Because you don't have to worry about conflicting libraries and such like, because all programs are compiled against the libraries you have. This means that it is not necessary to keep a carefully managed central repository of packages like debian does. The portage system is based on scripts, so it's easy for someone to distribute an ebuild for a new package which just works. There is no need to distribute different versions for different releases, because fundamentally, the idea of a release in gentoo is irrelevant. There is no need for said package to be compiled and stored on gentoo servers, with the beaurocracy that entails. As a result, gentoo is bang up to date with just about every package you might want. This, and the lack of support for non-free software, is why I chose gentoo over debian. Otherwise, I agree with your comments about compiling, but like I said, it's not as big a hassle as everyone makes it out to be.
Personally, I think they should have two seperate athletic leagues - the normal one, and an indy league in which steroids, gene-therapy and performance enhancing drugs are allowed. It would make for an interesting competition. Give the scientists an arena.
I wouldn't recommend it unless you don't want to actually work on that box.
I know everybody makes jokes about compiling gentoo, and frankly they're funny. But your comment is ridiculous. I've been quite happily running gentoo on a 700MHz duron, and can recompile the entire system overnight while I sleep. Secondly, If you install kernel 2.6, you can upgrade the system in the background and have a responsive desktop anyway. Thirdly, you don't have to upgrade the entire system at once, and you certainly don't have to upgrade every day. This leaves plenty time to actually work on the box.
Is there anybody that actually uses ActiveX on a webpage
I'm forced to use IE at work with the "prompt before accepting activeX components" option turned on. You think pop-ups are bad, you should try this! It seems to be used for any kind of plugin (flash, etc), and most pages with adverts, even slashdot, contain activeX of some kind. It really highlights how dangerous IE is - even when you're prompted, you don't know what you're accepting - you could be trying to view a PDF file - and if you accept it you are compromising your system, even if it's just user files at risk. When you consider the number of people routinely running potentially dangerous activeX components without realising it just by surfing the internet...it's unbelievable.
I'm wondering if this would just breed resistance to having body parts susceptible to sonic disruption. After all, mosquitoes breed in incredibly large numbers, so in very few generations, resistance to this should develop.
I imagine it would take a lot more than just a few generations, but even then, you could just change the frequency to match the bigger/smaller air sacks. I doubt mosquitos without these air sacks are going to evolve anytime soon.
How much does ultrasonic propogate through water?
Sound of all frequencies propogates significantly better underwater than in air. From the looks of it, the device is designed to operate underwater.
Is the real problem that we're killing too many of the fishes we didn't intend to catch? Or is it that we're catching too many fish?
From a European perspective, the former. The North Sea cod population is in danger of being wiped out because of haddock fishing. The stocks of haddock are fine, but because the fish are similar, there is a big problem with cod being caught accidentally. There has been an ongoing battle between the EU, which has struggled to impose restrictive quotas, and the fishing industry which is on the point of collapse. If it were feasible to raise the fishing quotas without endangering cod supplies, it would be better for everyone.
If this Ny-guy can invent one that makes crows explode, I'm all for it!
I don't know if it works for crows, but some birds, such as starlings, are incapable of farting. Put some bread out caked in bicarbonate of soda and wait for the feathers to fly.
Disclaimer: This is cruel, and not remotely funny. Honestly. Not even midly humourous.
West nile virus aside, think about the effect this could have on malaria. Mosquito control without the massive environmental fallout of chemical insecticides. I just hope it's cheap enough that the regions which need this can afford it.
Maybe a more worthwhile story would be on the fact that the entire diamond industry is created by incredibly strict control of the supply, which is kept artificially low to dramatically inflate price.
I'd love to see De Beers reaction if someone strapped a warp drive to this baby and flew it back to Earth.
Just because there are no viruses for the C64, doesn't mean it's invulnerable. It's just that writing a virus for a C64 would be like beating up your grandmother.
...but governments and organisations should be exercising a modicum of care over who they get their source and binaries from. Thats what MD5 checksums and trusted sources are there for.
No, what they should be doing is performing a full security audit on any code which is used in security critical applications, then compiling it themselves. Something which requires open source, at least to government officials if not the general public.
Why has this even been posted? It's been accepted for a long time that security through obscurity doesn't work, and this is effectively what he's arguing for. -1 Clueless.
Is it true that some states have prohibited Microsoft from issuing MSCEs? I heard this somewhere but I can't remember. Something about Microsoft not having the authority to certify engineers
But couldn't the "Microsoft Certified" part be interpretted as a disclaimer? Something along the lines of "Burger King Certified Brain Surgeon".
Probably the only actual record the big mac can claim is the shortest time to obsolescence. Not to downplay the achievement though...
They will probably make quite a decent profit out of this, despite the $200 discount. They must have got pretty decent discount from apple for both bulk buying and promotion. And any self respecting geek will want one of these over a stock G5
While it is true that a system with greater bandwith usually has greater capacity, it is a gross generalization
This is incorrect: read up on information theory. The maximum capacity of a communication channel is directly related to the bandwidth of the channel. Hence bandwidth is commonly used to refer to the capacity of the channel. It is in no way a gross generalisation.
This is a 2 Gb/s modulator, whereas III-V semiconductor modulators above 40 Gb/s are commericially available.
I think if you read between the hype, the breakthrough is that they can produce these things using conventional fabrication processes - i.e. they can fabricate a processor chip with built in optical transceivers, and they can fabricate standalone optical components much cheaper than currently.
It seems to me that the greatest effect this will have is to allow optical component interconnects, both at board level, and on chip using micromachined waveguides. At current clock frequencies, component interconnects are the most problematic part of the design. I don't see how there will be a revolution in long distance communications - you'll still need repeaters.
Re:No need for DRM
on
Linux and DRM?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
There is no legitimate need for Digital Restrictions Management.
Quite. But that's not what the question was. Disney will be releasing films online with Microsoft DRM whether we like it or not, and the submitter wants to know if it will be possible to watch them on a linux box. Many other film companies may well follow suit.
If there is no DRM support on linux, then Microsoft will have extended it's monopoly to digital film distribution. Which is bad, even if you and me have no intention of ever buying DRMed content.
Of course slashdot is obviously the last place to ask such a question, because all you get is tons of people ranting about how evil DRM is. Well, so is war, famine, and pestilence.
So, rant aside, I believe the issue is that the DRM in question is proprietary, and won't be available on linux until someone cracks it, like CSS.
The good news is that infections will only compromise the PC environment(s) in use. The Mac that is running VPC cannot be touched as it is effectively an invisible party to the VPC environments
Are you sure? The alert seems to imply that it can gain root access to the underlying system, not just the VPC environment.
Slashdot Mirror
You can tell that Microsoft haven't made many sales yet in Rwanda.
It was supposed to travel 88m, but someone got their units mixed up.
Debian unstable, on the other hand supports packages written in the 1970's, and even some from the early 1980's.
Sorry, but that was just asking for a cheap dig at debian :O) I'll get my hat...
Because you don't have to worry about conflicting libraries and such like, because all programs are compiled against the libraries you have. This means that it is not necessary to keep a carefully managed central repository of packages like debian does. The portage system is based on scripts, so it's easy for someone to distribute an ebuild for a new package which just works. There is no need to distribute different versions for different releases, because fundamentally, the idea of a release in gentoo is irrelevant. There is no need for said package to be compiled and stored on gentoo servers, with the beaurocracy that entails. As a result, gentoo is bang up to date with just about every package you might want. This, and the lack of support for non-free software, is why I chose gentoo over debian. Otherwise, I agree with your comments about compiling, but like I said, it's not as big a hassle as everyone makes it out to be.
Good God, you're right! This proves beyond a doubt that Star Trek is an accurate portrayal of the future, and not just a mere work of fiction.
Personally, I think they should have two seperate athletic leagues - the normal one, and an indy league in which steroids, gene-therapy and performance enhancing drugs are allowed. It would make for an interesting competition. Give the scientists an arena.
I know everybody makes jokes about compiling gentoo, and frankly they're funny. But your comment is ridiculous. I've been quite happily running gentoo on a 700MHz duron, and can recompile the entire system overnight while I sleep. Secondly, If you install kernel 2.6, you can upgrade the system in the background and have a responsive desktop anyway. Thirdly, you don't have to upgrade the entire system at once, and you certainly don't have to upgrade every day. This leaves plenty time to actually work on the box.
I'm forced to use IE at work with the "prompt before accepting activeX components" option turned on. You think pop-ups are bad, you should try this! It seems to be used for any kind of plugin (flash, etc), and most pages with adverts, even slashdot, contain activeX of some kind. It really highlights how dangerous IE is - even when you're prompted, you don't know what you're accepting - you could be trying to view a PDF file - and if you accept it you are compromising your system, even if it's just user files at risk. When you consider the number of people routinely running potentially dangerous activeX components without realising it just by surfing the internet...it's unbelievable.
I imagine it would take a lot more than just a few generations, but even then, you could just change the frequency to match the bigger/smaller air sacks. I doubt mosquitos without these air sacks are going to evolve anytime soon.
How much does ultrasonic propogate through water?
Sound of all frequencies propogates significantly better underwater than in air. From the looks of it, the device is designed to operate underwater.
From a European perspective, the former. The North Sea cod population is in danger of being wiped out because of haddock fishing. The stocks of haddock are fine, but because the fish are similar, there is a big problem with cod being caught accidentally. There has been an ongoing battle between the EU, which has struggled to impose restrictive quotas, and the fishing industry which is on the point of collapse. If it were feasible to raise the fishing quotas without endangering cod supplies, it would be better for everyone.
I don't know if it works for crows, but some birds, such as starlings, are incapable of farting. Put some bread out caked in bicarbonate of soda and wait for the feathers to fly.
Disclaimer: This is cruel, and not remotely funny. Honestly. Not even midly humourous.
West nile virus aside, think about the effect this could have on malaria. Mosquito control without the massive environmental fallout of chemical insecticides. I just hope it's cheap enough that the regions which need this can afford it.
I'd love to see De Beers reaction if someone strapped a warp drive to this baby and flew it back to Earth.
Maybe someone could integrate the leaked code with Mozilla. It would be like the OS equivalent of Brundlefly.
Just because there are no viruses for the C64, doesn't mean it's invulnerable. It's just that writing a virus for a C64 would be like beating up your grandmother.
I believe the NSA have released and audited/secure version of linux, and the Chinese government are likely to do the same.
No, what they should be doing is performing a full security audit on any code which is used in security critical applications, then compiling it themselves. Something which requires open source, at least to government officials if not the general public.
Why has this even been posted? It's been accepted for a long time that security through obscurity doesn't work, and this is effectively what he's arguing for. -1 Clueless.
But couldn't the "Microsoft Certified" part be interpretted as a disclaimer? Something along the lines of "Burger King Certified Brain Surgeon".
They will probably make quite a decent profit out of this, despite the $200 discount. They must have got pretty decent discount from apple for both bulk buying and promotion. And any self respecting geek will want one of these over a stock G5
This is incorrect: read up on information theory. The maximum capacity of a communication channel is directly related to the bandwidth of the channel. Hence bandwidth is commonly used to refer to the capacity of the channel. It is in no way a gross generalisation.
I think if you read between the hype, the breakthrough is that they can produce these things using conventional fabrication processes - i.e. they can fabricate a processor chip with built in optical transceivers, and they can fabricate standalone optical components much cheaper than currently.
It seems to me that the greatest effect this will have is to allow optical component interconnects, both at board level, and on chip using micromachined waveguides. At current clock frequencies, component interconnects are the most problematic part of the design. I don't see how there will be a revolution in long distance communications - you'll still need repeaters.
Quite. But that's not what the question was. Disney will be releasing films online with Microsoft DRM whether we like it or not, and the submitter wants to know if it will be possible to watch them on a linux box. Many other film companies may well follow suit.
If there is no DRM support on linux, then Microsoft will have extended it's monopoly to digital film distribution. Which is bad, even if you and me have no intention of ever buying DRMed content.
Of course slashdot is obviously the last place to ask such a question, because all you get is tons of people ranting about how evil DRM is. Well, so is war, famine, and pestilence.
So, rant aside, I believe the issue is that the DRM in question is proprietary, and won't be available on linux until someone cracks it, like CSS.
Are you sure? The alert seems to imply that it can gain root access to the underlying system, not just the VPC environment.