That's the whole problem. American government services are being run on computers that aren't in a secure data center. They just take a box, put it on a server, give it a domain name, and Bob's your uncle. There are no backups being done. There's no backup generator. There aren't multiple upstream providers to ensure they are always connected to the outside world. Stuff that should be in proper data centers is just shoved away in a closet somewhere. With the number of servers they have, they should really be able to have a bunch (like 2 or 3 per state, depending on the state), and just have individual government entities run their servers out of there, or run them out of an already existing co-location facility.
I never really understood why small towns did this stuff in the name of "tourism". Yeah, nobody wanted to visit your town before, but you built a big sun reflector, or a statue of some famous dude, and now you think it's a tourist destination. You know what kinds of things are actually tourist attractions? Disney world, The Grand Canyon, The CN Tower, and other stuff like that. Why would you go to some valley town where they have to reflect the sun so you can get sunlight when you can travel an equal distance and go to the seaside where you don't have to worry about reflecting the sunlight.
I would think that most teachers don't start at 50k. Where I live, the starting salary is $34k, and the OECD average is $37K. Not only that, but it tops out pretty low. Even after 15 years experience, the average OECD teacher only makes $45,000. The rates in the US are about the same in the highest paying areas, and quite deplorable in the lowest paying areas. So starting at $50k is actually quite good, especially in a field like engineering, where it's completely possible that you will be earning $100k after you get 10-15 years experience, a wage that teachers could never hope to obtain.50K is actually quite good, unless you live in Manhattan or San Francisco, in which case the price of living is quite high, but for many other areas, you can live quite comfortably on 50K.
Why would you have to remember them? Just use something like Password Safe or KeePass to remember your passwords for you. Not only do you not have to remember your passwords, but because you don't have to remember them, you can have much longer and more complex passwords.
They could also sneak into your house in the middle of the night, gas you, and hook your phone up to a computer and install all kinds of crazy software on your phone. Ok, maybe not something quite so crazy, but it's probably much easier for somebody to get physical access to your phone than it is for them to pull off some MITM attack.
In theory you are correct, but in practice, it seems to work exactly the opposite, at least in terms of cell phones. You can still get IOS 6 even if you only have the iPhone 3GS. Good luck finding an Android phone from 2009 that has an official update to the latest version of Android. Sure they're dropping support in IOS 7, but if the phone got you that far, you've got your money's worth. Even with Android itself being open source, the drivers that interface with different components of the phone like the wireless radio seem to be closed source, which means that it's exceedingly difficult to put a new version of Android on an old phone.
Really? Because I'm pretty sure that LG doesn't have an update available for my G2X past Android 2.2, because I'm not on T-Mobile, but rather a smaller independent carrier, which they can't be bothered to make an update for. I'm actually using the T-Mobile firmware because I wanted Android 2.3, but I had to jump through a few hoops to get it working. They have fixed it for a few of their current flagship models, but they don't have any interest in updating even slightly older phones. And especially not if you're on a small carrier. The phone was only released in 2011, which means it really isn't that old at all.
Even so, app updates come from the app store they are downloaded from. In order to get an update into the app store they need access to the account of the developer/organization that originally created the app. And if the attacker has access to the account, you're pretty much screwed anyway. You can't just upload a fake signed app under a completely different account and have it show up as an update to a legitimate app from another developer.
This is one reason where I think that Apple really has it right. Ensuring that users can easily get software updates for the entire phone ensures that they have a good user experience (for the most part, eg. Apple maps). But Android is such a mess in this respect. Google seems to get this with the nexus line of phones, but the other vendors seem to do a pretty bad job. And even if they release an update, it can sometimes be blocked by the network owner, or the update won't be for the network you happen to be with. It's like if you bought a Dell computer and when Windows came out with a new OS, you could only get the new version if Dell allowed it.
That says it all right there. Be careful about the sources of your software. If you're installing software from shady sources or vendors, you probably don't care that the signature matches one of a legitimate program or not.
The parent post I was referring to linked to this article states:
Microsoft still dominates the PC market by a staggering margin; Windows currently powers 91.5% of all PCs currently in use, according to Net Applicationsâ(TM) June data.
I'm not sure which number is really correct. but Windows really does dominate the desktop market. I would be more inclined to believe that it's close to 90% than the 70% figure you state, based on what I've seen in the real world. And depending on how you end up counting, you may actually count the same PC twice in both Windows and Linux, and even Apple. Even those I know who run Linux often have a Windows Partition, or a virtual machine. And many people state that this is one of the great advantages of buying a Mac. You get great hardware, and you can run Windows, Mac OS, and Linux all from the same machine.
I think this is actually a bad example, because to infringe on a patent, you actually have to infringe on all the claims. This is actually a less broad patent, because it would only cover cars, with wheels, that used the engine that ran on water. So if you then took the engine that ran on water, and used it to make a generator (which isn't a method of transportation), you would no longer be in violation of the patent. Similarly, if you used it to make a boat motor, you wouldn't be in violation of the patent, because your boat most likely doesn't have wheels.
Yes, but only because they started connecting a whole new class of devices. Microsoft isn't interested in making fridges, but some of those are connected to the internet now. They still have over 90% of the PC market, which is undergoing some shrinkage due to people not needing to upgrade as often, but MS still has a very sustainable market. They might need to lay off a few people, but it's not like MS is going to disappear completely. Even if they lost the entire consumer market because everybody wanted to use Android or IOS at home, they would still have a big market with the business market as Android and IOS seem to be completely ignoring.
Can you imagine how far back computing would be if we were all stuck with using bubble sort because all the other sorting algorithms were patented? Sure the quicksort patent would have been long expired by now, being developed in 1960, but it would have set us back quite a bit to not be able to use the more efficient sorting algorithms.
No, however, if you think about "instructions" for other things, it can get complicated. If I sell/give you some sheet music, that doesn't automatically transfer rights to you to commercially perform that music. It's always been that sheet music is sold for you to learn and play for yourself, and maybe a few close friends. But you aren't allowed to go purchase the sheet music of your favourite rock band and go around performing it without another license. Whether or not music is a physical object is up for debate, but it is the result of the instructions. You could argue that it's like a recipe book. I've never heard of any recipe book saying you can make all the recipes in the book, but just don't sell them. What you do with the food is up to you. But you can't copyright the actual recipe anyway, so I'm not sure how much that really applies. When I think about all the stuff you can purchase digitally, most of it comes with a non-commercial, personal use license. Buying a CD/iTunes track doesn't give you the right to use it commercially. Buying a book from Kindle doesn't give you the right to sell it even print out a physical copy for your own use.
Actually, I believe quite the opposite. You'd probably get quite a few more people willing to pay if they'd promise not to change it ever again. A lot of non-tech savvy users take a big fit every 6 months when facebook decides to move everything around, add new privacy settings, and create privacy unfriendly defaults for all the new settings. If they promised to just leave things the way they are for a little while, so people wouldn't have to review their privacy settings all the time, and didn't have to learn to use the new interface as Facebook tries to make themselves seem "new" and "hip" people would bother paying.
Yeah, but there's only so many bodies out there in the solar system. Probably under 200 planets/moons/rocks out there that can be used for this purpose. It probably wouldn't take much to throw a super-computer at the problem and just crunch through all the possibilities.
I think the Surface RT would have done a lot better if the price would have been the same price as a Nexus 7, or at least kept it at $300 or under, and included the touch cover. Without the touch cover, it's basically like any other tablet, and they were asking $500 for it. You can get them a little cheaper now, but by time you buy the touch cover, which was the only original thing about the Surface, you are spending almost as much as you would have for an iPad, and more than Nexus 10.
They say they are, but I seem to recall a couple times that when Amazon went down, the whole thing went down, or enough of it what their redundancy wasn't enough to handle the increased load at the other data centers. You're better off (if possible) to just have servers in 2 unrelated data centers in different cities, and mirror data between them.
Not really. Lead acid is about as good now as it was 50 years ago. Nickel Cadmium used to suck and it still does. Sure chemical batteries have come a long way, but only because we completely changed the chemicals we used. Although it might be possible that some microbial fuel cell might be reasonably useful in the future, it will be fed something much more energy dense than urine, and will use some kind of genetically engineered super microbes, and will be as similar to this as lithium polymer is to a zinc-carbon battery.
Everybody is saying "cry wolf" but it seems like more of a "chicken little" situation to me. In the old "boy who cried wolf" tale, the boy was actually lying, just to try to have some fun. Whereas chicken little was just blowing things a little out of proportion and getting the rest of the barnyard worked up over nothing.
I didn't really like the album that much (no offence to anyone who did), but because I could pay whatever I wanted, I think I tossed $5 their way just because I liked the whole concept, and felt like they deserved a little bit. Just like I bought that AFI album many years back, because it only $7 at the time, which I thought was probably what most CDs should cost. I'm much more interested in paying for a subscription type service to music, like RDIO or Spotify, where they have a much bigger collection then I could ever hope to own, and I can also discover new music without wasting money on albums I won't end up listening to more than 4-5 times.
Yes, but surely trying to classify everything into well defined groups comes up with some problem. Pluto is no longer a planet because we decided later to change the definition of planet to things that are actually big enough to clear out any other debris in their orbit. But when you compare on other traits, Pluto is more similar to Earth than Jupiter is to Earth. Jupiter doesn't even have a well defined solid surface. To put Jupiter and Earth in the same class but then leave out Pluto because of some certain criteria seems a little odd. This is the problem, we try to stick stuff in groups, but then those groups end up being hard to define because there's so much stuff out there that doesn't fit into any of the defined groups, or fits into what are supposed to be 2 or 3 distinct groups.
Yeah, but the seats would have to be oriented in such a way that the acceleration was down. So you'd have to be lying on your back. And then, they'd have to somehow flip you around so your feet would face the other way, so you could handle the 1g deceleration for the other half of the ride. They could put you in roller coaster restraints, and just have you sit normally, but I don't think most people would enjoy that kind of ride. even if it is only half an hour. I could see Six Flags putting this out as a "ride" before it became a serious travel option.
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That's the whole problem. American government services are being run on computers that aren't in a secure data center. They just take a box, put it on a server, give it a domain name, and Bob's your uncle. There are no backups being done. There's no backup generator. There aren't multiple upstream providers to ensure they are always connected to the outside world. Stuff that should be in proper data centers is just shoved away in a closet somewhere. With the number of servers they have, they should really be able to have a bunch (like 2 or 3 per state, depending on the state), and just have individual government entities run their servers out of there, or run them out of an already existing co-location facility.
I never really understood why small towns did this stuff in the name of "tourism". Yeah, nobody wanted to visit your town before, but you built a big sun reflector, or a statue of some famous dude, and now you think it's a tourist destination. You know what kinds of things are actually tourist attractions? Disney world, The Grand Canyon, The CN Tower, and other stuff like that. Why would you go to some valley town where they have to reflect the sun so you can get sunlight when you can travel an equal distance and go to the seaside where you don't have to worry about reflecting the sunlight.
I would think that most teachers don't start at 50k. Where I live, the starting salary is $34k, and the OECD average is $37K. Not only that, but it tops out pretty low. Even after 15 years experience, the average OECD teacher only makes $45,000. The rates in the US are about the same in the highest paying areas, and quite deplorable in the lowest paying areas. So starting at $50k is actually quite good, especially in a field like engineering, where it's completely possible that you will be earning $100k after you get 10-15 years experience, a wage that teachers could never hope to obtain.50K is actually quite good, unless you live in Manhattan or San Francisco, in which case the price of living is quite high, but for many other areas, you can live quite comfortably on 50K.
Why would you have to remember them? Just use something like Password Safe or KeePass to remember your passwords for you. Not only do you not have to remember your passwords, but because you don't have to remember them, you can have much longer and more complex passwords.
I came here to mention this. Best part about having locked community mailboxes. You don't have to be home to have packages delivered to you.
They could also sneak into your house in the middle of the night, gas you, and hook your phone up to a computer and install all kinds of crazy software on your phone. Ok, maybe not something quite so crazy, but it's probably much easier for somebody to get physical access to your phone than it is for them to pull off some MITM attack.
In theory you are correct, but in practice, it seems to work exactly the opposite, at least in terms of cell phones. You can still get IOS 6 even if you only have the iPhone 3GS. Good luck finding an Android phone from 2009 that has an official update to the latest version of Android. Sure they're dropping support in IOS 7, but if the phone got you that far, you've got your money's worth. Even with Android itself being open source, the drivers that interface with different components of the phone like the wireless radio seem to be closed source, which means that it's exceedingly difficult to put a new version of Android on an old phone.
Really? Because I'm pretty sure that LG doesn't have an update available for my G2X past Android 2.2, because I'm not on T-Mobile, but rather a smaller independent carrier, which they can't be bothered to make an update for. I'm actually using the T-Mobile firmware because I wanted Android 2.3, but I had to jump through a few hoops to get it working. They have fixed it for a few of their current flagship models, but they don't have any interest in updating even slightly older phones. And especially not if you're on a small carrier. The phone was only released in 2011, which means it really isn't that old at all.
Even so, app updates come from the app store they are downloaded from. In order to get an update into the app store they need access to the account of the developer/organization that originally created the app. And if the attacker has access to the account, you're pretty much screwed anyway. You can't just upload a fake signed app under a completely different account and have it show up as an update to a legitimate app from another developer.
This is one reason where I think that Apple really has it right. Ensuring that users can easily get software updates for the entire phone ensures that they have a good user experience (for the most part, eg. Apple maps). But Android is such a mess in this respect. Google seems to get this with the nexus line of phones, but the other vendors seem to do a pretty bad job. And even if they release an update, it can sometimes be blocked by the network owner, or the update won't be for the network you happen to be with. It's like if you bought a Dell computer and when Windows came out with a new OS, you could only get the new version if Dell allowed it.
That says it all right there. Be careful about the sources of your software. If you're installing software from shady sources or vendors, you probably don't care that the signature matches one of a legitimate program or not.
I'm not sure which number is really correct. but Windows really does dominate the desktop market. I would be more inclined to believe that it's close to 90% than the 70% figure you state, based on what I've seen in the real world. And depending on how you end up counting, you may actually count the same PC twice in both Windows and Linux, and even Apple. Even those I know who run Linux often have a Windows Partition, or a virtual machine. And many people state that this is one of the great advantages of buying a Mac. You get great hardware, and you can run Windows, Mac OS, and Linux all from the same machine.
I think this is actually a bad example, because to infringe on a patent, you actually have to infringe on all the claims. This is actually a less broad patent, because it would only cover cars, with wheels, that used the engine that ran on water. So if you then took the engine that ran on water, and used it to make a generator (which isn't a method of transportation), you would no longer be in violation of the patent. Similarly, if you used it to make a boat motor, you wouldn't be in violation of the patent, because your boat most likely doesn't have wheels.
Yes, but only because they started connecting a whole new class of devices. Microsoft isn't interested in making fridges, but some of those are connected to the internet now. They still have over 90% of the PC market, which is undergoing some shrinkage due to people not needing to upgrade as often, but MS still has a very sustainable market. They might need to lay off a few people, but it's not like MS is going to disappear completely. Even if they lost the entire consumer market because everybody wanted to use Android or IOS at home, they would still have a big market with the business market as Android and IOS seem to be completely ignoring.
Can you imagine how far back computing would be if we were all stuck with using bubble sort because all the other sorting algorithms were patented? Sure the quicksort patent would have been long expired by now, being developed in 1960, but it would have set us back quite a bit to not be able to use the more efficient sorting algorithms.
No, however, if you think about "instructions" for other things, it can get complicated. If I sell/give you some sheet music, that doesn't automatically transfer rights to you to commercially perform that music. It's always been that sheet music is sold for you to learn and play for yourself, and maybe a few close friends. But you aren't allowed to go purchase the sheet music of your favourite rock band and go around performing it without another license. Whether or not music is a physical object is up for debate, but it is the result of the instructions. You could argue that it's like a recipe book. I've never heard of any recipe book saying you can make all the recipes in the book, but just don't sell them. What you do with the food is up to you. But you can't copyright the actual recipe anyway, so I'm not sure how much that really applies. When I think about all the stuff you can purchase digitally, most of it comes with a non-commercial, personal use license. Buying a CD/iTunes track doesn't give you the right to use it commercially. Buying a book from Kindle doesn't give you the right to sell it even print out a physical copy for your own use.
Actually, I believe quite the opposite. You'd probably get quite a few more people willing to pay if they'd promise not to change it ever again. A lot of non-tech savvy users take a big fit every 6 months when facebook decides to move everything around, add new privacy settings, and create privacy unfriendly defaults for all the new settings. If they promised to just leave things the way they are for a little while, so people wouldn't have to review their privacy settings all the time, and didn't have to learn to use the new interface as Facebook tries to make themselves seem "new" and "hip" people would bother paying.
Yeah, but there's only so many bodies out there in the solar system. Probably under 200 planets/moons/rocks out there that can be used for this purpose. It probably wouldn't take much to throw a super-computer at the problem and just crunch through all the possibilities.
I think the Surface RT would have done a lot better if the price would have been the same price as a Nexus 7, or at least kept it at $300 or under, and included the touch cover. Without the touch cover, it's basically like any other tablet, and they were asking $500 for it. You can get them a little cheaper now, but by time you buy the touch cover, which was the only original thing about the Surface, you are spending almost as much as you would have for an iPad, and more than Nexus 10.
They say they are, but I seem to recall a couple times that when Amazon went down, the whole thing went down, or enough of it what their redundancy wasn't enough to handle the increased load at the other data centers. You're better off (if possible) to just have servers in 2 unrelated data centers in different cities, and mirror data between them.
Not really. Lead acid is about as good now as it was 50 years ago. Nickel Cadmium used to suck and it still does. Sure chemical batteries have come a long way, but only because we completely changed the chemicals we used. Although it might be possible that some microbial fuel cell might be reasonably useful in the future, it will be fed something much more energy dense than urine, and will use some kind of genetically engineered super microbes, and will be as similar to this as lithium polymer is to a zinc-carbon battery.
Everybody is saying "cry wolf" but it seems like more of a "chicken little" situation to me. In the old "boy who cried wolf" tale, the boy was actually lying, just to try to have some fun. Whereas chicken little was just blowing things a little out of proportion and getting the rest of the barnyard worked up over nothing.
I didn't really like the album that much (no offence to anyone who did), but because I could pay whatever I wanted, I think I tossed $5 their way just because I liked the whole concept, and felt like they deserved a little bit. Just like I bought that AFI album many years back, because it only $7 at the time, which I thought was probably what most CDs should cost. I'm much more interested in paying for a subscription type service to music, like RDIO or Spotify, where they have a much bigger collection then I could ever hope to own, and I can also discover new music without wasting money on albums I won't end up listening to more than 4-5 times.
Yes, but surely trying to classify everything into well defined groups comes up with some problem. Pluto is no longer a planet because we decided later to change the definition of planet to things that are actually big enough to clear out any other debris in their orbit. But when you compare on other traits, Pluto is more similar to Earth than Jupiter is to Earth. Jupiter doesn't even have a well defined solid surface. To put Jupiter and Earth in the same class but then leave out Pluto because of some certain criteria seems a little odd. This is the problem, we try to stick stuff in groups, but then those groups end up being hard to define because there's so much stuff out there that doesn't fit into any of the defined groups, or fits into what are supposed to be 2 or 3 distinct groups.
Yeah, but the seats would have to be oriented in such a way that the acceleration was down. So you'd have to be lying on your back. And then, they'd have to somehow flip you around so your feet would face the other way, so you could handle the 1g deceleration for the other half of the ride. They could put you in roller coaster restraints, and just have you sit normally, but I don't think most people would enjoy that kind of ride. even if it is only half an hour. I could see Six Flags putting this out as a "ride" before it became a serious travel option.