Yeah, wouldn't want to get any nasty STDs (serially-transmitted diseases)...;-)
Re:Prevention suggestions
on
iWarez
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The Wired article covers this. Apparently the Office for Mac install consists of dragging the Office folder on the CD onto the hard drive icon. The kid just dragged the Office folder from the hard drive to his iPod. Thus, any installed copy of Office for Mac is also an installer: either Office is installed and you risk copying, or Office is not installed and you can't continue being a Micro$oft drone...
Now why the demo machine needed to have Office installed is another question. In my experience, CompUSA/Best Buy/etc. try to prevent customers from being able to do anything useful on the demo machines.:-p
I guess they figured people would give up after password didn't work.
Along those lines, I've found that at my local Best Buy, I can root the WinXP machines by rebooting and forcing them to boot into safe mode. This reveals the Administrator account, which is *not* password-protected. Oops...
While the iPod may be ideal for a software-stealing spree, there are a number of other devices on the market that could also be used by virtual shoplifters. As well as any external FireWire drive, there are now a number of tiny key-chain drives that plug into computers' USB ports, like M-Systems' DiskOnKey and Trek2000's ThumbDrive.
Most key-chain drives work with both Macs and PCs. Some are available with up to one gigabyte of storage space. However, USB ports are a lot slower than FireWire, requiring the virtual shoplifter to hang around while the ill-gotten gains are transferring.
Should I let them know that you can cover one window with another window so that no one knows what you're doing? Or is that some sort of top-secret trick-of-the-trade that I shouldn't be disclosing right now?;-)
For that matter, that's something you can do with those fruity computers, too. Someone in Dallas go find that kid and beat him with a clue by four...
As long as you're not trying to compute with fruit, you should be able to right-click on the link and select "Open in new window" from the context menu. I eat and surf all the time, so I often do this in Opera or Mozilla to open links in a new tab.
If you are computing with fruit, my condolences...then this problem really is your fault.;-)
If you're building the two versions from a common XML source, not only are you exceptionally enlightened and cool;-), but you're not really maintaining two versions of your site. It's analogous to (but much cooler than;-) ) rendering the same HTML page with different stylesheets.
What I meant is that if you're writing (or FrontPaging *shudder*) static HTML pages for one browser and another set of static HTML pages for another browser, inevitably, you'll forget to bring one tree or the other up to date.
Not to mention that, inevitably, the two versions will go out of sync.
Hopefully your web site has enough meaningful content that you don't have to resort to gimmicks requiring non-standard plugins to keep people interested.
Agreed. Simplicity makes a web site ease to navigate and use. Web sites that are hard to navigate generally just end up pissing me off, no matter how cool the flash animations or java applets or whatnot.
I would also argue that the principle of least surprise is important here, i.e. make sure your design/style conforms with a user's reasonable expectations. Hyperlinked text should be underlined or otherwise visibily different than normal text. Don't underline text that isn't hyperlinked. Provide site navigation along one of the borders. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but you get the point.;-)
I think/. and k5 are both decent examples of usable web design. IMHO,/. provides more features , but k5 has a nicer looking design. A lot of other websites that allow comments need to adopt things that/. and k5 have been doing for years, like threading, flat/nested/threaded viewing mode, thresholding, etc.
LaTeX is just a really big Word/Powerpoint plug-in for Emacs; Perl/Java/C++ are just really complicated spreadsheet plug-ins waiting to be written...;-)
Since the lasing lines overlap, I think it would be very difficult to separate them to modulate individually. In addition, multi-line operation decreases the lasing efficiency of any particular line is probably pretty bad. Both these considerations would make it very difficult to integrate such a device into a wavelength-multiplexed communication system. The only way I can think of using this device in optical communication is to mode-lock the output and use it in a very fast single-channel link.
One such device, already in the works, would operate at the shorter infrared wavelengths now widely used for optical-fiber telecommunications, Gmachl says. In principle, the same technique might someday lead to a white-light device for room lighting, computer displays, or video projection, she notes.
It sounds like it's more or less a glorified micro-optoelectronic spotlight that you might be able to mode-lock to use for fiber-optic communication.
Actually, when you triple it, don't you get ultraviolet (~355 nm)? Of course, the 400nm-700nm model of human color vision is messed up, so it's possible that some people could see that as a really deep purple...
Re:wrong extensions....should be jpg
on
GNOME 2.0 Beta
·
· Score: 1
I imagine they used png because of it's lossless compression. The compression used by jpeg would probably overwhelm the antialiasing that seems to be the big selling point of GNOME 2.0.
This material is nothing new: I covered the distinction between alumina and aluminum in this comment attached to the transparent concrete article that speculated about transparent aluminum. Bottom line is that alumina (Al2O3) and aluminum (Al) are totally different materials, so naturally they have different properties such as hardness, stiffness, transparency, etc. Alumina is what sapphires and rubies are made of. Pure alumina is clear, but the addition of color centers like chromium ions results in the color of gemstone rubies and sapphires. A search for sapphire conformal optics will show you that making windows out of sapphire for military applications is nothing new. Just about the only thing that might be new is how they make the sapphire, but the article does not provide any details about that. Yes, sapphire is cool stuff, but it's not some magical new material.
That works if you want to beget nine children as quickly as possible, but if you just want one child as quickly as possible, it's going to take about 9 months.
...I don't run SETI@home. It's my understanding that the SETI@home project now provides more processing power than they really need, as they have not optimized the client and do not support multiple processors.
...for people who are wondering what this is all about:
The CIE color space: A pretty decent introduction to what the CIE color space is
Color FAQ: I haven't read through this, but it seems to be a more extensive coverage of color and how it's much more than RGB, HSV, or CYMK.
The short version is that all the different primary color systems--RGB (red-green-blue), CYMK (cyan-yellow-magenta-black), HSV (hue-saturation-value)--can represent some, but not all, of the colors visible to the human eye. Even specifying colors by the wavelength of the light emitted or reflected covers only a small subset of colors--in fact an even smaller subset than any of the primary color representations. The CIE system identifies colors by an XYZ coordinate system, where X, Y, and Z are artificial primary colors that span the full range of colors visible to the human eye.
And watching the show without some mechanism for the network (in this case Fox) to know that you're watching helps how?
IIRC, ratings are based on feedback (collected by a device that figures out what channel you're watching) from a "random" sampling of television viewers. I say "random" because apparently these people watch shows like Millionaire and Survivor and Temptation Island that I just can't stand.
I have a pair of computers in a single case that seem to work efficiently enough. I built it (dual Pentium II 333 MHz) two years ago, and though it's now mediocre, most computers of its generation are now obsolete.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, wouldn't want to get any nasty STDs (serially-transmitted diseases)... ;-)
The Wired article covers this. Apparently the Office for Mac install consists of dragging the Office folder on the CD onto the hard drive icon. The kid just dragged the Office folder from the hard drive to his iPod. Thus, any installed copy of Office for Mac is also an installer: either Office is installed and you risk copying, or Office is not installed and you can't continue being a Micro$oft drone...
:-p
Now why the demo machine needed to have Office installed is another question. In my experience, CompUSA/Best Buy/etc. try to prevent customers from being able to do anything useful on the demo machines.
I think the Mac zealot being quoted is referring to the computer consultant who brought this story to the attention of Wired.
:-p
There's no question what the kid's motivation was: he didn't want to have to sell a kidney in order to be able to type a paper for school...
My $0.02
I guess they figured people would give up after password didn't work.
Along those lines, I've found that at my local Best Buy, I can root the WinXP machines by rebooting and forcing them to boot into safe mode. This reveals the Administrator account, which is *not* password-protected. Oops...
Should I let them know that you can cover one window with another window so that no one knows what you're doing? Or is that some sort of top-secret trick-of-the-trade that I shouldn't be disclosing right now?
For that matter, that's something you can do with those fruity computers, too. Someone in Dallas go find that kid and beat him with a clue by four...
As long as you're not trying to compute with fruit, you should be able to right-click on the link and select "Open in new window" from the context menu. I eat and surf all the time, so I often do this in Opera or Mozilla to open links in a new tab.
;-)
If you are computing with fruit, my condolences...then this problem really is your fault.
If you're building the two versions from a common XML source, not only are you exceptionally enlightened and cool ;-), but you're not really maintaining two versions of your site. It's analogous to (but much cooler than ;-) ) rendering the same HTML page with different stylesheets.
What I meant is that if you're writing (or FrontPaging *shudder*) static HTML pages for one browser and another set of static HTML pages for another browser, inevitably, you'll forget to bring one tree or the other up to date.
Not to mention that, inevitably, the two versions will go out of sync.
Hopefully your web site has enough meaningful content that you don't have to resort to gimmicks requiring non-standard plugins to keep people interested.
Agreed. Simplicity makes a web site ease to navigate and use. Web sites that are hard to navigate generally just end up pissing me off, no matter how cool the flash animations or java applets or whatnot.
;-)
/. and k5 are both decent examples of usable web design. IMHO, /. provides more features , but k5 has a nicer looking design. A lot of other websites that allow comments need to adopt things that /. and k5 have been doing for years, like threading, flat/nested/threaded viewing mode, thresholding, etc.
I would also argue that the principle of least surprise is important here, i.e. make sure your design/style conforms with a user's reasonable expectations. Hyperlinked text should be underlined or otherwise visibily different than normal text. Don't underline text that isn't hyperlinked. Provide site navigation along one of the borders. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but you get the point.
I think
LaTeX is just a really big Word/Powerpoint plug-in for Emacs; Perl/Java/C++ are just really complicated spreadsheet plug-ins waiting to be written... ;-)
Thanks for clearing that up. :-)
Since the lasing lines overlap, I think it would be very difficult to separate them to modulate individually. In addition, multi-line operation decreases the lasing efficiency of any particular line is probably pretty bad. Both these considerations would make it very difficult to integrate such a device into a wavelength-multiplexed communication system. The only way I can think of using this device in optical communication is to mode-lock the output and use it in a very fast single-channel link.
Can a single photon be polychromatic?
Actually, when you triple it, don't you get ultraviolet (~355 nm)? Of course, the 400nm-700nm model of human color vision is messed up, so it's possible that some people could see that as a really deep purple...
I imagine they used png because of it's lossless compression. The compression used by jpeg would probably overwhelm the antialiasing that seems to be the big selling point of GNOME 2.0.
This material is nothing new: I covered the distinction between alumina and aluminum in this comment attached to the transparent concrete article that speculated about transparent aluminum. Bottom line is that alumina (Al2O3) and aluminum (Al) are totally different materials, so naturally they have different properties such as hardness, stiffness, transparency, etc. Alumina is what sapphires and rubies are made of. Pure alumina is clear, but the addition of color centers like chromium ions results in the color of gemstone rubies and sapphires. A search for sapphire conformal optics will show you that making windows out of sapphire for military applications is nothing new. Just about the only thing that might be new is how they make the sapphire, but the article does not provide any details about that. Yes, sapphire is cool stuff, but it's not some magical new material.
That works if you want to beget nine children as quickly as possible, but if you just want one child as quickly as possible, it's going to take about 9 months.
...I don't run SETI@home. It's my understanding that the SETI@home project now provides more processing power than they really need, as they have not optimized the client and do not support multiple processors.
- The CIE color space: A pretty decent introduction to what the CIE color space is
- Color FAQ: I haven't read through this, but it seems to be a more extensive coverage of color and how it's much more than RGB, HSV, or CYMK.
The short version is that all the different primary color systems--RGB (red-green-blue), CYMK (cyan-yellow-magenta-black), HSV (hue-saturation-value)--can represent some, but not all, of the colors visible to the human eye. Even specifying colors by the wavelength of the light emitted or reflected covers only a small subset of colors--in fact an even smaller subset than any of the primary color representations. The CIE system identifies colors by an XYZ coordinate system, where X, Y, and Z are artificial primary colors that span the full range of colors visible to the human eye.There's nothing on this page having anything to do with color. Googling for "HolyColor" didn't turn up anything either.
The code is probably so hideous that anyone who gazes upon it turns to stone... ;-)
Congrats, Rob and Kathleen, and best wishes to you both! :-)
And watching the show without some mechanism for the network (in this case Fox) to know that you're watching helps how?
IIRC, ratings are based on feedback (collected by a device that figures out what channel you're watching) from a "random" sampling of television viewers. I say "random" because apparently these people watch shows like Millionaire and Survivor and Temptation Island that I just can't stand.
I have a pair of computers in a single case that seem to work efficiently enough. I built it (dual Pentium II 333 MHz) two years ago, and though it's now mediocre, most computers of its generation are now obsolete.