The Olympics is nothing more than a jingoistic parade by corrupt officials and drug-laden athletes. Any pretense otherwise has long since been thrown out the window.
We should just terminate the Olympics. Let it die. China's just using it to improve its image. I'm ashamed to say that Canada (where I live) will be hosting the 2010 Olympics; I wish our country had the backbone to stand up to the crooks at the IOC and tell them to go to hell.
For Google and Hotmail, I used the gmail.com and hotmail.com SPF records respectively. That is, I assumed any mail from an IP address that got an SPF "pass" came from Google or Hotmail.
Yahoo doesn't publish SPF records, so for Yahoo I did a reverse lookup on the IP address and if it contained the string ".yahoo.", I counted it.
We in no way imply that Gmail's inbound spam filtering is bad. It's probably excellent. It's just difficult or impractical for Google to filter outbound mail without either human review or complaints because of false-positives.
What we're saying is that spammers are trying to evade IP reputation systems by hijacking organizations with good reputations or which would be impractical to block. There will be a CAPTCHA-cracking arms-race, but unfortunately I think the system will reach equilibrium with spammers quickly breaking CAPTCHAs and continuing to abuse free e-mail systems.
On our network of ~30 machines, we use chemical elements. This will let our network grow to a couple of hundred without our having to think about new names.
The last octet of the machine's IP address is the atomic number of its name, so the truly geeky among us can dispense with DNS altogether for internal hosts. "Beryllium? Oh, 192.168.10.4!"
... BUT, truth in advertising laws should kick in. They should only be allowed to advertise their DSL service at the lowest throttling speed. So if you buy service X that throttles protocol Y down to 20kb/s, then Bell should only be allowed to advertise that service as a 20kb/s service.
They should also not be allowed to throttle wholesale bandwith that other DSL providers buy unless those providers agree to the throttling (and advertising restrictions.)
Tcl "antiquated, primitive and ugly???!?!?"
Tcl is a thing of beauty. It's C bindings are unsurpassed in cleanliness. It's event-loop is a joy to behold. You can write some really great things in Tcl.
As a Canadian, I'm completely disgusted by the Human Rights [sic] Tribunals. They were originally designed to stop people from being discriminated against by employers or landlords. Unfortunately, like most government systems, they've expanded and now want to control what we can say (and ideally, what we think.)
Canada's "hate speech" laws need to be scrapped. Unfortunately, there's no political will for that. And politician who dares to make Canada more like the US will be pilloried, even though in this particular case the US has got it right with its emphasis on freedom of expression.
I love Canada, but some aspects of its politics drive me crazy.
How do the acid-test creators test the acid test?
on
Acid3 Test Released
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Seriously... if no browser gets 100/100, how do the test creators generate the reference image? And how do they know there are no bugs in their test? I'm genuinely curious...
It starts up and shuts down incredibly quickly. Everything "just works". I can run all my important tools like OpenSSH, OpenVPN, privoxy, etc. without any hassles. And Xandros did a pretty good job with the interface (though I tend to live in a terminal most of the time anyway.)
And 920g is so light I take it with me everywhere; I sometimes forget it's in my briefcase.
Any time an organization has the word "Collective" in its title, you know it's a bad idea. Basically, this is a bunch of lobbyists grabbing money from everyone and distributing it how they see fit. No thanks.
P.S. Before any Canadians get all upset because of the subject line... get over it. I'm Canadian too and live in Canada.
When I think about all the really talented programmers I know, not one of them likes Java or even uses it much. They tend to fall into two categories: Hard-core kernel hackers who sling around C or assembly, or higher-level hackers knee-deep in Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl or more exotic things like Lua, Scheme and Lisp.
Quite a while ago, I bought "The Java Programming Language" and honestly couldn't see what all the fuss was about. An OO language with vaguely C-like syntax. The open-source scripting languages like Perl, Tcl, etc. are far more fun, funky and innovative.
It's virtually certain you will not make a living from free software.
Our business model is to have a core GPL'd product that is solid, but geared for sysadmins and technical people. We then have a more user-friendly and spiffy product layered around it that is traditional proprietary software (although we do ship with source which is somewhat unusual.
Hard-core techies or FOSS-only people are happy with the GPL'd product, and others buy the commercial product. The GPL'd product is also a good hook and marketing vehicle, as well as a proving-ground for new ideas, scalability enhancements, etc.
Yes, I suppose that's one way to spin it. As I wrote earlier, the losing side always comes up with creative spins...
Seriously; our voting system should strive to represent the most people it can.
No voting system is perfect. Every voting system has its flaws and anomalies. In my opinion (and apparently the opinion of most Ontarians) FPTP is fine or at least better than MMP.
One should not confuse the rejection of MMP with the vindication of Plurality. The existence of the Ontario Citizens' Assembly itself should be evidence enough that the populace is NOT content with the current system.
How can you say that when MMP was rejected in Ontario by more than 63% to 37%? The fact is that any voting system has its flaws. And frankly, when you look at the state of Canada, it's in much better shape than almost every other country on earth in terms of freedom, prosperity and human dignity. Our problems are trivial compared to real problems, so I just don't see any pressing desire for electoral reform.
The trick of holding referendum after referendum until you win is quite frankly undemocratic. It sounds like BC is taking its lead from the PQ.
In Ontario, we use a first-past-the-post system. We had a referendum a while back to switch to a mixed-member/proportional system and it was soundly defeated.
The proponents of alternate systems are all for democratic reform... but naturally when they lost, they had all kinds of excuses... anything but admit that most people are happy with first-past-the-post.
You can prove mathematically that any representational voting system is "unfair" where "unfair" means that decisions can pass that are supported by fewer than 50% of voters. I believe first-past-the-post is a reasonable compromise that keeps the power of splinter groups in check and prevents them from hijacking the agenda.
Unfortunately the Tcl language itself is peculiar, dated and just not very good.
Realy? What shortcomings do you feel Tcl has? I find it to be a wonderful, simple, expressive language. It's certainly a lot less "peculiar" than Perl, no more "dated" than C, and really good for what I need.
Phone switches are very specialized hardware. They are definitely not you average Intel box
Oh yeah? I opened my expensive NEC Electra Elite phone system and discovered it was an Intel box running (of all things) embedded MS-DOS!!!
The software they run may very well be Linux based, but its not you average Linux.
Our Asterisk PBX runs on bog-standard Debian Etch and it's great.
People trying to run their phone systems over things like cable modems are just nuts, you need a dedicated T1 channel for each line.
Our 1-800 number comes in over our DSL connection and it works fine.
Modern commercial phone systems have millions and millions of R&D money that have been poured into them.
So does Microsoft Windows. Your point is... ?
The bottom line in telecom equipment is you get what you pay for.
No, the bottom line is that commercial PBX equipment is a great big ripoff and if commercial PBX vendors are not scared of Asterisk, they're in denial.
Asterisk is great! OK, its configuration language is pretty sucky, but
we've done some amazing things with it -- too long to post in a/. article.
Just look at the slides instead: (1.1MB PDF file)
Sorry I wasn't clear enough in my initial question. What really impresses me about Outlook/Exchange is when you go to schedule a meeting, it allows you to see when all the participants, rooms and resources (like projectors) are available in a horizontal chart of sorts.
The SugarCRM calendar module has exactly that feature (for participants, anyway. For resources, I'm not sure.)
Slashdot Mirror
The Olympics is nothing more than a jingoistic parade by corrupt officials and drug-laden athletes. Any pretense otherwise has long since been thrown out the window.
We should just terminate the Olympics. Let it die. China's just using it to improve its image. I'm ashamed to say that Canada (where I live) will be hosting the 2010 Olympics; I wish our country had the backbone to stand up to the crooks at the IOC and tell them to go to hell.
For Google and Hotmail, I used the gmail.com and hotmail.com SPF records respectively. That is, I assumed any mail from an IP address that got an SPF "pass" came from Google or Hotmail.
Yahoo doesn't publish SPF records, so for Yahoo I did a reverse lookup on the IP address and if it contained the string ".yahoo.", I counted it.
How are we not neutral? We can back up the numbers with data.
Of course the press release boasts a little. That's the purpose of press releases. We can back up the 98% number too. Email us if you're interested.
Well, I did this study and our results are here.
We in no way imply that Gmail's inbound spam filtering is bad. It's probably excellent. It's just difficult or impractical for Google to filter outbound mail without either human review or complaints because of false-positives.
What we're saying is that spammers are trying to evade IP reputation systems by hijacking organizations with good reputations or which would be impractical to block. There will be a CAPTCHA-cracking arms-race, but unfortunately I think the system will reach equilibrium with spammers quickly breaking CAPTCHAs and continuing to abuse free e-mail systems.
On our network of ~30 machines, we use chemical elements. This will let our network grow to a couple of hundred without our having to think about new names.
The last octet of the machine's IP address is the atomic number of its name, so the truly geeky among us can dispense with DNS altogether for internal hosts. "Beryllium? Oh, 192.168.10.4!"
... BUT, truth in advertising laws should kick in. They should only be allowed to advertise their DSL service at the lowest throttling speed. So if you buy service X that throttles protocol Y down to 20kb/s, then Bell should only be allowed to advertise that service as a 20kb/s service.
They should also not be allowed to throttle wholesale bandwith that other DSL providers buy unless those providers agree to the throttling (and advertising restrictions.)
Tcl "antiquated, primitive and ugly???!?!?" Tcl is a thing of beauty. It's C bindings are unsurpassed in cleanliness. It's event-loop is a joy to behold. You can write some really great things in Tcl.
... and use it as a tool to monitor our Asterisk system.
As a Canadian, I'm completely disgusted by the Human Rights [sic] Tribunals. They were originally designed to stop people from being discriminated against by employers or landlords. Unfortunately, like most government systems, they've expanded and now want to control what we can say (and ideally, what we think.)
Canada's "hate speech" laws need to be scrapped. Unfortunately, there's no political will for that. And politician who dares to make Canada more like the US will be pilloried, even though in this particular case the US has got it right with its emphasis on freedom of expression.
I love Canada, but some aspects of its politics drive me crazy.
Seriously... if no browser gets 100/100, how do the test creators generate the reference image? And how do they know there are no bugs in their test? I'm genuinely curious...
I have not seen the OLPC, but I love my EeePC.
It starts up and shuts down incredibly quickly. Everything "just works". I can run all my important tools like OpenSSH, OpenVPN, privoxy, etc. without any hassles. And Xandros did a pretty good job with the interface (though I tend to live in a terminal most of the time anyway.)
And 920g is so light I take it with me everywhere; I sometimes forget it's in my briefcase.
Surely you mean "Overladies"?
OWW!! Honey, it's just a joke. Hey! OWWWW! Honey!
Any time an organization has the word "Collective" in its title, you know it's a bad idea. Basically, this is a bunch of lobbyists grabbing money from everyone and distributing it how they see fit. No thanks.
P.S. Before any Canadians get all upset because of the subject line... get over it. I'm Canadian too and live in Canada.
When I think about all the really talented programmers I know, not one of them likes Java or even uses it much. They tend to fall into two categories: Hard-core kernel hackers who sling around C or assembly, or higher-level hackers knee-deep in Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl or more exotic things like Lua, Scheme and Lisp.
Quite a while ago, I bought "The Java Programming Language" and honestly couldn't see what all the fuss was about. An OO language with vaguely C-like syntax. The open-source scripting languages like Perl, Tcl, etc. are far more fun, funky and innovative.
It's virtually certain you will not make a living from free software.
Our business model is to have a core GPL'd product that is solid, but geared for sysadmins and technical people. We then have a more user-friendly and spiffy product layered around it that is traditional proprietary software (although we do ship with source which is somewhat unusual.
Hard-core techies or FOSS-only people are happy with the GPL'd product, and others buy the commercial product. The GPL'd product is also a good hook and marketing vehicle, as well as a proving-ground for new ideas, scalability enhancements, etc.
Look at the domains Network Solutions now owns!
the-real-microsoft.com
the-real-ibm.com
the-real-dell.com
the-real-walmart.com
the-real-esso.com
the-real-general-motors.com
the-real-ford.com
the-real-chrysler.com
I tried "slimybuggersatnetsolsuck.com" and sure enough it's taken now.
Ontario voted "No" to MMP, not "Yes" to FPTP
Yes, I suppose that's one way to spin it. As I wrote earlier, the losing side always comes up with creative spins...
Seriously; our voting system should strive to represent the most people it can.
No voting system is perfect. Every voting system has its flaws and anomalies. In my opinion (and apparently the opinion of most Ontarians) FPTP is fine or at least better than MMP.
One should not confuse the rejection of MMP with the vindication of Plurality. The existence of the Ontario Citizens' Assembly itself should be evidence enough that the populace is NOT content with the current system.
How can you say that when MMP was rejected in Ontario by more than 63% to 37%? The fact is that any voting system has its flaws. And frankly, when you look at the state of Canada, it's in much better shape than almost every other country on earth in terms of freedom, prosperity and human dignity. Our problems are trivial compared to real problems, so I just don't see any pressing desire for electoral reform.
The trick of holding referendum after referendum until you win is quite frankly undemocratic. It sounds like BC is taking its lead from the PQ.
In Ontario, we use a first-past-the-post system. We had a referendum a while back to switch to a mixed-member/proportional system and it was soundly defeated.
The proponents of alternate systems are all for democratic reform... but naturally when they lost, they had all kinds of excuses... anything but admit that most people are happy with first-past-the-post.
You can prove mathematically that any representational voting system is "unfair" where "unfair" means that decisions can pass that are supported by fewer than 50% of voters. I believe first-past-the-post is a reasonable compromise that keeps the power of splinter groups in check and prevents them from hijacking the agenda.
Unfortunately the Tcl language itself is peculiar, dated and just not very good.
Realy? What shortcomings do you feel Tcl has? I find it to be a wonderful, simple, expressive language. It's certainly a lot less "peculiar" than Perl, no more "dated" than C, and really good for what I need.
Phone switches are very specialized hardware. They are definitely not you average Intel box
Oh yeah? I opened my expensive NEC Electra Elite phone system and discovered it was an Intel box running (of all things) embedded MS-DOS!!!
The software they run may very well be Linux based, but its not you average Linux.
Our Asterisk PBX runs on bog-standard Debian Etch and it's great.
People trying to run their phone systems over things like cable modems are just nuts, you need a dedicated T1 channel for each line.
Our 1-800 number comes in over our DSL connection and it works fine.
Modern commercial phone systems have millions and millions of R&D money that have been poured into them.
So does Microsoft Windows. Your point is... ?
The bottom line in telecom equipment is you get what you pay for.
No, the bottom line is that commercial PBX equipment is a great big ripoff and if commercial PBX vendors are not scared of Asterisk, they're in denial.
Asterisk is great! OK, its configuration language is pretty sucky, but we've done some amazing things with it -- too long to post in a /. article.
Just look at the slides instead: (1.1MB PDF file)
The SugarCRM calendar module has exactly that feature (for participants, anyway. For resources, I'm not sure.)
Blue Screen of Brain Death.