One sentence in an article on Germany's Welt am Sonntag website states:
Der Hinweis, der zur Ergreifung von Sven J. führte, kam aber schließlich von Microsoft selbst.
Roughly translated, this says "The tip, which lead to the arrest of Sven J. [the Sasser's creator], came from Microsoft itself.
My question is: How did Microsoft do that? How could Microsoft find a guy, merely by studying the executable that he had created?! This really has me stumped.
Doesn't it sicken anyone that I will need this much computational power so that I can boot the OS and run Notepad?
Reluctantly, I have come to the conclusion that until the exponential rise in computing power comes to an end, Microsoft's software bloat will be accepted by the Lumpenproletariat.
Once Moore's law ceases to hold, users long-accustomed to the steady rise in power will have to decide what features they want in an operating system, based on the amount of computing power they can afford.
This line from good ol' Monty Burns reminds me of a thoughtful essay that you can find on the web that discusses Monty Burns' unhappiness despite his wealth and power.
Would this not have made good reading for the actors and actresses who give voice to the Simpsons?
I will agree with you that it is not the technical feat of collecting Microsoft's patches and then rolling them into a single downloadable executable that is newsworthy here.
But what you seem to be missing is that something so simple wasn't done by Microsoft, and that it fell to a concerned Windows user to create the all-in-one executable.
It means Microsoft's users care more about its operating systems that Microsoft does.
You like 2000 Pro? You're *still* better off buying XP Pro (at the same price!) and turning off the features you don't happen to like.
If you have a slow machine, the difference between Windows 2000 and XP is blantantly obvious.
You won't need to run any benchmarking software, as you will instinctively feel the difference. Windows 2000 will be responsive, with each key press and mouse click getting immediate feedback.
In comparison, you can learn a lot about how Windows is structured by running XP on the very same machine. Pressing the START button becomes a two-minute adventure in line drawing, area filling, and icon placement.
Being the smart guy I am, I stripped XP of every cycle-burning animation and needless graphical add-on that advanced tabs in option windows gave me, but I never, ever was able to get XP to run as quickly as 2000.
This discovery was quite a disappointment for me. When I first bought Windows 2000 to replace Windows 95, my machine became faster and more responsive. When I installed XP, I thought the same thing would happen. How wrong I was.
(For those who are interested, the "slow machine" I talk about was an overclocked 266MHz, Pentium with MMX machine with a 2GB SCSI drive, 192MB SDRAM, and an AGP video card on a FIC VIA-chipset motherboard.)
Of course, if you've bought yourself some computing powerhouse, sure, burn your cycles.
I thought NASA always tried to ensure that the spacecraft it sent beyond the earth's orbit were free from life. This way, we would ensure that we would not be hurling Earth organisms into space.
Well, maybe we should instead consider it mankind's destiny to populate the solar system with life. Who knows, something in that 10kg payload might have the genes capable of surviving on the moon.
When we human beings manage to destroy the biosphere on which we depend, at least we will have given some species a fighting chance to exist far away from us.
I wonder what became of that spacefaring bunch of losers.
Psst, your ancestry is showing.
Re:Software bug was just one part of bigger proble
on
Tracking the Blackout Bug
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You just don't hear about all the well run deregulated power systems.
Yes, we do not hear about them, because they do not exist.
Sure, it was First Energy's lines that failed initially, but if it wasn't First Energy, some other utility would have failed eventually. The engineering and the legal descriptions of the current electrical generation and distriubtion system in North America are at odds with one another.
There are over 300 million users of Office worldwide who can seamlessly exchange documents without concerns for loss of data or formatting errors.
Wow. I never thought that Microsoft would ever tout the seamlessness of its data exchange.
Here's a typical scenario from my work:
Three years have passed, and I exchange an old Armada with a new Evo machine.
User thanks me profusely for new laptop.
Somewhere between 30 minutes and 30 days pass.
User phone me up, hurling abuse. Apparently all the page breaks in the user's sales brochures have moved in MS Word, and some of the special effects in MS PowerPoint are acting funny.
In my experience, MS file formats aren't even compatible when "shared" among 1 user, let alone 300 million.
If you were lucky enough to download the files before the website started saying
"Sorry - The download site is temporarily unavailable due to the slashdot effect"
please post a torrent of the file somewhere in this discussion. I imagine you'd make a lot of people very happy.
GEOS was really a mind-altering product for Commodore 8-bit users like myself.
Before GEOS, I assumed that all computers were like my Commodore 128. You turned it on, and there was the lovely flashing cursor beneath the lines of text indicating that Microsoft Basic was READY for your typed input.
I bought my copy of GEOS at the World of Commodore tradeshow that happened the first weekend of every December by the International Airport in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The press (Commodore Computes!, Commodore Magazine, and RUN Magazine spring to mind) had been talking about this revolutionary new product for months, and it was with great excitement when I found it at the show.
I actually read the GEOS manual cover to cover the morning after I brought it home, and was amazed by the concepts: Windows, Icons, Mouse, and Pointer! The novelty of it all! And all those graphical programs with a consistent look and feel! GeoWrite, GeoPaint, and all the add-on packages that ultimately were available from Berkeley Softworks. This Graphical Environment Operating System was truly remarkable.
Having read about computer history, I now realize that these concepts had long been explored by the likes of Doug Engelbart (the father of the oNLine System) and then by those lucky designers at Xerox PARC when it first opened in the early 1970s.
But for me, it was GEOS for the Commodore 64 which was my introduction to the GUI interface which was ultimately to take the world by storm. Even though I sold my Commodore 128 long ago, that first GEOS manual still sits proudly on my bookshelf.
Its text contains features found in no known language: for instance, its commonest words may be repeated two or three times in succession. Source: http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/cs/staff/g.rugg/voyni ch/index.html
It is very, very, very unlikely that common words would be repeated again and again and again unless someone really, really, really wanted to.
I bought a new HP LaserJet IIP+ with a postscript cartridge and four megabytes of RAM in 1992. It cost me a small fortune, and I have never regretted it.
If you are a patient fellow, and can accept that something isn't brand new, then you may want to look for a used HP LaserJet online or in your local second-hand computer shops.
> Anyone else reminded of Peril Sensitive Sunglasses? It's bad enough people turn a > figurative blind eye to things they really don't want to be bothered with... but this is > going a bit far.
Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto, and a former graduate of MIT has already got the Peril Sensitive sunglasses.
In his particular case, he uses them to block out advertising, and other visual nuisances. From what I've read of his work (see http://wearcam.org/), I don't think he's done much aural work yet.
> The only really interesting piece, is in my > opinion that of William Gibson.
Yes, I too like the idea of having outright lies, misperceptions, and spin all beautifully color-coded for your reading pleasure.
Of course, then we have to ask ourselves, is there really such a thing as The Objective Truth?
Whatever off-shore datahaven those sleepless programmers dream up, I imagine that the registration process would be long and involved: First, the site would have to quiz you on your beliefs, your attitudes toward the world, and your mental model of the world. Thus equipped, it could easily tell you "the truth".
Naturally, for the truly lazy, the site could have some presets, if you want to skip the set up. Judging by some of the whoppingly ignorant or doctrinaire submissions slashdot regularly sees, I would guess that "socially-conservative bible literalist", "libertarian technophile", and "emotionally insecure piece of dirt" would be popular preset choices.
It's really unfortunate that you've had bad experiences getting used Model M keyboards operational, but I suggest that you try again. I don't think your Modem M experiences are typical.
I suggest that you start scowering the old computer junk stores in your neighborhood for a Model M. The United Way thirft shop may be worth a trip, as may be a quick visit to some of your less tech-savvy friends and relatives that may have one of these beauties still connected to their 386.
In the last ten years, I have had four of these keyboards, and in total, I haven't paid what you have for the lot of them, nor have I had any electro-mechanical problems. Other than popping off the keycaps and giving them a good wash, I've never had any problems -- which I would argue is typical for the Model M, which was created when engineers would rather over-design a product than compromise the design in order to shave pennies on manufacturing costs.
I've bought two of these keyboards new from stores eager to get rid of them when Windows 95 first came out. (It's a good thing that most people can't tell the difference between good keyboards and bad, or this would have never happened.)
As well, I've rescued two from work. (Due to the staff accountants on salary, not only are old computers written off the books, but they are physically destroyed with a hammer before being tossed in the dumpster. In with the pile of cheap VT220-clone and HP dumb terminals, I once found two grubby Model M keyboards.)
The NEC 1550X Is An Excellent Choice
on
DVI Flat Panels?
·
· Score: 1
Go ahead and buy the NEC 1550X monitor. You won't be disappointed.
I bought this monitor myself, because it had the two features that I really wanted, which were analog (VGA) and digital (DVI) inputs as well as a pivotable display.
It took me a few weeks to make up my mind on this purchase. I usually shop on price, and this is one expensive monitor: It cost me 740 Canadian dollars while other 15" LCDs without these two features could be had for about 400 dollars.
But you know what? Given the choice, I'd buy the same monitor again. The NEC 1550X is a well-built, top-quality monitor, and is an absolute pleasure to use.
If you stare at your monitor for a few hours a day, then get this monitor. You won't regret it.
Hi Saul, it's John. Yeah, judging from some of the less than enthusiastic replies to this article, it sounds like some meetups were more successful than others.
For some cities and towns, a second meetup may not happen at all, but that's not the case in Toronto. If word spreads about what a good time we had, there might even be more people there next time around.
Hi Vern, yup, I'm the other RCC grad at the party last night.
Before you guys arrived, we had been joking how the party would have been really popular if it was co-hosted remotely on IRC or some other similar venue. (Naturally, that would have defeated the whole purpose of the event.)
I was hesitant about going too, but then I realized that hey, this was a party that I was looking forward to for weeks, so I went after all.
I was sitting at the booth, practically straight across from the entrance to the top floor at the Rivloi. I was facing the pool table area.
Unlike most of the fellows at my table, I was clean shaven, wearing glasses and a collared green shirt. We were introduced, but from the distance between the two tables, we really didn't get much chance to talk.
Baring meteoric bombardment or sudden flooding though, we can correct that later. I'm going to me at the next meetup. I'll see you there.
Slashdot Mirror
My question is: How did Microsoft do that? How could Microsoft find a guy, merely by studying the executable that he had created?! This really has me stumped.
Does anyone care to speculate?
Reluctantly, I have come to the conclusion that until the exponential rise in computing power comes to an end, Microsoft's software bloat will be accepted by the Lumpenproletariat.
Once Moore's law ceases to hold, users long-accustomed to the steady rise in power will have to decide what features they want in an operating system, based on the amount of computing power they can afford.
Imagine -- algorithms will matter again.
Would this not have made good reading for the actors and actresses who give voice to the Simpsons?
I will agree with you that it is not the technical feat of collecting Microsoft's patches and then rolling them into a single downloadable executable that is newsworthy here.
But what you seem to be missing is that something so simple wasn't done by Microsoft, and that it fell to a concerned Windows user to create the all-in-one executable.
It means Microsoft's users care more about its operating systems that Microsoft does.
If you have a slow machine, the difference between Windows 2000 and XP is blantantly obvious.
You won't need to run any benchmarking software, as you will instinctively feel the difference. Windows 2000 will be responsive, with each key press and mouse click getting immediate feedback.
In comparison, you can learn a lot about how Windows is structured by running XP on the very same machine. Pressing the START button becomes a two-minute adventure in line drawing, area filling, and icon placement.
Being the smart guy I am, I stripped XP of every cycle-burning animation and needless graphical add-on that advanced tabs in option windows gave me, but I never, ever was able to get XP to run as quickly as 2000.
This discovery was quite a disappointment for me. When I first bought Windows 2000 to replace Windows 95, my machine became faster and more responsive. When I installed XP, I thought the same thing would happen. How wrong I was.
(For those who are interested, the "slow machine" I talk about was an overclocked 266MHz, Pentium with MMX machine with a 2GB SCSI drive, 192MB SDRAM, and an AGP video card on a FIC VIA-chipset motherboard.)
Of course, if you've bought yourself some computing powerhouse, sure, burn your cycles.
This functionality already exists in stand-alone, third-party apps on MS Windows.
Three of these content-wranglers jump to mind.
http://www.scopeware.com/
http://www.x1.com/
http://www.enfish.com/
Admittedly, they aren't free (as in beer or as in speech) but they would appear to get the job done.
You said Linux should innovate, but these ideas not only have been explored, but commercialized as well.
Well, maybe we should instead consider it mankind's destiny to populate the solar system with life. Who knows, something in that 10kg payload might have the genes capable of surviving on the moon.
When we human beings manage to destroy the biosphere on which we depend, at least we will have given some species a fighting chance to exist far away from us.
Psst, your ancestry is showing.
Yes, we do not hear about them, because they do not exist.
Sure, it was First Energy's lines that failed initially, but if it wasn't First Energy, some other utility would have failed eventually. The engineering and the legal descriptions of the current electrical generation and distriubtion system in North America are at odds with one another.
There's a good technical discussion on the failings of the power grid that may interest you.
I agree. These SCADA systems can become quite complex. If you are interested, you can even read General Electric's brochures for the XA/21 system.
You get Lindows.
Wow. I never thought that Microsoft would ever tout the seamlessness of its data exchange.
Here's a typical scenario from my work:
In my experience, MS file formats aren't even compatible when "shared" among 1 user, let alone 300 million.
If you were lucky enough to download the files before the website started saying "Sorry - The download site is temporarily unavailable due to the slashdot effect" please post a torrent of the file somewhere in this discussion. I imagine you'd make a lot of people very happy.
GEOS was really a mind-altering product for Commodore 8-bit users like myself.
Before GEOS, I assumed that all computers were like my Commodore 128. You turned it on, and there was the lovely flashing cursor beneath the lines of text indicating that Microsoft Basic was READY for your typed input.
I bought my copy of GEOS at the World of Commodore tradeshow that happened the first weekend of every December by the International Airport in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The press (Commodore Computes!, Commodore Magazine, and RUN Magazine spring to mind) had been talking about this revolutionary new product for months, and it was with great excitement when I found it at the show.
I actually read the GEOS manual cover to cover the morning after I brought it home, and was amazed by the concepts: Windows, Icons, Mouse, and Pointer! The novelty of it all! And all those graphical programs with a consistent look and feel! GeoWrite, GeoPaint, and all the add-on packages that ultimately were available from Berkeley Softworks. This Graphical Environment Operating System was truly remarkable.
Having read about computer history, I now realize that these concepts had long been explored by the likes of Doug Engelbart (the father of the oNLine System) and then by those lucky designers at Xerox PARC when it first opened in the early 1970s.
But for me, it was GEOS for the Commodore 64 which was my introduction to the GUI interface which was ultimately to take the world by storm. Even though I sold my Commodore 128 long ago, that first GEOS manual still sits proudly on my bookshelf.
Source: http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/cs/staff/g.rugg/voyn
It is very, very, very unlikely that common words would be repeated again and again and again unless someone really, really, really wanted to.
Hi Jeremy,
I would recommend an HP LaserJet.
I bought a new HP LaserJet IIP+ with a postscript cartridge and four megabytes of RAM in 1992. It cost me a small fortune, and I have never regretted it.
If you are a patient fellow, and can accept that something isn't brand new, then you may want to look for a used HP LaserJet online or in your local second-hand computer shops.
> The Cap of Silence would be the ultimate in productivity enhancement.
So search Google for noise cancellation earphones.
Sony makes them. Bose makes them. Who knows, if you tried them, they may just work.
> Anyone else reminded of Peril Sensitive Sunglasses? It's bad enough people turn a
> figurative blind eye to things they really don't want to be bothered with... but this is
> going a bit far.
Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto, and a former graduate of MIT has already got the Peril Sensitive sunglasses.
In his particular case, he uses them to block out advertising, and other visual nuisances. From what I've read of his work (see http://wearcam.org/), I don't think he's done much aural work yet.
> The only really interesting piece, is in my
> opinion that of William Gibson.
Yes, I too like the idea of having outright lies, misperceptions, and spin all beautifully color-coded for your reading pleasure.
Of course, then we have to ask ourselves, is there really such a thing as The Objective Truth?
Whatever off-shore datahaven those sleepless programmers dream up, I imagine that the registration process would be long and involved: First, the site would have to quiz you on your beliefs, your attitudes toward the world, and your mental model of the world. Thus equipped, it could easily tell you "the truth".
Naturally, for the truly lazy, the site could have some presets, if you want to skip the set up. Judging by some of the whoppingly ignorant or doctrinaire submissions slashdot regularly sees, I would guess that "socially-conservative bible literalist", "libertarian technophile", and "emotionally insecure piece of dirt" would be popular preset choices.
It's really unfortunate that you've had bad experiences getting used Model M keyboards operational, but I suggest that you try again. I don't think your Modem M experiences are typical.
I suggest that you start scowering the old computer junk stores in your neighborhood for a Model M. The United Way thirft shop may be worth a trip, as may be a quick visit to some of your less tech-savvy friends and relatives that may have one of these beauties still connected to their 386.
In the last ten years, I have had four of these keyboards, and in total, I haven't paid what you have for the lot of them, nor have I had any electro-mechanical problems. Other than popping off the keycaps and giving them a good wash, I've never had any problems -- which I would argue is typical for the Model M, which was created when engineers would rather over-design a product than compromise the design in order to shave pennies on manufacturing costs.
I've bought two of these keyboards new from stores eager to get rid of them when Windows 95 first came out. (It's a good thing that most people can't tell the difference between good keyboards and bad, or this would have never happened.)
As well, I've rescued two from work. (Due to the staff accountants on salary, not only are old computers written off the books, but they are physically destroyed with a hammer before being tossed in the dumpster. In with the pile of cheap VT220-clone and HP dumb terminals, I once found two grubby Model M keyboards.)
Go ahead and buy the NEC 1550X monitor. You won't be disappointed.
I bought this monitor myself, because it had the two features that I really wanted, which were analog (VGA) and digital (DVI) inputs as well as a pivotable display.
It took me a few weeks to make up my mind on this purchase. I usually shop on price, and this is one expensive monitor: It cost me 740 Canadian dollars while other 15" LCDs without these two features could be had for about 400 dollars.
But you know what? Given the choice, I'd buy the same monitor again. The NEC 1550X is a well-built, top-quality monitor, and is an absolute pleasure to use.
If you stare at your monitor for a few hours a day, then get this monitor. You won't regret it.
Mod the parent up, please!
I have disliked most of the Ask Slashdot questions for ages now, as they really are very elementary.
What people need to know is HOW to solve a problem, not necessarily the solution to the problem at hand.
For some cities and towns, a second meetup may not happen at all, but that's not the case in Toronto. If word spreads about what a good time we had, there might even be more people there next time around.
Before you guys arrived, we had been joking how the party would have been really popular if it was co-hosted remotely on IRC or some other similar venue. (Naturally, that would have defeated the whole purpose of the event.)
I was hesitant about going too, but then I realized that hey, this was a party that I was looking forward to for weeks, so I went after all.
Unlike most of the fellows at my table, I was clean shaven, wearing glasses and a collared green shirt. We were introduced, but from the distance between the two tables, we really didn't get much chance to talk.
Baring meteoric bombardment or sudden flooding though, we can correct that later. I'm going to me at the next meetup. I'll see you there.