Looking at the initial comments, various posters are hoping that the Cloudbook isn't as restricted as a Chromebook but I think Microsoft has a bigger fundamental issue than that.
And that is to accept to be successful in this space, you aren't going to sell a PC and the software tools that go into it.
In evaluating systems to provide to students, our company evaluated Chromebooks (2GByte DDR, 16GByte EMMc/Flash Drive) and low-cost Windows 10 PCs (4GByte DDR, 32GByte EMMc/Flash Drive) - both were manufactured by Acer and had the same Processor/display/Network IO. I should point out that probably nobody on this site would be customers for this type of platform; they're best suited for students and clerks.
Even though the Chromebooks had half the memory of the PC, they booted in a few seconds and allowed surfing the web, running Chrome Extensions/Apps (including those that provide basic, not complete, Office functionality) as well as accessing network resources (ie printers). Something we didn't realize at the time was that updates are annoying but fairly painless along with this, we didn't realize that updates were more or less automatic and just took a minute or two to work through. There are no ads/demands for virus protection under ChromeOS.
The WIndows 10 PCs took considerably longer to boot, required loading Chrome because our customers (that are schools) require it for the students (who all have gmail or Google Classroom accounts) and, if we wanted to use "true" Office, that needed a license and is painfully slow and unusable if you have two apps active at the same time. If did provide a familiar way of adding devices and networks (not that ChromeOS is that difficult to use, but I wanted to put something positive about the Win10 machines). What would have been a killer for us is updates; for the two evaluation machines we still have, they require 16GByte or better thumb drives to perform updates about twice a year and these updates take between one and two hours with lots of warnings about not losing power, network connections or forcing a reboot - I would expect if there was a larger hard drive, they would be considerably less painful. Then there is the inclusion of the 30 day trial of Norton which you are always being bugged to buy.
So, if Microsoft wants to compete against Google and their Chromebooks, I would recommended: - Coming up with a small, fast booting version of Win10 that can be updated in less than a minute - Develop a set of web accessible Office compatible apps - Consciously avoid the desire/need for paid apps.
I can see Microsoft coming up with an OS that meets the first requirement - the second two so go against the grain that I don't think they'll be able to take that plunge and will create yet another also-ran that will be remembered with the same fondness as the Ford Edsel.
Microsoft has a number of products that work to customer satisfaction (Windows 10 being a good example - again, it's really not for people on this list, but I know a lot of non-technical users that really like it) that makes them a ton of money. Rather than putting good money down a rat hole of trying to compete in a space that they will have to give value away to make sales, they can either look at improving the products they have and make them more compatible with what's out there (cough - Edge - cough).
Looking at people's responses, I'm guessing a "home computer" is one that: - Plugs into a TV and could display graphics for games - Play Games - Could do programming on it
My first "computer" was a Sharp PC1211 (still have it). 2k BASIC programmable, large format QWERTY keyboard and a printer base unit that allowed programs to be stored on cassette.
Which came down to what did I get when I wanted something that I could play games and program: an Atari 400 - the ANTIC chip graphic capabilities were superior to the other competing small systems. I still have the ANTIC manual for it.
Just looking at the other responses and I just realized that my first "home computer" (ie something that plugged into the TV and you could program and play games on) was actually my third.
I started with a Sharp PC1211 which was a large BASIC programmable calculator with a QWERTY keyboard, 2k of program memory and a thermal printer base station that allowed you to store programs on cassette: http://www.rskey.org/pc1211 I think it was purchased in 1979.
And, because games were limited on CPM, mono-chrome text based machines in the early 1980s, I got myself an Atari 400 because it had the most sophisticated graphics and sound at the time (I still have the ANTIC chip manual) which is what you would consider a "home computer".
Reading this, I'm thinking back to the early '80s when COBOL could be described exactly the way you are talking about Javascript.
Now, we're 30+ years later and people who have experience with COBOL (and the systems/tools that work with it) are in hot demand because of applications that won't die.
In 30 years, will we see the same need for programmers that understand how Javascript is programmed and can support the applications that were written in it?
I thought Poker was a game of understanding your opponents not only based on past actions with cards but also by looking at facial expressions, body language and determining whether or not they have a good hand. Along with that, a big part is developing subtle gestures to throw your opponents off.
Without this information, isn't this win somewhat random or "lucky" and not really indicative of how the AI can play against other humans?
It's interesting that the AI can develop a database on other player's styles and I'm sure professional players would be interested in the algorithm used to do that but I wonder how many times the AI would win after ten games of playing professional players.
I first read it as "Japanese Automakers To Keep Elderly On The Move" and thought that Roger Corman has the concept all ready for them: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...
That 32GBytes local storage along with the difficulty in working with additional (USB or SD based) storage is the killer for me in terms of thinking of a Chromebook as a PC.
I have no issues with the "thin client" concept and I think the ChromeOS provides the necessary infrastructure to make a ChromeOS device useful, I just don't think they can replicate the expected functionality of a PC.
In our business (Mimetics), we use Chromebooks a lot and the low end Chromebooks (2 GByte DDR & 16GByte SSD) are excellent for our application (Chrome Extension) as well as a classroom tool for students. I would argue that Chromebooks are better in the classroom than traditional PCs and I can see many applications where ChromeOS devices would be a better solution in a work environment than a traditional PC.
But, I would be reluctant to call a ChromeOS device as a "PC" because: - They need to have a network connection to access user data - Local file systems (ie USB drives) are absolutely painful to access and work with (the paradigm is to use GDrive storage and anything else is work) - There simply isn't enough memory/drive space available for anything other Extensions which are measured in the low tens of MBytes - Applications are limited to Javascript (although I'm hoping Webassembly will be an option in the near future) with browser built in debug tools with a somewhat convoluted load/test process. A full featured IDE for application development is nothing more than a dream at this point
A surface table, which can operate on its own, generally has many 10s to 100s of Gbytes of storage and can run traditional apps, even without keyboards seems ore likely to match the traditional definition of a "PC".
If you want to talk about Airlines feeling they can manhandle passengers out of their seats - great, I think it needs to be discussed so airlines understand that wasn't acceptable.
But, I think everybody here understands why airlines overbook, so don't bother explaining.
Ever since I first joined/. there has been an article a year stating: - Major organizations, banks, governments, etc. are still relying on COBOL. - COBOL programmers are in great demand so dust off your old MVS skills (and maybe pull out those JCL manuals) and offer up your services, you're in demand!
What I really think is the big takeaway from all this is simply that the need for supporting for your old software is never going away - so think of a way of monetizing it.
I'm trying to find the current backlog for Tesla cars and it seems to be somewhere north of 400k vehicles with close to a billion in deposits for the orders. Nobody else has that kind of traction (if you'll excuse the pun) for current, announced or planned vehicles - in comparison, in 2016 Mercedes sold 374k vehicles in the US.
Yes, the investors are taking a risk on Tesla, but isn't that part of the job description?
Along with this, there seems to be a significant demand for electric vehicles. I don't expect them to overtake fossil fueled vehicles any time soon, but at least 10% of buyers are seriously interested in EVs and Tesla is the number one name there with generally great reviews for products compared to the competition (ie the Leaf makes you feel like you're settling for less and the Volt/Bolt just don't have the cachet), the company is serious about renewables/reducing customers' carbon footprint and a rock star CEO.
You can say it's a fad stock, but there are some solid fundamentals there in terms of backlog and customer demand which justify a high stock price.
Maybe if the Model 3 turns out to be a lemon, things will change with regards to the stock, but as I said, part of the job description for an investor is to take risks and people seem to think that there will be a reward at the end of the day.
And yet, your complaints are all hardware related.
No, Rosco's complaints are regarding a computer system that wasn't [fully] defined.
"High" and "Extended" memory were two different things that resided in the same space. "High" was up to 384k that resided above the 640k standard memory limit. "Extended" memory was additional memory which also resided above the 640k standard memory limit but was paged and could be much larger than 384k. Some programs could access additional "High" memory while others accessed "Extended" memory.
Things got more complicated when you had to make allowances for the BIOS memory that may take up the entire top 128k (IBM and other PCs with GWBasic) or 64k or, in some limited cases 8k as well as video memory that took up different spaces depending on whether or not a monochrome or colour adapter (or both) was installed and how much memory space they took up as well as whether or not they had their own BIOS chips. I worked on a few systems that had less than 64k available in this space which meant that "High" memory was basically useless, but you maybe able to get some value out of "Extended" memory for some applications (like Lotus 1-2-3). '286 PCs could simulate High and Extended memory with very buggy drivers.
Then there were the IO port and interrupt selection switches and often you would have to deal with hardware that used interrupts which were already "allocated" (which meant they were listed as having a specific meaning in the "IBM Technical Reference Manual") and then redefine how other hardware interfaced to the processor. Sometimes you might have driver code which chained the interrupt handlers, allowing multiple devices to request interrupts on the same line.
At the time students and other young'uns were given the task of configuring PCs and we usually had a book listing the configuration of the various options of different people's PCs and what they were running along with the PC tech refs and adapter manuals - it was department level IT and incredibly frustrating when a new version of software came in, somebody wanted to add a card (for a scanner, CD drive, new display, etc.) which meant figuring out the new memory, IO port and interrupt configuration and updating and testing the machine.
Not completely computer related but I remember when I first started working full time at IBM and was in a product status meeting for the 3180 terminal (http://oldcomputer.info/terminal/ibm3180/index.htm) and how excited everybody was about the orders coming in for it.
The reason? It had a completely flat top which secretaries could put plants on. No other terminal top had a flat surface with no cooling holes like that monitor.
I guess this would be considered sexist now.
Looking at my Acer flat screen monitor with my little "Deadpool" character two-sided taped to the top, I can certainly see the attraction of a completely flat monitor top.
Wire wrapped, Z80 processor board. Motorola 6845 (using the design of the IBM Monochrome Adapter from the original PC) board. Single 8" drive running CP/M (I think I bought an S100 drive controller board but I can't remember where it came from - the disk drive came from IBM, where I was working at the time as a student). Surplus S100 rack ordered from "Radio Electronics". The power supply was hand made by one of my roommates that wanted to design his own switcher (it actually worked quite well). Keyboard was a surplus Ti-99 keyboard I bought at Active Surplus in Toronto. Monitor was an old portable TV I drove composite video into directly after removing the tuner.
I, along with a few people I worked with, can take some credit/blame for that.
IBM Toronto Manufacturing in the early-mid '90s was building memory SIMMs for PS/2s running OS/2. IBM, at the time, had a standard set of seven memory tests but they didn't catch problems in a multi-tasker like OS/2 running on a 286/386 with memory management with multiple processes running so the memory was heavily used - so we booted OS/2 and started up a number of processes, each one accessing memory continuously and see if there were any defective memory chips on the SIMM that only failed during very heavy usage.
The issue was trying to figure out if the failure was caused by an instruction or data operation and where exactly it was in the address space which was problematical because the actual page where the failing bit/data was obfuscated due to memory management paging. When a SIMM failed the OS/2 test, it would be brought to a debug station where attempts would be make to recreate the problem and, using a custom OS/2 build, return to that sequence where the problem lay and, using a processor emulator, determine what the address was failing.
As a side note, memory at the time cost $150/Mbit, so it was worth the time and effort to find and replace the defective chip on a 1-2 Mbyte SIMM.
I'm not sure exactly how our code got into the main branch, I suspect it was because there were other things that were fixed in that recovery code and situations where there was a failure resulting in the loop of death wasn't part of the test sequence.
I do remember that there was a fairly simple way of cold booting the system from so that you could avoid this failure loop (we called it the "loop of death") - If memory serves correctly it was pressing 'F8' when the OS/2 logo comes up and then selecting a cold boot from a menu (this is going back more than 25 years ago so don't shoot me if I'm wrong). OS/2 support at that point in time was pretty good, they would have explained how to get out of the loop of death as it was a pretty common problem, especially with badly behaved Win 3.11 apps.
I've been following this story since it broke a few days ago and other than the period in 2015 when the RCMP got lax, their use of the Stingrays as well as the controls put in place for their use seems reasonable.
Police are going to look for ways to monitor criminals' communications and this is one of the tools for doing that. As long there is a process where a judge approves the need for using the device and the rights and privacy of individuals caught as "incidental collections" is protected I don't see any problems here.
Maybe I'm imagining a perfect world that organizations like the RCMP don't live in, but if devices like cellphones are out there, police organizations are going to want to tap/track/monitor them.
Slashdot Mirror
Looking at the initial comments, various posters are hoping that the Cloudbook isn't as restricted as a Chromebook but I think Microsoft has a bigger fundamental issue than that.
And that is to accept to be successful in this space, you aren't going to sell a PC and the software tools that go into it.
In evaluating systems to provide to students, our company evaluated Chromebooks (2GByte DDR, 16GByte EMMc/Flash Drive) and low-cost Windows 10 PCs (4GByte DDR, 32GByte EMMc/Flash Drive) - both were manufactured by Acer and had the same Processor/display/Network IO. I should point out that probably nobody on this site would be customers for this type of platform; they're best suited for students and clerks.
Even though the Chromebooks had half the memory of the PC, they booted in a few seconds and allowed surfing the web, running Chrome Extensions/Apps (including those that provide basic, not complete, Office functionality) as well as accessing network resources (ie printers). Something we didn't realize at the time was that updates are annoying but fairly painless along with this, we didn't realize that updates were more or less automatic and just took a minute or two to work through. There are no ads/demands for virus protection under ChromeOS.
The WIndows 10 PCs took considerably longer to boot, required loading Chrome because our customers (that are schools) require it for the students (who all have gmail or Google Classroom accounts) and, if we wanted to use "true" Office, that needed a license and is painfully slow and unusable if you have two apps active at the same time. If did provide a familiar way of adding devices and networks (not that ChromeOS is that difficult to use, but I wanted to put something positive about the Win10 machines). What would have been a killer for us is updates; for the two evaluation machines we still have, they require 16GByte or better thumb drives to perform updates about twice a year and these updates take between one and two hours with lots of warnings about not losing power, network connections or forcing a reboot - I would expect if there was a larger hard drive, they would be considerably less painful. Then there is the inclusion of the 30 day trial of Norton which you are always being bugged to buy.
So, if Microsoft wants to compete against Google and their Chromebooks, I would recommended:
- Coming up with a small, fast booting version of Win10 that can be updated in less than a minute
- Develop a set of web accessible Office compatible apps
- Consciously avoid the desire/need for paid apps.
I can see Microsoft coming up with an OS that meets the first requirement - the second two so go against the grain that I don't think they'll be able to take that plunge and will create yet another also-ran that will be remembered with the same fondness as the Ford Edsel.
Microsoft has a number of products that work to customer satisfaction (Windows 10 being a good example - again, it's really not for people on this list, but I know a lot of non-technical users that really like it) that makes them a ton of money. Rather than putting good money down a rat hole of trying to compete in a space that they will have to give value away to make sales, they can either look at improving the products they have and make them more compatible with what's out there (cough - Edge - cough).
I still have my Pickett 600-ES. The same model slide rule that Buzz Aldrin took to the moon.
I just wish I didn't need glasses to read the damn thing.
Yup. You're a puppy.
Looking at people's responses, I'm guessing a "home computer" is one that:
- Plugs into a TV and could display graphics for games
- Play Games
- Could do programming on it
My first "computer" was a Sharp PC1211 (still have it). 2k BASIC programmable, large format QWERTY keyboard and a printer base unit that allowed programs to be stored on cassette.
My second was a wire-wrapped Z80 S100 CPM system: https://slashdot.org/comments....
Which came down to what did I get when I wanted something that I could play games and program: an Atari 400 - the ANTIC chip graphic capabilities were superior to the other competing small systems. I still have the ANTIC manual for it.
Just looking at the other responses and I just realized that my first "home computer" (ie something that plugged into the TV and you could program and play games on) was actually my third.
I started with a Sharp PC1211 which was a large BASIC programmable calculator with a QWERTY keyboard, 2k of program memory and a thermal printer base station that allowed you to store programs on cassette: http://www.rskey.org/pc1211 I think it was purchased in 1979.
Then went to a CPM computer I designed/wire-wrapped myself: https://slashdot.org/comments....
And, because games were limited on CPM, mono-chrome text based machines in the early 1980s, I got myself an Atari 400 because it had the most sophisticated graphics and sound at the time (I still have the ANTIC chip manual) which is what you would consider a "home computer".
I suspect that if you ran "cerberusss" through the WebCryptoAPI (https://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/) the result would be Andy Hunt.
Reading this, I'm thinking back to the early '80s when COBOL could be described exactly the way you are talking about Javascript.
Now, we're 30+ years later and people who have experience with COBOL (and the systems/tools that work with it) are in hot demand because of applications that won't die.
In 30 years, will we see the same need for programmers that understand how Javascript is programmed and can support the applications that were written in it?
I thought Poker was a game of understanding your opponents not only based on past actions with cards but also by looking at facial expressions, body language and determining whether or not they have a good hand. Along with that, a big part is developing subtle gestures to throw your opponents off.
Without this information, isn't this win somewhat random or "lucky" and not really indicative of how the AI can play against other humans?
It's interesting that the AI can develop a database on other player's styles and I'm sure professional players would be interested in the algorithm used to do that but I wonder how many times the AI would win after ten games of playing professional players.
I first read it as "Japanese Automakers To Keep Elderly On The Move" and thought that Roger Corman has the concept all ready for them: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...
That 32GBytes local storage along with the difficulty in working with additional (USB or SD based) storage is the killer for me in terms of thinking of a Chromebook as a PC.
I have no issues with the "thin client" concept and I think the ChromeOS provides the necessary infrastructure to make a ChromeOS device useful, I just don't think they can replicate the expected functionality of a PC.
In our business (Mimetics), we use Chromebooks a lot and the low end Chromebooks (2 GByte DDR & 16GByte SSD) are excellent for our application (Chrome Extension) as well as a classroom tool for students. I would argue that Chromebooks are better in the classroom than traditional PCs and I can see many applications where ChromeOS devices would be a better solution in a work environment than a traditional PC.
But, I would be reluctant to call a ChromeOS device as a "PC" because:
- They need to have a network connection to access user data
- Local file systems (ie USB drives) are absolutely painful to access and work with (the paradigm is to use GDrive storage and anything else is work)
- There simply isn't enough memory/drive space available for anything other Extensions which are measured in the low tens of MBytes
- Applications are limited to Javascript (although I'm hoping Webassembly will be an option in the near future) with browser built in debug tools with a somewhat convoluted load/test process. A full featured IDE for application development is nothing more than a dream at this point
A surface table, which can operate on its own, generally has many 10s to 100s of Gbytes of storage and can run traditional apps, even without keyboards seems ore likely to match the traditional definition of a "PC".
Nice to know Google has slashdot's back.
Only somebody who's exposed to JCL would say that.
And, years ago, I considered myself an expert in it.
an Overbooking issue.
If you want to talk about Airlines feeling they can manhandle passengers out of their seats - great, I think it needs to be discussed so airlines understand that wasn't acceptable.
But, I think everybody here understands why airlines overbook, so don't bother explaining.
It's not the COBOL per se, but how it runs and integrates into the system.
The expertise comes in making files available to read and write output to.
In my post below, I noted that if you're running in MVS (old IBM iron), you need to know and be comfortable with JCL. Same thing for VMS.
That's where the grey hair comes in.
You know what they say, memory is the second thing to go.
And I wish I could remember what the first one is.
Thanx for the clarification - I mixed up Expanded Memory and Extended Memory.
It's been a long time.
Ever since I first joined /. there has been an article a year stating:
- Major organizations, banks, governments, etc. are still relying on COBOL.
- COBOL programmers are in great demand so dust off your old MVS skills (and maybe pull out those JCL manuals) and offer up your services, you're in demand!
What I really think is the big takeaway from all this is simply that the need for supporting for your old software is never going away - so think of a way of monetizing it.
I'm trying to find the current backlog for Tesla cars and it seems to be somewhere north of 400k vehicles with close to a billion in deposits for the orders. Nobody else has that kind of traction (if you'll excuse the pun) for current, announced or planned vehicles - in comparison, in 2016 Mercedes sold 374k vehicles in the US.
Yes, the investors are taking a risk on Tesla, but isn't that part of the job description?
Along with this, there seems to be a significant demand for electric vehicles. I don't expect them to overtake fossil fueled vehicles any time soon, but at least 10% of buyers are seriously interested in EVs and Tesla is the number one name there with generally great reviews for products compared to the competition (ie the Leaf makes you feel like you're settling for less and the Volt/Bolt just don't have the cachet), the company is serious about renewables/reducing customers' carbon footprint and a rock star CEO.
You can say it's a fad stock, but there are some solid fundamentals there in terms of backlog and customer demand which justify a high stock price.
Maybe if the Model 3 turns out to be a lemon, things will change with regards to the stock, but as I said, part of the job description for an investor is to take risks and people seem to think that there will be a reward at the end of the day.
And yet, your complaints are all hardware related.
No, Rosco's complaints are regarding a computer system that wasn't [fully] defined.
"High" and "Extended" memory were two different things that resided in the same space. "High" was up to 384k that resided above the 640k standard memory limit. "Extended" memory was additional memory which also resided above the 640k standard memory limit but was paged and could be much larger than 384k. Some programs could access additional "High" memory while others accessed "Extended" memory.
Things got more complicated when you had to make allowances for the BIOS memory that may take up the entire top 128k (IBM and other PCs with GWBasic) or 64k or, in some limited cases 8k as well as video memory that took up different spaces depending on whether or not a monochrome or colour adapter (or both) was installed and how much memory space they took up as well as whether or not they had their own BIOS chips. I worked on a few systems that had less than 64k available in this space which meant that "High" memory was basically useless, but you maybe able to get some value out of "Extended" memory for some applications (like Lotus 1-2-3). '286 PCs could simulate High and Extended memory with very buggy drivers.
Then there were the IO port and interrupt selection switches and often you would have to deal with hardware that used interrupts which were already "allocated" (which meant they were listed as having a specific meaning in the "IBM Technical Reference Manual") and then redefine how other hardware interfaced to the processor. Sometimes you might have driver code which chained the interrupt handlers, allowing multiple devices to request interrupts on the same line.
At the time students and other young'uns were given the task of configuring PCs and we usually had a book listing the configuration of the various options of different people's PCs and what they were running along with the PC tech refs and adapter manuals - it was department level IT and incredibly frustrating when a new version of software came in, somebody wanted to add a card (for a scanner, CD drive, new display, etc.) which meant figuring out the new memory, IO port and interrupt configuration and updating and testing the machine.
NOT good times.
Not completely computer related but I remember when I first started working full time at IBM and was in a product status meeting for the 3180 terminal (http://oldcomputer.info/terminal/ibm3180/index.htm) and how excited everybody was about the orders coming in for it.
The reason? It had a completely flat top which secretaries could put plants on. No other terminal top had a flat surface with no cooling holes like that monitor.
I guess this would be considered sexist now.
Looking at my Acer flat screen monitor with my little "Deadpool" character two-sided taped to the top, I can certainly see the attraction of a completely flat monitor top.
Wire wrapped, Z80 processor board. Motorola 6845 (using the design of the IBM Monochrome Adapter from the original PC) board. Single 8" drive running CP/M (I think I bought an S100 drive controller board but I can't remember where it came from - the disk drive came from IBM, where I was working at the time as a student). Surplus S100 rack ordered from "Radio Electronics". The power supply was hand made by one of my roommates that wanted to design his own switcher (it actually worked quite well). Keyboard was a surplus Ti-99 keyboard I bought at Active Surplus in Toronto. Monitor was an old portable TV I drove composite video into directly after removing the tuner.
Good days.
I, along with a few people I worked with, can take some credit/blame for that.
IBM Toronto Manufacturing in the early-mid '90s was building memory SIMMs for PS/2s running OS/2. IBM, at the time, had a standard set of seven memory tests but they didn't catch problems in a multi-tasker like OS/2 running on a 286/386 with memory management with multiple processes running so the memory was heavily used - so we booted OS/2 and started up a number of processes, each one accessing memory continuously and see if there were any defective memory chips on the SIMM that only failed during very heavy usage.
The issue was trying to figure out if the failure was caused by an instruction or data operation and where exactly it was in the address space which was problematical because the actual page where the failing bit/data was obfuscated due to memory management paging. When a SIMM failed the OS/2 test, it would be brought to a debug station where attempts would be make to recreate the problem and, using a custom OS/2 build, return to that sequence where the problem lay and, using a processor emulator, determine what the address was failing.
As a side note, memory at the time cost $150/Mbit, so it was worth the time and effort to find and replace the defective chip on a 1-2 Mbyte SIMM.
I'm not sure exactly how our code got into the main branch, I suspect it was because there were other things that were fixed in that recovery code and situations where there was a failure resulting in the loop of death wasn't part of the test sequence.
I do remember that there was a fairly simple way of cold booting the system from so that you could avoid this failure loop (we called it the "loop of death") - If memory serves correctly it was pressing 'F8' when the OS/2 logo comes up and then selecting a cold boot from a menu (this is going back more than 25 years ago so don't shoot me if I'm wrong). OS/2 support at that point in time was pretty good, they would have explained how to get out of the loop of death as it was a pretty common problem, especially with badly behaved Win 3.11 apps.
downfall" Discovered the first book at a used bookstore and just get the whole set that I'm reading through.
Very, very funny with a lot of heart (it wasn't a very easy war for him) - you can see a lot of the "Goons" in the books.
If you see any of the books, like British Comedy, read them.
I've been following this story since it broke a few days ago and other than the period in 2015 when the RCMP got lax, their use of the Stingrays as well as the controls put in place for their use seems reasonable.
Police are going to look for ways to monitor criminals' communications and this is one of the tools for doing that. As long there is a process where a judge approves the need for using the device and the rights and privacy of individuals caught as "incidental collections" is protected I don't see any problems here.
Maybe I'm imagining a perfect world that organizations like the RCMP don't live in, but if devices like cellphones are out there, police organizations are going to want to tap/track/monitor them.