The scientists hope their research will eventually lead to a neural prosthesis to help people suffering Alzheimer's disease, the effects of stroke or other brain injury to recover long-term memory capability.
Yeah yeah, thats all well and good. How long before there is an app that one can use to un-see certain things that, well, should not have been seen...
thats a credit card. a credit card is not money. in real life, if your money is stolen, it is stolen.
In real life, if your money is money (as in paper currency) you need a safe in order to consider it, well, safe. Otherwise, yes, its pointless to think that bitcoin is any less secure than having cash around. But hmm, we did think up some "alternative" to requiring anyone who wishes to participate in the currency economy to obtain and store paper currency... If only I could remember what it was...
Something a would-be thief would likely not even recognize as being able to store a high-virtual-value item such as a bitcoin wallet. Consider it the equivalent of stashing your money in a cookie jar.
SSH is a pretty shitty example, if you excuse me for saying so. Name a version of SSH that installs on an android phone and allows for one-click uploading of pictures to a secure location that can be easily accessed later? The realm of non-cloud tools that are designed to solve this problem are pretty small, and for the most part immature, so it makes sense to crowdsource this sort of question beyond the usual "type it into google" mechanism.
Snap, that deal is pretty good (half off retail) and its getting gobbled up fast (its the no.1 seller on said site today.) See slickdeals for more info.
His complaint was about the cloud in general. So yes, his objection to using dropbox specifically is easy to overcome with many many other solutions, but the fact that they ALL rely on the cloud is still there.
A week or two outside the country making calls without a locked phone is worth about $450? Jeebus, put Skype on the thing, connect it to a free Wi-Fi spot somewhere, and get your talking in for about $10. If it were me (and I only travel outside the US rarely so it's not) and I needed full "cellphone" capabilities I would get a junker GSM handset off ebay for $20 or less and just put up with using a "dumbphone" for the duration. Some people see a benefit in this, sure, but the thing that pisses me off is it just further demonstrates how pathetic the carrier choice in the US is.
The sticking point I have is that no network, shy of T-Mobile (arguably the least capable network of any in the US) actually differentiates between customers who have a contract-free/unlocked phone, and those that don't. This basically punishes anyone who buys an unlocked phone who later goes on to buy 2 years of service from a major carrier, because you "could" have gotten the thing for free/almost free and ended up paying the same for your service. So, for someone who travels outside the US only on a few rare occasions in those 2 years, what good does this do them? None at all, in fact after 2 years they paid more for this than if they just got the subsidized phone and put up with the contract.
Good for Apple for offering an unlocked phone. To Hell with AT&T and Verizon for not putting it to better use, since they would rather keep you trapped in a contract than give you the chance to pay up-front and enjoy less expensive service in the long run.
And for people like me, we're not liking that Verizon is talking about getting rid of their Unlimited plan, because it raises the likelihood of some of us needing to pay more (this also makes that whole "unlimited" only complaint moot once it's put into affect, though my 4G point is moot as soon as AT&T catches up as well).
Don't worry, I won't have anything less to complain about if Verizon ditches their unlimited plan. What they are in all likelihood going to do (unless competition actually picks up in the next 6 months) is switch the $29 plan from "unlimited" to something like 2GB. Then, they will have a $39 (or so) plan for 5GB. They won't be offering smartphones any option priced less than $29 a month; it's just too big of a gold mine for them.
Sorry, but your conclusion from reading the site is completely wrong (not your fault, Verizon is TERRIBLE about this.)
If you have a smartphone (and they decide what is and isnt a smartphone) you WILL pay $29 a month for unlimited data, or you won't be connecting to Verizon's network. Period, full stop, end of story. The option was NOT there for the sub-$29 plans when you bought your Droid X (though they might have wanted you to think it was.) Call them and ask to downgrade your plan. It won't happen, not for you, not for anyone. Sub-$29 plans are only available for phone-retrieved data on NON-smartphones, regardless of contract status.
I would also ditch AT&T, while everyone is at it, and go to Verizon. At least Verizon treats its customers marginally better.
[Citation Needed]...
At least AT&T offers their customers the "freedom" to choose how much data they want to use, and to pay accordingly. Personally, I would love the option to pay $15 a month for 200MB given that I rarely am out of WiFi range and could easily adjust my usage to stay below that limit. Instead, on Verizon, I MUST have a $29 "unlimited" data plan regardless of how I want to use my own, paid for, not-under-contract smartphone. Yay Verizon.
"Get all the features of iPhone 4—FaceTime video calling, Retina display, HD video recording, and more—in a phone that you can activate and use on the supported GSM wireless carrier of your choice, such as AT&T in the United States," Apple said in a note. "If you don't want a multiyear service contract or if you prefer to use a local carrier when traveling abroad, the unlocked iPhone 4 is the best choice."
So as an American, you either need to be someone who wants to spend $649 on a smartphone but intends to use it for less than 2 years (perhaps, planning on moving to the moon?) or you need to be someone who is so frequently overseas that you have your own overseas SIM and would like to be able to switch between networks with ease. How many people is that? Any hands in the slashdot crowd?
The problem is the inability of consumers or managers to understand the 3 part rule. Speed, Quality, Cost, pick two.
I think the best analogy for this is furniture.
Mennonites make great furniture. It takes a long time, and is very expensive. It is a craft, and they are craftsmen.
Example fail. If Mennenites abided by your "pick two" rule and they were slow but produced high quality, they would be cheap. Instead they are expensive to boot, and are apparently working under the "Pick 1" rule.
If investors (who haven't seen a dividend from AAPL since 1995!) see that they just blew their 15B war chest on a new building, at the same time that Google, Microsoft, and many others are nipping at their iPhone-centric heels, they will start heading for the exits. Maybe Steve Jobs is comfortable with a stock price back around the 100/share range, but I think he would have a lot fewer "followers" if that ever happened. I wouldn't be surprised if they used corporate bonds to pay for a large part of the new building, it just makes more sense for overall company strength.
I like how at 7:06 in the video the artists rendition of the elevation view of the new building includes the obligatory iPod-wearing, air guitar playing youth in the foreground. I wonder if the city council is getting ad revenue for this event.
They can spin Trolltech back out, if as a product it is worth the money. Or, all the fans/supporters can pick up the GPLed portions of QT and keep the ball rolling (if there is indeed a groundswell of community support). It's not like Nokia is holding the only copy of the QT source code, and is dangling it over a bottomless pit...
This happens to projects and products all the time. The article, for it's good intentions, makes it sound like no software ever died on the vine before. Yeah, right.
Their strength is their weakness. The same nobility that inspired these geezers (and i use that term with respect) to volunteer will prevent anyone in government or management from allowing them to go through with it. If they do it, some of them will certainly develop cancer or other serious maladies, and Japan's black eye would only get worse if they were seen sending in their most revered citizens in to die cleaning up a mess caused by some whippersnapper 40 year olds and their slipshod safety procedures.
No, the only thing that would float is if the Tepco management team themselves "volunteered" to do the clean up, as penance for the disaster they caused.
What I don't understand is why Netflix doesn't go to a BitTorrent style P2P swarm type streaming. This would so much get them around how the cable companies are trying to screw them over for doing nothing more than providing programming that I want over a pipe THAT I PAID FOR.
Why? It would completely break the current functionality of "pick program, buffer for 10 seconds, start watching program".
What would be brilliant is an option for devices with a capable cache (4GB or more) where you would command it to fetch the highest quality stream via P2P, and you simply had to wait for it to finish to start watching it. The system would then keep the file around for the next day or so (or maybe just keep 10GB worth of the last media you watched) and it would seed it for the rest of the cloud. Apply custom ports, a little encryption, and a signed EXE and hopefully it will take more than a week to be completely hacked and allow for any user with a valid login to permanently download any content and strip it of DRM.
What? Geohot is on the case? Ah crap. Never mind, back to locked down streaming we go.
Isn't this more or less the same thing that Firesheep does, and why the EFF is urging everyone to use HTTPS wherever possible?
Yes it is, except that in the case of FireSheep, the user could have simply connected to HTTPS://facebook.com and been protected from attack. Also, the user had to initiate the connection; very few people probably have facebook.com set to load up on any wifi connection available, as soon as their laptop is opened up. Lastly, it's *facebook*. If your account is compromised you might have a few awkward messages sent to your friends on your behalf, but the damage is limited. We have seen time and time again in the past few weeks just how much damage a compromised gmail account can cause.
Given that someone can't sit next to me at Starbucks, or even in my driveway, and pick up packets off the wire and decode them, yes it is a LOT more worrying that this happens in the air as opposed to it being possible at all. I mean, how often did your PPP dialup and POP3 password get exploited for being transferred in cleartext? Sure, in a perfect world every single endpoint would have a major CA signed cert, and SSL/TLS would wrap every single packet on the internet. Until we get there, I will start my worrying with what happens over the air, and get to the wire when that's done.
While it is fear-mongering, it is hardly as trivial as the Facebook hacks of yore. For one, there is no way to enable/require SSL for these tokens (at least in plain sight). Two, there is no way to easily turn off these activities on a phone that you otherwise want to use for casual traffic on an unsecured network.
Therefore, if you have an Android phone you basically better never use WiFi at less than WPA2 grade encryption unless you want to risk your email and other services being compromised, period, end of story, no workaround.
I can only hope that thanks to the openness of Android, someone can code an app that allows for more granular control of what services are connecting at any given time, to at least give those with a clue the ability to stay safe when using open wifi.
Furthermore, if you don't like the Android model, you don't have to use an Android phone. [...] For everybody else, I would recommend whatever the latest Nexus model on the market happens to be as that's where the mainstream officially sanctioned Android action is.
Golf clap. "If you disagree with me, go away!" There's a bulletproof argument. Excuse me while I go spend $600 on a Nexus handset, only to be required to still pay an exorbitant amount for a data plan. Gee, isn't freedom great!
Slashdot Mirror
The scientists hope their research will eventually lead to a neural prosthesis to help people suffering Alzheimer's disease, the effects of stroke or other brain injury to recover long-term memory capability.
Yeah yeah, thats all well and good. How long before there is an app that one can use to un-see certain things that, well, should not have been seen...
I can if I devalue it to the point of uselessness! Muahahahahahah
Yours in deflation,
Kilgore T Krugerrand
thats a credit card. a credit card is not money. in real life, if your money is stolen, it is stolen.
In real life, if your money is money (as in paper currency) you need a safe in order to consider it, well, safe. Otherwise, yes, its pointless to think that bitcoin is any less secure than having cash around. But hmm, we did think up some "alternative" to requiring anyone who wishes to participate in the currency economy to obtain and store paper currency... If only I could remember what it was...
Something a would-be thief would likely not even recognize as being able to store a high-virtual-value item such as a bitcoin wallet. Consider it the equivalent of stashing your money in a cookie jar.
SSH is a pretty shitty example, if you excuse me for saying so. Name a version of SSH that installs on an android phone and allows for one-click uploading of pictures to a secure location that can be easily accessed later? The realm of non-cloud tools that are designed to solve this problem are pretty small, and for the most part immature, so it makes sense to crowdsource this sort of question beyond the usual "type it into google" mechanism.
Snap, that deal is pretty good (half off retail) and its getting gobbled up fast (its the no.1 seller on said site today.) See slickdeals for more info.
His complaint was about the cloud in general. So yes, his objection to using dropbox specifically is easy to overcome with many many other solutions, but the fact that they ALL rely on the cloud is still there.
A week or two outside the country making calls without a locked phone is worth about $450? Jeebus, put Skype on the thing, connect it to a free Wi-Fi spot somewhere, and get your talking in for about $10. If it were me (and I only travel outside the US rarely so it's not) and I needed full "cellphone" capabilities I would get a junker GSM handset off ebay for $20 or less and just put up with using a "dumbphone" for the duration. Some people see a benefit in this, sure, but the thing that pisses me off is it just further demonstrates how pathetic the carrier choice in the US is.
The sticking point I have is that no network, shy of T-Mobile (arguably the least capable network of any in the US) actually differentiates between customers who have a contract-free/unlocked phone, and those that don't. This basically punishes anyone who buys an unlocked phone who later goes on to buy 2 years of service from a major carrier, because you "could" have gotten the thing for free/almost free and ended up paying the same for your service. So, for someone who travels outside the US only on a few rare occasions in those 2 years, what good does this do them? None at all, in fact after 2 years they paid more for this than if they just got the subsidized phone and put up with the contract.
Good for Apple for offering an unlocked phone. To Hell with AT&T and Verizon for not putting it to better use, since they would rather keep you trapped in a contract than give you the chance to pay up-front and enjoy less expensive service in the long run.
And for people like me, we're not liking that Verizon is talking about getting rid of their Unlimited plan, because it raises the likelihood of some of us needing to pay more (this also makes that whole "unlimited" only complaint moot once it's put into affect, though my 4G point is moot as soon as AT&T catches up as well).
Don't worry, I won't have anything less to complain about if Verizon ditches their unlimited plan. What they are in all likelihood going to do (unless competition actually picks up in the next 6 months) is switch the $29 plan from "unlimited" to something like 2GB. Then, they will have a $39 (or so) plan for 5GB. They won't be offering smartphones any option priced less than $29 a month; it's just too big of a gold mine for them.
Sorry, but your conclusion from reading the site is completely wrong (not your fault, Verizon is TERRIBLE about this.)
If you have a smartphone (and they decide what is and isnt a smartphone) you WILL pay $29 a month for unlimited data, or you won't be connecting to Verizon's network. Period, full stop, end of story. The option was NOT there for the sub-$29 plans when you bought your Droid X (though they might have wanted you to think it was.) Call them and ask to downgrade your plan. It won't happen, not for you, not for anyone. Sub-$29 plans are only available for phone-retrieved data on NON-smartphones, regardless of contract status.
I would also ditch AT&T, while everyone is at it, and go to Verizon. At least Verizon treats its customers marginally better.
[Citation Needed]...
At least AT&T offers their customers the "freedom" to choose how much data they want to use, and to pay accordingly. Personally, I would love the option to pay $15 a month for 200MB given that I rarely am out of WiFi range and could easily adjust my usage to stay below that limit. Instead, on Verizon, I MUST have a $29 "unlimited" data plan regardless of how I want to use my own, paid for, not-under-contract smartphone. Yay Verizon.
From TFA:
"Get all the features of iPhone 4—FaceTime video calling, Retina display, HD video recording, and more—in a phone that you can activate and use on the supported GSM wireless carrier of your choice, such as AT&T in the United States," Apple said in a note. "If you don't want a multiyear service contract or if you prefer to use a local carrier when traveling abroad, the unlocked iPhone 4 is the best choice."
So as an American, you either need to be someone who wants to spend $649 on a smartphone but intends to use it for less than 2 years (perhaps, planning on moving to the moon?) or you need to be someone who is so frequently overseas that you have your own overseas SIM and would like to be able to switch between networks with ease. How many people is that? Any hands in the slashdot crowd?
The problem is the inability of consumers or managers to understand the 3 part rule. Speed, Quality, Cost, pick two.
I think the best analogy for this is furniture.
Mennonites make great furniture. It takes a long time, and is very expensive. It is a craft, and they are craftsmen.
Example fail. If Mennenites abided by your "pick two" rule and they were slow but produced high quality, they would be cheap. Instead they are expensive to boot, and are apparently working under the "Pick 1" rule.
If investors (who haven't seen a dividend from AAPL since 1995!) see that they just blew their 15B war chest on a new building, at the same time that Google, Microsoft, and many others are nipping at their iPhone-centric heels, they will start heading for the exits. Maybe Steve Jobs is comfortable with a stock price back around the 100/share range, but I think he would have a lot fewer "followers" if that ever happened. I wouldn't be surprised if they used corporate bonds to pay for a large part of the new building, it just makes more sense for overall company strength.
I like how at 7:06 in the video the artists rendition of the elevation view of the new building includes the obligatory iPod-wearing, air guitar playing youth in the foreground. I wonder if the city council is getting ad revenue for this event.
They can spin Trolltech back out, if as a product it is worth the money. Or, all the fans/supporters can pick up the GPLed portions of QT and keep the ball rolling (if there is indeed a groundswell of community support). It's not like Nokia is holding the only copy of the QT source code, and is dangling it over a bottomless pit...
This happens to projects and products all the time. The article, for it's good intentions, makes it sound like no software ever died on the vine before. Yeah, right.
I may be showing a lack of geek cred but is "happyed" a word (as seen in the response to "The State of Geek Culture")?
Their strength is their weakness. The same nobility that inspired these geezers (and i use that term with respect) to volunteer will prevent anyone in government or management from allowing them to go through with it. If they do it, some of them will certainly develop cancer or other serious maladies, and Japan's black eye would only get worse if they were seen sending in their most revered citizens in to die cleaning up a mess caused by some whippersnapper 40 year olds and their slipshod safety procedures.
No, the only thing that would float is if the Tepco management team themselves "volunteered" to do the clean up, as penance for the disaster they caused.
Yeah, nothing de-orbits better than a fully powered rocket. Earth, here I come!!!
What I don't understand is why Netflix doesn't go to a BitTorrent style P2P swarm type streaming. This would so much get them around how the cable companies are trying to screw them over for doing nothing more than providing programming that I want over a pipe THAT I PAID FOR.
Why? It would completely break the current functionality of "pick program, buffer for 10 seconds, start watching program".
What would be brilliant is an option for devices with a capable cache (4GB or more) where you would command it to fetch the highest quality stream via P2P, and you simply had to wait for it to finish to start watching it. The system would then keep the file around for the next day or so (or maybe just keep 10GB worth of the last media you watched) and it would seed it for the rest of the cloud. Apply custom ports, a little encryption, and a signed EXE and hopefully it will take more than a week to be completely hacked and allow for any user with a valid login to permanently download any content and strip it of DRM.
What? Geohot is on the case? Ah crap. Never mind, back to locked down streaming we go.
Isn't this more or less the same thing that Firesheep does, and why the EFF is urging everyone to use HTTPS wherever possible?
Yes it is, except that in the case of FireSheep, the user could have simply connected to HTTPS://facebook.com and been protected from attack. Also, the user had to initiate the connection; very few people probably have facebook.com set to load up on any wifi connection available, as soon as their laptop is opened up. Lastly, it's *facebook*. If your account is compromised you might have a few awkward messages sent to your friends on your behalf, but the damage is limited. We have seen time and time again in the past few weeks just how much damage a compromised gmail account can cause.
Given that someone can't sit next to me at Starbucks, or even in my driveway, and pick up packets off the wire and decode them, yes it is a LOT more worrying that this happens in the air as opposed to it being possible at all. I mean, how often did your PPP dialup and POP3 password get exploited for being transferred in cleartext? Sure, in a perfect world every single endpoint would have a major CA signed cert, and SSL/TLS would wrap every single packet on the internet. Until we get there, I will start my worrying with what happens over the air, and get to the wire when that's done.
While it is fear-mongering, it is hardly as trivial as the Facebook hacks of yore. For one, there is no way to enable/require SSL for these tokens (at least in plain sight). Two, there is no way to easily turn off these activities on a phone that you otherwise want to use for casual traffic on an unsecured network.
Therefore, if you have an Android phone you basically better never use WiFi at less than WPA2 grade encryption unless you want to risk your email and other services being compromised, period, end of story, no workaround.
I can only hope that thanks to the openness of Android, someone can code an app that allows for more granular control of what services are connecting at any given time, to at least give those with a clue the ability to stay safe when using open wifi.
Furthermore, if you don't like the Android model, you don't have to use an Android phone. [...] For everybody else, I would recommend whatever the latest Nexus model on the market happens to be as that's where the mainstream officially sanctioned Android action is.
Golf clap. "If you disagree with me, go away!" There's a bulletproof argument. Excuse me while I go spend $600 on a Nexus handset, only to be required to still pay an exorbitant amount for a data plan. Gee, isn't freedom great!