I created 320x240, 400x300, and 512x384 modes for M.A.M.E. They are also useful for postage stamp games like Powermanga. Just Ctrl-Alt-+ until it's close enough to full screen for you. It's also good for some XMMS plugins.
If you don't want to go through the pain of designing your own video mode then this page helps quite a bit.
http://xtiming.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/xtiming.p l
If you're using XFree86 4.x then it also helps to know that it will look something like this when you're done:
A 2600 controller is nothing more than 5 switches wired across various pins of the DB-9 connector. I've repurposed NES controllers into 2600 connectors by replacing the NES joystick cable with a 2600 cable and a little tracecutting with some soldering. You might be able to use a DB-9 serial connector as a substitute for the Atari connector.
My uncle used to do that only he would sometimes tape a brick to the envelope. Magazine advertisers used to send punch cards that you were supposed to punch out if you were responding to an offer. He always punched holes randomly before sending them back. He got a free subscription to some gardening magazine once.
Put a copy of Tripwire on the CD-R and occaisonally boot from it to confirm the integrity of the OS on disk. There could even be a script to run diff on a pair of files if Tripwire notices something screwy. I wonder how long it's going to be before their little keylogger gets very loudly posted to USENET.
The staff of these purchasing departments must be populated by illiterates then. The EULA of every single software package I've ever seen disclaims all responsibility for fitness of purpose. Apparently, it must have some legal force because I've also never heard of Microsoft or any other major software house being held accountable for bugs.
On the other hand, one CAN hold a company accountable for not fulfilling the terms of a service contract. The purchase price of the software is irrelavent compared to the cost of that all important service contract. But guess what?! Most software houses aren't in the business of selling service contracts; they sell licences. It is the VARs and retailers that sell service and some of THEM will even support open/free source.
These idiot beancounters need to realize they should be paying for service not software. The software is just bits on a disk, a eula, and a Certificate of Authenticity. The service is what truly costs something regardless of whether the solution is proprietary or open source.
If the beancounters don't want to in-source support then they can buy it. Sheesh! but can beancounters be really dumb!
I use Abiword the way I used to use Wordpad in Windows. The feature set is somewhere between Wordpad and Word and it loads up about as fast as Wordpad did. It works well enough for viewing most docs and knocking out quick little letters and so forth. I have Star and OpenOffice laying around if I have to work with something a little more complex but I don't bother with them that much. There is room for a solid lightweight wordprocessor like Abiword.
They also tried to create a business software package. A database of some sort if I remember correctly. They spent the bulk of their development resources on it and the software flopped. No doubt the warezing of their games didn't help matters much but it doesn't appear to be the primary cause of their demise.
If my woodcrafts are shoplifted then I'm indeed out my carvings. If my software is "stolen" then I'm without my copy....oh wait.....
Copyright violation is indeed a failure to pay for something but words like "steal", "shoplift", and most definitely "piracy" do nothing to promote your point of view. Another poster pointed out that "losses" due to piracy (in the BILLIONS) are not reported to shareholders. Apparently the accountants at software companies understand the difference.
A key phrase in most EULAs is "This software is licenced not sold." A better analogy would be that I run a movie theatre and some people are sneaking in and watching the movies without paying. It is necessary to make an example of those few or nobody will pay to watch the movies and soon there would be no movie theatre. Come to think of it, the movie theatre doesn't own the movies either. Warez kiddies make it more difficult to charge for what is in reality a service. They aren't (physically) stealing anything.
As long as industries that rely on copyrights use emotional and overblown terms like piracy "arr mateys I have a rich trove of Photoshop and hacked XP! arrrr!" then they are going to be less than convincing.
If copyright holders tone it down a little and call a shovel a shovel and a spade a spade then they might find a little more sympathy for their cause.
A rail gun vaporizes a thin conductive coating on the back of a shell and electrostatic repulsion of the vaporized coating thrusts the shell forward. This vapor is very hot so it wears away a good bit of the rails on it's way out.
A coil gun is a different sort of electropropellent. The "barrel" of the gun is a multitude of coils laid in a row. The coils are driven by banks of capacitors in rapid sequence. They work just like a solenoid except that a sequence of coils is employed for greater acceleration. A working coil gun can be fired many times as no hot plasma is involved in accelerating the shell.
The problem is that it is much harder to build an effective coil gun than it is a rail gun. The timing of the coil firings must be timed precisely. Fire a coil too soon and the shell is braked rather than accelerated. Fire it too late and little to no accelleration is imparted at all. Secondly, it takes a number of coils to do this. One big coil won't do much since it is pointless to increase power once the (ferrous) shell has been magnetically saturated. So multiple coils have to kick the shell up to speed. A lot of coils isn't the problem in and of itself. Each coil will need a large bank of capacitors to itself, this will serve to make the weapon very bulky. The capacitor banks also have to be recharged between firings. It will also take some doing to cool the system. Ever play with a home made electromagnet? It's going to get HOT.
So to recap, the device will have sophisticated sensing and timing requrements for the coils; the generator and capacitor banks will be bulky; getting a high rate of fire is problimatical and it will require a large cooling system as well. I haven't mentioned any sort of targeting system or the engineering requirements that will be imposed on the shells either.
Basically, a battlefield practical electromagnetic mass driver is at least as hard as this laser system.
Not much wrong with the GPL in and of itself.
on
Freedom or Power Redux
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
There is a clause in the GPL that says something to the effect "This code is licensed under this version of the GPL or any later version." Removing that clause from your COPYING.TXT pretty much gives you the licence on the Linux kernel. The GPL and LGPL are nothing more than tools in and of themselves. As long as the "any later version clause is removed" then the FSF has no power over a GPLed work.
The FSF also recommends that developers give the original copyrights to the FSF. You don't have to do that either. Basically, using the GPL does not morph a developer into a slack jawed Stallmanite.
It sounds like the GPL as used on the Linux kernel may be what you are looking for. The kernel developers also permit proprietary kernel modules but feel no obligation to maintain module compatibility across kernel releases. It is up to the proprietary vendor to track the kernel in that case. So you may or may not want to remove that addition as well.
There is a plugin for XMMS called Crossfade that helps a lot with this. You have to fiddle with it a little to get acceptable results. If you're really picky the results may be noticable but I can listen to Zappa albums again without wanting to throw my machine through a window. It's on the plugins page at www.xmms.org.
Would it be too much to ask for these article postings to run through the Demoroniser? "Smart quotes" are anything but. I realize we're stuck with them on no-clue sites but there is little excuse for them here.
I hope there is a nice lovingly drawn out and detailed scene featuring Jar Jar and an interrogation droid. Maybe it can jab that syringe into his tongue. It could be a sort of Clockwork Jar Jar thingy. If EPII turns out to be nothing more than yet another sappy melodrama with great special effects then I'll still pay to see it if there is a decent torture Jar Jar scene. What would really backfire and add to the tastiness is if the torture scene is supposed to be a dramatic emotional moment. The cheesy orchestra music can play up the wincing of the other characters as the so-called bad guys get a standing O from the Jar Jar haters.
By that reasoning I suppose. I have also heard people from Britain refer to "Southern Yankees". In their vernacular it makes perfect sense but would get them punched out if they said it in Georgia.
I've won games of Monopoly by snapping up those properties and throwing houses and hotels on them ASAP. Everytime someone passes go, they have to negotiate a minefield that could cost them a hell of a lot more than nine bucks. This income subsidizes buying at least one property from the other color groups so they can't turn around and do it to me. Come to think of it, parallels would be easy to draw between this behaivor and Microsofts.....
"With our new Gushermatic2000 wells and MegaPipeline; we'll drain the ANWR in no time. We'll cut down all the trees too and piss on them for the hell of it. Muhahahahahah!!
Those meddling Planeteers will never stop us!!
I'm getting aroused just thinking about. Quick! Somebody find me a baby seal......"
I use SSL Apache to secure our troubleticket system in a public school environment. I didn't give a hang about proving I'm a trustworthy vendor. I just didn't want the kiddies sniffing my building techs and screwing up my database. I just generated a certificate. Sure the browsers put up a big scary message about the "untrustworthy" key but that is okay. I'm not collecting credit cards from my building techs, I'm just locking other parties out of some work-related http usage. The SSL version of Webmin also comes with an unsigned certificate.
In short, unsigned SSL certs are a great way to secure http communications where money is not involved. Let's get cracking throwing that little 's' in front of http. That should give those gubmint creepazoids something to play with.
"You said Windows 98 would be faster, more efficient, and give us better access to the Internet."
"It does."...BLAM!!
It wasn't just "rich guy syndrome". Everyone laughed because almost everybody who has to use a computer at work has had to tolerate Window's idiosyncracies.
If we just had it under Linux it would definitely dominate everything.
That's just it. If you want to surf the web then you must use Windows. Let's face it folks, Al Gore didn't invent the Internet. Microsoft INNOVATED it. Bleh.
Don't bitch about everyone not being good little boys and failing to use IE. Insist on DOCUMENTED standards compliance. Documented does not mean: use the following COM system call to..........
Show me a fully crossplatform and open IE and I'll allow that you have a point. There is isn't one? Oh.
We obsess here a lot about network security for very good reasons. Proposals like this from government and industry also make obvious the need for equally thorough physical security.
I don't think prevention is possible in the case of an adversary like a well heeled business or the government. They can get in your house and fiddle with your equipment any time they want with "courts" like these. Detection on the other hand should be investigated.
I'm thinking of things like a switch on the inside of cases that causes emails and log entries when tripped. Ditto for mucking about with the keyboard or any other periphreals. How about a motion detection system monitoring the workstations and other hardware....that itself trips all manner of indications if it is tampered with.
Of course, Tripwire or a similar utility should be monitoring the integrity of files as well.
I like the idea of Mr. Federal Agent seeing my face pop up on the monitor as I ask him "Can I help you with something or did you just come in here to surf some porn?"
I used the version of Galeon that went with 0.9.3 Mozilla and upgraded to 0.9.4. Galeon popped up a dialog that basically amounted to "Wrong Mozilla. Bad Things might happen." It continued to work well for me until Galeon was updated to match. Of course, I only view a limited number of sites.
That sums up my feelings exactly. I too "just fix" them when they break...Well to be fair I'm doing more and more sysadmining but I'm still not above changing the toner cartridge for the secretaries. Nonetheless, I'm awed by people like Turing, Zuse and Hopper. You're +5 insightful in my book.
Granted, the distribution of one time pads is a pain in the rear. However since Osama primarily does business by courier anyway............
The making of one time pads isn't a big deal at all compared with the distribution problem. A tv tuned to a blank station and a video capture card would be an inexhaustible source of truly random data. Just strip the headers from the compressed frames. If one is feeling really frisky the sampled tv data could be used to seed pseudorandom algorithms as well. This would remove any identifiable quirks of the natural random number source. The data from the tv will be random but still may adhere to some type of bell shaped curve that would look like it's bandpass response. Individual bytes would be unpredictable but enough of them would tell you something about that tv+card combo anyway....so mix em up a little.
Slashdot Mirror
I created 320x240, 400x300, and 512x384 modes for M.A.M.E. They are also useful for postage stamp games like Powermanga. Just Ctrl-Alt-+ until it's close enough to full screen for you. It's also good for some XMMS plugins.
p l
If you don't want to go through the pain of designing your own video mode then this page helps quite a bit.
http://xtiming.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/xtiming.
If you're using XFree86 4.x then it also helps to know that it will look something like this when you're done:
.
.
.
Modeline "320x240@76d" 15.71 320 324 348 388 240 241 244 253 doublescan
Modeline "400x300@75d" 24.17 400 408 448 504 300 302 306 316 doublescan
Modeline "512x384@75d" 39.45 512 524 596 648 384 387 392 404 doublescan
.
.
.
Section "Screen"
Identifier "screen1"
Device "Matrox Millennium G400"
Monitor "Display 1"
DefaultColorDepth 16
Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" "512x384@75d" "400x300@75d" "320x240@76d"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
There ya go, hacky fullscreen of postage stamp displays. Enjoy.
A 2600 controller is nothing more than 5 switches wired across various pins of the DB-9 connector. I've repurposed NES controllers into 2600 connectors by replacing the NES joystick cable with a 2600 cable and a little tracecutting with some soldering. You might be able to use a DB-9 serial connector as a substitute for the Atari connector.
My uncle used to do that only he would sometimes tape a brick to the envelope. Magazine advertisers used to send punch cards that you were supposed to punch out if you were responding to an offer. He always punched holes randomly before sending them back. He got a free subscription to some gardening magazine once.
There were 5 instances of the f-word and 4 instances of the s-word. Just what were you trying to tell somebody.
1 s 1 f - Buy booze
1 s 2 f - Fly plane into building......
Put a copy of Tripwire on the CD-R and occaisonally boot from it to confirm the integrity of the OS on disk. There could even be a script to run diff on a pair of files if Tripwire notices something screwy. I wonder how long it's going to be before their little keylogger gets very loudly posted to USENET.
http://www.red-bean.com/~joelh/vigor/screenshots/
Heh. Heh.
The staff of these purchasing departments must be populated by illiterates then. The EULA of every single software package I've ever seen disclaims all responsibility for fitness of purpose. Apparently, it must have some legal force because I've also never heard of Microsoft or any other major software house being held accountable for bugs.
On the other hand, one CAN hold a company accountable for not fulfilling the terms of a service contract. The purchase price of the software is irrelavent compared to the cost of that all important service contract. But guess what?! Most software houses aren't in the business of selling service contracts; they sell licences. It is the VARs and retailers that sell service and some of THEM will even support open/free source.
These idiot beancounters need to realize they should be paying for service not software. The software is just bits on a disk, a eula, and a Certificate of Authenticity. The service is what truly costs something regardless of whether the solution is proprietary or open source.
If the beancounters don't want to in-source support then they can buy it. Sheesh! but can beancounters be really dumb!
I use Abiword the way I used to use Wordpad in Windows. The feature set is somewhere between Wordpad and Word and it loads up about as fast as Wordpad did. It works well enough for viewing most docs and knocking out quick little letters and so forth. I have Star and OpenOffice laying around if I have to work with something a little more complex but I don't bother with them that much. There is room for a solid lightweight wordprocessor like Abiword.
They also tried to create a business software package. A database of some sort if I remember correctly. They spent the bulk of their development resources on it and the software flopped. No doubt the warezing of their games didn't help matters much but it doesn't appear to be the primary cause of their demise.
If my woodcrafts are shoplifted then I'm indeed out my carvings. If my software is "stolen" then I'm without my copy....oh wait.....
Copyright violation is indeed a failure to pay for something but words like "steal", "shoplift", and most definitely "piracy" do nothing to promote your point of view. Another poster pointed out that "losses" due to piracy (in the BILLIONS) are not reported to shareholders. Apparently the accountants at software companies understand the difference.
A key phrase in most EULAs is "This software is licenced not sold." A better analogy would be that I run a movie theatre and some people are sneaking in and watching the movies without paying. It is necessary to make an example of those few or nobody will pay to watch the movies and soon there would be no movie theatre. Come to think of it, the movie theatre doesn't own the movies either. Warez kiddies make it more difficult to charge for what is in reality a service. They aren't (physically) stealing anything.
As long as industries that rely on copyrights use emotional and overblown terms like piracy "arr mateys I have a rich trove of Photoshop and hacked XP! arrrr!" then they are going to be less than convincing.
If copyright holders tone it down a little and call a shovel a shovel and a spade a spade then they might find a little more sympathy for their cause.
A rail gun vaporizes a thin conductive coating on the back of a shell and electrostatic repulsion of the vaporized coating thrusts the shell forward. This vapor is very hot so it wears away a good bit of the rails on it's way out.
A coil gun is a different sort of electropropellent. The "barrel" of the gun is a multitude of coils laid in a row. The coils are driven by banks of capacitors in rapid sequence. They work just like a solenoid except that a sequence of coils is employed for greater acceleration. A working coil gun can be fired many times as no hot plasma is involved in accelerating the shell.
The problem is that it is much harder to build an effective coil gun than it is a rail gun. The timing of the coil firings must be timed precisely. Fire a coil too soon and the shell is braked rather than accelerated. Fire it too late and little to no accelleration is imparted at all. Secondly, it takes a number of coils to do this. One big coil won't do much since it is pointless to increase power once the (ferrous) shell has been magnetically saturated. So multiple coils have to kick the shell up to speed. A lot of coils isn't the problem in and of itself. Each coil will need a large bank of capacitors to itself, this will serve to make the weapon very bulky. The capacitor banks also have to be recharged between firings. It will also take some doing to cool the system. Ever play with a home made electromagnet? It's going to get HOT.
So to recap, the device will have sophisticated sensing and timing requrements for the coils; the generator and capacitor banks will be bulky; getting a high rate of fire is problimatical and it will require a large cooling system as well. I haven't mentioned any sort of targeting system or the engineering requirements that will be imposed on the shells either.
Basically, a battlefield practical electromagnetic mass driver is at least as hard as this laser system.
There is a clause in the GPL that says something to the effect "This code is licensed under this version of the GPL or any later version." Removing that clause from your COPYING.TXT pretty much gives you the licence on the Linux kernel. The GPL and LGPL are nothing more than tools in and of themselves. As long as the "any later version clause is removed" then the FSF has no power over a GPLed work.
The FSF also recommends that developers give the original copyrights to the FSF. You don't have to do that either. Basically, using the GPL does not morph a developer into a slack jawed Stallmanite.
It sounds like the GPL as used on the Linux kernel may be what you are looking for. The kernel developers also permit proprietary kernel modules but feel no obligation to maintain module compatibility across kernel releases. It is up to the proprietary vendor to track the kernel in that case. So you may or may not want to remove that addition as well.
There is a plugin for XMMS called Crossfade that helps a lot with this. You have to fiddle with it a little to get acceptable results. If you're really picky the results may be noticable but I can listen to Zappa albums again without wanting to throw my machine through a window. It's on the plugins page at www.xmms.org.
Would it be too much to ask for these article postings to run through the Demoroniser? "Smart quotes" are anything but. I realize we're stuck with them on no-clue sites but there is little excuse for them here.
I hope there is a nice lovingly drawn out and detailed scene featuring Jar Jar and an interrogation droid. Maybe it can jab that syringe into his tongue. It could be a sort of Clockwork Jar Jar thingy. If EPII turns out to be nothing more than yet another sappy melodrama with great special effects then I'll still pay to see it if there is a decent torture Jar Jar scene. What would really backfire and add to the tastiness is if the torture scene is supposed to be a dramatic emotional moment. The cheesy orchestra music can play up the wincing of the other characters as the so-called bad guys get a standing O from the Jar Jar haters.
By that reasoning I suppose. I have also heard people from Britain refer to "Southern Yankees". In their vernacular it makes perfect sense but would get them punched out if they said it in Georgia.
I've won games of Monopoly by snapping up those properties and throwing houses and hotels on them ASAP. Everytime someone passes go, they have to negotiate a minefield that could cost them a hell of a lot more than nine bucks. This income subsidizes buying at least one property from the other color groups so they can't turn around and do it to me. Come to think of it, parallels would be easy to draw between this behaivor and Microsofts.....
I can just see that Exxon boardroom now...
"With our new Gushermatic2000 wells and MegaPipeline; we'll drain the ANWR in no time. We'll cut down all the trees too and piss on them for the hell of it. Muhahahahahah!!
Those meddling Planeteers will never stop us!!
I'm getting aroused just thinking about. Quick! Somebody find me a baby seal......"
I use SSL Apache to secure our troubleticket system in a public school environment. I didn't give a hang about proving I'm a trustworthy vendor. I just didn't want the kiddies sniffing my building techs and screwing up my database. I just generated a certificate. Sure the browsers put up a big scary message about the "untrustworthy" key but that is okay. I'm not collecting credit cards from my building techs, I'm just locking other parties out of some work-related http usage. The SSL version of Webmin also comes with an unsigned certificate.
In short, unsigned SSL certs are a great way to secure http communications where money is not involved. Let's get cracking throwing that little 's' in front of http. That should give those gubmint creepazoids something to play with.
"You said Windows 98 would be faster, more efficient, and give us better access to the Internet."
"It does."...BLAM!!
It wasn't just "rich guy syndrome". Everyone laughed because almost everybody who has to use a computer at work has had to tolerate Window's idiosyncracies.
If we just had it under Linux it would definitely dominate everything.
That's just it. If you want to surf the web then you must use Windows. Let's face it folks, Al Gore didn't invent the Internet. Microsoft INNOVATED it. Bleh.
Don't bitch about everyone not being good little boys and failing to use IE. Insist on DOCUMENTED standards compliance. Documented does not mean: use the following COM system call to..........
Show me a fully crossplatform and open IE and I'll allow that you have a point. There is isn't one? Oh.
We obsess here a lot about network security for very good reasons. Proposals like this from government and industry also make obvious the need for equally thorough physical security.
I don't think prevention is possible in the case of an adversary like a well heeled business or the government. They can get in your house and fiddle with your equipment any time they want with "courts" like these. Detection on the other hand should be investigated.
I'm thinking of things like a switch on the inside of cases that causes emails and log entries when tripped. Ditto for mucking about with the keyboard or any other periphreals. How about a motion detection system monitoring the workstations and other hardware....that itself trips all manner of indications if it is tampered with.
Of course, Tripwire or a similar utility should be monitoring the integrity of files as well.
I like the idea of Mr. Federal Agent seeing my face pop up on the monitor as I ask him "Can I help you with something or did you just come in here to surf some porn?"
I used the version of Galeon that went with 0.9.3 Mozilla and upgraded to 0.9.4. Galeon popped up a dialog that basically amounted to "Wrong Mozilla. Bad Things might happen." It continued to work well for me until Galeon was updated to match. Of course, I only view a limited number of sites.
That sums up my feelings exactly. I too "just fix" them when they break...Well to be fair I'm doing more and more sysadmining but I'm still not above changing the toner cartridge for the secretaries. Nonetheless, I'm awed by people like Turing, Zuse and Hopper. You're +5 insightful in my book.
Granted, the distribution of one time pads is a pain in the rear. However since Osama primarily does business by courier anyway............
The making of one time pads isn't a big deal at all compared with the distribution problem. A tv tuned to a blank station and a video capture card would be an inexhaustible source of truly random data. Just strip the headers from the compressed frames. If one is feeling really frisky the sampled tv data could be used to seed pseudorandom algorithms as well. This would remove any identifiable quirks of the natural random number source. The data from the tv will be random but still may adhere to some type of bell shaped curve that would look like it's bandpass response. Individual bytes would be unpredictable but enough of them would tell you something about that tv+card combo anyway....so mix em up a little.