I so wish that the next version of android that google tells carriers to fuck off.
I am so done with the baked in crap from HTC/Samsung/etc and the deviation from pure android get's so bad that some like HTC confuses some people.
Are you complaining about carriers or manufacturers? Google can't tell manufacturers (HTC/Samsung/etc) to fuck off, because they're the ones that build the device. There are already fairly strict restrictions on what you can do if you want to include the Play store (i.e. you have to install all of the other Google crap), which is what's pushing Samsung to fork Android, but the core open source OS is... open source.
The manufacturers, on the other hand, could tell the carriers to fuck off, and not provide support for installing carrier-supplied shovelware on phones bought through the carrier.
The problem is phones sold by the carrier, which are then customised. Apple doesn't allow this kind of customisation, so there's no reason for the carrier to the anywhere on the upgrade path. Most Android vendors do, which means that you have to get the firmware upgrades from them, rather than the manufacturer. If you buy one directly, then manufacturers vary wildly (and so do devices from the same manufacturer) in how timely they are in pushing updates. And they're all pretty bad, so there's no much incentive to compete.
Please read what I actually wrote, then reply. It was very much funded by the government, but the direction for the programme did not come from Capitol Hill, it came from within ARPA.
Governments never led any of the computer/digital revolution.
The biggest counter-example to this I can think of is the programme in the UK in the early 80s, which funded the BBC to develop a load of resources for teaching and invited companies to develop computers for education, which schools could then buy with central government picking up 50% of the cost. The company that made a successful bid (the requirements were quite strict, including a built-in programming language with support for structured programming) was Acorn, who got to brand their next computer the BBC Micro as the official computer to go along with the course material. A lot of tech startups in the UK in the '90s were run by people who learned to program as a result of this. Acorn's profits from this were used to fund the development of the CPU that would go in the successor computer. After some interest from Apple in using this chip in the Newton, they spun off their chip design company into a separate company: ARM. They've been pretty influential in the current part of the computer revolution.
It's probably technically correct to call the Internet a government program, but it's also a fairly good counterexample for this context. TCP/IP and associated protocols were developed by the ARPANet project, but that was one of many ARPA projects at the time and it was not actively pushed as a research direction by the elected bits of government. The [D]ARPA model is to hire academics to organise programmes, on the assumption that they know what the interesting research problems are and who would be good at tackling them. APRANet was run in this way - there was no central government mandate saying 'the future involves networked digital computers, go and develop stuff related to this'.
In general, organisations like DARPA are good at doing the sort of blue-sky research that will mostly produce useless results and occasionally produce world-changing ideas where, though the rewards can be huge, the risks are too high for most private research organisations (and where the maximum benefit often comes from not developing a proprietary technology). They're much less good at trying to push the economy in a particular direction.
Well, you should notice, I don't see how netflix could automagically start streaming to your new IP address
Netflix content is all pull, not push. The client side (web app or native app) sends a stream of HTTP requests for new chunks and pastes them together to give you the illusion of a constant stream. All that the OS has to do is drop the connection for one and the Netflix app will recover and issue a new request (with the same auth cookie) from its new IP address. The Netflix server doesn't care about your IP, it just cares about the chunk that you've requested and that you have a valid auth token for it. This is also how Netflix keeps the frame rate up - if the buffer starts to get small, it will transparently switch to requesting lower-quality chunks, so you'll get degraded image quality rather than RealVideo-style buffering... messages.
The unlatched door was in Paris and the torn seatbelt in New York.
Did you report them? Every taxi that I've been in in the UK and USA has a prominent sign inside giving the taxi registration number and the contact details for the regulatory authority. At least in the UK, if you report a taxi then they will inspect it and if it doesn't meet the requirements then they will fine the owner and, in worse cases, remove their license. Most authorities also do spot checks, but often a taxi can slip through the cracks of those.
The latest set of attacks on two-factor auth work by exploiting the fact that Google people are idiots and granted the Google Play app the ability to install applications without user intervention and exposed this via a UI to the Internet. If you compromise the user's browser and they log in with their Google credentials, then you can replace their bank app with a trojaned one and allow the two-factor auth to go forward.
You're joking, but you're actually close to the reason. There have been a lot of studies done on how easy it is to lose sales by making life inconvenient for purchasers. Amazon, in particular, is very much aware of exactly how many lost sales each extra click needs. There's pressure from a lot of big shops on this, because the cost of fraud is less than the cost of lost sales from people deciding that spending a lot of money in a secure way is too much faff. If you're asking someone for a lot of money, the last thing that you want them to do is stop and think about whether they really want the thing that they're buying.
And third, each transaction has a unique code generated by the card itself for each transaction, so replay attacks are not possible
Well, almost. If correctly implemented. Unfortunately, the security depends on an 'unpredictable number', which in a lot of devices is a simple incrementing counter, so if you can do one transaction with your real card and intercept the signals (you can buy off-the-shelf things that look like a credit card and contain a couple of extra chips for this) then you can predict it for the next transaction and bypass much of the security. Oh, and the fact that the bank authenticates the card but the card doesn't authenticate the bank also makes some MITM attacks possible. Much more secure than a mag stripe, but still quite flawed. I found it particularly entertaining that the USA waited until a load of the flaws were published before deciding to adopt the system.
For example, hierarchies are much easier for most to grasp over set theory
If you actually think that, then I really hope that you never design a UI that normal people have to use. Your assertion is true for about 10% of the population (which has a very large overlap with people who become software developers). Most people find notions of union and intersection of categories a lot easier to understand than hierarchies.
$50/month seems like a lot more than I'd want to pay for phone service. I have a pre-pay SIM and end up paying about £1-2/month. Costs are 3p/minute for calls, 2p/text, 1p/MB of data. If I use more, there are bundles that are cheaper. If I buy a bundle, it also works in any one of the 'feel at home' countries, including the US. For example, for £10 I can get 100 minutes, 3,000 texts, and 500MB of data, which will work in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Macau, New Zealand, Norway, Ireland, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, and the USA (and, of course, the UK). Oh, and I don't pay to receive calls or texts from anywhere in the world, even when I have no credit on my phone.
If I wanted to go onto a contract, there are a lot of options, but since you seem to like spending a lot on the phone we'll pick the most expensive one: unlimited data, unlimited calls, unlimited text, one-month contract is £30/month (around $45/month). And those allowances work in any of the destinations that I listed above. Dropping down to only 4GB of data and 600 minutes lowers it to £19 (about $29) per month. Even the cheapest contract (500MB, 200 minutes, unlimited texts) at £8/month ($12) is a lot more than I spend on a pre-pay plan though, so I'm not really tempted to switch. You need to use the phone a lot for it to be worthwhile.
Being able to recognize that a task can be automated, AND being able to tell the programmer how the task is to be done is a huge step on its own.
I'd agree with the first part of this - that really is the important step for a lot of people. I don't agree with the second though: for a lot of simple tasks, it takes longer to explain to a programmer exactly what is required than it would do implement something that more or less works. These tasks don't need maintainable or even efficient code, they just need something that works now, takes one minute to implement, and saves five minutes of work.
Some, like FB, would do it for practical and economical reasons, just because there are server logs and they need to optimize advertising and user engagement.
Aggregate data and broad trends used for very specific purposes then discarded are very different to individualised data to be sold on or stored indefinetely.
What makes you think that this is what they're collecting? Facebook is well aware of the value of the data that they collect and that their analysis algorithms are constantly improving, making it valuable to re-run analyses over old data. They delete transient results, but they keep the source, including:
Time that you visited any web page with a Facebook 'like' button.
The IP addresses that you've used (can be cross-correlated with geolocation databases to find where / who you've visited).
When any contacts are added or removed from any address book that is sync'd with Facebook.
The time, recipient, and contents of everyone that you've sent messages to.
In the last couple of years, Facebook has become a bit better at protecting this information from accidental disclosure, because they now realise that it's a valuable asset. For example, they are now fairly good at tracking who the undecided voters in a given constituency are and will sell this information to political parties (convincing the undecided voters is how you win an election), including personal details such as name, address and various other things that would help tailor a political message. Oh, and of course they'll then put that message in the person's Facebook feeds (if they have a Facebook account) for another fee...
It's a shame that you're an AC and not moderated up, because you're exactly right. Anyone who thinks that teaching programming is about producing a generation of software developers is completely missing the point. It's no more about that than teaching English is about producing a generation of novelists or teaching arithmetic is about producing a generation of accountants. A huge number of tasks now either require, or can be made easier, with some programming. Knowing that the boring repetitive task in Word or Excel can be automated with a short VBA script and not being afraid of writing one could make a huge number of people more productive. It won't make them programmers, but that wasn't ever the goal.
So, if the person decides to leave, you have no way of replacing them? If so, what are you going to do if they say 'I'm taking two weeks off now'? Fire them? And then what? Not replace them (because you have no way of replacing them)? Or ask them to come back at the end of the two weeks because you can't do without them.
Seems a bit odd that they're 'good' developers, yet don't have the option of saying to management 'I have these three job offers currently in hand. I'm going to take two weeks off now, and if you want me to come back at the end of it then we'll talk about the raise that you'll be giving me'. There's a big demand for good developers at the moment.
The British Empire doesn't exist anymore. Parts of it are now the British Commonwealth, though some are now part of the USA. And your second paragraph doesn't explain why you could not know the difference between an empire that covered a significant fraction of the world and a small island. Or are you also unable to tell the difference between Italy and the Roman Empire?
Digital electricity metres are not new (at least, in the UK where TFA is about). I'm not sure exactly when they introduced them, but I remember having one replaced around 2003 as part of the country-wide rolling upgrade program once they reached EOL. I doubt that there are any analogue ones left in the country. The controversy is about the ones that have wireless network connections (typically to the mobile phone network, not something short-range like ZigBee) and no security. If I were prone to conspiracy theories, then I'd think that the site that you linked to is funded by the smart metre industry to make objections look ridiculous.
TFA is about the UK. No one tried to brand digital metres (which were introduced well over a decade ago and have now completely replaced the old analogue ones as the old ones reached end of life and compulsory replacement age) as smart - they're just as dumb as the old ones, just using a digital circuit instead of analogue. The controversy is over smart metres, which are ones that have a network connection.
How often do you need it within an hour? If you're prototyping, then breadboards are usually fine. I'm a bit surprised that this is news: it was the advice almost ten years ago last time I did anything that required producing circuit boards. If you actually need a PCB, they're cheap to get professionally made and delivery is often next-day (or longer if you want to pay even less). Only make your own if speed is far more important than quality, and your time is cheap.
Of course, that assumes that you're making a thing because you want thing. If you want to hand-print PCBs because you want to learn a craft as a hobby, then by all means, do so and have fun!
The old systems used MORE power and had a high potential for failure. They were just plain awful. No one is going to be making the old 50's style analog meters with the rotating disk and gears that wore down over time
You know that all of those were replaced in the UK years ago, right? UK houses all have digital (but not broadcasting) electricity metre (and gas metres, if they have gas). Are you honestly claiming that digital a metre with a little LCD display (i.e. the kind that they want to rip out and replace with 'smart' metres) uses more power than a digital metre with an LCD display and an RF transmitter?
If you're going to conflate open source and community developed, then I'm going to conflate closed source and developed by a one-man fly-by-night company that goes bust next month.
For open source, that's not practical. First off, the customer here is not the home owner. The customer is the utility. The utility does NOT want the home owner to be hacking on the meters. Given the number of anti-smart-meter kooks out there, these are active targets for hacking. Even if open source is used they images would inevitably have to be signed. Yes, only Telefonica (or other provider) will be able to fix these meters, but that's normal and expected and required under many regulations. Yes, someone can fiddle with them, open them up, cut some wires, etc, but you break the seal on the meters and the owners will notice soon enough.
Open source here is not about allowing the end user to install their own version of the software, it's about interoperability. In the UK, part of privatisation of the energy companies meant that you are able to switch between providers at will. This means that if I get an electricity metre installed by one provider then the next one must be able to use it, whether I switch next week or in five years time. The new company now takes responsibility for the metre and so must be able to update it for their tariffs and must be able to ensure that the previous company can not get access to my consumption (e.g. by changing the encryption key used).
Slashdot Mirror
I so wish that the next version of android that google tells carriers to fuck off. I am so done with the baked in crap from HTC/Samsung/etc and the deviation from pure android get's so bad that some like HTC confuses some people.
Are you complaining about carriers or manufacturers? Google can't tell manufacturers (HTC/Samsung/etc) to fuck off, because they're the ones that build the device. There are already fairly strict restrictions on what you can do if you want to include the Play store (i.e. you have to install all of the other Google crap), which is what's pushing Samsung to fork Android, but the core open source OS is... open source.
The manufacturers, on the other hand, could tell the carriers to fuck off, and not provide support for installing carrier-supplied shovelware on phones bought through the carrier.
The problem is phones sold by the carrier, which are then customised. Apple doesn't allow this kind of customisation, so there's no reason for the carrier to the anywhere on the upgrade path. Most Android vendors do, which means that you have to get the firmware upgrades from them, rather than the manufacturer. If you buy one directly, then manufacturers vary wildly (and so do devices from the same manufacturer) in how timely they are in pushing updates. And they're all pretty bad, so there's no much incentive to compete.
Please read what I actually wrote, then reply. It was very much funded by the government, but the direction for the programme did not come from Capitol Hill, it came from within ARPA.
Governments never led any of the computer/digital revolution.
The biggest counter-example to this I can think of is the programme in the UK in the early 80s, which funded the BBC to develop a load of resources for teaching and invited companies to develop computers for education, which schools could then buy with central government picking up 50% of the cost. The company that made a successful bid (the requirements were quite strict, including a built-in programming language with support for structured programming) was Acorn, who got to brand their next computer the BBC Micro as the official computer to go along with the course material. A lot of tech startups in the UK in the '90s were run by people who learned to program as a result of this. Acorn's profits from this were used to fund the development of the CPU that would go in the successor computer. After some interest from Apple in using this chip in the Newton, they spun off their chip design company into a separate company: ARM. They've been pretty influential in the current part of the computer revolution.
It's probably technically correct to call the Internet a government program, but it's also a fairly good counterexample for this context. TCP/IP and associated protocols were developed by the ARPANet project, but that was one of many ARPA projects at the time and it was not actively pushed as a research direction by the elected bits of government. The [D]ARPA model is to hire academics to organise programmes, on the assumption that they know what the interesting research problems are and who would be good at tackling them. APRANet was run in this way - there was no central government mandate saying 'the future involves networked digital computers, go and develop stuff related to this'.
In general, organisations like DARPA are good at doing the sort of blue-sky research that will mostly produce useless results and occasionally produce world-changing ideas where, though the rewards can be huge, the risks are too high for most private research organisations (and where the maximum benefit often comes from not developing a proprietary technology). They're much less good at trying to push the economy in a particular direction.
Well, you should notice, I don't see how netflix could automagically start streaming to your new IP address
Netflix content is all pull, not push. The client side (web app or native app) sends a stream of HTTP requests for new chunks and pastes them together to give you the illusion of a constant stream. All that the OS has to do is drop the connection for one and the Netflix app will recover and issue a new request (with the same auth cookie) from its new IP address. The Netflix server doesn't care about your IP, it just cares about the chunk that you've requested and that you have a valid auth token for it. This is also how Netflix keeps the frame rate up - if the buffer starts to get small, it will transparently switch to requesting lower-quality chunks, so you'll get degraded image quality rather than RealVideo-style buffering... messages.
The unlatched door was in Paris and the torn seatbelt in New York.
Did you report them? Every taxi that I've been in in the UK and USA has a prominent sign inside giving the taxi registration number and the contact details for the regulatory authority. At least in the UK, if you report a taxi then they will inspect it and if it doesn't meet the requirements then they will fine the owner and, in worse cases, remove their license. Most authorities also do spot checks, but often a taxi can slip through the cracks of those.
The latest set of attacks on two-factor auth work by exploiting the fact that Google people are idiots and granted the Google Play app the ability to install applications without user intervention and exposed this via a UI to the Internet. If you compromise the user's browser and they log in with their Google credentials, then you can replace their bank app with a trojaned one and allow the two-factor auth to go forward.
You're joking, but you're actually close to the reason. There have been a lot of studies done on how easy it is to lose sales by making life inconvenient for purchasers. Amazon, in particular, is very much aware of exactly how many lost sales each extra click needs. There's pressure from a lot of big shops on this, because the cost of fraud is less than the cost of lost sales from people deciding that spending a lot of money in a secure way is too much faff. If you're asking someone for a lot of money, the last thing that you want them to do is stop and think about whether they really want the thing that they're buying.
And third, each transaction has a unique code generated by the card itself for each transaction, so replay attacks are not possible
Well, almost. If correctly implemented. Unfortunately, the security depends on an 'unpredictable number', which in a lot of devices is a simple incrementing counter, so if you can do one transaction with your real card and intercept the signals (you can buy off-the-shelf things that look like a credit card and contain a couple of extra chips for this) then you can predict it for the next transaction and bypass much of the security. Oh, and the fact that the bank authenticates the card but the card doesn't authenticate the bank also makes some MITM attacks possible. Much more secure than a mag stripe, but still quite flawed. I found it particularly entertaining that the USA waited until a load of the flaws were published before deciding to adopt the system.
For example, hierarchies are much easier for most to grasp over set theory
If you actually think that, then I really hope that you never design a UI that normal people have to use. Your assertion is true for about 10% of the population (which has a very large overlap with people who become software developers). Most people find notions of union and intersection of categories a lot easier to understand than hierarchies.
So how's your plan compare?
$50/month seems like a lot more than I'd want to pay for phone service. I have a pre-pay SIM and end up paying about £1-2/month. Costs are 3p/minute for calls, 2p/text, 1p/MB of data. If I use more, there are bundles that are cheaper. If I buy a bundle, it also works in any one of the 'feel at home' countries, including the US. For example, for £10 I can get 100 minutes, 3,000 texts, and 500MB of data, which will work in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Macau, New Zealand, Norway, Ireland, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, and the USA (and, of course, the UK). Oh, and I don't pay to receive calls or texts from anywhere in the world, even when I have no credit on my phone.
If I wanted to go onto a contract, there are a lot of options, but since you seem to like spending a lot on the phone we'll pick the most expensive one: unlimited data, unlimited calls, unlimited text, one-month contract is £30/month (around $45/month). And those allowances work in any of the destinations that I listed above. Dropping down to only 4GB of data and 600 minutes lowers it to £19 (about $29) per month. Even the cheapest contract (500MB, 200 minutes, unlimited texts) at £8/month ($12) is a lot more than I spend on a pre-pay plan though, so I'm not really tempted to switch. You need to use the phone a lot for it to be worthwhile.
Being able to recognize that a task can be automated, AND being able to tell the programmer how the task is to be done is a huge step on its own.
I'd agree with the first part of this - that really is the important step for a lot of people. I don't agree with the second though: for a lot of simple tasks, it takes longer to explain to a programmer exactly what is required than it would do implement something that more or less works. These tasks don't need maintainable or even efficient code, they just need something that works now, takes one minute to implement, and saves five minutes of work.
Some, like FB, would do it for practical and economical reasons, just because there are server logs and they need to optimize advertising and user engagement.
Aggregate data and broad trends used for very specific purposes then discarded are very different to individualised data to be sold on or stored indefinetely.
What makes you think that this is what they're collecting? Facebook is well aware of the value of the data that they collect and that their analysis algorithms are constantly improving, making it valuable to re-run analyses over old data. They delete transient results, but they keep the source, including:
In the last couple of years, Facebook has become a bit better at protecting this information from accidental disclosure, because they now realise that it's a valuable asset. For example, they are now fairly good at tracking who the undecided voters in a given constituency are and will sell this information to political parties (convincing the undecided voters is how you win an election), including personal details such as name, address and various other things that would help tailor a political message. Oh, and of course they'll then put that message in the person's Facebook feeds (if they have a Facebook account) for another fee...
It's a shame that you're an AC and not moderated up, because you're exactly right. Anyone who thinks that teaching programming is about producing a generation of software developers is completely missing the point. It's no more about that than teaching English is about producing a generation of novelists or teaching arithmetic is about producing a generation of accountants. A huge number of tasks now either require, or can be made easier, with some programming. Knowing that the boring repetitive task in Word or Excel can be automated with a short VBA script and not being afraid of writing one could make a huge number of people more productive. It won't make them programmers, but that wasn't ever the goal.
So, if the person decides to leave, you have no way of replacing them? If so, what are you going to do if they say 'I'm taking two weeks off now'? Fire them? And then what? Not replace them (because you have no way of replacing them)? Or ask them to come back at the end of the two weeks because you can't do without them.
Seems a bit odd that they're 'good' developers, yet don't have the option of saying to management 'I have these three job offers currently in hand. I'm going to take two weeks off now, and if you want me to come back at the end of it then we'll talk about the raise that you'll be giving me'. There's a big demand for good developers at the moment.
The British Empire doesn't exist anymore. Parts of it are now the British Commonwealth, though some are now part of the USA. And your second paragraph doesn't explain why you could not know the difference between an empire that covered a significant fraction of the world and a small island. Or are you also unable to tell the difference between Italy and the Roman Empire?
The saying is that the sun never sets over the British Empire, which was a lot bigger than the UK.
Digital electricity metres are not new (at least, in the UK where TFA is about). I'm not sure exactly when they introduced them, but I remember having one replaced around 2003 as part of the country-wide rolling upgrade program once they reached EOL. I doubt that there are any analogue ones left in the country. The controversy is about the ones that have wireless network connections (typically to the mobile phone network, not something short-range like ZigBee) and no security. If I were prone to conspiracy theories, then I'd think that the site that you linked to is funded by the smart metre industry to make objections look ridiculous.
TFA is about the UK. No one tried to brand digital metres (which were introduced well over a decade ago and have now completely replaced the old analogue ones as the old ones reached end of life and compulsory replacement age) as smart - they're just as dumb as the old ones, just using a digital circuit instead of analogue. The controversy is over smart metres, which are ones that have a network connection.
How often do you need it within an hour? If you're prototyping, then breadboards are usually fine. I'm a bit surprised that this is news: it was the advice almost ten years ago last time I did anything that required producing circuit boards. If you actually need a PCB, they're cheap to get professionally made and delivery is often next-day (or longer if you want to pay even less). Only make your own if speed is far more important than quality, and your time is cheap.
Of course, that assumes that you're making a thing because you want thing. If you want to hand-print PCBs because you want to learn a craft as a hobby, then by all means, do so and have fun!
The old systems used MORE power and had a high potential for failure. They were just plain awful. No one is going to be making the old 50's style analog meters with the rotating disk and gears that wore down over time
You know that all of those were replaced in the UK years ago, right? UK houses all have digital (but not broadcasting) electricity metre (and gas metres, if they have gas). Are you honestly claiming that digital a metre with a little LCD display (i.e. the kind that they want to rip out and replace with 'smart' metres) uses more power than a digital metre with an LCD display and an RF transmitter?
If you're going to conflate open source and community developed, then I'm going to conflate closed source and developed by a one-man fly-by-night company that goes bust next month.
For open source, that's not practical. First off, the customer here is not the home owner. The customer is the utility. The utility does NOT want the home owner to be hacking on the meters. Given the number of anti-smart-meter kooks out there, these are active targets for hacking. Even if open source is used they images would inevitably have to be signed. Yes, only Telefonica (or other provider) will be able to fix these meters, but that's normal and expected and required under many regulations. Yes, someone can fiddle with them, open them up, cut some wires, etc, but you break the seal on the meters and the owners will notice soon enough.
Open source here is not about allowing the end user to install their own version of the software, it's about interoperability. In the UK, part of privatisation of the energy companies meant that you are able to switch between providers at will. This means that if I get an electricity metre installed by one provider then the next one must be able to use it, whether I switch next week or in five years time. The new company now takes responsibility for the metre and so must be able to update it for their tariffs and must be able to ensure that the previous company can not get access to my consumption (e.g. by changing the encryption key used).