Vonage (one of many VOIP providers) runs at between 30-90kbps depending on what call quality you want. That means using your phone 24/7 at the highest quality would only use 27GB per month. Seeing as you probably only talk about an hour/day at the most (remember, this is a HOME phone), that's closer to 1GB/month. Hardly worth worrying about...
Flash videos run fine at 720p (my screen is only 768) on my laptop, and it's a low-powered (for battery life reasons) thinkpad with integrated graphics. As for the "good weekend". When my sister got her netbook (netbooks have long been known as the least compatible machines), it *litterally* took less time to fully install ubuntu, WITH full home-folder encryption, than it did to drive to the store and buy it. After 2 years of using it, the only problem she's had with it (barring physical damage she caused by dropping it) was some recent hdd corruption no doubt caused by inadvertant hard-shutdowns due to the battery being worn out and that only took me a half hour to fix. As for video cards going black from an update, I haven't seen any reports of that since the 9.10 days, and I spend a LOT of time in the #ubuntu channel helping people out.
Slightly off-topic, but guess what the #1 most common support issue has been in the #ubuntu irc channel for the last 2 weeks? Minecraft shitting the bed because Oracle is fucking with Java.
Unless you are trying to get a piece of unsupported hardware working, a normal user should never have to touch the command line and unless you've been messing around in the command line, you should never have to be touching restricted files (they are restricted for a REASON). It's actually fairly simple, unless it's in/home/your_username, or a temporary file in/tmp, a regular user doesn't need to touch it. It's not like windows where software developers like saving the damn user settings in Program Files and there being THREE fucking "User Data" folders in three different directories of each user's account.
Just buy a $20 router and tell them to configure THAT for the internet connection. I haven't heard of an ISP in 10 years that didn't support using a router (most even recommend it just for the firewall).
system76, zareason, dell (in some countries) along with MANY other retailers offer linux pre-installed and fully tested hardware in many form factors. I know that the system76 guys even hang out in the ubuntu forums to help customers who have questions or problems in addition to maning their own ticket system.
- Change the GUI every year based on superficial fashion trends
Canonical has only performed one major UI overhaul in 5 years. During that same time, Microsoft did it twice.
- Rebuild the whole OS from bleeding-edge source every six months
If you don't want bleeding edge, use the 5-year support LTS versions. Nobody is forcing you to run the newest release, even the 6-month ones are fully supported for a year and a half.
Don't forget RedHat and Ubuntu which will offer you annual subscriptions for premium support on their OS's for everything from servers to desktop clients.
"Microsoft supports each version of Windows for ten years
Bullshit. Windows XP is about the only version they ever supported for that long. And that's only because they were too damn lazy to release anything after it.
I wouldn't be surprised if Boeing themselves didn't invest a bunch of money in the crash. Car companies test-crash automobiles on a regular basis, Boeing probably got some VERY valuable information that can help them make planes safer in the future.
The olympics are great, they get all the tourists out of the rest of the world's vacation hot-spots so you don't have to wait in line or worry about hotels being booked up!
Don't forget cars. We pay about 25% more for new cars in Canada than we would if we drove 20 minutes south and bought the EXACT SAME car. I'm seeing people shipping regular cars in from EUROPE because it's cheaper than buying them here!
Ok, forget the length of the words and instead focus on the NUMBER of words you can chose from. For instance, I have a 2000 entry wordlist (2000 words). That's roughly 11 bits of entropy (2^11 = 2048). If you are using 100% random numbers, letters (upper & lower) and say 20 symbols, that's 82 character or just over 6 bits of entropy. This means that for every 2 random characters YOU use, I use 1 random word.
ex: 10 characters = 82^10 = 1.37 X 10^19 possible passwords
ex: 6 random words (ALL lowercase) = 2000^6 = 6.4 X 10 ^ 19 possible passphrases
Now YOU tell me what's easier to remeber: 6 words or 10 random characters with 82 possibilities each!
If your 10 characters are loosely based on a word (ex: like V3get@bleBr0th), then your entropy goes WAY down since you no longer have to use a random-character attack.
Sure, but ask your average consumer what they are and you'll just get a funny look. Contrast that reaction to the fact that iPhone and Android are now household names in most 1st world countries and you start to see why developing software for them is pointless.
If the politician is looking for a very simple, fairly effective and no-maintenace method of filtering out lots of mass-mailing messages, just have them "sort by subject". Most automated "click this button to send an e-mail to your representative" systems use the same subject line for every e-mail. Sorting by subject makes these VERY easy to deal with. Most e-mail programs (outlook, thunderbird, etc) also have filters that will *automatically* move all messages containing "Bill Foo" to a separate folder, making the personal e-mails MUCH easier to find.
Slashdot Mirror
Vonage (one of many VOIP providers) runs at between 30-90kbps depending on what call quality you want. That means using your phone 24/7 at the highest quality would only use 27GB per month. Seeing as you probably only talk about an hour/day at the most (remember, this is a HOME phone), that's closer to 1GB/month. Hardly worth worrying about...
obligatory
Submit them to WHOM?
Flash videos run fine at 720p (my screen is only 768) on my laptop, and it's a low-powered (for battery life reasons) thinkpad with integrated graphics. As for the "good weekend". When my sister got her netbook (netbooks have long been known as the least compatible machines), it *litterally* took less time to fully install ubuntu, WITH full home-folder encryption, than it did to drive to the store and buy it. After 2 years of using it, the only problem she's had with it (barring physical damage she caused by dropping it) was some recent hdd corruption no doubt caused by inadvertant hard-shutdowns due to the battery being worn out and that only took me a half hour to fix. As for video cards going black from an update, I haven't seen any reports of that since the 9.10 days, and I spend a LOT of time in the #ubuntu channel helping people out.
Slightly off-topic, but guess what the #1 most common support issue has been in the #ubuntu irc channel for the last 2 weeks? Minecraft shitting the bed because Oracle is fucking with Java.
Unless you are trying to get a piece of unsupported hardware working, a normal user should never have to touch the command line and unless you've been messing around in the command line, you should never have to be touching restricted files (they are restricted for a REASON). It's actually fairly simple, unless it's in /home/your_username, or a temporary file in /tmp, a regular user doesn't need to touch it. It's not like windows where software developers like saving the damn user settings in Program Files and there being THREE fucking "User Data" folders in three different directories of each user's account.
Just buy a $20 router and tell them to configure THAT for the internet connection. I haven't heard of an ISP in 10 years that didn't support using a router (most even recommend it just for the firewall).
system76, zareason, dell (in some countries) along with MANY other retailers offer linux pre-installed and fully tested hardware in many form factors. I know that the system76 guys even hang out in the ubuntu forums to help customers who have questions or problems in addition to maning their own ticket system.
- Change the GUI every year based on superficial fashion trends
Canonical has only performed one major UI overhaul in 5 years. During that same time, Microsoft did it twice.
- Rebuild the whole OS from bleeding-edge source every six months
If you don't want bleeding edge, use the 5-year support LTS versions. Nobody is forcing you to run the newest release, even the 6-month ones are fully supported for a year and a half.
Don't forget RedHat and Ubuntu which will offer you annual subscriptions for premium support on their OS's for everything from servers to desktop clients.
"Microsoft supports each version of Windows for ten years
Bullshit. Windows XP is about the only version they ever supported for that long. And that's only because they were too damn lazy to release anything after it.
Don't forget to bring them out for halloween as well!
I wouldn't be surprised if Boeing themselves didn't invest a bunch of money in the crash. Car companies test-crash automobiles on a regular basis, Boeing probably got some VERY valuable information that can help them make planes safer in the future.
The olympics are great, they get all the tourists out of the rest of the world's vacation hot-spots so you don't have to wait in line or worry about hotels being booked up!
Or just USE the missiles the Olympics have so graciously provided at such easily accessed locations in close proximity to your target!
Can we have a -1 basic grammar option for moderators?
Don't forget cars. We pay about 25% more for new cars in Canada than we would if we drove 20 minutes south and bought the EXACT SAME car. I'm seeing people shipping regular cars in from EUROPE because it's cheaper than buying them here!
You obviously have no idea how a harddrive works...
Well, so much for ever getting that Linux version :(
Ok, forget the length of the words and instead focus on the NUMBER of words you can chose from. For instance, I have a 2000 entry wordlist (2000 words). That's roughly 11 bits of entropy (2^11 = 2048). If you are using 100% random numbers, letters (upper & lower) and say 20 symbols, that's 82 character or just over 6 bits of entropy. This means that for every 2 random characters YOU use, I use 1 random word.
ex: 10 characters = 82^10 = 1.37 X 10^19 possible passwords
ex: 6 random words (ALL lowercase) = 2000^6 = 6.4 X 10 ^ 19 possible passphrases
Now YOU tell me what's easier to remeber: 6 words or 10 random characters with 82 possibilities each!
If your 10 characters are loosely based on a word (ex: like V3get@bleBr0th), then your entropy goes WAY down since you no longer have to use a random-character attack.
Once you have physical acccess, it's game over.
Sure, but ask your average consumer what they are and you'll just get a funny look. Contrast that reaction to the fact that iPhone and Android are now household names in most 1st world countries and you start to see why developing software for them is pointless.
Man, to be a fly on the wall when HR told him to fire himself via e-mail.
If the politician is looking for a very simple, fairly effective and no-maintenace method of filtering out lots of mass-mailing messages, just have them "sort by subject". Most automated "click this button to send an e-mail to your representative" systems use the same subject line for every e-mail. Sorting by subject makes these VERY easy to deal with. Most e-mail programs (outlook, thunderbird, etc) also have filters that will *automatically* move all messages containing "Bill Foo" to a separate folder, making the personal e-mails MUCH easier to find.
I believe they call it a "drive by".
I believe there were still netbooks selling with it at the beginning of last year.