It's interesting to imagine what this recall statement from Samsung might look like...
"A fault has been found in the DVD-HD841 which allows it to work with older TVs and causes users to be able to view DVDs from outside the United States. This results in a dangerous situation in which users will experience less than the minimum annoyance-hassle amount legally required by the MPAA. Please return your DVD player as soon as possible and you will be furnished a free replacement of lesser value."
Hey hey, constantly having problems to fix is a perfect way for an IT guy/gal to look busy all the time. How are you supposed to justify that huge salary if your *nix machines keep working all the time? I always recommend IIS for just that reason!
Likewise, I'll bet all 8 versions of Vista use the same "kernel". It's not the kernel that makes things work or not work (for the most part), it's the user-level software on top.
A group of Georgia State University student recently committed a similar act of "civil obedience" to protest the 55mph speed limit on I-285, where drivers routinely average 70-75mph. They gathered a group of at least 5 cars and drove down the interstate side-by-side, going roughly 55mph, holding almost all traffic to that speed. Of course, it made quite a difference on the road itself, and I hope that eventually someone who makes these sorts of decisions sees the video.
Their argument is that 55 is too slow and ought to be raised. However, even if the speed limit is left at 55mph, it should be enforced as such. Driving 80 (basically 5mph over the speed of traffic) can currently result in a 25-over ticket.
You're completely right. Practically all posts about controversial subjects these days require the final tagline comment or question that is literally flamebait. "Is Linux really that feasible in the home?", or "Would anyone actually do this to their computer?", or "Can Slashdotters really not get dates?". When I see those final taglines, I skip over the comments section for that article; it's just not worth anyone's time to see the canned responses that ran through everyone's head, but only one person managed to post within the first 20 seconds of the article's release (everything after that is modded -1 Redundant). I rather enjoy the articles that are now shown as folded headlines on the front page since the reduced popularity seems to improve the SNR of the discussion.
I know people who fit the previous case (bought a Creative player and discovered that m4p files won't play on it), and the alternate case is people who want to buy a better player but can't get all their music because iTunes has exclusive rights with some artists, like the Eagles.
iTMS and the iPod are two separate products that work exclusively with each other. Have lots of iTunes music purchased? It won't play on anyone else's music device (the ROKR is negligible). Have an iPod? Better get your music from iTunes, 'cause PlaysForSure files won't play on it. Much like the Canon v. Nikon world of cameras and lenses, if you buy a camera from one company, those extra lenses will have to come from the same company. However, competition is healthy and booming in the professional photography world. Some have likened this to the desktop PC world too, but it again falls short because so many apps are available for Windows and MacOSX, and even Linux has equivalents for most products.
However, in the iTMS + iPod world, these are two separate products that each have a strongly dominant hold on their respective markets, which also monopolistically exclude all competition from functioning with either product. I say it's about time someone looked at this case. How many/.ers have friends who bought a non-iPod mp3 player only to find out that none of their Fairplay-encrypted songs will play on it? How many/.ers have iPods that they wish could use Napster or a competing music store to purchase songs with different rights or improved quality?
Let me start by saying "yeah right". The next golf? The reason businesspeople play golf is not for the game, but to chat and talk politics (office or government) while having some sort of distraction outdoors. WoW is hardly a decent place to have an office meeting. Face it, most people (will) grow out of video games.
Is it just me, or does there seem to be an increase in terribly misleading headlines on/. lately? AOL isn't charging for all incoming mail, they're charging commercial emailers to send email to AOL users. As far as I can tell, AOL is a dying breed whose users won't really notice the difference, and are probably used to service problems anyway.
Re:No site should trust client-side information.
on
Cross Site Cooking
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· Score: 1
What's to stop someone from modifying a cookie file with a hex editor?
Changing cookies is even easier than that in the Mozilla family of browsers, with the Add'n'edit Cookies extension. You're right that, in general, cookies should be treated like POST or GET data, which can be full of crap you, as web designer, don't want. Just like POST and GET data, it should be thoroughly cleaned if it's to be used within an SQL query or to look up a file in the filesystem. The extension, though, is a great way to debug problems related to cookies.
Even if we've managed to keep spam to a minimum, and we've changed the word "eliminate" somehow to mean "reduce", can anyone honestly say we have Microsoft to thank for all this?
Oh, and that prediction I made 5 years ago about reducing telemarketers' phone calls? You can all thank me now.
"Quietly" refers to Mozilla's inclusion of this feature in the nightly trunk versions, not the official version available for download. That's hardly cause for concern. I'll bet most of the features added to nightlies are "quiet", so that's just a bit of fear mongering. It's a development version! I personally don't like the idea of pings that much, but I'm willing to bet it will have a UI to allow disabling when it's released to the masses. According to the bug request to implement it:
We should try and do an experimental implementation of , to see if
there are any unexpected real-world problems.
That's what nightlies are for! We now see that it's a controversial tag (and they're probably already well-aware), so they're giving it a shot. Would you rather them just say "no, we don't like that potential standard, so we're not going to try implementing it"?
That analogy is a bit flawed. The reverse of your Renoir analogy would be to have people copyrighting individual musical notes, and we know that's not the case. A more appropriate analogy to DJ mixing would be those who create visual collages of existing works and photographs, which is not so far-fetched as your copywritten colors.
How did it win awards for which it was not nominated?
In any case, it didn't look, from the start, like the sort of film that would win a flood of awards. I personally didn't like Munich (I thought the violence was gratuitous and the film's moral was weak at best), but you have to admit that its marketing and the names associated with it scream "Oscar! Oscar!" even if you've never seen it. We'll find out soon!
You're right about the grannies concerning PowerPoint, but many of them probably like to use Word clipart in the flyers they distribute around the neighborhood. However, you're very wrong about the PHB's and PowerPoint - they love it! Who else would use clipart so haphazardly but those two groups?
I'd be willing to bet that Microsoft knew exactly what was wrong and exactly how to fix it within hours of being notified about the problem. From their own FAQ, you'll see that there's quite a bit more involved than simply disabling the function and putting the new DLL on Windows Update. They've got many languages, different versions of Windows, and millions of customers running all sorts of weird crap on their machines that Ilfak doesn't have to worry about in order to maintain his job.
Also, most people running Ilfak's patch are going to know what they're doing well enough to expect changes in their machine's behavior if the patch causes problems. If MS put the exact same patch on Windows Update and every granny's and PHB's computer applied it overnight, it would be equally bad publicity when millions of less-tech-inclined users wake up the next day and can't add EPS clipart to their PowerPoint presentations because the patch prevented vector graphics from working at all.
Think about it - when you installed Ilfak's patch, did you think that it was failsafe? No, if you're smart, you figured it was better than nothing and went ahead anyway. Microsoft can't afford to release something that's "better than nothing". Only after several days of Ilfak's patch being released, without any serious side effects being reported, could you really be sure that it was a truly good solution. By then, it was only a couple more days before MS released their official patch that made the same solution permanent within the DLL.
I'm guessing the poster is referring to the behavior of Windows to run IE-like processes in far more situations than just clicking the big blue E. It's true that if you're running as a non-power-user on a properly configured machine, IE should be able to cause no more problems than the user entering a command prompt and manually attempting to destroy things.
The problem with IE's low-level integration is that little versions of the IE rendering engine appear all over the place: in the help system, in MSN/Windows Messenger, in Outlook Express, and even in regular Windows Explorer windows if you enter certain URLs in the address bar, etc. Some of these might be things you'd run even as the perfect Administrator, logging in only to do low-level maintenance. This means that IE-based exploits can potentially be run without ever clicking the blue E. There might be holes in the help system where opening a malicious help file uses an IE exploit to kill your system. Maybe a bug appears in the thumbnail view of Explorer where simply viewing the thumbnail of an evil.htm file on the network could kill your system. I'm not saying any of these glitches appear at the moment, but when you have the huge buggy IE codebase being called in so many places in the OS, you leave bigger holes for exploits to gain further privileges. That, in turn, impacts the security of the OS in general.
Arial is a nearly perfect substitute for Helvetica as it's mentioned in the summary. While it may seem that these two fonts are significantly different, the bulk of the difference comes from the various architectures' methods of displaying them. You usually see Helvetica on Macs, while PCs live in an Arial world. Don't believe me? Take the quiz!
Arial was a Helvetica clone developed by Monospace way back when font cloning was the cool thing to do. Ideally, it sports the same spacing and metrics of Helvetica, making it a literally perfect substitute for Helvetica. Thus, they're both nearly equally readable on the web and in print, and anyone who tells you otherwise is being a prick.
I'm most bothered by the fact that Viacom (who owns MTV) basically owns all music video stations on TV. They started out with just MTV, but now they own MTV2, VH1, CMT, BET, Fuse, and CTN (College Television). With that sort of monopoly, I'm surprised that people are so bent out of shape about Clearchannel, Infinity*, Jefferson Pilot, and the likes on the radio, considering how much worse the TV situation is. As an artist, you'd better not make Viacom mad or you're guaranteed never to reach the average teen or college student who doesn't make an active effort to find new music. Viacom is the music video god who determines what this demographic will consider cool, and in doing so they're destroying everything we hold dear.
Back when MTV first started sucking (by sucking I mean not playing videos), I could easily move to MTV2 for a metal fix, or VH1 for a classic rock fix, or CTN for the latest in alternative. Now they're all the same blathering crap that has little to do with music, and what's left is, as has been mentioned, hip hop and rap. Even VH1's music-based TV shows like "My Generation" and "Pop Up Video" have disappared in favor of "I Love the 80's". I think CMT is the only station they haven't fully corrupted yet, and you know it's only a matter of time.
Before all the lyrics and tabs sites disappear, let's make sure to collect them and start using P2P for distribution. Heck, you could probably include every lyric ever written in one 100MB torrent, passed around from user to user, and maybe release new lyrics or updates in a monthly package.
Even better would be to write a plugin support searching this one package: a customized plugin for the various torrent clients that enables user-to-user searches. The 100MB package would maintain a specific architecture (like gz'd XML files) so that any computer that has a full copy of the package could search it for lyrics, as well as supply a single lyric file on demand.
There are plenty of browser denial-of-service bugs, but few of them can actually render your browser useless upon every execution. This one has a lasting effect that's more significant that the old "do while(true) alert;"-style DoS attacks. A single double-click won't fix this one; you have to delete your old history.dat file.
Slashdot Mirror
"A fault has been found in the DVD-HD841 which allows it to work with older TVs and causes users to be able to view DVDs from outside the United States. This results in a dangerous situation in which users will experience less than the minimum annoyance-hassle amount legally required by the MPAA. Please return your DVD player as soon as possible and you will be furnished a free replacement of lesser value."
Hey hey, constantly having problems to fix is a perfect way for an IT guy/gal to look busy all the time. How are you supposed to justify that huge salary if your *nix machines keep working all the time? I always recommend IIS for just that reason!
Likewise, I'll bet all 8 versions of Vista use the same "kernel". It's not the kernel that makes things work or not work (for the most part), it's the user-level software on top.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5366552 067462745475
Their argument is that 55 is too slow and ought to be raised. However, even if the speed limit is left at 55mph, it should be enforced as such. Driving 80 (basically 5mph over the speed of traffic) can currently result in a 25-over ticket.
My definition of "bad" covers this one.
Happy VD Day!
Wow, that's the single best statement to refute my argument. A DRM-free world wouldn't have these problems :)
I know people who fit the previous case (bought a Creative player and discovered that m4p files won't play on it), and the alternate case is people who want to buy a better player but can't get all their music because iTunes has exclusive rights with some artists, like the Eagles.
However, in the iTMS + iPod world, these are two separate products that each have a strongly dominant hold on their respective markets, which also monopolistically exclude all competition from functioning with either product. I say it's about time someone looked at this case. How many /.ers have friends who bought a non-iPod mp3 player only to find out that none of their Fairplay-encrypted songs will play on it? How many /.ers have iPods that they wish could use Napster or a competing music store to purchase songs with different rights or improved quality?
You know, the one in the bunny suit. Oh wait, you guys can't see him.
Let me start by saying "yeah right". The next golf? The reason businesspeople play golf is not for the game, but to chat and talk politics (office or government) while having some sort of distraction outdoors. WoW is hardly a decent place to have an office meeting. Face it, most people (will) grow out of video games.
Is it just me, or does there seem to be an increase in terribly misleading headlines on /. lately? AOL isn't charging for all incoming mail, they're charging commercial emailers to send email to AOL users. As far as I can tell, AOL is a dying breed whose users won't really notice the difference, and are probably used to service problems anyway.
Changing cookies is even easier than that in the Mozilla family of browsers, with the Add'n'edit Cookies extension. You're right that, in general, cookies should be treated like POST or GET data, which can be full of crap you, as web designer, don't want. Just like POST and GET data, it should be thoroughly cleaned if it's to be used within an SQL query or to look up a file in the filesystem. The extension, though, is a great way to debug problems related to cookies.
And how's that empire these days? I heard they lost some minor territories across the western ocean.
Oh, and that prediction I made 5 years ago about reducing telemarketers' phone calls? You can all thank me now.
We should try and do an experimental implementation of , to see if there are any unexpected real-world problems.
That's what nightlies are for! We now see that it's a controversial tag (and they're probably already well-aware), so they're giving it a shot. Would you rather them just say "no, we don't like that potential standard, so we're not going to try implementing it"?That analogy is a bit flawed. The reverse of your Renoir analogy would be to have people copyrighting individual musical notes, and we know that's not the case. A more appropriate analogy to DJ mixing would be those who create visual collages of existing works and photographs, which is not so far-fetched as your copywritten colors.
In any case, it didn't look, from the start, like the sort of film that would win a flood of awards. I personally didn't like Munich (I thought the violence was gratuitous and the film's moral was weak at best), but you have to admit that its marketing and the names associated with it scream "Oscar! Oscar!" even if you've never seen it. We'll find out soon!
You're right about the grannies concerning PowerPoint, but many of them probably like to use Word clipart in the flyers they distribute around the neighborhood. However, you're very wrong about the PHB's and PowerPoint - they love it! Who else would use clipart so haphazardly but those two groups?
Also, most people running Ilfak's patch are going to know what they're doing well enough to expect changes in their machine's behavior if the patch causes problems. If MS put the exact same patch on Windows Update and every granny's and PHB's computer applied it overnight, it would be equally bad publicity when millions of less-tech-inclined users wake up the next day and can't add EPS clipart to their PowerPoint presentations because the patch prevented vector graphics from working at all.
Think about it - when you installed Ilfak's patch, did you think that it was failsafe? No, if you're smart, you figured it was better than nothing and went ahead anyway. Microsoft can't afford to release something that's "better than nothing". Only after several days of Ilfak's patch being released, without any serious side effects being reported, could you really be sure that it was a truly good solution. By then, it was only a couple more days before MS released their official patch that made the same solution permanent within the DLL.
The problem with IE's low-level integration is that little versions of the IE rendering engine appear all over the place: in the help system, in MSN/Windows Messenger, in Outlook Express, and even in regular Windows Explorer windows if you enter certain URLs in the address bar, etc. Some of these might be things you'd run even as the perfect Administrator, logging in only to do low-level maintenance. This means that IE-based exploits can potentially be run without ever clicking the blue E. There might be holes in the help system where opening a malicious help file uses an IE exploit to kill your system. Maybe a bug appears in the thumbnail view of Explorer where simply viewing the thumbnail of an evil .htm file on the network could kill your system. I'm not saying any of these glitches appear at the moment, but when you have the huge buggy IE codebase being called in so many places in the OS, you leave bigger holes for exploits to gain further privileges. That, in turn, impacts the security of the OS in general.
http://www.iliveonyourvisits.com/helvetica/
Arial was a Helvetica clone developed by Monospace way back when font cloning was the cool thing to do. Ideally, it sports the same spacing and metrics of Helvetica, making it a literally perfect substitute for Helvetica. Thus, they're both nearly equally readable on the web and in print, and anyone who tells you otherwise is being a prick.
Back when MTV first started sucking (by sucking I mean not playing videos), I could easily move to MTV2 for a metal fix, or VH1 for a classic rock fix, or CTN for the latest in alternative. Now they're all the same blathering crap that has little to do with music, and what's left is, as has been mentioned, hip hop and rap. Even VH1's music-based TV shows like "My Generation" and "Pop Up Video" have disappared in favor of "I Love the 80's". I think CMT is the only station they haven't fully corrupted yet, and you know it's only a matter of time.
* Owned by Viacom!
Even better would be to write a plugin support searching this one package: a customized plugin for the various torrent clients that enables user-to-user searches. The 100MB package would maintain a specific architecture (like gz'd XML files) so that any computer that has a full copy of the package could search it for lyrics, as well as supply a single lyric file on demand.
There are plenty of browser denial-of-service bugs, but few of them can actually render your browser useless upon every execution. This one has a lasting effect that's more significant that the old "do while(true) alert;"-style DoS attacks. A single double-click won't fix this one; you have to delete your old history.dat file.