I do find it interesting though that only commercial airliners have this rule. Military flights don't care if you leave your cell phone on, nor do police flights, or civil aviation flights.
For that matter, if it's such an issue, why do they make aviation headsets with bluetooth capabilities? or old fashioned wired cell phone headset connectors?
I fly frequently, I never turn off my cell phone. but then again, I never fly commercial.
I've been in the cockpit of a millitary hercules transport plane while the pilot, his instructor, and the flight engineer all had their cell phones out and on.
Part of our routine civil aviation SAR operations use text messaging to communicate between our aircraft and the base station.
The ONLY good reason I've ever seen for having a ban on cell phones in aircraft is that I don't want a plane full of a hundred people yabbering away while I'm trying to nap.
That 25 million profit won't get their first satellite off the ground, and they need 78 of them. They also have no existing market share to work off of, and are competing with entrenched players. They also can't rely on people in any town or city as those people will always be better off on DSL, Cable, or Fibre. (this will necessarily be slower, and more expensive than those options where they are available)
They have a great market niche to look forward to, but the start up costs truly are "out of this world"
Iridium was done by a major corporation with lots of market research, they bombed, badly. This company likely hasn't done even as much research as that...
As for "learning the market" I work in telecommunications and I do pay attention to what is happening in the market, There are MUCH larger players in Canada than Northwestel, making MUCH more money, and none of them would consider a venture like this because of the large expense, and high risk.
There is money to be made, but there's also a LOT to be spent, and recouping all your costs from a large population who have never heard of you and are already on your competition is just not easy.
I'm not saying it won't succeed, I'm just saying that the odds of one company with a vision making it work all the way from concept to implementation without loosing their shirt is rather small.
except what it says on there is "we're trying our best to lock down what end users will get, but hope to have some difficult to obtain developer only version that won't be locked down"
That doesn't make it even the slightest bit better.
I'm a practical person, and as much as I love the theory of truly open, I also buy the best tool for the job. If I can get root, I'll likely buy it, even if I can't install something other than Android. If I can't have root though, they can't have my money. (and they tried that on the Milestone, but people managed to get around it)
Re:Responding professionally to bad customer reque
on
DSL Installation Fail
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· Score: 1
oops... I meant to say paid by the job instead of by the hour...
I'm paid by the hour, but half our workforce is paid by the job. the difference shows, and finally management is admitting the same thing!
I second that, I have a Motorola Milestone right now, and because of the valiant efforts of others, and despite Motorola, I have it rooted and love it.
I have been drooling over the Xoom and hope to be able to buy one as soon as possible... but if I can't have root, I may have to try for a different tablet.
I'm sick and tired of companies who think they can tell me what to do with MY hardware after I have purchased it from them, it isn't theirs anymore, I'm ok if they won't support any changes I make, but I'm not ok with them actively blocking them.
There is another likely option. Many ADSL providers have a "self install" option, where they mail you a kit and you install it yourself (generally if you have phone jacks somewhere near your computer it's pretty easy, plug in the modem, put filters on all your other sets, and voilla). If the neighbour here did that I wouldn't be entirely surprised, I've seen some pretty creative installs done that way.
Re:Responding professionally to bad customer reque
on
DSL Installation Fail
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Or he could do like I do every single day, and just do the job, and do the job right.
Unfortunately at this point the only picture to reference is the one in the slashdot summary as the original has been removed, however based on the summary description and picture, I just can't even imagine what they were thinking. I have seen some pretty creative installs though, and the usual culprit is contractors who are paid by the hour instead of by the job, if they can save 10 seconds they will, no matter what it does to the quality of the job. And management usually loves them for it, because their numbers are good... unless you include the number of repairs they cause...
I install phone, internet, and TV, including ADSL, Fibre Optics, and Satellite services. I do it in Canada, and I do it year round. Weather is not a valid excuse. I have installed satellite dishes in blizzards at -25c, I have terminated fibre optics when I couldn't feel my fingers, and couldn't keep the snow out of the mechanical splicer, and I have terminated aerial service drops at the top of a pole while soaked to the bone and feeling the line voltage through my soaked gloves, and I have NEVER cancelled or rescheduled a job due to weather.
Weather is part of the job, if you don't want to work outside in whatever the weather happens to be, you don't work as a telecommunication technician doing residential and small business installs and repairs. It's pretty much that simple.
That said, I also get to work outdoors in the sunshine in the summer, I have worked on connection boxes on the side of the road not 5 meters away from a moose with 2 calves, and I have worked on rooftops and at pole-tops with views you could sell, and I get amazing variety and no managers watching over my shoulder, I never want to work a desk job again.
Or more likely, these guys will go broke, but whoever buys their satellite constellation will make loads of money...
I really like the idea, but I see it going the way of Iridium, the up front costs are just too high to make any money in the near term. That said, Iridium is still around, and I've been quite happy with it every time I've used it (works much better than Globalstar) So if this does the same thing, I look forward to whoever buys the constellation. It will solve a really big problem of internet in rural Canada (and the rest of the world). Especially nice would be the ability to use it mobile (current satellite internet systems require a precisely aimed dish, a LEO system would not, and as such could keep you connected easily on a moving bus/plane/boat/car
But that was a geostationary satellite, this is talking LEO, there's a huge difference. Geostationary is the reason satellite internet has a bad reputation, you're sending a signal 36,000km each way, that adds a lot of time to your pings. The plan here is for the altitude to be only 1000km, or 1/36th the distance, so if your ping before was 2000ms then your new ping time would only be about 55ms which is quite acceptable.
The downside is instead of launching 1 satellite, they are launching 78, so the big question remains as to whether they can make it cost effective, or if this will be another Irridium (which in and of itself isn't actually a bad thing, because the Irridium network, although not being run by the original company, does work, and does work very well.)
At the airport in a chair your lap supports the screen, and the keyboard isn't used, if you find a table, the built in kickstand or flip open case support the screen and you pull your bluetooth keyboard out of your bag. when you're at home or at the office the dock supports the screen and you already have a keyboard and mouse there (and maybe even a larger screen if you like).
What you see as the downside to it is actually the advantage that I see. I can take it wherever I want and still be functional, but any time I want serious computing I simply dock it with the keyboard/mouse/larger screen and continue right where it left off as I'm always on the same device no matter where I am.
I easily see my home computer being completely replaced in the next couple of years by a tablet, a docking station with keyboard/mouse/monitor and some network attached storage, and at the same time replace my laptop with that same tablet.
Sure there are some niches where more processing power is required, but that will not cover your average user.
and what's wrong with a tablet, that docks with a keyboard and mouse (they already exist)
Best of both worlds, use it anywhere, but when you want to get "serious work" done you dock it at your desk.
Sure, current tablets can't handle some high end activities that are extremely resource intensive, but a large percentage of the general public never handles those activities either. I don't think anyone is claiming that the "wintel" platform will cease to exist (well, at least not any time soon), only that "armdroid" will take a large percentage of it's current market.
I'm already considering it myself to be honest, there are very few times when an android tablet wouldn't do everything I need as long as I can dock it to a keyboard and mouse.
Your hypothetical situation that you say would be immune to the attack involves an unprivileged user with local access to the machine. If I have local access to leave a program running for the next person who logs on, I don't need "admin" rights. I've already got full access to the entire system simply by virtue of physical access, so it's irrelevant.
If I can con a user in to running a program I send them remotely, then I can also con them in to running it as admin, which means I can do any of the things listed in any of those articles.
In both cases I succeed.
So your assertion that ctrl-alt-del can't be trapped is either a) false, or b) true, but irrelevant.
Re:Climate science is just a big weather forecast.
on
Bastardi's Wager
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· Score: 1
and yet instead of a counter prediction, all the Global Warming supporters can do is criticize the person making the prediction....
I don't care. He's made a prediction, let the other side do the same.
Science isn't about your degree, or the letters behind your name, it isn't about who your employer is, or any of that. It's about whether or not you are right.
Would you want to ignore a major scientific discovery just because the guy who figured it out didn't have "phd" behind his name?
If an accountant came up to me while I was working and showed me a better way to wire a network I wouldn't tell him that he's not qualified to do so and continue doing things with the worse method.
That's the great thing about science, it's based on facts, and reproducible experiments. Any "science" which refuses to allow contrary opinions isn't a science, it's a religion. Same with any science that won't let you criticize it without being indoctrinated.
If global warming is real, and the earth is going to warm, put up the money and take his bet, after all, if he really doesn't know what he's talking about it's easy money right?
Global warming supporters were quick to say that an increase in solar activity in the last few years had nothing at all to do with our increase in temperature, so why would they expect that a decrease in solar activity would lower it.
Seems to me that any global warming supporter should be all over this bet, easy money after all...
It's worked for Global warming supporters quite well so far...
they said we'd all cook... and we didn't. they said we'd never see snow again, and we're covered in it they said we just haven't waited long enough... but that we'd better act now!
If they refuse to make predictions they aren't doing science at all. If their predictions are consistently wrong... then maybe they should change their stance (as opposed to the current method of changing their data)
unless system security is already compromised in some other way
If you HADN'T "compromised security in some other way" then you wouldn't be able to put up a fake login prompt no matter what key press was required as you wouldn't be able to run any applications.
The point is that if you can already run things on the computer (often by fooling the user in to doing so themselves, but other security holes would work too), then you have enough authority to intercept ctrl-alt-del, and if you don't, well it doesn't matter what you can intercept...
the water flow is not shrinking, and they were very definitely NOT talking about the amount of water coming off the glacier.
Their concern was specifically that people would be ok, until we ran out of ice, and then there would be no more water to flow downstream.
Problem is, if the glacier was GROWING (or even staying the same) they ALREADY wouldn't have water downstream from it.
So they are asking for the glacier to stop shrinking, but to keep melting and therefor providing water. You can't have it both ways, that's just not how physics works!
Is ANYONE's opinion on climate change NOT a political one?
Considering we have no working climate models, no explanations for why things happen, no working predictions, no reproducible results, and MUCH political clout weighing in, it is difficult to believe that there is such a thing as a non-political opinion on what is purely a political issue.
Regardless of whether "global warming" exists or not, or what causes it, or anything else, I had a wonderful laugh while visiting the Columbia Icefields.
They have a sign up talking about how the glacier is shrinking, and how this is a horribly bad thing because many people down stream from it rely on the water coming from the glacier. My first thought was "and just how do they expect to get water from it if it DOESN'T shrink??"
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're proving my point rather than disproving it...
They know their target audience has no interest in seeing naked women.
They know their target audience gets easy access to the real thing. :P
so.... their target market is women who own mirrors?
I do find it interesting though that only commercial airliners have this rule. Military flights don't care if you leave your cell phone on, nor do police flights, or civil aviation flights.
For that matter, if it's such an issue, why do they make aviation headsets with bluetooth capabilities? or old fashioned wired cell phone headset connectors?
I fly frequently, I never turn off my cell phone. but then again, I never fly commercial.
I've been in the cockpit of a millitary hercules transport plane while the pilot, his instructor, and the flight engineer all had their cell phones out and on.
Part of our routine civil aviation SAR operations use text messaging to communicate between our aircraft and the base station.
The ONLY good reason I've ever seen for having a ban on cell phones in aircraft is that I don't want a plane full of a hundred people yabbering away while I'm trying to nap.
That 25 million profit won't get their first satellite off the ground, and they need 78 of them. They also have no existing market share to work off of, and are competing with entrenched players. They also can't rely on people in any town or city as those people will always be better off on DSL, Cable, or Fibre. (this will necessarily be slower, and more expensive than those options where they are available)
They have a great market niche to look forward to, but the start up costs truly are "out of this world"
Iridium was done by a major corporation with lots of market research, they bombed, badly. This company likely hasn't done even as much research as that...
As for "learning the market" I work in telecommunications and I do pay attention to what is happening in the market, There are MUCH larger players in Canada than Northwestel, making MUCH more money, and none of them would consider a venture like this because of the large expense, and high risk.
There is money to be made, but there's also a LOT to be spent, and recouping all your costs from a large population who have never heard of you and are already on your competition is just not easy.
I'm not saying it won't succeed, I'm just saying that the odds of one company with a vision making it work all the way from concept to implementation without loosing their shirt is rather small.
except what it says on there is "we're trying our best to lock down what end users will get, but hope to have some difficult to obtain developer only version that won't be locked down"
That doesn't make it even the slightest bit better.
I'm a practical person, and as much as I love the theory of truly open, I also buy the best tool for the job. If I can get root, I'll likely buy it, even if I can't install something other than Android. If I can't have root though, they can't have my money. (and they tried that on the Milestone, but people managed to get around it)
oops... I meant to say paid by the job instead of by the hour...
I'm paid by the hour, but half our workforce is paid by the job. the difference shows, and finally management is admitting the same thing!
I second that, I have a Motorola Milestone right now, and because of the valiant efforts of others, and despite Motorola, I have it rooted and love it.
I have been drooling over the Xoom and hope to be able to buy one as soon as possible... but if I can't have root, I may have to try for a different tablet.
I'm sick and tired of companies who think they can tell me what to do with MY hardware after I have purchased it from them, it isn't theirs anymore, I'm ok if they won't support any changes I make, but I'm not ok with them actively blocking them.
There is another likely option. Many ADSL providers have a "self install" option, where they mail you a kit and you install it yourself (generally if you have phone jacks somewhere near your computer it's pretty easy, plug in the modem, put filters on all your other sets, and voilla). If the neighbour here did that I wouldn't be entirely surprised, I've seen some pretty creative installs done that way.
Or he could do like I do every single day, and just do the job, and do the job right.
Unfortunately at this point the only picture to reference is the one in the slashdot summary as the original has been removed, however based on the summary description and picture, I just can't even imagine what they were thinking. I have seen some pretty creative installs though, and the usual culprit is contractors who are paid by the hour instead of by the job, if they can save 10 seconds they will, no matter what it does to the quality of the job. And management usually loves them for it, because their numbers are good... unless you include the number of repairs they cause...
I install phone, internet, and TV, including ADSL, Fibre Optics, and Satellite services. I do it in Canada, and I do it year round. Weather is not a valid excuse. I have installed satellite dishes in blizzards at -25c, I have terminated fibre optics when I couldn't feel my fingers, and couldn't keep the snow out of the mechanical splicer, and I have terminated aerial service drops at the top of a pole while soaked to the bone and feeling the line voltage through my soaked gloves, and I have NEVER cancelled or rescheduled a job due to weather.
Weather is part of the job, if you don't want to work outside in whatever the weather happens to be, you don't work as a telecommunication technician doing residential and small business installs and repairs. It's pretty much that simple.
That said, I also get to work outdoors in the sunshine in the summer, I have worked on connection boxes on the side of the road not 5 meters away from a moose with 2 calves, and I have worked on rooftops and at pole-tops with views you could sell, and I get amazing variety and no managers watching over my shoulder, I never want to work a desk job again.
Or more likely, these guys will go broke, but whoever buys their satellite constellation will make loads of money...
I really like the idea, but I see it going the way of Iridium, the up front costs are just too high to make any money in the near term. That said, Iridium is still around, and I've been quite happy with it every time I've used it (works much better than Globalstar) So if this does the same thing, I look forward to whoever buys the constellation. It will solve a really big problem of internet in rural Canada (and the rest of the world). Especially nice would be the ability to use it mobile (current satellite internet systems require a precisely aimed dish, a LEO system would not, and as such could keep you connected easily on a moving bus/plane/boat/car
But that was a geostationary satellite, this is talking LEO, there's a huge difference.
Geostationary is the reason satellite internet has a bad reputation, you're sending a signal 36,000km each way, that adds a lot of time to your pings. The plan here is for the altitude to be only 1000km, or 1/36th the distance, so if your ping before was 2000ms then your new ping time would only be about 55ms which is quite acceptable.
The downside is instead of launching 1 satellite, they are launching 78, so the big question remains as to whether they can make it cost effective, or if this will be another Irridium (which in and of itself isn't actually a bad thing, because the Irridium network, although not being run by the original company, does work, and does work very well.)
At the airport in a chair your lap supports the screen, and the keyboard isn't used, if you find a table, the built in kickstand or flip open case support the screen and you pull your bluetooth keyboard out of your bag. when you're at home or at the office the dock supports the screen and you already have a keyboard and mouse there (and maybe even a larger screen if you like).
What you see as the downside to it is actually the advantage that I see. I can take it wherever I want and still be functional, but any time I want serious computing I simply dock it with the keyboard/mouse/larger screen and continue right where it left off as I'm always on the same device no matter where I am.
I easily see my home computer being completely replaced in the next couple of years by a tablet, a docking station with keyboard/mouse/monitor and some network attached storage, and at the same time replace my laptop with that same tablet.
Sure there are some niches where more processing power is required, but that will not cover your average user.
and what's wrong with a tablet, that docks with a keyboard and mouse (they already exist)
Best of both worlds, use it anywhere, but when you want to get "serious work" done you dock it at your desk.
Sure, current tablets can't handle some high end activities that are extremely resource intensive, but a large percentage of the general public never handles those activities either. I don't think anyone is claiming that the "wintel" platform will cease to exist (well, at least not any time soon), only that "armdroid" will take a large percentage of it's current market.
I'm already considering it myself to be honest, there are very few times when an android tablet wouldn't do everything I need as long as I can dock it to a keyboard and mouse.
Your hypothetical situation that you say would be immune to the attack involves an unprivileged user with local access to the machine. If I have local access to leave a program running for the next person who logs on, I don't need "admin" rights. I've already got full access to the entire system simply by virtue of physical access, so it's irrelevant.
If I can con a user in to running a program I send them remotely, then I can also con them in to running it as admin, which means I can do any of the things listed in any of those articles.
In both cases I succeed.
So your assertion that ctrl-alt-del can't be trapped is either a) false, or b) true, but irrelevant.
and yet instead of a counter prediction, all the Global Warming supporters can do is criticize the person making the prediction....
let me get this straight, 1 year being warmer is absolute undeniable proof of global warming... but 10 years of cooling can't disprove it?
No wonder people equate Global Warming with a religion! anything that can't be disproved regardless of the facts isn't science.
I don't care. He's made a prediction, let the other side do the same.
Science isn't about your degree, or the letters behind your name, it isn't about who your employer is, or any of that. It's about whether or not you are right.
Would you want to ignore a major scientific discovery just because the guy who figured it out didn't have "phd" behind his name?
If an accountant came up to me while I was working and showed me a better way to wire a network I wouldn't tell him that he's not qualified to do so and continue doing things with the worse method.
That's the great thing about science, it's based on facts, and reproducible experiments. Any "science" which refuses to allow contrary opinions isn't a science, it's a religion. Same with any science that won't let you criticize it without being indoctrinated.
If global warming is real, and the earth is going to warm, put up the money and take his bet, after all, if he really doesn't know what he's talking about it's easy money right?
Global warming supporters were quick to say that an increase in solar activity in the last few years had nothing at all to do with our increase in temperature, so why would they expect that a decrease in solar activity would lower it.
Seems to me that any global warming supporter should be all over this bet, easy money after all...
It's worked for Global warming supporters quite well so far...
they said we'd all cook... and we didn't.
they said we'd never see snow again, and we're covered in it
they said we just haven't waited long enough... but that we'd better act now!
If they refuse to make predictions they aren't doing science at all. If their predictions are consistently wrong... then maybe they should change their stance (as opposed to the current method of changing their data)
Just because winter in your specific location have been subjectively warmer recently does not mean that the entire earth is warming.
We can easily show places where the opposite is true and that doesn't prove the earth is cooling.
In fact NOBODY has yet proved ANYTHING other than that "global warming" makes money...
unless system security is already compromised in some other way
If you HADN'T "compromised security in some other way" then you wouldn't be able to put up a fake login prompt no matter what key press was required as you wouldn't be able to run any applications.
The point is that if you can already run things on the computer (often by fooling the user in to doing so themselves, but other security holes would work too), then you have enough authority to intercept ctrl-alt-del, and if you don't, well it doesn't matter what you can intercept...
Among other methods:
-MSGina.dll can be replaced with a customized GINA DLL.
-Keyboard filter driver (one example: http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/33581352/keyboard-filter-driver.aspx)
-Replacing the process manager application that you get when you press ctrl-alt-del during a normal session
-Changing the registry to point to a different application when you press ctrl-alt-del during a normal session
Further discusion: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/preventclose.aspx?msg=1666328
the water flow is not shrinking, and they were very definitely NOT talking about the amount of water coming off the glacier.
Their concern was specifically that people would be ok, until we ran out of ice, and then there would be no more water to flow downstream.
Problem is, if the glacier was GROWING (or even staying the same) they ALREADY wouldn't have water downstream from it.
So they are asking for the glacier to stop shrinking, but to keep melting and therefor providing water. You can't have it both ways, that's just not how physics works!
Is ANYONE's opinion on climate change NOT a political one?
Considering we have no working climate models, no explanations for why things happen, no working predictions, no reproducible results, and MUCH political clout weighing in, it is difficult to believe that there is such a thing as a non-political opinion on what is purely a political issue.
Regardless of whether "global warming" exists or not, or what causes it, or anything else, I had a wonderful laugh while visiting the Columbia Icefields.
They have a sign up talking about how the glacier is shrinking, and how this is a horribly bad thing because many people down stream from it rely on the water coming from the glacier. My first thought was "and just how do they expect to get water from it if it DOESN'T shrink??"