The only problem with that metric is that a busy mailing list could also indicate that your software or documentation sucks and people have to go looking for help to get it working.
Most of the the stuff that I develop is heavily bent towards usability/ease of use. A mailing list full of people having trouble is not a great sign of sucess from my point of view... But thank you emails on the other hand...:-) that's what I like to see..
yeah, it's quite good at 10pt provided that it is anti-aliased. I don't like reading anti-aliased text at that size though, and Nimbus isn't so great without it. It's readable, but Vera comes out much better (MS's Arial is much better too, which I was using until yesterday.;-) ) Vera is less condensed than Nimbus and Arial, but not that much really and I'm quickly growing to like the improved readability that it offers.
(Wow, 'o's that are circular instead of elliptic, or just boxes with the corners cut off).
Then don't bloody store your number in a decimal representation. If your application requires numbers in a certain IEEE spec format, them output them using base64, or C style 0xaaff1234 format or something. Or you could even do both. Output as decimal and then output a matching [ieee_fp][/ieee_fp] tag or something. XML is extensible that way. There are so many things you could do.
A recommendation is just that, a recommendation. If you have more important goals then do something more appropriate. XML doesn't even know what a number is. Elements hold opaque chunks of text or more elements. There is no XML number format.
Also, for most applications decimal format is fine. Quit dwelling on corner cases...
If you can't view Real format video directly in your browser, here is a complete URL that you can cut 'n' paste into the "Open Location" menu item of Real Player, or use "Open With":
Oooookkkkkeeeey... So I'm supposed to believe that religous extremists, in thier war against the West and the Western culture, are financing operations by pirating and spreading the very thing that they are against.
It's kind of like hardcore Vegans raising money for a campaign by holding a sausage sizzle.
Sorry, but in the commercial world companies go for whatever tools will reduce _labour_ costs, because that is where the real money is. What school of economics saves $1550 on tools while blowing out development time, which is measured by $10K minimum, and considers that to be a saving?
Just an interesting factoid. Internet radio, namely Shoutcast (see bottom of page) stations are now pulling more listeners than America's biggest radio/media group Clear Channel. So much for mainstream radio!
but giving a correct interpretation of tags and attributes is something that only Microsoft can do, unless it publishes the full specifications (present and future: after all, XML is eXtendible, right?)
I think you are right here. Actually I have a feeling that MS are aiming at a middle point between fully open and fully closed w.r.t. the exact format. Open enough such that people can index, summerise and process Word docs for content and document management systems. While at the same time being closed enough such that passing Word documents around is painful for those not using Office. (Think formating and printing)
1. Give the correct interpretation to the bytes representing the document content, in order to import the Office document in some other office suite using a different representation.
This is mostly solved (thanks to years of trials and errors).
...and moving to another poorly defined format (even XML) moves the competition back to square one w.r.t. understanding all the quirky behaviour/interpretations Word has when it reads it's documents.
You've only got half of the answer covered. What's really in it for MS is locking Free Software operating systems out of digital media. Quickly:
* Only DRM/"Trusted" systems will be able to play content from the Music industry or Hollywood.
* For an operating system to be trusted it needs to be vetted and signed for use with DRM. i.e. it needs to be a "known quantity".
* An OS where the user can modify it at will is not a "known quantity" or signed, and even if it was, as soon as you recompile it you would break the signature. Basically, an OS where you are allowed to modify it, can not be trusted. (Allowing modifications being a large part of the "Freedom" involved in Free Software. You can't have it both ways).
The result being a world where only non-Free operating systems can play the entertainment industry's content, by design.
If you thought playing Windows Media files on Linux was tough now, wait until Palladium.
Prince did have a spellchecker handy when he wrote that; it was most likely composed in MSWord. The typographically correct quotes ("sixes" and "nines") in constrast to the dumb quotes like in this comment, were most likely the work of MSWord's Autoformat and "Smart Quotes" feature...
unless of course Prince used the time saved on correct spelling to go back and manually fix his quoting... mmmm.
Reading the article again, I'm not really sure as to what it is exactly. The line: "You can copy the CD, but without the card the software won't run." suggests to me that it's kind of acting like a dongle/key.
Spoof a ligitamate read and you've got the key. Sniff the IDE bus and you've got the key.
The article says that a "smart card" is being used. The system is probably like this: A 'challenge' is created by the software and sent to the 'smart card'. The card uses it's secret to generate the 'response' from the 'challenge'. The 'response' is sent back to the software. The secret key never comes out of the smart card. There is nothing really useful to sniff.
The solution is to just crack the software itself. There is no difference between this and a normal dongles, and people have been getting around dongles for years now.
The idea that we ought to all work together is rubbish; for all its ugliness the KDE vs. Gnome war made both sides better. And they will continue to get better because of the competition.
The only problem with that argument is that it's baseless. We have don't know what would have happened if KDE and Gnome worked as one instead of just competing against each other. We don't have access to an alternate parellel universe, or a time machine to go make a comparision...
Ignoring the poorly presented, ill-defined etc etc stats. It should not be surprising to see attacks and Linux and unix-like machines on the rise. This year has seen remote holes found for OpenSSH and Apache, which *are* being exploited in the wild right now. It has never been so easy for script kiddies to crack Linux etc type boxes as it is now. There are still plenty of vulnerable machines out there that have not been patched yet...
Speaking of things that are also not NULL, Oracle (I think) has a very annoying misfeature/bug where it likes to translate empty strings ("") into NULLs. So, if you have a column in a table that takes strings but is set to NOT NULL, and you try to insert an empty string, the DB barfs and complains about a NOT NULL constraint being violated. But I was inserting "" and not a null! Needless to say it's very confusing until you figure out what's going on.
"" and NULL are not the same thing dammit!.
-- Simon
Re:Favorite solution to a bug
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 1
That's sounds like a stack corruption bug. Inserting an "int k" changes the layout of the stack and avoids the bug (kind of). Using "k=k" stops the compiler from optimising your "int k" away...
Isn't the point of the article that now you can go to a Verisign approved website for (unicode of some big company) and have it check out properly because there is a verisign cert for the site (unicode of some big company)?
No actually. Certs are meant to be part of a solution to the problem because Verisign are not going to issue certs that have misleading (unicode) names in them.
The problem is URLs that look like the real site you want. Mind you, I think that 80% of users never look at the location bar anyway. Not to mention how easy it is to hide the location bar. (Open a new window for your site using javascript window.open() and tell it not to put a location bar on the new window.)
People now seem to be good at knowing that if you get funny pop ups about self signed certs or certificates not matching the url that they don't put in their credit card number...
They are?!?! Which country do you live in? I want to move there!
> Yes, but how many times did you have 10 or > 20 documents opened simultaneously in Word?
True, not often. Mind you having lots of little windows nested inside the main window is just annoying. It's also very counter intuitive having windows contained inside other windows. At least tabs give you some clear organisation (and doesn't screw with the user's mental model of what windows are/do.)
Browser windows is a different story. I always have heaps of them...:)
> Netscape Navigator was just about the first > popular non-MDI (SDI?) application on Windows, > and from there everyone sorta dragged > themselves out of the stone age. Kinda funny > to see them go back to MDI.
:) yeah, but tabs are at least fairly usable (and common now). Actually I think the main reason I find tabs so handy on doze is because it only has one desktop and one taskbar. Tabs are the only sane way to organise lots of browsers/webpages on one desktop without heaps of tiny (useless) icons in the task bar. Linux is not a problem. I just do all browsing on a separate desktop...
-- Simon
Re:GUI still too basic, counter-intuitive
on
Mozilla 0.9.9 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
>>so they're no substitute for real tabs or MDI
> MDI has got to be the worst UI idea ever.
I have to agree too. I remember back in the early 90s when MS was big on MDI. Even they worked out that no one likes it and they finally ripped it out of Word. I think MDI has for the most part been wiped out or replaced with tabs in todays GUI apps. (and none too soon...)
Slashdot Mirror
The only problem with that metric is that a busy mailing list could also indicate that your software or documentation sucks and people have to go looking for help to get it working.
:-) that's what I like to see..
Most of the the stuff that I develop is heavily bent towards usability/ease of use. A mailing list full of people having trouble is not a great sign of sucess from my point of view... But thank you emails on the other hand...
--
Simon
yeah, it's quite good at 10pt provided that it is anti-aliased. I don't like reading anti-aliased text at that size though, and Nimbus isn't so great without it. It's readable, but Vera comes out much better (MS's Arial is much better too, which I was using until yesterday. ;-) ) Vera is less condensed than Nimbus and Arial, but not that much really and I'm quickly growing to like the improved readability that it offers.
(Wow, 'o's that are circular instead of elliptic, or just boxes with the corners cut off).
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Simon
Then don't bloody store your number in a decimal representation. If your application requires numbers in a certain IEEE spec format, them output them using base64, or C style 0xaaff1234 format or something. Or you could even do both. Output as decimal and then output a matching [ieee_fp][/ieee_fp] tag or something. XML is extensible that way. There are so many things you could do.
A recommendation is just that, a recommendation. If you have more important goals then do something more appropriate. XML doesn't even know what a number is. Elements hold opaque chunks of text or more elements. There is no XML number format.
Also, for most applications decimal format is fine. Quit dwelling on corner cases...
--
Simon
Where Do Terrorists Get Their Money? (Real format embedded)
If you can't view Real format video directly in your browser, here is a complete URL that you can cut 'n' paste into the "Open Location" menu item of Real Player, or use "Open With":
http://www.adbusters.org/abtv/movies/spotlight/Thi nkTank3/real_high.rpm
Thanks go to Adbusters.org.
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Simon
Here's a related link about opium and the ban.
--
Simon
Oooookkkkkeeeey... So I'm supposed to believe that religous extremists, in thier war against the West and the Western culture, are financing operations by pirating and spreading the very thing that they are against.
It's kind of like hardcore Vegans raising money for a campaign by holding a sausage sizzle.
Complete bullshit.
--
Simon
Sorry, but in the commercial world companies go for whatever tools will reduce _labour_ costs, because that is where the real money is. What school of economics saves $1550 on tools while blowing out development time, which is measured by $10K minimum, and considers that to be a saving?
False economy.
--
Simon
--
Simon
hey, and while we're at it perhaps we could print 'not for use by terrorists' on back of airline tickets too ...mmmm you're on to something here... ;-P
--
Simon
I think you are right here. Actually I have a feeling that MS are aiming at a middle point between fully open and fully closed w.r.t. the exact format. Open enough such that people can index, summerise and process Word docs for content and document management systems. While at the same time being closed enough such that passing Word documents around is painful for those not using Office. (Think formating and printing)
1. Give the correct interpretation to the bytes representing the document content, in order to import the Office document in some other office suite using a different representation. This is mostly solved (thanks to years of trials and errors).
--
Simon
* Only DRM/"Trusted" systems will be able to play content from the Music industry or Hollywood.
* For an operating system to be trusted it needs to be vetted and signed for use with DRM. i.e. it needs to be a "known quantity".
* An OS where the user can modify it at will is not a "known quantity" or signed, and even if it was, as soon as you recompile it you would break the signature. Basically, an OS where you are allowed to modify it, can not be trusted. (Allowing modifications being a large part of the "Freedom" involved in Free Software. You can't have it both ways).
The result being a world where only non-Free operating systems can play the entertainment industry's content, by design.
If you thought playing Windows Media files on Linux was tough now, wait until Palladium.
--
Simon
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Simon
unless of course Prince used the time saved on correct spelling to go back and manually fix his quoting... mmmm.
anal retentive? Who? me?
--
Simon
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Simon
The article says that a "smart card" is being used. The system is probably like this: A 'challenge' is created by the software and sent to the 'smart card'. The card uses it's secret to generate the 'response' from the 'challenge'. The 'response' is sent back to the software. The secret key never comes out of the smart card. There is nothing really useful to sniff.
The solution is to just crack the software itself. There is no difference between this and a normal dongles, and people have been getting around dongles for years now.
--
Simon
The point is not whether she can learn the concept. The point is that case sensitivity is a ROYAL PAIN IN THE BUTT WITH NO BENIFITS WHAT SO EVER.
Clear?
why learn case sensitivity then?
--
Simon
The only problem with that argument is that it's baseless. We have don't know what would have happened if KDE and Gnome worked as one instead of just competing against each other. We don't have access to an alternate parellel universe, or a time machine to go make a comparision...
--
Simon
Ignoring the poorly presented, ill-defined etc etc stats. It should not be surprising to see attacks and Linux and unix-like machines on the rise. This year has seen remote holes found for OpenSSH and Apache, which *are* being exploited in the wild right now. It has never been so easy for script kiddies to crack Linux etc type boxes as it is now. There are still plenty of vulnerable machines out there that have not been patched yet...
--
Simon
Speaking of things that are also not NULL, Oracle (I think) has a very annoying misfeature/bug where it likes to translate empty strings ("") into NULLs. So, if you have a column in a table that takes strings but is set to NOT NULL, and you try to insert an empty string, the DB barfs and complains about a NOT NULL constraint being violated. But I was inserting "" and not a null! Needless to say it's very confusing until you figure out what's going on.
"" and NULL are not the same thing dammit!.
--
Simon
That's sounds like a stack corruption bug. Inserting an "int k" changes the layout of the stack and avoids the bug (kind of). Using "k=k" stops the compiler from optimising your "int k" away...
just guessing
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Simon
For the love of god, the term is "Zero Sum Game", not gain. It comes from a section of maths known as game theory, go look it up if want more info.
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Simon
No actually. Certs are meant to be part of a solution to the problem because Verisign are not going to issue certs that have misleading (unicode) names in them.
The problem is URLs that look like the real site you want. Mind you, I think that 80% of users never look at the location bar anyway. Not to mention how easy it is to hide the location bar. (Open a new window for your site using javascript window.open() and tell it not to put a location bar on the new window.)
They are?!?! Which country do you live in? I want to move there!
--
Simon
> Yes, but how many times did you have 10 or
:)
> 20 documents opened simultaneously in Word?
True, not often. Mind you having lots of little windows nested inside the main window is just annoying. It's also very counter intuitive having windows contained inside other windows. At least tabs give you some clear organisation (and doesn't screw with the user's mental model of what windows are/do.)
Browser windows is a different story. I always have heaps of them...
--
Simon
> Netscape Navigator was just about the first
> popular non-MDI (SDI?) application on Windows,
> and from there everyone sorta dragged
> themselves out of the stone age. Kinda funny
> to see them go back to MDI.
:) yeah, but tabs are at least fairly usable (and common now). Actually I think the main reason I find tabs so handy on doze is because it only has one desktop and one taskbar. Tabs are the only sane way to organise lots of browsers/webpages on one desktop without heaps of tiny (useless) icons in the task bar. Linux is not a problem. I just do all browsing on a separate desktop...
--
Simon
>>so they're no substitute for real tabs or MDI
> MDI has got to be the worst UI idea ever.
I have to agree too. I remember back in the early 90s when MS was big on MDI. Even they worked out that no one likes it and they finally ripped it out of Word. I think MDI has for the most part been wiped out or replaced with tabs in todays GUI apps. (and none too soon...)
--
Simon