Setting up a limated company is very easy in the UK.
Someone has been advertising its services lately on radio for setting up a Nevada corporation...under $400 is supposed to do everything needed. I understand that there's lots of similar activity in Delaware as well.
Having to form a corporation (or some other business structure) raises the bar for getting a digital certificate from these clowns slightly, but not by much. It's probably not a bad idea anyway...if $MEGACORP decides it doesn't like your software/website/whatever, they go after your corporation instead of you personally. If you defeat them on their terms, great. If not, at least you aren't wiped out.
I would bet that some of these programs can forge the browser type headers.:) Then again, without viewing the site, I would wager that MSN uses JavaScript to do this. In that case, filter it.
JavaScript is a lousy way to check the browser type. (Then again, JavaScript is a lousy way of doing nearly anything.:-) ) Most webservers can be set up to send different pages according to the user-agent string sent by the browser; Apache, for instance, lets you do this with SSI. Here's what I use to weed out Nutscrape 4.x users so I can feed their broke-ass browsers alternate content that will render properly:
A server-parsed HTML page can then call this code to set the IE and NS variables according to what the server receives from the browser (note that Mozilla and Nutscrape 6 return F in both IE and NS).
I would guess that, in addition to its worm-propagating capabilities, IIS has something that serves the same function as the example above.
I think that iCab and OmniWeb already report themselves to be IE 5 or Netscape 4.7x.
iCab reports itself as IE only if you tell it to do so...it reports itself as iCab by default. (Last time I checked, that's what it did anyway...but that was with the most recent 68K version I could find, running on a Quadra 610 with MacOS 7.5.3. YMMV, especially for newer hardware.)
Hmm...gonna have to fire up the Mac when I get home to see what it does now...
lynx -useragent="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows NT)" http://www.msn.com
there's your fix
...and what's really weird is that Lynx does a fairly good job of rendering MSN. Selecting a news link caused much gnashing back-and-forth as it retrieved a bunch of intermediate pages before loading the selected page, but it eventually loaded an MSNBC page and rendered it reasonably well too. If they're sticking to the standards, Lynx should handle it...and it appears that they are. Aside from the usual conspiracy theories posted by your average anti-Microsoft/.er, the only other reason I can see for them blocking Lynx is that you won't see the ads. (I never see them when I browse with IE 6 under Win2K either, but then I filter ads with Squid.)
Nice product. All you need to do is add a two port 10/100 NIC in the PCI slot, like
this one (for a mere $275) and you can even have it manage a DMZ.
Umm...somehow I don't think a 64-bit PCI card will work too well in a box that only has a 32-bit PCI slot. Maybe you meant this 4-port NIC, which is a 32-bit PCI card (and it even supports Linux).
Just tell them "Shit, wonder who hacked the router, No wonder the pipe was so slow. We want a partial refund for lost bandwith..."
As often as the damn service goes down, we probably should get a break on our rates. (Word to the wise: if your ILEC is Sprint, don't buy DSL service. They have yet to figure out how to keep a DSLAM running.)
i think that's the actual problem - leaving in the default password.
...or, even better, no password at all. The Cayman DSL router at work had no password. You would think our service provider would've locked it up, but they didn't. It even bitches at you when you bring up its (web-based) configuration page if it has no password, but they must not have caught the clue. Oh well...at least with no password, I was able to kill NAT (don't need it to do that since there's another machine behind it running Coyote Linux that serves that purpose).
Things could get interesting if they try to get into the router now, of course...:-)
Re:A waste of time. Probably OEMed by someone else
on
Apple releases iPod
·
· Score: 2
Agree with the article poster - Lame. Not only is this a lackluster MP3 unit (which by virtue of being firewire will be limited to Apple Mac owners)
My HP Pavilion at work (don't laugh...I didn't buy it, but with an Asus motherboard inside, it's not that bad...if only it didn't have a Maxtor HD) would disagree with you...it has a FireWire port up front. I've also thought about putting the WD 100GB drive I bought recently into a FireWire case so I can move it between home and work (would need to add a FireWire card to the home box to do that...maybe $30 or so for that).
Most people enjoy seeing the few pennies that a site makes every day ( might not be a lot but it give a very happy ( justified?) feeling). So without that feeling of joy why would you keep a web site.
Umm...because I can? Money isn't the only reason you might put up a website...hell, in many cases, it doesn't even enter into the equation.
Oviously you haven't gone to http://msdn.microsoft.com
I have, plenty of times...but the material there isn't always the most comprehensive—or comprehensible. That's where the dead-tree documentation comes in handy.
I see little or no documentation out of Microsoft for the stuff I buy, either. Nor did I ever get much out of Sun or IBM. When I wanted good documentation I had to go out and buy it -- either from the vendor like in the case of MSDN, or from some book from my bookstore as in the case of X11/UNIX/IBM.
This has been my experience as well. The only programming book I've needed so far for Linux is K&R (back when I first got started with C, though I still refer to it from time to time). Everything else is documented well enough in manpages and on various websites. To start doing anything reasonably complex in Windows, OTOH, required about $200 or so in books (mostly for used, no less) to get up to speed--Petzold, Prosise, and one or two others.
Add another five bucks to bring us up to 2001 and a YEARS wages buys about 5 (could be 10 if you found 2 sticks for $40) sticks of 32 meg. Awfully bloody expensive in my book.
My comment was mainly WRT J. Random First-Worlder keeping his old 486 running as a light-duty server...but if he was going to donate his computer and send it halfway around the world, it wouldn't cost him much to bring it a little bit more up to spec before shipping it out. I doubt that the dwellers of your average Nepalese village would be able to wander on down the nearest PC Club or whatever for memory, even if they had the money.
The problem with old PC's like your 486 is that their RAM is very expensive.
It's probably somewhat more expensive (a quick check at a local surplus store came up with two 32MB FPM 72-pin SIMMs for $40 vs. two 256MB PC133 DIMMs for $40), but you're not going to throw a ton of RAM into a 486. Most won't take more than 32-64 megs.
another problem: they use a lot of electrical power, esp. since they have to be running 24/7.
Considering that my 1.0-GHz Athlon needs a hefty heatsink/fan and a 350W power supply while my old Cyrix 5x86-120 needs just a dinky heatsink with no fan and whatever power supply you can scrounge up, this doesn't sound right. (Hell, the 486SX-25 my parents used to have had no heatsink at all.)
Gnu Emacs 20 came out 1988?? Thats a hell of a long development time.
...and people wonder why Hurd isn't out yet.
The odd thing, though, is that my Emacs manual is for version 18, which was released in 1987. It would seem that they had a flurry of activity, then put it on hold for what turned out to be a very long time.
(Can't say that I've used Emacs in ages. Last time I built it at home, I was running a 386SX-25 with 4 megs of RAM running Linux 0.99pl14 (SLS, installed from 5.25" floppies). Now my home server is a K6-III-450 and my mail server at work is a P!!!-866, each with 256 megs of RAM (LFS on both, the K6-III with Linux 2.4.9 and the P!!! with Linux 2.4.12), but I haven't bothered to build Emacs on either of them. I prefer Joe for text editing nowadays, but I've also built vi (vim, actually) on them. I have one user bitching at me that Emacs isn't installed...if he insists on it, at least there's a brand-new version to try out now.)
For $50 a month, you can generally only get something like 384/128 DSL.
Around here (Las Vegas), that'll get you 512/128 cable-modem with a static IP and no gripes if you run a webserver, mail server, or whatever. Other plans are available starting around $27.
geez, I pay over $100 and only get 512mbps.. Qwest Bites
I honestly hope that you meant kbps. Otherwise, I WOULD BE GLAD TO TAKE THAT SHITTY CONNECTION OFF YOUR HANDS!
<pedantic>
Given that "mbps" is "millibits per second," I too hope "kbps" is what the original poster meant to say. (512 Mbps (megabits per second), on the other hand, would definitely be nothing to complain about.:-) ) </pedantic>
I'm not sure when ms word got the ability to save HTML
Hmm...
...clickety-click...
<html><body>
insert lame-ass content here
</body></html>
Press Alt-F A, call it "foo.html," select "Plain Text (*.txt)" from "save as type," and press Enter. I'd say the ability to save HTML from Word predates HTML or the Web, let alone this patent.
Notepad is less cumbersome, though.:-)
(Insert more smileys for the humor-impaired if necessary.)
I'm waiting on the death of Digital:Convergence to be able to use it without fear of a lawsuit.
For some reason, I'm under the impression that DC has bigger things to worry about right now than whether a geek somewhere is bypassing their lame-ass software to do something that's actually useful with a CueCat.
(FWIW, I never opened the package with the CD. I located a Win2K driver that makes it behave like a normal barcode scanner. It's not a particularly accurate device, though, and attempts I've made at printing barcodes and scanning them back in have been somewhat less than a resounding success...maybe plain paper isn't reflective enough for it. As a result, it mainly sits idle.)
Nowhere on any "CD" that you buy from the music store is there any mention of the fact that what you are buying is, in fact, a CD-ROM. There is no promise that it will conform to the redbook audio standard, or the orange-book, or any other colour of book you would like or expect it to be for that matter.
Umm...actually, if it carries one of the Compact Disc logos, there are some compatibility requirements associated with it. Philips owns those logos and makes them available for use with products (equipment and discs) that comply with the appropriate standards. Here's a quote from page 8 of the Philips Compact Disc Logo Guide, pertaining to the CD-DA (audio CD) logo:
Disc usage: This logo may only be used on discs complying with the CD-DA specification: IEC 60908 and/or the Philips-Sony Compact Disc Digital Audio System Description (also known as the RED Book).
That seems pretty cut-and-dried...if you're violating the Red Book specs to produce a "copy-protected" CD, you can no longer call it a CD (at least you can't use the CD-DA logo on it).
That leaves open the possibility of producing a CD and leaving the logo off of it...there's nothing to stop a label from omitting the CD-DA logo. If they do include the logo on a CD that refuses to play properly, though, they deserve to have their asses sued into oblivion. Not only can you get them for false advertising (calling it an audio CD when it fails to meet specs), but if Philips were so inclined, it could go after them for trademark violation/breach of contract/whatever (there's an agreement you fill out and fax to Philips to get the password to unzip the CD logo collection...been there, done that).
You mentioned problems with WD...while I won't say they've been 100% trouble-free, they have been better than most as far as IDE hard drives go. Three 5.1GB Maxtors in a row failed on me after 1-3 months each; the 5.1GB Western Digital that replaced the last of 'em is still going. I've had good luck with Quantum as well...but they got bought out by Maxtor, so they're no longer an option. For SCSI drives, Seagate and IBM are fairly decent.
As far as returns go when something does go wrong, I've dealt with WD, Maxtor, Quantum, and Seagate. I've had no problems with any of them...give them a call or go to their website, get an RMA, pack the drive properly (tossing the drive in a baggie and then into a Priority Mail box doesn't count...I've received drives that were shipped that way, and they were DOA), send it in, and wait a week or two for a new drive to be shipped out. On a couple of occasions, I've gotten back bigger drives than I sent in. Still, it would be better to not have to put the manufacturer's customer service to the test.
FWIW, the only SCSI drive that's ever failed on me was a refurbed 40MB Conner that I bought for my Apple IIe back in '91, and it took eight or nine years to conk out. There would appear to be at least a grain of truth to the increased reliability of SCSI drives. It's just a pain that they're so much more expensive (gotta factor in the cost of the controller, too). The machines in which I have SCSI drives (an Apple II and a Mac) have them because that's all they support (or used to support...while my Quadra 610 is still SCSI-only, I could replace the caching SCSI controller in my IIGS with an IDE controller).
(For the crack-addict moderators who thought my opinion of Maxtor was a troll...WTF?)
Bah, CloneCD will do let you make copies without a hitch.
I've run across one CD (the newest one from Staind) that CloneCD didn't like. EAC, however, ripped it with no problem. It'll rip to WAV (uncompressed or compressed with your choice of codec) or MP3 (it can use the LAME DLL or any command-line MP3 encoder). EAC combined with LAME kicks ass...the best ripper and the best encoder.
(I can't say that it'll work for everything, though...that's the only CD I've run across yet that threatened to be unrippable.)
Pair Networks is swapping out every IBM 75GXP hard drive they have "[b]ased on an amazingly high failure rate." Pair is a big host: 114,000 sites all running on FreeBSD 4.1.1, including cdrom.com and Tom's Hardware. "We currently use and recommend Maxtor drives" they say. Big black eye for IBM.
Let me see if I have this right...they're concerned their IBM hard drives might go south, so they're replacing them with Maxtors? If I were into the use of "recreational" drugs (which I'm not), I'd ask for some of whatever they're smoking as it must be powerful stuff. I predict that we'll see a follow-up story in three months' time about all the Maxtor drives that have gone tango-uniform being replaced with yet another drive. I've had far too many Maxtor hard drives conk out within the first three months to trust workstations to them. Putting them in servers, especially servers running high-volume websites, is sheer madness.
Slashdot Mirror
Having to form a corporation (or some other business structure) raises the bar for getting a digital certificate from these clowns slightly, but not by much. It's probably not a bad idea anyway...if $MEGACORP decides it doesn't like your software/website/whatever, they go after your corporation instead of you personally. If you defeat them on their terms, great. If not, at least you aren't wiped out.
I would guess that, in addition to its worm-propagating capabilities, IIS has something that serves the same function as the example above.
Hmm...gonna have to fire up the Mac when I get home to see what it does now...
Things could get interesting if they try to get into the router now, of course...:-)
The odd thing, though, is that my Emacs manual is for version 18, which was released in 1987. It would seem that they had a flurry of activity, then put it on hold for what turned out to be a very long time.
(Can't say that I've used Emacs in ages. Last time I built it at home, I was running a 386SX-25 with 4 megs of RAM running Linux 0.99pl14 (SLS, installed from 5.25" floppies). Now my home server is a K6-III-450 and my mail server at work is a P!!!-866, each with 256 megs of RAM (LFS on both, the K6-III with Linux 2.4.9 and the P!!! with Linux 2.4.12), but I haven't bothered to build Emacs on either of them. I prefer Joe for text editing nowadays, but I've also built vi (vim, actually) on them. I have one user bitching at me that Emacs isn't installed...if he insists on it, at least there's a brand-new version to try out now.)
Given that "mbps" is "millibits per second," I too hope "kbps" is what the original poster meant to say. (512 Mbps (megabits per second), on the other hand, would definitely be nothing to complain about.
</pedantic>
<html><body>
insert lame-ass content here
</body></html>
Press Alt-F A, call it "foo.html," select "Plain Text (*.txt)" from "save as type," and press Enter. I'd say the ability to save HTML from Word predates HTML or the Web, let alone this patent.
Notepad is less cumbersome, though. :-)
(Insert more smileys for the humor-impaired if necessary.)
(FWIW, I never opened the package with the CD. I located a Win2K driver that makes it behave like a normal barcode scanner. It's not a particularly accurate device, though, and attempts I've made at printing barcodes and scanning them back in have been somewhat less than a resounding success...maybe plain paper isn't reflective enough for it. As a result, it mainly sits idle.)
That leaves open the possibility of producing a CD and leaving the logo off of it...there's nothing to stop a label from omitting the CD-DA logo. If they do include the logo on a CD that refuses to play properly, though, they deserve to have their asses sued into oblivion. Not only can you get them for false advertising (calling it an audio CD when it fails to meet specs), but if Philips were so inclined, it could go after them for trademark violation/breach of contract/whatever (there's an agreement you fill out and fax to Philips to get the password to unzip the CD logo collection...been there, done that).
As far as returns go when something does go wrong, I've dealt with WD, Maxtor, Quantum, and Seagate. I've had no problems with any of them...give them a call or go to their website, get an RMA, pack the drive properly (tossing the drive in a baggie and then into a Priority Mail box doesn't count...I've received drives that were shipped that way, and they were DOA), send it in, and wait a week or two for a new drive to be shipped out. On a couple of occasions, I've gotten back bigger drives than I sent in. Still, it would be better to not have to put the manufacturer's customer service to the test.
FWIW, the only SCSI drive that's ever failed on me was a refurbed 40MB Conner that I bought for my Apple IIe back in '91, and it took eight or nine years to conk out. There would appear to be at least a grain of truth to the increased reliability of SCSI drives. It's just a pain that they're so much more expensive (gotta factor in the cost of the controller, too). The machines in which I have SCSI drives (an Apple II and a Mac) have them because that's all they support (or used to support...while my Quadra 610 is still SCSI-only, I could replace the caching SCSI controller in my IIGS with an IDE controller).
(For the crack-addict moderators who thought my opinion of Maxtor was a troll...WTF?)
(I can't say that it'll work for everything, though...that's the only CD I've run across yet that threatened to be unrippable.)