Many potential customers won't to business with you if you don't pass security audits. There's one major reason why having some security pays off.
The other reason, of course, is breach notification. It is very expensive to tell one million people you left their billing info on an anonymous FTP server.
BitLocker is not available on Vista Business edition. If you're recommending small businesses to use that (as you claim), you're not doing a proper job as a consultant.
I have an newish model Asus NForce board, and it is top-notch. Someone who refuses to buy new NVidia hardware because some old NVidia hardware was flakey is someone who is out of sync with reality.
I agree that NVidia should be giving away SLI licenses to support the purchase of their GPUs. But if you want SLI right now, just go for an NForce board--they rock.
Bingo! You got it. Wikipedia was wrong in saying that the Wind PC has an Atom N270. My/proc/cpuinfo clearly states its an Atom 230. I'm off to fix wikipedia;-)
For the record, everyone, it used to say the Wind PC used an N270! Really!
As I pointed out elsewhere, if you were concerned with "greenness" rather than finance or fashion, buying a new car would be the last thing you would consider. Manufacturing new cars is a very dirty process.
Sorry, but buying any new car is the opposite of being green. A lot of polluting resources go into manufacturing a new car. If you want to be green, you (in order) move to within walking distance of work, take a bus/train, or get a fuel-efficient used (already manufactured) car.
Atom implements the x86 (IA-32) instruction set; x86-64 is so far only activated for the Atom 230 and 330 desktop models. N and Z series Atom models cannot run x86-64 code.
What? State governments provide car rebates? Since when? In my experience, state governments do the opposite: they impose serious sales taxes on automobile purchases.
If you have the cheddar to drop $40k on a commuter car, you probably don't think twice about the price at the pump. Let's hope there are enough people buying this for the novelty value that it will stay afloat long enough that production efficiency can improve to the $25k/unit level.
No way. You don't want to have customers waiting in line as you wait for the iPhone CPU to render the display after you scroll the screen. And you *do* want to have enough extra processing power that you have the potential to run more sophisticated web apps available in the future.
I don't think you understand the concept of abstraction. The whole point is that the hardware doesn't have to be identical for the programmer to access it in a uniform way. Every servo has an angle. Every range finder returns a range value. Forcing the programmer to implement some sort of PWM to control the device and poll for status is horribly wasteful, compared to having an OS with hardware-specific drivers which provide a standard interface.
Have you ever programmed a microcontroller to drive a robot? It's messy. Remember when PC games had a list of "supported sound cards" because every app needed its own driver? That was a dark age, and we're still there with robots. But we don't have to be.
Has anyone ever tried an "event-driven" model to robot control? I'm thinking of something like Visual Basic, where a button click "event" would cause a certain routine to execute. The appearance of certain sensor data could be abstracted as "events" in a similar fashion.
I've programmed micros to make electronic gadgets as a hobby (thanks to learning the basics in school) and I find the use of polling and very limited interrupt routines to be quite limiting. Give me this:
onEvent ( servo2.pointing_complete )
solonoid1.pull() # fire the gun at that commie bastard in our DMZ! }
My life would be so much easier than polling through everything constantly and trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Obviously, every compliant sensor and actuator would come with a documented set of methods and properties. This is a scenario where the "object" part of OOP would match perfectly, as more than just a metaphor.
Regular readers of his blog would be aware of such methods. He regularly discusses papers and theories regarding security systems, including the security of voting machines.
Modern point of sale system are trending toward the web app model. An "embedded" chip fast enough to run some curses app won't cut it. An app needs to be fast enough to run a browser and with javascript.
You don't understand. They aren't protecting against a fault in the hardware; they're protecting against a feature in it. And this feature is not something that would only exist on a few machines. It exists on all modern Intel CPUs. The security community is concerned about this feature because it would allow rootkits/botnets to install in such a way that their detection is impossible via software. PoC code for such malware has been published, but we've yet to see it widely-used in the wild. That's only a matter of time, however. Sony is thinking ahead, and they would be wise to disable it by default. Disabling it completely, however, is probably overkill.
Low-power chips are great for low-load servers. I bought a cheap-o Atom nettop, no bigger than a DVD player, slapped a 2TB disk in, and installed Linux. Bam--instant offsite rsync server for my backups. The whole system uses less power than a lightbulb, makes almost no noise, and has a fanless CPU!
It may not be right for a high-load AJAX web app platform or for an HTPC, but the low power chips are more than enough for sufficiently responsive linux+ssh server.
No. It's correct to say civilization will always advance, at least in the most important way: technology. Technology can only get better, at the macro level. Even before we had the printing press and digital data storage, no civilization ever forgot how to write or start fires, for example.
With the Sun getting too hot, we won't need cold fusion. We will just need to shade the tropics with highly inefficient PV cells.
And the employment situation will be improved with all the post-hurricane repair workers required... Future Earth, you can thank me for this contribution to your survival by building a statue in my honor. It should be made of gilded marble and be large enough to be seen from space. You're welcome.
Slashdot Mirror
Many potential customers won't to business with you if you don't pass security audits. There's one major reason why having some security pays off.
The other reason, of course, is breach notification. It is very expensive to tell one million people you left their billing info on an anonymous FTP server.
BitLocker is not available on Vista Business edition. If you're recommending small businesses to use that (as you claim), you're not doing a proper job as a consultant.
I have an newish model Asus NForce board, and it is top-notch. Someone who refuses to buy new NVidia hardware because some old NVidia hardware was flakey is someone who is out of sync with reality.
I agree that NVidia should be giving away SLI licenses to support the purchase of their GPUs. But if you want SLI right now, just go for an NForce board--they rock.
Bingo! You got it. Wikipedia was wrong in saying that the Wind PC has an Atom N270. My /proc/cpuinfo clearly states its an Atom 230. I'm off to fix wikipedia ;-)
For the record, everyone, it used to say the Wind PC used an N270! Really!
As I pointed out elsewhere, if you were concerned with "greenness" rather than finance or fashion, buying a new car would be the last thing you would consider. Manufacturing new cars is a very dirty process.
Good to hear. It sounds like you work for a decent employer. I will surely look for a place like yours.
Sorry, but buying any new car is the opposite of being green. A lot of polluting resources go into manufacturing a new car. If you want to be green, you (in order) move to within walking distance of work, take a bus/train, or get a fuel-efficient used (already manufactured) car.
Well, Wikipedia says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Atom
But I know for a fact that this is false. I have a Wind PC, which uses the Atom N270, and I am running Ubuntu 9.04 64 bit on it right now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSI_Wind_PC
So both you and wikipedia have been misinformed, it seems.
The first link is about MSFT's logo, not about IE6. What am I missing here?
Miles per gallon doesn't matter AT ALL. Miles per dollar is the only real metric one could conceivable use to justify this expense.
And what about "miles per carbon", you ask? Well, if that's what you cared about, you'd take the bus!
What? State governments provide car rebates? Since when? In my experience, state governments do the opposite: they impose serious sales taxes on automobile purchases.
If you have the cheddar to drop $40k on a commuter car, you probably don't think twice about the price at the pump. Let's hope there are enough people buying this for the novelty value that it will stay afloat long enough that production efficiency can improve to the $25k/unit level.
No way. You don't want to have customers waiting in line as you wait for the iPhone CPU to render the display after you scroll the screen. And you *do* want to have enough extra processing power that you have the potential to run more sophisticated web apps available in the future.
I don't think you understand the concept of abstraction. The whole point is that the hardware doesn't have to be identical for the programmer to access it in a uniform way. Every servo has an angle. Every range finder returns a range value. Forcing the programmer to implement some sort of PWM to control the device and poll for status is horribly wasteful, compared to having an OS with hardware-specific drivers which provide a standard interface.
Have you ever programmed a microcontroller to drive a robot? It's messy. Remember when PC games had a list of "supported sound cards" because every app needed its own driver? That was a dark age, and we're still there with robots. But we don't have to be.
Has anyone ever tried an "event-driven" model to robot control? I'm thinking of something like Visual Basic, where a button click "event" would cause a certain routine to execute. The appearance of certain sensor data could be abstracted as "events" in a similar fashion.
I've programmed micros to make electronic gadgets as a hobby (thanks to learning the basics in school) and I find the use of polling and very limited interrupt routines to be quite limiting. Give me this:
onEvent ( camera4.face_detected ) {
servo2.point_to_angle( camera4.direction )
}
onEvent ( servo2.pointing_complete )
solonoid1.pull() # fire the gun at that commie bastard in our DMZ!
}
My life would be so much easier than polling through everything constantly and trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Obviously, every compliant sensor and actuator would come with a documented set of methods and properties. This is a scenario where the "object" part of OOP would match perfectly, as more than just a metaphor.
What are you talking about? I've never heard of a 32b Atom. Which model are you referring to?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what's+a+nettop%3F&l=1
Regular readers of his blog would be aware of such methods. He regularly discusses papers and theories regarding security systems, including the security of voting machines.
Modern point of sale system are trending toward the web app model. An "embedded" chip fast enough to run some curses app won't cut it. An app needs to be fast enough to run a browser and with javascript.
You don't understand. They aren't protecting against a fault in the hardware; they're protecting against a feature in it. And this feature is not something that would only exist on a few machines. It exists on all modern Intel CPUs. The security community is concerned about this feature because it would allow rootkits/botnets to install in such a way that their detection is impossible via software. PoC code for such malware has been published, but we've yet to see it widely-used in the wild. That's only a matter of time, however. Sony is thinking ahead, and they would be wise to disable it by default. Disabling it completely, however, is probably overkill.
Were they intentionally crippled, or just disabled by default? There's a big difference.
Low-power chips are great for low-load servers. I bought a cheap-o Atom nettop, no bigger than a DVD player, slapped a 2TB disk in, and installed Linux. Bam--instant offsite rsync server for my backups. The whole system uses less power than a lightbulb, makes almost no noise, and has a fanless CPU!
It may not be right for a high-load AJAX web app platform or for an HTPC, but the low power chips are more than enough for sufficiently responsive linux+ssh server.
No. It's correct to say civilization will always advance, at least in the most important way: technology. Technology can only get better, at the macro level. Even before we had the printing press and digital data storage, no civilization ever forgot how to write or start fires, for example.
With the Sun getting too hot, we won't need cold fusion. We will just need to shade the tropics with highly inefficient PV cells.
And the employment situation will be improved with all the post-hurricane repair workers required... Future Earth, you can thank me for this contribution to your survival by building a statue in my honor. It should be made of gilded marble and be large enough to be seen from space. You're welcome.