I must note that while running Slackware, I built and installed portable OpenSSH 3.3 the other day prior to knowing anything about this bug or priviledge sep.
Built it and everything was normal. Except when I tried to run it, I found that sshd was demanding correct nobody.nogroup identiies (mine were incorrect:P) and a/var/empty directory.
Took care of those minor issues and everything's been running fine since. So ha to you, BSD users.:)
You misinterpreted the entirety what he was trying to say. If I were in a crankier mood I'd ask you if you even read the post.
In a nutshell, he said this:
1. There is an exploitable bug in all current versions of OpenSSH. 2. We're working on a patch, but it's not done yet. 3. When it is, we'll tell you all exactly what was wrong and how we fixed it. 4. In the mean time, you can download the latest 3.3 patch and enable privilege separation to completely protect yourself from the vulnerability.
That just don't cut it, I won't blindly patch without an idea of what is broken.
There isn't a patch yet. Theo clearly stated that a patch and an explanation will be forthcoming at the same time. The whole reason he announced it early is to get admins to fix thier systems before the nefarious hackers could develop an exploit for it. (As another poster noted, it's incredibly easy for a nefarious hacker to develop an exploit if you have the source code to versions of the program with the bug and a version without. That is perhaps one of the few downfalls to open-source.)
You'll save yourself a lot of typing and needless jumping (to conclusions) if you read a bit more carefully next time.
For one thing, MP3 hardware came along fairly late in the game. I mean, what company in their right mind is going to develop hardware for a codec that isn't yet a de facto standard. Answer: none. MP3 players like the Rio came along well after everyone was already using MP3. The MP3-playing boomboxes and car stereos have only been around for the past couple of years, while I clearly remember swapping MP3s on FTP sites in '96. (And I am by no means an early adopter.)
As far as audio quality goes, I am not a fan of MP3 or any other lossless codec for that matter. I've been using an analog sythesizer program called ReBirth. Some of the songs you can download and play on this synth are just awesome. I decided I'd like to save some of the songs to MP3 but on the first run, the file sounded like absolute shit.
So I thought to myself, okay I'll get LAME. I read some webpages about options to LAME that will supposedly give you a "CD-quality MP3". Tried those options and the MP3 still sounded like shit. Even at the highest frequency and bitrate, MP3 was not up to the challenge of encoding a complex mix of analog waveforms and drum machine samples.
Next I decided to try Ogg. Slashbots seem to like it, but when I went looking for the actual software all I could find were a binary Win32 encoder and Winamp plugin. So much for being a great open standard. Maybe people aren't using it because there isn't any software available for it...
My last resort was some kind of lossless audio compression being developed in Linux. Can't remember the name. It took an eon to encode an 11-minute song and only resulted in about 40% compression. That's better than what bzip2 would give, but still too high to keep around on a hard disk.
I ended up burning the ReBirth songs to CD. They sound great.
Our money is pretty boring compared to "exciting" foreign money.
That is until these new-fangled bill come out and all the non-Americans remark about how frilly and showy-off our currency is. Those pompous American are at it again, this time with their dollar bills!
I second this; I built my computer almost 2 1/2 years ago from parts almost exclusively acquired through pricewatch[1] and had not a single problem.
Even as recent as a few months ago, I again used pricewatch to buy a few parts for my fiancee's computer I was building for her and didn't have a problem either.
And like the parent comment noted, be sure you don't just buy from Joe Blow's website, even if they do have the best deal. If you're not really sure, there is one tactic that I've found to work great: Call up the company in question (any halfway respectable retailer will have a toll-free number, mind you) and ask a few questions about the hardware you want to purchase. Don't ask newbie questions and don't ask highly technical ones, either. If they are curteous and at least make an effort to answer them, then they are probably a respectable dealer. If they give you the brush off, they must not need your business that badly.
1) Small potatoes, such as keyboard and case fans, I bought locally since the cost of shipping for these types of items is usually almost the cost of the part itself. I even bought my 19" monitor online, that bastard cost $80 to ship!:P Was worth every penny, though. Iiyama are the unsung heros of monitors, in my opinion.
I didn't like the older thinkpads (think Pentium days) mainly because of the fact that you had to have either the CD-ROM or floppy disc drive, never both. Another thing that bugged me was the "burly" keyboard. Sure it was solid, but it sucked to type on.
Have either of these issues changed much with the newer thinkpads?
What I really don't get is what makes this "bloggers vs. NPR" as the slashdot article announces. WTF does blogging specifically have to do with deep-linking, a universal web mechanism? Sure, it was a blogger who made the NPR issue mostly public, but beyond that this story is about 1000x more web-centric than blog-centric.
Heh heh, my thoughts exactly. I'm sitting here wondering how, in 3 months, I am going to afford a $500 apartment and go to school full time while my fiancee looks for a job.
But oh no, we've got clods like this one singing and dancing about how his dream house only cost him $320,000! Wow what a bargain!
I'm sure it's great info for the geek-scene superstars like Malda & Co who've already got the rest of their lives planned out, but to the unwashed masses (such as me), it doesn't really apply... (And in my case, probably won't apply for the better part of a decade, no less.)
I especially agree with the poll bit:
My humble place of abode: [ ] Just built my $320,000 seaside dream mansion [ ] Got a fairly nice condo [ ] Livin' in the 'burbs [o] My apartment's getting a little cramped [ ] There'll be a party in my dorm room tonight [ ] I tend to think of my parents as landlords, really...
Take care to note that I never said Mozilla lacks bloat, just that Netscape only adds to the bloat.:P
Seriously, I'm pretty happy with Mozilla even given its size. With the bloat, Mozilla is much more than a web browser (XPCOM, etc al) and that's something I think I'm going to take advantage of some day.
I'm definitely not calling you a liar, but for most site statistics I see (including my own), browsers in the "Other" category (Opera, Galeon, Dreamcast, lynx, WebTV, etc) usually pull anywhere between 10%-15% (+/- 5% based on your audience) of the hits.
Since your numbers add up to 100%, I'm taking a guess that the "Other" browsers are lumped into Mozilla/Netscape because other sources claim IE to have upwards of 80% or 90% of browser market share.
We've all heard it before: when (yes, I said when) AOL switches to Mozilla, there will instantly be millions of Mozilla users.
I wholeheartedly disagree. I realize that you may be lumping Netscape and other "value-added derivatives" in there when you say Mozilla. But what makes Mozilla the best browser for me is the complete lack of commercialism and additional bloatware. Netscape 6.0> and Mozilla are two opposite ends of the spectrum in my opinion, even if they do share most of the same code.
But I'll continue, assuming you mean "Mozilla" as in the binary distribution available from mozilla.org, mostly for the sake of argument.
AOL will do one of two things:
They will simply ship Netscape with their software, and probably modify the AOL software itself to use gecko for rendering HTML. (It might be interesting if they did the entire AOL suite in XPCOM, but I wouldn't hold my breath.)
They will repackage Mozilla, much like Netscape has, and brand it The AOL Browser or something like that. This is far less likely though, as since they own Netscape, they've already got a browser to use without hiring programmers to redo it all.
But the point remains that most of the mediocre Joe Sixpacks in the world will probably never know Mozilla exists. Therefore, there can never and will never be a Mozilla vs. Explorer war.
The best we can hope for is that the multitude of Mozilla-based web browsers stick to adherance of standards as adamantly as the Mozilla team has. If that can happen, then web developers will hopefully take a stronger stance towards standards and begin to reject the horribly standards-broken Internet Explorer[1]. From there, Microsoft has the chance to fix their browser and make it a worthwhile competitor or release a new version of the same tripe and wonder why their market share is going down the tube.
1) IE is particularly crappy with respect to CSS compliance and PNG support. I know, because these are two things that I've been playing with recently on my own. Mozilla isn't 100% CSS compliant either, but it does a lot more stuff the correct way. This is where I think Mozilla will make a great impact on the web. By testing out Mozilla developers will see the advantage of standards and more and more will have standards in mind when designing web sites. My dream is to see John Q. Random Webpublisher using w3.org as a techincal reference instead of "Designing Websites for Internet Explorer" by Joe Clueless.
Believe it or not, this doesn't seem to work with the newer builds of Mozilla.
By this I mean you can set the user agent pref (See prefs.js and edit/create user.js to set your own) and the about:mozilla page reports the correct faked agent. But go to any web page that reports your user-agent string back to you (such as here near the bottom) and it still gives the old built-in user agent string. Since I have no real reason to fake my string, (and this therefore doesn't affect me) I haven't filed a bug report.
Curiouser, an outdated mozilla.org page reports the correct values. (Scroll down to "Profile of Your Browser".
Another thing is that navigator.appVersion string cannot be changed other than modifying the source... it won't get changed with a faked user agent string. There's an entry in bugzilla for this.
So what gives? I dunno, other than there seem to still be a few quirks of Mozilla that won't likely be worked out for a few more versions.
I agree wholeheartedly. I often find myself explaining the concept of viruses to my friends, family, or whoever who happen to be mostly computer illiterate or just plain clueless. I politely explain to them that viruses (modern ones at least) don't just jump from machine to machine as biological viruses do, but rather have to piggyback on top of a program (not a text file, not a jpeg, not even a bloody gif) in order to propagate. And I've all but given up explaining to them that the malicious email attachments that the media and everyone talks about lately are actually trojan horses not viruses. Even geeks can never get this one right.
At the end of my short tutorial on viruses for the computer illiterate user, I usually go ahead and explain that I have been using computers over 14 years now, have never once used an anti-virus program, and have yet to have one of my systems infected with a virus or anything resembling it. (Not counting Windows 95.) The average joe would be somewhat surprised at hearing this, but still take it at face value and assume I know what I'm doing when it comes to computers. A few of the supremely clueless, after hearing the real facts on viruses and then hearing me say that I've never run any anti-virus software have replied with, "Really? But aren't you afraid you'll catch a virus?" in the tone of voice you might hear from someone who balks when you tell them you're a severe diabetic that has never bought insulin.
What exactly is your point?? Taking what I say outta context isn't gonna help your argument. I'm stating the obvious as for DivX.. it uses MPEG-4; another lossy format. I didn't say the visuals weren't good I said it was a Lossy format. It is.
How can I take it out of context when that's the only thing you said about it? Just "divx is lossy." As if it were an argument in and of itself on why you think divx sucks.
Oh.. umm I just got an xbox and I'm gonna hack it to play divx's I know I can go to blockbuster and rent a movie for 4 bucks or so but I was wondering if you can download Spider-Man for me and if so convert it to Divx for me so that I canwatch it on my xbox. Thanks.
And why not? If you happened to be a good friend of mine, I just might. One of my friends, who has no computer occasionally comes to me and borrows mine so he can download Dragonball Z VCDs to watch on his DVD player. There's no practical difference between VCDs and divx except one is more common and thei other is technically superior.
As an aside, what the hell does it matter that modding an Xbox to play divx movies is more inconvenient than just renting a DVD or watching a divx on a computer? That is obviously not the point of hacking an Xbox. The modding of the machine and the knowledge that you did it yourself is the fun part, not watching the damn movies. No, it's not a particularly hard hack to perform even if you're never weilded a soldering iron, but then neither is a computer case mod or a Tivo mod.
Especially cracking open this dtv/tivo box and doing all sorts of nifty stuff released back to the tivo community all these things were meant to be hacked mind you.
Okay, so you play with kernel code. And you hack your Tivo. You do both only because you believe they were meant to be hacked. IIRC, the Tivo was never designed to be hacked. The corporation only went along with all the community mods because they realized after the boxes were on the market that to do otherwise would be counterproductive to their profit margins. But more to the point, could you please tell me what is so horrible or sinful about hacking something that wasn't "meant to be hacked"? I think many (including myself) would argue that hacking something that wasn't designed to be hacked is much more fun in the long run. (Especially if the hack is useful, neat, clever, etc.) That's what makes hacking the Xbox such a nice challenge. Not only was it not designed to be hacked, it has multiple mechanisms in place to defend against modification. The people who designed the modchip and those writing the media player are getting tremendous recognition due to that fact alone.
I like this internet.. Except for the minor security problems with tcp/ip and the general disdain for security. I can do whatever I like, say whatever I want, with no or very little reprecussions of any kind.
That's exactly what you said you disliked about the internet in your previous post. That's fairly heavy contradiction in my book.
Of course this wasn't what I was addressing so at this point I've invited others to read your post and somehow they think your are a bit too emotional for some reason.
But you did address it. I remember quite clearly. You said that you disliked the internet because it allows people (even weird or unpopular people) to speak their minds on whatever topic they like. Emotional? In comparison to your devout hatred of both the divx and Xbox, I hardly think so.
Do you love your xbox that much? Have I offended your xbox? If so I apologize. I apologize to your xbox that I don't care about it or what you do with it. Do you feel better?
I don't think this kind of juvenile tripe even deserves a response, but I'm feeling generous. And I want to set the record straight for those who can't see the obvious if it punched them in the face: I don't have an Xbox, nor do I even plan to buy one in the forseeable future. I have no particular affinity for the Xbox either except that I admit that it is impressive from a technical standpoint. I own exactly one console video game system (a Playstation, they gray one) that I haven't played in probably over a year.
If it's added value for you; great. As for the rest of the world this won't mean a goddamned thing is which my original post seems to convey I don't know how you got lost.
I didn't get lost, I was pointing out the fact that your opinion != the world's opinion, something a lot of slashbots tend to forget after a few years of posting.
OMG!! MY WEBSITE!! WOAH (like that whiteboy Joey on whats that old show Blossom)!!)
What are you on, son?
and my xbox lackeys are kinda pissed they don't have any really cool games but they are also not breaking down their xboxes just because of this divx stuff; they seem relatively happy with the xbox though. To each his/her own.
More contradiction. Thoughout this whole exchange you've been condemning those who want to mod their Xbox for any reason at all and then have the audacity to state the sentence I've highlighted in bold? The only thing I can make out from your side of the debate is that hacking is cool and okay as long as it's not to watch divx movies on an xbox.
ok I do enjoy grand theft auto 3 I must admit and xbox "is like a wannabe", there are just no good games.
First, what constitues a good game is a matter of opinion. It would be appropriate to say you believe there are no good Xbox games, but again you assume that you speak for everyone. I don't know of any good Xbox games only because I have not yet played a single Xbox game. But the system is selling in the stores, the games get decent reviews in video game rags (to my knowledge) and I know of several people who are thrilled with theirs. You said yourself that you have friends who enjoy their Xbox, so I'm inferring that they think there are good games for it. (Unless maybe they bought the system anyway knowing there were no good games for it nor any on the horizon... hardly a wise purchasing decision. Stupid, I would even admit, if this happens to be the case.)
Is the DiVX stuff gonna make me want one? Most likely no
That's fine, you are certainly entitled to that.
and if I know about it and it hasn't swayed me.. your avg consumer who hears about it isn't gonna care either.
Yet again you assume that you speak for everyone. Does your average consumer hack the Linux kernel? No. Does your average consumer hack their Tivo? No. But you do. Funny how you try to form an argument that because you have no desire to hack the Xbox then no one wants to or that it's a stupid thing to do. Average consumers have nothing at all to do with any of this.
So is DVD (which uses MPEG-2 as the compression codec, a far more inefficient algorithm than divx).
The PS2 plays dvd's
Shittily, but yes it does. And with the most brain-dead unintuitive interface ever concocted, I might add.
If these people don't have computers to begin with where exactly do they pick up the divx's?
You are assuming that people who own Xboxes don't have any friends? Or access to someone elses computer? Or access to a computer at a college or uni or work? In some parts of the world, divx movies are actually very easy to buy. Downloading is not even close to the only way to get divx movies.
Not only that but to watch a movie in low quality format?
From this statement, I could take one of two guesses... 1. You have never seen any divx-encoded movies or have only seen a few poorly encoded ones and are thus talking out of your ass throughout this entire comment. 2. Prior to to the advent of DVD you didn't watch any movies at all. A well-encoded divx movie is far superior to both VHS and theatre screens. "Theatre screens?" you ask. Yes, a theatre screen is only mediocre quality, in my opinion. Sure, it's mammoth and that's something you'll never reproduce outside an actual theatre, but for its size, it's also rather blurry. When I watch any movie in a theatre, I'm usually distracted for the first 5 or 10 minutes about how blurry the movie seems until I get into the story. I never, repeat never, have this problem with DVD or VHS.
Who cares about the community?
Obviously you don't. Likewise, they probably don't give two shits about you.
I could buy an Xbox plus seperate DVD Player and save money and get a better quality format. If I wanted to go the extra mile and turn pirate I'd just fucking copy dvd's.
Then for g-d's sake, do it. Do either one, but stop bitching about it on slashdot. The mere mention of an Xbox modchip sure brings out a nasty emotional response from you.
Skill wise, I don't want to be bothered in opening a machine
Then don't. Nobody asked you to. Those who do have a bit of hacker spirit inside them and are up to the technical challenge of modding their Xbox (a machine which was built to be tamper resistant) will and they'll do it to their own machines and not bother you one bit about it.
Skill wise FOR YOU it might be extremely low, not for 9 yr old bobby who doesn't give a shit about wires but about games
Then for christ sake, he's simply not going to do it. As I stated multiple times above, those who want to mod their xbox will.
Infact I went to visit a friend and he was having a garage sale.. his little cousin is talking to me rambling at the mouth
Sounds like it rubbed off.
So, think about the rest of the world and not just your community when you talk about the sales of a product going up based on some tiny detail that is supposed to revolutionize a product.
The rest of the world will continue as it always has, Xbox modchip or no. Quite frankly, if I had an Xbox that I wanted to mod, I wouldn't give a flying shit about "the rest of the world" or what Micro$oft is going to do about all the lost revenue or anything else. I'd be in it for the fun.
This was the problem with the internet everyone hyped every tiny little thing that seemed so amazing in their own world but was practically useless to everyone else.
Oh look at you, Mister "I'm going to post an airhead rant on the internet and then condemn the very act near the end of the post".
The internet is an open medium which gives everyone the right to say exactly what they want to say no matter how much you dislike it. Neither slashdot nor any other company, organization, or individual on the internet is obligated to write content that you happen to agree with. If you don't like it, go to another website, there are thousands of others just like this one. Maybe you'll agree with what they say more instead of inconstructively bitching about this one. Even better, go build yourself another internet that you control if you dislike this one so damned much.
DiVX on XboX you say? Who cares, I thought it was made for the cool games they were supposed to have?
What it was made for and what it actually gets used for can be completely different things. I think Larry Wall (inventor of Perl scripting language, for the ungeek, namely you) was the one who said that the best tool one can ever hope to create is one for which uses are discovered that its designer never would have imagined.
Much as I despise Micros~1, with the modchip and these new programs being released, the Xbox now has a bit of added value in my eyes. The only question I have... where are all the Gamecube hackers?
I think that depends largely on how well the CG is done. In The Matrix, I honestly had no friggen clue what was CG and what was a prop until I saw the Matrix: Revisited DVD. I mean, yeah, there are things that are quite obviously CG, (like the baby farm scene) but for the most part I thought much of it was modelled. On the other hand, I had no idea that the helicopter explosion was modelled rather than CG.
It all depends on how well it's done. And with the Wachowski brothers in charge, I have no doubt that Reloaded will be done well.
I notice newpapers, papers, even textbooks for crying out loud, use statistics like this.
One example that my biology professor brought up once are the figures that environmentalists sometimes claim; statistics like "80% of the world's species have yet to be discovered". Well, if they haven't been discovered yet, just how do you know that there's 80% more out there?! Did Madam Cleo tell you?
On the Cyc company's website, one of the projects they're working on is implementing a system exactly as the one you described. Current computer software is capable of doing all of those things, but you have to do it all manually, one at a time, and all though separate interfaces.
Using a Cyc-based front end as your interface brings about the ability for your computer to actually understand exactly what you mean when you tell it to do something... it uses its database to remove ambiguities from the orders you give it.
One of my life-long dreams is to have a house (or at least a single computer) that takes orders in the same manner as the Enterprise-D computer and give useful information back in return.
On application in particular that I'm looking forward to: I imagine a future where, if I'm learning a new programming language, I can ask the computer to bring up an short example of syntax for a particular piece of code or display the prototype for this function or that. My children might have a program for studying schoolwork where the computer might prompt them for for answers and tell them if they're wrong. If it guesses that the child doesn't understand a particlar topic, the program would give them a short overview of it and ask questions afterwards about how it ties into other areas of the subject.
(Don't hassle me about this; I have to support my customers, and I am wrestling with the bugs and insufficiencies in XP.)
Sir, please try not to be so defensive. I think the vast vast majority of everyone here has to run Microsoft products from time to time. Even those who say they don't.:P
Now then, I may be wrong here but I think when you click on the icon for Mozilla under Win32, it just opens a new window inside the instance of Mozilla already running (if there is one). One easy way to tell: If the "auto-load" (or whatever it's called) feature is enabled, your taskbar would show two lizard icons when you try to run multiple instances of Mozilla. Another way to tell: if you see two mozilla.exe images listed in the Processes tab (not the Applications tab) of the Task Manager.
I'd verify these myself, but I won't have access to my desktop computer (with WinXP) for another week.
I wouldn't recommend that. At least, not in Linux. (No idea about builds for other OSes.) For example, let's try out this scenario. When browsing, I might add 6 or 7 new links (that I don't have time or motivation to read currently, but want to eventually) to my bookmarks per session. Then I switch to another workspace in my window manager, fiddle with some text files, maybe chat in IRC a bit. Lets say someone on IRC passes me a URL that I absolutely must visit. The natural reaction is to start Mozilla up from my Gnome panel, which I do, but completely forgetting that I already have the other instance running in another workspace.
Blammo, two instances. What happens every single time, no matter what order I quit the instances, is that my bookmarks that I've added get lost and my history gets deleted. No more purple links indicating where I've already been.
Most annoying. I've come within inches of writing a wrapper shell script that checks for an instance of Mozilla already running so it doesn't start a second.
Dunno if this has been fixed in v1.0, but I rather doubt it. At the least, I'd like to have an option in the prefs that automatically disables multiple instances.
Slashdot Mirror
I must note that while running Slackware, I built and installed portable OpenSSH 3.3 the other day prior to knowing anything about this bug or priviledge sep.
Built it and everything was normal. Except when I tried to run it, I found that sshd was demanding correct nobody.nogroup identiies (mine were incorrect
Took care of those minor issues and everything's been running fine since. So ha to you, BSD users.
You misinterpreted the entirety what he was trying to say. If I were in a crankier mood I'd ask you if you even read the post.
In a nutshell, he said this:
1. There is an exploitable bug in all current versions of OpenSSH.
2. We're working on a patch, but it's not done yet.
3. When it is, we'll tell you all exactly what was wrong and how we fixed it.
4. In the mean time, you can download the latest 3.3 patch and enable privilege separation to completely protect yourself from the vulnerability.
That just don't cut it, I won't blindly patch without an idea of what is broken.
There isn't a patch yet. Theo clearly stated that a patch and an explanation will be forthcoming at the same time. The whole reason he announced it early is to get admins to fix thier systems before the nefarious hackers could develop an exploit for it. (As another poster noted, it's incredibly easy for a nefarious hacker to develop an exploit if you have the source code to versions of the program with the bug and a version without. That is perhaps one of the few downfalls to open-source.)
You'll save yourself a lot of typing and needless jumping (to conclusions) if you read a bit more carefully next time.
History has shown that modifying technology to accommodate backwards compatibility gives way to a successful alternative to both sides.
Hmm. Windows 95 + Dos 7.
I don't think so.
I don't think I agree.
For one thing, MP3 hardware came along fairly late in the game. I mean, what company in their right mind is going to develop hardware for a codec that isn't yet a de facto standard. Answer: none. MP3 players like the Rio came along well after everyone was already using MP3. The MP3-playing boomboxes and car stereos have only been around for the past couple of years, while I clearly remember swapping MP3s on FTP sites in '96. (And I am by no means an early adopter.)
As far as audio quality goes, I am not a fan of MP3 or any other lossless codec for that matter. I've been using an analog sythesizer program called ReBirth. Some of the songs you can download and play on this synth are just awesome. I decided I'd like to save some of the songs to MP3 but on the first run, the file sounded like absolute shit.
So I thought to myself, okay I'll get LAME. I read some webpages about options to LAME that will supposedly give you a "CD-quality MP3". Tried those options and the MP3 still sounded like shit. Even at the highest frequency and bitrate, MP3 was not up to the challenge of encoding a complex mix of analog waveforms and drum machine samples.
Next I decided to try Ogg. Slashbots seem to like it, but when I went looking for the actual software all I could find were a binary Win32 encoder and Winamp plugin. So much for being a great open standard. Maybe people aren't using it because there isn't any software available for it...
My last resort was some kind of lossless audio compression being developed in Linux. Can't remember the name. It took an eon to encode an 11-minute song and only resulted in about 40% compression. That's better than what bzip2 would give, but still too high to keep around on a hard disk.
I ended up burning the ReBirth songs to CD. They sound great.
Our money is pretty boring compared to "exciting" foreign money.
That is until these new-fangled bill come out and all the non-Americans remark about how frilly and showy-off our currency is. Those pompous American are at it again, this time with their dollar bills!
Please enlighten us, sir, on how you'd improve our money instead of merely bitching about it.
I second this; I built my computer almost 2 1/2 years ago from parts almost exclusively acquired through pricewatch[1] and had not a single problem.
Even as recent as a few months ago, I again used pricewatch to buy a few parts for my fiancee's computer I was building for her and didn't have a problem either.
And like the parent comment noted, be sure you don't just buy from Joe Blow's website, even if they do have the best deal. If you're not really sure, there is one tactic that I've found to work great: Call up the company in question (any halfway respectable retailer will have a toll-free number, mind you) and ask a few questions about the hardware you want to purchase. Don't ask newbie questions and don't ask highly technical ones, either. If they are curteous and at least make an effort to answer them, then they are probably a respectable dealer. If they give you the brush off, they must not need your business that badly.
1) Small potatoes, such as keyboard and case fans, I bought locally since the cost of shipping for these types of items is usually almost the cost of the part itself. I even bought my 19" monitor online, that bastard cost $80 to ship!
I didn't like the older thinkpads (think Pentium days) mainly because of the fact that you had to have either the CD-ROM or floppy disc drive, never both. Another thing that bugged me was the "burly" keyboard. Sure it was solid, but it sucked to type on.
Have either of these issues changed much with the newer thinkpads?
What I really don't get is what makes this "bloggers vs. NPR" as the slashdot article announces. WTF does blogging specifically have to do with deep-linking, a universal web mechanism? Sure, it was a blogger who made the NPR issue mostly public, but beyond that this story is about 1000x more web-centric than blog-centric.
Heh heh, my thoughts exactly. I'm sitting here wondering how, in 3 months, I am going to afford a $500 apartment and go to school full time while my fiancee looks for a job.
But oh no, we've got clods like this one singing and dancing about how his dream house only cost him $320,000! Wow what a bargain!
I'm sure it's great info for the geek-scene superstars like Malda & Co who've already got the rest of their lives planned out, but to the unwashed masses (such as me), it doesn't really apply... (And in my case, probably won't apply for the better part of a decade, no less.)
I especially agree with the poll bit:
My humble place of abode:
[ ] Just built my $320,000 seaside dream mansion
[ ] Got a fairly nice condo
[ ] Livin' in the 'burbs
[o] My apartment's getting a little cramped
[ ] There'll be a party in my dorm room tonight
[ ] I tend to think of my parents as landlords, really...
Note my wording carefully. I said that I don't have a need to fake my browser string, only that the Mozilla setting seems to be borked.
Take care to note that I never said Mozilla lacks bloat, just that Netscape only adds to the bloat.
Seriously, I'm pretty happy with Mozilla even given its size. With the bloat, Mozilla is much more than a web browser (XPCOM, etc al) and that's something I think I'm going to take advantage of some day.
I'm definitely not calling you a liar, but for most site statistics I see (including my own), browsers in the "Other" category (Opera, Galeon, Dreamcast, lynx, WebTV, etc) usually pull anywhere between 10%-15% (+/- 5% based on your audience) of the hits.
Since your numbers add up to 100%, I'm taking a guess that the "Other" browsers are lumped into Mozilla/Netscape because other sources claim IE to have upwards of 80% or 90% of browser market share.
We've all heard it before: when (yes, I said when) AOL switches to Mozilla, there will instantly be millions of Mozilla users.
I wholeheartedly disagree. I realize that you may be lumping Netscape and other "value-added derivatives" in there when you say Mozilla. But what makes Mozilla the best browser for me is the complete lack of commercialism and additional bloatware. Netscape 6.0> and Mozilla are two opposite ends of the spectrum in my opinion, even if they do share most of the same code.
But I'll continue, assuming you mean "Mozilla" as in the binary distribution available from mozilla.org, mostly for the sake of argument.
AOL will do one of two things:
But the point remains that most of the mediocre Joe Sixpacks in the world will probably never know Mozilla exists. Therefore, there can never and will never be a Mozilla vs. Explorer war.
The best we can hope for is that the multitude of Mozilla-based web browsers stick to adherance of standards as adamantly as the Mozilla team has. If that can happen, then web developers will hopefully take a stronger stance towards standards and begin to reject the horribly standards-broken Internet Explorer[1]. From there, Microsoft has the chance to fix their browser and make it a worthwhile competitor or release a new version of the same tripe and wonder why their market share is going down the tube.
1) IE is particularly crappy with respect to CSS compliance and PNG support. I know, because these are two things that I've been playing with recently on my own. Mozilla isn't 100% CSS compliant either, but it does a lot more stuff the correct way. This is where I think Mozilla will make a great impact on the web. By testing out Mozilla developers will see the advantage of standards and more and more will have standards in mind when designing web sites. My dream is to see John Q. Random Webpublisher using w3.org as a techincal reference instead of "Designing Websites for Internet Explorer" by Joe Clueless.
Believe it or not, this doesn't seem to work with the newer builds of Mozilla.
By this I mean you can set the user agent pref (See prefs.js and edit/create user.js to set your own) and the about:mozilla page reports the correct faked agent. But go to any web page that reports your user-agent string back to you (such as here near the bottom) and it still gives the old built-in user agent string. Since I have no real reason to fake my string, (and this therefore doesn't affect me) I haven't filed a bug report.
Curiouser, an outdated mozilla.org page reports the correct values. (Scroll down to "Profile of Your Browser".
Another thing is that navigator.appVersion string cannot be changed other than modifying the source... it won't get changed with a faked user agent string. There's an entry in bugzilla for this.
So what gives? I dunno, other than there seem to still be a few quirks of Mozilla that won't likely be worked out for a few more versions.
Nope, no urban legend. I think Readers Digest may have had a blurb on it even.
But it is old news. I'm certain I've seen this posted on slashdot at least twice before.
I agree wholeheartedly. I often find myself explaining the concept of viruses to my friends, family, or whoever who happen to be mostly computer illiterate or just plain clueless. I politely explain to them that viruses (modern ones at least) don't just jump from machine to machine as biological viruses do, but rather have to piggyback on top of a program (not a text file, not a jpeg, not even a bloody gif) in order to propagate. And I've all but given up explaining to them that the malicious email attachments that the media and everyone talks about lately are actually trojan horses not viruses. Even geeks can never get this one right.
At the end of my short tutorial on viruses for the computer illiterate user, I usually go ahead and explain that I have been using computers over 14 years now, have never once used an anti-virus program, and have yet to have one of my systems infected with a virus or anything resembling it. (Not counting Windows 95.) The average joe would be somewhat surprised at hearing this, but still take it at face value and assume I know what I'm doing when it comes to computers. A few of the supremely clueless, after hearing the real facts on viruses and then hearing me say that I've never run any anti-virus software have replied with, "Really? But aren't you afraid you'll catch a virus?" in the tone of voice you might hear from someone who balks when you tell them you're a severe diabetic that has never bought insulin.
What exactly is your point?? Taking what I say outta context isn't gonna help your argument. I'm stating the obvious as for DivX.. it uses MPEG-4; another lossy format. I didn't say the visuals weren't good I said it was a Lossy format. It is.
How can I take it out of context when that's the only thing you said about it? Just "divx is lossy." As if it were an argument in and of itself on why you think divx sucks.
Oh.. umm I just got an xbox and I'm gonna hack it to play divx's I know I can go to blockbuster and rent a movie for 4 bucks or so but I was wondering if you can download Spider-Man for me and if so convert it to Divx for me so that I canwatch it on my xbox. Thanks.
And why not? If you happened to be a good friend of mine, I just might. One of my friends, who has no computer occasionally comes to me and borrows mine so he can download Dragonball Z VCDs to watch on his DVD player. There's no practical difference between VCDs and divx except one is more common and thei other is technically superior.
As an aside, what the hell does it matter that modding an Xbox to play divx movies is more inconvenient than just renting a DVD or watching a divx on a computer? That is obviously not the point of hacking an Xbox. The modding of the machine and the knowledge that you did it yourself is the fun part, not watching the damn movies. No, it's not a particularly hard hack to perform even if you're never weilded a soldering iron, but then neither is a computer case mod or a Tivo mod.
Especially cracking open this dtv/tivo box and doing all sorts of nifty stuff released back to the tivo community all these things were meant to be hacked mind you.
Okay, so you play with kernel code. And you hack your Tivo. You do both only because you believe they were meant to be hacked. IIRC, the Tivo was never designed to be hacked. The corporation only went along with all the community mods because they realized after the boxes were on the market that to do otherwise would be counterproductive to their profit margins. But more to the point, could you please tell me what is so horrible or sinful about hacking something that wasn't "meant to be hacked"? I think many (including myself) would argue that hacking something that wasn't designed to be hacked is much more fun in the long run. (Especially if the hack is useful, neat, clever, etc.) That's what makes hacking the Xbox such a nice challenge. Not only was it not designed to be hacked, it has multiple mechanisms in place to defend against modification. The people who designed the modchip and those writing the media player are getting tremendous recognition due to that fact alone.
I like this internet.. Except for the minor security problems with tcp/ip and the general disdain for security. I can do whatever I like, say whatever I want, with no or very little reprecussions of any kind.
That's exactly what you said you disliked about the internet in your previous post. That's fairly heavy contradiction in my book.
Of course this wasn't what I was addressing so at this point I've invited others to read your post and somehow they think your are a bit too emotional for some reason.
But you did address it. I remember quite clearly. You said that you disliked the internet because it allows people (even weird or unpopular people) to speak their minds on whatever topic they like. Emotional? In comparison to your devout hatred of both the divx and Xbox, I hardly think so.
Do you love your xbox that much? Have I offended your xbox? If so I apologize. I apologize to your xbox that I don't care about it or what you do with it. Do you feel better?
I don't think this kind of juvenile tripe even deserves a response, but I'm feeling generous. And I want to set the record straight for those who can't see the obvious if it punched them in the face: I don't have an Xbox, nor do I even plan to buy one in the forseeable future. I have no particular affinity for the Xbox either except that I admit that it is impressive from a technical standpoint. I own exactly one console video game system (a Playstation, they gray one) that I haven't played in probably over a year.
If it's added value for you; great. As for the rest of the world this won't mean a goddamned thing is which my original post seems to convey I don't know how you got lost.
I didn't get lost, I was pointing out the fact that your opinion != the world's opinion, something a lot of slashbots tend to forget after a few years of posting.
OMG!! MY WEBSITE!! WOAH (like that whiteboy Joey on whats that old show Blossom)!!)
What are you on, son?
and my xbox lackeys are kinda pissed they don't have any really cool games but they are also not breaking down their xboxes just because of this divx stuff; they seem relatively happy with the xbox though. To each his/her own.
More contradiction. Thoughout this whole exchange you've been condemning those who want to mod their Xbox for any reason at all and then have the audacity to state the sentence I've highlighted in bold? The only thing I can make out from your side of the debate is that hacking is cool and okay as long as it's not to watch divx movies on an xbox.
ok I do enjoy grand theft auto 3 I must admit and xbox "is like a wannabe", there are just no good games.
First, what constitues a good game is a matter of opinion. It would be appropriate to say you believe there are no good Xbox games, but again you assume that you speak for everyone. I don't know of any good Xbox games only because I have not yet played a single Xbox game. But the system is selling in the stores, the games get decent reviews in video game rags (to my knowledge) and I know of several people who are thrilled with theirs. You said yourself that you have friends who enjoy their Xbox, so I'm inferring that they think there are good games for it. (Unless maybe they bought the system anyway knowing there were no good games for it nor any on the horizon... hardly a wise purchasing decision. Stupid, I would even admit, if this happens to be the case.)
Is the DiVX stuff gonna make me want one? Most likely no
That's fine, you are certainly entitled to that.
and if I know about it and it hasn't swayed me.. your avg consumer who hears about it isn't gonna care either.
Yet again you assume that you speak for everyone. Does your average consumer hack the Linux kernel? No. Does your average consumer hack their Tivo? No. But you do. Funny how you try to form an argument that because you have no desire to hack the Xbox then no one wants to or that it's a stupid thing to do. Average consumers have nothing at all to do with any of this.
Divx is a lossy format to begin with
So is DVD (which uses MPEG-2 as the compression codec, a far more inefficient algorithm than divx).
The PS2 plays dvd's
Shittily, but yes it does. And with the most brain-dead unintuitive interface ever concocted, I might add.
If these people don't have computers to begin with where exactly do they pick up the divx's?
You are assuming that people who own Xboxes don't have any friends? Or access to someone elses computer? Or access to a computer at a college or uni or work? In some parts of the world, divx movies are actually very easy to buy. Downloading is not even close to the only way to get divx movies.
Not only that but to watch a movie in low quality format?
From this statement, I could take one of two guesses... 1. You have never seen any divx-encoded movies or have only seen a few poorly encoded ones and are thus talking out of your ass throughout this entire comment. 2. Prior to to the advent of DVD you didn't watch any movies at all. A well-encoded divx movie is far superior to both VHS and theatre screens. "Theatre screens?" you ask. Yes, a theatre screen is only mediocre quality, in my opinion. Sure, it's mammoth and that's something you'll never reproduce outside an actual theatre, but for its size, it's also rather blurry. When I watch any movie in a theatre, I'm usually distracted for the first 5 or 10 minutes about how blurry the movie seems until I get into the story. I never, repeat never, have this problem with DVD or VHS.
Who cares about the community?
Obviously you don't. Likewise, they probably don't give two shits about you.
I could buy an Xbox plus seperate DVD Player and save money and get a better quality format. If I wanted to go the extra mile and turn pirate I'd just fucking copy dvd's.
Then for g-d's sake, do it. Do either one, but stop bitching about it on slashdot. The mere mention of an Xbox modchip sure brings out a nasty emotional response from you.
Skill wise, I don't want to be bothered in opening a machine
Then don't. Nobody asked you to. Those who do have a bit of hacker spirit inside them and are up to the technical challenge of modding their Xbox (a machine which was built to be tamper resistant) will and they'll do it to their own machines and not bother you one bit about it.
Skill wise FOR YOU it might be extremely low, not for 9 yr old bobby who doesn't give a shit about wires but about games
Then for christ sake, he's simply not going to do it. As I stated multiple times above, those who want to mod their xbox will.
Infact I went to visit a friend and he was having a garage sale.. his little cousin is talking to me rambling at the mouth
Sounds like it rubbed off.
So, think about the rest of the world and not just your community when you talk about the sales of a product going up based on some tiny detail that is supposed to revolutionize a product.
The rest of the world will continue as it always has, Xbox modchip or no. Quite frankly, if I had an Xbox that I wanted to mod, I wouldn't give a flying shit about "the rest of the world" or what Micro$oft is going to do about all the lost revenue or anything else. I'd be in it for the fun.
This was the problem with the internet everyone hyped every tiny little thing that seemed so amazing in their own world but was practically useless to everyone else.
Oh look at you, Mister "I'm going to post an airhead rant on the internet and then condemn the very act near the end of the post".
The internet is an open medium which gives everyone the right to say exactly what they want to say no matter how much you dislike it. Neither slashdot nor any other company, organization, or individual on the internet is obligated to write content that you happen to agree with. If you don't like it, go to another website, there are thousands of others just like this one. Maybe you'll agree with what they say more instead of inconstructively bitching about this one. Even better, go build yourself another internet that you control if you dislike this one so damned much.
DiVX on XboX you say? Who cares, I thought it was made for the cool games they were supposed to have?
What it was made for and what it actually gets used for can be completely different things. I think Larry Wall (inventor of Perl scripting language, for the ungeek, namely you) was the one who said that the best tool one can ever hope to create is one for which uses are discovered that its designer never would have imagined.
Much as I despise Micros~1, with the modchip and these new programs being released, the Xbox now has a bit of added value in my eyes. The only question I have... where are all the Gamecube hackers?
Add to prefs.js:
user_pref("mozilla.widget.raise-on-setfocus", false);
I think that depends largely on how well the CG is done. In The Matrix, I honestly had no friggen clue what was CG and what was a prop until I saw the Matrix: Revisited DVD. I mean, yeah, there are things that are quite obviously CG, (like the baby farm scene) but for the most part I thought much of it was modelled. On the other hand, I had no idea that the helicopter explosion was modelled rather than CG.
It all depends on how well it's done. And with the Wachowski brothers in charge, I have no doubt that Reloaded will be done well.
I notice newpapers, papers, even textbooks for crying out loud, use statistics like this.
One example that my biology professor brought up once are the figures that environmentalists sometimes claim; statistics like "80% of the world's species have yet to be discovered". Well, if they haven't been discovered yet, just how do you know that there's 80% more out there?! Did Madam Cleo tell you?
On the Cyc company's website, one of the projects they're working on is implementing a system exactly as the one you described. Current computer software is capable of doing all of those things, but you have to do it all manually, one at a time, and all though separate interfaces.
Using a Cyc-based front end as your interface brings about the ability for your computer to actually understand exactly what you mean when you tell it to do something... it uses its database to remove ambiguities from the orders you give it.
One of my life-long dreams is to have a house (or at least a single computer) that takes orders in the same manner as the Enterprise-D computer and give useful information back in return.
On application in particular that I'm looking forward to: I imagine a future where, if I'm learning a new programming language, I can ask the computer to bring up an short example of syntax for a particular piece of code or display the prototype for this function or that. My children might have a program for studying schoolwork where the computer might prompt them for for answers and tell them if they're wrong. If it guesses that the child doesn't understand a particlar topic, the program would give them a short overview of it and ask questions afterwards about how it ties into other areas of the subject.
*sigh* I can't wait for the future...
Sir, please try not to be so defensive. I think the vast vast majority of everyone here has to run Microsoft products from time to time. Even those who say they don't.
Now then, I may be wrong here but I think when you click on the icon for Mozilla under Win32, it just opens a new window inside the instance of Mozilla already running (if there is one). One easy way to tell: If the "auto-load" (or whatever it's called) feature is enabled, your taskbar would show two lizard icons when you try to run multiple instances of Mozilla. Another way to tell: if you see two mozilla.exe images listed in the Processes tab (not the Applications tab) of the Task Manager.
I'd verify these myself, but I won't have access to my desktop computer (with WinXP) for another week.
You can start several instances of Mozilla.
I wouldn't recommend that. At least, not in Linux. (No idea about builds for other OSes.) For example, let's try out this scenario. When browsing, I might add 6 or 7 new links (that I don't have time or motivation to read currently, but want to eventually) to my bookmarks per session. Then I switch to another workspace in my window manager, fiddle with some text files, maybe chat in IRC a bit. Lets say someone on IRC passes me a URL that I absolutely must visit. The natural reaction is to start Mozilla up from my Gnome panel, which I do, but completely forgetting that I already have the other instance running in another workspace.
Blammo, two instances. What happens every single time, no matter what order I quit the instances, is that my bookmarks that I've added get lost and my history gets deleted. No more purple links indicating where I've already been.
Most annoying. I've come within inches of writing a wrapper shell script that checks for an instance of Mozilla already running so it doesn't start a second.
Dunno if this has been fixed in v1.0, but I rather doubt it. At the least, I'd like to have an option in the prefs that automatically disables multiple instances.