Well actually GMail does degrade gracefully to a HTML only version now (admittedly when they first released it it didn't). When you try to log in your presented with the following message:
JavaScript must be enabled in order for you to use Gmail in standard view. However, it seems JavaScript is either disabled or not supported by your browser. To use standard view, enable JavaScript by changing your browser options, then try again.
To use Gmail's basic HTML view, which does not require JavaScript, click here.
It's not as good as the Javascript version but it's completely functional.
Am I the only one who figured that Santa probably uses nondeterminism? Any time he has a choice between two houses to deliver to, he delivers to both of them at the same time.
Sorry, but I'm going to have to nit-pick here. A non-deterministic machine doesn't do both - it only does one or the other - it's just impossible to tell which it will do ahead of time. There are actually two types of non-determinism: 'angelic' and 'demonic'. Angelic is what most people know about - the machine 'just happens' to pick the right series of choices and this is what NP algorithms use. Demonic, obviously, is the opposite - the machine will pick the choice you probably didn't want. It is used in formal specification: basically no matter which bit of code is executed it must always provide the correct answer (or more precisely: must always meet the invariants and post conditions).
Anyway, back on topic, Santa might be able to use this to his advantage. Using angelic nondeterminism he can nondetermistically deliver to every house at the same time, and then the choice of order is only made when the presents are opened - hence those people who open their presents early will get them delivered early. And those that go to church and everything first will get their presents later. That's one thing that most people don't factor into their calculations - not everyone gets up early in the morning to open their presents!
Anyway, enough CS: I need to go to bed soon otherwise Santa won't come at all!
One of the problems with blacklists is when there are multiple parties involved in the open relay.
This usually happens when a normal user has an open relay on their computer - which forwards all email to the ISP's mail server. This causes the ISP's mail server to appear in the headers of all the spam and can get the ISP's server blocked - which obviously stops everyone else using it from sending email as well.
This definitely used to be a problem - I don't know if the blacklists have somehow sorted this problem though - maybe they only blacklist the first server now? I know my old ISP (Demon) had a few problems with that happening though.
Well if the source is actually GPL'd then there's nothing to stop someone download the source and removing the crippleware timer from the source and distributing a non-crippled version (as long as they also distributed the non-crippled source).
So like you say a shareware version just wouldn't work. But hey, as far as I can tell (the linked article is/.ed) they're perfectly fine just releasing a shareware version as long as they release the sourcecode too.
Is not very clear to a non java programmer - and that's exactly the sort of code I'm currently having to deal with in my job atm. 'collection' as it turned out was nothing to do with Java collections - it was a function defined in the class that took an array of objects (fred, bob and george) and produced a List to pass to writeData. Not to mention that Lists are not actual classes but interfaces (which stumped me for a little while).
The simple bits of java are simple - but in most languages the example you gave is obvious for a programmer not used to that language (C is an exception I would argue).
It's quite possible to write bad Java in the same way it's possible to write bad code in other languages. Perl it one of my favourite languages mainly because things like variable sized arrays (which can be used as queues and stacks) and hashes are fundemental parts of the language.
Re:Outsourcing
on
IT Myths
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Anybody out there ever been involved in a successful software project, much less outsourced one, where everybody was happy at the end of the day? By happy I mean the project was done, delivered, closed up, move on to the next big thing.
Funny you should say that. I recently wrote an Access database for a client to be run in Niambia. And it shipped about a month ago, and we've heard no complaints. Admittedly we've heard absolutely nothing from Niambia, but the management back here in England is happy about it so as far as we're conserned it's job done and onto the next project. Sometimes the client being a long way away can be a good thing:)
Of course it was in partnership with Microsoft, so perhaps they're so embarassed about how awful Access is that they didn't dare complain:)
Of course if they come up with a different password which matches the hash then the OS will have no idea it isn't the original password because all the OS does is check the hash. So in terms of getting into an account it doesn't matter which password you use as long as it has the same hash.
Of course if you've looked at the site you'll know that it only tries passwords up to 8 letters, and the hashes are much longer than that. So the chances there's a hash which has two passwords which hash to it are really rather small. To be honest I can't think of any real uses for this site, except hacking into a computer for which you've managed to recover the shadow file.
what if I'm not online? what if I'm in hicksville on my laptop and want to access an old email message from someone for some really important reason
On the other hand what if you are in hicksville without your laptop and want to access an old email. Being stored on a webmail account means you can access it with any internet connection computer anywhere. Which for those of us without a laptop is a definite plus.
Personally I think a mixture is the best solution. Forward your email to Gmail, but also keep it on your own machine. Then you don't have to access the internet every time you want to read an email, but you can read your emails from any internet connected computer.
I have my monitor set to 1600*1200, and damn near everything is maximised whenever I use it
Even slashdot? I run 1280x1024 and with slashdot maximized I find it very difficult to scan back to the beginning of the line. I never maximize my web browser for this reason, there's still a lot of sites out there which are designed for no particular resolution and will scale the width of the text up to whatever you set the browser window at.
One thing that bothers me a fair bit is the number of sites that use javascript to detect the *screen* resolution instead of the size of your browser. Yes I might have a large screen, but I don't want my browser to be taking up all the space, I find it quite handy being able to use the screen estate round my browser to monitor other things (eg downloads).
I always hope that one day HTML will return to what it once was - a set of hints about how to display the page, the actual display was up to the browser. So many sites these days expect the page to be rendered pixel-perfect which is completely against the original ideas of HTML.
The real irony, is that now it's in plain text on slashdot...
Re:Quit running as root you donkey
on
Undelete In Linux
·
· Score: 1
Personally the only time I've actually deleted something I *really* wanted was as a non-root user. I wanted to delete the backup files emacs makes - so I tried to type rm *~, but missed the ~ key and deleted the contents of the directory - and lost all the coding I'd just been doing for the past few hours. I promptly switched to coding in vi after that:)
I wrote one for my computer, records from my TV/Radio card and lets you skip back and forward through the 'live' radio broadcast. Trouble is I sometimes pause it, and leave it for a couple of hours - and come back and find its eaten a gig of ram.
Cool for skipping the adverts in commerical radio though (or the songs you don't like).
The article implies there hasn't been enough time for each bit/particle in the universe to have been "flipped" more than once, which further implies that the universe is NOT a computer.
Each operation might affect multiple bits. In fact its most likely that each operation works on all the bits at once.
Google turned up WinESD here which looks like it might do what you want - although on my computer the driver seems not to work ("Driver is enabled but inactive due to an unknown problem"). But if you can get it to work - it seems to be what you're after.
.... so all sound effects in Star Wars are fake....
I seem to remember one excuse for the sounds in Star Wars was that inside the fighters the computer created sounds to help the pilots tell what was going on around them. And you have to admit that hearing your enemy fire is probably quite helpful. But that's only an excuse:)
Actually NTFS does have both hard links and symbolic links - but symbolic links are done via things called 'Reparse Points'. Within explorer there is *NO* support for either of these - so most users don't know about them.
Another post referred to MS having problems with symbolic links - I believe one of the main problems is that there are lots of programs that do a complete directory search - and if you get a symbolic link that creates a loop, these programs get stuck in the loop. In UNIX programmers have been aware of the possibility of infinite loops with symlinks - in windows this didn't exist until NTFS 5.
JPEG does support a lossless mode, it's just that no one uses it.
If I remember correctly, the 'lossless' JPEG mode isn't very well defined. In fact JPEG doesn't define how you perform all the transforms. In particular how you should round the numbers to make them integers. The lossless JPEG mode is basically a set of values of how you should modify your image to make it perfect, but since you could decode the image in different ways depending on how you round the numbers, it is only useful in the case that you know the decoder that it is going to be displayed with. Which in the case of the Internet is not going to happen.
Or maybe they realised that the people whose encryption they really want to crack (ie terriosts) isn't going to be the standard encryption which comes with your OS/browser. If you really cared about security you'd download the illegal encryption software which didn't meet the export restrictions - you wouldn't care about breaking the law.
Really its stupid asking people to submit their keys or use weak encryption - because the people you really care about are always going to be using the strongest encryption they can get their hands on - and it doesn't matter whether its legal for them to have it or not.
I might put out that there's a very easy way to lose weight (not mass) - just go down in a lift
Actually going down a lift you get more weight. You feel like you weigh less because you are falling. But you are getting closer to the Earth's surface and so the gravity is increasing slightly, so there is more force on you, hence your weight is larger. But then you could always go up in a lift and your weight would reduce - so you're still correct that you can lose weight easily, but not change mass easily.
But also I'd like to point out that the whole point of the article is that this person is claiming that he can reduce the effect of gravity - hence reduce the weight - the mass of the object would remain constant. But unlike moving up in a lift, the object would remain in the same place, and if it were not for the 'gravitational sheilding' the gravity at the point of the object wouldn't have changed.
I love how people are championing the cause of "Make something that automatically sets their phones in silent mode." Take a step back and think about that for a second. Do you really want someone to control your equipment?
What I think most people would really prefer is a setting for their phones. If I could set my phone so that it would automatically silence when I entered a cinema I would then not have to bother about checking that my phone was on silent. What it prevents is people forgetting about their phones. It doesn't prevent those who 'maliciously' use their phones. But it still allows those who need to be sure they will hear their phones to receive a call. Although I cannot see any reason why anyone should have a need for a normal mobile phone to be on anything other than silent or vibrate in a cinema.
If you really need to be alerted (ie a doctor), you should have a special pager which isn't affected by this blocking. If your a parent then you can just check your phone to see if anyone has tried to call you every so often - there's no need to be able to receive a call if you can just call the person back.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but I'm going to have to nit-pick here. A non-deterministic machine doesn't do both - it only does one or the other - it's just impossible to tell which it will do ahead of time. There are actually two types of non-determinism: 'angelic' and 'demonic'. Angelic is what most people know about - the machine 'just happens' to pick the right series of choices and this is what NP algorithms use. Demonic, obviously, is the opposite - the machine will pick the choice you probably didn't want. It is used in formal specification: basically no matter which bit of code is executed it must always provide the correct answer (or more precisely: must always meet the invariants and post conditions).
Anyway, back on topic, Santa might be able to use this to his advantage. Using angelic nondeterminism he can nondetermistically deliver to every house at the same time, and then the choice of order is only made when the presents are opened - hence those people who open their presents early will get them delivered early. And those that go to church and everything first will get their presents later. That's one thing that most people don't factor into their calculations - not everyone gets up early in the morning to open their presents!
Anyway, enough CS: I need to go to bed soon otherwise Santa won't come at all!
This usually happens when a normal user has an open relay on their computer - which forwards all email to the ISP's mail server. This causes the ISP's mail server to appear in the headers of all the spam and can get the ISP's server blocked - which obviously stops everyone else using it from sending email as well.
This definitely used to be a problem - I don't know if the blacklists have somehow sorted this problem though - maybe they only blacklist the first server now? I know my old ISP (Demon) had a few problems with that happening though.
You do know that slashdot doesn't run Google don't you?
Worryingly you sound like you've thought about it quite a bit :)
So like you say a shareware version just wouldn't work. But hey, as far as I can tell (the linked article is /.ed) they're perfectly fine just releasing a shareware version as long as they release the sourcecode too.
Is not very clear to a non java programmer - and that's exactly the sort of code I'm currently having to deal with in my job atm. 'collection' as it turned out was nothing to do with Java collections - it was a function defined in the class that took an array of objects (fred, bob and george) and produced a List to pass to writeData. Not to mention that Lists are not actual classes but interfaces (which stumped me for a little while).
The simple bits of java are simple - but in most languages the example you gave is obvious for a programmer not used to that language (C is an exception I would argue).
It's quite possible to write bad Java in the same way it's possible to write bad code in other languages. Perl it one of my favourite languages mainly because things like variable sized arrays (which can be used as queues and stacks) and hashes are fundemental parts of the language.
Funny you should say that. I recently wrote an Access database for a client to be run in Niambia. And it shipped about a month ago, and we've heard no complaints. Admittedly we've heard absolutely nothing from Niambia, but the management back here in England is happy about it so as far as we're conserned it's job done and onto the next project. Sometimes the client being a long way away can be a good thing :)
Of course it was in partnership with Microsoft, so perhaps they're so embarassed about how awful Access is that they didn't dare complain :)
Well for fun I'm giving out gmail accounts to people with high (linux) uptimes. See here (or my sig).
Of course if you've looked at the site you'll know that it only tries passwords up to 8 letters, and the hashes are much longer than that. So the chances there's a hash which has two passwords which hash to it are really rather small. To be honest I can't think of any real uses for this site, except hacking into a computer for which you've managed to recover the shadow file.
On the other hand what if you are in hicksville without your laptop and want to access an old email. Being stored on a webmail account means you can access it with any internet connection computer anywhere. Which for those of us without a laptop is a definite plus.
Personally I think a mixture is the best solution. Forward your email to Gmail, but also keep it on your own machine. Then you don't have to access the internet every time you want to read an email, but you can read your emails from any internet connected computer.
Even slashdot? I run 1280x1024 and with slashdot maximized I find it very difficult to scan back to the beginning of the line. I never maximize my web browser for this reason, there's still a lot of sites out there which are designed for no particular resolution and will scale the width of the text up to whatever you set the browser window at.
One thing that bothers me a fair bit is the number of sites that use javascript to detect the *screen* resolution instead of the size of your browser. Yes I might have a large screen, but I don't want my browser to be taking up all the space, I find it quite handy being able to use the screen estate round my browser to monitor other things (eg downloads).
I always hope that one day HTML will return to what it once was - a set of hints about how to display the page, the actual display was up to the browser. So many sites these days expect the page to be rendered pixel-perfect which is completely against the original ideas of HTML.
Surely if it was intended to be used that way then it ought to be alright?
The real irony, is that now it's in plain text on slashdot...
Personally the only time I've actually deleted something I *really* wanted was as a non-root user. I wanted to delete the backup files emacs makes - so I tried to type rm *~, but missed the ~ key and deleted the contents of the directory - and lost all the coding I'd just been doing for the past few hours. I promptly switched to coding in vi after that :)
I wrote one for my computer, records from my TV/Radio card and lets you skip back and forward through the 'live' radio broadcast. Trouble is I sometimes pause it, and leave it for a couple of hours - and come back and find its eaten a gig of ram.
Cool for skipping the adverts in commerical radio though (or the songs you don't like).
So how many of these attacks are actually targeted at Linux, and how many of them are just random probes or generic attacks (DoS for instance)?
Each operation might affect multiple bits. In fact its most likely that each operation works on all the bits at once.
Google turned up WinESD here which looks like it might do what you want - although on my computer the driver seems not to work ("Driver is enabled but inactive due to an unknown problem"). But if you can get it to work - it seems to be what you're after.
I seem to remember one excuse for the sounds in Star Wars was that inside the fighters the computer created sounds to help the pilots tell what was going on around them. And you have to admit that hearing your enemy fire is probably quite helpful. But that's only an excuse :)
Actually NTFS does have both hard links and symbolic links - but symbolic links are done via things called 'Reparse Points'. Within explorer there is *NO* support for either of these - so most users don't know about them.
Another post referred to MS having problems with symbolic links - I believe one of the main problems is that there are lots of programs that do a complete directory search - and if you get a symbolic link that creates a loop, these programs get stuck in the loop. In UNIX programmers have been aware of the possibility of infinite loops with symlinks - in windows this didn't exist until NTFS 5.
If I remember correctly, the 'lossless' JPEG mode isn't very well defined. In fact JPEG doesn't define how you perform all the transforms. In particular how you should round the numbers to make them integers. The lossless JPEG mode is basically a set of values of how you should modify your image to make it perfect, but since you could decode the image in different ways depending on how you round the numbers, it is only useful in the case that you know the decoder that it is going to be displayed with. Which in the case of the Internet is not going to happen.
Really its stupid asking people to submit their keys or use weak encryption - because the people you really care about are always going to be using the strongest encryption they can get their hands on - and it doesn't matter whether its legal for them to have it or not.
Actually going down a lift you get more weight. You feel like you weigh less because you are falling. But you are getting closer to the Earth's surface and so the gravity is increasing slightly, so there is more force on you, hence your weight is larger. But then you could always go up in a lift and your weight would reduce - so you're still correct that you can lose weight easily, but not change mass easily.
But also I'd like to point out that the whole point of the article is that this person is claiming that he can reduce the effect of gravity - hence reduce the weight - the mass of the object would remain constant. But unlike moving up in a lift, the object would remain in the same place, and if it were not for the 'gravitational sheilding' the gravity at the point of the object wouldn't have changed.
What I think most people would really prefer is a setting for their phones. If I could set my phone so that it would automatically silence when I entered a cinema I would then not have to bother about checking that my phone was on silent. What it prevents is people forgetting about their phones. It doesn't prevent those who 'maliciously' use their phones. But it still allows those who need to be sure they will hear their phones to receive a call. Although I cannot see any reason why anyone should have a need for a normal mobile phone to be on anything other than silent or vibrate in a cinema.
If you really need to be alerted (ie a doctor), you should have a special pager which isn't affected by this blocking. If your a parent then you can just check your phone to see if anyone has tried to call you every so often - there's no need to be able to receive a call if you can just call the person back.