"Windows has the fewest vulnerabilities and the fewest "high severity" vulnerabilities of any platform measured."
I'm not seeing how you can interpret any vulnerability data that way, unless you either measure a very small number of platforms (one, for example), or used a very customised definition of "high severity"
"The use of kilobyte for 1,024 was just sort of sloppy notation"
Interesting theory.
You say that MB=10^6 is okay because MB=2^20 was never used. But MB=2^20 has always been the standard for computers, so changing it is just confusing because then the same symbol has 2 different meanings, with no easy way of telling which it refers to.
If you're going to invent a symbol for 10^6 bytes, at least choose a name (MidiByte, the d being for "decimal"?) that doesn't clash with a widely-used and confusingly simular unit of measurement.
(And anybody who whines about SI can grep the SI standard for "byte")
OK: Hard disk, linux, little LCD screen. Ideal for viewing photos. (insert pr0n joke here). Ideal as a digital picture-frame or similar.
So why support JPEG and not PNG or GIF or any other graphics formats? Isn't it just a case of loading imLib or ImageMagick or OpenIL or any of the other free tools that allows you to display loads of different formats?
Just seems like "low-hanging fruit" so far as file-format support goes...
"With the incredible power provided to us by modern CPU's, efficiency is just about completely irrelevant for 99% of non-game applications."
And this is why your computer still takes a minute to boot-up, despite being 8 million times faster than a 1980s computer that boots in 6 seconds.
"Think... when was the last time you thought "This word processor just doesn't respond to my keypresses fast enough."
Last time I loaded Microsoft Word. It takes about 10 seconds to start on my 2GHz machine at work.
"The reason why these programs aren't getting "faster" (as the article complains) is because there is no way to do so. They spend 99.9% of their time waiting for user input already."
So tell me why KPPP (a dial-up network program with just 3 buttons) takes 15 seconds to load in my WindowMaker desktop, or why KDE itself takes almost 25 seconds to load? Waiting for my user-input, is it?
"When that added efficiency does not lead to any noticeable benefit to the user, why do it?"
Everyone here has used fast applications and slow applications. The fast applications feel nice to use and let you get stuff done. The slow applications are annoying and frustrating and difficult to use. I'd certainly count speed (and memory footprint) as a benefit to the user.
"No, you can't exactly debug a fubar memory stack with just printf. Maybe in your hello world program, but not when things get complicated.:) Trust me, I know. I'm writing a rather large network application at the moment and somewhere along the line I must've overshot an array, but one mistake can ruin a whole application, and printf'ing wont help you."
Okay, I'm also writing a large network application, and I find printf statements very helpful indeed. It's Windows, so my main debugging tools tend to be message-boxes and fprintf to files. Even though there's a good "debugger" available, it's quite often at too low a level to see what's actually happening in the program.
One problem is running multi-process, multi-threaded code on several computers at once. Sure, debuggers can be made to work that way if you install Visual Studio on each machine you're testing on, but it can be inconvenient to say the least.
With print statements, your program can alert you in real time, using all the functions available in code but not in a debugger, and doesn't need to be carefully compiled as debug with the appropriate modules running in a debugger with the right break-points set. Just add a message box, and your program will tell you what it's doing.
Debuggers are great for examining memory structures, or for when you really don't know what the hell your program is doing, but for most purposes a few well-placed print statements and a logical series of tests can help you find the problem.
"not just Mahdist places like Saudi Arabia and Sudan - plenty of countries in the Carribean, subsaharan Africa, and SE Asia"
Sorry, I'm still not seeing the high standards of freedom that we're comparing our countries to.
Besides, the whole point of America is that it's supposed to be the most Free country anywhere, bar none. Rather than saying that "better than some of the dodgier parts of africa is good enough, maybe it would be better worth discussing how best to get america back to its ideals?
"But the solution is still in Russia and/or China."
If the second worst spammer in the world can appear on a chat-show to talk about their activities, then the US isn't exactly a hostile environment for such people...
"Seems to indicate that in the case of public domain content, such as a government-created documentary or a very old movie or audio recording--you would not be able to freely store and redistribute that content."
So no public domain then?
So if writers are contributing nothing to the public domain, tell us again why they deserve the exclusive privileges part of copyright which is their payment for writing work for the public domain?
"Face it, until there is a major disaster involving IT security most of this type of information will remain the exclusive domain of security geeks and haxors."
"This would be sweet if if you could make it display the wavform of an MP3 player in near real time"
Would be easier to do that in hardware directly -- a waveform is just a bucket-brigade delay chip, then sending each time-sample to bar-graph chip that drives one of 10 LED outputs. Put it all in an array and feed in an analog audio signal, no computers needed..
"There is no law that says they have to make it completely open and work with everything."
And no law [yet] which says we have to buy it. Just common-sense. "does it do what we want it to do", and "does it work with our existing equipment", and "does it work with out existing data [music files]"
"There are several keys that I think should be standard on all keyboards"
Home Takes you to ntlhome.com website
Shopping Takes you to microsoft shopping network website
Internet Launches Internet Explorer
Chat Takes you to AOL chat
Laugh until you find 20 such keyboards rack-mounted in a computing cluster on a restricted network... exactly what use is a volume-control, Mr Anderson, if your computers don't have soundcards?
Re:Caps Lock? Who cares about Caps Lock?
on
Is Caps Lock Dead?
·
· Score: 1
"They still haven't even bothered to get rid of the Scroll Lock button yet."
Maybe because anyone who writes console programs still uses it?
If you want a really secure PIN, simply use the last 4 digits of pi... apparently it would take thousands of years of supercomputer effort to crack that one...
"If more than one person can access the transmitter, then those multiple clients could just as easily talk to each other, should they take the time to work out a private wireless network for everyone to work on."
Sssh...
Let the big business setup wireless ISPs and encourage everyone to buy wireless network cards. When their business eventually folds, there will be a huge population of wireless-enabled computers, maybe even enough to bootstrap a mesh network...
Slashdot Mirror
"Windows has the fewest vulnerabilities and the fewest "high severity" vulnerabilities of any platform measured."
I'm not seeing how you can interpret any vulnerability data that way, unless you either measure a very small number of platforms (one, for example), or used a very customised definition of "high severity"
"The use of kilobyte for 1,024 was just sort of sloppy notation"
Interesting theory.
You say that MB=10^6 is okay because MB=2^20 was never used. But MB=2^20 has always been the standard for computers, so changing it is just confusing because then the same symbol has 2 different meanings, with no easy way of telling which it refers to.
If you're going to invent a symbol for 10^6 bytes, at least choose a name (MidiByte, the d being for "decimal"?) that doesn't clash with a widely-used and confusingly simular unit of measurement.
(And anybody who whines about SI can grep the SI standard for "byte")
OK: Hard disk, linux, little LCD screen. Ideal for viewing photos. (insert pr0n joke here). Ideal as a digital picture-frame or similar.
So why support JPEG and not PNG or GIF or any other graphics formats? Isn't it just a case of loading imLib or ImageMagick or OpenIL or any of the other free tools that allows you to display loads of different formats?
Just seems like "low-hanging fruit" so far as file-format support goes...
"With the incredible power provided to us by modern CPU's, efficiency is just about completely irrelevant for 99% of non-game applications."
And this is why your computer still takes a minute to boot-up, despite being 8 million times faster than a 1980s computer that boots in 6 seconds.
"Think... when was the last time you thought "This word processor just doesn't respond to my keypresses fast enough."
Last time I loaded Microsoft Word. It takes about 10 seconds to start on my 2GHz machine at work.
"The reason why these programs aren't getting "faster" (as the article complains) is because there is no way to do so. They spend 99.9% of their time waiting for user input already."
So tell me why KPPP (a dial-up network program with just 3 buttons) takes 15 seconds to load in my WindowMaker desktop, or why KDE itself takes almost 25 seconds to load? Waiting for my user-input, is it?
"When that added efficiency does not lead to any noticeable benefit to the user, why do it?"
Everyone here has used fast applications and slow applications. The fast applications feel nice to use and let you get stuff done. The slow applications are annoying and frustrating and difficult to use. I'd certainly count speed (and memory footprint) as a benefit to the user.
"No, you can't exactly debug a fubar memory stack with just printf. Maybe in your hello world program, but not when things get complicated. :) Trust me, I know. I'm writing a rather large network application at the moment and somewhere along the line I must've overshot an array, but one mistake can ruin a whole application, and printf'ing wont help you."
Okay, I'm also writing a large network application, and I find printf statements very helpful indeed. It's Windows, so my main debugging tools tend to be message-boxes and fprintf to files. Even though there's a good "debugger" available, it's quite often at too low a level to see what's actually happening in the program.
One problem is running multi-process, multi-threaded code on several computers at once. Sure, debuggers can be made to work that way if you install Visual Studio on each machine you're testing on, but it can be inconvenient to say the least.
With print statements, your program can alert you in real time, using all the functions available in code but not in a debugger, and doesn't need to be carefully compiled as debug with the appropriate modules running in a debugger with the right break-points set. Just add a message box, and your program will tell you what it's doing.
Debuggers are great for examining memory structures, or for when you really don't know what the hell your program is doing, but for most purposes a few well-placed print statements and a logical series of tests can help you find the problem.
"not just Mahdist places like Saudi Arabia and Sudan - plenty of countries in the Carribean, subsaharan Africa, and SE Asia"
Sorry, I'm still not seeing the high standards of freedom that we're comparing our countries to.
Besides, the whole point of America is that it's supposed to be the most Free country anywhere, bar none. Rather than saying that "better than some of the dodgier parts of africa is good enough, maybe it would be better worth discussing how best to get america back to its ideals?
"Can I been seen out for a jog on Sunday/Friday/Saturday morning without later being beaten for it?"
You know you have a problem when you need to compare your country with Saudi Arabia to make it look good...
"But the solution is still in Russia and/or China."
If the second worst spammer in the world can appear on a chat-show to talk about their activities, then the US isn't exactly a hostile environment for such people...
"Wouldn't it have just been easier to buy an airline ticket?"
It probably takes less time to row back than going through airline security...
"Burn the platters?" What, do you live in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber? They're aluminum, aren't they?"
I believe the normal technique is to mix them with iron oxide. You'll need a fuse which burns very hot to ignite it.
"I want a Sauron processor."
Hot and firey with clouds of black smoke?
You know it's time to upgrade when people are making jokes about still being able to use a machine twice as fast as yours...
Yes 700MHz is just fine for games...
"MS is creating these patents not to attack innocent people, but to defend it's illegal activities."
And you know their intention how?
"Seems to indicate that in the case of public domain content, such as a government-created documentary or a very old movie or audio recording--you would not be able to freely store and redistribute that content."
So no public domain then?
So if writers are contributing nothing to the public domain, tell us again why they deserve the exclusive privileges part of copyright which is their payment for writing work for the public domain?
"That's why Dell doesn't sell "laptops" any more, they sell "notebooks"."
Despite being three times the size and weight of an actual "notebook computer"...
Really, does anyone have a paper notebook anywhere near the size of a Dell laptop?
"Face it, until there is a major disaster involving IT security most of this type of information will remain the exclusive domain of security geeks and haxors."
There are other types of people?
"the manufacturers will be forced to have labels on it warning people not to put their laptop on their lap or serious injury might occur"
Then they could call it a desktop computer...
"This would be sweet if if you could make it display the wavform of an MP3 player in near real time"
Would be easier to do that in hardware directly -- a waveform is just a bucket-brigade delay chip, then sending each time-sample to bar-graph chip that drives one of 10 LED outputs. Put it all in an array and feed in an analog audio signal, no computers needed..
"There is no law that says they have to make it completely open and work with everything."
And no law [yet] which says we have to buy it. Just common-sense. "does it do what we want it to do", and "does it work with our existing equipment", and "does it work with out existing data [music files]"
"There are several keys that I think should be standard on all keyboards"
Home Takes you to ntlhome.com website
Shopping Takes you to microsoft shopping network website
Internet Launches Internet Explorer
Chat Takes you to AOL chat
Laugh until you find 20 such keyboards rack-mounted in a computing cluster on a restricted network... exactly what use is a volume-control, Mr Anderson, if your computers don't have soundcards?
"They still haven't even bothered to get rid of the Scroll Lock button yet."
Maybe because anyone who writes console programs still uses it?
If you want a really secure PIN, simply use the last 4 digits of pi... apparently it would take thousands of years of supercomputer effort to crack that one...
"If more than one person can access the transmitter, then those multiple clients could just as easily talk to each other, should they take the time to work out a private wireless network for everyone to work on."
Sssh...
Let the big business setup wireless ISPs and encourage everyone to buy wireless network cards. When their business eventually folds, there will be a huge population of wireless-enabled computers, maybe even enough to bootstrap a mesh network...
"Writers and layout people use cap lock all the time."
Well they can have mine; it's been forcibly removed from the keyboard...
"I don't see many forks of Open Office or Perl out there."
To fork Perl, you'd have to understand its source-code.