Wherever progress is to ensue, deviating natures are of greatest importance... The strongest natures retain the type, the weaker ones help to advance it... To this extent, the famous theory of the survival of the fittest does not seem to me to be the only viewpoint from which to explain the progress of strengthening of a man or of a race. (Uncle Friedrich)
my friend and i were canoeing around toronto island in the summer of 2007 - which unfortunately got us turned-over from a big wave on the home stretch - there we were in the water, bailing out the canoe - cell phone in the back pocket... dried it out for a week.. got a black screen.. dried it out for two weeks.. it worked!! and for another two years after that.:-D
great - so now millions of drones will have to sit in windowless rooms so the network wont leak out... and the air and the trees and the birds cant leak in... dismal existence... borg colony bleah!:-P
they see what has been freely given (open source) as valuable to their business, yet they dont want to give something back - so, dont give in - this is exactly the sort of thing open source was invented to prevent - if they're so greedy that they think they dont have to give anything back - well then - they can just live without those freely-given benefits. they're inflexible- why should open licensors have to bend for the sake of their greed??
> This is what I do with email. Sadly you'll eventually get spam to the private address > when someone visits a "scan my email address book for friends" type thing..
that's with email - but this isn't email - this is a system where we can set it up such that: private address will not actually be able to recieve from outside sources at all - private address can only recieve from one of user defined aliases - this way private long-term number cant get polluted by random brute-force attacks.
i've thought about this before - i think what one needs is a single PRIVATE number - that never gets given out to anyone - and you have a bunch of private ALIAS/Reference numbers which you yourself point to your private number - then you only give out the aliases - and if one of the aliases gets overloaded, you pull the plug on the alias, create a new alias, and then direct that new alias towards your private number.
really - what good programmer would make a hard-coded dependency on the existence of an obscure key like sysRq..? if you say the choice of an obscure key is so that it doesn't conflict with other existing applications use of key assignments - then the only sane way is that the user should be able to pick & reassign function-key invocations in a preferences file.
software that depends on a hard-wired sysRq key without being able to reassign it in a preferences file should be sumarily deleted and its sourcode burned in the digital bucket destined only to be run in machine-emulators (in which case - the sysRq will be reassigned anyway).
if you've got a mac - a great place to start is FutureBasic* - it allows you to get into programming pretty easily - get your teeth wet with the basic you know and love -- and then easily lets you get all the way to C++ and the full XCode IDE -- it supports proper recursive functions, local & global variables, and a very nice integrated IDE that ties in to XCode -- allowing inline C++ and assembly language code..
i did some a-b comparisons a while ago.. i was using handbrake.. CBR 700kbs.. between.mpeg and h264.. the h264 close-up pixel quality was superiour to the pixels of the mpeg clip.. whose file size was also larger.. h264 was so much better, in fact, that i vowed never to encode another film as mpeg again.. the cost however, is more processor usage.. mpeg can deliver a stutter-free picture on lower Mhz machines.. h264 gives better results & smaller size -- but requires more horsepower to interpret to the screen..
go to oxford - when i went (waaay back in 1992) - you can sit in the pub where the oxford inklings (j.r.r tolkien, c.s. lewis, owen barfield, charles williams) used to gather and discuss their latest writings... they had some of tolkien's original manuscripts on display at the BODLEIAN Library.. very cool.:-D
just like apple's OSX's built-in Internet Sharing feature did way back in OSX 10.4 (Tiger).. you can share your ethernet > wifi or you can share a wired connection to your ethernet (in case you have an older computer around which doesnt have wireless)
> I've been in a situation where the engine is off, > still in drive, and going downhill (I was actually accelerating). > I quickly lost both power steering and power brakes as I used them. > Everything gets manual very quickly.
> Having a mechanical backup for a loss of power is essential.
to all the joystick twiddlers -- this cannot be emphasized enough!!
no no no no no - force engraining of crappy keyboard layouts like qwerty is wrong. this should never be allowed, unless they give the option of choosing dvorak or qwerty as the student's choice.
> People are very quick to say "TEACHERS ARE OUT OF DATE!", but that's not necessarily > a bad thing. The material being taught hasn't changed because IT STILL WORKS LIKE IT > DID BACK THEN!
I used to think that technology could help education. I've probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I've had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent.
Unfortunately, technology isn't it. You're not going to solve the problems by putting all knowledge onto CD-ROMs. We can put a Web site in every school - none of this is bad. It's bad only if it lulls us into thinking we're doing something to solve the problem with education.
Lincoln did not have a Web site at the log cabin where his parents home-schooled him, and he turned out pretty interesting. Historical precedent shows that we can turn out amazing human beings without technology. Precedent also shows that we can turn out very uninteresting human beings with technology.
It's not as simple as you think when you're in your 20s - that technology's going to change the world. In some ways it will, in some ways it won't.
apple OS releases generally Improve performance on the same given hardware.
e.g. - OS7.5 > OS8 sped up file copies an order of magnitude. - 10.3 > 10.4 added speed on the same hardware. - optimization of ppc > intel added to OS transparently as OS version releases came out. - 64 bit support sped things up pretty transparently for a lot of users.
the point being - a MS windows assumes faster hardware to compensate for each new version of windows bloat - while apple optimizes each new rev of the OS to work faster on the same (supported) hardware. my iMac G5 works faster on 10.5 leopard than it ever did on 10.4, and that was faster than 10.3 before it, and that ran faster than it worked in OS9.2... same hardware - better performance.. go figure.. they must be OS/hardware company or something...:-^
> > And there is no malware possible that can read what's written on a post-it note. > > Security cameras. If you know what to Google you can find all sorts of security cameras on the internet.
i think gaining passwords from posty-notes via security cameras is a pretty low-possibility, definitely much harder to crack than leaving them in a word file on the computer somewhere.
and i think it would only be vulnerable to a determined human attack, its not the sort of thing that could be automated by a bot -- posty notes are more secure against bot attacks - even with the threat of OCRing possible text out of security cams.
well not really - but sometimes it seems they do - everytime i've gone through the trouble of trying to add a decent image to an article, the wiki-nerds shut you down - yes, they need to be diligent - but at the end of the day its just too much of a pain in the @#%$ to get a nice photo on to wikipedia - who wants to fight the censors - its just not worth it.
for example, i had added the wiki article for 'Jeff Johnson' (a great musician) - i emailed him, he actually emailed back. he sent me a photo that he chose and WANTED to have on wikipedia - even though the musician himself had provided the photo - the wiki-nerds deleted the image - its just too much trouble, and i cant be bothered to fight them just to get a picture up - so now the article runs without any picture at all -- i think my experience may be typical -- and thus = crappy or no pictures on wikipedia = the state of affairs.
all things the same, jpeg quality gives a good index to the quality of the image, but it can be just as true that a lower jpeg quality image might be a better quality image.
for example, two images: the first image might be scanned off a badly faded colour photocopy of a famous painting - it is saved at 300 dpi - approximately 2800 x 1200 pixels, and the jpeg quality set at 12 -- the second image is a well lit photograph of the original painting, scanned on a scitex scanner, and brought in as a tiff original -- all high end, but then they res it down to only 1600 x 900 pixels, say at 200 dpi, and saved at a jpeg quality of 8.
well, in such a case, most software based on the assumption that jpeg quality = image quality would auto-pick the worser image.:-(
handy index variable to have tho - could provide a resolution / jpeg quality metric in the google image searches...:-)
schools are poor dude - the $1000 that it takes to buy a new CPU for a student or a teacher comes out of the budget for the teacher's salary - i was in a school this spring (2009) - they're still getting by with ancient 486 PCs running windows 98 and the 'new' machine was running windows 2000. yes - this was in southern ontario - which is a lot better off than schools in mexico (or many other parts of the world) -
so - yes - this makes a lot of old machines more useful for those that can afford to update the least.
i've upgraded many many old G3 iMacs to run OSX - and they run OSX just fine (so long as you update the firmware first). you need at least 128-256Mb RAM - but you should be able to get at least OSX 10.3 on ANY old G3 iMac.
once you got OSX installed on your old imac, its a piece of cake to install Firefox -- now the caveat is -- if you only have only OSX 10.3, then you can only run up to Firefox v2 -- to get Firefox v3 or later, you will have to have Tiger (OSX 10.4) installed.
now, unless you got one of the really old pre-firewire iMacs -- you can run OSX 10.4 on them -- but you may have to use target disk mode (CMD-T at startup) and install Tiger (OSX 10.4) from a second machine that has a DVD drive (because Tiger 10.4, unlike Panther 10.3 is the first version of the Mac OS that comes ONLY on DVD!!) -- but because of Target Disk mode -- this is not half as hard as hacking an xorg.conf file... so why you complain??
therefore -- because all old G3 iMacs will run OSX (with a firmware upgrade) -- it means that all old iMacs will also run firefox -- at least to version 2, and if you manage to get tiger installed -- up to firefox 3.
Games are not Movies. The emotions and catharsis one gets from movies can only come from that source. The film maker waives the magic for two hours or so. But the game maker has to come up with a fun, enjoyable interactive 'experience' which runs on hardware. I fear all these improvements in graphic power are turning many games into movie-like experiences which are missing on the essential nature of what a game is. (Toru Iwatani, creator of PacMan)
I have always considered that the substitution of the Internal Combustion Engine for the horse marked a very gloomy passage in the progress of mankind. (Winston Churchill)
why not just do it hacker style? get your notebook / phone of choice - take a screwdriver and gouge out the camera - fill with carpenter's putty - done.
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Wherever progress is to ensue, deviating natures are of greatest importance...
The strongest natures retain the type, the weaker ones help to advance it...
To this extent, the famous theory of the survival of the fittest does not seem
to me to be the only viewpoint from which to explain the progress of strengthening
of a man or of a race. (Uncle Friedrich)
my friend and i were canoeing around toronto island in the summer of 2007 - which unfortunately got us turned-over from a big wave on the home stretch - there we were in the water, bailing out the canoe - cell phone in the back pocket... dried it out for a week.. got a black screen.. dried it out for two weeks.. it worked!! and for another two years after that. :-D
great - so now millions of drones will have to sit in windowless rooms so the network wont leak out... and the air and the trees and the birds cant leak in... dismal existence... borg colony bleah! :-P
they see what has been freely given (open source) as valuable to their business, yet they dont want to give something back - so, dont give in - this is exactly the sort of thing open source was invented to prevent - if they're so greedy that they think they dont have to give anything back - well then - they can just live without those freely-given benefits. they're inflexible- why should open licensors have to bend for the sake of their greed??
2cents
jp
> This is what I do with email. Sadly you'll eventually get spam to the private address
> when someone visits a "scan my email address book for friends" type thing..
that's with email - but this isn't email - this is a system where we can set it up such that: private address will not actually be able to recieve from outside sources at all - private address can only recieve from one of user defined aliases - this way private long-term number cant get polluted by random brute-force attacks.
i've thought about this before - i think what one needs is a single PRIVATE number - that never gets given out to anyone - and you have a bunch of private ALIAS/Reference numbers which you yourself point to your private number - then you only give out the aliases - and if one of the aliases gets overloaded, you pull the plug on the alias, create a new alias, and then direct that new alias towards your private number.
really - what good programmer would make a hard-coded dependency on the existence of an obscure key like sysRq..? if you say the choice of an obscure key is so that it doesn't conflict with other existing applications use of key assignments - then the only sane way is that the user should be able to pick & reassign function-key invocations in a preferences file.
software that depends on a hard-wired sysRq key without being able to reassign it in a preferences file should be sumarily deleted and its sourcode burned in the digital bucket destined only to be run in machine-emulators (in which case - the sysRq will be reassigned anyway).
if you've got a mac - a great place to start is FutureBasic* - it allows you to get into programming pretty easily - get your teeth wet with the basic you know and love -- and then easily lets you get all the way to C++ and the full XCode IDE -- it supports proper recursive functions, local & global variables, and a very nice integrated IDE that ties in to XCode -- allowing inline C++ and assembly language code..
FutureBasic 4.4.3:
http://www.stazsoftware.com/futurebasic/index.php
lets you get into programming pretty quickly, without spending a lot of overhead time with an undue amount of UI handling & string handling code.
i did some a-b comparisons a while ago.. i was using handbrake.. CBR 700kbs.. between .mpeg and h264.. the h264 close-up pixel quality was superiour to the pixels of the mpeg clip.. whose file size was also larger.. h264 was so much better, in fact, that i vowed never to encode another film as mpeg again.. the cost however, is more processor usage.. mpeg can deliver a stutter-free picture on lower Mhz machines.. h264 gives better results & smaller size -- but requires more horsepower to interpret to the screen..
2cents from toronto island :D
jp
go to oxford - when i went (waaay back in 1992) - you can sit in the pub where the oxford inklings (j.r.r tolkien, c.s. lewis, owen barfield, charles williams) used to gather and discuss their latest writings... they had some of tolkien's original manuscripts on display at the BODLEIAN Library.. very cool. :-D
musicians finally getting their music back -- its about frickin time...
just like apple's OSX's built-in Internet Sharing feature did way back in OSX 10.4 (Tiger)..
you can share your ethernet > wifi or you can share a wired connection to your ethernet
(in case you have an older computer around which doesnt have wireless)
keep those photocopiers running MS...
> I've been in a situation where the engine is off,
> still in drive, and going downhill (I was actually accelerating).
> I quickly lost both power steering and power brakes as I used them.
> Everything gets manual very quickly.
> Having a mechanical backup for a loss of power is essential.
to all the joystick twiddlers -- this cannot be emphasized enough!!
You can't say civilization doesn't advance,
for in every war they kill you a new way. (Will Rogers)
no no no no no - force engraining of crappy keyboard layouts like qwerty is wrong.
this should never be allowed, unless they give the option of choosing dvorak or qwerty
as the student's choice.
2cents
j
> People are very quick to say "TEACHERS ARE OUT OF DATE!", but that's not necessarily
> a bad thing. The material being taught hasn't changed because IT STILL WORKS LIKE IT
> DID BACK THEN!
I used to think that technology could help education. I've probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I've had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent.
Unfortunately, technology isn't it. You're not going to solve the problems by putting all knowledge onto CD-ROMs. We can put a Web site in every school - none of this is bad. It's bad only if it lulls us into thinking we're doing something to solve the problem with education.
Lincoln did not have a Web site at the log cabin where his parents home-schooled him, and he turned out pretty interesting. Historical precedent shows that we can turn out amazing human beings without technology. Precedent also shows that we can turn out very uninteresting human beings with technology.
It's not as simple as you think when you're in your 20s - that technology's going to change the world. In some ways it will, in some ways it won't.
Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing
Interview by Gary Wolf, Wired Magazine, February 1996.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs.html?pg=3
unlike another OS behmoth's software -
apple OS releases generally Improve performance on the same given hardware.
e.g.
- OS7.5 > OS8 sped up file copies an order of magnitude.
- 10.3 > 10.4 added speed on the same hardware.
- optimization of ppc > intel added to OS transparently as OS version releases came out.
- 64 bit support sped things up pretty transparently for a lot of users.
the point being - a MS windows assumes faster hardware to compensate for each new version of windows bloat - while apple optimizes each new rev of the OS to work faster on the same (supported) hardware. my iMac G5 works faster on 10.5 leopard than it ever did on 10.4, and that was faster than 10.3 before it, and that ran faster than it worked in OS9.2... same hardware - better performance.. go figure.. they must be OS/hardware company or something... :-^
2cents
> > And there is no malware possible that can read what's written on a post-it note.
>
> Security cameras. If you know what to Google you can find all sorts of security cameras on the internet.
i think gaining passwords from posty-notes via security cameras is a pretty low-possibility,
definitely much harder to crack than leaving them in a word file on the computer somewhere.
and i think it would only be vulnerable to a determined human attack, its not the sort
of thing that could be automated by a bot -- posty notes are more secure against
bot attacks - even with the threat of OCRing possible text out of security cams.
well not really - but sometimes it seems they do - everytime i've gone through the trouble of trying to add a decent image to an article, the wiki-nerds shut you down - yes, they need to be diligent - but at the end of the day its just too much of a pain in the @#%$ to get a nice photo on to wikipedia - who wants to fight the censors - its just not worth it.
for example, i had added the wiki article for 'Jeff Johnson' (a great musician) - i emailed him, he actually emailed back. he sent me a photo that he chose and WANTED to have on wikipedia - even though the musician himself had provided the photo - the wiki-nerds deleted the image - its just too much trouble, and i cant be bothered to fight them just to get a picture up - so now the article runs without any picture at all -- i think my experience may be typical -- and thus = crappy or no pictures on wikipedia = the state of affairs.
2cents from toronto island
john penner
all things the same, jpeg quality gives a good index to the quality of the image,
but it can be just as true that a lower jpeg quality image might be a better quality image.
for example, two images: the first image might be scanned off a badly faded
colour photocopy of a famous painting - it is saved at 300 dpi - approximately
2800 x 1200 pixels, and the jpeg quality set at 12 -- the second image is a
well lit photograph of the original painting, scanned on a scitex scanner,
and brought in as a tiff original -- all high end, but then they res it down to
only 1600 x 900 pixels, say at 200 dpi, and saved at a jpeg quality of 8.
well, in such a case, most software based on the assumption :-(
that jpeg quality = image quality would auto-pick the worser image.
handy index variable to have tho - could provide a resolution / jpeg quality :-)
metric in the google image searches...
all the best
john penner
schools are poor dude - the $1000 that it takes to buy a new CPU for a student or a teacher comes out of the budget for the teacher's salary - i was in a school this spring (2009) - they're still getting by with ancient 486 PCs running windows 98 and the 'new' machine was running windows 2000. yes - this was in southern ontario - which is a lot better off than schools in mexico (or many other parts of the world) -
so - yes - this makes a lot of old machines more useful for those that can afford to update the least.
i've upgraded many many old G3 iMacs to run OSX - and they run OSX just fine (so long as you update the firmware first). you need at least 128-256Mb RAM - but you should be able to get at least OSX 10.3 on ANY old G3 iMac.
once you got OSX installed on your old imac, its a piece of cake to install Firefox -- now the caveat is -- if you only have only OSX 10.3, then you can only run up to Firefox v2 -- to get Firefox v3 or later, you will have to have Tiger (OSX 10.4) installed.
now, unless you got one of the really old pre-firewire iMacs -- you can run OSX 10.4 on them -- but you may have to use target disk mode (CMD-T at startup) and install Tiger (OSX 10.4) from a second machine that has a DVD drive (because Tiger 10.4, unlike Panther 10.3 is the first version of the Mac OS that comes ONLY on DVD!!) -- but because of Target Disk mode -- this is not half as hard as hacking an xorg.conf file... so why you complain??
therefore -- because all old G3 iMacs will run OSX (with a firmware upgrade) -- it means that all old iMacs will also run firefox -- at least to version 2, and if you manage to get tiger installed -- up to firefox 3.
2cents
jp
Games are not Movies. The emotions and catharsis one gets from movies
can only come from that source. The film maker waives the magic for
two hours or so. But the game maker has to come up with a fun, enjoyable
interactive 'experience' which runs on hardware. I fear all these
improvements in graphic power are turning many games into movie-like
experiences which are missing on the essential nature of what a game is.
(Toru Iwatani, creator of PacMan)
I have always considered that the substitution of
the Internal Combustion Engine for the horse marked
a very gloomy passage in the progress of mankind. (Winston Churchill)
why not just do it hacker style? get your notebook / phone of choice - take a screwdriver and gouge out the camera - fill with carpenter's putty - done.