Free Speech carries a responsibility. It only means that governments aren't allowed to control what you say. It doesn't excuse you making personal insults or defamatory remarks -- and if you say something to me that I don't like, or something about me that might harm my reputation, I am entitled to Do Something About It. And if I so decided, then the government would be on my side -- up to a point, at any rate. The question "what is reasonable?" is decided in the courts.
Spam, viruses and spyware are illegal. Sending unsolicited e-mail is harassment, which is a criminal offence. Installing software on someone else's computer without consent is at least ordinary trespass -- which is a civil offence, and if deceptive techniques are employed to disguise its origin, may be some form of aggravated trespass -- which is a criminal offence.
I don't doubt that if there had never been a roadworthiness test for cars, and somebody suddenly decided now, in the present climate, that it would be a good idea to introduce one, there would be more than reasonable cause to suspect an ulterior motive -- such as Ford or GM Vauxhall trying to sell more new cars, rather than to reduce the levels of accidents and pollution caused by unfit vehicles. But that in itself is symptomatic of a much deeper-rooted problem.
The real problem is that your Government is peddling its arse -- and by extension, your collective arses -- to the corporations.
Amen to that. There is a need for somebody to regulate computer misuse. Look at all the bloody spam..... with forged HELOs, meaningless words to trick Bayesian filtering, and obfuscated text, it's clear that it's being sent against the recipients' wishes -- that's probably already a criminal offence in most countries. And a fair proportion of it is coming from virus-infested Windows PCs owned by clueless ADSL users. Deliberately infecting computers with viruses is a criminal offence in most countries. So is installing spyware -- hell, it's pretty much indistinguible from a virus anyway when you look at it from a user's perspective.
Most countries require vehicles used on the public highway to pass a roadworthiness test, and motorists accept this as necessary insofar as it's preferable to the dangers that would be posed by unroadworthy vehicles. Likewise, most countries have an authority responsible for ensuring that aircraft are not likely to drop out of the skies mid-flight, and it's generally accepted that this is better than the alternative. In the UK at least, there is very tight control over the RF spectrum: a licence is required to operate almost any kind of radio transmitter.
So why not have some authority responsible for "networthiness" ? Of course, that authority must remain accountable to the people in whose name it acts. It would be absolutely unacceptable for the FCC to favour particular hardware or software over others because someone was paying them to do so -- bad regulation is worse than no regulation at all. But good regulation would make sense. If it helps to clean up the virus, spam and spyware menace, then that must be for the better.
What is needed is a system of checks and balances -- and no hidden agendas. Which in itself should set off a few alarm bells. Policing networthiness is likely to cost money, after all, which is the reason why nobody has tried to do it until now. If somebody has decided to pone up the money after all this time, the people have a right to know who and why.
I have an idea for a robbery technique. I was thinking to patent it, as it depends on a recent change and so there cannot be any prior art. I don't see why the criminals should be the only ones making money out of crime! Let them steal goods and money, for sure, but they'll have to pay me royalties if they want to do it the way I thought up.
However, then I thought it might be better to phrase the claim as a technique for being robbed instead. This ought to be more lucrative. The perpetrator may not get caught after all, and the victim probably is insured anyway.
There's a simple way around that which would allow any content-creator to be paid for their work. All that is required is a secure way to arrange small monetary transactions. It works like this:
Band announce that they have an album ready, and will release it to the world as soon as £X has been raised in pledges.
Punters pledge a fixed amount of money each -- no more than they'd be prepared never to see again if the worst happened -- which is held in limbo until the next step is completed.
Either the target is reached, the album is released and the money goes to the band; or the target is not reached, the album is not released and all monies pledged are refunded.
After the release of the album, copies could be made available for paid download for a nominal fee {which would go straight to the band}. Since the majority of people don't actually begrudge bands the pittance they get under the present regime {it's just the fatcat middlemen we can't stand}, the system ought to work OK.
I have three filament bulbs in my home -- that's including one in the fridge and one in the sewing machine. {No light in the oven. I was thinking to fix a gas mantle on a wire so that it could be lowered into or out of the burner to provide a light; but I changed my mind when I found out what was in them. Besides which, haven't you ever heard of baking blind?:) } The third one is in my bedside lamp; it's on a turn-for-off dimmer switch {thus precluding any kind of fluorescent} and so tends to last about five years at a stretch. This is only ever on for short periods like long enough to get out of bed and put the main light on, or perhaps an hour of reading. Everything else is lit by compact fluorescents {with a standard push-and-twist base fitting like any ordinary light bulb; note that the cheaper ones are only double-folded and so longer than the more expensive triple-folded ones} except the loft, which is lit by "ordinary" fluorescent strip lights. {Unfortunately they're low power factor types, but just require some additional capacitors to correct this. Anyway, the main issue with low power factor is voltage drop in the cable, and I happen to know there's less than 10 metres of 1.0mm2 copper T&E cable from the fusebox to the luminaire in this case.}
If you're retrofitting, compact fluorescents are the obvious way of doing it. If you're wiring from scratch, it might be worth using small fluorescent striplights. Avoid halogen lights at any cost -- they're still filament bulbs. It may be worth arranging rooms so as to take advantage of natural daylight as far as possible. I guess I'm lucky living in a Victorian two-up-two-down, since this would have been designed with the sun as the primary illumination source. Judging by the evidence I've seen, the building was first wired for electricity sometime early last century {definitely before WWII} and completely re-wired about 25 years ago.
Don't use batteries, they pollute the environment something shocking. Use a mains adaptor instead, possibly even an old phone recharger or similar. Note that the voltage ratings quoted on the label are only for show and don't reflect what your trusty AVO will indicate.
Measure the output voltage, subtract the forward voltage of the LEDs {add together if wiring several in series} to get the "excess" voltage {guess 2V if you don't know it, 3V for blue or white diodes} to find out the excess voltage.
Select a suitable resistor to give about 20mA of current, it is not critical that this be spot on or anything, using the formula R = V / I -- where V is the excess voltage that needs to be dropped, I = 0.02 {because we said 20 milliamps but the formula wants whole amps} and R will be in ohms. Now resistors are made only in certain values, usually multiples of 10, 12, 15, 18, 22, 27, 33, 39, 47, 56, 68 and 82, so choose the nearest; eg. if your power supply is putting out 4.9V and your LED wants 2V, you have to drop 2.9V at 0.02A so R = 2.9 / 0.02 = 290 / 2 = 145, so use a 150 ohm resistor.
Finally, work out the power rating required, by multiplying the voltage dropped across the resistor by the current through it. In this case, P = 2.9 * 0.02 = 0.058 watts, so a 0.25W resistor will do fine.
Each room will need a separate switch and resistor, but if you have the volts available you can put multiple LEDs in series from the same switch. Watch the current consumption doesn't exceed the power supply rating: as you get close to it, the voltage will start to fall and the LEDs will get dim. But power supplies of this kind must be short-circuit-safe by law, so you won't burn your house down even if you do actually overload it.
Yes, writing software takes effort. Might I humbly suggest that, if you don't like the idea that that effort may go unrewarded if you choose to charge too high a price for your implementation of it, then you shouldn't make the effort in the first place?
You don't have an automatic right to get money just because something you do is hard. That's just a lie that Capitalist governments tell you in order to make you work harder for them. Now, when you read that you probably got angry and resentful. Please try to understand that your anger and resentment are not at me for being all calm and serene while pointing out the truth, but at yourself for believing the lie for so long. Knowing this, you can turn them into something positive and help to change the system so that in future nobody has to suffer the same way.
What these counterfeters are doing is completely wrong, as they are taking complete rips without liscense and selling them for a profit, and making them look like an offical Nintendo product
But then your sig says
Please do your part and become a libertarian today.
And it's at this point that I'm confused because you appear to be contradicting yourself. In a Libertarian society, there would not exist the artificial concept we understand as "intellectual property". All ideas, once expressed, would immediately enter the Public Domain. This is pretty much how things actually used to be, once upon a time.
An idea -- unlike, let's say, a packet of cereal or a cake -- is not diminished by the act of sharing. If I have a lit candle, and you have an unlit candle which you light from the flame of my lit candle, my room does not get any darker than it was before you lit it. And if, after you have left my room, some third party light a candle from the flame of yours, my room still does not get any darker.
Under the present, restrictive regime, there are laws to restrict copying because it interferes with a corporation's ability to make money. Such a concept runs essentially counter to Libertarian beliefs. In a Libertarian society you would have to deal with the idea that someone else could take an idea you thought of, improve on it a little and make more money selling it than you did -- with only the thought that you could do exactly the same thing to them for consolation.
So, which way do you want to have it? Intellectual Property or Libertarianism? You can't eat your cake and have it, you know.
I always thought that electronics was everything that happened when charges were in motion, and electrostatics was whatever happened when those same charges were standing still. Doesn't an electromagnetic relay depend for its operation on the flow of an electrical current {as opposed to the accumulation of electrical charge}; and therefore belong to the domain of electronics as opposed to electrostatics?
It worked for me. This is the almost-exact code I used:
<html> <head> <title>Test of mixed local and remote content</title> </head> <body> <h1>Test of mixed local and remote content</h1> <img src="gfx/picture1.jpg"/> <p>The above image originates from the remote server.</p> <img src="http://127.0.0.1/gfx/picture2.jpg"/> <p>The above image originates from the local server.</p> </body> </html>
As long as "picture1.jpg" is in the directory "gfx/" on the remote server and "picture2.jpg" is in the directory "/var/www/html/gfx/" on the local machine, both display fine -- or at least they do on my copy.
Alternatively, you could put a simple script on the remote server that will http:// GET the graphic straight from the local machine, and use this as the src for your <img/> tag. Then, as far as Firefox is concerned, the image is originating from the remote server. The downside, of course, is you have to upload and download the image every time you display it.
We're always told how America is the Land of the Free Market and Government Regulation is a Bad Thing. Yet the instant someone tries practising free-market economics for real over there, they're suddenly evil. What the hell difference is there between this type of counterfeiting, and what every supermarket is doing with its "own brand" copies of bestselling goods anyway? Isn't Tesco Rich Blend Instant Coffee just counterfeit Nescafé? Aren't Sainsbury's Rice Pops just counterfeit Kellogg's Rice Krispies? What's the freakin' difference already?
Joe Punter isn't going to be fooled for one minute into believing this sort of thing is endorsed by Nintendo. Nor, at that price, is he going to be bothered whether it is or not. All it has to do is keep the kids entertained for longer than they will take to break it. Realness isn't part of the equation. And if some third party can satisfy the relevant factors, then they're going to be the ones that get the money. Pure and simple.
It's the same thing with the obviously fake designer clothing sold on market stalls, and those awful fake Rolex watches you can spot a mile off {hint: a real Rolex does not go around in jerks. Just on the wrists of jerks}. Nobody's expecting it to be real, and nobody's disappointed that it isn't.
You know, just maybe if perhaps "official" stuff wasn't so overpriced, there might be a chance that people perhaps wouldn't feel so much of an urge to counterfeit it, possibly. It's all very well to say that if you're poor and have principles, you should do without; and I should know all there is to know about doing without. But while there are all these big rich corporations wanting to eat their cake and have it*, while simultaneously shoving it in your face that if you don't have foo you're obviously a loser, what the hell kind of example is that setting?
I've never understood why Western nations allow the importation of goods manufactured under conditions which would not be acceptable in the destination country; for instance, environmental pollution, unsanitary and/or unsafe working conditions, no trade union representation &c. With our strict controls on pollution and workers' welfare, how can we hope to compete with that?
The cynic in me thinks, however, that in order to boost the ailing manufacturing industries in the UK and USA, Bush and Blair will level the field by loosening our factory codes to third-world levels. The Dole will be scrapped. Instead, the unemployed -- and their kids -- will be forced to work a sixteen-hour day for a single bowl of rice, and not given anything to drink if they don't work hard enough.
Why bother comparing? Just mix the two {or more} soundtracks. You'll probably create enough errors so as to throw the thing right off target. Also, if the cinema has an induction loop for the hard-of-hearing, you can take a quite pure audio-only recording from that with just a simple flat coil of wire.
It ought to be obvious that reducing the kinetic energy of the wind by turning some of it into electricity is going to have an effect. Winds are a means of transporting energy from one place to another. A wind turbine extracts some of it, so while the source end still gets rid of the same amount of energy, it's a fair bet that at least some of the Earth's life-forms have evolved around the assumption that that energy is actually going to be delivered -- and are going to be disappointed.
Plus you've got the problems not only of what you do when the wind is not blowing, but how do you actually ensure that the turbine rotates at a steady 3000rpm (to give you 50 cycles a second, which many appliances depend on)?
You should be grateful of your low gas price. 79.9 cents a litre? In the UK we pay more than that number of pence. I don't know exactly how much 'cause I don't have a car, but it must be around the 80p/L mark.
This was the method I used in my first attempt to write a prime-number generator. I figured that any positive integer can be written as 6n, 6n+1, 6n+2, 6n+3, 6n+4 or 6n+5 where n is an integer; and furthermore, 6n, 6n+2 and 6n+4 are definitely even, while 6n+3 is definitely a multiple of three. So we only need to try 6n+1 and 6n+5 to see if they are primes. Also, the smallest prime factor of a non-prime number must be smaller than or equal to its square root; so you don't need to try every known prime for divisibility. Rather than do a square root, though, I squared the testing_factor and compared it with the prime_candidate. This is quicker for small prime_candidates; but, as the list of known primes {and thus testing_factors} grows, eventually the many multiplications will start to take longer than one square root evaluation. The crossover point actually is a system-by-system variable, since it depends on FPU performance.
I subsequently worked out that any list of primes stopping one shy of a product of primes-so-far {6, 30, 210, 2310..... } can be used, with very slight modification, as a sort of pre-sieve to eliminate things that are never going to be primes. For instance, looking at 30n+m, the "potential primes" are 30n+1, 30n+7, 30n+11, 30n+13, 30n+17, 30n+19, 30n+23 and 30n+29. {The primes smaller than 30 are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23 and 29; see how we simply have excluded everything which is a factor of 30, and included 1.} This list is good up to and including 209 {210 = 2 * 3 * 5 * 7} beyond which a new list will apply going something like 210n+1, 210n+11, 210n+13..... }
Now this is beginning to look like a recursive process! Mind, we're getting longer and longer lists as the density of primes is getting smaller. Hmm..... I think I might have to go and investigate.....
You'd think someone would have come up with a feature in a text editor for tidying up the alignment of posh brackets to conform to preferences, so this sort of thing wouldn't be an issue. My second-favourite editor, Kate, already highlights corresponding opening and closing brackets, be they round, square or posh..... surely a tidier can't be far off. Maybe in KDE4!
Anyway, my personal preference is for the opening posh bracket to be on the same line as the loop control statement {if/while/foreach &c.}, all the stuff inside the loop indented by 4 spaces, and the closing posh bracket lined up with the first letter of the loop control statement above, on a line by itself {well, maybe a trailing semicolon; but definitely not } else { all on one line -- that's just minging}. I believe this is the original K&R style. Fewer than 4 spaces doesn't look indented enough {this may not be a problem unless you want to use a last if...}, and more than 4 spaces takes up too much room without adding clarity. {In Perl, I like my trailing ifs and unlesses to line up.}
For me, indenting is all about indicating what belongs together and where natural breaks occur. Bits of programmes are like paragraphs. Putting the opening { on a line by itself wastes a line {in writing, if you start a new paragraph with an indent, you don't need a blank line as well}. I briefly flirted once with the idea of placing the closing bracket on the end of the last indented line. This was compact, but had the slight disadvantage of causing my code to look like Python..... Also, I always expected there to come a {nearly} blank line after the loopy bit, so things weren't broken up quite so neatly.
In other words, it doesn't actually offer you any real protection at all
Explain please. I jump to a stack address and my program blows up. How is that not protection?
That sort of thing shouldn't happen in the first place. If it's an accident, something you're using is seriously broken. If it's on purpose..... well, that's a different matter altogether.
I have been making veiled allusions to the idea that NX by itself doesn't stop someone running malicious code if they really want to. Obviously these were too heavily veiled, for which I apologise. Since a processor which includes "NX" protection must have the ability to execute code from somewhere, all it takes is for someone to get a programme running somehow, to patch in a new exception handler which will then arrange for the "NX" code to be executed -- whether that be by clearing the NX flag {assuming the hardware is based on legacy designs; the 8080 could execute instructions supplied by external devices for chuff's sake, and that was the real point of the eight RST instructions if you ask me -- they all go 00xxx000.....}, copying the code to an executable portion of memory, or by implementing an emulator {sounds hard, but where there's a will, there's a way, and believe me, there's a will alright}.
BTW, someone mentioned memory drums..... You didn't need stacks in those days. You knew how long your subroutine was, and before you called it you overwrote the instruction after last with a jump to where you wanted to return to. Or, if you were lucky, the address of the instruction that would have executed next had you not jumped would be in a register when you did jump; and you then could store it straight into the address field of a jump instruction that you happened to know was your "return". First-generation ARM processors used to work exactly that way.
Aren't you relying on the compiler's internals to some extent at least, every time you ever compile anything?
Only to the extent that it fulfills its role as a compiler, as defined by the language standard and documentation. Internal undocumented behavior is not included.
The compiler source code is part of the documentation. Admittedly, it's a highly advanced topic; but it's not one you should be afraid of. Of course, if you assumed without checking that b[0] would follow a[199], and you failed to comment in your code what you were doing when you mucked about with a[200], then you deserve what you get.
the NX bit means that pointing your PC register at a protected page causes an exception. How is that decorative?
It's decorative in the sense of a thin paper screen in front of an open fire. In other words, it doesn't actually offer you any real protection at all; but a person who did not fully appreciate what would be the likely consequence of a hot piece of fuel being ejected from the fireplace towards such a screen, might nonetheless feel lulled into a false sense of security by its presence -- and end up getting burned worse than if the screen wasn't there.
Never rely on the compiler's internals. The reason C allows such behavior [sic] is due to its nature as a portable assembler language.
Any why shouldn't you rely on the compiler's internals, if you have read and understood the source code? Aren't you relying on the compiler's internals to some extent at least, every time you ever compile anything?
NX is a standarad [sic] feature on x86 and has been for a long time. It is probably included in the other major architectures as well.
It's still strictly for decoration, though -- and I hope I don't have to point out why that is so. If anybody actually relies upon non-executability of data marked NX for a mission-critical application, they will be in trouble.
It is possible to write bad code in any computationally-complete language. (Corollary: Any language which makes it actually impossible to write bad code is computationally incomplete).
It's also possible to write good code in a language that lets you write bad code. Perl has a bad {and IMHO undeserved} reputation, but there are two words that will keep you safe: use strict;
There is a reason why C does not implement bounds checking. It is because the creators of C assumed any programmer either would have the sense to do so for themself, or would have a bloody good reason for wanting to do it that way. It's like a cutting tool which will let you start the motor even without all the guards in place. For the odd, freak case where you have to do something the manufacturers never thought of, it might be necessary to do things that way {think, a really unusual shaped workpiece which fouls on the guard no matter which side you try to cut it from, but which is physically big enough that you can hold it with both hands well clear of any moving machinery; two arrays where you know, from reading the compiler source code, that they will be stored one after another in memory where b[0] just happens also to be referenceable as a[200]}. The fact that I can't think of a plausible situation off the top of my head certainly doesn't mean there isn't one.
Bounds checking as a matter of course would serve only to slow things down needlessly. Yes, the ability to exceed bounds can be abused. But you don't always need the check, and UNIX/C philosophy eschews performing any action without an explicit request. Sometimes the check is implicit. For instance, if you do a % or && operation, or are reading from a type such as a char, you already know the limits within which the answer must lie; so why need your programming language re-check them for you? And if you're only reading a value from an array and you don't actually set too much store by what comes out {maybe it's just some text you're presenting to the user}, then you could quite conceivably get away without doing any bounds-checking.
Powerful tools are by definition potentially dangerous, and inherently-safe tools are by definition underpowered. But that isn't the problem. The problem is that programmers today are being brought up on "toy" languages with all the wipe-your-arse-for-you stuff, and never learning to respect what happens when you don't have all the handholding in place.
Of course it's easier to blame the language, and more so when you are trying to sell people an expensive programming language that claims to make it harder to write bad code {and quite probably harder to write code that runs on anything less than 2GHz, but that's not your concern if you don't actually sell hardware}.
PS. It's my bold prediction that before "no execute" becomes a standard feature on every processor, there will be an exploit allowing stuff labelled NX to be executed. It requires just one clueless user somewhere in the world with access to a broadband line, and ultimately will royally screw over any software that depends on NX for correct operation. More in next topic to mention this particular red herring.
Not only that, it's connected to the computer by a piece of freakin' wire. There's your obvious point of attack, for crying out loud. You don't need a gelatin mould made from a fingerprint found on the surface of the sensor {about an hour's work if you're quick and have prepared the kit in advance}, you just need to intercept and replicate the stream of zeros and ones from the reader to the computer. And you're in. Of course there's probably an easier way, like making sure the driver never loads.
It's a freakin' toy is what it is. Trouble with devices like this is that to a pointy-hair, it looks like a good idea {"ooh, shiny! Fingerprint sensor!"} And "solutions" like this get deployed in place of more obvious, real security measures. Once you start thinking about it hard enough, you see how any retro-fit security measure can be broken. A retro-fit measure like this works by disabling something that's normally possible. Designed-in security always works by enabling something that's normally impossible.
If the thing actually supplied a decryption key for an encrypted partition on the hard drive it would be a little more secure. But the USB cable alone makes it vulnerable -- it'd have to be right there on the motherboard. And maybe have a flip-action shutter interlocked with a mechanism to wipe the sensor clean, to try to stop anyone else lifting your prints with pencil sharpenings and adhesive tape {if you're in an office I bet you can find both these items within three metres of yourself right now. I can}.
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Free Speech carries a responsibility. It only means that governments aren't allowed to control what you say. It doesn't excuse you making personal insults or defamatory remarks -- and if you say something to me that I don't like, or something about me that might harm my reputation, I am entitled to Do Something About It. And if I so decided, then the government would be on my side -- up to a point, at any rate. The question "what is reasonable?" is decided in the courts.
Spam, viruses and spyware are illegal. Sending unsolicited e-mail is harassment, which is a criminal offence. Installing software on someone else's computer without consent is at least ordinary trespass -- which is a civil offence, and if deceptive techniques are employed to disguise its origin, may be some form of aggravated trespass -- which is a criminal offence.
I don't doubt that if there had never been a roadworthiness test for cars, and somebody suddenly decided now, in the present climate, that it would be a good idea to introduce one, there would be more than reasonable cause to suspect an ulterior motive -- such as Ford or GM Vauxhall trying to sell more new cars, rather than to reduce the levels of accidents and pollution caused by unfit vehicles. But that in itself is symptomatic of a much deeper-rooted problem.
The real problem is that your Government is peddling its arse -- and by extension, your collective arses -- to the corporations.
Amen to that. There is a need for somebody to regulate computer misuse. Look at all the bloody spam ..... with forged HELOs, meaningless words to trick Bayesian filtering, and obfuscated text, it's clear that it's being sent against the recipients' wishes -- that's probably already a criminal offence in most countries. And a fair proportion of it is coming from virus-infested Windows PCs owned by clueless ADSL users. Deliberately infecting computers with viruses is a criminal offence in most countries. So is installing spyware -- hell, it's pretty much indistinguible from a virus anyway when you look at it from a user's perspective.
Most countries require vehicles used on the public highway to pass a roadworthiness test, and motorists accept this as necessary insofar as it's preferable to the dangers that would be posed by unroadworthy vehicles. Likewise, most countries have an authority responsible for ensuring that aircraft are not likely to drop out of the skies mid-flight, and it's generally accepted that this is better than the alternative. In the UK at least, there is very tight control over the RF spectrum: a licence is required to operate almost any kind of radio transmitter.
So why not have some authority responsible for "networthiness" ? Of course, that authority must remain accountable to the people in whose name it acts. It would be absolutely unacceptable for the FCC to favour particular hardware or software over others because someone was paying them to do so -- bad regulation is worse than no regulation at all. But good regulation would make sense. If it helps to clean up the virus, spam and spyware menace, then that must be for the better.
What is needed is a system of checks and balances -- and no hidden agendas. Which in itself should set off a few alarm bells. Policing networthiness is likely to cost money, after all, which is the reason why nobody has tried to do it until now. If somebody has decided to pone up the money after all this time, the people have a right to know who and why.
You'd be laughed out of the patent office if you tried anything like that. There's far too much prior art .....
I have an idea for a robbery technique. I was thinking to patent it, as it depends on a recent change and so there cannot be any prior art. I don't see why the criminals should be the only ones making money out of crime! Let them steal goods and money, for sure, but they'll have to pay me royalties if they want to do it the way I thought up.
However, then I thought it might be better to phrase the claim as a technique for being robbed instead. This ought to be more lucrative. The perpetrator may not get caught after all, and the victim probably is insured anyway.
- Band announce that they have an album ready, and will release it to the world as soon as £X has been raised in pledges.
- Punters pledge a fixed amount of money each -- no more than they'd be prepared never to see again if the worst happened -- which is held in limbo until the next step is completed.
- Either the target is reached, the album is released and the money goes to the band; or the target is not reached, the album is not released and all monies pledged are refunded.
After the release of the album, copies could be made available for paid download for a nominal fee {which would go straight to the band}. Since the majority of people don't actually begrudge bands the pittance they get under the present regime {it's just the fatcat middlemen we can't stand}, the system ought to work OK.I have three filament bulbs in my home -- that's including one in the fridge and one in the sewing machine. {No light in the oven. I was thinking to fix a gas mantle on a wire so that it could be lowered into or out of the burner to provide a light; but I changed my mind when I found out what was in them. Besides which, haven't you ever heard of baking blind? :) } The third one is in my bedside lamp; it's on a turn-for-off dimmer switch {thus precluding any kind of fluorescent} and so tends to last about five years at a stretch. This is only ever on for short periods like long enough to get out of bed and put the main light on, or perhaps an hour of reading. Everything else is lit by compact fluorescents {with a standard push-and-twist base fitting like any ordinary light bulb; note that the cheaper ones are only double-folded and so longer than the more expensive triple-folded ones} except the loft, which is lit by "ordinary" fluorescent strip lights. {Unfortunately they're low power factor types, but just require some additional capacitors to correct this. Anyway, the main issue with low power factor is voltage drop in the cable, and I happen to know there's less than 10 metres of 1.0mm2 copper T&E cable from the fusebox to the luminaire in this case.}
If you're retrofitting, compact fluorescents are the obvious way of doing it. If you're wiring from scratch, it might be worth using small fluorescent striplights. Avoid halogen lights at any cost -- they're still filament bulbs. It may be worth arranging rooms so as to take advantage of natural daylight as far as possible. I guess I'm lucky living in a Victorian two-up-two-down, since this would have been designed with the sun as the primary illumination source. Judging by the evidence I've seen, the building was first wired for electricity sometime early last century {definitely before WWII} and completely re-wired about 25 years ago.
Don't use batteries, they pollute the environment something shocking. Use a mains adaptor instead, possibly even an old phone recharger or similar. Note that the voltage ratings quoted on the label are only for show and don't reflect what your trusty AVO will indicate.
Measure the output voltage, subtract the forward voltage of the LEDs {add together if wiring several in series} to get the "excess" voltage {guess 2V if you don't know it, 3V for blue or white diodes} to find out the excess voltage.
Select a suitable resistor to give about 20mA of current, it is not critical that this be spot on or anything, using the formula R = V / I -- where V is the excess voltage that needs to be dropped, I = 0.02 {because we said 20 milliamps but the formula wants whole amps} and R will be in ohms. Now resistors are made only in certain values, usually multiples of 10, 12, 15, 18, 22, 27, 33, 39, 47, 56, 68 and 82, so choose the nearest; eg. if your power supply is putting out 4.9V and your LED wants 2V, you have to drop 2.9V at 0.02A so R = 2.9 / 0.02 = 290 / 2 = 145, so use a 150 ohm resistor.
Finally, work out the power rating required, by multiplying the voltage dropped across the resistor by the current through it. In this case, P = 2.9 * 0.02 = 0.058 watts, so a 0.25W resistor will do fine.
Each room will need a separate switch and resistor, but if you have the volts available you can put multiple LEDs in series from the same switch. Watch the current consumption doesn't exceed the power supply rating: as you get close to it, the voltage will start to fall and the LEDs will get dim. But power supplies of this kind must be short-circuit-safe by law, so you won't burn your house down even if you do actually overload it.
Yes, writing software takes effort. Might I humbly suggest that, if you don't like the idea that that effort may go unrewarded if you choose to charge too high a price for your implementation of it, then you shouldn't make the effort in the first place?
You don't have an automatic right to get money just because something you do is hard. That's just a lie that Capitalist governments tell you in order to make you work harder for them. Now, when you read that you probably got angry and resentful. Please try to understand that your anger and resentment are not at me for being all calm and serene while pointing out the truth, but at yourself for believing the lie for so long. Knowing this, you can turn them into something positive and help to change the system so that in future nobody has to suffer the same way.
An idea -- unlike, let's say, a packet of cereal or a cake -- is not diminished by the act of sharing. If I have a lit candle, and you have an unlit candle which you light from the flame of my lit candle, my room does not get any darker than it was before you lit it. And if, after you have left my room, some third party light a candle from the flame of yours, my room still does not get any darker.
Under the present, restrictive regime, there are laws to restrict copying because it interferes with a corporation's ability to make money. Such a concept runs essentially counter to Libertarian beliefs. In a Libertarian society you would have to deal with the idea that someone else could take an idea you thought of, improve on it a little and make more money selling it than you did -- with only the thought that you could do exactly the same thing to them for consolation.
So, which way do you want to have it? Intellectual Property or Libertarianism? You can't eat your cake and have it, you know.
I always thought that electronics was everything that happened when charges were in motion, and electrostatics was whatever happened when those same charges were standing still. Doesn't an electromagnetic relay depend for its operation on the flow of an electrical current {as opposed to the accumulation of electrical charge}; and therefore belong to the domain of electronics as opposed to electrostatics?
It worked for me. This is the almost-exact code I used:
/> />
/> tag. Then, as far as Firefox is concerned, the image is originating from the remote server. The downside, of course, is you have to upload and download the image every time you display it.
<html>
<head>
<title>Test of mixed local and remote content</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Test of mixed local and remote content</h1>
<img src="gfx/picture1.jpg"
<p>The above image originates from the remote server.</p>
<img src="http://127.0.0.1/gfx/picture2.jpg"
<p>The above image originates from the local server.</p>
</body>
</html>
As long as "picture1.jpg" is in the directory "gfx/" on the remote server and "picture2.jpg" is in the directory "/var/www/html/gfx/" on the local machine, both display fine -- or at least they do on my copy.
Alternatively, you could put a simple script on the remote server that will http:// GET the graphic straight from the local machine, and use this as the src for your <img
We're always told how America is the Land of the Free Market and Government Regulation is a Bad Thing. Yet the instant someone tries practising free-market economics for real over there, they're suddenly evil. What the hell difference is there between this type of counterfeiting, and what every supermarket is doing with its "own brand" copies of bestselling goods anyway? Isn't Tesco Rich Blend Instant Coffee just counterfeit Nescafé? Aren't Sainsbury's Rice Pops just counterfeit Kellogg's Rice Krispies? What's the freakin' difference already?
Joe Punter isn't going to be fooled for one minute into believing this sort of thing is endorsed by Nintendo. Nor, at that price, is he going to be bothered whether it is or not. All it has to do is keep the kids entertained for longer than they will take to break it. Realness isn't part of the equation. And if some third party can satisfy the relevant factors, then they're going to be the ones that get the money. Pure and simple.
It's the same thing with the obviously fake designer clothing sold on market stalls, and those awful fake Rolex watches you can spot a mile off {hint: a real Rolex does not go around in jerks. Just on the wrists of jerks}. Nobody's expecting it to be real, and nobody's disappointed that it isn't.
You know, just maybe if perhaps "official" stuff wasn't so overpriced, there might be a chance that people perhaps wouldn't feel so much of an urge to counterfeit it, possibly. It's all very well to say that if you're poor and have principles, you should do without; and I should know all there is to know about doing without. But while there are all these big rich corporations wanting to eat their cake and have it*, while simultaneously shoving it in your face that if you don't have foo you're obviously a loser, what the hell kind of example is that setting?
* I just think it sounds better that way around.
I've never understood why Western nations allow the importation of goods manufactured under conditions which would not be acceptable in the destination country; for instance, environmental pollution, unsanitary and/or unsafe working conditions, no trade union representation &c. With our strict controls on pollution and workers' welfare, how can we hope to compete with that?
The cynic in me thinks, however, that in order to boost the ailing manufacturing industries in the UK and USA, Bush and Blair will level the field by loosening our factory codes to third-world levels. The Dole will be scrapped. Instead, the unemployed -- and their kids -- will be forced to work a sixteen-hour day for a single bowl of rice, and not given anything to drink if they don't work hard enough.
Although that's a nice-sounding idea, you might want to remember what happens when infra-red radiation falls on absorbent matter .....
At the sort of levels it would take to saturate a camcorder's sensor, you'd cook the audience.
Why bother comparing? Just mix the two {or more} soundtracks. You'll probably create enough errors so as to throw the thing right off target. Also, if the cinema has an induction loop for the hard-of-hearing, you can take a quite pure audio-only recording from that with just a simple flat coil of wire.
This is a solution without a problem.
It's just you. mpg321 manages quite happily without skinnability. MP3s are for listening to, not looking at.
It ought to be obvious that reducing the kinetic energy of the wind by turning some of it into electricity is going to have an effect. Winds are a means of transporting energy from one place to another. A wind turbine extracts some of it, so while the source end still gets rid of the same amount of energy, it's a fair bet that at least some of the Earth's life-forms have evolved around the assumption that that energy is actually going to be delivered -- and are going to be disappointed.
Plus you've got the problems not only of what you do when the wind is not blowing, but how do you actually ensure that the turbine rotates at a steady 3000rpm (to give you 50 cycles a second, which many appliances depend on)?
You should be grateful of your low gas price. 79.9 cents a litre? In the UK we pay more than that number of pence. I don't know exactly how much 'cause I don't have a car, but it must be around the 80p/L mark.
This was the method I used in my first attempt to write a prime-number generator. I figured that any positive integer can be written as 6n, 6n+1, 6n+2, 6n+3, 6n+4 or 6n+5 where n is an integer; and furthermore, 6n, 6n+2 and 6n+4 are definitely even, while 6n+3 is definitely a multiple of three. So we only need to try 6n+1 and 6n+5 to see if they are primes. Also, the smallest prime factor of a non-prime number must be smaller than or equal to its square root; so you don't need to try every known prime for divisibility. Rather than do a square root, though, I squared the testing_factor and compared it with the prime_candidate. This is quicker for small prime_candidates; but, as the list of known primes {and thus testing_factors} grows, eventually the many multiplications will start to take longer than one square root evaluation. The crossover point actually is a system-by-system variable, since it depends on FPU performance.
..... } can be used, with very slight modification, as a sort of pre-sieve to eliminate things that are never going to be primes. For instance, looking at 30n+m, the "potential primes" are 30n+1, 30n+7, 30n+11, 30n+13, 30n+17, 30n+19, 30n+23 and 30n+29. {The primes smaller than 30 are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23 and 29; see how we simply have excluded everything which is a factor of 30, and included 1.} This list is good up to and including 209 {210 = 2 * 3 * 5 * 7} beyond which a new list will apply going something like 210n+1, 210n+11, 210n+13 ..... }
..... I think I might have to go and investigate .....
I subsequently worked out that any list of primes stopping one shy of a product of primes-so-far {6, 30, 210, 2310
Now this is beginning to look like a recursive process! Mind, we're getting longer and longer lists as the density of primes is getting smaller. Hmm
You'd think someone would have come up with a feature in a text editor for tidying up the alignment of posh brackets to conform to preferences, so this sort of thing wouldn't be an issue. My second-favourite editor, Kate, already highlights corresponding opening and closing brackets, be they round, square or posh ..... surely a tidier can't be far off. Maybe in KDE4!
...}, and more than 4 spaces takes up too much room without adding clarity. {In Perl, I like my trailing ifs and unlesses to line up.}
..... Also, I always expected there to come a {nearly} blank line after the loopy bit, so things weren't broken up quite so neatly.
Anyway, my personal preference is for the opening posh bracket to be on the same line as the loop control statement {if/while/foreach &c.}, all the stuff inside the loop indented by 4 spaces, and the closing posh bracket lined up with the first letter of the loop control statement above, on a line by itself {well, maybe a trailing semicolon; but definitely not } else { all on one line -- that's just minging}. I believe this is the original K&R style. Fewer than 4 spaces doesn't look indented enough {this may not be a problem unless you want to use a last if
For me, indenting is all about indicating what belongs together and where natural breaks occur. Bits of programmes are like paragraphs. Putting the opening { on a line by itself wastes a line {in writing, if you start a new paragraph with an indent, you don't need a blank line as well}. I briefly flirted once with the idea of placing the closing bracket on the end of the last indented line. This was compact, but had the slight disadvantage of causing my code to look like Python
I have been making veiled allusions to the idea that NX by itself doesn't stop someone running malicious code if they really want to. Obviously these were too heavily veiled, for which I apologise. Since a processor which includes "NX" protection must have the ability to execute code from somewhere, all it takes is for someone to get a programme running somehow, to patch in a new exception handler which will then arrange for the "NX" code to be executed -- whether that be by clearing the NX flag {assuming the hardware is based on legacy designs; the 8080 could execute instructions supplied by external devices for chuff's sake, and that was the real point of the eight RST instructions if you ask me -- they all go 00xxx000
BTW, someone mentioned memory drums
It is possible to write bad code in any computationally-complete language. (Corollary: Any language which makes it actually impossible to write bad code is computationally incomplete).
It's also possible to write good code in a language that lets you write bad code. Perl has a bad {and IMHO undeserved} reputation, but there are two words that will keep you safe: use strict;
There is a reason why C does not implement bounds checking. It is because the creators of C assumed any programmer either would have the sense to do so for themself, or would have a bloody good reason for wanting to do it that way. It's like a cutting tool which will let you start the motor even without all the guards in place. For the odd, freak case where you have to do something the manufacturers never thought of, it might be necessary to do things that way {think, a really unusual shaped workpiece which fouls on the guard no matter which side you try to cut it from, but which is physically big enough that you can hold it with both hands well clear of any moving machinery; two arrays where you know, from reading the compiler source code, that they will be stored one after another in memory where b[0] just happens also to be referenceable as a[200]}. The fact that I can't think of a plausible situation off the top of my head certainly doesn't mean there isn't one.
Bounds checking as a matter of course would serve only to slow things down needlessly. Yes, the ability to exceed bounds can be abused. But you don't always need the check, and UNIX/C philosophy eschews performing any action without an explicit request. Sometimes the check is implicit. For instance, if you do a % or && operation, or are reading from a type such as a char, you already know the limits within which the answer must lie; so why need your programming language re-check them for you? And if you're only reading a value from an array and you don't actually set too much store by what comes out {maybe it's just some text you're presenting to the user}, then you could quite conceivably get away without doing any bounds-checking.
Powerful tools are by definition potentially dangerous, and inherently-safe tools are by definition underpowered. But that isn't the problem. The problem is that programmers today are being brought up on "toy" languages with all the wipe-your-arse-for-you stuff, and never learning to respect what happens when you don't have all the handholding in place.
Of course it's easier to blame the language, and more so when you are trying to sell people an expensive programming language that claims to make it harder to write bad code {and quite probably harder to write code that runs on anything less than 2GHz, but that's not your concern if you don't actually sell hardware}.
PS. It's my bold prediction that before "no execute" becomes a standard feature on every processor, there will be an exploit allowing stuff labelled NX to be executed. It requires just one clueless user somewhere in the world with access to a broadband line, and ultimately will royally screw over any software that depends on NX for correct operation. More in next topic to mention this particular red herring.
Not only that, it's connected to the computer by a piece of freakin' wire. There's your obvious point of attack, for crying out loud. You don't need a gelatin mould made from a fingerprint found on the surface of the sensor {about an hour's work if you're quick and have prepared the kit in advance}, you just need to intercept and replicate the stream of zeros and ones from the reader to the computer. And you're in. Of course there's probably an easier way, like making sure the driver never loads.
It's a freakin' toy is what it is. Trouble with devices like this is that to a pointy-hair, it looks like a good idea {"ooh, shiny! Fingerprint sensor!"} And "solutions" like this get deployed in place of more obvious, real security measures. Once you start thinking about it hard enough, you see how any retro-fit security measure can be broken. A retro-fit measure like this works by disabling something that's normally possible. Designed-in security always works by enabling something that's normally impossible.
If the thing actually supplied a decryption key for an encrypted partition on the hard drive it would be a little more secure. But the USB cable alone makes it vulnerable -- it'd have to be right there on the motherboard. And maybe have a flip-action shutter interlocked with a mechanism to wipe the sensor clean, to try to stop anyone else lifting your prints with pencil sharpenings and adhesive tape {if you're in an office I bet you can find both these items within three metres of yourself right now. I can}.