Dunno what you're running, but I maintain a whole bunch of older machines (PII's and PIII's), and XP Pro runs fine for ordinary use with as little as 128mb (and can scrape by on 96mb if all you need is basic internet and office work); tho XP Home really needs 256mb to do the same work at the same speed. Also, XP Home needs about 3x the CPU speed to achieve the same performance as XP Pro, all other factors being equal.
I've never seen my XP Pro box use over 450mb even with a bunch of office-type and image editing apps all open at once. The machine is a lowly P3-500 with 768mb RAM, and no pagefile, and has been running 24/7 for over 6 years. I don't use it for games, but I do use it for multimedia stuff.
When I was doing bits and extras, I had to sign a waiver of royalties for each and every production, to protect them against any claims on my "likeness" (identifiable images of my face) I might wish to make. The problem for studios is that if you're photographed *involuntarily*, you may own the exclusive right to your "likeness".
Which gets into the can of worms of whether the kids are there voluntarily or not. I've been told by people who've lived in such places, that in some countries, there are so many willing kids (who've discovered the benefits of foreign sugar-daddies in an otherwise-impoverished life) that you have to beat them off with a broomstick.
Substitute "creative writing" or "painting" for "programming" throughout the paper, and note that he speaks generally, not merely as the concept relates to CS.
What I got from the paper is that we need to stop being afraid of letting the students *be aware* that they may be learning something new. I don't think that's an unreasonable conclusion, tho I'd agree that he used far too many words to reach it.
And eventually, it will become mandated software, giving you the option of becoming either a criminal, or a specimen under glass.
Meanwhile, the real criminals hire expert programmers to create circumvention and false-data-stream tools. (And don't think there aren't enough programmers willing to do that... even if not for their own protection, who do you think writes the many for-profit trojans right now??)
Not only that, but if no one *sufficiently expert* =happens= to review the source, how do you know what's really in that obfuscated code? Remember, it's not like all the source code is queued up for a panel of experts to ensure that no unreviewed code ever reaches the public!
Hence I suspect there is a LOT of opensource code that no one (other than the original author) has ever inspected, or that has only been inspected by people not sufficiently expert to find backdoors and such. Does someone vet every trivial plugin offered for $CommonApp ??
And backdoors need neither large nor obvious... I'm reminded of a trojan SMTP server of some years back that was a mere 3000 BYTES.
Similarly, I wrote nulls over the top of some crap in a BBS-index's front-end so it would stop trying to contact an advertising server -- mind you this was in the days of 2400 baud!! I'm not a coder, but it wasn't hard to identify the strings being displayed and the binary code used to call the advertising module.
I still use BlueWave offline mail reader for BBS messaging (yes, there are a few BBSs left)... I've made it tagline itself as variously "Heat Wave", "Cold Wave", and "CrimeWave":)
Back in the DOS era, I too thought reading thru executables with Buerg's LIST was "normal". I've seen several of those "Nosy, aren't you!" type messages!!
And one day whilst rambling through an old verion of Paradox for DOS, I found some programmer's rant against upper management.
The same applies to the milk cows, who get a nice warm barn and generous fodder all winter, instead of having to stand out in the blizzards and forage for themselves as best they can when the grass is under two feet of snow...
Because a lot of otherwise intelligent and generally well-educated people are nonetheless unaware of Greenpeace's actual activities and real motivations, nor does it occur to them to investigate further. And we can't educate them by failing to refute Greenpeace's bullshit -- how is the average person to learn better if no one ever points out the flaws??
See also my post up above, subject line "follow the money".
A couple of relevant quotes from the cited page (emphasis mine):
Forbes magazine once described it as "a skillfully managed business" with full command of "the tools of direct mail and image manipulation -- and tactics that would bring instant condemnation if practiced by a for-profit corporation." But Greenpeace has escaped public censure by hiding behind the mask of its "non-profit" status and its U.S. tax exemption.
and
...its Amsterdam-based activist moguls pull the strings on what is estimated to be a $360 million global empire.
I saw the second box but it was greyed out (or rather, the box I'd apparently want to use next was). Seriously non-obvious.:)
I think I'd drop the upfront reference to login-required and not bring it up at all unless the user wanted to go beyond the four allowed query terms, then make it come up instead of a 5th search term.
Do you have a reason for wanting the login? I had an AC reply who also complained about it, and about logins in general where there's no real reason for it.
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That does increasingly seem to be the whole point of new laws and legislation, doesn't it? :(
Because if they had any common sense, they wouldn't be using Macs in the first place ;)
Dunno what you're running, but I maintain a whole bunch of older machines (PII's and PIII's), and XP Pro runs fine for ordinary use with as little as 128mb (and can scrape by on 96mb if all you need is basic internet and office work); tho XP Home really needs 256mb to do the same work at the same speed. Also, XP Home needs about 3x the CPU speed to achieve the same performance as XP Pro, all other factors being equal.
I've never seen my XP Pro box use over 450mb even with a bunch of office-type and image editing apps all open at once. The machine is a lowly P3-500 with 768mb RAM, and no pagefile, and has been running 24/7 for over 6 years. I don't use it for games, but I do use it for multimedia stuff.
When I was doing bits and extras, I had to sign a waiver of royalties for each and every production, to protect them against any claims on my "likeness" (identifiable images of my face) I might wish to make. The problem for studios is that if you're photographed *involuntarily*, you may own the exclusive right to your "likeness".
Which gets into the can of worms of whether the kids are there voluntarily or not. I've been told by people who've lived in such places, that in some countries, there are so many willing kids (who've discovered the benefits of foreign sugar-daddies in an otherwise-impoverished life) that you have to beat them off with a broomstick.
But your fellow citizens don't have the power to lock you up, enforced by possession of those geegaws that are restricted to police use...
That might actually be a viable solution... no shit, do you see these kids signing any waivers? No?? Then they're owed royalties.
Substitute "creative writing" or "painting" for "programming" throughout the paper, and note that he speaks generally, not merely as the concept relates to CS.
What I got from the paper is that we need to stop being afraid of letting the students *be aware* that they may be learning something new. I don't think that's an unreasonable conclusion, tho I'd agree that he used far too many words to reach it.
And eventually, it will become mandated software, giving you the option of becoming either a criminal, or a specimen under glass.
Meanwhile, the real criminals hire expert programmers to create circumvention and false-data-stream tools. (And don't think there aren't enough programmers willing to do that ... even if not for their own protection, who do you think writes the many for-profit trojans right now??)
Not only that, but if no one *sufficiently expert* =happens= to review the source, how do you know what's really in that obfuscated code? Remember, it's not like all the source code is queued up for a panel of experts to ensure that no unreviewed code ever reaches the public!
Hence I suspect there is a LOT of opensource code that no one (other than the original author) has ever inspected, or that has only been inspected by people not sufficiently expert to find backdoors and such. Does someone vet every trivial plugin offered for $CommonApp ??
And backdoors need neither large nor obvious... I'm reminded of a trojan SMTP server of some years back that was a mere 3000 BYTES.
And what happens when the remote search itself is compromised, and whatever some 3rd party wants is inserted into the data stream??
I also want access to every tool that the police and other gov't agencies have access to, from weapons to forensics.
Without this parity, We The People are at their mercy.
Here's a dumb but not entirely theoretical question: how do you count copyright infringement of kiddie porn images??
After all, doesn't the porn industry claim it's the most infringed of all copyrighted material??
Wow, now THAT's what I call encryption! ;)
I still have a couple of lace cards Here Somewhere, from high school... dunno who made them, but they floated around our computer programming class.
I remember when we got a paper tape reader... it was a big upgrade over loading our IBM1620's OS from punch cards!
In fact, when I read the summary, my next thought was, "Yeah, and sleep is a condition not unlike death".
"Not unlike" is not good enough in biochemistry.
Similarly, I wrote nulls over the top of some crap in a BBS-index's front-end so it would stop trying to contact an advertising server -- mind you this was in the days of 2400 baud!! I'm not a coder, but it wasn't hard to identify the strings being displayed and the binary code used to call the advertising module.
I still use BlueWave offline mail reader for BBS messaging (yes, there are a few BBSs left)... I've made it tagline itself as variously "Heat Wave", "Cold Wave", and "CrimeWave" :)
Today's apps are less fun, that's for sure!
Back in the DOS era, I too thought reading thru executables with Buerg's LIST was "normal". I've seen several of those "Nosy, aren't you!" type messages!!
And one day whilst rambling through an old verion of Paradox for DOS, I found some programmer's rant against upper management.
Dunno if it was supposed to be an Egg or what, but a real error message seen on a Mac that had just gotten itself all confused:
"Dude! Like, something went wrong!!"
I agree with you -- Greenpeace today is nothing but a vigilante extortion business (and so are nearly all the once-useful activist groups). See http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/oid/131
Minus the environmentalist rhetoric, they'd be recognised as the thugs they are, little different from any other protection racket.
According to http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/oid/131, $360 MILLION dollars does not suffice -- they still want more donations. So I'd guess their extortion fee to Apple would be in the half a billion range.
(No, this *isn't* meant as a joke, sad to say.)
The same applies to the milk cows, who get a nice warm barn and generous fodder all winter, instead of having to stand out in the blizzards and forage for themselves as best they can when the grass is under two feet of snow...
More to the point, rich people make more donations. See my post above, subject line "Follow the money".
(I'm reminded of the old tagline: "Eat the rich. The poor are tough and stringy.")
Because a lot of otherwise intelligent and generally well-educated people are nonetheless unaware of Greenpeace's actual activities and real motivations, nor does it occur to them to investigate further. And we can't educate them by failing to refute Greenpeace's bullshit -- how is the average person to learn better if no one ever points out the flaws??
See also my post up above, subject line "follow the money".
Suggested reading:
http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/oid/131
A couple of relevant quotes from the cited page (emphasis mine):
and
Draw your own conclusions.
I saw the second box but it was greyed out (or rather, the box I'd apparently want to use next was). Seriously non-obvious. :)
I think I'd drop the upfront reference to login-required and not bring it up at all unless the user wanted to go beyond the four allowed query terms, then make it come up instead of a 5th search term.
Do you have a reason for wanting the login? I had an AC reply who also complained about it, and about logins in general where there's no real reason for it.