I think the ionic breeze actually uses a pretty low voltage... it's not thousands of volts like it was in the PopMech article, because the breeze is a lot slower. Chances are, to save on wiring, they just have a simple 120 volts in a rectified AC pattern. That, incidentally, is also another difference with bug zappers... I'm pretty sure that bug zappers alternate which side is negative and which is positive, which means there's no breeze because it flips between pushing and pulling 60 times a second.
For anyone who cares... making an ion wind generator is dead simple. Smooth out the AC power into DC current, pump the voltage up to around 1000 volts, and embed the negative and positive grates into a plastic fan case. The ionic breeze costs a lot, but it's pure profit for the Sharper Image. An ionic wind is cheaper to make than a normal fan.
It is, I think, less efficient electrically than a normal fan. Not certain. It's been nearly 30 years since I made one. Mine did NOT smooth out the current, and did NOT hop up the voltage, so it was about what I think an ionic breeze is. To get the fastest breeze though I put the negative and positive sides pretty close together, so it would zap if bugs got between. My biggest problem was I didn't have any plastic spacers in it, to keep the sides apart... if it tipped over, or someone pushed on the mesh (I had nothing to prevent that either) it would short out. And, since I had no built in fuse... well. Two house outages later, my parents threw it away.:-)
A strong negative electric charge is put into one side of the system. This side should have many sharp points angled toward the positive side to be the most efficient. Negative charge builds up in this grid, concentrated at those points. The charge is not enough to actually arc across the air and make a spark, but it is high... high enough that electrons leap across, one by one. Actually, they're leaping across in the millions and billions per second, but they're so tiny that the effect is imperceptible.
This 'leaping' across has always seemed like how ice sublimates into a gas... it doesn't melt into water, then evaporate, an ice cube in dry air can evaporate directly. In the case of the electrons, they don't melt and flow across (spark) they just imperceptibly leap off one by one. Yeah, it's a bad analogy, but it's the best I can think of.:-)
As the electrons leap across the gap, they sometimes run into air molecules. When they strike, they can merge with that molecule, and turn it into an ion... this air ion now has a negative charge, and it gets drawn toward the posotive side too... pulled across, the air molecule bumps and shoves other air molecules, and you get a current of air, many of them negatively charged ions.
This 'other side' happens to be big flat metal plates in the 'ionic breeze', but it doesn't have to be. It could be a simple grid of metal, like chicken wire or something. Anything that can carry a current, and let air blow past it.
The charge between the two can be thousands of volts, but the current is very small. However, something getting in that gap, like a bug, could get zapped. Yeah, bug zappers are technically 'ionic breeze' machines too, but the voltage and their shape is not optimized to blow air.
As to where I learned this... all hail Popular Mechanics. An article way back in the late 70's demonstrated these, but not to make ions... they demonstrated a grid powerful enough to take off. Imagine a perfectly silent helicopter with no moving parts, trailing a thick heavy power cable (because they couldn't generate enough electricity onboard to lift it on its own). Definitely a nifty idea.
The web can be substituted by... hrm. FTP? Not really. Gopher? Hah! Maybe if the web was disabled for everyone, but this is just me... nothing on Gopher anymore. Telnet, ssh? Nope.
But email can be substituted by many other things. Message boards, instant messaging, comment threads, IRC... there are a hundred ways to communicate on the Internet, but only one way to put up content for others to view.
So I choose to lose email. I wouldn't even miss it much.
I think the movie should draw from the book, and the events of the game should be the last 1/3 of the movie. To be honest, the events of the movie are far too little to make a whole 2 hour movie. The book, which described the events leading up to the game, was not bad though. That would format the movie more like 'Conan', with the first half of the movie the 'growing up' period of the protagonist.
They're obliged to introduce it, due to fair trade agreements... but are they obliged to PASS it?
The Reports of Dialup's Death are Premature
on
PS3 Problems Parried
·
· Score: 1
Millions of people in the US cannot get broadband. In fact, there are nearly as many dialup users in the US as there are broadband. 45% of Internet users still use dialup... them's numbers to be aware of.
Now, it is very true that dialup users browse the Internet less, and are online less, than broadband users... so the number of visitors to any particular website are closer to 75% broadband. But in absolute numbers, dialup is far from dead.
The ISP I work for has 5000 dialup users, and 500 broadband users. In most of our service area, dialup is all that is available... and there is little we can do about it. Trees and hills block wireless, DSL is too short range, satellite is mediocre and expensive, cable doesn't reach...
Dialup won't die until broadband can reach rural areas at a price point under $20 per month.
I mostly game on a PC. I got my first gaming-only system 18 months ago... a DS. And I'll be getting my first-ever console in a few months... a Wii. I finally got a gaming system for two reasons... I have more money now, and these systems offer gameplay that is impossible to find for the PC.
Normally I game on a PC (and I program, and do tech support... I'm a full geek), and I always have, even when I was making nearly no money. A PC offers more price flexibility than a console does.
When you're poor, you can play free games. I can play multiplayer far easier than on a console (until XBox Live came out), extending the enjoyable life of my games. I can pirate games, TV, and movies when I'm broke.
When you're rich, you can do more on a PC than with a console. I can get a new video card and play the same games in higher resolutions. I can buy bleeding edge equipment, new games. I can play a wide variety of MMOs. I can play hot new titles on a big monitor with far more graphical splendour than the console.
The PC just scales better than a console to match your money situation. I can also use the same hardware for useful things (I work from home on Saturdays), not possible with a console. The console is a closed platform... prices are fixed, hardware is fixed, and you can't really change that without some heavy duty hacking.
Well, maybe not quite. But the Cell is designed for the kind of grunt, parallel type work that graphics processors often do. Just remains to be seen if it works as well as IBM hopes.
Games in modern settings are going to get advertising. It's just gonna happen, at least to some of them. However, games that are not in modern settings won't. Also, very simple. No idiot is gonna put a Nike in WoW or a Ford ad in System Shock. In games within their own alternate universe, it makes no sense to advertise, because it would only annoy. Games set in the real world are the market for this type of advertising. Historical games might go for historical ads... I wouldn't mind seeing an old Coca Cola sign on a shop set in WWII. Nor would I mind seeing a Ford ad on a billboard.
My only request is that the ad art be distressed to match the environment. This means that (for example) a billboard ad should have some stains on it. A poster on a wall should have water marks, dirt and grime (if that fits the setting at least). In other words, the ad should not look artificially clean so that it looks out of place. In a clean settings, sure... but in a realistic setting, with graffiti, grimy walls, etc, it looks ugly when the ad itself is artificially clean like a browser popup ad.
Summary: Fantasy ads bad, so they won't happen. Realistic ads fine, and we definitely will. Even historical ads are ok, if historical ad content is used (or historical LOOKING ads). And ads should fit the environment, via dirt/damage decals.
There is a law on the table (that may soon be voted in) that changes it so incidental copies (like, the COPY of/. that you are reading now that was COPIED over the internet to your browser, so it could display it to you) can be licensed separately, or can be disallowed/regulated, by copyright.
In other words, what used to be an automatic right, part of fair use (you're allowed to make copies in the course of normal use of a work), is now no longer a given... the person who creates the work can make it illegal to make even incidental copies in the normal course of accessing their work.
It's stupid. He also thinks it's stupid, and only copies made for commercial use should invoke copyright law.
There were tons of people who created and gave away their creations before the Internet. The difference is that before the Internet only people right nearby KNEW about them. Their was no ultra-cheap/free distribution method to get the creations of these people out into the hands of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of other people.
Many writers existed making stories for free. They wrote stories, books, novels... and were either uninterested or incompitent in trying to get them published. So who got to read them? Their family, neighbors, and friends. And that's it.
Many artists existed making paintings and drawings for free. Who saw them? Their family, neighbors, and friends. And that's it.
Many musicians existed who gave their music away for free or cost on casette tapes and such. Who heard them? Their family, neighbors, and friends, and maybe the local bars. And that's it.
People creating stuff for others, and giving it away for nothing or almost nothing, have always existed. But until the Internet, only a few people nearby knew about them. You probably knew someone yourself who fits this description (at least, if you're old enough to have known lots of people before 1995). Now, these same people can reach millions with a little technical savvy, or a friend with that savvy.
The Internet has made us the neighbors of everyone on the 'Net. We're all just one step away from everyone else. Just a visit, a quick jaunt across the street to read the latest writings, hear the newest song, or see the newest painting of that guy next door.
So nothing has changed. We just have more neighbors now.
With the buzz the Wii has right now (and hopefully at release), I fully expect Nintendo will go whole hog and release the Wii at $299. Three to six months later, it'll drop to $249, and six months to a year later, $199. Simply put, I think it'll sell at that higher price point, even to non-gamers, because I think they are putting out a great system. Particularly, I think the launch titles will sell it even at the higher price, and Nintendo has never been one to turn away money. If they start at $199, they'll have nowhere down to go... I don't think they wanna sell it at $149, because they would be losing money per box.
Unlike Sony and MS, Nintendo prefers to MAKE money on the boxes too, not just on the games. Since price cuts later in a units lifetime boost sales, they need to start somewhere high enough that they CAN cut prices, and still make money on the box. So I predict a starting point of $249 or even $299. I'm budgeting for $300, plus another $300 to buy a bunch of launch titles. Screw the PS3, I want my lightsaber... *cough*, I mean, I want my Wii remote.
Not 100 external services... 100 internal services, created and hosted on Amazon servers. Essentially they have compartmentalized their software development so that each piece of functionality is a black box, providing its content via a public interface so that changes to that component can be made without changing the home page at all (which gets thousands of hits per second).
In other words, they're using good software design techniques to minimize interdependancies and maximize code reuse.
The lower your income, the bigger random windfalls become. The $100 raffle pays out $100, whether you make that much in a month or that much in a day. That extra kidney you didn't really need sells for $2000 even if that's more than you make in 5 years.
Then there are families that pool their resources... very common when you get to the dirt poor. Houses with 4 families in them are common. Why not pool their resources and get a communal PC? It's not as off-the-wall as you make it sound.
Price, selection, and DRM is keeping me away from eBooks. $400+ for a reader that doesn't kill my eyes. Can't reliably get a book I want digitally. And if I get it, can't be certain I'll be able to keep it forever. Not to mention the cost of each book...
But that's all... ergonimics is not. I like the newer readers. I've dabbled with them, and I think I could read novels on them without frustration. I really like being able to search through books, and hold a library of books on one device. I read a LOT, but I'm not really attached to paper... I'd give that up without qualm.
I buy PDFs regularly though, because they cost a little less for reference books, and are not DRM restricted. I like being able to search through them. I have a couple programming references in PDF and Dead-tree... and I use the PDF more often than the tree. That's because I have the PDF copy at home and at work, and I'm almost always at my computer when I need it. The tree version is nice as well... I use that more when reading through whole chapters on the couch.
The eBook industry would have my complete reading budget (about $1000 per year) if:
- A good reader cost under $200 (I project this will happen in 2-5 years). - eBook costs fall to 1/2 to 2/3 the physical costs ($4-5 for fiction, $20-30 for reference). - DRM restrictions are greatly loosened or abandoned (The thought of being forced to re-purchase $2000 in books because my eReader is damaged is laughable).
This might seem like an obvious one... but it's not. When a user complained about the password complexity requirements, when was the last time you told them about dictionary attacks? When a user complained that Internet Explorer told him the 'server' was down, did you explain what a server means in computer terms, or did you just send them off with a reassurance and a condescending pat?
Users are not stupid... they are ignorant. They don't understand why it is failing. They may even be very knowledgable, just not in the domain of the current problem.
While you're waiting for that reboot, why not explain to the user what you suspect the problem is, and why. When they get confused between their email address and their username, clarify and define the terms. When they put www in front of every URL, whether it should be there or not, explain about how hostnames are a custom, not a rule.
"Type email.example.com in the address bar at the top."
"It says host not found?"
"Read me the address bar, letter by letter..."
"http://www..."
"Hold right there... the address I gave was email.example.com. Not all websites begin with www, just most."
"Ahh, gotit, lemme retype it..."
"Hostnames are just names... we could have called it fluffy.example.com if we wanted, but that would be silly. *chuckle* Ok, now that you have that typed in..."
And hopefully that user will remember from then on that websites don't have to begin with www. They may even look at and notice the alternate hosts various sites use. They learned something, it took only a few seconds longer, and the user will hopefully know a little more about the background behind the stuff they are told to do.
If you take a few seconds out of every call to combat ignorance, pretty soon you'll start getting fewer calls. At the very least, the calls will be more tolerable because the user won't be making the same completely stupid mistakes over and over because they don't understand.
If every tech took a few seconds to combat ignorance, we could actually make a difference.
This could have been insightful... but, you see, I've been on those private sites, and I've been out in the public Bittorrent sites. Surprise surprise, the public sites are a lot slower.
Sure you'll be able to eventually get a torrent anywhere, as long as you keep one seed out. But who wants 'eventually'. Private torrent communities almost always have fewer broken torrents, faster downloads, and less stalls. So real world experimentation seems to prove your theory wrong. Time to make a new theory.
I've notice many people here are misunderstanding the article. While the article does incorrectly state that 'all applications have hard coded passwords', I think what he meant was that 'nearly all applications that access secure resources over a network have hard coded passwords', and this is quite likely true.
For example, Apache has no hard coded passwords. But... what if you have your web application accessing a MySQL database on a different server? Well, then you need to login to that MySQL database. The password is stored in your web app. When was the last time that password was updated? And that, in theory, is easy to do because the web app isn't compiled and it's stored in a single location.
Another common scenario is a compiled Intranet app to, say, access Inventory information from a central database. It's common to have hardcoded logins to the database or web servers in apps like this. In fact, almost any app that does not require a user login, but does access secure resources, probably has a hardcoded login stored inside somewhere. Legions of these apps were coded by programmers who may be very competant, but are not security aware... they could well be stored plaintext right in the binary.
So the article may have been overgeneralizing, but it was quite accurate when it comes to business software.
Google can give out premium benefits to its employees because it only hires premium employees. For a country to successfully employ the Google model, they would have to deport (fire) anyone who is not up to snuff.
A country is a business entity that has military power to enforce its rule. And that's really the end of the definition. Remote companies in countries that don't put restrictions on them become de-facto governments for the employees who work there.
But, like any business entity, a government must remain solvent. They get money from the work of their citizens (employees), and use that money to provide benefits to the citizens. If the citizens are uneducated, lazy, or criminal, then the government cannot provide the same level of benefits. A business can fire employees that suck... most governments cannot. So governments must put up with crappier (on average) employees than most businesses. So a successful business can be picky, pick premium employees, and make big bucks (in theory) that they can pass on to the employees.
Slashdot Mirror
My sister married the guy she met on a local BBS. Not quite 'teh internets', but it was 1996... BBS were still going strong.
I think the ionic breeze actually uses a pretty low voltage... it's not thousands of volts like it was in the PopMech article, because the breeze is a lot slower. Chances are, to save on wiring, they just have a simple 120 volts in a rectified AC pattern. That, incidentally, is also another difference with bug zappers... I'm pretty sure that bug zappers alternate which side is negative and which is positive, which means there's no breeze because it flips between pushing and pulling 60 times a second.
:-)
For anyone who cares... making an ion wind generator is dead simple. Smooth out the AC power into DC current, pump the voltage up to around 1000 volts, and embed the negative and positive grates into a plastic fan case. The ionic breeze costs a lot, but it's pure profit for the Sharper Image. An ionic wind is cheaper to make than a normal fan.
It is, I think, less efficient electrically than a normal fan. Not certain. It's been nearly 30 years since I made one. Mine did NOT smooth out the current, and did NOT hop up the voltage, so it was about what I think an ionic breeze is. To get the fastest breeze though I put the negative and positive sides pretty close together, so it would zap if bugs got between. My biggest problem was I didn't have any plastic spacers in it, to keep the sides apart... if it tipped over, or someone pushed on the mesh (I had nothing to prevent that either) it would short out. And, since I had no built in fuse... well. Two house outages later, my parents threw it away.
Correct, but backwards... the negative side 'blows' towards the positive side.
A strong negative electric charge is put into one side of the system. This side should have many sharp points angled toward the positive side to be the most efficient. Negative charge builds up in this grid, concentrated at those points. The charge is not enough to actually arc across the air and make a spark, but it is high... high enough that electrons leap across, one by one. Actually, they're leaping across in the millions and billions per second, but they're so tiny that the effect is imperceptible.
:-)
This 'leaping' across has always seemed like how ice sublimates into a gas... it doesn't melt into water, then evaporate, an ice cube in dry air can evaporate directly. In the case of the electrons, they don't melt and flow across (spark) they just imperceptibly leap off one by one. Yeah, it's a bad analogy, but it's the best I can think of.
As the electrons leap across the gap, they sometimes run into air molecules. When they strike, they can merge with that molecule, and turn it into an ion... this air ion now has a negative charge, and it gets drawn toward the posotive side too... pulled across, the air molecule bumps and shoves other air molecules, and you get a current of air, many of them negatively charged ions.
This 'other side' happens to be big flat metal plates in the 'ionic breeze', but it doesn't have to be. It could be a simple grid of metal, like chicken wire or something. Anything that can carry a current, and let air blow past it.
The charge between the two can be thousands of volts, but the current is very small. However, something getting in that gap, like a bug, could get zapped. Yeah, bug zappers are technically 'ionic breeze' machines too, but the voltage and their shape is not optimized to blow air.
As to where I learned this... all hail Popular Mechanics. An article way back in the late 70's demonstrated these, but not to make ions... they demonstrated a grid powerful enough to take off. Imagine a perfectly silent helicopter with no moving parts, trailing a thick heavy power cable (because they couldn't generate enough electricity onboard to lift it on its own). Definitely a nifty idea.
The Raven
Sweet... I hadn't even noticed the tabs yet. Thanks Temujin. :-)
The web can be substituted by... hrm. FTP? Not really. Gopher? Hah! Maybe if the web was disabled for everyone, but this is just me... nothing on Gopher anymore. Telnet, ssh? Nope.
But email can be substituted by many other things. Message boards, instant messaging, comment threads, IRC... there are a hundred ways to communicate on the Internet, but only one way to put up content for others to view.
So I choose to lose email. I wouldn't even miss it much.
The Raven
I think the movie should draw from the book, and the events of the game should be the last 1/3 of the movie. To be honest, the events of the movie are far too little to make a whole 2 hour movie. The book, which described the events leading up to the game, was not bad though. That would format the movie more like 'Conan', with the first half of the movie the 'growing up' period of the protagonist.
Also, The Chief wasn't so taciturn in the book.
They're obliged to introduce it, due to fair trade agreements... but are they obliged to PASS it?
Millions of people in the US cannot get broadband. In fact, there are nearly as many dialup users in the US as there are broadband. 45% of Internet users still use dialup... them's numbers to be aware of.
Now, it is very true that dialup users browse the Internet less, and are online less, than broadband users... so the number of visitors to any particular website are closer to 75% broadband. But in absolute numbers, dialup is far from dead.
The ISP I work for has 5000 dialup users, and 500 broadband users. In most of our service area, dialup is all that is available... and there is little we can do about it. Trees and hills block wireless, DSL is too short range, satellite is mediocre and expensive, cable doesn't reach...
Dialup won't die until broadband can reach rural areas at a price point under $20 per month.
I mostly game on a PC. I got my first gaming-only system 18 months ago... a DS. And I'll be getting my first-ever console in a few months... a Wii. I finally got a gaming system for two reasons... I have more money now, and these systems offer gameplay that is impossible to find for the PC.
Normally I game on a PC (and I program, and do tech support... I'm a full geek), and I always have, even when I was making nearly no money. A PC offers more price flexibility than a console does.
When you're poor, you can play free games. I can play multiplayer far easier than on a console (until XBox Live came out), extending the enjoyable life of my games. I can pirate games, TV, and movies when I'm broke.
When you're rich, you can do more on a PC than with a console. I can get a new video card and play the same games in higher resolutions. I can buy bleeding edge equipment, new games. I can play a wide variety of MMOs. I can play hot new titles on a big monitor with far more graphical splendour than the console.
The PC just scales better than a console to match your money situation. I can also use the same hardware for useful things (I work from home on Saturdays), not possible with a console. The console is a closed platform... prices are fixed, hardware is fixed, and you can't really change that without some heavy duty hacking.
The Raven
It's called a Cell processor.
Well, maybe not quite. But the Cell is designed for the kind of grunt, parallel type work that graphics processors often do. Just remains to be seen if it works as well as IBM hopes.
Games in modern settings are going to get advertising. It's just gonna happen, at least to some of them. However, games that are not in modern settings won't. Also, very simple. No idiot is gonna put a Nike in WoW or a Ford ad in System Shock. In games within their own alternate universe, it makes no sense to advertise, because it would only annoy. Games set in the real world are the market for this type of advertising. Historical games might go for historical ads... I wouldn't mind seeing an old Coca Cola sign on a shop set in WWII. Nor would I mind seeing a Ford ad on a billboard.
My only request is that the ad art be distressed to match the environment. This means that (for example) a billboard ad should have some stains on it. A poster on a wall should have water marks, dirt and grime (if that fits the setting at least). In other words, the ad should not look artificially clean so that it looks out of place. In a clean settings, sure... but in a realistic setting, with graffiti, grimy walls, etc, it looks ugly when the ad itself is artificially clean like a browser popup ad.
Summary: Fantasy ads bad, so they won't happen. Realistic ads fine, and we definitely will. Even historical ads are ok, if historical ad content is used (or historical LOOKING ads). And ads should fit the environment, via dirt/damage decals.
Raven
There is a law on the table (that may soon be voted in) that changes it so incidental copies (like, the COPY of /. that you are reading now that was COPIED over the internet to your browser, so it could display it to you) can be licensed separately, or can be disallowed/regulated, by copyright.
In other words, what used to be an automatic right, part of fair use (you're allowed to make copies in the course of normal use of a work), is now no longer a given... the person who creates the work can make it illegal to make even incidental copies in the normal course of accessing their work.
It's stupid. He also thinks it's stupid, and only copies made for commercial use should invoke copyright law.
The Raven
Sidewalk entertainers.
Fan Fiction (yes, it existed before the Internet)
Graffiti Art
There were tons of people who created and gave away their creations before the Internet. The difference is that before the Internet only people right nearby KNEW about them. Their was no ultra-cheap/free distribution method to get the creations of these people out into the hands of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of other people.
Many writers existed making stories for free. They wrote stories, books, novels... and were either uninterested or incompitent in trying to get them published. So who got to read them? Their family, neighbors, and friends. And that's it.
Many artists existed making paintings and drawings for free. Who saw them? Their family, neighbors, and friends. And that's it.
Many musicians existed who gave their music away for free or cost on casette tapes and such. Who heard them? Their family, neighbors, and friends, and maybe the local bars. And that's it.
People creating stuff for others, and giving it away for nothing or almost nothing, have always existed. But until the Internet, only a few people nearby knew about them. You probably knew someone yourself who fits this description (at least, if you're old enough to have known lots of people before 1995). Now, these same people can reach millions with a little technical savvy, or a friend with that savvy.
The Internet has made us the neighbors of everyone on the 'Net. We're all just one step away from everyone else. Just a visit, a quick jaunt across the street to read the latest writings, hear the newest song, or see the newest painting of that guy next door.
So nothing has changed. We just have more neighbors now.
The Raven
Whoever modded him as 'Insightful' needs to RTFA, or even RTFS. Or buy a clue. Seriously, you kids these days... ;-)
... filtering for every different piece of software would mean manually adding filters for hundreds, or thousands of topics. It's ludicrous.
With the buzz the Wii has right now (and hopefully at release), I fully expect Nintendo will go whole hog and release the Wii at $299. Three to six months later, it'll drop to $249, and six months to a year later, $199. Simply put, I think it'll sell at that higher price point, even to non-gamers, because I think they are putting out a great system. Particularly, I think the launch titles will sell it even at the higher price, and Nintendo has never been one to turn away money. If they start at $199, they'll have nowhere down to go... I don't think they wanna sell it at $149, because they would be losing money per box.
Unlike Sony and MS, Nintendo prefers to MAKE money on the boxes too, not just on the games. Since price cuts later in a units lifetime boost sales, they need to start somewhere high enough that they CAN cut prices, and still make money on the box. So I predict a starting point of $249 or even $299. I'm budgeting for $300, plus another $300 to buy a bunch of launch titles. Screw the PS3, I want my lightsaber... *cough*, I mean, I want my Wii remote.
Raven
Not 100 external services... 100 internal services, created and hosted on Amazon servers. Essentially they have compartmentalized their software development so that each piece of functionality is a black box, providing its content via a public interface so that changes to that component can be made without changing the home page at all (which gets thousands of hits per second).
In other words, they're using good software design techniques to minimize interdependancies and maximize code reuse.
Yes, it is a good thing.
The lower your income, the bigger random windfalls become. The $100 raffle pays out $100, whether you make that much in a month or that much in a day. That extra kidney you didn't really need sells for $2000 even if that's more than you make in 5 years.
Then there are families that pool their resources... very common when you get to the dirt poor. Houses with 4 families in them are common. Why not pool their resources and get a communal PC? It's not as off-the-wall as you make it sound.
Will you switch to IE when Firefox passes it in popularity, and IE falles to #2?
Price, selection, and DRM is keeping me away from eBooks. $400+ for a reader that doesn't kill my eyes. Can't reliably get a book I want digitally. And if I get it, can't be certain I'll be able to keep it forever. Not to mention the cost of each book...
But that's all... ergonimics is not. I like the newer readers. I've dabbled with them, and I think I could read novels on them without frustration. I really like being able to search through books, and hold a library of books on one device. I read a LOT, but I'm not really attached to paper... I'd give that up without qualm.
I buy PDFs regularly though, because they cost a little less for reference books, and are not DRM restricted. I like being able to search through them. I have a couple programming references in PDF and Dead-tree... and I use the PDF more often than the tree. That's because I have the PDF copy at home and at work, and I'm almost always at my computer when I need it. The tree version is nice as well... I use that more when reading through whole chapters on the couch.
The eBook industry would have my complete reading budget (about $1000 per year) if:
- A good reader cost under $200 (I project this will happen in 2-5 years).
- eBook costs fall to 1/2 to 2/3 the physical costs ($4-5 for fiction, $20-30 for reference).
- DRM restrictions are greatly loosened or abandoned (The thought of being forced to re-purchase $2000 in books because my eReader is damaged is laughable).
This might seem like an obvious one... but it's not. When a user complained about the password complexity requirements, when was the last time you told them about dictionary attacks? When a user complained that Internet Explorer told him the 'server' was down, did you explain what a server means in computer terms, or did you just send them off with a reassurance and a condescending pat?
Users are not stupid... they are ignorant. They don't understand why it is failing. They may even be very knowledgable, just not in the domain of the current problem.
While you're waiting for that reboot, why not explain to the user what you suspect the problem is, and why. When they get confused between their email address and their username, clarify and define the terms. When they put www in front of every URL, whether it should be there or not, explain about how hostnames are a custom, not a rule.
"Type email.example.com in the address bar at the top."
"It says host not found?"
"Read me the address bar, letter by letter..."
"http://www..."
"Hold right there... the address I gave was email.example.com. Not all websites begin with www, just most."
"Ahh, gotit, lemme retype it..."
"Hostnames are just names... we could have called it fluffy.example.com if we wanted, but that would be silly. *chuckle* Ok, now that you have that typed in..."
And hopefully that user will remember from then on that websites don't have to begin with www. They may even look at and notice the alternate hosts various sites use. They learned something, it took only a few seconds longer, and the user will hopefully know a little more about the background behind the stuff they are told to do.
If you take a few seconds out of every call to combat ignorance, pretty soon you'll start getting fewer calls. At the very least, the calls will be more tolerable because the user won't be making the same completely stupid mistakes over and over because they don't understand.
If every tech took a few seconds to combat ignorance, we could actually make a difference.
The Raven
This could have been insightful... but, you see, I've been on those private sites, and I've been out in the public Bittorrent sites. Surprise surprise, the public sites are a lot slower.
Sure you'll be able to eventually get a torrent anywhere, as long as you keep one seed out. But who wants 'eventually'. Private torrent communities almost always have fewer broken torrents, faster downloads, and less stalls. So real world experimentation seems to prove your theory wrong. Time to make a new theory.
I've notice many people here are misunderstanding the article. While the article does incorrectly state that 'all applications have hard coded passwords', I think what he meant was that 'nearly all applications that access secure resources over a network have hard coded passwords', and this is quite likely true.
For example, Apache has no hard coded passwords. But... what if you have your web application accessing a MySQL database on a different server? Well, then you need to login to that MySQL database. The password is stored in your web app. When was the last time that password was updated? And that, in theory, is easy to do because the web app isn't compiled and it's stored in a single location.
Another common scenario is a compiled Intranet app to, say, access Inventory information from a central database. It's common to have hardcoded logins to the database or web servers in apps like this. In fact, almost any app that does not require a user login, but does access secure resources, probably has a hardcoded login stored inside somewhere. Legions of these apps were coded by programmers who may be very competant, but are not security aware... they could well be stored plaintext right in the binary.
So the article may have been overgeneralizing, but it was quite accurate when it comes to business software.
The Raven
This would not work.
Google can give out premium benefits to its employees because it only hires premium employees. For a country to successfully employ the Google model, they would have to deport (fire) anyone who is not up to snuff.
A country is a business entity that has military power to enforce its rule. And that's really the end of the definition. Remote companies in countries that don't put restrictions on them become de-facto governments for the employees who work there.
But, like any business entity, a government must remain solvent. They get money from the work of their citizens (employees), and use that money to provide benefits to the citizens. If the citizens are uneducated, lazy, or criminal, then the government cannot provide the same level of benefits. A business can fire employees that suck... most governments cannot. So governments must put up with crappier (on average) employees than most businesses. So a successful business can be picky, pick premium employees, and make big bucks (in theory) that they can pass on to the employees.
Governments cannot. It's silly to expect them to.