It could be interesting if all the game developers in the US picked/created a cross-platform 3D engine to standardize on. Then maybe they could concentrate more effort on playability and game innovation and less on flipping bits.
Of course just how "sentient" a chicken really might be is debatable.
I don't recall ever seeing a chicken distraught about missing an unfertilized egg or even one out of a group of chicks. So forgive me if I have a hard time equating this "abuse" to using a human woman's egg without consent.
Re:We've been down this road before
on
A Worm's Worm
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Or the nachi/a worm which tried to remove msblast then download and install the patch for the hole from MS.
It was a misguided attempt to stop msblast but it caused a lot of problems itself. We never had a problem with msblast but nachi essentially shut down a couple of our routers and cost us plenty in man-hours to clean up.
I doubt that Dabber is the same deal though. If it were you would expect it to have an expiration date.
Probably not since the original can't claim losses... unless maybe their spammer overlord is paying per infection. Then maybe they can use the DMCA and order all users with infected PCs to remove the offending worm from their system... or else!
Let those who want to be tracked have an ID tag. They can "check one out" and leave whatever identifying info they feel ok with.
Ideally have it either only keep the last two checkpoints (so you can get last location and direction.) Regardless, have a return of the ID tag wipe all history.
It will help prevent wild animals from tripping your sensors and let those who don't want to be found... not be.
If you are worried about theft of the tags, require ID. If a person values their privacy more than the safety net of the tags they don't have to take one.
On the surface, it seems like a bit of waste of money. If it prevents a helicopter and search and rescue crew from being dispatched though, I suppose it might pay for itself.
And MS is just as guilty itself. Office-2k runs with restricted rights, however, in order to get the "organizational chart" objects to work, students needed WRITE rights to the freakin C:\WINNT directory!
The answer, I think, is "it depends." You need to know your data and how your code is going to be used. Here is a real example:
Back around 1999, a coworker wrote a "round" routine for foxpro for dos. (Database language for those who have to ask.) It didn't round to the decimal, it rounded to the nearest 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, etc.
The way it did this was to build an array of every fractional value in decimal form, grab the decimal portion of the number, and then search the array for the nearest match.
Even then, this could find the nearest 1/8th in just a small fraction of a second. But it fell down (miserably) if you were looking for the nearest 1/128th, or (since this WAS for database work) you were rounding values from a million records or so.
The solution was to multiply the original number by the denominator (ie: x * 8), round to the nearst whole number and devide it back. So, the code ended up looking something like
The point is that optimization, even then, wasn't neccessarily about squeezing every ounce of speed out of your hardware. It could be more about not doing stupid things in your code, especially if the "stupid" part was going to be run repeatedly during execution.
Someone could have spent a day converting his slow round code to C or assembly and building a new function in a library to call from FoxPro. Not much payoff doing that though.
You could even do the same thing for the code I listed, but then maintainability drops a ton. Now your DB programmers would need to know C or assembly to make changes. (Like adding a check to prevent a divide-by-zero fault?) As it was, it could process a million records in around 6 seconds if I remember... more than fast enough for the job it had to do. Why optimize any further?
So, as much as possible, know how your code is likely going to be used and what the data is going to be. Look for choke points where optimization will acctually make a difference. And know when it's "good enough" vs when it's "as good as possible."
I think that violation of the GPL would constitute removal of rights across all software licensed under it
I sure hope the GPL isn't an all or nothing license. What if the GPL was found to be invalid with regards to a specific piece of software and a specific copyright holder (due to some action of the copyright holder?) Then the GPL is invalid for ALL software and would have to be replaced by a new license?
Revoking all rights to GPLed software from SCO might give me a happy, warm, fuzzy feeling, but I don't really think it would be legal. At least not unless SCO actually violated the GPL with regards to nmap. I don't believe the terms of the GPL themselves allow you to restrict WHO can use the software as long as they follow the terms of the license.
Even though SCO's statements are extremely hypocritical, I'm not sure that they constitute a violation of the GPL in general. The $699 license fee for the Linux kernel on the other hand... now THAT I think DOES violate the terms and I would love to see their right to distribute terminated until they change their action.
Ordinary asteroids in the inner solar system sometimes pass in front of weak background stars (occultations), which provides the opportunity to measure their diameters by timing the disappearence and reappearence of the star.
I would think that the star would have to not only be observed at the right moment in time, but would have to be observed at significant magnification. You would need to be able to observe which direction the object was moving (with or oposite the earth's orbit and rotation) and how fast it was moving too. So frame-rate of the observation would play a part as well.
Without that, how could you estimate size? Was it a 20 KM wide rock moving 400 KPH or a 1 KM wide rock moving 20 KPH? Ok, they may be moving way faster, but I'm sure you get my point.
After you install MS Office, Windows loads big portions of it during Windows boot. So your initial boot takes longer, but then your Office apps launch quickly.
I'll second that. We upgraded from MSO 97 to MSO 2000 on a bunch of PCs. After the upgrade, they things crawled and were not even usable for the main app they used to run... until a RAM upgrade.
This was without MSO running and without the MSO quick-launcher starting. (Using the quick-launcher uses even MORE memory, but not using it does not prevent the pre-loading of all MSO components.)
I was told the exact same thing.. We don't have a demo, but if you buy you can return within 30 days, no questions asked.
I would send them the software along with a letter requesting your money back. Send it certified so you have proof they got it. The last thing you want to do is let them stall you until the 30 days is up.
If you have to take it to court, you can probably file in your local small claims and show proof that you returned it. Of course, it would be even nicer if you could use a different e-mail address and get them to send you an e-mail promissing the refund.
-IANAL, but I play one on/. Take my advice at your own risk.
Like the earlier worms, Bagle does not affect Macs or computers running the Linux and Unix operating systems. - WA Post
Nice sig. When I send alerts to my users (primarily for their own benefit for their home PCs) I almost always include something like: "If you are using a Mac or Linux at home instead of Windows, you are at no risk from this virus."
I have our scanner set up to alert the user if they actually send a virus. The whole message is dumped and doesn't go to the intended recipient.
For incoming e-mail, infected attachments are shredded and a message like "This e-mail contained a virus in the file named $filename. For your protection, the file has been deleted. If you were actually expecting this file from the sender@senderdomain.com then you may want to contact them and let them know they could have a virus."...is tacked onto the message body.
The point is that "somebody" knows that attachments/mail was lost and we still don't have to bounce any infected e-mail back to the From: addy.
As I read your post, I'm listening to the warning on the TV about 40-50 below zero windchills tonight and -14F (-26C) for a low temp. Now THAT I can accept as cold.. not the 28 degree low they are expecting in Huntsville AL tonight.
For perspective, -14F is 46 degrees below freezing. That is the same as the differenece between freezing and 78 degrees (26C).
For more perspective, at these windchills, frostbite (freezing and damage to the skin) can occurr in as little as 5 minutes.
Now before anyone goes telling me how warm it is compared to where *you* are, here are some fun facts:
Coldest wind chill recorded in canada: -92C (at this temp skin freezes litterally within seconds)
Coldest recorded temp on earth: -129F (-90C) Volstok (and that was WITHOUT windchill!)
Coldest wind chill: Dunno.. but I'm betting it's in the antarctic. I couldn't find it online though. It is not uncommon, however, to have wind chills below -100C there.
None of the three articles I read said it was unlimited. Based on current use it would run out in only 3,650,000 years or so. (One load per day for 10,000 years with each load generating the same amount of electricity used in a year.)
Check out this non-evil label. The fact that they give exactly 50% of the sale price (not net profit) to the artist is one of my biggest reasons for buying there. That plus no-DRM MP3, OGG, FLAC and CD-quality WAV files (complete with CDDB info.)
in Huntsville, Alabama... It was so cold in the winter
I realized you were just joking when I read that. Cold in Alabama? Try going to Wisconsin or Canada in the winter.
BTW, yeah, I know you *thought* it was cold. We went to Florida for training a couple of years ago. Nearly everybody local to the area had winter jackets on... some with furry hoods and mittens. But we were wearing shorts and t-shirts and enjoying the balmy 70 degree day.
If they do try, they will fail miserably. The lack of scarcity of addresses will destroy any central control of the address space.
However, lack of scarcity doesn't have a large affect in monopolistic situations. Charter Pipeline charges a monthly fee to provide you with a static IP address.
On the surface, it might appear that this is due to scarcity, however, this really isn't the case. I am using an IP address at all times. Whether it is a dynamic address or a static one is really irrelevant... I'm still tying up one address. That means that not assigning me a static address really doesn't aleviate scarcity at all.
In fact, if there is not an equivelent to NAT for IPv6 (I have no idea if there is or not) then it would be trivial for ISPs to charge per "device" connected to the Internet. While this isn't strictly a per-IP charge, it would be functionally equivelent.
A standardized protocol for sharing music wirelessly with other portable owners (for legal sharing of course.. such as the mp3s from a non-evil record label.)
Long battery life (when not using the WiFi at least)
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like it's the author's idea. Clouds tend to hold in heat that would otherwise be radiated back out. ie: "Greenhouse Effect"
FWIW, the words "trust" and "Internet" haven't belonged together for quite a long time now.
It could be interesting if all the game developers in the US picked/created a cross-platform 3D engine to standardize on. Then maybe they could concentrate more effort on playability and game innovation and less on flipping bits.
I don't recall ever seeing a chicken distraught about missing an unfertilized egg or even one out of a group of chicks. So forgive me if I have a hard time equating this "abuse" to using a human woman's egg without consent.
It was a misguided attempt to stop msblast but it caused a lot of problems itself. We never had a problem with msblast but nachi essentially shut down a couple of our routers and cost us plenty in man-hours to clean up.
I doubt that Dabber is the same deal though. If it were you would expect it to have an expiration date.
Probably not since the original can't claim losses... unless maybe their spammer overlord is paying per infection. Then maybe they can use the DMCA and order all users with infected PCs to remove the offending worm from their system... or else!
If so, what's to keep someone from sneaking a back door into the project?
I'm sure that they wouldn't end up on 10x the number of spam lists than they are already on now. After all, spammers are so honorable.</sarcasm>
Let those who want to be tracked have an ID tag. They can "check one out" and leave whatever identifying info they feel ok with. Ideally have it either only keep the last two checkpoints (so you can get last location and direction.) Regardless, have a return of the ID tag wipe all history. It will help prevent wild animals from tripping your sensors and let those who don't want to be found... not be. If you are worried about theft of the tags, require ID. If a person values their privacy more than the safety net of the tags they don't have to take one. On the surface, it seems like a bit of waste of money. If it prevents a helicopter and search and rescue crew from being dispatched though, I suppose it might pay for itself.
And MS is just as guilty itself. Office-2k runs with restricted rights, however, in order to get the "organizational chart" objects to work, students needed WRITE rights to the freakin C:\WINNT directory!
That's just rediculous.
We'll talk again when a bad patch takes down 1/3 to 1/2 of your systems. (How much of an inconvenience would even 1/10th or 1/20th of them be?)
BTW, now it's WUS not SUS.
Back around 1999, a coworker wrote a "round" routine for foxpro for dos. (Database language for those who have to ask.) It didn't round to the decimal, it rounded to the nearest 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, etc.
The way it did this was to build an array of every fractional value in decimal form, grab the decimal portion of the number, and then search the array for the nearest match.
Even then, this could find the nearest 1/8th in just a small fraction of a second. But it fell down (miserably) if you were looking for the nearest 1/128th, or (since this WAS for database work) you were rounding values from a million records or so.
The solution was to multiply the original number by the denominator (ie: x * 8), round to the nearst whole number and devide it back. So, the code ended up looking something like
The point is that optimization, even then, wasn't neccessarily about squeezing every ounce of speed out of your hardware. It could be more about not doing stupid things in your code, especially if the "stupid" part was going to be run repeatedly during execution.
Someone could have spent a day converting his slow round code to C or assembly and building a new function in a library to call from FoxPro. Not much payoff doing that though.
You could even do the same thing for the code I listed, but then maintainability drops a ton. Now your DB programmers would need to know C or assembly to make changes. (Like adding a check to prevent a divide-by-zero fault?) As it was, it could process a million records in around 6 seconds if I remember... more than fast enough for the job it had to do. Why optimize any further?
So, as much as possible, know how your code is likely going to be used and what the data is going to be. Look for choke points where optimization will acctually make a difference. And know when it's "good enough" vs when it's "as good as possible."
I sure hope the GPL isn't an all or nothing license. What if the GPL was found to be invalid with regards to a specific piece of software and a specific copyright holder (due to some action of the copyright holder?) Then the GPL is invalid for ALL software and would have to be replaced by a new license?
Revoking all rights to GPLed software from SCO might give me a happy, warm, fuzzy feeling, but I don't really think it would be legal. At least not unless SCO actually violated the GPL with regards to nmap. I don't believe the terms of the GPL themselves allow you to restrict WHO can use the software as long as they follow the terms of the license.
Even though SCO's statements are extremely hypocritical, I'm not sure that they constitute a violation of the GPL in general. The $699 license fee for the Linux kernel on the other hand... now THAT I think DOES violate the terms and I would love to see their right to distribute terminated until they change their action.
Without that, how could you estimate size? Was it a 20 KM wide rock moving 400 KPH or a 1 KM wide rock moving 20 KPH? Ok, they may be moving way faster, but I'm sure you get my point.
I'll second that. We upgraded from MSO 97 to MSO 2000 on a bunch of PCs. After the upgrade, they things crawled and were not even usable for the main app they used to run... until a RAM upgrade.
This was without MSO running and without the MSO quick-launcher starting. (Using the quick-launcher uses even MORE memory, but not using it does not prevent the pre-loading of all MSO components.)
I would send them the software along with a letter requesting your money back. Send it certified so you have proof they got it. The last thing you want to do is let them stall you until the 30 days is up.
If you have to take it to court, you can probably file in your local small claims and show proof that you returned it. Of course, it would be even nicer if you could use a different e-mail address and get them to send you an e-mail promissing the refund.
-IANAL, but I play one on /. Take my advice at your own risk.
Nice sig. When I send alerts to my users (primarily for their own benefit for their home PCs) I almost always include something like: "If you are using a Mac or Linux at home instead of Windows, you are at no risk from this virus."
For incoming e-mail, infected attachments are shredded and a message like "This e-mail contained a virus in the file named $filename. For your protection, the file has been deleted. If you were actually expecting this file from the sender@senderdomain.com then you may want to contact them and let them know they could have a virus." ...is tacked onto the message body.
The point is that "somebody" knows that attachments/mail was lost and we still don't have to bounce any infected e-mail back to the From: addy.
For perspective, -14F is 46 degrees below freezing. That is the same as the differenece between freezing and 78 degrees (26C).
For more perspective, at these windchills, frostbite (freezing and damage to the skin) can occurr in as little as 5 minutes.
Now before anyone goes telling me how warm it is compared to where *you* are, here are some fun facts:
Coldest wind chill recorded in canada: -92C (at this temp skin freezes litterally within seconds)
Coldest recorded temp on earth: -129F (-90C) Volstok (and that was WITHOUT windchill!)
Coldest wind chill: Dunno.. but I'm betting it's in the antarctic. I couldn't find it online though. It is not uncommon, however, to have wind chills below -100C there.
None of the three articles I read said it was unlimited. Based on current use it would run out in only 3,650,000 years or so. (One load per day for 10,000 years with each load generating the same amount of electricity used in a year.)
Check out this non-evil label. The fact that they give exactly 50% of the sale price (not net profit) to the artist is one of my biggest reasons for buying there. That plus no-DRM MP3, OGG, FLAC and CD-quality WAV files (complete with CDDB info.)
I realized you were just joking when I read that. Cold in Alabama? Try going to Wisconsin or Canada in the winter.
BTW, yeah, I know you *thought* it was cold. We went to Florida for training a couple of years ago. Nearly everybody local to the area had winter jackets on... some with furry hoods and mittens. But we were wearing shorts and t-shirts and enjoying the balmy 70 degree day.
However, lack of scarcity doesn't have a large affect in monopolistic situations. Charter Pipeline charges a monthly fee to provide you with a static IP address.
On the surface, it might appear that this is due to scarcity, however, this really isn't the case. I am using an IP address at all times. Whether it is a dynamic address or a static one is really irrelevant... I'm still tying up one address. That means that not assigning me a static address really doesn't aleviate scarcity at all.
In fact, if there is not an equivelent to NAT for IPv6 (I have no idea if there is or not) then it would be trivial for ISPs to charge per "device" connected to the Internet. While this isn't strictly a per-IP charge, it would be functionally equivelent.