Even smart users will sometimes do dumb stuff, and some of them will be your bosses.
Missing the point. If it's the fault of whoever did the dumb stuff, then your boss gets canned, not you.
And by the way, it would be a far better investment of company resources to educate users about security -- a couple quick PowerPoint-like presentations would probably do it -- than to pay you to cover your ass at every turn, which is a full-time job. That's just simple economics -- cost of once-a-year seminar < full time cover-the-IT-dept's-ass guy. Bosses like simple economics -- you could even make a PowerPoint-like presentation of that.
"Well, I guess if you want to bring that skanky virus-infested laptop from home and plug it into our network it's fine as long as you don't call the helpdesk."
Erm... Fundamental disagreement. If you can't deal with a skanky virus-infested laptop, it means among other things, you're likely relying on Windows for critical systems. Which means you already have a problem.
I'm not saying you should completely tolerate laptops that are actually virus-infested -- for instance, if they clog up the network, you block or throttle network access. But if your security falls apart because someone brings in a laptop, chances are you're already hosed -- firewalls will only get you so far, and what are you going to do if one of your users is actually malicious?
If a place is SERIOUS about security, they might also be using a kitchen-sink approach -- they'll do what you said just because it's one more thing, even though it really changes nothing. But they are that fucking capslock SERIOUS about it, and someone were to take in a fucking army of virus-infested laptops, ipods, flying fucking toasters, the worst that'll happen is they'll lag the network.
I don't even want to guess at inconsistencies in the physics, seeing as they seem to grab anything you ever hear that sounds physicsy, especially if it has words like "quantum" or "dark matter", and include it in some random alien technology.
It's got the inevitable inconsistencies, mostly with the movie. I don't even want to guess at physics problem.
This is a good thing, and I like the show the way it is -- I like that Daniel Jackson doesn't have to spend the first half hour of every show cracking a new alien language -- but still, it might be good to officially reboot it.
The very first Microsoft product ever was Altair BASIC. I think the article speaks for itself:
They contacted MITS founder Ed Roberts, told him that they were developing an interpreter, and asked whether he would like to see a demonstration. This followed the common engineering industry practice of a trial balloon, an announcement of a non-existent product to gauge interest. Roberts agreed to meet them for a demonstration in a few weeks.
Right -- as if "common practice" excuses what is a blatant lie. Honest people didn't have a chance -- MITS had already decided to meet with Microsoft, and it seemed obvious that Microsoft would have their product done in time. Who would be crazy enough to start one?
Microsoft was founded on a lie.
(This is going to be a long rant, so you can stop reading now -- let me just assure you that if anything, they've gotten worse since that little stunt.)
But hey, at least they actually wrote that themselves. It might've even been a good product. But remember DOS? They bought that from its single programmer. It was originally called QDOS, which stands for "Quick and Dirty Operating System". IBM had to fix over 300 bugs in DOS, which is why it was copyrighted both Microsoft and IBM.
So, basically, through some pretty smooth marketing, Microsoft managed to sell what has got to be the crappiest OS ever. You could say it was a good thing -- all kinds of computers could be DOS compatible, and run DOS and all the same DOS software, without having to pay a dime to IBM. Too bad DOS sucked so much, and MS didn't seem to do any work at all on it.
In fact, if you look at most of their products, you have a hard time remembering when they ever came up with an original idea. Excel was obviously a ripoff of Lotus 1-2-3, and even had instructions on switching from Lotus 1-2-3. Word? WordPerfect. And Windows was enough of a ripoff of the Macintosh that Apple should've sued Microsoft into the ground.
The only advantage Microsoft had during these early years was that Macs were just that much worse.
But, recently, Apple has come out with OS X, and Linux has improved, so we have other options. Microsoft has kept and maintained a monopoly, often at the expense of their users. Office documents were not and still are not in any kind of open standard -- the 7000 page "standard" for Microsoft's XML format makes it incredibly difficult to implement any kind of competitor to Office, and Microsoft refused to accept the existing OpenDocument standard.
This has generally been their approach to standards. POSIX was released in 1988, and Microsoft has never supported POSIX, X-Windows, or any similar platform. Instead, they declare their own platform (and software) as standard simply because it is the most popular -- a habit from the days of DOS, when such practice was actually helpful to users. When DOS came out, there weren't really any standards, so the most popular platform -- and one that could run on any hardware -- was a really good thing. Now, we have all kinds of hardware standards, so this is no longer useful.
They quite frequently attempt to squeeze more out of their monopoly. You see this kind of thing all over the place. The Xbox headset, for no good reason, uses a jack which is shaped ever so slightly differently, for no good reason -- but the reason is obvious; if you want to use a headset with your Xbox, you have to buy one from Microsoft or from somebody who is paying Microsoft for the privilege. They encourage DirectX, rather than OpenGL, meaning people can either develop for OpenGL (and have a game work on Windows, Mac, or Linux), or for DirectX (and have a game work on Windows and Xbox). And recently, they've been actively participating in many aspects of Trusted Computing and DRM, which actively hurts the consumer, and is only really wanted by the RIAA/MPAA.
They've implemented a scheme called "Windows Genuine Advan
In the end, "blame-the-user" is not an effective strategy. Users will be users.
So what?
I mean, retards will be retards. I actually live with one -- and I mean in the real, medical/clinical sense. He's a good guy, we get along well. He can bag groceries, or put labels on boxes, and I'm sure he does a good job of it.
I would not hire him to do work that requires a lot of thought, however.
Hiring a user who isn't at least trainable about security to do any kind of computer work is like hiring a blind guy to drive a limo.
Therefore the burden of security rightly belongs on the IT department.
If the burden of security is on the IT department, that means the IT department has to be insanely vigilent and controlling. It's the kind of thing that leads to people being required to use one specific configuration of Windows, and not being allowed to use Firefox or install any software. Yes, it protects users from themselves, but it would also make me completely useless.
Thus, I work at a job where IT does focus on security, but users are also expected to be at least somewhat competent.
Places I've worked that took security seriously used two-factor authentication where each user carries a token generator, so the password alone is useless.
And that's all very well and good. That actually doesn't cripple the user.
Now, expiring the password or including some stupid checks like forcing them to have a number -- that does cripple the user, and doesn't inherently make things more secure anyway.
And they have other policies that help prevent the unintended consequences of human nature (like: no employee-owned equipment on the network).
That, I'd disagree with. If your network is vulnerable to a malicious machine through your firewall, then when a breach happens -- not if, when -- it will rip through your network like a broadsword through your rectum.
I mean, yes, have a way that IT can manage stuff. A simple contract -- if you want tech support, you run our machines with our dictated software and you follow our rules. But employees should be free to break that contract -- and thus receive no more support.
Not necessarily. As someone else said, the passwords will end up being things like password1206 -- if you cracked password1106 and it doesn't work anymore, how long do you think it would take to guess the next one in the series?
And "crackability criteria" doesn't really work. Require a number? Ok, it's password1. Require upercase letters? Password1. Scan for it being "based on a dictionary word"? 12345678. Try to make it idiot-proof, and they will invent a better idiot.
Instead, you should get rid of the moronic password expirations and crackability criteria, and instead require people to answer and digitally "sign" (click "I agree") a quick quiz about the legal ramifications when the company loses money because of their password fuckup. You should also do penetration testing, so that when someone ignores that quiz, you mess with them a little, scare the living shit out of them, and then show them just how ludicrously easy it was to do, and how much money they could've just lost (in addition to being fired).
The only difference is, you'd use a password to encrypt a private key on the local machine (or flash card, or USB drive, or whatever), but no key would have to be sent over the wire -- thus, even if someone cracked the SSL, or if you fell for a phishing attack, they'd never get anything useful out of you.
If it is that big a problem than a fix like that would have been used a long time ago.
I wonder about that. I've come to the conclusion that nobody cares enough, because not enough damage is being caused to justify a perceived cost of implementing a more secure system. You know, kind of how Microsoft doesn't see enough profit in designing the kind of system the end-users want, because they really get their money from Big Business?
Note that I said "perceived" cost. Even if the average amount lost per person using an insecure system is losing 25 cents, try telling that to the one person who just lost their life savings. Try telling them they were the only one hit, and they just made it look like everyone lost a quarter, instead of them losing a quarter of a million dollars. See if it makes them feel any better.
Yes, this is very possible. Moreso the bigger the game gets.
I play Nexus TK, which is a 2D MMO. There are some things that it's got to be easier for them to get to look good in 2D, of course -- it's easy to just sketch a character and be done with it.
Trouble is, the characters can do a lot. There are 16 different emotes, for instance -- 5 of which actually require the character's body to move as well as their face, and 2 of those which look different depending on which direction the character is facing (of 4 possible directions). And then there's the emote players do when they're casting spells, which also looks different from each of those four directions. Players can also attack in those four directions, and the attack animation is either a swinging motion (club, sword, or punch) or a stabbing motion (staff).
The game is isometric-ish, so you can't dupe stuff for the 4 directions -- for one thing, facing down is facing towards the camera, and up is away from the camera -- and most things look different from the back than they do from the front.
So, that's 5 emotes + 1 sort-of emote (casting spells) + 2 different attacks that I know of, + walking + riding a horse + standing still. That's 10 different animations -- for each direction, so 40 animations of 3 frames each, as well as 4 frames just standing still (or sitting on a horse) -- plus probably 2 more for when someone's holding a weapon or a shield. That means if they want to introduce a new outfit, say, they need to draw roughly 130 frames of animation.
Per item of clothing.
Now, a 3D game with skeletal animation (or morph targets) might take longer to get those animations initially, but you could just create a model for the clothing and attach it to the character. So, if you can create such a model faster than you can create 130 frames of animation, 3D will eventually be cheaper than 2D.
Same with everything else, by the way. Weapons have a drop graphic (what it looks like on the ground), as graphic for being held in each of those 4 directions, a swing animation in each of the 4 directions, and possibly a walking animation.
Technically, you can do skeletal animation for 2D, but only if you want your game to look like Ragdoll Kung-Fu.
Now, I'm not a game developer, but I can definitely say that there are cases where at least doing 3D artwork is cheaper now. However, what's often missed is that games don't have to be "next gen" to be good. Recently, I've been playing a lot of lugaru -- definitely worth the $20. The graphics and artwork is actually very old-looking -- will be much better in Lugaru 2, apparently -- but they focus on detail where it counts. Throw a knife at someone, and you'll have to retrieve it if you want to throw more knives. If it doesn't kill them, it'll be sticking out of their chest -- they can then grab it and use it against you, dripping blood all over the place...
In many ways, it actually looks much better than most "modern" or "next-gen" fighting games -- and they're going to make a sequel!
Because one doesn't just want to play it on mpg123. One also wants to play it on a handheld device that supports MPEG audio but does not support rendering Standard MIDI File to the General MIDI spec.
Valid argument, if that's what he was doing. He wasn't. He was piping it directly into mpg123.
AFAIK, the scanned images are just that -- scanned images. There may be other parts of the site that are subject to copyright, but I don't believe those images are.
I mean, what you're essentially saying is, once copyright expires on these PDFs, I can convert them to jpegs or pngs and claim copyright on those. How does that make sense?
Hmm... Some of the stuff looks like PDF, but is really just a huge assembly of images. The PHP isn't as relevant as the AJAX...
Anyway, one very easy way to force a download is to run Firefox without the Acrobat plugin. I use a 64-bit Firefox, but you can probably do this with a portable Firefox, or by temporarily renaming/removing the acrobat plugin dll (or so) from your Firefox plugin dir. Make sure your download settings don't automatically open Acrobat, then simply go to one of these pages. It'll prompt you with a choice to either open Acrobat or save the file.
You could also try clicking on the document and hitting shift+ctrl+s. On my Linux Acrobat Reader, at least when standing alone, this is the keyboard shortcut for File->Save a Copy. (I don't use the plugin much because I like my 64-bit Firefox, and acroread is 32-bit, but this might work from inside the browser.)
Another possibility is the Download Embedded extension -- or "addon", if you must. Works on just about anything embedded in a webpage. Not guaranteed to work on everything, of course -- a lot of Flash will load other Flash files from inside the SWF, and really, a Firefox extension can't do anything inside of a Firefox plugin. But it should work for PDFs. However, I haven't tried it on this page -- it may be that the page uses a frame, and I'm not sure Download Embedded handles frames (since they don't require an <embed> tag.)
And finally, you could just do a recursive wget, and essentially spider their entire site, including the PDFs. Then just do something like "find -iname '*.pdf'" if they're too buried for you to find on your own.
Let us know if you're bold enough to set up a torrent, if you decide to go the wget route!
Why would you convert the midi file to an mp3, just to play with mpg123? Leaving aside for a moment that mpg321 is better, and there are better things still, why not just play the midi?
I tend to agree, although I only scanned the source. I don't dare run it on my server without setting up a proper sandbox first, and it's too late at night to attempt to figure out what "a proper sandbox" looks like for PHP.
Why does Thunderbird still have its own copy of Gecko and XUL?
I understand Thunderbird needing to be separate from Firefox. We don't want a "browser suite" again. But would it kill them to at least use a shared library, or something?
True enough, but it always seemed to me that the biggest problems of AJAX was the HTML. Browser hacks, performance implications of quirks mode, browser hacks, performance implications of generating HTML from JavaScript and then parsing it for no good reason, and browser hacks.
I'd like to see the JavaScript go away, but it's at least theoretically possible to build an efficient JavaScript compiler/interpreter, and it is a damned powerful language. The problem is, HTML was designed to mark up web pages. It makes perfect sense when you're mostly using it for the hypertext effect -- just the occasional <a href>, or using <b> and <i> to essentially develop a page the way you'd do a word processing document.
It has no place in actual application development.
All of these actions help the economy and the poor not hurt them!
That's debatable.
The problem is, almost any scenario we come up with would be impossible to deconstruct to the point where either of us could say for certain that one way is better than the other. We'd have to look at actual statistics to try and find out what really happens to the poor.
Let's take your example:
I'm making more money now.
What is the cost of that?
Do you work more hours? Did someone else at your company end up making less? Or maybe your company made money at the expense of another company losing money.
I'm aware that it's not a completely closed system. It's possible that everyone in the economy worked harder, or that someone, somewhere, was more productive somehow -- maybe a particularly good crop of food, something like that.
But without being omniscient, I don't think you can really demonstrate that your making more money didn't hurt the poor.
Invested it in an IRA and also outside of retirement.
So you're not actually spending more. Moving on...
My money went to other companies who now have more money to expand operations and offer jobs and benefits to more of them poor folk you seem so concerned about.
Let's see: Your money went to other companies who now have more money to expand operations. They expand operations by spending money to other companies, who then expand operations. In theory, it stimulates the economy -- everyone's now working harder, which, of course, means more employment opportunity.
I should point out that providing that opportunity isn't everything. You still need education, and even with all of that available, how do you make sure the poor know about it? How do you feed and clothe them, and pull them out of gang warfare, in order for them to seize that opportunity?
I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm just saying that it takes a hell of a lot more than just a better economy. You need programs, either government-funded or charities. And like I said, we can't depend on charity unless we force the issue (pay it out of taxes).
But ignoring that issue for the moment, suppose you invest in some generic company who now decides they can afford more office chairs. They try to place an order for some obscene amount of office chairs. The office chair company doesn't have that many in stock, but also, responding to demand, realizes that they can raise prices and make more money -- and should raise prices, in order to prevent a year-long waiting list from everyone buying chairs.
I mean, yes, in theory, office chair company could sell every single chair they're asked for. And office chairs is a silly example, because I've never heard of a shortage of those. But the point is, if the office chair company can't scale up -- work harder, hire more people -- then they can't sell more chairs, so they are forced to raise the price of chairs. This, in turn, makes the company you invest in unable to afford as many chairs with your money. Eventually, the dust settles, and a fair price is reached -- and the office chair company is selling exactly as many chairs as before.
This ripples throughout the economy. The chair company is suddenly the place with more money than everyone else. They can now afford to buy more stuff, and everyone else can either work harder or charge more.
It's possible that the net effect on the economy is simply that everything costs more. This is called "inflation". It means that absolutely nothing about the economy changed, except that there are bigger numbers anywhere.
Remember, as Douglas Adams said, money is nothing but small green slips of paper. Now, it's not even that -- it's numbers in a computer. It is entirely fantasy -- fortunately a shared fantasy, but a fantasy nonetheless -- that dollars are worth more than Gil or WoW Gold.
Let's say I earn a raise (or don't have to pay taxes), so I go out and buy goods and services I normally wouldn't buy; my demand for those goods and services means a proportional demand in jobs to create and provide those goods and services. In short, the more money people have the more jobs there will be and the less poverty we will have.
In theory, yes. But it seems more likely to me that you'd hit a point, very quickly, where people decide to charge more, rather than produce more, and then we're back where we started, only everyone has more dollars -- which are now worth less. It's called "inflation."
I took Econ 101. Did you?
wouldn't you rather your capslock GOVERNMENT would talk about this stupidity, rather than the "issue" of "obscenity"?
I would rather, but I'm not naive enough to believe they will.
I'm still naive enough to believe that they have to answer to the people who can vote them out. The trick is to embarrass them enough that you get enough other voters to notice.
Better free public transportation = higher taxes = less money consumers have to spend on goods and services = less jobs = people in poverty are worse off than before
Better free public transportation = higher taxes, yes. Everything else you mention is speculation.
Put it another way: Now consumers are spending money on public transportation, instead of other goods and services. Public transportation is still a service, and still provides jobs.
It also means that you're paying for it even if you have a car -- which means people will use their cars less, because they already paid for the public transit, may as well use it. This reduces pollution and increases efficiency.
I've lost all hope in the government. It's become a big stupid monster machine that wants to put its snout into every facet of our lives.
I actually have trouble finding any large organization that doesn't fit that description. I'd like to know how you'd structure a new government to avoid that -- or would you prefer none at all?
Even private schools are subject to the government.
Your point? Everything is subject to the government.
Not to mention that if you attend private schools, you still have to pay for going to public school (even though you don't actually go).
Ah, yes, that's a problem. Kind of like how even if I don't use Windows, I still have to pay for it on my laptop. (Well, actually, mine was a Powerbook, but the point stands.)
Unfair, yes. But it's not a monopoly.
Free? Who do you think's flipping the bill? Santa Claus?! Public schooling is not free, it's funded through taxation just like all government "services".
Yeah, of course I know that. Which makes it a form of forced charity, which is, after all, the only kind we can count on.
And keep in mind: You don't have to respect their opinion to respect their right to have it.
I think Christianity is retarded. In fact, I think most religion is stupid superstition, and I think people are stupid for believing it and continuing to spread it. I will not respect your religion.
I will, however, defend to the death your right to believe whatever stupidity works for you.
I respect your rights, not necessarily what you do with them.
Slashdot Mirror
Erm, I just copy/pasted YOUR ***'s, and it shows up as hunter2 to YOU because it's YOUR password!
Missing the point. If it's the fault of whoever did the dumb stuff, then your boss gets canned, not you.
And by the way, it would be a far better investment of company resources to educate users about security -- a couple quick PowerPoint-like presentations would probably do it -- than to pay you to cover your ass at every turn, which is a full-time job. That's just simple economics -- cost of once-a-year seminar < full time cover-the-IT-dept's-ass guy. Bosses like simple economics -- you could even make a PowerPoint-like presentation of that.
Erm... Fundamental disagreement. If you can't deal with a skanky virus-infested laptop, it means among other things, you're likely relying on Windows for critical systems. Which means you already have a problem.
I'm not saying you should completely tolerate laptops that are actually virus-infested -- for instance, if they clog up the network, you block or throttle network access. But if your security falls apart because someone brings in a laptop, chances are you're already hosed -- firewalls will only get you so far, and what are you going to do if one of your users is actually malicious?
If a place is SERIOUS about security, they might also be using a kitchen-sink approach -- they'll do what you said just because it's one more thing, even though it really changes nothing. But they are that fucking capslock SERIOUS about it, and someone were to take in a fucking army of virus-infested laptops, ipods, flying fucking toasters, the worst that'll happen is they'll lag the network.
How you mock me.
That should be:
It's got the inevitable inconsistencies, mostly with the movie. I don't even want to guess at physics problem.
This is a good thing, and I like the show the way it is -- I like that Daniel Jackson doesn't have to spend the first half hour of every show cracking a new alien language -- but still, it might be good to officially reboot it.
The very first Microsoft product ever was Altair BASIC. I think the article speaks for itself:
Right -- as if "common practice" excuses what is a blatant lie. Honest people didn't have a chance -- MITS had already decided to meet with Microsoft, and it seemed obvious that Microsoft would have their product done in time. Who would be crazy enough to start one?
Microsoft was founded on a lie.
(This is going to be a long rant, so you can stop reading now -- let me just assure you that if anything, they've gotten worse since that little stunt.)
But hey, at least they actually wrote that themselves. It might've even been a good product. But remember DOS? They bought that from its single programmer. It was originally called QDOS, which stands for "Quick and Dirty Operating System". IBM had to fix over 300 bugs in DOS, which is why it was copyrighted both Microsoft and IBM.
So, basically, through some pretty smooth marketing, Microsoft managed to sell what has got to be the crappiest OS ever. You could say it was a good thing -- all kinds of computers could be DOS compatible, and run DOS and all the same DOS software, without having to pay a dime to IBM. Too bad DOS sucked so much, and MS didn't seem to do any work at all on it.
In fact, if you look at most of their products, you have a hard time remembering when they ever came up with an original idea. Excel was obviously a ripoff of Lotus 1-2-3, and even had instructions on switching from Lotus 1-2-3. Word? WordPerfect. And Windows was enough of a ripoff of the Macintosh that Apple should've sued Microsoft into the ground.
The only advantage Microsoft had during these early years was that Macs were just that much worse.
But, recently, Apple has come out with OS X, and Linux has improved, so we have other options. Microsoft has kept and maintained a monopoly, often at the expense of their users. Office documents were not and still are not in any kind of open standard -- the 7000 page "standard" for Microsoft's XML format makes it incredibly difficult to implement any kind of competitor to Office, and Microsoft refused to accept the existing OpenDocument standard.
This has generally been their approach to standards. POSIX was released in 1988, and Microsoft has never supported POSIX, X-Windows, or any similar platform. Instead, they declare their own platform (and software) as standard simply because it is the most popular -- a habit from the days of DOS, when such practice was actually helpful to users. When DOS came out, there weren't really any standards, so the most popular platform -- and one that could run on any hardware -- was a really good thing. Now, we have all kinds of hardware standards, so this is no longer useful.
They quite frequently attempt to squeeze more out of their monopoly. You see this kind of thing all over the place. The Xbox headset, for no good reason, uses a jack which is shaped ever so slightly differently, for no good reason -- but the reason is obvious; if you want to use a headset with your Xbox, you have to buy one from Microsoft or from somebody who is paying Microsoft for the privilege. They encourage DirectX, rather than OpenGL, meaning people can either develop for OpenGL (and have a game work on Windows, Mac, or Linux), or for DirectX (and have a game work on Windows and Xbox). And recently, they've been actively participating in many aspects of Trusted Computing and DRM, which actively hurts the consumer, and is only really wanted by the RIAA/MPAA.
They've implemented a scheme called "Windows Genuine Advan
So what?
I mean, retards will be retards. I actually live with one -- and I mean in the real, medical/clinical sense. He's a good guy, we get along well. He can bag groceries, or put labels on boxes, and I'm sure he does a good job of it.
I would not hire him to do work that requires a lot of thought, however.
Hiring a user who isn't at least trainable about security to do any kind of computer work is like hiring a blind guy to drive a limo.
If the burden of security is on the IT department, that means the IT department has to be insanely vigilent and controlling. It's the kind of thing that leads to people being required to use one specific configuration of Windows, and not being allowed to use Firefox or install any software. Yes, it protects users from themselves, but it would also make me completely useless.
Thus, I work at a job where IT does focus on security, but users are also expected to be at least somewhat competent.
And that's all very well and good. That actually doesn't cripple the user.
Now, expiring the password or including some stupid checks like forcing them to have a number -- that does cripple the user, and doesn't inherently make things more secure anyway.
That, I'd disagree with. If your network is vulnerable to a malicious machine through your firewall, then when a breach happens -- not if, when -- it will rip through your network like a broadsword through your rectum.
I mean, yes, have a way that IT can manage stuff. A simple contract -- if you want tech support, you run our machines with our dictated software and you follow our rules. But employees should be free to break that contract -- and thus receive no more support.
See, when YOU type hunter2, it shows to us as *******
Not necessarily. As someone else said, the passwords will end up being things like password1206 -- if you cracked password1106 and it doesn't work anymore, how long do you think it would take to guess the next one in the series?
And "crackability criteria" doesn't really work. Require a number? Ok, it's password1. Require upercase letters? Password1. Scan for it being "based on a dictionary word"? 12345678. Try to make it idiot-proof, and they will invent a better idiot.
Instead, you should get rid of the moronic password expirations and crackability criteria, and instead require people to answer and digitally "sign" (click "I agree") a quick quiz about the legal ramifications when the company loses money because of their password fuckup. You should also do penetration testing, so that when someone ignores that quiz, you mess with them a little, scare the living shit out of them, and then show them just how ludicrously easy it was to do, and how much money they could've just lost (in addition to being fired).
The only difference is, you'd use a password to encrypt a private key on the local machine (or flash card, or USB drive, or whatever), but no key would have to be sent over the wire -- thus, even if someone cracked the SSL, or if you fell for a phishing attack, they'd never get anything useful out of you.
I wonder about that. I've come to the conclusion that nobody cares enough, because not enough damage is being caused to justify a perceived cost of implementing a more secure system. You know, kind of how Microsoft doesn't see enough profit in designing the kind of system the end-users want, because they really get their money from Big Business?
Note that I said "perceived" cost. Even if the average amount lost per person using an insecure system is losing 25 cents, try telling that to the one person who just lost their life savings. Try telling them they were the only one hit, and they just made it look like everyone lost a quarter, instead of them losing a quarter of a million dollars. See if it makes them feel any better.
And I don't think the actual cost is that bad.
Yes, this is very possible. Moreso the bigger the game gets.
I play Nexus TK, which is a 2D MMO. There are some things that it's got to be easier for them to get to look good in 2D, of course -- it's easy to just sketch a character and be done with it.
Trouble is, the characters can do a lot. There are 16 different emotes, for instance -- 5 of which actually require the character's body to move as well as their face, and 2 of those which look different depending on which direction the character is facing (of 4 possible directions). And then there's the emote players do when they're casting spells, which also looks different from each of those four directions. Players can also attack in those four directions, and the attack animation is either a swinging motion (club, sword, or punch) or a stabbing motion (staff).
The game is isometric-ish, so you can't dupe stuff for the 4 directions -- for one thing, facing down is facing towards the camera, and up is away from the camera -- and most things look different from the back than they do from the front.
So, that's 5 emotes + 1 sort-of emote (casting spells) + 2 different attacks that I know of, + walking + riding a horse + standing still. That's 10 different animations -- for each direction, so 40 animations of 3 frames each, as well as 4 frames just standing still (or sitting on a horse) -- plus probably 2 more for when someone's holding a weapon or a shield. That means if they want to introduce a new outfit, say, they need to draw roughly 130 frames of animation.
Per item of clothing.
Now, a 3D game with skeletal animation (or morph targets) might take longer to get those animations initially, but you could just create a model for the clothing and attach it to the character. So, if you can create such a model faster than you can create 130 frames of animation, 3D will eventually be cheaper than 2D.
Same with everything else, by the way. Weapons have a drop graphic (what it looks like on the ground), as graphic for being held in each of those 4 directions, a swing animation in each of the 4 directions, and possibly a walking animation.
Technically, you can do skeletal animation for 2D, but only if you want your game to look like Ragdoll Kung-Fu.
Now, I'm not a game developer, but I can definitely say that there are cases where at least doing 3D artwork is cheaper now. However, what's often missed is that games don't have to be "next gen" to be good. Recently, I've been playing a lot of lugaru -- definitely worth the $20. The graphics and artwork is actually very old-looking -- will be much better in Lugaru 2, apparently -- but they focus on detail where it counts. Throw a knife at someone, and you'll have to retrieve it if you want to throw more knives. If it doesn't kill them, it'll be sticking out of their chest -- they can then grab it and use it against you, dripping blood all over the place...
In many ways, it actually looks much better than most "modern" or "next-gen" fighting games -- and they're going to make a sequel!
Valid argument, if that's what he was doing. He wasn't. He was piping it directly into mpg123.
I love that I got modded up for debugging a joke oneliner! Only on Slashdot...
Heh... What's funny is that converting to mp3 would likely make it sound worse. That's assuming it could encode the mp3 and decode it fast enough.
/var/log/messages | gzip | zcat | less
I don't know, it seems kind of like
cat
Even when it's lossless, it doesn't make sense.
I can see why people modded me funny, though.
AFAIK, the scanned images are just that -- scanned images. There may be other parts of the site that are subject to copyright, but I don't believe those images are.
I mean, what you're essentially saying is, once copyright expires on these PDFs, I can convert them to jpegs or pngs and claim copyright on those. How does that make sense?
Hmm... Some of the stuff looks like PDF, but is really just a huge assembly of images. The PHP isn't as relevant as the AJAX...
Anyway, one very easy way to force a download is to run Firefox without the Acrobat plugin. I use a 64-bit Firefox, but you can probably do this with a portable Firefox, or by temporarily renaming/removing the acrobat plugin dll (or so) from your Firefox plugin dir. Make sure your download settings don't automatically open Acrobat, then simply go to one of these pages. It'll prompt you with a choice to either open Acrobat or save the file.
You could also try clicking on the document and hitting shift+ctrl+s. On my Linux Acrobat Reader, at least when standing alone, this is the keyboard shortcut for File->Save a Copy. (I don't use the plugin much because I like my 64-bit Firefox, and acroread is 32-bit, but this might work from inside the browser.)
Another possibility is the Download Embedded extension -- or "addon", if you must. Works on just about anything embedded in a webpage. Not guaranteed to work on everything, of course -- a lot of Flash will load other Flash files from inside the SWF, and really, a Firefox extension can't do anything inside of a Firefox plugin. But it should work for PDFs. However, I haven't tried it on this page -- it may be that the page uses a frame, and I'm not sure Download Embedded handles frames (since they don't require an <embed> tag.)
And finally, you could just do a recursive wget, and essentially spider their entire site, including the PDFs. Then just do something like "find -iname '*.pdf'" if they're too buried for you to find on your own.
Let us know if you're bold enough to set up a torrent, if you decide to go the wget route!
Wait... Even if that worked...
Why would you convert the midi file to an mp3, just to play with mpg123? Leaving aside for a moment that mpg321 is better, and there are better things still, why not just play the midi?
wget -r -l 0 -np -Ajpg http://dme.mozarteum.at/; gocr *.jpg | txt2midi | timidity -
After all, you're wanting to do this realtime...
/usr/bin/violin
I tend to agree, although I only scanned the source. I don't dare run it on my server without setting up a proper sandbox first, and it's too late at night to attempt to figure out what "a proper sandbox" looks like for PHP.
Why does Thunderbird still have its own copy of Gecko and XUL?
I understand Thunderbird needing to be separate from Firefox. We don't want a "browser suite" again. But would it kill them to at least use a shared library, or something?
True enough, but it always seemed to me that the biggest problems of AJAX was the HTML. Browser hacks, performance implications of quirks mode, browser hacks, performance implications of generating HTML from JavaScript and then parsing it for no good reason, and browser hacks.
I'd like to see the JavaScript go away, but it's at least theoretically possible to build an efficient JavaScript compiler/interpreter, and it is a damned powerful language. The problem is, HTML was designed to mark up web pages. It makes perfect sense when you're mostly using it for the hypertext effect -- just the occasional <a href>, or using <b> and <i> to essentially develop a page the way you'd do a word processing document.
It has no place in actual application development.
Couldn't you just do a frameset with no borders and a single frame of 0 px?
That's debatable.
The problem is, almost any scenario we come up with would be impossible to deconstruct to the point where either of us could say for certain that one way is better than the other. We'd have to look at actual statistics to try and find out what really happens to the poor.
Let's take your example:
What is the cost of that?
Do you work more hours? Did someone else at your company end up making less? Or maybe your company made money at the expense of another company losing money.
I'm aware that it's not a completely closed system. It's possible that everyone in the economy worked harder, or that someone, somewhere, was more productive somehow -- maybe a particularly good crop of food, something like that.
But without being omniscient, I don't think you can really demonstrate that your making more money didn't hurt the poor.
So you're not actually spending more. Moving on...
Let's see: Your money went to other companies who now have more money to expand operations. They expand operations by spending money to other companies, who then expand operations. In theory, it stimulates the economy -- everyone's now working harder, which, of course, means more employment opportunity.
I should point out that providing that opportunity isn't everything. You still need education, and even with all of that available, how do you make sure the poor know about it? How do you feed and clothe them, and pull them out of gang warfare, in order for them to seize that opportunity?
I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm just saying that it takes a hell of a lot more than just a better economy. You need programs, either government-funded or charities. And like I said, we can't depend on charity unless we force the issue (pay it out of taxes).
But ignoring that issue for the moment, suppose you invest in some generic company who now decides they can afford more office chairs. They try to place an order for some obscene amount of office chairs. The office chair company doesn't have that many in stock, but also, responding to demand, realizes that they can raise prices and make more money -- and should raise prices, in order to prevent a year-long waiting list from everyone buying chairs.
I mean, yes, in theory, office chair company could sell every single chair they're asked for. And office chairs is a silly example, because I've never heard of a shortage of those. But the point is, if the office chair company can't scale up -- work harder, hire more people -- then they can't sell more chairs, so they are forced to raise the price of chairs. This, in turn, makes the company you invest in unable to afford as many chairs with your money. Eventually, the dust settles, and a fair price is reached -- and the office chair company is selling exactly as many chairs as before.
This ripples throughout the economy. The chair company is suddenly the place with more money than everyone else. They can now afford to buy more stuff, and everyone else can either work harder or charge more.
It's possible that the net effect on the economy is simply that everything costs more. This is called "inflation". It means that absolutely nothing about the economy changed, except that there are bigger numbers anywhere.
Remember, as Douglas Adams said, money is nothing but small green slips of paper. Now, it's not even that -- it's numbers in a computer. It is entirely fantasy -- fortunately a shared fantasy, but a fantasy nonetheless -- that dollars are worth more than Gil or WoW Gold.
In theory, yes. But it seems more likely to me that you'd hit a point, very quickly, where people decide to charge more, rather than produce more, and then we're back where we started, only everyone has more dollars -- which are now worth less. It's called "inflation."
I took Econ 101. Did you?
I'm still naive enough to believe that they have to answer to the people who can vote them out. The trick is to embarrass them enough that you get enough other voters to notice.
Better free public transportation = higher taxes, yes. Everything else you mention is speculation.
Put it another way: Now consumers are spending money on public transportation, instead of other goods and services. Public transportation is still a service, and still provides jobs.
It also means that you're paying for it even if you have a car -- which means people will use their cars less, because they already paid for the public transit, may as well use it. This reduces pollution and increases efficiency.
I actually have trouble finding any large organization that doesn't fit that description. I'd like to know how you'd structure a new government to avoid that -- or would you prefer none at all?
Your point? Everything is subject to the government.
Ah, yes, that's a problem. Kind of like how even if I don't use Windows, I still have to pay for it on my laptop. (Well, actually, mine was a Powerbook, but the point stands.)
Unfair, yes. But it's not a monopoly.
Yeah, of course I know that. Which makes it a form of forced charity, which is, after all, the only kind we can count on.
Let's see... The pencil and paintbrush seem obvious enough, so you must mean a straight line...
Oh, I see what you mean. Looks about as easy as Paint, once you know what it's called.
And keep in mind: You don't have to respect their opinion to respect their right to have it.
I think Christianity is retarded. In fact, I think most religion is stupid superstition, and I think people are stupid for believing it and continuing to spread it. I will not respect your religion.
I will, however, defend to the death your right to believe whatever stupidity works for you.
I respect your rights, not necessarily what you do with them.