If you knew the IP addresses so you could reach the servers you desired, and didn't have to use domain names, you can still reach the servers (in fact this is a useful way to get around some types of blocking.)
Indeed. And plenty of places still maintain their own/etc/hosts file containing "important" machines and distribute it via NIS/YP to their client machines. If you're concerned that's one thing you could do. Go through your netscape history, or set your machine to log outgoing packets, and then lookup those hosts and add them to/etc/hosts. Of course, things with round-robin DNS or other multi-machine kludges might fail, but at least you'll still be able to read the news websites that will say "Missiles on their way to New York; film at 11."
Of course, that's not the issue here. The issue is that ICANT^HN sucks. But how do you force them to suck less? Make them a government organization? No. Make them a publicly traded corporation? Perhaps. Make them a U.N. organization? Maybe, but then they'd accomplish even less than they do now. What's the answer?
It's not as bad as it seems...
on
Sun vs. OpenBSD?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
From the article:
Sun has now promised to give OpenBSD the same information it provided to higher-profile,
open-source projects such as Linux. "Sun has committed to working with OpenBSD to...ensure they
are extended the same information as other open-source communities," the company said in a
statement. (boldface added)
So really, Sun wasn't hindering the Open Source movement. They already gave the information to the "Linux project" (presumably that means Linus or one of the other kernel hackers) Really it's just that OpenBSD didn't have the documentaton. Big fucking deal. Yes, it sucks that they were overlooked, but really, you can't claim Sun is trying to stifle the Open Source movement by giving stuff to Linux and not OpenBSD.
I understand that this guy's hardball tactics have worked in the past, and seemed to work here, but really, that's not the right way to go about things.
Most activists screaming for every corporation to release all code and programming guides don't understand history. In the beginning, personal computers were mainly for hobbyists. They all came with programming documentation, and some even came with full schematics. Then they became commercial, but still the companies were fine about providing technical information to thos who wanted it. I recall one of my earlier video cards came with programming docs, as did an early Adaptec SCSI card. Then competition began to get more cut-throat. The next big feature in your sound card was what could make or break your company. Damned if you're going to give it away to some pimply-faced kid who may or may not be working for the competition.
The big corporations have been in this mindset for almost ten years now. It's going to take them a while to get out of it. The current economics models these companies have crash and burn when confronted with Open Source. This does not imply that Open Source is bad, rather that it's unexpected. It's going to take some time for public sentiment to overcome the marketing and accounting drones, who suddenly see nothing but a bunch of red numbers in their "total" columns. Most companies have already made gestures of goodwill by opening up a lot of programs. Think how much you had to pay for an Office Suite before OpenOffice/StarOffice. Any idea how much Transarc AFS cost before IBM bought them and released OpenAFS? I could go on and on, but I need to go to work.
The point is, as I've said before, and will continue to say, you can't say "You must do foo" to a corporation, because they'll laugh at you. Most people don't like being ordered around, let alone corporations. The right thing to do (which was eventually done here) is get press coverage and let the people know that ACME Corp has not responded to your (polite, not bitchy) requests for documentation. Chances are they probably lost the request anyway. (Do you know how much bureaucracy exists in large corporations? It's amazing they get anything done to begin with.) The point is, leaders of Open Source projects may have done wonderful things and contributed tons of ideas and programs to the community, and benefited the world as a whole, but still proprietary source code is not a God-given right. Maybe it should be, and maybe in the future it will be, but not right now. Once that is realized, relations with corporations will get much, much easier.
why would corporations be uptight about their sales info getting pushed out to a wider audience? Isn't this exactly what their advertisements are supposed to do?
Are the corporations really uptight? Do they even know this happened? This wouldn't be the first time that some trigger-happy lawyer quoted the DMCA in a cease-and-desist letter, when really, his client didn't give a flying fuck.
Maybe I'm cynical, but I'll bet in most stupid copyright cases where the assertions are unfounded or ridiculous (like the "Bill Wyman the reporter needs to prove that's his real name" case) the lawyers are acting on their own, without any consent or direction from their clients.
I mean, this one book contains most of the coolest structures in the world - I myself have based many trips around visiting some of the projects mentioned in this book. It's called "The Builders: Marvels of Engineering" Published by The National Geographic Society. There's a link here
Doesn't look like you can buy it on Amazon - my copy doesn't even have an ISBN number - so I think you can only buy it through Nat'l Geographic. Still, at $14.95, I wouldn't complain.
Re:I expect good stuff from Sodenberg.
on
Review: Solaris
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· Score: 2
record the lines you like and post them
-Weir: "You can't leave - she won't let you."
-Miller: "What's in the core??!!"
-Miller: "...you'll find yourself floating home!"
Weir: "I am home."
With apologies to David Spade and his Hollywood Minute bits back in the good old days of SNL:
"Well, let's see... Doctor arrives at space station orbiting planet. Strange things have happened there. People have died. Doctor finds that his once dead wife is now very much alive on this space station. Where have I heard this before? Ah yes, it was really good the first time I saw it, when it was called Event Horizon"
With all of the instant messaging tools available out there, is there any reason to run the messenger service to begin with?
Uh, that's not what Windows Messenger Service is.
It's a service that allows windows computers to talk to each other. It's primarily for messages like "Load new tape" or "UPS on Battery Power" or "File Server going down" that are sent by automated services/daemons on other windows machines. However, MS included the functionality for a person to send messages by hand, for example, a sysadmin can send "Printer outage this afternoon" to the entire domain. It wasn't designed with spammers in mind. It's been around since NT 4.0 at least....
Yet another reason why we need a "-2, Just Plain Wrong" moderation.
is it that big of an inconvenience? is it too much to ask for?
Yes. Pop-up ads are annoying. I'm not sure which planet the marketing folks who think "Oh, if we annoy them _more_, they'll buy from us" are from, but, well, they're wrong. I have no problem with the banner ads on, say, slashdot or userfriendly, or wherever. They're just there - they don't interfere with the "web browsing experience".
Pop-up ads on the other hand, are extremely annoying. First of all, they rely on either a) JavaScript kludges; or b) HTML kludges such as bogus frame targets. Second, spawning too many windows can suck if you're on a slow machine, and I've seen pop-ups kill Netscape on Linux, Win32, and Solaris. The only-thing worse than pop-up ads are the pop-under ads, or the pop-up ads that move around your screen by themselves.
If I'm browsing/., and I'm bored, I might glance at the banner ad and click it. If/. used pop-up ads, I'd close them as soon as the page loaded, and if I was bored, well, I'd just get back to work rather than looking at their ads.
I'd like to see some serious statistics on banner ads vs. pop-ups. I strongly disbelieve that pop-ups have a higher click-through rate. Don't people understand this?! Your morning newspaper doesn't have a spring-loaded ad that hits you in the face as soon as you open it. Why should the newspaper's companion website have that feature?
And the "just close the window" is the same argument as "just delete the spam". It's not the point. If I have a friend who sends me mail from yahoo, I don't mind the shameless plug for Yahoo that's inserted as a footer, because I can ignore it. If Yahoo were to send me a mail directly, saying "use our mail service", I would mind a lot. It takes no time at all to visually parse a web page and see what's an ad. It takes a significant amount of time to locate a pop-up window, close it, and close the 10 others that it spawns.
Of course, now comes the argument "Well, if you can ignore inline banner ads, then they're not useful." Bullshit. I can ignore billboards while I'm driving; I can ignore ads in the subway; I can mute commercials on TV; I can toss the flyers from the Sunday paper. Apparently, however, some people still think these methods are useful, because they don't seem to be going away.
(Of course, this is all moot for me, since any packets outgoing to doubleclick.net or the other ad places get redirected to 127.0.0.1, which answers everything with 1 pixel image:-)
I'm really disappointed with this "Ask Slashdot" question. I mean, really, the people who carry PDAs as status symbols, or who buy them simply to have them, are going to behave the same way with any gadget. That's a personality trait. It has nothing to do with PDAs.
I have a Palm III (2MB of RAM), and I use it for the following:
Address/Phone/Contact Info
Note taking if I forgot my laptop or didn't want to lug it. (Graffiti is as fast as pen and paper - and a lot more legible in my case - once you get used to it).
Transit Schedules & Trip Planners (MBTA Commuter Rail schedules have been available via a free-as-in-beer Palm app for about 1.5 years now, with bus and subway coming out soon).
Storing maps. (Save those GIFs from Mapquest and convert them to Palm format - yes, it's monochrome, but it's still readable). (TealPaint)
Reading PDF Documentation when I'm on the go. (Acrobat Reader for Palm)
Reading HTML/Text docs when I'm on the go. (iSilo).
Creating a shopping list, and then checking things off and keeping a running total as I put them in the shopping cart. (Shopper, I think it's called).
AvantGo for several web pages (including Slashdot), though AvantGo has started sucking more lately, so I don't use it as much as I used to.
Checkbook/Finance.
CNET's download.com Palm section is your friend. This is all done with free (beer or speech) applications, and, with 2MB of RAM, all these apps, 200 addresses, a bunch of notes, and all that stuff, I still have 700KB free.
So really, if you claim your PDA isn't useful, you're just not trying hard enough. If you don't like carrying it around, that's one thing - but don't say it's not useful.
ATTBI does NOIT need anything to register your MAC with them... they dont give arats ass about your MAC address..
This is true NOW. It was not true in August of 2002. They only just switched their policy recently. NOW, they only care about your cable modem's MAC addr. As recently as two months ago, however, they cared very much about your computer's MAC addr.
What used to happen, was you could get a broken DHCP lease, that only worked for registering with them. Connecting to anything else resulted in dropped connections. Oh, and the lease was only valid a short period of time.
Of course, this is the case in the Boston Area. AT&T Broadband exists in other areas, and may have different policies elsewhere, but I don't care about that, since I don't live there.
Dunno what this guy used, but certainly ATTBI/MediaOne/whatever does this.
Broadjump is the biggest piece of shit software I've ever seen. It reboots your computer whenever possible (god forbid they should check to see if you're running on 2K/XP which doesn't need to be rebooted to renew DHCP). You also need that program to register your MAC address with them. I could have made a fuss, but it wasn't worth it. I installed, registered, and de-installed. No more problems.
They certainly don't require that you leave it installed, except for Tech Support. Which so far has been easy, because if it's a problem with the line, you simply call and report that cable TV is out. Then they don't ask you to reboot your computer 500 times.
I was on a plane once where they didn't even let you use a Walkman in case it interfered with their electronics!
AFAIK, the FCC only bans radios and other "transmission" devices during flight. Other devices are at the discretion of the airline. For example, I was once on a flight where walkmans were allowed, but discmans weren't, because they could "interfere" with the electronics. This is a standard excuse given to everyone. If you actually get into the details, you'll find that the flight attendants know jack shit about electronics (not that they need to). It's probably just a CYA move for the airlines. Admittedly, much avionics hasn't changed much since the '60s, and it's likely it'd be far more susceptible to interference than modern stuff, but there's not much we can do about that. Laptop computers will be the next to be banned, because the flight attendants can't tell what has 802.11b and what doesn't. The simple solution is, of course, not to fly.
Now, if you're talking about the restriction on electronic devices during takeoff and landing, that's because they don't want you playing Super Mario Brothers while you're supposed to be listening to the stewardess tell you how to get off the plane in an emergency. Of course, you could read a book and not pay attention, but I guess they assume that people who are reading a book and probably read the safety information card.
Uh, no. A CD is not the same as a CD-R.
A CD consists of a plastic substrate with a thin layer of reflective material (usually aluminum, sometimes gold in higher-quality discs) embedded in it. The aluminum has small pits (or bumps, depending on your point of view) in it, and this is how the laser differentiates between 1s and 0s.
A CD-R has a plastic substrate, with a layer of reflective aluminum , and on top of that, a layer of (usually green-blue) transparent dye. It is impossible for a laser to make the pits and bumps in the aluminum layer with the precision required. Thus, it doesn't. What it does, is heat up the dye at specific places. When the dye is heated, it becomes opaque, thus blocking the aluminum layer from view. Thus, the reading laser sees bumps where the opaque dye is, thus creating 0s. So, a CD-R is essentially initialized to "1", and by "burning" it, you create zeros where necessary.
Because of the method used to produce CD-Rs, they do not have the longevity that regular CDs have. Excessive heat or sunlight can break down the dye-layer, causing read-errors. These errors can be compensated for (Sony/Phillips specs say that a CD must be able to have a 1mm hole drilled anywhere in the disc and still be read perfectly), but eventually, the CD will be unreadable.
CDs on the other hand, are pressed, not burned. They are created similarly to the way records were. A master glass (yes, glass) disc is created with a photo-reflective layer, and a laser is used to burn off the photo-reflective layer in portions (thus creating the 0s). That master is then "electroformed" to create the metal presses (which are the inverse of the surface of the CD). The presses become part of a mold, and the actual CD is injection molded, and picks up the microscopic bumps from the mold, which create the bumps on the CD itself. These molds can then be used over and over to make CDs extremely fast. Really, it's pretty much identical to the way a record used to be made, with a matrix, and then pressing onto vinyl. Because they are pressed, CD's are not as affected by environmental conditions. (Unless it gets so hot that the disc warps, but, well you've got other problems if that happens).
And that, kids, is why you can't advertise CD-Rs as CDs.
The class in question is 6.857, taught by Ron Rivest (of MD5 fame)
The class website is here, and this page gives information on the lecture.
No, I'm not karma-whoring. This is useful information, if you plan on asking questions other than "MS sucks, don't you think?"
Scroll down on the lecture page to "Lecture 12", and take a look at the background reading on Palladium. Gives you an idea of what the students will (should) know before asking questions, and as thus it might be useful in this forum, too.
I've got a Logitech Scanman that I picked up used a few years ago. Anyone got a copy of Windows 1.x or 2.x so that I can actually use it?
Maybe then I could use my brother's old Logitech mouse as well.
Don't by anything from Logitech if you ever want to update any of your software.
<HUMOR>
I've got a Seagate MFM hard drive that I picked up used a few years ago. Anyone got an IBM XT so that I can actually use it? Maybe then I could use my Dell CGA monitor as well.
Don't buy anything from Seagate or Dell if you ever want to update any of your software.
</HUMOR>
These were called the "ScanMan". They came in color, B&W, and Hi-Res (600dpi!) versions. They were quite useful, for their size, but the Mac versions were often bulky, had a SCSI interface (which use that stupid HDI-30 connector on powerbooks, if you have a powerbook that had a SCSI connector), and required a separate interface box for the A/C adapter and SCSI connector.
I have one which I'll gladly sell to you.:-)
That having been said, get a Logitech QuickCam 2000 (or QuickCam Pro). It's USB, it's small, it's a good resolution, it comes with a small desktop tripod. The advantage is that in addition to using it to take pictures of printed matter, you can use it to take pictures of the microfilm reader displays. You can't do that with a scanner. It paid for itself twice-over when I did a research project two years ago. On the downside, however, it doesn't work with Linux (AFAICT) or MacOS.
BUT, what about legit
gray-hacks like the Mandrake Linux XBox project and such? It would seem to me that in the long haul,
Microsoft would support such efforts because they could sell more devices (and potentially more software if
they licensed an opensource validation library)... "
This statement makes no sense. Why would MS support Linux - their sworn enemy? Why would they make it easy for people to buy their hardware and run Linux on it?
Even if MS didn't care about Linux, just look at the facts. The Xbox is basically a PC. However, it's sold at a huge loss. The sales of games make up for this loss. However, if everyone buys the Xbox at a loss, and then doesn't buy any games, but installs Linux on it, and uses it as a PC, MS loses a shitload of money. Without the Xbox, these same people wanting a PC would have to buy one from Dell, or something, which comes with Windows XP and other MS software, so MS has made money on software, without losing any money on hardware.
The only reason MS entered the game console market is to make money. They need the games in order to make money. Without them, they lose, and the Xbox will be as dead as the Nintendo PowerGlove.
Yes, you _can_ buy an Xbox, and run Linux on it with a modchip, but why would you want to? Why would you want to use MS hardware, which is a stipped down, shitty PC, and run Linux on it, when you can get a mini form-factor (XPC) bare-bones system for under $150, add a processor and drive, and be up and running on a better system without having to look at an MS logo everyday? Sure, I understand the "because I can", argument, and yeah, it's cool to make Linux run on something that wasn't mean to explicitly support it, but really, it's not like it's going to become a true platform.
That having been said, I am in no way supporting MS' extension of US laws to foreign companies. That does in fact suck.
But the fact is that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) got more addresses than The Republic of China alltogether.
Gee, maybe that's because MIT made more contributions to the original "Internet" than the Republic of China. Not that I'm saying ROC couldn't have, merely that they didn't. All the large institutions involved with ARPANET got class A subnets. Most of them sucumbed to peer pressure and gave them up. We didn't.
If you're using BK for source management you have to be looking over your sholder
and worrying what proclamation McVoy will issue next that might force you to throw out all versions in your tree currently and move to an
alternative product.
Wow, this is FUD worthy of Microsoft.
Go read the fscking links. All it says is that you can't use BitKeeper to work on competing products. Can you use BitKeeper to work on The GIMP? Sure. Can you use BitKeeper to work on KDE? Sure. Can you use BitKeeper to work on Subversion? No.
Do you honestly think it's McVoy's goal to kill off free software? If so, why does he say in his mail that
we're a business which happens to be committed to
helping the kernel team because we think that the kernel is vital to
the world at large. Helping the kernel absolutely does not translate
to helping people who happen to be our competitors.
Come on, people. If they really hated free software, they wouldn't be doing this. Of course, now is the spot where people will chime in saying "they're just making us use it so they can control the code and lock us in." Wrong. I haven't used BitKeeper, but I'll bet that you can still get the source code out of it. I don't think it will ever prohibit you from extracting the current source tree - if it does, well, that's the point at which Linus should abandon it.
That having been said, it does appear from this mail that McVoy has a personal disagreement with Ben Collins. (See the relevant text about 'netwinder') If so, a EULA is a poor forum in which to take action for his grievances. It does NOT, however, mean that he is any more wrong for doing so. He wants to make money. There's nothing wrong with that. The FSF may have a truly noble cause, but until there's such a thing as Open Source Food, and Free-As-In-Beer-And-Speech housing, people will still need money.
Now is the chance for the community to put live up to its hype. We've always said that we don't need to badmouth MS, we can just come up with something better. Go ahead! Make Subversion better than BitKeeper. Make it so that everyone who uses BitKeeper will be pounding your doors down trying to get Subversion. This isn't Windows we're talking about here - it's a revision control prorgam that's used mainly by clueful people. So make Subversion better, and put BitMover out of business, and then you'll have won.
Is it now? Gosh, let's see. We support Mozilla 1.x. We support Netscape 4.x. We support Netscape 6.2.x. We support IE 5.5 and above. It evens supports a version of Lynx. What more do you want? The AOL browser?
from the why-can't-we-be-our-own-certificate-authority dept.
Er, um, you can. It's trivial to be a certificate authority. You simply need to read a couple of HOWTOs and understand how X.509 certificates work. At MIT for example, we are our own CA. The MIT CA signs all other certifiates, such as certificates for machines that offer secure services, or client certificates for users to authenticate themselves for confidential services. Sure, your browser will claim that it won't recognize the certificate authority. But go ahead and download the root certificate, and tell Netscape you want to accept that certificate authority to certify "Internet sites", and you're all set. You only have to do that _once_. Ever. Just make sure that all your server certificates are signed by the certificate authority.
At MIT we get around the "accepting the certificate authority" problem by re-distributing Netscape with our CA alrady in the database. If your organization isn't big enough for this, then just hand the customers printed instructions on how to do it. Tell them by doing this, you're saving them money, with less costs to pass on.
Commercial Certificate Authorities mean jack shit. All they "certify" is "Joe Schmoe paid me $400, so I will now say that he is who he claims to be." Big fscking deal. Who exactly are they to claim that, anyway? Do they have access to Joe's birth certificate? His passport? His social security record? I had to provide more documentation to get a Massachusetts Drivers License than I did to get a certificate from Verisign. Once the general public realizes this, Verisign will need to find a new source of revenue. I envision a future when certificate authorities can be obtained for a nominal processing free ($30) provided the requestor provides proof of identity (or corporate identity).
Do the big wigs at MIT actually teach undergraduate classes?
Yup. Sussman (along with Hal Abelson and others) taught 6.001 (Intro to CS) when I took it in the spring of 1998. He also taught it for several years before that, and one year after. I believe they have taken a break from teaching it now. Eric Lander is teaching 7.012 (Intro to Biology) right now, and has taught one intro bio course each year for the 5 years I've been around, and a lot longer than that from what alums tell me.
It's actually quite the eye opener to be able to go through their mathematics courses and see how the material differs from the stuff they teach
at my school. Most of it is pretty similar, and this certainly takes away the mystique that MIT had before I took a look at it all. I guess if your
admissions standards and tuition fees are astronomically high that's enough too keep a stellar reputation.
Well, duh! Math is math is math. It's based in fact. You can't change it. It's not like they can decide to teach Lagrange multipliers in one school, and Bazooka Joe multipliers in another. However, there are majors other than Course 18.
It's the professors themselves who have a profound impact at MIT. Where else can you take a Biology 101 course taught by Eric Lander (of the Human Genome Project)? Or how about having Sussman teach your intro CS class? How about an Acoustics class taught by the guy who founded the Bose speaker corporation? And those wankers whining about the Big Dig in another thread today? Perhaps they could learn a few things in one of the classes I took, taught by one of the Big Dig masterminds, Fred Salvucci.
The problem is easily solved by calling it by the distribution. I do not run "GNU/Linux" or my computer, nor do I run "Linux". I run RedHat. Some of my friends run Debian. Others run SuSE or Mandrake. There, problem solved.
// end tongue-in-cheek section
Seriously, though, I actually use "Linux" most often in the context of "Does program $foo run on Linux?" Regardless of what RMS wants, that is perfectly correct. Programs run on the kernel (Linux), not GNU tools such as emacs/sed/gcc. When the FSF releases it's own (useful) kernel, I'll call it GNU.
No one denies that the GNU project contributed a lot to making Linux useful. People say "Linux" because people are naturally lazy and brevity is a virtue. Most people who use Linux have heard of "GNU" in the context of bash, tcsh, emacs, sed, gnucash, ghostscript. They don't need to be reminded of it - that's giving them less credit than due. All this whining about the name is what prevents people from taking RMS seriously, and what leads Joe Sixpack and Nancy NewsAnchor to brush aside the (GNU/)Linux community as a bunch of activist whiny idiots.
RMS constantly talks about taking social responsibility for one's actions. He needs to start thinking seriously about whether all this bitching about naming conventions is good for the community, and for society in general. But that won't happen, because he's right, we're wrong, and that's the way it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. And plenty of places still maintain their own /etc/hosts file containing "important" machines and distribute it via NIS/YP to their client machines. If you're concerned that's one thing you could do. Go through your netscape history, or set your machine to log outgoing packets, and then lookup those hosts and add them to /etc/hosts. Of course, things with round-robin DNS or other multi-machine kludges might fail, but at least you'll still be able to read the news websites that will say "Missiles on their way to New York; film at 11."
Of course, that's not the issue here. The issue is that ICANT^HN sucks. But how do you force them to suck less? Make them a government organization? No. Make them a publicly traded corporation? Perhaps. Make them a U.N. organization? Maybe, but then they'd accomplish even less than they do now. What's the answer?
Sun has now promised to give OpenBSD the same information it provided to higher-profile, open-source projects such as Linux. "Sun has committed to working with OpenBSD to...ensure they are extended the same information as other open-source communities," the company said in a statement. (boldface added)
So really, Sun wasn't hindering the Open Source movement. They already gave the information to the "Linux project" (presumably that means Linus or one of the other kernel hackers) Really it's just that OpenBSD didn't have the documentaton. Big fucking deal. Yes, it sucks that they were overlooked, but really, you can't claim Sun is trying to stifle the Open Source movement by giving stuff to Linux and not OpenBSD.
I understand that this guy's hardball tactics have worked in the past, and seemed to work here, but really, that's not the right way to go about things.
Most activists screaming for every corporation to release all code and programming guides don't understand history. In the beginning, personal computers were mainly for hobbyists. They all came with programming documentation, and some even came with full schematics. Then they became commercial, but still the companies were fine about providing technical information to thos who wanted it. I recall one of my earlier video cards came with programming docs, as did an early Adaptec SCSI card. Then competition began to get more cut-throat. The next big feature in your sound card was what could make or break your company. Damned if you're going to give it away to some pimply-faced kid who may or may not be working for the competition.
The big corporations have been in this mindset for almost ten years now. It's going to take them a while to get out of it. The current economics models these companies have crash and burn when confronted with Open Source. This does not imply that Open Source is bad, rather that it's unexpected. It's going to take some time for public sentiment to overcome the marketing and accounting drones, who suddenly see nothing but a bunch of red numbers in their "total" columns. Most companies have already made gestures of goodwill by opening up a lot of programs. Think how much you had to pay for an Office Suite before OpenOffice/StarOffice. Any idea how much Transarc AFS cost before IBM bought them and released OpenAFS? I could go on and on, but I need to go to work.
The point is, as I've said before, and will continue to say, you can't say "You must do foo" to a corporation, because they'll laugh at you. Most people don't like being ordered around, let alone corporations. The right thing to do (which was eventually done here) is get press coverage and let the people know that ACME Corp has not responded to your (polite, not bitchy) requests for documentation. Chances are they probably lost the request anyway. (Do you know how much bureaucracy exists in large corporations? It's amazing they get anything done to begin with.) The point is, leaders of Open Source projects may have done wonderful things and contributed tons of ideas and programs to the community, and benefited the world as a whole, but still proprietary source code is not a God-given right. Maybe it should be, and maybe in the future it will be, but not right now. Once that is realized, relations with corporations will get much, much easier.
Are the corporations really uptight? Do they even know this happened? This wouldn't be the first time that some trigger-happy lawyer quoted the DMCA in a cease-and-desist letter, when really, his client didn't give a flying fuck.
Maybe I'm cynical, but I'll bet in most stupid copyright cases where the assertions are unfounded or ridiculous (like the "Bill Wyman the reporter needs to prove that's his real name" case) the lawyers are acting on their own, without any consent or direction from their clients.
I mean, this one book contains most of the coolest structures in the world - I myself have based many trips around visiting some of the projects mentioned in this book. It's called "The Builders: Marvels of Engineering" Published by The National Geographic Society. There's a link here
Doesn't look like you can buy it on Amazon - my copy doesn't even have an ISBN number - so I think you can only buy it through Nat'l Geographic. Still, at $14.95, I wouldn't complain.
-Weir: "You can't leave - she won't let you."
-Miller: "What's in the core??!!"
-Miller: "...you'll find yourself floating home!"
Weir: "I am home."
"Well, let's see... Doctor arrives at space station orbiting planet. Strange things have happened there. People have died. Doctor finds that his once dead wife is now very much alive on this space station. Where have I heard this before? Ah yes, it was really good the first time I saw it, when it was called Event Horizon"
Uh, that's not what Windows Messenger Service is.
It's a service that allows windows computers to talk to each other. It's primarily for messages like "Load new tape" or "UPS on Battery Power" or "File Server going down" that are sent by automated services/daemons on other windows machines. However, MS included the functionality for a person to send messages by hand, for example, a sysadmin can send "Printer outage this afternoon" to the entire domain. It wasn't designed with spammers in mind. It's been around since NT 4.0 at least....
Yet another reason why we need a "-2, Just Plain Wrong" moderation.
Yes. Pop-up ads are annoying. I'm not sure which planet the marketing folks who think "Oh, if we annoy them _more_, they'll buy from us" are from, but, well, they're wrong. I have no problem with the banner ads on, say, slashdot or userfriendly, or wherever. They're just there - they don't interfere with the "web browsing experience".
Pop-up ads on the other hand, are extremely annoying. First of all, they rely on either a) JavaScript kludges; or b) HTML kludges such as bogus frame targets. Second, spawning too many windows can suck if you're on a slow machine, and I've seen pop-ups kill Netscape on Linux, Win32, and Solaris. The only-thing worse than pop-up ads are the pop-under ads, or the pop-up ads that move around your screen by themselves.
If I'm browsing /., and I'm bored, I might glance at the banner ad and click it. If /. used pop-up ads, I'd close them as soon as the page loaded, and if I was bored, well, I'd just get back to work rather than looking at their ads.
I'd like to see some serious statistics on banner ads vs. pop-ups. I strongly disbelieve that pop-ups have a higher click-through rate. Don't people understand this?! Your morning newspaper doesn't have a spring-loaded ad that hits you in the face as soon as you open it. Why should the newspaper's companion website have that feature?
And the "just close the window" is the same argument as "just delete the spam". It's not the point. If I have a friend who sends me mail from yahoo, I don't mind the shameless plug for Yahoo that's inserted as a footer, because I can ignore it. If Yahoo were to send me a mail directly, saying "use our mail service", I would mind a lot. It takes no time at all to visually parse a web page and see what's an ad. It takes a significant amount of time to locate a pop-up window, close it, and close the 10 others that it spawns.
Of course, now comes the argument "Well, if you can ignore inline banner ads, then they're not useful." Bullshit. I can ignore billboards while I'm driving; I can ignore ads in the subway; I can mute commercials on TV; I can toss the flyers from the Sunday paper. Apparently, however, some people still think these methods are useful, because they don't seem to be going away.
(Of course, this is all moot for me, since any packets outgoing to doubleclick.net or the other ad places get redirected to 127.0.0.1, which answers everything with 1 pixel image :-)
I have a Palm III (2MB of RAM), and I use it for the following:
- Address/Phone/Contact Info
- Note taking if I forgot my laptop or didn't want to lug it. (Graffiti is as fast as pen and paper - and a lot more legible in my case - once you get used to it).
- Transit Schedules & Trip Planners (MBTA Commuter Rail schedules have been available via a free-as-in-beer Palm app for about 1.5 years now, with bus and subway coming out soon).
- Storing maps. (Save those GIFs from Mapquest and convert them to Palm format - yes, it's monochrome, but it's still readable). (TealPaint)
- Reading PDF Documentation when I'm on the go. (Acrobat Reader for Palm)
- Reading HTML/Text docs when I'm on the go. (iSilo).
- Creating a shopping list, and then checking things off and keeping a running total as I put them in the shopping cart. (Shopper, I think it's called).
- AvantGo for several web pages (including Slashdot), though AvantGo has started sucking more lately, so I don't use it as much as I used to.
- Checkbook/Finance.
CNET's download.com Palm section is your friend. This is all done with free (beer or speech) applications, and, with 2MB of RAM, all these apps, 200 addresses, a bunch of notes, and all that stuff, I still have 700KB free.So really, if you claim your PDA isn't useful, you're just not trying hard enough. If you don't like carrying it around, that's one thing - but don't say it's not useful.
Are you kidding? If someone wants to fsck my drive for me, that's fine with me. It'll cut down on my boot time.
This is true NOW. It was not true in August of 2002. They only just switched their policy recently. NOW, they only care about your cable modem's MAC addr. As recently as two months ago, however, they cared very much about your computer's MAC addr.
What used to happen, was you could get a broken DHCP lease, that only worked for registering with them. Connecting to anything else resulted in dropped connections. Oh, and the lease was only valid a short period of time.
Of course, this is the case in the Boston Area. AT&T Broadband exists in other areas, and may have different policies elsewhere, but I don't care about that, since I don't live there.
dont spread lies man.... it's not right.
Don't spread ignorance, man, it's not right...
Dunno what this guy used, but certainly ATTBI/MediaOne/whatever does this.
Broadjump is the biggest piece of shit software I've ever seen. It reboots your computer whenever possible (god forbid they should check to see if you're running on 2K/XP which doesn't need to be rebooted to renew DHCP). You also need that program to register your MAC address with them. I could have made a fuss, but it wasn't worth it. I installed, registered, and de-installed. No more problems.
They certainly don't require that you leave it installed, except for Tech Support. Which so far has been easy, because if it's a problem with the line, you simply call and report that cable TV is out. Then they don't ask you to reboot your computer 500 times.
AFAIK, the FCC only bans radios and other "transmission" devices during flight. Other devices are at the discretion of the airline. For example, I was once on a flight where walkmans were allowed, but discmans weren't, because they could "interfere" with the electronics. This is a standard excuse given to everyone. If you actually get into the details, you'll find that the flight attendants know jack shit about electronics (not that they need to). It's probably just a CYA move for the airlines. Admittedly, much avionics hasn't changed much since the '60s, and it's likely it'd be far more susceptible to interference than modern stuff, but there's not much we can do about that. Laptop computers will be the next to be banned, because the flight attendants can't tell what has 802.11b and what doesn't. The simple solution is, of course, not to fly.
Now, if you're talking about the restriction on electronic devices during takeoff and landing, that's because they don't want you playing Super Mario Brothers while you're supposed to be listening to the stewardess tell you how to get off the plane in an emergency. Of course, you could read a book and not pay attention, but I guess they assume that people who are reading a book and probably read the safety information card.
Uh, no. A CD is not the same as a CD-R. A CD consists of a plastic substrate with a thin layer of reflective material (usually aluminum, sometimes gold in higher-quality discs) embedded in it. The aluminum has small pits (or bumps, depending on your point of view) in it, and this is how the laser differentiates between 1s and 0s.
A CD-R has a plastic substrate, with a layer of reflective aluminum , and on top of that, a layer of (usually green-blue) transparent dye. It is impossible for a laser to make the pits and bumps in the aluminum layer with the precision required. Thus, it doesn't. What it does, is heat up the dye at specific places. When the dye is heated, it becomes opaque, thus blocking the aluminum layer from view. Thus, the reading laser sees bumps where the opaque dye is, thus creating 0s. So, a CD-R is essentially initialized to "1", and by "burning" it, you create zeros where necessary.
Because of the method used to produce CD-Rs, they do not have the longevity that regular CDs have. Excessive heat or sunlight can break down the dye-layer, causing read-errors. These errors can be compensated for (Sony/Phillips specs say that a CD must be able to have a 1mm hole drilled anywhere in the disc and still be read perfectly), but eventually, the CD will be unreadable.
CDs on the other hand, are pressed, not burned. They are created similarly to the way records were. A master glass (yes, glass) disc is created with a photo-reflective layer, and a laser is used to burn off the photo-reflective layer in portions (thus creating the 0s). That master is then "electroformed" to create the metal presses (which are the inverse of the surface of the CD). The presses become part of a mold, and the actual CD is injection molded, and picks up the microscopic bumps from the mold, which create the bumps on the CD itself. These molds can then be used over and over to make CDs extremely fast. Really, it's pretty much identical to the way a record used to be made, with a matrix, and then pressing onto vinyl. Because they are pressed, CD's are not as affected by environmental conditions. (Unless it gets so hot that the disc warps, but, well you've got other problems if that happens).
And that, kids, is why you can't advertise CD-Rs as CDs.
The class website is here, and this page gives information on the lecture.
No, I'm not karma-whoring. This is useful information, if you plan on asking questions other than "MS sucks, don't you think?"
Scroll down on the lecture page to "Lecture 12", and take a look at the background reading on Palladium. Gives you an idea of what the students will (should) know before asking questions, and as thus it might be useful in this forum, too.
<HUMOR> I've got a Seagate MFM hard drive that I picked up used a few years ago. Anyone got an IBM XT so that I can actually use it? Maybe then I could use my Dell CGA monitor as well. Don't buy anything from Seagate or Dell if you ever want to update any of your software. </HUMOR>
I have one which I'll gladly sell to you. :-)
That having been said, get a Logitech QuickCam 2000 (or QuickCam Pro). It's USB, it's small, it's a good resolution, it comes with a small desktop tripod. The advantage is that in addition to using it to take pictures of printed matter, you can use it to take pictures of the microfilm reader displays. You can't do that with a scanner. It paid for itself twice-over when I did a research project two years ago. On the downside, however, it doesn't work with Linux (AFAICT) or MacOS.
This statement makes no sense. Why would MS support Linux - their sworn enemy? Why would they make it easy for people to buy their hardware and run Linux on it?
Even if MS didn't care about Linux, just look at the facts. The Xbox is basically a PC. However, it's sold at a huge loss. The sales of games make up for this loss. However, if everyone buys the Xbox at a loss, and then doesn't buy any games, but installs Linux on it, and uses it as a PC, MS loses a shitload of money. Without the Xbox, these same people wanting a PC would have to buy one from Dell, or something, which comes with Windows XP and other MS software, so MS has made money on software, without losing any money on hardware.
The only reason MS entered the game console market is to make money. They need the games in order to make money. Without them, they lose, and the Xbox will be as dead as the Nintendo PowerGlove.
Yes, you _can_ buy an Xbox, and run Linux on it with a modchip, but why would you want to? Why would you want to use MS hardware, which is a stipped down, shitty PC, and run Linux on it, when you can get a mini form-factor (XPC) bare-bones system for under $150, add a processor and drive, and be up and running on a better system without having to look at an MS logo everyday? Sure, I understand the "because I can", argument, and yeah, it's cool to make Linux run on something that wasn't mean to explicitly support it, but really, it's not like it's going to become a true platform.
That having been said, I am in no way supporting MS' extension of US laws to foreign companies. That does in fact suck.
Gee, maybe that's because MIT made more contributions to the original "Internet" than the Republic of China. Not that I'm saying ROC couldn't have, merely that they didn't. All the large institutions involved with ARPANET got class A subnets. Most of them sucumbed to peer pressure and gave them up. We didn't.
Wow, this is FUD worthy of Microsoft.
Go read the fscking links. All it says is that you can't use BitKeeper to work on competing products. Can you use BitKeeper to work on The GIMP? Sure. Can you use BitKeeper to work on KDE? Sure. Can you use BitKeeper to work on Subversion? No.
Do you honestly think it's McVoy's goal to kill off free software? If so, why does he say in his mail that
Come on, people. If they really hated free software, they wouldn't be doing this. Of course, now is the spot where people will chime in saying "they're just making us use it so they can control the code and lock us in." Wrong. I haven't used BitKeeper, but I'll bet that you can still get the source code out of it. I don't think it will ever prohibit you from extracting the current source tree - if it does, well, that's the point at which Linus should abandon it.
That having been said, it does appear from this mail that McVoy has a personal disagreement with Ben Collins. (See the relevant text about 'netwinder') If so, a EULA is a poor forum in which to take action for his grievances. It does NOT, however, mean that he is any more wrong for doing so. He wants to make money. There's nothing wrong with that. The FSF may have a truly noble cause, but until there's such a thing as Open Source Food, and Free-As-In-Beer-And-Speech housing, people will still need money.
Now is the chance for the community to put live up to its hype. We've always said that we don't need to badmouth MS, we can just come up with something better. Go ahead! Make Subversion better than BitKeeper. Make it so that everyone who uses BitKeeper will be pounding your doors down trying to get Subversion. This isn't Windows we're talking about here - it's a revision control prorgam that's used mainly by clueful people. So make Subversion better, and put BitMover out of business, and then you'll have won.
Is it now? Gosh, let's see. We support Mozilla 1.x. We support Netscape 4.x. We support Netscape 6.2.x. We support IE 5.5 and above. It evens supports a version of Lynx. What more do you want? The AOL browser?
Er, um, you can. It's trivial to be a certificate authority. You simply need to read a couple of HOWTOs and understand how X.509 certificates work. At MIT for example, we are our own CA. The MIT CA signs all other certifiates, such as certificates for machines that offer secure services, or client certificates for users to authenticate themselves for confidential services. Sure, your browser will claim that it won't recognize the certificate authority. But go ahead and download the root certificate, and tell Netscape you want to accept that certificate authority to certify "Internet sites", and you're all set. You only have to do that _once_. Ever. Just make sure that all your server certificates are signed by the certificate authority.
At MIT we get around the "accepting the certificate authority" problem by re-distributing Netscape with our CA alrady in the database. If your organization isn't big enough for this, then just hand the customers printed instructions on how to do it. Tell them by doing this, you're saving them money, with less costs to pass on.
Commercial Certificate Authorities mean jack shit. All they "certify" is "Joe Schmoe paid me $400, so I will now say that he is who he claims to be." Big fscking deal. Who exactly are they to claim that, anyway? Do they have access to Joe's birth certificate? His passport? His social security record? I had to provide more documentation to get a Massachusetts Drivers License than I did to get a certificate from Verisign. Once the general public realizes this, Verisign will need to find a new source of revenue. I envision a future when certificate authorities can be obtained for a nominal processing free ($30) provided the requestor provides proof of identity (or corporate identity).
Yup. Sussman (along with Hal Abelson and others) taught 6.001 (Intro to CS) when I took it in the spring of 1998. He also taught it for several years before that, and one year after. I believe they have taken a break from teaching it now. Eric Lander is teaching 7.012 (Intro to Biology) right now, and has taught one intro bio course each year for the 5 years I've been around, and a lot longer than that from what alums tell me.
Well, duh! Math is math is math. It's based in fact. You can't change it. It's not like they can decide to teach Lagrange multipliers in one school, and Bazooka Joe multipliers in another. However, there are majors other than Course 18.
It's the professors themselves who have a profound impact at MIT. Where else can you take a Biology 101 course taught by Eric Lander (of the Human Genome Project)? Or how about having Sussman teach your intro CS class? How about an Acoustics class taught by the guy who founded the Bose speaker corporation? And those wankers whining about the Big Dig in another thread today? Perhaps they could learn a few things in one of the classes I took, taught by one of the Big Dig masterminds, Fred Salvucci.
Yeesh.
Seriously, though, I actually use "Linux" most often in the context of "Does program $foo run on Linux?" Regardless of what RMS wants, that is perfectly correct. Programs run on the kernel (Linux), not GNU tools such as emacs/sed/gcc. When the FSF releases it's own (useful) kernel, I'll call it GNU.
No one denies that the GNU project contributed a lot to making Linux useful. People say "Linux" because people are naturally lazy and brevity is a virtue. Most people who use Linux have heard of "GNU" in the context of bash, tcsh, emacs, sed, gnucash, ghostscript. They don't need to be reminded of it - that's giving them less credit than due. All this whining about the name is what prevents people from taking RMS seriously, and what leads Joe Sixpack and Nancy NewsAnchor to brush aside the (GNU/)Linux community as a bunch of activist whiny idiots.
RMS constantly talks about taking social responsibility for one's actions. He needs to start thinking seriously about whether all this bitching about naming conventions is good for the community, and for society in general. But that won't happen, because he's right, we're wrong, and that's the way it is.