1: Paywall goes up. 2: Pageviews and visit stats drop like a rock. 3. [weeks/months later] Consumers realize that the NYTimes content is in fact higher quality than what they can access for free elsewhere. 4. Some percent of their pre-paywall consumers purchase online subscriptions. 5. Profit!
But after a few days, I went ahead and replaced 9.10 with a fresh install of Windows 7 (64-bit). As loathe as I am to admit it, Win7 is a much more polished, finished, stable product. For my hardware at least, Win7 is a much more effective operating system.
"If the Hurst e-reader is easy to use, inexpensive and isn't as locked down as the Kindle, I would give it a chance."
I would give them a 25% chance of it being easy to use, and about 10% chance of making it inexpensive enough to convince a large segment of their subscriber population to consider it affordable. I will give them a 0% chance it being less DRM-restricted than the Kindle.
I have been using Bibble Pro from Bibble Labs for years now, and have been very very happy with the results. I want my photo editor to be a dedicated to the task of just editing photos - I don't need it to be an all-purpose graphics tool or a file manager. In this task, Bibble really excels. It is geared towards users with higher-end needs, such as very broad raw file support, multi-threaded batch processing, and bulk workflow tools.
I have used and been very happy with the bulk scanning service offered by Digital Pickle in San Francisco. There are other services like them, so take a look around.
W.r.t. the performance of a browser's JS and HTML engines: A browser is much more than the sum of its fundamental rendering technologies. If performance were the most important driver of customer adoption, we all would have switched to using Opera years ago. But each time I try to move away from Firefox, I end up moving back because of either:
A. A site compatibility problem. B. A FF plugin that I cannot live without.
In a perfect world, alternative Linux browsers would provide support for FF plugins, but the reliance on XUL and other very FF-specific technologies makes that all but impossible. That being said, I look forward to this making its way into Midori - the WebKit-based GNOME browser project.
And to a certain degree, this is what is driving the private-equity-backed buyouts of publicly traded companies: take them private in order to remove the pressure from the quarterly roller coaster that is Wall Street. In doing so, you give companies the time and space to make long term plans and execute on them. By not having to please Wall Street on an ongoing basis, situations like these may happen a bit less often.
Yes, there is more to life than money. But keep in mind that unless and until the money side of the equation is positive or near break-even, the chance of this becoming widely deployed or adopted are essentially zero. The phtovoltaic and solar industries are a good example of this.
If they would add the new bookmarks suport to their toolbar, that would really be great. I continue to use the a9.com toolbar simply for the ability to share my bookmarks across multiple browsers and the ability to open a bookmark folder in a set of tabs.
The banking ATM system had this figured out decades ago - use two authentication systems: Something you know (PIN), and something you have (ATM Card). This increases the security by orders of magnitude. Were you to add to this Something you Are (biometrics), it would further reduce the chances of a compromise.
Someone would have to trick you into divulging your pin, pick your pocket, and replicate your thumb in order to withdraw money from your account. Then they're faced with a $500/day withdrawal limit no less (yet another security layer).
But then again, most attacks don't involve authentication compropmises - they simply bypass the authentication system completely (like robbing a bank in person, using a gun).
I've been using the NX solution from No Machine for a few weeks now, and I have to say that I'm impressed so far. The performance overall is vastly superior to VNC. I have used it comfortably over WAN links with and without VPN tunnels and have never been severly affected by lag.
Having attempted to run for office (California Assembly District 22) as a Libertarian candidate, I know first hand how difficult life can be for 'third-party' candidates. Although the Libertarian Party officially supports the adoption of IRV policies, it has not made this a primary advertising focus.
Based on my personal experience with the electoral process, it is my conclusion that it will be nearly impossible for a third-party candidate to win a major election in the US.
The problem of the 'wasted vote' (voting for a candidate because they have a chance of winning instead of voting for the candidate who most closely represents your views), it seems, will forever prevent progress for third-party politics in thsi country.
Do you think that the Libertarian Party, and your presidential campaign, could better spend it's resources with an all-out effort to make IRV the national standard for both state and federal elections?
Although this is taking a page out of the Good Book by Bruce Schneier: The encryption algorithm/mechanics is never the weak link. There have been robust encryption algo's around for a very long time now.
When was the last time a security breach occured that was the result of someone brute-forcing an encrypted message or key?
The end-to-end system is what matters, as always. A keystroke sniffer installed via spyware is a vastly more economical approach to breaking an encrypted message. Which is exactly what happened to Half-Life 2, remember?
This 'quantum crypto' can ensure that the integrity of the encryption was not breached while in-transit...but then some goober will accidentally leave his WinXP laptop at some airport security screening location and POOF! there goes your unbreakable security.
1. Install a Wifi network that will allow you to play games in the same room where your SO spends time.
2. Get a laptop that can be used for the types of games you play.
3. Try to play games that are either pausable, or allow time for frequent breathers, so that you can periodically engage your SO in meaningful conversation.
...you really need to be careful about which distribution you choose. Officially, Oracle will only support their 9i Server product on RedHat Enterprise and SUSE Enterprise. It would be really bad to call Oracle for support only to be told you are S.O.L. because you're not running on a supported platform.
That being said, you can run Orcle 9i Server on other, less costly distributions. Personally, I run a development Oracle 9i server on debian 3.0 (woody).
The trick to Oracle compatability is the gcc and glibc versions. For Oracle 9i, you need gcc-2.95.4 and gblic-2.2.5. This happens to match exactly what debian 3.0 currently supports. Unfortunately, most other distributions have long since upgraded to gcc-3.x series and glibc-2.3.x, on which Oracle will not install or run.
To verify what versions of these packages a given distribution supports, you should use Distrowatch.com.
No power loss rear suspension mtn bikes
on
Sports Technology?
·
· Score: 1
This has been the 'holy grail' of mountain biking for some time now, and I think the technology is getting close. Since the introduction of rear suspensions in mtn bikes, purists have been criticizing the fact that a certain percentage of your pedaling power was being diverted to compressing the rear suspension.
The first rear suspension frames (The 'Y' frames) were awful when it came to efficienctly tranferring power from pedal to the drivetrain. Most of these bikes had to be equipped with a switch that would lock out the rear suspension so that you could ride the bike up hills.
Over the years, there have been many, many wacky frame designs that have tried to solve this problem. Based on the trends in frame designs over the past 3 years, I think the industry is nearing a solution. Examples of which can be seen:
In a somewhat related note, I was curious if anyone out there knows the status of using a linux client on the Boingo wireless network. Their client software is not released for linux, but I figured with so many hotspots out there, there might be a linux-related project to build an open WiFi client app that understands the Boingo authentication protocols and such.
Does anyone know of such a project? Google searches did not turn up anything promising.
Re:Advice for switching wife's computer to Gentoo
on
Gentoo Reviewed
·
· Score: 1
Bah. I've been running Gentoo linux as the only OS on my wife's desktop machine for over six months now, and she has had very few problems with it.
All she really wants is KMail, Konqueror/Mozilla, and OpenOffice (which she was able to figure out on her own after using MS Office for a few years).
Every couple of days I just ssh into her machine, and type:
The point is not to try and convince millions of humans to change their behavior (buying a certificate and using an e-mail encryption program. Changing human behavior en masse is damn near impossible, and has been tried many times without much success.
If the goal here is to prevent snooping of mail-in-transit, which is probably what most people are interested in, then we should focus on securing the transit. We need to convince system administrators would setup POP3-over-SSL, IMAP-over-SSL and SMPT-over-SSL. If we did so, we could secure the information in transit which is at least half the battle. It is true that the payload of the message would be stored un-encrypted, but that's a minor problem (IMO) relative to the snoop-in-transit issue for most users.
End users would not have to modify their behavior at all really (except at the time of initial configuration of their cleint software). And they wouldn't have to be bothered by the complexities of key management, which is more complicated than most non-tech-savvy adults can handle.
Is there any publication out there (or person) who has performed a rating/analysis of non-NSI registars? I'd love to see a chart that compares prices, contract-restrictiveness, customer service responsiveness, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is my best guess:
1: Paywall goes up.
2: Pageviews and visit stats drop like a rock.
3. [weeks/months later] Consumers realize that the NYTimes content is in fact higher quality than what they can access for free elsewhere.
4. Some percent of their pre-paywall consumers purchase online subscriptions.
5. Profit!
But after a few days, I went ahead and replaced 9.10 with a fresh install of Windows 7 (64-bit). As loathe as I am to admit it, Win7 is a much more polished, finished, stable product. For my hardware at least, Win7 is a much more effective operating system.
Of course, YMMV.
Skips over the newscaster BLAH BLAH BLAH:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qER69SvyYV8#t=0m48s
NOTE: The Long Tail theory of economics has been fairly well refuted since the publication of the book...for most industries, at least:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121493784638920147.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
I had to laugh when I came to this paragraph:
"If the Hurst e-reader is easy to use, inexpensive and isn't as locked down as the Kindle, I would give it a chance."
I would give them a 25% chance of it being easy to use, and about 10% chance of making it inexpensive enough to convince a large segment of their subscriber population to consider it affordable. I will give them a 0% chance it being less DRM-restricted than the Kindle.
In other words, this device will fail miserably.
I have been using Bibble Pro from Bibble Labs for years now, and have been very very happy with the results. I want my photo editor to be a dedicated to the task of just editing photos - I don't need it to be an all-purpose graphics tool or a file manager. In this task, Bibble really excels. It is geared towards users with higher-end needs, such as very broad raw file support, multi-threaded batch processing, and bulk workflow tools.
Well worth the $130.
I have used and been very happy with the bulk scanning service offered by Digital Pickle in San Francisco. There are other services like them, so take a look around.
http://www.digitalpickle.com/
You can see some of their work here:
http://photos.buberel.org/p1001342731/?photo=907773107
jason
W.r.t. the performance of a browser's JS and HTML engines: A browser is much more than the sum of its fundamental rendering technologies. If performance were the most important driver of customer adoption, we all would have switched to using Opera years ago. But each time I try to move away from Firefox, I end up moving back because of either:
A. A site compatibility problem.
B. A FF plugin that I cannot live without.
In a perfect world, alternative Linux browsers would provide support for FF plugins, but the reliance on XUL and other very FF-specific technologies makes that all but impossible. That being said, I look forward to this making its way into Midori - the WebKit-based GNOME browser project.
-jason
And to a certain degree, this is what is driving the private-equity-backed buyouts of publicly traded companies: take them private in order to remove the pressure from the quarterly roller coaster that is Wall Street. In doing so, you give companies the time and space to make long term plans and execute on them. By not having to please Wall Street on an ongoing basis, situations like these may happen a bit less often.
-jason
Yes, there is more to life than money. But keep in mind that unless and until the money side of the equation is positive or near break-even, the chance of this becoming widely deployed or adopted are essentially zero. The phtovoltaic and solar industries are a good example of this.
If they would add the new bookmarks suport to their toolbar, that would really be great. I continue to use the a9.com toolbar simply for the ability to share my bookmarks across multiple browsers and the ability to open a bookmark folder in a set of tabs.
No other toolbar I know of can do that...
It doesn't matter if only 1% of users can figure out how to remove the DRM. As Steve Jobs said when he introduced the Apply FiarPlay DRM scheme:
It only takes one person to break the DRM, and the file will instantly become available to everone.
The P2P networks mean that the work of one person (to remove the DRM protections) can be leveraged by millions with very little incremental effort.
That is why all DRM protections are ultimately useless - as long as one person can crack it, then everyone can crack it.
The banking ATM system had this figured out decades ago - use two authentication systems: Something you know (PIN), and something you have (ATM Card). This increases the security by orders of magnitude. Were you to add to this Something you Are (biometrics), it would further reduce the chances of a compromise.
Someone would have to trick you into divulging your pin, pick your pocket, and replicate your thumb in order to withdraw money from your account. Then they're faced with a $500/day withdrawal limit no less (yet another security layer).
But then again, most attacks don't involve authentication compropmises - they simply bypass the authentication system completely (like robbing a bank in person, using a gun).
I've been using the NX solution from No Machine for a few weeks now, and I have to say that I'm impressed so far. The performance overall is vastly superior to VNC. I have used it comfortably over WAN links with and without VPN tunnels and have never been severly affected by lag.
Definitely worth trying out: http://www.nomachine.com/
The only drawback of course is that they don't have a Win32 version of the server.
Having attempted to run for office (California Assembly District 22) as a Libertarian candidate, I know first hand how difficult life can be for 'third-party' candidates. Although the Libertarian Party officially supports the adoption of IRV policies, it has not made this a primary advertising focus.
Based on my personal experience with the electoral process, it is my conclusion that it will be nearly impossible for a third-party candidate to win a major election in the US.
The problem of the 'wasted vote' (voting for a candidate because they have a chance of winning instead of voting for the candidate who most closely represents your views), it seems, will forever prevent progress for third-party politics in thsi country.
Do you think that the Libertarian Party, and your presidential campaign, could better spend it's resources with an all-out effort to make IRV the national standard for both state and federal elections?
-jason
Although this is taking a page out of the Good Book by Bruce Schneier: The encryption algorithm/mechanics is never the weak link. There have been robust encryption algo's around for a very long time now.
When was the last time a security breach occured that was the result of someone brute-forcing an encrypted message or key?
The end-to-end system is what matters, as always. A keystroke sniffer installed via spyware is a vastly more economical approach to breaking an encrypted message. Which is exactly what happened to Half-Life 2, remember?
This 'quantum crypto' can ensure that the integrity of the encryption was not breached while in-transit...but then some goober will accidentally leave his WinXP laptop at some airport security screening location and POOF! there goes your unbreakable security.
My solution:
1. Install a Wifi network that will allow you to play games in the same room where your SO spends time.
2. Get a laptop that can be used for the types of games you play.
3. Try to play games that are either pausable, or allow time for frequent breathers, so that you can periodically engage your SO in meaningful conversation.
Worked wonders for me!
Java SDK v1.5 (not yet released) contains support for 'generics', which are very much like C++ templates for Java:
l
http://java.sun.com/features/2003/05/bloch_qa.htm
...you really need to be careful about which distribution you choose. Officially, Oracle will only support their 9i Server product on RedHat Enterprise and SUSE Enterprise. It would be really bad to call Oracle for support only to be told you are S.O.L. because you're not running on a supported platform.
That being said, you can run Orcle 9i Server on other, less costly distributions. Personally, I run a development Oracle 9i server on debian 3.0 (woody).
The trick to Oracle compatability is the gcc and glibc versions. For Oracle 9i, you need gcc-2.95.4 and gblic-2.2.5. This happens to match exactly what debian 3.0 currently supports. Unfortunately, most other distributions have long since upgraded to gcc-3.x series and glibc-2.3.x, on which Oracle will not install or run.
To verify what versions of these packages a given distribution supports, you should use Distrowatch.com.
This has been the 'holy grail' of mountain biking for some time now, and I think the technology is getting close. Since the introduction of rear suspensions in mtn bikes, purists have been criticizing the fact that a certain percentage of your pedaling power was being diverted to compressing the rear suspension.
The first rear suspension frames (The 'Y' frames) were awful when it came to efficienctly tranferring power from pedal to the drivetrain. Most of these bikes had to be equipped with a switch that would lock out the rear suspension so that you could ride the bike up hills.
Over the years, there have been many, many wacky frame designs that have tried to solve this problem. Based on the trends in frame designs over the past 3 years, I think the industry is nearing a solution. Examples of which can be seen:
Ellsworth Truth
Iron Horse
Giant NRS
Now if I only had the $2500 it would take to upgrade my 7-year old Gary Fisher Joshua, I would be all set.
Sharing between home and work...isn't that what the iPod is for?
In a somewhat related note, I was curious if anyone out there knows the status of using a linux client on the Boingo wireless network. Their client software is not released for linux, but I figured with so many hotspots out there, there might be a linux-related project to build an open WiFi client app that understands the Boingo authentication protocols and such.
Does anyone know of such a project? Google searches did not turn up anything promising.
Bah. I've been running Gentoo linux as the only OS on my wife's desktop machine for over six months now, and she has had very few problems with it.
All she really wants is KMail, Konqueror/Mozilla, and OpenOffice (which she was able to figure out on her own after using MS Office for a few years).
Every couple of days I just ssh into her machine, and type:
> emerge sync ; emerge --update world
And everything just works.
The point is not to try and convince millions of humans to change their behavior (buying a certificate and using an e-mail encryption program. Changing human behavior en masse is damn near impossible, and has been tried many times without much success.
If the goal here is to prevent snooping of mail-in-transit, which is probably what most people are interested in, then we should focus on securing the transit. We need to convince system administrators would setup POP3-over-SSL, IMAP-over-SSL and SMPT-over-SSL. If we did so, we could secure the information in transit which is at least half the battle. It is true that the payload of the message would be stored un-encrypted, but that's a minor problem (IMO) relative to the snoop-in-transit issue for most users.
End users would not have to modify their behavior at all really (except at the time of initial configuration of their cleint software). And they wouldn't have to be bothered by the complexities of key management, which is more complicated than most non-tech-savvy adults can handle.
This is the path we should be taking.
-jason
Is there any publication out there (or person) who has performed a rating/analysis of non-NSI registars? I'd love to see a chart that compares prices, contract-restrictiveness, customer service responsiveness, etc.
Is there such a report?
-jason