>Wireless (especially N) is more than fast enough for your average office employee
For one, yes. But a whole office sharing the bandwidth, or even a whole building? Remember that you only get a maximum of 2 or 3 independent channel on wireless, and with N you can forget even that.
For light office workers or for semi-nomads with laptops and off-line storage this may work, but for many computer users it would just be a big step backwards.
> Their problem is keeping the cards secure and they state clearly that they are using commercially available smart cards.
The other problem is the use of an RFID interface. Unless you have a metal wallet, your card would be vulnerable to third party use as long as they can get close enough to your wallet. The normal readers can only bridge a few centimeters, but there is no reason why with proper signal amplification it should not work over a meter or more. Suddenly new attack scenarios become feasible that are completely unnecessary.
RFID may be nice, but the card needs an off switch to be safe.
>Looking at vulnerability stats at secunia shows that Microsoft QC have improved drastically across their entire product portfolio:
You have to read these with caution, though. Microsoft has been trying to get the vulnerability count down, and one way of doing this is merging several vulnerabilities into one. It looks good on paper, but it does not make the product any more secure.
That being said, the recent product certainly show improvements. They absolutely beat Java and Acrobat, when it comes to security. I think the comparison with Firefox may be uneven, though, because the Firefox guys class just about anything as a potential security issue, just to be on the safe side.
It is the other way round, very much for the reason that you mentioned. USB uses a data stream abstraction, and that can be virtualised (not easy, but possible). Most virtual machines can access USB devices on the host. But that is not possible for PCI, precisely because PCI works without this abstraction, and gives devices direct access to the memory. Because the interface to the DMA controller is different for each device, it is not possible to write a generic virtualisation layer.
Low cost? 10p for GB is more than you pay for a hard disk. Ok, so maybe it is lighter than a hard disk, but Ibet not as fast. Also Blu-Ray disks cost just a fraction of this price, and 4 four layer version is already working in the lab.
>2. Unscrupulous individual obtains opt-out list with your contact info and sells it to Nigerian spammers or other foreign group.
Indeed, which is why opt-out is a bad idea, if it is done centrally.
And I am missing my personal number 1 anyway: Flash cookies. Adobe does not make it easy to disable them, but it is absolutely worth it. Flash cookies are a privacy nightmare, much worse than normal cookies, and yet much less known (amongst users).
>Welcome to the real world, where standing waves on transmission lines do exist, and you can choose lengths carefully based on the frequency going down it.
That may be true for RF, but the whole point of communication is that you get more than a single frequency - a frequency spectrum. So matching your cable length is no good for Ethernet.
In practice, there are hardly issues with standing waves, because the cable is unidirectional. So two reflections have to occur, and there is additional damping in the cable. So unless your impedance is way off, you should be fine. Even a 10% mismatch is perfectly harmless.
Because unlike Mac OS X, which gets slicker with every upgrade, Windows becomes heavier, much heavier.
XP required 128 MB of RAM and a 300 MHz CPU. Vista needs 1 GBof RAM and reasonably a dual core CPU. Of course there are also the "basic" specs, but then why would you upgrade? Vista is a pig, but at least it seems like Windows 7 will be no more of a pig than Vista...
>Using Firefox (or even IE) on a production server to hit support.microsoft.com
No, Idon't think so. You should download files on a different computer, check them, and only then transfer them onto the server. That is even more so if you do not use https for the download (and very few downloads do that).
I agree that it is not where KDE3 is, but at least it is beginning to get usable. Ok, even KDE4.1 in 8.10 is usable, but only barely, while KDE4.2 in 9.04 is actually nice, although not mature yet. Let's hope that KDE4.3 is finally "ready".
>at the same time computers keep getting faster making running things like Java less annoying
Luckily Sun has an answer for that, too: the next Java version is always more than compensating for faster computing:-(. Iremember that back in the days I timed JRE 1.0 or 1.1 to start within 3 seconds on a 486 (!). It takes longer to start JRE 1.6 on my state of the art dual core now.
The original submission is written by an idiot. Power factor is the ratio between real power to apparent power - notice anything? Indeed, apparent power does not require any energy to produce, it can be created endlessly from passive compensation devices. Yes, it is an annoyance for the utility providers, because they has to do this compensation, but it is a very minor issue.
So LEDs might be a lot nicer, but it is for other reasons:directed light, better aging, instant brightness, smaller form factor etc. And is it worth 10 times the prices? Maybe for you, but not for me.
> Now everything is entirely dependent on your setup, but your biggest factor is going to be RAM.
Indeed. Idid a bog standard upgrade to an Athlon 4800+ with 4GBof RAM, and now I can run several VMs no problem. At current prices, even 8GB of ram are affordable, and the 64bit version of Ubuntu is getting really usable. Top it off with 2 SATAhard disks with NCQ, and it should run nicely.
Yep, that is very much my experience with KDE 4.1. So many things stopped working that it is barely usable. Which is fine, expect that version 4.0 was supposed to be the shiny new framework, and 4.1 was promised to be ready for the end user. By sticking labels on it, the developers create expectations in the user base, and the stick is justified if the expectations are not achieved.
> Windows Update, which requires IE's API's to work properly.
Which must be one of the worst software decisions ever. Active X is an incredibly stupid design, and the root cause for many Windows security problems. With Windows Update Microsoft is cementing it in by making it system critical.
> Are you kidding? Not enough CPU power? 1.2 GHz is enough for me to do raytracing!
Funny. I think it could serve as a TV hard disk recorder (PVR), because it could just record the bit stream without further processing. Moving 2GB/h should not be a problem even for a system as slow as this one. Reencoding, deinterlacing or commercial detection could be done overnight, or on a different system.
> Googles Analytics does check for flash player. I'm sure they know.;)
Google Mail does it, too, although Ithink it is only used for the "new mail"sound, and maybe for video chat.
Anyway, the reason that Flash is so popular is twofold:
a) it is really available for most platforms, including AMD64 (with ndiswrapper for a few years, and now even native), and
b) it does actually provide extra value:sound, video, stunning graphics etc
Both points are very much unlike Java, which remains slow, cumbersome, without proper support for AMD64, and really:what can you do in Java that you cannot do in some way in ECMA script?
Let's face it:Flash has won the plug-in war, and it is not even close.
Should be obvious, hm? Because Vendor B is the one really to blame: as far as I can see, one router from Vendor A misbehaved, but thousands or more from Vendor B. Unfortunately, Vendor B is also the one with deep pockets for legal action, so you cannot possible put the blame on them. Oops, hope Ido not get sued.
Well, whichever way you look at it, it is going to happen. The future is a multi-core CPU with SIMD capabilities, that will outshine current GPUs and CPUs alike.
The main question is whether a cores are going to be identical, or whether there are dedicated cores for specific purposes. Same for the memory interface:unified or NUMA?But those are minor architectural issues that only fill in the details of the big picture.
> I think this simply calls for a really long, over-promising and under-delivering open source driver project in the tradition of Nouveau or anything in DRI produced without commercial support.
As much as I am skeptical of them, Intel seems to be the only company interested in open source drivers. ATI may be making moves in that direction, too, but I am still waiting for results.
As for VIA/S3: at least the specs for some of the chips are out now. Unfortunately, the existing drivers are still some of the worst code I have ever seen - and most things work more by accident than by design, if at all.
> In 2008, it was 183.21. (Since you're probably SI challenged, that's a difference of 4.7 inches on a 601 foot deep lake.) That's a difference of.000645%. ZOMFG - 6.5 ten thousandths of a percent!
I think you are percentage challenged - the difference is a *factor* of.000645, or 0.0645%. And if you go by volume, it could be another order magnitude more. So the change is small, but it is certainly there.
> I'd call you an f***ing idiot
That is a bit daring on slashdot for someone who cannot use percentages...
> Run As... works for everything but launching Windows Update
That seems like a major flow to me - but it is no surprise. Designing a key feature for securing a system as an Active X component must rate as one of the worst design decisions in recent history.
> In 50yrs I think you'd have more problem porting the video out than anything else.
Maybe, but then maybe not. NTSC was defined in 1941, and current TVs are still compatible with the signal defined then. Yes, I know that things are changing: modulators are a thing of the past, and digital is the way to go. But still, compatibility has not been broken over nearly 70 years.
So do not underestimate the inertia of standards once defined. I would not be surprised if USB is around for a long long time, for example, just like the infamous 1/8" TRS jack.
Slashdot Mirror
>Wireless (especially N) is more than fast enough for your average office employee
For one, yes. But a whole office sharing the bandwidth, or even a whole building? Remember that you only get a maximum of 2 or 3 independent channel on wireless, and with N you can forget even that.
For light office workers or for semi-nomads with laptops and off-line storage this may work, but for many computer users it would just be a big step backwards.
> Their problem is keeping the cards secure and they state clearly that they are using commercially available smart cards.
The other problem is the use of an RFID interface. Unless you have a metal wallet, your card would be vulnerable to third party use as long as they can get close enough to your wallet. The normal readers can only bridge a few centimeters, but there is no reason why with proper signal amplification it should not work over a meter or more. Suddenly new attack scenarios become feasible that are completely unnecessary.
RFID may be nice, but the card needs an off switch to be safe.
>Looking at vulnerability stats at secunia shows that Microsoft QC have improved drastically across their entire product portfolio:
You have to read these with caution, though. Microsoft has been trying to get the vulnerability count down, and one way of doing this is merging several vulnerabilities into one. It looks good on paper, but it does not make the product any more secure.
That being said, the recent product certainly show improvements. They absolutely beat Java and Acrobat, when it comes to security. I think the comparison with Firefox may be uneven, though, because the Firefox guys class just about anything as a potential security issue, just to be on the safe side.
>USB is much harder to virtualise than PCI.
It is the other way round, very much for the reason that you mentioned. USB uses a data stream abstraction, and that can be virtualised (not easy, but possible). Most virtual machines can access USB devices on the host. But that is not possible for PCI, precisely because PCI works without this abstraction, and gives devices direct access to the memory. Because the interface to the DMA controller is different for each device, it is not possible to write a generic virtualisation layer.
Low cost? 10p for GB is more than you pay for a hard disk. Ok, so maybe it is lighter than a hard disk, but Ibet not as fast. Also Blu-Ray disks cost just a fraction of this price, and 4 four layer version is already working in the lab.
>2. Unscrupulous individual obtains opt-out list with your contact info and sells it to Nigerian spammers or other foreign group.
Indeed, which is why opt-out is a bad idea, if it is done centrally.
And I am missing my personal number 1 anyway: Flash cookies. Adobe does not make it easy to disable them, but it is absolutely worth it. Flash cookies are a privacy nightmare, much worse than normal cookies, and yet much less known (amongst users).
>Welcome to the real world, where standing waves on transmission lines do exist, and you can choose lengths carefully based on the frequency going down it.
That may be true for RF, but the whole point of communication is that you get more than a single frequency - a frequency spectrum. So matching your cable length is no good for Ethernet.
In practice, there are hardly issues with standing waves, because the cable is unidirectional. So two reflections have to occur, and there is additional damping in the cable. So unless your impedance is way off, you should be fine. Even a 10% mismatch is perfectly harmless.
>Why can't they just put the CD in and upgrade?
Because unlike Mac OS X, which gets slicker with every upgrade, Windows becomes heavier, much heavier.
XP required 128 MB of RAM and a 300 MHz CPU. Vista needs 1 GBof RAM and reasonably a dual core CPU. Of course there are also the "basic" specs, but then why would you upgrade? Vista is a pig, but at least it seems like Windows 7 will be no more of a pig than Vista...
> I implemented a nightly shut down policy for our users
Which is great, unless
- you want to be able to access your PC from home
- the virus scanner is set on read, so logging in takes 5 minutes in the morning
- you want to run a simulation over night
- updates should be run overnight
So yes, there is a case for shutting down PCs, but it is not always easy. Users will do it if it works.
>Using Firefox (or even IE) on a production server to hit support.microsoft.com
No, Idon't think so. You should download files on a different computer, check them, and only then transfer them onto the server. That is even more so if you do not use https for the download (and very few downloads do that).
>Well, KDE4 in 0904beta is still not ready...
I agree that it is not where KDE3 is, but at least it is beginning to get usable. Ok, even KDE4.1 in 8.10 is usable, but only barely, while KDE4.2 in 9.04 is actually nice, although not mature yet. Let's hope that KDE4.3 is finally "ready".
>at the same time computers keep getting faster making running things like Java less annoying
Luckily Sun has an answer for that, too: the next Java version is always more than compensating for faster computing :-(. Iremember that back in the days I timed JRE 1.0 or 1.1 to start within 3 seconds on a 486 (!). It takes longer to start JRE 1.6 on my state of the art dual core now.
The original submission is written by an idiot. Power factor is the ratio between real power to apparent power - notice anything? Indeed, apparent power does not require any energy to produce, it can be created endlessly from passive compensation devices. Yes, it is an annoyance for the utility providers, because they has to do this compensation, but it is a very minor issue.
So LEDs might be a lot nicer, but it is for other reasons:directed light, better aging, instant brightness, smaller form factor etc. And is it worth 10 times the prices? Maybe for you, but not for me.
> Now everything is entirely dependent on your setup, but your biggest factor is going to be RAM.
Indeed. Idid a bog standard upgrade to an Athlon 4800+ with 4GBof RAM, and now I can run several VMs no problem. At current prices, even 8GB of ram are affordable, and the 64bit version of Ubuntu is getting really usable. Top it off with 2 SATAhard disks with NCQ, and it should run nicely.
> User: "So stuff that I use now stops working?"
Yep, that is very much my experience with KDE 4.1. So many things stopped working that it is barely usable. Which is fine, expect that version 4.0 was supposed to be the shiny new framework, and 4.1 was promised to be ready for the end user. By sticking labels on it, the developers create expectations in the user base, and the stick is justified if the expectations are not achieved.
> Windows Update, which requires IE's API's to work properly.
Which must be one of the worst software decisions ever. Active X is an incredibly stupid design, and the root cause for many Windows security problems. With Windows Update Microsoft is cementing it in by making it system critical.
> Are you kidding? Not enough CPU power? 1.2 GHz is enough for me to do raytracing!
Funny. I think it could serve as a TV hard disk recorder (PVR), because it could just record the bit stream without further processing. Moving 2GB/h should not be a problem even for a system as slow as this one. Reencoding, deinterlacing or commercial detection could be done overnight, or on a different system.
> Googles Analytics does check for flash player. I'm sure they know. ;)
Google Mail does it, too, although Ithink it is only used for the "new mail"sound, and maybe for video chat.
Anyway, the reason that Flash is so popular is twofold:
a) it is really available for most platforms, including AMD64 (with ndiswrapper for a few years, and now even native), and
b) it does actually provide extra value:sound, video, stunning graphics etc
Both points are very much unlike Java, which remains slow, cumbersome, without proper support for AMD64, and really:what can you do in Java that you cannot do in some way in ECMA script?
Let's face it:Flash has won the plug-in war, and it is not even close.
Should be obvious, hm? Because Vendor B is the one really to blame: as far as I can see, one router from Vendor A misbehaved, but thousands or more from Vendor B. Unfortunately, Vendor B is also the one with deep pockets for legal action, so you cannot possible put the blame on them. Oops, hope Ido not get sued.
Well, whichever way you look at it, it is going to happen. The future is a multi-core CPU with SIMD capabilities, that will outshine current GPUs and CPUs alike.
The main question is whether a cores are going to be identical, or whether there are dedicated cores for specific purposes. Same for the memory interface:unified or NUMA?But those are minor architectural issues that only fill in the details of the big picture.
> I think this simply calls for a really long, over-promising and under-delivering open source driver project in the tradition of Nouveau or anything in DRI produced without commercial support.
As much as I am skeptical of them, Intel seems to be the only company interested in open source drivers. ATI may be making moves in that direction, too, but I am still waiting for results.
As for VIA/S3: at least the specs for some of the chips are out now. Unfortunately, the existing drivers are still some of the worst code I have ever seen - and most things work more by accident than by design, if at all.
> They're assimilating children to make them smart enough to use their products?
Maybe children are smarter than you give them credit for? :-)
Anyway, the license is not a problem - nobody (except maybe a senior lawyer in contract law) really understands the legalese.
> In 2008, it was 183.21. (Since you're probably SI challenged, that's a difference of 4.7 inches on a 601 foot deep lake.) That's a difference of .000645%. ZOMFG - 6.5 ten thousandths of a percent!
I think you are percentage challenged - the difference is a *factor* of .000645, or 0.0645%. And if you go by volume, it could be another order magnitude more. So the change is small, but it is certainly there.
> I'd call you an f***ing idiot
That is a bit daring on slashdot for someone who cannot use percentages...
> Run As... works for everything but launching Windows Update
That seems like a major flow to me - but it is no surprise. Designing a key feature for securing a system as an Active X component must rate as one of the worst design decisions in recent history.
> In 50yrs I think you'd have more problem porting the video out than anything else.
Maybe, but then maybe not. NTSC was defined in 1941, and current TVs are still compatible with the signal defined then. Yes, I know that things are changing: modulators are a thing of the past, and digital is the way to go. But still, compatibility has not been broken over nearly 70 years.
So do not underestimate the inertia of standards once defined. I would not be surprised if USB is around for a long long time, for example, just like the infamous 1/8" TRS jack.