Why hasn't anyone thought of making a very cool looking series of "Looks Best With Mozilla" buttons?
Because usually the likes of the crowd behind Mozilla is also usually supporting Web standards. "Looks best with browser X" goes very much against that.
To tackle text-only browsers, ASCII art could be an alternative to images.
As for people with disabilities, you could add a wav or an mp3 pronouncing the verification code. Actual speech generation is not really needed, you could get away with slapping together little 1-letter/digit wavs to form the code, like answering machines do it.
Dunno about that. I myself have gotten a bit sick of all the "prince marries princess and they all live happily ever after" stereotype endings you see in fantasy books. The LOTR ending is more realistic and it suits such a nice piece of work.
Took me a bit to realize they were talking about actual rodents. I was really puzzled until then: are they trying to locate the oldest mouse device? Are they artificially aging a computer mouse?
Winners will receive cash for every day beyond the current record.
Are we talking about the mouse again? I think some nice cheese would be more appropriate. Although, whatever prize it gets it won't make much of a difference since I'm assuming the prizes are granted post-mouse-mortem. Better make that a cheese allowance for 5 years for wife and kids.
My Big Boss could use that one. We were in a meeting once and the mouse from the presentation box got twirled around (buttons facing hand). He tried to use it like that for about 30 seconds before one of us geek guys took pity on him.
P.S. He was recently proposed to join some fancy European comitee dealing with the future of IT and crap like that. He was proud of it. So was I. I'm eagerly expecting the future to bring us more user-friendly computer mice. Executives are people too.
I believe in the case of floppies they are called "1.44 MB" and "2.88 MB" out of comodity rather than being accurate. It's not a case of changing the meaning of MB. Well, not with malevolent intent, anyway.
The trailer I always thought was best wasn't actually an "official" trailer, but a short movie put together by a fan of the Oni game (from Bungie). It's made entirely of movie captures from the game and has a very fitting soundtrack. Being made by a fan, it captures the spirit of the game like few trailers our there ever did for their rspective games.
Who cares? Where are the flying cars that we were promised to get in the 21st Century?
Re:Other recent releases: Totem, GNOME 2 media pla
on
MPlayer 1.0Pre1 Is Here
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Mplayer does some files better than Totem, but if you want to do more than "mplayer This.divx", check it out.
Ah, but you forget about MPlayer G2, which will be stripped of all front-end nonsense and instead implement all kinds of hooks that will allow people to built however vast frontends for it.
Why doesn't Mplayer disable XScreensaver while playing?)
For the same reason it doesn't disable, I don't know, PINE or Mozilla. XScreensaver is just an application that happens to be running at the same time, not a standard in power saving. MPlayer does, however, disable DPMS monitor power saving which is what you should be using if you really want power saving instead of fancy pictures showed when nobody's looking anyway.
Exactly. RSS works just like HTTP because it is HTTP. It's just like visiting a website except that you use a feed reader instead of a browser, and that the feeder usually comes with an automatic refresh feature.
FWIW, you can watch RSS feeds with any recent browser just as well (well, Mozilla and IE, haven't tried Opera), if you don't mind being shown a tree of XML tags.
If the XML document has an XSLT transformation sheet associated with it, it will be displayed as nice HTML so even that isn't a problem. Check this out to see an example.
The browser is still the original RSS feed reader.
It says in both the article and the post that the witness saw the person "testing" the virus, not writing it. Which is even more scary in a way. How did the witness know what he was doing? What day was it? Which version is he supposed to have written?
I say the hell with all the speculations. For all we know the "witness" may have gotten this urge to report the guy at the next desk to the FBI because he was an asshole and grabbed the last chocolate bar from the vending machine down the hall. Should nothing be found, oops, my mistake. But what do you know, they found him hacking Blaster code. Good boy, witness. Hey, people, we caught the Blaster author!
Until some decent facts come forward this is all FUD.
OK, then here comes the other side of the issue: what's stopping people from simply changing a letter in the mp3 info tag (the trivial approach) or a bit or byte somewhere in the file? Good luck matching my file to anything.
Is it just me or after the decoding of the human genome there has been an increase in DNA discoveries such as this one? (I'm not very knowledgeable in DNA issues, be gentle with me.:) )
Ah, but can you be sure it's not? I've seen already established patents about some pretty wild topics. I wonder why they don't patent "making money using computers" and get over with it already.
My sister is obsessive about Civ too. Every now and then she picks it up and plays it again for two weeks straight. It drives my dad nuts 'cause he can't figure what the heck is her fascination with that game.
I noticed that her and other girls enjoy games involving strategy. TBS or RTS doesn't matter. Most popular I've seen around are Heroes as well as Warcraft or Starcraft. The setting and story is important though, because they'll play the ones that are SciFi or Fantesy based rather than realistic ones like C&C or war simulations.
I'm not really surprised by the outcome of the survey. It only makes sense that women would be attracted to games that require planning and thinking rather than action games. And if they're gonna play something that requires reflexes it's gonna be something like Puzzle Bubble or Fast Tetris. I guess even if they do join in on FPS or other action types they are attracted by the strategic aspect rather than the sheer joy of killing.
There are about a hundred different ways to get a Linux computer to do malicious things without root access.
While the idea in itself stands, your examples are not the best choice in the matter. Your are not taking into account the vast variety of Linux system configurations possible and many aspects of the Linux/UNIX specific security model.
Let's assume all the user has to do is run a program [...]
See, the very premise you're starting from is far from a given. You can't compile a piece of code and expect it to simply run on any Linux machine. It may run on many but nowhere near the 100% you can reach with Windows.
Pop up a fake "please enter your root password" dialog and snarf the root password, if we so desire.
You're assuming there's X running, that the X version is compatible with your program, that X runs locally and not remotely. What widget set will the password prompt use? Xlib? Won't it look different enough from the usual dialogs to make the user suspicious? There's a good reason why most Linux exploits are command-line rootkits; expecting more than a shell to rely on is already unreasonable.
if the person was willing to run an attachment they won't think twice about this
The concept of "running an attachment" is close to non-existent in Linux environments. I can't name any MUA that runs attachements off the top of my head, and there's a damn good reason they don't. Ah, they may call some application that processes an attachement for display. Good luck on exploiting this: you have no idea what application, whether it's standalone or a plugin, what crashing or tricking it will do and so on.
did you know that "beep" needs to be setuid root?
No it doesn't. It's a device access issue here and you can solve it nicely with proper rights and ownership to the relevant/dev file (I forget which one right now).
You can try and snarf the address book directly
Which adress book would that be? The sheer MUA diversity makes it a very complicated task to find and read the address book one user is using.
You see how feeble UNIX security really is now?
All I see are some bad examples. Some of them were OK because they touched real issues: (1) once you get code executed on a system you can do bad stuff (but don't think getting that code executed is such a trivial task); (2) a good security model is useless in the hands of ignorant users.
As good as distros like Redhat are, you still often have to edit configuration files. Typically they are unnecessarily complex and easy to screwup, even with the purchase of an O'Reilly book for every service you configure.
So let's switch to XML config files and DTD's. The best of both worlds: machine- and human-editable with ease. Throw in a page of help for every option (or XML tag) like the kernel config has. Would make graphical administration interfaces a joy to work with. We could even have one and only admin tool for the entire/etc as long as some simple standards are followed.
Once Linux is installed, a typical user would never see the command line, and only needs to learn one GUI.
True, true. I frequent several Linux online communities on a constant basis. Lately (in the last year or so) I've seen an increasing number of complete Linux newbies asking "how do I open a terminal or a console?"
Think about it: they have never even seen the Linux command line. To most anyone who's been using Linux for more than two years (until now) this idea seems inconcievable.
Yet the people turning to Linux for the first time these days are reacting in the same point-and-click manner they would under Windows. Their user experience is limited to whatever they had the luck to get installed by default and whatever they see in the "Start" menu or on the desktop. That's what their Linux experience borns and dies with.
In many cases they don't even think that they could choose a better application than the defaults. They don't know (or care) that they have a choice, they don't know that on Linux you have more than the usual to choose from, sometimes they don't even know how to install new stuff or uninstall the old.
And even if they surpass all of the above, their install tools are limited to whatever the distro provides. Don't let me even start on the "qualities" of various graphical package managers out there in the popular distros right now.
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Why hasn't anyone thought of making a very cool looking series of "Looks Best With Mozilla" buttons?
Because usually the likes of the crowd behind Mozilla is also usually supporting Web standards. "Looks best with browser X" goes very much against that.
Must be one of those new terms as a combination of both. Nice one.
To tackle text-only browsers, ASCII art could be an alternative to images.
As for people with disabilities, you could add a wav or an mp3 pronouncing the verification code. Actual speech generation is not really needed, you could get away with slapping together little 1-letter/digit wavs to form the code, like answering machines do it.
Dunno about that. I myself have gotten a bit sick of all the "prince marries princess and they all live happily ever after" stereotype endings you see in fantasy books. The LOTR ending is more realistic and it suits such a nice piece of work.
The swoosh sound made by the menu panels in the first Carmaggedon. Oh, and the cryes of the pedestrians.
Took me a bit to realize they were talking about actual rodents. I was really puzzled until then: are they trying to locate the oldest mouse device? Are they artificially aging a computer mouse?
Winners will receive cash for every day beyond the current record.
Are we talking about the mouse again? I think some nice cheese would be more appropriate. Although, whatever prize it gets it won't make much of a difference since I'm assuming the prizes are granted post-mouse-mortem. Better make that a cheese allowance for 5 years for wife and kids.
My Big Boss could use that one. We were in a meeting once and the mouse from the presentation box got twirled around (buttons facing hand). He tried to use it like that for about 30 seconds before one of us geek guys took pity on him.
P.S. He was recently proposed to join some fancy European comitee dealing with the future of IT and crap like that. He was proud of it. So was I. I'm eagerly expecting the future to bring us more user-friendly computer mice. Executives are people too.
I believe in the case of floppies they are called "1.44 MB" and "2.88 MB" out of comodity rather than being accurate. It's not a case of changing the meaning of MB. Well, not with malevolent intent, anyway.
He's gonna become the next Seinfeld before all this is over. You just watch.
"Darl McBride" -- it even sounds like a sitcom.
Whacha gonna do, write an essay?
Or they just misplaced the machines and made up this whole story.
The trailer I always thought was best wasn't actually an "official" trailer, but a short movie put together by a fan of the Oni game (from Bungie). It's made entirely of movie captures from the game and has a very fitting soundtrack. Being made by a fan, it captures the spirit of the game like few trailers our there ever did for their rspective games.
Who cares? Where are the flying cars that we were promised to get in the 21st Century?
Mplayer does some files better than Totem, but if you want to do more than "mplayer This.divx", check it out.
Ah, but you forget about MPlayer G2, which will be stripped of all front-end nonsense and instead implement all kinds of hooks that will allow people to built however vast frontends for it.
Why doesn't Mplayer disable XScreensaver while playing?)
For the same reason it doesn't disable, I don't know, PINE or Mozilla. XScreensaver is just an application that happens to be running at the same time, not a standard in power saving. MPlayer does, however, disable DPMS monitor power saving which is what you should be using if you really want power saving instead of fancy pictures showed when nobody's looking anyway.
Exactly. RSS works just like HTTP because it is HTTP. It's just like visiting a website except that you use a feed reader instead of a browser, and that the feeder usually comes with an automatic refresh feature.
FWIW, you can watch RSS feeds with any recent browser just as well (well, Mozilla and IE, haven't tried Opera), if you don't mind being shown a tree of XML tags.
If the XML document has an XSLT transformation sheet associated with it, it will be displayed as nice HTML so even that isn't a problem. Check this out to see an example.
The browser is still the original RSS feed reader.OK, then here comes the other side of the issue: what's stopping people from simply changing a letter in the mp3 info tag (the trivial approach) or a bit or byte somewhere in the file? Good luck matching my file to anything.
Is it just me or after the decoding of the human genome there has been an increase in DNA discoveries such as this one? (I'm not very knowledgeable in DNA issues, be gentle with me. :) )
Ah, but can you be sure it's not? I've seen already established patents about some pretty wild topics. I wonder why they don't patent "making money using computers" and get over with it already.
My sister is obsessive about Civ too. Every now and then she picks it up and plays it again for two weeks straight. It drives my dad nuts 'cause he can't figure what the heck is her fascination with that game.
I noticed that her and other girls enjoy games involving strategy. TBS or RTS doesn't matter. Most popular I've seen around are Heroes as well as Warcraft or Starcraft. The setting and story is important though, because they'll play the ones that are SciFi or Fantesy based rather than realistic ones like C&C or war simulations.
I'm not really surprised by the outcome of the survey. It only makes sense that women would be attracted to games that require planning and thinking rather than action games. And if they're gonna play something that requires reflexes it's gonna be something like Puzzle Bubble or Fast Tetris. I guess even if they do join in on FPS or other action types they are attracted by the strategic aspect rather than the sheer joy of killing.
There are about a hundred different ways to get a Linux computer to do malicious things without root access.
While the idea in itself stands, your examples are not the best choice in the matter. Your are not taking into account the vast variety of Linux system configurations possible and many aspects of the Linux/UNIX specific security model.Let's assume all the user has to do is run a program [...]
See, the very premise you're starting from is far from a given. You can't compile a piece of code and expect it to simply run on any Linux machine. It may run on many but nowhere near the 100% you can reach with Windows.
Pop up a fake "please enter your root password" dialog and snarf the root password, if we so desire.
You're assuming there's X running, that the X version is compatible with your program, that X runs locally and not remotely. What widget set will the password prompt use? Xlib? Won't it look different enough from the usual dialogs to make the user suspicious? There's a good reason why most Linux exploits are command-line rootkits; expecting more than a shell to rely on is already unreasonable.
if the person was willing to run an attachment they won't think twice about this
The concept of "running an attachment" is close to non-existent in Linux environments. I can't name any MUA that runs attachements off the top of my head, and there's a damn good reason they don't. Ah, they may call some application that processes an attachement for display. Good luck on exploiting this: you have no idea what application, whether it's standalone or a plugin, what crashing or tricking it will do and so on.
did you know that "beep" needs to be setuid root?
No it doesn't. It's a device access issue here and you can solve it nicely with proper rights and ownership to the relevant /dev file (I forget which one right now).
You can try and snarf the address book directly
Which adress book would that be? The sheer MUA diversity makes it a very complicated task to find and read the address book one user is using.
You see how feeble UNIX security really is now?
All I see are some bad examples. Some of them were OK because they touched real issues: (1) once you get code executed on a system you can do bad stuff (but don't think getting that code executed is such a trivial task); (2) a good security model is useless in the hands of ignorant users.
As good as distros like Redhat are, you still often have to edit configuration files. Typically they are unnecessarily complex and easy to screwup, even with the purchase of an O'Reilly book for every service you configure.
So let's switch to XML config files and DTD's. The best of both worlds: machine- and human-editable with ease. Throw in a page of help for every option (or XML tag) like the kernel config has. Would make graphical administration interfaces a joy to work with. We could even have one and only admin tool for the entire /etc as long as some simple standards are followed.
Once Linux is installed, a typical user would never see the command line, and only needs to learn one GUI.
True, true. I frequent several Linux online communities on a constant basis. Lately (in the last year or so) I've seen an increasing number of complete Linux newbies asking "how do I open a terminal or a console?"
Think about it: they have never even seen the Linux command line. To most anyone who's been using Linux for more than two years (until now) this idea seems inconcievable.
Yet the people turning to Linux for the first time these days are reacting in the same point-and-click manner they would under Windows. Their user experience is limited to whatever they had the luck to get installed by default and whatever they see in the "Start" menu or on the desktop. That's what their Linux experience borns and dies with.
In many cases they don't even think that they could choose a better application than the defaults. They don't know (or care) that they have a choice, they don't know that on Linux you have more than the usual to choose from, sometimes they don't even know how to install new stuff or uninstall the old.
And even if they surpass all of the above, their install tools are limited to whatever the distro provides. Don't let me even start on the "qualities" of various graphical package managers out there in the popular distros right now.
Why should it? That's the whole point DJB is making.
shutdown -rn now: Express Elevator to Hell, System Going Down!
Actually, that would make a nice wall shutdown message... ...clickety click...