IF you actually read my comment, I am NOT making weapons tech or anything related, and even state we should _of course_ limit such uses - but the technology has a ton of other uses and is everywhere in the modern world. To limit all use and export of it just because it has some military uses is asinine - like limiting the export of aluminum - which every country in the world has access to - just because the Chinese might use some to make some weapons. The might also make your dishwashers.
I regularly do work for overseas clients using open source imaging libraries. Libraries that are _already_ available in those countries. So, a company in China could hire local developers to download and use the same NN (Neural Network) libraries I would use, and it would be legal. But if they hire me, overseas, to use the same libraries, that would be regulated as a technology exchange and possibly not allowed? That HURTS commerce. In an open source world, this sort of thing is ridiculous. It limits american companies by preventing them from competing internationally with already existing technologies - image classification, for example, is a Widely discussed topic, and many of the original theories and the techniques we use came from people outside the US - but thanks to international scientific sharing and open source, we - like everyone else - get to use and benefit from these techniques.
And these technologies are everywhere - they are not militarily purposed/used. These days - Our cellphones use NN to determine what sort of 'scene' we point the camera at and adjust the exposure/brightness/contrast appropriately - whether for a selfie or a food shot. Snapchat and many apps use facial recognition that uses Neural Networks - AI image classification and recognition - to implement filters. So, you're telling me a company in China can develop a new fox-face filter for their snapchat-alike app using the same techniques and libraries we can all download, but it would be bad/wrong for an american company to make such a filter and sell it on the Chinese market? No, if such regulation were to be used, the stipulations must be much more specific than just including image classification and other broad AI techniques. _OF course_ we don't want American developers making weapons for foreign regimes - but to limit ALL uses of these technologies is asinine and bad for our tech sector as it cuts off a broad swath of the global market - a swath that _already_ has access to these techniques.
The dept of commerce document linked in the article lists the following contact information: ADDRESSES: You may submit comments through either of the following:
Federal eRulemaking Portal: http:/// www.regulations.gov. The identification number for this rulemaking is BIS 2018– 0024.
Address: By mail or delivery to Regulatory Policy Division, Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S. Department of Commerce, Room 2099B, 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230. Refer to RIN 0694–AH61. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Kirsten Mortimer, Office of National Security and Technology Transfer Controls, Bureau of Industry and Security, Department of Commerce. Phone: (202) 482–0092; Fax (202) 482– 3355; Email: Kirsten.Mortimer AT bis.doc.gov.
Considering the original poster used the term "hate" in quotes, you seem to be really overreaching. And to assume anyone who doesn't want to see hate speech is a leftist totalitarian is sadly very, very shortsighted.
Just like the cryptic number sequence radio/voip 'stations', this could be a method of communication.
We see so much Spam everyday, everyone takes it for granted, and everyone runs 'filters'. If I wanted to secretly inform agents to begin operations, a select quote from a book sent as spam to hundreds of thousands of people would be perfect. Everyone ends up on spam-lists, and recieving spam is a passive process, so its even more anonymous than public web forums.
As a fellow IT 'nerd' I'm curious - what sort of platform did Sprint use for such a large DB? Custom? BerklyDB? Distributed mysql databases? MS Access (j/k)? Oracle? What OS does the main system use, and is it a teired system (data for past x days in online db, archived data available on seperatly mounted dbs), a cluster or a flat system? If Terabytes of source data enter the system each day, how large was the final db, ballpark of course.
If it fits into the game world, go for it. Your HL2 example was a good one. Playing D3 and seeing real magazines, real brands of soda, etc, would make the game more realistic than the made up stuff you see. Of course, they'd still need to be unobtrusive - otherwise i'd say keep em in the loading screen.
I do NOT want a video poping up advertising a DVD when I just happen to wander by some random tree though...
Instead of placing ads IN the game's content, why not play them while levels are loading? It seems modern games like Doom3 and Half-life 2 take well over 15 seconds to load a level anyway. Instead of just a bland progress-bar you could be watching an AD.
In-game ads would be easier to avoid (don't go near the creek unless you want to watch an ad for the dawson's creek DVD), but would IMHO be much more disruptive to the imersion of the game. Loading screens already hurt (KILL) imersion, so you might as well throw an ad up to take my attention away from watching the progress bar slowly move.
The service costs me 40.50$/mo, and that includes personal uses as well as covering my business. Details and features can be found at www.prepaidlegal.com - and no, I don't sell the service or anything.
I honestly don't remember how I found them, but the few times I've had to use the service has paid for itself. If I'd had to pay a lawyer to contact this schmucko, draft a letter, etc, by the hour, I'd of probably been out 400+ dollars.
The contract-review services and letter drafting are very useful, and allow you to recoup the costs fairly easily.
Oddly enough, I had a run in with this guy last year, and almost submited a story about it.
Ok, so my friend and I bought this domain, stealthisidea.com - as in Steal This Idea, and then never did anything with it.
Last summer, we get a packet, 1 inch thick, telling us we're in violation if his trademark on stealth, and that we were to cease all operations imediatly, and hand over the domain, and be prepared to pay damages.
Thinking this guy was just mistaken, I called him to clear up the matter. From moment 1 he was rude and abusive on the phone, demanding we meet his demands. After explaining the situation, he seemed to loose all grip with reality. He said we were violating his rights. He said he would have the police seize our computers and shut us down, all sorts of over the top crap. He took a very forceful tone, and quite frankly pissed me off. I told him in no uncertain terms that it was inappropriate to make those threats, and he just starting shouting loudly over me...
After the phone call, I dug into my records. I'd signed up for some pay-per-month legal service, including the added protection for my business, and yet had never used it. After finding the contact info, I got ahold of 'my lawyer' (actually just a lawyer at the firm asigned to my account) and explained the situation. He had me fax over a copy of the complaint.
In conversations with the lawyer, he agreed it was a frivilous complaint. You can walk into any hobby store and see models on the shelf for stealth airplanes, no TM symbol to be found next to the word stealth, let alone on the websites of companies that make these planes.
He spoke with the gentleman (if you can call him that), and asked for the registration numbers of the marks in question - none were ever produced. He told the gentleman that if he got a lawyer to bring a suit agianst us for such a rediculous claim, that he'd request sanctions against that lawyer.
We never heard from the guy again.
In the original packet were photocopies of letters to various companies, including JVC, asking them to cease production of various products with Stealth in the name.
I don't know if this guy actualy owns these marks (we never did get proof, but the fact that I produced a lawyer so fast may have been a deterent), but I do know he is an agressive, rude, and harassing individual.
The whole thing made me want to go trademark the common term 'sneak' as an alternative - after all, if someone (supposedly) let him register stealth, sneak should be just as valid.
Sorry to step into this argument, but I Don't agree with the idea that Inaction does not imply sponsorship. Inaction does imply sponsorship.
First, a clarification - this is about the seperation of church and state, not so much freedom of speech.
Some examples:
If a school chose to ignore students do something illegal like, oh, smoking pot on campus, then I'm pretty sure people would see that as the school condoning smoking pot.
Now, your first reaction is going to be that this is an invalid comparison - after all, the freedoms of religion and speech are rights, not illegal drug use.
However, you have to agree that the school's actions in this case would be condoning the behavior!
So, lets dig further by modifying the example. In many states, the laws defines statutory rape as sex with someone under a specific age, such as 16. Thus, anyone over that age isn't breaking the law by engaging in sexual intercourse. So, if a school in such a state were to allow students over this age to engage in sexual activity on campus or during school activities, you can bet that this would be seen as condoning, if not approving underage and premarital sex.
So, by allowing a _legal_ activity to continue on school grounds or at school activities, the school would be seen as condoning something many, if not most, adults would not want condoned.
Now, once again, you may be thinking that the comparison is invalid - but is it? I don't believe so.
From a different standpoint, The whole reason that these rights are defined is because they exist to protect individuals and minorities (I am speaking in the numerical sense, not the PC sense) Rights to certain activities - in this case, the freedoms of speech and religion. Now, if prayer at school football games and in classrooms were to be allowed, would you be happy if Jewish students were also allowed to openly pray in class? What about Muslims? What about Buhdists? What about Cannibals? What about devil worshipers? Pagans? Wiccans? And what about any Atheists who might find the idea of other students praying to be offensive?
Of course, maybe you're now justifying your beliefs by saying that Yes, all of those and more should be allowed to pray in school! But it doesn't work that way - mainly because students usually (unless they are 18) do _not_ have the freedoms of speech and religion. Thus schools are balancing the concept of separation of church and state with the wishes of parents. The most reasonable and realistic solution is to just not allow religious pageantry, symbols and prayer in the schools. If the students are really serious about their beliefs (whether due to their own convictions or those of their parents) - then they will still continue to follow the tenants of their religion and practice outside of school.
Some of you reading this may be thinking that my arguments are invalid, after-all, we are a Christian nation, founded by Christians, one nation under god, right? Wrong. Read the constitution again - it says very specifically that we get the freedom of religion, not the freedom of Christianity. Some of you may think this is a silly distinction - after-all, weren't the founding fathers Christian, and doesn't our money say 'in god we trust' - well, you need to do some more research - because our money didn't always say 'in god we trust', and some of our founders were atheists...
Another way to put it - there is a reason 'God' was mentioned in the declaration and then dropped from later documents.
Anyway, that was all my long winded reasoning for why laws/policies that 'restrict' prayer in school are not on crack.
And for those who are offended, I'm not atheist, nor am I Wiccan, Muslim, Jewish or Buhdist. Am I offended that others are? No. Do I want myself or my children to feel ostracized because we aren't one of those? No. And, most importantly, have I ever been a victim of religious intolerance? Most definitely Yes. And that is what I find
This is actualy and old feature. You can set most, if not all, vnc servers to connect to a remote machine and wait for that machine to 'pick up' the connection - thus allowing control of machines behind a NAT.
This is implemented via a 2 step process. #1, on the remote controling machine, start a viewer in 'listen' mode - this will await an inbound connection to start a viewer session. #2 - On the VNC server machine, 'add a new client' - in RealVNC, this is done by right-clicking the winvnc icon in the systray, and selecting 'add new client' - this will then prompt you for the remote machine's address. Type in the address of the remote machine, and enjoy.
Of course, scheduling or initiating the setup can be a pain, but it works.
Remember Pris, the pleasure model? Of course she's going to look human - would you want to engage in sexual activities with a green bodied replicant? No!
Replicants were outlawed on earth, elsewhere they were made to take the jobs thar were too dangerous for humans, or that humans just didn't want to do. Just like scientists today are doing research into robotic faces to convey emotion, the scientists of tomorrow will, if possible, make robots near human in form so as to make people feel more comfortable with them.
Only earth is worried about replicant infiltration - on the colony worlds replicants are in use and accepted - hence no need to 'mark' them.
Also, and this is more of a plot device - if the replicants didn't look the same, then the whole implication that Decker (or anyone) could be a replicant and not even know it falls down.
It has been revealed that these 64 bit intel chips are not able to address as much memory as AMD 64 bit chips. Specificaly, whereas the Opteron/Althon64 has a 40 bit physical and 48bit virtual address space (not the same as virtual mem, remember that AMD chips each have a memory controler, thus upto 256 Banks of memory, via 256 processors), these intel chips are limited to 36 bits.
Thats right, the same 36 bits that intel has supported via PXE for years...
Thus, total system memory size for these processors is limited to 64GB, meanwhile the per-processor limit for AMD chips is 1TB, 256TB total in a system (max 256 CPUs, if anyone ever makes a board and Hypertransport bridges capable of supporting such a large number of chips).
Anyway, it is a big difference, and it hints that the actual implementation may be the same old slow PXE implementation intel has had for years (since the pentium pro, if I remember correctly).
------------ This post was made while on percocet and no spell checking has been done. deal.
BoaConstructor isn't stalled, but it does appear that way on the surface. Riaan makes few actual releases on SF, and the latest releases (0.2.8, which kicks 0.2.3's butt) can only be found if you paruse the mailing list archives. Very annoying. He claims that 0.3.0 is ready, and its the last wxPython 2.4 based release, but that CVS is broken and holding him up on releasing it.
I say 'claims' because right now my confidence in Riaan isn't that high, to be honest - Someone I know has contacted Riaan about donating the time of one of his company's developers towards the project, and/or making direct donations - and Riaan doesn't seem to be responding now that he's found out the offer isn't a Huge Pile Of Cash(TM) , but would instead be small amounts spread over time and a dedicated # of hours of a paid developer a week. Of course, perhaps Riaan is just busy (Thats what my friend making the offer is hoping), but right now I'm nervous...
Of course, his CVS being messed up is completely understandable - SF has problems these days, and I'm not just talking about longstanding bugs: simple requests for software installs on the webfarm (such as a modern python installation) seem to simply go into lala land and are never responded to. Even a 'No' would be better than no response in months! And thats just one example of the lack of support SF seems to have these days... yes yes, its free, but gee, I remember when it didn't stink, so the current SF is a bother.
Another Python IDE is Black Adder, by The Kompany, but it costs $$ if you want to do anythign serious, and uses pyQT.
Speaking of XUL, a magazine I have here goes over XUL and javascript application development using mozilla - its the latest issue of Linux Journel or Linux magazine - the cover story features cross platform development.
One of the other articles covers python/GTK+ development using Glade and GladeGen - a python utility that takes the XML output from Glade and makes a python module for you with all the stubs you need where you created handlers in Glade. In fact, if the module already exists, it's even smart enough to only insert/change things and not overwrite your code. Its really sweet, and except for the integration, is nearing BoaConstructor butt-kicking status. SciTE + Glade + libglade + Python + GladeGen... yeowch that toolchain sounds deep, but its powerful. Throw things like PDO into the mix and you're good to go.
======== This post is not spell checked. It's 1:15am, I'm on darvaset, and I'm tired. deal.
Wow, thats a pretty bad problem you have there. Let me describe how we handled it 'back in the day' (1997 1998) on a novell network with windows clients all using netscape 4, at the university I worked for.
A login script.
Yup, a simple batch file.
All it did was copy down the bookmarks and preferences file from the known-good and approved copy on the server to the local profile upon login.
Now, it sounds like you might not want to do that for bookmarks, but for preferences (which includes the locked-down settings) you could just push it down when people log in.
No offense, but there are many situations where a admin won't be able to manage a peice of software via AD; maybe you should invest some time into learning about login scripts?
For example: for the same netscape install I mentioned above, we would sometimes push down updates, including new plugins, all by just copying the new files and applying registry patches in login scripts. So, the day after a point release came out that fixed a security bug, the login script would need an extra 60 seconds (since we'd enabled the copy-down of the update).
Moz/Firefox doesn't need registry patches though, so you won't even need a good uninstaller utility like cleansweep to help you find the changes an update makes.
(Mostly) Wrongo on python... The central repository used to be starship - but now PyPi is the favored repository. Has been for quite some time. _Much_ documentation exists for these modules.
http://www.python.org/pypi
No automated install system exists, like the cpan shell, but then again, the python standard library modules include a _lot_ of things you'd go hunting in CPAN for... the original poster mentioned writing a preforking server - its in the standard library with Python. In fact, you can change from the forking version to the threading version by simply changing which mixin class is used at server creation time - the rest of the API remains the same.
Here are some other _standard_ python modules you wouldn't need to go get a CPAN equivalent for:
pydoc - a python module documentation generator, it even includes a built in webserver and can allow you to browse documentation it generates (from your code and comments) live - including all modules currently available in the standard lib, installed for your site, and locally (in the directory where you are)
email - email and mime parsing, including reading and creating complex messages.
browser - find and launch a URL in a browser on the current machine, regardless of platform. The same code will launch a browser to the specified URL on windows, *nix and Apple machines, using the default browser the user has chosen, or will attempt to find one of a 'family' you choose for them, and fallback to what it can find otherwise. It will even launch a mail client if the URL begins with mailto:
DocXMLRPCServer - a fully functional, CGI and XMLRPC capable web server.
nntplib - nntp client library for implementing a nntp client, including posting capabilities.
Did I mention the standard library has very good documentation? ------------ Now, having said all of that: CPAN does _rock_, and I wish python had a PyPi shell utility - I even considered writing one, but current PyPi allows module authors to host their own downloads, and the 'download link' from PyPi can goto a html page with links to download a package instead of the actual install files - thus its a hairy problem. I may write a PEP dealing with that issue.
But for most day-to-day stuff I use SciTE for my Python/Jython development.
That said, the wx toolkit and boaConstructor are _very_ powerful. Have you sent your 'meaningless error message' to anyone on the boaConstructor lists to get feedback? I'm pretty sure the error means something to someone - heck, even _I_ might know what the problem is.
Honestly, and I'm not trying to be a troll here, how do you get anything done as a developer if you give up every time you get an error message? I'm not saying that you should have to debug everyone else's code as a part of day-to-day work, but if you just give up on something (boaConstructor) without Googling for an answer or consulting others or just digging in, then that doesn't bode well for what you'll do when you encounter a bug of your own creation. boaConstructor is used by a lot of people, and is under active development - if everyone got the 'meaningless error message' you got when they installed it, then either no one would use it, or it would already of been fixed. The most likely causes for your problem are:
A) You checked out a bad build from CVS (Get another) B) You don't have the prerequisites installed correctly, or you installed boaConstructor incorrectly C) Your Path is messed up (this will affect any/all dev projects - if a library or file cant be found, errors will happen) D) Invalid permissions E) Version conflicts (You could be on an old redhat box with Python 1.5.2, and boaConstructor needs a newer version, for example).
Instead of bothering slashdot with this issue, why didn't you post to the python list and/or the boaConstructor list? I'm sure that with the proper info people will be able to solve your problem.
My company just implemented something like this for a client - feature-wise, I mean. We didn't do LDAP support or calendaring, but most everything else is there. In fact, we had to remove many of the features we wrote because the client decided not to use them - such as the capability for discussions to hang off of a document or a folder within the system.
Anyway, Something like Plone may work for you. If you don't find something canned that seems to do what you want - or you think something like Plone could work with snowmen modifications - look into hiring someone to modify the system you think will work best for you. Most of the systems out there you will look at are free - meanwhile sharepoint isn't. Paying someone to modify OS software to meet your needs may be cheaper than the licensing fees for sharepoint! There is something to be said for integration with all of the MS Office tools - but then again, a move to Open Office (or star office) would be easier to push in your organization if you didn't rely upon MS-Office specific systems in cases such as this. That is a lot of money your company could save down the line that you'd completely write-off with sharepoint - it just wouldn't be an option.
Anyway, consider hiring a consulting firm to do the work for a fee less than the cost of a sharepoint system - you'll get exactly what you need, and not be tied into MS. Many sharepoint systems need customization work performed in order to 'fit' with a company's needs - so down the sharepoint road you could wind up with license fees _and_ development costs.
As for a firm to use - if you have a local favorite you use, give them a buzz. If you don't - which you probably don't, or you would of asked them their opinion already - then consider www.neurokode.com. Of course, I'm biased, I'm a half-owner of:) Then again, we did just do something very similar to this for another client - and code reuse saves you money. Oh, and no, we didn't use Plone - Zope wasn't an option for the client (which was annoying - I love python), so we wrote a custom PHP-mysql system for them, to which we retain the rights. We may open source it at some point - but right now the project is still in the bug-fix warranty period and we're more concerned with the clients needs.
For those who are curious, we used several open-source utilities (via command-line calling behind the scenes from PHP), such as doc2html, to provide automatic conversion of documents into usable and searchable strings for use in a full-text index within mysql. Thus, we gained the ability to search DOC, PDF, XLS and other types of files without requiring the files themselves to be changed. The original files were stored seperately and available for download to authorized users of the site.
Microsoft was already planning on a 64-bit release of XP, and even has a beta you can download and test if you have an Opteron or Athlon64 machine. Thus, my question is: why were you planning on waiting for Longhorn? Was it a lack of interest in paying for a 64-bit version of an existing OS, or just a lack of knowle3dge that a 64-bit version was comming?
Honestly though, anyone who is surprised by the anouncement of a XP2 needs to pay more attention: with the delays in Longhorn and the delays of sp2, with the added functiuonality of sp2, I've been expecting a XP second edition to be anounced for over 6 months. It's par for course after 98SE and ME. The release of 64-bit platforms just adds another excuse to the pile of reasons to push a new version out the door - I doubt we'll see commercial releases of regular XP for 64-bit now, regardless of the beta program. Oh, and the 64-bit version will be more secure, thanks to the support for non executable memory pages on AMD64 (and later, intel 'IA32e', which is the SAME THING).
64-bit XP download: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/downloads/upgrade.asp
Note: its a 'customer preview' (Beta), it may crash a lot, and you may have fun finding native 64 bit drivers for your hardware, so only install on a test partition, don't use it in production or while drinking, blah blah blah - if you shoot your dog in the head with it, I won't be held responsible - and neither will MS.
Windows Server 2003 is also available in a 64-bit preview: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver20 03/64bit/e xtended/default.mspx
Same warnings apply as above.
And no, this post was not spell checked.
Also check out Tim Powers
on
King Rat
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
If you like modern, urban fantasy, then check out Tim Powers' Fischer-king series (its not officially called that, but thats what I consider it). Start with 'Last Call' and then work you way up. The whole series predates Gaiman's work by many a year, and I have no idea if the similarities of style and type of story are due to coincidence or influence. Actually, I enjoy just about everything I've gotten my hands on from Tim Powers, including 'Anubis Gates' and 'The Drawing of the Dark' (which could be considered part of the Fischer Kind series, just set in the past by several hundred years).
I will say this though - many of the books have a similar, almost formulaic feel to the main character. The details may be different, but the fact that they just lost someone they love in the begining of the novel tends to be eirily similar. That said, its not always there, and the details of whom, how and why are always very different.
Re:"prepare-for-disappointment department"?
on
The Simpsons Movie
·
· Score: 2, Informative
On MASH - are you refering to the final episodes as a movie, or to the in-theaters movie? If the latter, it was released before the TV series, and was the inspiration, not the other way around.
From IMDB: MASH (1970) - the movie, Ring Lardner Jr wrote the screenplay, based on the book by Richard Hooker. "M*A*S*H" (1972) [TV-Series 1972-1983] - developed for TV by Larry Gelbart.
Slashdot Mirror
IF you actually read my comment, I am NOT making weapons tech or anything related, and even state we should _of course_ limit such uses - but the technology has a ton of other uses and is everywhere in the modern world. To limit all use and export of it just because it has some military uses is asinine - like limiting the export of aluminum - which every country in the world has access to - just because the Chinese might use some to make some weapons. The might also make your dishwashers.
Learn to read.
I regularly do work for overseas clients using open source imaging libraries. Libraries that are _already_ available in those countries.
So, a company in China could hire local developers to download and use the same NN (Neural Network) libraries I would use, and it would be legal. But if they hire me, overseas, to use the same libraries, that would be regulated as a technology exchange and possibly not allowed? That HURTS commerce. In an open source world, this sort of thing is ridiculous. It limits american companies by preventing them from competing internationally with already existing technologies - image classification, for example, is a Widely discussed topic, and many of the original theories and the techniques we use came from people outside the US - but thanks to international scientific sharing and open source, we - like everyone else - get to use and benefit from these techniques.
And these technologies are everywhere - they are not militarily purposed/used. These days - Our cellphones use NN to determine what sort of 'scene' we point the camera at and adjust the exposure/brightness/contrast appropriately - whether for a selfie or a food shot. Snapchat and many apps use facial recognition that uses Neural Networks - AI image classification and recognition - to implement filters. So, you're telling me a company in China can develop a new fox-face filter for their snapchat-alike app using the same techniques and libraries we can all download, but it would be bad/wrong for an american company to make such a filter and sell it on the Chinese market? No, if such regulation were to be used, the stipulations must be much more specific than just including image classification and other broad AI techniques. _OF course_ we don't want American developers making weapons for foreign regimes - but to limit ALL uses of these technologies is asinine and bad for our tech sector as it cuts off a broad swath of the global market - a swath that _already_ has access to these techniques.
The dept of commerce document linked in the article lists the following contact information:
ADDRESSES: You may submit comments
through either of the following:
Federal eRulemaking Portal: http:///
www.regulations.gov. The identification
number for this rulemaking is BIS 2018–
0024.
Address: By mail or delivery to
Regulatory Policy Division, Bureau of
Industry and Security, U.S. Department
of Commerce, Room 2099B, 14th Street
and Pennsylvania Avenue NW,
Washington, DC 20230. Refer to RIN
0694–AH61.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Kirsten Mortimer, Office of National
Security and Technology Transfer
Controls, Bureau of Industry and
Security, Department of Commerce.
Phone: (202) 482–0092; Fax (202) 482–
3355; Email: Kirsten.Mortimer AT
bis.doc.gov.
Considering the original poster used the term "hate" in quotes, you seem to be really overreaching. And to assume anyone who doesn't want to see hate speech is a leftist totalitarian is sadly very, very shortsighted.
Go pet a puppy, it will make you feel better.
I've seen this comercial for the last 10 days on local cable. Time warner cable in Cincinnati Ohio.
Just like the cryptic number sequence radio/voip 'stations', this could be a method of communication.
We see so much Spam everyday, everyone takes it for granted, and everyone runs 'filters'. If I wanted to secretly inform agents to begin operations, a select quote from a book sent as spam to hundreds of thousands of people would be perfect. Everyone ends up on spam-lists, and recieving spam is a passive process, so its even more anonymous than public web forums.
As a fellow IT 'nerd' I'm curious - what sort of platform did Sprint use for such a large DB? Custom? BerklyDB? Distributed mysql databases? MS Access (j/k)? Oracle? What OS does the main system use, and is it a teired system (data for past x days in online db, archived data available on seperatly mounted dbs), a cluster or a flat system? If Terabytes of source data enter the system each day, how large was the final db, ballpark of course.
"They also mentioned something about a special paint that reflected light at 100 times it's original intensity or something like that."
Yeah... how about a 'something like that' that doesn't violate the laws of physics.
Perhaps you meant a paint that reflected light 100 times better than regular paint.
Hrm, if only that patent were on bountyquest or some other such hunt-for-prior-art.
Without someone challenging the patent (lawyer required) I'm not sure how you'd go about pointing out a bad patent to the patent office.
Is there a group, other than the EFF, that one would send things like this to for attention? Would the EFF even care?
If it fits into the game world, go for it. Your HL2 example was a good one. Playing D3 and seeing real magazines, real brands of soda, etc, would make the game more realistic than the made up stuff you see. Of course, they'd still need to be unobtrusive - otherwise i'd say keep em in the loading screen.
I do NOT want a video poping up advertising a DVD when I just happen to wander by some random tree though...
Instead of placing ads IN the game's content, why not play them while levels are loading? It seems modern games like Doom3 and Half-life 2 take well over 15 seconds to load a level anyway. Instead of just a bland progress-bar you could be watching an AD.
In-game ads would be easier to avoid (don't go near the creek unless you want to watch an ad for the dawson's creek DVD), but would IMHO be much more disruptive to the imersion of the game. Loading screens already hurt (KILL) imersion, so you might as well throw an ad up to take my attention away from watching the progress bar slowly move.
The service costs me 40.50$/mo, and that includes personal uses as well as covering my business. Details and features can be found at www.prepaidlegal.com - and no, I don't sell the service or anything.
I honestly don't remember how I found them, but the few times I've had to use the service has paid for itself. If I'd had to pay a lawyer to contact this schmucko, draft a letter, etc, by the hour, I'd of probably been out 400+ dollars.
The contract-review services and letter drafting are very useful, and allow you to recoup the costs fairly easily.
Oddly enough, I had a run in with this guy last year, and almost submited a story about it.
Ok, so my friend and I bought this domain, stealthisidea.com - as in Steal This Idea, and then never did anything with it.
Last summer, we get a packet, 1 inch thick, telling us we're in violation if his trademark on stealth, and that we were to cease all operations imediatly, and hand over the domain, and be prepared to pay damages.
Thinking this guy was just mistaken, I called him to clear up the matter. From moment 1 he was rude and abusive on the phone, demanding we meet his demands. After explaining the situation, he seemed to loose all grip with reality. He said we were violating his rights. He said he would have the police seize our computers and shut us down, all sorts of over the top crap. He took a very forceful tone, and quite frankly pissed me off. I told him in no uncertain terms that it was inappropriate to make those threats, and he just starting shouting loudly over me...
After the phone call, I dug into my records. I'd signed up for some pay-per-month legal service, including the added protection for my business, and yet had never used it. After finding the contact info, I got ahold of 'my lawyer' (actually just a lawyer at the firm asigned to my account) and explained the situation. He had me fax over a copy of the complaint.
In conversations with the lawyer, he agreed it was a frivilous complaint. You can walk into any hobby store and see models on the shelf for stealth airplanes, no TM symbol to be found next to the word stealth, let alone on the websites of companies that make these planes.
He spoke with the gentleman (if you can call him that), and asked for the registration numbers of the marks in question - none were ever produced. He told the gentleman that if he got a lawyer to bring a suit agianst us for such a rediculous claim, that he'd request sanctions against that lawyer.
We never heard from the guy again.
In the original packet were photocopies of letters to various companies, including JVC, asking them to cease production of various products with Stealth in the name.
I don't know if this guy actualy owns these marks (we never did get proof, but the fact that I produced a lawyer so fast may have been a deterent), but I do know he is an agressive, rude, and harassing individual.
The whole thing made me want to go trademark the common term 'sneak' as an alternative - after all, if someone (supposedly) let him register stealth, sneak should be just as valid.
Sorry to step into this argument, but I Don't agree with the idea that Inaction does not imply sponsorship. Inaction does imply sponsorship.
First, a clarification - this is about the seperation of church and state, not so much freedom of speech.
Some examples:
If a school chose to ignore students do something illegal like, oh, smoking pot on campus, then I'm pretty sure people would see that as the school condoning smoking pot.
Now, your first reaction is going to be that this is an invalid comparison - after all, the freedoms of religion and speech are rights, not illegal drug use.
However, you have to agree that the school's actions in this case would be condoning the behavior!
So, lets dig further by modifying the example. In many states, the laws defines statutory rape as sex with someone under a specific age, such as 16. Thus, anyone over that age isn't breaking the law by engaging in sexual intercourse. So, if a school in such a state were to allow students over this age to engage in sexual activity on campus or during school activities, you can bet that this would be seen as condoning, if not approving underage and premarital sex.
So, by allowing a _legal_ activity to continue on school grounds or at school activities, the school would be seen as condoning something many, if not most, adults would not want condoned.
Now, once again, you may be thinking that the comparison is invalid - but is it? I don't believe so.
From a different standpoint, The whole reason that these rights are defined is because they exist to protect individuals and minorities (I am speaking in the numerical sense, not the PC sense) Rights to certain activities - in this case, the freedoms of speech and religion.
Now, if prayer at school football games and in classrooms were to be allowed, would you be happy if Jewish students were also allowed to openly pray in class?
What about Muslims? What about Buhdists? What about Cannibals? What about devil worshipers? Pagans? Wiccans? And what about any Atheists who might find the idea of other students praying to be offensive?
Of course, maybe you're now justifying your beliefs by saying that Yes, all of those and more should be allowed to pray in school! But it doesn't work that way - mainly because students usually (unless they are 18) do _not_ have the freedoms of speech and religion. Thus schools are balancing the concept of separation of church and state with the wishes of parents. The most reasonable and realistic solution is to just not allow religious pageantry, symbols and prayer in the schools.
If the students are really serious about their beliefs (whether due to their own convictions or those of their parents) - then they will still continue to follow the tenants of their religion and practice outside of school.
Some of you reading this may be thinking that my arguments are invalid, after-all, we are a Christian nation, founded by Christians, one nation under god, right? Wrong.
Read the constitution again - it says very specifically that we get the freedom of religion, not the freedom of Christianity. Some of you may think this is a silly distinction - after-all, weren't the founding fathers Christian, and doesn't our money say 'in god we trust' - well, you need to do some more research - because our money didn't always say 'in god we trust', and some of our founders were atheists...
Another way to put it - there is a reason 'God' was mentioned in the declaration and then dropped from later documents.
Anyway, that was all my long winded reasoning for why laws/policies that 'restrict' prayer in school are not on crack.
And for those who are offended, I'm not atheist, nor am I Wiccan, Muslim, Jewish or Buhdist. Am I offended that others are? No. Do I want myself or my children to feel ostracized because we aren't one of those? No. And, most importantly, have I ever been a victim of religious intolerance? Most definitely Yes. And that is what I find
Uhm, sure this would cause headaches, but couldn't you just compute the fixed inversion of the divisor outside the fpga and use it?
Ie, you need x/n for your perspective interpolation, so you instead calculate 1/n outside the fpga and do x*(1/n).
Of course, if n is not a constant, or a small group of constants, then external calulations of its value will slow things down dramatically.
Also, why not just use the 'Microblaze' softcpu for the spartan3? This includes a mapped instruction todo a divide fairly quickly on the fpga.
This is actualy and old feature. You can set most, if not all, vnc servers to connect to a remote machine and wait for that machine to 'pick up' the connection - thus allowing control of machines behind a NAT.
This is implemented via a 2 step process. #1, on the remote controling machine, start a viewer in 'listen' mode - this will await an inbound connection to start a viewer session.
#2 - On the VNC server machine, 'add a new client' - in RealVNC, this is done by right-clicking the winvnc icon in the systray, and selecting 'add new client' - this will then prompt you for the remote machine's address. Type in the address of the remote machine, and enjoy.
Of course, scheduling or initiating the setup can be a pain, but it works.
Remember Pris, the pleasure model? Of course she's going to look human - would you want to engage in sexual activities with a green bodied replicant? No!
Replicants were outlawed on earth, elsewhere they were made to take the jobs thar were too dangerous for humans, or that humans just didn't want to do. Just like scientists today are doing research into robotic faces to convey emotion, the scientists of tomorrow will, if possible, make robots near human in form so as to make people feel more comfortable with them.
Only earth is worried about replicant infiltration - on the colony worlds replicants are in use and accepted - hence no need to 'mark' them.
Also, and this is more of a plot device - if the replicants didn't look the same, then the whole implication that Decker (or anyone) could be a replicant and not even know it falls down.
It has been revealed that these 64 bit intel chips are not able to address as much memory as AMD 64 bit chips. Specificaly, whereas the Opteron/Althon64 has a 40 bit physical and 48bit virtual address space (not the same as virtual mem, remember that AMD chips each have a memory controler, thus upto 256 Banks of memory, via 256 processors), these intel chips are limited to 36 bits.
Thats right, the same 36 bits that intel has supported via PXE for years...
Thus, total system memory size for these processors is limited to 64GB, meanwhile the per-processor limit for AMD chips is 1TB, 256TB total in a system (max 256 CPUs, if anyone ever makes a board and Hypertransport bridges capable of supporting such a large number of chips).
Anyway, it is a big difference, and it hints that the actual implementation may be the same old slow PXE implementation intel has had for years (since the pentium pro, if I remember correctly).
------------ This post was made while on percocet and no spell checking has been done. deal.
BoaConstructor isn't stalled, but it does appear that way on the surface. Riaan makes few actual releases on SF, and the latest releases (0.2.8, which kicks 0.2.3's butt) can only be found if you paruse the mailing list archives. Very annoying. He claims that 0.3.0 is ready, and its the last wxPython 2.4 based release, but that CVS is broken and holding him up on releasing it.
I say 'claims' because right now my confidence in Riaan isn't that high, to be honest - Someone I know has contacted Riaan about donating the time of one of his company's developers towards the project, and/or making direct donations - and Riaan doesn't seem to be responding now that he's found out the offer isn't a Huge Pile Of Cash(TM) , but would instead be small amounts spread over time and a dedicated # of hours of a paid developer a week. Of course, perhaps Riaan is just busy (Thats what my friend making the offer is hoping), but right now I'm nervous...
Of course, his CVS being messed up is completely understandable - SF has problems these days, and I'm not just talking about longstanding bugs: simple requests for software installs on the webfarm (such as a modern python installation) seem to simply go into lala land and are never responded to. Even a 'No' would be better than no response in months! And thats just one example of the lack of support SF seems to have these days... yes yes, its free, but gee, I remember when it didn't stink, so the current SF is a bother.
Another Python IDE is Black Adder, by The Kompany, but it costs $$ if you want to do anythign serious, and uses pyQT.
Speaking of XUL, a magazine I have here goes over XUL and javascript application development using mozilla - its the latest issue of Linux Journel or Linux magazine - the cover story features cross platform development.
One of the other articles covers python/GTK+ development using Glade and GladeGen - a python utility that takes the XML output from Glade and makes a python module for you with all the stubs you need where you created handlers in Glade. In fact, if the module already exists, it's even smart enough to only insert/change things and not overwrite your code. Its really sweet, and except for the integration, is nearing BoaConstructor butt-kicking status. SciTE + Glade + libglade + Python + GladeGen... yeowch that toolchain sounds deep, but its powerful. Throw things like PDO into the mix and you're good to go.
======== This post is not spell checked. It's 1:15am, I'm on darvaset, and I'm tired. deal.
Wow, thats a pretty bad problem you have there. Let me describe how we handled it 'back in the day' (1997 1998) on a novell network with windows clients all using netscape 4, at the university I worked for.
A login script.
Yup, a simple batch file.
All it did was copy down the bookmarks and preferences file from the known-good and approved copy on the server to the local profile upon login.
Now, it sounds like you might not want to do that for bookmarks, but for preferences (which includes the locked-down settings) you could just push it down when people log in.
No offense, but there are many situations where a admin won't be able to manage a peice of software via AD; maybe you should invest some time into learning about login scripts?
For example: for the same netscape install I mentioned above, we would sometimes push down updates, including new plugins, all by just copying the new files and applying registry patches in login scripts. So, the day after a point release came out that fixed a security bug, the login script would need an extra 60 seconds (since we'd enabled the copy-down of the update).
Moz/Firefox doesn't need registry patches though, so you won't even need a good uninstaller utility like cleansweep to help you find the changes an update makes.
(Mostly) Wrongo on python...
The central repository used to be starship - but now PyPi is the favored repository. Has been for quite some time. _Much_ documentation exists for these modules.
http://www.python.org/pypi
No automated install system exists, like the cpan shell, but then again, the python standard library modules include a _lot_ of things you'd go hunting in CPAN for... the original poster mentioned writing a preforking server - its in the standard library with Python. In fact, you can change from the forking version to the threading version by simply changing which mixin class is used at server creation time - the rest of the API remains the same.
Here are some other _standard_ python modules you wouldn't need to go get a CPAN equivalent for:
pydoc - a python module documentation generator, it even includes a built in webserver and can allow you to browse documentation it generates (from your code and comments) live - including all modules currently available in the standard lib, installed for your site, and locally (in the directory where you are)
email - email and mime parsing, including reading and creating complex messages.
browser - find and launch a URL in a browser on the current machine, regardless of platform. The same code will launch a browser to the specified URL on windows, *nix and Apple machines, using the default browser the user has chosen, or will attempt to find one of a 'family' you choose for them, and fallback to what it can find otherwise. It will even launch a mail client if the URL begins with mailto:
DocXMLRPCServer - a fully functional, CGI and XMLRPC capable web server.
nntplib - nntp client library for implementing a nntp client, including posting capabilities.
Did I mention the standard library has very good documentation?
------------
Now, having said all of that: CPAN does _rock_, and I wish python had a PyPi shell utility - I even considered writing one, but current PyPi allows module authors to host their own downloads, and the 'download link' from PyPi can goto a html page with links to download a package instead of the actual install files - thus its a hairy problem. I may write a PEP dealing with that issue.
Cheers.
But for most day-to-day stuff I use SciTE for my Python/Jython development.
That said, the wx toolkit and boaConstructor are _very_ powerful. Have you sent your 'meaningless error message' to anyone on the boaConstructor lists to get feedback? I'm pretty sure the error means something to someone - heck, even _I_ might know what the problem is.
Honestly, and I'm not trying to be a troll here, how do you get anything done as a developer if you give up every time you get an error message? I'm not saying that you should have to debug everyone else's code as a part of day-to-day work, but if you just give up on something (boaConstructor) without Googling for an answer or consulting others or just digging in, then that doesn't bode well for what you'll do when you encounter a bug of your own creation. boaConstructor is used by a lot of people, and is under active development - if everyone got the 'meaningless error message' you got when they installed it, then either no one would use it, or it would already of been fixed. The most likely causes for your problem are:
A) You checked out a bad build from CVS (Get another)
B) You don't have the prerequisites installed correctly, or you installed boaConstructor incorrectly
C) Your Path is messed up (this will affect any/all dev projects - if a library or file cant be found, errors will happen)
D) Invalid permissions
E) Version conflicts (You could be on an old redhat box with Python 1.5.2, and boaConstructor needs a newer version, for example).
Instead of bothering slashdot with this issue, why didn't you post to the python list and/or the boaConstructor list? I'm sure that with the proper info people will be able to solve your problem.
My company just implemented something like this for a client - feature-wise, I mean. We didn't do LDAP support or calendaring, but most everything else is there. In fact, we had to remove many of the features we wrote because the client decided not to use them - such as the capability for discussions to hang off of a document or a folder within the system.
:) Then again, we did just do something very similar to this for another client - and code reuse saves you money. Oh, and no, we didn't use Plone - Zope wasn't an option for the client (which was annoying - I love python), so we wrote a custom PHP-mysql system for them, to which we retain the rights. We may open source it at some point - but right now the project is still in the bug-fix warranty period and we're more concerned with the clients needs.
Anyway, Something like Plone may work for you. If you don't find something canned that seems to do what you want - or you think something like Plone could work with snowmen modifications - look into hiring someone to modify the system you think will work best for you. Most of the systems out there you will look at are free - meanwhile sharepoint isn't. Paying someone to modify OS software to meet your needs may be cheaper than the licensing fees for sharepoint! There is something to be said for integration with all of the MS Office tools - but then again, a move to Open Office (or star office) would be easier to push in your organization if you didn't rely upon MS-Office specific systems in cases such as this. That is a lot of money your company could save down the line that you'd completely write-off with sharepoint - it just wouldn't be an option.
Anyway, consider hiring a consulting firm to do the work for a fee less than the cost of a sharepoint system - you'll get exactly what you need, and not be tied into MS. Many sharepoint systems need customization work performed in order to 'fit' with a company's needs - so down the sharepoint road you could wind up with license fees _and_ development costs.
As for a firm to use - if you have a local favorite you use, give them a buzz. If you don't - which you probably don't, or you would of asked them their opinion already - then consider www.neurokode.com. Of course, I'm biased, I'm a half-owner of
For those who are curious, we used several open-source utilities (via command-line calling behind the scenes from PHP), such as doc2html, to provide automatic conversion of documents into usable and searchable strings for use in a full-text index within mysql. Thus, we gained the ability to search DOC, PDF, XLS and other types of files without requiring the files themselves to be changed. The original files were stored seperately and available for download to authorized users of the site.
Microsoft was already planning on a 64-bit release of XP, and even has a beta you can download and test if you have an Opteron or Athlon64 machine. Thus, my question is: why were you planning on waiting for Longhorn? Was it a lack of interest in paying for a 64-bit version of an existing OS, or just a lack of knowle3dge that a 64-bit version was comming?
s /upgrade.asp
0 03/64bit/e xtended/default.mspx
Honestly though, anyone who is surprised by the anouncement of a XP2 needs to pay more attention: with the delays in Longhorn and the delays of sp2, with the added functiuonality of sp2, I've been expecting a XP second edition to be anounced for over 6 months. It's par for course after 98SE and ME. The release of 64-bit platforms just adds another excuse to the pile of reasons to push a new version out the door - I doubt we'll see commercial releases of regular XP for 64-bit now, regardless of the beta program. Oh, and the 64-bit version will be more secure, thanks to the support for non executable memory pages on AMD64 (and later, intel 'IA32e', which is the SAME THING).
64-bit XP download: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/download
Note: its a 'customer preview' (Beta), it may crash a lot, and you may have fun finding native 64 bit drivers for your hardware, so only install on a test partition, don't use it in production or while drinking, blah blah blah - if you shoot your dog in the head with it, I won't be held responsible - and neither will MS.
Windows Server 2003 is also available in a 64-bit preview:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2
Same warnings apply as above.
And no, this post was not spell checked.
If you like modern, urban fantasy, then check out Tim Powers' Fischer-king series (its not officially called that, but thats what I consider it). Start with 'Last Call' and then work you way up. The whole series predates Gaiman's work by many a year, and I have no idea if the similarities of style and type of story are due to coincidence or influence. Actually, I enjoy just about everything I've gotten my hands on from Tim Powers, including 'Anubis Gates' and 'The Drawing of the Dark' (which could be considered part of the Fischer Kind series, just set in the past by several hundred years).
I will say this though - many of the books have a similar, almost formulaic feel to the main character. The details may be different, but the fact that they just lost someone they love in the begining of the novel tends to be eirily similar. That said, its not always there, and the details of whom, how and why are always very different.
On MASH - are you refering to the final episodes as a movie, or to the in-theaters movie? If the latter, it was released before the TV series, and was the inspiration, not the other way around.
From IMDB:
MASH (1970) - the movie, Ring Lardner Jr wrote the screenplay, based on the book by Richard Hooker.
"M*A*S*H" (1972) [TV-Series 1972-1983] - developed for TV by Larry Gelbart.
So, it was a book, then movie, then TV show.