As someone else said, the Kodak DC210+ (which I bought a year ago) is a great camera. Megapixel, optical and digital zoom, CompactFlash... it's replaced my brother's $2000 super-automated Japanese camera with no one noticing. His girlfried and her two year old live with us, and I'm the designated photographer for all events; the pictures I take go on a fairly simple website that the rest of the family loves. No one has cared that we no longer have physical prints of these shots - my parents bought a color printer for that.
Where can I get good info on hooking this thing up to my laptop? I'm running RH6.0. I also bought the Sandisk CompactFlash unit, which makes download time much faster than over the serial cable. Any links would be appreciated.
Re:Why Microsoft is supporting Perl
on
On Perl 5.6
·
· Score: 1
For a Microsoft project, I think I chose the correct spelling.
Why Microsoft is supporting Perl
on
On Perl 5.6
·
· Score: 1
...for the same reason it has a competitor to Jini called Millenium: they've got a million hedge projects. It costs them next to nothing, and it gives them an in if they decide they need it. That leaves the possibility of 'embracing and extending' perl, but doesn't guarantee it at all.
Personally, I doubt they'll bother trying to colonize Perl, since Perl is competitive only with Visual Basic, which isn't threatened at all, given its penetration via Microsoft Office. There's no perceived threat from Perl the way there was with Java, and while they're ponying up some helpful development cash, they get some positive PR from supporting it.
In other words, this is part of M$'s diversified portfolio of technologies that they keep around, of which maybe 1-5% actually pop on Billy's radar and get the full behemoth treatment. Fear at this point is more than unreasonable, it's self-deluding.
I don't know how correct the science of the story is, but it made clear that the dust was easily obtained as 'tailings' of the refining process, and considered a nuisance until it was realized how lethal it is. I know that actual tailings from uranium mining is a big environmental problem at uranium sites like in northern Saskatchewan.
Plutonium dust is, in fact, tremendously lethal even in small doses, and the level of radiation poisoning it creates kills you quickly from radiation sickness, not slowly from cancer.
I'm reminded of a story printed in Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine, wherein the officer in charge of the Manhattan Project realises the tremendous lethality of plutonium dust. To prevent its use by governments [who might 'dust' cities to kill the inhabitants quickly and cheaply], he takes the dust under his control and the aircraft and holds Washington hostage to make himself a military dictator. After dusting a small town to prove its effectiveness, Washington capitulates. As dictator of the U.S., he seizes the U.N. and repeats the threat, demanding that all nuclear materials and aircraft be turned over to his control. He creates a U.N. military with control of all plutonium and aircraft, ends air travel entirely, and becomes the first ruler of Earth, incidentally putting an end to war and national sovereignty.
The Russians withhold some aircraft, and Moscow gets dusted, killing all inhabitants. The story didn't get into the whole 'benevolent dictator' thing, but it did raise the quesion of why plutonium dust was never developed as a weapon.
Those capsules are coming in at 25,000 miles per hour, and I doubt the friction of skipping takes much off of that. 25K is much greater than escape velocity from the Earth.
An interesting question for any physics geeks here: how fast would the capsule have to skip for escape velocity from the sun?
"falling towards the sun" means that, on re-entry to the earth's atmosphere, they skipped, sending them off into space and away from the earth at re-entry speeds that are too fast to turn around and try again. The gravity of the sun got hold of them, and their orbit, no matter what angle to the sun they skipped from, decayed relatively instantaneously, compared to the rate at which the earth's orbit is decaying (something like several millimeters a year).
One of the stories I heard has it that the re-entry capsule skipped off the atmosphere because the angle of entry was miscalculated (a very real danger, I'm told). Russian Space Command had contact with them for two days while they fell towards the sun, until they ran out of oxygen. The plan in that case was for them to crack their suits and the pod and go out quick, but they didn't.
The last time this happened, the antivirus companies had a patch out within days. Microsoft did fuck all.
It's been reported that, along with BO2K, the CDC will release a patch as well. They'll be including the source code, and they've publicized the hell out of it just so that people are aware of the risk.
This just isn't the huge threat you're making it out to be. As happens with every new virus or whatever that comes out, the network admin at my company will send out an email warning people not to open EXE files.
Once again, Microsoft appears to be doing fuck all. Everyone else is fixing their systems to close a gaping hole.
I honestly don't see how this could have been handled better. Should Sir Dystic, having figured out how to do it, promptly forgotten, hoping no one else would figure it out? The threat had to be real to get the action to fix it; that's been made plain by the scrambling of antivirus companies.
It would be nice if no one ever wrote viruses, and if we didn't have to lock our houses at night. However, Microsoft isn't just selling us houses that can't be locked properly, they're refusing to admit the problem exists and help fix it; they're telling us the lock is fine, and if BO2K is what it takes to admit that a serious problem needs fixing, then I won't feel badly for anyone who suffers for it when they could have avoided it.
Just to be clear, I'm not a member of the CDC. Nonetheless, your responses aren't great.
0: Microsoft SUX!!! (0 because it's the _true_ motivation for all of the following arguments) Response: Yeah whatever. Nobody likes M$, but millions of us rely on their products in our homes and our workplaces. Some of us don't have a choice in the matter. If you want us to use something else, make something better.
While its true that many don't have a choice in the OS used in their office, or by default because they're unable to install another, there are still lots of better, or at least different choices out there. Your crack about 'make something better' is probably the most succinct description of the motivation behind hacking, and all it's produced, that I've ever seen.
1: It's just an administration tool. Response: [snip] If this is just a tool why not create a shortcut on the desktop called 'Uninstall Back Orifice'?
One reason is to protect the administration tool. The network admin at my company is constantly telling people to enable Norton Antivirus; every time she has to clean their system manually, in fact.
You're right that BO is more than an administration tool: it's a political point that, for all the damage and heartache, is a valid point. See your reponse about leaving your house unlocked...
2: It's MS' fault for having the security holes in the first place. Response: [snip] If I leave my door unlocked that doesn't make it my fault when you steal my things. You're still the criminal.
I'm still a criminal, and you're still stupid for having left your door unlocked. Moreover, your home insurance won't cover you because you left your door unlocked; if you won't take known security measures to protect yourself, then you bear part of the blame.
3: MS wouldn't fix the holes if we didn't exploit them. Response: If you're so concerned about MS fixing their security holes, why not give them an advance copy of the software so they can attempt to fix them _before_ all the jackass kids exploit them?
My understanding of the release of the first BO is that Microsoft was offered an advance copy, and turned it down, while denying there was any security problem at all. Microsoft is a business, and what a business can get away with, it will. It's as simple as that, and if you disagree, you've never had the privilege of riding a cubicle in corporate America.
4: We're helping the community by bringing these problems to the attention of the public. Response: Clearly the only community CDC is concerned with is the script-kiddie community. Their program is extremely destructive to the common user and is most effective when used against inexperienced users. All they have done for the community is reinforce the atmosphere of distrust that pervades the internet today.
All they've done is force people to confront the problem. They've made a deliberate public showing of it because it wasn't to impress the script kiddies, it was to force a resolution to the issue. Yes, people may suffer because of it, but it takes a hard lesson sometimes. As for the atmosphere of distrust, which is better: suspicion all around or blissful ignorance?
Unless the Melissa author clearly explained in his post that the office file was viral, then he was firing into a crowded room. Posting it that way was his delivery system. He could have emailed it to 50 friends instead, but the Usenet post was safer (not safe enough, though...)
Is there anyone here really familiar with M$'s security model? From what little I've heard about it, I've heard that it's not bad; the problem is that it's both too different and far too complex to implement properly, which is effectively the same as bad security. The whole 'trust and digital signatures' model just doesn't seem to work, though I'm not sure that's the problem at all, since it was a digital signature on the Melissa Word file that caught the author.
Apparently I'm not as up on my backstory as I thought.
Given the weight of Anakin's transformation into Vader, I still think that has to be the climax of II. That puts the start of the clone wars in II, but I bet that Palpatine isn't revealed to be the Emperor until the climax of three.
Is there any word who'll play Anakin in II? Lucas doesn't have time to show him growing in his training, so II will have to start with a full-grown Anakin/Vader
I'd forgotten that Amidala and Annakin had to make Luke and Leia at some point. However, Vader is the one who hunts down and kills all the jedi, so the clone wars, the fall of the old republic, and the death of the all the jedi have to take place in three.
There are two really dramatic events left: Anakin's transformation into Vader, and the fall of the Old Republic. Everything else is story mechanics to get them there. Preceding Anakin's fall, he's trained by Obi Wan, falls in love with Amidala and impregnates her; the rest of II will be backstory to III, like the discovery of the clone technology and the decay of the Jedi Council, who fail to stop Palpatine; III can then focus on the clone wars, Vader hunting down the Jedi, hiding Luke and Leia, and Obi Wan and Yoda escaping into hiding as well.
One objection I've never heard, and this surprises me, is that Star Wars is a wonderful missed opportunity.
The Star Wars universe is a huge and well developed context in which many different, interesting tales could be told. Unfortunately, because they're marketed to kids for toy sales, the movies, books and comics are juvenile. I enjoyed Phantom Menace once I remembered it's directed at ten year olds, and concentrated on the special effects.
The fallout from that marketing angle is througout all the movies. The force is no longer a mystical element of the universe; it's a microbe that people have in greater or lesser quantities (leading, however, to the tantalizing possibility of bottling and freebasing it). The wars aren't fought with blood and bone, but with plastic aliens that get knocked down and don't get up. The insulting caricatures of other cultures were used for comic effect, with little thought to how adults might interpret them.
Surely I'm not alone in feeling cheated of what could happen if those movies were directed at adults. Whatever mythic quality they have is diluted to uselessness by the action figures that follow.
Star Trek movies make the same mistake, to a lesser degree. In Insurrection, Federation shuttlecraft come with a karaoke machine as a standard option, and the Enterprise can be flown with a Sidewinder joystick. I nearly puked in the theatre when I saw that.
The fact is very few people (Lucas himself and a small handfull of trusted individuals at this point) know how things are going to go down in the next two films and very little will be known by the public at large untill they are actually released. This is part of Lucas's magic. Think about the backstory for a bit, and you know exactly how the next two turn out. In the second of the six, Obi-wan will train Anakin while Palpatine continues his fiendish machinations (and anyone who machinates is okay with me). Palpatine will discover the clone technology that allows him to mass produce stormtroopers, and they'll make their appearance in the galaxy in some innocuous way, under the auspices of the Chancellor's decision to build some sort of the standing army to protect the galaxy from evil. The climax will be a half-trained Anakin falling into the pit of fire Obi-wan mentions to Luke in ESB, and the Emperor taking over Anakin's training. The third prequel will focus on the discovery by Obi-wan of Palpatine's identity as the Emperor. Darth Vader will be released on the galaxy to hunt down and kill the jedi, who discovered too late that Palpatine is the Sith Lord. The stormtroopers will become open conquerers under Grand Moff Tarkin, and the movie will climax with Yoda and Obi-wan going into hiding at the same time that the last jedi is slain (probably Samuel L. Jackson's character) and organised resistance to the empire ends. The order may be switched around a bit, but the skeleton's been around since Lucas started. Remember all the urban legends about Lucas having already written nine movies?
If not, go see for two reasons: so you can participate in the massive hate-on everyone has for Lucas and Jar-Jar Binks; and because, if you go without expectations, there are some mildly enjoyable parts like the fight with Darth Maul.
I assume that the relevant laws in the U.S. are the same as in Canada, from where I hail. Telling someone, however metaphorically, that you're going to harm them is a crime itself called 'making threats', which gives the police some legal handle on the threatener in case s/he's serious. I believe it's not as serious as actually harassing or stalking someone, but it can get you into trouble if you're uncautious about it.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone else said, the Kodak DC210+ (which I bought a year ago) is a great camera. Megapixel, optical and digital zoom, CompactFlash... it's replaced my brother's $2000 super-automated Japanese camera with no one noticing. His girlfried and her two year old live with us, and I'm the designated photographer for all events; the pictures I take go on a fairly simple website that the rest of the family loves. No one has cared that we no longer have physical prints of these shots - my parents bought a color printer for that.
Where can I get good info on hooking this thing up to my laptop? I'm running RH6.0. I also bought the Sandisk CompactFlash unit, which makes download time much faster than over the serial cable. Any links would be appreciated.
For a Microsoft project, I think I chose the correct spelling.
...for the same reason it has a competitor to Jini called Millenium: they've got a million hedge projects. It costs them next to nothing, and it gives them an in if they decide they need it. That leaves the possibility of 'embracing and extending' perl, but doesn't guarantee it at all.
Personally, I doubt they'll bother trying to colonize Perl, since Perl is competitive only with Visual Basic, which isn't threatened at all, given its penetration via Microsoft Office. There's no perceived threat from Perl the way there was with Java, and while they're ponying up some helpful development cash, they get some positive PR from supporting it.
In other words, this is part of M$'s diversified portfolio of technologies that they keep around, of which maybe 1-5% actually pop on Billy's radar and get the full behemoth treatment. Fear at this point is more than unreasonable, it's self-deluding.
I don't know how correct the science of the story is, but it made clear that the dust was easily obtained as 'tailings' of the refining process, and considered a nuisance until it was realized how lethal it is. I know that actual tailings from uranium mining is a big environmental problem at uranium sites like in northern Saskatchewan.
Plutonium dust is, in fact, tremendously lethal even in small doses, and the level of radiation poisoning it creates kills you quickly from radiation sickness, not slowly from cancer.
I'm reminded of a story printed in Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine, wherein the officer in charge of the Manhattan Project realises the tremendous lethality of plutonium dust. To prevent its use by governments [who might 'dust' cities to kill the inhabitants quickly and cheaply], he takes the dust under his control and the aircraft and holds Washington hostage to make himself a military dictator. After dusting a small town to prove its effectiveness, Washington capitulates. As dictator of the U.S., he seizes the U.N. and repeats the threat, demanding that all nuclear materials and aircraft be turned over to his control. He creates a U.N. military with control of all plutonium and aircraft, ends air travel entirely, and becomes the first ruler of Earth, incidentally putting an end to war and national sovereignty.
The Russians withhold some aircraft, and Moscow gets dusted, killing all inhabitants. The story didn't get into the whole 'benevolent dictator' thing, but it did raise the quesion of why plutonium dust was never developed as a weapon.
An interesting question for any physics geeks here: how fast would the capsule have to skip for escape velocity from the sun?
One of the stories I heard has it that the re-entry capsule skipped off the atmosphere because the angle of entry was miscalculated (a very real danger, I'm told). Russian Space Command had contact with them for two days while they fell towards the sun, until they ran out of oxygen. The plan in that case was for them to crack their suits and the pod and go out quick, but they didn't.
The last time this happened, the antivirus companies had a patch out within days. Microsoft did fuck all.
It's been reported that, along with BO2K, the CDC will release a patch as well. They'll be including the source code, and they've publicized the hell out of it just so that people are aware of the risk.
This just isn't the huge threat you're making it out to be. As happens with every new virus or whatever that comes out, the network admin at my company will send out an email warning people not to open EXE files.
Once again, Microsoft appears to be doing fuck all. Everyone else is fixing their systems to close a gaping hole.
I honestly don't see how this could have been handled better. Should Sir Dystic, having figured out how to do it, promptly forgotten, hoping no one else would figure it out? The threat had to be real to get the action to fix it; that's been made plain by the scrambling of antivirus companies.
It would be nice if no one ever wrote viruses, and if we didn't have to lock our houses at night. However, Microsoft isn't just selling us houses that can't be locked properly, they're refusing to admit the problem exists and help fix it; they're telling us the lock is fine, and if BO2K is what it takes to admit that a serious problem needs fixing, then I won't feel badly for anyone who suffers for it when they could have avoided it.
Just to be clear, I'm not a member of the CDC. Nonetheless, your responses aren't great.
0: Microsoft SUX!!! (0 because it's the _true_ motivation for all of the following arguments) Response: Yeah whatever. Nobody likes M$, but millions of us rely on their products in our homes and our workplaces. Some of us don't have a choice in the matter. If you want us to use something else, make something better.
While its true that many don't have a choice in the OS used in their office, or by default because they're unable to install another, there are still lots of better, or at least different choices out there. Your crack about 'make something better' is probably the most succinct description of the motivation behind hacking, and all it's produced, that I've ever seen.
1: It's just an administration tool. Response: [snip] If this is just a tool why not create a shortcut on the desktop called 'Uninstall Back Orifice'?
One reason is to protect the administration tool. The network admin at my company is constantly telling people to enable Norton Antivirus; every time she has to clean their system manually, in fact.
You're right that BO is more than an administration tool: it's a political point that, for all the damage and heartache, is a valid point. See your reponse about leaving your house unlocked...
2: It's MS' fault for having the security holes in the first place. Response: [snip] If I leave my door unlocked that doesn't make it my fault when you steal my things. You're still the criminal.
I'm still a criminal, and you're still stupid for having left your door unlocked. Moreover, your home insurance won't cover you because you left your door unlocked; if you won't take known security measures to protect yourself, then you bear part of the blame.
3: MS wouldn't fix the holes if we didn't exploit them. Response: If you're so concerned about MS fixing their security holes, why not give them an advance copy of the software so they can attempt to fix them _before_ all the jackass kids exploit them?
My understanding of the release of the first BO is that Microsoft was offered an advance copy, and turned it down, while denying there was any security problem at all. Microsoft is a business, and what a business can get away with, it will. It's as simple as that, and if you disagree, you've never had the privilege of riding a cubicle in corporate America.
4: We're helping the community by bringing these problems to the attention of the public. Response: Clearly the only community CDC is concerned with is the script-kiddie community. Their program is extremely destructive to the common user and is most effective when used against inexperienced users. All they have done for the community is reinforce the atmosphere of distrust that pervades the internet today.
All they've done is force people to confront the problem. They've made a deliberate public showing of it because it wasn't to impress the script kiddies, it was to force a resolution to the issue. Yes, people may suffer because of it, but it takes a hard lesson sometimes. As for the atmosphere of distrust, which is better: suspicion all around or blissful ignorance?
Unless the Melissa author clearly explained in his post that the office file was viral, then he was firing into a crowded room. Posting it that way was his delivery system. He could have emailed it to 50 friends instead, but the Usenet post was safer (not safe enough, though...)
Is there anyone here really familiar with M$'s security model? From what little I've heard about it, I've heard that it's not bad; the problem is that it's both too different and far too complex to implement properly, which is effectively the same as bad security. The whole 'trust and digital signatures' model just doesn't seem to work, though I'm not sure that's the problem at all, since it was a digital signature on the Melissa Word file that caught the author.
Apparently I'm not as up on my backstory as I thought.
Given the weight of Anakin's transformation into Vader, I still think that has to be the climax of II. That puts the start of the clone wars in II, but I bet that Palpatine isn't revealed to be the Emperor until the climax of three.
Is there any word who'll play Anakin in II? Lucas doesn't have time to show him growing in his training, so II will have to start with a full-grown Anakin/Vader
I'd forgotten that Amidala and Annakin had to make Luke and Leia at some point. However, Vader is the one who hunts down and kills all the jedi, so the clone wars, the fall of the old republic, and the death of the all the jedi have to take place in three.
There are two really dramatic events left: Anakin's transformation into Vader, and the fall of the Old Republic. Everything else is story mechanics to get them there. Preceding Anakin's fall, he's trained by Obi Wan, falls in love with Amidala and impregnates her; the rest of II will be backstory to III, like the discovery of the clone technology and the decay of the Jedi Council, who fail to stop Palpatine; III can then focus on the clone wars, Vader hunting down the Jedi, hiding Luke and Leia, and Obi Wan and Yoda escaping into hiding as well.
One objection I've never heard, and this surprises me, is that Star Wars is a wonderful missed opportunity.
The Star Wars universe is a huge and well developed context in which many different, interesting tales could be told. Unfortunately, because they're marketed to kids for toy sales, the movies, books and comics are juvenile. I enjoyed Phantom Menace once I remembered it's directed at ten year olds, and concentrated on the special effects.
The fallout from that marketing angle is througout all the movies. The force is no longer a mystical element of the universe; it's a microbe that people have in greater or lesser quantities (leading, however, to the tantalizing possibility of bottling and freebasing it). The wars aren't fought with blood and bone, but with plastic aliens that get knocked down and don't get up. The insulting caricatures of other cultures were used for comic effect, with little thought to how adults might interpret them.
Surely I'm not alone in feeling cheated of what could happen if those movies were directed at adults. Whatever mythic quality they have is diluted to uselessness by the action figures that follow.
Star Trek movies make the same mistake, to a lesser degree. In Insurrection, Federation shuttlecraft come with a karaoke machine as a standard option, and the Enterprise can be flown with a Sidewinder joystick. I nearly puked in the theatre when I saw that.
The fact is very few people (Lucas himself and a small handfull of trusted individuals at this point) know how things are going to go down in the next two films and very little will be known by the public at large untill they are actually released. This is part of Lucas's magic. Think about the backstory for a bit, and you know exactly how the next two turn out. In the second of the six, Obi-wan will train Anakin while Palpatine continues his fiendish machinations (and anyone who machinates is okay with me). Palpatine will discover the clone technology that allows him to mass produce stormtroopers, and they'll make their appearance in the galaxy in some innocuous way, under the auspices of the Chancellor's decision to build some sort of the standing army to protect the galaxy from evil. The climax will be a half-trained Anakin falling into the pit of fire Obi-wan mentions to Luke in ESB, and the Emperor taking over Anakin's training. The third prequel will focus on the discovery by Obi-wan of Palpatine's identity as the Emperor. Darth Vader will be released on the galaxy to hunt down and kill the jedi, who discovered too late that Palpatine is the Sith Lord. The stormtroopers will become open conquerers under Grand Moff Tarkin, and the movie will climax with Yoda and Obi-wan going into hiding at the same time that the last jedi is slain (probably Samuel L. Jackson's character) and organised resistance to the empire ends. The order may be switched around a bit, but the skeleton's been around since Lucas started. Remember all the urban legends about Lucas having already written nine movies?
If you're going to miss the $7, don't bother.
If not, go see for two reasons: so you can participate in the massive hate-on everyone has for Lucas and Jar-Jar Binks; and because, if you go without expectations, there are some mildly enjoyable parts like the fight with Darth Maul.
I assume that the relevant laws in the U.S. are the same as in Canada, from where I hail. Telling someone, however metaphorically, that you're going to harm them is a crime itself called 'making threats', which gives the police some legal handle on the threatener in case s/he's serious. I believe it's not as serious as actually harassing or stalking someone, but it can get you into trouble if you're uncautious about it.