Objects have methods, is what I was saying. But it's senseless to pretend that a method belongs only to an object. It's just a function underneath, after all.
Why should I design a bean object with a method for heating it, when I can design a saucepan function that can make anything hotter, not just a bean?
Maybe I'm old fashioned. But that's the way I like it. And passing function parameters in Perl is nothing like in assembler, where you have to know exactly how much you're passing and where. If you pass in registers, you have to know which registers; and if you pass on the stack, you have to know how much of that stack to look at. Well, OK, you can make the first parameter say how many more are to follow. That's easy and I'll give you it.
Perl doesn't make artificial impositions on you, like insisting you treat strings, integers and floats separately. You don't have to call a function on an integer if you want to add it to a float. If you've got a string like "999 Lettsby Avenue", you can add 0 to it and get 999 or 999.0. Ooh, Perl just called a function behind my back. Or maybe it extracted a property from an object. Um.
Don't be a fool and think the cable companies don't have counter-measures for having their devices hacked.
If you tinker with a box that communicates bi-directionally with the cable company, you are probably going to get nailed.
Yeah..... unplug the cable before you start, obviously. You're forgetting that rental cable boxes have to be robust against all kinds of things; after all, the companies don't want to be despatching service engineers every five minutes.
Equipment like that has to tolerate all sorts of abuse, even being painted for crying out loud. Hoik out the drive, dd off the contents {not using BusyBox dd -- it takes forever} and pop it back in. Then plug back into the cable. Nobody any the wiser.
Also, The Authorities are actually gathering so much surveillance data on all of us, that they have not got actually time to go through it all! The Old Bill only follow up about one in ten producers, for instance. Ask anyone who's ever been given one. You actually can get away with outrageous stuff under people's noses - most of the time they are simply relying on you being scared into behaving yourself.
Yes, the computer must be able to read the data. Just like PGP must be able to read the data before it decrypts it. Doesn't do you a whole lot of good to stare at the encrypted file, though, does it?
Except the machine itself must include the decryption process - both the algorithm, which is published anyway if it's a decent system, and the important key. So, you've got your scrambled data, yes, but you also have the very machine that has the ability to unscramble it. That's like writing the decryption key on the same piece of paper as the coded message.
It was a common enough hack in the days of Sky Analogue to record a "chop-and-swap" encrypted broadcast on VHS, then play it back through a decoder primed with the appropriate data. Someone with a high-end computer and a subscription just had to find the cut points, then anyone with an old '286 could feed them to the decoder. {This was satellite based, so using a one-way link}. That shouldn't have worked, and the fact that it did suggests that someone within BSkyB deliberately weakened the encryption at implementation time. But that's just human nature, and the very same thing might well be done with this system. The cable company's workers get paid the same amount regardless, as long as someone is actually paying for the service. And being able to show someone how to do something they aren't supposed to do is a good brownie-point earner.....
Someday, when we have decryption built into our televisions, we won't even have that.
Think of a sawn-off CRT that plugs into your TV chassis, and presents the appropriate impedances &c. so electronically, it is identical to a CRT. And no way they can tell. You can measure the voltage on each of the red, green and blue grids {giving you RGB video} and the current in the scan coils {giving you position on screen}.
The only way to keep it really secure is to descramble in the viewer's brain, using perception-altering drugs and neurolinguistic programming techniques. {A drug that reacted with growth hormone would provide age-locking}. And even that method probably is not secure, because whatever programme the drugged brain is executing to descramble the data, can be replicated by a machine.
I know this is going to look like heresy, but I actually like Perl.
Perl remembers that you still have to use functions to cause things to happen. According to your fancy object-oriented stuff -- Java, Ruby and the like -- the recipe for making beans on toast goes like this;
At least Perl remembers that you still have to execute functions. A saucepan on a stove is a function: you put something into it, it gets changed in some way {in this case it gets hotter}, and you take something out of it. Now, beans do have a measurable temperature, but to me at least it doesn't make any sense to imagine sliding the thermometer to cause the temperature of the beans to change. I expect to have to call a function to cause the beans to get hot.
Speaking of functions, I do love the way you call functions in Perl; you don't need to know or care in advance how many arguments your function is going to need, nor what to call them, because they just come through as one array which is always called @_. Oh, and Perl {and this definitely influenced PHP} indicates variable types with a prefix, so even within speech marks, it can spot a variable and insert the value.
PHP is a bit easier for creating web pages. It automates some of the things Perl makes you do for yourself {like grabbing form variables and function parameters} and you don't have to remember to send a MIME type, but comparing PHP to Perl is like comparing DJ's record decks to a Dansette autochanger. A DJ needs a level of control over the record playing process that automation would take away. Someone who just wants to listen to a stack of records from beginning to end and doesn't mind waiting a little while between songs doesn't need that level of control.
Another "feature" of Perl is that it's possible to write a piece of code you completely understand one day, and it to be so perfect, crystal-clear and obvious that commenting would spoil it; yet a mere 24 hours later, that same code whose beauty you appreciated and with which you Became One, has turned to gibberish.
It's not hard to keep adverts off the internet!
Just install squid proxy server {the best place to put it is on your firewall machine}, and block out doubleclick.*, fastclick.net, servedby.advertising.com and any other site that chucks banners and/or cookies at you. If you're very, very nice to your ISP {or you work for your ISP and have all their root passwords}, they might even do this for you on one of their servers.
Point taken, the state doesn't have to own companies. But it does need for BSI or some other such equivalent body to publish specifications, and issue product marks to indicate compliance with the standards.
We've got the W3C Validation marks for web sites, but they aren't nearly as recognised as the BSI Kite Mark, and they are not policed.
A national or international approvals certificate for computer hardware {and possibly software} would be a good way to encourage standards compliance, which benefits all. And in some economies, establishing state-owned companies would be the best way to keep prices affordable for consumers.
But you would create a parallel universe, since, in one timeline, you didn't place the bet. The timelines split from the moment you returned to. Along the "original" timeline you did not place the bet, and the game went a certain way. But when you returned back to the bifurcation point, you created a fresh timeline where the game hadn't been played, and thus you might well end up with a different result than you bet on.
The real funky stuff in temporal bifurcation theory has to do with how the multiverse tries to merge timelines {which is necessary since each universe is stored using lossy compression techniques. The existence of independent timelines is against the natural order of events..... cf. what happens when like magnetic poles are forcibly brought close to one another and then released; when oil and water are stirred vigorously together; and various other physical phenomena..... in pure physics terms, work has been done and potential energy stored, the multiverse is now releasing it}. For this to work, events on both {or all} timelines must be manipulated in such a way that the final outcomes of the alternate sequences of events are equivalent. The amount of effort this involves {and all this energy, BTW, has to come from PE stored during the creation of the bifurcation} depends on the magnitude of the dichotomy between timelines. This begins increasing, and then starts to decrease as the bifurcation passes out of living memory. But sometimes the tendency to merge manifests itself in a person saying the wrong word, for example. Psychologists sometimes attribute this to other causes, but the ones they can't really explain probably are due to timeline merging.
Copyright protection prevents recordings from being copied to the PC
No it doesn't. The thing has an analogue out. Possibly even RGB if it has a SCART conector. Nothing is ever going to stop you copying from that, without also stopping you watching it on a TV set.
Also, the files on the HDD must be readable, and the software to read them must be in the machine. {Think Spectrum fast cassette loaders. Not just fast, but copy-proof because it makes the whole process that bit more sensitive to fidelity - so an analogue copy is less likely to be successful. The first programme on the tape - often written in BASIC so you can just use LOAD "" - has to use the ROM-resident loading routines to load itself. It then implements the fast loader. All you need to do is to get this first programme to load but not run itself - the usual method was by making a fake header - and then modify the fast loader to read all the rest of the programme without executing it}. Now, 20 years on, the same principles apply. The computer has to be able to read the data from the disk in order to display it on the telly. Whatever can be read, can be copied. Light travels in straight lines. Energy is never created nor destroyed. Pressure in a fluid acts equally in all directions.
Why can't they just write something on the disk that the program [sic] can read, but the pirates can't? - reader's letter in an old Amiga magazine, offering the holy grail of copy protection.
Do you mean to say that US Federal laws outweigh individual state laws? That is so arse-backwards. Surely local laws should prevail locally, then state, then federal laws. {If what happens in an Enclosed Space will have no influence outside that Enclosed Space, then no-one outside of that space has the right to object to what happens therein}. Otherwise you haven't got a federal system at all, you've got a feudal system.
They have. When you buy a new printer, there is only enough ink in the cartridge to print a few pages - basically, it's only there to stop the printing head from drying out. It might be only 1/4 the normal amount you would find in a brand new cartridge.
Those who speak loudest for free trade are forgetting that fair trade is a much more important concept.
What would be much better would be for there to be state-owned computer hardware companies, mandated to publish full specifications for their products; and these published specifications would automatically assume the status of National or International Standards. This would allow private companies to manufacture interoperable products or even outright clones, and there would be a recognised standard for people to insist on compliance with. Result, people would be less keen on buying non-standards-compliant hardware.
I know I would love to buy a printer with a Kite Mark, if I could be sure that that Kite Mark meant not only that I was buying a piece of hardware that had been tested to certain impartial standards {including the fact that anyone could make ink cartridges to fit it}, but that I would also have effectively full access to the programmer's manual. And who would buy closed-source software without a Kite Mark, if closed-source software to do the same job was available with a Kite Mark? {Open source software would be effectively exempt from approvals requirements, as compliance could be verified by examining the source code and achieved if necessary by modifying the source code.}
Of course, there would have to be a mechanism for extending the standards to prevent stagnation, and this should never favour any request for an extension over another solely on the grounds of who is making it. The need to avoid stagnation should also be balanced carefully against the need to avoid enforced incompatibility.
Eventually, in some kinds of economies, state-owned manufacturers may be outdone by the private sector. But the standards-setting role is paramount. The lack of proper standards and approvals procedures, and effective policing thereof, may benefit greedy corporations in the short term; but it is costing us all in the long term.
The obvious one would be to cut down on the fags. If, however, you're one of the 31% {and the rest!} of smokers who don't want to give up, then I reckon your best option probably is to use sodium hydrogen carbonate {bicarbonate of soda} which you can get from any supermarket. Add toothpaste to wet brush, push it down between the bristles with your finger, and dip in a shallow tub of bicarb. Clean one side. Rinse brush, reload and clean other side. Rinse brush, reload and clean front teeth. Rinse your mouth really well to get rid of the bicarb {it's a weak alkali; so weak you shouldn't try to neutralise it with acid, or you risk overdoing it}.
Alternatively, take a digital photo of yourself, and edit it so your teeth look whiter!
I've said this often enough that I'm competing with RMS for trotting out tired old lines, but it never stopped him, so I'll say it again:
ANY ATTEMPT TO COPY-PROTECT MUSIC IS FATALLY FLAWED.
First, you can hijack/dev/dsp simply by hacking the module which implements it.
Secondly, even if you can't hijack/dev/dsp, you can still grab the data being sent to the sound card over the bus {ISA, PCI or USB}. You can buy prototyping kits from specialist electronics suppliers with some of the hardware ready made {basically a PCB to fit the slot with some TTL or a gate array for address decoding and the rest composed of breadboard-style copper strips}. The source for the sound card driver will give you all you need to know about how to interpret the data as it comes through. You can then repackage it how you like - wav, mp3 or ogg vorbis.
Thirdly, even if you can't grab the data from the bus, you can grab the analogue signal coming out of the jack socket on the back of the sound card and convert that back to digital. You will have to do some filtering and, to avoid creating artefacts, it will have to be done in the analogue domain. Processing through analogue also should destroy any inaudible "watermarking".
Fourthly, even if someone has permanently soldered a steel-armoured cable feeding a pair of headphones directly to the sound card, which has been potted in several layers of chemically-different resins with sharp springy bits that will fly out and cut you to ribbons if you try to interfere with it, you can still point a mic at each of the headphones and get a signal that way. This is the least pretty option, but nothing can ever make it go away.
The success of any analogue ripping scheme is dependent upon the equipment used and widely-available consumer tat is possibly going to pollute the filesharing market with inferior copies of songs. This may well be what the RIAA wants - effectively, in terms of reproduction quality, a return to the tape days. On the other hand, there will always be a group of people who are fastidious about quality, and all the necessary equipment already exists. So who knows? Maybed we'll see a new elite audiophile network. The only thing I don't like is the word "audiophile", which sounds too much like the sort of thing News of the World readers might not like.
The RIAA's methods are never going to work because they are trying to achieve a fundamental impossibility along the lines of perpetual motion or lead-into-gold. Either they will realise they have to give up, or they will kill themselves with the effort. What the RIAA should ask themselves is this: if photocopiers, scanners and printers are so cheap and readily available, then why do people buy newspapers and magazines instead of just making photocopies of them or scanning them and uploading them onto the internet?
No, it doesn't stop spam altogether. I can't think of any way for a machine to do that -- it's essentially a human being's job.
What SpamJavelindoes do, is make illegally-harvested addresses effectively worthless for resale.
If I didn't know spam harvesters would just pretend to be MSIE, then I'd put in some code to make it serve up different flavours of page depending on the variable $HTTP_USER_AGENT. Actually, that's not a bad idea for the NYT.
[note: you'll have to imagine the mustang signs and question marks - Slashdot isn't keen on < type codes.]
<? if (eregi("googlebot", $HTTP_USER_AGENT)) { include("google_special_page.htm"); } else { include("normal_page.htm"); }; ?>
Problem solved, innit? Googlebot gets a special page to index {with all links modified to point to the registration page}, everybody else gets the real links, nobody knows the difference because it's all handled server-side, and everybody is happy. Can I patent this now?;-)
I like the look of it. Obviously those static screenshots aren't going to indicate how fast the programme runs though;-)
Evolution was the first X11 mail client I ever used {probs setting up Kmail but can't remember why anymore, since then I've got it working fine on my laptop}. "Microsoft-like" isn't a priority for me, though I can understand why it would be for some people. But it isn't the be-all-and-end-all, and if having to pretend to be MS stifles innovation, then maybe it's time for Ximian to spread their wings and fly a bit. The worst that can happen is that someone forks off a new product based on an earlier UI version.
I thought that was the point of package management - that you could go back and reinstall older versions and their libraries if you had to, and have it all taken care of for you. If you're running Slackware or LFS, with no.rpms or.debs, you can pretty much make up the directory structure as you go along {it's only the package managers that insist on strict hierarchies, and to be fair how else are they to have a cat in hell's chance of knowing where your files are at?}, and compile the latest versions into their own directories.
The problem with hand counting is corruption of the people counting
And the problem with machine vote counting is corruption of the people who made the machines. Unless the machines are totally open to independent scrutiny - at the very least, this includes placing all blueprints and firmware in the public domain, which I am given to understand is not the case - there is a possibility for the manufacturers to design deliberate bias into them. And this potentially could go undetected much longer - and reach far wider - than bribing a few individuals.
To influence a hand-counted election result in just one ward, it is necessary to bribe many people, and this affects just one representative. Contrast this with the damage that could be done by a voting machine company manufacturing a few machines with inherent flaws that go undetectable thanks to trade secrecy laws.
Talking of deliberate errors in machines, and veering slightly off-topic, I had an idea for making deliberately flawed lb/oz weighing scales, that would add a few pence whenever the reading was not a whole number of ounces - nobody is likely to be able to do the calculation quickly enough to voice an objection in a busy supermarket. {In SI units, with fractions expressed in decimal rather than ratiometric notation, the calculation is possible on any idiot calculator - it would be spotted easily if anyone was trying to get away with it.}
We also use hand counting in this country. If something isn't broken then why try to fix it? The candidates and guests are allowed to supervise the counting of votes, which is done by independent volunteers in the polling station. Ward boundaries have already been set such that each ward has roughly the same population {so each representative speaks for the same number of people -- pretty fundamental when you think about it}, therefore each polling station will have roughly the same number of ballot papers in it. The figures are phoned or faxed through to the appropriate authorities as soon as they are ready. If a recount is needed, it can be done at that particular polling station. Ballot papers are stored throughout the term of office and not destroyed until the next election.
It doesn't take longer to count more ballot papers, because the counting is done in parallel. It takes more people, but if the population is bigger then you have more people.
Logic dictates that you can't trust a machine built by a human any more than you can trust a human, so you might as well go for the simpler option. Sophistication is a synonym for "opportunity for things to go wrong".
But what really frightens me is the fact that you Americans haven't mandated that the specifications and workings of voting machines should be in the public domain - where they are truly open to the level of independent scrutiny that democracy needs. That the manufacturers should consider their proprietary secrets of greater importance than the proper workings of democracy beggars belief. That the Government even allows voting machine manufacturers to keep such things secret is a scandal that should raise questions. But when the public at large seems actually to tolerate this egregious state of affairs, then I can only suppose that I have missed something important somewhere.
You can use backquotes {`` - the ones that normally are used for executing a command} or no quotes at all around a field name, and either single {''} or double {""} speech marks around data. I believe the use of double speech marks is a proprietary extension to ANSI SQL, but MySQL implements them, and MySQL is the de facto standard for database servers. Wherte MySQL differs from ANSI SQL, competitors tend to ape MySQL. More at http://www.mysql.com if you really must. There's a full and frank comparison with other DB engines on there somewhere too.
To find out where spam is coming from, get an e-mail account with Virtual Hosting. This is where you get an entire subdomain {or a domain if you pay for it} to yourself, and your e-mail address is in the form anything@mysubdomain.myisp.co.uk. Then you just need to give a different prefix for each site you visit -- e.g. nyt_resp@mysubdomain.myisp.co.uk, and so on.
If you want to put your e-mail address on your web site, use this to automagically mung your address.
I don't know how valid the address needs to be. I just used the "from" address on a piece of SPAM I had been sent previously. It seemed to work; certainly it didn't e-mail an auto-generated password to that address or anything.
So by modifying an Xbox you could cheat in an on-line game. Pay attention to that last word. Sure, someone could get a few extra points. Big deal. It's a bloody game, for chuff's sake.
Little boys grow out of pissing contests when they find another use for their dicks.
..... that this thing is just some kind of electromagnetic repulsion thing. Coils of wire? It looks like an electric motor flattened out. If you place a coil of good conducting material in a strong alternating field, the induced current will induce its own magnetic field, and the induced field will always repel the external magnetic field. If you have too much resistance in the coil, of course, the repulsion due to the induced field is likely to be weaker than the attraction due to gravity.
Talk of high voltage, high current and complex waveforms always impresses non-scientists. Even when it's a well-known phenomenon. Remember the "perpetual motion machine" {a lightly constructed wheel with elastic bands for spokes, set at an angle} that was actually a radiometer? It got its energy from the light bulb shining on it..... but it fooled plenty of non-scientists.
BTW, the use of the word "inch" gives it straight away that this person is not a real scientist. Real scientists use SI units exclusively, even {especially?} when talking to non-scientists.
Slashdot Mirror
Objects have methods, is what I was saying. But it's senseless to pretend that a method belongs only to an object. It's just a function underneath, after all.
Why should I design a bean object with a method for heating it, when I can design a saucepan function that can make anything hotter, not just a bean?
Maybe I'm old fashioned. But that's the way I like it. And passing function parameters in Perl is nothing like in assembler, where you have to know exactly how much you're passing and where. If you pass in registers, you have to know which registers; and if you pass on the stack, you have to know how much of that stack to look at. Well, OK, you can make the first parameter say how many more are to follow. That's easy and I'll give you it.
Perl doesn't make artificial impositions on you, like insisting you treat strings, integers and floats separately. You don't have to call a function on an integer if you want to add it to a float. If you've got a string like "999 Lettsby Avenue", you can add 0 to it and get 999 or 999.0. Ooh, Perl just called a function behind my back. Or maybe it extracted a property from an object. Um.
Also, The Authorities are actually gathering so much surveillance data on all of us, that they have not got actually time to go through it all! The Old Bill only follow up about one in ten producers, for instance. Ask anyone who's ever been given one. You actually can get away with outrageous stuff under people's noses - most of the time they are simply relying on you being scared into behaving yourself. Except the machine itself must include the decryption process - both the algorithm, which is published anyway if it's a decent system, and the important key. So, you've got your scrambled data, yes, but you also have the very machine that has the ability to unscramble it. That's like writing the decryption key on the same piece of paper as the coded message.
It was a common enough hack in the days of Sky Analogue to record a "chop-and-swap" encrypted broadcast on VHS, then play it back through a decoder primed with the appropriate data. Someone with a high-end computer and a subscription just had to find the cut points, then anyone with an old '286 could feed them to the decoder. {This was satellite based, so using a one-way link}. That shouldn't have worked, and the fact that it did suggests that someone within BSkyB deliberately weakened the encryption at implementation time. But that's just human nature, and the very same thing might well be done with this system. The cable company's workers get paid the same amount regardless, as long as someone is actually paying for the service. And being able to show someone how to do something they aren't supposed to do is a good brownie-point earner
The only way to keep it really secure is to descramble in the viewer's brain, using perception-altering drugs and neurolinguistic programming techniques. {A drug that reacted with growth hormone would provide age-locking}. And even that method probably is not secure, because whatever programme the drugged brain is executing to descramble the data, can be replicated by a machine.
Perl remembers that you still have to use functions to cause things to happen. According to your fancy object-oriented stuff -- Java, Ruby and the like -- the recipe for making beans on toast goes like this; At least Perl remembers that you still have to execute functions. A saucepan on a stove is a function: you put something into it, it gets changed in some way {in this case it gets hotter}, and you take something out of it. Now, beans do have a measurable temperature, but to me at least it doesn't make any sense to imagine sliding the thermometer to cause the temperature of the beans to change. I expect to have to call a function to cause the beans to get hot.
Speaking of functions, I do love the way you call functions in Perl; you don't need to know or care in advance how many arguments your function is going to need, nor what to call them, because they just come through as one array which is always called @_. Oh, and Perl {and this definitely influenced PHP} indicates variable types with a prefix, so even within speech marks, it can spot a variable and insert the value.
PHP is a bit easier for creating web pages. It automates some of the things Perl makes you do for yourself {like grabbing form variables and function parameters} and you don't have to remember to send a MIME type, but comparing PHP to Perl is like comparing DJ's record decks to a Dansette autochanger. A DJ needs a level of control over the record playing process that automation would take away. Someone who just wants to listen to a stack of records from beginning to end and doesn't mind waiting a little while between songs doesn't need that level of control.
Another "feature" of Perl is that it's possible to write a piece of code you completely understand one day, and it to be so perfect, crystal-clear and obvious that commenting would spoil it; yet a mere 24 hours later, that same code whose beauty you appreciated and with which you Became One, has turned to gibberish.
It's not hard to keep adverts off the internet! Just install squid proxy server {the best place to put it is on your firewall machine}, and block out doubleclick.*, fastclick.net, servedby.advertising.com and any other site that chucks banners and/or cookies at you. If you're very, very nice to your ISP {or you work for your ISP and have all their root passwords}, they might even do this for you on one of their servers.
Point taken, the state doesn't have to own companies. But it does need for BSI or some other such equivalent body to publish specifications, and issue product marks to indicate compliance with the standards.
We've got the W3C Validation marks for web sites, but they aren't nearly as recognised as the BSI Kite Mark, and they are not policed.
A national or international approvals certificate for computer hardware {and possibly software} would be a good way to encourage standards compliance, which benefits all. And in some economies, establishing state-owned companies would be the best way to keep prices affordable for consumers.
But you would create a parallel universe, since, in one timeline, you didn't place the bet. The timelines split from the moment you returned to. Along the "original" timeline you did not place the bet, and the game went a certain way. But when you returned back to the bifurcation point, you created a fresh timeline where the game hadn't been played, and thus you might well end up with a different result than you bet on.
..... cf. what happens when like magnetic poles are forcibly brought close to one another and then released; when oil and water are stirred vigorously together; and various other physical phenomena ..... in pure physics terms, work has been done and potential energy stored, the multiverse is now releasing it}. For this to work, events on both {or all} timelines must be manipulated in such a way that the final outcomes of the alternate sequences of events are equivalent. The amount of effort this involves {and all this energy, BTW, has to come from PE stored during the creation of the bifurcation} depends on the magnitude of the dichotomy between timelines. This begins increasing, and then starts to decrease as the bifurcation passes out of living memory. But sometimes the tendency to merge manifests itself in a person saying the wrong word, for example. Psychologists sometimes attribute this to other causes, but the ones they can't really explain probably are due to timeline merging.
The real funky stuff in temporal bifurcation theory has to do with how the multiverse tries to merge timelines {which is necessary since each universe is stored using lossy compression techniques. The existence of independent timelines is against the natural order of events
Also, the files on the HDD must be readable, and the software to read them must be in the machine. {Think Spectrum fast cassette loaders. Not just fast, but copy-proof because it makes the whole process that bit more sensitive to fidelity - so an analogue copy is less likely to be successful. The first programme on the tape - often written in BASIC so you can just use LOAD "" - has to use the ROM-resident loading routines to load itself. It then implements the fast loader. All you need to do is to get this first programme to load but not run itself - the usual method was by making a fake header - and then modify the fast loader to read all the rest of the programme without executing it}. Now, 20 years on, the same principles apply. The computer has to be able to read the data from the disk in order to display it on the telly. Whatever can be read, can be copied. Light travels in straight lines. Energy is never created nor destroyed. Pressure in a fluid acts equally in all directions.
Why can't they just write something on the disk that the program [sic] can read, but the pirates can't? - reader's letter in an old Amiga magazine, offering the holy grail of copy protection.
Do you mean to say that US Federal laws outweigh individual state laws? That is so arse-backwards. Surely local laws should prevail locally, then state, then federal laws. {If what happens in an Enclosed Space will have no influence outside that Enclosed Space, then no-one outside of that space has the right to object to what happens therein}. Otherwise you haven't got a federal system at all, you've got a feudal system.
They have. When you buy a new printer, there is only enough ink in the cartridge to print a few pages - basically, it's only there to stop the printing head from drying out. It might be only 1/4 the normal amount you would find in a brand new cartridge.
Those who speak loudest for free trade are forgetting that fair trade is a much more important concept.
What would be much better would be for there to be state-owned computer hardware companies, mandated to publish full specifications for their products; and these published specifications would automatically assume the status of National or International Standards. This would allow private companies to manufacture interoperable products or even outright clones, and there would be a recognised standard for people to insist on compliance with. Result, people would be less keen on buying non-standards-compliant hardware.
I know I would love to buy a printer with a Kite Mark, if I could be sure that that Kite Mark meant not only that I was buying a piece of hardware that had been tested to certain impartial standards {including the fact that anyone could make ink cartridges to fit it}, but that I would also have effectively full access to the programmer's manual. And who would buy closed-source software without a Kite Mark, if closed-source software to do the same job was available with a Kite Mark? {Open source software would be effectively exempt from approvals requirements, as compliance could be verified by examining the source code and achieved if necessary by modifying the source code.}
Of course, there would have to be a mechanism for extending the standards to prevent stagnation, and this should never favour any request for an extension over another solely on the grounds of who is making it. The need to avoid stagnation should also be balanced carefully against the need to avoid enforced incompatibility.
Eventually, in some kinds of economies, state-owned manufacturers may be outdone by the private sector. But the standards-setting role is paramount. The lack of proper standards and approvals procedures, and effective policing thereof, may benefit greedy corporations in the short term; but it is costing us all in the long term.
Why would you want to mount the remote disk with samba? It's such an ugly hack. Just use NFS, for crying out loud.
Is there a PAL/UHF/6MHz sound version of this thing, does anyone know?
Sperm?! What tobacconist are you going to?
The obvious one would be to cut down on the fags. If, however, you're one of the 31% {and the rest!} of smokers who don't want to give up, then I reckon your best option probably is to use sodium hydrogen carbonate {bicarbonate of soda} which you can get from any supermarket. Add toothpaste to wet brush, push it down between the bristles with your finger, and dip in a shallow tub of bicarb. Clean one side. Rinse brush, reload and clean other side. Rinse brush, reload and clean front teeth. Rinse your mouth really well to get rid of the bicarb {it's a weak alkali; so weak you shouldn't try to neutralise it with acid, or you risk overdoing it}.
Alternatively, take a digital photo of yourself, and edit it so your teeth look whiter!
I've said this often enough that I'm competing with RMS for trotting out tired old lines, but it never stopped him, so I'll say it again:
/dev/dsp simply by hacking the module which implements it.
/dev/dsp, you can still grab the data being sent to the sound card over the bus {ISA, PCI or USB}. You can buy prototyping kits from specialist electronics suppliers with some of the hardware ready made {basically a PCB to fit the slot with some TTL or a gate array for address decoding and the rest composed of breadboard-style copper strips}. The source for the sound card driver will give you all you need to know about how to interpret the data as it comes through. You can then repackage it how you like - wav, mp3 or ogg vorbis.
ANY ATTEMPT TO COPY-PROTECT MUSIC IS FATALLY FLAWED.
First, you can hijack
Secondly, even if you can't hijack
Thirdly, even if you can't grab the data from the bus, you can grab the analogue signal coming out of the jack socket on the back of the sound card and convert that back to digital. You will have to do some filtering and, to avoid creating artefacts, it will have to be done in the analogue domain. Processing through analogue also should destroy any inaudible "watermarking".
Fourthly, even if someone has permanently soldered a steel-armoured cable feeding a pair of headphones directly to the sound card, which has been potted in several layers of chemically-different resins with sharp springy bits that will fly out and cut you to ribbons if you try to interfere with it, you can still point a mic at each of the headphones and get a signal that way. This is the least pretty option, but nothing can ever make it go away.
The success of any analogue ripping scheme is dependent upon the equipment used and widely-available consumer tat is possibly going to pollute the filesharing market with inferior copies of songs. This may well be what the RIAA wants - effectively, in terms of reproduction quality, a return to the tape days. On the other hand, there will always be a group of people who are fastidious about quality, and all the necessary equipment already exists. So who knows? Maybed we'll see a new elite audiophile network. The only thing I don't like is the word "audiophile", which sounds too much like the sort of thing News of the World readers might not like.
The RIAA's methods are never going to work because they are trying to achieve a fundamental impossibility along the lines of perpetual motion or lead-into-gold. Either they will realise they have to give up, or they will kill themselves with the effort. What the RIAA should ask themselves is this: if photocopiers, scanners and printers are so cheap and readily available, then why do people buy newspapers and magazines instead of just making photocopies of them or scanning them and uploading them onto the internet?
No, it doesn't stop spam altogether. I can't think of any way for a machine to do that -- it's essentially a human being's job.
;-)
What SpamJavelin does do, is make illegally-harvested addresses effectively worthless for resale.
If I didn't know spam harvesters would just pretend to be MSIE, then I'd put in some code to make it serve up different flavours of page depending on the variable $HTTP_USER_AGENT. Actually, that's not a bad idea for the NYT.
[note: you'll have to imagine the mustang signs and question marks - Slashdot isn't keen on < type codes.]
<? if (eregi("googlebot", $HTTP_USER_AGENT)) { include("google_special_page.htm"); }
else { include("normal_page.htm"); }; ?>
Problem solved, innit? Googlebot gets a special page to index {with all links modified to point to the registration page}, everybody else gets the real links, nobody knows the difference because it's all handled server-side, and everybody is happy. Can I patent this now?
I like the look of it. Obviously those static screenshots aren't going to indicate how fast the programme runs though ;-)
Evolution was the first X11 mail client I ever used {probs setting up Kmail but can't remember why anymore, since then I've got it working fine on my laptop}. "Microsoft-like" isn't a priority for me, though I can understand why it would be for some people. But it isn't the be-all-and-end-all, and if having to pretend to be MS stifles innovation, then maybe it's time for Ximian to spread their wings and fly a bit. The worst that can happen is that someone forks off a new product based on an earlier UI version.
I thought that was the point of package management - that you could go back and reinstall older versions and their libraries if you had to, and have it all taken care of for you. If you're running Slackware or LFS, with no .rpms or .debs, you can pretty much make up the directory structure as you go along {it's only the package managers that insist on strict hierarchies, and to be fair how else are they to have a cat in hell's chance of knowing where your files are at?}, and compile the latest versions into their own directories.
To influence a hand-counted election result in just one ward, it is necessary to bribe many people, and this affects just one representative. Contrast this with the damage that could be done by a voting machine company manufacturing a few machines with inherent flaws that go undetectable thanks to trade secrecy laws.
Talking of deliberate errors in machines, and veering slightly off-topic, I had an idea for making deliberately flawed lb/oz weighing scales, that would add a few pence whenever the reading was not a whole number of ounces - nobody is likely to be able to do the calculation quickly enough to voice an objection in a busy supermarket. {In SI units, with fractions expressed in decimal rather than ratiometric notation, the calculation is possible on any idiot calculator - it would be spotted easily if anyone was trying to get away with it.}
We also use hand counting in this country. If something isn't broken then why try to fix it? The candidates and guests are allowed to supervise the counting of votes, which is done by independent volunteers in the polling station. Ward boundaries have already been set such that each ward has roughly the same population {so each representative speaks for the same number of people -- pretty fundamental when you think about it}, therefore each polling station will have roughly the same number of ballot papers in it. The figures are phoned or faxed through to the appropriate authorities as soon as they are ready. If a recount is needed, it can be done at that particular polling station. Ballot papers are stored throughout the term of office and not destroyed until the next election.
It doesn't take longer to count more ballot papers, because the counting is done in parallel. It takes more people, but if the population is bigger then you have more people.
Logic dictates that you can't trust a machine built by a human any more than you can trust a human, so you might as well go for the simpler option. Sophistication is a synonym for "opportunity for things to go wrong".
But what really frightens me is the fact that you Americans haven't mandated that the specifications and workings of voting machines should be in the public domain - where they are truly open to the level of independent scrutiny that democracy needs. That the manufacturers should consider their proprietary secrets of greater importance than the proper workings of democracy beggars belief. That the Government even allows voting machine manufacturers to keep such things secret is a scandal that should raise questions. But when the public at large seems actually to tolerate this egregious state of affairs, then I can only suppose that I have missed something important somewhere.
You can use backquotes {`` - the ones that normally are used for executing a command} or no quotes at all around a field name, and either single {''} or double {""} speech marks around data. I believe the use of double speech marks is a proprietary extension to ANSI SQL, but MySQL implements them, and MySQL is the de facto standard for database servers. Wherte MySQL differs from ANSI SQL, competitors tend to ape MySQL. More at http://www.mysql.com if you really must. There's a full and frank comparison with other DB engines on there somewhere too.
To find out where spam is coming from, get an e-mail account with Virtual Hosting. This is where you get an entire subdomain {or a domain if you pay for it} to yourself, and your e-mail address is in the form anything@mysubdomain.myisp.co.uk. Then you just need to give a different prefix for each site you visit -- e.g. nyt_resp@mysubdomain.myisp.co.uk, and so on.
If you want to put your e-mail address on your web site, use this to automagically mung your address.
I don't know how valid the address needs to be. I just used the "from" address on a piece of SPAM I had been sent previously. It seemed to work; certainly it didn't e-mail an auto-generated password to that address or anything.
Grow up, will you?
So by modifying an Xbox you could cheat in an on-line game. Pay attention to that last word. Sure, someone could get a few extra points. Big deal. It's a bloody game, for chuff's sake.
Little boys grow out of pissing contests when they find another use for their dicks.
..... that this thing is just some kind of electromagnetic repulsion thing. Coils of wire? It looks like an electric motor flattened out. If you place a coil of good conducting material in a strong alternating field, the induced current will induce its own magnetic field, and the induced field will always repel the external magnetic field. If you have too much resistance in the coil, of course, the repulsion due to the induced field is likely to be weaker than the attraction due to gravity.
..... but it fooled plenty of non-scientists.
Talk of high voltage, high current and complex waveforms always impresses non-scientists. Even when it's a well-known phenomenon. Remember the "perpetual motion machine" {a lightly constructed wheel with elastic bands for spokes, set at an angle} that was actually a radiometer? It got its energy from the light bulb shining on it
BTW, the use of the word "inch" gives it straight away that this person is not a real scientist. Real scientists use SI units exclusively, even {especially?} when talking to non-scientists.