Neither the Fedex, or the UPS solutions seem to be very cross platform. Furthermore, you would have to run both systems as neither calculates shipping for the other.
I ended up importing the csv files from UPS and Fedex for our shipping location into a MySQL database and writing a Java API (mmmm servlets) to compute shipping based on this. It works well for a single shipping point for shipping within the US. It breaks down when you want to ship outside the US or add another shipping location. The hard part is importing the data but once that is done, it runs really well.
If anybody wants the code, I can GPL it give it to you. Just send me an email. I am however looking for a better solution or if I ever get time, to extend my package.
To go along with this, if anybody has open source shipping cost calculation software that they would like to recommend, many of us would appreciate it.
When you say that Java is not the answer, you are more right than you may know.
Java does a wonderful job with the simple stuff that you mention. It checks array bounds, does not let you write to unallocated or freed memory, and a slew of other runtime checks. Java however does not eliminate memory leaks.
To be able to be freed (by the garbage collector) an object must have no references. Accidentally keeping references around is a lot easier than you might think and can be a huge source of memory leakage.
I love Java and I prefer using it for most of my projects, however anybody who tells you that it solves all your memory leak problems is blowing smoke out their ass.
The only thing that is lime green on the wired page that I see is the search box.
Searching on the front page for christmas, gift, or geek, turned up nothing.
Searching their headlines for christmas, gift, or geek turns up nothing relevant.
Maybe what Taco means is that its only in the dead tree version of Wired?
For those of you that are interested, CNN also has a geek gift list.
Actually, try Cookie Pal (Windows). Its not a proxy, but a utility that watches for the dialog boxes that browsers pop up and will accept or reject the cookies based on criteria that you set. I have found it to be better than many of the proxies.
The neat part is that it can play sounds when it sets or rejects cookies. It has these wonderful farting sounds for rejected cookies....
Installation doesn't appear to be the problem. The installation goes fine and when I'm done I have a javalib...so file and a java2 directory in the plugins folder. Seems to be exactly what one would expect and what you would get from the Netscape release....
I have yet to see java working in Mozilla under Linux. I periodically install it, but I always get errors starting up. Today when I tried I got the following error:
There was an error trying to initialize the HPI library.
Please check your installation, HotSpot does not work correctly
when installed in the JDK 1.2 Linux Production Release, or
with any JDK 1.1.x release.
Could not startup JVM properly!
java_vm process: could not start Java VM
INTERNAL ERROR on Browser End: Could not read ack from browser
System error?:: Resource temporarily unavailable
Now I'll have to go and delete it from the plugin directory. Anybody else have this experience? Does anybody know what I need to do to fix this? It looks like it may be trying to use one of the other java runtimes I have installed rather than the one that it installed. I couldn't find a bug report about it.
>Scrape up your AOL CD very badly on the data-side.
You mean scratch the polycarbonate side?
The data layer on the cd is just under the label. CDs are rather resistant to scratches in their plastic because those scratches don't actually destroy data an the laser beam can focus around them. Scratch the label though and you will wipe out the pits.
Take a dry erase marker (or permanent if you don't like the cd) and make a line (on the plastic side) from the center of the cd to the edge. Put it in your CD player and the player will probably be able to play the CD just fine because of focusing, and error correction. Better (usually older) cd players will be able to play CDs with up to four or five such lines. (Newer cd players are cheaper partly because they aren't made so well anymore.)
The specification for CDs is very strict about what angle the laser hits the disk, how big the pits are, what wavelength the laser uses, the index of refraction of the cd material, and the thickness of the CD.
The aluminum layer containing the pits is actually right under the label. The polycarbonate has to be a certain thickness with the right index of refraction such that the laser beam coming in at the right angle will find the pit and return at the correct angle for the detector.
Furthermore, because CDs are so thick, the point at which the laser enters the plastic is a good ways away from the focal point of the laser (on the pit). This means that the laser enters the CD over a large surface area (many many times the size of a pit), just one factor that makes CDs resistant to dust and scratching.
Even if you were able to play with the index of refraction of your material such that you could get the cd to work when it is thinner, your CD would be more suseptible to dust and scratches (face it, CDs aren't great now). In the applications suggested here, I'd think that might be something of an issue.
At the very least expect it not to work in many drives just because it can't be held in place properly. My CD-ROM operates on its side. To work like that the cradle has little clips on the sides to hold the CD. That obviously relys on the CD's rigidity. Also think of walkmans that use ball bearings in the center hole to hold on to a CD.
when you get done with your ncurses project, be sure to let me know. I answer questions on comp.lang.java.help upon occasion and the question "how do I contol output to the console" gets asked more frequently than just about any question other than "whats up with my classpath".
If you can make it so that for some of the more common platforms and terminal types you can
move the cursor around
change the text color
hide input (for passwords for example)
Many a java programmer will beat a path to your door.
It is well known that you can simulate a turing machine with the game of life. We learned about this in Computer Science class several years ago.
If I remember correctly from what the prof said, when the game was invented they set up the rules in such a way so that it was hard to predict the outcome of a given configuration. There could be other rules than an organism living only if it is next to one or two of its own kind. That rule was chosen simply because it makes life hard to predict.
From there somebody showed that you could make wires and gates using these rules and we know you can make a turing machine from (infinite number of) wires and gates. So an infinite life board can be used as a turing machine.
Kids always think their dad does the coolest thing. I had a friend who's dad was a doctor. He said it was the best because he could be sick for nothing. My dad is a minister so I told him I could be good for nothing.
Somebody here on Slashdot a while ago suggested reading the book Handbook of Applied Cryptography. (Its a free download in postscript or pdf.) I'm working my way through it now, but I would especially recommend the first chapter to everybody. It is a good of crypto in general and makes some great points.
Here is a point about digital signatures that I got from the first chapter that I found interesting:
What is to keep an somebody from signing something then later claiming that their key was compromised at that point and it wasn't actually them that signed the document?
This was on NPR last night. According to them, the egyption kings had a good reason for wanting to have their pyramids face true north. The kings wanted to become stars (of course!). They wanted to join the stars that were in the sky all night every day of the year and those stars are right around true north.
Given this motivation and what we currently know about the ages of the pyramids it sounds as if they might have done it this way and we will be able to see if they really did do it this way. Sounds exciting to m
Word of warning. Before you try this, make sure that the directory that Mozilla is installed in is writable by mozilla. After you install the psm you will have to keep the directory writeable due to a bug. If you don't mozilla will crash each time you visit a secure site.
Besides the obvious gripe of having to switch over to Windows and IE to be able to use the site, I was intrigued.
The site uses the Open Directory Product Data but it does some fairly funky stuff with it.
The graphs seem to be a pretty nice way of displaying the data. You can easily tell sizes of categories and how they relate to one another.
They seem to use some sort of data other than the ODP data. The size of the circles seems to indicate the popularity of the site. I don't know where they are getting this data. Maybe they are doing something like google and seeing how many links to the site there are. That information certainly isn't in the ODP data.
They are not using live ODP data and they seem to have stripped the site descriptions off. Also the pages seem to take about a minute to download and draw (I think its the drawing, not the slashdotting).
Maybe if they can solve some of those problems I would consider using it as a nifty way to browse the ODP....
All it shows is that something is different in that county. I heard a report on the radio yesteraday that Buchanan has a cousin that lives in the county and that that county cast a lot of votes for buchanan in some other election.
If political websites are blocked, there is a better than good chance that some piece of filtering software is blocking one of the web sites for which I am responsible.
I don't have the time, money, or computer systems to install, configure, and test urls with different filtering software. Is there some web site that I can go to, submit a url get a summary of what filtering software thinks of a web site?
Given that these filtering companies encrypt their lists, there probobly isn't an easy way to set up a site like this. Do the filtering companies maintain a query for their piece of software? If not, why not?
It seems to me that this is something that web masters are going to have to worry about from now on, just as they have to worry about placement in search engines now.
I enjoyed Ladder, an abondonware game, so much that I cloned it.
I don't know how much latitude I have under copyright law to distribute a clone. Probably none. If the copyright owners were to ask me to stop distributing the game, I would.
In my own little fantasy world, I believe that those persons (unknown to me) who originally did the game would love to see more people getting enjoyment out of it. But then again, I could understand if they did not feel this way. So get it while its hot!
Slashdot Mirror
I ended up importing the csv files from UPS and Fedex for our shipping location into a MySQL database and writing a Java API (mmmm servlets) to compute shipping based on this. It works well for a single shipping point for shipping within the US. It breaks down when you want to ship outside the US or add another shipping location. The hard part is importing the data but once that is done, it runs really well.
If anybody wants the code, I can GPL it give it to you. Just send me an email. I am however looking for a better solution or if I ever get time, to extend my package.
To go along with this, if anybody has open source shipping cost calculation software that they would like to recommend, many of us would appreciate it.
Java does a wonderful job with the simple stuff that you mention. It checks array bounds, does not let you write to unallocated or freed memory, and a slew of other runtime checks. Java however does not eliminate memory leaks.
To be able to be freed (by the garbage collector) an object must have no references. Accidentally keeping references around is a lot easier than you might think and can be a huge source of memory leakage.
Dr. Dobb's has an article about this.
I love Java and I prefer using it for most of my projects, however anybody who tells you that it solves all your memory leak problems is blowing smoke out their ass.
For those of you that are interested, CNN also has a geek gift list.
The neat part is that it can play sounds when it sets or rejects cookies. It has these wonderful farting sounds for rejected cookies....
Installation doesn't appear to be the problem. The installation goes fine and when I'm done I have a javalib...so file and a java2 directory in the plugins folder. Seems to be exactly what one would expect and what you would get from the Netscape release....
I have yet to see java working in Mozilla under Linux. I periodically install it, but I always get errors starting up. Today when I tried I got the following error:
There was an error trying to initialize the HPI library.
Please check your installation, HotSpot does not work correctly
when installed in the JDK 1.2 Linux Production Release, or
with any JDK 1.1.x release.
Could not startup JVM properly!
java_vm process: could not start Java VM
INTERNAL ERROR on Browser End: Could not read ack from browser
System error?:: Resource temporarily unavailable
Now I'll have to go and delete it from the plugin directory. Anybody else have this experience? Does anybody know what I need to do to fix this? It looks like it may be trying to use one of the other java runtimes I have installed rather than the one that it installed. I couldn't find a bug report about it.
You mean scratch the polycarbonate side?
The data layer on the cd is just under the label. CDs are rather resistant to scratches in their plastic because those scratches don't actually destroy data an the laser beam can focus around them. Scratch the label though and you will wipe out the pits.
Take a dry erase marker (or permanent if you don't like the cd) and make a line (on the plastic side) from the center of the cd to the edge. Put it in your CD player and the player will probably be able to play the CD just fine because of focusing, and error correction. Better (usually older) cd players will be able to play CDs with up to four or five such lines. (Newer cd players are cheaper partly because they aren't made so well anymore.)
Enigma rotors turn up
The aluminum layer containing the pits is actually right under the label. The polycarbonate has to be a certain thickness with the right index of refraction such that the laser beam coming in at the right angle will find the pit and return at the correct angle for the detector.
Furthermore, because CDs are so thick, the point at which the laser enters the plastic is a good ways away from the focal point of the laser (on the pit). This means that the laser enters the CD over a large surface area (many many times the size of a pit), just one factor that makes CDs resistant to dust and scratching.
Even if you were able to play with the index of refraction of your material such that you could get the cd to work when it is thinner, your CD would be more suseptible to dust and scratches (face it, CDs aren't great now). In the applications suggested here, I'd think that might be something of an issue.
At the very least expect it not to work in many drives just because it can't be held in place properly. My CD-ROM operates on its side. To work like that the cradle has little clips on the sides to hold the CD. That obviously relys on the CD's rigidity. Also think of walkmans that use ball bearings in the center hole to hold on to a CD.
Math ML
If you can make it so that for some of the more common platforms and terminal types you can
- move the cursor around
- change the text color
- hide input (for passwords for example)
Many a java programmer will beat a path to your door.I highly doubt that it fits in a finite board unless it has a finite tape.
If I remember correctly from what the prof said, when the game was invented they set up the rules in such a way so that it was hard to predict the outcome of a given configuration. There could be other rules than an organism living only if it is next to one or two of its own kind. That rule was chosen simply because it makes life hard to predict.
From there somebody showed that you could make wires and gates using these rules and we know you can make a turing machine from (infinite number of) wires and gates. So an infinite life board can be used as a turing machine.
Forget an extra receptor, when I was growing up I could have sworn that my mom had a whole extra eye in the back of her head.
Kids always think their dad does the coolest thing. I had a friend who's dad was a doctor. He said it was the best because he could be sick for nothing. My dad is a minister so I told him I could be good for nothing.
Here is a point about digital signatures that I got from the first chapter that I found interesting:
What is to keep an somebody from signing something then later claiming that their key was compromised at that point and it wasn't actually them that signed the document?
Given this motivation and what we currently know about the ages of the pyramids it sounds as if they might have done it this way and we will be able to see if they really did do it this way. Sounds exciting to m
Word of warning. Before you try this, make sure that the directory that Mozilla is installed in is writable by mozilla. After you install the psm you will have to keep the directory writeable due to a bug. If you don't mozilla will crash each time you visit a secure site.
You are very much appreciated.
The site uses the Open Directory Product Data but it does some fairly funky stuff with it. The graphs seem to be a pretty nice way of displaying the data. You can easily tell sizes of categories and how they relate to one another.
They seem to use some sort of data other than the ODP data. The size of the circles seems to indicate the popularity of the site. I don't know where they are getting this data. Maybe they are doing something like google and seeing how many links to the site there are. That information certainly isn't in the ODP data.
They are not using live ODP data and they seem to have stripped the site descriptions off. Also the pages seem to take about a minute to download and draw (I think its the drawing, not the slashdotting).
Maybe if they can solve some of those problems I would consider using it as a nifty way to browse the ODP....
All it shows is that something is different in that county. I heard a report on the radio yesteraday that Buchanan has a cousin that lives in the county and that that county cast a lot of votes for buchanan in some other election.
I don't have the time, money, or computer systems to install, configure, and test urls with different filtering software. Is there some web site that I can go to, submit a url get a summary of what filtering software thinks of a web site?
Given that these filtering companies encrypt their lists, there probobly isn't an easy way to set up a site like this. Do the filtering companies maintain a query for their piece of software? If not, why not?
It seems to me that this is something that web masters are going to have to worry about from now on, just as they have to worry about placement in search engines now.
I don't know how much latitude I have under copyright law to distribute a clone. Probably none. If the copyright owners were to ask me to stop distributing the game, I would.
In my own little fantasy world, I believe that those persons (unknown to me) who originally did the game would love to see more people getting enjoyment out of it. But then again, I could understand if they did not feel this way. So get it while its hot!
You are saving half your income so that you can do this aren't you?