The volunteer probably doesn't know the building the blind person is looking for. So, they use google maps, which the blind person can already use to get there (along with their trusty dog). You still need a dog because otherwise you'll (a) bump into people, (b) tend to mis-step onto the street while walking along the sidewalk, or on people's lawns, or into garbage cans and recycling bins, or trip on the curb if the street is in such bad repair that your feet can't tell you that you've passed the "crown" in the road and are just a bit more than half-way to the next sidewalk. Or there's a pile of snow that you'll have to navigate through.
And I'm sure the grocery store won't mind you opening a few jugs, sniffing them and putting them back if you don't feel they smell fresh enough.
That's what your seeing eye dog is for. If dogs can smell cancers that we can't even detect, they can probably smell milk that's been sitting on the shelf too long. Or he or she can growl menacingly while you open the milk to smell it. If it's past date, it should be removed from the shelves anyway.
On your point #1, there is no date for an android app, expecially not "coming soon". FTFA: "Kristensen hopes to add Android in the future through grant funding."
Your point number 2 isn't a help for the newly seriously visually impaired. They're not going to go out and buy a complete new wardrobe (and how would they know what stuff matches when shopping?). Custom qr codes on the clothes would let people know what is what, and give them the same clothing options as sighted people.
On your point number 3, an app that takes a picture, then reads out the text, would let people hear the various dates on the milk.
Having rfid tags on the store shelves would let people know that they're in the right section. A bar code reader should take care of some/most of the rest (identifying individual products).
I've given these matters a lot of thought because I've had months where I could not see, and will permanently lose my vision over the years. I want a way to maintain my autonomy. Be My Eyes doesn't do it.
We had access to coal and oil for a lot longer than nuclear, and fossil fuels today still represent 10x as much energy generated/used as nuclear. linky
The figures are from 2008 - before fukushima, and nuclear plant construction is going nowhere, while China produces 1 new coal plant every day.
No I'm not. First, every hd has caching. Unless your hd is badly fragmented, the likelihood is that both the OS and the hd have the file's location in the cache (since it should be in one of the chunks read as the app's location). So that leaves the average access time - which, if your hd is not badly fragmented and the heads don't have to move much, will likely be ~ 4ms.
And as I've pointed out elsewhere, using c's binary calls to read/write the ini file int ram as one big chunk instead of using the Windows calls or the calls that read or write text data are extremely fast. In fact, you wouldn't be able to time them for a 4k or 8k ini file. So the actual binary search through an 8k chunk of ram for a dozen values is going to be a LOT quicker than searching through the hive, even indexed.
Searching through a huge chunk of indexed memory is still going to be slower than searching through a smaller chunk of memory - there's no way of getting around it. It takes time to go through the index, then look up the associated value. Multiply by each key, and you don't save any time. Test it yourself - load the registry into regedt32 and search for a key. It takes a lot more than 5-8ms.
Now, onto another problem I left out - the NTFS system can restore your file system structure - but whether your files survive is a crapshoot. It depends on the mode the drive is in, and the default is to cache data, not write it through immediately. So the stuff that you've currently working on will probably get corrupted.
On top of that, when I tried to learn android's accessibility options and , the teaching mode pretty much locked me out of my phone - it intercepted every gesture so I had no way of finishing learning how to use it - and that was while looking.
Pointing at something and asking "what is is" isn't a real problem. The real problems are "I need to find 2 socks the same color", "I need my white top and my black skirt", "I need my 'fat jeans' because I'm staying home today", "where's my phone?"
A qr code reader, a barcode reader, and an rfid tag reader (plus some help sewing qr codes inside clothes) would be of far more practical use.
Open/Read-Write/Close file I-O cycle for disk scattered.ini files
If your hard disk has a seek time of 8ms, then you will take, on average 4ms to read the file (ini files are usually small enough that reading one 4k block is sufficient). The time to parse it out is pretty much zero if you're doing it right. So the speed argument for using the registry isn't of any value. You won't even notice.
The recovery tools being on a separate partition does NOT help when you lose the drive, which, in my experience, is the only reason to do a system restore/reinstall (gone through about 24 drives over the years at home, plus a bunch at work). Having to reinstall both the os and go through the install routine for each program is a lot more tedious than just copying a directory with the app, data, and ini file. So on this, the registry totally loses.
So the registry doesn't help with backing up and restoring programs - it's a hindrance.
the fact text reads slower than binary storage (due to a larger and more complex structure in text)
Wow, just wow. You obviously haven't done much (if any) low-level programming. There is NO reason to open any file in "text mode" (which is a Windows quirk), which is slower and makes the file less transportable to other platforms. And the structure of an ini file is very simple. And if you don't like it, you're free to implement your own. Just load the whole file into a buffer in binary mode. You can even do it as a fixed-record-length store, in alphabetical order, and use bsearch() . My tests doing this show that you can do 100,000 key searches in a 1 meg buffer per second on a single-core cpu. I doubt anyone's going to have a 1 meg ini file, or 100,000 keys in it.
His point's correct. Text reads are slower than binary ones since the data contained, when equal, is smaller to store or read and the structure of text files is more complex, taking more time still.
Not necessarily. Your system NEVER reads or writes less than a certain block size. It takes the same amount of time to read 1 byte as it does to read the entire block.
Also, storing a simple boolean a value as either 0x00 or 0x01 takes the same amount of bytes (1) as storing it as '0' or '1'.
String values require the same amount of space (esp. if you don't bother with the whole cr/lf windows-centric 'text file mode' and just use one of 0x0a or 0x0d as the record/line delimiter.
It's quicker to read and parse a 1k file from disk than it is to search a large binary blob in ram. Try it some time.
Recovery tools are available on Windows install media for any issues (corruption).
Not any more. Today's computers do not ship with install media, and nowadays many laptops don't even have an optical reader.
The registry is stupid. It makes transfer of applications from one machine to another harder to the point of non-transportability, harder to fix when something goes off the rails, harder to customize with simple tools, and harder to use alternate values (for example, by specifying different ini files on the command line).
When people claim that text reads are slower than binary reads, they show their ignorance in several ways. (1) you do not have to use cr/lf as the delimiter, (2) NEVER use the string or line reading functions. They're for lazy people who don't know how to allocate proper-sized buffers, they have a huge amount of overhead, and they're prone to over- and under-runs, and (3) the structure of an ini file is much simpler than the hive, and if you're not happy with it, you can create your own file structure. You're not locked into any one system.
They can be plugged in but not mounted. in such a case, rm -rf / won't touch them. Only mount the disk when doing a backup, then unmount it again, problem solved.
Or you can wait a year for Apple to release theirs.
It'll be designed for hipsters. That means that it looks like an ordinary pair of mirrored shades, and can overlay either eye, or both if you want 3D without "shutters LCD glasses".
No, it hasn't. It depends on what facts both sides are able to come up with. Theories are just that - theories. Jurors are there to sort through it all and determine the facts of the case. If I were the prosecutor, it would be very easy to turn this testimony to my advantage by asking the agent what finally changed his mind, since he was SO certain - he must have had a pretty powerful reason.
If the prosecutor is having a meltdown, either he or she is out of their league, or they're acting because they want to bait the hook even more for when they finally reel that sucker in...
I think you overlook the obvious fact that DerYeghiayan's actions suggest a "throw some shit on the wall and see what sticks" approach to his investigation.
So what? When you're starting from scratch, you have to start somewhere, and your first theory will most likely be wrong; let's see the FACTS of the case, not theories on either side.
The juror is there to determine the facts of the case. The prosecution and defense are both giving their sides. The jury may decide that there's reasonable doubt, doubt but it's not reasonable, or no doubt one way or another. It's their call. They really don't care about the agent's theories, because they are not FACTS.
You can present 1,000 theories about why there should be some doubt about you being the killer, including the police originally thinking it was someone else - but if facts, such as a video surfaces of you doing the deed, and they find the weapon with your dna and fingerprints on it, you're most likely toast. The facts trump any amount of theories.
Binary reads/writes are faster than text read/writes only because of the library calls made. There is NO reason (except programmer laziness and incompetence) to use the text read/write functions, which are not only inefficient but also prone to buffer flows. Opening a text file in binary mode is just as fast as opening a binary file, same as saving.
As for reading the registry being faster because it's in memory, that's easy to disprove. Open up the registry editor and search for a key. It takes a perceptible amount of time, as opposed to reading an entire 8k ini file into a buffer, which takes, at most, 8ms. And because it's so small and you're only looking for a limited subset of keys and values, you can search it VERY fast.
As for "having it all in one place", I prefer to have the program and any associated files in one place, so that it's easy to backup and restore, as well as transfer to another machine just by copying the director(y|ies). So do most people, given a choice.
Also, computers today do NOT ship with a windows install media - just a way to back up the setup files to a usb key. Heck, many computers don't even ship with an optical drive any more - they're going the way of the floppy.
That doesn't change the facts. We don't need yet another way for people to ruin both their lives and the lives of those around them, and cost up to a million or more in taxpayers money before they "shuck their mortal coil."
Your argument is as persuasive as the speeder who says he shouldn't be ticketed because other speeders were going even faster.
The agent's theory that this was done to keep the price of bitcoins high doesn't make sense. There's more money to be made in arbitrage by having the price fluctuate wildly, especially if you're the one controlling when bitcoins that are taken off the market (MtGox trades them for real money) are converted to other currencies.. A small float leaves it open to greater manipulation, same as penny stocks.
Also, why would anyone wait until now to introduce such a theory? "Oh, maybe they want to sue the US after? for damages" Not gonna happen - you have a responsibility to mitigate any damage done, and giving up the real person running it would do that. Unless he thought that he could win another way and get back all those bitcoins... and now realizes he can't no matter what.
Just too convenient an excuse at the last minute for my tastes - and my common sense. And now he's gonna piss off the jury,because they're going to smell it for what it is - an attempt to fool the jury.
Bit Coins are actually more real then the US Dollar.
Really? Try paying your taxes with them.
But at least bit coin is connected to something in limited supply thus needs to be shared.
Limited supply does not equal increased value. There's a limited supply of coffee cups signed by me (currently zero), but if I were to sign one, it wouldn't have more value than (and probably less than) an ordinary coffee cup. Unlike the bitcoin, the coffee cup has utility.
Would things like cryptowall be feasible without it?
Of course they would. There's more than one way to pay ransomware authors.
For example, they can buy a large amount of a penny stock, then demand that their victims buy that stock x - done quickly enough, often enough, stock gets pumped. they dump.
They can start their own "anti-virus" company, and offer a service to unlock the hard drives cheap. Works better if they're also (through emails) asking for much more money, so it appears there are two actors - the crook and the anti-virus guys, instead of them being one and the same.
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The volunteer probably doesn't know the building the blind person is looking for. So, they use google maps, which the blind person can already use to get there (along with their trusty dog). You still need a dog because otherwise you'll (a) bump into people, (b) tend to mis-step onto the street while walking along the sidewalk, or on people's lawns, or into garbage cans and recycling bins, or trip on the curb if the street is in such bad repair that your feet can't tell you that you've passed the "crown" in the road and are just a bit more than half-way to the next sidewalk. Or there's a pile of snow that you'll have to navigate through.
Nothing replaces a good dog.
And I'm sure the grocery store won't mind you opening a few jugs, sniffing them and putting them back if you don't feel they smell fresh enough.
That's what your seeing eye dog is for. If dogs can smell cancers that we can't even detect, they can probably smell milk that's been sitting on the shelf too long. Or he or she can growl menacingly while you open the milk to smell it. If it's past date, it should be removed from the shelves anyway.
On your point #1, there is no date for an android app, expecially not "coming soon". FTFA: "Kristensen hopes to add Android in the future through grant funding."
Your point number 2 isn't a help for the newly seriously visually impaired. They're not going to go out and buy a complete new wardrobe (and how would they know what stuff matches when shopping?). Custom qr codes on the clothes would let people know what is what, and give them the same clothing options as sighted people.
On your point number 3, an app that takes a picture, then reads out the text, would let people hear the various dates on the milk.
Having rfid tags on the store shelves would let people know that they're in the right section. A bar code reader should take care of some/most of the rest (identifying individual products).
I've given these matters a lot of thought because I've had months where I could not see, and will permanently lose my vision over the years. I want a way to maintain my autonomy. Be My Eyes doesn't do it.
We had access to coal and oil for a lot longer than nuclear, and fossil fuels today still represent 10x as much energy generated/used as nuclear. linky
The figures are from 2008 - before fukushima, and nuclear plant construction is going nowhere, while China produces 1 new coal plant every day.
And as I've pointed out elsewhere, using c's binary calls to read/write the ini file int ram as one big chunk instead of using the Windows calls or the calls that read or write text data are extremely fast. In fact, you wouldn't be able to time them for a 4k or 8k ini file. So the actual binary search through an 8k chunk of ram for a dozen values is going to be a LOT quicker than searching through the hive, even indexed.
Searching through a huge chunk of indexed memory is still going to be slower than searching through a smaller chunk of memory - there's no way of getting around it. It takes time to go through the index, then look up the associated value. Multiply by each key, and you don't save any time. Test it yourself - load the registry into regedt32 and search for a key. It takes a lot more than 5-8ms.
Now, onto another problem I left out - the NTFS system can restore your file system structure - but whether your files survive is a crapshoot. It depends on the mode the drive is in, and the default is to cache data, not write it through immediately. So the stuff that you've currently working on will probably get corrupted.
iPhone only is a problem.
On top of that, when I tried to learn android's accessibility options and , the teaching mode pretty much locked me out of my phone - it intercepted every gesture so I had no way of finishing learning how to use it - and that was while looking.
Pointing at something and asking "what is is" isn't a real problem. The real problems are "I need to find 2 socks the same color", "I need my white top and my black skirt", "I need my 'fat jeans' because I'm staying home today", "where's my phone?"
A qr code reader, a barcode reader, and an rfid tag reader (plus some help sewing qr codes inside clothes) would be of far more practical use.
Open/Read-Write/Close file I-O cycle for disk scattered .ini files
If your hard disk has a seek time of 8ms, then you will take, on average 4ms to read the file (ini files are usually small enough that reading one 4k block is sufficient). The time to parse it out is pretty much zero if you're doing it right. So the speed argument for using the registry isn't of any value. You won't even notice.
The recovery tools being on a separate partition does NOT help when you lose the drive, which, in my experience, is the only reason to do a system restore/reinstall (gone through about 24 drives over the years at home, plus a bunch at work). Having to reinstall both the os and go through the install routine for each program is a lot more tedious than just copying a directory with the app, data, and ini file. So on this, the registry totally loses.
So the registry doesn't help with backing up and restoring programs - it's a hindrance.
the fact text reads slower than binary storage (due to a larger and more complex structure in text)
Wow, just wow. You obviously haven't done much (if any) low-level programming. There is NO reason to open any file in "text mode" (which is a Windows quirk), which is slower and makes the file less transportable to other platforms. And the structure of an ini file is very simple. And if you don't like it, you're free to implement your own. Just load the whole file into a buffer in binary mode. You can even do it as a fixed-record-length store, in alphabetical order, and use bsearch() . My tests doing this show that you can do 100,000 key searches in a 1 meg buffer per second on a single-core cpu. I doubt anyone's going to have a 1 meg ini file, or 100,000 keys in it.
His point's correct. Text reads are slower than binary ones since the data contained, when equal, is smaller to store or read and the structure of text files is more complex, taking more time still.
Not necessarily. Your system NEVER reads or writes less than a certain block size. It takes the same amount of time to read 1 byte as it does to read the entire block.
Also, storing a simple boolean a value as either 0x00 or 0x01 takes the same amount of bytes (1) as storing it as '0' or '1'.
String values require the same amount of space (esp. if you don't bother with the whole cr/lf windows-centric 'text file mode' and just use one of 0x0a or 0x0d as the record/line delimiter.
It's quicker to read and parse a 1k file from disk than it is to search a large binary blob in ram. Try it some time.
Recovery tools are available on Windows install media for any issues (corruption).
Not any more. Today's computers do not ship with install media, and nowadays many laptops don't even have an optical reader.
The registry is stupid. It makes transfer of applications from one machine to another harder to the point of non-transportability, harder to fix when something goes off the rails, harder to customize with simple tools, and harder to use alternate values (for example, by specifying different ini files on the command line).
When people claim that text reads are slower than binary reads, they show their ignorance in several ways. (1) you do not have to use cr/lf as the delimiter, (2) NEVER use the string or line reading functions. They're for lazy people who don't know how to allocate proper-sized buffers, they have a huge amount of overhead, and they're prone to over- and under-runs, and (3) the structure of an ini file is much simpler than the hive, and if you're not happy with it, you can create your own file structure. You're not locked into any one system.
They can be plugged in but not mounted. in such a case, rm -rf / won't touch them. Only mount the disk when doing a backup, then unmount it again, problem solved.
I can't pay taxes with chickens, either. Doesn't mean chickens aren't real.
But it means chickens are not legal tender, good for settling all debts, public and private.
He doesn't seem to know the difference between hearing and listening.
why don't they complain about Linux not being UNIX either?
Let me spell it out for you - Linux Is Not UniX.
Thee's a 3rd, but it's sealed by court order :-)
No, I say this from experience with a couple of murder trials - one as a witness, the other as a juror.
Or you can wait a year for Apple to release theirs. It'll be designed for hipsters. That means that it looks like an ordinary pair of mirrored shades, and can overlay either eye, or both if you want 3D without "shutters LCD glasses".
You'll even be able to wear your sunglasses at night ...
And it will be "only" $799".
No, it hasn't. It depends on what facts both sides are able to come up with. Theories are just that - theories. Jurors are there to sort through it all and determine the facts of the case. If I were the prosecutor, it would be very easy to turn this testimony to my advantage by asking the agent what finally changed his mind, since he was SO certain - he must have had a pretty powerful reason.
If the prosecutor is having a meltdown, either he or she is out of their league, or they're acting because they want to bait the hook even more for when they finally reel that sucker in ...
I think you overlook the obvious fact that DerYeghiayan's actions suggest a "throw some shit on the wall and see what sticks" approach to his investigation.
So what? When you're starting from scratch, you have to start somewhere, and your first theory will most likely be wrong; let's see the FACTS of the case, not theories on either side.
The juror is there to determine the facts of the case. The prosecution and defense are both giving their sides. The jury may decide that there's reasonable doubt, doubt but it's not reasonable, or no doubt one way or another. It's their call. They really don't care about the agent's theories, because they are not FACTS.
You can present 1,000 theories about why there should be some doubt about you being the killer, including the police originally thinking it was someone else - but if facts, such as a video surfaces of you doing the deed, and they find the weapon with your dna and fingerprints on it, you're most likely toast. The facts trump any amount of theories.
Jurors have a good bs detector. They don't need to understand the technical details to know when someone's blowing smoke up their skirts.
Binary reads/writes are faster than text read/writes only because of the library calls made. There is NO reason (except programmer laziness and incompetence) to use the text read/write functions, which are not only inefficient but also prone to buffer flows. Opening a text file in binary mode is just as fast as opening a binary file, same as saving.
As for reading the registry being faster because it's in memory, that's easy to disprove. Open up the registry editor and search for a key. It takes a perceptible amount of time, as opposed to reading an entire 8k ini file into a buffer, which takes, at most, 8ms. And because it's so small and you're only looking for a limited subset of keys and values, you can search it VERY fast.
As for "having it all in one place", I prefer to have the program and any associated files in one place, so that it's easy to backup and restore, as well as transfer to another machine just by copying the director(y|ies). So do most people, given a choice.
Also, computers today do NOT ship with a windows install media - just a way to back up the setup files to a usb key. Heck, many computers don't even ship with an optical drive any more - they're going the way of the floppy.
That doesn't change the facts. We don't need yet another way for people to ruin both their lives and the lives of those around them, and cost up to a million or more in taxpayers money before they "shuck their mortal coil."
Your argument is as persuasive as the speeder who says he shouldn't be ticketed because other speeders were going even faster.
The agent's theory that this was done to keep the price of bitcoins high doesn't make sense. There's more money to be made in arbitrage by having the price fluctuate wildly, especially if you're the one controlling when bitcoins that are taken off the market (MtGox trades them for real money) are converted to other currencies.. A small float leaves it open to greater manipulation, same as penny stocks.
Also, why would anyone wait until now to introduce such a theory? "Oh, maybe they want to sue the US after? for damages" Not gonna happen - you have a responsibility to mitigate any damage done, and giving up the real person running it would do that. Unless he thought that he could win another way and get back all those bitcoins ... and now realizes he can't no matter what.
Just too convenient an excuse at the last minute for my tastes - and my common sense. And now he's gonna piss off the jury,because they're going to smell it for what it is - an attempt to fool the jury.
Bit Coins are actually more real then the US Dollar.
Really? Try paying your taxes with them.
But at least bit coin is connected to something in limited supply thus needs to be shared.
Limited supply does not equal increased value. There's a limited supply of coffee cups signed by me (currently zero), but if I were to sign one, it wouldn't have more value than (and probably less than) an ordinary coffee cup. Unlike the bitcoin, the coffee cup has utility.
Just another commodity rip off scam. We need a medium of exchange that stands by itself, not subject to speculations of the 'market'.
Bullets and guns. With enough of those, you can get anything you want ...
Fortunately we're moving away from that model in many parts of the world ... just not fast enough.
Would things like cryptowall be feasible without it?
Of course they would. There's more than one way to pay ransomware authors.
For example, they can buy a large amount of a penny stock, then demand that their victims buy that stock x - done quickly enough, often enough, stock gets pumped. they dump.
They can start their own "anti-virus" company, and offer a service to unlock the hard drives cheap. Works better if they're also (through emails) asking for much more money, so it appears there are two actors - the crook and the anti-virus guys, instead of them being one and the same.
I'm sure you can think of more.