Architecturally, Salt is based on a Pub/Sub message queue (they use ZeroMQ to build it) - this allows the master node to send commands to a large number of minion nodes with very little overhead. It is also pretty easy to hook into the message queue on either master or minion nodes, so you can use it to send custom "event" messages along the queue (with authentication and all the fixin's) which can be used to trigger commands or configuration changes, or to hook into external systems.
I am using this to experiment with "event-driven architecture" currently - doing things like automatically updating proxy configurations when a new application server comes online, or removing an A record from DNS when a host is terminated. I don't think it's the end-all, be-all of configuration management, but Salt does provide a lot of flexibility to implement some pretty fancy infrastructure.
Shameless plug: If anyone is coming to SaltConf 2014 in Jan., I'll be giving a talk about the above (I don't work for SaltStack, it's just neat stuff)
It seems like a lot of people don't realize that amazon has recently released a Hardware Security Module product. If you want to encrypt your data in "the cloud" such that it is not available to your cloud provider, but is usable by your application, this is pretty much the only way to do it.
As far as I know, amazon is the only major cloud provider that has an HSM option -perhaps this is a subtle advertisement of their (not cheap) new service to people who are *really* concerned about encrypting their data.
Food for thought at least..
Well, they realized that the fscked-up. They just issued this apology / justification (not nearly enough IMHO)...
From enfour.com/OpenLetter.pdf:
On November 1, 2012, a version of the UniDict® iOS software revealed a bug that has
embarrassed both our users and our company. We are sincerely sorry for the uproar and the bad
feelings our customers have experienced. To everyone affected, we offer our humble apologies.
The story and tech details
On the morning of November 1, customers had an unpleasant surprise if they opened the app and
let it go to sleep before it was closed. Upon waking, a dialog box showed "Run in Safe Mode" then
the app disabled itself and performed an auto soft close. A notification appeared locally on the
device and if the user had authorized the app to access their Twitter account, a tweet of the
notification was sent out under their account with a hash tag #softwarepiracyconfession. This tweet
only happened if the user tapped a send confirmation button.
As soon as we realised there was a problem, we corrected it by removing the anti-piracy module
and working with Apple to get the patched version online for download. It was available before
close of business on November 1. At no time was the device itself or personal information
compromised; there was no virus, no unofficial APIs, no hacking and no malware involved.
Nevertheless, a number of users with certain system configurations were affected during this time
period. Some may still be if they haven't updated to the fixed version. If you are not running the
latest version, we urge you to update your app immediately to avoid the potential embarrassment
of an unexpected tweet.
Why this happened
Combatting piracy is challenging. As a small family-owned company with few employees every lost
sale impacts our livelihood and our ability to continue developing apps that we are passionate
about. Piracy of Enfour products happens at an astonishing rate. We have seen a 1:100 ratio of
legal to pirated copies of our software. Ouch. We can't thwart truly determined hacker & crackers,
but we wanted to possibly shame those who were opportunistically stealing our software. Just like
installing a shop-lifting alarm in a store, we thought we were being creative with a notification and a
timed tweet for users of a cracked app.
In retrospect, this was not the wisest choice. The bug that revealed this creative indiscretion was a
screwup and we accept full responsibility. We have tried to reach as many affected people as
possible using social media via our personal accounts as well as via our website and also the
iTunes store -all in multiple languages. We have taken all possible steps to ensure that our
customers are never affected again.
Piracy is a hot issue. Despite what some believe about piracy being acceptable and harmless, we
know piracy does cost us money and affects us directly. It's far too large and personal a topic for
us to pontificate upon, but if you are interested in a perspective that fits our opinion, there is a good
article in Bloomberg Business Week. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-01/piracycuts-into-paid-app-sales
Thank you We appreciate the time you took to read this letter and if you would like to discuss the issue further,
we are available for comment.
Tracey Northcott
VP International Communications
Enfour, Inc.
3F Kouju Bld 3-52-8 Sendagaya
Shibuya-ku Tokyo 151-0051 JAPAN
tracey@enfour.co.jp http://www.enfour.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/artist/enfour-inc./id284965604?l=en
TEL: +81-3-5411-7738
FAX: +81-3-5411-7704
I'm not a user of their software, or apple products for that matter, but if I were affected by this bug I would def
So you have surrendered to the erosion of personal privacy, personal rights and personal integrity; I haven't and neither has the author of the post. You may be one of those willing to trade your rights for convenience. I too would refuse my Social Security number.
So you only use pre-paid cellular, do not use credit cards or take out loans, or any other transaction that requires interacting with a credit agency?
How's that working out for you? Seriously. Living a life without interacting with the credit agencies in this day and age is difficult, and I'd like to know what you have to give up (like discounts on phones in exchange for contracts, etc) in order to keep your SSN completely private. (Where Completely = You, your employer, your health insurer (if you have one) and the gov't.)
I also refuse to provide my SS for consumer products. I am willing to provide it when applying for a loan which I have done for homes and cars. I am willing to provide it to employers and other tax documents. I have also provided it for credit cards (although I regret ever doing business with credit card companies) - but I have REFUSED to provide it twice for cell phones (most recently for a 1G Iphone w/ ATT) with complete success. I have also refused to provide it for employment applications - no one needs a credit check to decide if they want to hire me (note: I have submitted to and passed background checks for security clearance where the position required it - this is a different situation).
I wish more people would refuse to provide their SS - maybe people would stop asking for it when they don't really need it (No, a cell phone doesn't need it - your landline didn't need to open a line of credit 10 years ago, and $2.99/min sex lines were perfectly available and billable).
It's not about keeping the SS completely secret - it's about minimizing risk by not handing it over to just anybody who asks. We (the U.S.) have become too obsessed with credit scores - and too free about giving up our privacy (in my opinion).
Sorry if this reply has turned into a rant..I've just gotten progressively irritated reading this thread - I just don't think it's some kind of crazy tin-foil hat thing to try and push back against corporations treating our personal information so frivolously. just my $.02:)
The real problem here is that the legal fees for defending against a felony are going to be in the ~$10,000+ range, or you can just pay the $5,000 fine and go on your way.
I doubt anyone will ever actually go to prison over this, and it will be a while until someone presses it far enough to get the law overturned.
Meanwhile, the state can collect some fines in some tough economic times.
Also, with such tactics, doesn't an ISP lose "common carrier" status
I can't recall how many times I have posted that ISP's don't have common carrier status. They don't need common carrier status for protection under the DMCA.
Whoever modded up the parent: YOU FAIL!
I must have missed your earlier posts - could you please explain why ISPs don't have common carrier status under the law? (in the US)
I agree, this is my big gripe with the project - they highly misrepresent how "open" the hardware is.
I was all jazzed up to borrow some aspects of their circuit design for a little pet project of mine...until I figured out that the "open hardware" stuff was BS. They are only providing like 20% of the design.
That said, it's still more info than anyone else provides about their hardware. I wish other companies would look at what is provided with OpenMoko - and realize that they won't lose any competitive advantage by providing similar details, which are still quite useful for hacking.
I do wish the openmoko project wouldn't dilute the term "open hardware" like that.
...I've got one too. And until I jailbroke it, it couldn't ssh, it didn't sync very well, I couldn't install any unix apps...
If you keep the iphone firmware intact, it is just frustrating to know that there is this awesome bsd-based smartphone that stores basically everything in little sqlite databases - THAT YOU CAN'T USE!
I love the functionality of my hacked iPhone, but Apple's attitude with the appstore has really underscored the need for free software to me. I have decided to no longer purchase apple products or services as a result of my experience with the iPhone (been a Mac user ever since they rolled out OS X).
An openmoko freerunner is definitely on "to buy" list - not because I expect it to be super-functional out of the box, but because I want to (financially) support the concept.
I'm sick of being unreasonably prevented from using the full capability of products I purchase.
If you're happy with one company being in charge of what software you can run on your phone, what network ports you can connect to, what access you have to backup your own personal information...then by all means, stick with the iphone. Good luck with that. I've been burned one too many times by vendor lock-in I guess. Just my $.02
Almost...spherical distortion is a long standing problem, and it DOES depend on the subject's distance from the lens (this is why spherical abberation is generally fixed in microscope lenses). If you take a close up picture (of a face for example) with a lens with bad distortion at close distances (like a wide angle lens), objects that are just a little closer to the lens than others in the frame (like the tip of the person's nose) will seem a great deal closer as a result of the distortion (creating a pinnochio effect) The distance from the lens, the depth-of-field and the focal length all play a role in the distortion.
My GF had this problem measuring the length of feather barbules in her biology thesis - we could find no (Free) software that easily corrected for spherical distortion, and did not have the means to try the more expensive image analysis software. But simply taking a picture of graph paper and correcting for the distortion you see will _NOT_ work as the depth of field and distance from the lens change - therefore it would be somewhat useless to correct for graph paper at ~1/2 m from the lens, and then take pictures of buldings ~500 m away. That said, the effect should be diminished at greater distances, so you really should not have a problem with architectural pictures. If you really want everything to be accurate, you will either have to get a SLR digital camera (with interchangable lenses) and spend some cash on a nice lens (note that most auto-zoom lenses are not that high quality - this is why a lot of pro photagraphers carry like 10 lenses or several different cameras all the time); or you could try to write it yourself...but I don't think you'll find the time/price tradeoff of either option worth the improvement for your particular application.
Maybe I'm stupid but it seems like you could just enclose a laptop HD in a farraday cage, or some custom made shielding specific to your application. What's harder - developing some hardware control mechanism or using off-the-shelf parts and a thick metal box with a little shielded exit port for an IDE cable? Surely being in the business of desiging high precision sensors you know a thing or two about shield design...
David Griffiths is currently my advisor at Reed college. I have never met a more brilliant physiscist, and having read several quantum mechanics texts, I can honestly say that no one presents the necessary ideas in a more straightforward and entertaining manner than Griffiths.
You probably need to recompile your kernel. Brief instructions:
cd/usr/src/linux && make mrproper && make menuconfig
This will start the kernel configuration program. You should probably read up a bit on the various options, as there are many, try Kernel-Howto
for more info... make sure you include:
USB Support
USB-Serial
USB-Visor
just go through every menu option and look for things that sound like they apply to you, and when in doubt compile as a module. Save the configuration and exit. Then:
make clean && make dep && make bzImage && make modules && mv/boot/bzImage/boot/bzImage.old && mv/lib/modules/SOMETHING/lib/modules/SOMETHING-old && make modules_install && mv/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage/boot
now, if you use GRUB for a boot loader you should be ok to restart the computer and see if it worked. If you use Lilo:
/sbin/lilo
Er, I think that's all you have to do, I use GRUB personally. Now reboot and see if stuff works..you might have to load the module after rebooting:
modprobe usb-visor
Worst case scenario, boot with a rescue disk, and rename the.old files to their original names (deleting the failing replacements.) Look at the kernel-howto linked above, and:
Handspring-Visor-HOWTO
which goes into much greater detail. It's really not that hard.
It seems that a lot of people are assuming this guy wants to record sixteen channels of Television at once - but to me it seems that the obvious reason for this system is to monitor/record from a multichannel video surveillance system, which could easily exceed 16 cameras depending on the size of the site. Perhaps the poster should search for pc controlled multiplexors (which have like four video in ports and do most of the video compression on board). Try looking at home automation/security sites (NOT x10.com), sorry no links, but I'm sure I've seen such cards on the web before, although they cost ~$1200 for four channels.
Input your sound sample -> convert to waveform. Input sample to compare -> """"""""""""""""""""
Then all you have to do is compare the shape of the two waveforms, assuming you have a reasonably consistant connection, and are willing to do a little performance tuning (i.e. setting the acceptable difference between the two waves), it wouldn't be that hard.
Does anyone else remember the old greyscale logitech handheld scanners? I've often lamented the fact that no one sees fit to make an updated version (HP had a pretty sweet one that didn't even need to be plugged in to work w/ ~ 50 pages worth of memory - but for some reason the discontinued it). A handheld would be perfect for all your odd-sized scan jobs (and books, which is why I want one)
When I hear "webpad" I think ~$400-800. Maybe they should add a pressure sensitive stylus and sell it as a graphic art tablet/webpad/portable entertainment device (Of course it would be a much better entertainment device w/ a DVD and a DMCA free world). It would also be nice to see an integrated hard cover that just flips down over the screen. If it has a decent sized HD, good battery life and is reasonably fast I'd buy it for maybe $1800. If you want $2300 show me video and a DVD player.
If Adobe allowed KIllustrator to exist as a product and didn't do anything about it, Microsoft could (for instance) release a product called MS Illustrator. Adobe wouldn't be able to do anything about it -- they didn't fight KIllustrator, what possible objection could they have to MS Illustrator? They would very likely lose their trademark if they knowingly allowed a clearly similar product to use such a similar name. I doubt very many of you would take Microsoft's side in that fight, so why do you all take KOffice's side?
People SHOULD take Microsoft's side in that case. How long is it going to be before every word in the English language is trademarked? IP is going to ruin humanity
Second, I keep seeing people say you shouldn't be able to trademark simple words. Okay, "Windows" is a simple word. So you don't think Microsoft should be able to fight a piece of software called "KWindows"? Probably not. How about "Doom"? Another software. Should id software just blithely accept it if some Linux geek writes a first-person shooter called "KDoom"?
*Yes* Microsof should just suck it up if someone else (XWindows) wants to use the descriptive and common term windows in a windowing environment - it is an industry accepted and household term with a well defined meaning that has nothing to do with Microsoft (indeed the term was around a goodly while before MS ever evern started ripping off the code to build windows.)
And FYI tryx a FreshMeat search for LXDoom - and notice that id software doesn't give a fuck.
Intellectual property legislation (from the judicial branch, no less) is going to grow and grow until all innovation is stifled and limited to those few who can either pay extremely high retainers or those who can write and keep code for themselves / small group.
Folks, "Illustrator" is a graphics package by Adobe. The name "KIllustrator" was almost certainly chosen *because* of the name "Illustrator", not just as a coincidence. The fact that it's an open-source project does not grant it legal immunity, and it doesn't excuse such shameless and unethical trademark violation. Yes, that's right -- I consider it unethical for the authors of this program to have blatantly copied the name of a successful graphics package. How can you defend that?
KIllustrator is a program one uses to Illustrate. Much like Konsole is a Console program, or KWord is a Word Processor (Yup Remember those?). Why do companies need to bicker over such petty bullshit. Broader OT question - why does EVERYONE always bicker over such petty bullshit? (Yes I recognize the irony).
In some areas, Multiple Listing Services (MLS) make realtors sign agreements that they won't release MLS database information to individuals unless they are first a customer of the realtor - if the realtor violates this, then MLS will cut them off (and they're pretty much boned). This, plus the high expense of MLS subscription in certain areas like impedes the development of a definitive search site. Maybe in a couple of years...
The main reason _I_ would like an external power supply is for my server rack (in progress). I've got 5 pcs in rackmount cases (of varying sizes), they're all watercooled (read: NO fans at all in the cases except for the powersupply). Now, if I could buy a 1 or 2-u powersupply that would run that many boxes (and preferably be designed for watercooling itself - I can dream can't I;) I'd be in heaven. If we had external power supplies for desktops, there would already be some type of standard (hopefully) connector. Thus, large capacity PS's could be designed with a little scalability in mind (picture a power hub with multiple ports).
Slashdot Mirror
Architecturally, Salt is based on a Pub/Sub message queue (they use ZeroMQ to build it) - this allows the master node to send commands to a large number of minion nodes with very little overhead. It is also pretty easy to hook into the message queue on either master or minion nodes, so you can use it to send custom "event" messages along the queue (with authentication and all the fixin's) which can be used to trigger commands or configuration changes, or to hook into external systems.
I am using this to experiment with "event-driven architecture" currently - doing things like automatically updating proxy configurations when a new application server comes online, or removing an A record from DNS when a host is terminated. I don't think it's the end-all, be-all of configuration management, but Salt does provide a lot of flexibility to implement some pretty fancy infrastructure.
Shameless plug: If anyone is coming to SaltConf 2014 in Jan., I'll be giving a talk about the above (I don't work for SaltStack, it's just neat stuff)
It seems like a lot of people don't realize that amazon has recently released a Hardware Security Module product. If you want to encrypt your data in "the cloud" such that it is not available to your cloud provider, but is usable by your application, this is pretty much the only way to do it.
As far as I know, amazon is the only major cloud provider that has an HSM option -perhaps this is a subtle advertisement of their (not cheap) new service to people who are *really* concerned about encrypting their data.
Food for thought at least..
I'm not a user of their software, or apple products for that matter, but if I were affected by this bug I would def
So you have surrendered to the erosion of personal privacy, personal rights and personal integrity; I haven't and neither has the author of the post. You may be one of those willing to trade your rights for convenience. I too would refuse my Social Security number.
So you only use pre-paid cellular, do not use credit cards or take out loans, or any other transaction that requires interacting with a credit agency?
How's that working out for you? Seriously. Living a life without interacting with the credit agencies in this day and age is difficult, and I'd like to know what you have to give up (like discounts on phones in exchange for contracts, etc) in order to keep your SSN completely private. (Where Completely = You, your employer, your health insurer (if you have one) and the gov't.)
I also refuse to provide my SS for consumer products. I am willing to provide it when applying for a loan which I have done for homes and cars. I am willing to provide it to employers and other tax documents. I have also provided it for credit cards (although I regret ever doing business with credit card companies) - but I have REFUSED to provide it twice for cell phones (most recently for a 1G Iphone w/ ATT) with complete success. I have also refused to provide it for employment applications - no one needs a credit check to decide if they want to hire me (note: I have submitted to and passed background checks for security clearance where the position required it - this is a different situation).
I wish more people would refuse to provide their SS - maybe people would stop asking for it when they don't really need it
(No, a cell phone doesn't need it - your landline didn't need to open a line of credit 10 years ago, and $2.99/min sex lines were perfectly available and billable).
It's not about keeping the SS completely secret - it's about minimizing risk by not handing it over to just anybody who asks.
We (the U.S.) have become too obsessed with credit scores - and too free about giving up our privacy (in my opinion).
Sorry if this reply has turned into a rant..I've just gotten progressively irritated reading this thread - I just don't think it's some kind of crazy tin-foil hat thing to try and push back against corporations treating our personal information so frivolously. :)
just my $.02
The real problem here is that the legal fees for defending against a felony are going to be in the ~$10,000+ range, or you can just pay the $5,000 fine and go on your way.
I doubt anyone will ever actually go to prison over this, and it will be a while until someone presses it far enough to get the law overturned.
Meanwhile, the state can collect some fines in some tough economic times.
I can't recall how many times I have posted that ISP's don't have common carrier status. They don't need common carrier status for protection under the DMCA.
Whoever modded up the parent: YOU FAIL!
I must have missed your earlier posts - could you please explain why ISPs don't have common carrier status under the law? (in the US)
1 metric assload = 2.02 imperial assloads.
simple.
...about 15 minutes after word of the gag-order hit the streets.
I agree, this is my big gripe with the project - they highly misrepresent how "open" the hardware is.
I was all jazzed up to borrow some aspects of their circuit design for a little pet project of mine...until I figured out that the "open hardware" stuff was BS. They are only providing like 20% of the design.
That said, it's still more info than anyone else provides about their hardware. I wish other companies would look at what is provided with OpenMoko - and realize that they won't lose any competitive advantage by providing similar details, which are still quite useful for hacking.
I do wish the openmoko project wouldn't dilute the term "open hardware" like that.
...I've got one too. And until I jailbroke it, it couldn't ssh, it didn't sync very well, I couldn't install any unix apps...
If you keep the iphone firmware intact, it is just frustrating to know that there is this awesome bsd-based smartphone that stores basically everything in little sqlite databases - THAT YOU CAN'T USE!
I love the functionality of my hacked iPhone, but Apple's attitude with the appstore has really underscored the need for free software to me.
I have decided to no longer purchase apple products or services as a result of my experience with the iPhone (been a Mac user ever since they rolled out OS X).
An openmoko freerunner is definitely on "to buy" list - not because I expect it to be super-functional out of the box, but because I want to (financially) support the concept.
I'm sick of being unreasonably prevented from using the full capability of products I purchase.
If you're happy with one company being in charge of what software you can run on your phone, what network ports you can connect to, what access you have to backup your own personal information...then by all means, stick with the iphone. Good luck with that. I've been burned one too many times by vendor lock-in I guess.
Just my $.02
I'll say it again:
FUCK YEAH!
...my goddamn holographic cube storage.
Almost...spherical distortion is a long standing problem, and it DOES depend on the subject's distance from the lens (this is why spherical abberation is generally fixed in microscope lenses). If you take a close up picture (of a face for example) with a lens with bad distortion at close distances (like a wide angle lens), objects that are just a little closer to the lens than others in the frame (like the tip of the person's nose) will seem a great deal closer as a result of the distortion (creating a pinnochio effect) The distance from the lens, the depth-of-field and the focal length all play a role in the distortion.
My GF had this problem measuring the length of feather barbules in her biology thesis - we could find no (Free) software that easily corrected for spherical distortion, and did not have the means to try the more expensive image analysis software. But simply taking a picture of graph paper and correcting for the distortion you see will _NOT_ work as the depth of field and distance from the lens change - therefore it would be somewhat useless to correct for graph paper at ~1/2 m from the lens, and then take pictures of buldings ~500 m away. That said, the effect should be diminished at greater distances, so you really should not have a problem with architectural pictures. If you really want everything to be accurate, you will either have to get a SLR digital camera (with interchangable lenses) and spend some cash on a nice lens (note that most auto-zoom lenses are not that high quality - this is why a lot of pro photagraphers carry like 10 lenses or several different cameras all the time); or you could try to write it yourself...but I don't think you'll find the time/price tradeoff of either option worth the improvement for your particular application.
Interesting...what materials (for example) would be employed in shielding magnetic fields from HDs then?
I never realized it was such a different problem..I guess I should pick up an E&M text sometime..:)
Note: I really am interested and would like to know some example materials if you have them off the top of your head..
Maybe I'm stupid but it seems like you could just enclose a laptop HD in a farraday cage, or some custom made shielding specific to your application. What's harder - developing some hardware control mechanism or using off-the-shelf parts and a thick metal box with a little shielded exit port for an IDE cable? Surely being in the business of desiging high precision sensors you know a thing or two about shield design...
David Griffiths is currently my advisor at Reed college. I have never met a more brilliant physiscist, and having read several quantum mechanics texts, I can honestly say that no one presents the necessary ideas in a more straightforward and entertaining manner than Griffiths.
It seems that a lot of people are assuming this guy wants to record sixteen channels of Television at once - but to me it seems that the obvious reason for this system is to monitor/record from a multichannel video surveillance system, which could easily exceed 16 cameras depending on the size of the site. Perhaps the poster should search for pc controlled multiplexors (which have like four video in ports and do most of the video compression on board). Try looking at home automation/security sites (NOT x10.com), sorry no links, but I'm sure I've seen such cards on the web before, although they cost ~$1200 for four channels.
Input your sound sample -> convert to waveform.
Input sample to compare -> """"""""""""""""""""
Then all you have to do is compare the shape of the two waveforms, assuming you have a reasonably consistant connection, and are willing to do a little performance tuning (i.e. setting the acceptable difference between the two waves), it wouldn't be that hard.
Does anyone else remember the old greyscale logitech handheld scanners? I've often lamented the fact that no one sees fit to make an updated version (HP had a pretty sweet one that didn't even need to be plugged in to work w/ ~ 50 pages worth of memory - but for some reason the discontinued it). A handheld would be perfect for all your odd-sized scan jobs (and books, which is why I want one)
When I hear "webpad" I think ~$400-800. Maybe they should add a pressure sensitive stylus and sell it as a graphic art tablet/webpad/portable entertainment device (Of course it would be a much better entertainment device w/ a DVD and a DMCA free world). It would also be nice to see an integrated hard cover that just flips down over the screen. If it has a decent sized HD, good battery life and is reasonably fast I'd buy it for maybe $1800. If you want $2300 show me video and a DVD player.
People SHOULD take Microsoft's side in that case. How long is it going to be before every word in the English language is trademarked? IP is going to ruin humanity
*Yes* Microsof should just suck it up if someone else (XWindows) wants to use the descriptive and common term windows in a windowing environment - it is an industry accepted and household term with a well defined meaning that has nothing to do with Microsoft (indeed the term was around a goodly while before MS ever evern started ripping off the code to build windows.)
And FYI tryx a FreshMeat search for LXDoom - and notice that id software doesn't give a fuck.
Intellectual property legislation (from the judicial branch, no less) is going to grow and grow until all innovation is stifled and limited to those few who can either pay extremely high retainers or those who can write and keep code for themselves / small group.
KIllustrator is a program one uses to Illustrate. Much like Konsole is a Console program, or KWord is a Word Processor (Yup Remember those?). Why do companies need to bicker over such petty bullshit. Broader OT question - why does EVERYONE always bicker over such petty bullshit? (Yes I recognize the irony).
In some areas, Multiple Listing Services (MLS) make realtors sign agreements that they won't release MLS database information to individuals unless they are first a customer of the realtor - if the realtor violates this, then MLS will cut them off (and they're pretty much boned). This, plus the high expense of MLS subscription in certain areas like impedes the development of a definitive search site. Maybe in a couple of years...
Ferrite beads work pretty well for cables...
The main reason _I_ would like an external power supply is for my server rack (in progress). I've got 5 pcs in rackmount cases (of varying sizes), they're all watercooled (read: NO fans at all in the cases except for the powersupply). Now, if I could buy a 1 or 2-u powersupply that would run that many boxes (and preferably be designed for watercooling itself - I can dream can't I ;) I'd be in heaven. If we had external power supplies for desktops, there would already be some type of standard (hopefully) connector. Thus, large capacity PS's could be designed with a little scalability in mind (picture a power hub with multiple ports).