Well, you Americans want all to get big salaries, but buy cheap products. If you pay a lot to workers etc then the product will not be cheap. So, the end result is that companies choose to produce goods in China and other countries where salaries of workers are lower, so that the costs are lower, so that the product is cheaper.
Also, I never said that a cause for crap economy should be one. You can get multiple problems all resulting in crape economy.
I think if you add a resistor in series with the halogen bulb you may be able to bring the temperature down enough so that the color is the same as that of a regular incandescent bulb. I know that running halogens at too low temperature shortens their life, but a small decrease actually increases the life.
Incandescent lights are probably more expensive to ship. They take up as much space as CFLs but are much cheaper, so the shipping cost makes up for a larger part in total cost.
The worst thing about CFLs is their color - I like the yellow color of 40W incandescent bulbs, to reproduce that with a CFL (and get continuous spectrum) I suppose I would need a large lamp and a color filter, though the efficiency might be even worse them.
The good thing is that incandescent bulbs last a long time when not in use.
Except that you can use the phone even without the stylus, just that you will leave smudges and fingerprints. So with the Psion Series 5 I had a choice - use a stylus or some other pointed plastic object or just use my fingernail or finger and leave residue on the screen.
Psion also had another thing right - the device uses AA batteries, which can be rechargeable or primary. So if the batteries discharged while I was away from an outlet I could just buy some cheap primary ones. Too bad it was not possible to recharge the batteries while they were in the device, but it's much better than my phone or new PDAs have - expensive proprietary batteries.
My Nokia N93 was made in Finland. I suppose parts of it were made in China, but I still paid a lot for it (~720EUR) when I bought it ~4 years ago. BTW, that price is about 3 months of minimal salary in my country.
In any case, the fact that the workers choose to work in the factories (they are not forced to) means that being unemployed sucks more than the job they have now. Forcing the factories to increase wages and conditions will result in some of the workers getting better conditions and other workers being unemployed which sucks more then their current conditions (otherwise they would not have chosen to work there).
If tapping with a fingernail does not work, then most likely using a stylus won't work either. Which means that the screen will always be full of fingerprints and smudges, unless I wash my hands every time I want to do something with the phone.
I have a Psion Series 5 PDA, made in 1997 and it works with a stylus. Interesting how people in 1997 knew that fingerprints on the screen = bad, but now they don't.
The whole "can only access user files" thing is good if there is more than one user on that machine. If the computer is used by a single user, accessing user files is just as bad as root permissions (yes, the virus would be easier to remove, but can do just as much damage).
Linux users are a mixed bunch of people running all manner of different distros with their own ways of doing things and their own list of applications that are installed by default.
And if Linux ever gains significant popularity, it will be some distribution (say Ubuntu) and not just the kernel. Windows is one OS - there are different versions of it, but the OS is one. Just like Ubuntu would be if it was more popular. No "average user" is going to use a different distribution than his friends, because then he would be unable to ask for advice (it's bad already with the way Vista changed things from XP; I don't use Vista or 7, so if somebody has a problem with it and asks me for help, if the way to fix things is different than on XP, he can figure it out himself because I won't install 7 just to answer his question; same with Linux - I have Debian, I won't install Ubuntu or Mandriva just to answer somebody's question; the problem is that there are more differences between Linux distron then there is between Windows versions).
Anyway, UAC in Vista/7 works like graphic sudo in Linux. If you want to do something that requires root access, you have to type in your password, but even if you run as Administrator, you get the prompt, but just need to click OK (if I manage to run KDE as root, I do not get such prompts at all).
We use Linux where I work, the choice was made primarily because of cost, I showed that Linux has a browser, software similar to MS Office and can create/open.doc and.xls files. I use Windows at home, though I have one virtual machine that runs a Debian server and two virtual machines with Debian on them to mess around when I need something so I don't break the server VM.
You forgot that you CAN install software on those things - firmware updates. A spammer could make a fortune if they could convince a lot of people to install a hacked firmware, yet it has not happened.
First, the spammer would need to convince people that the device has a firmware and that the firmware can be updated. Without knowing the make/model of the modem it would be difficult to write a program that did that automatically (because the way firmware is upgraded is different for every modem), also, the firmware has to be model specific. I can't install a Linksys firmware on my D-Link DSL-500T, I doubt that the firmware from another D-Link ADSL modem would work.
I've heard the marketshare excuse since at least 1995 and there are more Mac and Linux desktops out there now than the total sales of Win95.
However, most of the Linux desktops are used by those who do not click on random things. Also, while the number is big, it still is small compared to Windows market share (Wikipedia says that in 2009 October it was 91%). So, now that I (hypothetically) decided to create a virus, should I target 91% of computers with a lot of stupid users, or 1% of computers with a lot of smart users? This is the same reason why less common devices do not have Linux drivers (the device is not common, so nobody in the Linux community wrote the driver and the manufacturer does not care about the 1% of potential users enough to create a driver that would work on the most common distributions). Also, that 1% is divided to a lot of distributions, most of which are not compatible with each other without recompiling the virus.
Running an unpatched system, misconfigured/no firewall, unneeded services, opening all attachments does not disappear when the user switches to Linux.
Can you even download and install additional programs on your ADSL modem? I could not do that with my modem (D-Link DSL-500T), so any spammer would have to exploit security bugs on the device (if there are any).
Not to mention that there are a lot of different modems, and while most of them run Linux, not all of them are compatible or even have compatible CPUs.
Also, as I said, Linux has small market share and a lot of the users know what they are doing, so it is less profitable to write a virus for Linux (or Mac, or Windows 3.11) than it is with Windows XP/Vista/7.
Still, "the worst a virus on Linux can do is delete all your documents, it cannot break the system files" is quite bad.
Well, I chose Debian because a version stays current a long time (and supported even longer), unlike Ubuntu, which probably has a new version released faster than service packs for Windows. Still, the most secure way is the way Apple does on their iP(ad|od|hone)s, but I do not like it, I'd rather face the risk of a virus (or rather a worm - I have not seen an actual virus (that infects other files instead of being a separate file) for a long time) than be told by some company what programs I can and cannot run on my computer (I don't think Apple does it for computers too, just the small devices).
As for NASA and Pentagon - I don't know the situation there, so I can't really comment about it, but you can on windows make the system drive read-only and deny execution of files from any other drives.
A competent administrator most likely could secure Windows so the user cannot run the virus anyway.
However, a lot of computers are used at home, by one or more people sharing accounts where they know only the most basic things and ask a nerd friend when they have problems or take the computer to a repair shop. You know, a lot of people cannot install Windows even though they can read and understand the setup (also, "Hi, I have a problem with my computer, it displayed some error and now does not work. No, I do not remember the error, but maybe you know what could be the problem?").
They will have root access to their computer (needed for apt-get or synaptic), but may run as a standard user. They will still download and run things (while most of the software is installed using repositories and apt-get or similar software, some things still have to be downloaded as.deb,.rpm,.sh or.tar.gz files, for example Canon scanner drivers, Firefox on Debian and nVidia display drivers (not sure about that though).
Well, there has to be a way for a user to execute an email attachment or a downloaded file. If the user wants the screensaver (or whatever) that he found on some site or got from his "friend", he will check the checkbox that says "allow execution" (or similar).
Kind of the same happens with Windows. The user has to download the executable file and run it ignoring two warnings (one from firefox and another one from Windows).
Because there is no way for a virus to spread on a Linux machine.
Even assuming that Linux does not have security bugs and the user runs as user and not root, the virus can still: 1. Access all of the users files. 2. delete them (rm -rf/home/username ) 3. Send itself to every email address it could find in the users files.
For a single user machine, rm -rf / and rm -rf/home/username is about the same in the damage.
Yes, most of Linux users now are the ones that know what they are doing and would be able to stay clean even using Windows. If, say, everyone goes to Linux, the "oh, look, my friend sent me a screensaver " users and virus creators will go too and Linux will have the same problem as Windows do now.
For now, the number of Linux users, not to mention the number of stupid Linux users is too low for the virus writers to care (why spend time to create a virus that works for 5% of people, 90% of whom know how to protect themselves, when he can create a virus that works for 90% of people a lot of whom will run it).
I use both Linux and Windows, my opinion is that both operating systems have their own advantages and disadvantages, but both are good at what they do, especially Linux for servers or work computers that need a browser and OpenOffice.
I like interlaced 50Hz video better than progressive 25Hz. The interlaced video looks much smoother with good deinterlacing that makes it to 50fps or on a CRT TV.
Really, how does that sound? Maybe you have a recording of your experiment? It would be interesting to hear, but I do not have a baseball bat or a cat.
That may or may not need a high byte terminator. I have a 50pin cable connected to a 68pin HBA with an adapter and it works just fine (I am using a 50pin MO drive, and the motherboard has two 68pin connectors - one I am using for (LVD) hard drives and a CDRW drive (with an IDE-DCSI adapter), the other for the 50pin SE MO drive).
If you are connecting a 68pin drive to a 50pin bus then you should not need the terminator - the wires on the hard drive are too short to cause reflections (the wavelength of a 160MHz signal is ~1.8m so the short traces from the chip on the hard drive to the connector should not be a problem, also, you are not using the high byte for data, the drive operates in narrow mode.
All in all, I like SCSI, I can connect a very old device to a relatively new bus or a new device to an old bus, also, I can use one cable (and one port on the adapter) to connect many devices, unlike SATA.
I am using a couple of narrow devices on a wide bus, but just with a 50F-68F adapter (one for each device), I do not know if it has a terminator or not, but from what I know about cables and termination, probably not.
You only need a high byte terminator if you want to have half of the bus with a wide cable and the other half with narrow cable, if you use 68-50 pin adapter for each narrow device then no additional termination is needed.
I still use SCSI because I have a couple of tape drives and SCSI 15kRPM hard drives are cheaper than SAS 15kRPM drives, also, a SAS HBA is very expensive.
SCSI (the parallel variety, not SAS): Was straight forward for the most part (just set a unique ID for each device). Termination of the bus caused the most hassles, plus it wasn't hot pluggable.
I use SCSI in a few of my PCs, but never had problems with termination. New internal cables come with a terminator already attached on one end and the host adapter terminated the other end. External cables are different, but I just attach a terminator at the end of the bus and that's all. Though I really do not like the VHDCI connector - it breaks connection too easily.
PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse:
Also, KVM switches. I am using PS/2 for keyboard/mouse because USB KVM switches are much more expensive than PS/2 ones. Even if I have to use a PS/2->USB adapter for my laptop and a USB->PS/2 adapter for my keyboard (other computers have PS/2 ports).
How about making the program run quite fast on the 1GHz CPU? Then it may run OK with a lower processor, but if you make it just bearable on the 1GHz then it will be too slow on slower machines.
Also, new CPUs can reduce their clock speed to about half of maximum for power saving, so if you get a new 1GHz CPU, you can make it 500MHz.
Where I live, some of the bigger intersections have pedestrian traffic lights that beep when the green light is on, I assume, to let blind people know that they can go now. So, the blind person is supposed to cross the street by himself, but how is he going to hear the almost silent car that is going even though the red light is on?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you Americans want all to get big salaries, but buy cheap products. If you pay a lot to workers etc then the product will not be cheap. So, the end result is that companies choose to produce goods in China and other countries where salaries of workers are lower, so that the costs are lower, so that the product is cheaper.
Also, I never said that a cause for crap economy should be one. You can get multiple problems all resulting in crape economy.
I think if you add a resistor in series with the halogen bulb you may be able to bring the temperature down enough so that the color is the same as that of a regular incandescent bulb. I know that running halogens at too low temperature shortens their life, but a small decrease actually increases the life.
Incandescent lights are probably more expensive to ship. They take up as much space as CFLs but are much cheaper, so the shipping cost makes up for a larger part in total cost.
The worst thing about CFLs is their color - I like the yellow color of 40W incandescent bulbs, to reproduce that with a CFL (and get continuous spectrum) I suppose I would need a large lamp and a color filter, though the efficiency might be even worse them.
The good thing is that incandescent bulbs last a long time when not in use.
Except that you can use the phone even without the stylus, just that you will leave smudges and fingerprints. So with the Psion Series 5 I had a choice - use a stylus or some other pointed plastic object or just use my fingernail or finger and leave residue on the screen.
Psion also had another thing right - the device uses AA batteries, which can be rechargeable or primary. So if the batteries discharged while I was away from an outlet I could just buy some cheap primary ones. Too bad it was not possible to recharge the batteries while they were in the device, but it's much better than my phone or new PDAs have - expensive proprietary batteries.
My Nokia N93 was made in Finland. I suppose parts of it were made in China, but I still paid a lot for it (~720EUR) when I bought it ~4 years ago. BTW, that price is about 3 months of minimal salary in my country.
In any case, the fact that the workers choose to work in the factories (they are not forced to) means that being unemployed sucks more than the job they have now. Forcing the factories to increase wages and conditions will result in some of the workers getting better conditions and other workers being unemployed which sucks more then their current conditions (otherwise they would not have chosen to work there).
If tapping with a fingernail does not work, then most likely using a stylus won't work either. Which means that the screen will always be full of fingerprints and smudges, unless I wash my hands every time I want to do something with the phone.
I have a Psion Series 5 PDA, made in 1997 and it works with a stylus. Interesting how people in 1997 knew that fingerprints on the screen = bad, but now they don't.
OK, I'm keeping my Nokia N93 (keypad ftw).
The whole "can only access user files" thing is good if there is more than one user on that machine. If the computer is used by a single user, accessing user files is just as bad as root permissions (yes, the virus would be easier to remove, but can do just as much damage).
Linux users are a mixed bunch of people running all manner of different distros with their own ways of doing things and their own list of applications that are installed by default.
And if Linux ever gains significant popularity, it will be some distribution (say Ubuntu) and not just the kernel. Windows is one OS - there are different versions of it, but the OS is one. Just like Ubuntu would be if it was more popular. No "average user" is going to use a different distribution than his friends, because then he would be unable to ask for advice (it's bad already with the way Vista changed things from XP; I don't use Vista or 7, so if somebody has a problem with it and asks me for help, if the way to fix things is different than on XP, he can figure it out himself because I won't install 7 just to answer his question; same with Linux - I have Debian, I won't install Ubuntu or Mandriva just to answer somebody's question; the problem is that there are more differences between Linux distron then there is between Windows versions).
Anyway, UAC in Vista/7 works like graphic sudo in Linux. If you want to do something that requires root access, you have to type in your password, but even if you run as Administrator, you get the prompt, but just need to click OK (if I manage to run KDE as root, I do not get such prompts at all).
We use Linux where I work, the choice was made primarily because of cost, I showed that Linux has a browser, software similar to MS Office and can create/open .doc and .xls files. I use Windows at home, though I have one virtual machine that runs a Debian server and two virtual machines with Debian on them to mess around when I need something so I don't break the server VM.
You forgot that you CAN install software on those things - firmware updates. A spammer could make a fortune if they could convince a lot of people to install a hacked firmware, yet it has not happened.
First, the spammer would need to convince people that the device has a firmware and that the firmware can be updated. Without knowing the make/model of the modem it would be difficult to write a program that did that automatically (because the way firmware is upgraded is different for every modem), also, the firmware has to be model specific. I can't install a Linksys firmware on my D-Link DSL-500T, I doubt that the firmware from another D-Link ADSL modem would work.
I've heard the marketshare excuse since at least 1995 and there are more Mac and Linux desktops out there now than the total sales of Win95.
However, most of the Linux desktops are used by those who do not click on random things. Also, while the number is big, it still is small compared to Windows market share (Wikipedia says that in 2009 October it was 91%). So, now that I (hypothetically) decided to create a virus, should I target 91% of computers with a lot of stupid users, or 1% of computers with a lot of smart users? This is the same reason why less common devices do not have Linux drivers (the device is not common, so nobody in the Linux community wrote the driver and the manufacturer does not care about the 1% of potential users enough to create a driver that would work on the most common distributions). Also, that 1% is divided to a lot of distributions, most of which are not compatible with each other without recompiling the virus.
Running an unpatched system, misconfigured/no firewall, unneeded services, opening all attachments does not disappear when the user switches to Linux.
Can you even download and install additional programs on your ADSL modem? I could not do that with my modem (D-Link DSL-500T), so any spammer would have to exploit security bugs on the device (if there are any).
Not to mention that there are a lot of different modems, and while most of them run Linux, not all of them are compatible or even have compatible CPUs.
Also, as I said, Linux has small market share and a lot of the users know what they are doing, so it is less profitable to write a virus for Linux (or Mac, or Windows 3.11) than it is with Windows XP/Vista/7.
Still, "the worst a virus on Linux can do is delete all your documents, it cannot break the system files" is quite bad.
Well, I chose Debian because a version stays current a long time (and supported even longer), unlike Ubuntu, which probably has a new version released faster than service packs for Windows. Still, the most secure way is the way Apple does on their iP(ad|od|hone)s, but I do not like it, I'd rather face the risk of a virus (or rather a worm - I have not seen an actual virus (that infects other files instead of being a separate file) for a long time) than be told by some company what programs I can and cannot run on my computer (I don't think Apple does it for computers too, just the small devices).
As for NASA and Pentagon - I don't know the situation there, so I can't really comment about it, but you can on windows make the system drive read-only and deny execution of files from any other drives.
A competent administrator most likely could secure Windows so the user cannot run the virus anyway.
However, a lot of computers are used at home, by one or more people sharing accounts where they know only the most basic things and ask a nerd friend when they have problems or take the computer to a repair shop. You know, a lot of people cannot install Windows even though they can read and understand the setup (also, "Hi, I have a problem with my computer, it displayed some error and now does not work. No, I do not remember the error, but maybe you know what could be the problem?").
They will have root access to their computer (needed for apt-get or synaptic), but may run as a standard user. They will still download and run things (while most of the software is installed using repositories and apt-get or similar software, some things still have to be downloaded as .deb, .rpm, .sh or .tar.gz files, for example Canon scanner drivers, Firefox on Debian and nVidia display drivers (not sure about that though).
Well, there has to be a way for a user to execute an email attachment or a downloaded file. If the user wants the screensaver (or whatever) that he found on some site or got from his "friend", he will check the checkbox that says "allow execution" (or similar).
Kind of the same happens with Windows. The user has to download the executable file and run it ignoring two warnings (one from firefox and another one from Windows).
Because there is no way for a virus to spread on a Linux machine.
Even assuming that Linux does not have security bugs and the user runs as user and not root, the virus can still: /home/username )
1. Access all of the users files.
2. delete them (rm -rf
3. Send itself to every email address it could find in the users files.
For a single user machine, rm -rf / and rm -rf /home/username is about the same in the damage.
Yes, most of Linux users now are the ones that know what they are doing and would be able to stay clean even using Windows. If, say, everyone goes to Linux, the "oh, look, my friend sent me a screensaver " users and virus creators will go too and Linux will have the same problem as Windows do now.
For now, the number of Linux users, not to mention the number of stupid Linux users is too low for the virus writers to care (why spend time to create a virus that works for 5% of people, 90% of whom know how to protect themselves, when he can create a virus that works for 90% of people a lot of whom will run it).
I use both Linux and Windows, my opinion is that both operating systems have their own advantages and disadvantages, but both are good at what they do, especially Linux for servers or work computers that need a browser and OpenOffice.
You can get them now, but bigger batteries will make your phone heavier, and of course nobody can lift 200 grams without a forklift or a crane.
I like interlaced 50Hz video better than progressive 25Hz. The interlaced video looks much smoother with good deinterlacing that makes it to 50fps or on a CRT TV.
I will never buy a Sony anything.
I have a Sony WM-D6C - works quite well, sound quality is great. Though probably it was made when SOny meant quality.
Oh, and I also have a Sony Handycam DCR-HC-90E - I got it really cheap but with a broken LCD which I replaced, also works well.
No, I don't. I live in a country where software patents are not valid.
Really, how does that sound? Maybe you have a recording of your experiment? It would be interesting to hear, but I do not have a baseball bat or a cat.
That may or may not need a high byte terminator. I have a 50pin cable connected to a 68pin HBA with an adapter and it works just fine (I am using a 50pin MO drive, and the motherboard has two 68pin connectors - one I am using for (LVD) hard drives and a CDRW drive (with an IDE-DCSI adapter), the other for the 50pin SE MO drive).
If you are connecting a 68pin drive to a 50pin bus then you should not need the terminator - the wires on the hard drive are too short to cause reflections (the wavelength of a 160MHz signal is ~1.8m so the short traces from the chip on the hard drive to the connector should not be a problem, also, you are not using the high byte for data, the drive operates in narrow mode.
All in all, I like SCSI, I can connect a very old device to a relatively new bus or a new device to an old bus, also, I can use one cable (and one port on the adapter) to connect many devices, unlike SATA.
I am using a couple of narrow devices on a wide bus, but just with a 50F-68F adapter (one for each device), I do not know if it has a terminator or not, but from what I know about cables and termination, probably not.
You only need a high byte terminator if you want to have half of the bus with a wide cable and the other half with narrow cable, if you use 68-50 pin adapter for each narrow device then no additional termination is needed.
I still use SCSI because I have a couple of tape drives and SCSI 15kRPM hard drives are cheaper than SAS 15kRPM drives, also, a SAS HBA is very expensive.
SCSI (the parallel variety, not SAS): Was straight forward for the most part (just set a unique ID for each device). Termination of the bus caused the most hassles, plus it wasn't hot pluggable.
I use SCSI in a few of my PCs, but never had problems with termination. New internal cables come with a terminator already attached on one end and the host adapter terminated the other end. External cables are different, but I just attach a terminator at the end of the bus and that's all. Though I really do not like the VHDCI connector - it breaks connection too easily.
PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse:
Also, KVM switches. I am using PS/2 for keyboard/mouse because USB KVM switches are much more expensive than PS/2 ones. Even if I have to use a PS/2->USB adapter for my laptop and a USB->PS/2 adapter for my keyboard (other computers have PS/2 ports).
How about making the program run quite fast on the 1GHz CPU? Then it may run OK with a lower processor, but if you make it just bearable on the 1GHz then it will be too slow on slower machines.
Also, new CPUs can reduce their clock speed to about half of maximum for power saving, so if you get a new 1GHz CPU, you can make it 500MHz.
Where I live, some of the bigger intersections have pedestrian traffic lights that beep when the green light is on, I assume, to let blind people know that they can go now. So, the blind person is supposed to cross the street by himself, but how is he going to hear the almost silent car that is going even though the red light is on?