- The executable itself, that is, the black-box which tells you at most as little of the implementation details as a hammer would compared to a diagram of the hammer, can neither be patented or copyrighted.
I am sure all the software vendors who add the "Copyright 200X" would beg to differ.
Linux users (hardly ever) download and install software from the internet. We download and install packages from repositories.
But what about (future) Linux users who will get that "OMG l00k at my last picture from Cancun vacation!!!!" with the n1ce_b00bz.jpg.py attachment with a script that does some nasty things to their data.
This is true. Most drive-by attacks these days seem to come from dodgy banner ads, or poorly sanitised user comments with embedded scripting on otherwise perfectly legitimate web sites.
Banner ads? Which banner ads?*
Anyway, I always laugh when people think that because of running with an "unprivileged" account users are more secured.
The fact is that all the information the user cares about is accessible (read and write) with this "unprivileged" account, in Linux, Windows and OsX.
Any malicious program who wants to erase those, or a program who wants to transfer them to someone else will be able to do it without trouble (you just have to doubleclick that "paris-hilton-nude.jpg.exe).
This is where antivirus became useful, as they provide a list of known malicious programs and block them so that computer users do not have to worry about.
Of course, a comprehensive set of design rules for the operating system (for starters, the OS presenting the type of file based on the content and not three letters) or maybe the inability to run any program unless it is installed from a repo (but still, could you run a python script?) will help enhance the security.
There might not be samples of everything on their site, [...].
That has become the main problem for me, aside from the same 30 songs they play everytime I start a station, nothing new ever comes out.
In order for it to work better, you must listen to whatever genres they cover better. I guess alternative, grunge, pop and rock-pop may be ok. But for heavy metal they do not have a lot of diversity, OR their recommendation algorithm is broken.
I do use Last.fm, unfortunately they do not have a wide range of artists, at least not of my liked genre.
Every time I start a station with say the "Satriani" artist tag, I get the exact same 20 songs (in random order), before something completely unrelated start playing. I have the same results with "Kamelot", "Stratovarius" and "Dream Theater".
I liked it more when you could specify two or three artists. That would give you a bit of more breadth on the pool of music to listen.
Regarding alternatives, I have tried Musicology and it is OK, the only drawback being the "web2.0" interface which I really hate.
BTW, the LastRipper program is a good way to save Last.FM streams. I have got a lot of classical music (at 128kbps quality is good for portable players)
Haha... I can imagine your situation and am sorry for you.
On a related note, I think the original poster will get very disappointed when he realizes that the amount of WiFi points in South America are not as many as in the USA.
Of course it depends on which parts of S.A. he is going but, in general people in here still use internet cafes.
On the bootable CD, it is not always possible. A lot of cafes (at least in Mexico) have the CPUs locked down, in a wooden box sometimes. This to avoid any type of vandalism.
Well, for one the majority of people do not pay the corresponding license tax for the BBC.
People from outside the UK cannot legally use the iPlayer to watch BBC shows. So, in a same way the BBC news could cut their supply of free news to people outside the UK
I want you to find me the clip where "Bush [went] before the world claiming there were absolutely WMD's in Iraq". I propose no such claim ever happened. You might respond 'well you're just an ignorant rube', but that doesn't actually answer the question does it?
You should join academia. Oh but they suck for putting food on the table? Too bad. Time is a very key asset in the real world and we have to cater to that.
Funny, I am in academia right now and I am better than working as a software engineer (my major) in my home country.
Because of academia I have traveled almost for free, I can go to work at whatever hour I want and I get paid for my ideas.
Oh and by the way... there is a inherent problem with sites such as metacritic and gamerankings. When a game first comes out, usually the first reviews you read are the ones which are paid for, thus you see only "90 to 100" points favorable review. After about six months, other less favorable reviews come out and you get a completely different score.
I saw that with "Wii Fit" and Excite truck, which started around the 90s in scores and got down after some months of released.
The problem with reviews is that they are strongly subjective.
On the other hand, sites such as Criticker (for movies) that make recommendations based on *your* defined ranking seem more useful for me.
For example, from the first 5 "best" games for the Wii (from metacritic): 1 Super Mario Galaxy 2007 97 2 Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, The 2006 95 3 World of Goo 2008 94 4 Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2008 93 5 Rock Band 2
I bought mario galaxy and thought it was just OK, nothing worth of an 80 or so.
I bought L. of Zelda along with my Wii when it was first released, however I stopped playing it after about 2 hours because I got bored as hell.
I played SuperSmash Bros brawl at a friend's house and didn't like it at all. See, I was raised with Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat 1 and 2, thus, the "one button does everything" gameplay of SSBB just does not cut it for me.
As of "Rockband 2", I play the real guitar, I tried this mock-guitar playing in an arcade some years ago and after the first two or three games it lost the novelty (I also installed FretsOnFire and gave it a try, I just do not find such kind of game amusing).
So, that only leaves World of Goo, which was a good game, albeit a bit short. The sad think, for the wii I guess, is that a "side-project" game as world of goo ends among the first 5 of the platform...
Yet most colleges don't even go over SQL and database. Which still has pleanty of computer science in the topic. DB call can be just as advanced a any other program. As well teach people to think in agragate. However most of the people I interview cannot do a join
SQL + Normalization : Set theory + discrete maths.
... are you actually missing some specific function that is provided by add-ons in FF and not provided in Opera?
I was an Opera user for several years, even using the "ad-supported" version of their software, because I really liked it.
Nowadays I run firefox. Opera would need to provide the functionality of the following extensions for me:
ScrapBook: Capture pages locally, add comments and remove DOM objects. Stylish: Change CSS of pages you visit TinyMenu: Change the menu bar to a single "Menu" button and move the other control bars so that they occupy only one row in the screen. Tree Style Tab: Present tabs in a vertical tree (on the left of the screen). DelIcioUS: Bookmarks DownThemAll: Mass Downloader/Download Manager. PriceDrop: Track amazon and bestbuy price changes and notify about them.
The issue with Opera is that to get the same functionality of Firefox, it will either need to make use of addons/plugins or it will suffer the same fate as Netscape or other browsers who wanted to do everything.
So according to this guy rant letter, the "cat-brain simulation" was nothing more than the simulation of a ANN wiht X number of neurons with X equal to the average number of neurons in a cat.
However, it seems the/complexity/ of the simulated neurons is not remotely similar to that of the neurons of a real cat.
With that view, yes it seems less breakthrough. The experiment reminds me of AI researchers that thought that we could get intelligent machines using a brute-force kind of approach; this by adding/enough/ knowledge-rules,/enough/ processing power, etc...
Ahhh London. Great memories I have from that city.
In addition to what parent poster recommended, let me add these walking tours. We took one of them (the underground-related tour) and think it is worth every penny.
Also, have a look at The London Dungeon if you like "scary houses". It combines the story of London and some of its myths in a really well done story. Providing a great atmosphere and good actors.
Watch out for the queen's guards, they are known to have bad temper;-).
This ignorant people think that "web client" means Gmail like Ajax applications... I am a happy Citrix user and from my experience the performance of the applications is very good.
Slashdot Mirror
When someone holds up Apple as the standard for openness that you should strive for, you have to be really messing up!
There, fixed that for you.
Mine too... but then again, we are posting in /.
- The executable itself, that is, the black-box which tells you at most as little of the implementation details as a hammer would compared to a diagram of the hammer, can neither be patented or copyrighted.
I am sure all the software vendors who add the "Copyright 200X" would beg to differ.
Linux users (hardly ever) download and install software from the internet. We download and install packages from repositories.
But what about (future) Linux users who will get that "OMG l00k at my last picture from Cancun vacation!!!!" with the n1ce_b00bz.jpg.py attachment with a script that does some nasty things to their data.
The fact remains that in most sensible implementations, the user is unable to run arbitrary code outside his own directory..
So, besides hanging in the user's .bashrc, deleting all user files, or sending my_employees_SSN.odt via HTTP to the bad guys nothing bad will happen.
Nice!
This is true. Most drive-by attacks these days seem to come from dodgy banner ads, or poorly sanitised user comments with embedded scripting on otherwise perfectly legitimate web sites.
Banner ads? Which banner ads?*
Anyway, I always laugh when people think that because of running with an "unprivileged" account users are more secured.
The fact is that all the information the user cares about is accessible (read and write) with this "unprivileged" account, in Linux, Windows and OsX.
Any malicious program who wants to erase those, or a program who wants to transfer them to someone else will be able to do it without trouble (you just have to doubleclick that "paris-hilton-nude.jpg.exe).
This is where antivirus became useful, as they provide a list of known malicious programs and block them so that computer users do not have to worry about.
Of course, a comprehensive set of design rules for the operating system (for starters, the OS presenting the type of file based on the content and not three letters) or maybe the inability to run any program unless it is installed from a repo (but still, could you run a python script?) will help enhance the security.
*Says an adblock plus user
It is funny that the 2nd most scrobbled artist is "The Beatles" but the do not have any of their songs :(
There might not be samples of everything on their site, [...].
That has become the main problem for me, aside from the same 30 songs they play everytime I start a station, nothing new ever comes out.
In order for it to work better, you must listen to whatever genres they cover better. I guess alternative, grunge, pop and rock-pop may be ok. But for heavy metal they do not have a lot of diversity, OR their recommendation algorithm is broken.
I do use Last.fm, unfortunately they do not have a wide range of artists, at least not of my liked genre.
Every time I start a station with say the "Satriani" artist tag, I get the exact same 20 songs (in random order), before something completely unrelated start playing. I have the same results with "Kamelot", "Stratovarius" and "Dream Theater".
I liked it more when you could specify two or three artists. That would give you a bit of more breadth on the pool of music to listen.
Regarding alternatives, I have tried Musicology and it is OK, the only drawback being the "web2.0" interface which I really hate.
BTW, the LastRipper program is a good way to save Last.FM streams. I have got a lot of classical music (at 128kbps quality is good for portable players)
Haha... I can imagine your situation and am sorry for you.
On a related note, I think the original poster will get very disappointed when he realizes that the amount of WiFi points in South America are not as many as in the USA.
Of course it depends on which parts of S.A. he is going but, in general people in here still use internet cafes.
On the bootable CD, it is not always possible. A lot of cafes (at least in Mexico) have the CPUs locked down, in a wooden box sometimes. This to avoid any type of vandalism.
Well, for one the majority of people do not pay the corresponding license tax for the BBC.
People from outside the UK cannot legally use the iPlayer to watch BBC shows. So, in a same way the BBC news could cut their supply of free news to people outside the UK
I want you to find me the clip where "Bush [went] before the world claiming there were absolutely WMD's in Iraq". I propose no such claim ever happened. You might respond 'well you're just an ignorant rube', but that doesn't actually answer the question does it?
There ya go gringito how fast do you forget
You should join academia. Oh but they suck for putting food on the table? Too bad. Time is a very key asset in the real world and we have to cater to that.
Funny, I am in academia right now and I am better than working as a software engineer (my major) in my home country.
Because of academia I have traveled almost for free, I can go to work at whatever hour I want and I get paid for my ideas.
Oh and by the way... there is a inherent problem with sites such as metacritic and gamerankings. When a game first comes out, usually the first reviews you read are the ones which are paid for, thus you see only "90 to 100" points favorable review. After about six months, other less favorable reviews come out and you get a completely different score.
I saw that with "Wii Fit" and Excite truck, which started around the 90s in scores and got down after some months of released.
The problem with reviews is that they are strongly subjective.
On the other hand, sites such as Criticker (for movies) that make recommendations based on *your* defined ranking seem more useful for me.
For example, from the first 5 "best" games for the Wii (from metacritic):
1 Super Mario Galaxy 2007 97
2 Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, The 2006 95
3 World of Goo 2008 94
4 Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2008 93
5 Rock Band 2
I bought mario galaxy and thought it was just OK, nothing worth of an 80 or so.
I bought L. of Zelda along with my Wii when it was first released, however I stopped playing it
after about 2 hours because I got bored as hell.
I played SuperSmash Bros brawl at a friend's house and didn't like it at all. See, I was raised with Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat 1 and 2, thus, the "one button does everything" gameplay of SSBB just does not cut it for me.
As of "Rockband 2", I play the real guitar, I tried this mock-guitar playing in an arcade some years ago and after the first two or three games it lost the novelty (I also installed FretsOnFire and gave it a try, I just do not find such kind of game amusing).
So, that only leaves World of Goo, which was a good game, albeit a bit short. The sad think, for the wii I guess, is that a "side-project" game as world of goo ends among the first 5 of the platform...
Yet most colleges don't even go over SQL and database. Which still has pleanty of computer science in the topic. DB call can be just as advanced a any other program. As well teach people to think in agragate. However most of the people I interview cannot do a join
SQL + Normalization : Set theory + discrete maths.
... are you actually missing some specific function that is provided by add-ons in FF and not provided in Opera?
I was an Opera user for several years, even using the "ad-supported" version of their software, because I really liked it.
Nowadays I run firefox. Opera would need to provide the functionality of the following extensions for me:
ScrapBook: Capture pages locally, add comments and remove DOM objects.
Stylish: Change CSS of pages you visit
TinyMenu: Change the menu bar to a single "Menu" button and move the other control bars so that they occupy only one row in the screen.
Tree Style Tab: Present tabs in a vertical tree (on the left of the screen).
DelIcioUS: Bookmarks
DownThemAll: Mass Downloader/Download Manager.
PriceDrop: Track amazon and bestbuy price changes and notify about them.
The issue with Opera is that to get the same functionality of Firefox, it will either need to make use of addons/plugins or it will suffer the same fate as Netscape or other browsers who wanted to do everything.
So according to this guy rant letter, the "cat-brain simulation" was nothing more than the simulation of a ANN wiht X number of neurons with X equal to the average number of neurons in a cat.
However, it seems the /complexity/ of the simulated neurons is not remotely similar to that of the neurons of a real cat.
With that view, yes it seems less breakthrough. The experiment reminds me of AI researchers that thought that we could get intelligent machines using a brute-force kind of approach; this by adding /enough/ knowledge-rules, /enough/ processing power, etc...
No shit, I was almost hit by a double decker bus (Arriva) while crossing in the middle of the street at Liverpool.
I saw nothing coming... looking at the wrong side =oP
Oh oh oh!
And also tell them how easy is it to fix your teeth in the USA...
And tell them how sucky their health care is... so much that if Stephen Hawking lived in the UK, he would be dead!
Ahhh London. Great memories I have from that city.
In addition to what parent poster recommended, let me add these walking tours. We took one of them (the underground-related tour) and think it is worth every penny.
Also, have a look at The London Dungeon if you like "scary houses". It combines the story of London and some of its myths in a really well done story. Providing a great atmosphere and good actors.
Watch out for the queen's guards, they are known to have bad temper ;-).
I call bullshit on anyone who claims 90% of the running copies were pirated,
You should look at the percentage of people who pirate (or don't pay for, while using it) WinRar or WinZip...
Being the case that even slashdot crowd is complaining about google's "great idea" I am sure Ballmer should be laughing out loud at Google Chrome :)
This ignorant people think that "web client" means Gmail like Ajax applications... I am a happy Citrix user and from my experience the performance of the applications is very good.
I take you haven't used Citrix uh?
Let me see... using my University's provided Citrix apps I can run:
Chem3D, ChemBioDraw, Spartan 08, Abaqus, Authorware SuSProg3D, CorelDraw X4, VisualMC, Maple13, MathCAD, MatLab2009, Access 2007, Acrobat Reader, Excel 2007, InfoPath 2007, Internet Explorer 7, OneNote 2007, Outlook 2007, PDf Creator, Powerpoint 2007, Publisher 2007, Word 2007, Eviews 6, MiniTab15, NVIVOv2, SASv9, SPSS 17, Stat v9, MindGenius, Notepad, Putty, SharePoint Designer.
Can I running from any computer with internet connection [ YES ] ?
Can I save and access my files from any computer with internet connection [ YES ] ?
Any application could be easily installed (Eclipse, VS, Emacs, Vi , etc..) and used by other people in their Linux/Windows machines.