Of just terminate your satellite runs at your cabinet for easy access to your Mythbackend. The frontends can all then just stream straight over ethernet.
Well since we're all moving to tablet and they don't need RJ45s, why put them in?
Because we're not all moving to tablet. Whilst I can see a use for a table for very restricted situations, it would be far too limiting to replace my laptop with a tablet and having both just seems daft, so no, I'm sticking with my laptop as the portable device (and I still have a desktop workstation in my office, lots of screen space is good).
Because whilst wifi is ok most of the time, occasionally you need the bandwidth of cable. For example, I can watch SDTV in my bedroom on a laptop, streamed over wifi, but HDTV is flakey at best (BBC HD is about 20Mbps, which is close to the bandwidth limit of 802.11g. Add a bit of interference and you're screwed). This only gets worse as the population density of 2.4GHz equipment increases.
my next home server will be some micro box that I'll put next to the socket the broadband comes in on.
That's not FUTURE proofing, that's what I'm doing NOW. So tomorrow I expect things to only get smaller and better.
My home datacabinet contains: - Patch panel for terminating the satellite TV coax - Patch panel for terminating Cat6 structured cabling - Gigabit switch (which amazingly doesn't seem to overheat despite me getting pissed off with the noise and disconnecting the fans years ago:) - Test server (rarely gets turned on, but needed for my job occasionally) - Sheevaplug server (essentially my "main server" - handles file serving, firewalling, VoIP, runs Mythbackend, etc.) - External hard drive (used by the Sheevaplug) - DSL modem - FXO/FXS gateway - DVB-S2 receiver - 802.11g access point (actually attached to the outside of the cabinet to avoid being in a faraday cage) - Wallwarts and various cabling oddities such as a microfilter for the DSL
Whilst a lot of this stuff is "small" (e.g. the shevaplug, hard drive, DSL modem, FXO/FXS gateway, access point and DVB-S2 receiver could all be screwed to a wall somewhere), they all have assoaciated wall-warts (annoyingly mostly running at different voltages - everything that accepts a 12v input is already running off a single PSU but there are oddities like 5v and 9v inputs) and generally the mess of boxes and wires is enough for me to be happier just locking it all away in one small wall-mounted cabinet above head height.
I am using WLAN in the place I live. The same one that many other residents use. It is password protected, but once you login, everyone is still broadcasting their data to me also. Is it ok for me to sniff that data too?
Yes, why not? If you are sending data in the clear to untrusted networks you're a complete idiot. Presumably that wifi is either a LAN where all the clients are trusted (so everyone trusts you not to do bad things with their data), or it is an internet connection, which is inherently an insecure network so anything passing over it is liable to be intercepted (often legally required to be intercepted and logged by third parties in some jurisdictions).
In the same way, would it be ok for me to plug-in to your internet connection outside your house and sniff that data too?
Yes and no. The internet is an insecure public network, so I have no real expectation for privacy. *However*, in the case of my hard-wired internet connection, I am not blasting data out into the public environment, so by tapping into it you are either tresspassing on my property (to connect to my network) or you are tresspassing on the telco's property (their copper cables), both of which are crimes.
I mean, it's obviously your fault since you didn't use VPN.
I don't need to use a VPN. Protocols I use that carry sensitive data are encrypted (e.g. ssh, https, imaps, etc). And yes, if I shoved some sensitive data in the clear over an insecure network I would only have myself to blame if someone intercepted it. (Note: if someone captured my credit card details and used them fraudulently then, whilst it would've been my fault that they got the credit card details, they are still breaking the law by using them, so I would expect them to be arrested. If they captured the details and didn't use them for anything illegal then that's just tough for me isn't it?)
And, would it be OK for ISP's and VPN providers to sniff data that goes across them?
Not sure what you mean by "VPN provider" since pretty much all sensible uses of VPN is between trusted networks (so you inherently trust the other party to not do anything bad with your data).
I would have a problem with ISPs profiling my traffic (e.g. Phorm), and I do have a real problem with legislation that forces ISPs to do this (the security services shouldn't be interested in what law abiding citizens are doing). However, as mentioned above, the traffic going through my ISP isn't being blasted out over public space. Importantly: This isn't what Google was doing - they were capturing a few packets from random in-progress connections while driving past. They would've been lucky to get any kind of useful data out of a fraction of a percent of the packets they caught, let alone tie it back to an individual and profile their browsing habits.
I think this is scary and completely unacceptable.
Why is it "completely unacceptable" to capture data that is being broadcast in the clear over public radio spectrum in a public space? If someone wants to protect their data, their router has the tools to do this, just as if you don't want people to see you standing in your house nude you close the damned curtains.
No, I'm not defending Google, I'm defending *everyone's* right to not be penalised for something that shouldn't be considered "unacceptable".
Indeed. Part of the problem with a too exact / descriptive patent is that someone will research said patent, replace one minor piece, and be able to produce widgets that do not violate said patent.
No, a court would rule that a very minor change does not avoid patent violation.
The whole point of patents was to give inventors an incentive to open up their inventions so that the public could benefit from the work after a predetermined period. This is not what happens with current patents - currently the "inventors" (rather: the employer of the inventor) publishes some vague patent, then the next 20 years is spent suing people who come up with anything even close, then at the end of that 20 years the public is left with an "open" description so vague that they couldn't implement it anyway.
If the public isn't going to get anything out of a patent in the long run, why on earth should the government (who is supposed to act in the public's interest) be granting them?
Think of it this way: if you're a book author, and you put out a work that someone else changes a few words to, then claims copyright to, how pissed would you be?
Patents are not copyright. However, your argument doesn't even work for copyright - the modified copy would be considered a "derived work", and whilst the modifier could claim copyright on the changes, the whole work would still also be under the original author's copyright so would not be distributable without the original author's permission.
That's how many patent holders feel when someone does the above. If I spend 300+ hours working out a new, awesome tennis racket that doesn't induce tennis elbow, I'd be pissed if a lawyer took the words of my patent, found some inconsequential component ("cross-stitching"), changed it to something equally inconsequential ("horizontal-stitching"), and started making tennis rackets based 99% off my design.
You'd be pissed, and the court wouldn't allow it since it is a minor change so you'd be fine. However, as it stands, you spend 300+ hours developing a new tennis racket, spend vast amounds of money bringing it to market and then someone with a vague patent will put you out of business even though they're not even making tennis rackets (or if they are, their tennis rackets are nothing like your invention, its just that the vague description in their patent happens to match a vague description of your racket, regardless of the specifics).
To patent it, you must publish it. A magician does not reveal his secrets.
Modern patents don't tend to publish much in the way of specific information on how something works, they're pretty vague (which is why a patent holder can sue anyone with something that looks even vaguely similar). Actually fully implementing something described in a modern technology patent using just the published information is pretty much impossible these days.
Oh, I should add that VxWorks is such a "carrier grade OS" that doesn't crash. My Wifi SIP phone runs VxWorks (UTStarcom F1000G) and it is the most unstable piece of crap you'll find. That's not because VxWorks is unstable, its because all the software that UTStarcom wrote was written by idiots (unfortunately, idiots who ignore their customers when multiple customers ask for support on the same bug).
I remember phones that didn't crash -at all-. True, they were noisy and fixed into the wall, but replacing one defect with another has never appealed to me.
Your mistake is thinking of a smartphone as a phone, rather than a palmtop computer that just happens to have phone functionality buried in it alongside everything else. Calling them a "phone" is just a moronic (but rather successful) marketing decision.
I hate dumb cell phones because they drop connections (proper error-correction would eliminate that entirely, would fit onto the chips perfectly well, and would add practically no cost to the devices)
Do they? My old Nokia 5130 only ever dropped calls when I went out of coverage (e.g. into a tunnel). My Nokia 7110's firmware was buggy as hell, but I don't recall it ever dropping calls.
have limited memory (you can get a flash with as many gigabytes as a dumb phone's memory has K)
Wait.. why does a dumb phone need memory? The thing attached to the wall with a rotary dial didn't have any memory, why do you need memory on a dumb phone? Or are you, maybe, confusing "dumb" with "fairly smart but not quite functional enough to be considered a smartphone"?
and have way too many signal shadows (at least some of which would be eliminated with better error-correction as it's not simply line-of-site that matters in such things).
What do signal shadows have to do with the phone? This is a function of the network, not the phone.
I hate "smart phones" that crash - there are plenty of Carrier-Grade OS' out there, at least some can fit on phones, and there's no excuse for instability on an OS that's five nines rated.
Modern smart phones generally don't crash in the "the kernel has blown up" way. Crashes tend to be down to broken userspace applications, not the OS itself.
This is a bug, not a feature. Unless the phones are simply defective, I don't want some salesman at a shop deciding for me what phones I can and cannot buy.
Back when I wanted a new phone a few years ago, I went into the local Carphone Warehouse and asked if I could look at the HTC Dream. I explained that I wanted an Android phone with a physical keyboard. The sales man told me that the HTC Dream was rubbish because it wasn't very "iphone-like" and got out an array or other phones (none of them an iphone, many of them running Symbian, none of them with a physical keyboard) and explained to me that I should choose one of those because they are much more like the iPhone. I walked out after explaining that if I wanted an iPhone I would have damned well bought an iPhone and that I didn't much appreciate him wasting my time by showing me devices that in no way met any of the criteria I had expressed as requirements. I then went and bought a HTC Dream off ebay and have been pretty happy with it (although it is started to get to the end of its life now since it can't run the latest Android any more and the wifi has died).
I still think it's hilarious that Microsoft probably would have sewn up the tablet market if
MS have a pretty good history of completely misjudging new technologies. For a long time they considered the internet to be a fad and refused to invest anything in it (hence Trumpet Winsock instead of an official IP stack, no MS web browser until quite late on, etc). Luckilly for them, they have usually had the resources to catch up enough once they realise they've screwed up (often by buying up the companies who had become successful through MS's lack of foresight).
the Office division actually reworked the Office UI for tablets instead of refusing to change anything [the tablet OS guys actually had to code all kinds of hacks to get the on-screen keyboard to hide/show properly with Office, particularly Excel.
I think you're wrong. If you're using a word processor, spreadsheet, etc. in any serious way on a tablet then you're insane. Tablets lend themselves to surfing the web, browsing photos, watching video, etc. and 10 years ago these things were largely not mainstream, so very few people would've spent a reasonably large chunk of cash on a tablet to do them.
The alt + power off thing is a bit annoying though I suppose you could see it from the perspective that modern machines can save / resume state these days so a full power off is not what most users probably want given it takes longer to restart.
I don't really see a problem with hiding it (although I don't actually think there is any point in doing this) so long as there are visual cues to tell you that there's something hidden and how to reveal it. But in its current form, the only way you'll figure out there's something hidden there is by blindly banging all the keys on the keyboard to see what happens.
And yes, I agree that suspending/hibernating is the norm now, but there are still valid reasons to power off. For example, I usually put my laptop to sleep, but when I know it will be left a long time (days) on battery power then this is silly - the battery will be flat the next time I come to use it. I could hibernate it, but this actually takes longer to save/restore the RAM to disk than just shutting down/booting, so unless I have some work-in-progress open that I want to save the state of, I will usually power off completely in this case.
I'm one of the few people (it seems) with positive things to say about GNOME 3.
Yes, I've heard a lot of negative comments about Gnome 3, but very few of them seem to detail specific things people are finding wrong with it - saying "it's crap" doesn't help anyone improve it unless you can say _why_ you think it's crap.
Personally, I like Gnome 3. On the whole I think they have got it mostly right. There are problems, of course, but you'd expect that. The problems I've found with it are:
1. They have completely removed some useful stuff like the ability to disable the display's power management. There's a nice menu with "Turn monitor off after: 30 minutes, 1 hour, etc." in it, but no "Never" option. I understand decluttering the UI, but this doesn't seem like clutter - this is exactly where I'd expect to find this option, and is no more clutter than the "1 hour" option.
2. The "Power Off" option is hidden until you hold down Alt, yet there is no visual clue that there is a hidden option or that holding down Alt is going to do anything. This seems like a very odd decision - whilst putting a machine to sleep is my usual preference, I frequently do have cause for powering off entirely and it just seems odd to make it hard to find this option. Once you've learnt about it, this isn't a big deal, but it sounds counterproductive for new users and I imagine a lot of less experienced people will simply power off by holding down the power button since there's no obvious other way to do it(!)
3. The launcher buttons violate the principle of least surprise by changing their action depending on whether the application is already running or not. If the application isn't running then they launch a new window. If an application is running they raise *all* of that application's existing windows. I can't think of a situation where I would ever want to raise all 5 terminals I have open at once, but I frequently want to open a new one.
4. Related to (3), clicking Empathy's launcher icon while I have an IM window open just raises that IM window, there's no obvious way of getting the contacts list back (you have to right click the launcher and select "new window" - very counterintuitive since clicking the launcher when there isn't an IM window open gives you the contacts list as you'd expect).
5. The Empathy integration appears to have a bug whereby it sets my status to "unavailable" after I suspend and resume my machine. I have to manually set it to "available" or launch the Empathy contacts list window in order to prompt it to reconnect to my IM accounts.
6. Gnome 3 only supports 3 mouse buttons and a wheel. There is no way to assign my other 2 buttons (which I previously liked to use for "window raise" and "window lower" under Compiz)
Despite all the problems listed above, I still find Gnome 3 to be the best desktop environment I've used, so I'm sticking with it. Gnome 3 also seems to be gearing up for running well on touch-screen tablets *without* crippling the desktop UI in the process, so that's all good.
I found the search feature to be the best thing added to the start menu since it was added to Windows. It actually made the damn thing usable again. I don't even bother navigating the menus now, I just type in the name of whatever I want
However, my biggest gripe isn't actually the start screen, it's the "Charms". Whereas the bottom-left corner opens up the start screen, the right border opens up the charms panel, which has things like wifi strength and such; that much is good. However, in order to do the extremely unusual action of shutting down or hibernating the computer, you have to go into Settings, then Shutdown, all of which AFTER having opened the Charms menu. How's that for intuitive?
Gnome 3 has also tried to hide the shutdown option - in this case, you have to push "Alt" to get it to appear in the menu, a key press that you can only discover by experimenting with pushing all the keys to see what happens (there are no visual cues that the "power off" option is hidden or that you should push alt).
Nevermind, I'm sure in both Windows 8 and Gnome, users will find holding down the physical power button to be a much more convenient way of shutting down.
There seems to be a general trend to hide or remove genuinely useful stuff, even though it doesn't really seem to add any complexity by being there. For example, if you want to disable your monitor's power saving in Gnome 3, you probably expect to go into "System Settings -> Screen". And sure enough, there is a "Turn off after:" option with a drop-down menu of various settings such as "30 minutes", "1 hour", etc. But this menu doesn't have a "never" option - why not? This is the logical place to put it, and it doesn't seem to add any complexity to the UI by having it there. As it turns out, the only way to disable monitor power management is to install a third party add-on, which adds an option to a completely different (not quite as intuitive) part of the UI. (Some background: generally, if my monitor is turned on, I want to see it, whether that be because I'm watching a movie or keeping an eye on something that's running on the machine (a download, a big compile, etc.). When I'm away from my computer, I am in the habit of pushing the physical power buttons on the monitors, so power management doesn't actually save me power but does cause me some annoyance).
The idea is basically that if you want to use something like your browser, email, an IDE, etc., there's no reason to have multiple windows up, since they'll just distract you from what you're doing.
Multiple windows aren't a distraction for me, they are a requirement. My normal working environment is a large terminal window to develop my code in, another terminal for actually running the code, a third terminal is usually open to examine logs related to testing the code. If I'm working on something web-based I'll also have a browser for testing the code. I need documentation open, which is usually in the form of several browser tabs and maybe an email or 2 open in Thunderbird tabs.
These windows are all related to a single project - the only alternative to having them all on screen at once would be to keep switching between them, whcih would be very distracting and counterproductive (I do have to do this when working on small-screen devices such as my 15.4" laptop, and I find it hard work).
Windows 7 and GNOME 3 (and possible others) have quick gestures for putting two windows on half of the screen each, but the idea is that generally you don't need more than that (although it would be nice if they had a way to handle it), and most things can just be left in a random place in the background (IMs, email, whatever you're not doing at this moment).
I use and like Gnome 3. But I place windows manually and wouldn't want it any other way. My browser is left maximised on my secondary (only 15") monitor, but nothing else ever gets maximised. The only time I've used the "half screen" maximisation feature is when comparing 2 network dumps in 2 separate Wireshark instances - it's handy for this, but I use it so rarely that I really wouldn't miss it.
I've come to the conclusion that having a desktop environment that supports a multitude of devices (from tiny-screen phones all the way up to massive-screen desktops, etc) is a Good Thing, but we have to stop forcing the paradigms of one type of device on another. On my phone, I want my browser maximised pretty much all the time because the screen is small, but on a desktop with a 24" screen I almost never want this. But I don't think there is a hard rule about whether to maximise or window applications: small screen sizes will tend to want most things maximised, big screen sizes will tend to want most things windows, but in all cases there are exceptions. In the middle, there are things like 10" tablets where you're often going to want things maximised, but there are considerable numbers of cases where you don't. For example, I often wouldn't want my instant messager maximised on a tablet (but sometimes I would), whilst I would usually want my browser maximised (but sometimes I wouldn't).
Since it seems to be very fuzzy whether to maximise or window things, I'm not sure what the best approach is for picking defaults. On the one hand, it sounds nice to try and heuristically figure out the probability that the user will want a certain application maximised on a certain sized screen, and therefore either maximise it or window it by default depending on what the calculated probabilities suggest (and give the user the ability to override this, possibly feeding back the user's override decision into the heuristic so it learns). However, on the other hand, this seems to violate the principle of least surprise - I usually like my computer to do predictable things in response to my mouse clicks, which such a system inherently prevents.
This, combined with the fact that Britain has 0% VAT on books, means you should order your books from small, British internet stores. Amazon.co.uk is no good, as they will be over the limit for most countries.
I wouldn't count on the 0% tax on books sticking around too long. The UK government is slowly removing the VAT-free status from types of goods.
(Some background for those outside the UK: VAT was originally supposed to be charged only on luxury goods. So most food was VAT exempt, as were things like books (since they have educational value). The things the government considers "non-luxury" are gradually being reduced - for example, heating your home, cooking your food, etc. are considered luxuries these days and the government charges VAT on gas/electricity.)
Sorry, we're running life critical systems here. We can't rely on "taking a look at it".
If you're running "life critical systems", what the hell are you doing running an OS that isn't designed for "life critical systems" in the first place? (Hint: Windows and Linux are *not* designed for life critical systems). As for not being able to rely on "taking a look at it", that's why you need to pay someone to do this stuff - you can't expect either Microsoft or a Linux developer to work for you for free, but at least with an open OS you can employ a third party to maintain it beyond its normal support life, whereas if you start out with a closed system you're always going to be at the mercy of the vendor.
but frankly we need someone to take responsibility and to be held accountable for all aspects of our system.
If you think Microsoft are going to "take responsibility and be accountable" in any serious way, you obviously didn't read the licence agreement. I presume what you actually mean is "I want to be able to blame Microsoft when things go wrong to divert the shitstorm away from me" whilst achieving nothing actually useful. Ain't blame culture brillient?
I'm a pretty technical user and have been using Linux as my primary desktop for over a decade. Lately, even I am having trouble seeing it as a viable alternative to windows.
Is there a reason why you don't see it as a viable alternative to Windows?
I'm genuinely interested - For work use, I've been using Linux exclusively for 12 years, and around 10 years for home use. This has probably left me rather out of touch with what goes on in the Windows world (I've basically not used any Windows newer than 98 in any kind of serious way), but from what I've seen, for techies, Windows still seems to be less capable than modern Linux.
For non-techies, I'm not convinced there's much to choose between Windows and Linux so long as you don't need to use Windows-only software and have hardware that's well supported by Linux. My Fiancée is an OS X user, but seems to have no trouble at all using my Fedora laptop (and from the "so long as you don't need Windows-only software" perspective, OS X has the same problem, but has a pretty big market share so I'm not sure that's as big a factor as people often make out).
A real solution is end to end encryption network-wide, which is what IPv6 was supposed to do
No it isn't. You can set up ad-hoc ipsec with keys hosted in DNS if you like - this is irrespective of whether you're using v4 or v6. The problem here is that it's a bit of effort to set it up and practically no one running a server actually does it (making setting up a client reasonably pointless). And no, this won't magically start happening if you switch to IPv6 - you still need to jump through all the same hoops to set up ipsec and practically no one does.
So, a cloud business should have their servers in Russia or China or somewhere that will tell the US Government to "fuck off"?
Its probably reasonable to host mirrored servers in mutually hostile countries so that they won't both shut you down as a result of a complaint in a single country.
Remember the context. Home network is IPv6. Home LAN is IPv4 since the printer is v4. Cell phone is v6 on a v6 network but could be going wifi off a v4 or v6 network.
Ok, with a v4-only printer on a LAN, the choices seem to be:
1. Cellphone also on the LAN (probably over wifi) and wants to connect to the printer: The cellphone has a v4 address so can just talk to the printer as usual.
2. Cellphonw is also on the LAN and the printer wants to connect to it: Again, the cellphone has a v4 address, no problem.
3. Cellphone is on a v6-only mobile network and wants to connect to the printer. The cellphone can connect to any v4 service through NAT64, including a printer, so no problem. However, in reality, tte printer doesn't have a global scope address, so it is impossible for something on the internet to talk to it; you might buy a v4 address from the ISP at a premium price in order to map it to the printer, but I question whether anyone actually wants their printer to be accessible from the global network anyway.
4. Cellphone is on a v6-only network and the printer wants to connect to it. Oh, this isn't going to be trivially possible, but I can't think of a reason why you'd ever want to do this anyway.
Yes, TCP traffic is bidirectional, but when we're talking about any kind of v4/v6 translation (NAT) then what matters is the direction the connection is made in (i.e. which side sends the initial SYN) - from that point on, the connection is being statefully tracked by the NAT and you don't need both endpoints to have globally reachable addresses.
I can't think why a printer would ever need to connect _to_ your cellphone.
You might want to print from your phone though, which would necessitate a connection from your phone to your printer. This is the same as connecting to any IPv4 service from an IPv6 device (except in actual fact it probably won't be possible anyway since your printer isn't going to have a global scope address). If your phone is connected to your local wifi then it will have a v4 address anyway, of course.
Millets was aimed squarely at family campers and casual hikers, whereas Blacks was more specialised and aimed at serious hikers, campers, climbers etc.
Not really. They both sold extremely similar stock, and I wouldn't call any of it "serious" in either case. No, Blacks didn't sell any climbing or mountaineering equipment.
Of course in the end both stores have suffered from the prevalence of big warehouse style outdoor equipment stores that have cheaper prices and enough space to effectively service both markets. Millets is now effectively dead and Blacks is seriously struggling.
I think this is because they were both pitched at the casual outdoors people, which is something that the big stores deal with just as well (e.g. Go Outdoors, Cotswold, etc). The more specialist stores that really do cator to more serious people are still going strong - people like Joe Brown, V12, Needlesports, Up & Under - these are all more expensive than the big stores, but they carry a better range of gear for their niché market (their total product range is, of course, poorer... but that doesn't matter because no one is going to go to V12 for fishing kit, whereas they might go to Go Outdoors - if you're after a specific bit of climbing or mountaineering kit, you're more likely to find it in V12 than Go Outdoors). The more specialist stores also tend to have very knowledgable staff: I've always found Up & Under in Cardiff to be absolutely excellent at fitting footware (both rockboots and mountain boots); meanwhile, Field & Trek tried to sell me rockboots based on how tough and hardwearing their soles were, which any climber will tell you is completely nuts...
Clustered stores make sense as long as they're different companies, after all they're competing with each other and when they cluster that's usually a sign that the area has a lot of people looking for that kind of store.
It makes sense where the stores have different stock, so people want to shop around to figure out which thing to buy: if you're buying a big ticket item like a car, a house, etc then you're going to want to do some serious browsing before putting down some money, so clustering estate agents, car dealerships, etc makes sense.
On the other hand, a cluster of computer game shops, all selling exactly the same selection of games, aren't going to attract a lot of pre-purchase browsing: you know that the product you're looking at is going to be identical in the next shop, and the shop after that, so you're probably just going to buy in the first shop you come to. If you do shop around first, then you're just looking for the best price - you're not shopping around to see which product best suits your need. Something shops do not want to do is compete with each other on price alone, because this just causes a price war which lowers their profits, and this is exactly what you'll get if you cluster these types of shops. On the other hand, if you spread out, you're competing on other factors than just price - people are going to go into the shop that's most convenient and probably aren't going to trek across town to check if the next store has the same thing for a few pennies less.
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Of just terminate your satellite runs at your cabinet for easy access to your Mythbackend. The frontends can all then just stream straight over ethernet.
Well since we're all moving to tablet and they don't need RJ45s, why put them in?
Because we're not all moving to tablet. Whilst I can see a use for a table for very restricted situations, it would be far too limiting to replace my laptop with a tablet and having both just seems daft, so no, I'm sticking with my laptop as the portable device (and I still have a desktop workstation in my office, lots of screen space is good).
Because whilst wifi is ok most of the time, occasionally you need the bandwidth of cable. For example, I can watch SDTV in my bedroom on a laptop, streamed over wifi, but HDTV is flakey at best (BBC HD is about 20Mbps, which is close to the bandwidth limit of 802.11g. Add a bit of interference and you're screwed). This only gets worse as the population density of 2.4GHz equipment increases.
my next home server will be some micro box that I'll put next to the socket the broadband comes in on.
That's not FUTURE proofing, that's what I'm doing NOW. So tomorrow I expect things to only get smaller and better.
My home datacabinet contains: :)
- Patch panel for terminating the satellite TV coax
- Patch panel for terminating Cat6 structured cabling
- Gigabit switch (which amazingly doesn't seem to overheat despite me getting pissed off with the noise and disconnecting the fans years ago
- Test server (rarely gets turned on, but needed for my job occasionally)
- Sheevaplug server (essentially my "main server" - handles file serving, firewalling, VoIP, runs Mythbackend, etc.)
- External hard drive (used by the Sheevaplug)
- DSL modem
- FXO/FXS gateway
- DVB-S2 receiver
- 802.11g access point (actually attached to the outside of the cabinet to avoid being in a faraday cage)
- Wallwarts and various cabling oddities such as a microfilter for the DSL
Whilst a lot of this stuff is "small" (e.g. the shevaplug, hard drive, DSL modem, FXO/FXS gateway, access point and DVB-S2 receiver could all be screwed to a wall somewhere), they all have assoaciated wall-warts (annoyingly mostly running at different voltages - everything that accepts a 12v input is already running off a single PSU but there are oddities like 5v and 9v inputs) and generally the mess of boxes and wires is enough for me to be happier just locking it all away in one small wall-mounted cabinet above head height.
I am using WLAN in the place I live. The same one that many other residents use. It is password protected, but once you login, everyone is still broadcasting their data to me also. Is it ok for me to sniff that data too?
Yes, why not? If you are sending data in the clear to untrusted networks you're a complete idiot. Presumably that wifi is either a LAN where all the clients are trusted (so everyone trusts you not to do bad things with their data), or it is an internet connection, which is inherently an insecure network so anything passing over it is liable to be intercepted (often legally required to be intercepted and logged by third parties in some jurisdictions).
In the same way, would it be ok for me to plug-in to your internet connection outside your house and sniff that data too?
Yes and no. The internet is an insecure public network, so I have no real expectation for privacy. *However*, in the case of my hard-wired internet connection, I am not blasting data out into the public environment, so by tapping into it you are either tresspassing on my property (to connect to my network) or you are tresspassing on the telco's property (their copper cables), both of which are crimes.
I mean, it's obviously your fault since you didn't use VPN.
I don't need to use a VPN. Protocols I use that carry sensitive data are encrypted (e.g. ssh, https, imaps, etc). And yes, if I shoved some sensitive data in the clear over an insecure network I would only have myself to blame if someone intercepted it. (Note: if someone captured my credit card details and used them fraudulently then, whilst it would've been my fault that they got the credit card details, they are still breaking the law by using them, so I would expect them to be arrested. If they captured the details and didn't use them for anything illegal then that's just tough for me isn't it?)
And, would it be OK for ISP's and VPN providers to sniff data that goes across them?
Not sure what you mean by "VPN provider" since pretty much all sensible uses of VPN is between trusted networks (so you inherently trust the other party to not do anything bad with your data).
I would have a problem with ISPs profiling my traffic (e.g. Phorm), and I do have a real problem with legislation that forces ISPs to do this (the security services shouldn't be interested in what law abiding citizens are doing). However, as mentioned above, the traffic going through my ISP isn't being blasted out over public space. Importantly: This isn't what Google was doing - they were capturing a few packets from random in-progress connections while driving past. They would've been lucky to get any kind of useful data out of a fraction of a percent of the packets they caught, let alone tie it back to an individual and profile their browsing habits.
I think this is scary and completely unacceptable.
Why is it "completely unacceptable" to capture data that is being broadcast in the clear over public radio spectrum in a public space? If someone wants to protect their data, their router has the tools to do this, just as if you don't want people to see you standing in your house nude you close the damned curtains.
No, I'm not defending Google, I'm defending *everyone's* right to not be penalised for something that shouldn't be considered "unacceptable".
Indeed. Part of the problem with a too exact / descriptive patent is that someone will research said patent, replace one minor piece, and be able to produce widgets that do not violate said patent.
No, a court would rule that a very minor change does not avoid patent violation.
The whole point of patents was to give inventors an incentive to open up their inventions so that the public could benefit from the work after a predetermined period. This is not what happens with current patents - currently the "inventors" (rather: the employer of the inventor) publishes some vague patent, then the next 20 years is spent suing people who come up with anything even close, then at the end of that 20 years the public is left with an "open" description so vague that they couldn't implement it anyway.
If the public isn't going to get anything out of a patent in the long run, why on earth should the government (who is supposed to act in the public's interest) be granting them?
Think of it this way: if you're a book author, and you put out a work that someone else changes a few words to, then claims copyright to, how pissed would you be?
Patents are not copyright. However, your argument doesn't even work for copyright - the modified copy would be considered a "derived work", and whilst the modifier could claim copyright on the changes, the whole work would still also be under the original author's copyright so would not be distributable without the original author's permission.
That's how many patent holders feel when someone does the above. If I spend 300+ hours working out a new, awesome tennis racket that doesn't induce tennis elbow, I'd be pissed if a lawyer took the words of my patent, found some inconsequential component ("cross-stitching"), changed it to something equally inconsequential ("horizontal-stitching"), and started making tennis rackets based 99% off my design.
You'd be pissed, and the court wouldn't allow it since it is a minor change so you'd be fine. However, as it stands, you spend 300+ hours developing a new tennis racket, spend vast amounds of money bringing it to market and then someone with a vague patent will put you out of business even though they're not even making tennis rackets (or if they are, their tennis rackets are nothing like your invention, its just that the vague description in their patent happens to match a vague description of your racket, regardless of the specifics).
To patent it, you must publish it. A magician does not reveal his secrets.
Modern patents don't tend to publish much in the way of specific information on how something works, they're pretty vague (which is why a patent holder can sue anyone with something that looks even vaguely similar). Actually fully implementing something described in a modern technology patent using just the published information is pretty much impossible these days.
Oh, I should add that VxWorks is such a "carrier grade OS" that doesn't crash. My Wifi SIP phone runs VxWorks (UTStarcom F1000G) and it is the most unstable piece of crap you'll find. That's not because VxWorks is unstable, its because all the software that UTStarcom wrote was written by idiots (unfortunately, idiots who ignore their customers when multiple customers ask for support on the same bug).
I remember phones that didn't crash -at all-. True, they were noisy and fixed into the wall, but replacing one defect with another has never appealed to me.
Your mistake is thinking of a smartphone as a phone, rather than a palmtop computer that just happens to have phone functionality buried in it alongside everything else. Calling them a "phone" is just a moronic (but rather successful) marketing decision.
I hate dumb cell phones because they drop connections (proper error-correction would eliminate that entirely, would fit onto the chips perfectly well, and would add practically no cost to the devices)
Do they? My old Nokia 5130 only ever dropped calls when I went out of coverage (e.g. into a tunnel). My Nokia 7110's firmware was buggy as hell, but I don't recall it ever dropping calls.
have limited memory (you can get a flash with as many gigabytes as a dumb phone's memory has K)
Wait.. why does a dumb phone need memory? The thing attached to the wall with a rotary dial didn't have any memory, why do you need memory on a dumb phone? Or are you, maybe, confusing "dumb" with "fairly smart but not quite functional enough to be considered a smartphone"?
and have way too many signal shadows (at least some of which would be eliminated with better error-correction as it's not simply line-of-site that matters in such things).
What do signal shadows have to do with the phone? This is a function of the network, not the phone.
I hate "smart phones" that crash - there are plenty of Carrier-Grade OS' out there, at least some can fit on phones, and there's no excuse for instability on an OS that's five nines rated.
Modern smart phones generally don't crash in the "the kernel has blown up" way. Crashes tend to be down to broken userspace applications, not the OS itself.
This is a bug, not a feature. Unless the phones are simply defective, I don't want some salesman at a shop deciding for me what phones I can and cannot buy.
Back when I wanted a new phone a few years ago, I went into the local Carphone Warehouse and asked if I could look at the HTC Dream. I explained that I wanted an Android phone with a physical keyboard. The sales man told me that the HTC Dream was rubbish because it wasn't very "iphone-like" and got out an array or other phones (none of them an iphone, many of them running Symbian, none of them with a physical keyboard) and explained to me that I should choose one of those because they are much more like the iPhone. I walked out after explaining that if I wanted an iPhone I would have damned well bought an iPhone and that I didn't much appreciate him wasting my time by showing me devices that in no way met any of the criteria I had expressed as requirements. I then went and bought a HTC Dream off ebay and have been pretty happy with it (although it is started to get to the end of its life now since it can't run the latest Android any more and the wifi has died).
I still think it's hilarious that Microsoft probably would have sewn up the tablet market if
MS have a pretty good history of completely misjudging new technologies. For a long time they considered the internet to be a fad and refused to invest anything in it (hence Trumpet Winsock instead of an official IP stack, no MS web browser until quite late on, etc). Luckilly for them, they have usually had the resources to catch up enough once they realise they've screwed up (often by buying up the companies who had become successful through MS's lack of foresight).
the Office division actually reworked the Office UI for tablets instead of refusing to change anything [the tablet OS guys actually had to code all kinds of hacks to get the on-screen keyboard to hide/show properly with Office, particularly Excel.
I think you're wrong. If you're using a word processor, spreadsheet, etc. in any serious way on a tablet then you're insane. Tablets lend themselves to surfing the web, browsing photos, watching video, etc. and 10 years ago these things were largely not mainstream, so very few people would've spent a reasonably large chunk of cash on a tablet to do them.
The alt + power off thing is a bit annoying though I suppose you could see it from the perspective that modern machines can save / resume state these days so a full power off is not what most users probably want given it takes longer to restart.
I don't really see a problem with hiding it (although I don't actually think there is any point in doing this) so long as there are visual cues to tell you that there's something hidden and how to reveal it. But in its current form, the only way you'll figure out there's something hidden there is by blindly banging all the keys on the keyboard to see what happens.
And yes, I agree that suspending/hibernating is the norm now, but there are still valid reasons to power off. For example, I usually put my laptop to sleep, but when I know it will be left a long time (days) on battery power then this is silly - the battery will be flat the next time I come to use it. I could hibernate it, but this actually takes longer to save/restore the RAM to disk than just shutting down/booting, so unless I have some work-in-progress open that I want to save the state of, I will usually power off completely in this case.
I'm one of the few people (it seems) with positive things to say about GNOME 3.
Yes, I've heard a lot of negative comments about Gnome 3, but very few of them seem to detail specific things people are finding wrong with it - saying "it's crap" doesn't help anyone improve it unless you can say _why_ you think it's crap.
Personally, I like Gnome 3. On the whole I think they have got it mostly right. There are problems, of course, but you'd expect that. The problems I've found with it are:
1. They have completely removed some useful stuff like the ability to disable the display's power management. There's a nice menu with "Turn monitor off after: 30 minutes, 1 hour, etc." in it, but no "Never" option. I understand decluttering the UI, but this doesn't seem like clutter - this is exactly where I'd expect to find this option, and is no more clutter than the "1 hour" option.
2. The "Power Off" option is hidden until you hold down Alt, yet there is no visual clue that there is a hidden option or that holding down Alt is going to do anything. This seems like a very odd decision - whilst putting a machine to sleep is my usual preference, I frequently do have cause for powering off entirely and it just seems odd to make it hard to find this option. Once you've learnt about it, this isn't a big deal, but it sounds counterproductive for new users and I imagine a lot of less experienced people will simply power off by holding down the power button since there's no obvious other way to do it(!)
3. The launcher buttons violate the principle of least surprise by changing their action depending on whether the application is already running or not. If the application isn't running then they launch a new window. If an application is running they raise *all* of that application's existing windows. I can't think of a situation where I would ever want to raise all 5 terminals I have open at once, but I frequently want to open a new one.
4. Related to (3), clicking Empathy's launcher icon while I have an IM window open just raises that IM window, there's no obvious way of getting the contacts list back (you have to right click the launcher and select "new window" - very counterintuitive since clicking the launcher when there isn't an IM window open gives you the contacts list as you'd expect).
5. The Empathy integration appears to have a bug whereby it sets my status to "unavailable" after I suspend and resume my machine. I have to manually set it to "available" or launch the Empathy contacts list window in order to prompt it to reconnect to my IM accounts.
6. Gnome 3 only supports 3 mouse buttons and a wheel. There is no way to assign my other 2 buttons (which I previously liked to use for "window raise" and "window lower" under Compiz)
Despite all the problems listed above, I still find Gnome 3 to be the best desktop environment I've used, so I'm sticking with it. Gnome 3 also seems to be gearing up for running well on touch-screen tablets *without* crippling the desktop UI in the process, so that's all good.
I found the search feature to be the best thing added to the start menu since it was added to Windows. It actually made the damn thing usable again. I don't even bother navigating the menus now, I just type in the name of whatever I want
So, uh, kinda like opening a bash prompt then?
However, my biggest gripe isn't actually the start screen, it's the "Charms". Whereas the bottom-left corner opens up the start screen, the right border opens up the charms panel, which has things like wifi strength and such; that much is good. However, in order to do the extremely unusual action of shutting down or hibernating the computer, you have to go into Settings, then Shutdown, all of which AFTER having opened the Charms menu. How's that for intuitive?
Gnome 3 has also tried to hide the shutdown option - in this case, you have to push "Alt" to get it to appear in the menu, a key press that you can only discover by experimenting with pushing all the keys to see what happens (there are no visual cues that the "power off" option is hidden or that you should push alt).
Nevermind, I'm sure in both Windows 8 and Gnome, users will find holding down the physical power button to be a much more convenient way of shutting down.
There seems to be a general trend to hide or remove genuinely useful stuff, even though it doesn't really seem to add any complexity by being there. For example, if you want to disable your monitor's power saving in Gnome 3, you probably expect to go into "System Settings -> Screen". And sure enough, there is a "Turn off after:" option with a drop-down menu of various settings such as "30 minutes", "1 hour", etc. But this menu doesn't have a "never" option - why not? This is the logical place to put it, and it doesn't seem to add any complexity to the UI by having it there. As it turns out, the only way to disable monitor power management is to install a third party add-on, which adds an option to a completely different (not quite as intuitive) part of the UI. (Some background: generally, if my monitor is turned on, I want to see it, whether that be because I'm watching a movie or keeping an eye on something that's running on the machine (a download, a big compile, etc.). When I'm away from my computer, I am in the habit of pushing the physical power buttons on the monitors, so power management doesn't actually save me power but does cause me some annoyance).
The idea is basically that if you want to use something like your browser, email, an IDE, etc., there's no reason to have multiple windows up, since they'll just distract you from what you're doing.
Multiple windows aren't a distraction for me, they are a requirement. My normal working environment is a large terminal window to develop my code in, another terminal for actually running the code, a third terminal is usually open to examine logs related to testing the code. If I'm working on something web-based I'll also have a browser for testing the code. I need documentation open, which is usually in the form of several browser tabs and maybe an email or 2 open in Thunderbird tabs.
These windows are all related to a single project - the only alternative to having them all on screen at once would be to keep switching between them, whcih would be very distracting and counterproductive (I do have to do this when working on small-screen devices such as my 15.4" laptop, and I find it hard work).
Windows 7 and GNOME 3 (and possible others) have quick gestures for putting two windows on half of the screen each, but the idea is that generally you don't need more than that (although it would be nice if they had a way to handle it), and most things can just be left in a random place in the background (IMs, email, whatever you're not doing at this moment).
I use and like Gnome 3. But I place windows manually and wouldn't want it any other way. My browser is left maximised on my secondary (only 15") monitor, but nothing else ever gets maximised. The only time I've used the "half screen" maximisation feature is when comparing 2 network dumps in 2 separate Wireshark instances - it's handy for this, but I use it so rarely that I really wouldn't miss it.
I've come to the conclusion that having a desktop environment that supports a multitude of devices (from tiny-screen phones all the way up to massive-screen desktops, etc) is a Good Thing, but we have to stop forcing the paradigms of one type of device on another. On my phone, I want my browser maximised pretty much all the time because the screen is small, but on a desktop with a 24" screen I almost never want this. But I don't think there is a hard rule about whether to maximise or window applications: small screen sizes will tend to want most things maximised, big screen sizes will tend to want most things windows, but in all cases there are exceptions. In the middle, there are things like 10" tablets where you're often going to want things maximised, but there are considerable numbers of cases where you don't. For example, I often wouldn't want my instant messager maximised on a tablet (but sometimes I would), whilst I would usually want my browser maximised (but sometimes I wouldn't).
Since it seems to be very fuzzy whether to maximise or window things, I'm not sure what the best approach is for picking defaults. On the one hand, it sounds nice to try and heuristically figure out the probability that the user will want a certain application maximised on a certain sized screen, and therefore either maximise it or window it by default depending on what the calculated probabilities suggest (and give the user the ability to override this, possibly feeding back the user's override decision into the heuristic so it learns). However, on the other hand, this seems to violate the principle of least surprise - I usually like my computer to do predictable things in response to my mouse clicks, which such a system inherently prevents.
This, combined with the fact that Britain has 0% VAT on books, means you should order your books from small, British internet stores. Amazon.co.uk is no good, as they will be over the limit for most countries.
I wouldn't count on the 0% tax on books sticking around too long. The UK government is slowly removing the VAT-free status from types of goods.
(Some background for those outside the UK: VAT was originally supposed to be charged only on luxury goods. So most food was VAT exempt, as were things like books (since they have educational value). The things the government considers "non-luxury" are gradually being reduced - for example, heating your home, cooking your food, etc. are considered luxuries these days and the government charges VAT on gas/electricity.)
Sorry, we're running life critical systems here. We can't rely on "taking a look at it".
If you're running "life critical systems", what the hell are you doing running an OS that isn't designed for "life critical systems" in the first place? (Hint: Windows and Linux are *not* designed for life critical systems). As for not being able to rely on "taking a look at it", that's why you need to pay someone to do this stuff - you can't expect either Microsoft or a Linux developer to work for you for free, but at least with an open OS you can employ a third party to maintain it beyond its normal support life, whereas if you start out with a closed system you're always going to be at the mercy of the vendor.
but frankly we need someone to take responsibility and to be held accountable for all aspects of our system.
If you think Microsoft are going to "take responsibility and be accountable" in any serious way, you obviously didn't read the licence agreement. I presume what you actually mean is "I want to be able to blame Microsoft when things go wrong to divert the shitstorm away from me" whilst achieving nothing actually useful. Ain't blame culture brillient?
I'm a pretty technical user and have been using Linux as my primary desktop for over a decade. Lately, even I am having trouble seeing it as a viable alternative to windows.
Is there a reason why you don't see it as a viable alternative to Windows?
I'm genuinely interested - For work use, I've been using Linux exclusively for 12 years, and around 10 years for home use. This has probably left me rather out of touch with what goes on in the Windows world (I've basically not used any Windows newer than 98 in any kind of serious way), but from what I've seen, for techies, Windows still seems to be less capable than modern Linux.
For non-techies, I'm not convinced there's much to choose between Windows and Linux so long as you don't need to use Windows-only software and have hardware that's well supported by Linux. My Fiancée is an OS X user, but seems to have no trouble at all using my Fedora laptop (and from the "so long as you don't need Windows-only software" perspective, OS X has the same problem, but has a pretty big market share so I'm not sure that's as big a factor as people often make out).
A real solution is end to end encryption network-wide, which is what IPv6 was supposed to do
No it isn't. You can set up ad-hoc ipsec with keys hosted in DNS if you like - this is irrespective of whether you're using v4 or v6. The problem here is that it's a bit of effort to set it up and practically no one running a server actually does it (making setting up a client reasonably pointless). And no, this won't magically start happening if you switch to IPv6 - you still need to jump through all the same hoops to set up ipsec and practically no one does.
So, a cloud business should have their servers in Russia or China or somewhere that will tell the US Government to "fuck off"?
Its probably reasonable to host mirrored servers in mutually hostile countries so that they won't both shut you down as a result of a complaint in a single country.
TCP/IP is bidirectional.
Remember the context. Home network is IPv6. Home LAN is IPv4 since the printer is v4. Cell phone is v6 on a v6 network but could be going wifi off a v4 or v6 network.
Ok, with a v4-only printer on a LAN, the choices seem to be:
1. Cellphone also on the LAN (probably over wifi) and wants to connect to the printer: The cellphone has a v4 address so can just talk to the printer as usual.
2. Cellphonw is also on the LAN and the printer wants to connect to it: Again, the cellphone has a v4 address, no problem.
3. Cellphone is on a v6-only mobile network and wants to connect to the printer. The cellphone can connect to any v4 service through NAT64, including a printer, so no problem. However, in reality, tte printer doesn't have a global scope address, so it is impossible for something on the internet to talk to it; you might buy a v4 address from the ISP at a premium price in order to map it to the printer, but I question whether anyone actually wants their printer to be accessible from the global network anyway.
4. Cellphone is on a v6-only network and the printer wants to connect to it. Oh, this isn't going to be trivially possible, but I can't think of a reason why you'd ever want to do this anyway.
Yes, TCP traffic is bidirectional, but when we're talking about any kind of v4/v6 translation (NAT) then what matters is the direction the connection is made in (i.e. which side sends the initial SYN) - from that point on, the connection is being statefully tracked by the NAT and you don't need both endpoints to have globally reachable addresses.
To connect to an IPv6 user, like a cell phone.
I can't think why a printer would ever need to connect _to_ your cellphone.
You might want to print from your phone though, which would necessitate a connection from your phone to your printer. This is the same as connecting to any IPv4 service from an IPv6 device (except in actual fact it probably won't be possible anyway since your printer isn't going to have a global scope address). If your phone is connected to your local wifi then it will have a v4 address anyway, of course.
About 2-3 years after both have been rebadged Santander, one will close.
Pretty sure they've both been Santander for over 3 years already.. I keep expecting the smaller one to close, but it hasn't happened yet.
Millets was aimed squarely at family campers and casual hikers, whereas Blacks was more specialised and aimed at serious hikers, campers, climbers etc.
Not really. They both sold extremely similar stock, and I wouldn't call any of it "serious" in either case. No, Blacks didn't sell any climbing or mountaineering equipment.
Of course in the end both stores have suffered from the prevalence of big warehouse style outdoor equipment stores that have cheaper prices and enough space to effectively service both markets. Millets is now effectively dead and Blacks is seriously struggling.
I think this is because they were both pitched at the casual outdoors people, which is something that the big stores deal with just as well (e.g. Go Outdoors, Cotswold, etc). The more specialist stores that really do cator to more serious people are still going strong - people like Joe Brown, V12, Needlesports, Up & Under - these are all more expensive than the big stores, but they carry a better range of gear for their niché market (their total product range is, of course, poorer... but that doesn't matter because no one is going to go to V12 for fishing kit, whereas they might go to Go Outdoors - if you're after a specific bit of climbing or mountaineering kit, you're more likely to find it in V12 than Go Outdoors). The more specialist stores also tend to have very knowledgable staff: I've always found Up & Under in Cardiff to be absolutely excellent at fitting footware (both rockboots and mountain boots); meanwhile, Field & Trek tried to sell me rockboots based on how tough and hardwearing their soles were, which any climber will tell you is completely nuts...
Clustered stores make sense as long as they're different companies, after all they're competing with each other and when they cluster that's usually a sign that the area has a lot of people looking for that kind of store.
It makes sense where the stores have different stock, so people want to shop around to figure out which thing to buy: if you're buying a big ticket item like a car, a house, etc then you're going to want to do some serious browsing before putting down some money, so clustering estate agents, car dealerships, etc makes sense.
On the other hand, a cluster of computer game shops, all selling exactly the same selection of games, aren't going to attract a lot of pre-purchase browsing: you know that the product you're looking at is going to be identical in the next shop, and the shop after that, so you're probably just going to buy in the first shop you come to. If you do shop around first, then you're just looking for the best price - you're not shopping around to see which product best suits your need. Something shops do not want to do is compete with each other on price alone, because this just causes a price war which lowers their profits, and this is exactly what you'll get if you cluster these types of shops. On the other hand, if you spread out, you're competing on other factors than just price - people are going to go into the shop that's most convenient and probably aren't going to trek across town to check if the next store has the same thing for a few pennies less.