I think this has less to do with a terrorist using a cell phone to detonate a bomb and more to do with preventing people from using text messaging to organize flash mobs to protest Bush. After all, GW doesn't tolerate dissent.
**FUGW**
... to justify the existance of the Orwellian Patriot Act. Not only did OBL manage to kill 3000 people and two buildings, it seems that he managed to kill common sense and reason as well.
Not just other goverments, but probably big corporate users as well. Let's face it, Israel is a drop in the bucket in terms of revenue to M$. But if big business decided to follow Israel's lead, M$ could find themselves in a full-scale user revolt. It's not like M$'s licensing, pricing policies and marginal quality hasn't ruffled a few feathers along the way.
Even worse for M$ is that it would be a high-profile win and an effective endorsement for OSS which could tip the balance for potential OSS users sitting on the fence waiting to see if OSS really does provide a viable alternative to M$.
But where is the libforms.so.1 source?
on
XForms Essentials
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
I tried to find the source code to Xforms-1.0 (libforms.so.1), but the download page says it was pulled for some reason. I need it for a LyX upgrade.
In the famous photo of the first flight of the 1903 flyer at the lower-right foreground there are some tools (a shovel and an oil can) and a box with wires coming out of it. The box is a supposed to be a large dry-cell battery which was used to help start the plane.
Question: Does anyone have any details on this battery? There's a logo on its side which I can't identify. Any ideas?
Granted stripping the panels from the DeLorean and attaching them to the hover craft was a bit lame. The point is that had Jesse actually been on the set for the first three days of the build like he was supposed to have been instead of running off to throw his tantrum, it wouldn't have happened.
What I don't understand is why the producers allow him to get away with this. I wonder if he still gets paid for not showing up on his own show.
This is actually not a big deal. Battlebots has had requirements for fail-safes on their radio equipment from the beginning. Most PCM based R/C equipment comes standard with it. There is also high-end R/C stuff (like the IFI controllers) which use frequency hopping which makes them jam resistant and have very robust fail-safes.
MG is a fun show. But I'm not real happy with having Jesse as host. There's no question he's a talented metal worker, but the stoned surfer dude personna gets old really fast. I think the final straw for me was when he threw a hissy fit and walked off the build for 3 days because he didn't like the project then came back and dissed the contestants for not building what he wanted. (I think it was the hover DeLorean episode.) One of the contestants stood up to him and Jesse threw yet another stink fit and tossed him of the team. What a fucking baby.
At least Junkyard Wars has more personable hosts. But they need to bring Cathey Rogers back. Monster House is cool too.
What's the possibility of placing Hubble inside a special re-entry vehicle (perhaps a big tube with heat shield) and parachuting it down like the old apollo spacecraft did? It's seems like such a waste to destroy such a significant part of space history.
The DMCA protects encrypted content from decyphering and illegal copying. But sending plain HTML over an encrypted link is entirely different. SSL protects the pipe between the server and the client from third party interception. There is no 'cracking' involved since the client and server agree on the encryption algorithm and keys to be used before the transmission takes place.
I worked at a company that was going to do vehicle tracking using GPS and those road map CDs you see at the computer store. We bought several of them from different companies. What we found was that they are full of mistakes. I believe that most of the data for these comes from a company called DeLorme (sp?). Unfortunately, it seems to have been compiled from obsolete government records. Something to keep in mind is you're planning a trip with these.
Some new information has come to light over the Kursk disaster. For those with short attention spans, the Kursk was the submarine that blew up and sank in the Artic Ocean killing all 118 on board. The Russians tried to blame the incident on a collision with an unidentified object. However, sonar tapes which recorded the blasts (a small one at first, then a much larger one two minutes later) cast doubt on these claims. A whistle blower within the Russian military has leaked that the crew of the Kursk was testing a new type of torpedo when the accident occured. It seemed very likely that the test didn't go quite as planned.
While rescue efforts to save the survivors of the Kursk failed, salvage crews were able to recover a 'Black Box' from the submarine which contained detailed accounts of the events leading up to the explosion. As luck would have it, we got a copy of those tapes.
It turns out that the submarine crew was trying to load Microsoft Windows on their fire control computer. Their intent was to replace the aging CP/M operating system with the flashier Windows OS. Apparently, the Russians didn't know about the legendary stability problems exhibited by Windows. The log tapes make this painfully obvious:
Captain: Is the new fire control Windows OS installed yet Comrade?
Seaman: Almost Sir. We just need to finish filling out the registration card.
Captain: Excellent. Soon we will be able to point and click our enemies into oblivian.
[evil laughter in background]
Seaman: Comrade Captain! It is booting! Look, it says "Preparing to run Windows for the first time".
[long pause]
Seaman: Arrgh! Sir, it wants me to reboot again. That makes the 27th time.
Captain: Hmmm. This is not encouraging. Go ahead and reboot again.
Seaman: Aye Sir.
[another long pause]
Seaman: Captain, it is up again. It says it found new hardware... A CD-ROM drive and that it needs drivers.
Captain: Where are the drivers?
Seaman: On the CD-ROM.
Captain: You are joking, right?
Seaman: No Sir.
Captain: Reboot the damn thing again. I am starting not to like this Windows.
[another long pause]
Seaman: Sir! It is back! It says it found the Gorby2000 Torpedo and is looking for the device drivers. Do we have a driver disk?
Captain: I do not think so.
Seaman: I will tell it to use the default drivers.
[another long pause]
Seaman: Crap. It wants to reboot again.
Captain: How many times are we going to reboot today? This is taking forever. Our hull is going to rust out before this works.
[another long pause]
Seaman: Sir! It is up and this time it is not asking for anything!
Captain: Really? No device drivers? No registration cards? No user profiles?
Seaman: No Sir. I think it is ready.
Captain: Good work comrade. Now click on the fire control icon and let us see how this works.
Seaman: Clicking now, Sir.
[another long pause]
Captain: Why does the fire control screen have a dancing paper clip on it?
Seaman: I have no idea Sir.
Captain: Hmmm, well try clicking on the menu.
Seaman: Aye Sir. Let us see; Open E-mail, Spam a friend, Mail a Virus, Fire a Torpedo.
Captain: We will spam a friend later. Let us fire a torpedo.
Seaman: Aye Sir.
[another long pause]
Seaman: It is asking us to load the torpedo and to click when ready.
Captain: Torpedo room, load a torpedo in tube number 1!
[intercom:] This is the Torpedo room. The torpedo is loaded Sir.
Captain: Click on the continue button.
Seaman: Aye Sir.
[another long pause]
Seaman: It is asking for a target Sir.
Captain: Hmmm, target the Rainbow Warrior.
Seaman: Aye Sir. Damn! It says the torpedo is low on ink.
Captain: Click ignore. We will get some ink when we return to base.
Seaman: Aye Sir. We are ready to fire.
Captain: Very good. You may fire when ready comrade.
Seaman: Firing torpe
The reality I'm referring to is that for most users, their machine runs both the application and the windowing system. (Think windoze.) X is well suited for the mainframe environment where the user's desktop is essentially a glorified dumb terminal or where remote admin needs to be done. But that arrangement isn't very common in home or for many business applications.
My thoughts are that for home/workstation environments where all computing is done locally that a less bloated and more streamlined version of X might be beneficial.
I like Xfree. But it's still basically X. The problem I have with X is that it's overkill for most client desktops. It's nice that X allows remote windowing. But how many users actually need that? (I'm ignoring the security implications this has as well.) The reality is that 99.9% of X applications have both the client application and X server on the same machine. So why have such a complicated networking layer to draw a window on a screen? Seems like a lot of unnecessary overhead to me.
I seem to remember there was a move to streamline X given this new reality. But I don't know what it's called. Could someone fill me in?
Besides As much as I dislike M$, Microsoft does not have an illegal monolopy
Ummm, you haven't been paying attention, have you? M$ was in fact found guilty of being an illegal monopoly in a court of law.
Additionly, it was no secret that Bush and company had no real interest in pursuing M$. They said as much during the 2000 election campaign which is why M$ did their best to drag the court case out until after the inaugeration. It payed off for them. M$ got a slap on the wrist and basically walked away unscathed.
As far as hurting consumers, M$ hurt consumers by limited their choices by preventing competition. The result is that consumers are stuck with shoddy and overpriced software with few options to shop elsewhere.
The mirror mostly works. Some of the images are broken.
The best chip "easter egg" I've seen was on the Intel P3 die which said something like "Microsoft Sucks" on it. The engineer responsible was fired if I remember correctly.
I would have liked to see this go to trial with the aid of the EFF. It would have made an excellent test case challenging the stupidity contained in the DMCA.
On the other hand, I'm glad the kid isn't going to get shafted by this.
I was prefectly happy when I switched to TaxCut. It imported my previous year's returns from TurboTax and was generally very easy to use. Plus it was less expensive. And there was no DRM to fight with and no crap being secretly written to my boot block. I think Intuit really shot themselves in the foot over this. I have no intention of going back to TurboTax, apology or not. There's no reason to now.
A bit off topic, but I wonder how Valve's draconian DRM system called Steam is going to fair in the long run? I haven't seen a DRM system that has done well in the market yet. Could Steam be the first or will it pull an Intuit?
It's been suggested in several posts that the Wright's requirement of a 25mph headwind was cheating because this somehow reduced their plane to a noisy glider. This really isn't the case. The reason has to do with drag. Even with a modern paved runway and tires, there is still a noticable amount of rolling drag during a take-off roll. It's not uncommon for a pilot (especially in small planes with limited horsepower) to lift the plane of the runaway a few feet to eliminate the rolling drag and then let the plane gain additional speed from the reduced drag before climbing out. Using a headwind just makes this process easier. Considering that the Wright Bros were using a crude track, wheels, and skids it's amazing they were able to get off the ground at all.
But their biggest contribution was that the Wrights recognized that existing aerodynamic theory was wrong. Using their wind tunnel and full size models, they literally re-wrote the book on aerodynamic theory of the time. Unlike other attempts at flight of the time, the Wright flyer was a product of sound scientific research rather than throw-it-together-and-hope-it-flies which was so common a the time. For that, they deserve to be recognized as the fathers of flight.
I'm a little disappointed with Valve about now. Strike one is the DRM nitemare called Steam that they're shoving down the gaming community's throat. OMG! What a fiasco that is. Strike two is the shutting out of linux users. If Id can support linux, why can't Valve?
What I don't fully understand is why Valve went with DX9 over CG and openGL, especially since DX9's HLSL is essentially identical to CG. CG offers cross-platform compatibility. DX9 limits the portability of HL2. So why do it?
Isn't that what people used to say. Well guess what. It is happening here. Right now before your very eyes. Remember that when 2004 rolls around and be sure to thank Dumbya and his minions by sending them packing.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this has less to do with a terrorist using a cell phone to detonate a bomb and more to do with preventing people from using text messaging to organize flash mobs to protest Bush. After all, GW doesn't tolerate dissent. **FUGW**
... to justify the existance of the Orwellian Patriot Act. Not only did OBL manage to kill 3000 people and two buildings, it seems that he managed to kill common sense and reason as well.
Not just other goverments, but probably big corporate users as well. Let's face it, Israel is a drop in the bucket in terms of revenue to M$. But if big business decided to follow Israel's lead, M$ could find themselves in a full-scale user revolt. It's not like M$'s licensing, pricing policies and marginal quality hasn't ruffled a few feathers along the way.
Even worse for M$ is that it would be a high-profile win and an effective endorsement for OSS which could tip the balance for potential OSS users sitting on the fence waiting to see if OSS really does provide a viable alternative to M$.
I tried to find the source code to Xforms-1.0 (libforms.so.1), but the download page says it was pulled for some reason. I need it for a LyX upgrade.
In the famous photo of the first flight of the 1903 flyer at the lower-right foreground there are some tools (a shovel and an oil can) and a box with wires coming out of it. The box is a supposed to be a large dry-cell battery which was used to help start the plane.
Question: Does anyone have any details on this battery? There's a logo on its side which I can't identify. Any ideas?
Citing poor security, Ohio has canceled plans for installing e-voting systems for use in 2004. They are going to use punch cards instead.
link here.
Granted stripping the panels from the DeLorean and attaching them to the hover craft was a bit lame. The point is that had Jesse actually been on the set for the first three days of the build like he was supposed to have been instead of running off to throw his tantrum, it wouldn't have happened.
What I don't understand is why the producers allow him to get away with this. I wonder if he still gets paid for not showing up on his own show.
This is actually not a big deal. Battlebots has had requirements for fail-safes on their radio equipment from the beginning. Most PCM based R/C equipment comes standard with it. There is also high-end R/C stuff (like the IFI controllers) which use frequency hopping which makes them jam resistant and have very robust fail-safes.
MG is a fun show. But I'm not real happy with having Jesse as host. There's no question he's a talented metal worker, but the stoned surfer dude personna gets old really fast. I think the final straw for me was when he threw a hissy fit and walked off the build for 3 days because he didn't like the project then came back and dissed the contestants for not building what he wanted. (I think it was the hover DeLorean episode.) One of the contestants stood up to him and Jesse threw yet another stink fit and tossed him of the team. What a fucking baby.
At least Junkyard Wars has more personable hosts. But they need to bring Cathey Rogers back. Monster House is cool too.
What's the possibility of placing Hubble inside a special re-entry vehicle (perhaps a big tube with heat shield) and parachuting it down like the old apollo spacecraft did? It's seems like such a waste to destroy such a significant part of space history.
The DMCA protects encrypted content from decyphering and illegal copying. But sending plain HTML over an encrypted link is entirely different. SSL protects the pipe between the server and the client from third party interception. There is no 'cracking' involved since the client and server agree on the encryption algorithm and keys to be used before the transmission takes place.
I wonder what effect this would have on web crawlers should this policy actually become widely adopted.
I worked at a company that was going to do vehicle tracking using GPS and those road map CDs you see at the computer store. We bought several of them from different companies. What we found was that they are full of mistakes. I believe that most of the data for these comes from a company called DeLorme (sp?). Unfortunately, it seems to have been compiled from obsolete government records. Something to keep in mind is you're planning a trip with these.
The Truth About the Kursk Disaster
... A CD-ROM drive and that it needs drivers.
Some new information has come to light over the Kursk disaster. For those with short attention spans, the Kursk was the submarine that blew up and sank in the Artic Ocean killing all 118 on board. The Russians tried to blame the incident on a collision with an unidentified object. However, sonar tapes which recorded the blasts (a small one at first, then a much larger one two minutes later) cast doubt on these claims. A whistle blower within the Russian military has leaked that the crew of the Kursk was testing a new type of torpedo when the accident occured. It seemed very likely that the test didn't go quite as planned.
While rescue efforts to save the survivors of the Kursk failed, salvage crews were able to recover a 'Black Box' from the submarine which contained detailed accounts of the events leading up to the explosion. As luck would have it, we got a copy of those tapes.
It turns out that the submarine crew was trying to load Microsoft Windows on their fire control computer. Their intent was to replace the aging CP/M operating system with the flashier Windows OS. Apparently, the Russians didn't know about the legendary stability problems exhibited by Windows. The log tapes make this painfully obvious:
Captain: Is the new fire control Windows OS installed yet Comrade?
Seaman: Almost Sir. We just need to finish filling out the registration card.
Captain: Excellent. Soon we will be able to point and click our enemies into oblivian.
[evil laughter in background]
Seaman: Comrade Captain! It is booting! Look, it says "Preparing to run Windows for the first time".
[long pause]
Seaman: Arrgh! Sir, it wants me to reboot again. That makes the 27th time.
Captain: Hmmm. This is not encouraging. Go ahead and reboot again.
Seaman: Aye Sir.
[another long pause]
Seaman: Captain, it is up again. It says it found new hardware
Captain: Where are the drivers?
Seaman: On the CD-ROM.
Captain: You are joking, right?
Seaman: No Sir.
Captain: Reboot the damn thing again. I am starting not to like this Windows.
[another long pause]
Seaman: Sir! It is back! It says it found the Gorby2000 Torpedo and is looking for the device drivers. Do we have a driver disk?
Captain: I do not think so.
Seaman: I will tell it to use the default drivers.
[another long pause]
Seaman: Crap. It wants to reboot again.
Captain: How many times are we going to reboot today? This is taking forever. Our hull is going to rust out before this works.
[another long pause]
Seaman: Sir! It is up and this time it is not asking for anything!
Captain: Really? No device drivers? No registration cards? No user profiles?
Seaman: No Sir. I think it is ready.
Captain: Good work comrade. Now click on the fire control icon and let us see how this works.
Seaman: Clicking now, Sir.
[another long pause]
Captain: Why does the fire control screen have a dancing paper clip on it?
Seaman: I have no idea Sir.
Captain: Hmmm, well try clicking on the menu.
Seaman: Aye Sir. Let us see; Open E-mail, Spam a friend, Mail a Virus, Fire a Torpedo.
Captain: We will spam a friend later. Let us fire a torpedo.
Seaman: Aye Sir.
[another long pause]
Seaman: It is asking us to load the torpedo and to click when ready.
Captain: Torpedo room, load a torpedo in tube number 1!
[intercom:] This is the Torpedo room. The torpedo is loaded Sir.
Captain: Click on the continue button.
Seaman: Aye Sir.
[another long pause]
Seaman: It is asking for a target Sir.
Captain: Hmmm, target the Rainbow Warrior.
Seaman: Aye Sir. Damn! It says the torpedo is low on ink.
Captain: Click ignore. We will get some ink when we return to base.
Seaman: Aye Sir. We are ready to fire.
Captain: Very good. You may fire when ready comrade.
Seaman: Firing torpe
The reality I'm referring to is that for most users, their machine runs both the application and the windowing system. (Think windoze.) X is well suited for the mainframe environment where the user's desktop is essentially a glorified dumb terminal or where remote admin needs to be done. But that arrangement isn't very common in home or for many business applications.
My thoughts are that for home/workstation environments where all computing is done locally that a less bloated and more streamlined version of X might be beneficial.
I like Xfree. But it's still basically X. The problem I have with X is that it's overkill for most client desktops. It's nice that X allows remote windowing. But how many users actually need that? (I'm ignoring the security implications this has as well.) The reality is that 99.9% of X applications have both the client application and X server on the same machine. So why have such a complicated networking layer to draw a window on a screen? Seems like a lot of unnecessary overhead to me.
I seem to remember there was a move to streamline X given this new reality. But I don't know what it's called. Could someone fill me in?
Besides As much as I dislike M$, Microsoft does not have an illegal monolopy
Ummm, you haven't been paying attention, have you? M$ was in fact found guilty of being an illegal monopoly in a court of law.
Additionly, it was no secret that Bush and company had no real interest in pursuing M$. They said as much during the 2000 election campaign which is why M$ did their best to drag the court case out until after the inaugeration. It payed off for them. M$ got a slap on the wrist and basically walked away unscathed.
As far as hurting consumers, M$ hurt consumers by limited their choices by preventing competition. The result is that consumers are stuck with shoddy and overpriced software with few options to shop elsewhere.
This could give a whole new meaning to the blue screen of death. I sure hope they're not using Winbloze on a critical piece of life support.
mirror
The mirror mostly works. Some of the images are broken.
The best chip "easter egg" I've seen was on the Intel P3 die which said something like "Microsoft Sucks" on it. The engineer responsible was fired if I remember correctly.
I would have liked to see this go to trial with the aid of the EFF. It would have made an excellent test case challenging the stupidity contained in the DMCA.
On the other hand, I'm glad the kid isn't going to get shafted by this.
I was prefectly happy when I switched to TaxCut. It imported my previous year's returns from TurboTax and was generally very easy to use. Plus it was less expensive. And there was no DRM to fight with and no crap being secretly written to my boot block. I think Intuit really shot themselves in the foot over this. I have no intention of going back to TurboTax, apology or not. There's no reason to now.
A bit off topic, but I wonder how Valve's draconian DRM system called Steam is going to fair in the long run? I haven't seen a DRM system that has done well in the market yet. Could Steam be the first or will it pull an Intuit?
Kill their ratings and it will stop. Simple. Besides, it has Paul Anka's guarantee.
It's been suggested in several posts that the Wright's requirement of a 25mph headwind was cheating because this somehow reduced their plane to a noisy glider. This really isn't the case. The reason has to do with drag. Even with a modern paved runway and tires, there is still a noticable amount of rolling drag during a take-off roll. It's not uncommon for a pilot (especially in small planes with limited horsepower) to lift the plane of the runaway a few feet to eliminate the rolling drag and then let the plane gain additional speed from the reduced drag before climbing out. Using a headwind just makes this process easier. Considering that the Wright Bros were using a crude track, wheels, and skids it's amazing they were able to get off the ground at all.
But their biggest contribution was that the Wrights recognized that existing aerodynamic theory was wrong. Using their wind tunnel and full size models, they literally re-wrote the book on aerodynamic theory of the time. Unlike other attempts at flight of the time, the Wright flyer was a product of sound scientific research rather than throw-it-together-and-hope-it-flies which was so common a the time. For that, they deserve to be recognized as the fathers of flight.
I'm a little disappointed with Valve about now. Strike one is the DRM nitemare called Steam that they're shoving down the gaming community's throat. OMG! What a fiasco that is. Strike two is the shutting out of linux users. If Id can support linux, why can't Valve?
What I don't fully understand is why Valve went with DX9 over CG and openGL, especially since DX9's HLSL is essentially identical to CG. CG offers cross-platform compatibility. DX9 limits the portability of HL2. So why do it?
Isn't that what people used to say. Well guess what. It is happening here. Right now before your very eyes. Remember that when 2004 rolls around and be sure to thank Dumbya and his minions by sending them packing.
1984 was never meant to be a how-to guide.