Your eyes do tiny little loops and recalibrates at up to 70FPS, which is one of the many design ``tricks'' which are used to give our eyes a much higher effective resolution and framerate than the hardware (eyeballs, nerves, brain) would suggest. This is one reason why dead trees are still easier to read/recognise than video.
Using a very high framerate (150-250FPS) can work around this problem, as can using a slower phosphor. Intelligent-pixel displays will also solve the problem by remaining a stable colour until they're due to change.
I agree that the testing dude's monitor is unlikely to be doing 200FPS, but OTOH perhaps it should be doing that rate.
I clicked on the ``good HTML'' link from a Slashdot quickie bundle of about a week ago while using Konqueror. It loved it, lapped up about 12 nested frames, all manner of rubbish. And it does Hotmail so I can use it in Web cafes.
Still not perfect (fonts go strange occasionally) but excellent and can only improve.
Users can't sniff passwords, firewalling no help
on
Microsoft Cracked
·
· Score: 1
This child process sniffs out passwords, because hey, any user account can sniff packets, not just root.
If you weren't a spineless AC, I'd give you an IP, a user login and a password for this (my home) box, which is running an obselete version of Mandrake Linux.
I'll also bet you $Oz1000 that you can't use that account to sniff any passwords. I'll add a side bet of a further $Oz1000 that you can't ping or traceroute either.
This box has not been security tweaked (if it had you wouldn't be able to blow your nose here without special permission) indeed I've undone some of the default security.
Now, shall we discuss a system which is serious about security, like OpenBSD or OpenVMS? (-:
Microsoft's biggest mistake was that it wasn't using a more secure firewall to protect it's local machines
Horse puckey. They were trojanned, so no amount of firewalling would have helped. Microsoft's biggest mistake was limiting their use of Unix to software manufacture plus the odd curiostiy piece.
Your tagline said:
I have seen the end of the world! I think it was an exit on the Jersey turnpike.
Eerie how appropriate taglines sometimes are. The end of the world is Outlook. If one single piece of software has the ability to knacker the 'net, Outlook is it.
Maybe now Microsoft will do something serious about fixing it? Yes, I know, it is wishful thinking, but stranger things have happened.
On the subject of the potential theft of Office and Windows, Bill will just write a letter to the crackers complaining that he can't make any money if they steal his code, and then tell everyone else that it was a buggy release anyway and he's concerned that it'll give his company a bad image.
So modularise already: N-Kernel Monte, anyone?
on
HURD For 'Big Iron'?
·
· Score: 1
big companies [...] are upset with linux for aiming at small systems, but aren't immediately splashing out with their own cash to rectify it themselves.
This may smell too microkernel to please some people, but since some anwesome things have been done with kernel modules already, why not a few more? If somebody wants a new feature that speeds some things up enormously but requires (say) 8 megs of RAM to start up, why not do it as a kernel module?
That way, your distro could boot ``minimised'' and then load the module if appropriate (Hmm. This is a 2MB 386SX. Should I load ramgulper.o?).
One way of doing this with extremely core items would be to make the core item as a pre-loaded module; that is, the code is a module, but a copy of it is compiled into the kernel so it is present at boot (you might conceivably need some memory management, for example, to get to the point of being able to load your new ramgulper.o hyperfast memory management kernel subsystem module).
If Two-Kernel Monte can replace an entire more-or-less running kernel on the fly, surely it is not much more technically difficult to replace significant subsystems on the fly?
As to the idea of splashing out with the cash, the problem isn't the cash itself, but getting the companies to commit. Politics and memes are bigger blockers than dollars ever were. If this kind of thing is shown to work, no matter how shakily at first, you will get some joiners from false-floor territory.
If Bill Gates could sell an 8080 BASIC interpreter to MITS more than eight weeks before writing an alpha version of it (ie, it hadn't even been planned when he sold it), what's stopping ``us'' from ``selling'' advanced kernel features to IBM or Fujitsu a few weeks from now, by which time the bones of them actually exist?
...and now that the patent has expired, ships it on the main CD set from 7.2 (currently -rc1). Mandrake 7.2 also includes Apache-ASP and the semi-separate Apache-PERL daemon. And lots of other yummy stuff. (-:
To say it another way, I don't think that anyone is interested in why YOU use Apache-SSL or YOU use Apache+mod_ssl. I know that I'm not! Instead, I'd like to hear WHY you use Apache-SSL, or WHY you use Apache+mod_ssl.
Trust you to cut to the chase, leaving all of these other Slashdotters floundering in the trivia 30 minutes back in the plot. How are they supposed to work up a good flame war when you axe their ``reason'' for a good does/doesn't war with one small, well-placed, fixed-pitch question? (-:
I use mod_ssl because that's what Mandrake ship with their distros. You can call that laziness, or you can call it pragmatism, but really it's the only reason I have.
It doesn't truly matter that M$ was involved, nor that IIS was in use. In this case, NASDAQ has someone they can talk to, debug, and fix, ultimately, and it was M$.
Beg pardon? Louis, are you implying here that Open Source people have nobody to talk to?
On Tuesday, I found a bug in Mandrake's recent compilation of a Linux kernel (which neutered ide-scsi CD burners). Within 15 minutes of telling them this, it was attended to, diagnosed, and fixed. Less than 15 minutes after seeing their email, the fix was on Mandrake's FTP server (which is impressive, given that we're dealing with four different kernel compiles here, plus modules).
Try getting any response out of Microsoft within 15 minutes, even by telephone, I dare you! Now try getting it for free. Finally, if the response starts with ``have you tried rebooting your computer?'', scream into the handset and hang up. (-:
I can't even get a straight answer about pricing out of Microsoft, never mind useful tech support. My experience with Sun and IBM is that their turnaround is likely to be a couple of days rather than minutes, but that their response is generally quite helpful. I haven't tried VALinux, but have heard good things about them.
I hope this is early enough to beat all the M$ bashers et al...
Forlorn hope, M$ is busy making more of them as we type. (-:
Never mind a thousand years from now, most people eat and drink so much crap, live in so much stress, breathe so much poison that they fall well short of a tenth of that - and the last half of it is less than enjoyable.
As to Hawkings' bilge, according to the geneticists, we'll have so much ``genetic load'' by then that we won't be able to reproduce anyway.
What I want to know is how we allegedly got along so well for millions of years, when suddenly our collective future is telescoping in to a thousand years max. That doesn't make sense at all. Surely, if something were to go wrong, it's had thousands of chances to do it already, by popular reckoning, so why didn't it? And if you say ``just lucky, I guess,'' then I have a bridge to sell you, fine steel arch, great history and good revenue from traffic tolls, not so popular now that the Olympics have finished, urgent sale since my Olympic Village is being deconstructed, cheap at $Oz2,000,000.00 - get it while you can!
Re:Haven't they heard of C# yet?
on
KBasic
·
· Score: 1
Well, all the best developers will all be using C#, so the VB code-monkeys will eventually be forced to make the switch.
Just as the release of Windows 2000 has helped Linux immensely, now seems like the perfect time to offer those ex-VB-codemonkeys something better. Something that really is object oriented (ie, not a straight clone of VirusBasic). Something cross-platform, not bound to KDE, so they can start using it under Windows and then switch platforms when the platform is no longer as important.
Since BASIC is an acronym for Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, perhaps we should dream up a nice acronym for ADVANCED?
...and has already been more than half done
on
KBasic
·
· Score: 1
Perfect, but we need one more thing!
on
KBasic
·
· Score: 1
We need, a VirusBASIC-to-Python translator. Yes, it will result in buckets of poor-quality Python, but it will enable heaps of VB programmers to make the Right Decision{tm}, just like that bloke's dual-boot Athlon did.
By the way, Michael Kohn already has the hardest part done, and done well. That was a hint, guys...
``Clearer to the users?'' If Microsoft wanted to make it any clearer to the users that as far as MS was concerned they were just wallets that knew other wallets, they'd have to fill the screen with flashing scarlet words on a daffodil yellow background:
YOU ARE JUST A WALLET!
BUT YOU MAY YET HAVE VALUE
BECAUSE YOU KNOW
A LOT OF OTHER WALLETS!
Au contraire, I think Microsoft saw their customer base coming - from a loooooong way off...
A problem of course, is tilting the earth in time.
Don't worry, the Great A'Tuin will duck, we'll probably only lose a few of the Ramtops, if that... if it happens soon enough, we might see what became of the Crimson Assurance Company.
Maybe it's time to make room for the next step in evolution?
We have a compost bin, and keep ours healthy and well-fed, just in case we need to ask any favours later... (-:
OTOH, geneticists assure us that our collective genetic load is increasing so fast that we'll die out in a few hundred years anyway, and the cockroaches soon after.
Yay. Whoopie. Joy, joy. Life is hard and then you die... there are actually more practical views of reality, happier ones, which are a much closer fit to observable reality than most of the common ones. Try a few. What have you got to lose?
Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted.
Corollary: until Windows is past history, a lot of hobby computers are being wasted.
Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
It certainly has been, but not by Micro-Soft! (-:
The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
And all that time was paid for?
Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC.
This statement makes me curous, Bill. If it only took you two months to write the entire BASIC, why did it take a whole year to tinker with it? Can I ask you a question and get an honest answer? Did ``write'' here mean ``key in from a listing stolen from University rubbish bins?''
People complained that Altair BASIC was buggy. Is that because the bugs were keyed in from a discarded program listing, or because your programming skills were as good as your soldering skills?
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive.
Nothing's changed much since. According to you, Bill, as recently as 1998 Microsoft's customer feedback was almost entirely positive. Since the whole world's wrong, and you're right, and that's the way it's always been, who am I to argue? Uh, it might helped if you upped the dosage of those pills, Bill.
As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software.
And you don't? Naturally, those listings taken from the dumpsters were public domain, weren't they? I mean, the authors haven't complained yet, have they? The Spyglass issue was just a little misunderstanding? How about the drive doubler software? And, my gosh, doesn't Money resemble something Microsoft once had a look at the source code for awfully closely? Come clean, Bill, tell us the whole story!
What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?
Linus Torvalds.
Next question? (-:
I would appreciate letters from any one who [...] has a suggestion or comment.
And remember that quote about how he used to pinch source code listings, without asking the authors, out of University rubbish bins. One wonder how much of Altair BASIC was actually written by Bill, and why it was so buggy.
Slashdot Mirror
I would be unbearably tempted to respond, and consequences be damned, ``No, but I can get some. Should I?''
Your eyes do tiny little loops and recalibrates at up to 70FPS, which is one of the many design ``tricks'' which are used to give our eyes a much higher effective resolution and framerate than the hardware (eyeballs, nerves, brain) would suggest. This is one reason why dead trees are still easier to read/recognise than video.
Using a very high framerate (150-250FPS) can work around this problem, as can using a slower phosphor. Intelligent-pixel displays will also solve the problem by remaining a stable colour until they're due to change.
I agree that the testing dude's monitor is unlikely to be doing 200FPS, but OTOH perhaps it should be doing that rate.
I clicked on the ``good HTML'' link from a Slashdot quickie bundle of about a week ago while using Konqueror. It loved it, lapped up about 12 nested frames, all manner of rubbish. And it does Hotmail so I can use it in Web cafes. Still not perfect (fonts go strange occasionally) but excellent and can only improve.
If you weren't a spineless AC, I'd give you an IP, a user login and a password for this (my home) box, which is running an obselete version of Mandrake Linux.
I'll also bet you $Oz1000 that you can't use that account to sniff any passwords. I'll add a side bet of a further $Oz1000 that you can't ping or traceroute either.
This box has not been security tweaked (if it had you wouldn't be able to blow your nose here without special permission) indeed I've undone some of the default security.
Now, shall we discuss a system which is serious about security, like OpenBSD or OpenVMS? (-:
Horse puckey. They were trojanned, so no amount of firewalling would have helped. Microsoft's biggest mistake was limiting their use of Unix to software manufacture plus the odd curiostiy piece.
Your tagline said: I have seen the end of the world! I think it was an exit on the Jersey turnpike. Eerie how appropriate taglines sometimes are. The end of the world is Outlook. If one single piece of software has the ability to knacker the 'net, Outlook is it. Maybe now Microsoft will do something serious about fixing it? Yes, I know, it is wishful thinking, but stranger things have happened. On the subject of the potential theft of Office and Windows, Bill will just write a letter to the crackers complaining that he can't make any money if they steal his code, and then tell everyone else that it was a buggy release anyway and he's concerned that it'll give his company a bad image.
big companies [...] are upset with linux for aiming at small systems, but aren't immediately splashing out with their own cash to rectify it themselves.
This may smell too microkernel to please some people, but since some anwesome things have been done with kernel modules already, why not a few more? If somebody wants a new feature that speeds some things up enormously but requires (say) 8 megs of RAM to start up, why not do it as a kernel module?
That way, your distro could boot ``minimised'' and then load the module if appropriate (Hmm. This is a 2MB 386SX. Should I load ramgulper.o?).
One way of doing this with extremely core items would be to make the core item as a pre-loaded module; that is, the code is a module, but a copy of it is compiled into the kernel so it is present at boot (you might conceivably need some memory management, for example, to get to the point of being able to load your new ramgulper.o hyperfast memory management kernel subsystem module).
If Two-Kernel Monte can replace an entire more-or-less running kernel on the fly, surely it is not much more technically difficult to replace significant subsystems on the fly?
As to the idea of splashing out with the cash, the problem isn't the cash itself, but getting the companies to commit. Politics and memes are bigger blockers than dollars ever were. If this kind of thing is shown to work, no matter how shakily at first, you will get some joiners from false-floor territory.
If Bill Gates could sell an 8080 BASIC interpreter to MITS more than eight weeks before writing an alpha version of it (ie, it hadn't even been planned when he sold it), what's stopping ``us'' from ``selling'' advanced kernel features to IBM or Fujitsu a few weeks from now, by which time the bones of them actually exist?
...and now that the patent has expired, ships it on the main CD set from 7.2 (currently -rc1). Mandrake 7.2 also includes Apache-ASP and the semi-separate Apache-PERL daemon. And lots of other yummy stuff. (-:
Trust you to cut to the chase, leaving all of these other Slashdotters floundering in the trivia 30 minutes back in the plot. How are they supposed to work up a good flame war when you axe their ``reason'' for a good does/doesn't war with one small, well-placed, fixed-pitch question? (-:
I use mod_ssl because that's what Mandrake ship with their distros. You can call that laziness, or you can call it pragmatism, but really it's the only reason I have.
Find it at http://www.stunnel.org/.
All I want is to say I have a ``Duron-Duron'' setup...
And I ran, ran so far away...
And if I rack up enough puns here, I may not need to go to Kuro5hin today.
At Linux Laughs (yes, also stale data).
Check out my ancient parody page and please email me updates and suggestions.
It doesn't truly matter that M$ was involved, nor that IIS was in use. In this case, NASDAQ has someone they can talk to, debug, and fix, ultimately, and it was M$.
Beg pardon? Louis, are you implying here that Open Source people have nobody to talk to?
On Tuesday, I found a bug in Mandrake's recent compilation of a Linux kernel (which neutered ide-scsi CD burners). Within 15 minutes of telling them this, it was attended to, diagnosed, and fixed. Less than 15 minutes after seeing their email, the fix was on Mandrake's FTP server (which is impressive, given that we're dealing with four different kernel compiles here, plus modules).
Try getting any response out of Microsoft within 15 minutes, even by telephone, I dare you! Now try getting it for free. Finally, if the response starts with ``have you tried rebooting your computer?'', scream into the handset and hang up. (-:
I can't even get a straight answer about pricing out of Microsoft, never mind useful tech support. My experience with Sun and IBM is that their turnaround is likely to be a couple of days rather than minutes, but that their response is generally quite helpful. I haven't tried VALinux, but have heard good things about them.
I hope this is early enough to beat all the M$ bashers et al...
Forlorn hope, M$ is busy making more of them as we type. (-:
Never mind a thousand years from now, most people eat and drink so much crap, live in so much stress, breathe so much poison that they fall well short of a tenth of that - and the last half of it is less than enjoyable.
As to Hawkings' bilge, according to the geneticists, we'll have so much ``genetic load'' by then that we won't be able to reproduce anyway.
What I want to know is how we allegedly got along so well for millions of years, when suddenly our collective future is telescoping in to a thousand years max. That doesn't make sense at all. Surely, if something were to go wrong, it's had thousands of chances to do it already, by popular reckoning, so why didn't it? And if you say ``just lucky, I guess,'' then I have a bridge to sell you, fine steel arch, great history and good revenue from traffic tolls, not so popular now that the Olympics have finished, urgent sale since my Olympic Village is being deconstructed, cheap at $Oz2,000,000.00 - get it while you can!
Just as the release of Windows 2000 has helped Linux immensely, now seems like the perfect time to offer those ex-VB-codemonkeys something better. Something that really is object oriented (ie, not a straight clone of VirusBasic). Something cross-platform, not bound to KDE, so they can start using it under Windows and then switch platforms when the platform is no longer as important.
Since BASIC is an acronym for Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, perhaps we should dream up a nice acronym for ADVANCED?
here
Simple, really, isn't it? (-:
Oh, and see here for details.
We need, a VirusBASIC-to-Python translator. Yes, it will result in buckets of poor-quality Python, but it will enable heaps of VB programmers to make the Right Decision{tm}, just like that bloke's dual-boot Athlon did.
By the way, Michael Kohn already has the hardest part done, and done well. That was a hint, guys...
Au contraire, I think Microsoft saw their customer base coming - from a loooooong way off...
A problem of course, is tilting the earth in time.
Don't worry, the Great A'Tuin will duck, we'll probably only lose a few of the Ramtops, if that... if it happens soon enough, we might see what became of the Crimson Assurance Company.
Maybe it's time to make room for the next step in evolution?
We have a compost bin, and keep ours healthy and well-fed, just in case we need to ask any favours later... (-:
OTOH, geneticists assure us that our collective genetic load is increasing so fast that we'll die out in a few hundred years anyway, and the cockroaches soon after.
Yay. Whoopie. Joy, joy. Life is hard and then you die... there are actually more practical views of reality, happier ones, which are a much closer fit to observable reality than most of the common ones. Try a few. What have you got to lose?
...and he's still getting positive feedback. Developers even go so far as to write ILOVEYOU...
Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted.
Corollary: until Windows is past history, a lot of hobby computers are being wasted.
Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
It certainly has been, but not by Micro-Soft! (-:
The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
And all that time was paid for?
Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC.
This statement makes me curous, Bill. If it only took you two months to write the entire BASIC, why did it take a whole year to tinker with it? Can I ask you a question and get an honest answer? Did ``write'' here mean ``key in from a listing stolen from University rubbish bins?''
People complained that Altair BASIC was buggy. Is that because the bugs were keyed in from a discarded program listing, or because your programming skills were as good as your soldering skills?
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive.
Nothing's changed much since. According to you, Bill, as recently as 1998 Microsoft's customer feedback was almost entirely positive. Since the whole world's wrong, and you're right, and that's the way it's always been, who am I to argue? Uh, it might helped if you upped the dosage of those pills, Bill.
As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software.
And you don't? Naturally, those listings taken from the dumpsters were public domain, weren't they? I mean, the authors haven't complained yet, have they? The Spyglass issue was just a little misunderstanding? How about the drive doubler software? And, my gosh, doesn't Money resemble something Microsoft once had a look at the source code for awfully closely? Come clean, Bill, tell us the whole story!
What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?
Linus Torvalds.
Next question? (-:
I would appreciate letters from any one who [...] has a suggestion or comment.
Ever your humble servant. (-:
Remember, Mr. Bill wasn't rich back then.
Yes, he was.
And remember that quote about how he used to pinch source code listings, without asking the authors, out of University rubbish bins. One wonder how much of Altair BASIC was actually written by Bill, and why it was so buggy.
Try this link instead? (-: