This article says the 2GHz processor for dual-processor servers
has been cancelled, but then goes on to say that a 2GHz processor for
dual-processor workstations is coming "in September" (though
they don't say of which year). In this context, what's the difference? I'm
assuming it's onboard cache or something similar, but I'd love to
know.
Re:Disturbing development in US news stream.
on
Handling the Loads
·
· Score: 2
That was more likely to be your local cable system's
choice than that of the government. I've got about
150 channels (love that digital cable box), and
most of the ones that were off-air (i.e. their
transmitters dropped 1500 feet) were, at least here,
running simulcasts of CNN or MSNBC. (The religious
channels, oddly enough, are all local, and they
just kept right on with their preaching, not
breaking the network, presumably because they're
all run from a glorified TiVo box in someone's basement.:)
The WoW FAQ is somewhat less than informative...
For what platforms will the game be available?
The game will initially be available for PCs.
Wow, that helps. They do forget that not all the world's a Windows box, don't they? Where's the (Linux/BeOS/*BSD/QNX/other-fave-thing-that-runs-on -PC-hardware) port?
You missed the best part (not directly related to money, but still darn funny nonetheless):
34,035 people voted, which is approximately 1/100ths of a percent of a projected potential electorate, raising questions of whether the
election met the popular democratic standards upon which it was based
They're worried whether ICANN in its current form is adequately representing their constituency (domain owners), and yet simultaneously they're planning to make it even harder to participate.
I'm a domain owner; I've got three or four of 'em. Domain names are ten bucks a year, so that's not a big deal. Anyone want to take bets on how many zeroes will be at the end of this At-Large membership fee? I've got a quarter that says it'll be more zeroes than I can muster.
Nope, it's definitely getting worse. Another 15 hits in the past hour (since I put up a l'il script to log them separately, and to attempt to email the responsible parties).
Something that should perhaps be part of another thread: For each attack, I'm now sending out one email, to [webmaster && postmaster]@[domain]. Is this actually a good/ethical idea? Under the circumstances, I'm hoping it won't be interpreted as spam. The text of the email is, roughly:
From: (my email address)
To: (as above)
Subject: You are afflicted with Code Red or a variant!
Your machine, at IP address (blah), appears to be infected with the Code Red virus. Information on how to fix this system vulnerability is at (url that I don't remember right now).
Thank you. ...dave
I just pulled out the logs from the home Web server on a 24.x.x.x cable modem (which never really does anything but redirect people to my real Web server). The original tried to attack my Apache web server about a dozen times over three days; this one, over the past four days, has tried over 200 attacks.
So, will this be traditional dialup UUCP, or UUCP-over-TCP/IP? If the latter, sign me up; I *still* use UUCP for my backup mail feed, and have been using it since about 1996. (Yeah, right as things like UUCP became unfashionable. Go figure.)
So what is the definition of "classic machine" in this context? I'd love to play along, but I suspect I'll have a devil of a time finding a VAX these days:-)
It just seems a little silly to me, in some way I'm having trouble articulating precisely -- "here's some free software, but you have to use our proprietary platform to even look at it."
The extra time it would've taken to provide both a zip file, and the self-extracting EXE, is minimal, and would've been a nice gesture on their part. (If they still make NT for Alpha and other non-x86 platforms, chances are they're just as hosed as the Linux users, so it's not just a "Linux geeks" problem.)
Even if you do download it, you're still stuck with an EXE file that (presumably) isn't terribly useful on non-Windows platforms. Why they couldn't just use a nice, platform-independent archive format like tar/gz or zip or something I'll never know.
Why wait for Google to find it, just so you can read the essay in plain text? Don't! Here it is already. And since the Web server seemed a bit sluggish, perhaps in anticipation of the/. Effect, here's a mirror of the PDF original. Enjoy.
It came with a DVD-ROM, so...
on
Indrema No More
·
· Score: 3
... if they wanted to go out with a real bang, they could take whatever work they'd done on the DVD player capabilities and release it. It's bound to be better than the currently-available options (Xine and OMS), and it's certainly better than the vaporware that's out there (alleged releases from InterVideo and Cyberlink).
Heck, it could even be made into an actual product, if anyone's left to develop it. I'd buy the bloody thing...
There are a number of projects out there that use collab.net software, or are "powered by collab.net" (whatever that means), or so on. What will become of them?
The biggest one I can think of is OpenOffice, which has a little tiny "powered by collab.net" logo at the bottom of the front page. Since this one's on Sun's bankroll (more or less) it'll likely continue, but what about the rest of 'em?
The problem isn't the violence per se. The problem is lazy parents that
use television as babysitting.
Yes, it's been done for a while. But most of us grew up with Looney Toons.
Sure, it's violence, but it's blatantly obvious that it's FUNNY violence.
Not many of us can easily get our hands on an anvil, or 482 sticks of
dynamite, or any of the various implements used in these classic 'toons.
So even the dullest of young minds can (usually) sort out that this isn't
something to try at home -- if for no other reason than it'd be
impossible.
Many anime cartoons are more realistic -- at least as realistic as any of
these things can be, at least. There are sci-fi or fantasy elements, but
the characters are clearly human. Witness Gene Starwind (the guy from
"Outlaw Star") carrying something that looks suspiciously like a sawed-off
shotgun, or Son Gohan wielding nothing but a broken arm and gallons of chi
energy.
Anthropomorphizing the violence doesn't make it go away, though. Surely,
at some point, someone's tried falling off a cliff with nothing but an
umbrella for protection...
Where is all this going, then? Right where it should: back to the
parents.
It doesn't matter how busy your job is, nor how many sadistic demands your
bosses place on your time. You will make time for your kids.
Maybe sit down with 'em, watch a few of their favorite shows. Not only are
they occasionally more entertaining than this dope from the New York Times
gives them credit for, but you'll know what you're up against as a
parent.
And if you can't make time for this, you might need to give your life
priorities a serious re-think.
Everyone and their distant cousin is in the business
of trying to improve on MP3, it seems. The Ogg Vorbis
format claims to do roughly the same thing -- provide
better-sounding music, while taking less disk space.
Vorbis is GPL/LGPL too, which is a definite plus to many geeks:)
Everyone.net has a pretty nice system, though (as with most of 'em) it could use some improvement.
Pro: You sign up, send in a tax form (if based in.us), add a bit of cut-and-paste HTML, and you're off. Couldn't be simpler. You'll start racking up ad impressions within a couple hours.
Con: So-so pay rates. Over the short time (a couple months) I've been using their service, it's averaged out to maybe 6 CPM (cents per 1000 ads displayed). And their ad-fu uses JavaScript. Also, I don't think you can run ads on multiple domain names through one account (I signed up for ads on Bureau 42, and thought I'd add
the ads to my personal site, but I get mostly broken-image links on the latter.
If you want a fairly short-term solution, though, while you look for something better or set up your own ad software, it's hard to go wrong here.
Granted, this page is hosted on microsoft.com, but it doesn't explicitly say anything nearly as bad as what the/. article implies.
(Yeah, this piece of stunning MS prose implies a whole lot, but that's a different piece of cake altogether.
From an OEM standpoint, this makes sense (though any OEM or retailer that doesn't already know this stuff shouldn't be in the business). Buying a computer without an OS is, for many (most?) customers, kinda useless. Then again, any biz worthy of the name should know about Linux and BeOS and *BSD and all those other toys anyway.
As much as I hate to admit it, from a business standpoint, there are even a couple GOOD ideas.
Warn customers that acquiring the PC "naked" and subsequently pirating the software is never a good option. Explain the risks: technical troubles, upgrade problems, viruses and the law.
Sound practice, that. If the customer says, "No, I'm not pirating anything, I'm putting Linux on that machine," the retailer has done their part. They've done just about everything they can legally do, short of refusing the sale. And if they won't sell you a so-called naked PC, the guy down the street probably will...
(The whole discussion of whether it's a retailer's job to act as unpaid agents for the anti-piracy faction is better left elsewhere.)
Recently, TiVo (they make one of those nifty set-top, hard-disk based recorders) announced that they don't really care if end-users crack open their units and play around (installing new hard drives, etc.)
Give the size constraints of the Indrema, you might not be able to leave lots of empty space for future expansion. But how much hardware modification will be possible, for those inclined toward such things? Will it be possible to buy a unit with a smaller hard drive, then upgrade later with an off-the-shelf unit? (Corollary: We will be able to download OS patches, right?:)
An (admittedly cursory) glance at bordercontrol.com suggests that the bulk of their screening is done based solely on a user's IP address. Even that database is probably fallible, but that's beside the point.
You can tunnel your request through a host in another country via SSH. You can use proxies for Web stuff. All you need to do is to find someone who'll let you use their box for this -- it'll probably be on a fairly small scale, as bandwidth isn't always cheap. (I've a friend in Vancouver who'd probably be quite glad to let me use his DSL line for this.:)
And it'll be hard as $PROFANITY to stop this -- how can they know that my bud isn't actually using the service himself, as opposed to routing traffic down to me in Missouri? And even if they get all draconian on us and start blocking individual users, I've got other friends in other jurisdictions...
This is not gonna work. Sorry, JumpTV, you'd better skip down to live 5 of your business plan ("take the money we made from naive investors on our IPO and buy a small island named after some dead French saint") real quick-like.
I'll admit that I have not yet downloaded this
package (and I probably won't, because a portable MP3 player does nothing for me, but...
It just happens to use Linux as its core, but the actual internals may very well be proprietary. (The file manager, MP3 decoder, etc.) If these bits are in fact Compaq-proprietary, they're permitted to use whatever license they please (including the ugly abomination they're using here). The GPL would only cover the Linux kernel itself in this case, and I think we all know where to get that.
I'm willing to bet that either:
It's proprietary software, and Compaq can do this, or
It's a standard template of lawyer-ese, and giving them a stern talking-to will clear this right up.
Let's not always leap to conclusions, summoning dark demons, creatures of unmitigated hatred, and RMS, every time something like this happens. More often than not, it's just legitimate misunderstanding.
Feel free to click through if you like -- I'll even duplicate the link here -- but there's no relevant content there. It's just a really cool name that conveniently reflects my philosophy.
To me, technology and (stereotypically Pagan) mysticism are a natural combination. Many Pagans believe, simply, in working to make the world a better place. Yeah it's a blatant cliche, but I freely admit to being an idealist.
I dream (and yes, I really do have dreams about this!) of a world where people are taken as people, and that is all. Maybe a touch of meritocracy, but where all of us realize the inherent equality of one another, and each of respects the rights and ideas of the rest.
To my mind, one of the major stumbling blocks in this idea(l) is the fact that most of us don't communicate well with one another. We get lost in the moment. (When was the last time you called your mother, by the way?) We get hung up on different eye colour, different skin colour, different religious preferences (both in interpretation of $DEITY and that whole KDE/Gnome debacle). We talk, we listen sometimes, but we rarely understand.
(Insert standard "Internet shattering communicative and cultural barriers" speech here.)
Slashdot Mirror
This article says the 2GHz processor for dual-processor servers has been cancelled, but then goes on to say that a 2GHz processor for dual-processor workstations is coming "in September" (though they don't say of which year). In this context, what's the difference? I'm assuming it's onboard cache or something similar, but I'd love to know.
That was more likely to be your local cable system's :)
choice than that of the government. I've got about
150 channels (love that digital cable box), and
most of the ones that were off-air (i.e. their
transmitters dropped 1500 feet) were, at least here,
running simulcasts of CNN or MSNBC. (The religious
channels, oddly enough, are all local, and they
just kept right on with their preaching, not
breaking the network, presumably because they're
all run from a glorified TiVo box in someone's basement.
The WoW FAQ is somewhat less than informative...n -PC-hardware) port?
For what platforms will the game be available?
The game will initially be available for PCs.
Wow, that helps. They do forget that not all the world's a Windows box, don't they? Where's the (Linux/BeOS/*BSD/QNX/other-fave-thing-that-runs-o
34,035 people voted, which is approximately 1/100ths of a percent of a projected potential electorate, raising questions of whether the election met the popular democratic standards upon which it was based
They're worried whether ICANN in its current form is adequately representing their constituency (domain owners), and yet simultaneously they're planning to make it even harder to participate.
I'm a domain owner; I've got three or four of 'em. Domain names are ten bucks a year, so that's not a big deal. Anyone want to take bets on how many zeroes will be at the end of this At-Large membership fee? I've got a quarter that says it'll be more zeroes than I can muster.
Something that should perhaps be part of another thread: For each attack, I'm now sending out one email, to [webmaster && postmaster]@[domain]. Is this actually a good/ethical idea? Under the circumstances, I'm hoping it won't be interpreted as spam. The text of the email is, roughly:
From: (my email address)
...dave
To: (as above)
Subject: You are afflicted with Code Red or a variant!
Your machine, at IP address (blah), appears to be infected with the Code Red virus. Information on how to fix this system vulnerability is at (url that I don't remember right now).
Thank you.
So what is the definition of "classic machine" in this context? I'd love to play along, but I suspect I'll have a devil of a time finding a VAX these days :-)
The extra time it would've taken to provide both a zip file, and the self-extracting EXE, is minimal, and would've been a nice gesture on their part. (If they still make NT for Alpha and other non-x86 platforms, chances are they're just as hosed as the Linux users, so it's not just a "Linux geeks" problem.)
Oh, wait, it's Microsoft. Guess I do know.
Anyway, anyone planning to drop this baby on SourceForge and port it to Linux?
Because the Slashdot Effect is so good, I want some!
http://www.technopagan.org/echo/rfc3098.txt
Why wait for Google to find it, just so you can read the essay in plain text? Don't! Here it is already. And since the Web server seemed a bit sluggish, perhaps in anticipation of the /. Effect, here's a mirror of the PDF original. Enjoy.
Heck, it could even be made into an actual product, if anyone's left to develop it. I'd buy the bloody thing...
The biggest one I can think of is OpenOffice, which has a little tiny "powered by collab.net" logo at the bottom of the front page. Since this one's on Sun's bankroll (more or less) it'll likely continue, but what about the rest of 'em?
And then, as the rest of their April Fools joke, they'll down it in Siberia by accident.
Yes, it's been done for a while. But most of us grew up with Looney Toons. Sure, it's violence, but it's blatantly obvious that it's FUNNY violence. Not many of us can easily get our hands on an anvil, or 482 sticks of dynamite, or any of the various implements used in these classic 'toons. So even the dullest of young minds can (usually) sort out that this isn't something to try at home -- if for no other reason than it'd be impossible.
Many anime cartoons are more realistic -- at least as realistic as any of these things can be, at least. There are sci-fi or fantasy elements, but the characters are clearly human. Witness Gene Starwind (the guy from "Outlaw Star") carrying something that looks suspiciously like a sawed-off shotgun, or Son Gohan wielding nothing but a broken arm and gallons of chi energy.
Anthropomorphizing the violence doesn't make it go away, though. Surely, at some point, someone's tried falling off a cliff with nothing but an umbrella for protection...
Where is all this going, then? Right where it should: back to the parents.
It doesn't matter how busy your job is, nor how many sadistic demands your bosses place on your time. You will make time for your kids. Maybe sit down with 'em, watch a few of their favorite shows. Not only are they occasionally more entertaining than this dope from the New York Times gives them credit for, but you'll know what you're up against as a parent.
And if you can't make time for this, you might need to give your life priorities a serious re-think.
Vorbis is GPL/LGPL too, which is a definite plus to many geeks :)
Pro: You sign up, send in a tax form (if based in .us), add a bit of cut-and-paste HTML, and you're off. Couldn't be simpler. You'll start racking up ad impressions within a couple hours.
Con: So-so pay rates. Over the short time (a couple months) I've been using their service, it's averaged out to maybe 6 CPM (cents per 1000 ads displayed). And their ad-fu uses JavaScript. Also, I don't think you can run ads on multiple domain names through one account (I signed up for ads on Bureau 42, and thought I'd add the ads to my personal site, but I get mostly broken-image links on the latter.
If you want a fairly short-term solution, though, while you look for something better or set up your own ad software, it's hard to go wrong here.
(Yeah, this piece of stunning MS prose implies a whole lot, but that's a different piece of cake altogether.
From an OEM standpoint, this makes sense (though any OEM or retailer that doesn't already know this stuff shouldn't be in the business). Buying a computer without an OS is, for many (most?) customers, kinda useless. Then again, any biz worthy of the name should know about Linux and BeOS and *BSD and all those other toys anyway.
As much as I hate to admit it, from a business standpoint, there are even a couple GOOD ideas.
Sound practice, that. If the customer says, "No, I'm not pirating anything, I'm putting Linux on that machine," the retailer has done their part. They've done just about everything they can legally do, short of refusing the sale. And if they won't sell you a so-called naked PC, the guy down the street probably will...(The whole discussion of whether it's a retailer's job to act as unpaid agents for the anti-piracy faction is better left elsewhere.)
Hey, my bad. :-) I just wanted to have that info in the question, in the (highly unlikely) even that the TiVo name didn't ring a bell with Gildred.
Give the size constraints of the Indrema, you might not be able to leave lots of empty space for future expansion. But how much hardware modification will be possible, for those inclined toward such things? Will it be possible to buy a unit with a smaller hard drive, then upgrade later with an off-the-shelf unit? (Corollary: We will be able to download OS patches, right? :)
An (admittedly cursory) glance at bordercontrol.com suggests that the bulk of their screening is done based solely on a user's IP address. Even that database is probably fallible, but that's beside the point.
You can tunnel your request through a host in another country via SSH. You can use proxies for Web stuff. All you need to do is to find someone who'll let you use their box for this -- it'll probably be on a fairly small scale, as bandwidth isn't always cheap. (I've a friend in Vancouver who'd probably be quite glad to let me use his DSL line for this. :)
And it'll be hard as $PROFANITY to stop this -- how can they know that my bud isn't actually using the service himself, as opposed to routing traffic down to me in Missouri? And even if they get all draconian on us and start blocking individual users, I've got other friends in other jurisdictions...
This is not gonna work. Sorry, JumpTV, you'd better skip down to live 5 of your business plan ("take the money we made from naive investors on our IPO and buy a small island named after some dead French saint") real quick-like.
It just happens to use Linux as its core, but the actual internals may very well be proprietary. (The file manager, MP3 decoder, etc.) If these bits are in fact Compaq-proprietary, they're permitted to use whatever license they please (including the ugly abomination they're using here). The GPL would only cover the Linux kernel itself in this case, and I think we all know where to get that. I'm willing to bet that either:
Let's not always leap to conclusions, summoning dark demons, creatures of unmitigated hatred, and RMS, every time something like this happens. More often than not, it's just legitimate misunderstanding.
To me, technology and (stereotypically Pagan) mysticism are a natural combination. Many Pagans believe, simply, in working to make the world a better place. Yeah it's a blatant cliche, but I freely admit to being an idealist.
I dream (and yes, I really do have dreams about this!) of a world where people are taken as people, and that is all. Maybe a touch of meritocracy, but where all of us realize the inherent equality of one another, and each of respects the rights and ideas of the rest.
To my mind, one of the major stumbling blocks in this idea(l) is the fact that most of us don't communicate well with one another. We get lost in the moment. (When was the last time you called your mother, by the way?) We get hung up on different eye colour, different skin colour, different religious preferences (both in interpretation of $DEITY and that whole KDE/Gnome debacle). We talk, we listen sometimes, but we rarely understand.
(Insert standard "Internet shattering communicative and cultural barriers" speech here.)