Hmm... I've had exactly the same problem, but I thought it was just my weird drive. Thanks for sharing it! (it booted and installed windows, so i know the drive is capable of booting)
(ie: imagine my frustration about creating 4th linux iso, and not having it boot my machine... I must have tried every cd-rw setting for bootable drives, and still endedup creating 5 root floppies and 1 boot floppy [slackware]).
I still use LOTS of floppies for my Sony FD (floppy disk) digital camera. I know it's old, but it works great for shots that don't need more than 1 megapixel.
Floopies are also great for backing up small documents, moving them around computers (especially if the network is down).
Size wise, floppies still have more space than an average person "needs" (ie: most people don't "create" more than 1mb of work anyway on a short notice, and anything below that fits nicely on a floppy).
Remember, a floppy can store the text version of most books, which is quite a bit of information.
Bloated programs aside, a floppy is still a great way to short-term store and move small data files around with you (certainly a lot more comptable and easier to use than anything else).
I wonder what they'll do if the board of education (or something) approaches them and says to them: "if you don't leave us alone, we'll simply switch to Linux everywhere"
It just takes a few important pissed off customers to make companies wish they weren't so nitpicky. My school switched from getting thousands of Compaq's to getting thousands of Dell boxes because Compaq's tech support was "rude" to the guy who makes the buy decision. I bet Compaq wasn't too happy to loose a multimillion dollar deal like that.
Microsoft may do this now, but I'm sure they'll regret it big time if they ever loose the education market completely (not just the money, but the public exposure - everybody knows what Word is because that's what everybody writes their term papers in).
Well, they might not be totally OK, but I'm sure if they had a choice about people pirating THEIR software or using FREE software, they'd go for people pirating THEIR software (they're not making any money either way, but at least their software becomes standard in the industry and school/college graduates know it since they've been using it a few years in school:-)
Didn't Bill Gates say something of that sort a few years back, like "I'd rather have them pirate our software than someone else's."
You mean the paperweight variety? That would include just about every Java, C++, C#, VB book out there. If a book is about a language and is more than 2 inches thick, then it's worthless. (I think Programming Perl still makes it into the "great book" variety though).
Books to avoid? I never get books that deal with any specific technology (that will usually disappear or change drastically within a few years). Most of my books are theoretical, math, algorithms, graphics algorithms, etc. Those have proven most useful over many years.
Technical details on specific technologies are usually published electronically as specs, etc., so no need for a book:-)
Also, as a special precaution, avoid any book that has "VB", "Dummies", "21 Days", "7 Days", or "HTML" in its title.
"A colleague once told me that the world was full of bad security systems designed by people who read Applied Cryptography" - Bruce Schneier (author of Applied Cryptography).
Applied Cryptography should be read in addition to Secrets & Lies.
Coffee is usually served around 140 degrees Fahrenheit; McDonald's was serving it at over 180.
Is that before they put the milk in or after? The trick is that if you put cold milk into mildly hot coffee, the coffee becomes cool (not very nice), but a bit of milk in very hot coffee makes it 'just right'.
People who buy coffee should know that "no-milk" coffee is genereally hotter than one with milk; thus, people should be careful with hot things.
Linux use is growing. More and more people move from Windows to Linux. Now, as soon as they realize that they can't get their sound, modem, scanner, or cd burner working, they take a baseball bat and attack the box.
What is Fair Use? Did God intend for us to have Fair Use rights? Do animals have Fair Use rights?...
Can animals be sold into slavery? Do cows, pigs, and chickens have a right to life, and the pursuit of happiness?
There are no inalienable rights which are truly universally inalienable. It's just how we interpret and apply them.
So, if we're gonna abandon fair use on your grounds, maybe we should abandon free speech as well?
How about this: How do you criticize something legally? You buy a book, and after reading it and hating it, you decide to write a review. Now, obviously the author won't give you a 'right' to criticize their work. But if you write your review anyway, you'd probably be violating some law if fair use is abandoned.
How about a "copyright" that would require anyone to mention the source of the work, but abolish all other 'rights'? (like if you publish something, anyone in the world can do whatever they wish with it, but they may not remove your name from the credits).
Anybody can modify, sell, etc., the linux kernel, etc., but linus' name is still engraved everywhere, and everybody gives him credit for coming up with the thing.
With most software, the idea is "buyer beware." Once you buy something, you're stuck with it. You might not like it after 1 minute of using the software, but since you installed it, that's it, it's yours, and the company will not refund your money.
That's a rip-off in most common sense. If you buy a defective physical anything, you can almost always return it for money back. Hell, most things you can return just because you don't like them! Not so with software.
So, yes, the software companies would mind if you copy something to 'just try out', since then they don't make their $500 for your 2 minute 'try out' of their software.
Realistically, how much money would software companies make if anybody who didn't like their software could just return it for money back?
I can see it now... Microsoft IntelliWallet Explorer... with a little LED that lets you explore your money in the dark... [with a disclaimer that they're not responsible if it destroys your money because of a bug]
The scary part is that if they force this upon the public. Imagine needing a Passport account to withdraw cash from an ATM:-)
The problem is that these things grow (or slow down) at an exponential rate, so a LOT can happen in 50 years. Just look at what the Internet has grown into in just the last 10!
So while they may have been saying that for the last 100 years, the fact that it can happen in the next 50-100 years is VERY real (provided the exponential growth rate continues).
Now, hopefully prices for stuff will increase, which will cut down consumerism, starve some unproductive countries, and establish some sort of balance.
The horrific thing is chaos, which makes it kind of hard to predict what may happen. We may never achieve this 'balance' and may simply run ourselves 'dry', at which point most of the world will be destroyed in a global war for resources (or something like A.I. [movie] version of events - without the aliens of course).
From a more pragmatic perspective, nobody knows how the climate works, and they will NEVER know! The earth could enter an ice age in the next 50 years, without us intervening or not. I think the issue these scientists (form the article) are pointing out is that we've destabilized the balance in the ecosystem, which is probably a bad thing (but nobody really knows if that destabilization may actually save us from something even more horrific).
maybe that's their way of getting commens: hide the form, then say "well, nobody posted, meaning nobody cares about the issue... lets just pass the damn thing"
They put it there; it's not their fault that nobody but the RIAA & MPAA could find it.
Hmm...
Wasn't there some technology that was experimented with to launch things into orbit using mini nuclear explosions? I think they mentioned it on Discovery channel a few years ago. The idea is that if they researched it enough, it would mean very cheap way to reach space (you could lift heavier loads a lot cheaper). But they shut down the program because of its taboo nuclear thingies (not great for public relations nor environmentalists).
Would be great publicity if they decided to use GNU software for the mission... If someone could get Linux running on a PDA and a PS2, then why not a 'space' computer?
Get a decent scanner, etc., and every day, digitize some pictures (I did around 50-500 per day). In a few weeks/months, you'll have your whole collection. Scan at the max resolution (the ones that create 100MB or more images), and then turn them into HUGE jpeg. JPEG is lossy, but if images are sufficiently huge and resolution is good, the lossiness is not really a big issue (and it's relatively space efficient than lossless formats).
I wrote my own software for managing the collection (creating viewable size pictures, thumbnails, etc.), and so far, the best way to organize them is in a directory structure like/YYYY/MM/DD/ so that you can get to any specific day easily, and since you usually don't have that many pictures for any specific day, it manages it quite nicely.
Biggest issue so far is space. I may be living in the past, but having some important directory take up 40% of a HUGE hard drive is kind of unsettling. Backups are also a pain, it takes many CD-Rs to store everything, and even with DVDs, it would still be a major pain requiring several DVDs.
The best parts are that you can easily share it with your family, just startup a web-server and have your family browse through the thing. You can also combine it with other media, for example, my collection has digitized home movies (MPEG format), files, etc.,
There is no worry about it outlasting technology, since I'm sure I'll move it over to the newer machines/technology as those become available. The family will maintain the whole collection. You also don't throw away (shread or burn) the originals, so in case something horrible does happen, you still have some physical backup.
Slashdot Mirror
1st generation of StarWars walkers?
Hmm... I've had exactly the same problem, but I thought it was just my weird drive. Thanks for sharing it! (it booted and installed windows, so i know the drive is capable of booting)
(ie: imagine my frustration about creating 4th linux iso, and not having it boot my machine... I must have tried every cd-rw setting for bootable drives, and still endedup creating 5 root floppies and 1 boot floppy [slackware]).
I still use LOTS of floppies for my Sony FD (floppy disk) digital camera. I know it's old, but it works great for shots that don't need more than 1 megapixel.
Floopies are also great for backing up small documents, moving them around computers (especially if the network is down).
Size wise, floppies still have more space than an average person "needs" (ie: most people don't "create" more than 1mb of work anyway on a short notice, and anything below that fits nicely on a floppy).
Remember, a floppy can store the text version of most books, which is quite a bit of information.
Bloated programs aside, a floppy is still a great way to short-term store and move small data files around with you (certainly a lot more comptable and easier to use than anything else).
I wonder what they'll do if the board of education (or something) approaches them and says to them: "if you don't leave us alone, we'll simply switch to Linux everywhere"
It just takes a few important pissed off customers to make companies wish they weren't so nitpicky. My school switched from getting thousands of Compaq's to getting thousands of Dell boxes because Compaq's tech support was "rude" to the guy who makes the buy decision. I bet Compaq wasn't too happy to loose a multimillion dollar deal like that.
Microsoft may do this now, but I'm sure they'll regret it big time if they ever loose the education market completely (not just the money, but the public exposure - everybody knows what Word is because that's what everybody writes their term papers in).
Well, they might not be totally OK, but I'm sure if they had a choice about people pirating THEIR software or using FREE software, they'd go for people pirating THEIR software (they're not making any money either way, but at least their software becomes standard in the industry and school/college graduates know it since they've been using it a few years in school :-)
Didn't Bill Gates say something of that sort a few years back, like "I'd rather have them pirate our software than someone else's."
You mean the paperweight variety? That would include just about every Java, C++, C#, VB book out there. If a book is about a language and is more than 2 inches thick, then it's worthless. (I think Programming Perl still makes it into the "great book" variety though).
:-)
Books to avoid? I never get books that deal with any specific technology (that will usually disappear or change drastically within a few years). Most of my books are theoretical, math, algorithms, graphics algorithms, etc. Those have proven most useful over many years.
Technical details on specific technologies are usually published electronically as specs, etc., so no need for a book
Also, as a special precaution, avoid any book that has "VB", "Dummies", "21 Days", "7 Days", or "HTML" in its title.
Applied Cryptography should be read in addition to Secrets & Lies.
Here's my gold list (from the front of my bookshelf):
Computer Graphics, Principles and Practice, Foley, van Dam, etc.
Computer Graphics, C version, by Donald Hearn and Pauline Baker
Real-Time Rendering by Thomas Moller and Eric Haines
Crafting a Compiler with C by Fisher and LeBlanc
Numerical Recipes in C, Art of Scientific Computation
Introduction to Algorithms, Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest
Computer Algorithms, Introduction to Design and Analysis by Sara Baase
Computers and Intractability, A guide to the theory of NP-Completeness
Computability, Complexity, and Languages, by Martin Davis
Introduction to Languages and The Theory of Computation, by John Martin
An Introduction to The Theory of Numbers by Ivan Niven, etc.
Operating System Concepts by Silberschatz, Galvin, Gagne
Data Compression, The Complete Reference by David Solomon
The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth
Rapid Development by Steve McConnell (and other McConnell's books)
And how could the list ever be complete without...
The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick Brooks
(am I a nerd of what?)
Is that before they put the milk in or after? The trick is that if you put cold milk into mildly hot coffee, the coffee becomes cool (not very nice), but a bit of milk in very hot coffee makes it 'just right'.
People who buy coffee should know that "no-milk" coffee is genereally hotter than one with milk; thus, people should be careful with hot things.
People attacking Linux boxes with baseball bats?
Linux use is growing. More and more people move from Windows to Linux. Now, as soon as they realize that they can't get their sound, modem, scanner, or cd burner working, they take a baseball bat and attack the box.
What is Fair Use? Did God intend for us to have Fair Use rights? Do animals have Fair Use rights?...
Can animals be sold into slavery? Do cows, pigs, and chickens have a right to life, and the pursuit of happiness?
There are no inalienable rights which are truly universally inalienable. It's just how we interpret and apply them.
So, if we're gonna abandon fair use on your grounds, maybe we should abandon free speech as well?
How about this: How do you criticize something legally? You buy a book, and after reading it and hating it, you decide to write a review. Now, obviously the author won't give you a 'right' to criticize their work. But if you write your review anyway, you'd probably be violating some law if fair use is abandoned.
How about a "copyright" that would require anyone to mention the source of the work, but abolish all other 'rights'? (like if you publish something, anyone in the world can do whatever they wish with it, but they may not remove your name from the credits).
Anybody can modify, sell, etc., the linux kernel, etc., but linus' name is still engraved everywhere, and everybody gives him credit for coming up with the thing.
Simple! Just use the deflector. Plans to build, fix, and tune one can be found by watching startrek.
With most software, the idea is "buyer beware." Once you buy something, you're stuck with it. You might not like it after 1 minute of using the software, but since you installed it, that's it, it's yours, and the company will not refund your money.
That's a rip-off in most common sense. If you buy a defective physical anything, you can almost always return it for money back. Hell, most things you can return just because you don't like them! Not so with software.
So, yes, the software companies would mind if you copy something to 'just try out', since then they don't make their $500 for your 2 minute 'try out' of their software.
Realistically, how much money would software companies make if anybody who didn't like their software could just return it for money back?
Most software never lives up to its advertising.
I can see it now... Microsoft IntelliWallet Explorer... with a little LED that lets you explore your money in the dark... [with a disclaimer that they're not responsible if it destroys your money because of a bug]
The scary part is that if they force this upon the public. Imagine needing a Passport account to withdraw cash from an ATM :-)
The problem is that these things grow (or slow down) at an exponential rate, so a LOT can happen in 50 years. Just look at what the Internet has grown into in just the last 10!
So while they may have been saying that for the last 100 years, the fact that it can happen in the next 50-100 years is VERY real (provided the exponential growth rate continues).
Now, hopefully prices for stuff will increase, which will cut down consumerism, starve some unproductive countries, and establish some sort of balance.
The horrific thing is chaos, which makes it kind of hard to predict what may happen. We may never achieve this 'balance' and may simply run ourselves 'dry', at which point most of the world will be destroyed in a global war for resources (or something like A.I. [movie] version of events - without the aliens of course).
From a more pragmatic perspective, nobody knows how the climate works, and they will NEVER know! The earth could enter an ice age in the next 50 years, without us intervening or not. I think the issue these scientists (form the article) are pointing out is that we've destabilized the balance in the ecosystem, which is probably a bad thing (but nobody really knows if that destabilization may actually save us from something even more horrific).
maybe that's their way of getting commens: hide the form, then say "well, nobody posted, meaning nobody cares about the issue... lets just pass the damn thing" They put it there; it's not their fault that nobody but the RIAA & MPAA could find it. Hmm...
yeah, but try making any other bot answer questions like "what's two plus five?" :-)
It is just a bot afterall, what did you expect? I'm sure even the best ones will fall for some unexpected phrases.
Forgot the url, sorry: Prof.Phreak Bot.
Bah, Alice's nothing. Try Prof.Phreak bot:
Wasn't there some technology that was experimented with to launch things into orbit using mini nuclear explosions? I think they mentioned it on Discovery channel a few years ago. The idea is that if they researched it enough, it would mean very cheap way to reach space (you could lift heavier loads a lot cheaper). But they shut down the program because of its taboo nuclear thingies (not great for public relations nor environmentalists).
Would be great publicity if they decided to use GNU software for the mission... If someone could get Linux running on a PDA and a PS2, then why not a 'space' computer?
XML is unlikely to go away (you'll still be able to read XML docs 50 years from now, even if basic formats like JPEG, etc., are totally replaced).
Not to mention in case of any major changes, it doesn't take long to create an XSLT script to convert your XML into anything.
from: nasdaqtrader
So how could WorldCom fail?
I wrote my own software for managing the collection (creating viewable size pictures, thumbnails, etc.), and so far, the best way to organize them is in a directory structure like /YYYY/MM/DD/ so that you can get to any specific day easily, and since you usually don't have that many pictures for any specific day, it manages it quite nicely.
Biggest issue so far is space. I may be living in the past, but having some important directory take up 40% of a HUGE hard drive is kind of unsettling. Backups are also a pain, it takes many CD-Rs to store everything, and even with DVDs, it would still be a major pain requiring several DVDs.
The best parts are that you can easily share it with your family, just startup a web-server and have your family browse through the thing. You can also combine it with other media, for example, my collection has digitized home movies (MPEG format), files, etc.,
There is no worry about it outlasting technology, since I'm sure I'll move it over to the newer machines/technology as those become available. The family will maintain the whole collection. You also don't throw away (shread or burn) the originals, so in case something horrible does happen, you still have some physical backup.