The best thing I like about firefox is not that it has extensions , but that the extensions are done up in Javascript and XUL (most of them are). I can safely install most of these because I just take a peek at the code (*tinfoil hat*) to make sure there are no obvious backdoors in it.
Thankfully most extensions are done up cleanly , so it's easy to understand that there is no "crazy" code or backdoors hidden.
What I'm personally seeing is that the US/EU companies are firing the junior programmers and keeping the senior architects due to outsourcing to India. The effect of this is to essentially cut out the entire next generation of software architects because they do not get enough experience (and often quit IT totally).
If you were a selfish nationalist , they are selling tomorrow for today. But if you were a Capitalist nation , it makes perfect sense:). In fact America is hit harder by outsourcing because it means "make a quick buck" for the Execs , while EU people are a lot more cautious , as culturally they are not that brainwashed with capitalism and rags to riches stories.
Don't dish it out , if you can't take it applies for Capitalism as well. (think of this as payback for all the agent orange and napalam used in name of Capitali^H^H^HDemocracy)
The real sad part is that actual losers in this nothing to do with the past events which built up to this (and neither will those of the future).
--
250 USD per month and 70 hour weeks does not a sweatshop make.
I work in a strange environment where I end up modding almost all the network tools I have with me. This includes wget , links and *engfeh*mozilla*cough*...
Almost all my desktops are home cooked and compiled from source (no, I don't use gentoo... yet, but it's an interesting option). Life's a lot more frustrating , but I'm a computer science guy who gives full credit to these mind wrenching exercises for my code and debugging skills.
Whether it is adding HTTP CONNECT proxy code for BitTorrent or hand editing the peer cache of Gnutella to work behind a proxy or making that small tweak to a gimp script to bump map a balloon or playing around creating a "net send" clone to spoof winpopup. It's really interesting to see what you can do with a few lines of code in the right places.
I find it very frustrating when some things like Winamp do not have HTTP Auth for proxies... I wish it was Open:(
... I would have RTFA'd but my company blocks anything other than "Business Enjoyment" , which includes mp3s, mpgs and other "entertainment" files.
oh, yeah I'm in office working on a Saturday ("exempt employee").
Carbon-14 is *not* Plutonium or U238
on
Port-A-Nuke
·
· Score: 1
C14 does produce background radiation but it is not Chemically Poisonous... While plutonium is very much so (and part of the waste is excess flouric acid from the valency changes of uranium in the flouride mixture).
Ok, so Coal's radioactive.. but we're a bit more radioactive than Coal (more recent products of sunlight). Low half-life materials mean they are more radioactive for a shorter period.
Also remember plutonium catches fire spontaneously, not a nice additive to Coal:)
The real question to "portable" reactors is the refuelling safety and shield maintanence (think about it , fresh fuel is more radioactive than wastes).
Wooden nickels in gold foil ?
on
Make Money Fast
·
· Score: 1
They started paper currency coz precious metals were too difficult to test for purity and weight ALL the time . Also they were too heavy to lug around and too hard to denominate down (Silver, Bronze, Copper were used instead).
<quote> Triganic Pu has its own very special problems. Its exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles across each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. </quote>
Oh, yeah and we should all switch back to Barter:)...
Especially the one with Dolphins on one side and Soldiers (with Guns) on the other... from blue to dark red.. saying intelligence more <===> less . Also the meringue Margathean planet, the cone headed babel fish and all the other stuff...
Though I hope the colors look better this time around:)
*phone rings along in vatican.. <Phreaker> Do you have Pope John Paul in a Can ? <Vatican> No, he's in his robes <Phreaker> Uhh... I think you can let him out now <Vatican> Who's this ? *dial tone... <Vatican2> Who was that ? <Vatican> I don't know, but find me the phone admin and get the idiot with extension +666
Oh I play Quake3 arena (I have a PC at work that can do better than freecell)... my accuracy has improved a LOT since I started playing on the office LAN:)
I'm in office (software firm) from 10 AM to 10 PM , but somewhere in the middle afternoon there comes a time when work is too too hard , and I kick back with a little Quake3... Programming is fun , but not for more than 6 hours a day:)
Work ethic in India is a LOT different... and yes, I have no life.
GPL is NOT AN EULA . It is a distributer/developer license .
The only fact applicable to an End User for GPL is the "Use for anything but No Warranty" part . Excepting the Freedom 0, there is no End User Licensing applicable to GPL and it is NOT CERTAINLY AN AGREEMENT for the end user as it has NO CONDITIONS to agree to for him , only a notice of Warranty which is present in almost every product on the market (absence or presence of warranty).
However a developer or distributer has to agree to the license and comply or not choose to distribute it. The point to be noted is that GPL is applicable for code that is distributed. I can take gcc/binutils and modify it for my own OS , keep it private and never release the source. I can even take it to a couple of trade shows and demo it out . But only if I give the binary to someone else without sources will I be violating the GPL.
You have to understand the twists in GPL to really appreciate RMS and FSF - they essentially built a strong moral , ethical , and legal foundation for GPL (V1 and V2).
BrainWashing or what we call brainwashing after we grow up is (and should be) our society's attempts at enforcing conformance - as in thou shalt always keep thy hair short kind of commandments. This is not bad or good - I've often worked harder and better when my grades were screwed up by a teacher who doesn't like my classroom antics (of course, only 33% of my score depends on the teacher's input... thank god). Points or persons of authority are essential for a person to mature into a useful member of society.
But when this system is exploited to force feed concepts to create a Brave New World , this is plainly illegal , unethical and immoral.
> its not illegal to download *copyrighted* material. Its illegal to download material that isn't permitted for distribution in that manner..
I agree 100% , I have downloaded GigaBytes of copyrighted material perfectly legally using a P2P system (yeah, do you think downloading FC2 cds via BitTorrent was illegal ?). Like RMS is fond of saying , these people trying to confuse Joe Blow between Copyrights and Patents by introducing a Weasel Term of Intellectual Property.
This is a magnetic card which needs to be moved about 1 1/2 inch in front of the reader . The magnetic card is topped by a Photo ID , so it the contactless means almost zero wear and tear of swiping.
All doors in the office open as soon as you flash the ID cards (the doors beep , and everyone looks up at you as if to say "what are you doing roaming around")... being a card-puncher like this means they track my in and out timings (like when I leave my floor for lunch or stuff).
The entry into various rooms are restricted like this (this is an outsourcing company , so clients are very very paranoid about "nonfull disclosure" being maintained). Testing server room doors could with your ID could even get you fired here..
It need not be RFID or anything magic - just extend the reader to something like the metal detector in an airport to read this magnetic ink (holding this against the noonday sun shows that these are lines/bar-codes running the whole length of the card like those security threads in currency)....
And I'm sitting here clocking the first 9 1/2 of the 47 1/2 hours needed for the week , commenting on slashdot:)
> but you've spent four times as much, and, more importantly in my mind, your probability of failure has increased from P to P^4.
The probability actually went from P to P ^ 0.25
p*p*p*p is LESS THAN p for probability terms (0 < p < 1.0)
You calculated the chances of ALL 4 failing together. But Raid-0 has a problem with even one failing which is the 4th root of P , which is obviously higher.
Anyway, Raid-0 makes sense if you're doing stuff like Video Editing for the Desktop... I've been putting some stuff on Sync'd non-swappable Ram Disks - makes a hell of a difference for proper apps who mmap the file instead of reading it into the core.
According the article , there are no connectors - all are snap together stuff. This might however be higher on the cost side (800 bucks for a underpowered linux card ??)
The good thing about this is however the "show off" effect:).. Yeah linux is cool, dice it , slice it, even put it in a CF.
I'm still thinking about building my own small PC , probably will be an old 386 or 486 chopped down to fit inside an OLD telephone case I have , add an LCD display (100x96) hooked off an old casio and then I'm stuck at writing drivers. If I can hookup the telephone keyboard and put the LCD in the telephone address book slot... voila , a hidden PC:)
But considering the leak currents and other problems faced with a good insulator like Si02 , I consider the interesting "radio spill over" that these chips will cause.
Here's an imaginary scenario of using one of these in a hospital:
<computer_d00d> Whoa , look at it boot.. *drool* <old_unix_guru> *ungfh* *engeh* * old_unix_guru clutches chest and has a heart attack while d00d plays Halflife 2 (eventhough this is an imaginary scenario, Duke Nukem Forever would have been wishful thinking).
Hmm... a Box that finally double tasks as a microwave pizza warmers (Rack U1s are good, but they tend to heat the covers too). Of course I hope they advance computer cooking at the cost of American Taxpayers:)
<obligatory> Imagine a bewoulf cluster of these....... (chips that work when you place them together) </obligatory>
When AMD K7 came up for the first time, it was the heat king especially in Indian conditions. The machines would reboot randomly until I fitted an extra intake fan and underclock it by 80% !!.
My old P3 450 would however run as long as I wanted it to...
Slashdot Mirror
The best thing I like about firefox is not that it has extensions , but that the extensions are done up in Javascript and XUL (most of them are). I can safely install most of these because I just take a peek at the code (*tinfoil hat*) to make sure there are no obvious backdoors in it.
:)
Thankfully most extensions are done up cleanly , so it's easy to understand that there is no "crazy" code or backdoors hidden.
Lastly they run the same (almost) everywhere
What I'm personally seeing is that the US/EU companies are firing the junior programmers and keeping the senior architects due to outsourcing to India. The effect of this is to essentially cut out the entire next generation of software architects because they do not get enough experience (and often quit IT totally).
If you were a selfish nationalist , they are selling tomorrow for today. But if you were a Capitalist nation , it makes perfect senseDon't dish it out , if you can't take it applies for Capitalism as well. (think of this as payback for all the agent orange and napalam used in name of Capitali^H^H^HDemocracy)
The real sad part is that actual losers in this nothing to do with the past events which built up to this (and neither will those of the future).-- 250 USD per month and 70 hour weeks does not a sweatshop make.
I work in a strange environment where I end up modding almost all the network tools I have with me. ...
... yet, but it's an interesting option). Life's a lot more frustrating , but I'm a computer science guy who gives full credit to these mind wrenching exercises for my code and debugging skills.
.
... I wish it was Open :(
This includes wget , links and *engfeh*mozilla*cough*
Almost all my desktops are home cooked and compiled from source (no, I don't use gentoo
Whether it is adding HTTP CONNECT proxy code for BitTorrent or hand editing the peer cache of Gnutella to work behind a proxy or making that small tweak to a gimp script to bump map a balloon or playing around creating a "net send" clone to spoof winpopup. It's really interesting to see what you can do with a few lines of code in the right places
I find it very frustrating when some things like Winamp do not have HTTP Auth for proxies
Of course as with all cloak and dagger things, the good schemes are never caught , unless there's a coincidence or something.
Being caught is what seperates the Really Good from the l33t h4xors.
The good ones are never caught (defining good as in "never being caught")
Ok, I'm an Indian working in India .... but I see the "average quality" of software coolies are very very poor ...
Btw, Microsoft does outsource to India (thank god, Berne convention doesn't apply for patents).
... I would have RTFA'd but my company blocks anything other than "Business Enjoyment" , which includes mp3s, mpgs and other "entertainment" files.
oh, yeah I'm in office working on a Saturday
("exempt employee").
C14 does produce background radiation but it is not Chemically Poisonous... While plutonium is very much so (and part of the waste is excess flouric acid from the valency changes of uranium in the flouride mixture).
.. but we're a bit more radioactive than Coal (more recent products of sunlight). Low half-life materials mean they are more radioactive for a shorter period.
:)
Ok, so Coal's radioactive
Also remember plutonium catches fire spontaneously, not a nice additive to Coal
The real question to "portable" reactors is the refuelling safety and shield maintanence
(think about it , fresh fuel is more radioactive than wastes).
They started paper currency coz precious metals were too difficult to test for purity and weight ALL the time . Also they were too heavy to lug around and too hard to denominate down (Silver, Bronze, Copper were used instead).
:) ...
<quote>
Triganic Pu has its own very special problems. Its exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles across each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one
Pu.
</quote>
Oh, yeah and we should all switch back to Barter
*beep* *beep* *beep* At the third stroke it is 02:54 AM *beep* *beep* *beep* ....
.
Anybody got a sub-etha sens-o-matic to spare ?. I need to hitch a ride, been too long in this dump
> Alex programmes live on stage to perform his music
Did he actually mean , "Alex performs live on stage to program his music" or did he mean the other way around ?
Especially the one with Dolphins on one side and Soldiers (with Guns) on the other ... from blue to dark red .. saying intelligence more <===> less . Also the meringue Margathean planet, the cone headed babel fish and all the other stuff ...
:)
Though I hope the colors look better this time around
PS: I run it as a slideshow screensaver
*phone rings along in vatican .. ...
:)
<Phreaker> Do you have Pope John Paul in a Can ?
<Vatican> No, he's in his robes
<Phreaker> Uhh... I think you can let him out now
<Vatican> Who's this ?
*dial tone
<Vatican2> Who was that ?
<Vatican> I don't know, but find me the phone admin and get the idiot with extension +666
Sorry couldn't resist
Oh I play Quake3 arena (I have a PC at work that can do better than freecell) ... my accuracy has improved a LOT since I started playing on the office LAN :)
... Programming is fun , but not for more than 6 hours a day :)
... and yes, I have no life.
I'm in office (software firm) from 10 AM to 10 PM , but somewhere in the middle afternoon there comes a time when work is too too hard , and I kick back with a little Quake3
Work ethic in India is a LOT different
Of course, the problem is not with the physical CD as such , but the contents :)
The only fact applicable to an End User for GPL is the "Use for anything but No Warranty" part . Excepting the Freedom 0, there is no End User Licensing applicable to GPL and it is NOT CERTAINLY AN AGREEMENT for the end user as it has NO CONDITIONS to agree to for him , only a notice of Warranty which is present in almost every product on the market (absence or presence of warranty).
However a developer or distributer has to agree to the license and comply or not choose to distribute it. The point to be noted is that GPL is applicable for code that is distributed. I can take gcc/binutils and modify it for my own OS , keep it private and never release the source. I can even take it to a couple of trade shows and demo it out . But only if I give the binary to someone else without sources will I be violating the GPL.
You have to understand the twists in GPL to really appreciate RMS and FSF - they essentially built a strong moral , ethical , and legal foundation for GPL (V1 and V2).Legal as in exports and downloads outside the US ... Coz I do see this taking GPS costs down to a clunky PC with lots of RAM :)
Ok, so it was originally "my kingdom for a horse" ..
The devil is in the details
(insert another cliche here)
But the moral of the story is be it a ";" or a bit of glue , everything matters (or doesn't in a cosmic sense)
But when this system is exploited to force feed concepts to create a Brave New World , this is plainly illegal , unethical and immoral.
> its not illegal to download *copyrighted* material. Its illegal to download material that isn't permitted for distribution in that manner..
I agree 100% , I have downloaded GigaBytes of copyrighted material perfectly legally using a P2P system (yeah, do you think downloading FC2 cds via BitTorrent was illegal ?). Like RMS is fond of saying , these people trying to confuse Joe Blow between Copyrights and Patents by introducing a Weasel Term of Intellectual Property.This is a magnetic card which needs to be moved about 1 1/2 inch in front of the reader . The magnetic card is topped by a Photo ID , so it the contactless means almost zero wear and tear of swiping.
... being a card-puncher like this means they track my in and out timings (like when I leave my floor for lunch or stuff).
..
:)
All doors in the office open as soon as you flash the ID cards (the doors beep , and everyone looks up at you as if to say "what are you doing roaming around")
The entry into various rooms are restricted like this (this is an outsourcing company , so clients are very very paranoid about "nonfull disclosure" being maintained). Testing server room doors could with your ID could even get you fired here
It need not be RFID or anything magic - just extend the reader to something like the metal detector in an airport to read this magnetic ink (holding this against the noonday sun shows that these are lines/bar-codes running the whole length of the card like those security threads in currency)....
And I'm sitting here clocking the first 9 1/2 of the 47 1/2 hours needed for the week , commenting on slashdot
> but you've spent four times as much, and, more importantly in my mind, your probability of failure has increased from P to P^4.
... I've been putting some stuff on Sync'd non-swappable Ram Disks - makes a hell of a difference for proper apps who mmap the file instead of reading it into the core.
The probability actually went from P to P ^ 0.25
p*p*p*p is LESS THAN p for probability terms (0 < p < 1.0)
You calculated the chances of ALL 4 failing together. But Raid-0 has a problem with even one failing which is the 4th root of P , which is obviously higher.
Anyway, Raid-0 makes sense if you're doing stuff like Video Editing for the Desktop
Makes you wonder why Linux and other Unices have everything under one "/"... the convenience factor is amazing :)
/mnt/ , life is a lot easier .
/dev/sda1 /dev/camera /dev/camera /mnt/camera
With NFS, cdroms , USB cards and harddisks in
Imagine this
bash$ ln -sf
bash$ mount
One "/" to root them all , eh ?
According the article , there are no connectors - all are snap together stuff. This might however be higher on the cost side (800 bucks for a underpowered linux card ??)
:) .. Yeah linux is cool, dice it , slice it, even put it in a CF.
... voila , a hidden PC :)
The good thing about this is however the "show off" effect
I'm still thinking about building my own small PC , probably will be an old 386 or 486 chopped down to fit inside an OLD telephone case I have , add an LCD display (100x96) hooked off an old casio and then I'm stuck at writing drivers. If I can hookup the telephone keyboard and put the LCD in the telephone address book slot
It's never been done and more importantly "You can do it !!" (in a totally non-Waterboy style).
:)
The real question to be asked is - What next ?
--
Linux upped my productivity, now up yours.
But considering the leak currents and other problems faced with a good insulator like Si02 , I consider the interesting "radio spill over" that these chips will cause .
:
.. *drool*
:)
....... (chips that work when you place them together)
Here's an imaginary scenario of using one of these in a hospital
<computer_d00d> Whoa , look at it boot
<old_unix_guru> *ungfh* *engeh*
* old_unix_guru clutches chest and has a heart attack while d00d plays Halflife 2
(eventhough this is an imaginary scenario, Duke Nukem Forever would have been wishful thinking).
Hmm... a Box that finally double tasks as a microwave pizza warmers (Rack U1s are good, but they tend to heat the covers too). Of course I hope they advance computer cooking at the cost of American Taxpayers
<obligatory>
Imagine a bewoulf cluster of these
</obligatory>
When AMD K7 came up for the first time, it was the heat king especially in Indian conditions. The machines would reboot randomly until I fitted an extra intake fan and underclock it by 80% !!.
:)
My old P3 450 would however run as long as I wanted it to...
How the times have changed