I type 100+wpm, and have been typing since I was eleven years old. I can type without looking, and without thinking about it.
My handwriting is atrocious; illegible or fast, pick one. Also, my hand craps easily from holding a pencil or pen.
From this you can gather that I'd rather take notes on a computer than on paper, and you'd be correct, in most cases. Specifically, if I'm going to take effective, useful notes that I can refer to later, a laptop is mandatory for me. On the other hand, if I don't plan to KEEP the notes -- that is, if I'm using notes merely as a mechanism to help me remember what I've just heard -- I take a notepad.
So for me to have the option is what's best for me. If I entered a classroom that banned paper and pencil, and required laptops for note-taking, I'd be just as annoyed as this makes me.
Most people who dual-boot are doing so between linux and windows so that they can play windows games.
Me, I have music (that I write and record, not mp3s) software and files on my windows PC that I can't walk away from, but I'm trying to do all my new work on a Mac. Now I can actually pick up a mac mini and dual-boot OSX and windows for all my music stuff.
This also means I can take my old PC and turn it into a dedicated linux box, since it was the need to access my windows-based music that prevented it in the past.
I just finished building a pile of templates, pure css in structure, and one of the target browsers is IE7 (beta 2).
One of the things I needed to implement was a horizontal row of navigaion items, with bullets. Simple, right? Drop an unordered list with li set to display: inline, set a padding-left on the li (or on the contained within, because they're links) and a white-space: nowrap on the container.
Except IE7. In IE7, whenever the screen size is narrower than the links, the padding on the first bullet collapses. I tried every variation I could think of over the course of an hour to no avail.
I finally had to set up a class with display:hidden, font-size:0, and a few other things, then apply that style to an otherwise useless "first" link in the list, like so:
[ul]
[li class="stupidie7bugfix"][/li]
[li][a href="..."]actual first link[/a][/li] . . . [/ul] In my opinion, IE7 is still garbage.
Okay, so let's say we did want to send emails to a small group of people without it coming back to haunt us. This is a lot of work, but then, if you want to do something illegal, you'll probably consider it reasonable.
First: set up a computer on a residential connection that sends all logs to/dev/null (after you finish setting it up, of course -- heh) and only offers one outward-facing service: ssh.
Second: set up local accounts for all the people you want to communicate with, and limit them reading their mail locally via ssh only.
Third: Show each user how to read the email by sshing into the machine and reading the text mails with vi, or with mutt, or some other command-line emailer.
Fourth: Create an iso that can be used to set the box back up from scratch to the current config, and that performs the install without user intervention, and employs a disk-wiping mechanism during the install.
Fifth: Set the computer to boot from CD first, and a cron job to reboot the machine every night at 2am.
Now you can happily send email to each other all day long. Every evening, the box reboots, wipes itself, and reloads everything, so mail isn't stored locally for more than 22 hours or so, limiting the amount of incriminating evidence on the machine. Even if the machine's traffic is captured and stored, the encryption is via ssh, so you can't provide your private key for decryption -- there isn't one.
Your only real concerns now are ssh exploits, weak passwords, and your cohorts cut and pasting content from the ssh session onto their local computer. But then, if they'd do that, there are probably lots of other ways they're screwing up the heist.;)
Also, having never actually done anything like this, it's pure speculation. Someone tell me why it won't work.:)
Yeah, well, this is why I run my own mail server, store my own backups, and can destroy either or both at will if need be. I store backups just in case I accidentally delete something I should have kept, and I control backups just in case I accidentally keep something I should have deleted. Simple.
Obviously, the people who I email with (probably) don't do the same thing, and so still have those copies laying around, but let's face it -- if I wanted to do something illegal or sketchy, I wouldn't use email anyway. The control I have isn't to protect me from getting caught at something (I don't do anything of that nature) but to have control *because I can*.
"For the time being"? Seriously? With the stated goal of driving adoption? What a transparent charade. Gee, I guess I'll buy Sony's product now, and as soon as they are the market leader, I'm sure they won't suddenly start using the token.
First: how odd that he should be mocking an attempt to get these laptops in the hands of poor children, considering his company's vision statement is (I believe) "A computer on every desktop". Oh, wait, I suppose his complaint is because these children are too poor to afford desks?
Second: complaining about "cranking...while you're trying to type" is just plain ignorant. The goal is to have a laptop you CAN crank if you don't have access to other power sources, and the cranking/use ratio is certainly going to be more than one minute of cranking to ten minutes of use.
Finally: the last time I checked, people used to use laptops with non-TFT screens that were tiny, and people used to use computers that had little 5" CRTs that only displayed one color over black. His complaint here is like an auto manufacturer saying that people want cars with air bags and leather seats and four-wheel-disc brakes -- certainly they do if they have access to the latest-greatest and funds to pay for it, but if you're poor, you'll take a car that gets you where you need to go whether it has amenities or not.
This sort of thing is the reason I stopped playing WoW, and in fact any game that (A) requires a monthly fee to play, and (B) has a customer service department that is obviously understaffed, overworked and applying vague rules unevenly and (therefore) unfairly.
In short: if you want me to spend money every month on you, you're going to have to step up to the plate and provide decent customer service for me, and that includes treating customers fairly when you *don't* want their money any more -- after all, after reading this story, why should I work to build a character up to level 60 if I might lose everything without notice for no reasonable reason and with no opportunity for justice?
Programming is hard, there's no question. There's only one thing harder: figuring out a new and unique thing to program.
In other words, I'm impressed by his ability to code well (presumably) in a short time, but would be a heck of a lot more impressed if he had created something unique (such as the original Flickr, or whatever it is that was the original in that field) in twice the time.
(also, why did someone tag this post as flamebait? Is it no longer possible to discuss technology invented by another culture without it denegrating into a flamewar? Seriously? That's depressing as hell.)
If you really want a "futuristic" home that won't become an anachronism eventually, there is one (and only one) option: make the house as flexible and updatable as possible.
That means you can't just run wires in the walls; you need low AND high-voltage conduit that runs places you don't think you need cables right now, and with lots of extra capacity -- and, ideally, that allows you to break through the wall and "punch into" the conduit at any point within the wall that it runs.
That means you need to allow for reconfiguration of ducting, gas and water lines at will.
That means you need some walls to be more than just non-structural -- they should be freely reconfigurable.
You get the idea. The future is DIFFERENT, and your house needs to be able to accommodate that.
I have a nearly ready-to-go voting system based on existing technology, with low hardware requirements, complete transparency and an obvious-in-retrospect UI and process that leaves an anonymous yet completely verifiable method to check your vote.
I'll let you know when it's being demo'd.
(I'm sure someone will mark this "funny", and you may well laugh, but you'll smack yourselves in the forehead if/when I get it out the door)
It sneaks up on you. Many, many years ago, I opened a bank account; nobody asked what I did for a living, nobody asked where the money came from. Several years ago, my wife and I got a small safety deposit box for wedding/engagement ring storage, and the questions went on and on, esp. regarding my wife's self-employed status. Now I read a story about folks paying off a credit card debt that they could afford to pay off, and having their assets frozen. In a few years, will I go into the bank attempting to transfer funds between accounts, only to find everything frozen while they do a background check?
I predict that wall safes and such are going to come back in style one of these days, and (esp. considering interest rates on accounts being negligible) bank accounts are going to be the place exclusively for money that's moving, not money that's being saved.
I would imagine that web hosting facility owners (ie those who do colocation and hosting) in New Jersey are going to be pissed, because nobody will want to operate public servers there any more.
I don't want to poop on the accomplishment of these kids -- it's really groovy-cool what they did -- but it's worth pointing out a potential answer to the question "why aren't the manufacturers doing it?"
It's simple, really; if you have a fixed amount of power and you want better speed and gas mileage, reduce weight. The same engine powers a Toyota MR2 Spyder to a high-seven-second 0-60 time and a Lotus Elise to a low-six-second 0-60 time; the Lotus is significantly lighter.
Manufacturers can't reduce weight like someone making a one-off or prototype can; manufacturers need crash protection and air bags, and their cars also need to last a lot longer in day-to-day use. Expecting manufacturers to equal this achievement in a production-ready and street-legal configuration is asking too much.
That article keeps asking "why should you care", and I realized they were right -- why should I?
The few windows boxes I still have are still running 2000; never saw a need to upgrade to XP. One of those machines (the one my wife uses) runs apps that are available (or have rock-solid alternatives) on Linux, such as Firefox, Thunderbird, IM clients, media players, and address book/calendering. The only(!) app that I haven't migrated her off of yet is Quicken, and that's in progress. The other machine is running audio recording software that's out of date, and will probably be replaced by a mac soon.
...for various reasons, I get Yahoo! Music for free, and I found the DRM restrictions so onerous that I uninstalled it a few days later. For FREE it wasn't worth it.
That's not just about Yahoo!'s player; it's the DRM that's the problem. I listen to mp3s on the road via iPod through my car stereo, and in the living room via a slim devices product -- if I get a DRM'd product, I can play it one place and not the other. That's just nonsense, and so I stick with CD ripping.
Hasn't it, though? I tried iTunes briefly, bought one song -- realized I couldn't play it on my slim devices player, and said "heck with it" and never bought anything again.
"Hasn't hurt" is different than "Hasn't hurt enough to get them to stop doing it"
I have two economy cars, and one minivan. The minivan cost more than twice what the economy cars cost. For the first time in history, minivan sales have taken the lead over econony car sales in my household!
I don't know why it's so hard to conceive of a system wherein a created work is owned by the creator until their death, or ten years, whichever is longer (so that the heirs of an artist who suffers an untimely death less than ten years after releasing a work can still reap some benefit.)
First: if they do this, I feel like I'd want to be able to click links and scroll using the stylus on the touch screen, but that's also where I'd like to be able to pop up a keyboard to do user input. So I'm not really sure what the top screen would be for, other than pushing the web page up there when using the pop-up keyboard.
Second: I have a DS, and I love it, but the wireless connectivity has a big, gaping hole: no WPA support. I'm not going to render my home network less secure by moving it back to WEP just to get access for my DS, and running two wireless routers just seems ludicrous.
You, sir (or ma'am), have captured the issue perfectly: the telcos charge a fixed rate for access to lines, and they want the freedom to jack up the rates on a case-by-case basis for those services that are enjoying enough success to be able to afford it.
They could jack up the rates for everyone, but then nobody would use their system, because most people couldn't afford it. They could leave the rates as-is, but then they have to watch the line be leveraged by successful businesses to make tons of money.
To suggest that Google, for instance, gets a "free lunch" with "cheap servers" is ignorant, and completely ignores the expense of employees, infrastructure, code, and other costs of doing business. You might just as well say that the telcos get a "free lunch" with "cheap copper wire", ignoring every other aspect of their business. It suggests that this telco representative at least is confusing companies like Google with a retro image of backyard programmers in a suburban garage -- probably intentionally.
This is not unlike the pricing model that record companies adopt; when an artist is hugely successful, they jack up the price of their CDs. The difference here is that the telcos are providing a service similar to the CD pressing companies, not the record labels -- and can you imagine how long a CD pressing company would stay in business if they tried to charge BMG Music twice as much for pressing Britney Spears CDs as they did other artists? (disclaimer: I have no idea if Britney Spears is distributed by BMG Music)
It's all about greed, pure and simple. Either the telcos will get away with it, or they won't, but don't look for "reasonable" or "appropriate" here -- it's a grab for cash, always has been, always will be.
TFA seems to say that the charge is only to be certified to send high volume email, like mailing lists or legit bulk mail (ie spam from somewhat reputable companies).
So if I sign up for a mailing list operated by a not-for-profit support group for, let's say, Parkinson's Disease -- and that mailing list has thousands of members -- the not-for-profit support group has to pay?
Slashdot Mirror
I type 100+wpm, and have been typing since I was eleven years old. I can type without looking, and without thinking about it.
My handwriting is atrocious; illegible or fast, pick one. Also, my hand craps easily from holding a pencil or pen.
From this you can gather that I'd rather take notes on a computer than on paper, and you'd be correct, in most cases. Specifically, if I'm going to take effective, useful notes that I can refer to later, a laptop is mandatory for me. On the other hand, if I don't plan to KEEP the notes -- that is, if I'm using notes merely as a mechanism to help me remember what I've just heard -- I take a notepad.
So for me to have the option is what's best for me. If I entered a classroom that banned paper and pencil, and required laptops for note-taking, I'd be just as annoyed as this makes me.
Most people who dual-boot are doing so between linux and windows so that they can play windows games.
Me, I have music (that I write and record, not mp3s) software and files on my windows PC that I can't walk away from, but I'm trying to do all my new work on a Mac. Now I can actually pick up a mac mini and dual-boot OSX and windows for all my music stuff.
This also means I can take my old PC and turn it into a dedicated linux box, since it was the need to access my windows-based music that prevented it in the past.
I am a happy clam.
I just finished building a pile of templates, pure css in structure, and one of the target browsers is IE7 (beta 2).
One of the things I needed to implement was a horizontal row of navigaion items, with bullets. Simple, right? Drop an unordered list with li set to display: inline, set a padding-left on the li (or on the contained within, because they're links) and a white-space: nowrap on the container.
Except IE7. In IE7, whenever the screen size is narrower than the links, the padding on the first bullet collapses. I tried every variation I could think of over the course of an hour to no avail.
I finally had to set up a class with display:hidden, font-size:0, and a few other things, then apply that style to an otherwise useless "first" link in the list, like so:
[ul]
[li class="stupidie7bugfix"][/li]
[li][a href="..."]actual first link[/a][/li]
.
.
.
[/ul]
In my opinion, IE7 is still garbage.
Okay, so let's say we did want to send emails to a small group of people without it coming back to haunt us. This is a lot of work, but then, if you want to do something illegal, you'll probably consider it reasonable.
/dev/null (after you finish setting it up, of course -- heh) and only offers one outward-facing service: ssh.
;)
:)
First: set up a computer on a residential connection that sends all logs to
Second: set up local accounts for all the people you want to communicate with, and limit them reading their mail locally via ssh only.
Third: Show each user how to read the email by sshing into the machine and reading the text mails with vi, or with mutt, or some other command-line emailer.
Fourth: Create an iso that can be used to set the box back up from scratch to the current config, and that performs the install without user intervention, and employs a disk-wiping mechanism during the install.
Fifth: Set the computer to boot from CD first, and a cron job to reboot the machine every night at 2am.
Now you can happily send email to each other all day long. Every evening, the box reboots, wipes itself, and reloads everything, so mail isn't stored locally for more than 22 hours or so, limiting the amount of incriminating evidence on the machine. Even if the machine's traffic is captured and stored, the encryption is via ssh, so you can't provide your private key for decryption -- there isn't one.
Your only real concerns now are ssh exploits, weak passwords, and your cohorts cut and pasting content from the ssh session onto their local computer. But then, if they'd do that, there are probably lots of other ways they're screwing up the heist.
Also, having never actually done anything like this, it's pure speculation. Someone tell me why it won't work.
Yeah, well, this is why I run my own mail server, store my own backups, and can destroy either or both at will if need be. I store backups just in case I accidentally delete something I should have kept, and I control backups just in case I accidentally keep something I should have deleted. Simple.
Obviously, the people who I email with (probably) don't do the same thing, and so still have those copies laying around, but let's face it -- if I wanted to do something illegal or sketchy, I wouldn't use email anyway. The control I have isn't to protect me from getting caught at something (I don't do anything of that nature) but to have control *because I can*.
"For the time being"? Seriously? With the stated goal of driving adoption? What a transparent charade. Gee, I guess I'll buy Sony's product now, and as soon as they are the market leader, I'm sure they won't suddenly start using the token.
Who is foolish enough to be suckered in by this?
First: how odd that he should be mocking an attempt to get these laptops in the hands of poor children, considering his company's vision statement is (I believe) "A computer on every desktop". Oh, wait, I suppose his complaint is because these children are too poor to afford desks?
Second: complaining about "cranking...while you're trying to type" is just plain ignorant. The goal is to have a laptop you CAN crank if you don't have access to other power sources, and the cranking/use ratio is certainly going to be more than one minute of cranking to ten minutes of use.
Finally: the last time I checked, people used to use laptops with non-TFT screens that were tiny, and people used to use computers that had little 5" CRTs that only displayed one color over black. His complaint here is like an auto manufacturer saying that people want cars with air bags and leather seats and four-wheel-disc brakes -- certainly they do if they have access to the latest-greatest and funds to pay for it, but if you're poor, you'll take a car that gets you where you need to go whether it has amenities or not.
Sheesh.
This sort of thing is the reason I stopped playing WoW, and in fact any game that (A) requires a monthly fee to play, and (B) has a customer service department that is obviously understaffed, overworked and applying vague rules unevenly and (therefore) unfairly.
In short: if you want me to spend money every month on you, you're going to have to step up to the plate and provide decent customer service for me, and that includes treating customers fairly when you *don't* want their money any more -- after all, after reading this story, why should I work to build a character up to level 60 if I might lose everything without notice for no reasonable reason and with no opportunity for justice?
Programming is hard, there's no question. There's only one thing harder: figuring out a new and unique thing to program.
In other words, I'm impressed by his ability to code well (presumably) in a short time, but would be a heck of a lot more impressed if he had created something unique (such as the original Flickr, or whatever it is that was the original in that field) in twice the time.
But what have they done for me lately?
(also, why did someone tag this post as flamebait? Is it no longer possible to discuss technology invented by another culture without it denegrating into a flamewar? Seriously? That's depressing as hell.)
If you really want a "futuristic" home that won't become an anachronism eventually, there is one (and only one) option: make the house as flexible and updatable as possible.
That means you can't just run wires in the walls; you need low AND high-voltage conduit that runs places you don't think you need cables right now, and with lots of extra capacity -- and, ideally, that allows you to break through the wall and "punch into" the conduit at any point within the wall that it runs.
That means you need to allow for reconfiguration of ducting, gas and water lines at will.
That means you need some walls to be more than just non-structural -- they should be freely reconfigurable.
You get the idea. The future is DIFFERENT, and your house needs to be able to accommodate that.
I have a nearly ready-to-go voting system based on existing technology, with low hardware requirements, complete transparency and an obvious-in-retrospect UI and process that leaves an anonymous yet completely verifiable method to check your vote.
I'll let you know when it's being demo'd.
(I'm sure someone will mark this "funny", and you may well laugh, but you'll smack yourselves in the forehead if/when I get it out the door)
It sneaks up on you. Many, many years ago, I opened a bank account; nobody asked what I did for a living, nobody asked where the money came from. Several years ago, my wife and I got a small safety deposit box for wedding/engagement ring storage, and the questions went on and on, esp. regarding my wife's self-employed status. Now I read a story about folks paying off a credit card debt that they could afford to pay off, and having their assets frozen. In a few years, will I go into the bank attempting to transfer funds between accounts, only to find everything frozen while they do a background check?
I predict that wall safes and such are going to come back in style one of these days, and (esp. considering interest rates on accounts being negligible) bank accounts are going to be the place exclusively for money that's moving, not money that's being saved.
I would imagine that web hosting facility owners (ie those who do colocation and hosting) in New Jersey are going to be pissed, because nobody will want to operate public servers there any more.
"Spam Stamping"? Isn't that the AOL/Yahoo! email initiative?
I don't want to poop on the accomplishment of these kids -- it's really groovy-cool what they did -- but it's worth pointing out a potential answer to the question "why aren't the manufacturers doing it?"
It's simple, really; if you have a fixed amount of power and you want better speed and gas mileage, reduce weight. The same engine powers a Toyota MR2 Spyder to a high-seven-second 0-60 time and a Lotus Elise to a low-six-second 0-60 time; the Lotus is significantly lighter.
Manufacturers can't reduce weight like someone making a one-off or prototype can; manufacturers need crash protection and air bags, and their cars also need to last a lot longer in day-to-day use. Expecting manufacturers to equal this achievement in a production-ready and street-legal configuration is asking too much.
That article keeps asking "why should you care", and I realized they were right -- why should I?
The few windows boxes I still have are still running 2000; never saw a need to upgrade to XP. One of those machines (the one my wife uses) runs apps that are available (or have rock-solid alternatives) on Linux, such as Firefox, Thunderbird, IM clients, media players, and address book/calendering. The only(!) app that I haven't migrated her off of yet is Quicken, and that's in progress. The other machine is running audio recording software that's out of date, and will probably be replaced by a mac soon.
So why should I care?
...for various reasons, I get Yahoo! Music for free, and I found the DRM restrictions so onerous that I uninstalled it a few days later. For FREE it wasn't worth it.
That's not just about Yahoo!'s player; it's the DRM that's the problem. I listen to mp3s on the road via iPod through my car stereo, and in the living room via a slim devices product -- if I get a DRM'd product, I can play it one place and not the other. That's just nonsense, and so I stick with CD ripping.
That sounds like a great way to kill sales.
Hasn't hurt iTunes.
Hasn't it, though? I tried iTunes briefly, bought one song -- realized I couldn't play it on my slim devices player, and said "heck with it" and never bought anything again.
"Hasn't hurt" is different than "Hasn't hurt enough to get them to stop doing it"
I have two economy cars, and one minivan. The minivan cost more than twice what the economy cars cost. For the first time in history, minivan sales have taken the lead over econony car sales in my household!
(sigh)
I don't know why it's so hard to conceive of a system wherein a created work is owned by the creator until their death, or ten years, whichever is longer (so that the heirs of an artist who suffers an untimely death less than ten years after releasing a work can still reap some benefit.)
First: if they do this, I feel like I'd want to be able to click links and scroll using the stylus on the touch screen, but that's also where I'd like to be able to pop up a keyboard to do user input. So I'm not really sure what the top screen would be for, other than pushing the web page up there when using the pop-up keyboard.
Second: I have a DS, and I love it, but the wireless connectivity has a big, gaping hole: no WPA support. I'm not going to render my home network less secure by moving it back to WEP just to get access for my DS, and running two wireless routers just seems ludicrous.
You, sir (or ma'am), have captured the issue perfectly: the telcos charge a fixed rate for access to lines, and they want the freedom to jack up the rates on a case-by-case basis for those services that are enjoying enough success to be able to afford it.
They could jack up the rates for everyone, but then nobody would use their system, because most people couldn't afford it. They could leave the rates as-is, but then they have to watch the line be leveraged by successful businesses to make tons of money.
To suggest that Google, for instance, gets a "free lunch" with "cheap servers" is ignorant, and completely ignores the expense of employees, infrastructure, code, and other costs of doing business. You might just as well say that the telcos get a "free lunch" with "cheap copper wire", ignoring every other aspect of their business. It suggests that this telco representative at least is confusing companies like Google with a retro image of backyard programmers in a suburban garage -- probably intentionally.
This is not unlike the pricing model that record companies adopt; when an artist is hugely successful, they jack up the price of their CDs. The difference here is that the telcos are providing a service similar to the CD pressing companies, not the record labels -- and can you imagine how long a CD pressing company would stay in business if they tried to charge BMG Music twice as much for pressing Britney Spears CDs as they did other artists? (disclaimer: I have no idea if Britney Spears is distributed by BMG Music)
It's all about greed, pure and simple. Either the telcos will get away with it, or they won't, but don't look for "reasonable" or "appropriate" here -- it's a grab for cash, always has been, always will be.
TFA seems to say that the charge is only to be certified to send high volume email, like mailing lists or legit bulk mail (ie spam from somewhat reputable companies).
So if I sign up for a mailing list operated by a not-for-profit support group for, let's say, Parkinson's Disease -- and that mailing list has thousands of members -- the not-for-profit support group has to pay?
That doesn't strike you as a bad thing?
Is there a company in USA that has some moral fibre left?
Yes, cereal manufacturers.
Oh, wait, that's just the fiber part.