Cooler heads need to prevail, and make a commitment to fork the project should its current leadership continue to spiral out of control.
OpenBSD is a respected operating system that is relied upon by communities and businesses across the world. It deserves, and demands, a stable leadership committed to creating the best operating system they can. The current OpenBSD leadership isn't that. This must change.
You're kidding, right? BWAH HA HA HA !!! What have you done to justify such a somber and pointlessly judgmental outlook on such a highly successful and respected project? Are you the leader of ANY group I should be paying attention to? I'll bet you even think that being "professional" means having no ego?
First off, Theo is the FOUNDER of OpenBSD, and the FOUNDER of the OpenSSH project. He's strongly motivated by a passionate desire for perfection, on his terms. That he's arguably so much closer to this mark than billion dollar corporations with 1000x the programming resources at their disposal is a clear sign of his effectiveness. He's a bit hot-headed and idealistic, and I daresay those qualities are what allow him to work so diligently for perfection. Lord knows my day to day professional life depends utterly on the quality represented by OpenSSH!
Thank you Theo! I'm a Linux user who depends utterly upon your OpenSSH and has tremendous respect for what you've accomplished. Yes, you are human, and given to occasional moments of discomfort - and for this I absolve thee. Love your work, carry on, man!
When customers don't get what they want, they'll look for a way to get it. And when somebody provides what the customers want, they'll buy it.
How much simpler could it be?
I want to watch what I want to watch, when I want to watch it, and I'll pay up to a couple bucks a day to get it. I don't want to wait, and I don't want alot of hassle. What we're seeing is the end of an era - the era of broadcast television. Broadcast television will wane, and the quality of online video developed under alternative business models will improve. (We hope - most of the YouTube content is either pirate or just awful to watch)
But the ability is there, and the public networks aren't (so far) willing to adapt. So they'll die.
Because Linux is less resource intensive, he's able to upgrade his distro several times on the same hardware, putting himself in the situation of having a new kernel with old hardware and old drivers that don't load in the new kernel.
Hear here! I have an ANCIENT AMD K6-2/450 doing backups. It has 2.5 TB of hard disks in it, and its only purpose in life is to copy files over the network every day. It's 10 years old, and has been in continuous 24x7 duty all along. Rock stable, too - why change it when it works fine and performance isn't an issue?
I haven't had to upgrade my PC through the last three releases and it works fine. Hell, I have Vista running on a laptop with only a 1.4GHz processor and it runs fine.
You sir, are an amazingly patient person. I credit you for your lack of desire to do meaningful work. Wally would be proud!
I got bit like this once. The hosting provider wholesaler I'd been using vanished. No phone calls, the colo wouldn't help me, and I was stranded with data that was 4 days old, (I had on-site backups, and weekly off-site backups) and some very, very pissed customers.
It was about 3 days of hell getting everything together and getting back up. I also had to eat an entire month's hosting revenue due to TOS violations, despite having picked the premiere hosting facility on the west coast. It cost me thousands of dollars. I vowed that this would NEVER happen again - not like that.
It takes just once before you "get" just how bad it can be when your hosting provider goes south, or your server borks, or you accidentally run "rm -rf/." instead of "rm -rf./" or......
So today, I have automated, nightly, off-site backups at all times, and fully redundant hosting "hot" - ready for rollover at a moment's notice, on a different network, different hosting company, in a different city. It would take me about 2 hours to cut over - the only delay is DNS updates. I even test them from time to time, and once had to use it when primary hosting failed.
But only because they missed something I think should apply - the Storm Trojan network. I mean, come on! Arguably the world's most powerful centrally-controlled computing resource, and it's all comprised of horked computers? How is that not a wonder?
You should hate its existence. But it's still quite amazing.
This argument gets heard all the time. But it's simply not true. Yes, you can satisfy 80% of the trips made by an average family with an electric vehicle. But that's quite different than satisfying 80% of the USERS. That occasional trip, that 1 in 5 trip that can't be done by an EV (easily) is a show-stopper.
Take a look at the 80/20 myth for a good explanation of how this dynamic works out in practice.
It's not even that! The pricing structure shouldn't even ALLOW for a $4800 bill. What the heck?... Credit card companies do this sort of statistical scanning all the time to combat fraud.
The difference is... who pays? If a credit card is fraudulently used, the credit card company pays. So they have every incentive to give a damn.
But guess who's going to pay the $4,800? It sure as hell won't be AT&T. As I write this, my wife is on the phone to discuss a $900 Verizon bill my daughter rang up "saving money on the minutes" with text messaging. The only thing they seem willing to do is very politely tell us to screw off.
I wouldn't bet on that. At some point, no moving parts has to beat moving parts.
Yeah, like how the Peltier cooler has replaced mechanical refrigerators. Or the thermocouple has replaced mechanical generators and steam in nuclear power plants.
Now I have to wait longer for SSD to become the clear winner.
I've been waiting for well over 10 years. When I first thought that SSD was going to "win", 1 GB drive was huge. Now, it's $9, plugs into a thumb-sized slot in 5 seconds, and is available at the local Wal-Mart. The mechanical drives sport 750 GB for $200 that the 1 GB drive used to cost. (and that doesn't even account for inflation!)
I have a digital camera with video and sound. It's up to 800x600, and with my 2 GB flash cartridge, I get up to about an 30 minutes of video. It's very small, lightweight, and runs on a couple AA rechargables.
Well, it's not like you can't run an "Enterprise Business" on 15 servers. I am CTO of a software company servicing school districts in California. We have 70 school districts, hundreds of users and tens of thousands of students in our databases, we make it work with a surprisingly small cluster of 4 4-way Opteron servers, running at just under 5% of capacity. (mid-day load average)
Our annual sales exceed $1 million dollars this year, we've been growing 40% - 70% annually. No, we're not a megacorp, but still quite legit. (and our servers are all 100% Linux)
Indeed. The car industry for one has a calculation on fixing faults to the effect that if the lawsuit is cheaper than the fix, they leave it. Basically, there is a dollar value applied to a human life and any fault is analysed and a possible headcount caused by the fault calculated. If the repair is less than that total, the do it.
This is often brought up as a bad thing. But it's not that at all. Usually there's an emotional reaction like "how cold-hearted!". And it's easy to feel indignant, etc.
But look at it like this: if you had just $100, and had to choose between saving one life by putting an expensive airbag into 1 car, or saving 3 lives by putting cheap-o seatbelts into 10 cars, which would you choose?
I think we'd all agree that this is an open-shut case, you'd save the 3 lives instead of the 1. But what about the 4th life?...and that's the rub.
There are ALWAYS risks. Slinging a piece of meat along down the highway at 75 MPH contains inherent risks that will never be mitigated. Remember that people die (on average) in about 60 years anyway.
Many laws passed for "our safety" have little or no known provable benefit. Your dentist is required to wear gloves, yet there's not a single study anyplace to support the idea that gloves actually produce any meaningful benefit that simply washing your hands does not. Who pays for this? (Hint: it's not the Dentist) Calculating the cost of each life saved is a good way to determine: Is it really worth it? Really?
There are many laws like this that provide marginal or at least undemonstrated safety benefits, often at incredible costs. I wish there were more people who'd calculate the cost of these things per life saved...
Cool. So let me turn the question around on you - when was the last known extinction-level event as a result of an asteroid or comet? Has it been over 30,000 years? Has it been over 300,000 years? or 3,000,000 years? Or even 30,000,000 years? (yes to all the above, if you were paying attention)
Perhaps the risk isn't as high as your "interplanetary superhighway" leads you to believe?
Based on emperical evidence, my napkin trumps your TFA.
Do we know this? I'm no astronomer, so I don't. Just how much can an orbit be altered by a collision? (Or at least, one that doesn't pulverize both objects).
I'm no astronomer either, but we can run some numbers found a la Google and give ourselves some reasonable estimates. Anybody who IS an astronomer is free to correct my numbers, but my intention is merely a "back of the napkin" class estimate.
Asteroids are somewhere between 1.8 and 4.5 AU from the sun. The earth is 1 AU from the son. Since both orbit the sun, and the average distance of earth from the sun is 0 AU (orbit being roughly circular) let's say that the average distance of an asteroid from Earth is about 2.2 AU. Since earth is 1 AU and that is 93 Million miles, we'll say that the average asteroid is about 93 million * 2.2 miles from the Earth. That's 204.6 million miles from the Earth.
So let's assume that two rocks hit. What are the odds that the asteroid goes out and whacks the Earth, straight away? Well, we'd end up with a 204.6 MILLION MILE RADIUS on the inside of a very large sphere. Using the formula for calculating the surface of a sphere, we get 261,348,480,000,000,000 square miles of area that the asteroid could potentially hit. Compare that to the actual area of Earth to hit (a circle 2*pi*r) =~ 50,000 miles.
In short, you have a 50,000 in 261,348,480,000,000,000, or 1 in 5,226,969,600,000. (one in about 5 trillion)
These are very VERY VERY small odds, even if my back-of-the-napkin calculations are off by several orders of magnitude. Let's give you some idea just how BIG 5 trillion is. There have been about 1 billion seconds since Jan 1, 1972. To wait 1 trillion seconds is to wait about 30,000 years. If asteroids were to collide every SINGLE SECOND it would STILL take over 30,000 YEARS for one to hit the Earth directly.
Now, these figures are rough. They do not take into account orbital mechanics, etc. But even so, the numbers are very small (large as odds against?) indeed.
Actually, my mental image is like much of Mexico - partially done. It's something I've seen lots of in Mexico, but just don't see here in the states - buildings and structures stopped halfway. It's weird to see nice, quality brick houses and the like built up about halfway and then just... abandoned!
So, I figure the tarmac would be all laid out, the foundation for the buildings poured, and then whatever mysterious forces cause projects to die halfway would kick in and we'd have another open wound in the Earth facing the sky.
I did not, in fact, mean to use the word "cult", as that word is rarely used by any two people to mean the same thing. It can refer to any small religion (which is arguably the correct usage in the modern sense). It can refer to any body of religious practices (this is an archaic usage). It can refer to organizations that use religion purely as cover to perform illegal or immoral acts (Jonestown comes to mind) or otherwise separate membership from the rest of society (e.g. the Unification Church). It can refer to religions which are not considered "acceptable alternatives" by the mainstream (e.g. Christians in the U.S. referring to Paganism). It can refer to any religion that is not the speaker's (I've heard many U.S. Baptists refer to Roman Catholicism this way). It's just not a useful word. Yes, it can mean all these things. However, it's also very inflammatory, making it a very useful word, depending on your intentions.
It's interesting that pitches can be amalgamated by experience. Which is a basic part of human nature - the mind adapts to fit circumstances, and if the key of A is what we tune in to, why wouldn't our minds adapt to fit this reality?
It's all how it works. The article is weak on details, but this post is probably bigger. If every time you heard a sound like a jet engine, you got smacked upside the back of your head, wouldn't you get jumpy when you heard anything that sounded like a jet engine, even if it wasn't *exactly* the same?
Sometimes it's funny how Science has to prove the stuff that "Everybody Knows". (TM)
So you're saying you're okay with locking out these users? They're hardly rare... your own grandparents are probably among them.
No. I'm saying other people are locking them out. And that you don't have to be one of them.
I don't write device drivers, I don't manufacture VGA cards or monitors. I don't decide what hardware gets supported. I deal with whatever hardware is supported. And "works" for me and my staff is wwwwaaaayyyyy more important than "works like I think it should". Because I'm about getting stuff done.
If you are willing to deal with major headaches because of a "standard" that you adhere to that can be otherwise dealt with for $5-10 at the local thrift store, be glad that you don't work for me. Because if you did, you wouldn't for long. I'm not willing to invest 2-3 man-days of skilled programmer time to figure out how come a driver won't work on a 15 year old monitor when a 10 year-old monitor that will work can be had for $10 and 1/2 hour.
What's YOUR time really worth? At $100-$200 per hour of MY time, a trip to the thrift store sounds awful convenient, to hell be damned with "the standard".
If you are really, REALLY only interested in a browser, then Firefox on Linux takes the cake. VMWare-based solutions are overcomplicated and under-performing. Firefox on Linux has the following neat qualities:
1) Once configured with well supported hardware, it's nearly impossible to hork without the root password.
2) cron can automagically apply updates (via yum on RPM distros, apt on Debian derivatives) via cron.
3) Viruses are rare to non-existent. (See #1)
4) Usability is good - it's not hard to teach somebody how to use it.
5) Compatability is decent. (not all flash/shockwave/java thingies work without a bit of crabbing, but it's usually doable)
6) Works wonderfully with that old 1.5 Ghz P4 you got at the yard sale for $80.
7) Remote support is decent. You can ssh in, forward X11 to your local system, and see whatever they see.
But, if you want MORE than the basics (EG: a browser + Internet connection) and might want to give the users a full computer (TM) then I'd strongly recommend a Mac. They can be had used for fairly cheap, almost all will run OSX, and I've never seen a computer that I've had fewer problems with when my 6 kids bring over their 27 friends to my (forever messy) kid-friendly house.
If they are more expensive, it comes back rather quickly in "OMFG IT JUST FRICKKEN WORX!" savings. (but don't expect Windows Media support anytime soon)
And, in case you are curious, I'm a long-term Linux geek, my laptop runs Fedora Core 6, my servers are all CentOS 4.x and I love 'em. They are rock-solid and the servers deliver 99.95% uptime. (most of the last 0.05% is not because of software problems, either)
Linux is fabulous for servers, passable for a deskop, mostly due to lack of 3rd party support.. MacOS is the opposite - teh shiznit for desktop systems thanks to great OS and decent 3rd party support, but only passable for a server.
Windows is, at best, median at either - although it's a crappy solution to both desktop and server issues, the industry 3rd party support makes up for much of the rotting carcass that is the Win32 API.
Today being "poor" in the West means having a small tv, and a second hand car, a used fridge and electricity, and a menial job. 200 years ago it meant starvation, and it still does in some places. Your point is?
HUZZAH! Wish I had mod points, I'd bump you that last step towards +5. People in the west don't know what it means to be poor. In the United States, you can dig through garbage on the street and still make a global living at about the 90% level! (meaning, 90% of the world is doing WORSE off than you)
Techical definitions of poverty aside, true poverty isn't when you have to steal to live. It's when you can't even steal enough to live. It's a state of hunger, apathy and deprivation that is actually hard to imagine.
I've done charity work for an orphanage in Haiti and the experience has left me with newfound appreciation for the wealth we have here in the States. You can quite literally fund the education of an entire family (several kids) with just $0.50 per day, a single Starbucks Latte per week! Simple skills, like the ability to read, write, basic chemistry (acid/alkali knowledge comes in very handy when trying to find out why your food crops won't grow) all make a huge difference in the quality of life...
Overall, the poor *ARE* getting richer, in every continent and nearly every country, but there's still plenty of work to be done, and of course, global warming threatens to undo the gains we've made so far.
So pitch in! When you are dealing with the 3rd world, your $20 makes more difference than you can possibly realize!
Dude, if they still work, save them in your cellar! They will soon be collectors items and you can make a fortune!
But if you are trying to work with them, it's obvious that the only reason you don't microwave your install CD is that you are so cheap you make Scrooge look lavish. I can spend $5-$10 at the local thrift store to get SVGA, 1280x1024 monitors, 15 inch. If you're still using IBM VGA monitors and you expect everything else to work on them, you are [unrealistic/indescribable/retarded/virgin].
I'm a private pilot, and the other simulators disappoint. They are good for practicing Instrument procedure, and to a certain extent, airplane maneuvers, but for just plane fun (pun intended) they are weak.
Most of the joy of flying General Aviation (small) planes is the view - nothing like it anywhere else, including that commercial jet. (which rockets up to 45,000 feet in 10 minutes where you can't see jack) Flight simulators have typically given depictions of the landscape - patterns that are rough analogies of what you'd actually find out the window.
But this is the real McCoy! Resolution is still weak, and the plane handling characteristics are lousy, but when I'm flying 5,500 VFR over the East Bay, it actually IS the East Bay. I noticed that once you've started the Easter Egg, you can re-launch from any view, which let me spin a few circles above local Oroville, CA.
I recognized everything and had no trouble finding the local airport, and successfully landed the very first try in the SR-22. Since I've never flown an SR22, I had to stall it first in the air to figure out what my approach speed should be - about 70 knots seemed about right.
Really, if they put some spit and polish on this, it could give FS X a real run for its money - for just plane fun, it already rivals FS X!
Anybody running an ssh server on a public-facing network that pays any attention at all to their log files knows the problems of passwords.
The short answer is: they suck. All of them. They are easily compromised and have multiple points of failure: ANYTHING between the human side of the input device and the hash function can be hacked to completely defeat the system.
In this case, a web-cam (commonly available on most newer laptops, aimed directly at the eyeballs in question) can be used to completely defeat this system if used in conjunction with any other camera in the room, or any screen-scrape capable trojan.
If, instead, we used a challenge-response system where knowing a particular set of private values enabled for an answer that could be independently verified, the transaction could be sent "in the open" on malicious public networks with relative security.
Like ssh does when set up with RSA keys. Like your SSL-enabled browser does with any SSL certified site.
I do something similar with my bike locks - I engrave the combinations to the locks directly on the locks, after hashing them up a bit with a privately known, but simple, math function. I never have to worry about forgetting the combos to the locks, but I also don't have to worry anybody reading the combo - without knowing my (relatively simple) math function, the numbers on the locks are worthless.
No, I don't expect the average user to deal with a 128-bit key. But most passwords don't even keep pace with an 8-bit key in terms of security.
An American, Russian, and Polish astronaut were all sharing drinks one night. After a few rounds the American gets brash and announces:
Gentlmen, America is getting ready to build a base on the moon. We'll live there instead of here so if you blow us up, we'll be fine.
The other astronauts cheer and toast to the success of this ambitious project. After a few more rounds the Russian gets brash and announces:
Comrades, the mother land Russia, she is getting ready to build a base on the moon. We'll live there instead of here so if you blow us up, we'll be fine.
The other astronauts cheer and toast to the success of this ambitious project. After a few more rounds the Polish gets brash and announces:
Honors, ze country ze Poland, vee is getting ready to build a base on da SUN!
The table grew quiet. The Russian and American astronauts looked at each other awkwardly, each hoping the other would rescue them from the moment. Finally, the American spoke up, and asked the question they'd both been thinking: "How ya gonna do that?".
The Polish wavered for a moment, obviously conflicted about revealing this state secret. Finally, the alcohol won over, and he blurted out loudy:
So, if there is a myth that a lot of people believe is true, then it will stay up there as it is not challenged. So, it still gets reputation, and therefore more credibility, making it more likely that the myth will be perpetrated.
Yep. There are lots of these. Snopes is full of these - "everybody knows it's true" but yet it's false.
Also, if someone hasn't noticed something that is wrong on an esoteric entry, it will also be given credibility, and once again be more likely to be considered to be fact.
Oh, you were talking about Wikipedia - but there to, in real life, we have the same dynamic at work. Such as, for example, the "sovereign" status of Sealand. If you look at the legal history of this claim, it's simply a case of "no court has bothered to rule against them". So it stands as a claim.
While you could add voting to the algorithm to have people vote on whether it is true, that still gets destroyed by someone who just votes because they think it's true, not because they have verified it.
Either way, it potentially gives additional credibility to something that may be very wrong.
If a bunch of people vote on it for whatever reason they prefer, then that vote stands. (at least in theory, the last two US elections are good example of how this can go wrong) There will ALWAYS be a fight to preserve truth over opinion. And one of the best examples of this is Slashdot!
How many posts modded funny do you see about the "Blue Screen of Death"? I think I've actually seen a BSOD maybe once in the last three years - XP is a far cry from Win98. How many highly ranked posters here haven't the foggiest clue how copyrights, patents, and trademarks work, or even are aware that there's a difference between them?
How many people here actually believe that if any GPL code here is found in the Windows Source code, then all of Windows must then be open-sourced, and that they would then have a legal right to demand this? (I'm probably going to get modded to -1 troll for this last question)
Hey, we just might get our flying cars. But they won't be coming from this guy. (See below for the bazillion posts of SCAM SCAM SCAM - this guy's been at it for years.
As a private pilot, I'm so hoping so hoping so hoping that this one actually works out! Light plane aviation has a number of problems:
1) Getting from your house to the plane is a hassle - the plane's at an airport, you have to park your car, leaving your car for very long can be expensive, you need a ride in a cab, etc.
2) Weather is a BIATCH. You plan a flight a week in advance, and then you get thunderstorms hitting right where you wanted to land. Small planes don't do nearly as well as the big jets in bad weather.
3) Hassle at the other end: Once you've landed, you're more or less stuck without a rental car. And in many smaller airports, that's a pain. Rental car agencies will deliver a rental car, but that doesn't make much sense when the nearest rental is 45 minutes away.
4) Parking - who wants to pay hundreds of dollars a month for what amounts to a garage that happens to be next to the tarmac at the airport?
The MIT "folding wings" car would solve all these problems:
1) Drive it to the airport.
2) If the weather gets too bad to fly, land at the nearest airport and drive the rest of the way.
3) Once you've landed, you fold wings and drive to your destination on surface streets.
4) At home, you park it in your garage!
All this for about $100,000?!?!?! Hell yes I'd buy one!
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Cooler heads need to prevail, and make a commitment to fork the project should its current leadership continue to spiral out of control.
OpenBSD is a respected operating system that is relied upon by communities and businesses across the world. It deserves, and demands, a stable leadership committed to creating the best operating system they can. The current OpenBSD leadership isn't that. This must change.
You're kidding, right? BWAH HA HA HA !!! What have you done to justify such a somber and pointlessly judgmental outlook on such a highly successful and respected project? Are you the leader of ANY group I should be paying attention to? I'll bet you even think that being "professional" means having no ego?
First off, Theo is the FOUNDER of OpenBSD, and the FOUNDER of the OpenSSH project. He's strongly motivated by a passionate desire for perfection, on his terms. That he's arguably so much closer to this mark than billion dollar corporations with 1000x the programming resources at their disposal is a clear sign of his effectiveness. He's a bit hot-headed and idealistic, and I daresay those qualities are what allow him to work so diligently for perfection. Lord knows my day to day professional life depends utterly on the quality represented by OpenSSH!
Thank you Theo! I'm a Linux user who depends utterly upon your OpenSSH and has tremendous respect for what you've accomplished. Yes, you are human, and given to occasional moments of discomfort - and for this I absolve thee. Love your work, carry on, man!
When customers don't get what they want, they'll look for a way to get it. And when somebody provides what the customers want, they'll buy it.
How much simpler could it be?
I want to watch what I want to watch, when I want to watch it, and I'll pay up to a couple bucks a day to get it. I don't want to wait, and I don't want alot of hassle. What we're seeing is the end of an era - the era of broadcast television. Broadcast television will wane, and the quality of online video developed under alternative business models will improve. (We hope - most of the YouTube content is either pirate or just awful to watch)
But the ability is there, and the public networks aren't (so far) willing to adapt. So they'll die.
How much simpler could it be?
Because Linux is less resource intensive, he's able to upgrade his distro several times on the same hardware, putting himself in the situation of having a new kernel with old hardware and old drivers that don't load in the new kernel.
Hear here! I have an ANCIENT AMD K6-2/450 doing backups. It has 2.5 TB of hard disks in it, and its only purpose in life is to copy files over the network every day. It's 10 years old, and has been in continuous 24x7 duty all along. Rock stable, too - why change it when it works fine and performance isn't an issue?
I haven't had to upgrade my PC through the last three releases and it works fine. Hell, I have Vista running on a laptop with only a 1.4GHz processor and it runs fine.
You sir, are an amazingly patient person. I credit you for your lack of desire to do meaningful work. Wally would be proud!
I got bit like this once. The hosting provider wholesaler I'd been using vanished. No phone calls, the colo wouldn't help me, and I was stranded with data that was 4 days old, (I had on-site backups, and weekly off-site backups) and some very, very pissed customers.
/." instead of "rm -rf ./" or......
It was about 3 days of hell getting everything together and getting back up. I also had to eat an entire month's hosting revenue due to TOS violations, despite having picked the premiere hosting facility on the west coast. It cost me thousands of dollars. I vowed that this would NEVER happen again - not like that.
It takes just once before you "get" just how bad it can be when your hosting provider goes south, or your server borks, or you accidentally run "rm -rf
So today, I have automated, nightly, off-site backups at all times, and fully redundant hosting "hot" - ready for rollover at a moment's notice, on a different network, different hosting company, in a different city. It would take me about 2 hours to cut over - the only delay is DNS updates. I even test them from time to time, and once had to use it when primary hosting failed.
Disappointed, too.
But only because they missed something I think should apply - the Storm Trojan network. I mean, come on! Arguably the world's most powerful centrally-controlled computing resource, and it's all comprised of horked computers? How is that not a wonder?
You should hate its existence. But it's still quite amazing.
This argument gets heard all the time. But it's simply not true. Yes, you can satisfy 80% of the trips made by an average family with an electric vehicle. But that's quite different than satisfying 80% of the USERS. That occasional trip, that 1 in 5 trip that can't be done by an EV (easily) is a show-stopper.
Take a look at the 80/20 myth for a good explanation of how this dynamic works out in practice.
It's not even that! The pricing structure shouldn't even ALLOW for a $4800 bill. What the heck? ... Credit card companies do this sort of statistical scanning all the time to combat fraud.
The difference is... who pays? If a credit card is fraudulently used, the credit card company pays. So they have every incentive to give a damn.
But guess who's going to pay the $4,800? It sure as hell won't be AT&T. As I write this, my wife is on the phone to discuss a $900 Verizon bill my daughter rang up "saving money on the minutes" with text messaging. The only thing they seem willing to do is very politely tell us to screw off.
They are used to it.
I wouldn't bet on that. At some point, no moving parts has to beat moving parts.
Yeah, like how the Peltier cooler has replaced mechanical refrigerators. Or the thermocouple has replaced mechanical generators and steam in nuclear power plants.
Oh, wait....
Now I have to wait longer for SSD to become the clear winner.
I've been waiting for well over 10 years. When I first thought that SSD was going to "win", 1 GB drive was huge. Now, it's $9, plugs into a thumb-sized slot in 5 seconds, and is available at the local Wal-Mart. The mechanical drives sport 750 GB for $200 that the 1 GB drive used to cost. (and that doesn't even account for inflation!)
I have a digital camera with video and sound. It's up to 800x600, and with my 2 GB flash cartridge, I get up to about an 30 minutes of video. It's very small, lightweight, and runs on a couple AA rechargables.
Still think that SSD hasn't "won"?
Well, it's not like you can't run an "Enterprise Business" on 15 servers. I am CTO of a software company servicing school districts in California. We have 70 school districts, hundreds of users and tens of thousands of students in our databases, we make it work with a surprisingly small cluster of 4 4-way Opteron servers, running at just under 5% of capacity. (mid-day load average)
Our annual sales exceed $1 million dollars this year, we've been growing 40% - 70% annually. No, we're not a megacorp, but still quite legit. (and our servers are all 100% Linux)
Indeed. The car industry for one has a calculation on fixing faults to the effect that if the lawsuit is cheaper than the fix, they leave it. Basically, there is a dollar value applied to a human life and any fault is analysed and a possible headcount caused by the fault calculated. If the repair is less than that total, the do it.
...and that's the rub.
This is often brought up as a bad thing. But it's not that at all. Usually there's an emotional reaction like "how cold-hearted!". And it's easy to feel indignant, etc.
But look at it like this: if you had just $100, and had to choose between saving one life by putting an expensive airbag into 1 car, or saving 3 lives by putting cheap-o seatbelts into 10 cars, which would you choose?
I think we'd all agree that this is an open-shut case, you'd save the 3 lives instead of the 1. But what about the 4th life?
There are ALWAYS risks. Slinging a piece of meat along down the highway at 75 MPH contains inherent risks that will never be mitigated. Remember that people die (on average) in about 60 years anyway.
Many laws passed for "our safety" have little or no known provable benefit. Your dentist is required to wear gloves, yet there's not a single study anyplace to support the idea that gloves actually produce any meaningful benefit that simply washing your hands does not. Who pays for this? (Hint: it's not the Dentist) Calculating the cost of each life saved is a good way to determine: Is it really worth it? Really?
There are many laws like this that provide marginal or at least undemonstrated safety benefits, often at incredible costs. I wish there were more people who'd calculate the cost of these things per life saved...
Cool. So let me turn the question around on you - when was the last known extinction-level event as a result of an asteroid or comet? Has it been over 30,000 years? Has it been over 300,000 years? or 3,000,000 years? Or even 30,000,000 years? (yes to all the above, if you were paying attention)
Perhaps the risk isn't as high as your "interplanetary superhighway" leads you to believe?
Based on emperical evidence, my napkin trumps your TFA.
Cheers! =)
Do we know this? I'm no astronomer, so I don't. Just how much can an orbit be altered by a collision? (Or at least, one that doesn't pulverize both objects).
I'm no astronomer either, but we can run some numbers found a la Google and give ourselves some reasonable estimates. Anybody who IS an astronomer is free to correct my numbers, but my intention is merely a "back of the napkin" class estimate.
How fast does an asteroid travel? The average speed of an asteroid is 25km/second. Since I'm am American, to me that's about 15 miles per SECOND.
Earth is 7,926 Miles across. For these figures I'll use 8,000 miles.
Asteroids are somewhere between 1.8 and 4.5 AU from the sun. The earth is 1 AU from the son. Since both orbit the sun, and the average distance of earth from the sun is 0 AU (orbit being roughly circular) let's say that the average distance of an asteroid from Earth is about 2.2 AU. Since earth is 1 AU and that is 93 Million miles, we'll say that the average asteroid is about 93 million * 2.2 miles from the Earth. That's 204.6 million miles from the Earth.
So let's assume that two rocks hit. What are the odds that the asteroid goes out and whacks the Earth, straight away? Well, we'd end up with a 204.6 MILLION MILE RADIUS on the inside of a very large sphere. Using the formula for calculating the surface of a sphere, we get 261,348,480,000,000,000 square miles of area that the asteroid could potentially hit. Compare that to the actual area of Earth to hit (a circle 2*pi*r) =~ 50,000 miles.
In short, you have a 50,000 in 261,348,480,000,000,000, or 1 in 5,226,969,600,000. (one in about 5 trillion)
These are very VERY VERY small odds, even if my back-of-the-napkin calculations are off by several orders of magnitude. Let's give you some idea just how BIG 5 trillion is. There have been about 1 billion seconds since Jan 1, 1972. To wait 1 trillion seconds is to wait about 30,000 years. If asteroids were to collide every SINGLE SECOND it would STILL take over 30,000 YEARS for one to hit the Earth directly.
Now, these figures are rough. They do not take into account orbital mechanics, etc. But even so, the numbers are very small (large as odds against?) indeed.
Actually, my mental image is like much of Mexico - partially done. It's something I've seen lots of in Mexico, but just don't see here in the states - buildings and structures stopped halfway. It's weird to see nice, quality brick houses and the like built up about halfway and then just... abandoned!
So, I figure the tarmac would be all laid out, the foundation for the buildings poured, and then whatever mysterious forces cause projects to die halfway would kick in and we'd have another open wound in the Earth facing the sky.
It's interesting that pitches can be amalgamated by experience. Which is a basic part of human nature - the mind adapts to fit circumstances, and if the key of A is what we tune in to, why wouldn't our minds adapt to fit this reality?
It's all how it works. The article is weak on details, but this post is probably bigger. If every time you heard a sound like a jet engine, you got smacked upside the back of your head, wouldn't you get jumpy when you heard anything that sounded like a jet engine, even if it wasn't *exactly* the same?
Sometimes it's funny how Science has to prove the stuff that "Everybody Knows". (TM)
So you're saying you're okay with locking out these users? They're hardly rare... your own grandparents are probably among them.
No. I'm saying other people are locking them out. And that you don't have to be one of them.
I don't write device drivers, I don't manufacture VGA cards or monitors. I don't decide what hardware gets supported. I deal with whatever hardware is supported. And "works" for me and my staff is wwwwaaaayyyyy more important than "works like I think it should". Because I'm about getting stuff done.
If you are willing to deal with major headaches because of a "standard" that you adhere to that can be otherwise dealt with for $5-10 at the local thrift store, be glad that you don't work for me. Because if you did, you wouldn't for long. I'm not willing to invest 2-3 man-days of skilled programmer time to figure out how come a driver won't work on a 15 year old monitor when a 10 year-old monitor that will work can be had for $10 and 1/2 hour.
What's YOUR time really worth? At $100-$200 per hour of MY time, a trip to the thrift store sounds awful convenient, to hell be damned with "the standard".
Subject says it.
If you are really, REALLY only interested in a browser, then Firefox on Linux takes the cake. VMWare-based solutions are overcomplicated and under-performing. Firefox on Linux has the following neat qualities:
1) Once configured with well supported hardware, it's nearly impossible to hork without the root password.
2) cron can automagically apply updates (via yum on RPM distros, apt on Debian derivatives) via cron.
3) Viruses are rare to non-existent. (See #1)
4) Usability is good - it's not hard to teach somebody how to use it.
5) Compatability is decent. (not all flash/shockwave/java thingies work without a bit of crabbing, but it's usually doable)
6) Works wonderfully with that old 1.5 Ghz P4 you got at the yard sale for $80.
7) Remote support is decent. You can ssh in, forward X11 to your local system, and see whatever they see.
But, if you want MORE than the basics (EG: a browser + Internet connection) and might want to give the users a full computer (TM) then I'd strongly recommend a Mac. They can be had used for fairly cheap, almost all will run OSX, and I've never seen a computer that I've had fewer problems with when my 6 kids bring over their 27 friends to my (forever messy) kid-friendly house.
If they are more expensive, it comes back rather quickly in "OMFG IT JUST FRICKKEN WORX!" savings. (but don't expect Windows Media support anytime soon)
And, in case you are curious, I'm a long-term Linux geek, my laptop runs Fedora Core 6, my servers are all CentOS 4.x and I love 'em. They are rock-solid and the servers deliver 99.95% uptime. (most of the last 0.05% is not because of software problems, either)
Linux is fabulous for servers, passable for a deskop, mostly due to lack of 3rd party support.. MacOS is the opposite - teh shiznit for desktop systems thanks to great OS and decent 3rd party support, but only passable for a server.
Windows is, at best, median at either - although it's a crappy solution to both desktop and server issues, the industry 3rd party support makes up for much of the rotting carcass that is the Win32 API.
Today being "poor" in the West means having a small tv, and a second hand car, a used fridge and electricity, and a menial job. 200 years ago it meant starvation, and it still does in some places. Your point is?
HUZZAH! Wish I had mod points, I'd bump you that last step towards +5. People in the west don't know what it means to be poor. In the United States, you can dig through garbage on the street and still make a global living at about the 90% level! (meaning, 90% of the world is doing WORSE off than you)
Techical definitions of poverty aside, true poverty isn't when you have to steal to live. It's when you can't even steal enough to live. It's a state of hunger, apathy and deprivation that is actually hard to imagine.
I've done charity work for an orphanage in Haiti and the experience has left me with newfound appreciation for the wealth we have here in the States. You can quite literally fund the education of an entire family (several kids) with just $0.50 per day, a single Starbucks Latte per week! Simple skills, like the ability to read, write, basic chemistry (acid/alkali knowledge comes in very handy when trying to find out why your food crops won't grow) all make a huge difference in the quality of life...
Overall, the poor *ARE* getting richer, in every continent and nearly every country, but there's still plenty of work to be done, and of course, global warming threatens to undo the gains we've made so far.
So pitch in! When you are dealing with the 3rd world, your $20 makes more difference than you can possibly realize!
IBM "Genuine VGA" monitors? You're USING them!?!?
Dude, if they still work, save them in your cellar! They will soon be collectors items and you can make a fortune!
But if you are trying to work with them, it's obvious that the only reason you don't microwave your install CD is that you are so cheap you make Scrooge look lavish. I can spend $5-$10 at the local thrift store to get SVGA, 1280x1024 monitors, 15 inch. If you're still using IBM VGA monitors and you expect everything else to work on them, you are [unrealistic/indescribable/retarded/virgin].
I'm a private pilot, and the other simulators disappoint. They are good for practicing Instrument procedure, and to a certain extent, airplane maneuvers, but for just plane fun (pun intended) they are weak.
Most of the joy of flying General Aviation (small) planes is the view - nothing like it anywhere else, including that commercial jet. (which rockets up to 45,000 feet in 10 minutes where you can't see jack) Flight simulators have typically given depictions of the landscape - patterns that are rough analogies of what you'd actually find out the window.
But this is the real McCoy! Resolution is still weak, and the plane handling characteristics are lousy, but when I'm flying 5,500 VFR over the East Bay, it actually IS the East Bay. I noticed that once you've started the Easter Egg, you can re-launch from any view, which let me spin a few circles above local Oroville, CA.
I recognized everything and had no trouble finding the local airport, and successfully landed the very first try in the SR-22. Since I've never flown an SR22, I had to stall it first in the air to figure out what my approach speed should be - about 70 knots seemed about right.
Really, if they put some spit and polish on this, it could give FS X a real run for its money - for just plane fun, it already rivals FS X!
Anybody running an ssh server on a public-facing network that pays any attention at all to their log files knows the problems of passwords.
The short answer is: they suck. All of them. They are easily compromised and have multiple points of failure: ANYTHING between the human side of the input device and the hash function can be hacked to completely defeat the system.
In this case, a web-cam (commonly available on most newer laptops, aimed directly at the eyeballs in question) can be used to completely defeat this system if used in conjunction with any other camera in the room, or any screen-scrape capable trojan.
If, instead, we used a challenge-response system where knowing a particular set of private values enabled for an answer that could be independently verified, the transaction could be sent "in the open" on malicious public networks with relative security.
Like ssh does when set up with RSA keys. Like your SSL-enabled browser does with any SSL certified site.
I do something similar with my bike locks - I engrave the combinations to the locks directly on the locks, after hashing them up a bit with a privately known, but simple, math function. I never have to worry about forgetting the combos to the locks, but I also don't have to worry anybody reading the combo - without knowing my (relatively simple) math function, the numbers on the locks are worthless.
No, I don't expect the average user to deal with a 128-bit key. But most passwords don't even keep pace with an 8-bit key in terms of security.
Gentlmen, America is getting ready to build a base on the moon. We'll live there instead of here so if you blow us up, we'll be fine.
The other astronauts cheer and toast to the success of this ambitious project. After a few more rounds the Russian gets brash and announces:
Comrades, the mother land Russia, she is getting ready to build a base on the moon. We'll live there instead of here so if you blow us up, we'll be fine.
The other astronauts cheer and toast to the success of this ambitious project. After a few more rounds the Polish gets brash and announces:
Honors, ze country ze Poland, vee is getting ready to build a base on da SUN!
The table grew quiet. The Russian and American astronauts looked at each other awkwardly, each hoping the other would rescue them from the moment. Finally, the American spoke up, and asked the question they'd both been thinking: "How ya gonna do that?".
The Polish wavered for a moment, obviously conflicted about revealing this state secret. Finally, the alcohol won over, and he blurted out loudy:
Vee vill be goink at NIGHT!
/Had to do it.
//Yes, had to.
///Really.
So, if there is a myth that a lot of people believe is true, then it will stay up there as it is not challenged. So, it still gets reputation, and therefore more credibility, making it more likely that the myth will be perpetrated.
Yep. There are lots of these. Snopes is full of these - "everybody knows it's true" but yet it's false.
Also, if someone hasn't noticed something that is wrong on an esoteric entry, it will also be given credibility, and once again be more likely to be considered to be fact.
Oh, you were talking about Wikipedia - but there to, in real life, we have the same dynamic at work. Such as, for example, the "sovereign" status of Sealand. If you look at the legal history of this claim, it's simply a case of "no court has bothered to rule against them". So it stands as a claim.
While you could add voting to the algorithm to have people vote on whether it is true, that still gets destroyed by someone who just votes because they think it's true, not because they have verified it.
Either way, it potentially gives additional credibility to something that may be very wrong.
If a bunch of people vote on it for whatever reason they prefer, then that vote stands. (at least in theory, the last two US elections are good example of how this can go wrong) There will ALWAYS be a fight to preserve truth over opinion. And one of the best examples of this is Slashdot!
How many posts modded funny do you see about the "Blue Screen of Death"? I think I've actually seen a BSOD maybe once in the last three years - XP is a far cry from Win98. How many highly ranked posters here haven't the foggiest clue how copyrights, patents, and trademarks work, or even are aware that there's a difference between them?
How many people here actually believe that if any GPL code here is found in the Windows Source code, then all of Windows must then be open-sourced, and that they would then have a legal right to demand this? (I'm probably going to get modded to -1 troll for this last question)
See what I mean?
Hey, we just might get our flying cars. But they won't be coming from this guy. (See below for the bazillion posts of SCAM SCAM SCAM - this guy's been at it for years.
But there is a ray of light on the horizon, in the form of a real, honest-to-gosh flying car.
As a private pilot, I'm so hoping so hoping so hoping that this one actually works out! Light plane aviation has a number of problems:
1) Getting from your house to the plane is a hassle - the plane's at an airport, you have to park your car, leaving your car for very long can be expensive, you need a ride in a cab, etc.
2) Weather is a BIATCH. You plan a flight a week in advance, and then you get thunderstorms hitting right where you wanted to land. Small planes don't do nearly as well as the big jets in bad weather.
3) Hassle at the other end: Once you've landed, you're more or less stuck without a rental car. And in many smaller airports, that's a pain. Rental car agencies will deliver a rental car, but that doesn't make much sense when the nearest rental is 45 minutes away.
4) Parking - who wants to pay hundreds of dollars a month for what amounts to a garage that happens to be next to the tarmac at the airport?
The MIT "folding wings" car would solve all these problems:
1) Drive it to the airport.
2) If the weather gets too bad to fly, land at the nearest airport and drive the rest of the way.
3) Once you've landed, you fold wings and drive to your destination on surface streets.
4) At home, you park it in your garage!
All this for about $100,000?!?!?! Hell yes I'd buy one!