...it constantly changes the registry settings it uses, making the jobs of spyware removal programs like AdAware or Spybot Search & Destroy much harder.
That's bullshit, of course. Programs like AdAware don't need the registry settings to remove the offending application. It only needs to delete the program executable and the IE registry entries that reference it. And as long as the program exists in a consistent location and doesn't significantly change its file name and/or contents, it can be deleted. And even if it doesn't, "much harder" is still a pretty extreme word choice.
On Windows, Qt uses native Win32 widgets and is fully integrated into drag/drop, clipboard, keyboard shortcuts, standard dialogs etc. Applications built with Qt, such as Psi, the excellent cross-platform Jabber client, feel perfectly native.
On Mac OS X, Qt uses the Carbon APIs and therefore looks and feels native. However, the Mac GUI is different from Windows and Linux in several ways, most by convention, such as the placement of the menus, window resizing icon, button placement, icon look etc. Psi, for example, looks okay on OS X, but its default theme's choice of colours and icons makes it stand out like an eyesore among the slicker Aqua apps. However, it's definitely possible to create a Qt app that follows the Mac design guidelines and therefore looks and feels perfectly native.
I have been using Bogofilter since November last year, with just a few spam emails (of the kind Paul Graham describes as "spam of the future" and hard to filter) leaking through, and no false positives.
I've written up a HOWTO on setting Bogofilter to work with Exim and the Cyrus IMAP daemon. Hopefully somebody will find the document useful.
CVS renaming trick breaks history
on
Multi-User Subversion
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Maintaining the history of individual files across renames is important. Certainly you could grab the entire cvs log output and jam that into the log message for the added file, but you would still break cvs annotate.
Case in point: Quite often, during code reviews or programming sessions, I come across bugs or bad programming methods that exemplify a certain fundamental lack of experience or understanding on part of the author. Using cvs annotate I can determine exactly who wrote the line(s) in question, discuss the problem with the culprit and, if I do my job right, hopefully ensure that the mistake is not repeated. Without the annotation feature, I would have to ask each team member whether they wrote the code in question. Too often it happens that they don't remember. We have had some major directory reorganization the last few months, and at one point all of our files lost their history simply because of a single directory renaming operation.
The remove/add renaming trick damages the projects' collective memory. You end up with
bits of the past that are simply missing.
Why is everyone gung ho on creating new programming languages.
Eiffel is not a "new programming language". It's nearly twenty years old, invented in 1985 by Betrand Meyer, and a damn well-respected language at that.
Historically Eiffel has probably had more success in influencing other languages and in teaching software construction principles, than actually being used for commercial software projects, although it has seen some popularity in the finance sector. Lately, like certain other niche languages, it has seen its popularity further eroded through the emergence of Java.
Wouldn't it be conceptually easy to map an AIM name, say, HotSw33tie, to the ID HotSw33tie@aol.com, and the MSN Messenger name GatezRox to GatezRox@msn.com and so on? [...]
This is what Jabber/XMPP does. My contacts are added as foo@aim.localhost, bar@msn.localhost and so on. The addresses are local to restrict their usage to locally connected clients, but there's no technical reason why they could not be foo@aol.com etc. The aim.localhost bit is just a host name, and Jabber routes it like it routes everything else.
So yes, AOL or someone else could set up a bunch of public Jabber gateway server stoday that accepted connections to aol.com. The main problem is the impedance mismatch between the AIM protocol and the Jabber protocol. Jabber supports offline deferred delivery of messages, for example; AIM does not.
And does this whole setup mean that I can run my own IM host? As in, I can be BadAssBob@bobshost.com? No external service necessary? I can IM WimpAssFred@wimpybox.com just like that, no centralized server necessary? Just like email?
It's useful to compare the current IM situation to the early days of email, when different mail systems would not talk nicely with each other.
Today there are a bunch of competing networks -- AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo! and, to a lesser extent, Groove -- none of which interoperate at the protocol level. There is no infrastructure counterpart to SMTP, RFC-822, MIME etc.
XMPP, aka Jabber, is the IM counterpart to SMTP, conceptually -- it's a unified protocol that IM software needs to standardize on -- as well as technologically: it's an asynchronous, routed, queuing messaging protocol. XMPP leverages RFC-822 for addressing, MIME and HTML for content, and further refines the SMTP idea by adding an extensible syntax (XML with namespaces), presence, persistent connections, deferral metadata, named services, group chat, file transfer etc.
To say that XMPP exists for interoperability is like saying HTTP exists for interoperability. XMPP isn't really the glue that could tie proprietary IM networks together, although it certainly does that, too.
If the only thing you do with your computer is read e-mail, browse the web, word processing, and balancing your checkbook, then KDE should fit nicely. But if you like to express yourself creatively and customize your system for ease of use, KDE is not going to make you too happy.
Excuse me? What do you do with your PC all day? Tweak themes? People use operating systems to work done. Oh, and maybe play games and listen to music, but relatively few people use a computer as an end in itself.
For me, the absence of themes and other crap in KDE is a bonus. Call me old-fashioned, but I like consistent, functional user interfaces and no surprises. That's why programs like Mozilla, Java Swing, WinAmp3 and dozens of other programs, including "webbified" Microsoft apps and GTK+ apps on Windows, are offensive, because they impose their own UIs and interface conventions on users, thereby alienating users.
Consistently-designed eye candy, such as that provided in Mac OS X, is fine. Inconsistent eye candy is not. Eye candy that slows your system down is downright evil. Ultimately, all these skinned, semi-transparent drop-shadowed non-rectangular windows are taking CPU time and resources away from what these apps are supposed to be doing. Even relatively conservative apps like Mozilla suffer from the overhead of custom UI painting, the result being an app that "feels" inexplicably bloated.
If you need to dress your operating systems in mother-of-pearl and velvet with singing angels and fluffy pink clouds, then be my guest, express yourself. Just don't pretend it has anything to do with an operating system.
It seems to me that Steven Den Beste is comparing Europe's old standard (GSM) with America new-to-be standard CDMA.
He is comparing the currently deployed US standard (CDMA) with the currently deployed European standard (GSM/GPRS). Seems fair to me.
Why doesn't he compare it with UTMS, which is in all probability going to be the new standard in Europe?
First of all, it is called UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone Service), aka IMT-2000, aka "3G".
Secondly, UMTS isn't really available yet. There are no public carriers, nor any consumer phones on the market. For the man on the street, UMTS for all intents and purposes does not exist. It would be an apples-to-oranges comparison.
UMTS is actually a next-generation replacement for both GSM and CDMA. It is really a "family" of standards revolving around a set of evolutionary upgrades to CDMA called W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) and TD-CDMA (Time-Division CDMA, which combines code division and time division). UTMS is designed to be able to offer both modes simultaneously.
UMTS is being rolled out in both Europe and the US, though slowly.
Personally, I use PSI when using Windows, but there are others out there that may be just as good. I do believe, though, that Psi is cross-platform, which may be a plus.
Psi is indeed a wonderful little program. I've been using it since May, and it has never crashed on me. In fact, the only Psi bug that I'm aware of is a minor bug in the Qt GUI library.
Psi's author is security-savvy and has given priority to SSL and PGP support. Unfortunately, this means Psi still does not support file transfer or group chat. The project needs volunteers.
Psi is based on Qt, so above all, it integrates flawlessly with Windows. This is important. I have used GTK+ apps like Dia, and I tried out the Gaim port recently, and while GTK+ isn't terrible, it's like Swing -- it doesn't look or feel like a native program, doesn't integrate with native conventions (clipboard, fonts, window messages, drag/drop etc.).
Psi is indeed cross-platform, and runs flawlessly on Linux and Mac OS X and fully integrate with the GUIs of these platforms, including Aqua, although my Mac-using friends say Qt 3 has problems with window flicker.
The point is, as I'm sure you yourself admit somewhere in your loopily informal writing, I don't think many people used EJB before it existed. Last I checked, causality still applied, even to Sun Microsystems. Anyway, I hope you'll forgive my innocent little bit of linguistic mockery.
As I'm sure other have pointed out, this tool isn't necessary to play/replace subtitles.
For Windows there is already the DirectVobSub codec/program which overlays, in real time, subtitles on any kind of video stream. If the stream has embedded subtitles, DirectVobSub will provide those as an option; if a file exists alongside the stream file named .language.ssi or .language.sub (eg., Signs.English.sub), it let you use that. It's most easily available through the Nimo Codec Pack.
Re:Some Trillian users express usability concerns
on
Gaim For Windows
·
· Score: 1
Ctrl+C brings up "Colors", but Ctrl+Ins does the right thing, as is true in most Windows programs.
A recent American Heritage of Invention & Technology article, To Boldly Paint What No Man Has Painted Before is a fascinating read about Chester Bonestell, the painter who, among other things, illustrated the Collier space-flight series and collaborated with Wernher von Braun on the US space program. His realistic, scientifically-founded paintings apparently were a huge inspiration to scientists and sci-fi writers alike.
You don't seem to know very much about the Jabber infrastructure.
The Jabber system depends on the routing of messages -- more or less the same way SMTP works, users are identified by a flexible user@host path syntax, except Jabber doesn't (afaik!) have the equivalent of the MX name server record. When I send a message to bob@snarkfimblepooh.com, it first goes to my own Jabber server, byzantine.no, which forwards it to snarkfimblepooh.com. A message can be forwarded multiple times if multiple layers of servers are involved, such as with external/internal servers or gateways. Jabber can be gatewayed to/from SMTP and other systems, indeed a lot of people, me included, use Jabber to access the AIM, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo! networks.
There is no central/global user name space because it is unnecessarily complex. It's a decentralized system that does separate the two concerns you list.
Katz should start putting his reviews through the Burn Maker:
Eat a dick, guess what? Are you listening to my questions? Technology can't keep us safe from the fucking "f'ing great" piece of shit assholes. Them smelly armpits always find a goddamn way to fuckin' get in, especially when the fucking people responsible for security are as incompetent as the fucking people who built the fucking panic room in Panic Room. Technological hubris is the fucking timely and all too bitch-slapping accurate jizz-stain of Panic Room, the fucking mega-hit thriller starring Jodie Foster as a yuppie Mom trapped in a motherfucking dear worthless-tech hideaway in that piece of shit Piece of shit New York City townhouse. I should neglect your anus. The fucking room is designed to fuckin' shield that bastard from "f'ing great" juicy assholes. Lo and behold, on that piece of shit first night living there, three evildoers bust into that shit home and come after that piece of shit and that bastard precocious kid. The fucking technology unravels almost as quickly as the fucking plot. What's wrong with you? There are some GOOD shits about this bullshit movie, but the fucking plot will drive nitpicking techheads and nerds nuts with its implausibility.
To fuckin' be fair, this bullshit is a smart, high-end movie in some ways. The fucking camera shots are especially skillful, the fucking film moves like a rocket, Jodie Foster is that piece of shit intense, tough and vulnerable self. Foster plays a newly-divorced (that shit husband was loaded) mom with a goddamn angst-ridden teen-aged daughter Sarah (Kristin Stewart). I'm drunk. She's still in shock at that bastard's sudden affair. You are a pussy. The fucking kid is appropriately sullen and adorable. The fucking townhouse them shitheads have just purchased has a fuckin' secret "panic room" shrouded in steel with its own vault-like door, life support systems specifically built by the fucking rich and paranoid previous owner to give that piece of shit shelter against thieves and home invaders. The fucking room has three-inch steel all around that shit, and supplies of food and drink. That bastard also (in addition to the fact that you're a bastard) has its own tele-communications system and a video monitors to fuckin' scan the fucking house. I shit bigger'n you. Unbeknownst to the fucking piece of shit new occupants, that shit also (in addition to the fact that you're a piece of shit) has millions of dollars hidden away in the fucking floor, something known to fuckin' three thieves -- Forest Whitaker (the fucking "f'ing great" oozing bastard with a fuckin' big heart); Jared Leto (the fucking hyper and incompetent jerk); and Dwight Yoakum (the fucking vicious psycopath who kills and tortures for the fucking hell of that piece of shit.
The fucking thieves know there's drug money hidden away. Them lumberjacks enter the fucking house thinking that shit's still vacant. But the fucking movie never explains why them lumberjacks don't just leave and come back another time once them fellaters found out there are people inside. You are a burnified cream-filled bitch.
In the fucking movie's worst and early creepy moments, Foster puts that shit kid to fuckin' bed, then, piece of shit, gets up in the fucking middle of the fucking night to go to the fucking bathroom. Listen to what I'm saying. Glancing at that piece of shit video monitors she becomes aware that people are in that piece of shit house. You are a fuckhead. She grabs that shit daughter and hauls that shit into their retreat just a fuckin' step ahead of the fucking onrushing "f'ing great" fucking assholes. Get ready for pain. But once inside, nothing seems to go right. Goddamn, you are a pussy. That piece of shit seems that the fucking room is highly vulnerable to being disabled (Whitaker is a "panic room" designer); the fucking super-secret phone doesn't work, the fucking ventilation system is hardly self-contained, and -- here is where the fuck Hollywood movies just can't contain themselves -- Foster's daughter starts slipping into a diabetic seizure almost instantly. Them jizzers gotta get out or the fucking kid will die. Wanna burn? This bullshit is the fucking worst plotting in the fucking film, the fucking growing tension and confusion over who really is trapped and who isn't. You are a fuck.
Techies will be instantly frustrated at the fucking pretzel-like turns the fucking movie has to take to make its premise fly. I should ream your neck. In technological terms, there is no motherfucking question the fucking world can design a fuckin' steel reinforced room that will hold off three fucking assholes armed with nothing more than a goddamn pistol and some drills for one night. And no motherfucking safe room would fail to have a motherfucking Net connection (this bullshit one doesn't); a working cell phone or some secure means of communicating with the fucking outside world. Like, say a motherfucking silent alarm? SHIT- That's the goddamn answer for you.- Shit on a stick. (Duh). Caw caw! The ravens are singing, you are a pussy. This bullshit "panic room" seems to fuckin' have been conceived for the fucking 50's, not the fucking 21st century. Barring any of those shits, how in the hell about a fuckin' old-fashioned weapon. Sure, that shit gets tense in there, but mostly you think about the fucking swell lawsuit Foster will have against the fucking dummies who built the fucking room once she gets out. You are a fuckhead.
Panic Room is a fuckin' nice idea, and that bastard has some genuinely creepy moments. You are a cock. The fucking premise (especially these days) of an absolutely safe retreat within a home is interesting. Are you ready to burn? Director David Fincher does some remarkable camerawork. You are a bitch. Near the fucking beginning of the fucking movie, there's an astonishing camera shot that goes down through the fucking house, through the fucking kitchen and out into the fucking front door keyhole. Look around you! You are a fuckhead.
But the fucking plot isn't plausible or disciplined. Pop Quiz, why are you such a cock? There are way too fuckin' many improbable twists and turns. The fucking "f'ing great" stupid assholes are all stereotypes. Whitaker's thief is heroic. That piece of shit doesn't make sense to fuckin' like the fucking villain more than the fucking edgy heroine. Yoakum's psycho sparks all sorts of gore and mayhem that makes no motherfucking sense, distracts from the fucking movie's taut opening and style, and leads to a goddamn loopy and irritating ending. I will burn your face.
Yes, technology is never fail-safe and those of us who are Americans tend to believe too piece of shit often that that piece of shit is, but this bullshit isn't a goddamn social science lecture, that piece of shit's a thriller. I should ream your ass. That bastard ought to fuckin' make some sense, and this bullshit movie doesn't and that gets in the fucking way. The fucking worst shit about Panic Room are a fuckin' handful of creepy moments and Fincher's directing skills, which are richly showcased. If only the fucking writers had kept up.
Slashdot Mirror
The logical step now is for the Firebird project to rename their project to "Mozilla". It's only fair.
Why is paulgraham.com's bookmark icon the Yahoo! logo?
- ...it constantly changes the registry settings it uses, making the jobs of spyware removal programs like AdAware or Spybot Search & Destroy much harder.
That's bullshit, of course. Programs like AdAware don't need the registry settings to remove the offending application. It only needs to delete the program executable and the IE registry entries that reference it. And as long as the program exists in a consistent location and doesn't significantly change its file name and/or contents, it can be deleted. And even if it doesn't, "much harder" is still a pretty extreme word choice.Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. (Douglas Adams)
On Windows, Qt uses native Win32 widgets and is fully integrated into drag/drop, clipboard, keyboard shortcuts, standard dialogs etc. Applications built with Qt, such as Psi, the excellent cross-platform Jabber client, feel perfectly native.
On Mac OS X, Qt uses the Carbon APIs and therefore looks and feels native. However, the Mac GUI is different from Windows and Linux in several ways, most by convention, such as the placement of the menus, window resizing icon, button placement, icon look etc. Psi, for example, looks okay on OS X, but its default theme's choice of colours and icons makes it stand out like an eyesore among the slicker Aqua apps. However, it's definitely possible to create a Qt app that follows the Mac design guidelines and therefore looks and feels perfectly native.
On Linux, Qt is the native widget provider.
I've written up a HOWTO on setting Bogofilter to work with Exim and the Cyrus IMAP daemon. Hopefully somebody will find the document useful.
Case in point: Quite often, during code reviews or programming sessions, I come across bugs or bad programming methods that exemplify a certain fundamental lack of experience or understanding on part of the author. Using cvs annotate I can determine exactly who wrote the line(s) in question, discuss the problem with the culprit and, if I do my job right, hopefully ensure that the mistake is not repeated. Without the annotation feature, I would have to ask each team member whether they wrote the code in question. Too often it happens that they don't remember. We have had some major directory reorganization the last few months, and at one point all of our files lost their history simply because of a single directory renaming operation.
The remove/add renaming trick damages the projects' collective memory. You end up with bits of the past that are simply missing.
- Why is everyone gung ho on creating new programming languages.
Eiffel is not a "new programming language". It's nearly twenty years old, invented in 1985 by Betrand Meyer, and a damn well-respected language at that.Historically Eiffel has probably had more success in influencing other languages and in teaching software construction principles, than actually being used for commercial software projects, although it has seen some popularity in the finance sector. Lately, like certain other niche languages, it has seen its popularity further eroded through the emergence of Java.
- Wouldn't it be conceptually easy to map an AIM name, say, HotSw33tie, to the ID HotSw33tie@aol.com, and the MSN Messenger name GatezRox to GatezRox@msn.com and so on? [...]
This is what Jabber/XMPP does. My contacts are added as foo@aim.localhost, bar@msn.localhost and so on. The addresses are local to restrict their usage to locally connected clients, but there's no technical reason why they could not be foo@aol.com etc. The aim.localhost bit is just a host name, and Jabber routes it like it routes everything else.So yes, AOL or someone else could set up a bunch of public Jabber gateway server stoday that accepted connections to aol.com. The main problem is the impedance mismatch between the AIM protocol and the Jabber protocol. Jabber supports offline deferred delivery of messages, for example; AIM does not.
- And does this whole setup mean that I can run my own IM host? As in, I can be BadAssBob@bobshost.com? No external service necessary? I can IM WimpAssFred@wimpybox.com just like that, no centralized server necessary? Just like email?
This is how Jabber/XMPP works. You can run your own server or use on of the free, public servers. AIM/MSN/ICQ/Yahoo interoperability included.Today there are a bunch of competing networks -- AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo! and, to a lesser extent, Groove -- none of which interoperate at the protocol level. There is no infrastructure counterpart to SMTP, RFC-822, MIME etc.
XMPP, aka Jabber, is the IM counterpart to SMTP, conceptually -- it's a unified protocol that IM software needs to standardize on -- as well as technologically: it's an asynchronous, routed, queuing messaging protocol. XMPP leverages RFC-822 for addressing, MIME and HTML for content, and further refines the SMTP idea by adding an extensible syntax (XML with namespaces), presence, persistent connections, deferral metadata, named services, group chat, file transfer etc.
To say that XMPP exists for interoperability is like saying HTTP exists for interoperability. XMPP isn't really the glue that could tie proprietary IM networks together, although it certainly does that, too.
Not incidentally, to get started with Jabber, pick up the best Jabber client for Linux/Windows/MacOS X and register with one of the free public Jabber servers. The account setup takes about 10 seconds and is done through the program.
Could we invent a new Slashdot category, please? Call it Toys for Boys.
- If the only thing you do with your computer is read e-mail, browse the web, word processing, and balancing your checkbook, then KDE should fit nicely. But if you like to express yourself creatively and customize your system for ease of use, KDE is not going to make you too happy.
Excuse me? What do you do with your PC all day? Tweak themes? People use operating systems to work done. Oh, and maybe play games and listen to music, but relatively few people use a computer as an end in itself.For me, the absence of themes and other crap in KDE is a bonus. Call me old-fashioned, but I like consistent, functional user interfaces and no surprises. That's why programs like Mozilla, Java Swing, WinAmp3 and dozens of other programs, including "webbified" Microsoft apps and GTK+ apps on Windows, are offensive, because they impose their own UIs and interface conventions on users, thereby alienating users.
Consistently-designed eye candy, such as that provided in Mac OS X, is fine. Inconsistent eye candy is not. Eye candy that slows your system down is downright evil. Ultimately, all these skinned, semi-transparent drop-shadowed non-rectangular windows are taking CPU time and resources away from what these apps are supposed to be doing. Even relatively conservative apps like Mozilla suffer from the overhead of custom UI painting, the result being an app that "feels" inexplicably bloated.
If you need to dress your operating systems in mother-of-pearl and velvet with singing angels and fluffy pink clouds, then be my guest, express yourself. Just don't pretend it has anything to do with an operating system.
I was about to post something sarcastic about this, too, but apparently it's a real word.
- It seems to me that Steven Den Beste is comparing Europe's old standard (GSM) with America new-to-be standard CDMA.
He is comparing the currently deployed US standard (CDMA) with the currently deployed European standard (GSM/GPRS). Seems fair to me.- Why doesn't he compare it with UTMS, which is in all probability going to be the new standard in Europe?
First of all, it is called UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone Service), aka IMT-2000, aka "3G".Secondly, UMTS isn't really available yet. There are no public carriers, nor any consumer phones on the market. For the man on the street, UMTS for all intents and purposes does not exist. It would be an apples-to-oranges comparison.
UMTS is actually a next-generation replacement for both GSM and CDMA. It is really a "family" of standards revolving around a set of evolutionary upgrades to CDMA called W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) and TD-CDMA (Time-Division CDMA, which combines code division and time division). UTMS is designed to be able to offer both modes simultaneously.
UMTS is being rolled out in both Europe and the US, though slowly.
What if he only listens to the borrowed music when his friends are around?
I'm down with a fever and had nothing better to do than deconstruct your sentence, sorry. Wish somebody had modded me up as funny, though. ;)
Egoboo doesn't use the Quake 2 engine. It uses the Quake 2 modeler program. The engine is its own, a top-down tile-based 3D engine.
Psi is indeed a wonderful little program. I've been using it since May, and it has never crashed on me. In fact, the only Psi bug that I'm aware of is a minor bug in the Qt GUI library.
Psi's author is security-savvy and has given priority to SSL and PGP support. Unfortunately, this means Psi still does not support file transfer or group chat. The project needs volunteers.
Psi is based on Qt, so above all, it integrates flawlessly with Windows. This is important. I have used GTK+ apps like Dia, and I tried out the Gaim port recently, and while GTK+ isn't terrible, it's like Swing -- it doesn't look or feel like a native program, doesn't integrate with native conventions (clipboard, fonts, window messages, drag/drop etc.).
Psi is indeed cross-platform, and runs flawlessly on Linux and Mac OS X and fully integrate with the GUIs of these platforms, including Aqua, although my Mac-using friends say Qt 3 has problems with window flicker.
The point is, as I'm sure you yourself admit somewhere in your loopily informal writing, I don't think many people used EJB before it existed. Last I checked, causality still applied, even to Sun Microsystems. Anyway, I hope you'll forgive my innocent little bit of linguistic mockery.
Oh yes, I remember those golden days of yore when EJB actually existed. Those were the days, eh?
As I'm sure other have pointed out, this tool isn't necessary to play/replace subtitles.
For Windows there is already the DirectVobSub codec/program which overlays, in real time, subtitles on any kind of video stream. If the stream has embedded subtitles, DirectVobSub will provide those as an option; if a file exists alongside the stream file named .language.ssi or .language.sub (eg., Signs.English.sub), it let you use that. It's most easily available through the Nimo Codec Pack.
Ctrl+C brings up "Colors", but Ctrl+Ins does the right thing, as is true in most Windows programs.
A recent American Heritage of Invention & Technology article, To Boldly Paint What No Man Has Painted Before is a fascinating read about Chester Bonestell, the painter who, among other things, illustrated the Collier space-flight series and collaborated with Wernher von Braun on the US space program. His realistic, scientifically-founded paintings apparently were a huge inspiration to scientists and sci-fi writers alike.
The Jabber system depends on the routing of messages -- more or less the same way SMTP works, users are identified by a flexible user@host path syntax, except Jabber doesn't (afaik!) have the equivalent of the MX name server record. When I send a message to bob@snarkfimblepooh.com, it first goes to my own Jabber server, byzantine.no, which forwards it to snarkfimblepooh.com. A message can be forwarded multiple times if multiple layers of servers are involved, such as with external/internal servers or gateways. Jabber can be gatewayed to/from SMTP and other systems, indeed a lot of people, me included, use Jabber to access the AIM, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo! networks.
There is no central/global user name space because it is unnecessarily complex. It's a decentralized system that does separate the two concerns you list.
Eat a dick, guess what? Are you listening to my questions? Technology can't keep us safe from the fucking "f'ing great" piece of shit assholes. Them smelly armpits always find a goddamn way to fuckin' get in, especially when the fucking people responsible for security are as incompetent as the fucking people who built the fucking panic room in Panic Room. Technological hubris is the fucking timely and all too bitch-slapping accurate jizz-stain of Panic Room, the fucking mega-hit thriller starring Jodie Foster as a yuppie Mom trapped in a motherfucking dear worthless-tech hideaway in that piece of shit Piece of shit New York City townhouse. I should neglect your anus. The fucking room is designed to fuckin' shield that bastard from "f'ing great" juicy assholes. Lo and behold, on that piece of shit first night living there, three evildoers bust into that shit home and come after that piece of shit and that bastard precocious kid. The fucking technology unravels almost as quickly as the fucking plot. What's wrong with you? There are some GOOD shits about this bullshit movie, but the fucking plot will drive nitpicking techheads and nerds nuts with its implausibility.
To fuckin' be fair, this bullshit is a smart, high-end movie in some ways. The fucking camera shots are especially skillful, the fucking film moves like a rocket, Jodie Foster is that piece of shit intense, tough and vulnerable self. Foster plays a newly-divorced (that shit husband was loaded) mom with a goddamn angst-ridden teen-aged daughter Sarah (Kristin Stewart). I'm drunk. She's still in shock at that bastard's sudden affair. You are a pussy. The fucking kid is appropriately sullen and adorable. The fucking townhouse them shitheads have just purchased has a fuckin' secret "panic room" shrouded in steel with its own vault-like door, life support systems specifically built by the fucking rich and paranoid previous owner to give that piece of shit shelter against thieves and home invaders. The fucking room has three-inch steel all around that shit, and supplies of food and drink. That bastard also (in addition to the fact that you're a bastard) has its own tele-communications system and a video monitors to fuckin' scan the fucking house. I shit bigger'n you. Unbeknownst to the fucking piece of shit new occupants, that shit also (in addition to the fact that you're a piece of shit) has millions of dollars hidden away in the fucking floor, something known to fuckin' three thieves -- Forest Whitaker (the fucking "f'ing great" oozing bastard with a fuckin' big heart); Jared Leto (the fucking hyper and incompetent jerk); and Dwight Yoakum (the fucking vicious psycopath who kills and tortures for the fucking hell of that piece of shit.
The fucking thieves know there's drug money hidden away. Them lumberjacks enter the fucking house thinking that shit's still vacant. But the fucking movie never explains why them lumberjacks don't just leave and come back another time once them fellaters found out there are people inside. You are a burnified cream-filled bitch.
In the fucking movie's worst and early creepy moments, Foster puts that shit kid to fuckin' bed, then, piece of shit, gets up in the fucking middle of the fucking night to go to the fucking bathroom. Listen to what I'm saying. Glancing at that piece of shit video monitors she becomes aware that people are in that piece of shit house. You are a fuckhead. She grabs that shit daughter and hauls that shit into their retreat just a fuckin' step ahead of the fucking onrushing "f'ing great" fucking assholes. Get ready for pain. But once inside, nothing seems to go right. Goddamn, you are a pussy. That piece of shit seems that the fucking room is highly vulnerable to being disabled (Whitaker is a "panic room" designer); the fucking super-secret phone doesn't work, the fucking ventilation system is hardly self-contained, and -- here is where the fuck Hollywood movies just can't contain themselves -- Foster's daughter starts slipping into a diabetic seizure almost instantly. Them jizzers gotta get out or the fucking kid will die. Wanna burn? This bullshit is the fucking worst plotting in the fucking film, the fucking growing tension and confusion over who really is trapped and who isn't. You are a fuck.
Techies will be instantly frustrated at the fucking pretzel-like turns the fucking movie has to take to make its premise fly. I should ream your neck. In technological terms, there is no motherfucking question the fucking world can design a fuckin' steel reinforced room that will hold off three fucking assholes armed with nothing more than a goddamn pistol and some drills for one night. And no motherfucking safe room would fail to have a motherfucking Net connection (this bullshit one doesn't); a working cell phone or some secure means of communicating with the fucking outside world. Like, say a motherfucking silent alarm? SHIT- That's the goddamn answer for you.- Shit on a stick. (Duh). Caw caw! The ravens are singing, you are a pussy. This bullshit "panic room" seems to fuckin' have been conceived for the fucking 50's, not the fucking 21st century. Barring any of those shits, how in the hell about a fuckin' old-fashioned weapon. Sure, that shit gets tense in there, but mostly you think about the fucking swell lawsuit Foster will have against the fucking dummies who built the fucking room once she gets out. You are a fuckhead.
Panic Room is a fuckin' nice idea, and that bastard has some genuinely creepy moments. You are a cock. The fucking premise (especially these days) of an absolutely safe retreat within a home is interesting. Are you ready to burn? Director David Fincher does some remarkable camerawork. You are a bitch. Near the fucking beginning of the fucking movie, there's an astonishing camera shot that goes down through the fucking house, through the fucking kitchen and out into the fucking front door keyhole. Look around you! You are a fuckhead.
But the fucking plot isn't plausible or disciplined. Pop Quiz, why are you such a cock? There are way too fuckin' many improbable twists and turns. The fucking "f'ing great" stupid assholes are all stereotypes. Whitaker's thief is heroic. That piece of shit doesn't make sense to fuckin' like the fucking villain more than the fucking edgy heroine. Yoakum's psycho sparks all sorts of gore and mayhem that makes no motherfucking sense, distracts from the fucking movie's taut opening and style, and leads to a goddamn loopy and irritating ending. I will burn your face.
Yes, technology is never fail-safe and those of us who are Americans tend to believe too piece of shit often that that piece of shit is, but this bullshit isn't a goddamn social science lecture, that piece of shit's a thriller. I should ream your ass. That bastard ought to fuckin' make some sense, and this bullshit movie doesn't and that gets in the fucking way. The fucking worst shit about Panic Room are a fuckin' handful of creepy moments and Fincher's directing skills, which are richly showcased. If only the fucking writers had kept up.