I looked at http://www.lyx.org/ a few years ago, and it was alright. It wasn't what I wanted though, not needing or knowing LaTeX.
However, you already use TeX, so it might just what you want.
Or alternatively, have a look at AbiWord from http://www.abisource.com/ it is simple, and shouldn't screw things up if you use the native file format (an XML based thingy).
I use AbiWord all the time for quick loading WP without too many fancy things. One caveat, it sometimes crashes for no explicable reason, and then causes you to have to re-write everything that you hadn't saved.
http://openoffice.org/ has already been mentioned heaps of times. I won't bother saying anything more about it.
This is old news, Microsoft has been wanting to rent software for ages.
Two types of customer. The home user is used to renting software such as Virus Checkers and the like. Yes, it isn't really renting as such, but whatever. Microsoft really just needs to convince them that it's a good deal, and they are done. However, considering that many people don't have access to broadband (yes, not everyone lives in a city, and some people are still too poor to pay even if they can access it), I wonder how they will distribute the updates. Actually, do you get to keep the software when you stop paying? Previously it stopped working (you could only view the documents). Is that such a great thing for home customers?
Business customers would probably love this though. At least some of them. Pay less, always get the latest version. Except they got screwed over with something like this before already, they didn't actually get a new version for ages (I can't remember the details).
Oh yeah, one final thought, what about setting up your own server to pretend to be the MS server and say, "yes, you're a legit copy" to any software that queries it? And/or introduce a crack into the system so that it doesn't shut down?
OK, this is totally off topic, but what the fuck are you talking about? I just did a search for "if I was from control", apart from stupid things like the above post on slashdot, the only relevant thing I found was
Get Smart wasnt that nice as i imagine.cos the trailer showed it being so funny, but in the movie is like quite lame. i think they overdid it with the lame humor. like when the actor said something thats supposed to make ppl laugh, no one laugh at all. SO SAD THE PRODUCER! xD i like the part where max & seigfried talk to each other. Max: if i was from CONTROL you'd already be dead. Sieg:if you were form CONTROL you'd already be dead. Max:well, since neither of us are dead it proves that im NOT from CONTROL.
So yeah, I found the answer myself. Stupid memes. (I still don't get the one about hot grits and Natille Portman, though I found out apparently she is some actor or another. Oh yeah, and just because I don't watch movies or TV or know about popular culture, doesn't make me not a geek. I play Nethack, I read Slashdot, I program, so fuck you if you want my fucking non-existent "geek membership card" or whatever.)
Actually, the main strand of anarchism today is communist anarchism. No market at all. So yeah.
Also, if you were going to have an "anarchist market", you wouldn't need regulation. Because the basic assumptions of Mutualism (the economic theory that anarchists who advocate markets advocate), include such things as labour being the limit of price, and property as usage. And the regulation for that would be the community as a whole, who wouldn't stand for some bastard claiming three houses when they can only live in one. (They simple live in the houses, and if the "owner" tries to forcibly evict them, then self-defence occurs.)
The so called free market isn't free. If customers had any idea about the true cost of things to the companies that they purchase from, they wouldn't buy at the prices that things are being sold at.
Free markets require perfect knowledge. And without that, the invisible hand doesn't work.
Oh yeah, like in the US you have to pay to receive messages? Would you put up with having to pay to receive emails or take all phone calls? Fuck no.
Meh, this is a random ol' rant.
(Oh yeah, to the fuckers who say "communism", I'm an anarchist. Check my "homepage" for info about that. Oh yeah, and no I don't get anything for the referral link, and if it really bothers you, you can remove it.)
Step one, find a birth certificate for a person of the same gender as you, and around the same ago.
Register at your local university and obtain student card in the name of the person on the birth certificate, withdraw before you have to pay anything (this step may vary with your university, I know it is possible at the Uni that I attended).
Obtain utility bills in the name of the person on the birth certificate.
There you go, 100 points of ID!
Use to obtain other forms of ID etc. (If you're in the USA finding the social security number would probably be useful too.)
If the person isn't dead (to create a "new" id, make sure that the birth certificate is for a person who died quite young), then you can have a field day getting access to whatever.
When I provide code on my website, I link to a program which displays the code on the screen.
Using the program, you can look at any file (apart from ones that are either in a black-list, such as "settings.php", or ones that have a bit of text at the start "don't show this") any time.
If it gets updated, you can always get the latest version.
Of course, yes, there isn't any real way to make sure that EvilCorp doesn't fuck around and show different code to what is actually being run. But considering you can't update that code on EvilCorp's websever, there isn't anything you can do about it.
With AGPL, you can run the code on/your/ websever.
(The only trouble with the GNU AGPL that I can tell (that is, v3, not v2), is that it explicitly allows mixing with GPL code, and then the entire program is GPL, not AGPL. I personally think it should be the other way around. But meh.)
OK, so first you have to acquire a patent that would be relevant for them (either "invent" or buy or whatever). Then you have to attract the attention of this mob and persuade them that it would be cheaper to buy your patent, rather then just sue you for infringing one of their patents.
Then you have to repeat.
Good luck with that.
Personally, I don't see what the problem with this group is, in the current system. (Of course, there are heaps of problems with the current system, but this isn't the place to go into them.)
I've seen this sort of comment in other places as well. It is a very important one.
I remember when I was younger and stupid that I thought that.com on websites was the same as.com at the end of some MS DOS programs. Actually I never was stupid enough to think that they meant the same thing, but the fact is that I was damn confused until I learnt that one meant commercial and the other command.
So yeah, this is a stupid idea, and I predict many many further opportunities for nasty people to exploit this to take money of stupid and ignorant people.
Not to mention it will confuse the heck out of lots of people.
I wouldn't worry really. If it does destroy the world (which this is saying it won't, because if it could, it would have already happened naturally), then too bad. There isn't anything we can do, and such is life. C'est la vie.
Oh yeah, and I really have been there, there was an open day a couple of months back, the thing is less then about 15 cm in most places (then you have the various vacuum thingys, etc.). Which is rather big, actually, considering the size of the particles...
"There are seven pubs and two Indian joints within a one block radius, a tube station a couple of blocks away and a women's fitness centre across the road."
Like service:
"WE COULD CUT A HOLE IN THE FLOOR OF MISSION CONTROL, INSTALL A POLE, KEEP A CAR IN THE SERVICE BAYS AND CALL IT THE BATMOBILE!"
So, besides electricity usage, what else should you care about? How about heat? Your room can't be too hot (you can send all the heat to the swimming pool in the fitness centre...).
What about wires? Both a OHS issue, and a potential to kill off half your servers if you trip over an exposed power cord or network line. So you lay them under the floor?
Have a look at some of the previous contests. The original contest (2004 voting contest) has people exploiting stacks and various other sorts of nastiness.
In 2006, http://www.brainhz.com/underhanded/results2006.html you get people exploiting the fact that 64 bit and 32 bit OS are different, or that some OSes are big endian and some little, and so on. There are all sorts of nasty tricks that are possible.
One possible option for this contest is to hide information in the lower bounds of each pixel (stenography like), there isn't much space, but you could recover some information from the original. And a one bit difference in black isn't easy to spot...
Of course, I can't code C, so I don't know what I'm talking about.
He doesn't accept that there is intelligent extraterrestrial life, he just suggests that it is perfectly plausible.
All things considered, we don't have any evidence for the Christian or Jewish or Muslim god, or the Hindu/Buddhist gods, or any supernatural events. Well, I should say, the only "evidence" we have is testimony, which is often thousands of years old, and distorted etc. (Hume wrote about whether one should believe in "miracles" or not. No you shouldn't, because it is much more likely that you were mistaken, if you "saw" it yourself, or mislead (intentionally or otherwise), otherwise.)
However, it is within our understanding of the way the universe works that there might be life outside of this solar system. Yes, we don't have any evidence for it, and that is why Sagan (and myself) don't claim that it exists. Merely that it might exist, and that we hold our judgment until further, and sufficient, evidence is presented.
Do you have any other examples of Sagan (or any other skeptic of a similar bent) believing in irrationalities or without evidence?
Of course they don't violate ... copyright ...
on
Mod Chips Legal In the UK
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
At least, not by any sensible person's definition or understanding of the term "copyright". That is, there may be some legal jurisdictions where a piece of hardware can be considered a violation of copyright law, even if that hardware is not in and off itself a violation. (If you know what I mean.) However, in no sensible place could it be considered to break copyright, anymore then region free DVD players could be considered tools to break copyright.
(I believe in Australia both are perfectly legal.)
Of course, what the law says, and what a sensible person would expect the law to say are often two completely different things. Where the law is too complex for the average person to understand, then there is something wrong with it. (Resists temptation to explain why all laws are wrong, complex or not.)
Nah, screw MSIE users. I develop personal websites, and unless someone specifically asks me to make it look pretty in IE, I won't. I'll code to standards, and I'll code to make it look nice in Firefox.
I'll also make the point that it may or maynot look nice in IE, but I don't care.
If they really want it to look nice in IE, I make it so. And it costs them.
They know that, I know that.
But, because I code to standards, it "works" in IE (except for the bit where IE doesn't understand XHTML).
When I develop pages, I like to do so in XHTML, simply because it is nicer to develop in for me (someone who initially learnt nasty 3.whatever back in 2000).
So, because I use PHP, I go and tell everyone that the page I'm serving up is application/xhtml+xml. Whoops, MSIE doesn't understand that... *roles eyes*. So I have to chuck in a bit of code to check for MSIE, and then add a disclaimer at the bottom, "If your user agent has MSIE in it, then this page was served as text/html. Maybe you should stop using MSIE if you are, or change your user agent if you aren't."
Not to mention having to chuck in IE specific CSS (the/only/ thing I like about IE is the fact that it has that comment stuff which allows a separate style sheet that no other browser sees).
Meh, I'll continue not developing for MSIE, unless I have to, and because I'm using standards compliant code, the site should still be perfectly viewable, even without CSS. If only other people decided not to develop for MSIE, maybe more people would get a better browser...
Actually maybe MSIE 8 will actually mean that I don't have to care that IE even exists? (Sorta how I don't care that Opera exists, because I know that it is relatively standards compliant.)
What about vegetarian lesbian non-terrorists? Damn, looks like they might be Muslim, Hindu, and Christian terrorists.
Oh well.
Yeah, I support working class attacks on/religion/, but I also think that it is fucking stupid to think that one single test like that would solve your problem.
What if the Muslim person has had special dispensation from their holy leader to eat meat? Or to be allowed to cut their beard? It does happen, and it means your simplistic anti-terrorism measures don't work.
They can use the injustice system and sue the bastards perhaps?
Or maybe they can accept that email is not an instant communication tool, that sometimes it does take hours for an email to go around the world (if it ever gets there).
It happened in the middle of the night right? How many people were affected?
Not only that, if I have to mourn the customers every time a corporation got hurt, I wouldn't go out smashing windows, or whatever. The "what about the customers" argument is as flawed as the "what about the workers" argument that is used against people who damage property.
I read the article. I'm just pointing out a couple of the lessons for the next person who does this (or anything like this).
I don't give a shit about corporations, but I do give a shit about people getting caught up in the injustice system just because they fucked around with a corporation.
The media don't give a shit about you, don't contact them, and don't talk to them. Wired have posted a photo of one of the people.
Don't connect your "hacking" handle with photos, places, names etc. If the media can connect the dots, so can the cops.
Don't talk. Don't boast. Be wary. And they got the last one down, they do accept that they might get caught.
Yeah, these are just some things to think about when breaking the law, and these lessons should be obvious. But I've seen too many people use the same handle all over the 'net, including places where they post names, photos and places. (I use this name in two places, here and RevLeft, you won't find much information about me from either place.)
Oh yeah, and one final thing. Who gives a fuck if Comcast has a lost money? I don't give a shit about corporations.
Slashdot Mirror
I looked at http://www.lyx.org/ a few years ago, and it was alright. It wasn't what I wanted though, not needing or knowing LaTeX.
However, you already use TeX, so it might just what you want.
Or alternatively, have a look at AbiWord from http://www.abisource.com/ it is simple, and shouldn't screw things up if you use the native file format (an XML based thingy).
I use AbiWord all the time for quick loading WP without too many fancy things. One caveat, it sometimes crashes for no explicable reason, and then causes you to have to re-write everything that you hadn't saved.
http://openoffice.org/ has already been mentioned heaps of times. I won't bother saying anything more about it.
This is old news, Microsoft has been wanting to rent software for ages.
Two types of customer. The home user is used to renting software such as Virus Checkers and the like. Yes, it isn't really renting as such, but whatever. Microsoft really just needs to convince them that it's a good deal, and they are done. However, considering that many people don't have access to broadband (yes, not everyone lives in a city, and some people are still too poor to pay even if they can access it), I wonder how they will distribute the updates. Actually, do you get to keep the software when you stop paying? Previously it stopped working (you could only view the documents). Is that such a great thing for home customers?
Business customers would probably love this though. At least some of them. Pay less, always get the latest version. Except they got screwed over with something like this before already, they didn't actually get a new version for ages (I can't remember the details).
Oh yeah, one final thought, what about setting up your own server to pretend to be the MS server and say, "yes, you're a legit copy" to any software that queries it? And/or introduce a crack into the system so that it doesn't shut down?
OK, this is totally off topic, but what the fuck are you talking about? I just did a search for "if I was from control", apart from stupid things like the above post on slashdot, the only relevant thing I found was
So, there is a movie? A movie about Get Smart? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425061/ I guess so.
So yeah, I found the answer myself. Stupid memes. (I still don't get the one about hot grits and Natille Portman, though I found out apparently she is some actor or another. Oh yeah, and just because I don't watch movies or TV or know about popular culture, doesn't make me not a geek. I play Nethack, I read Slashdot, I program, so fuck you if you want my fucking non-existent "geek membership card" or whatever.)
Actually, the main strand of anarchism today is communist anarchism. No market at all. So yeah.
Also, if you were going to have an "anarchist market", you wouldn't need regulation. Because the basic assumptions of Mutualism (the economic theory that anarchists who advocate markets advocate), include such things as labour being the limit of price, and property as usage. And the regulation for that would be the community as a whole, who wouldn't stand for some bastard claiming three houses when they can only live in one. (They simple live in the houses, and if the "owner" tries to forcibly evict them, then self-defence occurs.)
Actually, I don't live with my parents (which is what I assume you are trying to imply), I live on a different continent even with my partner.
I pre-pay my mobile phone, and I only have trouble when travelling internationally. I also don't use my phone much.
Of course, I'm not a typical user.
Anyway, capitalism is still the problem.
The so called free market isn't free.
If customers had any idea about the true cost of things to the companies that they purchase from, they wouldn't buy at the prices that things are being sold at.
Free markets require perfect knowledge. And without that, the invisible hand doesn't work.
Oh yeah, like in the US you have to pay to receive messages? Would you put up with having to pay to receive emails or take all phone calls? Fuck no.
Meh, this is a random ol' rant.
(Oh yeah, to the fuckers who say "communism", I'm an anarchist. Check my "homepage" for info about that. Oh yeah, and no I don't get anything for the referral link, and if it really bothers you, you can remove it.)
Step one, find a birth certificate for a person of the same gender as you, and around the same ago.
Register at your local university and obtain student card in the name of the person on the birth certificate, withdraw before you have to pay anything (this step may vary with your university, I know it is possible at the Uni that I attended).
Obtain utility bills in the name of the person on the birth certificate.
There you go, 100 points of ID!
Use to obtain other forms of ID etc. (If you're in the USA finding the social security number would probably be useful too.)
If the person isn't dead (to create a "new" id, make sure that the birth certificate is for a person who died quite young), then you can have a field day getting access to whatever.
Enjoy.
When I provide code on my website, I link to a program which displays the code on the screen.
Using the program, you can look at any file (apart from ones that are either in a black-list, such as "settings.php", or ones that have a bit of text at the start "don't show this") any time.
If it gets updated, you can always get the latest version.
Of course, yes, there isn't any real way to make sure that EvilCorp doesn't fuck around and show different code to what is actually being run. But considering you can't update that code on EvilCorp's websever, there isn't anything you can do about it.
With AGPL, you can run the code on /your/ websever.
(The only trouble with the GNU AGPL that I can tell (that is, v3, not v2), is that it explicitly allows mixing with GPL code, and then the entire program is GPL, not AGPL. I personally think it should be the other way around. But meh.)
OK, so first you have to acquire a patent that would be relevant for them (either "invent" or buy or whatever). Then you have to attract the attention of this mob and persuade them that it would be cheaper to buy your patent, rather then just sue you for infringing one of their patents.
Then you have to repeat.
Good luck with that.
Personally, I don't see what the problem with this group is, in the current system. (Of course, there are heaps of problems with the current system, but this isn't the place to go into them.)
I've seen this sort of comment in other places as well. It is a very important one.
I remember when I was younger and stupid that I thought that .com on websites was the same as .com at the end of some MS DOS programs. Actually I never was stupid enough to think that they meant the same thing, but the fact is that I was damn confused until I learnt that one meant commercial and the other command.
So yeah, this is a stupid idea, and I predict many many further opportunities for nasty people to exploit this to take money of stupid and ignorant people.
Not to mention it will confuse the heck out of lots of people.
I wouldn't worry really. If it does destroy the world (which this is saying it won't, because if it could, it would have already happened naturally), then too bad. There isn't anything we can do, and such is life. C'est la vie.
Oh yeah, and I really have been there, there was an open day a couple of months back, the thing is less then about 15 cm in most places (then you have the various vacuum thingys, etc.). Which is rather big, actually, considering the size of the particles...
Tastes good. (Or so I'm told.)
The BOFH cares about important things:Like service:
So, besides electricity usage, what else should you care about? How about heat? Your room can't be too hot (you can send all the heat to the swimming pool in the fitness centre...).
What about wires? Both a OHS issue, and a potential to kill off half your servers if you trip over an exposed power cord or network line. So you lay them under the floor?
Complicated stuff this...
Alternatively, it doesn't have to be black, it can be "random" colours or whatever (as pointed out by someone below).
;).
I can't just think how one could do it, and still pass inspection, however, I'm not trying to enter the contest, so
Have a look at some of the previous contests. The original contest (2004 voting contest) has people exploiting stacks and various other sorts of nastiness.
In 2006, http://www.brainhz.com/underhanded/results2006.html you get people exploiting the fact that 64 bit and 32 bit OS are different, or that some OSes are big endian and some little, and so on. There are all sorts of nasty tricks that are possible.
One possible option for this contest is to hide information in the lower bounds of each pixel (stenography like), there isn't much space, but you could recover some information from the original. And a one bit difference in black isn't easy to spot...
Of course, I can't code C, so I don't know what I'm talking about.
He doesn't accept that there is intelligent extraterrestrial life, he just suggests that it is perfectly plausible.
All things considered, we don't have any evidence for the Christian or Jewish or Muslim god, or the Hindu/Buddhist gods, or any supernatural events. Well, I should say, the only "evidence" we have is testimony, which is often thousands of years old, and distorted etc. (Hume wrote about whether one should believe in "miracles" or not. No you shouldn't, because it is much more likely that you were mistaken, if you "saw" it yourself, or mislead (intentionally or otherwise), otherwise.)
However, it is within our understanding of the way the universe works that there might be life outside of this solar system. Yes, we don't have any evidence for it, and that is why Sagan (and myself) don't claim that it exists. Merely that it might exist, and that we hold our judgment until further, and sufficient, evidence is presented.
Do you have any other examples of Sagan (or any other skeptic of a similar bent) believing in irrationalities or without evidence?
At least, not by any sensible person's definition or understanding of the term "copyright". That is, there may be some legal jurisdictions where a piece of hardware can be considered a violation of copyright law, even if that hardware is not in and off itself a violation. (If you know what I mean.) However, in no sensible place could it be considered to break copyright, anymore then region free DVD players could be considered tools to break copyright.
(I believe in Australia both are perfectly legal.)
Of course, what the law says, and what a sensible person would expect the law to say are often two completely different things. Where the law is too complex for the average person to understand, then there is something wrong with it. (Resists temptation to explain why all laws are wrong, complex or not.)
WINE?
What like http://xkcd.com/417/ ?
Nah, screw MSIE users. I develop personal websites, and unless someone specifically asks me to make it look pretty in IE, I won't. I'll code to standards, and I'll code to make it look nice in Firefox.
I'll also make the point that it may or maynot look nice in IE, but I don't care.
If they really want it to look nice in IE, I make it so. And it costs them.
They know that, I know that.
But, because I code to standards, it "works" in IE (except for the bit where IE doesn't understand XHTML).
When I develop pages, I like to do so in XHTML, simply because it is nicer to develop in for me (someone who initially learnt nasty 3.whatever back in 2000).
/only/ thing I like about IE is the fact that it has that comment stuff
So, because I use PHP, I go and tell everyone that the page I'm serving up is application/xhtml+xml. Whoops, MSIE doesn't understand that... *roles eyes*. So I have to chuck in a bit of code to check for MSIE, and then add a disclaimer at the bottom, "If your user agent has MSIE in it, then this page was served as text/html. Maybe you should stop using MSIE if you are, or change your user agent if you aren't."
Not to mention having to chuck in IE specific CSS (the
which allows a separate style sheet that no other browser sees).
Meh, I'll continue not developing for MSIE, unless I have to, and because I'm using standards compliant code, the site should still be perfectly viewable, even without CSS. If only other people decided not to develop for MSIE, maybe more people would get a better browser...
Actually maybe MSIE 8 will actually mean that I don't have to care that IE even exists? (Sorta how I don't care that Opera exists, because I know that it is relatively standards compliant.)
What about vegetarian lesbian non-terrorists? Damn, looks like they might be Muslim, Hindu, and Christian terrorists.
/religion/, but I also think that it is fucking stupid to think that one single test like that would solve your problem.
Oh well.
Yeah, I support working class attacks on
What if the Muslim person has had special dispensation from their holy leader to eat meat? Or to be allowed to cut their beard? It does happen, and it means your simplistic anti-terrorism measures don't work.
Thanks for trying though.
They can use the injustice system and sue the bastards perhaps?
Or maybe they can accept that email is not an instant communication tool, that sometimes it does take hours for an email to go around the world (if it ever gets there).
It happened in the middle of the night right? How many people were affected?
Not only that, if I have to mourn the customers every time a corporation got hurt, I wouldn't go out smashing windows, or whatever. The "what about the customers" argument is as flawed as the "what about the workers" argument that is used against people who damage property.
I read the article. I'm just pointing out a couple of the lessons for the next person who does this (or anything like this).
I don't give a shit about corporations, but I do give a shit about people getting caught up in the injustice system just because they fucked around with a corporation.
The media don't give a shit about you, don't contact them, and don't talk to them. Wired have posted a photo of one of the people.
Don't connect your "hacking" handle with photos, places, names etc. If the media can connect the dots, so can the cops.
Don't talk. Don't boast. Be wary. And they got the last one down, they do accept that they might get caught.
Yeah, these are just some things to think about when breaking the law, and these lessons should be obvious. But I've seen too many people use the same handle all over the 'net, including places where they post names, photos and places. (I use this name in two places, here and RevLeft, you won't find much information about me from either place.)
Oh yeah, and one final thing. Who gives a fuck if Comcast has a lost money? I don't give a shit about corporations.