The headlines seem to always point to more power/weight or power density. No one seems to be concerned with robustness. Mobile power systems operate in a harsh environment... Extreme temperature ranges, Extreme vibration, contamination (from water, salts, abrasive sands, etc). I would like to see more effort towards versatile and survivable power systems over more "power vs weight" speculation.
I did some temp work at a document storage warehouse repacking some damaged file boxes. One thing I learned is that rubber bands have a useful life of about two years. After about five years, all rubber and elastic bands had failed, and worst of all, after about eight years, the remnants of rubber bands had all turned into a permanent solid glue. Lesson learned: no rubber bands allowed for long-term storage.
My current peeve... how about a driver that works nicely with Real Time Linux. The word is that proprietary NVIDIA drivers are death to Real Time OS. I would purchase a NVIDIA card and use proprietary drivers if they had low latency, low jitter, and no memory conflict issues. Until then, I will try AMD/ATI and/or use KML drivers. Real Time Linux is used for device controllers, robotics, and other timing-sensitive applications. I am not a Freeware fanatic, I just want something that works.
It was possible to touch type if you were very careful, and the touch screen with stylus worked as a mouse. The drawbacks - Windows CE and too short battery life. You had to save your data and programs on a CF card, because when the battery went, your computer went back to ROM defaults. It had a mic and sound recording, a built-in modem, and a slot for CF card and PCMCIA. ActiveSync sucked, you had to use Outlook for mail to synch, and the mini-Office-apps saved to a non-standard format. The modem, mini-IE and POP3 mail client worked pretty well.
The keyboard and screen can't get much smaller than this and still be useable.
I used to be an MS developer... I hear your lament.
Today, learn Apache Web Server with PHP. MySQL is the leading OS database. I have implemented Apache, PHP and MySQL on a Windows platform with no problems. Next step is to go to Linux server, and integration into the whole.
Message is: use Apache, PHP, MySQL and you can use any platform available.
If you will notice, nearly all of these things are in fields that have tracks - parallel lines through the field. Is this a machinery (tractor, harvester, irrigatation) track? ANYHOW, if you look closely, the track always intersects the design in the center, or at a node that could be the "pivot point" of the design. Why does the design always align with the tracks? Could it be that this is the ingress and reference point for a clever ground crew? NAW, the aliens just like fields with tracks and the symmetry of aligned patterns!
If you have a key which is part of a master system, you have access to the lock. You could disassemble your OWN lock to find the keying pattern for the master key by measuring the extra pin segments in your lock.... (Second post to this article, but just thought of that)
To add to your mention of a lack of pysical security consider... Most doors have only the flimsy wooden framing holding the catches, or the doors themselves are hollow-core - only thin veneer on a frame; also consider climbing over the walls in adjacent offices which use drop-ceiling systems; or even using a (smallish) hammer to bang a hole in sheetrock walls... or (gasp) breakable WINDOWS!!!!! This does not even consider the tried-and-true credit-card slip trick, and what if the door has the hinge pins accessible? These be things to ponder....
Sansui and Onkyo were renowned in the 80's for low-low-low-distortion amps and high-end recievers. This company has been in the consumer-audiophile business for a long time. I remember touch-sensitive controls and FM lock WAAAY before these things became maintsream. It doesnt surprise me that they are "pioneering" new ideas in consumer A/V appliances.
Unfortunately, it seems that journalists who write about the internet are still AOL/MSN newbies who think that AOL IS the Internet. Somehow I don't think that AOL/TW is going to innovate as much as these folks hope. Who really wants the Internet EVERYWHERE. Geez, do these people have a real life (outside of computer journalism) or care about privacy and security issues?
Going even further off-topic, the answer is, YES. Relying on trusted code ignores a common security problem... an untrusted user with superuser rights can initiate insecure connections via ftp, email, browser, etc., downloading, installing, and/or enabling security breaches, sometimes *without the user being aware of their actions*. Some firewalling systems filter email attachments, and allow blocking of known "bad boys" via http -- trackers, ad servers and such, so I would say that blocking unathorized outbound connections is smart in any case... even for the single-user geek machine with a (maybe sometimes inattentive human controller) human user. Dont get me talking about security and acceptable use policies in a corporate environment!
You can use the firewall functions to block OUTGOING ports. Generally, you would block all outgoing port connections between 0-1024, except for well-known ports 80(http), 53(dns), 25(smtp), 110(pop3), 143(https), and etc. The most important outgoing ports to block in WIN(SMB, SAMBA, NTLM, NETBIOS) environments are ports 137 and 139.
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The headlines seem to always point to more power/weight or power density. No one seems to be concerned with robustness. Mobile power systems operate in a harsh environment... Extreme temperature ranges, Extreme vibration, contamination (from water, salts, abrasive sands, etc). I would like to see more effort towards versatile and survivable power systems over more "power vs weight" speculation.
trasgu
I did some temp work at a document storage warehouse repacking some damaged file boxes. One thing I learned is that rubber bands have a useful life of about two years. After about five years, all rubber and elastic bands had failed, and worst of all, after about eight years, the remnants of rubber bands had all turned into a permanent solid glue. Lesson learned: no rubber bands allowed for long-term storage.
My current peeve... how about a driver that works nicely with Real Time Linux. The word is that proprietary NVIDIA drivers are death to Real Time OS. I would purchase a NVIDIA card and use proprietary drivers if they had low latency, low jitter, and no memory conflict issues. Until then, I will try AMD/ATI and/or use KML drivers. Real Time Linux is used for device controllers, robotics, and other timing-sensitive applications. I am not a Freeware fanatic, I just want something that works.
Windows that effeciently absorb light are NOT windows. They would be called WALLS.
What is this Facebook thing? Isn't that something kids do on computers?
Many years ago, I used a HP Jornada 690
It was possible to touch type if you were very careful, and the touch screen with stylus worked as a mouse.
The drawbacks - Windows CE and too short battery life. You had to save your data and programs on a CF card, because when the battery went, your computer went back to ROM defaults. It had a mic and sound recording, a built-in modem, and a slot for CF card and PCMCIA. ActiveSync sucked, you had to use Outlook for mail to synch, and the mini-Office-apps saved to a non-standard format. The modem, mini-IE and POP3 mail client worked pretty well.
The keyboard and screen can't get much smaller than this and still be useable.
What UPS? (Bzzzt....)
I used to be an MS developer... I hear your lament.
Today, learn Apache Web Server with PHP. MySQL is the leading OS database. I have implemented Apache, PHP and MySQL on a Windows platform with no problems. Next step is to go to Linux server, and integration into the whole.
Message is: use Apache, PHP, MySQL and you can use any platform available.
Dennis
Does this mean the BSA Gestapo will now look for patent violations on your web server?
No Java, Javascript, Flash, QT, or other plug-ins here. Just have to do without, I guess.
KERMUDGION.
If you will notice, nearly all of these things are in fields that have tracks - parallel lines through the field. Is this a machinery (tractor, harvester, irrigatation) track? ANYHOW, if you look closely, the track always intersects the design in the center, or at a node that could be the "pivot point" of the design. Why does the design always align with the tracks? Could it be that this is the ingress and reference point for a clever ground crew? NAW, the aliens just like fields with tracks and the symmetry of aligned patterns!
If you have a key which is part of a master system, you have access to the lock. You could disassemble your OWN lock to find the keying pattern for the master key by measuring the extra pin segments in your lock.... (Second post to this article, but just thought of that)
To add to your mention of a lack of pysical security consider... Most doors have only the flimsy wooden framing holding the catches, or the doors themselves are hollow-core - only thin veneer on a frame; also consider climbing over the walls in adjacent offices which use drop-ceiling systems; or even using a (smallish) hammer to bang a hole in sheetrock walls... or (gasp) breakable WINDOWS!!!!! This does not even consider the tried-and-true credit-card slip trick, and what if the door has the hinge pins accessible? These be things to ponder....
Sansui and Onkyo were renowned in the 80's for low-low-low-distortion amps and high-end recievers. This company has been in the consumer-audiophile business for a long time. I remember touch-sensitive controls and FM lock WAAAY before these things became maintsream. It doesnt surprise me that they are "pioneering" new ideas in consumer A/V appliances.
Dennis
Oh yeah, and why am I still getting hundreds of port 137 connections on the firewall every day, not to mention the 139 and 1433 and port 80 scans.
These are not script kiddies playing with port scanners, they are automated bots running on someones WIN machine.
Unfortunately, it seems that journalists who write about the internet are still AOL/MSN newbies who think that AOL IS the Internet. Somehow I don't think that AOL/TW is going to innovate as much as these folks hope. Who really wants the Internet EVERYWHERE. Geez, do these people have a real life (outside of computer journalism) or care about privacy and security issues?
Going even further off-topic, the answer is, YES. Relying on trusted code ignores a common security problem... an untrusted user with superuser rights can initiate insecure connections via ftp, email, browser, etc., downloading, installing, and/or enabling security breaches, sometimes *without the user being aware of their actions*. Some firewalling systems filter email attachments, and allow blocking of known "bad boys" via http -- trackers, ad servers and such, so I would say that blocking unathorized outbound connections is smart in any case... even for the single-user geek machine with a (maybe sometimes inattentive human controller) human user. Dont get me talking about security and acceptable use policies in a corporate environment!
You can use the firewall functions to block OUTGOING ports. Generally, you would block all outgoing port connections between 0-1024, except for well-known ports 80(http), 53(dns), 25(smtp), 110(pop3), 143(https), and etc. The most important outgoing ports to block in WIN(SMB, SAMBA, NTLM, NETBIOS) environments are ports 137 and 139.
You can get tapes of Julius Sumner Miller doing fun physics experiments from PBS and other sources. Great Fun.
Trasgu