Oh, you think Flash is a security problem now? Publish the source code to it. The malware writers will go over that with a fine toothed comb, and the rate of zero-days will go up by a factor of 10 until they finally exhaust it.
That, and everyone and their mom will be forking it to try to patch the holes they find. It'll be complete chaos.
Though... now that I think about it.... that will make flash SOOO much more of a security hazard that even most of the morons that are refusing to migrate their old crap will be forced to action. Maybe that'll be a net good? "Difficult to say... always in motion the future is."
As we've seen before, all it takes is to have a merger or a sale. And then the new owners will milk it like the golden cow. We've seen that over, and over, and over again. That's what half the buy-outs do, they're just a clearing house, to carve up the company assets and sell them piecemeal for more than they paid for the lot. That's why we see so many companies get sold twice in rapid succession - they get bought out, the valuable IP etc they have gets distributed around, and the husk of the company gets resold.
So when they say "We PROMISE!", I say it doesn't matter if you keep your word or not, it's not going to be UP to you when it matters.
I think more games should be playable in such a way that you can ignore the goals and quests and play it however you like.
For the sheer awesomeness of simply being able to travel around as I see fit, Skyrim is probably my favorite game ever.
Also sometimes there's the need to improve the challenge level past what the game provides. A number of games offer "skill points" by some name or other to allocate toward better performance, allowing the player to customize how their character performs... hits harder, better defense, more powerful magic, etc, so you can replay the game going "all in on magic" for a different gameplay that time through.
I loved Dust - Elysian Tail, and it has fair replay value, but I wanted more. Beat it on the hardest setting, as in beat it 119% (all extra challenges completed) So I wanted to kick it up a notch. Now that game has skill points you get to assign, but you acquire just enough skill points during the course of leveling up to max out all categories. So by the end of the game most players have all of their abilities very near max. (you can get to the end before you are max level) The game also prevents you from assigning one skill more than 4 points higher than your lowest other skill, which is a dumb limitation seeing as skill points are gained frequently.
Anyway, I decided to play the entire game without assigning any skill points. None to defense, none to health, none to attack, none to fidget (magic) and see if I could still beat the game. oooookay, NOW we have a challenging game! That one took me quite some time to finally finish. I see in the forums discussing the game how people lament the game isn't difficult enough for a good player, you can't turn the difficulty setting high enough to stay challenging. But THAT....that will do the trick. Boss battles that take 15 minutes to do, where one hit will kill you. You're one-shot for many of the common mobs too. (just try jumping over a slime with the wrong timing... insta-kill)
In this particular game, magic quickly becomes the dominating attack, as it is ranged and gets to be very high damage. Without leveling up fidget, magic is essentially useless in any of the mid to upper levels, all it's useful for is attracting aggro. Then once they're in range you just have to beat the candy out of them without ever getting hit. (difficult to do with mobs that you can't block, like Lady Tethis) The good news on this sort of game tactic though is you get to see aspects the game that you otherwise would miss entirely. Did you know you can rip a sky-ship out of the air and body slam it on the ground? (most players would hit it twice with lightning as soon as they saw it on screen to kill it, which is useless if fidget isn't leveled up) So ordinarily players would have no use for that move. But surprise... even for as strong as that ship is, one body slam is all it takes to kill it! Using combos in unexpected ways like that is one of the many interesting things I ran into playing without assigning skill points.
It's too bad so few games give you the opportunity to prevent some aspect of your "leveling up". In Dust, without skill assignments you still level up, but damage, health, and defense are several times lower, and fidget is several magnitudes lower.
As far as web browsing goes, aren't autoplaying videos" the de-facto definition of evil?? THE most despised advertisement ploy that marketing has been able to devise? How on earth do they think this is a good idea? (or are they just trolling us with this idea?)
is to make a new account with a less popular name. Sorry, I know, it sucks, but that is the price you pay for using a "generic" login on what turns out to be a very popular service. It was difficult to see this problem years ago, so it's not really your fault, but you have to deal with it now.
I registered first.middle.last@gmail.com a few years ago when I went job hunting. I already had another one I'd made shortly after they came out (and I got an invite! remember those days?) but it was more of my online nickname and wasn't really that professional.
Nowadays it can be really hard to find a username that's not already taken on a big service like gmail. Or slashdot for that matter. Check out my nick here. I haven't had it for that long compared to some here. (my nick may be short, but my UID isn't impressively small) I just got very lucky it wasn't already taken, as ALL the longer variations were - this was a last-ditch sign-up attempt that really surprised me when it went through.
So just try to pick something that will endure for awhile. first.last@service.com isn't even really good enough nowadays. Common substitutions don't even work most of the time. In the end it will be easier to remember several.words.in.username@service.com than some leet-speak-mess@service.com. Compare for example: GH05T@service.com vs say ghost.in.the.shell@service.com. Shorter isn't always easier to remember or convey over the phone or accurately in writing.
You know what else that route would be ideal for? Trains.
These abandoned rail lines actually make ideal bicycle trails for several reasons. - they run, usually directly, between population centers - they're inside a ~100ft right-of-way that's often turned into a lush shaded tree tunnel that you can't even see the fields/highways/houses/industry/etc that the tail runs through - they're raised so usually are free of water - they're as level as possible, sometimes winding around hills, because trains prefer their track to be level to save on fuel and time - once the tracks and ties are removed, the bed just requires addition of finer gravel (the coarse roadstone can stay) and a once-over with a heavy roller to be ready for riding. (or you can pave it, concrete or asphalt) - intersections/crossings with roads are already built up. they often leave the tracks in and just fill in the wheel gaps with a little bit of asphalt.
The USA just doesn't have a dense enough population in most places for train-transit to work. This is not Europe. This is the ideal reuse for these otherwise abandoned lines.
This was the trail that ran between cedar falls/waterloo/evensdale/laporte and center point/urbandale/cedar rapids. I'm not good with county locations, could be madison. The trail was washed out (and buried in places up to THREE FEED deep in corn stalks washed out from the nearby fields) just south of Klima park 4 miles south of LaPorte City.
Bikes hardly have any impact on paved roads and bike paths are already paid for by taxation.
I don't normally favor new taxes but in this case I can really see their point. I live in a city that borders on another wealthier city. They went all-in on bicycle paths and we did not. It sucks not having them here. Technically it's illegal to ride a bicycle on a sidewalk here anyway. The police don't care at all unless there's a bike/pedestrian collision, which makes the bicyclist automatically 100% at-fault "because it wasn't lawful for them to be there in the first place". I'm actually okay with that too. (I've actually been ran into by a bicyclist while trying to mow my lawn!) But it technically forces cyclists onto roads which can be quite hazardous. Also lack of even sidewalks beside many roadways again complicates matters.
So as long as the tax is going completely to bicycle-related public service, I'm totally onboard. It probably won't even really make much of a difference - pavement is expensive. I know my front sidewalk costs $200 per square to replace when it gets cracked and the city tells me to fix it. I can't imagine the cost of even one block of bike path, which is usually twice as wide as a sidewalk.
A few years back we had flooding, and a stretch of a 50-mile long bicycle trail that goes between cities here got washed out. It took them three years to get funding to repair it. It was just crushed gravel laid down on abandoned railroad bed, ideal for a long bike path. But the washout carved out the land in the area, so they had to have dozers and graders in there to repair the bed before they could lay down a new surface. That stuff costs money. And as far as taxes are concerned, just like the gasoline tax they try to tax the people that are getting the biggest benefit from the service, it's the fairest way to get the funding.
I don't think it's nearly as cut-and-dry as you think it is. Things like schematics and source code are only useful to a very small percentage of consumers, let alone actual technicians. Most of the time only high dollar items will ever be worth repairing. What good is a schematic to repair a $20 device, when a an hour of a repair tech's time is $50? And really, source code? Try to find a shop you can take something to in order to have it reprogrammed. And then how much is several hours of a coder's time going to cost you?
A lot of this issue is more about the legal aspect, where companies abuse laws like DMCA and Copyright to help lawyers make repairs and 3rd party parts and services unlawful. It's the "razor blade game" where you are legally forced to buy their blades. It's easy for service parts to be that way simply because an electronic daughterboard or ECU is pretty easily seen as patentable, and the program that runs on it is copyrighted. Black-box development of say a replacement ECU is possible, but expensive, and then they try as above to abuse laws like DMCA to keep you buried armpit-deep in lawyers and sue you into leaving the market, whether or not they've actually found something legally justifiable to keep you out. They usually have a three step plan: 1: Sue you. if you win, 2: Sue you again. If you win (and assuming you still have enough money to keep paying your lawyers) then 3: buy you out and shutter your business. We see this time and time again. They need to address this "assault by attorney" problem head-on.
Although a lot of technical people wish they could repair things more easily, the truth is that a lot of consumers aren't going to be willing to do what it takes (or COSTS) to repair things. I've got a drop-in charger for a radio here that I've been fiddling with on-and-off for weeks, and haven't been able to figure out. I had no schematic so I wrote one up. All the parts are obtainable. Haven't been able to figure out what's wrong with it yet though. What's my time worth? I suppose I'd have been a lot smarter to just have gotten online and bought a new one by now. A lot of things simply aren't worth anyone's time to fix, even if they have all the ideal support. And it's not just a matter of the manufacturer not making it repairable - a lot of the time it doesn't even matter because even with ideal circumstances that by its nature it's going to be cheaper to make a new one than fix your broken one.
And if you're going to try to force them to make a better product, that's going to be a huge uphill battle. Manufacturing in the consumer market is a race-to-the-bottom where suppliers like China are doing their best to provide products at the minimum (and ABSOLUTE minimum) acceptable quality and durability the consumer will accept, in order to provide it at the lowest possible price. That makes forced-durability a tug-of-war, and one that will have boundaries and limits that are impossible to clearly define in any standard way.
Look at a laptop computer nowadays. One board. Memory and even sometimes the SSD are soldered down. Unquestionably the lowest cost way to manufacture it. Display panel is one integrated piece, no separate backlight or even LCD controller, it's all glued into the top shell along with the camera. Again arguably the lowest cost way to make it. That leaves the top case with its keyboard, trackpad, and speakers, all manufactured as one piece. If you're thinking demanding the schematic to the board is going to get you anywhere, you're insane. How about the camera being replaceable? No, the consumer demands low cost and a thin, light design, and so the camera is going to have to stay glued into the top. The only point of leverage here that makes sense is to somehow cap the cost of the parts. An $800 laptop should not have a total cost to assemble from parts of $1500. If anything, the parts aren't assembled and that should result in a LOWER cost for sum of parts than for completed product. $800 laptop? Then $750
Thanks for the info. Yep, they don't call it "rocket science" for nothing. Heard put another way, "Getting to space is EASY. Staying in space is hard." Getting enough angular orbital speed going and in the orientation you want it is the biggest challenge.
Due to no RUD they should have been able to downlink all the data they need to fully identify the issue and fix it in the next go-round though. Not having to collect debris scattered across thousands of miles and reassemble the bits in a large hanger for forensics is a big help.
I assume the malfunction failed to get it into the correct orbital profile, since the limited videos available all look okay? (no kaboom) Or does someone have a more informative video?
Well, okay, "person", not "man", but yeah, same thing. "Person" sounds very awkward in that context somehow. English needs to learn from these other languages that have gender-neutral pronouns that we can use to keep from offending the overly-sensitive. Otherwise it seems so forced when we have to force nouns into pronoun duties.
The Aldi folks have it right. There's no need for a sticker or defacement of common produce items.
I was at walmart last week and found apple turnovers in the bakery self-serve box. (unusual, they're typically in boxes of 4) Got some. Got to the register. Clerk spent time looking in the system, could not find the individual turnover product. Gave up, entered them under "german pastry" or something like that.
Other stores I go to and get say apples, they have that tiny little sticker on them. Get to the register and the gal picks up the bag, squints to read the short little number on the label, picks up the laminated sheet, looks up the number, and hand keys in the full product code for that number while weighing it.
Nowhere I shop uses barcodes for loose produce. I'd expect barcodes on some bundled greens like lettuce and celery though I don't buy those.
I think this could work for produce you can get the code to stay on and still be readable for awhile. I'd imagine a lot of produce won't retain the code without blurring it or bruising the area and turning it into a large black smudge. Maybe they're doing this with avocados because they are good at retaining the code clearly?
"'Our goal is to lead a sweeping transformation of the federal government's technology that will deliver dramatically better services for citizens,'
So he thinks he's going to cut spending and improve services? Sounds like the hucksters and their perpetual motion machines, they both seem to think they can defy physics and common sense. (reminds me of "we're going to cut taxes but not take away social services" plan)
If he continues the way he's been going, he'll just cancel all all the Federal Technology programs or defund them into shutdown. Sure that'l save money, but it certainly won't make them provide "better service". Unless Trump considers "gone" to be "better service" - and I suspect that's the case. I think if he doesn't like something, he considers getting rid of it as calling it "improved". Hey we're going to "improve" your broken leg by cutting it off!
We have a little bit of that going on here right now. One of the higher admins (that's about due to early retire) has several systems using his account because the system accounts he should be using for that don't work properly. Fortunately he's not the only user that has that access though, so while it can be a rare inconvenience when he's gone (to track down one of the other admins that also has access) it's still not a good idea.
If your admin leaves on amicable terms, have them change their password when they leave. I don't expect them to tell you what their current password is (as many will reuse passwords etc) but they should be able to get on their computer before they walk out, make sure all personal information is out of their keychain (personal info on company computers being another rant for another time) and then start the password change process. Then their manager can sit down and enter a new password he has created.
This has several benefits. You don't have to worry about what the user's password may be locking you out of after they exit the building, AND it works like an account-disable because they don't have their new password. (just make sure you note on the account not to let the user do a password reset by calling the helpdesk!) There may still be some things that need to be individually addressed though such as SSH public key logins that don't rely on the user's directory password. If you're worried about that you can disable the account entirely, and then activate it momentarily if you find you need it for something - get it migrated, and disable it again.
That way, if something DOES end up being locked down under his login, the manager can get at it. It also allows for good tracking of what information required the new password, so they can review handovers and reduce/eliminate future needs with policy changes. This is a better idea than calling the employee a week after they've departed. It's more considerate for the company as well as the employee, and is also more reliable. (there may be hard feelings you were unaware of that give you the finger when you try to call them back)
and this is obviously one of them. Criminals come from all walks of life, sysadmin isn't a position immune to containing the occasional bad apple.
So many questions of course, a lot of which boil down to "They must have had some serious lapse in procedure to have allowed this to happen." That's not really the case though. Back doors and logic bombs are serious threats when a person has been a trusted system administrator. Done "right", they can be extremely difficult to detect. It's a bit like the widely accepted advice of "Server was hacked? Don't try to clean it, you might miss something. You must wipe and reinstall it." (same really applies even to a home desktop) A departing admin (on bad OR good terms) is basically the exact same issue, a compromised system, but we only very rarely see such an extreme response. It's much less practical to nuke-n-pave when it's your entire network that is basically now classified as "compromised." Is this how we should respond? When you really stop and think about it, it starts to show itself as a really difficult question to answer. Rebuilding everything when an admin leaves when your system is large is just really hard to justify. But if your system is big, it's also more difficult to review it all and proclaim it "clean". It's just a bad position to be in, and that's why admin departures are such a headache. If you're big enough you have several admins and better compartmentalization of access, more robust isolation of systems, better logging, security software that's under the control of the CIO and not the admins, etc. They have a better chance, but it doesn't look like this one was big enough to have those benefits.
The lack of backups is the most troubling though. That's what stung the other recent post on the cleanout-from-inside. There's just no excuse for that.
A) stop apps from nagging you to rate them B) stop apps from presenting inconsistent, confusing ratings popups that may trick you into rating higher C) stop apps from bribing you for a higher-than-it-deserves rating D) stop apps from just plain fraudulently submitting 5-star ratings on your behalf
This move isn't even slightly surprising.
(and how many times do I have to click the "NO THANKS!" button when asked to rate your app? once every time I launch it? Nevermind that I've already rated it 3-4 times, each one lower than the last! idiots.)
It makes me wonder if they are considering the potential for something like an explosion or fire from the battery itself, or what the battery could work in conjunction with. (such as a detonator) In the case of a detonator, it's trivially easy to buck up voltage from even a 1.5v AAA to charge up a capacitor to fire off even a large detonator. In that case, it's the power capacity of the battery that's the issue. But I bet you could get away with that using a CR2032 watch battery also.
As for the 9v, it has less power than a pair of AA batteries, owing to its design to provide greater voltage at a lower current and for less time. Older 9v's used to be made of six AAAA batteries - I used to take them apart for fun. (do they still do that?) Then the cheaper ones started stacking flat cells vertically top to bottom (still, six of them), I think radio shack was the first I saw do that. I was quite disappointed to find that stack in there when I tore open a radio shack 9v years ago. But using individual cells internally wastes space that could be used to increase the total power in the cell, more room for electrolyte. I generally judge batteries like that by their weight, and you can clearly see that a 9v weighs less than two AAs. The power in a single D cell however... would apparently make the TSA wet their pants. (go look it up, it's quite surprising!)
I'm not really sure how they think you can directly convert battery power into an explosion though? Most batteries are good at high density storage yes, but not rapid charge or discharge. (if you want that, get a supercap!) Something tells me they don't science much.
well it doesn't matter who's running the show, we will get the the bill in the end. Right now it's coming partly from taxes and partly from the airlines. This just shifts the initial cost over to the airlines. We will still get stuck with the bill. The problem now is the massive conflict of interest it creates. I'm sure MrT is just looking at this as another business opportunity though. It just blows my mind the amount of business favors he's going to have stacked up before we manage to get rid of him.
But poking around a hard drive is a legitimate part of fixing a computer, and if they inform on criminal activity they've observed as part of their normal activities they're informants.
Not even remotely. I repaired computers for a decade, and never once did I have reason to "poke around on a hard drive". Even on the rare occasion I needed to open a document without the customer's involvement (to test speakers or a video issue for example) I knew where in the OS to find pictures or sound files I could use. I never needed to even rifle through their Pictures folder to find something to open.
And lets not forget, they were searching the unallocated space on the hard drive. There is absolutely no reason to do this unless you are searching for deleted data. So unless they brought it in for an unformat or to recover something accidentally deleted, you have ZERO business doing that kind of search.
I see this as no different than contracting a painter to come over and paint a few rooms of your house, and when you step out into the garage to work on your car they start rifling through your dresser looking for anything illegal. Maybe the local DEA has a private deal with that employee and wants to know if he ever "stumbles across" any drugs. And they'll pay him for the tip. And maybe he carries a little baggie in his truck to leave in your underwear drawer if you look like a good mark.
And lets not forget, he's being offered a reward. If that doesn't reek of "incentive to plant evidence", I don't know what does. There's a reason we don't pay cops bonuses when they make busts. You don't give incentives to law enforcement to find more illegal activity because it encourages them to plant evidence and violate rights. Using a proxy doesn't improve this. If anything, it makes it worse because now you're not trying to rely on the morality and legal knowledge of an officer... now you're relying on the morals and legal know-how of Joe Citizen, and that's a heck of a lot worse still.
I see three things that need to be addressed here. First off, employees conducting searches that clearly go beyond the business contract. I think anyone who's been surreptitiously searched by a service provider should have grounds for legal action, whether or not they found anything naughty. If I come back in from the garage and see the painter sifting through my dresser he's going to get thrown out of my house as a starter. Then I'm going to be on the phone lighting up the ear of his manager. And depending on how that goes, I may meet him in court a little later. The problem with computer forensics is it's a heck of a lot harder to catch them doing this. They're doing it out of your sight, and leaving essentially no evidence. IMHO that should make civil penalties worse. Penalties for behavior that's harder to catch needs to be more severe to balance out the incentive that it's easier to get away with, to make the risk-calculations in the criminal's head balance out.
Second, Best Buy should have at least some legal exposure here also, because it should be part of their employee's training that you don't violate the privacy rights of a customer. We didn't have a written policy where I worked, but it was occasionally discussed with the new people that you don't go mucking around on customer hard drives. If several of your employees are taking advantage of their access to customer data for personal gain, this should be a huge issue for Best Buy. Not only is it a legal issue, but it's a huge violation of customer trust and will have an impact on business as customers take their gear elsewhere for service. So it's in the business's best interest for several reasons to prevent this behavior. (that, and how much clock time was wasted by these employees while they conducted hard drive scans, getting paid by the hour from BB to scan hard drives that the FBI would then maybe pay them for? That's theft, as I doubt they d
Just responding to several replies to my previous post all at once here.
Remember too airplane electronics is updated on a 5, 10, or 20 year schedule. Whatever power port the USB adapter was plugged into may not have been updated for a very long time, even though things worked.
Unless the USB ports were following the very first standard (back when peripherals were only allowed to draw a piddly 100mA) they still should be watching the current and kill power if there's an overdraw. Age is not an excuse for unsafe behavior since it's always been specified how you should handle overdraw. by the accessory.
Part of the story here is those drop-resistors. People ask "why can't the charger and the device communicate two-way?" The answer is those resistors. It costs money to build in communications, not a lot but china's cheap. If you want a cheap charger, 5 cents in resistors beats a buck in an IC and 6 other support components. And back when USB came out, prices were a lot higher. So the chargers just set the voltage and are supposed to shut down if the accessory ignores them and overdraws. But again, that's added cost and China won't support that. They'd much rather overspec on the package and overheat in your cigarette lighter jack. You're more than likely to just fry it after a few weeks of overdrawing abuse, in which case you'll just go buy another one, and that's precisely what they want anyway, so don't expect that to change anytime soon. Ignoring the standard is in their best interest.
There are USB "condom" devices that, in addition to isolating from data comms, will trick both the charger and the iPhone into doing 1A charging.
Yeah.... "firebugs". Do not use them. Ignoring the maximum power rating on your charger is like sticking your fingers in your ears and humming when someone warns you not to do something dangerous. So unless you're trying for a Darwin Award, don't use those. If you insist, then for the love of god don't leave it charging unattended! There's a real risk you'll set your car on fire while you're getting groceries or something.
It's been a while since I read the specs, but isn't this statement contradicting how a USB DCP charger _should_ behave according to BC1.1/1.2 ? As in, when Idcp goes above what the charger can deliver, Vchg should drop..
Your electronics background should help here. If a device is setting its load to draw a certain power, and your supply can't manage that much current, dropping the voltage is the opposite of what you ought to be doing to maintain power. It's a bit of a paradox problem. "The only winning move is not to play". Shut off. Dropping the voltage will cause most good phones to stop charging. Then the charger rebounds voltage since the load disappears. Then a few seconds later the phone starts charging again. Rinse and repeat. I think most of us have seen a phone do that, chirp chirp chirp chirp, as it continuously bounces between "charging" and "not charging". In case you haven't ran into that, the phone doesn't actually get charged, it's just super annoying for anyone nearby that has to listen to it. So please don't design a power supply that does this, it only helps if you're a cheap power bank that doesn't care but yet somehow has a buck-down regulator that can still operate at voltages approaching the load voltage (typically 3.7v)
5v? What about my old phone which charges at 9v, and my current phone that charges at 12v?
3.7 volts is incredibly common right now in devices. Here's a nice primer for the new arrivals: http://www.instructables.com/i... Pretty much every cell phone on the planet uses a flat lipo pack since they're currently the best price point for storage-density. Modern semiconductors tend to be made for lower voltages, so this is fine. A li
There have been standards in place for quite some time now governing the power capacity of USB ports. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Power) Sorry this is a bit of a long-winded explanation but it's all stuff you have to know to understand the issue.
The iPhone is somewhat "notorious" for refusing to charge off a port that doesn't communicate the amount of current it is allowed to draw. ("you cannot charge form this device" popup of some sort, I don't recall the exact message you get) This caused frustration from some who bought cheap car and wall adapters and found their iPhone wouldn't charge from them, despite other phones charging fine. To Apple's credit, this was the correct and (fire) safe behavior. Devices that just continue blindly and overheat themselves or other accessories are just plain poor design, but should still not be capable of posing a hazard in the charger.
Voltage (5v in this case) is supplied "on supply", in other words the power source dictates the voltage and the accessory needs to be capable of handling it. Accessories that can't tolerate how high the voltage is will probably be damaged by it, and could pose an overheat/fire hazard. Since all USB are supposed to run at 5v, voltage is not an issue because USB supplies and accessories all expect 5v.
Current on the other hand, is supplied on demand, meaning the accessory decides how much power to draw from the supply. If it draws too much again there is an overheat/fire risk, but this time from the supply not the accessory. Power (in the form of current, where power = voltage x current) overdraw has become an important consideration with USB now that it's become something of the de-facto battery charging standard. Larger devices (like bigger cell phones and especially tablets like iPads) can "quick charge" their large batteries by drawing more current at 5v. But the supply needs to be capable of safely delivering the higher power. The USB spec says to use DC drop resistors on the D+ and D- data lines to communicate fixed values that the accessory can look up in a table to determine how much power the supply claims it can safely deliver. These resistors aren't necessary to USB data function and can be omitted but then the accessory has no way of knowing how much power it can safely draw. It should then default to the "bare minimum" of 25mA of current, which would charge most modern devices very slowly. (or like the iPhone, just flat out refuse to charge at all) This is enough power though to operate unpowered accessories like mice and keyboards. Some larger accessories (like tablets and battery banks) can adjust the amount of power they draw to suit the maximum specified by the supply. An iphone can charge at either 500mA or 1000mA, for example, depending on the charger it's attached to. Again it's very important to understand the amount of power being drawn by the accessory is entirely determined BY the accessory. The phone is charging at 500mA NOT because that's how much the charger physical can provide, but because it has TOLD the phone how much it can safely provide and the PHONE is only demanding 500mA form it at as result.
If the phone wants 1000mA and the charger is telling it that it can only safely supply 500mA, but the phone just ignores that and tries to draw 1000mA, the charger's acceptable responses are both limited and well-defined. Quality chargers will simply detect the overdraw and stop providing power, and your phone will probably go into charge for a fraction of a second and then immediately stop charging. You might ask yourself "why doesn't the charger just refuse to provide more power than it can safely manager?" Power = Voltage x Current. To keep Power constant (at 500mA) when the device has rigged current it is drawing so that it will get 1000mA, it COULD cut the voltage in half since it has control over that. BUT that violates USB standards. They specifically say you can't do that, your only response is to TURN OFF the supply of power entirely. The accessor
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Oh, you think Flash is a security problem now? Publish the source code to it. The malware writers will go over that with a fine toothed comb, and the rate of zero-days will go up by a factor of 10 until they finally exhaust it.
That, and everyone and their mom will be forking it to try to patch the holes they find. It'll be complete chaos.
Though... now that I think about it.... that will make flash SOOO much more of a security hazard that even most of the morons that are refusing to migrate their old crap will be forced to action. Maybe that'll be a net good? "Difficult to say... always in motion the future is."
As we've seen before, all it takes is to have a merger or a sale. And then the new owners will milk it like the golden cow. We've seen that over, and over, and over again. That's what half the buy-outs do, they're just a clearing house, to carve up the company assets and sell them piecemeal for more than they paid for the lot. That's why we see so many companies get sold twice in rapid succession - they get bought out, the valuable IP etc they have gets distributed around, and the husk of the company gets resold.
So when they say "We PROMISE!", I say it doesn't matter if you keep your word or not, it's not going to be UP to you when it matters.
Also sometimes there's the need to improve the challenge level past what the game provides. A number of games offer "skill points" by some name or other to allocate toward better performance, allowing the player to customize how their character performs... hits harder, better defense, more powerful magic, etc, so you can replay the game going "all in on magic" for a different gameplay that time through.
I loved Dust - Elysian Tail, and it has fair replay value, but I wanted more. Beat it on the hardest setting, as in beat it 119% (all extra challenges completed) So I wanted to kick it up a notch. Now that game has skill points you get to assign, but you acquire just enough skill points during the course of leveling up to max out all categories. So by the end of the game most players have all of their abilities very near max. (you can get to the end before you are max level) The game also prevents you from assigning one skill more than 4 points higher than your lowest other skill, which is a dumb limitation seeing as skill points are gained frequently.
Anyway, I decided to play the entire game without assigning any skill points. None to defense, none to health, none to attack, none to fidget (magic) and see if I could still beat the game. oooookay, NOW we have a challenging game! That one took me quite some time to finally finish. I see in the forums discussing the game how people lament the game isn't difficult enough for a good player, you can't turn the difficulty setting high enough to stay challenging. But THAT... .that will do the trick. Boss battles that take 15 minutes to do, where one hit will kill you. You're one-shot for many of the common mobs too. (just try jumping over a slime with the wrong timing... insta-kill)
In this particular game, magic quickly becomes the dominating attack, as it is ranged and gets to be very high damage. Without leveling up fidget, magic is essentially useless in any of the mid to upper levels, all it's useful for is attracting aggro. Then once they're in range you just have to beat the candy out of them without ever getting hit. (difficult to do with mobs that you can't block, like Lady Tethis) The good news on this sort of game tactic though is you get to see aspects the game that you otherwise would miss entirely. Did you know you can rip a sky-ship out of the air and body slam it on the ground? (most players would hit it twice with lightning as soon as they saw it on screen to kill it, which is useless if fidget isn't leveled up) So ordinarily players would have no use for that move. But surprise... even for as strong as that ship is, one body slam is all it takes to kill it! Using combos in unexpected ways like that is one of the many interesting things I ran into playing without assigning skill points.
It's too bad so few games give you the opportunity to prevent some aspect of your "leveling up". In Dust, without skill assignments you still level up, but damage, health, and defense are several times lower, and fidget is several magnitudes lower.
I thought this was like the company mantra?
As far as web browsing goes, aren't autoplaying videos" the de-facto definition of evil?? THE most despised advertisement ploy that marketing has been able to devise?
How on earth do they think this is a good idea? (or are they just trolling us with this idea?)
is to make a new account with a less popular name. Sorry, I know, it sucks, but that is the price you pay for using a "generic" login on what turns out to be a very popular service. It was difficult to see this problem years ago, so it's not really your fault, but you have to deal with it now.
I registered first.middle.last@gmail.com a few years ago when I went job hunting. I already had another one I'd made shortly after they came out (and I got an invite! remember those days?) but it was more of my online nickname and wasn't really that professional.
Nowadays it can be really hard to find a username that's not already taken on a big service like gmail. Or slashdot for that matter. Check out my nick here. I haven't had it for that long compared to some here. (my nick may be short, but my UID isn't impressively small) I just got very lucky it wasn't already taken, as ALL the longer variations were - this was a last-ditch sign-up attempt that really surprised me when it went through.
So just try to pick something that will endure for awhile. first.last@service.com isn't even really good enough nowadays. Common substitutions don't even work most of the time. In the end it will be easier to remember several.words.in.username@service.com than some leet-speak-mess@service.com. Compare for example: GH05T@service.com vs say ghost.in.the.shell@service.com. Shorter isn't always easier to remember or convey over the phone or accurately in writing.
These abandoned rail lines actually make ideal bicycle trails for several reasons.
- they run, usually directly, between population centers
- they're inside a ~100ft right-of-way that's often turned into a lush shaded tree tunnel that you can't even see the fields/highways/houses/industry/etc that the tail runs through
- they're raised so usually are free of water
- they're as level as possible, sometimes winding around hills, because trains prefer their track to be level to save on fuel and time
- once the tracks and ties are removed, the bed just requires addition of finer gravel (the coarse roadstone can stay) and a once-over with a heavy roller to be ready for riding. (or you can pave it, concrete or asphalt)
- intersections/crossings with roads are already built up. they often leave the tracks in and just fill in the wheel gaps with a little bit of asphalt.
The USA just doesn't have a dense enough population in most places for train-transit to work. This is not Europe. This is the ideal reuse for these otherwise abandoned lines.
This was the trail that ran between cedar falls/waterloo/evensdale/laporte and center point/urbandale/cedar rapids. I'm not good with county locations, could be madison. The trail was washed out (and buried in places up to THREE FEED deep in corn stalks washed out from the nearby fields) just south of Klima park 4 miles south of LaPorte City.
I don't normally favor new taxes but in this case I can really see their point. I live in a city that borders on another wealthier city. They went all-in on bicycle paths and we did not. It sucks not having them here. Technically it's illegal to ride a bicycle on a sidewalk here anyway. The police don't care at all unless there's a bike/pedestrian collision, which makes the bicyclist automatically 100% at-fault "because it wasn't lawful for them to be there in the first place". I'm actually okay with that too. (I've actually been ran into by a bicyclist while trying to mow my lawn!) But it technically forces cyclists onto roads which can be quite hazardous. Also lack of even sidewalks beside many roadways again complicates matters.
So as long as the tax is going completely to bicycle-related public service, I'm totally onboard. It probably won't even really make much of a difference - pavement is expensive. I know my front sidewalk costs $200 per square to replace when it gets cracked and the city tells me to fix it. I can't imagine the cost of even one block of bike path, which is usually twice as wide as a sidewalk.
A few years back we had flooding, and a stretch of a 50-mile long bicycle trail that goes between cities here got washed out. It took them three years to get funding to repair it. It was just crushed gravel laid down on abandoned railroad bed, ideal for a long bike path. But the washout carved out the land in the area, so they had to have dozers and graders in there to repair the bed before they could lay down a new surface. That stuff costs money. And as far as taxes are concerned, just like the gasoline tax they try to tax the people that are getting the biggest benefit from the service, it's the fairest way to get the funding.
they don't have much use for college if they haven't managed to get their GED yet.
I don't think it's nearly as cut-and-dry as you think it is. Things like schematics and source code are only useful to a very small percentage of consumers, let alone actual technicians. Most of the time only high dollar items will ever be worth repairing. What good is a schematic to repair a $20 device, when a an hour of a repair tech's time is $50? And really, source code? Try to find a shop you can take something to in order to have it reprogrammed. And then how much is several hours of a coder's time going to cost you?
A lot of this issue is more about the legal aspect, where companies abuse laws like DMCA and Copyright to help lawyers make repairs and 3rd party parts and services unlawful. It's the "razor blade game" where you are legally forced to buy their blades. It's easy for service parts to be that way simply because an electronic daughterboard or ECU is pretty easily seen as patentable, and the program that runs on it is copyrighted. Black-box development of say a replacement ECU is possible, but expensive, and then they try as above to abuse laws like DMCA to keep you buried armpit-deep in lawyers and sue you into leaving the market, whether or not they've actually found something legally justifiable to keep you out. They usually have a three step plan: 1: Sue you. if you win, 2: Sue you again. If you win (and assuming you still have enough money to keep paying your lawyers) then 3: buy you out and shutter your business. We see this time and time again. They need to address this "assault by attorney" problem head-on.
Although a lot of technical people wish they could repair things more easily, the truth is that a lot of consumers aren't going to be willing to do what it takes (or COSTS) to repair things. I've got a drop-in charger for a radio here that I've been fiddling with on-and-off for weeks, and haven't been able to figure out. I had no schematic so I wrote one up. All the parts are obtainable. Haven't been able to figure out what's wrong with it yet though. What's my time worth? I suppose I'd have been a lot smarter to just have gotten online and bought a new one by now. A lot of things simply aren't worth anyone's time to fix, even if they have all the ideal support. And it's not just a matter of the manufacturer not making it repairable - a lot of the time it doesn't even matter because even with ideal circumstances that by its nature it's going to be cheaper to make a new one than fix your broken one.
And if you're going to try to force them to make a better product, that's going to be a huge uphill battle. Manufacturing in the consumer market is a race-to-the-bottom where suppliers like China are doing their best to provide products at the minimum (and ABSOLUTE minimum) acceptable quality and durability the consumer will accept, in order to provide it at the lowest possible price. That makes forced-durability a tug-of-war, and one that will have boundaries and limits that are impossible to clearly define in any standard way.
Look at a laptop computer nowadays. One board. Memory and even sometimes the SSD are soldered down. Unquestionably the lowest cost way to manufacture it. Display panel is one integrated piece, no separate backlight or even LCD controller, it's all glued into the top shell along with the camera. Again arguably the lowest cost way to make it. That leaves the top case with its keyboard, trackpad, and speakers, all manufactured as one piece. If you're thinking demanding the schematic to the board is going to get you anywhere, you're insane. How about the camera being replaceable? No, the consumer demands low cost and a thin, light design, and so the camera is going to have to stay glued into the top. The only point of leverage here that makes sense is to somehow cap the cost of the parts. An $800 laptop should not have a total cost to assemble from parts of $1500. If anything, the parts aren't assembled and that should result in a LOWER cost for sum of parts than for completed product. $800 laptop? Then $750
Thanks for the info. Yep, they don't call it "rocket science" for nothing. Heard put another way, "Getting to space is EASY. Staying in space is hard." Getting enough angular orbital speed going and in the orientation you want it is the biggest challenge.
Due to no RUD they should have been able to downlink all the data they need to fully identify the issue and fix it in the next go-round though. Not having to collect debris scattered across thousands of miles and reassemble the bits in a large hanger for forensics is a big help.
I assume the malfunction failed to get it into the correct orbital profile, since the limited videos available all look okay? (no kaboom) Or does someone have a more informative video?
Michael Knight would be proud!
Well, okay, "person", not "man", but yeah, same thing. "Person" sounds very awkward in that context somehow. English needs to learn from these other languages that have gender-neutral pronouns that we can use to keep from offending the overly-sensitive. Otherwise it seems so forced when we have to force nouns into pronoun duties.
I was at walmart last week and found apple turnovers in the bakery self-serve box. (unusual, they're typically in boxes of 4) Got some. Got to the register. Clerk spent time looking in the system, could not find the individual turnover product. Gave up, entered them under "german pastry" or something like that.
Other stores I go to and get say apples, they have that tiny little sticker on them. Get to the register and the gal picks up the bag, squints to read the short little number on the label, picks up the laminated sheet, looks up the number, and hand keys in the full product code for that number while weighing it.
Nowhere I shop uses barcodes for loose produce. I'd expect barcodes on some bundled greens like lettuce and celery though I don't buy those.
I think this could work for produce you can get the code to stay on and still be readable for awhile. I'd imagine a lot of produce won't retain the code without blurring it or bruising the area and turning it into a large black smudge. Maybe they're doing this with avocados because they are good at retaining the code clearly?
So he thinks he's going to cut spending and improve services? Sounds like the hucksters and their perpetual motion machines, they both seem to think they can defy physics and common sense. (reminds me of "we're going to cut taxes but not take away social services" plan)
If he continues the way he's been going, he'll just cancel all all the Federal Technology programs or defund them into shutdown. Sure that'l save money, but it certainly won't make them provide "better service". Unless Trump considers "gone" to be "better service" - and I suspect that's the case. I think if he doesn't like something, he considers getting rid of it as calling it "improved". Hey we're going to "improve" your broken leg by cutting it off!
Maybe someone who has trouble "anticipating" their product could become a success should not be CEO of any company?
We have a little bit of that going on here right now. One of the higher admins (that's about due to early retire) has several systems using his account because the system accounts he should be using for that don't work properly. Fortunately he's not the only user that has that access though, so while it can be a rare inconvenience when he's gone (to track down one of the other admins that also has access) it's still not a good idea.
If your admin leaves on amicable terms, have them change their password when they leave. I don't expect them to tell you what their current password is (as many will reuse passwords etc) but they should be able to get on their computer before they walk out, make sure all personal information is out of their keychain (personal info on company computers being another rant for another time) and then start the password change process. Then their manager can sit down and enter a new password he has created.
This has several benefits. You don't have to worry about what the user's password may be locking you out of after they exit the building, AND it works like an account-disable because they don't have their new password. (just make sure you note on the account not to let the user do a password reset by calling the helpdesk!) There may still be some things that need to be individually addressed though such as SSH public key logins that don't rely on the user's directory password. If you're worried about that you can disable the account entirely, and then activate it momentarily if you find you need it for something - get it migrated, and disable it again.
That way, if something DOES end up being locked down under his login, the manager can get at it. It also allows for good tracking of what information required the new password, so they can review handovers and reduce/eliminate future needs with policy changes. This is a better idea than calling the employee a week after they've departed. It's more considerate for the company as well as the employee, and is also more reliable. (there may be hard feelings you were unaware of that give you the finger when you try to call them back)
and this is obviously one of them. Criminals come from all walks of life, sysadmin isn't a position immune to containing the occasional bad apple.
So many questions of course, a lot of which boil down to "They must have had some serious lapse in procedure to have allowed this to happen." That's not really the case though. Back doors and logic bombs are serious threats when a person has been a trusted system administrator. Done "right", they can be extremely difficult to detect. It's a bit like the widely accepted advice of "Server was hacked? Don't try to clean it, you might miss something. You must wipe and reinstall it." (same really applies even to a home desktop) A departing admin (on bad OR good terms) is basically the exact same issue, a compromised system, but we only very rarely see such an extreme response. It's much less practical to nuke-n-pave when it's your entire network that is basically now classified as "compromised." Is this how we should respond? When you really stop and think about it, it starts to show itself as a really difficult question to answer. Rebuilding everything when an admin leaves when your system is large is just really hard to justify. But if your system is big, it's also more difficult to review it all and proclaim it "clean". It's just a bad position to be in, and that's why admin departures are such a headache. If you're big enough you have several admins and better compartmentalization of access, more robust isolation of systems, better logging, security software that's under the control of the CIO and not the admins, etc. They have a better chance, but it doesn't look like this one was big enough to have those benefits.
The lack of backups is the most troubling though. That's what stung the other recent post on the cleanout-from-inside. There's just no excuse for that.
A) stop apps from nagging you to rate them
B) stop apps from presenting inconsistent, confusing ratings popups that may trick you into rating higher
C) stop apps from bribing you for a higher-than-it-deserves rating
D) stop apps from just plain fraudulently submitting 5-star ratings on your behalf
This move isn't even slightly surprising.
(and how many times do I have to click the "NO THANKS!" button when asked to rate your app? once every time I launch it? Nevermind that I've already rated it 3-4 times, each one lower than the last! idiots.)
It makes me wonder if they are considering the potential for something like an explosion or fire from the battery itself, or what the battery could work in conjunction with. (such as a detonator) In the case of a detonator, it's trivially easy to buck up voltage from even a 1.5v AAA to charge up a capacitor to fire off even a large detonator. In that case, it's the power capacity of the battery that's the issue. But I bet you could get away with that using a CR2032 watch battery also.
As for the 9v, it has less power than a pair of AA batteries, owing to its design to provide greater voltage at a lower current and for less time. Older 9v's used to be made of six AAAA batteries - I used to take them apart for fun. (do they still do that?) Then the cheaper ones started stacking flat cells vertically top to bottom (still, six of them), I think radio shack was the first I saw do that. I was quite disappointed to find that stack in there when I tore open a radio shack 9v years ago. But using individual cells internally wastes space that could be used to increase the total power in the cell, more room for electrolyte. I generally judge batteries like that by their weight, and you can clearly see that a 9v weighs less than two AAs. The power in a single D cell however... would apparently make the TSA wet their pants. (go look it up, it's quite surprising!)
I'm not really sure how they think you can directly convert battery power into an explosion though? Most batteries are good at high density storage yes, but not rapid charge or discharge. (if you want that, get a supercap!) Something tells me they don't science much.
well it doesn't matter who's running the show, we will get the the bill in the end. Right now it's coming partly from taxes and partly from the airlines. This just shifts the initial cost over to the airlines. We will still get stuck with the bill. The problem now is the massive conflict of interest it creates. I'm sure MrT is just looking at this as another business opportunity though. It just blows my mind the amount of business favors he's going to have stacked up before we manage to get rid of him.
Not even remotely. I repaired computers for a decade, and never once did I have reason to "poke around on a hard drive". Even on the rare occasion I needed to open a document without the customer's involvement (to test speakers or a video issue for example) I knew where in the OS to find pictures or sound files I could use. I never needed to even rifle through their Pictures folder to find something to open.
And lets not forget, they were searching the unallocated space on the hard drive. There is absolutely no reason to do this unless you are searching for deleted data. So unless they brought it in for an unformat or to recover something accidentally deleted, you have ZERO business doing that kind of search.
I see this as no different than contracting a painter to come over and paint a few rooms of your house, and when you step out into the garage to work on your car they start rifling through your dresser looking for anything illegal. Maybe the local DEA has a private deal with that employee and wants to know if he ever "stumbles across" any drugs. And they'll pay him for the tip. And maybe he carries a little baggie in his truck to leave in your underwear drawer if you look like a good mark.
And lets not forget, he's being offered a reward. If that doesn't reek of "incentive to plant evidence", I don't know what does. There's a reason we don't pay cops bonuses when they make busts. You don't give incentives to law enforcement to find more illegal activity because it encourages them to plant evidence and violate rights. Using a proxy doesn't improve this. If anything, it makes it worse because now you're not trying to rely on the morality and legal knowledge of an officer... now you're relying on the morals and legal know-how of Joe Citizen, and that's a heck of a lot worse still.
I see three things that need to be addressed here. First off, employees conducting searches that clearly go beyond the business contract. I think anyone who's been surreptitiously searched by a service provider should have grounds for legal action, whether or not they found anything naughty. If I come back in from the garage and see the painter sifting through my dresser he's going to get thrown out of my house as a starter. Then I'm going to be on the phone lighting up the ear of his manager. And depending on how that goes, I may meet him in court a little later. The problem with computer forensics is it's a heck of a lot harder to catch them doing this. They're doing it out of your sight, and leaving essentially no evidence. IMHO that should make civil penalties worse. Penalties for behavior that's harder to catch needs to be more severe to balance out the incentive that it's easier to get away with, to make the risk-calculations in the criminal's head balance out.
Second, Best Buy should have at least some legal exposure here also, because it should be part of their employee's training that you don't violate the privacy rights of a customer. We didn't have a written policy where I worked, but it was occasionally discussed with the new people that you don't go mucking around on customer hard drives. If several of your employees are taking advantage of their access to customer data for personal gain, this should be a huge issue for Best Buy. Not only is it a legal issue, but it's a huge violation of customer trust and will have an impact on business as customers take their gear elsewhere for service. So it's in the business's best interest for several reasons to prevent this behavior. (that, and how much clock time was wasted by these employees while they conducted hard drive scans, getting paid by the hour from BB to scan hard drives that the FBI would then maybe pay them for? That's theft, as I doubt they d
Just responding to several replies to my previous post all at once here.
Unless the USB ports were following the very first standard (back when peripherals were only allowed to draw a piddly 100mA) they still should be watching the current and kill power if there's an overdraw. Age is not an excuse for unsafe behavior since it's always been specified how you should handle overdraw. by the accessory.
Part of the story here is those drop-resistors. People ask "why can't the charger and the device communicate two-way?" The answer is those resistors. It costs money to build in communications, not a lot but china's cheap. If you want a cheap charger, 5 cents in resistors beats a buck in an IC and 6 other support components. And back when USB came out, prices were a lot higher. So the chargers just set the voltage and are supposed to shut down if the accessory ignores them and overdraws. But again, that's added cost and China won't support that. They'd much rather overspec on the package and overheat in your cigarette lighter jack. You're more than likely to just fry it after a few weeks of overdrawing abuse, in which case you'll just go buy another one, and that's precisely what they want anyway, so don't expect that to change anytime soon. Ignoring the standard is in their best interest.
Yeah.... "firebugs". Do not use them. Ignoring the maximum power rating on your charger is like sticking your fingers in your ears and humming when someone warns you not to do something dangerous. So unless you're trying for a Darwin Award, don't use those. If you insist, then for the love of god don't leave it charging unattended! There's a real risk you'll set your car on fire while you're getting groceries or something.
Your electronics background should help here. If a device is setting its load to draw a certain power, and your supply can't manage that much current, dropping the voltage is the opposite of what you ought to be doing to maintain power. It's a bit of a paradox problem. "The only winning move is not to play". Shut off. Dropping the voltage will cause most good phones to stop charging. Then the charger rebounds voltage since the load disappears. Then a few seconds later the phone starts charging again. Rinse and repeat. I think most of us have seen a phone do that, chirp chirp chirp chirp, as it continuously bounces between "charging" and "not charging". In case you haven't ran into that, the phone doesn't actually get charged, it's just super annoying for anyone nearby that has to listen to it. So please don't design a power supply that does this, it only helps if you're a cheap power bank that doesn't care but yet somehow has a buck-down regulator that can still operate at voltages approaching the load voltage (typically 3.7v)
3.7 volts is incredibly common right now in devices. Here's a nice primer for the new arrivals: http://www.instructables.com/i...
Pretty much every cell phone on the planet uses a flat lipo pack since they're currently the best price point for storage-density. Modern semiconductors tend to be made for lower voltages, so this is fine. A li
There have been standards in place for quite some time now governing the power capacity of USB ports. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Power)
Sorry this is a bit of a long-winded explanation but it's all stuff you have to know to understand the issue.
The iPhone is somewhat "notorious" for refusing to charge off a port that doesn't communicate the amount of current it is allowed to draw. ("you cannot charge form this device" popup of some sort, I don't recall the exact message you get) This caused frustration from some who bought cheap car and wall adapters and found their iPhone wouldn't charge from them, despite other phones charging fine. To Apple's credit, this was the correct and (fire) safe behavior. Devices that just continue blindly and overheat themselves or other accessories are just plain poor design, but should still not be capable of posing a hazard in the charger.
Voltage (5v in this case) is supplied "on supply", in other words the power source dictates the voltage and the accessory needs to be capable of handling it. Accessories that can't tolerate how high the voltage is will probably be damaged by it, and could pose an overheat/fire hazard. Since all USB are supposed to run at 5v, voltage is not an issue because USB supplies and accessories all expect 5v.
Current on the other hand, is supplied on demand, meaning the accessory decides how much power to draw from the supply. If it draws too much again there is an overheat/fire risk, but this time from the supply not the accessory. Power (in the form of current, where power = voltage x current) overdraw has become an important consideration with USB now that it's become something of the de-facto battery charging standard. Larger devices (like bigger cell phones and especially tablets like iPads) can "quick charge" their large batteries by drawing more current at 5v. But the supply needs to be capable of safely delivering the higher power. The USB spec says to use DC drop resistors on the D+ and D- data lines to communicate fixed values that the accessory can look up in a table to determine how much power the supply claims it can safely deliver. These resistors aren't necessary to USB data function and can be omitted but then the accessory has no way of knowing how much power it can safely draw. It should then default to the "bare minimum" of 25mA of current, which would charge most modern devices very slowly. (or like the iPhone, just flat out refuse to charge at all) This is enough power though to operate unpowered accessories like mice and keyboards. Some larger accessories (like tablets and battery banks) can adjust the amount of power they draw to suit the maximum specified by the supply. An iphone can charge at either 500mA or 1000mA, for example, depending on the charger it's attached to. Again it's very important to understand the amount of power being drawn by the accessory is entirely determined BY the accessory. The phone is charging at 500mA NOT because that's how much the charger physical can provide, but because it has TOLD the phone how much it can safely provide and the PHONE is only demanding 500mA form it at as result.
If the phone wants 1000mA and the charger is telling it that it can only safely supply 500mA, but the phone just ignores that and tries to draw 1000mA, the charger's acceptable responses are both limited and well-defined. Quality chargers will simply detect the overdraw and stop providing power, and your phone will probably go into charge for a fraction of a second and then immediately stop charging. You might ask yourself "why doesn't the charger just refuse to provide more power than it can safely manager?" Power = Voltage x Current. To keep Power constant (at 500mA) when the device has rigged current it is drawing so that it will get 1000mA, it COULD cut the voltage in half since it has control over that. BUT that violates USB standards. They specifically say you can't do that, your only response is to TURN OFF the supply of power entirely. The accessor
"And in other unrelated news, every company incorporated in Texas is now mulling moving their incorporation to 'anywhere other than Texas'..."
CEO: "Another troll lawsuit? How can we stop this from happening again?"
Lawyer: " MOVE "
I guess it's time for Texas to get some Karma payback for letting the trolls piss all over the country while standing in their back yard.