China is a communist country, a country in which the regime is NOT elected.
They have their "Great Firewall" in place in order to protect their totalitarian regime.
Why in the world the UK, with a supposedly "ELECTED" and "DEMOCRATIC" government, want to follow China in erecting their "Great Firewall" ??
A LOT of countries have "great firewalls". The only one that everyone seems to know about is China, but there are many, many, many more. And many of them are "elected" and "democratic" as well.
A lot of times it's to keep stuff like pornography and such out of the country - they often have film censor boards and such as well.
Of course, many are developing world, but many are just quiet on the whole thing and don't make a big fuss about it (e.g., Singapore).
The political system in play and firewall/censorship of the internet are independent of each other.
Or... don't learn about technology. If you're interested in it, you'll learn anyways.
Instead, learn how to improve yourself as a person. Do you know how to speak to customers? Or do you cordon yourself off?
"Soft skills" are extremely important, probably more so than technical skills. Technical skills can be learned. But soft skills require training and practice.
Learn skills like sales and marketing - learn what they do, and how they do it, and how you can best ensure that your future doesn't rely on them making over-the-top promises.
Or learn how to communicate with other people. Being able to talk technical is good when dealing with your peers, but how do you talk to the salespeople? Is it likely they misunderstand you?
Learn about management. Perhaps learn project management and how to deal with conflicting priorities, dealing with what management wants and what they don't need.
Learn about business - how your company operates, what all the numbers mean. Take up accounting and learn why things are done in certain ways.
Technical skills are easy. Soft skills will help you become a more valuable employee. You may be able to write the next OS kernel blindfolded, but if everyone goes to the new guy because he's easy to approach and gives reasonable answers, well, your days are limited. But show you know your stuff, and show that you empathize with others, and suddenly you're the invaluable person.
We run into it all the time - management who fail to understand why we need something or have to do stuff this way because of security concerns. Being able to speak "their language" can make it easier for you to explain your concerns and head off the next security breach.
Except said bad exit node already compromises HTTPS by doing a MITM attack. because it literally IS a MITM. Just like an exit node can compromise SSH as well.
Basically the exit nodes see that you're trying to establish an HTTPS connection and return you a self-signed cert to encrypt data with that they decrypt, and the re-encrypt with the real key to the site.
Your browser will detect the fault since the certificate doesn't have a path to a known root CA. The question is, will the user know, care or not bother?
Basically the paper isn't saying anything new - exit nodes are known to have the ability to spy on Tor users (and with enough spying, be able to identify them). It's just that some nodes are a bit more sophisticated and perform MITM attacks on otherwise-encrypted connections.
And heck, didn't the NSA run something like the largest crowd of exit nodes because of this?
not necessarily - whilst its true the cheapass "BIOS" style RAID controllers are pretty useless, the expensive RAID cards are very good. As good as having a dedicated CPU to perform the xor calculations that your main CPU would otherwise do if using mdadm or similar, with a battery backing to ensure writes occur on power failure.
Until the card dies. Then it's a mad scramble to try to figure out how to get the data off the disk. Especially since some RAID cards are so fussy that if the firmware used on the replacement card doesn't match that on the array, it refuses to work.
If it was VFS or md, no big deal. You stick the drives in another PC (USB adapters if necessary), set up the array again, and access your data.
Of course, RAID cards are for performance - though a modern PC is more than adequate enough for home and small business (i.e., GigE sized) tasks. And quite possibly, if you need SSDs, things get more interesting since modern SSDs can be faster than said RAID cards.
This'll work great right up to the point where the manufacturer has to face a wrongful death suit because a car refused to use traction control because it couldn't authenticate with the customer options server for whatever reason.
Except I think traction control is now a mandatory feature in new cars. There may be an option to disable it, but by default the car has to have traction control and by default it's on.
95, XP, Vista, and Windows 8 offered significant change to the UI, and people have a hard time with change. XP success was it longevity and Microsoft's failure to make a new OS in a decade.
95 was actually decent compared to what options were available.
Vista is "bad" purely because it broke a LOT of things thanks to UAC - so many programs required admin incidentally that getting far without seeing the dialog was quite difficult. Of course, a couple of years meant that everyone fixed their sh*tty crap and ends up much better. (most developers are crap and most programs suffer from the "get it done" mentality.).
XP's longevity was due to the netbook suddenly forcing Microsoft to keep it around because Vista demanded too much system resources. So Windows ULCPC (Ultra Low Cost PC) edition was created - basically Windows XP. It's also why XP support ends this year - otherwise it would've ended years ago.
I'm wondering WFT the Feds were called in for??? I mean..is filming a movie in a theater now a fucking federal crime?!?! I thought copyright infringement was more of a civil crime than a criminal one, and when did it become a federal one?
Nope. Copyright infringement is a federal offence and a felony.
Why do you think the RIAA sues people? They simply launch a federal case, get the judge to open discovery, and drop the suit once the information is there because the criminal courts have a tougher standard. They then use those names to launch civil lawsuits.
And filming in theatres counts. Or do you somehow fail to see those scary "FBI" warnings they show before every movie and home release?
And then there were cases years ago where someone used a camera to capture a snippet of a movie and was hauled out.
In the end, it looks like an interesting way to get around glasshole pervasive surveillance...
But how selective are Nintendo when it comes to deciding whether you can have a devkit and play in their ecosystem or not?
If you want to play in the Apple ecosystem all you need is a Mac, an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and $99 and you can develop for and publish on iOS. Android is even easier (you can do it on a PC, there is a bigger range of device options and IIRC you dont need to pay any costs to publish on Google Play)
They're far more selective.
Apple's is just an entrance fee. You buy the devkit (Mac) and you can code away. If you want to test on devices and whatnot, you need $99, which also gives you publishing controls.
Android is easier, though their store really stinks (can someone explain to me how searching for an app name can somehow NOT return the app as the top hit, but dozens of clones? I thought Google was king of search...).
PC is easier still, as long as you're willing to do the marketing/sales/payment thing yourself. (It's HARD to get into Steam. Of course, once you're in, things are golden, but getting in is quite difficult).
Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony are much harder comparatively. They're all striving for the "Apple" form for development, but not quite there yet. Nintendo's opened up a bit, but Microsoft's seems to be most "open" with ID@Xbox and lots of examples of how one can enable devkit functionality on a retail Xbone. (Alas, they got rid of XNA, which was probably the easiest way to get in...). Sony? Supposedly they've got a system for it. probably being freer with the devkits, I guess, while ID@Xbox is more they give you 2 devkits, you have to buy retail units to have more, sort of thing.
I too use multiple accounts, but not to preserve my privacy, simply my sanity. Gmail/Hotmail/Yandex are all smart enough to figure out that its all the same person. (Something about the fact that they come from the same IP addresses, I suppose)...
Actually, no. IP addresses (at least IPv4 ones) are completely useless for detecting this because there are many legitimate reasons why one IP address may log into multiple acconts simultaneously.
The most common reason? Multiple people!
With families on facebook, Hotmail, yahoo, whatever, thanks to NAT, all their traffic comes from 1 IP address, whether it's Susie checking facebook on her smartphone, John checking his on his tablet, Mom on the PC, and Dad on the other PC.
There you go - 4 legitimate logins for 4 different people on 1 IP address.
Fear not, however, for IPv6 will save the day, so you can differentiate between all their traffic, and also tell if one PC is used by multiple people.
(Or another reason why NAT for IPv6 may not be such a bad idea - it's not like the average family will have direct connectivity anyways thanks to firewalls. At best, they will appear to have it, but it won't work).
That's the position AMD has to play. Of course, your myopic view only sees an engineering problem to solve. You have absolutely no comprehension of the business considerations behind the move... which is probably why you insist they're missing the boat. They are trying to claw their way into the mid-range market and undercut Intel. This is one of the select few ways they're going to do it. Unfortunately, the cost of commodity components to get this Hindenburg off the ground isn't going down -- AMD's position is shrinking and if they don't leverage everything now, they're going to find themselves in an untenable market position and will simply fold, leaving Intel as the only major player left in the market.
And if that happens... we're all fucked.
I'm sure Intel realizes it too, because they've avoided a lot of anti-trust because of AMD. Heck, Intel probably foisted Sony and Microsoft onto AMD to provide AMD with some steady cashflow for the next 8+ years.
To Intel, AMD's the perfect competitor - not too big, in just enough trouble to not be an issue. But big enough to matter and to provide competition in the eyes of government, keeping regulators and other stuff off Intel's back.
And Intel probably has a "AMD rescue" package available which can involve burying millions of AMD processors to boost their sales. .
Because if AMD fails - all of AMD's patents are most likely NOT going to be given to Intel. Instead, they'll probably be spread out among dozens of entities, and what was once a lucrative zero-cost cross-licensing with AMD becomes an expensive, lawyer filled license negotiation.
You got to think similar things as well for odd competition, like Apple iAds. Probably supported by Google to justify the purchase of AdMob (DoJ said iAds provides sufficient competition in mobile advertising). Of course, it really isn't and Apple's quit promoting it for some time, yet it lives on. Probably some Google cash paying someone to keep it alive.
From what little I know of the apple ecosystem if such a bug was found on a iPhone 3 the effective response would be the same (you are on your own, we don't support that any more).
Well, the iPhone 3G is 6 years old at this point - around the era of the HTC G1 (Dream) as the first released Android device out there. So losing support for it isn't completely unexpected.
Google's core business is search and advertising. The problem is targeted ads are failures. I am 100% less likely to use a targeted advertisement than a regular one. why? because targeted ads only work for what you already have bought. Amazon has 15 years of my buying history. they have not once sent me a useful targeted ad.
google is throwing everything they can out there and see what sticks. cars, tablets, phones, email, bundling, whatever. now look at google plus. you have to have a google plus account to use google services yet google plus is a wasteland of wannabe's
Social media is failing, because programs + advertisers want you to log in with your social media account so they can broadcast their ads over your social media. nearly every tablet app wants you to broadcast every single time you play a fart noise(or insert stupid game step here) on your device.
Advertising is over saturating the marketplaces so badly people are tuning out the advertisements. which mean the advertisers in turn push harder and harder.
Advertising is a core business of google. as advertising becomes less and less successful, google has to change up.
Except guess what? "The Advertisers" you reference are actually... Google! Google OWNs online advertising. There's a tiny slice of it for other people, but it's something like Google has 98% marketshare of online advertising.
And that means Google basically knows what websites you visit, what your interests are, the fact you clicked on this article, etc. And it also knows where you go, what you look up on your map, your calendar, etc., through your smartphone and tablet.
Soon it'll know what kind of house you have - whether it has air conditioning, is it a one or two level house, etc., through Nest. I'm sure during a heatwave, you're going to get a lot of targeted ads for whole house air conditioners if they see you don't have one. Heck, they may guess you spend more time at the office and shopping malls during warm days because of it.
Untargeted advertising is failing. Targeted advertising requires gathering information. Google would love to get at the juicy data Facebook has, but Google has a lot more. They have full web browsing (thanks to ad penetration), know if you're an Android or iOS user (and if so, are you a cheap user or do you spend money). It knows how long to visit Facebook on your phone or in Chrome (why do you think Google created it?).
Next time someone goes to Google and says "I want to advertise my goods only to iOS users, who live in Main Street Ohio and who basically only go between home and work", Google can do it, because they have the information. HVAC companies are probably going to tell Google to advertise towards Nest users (who have shown willingness to pay for a premium product) who do not have air conditioning in the spring. Or furnace checkups in the winter.
Google Ohm may be gone, but such information can be correlated to tell you if you heat with electricity or other fuel (natural gas, oil, propane, etc.).
Facebook only knows what you and everyone else tell it and what it gathers through spot checks of "Like" buttons. Google knows everything through the extensive series of ad networks, G+, etc.
Facebook can't tell if you had a kegger last night. Google knows you were at one because your phone showed you at a friend's place, and you googled about hangover recipes. Hell, it may realize that half the photos you took are more crooked than usual (thanks google goggles!). And with google glass, someone will have confirmed it!
Reasons like this are why Vavle's push is good for the entire Linux community and not just gamers. I see a lot of naysaying about SteamOS, but what really speaks to me is the number of gears that are beginning to turn.
Well, it's because Valve sees the competition, and they see where they have an open field. Linux is one of them - the app stores it has are few and far between. Valve and Steam are huge names among the computing community.
And while Windows and OS X have their own app stores that compete with Steam, Linux doesn't. Which means Valve can move in and take over and become the app store for Linux.
But to do that, they need to encourage development on Linux, and convince the AAA developers that there's a market for it. Hence SteamOS and this project.
Remember, the end goal is to set up a walled garden on Linux. (And Steam's one of the ultimate - if you think Apple was hard... ). Because Linux doesn't have one, and Steam and Valve are big enough names to convince game developers and commercial vendors to sell software through Steam.
And yes, Valve is listening to the developers on what they need, because the Steam Store on Linux is rather bare.
As a side note - if SteamOS is so hackable (by design) - how long until people hack it to disable VAC? I mean, it's only a matter of time before "cheating video drivers" and bots get ported to it, and if you have full control of the kernel, you can neuter VAC into thinking all is well while the player is really cheating through online multiplayer...
I am a fan of full disclosure and all that, but does it have to be done on a Friday afternoon? Could you not sit on the bug for just one weekend and disclose it on Monday morning, so there is a chance that the right engineers to fix it are available?
Does it really matter? I mean, if Google fixes it in 4.4 on Monday, that still leaves almost every Android phone vulnerable as they won't get the patch, ever. The Nexus line doesn't form a huge part of the Android market.
I don't think it's something that can be fixed without an OS update - unless Google Services Framework can hitch even deeper into the OS.
The innovation I would really like to see from laptop keyboards is to make them mechanical. It doesn't bother me that most desktop keyboards are membrane crap, because I can replace them with a good keyboard, such as the Das Keyboard (yes, I know the redundancy of "the Das"). But attaching a mechanical keyboard to a laptop largely defeats the purpose of a laptop.
At the same time, I'm not sure it could be done in a way that's satisfying. You could never replicate a desktop mechanical keyboard perfectly without drastically increasing the thickness of the case. I'm not sure if a "low-travel" version of mechanical keys would be as satisfying or worth the extra cost. For the time being, my favorite laptop keyboard is Apple's. The keys aren't mushy or sticky like on a lot of keyboards, and their low travel distance lets you bottom out quicker (which is important for this type of keyboard, if not mechanical ones).
If you want a mechanical keyboard on your laptop, you're better off carrying it yourself - no one's going to make their laptop 1" thicker to fit in a full mechanical keyboard (and yes, it'll be 1" thicker to accoomodate the switch and keycap travel).
In the 80s, they had 5mm travel keys. But in the 90s, they moved to 2mm travel, which resulted in rather stiff typing because it always bottomed out right when your fingers were achieving maximum speed. In the late 90s they moved up to 3-4 mm travel keys resulting in a much more satisfying typing experience on laptops.
I think Apple kept the 3-4mm travel keys throughout the 90s and 2000s and they've standardized on that as a compromise between thickness and travel. And I think they chose that because membrane keys "snap" around that distance (One of the things that makes membrane keyboard "bad" is they "snap" before they register, while mechanical ones snap when they register). So when the key gives, it registers and gives you good feedback.
The irony of the whole thing is Apple does make some great keyboards, but they make absolutely lousy mice. (Which is probably why they make trackpads now).
I use Apple keyboards because they're quite decent.
Yep, and the "Netflix of Porn" SugarDVD announced that in December, PS4 users watched 3 times as much porn as Xbox One users. While they anticipate more viewing through the Xbox One later on (perhaps it's the "family friendly" advertising on the Xbox One versus the "hardcore gamer" marketing of the PS4 for the difference) as it matures as a media gateway, the initial results are in.
PS4 is the porn machine to get! Heck, weren't there PS4 twitch streams that were full of porn as well?
Actually, it's to... provide an alternative locating service to GPS.
Both Apple and Google maintain a list of WiFi MAC addresses and GPS locations. In areas where there's no GPS, or GPS is extremely weak, using cell tower and MAC addresses can provide alternative location services. Or for devices without GPS hardware, it can provide location services still. E.g., if you tether a WiFi-only iPad to an iPhone, it can get your location quite accurately using the database.
Apple bought a company that maintains the database, Google built theirs up using streetview. Mozilla is probably trying to create an open-source version.
And it's that database that lead to the whole "tracking" scandal of iOS 4 - because whenever you requested a location Apple sends you a database containing locations near you as well so you can do mapping without continually asking Apple where it is. That database cache was what people said "Apple is tracking them!" Of course, it wasn't, but knowing what areas the cache covers helps in knowing where you might be. In densely populated areas with a lot of APs, Apple would send you a very narrow list that can be quite accurate to your track. In areas with more sporadic coverage, you get a bigger footprint because there's less data per square mile (Apple probably sends you a fixed number of APs to locate oneself, rather than send you all the APs within a certain radius).
So in the city, you can get down to street-level tracking. In the suburbs, well, the cache is probably only good for pinpointing to a few blocks.
This is pretty normal in Australia, Interior of Australia has a long history of 4+ year droughts every decade or 2 then we get summers with insane levels of rainfall flooding everything, Australia rarely does things by the averages, it is usually one extreme or the other. I grew up on Australian farm. I vividly remember the long drought in the 80's and my father refers to that as a moderate one compared to what he had in the 60's and 70's. We have photos of our farm as a dust bowl in 30's as well, something my father hasn't even seen it get as bad as.
In other words, the Australians will inherit the earth.
Because they're used to the extremes, and the thing climate change does is make extreme weather even more extreme. Winters get colder. Summers get hotter. But there'll be brief respites where you'll get a hot summer week in the middle of winter, or a cold wintry spell in the middle of summer (with snow).
It doesn't warm evenly, it just gets wilder, and only the Australians have been used to it.
To be fair, the cell phones of the time would not have been popular if they weren't cheap. I certainly wouldn't have paid $850 for a cell phone before Apple showed how cell phones should work.
Even now, people wouldn't pay so much money for Windows Phone. Microsoft is taking a loss on every Lumia, just to get them to sell. The profit is in the carriers' service plans.
Android too. Very few people buy the flagship phones if they weren't $99 on contract (or these days, you can get an S4 or other flagship like an HTC One for FREE).
Even with Samsung's sales (177M phones in a quarter), the vast, vast, vast majority of those are what carriers give away or free phones. Heck, I saw ads for the Samsung Galaxy Ace, running ICS (not Jellybean!) free on contract.
So Android's main sales strength is in the low end where they're shoveling them out the door (I use Samsung as they have around 90% marketshare of Android , but under 10% of which is their current flagship phone, so the other phones make up the rest of the sales).
Only Apple actually gets people to spend $850 on a phone. Hell, only Apple makes it easy to get an unlocked phone, at that. Go to a Samsung store or a Microsoft store and say you want to buy the phones, and the employees won't sell you a phone. Instead you have to go to a carrier. Or order it online. Apple though, will happily sell you one.
This isn't really bragging, you know. It's a way of making oneself feel better about being ignorant. If you play down the importance of X, then it's not so bad that you're ignorant about X. I think a lot of us do this to some degree for some X (even without meaning to).
The problem is there's a culture of anti-intellectualism in America. You see it in the stereotypes - the nerds and geeks who get bullied at school, the jocks who mock learning while they get a full university scholarship, etc.
Soft intellectual pursuits like diplomacy and all that are thrown out by just going in with brawny men firing guns.
Or how chess gives way to NASCAR.
Other countries tend to be a bit more balanced, though there are some that go the opposite way where education is paramount to everything else (leading to situations like obesity where emphasis on physical education gave way to sedentiary studying).
This is amazing news... I believe we might not be far from some sort of sensor that will monitor our main "health checks" (sugar level in blood, cholesterol, blood pressure, heart rate, etc) and give us an accurate, real time report, in a non-intrusive / painful way...
Something I'm sure insurance companies would love to know.
Oh, you're mostly in the green, but for 10 days in 2013, I see you went into the yellow for your health. That'll be a 10% unhealthy habits surcharge on your premium. Next time, go easy on the sweets, especially around the holidays and your birthday.
You arguments about Bitcoin's level of acceptance can be equally applied to PayPal in 1999. There where almost no sites accepting PayPal balance and you certainly could not pay your groceries and rent with PayPal. If someone sent you money with PayPal, all you could do was withdraw it to your bank account in local currency and that was about it.
Except that was Paypal's business model!
In fact, Paypal is still the only way for random individuals to send money to one another by credit card. And that's how they started - having a Paypal account meant that you could take money from a credit card without having to go through the onerous process of having a merchant account and all the restrictions and minimums that go with it.
It's why eBay bought Paypal - they were complementary. A seller and a buyer who may never meet again are able to transact over the Internet without involving annoying things like money orders or other things. If you weren't big enough to have a merchant account, you used Paypal (perhaps you were selling a couple of knickknacks every other year) because it was quick, easy and what everyone expects when you do commerce over the Internet.
That's why Paypal is not like BTC. Paypal offered a service that no one else does, even today. BTC doesn't offer much - it's a currency. As a retailer, you can choose what to accept - cash, credit, debit, bitcoins, gold, silver, etc. Right now BTC is accepted in a few places only because of the hype, and probably because a few smart businesspeople know they can charge a premium for it and people won't be the wiser.
I have a friend that works at a construction engineering firm and they have trouble finding qualified and experienced electrical engineers to fill some positions.
No, they have trouble finding qualified and experienced electrical engineers for the apparently low salary they're paying. I'll bet if they doubled the salary they'd be swamped in great applicants. The problem is with the pay rate they're offering, not the labour pool.
No there are fields in EE that are genuinely short of candidates - and competition is so strong starting salaries can be extremely high.
Power engineering is one such field and electric utilities are dealing with the fact that their existing employees are all old and greying and retiring faster than graduates are available. Starting salaries are extremely high for the areas involved.
It's just that compared to computer engineering, it's not sexy. You're dealing with high voltages, lots of math on transmission lines, AC, DC, switchgear, power factors, multiphase power and all that. You're not making the next smartphone or flashy widget - your work involves basically keeping those things working by making sure everyone has power when they need it.
Likewise with analog IC design. You're dealing with so many variables and advanced math and all that other stuff trying to ensure that you can make a manufacturable circuit that's tolerant of component variations (resistors, capacitors, etc.,built on silicon have huge tolerances - the only saving grace is that the variation tends to be very low - so while your resistors may be 50% off in their values, a pair of identical resistors on the chip may differ by 1% or less between them, reliably).
None of it is "easy" or sexy. Especially since a lot of it involves higher math and physics.
Power engineering is one that's especially tempting if you're deciding on a specialization because there are *options*. If you want to move, practically every electric utility is short so pick your location and make a deal. And the total graduating class every year is probably well under 100 from every accredited institution. Like I said, the class size is probably countable on one hand - and often zero. Heck, you might be the ONLY person graduating!
There are still jobs out there for power engineers - I have a friend that works at a construction engineering firm and they have trouble finding qualified and experienced electrical engineers to fill some positions.
There are tons of EE jobs out there. Its just that the one everyone wants - the ones related to computers and digital logic, are really popular and many places are churning them out. But, like supply and demand, well, those jobs are also moving offshore because they're portable, and offshore education is getting really good as well.
However, power engineers, a discipline who has seen the number of members drop steadily to the point where a graduating class may be counted on one hand (if at all! Sometimes there are years with zero graduates) can see good work. Their jobs generally aren't portable, and they deal with all matter of power - from generation, transmission, transformation, etc. Many electric utilities are paying handsomely for fresh graduates because they're hard to get (power engineering isn't very sexy).
Likewise, you have analog IC designers, a role that's also so short on people, fresh grads can demand 6 figure salaries. Analog IC design is not just stuff like opamps and all that, but mixed-signal ICs, and modern digital ICs often contain analog interfaces. Even "digital" communications often do a lot of analog design (the Ethernet PHY is a mixed-signal chip - the signal comes in as analog and you have to recover a digital signal from that). There's also CMOS sensors for cameras, and many others.
Then there's RF - which is in demand (think smartphones) - besides IC designs, there's antennas, communications, weak signal, etc.
Computer and software? Well, there are just too many of them and they're portable.
There's plenty of jobs out there. And because of shortage of supplies, damn the starting salaries can be double of a computer engineer.
If you're an analog IC designer with RF experience....
Actually, they have apparently been accepting grants all along, for many years, but never coming back.
The new decree (Do they not pass laws over there?) simply says:
Students who earned bachelor's degrees in Russian universities may enter leading [foreign] universities... and be eligible for financial support from the government. If these students would like to stay overseas after graduation, they would have to pay a hefty amount to Russia that would include all the money spent on the education plus a fine twice as large as this amount.
Good luck collecting, unless they want to hire a boat load of lawyers in each country students go to. (If they thought US tuition was high, wait till they see US lawyer bills). Maybe they will get the parents to co-sign these grants so they can at least threaten to put the parents in the hot seat if young Doctor Ivan doesn't come back.
Uh, the easy solution is to deny them a passport and cancel their existing one.
Without a passport, they can't renew their visas and US Customs and Immigration is obligated to eject them from the country. Pretty basic technique.
Without a passport, they're an illegal immigrant and your future options become severely limited. Of course, Russia will probably happily go and take them back in so countries with Russian visa-less students will be more than happy to send them on their way.
They can't immigrate - the best they can is apply as a refugee, which is a slow and arduous process as they need to prove that they're facing real harm in returning. Financial ruin is, hwoever, not a recognized harm.
In the meantime, they can't work, they can't do a lot of things.
If you want to see what no passport does, see Edward Snowden. He's still a US citizen, but he's basically trapped - the only country he can legally enter is the US. He can't get a work permit or other things.
Slashdot Mirror
A LOT of countries have "great firewalls". The only one that everyone seems to know about is China, but there are many, many, many more. And many of them are "elected" and "democratic" as well.
A lot of times it's to keep stuff like pornography and such out of the country - they often have film censor boards and such as well.
Of course, many are developing world, but many are just quiet on the whole thing and don't make a big fuss about it (e.g., Singapore).
The political system in play and firewall/censorship of the internet are independent of each other.
Or ... don't learn about technology. If you're interested in it, you'll learn anyways.
Instead, learn how to improve yourself as a person. Do you know how to speak to customers? Or do you cordon yourself off?
"Soft skills" are extremely important, probably more so than technical skills. Technical skills can be learned. But soft skills require training and practice.
Learn skills like sales and marketing - learn what they do, and how they do it, and how you can best ensure that your future doesn't rely on them making over-the-top promises.
Or learn how to communicate with other people. Being able to talk technical is good when dealing with your peers, but how do you talk to the salespeople? Is it likely they misunderstand you?
Learn about management. Perhaps learn project management and how to deal with conflicting priorities, dealing with what management wants and what they don't need.
Learn about business - how your company operates, what all the numbers mean. Take up accounting and learn why things are done in certain ways.
Technical skills are easy. Soft skills will help you become a more valuable employee. You may be able to write the next OS kernel blindfolded, but if everyone goes to the new guy because he's easy to approach and gives reasonable answers, well, your days are limited. But show you know your stuff, and show that you empathize with others, and suddenly you're the invaluable person.
We run into it all the time - management who fail to understand why we need something or have to do stuff this way because of security concerns. Being able to speak "their language" can make it easier for you to explain your concerns and head off the next security breach.
Except said bad exit node already compromises HTTPS by doing a MITM attack. because it literally IS a MITM. Just like an exit node can compromise SSH as well.
Basically the exit nodes see that you're trying to establish an HTTPS connection and return you a self-signed cert to encrypt data with that they decrypt, and the re-encrypt with the real key to the site.
Your browser will detect the fault since the certificate doesn't have a path to a known root CA. The question is, will the user know, care or not bother?
Basically the paper isn't saying anything new - exit nodes are known to have the ability to spy on Tor users (and with enough spying, be able to identify them). It's just that some nodes are a bit more sophisticated and perform MITM attacks on otherwise-encrypted connections.
And heck, didn't the NSA run something like the largest crowd of exit nodes because of this?
Until the card dies. Then it's a mad scramble to try to figure out how to get the data off the disk. Especially since some RAID cards are so fussy that if the firmware used on the replacement card doesn't match that on the array, it refuses to work.
If it was VFS or md, no big deal. You stick the drives in another PC (USB adapters if necessary), set up the array again, and access your data.
Of course, RAID cards are for performance - though a modern PC is more than adequate enough for home and small business (i.e., GigE sized) tasks. And quite possibly, if you need SSDs, things get more interesting since modern SSDs can be faster than said RAID cards.
Except I think traction control is now a mandatory feature in new cars. There may be an option to disable it, but by default the car has to have traction control and by default it's on.
95 was actually decent compared to what options were available.
Vista is "bad" purely because it broke a LOT of things thanks to UAC - so many programs required admin incidentally that getting far without seeing the dialog was quite difficult. Of course, a couple of years meant that everyone fixed their sh*tty crap and ends up much better. (most developers are crap and most programs suffer from the "get it done" mentality.).
XP's longevity was due to the netbook suddenly forcing Microsoft to keep it around because Vista demanded too much system resources. So Windows ULCPC (Ultra Low Cost PC) edition was created - basically Windows XP. It's also why XP support ends this year - otherwise it would've ended years ago.
Nope. Copyright infringement is a federal offence and a felony.
Why do you think the RIAA sues people? They simply launch a federal case, get the judge to open discovery, and drop the suit once the information is there because the criminal courts have a tougher standard. They then use those names to launch civil lawsuits.
And filming in theatres counts. Or do you somehow fail to see those scary "FBI" warnings they show before every movie and home release?
And then there were cases years ago where someone used a camera to capture a snippet of a movie and was hauled out.
In the end, it looks like an interesting way to get around glasshole pervasive surveillance...
They're far more selective.
Apple's is just an entrance fee. You buy the devkit (Mac) and you can code away. If you want to test on devices and whatnot, you need $99, which also gives you publishing controls.
Android is easier, though their store really stinks (can someone explain to me how searching for an app name can somehow NOT return the app as the top hit, but dozens of clones? I thought Google was king of search...).
PC is easier still, as long as you're willing to do the marketing/sales/payment thing yourself. (It's HARD to get into Steam. Of course, once you're in, things are golden, but getting in is quite difficult).
Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony are much harder comparatively. They're all striving for the "Apple" form for development, but not quite there yet. Nintendo's opened up a bit, but Microsoft's seems to be most "open" with ID@Xbox and lots of examples of how one can enable devkit functionality on a retail Xbone. (Alas, they got rid of XNA, which was probably the easiest way to get in...). Sony? Supposedly they've got a system for it. probably being freer with the devkits, I guess, while ID@Xbox is more they give you 2 devkits, you have to buy retail units to have more, sort of thing.
Actually, no. IP addresses (at least IPv4 ones) are completely useless for detecting this because there are many legitimate reasons why one IP address may log into multiple acconts simultaneously.
The most common reason? Multiple people!
With families on facebook, Hotmail, yahoo, whatever, thanks to NAT, all their traffic comes from 1 IP address, whether it's Susie checking facebook on her smartphone, John checking his on his tablet, Mom on the PC, and Dad on the other PC.
There you go - 4 legitimate logins for 4 different people on 1 IP address.
Fear not, however, for IPv6 will save the day, so you can differentiate between all their traffic, and also tell if one PC is used by multiple people.
(Or another reason why NAT for IPv6 may not be such a bad idea - it's not like the average family will have direct connectivity anyways thanks to firewalls. At best, they will appear to have it, but it won't work).
I'm sure Intel realizes it too, because they've avoided a lot of anti-trust because of AMD. Heck, Intel probably foisted Sony and Microsoft onto AMD to provide AMD with some steady cashflow for the next 8+ years.
To Intel, AMD's the perfect competitor - not too big, in just enough trouble to not be an issue. But big enough to matter and to provide competition in the eyes of government, keeping regulators and other stuff off Intel's back.
And Intel probably has a "AMD rescue" package available which can involve burying millions of AMD processors to boost their sales. .
Because if AMD fails - all of AMD's patents are most likely NOT going to be given to Intel. Instead, they'll probably be spread out among dozens of entities, and what was once a lucrative zero-cost cross-licensing with AMD becomes an expensive, lawyer filled license negotiation.
You got to think similar things as well for odd competition, like Apple iAds. Probably supported by Google to justify the purchase of AdMob (DoJ said iAds provides sufficient competition in mobile advertising). Of course, it really isn't and Apple's quit promoting it for some time, yet it lives on. Probably some Google cash paying someone to keep it alive.
Well, the iPhone 3G is 6 years old at this point - around the era of the HTC G1 (Dream) as the first released Android device out there. So losing support for it isn't completely unexpected.
Except guess what? "The Advertisers" you reference are actually... Google! Google OWNs online advertising. There's a tiny slice of it for other people, but it's something like Google has 98% marketshare of online advertising.
And that means Google basically knows what websites you visit, what your interests are, the fact you clicked on this article, etc. And it also knows where you go, what you look up on your map, your calendar, etc., through your smartphone and tablet.
Soon it'll know what kind of house you have - whether it has air conditioning, is it a one or two level house, etc., through Nest. I'm sure during a heatwave, you're going to get a lot of targeted ads for whole house air conditioners if they see you don't have one. Heck, they may guess you spend more time at the office and shopping malls during warm days because of it.
Untargeted advertising is failing. Targeted advertising requires gathering information. Google would love to get at the juicy data Facebook has, but Google has a lot more. They have full web browsing (thanks to ad penetration), know if you're an Android or iOS user (and if so, are you a cheap user or do you spend money). It knows how long to visit Facebook on your phone or in Chrome (why do you think Google created it?).
Next time someone goes to Google and says "I want to advertise my goods only to iOS users, who live in Main Street Ohio and who basically only go between home and work", Google can do it, because they have the information. HVAC companies are probably going to tell Google to advertise towards Nest users (who have shown willingness to pay for a premium product) who do not have air conditioning in the spring. Or furnace checkups in the winter.
Google Ohm may be gone, but such information can be correlated to tell you if you heat with electricity or other fuel (natural gas, oil, propane, etc.).
Facebook only knows what you and everyone else tell it and what it gathers through spot checks of "Like" buttons. Google knows everything through the extensive series of ad networks, G+, etc.
Facebook can't tell if you had a kegger last night. Google knows you were at one because your phone showed you at a friend's place, and you googled about hangover recipes. Hell, it may realize that half the photos you took are more crooked than usual (thanks google goggles!). And with google glass, someone will have confirmed it!
Well, it's because Valve sees the competition, and they see where they have an open field. Linux is one of them - the app stores it has are few and far between. Valve and Steam are huge names among the computing community.
And while Windows and OS X have their own app stores that compete with Steam, Linux doesn't. Which means Valve can move in and take over and become the app store for Linux.
But to do that, they need to encourage development on Linux, and convince the AAA developers that there's a market for it. Hence SteamOS and this project.
Remember, the end goal is to set up a walled garden on Linux. (And Steam's one of the ultimate - if you think Apple was hard... ). Because Linux doesn't have one, and Steam and Valve are big enough names to convince game developers and commercial vendors to sell software through Steam.
And yes, Valve is listening to the developers on what they need, because the Steam Store on Linux is rather bare.
As a side note - if SteamOS is so hackable (by design) - how long until people hack it to disable VAC? I mean, it's only a matter of time before "cheating video drivers" and bots get ported to it, and if you have full control of the kernel, you can neuter VAC into thinking all is well while the player is really cheating through online multiplayer...
Does it really matter? I mean, if Google fixes it in 4.4 on Monday, that still leaves almost every Android phone vulnerable as they won't get the patch, ever. The Nexus line doesn't form a huge part of the Android market.
I don't think it's something that can be fixed without an OS update - unless Google Services Framework can hitch even deeper into the OS.
If you want a mechanical keyboard on your laptop, you're better off carrying it yourself - no one's going to make their laptop 1" thicker to fit in a full mechanical keyboard (and yes, it'll be 1" thicker to accoomodate the switch and keycap travel).
In the 80s, they had 5mm travel keys. But in the 90s, they moved to 2mm travel, which resulted in rather stiff typing because it always bottomed out right when your fingers were achieving maximum speed. In the late 90s they moved up to 3-4 mm travel keys resulting in a much more satisfying typing experience on laptops.
I think Apple kept the 3-4mm travel keys throughout the 90s and 2000s and they've standardized on that as a compromise between thickness and travel. And I think they chose that because membrane keys "snap" around that distance (One of the things that makes membrane keyboard "bad" is they "snap" before they register, while mechanical ones snap when they register). So when the key gives, it registers and gives you good feedback.
The irony of the whole thing is Apple does make some great keyboards, but they make absolutely lousy mice. (Which is probably why they make trackpads now).
I use Apple keyboards because they're quite decent.
Yep, and the "Netflix of Porn" SugarDVD announced that in December, PS4 users watched 3 times as much porn as Xbox One users. While they anticipate more viewing through the Xbox One later on (perhaps it's the "family friendly" advertising on the Xbox One versus the "hardcore gamer" marketing of the PS4 for the difference) as it matures as a media gateway, the initial results are in.
PS4 is the porn machine to get! Heck, weren't there PS4 twitch streams that were full of porn as well?
Actually, it's to... provide an alternative locating service to GPS.
Both Apple and Google maintain a list of WiFi MAC addresses and GPS locations. In areas where there's no GPS, or GPS is extremely weak, using cell tower and MAC addresses can provide alternative location services. Or for devices without GPS hardware, it can provide location services still. E.g., if you tether a WiFi-only iPad to an iPhone, it can get your location quite accurately using the database.
Apple bought a company that maintains the database, Google built theirs up using streetview. Mozilla is probably trying to create an open-source version.
And it's that database that lead to the whole "tracking" scandal of iOS 4 - because whenever you requested a location Apple sends you a database containing locations near you as well so you can do mapping without continually asking Apple where it is. That database cache was what people said "Apple is tracking them!" Of course, it wasn't, but knowing what areas the cache covers helps in knowing where you might be. In densely populated areas with a lot of APs, Apple would send you a very narrow list that can be quite accurate to your track. In areas with more sporadic coverage, you get a bigger footprint because there's less data per square mile (Apple probably sends you a fixed number of APs to locate oneself, rather than send you all the APs within a certain radius).
So in the city, you can get down to street-level tracking. In the suburbs, well, the cache is probably only good for pinpointing to a few blocks.
In other words, the Australians will inherit the earth.
Because they're used to the extremes, and the thing climate change does is make extreme weather even more extreme. Winters get colder. Summers get hotter. But there'll be brief respites where you'll get a hot summer week in the middle of winter, or a cold wintry spell in the middle of summer (with snow).
It doesn't warm evenly, it just gets wilder, and only the Australians have been used to it.
Android too. Very few people buy the flagship phones if they weren't $99 on contract (or these days, you can get an S4 or other flagship like an HTC One for FREE).
Even with Samsung's sales (177M phones in a quarter), the vast, vast, vast majority of those are what carriers give away or free phones. Heck, I saw ads for the Samsung Galaxy Ace, running ICS (not Jellybean!) free on contract.
So Android's main sales strength is in the low end where they're shoveling them out the door (I use Samsung as they have around 90% marketshare of Android , but under 10% of which is their current flagship phone, so the other phones make up the rest of the sales).
Only Apple actually gets people to spend $850 on a phone. Hell, only Apple makes it easy to get an unlocked phone, at that. Go to a Samsung store or a Microsoft store and say you want to buy the phones, and the employees won't sell you a phone. Instead you have to go to a carrier. Or order it online. Apple though, will happily sell you one.
The problem is there's a culture of anti-intellectualism in America. You see it in the stereotypes - the nerds and geeks who get bullied at school, the jocks who mock learning while they get a full university scholarship, etc.
Soft intellectual pursuits like diplomacy and all that are thrown out by just going in with brawny men firing guns.
Or how chess gives way to NASCAR.
Other countries tend to be a bit more balanced, though there are some that go the opposite way where education is paramount to everything else (leading to situations like obesity where emphasis on physical education gave way to sedentiary studying).
Something I'm sure insurance companies would love to know.
Oh, you're mostly in the green, but for 10 days in 2013, I see you went into the yellow for your health. That'll be a 10% unhealthy habits surcharge on your premium. Next time, go easy on the sweets, especially around the holidays and your birthday.
Except that was Paypal's business model!
In fact, Paypal is still the only way for random individuals to send money to one another by credit card. And that's how they started - having a Paypal account meant that you could take money from a credit card without having to go through the onerous process of having a merchant account and all the restrictions and minimums that go with it.
It's why eBay bought Paypal - they were complementary. A seller and a buyer who may never meet again are able to transact over the Internet without involving annoying things like money orders or other things. If you weren't big enough to have a merchant account, you used Paypal (perhaps you were selling a couple of knickknacks every other year) because it was quick, easy and what everyone expects when you do commerce over the Internet.
That's why Paypal is not like BTC. Paypal offered a service that no one else does, even today. BTC doesn't offer much - it's a currency. As a retailer, you can choose what to accept - cash, credit, debit, bitcoins, gold, silver, etc. Right now BTC is accepted in a few places only because of the hype, and probably because a few smart businesspeople know they can charge a premium for it and people won't be the wiser.
No there are fields in EE that are genuinely short of candidates - and competition is so strong starting salaries can be extremely high.
Power engineering is one such field and electric utilities are dealing with the fact that their existing employees are all old and greying and retiring faster than graduates are available. Starting salaries are extremely high for the areas involved.
It's just that compared to computer engineering, it's not sexy. You're dealing with high voltages, lots of math on transmission lines, AC, DC, switchgear, power factors, multiphase power and all that. You're not making the next smartphone or flashy widget - your work involves basically keeping those things working by making sure everyone has power when they need it.
Likewise with analog IC design. You're dealing with so many variables and advanced math and all that other stuff trying to ensure that you can make a manufacturable circuit that's tolerant of component variations (resistors, capacitors, etc. ,built on silicon have huge tolerances - the only saving grace is that the variation tends to be very low - so while your resistors may be 50% off in their values, a pair of identical resistors on the chip may differ by 1% or less between them, reliably).
None of it is "easy" or sexy. Especially since a lot of it involves higher math and physics.
Power engineering is one that's especially tempting if you're deciding on a specialization because there are *options*. If you want to move, practically every electric utility is short so pick your location and make a deal. And the total graduating class every year is probably well under 100 from every accredited institution. Like I said, the class size is probably countable on one hand - and often zero. Heck, you might be the ONLY person graduating!
There are tons of EE jobs out there. Its just that the one everyone wants - the ones related to computers and digital logic, are really popular and many places are churning them out. But, like supply and demand, well, those jobs are also moving offshore because they're portable, and offshore education is getting really good as well.
However, power engineers, a discipline who has seen the number of members drop steadily to the point where a graduating class may be counted on one hand (if at all! Sometimes there are years with zero graduates) can see good work. Their jobs generally aren't portable, and they deal with all matter of power - from generation, transmission, transformation, etc. Many electric utilities are paying handsomely for fresh graduates because they're hard to get (power engineering isn't very sexy).
Likewise, you have analog IC designers, a role that's also so short on people, fresh grads can demand 6 figure salaries. Analog IC design is not just stuff like opamps and all that, but mixed-signal ICs, and modern digital ICs often contain analog interfaces. Even "digital" communications often do a lot of analog design (the Ethernet PHY is a mixed-signal chip - the signal comes in as analog and you have to recover a digital signal from that). There's also CMOS sensors for cameras, and many others.
Then there's RF - which is in demand (think smartphones) - besides IC designs, there's antennas, communications, weak signal, etc.
Computer and software? Well, there are just too many of them and they're portable.
There's plenty of jobs out there. And because of shortage of supplies, damn the starting salaries can be double of a computer engineer.
If you're an analog IC designer with RF experience....
Uh, the easy solution is to deny them a passport and cancel their existing one.
Without a passport, they can't renew their visas and US Customs and Immigration is obligated to eject them from the country. Pretty basic technique.
Without a passport, they're an illegal immigrant and your future options become severely limited. Of course, Russia will probably happily go and take them back in so countries with Russian visa-less students will be more than happy to send them on their way.
They can't immigrate - the best they can is apply as a refugee, which is a slow and arduous process as they need to prove that they're facing real harm in returning. Financial ruin is, hwoever, not a recognized harm.
In the meantime, they can't work, they can't do a lot of things.
If you want to see what no passport does, see Edward Snowden. He's still a US citizen, but he's basically trapped - the only country he can legally enter is the US. He can't get a work permit or other things.