As long as the sock is not too thoroughly impregnated with hydrophobic pollutants, it needn't be all that clean. As long as it can absorb some water, it will work; the can itself will prevent the sock from contaminating the beer.
The Linux Way is to write programmes in such a way that they can be controlled entirely from a command line in a way that is friendly to power users; then implement a more ordinary-user-friendly interface on top of that, which simply calls the underlying command-line programme with the options chosen using the GUI. So you have stuff like cdrdao / cdrecord, which are command-line based, but can be controlled through front-ends such as gcombust and k3b. Likewise, KMail interfaces with GnuPG to provide encryption and signing functionality.
This way, one developer or group of developers can work on the backend, and another group work on the GUI frontend. The advantage is that the skill sets are separated; the disadvantage is that the two development teams can lose synchronisation.
Amen to that! You pay for Windows in cash. You pay for Open Source Software by learning a little about it. Learning is an investment and it pays dividends in time.
If something took you ages to find out, it's common courtesy to share that information with others so nobody else has to expend that much effort ever again. Post about it on your own web site {where Google will find it, eventually} and on the LinuxQuestions Wiki. E-mail the package author -- it could be a simple, honest omission; after all, what's obvious to one person isn't necessarily obvious to everyone.
These people have given you all this software out of the goodness of their own hearts, and in good faith that you will find it useful. They haven't asked you for anything in return. Even if you're not a programmer and so can't improve on the actual code yourself, nobody is stopping you from working on improving on the documentation.
But does it affect the RF output? Macrovision adds spikes to the "invisible" portions of the video signal signal to cause the AGC in the video recorder to reduce the signal level, thereby darkening the picture. I would have guessed that the modulation and demodulation processes would tend to cancel out the AGC-triggering spikes.
At any rate, all you need to get rid of the macrovision signal is another AGC with a very short time constant; so it will flatten out the Macrovision spikes, then quickly reset itself so as not to affect the picture brightness. Alternatively, if you prefer digital to analogue methods, you could recreate all the timing information using a microcontroller; you would have to qualitatively sense the timing pulse periods on the "tainted" signal to determine when they occur, and switch between the incoming video signal {during the "visible" period} and your own, locally-generated, "pure" timing signal {during the "invisible" periods}.
If there are standard ICs that add the Macrovision pulses to an existing "clean" signal, it is just about conceivable that a simple cut-tracks-and-join-with-wire operation modification would permanently fix the problem, especially if similar equipment is sold in countries that don't stipulate the use of Macrovision..... it probably would have a simple resistor placed instead of the Macrovision IC, just bridging the output to the input.
You can stick Macrovision on a composite video signal (maybe even on an S-Video signal) but when you come to modulate it onto RF, the extraneous signals just overload the modulator and end up not coming out of the receiver. Since many older tellies still have no SCART socket, only an RF input, VCRs and cable / satellite boxes will need an RF output for awhile yet. And if RF modulation defeats macrovision, there's no point including it in the first place.
NTL's pay-per-view movie service is Macrovision-crippled, but Macrovision strippers are readily obtainable from camcorder specialists {they're needed in order to watch macrovision-crippled cassettes/DVDs on most professional-grade monitors}.
As an aside, what happens if your device's internal macrovision-crippler goes faulty and stops generating the Macrovision spikes? If you never tried to do anything with it that the manufacturers didn't want you doing, then you might never find out it wasn't working!
Dial-up was always a horrid bodge. The future is fibre-to-home. Your computer, TV and telephone -- and such appliances yet to be invented that perform analogous functions -- will use a single digital fibre optic cable.
Until then, ADSL, whether carried over phone, TV or power cables -- incidentally, where was the April Fool story about broadband over water and sewage pipes? -- will have to do. And as it gains in popularity, things like this will take off. Some people probably would actually upgrade to broadband internet just to run software on a simple click-and-go basis.
We just need an end to driver misery before it really takes off. I think over time, chipsets are all going to become compatible with one another eventually -- consolidation and standardisation do benefit the market to an extent. With the way XP and Mac OS X have borrowed so heavily from FreeBSD, and thus the possibility of cross-porting drivers easily, I would not be at all surprised to see some form of FreeBSD-based OS taking off on this.
Clarification: Apache is distributed under its own licence, which is closer to BSD than GPL.
The main difference is that the BSD licence just permits copying and modification and so boils down to "Sharing is not theft", while the GPL additionally demands that any such modifications be released under a similar licence and boils down more to "Not sharing is theft".
It may be a minor point {and the BSD licence is arguably more permissive than the GPL, but more permissivity isn't always a good thing; a hundred years or so ago, a husband could not be prosecuted for raping his wife because a marriage certificate was seen as consent to S.I. and you're not telling me that was fair.}
Now that sounds like a good idea..... so there must be a good reason why it wouldn't work IRL.
One possible reason might be that it would inevitably create a lot of work for somebody, and it seems to me that the people at the top are naturally reluctant to consider anything that might involve hard work.
Yes, and the BBC is advert-free {well, they advertise BBC publications but they just say "available at all good (book|record|whatever)shops" and forthcoming programmes, and it is all tasteful}. It's really worth it not to see advertisements.....
VAT is sales tax and is chargeable on anything not considered "essential". The definition is somewhat subjective. VAT is not, for instance, charged on children's clothes {though it is charged on adults' clothes} nor on basic foodstuffs for preparation at home {but it is charged on take-away food}. Newspapers, magazines and books are not subject to VAT either.
There is no way to access international characters on a standard qwerty keyboard with Windows: that's a shame!
Well, seeing as I'm not a Windows user either, I could say that was SFEP. But I thought Windows users could access non-keyboard characters by holding down ALT (and Fn on a laptop) and typing its ASCII code on the numeric pad, unless that feature has been removed since Windows 98 (the last Windows version I used). Nah, you're right -- we're on the same side -- it is SFEP!
OK, OK, I know..... I wasn't having a go at Mac mice being single-button. You've got the Windows mob to do that! Rather, my point was that I find the tabbed browsing in Konqueror and Mozilla useful but not perfect, because it's a flat structure. Having many windows with many tabs open in each one isn't perfect either -- now it's a two-dimensional structure, alright, but in the form of a matrix as opposed to a tree.
Or am I just setting my sights too high -- expecting a really good user interface to compensate for a broken user?
Not being a Mac user, I have a middle button {that isn't meant to be a flame, although it does sound like one..... but bear with me and you'll see} which lets me follow links in a new tab. So I can keep a bit of a chain of thought together..... if I know something is relevant to the page I'm reading, I can call it up and not lose the current page.
Typically, I'll do a search, then open one result at a time in a new tab; if the article is useful I'll keep its tab open, if it's no good I'll close it. However, it all gets very unwieldy once you have more than about half a dozen tabs on the go at once. Plus, tabs are {TTBOMK} not rearrangeable -- so the structure breaks a bit, because I can't put the tabs I opened from each first-level click next to one another. Tabs are good, maybe even great, but they aren't perfect.
Other times, I will bookmark a site which, on further exploration, turns out not to be any good. Which is a waste of a bookmark.
The computer already knows what sites I have visited, how long I spent looking at each one, whether or not I did any word searches {and what they turned up}, and what I clicked to next -- whether it was a link from that page, or if I returned to a previous tab, or started a new search. Now, if I want to find a page that I know I visited recently, how should the above-mentioned information be presented to me so that I can find the page I'm looking for, quickly?
It's good to see that question being addressed. This could be something the web has been waiting for.
When I first heard of CSS, I thought "That's way too complicated, I'll never use it." I was content with my tags, and using tables with one data cell just to get a border. I just couldn't see how horrible all these things were.
Then, for some reason, I had to use CSS for something. And it was a revelation.
When you use <FONT> tags, you have to choose a colour, a typeface and a size with each one -- not a big deal, you think. But eventually you've got a huge massive thing like
than you wouldn't have that problem, because you can just edit the style definition for "pastdate" in one place. Just like using functions.
The HTML and CSS standards are quite clear -- and if some manufacturer (*cough* Microsoft *cough) has their head so far up their arse that they can't follow them, it's SOFP.
Wouldn't it be possible to write some MS-office macros, to export perfect OpenOffice.org data files (.sxw,.sxc) ? The macro language has an object model which allows access to every feature of an Office document, and the OO file format is fully documented. That'd solve the data export problems once and for all, surely.....
What happens if you actually leave the room while the advert breaks are on? You know, some of us get thirsty, so we get up and light the kettle..... and all that tea or coffee has to go somewhere in the end, which is another reason to get up.....
I don't see that there is anything the advertisers can do about this, unless they broadcast "capttchas" in along with the adverts, which must be solved in order to confirm that you have actually been paying attention to them.
I think we should lobby for government to mandate that broadcasters transmit some sort of machine-readable flag to indicate whether content is "editorial" or "advertising". Of course, the specs should be open.
I would also like to see a television set with advert-blocking features given to the Queen. Then, if anybody shows an advert with the flag set incorrectly -- so the Queen's set shows it, when it was set not to -- they've just committed treason!
Wal-Mart sell Linux PCs, so surely by not providing a player for Linux they are shooting themselves in the foot? It's a bit like selling CDs but no CD players, and cassette players but no pre-recorded cassettes.
Anyway, I have an idea for the perfect all-purpose DRM-defeater. It does require the use of a Windows PC upon which to extract the DRM'ed file; but the data is obtained in uncompressed, raw PCM. It can then be further processed, re-compressed or whatever you want to do with it. No analogue step involved. And it's all based in hardware, so there's absolutely Jack Shit anybody can do about it.
SCO cannot go after the BSDs. The courts have already ruled that there is no AT&T code in BSD. You can't be tried twice for the same crime. If they tried anything on, the case almost certainly would be chucked out quicker than you could say "Double Jeopardy".
Beside which, after the Linux suit is over, McBride and co. will either be penniless, or behind bars; so, either way, it will be a long time before they get anywhere near another courtroom.
In the UK, LPs and cassettes used to cost around the same amount -- the cassette price sometimes being 50p. cheaper than the LP. CDs were a few pounds more expensive than the LP. Eight-tracks have always been bought second-hand; I have never ever seen them in record stores, but maybe they were popular in London.
When I got my first 8x2 writer {there were no re-writables in those days} I never looked back. I still have a couple of CDs I made from tapes.....
What the f**k is "brand equity"? Sounds to me like a Capitalist scam to sell stuff that doesn't exist, to people who are spending other people's money.....
No, I'd buy the CD and a blank cassette, and tape it at home -- and then, not only would it sound better than a store-bought cassette, but I would still have the CD in case the cassette gets eaten up {I remember that used to happen a lot when I still had any kit that could actually handle cassettes. My hi-fi tape deck packed up shortly after I got my first CD burner in '98 and I never bothered with buying another}.
Anyway, you have confirmed my point that CD / cassette pricing is a rip-off.
I'm not convinced that it isn't a rip-off. Just because tape has a poorer quality of reproduction and less functionality than CD, does not justify selling it at a lower price if it's actually more expensive to make in the first place. Either CD buyers are being overcharged, or cassette buyers are receiving an unfair subsidy.
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As long as the sock is not too thoroughly impregnated with hydrophobic pollutants, it needn't be all that clean. As long as it can absorb some water, it will work; the can itself will prevent the sock from contaminating the beer.
The Linux Way is to write programmes in such a way that they can be controlled entirely from a command line in a way that is friendly to power users; then implement a more ordinary-user-friendly interface on top of that, which simply calls the underlying command-line programme with the options chosen using the GUI. So you have stuff like cdrdao / cdrecord, which are command-line based, but can be controlled through front-ends such as gcombust and k3b. Likewise, KMail interfaces with GnuPG to provide encryption and signing functionality.
This way, one developer or group of developers can work on the backend, and another group work on the GUI frontend. The advantage is that the skill sets are separated; the disadvantage is that the two development teams can lose synchronisation.
Amen to that! You pay for Windows in cash. You pay for Open Source Software by learning a little about it. Learning is an investment and it pays dividends in time.
If something took you ages to find out, it's common courtesy to share that information with others so nobody else has to expend that much effort ever again. Post about it on your own web site {where Google will find it, eventually} and on the LinuxQuestions Wiki. E-mail the package author -- it could be a simple, honest omission; after all, what's obvious to one person isn't necessarily obvious to everyone.
These people have given you all this software out of the goodness of their own hearts, and in good faith that you will find it useful. They haven't asked you for anything in return. Even if you're not a programmer and so can't improve on the actual code yourself, nobody is stopping you from working on improving on the documentation.
Er ..... Have you ever heard of something called perl?
But does it affect the RF output? Macrovision adds spikes to the "invisible" portions of the video signal signal to cause the AGC in the video recorder to reduce the signal level, thereby darkening the picture. I would have guessed that the modulation and demodulation processes would tend to cancel out the AGC-triggering spikes.
..... it probably would have a simple resistor placed instead of the Macrovision IC, just bridging the output to the input.
At any rate, all you need to get rid of the macrovision signal is another AGC with a very short time constant; so it will flatten out the Macrovision spikes, then quickly reset itself so as not to affect the picture brightness. Alternatively, if you prefer digital to analogue methods, you could recreate all the timing information using a microcontroller; you would have to qualitatively sense the timing pulse periods on the "tainted" signal to determine when they occur, and switch between the incoming video signal {during the "visible" period} and your own, locally-generated, "pure" timing signal {during the "invisible" periods}.
If there are standard ICs that add the Macrovision pulses to an existing "clean" signal, it is just about conceivable that a simple cut-tracks-and-join-with-wire operation modification would permanently fix the problem, especially if similar equipment is sold in countries that don't stipulate the use of Macrovision
You can stick Macrovision on a composite video signal (maybe even on an S-Video signal) but when you come to modulate it onto RF, the extraneous signals just overload the modulator and end up not coming out of the receiver. Since many older tellies still have no SCART socket, only an RF input, VCRs and cable / satellite boxes will need an RF output for awhile yet. And if RF modulation defeats macrovision, there's no point including it in the first place.
NTL's pay-per-view movie service is Macrovision-crippled, but Macrovision strippers are readily obtainable from camcorder specialists {they're needed in order to watch macrovision-crippled cassettes/DVDs on most professional-grade monitors}.
As an aside, what happens if your device's internal macrovision-crippler goes faulty and stops generating the Macrovision spikes? If you never tried to do anything with it that the manufacturers didn't want you doing, then you might never find out it wasn't working!
Dial-up was always a horrid bodge. The future is fibre-to-home. Your computer, TV and telephone -- and such appliances yet to be invented that perform analogous functions -- will use a single digital fibre optic cable.
Until then, ADSL, whether carried over phone, TV or power cables -- incidentally, where was the April Fool story about broadband over water and sewage pipes? -- will have to do. And as it gains in popularity, things like this will take off. Some people probably would actually upgrade to broadband internet just to run software on a simple click-and-go basis.
We just need an end to driver misery before it really takes off. I think over time, chipsets are all going to become compatible with one another eventually -- consolidation and standardisation do benefit the market to an extent. With the way XP and Mac OS X have borrowed so heavily from FreeBSD, and thus the possibility of cross-porting drivers easily, I would not be at all surprised to see some form of FreeBSD-based OS taking off on this.
Clarification: Apache is distributed under its own licence, which is closer to BSD than GPL.
The main difference is that the BSD licence just permits copying and modification and so boils down to "Sharing is not theft", while the GPL additionally demands that any such modifications be released under a similar licence and boils down more to "Not sharing is theft".
It may be a minor point {and the BSD licence is arguably more permissive than the GPL, but more permissivity isn't always a good thing; a hundred years or so ago, a husband could not be prosecuted for raping his wife because a marriage certificate was seen as consent to S.I. and you're not telling me that was fair.}
Now that sounds like a good idea ..... so there must be a good reason why it wouldn't work IRL.
One possible reason might be that it would inevitably create a lot of work for somebody, and it seems to me that the people at the top are naturally reluctant to consider anything that might involve hard work.
Yes, and the BBC is advert-free {well, they advertise BBC publications but they just say "available at all good (book|record|whatever)shops" and forthcoming programmes, and it is all tasteful}. It's really worth it not to see advertisements .....
VAT is sales tax and is chargeable on anything not considered "essential". The definition is somewhat subjective. VAT is not, for instance, charged on children's clothes {though it is charged on adults' clothes} nor on basic foodstuffs for preparation at home {but it is charged on take-away food}. Newspapers, magazines and books are not subject to VAT either.
OK, OK, I know ..... I wasn't having a go at Mac mice being single-button. You've got the Windows mob to do that! Rather, my point was that I find the tabbed browsing in Konqueror and Mozilla useful but not perfect, because it's a flat structure. Having many windows with many tabs open in each one isn't perfect either -- now it's a two-dimensional structure, alright, but in the form of a matrix as opposed to a tree.
Or am I just setting my sights too high -- expecting a really good user interface to compensate for a broken user?
Not being a Mac user, I have a middle button {that isn't meant to be a flame, although it does sound like one ..... but bear with me and you'll see} which lets me follow links in a new tab. So I can keep a bit of a chain of thought together ..... if I know something is relevant to the page I'm reading, I can call it up and not lose the current page.
Typically, I'll do a search, then open one result at a time in a new tab; if the article is useful I'll keep its tab open, if it's no good I'll close it. However, it all gets very unwieldy once you have more than about half a dozen tabs on the go at once. Plus, tabs are {TTBOMK} not rearrangeable -- so the structure breaks a bit, because I can't put the tabs I opened from each first-level click next to one another. Tabs are good, maybe even great, but they aren't perfect.
Other times, I will bookmark a site which, on further exploration, turns out not to be any good. Which is a waste of a bookmark.
The computer already knows what sites I have visited, how long I spent looking at each one, whether or not I did any word searches {and what they turned up}, and what I clicked to next -- whether it was a link from that page, or if I returned to a previous tab, or started a new search. Now, if I want to find a page that I know I visited recently, how should the above-mentioned information be presented to me so that I can find the page I'm looking for, quickly?
It's good to see that question being addressed. This could be something the web has been waiting for.
Then, for some reason, I had to use CSS for something. And it was a revelation.
When you use <FONT> tags, you have to choose a colour, a typeface and a size with each one -- not a big deal, you think. But eventually you've got a huge massive thing likeThen you decide that the dates would look better in green than blue
Whereas if you'd writtenthan you wouldn't have that problem, because you can just edit the style definition for "pastdate" in one place. Just like using functions.
The HTML and CSS standards are quite clear -- and if some manufacturer (*cough* Microsoft *cough) has their head so far up their arse that they can't follow them, it's SOFP.
Wouldn't it be possible to write some MS-office macros, to export perfect OpenOffice.org data files (.sxw, .sxc) ? The macro language has an object model which allows access to every feature of an Office document, and the OO file format is fully documented. That'd solve the data export problems once and for all, surely .....
What happens if you actually leave the room while the advert breaks are on? You know, some of us get thirsty, so we get up and light the kettle ..... and all that tea or coffee has to go somewhere in the end, which is another reason to get up .....
I don't see that there is anything the advertisers can do about this, unless they broadcast "capttchas" in along with the adverts, which must be solved in order to confirm that you have actually been paying attention to them.
Amen to that, brother.
I think we should lobby for government to mandate that broadcasters transmit some sort of machine-readable flag to indicate whether content is "editorial" or "advertising". Of course, the specs should be open.
I would also like to see a television set with advert-blocking features given to the Queen. Then, if anybody shows an advert with the flag set incorrectly -- so the Queen's set shows it, when it was set not to -- they've just committed treason!
Wal-Mart sell Linux PCs, so surely by not providing a player for Linux they are shooting themselves in the foot? It's a bit like selling CDs but no CD players, and cassette players but no pre-recorded cassettes.
Anyway, I have an idea for the perfect all-purpose DRM-defeater. It does require the use of a Windows PC upon which to extract the DRM'ed file; but the data is obtained in uncompressed, raw PCM. It can then be further processed, re-compressed or whatever you want to do with it. No analogue step involved. And it's all based in hardware, so there's absolutely Jack Shit anybody can do about it.
SCO cannot go after the BSDs. The courts have already ruled that there is no AT&T code in BSD. You can't be tried twice for the same crime. If they tried anything on, the case almost certainly would be chucked out quicker than you could say "Double Jeopardy".
Beside which, after the Linux suit is over, McBride and co. will either be penniless, or behind bars; so, either way, it will be a long time before they get anywhere near another courtroom.
In the UK, LPs and cassettes used to cost around the same amount -- the cassette price sometimes being 50p. cheaper than the LP. CDs were a few pounds more expensive than the LP. Eight-tracks have always been bought second-hand; I have never ever seen them in record stores, but maybe they were popular in London.
.....
When I got my first 8x2 writer {there were no re-writables in those days} I never looked back. I still have a couple of CDs I made from tapes
What the f**k is "brand equity"? Sounds to me like a Capitalist scam to sell stuff that doesn't exist, to people who are spending other people's money .....
No, I'd buy the CD and a blank cassette, and tape it at home -- and then, not only would it sound better than a store-bought cassette, but I would still have the CD in case the cassette gets eaten up {I remember that used to happen a lot when I still had any kit that could actually handle cassettes. My hi-fi tape deck packed up shortly after I got my first CD burner in '98 and I never bothered with buying another}.
Anyway, you have confirmed my point that CD / cassette pricing is a rip-off.
I'm not convinced that it isn't a rip-off. Just because tape has a poorer quality of reproduction and less functionality than CD, does not justify selling it at a lower price if it's actually more expensive to make in the first place. Either CD buyers are being overcharged, or cassette buyers are receiving an unfair subsidy.