they used to need licenses to listen to radio as well. not certain if that still applies or got folded into the television license.
The radio licence was abolished 40 years ago.
These days, the BBC (and certain content on commercial channels) is funded entirely by the TV licence. This is going to have to change at some point though since more and more people (myself included) are getting their TV entirely from iPlayer, which doesn't require a licence. It seems a bit unfair for only the broadcast TV watchers to subsidise all of these services (TV, radio, iPlayer, the BBC website, lots of content on non-BBC TV and radio channels, etc.). At some point I hope it simply becomes a tax for all households, possibly collected as part of council tax, since that would seem much fairer and would mean we'd be rid of the abusive dicks at the TV licensing authority (aka. C(r)apita).
Yes, you pay a relatively small fee to watch broadcast TV, and it funds high quality advert-free TV, advert free radio, vast amounts of advert-free web content...
OK, everyone knows space is big but doesn't this seem a bit cavalier, leaving old space junk in orbit?
It's orbit around the sun so there's lots more 'space' for junk to accumulate than say LEO but still. Seems like we're making the same short-sighted decisions over and over.
Can any of the rocket surgeons here comment on what it would take to de-orbit such a device?
'Set the controls for the heart of the sun.' -- Pink Floyd
Where are you going to deorbit it _to_? Bringing it back to earth is as big a job as sending it out there, deorbiting it into the sun is even harder. Even geostationary satellites don't get deorbitted when they reach the end of their life - they are boosted into a higher orbit to get them out of the way.
The biggest clue that it isn't holding Intel back is that if it did, they could offer a "native" micro-op programming mode as well for beyond-assembler optimization. A lot of people seem to think that Intel would intentionally drive around 30 years with the hand brake on, it just doesn't make any kind of sense.
Well, you can upload new microcode to intel CPUs, so chances are you could write magic new instructions that execute exactly the microcode you want. But it would take extensive knowledge of the CPU internals (probably the sort of knowledge that doesn't exist outside of intel), and would truely kill any idea of cross platform compatability.
Again its about not enabling someone to get your password in the first place. Rotation absolutely helps with that in the even a master password database is stolen.
Of course, but as with all security, this is about balancing the odds - what are the chances of the master password DB being stolen, cracked and the password(s) used, vs. the chances of one of your users being pushed into having a weak password through having to change it regularly?
You will usually know right away if its gone missing and change your password immediately or phone the helpdesk to have your account locked if this happens.
More likely they will be more concerned about their money and credit cards having been stolen and will completely forget that they had a password in there...
Straight into the recycle bin if you don't want it. When the landfill operators note that they have truckload after truckload of them, someone will make the phone company change the way they do things.
I've often thought that junk mailers should be taxed to pay for the cost of disposing of their junk mail. Currently (in the UK) the council tax payer foots the bill.
The security guys that argue passwords should not expire are crappy security guys.
It depends what the password is protecting. If someone gets your password, the chances are they are going to use it immediately. A timed expiry of passwords can prevent repeat-uses of it, but if the attacker already had chance to install malware when the account was originally compromised, they probably don't even need the password the second time around. Additionally, if a repeat attack isn't going to get the attacker anything extra over the original attempt, its probably not worth worrying about.
Conversely, regularly expiring peoples passwords almost always leads to them changing "mypassword1" to "mypassword2" and then to "mypassword3" which arguably doesn't actually do a lot to improve security. Additionally, if people are having to change password frequently and they don't do the above, they are probably using fairly weak passwords in order to remember them and/or keeping a post-it note on their monitor with the password written on it.
There is a lot to be said for encouraging people to have a very secure password that is never shared with other services and rarely changes (so they can memorise it, even if its strong).
At the end of the day, different policies lend themselves to different situations. Blindly forcing everyone to change their password every month is probably very counterproductive - the chances of someone compromising a strong password that isn't shared between services is very low, whereas the temptation to use a weak, shared password with a deterministic monthly change is extremely high.
Certificate expiration is important as well.
Certificate expiration can't be considered anything like the situation with password expiration. Certificates are machine-readable, they can be made as secure as you like and you don't have to remember them. Other than being a mild pain in the arse, renewing expired certificates shouldn't be a big problem and there is no incentive to make them weak as a result.
Well, I thought my HTC Dream was about the right size. My current Samsung Captivate Glide is bigger, but still ok (although despite the extra size, the keyboard is nowhere near as nice as the Dream's). I don't think I'd want anything bigger than the Glide though... But this is all personal preference and comes down to what you want out of your phone. The question "are phones getting too big" can simply be answered with "do people buy them?" - if the answer is yes then clearly they fit some peoples' criteria. Isn't the whole point of having lots of different handsets to provide people with a wide choice that allows them to pick the one that best does what they want? There's no point in everyone making identical handsets - there would be nothing to choose between them; instead, so long as there are a wide variety of sizes, styles, etc then everyone's happy, right? (Well, everyone except the iphone fanboys who seem to think that not having to choose and just sucking up whatever Apple puts in front of you is a better option).
I don't really care about phones being 7.5mm thin, I don't mind having a few millimeters extra if that means I actually have a battery worth its salt
I do wonder what goes through the heads of the marketing people who make a big noise about how their new tablet is "the thinnest ever" because its 0.3mm thinner than the competition (I'm looking at you Sony) - seriously, you'd struggle to notice the difference if you had the tablets side by side, let alone if you were actually using it...
The servers drive should be encrypted. The entire database should be encrypted.
Its not so simple. A server requires the drive to be mounted (and therefore decryptable) in order to function. So from the time the server is powered up until the time it is powered down, the file system is vulnerable - for a server that is powered on all the time, this means the window of opportunity for an attacker is huge. It stops a burglar from getting at the data after they unplug the machine and walk off with it, but if your server is in a secure datacentre then this isn't such a big worry - the concern is the server being compromised *while its running* (and as mentioned, servers tend to be running all the time). This could happen either by a remote attack, or by someone physically accessing the machine. So really, for an always-on server there often isn't a lot of point in encrypting it. Add to this that, unless you want to store the encryption key on the server itself (which rather defeats the point), you need to manually load it every time the server boots, which isn't great for failure resilliance.
And especially for I/O heavy servers (frequently the case with big DB servers), encryption is *not* free - it can have a significant performance hit.
There are places where filesystem encyption on servers makes sense - this is where the encrypted filesystems are only mounted for brief periods of time. For example, a server that is performing remote backups of another server can retrieve the key from the machine its backing up, mount the FS, do the backup, unmount the FS and wipe the local copy of the key. The window of opportunity for an attacker is relatively short there (the duration of the backup); although obviously if an attacker can load persistent malware on the machine they can have it capture the key when the backup next starts.
Now I finally see what Shuttleworth's been meaning when he says the same applications run on all form factors - as a developer, you separate the logic from the UI, and write three UIs: one for phone, one for tablet, and one for desktop. Until now I thought "nice in concept, but what's the point?". But if your device itself suddenly switches from a phone or tablet to a desktop, then your app can keep running and switch UIs on the fly.
What I really find neat is how tablet apps can become phone apps when docked on the side, for multitasking. This finally looks like a tablet that's not purely for consuming content.
The thing is, I'm not convinced you actually want to have a separate UI... The Microsoft strategy of shoving a phone/tablet UI on a desktop or a desktop UI on a phone/tablet is clearly moronic, but I think there is some middle-ground where you can design a UI that works well for all the hardware.
For one thing, there doesn't seem to be a clear distinction between phone/tablet/laptop/desktop - if we look at the hardware, all of these devices have varying screen sizes and they can all have varying combinations of input technologies - my phone has a keyboard, some laptops have touch screens, you can connect a keyboard and mouse to a tablet. What we have is more like a continuum:
- phones tend to have small touch screens with no keyboard (but some phones are practically big enough to be verging on "small tablet" size, some phones have keyboards and trackballs, pretty much any android phone can have a bluetooth/usb mouse and keyboard attached to it). Many phones can also be plugged into external monitors.
- tablets tend to be a bit bigger than phones (but there isn't a lot of difference between a small tablet and a large phone). They have touch screens, but again, you can connect keyboards and mice to them, plug them into external screens, etc.
- laptops are often, again, a bit bigger than tablets. But again, there's a cross over here - a small laptop may have the same screen size as a large tablet. They have keyboards and trackpads and you can connect external keyboards, mice, screens to them. But many laptops also have touch screens - what's the difference between a touch screen laptop and a tablet with a keyboard and mouse?
- desktops are usually treated the same as laptops. Again, often bigger screens (but not always), they have keyboards and mice but nothing stopping you having a touch screen.
So where do you draw the line - at what point do you say "we're now on a tablet" and switch to the tablet interface? What's the justification for switching the *entire* UI to a tablet interface? Is it down to the input devices available? If I unplug the keyboard and mouse then am I suddenly incapable of using multple windows at once? Similarly, if I connect a keyboard and mouse to a tablet, do I suddenly expect to lose all the touch screen controls?
As for screen sizes - certainly as the screen gets smaller I'm more likely to want applications full-screen; and conversely for large screens I'm more likely to want applications in windows. But this isn't necessarilly the case for all applications. For example, even on a tablet, I may want an instant messaging conversation to be displayed at the same time as surfing the web, so enforcing full-screen-everything seems like the wrong approach.
And how much is because the gift-giving season is in a part of the year when temperatures are too cold for vigorous outdoor recreation throughout much of the developed world?
I tend to find the cold makes me want my outdoor recreation to be vigorous:)
Can you find me an activity in the real world that isn't like that, which is actually fun for adults? Just running around and pretending to shoot each other with sticks, climbing trees, etc. is not fun for adults.
I mountaineer, rock climb and windsurf. Yes, there are setup costs for all of these (probably less than a lot of gamers spend on consoles and games over the years), and yes they require suitable weather. However, my activities actually fit together reasonably well in different weathers - when its sunny and warm I go rock climbing or mountaineering, when its snowing I go ice climbing, mountaineering or skiing, if its a howling gale I go windsurfing (don't care whether or not its raining)...
Ok, I'll admit there is a small amount of looking at a screen to get the weather forecast, or to organise meets with other people, but largely the "screen time" is pretty minimal.
Realistically what is their alternative? Movies are, according to many Slashdot posts, all shit as well. Music is all shit. TV is runny diarrhoeal shit.
I dunno, go outside and have fun in the real world for a change? You know, like people did before video games, TV and movies existed?
Even on older cars the default state of the clutch is engaged. Most cars have a hydrolic clutch which can fail due to a burst hose or failed seal, etc. Other cars have a manual clutch which is basically just a cable that can fail from fatigue (the clutch cable breaks). In either of these cases if the clutch fails it is left *engaged* which means that you cannot release it.
Failures can happen in all systems, but the question is: what are the chances of them happenning at the same time. In a traditional manual car, I can slow it down / bring it to a halt by: 1. taking my foot off the accellerator. 2. using the brakes. 3. turning off the ignition. 4. putting the car in neutral. (This doesn't require a working clutch). 5. disengaging the clutch. 6. drop a few gears (requires the clutch).
Compare to a modern keyless drive-by-wire automatic: 1. accellerator is actually just a digital input to the engine management computer and is handled by software. 2. brakes probably still work (I don't *think* anyone is making this drive-by-wire yet, although there is scope for the ABS computer to screw things up). 3. on/off button is just an input to the engine management computer and is handled by software. 4. transmission controls are just an input to the engine management computer and is handled by software. Addidionally, a fully functional engine management computer often won't let you select neutral at highway speeds anyway. 5. there is no clutch 6. transmission controls are just an input to the engine management computer and is handled by software. Addidionally, a fully functional engine management computer often won't let you select a lower gear if it would overrev the engine.
Also, car manufacturers have started to push the idea of electronic steering (Nissan springs to mind. Although they have a mechanical linkage "for emergencies" I rather get the impression that they want to get rid of that entirely before too long).
As you can see, with older cars there are at least 5 non-interdependent ways of slowing down if anything goes wrong. On a very modern car you're very dependent on the computer, and if thats malfunctioning that could wipe out most of your options in one stroke.
To the best of my knowledge, your ignition switch goes to a relay that physically disconnects power to the high-voltage ignition system.
What if your car doesn't have high voltage ignition (i.e. its a diesel)?
What if your car has keyless ignition (i.e. the "start/stop" control is a push button which is tied to the engine management computer (which is conveniently ignoring your request to stop)?
I'm fairly sure if turning the ignition off was an option they would've done it, given that they were asking advice from the manufacturer's technician...
but if the car computer ignores the "turn off car" button press while you're driving at speed, there's no way to force the car to turn off.
Open fuse box, pull all the fuses.
However, some cars don't put the fusebox anywhere reachable by the driver (i.e. either in the passenger side or in the engine compartment), and the driver was disabled so who knows if he was capable of doing that kind of thing while driving anyway.
Why not let drug users let their kids use drugs.... etc
Because it's not the parents (voters) being harmed (mentally in this case). It's the children...
That assumes that the government knows what's best for the child. It may be true in some cases, but this is supposed to be the parent's responsibility and I would be greatly opposed to the government interfering where it isn't clear cut.
I strongly believe there is no god. I also believe that the evidence for evolution is a very strong argument for the non-existence of god, and that is why I think so many believers have a problem with it.
I'm agnostic, so I have no particular idea about whether or not there is a god. However, as I see it, evolution is only a threat to believers if they want to believe a completely literal interpretation of the bible. From just a "god created the world" standpoint (with no restriction on how (s)he did it), then why isn't "god created the world by setting all the appropriate universal constants to values that would result in the world evolving how (s)he wants it to be and then kicked off the big bang" a reasonable explanation?
This is one of the reasons why I'm agnostic - I don't believe that there can ever be evidence pointing to the existence or nonexistence of a god (unless maybe that god places evidence for their existence in our hands, which up till now doesn't fit with their observed MO) because even with a full understanding of how the universe works, nothing would disprove the idea that it could have all been kicked off by an intelligent creator billions of years ago.
I think the problem isn't that evolution provides any evidence for the non-existence of a god (IMHO it doesn't do that at all); the problem is that it discredits the established religious texts by showing that all the incidental fluff they claim is wrong.
don't do bad because your holy book tells you it's OK.
The sort of atrocities you're thinking of tend to be banned in the religious texts. However, texts have to be interpretted and that gives scope for religious leaders to redefine things to meet their ends. For example, if your religious text says "don't kill people" (most texts have this somewhere, its basically a universal no-no) then the religious leaders redefine "people" (well, anyone with a different religion isn't really a person are they?), or redefine "kill" (we're not killing someone - we're setting them free from $other_religion). On the whole, if religious people better understood their own religion instead of just taking their leaders' interpretation of it at face value, we'd probably see less atrocities. But people are always going to intentionally reinterpret texts to give them an excuse or an "out" for something they want to do anyway.
"get_iplayer, does the recording, indexing and searching of the iPlayer TV/Radio programmes and podcasts available. It can even stream the iPlayer TV programmes while recording them to mplayer, vlc or xine, etc. It does not circumvent any digital rights management security (see the BBC’s website on how to do that with the Windows-only DRM content they provide)."
Not entirely true. iPlayer uses SWF verification. It's a pretty worthless DRM mechanism, but its there.
"However, the BBC is unlikely to be able to use any such mechanism unless we feel that it is sufficiently secure that there would be the possibility of legal action in the event of bypassing it."
Not sure why you would defend the BBC, but that is pretty much the definition of a sanction. In fact it states quite clearly that the BBC is less interested in about how good the DRM is [they expect it to be broken], but whether anti-circumvention provisions is protected by law e.g. DMCA. It is just focused on stopping the people forced to pay for service in the UK having unrestricted access to the content they paid for.
The BBC has a rather bonkers idea about DRM anyway. For example, HD Freesat receivers are required to implemtn DRM on their output (i.e. HDCP on the HD output, no analogue HD output, etc.), even though the DVB-S signal they are receiving is transmitted in the clear anyway. All it does is inconvenience legitimate consumers - anyone planning on copyright infringement is going to find it more trivial to record the raw DVB-S stream rather than an HDMI stream anyway.
Similarly, iPlayer's DRM is so weak as to be completely useless, and yet they still use it and therefore insist on using the terrible Flash player instead of making the video streams available in a standard format that would work on all platforms. (The flash player is so bad that I invariably just use get_iplayer and then play it with mplayer).
After bricking three successive broadband routers using firmware upgrades recommended by their respective manufacturers, my position on firmware upgrades is simple: NEVER do them, unless you have nothing to lose (i.e. if your device is working so badly that you would need to replace it anyway).
Isn't "the device working so badly that you need to replace it" pretty much the standard situation for broadband routers, whether or not you have the latest firmware?
Would you expect them to replace something that's out of warranty? Read their warranty terms, it probably says that once the warranty ends, under all circumstances so does their obligation to you. That's why manufacturers sell extended warranties/maintenance plans.
You have a device which is no longer under warranty. You call the vendor because you have a problem. The vendor has a few options: 1. Tell you to get lost, since the item is no longer under warranty. 2. Allow you to pay for support (which may be a technician making a site visit to fix it, return to vendor for a fix, or instructions on how to fix it yourself). 3. Offer free support (again, site visit, return or instructions).
They are certainly under no obligation to do anything beyond (1), but it may be beneficial for them (i.e. if they do (3) you may be more inclined to buy your next hardware from them since they offered good service even when they didn't have to).
If they do (2) or (3) and the "fix" is potentially risky then again they have a choice: 1. Tell you about the risks and that if it breaks they won't accept liability. 2. Accept liability for anything that breaks.
Again, they are under no obligation to accept liability, but they should damned well tell you this before applying the fix. "Wups sorry" doesn't cut it if you haven't already informed the customer that they may potentially be screwed if they go ahead.
Why on earth are you repurposing ~7-10 year old server hardware?
Failure rates exhibit a bath-tub curve. I have yet to be convinced that hardware that has been running with no issues at all for 7 years is more likely to exhibit sudden death than brand new hardware. And yet I keep meeting people who insist on replacing anything over 3 years old with new kit that flakes out within a few weeks.
Slashdot Mirror
they used to need licenses to listen to radio as well. not certain if that still applies or got folded into the television license.
The radio licence was abolished 40 years ago.
These days, the BBC (and certain content on commercial channels) is funded entirely by the TV licence. This is going to have to change at some point though since more and more people (myself included) are getting their TV entirely from iPlayer, which doesn't require a licence. It seems a bit unfair for only the broadcast TV watchers to subsidise all of these services (TV, radio, iPlayer, the BBC website, lots of content on non-BBC TV and radio channels, etc.). At some point I hope it simply becomes a tax for all households, possibly collected as part of council tax, since that would seem much fairer and would mean we'd be rid of the abusive dicks at the TV licensing authority (aka. C(r)apita).
A licence to watch TV? Seriously?
Yes, you pay a relatively small fee to watch broadcast TV, and it funds high quality advert-free TV, advert free radio, vast amounts of advert-free web content...
OK, everyone knows space is big but doesn't this seem a bit cavalier, leaving old space junk in orbit?
It's orbit around the sun so there's lots more 'space' for junk to accumulate than say LEO but still. Seems like we're making the same short-sighted decisions over and over.
Can any of the rocket surgeons here comment on what it would take to de-orbit such a device?
'Set the controls for the heart of the sun.' -- Pink Floyd
Where are you going to deorbit it _to_? Bringing it back to earth is as big a job as sending it out there, deorbiting it into the sun is even harder. Even geostationary satellites don't get deorbitted when they reach the end of their life - they are boosted into a higher orbit to get them out of the way.
So use a different SIP client on your phone... all this is standardised...
The biggest clue that it isn't holding Intel back is that if it did, they could offer a "native" micro-op programming mode as well for beyond-assembler optimization. A lot of people seem to think that Intel would intentionally drive around 30 years with the hand brake on, it just doesn't make any kind of sense.
Well, you can upload new microcode to intel CPUs, so chances are you could write magic new instructions that execute exactly the microcode you want. But it would take extensive knowledge of the CPU internals (probably the sort of knowledge that doesn't exist outside of intel), and would truely kill any idea of cross platform compatability.
Again its about not enabling someone to get your password in the first place. Rotation absolutely helps with that in the even a master password database is stolen.
Of course, but as with all security, this is about balancing the odds - what are the chances of the master password DB being stolen, cracked and the password(s) used, vs. the chances of one of your users being pushed into having a weak password through having to change it regularly?
You will usually know right away if its gone missing and change your password immediately or phone the helpdesk to have your account locked if this happens.
More likely they will be more concerned about their money and credit cards having been stolen and will completely forget that they had a password in there...
Straight into the recycle bin if you don't want it. When the landfill operators note that they have truckload after truckload of them, someone will make the phone company change the way they do things.
I've often thought that junk mailers should be taxed to pay for the cost of disposing of their junk mail. Currently (in the UK) the council tax payer foots the bill.
The security guys that argue passwords should not expire are crappy security guys.
It depends what the password is protecting. If someone gets your password, the chances are they are going to use it immediately. A timed expiry of passwords can prevent repeat-uses of it, but if the attacker already had chance to install malware when the account was originally compromised, they probably don't even need the password the second time around. Additionally, if a repeat attack isn't going to get the attacker anything extra over the original attempt, its probably not worth worrying about.
Conversely, regularly expiring peoples passwords almost always leads to them changing "mypassword1" to "mypassword2" and then to "mypassword3" which arguably doesn't actually do a lot to improve security. Additionally, if people are having to change password frequently and they don't do the above, they are probably using fairly weak passwords in order to remember them and/or keeping a post-it note on their monitor with the password written on it.
There is a lot to be said for encouraging people to have a very secure password that is never shared with other services and rarely changes (so they can memorise it, even if its strong).
At the end of the day, different policies lend themselves to different situations. Blindly forcing everyone to change their password every month is probably very counterproductive - the chances of someone compromising a strong password that isn't shared between services is very low, whereas the temptation to use a weak, shared password with a deterministic monthly change is extremely high.
Certificate expiration is important as well.
Certificate expiration can't be considered anything like the situation with password expiration. Certificates are machine-readable, they can be made as secure as you like and you don't have to remember them. Other than being a mild pain in the arse, renewing expired certificates shouldn't be a big problem and there is no incentive to make them weak as a result.
Hmm, I think current smartphones are far too big.
Well, I thought my HTC Dream was about the right size. My current Samsung Captivate Glide is bigger, but still ok (although despite the extra size, the keyboard is nowhere near as nice as the Dream's). I don't think I'd want anything bigger than the Glide though... But this is all personal preference and comes down to what you want out of your phone. The question "are phones getting too big" can simply be answered with "do people buy them?" - if the answer is yes then clearly they fit some peoples' criteria. Isn't the whole point of having lots of different handsets to provide people with a wide choice that allows them to pick the one that best does what they want? There's no point in everyone making identical handsets - there would be nothing to choose between them; instead, so long as there are a wide variety of sizes, styles, etc then everyone's happy, right? (Well, everyone except the iphone fanboys who seem to think that not having to choose and just sucking up whatever Apple puts in front of you is a better option).
I don't really care about phones being 7.5mm thin, I don't mind having a few millimeters extra if that means I actually have a battery worth its salt
I do wonder what goes through the heads of the marketing people who make a big noise about how their new tablet is "the thinnest ever" because its 0.3mm thinner than the competition (I'm looking at you Sony) - seriously, you'd struggle to notice the difference if you had the tablets side by side, let alone if you were actually using it...
The servers drive should be encrypted. The entire database should be encrypted.
Its not so simple. A server requires the drive to be mounted (and therefore decryptable) in order to function. So from the time the server is powered up until the time it is powered down, the file system is vulnerable - for a server that is powered on all the time, this means the window of opportunity for an attacker is huge. It stops a burglar from getting at the data after they unplug the machine and walk off with it, but if your server is in a secure datacentre then this isn't such a big worry - the concern is the server being compromised *while its running* (and as mentioned, servers tend to be running all the time). This could happen either by a remote attack, or by someone physically accessing the machine. So really, for an always-on server there often isn't a lot of point in encrypting it. Add to this that, unless you want to store the encryption key on the server itself (which rather defeats the point), you need to manually load it every time the server boots, which isn't great for failure resilliance.
And especially for I/O heavy servers (frequently the case with big DB servers), encryption is *not* free - it can have a significant performance hit.
There are places where filesystem encyption on servers makes sense - this is where the encrypted filesystems are only mounted for brief periods of time. For example, a server that is performing remote backups of another server can retrieve the key from the machine its backing up, mount the FS, do the backup, unmount the FS and wipe the local copy of the key. The window of opportunity for an attacker is relatively short there (the duration of the backup); although obviously if an attacker can load persistent malware on the machine they can have it capture the key when the backup next starts.
Well, it just follows the pattern. Burglars don't burgle, they burglarize. Murderers don't murder, they murderize. Etc.
The person who commits an act of burglarization is a burglarizer?
Now I finally see what Shuttleworth's been meaning when he says the same applications run on all form factors - as a developer, you separate the logic from the UI, and write three UIs: one for phone, one for tablet, and one for desktop. Until now I thought "nice in concept, but what's the point?". But if your device itself suddenly switches from a phone or tablet to a desktop, then your app can keep running and switch UIs on the fly.
What I really find neat is how tablet apps can become phone apps when docked on the side, for multitasking. This finally looks like a tablet that's not purely for consuming content.
The thing is, I'm not convinced you actually want to have a separate UI... The Microsoft strategy of shoving a phone/tablet UI on a desktop or a desktop UI on a phone/tablet is clearly moronic, but I think there is some middle-ground where you can design a UI that works well for all the hardware.
For one thing, there doesn't seem to be a clear distinction between phone/tablet/laptop/desktop - if we look at the hardware, all of these devices have varying screen sizes and they can all have varying combinations of input technologies - my phone has a keyboard, some laptops have touch screens, you can connect a keyboard and mouse to a tablet. What we have is more like a continuum:
- phones tend to have small touch screens with no keyboard (but some phones are practically big enough to be verging on "small tablet" size, some phones have keyboards and trackballs, pretty much any android phone can have a bluetooth/usb mouse and keyboard attached to it). Many phones can also be plugged into external monitors.
- tablets tend to be a bit bigger than phones (but there isn't a lot of difference between a small tablet and a large phone). They have touch screens, but again, you can connect keyboards and mice to them, plug them into external screens, etc.
- laptops are often, again, a bit bigger than tablets. But again, there's a cross over here - a small laptop may have the same screen size as a large tablet. They have keyboards and trackpads and you can connect external keyboards, mice, screens to them. But many laptops also have touch screens - what's the difference between a touch screen laptop and a tablet with a keyboard and mouse?
- desktops are usually treated the same as laptops. Again, often bigger screens (but not always), they have keyboards and mice but nothing stopping you having a touch screen.
So where do you draw the line - at what point do you say "we're now on a tablet" and switch to the tablet interface? What's the justification for switching the *entire* UI to a tablet interface? Is it down to the input devices available? If I unplug the keyboard and mouse then am I suddenly incapable of using multple windows at once? Similarly, if I connect a keyboard and mouse to a tablet, do I suddenly expect to lose all the touch screen controls?
As for screen sizes - certainly as the screen gets smaller I'm more likely to want applications full-screen; and conversely for large screens I'm more likely to want applications in windows. But this isn't necessarilly the case for all applications. For example, even on a tablet, I may want an instant messaging conversation to be displayed at the same time as surfing the web, so enforcing full-screen-everything seems like the wrong approach.
And how much is because the gift-giving season is in a part of the year when temperatures are too cold for vigorous outdoor recreation throughout much of the developed world?
I tend to find the cold makes me want my outdoor recreation to be vigorous :)
Can you find me an activity in the real world that isn't like that, which is actually fun for adults? Just running around and pretending to shoot each other with sticks, climbing trees, etc. is not fun for adults.
I mountaineer, rock climb and windsurf. Yes, there are setup costs for all of these (probably less than a lot of gamers spend on consoles and games over the years), and yes they require suitable weather. However, my activities actually fit together reasonably well in different weathers - when its sunny and warm I go rock climbing or mountaineering, when its snowing I go ice climbing, mountaineering or skiing, if its a howling gale I go windsurfing (don't care whether or not its raining)...
Ok, I'll admit there is a small amount of looking at a screen to get the weather forecast, or to organise meets with other people, but largely the "screen time" is pretty minimal.
Realistically what is their alternative? Movies are, according to many Slashdot posts, all shit as well. Music is all shit. TV is runny diarrhoeal shit.
I dunno, go outside and have fun in the real world for a change? You know, like people did before video games, TV and movies existed?
Even on older cars the default state of the clutch is engaged. Most cars have a hydrolic clutch which can fail due to a burst hose or failed seal, etc. Other cars have a manual clutch which is basically just a cable that can fail from fatigue (the clutch cable breaks). In either of these cases if the clutch fails it is left *engaged* which means that you cannot release it.
Failures can happen in all systems, but the question is: what are the chances of them happenning at the same time. In a traditional manual car, I can slow it down / bring it to a halt by:
1. taking my foot off the accellerator.
2. using the brakes.
3. turning off the ignition.
4. putting the car in neutral. (This doesn't require a working clutch).
5. disengaging the clutch.
6. drop a few gears (requires the clutch).
Compare to a modern keyless drive-by-wire automatic:
1. accellerator is actually just a digital input to the engine management computer and is handled by software.
2. brakes probably still work (I don't *think* anyone is making this drive-by-wire yet, although there is scope for the ABS computer to screw things up).
3. on/off button is just an input to the engine management computer and is handled by software.
4. transmission controls are just an input to the engine management computer and is handled by software. Addidionally, a fully functional engine management computer often won't let you select neutral at highway speeds anyway.
5. there is no clutch
6. transmission controls are just an input to the engine management computer and is handled by software. Addidionally, a fully functional engine management computer often won't let you select a lower gear if it would overrev the engine.
Also, car manufacturers have started to push the idea of electronic steering (Nissan springs to mind. Although they have a mechanical linkage "for emergencies" I rather get the impression that they want to get rid of that entirely before too long).
As you can see, with older cars there are at least 5 non-interdependent ways of slowing down if anything goes wrong. On a very modern car you're very dependent on the computer, and if thats malfunctioning that could wipe out most of your options in one stroke.
To the best of my knowledge, your ignition switch goes to a relay that physically disconnects power to the high-voltage ignition system.
What if your car doesn't have high voltage ignition (i.e. its a diesel)?
What if your car has keyless ignition (i.e. the "start/stop" control is a push button which is tied to the engine management computer (which is conveniently ignoring your request to stop)?
I'm fairly sure if turning the ignition off was an option they would've done it, given that they were asking advice from the manufacturer's technician...
but if the car computer ignores the "turn off car" button press while you're driving at speed, there's no way to force the car to turn off.
Open fuse box, pull all the fuses.
However, some cars don't put the fusebox anywhere reachable by the driver (i.e. either in the passenger side or in the engine compartment), and the driver was disabled so who knows if he was capable of doing that kind of thing while driving anyway.
Why not let drug users let their kids use drugs.... etc
Because it's not the parents (voters) being harmed (mentally in this case). It's the children...
That assumes that the government knows what's best for the child. It may be true in some cases, but this is supposed to be the parent's responsibility and I would be greatly opposed to the government interfering where it isn't clear cut.
I strongly believe there is no god. I also believe that the evidence for evolution is a very strong argument for the non-existence of god, and that is why I think so many believers have a problem with it.
I'm agnostic, so I have no particular idea about whether or not there is a god. However, as I see it, evolution is only a threat to believers if they want to believe a completely literal interpretation of the bible. From just a "god created the world" standpoint (with no restriction on how (s)he did it), then why isn't "god created the world by setting all the appropriate universal constants to values that would result in the world evolving how (s)he wants it to be and then kicked off the big bang" a reasonable explanation?
This is one of the reasons why I'm agnostic - I don't believe that there can ever be evidence pointing to the existence or nonexistence of a god (unless maybe that god places evidence for their existence in our hands, which up till now doesn't fit with their observed MO) because even with a full understanding of how the universe works, nothing would disprove the idea that it could have all been kicked off by an intelligent creator billions of years ago.
I think the problem isn't that evolution provides any evidence for the non-existence of a god (IMHO it doesn't do that at all); the problem is that it discredits the established religious texts by showing that all the incidental fluff they claim is wrong.
don't do bad because your holy book tells you it's OK.
The sort of atrocities you're thinking of tend to be banned in the religious texts. However, texts have to be interpretted and that gives scope for religious leaders to redefine things to meet their ends. For example, if your religious text says "don't kill people" (most texts have this somewhere, its basically a universal no-no) then the religious leaders redefine "people" (well, anyone with a different religion isn't really a person are they?), or redefine "kill" (we're not killing someone - we're setting them free from $other_religion). On the whole, if religious people better understood their own religion instead of just taking their leaders' interpretation of it at face value, we'd probably see less atrocities. But people are always going to intentionally reinterpret texts to give them an excuse or an "out" for something they want to do anyway.
BTW, get_iplayer does not bypass DRM since the BBC do not use any.
http://linuxcentre.net/getiplayer
From the link above:
"get_iplayer, does the recording, indexing and searching of the iPlayer TV/Radio programmes and podcasts available. It can even stream the iPlayer TV programmes while recording them to mplayer, vlc or xine, etc. It does not circumvent any digital rights management security (see the BBC’s website on how to do that with the Windows-only DRM content they provide)."
Not entirely true. iPlayer uses SWF verification. It's a pretty worthless DRM mechanism, but its there.
"However, the BBC is unlikely to be able to use any such mechanism unless we feel that it is sufficiently secure that there would be the possibility of legal action in the event of bypassing it."
Not sure why you would defend the BBC, but that is pretty much the definition of a sanction. In fact it states quite clearly that the BBC is less interested in about how good the DRM is [they expect it to be broken], but whether anti-circumvention provisions is protected by law e.g. DMCA. It is just focused on stopping the people forced to pay for service in the UK having unrestricted access to the content they paid for.
The BBC has a rather bonkers idea about DRM anyway. For example, HD Freesat receivers are required to implemtn DRM on their output (i.e. HDCP on the HD output, no analogue HD output, etc.), even though the DVB-S signal they are receiving is transmitted in the clear anyway. All it does is inconvenience legitimate consumers - anyone planning on copyright infringement is going to find it more trivial to record the raw DVB-S stream rather than an HDMI stream anyway.
Similarly, iPlayer's DRM is so weak as to be completely useless, and yet they still use it and therefore insist on using the terrible Flash player instead of making the video streams available in a standard format that would work on all platforms. (The flash player is so bad that I invariably just use get_iplayer and then play it with mplayer).
After bricking three successive broadband routers using firmware upgrades recommended by their respective manufacturers, my position on firmware upgrades is simple: NEVER do them, unless you have nothing to lose (i.e. if your device is working so badly that you would need to replace it anyway).
Isn't "the device working so badly that you need to replace it" pretty much the standard situation for broadband routers, whether or not you have the latest firmware?
Would you expect them to replace something that's out of warranty? Read their warranty terms, it probably says that once the warranty ends, under all circumstances so does their obligation to you. That's why manufacturers sell extended warranties/maintenance plans.
You have a device which is no longer under warranty. You call the vendor because you have a problem. The vendor has a few options:
1. Tell you to get lost, since the item is no longer under warranty.
2. Allow you to pay for support (which may be a technician making a site visit to fix it, return to vendor for a fix, or instructions on how to fix it yourself).
3. Offer free support (again, site visit, return or instructions).
They are certainly under no obligation to do anything beyond (1), but it may be beneficial for them (i.e. if they do (3) you may be more inclined to buy your next hardware from them since they offered good service even when they didn't have to).
If they do (2) or (3) and the "fix" is potentially risky then again they have a choice:
1. Tell you about the risks and that if it breaks they won't accept liability.
2. Accept liability for anything that breaks.
Again, they are under no obligation to accept liability, but they should damned well tell you this before applying the fix. "Wups sorry" doesn't cut it if you haven't already informed the customer that they may potentially be screwed if they go ahead.
Why on earth are you repurposing ~7-10 year old server hardware?
Failure rates exhibit a bath-tub curve. I have yet to be convinced that hardware that has been running with no issues at all for 7 years is more likely to exhibit sudden death than brand new hardware. And yet I keep meeting people who insist on replacing anything over 3 years old with new kit that flakes out within a few weeks.