I *had* a tablet - a 7" Acer Android - that I loved and used daily until I upgraded my phone to a RAZR Maxx HD. I had an Android phone before but the screen was small and/or low resolution enough that I preferred the bright, sharp 7" tablet. The new phone, however, is big/bright/sharp/fast enough that I lost interest in the tablet, which I still have but haven't picked up ever since.
And the battery life on this thing is just incredible. I will never again buy a phone that doesn't have incredible battery life - after having a decent screen, it's the next most important thing in a phone!
We have a well-funded government agency, tasked with securing its country, actively sabotaging the security frameworks of the nation it has been tasked with protecting, in the name of "security". Never mind that any back door left open to the NSA is also left open to other parties. (EG: China) And now we're supposed to *trust* this agency with even more unfettered access to 0-day exploits?
If the NSA was really about securing the United States, it would be auditing commercial security products to ensure the *lack* of back doors, not ensuring the presence of them!
It's important not to accept any input as pure fact on its face. It's equally important to accept facts that are verified, even if inconvenient. Far too often, "healthy skepticism" is another way to say "inconvenient so LA LA LA LA LA (fingers in ears)".
Fact is that micro pollutants are just now entering the threshold of human understanding - and it's a bigger problem than just about anybody guessed.
I recently stayed at a "fancy" hotel in Reno, NV that charged $5 for the Wifi, only to get dreadfully slow speeds. I also recently stayed at a "Best Value Inn" or something like that near Moreno Valley and despite the clearly packed night and free Wifi, speeds were excellent.
Care to guess where I'll prefer when I'm back in either area?
... and it's pretty pointless. No bugs? You are certainly joking, or at the very least, clueless.
There are *always* bugs and always will be. So what? Many bugs just aren't worth fixing, and are even debatable as a bug. Bugs come in all forms:
A) The software doesn't do what it is specifically designed to do. (obvious, must fix)
B) The software does exactly what it's supposed to do in an insecure way that can be exploited in some fashion. (probably should fix, unless the "insecure" way is part of the assumed envelope of use. For example, the common practice of using an SSL reverse proxy got Google in trouble with the NSA yet using a reverse proxy isn't itself generally considered a "bug".
C) The software does what it's designed to do, but not in a way that the user expects. (Is this a bug? Or PEBCAK?)
D) The software does what it's supposed to but not when an unexpected environment is encountered. (Example: this product is incompatible with A/V $FOO)
E) The software interacts with other software in an unexpected way.
F) The software lacks a feature that some customers would find useful.
G) The software implements a feature in an unattractive or cumbersome way.... and so on.
A PENCIL has bugs! Yes, a pencil. The lead breaks easily. The eraser doesn't remove *all* the marking when you use it. It requires a sharpener. You can't sign a contract with a pencil. They are horrible for lefties who end up with a dark stripe on the side of the their hand. The paint can sometimes discolor your finger. And on and on and on...
These are all "bugs" yet the design of a pencil hasn't been updated to fix them. There are few things as simple as a !@#$% pencil yet these obvious bugs have *never* been fixed. Oh sure, some have. There have been erasable pens. There are mechanical pencils. Pens can perform some of the duties of a pencil.
So if a bug-free pencil hasn't yet been made, how in the name of anything holy do you expect something millions of times more complex to be "bug free"?
Expensive advertising campaigns engender trust because it shows that the advertiser has the resources to carry out the campaign. It's why online ads are so commonly ignored - people want to do business with "reputable" companies and expensive advertising is a way of establishing repute.
Similarly, putting out the modicum of effort to perform basic security like SSL is a signal that the website is reputable. I mean, if you can't be bothered to buy a $50 SSL certificate and install it, are you *really* trustworthy?
Actually, I have a physically secured, locked box full of hard drives that I haven't bothered to wipe or destroy. Our approximate policy is to use in house for other purposes if it makes sense, or throw into the box. HDDs just 3 to 5 years old are basically worthless. For storage in volume, anything smaller than about 2 or 3 TB is ready to be replaced, just because of the savings in electricity.
The most bad-ass server I've ever had the pleasure of working with was a Digital VAX 11/750 generations ago. It was *built* to be reliable from the very first rivet.
Oh sure, my pocket phone has far more power, memory, and storage. Despite the ample square footage of my "McMansion" house, It would not have fit in my kitchen. It ate power like global warming really was a myth. But as a server, it was in its own class.
It would automatically detect memory that was failing and rebuild from memory (like ECC) but then would remap that address so it would no longer be used.
You could upgrade its CPUs one at a time without shutting it down.
It was like a hoover with data, versioning files was intrinsic to how the O/S worked.
One time, the A/C in the computer room went out. It mapped *everything* in RAM to disk as the temperature rose and the chips became unreliable. We literally pulled the plug on it because it was completely unresponsive, as all operations were working directly off HDD. When the A/C was fixed and it was powered up late that night, it spooled all of RAM out of the HDD swap, and everybody's workstation resumed exactly where they had left off that afternoon - we couldn't find any data loss at all.
I will forever bow in deference to the greatest server I have ever had the pleasure of working on. How HP managed to acquire such a legacy and turn its back... part of me cries inside.
Put the firewall up FIRST, and open essential ports as necessary. This is network security 101.
Duh?
I think the question is whether or not you trust iptables to be the firewall, or whether or not you have a dedicated device as a firewall.
Sadly, as a security device, dedicated firewalls are their own can of worms. For example, firmware updates for dedicated firewall devices are often much less frequently issued, and the update process is typically far more painful than you'd see as a mindful admin for a Linux box. Many "dedicated firewall" devices are little more than Linux + iptables + proprietary interface anway, meaning you aren't protected at all if there's a common kernel flaw found. Lastly, being heavily stripped down, you have no way to audit them to see if they *are* compromised, because half your toolchain is missing even if you do have shell access, even though, as a full-fledged, turing complete computing device, they are quite useful to a black hat.
All that said, I do frequently use dedicated firewalls, but also use locked down Linux servers interchangeably. Given the 10+ years of excellent security track record I've maintained going this route, I'm pretty confident this doesn't mean I'm incompetent, as would seem to be the opinion around here.
I am a bit paranoid about security, disabling password access anywhere possible, relying on default-deny firewalls, using port-knocking & non-standard ports for SSH, not using non-ssl connections for *anything* administrative, VPNs required for access to insecure services like IPMI, etc.
We paid Comcast to bring broadband to us in the first place. That they haven't done it yet means we'd only have to pay twice to get it if we went the municipal route, whereas we won't get it at all from Comcast.
Even if we did "get" the broadband, they've shown perfect willingness to simply refuse to upgrade their networks to allow bandwidth to flow from Internet companies they don't like. (*cough*Netflix*/cough*)
In Europe, they discovered that train wrecks were really, really bad. So they set about building a system of trains that didn't wreck, with numerous controls and systems to prevent collisions, resulting in an excellent safety record and low cost.
In the United States, they discovered that train wrecks were really, really bad. So they set about building a system of trains that survived wrecks with minimal injuries, with heavy crash cages and crumple zones in order to gracefully survive collisions, resulting in an excellent safety record and ridiculous costs.
Making a US train go as fast as an EU train is very difficult to do feasibly, since it weighs at least 4x as much per passenger.
For the most part, I agree with you. I'm also a bit of a cheap bastard. I ride my bike to work largely for health reasons but also because it's cheaper. I switched to CFLs over a decade ago when I saw the cost savings. I aggressively turn up the AC to "just barely comfortable" to save money. I ditched the home phone for Magic Jack, and I ditched cable TV for Hulu/Netflix. By watching the gas consumption calculator on my car, and reading up about "hypermiling" I get about 10-20% better fuel economy simply by changing my driving patterns - after some practice, I can do it without doing anything people driving with me would notice without paying close attention. I routinely time shift my schedule either early or late so I avoid traffic altogether.
If I owned my house, I would have erected a solar back porch roof long ago to both keep sun off the house and power the A/C.
And by the way, modern cars are so low emission that some of them actually clean up the air around them. The 2011 Ford F150 Raptor is one of them. If I were an environmentalist, (and I need to stress that I am NOT) I would push for more of these cars to be on the road than lobbying for higher gas prices (which serves to ruin the economy, and has almost no actual benefit on reducing emissions.)
But, I LOL at statements like this! This statement is only true if you ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room: CO2.
Pffft. Please. They have glass windows on their walls, right? An infrared laser microphone reflecting off the window would be more than sufficient. The trick would be to connect several electric typewriters together with a randomizer so that there are many typewriters banging away in random in the same room.
I'm a partner in a small software company. We employ 8 developers, 26 total staff. Our wages are midline, our benefits excellent, and our work environment is superb. I haven't seen *any* benefit from the H1B's.
And we've tried!
We really need people who can code. We have problems to solve, we need programmers to code answers to the problems. We really don't care about education credentials - if you can code, write reasonable answers to solve real problems, we're interested in you. We took a look at the H1B visa thing, and we were consistently disappointed. Gorgeous, impressive resumes for people with Masters or (gasp) even PHDs in computer science who couldn't write a SQL statement, recursive algorithm, or even factor a number. "Write me a function that replaces the word "apples" with "oranges" in a given input string was met with blank stares.
I don't know what they do, but I'm not interested in finding out. But if you want to live in NorCal and want a decent job at a small, securely growing software company... PM me!
So, you have this boxy thing mounted in the middle of the park bench. The promo photo has two attractive people awkwardly trying to look chic sitting next to something about he size of an old-school VCR bolted to the middle of the bench. Of course, you'd naturally stick your 32 oz triple malt latte on it, and any 9 year old with angry daddy issues will beat it with the nearest rock. Meanwhile, it provides no shade at all.
Great idea, utter failure in implementation. Instead:
1) Put the solar panel (even if small) on a pole OUT OF THE WAY so it lets you sit on the !@# seat, and provides at least a modicum of shade. Better yet, made the overhead cover the length of the bench so the shade is usable and you get some protection from light rain.
2) Put the USB charge port under the seat. This provides automatic protection from accidental strikes and also doesn't provide an automatic target for 9 year olds with angry daddy issues.
As it sits now, it's practically a show case example of some bad engineering product a la Dilbert.
One thing I know about the Googlites is that when they make a public statement like this, it's usually pretty conservative. Self-driving cars seemed like a pipe dream, but they're just about here, and it's for real.
It is true that landfills are often usable afterwards for parks and even houses!
It is also true that landfill locations have to be carefully surveyed for issues such as water runoff and geological stability in order to ensure that land fills don't pollute groundwater or leak toxic chemicals, etc. Nobody wants to live next to a landfill for the 10-40 years that they are open. They aren't pretty. They smell bad, and attract vermin. As we learn more about the real effects of land fills, we often find that even years after being closed, they are causing ongoing environmental damage that is very expensive. Many toxic "super fund" environmental disasters are previous dump sites.
And, if it's actually profitable recycle instead of dumping, are you really arguing that we should dump anyway?
I'm a fan of foldable bikes. Think: Dahon and/or Bike Friday. They solve one of the biggest problems with bikes in conjunction with an automotive culture: getting "stuck" with a bike that you rode to work but won't be driving home with.
So, I've spent a lot of time on a 16" wheel on a Dahon Stowaway with performance tires, and a finely tuned internal 3-speed hub that made it into a surprisingly fast speed demon. I loved it - it was fast, casual, and convenient. Sadly, it was stolen.
The small, 16" wheels are surprisingly effective on commuter bike! No, you don't go off road on 16" wheels - but ask yourself: do you really do that much anyway?
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I *had* a tablet - a 7" Acer Android - that I loved and used daily until I upgraded my phone to a RAZR Maxx HD. I had an Android phone before but the screen was small and/or low resolution enough that I preferred the bright, sharp 7" tablet. The new phone, however, is big/bright/sharp/fast enough that I lost interest in the tablet, which I still have but haven't picked up ever since.
And the battery life on this thing is just incredible. I will never again buy a phone that doesn't have incredible battery life - after having a decent screen, it's the next most important thing in a phone!
We have a well-funded government agency, tasked with securing its country, actively sabotaging the security frameworks of the nation it has been tasked with protecting, in the name of "security". Never mind that any back door left open to the NSA is also left open to other parties. (EG: China) And now we're supposed to *trust* this agency with even more unfettered access to 0-day exploits?
If the NSA was really about securing the United States, it would be auditing commercial security products to ensure the *lack* of back doors, not ensuring the presence of them!
It's important not to accept any input as pure fact on its face. It's equally important to accept facts that are verified, even if inconvenient. Far too often, "healthy skepticism" is another way to say "inconvenient so LA LA LA LA LA (fingers in ears)".
Fact is that micro pollutants are just now entering the threshold of human understanding - and it's a bigger problem than just about anybody guessed.
I've seen no such correlation.
I recently stayed at a "fancy" hotel in Reno, NV that charged $5 for the Wifi, only to get dreadfully slow speeds. I also recently stayed at a "Best Value Inn" or something like that near Moreno Valley and despite the clearly packed night and free Wifi, speeds were excellent.
Care to guess where I'll prefer when I'm back in either area?
I wonder how this CPU performs? Does it compare to anything I'd care about, or is it more akin to something I'd build a wifi router out of?
... and it's pretty pointless. No bugs? You are certainly joking, or at the very least, clueless.
There are *always* bugs and always will be. So what? Many bugs just aren't worth fixing, and are even debatable as a bug. Bugs come in all forms:
A) The software doesn't do what it is specifically designed to do. (obvious, must fix)
B) The software does exactly what it's supposed to do in an insecure way that can be exploited in some fashion. (probably should fix, unless the "insecure" way is part of the assumed envelope of use. For example, the common practice of using an SSL reverse proxy got Google in trouble with the NSA yet using a reverse proxy isn't itself generally considered a "bug".
C) The software does what it's designed to do, but not in a way that the user expects. (Is this a bug? Or PEBCAK?)
D) The software does what it's supposed to but not when an unexpected environment is encountered. (Example: this product is incompatible with A/V $FOO)
E) The software interacts with other software in an unexpected way.
F) The software lacks a feature that some customers would find useful.
G) The software implements a feature in an unattractive or cumbersome way. ... and so on.
A PENCIL has bugs! Yes, a pencil. The lead breaks easily. The eraser doesn't remove *all* the marking when you use it. It requires a sharpener. You can't sign a contract with a pencil. They are horrible for lefties who end up with a dark stripe on the side of the their hand. The paint can sometimes discolor your finger. And on and on and on...
These are all "bugs" yet the design of a pencil hasn't been updated to fix them. There are few things as simple as a !@#$% pencil yet these obvious bugs have *never* been fixed. Oh sure, some have. There have been erasable pens. There are mechanical pencils. Pens can perform some of the duties of a pencil.
So if a bug-free pencil hasn't yet been made, how in the name of anything holy do you expect something millions of times more complex to be "bug free"?
Expensive advertising campaigns engender trust because it shows that the advertiser has the resources to carry out the campaign. It's why online ads are so commonly ignored - people want to do business with "reputable" companies and expensive advertising is a way of establishing repute.
Similarly, putting out the modicum of effort to perform basic security like SSL is a signal that the website is reputable. I mean, if you can't be bothered to buy a $50 SSL certificate and install it, are you *really* trustworthy?
SSL should be a basic signal of trustworthiness.
Actually, I have a physically secured, locked box full of hard drives that I haven't bothered to wipe or destroy. Our approximate policy is to use in house for other purposes if it makes sense, or throw into the box. HDDs just 3 to 5 years old are basically worthless. For storage in volume, anything smaller than about 2 or 3 TB is ready to be replaced, just because of the savings in electricity.
The most bad-ass server I've ever had the pleasure of working with was a Digital VAX 11/750 generations ago. It was *built* to be reliable from the very first rivet.
Oh sure, my pocket phone has far more power, memory, and storage. Despite the ample square footage of my "McMansion" house, It would not have fit in my kitchen. It ate power like global warming really was a myth. But as a server, it was in its own class.
It would automatically detect memory that was failing and rebuild from memory (like ECC) but then would remap that address so it would no longer be used.
You could upgrade its CPUs one at a time without shutting it down.
It was like a hoover with data, versioning files was intrinsic to how the O/S worked.
One time, the A/C in the computer room went out. It mapped *everything* in RAM to disk as the temperature rose and the chips became unreliable. We literally pulled the plug on it because it was completely unresponsive, as all operations were working directly off HDD. When the A/C was fixed and it was powered up late that night, it spooled all of RAM out of the HDD swap, and everybody's workstation resumed exactly where they had left off that afternoon - we couldn't find any data loss at all.
I will forever bow in deference to the greatest server I have ever had the pleasure of working on. How HP managed to acquire such a legacy and turn its back... part of me cries inside.
Put the firewall up FIRST, and open essential ports as necessary. This is network security 101.
Duh?
I think the question is whether or not you trust iptables to be the firewall, or whether or not you have a dedicated device as a firewall.
Sadly, as a security device, dedicated firewalls are their own can of worms. For example, firmware updates for dedicated firewall devices are often much less frequently issued, and the update process is typically far more painful than you'd see as a mindful admin for a Linux box. Many "dedicated firewall" devices are little more than Linux + iptables + proprietary interface anway, meaning you aren't protected at all if there's a common kernel flaw found. Lastly, being heavily stripped down, you have no way to audit them to see if they *are* compromised, because half your toolchain is missing even if you do have shell access, even though, as a full-fledged, turing complete computing device, they are quite useful to a black hat.
All that said, I do frequently use dedicated firewalls, but also use locked down Linux servers interchangeably. Given the 10+ years of excellent security track record I've maintained going this route, I'm pretty confident this doesn't mean I'm incompetent, as would seem to be the opinion around here.
I am a bit paranoid about security, disabling password access anywhere possible, relying on default-deny firewalls, using port-knocking & non-standard ports for SSH, not using non-ssl connections for *anything* administrative, VPNs required for access to insecure services like IPMI, etc.
We paid Comcast to bring broadband to us in the first place. That they haven't done it yet means we'd only have to pay twice to get it if we went the municipal route, whereas we won't get it at all from Comcast.
Even if we did "get" the broadband, they've shown perfect willingness to simply refuse to upgrade their networks to allow bandwidth to flow from Internet companies they don't like. (*cough*Netflix*/cough*)
On the Internet... Hype = Sucker Investors.
There, FTFY.
In Europe, they discovered that train wrecks were really, really bad. So they set about building a system of trains that didn't wreck, with numerous controls and systems to prevent collisions, resulting in an excellent safety record and low cost.
In the United States, they discovered that train wrecks were really, really bad. So they set about building a system of trains that survived wrecks with minimal injuries, with heavy crash cages and crumple zones in order to gracefully survive collisions, resulting in an excellent safety record and ridiculous costs.
Making a US train go as fast as an EU train is very difficult to do feasibly, since it weighs at least 4x as much per passenger.
For the most part, I agree with you. I'm also a bit of a cheap bastard. I ride my bike to work largely for health reasons but also because it's cheaper. I switched to CFLs over a decade ago when I saw the cost savings. I aggressively turn up the AC to "just barely comfortable" to save money. I ditched the home phone for Magic Jack, and I ditched cable TV for Hulu/Netflix. By watching the gas consumption calculator on my car, and reading up about "hypermiling" I get about 10-20% better fuel economy simply by changing my driving patterns - after some practice, I can do it without doing anything people driving with me would notice without paying close attention. I routinely time shift my schedule either early or late so I avoid traffic altogether.
If I owned my house, I would have erected a solar back porch roof long ago to both keep sun off the house and power the A/C.
And by the way, modern cars are so low emission that some of them actually clean up the air around them. The 2011 Ford F150 Raptor is one of them. If I were an environmentalist, (and I need to stress that I am NOT) I would push for more of these cars to be on the road than lobbying for higher gas prices (which serves to ruin the economy, and has almost no actual benefit on reducing emissions.)
But, I LOL at statements like this! This statement is only true if you ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room: CO2.
Pffft. Please. They have glass windows on their walls, right? An infrared laser microphone reflecting off the window would be more than sufficient. The trick would be to connect several electric typewriters together with a randomizer so that there are many typewriters banging away in random in the same room.
Do you have any idea what % of landings are VFR? (Visual Flight Rules) It's almost certainly over half, and may be as much as 90%.
I really rue the day that "r/c model aircraft" because a "drone". Suddenly, a toy is worth regulating, and it's become rather ridiculous.
Now we're talking about having to tether a model aircraft with a line, so that now we have entanglement issues?
Can somebody please add some reason?
I'm a partner in a small software company. We employ 8 developers, 26 total staff. Our wages are midline, our benefits excellent, and our work environment is superb. I haven't seen *any* benefit from the H1B's.
And we've tried!
We really need people who can code. We have problems to solve, we need programmers to code answers to the problems. We really don't care about education credentials - if you can code, write reasonable answers to solve real problems, we're interested in you. We took a look at the H1B visa thing, and we were consistently disappointed. Gorgeous, impressive resumes for people with Masters or (gasp) even PHDs in computer science who couldn't write a SQL statement, recursive algorithm, or even factor a number. "Write me a function that replaces the word "apples" with "oranges" in a given input string was met with blank stares.
I don't know what they do, but I'm not interested in finding out. But if you want to live in NorCal and want a decent job at a small, securely growing software company... PM me!
No Intellectual Property?
So, you have this boxy thing mounted in the middle of the park bench. The promo photo has two attractive people awkwardly trying to look chic sitting next to something about he size of an old-school VCR bolted to the middle of the bench. Of course, you'd naturally stick your 32 oz triple malt latte on it, and any 9 year old with angry daddy issues will beat it with the nearest rock. Meanwhile, it provides no shade at all.
Great idea, utter failure in implementation. Instead:
1) Put the solar panel (even if small) on a pole OUT OF THE WAY so it lets you sit on the !@# seat, and provides at least a modicum of shade. Better yet, made the overhead cover the length of the bench so the shade is usable and you get some protection from light rain.
2) Put the USB charge port under the seat. This provides automatic protection from accidental strikes and also doesn't provide an automatic target for 9 year olds with angry daddy issues.
As it sits now, it's practically a show case example of some bad engineering product a la Dilbert.
One thing I know about the Googlites is that when they make a public statement like this, it's usually pretty conservative. Self-driving cars seemed like a pipe dream, but they're just about here, and it's for real.
In fact, Google has been working for years to use their information for predicting disease breakouts in a more general sense. If he says 100,000 lives, they've probably already done the math to support that statement.
It is true that landfills are often usable afterwards for parks and even houses!
It is also true that landfill locations have to be carefully surveyed for issues such as water runoff and geological stability in order to ensure that land fills don't pollute groundwater or leak toxic chemicals, etc. Nobody wants to live next to a landfill for the 10-40 years that they are open. They aren't pretty. They smell bad, and attract vermin. As we learn more about the real effects of land fills, we often find that even years after being closed, they are causing ongoing environmental damage that is very expensive. Many toxic "super fund" environmental disasters are previous dump sites.
And, if it's actually profitable recycle instead of dumping, are you really arguing that we should dump anyway?
Makes perfect sense why the passwords would suck. These are the same doofus types that put IPMI on the public Internet.
IMHO:
1) Backups that don't get done automatically often don't get done regularly, so they should be automatically performed via scripts.
2) Offline isn't as important as offsite. Buildings catch fire, get flooded, disappear into sink holes, get hit by falling jet airplanes.
3) Security matters. Paranoia should be the order of the day.
I'm a fan of foldable bikes. Think: Dahon and/or Bike Friday. They solve one of the biggest problems with bikes in conjunction with an automotive culture: getting "stuck" with a bike that you rode to work but won't be driving home with.
So, I've spent a lot of time on a 16" wheel on a Dahon Stowaway with performance tires, and a finely tuned internal 3-speed hub that made it into a surprisingly fast speed demon. I loved it - it was fast, casual, and convenient. Sadly, it was stolen.
The small, 16" wheels are surprisingly effective on commuter bike! No, you don't go off road on 16" wheels - but ask yourself: do you really do that much anyway?