They wouldn't, at least not in any context where this tool would be of valid use.
On my Blackberry and my iPod, when I log into my facebook account, the account remains logged in forever. I don't need to know my password any more to gain access to Facebook on my iPod. If my iPod were to be stolen, two things would be true:
1. Thief would have no way of getting my Facebook password. The specific device is pre-authenticated with my Facebook account, but the Facebook app doesn't actually have a copy of the password in it.
2. Thief would have access to my Facebook account using that device (at least all the stuff you don't need a password to see or change) until I clear pre-authentication for that device from my account.
So, the thief could use the stolen device to post messages "from me", read my wall, download my pictures, see all of my account settings and change a few of them. But they wouldn't have my password. They'd have a device that I had authorized for access to my account.
Once that device is cleared from the pre-authentication list, the thief loses access to my account.
Forcing a hacker to log back in is like kicking the burglar out and locking your back door after you've found out that your unlocked back door is the way the burglars have gotten in.
This tool is good enough if, say, you didn't log out of your account when you left the library, or your cell phone was stolen. There's no easy way for the next patron or the thief to actually get access to your password, they just have a cached login on the device. If you can clear that, there's no real need to change your password.
Obviously, changing your password is a BETTER way of locking them out, just in case they somehow did manage to get your password from the device.
if a spammer has your facebook credentials, then they have access to this new system as well.
It's a good thing they didn't design this as a solution to that problem, then.
This is only about clearing pre-authentication on devices that remain logged in.
"Oops, I left the library computer logged in to my Facebook account, better clear that pre-authentication so the next patron can't use my account." "Oops, someone stole my iPod, better clear pre-authentication for it on Facebook so they can't access my account."
If you suspect someone else has your Facebook password, this tool is utterly useless to you, since they could simply log in again. The only useful response to that threat is to change your password.
No. This term, "ban", the article keeps using it, but in this article it does not mean what we think it (usually) means. (with apologies to I. Montoya)
"Ban" in the context of this article means "clear pre-authentication", if I'm reading the article correctly. Most Facebook apps allow you to check a little tickybox that says "keep me logged in forever". "Ban" clears that tickybox. It simply means that you need to know your Facebook password and present it before you can use the device again. No one can use this to lock you out of your account, only to make you log back in next time on that device.
So, if your cell phone is stolen, and you've pre-authenticated it with Facebook, you get home and "ban" the device. That means the Facebook app on that cell phone is going to ask the thief for the password next time they want to log into Facebook.
If they ban you first, you log back in to Facebook, log in to clear the "ban" on that device, and "ban" them immediately. They can't log back in to Facebook to "ban" you any more, so you win.
It's like changing your password, except it's more convenient when you have no reason to believe that your password has actually been compromised.
Congratulations. I suspect you are the first person to comment, including the person who wrote the summary, that understands what this is good for. This is about cached credentials on stolen or obsoleted devices, not account hacks or disclosed credentials. This is about devices, like an iPhone or Blackberry or even a web browser, that have the "keep me logged in" tickybox checked off. This will, in essence, "uncheck" the tickybox the next time someone tries to access the account from that device, and ask them to log back in.
If you're the legit account holder and someone with an old device of yours knocks you off, you've already got your account credentials, and you can log right back in and knock everyone else off immediately. If you're the spammer, unless you have somehow hacked the original credentials, you are out for good if the legit account holder manages to knock you off once.
So if someone steals your cell phone, you can ban that device. They might be able to bounce you once or twice first, but you can log in because you have the login credentials. They can't change your email or password, even on a pre-authenticated device, without providing the old password. Once you get logged in you can bounce them, and they don't have your password so they can't get back in. You only have to win once.
Personally, I'd design the system so that you can clear pre-authentication only for all pre-authenticated devices, including the one you are logged into at that moment. No choosing specific ones or excluding the one you are using right now. That way, someone accessing your account through a lost or stolen device has no way of knocking you off without knocking themselves off at the same time. You can log back in (you have your password). They can't.
Of course, this would also have the same effect as simply changing your Facebook password, which seems like the logical thing to do if you suspect someone has access. That would completely lock out anyone with a pre-authenticated device *and* protect you from someone who might have actually hacked your credentials.
Having said that, if you use that same phone or device to check your email too, there is a risk of your getting locked out. "Lost password" goes to your email account. So there is a risk that you get your Facebook-related email on your phone, the hacker could use "lost password" on your phone to have a new password sent to your phone, then login with the new password, and own your account.
But this doesn't attempt to solve for that problem. If someone's got a device that can access your email, your Facebook account should be WAY the hell down on the list of your problems you have to deal with anyway.
When only the accuser has had the time to speak, there is no way anyone can legitimately claim that they have enough information.
Yes, it turns out that the juror was correct. That doesn't mean that jurors are allowed to make conclusions before the defense has had their fair chance to speak, or that publicly stating that conclusion is somehow acceptable if that conclusion happens to turn out to be correct.
The juror's duty is to listen to and understand all of the evidence, both from the prosecution and the defense, and weigh that evidence, then decide guilt or innocence.
This juror listened to the prosecution (who is, by law, biased against the defendant) and made her conclusion based on that evidence alone, and stated her conclusion in public. She closed her mind and opened her mouth. Jurors are supposed to close their mouth and open their minds.
As a juror, you can "THINK" anything you want. That's fine. But a posting "I'm looking forward to telling the defendant he is guilty" when only the prosecution has had time to present their case is not THINKING. It's reaching a conclusion, and stating it in public, before the evidence has been examined. That's precisely, exactly, 100% the epitome of what jurors are NOT supposed to do.
The prosecution lays out their evidence, then the defense lays out their evidence and has the opportunity to examine and refute the prosecution's evidence. During that process, some or all of the prosecution's case may be destroyed (or may not). At the end, both the prosecution and defense make closing statements, which allow then one last chance to summarize what is left of their respective cases.
Until the defense has had an opportunity to fully respond to the accusation, the juror should not be in the position of concluding that the defendant is guilty. They may have their own internal opinion about it, but their job while a juror is to really listen to the defense and see if the defense can adequately explain away or refute the prosecution's evidence. If the defense fails to do this, then they vote "GUILTY" in the trial. Once the verdict is read and the jurors are released from duty, they are then free to talk about the trial to anyone they want. Until that time, they are constantly reminded to keep their mouth shut outside the jury deliberation room and their eyes, ears, and mind open while in the courtroom.
Boring as hell? You betcha. Damn it's mind-numbingly dull. But it's one of the duties we have as citizens - protecting the rights of our fellow citizens. It's very similar to military service in that regard.
If we are accused of a crime, we have the right to a trial. Guilt or innocence in that trial is decided by people who are supposed to be impartial strangers who look at the evidence with as little bias as is humanly possible. That right is supported by the jury system, and the jurors who are drafted into service to perform this duty. The inconvenience and hassle we pay to occasionally be called for jury duty is part of the price of freedom - it ensures that your accuser cannot also decide your guilt or innocence. They have to convince a room full of people.
Or, if we're being honest, buying players in Fantasy Football, which many people around me spend good money to "buy" a team whilst simultaneously laughing their asses off at Facebook gamers?
You're buying entertainment. Facebook games are not my chosen form of entertainment. Neither is fantasy football. Neither is cable television. Nor NASCAR or any form of televised sport. And I could just as easily laugh at the person who spends $20/month to buy premium sports or movies channels as I could someone who spends $20/month on WoW or Facebook credits to receive their entertainment, or someone who spends $100/year to buy a fantasy league.
But I understand that I do enjoy leisure activities where I am spending money and getting nothing but intangible amusement in return. Just because my chosen activities are different doesn't make them any more or less valuable.
I'm a paying member of Geocaching, which is about as pointless as you can get, but I happily drop $40/year to them because when I do it, I have fun.
I spend probably an average of about $600 a year on kayaking and camping gear, fuel, etc and countless hours practicing rescue and emergency techniques so I can take a piece of plastic, put it on my car, drive it to the ocean, and go out camping on an island a few nights a year, and go for some short paddles where we just paddle up and down a river for a couple of hours and have a beer, and do a little Appalachian Trail maintenance with the camping gear.
I worked really hard and spent thousands of dollars to get a pilot's license so I can buzz around and look at the scenery to no useful purpose. I have several hundred dollars worth of knives and Dremels so I can carve little wooden animals to entertain my daughter and give as gifts to her friends. I go to the occasional movie and spend $10 to put my ass in a seat for two hours (at best) and watch a film that has no purpose other than to entertain.
It's all leisure time, and we all choose different things to do with it. If a $5 Facebook card can buy you two hours' worth of enjoyable (to you) entertainment, then it's a damned good value compared to spending $20 on a 2-hour WWE pay-per-view, or $10 + gas + popcorn to go see a movie.
And if I wanted to talk about cold-booting times as a metric, I would have used the term "boot" or "cold boot". But I wasn't talking about performance metrics, so I didn't use that term.
I was stating an approximate amount of time that my system is unavailable to me while I apply a kernel patch, and making the point that saving that time by using a riskier patching method was undesirable in my opinion.
That time includes both the "graceful shutdown", "powering up", and in my case "logging in" portions of a reboot, since I can't bloody well use my computer while it's powering down or before I've logged in, now can I?
I know Windows 7 has improved startup times dramatically over XP, and that's great. My father has a Windows 7 machine, my mother does, several friends do, and I like it. It does start fast.
But, no, to answer your question, startup takes nowhere near a minute in Mint. Probably closer to the 15 seconds you report from Windows 7, though I'll admit I haven't timed it with a stopwatch so I can't give you an exact time.
"Boot" and "reboot" are different terms, though.
So, to be clear: My "under a minute" was from the moment I told Mint to reboot to the moment I'm back in a fully operational desktop again with my basic programs running (Firefox and Thunderbird). So that figure includes powerdown, POST, OS startup, login to my primary account, launching my programs, and being back where I started when I started telling it to shut down.
And it's probably closer to 40 seconds, if I had to guess at a more precise time. But that's a guess. And Windows Seven might still beat the pants off it, and if it does I'm happy for you if that sort of metric is important to you. Personally, I'm happy with anything pretty much under a minute or so.
The reboot-to-patch-everything treadmill really sucks, and I'm glad it's largely behind us as a computing community across most personal computing platforms.
It's also great that everyone (on all platforms) has put so much work into reducing boot times for those times when it is necessary (or safer) to just reboot rather than trying to patch-in-flight.
True. The in-place kernel upgrade is somewhat safer than their analogy might imply, but it does lead to an interesting point. Why would you want to do this?
Personally, I'm OK with having to reboot my Linux machine when I change kernels, mostly because it's the only time Linux DOES ask me to reboot. To be fair, Microsoft and especially third party Windows software vendors have gotten a lot better about this in the last few years, so infrequent need to reboot is now a pretty solid feature on both Windows and Linux.
In any case, when I get a new kernel, I can install the new kernel and continue running along on the old one as long as I wish to, then reboot to apply the new kernel at a convenient time. Rebooting Linux Mint takes less than a minute from powerdown to login, and I know I haven't run into any risky process locks or anything during the upgrade process. Plus, I like the fact that the "older" kernel is always available to me on the boot menu in case something goes horribly wrong with the new one.
But I'm not all that uptight about "uptime". It's a home computer. If I have to reboot it once a month or so to apply the latest kernel, I'll reboot it. For my purposes, I don't see any added value for the extra risk (however slight) an "in-place upgrade" would introduce.
If I were running a "must be up 24/7" machine, I could see this as a benefit, but chances are at that point I've load-balanced a couple of machines and the cluster can stand a "rolling reboot" of the machines far better than it could stand a botched upgrade.
I still love the idea, and applaud the folks who managed it, but I don't think I see a real reason for it other than "wow, that's pretty nifty". It doesn't seem possible without introducing at least a little bit of risk, and it doesn't seem that the people who would really need it would be all that tolerant of the risk.
I'm thinking create a couple of small singularities in low earth orbit and let them vacuum up the space debris. Let gravity do the work. What could possibly go wrong?
Let's take the "instant backup" concept a bit further, though. I realize this is pure speculation, but...
What if the data was backed up to the nearest towers continuously? The controller, seeing the plane off course and unable to raise the crew, might be able to access the cockpit voice recording seconds after it was recorded (listening in on the cockpit almost in real-time). He'd hear what was going on and know minutes or seconds earlier that he had a hijacking on his hands, and might possibly have been able to scramble an intercept more quickly.
I'm not for a minute suggesting that the WTC attack could have been prevented by this, because the incident happened very quickly, but having that data available long before you even start recovery, and in some cases before the crash even occurs, could be useful.
Because black boxes are not always recoverable, and if the box can have some sort of continuous connection and can send the data somewhere safe, you don't even have to search for it. You can focus your physical investigation elsewhere. You can also focus on rescue without worrying about the "clock running out" on finding the data recorder.
All important data should be backed up. Data that is about to be subjected to an extremely hostile environment, doubly so. Flight Data Recorders can survive a lot, but they aren't indestructible, and having them sink intact to the bottom of an ocean with the rest of the aircraft renders them as useless as if they were destroyed.
Any way you can take as much of that data as possible and get it backed up somewhere other than an aircraft that's about to crash is a Good Thing. It may be too expensive to be practical, but it at least merits discussion.
A few crazy ideas:
Install a secondary flight data recorder to a caching device, and hook that up to a transmitter. Whenever the aircraft is in RF range to a towered airport, have the transmitter send as much of the flight data as possible in compressed form to a computer at the airport, along with the aircraft's tail number. Now an NTSB or FAA investigation into a crash can include a request to search airport-stored backups (possibly incomplete, but at least existing) of recorded flight data even if the black box itself is damaged, destroyed or cannot be recovered. There might be some indication of trouble even hours before the crash, and a lot of crashes happen in range of airports anyway so you'd have a pretty complete set of data available before you even send the rescue teams out.
Alternatively, or even additionally, put a satellite uplink on the aircraft and reserve a few satellite frequencies. If a pilot squawks mayday, the flight data recorder starts transmitting the contents of its memory (in reverse order, so the most recent events are sent first) to a satellite immediately. That covers data where the aircraft is outside radio range of an airport. Again, you might not get all of the data, but you'll probably get some of it, even if the flight data recorder itself is destroyed or unrecoverable at the bottom of the ocean.
Hell, you could put radio-linked "repeater" with some memory that ejects itself from the aircraft upon a mayday squawk and continues to receive black box data while in range, then deploys a little parachute and float balloon. The onboard Flight Data Recorder continues to record data and retransmit it to the repeater, which will contain most or all of the data, and have a much more graceful landing and be much easier to recover. That cache could even have a satellite repeater so it can send the data in real time to a satellite just in case it becomes unrecoverable.
Hell, put a few extra terabytes in the flight data recorder and have aircraft FDRs replicate data to each other continuously. If Flight 459 goes down, Flight 128 who was in the vicinity might have a backup copy of some or all of 459's FDR data, and that data will be automatically relayed to the nearest airport when Flight 128 comes in range of an airport, where it can be pieced together with other bits captured by other flights.
None of these crazy ideas eliminate the ability to get the flight data recorder itself if it turns out to be recoverable, it just provides alternate mechanisms whereby some or even all of the data might be backed up before it becomes subject to the risk of being lost forever.
Whaddya mean, "starting from now"? Google has always collected this information since Gmail was invitation-only and invitations were hard to come by. What do you read? What do you re-read? What do you reply to? What do you save? What do you delete immediately? What do you archive into folders? This is all valuable stuff to them.
Now they are just showing you how much they know about your habits, by attempting to guess what you wanted to do before you do it based on the patterns they already know about you. And they'll be right most of the time, because they've had as long as you've had Gmail to learn your habits.
Plato and Aristotle appeared approximately one thousand years too early to be included in this map. Hence their exclusion.
It only claims to list prominent personalities in the last 500 years. Hence the whole "Modern Science Map" description of it, the first paragraph specifically stating that it encompasses the last 500 years, the prominent markings of the century each person appeared in starting with the number "15", the specific mention that there were significant contributors further back in the past but that the map only includes the last 500 years. Little details like that.
But the core point still holds. All of the embryos used in the current 21 cell lines were derived from sources where the embryos were slated for destruction. We currently destroy lots of embryos every day. No embryo has ever been created for the purpose of being destroyed for research using US funding, and that's the way it should be.
Leaving aside the debate about abortion as a source of embryos, there is a sufficient supply of embryos destroyed every day that are the direct result of fertility treatments like In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) to meet the needs of every research project anyone could ever want to make, but we've passed a law that forces all of those embryos to be discarded and destroyed without any societal benefit. There are few talks about banning IVF, so those embryos will continue to be destroyed in massive quantities for the foreseeable future.
Embryos are not being created for the purpose of harvest as many feared, they are being created as a side effect of other processes and destroyed without the opportunity to derive anything useful from them. The law isn't saving embryos. It's just ensuring that those that are destroyed are being utterly wasted.
It's like passing a ban on organ donation. You won't stop anyone from being killed in traffic accidents, you'll just prevent their tragedy from saving someone else.
If you're that uncomfortable with it, you should work toward banning IVF. Stop the problem at its source. In the meantime, the genetic material to do research is there, and the embryos are being destroyed anyway. What's wrong with taking advantage of this resource rather than wasting it?
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They wouldn't, at least not in any context where this tool would be of valid use.
On my Blackberry and my iPod, when I log into my facebook account, the account remains logged in forever. I don't need to know my password any more to gain access to Facebook on my iPod. If my iPod were to be stolen, two things would be true:
1. Thief would have no way of getting my Facebook password. The specific device is pre-authenticated with my Facebook account, but the Facebook app doesn't actually have a copy of the password in it.
2. Thief would have access to my Facebook account using that device (at least all the stuff you don't need a password to see or change) until I clear pre-authentication for that device from my account.
So, the thief could use the stolen device to post messages "from me", read my wall, download my pictures, see all of my account settings and change a few of them. But they wouldn't have my password. They'd have a device that I had authorized for access to my account.
Once that device is cleared from the pre-authentication list, the thief loses access to my account.
Does that make it clearer?
Analogy fail.
Forcing a hacker to log back in is like kicking the burglar out and locking your back door after you've found out that your unlocked back door is the way the burglars have gotten in.
This tool is good enough if, say, you didn't log out of your account when you left the library, or your cell phone was stolen. There's no easy way for the next patron or the thief to actually get access to your password, they just have a cached login on the device. If you can clear that, there's no real need to change your password.
Obviously, changing your password is a BETTER way of locking them out, just in case they somehow did manage to get your password from the device.
if a spammer has your facebook credentials, then they have access to this new system as well.
It's a good thing they didn't design this as a solution to that problem, then.
This is only about clearing pre-authentication on devices that remain logged in.
"Oops, I left the library computer logged in to my Facebook account, better clear that pre-authentication so the next patron can't use my account."
"Oops, someone stole my iPod, better clear pre-authentication for it on Facebook so they can't access my account."
If you suspect someone else has your Facebook password, this tool is utterly useless to you, since they could simply log in again. The only useful response to that threat is to change your password.
No. This term, "ban", the article keeps using it, but in this article it does not mean what we think it (usually) means. (with apologies to I. Montoya)
"Ban" in the context of this article means "clear pre-authentication", if I'm reading the article correctly. Most Facebook apps allow you to check a little tickybox that says "keep me logged in forever". "Ban" clears that tickybox. It simply means that you need to know your Facebook password and present it before you can use the device again. No one can use this to lock you out of your account, only to make you log back in next time on that device.
So, if your cell phone is stolen, and you've pre-authenticated it with Facebook, you get home and "ban" the device. That means the Facebook app on that cell phone is going to ask the thief for the password next time they want to log into Facebook.
If they ban you first, you log back in to Facebook, log in to clear the "ban" on that device, and "ban" them immediately. They can't log back in to Facebook to "ban" you any more, so you win.
It's like changing your password, except it's more convenient when you have no reason to believe that your password has actually been compromised.
Congratulations. I suspect you are the first person to comment, including the person who wrote the summary, that understands what this is good for. This is about cached credentials on stolen or obsoleted devices, not account hacks or disclosed credentials. This is about devices, like an iPhone or Blackberry or even a web browser, that have the "keep me logged in" tickybox checked off. This will, in essence, "uncheck" the tickybox the next time someone tries to access the account from that device, and ask them to log back in.
If you're the legit account holder and someone with an old device of yours knocks you off, you've already got your account credentials, and you can log right back in and knock everyone else off immediately. If you're the spammer, unless you have somehow hacked the original credentials, you are out for good if the legit account holder manages to knock you off once.
So if someone steals your cell phone, you can ban that device. They might be able to bounce you once or twice first, but you can log in because you have the login credentials. They can't change your email or password, even on a pre-authenticated device, without providing the old password. Once you get logged in you can bounce them, and they don't have your password so they can't get back in. You only have to win once.
Personally, I'd design the system so that you can clear pre-authentication only for all pre-authenticated devices, including the one you are logged into at that moment. No choosing specific ones or excluding the one you are using right now. That way, someone accessing your account through a lost or stolen device has no way of knocking you off without knocking themselves off at the same time. You can log back in (you have your password). They can't.
Of course, this would also have the same effect as simply changing your Facebook password, which seems like the logical thing to do if you suspect someone has access. That would completely lock out anyone with a pre-authenticated device *and* protect you from someone who might have actually hacked your credentials.
Having said that, if you use that same phone or device to check your email too, there is a risk of your getting locked out. "Lost password" goes to your email account. So there is a risk that you get your Facebook-related email on your phone, the hacker could use "lost password" on your phone to have a new password sent to your phone, then login with the new password, and own your account.
But this doesn't attempt to solve for that problem. If someone's got a device that can access your email, your Facebook account should be WAY the hell down on the list of your problems you have to deal with anyway.
Is this the stuff that turns into "Red Matter", then?
If so, should the article contain more, I dunno, lens flare?
When only the accuser has had the time to speak, there is no way anyone can legitimately claim that they have enough information.
Yes, it turns out that the juror was correct. That doesn't mean that jurors are allowed to make conclusions before the defense has had their fair chance to speak, or that publicly stating that conclusion is somehow acceptable if that conclusion happens to turn out to be correct.
The juror's duty is to listen to and understand all of the evidence, both from the prosecution and the defense, and weigh that evidence, then decide guilt or innocence.
This juror listened to the prosecution (who is, by law, biased against the defendant) and made her conclusion based on that evidence alone, and stated her conclusion in public. She closed her mind and opened her mouth. Jurors are supposed to close their mouth and open their minds.
As a juror, you can "THINK" anything you want. That's fine. But a posting "I'm looking forward to telling the defendant he is guilty" when only the prosecution has had time to present their case is not THINKING. It's reaching a conclusion, and stating it in public, before the evidence has been examined. That's precisely, exactly, 100% the epitome of what jurors are NOT supposed to do.
The prosecution lays out their evidence, then the defense lays out their evidence and has the opportunity to examine and refute the prosecution's evidence. During that process, some or all of the prosecution's case may be destroyed (or may not). At the end, both the prosecution and defense make closing statements, which allow then one last chance to summarize what is left of their respective cases.
Until the defense has had an opportunity to fully respond to the accusation, the juror should not be in the position of concluding that the defendant is guilty. They may have their own internal opinion about it, but their job while a juror is to really listen to the defense and see if the defense can adequately explain away or refute the prosecution's evidence. If the defense fails to do this, then they vote "GUILTY" in the trial. Once the verdict is read and the jurors are released from duty, they are then free to talk about the trial to anyone they want. Until that time, they are constantly reminded to keep their mouth shut outside the jury deliberation room and their eyes, ears, and mind open while in the courtroom.
Boring as hell? You betcha. Damn it's mind-numbingly dull. But it's one of the duties we have as citizens - protecting the rights of our fellow citizens. It's very similar to military service in that regard.
If we are accused of a crime, we have the right to a trial. Guilt or innocence in that trial is decided by people who are supposed to be impartial strangers who look at the evidence with as little bias as is humanly possible. That right is supported by the jury system, and the jurors who are drafted into service to perform this duty. The inconvenience and hassle we pay to occasionally be called for jury duty is part of the price of freedom - it ensures that your accuser cannot also decide your guilt or innocence. They have to convince a room full of people.
Or, if we're being honest, buying players in Fantasy Football, which many people around me spend good money to "buy" a team whilst simultaneously laughing their asses off at Facebook gamers?
You're buying entertainment. Facebook games are not my chosen form of entertainment. Neither is fantasy football. Neither is cable television. Nor NASCAR or any form of televised sport. And I could just as easily laugh at the person who spends $20/month to buy premium sports or movies channels as I could someone who spends $20/month on WoW or Facebook credits to receive their entertainment, or someone who spends $100/year to buy a fantasy league.
But I understand that I do enjoy leisure activities where I am spending money and getting nothing but intangible amusement in return. Just because my chosen activities are different doesn't make them any more or less valuable.
I'm a paying member of Geocaching, which is about as pointless as you can get, but I happily drop $40/year to them because when I do it, I have fun.
I spend probably an average of about $600 a year on kayaking and camping gear, fuel, etc and countless hours practicing rescue and emergency techniques so I can take a piece of plastic, put it on my car, drive it to the ocean, and go out camping on an island a few nights a year, and go for some short paddles where we just paddle up and down a river for a couple of hours and have a beer, and do a little Appalachian Trail maintenance with the camping gear.
I worked really hard and spent thousands of dollars to get a pilot's license so I can buzz around and look at the scenery to no useful purpose. I have several hundred dollars worth of knives and Dremels so I can carve little wooden animals to entertain my daughter and give as gifts to her friends. I go to the occasional movie and spend $10 to put my ass in a seat for two hours (at best) and watch a film that has no purpose other than to entertain.
It's all leisure time, and we all choose different things to do with it. If a $5 Facebook card can buy you two hours' worth of enjoyable (to you) entertainment, then it's a damned good value compared to spending $20 on a 2-hour WWE pay-per-view, or $10 + gas + popcorn to go see a movie.
And if I wanted to talk about cold-booting times as a metric, I would have used the term "boot" or "cold boot". But I wasn't talking about performance metrics, so I didn't use that term.
I was stating an approximate amount of time that my system is unavailable to me while I apply a kernel patch, and making the point that saving that time by using a riskier patching method was undesirable in my opinion.
That time includes both the "graceful shutdown", "powering up", and in my case "logging in" portions of a reboot, since I can't bloody well use my computer while it's powering down or before I've logged in, now can I?
I know Windows 7 has improved startup times dramatically over XP, and that's great. My father has a Windows 7 machine, my mother does, several friends do, and I like it. It does start fast.
But, no, to answer your question, startup takes nowhere near a minute in Mint. Probably closer to the 15 seconds you report from Windows 7, though I'll admit I haven't timed it with a stopwatch so I can't give you an exact time.
"Boot" and "reboot" are different terms, though.
So, to be clear: My "under a minute" was from the moment I told Mint to reboot to the moment I'm back in a fully operational desktop again with my basic programs running (Firefox and Thunderbird). So that figure includes powerdown, POST, OS startup, login to my primary account, launching my programs, and being back where I started when I started telling it to shut down.
And it's probably closer to 40 seconds, if I had to guess at a more precise time. But that's a guess. And Windows Seven might still beat the pants off it, and if it does I'm happy for you if that sort of metric is important to you. Personally, I'm happy with anything pretty much under a minute or so.
The reboot-to-patch-everything treadmill really sucks, and I'm glad it's largely behind us as a computing community across most personal computing platforms.
It's also great that everyone (on all platforms) has put so much work into reducing boot times for those times when it is necessary (or safer) to just reboot rather than trying to patch-in-flight.
I'll have a jigger of that mixed with my civet-poo coffee for a perfect dessert beverage!
Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
True. The in-place kernel upgrade is somewhat safer than their analogy might imply, but it does lead to an interesting point. Why would you want to do this?
Personally, I'm OK with having to reboot my Linux machine when I change kernels, mostly because it's the only time Linux DOES ask me to reboot. To be fair, Microsoft and especially third party Windows software vendors have gotten a lot better about this in the last few years, so infrequent need to reboot is now a pretty solid feature on both Windows and Linux.
In any case, when I get a new kernel, I can install the new kernel and continue running along on the old one as long as I wish to, then reboot to apply the new kernel at a convenient time. Rebooting Linux Mint takes less than a minute from powerdown to login, and I know I haven't run into any risky process locks or anything during the upgrade process. Plus, I like the fact that the "older" kernel is always available to me on the boot menu in case something goes horribly wrong with the new one.
But I'm not all that uptight about "uptime". It's a home computer. If I have to reboot it once a month or so to apply the latest kernel, I'll reboot it. For my purposes, I don't see any added value for the extra risk (however slight) an "in-place upgrade" would introduce.
If I were running a "must be up 24/7" machine, I could see this as a benefit, but chances are at that point I've load-balanced a couple of machines and the cluster can stand a "rolling reboot" of the machines far better than it could stand a botched upgrade.
I still love the idea, and applaud the folks who managed it, but I don't think I see a real reason for it other than "wow, that's pretty nifty". It doesn't seem possible without introducing at least a little bit of risk, and it doesn't seem that the people who would really need it would be all that tolerant of the risk.
Is there anything the free market can't solve?
I'm thinking create a couple of small singularities in low earth orbit and let them vacuum up the space debris. Let gravity do the work. What could possibly go wrong?
Let's take the "instant backup" concept a bit further, though. I realize this is pure speculation, but...
What if the data was backed up to the nearest towers continuously? The controller, seeing the plane off course and unable to raise the crew, might be able to access the cockpit voice recording seconds after it was recorded (listening in on the cockpit almost in real-time). He'd hear what was going on and know minutes or seconds earlier that he had a hijacking on his hands, and might possibly have been able to scramble an intercept more quickly.
I'm not for a minute suggesting that the WTC attack could have been prevented by this, because the incident happened very quickly, but having that data available long before you even start recovery, and in some cases before the crash even occurs, could be useful.
Because black boxes are not always recoverable, and if the box can have some sort of continuous connection and can send the data somewhere safe, you don't even have to search for it. You can focus your physical investigation elsewhere. You can also focus on rescue without worrying about the "clock running out" on finding the data recorder.
All important data should be backed up. Data that is about to be subjected to an extremely hostile environment, doubly so. Flight Data Recorders can survive a lot, but they aren't indestructible, and having them sink intact to the bottom of an ocean with the rest of the aircraft renders them as useless as if they were destroyed.
Any way you can take as much of that data as possible and get it backed up somewhere other than an aircraft that's about to crash is a Good Thing. It may be too expensive to be practical, but it at least merits discussion.
A few crazy ideas:
Install a secondary flight data recorder to a caching device, and hook that up to a transmitter. Whenever the aircraft is in RF range to a towered airport, have the transmitter send as much of the flight data as possible in compressed form to a computer at the airport, along with the aircraft's tail number. Now an NTSB or FAA investigation into a crash can include a request to search airport-stored backups (possibly incomplete, but at least existing) of recorded flight data even if the black box itself is damaged, destroyed or cannot be recovered. There might be some indication of trouble even hours before the crash, and a lot of crashes happen in range of airports anyway so you'd have a pretty complete set of data available before you even send the rescue teams out.
Alternatively, or even additionally, put a satellite uplink on the aircraft and reserve a few satellite frequencies. If a pilot squawks mayday, the flight data recorder starts transmitting the contents of its memory (in reverse order, so the most recent events are sent first) to a satellite immediately. That covers data where the aircraft is outside radio range of an airport. Again, you might not get all of the data, but you'll probably get some of it, even if the flight data recorder itself is destroyed or unrecoverable at the bottom of the ocean.
Hell, you could put radio-linked "repeater" with some memory that ejects itself from the aircraft upon a mayday squawk and continues to receive black box data while in range, then deploys a little parachute and float balloon. The onboard Flight Data Recorder continues to record data and retransmit it to the repeater, which will contain most or all of the data, and have a much more graceful landing and be much easier to recover. That cache could even have a satellite repeater so it can send the data in real time to a satellite just in case it becomes unrecoverable.
Hell, put a few extra terabytes in the flight data recorder and have aircraft FDRs replicate data to each other continuously. If Flight 459 goes down, Flight 128 who was in the vicinity might have a backup copy of some or all of 459's FDR data, and that data will be automatically relayed to the nearest airport when Flight 128 comes in range of an airport, where it can be pieced together with other bits captured by other flights.
None of these crazy ideas eliminate the ability to get the flight data recorder itself if it turns out to be recoverable, it just provides alternate mechanisms whereby some or even all of the data might be backed up before it becomes subject to the risk of being lost forever.
The ironing is delicious.
Yes, I like to make tasty ironing. I put a little oregano and garlic in the starch.
Isn't two thousand approximately one thousand? (grin). Math fail on my part. LOL!
Somehow, you veered off-course and put a very interesting discussion about aviation into a Google Priority Inbox thread.
I think we need to pull the black box and get the cockpit voice recorder tapes. Were you playing Solitaire while flying Slashdot again? ;)
Whaddya mean, "starting from now"? Google has always collected this information since Gmail was invitation-only and invitations were hard to come by. What do you read? What do you re-read? What do you reply to? What do you save? What do you delete immediately? What do you archive into folders? This is all valuable stuff to them.
Now they are just showing you how much they know about your habits, by attempting to guess what you wanted to do before you do it based on the patterns they already know about you. And they'll be right most of the time, because they've had as long as you've had Gmail to learn your habits.
And let this be a lesson for metamoderating-by-reply: ratings change. :)
Plato and Aristotle appeared approximately one thousand years too early to be included in this map. Hence their exclusion.
It only claims to list prominent personalities in the last 500 years. Hence the whole "Modern Science Map" description of it, the first paragraph specifically stating that it encompasses the last 500 years, the prominent markings of the century each person appeared in starting with the number "15", the specific mention that there were significant contributors further back in the past but that the map only includes the last 500 years. Little details like that.
Critical thinking indeed.
Or a number of places within a few miles of my home town, several of them on Interstate highway.
But the core point still holds. All of the embryos used in the current 21 cell lines were derived from sources where the embryos were slated for destruction. We currently destroy lots of embryos every day. No embryo has ever been created for the purpose of being destroyed for research using US funding, and that's the way it should be.
Leaving aside the debate about abortion as a source of embryos, there is a sufficient supply of embryos destroyed every day that are the direct result of fertility treatments like In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) to meet the needs of every research project anyone could ever want to make, but we've passed a law that forces all of those embryos to be discarded and destroyed without any societal benefit. There are few talks about banning IVF, so those embryos will continue to be destroyed in massive quantities for the foreseeable future.
Embryos are not being created for the purpose of harvest as many feared, they are being created as a side effect of other processes and destroyed without the opportunity to derive anything useful from them. The law isn't saving embryos. It's just ensuring that those that are destroyed are being utterly wasted.
It's like passing a ban on organ donation. You won't stop anyone from being killed in traffic accidents, you'll just prevent their tragedy from saving someone else.
If you're that uncomfortable with it, you should work toward banning IVF. Stop the problem at its source. In the meantime, the genetic material to do research is there, and the embryos are being destroyed anyway. What's wrong with taking advantage of this resource rather than wasting it?