so, but it still makes a couple interesting observations about technically minded people. It's funny and insightful reading. A quality troll, at least.:)
My point is, why is this news? I'm sure he's not the first, and he won't be the last.
I'll play devil's advocate and burn some karma.
I suspect that Linux advertising isn't proving very profitable for Slashdot. Note the extra attention that Apple has gotten on Slashdot, coincident with their expanding revenue forms. It seems likely that Slash wants to become as much a Mac site as a Linux/free software site.
This isn't a dig. It's speculation, and it's probably good business sense. It'll even be interesting, perhaps even fun, so long as it doesn't impact the overall geekiness of the Slash blog.
Slashdot Mirror
So long as a single non-compliant piece of equipment exists that lets you record a screen or the output of a speaker, circumventing hardware protection is trivial.
Rather than repeating what I've already typed up a couple of times, my thinking about what's really going to have to happen is here.
This could be part of the package manager, or it could be a general purpose service of some sort that programs register themselves with on installation.
For what it's worth, most of the other "funny" (big, fat quotes) posts aren't. So, you get Insightful instead.
Just as well. After today, my user prefs are tuned to pitch anything moderated as "funny" (more big, fat quotes) down into oblivion.
Fun, me.
Not just register.com -- NetSol also moved much of its operations from UNIX systems to Windows systems, if you didn't have enough reason to question the sanity of NetSol already...
From what we can tell here, they sent the notification only to people who previously had checked "yes" for service change notification preferences.
So the only people who got a note about the update were the ones who didn't care enough to turn these off in the first place.
Like many, I'm more than a little peeved by this. If this is "okay," then every website you've ever given contact info to can do the same, claiming "Of course we didn't tell you we were starting to sell your name again. You told us not to send unsolicited mail!"
I'd bet they'd be really receptive to a commercially-supported set of ports of the more common X-based tools.
There are already a couple X servers for Mac OS X. How much more would need to be done to see Ximian Red Carpet and the major components of Ximian Desktop up under Mac OS X?
Shouldn't nVidia, Bezos or British Telecom be stepping in about now to claim a patent on encoding 8-bit data as 8-bit data?
No specifics, but I'd wager a question posted to sci.electronics.repair would net you more replies than you can count.
But if you're going to lay out that kind of cash, replacing the monitors with cheap analog LCDs will make them immune to most kinds of interference and cut your power consumption significantly. Replacing them with digital LCDs (DVI-D) will make them work properly in the middle of a pile of supercharged magnets.
That said, I'd find someone who's comfortable throwing a scope on the line and checking out your power situation. If your building's UPS is throwing out an imperfect signal, it may be slowly killing your machines if left unrepaired. PCs don't take well to current variation or screwy spiked or squared voltage waveforms.
That stopped working for my home and office systems about a month ago. I haven't seen any NYTimes articles since.
Is it still working for you, or have you tried recently?
A body shouldn't have to entertain to be interesting. He's interesting because he's picked a fight he believes in, and is fighting it continuously without giving an inch. That kind of conviction is all but dead today. IMHO, he'd be far less interesting if he were trying to pretty up the message and reframe and redecorate it until it was something more politically/publicly "fun and tasty."
Toshiba. The factory-direct store made no fuss about selling me an OS-free system at a nice discount after I related my experience with Dell.
They offered me a $200 discount and said I could return the Microsoft CDs if I wanted, but would get the discount even if I changed my mind and kept them. They offered to include the discs but not install the Microsoft software. But they would not sell me an Inspiron 8000 laptop without Linux.
I eventually gave up and said that I wasn't ordering if I couldn't have Linux or no OS at all. Neither the salesman nor his immediate supervisor could complete the sale, and I spent my $3500 elsewhere.
This would be a valuable tool for employees using the net properly, as looking at where people in similar positions are going will tell you where they're finding good material.
For the rest, most would think twice about abusing the web and having 20 hours of slutgoths.com and bdsmchat.com at the head of their lists.
Lain's navi sure looks a lot like Gnome!
Read the excellent information Google has provided about how the engine works, and use the engine with its inner-workings in mind. When you meet the machine half-way instead of trying to dumb it down for the user, you'll get a hell of a lot more done.
In Google's case, taking half a minute to think about what you're looking for, then tossing in a few related bits of jargon or other words relevant to the context you're after does amazing things. With a little forethought, you can almost always find what you're after and be down to a page with nothing but relevant links with just an extra word or two added as filters.
Better resolution would be nice too, but LCD costs go up exponentially in the small sizes.
Ever hear of an unterminated Pascal string?
Isn't a Katz story perhaps long enough for two or three ads?
I'm sure NetBSD does the same?
Very nice. :)
Out of curiosity, how real is this advantage? Are there things that make NetBSD more portable than OpenBSD?
I suspect that Linux advertising isn't proving very profitable for Slashdot. Note the extra attention that Apple has gotten on Slashdot, coincident with their expanding revenue forms. It seems likely that Slash wants to become as much a Mac site as a Linux/free software site.
This isn't a dig. It's speculation, and it's probably good business sense. It'll even be interesting, perhaps even fun, so long as it doesn't impact the overall geekiness of the Slash blog.