They might not have lost access, but the 'old times' OtherOS option in the PS3 still hid part of the hardware. I'm sure that if you google for it you'll find plenty of technical details. As far as I remember it, the OtherOS (linux) ran on a hypervisor that did shielded it from the GPU and at least one core. The USAF apparently linked a LOT (1760?) of these PS3's together and use it as a super-computer. If they can unlock that extra core on each machine, they'll gain quite a bit of extra computer power !
Seconded. I bungee jumped from a 103 m (ca 337 ft) bridge some years back. ( http://www.vertigeaventures.com/xindex.htm ) I have no clue how deep the guy fell, but I remember two things very clearly * you pick up speed ENORMOUSLY FAST, the air really rushes by as you go head first. * the brain goes in some kind of overdrive making every second seem to take forever and although I did not quite see my life flash by, I sure had plenty of time to realize what was going on and wonder why that elastic cord hadn't started slowing me down yet.
Although he (hopefully) may not quite have "experienced" the landing, he'll sure as hell will have had a terrifying time going down =(
Although I agree there is quite a bit of windows-based nastiness around, do you honestly think that no such thing exists on Mac ? Or will you switch to a new "niche" OS each time the amount of viruses has reached a certain threshold ?
(and please don't give me the "OS-X" is safe by design line; the little time needed to own "locked down" OS-X machines in public contests is simply testimony that there is plenty of "options" for the bad guys to use, they simply can't be bothered and/or haven't been caught yet).
Although I agree that the indexing took quite a some time & resources, once it's finished with that, so is the 'slowdown'...
Not sure why everybody needs to moan so much about this. If you don't need/want/like it, then simply switch it off... whining idiots!
That said, I wouldn't be surprised that next week we get a new Slashdot story about how slow searching in Thunderbird with indexing turned off is soooo slow !
ps: I have about 10 years of email sitting in there (about 1.4Gb, imported from Eudora some years back) and although I'm not happy with everything TB v3, I sure like the fact that searching something is that fast now !
The question then becomes : will the customer / client be willing to pay 5 to 10 (let alone 20) times as much so it runs on hardware he doesn't care about ?
You assume here that the information in the disk-cache needs to be read from the disk. While this is true for "current average hardware" using diskread-ahead/read-behind caching as you describe, this is not true for the non-volatile cache used in the disks being tested here.
[... the HD has no way to determine what data should be preferentially cached whereas the OS does...]
That's where the 'learning' comes into play, which is what makes this kind of drive special. While I agree that the drive does not know the meaning of what it is caching, it certainly can learn which blocks of data are accessed most frequently and hence can put these in it's *non volatile* cache, or as I was musing, in it's "preloaded" cache. You could argue that adding 4Gb of RAM might be more useful and in fact might be used in many other different ways than just cache, it also might turn out much more expensive (upgrading laptop memory gets expensive fast), or simply impossible (32bit systems).
The main problem with OS caches is that they need to be read into memory before they can be used. => it's all great if the OS keeps a copy of something.dll in memory because it has learned over time that this file is needed very often, it still has to read it at least once first.
Although the HDD will not realise what it is caching, it can have the relevant blocks already sitting in its cache long before the OS asks for it.
So yes, I agree, adding RAM on the HDD makes it more expensive, adding the cache-logic even more so, but offloading this to the hardware seems like it's worth the (small) extra price IMHO, ESPECIALLY for everyday users as they will have the most benefit from it.... (servers and power-gamers that 'need' the performance will likely be willing to put down the money for an $$D disk)
The effects should be (more or less) identical across OS's as they mostly use the HDD's in the same way. Sure, there will be differences in the way the filesystem puts things to disk, but in the end it's always a bunch of data-blocks that are laid down in a structured way so they can be retrieved easily afterwards. (exceptions exist like eg. Log-structured file system, but in 99.999% of cases the general idea always is the same).
What I do wonder is, how does this thing feel 'in reality' ? Most of these tests are bases around (extremely) synthetic tests that don't even come close to actual usage, let alone allow this kind of hardware combination show it's potential.... (IMHO).
For comparison, I'm currently running Win7 on an old/slowish/7200 rpm 2"5 HDD and out of the box it performs/annoyingly//bad/ : booting is slow, launching programs takes forever, once ram is filled up and I switch between programs or dare start something new the machine seems to come to a stop and the hdd light remains on for ever. So I added 2 USB sticks and let ReadyBoost play with 2GB on each and things became... well, not much different IHMO. I then went for eBoostr using the same 2 x 2GB setup and now things are/feel much 'faster'. Booting is kind of better (although I have a feeling the eBoostr driver isn't quite the first thing to be loaded and/or doesn't quite realise there is stuff to find on the USB's right of the bat, not sure if anyone knows of an easy way to optimize that ?), large, frequently used programs like eg. Outlook start up in seconds (!), VS2008 takes about 20 seconds to open up a (smallish) project (it used to be over a minute!), Firefox loads much faster than before, clicking a fonts-dropdown (eg. in excel) doesn't cause my machine to go non-responsive any more while scanning/fetching al the.ttf files... etc etc...
Stuff it all had to 'learn', but obviously it now 'knows' what's important and helps performance accordingly, big time!
I have high hopes that a cache sitting directly on the HDD may have the same impact over time, if not better... it would in each case free up some RAM and overhead on the computer side, although at the cost of configurability. Then again, if the algorithm is clever enough there is no need for configuration is there...
Then again, I wonder why they can't simply use a large slab of (cheap?!) DRAM and have its content buffered on the outer layers of the platters. This would mean that when spinning up, the drive needs to read its cache into memory first before being able to serve data to the machine; but given the read-speeds on this part of the drive - and the fact you don't have to worry about SATA or whatever interface overhead - reading say 8Gb of cache into DRAM shouldn't take much longer than the POST of the computer over-all, I think. Then again, as the cache is optimized over time, writing those changes back to the disk might be 'complicated' as it must be done while the drive seems idle and most certainly not while it might interfere with whatever the user (or OS) is doing.... doable though.
The idea indeed isn't new and although I prefer eBoostr over ReadyBoost because it 'feels faster', the main hurdle on both technologies is 'outdated information'. The data on the (external) cache cannot really be trusted when you reboot (or re-insert the cache-device). I'm not sure how either technololgies overcome this, but having the cache sit 'closer' to the actual harddisk should make it a lot more reliable imho
GBridge does quite a decent job too IMHO... tries to be much more than just what you ask for, but so far I've only used it for about 2 weeks, solely for remote access to "all my pc's all over the world" so I can't comment much it's other capabilities but it allows me to connect from work (megafirewall) to home (non-configured NAT) without any problem. It's using a "built-in" Ultr@VNC which is great for my XPHome pc, but can also work with Remote Desktop (which I prefer on the XP Pro machines)
IMHO, the question here is : did Dell *disable* OS/2 on your (probably old) machine that had been running OS/2 for quite a while already and at the time was sold as "runs OS/2" ?
Didn't think so.
Frankly I can think of quite few people (hobbyists, scientists,...) that went for a PS/3 *because* it is (probably!) one of the most accessible CELL-based machines around. Having it also do games is an added bonus, or vice versa. I'm not sure on how the DoJ will look upon this, but IMHO Sony did indeed steal functionality away from the user with their move.... few will mind, I'm sure 99% of PS/3 users never understood let alone used said functionality, but then again, it was there for everyone who bought a machine to use, and it was advertised as such too !! I remember at the time it surely helped their 'Hey Sony is playing the nice guy by allowing Linux on their new machine!'-image. First disappointment probably was the hyper-visor and the 3D Gfx not being accessible, and now this... I think it's sad.
Wouldn't they be able to 'fly' out of such situations ? "Simply put the nose upwards and set the throttle to Full Ahead" so to speak...
Agreed, once you lose engines at such depth you're hosed big time(*), but then again I would assume there is quite some redundancy in said vehicles.
Just thinking about this, my only training have been "Hunt for the Red October" and the "688 Attack sub" manual... the latter being very educational btw.
(*: I'm so funny =)
Re:Great, still doesn't fix the Houston problem.
on
The Year of the E-Bicycle
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Not sure about The Netherlands, but here in Belgium you're quite welcome to use your bicycle on the main road when there is no separate bike path available. When there is one, yes you HAVE to use it, but when there isn't you shouldn't be using the pedestrians' side-walks but simply drive on the right side of the road. I'm pretty sure it's like that in the Netherlands too...
Everyone here is used to it, that much that I'm having a hard time to imagine roads without cyclists. In fact the law even grants quite a bit of "super-rights" to bicyclists : * within built-up area cyclists are allowed to drive next to each other and don't have to go one-in-front-of-the-other whenever a car comes by (outside of built-up areas you actually have to ride 'sequentially') * if there is a car-bike accident, the driver of the car by default is the one at fault. Hence he has to prove that the cyclist made some error causing the accident, not the other way around... (this is true in car-pedestrian accidents too btw)
Reading the stuff above makes me wonder what kind of cavemen-mentality they have in Houston =(
ps: in Belgium we do have this 'exception' that when you're "very young" (I THINK it's up to the age of 6 ?) you can (and should) actually drive on the side-walk rather than on the street. Frankly I'm not that much a fan of such system, but I guess it's safer for the young (learning) cyclists to get some road-sense/awareness before putting them on the actual road... I'm not so sure it such a good idea from the point of view of (elder) pedestrians, but well, it makes everyone more 'attentive' =)
Not being familiar with the dash of a Toyota Prius (or Toyota in general), I do was wondering if there isn't some kind of indication on what the Cruise Controls' requested speed is ? I know my Citroen C4 shows this nicely side by side to the actual speed.
I am most certainly not in favour of this law, something quite a few people somehow seem to deduce from -my obviously badly written (*)- post. Given the way eg. TrueCrypt works, simply having it on your machine seems to be enough to "make" you guilty by this law and indeed that is plain silly. That said, simply don't install TrueCrypt and use something less technically perfect like the NTFS encryption or simply a 7-zip archive with a password.
As for the risk of me knowing I'm innocent but "the cops" likely to arrest me for something totally unrelated : when did things become so much us vs them? I'm in Belgium here, and although I'm very willing to believe there are some *ridiculously* stupid laws around, I doubt an investigator in search of illegal druglabs will enjoy the paperwork to fine me because I painted a wall in the wrong colour.
Call me naive *and* dull (**), but I do doubt there is that much around my house that could get me arrested. Crime units have enough on their hands already besides harassing 'ordinary citizens'. Citizens that refuse to cooperate might off course be another matter... in fact, when people simply enjoy counter-acting law-enforcement as a hobby (and yes, that's what some of you make it sound like), then they're simply wasting time and tax-payers money (and hence mine too!) so frankly I wouldn't mind too much. If on the other hand you have the impression law-enforcement is stepping outside the boundaries of what they rightfully can and should do, then go by the proper channels to make these things public and fight them accordingly. Imho, public disobedience should be, maybe not the last resort, but certainly not the first one either.
Frankly, I'm more against this need to encrypt and 'make everything secret' in the name of privacy that seems to be the general tenure here (lately). It's all too black and white here for some... No I'm not saying one has to crawl for every guy waving a badge in your face but no there is no need to go berserk about them wanting to check how 'an anonymous tip' turns out, especially if they good reason to follow that lead and have gotten the relevant paperwork which means they already internally scrutinised this. If we take away all their power to investigate, there won't be much crime-fighting left. Then again, if we give them too much power, or more precisely, if we give them too much STUPID tools (eg. like this law here) that can be used as a wild-card against whomever happens to be in the wrong spot, then there will be less actual crime-fighting too. It's all about finding that sweet-spot in the middle.
(*: Yes, I would let them in without complaining *if* they have the proper warrant, apparently that wasn't too clear either, mea culpa) (**: no I don't have pictures of me cross-dressing, nor a sex-tape of my wife... in fact, who has all these things to start with and then again, if you're scared to death they'll be found : destroy them and live your life without that stress... Man, the situations people like to put themselves in sometimes make me wonder... )
Random data wouldn't really work as it would get rather 'obvious' as the same file has xyz as contents the first time, abc the second time and pqr the third time you read it. Overwriting data is stupid too imho, "clearly" they would work on a backup of the data, so when they notice that all data gets overwritten after entering said password, they'll be able to charge you for 'willing obstruction' (or whatever it is called).
Anyway, I'm still confused about this 'right to encryption' so dearly defended by lots of people here. => if the authorities have a search-warrant, they are allowed to take pretty much any paper that has something incriminating on it with them. When they ask, you're supposed to open the doors, lockers, safes, etc... so they can get to whatever is behind it. IMHO, same goes for digital encryption. (Sure you could choose not to comply and let them use force to get at it... but if you're 'innocent' I fail to see how that would be beneficial for you !?)
Call me naive, but refusing to give up the keys does make you look guilty any which way you look at it.
Yes I do have locks on my doors too and they indeed come in useful to keep peeping toms out; however when the police knocks saying they suspect my basement to be a meth-lab, well I'll gladly let them in and go look for themselves. Likewise, although I know my neighbour quite well, the moment he refuses police to have a look in his basement for said accusations, my interest will most certainly be piqued and I'm sure the cops' too...
Maybe bigger buttons are easier to find... (**), but the problem is : they are always arranged horizontally, and there is only so much of them you can put on-screen. => menus on the other side a spread out both horizontally & vertically, and you can get a LOT more options across on the same surface.
To me, the ribbon is like going back to baby-books with lots of pictures. I've learned how to read in the mean-time, I don't want to wade through 10 pages of illustrations to figure out what can be conveyed in 10 lines of text.
Slashdot Mirror
They might not have lost access, but the 'old times' OtherOS option in the PS3 still hid part of the hardware. I'm sure that if you google for it you'll find plenty of technical details. As far as I remember it, the OtherOS (linux) ran on a hypervisor that did shielded it from the GPU and at least one core.
The USAF apparently linked a LOT (1760?) of these PS3's together and use it as a super-computer. If they can unlock that extra core on each machine, they'll gain quite a bit of extra computer power !
Seconded.
I bungee jumped from a 103 m (ca 337 ft) bridge some years back. ( http://www.vertigeaventures.com/xindex.htm )
I have no clue how deep the guy fell, but I remember two things very clearly
* you pick up speed ENORMOUSLY FAST, the air really rushes by as you go head first.
* the brain goes in some kind of overdrive making every second seem to take forever and although I did not quite see my life flash by, I sure had plenty of time to realize what was going on and wonder why that elastic cord hadn't started slowing me down yet.
Although he (hopefully) may not quite have "experienced" the landing, he'll sure as hell will have had a terrifying time going down =(
OMG, what's with the "Userboxes"... is there some weird kind of facebooky underworld for wikipedia admins ?????
Although I agree there is quite a bit of windows-based nastiness around, do you honestly think that no such thing exists on Mac ? Or will you switch to a new "niche" OS each time the amount of viruses has reached a certain threshold ?
(and please don't give me the "OS-X" is safe by design line; the little time needed to own "locked down" OS-X machines in public contests is simply testimony that there is plenty of "options" for the bad guys to use, they simply can't be bothered and/or haven't been caught yet).
Infrared cameras ??? Wait until they start driving around with those things they have at airports now where everyone is so up in arms about.
But, but I already have it's renovation completely planned out !!
http://lolsnaps.com/upload_images/real/1030.jpg
Cats have 9 lives anyway, you're still good until v14.10 something...
Although I agree that the indexing took quite a some time & resources, once it's finished with that, so is the 'slowdown'...
Not sure why everybody needs to moan so much about this. If you don't need/want/like it, then simply switch it off... whining idiots!
That said, I wouldn't be surprised that next week we get a new Slashdot story about how slow searching in Thunderbird with indexing turned off is soooo slow !
ps: I have about 10 years of email sitting in there (about 1.4Gb, imported from Eudora some years back) and although I'm not happy with everything TB v3, I sure like the fact that searching something is that fast now !
The question then becomes : will the customer / client be willing to pay 5 to 10 (let alone 20) times as much so it runs on hardware he doesn't care about ?
You assume here that the information in the disk-cache needs to be read from the disk. While this is true for "current average hardware" using diskread-ahead/read-behind caching as you describe, this is not true for the non-volatile cache used in the disks being tested here.
[... the HD has no way to determine what data should be preferentially cached whereas the OS does ...]
That's where the 'learning' comes into play, which is what makes this kind of drive special. While I agree that the drive does not know the meaning of what it is caching, it certainly can learn which blocks of data are accessed most frequently and hence can put these in it's *non volatile* cache, or as I was musing, in it's "preloaded" cache.
You could argue that adding 4Gb of RAM might be more useful and in fact might be used in many other different ways than just cache, it also might turn out much more expensive (upgrading laptop memory gets expensive fast), or simply impossible (32bit systems).
The main problem with OS caches is that they need to be read into memory before they can be used.
=> it's all great if the OS keeps a copy of something.dll in memory because it has learned over time that this file is needed very often, it still has to read it at least once first.
Although the HDD will not realise what it is caching, it can have the relevant blocks already sitting in its cache long before the OS asks for it.
So yes, I agree, adding RAM on the HDD makes it more expensive, adding the cache-logic even more so, but offloading this to the hardware seems like it's worth the (small) extra price IMHO,
ESPECIALLY for everyday users as they will have the most benefit from it.... (servers and power-gamers that 'need' the performance will likely be willing to put down the money for an $$D disk)
The effects should be (more or less) identical across OS's as they mostly use the HDD's in the same way. Sure, there will be differences in the way the filesystem puts things to disk, but in the end it's always a bunch of data-blocks that are laid down in a structured way so they can be retrieved easily afterwards. (exceptions exist like eg. Log-structured file system, but in 99.999% of cases the general idea always is the same).
What I do wonder is, how does this thing feel 'in reality' ? Most of these tests are bases around (extremely) synthetic tests that don't even come close to actual usage, let alone allow this kind of hardware combination show it's potential.... (IMHO).
For comparison, /annoyingly/ /bad/ : booting is slow, launching programs takes forever, once ram is filled up and I switch between programs or dare start something new the machine seems to come to a stop and the hdd light remains on for ever. So I added 2 USB sticks and let ReadyBoost play with 2GB on each and things became... well, not much different IHMO. I then went for eBoostr using the same 2 x 2GB setup and now things are/feel much 'faster'. Booting is kind of better (although I have a feeling the eBoostr driver isn't quite the first thing to be loaded and/or doesn't quite realise there is stuff to find on the USB's right of the bat, not sure if anyone knows of an easy way to optimize that ?), large, frequently used programs like eg. Outlook start up in seconds (!), VS2008 takes about 20 seconds to open up a (smallish) project (it used to be over a minute!), Firefox loads much faster than before, clicking a fonts-dropdown (eg. in excel) doesn't cause my machine to go non-responsive any more while scanning/fetching al the .ttf files... etc etc...
I'm currently running Win7 on an old/slowish/7200 rpm 2"5 HDD and out of the box it performs
Stuff it all had to 'learn', but obviously it now 'knows' what's important and helps performance accordingly, big time!
I have high hopes that a cache sitting directly on the HDD may have the same impact over time, if not better... it would in each case free up some RAM and overhead on the computer side, although at the cost of configurability. Then again, if the algorithm is clever enough there is no need for configuration is there...
Then again, I wonder why they can't simply use a large slab of (cheap?!) DRAM and have its content buffered on the outer layers of the platters. This would mean that when spinning up, the drive needs to read its cache into memory first before being able to serve data to the machine; but given the read-speeds on this part of the drive - and the fact you don't have to worry about SATA or whatever interface overhead - reading say 8Gb of cache into DRAM shouldn't take much longer than the POST of the computer over-all, I think. Then again, as the cache is optimized over time, writing those changes back to the disk might be 'complicated' as it must be done while the drive seems idle and most certainly not while it might interfere with whatever the user (or OS) is doing.... doable though.
The idea indeed isn't new and although I prefer eBoostr over ReadyBoost because it 'feels faster', the main hurdle on both technologies is 'outdated information'. The data on the (external) cache cannot really be trusted when you reboot (or re-insert the cache-device). I'm not sure how either technololgies overcome this, but having the cache sit 'closer' to the actual harddisk should make it a lot more reliable imho
Frankly, it was in the "original' VNC 10+ years ago ... (now real-vnc I believe)
GBridge does quite a decent job too IMHO ... tries to be much more than just what you ask for, but so far I've only used it for about 2 weeks, solely for remote access to "all my pc's all over the world" so I can't comment much it's other capabilities but it allows me to connect from work (megafirewall) to home (non-configured NAT) without any problem. It's using a "built-in" Ultr@VNC which is great for my XPHome pc, but can also work with Remote Desktop (which I prefer on the XP Pro machines)
http://www.gbridge.com/
It's free (at least current version is); but not open source I guess judging by the fact that it's Windows only...
IMHO, the question here is : did Dell *disable* OS/2 on your (probably old) machine that had been running OS/2 for quite a while already and at the time was sold as "runs OS/2" ?
Didn't think so.
Frankly I can think of quite few people (hobbyists, scientists, ...) that went for a PS/3 *because* it is (probably!) one of the most accessible CELL-based machines around. Having it also do games is an added bonus, or vice versa. I'm not sure on how the DoJ will look upon this, but IMHO Sony did indeed steal functionality away from the user with their move.... few will mind, I'm sure 99% of PS/3 users never understood let alone used said functionality, but then again, it was there for everyone who bought a machine to use, and it was advertised as such too !! I remember at the time it surely helped their 'Hey Sony is playing the nice guy by allowing Linux on their new machine!'-image. First disappointment probably was the hyper-visor and the 3D Gfx not being accessible, and now this... I think it's sad.
Wouldn't they be able to 'fly' out of such situations ? "Simply put the nose upwards and set the throttle to Full Ahead" so to speak ...
Agreed, once you lose engines at such depth you're hosed big time(*), but then again I would assume there is quite some redundancy in said vehicles.
Just thinking about this, my only training have been "Hunt for the Red October" and the "688 Attack sub" manual ... the latter being very educational btw.
(*: I'm so funny =)
Not sure about The Netherlands, but here in Belgium you're quite welcome to use your bicycle on the main road when there is no separate bike path available.
When there is one, yes you HAVE to use it, but when there isn't you shouldn't be using the pedestrians' side-walks but simply drive on the right side of the road.
I'm pretty sure it's like that in the Netherlands too...
Everyone here is used to it, that much that I'm having a hard time to imagine roads without cyclists. In fact the law even grants quite a bit of "super-rights" to bicyclists :
* within built-up area cyclists are allowed to drive next to each other and don't have to go one-in-front-of-the-other whenever a car comes by (outside of built-up areas you actually have to ride 'sequentially')
* if there is a car-bike accident, the driver of the car by default is the one at fault. Hence he has to prove that the cyclist made some error causing the accident, not the other way around... (this is true in car-pedestrian accidents too btw)
Reading the stuff above makes me wonder what kind of cavemen-mentality they have in Houston =(
ps: in Belgium we do have this 'exception' that when you're "very young" (I THINK it's up to the age of 6 ?) you can (and should) actually drive on the side-walk rather than on the street. Frankly I'm not that much a fan of such system, but I guess it's safer for the young (learning) cyclists to get some road-sense/awareness before putting them on the actual road... I'm not so sure it such a good idea from the point of view of (elder) pedestrians, but well, it makes everyone more 'attentive' =)
Not being familiar with the dash of a Toyota Prius (or Toyota in general), I do was wondering if there isn't some kind of indication on what the Cruise Controls' requested speed is ?
I know my Citroen C4 shows this nicely side by side to the actual speed.
I am most certainly not in favour of this law, something quite a few people somehow seem to deduce from -my obviously badly written (*)- post.
Given the way eg. TrueCrypt works, simply having it on your machine seems to be enough to "make" you guilty by this law and indeed that is plain silly. That said, simply don't install TrueCrypt and use something less technically perfect like the NTFS encryption or simply a 7-zip archive with a password.
As for the risk of me knowing I'm innocent but "the cops" likely to arrest me for something totally unrelated : when did things become so much us vs them? I'm in Belgium here, and although I'm very willing to believe there are some *ridiculously* stupid laws around, I doubt an investigator in search of illegal druglabs will enjoy the paperwork to fine me because I painted a wall in the wrong colour.
Call me naive *and* dull (**), but I do doubt there is that much around my house that could get me arrested. Crime units have enough on their hands already besides harassing 'ordinary citizens'. Citizens that refuse to cooperate might off course be another matter... in fact, when people simply enjoy counter-acting law-enforcement as a hobby (and yes, that's what some of you make it sound like), then they're simply wasting time and tax-payers money (and hence mine too!) so frankly I wouldn't mind too much. If on the other hand you have the impression law-enforcement is stepping outside the boundaries of what they rightfully can and should do, then go by the proper channels to make these things public and fight them accordingly. Imho, public disobedience should be, maybe not the last resort, but certainly not the first one either.
Frankly, I'm more against this need to encrypt and 'make everything secret' in the name of privacy that seems to be the general tenure here (lately). It's all too black and white here for some ... No I'm not saying one has to crawl for every guy waving a badge in your face but no there is no need to go berserk about them wanting to check how 'an anonymous tip' turns out, especially if they good reason to follow that lead and have gotten the relevant paperwork which means they already internally scrutinised this. If we take away all their power to investigate, there won't be much crime-fighting left. Then again, if we give them too much power, or more precisely, if we give them too much STUPID tools (eg. like this law here) that can be used as a wild-card against whomever happens to be in the wrong spot, then there will be less actual crime-fighting too. It's all about finding that sweet-spot in the middle.
(*: Yes, I would let them in without complaining *if* they have the proper warrant, apparently that wasn't too clear either, mea culpa) ... in fact, who has all these things to start with and then again, if you're scared to death they'll be found : destroy them and live your life without that stress... Man, the situations people like to put themselves in sometimes make me wonder ... )
(**: no I don't have pictures of me cross-dressing, nor a sex-tape of my wife
And why again did you decide to encrypt those patches-in-progress ?
Maybe it's naive, but from a practical point of view : what good would standing up for my rights bring me here ?
Random data wouldn't really work as it would get rather 'obvious' as the same file has xyz as contents the first time, abc the second time and pqr the third time you read it.
Overwriting data is stupid too imho, "clearly" they would work on a backup of the data, so when they notice that all data gets overwritten after entering said password, they'll be able to charge you for 'willing obstruction' (or whatever it is called).
Anyway, I'm still confused about this 'right to encryption' so dearly defended by lots of people here.
=> if the authorities have a search-warrant, they are allowed to take pretty much any paper that has something incriminating on it with them. When they ask, you're supposed to open the doors, lockers, safes, etc... so they can get to whatever is behind it. IMHO, same goes for digital encryption. (Sure you could choose not to comply and let them use force to get at it... but if you're 'innocent' I fail to see how that would be beneficial for you !?)
Call me naive, but refusing to give up the keys does make you look guilty any which way you look at it.
Yes I do have locks on my doors too and they indeed come in useful to keep peeping toms out; however when the police knocks saying they suspect my basement to be a meth-lab, well I'll gladly let them in and go look for themselves. Likewise, although I know my neighbour quite well, the moment he refuses police to have a look in his basement for said accusations, my interest will most certainly be piqued and I'm sure the cops' too...
I wonder what's the funniest part of your post
=> the contents
=> the fact that it got Score:5, Interesting
Boy oh boy....
Maybe bigger buttons are easier to find... (**), but the problem is : they are always arranged horizontally, and there is only so much of them you can put on-screen.
=> menus on the other side a spread out both horizontally & vertically, and you can get a LOT more options across on the same surface.
To me, the ribbon is like going back to baby-books with lots of pictures. I've learned how to read in the mean-time, I don't want to wade through 10 pages of illustrations to figure out what can be conveyed in 10 lines of text.