I'm pretty sure I can spot more than 6 points of interest.
Yes, if the picture is shown on a 22" LCD.
However have you seen the iPhone 4S lately? Its screen is so small, compared to your finger, that it's hard to have more than a few unique points that stand out and don't interfere with each other. In your picture, for example, one group of red flowers would be one point, and another group - another point. The tree top could be recruited as yet another point, and that's about all. Other points, even though you can tell them apart in a 2,000 pixels wide JPEG, will be one amorphous gray mass on a smartphone, impossible to identify quickly or in bad lighting conditions.
So you want to break into a tablet that belongs to your boss. He leaves the tablet on the desk but it's always locked. Here is the procedure.
When the boss walks away, clean the tablet and put it back. Wait until he returns and starts using it. Wait until he is distracted by something and walks away again. Look at the smudges. If not enough, wipe and repeat. The unlock pattern will be always there, unlike other random touches.
One way to plug this hole would be by using a numeric PIN and a numeric on-screen keyboard that has digits duplicated and shuffled on each presentation. Then the sequence of touches will be just as random as the RNG that controls the shuffling. If your keyboard has duplicate cells (0..9, 0..9) and you have duplicate digits in the password then each cell can be pressed only once.
This wondrous algorithm is now in public domain, by the way. Apple, are you listening?
With web based applications, and a LAMP/LAPP server (Or windows/MSSQL) you can get the same functionality that the AS-400 provides, pay the price of one PC, and either purchase an already complete software package or pay a far more reasonable developer fee for your custom software- AND everyone with a web browser can access it; which includes all those ipads and even mobile phones.
That only includes scenarios when a large group of people needs to do similar actions, like filling time cards or booking travel. Applications exist already to do all that.
However a large number of spreadsheets (the majority, I'd think) are custom, one-time documents created to graph an experiment or to forecast a scenario - or to act as a tiny database to one or two users. These spreadsheets are unique. You can't compare the cost of entering data into a cell with the cost of hiring a developer who, after weeks of work, will allow you to do the same. This would be practical only if your spreadsheet is widely used. But most are not.
They are facing the very real reality that Windows 8 will flop. Tens of thousands of PC's are being replaced with ipads both at home, and in the enterprise.
Windows 7 and Windows 8 are not going to disappear until desktops and laptops disappear. How likely is that?
Enterprise lives and dies by spreadsheets, MS Word documents, custom software tools, and expensive 3rd party applications. Those are not manageable on "mobile devices." Besides, why an enterprise would want its workers to work while mobile? Most of them are hired specifically to sit in cubicles and work, not to relax in bars. Most work can't even be taken out of the company.
it requires allowing them to modify (and wipe!) the device whenever they like
For completeness of the discussion, here is the list of policies taken from property pages in Exchange 2010:
Require a password and specify its complexity, expiration periods and timeouts
Require encryption on the device and on the storage card
Allow or disable removable storage, camera, WiFi, infrared, tethering, remote desktop, desktop sync and Bluetooth
Allow or disable the browser, 3rd party email, unsigned software and unsigned install packages
Allow or disable any applications (using an open-ended list)
In other words, by BYOD you simply surrender control over it to the company. It would be much fun if you suddenly discover that your phone now requires a 32-character password that you must enter after 60 seconds of inactivity. The password, of course, expires every 3 days, and the password history depth is set to 100.
And indeed, the device can be remotely wiped if it ever connects to the server. Backups, of course, aren't likely to be erased if you don't want them to (and if you use CD-R; good luck erasing from those.) However if the content was encrypted and the key is destroyed they might be of limited use to you.
It is broken only because you are attacking a different problem. That problem is Google's inability to provide services to <13 crowd. Only the Congress can fix that. Nobody in his right mind should fault Google for disabling an account on these grounds - their hands are tied.
I am concerned about something else completely, and my analogy is passable there. That problem is the sudden and rude way Google pulled the plug. Using your own analogy,
and I say "by the way, I'm 11", so the vendor takes it away.
That would be likely assault to take your property. Am I allowed to walk up to a child and take his iPhone away for one reason or another that exists only in my imagination? Even if I give him money in exchange? (Note that children can't legally form contracts, and therefore can't buy or sell such items. Otherwise it would be legal to buy children's property for baubles.) At most a citizen is allowed a citizen's arrest until the police arrives to sort it all out. Your hot dog vendor has no right to lay a hand on anyone, especially on a child. Besides, if the vendor was lied to once, what is the chance that the second statement is also a lie?
As you can see, the most vehement objection to Google's actions is simply against their abrupt way of terminating the relationship. If anyone sane was in charge (a wishful thinking at Google, apparently, considering their endless string of stupid blunders!) the proper way to do it would be this:
You enter data that violates TOS. A very lenient way of handling this would not even allow to enter that data (highlight in red and refuse to accept.) Google could say that if you were old enough to open an account some time ago then you aren't any younger now, unless you travel backward in time.
A simply lenient way would accept the form but then, on the next page, ask you to confirm, telling you that if that's true you will lose access to the account. Don't forget to say how to reactivate it, who to send the ID to, and offer to print this page. Require a good confirmation.
A strict way of handling this would simply skip the confirmation of numbers (why? anyone can make typos) but still presents you with a detailed screen where everything is explained, you are assured that all your data is safe, and how you (or your parents) can get the data back.
Finally, the stupid way would be to log you out the very instant after you click Submit on the DOB form; all further attempts to re-login would be denied with a cryptic message that instills fear.
As you see, Google lacks human touch. That's all. It behaves like a mindless robot - which most of its services are.
Furthermore, if a cat prancing on a keyboard managed to log into the persons Google account, navigate to account settings, select profile information, and enter a faulty dob, then you can't blame Google's automated system for not building in that contingency.
You don't need such a complex scenario. All you need is the ability to press ENTER or click a mouse. The browser may be already at that form, and the numbers may be already partially entered. Then the user walks away before checking the input and cat takes over. The scenario doesn't need to be practical, it only needs to be possible.
He explained that. Slashdot doesn't want to know anything about the user except a login name and password, which are both random.
You could, of course, compile a user's profile from his posts and comments. However few people are that much concerned; it's in the domain of governments and secret services, and they don't care about poor peons. Businesses, on the other hand, wring those same peons dry.
If this experience was so traumatic for your daughter, her life is probably far too sheltered and you spoil her.
I take it that if you say "Yes, two, please" to a seller of hot dogs in the street and get a slap in the face in return, that experience will be totally fine with you, and you wouldn't be upset, not in the slightest.
Seriously, it's not that big a deal, create a new account, or create an account somewhere else.
The problem is not with that. The problem is in being wronged, not respected, treated like dirt. I thought it to be obvious.
I'd love to hear the logical leap from "Google disabled an account which violates their TOS" to "OMG Google will delete my account".
There are good courses on logic in many places. But here are a few hints.
1. It takes zero time for Google to publish new TOS. It takes non-zero (and positive) time for the account owner to learn about the new TOS. Therefore, a non-zero time period exists when the account may be in violation of the new TOS.
2. The account of the girl was deleted for a violation of TOS. No chance was given to reconsider, or to verify the input, or to save the data. Therefore anyone's account, regardless of how valuable the data there might be, can be similarly deleted without confirmation.
3. The identity of the person who was entering the DOB was not positively verified. For all practical purposes, it could be a cat playing on the keyboard.
You can say that it's stupid, and it is. But it is just as stupid as deleting an account because someone entered a number that is interpreted by the machine as a violation of TOS. There was no human judge who reviewed the accusation, questioned the accused and made a fair decision. The computer killed the account just as easily as a human kills an annoying mosquito.
People don't like to be judged by machines, and people don't like to be treated badly. Deletion of someone's messages is clearly falling into the "treated badly" category. Even if the business doesn't want to serve a particular customer anymore, it is not OK to pull out a shotgun and blast the guy. What is OK is to talk to him, explain why he is no longer welcome. Then you listen to what he might have to say - which might be exculpatory ("Hey, I'm not John Smith, I'm John Doe and here is my driver's license!") And only then you escort the guy off your premises. But Google reached for the shotgun, here and in many other documented cases. It is seriously uncool.
The same day I have made backup of my entire Google mail account. I do not trust them anymore that they won't pull the same stunt with MY personal account.
On the other hand, this is a convenient and completely automated way to delete an account:-)
I still have a GMail account, but it is devoid of messages, and if anything new shows up it will be instantly transferred via POP3 and deleted from the server. I did that when Google started randomly deleting accounts for "wrong" name or something. They said it was for Google+ but I don't care, and I haven't been back to the fold. To me Google is now only a search engine.
The another sad effect of your story is that any mistake, any typo can delete *your* account without confirmation. You can misinterpret the question, you can cut and paste a wrong number, you can do many things. If your child has access to the account she could do this. I suppose your GMail account not only stores images of ponies, but also contains important emails, ones that you don't want to lose.
I have to run in a moment, so just a few more comments.
First, you can't design hardware products with F/OSS. Not because I'm in any way against libre s/w but just because it doesn't cut it. Sorry, but it's highly impractical. Hundreds of man-years of hard work went into SolidWorks, you can't expect a similar investment (or an efficiency breakthrough) from a F/OSS developer.
Second, you need to make a one-pager (PDF) where all these specs are in one place. You must have a rendering. Perhaps POV will do it, since you insist on F/OSS.
The power of 3 to 4 watts is too much for the PCMCIA card. Note that the card cage has no interfaces for conductive cooling, even if you put some gap filler from Bergquist under the card shield. The cooling will be nonexistent! You need to look into this ASAP. You are looking at commercial temperature range ICs (+55C perhaps) and your temperature rise from the die to the ambient can be easily 30C - this means that the card will be failing at room temperature! But it will be hotter inside the card cage. Get your hands on some CFD software (FlowTherm, CosmosFlow, etc.) and get busy.
That's all I can think of. You have a long road ahead:-)
yes i looked at MiniPCI, i found _one_ image of a removable MiniPCI with ejector assembly: could i find who made it? could i hell.
JAE makes these connectors. I'm afraid you aren't trying hard enough. The job that you are about to undertake requires a lot of effort. You can't just take the path of least resistance.
COM express - saw that one. it's not user-removable - factory only.
I'm unsure what you mean by that. I have COM Express boards and connectors right here, and I assure you they are perfectly removable. There are many docking station connectors that are of similar size and pitch.
remember also: we're aiming for *mass-volume*.
You don't have the story to manufacture anything in mass volume. In essence, who are your customers, outside of Slashdot?
PCMCIA's 68-pin connector was designed for repeated insertion/removal.
The most popular RF connector, called SMA, is usually rated for about 100 mating cycles. The message here is that you need to realistically assess how many insertion/removal cycles are really needed. Yes, PCMCIA is more rugged, but it comes at a price. Reliability is one of components of that price.
we can even re-use pre-existing casework
But is it worth it to lose a business just to reuse a couple of simple fixtures?
I clearly am not in on your business discussions, and perhaps I'm missing something very obvious to you. I just don't see who would be your customer, and I haven't heard anyone in the last decade (until you showed up) arguing for the PCMCIA connector. If you build the card it will have to be plugged into similarly proprietary backplane.
There is one thought, though, that you might find useful. There are thousands of ARM boards on the market. Yours would be yet another one, with no significant difference. However there are very few cheap x86 boards. The lowest cost you can find is still two or three hundred dollars after you add the m/b, the CPU, the heatsink and whatever else might be needed. Can you fix that?
The reason is simple. Many customers must run WinXP, whether they like it or not. I think I mentioned my USB-connected weather station, with proprietary USB drivers. Performance is not as much required as low power and reasonably small size. Maybe you can find a good x86 CPU, maybe you can run it in a VM on the ARM - whatever. But if you build a board that is capable of running XP at some reasonable speed, all under $50 (or $100, in a box and with WiFi) then you have a winner.
That would make sense only if access to communications is a human right and not a service that you buy and sell. Otherwise your rights and seller's rights are defined by the contract.
Also note that one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. BART is not a political stage - it is a conveyance, so it was proper for them to fulfill their primary mission at expense of a tertiary one.
The PCMCIA/CardBus connector alone will cost you $9.29 + shipping from Digikey. However you can't just "wire it up" because its pins are too small and fragile. So you need to make a PCB for it, that can't be much more than $100 or $120. Of course once you put the rest of the breakout connectors onto that PCB it becomes around $150. At this point it becomes cheaper to buy a small netbook or a small Atom-based motherboard.
This whole idea seems to be tailored for people who want to build a computer. However majority of people, by my observations, are far past that. Today I don't want to build a computer. I want to build a thing that uses a computer as its part.
For example, right now I need a computer that has a USB host interface to talk to my weather station. The weather station console plugs into a PC and runs very nicely; but I don't have a PC near the console, and I don't want to run a big, noisy and hot PC just for that. I want something under a couple of watts that generates network data. I'm willing to build something but I don't see much sense in building a PCB. If I do that I will then build my own network-ready system out of an AVR32.
re-use of *existing* connectors, housings and assemblies keeps the price right down
lkcl, before you jump into production please make sure that you don't want your SATA and USB work. Because they aren't very likely to; the PCMCIA connector is not a controlled impedance part, and your pinout requires 90 Ohm differential for USB and 100 Ohm differential for SATA. Ethernet is also 100 Ohm, but it has plenty of margin. Even if the board works on the bench, it's not the right thing to do. You need a proper differential connector, something that you can get from Samtec, for example.
I really don't know how much you are an expert in manufacturing, but I built a number of professional designs, and I strongly suggest that you don't pick an old, obsolete connector just because you think it is cool. You need to consider the other side of the connector. How many PCMCIA cages can you find at Digikey? How many of them are easy to solder by hand? Hell, this connector would give *me* trouble, and I can solder 0402 all day long under the microscope. This connector has pin spacing of 0.635 mm, and practically none of your customers can solder it.
I still don't quite understand the business idea of your product. By "business" I don't mean making money; I mean "delivering value," making good things. What value do you expect to deliver if nobody can connect to your board? Your super-small form factor is a problem here. Very few electronic enthusiasts are so much concerned about size and space. They are far more concerned about being able to see the parts without using an electron microscope. If you'd ask me, I'd say you need to think how your customers are going to use your product.
The talk about standard connectors... if you want it done right, use COM Express. These modules are interchangeable and your product would actually fit into an existing market. You can actually sell the thing without Slashdot. Inventing your own standard, using an obsolete connector and breaking the electrical signaling requirements will not do you any good. You are not large enough to establish a competing standard, and your design is not as good anyway. But if you don't want to deal with COM Express (which is not a pleasure to solder either, I admit) then just forget the unification and use plain vanilla 0.1" headers for everything except high speed interfaces. Or include a CardBus breakout board with your CPU board.
When I said "reputed journalists", I was talking about Kazakhstanis
The comms blackout, as reported, applies only to the specific area of the unrest:
has blocked the internet and disabled cellphone towers in the city of Zhanaozen
so that rioters can't coordinate their actions as they did in London. The rest of Kazakhstan is not incommunicado. Local journalists are free to go there, investigate, return to other cities and call anyone they want in the world. What is the problem then?
if you manage to mangle it irretrievably, then thanks to the modular design you've only got one part to replace, not the entire device, eh? is that good apples or what?:)
Well, since the pins are on the motherboard side of the connection, the easy part is to simply open the laptop up, quickly desolder a 100-pin surface mounted connector with a hot air rework station, then take a new one out of your desk drawer, position to plus-minus 5 mil and solder all pins using infrared reflow. (You can't use the soldering iron in many cases because the pins are under the card cage.) That only requires a simple piece of equipment that used to cost tens of thousands of dollars but now, thanks to cheap Chinese manufacturing, can be had for just $1K.
Or, alternatively, you throw the laptop in the trash and tell your boss to buy you a new one:-)
Well, since the media is utterly UNRELIABLE in the extreme, anything is more reliable than they are these days.
Incorrect, mathematically. Imagine a media source that is ultimately unreliable - it is a generator of random noise. If the set of answers is [0..n-1] then the probability of any answer is exactly 1/n.
Now imagine a witness who is not that bad. The witness has a bias. The density of probability has a peak (one or more.) You are saying, correctly, that the witness is "not as bad." However you don't specify which bias the witness has, if any. In other words, the "good" witness may give you a specific answer that is absolutely wrong.
Because reputed journalists don't use mobile phones or the Internet?
A journalist is welcome to use phones or the Internet to send the story in, or to do background research. I'm not a journalist, let alone reputed one, but I don't see a mathematically correct way to conduct interviews remotely when you don't know who you are talking to and what is the agenda of the person who tells you the story. He may be even the well known, honorable mayor of the town... with a gun at his head. Internet's value to external reporters would be very limited. Even videos wouldn't tell much. Imagine videos of the Civil War in the USA, will they tell you who is right and who is wrong?
You need reliable (unbiased) sources and a trusted communication channel. If you conduct an interview with an unknown person at an unconfirmed location and that person tells you a story, what is the value of that story? Will you rush to print with that?
Theoretically it could be possible to call many citizens in the area and get an average opinion. But stories of ten senior citizens who sit at home will be different from the story of one 20 y/o man who is rebelling against the power. You can't average those. Besides, this is a small city in a backward country that is ruled by iron fist of President for Life. You can't just grab a phone book and start calling even if the lines were working.
Available reports indicate a small-scale uprising there; tens of people killed even before the government sent the troops in; Molotov cocktails are used against trains and machinery, and so on. You'd be hard pressed to find someone there without an agenda. The government may lie, but the opposition knows how to lie just as well - and the media is the natural vector of spreading this disinformation.
In the end, the only way to get the truth out is to send a trusted reporter in. If you do that it doesn't matter too much if the communications to the area are restricted. The reporter can have an Iridium phone, or he can research the story and fly out of the area on a private airplane. When there is a will there is a way.
How can I even consider buying the product if your "web site" (which is just a Wiki) doesn't offer specifications, interfaces, power needs, thermal considerations, mechanical drawings, software, and many other things that are required to seriously consider using your product? Have you passed FCC testing, for example? If not then you probably can't sell the thing to the public at large.
It may be that your company just wants to announce a product and have thousands of backorders the very next day. But you need to at least explain to your customers why they should buy your product. Make a rendering in SolidWorks if you don't have a prototype. This is a technical product for geeks, so you need to supply all the appropriate pr0n.
Cellular telephone and Internet connections in Zhanaozen have been out of service since the Friday violence, making independent verification of the security situation impossible.
An independent verification of events does not mean contacting a stranger on Facebook who purports to be from the area and asking him how many people the government killed today. But that's what the quoted portion implies.
The user has no agreement of any kind with the advertiser. There can be no fraud between the user and the advertiser as a result.
Doesn't that open the door for automated scripts that load Slashdot and other "community-supported" sites and perhaps even "click" on ads and go as far as they can figure it out? Anyone could run such a script on his computer, and there would be no visual output from it, just fake ad clicks at any rate that the operator desires.
The difference between billboards (or newspaper ads - even though I agree, I haven't seen a newspaper for many years) is that Internet ads are tracked, and therefore they command higher price to the advertiser. A printed ad has to depend on statistics. Every Internet ad is sold per impression (which is getting less popular, as I understand) or per click. I don't know what contracts Slashdot sells, but the former would do no good to anyone if millions of geeks download ads and not click on them. It would be only a waste of electrons.
Also if we take your maxim further we arrive to "The user has no agreement of any kind with the Web site operator" - and is, therefore, morally right to mangle the served HTML in any way he likes (for personal use, of course.)
I want also to mention that I'm not militantly against ads. As matter of fact, I very carefully read all the ads in well known pr0n magazines like QST, QEX, Microwave Design, Circuit Cellar and every other trade publication that I come across. They sell stuff that I may - very likely - need, want, or just dream that I had it. However, just for one brief experiment, let me open Slashdot with IE; what do I see?
"You are welcome to apply for a position of Qt/GUI developer with Chopper Trading" - not applicable. I'm not looking for a job, I already have more than I can handle. I'm also clueless about trading.
"IBM Bisiness Agility" - I don't even understand those words.
"Galaxy Nexus" - no, thanks, I have no need for a phone of that size (or any other phone to that effect.)
"Cabela's" - no need for an ad, I have a shopping list already prepared since I'm buying stuff from them for years.
We see that I have nothing among Internet ads that I would need. That's why I'm not looking at them. By the way, scrolling in IE, with these ads enabled, was pretty sluggish - not the case with FF, with ads taken out. So one of important reasons why I block ads is because they offer nothing to me that I may possibly need. It's like you are on your way to work, crossing a large street, and various peddlers are grabbing you by the coat's sleeves and shoving some stupid wares into your face. You have seen those guys a million times before, you know that they have nothing that could be even of remotest interest to you, so would you still listen to them?
You can say that I'm missing so many chances to buy a new TV... I don't even have an old one. Or a new diamond ring for a GF... thank you very much, GFs are welcome to spend their own dough on those useless crystals:-) Or perhaps IBM would like me to buy one of their AS/400 to run at home? I'm at loss what is out there that I might possibly need. I subscribe to pretty ascetic set of needs in mundane things, so if I'm alive then I have enough already. I never ask myself "what else might I want to buy." I ask myself "Why I am buying this, and is there a way to not buy it?" If there is such a way then I walk away. In other words, I'm not a part of the consumer-driven economy where people are hypnotized to shop (for junk that they don't need) till they drop. I buy only things that (I believe) I really need for a specific purpose; that would be pretty exclusively for professional use or for a hobby. With any of those I don't need advices of strangers; the same Cabela's sends me catalogs nearly every week... and I read them all, because I want to.
People who would never have reason to click those ads still help finance a community they derive some obviously-perceived benefit from
This is treacherous ground. Let's say I browse Slashdot with IE, with all ads at full tilt. I want to help Slashdot. But I know that I don't like to see those ads. So I take a piece of masking tape and glue it to the screen over those ads. Is it any different from the earlier method? Is it fair to everyone?
Then I decide that since I don't want them to be seen I switch to Chrome with AdBlock that downloads ads and hides them. Advertisers are none the wiser, but all ads are rendered into/dev/null. Is it fair to everyone?
Finally, I make one more tweak and don't even download ads. Advertisers know that they had no impression. On the other hand, I don't misrepresent my actions.
So which position is more fair? On one end of the spectrum I must carefully watch every ad on Slashdot whenever it comes up because I want to fulfill a social contract, so that the advertiser gets its eyeball time and Slashdot is paid. This is actually one option that is honest. The other honest option is to not watch ads and not download them. In that case advertiser gets no impressions but keeps his money. Every other option is dishonest to some extent - money is charged for presentation of an ad that wasn't looked at.
I understand that all ad campaigns have a certain efficiency level built in. Out of 100 billboards along the freeway the driver maybe pays attention to one or two, being preoccupied with other matters at other locations. However intentionally ignoring ads skews that ratio further. And that's what happens when geeks who hate ads are allowing ads from select few sites - even though they have no intention of ever watching them or clicking on them.
In other words, "People who would never have reason to click those ads still help finance a community" are committing fraud unless they actually watch these ads as an average Web user would do. If not, Slashdot charges money for services that are either not rendered at all, or rendered below average performance numbers. Why such a practice should be lauded?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty sure I can spot more than 6 points of interest.
Yes, if the picture is shown on a 22" LCD.
However have you seen the iPhone 4S lately? Its screen is so small, compared to your finger, that it's hard to have more than a few unique points that stand out and don't interfere with each other. In your picture, for example, one group of red flowers would be one point, and another group - another point. The tree top could be recruited as yet another point, and that's about all. Other points, even though you can tell them apart in a 2,000 pixels wide JPEG, will be one amorphous gray mass on a smartphone, impossible to identify quickly or in bad lighting conditions.
So you want to break into a tablet that belongs to your boss. He leaves the tablet on the desk but it's always locked. Here is the procedure.
When the boss walks away, clean the tablet and put it back. Wait until he returns and starts using it. Wait until he is distracted by something and walks away again. Look at the smudges. If not enough, wipe and repeat. The unlock pattern will be always there, unlike other random touches.
One way to plug this hole would be by using a numeric PIN and a numeric on-screen keyboard that has digits duplicated and shuffled on each presentation. Then the sequence of touches will be just as random as the RNG that controls the shuffling. If your keyboard has duplicate cells (0..9, 0..9) and you have duplicate digits in the password then each cell can be pressed only once.
This wondrous algorithm is now in public domain, by the way. Apple, are you listening?
With web based applications, and a LAMP/LAPP server (Or windows/MSSQL) you can get the same functionality that the AS-400 provides, pay the price of one PC, and either purchase an already complete software package or pay a far more reasonable developer fee for your custom software- AND everyone with a web browser can access it; which includes all those ipads and even mobile phones.
That only includes scenarios when a large group of people needs to do similar actions, like filling time cards or booking travel. Applications exist already to do all that.
However a large number of spreadsheets (the majority, I'd think) are custom, one-time documents created to graph an experiment or to forecast a scenario - or to act as a tiny database to one or two users. These spreadsheets are unique. You can't compare the cost of entering data into a cell with the cost of hiring a developer who, after weeks of work, will allow you to do the same. This would be practical only if your spreadsheet is widely used. But most are not.
They are facing the very real reality that Windows 8 will flop. Tens of thousands of PC's are being replaced with ipads both at home, and in the enterprise.
Windows 7 and Windows 8 are not going to disappear until desktops and laptops disappear. How likely is that?
Enterprise lives and dies by spreadsheets, MS Word documents, custom software tools, and expensive 3rd party applications. Those are not manageable on "mobile devices." Besides, why an enterprise would want its workers to work while mobile? Most of them are hired specifically to sit in cubicles and work, not to relax in bars. Most work can't even be taken out of the company.
it requires allowing them to modify (and wipe!) the device whenever they like
For completeness of the discussion, here is the list of policies taken from property pages in Exchange 2010:
In other words, by BYOD you simply surrender control over it to the company. It would be much fun if you suddenly discover that your phone now requires a 32-character password that you must enter after 60 seconds of inactivity. The password, of course, expires every 3 days, and the password history depth is set to 100.
And indeed, the device can be remotely wiped if it ever connects to the server. Backups, of course, aren't likely to be erased if you don't want them to (and if you use CD-R; good luck erasing from those.) However if the content was encrypted and the key is destroyed they might be of limited use to you.
Your hot dog analogy is completely broken.
It is broken only because you are attacking a different problem. That problem is Google's inability to provide services to <13 crowd. Only the Congress can fix that. Nobody in his right mind should fault Google for disabling an account on these grounds - their hands are tied.
I am concerned about something else completely, and my analogy is passable there. That problem is the sudden and rude way Google pulled the plug. Using your own analogy,
and I say "by the way, I'm 11", so the vendor takes it away.
That would be likely assault to take your property. Am I allowed to walk up to a child and take his iPhone away for one reason or another that exists only in my imagination? Even if I give him money in exchange? (Note that children can't legally form contracts, and therefore can't buy or sell such items. Otherwise it would be legal to buy children's property for baubles.) At most a citizen is allowed a citizen's arrest until the police arrives to sort it all out. Your hot dog vendor has no right to lay a hand on anyone, especially on a child. Besides, if the vendor was lied to once, what is the chance that the second statement is also a lie?
As you can see, the most vehement objection to Google's actions is simply against their abrupt way of terminating the relationship. If anyone sane was in charge (a wishful thinking at Google, apparently, considering their endless string of stupid blunders!) the proper way to do it would be this:
You enter data that violates TOS. A very lenient way of handling this would not even allow to enter that data (highlight in red and refuse to accept.) Google could say that if you were old enough to open an account some time ago then you aren't any younger now, unless you travel backward in time.
A simply lenient way would accept the form but then, on the next page, ask you to confirm, telling you that if that's true you will lose access to the account. Don't forget to say how to reactivate it, who to send the ID to, and offer to print this page. Require a good confirmation.
A strict way of handling this would simply skip the confirmation of numbers (why? anyone can make typos) but still presents you with a detailed screen where everything is explained, you are assured that all your data is safe, and how you (or your parents) can get the data back.
Finally, the stupid way would be to log you out the very instant after you click Submit on the DOB form; all further attempts to re-login would be denied with a cryptic message that instills fear.
As you see, Google lacks human touch. That's all. It behaves like a mindless robot - which most of its services are.
Furthermore, if a cat prancing on a keyboard managed to log into the persons Google account, navigate to account settings, select profile information, and enter a faulty dob, then you can't blame Google's automated system for not building in that contingency.
You don't need such a complex scenario. All you need is the ability to press ENTER or click a mouse. The browser may be already at that form, and the numbers may be already partially entered. Then the user walks away before checking the input and cat takes over. The scenario doesn't need to be practical, it only needs to be possible.
Why you still have slashdot account?
He explained that. Slashdot doesn't want to know anything about the user except a login name and password, which are both random.
You could, of course, compile a user's profile from his posts and comments. However few people are that much concerned; it's in the domain of governments and secret services, and they don't care about poor peons. Businesses, on the other hand, wring those same peons dry.
Why does your pre-teen daughter have an e-mail account to begin with?
I can quote the original comment for you:
If this experience was so traumatic for your daughter, her life is probably far too sheltered and you spoil her.
I take it that if you say "Yes, two, please" to a seller of hot dogs in the street and get a slap in the face in return, that experience will be totally fine with you, and you wouldn't be upset, not in the slightest.
Seriously, it's not that big a deal, create a new account, or create an account somewhere else.
The problem is not with that. The problem is in being wronged, not respected, treated like dirt. I thought it to be obvious.
I'd love to hear the logical leap from "Google disabled an account which violates their TOS" to "OMG Google will delete my account".
There are good courses on logic in many places. But here are a few hints.
1. It takes zero time for Google to publish new TOS. It takes non-zero (and positive) time for the account owner to learn about the new TOS. Therefore, a non-zero time period exists when the account may be in violation of the new TOS.
2. The account of the girl was deleted for a violation of TOS. No chance was given to reconsider, or to verify the input, or to save the data. Therefore anyone's account, regardless of how valuable the data there might be, can be similarly deleted without confirmation.
3. The identity of the person who was entering the DOB was not positively verified. For all practical purposes, it could be a cat playing on the keyboard.
You can say that it's stupid, and it is. But it is just as stupid as deleting an account because someone entered a number that is interpreted by the machine as a violation of TOS. There was no human judge who reviewed the accusation, questioned the accused and made a fair decision. The computer killed the account just as easily as a human kills an annoying mosquito.
People don't like to be judged by machines, and people don't like to be treated badly. Deletion of someone's messages is clearly falling into the "treated badly" category. Even if the business doesn't want to serve a particular customer anymore, it is not OK to pull out a shotgun and blast the guy. What is OK is to talk to him, explain why he is no longer welcome. Then you listen to what he might have to say - which might be exculpatory ("Hey, I'm not John Smith, I'm John Doe and here is my driver's license!") And only then you escort the guy off your premises. But Google reached for the shotgun, here and in many other documented cases. It is seriously uncool.
The same day I have made backup of my entire Google mail account. I do not trust them anymore that they won't pull the same stunt with MY personal account.
On the other hand, this is a convenient and completely automated way to delete an account :-)
I still have a GMail account, but it is devoid of messages, and if anything new shows up it will be instantly transferred via POP3 and deleted from the server. I did that when Google started randomly deleting accounts for "wrong" name or something. They said it was for Google+ but I don't care, and I haven't been back to the fold. To me Google is now only a search engine.
The another sad effect of your story is that any mistake, any typo can delete *your* account without confirmation. You can misinterpret the question, you can cut and paste a wrong number, you can do many things. If your child has access to the account she could do this. I suppose your GMail account not only stores images of ponies, but also contains important emails, ones that you don't want to lose.
I have to run in a moment, so just a few more comments.
First, you can't design hardware products with F/OSS. Not because I'm in any way against libre s/w but just because it doesn't cut it. Sorry, but it's highly impractical. Hundreds of man-years of hard work went into SolidWorks, you can't expect a similar investment (or an efficiency breakthrough) from a F/OSS developer.
Second, you need to make a one-pager (PDF) where all these specs are in one place. You must have a rendering. Perhaps POV will do it, since you insist on F/OSS.
The power of 3 to 4 watts is too much for the PCMCIA card. Note that the card cage has no interfaces for conductive cooling, even if you put some gap filler from Bergquist under the card shield. The cooling will be nonexistent! You need to look into this ASAP. You are looking at commercial temperature range ICs (+55C perhaps) and your temperature rise from the die to the ambient can be easily 30C - this means that the card will be failing at room temperature! But it will be hotter inside the card cage. Get your hands on some CFD software (FlowTherm, CosmosFlow, etc.) and get busy.
That's all I can think of. You have a long road ahead :-)
yes i looked at MiniPCI, i found _one_ image of a removable MiniPCI with ejector assembly: could i find who made it? could i hell.
JAE makes these connectors. I'm afraid you aren't trying hard enough. The job that you are about to undertake requires a lot of effort. You can't just take the path of least resistance.
COM express - saw that one. it's not user-removable - factory only.
I'm unsure what you mean by that. I have COM Express boards and connectors right here, and I assure you they are perfectly removable. There are many docking station connectors that are of similar size and pitch.
remember also: we're aiming for *mass-volume*.
You don't have the story to manufacture anything in mass volume. In essence, who are your customers, outside of Slashdot?
PCMCIA's 68-pin connector was designed for repeated insertion/removal.
The most popular RF connector, called SMA, is usually rated for about 100 mating cycles. The message here is that you need to realistically assess how many insertion/removal cycles are really needed. Yes, PCMCIA is more rugged, but it comes at a price. Reliability is one of components of that price.
we can even re-use pre-existing casework
But is it worth it to lose a business just to reuse a couple of simple fixtures?
I clearly am not in on your business discussions, and perhaps I'm missing something very obvious to you. I just don't see who would be your customer, and I haven't heard anyone in the last decade (until you showed up) arguing for the PCMCIA connector. If you build the card it will have to be plugged into similarly proprietary backplane.
There is one thought, though, that you might find useful. There are thousands of ARM boards on the market. Yours would be yet another one, with no significant difference. However there are very few cheap x86 boards. The lowest cost you can find is still two or three hundred dollars after you add the m/b, the CPU, the heatsink and whatever else might be needed. Can you fix that?
The reason is simple. Many customers must run WinXP, whether they like it or not. I think I mentioned my USB-connected weather station, with proprietary USB drivers. Performance is not as much required as low power and reasonably small size. Maybe you can find a good x86 CPU, maybe you can run it in a VM on the ARM - whatever. But if you build a board that is capable of running XP at some reasonable speed, all under $50 (or $100, in a box and with WiFi) then you have a winner.
That would make sense only if access to communications is a human right and not a service that you buy and sell. Otherwise your rights and seller's rights are defined by the contract.
Also note that one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. BART is not a political stage - it is a conveyance, so it was proper for them to fulfill their primary mission at expense of a tertiary one.
The PCMCIA/CardBus connector alone will cost you $9.29 + shipping from Digikey. However you can't just "wire it up" because its pins are too small and fragile. So you need to make a PCB for it, that can't be much more than $100 or $120. Of course once you put the rest of the breakout connectors onto that PCB it becomes around $150. At this point it becomes cheaper to buy a small netbook or a small Atom-based motherboard.
This whole idea seems to be tailored for people who want to build a computer. However majority of people, by my observations, are far past that. Today I don't want to build a computer. I want to build a thing that uses a computer as its part.
For example, right now I need a computer that has a USB host interface to talk to my weather station. The weather station console plugs into a PC and runs very nicely; but I don't have a PC near the console, and I don't want to run a big, noisy and hot PC just for that. I want something under a couple of watts that generates network data. I'm willing to build something but I don't see much sense in building a PCB. If I do that I will then build my own network-ready system out of an AVR32.
re-use of *existing* connectors, housings and assemblies keeps the price right down
lkcl, before you jump into production please make sure that you don't want your SATA and USB work. Because they aren't very likely to; the PCMCIA connector is not a controlled impedance part, and your pinout requires 90 Ohm differential for USB and 100 Ohm differential for SATA. Ethernet is also 100 Ohm, but it has plenty of margin. Even if the board works on the bench, it's not the right thing to do. You need a proper differential connector, something that you can get from Samtec, for example.
I really don't know how much you are an expert in manufacturing, but I built a number of professional designs, and I strongly suggest that you don't pick an old, obsolete connector just because you think it is cool. You need to consider the other side of the connector. How many PCMCIA cages can you find at Digikey? How many of them are easy to solder by hand? Hell, this connector would give *me* trouble, and I can solder 0402 all day long under the microscope. This connector has pin spacing of 0.635 mm, and practically none of your customers can solder it.
I still don't quite understand the business idea of your product. By "business" I don't mean making money; I mean "delivering value," making good things. What value do you expect to deliver if nobody can connect to your board? Your super-small form factor is a problem here. Very few electronic enthusiasts are so much concerned about size and space. They are far more concerned about being able to see the parts without using an electron microscope. If you'd ask me, I'd say you need to think how your customers are going to use your product.
The talk about standard connectors ... if you want it done right, use COM Express. These modules are interchangeable and your product would actually fit into an existing market. You can actually sell the thing without Slashdot. Inventing your own standard, using an obsolete connector and breaking the electrical signaling requirements will not do you any good. You are not large enough to establish a competing standard, and your design is not as good anyway. But if you don't want to deal with COM Express (which is not a pleasure to solder either, I admit) then just forget the unification and use plain vanilla 0.1" headers for everything except high speed interfaces. Or include a CardBus breakout board with your CPU board.
I suppose cell phone video is worth a thousand words.
Three words: The Running Man.
When I said "reputed journalists", I was talking about Kazakhstanis
The comms blackout, as reported, applies only to the specific area of the unrest:
has blocked the internet and disabled cellphone towers in the city of Zhanaozen
so that rioters can't coordinate their actions as they did in London. The rest of Kazakhstan is not incommunicado. Local journalists are free to go there, investigate, return to other cities and call anyone they want in the world. What is the problem then?
if you manage to mangle it irretrievably, then thanks to the modular design you've only got one part to replace, not the entire device, eh? is that good apples or what? :)
Well, since the pins are on the motherboard side of the connection, the easy part is to simply open the laptop up, quickly desolder a 100-pin surface mounted connector with a hot air rework station, then take a new one out of your desk drawer, position to plus-minus 5 mil and solder all pins using infrared reflow. (You can't use the soldering iron in many cases because the pins are under the card cage.) That only requires a simple piece of equipment that used to cost tens of thousands of dollars but now, thanks to cheap Chinese manufacturing, can be had for just $1K.
Or, alternatively, you throw the laptop in the trash and tell your boss to buy you a new one :-)
Well, since the media is utterly UNRELIABLE in the extreme, anything is more reliable than they are these days.
Incorrect, mathematically. Imagine a media source that is ultimately unreliable - it is a generator of random noise. If the set of answers is [0..n-1] then the probability of any answer is exactly 1/n.
Now imagine a witness who is not that bad. The witness has a bias. The density of probability has a peak (one or more.) You are saying, correctly, that the witness is "not as bad." However you don't specify which bias the witness has, if any. In other words, the "good" witness may give you a specific answer that is absolutely wrong.
Because reputed journalists don't use mobile phones or the Internet?
A journalist is welcome to use phones or the Internet to send the story in, or to do background research. I'm not a journalist, let alone reputed one, but I don't see a mathematically correct way to conduct interviews remotely when you don't know who you are talking to and what is the agenda of the person who tells you the story. He may be even the well known, honorable mayor of the town ... with a gun at his head. Internet's value to external reporters would be very limited. Even videos wouldn't tell much. Imagine videos of the Civil War in the USA, will they tell you who is right and who is wrong?
More reliable than the media
You need reliable (unbiased) sources and a trusted communication channel. If you conduct an interview with an unknown person at an unconfirmed location and that person tells you a story, what is the value of that story? Will you rush to print with that?
Theoretically it could be possible to call many citizens in the area and get an average opinion. But stories of ten senior citizens who sit at home will be different from the story of one 20 y/o man who is rebelling against the power. You can't average those. Besides, this is a small city in a backward country that is ruled by iron fist of President for Life. You can't just grab a phone book and start calling even if the lines were working.
Available reports indicate a small-scale uprising there; tens of people killed even before the government sent the troops in; Molotov cocktails are used against trains and machinery, and so on. You'd be hard pressed to find someone there without an agenda. The government may lie, but the opposition knows how to lie just as well - and the media is the natural vector of spreading this disinformation.
In the end, the only way to get the truth out is to send a trusted reporter in. If you do that it doesn't matter too much if the communications to the area are restricted. The reporter can have an Iridium phone, or he can research the story and fly out of the area on a private airplane. When there is a will there is a way.
good man! feel free to fill in the preorder form
How can I even consider buying the product if your "web site" (which is just a Wiki) doesn't offer specifications, interfaces, power needs, thermal considerations, mechanical drawings, software, and many other things that are required to seriously consider using your product? Have you passed FCC testing, for example? If not then you probably can't sell the thing to the public at large.
It may be that your company just wants to announce a product and have thousands of backorders the very next day. But you need to at least explain to your customers why they should buy your product. Make a rendering in SolidWorks if you don't have a prototype. This is a technical product for geeks, so you need to supply all the appropriate pr0n.
Here is a good example to follow.
Cellular telephone and Internet connections in Zhanaozen have been out of service since the Friday violence, making independent verification of the security situation impossible.
An independent verification of events does not mean contacting a stranger on Facebook who purports to be from the area and asking him how many people the government killed today. But that's what the quoted portion implies.
The user has no agreement of any kind with the advertiser. There can be no fraud between the user and the advertiser as a result.
Doesn't that open the door for automated scripts that load Slashdot and other "community-supported" sites and perhaps even "click" on ads and go as far as they can figure it out? Anyone could run such a script on his computer, and there would be no visual output from it, just fake ad clicks at any rate that the operator desires.
The difference between billboards (or newspaper ads - even though I agree, I haven't seen a newspaper for many years) is that Internet ads are tracked, and therefore they command higher price to the advertiser. A printed ad has to depend on statistics. Every Internet ad is sold per impression (which is getting less popular, as I understand) or per click. I don't know what contracts Slashdot sells, but the former would do no good to anyone if millions of geeks download ads and not click on them. It would be only a waste of electrons.
Also if we take your maxim further we arrive to "The user has no agreement of any kind with the Web site operator" - and is, therefore, morally right to mangle the served HTML in any way he likes (for personal use, of course.)
I want also to mention that I'm not militantly against ads. As matter of fact, I very carefully read all the ads in well known pr0n magazines like QST, QEX, Microwave Design, Circuit Cellar and every other trade publication that I come across. They sell stuff that I may - very likely - need, want, or just dream that I had it. However, just for one brief experiment, let me open Slashdot with IE; what do I see?
We see that I have nothing among Internet ads that I would need. That's why I'm not looking at them. By the way, scrolling in IE, with these ads enabled, was pretty sluggish - not the case with FF, with ads taken out. So one of important reasons why I block ads is because they offer nothing to me that I may possibly need. It's like you are on your way to work, crossing a large street, and various peddlers are grabbing you by the coat's sleeves and shoving some stupid wares into your face. You have seen those guys a million times before, you know that they have nothing that could be even of remotest interest to you, so would you still listen to them?
You can say that I'm missing so many chances to buy a new TV ... I don't even have an old one. Or a new diamond ring for a GF ... thank you very much, GFs are welcome to spend their own dough on those useless crystals :-) Or perhaps IBM would like me to buy one of their AS/400 to run at home? I'm at loss what is out there that I might possibly need. I subscribe to pretty ascetic set of needs in mundane things, so if I'm alive then I have enough already. I never ask myself "what else might I want to buy." I ask myself "Why I am buying this, and is there a way to not buy it?" If there is such a way then I walk away. In other words, I'm not a part of the consumer-driven economy where people are hypnotized to shop (for junk that they don't need) till they drop. I buy only things that (I believe) I really need for a specific purpose; that would be pretty exclusively for professional use or for a hobby. With any of those I don't need advices of strangers; the same Cabela's sends me catalogs nearly every week ... and I read them all, because I want to.
People who would never have reason to click those ads still help finance a community they derive some obviously-perceived benefit from
This is treacherous ground. Let's say I browse Slashdot with IE, with all ads at full tilt. I want to help Slashdot. But I know that I don't like to see those ads. So I take a piece of masking tape and glue it to the screen over those ads. Is it any different from the earlier method? Is it fair to everyone?
Then I decide that since I don't want them to be seen I switch to Chrome with AdBlock that downloads ads and hides them. Advertisers are none the wiser, but all ads are rendered into /dev/null. Is it fair to everyone?
Finally, I make one more tweak and don't even download ads. Advertisers know that they had no impression. On the other hand, I don't misrepresent my actions.
So which position is more fair? On one end of the spectrum I must carefully watch every ad on Slashdot whenever it comes up because I want to fulfill a social contract, so that the advertiser gets its eyeball time and Slashdot is paid. This is actually one option that is honest. The other honest option is to not watch ads and not download them. In that case advertiser gets no impressions but keeps his money. Every other option is dishonest to some extent - money is charged for presentation of an ad that wasn't looked at.
I understand that all ad campaigns have a certain efficiency level built in. Out of 100 billboards along the freeway the driver maybe pays attention to one or two, being preoccupied with other matters at other locations. However intentionally ignoring ads skews that ratio further. And that's what happens when geeks who hate ads are allowing ads from select few sites - even though they have no intention of ever watching them or clicking on them.
In other words, "People who would never have reason to click those ads still help finance a community" are committing fraud unless they actually watch these ads as an average Web user would do. If not, Slashdot charges money for services that are either not rendered at all, or rendered below average performance numbers. Why such a practice should be lauded?