Okay, explain to me how you're supposed to get updates, say for a client whose PC is borked or unsafe, if you don't have a functional Windows machine handy, already running a version of Windows approved by M$? (Presently meaning with WGA installed, I gather.)
Hmm... if you're required to produce this type of evidence for a court, is there anything that says HOW it has to be produced? Remember, a 1mb textfile is about 1000 printed pages.....
Actually, a lot of large-acreage subdivisions work exactly that way. You buy and pay taxes on 10 or 20 acres, but you're only allowed to USE about 2 acres of it. Only reason it's not fraud is cuz you're told about it up front.
Amazing how fast something like streaming audio adds up. Frex, if I have a 96kbit station going all day but do almost nothing else online, it still comes to about a gig for the day, per my firewall's in/out log. I was surprised that it amounted to so much data, but there you are.
30GB/mo. just for middling-quality radio. Eeep!
Add the usual odds and ends that average folks do online/download/whatever, and 100GB/month starts to sound a bit cramped.
And what do they expect to do when digital video becomes the norm -- cut off everyone who "watches TV" over the internet?? And how do they plan to distinguish free/unencumbered legit downloads from pirated content?
I don't know about those, but I'm on a Motorola wireless radio system, and it has bandwidth logging on a per-user basis.
And rather than throw out "excessive" users, the owner (this ISP is a one-man band) just lowers their speed cap til they get the message. "Excessive" here is defined as maxing out your connection *continuously* for more than a few days in a row.
I had a similar thought whilst RTFAing... this guy tried to use up the "excessive" 300GB/mo. on his new ISP and couldn't even break 50GB. And cable modem is shared. Hmmm... What if ALL the usage by EVERYONE on that particular branch of the system somehow got flagged to a single account? Cuz that's what it sounds like happened.
3) A "configuration manager" that knows most of the contents of the/etc directory and has three windows: a list of text config files, a window that displays the file, and a window with a paragraph or two of explanations and examples on how to change the file.
This goes with what I keep suggesting: a dual-pane config editor, with *both* checkbox-with-clue-balloons and raw text modes available. Use one, the other, or both as suits you, but the idea is to both show the available options (and basic info on their effects) all in one unified place, and let the user SEE what actually happened in the config file, so they can learn from it, if they wish (but aren't compelled to do so).
[trots out same suggestion I've made every time this topic comes up; mods self -1, Redundant]
Why not an interface that can both show you the available config options in a GUI, *and* (in an adjacent subwindow) display the actual textfile, so you can SEE what you really did by clicking the GUI's checkbox?
Most HTML editors already do effectively the same thing, by having both WYSIWYG and raw-HTML modes, and you can use whichever interface you prefer. Also lets you learn by seeing what your changes actually DID.
I agree with you completely. As a user, I don't mind a UI being different from other UIs; I =do= mind when its *own body parts* apparently never met.
"It's a tough nut to crack, and, unfortunately, probably not possible in a community development model simply because there is nobody with any authority to set standards. Even the LSB is often disregarded, and the LSB doesn't go anywhere near far enough because it has to appease dozens of different distro makers."
Maybe one major distro needs to step forward and say "This is how it's going to be from now on. If you want to stay with the market, get in step," and ENFORCE it with respect to everything that goes into their distro. There will be screams of protest at first, but if the result is better UI consistency in ways that improve linux for Real Everyday Users (not just for geeks or just for n00bs) it will be worth it.
And of course if someone doesn't like it, they're still perfectly free to make their own distro, and set their own standards. Whether they'll attract any significant userbase is then entirely up to them.
"Sometimes programmers just don't have the right perspective on things because they aren't really power-users of their own software."
And sometimes they're not even *ordinary everyday users* of their own software. If they were, they couldn't help but trip over some of the pitfalls they've left for regular users. But in my observation, developers are often far more interested in the solving the creative puzzle than in viewing the resulting picture. (This isn't uncommon among creative endeavours -- frex, many actors never watch the shows they star in.)
"developers... should really be communicating with their users better about what problems actually need to be solved."
Exactly. This is a great deal of why M$ has become so widely accepted -- they DO sit ordinary everyday users down in front of raw new software and watch how these users cope. Opensource doesn't generally have the financial resources to do that, but it DOES have a sufficienly wide userbase -- if only developers are willing to recognise that both power users =and= ordinary everyday users may well know more about *how the software behaves in the Real World* than the developer does.
The other thing about testing, is that you've got to be open to user complaints, no matter how stupid they sound to you. If a user does something "stupid", ask yourself how the user got to that point in the first place. I've found plenty of apps (under every OS) that I can crash just by doing something out of the prescribed order, or by clicking in an unexpected place. You can't prevent users from doing unexpected things. You CAN try to cope sensibly with the effects. But way too often, the response is "Well then, don't DO that" or "PEBKAC" or even removing the feature entirely, rather than fixing the problem.
As a passenger, I may not want MY route tracked either. Yeah, there will always be records of my start and end points, but not necessarily of every stop between -- unless a GPS is tracking the cab.
ISTM that a reasonable compromise would be that the GPS could be turned off by passenger request. The cabbie could also be free to suggest when this is in the passenger's best interests.
As to dishonest cabbies, well, they'll just find some way around it anyway.
Isn't that what one of the Christian monastic teachings (I forget which one) was about?? "Question everything, including God himself", or something to that effect.
Someone above restated the "created in God's image" as "*being* created in God's image", to explain the differences between human physiology and sound design. IOW, it's on the drawing board, but we're not finished yet.
I think it's simpler than that. God doesn't have a clue, so making it up as he goes along.;)
That was akin to my first thought: If opensource code is really so superior to closed source code, and if the world would be better off if all apps had been built from those codebases, then shouldn't we *encourage* it to be "pirated", for everyone's net benefit??
When I was DJing at a station that was NOT obligated to pay royalties, we still kept meticulous playlists. With digital stations, you don't need this handwritten log, you just need an automated server log.
BTW, piperazine has no significant effect on tapeworms; it's for ascarids (roundworms, pinworms). For tapeworms you want fenbendazole or droncit or Yomesan. Too bad the LD50 for these drugs is so high.;)
The concept is sound enough. The problem is that there is no other central body available to register artists who don't want to go thru SE.
Last time this topic went around, I suggested that outfits like CDBaby, as existing proven-reliable shared-profit music distribution entities, should institute a program where their artists can use them for these compulsory royalties -- and trust CDBaby (et al.) to set a rate as reasonable as they have for their other services.
At least it would be another option, that wouldn't require chasing down individual artists (who have a tendency to fall off the planet).
Thanks for the info, and the link. Never hurts to have one more tool in the kit.
I haven't had a flash unit fail yet myself, but I don't use 'em a lot (mainly just my camera's xD card). It does sometimes play dead and pretend it wants reformatting, but I think that's disagreement between itself and XP's notion of a USB1.x driver (old machine). I ignore its complaints, and after a couple more access attempts the problem goes away.
Someone did torture tests a couple years ago and found that most consumer-grade flash units survive everything you can throw at them physically (microwaving, hammering, one even survived having a nail driven through it) but I don't recall if they tested for static shocks -- which are more likely to be encountered in Everyday Life[tm].
The "death without warning" issue is what would bother me the most. My W.D. HDs invariably have given me months of notice (sometimes years) before going totally tits-up; there's ALWAYS time for one final backup. Works-today, Dead-tomorrow is more incentive for backups, yeah, but there's always the backup you didn't quite get to yet....
On the plus side, flash HDs would lend themselves handily to having multiple removable drives -- don't even need to redesign the PC case, just make a unit that fits in a standard 5" drive bay, that could take a dozen or so, the size of current thumb drives, plugged in side by side. That would also help with the size vs cost issue -- a dozen 100GB drives being usually as good a solution as one 1000GB drive, and much safer from a data recovery standpoint, plus you could start with one and add as needed very easily. With an IDE or SATA adapter, it could even be used with an old machine.
I can tell you that a great deal of what I root around looking for are MP3s of my old vinyl albums, that don't exist as CDs, and probably never will.
I was talking to Steve Swindells today and asked him about his 1980 album, Fresh Blood, which still remains my all-time favourite LP. It made Billboard's Top 100 list, so it wasn't entirely obscure. Here's what Steve had to say about the possibility of it ever getting released on CD:
Sorry - re Fresh Blood, I made enquiries and it's now mouldering with Altlantic Records, who own the rights for perpetuity, of course.
And they have no plans to put it out as a CD. At least they know of its existence in some vault!
If even 10% of those of us who put that album on Billboard's Top 100 list bought a CD copy, that would be a tidy chunk of change... but the label doesn't see it that way.
Yep. Insurance companies love anything that helps them establish risk-assessment.
Another potential abuse leaps to mind: Some dude on parole is supposed to stay out of druggie neighbourhoods, as a condition of staying out of jail. The court-mandated GPS on his vehicle (or his leg-iron) tracks him into a neighbourhood whose sewer surveillance establishes it as a major druggie hangout. Does just being constitute violation of parole??
Don't think in light of current policies. Think in light of potential abuse, because the Good Guys[tm] won't always be in charge.
You don't need a warrant. The point is that it would ID someone for The Authorities to keep an eye on. Next time the hapless perp gets stopped for a minor traffic violation, up comes the flag on his record, giving the officer probable cause to search the vehicle.
I expect the early instances would get thrown out of court, but since we're headed toward a thought-crime system, that won't last forever.
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Okay, explain to me how you're supposed to get updates, say for a client whose PC is borked or unsafe, if you don't have a functional Windows machine handy, already running a version of Windows approved by M$? (Presently meaning with WGA installed, I gather.)
Occurs to me that if what they're logging is IP addresses, a suitably crafted DDoS might render the logged data completely useless.
Hmm... if you're required to produce this type of evidence for a court, is there anything that says HOW it has to be produced? Remember, a 1mb textfile is about 1000 printed pages.....
Actually, a lot of large-acreage subdivisions work exactly that way. You buy and pay taxes on 10 or 20 acres, but you're only allowed to USE about 2 acres of it. Only reason it's not fraud is cuz you're told about it up front.
Amazing how fast something like streaming audio adds up. Frex, if I have a 96kbit station going all day but do almost nothing else online, it still comes to about a gig for the day, per my firewall's in/out log. I was surprised that it amounted to so much data, but there you are.
30GB/mo. just for middling-quality radio. Eeep!
Add the usual odds and ends that average folks do online/download/whatever, and 100GB/month starts to sound a bit cramped.
And what do they expect to do when digital video becomes the norm -- cut off everyone who "watches TV" over the internet?? And how do they plan to distinguish free/unencumbered legit downloads from pirated content?
I don't know about those, but I'm on a Motorola wireless radio system, and it has bandwidth logging on a per-user basis.
And rather than throw out "excessive" users, the owner (this ISP is a one-man band) just lowers their speed cap til they get the message. "Excessive" here is defined as maxing out your connection *continuously* for more than a few days in a row.
I had a similar thought whilst RTFAing... this guy tried to use up the "excessive" 300GB/mo. on his new ISP and couldn't even break 50GB. And cable modem is shared. Hmmm... What if ALL the usage by EVERYONE on that particular branch of the system somehow got flagged to a single account? Cuz that's what it sounds like happened.
3) A "configuration manager" that knows most of the contents of the /etc directory and has three windows: a list of text config files, a window that displays the file, and a window with a paragraph or two of explanations and examples on how to change the file.
This goes with what I keep suggesting: a dual-pane config editor, with *both* checkbox-with-clue-balloons and raw text modes available. Use one, the other, or both as suits you, but the idea is to both show the available options (and basic info on their effects) all in one unified place, and let the user SEE what actually happened in the config file, so they can learn from it, if they wish (but aren't compelled to do so).
[trots out same suggestion I've made every time this topic comes up; mods self -1, Redundant]
Why not an interface that can both show you the available config options in a GUI, *and* (in an adjacent subwindow) display the actual textfile, so you can SEE what you really did by clicking the GUI's checkbox?
Most HTML editors already do effectively the same thing, by having both WYSIWYG and raw-HTML modes, and you can use whichever interface you prefer. Also lets you learn by seeing what your changes actually DID.
I agree with you completely. As a user, I don't mind a UI being different from other UIs; I =do= mind when its *own body parts* apparently never met.
"It's a tough nut to crack, and, unfortunately, probably not possible in a community development model simply because there is nobody with any authority to set standards. Even the LSB is often disregarded, and the LSB doesn't go anywhere near far enough because it has to appease dozens of different distro makers."
Maybe one major distro needs to step forward and say "This is how it's going to be from now on. If you want to stay with the market, get in step," and ENFORCE it with respect to everything that goes into their distro. There will be screams of protest at first, but if the result is better UI consistency in ways that improve linux for Real Everyday Users (not just for geeks or just for n00bs) it will be worth it.
And of course if someone doesn't like it, they're still perfectly free to make their own distro, and set their own standards. Whether they'll attract any significant userbase is then entirely up to them.
"Sometimes programmers just don't have the right perspective on things because they aren't really power-users of their own software."
... should really be communicating with their users better about what problems actually need to be solved."
And sometimes they're not even *ordinary everyday users* of their own software. If they were, they couldn't help but trip over some of the pitfalls they've left for regular users. But in my observation, developers are often far more interested in the solving the creative puzzle than in viewing the resulting picture. (This isn't uncommon among creative endeavours -- frex, many actors never watch the shows they star in.)
"developers
Exactly. This is a great deal of why M$ has become so widely accepted -- they DO sit ordinary everyday users down in front of raw new software and watch how these users cope. Opensource doesn't generally have the financial resources to do that, but it DOES have a sufficienly wide userbase -- if only developers are willing to recognise that both power users =and= ordinary everyday users may well know more about *how the software behaves in the Real World* than the developer does.
The other thing about testing, is that you've got to be open to user complaints, no matter how stupid they sound to you. If a user does something "stupid", ask yourself how the user got to that point in the first place. I've found plenty of apps (under every OS) that I can crash just by doing something out of the prescribed order, or by clicking in an unexpected place. You can't prevent users from doing unexpected things. You CAN try to cope sensibly with the effects. But way too often, the response is "Well then, don't DO that" or "PEBKAC" or even removing the feature entirely, rather than fixing the problem.
As a passenger, I may not want MY route tracked either. Yeah, there will always be records of my start and end points, but not necessarily of every stop between -- unless a GPS is tracking the cab.
ISTM that a reasonable compromise would be that the GPS could be turned off by passenger request. The cabbie could also be free to suggest when this is in the passenger's best interests.
As to dishonest cabbies, well, they'll just find some way around it anyway.
"What if, for example, God rewarded skepticism?"
Isn't that what one of the Christian monastic teachings (I forget which one) was about?? "Question everything, including God himself", or something to that effect.
Someone above restated the "created in God's image" as "*being* created in God's image", to explain the differences between human physiology and sound design. IOW, it's on the drawing board, but we're not finished yet.
;)
I think it's simpler than that. God doesn't have a clue, so making it up as he goes along.
That was akin to my first thought: If opensource code is really so superior to closed source code, and if the world would be better off if all apps had been built from those codebases, then shouldn't we *encourage* it to be "pirated", for everyone's net benefit??
When I was DJing at a station that was NOT obligated to pay royalties, we still kept meticulous playlists. With digital stations, you don't need this handwritten log, you just need an automated server log.
;)
BTW, piperazine has no significant effect on tapeworms; it's for ascarids (roundworms, pinworms). For tapeworms you want fenbendazole or droncit or Yomesan. Too bad the LD50 for these drugs is so high.
The concept is sound enough. The problem is that there is no other central body available to register artists who don't want to go thru SE.
Last time this topic went around, I suggested that outfits like CDBaby, as existing proven-reliable shared-profit music distribution entities, should institute a program where their artists can use them for these compulsory royalties -- and trust CDBaby (et al.) to set a rate as reasonable as they have for their other services.
At least it would be another option, that wouldn't require chasing down individual artists (who have a tendency to fall off the planet).
Thanks for the info, and the link. Never hurts to have one more tool in the kit.
I haven't had a flash unit fail yet myself, but I don't use 'em a lot (mainly just my camera's xD card). It does sometimes play dead and pretend it wants reformatting, but I think that's disagreement between itself and XP's notion of a USB1.x driver (old machine). I ignore its complaints, and after a couple more access attempts the problem goes away.
Someone did torture tests a couple years ago and found that most consumer-grade flash units survive everything you can throw at them physically (microwaving, hammering, one even survived having a nail driven through it) but I don't recall if they tested for static shocks -- which are more likely to be encountered in Everyday Life[tm].
The "death without warning" issue is what would bother me the most. My W.D. HDs invariably have given me months of notice (sometimes years) before going totally tits-up; there's ALWAYS time for one final backup. Works-today, Dead-tomorrow is more incentive for backups, yeah, but there's always the backup you didn't quite get to yet....
On the plus side, flash HDs would lend themselves handily to having multiple removable drives -- don't even need to redesign the PC case, just make a unit that fits in a standard 5" drive bay, that could take a dozen or so, the size of current thumb drives, plugged in side by side. That would also help with the size vs cost issue -- a dozen 100GB drives being usually as good a solution as one 1000GB drive, and much safer from a data recovery standpoint, plus you could start with one and add as needed very easily. With an IDE or SATA adapter, it could even be used with an old machine.
ROTFLMAO! -- And as I recall, Beethoven's contemporary critics made much the same remarks as do our era's critics when confronted with modern music.
;)
Anyone who doesn't get the comparison isn't playing their Beethoven loud enough.
(Mind you, I *like* both punk and Beethoven!!)
I was talking to Steve Swindells today and asked him about his 1980 album, Fresh Blood, which still remains my all-time favourite LP. It made Billboard's Top 100 list, so it wasn't entirely obscure. Here's what Steve had to say about the possibility of it ever getting released on CD:
Sorry - re Fresh Blood, I made enquiries and it's now mouldering with Altlantic Records, who own the rights for perpetuity, of course.
And they have no plans to put it out as a CD. At least they know of its existence in some vault!
If even 10% of those of us who put that album on Billboard's Top 100 list bought a CD copy, that would be a tidy chunk of change... but the label doesn't see it that way.
Given your comment... what does this do to data recovery, when one DOES fail?
Yep. Insurance companies love anything that helps them establish risk-assessment.
Another potential abuse leaps to mind: Some dude on parole is supposed to stay out of druggie neighbourhoods, as a condition of staying out of jail. The court-mandated GPS on his vehicle (or his leg-iron) tracks him into a neighbourhood whose sewer surveillance establishes it as a major druggie hangout. Does just being constitute violation of parole??
Don't think in light of current policies. Think in light of potential abuse, because the Good Guys[tm] won't always be in charge.
You don't need a warrant. The point is that it would ID someone for The Authorities to keep an eye on. Next time the hapless perp gets stopped for a minor traffic violation, up comes the flag on his record, giving the officer probable cause to search the vehicle.
I expect the early instances would get thrown out of court, but since we're headed toward a thought-crime system, that won't last forever.