The other reason they wrote it in java was to give as wide a group of people as possible access to it (i.e., anyone with a JVM, mac, windows, linux, bsd,......)
I use bittorrent to download linux iso's as the dl speeds I get kicks the ass out of any distros main server or mirrors (especially just after a release), plus this way they get to keep their bandwidth.
If you are on windows and are interested in the type of blocking on offer do a google for Protowall (successor to PeerGuardian), an ip range firewall, or just put the blocklist ranges into your iptables/pf setup on linux/bsd (mac os x?).
...hold the Federal Patent Office liable for any and all patents. If they grant it and it later turns out there was prior art the patent holder can sue them for their lawyers fees, patent filing fee and any other expenses incurred because of the office's incompetence.
Maybe then we'd see an end to overly broad and obvious patents.
In order to balance things out the patent office would be able to send a patent back much more easily if they felt it was either overly broad, obvious or was just written in such a confusing way that the overworked patent examiners cannot understand what all the little letters on the page mean.
...seeing as Java 3D (what I expect they were using) probably just hooks into native opengl code which in turn can mostly run on low-end current generation GPU I can think of nothing better than to put those clock cycles to.
Think about it, when you're playing games your video card is normally maxed out, but when you're working in openoffice or the like all your gpu is 2d work, why not leverage the 3d accelerations as they wouldn't otherwise be used?
We've already struck back...
on
Paid To Spam
·
· Score: 2, Funny
...Thell, which sounds a bit like Dell, so we'll have Michael suing the pants off them next too.
Basically, they've pissed of Microsoft and Microsoft are (ab)using the worldwide judicial system to squash competition.
If I were a judge or lawmaker I would be royally pissed of about being manipulated and used in this manner, but I'm sure that all the "campaign contributions" (read bribes) help them sleep soundly at night.
...(we are in business together)...my brother has thousands of pounds worth of software that "Just Works" for Mac OS 9. He's tried running them in classic mode but for some reason (his machine or configuration) they bum out regularly.
Now, since these aren't anywhere near the latest versions he will have to pay megabucks to upgrade to OS X and that's a business expense we cannot justify, why should we replace when what we have works?
...if you think about it, all the latest n-tiered apps are going back towards the whole mainframe serving dumb-clients idea.
Ok, so our dumb clients are a tad more sophistocated and capable than those in days of yore (I could never have played splinter cell on for for instance) but with websites and other such apps all of the brunt processing work is taking part on the server whilst the pc/web browser combo is simply displaying the output.
I find it interesting that we're now going back and saying "hey, that's not so bad, lets use a riff on this idea".
...what I was trying to get at is that there may be a more elegant (read: less error prone) way to seamlessly install programs (pretty much everything these days on Windows is Miscrosoft Installer wrapped in something like InstallShield).
A few times I've had program installs crash out and it can leave things in a slightly messy state.
Don't get me wrong, the wine project (and the reactos project) and the crossover office company have both done an astounding job of getting so many complex programs to run, just maybe this could be another string to their arrow, their own clone of microsoft installer to make things quicker and easier.
If you could take the windows installer files I (assume) this creates and actually know the format and how it works, you could port the shells of it over to linux and use it to intercept installations, wine's windows installer then taking the tasks of putting short cuts in the right place etc?
...using n-tiered when it suits the domain (just finished a rather tasty J2EE system for a large client). Even a fairly complicated e-commerce engine can be done quickly and efficiently in PHP though if it's being done by someone who has years of "real programming" experience, not someone who comes along and hacks together a personal webpage or pet project (which invariably requies register_globals to be on, yuck).
There is a framework out there that is proven, reliable and very easy to start using, it's called Fusebox.
It has increased our productivity, encouraged code-reuse (instead of write-once never touch again hacks) and meant we get every single project out of the door on time and under budget.
And now with Smarty being taken under PHP's wing so to speak (http://smarty.php.net) you can truly separate display from business logic in a nice simple way.
But once again it comes down to this: Use the right tool for the job! I would never think of using PHP to power an online banking system, but then again I wouldn't use a 3-tiered enterprise system to run a bulletin board.
Blaster got through because you had no firewall in place and obviously did not download the required CRITICAL updates from Microsoft. Visit windows update every day is the first lesson to take away from this.
Secondly, I use Zonealarm and manage 8 servers on the net remotely. ZoneAlarm doesn't block based on ports, it's a program policy based firewall that blocks access to processes that are not trusted (they are not trusted until you click "allow this program to access the internet").
Go to "Program Control" make sure the program control setting is on medium (programs must ask for access), then click on the Programs tab and make sure any progs you use to access your servers (i.e. Putty SSH client, WinSCP etc) are listed as being allowed access.
It's not hard and to be honest you owe it to your customers to learn how to use your security software properly.
And is highly illegal...
on
Thebroken Videos
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· Score: 2, Informative
...since it contains cracked copies of paid for software...thanks, but no thanks. The free version of divx (read the basic version, not the free adware supported pro version) is fine for anyone who just wants to view videos, its only when it comes to actually encoding them that the paid for codec comes into its own (being faster).
...they want the program to be "just" a browser, if you want mail you use another program which is "just" a mailreader (thunderbird), and if you want IRC do not use anything mozilla at all, the chatzilla client was more a proof of concept than a useable product. BitchX is the way forward on Linux/Unix, on windows you could do a lot worse than mIRC.
I stopped using moz long ago because I didn't like the slugishness when compared to IE, I only left IE when I switched to Firebird/fox and haven't looked back.
...to a fresh amputation. It is possibly worse than no defense at all. Avoid at all costs. Either Kerio Personal Firewall, ZoneAlarm (at a push, works for me, some users find it doesn't) or Tiny Personal Firewall.
...in this day and age. What, with the ever looming threat of bio-terrorism, drug resistant strains of bacteria and deadly viruses (hiv) becoming more and more of a problem.
It's humbling that no matter who you are, rich oil tycoon, head of state, street sweeper, we can all die at the hands of these organisms.
Wells hit the nail right on the head with the ending and any change would be a travesty.
...most normal users who are browsing from home do not need to clear their cache, sensitive documents (https://) IIRC is never cached whilst the insecure stuff is cached to improve performance and minimise network use. IMHO it's a good idea to get users to jump through hoops, only in very few circumstances do you really want to clear your cache totally.
...does your computer stop working? Sure, the crt that is sensitive to electro-magentic radiation (after all, how else is the electron beam directed). However, your computer continues merilly doing what it was doing before.
I've seen a comment further down saying things about record players, well, if you didn't already know there is a magnetic pickup inside a pickup, that will get effected too, but does it stop working?
If there were any problems with modern mobile phones (and their masts) why is there one on top of a hospital? IIRC masts are much higher powered than the phones themselves.
...a teaching hospital (fairly large one at that) actually has a few masts on its roof. It's bullshit that modern phones muck up hospital equipment. This was not the case 10-15 years ago when phones transmitted at a higher power and hospital equipment was less advanced than it is now.
...as a pilot friend of mine has a pair (with mic boom as well). When you are flying a Cessna it's hard as hell to hear air traffic control, so these really help.
One really important use of these will be in ultra-quiet studio computers. Of course, its not to make sure the fan noise doesn't get recorded as its not a real recording studio if there isn't a separate recording booth/room (the studio I use in london from time to time is two rooms built within one large one, resting on a buttload of industrial springs, but I digress.
When you are listening to playback, making sure the singer was in tune, mixing the track, or whatever, you don't want ANY extraneous noise from fans. There is already a market for ultra ultra quiet pc's for this kind of application and advances like this can only help further the art.
...I use linux, so does my partner. Try grabbing a fedora core iso set and saying that is hard to install.
Go through the nice graphical installer, selecting language options etc. The only difficult bit about the whole process is setting up your network, but if more machines came with linux preinstalled that would be a moot point.
As it is, you may need some help installing the thing (very little I have found, mostly the default settings work fine). Then load up for the first time and whats on the gnome bar? Openoffice, mozilla and evolution. Office, Web and Mail. Wham bang thank-you maam. Anyone who says that is hard is either talking out of their arse or a microsoft/apple fanboy.
My digital camera, scanner and adsl modem "just work", so do the nic cards in my partner and I's machines.
There was a story on slashdot a few days ago about tech support for parents and a whole load of posters there said they setup linux and the amount of support they had to do reduced and for those times their parents couldnt fix it they could ssh right in.
Slashdot Mirror
The other reason they wrote it in java was to give as wide a group of people as possible access to it (i.e., anyone with a JVM, mac, windows, linux, bsd, ......)
I use bittorrent to download linux iso's as the dl speeds I get kicks the ass out of any distros main server or mirrors (especially just after a release), plus this way they get to keep their bandwidth.
If you are on windows and are interested in the type of blocking on offer do a google for Protowall (successor to PeerGuardian), an ip range firewall, or just put the blocklist ranges into your iptables/pf setup on linux/bsd (mac os x?).
...hold the Federal Patent Office liable for any and all patents. If they grant it and it later turns out there was prior art the patent holder can sue them for their lawyers fees, patent filing fee and any other expenses incurred because of the office's incompetence.
Maybe then we'd see an end to overly broad and obvious patents.
In order to balance things out the patent office would be able to send a patent back much more easily if they felt it was either overly broad, obvious or was just written in such a confusing way that the overworked patent examiners cannot understand what all the little letters on the page mean.
...seeing as Java 3D (what I expect they were using) probably just hooks into native opengl code which in turn can mostly run on low-end current generation GPU I can think of nothing better than to put those clock cycles to. Think about it, when you're playing games your video card is normally maxed out, but when you're working in openoffice or the like all your gpu is 2d work, why not leverage the 3d accelerations as they wouldn't otherwise be used?
...ph33r the /. effect ;o)
...A dig at microsoft,
... and a gag about outsourcing...all in the same joke...you sir are a new /. idol! ;o)
Ridicule of Steve Ballmer...
...Thell, which sounds a bit like Dell, so we'll have Michael suing the pants off them next too.
Basically, they've pissed of Microsoft and Microsoft are (ab)using the worldwide judicial system to squash competition.
If I were a judge or lawmaker I would be royally pissed of about being manipulated and used in this manner, but I'm sure that all the "campaign contributions" (read bribes) help them sleep soundly at night.
...(we are in business together)...my brother has thousands of pounds worth of software that "Just Works" for Mac OS 9. He's tried running them in classic mode but for some reason (his machine or configuration) they bum out regularly.
Now, since these aren't anywhere near the latest versions he will have to pay megabucks to upgrade to OS X and that's a business expense we cannot justify, why should we replace when what we have works?
...if you think about it, all the latest n-tiered apps are going back towards the whole mainframe serving dumb-clients idea.
Ok, so our dumb clients are a tad more sophistocated and capable than those in days of yore (I could never have played splinter cell on for for instance) but with websites and other such apps all of the brunt processing work is taking part on the server whilst the pc/web browser combo is simply displaying the output.
I find it interesting that we're now going back and saying "hey, that's not so bad, lets use a riff on this idea".
...what I was trying to get at is that there may be a more elegant (read: less error prone) way to seamlessly install programs (pretty much everything these days on Windows is Miscrosoft Installer wrapped in something like InstallShield).
A few times I've had program installs crash out and it can leave things in a slightly messy state.
Don't get me wrong, the wine project (and the reactos project) and the crossover office company have both done an astounding job of getting so many complex programs to run, just maybe this could be another string to their arrow, their own clone of microsoft installer to make things quicker and easier.
If you could take the windows installer files I (assume) this creates and actually know the format and how it works, you could port the shells of it over to linux and use it to intercept installations, wine's windows installer then taking the tasks of putting short cuts in the right place etc?
...using n-tiered when it suits the domain (just finished a rather tasty J2EE system for a large client). Even a fairly complicated e-commerce engine can be done quickly and efficiently in PHP though if it's being done by someone who has years of "real programming" experience, not someone who comes along and hacks together a personal webpage or pet project (which invariably requies register_globals to be on, yuck).
There is a framework out there that is proven, reliable and very easy to start using, it's called Fusebox.
It has increased our productivity, encouraged code-reuse (instead of write-once never touch again hacks) and meant we get every single project out of the door on time and under budget.
And now with Smarty being taken under PHP's wing so to speak (http://smarty.php.net) you can truly separate display from business logic in a nice simple way.
But once again it comes down to this: Use the right tool for the job! I would never think of using PHP to power an online banking system, but then again I wouldn't use a 3-tiered enterprise system to run a bulletin board.
...Google will provide you with information.
Made a lot of those spooky pitch bendy sci-fi sound effects used in a lot of 40's and 50's movies of that genre.
Blaster got through because you had no firewall in place and obviously did not download the required CRITICAL updates from Microsoft. Visit windows update every day is the first lesson to take away from this.
Secondly, I use Zonealarm and manage 8 servers on the net remotely. ZoneAlarm doesn't block based on ports, it's a program policy based firewall that blocks access to processes that are not trusted (they are not trusted until you click "allow this program to access the internet").
Go to "Program Control" make sure the program control setting is on medium (programs must ask for access), then click on the Programs tab and make sure any progs you use to access your servers (i.e. Putty SSH client, WinSCP etc) are listed as being allowed access.
It's not hard and to be honest you owe it to your customers to learn how to use your security software properly.
...since it contains cracked copies of paid for software...thanks, but no thanks. The free version of divx (read the basic version, not the free adware supported pro version) is fine for anyone who just wants to view videos, its only when it comes to actually encoding them that the paid for codec comes into its own (being faster).
Link to FREE basic codec, no spyware in this one.
< nelson > Ha Ha! < /nelson >
Yielding: <nelson>Ha Ha!</nelson>...they want the program to be "just" a browser, if you want mail you use another program which is "just" a mailreader (thunderbird), and if you want IRC do not use anything mozilla at all, the chatzilla client was more a proof of concept than a useable product. BitchX is the way forward on Linux/Unix, on windows you could do a lot worse than mIRC.
I stopped using moz long ago because I didn't like the slugishness when compared to IE, I only left IE when I switched to Firebird/fox and haven't looked back.
...to a fresh amputation. It is possibly worse than no defense at all. Avoid at all costs. Either Kerio Personal Firewall, ZoneAlarm (at a push, works for me, some users find it doesn't) or Tiny Personal Firewall.
...in this day and age. What, with the ever looming threat of bio-terrorism, drug resistant strains of bacteria and deadly viruses (hiv) becoming more and more of a problem.
It's humbling that no matter who you are, rich oil tycoon, head of state, street sweeper, we can all die at the hands of these organisms.
Wells hit the nail right on the head with the ending and any change would be a travesty.
...most normal users who are browsing from home do not need to clear their cache, sensitive documents (https://) IIRC is never cached whilst the insecure stuff is cached to improve performance and minimise network use. IMHO it's a good idea to get users to jump through hoops, only in very few circumstances do you really want to clear your cache totally.
...does your computer stop working? Sure, the crt that is sensitive to electro-magentic radiation (after all, how else is the electron beam directed). However, your computer continues merilly doing what it was doing before.
I've seen a comment further down saying things about record players, well, if you didn't already know there is a magnetic pickup inside a pickup, that will get effected too, but does it stop working?
If there were any problems with modern mobile phones (and their masts) why is there one on top of a hospital? IIRC masts are much higher powered than the phones themselves.
...a teaching hospital (fairly large one at that) actually has a few masts on its roof. It's bullshit that modern phones muck up hospital equipment. This was not the case 10-15 years ago when phones transmitted at a higher power and hospital equipment was less advanced than it is now.
Tools | Options | Privacy | Cache | Clear
Now that was easy, wasn't it?
...as a pilot friend of mine has a pair (with mic boom as well). When you are flying a Cessna it's hard as hell to hear air traffic control, so these really help.
One really important use of these will be in ultra-quiet studio computers. Of course, its not to make sure the fan noise doesn't get recorded as its not a real recording studio if there isn't a separate recording booth/room (the studio I use in london from time to time is two rooms built within one large one, resting on a buttload of industrial springs, but I digress.
When you are listening to playback, making sure the singer was in tune, mixing the track, or whatever, you don't want ANY extraneous noise from fans. There is already a market for ultra ultra quiet pc's for this kind of application and advances like this can only help further the art.
...I use linux, so does my partner. Try grabbing a fedora core iso set and saying that is hard to install.
Go through the nice graphical installer, selecting language options etc. The only difficult bit about the whole process is setting up your network, but if more machines came with linux preinstalled that would be a moot point.
As it is, you may need some help installing the thing (very little I have found, mostly the default settings work fine). Then load up for the first time and whats on the gnome bar? Openoffice, mozilla and evolution. Office, Web and Mail. Wham bang thank-you maam. Anyone who says that is hard is either talking out of their arse or a microsoft/apple fanboy.
My digital camera, scanner and adsl modem "just work", so do the nic cards in my partner and I's machines.
There was a story on slashdot a few days ago about tech support for parents and a whole load of posters there said they setup linux and the amount of support they had to do reduced and for those times their parents couldnt fix it they could ssh right in.
...it stands for ruthlessly opressing fair use and free speech.
And also the Recording Industry Association of America.