Remember our old friend DRM? Now DVD stores can make DRM'd DVDs, which only work once, and which also don't pollute the environment.
You would probably remember the original complaint about the single-use DVDs coming from the environmental groups, about the waste of unrecyclable plastic.
Well, now your single-use disk can be thrown in the recycling bin and become something else, which is awesome.
See this is funny because wherever you come from, your supermarket actually gives you the choice. If they gave this choice to Australians, I would say "paper." However, they force us to accept plastic.
I gather this means that Xbox modchipping will be illegal now (PS2 modchipping was already illegal, apparently) only if you do it the penalties will be much higher than they used to be for similar acts.
What if you already chipped your unit? Presumably that's okay.
And then, does copying a game you own to your hard disk count as access control circumvention? You are allowing it to run without the disk in the drive, which is a method of controlling access.
It's all very confusing. Why anyone would bother to put in laws like this is beyond me.
We already have wireless USB devices, but what makes this a good idea is it will *standardise* the interface, so instead of having one receiver for my keyboard, one receiver for my mouse, and so on, I could have a single receiver for every wireless device in the vicinity of the computer.
But the annoying thing about wireless USB stuff is that it needs to be powered, so it only suits a small subset of devices well. Let's look at a collection of stuff I currently consider attaching to my computer.
Keyboard - suits well. Only uses power when a key is being pressed, and lasts months because of it.
Mouse - lasts about 2-3 weeks on a pair of AA batteries. These days you can get ones which recharge Li-ion batteries with a cradle, but I'm not rich enough to buy one (yet. in a year my debts will be gone and I will buy one.)
GameBoy Advance cart writer - uses way too much power. Never tried batteries but the fact that the parallel version of the same thing uses six (!) AA batteries is scary enough.
GameCube memory card writer - this might be feasible but only because I use it so much less than the GameBoy cart writer.
GameBoy Advance SP charger - wireless helps this about as much as a shove in the back helps a granny across the road.
External hard drive enclosure - full sized hard drives probably chew through power so wireless is not much use here.
Webcam - some webcams can run for quite a while on a single set of batteries so it might be possible to get a cradle setup here. And a wireless webcam would be ultimately flexible, you could put it in the shower and use the data for blackmail.
Digital camera - these things already chew through battery while they're on the road so wireless makes perfect sense here. Just bring the camera back near the computer and the drive pops up on the desktop. Of course this might suit bluetooth better, since you could trade photos on the road to your friend's mobile phone.
So for some things it's a good fit, for the other half or more it's horrendous. If only people had listened to Tesla in his prime we might have had some serious research devoted to wireless power transmission by now.
Well it isn't. Just looking at a portion of my acquaintances, all the ones currently on higher wages than the rest entered the industry with no university degree. These days a Bachelors degree is an optional feature when it comes to job hiring because three years experience in the field would have given you far better qualifications.
Actually, Windows XP has the same system as Windows 2000.
Folders open the way you configure them, so you can use either the "one window for everything" mode, and the "one window per folder" mode. And in "one window per folder" mode, the window retains its view settings and generally seems to pop up in the same place the next time though this may be luck.
Suppose your grandma gets really used to something like GnuCash and tells her friend who's using Windows that it's really good, then her friend asks her granddaughter to set it up for her.
What is her granddaughter going to tell her, if she can not get it to work with Cygwin?
I like the idea, but I am not sure Windows is ready.
If I could get the entertaining channels and ditch useless music channels like MTV, everything would be so much more bearable since housemates would never be able to put on the music channels. And if the bill was lower as a result, hallelujah.
Well, how many resources are chewed up depends whether you choose to actually run all the things you install. IIRC, on RedHat you still have to go and tell things to start on startup, unlike Debian where (almost) everything you install starts up immediately. But you do lose disk space, I guess.
What they really should have said was install Fedora with minimum setup, then install apt and synaptic, and then find other things you need from there.
Let's not. That would be an annoying feature. Not only do I not want to bother other people with the fact that I'm logging, but I don't need yet another useless dialog box coming up in my face either.
I propose for anyone who doesn't want me to log, that they simply tell me not to log and mail a money order for $20 each month to cover expenses relating to the time consuming deletion of log files.
Usually an employer will tell you that conversations are being logged. In some cases they even tell the other party that it is being logged, a few of my friends who use MSN from inside companies are under a regime like this, every time they open up a chat to me I get a massive automated warning message from them before the real message.
If the user wants their chat to be "unlogged" they'd better pay me the money for the time it will take to track down and delete the file after every single chat!
I was just thinking you could run a Beowulf cluster of these virtual Linux machines on a single Windows machine. Yeah, it defeats the purpose... unless the purpose is to be funny.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember our old friend DRM? Now DVD stores can make DRM'd DVDs, which only work once, and which also don't pollute the environment.
You would probably remember the original complaint about the single-use DVDs coming from the environmental groups, about the waste of unrecyclable plastic.
Well, now your single-use disk can be thrown in the recycling bin and become something else, which is awesome.
See this is funny because wherever you come from, your supermarket actually gives you the choice. If they gave this choice to Australians, I would say "paper." However, they force us to accept plastic.
I gather this means that Xbox modchipping will be illegal now (PS2 modchipping was already illegal, apparently) only if you do it the penalties will be much higher than they used to be for similar acts.
What if you already chipped your unit? Presumably that's okay.
And then, does copying a game you own to your hard disk count as access control circumvention? You are allowing it to run without the disk in the drive, which is a method of controlling access.
It's all very confusing. Why anyone would bother to put in laws like this is beyond me.
Absolutely.
We already have wireless USB devices, but what makes this a good idea is it will *standardise* the interface, so instead of having one receiver for my keyboard, one receiver for my mouse, and so on, I could have a single receiver for every wireless device in the vicinity of the computer.
But the annoying thing about wireless USB stuff is that it needs to be powered, so it only suits a small subset of devices well. Let's look at a collection of stuff I currently consider attaching to my computer.
So for some things it's a good fit, for the other half or more it's horrendous. If only people had listened to Tesla in his prime we might have had some serious research devoted to wireless power transmission by now.
So basically it's poorly named, and should be called "Bluetooth 2.0", or something different like UWB.
Note to self, submit patents in 24-point font.
He was probably too busy putting bubbles into beer. Oh wait, you were talking about the other Einstein. My bad.
Well it isn't. Just looking at a portion of my acquaintances, all the ones currently on higher wages than the rest entered the industry with no university degree. These days a Bachelors degree is an optional feature when it comes to job hiring because three years experience in the field would have given you far better qualifications.
+1 Parainformative, -1 "Speling"
You mean you don't see all the wasted space between the icons? I thought that's what it meant. ;-)
Actually, Windows XP has the same system as Windows 2000.
Folders open the way you configure them, so you can use either the "one window for everything" mode, and the "one window per folder" mode. And in "one window per folder" mode, the window retains its view settings and generally seems to pop up in the same place the next time though this may be luck.
But I like my menu where I can reach it without having to travel between 0 and 1200 pixels up the screen.
Well if one of your siblings provided offspring and you didn't have any, then you are still not a grandparent.
Suppose your grandma gets really used to something like GnuCash and tells her friend who's using Windows that it's really good, then her friend asks her granddaughter to set it up for her.
What is her granddaughter going to tell her, if she can not get it to work with Cygwin?
I like the idea, but I am not sure Windows is ready.
If I could get the entertaining channels and ditch useless music channels like MTV, everything would be so much more bearable since housemates would never be able to put on the music channels. And if the bill was lower as a result, hallelujah.
Well, how many resources are chewed up depends whether you choose to actually run all the things you install. IIRC, on RedHat you still have to go and tell things to start on startup, unlike Debian where (almost) everything you install starts up immediately. But you do lose disk space, I guess.
What they really should have said was install Fedora with minimum setup, then install apt and synaptic, and then find other things you need from there.
I know, he should have been pimping Muine, or something equally sexy.
Let's not. That would be an annoying feature. Not only do I not want to bother other people with the fact that I'm logging, but I don't need yet another useless dialog box coming up in my face either.
I propose for anyone who doesn't want me to log, that they simply tell me not to log and mail a money order for $20 each month to cover expenses relating to the time consuming deletion of log files.
Usually an employer will tell you that conversations are being logged. In some cases they even tell the other party that it is being logged, a few of my friends who use MSN from inside companies are under a regime like this, every time they open up a chat to me I get a massive automated warning message from them before the real message.
If the user wants their chat to be "unlogged" they'd better pay me the money for the time it will take to track down and delete the file after every single chat!
Actually if the server is logging then you're violating it because neither party involved in the conversation is the one logging.
Nevertheless it's common paranoia theory that the major IMs do log all their conversations, so that they can sell information to the US government.
Oh right, so every single conversation, I have to start with the phrase "Oh, by the way, I'm logging." Sounds "fantastic."
Now that the vulnerabilities are known, let's all get to work writing the next Blaster variant!
Don't forget...
3. Real pain in the butt to get networking working without fucking about installing the bridging driver on Windows.
It would be a lot nicer if the install process was something like this:
I was just thinking you could run a Beowulf cluster of these virtual Linux machines on a single Windows machine. Yeah, it defeats the purpose... unless the purpose is to be funny.