http://www.periapsis.org/tellico/
I used it with my collection of about 1500 books. Now with version 1.03 it will use UPC codes.
It can also be used for collections of cd's, dvd's, and other things.
I'm happy with it. It works like a charm with my cue cat.
For anyone needing to catalog books it is a good reason to investigate Linux.
that I would be able to install it on the PC that I'm using now.
Porting OS X to the x86 could easily be an opportunity for Apple to 1) do the BIOS right, meaning that it would require a custom BIOS; 2) make use of the the hardware (video cards, sound cards, etc.) available in the x86 world; 3) if the port was done with some preparation it could make use of drivers for the peripherals by using a wrapper for win32 drivers.
Even if OX X were ported to run on x86 processors, I don't see why Apple would have to give up complete control over the hardware on which it would run.
I realize I'm a little hazy here & even self-contradictory. But maybe somebody else can tease out some the implications of these thoughts.
Not having a date on Friday & Saturday nights (or any other night), a dedicated army of uber-geeks sit at home patiently clicking reload on their preferred uber-browser.
Psychology is hard because the methodolgy of conducting experiments is rife with traps for the unwary (or what is the the same thing, for the ideologically driven).
Half of the problems come from poorly designed experiments, and the other half come from "knowing beforehand" what the results SHOULD be. See the history of intelligence testing. A very reasonable conclusion based on this history is that intelligence is the capacity to navigate & make use of one's cultural norms, practices, and knowlege. Note this is separate from the TRUTH, RATIONALITY, and COHERENCE of those norms, practices, and knowledge.
[Question, is it possible to measure that intelligence in the abstract without referencing specific the specific instances of that capacity? Is it possible to distill representative norms, practices, and knowledge that represents a baseline capacity of human beings to navigate their cultural norms, practices, and knowledge that is at the same time NOT a reflection of the cultural norms, practices, and knowledge that the the persons who are administering the test need to navigate their cultural norms, practices, and knowledge?
Anyone want to take bets that with a little practice the natives would be able to complete all of the tasks the experimenters set for the natives?
If one accepts the not unlikely possibility that the natives would with practice learn to accurately compare amounts larger than 3 or 4 objects reliably, the premise that language limits thinking falls flat. If anything, it would seem rather that language reflects thinking & that language reflects the demands and practices of environment and social life.
If the natives were unable to learn to reliably compare larger numbers of objects even with extensive practice, then a conclusion about linguistic determinism could be drawn that would have some persuasive power. Otherwise, one only sees the analytical and methodological naivete of the experimenters.
Tit for tat: the Dr early on explains how he conclusively and completely erased the Dalek timeline. Thereby, destroying the Nation estate's hopes of ever doing anything ever again with the Daleks.
Of course, this wouldn't be nice, but it would send a strong signal to any other persons or estates controlling any other figures from the Dr. Who universe to play nice or else.
Instead of the daleks how the Cybermen? I always felt they had a great deal of untapped potential. And maybe this time, they could be allowed some flexibility in the physical movements?
In other news today, the Gartner group released a study finding that 110% of spam comes from unpatched computers running the Linux and BSD boxes.
The study found that unpatched computers with an uptime of more than 7 or 8 days correlated with large amounts of spam. The study recommended rebooting at lest 2 or 3 times per workday day, thereby dramatically decreasing the risk of becoming a spambot. The study consequently found that the so-called Blue Screen of Death is actually a feature.
"People running computers with an uptime of days, weeks, let alone months, are insane. Windows is not to blame for spam. People should learn how to read email," Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying in response to the study.
I am an adjunct professor of world history at a local university. Typically I require 2 or 3 short papers in addition to take-home a final and midterms. In my syllabus, which I go over with students on the first day of class, I inform my students that plagiarism is a serious breach of university regulations.
There was only one case where I was fairly certain that the student had procured a paper from the internet. How did I know? The student could hardly speak English. The paper was about 350% of what was required. It would have been acceptable as a term paper in an undergraduate seminar. The student swore that he wrote it.
What did I give the student? I think it was a D or D+. It was a while ago, and I don't have my records handy. I was pretty sure the student had copied the paper from somewhere, but he had insisted that he had written it for a class in Korea. I reluctantly accepted his explanation. I didn't know how far I wanted to take it, and I wasn't so very sure that this incident should put him at risk of expulsion. But a stern warning, and an unpleasant grade should have gotten the point across.
But you know the funniest part? The student had a D/D+ average for the rest of the work for the class.
What do I tell my students now? If they are going to plagiarize, they had better be consistent about it. Nothing stinks of plagiarism than a sequence of grades like "C-, A, D, D+, D". Especially when the "A" is for maybe 5% of your grade.
Classes that base their grade mostly on one final paper are much more amenable to plagiarism than classes which require several short writing assignments on specific topics. Another preventative measure is to require an outline, or an abstract of the final paper with the proviso that any changes of topic have to be approved in advance.
Plagiarism is wrong and shameful. But, I also know that virtue is weak and sometimes needs to be helped along by making it easier to do right than to give into vice.
I have sucessfully installed Suse 9.1 (both x86 & x86_64) and Mandrake 10 in a dual boot configuration with Linux & Windows XP on the same hard drive on different partitions.
However, whenever possible, I use LILO. I had no problems whatsoever.
Is it possible the problems are associated with use of GRUB?
After 2 download attempts, I started to install Fedora Core 2 for x86_64. It gave me a warning that something was amiss with the partition table, so I cancelled the installation and wiped the DVD-rw.
Suse 9.1 for x86_64 works just fine for me. Never knew there was a problem.
99% of the people raving about how wonderful Star Wars is (was?) reason this way:
1) The movie made me feel GOOD (holy, cool, clever, etc).
2) Because pleasurable feelings were induced, the movie (experience, religion, book, story, anime, novel, etc.) must be GOOD (holy, cool, clever, etc).
3) The possibility that I was manipulated, deceived, mind-raped, drugged (literally or metaphorically), or god only knows what else to shell out for a barely tolerable mediocre production, is unthinkable.
The response inevitably comes down to "I mean really, I'm way too clever, insightful, and generally too self-aware to be taken in by a director who really is in it for the money." [If you really doubt this, why ewoks? why jar-jar?] I have since stopped being amused, and only resigned, by the naivete of otherwise intelligent people who seem to think that there is anything else to the whole Star Wars (psuedo-)mythos besides making a buck. It's hollywood at its crassest and most materialistic.
For a better explanation and expression of this valuation of most of american sci-fi, see:
"Microworlds: Writings on Science Fiction and Fantasy" by Stanislaw Lem.
or for more comedy, look up the "Lem Affair" and the American Science Fiction Establishment of the 1970's.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/07/witty_ev il _firsts/
At least as I understood the article [not being a IT security professional or even a programmer], this analysis of the Witty worm suggests some possibilities.
Imagine if you will, a worm similar to Slammer with rapid saturation but with a self-destruct timer. The host computer is nuked at a specified time. Say 2 hours after the worm's release into the wild through some of those zombie bots the article mentions. Or if the host computer is rebooted before the deadline, on reboot the hard drive is formatted. Or the computer could be nuked 2 hours after infection.
What would happen if umpteen kazillion windows machines stopped working all at the same time, or at least within a few minutes of each other?
How do you think Microsoft's future would look, considering that Mac, Linux & Unix users would be largely unaffected? As I have explained to colleagues, friends, & acquaintences, the single most effective way to avoid these kinds of worms, viruses, et al, is to avoid Microsoft products whenever possible.
And given how much Windows' "security" model aids in the propagation of worms, AV & firewall vendors wouldn't be in much better shape either. There wouldn't be enough time to 1) become aware of the threat 2) prepare fixes & AV/firewall signatures 3) make the fix available 4) make the general computing populace aware of the necessity of applying the fix immediately 5) have enough bandwidth on hand to provide the fix to all who would need it.
Again, as I understood the article, this doesn't seem to be impossible as a matter of principle. From the article, it just looks like no one has thought of trying it yet.
While, I hope it doesn't happen, I don't see why it can't either.
So it was his copy. What does that prove? He may have been terribly foolish and even horridly careless with safeguarding his copy of an otherwise unremarkable film.
Was he the only one with access to his copy of the movie? Did he sign his name in blood on various MPAA forms that he would keep the film on a chain around his neck while the film was in his possession unless he was watching that copy of the film?
My guess is that it was at least as likely to have been someone in his household or who works for/with him as it was him
In my very limited experience, the problem people have with OSS is that they don't understand how anyone could possibly hope to make any money from it.
That is easy enough to explain:
roughly speaking, there are two ways of making money from software: 1) supplying code and controlling access to it typically through the EULA, and 2) support and maintainence of software.
The first is what/.'ers call proprietary code. The second in no way implies or requires restrictions on access or distribution to the software, meaning that access to the source code & binaries can made available through a variety of licensing schemes.
Then it's straightforward to explain that if software is treated like widgets & sneakers, then of course, customer support is a necessary evil. If, however, you have software that you or someone else wrote for which there are customers willing to pay for support or tailoring that software to a particular need and market, then of course, there's money to be made from OSS software.
Then wrapping it up with a quick and dirty overview of the so-called open source community pretty much covers all the main points.
I always thought this would be way cool, but the wife won't go for it. link to site
Combination blender and telephone by Tom Myers, Art/Not Practical (C) 1998.
Copied from the website:
It's a combination blender and telephone. It's fully functional as a telephone or blender. WHY? is the most FAQ (Frequently Asked Question).
It's for people who like to hear: "Where in the **** did you get this?" If you're looking for a sensible, mass-produced appliance, you're better off at [Sears Roebuck].
If you want your friends to think you're insane, but quote you like God anyway, this is the appliance for YOU!
The "ringer" is the blender motor,which pulses like a telephone bell, except angrier. To answer, pick up the pitcher out of the base and put it to your ear. Usually, the caller can hear the motor spinning down just after you pick it up.
To hang up, replace the pitcher in the base, just like all the other boring telephones.
Each blenderphone is hand-made starting from a standard blender and standard telephone, with a smattering of electronic parts and handmade internal linkages. Painstaking detail work hides its custom origin so it looks and works like it came "off the shelf" of some department store.
That there's such a showstopper of a bug in a recent mandrake release comes as no surprise.
I'm not a linux expert but I do like fiddling around with it. And I'm not afraid of using a CLI. I find with a few minor exceptions Linux meets my needs as a desktop user -- student/home user. KDE + Mozilla + OpenOffice and XMMS. Everything else is just nice.
Mandrake 8.1 was the first distribution that would boot on my computer out of the box. Or rather after burning the downloaded ISO's. I had good experiences with 8.1, 8.2 & 9.0.
Mandrake 9.1 got to be so annoying that I switched to Suse 8.2
Mandrake 9.1 had annoying flaws in the ADSL scripts. Everything was ok in 9.0. I thought the problem would surely be fixed in the 9.2 betas and RC's. But, no. I had to copy and manually edit even after using Mandrake Control Center. The error was something like "n=eth0 (using >Name of the NIC module
In addition there were errors error in the fstab. So that there were always odd errors in mounting my cdrom & floppy. Again the result of carelessness and sloppiness.
All of the above can be found in a search of ALT.OS.LINUX.MANDRAKE on google groups.
The cool/bad kids wont be doing drugs or boinking one another but learning fow to work bit torrent and figuring out how to set up their own file sharing networks.
Just a thought. How are those SCO licenses printed?
I had a picture of bidding gone mad on ebay in about 5 years.
After all, if you were a consultant, wouldn't it make a nice conversation piece. Proof [yet again] that you should believe everything you read but should trust one's own judgment?
Hmmmm. Should we hoard SCO licenses to hedge against the future?
Slashdot Mirror
With frickin' laserfied sharks!!!
http://www.periapsis.org/tellico/ I used it with my collection of about 1500 books. Now with version 1.03 it will use UPC codes. It can also be used for collections of cd's, dvd's, and other things. I'm happy with it. It works like a charm with my cue cat. For anyone needing to catalog books it is a good reason to investigate Linux.
that I would be able to install it on the PC that I'm using now.
Porting OS X to the x86 could easily be an opportunity for Apple to 1) do the BIOS right, meaning that it would require a custom BIOS; 2) make use of the the hardware (video cards, sound cards, etc.) available in the x86 world; 3) if the port was done with some preparation it could make use of drivers for the peripherals by using a wrapper for win32 drivers.
Even if OX X were ported to run on x86 processors, I don't see why Apple would have to give up complete control over the hardware on which it would run.
I realize I'm a little hazy here & even self-contradictory. But maybe somebody else can tease out some the implications of these thoughts.
Not having a date on Friday & Saturday nights (or any other night), a dedicated army of uber-geeks sit at home patiently clicking reload on their preferred uber-browser.
The average /. reader is an idiot. Half of /. readers are below average. Are you scared yet?
/. reader-idiot still average or above?
Are these the same halves? or 2 different halves? Or is it that a
Psychology is hard because the methodolgy of conducting experiments is rife with traps for the unwary (or what is the the same thing, for the ideologically driven).
Half of the problems come from poorly designed experiments, and the other half come from "knowing beforehand" what the results SHOULD be. See the history of intelligence testing. A very reasonable conclusion based on this history is that intelligence is the capacity to navigate & make use of one's cultural norms, practices, and knowlege. Note this is separate from the TRUTH, RATIONALITY, and COHERENCE of those norms, practices, and knowledge.
[Question, is it possible to measure that intelligence in the abstract without referencing specific the specific instances of that capacity? Is it possible to distill representative norms, practices, and knowledge that represents a baseline capacity of human beings to navigate their cultural norms, practices, and knowledge that is at the same time NOT a reflection of the cultural norms, practices, and knowledge that the the persons who are administering the test need to navigate their cultural norms, practices, and knowledge?
Anyone want to take bets that with a little practice the natives would be able to complete all of the tasks the experimenters set for the natives?
If one accepts the not unlikely possibility that the natives would with practice learn to accurately compare amounts larger than 3 or 4 objects reliably, the premise that language limits thinking falls flat. If anything, it would seem rather that language reflects thinking & that language reflects the demands and practices of environment and social life.
If the natives were unable to learn to reliably compare larger numbers of objects even with extensive practice, then a conclusion about linguistic determinism could be drawn that would have some persuasive power. Otherwise, one only sees the analytical and methodological naivete of the experimenters.
... a penile enhancement product the truly performs wonders,
... a former minister of a third world company who really needs my help moving millions out of his country,
... a home mortgage rate that is too good to be found at my bank,
... prescription Viagra for next to nothing,
... singles in my area who will put out on the first date for a coke and hamburger,
... and all of the amazing products that are too revolutionary to find except through unsolicited electronic communications.
> Just like the year before.
You mean I missed it! Damn!!!
The more technologically advanced the race/civilization, the more deadly the industrial accident, even if rarer.
The more complex the technological implementation, the more likely breakdowns, errors, malfunctions, and general mayhem from time to time.
Bio-hacking would seem to be the most dangerous technology. It's dangers would be inseparable from the good that might come from it.
Tit for tat: the Dr early on explains how he conclusively and completely erased the Dalek timeline. Thereby, destroying the Nation estate's hopes of ever doing anything ever again with the Daleks. Of course, this wouldn't be nice, but it would send a strong signal to any other persons or estates controlling any other figures from the Dr. Who universe to play nice or else. Instead of the daleks how the Cybermen? I always felt they had a great deal of untapped potential. And maybe this time, they could be allowed some flexibility in the physical movements?
In other news today, the Gartner group released a study finding that 110% of spam comes from unpatched computers running the Linux and BSD boxes.
The study found that unpatched computers with an uptime of more than 7 or 8 days correlated with large amounts of spam. The study recommended rebooting at lest 2 or 3 times per workday day, thereby dramatically decreasing the risk of becoming a spambot. The study consequently found that the so-called Blue Screen of Death is actually a feature.
"People running computers with an uptime of days, weeks, let alone months, are insane. Windows is not to blame for spam. People should learn how to read email," Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying in response to the study.
I am an adjunct professor of world history at a local university. Typically I require 2 or 3 short papers in addition to take-home a final and midterms. In my syllabus, which I go over with students on the first day of class, I inform my students that plagiarism is a serious breach of university regulations.
There was only one case where I was fairly certain that the student had procured a paper from the internet. How did I know? The student could hardly speak English. The paper was about 350% of what was required. It would have been acceptable as a term paper in an undergraduate seminar. The student swore that he wrote it.
What did I give the student? I think it was a D or D+. It was a while ago, and I don't have my records handy. I was pretty sure the student had copied the paper from somewhere, but he had insisted that he had written it for a class in Korea. I reluctantly accepted his explanation. I didn't know how far I wanted to take it, and I wasn't so very sure that this incident should put him at risk of expulsion. But a stern warning, and an unpleasant grade should have gotten the point across.
But you know the funniest part? The student had a D/D+ average for the rest of the work for the class.
What do I tell my students now? If they are going to plagiarize, they had better be consistent about it. Nothing stinks of plagiarism than a sequence of grades like "C-, A, D, D+, D". Especially when the "A" is for maybe 5% of your grade.
Classes that base their grade mostly on one final paper are much more amenable to plagiarism than classes which require several short writing assignments on specific topics. Another preventative measure is to require an outline, or an abstract of the final paper with the proviso that any changes of topic have to be approved in advance.
Plagiarism is wrong and shameful. But, I also know that virtue is weak and sometimes needs to be helped along by making it easier to do right than to give into vice.
Just a thought.
I have sucessfully installed Suse 9.1 (both x86 & x86_64) and Mandrake 10 in a dual boot configuration with Linux & Windows XP on the same hard drive on different partitions.
However, whenever possible, I use LILO. I had no problems whatsoever.
Is it possible the problems are associated with use of GRUB?
After 2 download attempts, I started to install Fedora Core 2 for x86_64. It gave me a warning that something was amiss with the partition table, so I cancelled the installation and wiped the DVD-rw. Suse 9.1 for x86_64 works just fine for me. Never knew there was a problem.
what a loser I was in high school.
99% of the people raving about how wonderful Star Wars is (was?) reason this way:
1) The movie made me feel GOOD (holy, cool, clever, etc).
2) Because pleasurable feelings were induced, the movie (experience, religion, book, story, anime, novel, etc.) must be GOOD (holy, cool, clever, etc).
3) The possibility that I was manipulated, deceived, mind-raped, drugged (literally or metaphorically), or god only knows what else to shell out for a barely tolerable mediocre production, is unthinkable.
The response inevitably comes down to "I mean really, I'm way too clever, insightful, and generally too self-aware to be taken in by a director who really is in it for the money." [If you really doubt this, why ewoks? why jar-jar?] I have since stopped being amused, and only resigned, by the naivete of otherwise intelligent people who seem to think that there is anything else to the whole Star Wars (psuedo-)mythos besides making a buck. It's hollywood at its crassest and most materialistic.
For a better explanation and expression of this valuation of most of american sci-fi, see:
"Microworlds: Writings on Science Fiction and Fantasy" by Stanislaw Lem.
or for more comedy, look up the "Lem Affair" and the American Science Fiction Establishment of the 1970's.
First, take a look at this article
v il _firsts/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/07/witty_e
At least as I understood the article [not being a IT security professional or even a programmer], this analysis of the Witty worm suggests some possibilities.
Imagine if you will, a worm similar to Slammer with rapid saturation but with a self-destruct timer. The host computer is nuked at a specified time. Say 2 hours after the worm's release into the wild through some of those zombie bots the article mentions. Or if the host computer is rebooted before the deadline, on reboot the hard drive is formatted. Or the computer could be nuked 2 hours after infection.
What would happen if umpteen kazillion windows machines stopped working all at the same time, or at least within a few minutes of each other?
How do you think Microsoft's future would look, considering that Mac, Linux & Unix users would be largely unaffected? As I have explained to colleagues, friends, & acquaintences, the single most effective way to avoid these kinds of worms, viruses, et al, is to avoid Microsoft products whenever possible.
And given how much Windows' "security" model aids in the propagation of worms, AV & firewall vendors wouldn't be in much better shape either. There wouldn't be enough time to 1) become aware of the threat 2) prepare fixes & AV/firewall signatures 3) make the fix available 4) make the general computing populace aware of the necessity of applying the fix immediately 5) have enough bandwidth on hand to provide the fix to all who would need it.
Again, as I understood the article, this doesn't seem to be impossible as a matter of principle. From the article, it just looks like no one has thought of trying it yet.
While, I hope it doesn't happen, I don't see why it can't either.
An alibi.
So it was his copy. What does that prove? He may have been terribly foolish and even horridly careless with safeguarding his copy of an otherwise unremarkable film.
Was he the only one with access to his copy of the movie? Did he sign his name in blood on various MPAA forms that he would keep the film on a chain around his neck while the film was in his possession unless he was watching that copy of the film?
My guess is that it was at least as likely to have been someone in his household or who works for/with him as it was him
In my very limited experience, the problem people have with OSS is that they don't understand how anyone could possibly hope to make any money from it.
/.'ers call proprietary code. The second in no way implies or requires restrictions on access or distribution to the software, meaning that access to the source code & binaries can made available through a variety of licensing schemes.
That is easy enough to explain:
roughly speaking, there are two ways of making money from software: 1) supplying code and controlling access to it typically through the EULA, and 2) support and maintainence of software.
The first is what
Then it's straightforward to explain that if software is treated like widgets & sneakers, then of course, customer support is a necessary evil. If, however, you have software that you or someone else wrote for which there are customers willing to pay for support or tailoring that software to a particular need and market, then of course, there's money to be made from OSS software.
Then wrapping it up with a quick and dirty overview of the so-called open source community pretty much covers all the main points.
I always thought this would be way cool, but the wife won't go for it.
link to site
Combination blender and telephone by Tom Myers, Art/Not Practical (C) 1998.
Copied from the website:
It's a combination blender and telephone. It's fully functional as a telephone or blender. WHY? is the most FAQ (Frequently Asked Question).
It's for people who like to hear: "Where in the **** did you get this?" If you're looking for a sensible, mass-produced appliance, you're better off at [Sears Roebuck].
If you want your friends to think you're insane, but quote you like God anyway, this is the appliance for YOU!
The "ringer" is the blender motor,which pulses like a telephone bell, except angrier. To answer, pick up the pitcher out of the base and put it to your ear. Usually, the caller can hear the motor spinning down just after you pick it up.
To hang up, replace the pitcher in the base, just like all the other boring telephones.
Each blenderphone is hand-made starting from a standard blender and standard telephone, with a smattering of electronic parts and handmade internal linkages. Painstaking detail work hides its custom origin so it looks and works like it came "off the shelf" of some department store.
That there's such a showstopper of a bug in a recent mandrake release comes as no surprise.
I'm not a linux expert but I do like fiddling around with it. And I'm not afraid of using a CLI. I find with a few minor exceptions Linux meets my needs as a desktop user -- student/home user. KDE + Mozilla + OpenOffice and XMMS. Everything else is just nice.
Mandrake 8.1 was the first distribution that would boot on my computer out of the box. Or rather after burning the downloaded ISO's. I had good experiences with 8.1, 8.2 & 9.0.
Mandrake 9.1 got to be so annoying that I switched to Suse 8.2
Mandrake 9.1 had annoying flaws in the ADSL scripts. Everything was ok in 9.0. I thought the problem would surely be fixed in the 9.2 betas and RC's. But, no. I had to copy and manually edit even after using Mandrake Control Center. The error was something like "n=eth0 (using >Name of the NIC module
In addition there were errors error in the fstab. So that there were always odd errors in mounting my cdrom & floppy. Again the result of carelessness and sloppiness.
All of the above can be found in a search of ALT.OS.LINUX.MANDRAKE on google groups.
Sex and drugs as a focus point if teen rebellion?
The cool/bad kids wont be doing drugs or boinking one another but learning fow to work bit torrent and figuring out how to set up their own file sharing networks.
just a thought
Just a thought. How are those SCO licenses printed? I had a picture of bidding gone mad on ebay in about 5 years. After all, if you were a consultant, wouldn't it make a nice conversation piece. Proof [yet again] that you should believe everything you read but should trust one's own judgment? Hmmmm. Should we hoard SCO licenses to hedge against the future?