The 10 million zombies may be worth much more than $250k to the person that controls them, but they are worth nothing to the guy that lives down the hall from the person that controls them, so he might be quite happy to pick up the money if he knows something.
On a related note, I've always wondered if drives cache data from unrequested blocks that the head hovers over. If they do, that would be an example where the drive cache isn't made redundant by the OS caching requested blocks in system RAM.
To be more explicit, suppose a large file is written to disk, and the disk isn't fragmented, so the blocks are fairly contiguous when written. When reading that file back in, suppose our program reads a chunk of data, does some processing on it, then reads the next chunk, etc. While it is processing a chunk, the disk continues to spin, so the head is no longer positioned over the next chunk when it is requested. In the worst case the program must wait for the disk to do almost a full revolution before the next chunk can be read, unless the drive caches the blocks the head is hovering over in anticipation of them probably being requested sometime soon. Do drives do that?
If drives don't cache that way, it seems it would behoove programmers to read data into a large buffer before processing, rather than interleaving processing with small reads.
You might want to try MSYS. It provides a shell, a handful of common Unix commands, and it translates path names so you can type "/c/Program Files/" instead of "C:\Program Files\". It allows me to cry a lot less when I have to use Windows.
From what I remember, they had just found the IP address of a suspect and wanted to find his location. Not exactly the time to embark on an unnecessary software development project -- just get the answer and find the bad guy before he moves. Also, the person writing the GUI was not a developer, but rather a scientist involved in the investigation. It gave the impression that they thought "a GUI is the thing we need to get the answer," rather than "someone ought to write a GUI to make this easier in the future."
Do you find the idea of creating a "gui interface using visual basic" to see about tracking an ip address as more fit for a sitcom rather than crime drama?
In case you were wondering, that happened in CSI NY recently. Truly cringe-worthy.
I believe that only persons who are A) salaried, and B) managing other people are exempt from overtime pay. This is set at the federal level by the Fair Labor and Standards Act
It's a bit more complicated than just (A) and (B), and states can override FLSA. This document about Pennsylvania (I don't know if it is current) says "In order for an employee in Pennsylvania to be exempt from overtime, he or she must be exempt under both the federal FLSA and Pennsylvania state law."
Apparently you hadn't noticed, this whole conversation is primarily applicable to salaried workers, not hourly employees.
In Pennsylvania, salaried vs. hourly has no impact (as far as I know - IANAL) on obligation to pay overtime. In fact, you'll find mentions of minimum salary here, which implies that salaried employees below the minimum are not exempt from overtime pay.
I don't think that's a state thing either; I'm not 100% sure but are there any states that doesn't require overtime pay beyond 40 hours for non-exempt employees?
Even if all states require overtime pay beyond 40 hours, that doesn't mean that they all have the same rules about pushing hours from one week to another.
For both of my companies you work 9 hours a day except the friday you work you only work 8 hours. Then you get every other friday off.
Is this even legal in most states (without paying overtime)? I could be wrong, but I believe in Pennsylvania you can't push hours from one week to another. If an employee works more than 40 hours in a week, you have to pay overtime for the extra hours -- you can't offset them with fewer hours in another week. Of course, certain job functions are exempt from overtime (e.g. computer programmers and management).
Well, I did put quotes around it for a reason. Anyway, to a lot of desktop users, not being able to view Youtube videos or flash-only sites is a deal-breaker. Personally, I don't care for Flash and I keep it turned off almost always, but I'm in the minority.
I think you are missing the point. My comment relates back to the "...Flash on Linux is the one major entry barrier controlling acceptance of Linux as a viable desktop operating system..." statement in the original summary.
To be a "viable desktop operating system" it needs to be able to provide functionality that average desktop users demand on some hardware, not on all hardware. If it can't provide required functionality on any hardware at all, it's game over -- manufacturers are going to be very reluctant to ship computers with Linux pre-installed instead of Windows, since buyers will find the computer to be inadequate.
Being able to run on all hardware is nice, and may speed adoption and grow the potential userbase, but it isn't required for viability. Apple's OSX doesn't run on all hardware (as far as I know), and I don't hear anyone claiming it isn't a viable desktop OS because of that.
Poor Flash is the one major barrier? Pah - there are a number of more pressing issues, like poor wireless support...
Hardware problems are annoying, but they are fundamentally different from the problem of "critical" software being broken or unavailable. A computer manufacturer that wants to ship computers with Linux pre-loaded, instead of Windows, can pick Linux-friendly hardware to work around the hardware problems. There is no work-around for Flash being crap.
I'd use KDE happily & lovingly if only I could disable the damn "tap-to-click" on my trackpad!
Isn't that an X-Windows problem, rather than a KDE problem? Anyway, here are the notes that I jotted down last time I dealt with it (not sure where I got my info):
Edit/etc/X11/xorg.conf to turn off conversion of a tap on the touchpad into a left mouse click (begs for accidents):
Option "TapButton" "0"
Option "MaxTapMove" "0"
Option "MaxTapTime" "0" Note that some people recommend also doing:
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "0"
I was searching for an uncommon sailboat and there were 0 pages returned. Google returns results for the same query.
They seem to have a bug where they sometimes return empty results for a search term where they have indexed pages containing the term. I got empty results for "Clustify", but then it worked fine later when I tried again. I also get empty results when searching for my name, even though my name appears in the their description of pages returned for other search queries like "about Hot Neuron".
Cuil has some weird bugs. I searched for my name, found a link to a Gallery page I have about my son's birth earlier this year, and they have a little thumbnail icon next to the search result for that. But it's a random map of the United States completely unrelated to the page it links to. Bizarre.
Consider yourself lucky. I did a search for my name and it found nothing at all, which is surprising since they've indexed several pages that contain my name.
What possesses people (Reuters) to use JavaScript for the next-page links in articles? It breaks opening the link in a separate tab, it breaks the link for anyone that has JavaScript disabled, and it keeps search engines from following the link. I realize this is off-topic, but is there some benefit to this that I'm not seeing?
On the one hand, this may reduce the amount of spam coming from bots on Time Warner's network, since people may be more concerned about securing their computers if they get billed for the bandwidth for the spam they are sending. On the other hand, getting billed for the bandwidth to receive spam sucks since the receiver has no control over it.
Real-time quotes are nice, but if they really want to leap over finance.yahoo.com they need to add an option to their charts to graph "growth of $10,000 investment" or "adjusted price (reinvested dividends)." Both Yahoo and Google only graph price, which means that the graph gaps down when a dividend or capital gain is paid out, but the drop has no economic significance -- the price drop represents money that was paid to the shareholder, not money that was lost. This is especially significant for mutual funds, which can have very large capital gains payouts (e.g. 20%), typically around the end of the year.
For example, look at the 1-year or 5-year chart for MVALX. The huge drops every December are misleading -- they represent money that was returned to the shareholder (or reinvested), not money that was lost. Quicken.com got this right a decade ago when they offered stock charts, so why can't Google or Yahoo get it right?
According to a different review: "Netflix is planning HD streaming, and this box will support it. When Netflix gets HD streaming content, they'll update the box by firmware to support HD resolutions at higher bitrates of 4-6mbps, including 5.1 surround"
More sales doesn't necessarily mean more profits if those sales are achieved by lowering margins to a point where they need to sell 20 items to make the same as they currently do from one (meaning they _have_ to sell 20x as many, and also cope with 20x the support calls, carry 20x the inventory, etc.) or in the case of a company with a reputation for quality, by cutting corners in ways that result in an inferior product. True over the short term, but perhaps not the long term. Market share matters more for computers than for other things. If you have more market share, more people write software for your OS, which increases demand for your computers. Take that far enough, and it becomes difficult for people to buy anyone else's computers even if they want to -- the position Microsoft is in right now. Also, it is possible to target lower price points by reducing features rather than quality.
Slashdot Mirror
pants = British for rubbish
10 million zombie PC's are worth more than $250K
The 10 million zombies may be worth much more than $250k to the person that controls them, but they are worth nothing to the guy that lives down the hall from the person that controls them, so he might be quite happy to pick up the money if he knows something.
On a related note, I've always wondered if drives cache data from unrequested blocks that the head hovers over. If they do, that would be an example where the drive cache isn't made redundant by the OS caching requested blocks in system RAM.
To be more explicit, suppose a large file is written to disk, and the disk isn't fragmented, so the blocks are fairly contiguous when written. When reading that file back in, suppose our program reads a chunk of data, does some processing on it, then reads the next chunk, etc. While it is processing a chunk, the disk continues to spin, so the head is no longer positioned over the next chunk when it is requested. In the worst case the program must wait for the disk to do almost a full revolution before the next chunk can be read, unless the drive caches the blocks the head is hovering over in anticipation of them probably being requested sometime soon. Do drives do that?
If drives don't cache that way, it seems it would behoove programmers to read data into a large buffer before processing, rather than interleaving processing with small reads.
You might want to try MSYS. It provides a shell, a handful of common Unix commands, and it translates path names so you can type "/c/Program Files/" instead of "C:\Program Files\". It allows me to cry a lot less when I have to use Windows.
From what I remember, they had just found the IP address of a suspect and wanted to find his location. Not exactly the time to embark on an unnecessary software development project -- just get the answer and find the bad guy before he moves. Also, the person writing the GUI was not a developer, but rather a scientist involved in the investigation. It gave the impression that they thought "a GUI is the thing we need to get the answer," rather than "someone ought to write a GUI to make this easier in the future."
My guess is that's why it was mentioned.
I assume so. I just thought it was odd that the poster danced around exactly which show did it ("crime drama").
Do you find the idea of creating a "gui interface using visual basic" to see about tracking an ip address as more fit for a sitcom rather than crime drama?
In case you were wondering, that happened in CSI NY recently. Truly cringe-worthy.
The Windows computer was busy downloading malware or sending spam in the background, so it didn't have much bandwidth available.
I believe that only persons who are A) salaried, and B) managing other people are exempt from overtime pay. This is set at the federal level by the Fair Labor and Standards Act
It's a bit more complicated than just (A) and (B), and states can override FLSA. This document about Pennsylvania (I don't know if it is current) says "In order for an employee in Pennsylvania to be exempt from overtime, he or she must be exempt under both the federal FLSA and Pennsylvania state law."
Apparently you hadn't noticed, this whole conversation is primarily applicable to salaried workers, not hourly employees.
In Pennsylvania, salaried vs. hourly has no impact (as far as I know - IANAL) on obligation to pay overtime. In fact, you'll find mentions of minimum salary here, which implies that salaried employees below the minimum are not exempt from overtime pay.
I don't think that's a state thing either; I'm not 100% sure but are there any states that doesn't require overtime pay beyond 40 hours for non-exempt employees?
Even if all states require overtime pay beyond 40 hours, that doesn't mean that they all have the same rules about pushing hours from one week to another.
For both of my companies you work 9 hours a day except the friday you work you only work 8 hours. Then you get every other friday off.
Is this even legal in most states (without paying overtime)? I could be wrong, but I believe in Pennsylvania you can't push hours from one week to another. If an employee works more than 40 hours in a week, you have to pay overtime for the extra hours -- you can't offset them with fewer hours in another week. Of course, certain job functions are exempt from overtime (e.g. computer programmers and management).
Wikipedia gives some xargs examples.
Nothing too spectacular, but:
Go back to the previous directory:
cd -
Reverse lines from a file:
tac
And, of course, xargs, which is almost infinitely useful.
How in the world is Flash "critical"?
Well, I did put quotes around it for a reason. Anyway, to a lot of desktop users, not being able to view Youtube videos or flash-only sites is a deal-breaker. Personally, I don't care for Flash and I keep it turned off almost always, but I'm in the minority.
I think you are missing the point. My comment relates back to the "...Flash on Linux is the one major entry barrier controlling acceptance of Linux as a viable desktop operating system..." statement in the original summary.
To be a "viable desktop operating system" it needs to be able to provide functionality that average desktop users demand on some hardware, not on all hardware. If it can't provide required functionality on any hardware at all, it's game over -- manufacturers are going to be very reluctant to ship computers with Linux pre-installed instead of Windows, since buyers will find the computer to be inadequate.
Being able to run on all hardware is nice, and may speed adoption and grow the potential userbase, but it isn't required for viability. Apple's OSX doesn't run on all hardware (as far as I know), and I don't hear anyone claiming it isn't a viable desktop OS because of that.
Poor Flash is the one major barrier? Pah - there are a number of more pressing issues, like poor wireless support...
Hardware problems are annoying, but they are fundamentally different from the problem of "critical" software being broken or unavailable. A computer manufacturer that wants to ship computers with Linux pre-loaded, instead of Windows, can pick Linux-friendly hardware to work around the hardware problems. There is no work-around for Flash being crap.
I'd use KDE happily & lovingly if only I could disable the damn "tap-to-click" on my trackpad!
Isn't that an X-Windows problem, rather than a KDE problem? Anyway, here are the notes that I jotted down last time I dealt with it (not sure where I got my info):
Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf to turn off conversion of a tap on the
touchpad into a left mouse click (begs for accidents):
Option "TapButton" "0"
Option "MaxTapMove" "0"
Option "MaxTapTime" "0"
Note that some people recommend also doing:
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "0"
I was searching for an uncommon sailboat and there were 0 pages returned. Google returns results for the same query.
They seem to have a bug where they sometimes return empty results for a search term where they have indexed pages containing the term. I got empty results for "Clustify", but then it worked fine later when I tried again. I also get empty results when searching for my name, even though my name appears in the their description of pages returned for other search queries like "about Hot Neuron".
Cuil has some weird bugs. I searched for my name, found a link to a Gallery page I have about my son's birth earlier this year, and they have a little thumbnail icon next to the search result for that. But it's a random map of the United States completely unrelated to the page it links to. Bizarre.
Consider yourself lucky. I did a search for my name and it found nothing at all, which is surprising since they've indexed several pages that contain my name.
A different article about it says it is 65-80% done, so they really don't know how far long it is.
What possesses people (Reuters) to use JavaScript for the next-page links in articles? It breaks opening the link in a separate tab, it breaks the link for anyone that has JavaScript disabled, and it keeps search engines from following the link. I realize this is off-topic, but is there some benefit to this that I'm not seeing?
On the one hand, this may reduce the amount of spam coming from bots on Time Warner's network, since people may be more concerned about securing their computers if they get billed for the bandwidth for the spam they are sending. On the other hand, getting billed for the bandwidth to receive spam sucks since the receiver has no control over it.
Real-time quotes are nice, but if they really want to leap over finance.yahoo.com they need to add an option to their charts to graph "growth of $10,000 investment" or "adjusted price (reinvested dividends)." Both Yahoo and Google only graph price, which means that the graph gaps down when a dividend or capital gain is paid out, but the drop has no economic significance -- the price drop represents money that was paid to the shareholder, not money that was lost. This is especially significant for mutual funds, which can have very large capital gains payouts (e.g. 20%), typically around the end of the year.
For example, look at the 1-year or 5-year chart for MVALX. The huge drops every December are misleading -- they represent money that was returned to the shareholder (or reinvested), not money that was lost. Quicken.com got this right a decade ago when they offered stock charts, so why can't Google or Yahoo get it right?
According to a different review:
"Netflix is planning HD streaming, and this box will support it. When Netflix gets HD streaming content, they'll update the box by firmware to support HD resolutions at higher bitrates of 4-6mbps, including 5.1 surround"