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User: Chris+Hodges

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  1. Re:What learning? on MIT Urges Brazilian Government to Use Linux · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Saying that hiding the source for an Operating System from the general public robs them of learning is like saying keeping Quantum Physics textbooks away from six year olds robs them of learning.

    While that may be true for the vast majority of the population, it's an insult to the minority who will tinker with the code of the OSS they are exposed to, get a taste for it, and go on to develop a home-grown software industry as a result.

  2. Re:It's called... on Sunlight in a Tube · · Score: 1

    Shouldn't that be Windows(TM)?

  3. Re:Economical? on AgroWaste to Oil a Growing Market · · Score: 1
    Actually, if this were the only source of petro we used we would eventually run into dooms day scenarios of global cooling. The reason is that this process isn't perfect, it produces carbon black (pure carbon) as one of it by products. Unless you can find a way of making C02 without C then we will eventually deplete the atmosphere!

    But you wouldn't have to make it without carbon - you've just said carbon is produced, so just burn that. You could probably even press it into blocks and sell it as barbecue fuel.

  4. Re:It will take time on Where are the Large RAM Systems? · · Score: 1

    Machine vision systems spring to mind, such as:
    http://digital.ni.com/worldwide/bwcontent.nsf/all/ 725E25B100E5BDEF86256F4400013228?opendocument
    and with that sort of (image) data rate 16GB RAM is only a small buffer. Just a guess.

  5. Re:Is this really a big deal? on New Virus Attacks Via RAR Files · · Score: 1

    I've been in a similar situation - sending patches by email as an exe (just a winzip self-extracting file). The final compromise was email to the (junior) admin who would pass it on, but his boss didn't want to know.

  6. Re:This is bad on Firefox Lead Now Working For Google · · Score: 1
    Perhaps if less time was spent hating and more time spent coding then ugly OSS interfaces would be banished. Even as I write my email using Thunderbird I long for Outlook and it's slick "do what I think" interface.

    I take it you haven't used outlook 2003 then. Or worse migrated from 98 to 2003. Besides, most people here (myself included) have neither the skill nor the time to code OSS (or at least major OSS like firefox). We can however moan (hate if that's how you want to put it) all day.

  7. Re:This is bad on Firefox Lead Now Working For Google · · Score: 1
    Here's another theory.

    Firefox is gaining market share in the browser market. Unlike ie, firefox doesn't prefer a rival search engine, so a higher proportion of firefox users (than ie users) will use google. Therefore a growth in firefox's market share is in google's interest. Besides, compared to the income they are getting from advertising to firefox users, this guy will come cheap.

  8. Re:What sort of DRM? on Welcome to the Future of DRM Media · · Score: 1

    FWIW I agree. However, trivial DRM makes it easier to borrow and copy than to buy if you want to listen on a PC, so won't decrease even casual piracy, let alone organised copying and selling.

  9. Re:What sort of DRM? on Welcome to the Future of DRM Media · · Score: 1
    What sort of DRM does the Radiohead CD have? Just wondering. Is it the type where you press the Shift key and the DRM goes away?

    ...Or the sort where you you can copy it using K3B without noticing any copy protection at all?

    ...Or the sort where you can copy the tracks off it in K3B, so long as you click on the drive and hit "view tracks" instead of "mount disc" when prompted? (When I chose mount disc the drive kept trying to mount until I shut down, without either succeeding or giving an error - my guess is a corrupt TOC)

  10. Re: Mozilla Thunderbird! on No-Click Phishing On The Way · · Score: 1
    Are any executibles a bad idea: No.

    Exactly. I wrote a large set of macros for Excel 97 a few years ago as a summer job, and supported by email when I was back at uni. This often involved sending patches direct to the (2) users. A winzip self-extracting .exe was perfect - until the mail gateway was rconfigured to block all executables (and .zip files) and even the IT department on that site couldn't do anything about it (e.g. whitelisting). In the end the solution was to rename patch.exe as patch.bmp, which wasn't even scanned by the gateway virus checker, and instruct the user to rename and run. I didn't want to use a vulnerability to bypass overzealous security, but posting floppies was too slow. Of course that's the last thing you want to do for ordinary users.

  11. Re:How will this help on Hotmail Cracks Down on Spam · · Score: 1
    and they don't need to worry too much about paying customers sending spam since they must provide a credit card, and thus are traceable.

    More to the point it's unlikely to be profitable if they have to pay to send spam from an account with a daily limit.

  12. Re:teletext on Ceefax Turns 30 · · Score: 1

    Thanks, I'm now getting somewhere. I now get teletext if I unplug the DVD player. The decoder was on composite, now it's on RGB with a noticeably better picture. I'll have to have a think, a google and a fiddle (not necessarily in that order!) still. In the mean time yours will have the honour of being the first /. post I've printed for reference (and I've only just fixed printing on Linux on this box anyway).

  13. Re:teletext on Ceefax Turns 30 · · Score: 1
    About connecting two appliances to one SCART socket: it will only ever work if only one output device is ever switched on at a time.

    Sorry, I over simplified - the telewest box is connected to the TV through the video. The video (phillips), even when switched off, monitors the teletext signal on the TV so that it can switch to the right channel immediately if you press the instant record button (according to the book that is). Text mode looks like mix (picture+text) mode with a green cast and is almost impossible to read. I could go on, but it's just one of those funny incompatabilities.

    Anyway, to get right on topic and as you're in the UK Ceefax has a page (190) on the anniversary.

  14. Re:teletext on Ceefax Turns 30 · · Score: 1
    No matter what you say about being easy to use etc, their time is virtually gone. Within 5 years we will all be using digital TV, which doesnt accomodate the old style Ceefax services, instead we have BBCi which is much much better.

    It's certainly transmitted over digital cable (telewest) for BBC1/2, ITV1, C4 and C5, also I think on Sky 1 and some other channels. The fact that my VCR breaks it when connected via the same SCART socket as the decoder is another matter.

  15. Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? on Windows Fails 8% of the Time · · Score: 1
    That's what I was getting at - you actually use it at random times or have it doing something. The impression I get is that a lot of machines seem to get left on just because the user can't be bothered to press to button and wait a few seconds when they want to use it. I was hoping to be proved wrong, hence my question.

    Though why you would want to get woken in the night for a game is beyond me.

  16. Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? on Windows Fails 8% of the Time · · Score: 1
    No - I was wondering why so many windows sessions were left on long enough to crash, when most of the time they're not doing anything.

    It's probably a bad idea to reply to a +2 funny AC.

  17. Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? on Windows Fails 8% of the Time · · Score: 1
    My work XP and 2k boxes usually get slow and unresponsive after between 20 and 30 days up time. Thats with constant use of visual studio 6 (C++) and MS SQL 2K.

    Why do so many boxes get left on for days on end? Especially work machines where you know you're not going to need them for hours when you go home at night / over the weekend. The only time I would leave a machine on if I'm not expecting to be going back to it in an hour or so is if it's running a test (work) or doing a big download (home).

  18. Re:Same as Usenet on Beat Spam By Not Using Email · · Score: 2, Insightful
    millions of different forum sites are harder to spam than one centralized usenet system.

    But they're also much more annoying to use - first you have to find a decent forum. Then you (often) have to register. Then you find that actually you get flamed for posting a newbie question - but the search is so useless that you can't find the answer that was posted last week (and it's all .asp and not indexed by google). Then you go back to usenet.

  19. Re:So, for 3 Grand... on 20,000 Zombie PCs -- $3000 · · Score: 1
    If you don't kill it real fast, it will open two more when you DO close it, and each of them opens two more, and in about 6 clicks, your pc is dead.

    Or Ctrl-Alt-Del and shutdown ie.

    At least in ie6 disabling scripting, activex, etc. stops popups and most of the other junk. And very few sites require ie over netscape7/mozilla (depending which PC/OS I'm using).

  20. Re:Again on The Death of the Floppy Disk · · Score: 1
    is there such thing as a USB extension cord without buying a hub?

    Yes - to simply extend the range of a single USB device you can use something like http://www.inmac.co.uk/product.aspx?SKU=E439231 or active versions are available for USB1.1 to give >5m range.

    I think what you are after is a sort of USB laplink solution though: http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process ?Merchant_Id=1&Product_Id=20963

  21. Re:Is it REALLY a bad thing? on Britain is the World's Surveillance Leader · · Score: 1
    One day Big Brother gets interested in Joe Bloggs - let's see what Joe's been up to. Crank up the search software and see all movements of Mr Bloggs for the last week, month or whatever. If you don't believe this is possible then you probably don't believe that Google can search 4 billion pages in 0.001 secs either...

    Rashly assuming that you meant this to be taken at face value, this is a false analogy. To actually go from a name then you would need recognition software that's way beyond anything we can do at the moment (most if not all published tests on face recognition have failed, let alone trying to recognise an individual when their face may only be (say) 4 pixels greyscale. You would then need to index your incoming feed - google doedn't search 4 billion webpages .001 seconds, it searches its records of the text of those pages, those records are stored in a highly optimised way.

    Tracking an individual back in time would be easier, though you would still need to recognise the blobs that make up an individual from 1 frame to the next, 1 camera to the next, and 1 crowd to the next, and index the motion of these blobs.

    I'm not saying it's impossible as such, just a very hard problem - and I suspect just throwing more processing at it will not solve anything.

  22. Re:Is it REALLY a bad thing? on Britain is the World's Surveillance Leader · · Score: 1
    ...and the tube is *unbearable*, especially in the hot weather.

    Well do something about it! Transport for London are looking for suggestions to keep the tube cool http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/promotions-cooling-tube. shtml I used to work in London (Kingsway, near Covent Garden), now I live in and work near Bristol. The few times I've been back, the streets do same clearer - it's easier to cross as a pedestrian, and the tubes don't seem all that much busier (it's hard to see how they could be when there was no room to get more people on.

  23. Re:Ogg Theora on BBC Begins Open-Source Streaming Challenge · · Score: 1
    Well it sounds as though they took care to research and avoid patented "technology" as well.

    And just a bit more money and legal experience than most OSS projects when it comes to showing prior art as published by academics before PCs could even show video.

  24. Re:basic... very basic. on You've Got PC · · Score: 1
    You ask the wrong quesion. Why does a dialup user need an ethernet port?

    Easy - so you can sell them an upgrade to broadband more easily.

    Chris

  25. Re:LZW check, JPEG, erm... on Forgent Squeezing Money Out Of JPEG, Other Patents · · Score: 2, Insightful
    It's not complexity as such that's the issue with JPEGs - it's sharpness or edge effects. A screenshot of multiple /. IE windows is definately better as a .png (saved using paint shop pro 5) - to get a .jpeg down to the same 110KB puts all the text on a nasty fuzzy grey background. I don't have a photo on this machine that isn't already a .jpeg or converted from one, so I can't test with photos.

    Jpegs are fine for publishing photos, and there's a good reason while digital cameras use them but (of course) they shouldn't be used while editing if you want to save incrementally - the file size gets samller each time, as does the amount of information in the file.

    Chris