Maybe for you. But anyone programming, at least in the F/OSS arena, knows about changelogs very well. They should also be on a few relavent mailing lists, or know of them. I would imagine than anyone working on the code would at least have a few avenues to explore in finding out who/where to send a patch or report.
DOS? Wow. So does that mean the cameras are using some sort of x86-compatible processor, or is it some sort of weird non-x86 version of DOS? The datalight page didn't say anything about processors. It's funny reading that press release (your first link). A company rep says that the use of DOS is on the rise. *shiver* Hopefully with the increased need for network access (bluetooth, WiFi, ethernet) and associated services (like small web servers, SMB) we will se more Linux usage in small devices. I mean, sure, those things can be done in DOS or other embedded OS's. But it's just not as flexible or powerful. Or easy. Why go and develop your own USB stack or web server, or license someone else's, when all that stuff is available for free (and royalty-free) with Linux? The only difference might be processor power. But if you can fit an x86-clone in a camera, surely you can do the same with an ARM or MIPS processor.
Oh, there are many of us in the OS community that know how pathetic MySQL is. The sad fact is that we're a minority. And thus you have the vicious cycle of most people using MySQL because that's usually that's available at web hosting companies, and that most web hosting companies only support MySQL because that's all they see demand for. *sigh*
Alternatively, you could maybe just upgrade to 512M, then get a 512M thumbdrive (or iPod Shuffle!) for much less than the additional $350 they want to go from 512M to 1G internal. Set it up as RAM drive and you might be able to get some of the speed of full Gig of internal RAM for $200 less.
Not likely. You do realise that flash memory is pretty damn slow? And it has a limited lifetime, something like only 10k-100k erase cycles? You certainly wouldn't want to swap to it.
But clustering these things certainly sounds interesting, at least in small numbers. Especially considering the alternatives, like the briq. Put 6 or 7 mini's on an 8-port ethernet switch and you're only out $3.5K, tops. Stack them on top of each other and they'd still take up less space than a normal PC case. They're not overly powerful processors nowadays, but they're nothing to sneeze at. And if you're working on an easily parallelizable algorithm, e.g rendering, then you're laughing! I think we'll see a lot of small mini clusters on slashdot in the neat future.
I've never heard another male video gamer complain `Duke's arms are too muscular!` or `Look at those pecs, they're unnatural!`.
True. But one of the main reasons I usually play as a female character is because all the male ones usually look like and act like self-centred jerks. That's just not me. I'm also not female, but at least they are nice to look at. And it's fun to beat up those same egotistical male characters with a diminutive girl:)
Because even with an entire industry making virus scanners and now adware/spyware removers to cover over the holes in Windows, Linux still has a far better track record when it comes to security? The army of compromised Windows machines spewing out spam should be proof enough of that.
From what I understand, the problem is that the cost of SMS messaging adds up faster than you realize. Imagine you have a friend that works nearby and you want to ask them if they want to have lunch together:
X: hi, it's
X here.
Y: hi. how are you?
X: good. hey, you wanna meet up for lunch?
Y: sure. at the XYZ foodcourt?
X: no, i'm getting sick of that. how about the park?
Y: ok then. what time? 12:30?
X: sure, see you there
Y: bye!
Now, if that was a normal voice call, that conversation will take all of 10-15 seconds. Even on a mobile/cell phone, that's still pretty cheap. But with SMS that's 8 messages, probably more with negotiating the place and time. Add in even more messages if more people or groups have to be organized. Now, here in Australia an SMS on most networks will cost the same as a call connection fee, something like 20-25 cents IIRC (I don't have one myself). So the previous conversation can quickly ramp up to a few dollars. Imagine having similar SMS conversations several times a day for a whole month and the figures of even a few hundred dollars start sounding very believable.
Right. The "everyone knows not to do that" excuse. Except, that 99% of the ordinary windows users out there that don't know this little pearl of wisdom. Look, you and your MSCE buddies might know this and other "obvious" ways to secure your PC, but most people don't. That's why this is so serious. And it affects XP SP2, the update that was supposed to make everyone safe and secure. So far, "BFD" is my response to XP SP2.
Maybe the MS product found the Spybot S&D definition file(s). Did you pay much attention to what the MS beta had found before telling it to delete them all?
If you need software to run critical proceses in a nuke plant or an airplane, would you use Microsoft products?
I believe the the EULA specifically rules out the use of MS software in those sorts of situations. But it's for exactly the reason you specified: everyone including MS knows that their software is unreliable.
Forget a streaming webserver. I'd like it if it could just save the photos direct to the hard disk of a laptop or some other WiFi-accessable storage. Flash memory is damn slow. I hate using the TIFF option on my camera because it takes so long to save the ~12M image to the slow flash memory card (XD).
That's funny. Here in Australia the traffic lights fall back to flashing the red lights, which means "the traffic lights aren't working right now, figure it out for yourselves". I've seen it a few times myself. Like you said, I'm also not sure what circumstances could result in this occuring. Obviously the controller is still working, but perhaps it's reset for some reason and can't get the time, or can't communicate with the other traffic lights.
From what I gather, the problem wasn't with the operating systems but with the databases and associated programs. Written in old languages like COBOL, various BASIC's, and various db procedural languages. They're the sorts of places you see people dicking around with dates in d/m/y format. Most low-level code (in the OS at least) just operates on seconds (or something smaller) since some epoch. The arithmetic is so much easier that way. You only have to convert when displaying the date or inputing it. At least, that's the Unix way. I think Windows NT does something similar, even if MS still refuses to put GMT in into the BIOS clock.
Here in Australia we're paying $80/month for 256/64 unlimited ADSL. We're lucky though, because just about every ISP has dropped their true unlimited (volume) plans but we've been able to stay on the plan we signed up for. I've been keeping close tabs on our usage and we should be able to go to a 512/128 ADSL plan that's limited to 20G per month plus 20G "offpeak" (midnight to 7am). And it'll be slightly cheaper.
Precisely. The confirmation dialog box has become so common now that clicking "yes" or "ok" or something similar has become a pavlovian response for many. And Microsoft seems to think that this is an acceptable "security measure", or at least that most people will think it's acceptable.
For a long time, Microsoft's standard response to the latest security hole was to add more confirmation dialog boxes instead of fixing the underlying issues. Well, now you can hardly do anything in Windows/Explorer/Outlook/Office without being harassed by little dialog boxes asking "Are you sure you want to <insert seemingly minor operation here>?".
Yes, you're right. I guess I showed how long I've been using Debian. They used to do more subtle things to config files so that the daemon wouldn't start and you had to spend at least a little time looking in the main config file. Now they are putting a RUN_DAEMON="false" variable or something similar in the/etc/default/{service} config file that's read by the init script. Although a few still put an exit command early in the init script and require you to remove it or comment it out. This is a bad way to do this for two reasons: 1) The init script is not a config file and has no other settings the admin will look at and 2) dpkg wants to replace the edited init script each time you upgrade the package.
...with perhaps a pre-configured installer that sets up the most comonly used packages on a server.
Ooh, bad idea. Multiple vendors (amongst them Microsoft and RedHat) have already demonstrated that it's a bad idea for an OS installer to silently install services/daemons. When an exploit comes around, someone *will* write a worm and say bye bye to your credibility. Because there'll be an aweful lot of people who didn't even know that Apache/Sendmail/BIND/whatever was installed on their machines and didn't know to update. No siree, I like the current trend of disabling services/daemons on installation. Even better, Debian often sabotages config files to force the admin to spend at least a little time looking at a config file before firing up some daemon.
I've used a scanner a few times to read old thermal-print movie stubs. It was surprising because the text was almost invisible. After a little playing with the levels in The GIMP, the text showed up pretty well. But I doubt your local supermarket employees would even know you can do that, let alone have the time to do it.
Japanese text has always looked fine on my Debian GNU/Linux box(es). So does Korean, Chinese, and Russian. My arabic font seems to incomplete though or something. I just had to install the necessary font packages. I don't know what you need on windows. I still can't read any of these languages though...
It has nothing to do with multitasking or the scheduler. It's another bit/flag in the page table, telling the MMU don't execute this page of memory. It's not so much to protect against viruses/virii, but buffer overflow attacks by worms and script kiddies. But the media doesn't distinguish between viruses/virii, trojans, and worms, and most attacks now use a combination of forms anyway.
I saw all three in the theatre. Why is everyone going on about the ending of ROTK? It's been a while since I've seen it, but I don't remember anything wrong with the end. I'll have to watch the extended edition DVD's I just got for chrissy, but I don't really remember the multiple endings that everyone seems to mention. When I saw it in the theatre, the audiance wasn't moaning or anything, although the two little pricks sitting next to me were making quite a ruckus all through the movie with SMS's and other nonsense on their mobile phones. And I always stay for the credits (at least some of them) so I don't really pay much attention to exactly when the audience gets up to leave.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe for you. But anyone programming, at least in the F/OSS arena, knows about changelogs very well. They should also be on a few relavent mailing lists, or know of them. I would imagine than anyone working on the code would at least have a few avenues to explore in finding out who/where to send a patch or report.
DOS? Wow. So does that mean the cameras are using some sort of x86-compatible processor, or is it some sort of weird non-x86 version of DOS? The datalight page didn't say anything about processors. It's funny reading that press release (your first link). A company rep says that the use of DOS is on the rise. *shiver* Hopefully with the increased need for network access (bluetooth, WiFi, ethernet) and associated services (like small web servers, SMB) we will se more Linux usage in small devices. I mean, sure, those things can be done in DOS or other embedded OS's. But it's just not as flexible or powerful. Or easy. Why go and develop your own USB stack or web server, or license someone else's, when all that stuff is available for free (and royalty-free) with Linux? The only difference might be processor power. But if you can fit an x86-clone in a camera, surely you can do the same with an ARM or MIPS processor.
Oh, there are many of us in the OS community that know how pathetic MySQL is. The sad fact is that we're a minority. And thus you have the vicious cycle of most people using MySQL because that's usually that's available at web hosting companies, and that most web hosting companies only support MySQL because that's all they see demand for. *sigh*
What the hell are you talking about?
Or a DVB card. Then the encoding is done by the TV station and/or the producers of the material.
Not likely. You do realise that flash memory is pretty damn slow? And it has a limited lifetime, something like only 10k-100k erase cycles? You certainly wouldn't want to swap to it.
But clustering these things certainly sounds interesting, at least in small numbers. Especially considering the alternatives, like the briq. Put 6 or 7 mini's on an 8-port ethernet switch and you're only out $3.5K, tops. Stack them on top of each other and they'd still take up less space than a normal PC case. They're not overly powerful processors nowadays, but they're nothing to sneeze at. And if you're working on an easily parallelizable algorithm, e.g rendering, then you're laughing! I think we'll see a lot of small mini clusters on slashdot in the neat future.
True. But one of the main reasons I usually play as a female character is because all the male ones usually look like and act like self-centred jerks. That's just not me. I'm also not female, but at least they are nice to look at. And it's fun to beat up those same egotistical male characters with a diminutive girl :)
Because even with an entire industry making virus scanners and now adware/spyware removers to cover over the holes in Windows, Linux still has a far better track record when it comes to security? The army of compromised Windows machines spewing out spam should be proof enough of that.
From what I understand, the problem is that the cost of SMS messaging adds up faster than you realize. Imagine you have a friend that works nearby and you want to ask them if they want to have lunch together:
Now, if that was a normal voice call, that conversation will take all of 10-15 seconds. Even on a mobile/cell phone, that's still pretty cheap. But with SMS that's 8 messages, probably more with negotiating the place and time. Add in even more messages if more people or groups have to be organized. Now, here in Australia an SMS on most networks will cost the same as a call connection fee, something like 20-25 cents IIRC (I don't have one myself). So the previous conversation can quickly ramp up to a few dollars. Imagine having similar SMS conversations several times a day for a whole month and the figures of even a few hundred dollars start sounding very believable.
Right. The "everyone knows not to do that" excuse. Except, that 99% of the ordinary windows users out there that don't know this little pearl of wisdom. Look, you and your MSCE buddies might know this and other "obvious" ways to secure your PC, but most people don't. That's why this is so serious. And it affects XP SP2, the update that was supposed to make everyone safe and secure. So far, "BFD" is my response to XP SP2.
Maybe the MS product found the Spybot S&D definition file(s). Did you pay much attention to what the MS beta had found before telling it to delete them all?
I believe the the EULA specifically rules out the use of MS software in those sorts of situations. But it's for exactly the reason you specified: everyone including MS knows that their software is unreliable.
Forget a streaming webserver. I'd like it if it could just save the photos direct to the hard disk of a laptop or some other WiFi-accessable storage. Flash memory is damn slow. I hate using the TIFF option on my camera because it takes so long to save the ~12M image to the slow flash memory card (XD).
That's funny. Here in Australia the traffic lights fall back to flashing the red lights, which means "the traffic lights aren't working right now, figure it out for yourselves". I've seen it a few times myself. Like you said, I'm also not sure what circumstances could result in this occuring. Obviously the controller is still working, but perhaps it's reset for some reason and can't get the time, or can't communicate with the other traffic lights.
From what I gather, the problem wasn't with the operating systems but with the databases and associated programs. Written in old languages like COBOL, various BASIC's, and various db procedural languages. They're the sorts of places you see people dicking around with dates in d/m/y format. Most low-level code (in the OS at least) just operates on seconds (or something smaller) since some epoch. The arithmetic is so much easier that way. You only have to convert when displaying the date or inputing it. At least, that's the Unix way. I think Windows NT does something similar, even if MS still refuses to put GMT in into the BIOS clock.
Bah! Luxury, luxury!
Here in Australia we're paying $80/month for 256/64 unlimited ADSL. We're lucky though, because just about every ISP has dropped their true unlimited (volume) plans but we've been able to stay on the plan we signed up for. I've been keeping close tabs on our usage and we should be able to go to a 512/128 ADSL plan that's limited to 20G per month plus 20G "offpeak" (midnight to 7am). And it'll be slightly cheaper.
Precisely. The confirmation dialog box has become so common now that clicking "yes" or "ok" or something similar has become a pavlovian response for many. And Microsoft seems to think that this is an acceptable "security measure", or at least that most people will think it's acceptable.
For a long time, Microsoft's standard response to the latest security hole was to add more confirmation dialog boxes instead of fixing the underlying issues. Well, now you can hardly do anything in Windows/Explorer/Outlook/Office without being harassed by little dialog boxes asking "Are you sure you want to <insert seemingly minor operation here>?".
Yeah, but many of us filter out Michael's stories. So this is the first I've seen it.
Yes, you're right. I guess I showed how long I've been using Debian. They used to do more subtle things to config files so that the daemon wouldn't start and you had to spend at least a little time looking in the main config file. Now they are putting a RUN_DAEMON="false" variable or something similar in the /etc/default/{service} config file that's read by the init script. Although a few still put an exit command early in the init script and require you to remove it or comment it out. This is a bad way to do this for two reasons: 1) The init script is not a config file and has no other settings the admin will look at and 2) dpkg wants to replace the edited init script each time you upgrade the package.
Ooh, bad idea. Multiple vendors (amongst them Microsoft and RedHat) have already demonstrated that it's a bad idea for an OS installer to silently install services/daemons. When an exploit comes around, someone *will* write a worm and say bye bye to your credibility. Because there'll be an aweful lot of people who didn't even know that Apache/Sendmail/BIND/whatever was installed on their machines and didn't know to update. No siree, I like the current trend of disabling services/daemons on installation. Even better, Debian often sabotages config files to force the admin to spend at least a little time looking at a config file before firing up some daemon.
I've used a scanner a few times to read old thermal-print movie stubs. It was surprising because the text was almost invisible. After a little playing with the levels in The GIMP, the text showed up pretty well. But I doubt your local supermarket employees would even know you can do that, let alone have the time to do it.
Japanese text has always looked fine on my Debian GNU/Linux box(es). So does Korean, Chinese, and Russian. My arabic font seems to incomplete though or something. I just had to install the necessary font packages. I don't know what you need on windows. I still can't read any of these languages though...
1919 2.18 AMD Athlon-XP 2600+
266 24.15 AMD K6-II 266
25 200.22 TI MicroSparc (Sparcstation LX)
It has nothing to do with multitasking or the scheduler. It's another bit/flag in the page table, telling the MMU don't execute this page of memory. It's not so much to protect against viruses/virii, but buffer overflow attacks by worms and script kiddies. But the media doesn't distinguish between viruses/virii, trojans, and worms, and most attacks now use a combination of forms anyway.
I saw all three in the theatre. Why is everyone going on about the ending of ROTK? It's been a while since I've seen it, but I don't remember anything wrong with the end. I'll have to watch the extended edition DVD's I just got for chrissy, but I don't really remember the multiple endings that everyone seems to mention. When I saw it in the theatre, the audiance wasn't moaning or anything, although the two little pricks sitting next to me were making quite a ruckus all through the movie with SMS's and other nonsense on their mobile phones. And I always stay for the credits (at least some of them) so I don't really pay much attention to exactly when the audience gets up to leave.