The main response I give to this, is it has always been acceptable to have a limited amount of personal phone calls -- for example "Honey, I'm working an hour late", or "Well, can you pick up a gallon of milk on the way home?" accompanied by the usual personal greetings / goodbyes, etc. Or maybe you need to call your doctor during business hours to schedule an appointment. Now days, online has either replaced or supplemented many of these previous phone-only personal items, and it may actually be more efficient then sitting on hold for half an hour with the insurance company. The alternative is for the employer to give you more frequent personal days to take care of things that can only be done during business hours. Oh, and many office workers are on flex time, which basically boils down to the employer isn't buying your time, instead they are buying your work output. if you aren't producing enough for what they are paying you, then there are other avenues than cutting off all your phone and internet access.
You mean like what is here? Yes it would be easier if they gave a Linux support flag on the actual model page, instead of flipping between these two pages (or gave pricing info on the Linux page), but it is better than many vendors.
I've been looking at the Torgoens, among them the T2 series (also no longer on their web site). Here's what I'm basically looking for in a slide rule watch: 1) Preferably a rotating outer bezel, instead of rotating the slide rule with one of the crowns. It seems that it would take too long to set the slide rule for a quick calculation using the crown. Also, most watch of that design put the slide rule crown on the left side, where you'd have to take the watch off to use it. 2) No parallax errors -- so the ones with one set of scales on the outside bezel, and the other scales under the crystal are out. 3) Something where the numbers on the bezel won't wear off, i.e. not painted on but actually etched / engraved. 4) Enough of the gauge marks so it doesn't look too plain. Most of the E6B ones fill this category nicely. 5) C, D, and time scales. Some watches are missing the time scale (see the third one in on the T2 for example).
I think either the Citizen Skyhawk comes close to what I want, but I'm skeptical on the digital face (which can get covered up by the hands periodically). Also some of the no-longer made Seiko's look close to what I want.
The reason this is significant is that apps are usually installed with limited access to items it doesn't need. So normally a bad app won't be able to steal passwords, or lift your address book, unless you give it permissions. This demonstration is simply showing a covert channel for information leakage that people may not have thought about before.
That is precisely the reason I started liking Best Buy -- it was so pleasant after a bad Circuit City experience. CC was trying to push an extended warranty on a laptop that my Dad was buying, saying that this model is known to "blow up" if it isn't cleaned every 6 months. I came back and said, "so you are saying that we should buy a different laptop then?" The sales person didn't react to well to logic.
Went over to Best Buy, the sales person let us browse, he said it looks like we knew what we were doing, and to grab him if there were any questions. Of course, now that CC is gone, BB has started to degrade.
This may or may not help with the current situation, but with regards to choice 2, (especially during the hiring process) mention that you do some community work on the side for non-profits, and that the entities you deal with want to make sure there are no legal issues with anything you contribute to them. Sell it as you helping your church with their web site (even if you don't have a church...), or helping with backend systems for running a homeless shelter, etc. That opens the door to them letting you adjust that part of your contract -- after all, which employer would want to be seen as squashing their employee's ability to do charity work / help the community?
Then, take the contract to your lawyer, tell him what you want to have covered, and he will be able to re-word that section of the contract as an amendment for you to have your employer sign. This may work better at hire time than once you've been at a place for a while though. But worth a try.
But you are also decreasing local entropy -- That is, you take in raw materials and form them into physical ordered structures (cells, brain material, etc). That's what I meant by "local" entropy -- extremely local.
An entity that a) reduces local entropy, and b) came into existence via being replicated from and by another similar entity. Thus, you have the requirement of self replication, consuming resources, etc., which allows for those who can't reproduce, and rules out fire.
The other question is, Does this product cell in small quantities for a small price, which would cost 10x more to ship it? I hate buying a 25 cent component and paying 5 buck for shipping and "handling".
The problem with a mill is that you are starting out with a large block and taking off pieces until you have your shape. So you end up with a lot of wasted material (of course you could probably re-cast the scrap shavings into a new block but...). Whereas the 3d printer uses only enough material to make your shape, and it can include hollow parts inside. Some of them can even make fully assembled movable parts (like say a crescent wrench).
As for the material, it would seem that eventually one would come up with a system that pulls from two different spools, which when combined has a greater hardness (similar to mixing epoxy). Not sure what is holding that up though.
Well, that is only if you are going in through the front door. All the jobs I've gotten were through the back door, either personal reference or hungry recruiters. It probably doesn't hurt that I'm in an area with a wide range of opportunities and industries, but you'd be surprised at what you can accomplish by just keeping your ears open, talking to the right person, and saying the right things (you do have to have a certain amount of interpersonal skills, enough to read the other person's body language so you can adjust your message towards what they are looking for).
Now a related question -- is there any evidence (for or against) that life originated more than once on earth? Is the prevailing theory that a single reproducing organism came into being, from which all others were derived, or is it more likely that multiple instances of life happened over the course of time, and they all happen to take the same form? If this is the case, then it lends credence to life existing elsewhere in the universe, with much similarity to what we know. However, if it is unlikely for more than one independent instance of life to be similar, then we should be observing various non-related life types here on earth (i.e., some carbon based, some silicon based, etc).
Or, as an alternative, run any infection vector program inside a VM, and access it from your main Windows host via RDP (if running a copy of Windows in the VM) or X (for Linux VMs). With my setup, I have Internet Explorer set to not run any scripts or plugins, and the Firefox icon points to a Cygwin script that launches Firefox on a remote Linux box. Same with IM clients, etc. Went from having to rebuild the Windows box that the kids used on a weekly basis to hardly having to touch it at all.
My first lesson on that topic was when I was around 19, working at a small business that included a print shop. At the time, OCR software was relatively new, so I thought I'd introduce it to the layout department. I sold the idea to management that it could save time scanning in documents instead of having someone type them in, and they loved it. However, one of the ladies that was responsible for entering everything into the typesetter was less than enthusiastic -- she thought this would put her out of a job. Of course, in my youth, I didn't get it. I just casually responded that if that were the case, then maybe she would get a better job somewhere else, or that she could learn other positions within the department. That didn't go over so well.
I think the biggest thing that can come out of this project (especially if more like it come around) is the fact that the hardware is too cheap to run a non-free OS on it. Now sure, to make it into a full computer you have to add a monitor, keyboard, mouse, USB hub, storage (not sure if it comes with flash built in or if it needs a SD card to boot from), and and Internet connection. But most people are going to see the $25 price (assuming something like this ever gets retail) and pick one up. The netbooks almost made this happen (since they were Linux only when they first came out -- until Microsoft cut a deal for Windows XP). Only thing is, would the typical user be using a Debian based (or similar) distro, or would they be using a version of Android?
The only thing I think that would make this more useful is if they added another, say, $30 or so to the price and added a calculator screen / keypad to it (and battery/charging circuitry). Since most high school kids need a $100 graphing calculator, one that transforms into full workstation when plugged into a monitor/keyboard would be great. Of course the schools probably would never allow the use of an "open" calculator on exams (but then again, most high school level exams only need a simple scientific calculator -- or a slide rule).
And what makes you think that the IPv6 off-the-shelf routers won't default to a stateful firewall? In fact, I can't see any vendor not enabling that by default, and advertizing it in big bold letters (not the techno-jargon, but "Buy this box and keep the hackers out"). And the ISPs are likely to include such functionality in their cable/DSL modem, since they could benefit from fewer zombies on the network.
Not only that, you can install CM7 to boot directly off the SD card, so if you wanted to go back to the stock firmware it is just a simple matter of booting without the SD installed. If you go this route, make sure to use a Sandisk SD card though (even the class 2 Sandisk is faster than the class 10 of most other brands for this use case, since the other cards are only fast at very large block transfers).
Not to mention items like the Nook Color (Barnes & Noble). You can install CyanogenMod 7 (a community-maintained Android distribution) on it; you can even run it 100% from an SD card so you won't have to mod the device itself (the Nook tries booting from the SD card first before booting from internal storage). If you do run CyanogenMod from an SD card, make sure to use a Sandisk (class 2 or class 4) card. It is the only card I've tested that has good performance on small read/writes (even beats out all the class 10 cards).
Only thing missing on the Nook Color after running a generic Android port is front/rear facing cameras, GPS, and 3G.
Almost every root kit (Unix, Windows, Linux, etc) starts off with modifying the boot sector. Some may even go as far as modifying the BIOS. Now granted that on Unix type systems, root kits are installed after someone hacks your system. But on Windows, I've run into a fairly large number of root kit viruses that have an altered boot sector (the only way I've been able to clean them / detect them is to boot a Linux CD to run a virus scanner -- AVG has a somewhat useable one out).
The point is to know that what I'm booting up is what I installed. You know that thing that was invented back in the 80's or so, called a "boot sector virus"? Yes, I know it's kind of hard to get one of those installed on a Linux system, but there are a number of server systems that have been "owned". Right now if I suspect that something is fishy with one of the servers I'm tasked with maintaining, it would be nice to know that all the automatic validity checks I put in starting with the initrd image on up are actually trust worthy. And when you've got several hundred systems to maintain, each with their own patch schedule and different customer group, every little bit helps.
I want to leave secure boot enabled, but put me in charge of the keys. That is, I want to load my own public keys into the system (through a secure channel, such as a bios screen or flipping a physical switch, for example).
And you'd have a better time finding the executable in a directory with thousands of files, vs. several directories with hundreds of files? You can't even go by the file date, as that doesn't reflect the date the file was installed (but whatever date the package says it is). What I do (on an RPM based system) is: rpm -ql packagename |grep bin (or grep man), to find what I'm looking for. And, "rpm -q --last" to find the most recently installed package.
If this is for the education market, I think a good follow-up product would be to add a calculator style keypad, cheap LCD display, and turn this into a TI-83 replacement. That way, since all the kids are required to carry a $100 calculator any way, having a calculator that can transform into a full Linux workstation by plugging in a USB keyboard & monitor would be ideal.
To the extent that Lisp is sort of a mathematical / logical construct, it is often said that it was discovered instead of invented / developed. The same way that Einstein discovered E=mc^2. And in this case, I'm referring to the "inside" of lisp, the core ideas. Not the parentheses that you see -- that is merely and abstraction, just like other math symbols.
To get a somewhat better idea, take a look at some of Paul Graham's essays at paulgraham.com. Specifically, "What makes Lisp different", and "The roots of Lisp".
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The main response I give to this, is it has always been acceptable to have a limited amount of personal phone calls -- for example "Honey, I'm working an hour late", or "Well, can you pick up a gallon of milk on the way home?" accompanied by the usual personal greetings / goodbyes, etc. Or maybe you need to call your doctor during business hours to schedule an appointment. Now days, online has either replaced or supplemented many of these previous phone-only personal items, and it may actually be more efficient then sitting on hold for half an hour with the insurance company. The alternative is for the employer to give you more frequent personal days to take care of things that can only be done during business hours. Oh, and many office workers are on flex time, which basically boils down to the employer isn't buying your time, instead they are buying your work output. if you aren't producing enough for what they are paying you, then there are other avenues than cutting off all your phone and internet access.
You mean like what is here? Yes it would be easier if they gave a Linux support flag on the actual model page, instead of flipping between these two pages (or gave pricing info on the Linux page), but it is better than many vendors.
I've been looking at the Torgoens, among them the T2 series (also no longer on their web site). Here's what I'm basically looking for in a slide rule watch:
1) Preferably a rotating outer bezel, instead of rotating the slide rule with one of the crowns. It seems that it would take too long to set the slide rule for a quick calculation using the crown. Also, most watch of that design put the slide rule crown on the left side, where you'd have to take the watch off to use it.
2) No parallax errors -- so the ones with one set of scales on the outside bezel, and the other scales under the crystal are out.
3) Something where the numbers on the bezel won't wear off, i.e. not painted on but actually etched / engraved.
4) Enough of the gauge marks so it doesn't look too plain. Most of the E6B ones fill this category nicely.
5) C, D, and time scales. Some watches are missing the time scale (see the third one in on the T2 for example).
I think either the Citizen Skyhawk comes close to what I want, but I'm skeptical on the digital face (which can get covered up by the hands periodically). Also some of the no-longer made Seiko's look close to what I want.
The reason this is significant is that apps are usually installed with limited access to items it doesn't need. So normally a bad app won't be able to steal passwords, or lift your address book, unless you give it permissions. This demonstration is simply showing a covert channel for information leakage that people may not have thought about before.
That is precisely the reason I started liking Best Buy -- it was so pleasant after a bad Circuit City experience. CC was trying to push an extended warranty on a laptop that my Dad was buying, saying that this model is known to "blow up" if it isn't cleaned every 6 months. I came back and said, "so you are saying that we should buy a different laptop then?" The sales person didn't react to well to logic.
Went over to Best Buy, the sales person let us browse, he said it looks like we knew what we were doing, and to grab him if there were any questions. Of course, now that CC is gone, BB has started to degrade.
Our dog doesn't call when called, but knows the cat's name. Every time the cat is called for dinner, dog comes running.
This may or may not help with the current situation, but with regards to choice 2, (especially during the hiring process) mention that you do some community work on the side for non-profits, and that the entities you deal with want to make sure there are no legal issues with anything you contribute to them. Sell it as you helping your church with their web site (even if you don't have a church...), or helping with backend systems for running a homeless shelter, etc. That opens the door to them letting you adjust that part of your contract -- after all, which employer would want to be seen as squashing their employee's ability to do charity work / help the community?
Then, take the contract to your lawyer, tell him what you want to have covered, and he will be able to re-word that section of the contract as an amendment for you to have your employer sign. This may work better at hire time than once you've been at a place for a while though. But worth a try.
But you are also decreasing local entropy -- That is, you take in raw materials and form them into physical ordered structures (cells, brain material, etc). That's what I meant by "local" entropy -- extremely local.
An entity that a) reduces local entropy, and b) came into existence via being replicated from and by another similar entity. Thus, you have the requirement of self replication, consuming resources, etc., which allows for those who can't reproduce, and rules out fire.
The other question is, Does this product cell in small quantities for a small price, which would cost 10x more to ship it? I hate buying a 25 cent component and paying 5 buck for shipping and "handling".
The problem with a mill is that you are starting out with a large block and taking off pieces until you have your shape. So you end up with a lot of wasted material (of course you could probably re-cast the scrap shavings into a new block but...). Whereas the 3d printer uses only enough material to make your shape, and it can include hollow parts inside. Some of them can even make fully assembled movable parts (like say a crescent wrench).
As for the material, it would seem that eventually one would come up with a system that pulls from two different spools, which when combined has a greater hardness (similar to mixing epoxy). Not sure what is holding that up though.
Well, that is only if you are going in through the front door. All the jobs I've gotten were through the back door, either personal reference or hungry recruiters. It probably doesn't hurt that I'm in an area with a wide range of opportunities and industries, but you'd be surprised at what you can accomplish by just keeping your ears open, talking to the right person, and saying the right things (you do have to have a certain amount of interpersonal skills, enough to read the other person's body language so you can adjust your message towards what they are looking for).
Now a related question -- is there any evidence (for or against) that life originated more than once on earth? Is the prevailing theory that a single reproducing organism came into being, from which all others were derived, or is it more likely that multiple instances of life happened over the course of time, and they all happen to take the same form? If this is the case, then it lends credence to life existing elsewhere in the universe, with much similarity to what we know. However, if it is unlikely for more than one independent instance of life to be similar, then we should be observing various non-related life types here on earth (i.e., some carbon based, some silicon based, etc).
{Cue all the "Or not run windows!" replies...}
Or, as an alternative, run any infection vector program inside a VM, and access it from your main Windows host via RDP (if running a copy of Windows in the VM) or X (for Linux VMs). With my setup, I have Internet Explorer set to not run any scripts or plugins, and the Firefox icon points to a Cygwin script that launches Firefox on a remote Linux box. Same with IM clients, etc. Went from having to rebuild the Windows box that the kids used on a weekly basis to hardly having to touch it at all.
My first lesson on that topic was when I was around 19, working at a small business that included a print shop. At the time, OCR software was relatively new, so I thought I'd introduce it to the layout department. I sold the idea to management that it could save time scanning in documents instead of having someone type them in, and they loved it. However, one of the ladies that was responsible for entering everything into the typesetter was less than enthusiastic -- she thought this would put her out of a job. Of course, in my youth, I didn't get it. I just casually responded that if that were the case, then maybe she would get a better job somewhere else, or that she could learn other positions within the department. That didn't go over so well.
I think the biggest thing that can come out of this project (especially if more like it come around) is the fact that the hardware is too cheap to run a non-free OS on it. Now sure, to make it into a full computer you have to add a monitor, keyboard, mouse, USB hub, storage (not sure if it comes with flash built in or if it needs a SD card to boot from), and and Internet connection. But most people are going to see the $25 price (assuming something like this ever gets retail) and pick one up. The netbooks almost made this happen (since they were Linux only when they first came out -- until Microsoft cut a deal for Windows XP). Only thing is, would the typical user be using a Debian based (or similar) distro, or would they be using a version of Android?
The only thing I think that would make this more useful is if they added another, say, $30 or so to the price and added a calculator screen / keypad to it (and battery/charging circuitry). Since most high school kids need a $100 graphing calculator, one that transforms into full workstation when plugged into a monitor/keyboard would be great. Of course the schools probably would never allow the use of an "open" calculator on exams (but then again, most high school level exams only need a simple scientific calculator -- or a slide rule).
And what makes you think that the IPv6 off-the-shelf routers won't default to a stateful firewall? In fact, I can't see any vendor not enabling that by default, and advertizing it in big bold letters (not the techno-jargon, but "Buy this box and keep the hackers out"). And the ISPs are likely to include such functionality in their cable/DSL modem, since they could benefit from fewer zombies on the network.
Not only that, you can install CM7 to boot directly off the SD card, so if you wanted to go back to the stock firmware it is just a simple matter of booting without the SD installed. If you go this route, make sure to use a Sandisk SD card though (even the class 2 Sandisk is faster than the class 10 of most other brands for this use case, since the other cards are only fast at very large block transfers).
Not to mention items like the Nook Color (Barnes & Noble). You can install CyanogenMod 7 (a community-maintained Android distribution) on it; you can even run it 100% from an SD card so you won't have to mod the device itself (the Nook tries booting from the SD card first before booting from internal storage). If you do run CyanogenMod from an SD card, make sure to use a Sandisk (class 2 or class 4) card. It is the only card I've tested that has good performance on small read/writes (even beats out all the class 10 cards).
Only thing missing on the Nook Color after running a generic Android port is front/rear facing cameras, GPS, and 3G.
Almost every root kit (Unix, Windows, Linux, etc) starts off with modifying the boot sector. Some may even go as far as modifying the BIOS. Now granted that on Unix type systems, root kits are installed after someone hacks your system. But on Windows, I've run into a fairly large number of root kit viruses that have an altered boot sector (the only way I've been able to clean them / detect them is to boot a Linux CD to run a virus scanner -- AVG has a somewhat useable one out).
The point is to know that what I'm booting up is what I installed. You know that thing that was invented back in the 80's or so, called a "boot sector virus"? Yes, I know it's kind of hard to get one of those installed on a Linux system, but there are a number of server systems that have been "owned". Right now if I suspect that something is fishy with one of the servers I'm tasked with maintaining, it would be nice to know that all the automatic validity checks I put in starting with the initrd image on up are actually trust worthy. And when you've got several hundred systems to maintain, each with their own patch schedule and different customer group, every little bit helps.
I want to leave secure boot enabled, but put me in charge of the keys. That is, I want to load my own public keys into the system (through a secure channel, such as a bios screen or flipping a physical switch, for example).
And you'd have a better time finding the executable in a directory with thousands of files, vs. several directories with hundreds of files? You can't even go by the file date, as that doesn't reflect the date the file was installed (but whatever date the package says it is). What I do (on an RPM based system) is: rpm -ql packagename |grep bin (or grep man), to find what I'm looking for. And, "rpm -q --last" to find the most recently installed package.
If this is for the education market, I think a good follow-up product would be to add a calculator style keypad, cheap LCD display, and turn this into a TI-83 replacement. That way, since all the kids are required to carry a $100 calculator any way, having a calculator that can transform into a full Linux workstation by plugging in a USB keyboard & monitor would be ideal.
To the extent that Lisp is sort of a mathematical / logical construct, it is often said that it was discovered instead of invented / developed. The same way that Einstein discovered E=mc^2. And in this case, I'm referring to the "inside" of lisp, the core ideas. Not the parentheses that you see -- that is merely and abstraction, just like other math symbols.
To get a somewhat better idea, take a look at some of Paul Graham's essays at paulgraham.com. Specifically, "What makes Lisp different", and "The roots of Lisp".