they waited too long to go digital, and they screwed it up when they did go mainstream digital.
They didn't wait too long - they were one of the first, if not the first, to go digital. Their cameras were also good sellers. What Kodak couldn't cope with was the change in culture needed to go from the insanely high-margin consumables business to the insanely low-margin commodity camera business. The Kodak of the 1980s would never even want to be a Nikon or Canon.
Anyway, Eastman Kodak didn't really go away. The chemicals division is still cranking out chemicals, having been spun off in 1993 and still sits in the Fortune 500. Much of the valuable business was sold to other companies. Even the old films parent company still exists, though only in the commercial world, and it has over $4 billion in revenue.
It's not only "Stallman-esq" DRM (can I say that?), it doesn't change the fundamental problem. People aren't providing free content because it is too hard to get paid for it. They are providing free content because that is what is expected from the internet - people won't pay for it. You can have the most convenient, zero overhead cost currency possible and people still won't click on the pay article or video, they will click on the free one.
And any DRM scheme that is pervasive enough to protect all content on the internet will be easily defeated... the keys will be all over the place.
That's true, but he claims it draws 35 watts. I imagine he didn't use a full sized desktop box for his router:)
The Buffalo routers are great, but they don't try to sell them for $300! If I wanted an OpenWRT device I would do something very similar to what you have done. If you dropped $300 on my lap, I might be tempted to build something more capable.
It comes with a warranty for sure, unless he's using gray market or used parts. His time to source and build the thing is worth approximately zero, or he wouldn't be messing around with a DIY device. If he's a professional who puts together a standard set of firmware for these things and uses them at all of his clients, that's another thing. But I think most of us are discussing the home use of this beast. Perhaps my assumption is faulty.
What people do (or don't do) with the firmware has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion.
It has a lot to do with this discussion, because this product is only interesting because it can be dicked around with. It is a product meant for people who intend to spend some time setting it up. Joe Average is going to drop $40-70 on a regular router, not $300 on this open source job. IMHO, snapping a few boards into a case absolutely pales in comparison to getting an OS loaded and configured. I totally get that people don't want to build a PC and are willing to pay for that privilege, but lets not pretend that we are considering our time as particularly valuable when selecting this particular product.
The point is that not all screwing around is equal, especially to different people.
I think your point is that some people are willing to pay for a pre-assembled kit because they don't want to screw around with hardware. I agree with that.
But we weren't discussing whether it would be fun to build your own or not, we were discussing whether or not you should include labor costs when comparing the home built vs the packaged unit. My opinion is that no, time is not an issue here since the thing is meant to be screwed around with. If your time is so valuable that it needs to be considered, you probably aren't in this market at all.
I agree that someone might not "want to", and that very well might be worth the extra cash for that person. But using the labor argument against a solution where you are going to spend a lot of time dicking around anyway is weak, IMHO.
I'm failing to see your point. SJHilman made a router for $200 that could easily be expanded with a wireless card for $300 total. The retort was that his setup does not include labor. I replied that labor is silly to include in a discussion where people are dicking around with the firmware anyway.
The selection bias I was referring to was his observation that climate scientists seem to blame global warming for every calamitous weather event. I hear it brought up every... single... time... by idiot reporters, but I don't think I've ever heard a climate scientist make this claim.
I'm certain that the models are not complete. In the 90s I was quite skeptical of them, as they weren't doing a good job fitting new data coming in, and they varied from predicting cooling to predicting very unlikely amounts of heating. In other words, the error bars were too large and the fit too poor. Different models had different predictions. Over the years, however, the models all seemed to begin to converge. I have since come around to believe that the models probably have the long term trend right, and they probably have the root cause correct. That said, they obviously are trying to model something that is insanely complex, and there will obviously be factors that they miss.
I'm glad to see anthropomorphic climate change skeptics building models. In the past they were just pointing at charts and discussing convenient correlations. Climate is too complicated to simply point to correlations. The more talent we have working on models, the better.
Yes, I have missed them. Please do enlighten me! Maybe I'm a bit odd, but my threshold for "climate scientist" is quite high. I feel like you need to be involved in the construction and testing of climate models in order to call yourself a climate scientist. At the very least, you need to be in the data collection end of things.
Also, while I wish people pushing for reduced carbon emission well and hope they succeed, I don't think that they will. I think the efforts are wasted - people will probably use most of the world's fossil fuels as long as they are the cheapest way to get energy. Perhaps technology will save us, but barring that we should probably be putting money into mitigation efforts. There should be some centralized effort to cope with the effects of global warming: Do we continue to rebuild low-lying areas? Do we build sea walls? Do we pump cooling material into the atmosphere? And so on.
But where are all of you to point this out when idiots get on TV and try to claim that the latest big hurricane was "exacerbated by global warming"?
I obviously can't speak for every Slashdotter who thinks that the scientific consensus is probably correct, but I know it pisses me off when they do that.
Has a habit of touting every storm or weather incident (even earthquakes) as proof of global warming, but denying those same incidents as proof against global warming.
I suspect that is selection bias on your part. While the media do love to play up the "global warming" angle after every calamity, in every interview with an actual climate scientist that I've seen, the scientists seem pretty eager to distance themselves from that sort of speculation. If they have their dander up, they might point to theories which predict that the frequency and intensity of storms will increase, but that's about as far as I've seen them go.
It also invalidates the security model that you need to be in physical possession of the token to access the account.
That was not the security model. If that were the security model, the bank would require a dongle instead of an Android app. The security model is that he possesses a unique ID, a password, and a token (in this case, generated from his Android's ID). An attacker would need all three of those things to access his account. One can be read in plain text, one can be picked up with a keylogger, and the third by cloning his phone. Certainly not perfect security, but every piece makes an attacker's life more difficult.
Now if he had one of those little hardware dongles and he figured out how to clone it without obviously tampering with the dongle... that would be disturbing news for users of the dongle.
But this "token device" is a smartphone, and the bank generator is just an app. You have to assume that physical access means security has been compromised, just as with any other computer. There is nothing on a smartphone that can't be cloned with Titanium Backup and friends plus a few minutes of time.
I don't get that impression from reading TFA. It sounds like the implementation is mostly OK. Remember that all this generator is supposed to do is verify that you possess the token. Knowing the algorithm, so long as it is sound, shouldn't be a security problem - someone would still need to get their hands on the real token in order to clone it.
Now, had he figured out a way to divine the secret device ID from the generated codes, well now that would be bad.
I'm glad it works for you. I don't have a touch screen, and so it sucks more. It uses more screen real estate without presenting more information. It scrolls horizontally, which is great if you have a horizontal mouse wheel - mine is vertical. Since it spreads shit all over the screen, I have to move the mouse around a lot more. I embraced change - I tried it for a year.
The idea that making a program shortcut is doing an install is just plain dumb.
You are taking me too literally. Installing a program in a dedicated directory, and then also requiring the installer to create a shortcut to the program is silly - just make the OS smart enough to find the programs in the dedicated directory.
From System 7 through System 9 the solution was precisely the same as Windows, indeed, in every way.
Huh? It was rare to get a program that had an installer at all, let alone some requirement that shortcuts be made in some other location. You could install a program wherever you liked, so there was little reason to make an alias - though of course you certainly could if that suited your work flow.
the start menu has become the most copied interface element after the window and the close gadget.
Is that a result of a successful interface or a result of a familiar interface? It is very hard to separate the two when discussing Windows.
XP was mostly very badly received on geek sites like Slashdot
XP's greatest sin at the time was bloating up Windows 2000 without adding any significant features to compensate. Cheap memory and several service packs fixed most of those complaints. Vista had similar birthing problems, but in the end we got Windows 7, which is pretty good.
The thing about Windows 8 is that performance is not a complaint you typically hear. In fact, it seems faster than 7. No amount of hardware improvements will fix Windows 8's deficiencies, so we are left with service packs for hope. For the next few years, it's a non-issue as companies will run Windows 7.
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they waited too long to go digital, and they screwed it up when they did go mainstream digital.
They didn't wait too long - they were one of the first, if not the first, to go digital. Their cameras were also good sellers. What Kodak couldn't cope with was the change in culture needed to go from the insanely high-margin consumables business to the insanely low-margin commodity camera business. The Kodak of the 1980s would never even want to be a Nikon or Canon.
Anyway, Eastman Kodak didn't really go away. The chemicals division is still cranking out chemicals, having been spun off in 1993 and still sits in the Fortune 500. Much of the valuable business was sold to other companies. Even the old films parent company still exists, though only in the commercial world, and it has over $4 billion in revenue.
It's not only "Stallman-esq" DRM (can I say that?), it doesn't change the fundamental problem. People aren't providing free content because it is too hard to get paid for it. They are providing free content because that is what is expected from the internet - people won't pay for it. You can have the most convenient, zero overhead cost currency possible and people still won't click on the pay article or video, they will click on the free one.
And any DRM scheme that is pervasive enough to protect all content on the internet will be easily defeated... the keys will be all over the place.
That's true, but he claims it draws 35 watts. I imagine he didn't use a full sized desktop box for his router :)
The Buffalo routers are great, but they don't try to sell them for $300! If I wanted an OpenWRT device I would do something very similar to what you have done. If you dropped $300 on my lap, I might be tempted to build something more capable.
It comes with a warranty for sure, unless he's using gray market or used parts. His time to source and build the thing is worth approximately zero, or he wouldn't be messing around with a DIY device. If he's a professional who puts together a standard set of firmware for these things and uses them at all of his clients, that's another thing. But I think most of us are discussing the home use of this beast. Perhaps my assumption is faulty.
What people do (or don't do) with the firmware has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion.
It has a lot to do with this discussion, because this product is only interesting because it can be dicked around with. It is a product meant for people who intend to spend some time setting it up. Joe Average is going to drop $40-70 on a regular router, not $300 on this open source job. IMHO, snapping a few boards into a case absolutely pales in comparison to getting an OS loaded and configured. I totally get that people don't want to build a PC and are willing to pay for that privilege, but lets not pretend that we are considering our time as particularly valuable when selecting this particular product.
Aren't you angry? Yes, I meant OpenWRT.
But I wouldn't do all that. I would either ask Hilman for a list of the parts he used, or go to a forum where they do this sort of thing.
Barring that, I would buy one of the many under-$100 routers which work well with open-source firmware.
The point is that not all screwing around is equal, especially to different people.
I think your point is that some people are willing to pay for a pre-assembled kit because they don't want to screw around with hardware. I agree with that.
But we weren't discussing whether it would be fun to build your own or not, we were discussing whether or not you should include labor costs when comparing the home built vs the packaged unit. My opinion is that no, time is not an issue here since the thing is meant to be screwed around with. If your time is so valuable that it needs to be considered, you probably aren't in this market at all.
I have no idea what such a beast would cost. It's entirely possible that SJHillman is way off.
I agree that someone might not "want to", and that very well might be worth the extra cash for that person. But using the labor argument against a solution where you are going to spend a lot of time dicking around anyway is weak, IMHO.
I'm failing to see your point. SJHilman made a router for $200 that could easily be expanded with a wireless card for $300 total. The retort was that his setup does not include labor. I replied that labor is silly to include in a discussion where people are dicking around with the firmware anyway.
If you are buying a router to screw around with DD-WRT, you almost certainly aren't counting labor anyway.
Yeah, my jaw kind of dropped there at the price.
The selection bias I was referring to was his observation that climate scientists seem to blame global warming for every calamitous weather event. I hear it brought up every... single... time... by idiot reporters, but I don't think I've ever heard a climate scientist make this claim.
I'm certain that the models are not complete. In the 90s I was quite skeptical of them, as they weren't doing a good job fitting new data coming in, and they varied from predicting cooling to predicting very unlikely amounts of heating. In other words, the error bars were too large and the fit too poor. Different models had different predictions. Over the years, however, the models all seemed to begin to converge. I have since come around to believe that the models probably have the long term trend right, and they probably have the root cause correct. That said, they obviously are trying to model something that is insanely complex, and there will obviously be factors that they miss.
I'm glad to see anthropomorphic climate change skeptics building models. In the past they were just pointing at charts and discussing convenient correlations. Climate is too complicated to simply point to correlations. The more talent we have working on models, the better.
Yes, I have missed them. Please do enlighten me! Maybe I'm a bit odd, but my threshold for "climate scientist" is quite high. I feel like you need to be involved in the construction and testing of climate models in order to call yourself a climate scientist. At the very least, you need to be in the data collection end of things.
Also, while I wish people pushing for reduced carbon emission well and hope they succeed, I don't think that they will. I think the efforts are wasted - people will probably use most of the world's fossil fuels as long as they are the cheapest way to get energy. Perhaps technology will save us, but barring that we should probably be putting money into mitigation efforts. There should be some centralized effort to cope with the effects of global warming: Do we continue to rebuild low-lying areas? Do we build sea walls? Do we pump cooling material into the atmosphere? And so on.
But where are all of you to point this out when idiots get on TV and try to claim that the latest big hurricane was "exacerbated by global warming"?
I obviously can't speak for every Slashdotter who thinks that the scientific consensus is probably correct, but I know it pisses me off when they do that.
Has a habit of touting every storm or weather incident (even earthquakes) as proof of global warming, but denying those same incidents as proof against global warming.
I suspect that is selection bias on your part. While the media do love to play up the "global warming" angle after every calamity, in every interview with an actual climate scientist that I've seen, the scientists seem pretty eager to distance themselves from that sort of speculation. If they have their dander up, they might point to theories which predict that the frequency and intensity of storms will increase, but that's about as far as I've seen them go.
Yeah, I have one of those 80% Android phones. I bought it because it was cheap. Apple has nothing to worry about.
It also invalidates the security model that you need to be in physical possession of the token to access the account.
That was not the security model. If that were the security model, the bank would require a dongle instead of an Android app. The security model is that he possesses a unique ID, a password, and a token (in this case, generated from his Android's ID). An attacker would need all three of those things to access his account. One can be read in plain text, one can be picked up with a keylogger, and the third by cloning his phone. Certainly not perfect security, but every piece makes an attacker's life more difficult.
Now if he had one of those little hardware dongles and he figured out how to clone it without obviously tampering with the dongle... that would be disturbing news for users of the dongle.
But this "token device" is a smartphone, and the bank generator is just an app. You have to assume that physical access means security has been compromised, just as with any other computer. There is nothing on a smartphone that can't be cloned with Titanium Backup and friends plus a few minutes of time.
This is security through obscurity at its worst,
I don't get that impression from reading TFA. It sounds like the implementation is mostly OK. Remember that all this generator is supposed to do is verify that you possess the token. Knowing the algorithm, so long as it is sound, shouldn't be a security problem - someone would still need to get their hands on the real token in order to clone it.
Now, had he figured out a way to divine the secret device ID from the generated codes, well now that would be bad.
Sorry, I don't see how it sucks more.
I'm glad it works for you. I don't have a touch screen, and so it sucks more. It uses more screen real estate without presenting more information. It scrolls horizontally, which is great if you have a horizontal mouse wheel - mine is vertical. Since it spreads shit all over the screen, I have to move the mouse around a lot more. I embraced change - I tried it for a year.
The idea that making a program shortcut is doing an install is just plain dumb.
You are taking me too literally. Installing a program in a dedicated directory, and then also requiring the installer to create a shortcut to the program is silly - just make the OS smart enough to find the programs in the dedicated directory.
From System 7 through System 9 the solution was precisely the same as Windows, indeed, in every way.
Huh? It was rare to get a program that had an installer at all, let alone some requirement that shortcuts be made in some other location. You could install a program wherever you liked, so there was little reason to make an alias - though of course you certainly could if that suited your work flow.
the start menu has become the most copied interface element after the window and the close gadget.
Is that a result of a successful interface or a result of a familiar interface? It is very hard to separate the two when discussing Windows.
Personally, I still can't get over the fact that you think roofing a quarter acre of open space is a reasonable suggestion.
Re-read my response - I called it "absurd".
XP was mostly very badly received on geek sites like Slashdot
XP's greatest sin at the time was bloating up Windows 2000 without adding any significant features to compensate. Cheap memory and several service packs fixed most of those complaints. Vista had similar birthing problems, but in the end we got Windows 7, which is pretty good.
The thing about Windows 8 is that performance is not a complaint you typically hear. In fact, it seems faster than 7. No amount of hardware improvements will fix Windows 8's deficiencies, so we are left with service packs for hope. For the next few years, it's a non-issue as companies will run Windows 7.