As a student and a user of non-Microsoft products, I would really appreciate it if lecturers didn't distribute their notes in such a proprietary format.
Why not just convert your slides into Adobe Acrobat PDF? Fine, so it's kinda-non-free, but at least the formal specs are public. It's designed for distribution whereas Office files are pretty much for editing only. Then students with pretty much any OS might be able to read them. Oh, and don't do a fancy "4 pages per sheet" printout; if I want more than one slide per page, I can jolly well learn to use the n-up button in the printer setup.
Another one of my complaints is the fact that PowerPoint et al. have made speakers lazy. Most slideshows are crap on so many levels. People actually use fly-ins and other special effects as handwaving, obfuscating the fact that there is no content. Often there are too many slides (anything above one per minute is definitely too many!), with too much text on each. Oh, and if you are not teaching UI design or art, stick with either basics or templates.
The last part certainly wasn't criticism to the parent; I just felt like venting about some of my lecturers.
Informative? Well, at least it's not informed. Nokia has been around in one form or another for over a century. Nokia is actually a fusion of three companies and three businesses: wood (since 1865), rubber (1898) and cables (1912). The name "Nokia" is actually a place in Finland. Yes, we all know it sounds Japanese.
Through the years Nokia has bought other companies and expanded its business into new areas. In fact the company had practically nothing to do with electronics until the late 80's. The company has continued to narrow down its focus, unlike the parent suggested.
Particularly under Jorma Ollila, Nokia decided to focus on electronics and especially communications and started to sell its other functions away. Most of newly formed companies wanted to be associated with the Nokia brand, so many chose names with suitable connotations. Therefore, you now have Nokian tyres (the 'n' at the end of the word is the genitive case, so the word actually means "Nokia's tyres"), NK cables and Nokian footwear. Pretty much every Finn has a pair of (old 'Nokia' or new 'Nokian') rubber boots. Fine boots them. Used them in the army too.
Anyway, calling Nokia simply a "cell phone company", or calling for Nokia to become one, is misinformed. Although mobile phones are definitely the most visible area to the consumer, the company provides a much wider range of communication solutions including mobile base stations and networks. In the consumer market they've made a few lemons though; the IP55 ADSL router, a rebranded Webramp, comes to mind, as does the N-Gage.:) But the MediaMaster was/is a fine product.
But I am concerned as to the Santa friendliness of this chimney internet access. Will I still be able to get my presents if I access the internet this way.
Depends on what kind of sites you are looking at. Are they naughty or nice?
If you're interested in protecting your identity, the incubating, proof-of-concept UDPP2P project looks interesting. It uses spoofed UDP packets as much as possible, keeping your IP hidden until another machine has offered to send you the file you were looking for.
It looks interesting, although I'm not quite sure about breaking standards (by spoofing the packets) in favour of privacy...
Default passwords are of course a problem, especially when many of these systems are operated by people who probably don't even know they are running an SMB server.
Also, even those who know better often seem to leave passwords to default if the system shouldn't be accessible from the outside. A typical example of such a system is an ADSL router / firewall. I know several of these whose password is left as standard. Granted, attacking them will be more difficult (and probably cannot be automated like in this case) but once one of the hosts inside is rooted, it's easy to connect to the router from within the LAN and gain access to the rest of the services.
Average speed: more than 923 megabits per second, or more than 3,500 times faster than a typical home broadband connection.
That'd be pretty sucky broadband, if you ask me. 262kb? I mean, it's better than dial-up certainly, but...
Seriously though, if anyone here is thinking that any ISP with 3,500 256kbps connections has that bandwidth available, think again. The issue of contention comes to play. Here in the UK, the contention ratio for a typical home DSL connection is 1:50, meaning the ISP allocates one fiftieth of (number_of_connections x connection_speed). In other words, the ISP oversells their capacity 50-fold. Business DSL connections get more bandwidth reserved for them, typically 1:20 here.
Not true, back in my school daze, we used Turing a teaching language, and the newer version (at the time) Object Oriented Turing(OOT) used the same dos extender, it simply allowed dos level programs to access memeory above the 640k barrior, a godsend at the time
Are you sure? I always thought the 'W' in dos4gw.exe stands for Watcom.
Anyway, the comparison table at http://www.tenberry.com/dos4g/watcom/4gwtable.htm lists Watcom C++ and Fortran as the only supported compilers. I thought there was a dos/4g available for some other products, but dos4gw.exe was exclusive to Watcom.
What exactly did dos4gw.exe do, incidently? I always used to wonder.
It allowed the programmer to use all of the available memory. Remember when you had problems getting programs running because there was not enough conventional memory (ie. the first 640KB)? Well, dos/4gw made is easy to write programs free of these memory limitations.
More information at http://www.tenberry.com/dos4g/
First of all, for the uninitiated, if your program shipped with dos4gw.exe (as most games did), it was compiled in Watcom. Such was the performance difference that nobody really bothered with any other compiler, especially with games.
Back in the days of DOS, if you were a developer, the Watcom C compiler was *the* thing to pirate.
I remeber using a stripped-down copy which was missing a good part of the standard C++ libraries and still doing most of my development on it. Having gotten used to such luxuries as the IDE Borland C++ (and Turbo Pascal) shipped with, it took a while to get used to but produced superb code.
Well, isn't the mere existence of programming languages dangerous, because it lets hackers write malicious code? This sounds remotely like something **AA would say. What's more, machine code could be used as a circumvention device for copyright protection. Yes, we better outlaw binary.
I've been trying to migrate people _away_ from windows, this only makes it easier for them to stay;-)
On the other hand, Microsoft has done an excellent job trying to migrate developers away from Windows by creating Visual C++, the bastard son of C++. I have yet to find any features in VC++ that would make my job as a developer easier than in gcc. (Step-by-step execution built into the GUI? The few times I would actually need it, the debugger crashes before trapping anything. IDE? If you must, use KDevelop.)
Fortunately I've only had to work with this brilliant piece of software for short (a few months) assignments.
So get off your ass, knock up a form letter, keep it handy, and complain!
I did. It looks something like this.
Dear Sir / Madam,
An article published on The Register a few days ago (and available at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/23/27756.html ) prompted me to write to you regarding the browser support on your Online Banking service. A long-time Linux user browsing with Mozilla and a customer of your bank for a couple of years now, I am very frustrated by your lack of consideration in supporting alternative operating systems and web browsers. Supporting only one or two platforms for such an essential service as online banking shows short-sightedness and disregard for your customers.
There are various reasons why it is a bad idea to limit your support to certain web browsers or operating systems and instead use proprietory solutions. These include:
- Some people are unable to use certain technologies. The visually impaired, for example, may need special hardware and/or software to access the Web. Phone banking is not an acceptable alternative; everyone should have access to the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web Consortium (www.w3.org) is working hard to achieve this goal by setting standards, so breaking them is inherently the wrong thing to do.
- The actual standards in place today are very secure and well designed, something which cannot be said about the proprietory extensions in most Microsoft products. Limiting your support to certain 'tested' browsers is by no means going to improve the security of your system; in fact, trying to improve security through using Microsoft products is an oxymoron and laughable at best.
- The method by which you are trying to limit access is useless but annoying. Most 'alternative' browsers allow the user to set their browser identification to anything they like, that is, the browser will present itself as, say, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0. Therefore, most knowledgeable users who are unable to access your site because of this limitation will change their browser identification and be permitted. However, this is a bad idea because (a) it will produce misleading browser statistics for you, (b) it lets anyone access your site tailored for a certain, non-standard-compliant browser, and (c) it may lead to situations where the user is allowed access but, because of the non-standard nature of your site, will not be able to navigate as intended.
I realise that Microsoft Internet Explorer is by far the most popular browser but there are many alternatives available. Ignoring these alternatives is utterly irresponsible of you, as well as bad business practice. Even if just ten per cent of people use the alternative browsers, that's ten per cent of potential customers to lose to your more considerate competitors.
The Register published a hall-of-fame as well as a hall-of-shame (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/27777.html ). Of your competitors, Barclays, Lloyds TSB and Nationwide are among the considerate. I am sure I can find a bank which values its customers by providing the means to actually use their money. Unless I can see a considerable improvement in your support in this matter, I will be forced to change banks.
Kind of to go with this, I found a (Finnish, sorry, but you can still look at the purdy pictures) page that has some interesting avi clips. These people got an infrared camera to do a few DivX clips on how the heat is distributed across the components. I like the first one best; they actually destroy an uncooled 1.4GHz Athlon Thunderbird. The CPU temperature rises to 300 deg C in about six seconds!
Also, if I owned a store, I would _not_ sell a game called "BMX XXX". The name is inappropriate by itself, and implies that it's porn (even though it's not).
Absolutely. This is why they are going to rename it BMX PG.
Yes, this is cool, but $10,000? Am I the only one thinking that keeping "hundreds of thousands" of computers on for "over four years" is probably going to cost something? (Yes, even when many of these computers would have been running anyway.)
The problem with Blenders interface is that it stays confusing even for the third and fourth time you try it. Without a reference manuel or lots of tutorial website, there is basically zero change that ever will get used to the interface.
Agreed. On the other hand, I just bought the 'official' 2.03 manual and just followed the tutorials, and once I actually found out how the program works, the interface became intuitive. Remeber, Blender was originally an in-house tool for people using it 8 hours a day. These people don't go through buttons, they use keyboard shortcuts.
You can get the job done with Blenders interfaces and it has some nice ideas, but there is still quite huge room for improvments (not only on the interface site, but also on the functionality site, I still miss boolean operations).
I have to agree. I have some experience with Lightwave and, while I often like to play with NURBS and other modeling techniques, I find boolean operations invaluable. The intersection tool on Blender is a joke really; hopefully the new Blender coders agree and do something about it (so I can concentrate on whining and not doing any programming myself.)
Speaking of Lightwave: is there anybody else out there who thinks the separation of the interface to "Modeler" and "Layout" is a great idea? I just hate the idea that when I am creating a new model I have to (mentally) move the rest of the scene aside? Sure, I could use layers and all that, but I generally need different tools when modeling than when setting up the scene.
(Yes, I realize these are design philosophy decisions and not bugs, so I am not expecting anyone to change Blender.:)
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Why not just convert your slides into Adobe Acrobat PDF? Fine, so it's kinda-non-free, but at least the formal specs are public. It's designed for distribution whereas Office files are pretty much for editing only. Then students with pretty much any OS might be able to read them. Oh, and don't do a fancy "4 pages per sheet" printout; if I want more than one slide per page, I can jolly well learn to use the n-up button in the printer setup.
Another one of my complaints is the fact that PowerPoint et al. have made speakers lazy. Most slideshows are crap on so many levels. People actually use fly-ins and other special effects as handwaving, obfuscating the fact that there is no content. Often there are too many slides (anything above one per minute is definitely too many!), with too much text on each. Oh, and if you are not teaching UI design or art, stick with either basics or templates.
The last part certainly wasn't criticism to the parent; I just felt like venting about some of my lecturers.
I think that's supposed to mean rubber boots. Wellingtons, if you are thus inclined. My guess is the poster was a Swede.
Informative? Well, at least it's not informed. Nokia has been around in one form or another for over a century. Nokia is actually a fusion of three companies and three businesses: wood (since 1865), rubber (1898) and cables (1912). The name "Nokia" is actually a place in Finland. Yes, we all know it sounds Japanese.
Through the years Nokia has bought other companies and expanded its business into new areas. In fact the company had practically nothing to do with electronics until the late 80's. The company has continued to narrow down its focus, unlike the parent suggested.
Particularly under Jorma Ollila, Nokia decided to focus on electronics and especially communications and started to sell its other functions away. Most of newly formed companies wanted to be associated with the Nokia brand, so many chose names with suitable connotations. Therefore, you now have Nokian tyres (the 'n' at the end of the word is the genitive case, so the word actually means "Nokia's tyres"), NK cables and Nokian footwear. Pretty much every Finn has a pair of (old 'Nokia' or new 'Nokian') rubber boots. Fine boots them. Used them in the army too.
Anyway, calling Nokia simply a "cell phone company", or calling for Nokia to become one, is misinformed. Although mobile phones are definitely the most visible area to the consumer, the company provides a much wider range of communication solutions including mobile base stations and networks. In the consumer market they've made a few lemons though; the IP55 ADSL router, a rebranded Webramp, comes to mind, as does the N-Gage. :) But the MediaMaster was/is a fine product.
Damn, Mr Dewey was definitely on to something. Who would've thought the categody 133.7 is fraud"?
Yeah, and it's probably pretty well padded with cash too?
Depends on what kind of sites you are looking at. Are they naughty or nice?
It looks interesting, although I'm not quite sure about breaking standards (by spoofing the packets) in favour of privacy...
Here.
Also, even those who know better often seem to leave passwords to default if the system shouldn't be accessible from the outside. A typical example of such a system is an ADSL router / firewall. I know several of these whose password is left as standard. Granted, attacking them will be more difficult (and probably cannot be automated like in this case) but once one of the hosts inside is rooted, it's easy to connect to the router from within the LAN and gain access to the rest of the services.
Seriously though, if anyone here is thinking that any ISP with 3,500 256kbps connections has that bandwidth available, think again. The issue of contention comes to play. Here in the UK, the contention ratio for a typical home DSL connection is 1:50, meaning the ISP allocates one fiftieth of (number_of_connections x connection_speed). In other words, the ISP oversells their capacity 50-fold. Business DSL connections get more bandwidth reserved for them, typically 1:20 here.
Are you sure? I always thought the 'W' in dos4gw.exe stands for Watcom.
Anyway, the comparison table at http://www.tenberry.com/dos4g/watcom/4gwtable.htm lists Watcom C++ and Fortran as the only supported compilers. I thought there was a dos/4g available for some other products, but dos4gw.exe was exclusive to Watcom.
Can someone verify this?
I remeber using a stripped-down copy which was missing a good part of the standard C++ libraries and still doing most of my development on it. Having gotten used to such luxuries as the IDE Borland C++ (and Turbo Pascal) shipped with, it took a while to get used to but produced superb code.
Does anyone else think the funniest thing about the comic is that it's typeset in MS Comic Sans?
Well, isn't the mere existence of programming languages dangerous, because it lets hackers write malicious code? This sounds remotely like something **AA would say. What's more, machine code could be used as a circumvention device for copyright protection. Yes, we better outlaw binary.
(It's called "reduction to absurdity".)
On the other hand, Microsoft has done an excellent job trying to migrate developers away from Windows by creating Visual C++, the bastard son of C++. I have yet to find any features in VC++ that would make my job as a developer easier than in gcc. (Step-by-step execution built into the GUI? The few times I would actually need it, the debugger crashes before trapping anything. IDE? If you must, use KDevelop.)
Fortunately I've only had to work with this brilliant piece of software for short (a few months) assignments.
I did. It looks something like this.
Dear Sir / Madam,
An article published on The Register a few days ago (and available at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/23/27756.html ) prompted me to write to you regarding the browser support on your Online Banking service. A long-time Linux user browsing with Mozilla and a customer of your bank for a couple of years now, I am very frustrated by your lack of consideration in supporting alternative operating systems and web browsers. Supporting only one or two platforms for such an essential service as online banking shows short-sightedness and disregard for your customers.
There are various reasons why it is a bad idea to limit your support to certain web browsers or operating systems and instead use proprietory solutions. These include:
- Some people are unable to use certain technologies. The visually impaired, for example, may need special hardware and/or software to access the Web. Phone banking is not an acceptable alternative; everyone should have access to the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web Consortium (www.w3.org) is working hard to achieve this goal by setting standards, so breaking them is inherently the wrong thing to do.
- The actual standards in place today are very secure and well designed, something which cannot be said about the proprietory extensions in most Microsoft products. Limiting your support to certain 'tested' browsers is by no means going to improve the security of your system; in fact, trying to improve security through using Microsoft products is an oxymoron and laughable at best.
- The method by which you are trying to limit access is useless but annoying. Most 'alternative' browsers allow the user to set their browser identification to anything they like, that is, the browser will present itself as, say, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0. Therefore, most knowledgeable users who are unable to access your site because of this limitation will change their browser identification and be permitted. However, this is a bad idea because (a) it will produce misleading browser statistics for you, (b) it lets anyone access your site tailored for a certain, non-standard-compliant browser, and (c) it may lead to situations where the user is allowed access but, because of the non-standard nature of your site, will not be able to navigate as intended.
I realise that Microsoft Internet Explorer is by far the most popular browser but there are many alternatives available. Ignoring these alternatives is utterly irresponsible of you, as well as bad business practice. Even if just ten per cent of people use the alternative browsers, that's ten per cent of potential customers to lose to your more considerate competitors.
The Register published a hall-of-fame as well as a hall-of-shame (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/27777.html ). Of your competitors, Barclays, Lloyds TSB and Nationwide are among the considerate. I am sure I can find a bank which values its customers by providing the means to actually use their money. Unless I can see a considerable improvement in your support in this matter, I will be forced to change banks.
Sincerely,
Kind of to go with this, I found a (Finnish, sorry, but you can still look at the purdy pictures) page that has some interesting avi clips. These people got an infrared camera to do a few DivX clips on how the heat is distributed across the components. I like the first one best; they actually destroy an uncooled 1.4GHz Athlon Thunderbird. The CPU temperature rises to 300 deg C in about six seconds!
Absolutely. This is why they are going to rename it BMX PG.
Interesting none the less.
But who's doing it for the money anyway...
I have to agree. I have some experience with Lightwave and, while I often like to play with NURBS and other modeling techniques, I find boolean operations invaluable. The intersection tool on Blender is a joke really; hopefully the new Blender coders agree and do something about it (so I can concentrate on whining and not doing any programming myself.)
Speaking of Lightwave: is there anybody else out there who thinks the separation of the interface to "Modeler" and "Layout" is a great idea? I just hate the idea that when I am creating a new model I have to (mentally) move the rest of the scene aside? Sure, I could use layers and all that, but I generally need different tools when modeling than when setting up the scene.
(Yes, I realize these are design philosophy decisions and not bugs, so I am not expecting anyone to change Blender. :)