Twice I managed to get 4 tetris' (don't know the plural) on level 9 height 5. That was a while back when I still had reflexes. I also made it to level 21 on the tetris game for NES. That was an adrenaline rush!
Macromedia may be trying to preempt SVG becoming a viable authoring medium. This preserves the sales of their Flash authoring tool, which is Macromedia's main source of income from the Flash product. Remember, they make much of their money from tools for open formats (Dreamweaver - HTML, Fireworks - GIF / JPG, etc) and maintaining their lead in this area would be important to them.
I don't want to sound too 'monopolistic paranoid'. In, this news appears to be just confirmation of earlier promises that Macromedia has made. I just want to present another perspective.
SVG would be a real advance in web graphics. Instead of paying for authoring tools basic graphics and even animation can be done by hand scripting in a text editor. IBM's alphaworks has an excellent java SVG viewer and some example files, I'd suggest everyone with an interest in Flash and web graphics have a look at what the possibilities are.
IANAL, but once something has been filed in court, it can't be dropped or retracted. The legal motions have to go through. But what can happen is the action can not be pressed. In this case, the Etoys lawyer would appear before the judge and explain that the parties had settled their differences.
Or something like that.
Sorry if this was redundant, but I saw lots of highly rated comments pointing out that Etoys was not dropping their case as if that was ominous in itself. It probably isn't.
But I do find it absurd this happened as soon as the Christmas shopping season was over. Of course, for many of these big 'e-tailers' it was over the 10th or 15th, as they couldn't fulfill and ship orders after that.
Oh, and pet peeve I see in many comments: it is a SITE, not a SIGHT. Even though you look at it. Even though they sound the same. Even if many of them are hardly deserving of either term.
Every SysAdmin worth his/her salt and most of the rest of us know you're right. However, who are these certifications for? The people controlling the purse strings. They don't realize the implications of a C2 rating and they also don't realize it is a particularly configured install on a few limited machines. They just know they can get NT certified.
The entire certification process just becomes a tool to spread FUD. Fear that anything that doesn't carry certification will be broken into. Uncertainty that anything else could be better. Doubt that they could be wrong.
Given that, getting a particular distro certified would do the Linux community good. It doesn't matter that the kernel will become out of date. It doesn't even matter that it might be a stripped down disto that can't do everything. What would matter is that one could say "Linux is C2 certified".
Perhaps VA could partner with one of the commercial distros to create a system that could be certified.
that they played for a movie coming out in May 2000? That had enough vertigo inducing shots to scare the bejesus outta the kids in front of me? Not to mention the TRex... Now that movie looked good. Granted, dinosaurs are easier to CG animate than humans, and when you're shooting against real backgrounds you don't have do worry about rendering sky and trees, but still, that looked really good!
was Zurg a reference to the Zerg from Starcraft? Obviously not directly, cause the Zerg from Starcraft are alien, not humanoid.
How about a P90? Dead dog slow here. I couldn't even brag about posting with it, it got too frustrating.
However, I'm gonna put some action behind my complaints. Looks like this will have to be my next bugzilla mission, helping out with the speed. It should blaze on a P90 so that those poor souls with 486's can browse decently.
Also, does that mean when I find a bug, I don't need to report it? It is reported automatically?
While I don't know too much about Full Circle, I know that it isn't going to give the kind of bug report you could contribute. Information like what you were doing at the time, what machine configuration you've got and whether the bug is reproducable is critical to debugging it.
As another respondant mentioned, many Mozilla bugs will not crash the program and trigger the Talkback.
So browse the bugzilla website. Learn how to use Bugzilla. Snag a nightly build and bang on it.
I finally did. I'd been going for months with Mozilla crashing one of my computers. Well, with the problem not getting any better I started digging through Bugzilla, found others reporting the same bug and someone had a possible solution. I tried something similar (having to do with Java Runtime Environment) and it works now. So, while there is still some kind of bug, we've got two of us reporting into Bugzilla a solution. That gives the hardcore developers some clues, something to follow.
Great answers to some good questions. The article left me with one question about the following statement:
In retrospect, I wish I/had/ chosen OpenBSD;-)
Why is that? I mean, I know most of the standard arguments for BSD over Linux but why would you, a Linux user even at home, now make that statement? The standard security reasons? Was there a specific incident (that you can talk about) that triggered that statement? Had you later tested the BSD / Apache combination and achieved better performance?
Why monitor every conversation & for such obvious information? As the organizers of Jam Echelon day figure, thats gotta be a quite a bit of work.
Most terrorist who are serious about such nefarious activities are going to be quieter about such operations. Speaking in code. The stuff we see in movies. The NSA keywords would only stand out long enough from the noise for the spooks to install a noise filter. Just like we can filter out the AC first post freaks.
But what if the intent of the system was to watch for signs of that kind of activity? Transactions for the supplies and infrastructure for ugly activities. On demand tapping of a particular person's conversations. Searching email for people with dangerous questions or dangerous knowledge. Searching for people that warrant further watching.
Then other options can be brought to use. Tempest to check out whats really behind those PGP messages. A quick background check to determine idealogical motivations. Action would then be taken as necessary.
Imagine your personal profile. Maybe a risk scoring system with a few different variables based on what you've written, emailed and said. Maybe a few higher points on the 'personal independance' score cause you post the NSA keywords. A few less on the 'knowledge' score cause you barely passed Physics and Calculus in college. Hmm, a wife and kids? Knock the 'motivation' score down a little. So your Jam Echelon keywords never make it past the first stage, they aren't even interested in you. But now take your terrorists. Hmm, their motivations may be known by their religion, their public postings or published papers. They or someone they know has the necessary knowledge to cause major disruption. Echelon tracks everything they do and say.
Is Echelon tracking US Citizens? They didn't know Ted K. was hopping on the bus and mailing bombs. Of course, he was pretty low key, low tech. They didn't know those guys bought a bunch of fertilizer and diesel and packed it in a truck and parked it outside a Federal Building.
They didn't know about those guys that blew up the parking garage under the World Trade Center.
Of course, one could get very conspiritorial and say they did know about these things. There were other motivations that made the NSA allow them to happen...
EB used to have the latest games and have people that knew what was coming out. The last two times they have failed me badly. I won't go back. Unless they get a clue real fast they are going to miss the boat entirely. Of course, with the limited shelf space of the stores around here, who blames them for not carrying everything. But they should at least be aware of games coming out (where they have failed me before) and be prepared to do what it takes to counter the growning online sales and new trends in gaming, OS, etc.
For hosting you might try Hurricane Electric. Their servers use Linux and let you use PHP3 and MySQL. All starting at $9.95 a month. They're fast for me, they're only a hop or two from MAEWest (maybe not a good thing) and overall I'm quite happy. I've only used them for a month though, so YMMV. They currently register through NSI so you'd have to register it yourself using one of these alternate Name Servers.
There was another hosting service that advertised on Slashdot a while back. I don't have the URL handy, might not have it at all anymore.
>Music obviously is an equation, or your MP3 >player wouldn't work very well.
You obviously have no real idea of how MP3 works. In a nutshell, MP3 models what frequencies in _sound_ are important to the human ear. MP3 works with any sound, and the principles behind it apply somewhat to other human perceptions.
Sound != Music
MP3 just reproduces sound. Much of that happens to be music.
But seriously, what are the real cybertools? I saw it and thought of stuff like netstat, traceroute, Perl, grep, etc. Those are the 'blades' that keep 'cyberspace' running.
Since everyone else is telling their story, I'll tell mine.
First, My RSI seems to be mouse related, not keyboard. Long hours of Doom and then Warcraft II took their toll.
My symptoms manifest themselves as pain in my right thumb, wrist and elbow. I looked around on the web when I first started feeling it and found info on my seating position. Mine was about as bad as it got. My desk was way too high and my typing / mouse position put my arm in a pretzel. So first thing I did was get a chair that sat higher. That worked great for a while, but the symptoms came back.
I moved the chair even higher, going so far as to put a phone book (ouch, my butt didn't like that) in there. It helped, but only temporarily. So I had to reduce the computing time. I should have done that in the first place.
My girlfriend bought me one of those Marble FX Trackballs. That also helped immensely, especially because I still had the old mouse at work and a completely different one at home.
So, the important factors for me are:
Seat position.
Amount of time spent at the computer. Mix it up.
Change in accessories to help allieviate the problem.
OK, I figure now that the karma system has been introduced, at least half of the Slashdotters that regularly post are going to start watching their karma with each post, trying to raise it. So why don't we make it offical and make a Slashbox of the users with the highest (and lowest) karmas? That will give the Slash-addicts their ten microseconds of Slash-fame.
The problem with that is that you have to write a scintillatingly good comment pretty quickly; posts written after the first hour or two of a/. posting, I think, are largely ignored.
So true! Those comments get moderated up, generate most of the replies, and get the most attention. So this is one of the drawbacks to a scoring/moderation system, you can miss out on some good stuff that just didn't get posted in time.
I've been making a concious effort to read the newest, lowest scored posts when I have points to try and promote articles that others missed. But even then, I only hit new articles. And if the M2 system means anything, other moderators are much worse than me.
I just added one of the new Slashboxes and it showed up at the bottom of my list. So I spent a few miniutes clicking and waiting so it came up to about where I wanted it. Not the best way to use mine or Slashdot's resources.
Could we have a way to specify the order our Slashboxes appear? I was thinking instead of checkboxes to pick them, we could enter a number indicating where in our sequence we wanted that Slashbox. That way I wouldn't have to spend a bunch of time re-ordering them when I add new ones or my preferences get lost.
On a side note, anyone notice that the ArsTechnica box is always well behind the site? Other Slashboxes maintain concurrency a bit better, can the ArsBox be made to do so also?
So I just MM'd my 10 comments. 9 seemed obviously fair. One I just wasn't too sure about so I left it at the middle button. Is that what that is for? Unsure, don't know, disagree but want to be fair?
From the info in this article it seems that marking everything unfair flags abuse? Marking everything fair won't count, will it?
After I hit the button, I got a few of the following messages: SQL Error Email Rob and tell him what you were doing please! It did say that 10 comments were M2'd
MS will make defeating this project -- with "enhancements" -- priority one.
Of course, but thats isn't a major issue. While I'm sure this has been discussed before, I'll paste my.02 to the wall.
Wine will bring the existing Windows apps to Linux. This will help bridge the gap to the corporate desktop. Why wait for a Linux version of the last FooApp that BarCorp can't live without when you can do everything else in Linux and run the current version of FooApp under Linux? Oh, the new version doesn't work? Don't buy it.
Wine makes it easier to bring file format compatibility to Linux apps. Take a look at th is posting on Deja to see why.
Emulation is just plain cool. (Yes I know what WINE starts for...)
Some apps will never be ported. Wine will run them.
Why is everyone still using x86 architecture? Why not move to a superior processor? The same market pressure that kept WinTel around make Wine valuable.
I know this turned into a rant. Sorry.
A Historic Moment - for other reasons as well
on
Linux 2.3.0
·
· Score: 2
Its tough to define the actual moment that Linux "arrived". We could easily name a date well into the past like the first time it was used to compile it's own kernel. We could pin down when XFree86 first came up and running on it, providing a GUI for the unwashed masses (including me). But the last year or so has seen huge progress, where Linux gets named in all the trade mags as a contener, where it gets benchmarked directly against NT, BSDs, Solaris, Netware, etc.
Starting development on the 2.3.x kernel marks a new era. Linux is here, now people want to see where it will go. Will SMP get major attention as some have already suggested? Will distributions like Red Hat make major money off OSS or will they destroy it? Will games make inroads into Linux as it matures?
CT writes:I wonder if something like this is necessary with the difficulty of FTP becoming less of an issue with the better of the graphical clients out there. It allows users to use better Web Development tools on their own machines as well. What do you all think?
I think it is necessary. Have you sat and watched newbies attempt to get something up on the web? We are all so used to file structures, HTML goodness, the niceties of networks and everything else required to get working pages from our computer to a server that we forget they are starting from scratch. These are people that break out when faced with saving a file and finding it again from Windows Wordpad. They are the ones that Microsoft included that Most Recently Used Documents pop up a few dozen pixels above the Start button for.
I've watched (and helped) friends get stuff up on Geocities, and they are quite happy to use that frames based JavaScript page builder thing. Some have even graduated to typing their own HTML into the forms based page editor that Geocities makes available. But they have yet to master getting files from here to there. The concept of editing a page on their own machine and then uploading it is still foreign to them. So simple web based tools are necessary and useful to get the neophytes started on one of the things that makes the internet such a revolution in communication, the ability to self publish.
Slashdot Mirror
Twice I managed to get 4 tetris' (don't know the plural) on level 9 height 5. That was a while back when I still had reflexes. I also made it to level 21 on the tetris game for NES. That was an adrenaline rush!
No mention of RAM, but I'd take a look at what is available from ARM and assume it is about the same (I'd do it but I'm already late for something.).
I don't want to sound too 'monopolistic paranoid'. In, this news appears to be just confirmation of earlier promises that Macromedia has made. I just want to present another perspective.
SVG would be a real advance in web graphics. Instead of paying for authoring tools basic graphics and even animation can be done by hand scripting in a text editor. IBM's alphaworks has an excellent java SVG viewer and some example files, I'd suggest everyone with an interest in Flash and web graphics have a look at what the possibilities are.
Or something like that.
Sorry if this was redundant, but I saw lots of highly rated comments pointing out that Etoys was not dropping their case as if that was ominous in itself. It probably isn't.
But I do find it absurd this happened as soon as the Christmas shopping season was over. Of course, for many of these big 'e-tailers' it was over the 10th or 15th, as they couldn't fulfill and ship orders after that.
Oh, and pet peeve I see in many comments: it is a SITE, not a SIGHT. Even though you look at it. Even though they sound the same. Even if many of them are hardly deserving of either term.
Did Rob have to remove them?
Or is something more insidious at work here?
The entire certification process just becomes a tool to spread FUD. Fear that anything that doesn't carry certification will be broken into. Uncertainty that anything else could be better. Doubt that they could be wrong.
Given that, getting a particular distro certified would do the Linux community good. It doesn't matter that the kernel will become out of date. It doesn't even matter that it might be a stripped down disto that can't do everything. What would matter is that one could say "Linux is C2 certified".
Perhaps VA could partner with one of the commercial distros to create a system that could be certified.
was Zurg a reference to the Zerg from Starcraft? Obviously not directly, cause the Zerg from Starcraft are alien, not humanoid.
However, I'm gonna put some action behind my complaints. Looks like this will have to be my next bugzilla mission, helping out with the speed. It should blaze on a P90 so that those poor souls with 486's can browse decently.
While I don't know too much about Full Circle, I know that it isn't going to give the kind of bug report you could contribute. Information like what you were doing at the time, what machine configuration you've got and whether the bug is reproducable is critical to debugging it.
As another respondant mentioned, many Mozilla bugs will not crash the program and trigger the Talkback.
So browse the bugzilla website. Learn how to use Bugzilla. Snag a nightly build and bang on it.
I finally did. I'd been going for months with Mozilla crashing one of my computers. Well, with the problem not getting any better I started digging through Bugzilla, found others reporting the same bug and someone had a possible solution. I tried something similar (having to do with Java Runtime Environment) and it works now. So, while there is still some kind of bug, we've got two of us reporting into Bugzilla a solution. That gives the hardcore developers some clues, something to follow.
- But how much does it kill them to have it up there in WordPerfect format also?
- Notice that the file size for WP is smaller (by over 300K uncompressed)?
- Taking a look at their index of legal documents, is there any pretense at all that they are being objective?
Oi, the fun has only just begun...In retrospect, I wish I /had/ chosen OpenBSD ;-)
Why is that? I mean, I know most of the standard arguments for BSD over Linux but why would you, a Linux user even at home, now make that statement? The standard security reasons? Was there a specific incident (that you can talk about) that triggered that statement? Had you later tested the BSD / Apache combination and achieved better performance?
Most terrorist who are serious about such nefarious activities are going to be quieter about such operations. Speaking in code. The stuff we see in movies. The NSA keywords would only stand out long enough from the noise for the spooks to install a noise filter. Just like we can filter out the AC first post freaks.
But what if the intent of the system was to watch for signs of that kind of activity? Transactions for the supplies and infrastructure for ugly activities. On demand tapping of a particular person's conversations. Searching email for people with dangerous questions or dangerous knowledge. Searching for people that warrant further watching.
Then other options can be brought to use. Tempest to check out whats really behind those PGP messages. A quick background check to determine idealogical motivations. Action would then be taken as necessary.
Imagine your personal profile. Maybe a risk scoring system with a few different variables based on what you've written, emailed and said. Maybe a few higher points on the 'personal independance' score cause you post the NSA keywords. A few less on the 'knowledge' score cause you barely passed Physics and Calculus in college. Hmm, a wife and kids? Knock the 'motivation' score down a little. So your Jam Echelon keywords never make it past the first stage, they aren't even interested in you. But now take your terrorists. Hmm, their motivations may be known by their religion, their public postings or published papers. They or someone they know has the necessary knowledge to cause major disruption. Echelon tracks everything they do and say.
Is Echelon tracking US Citizens? They didn't know Ted K. was hopping on the bus and mailing bombs. Of course, he was pretty low key, low tech. They didn't know those guys bought a bunch of fertilizer and diesel and packed it in a truck and parked it outside a Federal Building.
They didn't know about those guys that blew up the parking garage under the World Trade Center.
Of course, one could get very conspiritorial and say they did know about these things. There were other motivations that made the NSA allow them to happen...
EB used to have the latest games and have people that knew what was coming out. The last two times they have failed me badly. I won't go back. Unless they get a clue real fast they are going to miss the boat entirely. Of course, with the limited shelf space of the stores around here, who blames them for not carrying everything. But they should at least be aware of games coming out (where they have failed me before) and be prepared to do what it takes to counter the growning online sales and new trends in gaming, OS, etc.
There was another hosting service that advertised on Slashdot a while back. I don't have the URL handy, might not have it at all anymore.
>Music obviously is an equation, or your MP3
>player wouldn't work very well.
You obviously have no real idea of how MP3 works. In a nutshell, MP3 models what frequencies in _sound_ are important to the human ear. MP3 works with any sound, and the principles behind it apply somewhat to other human perceptions.
Sound != Music
MP3 just reproduces sound. Much of that happens to be music.
Drool...
But seriously, what are the real cybertools? I saw it and thought of stuff like netstat, traceroute, Perl, grep, etc. Those are the 'blades' that keep 'cyberspace' running.
Not that hardware isn't cool either...
First, My RSI seems to be mouse related, not keyboard. Long hours of Doom and then Warcraft II took their toll.
My symptoms manifest themselves as pain in my right thumb, wrist and elbow. I looked around on the web when I first started feeling it and found info on my seating position. Mine was about as bad as it got. My desk was way too high and my typing / mouse position put my arm in a pretzel. So first thing I did was get a chair that sat higher. That worked great for a while, but the symptoms came back.
I moved the chair even higher, going so far as to put a phone book (ouch, my butt didn't like that) in there. It helped, but only temporarily. So I had to reduce the computing time. I should have done that in the first place.
My girlfriend bought me one of those Marble FX Trackballs. That also helped immensely, especially because I still had the old mouse at work and a completely different one at home.
So, the important factors for me are:
So true! Those comments get moderated up, generate most of the replies, and get the most attention. So this is one of the drawbacks to a scoring/moderation system, you can miss out on some good stuff that just didn't get posted in time.
I've been making a concious effort to read the newest, lowest scored posts when I have points to try and promote articles that others missed. But even then, I only hit new articles. And if the M2 system means anything, other moderators are much worse than me.
Could we have a way to specify the order our Slashboxes appear? I was thinking instead of checkboxes to pick them, we could enter a number indicating where in our sequence we wanted that Slashbox. That way I wouldn't have to spend a bunch of time re-ordering them when I add new ones or my preferences get lost.
On a side note, anyone notice that the ArsTechnica box is always well behind the site? Other Slashboxes maintain concurrency a bit better, can the ArsBox be made to do so also?
From the info in this article it seems that marking everything unfair flags abuse? Marking everything fair won't count, will it?
After I hit the button, I got a few of the following messages:
SQL Error Email Rob and tell him what you were doing please!
It did say that 10 comments were M2'd
Of course, but thats isn't a major issue. While I'm sure this has been discussed before, I'll paste my
I know this turned into a rant. Sorry.
Starting development on the 2.3.x kernel marks a new era. Linux is here, now people want to see where it will go. Will SMP get major attention as some have already suggested? Will distributions like Red Hat make major money off OSS or will they destroy it? Will games make inroads into Linux as it matures?
We'll see.
In fact, we'll make it happen.
I think it is necessary. Have you sat and watched newbies attempt to get something up on the web? We are all so used to file structures, HTML goodness, the niceties of networks and everything else required to get working pages from our computer to a server that we forget they are starting from scratch. These are people that break out when faced with saving a file and finding it again from Windows Wordpad. They are the ones that Microsoft included that Most Recently Used Documents pop up a few dozen pixels above the Start button for.
I've watched (and helped) friends get stuff up on Geocities, and they are quite happy to use that frames based JavaScript page builder thing. Some have even graduated to typing their own HTML into the forms based page editor that Geocities makes available. But they have yet to master getting files from here to there. The concept of editing a page on their own machine and then uploading it is still foreign to them. So simple web based tools are necessary and useful to get the neophytes started on one of the things that makes the internet such a revolution in communication, the ability to self publish.
In so many words, yes, it is necessary.
Instant glue, 1973
Problem is, I've done it to myself before.