It's not that simple. An adapter is a USB peripheral itself, so it can use any off-the-shelf chip and it will work. A keylogger has to be transparent to the USB bus, so you can't just use an off-the-shelf USB interface chip. Not that it's terribly difficult to develop your own, but it requires more skills than a PS/2 keylogger.
It's not the risk to the astronauts, it's the risk to NASA (as in, bad publicity). I mean, come on -- being an astronaut is safer than many other occupations (like a firefighter, or a soldier), even with the occasional failure once in a while. The reason NASA doesn't want to do it is that another failure would completely ruin them, not because they are concerned about the astronauts. Shit hitting the fan is a powerful force.
There is nothing inherently secure about USB. USB keyboards use a standardized format. The main thing that keeps you from making a keylogger is the protocol complexity -- you have to understand the usb protocol to log keystrokes. I think it's definitely doable (even though it's definitely more complex than PS/2).
The main reason it costs more is quantity. We are talking probably a production run of 5000 units or less for this thing versus a few hundred thousand for a TV card. This constitutes a very substantial price difference as far as components go.
Yeah, well, and I've run Win95 on a 386/16 with 4MB of RAM. So what? It's not like you can do something useful with it. In fact, I don't exactly understand what the hell third world countries need computers for, anyway.
What would be the use of that? Weather information can be provided via newspapers, radio, TV, and other media. It still is; many farmers here in the US don't own a computer. People in third world countries would want computers to do the same thing we do with them here: browse the Internet, send email, play games, and so on.
If you think even developing countries have a use for ancient hardware, you are wrong. It's not 1996, and 1996 computers are not useful in today's world. Why the hell would you want an ancient computer that can barely run X11? Normal, graphical Linux doesn't run that well on anything less than 500MHz / 128M of ram.
Yes, it has a dedicated hardware decoder. It's called a DSP (digital signal processor), it's fairly universal, and it can be made to decode any signal as long as it has enough speed. It's quite pointless to make a chip that can decode just two formats (especially since the ipod supports a number of other ones, like WAV and lossless). A DSP is optimized towards decoding audio (it has instructions like multiply-accumulate, etc.), but it's fairly universal.
That is why you will never be on a jury. Juries are carefully screened, and usually contain only the most moronic and/or senile members of society they could find.
I don't think you understand the concept of vicarious (contributory) infringement. If you have a reason to know that your site is used to violate copyright law and you gain some sort of benefit from such violations (drawing visitors to your site counts), you can be liable for contributory infringement. Providing direct links or torrents is obvious infringement. Saying something like "You might be able to get xxx if you search on google" probably isn't, but it's a gray area. There are exceptions for ISPs and proxies and such, but a warez site would not count.
This is part of copyright law. Don't compare it to prostitution, drugs, and other illegal activities; they are not copyright law violations.
Menu bars: they're not at the top of the screen, which makes selecting a menu unnecessarily hard.
Just because you are used to the Mac interface doesn't mean it's good. Actually, the menu bar at the top is bad from a usability perspective. Sure, it's at the same place, but it changes depending on which application window is currently active. This can be confusing even to experienced users. It makes much more sense to put menu bars on the window of the application they belong to.
icons: have you ever used Word's toolbars? A bazillion nondescriptive icons crammed together. Not Good.
First, it's pretty easy to find out what each one does. Just hover your mouse over one for 2 seconds or so. Second, they are meant as quick shortcuts. Third, from my experience, they are the easiest interface feature to use -- most Word newbies start out with the toolbar.
- windows: GDI. 'nuff said. See Mac OS X for the solution.
I'm not sure what you are referring to here. The display PDF stuff is better, but it's also a CPU hog.
maximize: the Maximize function plasters the window across the whole screen, making drag-and-drop to the desktop impossible. Again, imitate the Mac.
Ever hear of the Save As menu option? Besides, what if you want to use your entire screen for one application? What's so great about the Mac interface, anyway? It's almost the same as the Windows one, anyway.
- applications steal the focus way too often. Sod off! I'll get to the alert (or whatever) when I'm good and well ready, ie after I finish whatever I'm doing. See the Mac.
Never ran into that problem.
- Personalized menus: Bad Bill! Providing users with moving targets and randomly missing menu items is Not Good. Throw option away.
Agreed. It's a pretty stupid idea.
- keyboard shortcuts: Alt-F4 is just plain wrong. Use Ctrl-Q instead.
Alt-F4 is handled by Windows, Ctrl-Q is handled by the application. In many cases, either one will work.
Anyway, these aren't interface problems, they are your preferences. In fact, if you use KDE on Linux, you can change almost all of these behaviors.
OK, so name one major problem with the basic Windows interface (menubars, icons, windows, maximize, etc.). Explain why it is a problem. Propose a way to fix it.
My opinion: the basic interface is fine, and doesn't need to be changed. There are sometimes implementation problems, but those are due to stupid application developers rather than a bad interface paradigm.
As far as the learning curve: it takes most people at least a few months to learn how to drive a car, and a few years to actually get good at it. The fact that you can teach someone the basics of how to operate a computer in 2 hours tells me the user interface we have now is quite good.
Most of his ideas are much stupider. Gestures, for one. They are pointless, confusing, and difficult to use. I've used a CAD program (by Mentor Graphics) that relied on gestures for some commands. Boy, was that annoying. Let's see, you have to drag your mouse northwest to zoom out. Except that half the time it doesn't recognize the command or interprets it as something else. Not to mention that you can't zoom while doing something else with the mouse. What's wrong with keyboard accelerators, anyway?
Voice recognition: same problem. It's great if the program recognizes your speech. But many people have some kind of accent, and even a slight one will throw voice recognition way off. Not to mention that you will pretty much have to announce your intention to save the document to the whole office. Voice recognition sounds good on paper, but is really impractical in most situations.
More complex screen objects, like piles, have engineering problems. It will only work for text documents, because even modern computers aren't fast enough to preview, say, 5 JPG files a second. Cobwebs around folders? That's just silly. That's called carrying an analogy too far.
Some of his other ideas aren't too bad, but they aren't revolutionary, either.
This has got to be the stupidest idea i have ever heard anyone suggest, especially in a world of GUIs. The whole idea behind a GUI is that you don't have to memorize a zillion shortcuts. Otherwise, something like vi is a lot more convenient. Making commands part of the OS is even stupider. It leads to more confusion, not less.
The good thing about this one is that Microsoft is pretty dedicated to their own UI.
You know why? Because despite all the flaws various "gurus" manage to find in it, the Windows GUI doesn't suck. Cars have had the same interface for the last 90 years or so, and nobody is talking about updating it.
For some reason, in the computer world, there are a bunch of self-proclaimed experts like Jef Raskin (who probably couldn't tell a good interface from his asshole) that bitch about existing interfaces. There is a good reason Steve Jobs fired him -- Raskin is an idiot. About the only interface he ever developed was the Canon Cat and we all know what a great success that was. Wow, an interface that makes a $2000 computer act like a $200 electronic typewriter. What a genius.
The US prison population is growing very quickly. It is now several times what it was 20 years ago. New prisons are not being built at the same rate. Obviously, you run into very different issues than you would have had 50 years ago.
As for a better lawyers: you can't always afford one. As far as "peers": a senile grumpy racist jury isn't composed of people I would consider peers, and that's the one you will most likely end up with. Anyway, do some digging sometimes, you will uncover lots of interesting stuff.
You really need to improve your reading comprehension skills. I made the following points:
- Things like TV and videogames are means of control. With such enormous inmate populations, US prisons would be hard-pressed to do without them. - Due to flaws in the US legal system, a significant percentage of inmates in US prisons should have never been sent there.
Do you disagree with my first point or my second point?
that are caught are almost certainly not caught for their first offence
A first offender is someone who has no prior criminal record. I believe this is the generally accepted definition of this term. Federal law defines a first offender as one who "has not been convicted of a crime of violence or an otherwise serious offense."
Your burglar has almost certainly lived a life of crime for a long time.
Actually, that's rather uncommon. Stupid criminals get caught very quickly. Smarter ones can get away with it for a longer time, but most criminals are very stupid.
the only thing we can do is lock them away to prevent them committing more crimes.
In that case, we might as well impose life sentences for all offenses, regardless of severity. After all, if the criminals never stop committing crimes, that's the only way. Do you think this would be a good system?
if they are guilty of something other than possession of pot
Why exclude potheads? They are probably the ones that need to be locked up the longest. After all, they hardly ever quit.
It's somebody being careless and leaving everybody's front door unlocked.
This is why I brought up the house lock example. Nobody tries to make them truly secure. Many of them can be opened with a credit card. Most others can be opened with a bent paperclip.
Besides, you don't need exploits for an unlocked door. An exploit is the software equivalent of lockpicking equipment.
Honest people don't need to be "kept honest".
A lock is usually used to indicate that something is off-limits to the public. One definition of an honest person is one who doesn't try to open locked doors.
No, what we need is for software developers to be held accountable for the services they provide when they are notified of a security hole.
Yeah, just like the lock manufacturers replacing your lock with a more pick-resistant one. See, none of this crap would be necessary if crackers were hunted down and jailed.
As someone said, "for every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat - and wrong." Increasing prison sentences is one of these really obvious and completely wrong solutions to the complex problem of reducing crime.
First, sending a criminal to prison has both positive and negative effects. The positive effects consist mostly of the unpleasantness factor and the temporary removal of said criminal from society. The negative effects include prolonged interaction with other criminals, the development of violent tendencies and grudges against society, and the fact that the criminal gets used to prison and it's no longer a particularly effective punishment.
Basically, what happens when you send, say, a burglar to jail for two years is as follows. The first two to four weeks they suffer. Then, they start to get used to it. A somewhat normal person with criminal tendencies will easily turn into a violent sociopath. After all, fighting is the preferred way to resolve conflicts in prison. The whole time they interact with more serious criminals. Once the former burglar comes out, he has no inhibitions and is now an experienced criminal. He is no longer afraid of going to jail; it's no longer a deterrent, it's just a mild occupational hazard.
My solution would be to lock him up for, perhaps, three weeks in a more controlled environment (jail block for first offenders only, lots of supervision to ensure fights don't break out). Then add a year or two of probation. He will probably suffer more while he is locked up (any prison is a nasty place to be). He will not interact with hardened criminals, and he will not spend enough time there to become desensitized. Once he comes out, he will be too afraid to risk going to jail for a longer time, and the probation period will act as a reminder.
Which of these punishments will be more likely to turn this criminal into a repeat offender?
If people like you weren't so stupid, they would probably realize that if the inmates can't play video games or watch TV they will spend their time starting gang fights, riots, and so on. This situation would require hiring many more guards and building bigger and more secure prisons. Guards and prisons are a hell of a lot more expensive than Xboxes, and their cost comes out of my pockets. If anything, providing video games to inmates is an example of good fiscal policy.
and not to the inmates who have no rights.
I want to hear you sing this tune if you ever end up behind bars (statistically, it's quite likely). There are quite a few innocent people in jail, too. Keep this in mind next time you say something dumb like this.
I don't have any personal experience with this, but I do know that every job application always asks about convictions. Given how tight the job market is, I'd be surprised if you could get any job with a felony conviction.
I agree that if criminals got education while they were in prison everyone would be far better off -- including the taxpayer. If we reduced recidivism, we would have a very low crime rate in this country. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Of course, the average constituent is too stupid to realize that being "tough on crime" only leads to tougher criminals and more crime. You can't expect someone to spend 10+ years in prison and somehow become a normal member of society.
If you really want to cut down on recidivism and reduce crime, you would need to have an integrated solution -- one that involves education, vocational training, and some kind of job placement assistance. Even then, a sizable percentage of criminals will relapse, putting the whole program into a bad light. I think it is probably sufficient to say that every country with a low crime rate has such a system in place.
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It's not that simple. An adapter is a USB peripheral itself, so it can use any off-the-shelf chip and it will work. A keylogger has to be transparent to the USB bus, so you can't just use an off-the-shelf USB interface chip. Not that it's terribly difficult to develop your own, but it requires more skills than a PS/2 keylogger.
It's not the risk to the astronauts, it's the risk to NASA (as in, bad publicity). I mean, come on -- being an astronaut is safer than many other occupations (like a firefighter, or a soldier), even with the occasional failure once in a while. The reason NASA doesn't want to do it is that another failure would completely ruin them, not because they are concerned about the astronauts. Shit hitting the fan is a powerful force.
There is nothing inherently secure about USB. USB keyboards use a standardized format. The main thing that keeps you from making a keylogger is the protocol complexity -- you have to understand the usb protocol to log keystrokes. I think it's definitely doable (even though it's definitely more complex than PS/2).
54euros is not 40 USD, it's about 73 USD with the current exchange rates. Buying stuff from Europe sucks now :(
The main reason it costs more is quantity. We are talking probably a production run of 5000 units or less for this thing versus a few hundred thousand for a TV card. This constitutes a very substantial price difference as far as components go.
Yeah, well, and I've run Win95 on a 386/16 with 4MB of RAM. So what? It's not like you can do something useful with it. In fact, I don't exactly understand what the hell third world countries need computers for, anyway.
It's just that Sun's "gift" seems too much like a Trojan horse (no, not the virus kind).
Actually, that's exactly the case. Just look at all the white trash in the US. Renting video games with food stamps is not an uncommon occurrence.
You seem to assume that just because someone is poor they don't need entertainment. I don't see the connection.
What would be the use of that? Weather information can be provided via newspapers, radio, TV, and other media. It still is; many farmers here in the US don't own a computer. People in third world countries would want computers to do the same thing we do with them here: browse the Internet, send email, play games, and so on.
If you think even developing countries have a use for ancient hardware, you are wrong. It's not 1996, and 1996 computers are not useful in today's world. Why the hell would you want an ancient computer that can barely run X11? Normal, graphical Linux doesn't run that well on anything less than 500MHz / 128M of ram.
Yes, it has a dedicated hardware decoder. It's called a DSP (digital signal processor), it's fairly universal, and it can be made to decode any signal as long as it has enough speed. It's quite pointless to make a chip that can decode just two formats (especially since the ipod supports a number of other ones, like WAV and lossless). A DSP is optimized towards decoding audio (it has instructions like multiply-accumulate, etc.), but it's fairly universal.
That is why you will never be on a jury. Juries are carefully screened, and usually contain only the most moronic and/or senile members of society they could find.
I don't think you understand the concept of vicarious (contributory) infringement. If you have a reason to know that your site is used to violate copyright law and you gain some sort of benefit from such violations (drawing visitors to your site counts), you can be liable for contributory infringement. Providing direct links or torrents is obvious infringement. Saying something like "You might be able to get xxx if you search on google" probably isn't, but it's a gray area. There are exceptions for ISPs and proxies and such, but a warez site would not count.
This is part of copyright law. Don't compare it to prostitution, drugs, and other illegal activities; they are not copyright law violations.
Menu bars: they're not at the top of the screen, which makes selecting a menu unnecessarily hard.
Just because you are used to the Mac interface doesn't mean it's good. Actually, the menu bar at the top is bad from a usability perspective. Sure, it's at the same place, but it changes depending on which application window is currently active. This can be confusing even to experienced users. It makes much more sense to put menu bars on the window of the application they belong to.
icons: have you ever used Word's toolbars? A bazillion nondescriptive icons crammed together. Not Good.
First, it's pretty easy to find out what each one does. Just hover your mouse over one for 2 seconds or so. Second, they are meant as quick shortcuts. Third, from my experience, they are the easiest interface feature to use -- most Word newbies start out with the toolbar.
- windows: GDI. 'nuff said. See Mac OS X for the solution.
I'm not sure what you are referring to here. The display PDF stuff is better, but it's also a CPU hog.
maximize: the Maximize function plasters the window across the whole screen, making drag-and-drop to the desktop impossible. Again, imitate the Mac.
Ever hear of the Save As menu option? Besides, what if you want to use your entire screen for one application? What's so great about the Mac interface, anyway? It's almost the same as the Windows one, anyway.
- applications steal the focus way too often. Sod off! I'll get to the alert (or whatever) when I'm good and well ready, ie after I finish whatever I'm doing. See the Mac.
Never ran into that problem.
- Personalized menus: Bad Bill! Providing users with moving targets and randomly missing menu items is Not Good. Throw option away.
Agreed. It's a pretty stupid idea.
- keyboard shortcuts: Alt-F4 is just plain wrong. Use Ctrl-Q instead.
Alt-F4 is handled by Windows, Ctrl-Q is handled by the application. In many cases, either one will work.
Anyway, these aren't interface problems, they are your preferences. In fact, if you use KDE on Linux, you can change almost all of these behaviors.
OK, so name one major problem with the basic Windows interface (menubars, icons, windows, maximize, etc.). Explain why it is a problem. Propose a way to fix it.
My opinion: the basic interface is fine, and doesn't need to be changed. There are sometimes implementation problems, but those are due to stupid application developers rather than a bad interface paradigm.
As far as the learning curve: it takes most people at least a few months to learn how to drive a car, and a few years to actually get good at it. The fact that you can teach someone the basics of how to operate a computer in 2 hours tells me the user interface we have now is quite good.
Most of his ideas are much stupider. Gestures, for one. They are pointless, confusing, and difficult to use. I've used a CAD program (by Mentor Graphics) that relied on gestures for some commands. Boy, was that annoying. Let's see, you have to drag your mouse northwest to zoom out. Except that half the time it doesn't recognize the command or interprets it as something else. Not to mention that you can't zoom while doing something else with the mouse. What's wrong with keyboard accelerators, anyway?
Voice recognition: same problem. It's great if the program recognizes your speech. But many people have some kind of accent, and even a slight one will throw voice recognition way off. Not to mention that you will pretty much have to announce your intention to save the document to the whole office. Voice recognition sounds good on paper, but is really impractical in most situations.
More complex screen objects, like piles, have engineering problems. It will only work for text documents, because even modern computers aren't fast enough to preview, say, 5 JPG files a second. Cobwebs around folders? That's just silly. That's called carrying an analogy too far.
Some of his other ideas aren't too bad, but they aren't revolutionary, either.
This has got to be the stupidest idea i have ever heard anyone suggest, especially in a world of GUIs. The whole idea behind a GUI is that you don't have to memorize a zillion shortcuts. Otherwise, something like vi is a lot more convenient. Making commands part of the OS is even stupider. It leads to more confusion, not less.
The good thing about this one is that Microsoft is pretty dedicated to their own UI.
You know why? Because despite all the flaws various "gurus" manage to find in it, the Windows GUI doesn't suck. Cars have had the same interface for the last 90 years or so, and nobody is talking about updating it.
For some reason, in the computer world, there are a bunch of self-proclaimed experts like Jef Raskin (who probably couldn't tell a good interface from his asshole) that bitch about existing interfaces. There is a good reason Steve Jobs fired him -- Raskin is an idiot. About the only interface he ever developed was the Canon Cat and we all know what a great success that was. Wow, an interface that makes a $2000 computer act like a $200 electronic typewriter. What a genius.
The US prison population is growing very quickly. It is now several times what it was 20 years ago. New prisons are not being built at the same rate. Obviously, you run into very different issues than you would have had 50 years ago.
As for a better lawyers: you can't always afford one. As far as "peers": a senile grumpy racist jury isn't composed of people I would consider peers, and that's the one you will most likely end up with. Anyway, do some digging sometimes, you will uncover lots of interesting stuff.
You really need to improve your reading comprehension skills. I made the following points:
- Things like TV and videogames are means of control. With such enormous inmate populations, US prisons would be hard-pressed to do without them.
- Due to flaws in the US legal system, a significant percentage of inmates in US prisons should have never been sent there.
Do you disagree with my first point or my second point?
that are caught are almost certainly not caught for their first offence
A first offender is someone who has no prior criminal record. I believe this is the generally accepted definition of this term. Federal law defines a first offender as one who "has not been convicted of a crime of violence or an otherwise serious offense."
Your burglar has almost certainly lived a life of crime for a long time.
Actually, that's rather uncommon. Stupid criminals get caught very quickly. Smarter ones can get away with it for a longer time, but most criminals are very stupid.
the only thing we can do is lock them away to prevent them committing more crimes.
In that case, we might as well impose life sentences for all offenses, regardless of severity. After all, if the criminals never stop committing crimes, that's the only way. Do you think this would be a good system?
if they are guilty of something other than possession of pot
Why exclude potheads? They are probably the ones that need to be locked up the longest. After all, they hardly ever quit.
It's somebody being careless and leaving everybody's front door unlocked.
This is why I brought up the house lock example. Nobody tries to make them truly secure. Many of them can be opened with a credit card. Most others can be opened with a bent paperclip.
Besides, you don't need exploits for an unlocked door. An exploit is the software equivalent of lockpicking equipment.
Honest people don't need to be "kept honest".
A lock is usually used to indicate that something is off-limits to the public. One definition of an honest person is one who doesn't try to open locked doors.
No, what we need is for software developers to be held accountable for the services they provide when they are notified of a security hole.
Yeah, just like the lock manufacturers replacing your lock with a more pick-resistant one. See, none of this crap would be necessary if crackers were hunted down and jailed.
As someone said, "for every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat - and wrong." Increasing prison sentences is one of these really obvious and completely wrong solutions to the complex problem of reducing crime.
First, sending a criminal to prison has both positive and negative effects. The positive effects consist mostly of the unpleasantness factor and the temporary removal of said criminal from society. The negative effects include prolonged interaction with other criminals, the development of violent tendencies and grudges against society, and the fact that the criminal gets used to prison and it's no longer a particularly effective punishment.
Basically, what happens when you send, say, a burglar to jail for two years is as follows. The first two to four weeks they suffer. Then, they start to get used to it. A somewhat normal person with criminal tendencies will easily turn into a violent sociopath. After all, fighting is the preferred way to resolve conflicts in prison. The whole time they interact with more serious criminals. Once the former burglar comes out, he has no inhibitions and is now an experienced criminal. He is no longer afraid of going to jail; it's no longer a deterrent, it's just a mild occupational hazard.
My solution would be to lock him up for, perhaps, three weeks in a more controlled environment (jail block for first offenders only, lots of supervision to ensure fights don't break out). Then add a year or two of probation. He will probably suffer more while he is locked up (any prison is a nasty place to be). He will not interact with hardened criminals, and he will not spend enough time there to become desensitized. Once he comes out, he will be too afraid to risk going to jail for a longer time, and the probation period will act as a reminder.
Which of these punishments will be more likely to turn this criminal into a repeat offender?
Any profits should go back to the taxpayers
If people like you weren't so stupid, they would probably realize that if the inmates can't play video games or watch TV they will spend their time starting gang fights, riots, and so on. This situation would require hiring many more guards and building bigger and more secure prisons. Guards and prisons are a hell of a lot more expensive than Xboxes, and their cost comes out of my pockets. If anything, providing video games to inmates is an example of good fiscal policy.
and not to the inmates who have no rights.
I want to hear you sing this tune if you ever end up behind bars (statistically, it's quite likely). There are quite a few innocent people in jail, too. Keep this in mind next time you say something dumb like this.
I don't have any personal experience with this, but I do know that every job application always asks about convictions. Given how tight the job market is, I'd be surprised if you could get any job with a felony conviction.
I agree that if criminals got education while they were in prison everyone would be far better off -- including the taxpayer. If we reduced recidivism, we would have a very low crime rate in this country. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Of course, the average constituent is too stupid to realize that being "tough on crime" only leads to tougher criminals and more crime. You can't expect someone to spend 10+ years in prison and somehow become a normal member of society.
If you really want to cut down on recidivism and reduce crime, you would need to have an integrated solution -- one that involves education, vocational training, and some kind of job placement assistance. Even then, a sizable percentage of criminals will relapse, putting the whole program into a bad light. I think it is probably sufficient to say that every country with a low crime rate has such a system in place.