Konqueror has this wonderfull little check box "disable window.open" on it's javascript tab.
That pretty much kills any and all pop-up adds, and that feature alone makes Konqueror my browser of choice some days. Funny how none of the commercial browsers would have that feature which can save one alot of anoyance. I hate it when I am tricked to follow a link that starts a never ending barage of windows that open untill your browser crashes or the cows come home.
/*
* Homework A1 course...
* (c) 2001 Me
*
* This code is (C) me and is licensed under the
* GPL license as below with the following
* explicit clarification: The use of the code
* as an assignment submitted for marking is
* subject to the GPL license.
*
* GPL prologue, etc....
*/
Moderators Ignore it: Re:Space graffitti
on
Dial U for Union
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· Score: 1
Doh! I posted to the wrong article. Just ignore it.
I knew you could!
Seriously though it's nice to see some currency with a actual backbone. On the otherhand, can I redeem my gold grains at any time?
Although the only value gold has is one we assign it, so really the whole concept of currency is a mass dillusion.
I am sure many of you have heard the conspiracy theories surrounding flourescent lights....
Many have suggested that The Man (tm) is controlling our thoughts with flourescent lights.;)
On a serious note though, it might be interesting to see what one could do with this technology in a covert fashion. I.e. fashion an audio/video bug self contained in a balast and install them after hours. Attach a receiver to a telescope, and you have very hard to detect surveilence.
Security, all security is based on a structure of trust. I trust key x to belong to person y, etc.
The complexities of key exchange, and the difficulties of most person to person systems is that simply how can you ever trust the software? Microsoft could release easy to use encryption for all email, and slip in a back door, and everybody might start using it thinking, 'Heh, now the feds can't read my mail.' Yet they would be kidding themselves because they are not even part of the loop.
Simply put, encryption programs are complex because security is no simple issue to be solved by handing out push buttons to people.
Case and point: most of the broken codes circa world war II were not caused by supreme power or thinking, they were cause by catching german radio operators make mistakes.
Even if you could encrypt something easily to send it to another person who did not need to understand the mechanism by which the text was recovered, what would stop them from accidently forwarding, or intentionally forwarding the plain text to someone else? Nothing.
On the flip side, who do you think cares about your letters home to mom? So much mail fly's across the internet that encrypting yours will only likely draw attention to it. It's fairly safe to assume that the NSA or some other department of the government will be able to read it just the same.
No form of encryption can be secure unless all parties understand the difficult implications of security and take due dilligence to use it properly. If you need encryption that badly, then it's worth the time it would take to teach someone else to use it and make sure they understand why it is encrypted and how to protect the data. If it is not worth the time to teach them, and teach yourself, then it's not worth encrypting at all.
Back pain and other health problems related to over-computing (such as wrist pain) are a problem I know all to well!
I have gone through various different pain killers (mostly ibuprofin, ASA), and physio, and, and and...
I found in the end there was only one solution:
Stop hunching over in front of your computer!
This can be accomplished in a number of ways (which I recommend you do all of them!)
Tweak your chair settings so that it is at the right height - feet should be flat on the floor and elbows bent 90 degress to reach the keyboard. Don't rest them on anything (esp. not the hard edge of a desk
If your chair has a rocking mode, disable it. Force yourself to sit up straight
If your chair sucks, get your company to spring for a new one. If the problem is mostly at home, or the company won't spring, then invest in a chair for yourself. Esp. in the states, a 400 $ chair could save you thousands in medical bills if you wait so long that you need therapy.
Get up and walk around frequently. Take a walk at lunch. Excersise
If you work at a computer 8 hours a day, consider finding other hobbies than going home and spending another 6 on your own computer. Strenght training, rock climbing, etc. There is in fact more to life than computing.
Physio therapy is often very helpful, in that the therapist will force you to do excercises that target the muscle groups that you need to strengthen. That plus other therapies including masage, chiropractic adjustment, ultrasound, etc can make a big difference. Overall though, it is the excercise that does the most. Most pain from computers is caused becuase your muscles aren't doing their job properly -- target excercises strenthen them and make you more aware of how to use them.
Disclaimer: IANAD (Like IANAL, but D for doctor). If your are in that much discomfort, you should be seeing a doctor, and getting an evaluation from a physio therapist. Important note though: The longer you wait to do somthing about it, the worse the damage and the longer and harder to fix it.
Where is rms on this one?
on
Shared Source?
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· Score: 1
Once again, Open Source and Free Software has been confused. Microsoft discusses the GPL as an Open Source license, allowing them to conveniently ignore the fact that the GPL is the legal embodiement of a philospophy the describes software freedom.
For over 2 years now, the toronto area has used one form of 10 digit dialing, and another one is coming online soon.
The current system works like this:
the 416 was split geographically into 905 and 416. Local calls remained local, but if you were calling across the boundery, you had to specify the area code, i.e. 10 digits.
Now 905 is large, and there are numbers within 905 that are long distance from 905 and 416. Such a call needs the 1+area code still.
The new system is coming in early next year, to split the area codes again. This time, instead of telling people that they have a new area code, all new numbers will come in the new code, so the entire 416 and 905 area will have a total of 4 codes, and all are 10 digit local numbers. Long distance calls still need the 1+area code.
I think that is smarter than making all calls 10 digit whether they are long distance, or not is a bad idea. That way you can't misdial a long distance nubmer and get charged for it.
The flip side, is that the area code will now become a number you have to remember as a number, rather than a geographical place. Anyone studying number grouping will tell yopu phone numbers are bad enough already, and 3 more digits will really mess up some of our... um... less numerically inclined friends.
We hired an inexperienced buffoon as a junior member. Didn't know Windows, Unix, programming, or anything. He read an O'Reilly book and got hired as a Java network programmer six months later.
I see three possibilities here:
1. He is a buffon with a job he can't possibly handle. He will probably be fired soon.
2. He was some kind of latent programming natural, and may become usefull some day
3. That was one of those misprinted O'reilly books with Voodoo Magic Ink(tm) and supernatural geek creating powers.
I am afraid I have to disagree with that.
Perhaps some people are only interested in money, and I pity them, because there is alot more in life than money.
Not to say money isn't a factor. While money can't buy you happiness, financial insecurity causes an aweful lot of greif and depression. If a company is unwilling or unable to pay for your skills, then it's their loss.
But their are other factors that affect whether or not people will stay once they are there.
Bosses
PHB's (in the dilbert lingo) will cause people to leave, without a doubt.
Understanding managers with experience in the field that they are managing people in can make a job very enjoyable. Providing basic respect, encouragement, and realistic expectations go a long way.
Benifits, job security
Atmosphere
Tech workers esp, but most industries in general have specific needs. Comfortable work stations with appropriate lighting (no glare, and none of that (ug) natural light near the computers) are vital to employee health and saftey. Ample room to spread out books, printouts, and working notes allows the employee to organise them selves as they see fit. Tollerance for messy desks (esp. when the customers will never see them). Things to do while people are thinking, or need a break. Places to gather and chat. Windows to look out of while pondering deep truths. Encourage team building and communications within and without teams. Hokey HR seminars run by liberal arts students (i.e. handing each person an animal sound and tell everyone to form up into groups by only using those sounds) are a waste of everyones time. Paintball, bowling, go-kart racing, alley-hockey, and junk-yard wars style challenges (i.e. here is 1 role of duct tape, 2 sqaure meters of carboard, 2lbs of plumbers putty, 6 feet of string, and a small assortment of tools. Each 3 person team has to get the entire team across the swimming pool as fast as possible.) That kind of event is fun, challenging, and has your teams using their creative talents. For encouragement, add prizes like a bonus week of vacation, weekend all inclusive hotel stays for the winner and a guest, and 2 months of free pizza for the best department for friday lunches, make it worthwhile.
Training -- Letting your employess languish might make them less able to switch companies, but it destroys the company's ability to grow in a fast paced industry.
decent hardware -- I am doing java development currently, and they had me starting with a p-2 350 with 64 megs of ram. Java is a memory hog, so that was simply unacceptable. (I have 256 now)... That, and letting people customize their software a bit. Sound cards and cd rom drives are a must. Insist on headphones for sure, but most IT people I know use music to help them focus and remove distractions while they work. Also good for stress. Provide choices. Any Vi/Emacs warrier will go nuts if you force them to use inferior tools.
Enforced overtime -- The only excuse for someone working forced overtime, is when the server just started spitting sparks and blowing smoke. Overtime (esp. enforced overtime) is a sure sign that either poor planning took place, or some manager promised an unreasonable date. "The Mythical Man Month" is a required reading for all managers. Even those with programming backgrounds. If I was on a team with such a boss, I would go so far as to having an informal (but organised) work slowdown on the team untill the manager presents a 1000 word essay on a theme such as "Overtime and burnout: how much does it cost", or "The Warm Body Myth".
Air: Provide it. Preferably at a reasonable temperature (18-21 deg. Celcius (65-70 deg F)) for most North Americans(I won't speak for other places -- i just don't know) is preferable. Keep the filters clean, and don't put a food-waste dumpster by the air intake. In poluted down town areas, electrostatic precipitators can strip smog, smoke and other particulates from the air and make everyone comfortable. Smokers should smoke outside or in a seperatley ventaleted room that maintains a lower air pressure than the rest of the office to keep it from drifting. No smoking at the air intakes. I appologise to you smokers out there, that's your choice and right, but as a non smoker I have a right not to breath it, and it is your responsibility to keep it to yourself.
Privacy. There is alot of debate on this one, and whatever the company does has to suit the employees. Open surroundings can be good, and encourage communication. They allow one to see who else is around fairly quickly, and if they are busy. More private surroundings on the other hand allow people to have a less things going on in their field of site and hearing to distract them. I for one prefer a mix. I should be able to see other people in my department when I am standing up, at least enough to see if they are one the phone or wearing headphones. While I am sitting though, and staring off into space solving a problem, I don't want the person accross from me to think I am staring at them nor feel like they are staring at me.
Autonomy -- micromanagement bad. Most people can handle being given a task, and then being let to do it. Standing over shoulders, or daily/hourly progress reports just make people jumpy and nervous. Weekly status meetings on the other hand are a great forum to see where things are going and to identify and correct problems as soon as possible
Opportuities for advancement. I have not yet met anyone who enjoyed being in a dead end job. Promotions, and newer/more intersting work should be given to those who deserve it.
That covers most of the bases. Money might bring people to a job, but people don't start looking for another job unless they are unhappy. Keeping with what I said before, too little money can cause unhappiness, so don't forget that too.
(btw: I know, I know, I have been trolled, and I will try to have a nice day.)
What about building linux suspend to disk support?
I mean if the _only_ reason you are using windows is because linux is missing some wanted feature, then maybe the community could build it?
What would it take to add it?
I guess kernel support would be needed to load/save kernel memory to a boot drive, plus a modified boot loader that could init the os that way. I suspose most of the harware would need to be re-initialised as well.
There are enough linux laptops out there that this feature could be in demand. Furthermore we (the community) could make it more useful than commercial versions...
i.e. On top of normal suspend/resume the user could:
Start up their computer and save multiple different states, and allow the boot loader to select one -- i.e. I could have a prepared boot that goes straight to a logged in X, vs. a second one that goes to a terminal w/o X started. All while still benefitting from high-speed booting.
Is it just me, or is there an inordinatly high amount of depression and ADD in the programming community?
Is there something about the brain structures that allow us to focus at 17 million different levels, from the big picture of the overal structure, down to every little line of detail?
Is it pure coincidence? I think not. We play our brains like a fine tuned instrument... heck, caffeine is even chemically and functionally similar to dexadrim, one of the add drugs.
For me, the first 20 years of my life was a series of mental highs and lows -- my mood swings were erratic, and made succeeding in school very very difficult. It took a long time to realise that I wasn't actually lazy -- my brain itself couldn't funtion right.
Then came prozac. Wow, what a difference. Let me tell you all, that depression sucks big time -- though it's hard to tell it when you are depressed. Worst of all, it's rarely because of anything bad that may have happened in your life. It's more like breaking a leg or getting a cold. Your brain stops producing the chemicals needed to function normally, and Seritonan (the one that prozac works to promote) is an important part of regulating emotions.
If you think that you may be suffering from depression -- SEE YOUR DOCTOR!!!
There is no shame in being on antidepressants. It's nobodies fault. The drugs these days work wonderfully, with almost no side effects. And best of all, you can't really abuse them either. If your not suffering whatever kind of biochemical depression that the given drug targets, then it won't do anything to you at all.
I was scared that it might affect my personality, they way I think, etc. I was scared at what it would do to me. But let me tell you this: If you can think back to a time when everything seemed right, you were sleeping well, and your depression wasn't there, then that is how it feels to be on the drug. It feels normal. You still experience a normal range of emotions, etc. It's not a magic happy pill -- it just makes your brain work the way it is supposed to. To spec as it were.
--A concerned member of the community.
For those of you who have never heard of blender
on
Blender Goes Freeware
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· Score: 1
I have toyed with blender on and off now for over a year or two, and I am willing to say (with experience in 3dStudio, and Alias Animator both of varying versions) That blender is at least as powerful and possibly more so than offerings for commercial products. However, it's interface is very difficult to learn -- those of you who like VI, Emacs, or any other "real" programmers editors, I think you will be quite happy though. The blender interface was designed for speed, not ease of use. The learning curve has an infinite slope, but takling that, in a draw vs one of the other commercial offersings, a blender user will be the one standing with the smoking mouse and keyboard.
Great work NAN, I for one have been looking forward to this.
Lovely how this guy can take a publically published standard (circa 1993 or so...) and years later after it has been used in the public domain for 5-6 years figures he can make tonnes of money in patent law suits against the world.... I don't think this will hold up. I don't think you can patent something like this, which has been in use for years before the patent was filed. He has tried to utterly defeat the purpose of open standards like http. I think Tim Burners-Lee, and everyone else who worked on the http standard and it's various iterations should sue this guy for... I don't know, but I am sure someone could find a lawer that would find some way to make sure that this guy doesn't make any money off his scam. At the very least I wonder what Tim would have to say about it.
Re:Why wasn't it controlled before?
on
At The Crossroads
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· Score: 1
Thank you for not flaming... As I said, devils advocate... Here is a wonderful point: That would make more sense if laws existed in some sort of vacuum where there was just Right and Wrong But ideally laws exist on the basis of right vs. wrong, using a set of guiding principles to weight when one possibility takes precendence over another. Our society has "developed" to the point where we have set out some of those principals. Some places like Canada and the US have set out those principals in their constitutions. This is a case where those guiding principles collide -- the right to free speech, vs the right to protect your work. Once upon a time we lived in a barter society -- musicians and artists had few direct means to care for themselves -- arts demand much time and only provide mental gain. Fortunetly, from the bards and buskers to the court patrons, others valued their work enough to provide them coin, food, lodging, etc. The question I pose is thus: How much do we value the works of these people, and those in the other fields where IP rules the day... Musicians in our current society are taking a bad rap, (pardon the pun) because of the music industry feeds them alot of money... But what if writers, and novelists started having their books scanned in, converted to text and traded away on the internet, without them ever seeing a cent? They make much thinner wages for their work, and you might see a few going homeless just because someone decided that their work should be free. Scary thought? It's really not that far off -- the only reason why it hasn't happened yet is because computer screens are not easy to read. Text storage, compression and charactor recognition are all available, and reasonably reliable. I make an effort to buy the books of the authors I like, as a way of ensuring more will come out. Simmilarly, every single one of the few cd's I have bought this year were of artists I heard on mp3's. Copying music isn't anything new. Trading tapes was very common. The difference is that with the internet, unlimited time browsing and high speed connections, it only takes seconds for one copy to diseminate... You don't have to buy a new hard drive every time, and you can easily delete unwanted songs... There is nothing to limit the rate at which it is done, and it is hurting the industry. How much do you value the work of those artists? They enrich our society, and lives. I perform my own art (that of coding;) better while I listen to music, and the long commutes are made enjoyable by books.
Pardon me for playing the devil's advocate, but I would like to point out a little tiny detail:
The internet, and cyberspace escaped much notice for the first 20-30 years of it's life. A culture developed in a vacuum of regulation. In the early 90's it's popularity blossomed with the accessabilty increases, and many of the net's new denziens of the time (like my self, circa '92) quickly grasped the culture and joined it, taking it to heart as a new way of sharing and co-existing with people around the world.
But the fact of the matter is that laws are still laws. And many broke existing laws. We brought this upon ourselves. Instead of following the much looser laws of the time by intelligently applying them to the new medium, we, ALL OF US, chose instead to use the digital transfer of information as we pleased. So, goverments are now faced with corparations trying to get into this world and being faced with lawlessness against them in ways that they had never before dealt with.
Now undoubtadly some fLAMER will point out that they havn't done anything wrong, but the point is that they didn't stop it either....
Intellectual Property law isn't unjust, isn't wrong. Why shouldn't a musician be able to make money off of any copy of their work? They chose to take their musical talents and make a living of it. Why should every piece of software have open source? For the most part humans don't give up stuff for free. This is a many thousand year old tradition.
Putting the sterotype issue asside for a moment, I would like to say that if more young women are finding and building a world they like on the net, more power to em. I am a guy. I don't pretend to remotley understand the pressures young women go through. Furthermore, as a self-styled geek, I have always valued brains over beauty, so I hope I haven't been part of the unintentional, non-concious oppression that is often discussed. The net has for many years been a form of communication that has allowed people to express themselves without being embarressed or scared. As a fairly quiet person myself, I guarentee I wouldn't have the guts to make my ideas like this public if I had to do it IRL. Not becuase I am ashamed or embarressed of my ideas, but rather that I lack the self confidence to share. In my experience and understanding of the world, the media and many men try and push women into nice little do-this, don't do that boxes. Smart girls often act dumb and don't reach their own potential, because of the stigmas our world attaches to being smart and successful as a women.
It is up to every one of us men to do one of the following (and frankly, I am never sure which is appropriate...): 1) Encourage girls to reach their full potential and beyond. 2) Keep our noses out of their online world and let it be everything they make it.
I guess I am breaking #2, but even so, I hope I haven't made to much of an ass of myself. Anyhow, I will fall back into the shadows of the net now.
I have to agree that all this chrome is fragmenting the market and confusing potential newbies.... But then, hey, what is (Linux|BSD|whatever) about? Lets face it... We are geeks, nerds, and technophytes, and we want our stuff to look cool. Linux was made for fun -- the fun of saying "I am geekier than you", or as one of my friend's them states, "leeter than you". We buy geek clothes from places like thinkgeek and copyleft, we hang out on slashdot to share our opinions (and gain karma...)... and on and on and on. Yet windows backlash is creating a new marketplace, one full of people that want to get work done, not look cool. How many of you have posted screenshots of your desktop on your website? How many of you lost slashdot purity points for doing so with a web browser open showing slashdot? Get real, I say to us all. Chrome is for games, and for interfaces the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is rule of the day. Or in other words, if you want to use skins, make the default skin look like a normal interface, and let the geeks have fun customising it if they feel so inclined.
I read through their membership agreement yesterday when the add came up on me for the first time. You sign on and agree to an NDA, and the "worth" of jobs are assigned by the people in charge of specific programs. so I think that that should reasonable cap the fairness issue. But it isn't really open source -- you are working on software for a company to sell. It has an interesting idea -- lets higher 1000's of programmers and give them a piece of code to write and integrate, and if we can sell the thing afterwords, then we will trickle the shares down. They are hoping to capitalise on our community. The flip is that it creates a whole new development model that may give rise to a cyberpunkish environment where programmers are freelancers that take little pieces of projects. Will they survive? Interesting to see. I considered signing on, but I think hoping and praying for a project to sell and putting lots of time into it like that just isn't for me. If I am going to put my free time into a project, I am going to make sure it's something I like to do, not slaving for a corparation for no money unless the product sells, that's just backwards to me.
American law has always bent the way of the corparation and ensures that they make as much money as possible, at the expense of the rights of the individual.
The only real case hear has nothing to do with "protecting the morals of our youth"... It was a huge embaressment that a couple of programmers made a tool to render the software useless. Would you as a parent or an institution buy software that was easy to circumvent?
I offer my congrats to the authors of CPHack on GLPing it and then seeling your "rights" to the program to Mattel, that has to be the funnyest legal hack I have ever heard of.
Frankly what we need to protect the morals of our children are parents that actually spend time with their kids, not plop them down infront of a TV or computer as an e-babysitter. If we take the time to teach our children right from wrong in the first place, such big-brother-esque software as CyberPatrol would not be neccessary.
If mattel wanted to "protect the morals of our children" They should pull their entire barbie line of products, for those give young girls a wrong idea of beauty, that will eventually lead to problems such as Anorexia and Bulemia. Mattel and it's group of companies sell many toys that espouse violence... Mattel has never cared about morals in the first place, only the bottom line.
We all know that our computers can't be 'blowd' up by a piece of email or a virus... Yet, these myths proliferate badly. Why: #1 I guarentee that @aol.com was somewhere in the headers... #2 There is a virus at work.... it's a social virus. These things circulate because of all the less than computer litterate people out there that feel the need to be scared of their computer. Do you think a social virus email that pronounced your computer safe from all email virii would propagate? Please take the time to educate your friends, family, etc when they forward that kind of crap to you. How about a chain letter asking that the bandwidth abuse caused by chain letters be stopped... "By reading this slashdot comment, your computer will start jumping up and down untill it overheats and explodes!"
Slashdot Mirror
Konqueror has this wonderfull little check box "disable window.open" on it's javascript tab.
That pretty much kills any and all pop-up adds, and that feature alone makes Konqueror my browser of choice some days. Funny how none of the commercial browsers would have that feature which can save one alot of anoyance. I hate it when I am tricked to follow a link that starts a never ending barage of windows that open untill your browser crashes or the cows come home.
/*
* Homework A1 course...
* (c) 2001 Me
*
* This code is (C) me and is licensed under the
* GPL license as below with the following
* explicit clarification: The use of the code
* as an assignment submitted for marking is
* subject to the GPL license.
*
* GPL prologue, etc....
*/
Doh! I posted to the wrong article. Just ignore it.
Title pretty much says it all!
[Your Name] Was here.
I knew you could!
Seriously though it's nice to see some currency with a actual backbone. On the otherhand, can I redeem my gold grains at any time?
Although the only value gold has is one we assign it, so really the whole concept of currency is a mass dillusion.
I am sure many of you have heard the conspiracy theories surrounding flourescent lights....
;)
Many have suggested that The Man (tm) is controlling our thoughts with flourescent lights.
On a serious note though, it might be interesting to see what one could do with this technology in a covert fashion. I.e. fashion an audio/video bug self contained in a balast and install them after hours. Attach a receiver to a telescope, and you have very hard to detect surveilence.
Security, all security is based on a structure of trust. I trust key x to belong to person y, etc.
The complexities of key exchange, and the difficulties of most person to person systems is that simply how can you ever trust the software? Microsoft could release easy to use encryption for all email, and slip in a back door, and everybody might start using it thinking, 'Heh, now the feds can't read my mail.' Yet they would be kidding themselves because they are not even part of the loop.
Simply put, encryption programs are complex because security is no simple issue to be solved by handing out push buttons to people.
Case and point: most of the broken codes circa world war II were not caused by supreme power or thinking, they were cause by catching german radio operators make mistakes.
Even if you could encrypt something easily to send it to another person who did not need to understand the mechanism by which the text was recovered, what would stop them from accidently forwarding, or intentionally forwarding the plain text to someone else? Nothing.
On the flip side, who do you think cares about your letters home to mom? So much mail fly's across the internet that encrypting yours will only likely draw attention to it. It's fairly safe to assume that the NSA or some other department of the government will be able to read it just the same.
No form of encryption can be secure unless all parties understand the difficult implications of security and take due dilligence to use it properly. If you need encryption that badly, then it's worth the time it would take to teach someone else to use it and make sure they understand why it is encrypted and how to protect the data. If it is not worth the time to teach them, and teach yourself, then it's not worth encrypting at all.
I have gone through various different pain killers (mostly ibuprofin, ASA), and physio, and, and and...
I found in the end there was only one solution: Stop hunching over in front of your computer!
This can be accomplished in a number of ways (which I recommend you do all of them!)
Physio therapy is often very helpful, in that the therapist will force you to do excercises that target the muscle groups that you need to strengthen. That plus other therapies including masage, chiropractic adjustment, ultrasound, etc can make a big difference. Overall though, it is the excercise that does the most. Most pain from computers is caused becuase your muscles aren't doing their job properly -- target excercises strenthen them and make you more aware of how to use them.
Disclaimer: IANAD (Like IANAL, but D for doctor). If your are in that much discomfort, you should be seeing a doctor, and getting an evaluation from a physio therapist. Important note though: The longer you wait to do somthing about it, the worse the damage and the longer and harder to fix it.
Once again, Open Source and Free Software has been confused. Microsoft discusses the GPL as an Open Source license, allowing them to conveniently ignore the fact that the GPL is the legal embodiement of a philospophy the describes software freedom.
--Nuff Said.
Either someone at work found out about your side-project, and you were set up, or else you just got smacked with some luck.
Question is... Good luck, or bad?
Either your going to make a killing, or your going to be screwed. In either case, your boss will be singing "All your codebase are belong to us!"
For over 2 years now, the toronto area has used one form of 10 digit dialing, and another one is coming online soon.
The current system works like this:
the 416 was split geographically into 905 and 416. Local calls remained local, but if you were calling across the boundery, you had to specify the area code, i.e. 10 digits.
Now 905 is large, and there are numbers within 905 that are long distance from 905 and 416. Such a call needs the 1+area code still.
The new system is coming in early next year, to split the area codes again. This time, instead of telling people that they have a new area code, all new numbers will come in the new code, so the entire 416 and 905 area will have a total of 4 codes, and all are 10 digit local numbers. Long distance calls still need the 1+area code.
I think that is smarter than making all calls 10 digit whether they are long distance, or not is a bad idea. That way you can't misdial a long distance nubmer and get charged for it.
The flip side, is that the area code will now become a number you have to remember as a number, rather than a geographical place. Anyone studying number grouping will tell yopu phone numbers are bad enough already, and 3 more digits will really mess up some of our... um... less numerically inclined friends.
Thoughts?
We hired an inexperienced buffoon as a junior member. Didn't know Windows, Unix, programming, or anything. He read an O'Reilly book and got hired as a Java network programmer six months later.
I see three possibilities here:
1. He is a buffon with a job he can't possibly handle. He will probably be fired soon.
2. He was some kind of latent programming natural, and may become usefull some day
3. That was one of those misprinted O'reilly books with Voodoo Magic Ink(tm) and supernatural geek creating powers.
Laff. Its funny.
Not to say money isn't a factor. While money can't buy you happiness, financial insecurity causes an aweful lot of greif and depression. If a company is unwilling or unable to pay for your skills, then it's their loss.
But their are other factors that affect whether or not people will stay once they are there.
That covers most of the bases. Money might bring people to a job, but people don't start looking for another job unless they are unhappy. Keeping with what I said before, too little money can cause unhappiness, so don't forget that too. (btw: I know, I know, I have been trolled, and I will try to have a nice day.)
What about building linux suspend to disk support?
I mean if the _only_ reason you are using windows is because linux is missing some wanted feature, then maybe the community could build it?
What would it take to add it?
I guess kernel support would be needed to load/save kernel memory to a boot drive, plus a modified boot loader that could init the os that way. I suspose most of the harware would need to be re-initialised as well.
There are enough linux laptops out there that this feature could be in demand. Furthermore we (the community) could make it more useful than commercial versions...
i.e. On top of normal suspend/resume the user could:
Start up their computer and save multiple different states, and allow the boot loader to select one -- i.e. I could have a prepared boot that goes straight to a logged in X, vs. a second one that goes to a terminal w/o X started. All while still benefitting from high-speed booting.
Disscussion?
Perhaps a larger, global organisation such as UNESCO, the UN, or else an international coalition of space agency's should declare it a protected area.
Sites such as Quebec City, the cradle of Canada, are labled as UNESCO world heritage sites, so why shouldn't humankind's first jaunt on the moon.
I am sure though that unesco would probably just write back a letter stating that "We have no jurisdiction over the moon"....
Is it just me, or is there an inordinatly high amount of depression and ADD in the programming community?
Is there something about the brain structures that allow us to focus at 17 million different levels, from the big picture of the overal structure, down to every little line of detail?
Is it pure coincidence? I think not. We play our brains like a fine tuned instrument... heck, caffeine is even chemically and functionally similar to dexadrim, one of the add drugs.
For me, the first 20 years of my life was a series of mental highs and lows -- my mood swings were erratic, and made succeeding in school very very difficult. It took a long time to realise that I wasn't actually lazy -- my brain itself couldn't funtion right.
Then came prozac. Wow, what a difference. Let me tell you all, that depression sucks big time -- though it's hard to tell it when you are depressed. Worst of all, it's rarely because of anything bad that may have happened in your life. It's more like breaking a leg or getting a cold. Your brain stops producing the chemicals needed to function normally, and Seritonan (the one that prozac works to promote) is an important part of regulating emotions.
If you think that you may be suffering from depression -- SEE YOUR DOCTOR!!!
There is no shame in being on antidepressants. It's nobodies fault. The drugs these days work wonderfully, with almost no side effects. And best of all, you can't really abuse them either. If your not suffering whatever kind of biochemical depression that the given drug targets, then it won't do anything to you at all.
I was scared that it might affect my personality, they way I think, etc. I was scared at what it would do to me. But let me tell you this: If you can think back to a time when everything seemed right, you were sleeping well, and your depression wasn't there, then that is how it feels to be on the drug. It feels normal. You still experience a normal range of emotions, etc. It's not a magic happy pill -- it just makes your brain work the way it is supposed to. To spec as it were.
--A concerned member of the community.
I have toyed with blender on and off now for over a year or two, and I am willing to say (with experience in 3dStudio, and Alias Animator both of varying versions) That blender is at least as powerful and possibly more so than offerings for commercial products.
However, it's interface is very difficult to learn -- those of you who like VI, Emacs, or any other "real" programmers editors, I think you will be quite happy though. The blender interface was designed for speed, not ease of use. The learning curve has an infinite slope, but takling that, in a draw vs one of the other commercial offersings, a blender user will be the one standing with the smoking mouse and keyboard.
Great work NAN, I for one have been looking forward to this.
Lovely how this guy can take a publically published standard (circa 1993 or so...) and years later after it has been used in the public domain for 5-6 years figures he can make tonnes of money in patent law suits against the world.... I don't think this will hold up. I don't think you can patent something like this, which has been in use for years before the patent was filed. He has tried to utterly defeat the purpose of open standards like http. I think Tim Burners-Lee, and everyone else who worked on the http standard and it's various iterations should sue this guy for ... I don't know, but I am sure someone could find a lawer that would find some way to make sure that this guy doesn't make any money off his scam. At the very least I wonder what Tim would have to say about it.
Thank you for not flaming... As I said, devils advocate... Here is a wonderful point:
That would make more sense if laws existed in some sort of vacuum where there was just Right and Wrong
But ideally laws exist on the basis of right vs. wrong, using a set of guiding principles to weight when one possibility takes precendence over another.
Our society has "developed" to the point where we have set out some of those principals. Some places like Canada and the US have set out those principals in their constitutions.
This is a case where those guiding principles collide -- the right to free speech, vs the right to protect your work. Once upon a time we lived in a barter society -- musicians and artists had few direct means to care for themselves -- arts demand much time and only provide mental gain. Fortunetly, from the bards and buskers to the court patrons, others valued their work enough to provide them coin, food, lodging, etc.
The question I pose is thus: How much do we value the works of these people, and those in the other fields where IP rules the day...
Musicians in our current society are taking a bad rap, (pardon the pun) because of the music industry feeds them alot of money...
But what if writers, and novelists started having their books scanned in, converted to text and traded away on the internet, without them ever seeing a cent? They make much thinner wages for their work, and you might see a few going homeless just because someone decided that their work should be free.
Scary thought? It's really not that far off -- the only reason why it hasn't happened yet is because computer screens are not easy to read. Text storage, compression and charactor recognition are all available, and reasonably reliable.
I make an effort to buy the books of the authors I like, as a way of ensuring more will come out. Simmilarly, every single one of the few cd's I have bought this year were of artists I heard on mp3's.
Copying music isn't anything new. Trading tapes was very common. The difference is that with the internet, unlimited time browsing and high speed connections, it only takes seconds for one copy to diseminate... You don't have to buy a new hard drive every time, and you can easily delete unwanted songs... There is nothing to limit the rate at which it is done, and it is hurting the industry.
How much do you value the work of those artists? They enrich our society, and lives. I perform my own art (that of coding;) better while I listen to music, and the long commutes are made enjoyable by books.
Pardon me for playing the devil's advocate, but I would like to point out a little tiny detail:
The internet, and cyberspace escaped much notice for the first 20-30 years of it's life. A culture developed in a vacuum of regulation. In the early 90's it's popularity blossomed with the accessabilty increases, and many of the net's new denziens of the time (like my self, circa '92) quickly grasped the culture and joined it, taking it to heart as a new way of sharing and co-existing with people around the world.
But the fact of the matter is that laws are still laws. And many broke existing laws. We brought this upon ourselves. Instead of following the much looser laws of the time by intelligently applying them to the new medium, we, ALL OF US, chose instead to use the digital transfer of information as we pleased. So, goverments are now faced with corparations trying to get into this world and being faced with lawlessness against them in ways that they had never before dealt with.
Now undoubtadly some fLAMER will point out that they havn't done anything wrong, but the point is that they didn't stop it either....
Intellectual Property law isn't unjust, isn't wrong. Why shouldn't a musician be able to make money off of any copy of their work? They chose to take their musical talents and make a living of it. Why should every piece of software have open source? For the most part humans don't give up stuff for free. This is a many thousand year old tradition.
Rem: Devils advocate...
I would like to say that if more young women are finding and building a world they like on the net, more power to em.
I am a guy. I don't pretend to remotley understand the pressures young women go through
Furthermore, as a self-styled geek, I have always valued brains over beauty, so I hope I haven't been part of the unintentional, non-concious oppression that is often discussed.
The net has for many years been a form of communication that has allowed people to express themselves without being embarressed or scared. As a fairly quiet person myself, I guarentee I wouldn't have the guts to make my ideas like this public if I had to do it IRL. Not becuase I am ashamed or embarressed of my ideas, but rather that I lack the self confidence to share.
In my experience and understanding of the world, the media and many men try and push women into nice little do-this, don't do that boxes. Smart girls often act dumb and don't reach their own potential, because of the stigmas our world attaches to being smart and successful as a women.
It is up to every one of us men to do one of the following (and frankly, I am never sure which is appropriate...):
1) Encourage girls to reach their full potential and beyond.
2) Keep our noses out of their online world and let it be everything they make it.
I guess I am breaking #2, but even so, I hope I haven't made to much of an ass of myself.
Anyhow, I will fall back into the shadows of the net now.
I have to agree that all this chrome is fragmenting the market and confusing potential newbies.... But then, hey, what is (Linux|BSD|whatever) about?
Lets face it... We are geeks, nerds, and technophytes, and we want our stuff to look cool. Linux was made for fun -- the fun of saying "I am geekier than you", or as one of my friend's them states, "leeter than you".
We buy geek clothes from places like thinkgeek and copyleft, we hang out on slashdot to share our opinions (and gain karma...)... and on and on and on.
Yet windows backlash is creating a new marketplace, one full of people that want to get work done, not look cool.
How many of you have posted screenshots of your desktop on your website? How many of you lost slashdot purity points for doing so with a web browser open showing slashdot?
Get real, I say to us all. Chrome is for games, and for interfaces the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is rule of the day. Or in other words, if you want to use skins, make the default skin look like a normal interface, and let the geeks have fun customising it if they feel so inclined.
I read through their membership agreement yesterday when the add came up on me for the first time. You sign on and agree to an NDA, and the "worth" of jobs are assigned by the people in charge of specific programs. so I think that that should reasonable cap the fairness issue. But it isn't really open source -- you are working on software for a company to sell. It has an interesting idea -- lets higher 1000's of programmers and give them a piece of code to write and integrate, and if we can sell the thing afterwords, then we will trickle the shares down. They are hoping to capitalise on our community. The flip is that it creates a whole new development model that may give rise to a cyberpunkish environment where programmers are freelancers that take little pieces of projects. Will they survive? Interesting to see. I considered signing on, but I think hoping and praying for a project to sell and putting lots of time into it like that just isn't for me. If I am going to put my free time into a project, I am going to make sure it's something I like to do, not slaving for a corparation for no money unless the product sells, that's just backwards to me.
This kind of article scares me.
American law has always bent the way of the corparation and ensures that they make as much money as possible, at the expense of the rights of the individual.
The only real case hear has nothing to do with "protecting the morals of our youth"... It was a huge embaressment that a couple of programmers made a tool to render the software useless. Would you as a parent or an institution buy software that was easy to circumvent?
I offer my congrats to the authors of CPHack on GLPing it and then seeling your "rights" to the program to Mattel, that has to be the funnyest legal hack I have ever heard of.
Frankly what we need to protect the morals of our children are parents that actually spend time with their kids, not plop them down infront of a TV or computer as an e-babysitter. If we take the time to teach our children right from wrong in the first place, such big-brother-esque software as CyberPatrol would not be neccessary.
If mattel wanted to "protect the morals of our children" They should pull their entire barbie line of products, for those give young girls a wrong idea of beauty, that will eventually lead to problems such as Anorexia and Bulemia. Mattel and it's group of companies sell many toys that espouse violence... Mattel has never cared about morals in the first place, only the bottom line.
We all know that our computers can't be 'blowd' up by a piece of email or a virus... Yet, these myths proliferate badly. Why:
#1 I guarentee that @aol.com was somewhere in the headers...
#2 There is a virus at work.... it's a social virus. These things circulate because of all the less than computer litterate people out there that feel the need to be scared of their computer. Do you think a social virus email that pronounced your computer safe from all email virii would propagate? Please take the time to educate your friends, family, etc when they forward that kind of crap to you. How about a chain letter asking that the bandwidth abuse caused by chain letters be stopped... "By reading this slashdot comment, your computer will start jumping up and down untill it overheats and explodes!"