You do know you can access the HTML Source from the View menu in both Firefox and IE (also Page command bar button on IE7), right? I mean, I commend you for finding this, but really wasn't it just a *bit* of an extreme measure to go wget-ing all that?
Of course, this just makes the whole thing much more ironic... you were using a third party tool, the blogger used a workaround for a poorly conceived script (which some are calling a "hack" for reasons completely unknown to me), when all that was neccessary was a simple menu option, a trivial amount of HTML reading ability, and enough sense to look inside an iframe (in this specific case, that's where the embed object is) by copy-pasting its URL into the address bar before repeating parts one and two.
There's a difference between interpreting what somebody else is serving in your own way, and actively launching an attack on somebody. I'm not entirely sure why the -f option is even there (I needed to read the manpage to find out what it does) but it can't really be compared to electing not to be put off by a script stating that right clicks are disabled. I see the reason behind your response though; I wasn't terribly clear.
I didn't mean to imply that just because software has a feature it's ok to use it, but rather that whatever fool wrote that site apparently thought that A) everybody who wanted to view page properties (or source even?) would do it via right-click, and B) that that little script was even going to stop them. My intent was to point out that it is absurd to complain about somebody reading and posting information which is publicly available from your web server just because they had to use a completely normal browser feature to do it. Unlike using ping flood to DoS attack somebody (which is not it's intended use, though I'm still not sure what is), the blogger was simply using their web server for its intended purpose: transmitting information including the URL of the stream to anybody who wants it.
Side note: I've since learned that the complaint really doesn't seem to be about the workaround, but rather about posting the direct links. Nearly as dumb a complaint, but once again the summary would have you think this was a totally different topic. See previous post about calling this a "hack".
They at least hid the actual embed in an iframe, so you can't just see the stream URL by selecting View Source (which doesn't need right-click at all!). Of course, the iframe URL is in the page source, so you can navigate to that page DIRECTLY and voila! there is your player (without any ads) and, of course, you can view source that page and see the embedded player's URL (again, without right-click, which is still disabled in IE). The URL for the player (128kbps) is http://www.atlantabluesky.com/jazz/DISPLAYS.html.
Ironically, the whole reason for the blogger posting this workaround and the URL streams in the first place is because he wasn't able to listen to them anymore in Linux/BSD, or in any browser except IE. I've confirmed that EVEN WITH the Windows Media Player extension for Firefox installed, the stream can't be played (haven't booted into Linux to try that, I'll take his word for it though). Ironically however, the right-click capture doesn't even work in Firefox, so you can right-click on the (non-connecting) player, select properties, and view the stream URL to your heart's content (and yes, this is with the ability for javascript to catch right-click enabled... their scripting is just that bad, I guess).
bypassing JavaScript functions that try to disable a mouse's right-click context menu functionality
You mean opening Firefox's options, going to Content tab, clicking on Advanced for Javascript, an un-checking the third option (Allow scripts to: Disable or replace context menus)? There's something analogous in Konqueror, and probably lots of other browsers. I don't think IE has the specific feature but it's still damn easy to turn off scripting overall. The only reason people wouldn't do this is if they didn't know that it was a script trapping the right-click, and if people went through and checked all their settings whenever they got a new browser (or many other programs) they would have found the option anyway. Calling that a "hack" is almost worse than calling some script kiddie who breaks into an improperly secured machine a "hacker". I know the general public can't get the terminology right to save their life, but can we at least expect better from Slashdot? PLEASE?!?
Hell, this isn't even an extension like NoScript, let alone going into about:config or any such. Stuff of this nature is built right into the browser options, and anybody who knows about it can, will, and should use it. Suggesting that such knowledge makes makes one a hacker (presumably defined as somebody who hacks) is about as reasonable as trying to suppress the knowledge itself.
As somebody who has both bought and dropped OneCare (bought because I beta tested it and got a good deal on a subscription, dropped because when they wanted to charge me the full rate the next year I said no) I can definitely say the only downside of the service is that you need to call the 800 number - you can't unsubscribe online. Having said that, the service was very prompt, the closest to no-questions-asked that I've ever seen, took almost no time, and while I had already uninstalled the application by that time, if I had wanted to use it again I would have just re-downloaded the 90-day trial copy! Compare that to Symantec (who, nearly a year after cancellation, still occasionally send me emails BEGGING me to come back... WTF? I signed up for a trial account for the exclusive purpose of discovering why their software was fscking up my company's Access/remote SQL Server application; I never subscribed, and I told them in no uncertain terms what I thought of their products).
Actually, Microsoft does stand in the way of ODF adoption
Are you aware that Word 2007 supports ODF? Not out of the box, but it's on the list of supported add-ons (along with exporters for PDF and for Microsoft's XPS format, an alternative to PDF for some situations).
Why would they do this? How about because they want to make MS Office the program *everybody* uses for *all* word processing? ODF isn't that popular yet, but it's gaining exposure. So... add support for it, then add it to the list of official formats you can use. Remove some of the primary advantages of OO.o (support all the same formats, support a couple it doesn't, and still have things like better Accessibility support, and it gets a lot easier to convince governents and companies not to switch).
Admittedly, they could do this without standardization of ODF, but there's no point in fighting it and a bit to be gained from supporting it. There's nothing wrong with the standard; to Microsoft it's just another format you can use their software for.
Don't know why I chose yours out of all the random replies to respond to, maybe because you seemed less fanboyish than most. Here goes...
Aside from security, which really is improved (yes, there have been things like the.ani exploit, but the vast majority of exploits common to previous Windows version don't work anymore or require a substantially stupider user) the bundled functionality is probably the biggest upgrade. Not only the included software, which has been upgraded, but stuff like integrated search, network diagnostics, even weird little stuff like the ability to set volume levels for different programs independently.
Better security is something you can sell some (though not all) users on. They might not understand the details of stuff like ASLR or even that it blocks a large family of common exploits (return-to-libc type stuff) but telling them "if you run this nominally safe program in XP, somebody can take over your computer. If you run it in Vista they can't." is pretty good. Less important but probably more sellable is the improved speed and reduced risk of identity theft from the restrictions on malware. Far, far too many people still don't run with any real antispyware, for example; even if they occasionally run AdAware or something they only do it when they notice a problem. I'm not saying Windows Defender's detection/cleaning engine is the best, but at least it's real time. Having a two-way firewall that asks you for permission when an unreconized program attempts to access the Internet is another good thing. I haven't even mentioned UAC (though I personally consider it superb) because I realize a lot of people will click Allow without thinking, but at least there is SOME protection for those who do think (and it's not too hard to figure out when UAC is likely to prompt you; even if you allow those prompts without reading them, one at an unexpected time will send up warnings in a lot of peoples' minds).
Better included software and capabilities is another thing entirely. This is something people can see, something you can really sell them on. A lot of people still use Outlook Express, for example (don't ask me how they can stand it). Windows Mail combines a similar interface (no learning curve) with insanely better capabilities (particularly the addition of junk filtering and indexed search, and de-integration with Messenger). Windows Calendar is better than Outlook 2003's calendar (for a home user, it doesn't have as much groupware capability) and is dead easy to use. Windows Vista's search feature has something on pretty much every other desktop search out there. It's faster, more convenient, and doesn't require manual installation like Google Desktop, Windows Desktop Search, etc. It is far faster than Beagle on my Linux system, and much more integrated. Spotlight comes closest, but having the search in the Start menu (accessible from the Windows key) is a nice touch, and I prefer the way the Start menu search lays out results. It is also extendable; I don't know about Spotlight but on my Windows system I can search Google, Wikipedia, my music or pictures, or anything else I want to set up by just typing an extra letter or two before the search string. This all thanks to a handy search enchancer called Start++, which is a free download and can do more than I've listed here. It's not included (though it would be awesome if they included such functionality in SP1) but installing it puts Vista's search well ahead of any Spotlight setup I've used. Even little things like SuperFetch (learn which programs users run at given times fo the day and week, and prefetch them so they load instantly) is actually a very nice feature from an end user perspective.
I've got my gripes with Vista, but none of them have to do with it being a minimal upgrade from XP. Most of the things it lacks I get from my Linux installation (dual-boot on the same laptop, openSuse if anybody cares) but a lot of Vista is nice enough I actually use it more than Linux at the moment. Before Vista came out, I'd used Linux pretty exclusively on my home system for months; I can't stand XP anymore.
It's an adopted young, not a biological child (I first read about it ocurring with biological children, but can't remember the exact source) but consider the case of Loulis, a chimpanzee raised by other chimps who had been raised by humans:
While hardly an indication that human language is going to sweep throguh the global ape population, it does suggest that great apes raised by humans or by human-raised members of their own species can and will learn sign language.
Well, they could certainly express the desire via sign language (hell, over a decade ago some apes were using ASL to communicate with humans, including desires). The question is whether they could understand what rights (and responsibilities) mean. Probably at least a few could, though perhaps not well. They aren't likely to be forming million-monkey-marches (sorry, the alliteration was just too good) on th capitol or anything, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve some rights. From some reading I've done, apes that have been raised directly by humans and taught ASL associate more with humans than with other members of their own species... which raises questions about their intelligence, but also suggests that they would, given the chance, want "human" rights.
Sign language certainly counts as a form of speech... and many of the great apes have shown a decent aptitude for it (the fact they can't speak aloud is a problem in their vocal apparatus, not their intelligence). Mothers even teach sign language to their young. One might wonder why they didn't develop their own language (assuming they didn't, which at least some might have) but even so there's certainly a reasonable ability to communicate in language, and as such they should probably have the same rights regarding communication that humans do.
Interesting... IE7 on Vista RC2 shows the undownloaded image placeholder (complete with magnification mouse pointer, clicking which results in truly gigantic image placeholder) and has "Show Picture" in the context menu. Selecting "Show Picture" flickers the placeholder like it's downloading, but won't download it entirely and thros the placeholder back up. I guess it downloads just the header, decides the file is too huge, and kills the download.
While Google certainly has the right to control their own results, they have a moral obligation not to abuse this power. Too many people - both web searchers and site owners - depend on it.
Not to say that I agree with Kinderstart.com's reasoning, but they do have one: Google has become, in effect, the world's online navigation system. Being de-listed from Google (or even demoted; who wades through more than the first few pages of results unless they are looking for something specific?) is the WWW equivalent of being removed (or obscured) from the phone books, maps, "services next right" highway signs, travel guides, and so on. Google search provides most of those options, and, much like the physical world's AAA maps or Lonely Planet guides or so forth, Google is often seen as The Authority on the subject to the point that many alternative sources for such info are virtually unknown or at least unused.
Also as with the real world, location and visibility matter. Facebook.com or MySpace.com might not do as well if Google de-listed them entirely, but could survive because people know the URLs and can exchange them easily. YouTube.com is linked from so many places that Google web searches probably add fairly little to its total hits (and anyhow, people could go to the site and then search internally if they were looking for something). However, unlike in the real world, you could have a 64-character GUID for a URL and effectively no permanent links from other sites (analogous to living in the middle of nowhere down a road with a thousand dead ends and no street signs) and if Google crawls your site people will still come.
Indeed the vast majority of the web functions like this. Aside from a few sites that I visit regularly or have found some reason to write down, I do not remember any URLs off the top of my head. Heck, I couldn't reach half my bookmarked sites without a search engine or a good long time (if then). I could probably reach them if I was allowed to use, for example, Live search (but not Google) but it would take longer since I'm less familiar with the search conventions Live (or Yahoo, or any of the few other engines I know of) use. At that, I've been searching the web since before AltaVista was the engine of choice, since well before Google existed probably. Considering studies that show things like "70% of high school students in the USA cannot refine an overly broad Internet search" do you really think people have a chance of finding a site like KinderStart if it isn't in the first handful of responses ('handful' being a flexible term controlled by the number of nearly identical companies/sites... maybe "first 0.1%" would be better) for searches like "parenting info search engine" (sans quotes)? I don't. (Side note: I constructed that search query as the kind of thing a person familiar with web search but not very good at it might have used. Even so, neither Google not Live turned it up in the first 50 responses, and indeed by page four Google's responses were so wildly off base many people would ahve given up entirely. Live.com did better, but if the user had heard about kinderstart.com, and remembered the description but not the URL, they probably wouldn't have found it. They would have gone elsewhere, taking their valuable site ulitization and advertisement watching with them.)
XBox 360... more than capable of doing everything the iTV does
higher again Tivo Series 3 which is a PVR
Get a computer TV tuner (usually in the $100-$150 range, in my limited experience) and Media Center (which most new computers have, and which I think you need in order to stream to the XBox360 anyhow) and your computer IS your PVR. No monthly subscription, either... and it's a lot easier to upgrade the hard drive. Yes, it's Microsoft stuff, and I believe it may apply DRM to the recorded files so they can't be copied to other computers (no idea what format or protection TiVo uses internally) but you can copy them to PFS-compatible portable devices at least. I suspect there are utilities to remove any DRM that might exist, too. In any case, unless you're looking to upload episodes to other people, rather than just using it the way most people use a TiVo (record TV that you aren't there to watch and/or want to keep for later, skip commercials and rewind while watching, and so forth) it's quite capable. I've had some slight problems with getting the guide data to work correctly at my university, but it's manually editable anyhow (and data from the zip code of the city itself is pretty close).
Baen has a "free library" on their website with a small, frequently changing collection of stuff. However, their hardcover books also come with a CD licensed for free redistribution that can be copied onto hard drives, etc. No DRM whatsoever.
A fellow running a (unrelated) site called TheFifthImperium has put the contents of every single one of these CDs up on his website at http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com. They can either be read online (as downloaded documents or HTML) or you can download the entire CDs. No idea of this site's ability to withstand Slashdotting, but it's well worth visiting. David Weber (of Honor Harrington fame, plus many other fine novels) and Eric Flint (author of this article and a vast number of superb sci-fi or fantasy books) feature heavily on these CDs, but there are books by quite a few BAEN authors included. If your local library has hardcover BAEN books, there's a good chance they'll have the CDs too (though the link above will get you to all the CDs, which is nice as no one CD has all the books they've distributed this way).
Even if reading on a computer doesn't appeal too much, it's worth checking them out just to learn a bit about the authors and their works.
Aside from the fact that the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket is designed for long-range spacecraft rather than satellites (and I think the difference is really only one of size) exactly how is it better/different? The VASIMR may actually be more versatile, and has quite a few advantages over standard ion designs (things like being completely electrodeless and containing its plasma propellent with EM fields so as to avoid corrosion). I'm all for improved rockets, and the general concept of the ion/plasma rocket is a good one, but it sounds like duplication of effort...
Both symlinks and hard links have their place. Your point about moving/renaming/deleting the linked-to file is the whole reason for hard links (aliases). However, hard links have limitations too. The important ones are lack of the ability to link to a directory (probably one in three links I manually create in *nix is to a directory) and lack of ability to link across partitions (in both Linux and Windows I store data on a non-system partition, and I often cross-link)
Incidentally, unless you're referring to the SUA (Unix subsystem) in Vista, Vista certainly doesn't advertise the creation of either link type. SUA hard links behave as expected, but SUA symlinks are not the same as Vista's symlinks (which aren't the same as shortcuts AKA.lnk files, in Vista or earlier Windows versions) and SUA symlinks only function within the SUA.
My family are slowly travelling the world (5+ years so far) and I'm currently visiting them, in Malaysia and Thailand. We don't do hotels (for staying at), but hotels, resorts, and Internet cafes provide our connectivity (usually via WiFi). Despite all the nice services installed (Skype is very popular), I would never use one of the computers here for anything serious... forget online banking; I probably wouldn't even check my email on one.
Even if one assumes that the owner of the establishment doesn't have their own spyware and keyloggers (software or hardware) installed, and some earlier visitor didn't install any (neither of these are great assumptions to make, but most people seem to anyway) I still assume somebody is, in effect, looking over my shoulder recording my keyboard and screen in video. These machines just don't get updated. Even the ones running SP2 will be using IE6 (forget Firefox). They might have Avast! or AVG, and it might even be up to date, but that's the best you can hope for. I'm sure somebody, somewhere uses Spybot S&D or AdAware SE Personal, but I haven't seen it... Of course there's no chance of Defender.
A friend of mine loaded a copy of AdAware and scanned one computer in an Internet cafe, and found eight different spyware or keylogger applications running. The owner of the shop sounded concerned (they're very polite in Thailand) but he did... nothing. Either he didn't care, he put them there himself, or there's nothing he could do.
Indeed, that could explain the issue. Has he been burning CDs/DVDs lately, or had problems doing so? For some reason, burners seem to want to be grounded (don't ask me, I'm not an EE, but this doesn't really make sense to me). My latest 2 laptops, which have DVD burners, are the only two I've ever owned with ground-pin power supplies. I have heard that you should not burn discs when ungrounded (or at least on ungrounded AC) and can personally attest to at least one case that supports this theory: an external burner that would not work correctly (blank CD -> coaster) until we connected it to a grounded system (most of our AC is off inverters and not grounded).
Ah... the only DX9 game I play regularly is EVE, and last I checked (a good while ago) that was firmly on the "doesn't work" list. I should take a look again, though. I actually used EVE for benchmarking (although my info comes from a variety of sources). The DX9 workaround in particular I found while trying to figure out why EVE was blanking the screen for 4 seconds during screen loads (this wasn't a powerful machine, and it was an old beta of Vista, but still didn't seem right... and wasn't.)
Incidentally, you ARE using Wine, right? The commercial variants would actually cost me more than a valid Windows license (the joys of being a CS major).
This is unconfirmed info, so take it with a grain of salt, but I've heard two things about Vista's Direct3D that could cast some light on the slight performance loss.
By default, Vista tries to use DirectX 10 when running a 3D program. DX10 is not backward compatible, so Vista also includes DX9. However, if a game needs DX9, Vista will waste some resources trying DX10 Workaround: set Compatibility Mode - XP. I found that gave me a significant increase (maybe 10% or so) in frame rates, and decreased startup times..
As with, for example, the nVidia proprietary driver for Linux, Vista uses as little kernel-mode driver as possible and runs the real code - the stuff that puts a load on the CPU, not the GPU - in user-mode. (The reason in Linux has to do with keeping the kernel-mode code OSS while still having full proprietary capability, while in Vista the change was made for stability reasons.) This causes a small but noticable (I usually hear 5%-8%) performance loss, as the user-mode code goes through the kernel-mode driver before reaching the hardware. The only workaround for this with current hardware would be using XP (or other non-WDDM) drivers... probably not worth it. However, cards and drivers optimized for DX10 may negate this issue. The idea behind DX10 isn't to do anything DX9 revision C couldn't; the idea is to do it much faster, and to take advantage of WDDM (Windows [Vista] Display Driver Model).
In any rate, I game in Vista, and if my framerates are slightly worse, they are plenty good enough... and well ahead of, for example, Wine (though there's something awesome about playing even a DX8 game like WarCraft 3 in Linux/BSD).
The article isn't too specific, but it tells a bit more than the summary does. One specific note: this is all Windows software. My guess is they are using the stuff from PortableApps.com. Going by the applications listed in the article, that would probably be
Office Suite - OO.o Portable, most likely. There is also AbiWord Portable, but the article mentions an office suite, not just word proccessing.
Internet browser and email are presumably the portable version of Firefox and Thunderbird.
Instant messaging has two options, Gaim Portable and Miranda IM Portable. Never heard of the second before.
Audio/video player - VLC Media Player Portable.
Any idea how much space this software all takes, or how large the drives will be? The operation is said to cost about $3.4M, or under $20/student. Some of that will be administrative costs, too. Nonetheless, I'm impressed it can be done for so little.
(try restarting just the windows manager on Windows - you can't)
Just a guess, but you aren't a Vista user, are you? Using Windows Vista, open Task Manager/Windows Defender, find "dwm.exe" (Description: Desktop Window Manager), kill it. Screen goes blank for a moment, then windows contents re-appear, then borders (if using Aero - if not, then the screen just goes dark and comes back up again). Can be used any time you want to, such as if a window or tooltip has gotten stuck (occasionally happens if a program or thread terminates unexpectedly). Also an easy way to cause the computer to re-attempt Aero, for example if you just installed the neccessary driver.
Side note: dwm.exe runs with user permissions; you don't even need UAC privilege escalation to mess with it.
Let me state right off that I am not, by nature, a Mac user except when assisting friends or doing unofficial tech support or some such. However, I've been very, very impressed by Parallels... but there are still reasons for a genuine multiboot system. In no particular order:
Performance. Whatever you wnat to say about the resources Windows soaks up, OS X (and, for that matter, a modern Linux distro or any other modern system) is going to eat a somewhat significant percentage of your CPU and RAM quietly in the background. If you're running a Windows application (or applications) that REALLY push the limits of what your machine can do, and make full use of both cores (almost anything significant with 'rendering' in the description will qualify, for example) you perhaps don't want to be running the entirity of OS X + Parallels in addition to Windows.
Hardware access. I have no idea if you're a gamer or not, and I have no idea what hardware drivers will work properly from within Parallels, but my guess is that you won't get full video capabilities, may or may not be able to take advantage of cool doohickeys like the hard drive tilt sensor, built-in camera, or other cool hardware. Sure, OS X has it and handles it... but if your Windows app wants it and Parallels doesn't support that level of access, you need to multiboot.
Support. Probably not an issue for most of us, but then, the unsupported version of Boot Camp is free. What I'm referring to, however, is Windows support. I'm sure MS offers support for virtualizing Windows through VirtualPC, and Parallels probably has their own support, but I'm not at all sure that MS will offer to (or be able to) support Windows when it's running on 3rd-party virtualization software hosted by a 3rd-party OS. I realize this last one is mostly speculation, but believe me, when you're in the business world this issue is more important that the other two put together.
There might be some other reasons, but a lot of people will find at least one reason in those three. Note that this doesn't make Parallels a bad buy; you're perfectly right about the advantages of it. However, especially since the new version of Parallels will apparently be able to use the Boot Camp partitions for its hard drive images, having the option to multiboot is not something to toss aside lightly.
I can't speak for the whole article, though I wish he'd cited sources. however, the bit about no unified video drivers was pure bull. I've used Vista on three different machines with different video configurations, and it's quite clear Gutmann should have done some more practical research (playing with systems).
Oldest to newest:
P4 28GHz, 512 MB RAM split at 384MB system/128MB video, ATi Mobility Radeon 9100. No pixel shader 2, so no WDDM. Loaded unified driver for XP using compatibility mode, and it worked fine (for an XP driver). RAM was a performance bottleneck but it ran. Now used primarily for Linux.
Turion64 1.8GHz, 1280MB RAM split at 1152MB system/128MB VRAM, ATi Radeon Xpress 200M. Unified driver from ATI for all their WDDM-compatible Radeon cards loaded perfectly, Aero worked great, really new games suffered low framerates and/or poor video quality but older ones were great, and the system itself ran beautifully.
Brand new Core 2 Duo 1.83GHz, 2048MB system RAM, nVidia GoForce Go 7600 with 256MB dedicated VRAM. Initially nVidia offered no laptop frivers for download, but their laptop (Go series) cards use the exact same drivers, with different INF files. Downloaded the unified WDDM GoForce driver intended for desktops, modified the INF file, and it installed beautifully. Windows Update later announced an updated driver from nVidia that was really the same thing with laptop support now in the official INF. Blazing fast and good enough for the majority of gamers. Includes HDMI port and SPDIF support, but I don't have any HD capability and Vista has never complained or done anything antisocial to the video quality.
So, while it seems Gutmann's article had some truth in it, I'd take it with a huge grain of salt.
Certainly this is too unlikely to be a coincidence, but that doesn't guarantee Yahoo sold the info. Have you considered spyware? I never use Yahoo search (and only occasionally Live search) and I don't know Yahoo's privacy policy, but them selling personally associated search info to a company like Expedia (unless there's some partnership between then that I don't know aout?) seems unlikely. On the other hand, this is exactly the sort of behavior one might see if one's machine has spyware. I'm not saying it would be difficult for Yahoo to provide this info to third parties (especailly if your relative uses Yahoo email) but it's fairly unlikely. I've never heard of anything like that from MS or Google either (and only once about Yahoo) so I'm guessing we don't know the whole story.
Slashdot Mirror
You do know you can access the HTML Source from the View menu in both Firefox and IE (also Page command bar button on IE7), right? I mean, I commend you for finding this, but really wasn't it just a *bit* of an extreme measure to go wget-ing all that?
Of course, this just makes the whole thing much more ironic... you were using a third party tool, the blogger used a workaround for a poorly conceived script (which some are calling a "hack" for reasons completely unknown to me), when all that was neccessary was a simple menu option, a trivial amount of HTML reading ability, and enough sense to look inside an iframe (in this specific case, that's where the embed object is) by copy-pasting its URL into the address bar before repeating parts one and two.
There's a difference between interpreting what somebody else is serving in your own way, and actively launching an attack on somebody. I'm not entirely sure why the -f option is even there (I needed to read the manpage to find out what it does) but it can't really be compared to electing not to be put off by a script stating that right clicks are disabled. I see the reason behind your response though; I wasn't terribly clear.
I didn't mean to imply that just because software has a feature it's ok to use it, but rather that whatever fool wrote that site apparently thought that A) everybody who wanted to view page properties (or source even?) would do it via right-click, and B) that that little script was even going to stop them. My intent was to point out that it is absurd to complain about somebody reading and posting information which is publicly available from your web server just because they had to use a completely normal browser feature to do it. Unlike using ping flood to DoS attack somebody (which is not it's intended use, though I'm still not sure what is), the blogger was simply using their web server for its intended purpose: transmitting information including the URL of the stream to anybody who wants it.
Side note: I've since learned that the complaint really doesn't seem to be about the workaround, but rather about posting the direct links. Nearly as dumb a complaint, but once again the summary would have you think this was a totally different topic. See previous post about calling this a "hack".
They at least hid the actual embed in an iframe, so you can't just see the stream URL by selecting View Source (which doesn't need right-click at all!). Of course, the iframe URL is in the page source, so you can navigate to that page DIRECTLY and voila! there is your player (without any ads) and, of course, you can view source that page and see the embedded player's URL (again, without right-click, which is still disabled in IE). The URL for the player (128kbps) is http://www.atlantabluesky.com/jazz/DISPLAYS.html.
Ironically, the whole reason for the blogger posting this workaround and the URL streams in the first place is because he wasn't able to listen to them anymore in Linux/BSD, or in any browser except IE. I've confirmed that EVEN WITH the Windows Media Player extension for Firefox installed, the stream can't be played (haven't booted into Linux to try that, I'll take his word for it though). Ironically however, the right-click capture doesn't even work in Firefox, so you can right-click on the (non-connecting) player, select properties, and view the stream URL to your heart's content (and yes, this is with the ability for javascript to catch right-click enabled... their scripting is just that bad, I guess).
You mean opening Firefox's options, going to Content tab, clicking on Advanced for Javascript, an un-checking the third option (Allow scripts to: Disable or replace context menus)? There's something analogous in Konqueror, and probably lots of other browsers. I don't think IE has the specific feature but it's still damn easy to turn off scripting overall. The only reason people wouldn't do this is if they didn't know that it was a script trapping the right-click, and if people went through and checked all their settings whenever they got a new browser (or many other programs) they would have found the option anyway. Calling that a "hack" is almost worse than calling some script kiddie who breaks into an improperly secured machine a "hacker". I know the general public can't get the terminology right to save their life, but can we at least expect better from Slashdot? PLEASE?!?
Hell, this isn't even an extension like NoScript, let alone going into about:config or any such. Stuff of this nature is built right into the browser options, and anybody who knows about it can, will, and should use it. Suggesting that such knowledge makes makes one a hacker (presumably defined as somebody who hacks) is about as reasonable as trying to suppress the knowledge itself.
As somebody who has both bought and dropped OneCare (bought because I beta tested it and got a good deal on a subscription, dropped because when they wanted to charge me the full rate the next year I said no) I can definitely say the only downside of the service is that you need to call the 800 number - you can't unsubscribe online. Having said that, the service was very prompt, the closest to no-questions-asked that I've ever seen, took almost no time, and while I had already uninstalled the application by that time, if I had wanted to use it again I would have just re-downloaded the 90-day trial copy! Compare that to Symantec (who, nearly a year after cancellation, still occasionally send me emails BEGGING me to come back... WTF? I signed up for a trial account for the exclusive purpose of discovering why their software was fscking up my company's Access/remote SQL Server application; I never subscribed, and I told them in no uncertain terms what I thought of their products).
Why would they do this? How about because they want to make MS Office the program *everybody* uses for *all* word processing? ODF isn't that popular yet, but it's gaining exposure. So... add support for it, then add it to the list of official formats you can use. Remove some of the primary advantages of OO.o (support all the same formats, support a couple it doesn't, and still have things like better Accessibility support, and it gets a lot easier to convince governents and companies not to switch).
Admittedly, they could do this without standardization of ODF, but there's no point in fighting it and a bit to be gained from supporting it. There's nothing wrong with the standard; to Microsoft it's just another format you can use their software for.
Don't know why I chose yours out of all the random replies to respond to, maybe because you seemed less fanboyish than most. Here goes...
.ani exploit, but the vast majority of exploits common to previous Windows version don't work anymore or require a substantially stupider user) the bundled functionality is probably the biggest upgrade. Not only the included software, which has been upgraded, but stuff like integrated search, network diagnostics, even weird little stuff like the ability to set volume levels for different programs independently.
Aside from security, which really is improved (yes, there have been things like the
Better security is something you can sell some (though not all) users on. They might not understand the details of stuff like ASLR or even that it blocks a large family of common exploits (return-to-libc type stuff) but telling them "if you run this nominally safe program in XP, somebody can take over your computer. If you run it in Vista they can't." is pretty good. Less important but probably more sellable is the improved speed and reduced risk of identity theft from the restrictions on malware. Far, far too many people still don't run with any real antispyware, for example; even if they occasionally run AdAware or something they only do it when they notice a problem. I'm not saying Windows Defender's detection/cleaning engine is the best, but at least it's real time. Having a two-way firewall that asks you for permission when an unreconized program attempts to access the Internet is another good thing. I haven't even mentioned UAC (though I personally consider it superb) because I realize a lot of people will click Allow without thinking, but at least there is SOME protection for those who do think (and it's not too hard to figure out when UAC is likely to prompt you; even if you allow those prompts without reading them, one at an unexpected time will send up warnings in a lot of peoples' minds).
Better included software and capabilities is another thing entirely. This is something people can see, something you can really sell them on. A lot of people still use Outlook Express, for example (don't ask me how they can stand it). Windows Mail combines a similar interface (no learning curve) with insanely better capabilities (particularly the addition of junk filtering and indexed search, and de-integration with Messenger). Windows Calendar is better than Outlook 2003's calendar (for a home user, it doesn't have as much groupware capability) and is dead easy to use. Windows Vista's search feature has something on pretty much every other desktop search out there. It's faster, more convenient, and doesn't require manual installation like Google Desktop, Windows Desktop Search, etc. It is far faster than Beagle on my Linux system, and much more integrated. Spotlight comes closest, but having the search in the Start menu (accessible from the Windows key) is a nice touch, and I prefer the way the Start menu search lays out results. It is also extendable; I don't know about Spotlight but on my Windows system I can search Google, Wikipedia, my music or pictures, or anything else I want to set up by just typing an extra letter or two before the search string. This all thanks to a handy search enchancer called Start++, which is a free download and can do more than I've listed here. It's not included (though it would be awesome if they included such functionality in SP1) but installing it puts Vista's search well ahead of any Spotlight setup I've used. Even little things like SuperFetch (learn which programs users run at given times fo the day and week, and prefetch them so they load instantly) is actually a very nice feature from an end user perspective.
I've got my gripes with Vista, but none of them have to do with it being a minimal upgrade from XP. Most of the things it lacks I get from my Linux installation (dual-boot on the same laptop, openSuse if anybody cares) but a lot of Vista is nice enough I actually use it more than Linux at the moment. Before Vista came out, I'd used Linux pretty exclusively on my home system for months; I can't stand XP anymore.
It's an adopted young, not a biological child (I first read about it ocurring with biological children, but can't remember the exact source) but consider the case of Loulis, a chimpanzee raised by other chimps who had been raised by humans:
3 8294
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loulis
I was led there by this page on Google Answers:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=7
While hardly an indication that human language is going to sweep throguh the global ape population, it does suggest that great apes raised by humans or by human-raised members of their own species can and will learn sign language.
Well, they could certainly express the desire via sign language (hell, over a decade ago some apes were using ASL to communicate with humans, including desires). The question is whether they could understand what rights (and responsibilities) mean. Probably at least a few could, though perhaps not well. They aren't likely to be forming million-monkey-marches (sorry, the alliteration was just too good) on th capitol or anything, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve some rights. From some reading I've done, apes that have been raised directly by humans and taught ASL associate more with humans than with other members of their own species... which raises questions about their intelligence, but also suggests that they would, given the chance, want "human" rights.
Sign language certainly counts as a form of speech... and many of the great apes have shown a decent aptitude for it (the fact they can't speak aloud is a problem in their vocal apparatus, not their intelligence). Mothers even teach sign language to their young. One might wonder why they didn't develop their own language (assuming they didn't, which at least some might have) but even so there's certainly a reasonable ability to communicate in language, and as such they should probably have the same rights regarding communication that humans do.
Interesting... IE7 on Vista RC2 shows the undownloaded image placeholder (complete with magnification mouse pointer, clicking which results in truly gigantic image placeholder) and has "Show Picture" in the context menu. Selecting "Show Picture" flickers the placeholder like it's downloading, but won't download it entirely and thros the placeholder back up. I guess it downloads just the header, decides the file is too huge, and kills the download.
While Google certainly has the right to control their own results, they have a moral obligation not to abuse this power. Too many people - both web searchers and site owners - depend on it.
Not to say that I agree with Kinderstart.com's reasoning, but they do have one: Google has become, in effect, the world's online navigation system. Being de-listed from Google (or even demoted; who wades through more than the first few pages of results unless they are looking for something specific?) is the WWW equivalent of being removed (or obscured) from the phone books, maps, "services next right" highway signs, travel guides, and so on. Google search provides most of those options, and, much like the physical world's AAA maps or Lonely Planet guides or so forth, Google is often seen as The Authority on the subject to the point that many alternative sources for such info are virtually unknown or at least unused.
Also as with the real world, location and visibility matter. Facebook.com or MySpace.com might not do as well if Google de-listed them entirely, but could survive because people know the URLs and can exchange them easily. YouTube.com is linked from so many places that Google web searches probably add fairly little to its total hits (and anyhow, people could go to the site and then search internally if they were looking for something). However, unlike in the real world, you could have a 64-character GUID for a URL and effectively no permanent links from other sites (analogous to living in the middle of nowhere down a road with a thousand dead ends and no street signs) and if Google crawls your site people will still come.
Indeed the vast majority of the web functions like this. Aside from a few sites that I visit regularly or have found some reason to write down, I do not remember any URLs off the top of my head. Heck, I couldn't reach half my bookmarked sites without a search engine or a good long time (if then). I could probably reach them if I was allowed to use, for example, Live search (but not Google) but it would take longer since I'm less familiar with the search conventions Live (or Yahoo, or any of the few other engines I know of) use. At that, I've been searching the web since before AltaVista was the engine of choice, since well before Google existed probably. Considering studies that show things like "70% of high school students in the USA cannot refine an overly broad Internet search" do you really think people have a chance of finding a site like KinderStart if it isn't in the first handful of responses ('handful' being a flexible term controlled by the number of nearly identical companies/sites... maybe "first 0.1%" would be better) for searches like "parenting info search engine" (sans quotes)? I don't. (Side note: I constructed that search query as the kind of thing a person familiar with web search but not very good at it might have used. Even so, neither Google not Live turned it up in the first 50 responses, and indeed by page four Google's responses were so wildly off base many people would ahve given up entirely. Live.com did better, but if the user had heard about kinderstart.com, and remembered the description but not the URL, they probably wouldn't have found it. They would have gone elsewhere, taking their valuable site ulitization and advertisement watching with them.)
Get a computer TV tuner (usually in the $100-$150 range, in my limited experience) and Media Center (which most new computers have, and which I think you need in order to stream to the XBox360 anyhow) and your computer IS your PVR. No monthly subscription, either... and it's a lot easier to upgrade the hard drive. Yes, it's Microsoft stuff, and I believe it may apply DRM to the recorded files so they can't be copied to other computers (no idea what format or protection TiVo uses internally) but you can copy them to PFS-compatible portable devices at least. I suspect there are utilities to remove any DRM that might exist, too. In any case, unless you're looking to upload episodes to other people, rather than just using it the way most people use a TiVo (record TV that you aren't there to watch and/or want to keep for later, skip commercials and rewind while watching, and so forth) it's quite capable. I've had some slight problems with getting the guide data to work correctly at my university, but it's manually editable anyhow (and data from the zip code of the city itself is pretty close).
A bit more details...
Baen has a "free library" on their website with a small, frequently changing collection of stuff. However, their hardcover books also come with a CD licensed for free redistribution that can be copied onto hard drives, etc. No DRM whatsoever.
A fellow running a (unrelated) site called TheFifthImperium has put the contents of every single one of these CDs up on his website at http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com. They can either be read online (as downloaded documents or HTML) or you can download the entire CDs. No idea of this site's ability to withstand Slashdotting, but it's well worth visiting. David Weber (of Honor Harrington fame, plus many other fine novels) and Eric Flint (author of this article and a vast number of superb sci-fi or fantasy books) feature heavily on these CDs, but there are books by quite a few BAEN authors included. If your local library has hardcover BAEN books, there's a good chance they'll have the CDs too (though the link above will get you to all the CDs, which is nice as no one CD has all the books they've distributed this way).
Even if reading on a computer doesn't appeal too much, it's worth checking them out just to learn a bit about the authors and their works.
Aside from the fact that the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket is designed for long-range spacecraft rather than satellites (and I think the difference is really only one of size) exactly how is it better/different? The VASIMR may actually be more versatile, and has quite a few advantages over standard ion designs (things like being completely electrodeless and containing its plasma propellent with EM fields so as to avoid corrosion). I'm all for improved rockets, and the general concept of the ion/plasma rocket is a good one, but it sounds like duplication of effort...
Both symlinks and hard links have their place. Your point about moving/renaming/deleting the linked-to file is the whole reason for hard links (aliases). However, hard links have limitations too. The important ones are lack of the ability to link to a directory (probably one in three links I manually create in *nix is to a directory) and lack of ability to link across partitions (in both Linux and Windows I store data on a non-system partition, and I often cross-link)
.lnk files, in Vista or earlier Windows versions) and SUA symlinks only function within the SUA.
Incidentally, unless you're referring to the SUA (Unix subsystem) in Vista, Vista certainly doesn't advertise the creation of either link type. SUA hard links behave as expected, but SUA symlinks are not the same as Vista's symlinks (which aren't the same as shortcuts AKA
My family are slowly travelling the world (5+ years so far) and I'm currently visiting them, in Malaysia and Thailand. We don't do hotels (for staying at), but hotels, resorts, and Internet cafes provide our connectivity (usually via WiFi). Despite all the nice services installed (Skype is very popular), I would never use one of the computers here for anything serious... forget online banking; I probably wouldn't even check my email on one.
Even if one assumes that the owner of the establishment doesn't have their own spyware and keyloggers (software or hardware) installed, and some earlier visitor didn't install any (neither of these are great assumptions to make, but most people seem to anyway) I still assume somebody is, in effect, looking over my shoulder recording my keyboard and screen in video. These machines just don't get updated. Even the ones running SP2 will be using IE6 (forget Firefox). They might have Avast! or AVG, and it might even be up to date, but that's the best you can hope for. I'm sure somebody, somewhere uses Spybot S&D or AdAware SE Personal, but I haven't seen it... Of course there's no chance of Defender.
A friend of mine loaded a copy of AdAware and scanned one computer in an Internet cafe, and found eight different spyware or keylogger applications running. The owner of the shop sounded concerned (they're very polite in Thailand) but he did... nothing. Either he didn't care, he put them there himself, or there's nothing he could do.
Indeed, that could explain the issue. Has he been burning CDs/DVDs lately, or had problems doing so? For some reason, burners seem to want to be grounded (don't ask me, I'm not an EE, but this doesn't really make sense to me). My latest 2 laptops, which have DVD burners, are the only two I've ever owned with ground-pin power supplies. I have heard that you should not burn discs when ungrounded (or at least on ungrounded AC) and can personally attest to at least one case that supports this theory: an external burner that would not work correctly (blank CD -> coaster) until we connected it to a grounded system (most of our AC is off inverters and not grounded).
Ah... the only DX9 game I play regularly is EVE, and last I checked (a good while ago) that was firmly on the "doesn't work" list. I should take a look again, though.
I actually used EVE for benchmarking (although my info comes from a variety of sources). The DX9 workaround in particular I found while trying to figure out why EVE was blanking the screen for 4 seconds during screen loads (this wasn't a powerful machine, and it was an old beta of Vista, but still didn't seem right... and wasn't.)
Incidentally, you ARE using Wine, right? The commercial variants would actually cost me more than a valid Windows license (the joys of being a CS major).
Workaround: set Compatibility Mode - XP. I found that gave me a significant increase (maybe 10% or so) in frame rates, and decreased startup times..
The only workaround for this with current hardware would be using XP (or other non-WDDM) drivers... probably not worth it. However, cards and drivers optimized for DX10 may negate this issue. The idea behind DX10 isn't to do anything DX9 revision C couldn't; the idea is to do it much faster, and to take advantage of WDDM (Windows [Vista] Display Driver Model).
In any rate, I game in Vista, and if my framerates are slightly worse, they are plenty good enough... and well ahead of, for example, Wine (though there's something awesome about playing even a DX8 game like WarCraft 3 in Linux/BSD).
Any idea how much space this software all takes, or how large the drives will be? The operation is said to cost about $3.4M, or under $20/student. Some of that will be administrative costs, too. Nonetheless, I'm impressed it can be done for so little.
Side note: dwm.exe runs with user permissions; you don't even need UAC privilege escalation to mess with it.
There might be some other reasons, but a lot of people will find at least one reason in those three. Note that this doesn't make Parallels a bad buy; you're perfectly right about the advantages of it. However, especially since the new version of Parallels will apparently be able to use the Boot Camp partitions for its hard drive images, having the option to multiboot is not something to toss aside lightly.
Oldest to newest:
So, while it seems Gutmann's article had some truth in it, I'd take it with a huge grain of salt.
Certainly this is too unlikely to be a coincidence, but that doesn't guarantee Yahoo sold the info. Have you considered spyware? I never use Yahoo search (and only occasionally Live search) and I don't know Yahoo's privacy policy, but them selling personally associated search info to a company like Expedia (unless there's some partnership between then that I don't know aout?) seems unlikely. On the other hand, this is exactly the sort of behavior one might see if one's machine has spyware. I'm not saying it would be difficult for Yahoo to provide this info to third parties (especailly if your relative uses Yahoo email) but it's fairly unlikely. I've never heard of anything like that from MS or Google either (and only once about Yahoo) so I'm guessing we don't know the whole story.