Well I can hazard a guess as to why some people might buy something like a, uh, razor or electric toothbrush... after all, somebody out there must have a use for devices such as this "Eye Massager", otherwise why would they make them?!
... about Real reverse engineering FairPlay (more power to them)
I feel compelled to correct that: as was probably pointed out in the previous Slashdot coverage, it wasn't Real who do did the difficult reverse-engineering, it was "dvd Jon" Lech Johansen (for the open-source media player VLC -- I assume so that he could listen to iTunes-purchased music on his Linux PC, kinda like DeCSS). From a post his blog:
Q: Has the Harmony project met your expectations?
A: No, it has blown them away. We took the decision at the beginning of the year to implement Harmony. It really went back to some things we were working on before, where we've had good experience with creating technology with interoperability in the past.
Until someone makes a plugin for MS Office that'll open OpenOffice docs, this is how it'll stay. It might well be an open format, but it the primary market-share application (MS Office, with an IE-like >90% share) cannot open it then I'm afraid it doesn't mean squat. Like the parent says, when you work with the rest of the word you have to play by their "standard", even if it's not open.
What I'd REALLY like to see is a hack to make Microsoft Office open OOo docs. Even if it's a nasty-ass system-hook that watches for MSOffice opening an OOo document, then calls some stripped-down OpenOffice -> MS Word conversion code (gleaned from the OpenOffice codebase) and passes MSOffice a converted Word doc that it can deal with. (Rinse and repeat for the other MS formats, and tweak to add the relevant types such as.sxw into the MSOffice File...Open dialogs.)
Assuming the OO -> MS conversion works better than the MS -> OO conversion, which I'd imagine it should do (?), so that OOo docs appeared to render correctly in Microsoft Office then that'd be fine. As long as there's a nice small easy installer for it and the actual end-user usage is completely transparent then most people won't care (or know) if the process itself is a fudge, as long as the operation doesn't take too long.
I'm sure there's a skilled coder on/. that could make this happen...
Well said! It shows the general quality of the article when they don't even bother to publish the results of the TESTING, let alone do a proper test, train, re-test, auto-learn, test again with each of the products! Instead it's just a "this one is easy to install, this one's got a pretty UI" waste of time.
The fact that they then quote ridiculously low percentages for spam recognition (when they should be aiming in the 95-99.9% bracket) and don't mention ANY of the problems of spam filtering such as false-positives ONCE, what each system does with mail marked as spam, or how each system plugs into a virus scanner (as essential as the spam-filtering itself; yes, I know they have a summary table at the end but it's only of the Y/N type with no detail) just puts the nail in the coffin. That article really is of very little use.
For people that have more of a clue and would like to implement something cheap but effective, this article gives a full step-by-step on how to create a Debian-based Postfix + Amavis-new + SpamAssassin + Razor + Pyzor + ClamAV + DCC mail relay (ideal for protecting an Exchange server, for instance): http://www200.pair.com/mecham/spam/spamfilter20041 003.html
Not quite true, there are some (rather expensive) flatbed scanners that provide good results, and have the added advantage of scanning an entire film in one go rather than the usual strips of 6. For instance, the Epson 9950F provides prettygood scans.
If you want excellent quality, go for a dedicated 35mm filmscanner such as the Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400 (I have one, it's spot-on) or a Nikon Super CoolScan 5000ED; if you want superb quality then pay for proper drum scans (not Imacons: they're only CCDs, as much as their literature tries to say otherwise), but be warned, they're _very_ expensive per scan. Note that you're going to spend a *lot* of time waiting: you have to get your film (usually slide/E6) processed, then scan it in, and at around 2-5 minutes per frame at a decent res. (2700ppi) with ICE (hardware dust and scratch removal) that's over an HOUR per film.
Every single one of the pros I know have switched to digital within the past three years and aren't looking back -- the time saved in their workflow pays for that horrendously expensive body or camera-back within months, if not weeks. I think I'll be making the switch shortly myself, probably to a Canon 20D or 1D Mk.2; as much as I love film it's just too much hassle.
Be thankful you're not in the UK: the government is hell-bent on forcing ID cards, with embedded biometrics (facial, maybe others), onto a public that doesn't want them and doesn't want to pay for them.
All sorts of benefits are being touted; David Blunkett, Home Secretary, had this to say regarding these cards use:
Identity cards would help us tackle the organised criminals and terrorists who use fake identities to carry out their crimes. They would also aid the fight against illegal working and immigration abuse, enable easier and more convenient access to services and ensure free public services are only used by those entitled to them. The Identity Cards Bill will set out the stringent safeguards we want for the use of the cards, what information they contain and who can access it.
Of course, he fails to mention that ID cards didn't stop the Madrid bombings (Spain has ID cards). He also failed to mention the scope of access of previous projects was way too broad which'll probably happen again (e.g. the Food Standards Agency at one time had full access to all you e-mail and surfing habits thanks to the R.I.P. bill, as well as local councils!). But then, there are many, many flaws and concerns. Originally they were supposed to be _purely_ for identification purposes, but compulsion and links to public services/benefits are being pushed, as well as circumventing checks and balances such as this case of forcing employers to check their staff with the National ID Register even though it'll be illegal to force a check, until they become compulsory, at least.
It's all very disturbing, the public really doesn't want them so the government's conducting heavily-loaded research to lie with, then they can use statistics to pretend the people are in favour. The costs will be prohibitive, with the money much better spent on the likes of education & healthcare, but they've got the bit firmly between the teeth and are serious about imposing these on us, whether we like it or not.
For more details check out No2ID.net and read the concerns of Privacy International in their (slightly old but still relevant) ID Card FAQ.
Re:Combat it or deny responsibility you mean...
on
Gone Phishing?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
It does seem to be yet another shift of burden of proof onto the consumer though, does it not?
Have you noticed all the online banking EULA's with specific "you're liable for anything until you report your password as breached"? Much in the same way as "Chip and Pin" here in the UK, the shift in the responsibility of fraud onto the customer of these systems is designed for the benefit of the BANKS, any benefit to you is a secondary concern and it seems to be that its actually to your detriment in many cases.
Interestingly, who is it that oversees the fraud of these systems to determine whether they're secure or not? Why, it's the same banks that run them. Hardly independent or unbiased now, is it? That's like asking Adobe, "is your PDF encryption secure?" Hmm, what do you think... *cough* ROT-13 *cough*
Let's use an example of something like Chip and Pin, where instead of a signature you type in a pin along with your credit card transaction. This is vulnerable to multiple attacks, e.g. shoulder-surfing: say someone watches your pin, then steals your card and goes on a shopping spree -- the transactions are all valid as they had the correct pin, so YOU are responsible for this loss. Compare this to the old signature method, they might fool the store cashier, but when you report it you get your money back -- problem is, it's costly for the credit card companies to check and they (or the retailer) ends up paying out. The cost and burden of proof is on THEM, and they don't like that. Other examples of abuse would include dummy card readers and pin input devices, corrupt shops who capture pins, etc. For an interesting discussion on this see here: http://toothycat.net/wiki/wiki.pl?ChipAndPin
So, while I totally agree that users have to bear a certain amount of responsibility, much in the same way as Chip and Pin, until internet banking can be made more secure *by the banks themselves* to the extent that phishing scams and other fraudulent methods are overcome AND the burden of proof is *kept with the banks* then I, for one, will not use them. (Removes tin-foil hat!)
I'd strongly recommend the "iCurious" check out MacRumor's Buyers' Guide, it's invaluable for helping you not to make the dreaded "but you were so right for me, then they brought out the newer sexier model" mistake!
Particularly of note are the warnings not to buy Powerbooks right now, as it's very likely they're be new ones in Jan/Feb (and the 12" is currently a rip-off compared to the latest 12" iBook). There are also rumours that the eMac'll be updated to a G5 soon, though this gossip does appear to have been quashed today due to low-end G5/PPC970 chip shortages from IBM. Though, as always, if you _really_ need it, just buy it -- the Apple store tends to automatically upgrade if a new product's announced, and even if your toy arrives just before the new announcements if you ring Apple they may be able to sort you out with something to make feel you a little less gutted. At the end of the day, even if you Apple is superseded tomorrow, it's still no less useful...
I'll give you another example of something that seemed equally (if not more) preposterous, but was also true: witch-hunting.
Reading back into history it seems completely ludicrous: all you had to do was point the finger and shout "witch!", then the accused, however innocent and however tenuous the "evidence", would be rolled down a hill in a barrel full of spikes, burned at the stake, drowned, or something equally barbaric. If by some small miracle they survived, then they were _definitely_ a witch, and were killed. If they didn't, well, err... unlucky, I guess, they weren't a witch!
Now, substitute the word "witch" with the word "terrorist" and you're getting close to something I suspect many, many people will find equally shocking and preposterous in years to come.
Like you say, crazy things happen when checks and balances are omitted...
Funnily enough, I got mine through the main Slashdot RSS feed so there was no indication of any shape or form that it was under "games". Precisely:
DS Pre-Orders Stopped as Sales Soar -- Zonk -- 6.45pm
As you can see, that doesn't give you any clue what it's about, and besides, even if it *was* under the games section there's a fair contingency of single-platform gamers (e.g. PC-only) who wouldn't know what a DS is. Visiting the Slashdot "summary" post should then clarify it is, but it doesn't. (Though now one of the mods has appended the word "handheld" at the end, and it's in the Nintendo topic so it's not too hard to grasp.)
Still, the complaints are somewhat valid, the moderators overly harsh, and the followup posters somewhat arrogant. Typical Slashdot, then:)
I think he's referring to the crappy titling of the article. As any journalist worth their salt knows, you should always explain any uncommon acronyms in the first instance, for example "Dual-Screen (DS)", or at least (in the case of headlines where print space may be tight) qualify them in such a way as to generally indicate what it's about. Would adding the words "Nintendo DS handheld..." really have been that hard?
Like others that browse news via RSS feed headlines (using Thunderbird v0.9), I sure as hell didn't know what the article was about. But then, Slashdot's hardly famed for its skilled and professional journalism now, is it...
Yeah, I've seen that happen before, both with replies (only from one friend -- seems their Exchange server's sending in a wierd format) and forwards. It drove me nuts for a while, until I noticed the following: (reply or forward first) Go to Edit, Rewrap. This should reflow the text:)
See their coverage here, they've even appended the following paragraph to the end of the article:
Thank you, everybody, yes we know about the BBC story that says moving away from plans to combine passports, ID and driving licence is a change of plan in response to the Home Affairs Committee. In our opinion it has been clear for some time that a combined card was not going to ship, so we think the BBC is shooting at the wrong target here. In any event, if this was the story it would have been the story when Blunkett referred to a separate card shipping with passports at the Labour Party Conference last month. We expect the BBC will have some footage of this it could consult.
Make no mistake, the government are still hell-bent on introducing ID cards, they're just issuing the _alongside_ passorts so as to sneak them in. Compulsion will come soon after that, and it sure as hell won't be limited to just identification, being tied into a massive central database that'd make Big Brother proud (and access to that database will be way too broad -- wonder if the Food Standards Agency will get to use it?). My favourite part is the Reg's criticism of the "public consutation":
So the government is telling us something like, 'seven out of ten people who don't know what they're talking about think this is a good thing.'
Nice. And there was me thinking that the US was the current king of civil liberty erosion, looks the UK's pulling out in front on this one!
Yeah, I noticed that too. Most likely it's because they 0.13 micron process (as with all the current Athlon chips), which is a lot more efficient than the original 0.18 micron "fry an egg on me" Athlons. The next step will be the 0.09 process, which will result in faster & cooler (or as cool) chips again:)
I got one of these (the 9118) bundled with my Gigabyte TA-1 and it suits it perfectly, fitting nicely with the form-factor of the machine. I think all these models are very similar, with perhaps the 5100c suiting you best; they've got a reasonable action for the price and are available in both USB (with an upstream port built-in -- handy if you wish to allow pendrive access) and straight PS/2.
If you're buying a few of them you might want to fire an e-mail to BTC's US distributor (or ring them) and see what they can do for you -- many resellers put a high markup on these purely 'cause they're small (~USD30), but with a bit of hunting you can probably get them for closer to USD5.
Assuming there aren't any overriding difficulties with patents or licence problems, this would absolutely ideal for deploying Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. One of the biggest issues holding Firefox back from enterprise deployment in MS shops is the fact that there's no MSI installer. This would allow it to be rolled out to all the desktops domain-wide via Group Policy and , as the installer tracks any changes made, it can be rolled-back/uninstalled or upgraded easily. All that would needed to add to that would be some basic properties (hopefully via GPOs also) to allow admins to customise & lock it down a little (say, auto-set the web proxy details), and it'd be perfect!
Alternatively, save yourself time, hassle and worry and ring up Apple's phone support. They're really quite helpful and should be able to provide a solution (as it's a known issue). Good luck!
Or a third: neither even exist at all, and it is simply an imaginary situation concocted to keep the population docile and under control by telling them they're in a constant state of war. I mean, we all know that when you're at war you can't question small things like erosion of civil liberties; domestic policies like heathcare, education; the government, etc. 'cause that'd be plain unpatriotic. Hmmm, seems like there's a recent real-word parallel there somewhere...;)
Actually, yes it is! (It's the key that hides all the open palettes and toolbox, leaving just the image you're working on unhindered by clutter. Shift-tab does this but leaves the toolbox up.)
Seriously though, sarcasm aside, Photoshop and other graphics applications are pretty nasty to use with a mouse. Yes, they are. For instance, try using a PS on a Mac for a week with your favorite mouse (say, a Logitech 3 button USB), then switching over to a PC (re-plugging your mouse). Ewww, different mouse acceleration!
OK, that's not really fair, but my reasoning is that you'd be much better off using a pointing device such as a graphics tablet** that maps 1:1 to the control surface area (you can tweak this in the driver settings usually). Then you get no wierd surprises, no strange acceleration, and an intuitive controller that behaves in a consistent manner.
**Yes, I am biased: I love my Wacom Intuos2 pad. Of course, they had to announce a new version a month after I buy the fricken thing, with funky modifier keys and a zoom-strip built into the pad - dammit!;)
I'm colour-blind. Not massively so, just the most common red-green deficiency (deuteranopia, I think?) that affects around 5 in 100 males, maybe more (http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/2.html)
I'm not a pilot, but I've done a fair bit of sailing; my last trip was a ~1500 nautical mile blue-water passage from the Azores back home to the Isle of Man. That's 12 days at sea, and even with four crew you spend a couple of hours on nightwatch per day. You're bound to encounter various situations where coloured light recognition is *very* useful, nearing on essential. For instance: you see a very large tanker directly ahead; the very fact that she's already over the horizon means that she's going to have a hard time stopping within those 5km, and probably hasn't seen you. You may need to get out of her way, and fast. While you can try hailing someone on the VHF or SSB, even with DSC some ships don't pay attention, and a surprisingly large amount of don't have their radar on all the time (due to the limited life magnetrons, I guess?). So, can you tell if he's actually coming towards you, or going away? Can you tell the configuration of the lights? Is that red or green on their port side? (Yes, you should be able to see their white aft light, but bulbs die.)
Personally, I wouldn't be 100% sure. My general daytime vision is pretty good, and I can usually tell what colour an object is, but low-intensity lights at night? Not with confidence. (Even with bino's.) On a ship it's not too bad: you have time to play with, so you can take a bearing, wait a minute and take another one, then calculate if she's on a collision; you can check the radar if you have it (we do); or you can piss off one of your crewmates by waking them up;) But you're going to have trouble with vessel identification from their lighting (is that a ship or a rig?), and you're going to have some trouble coming into ports; not something I'd want to have to deal with single-handed.
Personally, I wouldn't be confident enough to pilot a plane at night. I'd imagine that things happen much faster compared to sailing (we travel an average of 6 knots an hour, and most motor vessels do 30kts tops) and that extra dimension of movement must make a lot of difference! Sailing's got plenty of procedures, knowledge requirements & useful instrumentation; I'd imagine that piloting has many more, so I guess what I'm interested in is whether you feel these would cover absolutely any situation that happened? I know that if it came down to it, if I was stuck on a boat by myself I'd be able to manage in spite of being colour-blind; can you say the same of yourself as a pilot?
(This isn't meant in a confrontational manner, I'm genuinely interested.)
I've used Smoothwall too, and it's great. I'll add another suggestion, though: IPCop, a free GPLed fork of Smoothwall which adds many features not available in the basic Smoothwall distro; great for home and small network use (though I'd highly recommend SW if you need any commercial support). The latest version - on release candidate 4 now, watch out for 1.4 stable any day now! - includes traffic shaping using Wondershaper, so will solve your P2P problems quite nicely. See the unofficial support forums for the latest news and plenty of help.
Of course, if you just want a standalone device, like others have said youe best bet is to get a LinkSys WRT54G/WAP54G plus alternative firmware, such as the Sveasoft one. See more info here: http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/LinksysWr t54g
Actually, it's probably worth pointing out that the TV licence is exactly that: a TV licence. You don't need to buy one to be entitled to listen to the BBC radio stations; they're just an extra-cool addition made available completely free to the general public. Incidentally, you also don't have to pay for a TV licence if you only use it to watch DVDs, videos, and satellite (though now that the BBC channels are on sat that'd be a tricky one to argue); all you have to do is detune the TV - yes, really! - though you'd be well-advised to either remove the TV tuner part completely, or at least crush the female connector with a pair of pliers. See this FAQ for more info: http://www.jifvik.org/tv/
Slashdot Mirror
Well I can hazard a guess as to why some people might buy something like a, uh, razor or electric toothbrush... after all, somebody out there must have a use for devices such as this "Eye Massager", otherwise why would they make them?!
I feel compelled to correct that: as was probably pointed out in the previous Slashdot coverage, it wasn't Real who do did the difficult reverse-engineering, it was "dvd Jon" Lech Johansen (for the open-source media player VLC -- I assume so that he could listen to iTunes-purchased music on his Linux PC, kinda like DeCSS). From a post his blog:
Interview with Rob Glaser over at news.com:Q: Has the Harmony project met your expectations?
What a coincidenceA: No, it has blown them away. We took the decision at the beginning of the year to implement Harmony. It really went back to some things we were working on before, where we've had good experience with creating technology with interoperability in the past.
Until someone makes a plugin for MS Office that'll open OpenOffice docs, this is how it'll stay. It might well be an open format, but it the primary market-share application (MS Office, with an IE-like >90% share) cannot open it then I'm afraid it doesn't mean squat. Like the parent says, when you work with the rest of the word you have to play by their "standard", even if it's not open.
.sxw into the MSOffice File...Open dialogs.)
/. that could make this happen...
What I'd REALLY like to see is a hack to make Microsoft Office open OOo docs. Even if it's a nasty-ass system-hook that watches for MSOffice opening an OOo document, then calls some stripped-down OpenOffice -> MS Word conversion code (gleaned from the OpenOffice codebase) and passes MSOffice a converted Word doc that it can deal with. (Rinse and repeat for the other MS formats, and tweak to add the relevant types such as
Assuming the OO -> MS conversion works better than the MS -> OO conversion, which I'd imagine it should do (?), so that OOo docs appeared to render correctly in Microsoft Office then that'd be fine. As long as there's a nice small easy installer for it and the actual end-user usage is completely transparent then most people won't care (or know) if the process itself is a fudge, as long as the operation doesn't take too long.
I'm sure there's a skilled coder on
Well said! It shows the general quality of the article when they don't even bother to publish the results of the TESTING, let alone do a proper test, train, re-test, auto-learn, test again with each of the products! Instead it's just a "this one is easy to install, this one's got a pretty UI" waste of time.
1 003.html
The fact that they then quote ridiculously low percentages for spam recognition (when they should be aiming in the 95-99.9% bracket) and don't mention ANY of the problems of spam filtering such as false-positives ONCE, what each system does with mail marked as spam, or how each system plugs into a virus scanner (as essential as the spam-filtering itself; yes, I know they have a summary table at the end but it's only of the Y/N type with no detail) just puts the nail in the coffin. That article really is of very little use.
For people that have more of a clue and would like to implement something cheap but effective, this article gives a full step-by-step on how to create a Debian-based Postfix + Amavis-new + SpamAssassin + Razor + Pyzor + ClamAV + DCC mail relay (ideal for protecting an Exchange server, for instance):
http://www200.pair.com/mecham/spam/spamfilter2004
Not quite true, there are some (rather expensive) flatbed scanners that provide good results, and have the added advantage of scanning an entire film in one go rather than the usual strips of 6. For instance, the Epson 9950F provides pretty good scans.
If you want excellent quality, go for a dedicated 35mm filmscanner such as the Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400 (I have one, it's spot-on) or a Nikon Super CoolScan 5000ED; if you want superb quality then pay for proper drum scans (not Imacons: they're only CCDs, as much as their literature tries to say otherwise), but be warned, they're _very_ expensive per scan. Note that you're going to spend a *lot* of time waiting: you have to get your film (usually slide/E6) processed, then scan it in, and at around 2-5 minutes per frame at a decent res. (2700ppi) with ICE (hardware dust and scratch removal) that's over an HOUR per film.
Every single one of the pros I know have switched to digital within the past three years and aren't looking back -- the time saved in their workflow pays for that horrendously expensive body or camera-back within months, if not weeks. I think I'll be making the switch shortly myself, probably to a Canon 20D or 1D Mk.2; as much as I love film it's just too much hassle.All sorts of benefits are being touted; David Blunkett, Home Secretary, had this to say regarding these cards use:
Of course, he fails to mention that ID cards didn't stop the Madrid bombings (Spain has ID cards). He also failed to mention the scope of access of previous projects was way too broad which'll probably happen again (e.g. the Food Standards Agency at one time had full access to all you e-mail and surfing habits thanks to the R.I.P. bill, as well as local councils!). But then, there are many, many flaws and concerns. Originally they were supposed to be _purely_ for identification purposes, but compulsion and links to public services/benefits are being pushed, as well as circumventing checks and balances such as this case of forcing employers to check their staff with the National ID Register even though it'll be illegal to force a check, until they become compulsory, at least.
It's all very disturbing, the public really doesn't want them so the government's conducting heavily-loaded research to lie with, then they can use statistics to pretend the people are in favour. The costs will be prohibitive, with the money much better spent on the likes of education & healthcare, but they've got the bit firmly between the teeth and are serious about imposing these on us, whether we like it or not.
For more details check out No2ID.net and read the concerns of Privacy International in their (slightly old but still relevant) ID Card FAQ.
It does seem to be yet another shift of burden of proof onto the consumer though, does it not?
Have you noticed all the online banking EULA's with specific "you're liable for anything until you report your password as breached"? Much in the same way as "Chip and Pin" here in the UK, the shift in the responsibility of fraud onto the customer of these systems is designed for the benefit of the BANKS, any benefit to you is a secondary concern and it seems to be that its actually to your detriment in many cases.
Interestingly, who is it that oversees the fraud of these systems to determine whether they're secure or not? Why, it's the same banks that run them. Hardly independent or unbiased now, is it? That's like asking Adobe, "is your PDF encryption secure?" Hmm, what do you think... *cough* ROT-13 *cough*
Let's use an example of something like Chip and Pin, where instead of a signature you type in a pin along with your credit card transaction. This is vulnerable to multiple attacks, e.g. shoulder-surfing: say someone watches your pin, then steals your card and goes on a shopping spree -- the transactions are all valid as they had the correct pin, so YOU are responsible for this loss. Compare this to the old signature method, they might fool the store cashier, but when you report it you get your money back -- problem is, it's costly for the credit card companies to check and they (or the retailer) ends up paying out. The cost and burden of proof is on THEM, and they don't like that. Other examples of abuse would include dummy card readers and pin input devices, corrupt shops who capture pins, etc. For an interesting discussion on this see here:
http://toothycat.net/wiki/wiki.pl?ChipAndPin
So, while I totally agree that users have to bear a certain amount of responsibility, much in the same way as Chip and Pin, until internet banking can be made more secure *by the banks themselves* to the extent that phishing scams and other fraudulent methods are overcome AND the burden of proof is *kept with the banks* then I, for one, will not use them. (Removes tin-foil hat!)
I'd strongly recommend the "iCurious" check out MacRumor's Buyers' Guide, it's invaluable for helping you not to make the dreaded "but you were so right for me, then they brought out the newer sexier model" mistake!
Particularly of note are the warnings not to buy Powerbooks right now, as it's very likely they're be new ones in Jan/Feb (and the 12" is currently a rip-off compared to the latest 12" iBook). There are also rumours that the eMac'll be updated to a G5 soon, though this gossip does appear to have been quashed today due to low-end G5/PPC970 chip shortages from IBM. Though, as always, if you _really_ need it, just buy it -- the Apple store tends to automatically upgrade if a new product's announced, and even if your toy arrives just before the new announcements if you ring Apple they may be able to sort you out with something to make feel you a little less gutted. At the end of the day, even if you Apple is superseded tomorrow, it's still no less useful...
I'll give you another example of something that seemed equally (if not more) preposterous, but was also true: witch-hunting.
Reading back into history it seems completely ludicrous: all you had to do was point the finger and shout "witch!", then the accused, however innocent and however tenuous the "evidence", would be rolled down a hill in a barrel full of spikes, burned at the stake, drowned, or something equally barbaric. If by some small miracle they survived, then they were _definitely_ a witch, and were killed. If they didn't, well, err... unlucky, I guess, they weren't a witch!
Now, substitute the word "witch" with the word "terrorist" and you're getting close to something I suspect many, many people will find equally shocking and preposterous in years to come.
Like you say, crazy things happen when checks and balances are omitted...
Funnily enough, I got mine through the main Slashdot RSS feed so there was no indication of any shape or form that it was under "games". Precisely:
:)
DS Pre-Orders Stopped as Sales Soar -- Zonk -- 6.45pm
As you can see, that doesn't give you any clue what it's about, and besides, even if it *was* under the games section there's a fair contingency of single-platform gamers (e.g. PC-only) who wouldn't know what a DS is. Visiting the Slashdot "summary" post should then clarify it is, but it doesn't. (Though now one of the mods has appended the word "handheld" at the end, and it's in the Nintendo topic so it's not too hard to grasp.)
Still, the complaints are somewhat valid, the moderators overly harsh, and the followup posters somewhat arrogant. Typical Slashdot, then
I think he's referring to the crappy titling of the article. As any journalist worth their salt knows, you should always explain any uncommon acronyms in the first instance, for example "Dual-Screen (DS)", or at least (in the case of headlines where print space may be tight) qualify them in such a way as to generally indicate what it's about. Would adding the words "Nintendo DS handheld..." really have been that hard?
Like others that browse news via RSS feed headlines (using Thunderbird v0.9), I sure as hell didn't know what the article was about. But then, Slashdot's hardly famed for its skilled and professional journalism now, is it...
Yeah, I've seen that happen before, both with replies (only from one friend -- seems their Exchange server's sending in a wierd format) and forwards. It drove me nuts for a while, until I noticed the following: :)
(reply or forward first) Go to Edit, Rewrap. This should reflow the text
It is somewhat annoying, though.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." -- Douglas Adams
Make no mistake, the government are still hell-bent on introducing ID cards, they're just issuing the _alongside_ passorts so as to sneak them in. Compulsion will come soon after that, and it sure as hell won't be limited to just identification, being tied into a massive central database that'd make Big Brother proud (and access to that database will be way too broad -- wonder if the Food Standards Agency will get to use it?). My favourite part is the Reg's criticism of the "public consutation":
Nice. And there was me thinking that the US was the current king of civil liberty erosion, looks the UK's pulling out in front on this one!Heh, reminds me of this :)
Yeah, I noticed that too. Most likely it's because they 0.13 micron process (as with all the current Athlon chips), which is a lot more efficient than the original 0.18 micron "fry an egg on me" Athlons. The next step will be the 0.09 process, which will result in faster & cooler (or as cool) chips again :)
There isn't one. But PDFCreator does a damn good job ;)
http://www.btc.com.tw/english/2-7-06keyboard.htm#
http://www.btc.com.tw/english/2-7-07keyboard.htm#
I got one of these (the 9118) bundled with my Gigabyte TA-1 and it suits it perfectly, fitting nicely with the form-factor of the machine. I think all these models are very similar, with perhaps the 5100c suiting you best; they've got a reasonable action for the price and are available in both USB (with an upstream port built-in -- handy if you wish to allow pendrive access) and straight PS/2.
If you're buying a few of them you might want to fire an e-mail to BTC's US distributor (or ring them) and see what they can do for you -- many resellers put a high markup on these purely 'cause they're small (~USD30), but with a bit of hunting you can probably get them for closer to USD5.Assuming there aren't any overriding difficulties with patents or licence problems, this would absolutely ideal for deploying Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. One of the biggest issues holding Firefox back from enterprise deployment in MS shops is the fact that there's no MSI installer. This would allow it to be rolled out to all the desktops domain-wide via Group Policy and , as the installer tracks any changes made, it can be rolled-back/uninstalled or upgraded easily. All that would needed to add to that would be some basic properties (hopefully via GPOs also) to allow admins to customise & lock it down a little (say, auto-set the web proxy details), and it'd be perfect!
0 33
:)
In fact, after doing a quick search it looks like someone's already done it (don't know if it uses WiX, though it is mentioned in the Bugzilla listing):
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=138
Superb! Finally a way to get rid of IE from the corporate desktops
Sounds like there's a problem with your machine (either software or hardware). I'm pretty sure there are some known issues with the new G5 iMacs (particularly something dodgy with some power supplies that cause a buzzing that's often mistaken for fan noise): do a search on Google or take a look here:0 304 : www.macfixit.com/article.php/20040324083206608+G5+ iMac+fan+fix&hl=en
http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-9
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:wQoarms_HOMJ
Alternatively, save yourself time, hassle and worry and ring up Apple's phone support. They're really quite helpful and should be able to provide a solution (as it's a known issue). Good luck!
Or a third: neither even exist at all, and it is simply an imaginary situation concocted to keep the population docile and under control by telling them they're in a constant state of war. I mean, we all know that when you're at war you can't question small things like erosion of civil liberties; domestic policies like heathcare, education; the government, etc. 'cause that'd be plain unpatriotic. Hmmm, seems like there's a recent real-word parallel there somewhere... ;)
Actually, yes it is! (It's the key that hides all the open palettes and toolbox, leaving just the image you're working on unhindered by clutter. Shift-tab does this but leaves the toolbox up.)
;)
Seriously though, sarcasm aside, Photoshop and other graphics applications are pretty nasty to use with a mouse. Yes, they are. For instance, try using a PS on a Mac for a week with your favorite mouse (say, a Logitech 3 button USB), then switching over to a PC (re-plugging your mouse). Ewww, different mouse acceleration!
OK, that's not really fair, but my reasoning is that you'd be much better off using a pointing device such as a graphics tablet** that maps 1:1 to the control surface area (you can tweak this in the driver settings usually). Then you get no wierd surprises, no strange acceleration, and an intuitive controller that behaves in a consistent manner.
**Yes, I am biased: I love my Wacom Intuos2 pad. Of course, they had to announce a new version a month after I buy the fricken thing, with funky modifier keys and a zoom-strip built into the pad - dammit!
I'm colour-blind. Not massively so, just the most common red-green deficiency (deuteranopia, I think?) that affects around 5 in 100 males, maybe more (http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/2.html)
;) But you're going to have trouble with vessel identification from their lighting (is that a ship or a rig?), and you're going to have some trouble coming into ports; not something I'd want to have to deal with single-handed.
I'm not a pilot, but I've done a fair bit of sailing; my last trip was a ~1500 nautical mile blue-water passage from the Azores back home to the Isle of Man. That's 12 days at sea, and even with four crew you spend a couple of hours on nightwatch per day. You're bound to encounter various situations where coloured light recognition is *very* useful, nearing on essential. For instance: you see a very large tanker directly ahead; the very fact that she's already over the horizon means that she's going to have a hard time stopping within those 5km, and probably hasn't seen you. You may need to get out of her way, and fast. While you can try hailing someone on the VHF or SSB, even with DSC some ships don't pay attention, and a surprisingly large amount of don't have their radar on all the time (due to the limited life magnetrons, I guess?). So, can you tell if he's actually coming towards you, or going away? Can you tell the configuration of the lights? Is that red or green on their port side? (Yes, you should be able to see their white aft light, but bulbs die.)
Personally, I wouldn't be 100% sure. My general daytime vision is pretty good, and I can usually tell what colour an object is, but low-intensity lights at night? Not with confidence. (Even with bino's.) On a ship it's not too bad: you have time to play with, so you can take a bearing, wait a minute and take another one, then calculate if she's on a collision; you can check the radar if you have it (we do); or you can piss off one of your crewmates by waking them up
Personally, I wouldn't be confident enough to pilot a plane at night. I'd imagine that things happen much faster compared to sailing (we travel an average of 6 knots an hour, and most motor vessels do 30kts tops) and that extra dimension of movement must make a lot of difference! Sailing's got plenty of procedures, knowledge requirements & useful instrumentation; I'd imagine that piloting has many more, so I guess what I'm interested in is whether you feel these would cover absolutely any situation that happened? I know that if it came down to it, if I was stuck on a boat by myself I'd be able to manage in spite of being colour-blind; can you say the same of yourself as a pilot?
(This isn't meant in a confrontational manner, I'm genuinely interested.)
I've used Smoothwall too, and it's great. I'll add another suggestion, though: IPCop, a free GPLed fork of Smoothwall which adds many features not available in the basic Smoothwall distro; great for home and small network use (though I'd highly recommend SW if you need any commercial support). The latest version - on release candidate 4 now, watch out for 1.4 stable any day now! - includes traffic shaping using Wondershaper, so will solve your P2P problems quite nicely. See the unofficial support forums for the latest news and plenty of help.
r t54g
Of course, if you just want a standalone device, like others have said youe best bet is to get a LinkSys WRT54G/WAP54G plus alternative firmware, such as the Sveasoft one. See more info here:
http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/LinksysW
Actually, it's probably worth pointing out that the TV licence is exactly that: a TV licence. You don't need to buy one to be entitled to listen to the BBC radio stations; they're just an extra-cool addition made available completely free to the general public. Incidentally, you also don't have to pay for a TV licence if you only use it to watch DVDs, videos, and satellite (though now that the BBC channels are on sat that'd be a tricky one to argue); all you have to do is detune the TV - yes, really! - though you'd be well-advised to either remove the TV tuner part completely, or at least crush the female connector with a pair of pliers. See this FAQ for more info:
http://www.jifvik.org/tv/