What works for me is a combination of the Comfort Keyboard (three detachable sections on ball-and-socket joints) and the 3m Ergonomic Mouse (shaped sort of like a joystick).
With the standard keyboard or common "ergo" models I'll get shooting pains down the back of my hands after a couple of hours, even if I take regular breaks.
Mozilla (recent releases, I'm currently running RC1 of 1.0) can send arbitrary UA strings by using David Illsley's uabar, available at http://uabar.mozdev.org/ . Enjoy:)
I have, in fact, lived in a backwater place, and have tried to explain over the (long distance) phone to older people with poor eyesight and zero technical knowledge how to load a "plug-in", and then had to explain why the 486 was hung because of the "harmless" multimedia it didn't have enough RAM to handle. One click is easy, you say? *sigh*
I have fairly recently been stuck on a painfully slow modem connection, where the only effective way to get ANY information was in text format. Sorry, but I don't have the patience to download your "small" plug-in, regardless of how efficient you claim it is.
Sorry if my RL experience doesn't count as "research" in your books.
You're making a big assumption - that the Flash is designed correctly.
And? Never seen a simple Flash animation use up much CPU unless you're doing complicated computations, which it doesn't sound like he plans to do.
My father went to the local public library to access the Internet, because he could neither afford a computer nor did he have the technical knowledge to configure one. (I live a two hour flight away.) Trust me, he could not view Flash sites with the boat anchor 486's there.
You mean text readers like FlashMX supports,
Um, FlashMX isn't free. Granted, there's a free* (*gotta love those asterisks) trial version, but you can't assume that a non-free app is going to be on the client side.
Inconsequential if the flash is designed correctly. Since it can play as it's downloading all the end user would have to do is wait a couple of seconds. Considering the use/target audience for this, the animation is something they're coming specifically to see meaning they'd be willing to wait.
Two years ago I lived in a location where I was lucky to get a 19.2 connection on a good day. Sorry, "wait a couple of seconds" is a gross underestimation of the time it takes to load multimedia bloatage.
Besides, why bother with Flash if you can convey the same information in a much more widely usable format? What happened to the KISS principle (Keep It Stupidly Simple)?
Is your target audience on lower-end PCs?
on
Flash and Open Source
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If you're aiming your educational site at:
- students / low-income people using the browser PCs at the local public library (usually an older box donated by someone) - the disabled (the visually impaired often use audio text readers / large fonts) - non-geeks who may not know what a "plug-in" is, where to get it or how to install it - people on a slow connection (DSL / cable modems are not available in many rural neighbourhoods)
then you DO NOT want to use Flash, because you will block out a large part of your target audience.
If you insist on Flash content, have a dual site - Flash and non-Flash - and make sure the main page is accessible to a text-only browser like Lynx, so people using audio readers / slow links can actually read your page.
1. Answer the phone politely. Determine that it's a telemarketer. 2. Say "One moment please." 3. Put the phone down and go about your business for 5-10 minutes. 4. Pick up the phone, say cheerfully "Hello!", (telemarketer reminds you), say cheerfully "Sorry, of course! Just a sec." 5. GOTO 3.
I watched a friend's mother waste someone's time for close to an hour this way...
Proprietary protocols are but one of Microsoft's ways to keep customers nicely handcuffed.
Just as an example, look at the hoops the folks doing the Samba development had to jump through in order to make Samba able to mount Windows shared drives.
I'm a fairly senior engineer, currently in 6 by 9 cube (only managers get offices). I hate cubes - I have a movable screen across my cube opening, and I wear headphones the whole time because of my co-workers on the phone, the meeting rooms nearby, people walking up and down the hallway... Other people might not mind the noise as much, but I get 2-3 times as much work done at home where I can actually concentrate.
If you're doing a lot of group work, a truly open office space would probably be great, but for coding, writing white papers, etc., you need to be able to concentrate imho.
The place where I bought my vacuum (specialty vacuum store, small business) has a bunch of accessories, including extra-small brushes etc. that are great for keyboards, getting dust bunnies out from between the motherboard and the back of the case, etc.
On a similar note, I've been looking for an ergo mouse myself. Trouble is, I want one I can use with my left hand, which nixes every one I've seen out there. Sigh.
Any suggestions? ================================== neophase
The important question now is: how come it's so small? What features doesn't it have that Mozilla does have?
My copy is still downloading, but I've been (very happily) running the Win32 version for some time. Opera's reduced size is partly because it comes with JavaScript but not Java (you need the Sun package), and *basic* mail and news clients.
I wonder if it supports the button sets like the Win32 version... ================================== neophase
In the decision, the findings for the twelve claims were:
Impairing computer facilities in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(5); First Claim: $147,613.50
Exceeding authorized access in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(5)(c); Second Claim: $147,613.50. This recommended award is in the alternative to the amount recomended on AOL's first claim.
Violation of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. 1125(a) (false designation of origin); Third Claim: $413,645.71. $129,673.50 of this sum is in the alternative to the amounts recommended on AOL's first and second claims; the balance ($283,972.21) is in addition to the amounts recommended on AOL's first and second claims.
Violation of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. 1125(c)(1) (dilution of interest in a famous mark); Fourth Claim: No damages recommended.
Conversion or trespass to chattel under New York and Virginia common law; Fifth Claim: $200,000. This amount is in addition to the amount recomended on the first, second and third claims.
Violation of the Virginia Computer Crimes Act, Va. Code Ann. 18.2-152.3; Sixth Claim: $147,613.50. This recomended award is in the alternative to the amount recomended on AOL's first, second, third and fifth claims.
Common law misappropriation of name and identity; Seventh Claim: No damages recommended.
Violation of the New York General Business Law, 130, 349 and 350; Eighth Claim: No damages recommended.
Common law fraud under Virginia law; Ninth Claim: No damages recommended.
Unjust enrichment under Virginia law; Tenth Claim: $129,673.50. This recomended award is in the alternative to the amount recomended on AOL's first, second, third, fifth and sixth claims.
Common law nuisance under Virginia law; and Eleventh Claim: No damages recommended.
Violation of the Washington State Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Act. Twelfth Claim: No damages recommended.
Why, oh why, do so many companies seem to feel a need to create their very own *special* encryption mechanisms when there are proven algorithms out there? ================================== neophase
Pre-alpha: Partial features. Still under serious development.
Alpha: All major features work most of the time. May be missing some chunks, and/or may not work under some circumstances. May not cooperate nicely with other programs. Beware memory leaks, non-standard configurations, etc.
Beta: All major and most minor features work. Some bugs under particular configurations. Some "we don't know why" bugs still being ironed out. Developers are looking for configurations / situations where stuff blows up.
Release: All features work, except perhaps in uncommon configurations. Bugs (hopefully) are minor.
The article seemed to imply that *all* e-commerce / Internet references must be removed from the store's promotional material. Legally, they might be able to control signage within the mall, but how can the mall dictate printed newspaper ads? printed stuff on bags? catalogues? Time to re-read the tenant's agreement, I guess. ================================== neophase
Sounds TERRORIST like a MOSSAD cool idea FBI, but I doubt MILITIA that the Men In Black AK47 really give a hoot REVOLUTION about people e-mailing jokes WACO to co-workers BOMB...
Here it is folks - please pardon the ugly perl code:-)
First, the answers:
ISBN: 0380973464, remaining contest text 242 335 51 377 183 168 this is (a truly strange deception.
ISBN: 0380973464, remaining contest text 380 330 115 289 273 189 56 funky protagonists are destined to want appendices)
ISBN: 0684864223, remaining contest text 87 434 10 468 151 345 150 494 376 415 426 he had great Marks for the easiest execution. of enemy) explosions
ISBN: 0385495315, remaining contest text 1 193 121 29 109 66 28 160 106 People need the bestselling conflict, in the information age
ISBN: 0471117099, remaining contest text 24 21 25 12 53 22 56 8 the suitable specialist offers steps for secure Source
------------ Now, the code:
------------ #!/usr/local/bin/perl # Cynthia Brown 19 Oct 1999
# Contest strings saved to file contest.txt $contest = "contest.txt"; open (CONTEST, $contest) || die $contest; @contest = ; close CONTEST; # These are Amazon's pages of the various contest prize books saved to disk @reviews = ("applied.txt", "between.txt", "codebook.txt", "cryptonomicon.txt");
foreach $line (@contest) { @line = split ('-', $line); $isbn = shift (@line) . shift (@line) . shift (@line) . shift (@line); printf ("\n\nISBN: $isbn, remaining contest text @line"); foreach $book (@reviews) { system ("grep \'ISBN: $isbn\' $book >/dev/null\n"); if ($? == 0) { open (BOOK, $book) || die $book; @book = ; close BOOK; # Move down to the start of the reviews while (@book[0] ne " Reviews\n") { shift (@book); } shift (@book); shift (@book); printf ("@book[0]\n"); # Lose trailing \n and merge into 1 big honking string chop (@book); $foo = ""; while (scalar (@book) > 0) { $foo.= shift (@book); } # Lose multiple spaces, etc. $foo =~ s/--*//g; $foo =~ s/__*//g; $foo =~ s/\///g; $foo =~ s/,/,/g; $foo =~ s/ *//g; $foo = substr ($foo, 1, length($foo)-1); # printf ("$foo\n"); # Get the words based on the offsets @foo = split ('\s', $foo); foreach $offset (@line) { $bar = @foo[$offset - 1]; printf ("$bar "); } printf ("\n\n"); } } }
... it's unlikely that this will amount to anything significant, for several reasons:
First, this sounds suspiciously like Esperanto, the supposedly "neutral and universal" language that everyone was supposed to learn. Real languages evolve; an artificial language is static and has to be forcibly "upgraded" to include new concepts.
As anyone who has read the output of automated "translators" can attest, the results are far from stellar, unless the text is VERY simple structurally and semantically. Colloquialisms and figures of speech are particularly difficult.
Any translation introduces a certain amount of error. Languages express things differently, and secondary meanings are often lost in the translations. This system is adding an extra layer of potential errors to the whole mess.
The text would have to be completely free from grammatical and spelling errors for an automated program to stand a chance. This is more of a problem than it first sounds, since the grammar and spelling checkers that I've seen appear to have trouble differentiating between similar words with very different meanings. I don't want to start a spelling / grammar flame war, but much of the stuff on the web is abysmal.
While this system would reduce the number of translators significantly, with the UN's record of fast action (NOT!) and bureaucracy I think this is headed down to the Great Bit Bucket. I'd be much more interested in what some of the major research centres in computational linguistics and language recognition are up to. (Links, anyone?) ================================== neophase
This "utility" does nothing but lend a false sense of security to the end-user, while generating money for the vendor. Here are some additional problems, which I haven't seen in the comments (yet):
The PrintScreen button. If you're trying to destroy all evidence that you e-mailed someone about The Bomb (TM), how can you guarantee that a printed copy doesn't exist? Others have mentioned the cut-and-paste-into-Notepad scenario, not to mention swap files, disk data recovery, etc. etc.
Key server availability issues. If you need to obtain the key over the net each time you access the message, you need to be on-line *AND* the key server must be up.
Sniffer-type attacks. What's to prevent me from recording all transactions by my co-worker, including the key retrievals? Is this key transmitted in cleartext? Is it "encrypted" by XORing it with some arbitrary word like "secret"?
General crypto cluefulness. Anyone who reads sci.crypt or coderpunks can expound upon the worthlessness of proprietary encryption algorithms.
This proposed "system" looks like it's plagued with the same flaws as many other before it. It'll deceive only those too clueless to know better.
Canada has a similar policy, available at the CA domain registrar. According to this policy, registrations are given names according to their scope. National organizations can try to register "foo.ca", provincial ones can shoot for "bar.province.ca", and local ones can try for "foobar.town.province.ca". Individuals are assigned a "local" scope and can register "name.city.province.ca".
This is not 100% cast in stone; a friend registered a national-level domain by getting someone in another province to go in on the application. However, sorting individuals by location makes collisions like the ones in the article less likely to happen. The ".ind" TLD for individuals is a neat idea, but we'd still have a race condition between those of us with common names:-) ================================== neophase
Slashdot Mirror
I agree 100% that it all depends on the person.
:-)
What works for me is a combination of the Comfort Keyboard (three detachable sections on ball-and-socket joints) and the 3m Ergonomic Mouse (shaped sort of like a joystick).
With the standard keyboard or common "ergo" models I'll get shooting pains down the back of my hands after a couple of hours, even if I take regular breaks.
And yes, the idea of life as a waiter sucks
Mozilla (recent releases, I'm currently running RC1 of 1.0) can send arbitrary UA strings by using David Illsley's uabar, available at http://uabar.mozdev.org/ . Enjoy :)
*sigh*
I have, in fact, lived in a backwater place, and have tried to explain over the (long distance) phone to older people with poor eyesight and zero technical knowledge how to load a "plug-in", and then had to explain why the 486 was hung because of the "harmless" multimedia it didn't have enough RAM to handle. One click is easy, you say? *sigh*
I have fairly recently been stuck on a painfully slow modem connection, where the only effective way to get ANY information was in text format. Sorry, but I don't have the patience to download your "small" plug-in, regardless of how efficient you claim it is.
Sorry if my RL experience doesn't count as "research" in your books.
You're making a big assumption - that the Flash is designed correctly.
And? Never seen a simple Flash animation use up much CPU unless you're doing complicated computations, which it doesn't sound like he plans to do.
My father went to the local public library to access the Internet, because he could neither afford a computer nor did he have the technical knowledge to configure one. (I live a two hour flight away.) Trust me, he could not view Flash sites with the boat anchor 486's there.
You mean text readers like FlashMX supports,
Um, FlashMX isn't free. Granted, there's a free* (*gotta love those asterisks) trial version, but you can't assume that a non-free app is going to be on the client side.
Inconsequential if the flash is designed correctly. Since it can play as it's downloading all the end user would have to do is wait a couple of seconds. Considering the use/target audience for this, the animation is something they're coming specifically to see meaning they'd be willing to wait.
Two years ago I lived in a location where I was lucky to get a 19.2 connection on a good day. Sorry, "wait a couple of seconds" is a gross underestimation of the time it takes to load multimedia bloatage.
Besides, why bother with Flash if you can convey the same information in a much more widely usable format? What happened to the KISS principle (Keep It Stupidly Simple)?
If you're aiming your educational site at:
- students / low-income people using the browser PCs at the local public library (usually an older box donated by someone)
- the disabled (the visually impaired often use audio text readers / large fonts)
- non-geeks who may not know what a "plug-in" is, where to get it or how to install it
- people on a slow connection (DSL / cable modems are not available in many rural neighbourhoods)
then you DO NOT want to use Flash, because you will block out a large part of your target audience.
If you insist on Flash content, have a dual site - Flash and non-Flash - and make sure the main page is accessible to a text-only browser like Lynx, so people using audio readers / slow links can actually read your page.
1. Answer the phone politely. Determine that it's a telemarketer.
2. Say "One moment please."
3. Put the phone down and go about your business for 5-10 minutes.
4. Pick up the phone, say cheerfully "Hello!", (telemarketer reminds you), say cheerfully "Sorry, of course! Just a sec."
5. GOTO 3.
I watched a friend's mother waste someone's time for close to an hour this way...
Proprietary protocols are but one of Microsoft's ways to keep customers nicely handcuffed.
Just as an example, look at the hoops the folks doing the Samba development had to jump through in order to make Samba able to mount Windows shared drives.
I'm a fairly senior engineer, currently in 6 by 9 cube (only managers get offices). I hate cubes - I have a movable screen across my cube opening, and I wear headphones the whole time because of my co-workers on the phone, the meeting rooms nearby, people walking up and down the hallway... Other people might not mind the noise as much, but I get 2-3 times as much work done at home where I can actually concentrate.
If you're doing a lot of group work, a truly open office space would probably be great, but for coding, writing white papers, etc., you need to be able to concentrate imho.
The place where I bought my vacuum (specialty vacuum store, small business) has a bunch of accessories, including extra-small brushes etc. that are great for keyboards, getting dust bunnies out from between the motherboard and the back of the case, etc.
Any suggestions?
neophase
==================================
My copy is still downloading, but I've been (very happily) running the Win32 version for some time. Opera's reduced size is partly because it comes with JavaScript but not Java (you need the Sun package), and *basic* mail and news clients.
I wonder if it supports the button sets like the Win32 version...
==================================
neophase
First Claim: $147,613.50
Second Claim: $147,613.50. This recommended award is in the alternative to the amount recomended on AOL's first claim.
Third Claim: $413,645.71. $129,673.50 of this sum is in the alternative to the amounts recommended on AOL's first and second claims; the balance ($283,972.21) is in addition to the amounts recommended on AOL's first and second claims.
Fourth Claim: No damages recommended.
Fifth Claim: $200,000. This amount is in addition to the amount recomended on the first, second and third claims.
Sixth Claim: $147,613.50. This recomended award is in the alternative to the amount recomended on AOL's first, second, third and fifth claims.
Seventh Claim: No damages recommended.
Eighth Claim: No damages recommended.
Ninth Claim: No damages recommended.
Tenth Claim: $129,673.50. This recomended award is in the alternative to the amount recomended on AOL's first, second, third, fifth and sixth claims.
Eleventh Claim: No damages recommended.
Twelfth Claim: No damages recommended.
==================================
neophase
Why, oh why, do so many companies seem to feel a need to create their very own *special* encryption mechanisms when there are proven algorithms out there?
==================================
neophase
ISBN: 1573980137
Price: $29.95
Ships: usually 2-3 days
ISBN: 1573980137
I think I'll make a suggestion to the Christmas elf :-)
==================================
neophase
- Pre-alpha: Partial features. Still under serious development.
- Alpha: All major features work most of the time. May be missing some chunks, and/or may not work under some circumstances. May not cooperate nicely with other programs. Beware memory leaks, non-standard configurations, etc.
- Beta: All major and most minor features work. Some bugs under particular configurations. Some "we don't know why" bugs still being ironed out. Developers are looking for configurations / situations where stuff blows up.
- Release: All features work, except perhaps in uncommon configurations. Bugs (hopefully) are minor.
This, of course, is in an ideal world==================================
neophase
Kudos to all the folks who've been putting in the hours :-)
==================================
neophase
The article seemed to imply that *all* e-commerce / Internet references must be removed from the store's promotional material. Legally, they might be able to control signage within the mall, but how can the mall dictate printed newspaper ads? printed stuff on bags? catalogues? Time to re-read the tenant's agreement, I guess.
==================================
neophase
Sincerely POSSE,
==================================
neophase
Here it is folks - please pardon the ugly perl code :-)
.= shift (@book); /g; /g; /g; ,/,/g; /g;
First, the answers:
ISBN: 0380973464, remaining contest text 242 335 51 377 183 168
this is (a truly strange deception.
ISBN: 0380973464, remaining contest text 380 330 115 289 273 189 56
funky protagonists are destined to want appendices)
ISBN: 0684864223, remaining contest text 87 434 10 468 151 345 150 494 376 415 426
he had great Marks for the easiest execution. of enemy) explosions
ISBN: 0385495315, remaining contest text 1 193 121 29 109 66 28 160 106
People need the bestselling conflict, in the information age
ISBN: 0471117099, remaining contest text 24 21 25 12 53 22 56 8
the suitable specialist offers steps for secure Source
------------
Now, the code:
------------
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
# Cynthia Brown 19 Oct 1999
# Contest strings saved to file contest.txt
$contest = "contest.txt";
open (CONTEST, $contest) || die $contest;
@contest = ;
close CONTEST;
# These are Amazon's pages of the various contest prize books saved to disk
@reviews = ("applied.txt", "between.txt", "codebook.txt", "cryptonomicon.txt");
foreach $line (@contest) {
@line = split ('-', $line);
$isbn = shift (@line) . shift (@line) . shift (@line) . shift (@line);
printf ("\n\nISBN: $isbn, remaining contest text @line");
foreach $book (@reviews) {
system ("grep \'ISBN: $isbn\' $book >/dev/null\n");
if ($? == 0) {
open (BOOK, $book) || die $book;
@book = ;
close BOOK;
# Move down to the start of the reviews
while (@book[0] ne " Reviews\n") {
shift (@book);
}
shift (@book); shift (@book);
printf ("@book[0]\n");
# Lose trailing \n and merge into 1 big honking string
chop (@book);
$foo = "";
while (scalar (@book) > 0) {
$foo
}
# Lose multiple spaces, etc.
$foo =~ s/--*/
$foo =~ s/__*/
$foo =~ s/\//
$foo =~ s/
$foo =~ s/ */
$foo = substr ($foo, 1, length($foo)-1);
# printf ("$foo\n");
# Get the words based on the offsets
@foo = split ('\s', $foo);
foreach $offset (@line) {
$bar = @foo[$offset - 1];
printf ("$bar ");
}
printf ("\n\n");
}
}
}
==================================
neophase
==================================
neophase
While this system would reduce the number of translators significantly, with the UN's record of fast action (NOT!) and bureaucracy I think this is headed down to the Great Bit Bucket. I'd be much more interested in what some of the major research centres in computational linguistics and language recognition are up to. (Links, anyone?)
==================================
neophase
- The PrintScreen button. If you're trying to destroy all evidence that you e-mailed someone about The Bomb (TM), how can you guarantee that a printed copy doesn't exist? Others have mentioned the cut-and-paste-into-Notepad scenario, not to mention swap files, disk data recovery, etc. etc.
- Key server availability issues. If you need to obtain the key over the net each time you access the message, you need to be on-line *AND* the key server must be up.
- Sniffer-type attacks. What's to prevent me from recording all transactions by my co-worker, including the key retrievals? Is this key transmitted in cleartext? Is it "encrypted" by XORing it with some arbitrary word like "secret"?
- General crypto cluefulness. Anyone who reads sci.crypt or coderpunks can expound upon the worthlessness of proprietary encryption algorithms.
This proposed "system" looks like it's plagued with the same flaws as many other before it. It'll deceive only those too clueless to know better.==================================
neophase
This is not 100% cast in stone; a friend registered a national-level domain by getting someone in another province to go in on the application. However, sorting individuals by location makes collisions like the ones in the article less likely to happen. The ".ind" TLD for individuals is a neat idea, but we'd still have a race condition between those of us with common names :-)
==================================
neophase
==================================
neophase
- "The Linux SWAP file is limited to 128 MB RAM."
- "the [Linux] system must check the integrity of the file system during system restart"
- "How easy is it to find skilled development and support people for Linux?"
It's suppertime. Enough of this junk before I lose my appetite.*blink*
I thought this was a good thing.
No comment necessary.
==================================
neophase