What if all of these new-fangled gadets didn't have any method of text entry on them what-so-ever? I mean how often do you have to change the song title on a MP3 player and why would you ever want to write a paper on your palm?
What ever happend to the old UNIX adage that every program should do one thing and it should interact with everything else? The same applies to these new devices. Your cell phone should do nothing more than send/recieve phone calls, your PDA should do nothing more than keep appointments and an address book and your MP3 player should do nothing more than play MP3s. Now where this comes together is bluetooth. Now you want to call someone who's phone number is entered into your PDA, no problem, just bring up the entry, hit dial and your PDA will tell your cell phone to dial that number.
No back to the text entry. What if you had one keyboard that would allow you to enter into every device out there? This could even be a portable computer. Size here wouldn't be an issue, if you want a full sized keyboard to change your MP3 song title no problem, if you want to use a small keypad with the same MP3 player again, no problem! The key here is to get every device to speak the same langauge. It all goes back to creating a standard, and sticking to it!
I think that they are trying to put too much duplicate functionality into all these devices. The focus should change to making each device do one thing, and do it well.
I agree, while the Simpsons became an excellent show later on in it's life, the early shows were pretty bad! But it still would be nice to have the entire library of shows at your disposal.
In related news, I noticed over at The Simpsons Archive a while ago that a Simpsons spin-off show is in the works. I'm hoping the focus is on the Wiggums. An entire show related to Clancy and Ralph would be great!
They already have the "robotic" car! In most places is better known as a Bus.
Cars are built for fun, there's nothing better than a nice long drive. Why would you ever want the car to do the driving for you? If you don't like driving, then find alterative means of transportation.
In my experience the pixels last a long time. I have a laptop that is over five years old now. It has only one dead pixel which was there from the beginning, and the screen is left on basically all the time. As for my new laptop, it too has one dead pixel which appeared the second time I turned on the computer. I can live with one as long as no new ones appear.
It seems for some reason that one or two dead pixels seem common place, but once the bad ones die off when the monitor is new, the rest seem to last a long time from what I have seen.
I found all these words with squiggly underlines on my website. And there I was trying to figure out why most of my words were spelt wrong! It turns out they were just hyperlinks after all.
Okay the satellite dish on the vehicle is a little much, anyway to use this connection will being able to pretty much hide the electronics?
Actually I will answer my own question, it might be possible to hide this away.
Some day I hope to do just that. I got as far as streaming live video out over the internet from a wireless camera mounted to an R/C car. My next step was to hook the controller up to a webserver and setup controls on a website. But I never got around to doing this. Maybe I'll do it someday. The streaming video was neat though!
As for what's hanging off my parallel port right now? An old laptop sans a NIC, using PLIP to route a connection to the net. And my other boring parallel devices are a CD burner, a scanner and a printer. Unfortunately nothing out of the ordianary.
How about just memorizing a series of key strokes rather than using a familiar string as the password? You could remember starting with "a" then move 5 keys over which gives you a "h" and move on from there. The end result will be a string that has no meaning what so ever, but is still easily remembered. Mind you if you aren't using a QWERTY keyboard it might throw things off.
It's also a good idea to include different cases, numbers and quotations in the password. Of course if you use the method above remembering the right combo will be no problem.
I like to write down my password on a post-it note and stick it on my monitor. You could do the same in your situation, just put the notes on each of the servers. If this method doesn't suit, you could always try an encrypted database. I would suggest Rot-13 as the encryption algorithm, or if you are real concerned about security you could use Rot-13 twice.
Seriously though, how about going a non-password route? Biometrics comes to mind, or those credit card type login cards. Any other similar solutions I'm missing? This would allow you to forget passwords altogether while still leaving the security in-tact. If you think that such a solution is a little too complex/over budget/etc. I would go the encrypted database route (just don't use rot-13!)
You must be living very close to Bell and the Cable Co.
Actaully my telco is an independant one, it's not Bell. Most of thier customers are in rural areas (it switches back to Bell in the towns) so this would be why we have high speed avaliable in the country. The nice thing about thier DSL as opposed to Bell's (I've used it too) is that they don't use PPPoE, just plain old DHCP (would be even better if it were static IPs though).
I would also add that I live out in the middle of nowhere, I live on a farm actually, nearest town is over 15 minutes away, the nearest city is an hour away. Yet I have DSL here at the same rates the people in the city pay! Around here things have always seemed to be ahead of thier times as far as technology goes (from a rural standpoint). I guess this is one of the reasons why Canada is the most connected country in the world. I recall hearing that Canada will have high-speed access avaliable to everyone by 2004.
Looks pretty snazzy but it looks an awful lot like the G4 cube. How long do you think it will be before Apple comes along trying to stop them from using the design? IIRC they already did that to people copying the iMac design, so the same will probably hold true for this machine which is very unfortunate. Then again who knows, it's much smaller than a cube and doesn't use the opaque plastic so maybe they will ignore this? Let's hope so.
But is it really just a couple of hacks a year? I seem to recall the rumour being that Microsoft.com is powered by 40+ boxes. So one gets hacked? No big deal, that computer just will no longer serve pages until it is operational again, all while the other 39 keep on serving pages.
All they would need is tripwire style software to look for any file changes, and if any occur drop the box offline and reinstall, or better yet just network boot all the servers so all that is needed is a reboot. They could all just automatically reboot after 15 mins or so (I mean they are gonna need it anyway right?;)
How about this for an idea for Linux? The ultimate un[h|cr]ackable web server!
What you need:
Many servers that can boot over the network
A server with a CDROM containing the OS, Applications, website data, etc.
Then have the servers reboot every so often (making sure they don't all go down at the same time!!!) and reboot with the data contained on the CD. Even if a machine was broken into, anything the attacker did would be wiped out. Okay so it isn't the greatest of ideas, but if you are Microsoft and your security image is of upmost importance you might consider doing something like this!
Actaully http://defaced.alldas.de/ has already taken over this role. Mind you themes.org doesn't seem to be on there yet!? They do however provide all the info on operating systems and multiple attacks, etc.
And why is there no browser for my abacus? I mean an abacus is all anyone really needs right?
It may be slow, the GUI isn't very good by today's standards and is no longer supported by major abacus manufacturers but why isn't there be a browser for it? I think we need a new Abacus Application Protocol (buzzword: AAP) which defines where each bead is placed to represent a binary number. This would allow all those abacus programmers out there to actaully create my dream of an abacus web browser!
I think it is just a matter of not needing the butterfly keyboard design anymore. With all these new fangled laptops with 15" screens, the size of the machine is more than big enough to encase a decent sized keyboard. Personally I really like the keyboard on my laptop and prefer it over a standard keyboard.
Using a butterfly like system to achieve ergonomic design is a great idea though!
Same issues as with Napster...
on
Launchcast Sued
·
· Score: 1
Imagine - playing the music listeners want to hear instead of the tripe the Record Giants have preselected for everyone!
I believe this to be the main reason the RIAA was against Napster. They knew darn well they were making more money with Napster but Napster allowed each person to decided what they want to listen to, not what the RIAA tries to shove down our throats and make us like it. Personally I can't stand the "mainstream" music of late (or ever, but it seems even worse lately!), but there are others who listen to it to be trendy or what have you, not because they truely like it. Imagine if you actaully had to search out bands that you actually like, that would just be awful, I think I'll just turn on MTV and see what the RIAA wants me to listen to.
The whole music industry is based around money (obviously) and they know that they can make more money telling Britney Spears what to do then some band that actually understands what the RIAA is up to. But if they can't tell us to like Britney Spears then they have lost their money making platform.
Okay, enough ranting...I'm just fed up at all the junk they are giving us when there is some amazing music out there that everyone is missing (including myself).
Maybe the extra bloat is Netscape 6, Winamp, and ICQ (any other AOL owned software I missed?)hidden away just waiting to take over your system after you sign up with AOL.
"AOL has determinded that your software is out of date. Would you like to upgrade to our lastest software? The installation will take only a few minutes and you don't even have to download anything!" (Yes | No)
Sure it may use IE and WMP by default, but it doesn't have to stay that way!
~$ ping -i 450 10.0.3.1
PING 10.0.3.1 (10.0.3.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=6165731.1 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=3211900.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=5124922.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=6388671.9 ms
I guess this brings new meaning to the term "Chip Wagon"!
This is a good thing though, the oil industry needs some competition! Although many say that the oil will last for another good long time, do we really need to use it exclusively? That would be like using Windows exclusively when other better suited, cheaper alternatives exist. Sure Windows might have it's place, but it doesn't work the best for everything. Using the right tool for the job is what is important. Save the oil for places where it is better suited and use the new fuel technologies where they are best suited!
I thought even wired mice and keyboards could be listened to with the right equipment! I remember watching some tv show a few years back about this. They showed that they could grab what someone is typing from across the street by picking up the signals generated when a key is pressed.
And hey if you are real good (1337?) you could even pick up all the data travelling through the computer! Everytime a digital high is generated there will be RF interference and with the right equipment you should be able to grab this. Sorting out what is what however might prove to be a different matter.
The only truly secure computer is one that is off, locked in a room, and preferably not assembled.
Actaully your radio show idea is a good one! Since he works for an ISP he has a nice fat pipe making streaming out the radio show a snap. Pick a topic you are interested in and stream away. You could have people who are in the know about certain topics call in a be a part of the broadcast (you said no one was calling anyway right?) Find yourself some advertisers for the program and you can even make some more money!
If you had a tech theme to your radio show you could have all the support calls come in and answer them on the air. Well if you have nothing better to do you may consider this.
If Microsoft restricts its users to using only Windows, it is basically shutting users from using other OS's
Not exactly, by Microsoft doing this they have not made it impossible for you to run Linux. Having them co-exist on the same hard drive is another matter, but if we are talking only about competition then that is a non issue.
Besides, LILO will probably have support for the new "MBR" in time anyway.
Actaully instead of a webcam, how about creating vector images from the board? Somewhere out there someone makes a whiteboard that has an attachment that monitors where the pen is located on the board and then creates an image based on it's location that is then sent to a computer. If this was implemented on the chalk board, a live vector image could be streamed to anyone who wants to see it. I suggest this approach due to the fact that unless the webcam is really good quality, it may be difficult to see what is really on the board.
Maybe they even could attach a robotic arm so people on the net could add to the board. Or maybe that's just going too far...
Slashdot Mirror
What if all of these new-fangled gadets didn't have any method of text entry on them what-so-ever? I mean how often do you have to change the song title on a MP3 player and why would you ever want to write a paper on your palm?
What ever happend to the old UNIX adage that every program should do one thing and it should interact with everything else? The same applies to these new devices. Your cell phone should do nothing more than send/recieve phone calls, your PDA should do nothing more than keep appointments and an address book and your MP3 player should do nothing more than play MP3s. Now where this comes together is bluetooth. Now you want to call someone who's phone number is entered into your PDA, no problem, just bring up the entry, hit dial and your PDA will tell your cell phone to dial that number.
No back to the text entry. What if you had one keyboard that would allow you to enter into every device out there? This could even be a portable computer. Size here wouldn't be an issue, if you want a full sized keyboard to change your MP3 song title no problem, if you want to use a small keypad with the same MP3 player again, no problem! The key here is to get every device to speak the same langauge. It all goes back to creating a standard, and sticking to it!
I think that they are trying to put too much duplicate functionality into all these devices. The focus should change to making each device do one thing, and do it well.
I agree, while the Simpsons became an excellent show later on in it's life, the early shows were pretty bad! But it still would be nice to have the entire library of shows at your disposal.
In related news, I noticed over at The Simpsons Archive a while ago that a Simpsons spin-off show is in the works. I'm hoping the focus is on the Wiggums. An entire show related to Clancy and Ralph would be great!
They already have the "robotic" car! In most places is better known as a Bus.
Cars are built for fun, there's nothing better than a nice long drive. Why would you ever want the car to do the driving for you? If you don't like driving, then find alterative means of transportation.
In my experience the pixels last a long time. I have a laptop that is over five years old now. It has only one dead pixel which was there from the beginning, and the screen is left on basically all the time. As for my new laptop, it too has one dead pixel which appeared the second time I turned on the computer. I can live with one as long as no new ones appear.
It seems for some reason that one or two dead pixels seem common place, but once the bad ones die off when the monitor is new, the rest seem to last a long time from what I have seen.
I found all these words with squiggly underlines on my website. And there I was trying to figure out why most of my words were spelt wrong! It turns out they were just hyperlinks after all.
Finally, an Internet connection for my car!
Okay the satellite dish on the vehicle is a little much, anyway to use this connection will being able to pretty much hide the electronics? Actually I will answer my own question, it might be possible to hide this away.
controlling something like a car
Some day I hope to do just that. I got as far as streaming live video out over the internet from a wireless camera mounted to an R/C car. My next step was to hook the controller up to a webserver and setup controls on a website. But I never got around to doing this. Maybe I'll do it someday. The streaming video was neat though!
As for what's hanging off my parallel port right now? An old laptop sans a NIC, using PLIP to route a connection to the net. And my other boring parallel devices are a CD burner, a scanner and a printer. Unfortunately nothing out of the ordianary.
How about just memorizing a series of key strokes rather than using a familiar string as the password? You could remember starting with "a" then move 5 keys over which gives you a "h" and move on from there. The end result will be a string that has no meaning what so ever, but is still easily remembered. Mind you if you aren't using a QWERTY keyboard it might throw things off.
It's also a good idea to include different cases, numbers and quotations in the password. Of course if you use the method above remembering the right combo will be no problem.
I like to write down my password on a post-it note and stick it on my monitor. You could do the same in your situation, just put the notes on each of the servers. If this method doesn't suit, you could always try an encrypted database. I would suggest Rot-13 as the encryption algorithm, or if you are real concerned about security you could use Rot-13 twice.
Seriously though, how about going a non-password route? Biometrics comes to mind, or those credit card type login cards. Any other similar solutions I'm missing? This would allow you to forget passwords altogether while still leaving the security in-tact. If you think that such a solution is a little too complex/over budget/etc. I would go the encrypted database route (just don't use rot-13!)
You must be living very close to Bell and the Cable Co.
Actaully my telco is an independant one, it's not Bell. Most of thier customers are in rural areas (it switches back to Bell in the towns) so this would be why we have high speed avaliable in the country. The nice thing about thier DSL as opposed to Bell's (I've used it too) is that they don't use PPPoE, just plain old DHCP (would be even better if it were static IPs though).
I would also add that I live out in the middle of nowhere, I live on a farm actually, nearest town is over 15 minutes away, the nearest city is an hour away. Yet I have DSL here at the same rates the people in the city pay! Around here things have always seemed to be ahead of thier times as far as technology goes (from a rural standpoint). I guess this is one of the reasons why Canada is the most connected country in the world. I recall hearing that Canada will have high-speed access avaliable to everyone by 2004.
Looks pretty snazzy but it looks an awful lot like the G4 cube. How long do you think it will be before Apple comes along trying to stop them from using the design? IIRC they already did that to people copying the iMac design, so the same will probably hold true for this machine which is very unfortunate. Then again who knows, it's much smaller than a cube and doesn't use the opaque plastic so maybe they will ignore this? Let's hope so.
All they would need is tripwire style software to look for any file changes, and if any occur drop the box offline and reinstall, or better yet just network boot all the servers so all that is needed is a reboot. They could all just automatically reboot after 15 mins or so (I mean they are gonna need it anyway right?
How about this for an idea for Linux? The ultimate un[h|cr]ackable web server!
What you need:
- Many servers that can boot over the network
- A server with a CDROM containing the OS, Applications, website data, etc.
Then have the servers reboot every so often (making sure they don't all go down at the same time!!!) and reboot with the data contained on the CD. Even if a machine was broken into, anything the attacker did would be wiped out. Okay so it isn't the greatest of ideas, but if you are Microsoft and your security image is of upmost importance you might consider doing something like this!just ping -f microsoft.com
Too bad Microsoft filters ICMP packets.
Actaully http://defaced.alldas.de/ has already taken over this role. Mind you themes.org doesn't seem to be on there yet!? They do however provide all the info on operating systems and multiple attacks, etc.
And why is there no browser for my abacus? I mean an abacus is all anyone really needs right?
It may be slow, the GUI isn't very good by today's standards and is no longer supported by major abacus manufacturers but why isn't there be a browser for it? I think we need a new Abacus Application Protocol (buzzword: AAP) which defines where each bead is placed to represent a binary number. This would allow all those abacus programmers out there to actaully create my dream of an abacus web browser!
Where did those Butterfly keyboards go?
Maybe they flew away?
I think it is just a matter of not needing the butterfly keyboard design anymore. With all these new fangled laptops with 15" screens, the size of the machine is more than big enough to encase a decent sized keyboard. Personally I really like the keyboard on my laptop and prefer it over a standard keyboard.
Using a butterfly like system to achieve ergonomic design is a great idea though!
Imagine - playing the music listeners want to hear instead of the tripe the Record Giants have preselected for everyone!
I believe this to be the main reason the RIAA was against Napster. They knew darn well they were making more money with Napster but Napster allowed each person to decided what they want to listen to, not what the RIAA tries to shove down our throats and make us like it. Personally I can't stand the "mainstream" music of late (or ever, but it seems even worse lately!), but there are others who listen to it to be trendy or what have you, not because they truely like it. Imagine if you actaully had to search out bands that you actually like, that would just be awful, I think I'll just turn on MTV and see what the RIAA wants me to listen to.
The whole music industry is based around money (obviously) and they know that they can make more money telling Britney Spears what to do then some band that actually understands what the RIAA is up to. But if they can't tell us to like Britney Spears then they have lost their money making platform.
Okay, enough ranting...I'm just fed up at all the junk they are giving us when there is some amazing music out there that everyone is missing (including myself).
Maybe the extra bloat is Netscape 6, Winamp, and ICQ (any other AOL owned software I missed?)hidden away just waiting to take over your system after you sign up with AOL.
"AOL has determinded that your software is out of date. Would you like to upgrade to our lastest software? The installation will take only a few minutes and you don't even have to download anything!"
(Yes | No)
Sure it may use IE and WMP by default, but it doesn't have to stay that way!
I guess my avian carrier network just isn't fast enough!
~$ ping -i 450 10.0.3.1
PING 10.0.3.1 (10.0.3.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=6165731.1 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=3211900.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=5124922.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=6388671.9 ms
I guess this brings new meaning to the term "Chip Wagon"!
This is a good thing though, the oil industry needs some competition! Although many say that the oil will last for another good long time, do we really need to use it exclusively? That would be like using Windows exclusively when other better suited, cheaper alternatives exist. Sure Windows might have it's place, but it doesn't work the best for everything. Using the right tool for the job is what is important. Save the oil for places where it is better suited and use the new fuel technologies where they are best suited!
I thought even wired mice and keyboards could be listened to with the right equipment! I remember watching some tv show a few years back about this. They showed that they could grab what someone is typing from across the street by picking up the signals generated when a key is pressed.
And hey if you are real good (1337?) you could even pick up all the data travelling through the computer! Everytime a digital high is generated there will be RF interference and with the right equipment you should be able to grab this. Sorting out what is what however might prove to be a different matter.
The only truly secure computer is one that is off, locked in a room, and preferably not assembled.
Actaully your radio show idea is a good one! Since he works for an ISP he has a nice fat pipe making streaming out the radio show a snap. Pick a topic you are interested in and stream away. You could have people who are in the know about certain topics call in a be a part of the broadcast (you said no one was calling anyway right?) Find yourself some advertisers for the program and you can even make some more money!
If you had a tech theme to your radio show you could have all the support calls come in and answer them on the air. Well if you have nothing better to do you may consider this.
If Microsoft restricts its users to using only Windows, it is basically shutting users from using other OS's
Not exactly, by Microsoft doing this they have not made it impossible for you to run Linux. Having them co-exist on the same hard drive is another matter, but if we are talking only about competition then that is a non issue.
Besides, LILO will probably have support for the new "MBR" in time anyway.
Actaully instead of a webcam, how about creating vector images from the board? Somewhere out there someone makes a whiteboard that has an attachment that monitors where the pen is located on the board and then creates an image based on it's location that is then sent to a computer. If this was implemented on the chalk board, a live vector image could be streamed to anyone who wants to see it. I suggest this approach due to the fact that unless the webcam is really good quality, it may be difficult to see what is really on the board.
Maybe they even could attach a robotic arm so people on the net could add to the board. Or maybe that's just going too far...