Use your oldest, least reliable, and soon-to-be-obsolete equipment to back up your critical data.
Backup up your data to tape or DVD, and save redundant snapshots of recent backups to old hard drives when one becomes available. Sometimes the drive itself becomes its own "final backup" after you copy the data to the new one and do its initial backup.
Then when you want to pull back a seven year old email message or something, you try the drive first. If the drive's still good, you just saved yourself half an hour fiddling with slow offline storage. If the drive's bad, then you're no worse off than if you didn't make the snapshot at all.
Yah, I was going to say extra backups, but you beat me to it. They're much quicker to pull data back from than tape or DVD, and if they fail you haven't lost anything but the couple of minutes you spend slotting it in to an external drive enclosure.
Unfortunately, anything that's Word-compatible is forced to be a pile of manure as well because they have to be compatible with Microsoft's appalling excuse for a file format and document structure.
So there's no non-fragrant alternatives to Word currently on the market, except maybe editing raw HTML in Emacs/vi/Wordstar/paper-tape-paste-and-scissors...
I can't tell you who "them" is, this was back before I left $VBC, three jobs ago. But even the "best" (least worst?) hardware encryption was terribly fragile.
My experience with hardware encrypted media makes me doubt anything good will come of this technology.
We had a large number of encrypted thumb drives, at one point, and all of them died and needed to be reformatted in short order... they were simply more vulnerable to data loss when (for example) you pulled them "too soon". One vendor wouldn't even allow us to reformat them without sending them a signed letter from the CEO (on corporate letterhead) asking for the formatting utility, and then when we provided it we got no further response from them.
We turfed all the "secure" thumb drives no matter what manufacturer and went back to application layer encryption.
There are many kinds of openness, and many degrees of openness.
I'm not talking about "Open Source", but about "Open Systems".
UNIX was an open system over a decade before there was an open source implementation of it.
The only openness that matters, to the end user, is the openness that is exposed to the end user. A system where the average end user has no access to the API is not open in any meaningful sense.
The open source kernels in the iPhone and the G1 are irrelevant to the end user.
What sort of whacked-out idea of "open" do you have?
Oh, I really hate the irony inherent in the fact that, for the end user, the most open handhelds are all built on proprietary bases.
None of them are completely open, but at least Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Symbian have stable, documented, and unlocked APIs.
Which means that you can take an open source program, no matter who it's written by, modify it, compile it, install it on your phone, and run it... without having to jump through hoops with developer programs, buying a second unlocked phone, or any other bullshit inherent in Tivoised hardware.
None of them are real open systems, there's no hope of having independent third-party implementations of WinMo or PalmOS competing with the original code base, but they're closer than what Apple and Google have produced.
If you are a developer, it is as simple as changing phone covers.
I've flashed my iPaq to Linux and back to Pocket PC, and that was a relatively painless process... for a reflash. I doubt the Android is any easier. And that's not something that's useful to me, as a phone user. Here I am, sitting in an airport terminal, and I want to bring up a timetable app. Pull out my G1... hmmm, it's in developer mode. Ten minutes later, after I've reflashed my phone so I can run the app I want, I see I've only got five minutes to get to my gate.
No, you wouldn't do that. You'd just use the phone in one mode, all the time, or you'd carry two phones.
It was bad enough having to reboot my desktop between free UNIX and Wintendo mode that I got a second computer. I can't imagine doing that with a phone.
My handheld is running an OS that's actually *open*, not a Tivoised UNIX like the iPhone or Android.
Google sells a completely unlocked version of the phone. You can download Android's source, change it, compile and run.
If you don't mind reflashing your phone every time you switch from wanting to run the apps youre working on and apps from the app store. That's more hassles than the iPhone developer kit, which only requires you to sign your app with your key before you can install it on your phone.
The slightly greater potential in the Android phone is not worth it. Neither the iPhone nor the Android phone are open in any useful sense.
If you want an open phone, get an open phone. Microsoft, Palm, Nokia, and OpenMoko will be happy to sell you one.
Android might be open-source, but Android phones using Google's app store are completely locked and Tivoised, developers can't even download their own apps from the store using their unlocked phones. The fact that Android is built on top of Linux is as irrelevant as the fact that the iPhone kernel uses Mach and BSD.
Re:The real problem...
on
Why TV Lost
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· Score: 1
The world has been going downhill a long time, if greek/latin knowledge is any indicator.
Back out the huge mistake introduced in 1997 with Active Desktop... the ability of the HTML control to grant untrusted code full local user privileges. Building layers of soft internal sandboxes between local user processes is fine and dandy, but it won't provide a fraction of the benefit of reducing the surface area to initial infection.
Remove the ability of the HTML control to grant local user access. Make ANY privilege escalation from a hard sandbox (via ActiveX,.NET, or active scripting, or even passing off a URL or downloaded object to a helper application) require an explicit operation (either ahead of time, as in KHTML's 'IO Slaves', or through a callback) from the process that launched that instance of the HTML control.
Then, provide a wrapper that implements the old API, but require the user to explicitly launch this legacy mode and run any application that uses the legacy API inside a hard sandbox (either a virtual machine, or if the Windows APIs can be sufficiently firewalled something like a FreeBSD Jail) that provides no long-term storage visible outside that sandbox.
Nothing less is going to solve Microsoft's security nightmare.
If it doesn't remove the HTML control with its inherently insecure and unfixable API then it doesn't matter what UI changes it makes.
The anti-competitive arguments about IE are important, no doubt, but the security nightmare that Microsoft created in 1997 with "Active Desktop" is what the government should be looking at. Criminal negligence is not to strong a term for it.
Now that I think of it, if you're leeching, then you're not "making available", so according to the RIAA's legal position you're not actually violating copyright. Or at least you're not doing anything they can take you to court over.
Wait a second... "Any use of these timetables in a manner which breaches copyright by a third party can only occur through the grant of a suitable licence by RailCorp."
What that's saying is that you're only violating their copyright if you get a license to do so.
Whoever wrote that letter needs to re-take Remedial Passive Voice.
whether or not evolution brings it about is a somewhat pointless question if you seek some kind of deeper knowledge into the nature of life.
The people generally expressing surprised concern over the question of whether evolution leads to speciation don't strike me as being terribly interested in any kind of "deeper knowledge", but are rather attempting to muddy the waters in favor of their personal religious beliefs.
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Use your oldest, least reliable, and soon-to-be-obsolete equipment to back up your critical data.
Backup up your data to tape or DVD, and save redundant snapshots of recent backups to old hard drives when one becomes available. Sometimes the drive itself becomes its own "final backup" after you copy the data to the new one and do its initial backup.
Then when you want to pull back a seven year old email message or something, you try the drive first. If the drive's still good, you just saved yourself half an hour fiddling with slow offline storage. If the drive's bad, then you're no worse off than if you didn't make the snapshot at all.
Yah, I was going to say extra backups, but you beat me to it. They're much quicker to pull data back from than tape or DVD, and if they fail you haven't lost anything but the couple of minutes you spend slotting it in to an external drive enclosure.
Excel, maybe.
Word is a pile of manure.
Unfortunately, anything that's Word-compatible is forced to be a pile of manure as well because they have to be compatible with Microsoft's appalling excuse for a file format and document structure.
So there's no non-fragrant alternatives to Word currently on the market, except maybe editing raw HTML in Emacs/vi/Wordstar/paper-tape-paste-and-scissors...
I can't tell you who "them" is, this was back before I left $VBC, three jobs ago. But even the "best" (least worst?) hardware encryption was terribly fragile.
My experience with hardware encrypted media makes me doubt anything good will come of this technology.
We had a large number of encrypted thumb drives, at one point, and all of them died and needed to be reformatted in short order... they were simply more vulnerable to data loss when (for example) you pulled them "too soon". One vendor wouldn't even allow us to reformat them without sending them a signed letter from the CEO (on corporate letterhead) asking for the formatting utility, and then when we provided it we got no further response from them.
We turfed all the "secure" thumb drives no matter what manufacturer and went back to application layer encryption.
So what is T-Mobile locking you out of?
There are many kinds of openness, and many degrees of openness.
I'm not talking about "Open Source", but about "Open Systems".
UNIX was an open system over a decade before there was an open source implementation of it.
The only openness that matters, to the end user, is the openness that is exposed to the end user. A system where the average end user has no access to the API is not open in any meaningful sense.
The open source kernels in the iPhone and the G1 are irrelevant to the end user.
What sort of whacked-out idea of "open" do you have?
Oh, I really hate the irony inherent in the fact that, for the end user, the most open handhelds are all built on proprietary bases.
None of them are completely open, but at least Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Symbian have stable, documented, and unlocked APIs.
Which means that you can take an open source program, no matter who it's written by, modify it, compile it, install it on your phone, and run it... without having to jump through hoops with developer programs, buying a second unlocked phone, or any other bullshit inherent in Tivoised hardware.
None of them are real open systems, there's no hope of having independent third-party implementations of WinMo or PalmOS competing with the original code base, but they're closer than what Apple and Google have produced.
I didn't buy EITHER phone, because the perception of openness is an illusion in both cases.
I've been modded down by Apple fans for pointing out that the OS X base of the iPhone is irrelevant.
I'm sure I'll be modded down by Google fans for pointing out the Android has the same problem.
I'm not immune to irony, but I'm really not happy that Microsoft is shipping a more open phone than anything based on UNIX.
If you are a developer, it is as simple as changing phone covers.
I've flashed my iPaq to Linux and back to Pocket PC, and that was a relatively painless process... for a reflash. I doubt the Android is any easier. And that's not something that's useful to me, as a phone user. Here I am, sitting in an airport terminal, and I want to bring up a timetable app. Pull out my G1... hmmm, it's in developer mode. Ten minutes later, after I've reflashed my phone so I can run the app I want, I see I've only got five minutes to get to my gate.
No, you wouldn't do that. You'd just use the phone in one mode, all the time, or you'd carry two phones.
It was bad enough having to reboot my desktop between free UNIX and Wintendo mode that I got a second computer. I can't imagine doing that with a phone.
My handheld is running an OS that's actually *open*, not a Tivoised UNIX like the iPhone or Android.
Google sells a completely unlocked version of the phone. You can download Android's source, change it, compile and run.
If you don't mind reflashing your phone every time you switch from wanting to run the apps youre working on and apps from the app store. That's more hassles than the iPhone developer kit, which only requires you to sign your app with your key before you can install it on your phone.
The slightly greater potential in the Android phone is not worth it. Neither the iPhone nor the Android phone are open in any useful sense.
If you want an open phone, get an open phone. Microsoft, Palm, Nokia, and OpenMoko will be happy to sell you one.
Android's more open nature gives it an advantage there
If you want an open cellphone, get a traditional PalmOS device, a Windows Mobile device, or a Symbian device.
The Android phones, the iPhone, and as far as I can tell the Palm Pre, are all - in every way that matters to the end user - closed devices.
Android might be open-source, but Android phones using Google's app store are completely locked and Tivoised, developers can't even download their own apps from the store using their unlocked phones. The fact that Android is built on top of Linux is as irrelevant as the fact that the iPhone kernel uses Mach and BSD.
The world has been going downhill a long time, if greek/latin knowledge is any indicator.
Since 476AD, I think you'll find.
...and just assuming the summary isn't stupid
That's crazy talk!
"Television? The word is half Greek and half Latin. No good will come of this device." - Charles Prestwich Scott, 1936.
Back out the huge mistake introduced in 1997 with Active Desktop... the ability of the HTML control to grant untrusted code full local user privileges. Building layers of soft internal sandboxes between local user processes is fine and dandy, but it won't provide a fraction of the benefit of reducing the surface area to initial infection.
Remove the ability of the HTML control to grant local user access. Make ANY privilege escalation from a hard sandbox (via ActiveX, .NET, or active scripting, or even passing off a URL or downloaded object to a helper application) require an explicit operation (either ahead of time, as in KHTML's 'IO Slaves', or through a callback) from the process that launched that instance of the HTML control.
Then, provide a wrapper that implements the old API, but require the user to explicitly launch this legacy mode and run any application that uses the legacy API inside a hard sandbox (either a virtual machine, or if the Windows APIs can be sufficiently firewalled something like a FreeBSD Jail) that provides no long-term storage visible outside that sandbox.
Nothing less is going to solve Microsoft's security nightmare.
Which city do you live in?
If it doesn't remove the HTML control with its inherently insecure and unfixable API then it doesn't matter what UI changes it makes.
The anti-competitive arguments about IE are important, no doubt, but the security nightmare that Microsoft created in 1997 with "Active Desktop" is what the government should be looking at. Criminal negligence is not to strong a term for it.
Oh, damn, I hope they don't kill the DRM-free side of the store.
Now that I think of it, if you're leeching, then you're not "making available", so according to the RIAA's legal position you're not actually violating copyright. Or at least you're not doing anything they can take you to court over.
Does that make sense?
What am I missing?
Wait a second... "Any use of these timetables in a manner which breaches copyright by a third party can only occur through the grant of a suitable licence by RailCorp."
What that's saying is that you're only violating their copyright if you get a license to do so.
Whoever wrote that letter needs to re-take Remedial Passive Voice.
Just because they've got pi on their faces over goofy resolutions, that's no reason to deny that Pluto is a planet.
You Pluto-haters will get yours.
I get the point you're making.
I'm not convinced that's the point he was making.
whether or not evolution brings it about is a somewhat pointless question if you seek some kind of deeper knowledge into the nature of life.
The people generally expressing surprised concern over the question of whether evolution leads to speciation don't strike me as being terribly interested in any kind of "deeper knowledge", but are rather attempting to muddy the waters in favor of their personal religious beliefs.