To an extent, true, but the idea behind the site was simply to show that you can build a hard to guess password with stuff that is somewhat memorable to you, but still obfuscated. And the numbers - not everything has to be around your birthyear, but yeah, your point still stands about the potential for brute forcing every possible combination.
Yes, it's a blatant plug, but if you're trying to show users a way to come up with a complex, yet memorable password, http://www.makemeapassword.com/ can walk them through a short algorithm. The passwords are reasonably complex, but follow a few rules that hopefully people can remember. "Ycagwyw,1983,%" is a bit more hard to brute force attack than "password2".:)
Perhaps someone will correct me if I'm wrong here...
I realize this is a very simplistic view, but wasn't a core issue in the MS/Java fracas about 'incompatible' JVMs? If so, why isn't Sun coming down hard on projects like Kaffe and GCJ, if for nothing else than brand infringement?
Many Linux distros I use/try have 'java' on them as an executable, but it's not Sun's Java, and gives a *very* bad impression of what Java is really all about. Like the parent here, I end up having to remove the default 'java' stuff and install Sun's Java on every system I use anyway, because precious little that I need to run in Java runs on the open source versions. Isn't that damage to the Java brand just as bad as anything MS could have done? At the very least, MS actually made improvements which would make the experience of a custom Java good on at least one platform - the kaffee/gcj stuff isn't usable on any platform I've tried it on.
spam, due to all the filtering, I'm starting a collection. You can watch my spam at http://www.watchmyspam.com/ RSS feeds and a mailing list are coming soon - we're still in beta right now...
I'm already getting hammered here - not sure how many people are using gzip in the browser to pull from my web server, but http://fosterburgess.com/kimsal/martiallaw.html.gz would definitely give you a gzipped version, lightening the load on my bandwidth a bit:)
Visa, Mastercard and banks with billions of dollars at stake in this game (consumer spending) would probably not be randomly going in this direction. You don't think making it easier for people to spend money causes people to spend more money?
I probably sound like a paranoid nut, but banks are pushing this 'touchless' card technology because we buy more when we use it. By 'we' I mean consumers. And we buy more when using plastic than when using cash. In this USAToday article - http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/credit/2006-10 -09-credit-cards-usat_x.htm - a great quote sums it up:
Merchants, too, benefit from faster no-signature transactions, credit card companies say, because the stores can serve more customers -- resulting in higher overall sales. And "people will spend more if they come in with a card vs. cash," says Gareth Forsey of MasterCard Worldwide (MA).
"People will spend more".
So, if people already spend more by putting a card in a reader, it stands to reason that they'll spend even more when they don't even have to get the card out of the wallet - just wave it around in front of the reader. The speedpass technology is pretty much doing this already, and McDonald's adopted it a few years back. Obviously it was a pretty big expense for them to put the machines in, refit their networks to accomodate it, etc. Why would they do it unless it meant people were buying more? In fact, Visa's own website (http://merchants.visa.com/solutions/qsr.jsp) states that
A recent Visa study of 100,000 QSR transactions showed that customers using payment cards spent an average of 30 percent more than those who paid with cash. Other industry studies suggest that the average spread may be even higher.
So for everyone saying "when did we get so lazy?" and similar notions, it's not that we're lazy. We simply spend more the less psychologically painful it is to do so. If I lay down 5 $20s to do my grocery shopping, it's more painful than swiping a card, because it's not as real at that moment. When I get view my statement later, yes, it all tallies up, but there's no difference between using plastic for groceries, clothes, the movies, or anything else, even if all the prices are wildly different.
It's got more of a long term effect. If people can't legally virtualize the basic/home versions, QA testing on those versions will suffer. Yes, technically, they may be the same products, but I'm confident there will be some little niggling issues that only crop up under certain configurations on one version or another. If the only legal way people can effectively test their software on the 'basic/home' versions of Vista is to purchase multiple copies for multiple machines, they may not do that, and opt only to ensure testing of their products on the 'ultimate' version(s). Given how little some software seems to have been tested, this may not be noticeable in some markets, but it likely will be in others.
I wrote a bit about this (somewhat negatively) at http://fosterburgess.com/kimsal/?p=139 a few days ago. I've been looking for a solid option for having some dictation automatically transcribed to text files, and have this run under Linux. Basically, anyone looking to do this is just out of luck. It'll be years before there's anything useable for the average person. In my post, I reference another article (http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=3 4072) which also talks about the state of things.
What's frustrating is that there *was* something halfway decent - IBM's ViaVoice - but that's gone. A few of the Linux apps I see out there are layers to run on top of ViaVoice. With that option gone for Linux, those tools are useless. It's like the rug was pulled out from underneath any progress in this arena for the foreseeable future.
I found voxforge a few days ago, and while it seems admirable, it's a small part of the larger problem which I don't see getting any better any time soon.
For most consumer appliances (phones, dvd players, etc) the same task is being performed - moving electricity. It *is* all a hammer's job. In many cases the only thing stopping you from using one adapter in another setting is the size/shape of the connector, not the quality of the power moving through it. That's why universal adapters can work so well. If manufacturers made different types of nails that could only be hammered with specific types of hammers solely/primarily for the purpose of selling more hammers, wouldn't that "grind your gears"?
Doing 'apt-get update', then rebooting the computer, and then not having any network stuff work solely because network settings have been changed to expect (and only look for) IPv6 stuff. This has happened to me in both Mandriva and Kubuntu (except in mandriva it was urpmi instead of apt-get).
This looks like a neat concept, but sort of seems like a hack around the existing security model. Frankly, I'm of two minds. On one hand, I like the idea of being able to tie together multiple hosted javascripts from other parties without having to install and configure them on my server. (plug - I mentioned this idea in an AJAX discussion on http://webdevradio.com/ a couple months ago). On the other hand, 'same-origin' policy exists for a reason (not that I agree with it) and it seems like relying on a hack like this is weak, in that if it becomes popular, it'll just be patched as a 'security hole' in future browser updates.
I am a linux user. I've used Linux on and off since RH 5.2. The day to day useful things I expect a desktop to do have always come up short with GNOME. I met a GNOME developer a few years ago who was showing off their printing work. I asked if he'd ever seen the KDE printing stuff, and I got 'no, we don't look at KDE all that much'. Now, that may have been just him, and wasn't representative of most GNOME developers, but it struck me as a very ignorant thing to do, given that the code is available to inspect and be inspired from.
The GNOME file selection has been promised to be 'better' (more HIG-compliant?) for years now, and it's still fundamentally unusable. Just today (using Kubuntu) I needed to open a file in a GNOME app. To just hit the file, I started typing '/var/www/html', but the '/v' on its own puts all of '/var/' in there (auto-populates) such that when I type the 'r' (from var) I get '/var/run' and the r automatically prepops to whatever the first 'r' directory in 'var' is (/var/run). It's freakin' annoying. And even more annoying, I can't find the app that had that behaviour. Other GNOME apps I'm trying now don't do that. Aha - it's the mozilla file upload dialog. Mozilla is apparently a GNOME app, according to GNOME proponents. To the extent that it doesn't look or function like a GNOME app, I like it.:)
Anyway, I think the usefulness of a distro, while enhanced by KDE over GNOME, still relies in the packaging and defaults used. A couple examples:
1. RedHat/Fedora put a request_body_limit (or something like that) in Apache configs, set to some small number. This was probably intended to help prevent attacks, but is not mirrored by anyone else's distro defaults (that I know of), and causes confusion for people who are used to more standard defaults.
2. Ubuntu (and recently mandriva) seem to be pushing IPv6 usage, even to the point of breaking otherwise perfectly good IPv4 installations (upgrade from mandriva last year just decided to change everything to use only IPv6).
One of the best experiences I had from an 'out of the box' standpoint was Xandros. I installed it last year, and it immediately set up a printer shared from my wife's computer during the installation process. Ubunut 'everything just works!' has never done that for me, nor has mandrake/fedora or others.
What still bothers me is the fact that in Ubuntu's GNOME file selector interface, I cannot simply paste a URL and have the program open the referenced document. It is also incredibly ugly for me...why? In KDE, this is possible but the fonts and general look are very ugly and are already starting to look ancient.
What's different about the 'ubuntu' GNOME file selector? Or are you just meaning that the GNOME file selector on the whole is bad? I'd agree with the second part - GNOME in general just isn't that great (usefulness, visual appeal, etc.) Obviously that's just my own view, and others will no doubt disagree. But given KDE vs GNOME, I've taken KDE every day. I still try GNOME every so often (every 6 months or so, perhaps) and it never feels any better.
Can you "paste a URL and have the program open the referenced document" in GNOME for Fedora, or Mandriva, or Suse?
I've heard some stories at work of people having their lunches/food taken from the communal fridges. Personally, I find it very bizarre. I think I used someone's mustard by mistake once. Some people have their names on condiments, and I only noticed half the name left after I used some, as the name had been partially smudged off already. I felt bad enough about that. But just coming in and taking someone else's food? Really, I just can't imagine ever doing that. Perhaps there's some sort of boundary gene that certain people have which leads them in to paths like IT which can partially account for the groupings this article laid out? But maybe I'm just a picky eater! Honestly, it takes me forever to make a decision at a restaurant, usually where I can see pictures of the food ahead of time. To just somewhat randomly grab something and eat it has no appeal. To spend time rummaging around 10 different bags/boxes to find what I wanted seems even more intrusive and wrong than I could fathom...
Not funny at all. I've posted on this tivo stuff before, and just chose not to get in to it all again. One of the big points of the Tivo technology argued during the case was the 'time warp' function. Tivo's page about the lawsuit - http://investor.tivo.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?Release ID=207787 - mentions the 'time warp' patent: "The Time Warp patent discloses systems and methods for the simultaneous storage and playback of programs, supporting advanced capabilities such as pausing live television, fast-forwarding, rewinding, instant replays, and slow motion."
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6233389.html has a quick summary, and IIRC, DISH's main defense was that they weren't converting to/from MPEG, so the patent wasn't valid. Also IIRC, that didn't prove to be enough to sway the verdict in their favor in April.
Any 'watching' in TV mode is still buffering to allow for pausing/rewinding/etc, so no matter whether you've got dual tuners or not, the buffering is what is violating the 'time warp' patent. My recollection from the trial notes I'd read was that DISH engineers had testified that their original pre-seeing-using-tivo versions of their DVRs wouldn't allow for pausing/rewinding/fastfwding during 'live' TV, only during playback of previously recorded shows.
This was stuff that was all being developed during the same time period by different companies, at least if we are to believe the Tivo bashers. If so, why were they the only company to be able to figure this out? Other companies had DVRs out even before Tivo which did not have this functionality. If it was simply a hardware limitation issue, the other companies surely still could have patented the idea with working prototypes which would simply be too costly to market (at that time) then bring the tech to market later when costs came down. I don't think that was the case. The materials I've read seem to point to Tivo having come up with a technique which was unique/novel/nonobvious *at that time*, and was able to implement it in a commercial play as well. Believing this to be the case (in absence of evidence to the contrary) I say good on them, and I hope echostar pays through the nose for the violations.
Good lord I would have thought this would have been obvious to anyone who's used a DVR for awhile, but apparently it's not...
allow for the recording of one program while watching another program (aka, anything one can normally do with a VCR) on a DVR.
Look at a VCR. It holds one video cassette.
Look at a DVR. It holds one hard drive (usually).
Try recording to a VCR while watching another program on the same tape (or on a different tape). It's physically impossible. Recording to and watching from the same physical media is what makes the Tivo/VCR analogy fall apart.
(aka, anything one can normally do with a VCR)
Why not just argue that we've been able to do this all along with multiple television sets?
If AOL has, what?, around 20 million subscribers, and each was paying on average $20/month, isn't that $400 million dollars a month that will be pumped back in to other areas of the economy? Given that 'only' 5000 are being laid off right now, I suspect that the increase in other spending on 'net related (or entertainment, or whatever) will, on the whole, be able to create jobs for those 5000 somewhere... I realize I'm talking somewhat in the abstract, but *damn*, that's a lot of hard cash that will be freed up on the consumer side.
I spoke about the "regex coach" tool from http://weitz.de/regex-coach/ on my podcast (shameless plug!) http://webdevradio.com/ - it's a great tool for helping visually walk through the regex creation process, especially for complex needs.
The self-checkout lanes need 'done this before' aisles and 'new to tech' aisles. Not sure how best to word it, but that's a far better indicator of how quick you're going to get through vs. how many items someone has. I almost feel cheated when I go through self-service lanes (or ATMs) because I never get to take much time. I swear people in front of me at ATMs must sometimes be trading stocks or applying for a mortgage considering how long it takes them to insert the card and get $20 out.
That's odd - I don't have that problem here, and I think we're using ISA as well. It asks at the beginning, and I think I hit 'save the password'. Perhaps it's silently reauthing for every request, but because the password is saved it's transparent to me? Either way, it's better than not having it at all, from my perspective, but still not 'matured' in the marketplace.
Slashdot Mirror
To an extent, true, but the idea behind the site was simply to show that you can build a hard to guess password with stuff that is somewhat memorable to you, but still obfuscated. And the numbers - not everything has to be around your birthyear, but yeah, your point still stands about the potential for brute forcing every possible combination.
Yes, it's a blatant plug, but if you're trying to show users a way to come up with a complex, yet memorable password, http://www.makemeapassword.com/ can walk them through a short algorithm. The passwords are reasonably complex, but follow a few rules that hopefully people can remember. "Ycagwyw,1983,%" is a bit more hard to brute force attack than "password2". :)
Perhaps someone will correct me if I'm wrong here...
I realize this is a very simplistic view, but wasn't a core issue in the MS/Java fracas about 'incompatible' JVMs? If so, why isn't Sun coming down hard on projects like Kaffe and GCJ, if for nothing else than brand infringement?
Many Linux distros I use/try have 'java' on them as an executable, but it's not Sun's Java, and gives a *very* bad impression of what Java is really all about. Like the parent here, I end up having to remove the default 'java' stuff and install Sun's Java on every system I use anyway, because precious little that I need to run in Java runs on the open source versions. Isn't that damage to the Java brand just as bad as anything MS could have done? At the very least, MS actually made improvements which would make the experience of a custom Java good on at least one platform - the kaffee/gcj stuff isn't usable on any platform I've tried it on.
spam, due to all the filtering, I'm starting a collection. You can watch my spam at http://www.watchmyspam.com/ RSS feeds and a mailing list are coming soon - we're still in beta right now...
I'm already getting hammered here - not sure how many people are using gzip in the browser to pull from my web server, but http://fosterburgess.com/kimsal/martiallaw.html.gz would definitely give you a gzipped version, lightening the load on my bandwidth a bit :)
I didn't mirror all the javascript, png files and such - just the basic HTML.
http://fosterburgess.com/kimsal/martiallaw.html
Visa, Mastercard and banks with billions of dollars at stake in this game (consumer spending) would probably not be randomly going in this direction. You don't think making it easier for people to spend money causes people to spend more money?
I probably sound like a paranoid nut, but banks are pushing this 'touchless' card technology because we buy more when we use it. By 'we' I mean consumers. And we buy more when using plastic than when using cash. In this USAToday article - http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/credit/2006-10 -09-credit-cards-usat_x.htm - a great quote sums it up:
Merchants, too, benefit from faster no-signature transactions, credit card companies say, because the stores can serve more customers -- resulting in higher overall sales. And "people will spend more if they come in with a card vs. cash," says Gareth Forsey of MasterCard Worldwide (MA).
"People will spend more".
So, if people already spend more by putting a card in a reader, it stands to reason that they'll spend even more when they don't even have to get the card out of the wallet - just wave it around in front of the reader. The speedpass technology is pretty much doing this already, and McDonald's adopted it a few years back. Obviously it was a pretty big expense for them to put the machines in, refit their networks to accomodate it, etc. Why would they do it unless it meant people were buying more? In fact, Visa's own website (http://merchants.visa.com/solutions/qsr.jsp) states that
A recent Visa study of 100,000 QSR transactions showed that customers using payment cards spent an average of 30 percent more than those who paid with cash. Other industry studies suggest that the average spread may be even higher.
So for everyone saying "when did we get so lazy?" and similar notions, it's not that we're lazy. We simply spend more the less psychologically painful it is to do so. If I lay down 5 $20s to do my grocery shopping, it's more painful than swiping a card, because it's not as real at that moment. When I get view my statement later, yes, it all tallies up, but there's no difference between using plastic for groceries, clothes, the movies, or anything else, even if all the prices are wildly different.
It's got more of a long term effect. If people can't legally virtualize the basic/home versions, QA testing on those versions will suffer. Yes, technically, they may be the same products, but I'm confident there will be some little niggling issues that only crop up under certain configurations on one version or another. If the only legal way people can effectively test their software on the 'basic/home' versions of Vista is to purchase multiple copies for multiple machines, they may not do that, and opt only to ensure testing of their products on the 'ultimate' version(s). Given how little some software seems to have been tested, this may not be noticeable in some markets, but it likely will be in others.
of trying to kill off ext3!
Thank you thank you - I'll be here the rest of the week...
AFAICT it's a bit out of my price range - cheapest price I can see if $3400.
I wrote a bit about this (somewhat negatively) at http://fosterburgess.com/kimsal/?p=139 a few days ago. I've been looking for a solid option for having some dictation automatically transcribed to text files, and have this run under Linux. Basically, anyone looking to do this is just out of luck. It'll be years before there's anything useable for the average person. In my post, I reference another article (http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=3 4072) which also talks about the state of things.
What's frustrating is that there *was* something halfway decent - IBM's ViaVoice - but that's gone. A few of the Linux apps I see out there are layers to run on top of ViaVoice. With that option gone for Linux, those tools are useless. It's like the rug was pulled out from underneath any progress in this arena for the foreseeable future.
I found voxforge a few days ago, and while it seems admirable, it's a small part of the larger problem which I don't see getting any better any time soon.
Probably not worth replying, but what the heck...
For most consumer appliances (phones, dvd players, etc) the same task is being performed - moving electricity. It *is* all a hammer's job. In many cases the only thing stopping you from using one adapter in another setting is the size/shape of the connector, not the quality of the power moving through it. That's why universal adapters can work so well. If manufacturers made different types of nails that could only be hammered with specific types of hammers solely/primarily for the purpose of selling more hammers, wouldn't that "grind your gears"?
Doing 'apt-get update', then rebooting the computer, and then not having any network stuff work solely because network settings have been changed to expect (and only look for) IPv6 stuff. This has happened to me in both Mandriva and Kubuntu (except in mandriva it was urpmi instead of apt-get).
This looks like a neat concept, but sort of seems like a hack around the existing security model. Frankly, I'm of two minds. On one hand, I like the idea of being able to tie together multiple hosted javascripts from other parties without having to install and configure them on my server. (plug - I mentioned this idea in an AJAX discussion on http://webdevradio.com/ a couple months ago). On the other hand, 'same-origin' policy exists for a reason (not that I agree with it) and it seems like relying on a hack like this is weak, in that if it becomes popular, it'll just be patched as a 'security hole' in future browser updates.
I am a linux user. I've used Linux on and off since RH 5.2. The day to day useful things I expect a desktop to do have always come up short with GNOME. I met a GNOME developer a few years ago who was showing off their printing work. I asked if he'd ever seen the KDE printing stuff, and I got 'no, we don't look at KDE all that much'. Now, that may have been just him, and wasn't representative of most GNOME developers, but it struck me as a very ignorant thing to do, given that the code is available to inspect and be inspired from.
:)
The GNOME file selection has been promised to be 'better' (more HIG-compliant?) for years now, and it's still fundamentally unusable. Just today (using Kubuntu) I needed to open a file in a GNOME app. To just hit the file, I started typing '/var/www/html', but the '/v' on its own puts all of '/var/' in there (auto-populates) such that when I type the 'r' (from var) I get '/var/run' and the r automatically prepops to whatever the first 'r' directory in 'var' is (/var/run). It's freakin' annoying. And even more annoying, I can't find the app that had that behaviour. Other GNOME apps I'm trying now don't do that. Aha - it's the mozilla file upload dialog. Mozilla is apparently a GNOME app, according to GNOME proponents. To the extent that it doesn't look or function like a GNOME app, I like it.
Anyway, I think the usefulness of a distro, while enhanced by KDE over GNOME, still relies in the packaging and defaults used. A couple examples:
1. RedHat/Fedora put a request_body_limit (or something like that) in Apache configs, set to some small number. This was probably intended to help prevent attacks, but is not mirrored by anyone else's distro defaults (that I know of), and causes confusion for people who are used to more standard defaults.
2. Ubuntu (and recently mandriva) seem to be pushing IPv6 usage, even to the point of breaking otherwise perfectly good IPv4 installations (upgrade from mandriva last year just decided to change everything to use only IPv6).
One of the best experiences I had from an 'out of the box' standpoint was Xandros. I installed it last year, and it immediately set up a printer shared from my wife's computer during the installation process. Ubunut 'everything just works!' has never done that for me, nor has mandrake/fedora or others.
What still bothers me is the fact that in Ubuntu's GNOME file selector interface, I cannot simply paste a URL and have the program open the referenced document. It is also incredibly ugly for me...why? In KDE, this is possible but the fonts and general look are very ugly and are already starting to look ancient.
What's different about the 'ubuntu' GNOME file selector? Or are you just meaning that the GNOME file selector on the whole is bad? I'd agree with the second part - GNOME in general just isn't that great (usefulness, visual appeal, etc.) Obviously that's just my own view, and others will no doubt disagree. But given KDE vs GNOME, I've taken KDE every day. I still try GNOME every so often (every 6 months or so, perhaps) and it never feels any better.
Can you "paste a URL and have the program open the referenced document" in GNOME for Fedora, or Mandriva, or Suse?
I've heard some stories at work of people having their lunches/food taken from the communal fridges. Personally, I find it very bizarre. I think I used someone's mustard by mistake once. Some people have their names on condiments, and I only noticed half the name left after I used some, as the name had been partially smudged off already. I felt bad enough about that. But just coming in and taking someone else's food? Really, I just can't imagine ever doing that. Perhaps there's some sort of boundary gene that certain people have which leads them in to paths like IT which can partially account for the groupings this article laid out? But maybe I'm just a picky eater! Honestly, it takes me forever to make a decision at a restaurant, usually where I can see pictures of the food ahead of time. To just somewhat randomly grab something and eat it has no appeal. To spend time rummaging around 10 different bags/boxes to find what I wanted seems even more intrusive and wrong than I could fathom...
Not funny at all. I've posted on this tivo stuff before, and just chose not to get in to it all again. One of the big points of the Tivo technology argued during the case was the 'time warp' function. Tivo's page about the lawsuit - http://investor.tivo.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?Release ID=207787 - mentions the 'time warp' patent: "The Time Warp patent discloses systems and methods for the simultaneous storage and playback of programs, supporting advanced capabilities such as pausing live television, fast-forwarding, rewinding, instant replays, and slow motion."
T O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fs rchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6233389.PN.&OS=PN/62333 89&RS=PN/6233389
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6233389.html has a quick summary, and IIRC, DISH's main defense was that they weren't converting to/from MPEG, so the patent wasn't valid. Also IIRC, that didn't prove to be enough to sway the verdict in their favor in April.
Any 'watching' in TV mode is still buffering to allow for pausing/rewinding/etc, so no matter whether you've got dual tuners or not, the buffering is what is violating the 'time warp' patent. My recollection from the trial notes I'd read was that DISH engineers had testified that their original pre-seeing-using-tivo versions of their DVRs wouldn't allow for pausing/rewinding/fastfwding during 'live' TV, only during playback of previously recorded shows.
This was stuff that was all being developed during the same time period by different companies, at least if we are to believe the Tivo bashers. If so, why were they the only company to be able to figure this out? Other companies had DVRs out even before Tivo which did not have this functionality. If it was simply a hardware limitation issue, the other companies surely still could have patented the idea with working prototypes which would simply be too costly to market (at that time) then bring the tech to market later when costs came down. I don't think that was the case. The materials I've read seem to point to Tivo having come up with a technique which was unique/novel/nonobvious *at that time*, and was able to implement it in a commercial play as well. Believing this to be the case (in absence of evidence to the contrary) I say good on them, and I hope echostar pays through the nose for the violations.
Link to the full patent: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P
Good lord I would have thought this would have been obvious to anyone who's used a DVR for awhile, but apparently it's not...
allow for the recording of one program while watching another program (aka, anything one can normally do with a VCR) on a DVR.
Look at a VCR. It holds one video cassette.
Look at a DVR. It holds one hard drive (usually).
Try recording to a VCR while watching another program on the same tape (or on a different tape). It's physically impossible. Recording to and watching from the same physical media is what makes the Tivo/VCR analogy fall apart.
(aka, anything one can normally do with a VCR)
Why not just argue that we've been able to do this all along with multiple television sets?
If AOL has, what?, around 20 million subscribers, and each was paying on average $20/month, isn't that $400 million dollars a month that will be pumped back in to other areas of the economy? Given that 'only' 5000 are being laid off right now, I suspect that the increase in other spending on 'net related (or entertainment, or whatever) will, on the whole, be able to create jobs for those 5000 somewhere... I realize I'm talking somewhat in the abstract, but *damn*, that's a lot of hard cash that will be freed up on the consumer side.
I spoke about the "regex coach" tool from http://weitz.de/regex-coach/ on my podcast (shameless plug!) http://webdevradio.com/ - it's a great tool for helping visually walk through the regex creation process, especially for complex needs.
The self-checkout lanes need 'done this before' aisles and 'new to tech' aisles. Not sure how best to word it, but that's a far better indicator of how quick you're going to get through vs. how many items someone has. I almost feel cheated when I go through self-service lanes (or ATMs) because I never get to take much time. I swear people in front of me at ATMs must sometimes be trading stocks or applying for a mortgage considering how long it takes them to insert the card and get $20 out.
That's odd - I don't have that problem here, and I think we're using ISA as well. It asks at the beginning, and I think I hit 'save the password'. Perhaps it's silently reauthing for every request, but because the password is saved it's transparent to me? Either way, it's better than not having it at all, from my perspective, but still not 'matured' in the marketplace.