Such a product could be written in PHP with a MySQL backend in half a day. It would be very flexible to your company's needs - a reporting page could also serve the HR department when it comes time to pay saleries.
It could also be used to monitor who is at lunch, or in a meeting, or out of the office, etc. This would be handy for the receptionist(s) taking phone calls - they would know where you are without calling your desk phone, then paging you over the whole phone/PA system (keeping the client on-hold during this time).
One issue with this is, how will people remember to go to a web page on the intranet at the start/end of their shift? The browser's start/home page might work at the start of the shift, but what about the end of the shift?
Downstream firewalls won't help much. The traffic will still travel through the cable/wires to your computer, it's just that the packets get ignored. These dropped packets still count towards your bandwidth limit/charge.
Something would need to be done further upstream, at say the ISP. A web frontend to iptables would not be too hard to create, however it would be difficult/repetitive for dialup users who get disconnected after a handful of hours.
Using Windows 98 on a 4 hour dialup modem connection, the number of times I ran netstat and discovered foreign machines connected to port 135 was astounding - even when there were no file shares available. Whenever I had SQL Server 2000 SP3 running, within 30 minutes my modem lights would blink like crazy, until I temporarily stopped the DB service.
Now I run Linux with iptables blocking all ports except 80 (Apache) and 81 (IIS-4). No attacks can get to my Win98 VMWare Workstation.
I have the Flash plugin installed in Linux and Windows. It's NO INCONVENIENCE AT ALL to download a file less than 700 KB in size and install it.
Of course there are places where Flash usage is excessive or relied on too much, but there are many places where it is appropriate.
As a web developer, I know how hard it is to mimick the interactivty and animation. Flash is a mature product, it has many features that are impossible/very difficult to implement using XHTML/DOM/CSS/JavaScript/SVG/DHTML/etc.
When I develop a web page where I am given Flash to embed, I also provide a plain text alternative - and I make a point of making it looking as simple/boring as possible. That way visually impaired visitors can still use the site, and those "Flash is evil" users can be punished with very un-appealing presentation. I mean these technologies have been around for years - designed to enrich our browsing experience. Why not accept it and get on with life?
Some things just cant/shouldnt be done in Flash. Some things just cant/shouldnt be done in W3C technologies. Flash vector animations are very small - higher quality and much smaller than the equivalent animated gif or DHTML.
The Flash plugin is quite cross browser/operating system friendly. Imagine the headaches accomplishing the same interactivty/animation using W3C code. Browsers don't adhere to standards perfectly.
Some tech users may find plugins evil or inconvenient - why? Think of the 100 times more people who aren't techies - think how they appreciate the simplicity of plugins. Just one or two "OK" clicks if they don't have the plugin - and they are viewing the plugin content.
The internet is a heterogenous store of many different forms of media - user friendly browsing is achieved by browsers capable of displaying multiple media formats IN THE BROWSER. This includes PDF, Flash and M$ Office files. The general internet population is not as savvy as many of us on/. - we need to be considerate of them too.
Here in Australia, if I wanted to send an SMS to a friend, I pay the $0.25c to send it, my friend would recieve it free.
If I placed a phone call to a friend's mobile, I pay the (higher than landline) call charges, my friend with the mobile didn't make the call, so he doesn't pay.
Some "dehumaniSing" could be a good thing, espcially when grading subjective material.
Objective material is factual, a simplification is "Most dogs have 2 eyes."
Subjective material is opinionated - "Australia should legalise heroin injecting rooms." Obviously this is controversial, and there are serveral positions on the matter.
Most teachers/lecturers/graders/tutors have their own (pre-existing) subjective opinions on certain topics. If you submit an essay that opposes their views, the chances are very high that you will get a lower grade, even if your essay is well formed/written/structured.
In high school, I always took this into account and wrote essays that agreed with the teacher's point of view, even if I didn't. Such software could lessen the need for writing what they 'want to read'.
I thought President Bush was into COLONisation (or is that colonic irrigation?) and exporation. Just look at Iraq.
Seriously though, what they are undertaking is a huge/expensive task... wouldn't the money better be spent inside Russia, to bring people above the poverty line? It's not like Russia is short on land...
At least if the reactor went critical, there wouldn't be many deaths. I just hope Homer Simpson isn't one of the 6 engineers that will maintain the power station.
Version numbers rarely have anything to do with software development progress with respect to competitors software.
If that was the case, is Windows 3.1 more advanced software that a Linux box with kernel 2.6.0-test3?
It is a well known trend that competing software vendors may increase their version increments to appear current with their competitors.
For example, Netscape 6 (as opposed to Netscape 5) was released because MSIE was already at version 6. RedHat 9 came out after RedHat 8 (there was no 8.1) presumably to keep abreast with Mandrake 9.
GNOME is a mature desktop environment. Their software is good enough - their is no need to resort to such version jumping. It suits some people, but not others. My (Red) Hat goes off to them for not needing to keep their versions in sync with KDE.
I use RedHat 9 and GNOME - and I find that the used RAM slowly creeps up whilst using Nautilus. Now that I have 576 MB it takes a while, but it is still annoying. It would be great if this was resolved in GNOME 2.4.
Used RAM also increases (at a reduced rate) when I use a lighter file manager. The only way to reclaim that memory is to restart X. Maybe XFree86 4.3.0 has a memory leek in RedHat 9 too?
FYI the amount of RAM doesn't increase like that in my Windows 98, which is also immune to the Blaster Worm.
Hit the road Tux, and don't you come back no more no more no more no more, hit the road Tux, and don't you come back no more...
Sorry, couldn't resist. I wonder if yearly vehicle registration fees will decrease now? VicRoads charge ~$440 for a light vehicle, and ~500 for a medium vehicle. That's more than one weeks wage for many people.
Maybe if VicRoads switched all their systems and PCs to Linux; vehicle ownership would not be out of reach for so many. I should send them a Tux t-shirt with my next payment.
I think some hardware manufacturers don't like end users performing such modifications. There is always the risk of some damage occuring - especially with small/compact/advanced hardware - where 1mm of conductant paste in the wrong place could fry a processor. PC hardware is delicate equipment - imagine how much $$$ hardware vendors would be up for if they allowed this thermal paste.
I remember reading the/. article "AMD: No Grease For You!" http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/29 /005324 0&mode=thread&tid=142
>"we'll all surely be thinking about putting it in our boxes"
I won't be doing this. Such a think could void warranties. Stability and reliability is more important than speed IMHO - especially since I don't play games.
If manufacturers start using this paste, and it doesn't deteriorate after 5 years, then that is different.
Obviously it won't be used in resistors - as conductance is not very good in such components;-)
He could pretend to be gay - subtle at first and then more 'out' about it.
He could also meet a girlfriend/fiancé for lunch, and plan it so that his boss sees his partner. This partner could be just a friend - the boss is not likely to know the difference.
Or he could combine both of the above and meet a pretend boyfriend for lunch?
Definately document the harassment - to use just in case the situation gets worse.
I find ASP.NET rather difficult to work with - and avoid using it if there is a better alternative.
The amount of code required to output [X]HTML to the browser is in the order of magnitudes more than using ASP. More typing for less output is bad for productivity and deadlines. ASP can be adjusted with any txt editor, and does not need compiling.
The ASP engine in IIS6 has been rewritten for performance - so legacy applications will continue to run.
The features that come with.NET and not ASP can usually be accomplished in PHP, which is smaller, well documented and cross platform.
I can't give my opinion of.NET applications that are not hosted on a web server - they may be better than earlier technologies.
service httpd start
Mike
A discrepancy?
on
dB Drag Racing
·
· Score: 5, Informative
From the article: "every 10 dB increase equivalent to a doubling of perceived sound."
In high school physics, I was taught that an increase of 3dB doubles the intensity/amplitude of the sound. My teacher concluded that +3dB would mean you hear a sound twice as loud. Then he went on to explain that P (power) is directly proportional to 1/d (the inverse of the distance squared).
I know that the Richter scale works on the idea that an earthquake of 6 on the Richter scale is double the strength of one of 5 on the Richter scale.
But have I been mislead? Is "perceived sound" different from amplitude/intensity? Did I really get staight 'A's in pyhsics?
Mike
Tux, myself and my lady regularly engage in 3somes - over the home network.
Slashdot Mirror
Markup languages are hardly extreme, but surely they could push the bounds of the latest standards and do something truely extreme. ;-)
Mike
Such a product could be written in PHP with a MySQL backend in half a day. It would be very flexible to your company's needs - a reporting page could also serve the HR department when it comes time to pay saleries.
It could also be used to monitor who is at lunch, or in a meeting, or out of the office, etc. This would be handy for the receptionist(s) taking phone calls - they would know where you are without calling your desk phone, then paging you over the whole phone/PA system (keeping the client on-hold during this time).
One issue with this is, how will people remember to go to a web page on the intranet at the start/end of their shift? The browser's start/home page might work at the start of the shift, but what about the end of the shift?
Mike
Something would need to be done further upstream, at say the ISP. A web frontend to iptables would not be too hard to create, however it would be difficult/repetitive for dialup users who get disconnected after a handful of hours.
Using Windows 98 on a 4 hour dialup modem connection, the number of times I ran netstat and discovered foreign machines connected to port 135 was astounding - even when there were no file shares available. Whenever I had SQL Server 2000 SP3 running, within 30 minutes my modem lights would blink like crazy, until I temporarily stopped the DB service.
Now I run Linux with iptables blocking all ports except 80 (Apache) and 81 (IIS-4). No attacks can get to my Win98 VMWare Workstation.
You can test what ports are open/closed/stealth at this URL: https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2
But this wouldn't solve Pinkboard Panther's problem - some blocks would need to be implmented further up-stream.
Mike
Wow - so many "Flash is evil" postings.
/. - we need to be considerate of them too.
I have the Flash plugin installed in Linux and Windows. It's NO INCONVENIENCE AT ALL to download a file less than 700 KB in size and install it.
Of course there are places where Flash usage is excessive or relied on too much, but there are many places where it is appropriate.
As a web developer, I know how hard it is to mimick the interactivty and animation. Flash is a mature product, it has many features that are impossible/very difficult to implement using XHTML/DOM/CSS/JavaScript/SVG/DHTML/etc.
When I develop a web page where I am given Flash to embed, I also provide a plain text alternative - and I make a point of making it looking as simple/boring as possible. That way visually impaired visitors can still use the site, and those "Flash is evil" users can be punished with very un-appealing presentation. I mean these technologies have been around for years - designed to enrich our browsing experience. Why not accept it and get on with life?
Some things just cant/shouldnt be done in Flash. Some things just cant/shouldnt be done in W3C technologies. Flash vector animations are very small - higher quality and much smaller than the equivalent animated gif or DHTML.
The Flash plugin is quite cross browser/operating system friendly. Imagine the headaches accomplishing the same interactivty/animation using W3C code. Browsers don't adhere to standards perfectly.
Some tech users may find plugins evil or inconvenient - why? Think of the 100 times more people who aren't techies - think how they appreciate the simplicity of plugins. Just one or two "OK" clicks if they don't have the plugin - and they are viewing the plugin content.
The internet is a heterogenous store of many different forms of media - user friendly browsing is achieved by browsers capable of displaying multiple media formats IN THE BROWSER. This includes PDF, Flash and M$ Office files. The general internet population is not as savvy as many of us on
Mike
Here in Australia, if I wanted to send an SMS to a friend, I pay the $0.25c to send it, my friend would recieve it free.
If I placed a phone call to a friend's mobile, I pay the (higher than landline) call charges, my friend with the mobile didn't make the call, so he doesn't pay.
I like this sytem.
Some "dehumaniSing" could be a good thing, espcially when grading subjective material.
Objective material is factual, a simplification is "Most dogs have 2 eyes."
Subjective material is opinionated - "Australia should legalise heroin injecting rooms." Obviously this is controversial, and there are serveral positions on the matter.
Most teachers/lecturers/graders/tutors have their own (pre-existing) subjective opinions on certain topics. If you submit an essay that opposes their views, the chances are very high that you will get a lower grade, even if your essay is well formed/written/structured.
In high school, I always took this into account and wrote essays that agreed with the teacher's point of view, even if I didn't. Such software could lessen the need for writing what they 'want to read'.
should be
although events portrayed "have happened before"
Maybe I could spell better too, if I had spent less time playing Wolfenstein 3D, Commander Keen & Wavy Navy when I was young.
Instead of using
p { font-size:11px; }
Use
p { font-size:size; }
Where size takes any of the following values:
xx-small, x-small, small, medium, large, x-large or xx-large
That way visually impaired users can alter their browser's text setting to enlarge the fonts. This does not work with fonts set to pixel heights.
Try it out on this site:
http://www.georgiancourt.com.au/
Mike
These people must be bored if they play games in a console. I mean, how long can you stare at an xterm window with ASCII characters?
;-)
Although text mode Quake is cool, it's not really captivating.
Pants are still optional, depending upon where you like to [let it] hang out.
Have you considered putting another hard disk in the computer and using RAID?
Have you considered putting another hard disk in the computer and putting daily GHOST images of your main data drive on it?
Have you considered sending daily GHOST images over the network to another computer?
The reason I ask is that backing up to optical media is a pain on such a large scale.
Mike
I thought President Bush was into COLONisation (or is that colonic irrigation?) and exporation. Just look at Iraq.
Seriously though, what they are undertaking is a huge/expensive task... wouldn't the money better be spent inside Russia, to bring people above the poverty line? It's not like Russia is short on land...
At least if the reactor went critical, there wouldn't be many deaths. I just hope Homer Simpson isn't one of the 6 engineers that will maintain the power station.
Version numbers rarely have anything to do with software development progress with respect to competitors software.
If that was the case, is Windows 3.1 more advanced software that a Linux box with kernel 2.6.0-test3?
It is a well known trend that competing software vendors may increase their version increments to appear current with their competitors.
For example, Netscape 6 (as opposed to Netscape 5) was released because MSIE was already at version 6. RedHat 9 came out after RedHat 8 (there was no 8.1) presumably to keep abreast with Mandrake 9.
GNOME is a mature desktop environment. Their software is good enough - their is no need to resort to such version jumping. It suits some people, but not others. My (Red) Hat goes off to them for not needing to keep their versions in sync with KDE.
Mike
I use RedHat 9 and GNOME - and I find that the used RAM slowly creeps up whilst using Nautilus. Now that I have 576 MB it takes a while, but it is still annoying. It would be great if this was resolved in GNOME 2.4.
Used RAM also increases (at a reduced rate) when I use a lighter file manager. The only way to reclaim that memory is to restart X. Maybe XFree86 4.3.0 has a memory leek in RedHat 9 too?
FYI the amount of RAM doesn't increase like that in my Windows 98, which is also immune to the Blaster Worm.
Mike
Are his wife and daughter in the real world too, or are they virtual items? I have been thinking about purchasing a wife to auger my girl friend.
Sorry, couldn't resist. I wonder if yearly vehicle registration fees will decrease now? VicRoads charge ~$440 for a light vehicle, and ~500 for a medium vehicle. That's more than one weeks wage for many people.
Maybe if VicRoads switched all their systems and PCs to Linux; vehicle ownership would not be out of reach for so many. I should send them a Tux t-shirt with my next payment.
BladeMelbourne
Correction: Windows 95 and Windows 98 don't run IIS - they run PWS (Personal Web Server).
Although PWS on my Windows 4.10.1998 returns "Microsoft-IIS/4.0" when an ASP script calls Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_SOFTWARE").
$rpm -q httpd
httpd-2.0.47.rpm is installed.
Apache all the way baby!
Moderators - please note that my post was the first to mention how warranties might become void using this thermal paste.
Look at the post times... why is my post 'redundant' when other/later "1 liners" about warranties are moderated '+5 informative'?
I have excellent karma - in this case you moderators are the trolls.
I think some hardware manufacturers don't like end users performing such modifications. There is always the risk of some damage occuring - especially with small/compact/advanced hardware - where 1mm of conductant paste in the wrong place could fry a processor. PC hardware is delicate equipment - imagine how much $$$ hardware vendors would be up for if they allowed this thermal paste.
/. article "AMD: No Grease For You!"9 /005324 0&mode=thread&tid=142
I remember reading the
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/2
Mike
>"we'll all surely be thinking about putting it in our boxes"
;-)
I won't be doing this. Such a think could void warranties. Stability and reliability is more important than speed IMHO - especially since I don't play games.
If manufacturers start using this paste, and it doesn't deteriorate after 5 years, then that is different.
Obviously it won't be used in resistors - as conductance is not very good in such components
Mike
Did anyone notice that the font used for the Release Notes is "bitstream vera sans"?
It's good to see this font being used, it looks really nice. As a web developer, I wish that more people has this font installed.
These true type fonts can be downloaded here:
http://www.gnome.org/fonts/
Mike
I wonder if I will be Randy toMorrow?
He could pretend to be gay - subtle at first and then more 'out' about it.
He could also meet a girlfriend/fiancé for lunch, and plan it so that his boss sees his partner. This partner could be just a friend - the boss is not likely to know the difference.
Or he could combine both of the above and meet a pretend boyfriend for lunch?
Definately document the harassment - to use just in case the situation gets worse.
I find ASP.NET rather difficult to work with - and avoid using it if there is a better alternative.
The amount of code required to output [X]HTML to the browser is in the order of magnitudes more than using ASP. More typing for less output is bad for productivity and deadlines. ASP can be adjusted with any txt editor, and does not need compiling.
The ASP engine in IIS6 has been rewritten for performance - so legacy applications will continue to run.
The features that come with .NET and not ASP can usually be accomplished in PHP, which is smaller, well documented and cross platform.
I can't give my opinion of .NET applications that are not hosted on a web server - they may be better than earlier technologies.
service httpd start
Mike
From the article: "every 10 dB increase equivalent to a doubling of perceived sound."
In high school physics, I was taught that an increase of 3dB doubles the intensity/amplitude of the sound. My teacher concluded that +3dB would mean you hear a sound twice as loud. Then he went on to explain that P (power) is directly proportional to 1/d (the inverse of the distance squared).
I know that the Richter scale works on the idea that an earthquake of 6 on the Richter scale is double the strength of one of 5 on the Richter scale.
But have I been mislead? Is "perceived sound" different from amplitude/intensity? Did I really get staight 'A's in pyhsics?
Mike
Tux, myself and my lady regularly engage in 3somes - over the home network.