This saddens me but I understand it. Adoption of PKI for email in this multi-standard, multi-client fashion was just too difficult for the average email user. Yes, I usually have one or two accounts for secure messaging and I do use Thawte (I am a Notary) but it just doesn't work for most unless there is someone to walk them through. As much as I am aggravated by Lotus Notes, they self contained system (part of my aggravation) was able to pull this off 10 years ago and is still really the only app that I have seen do PKI well. Unfortunately it doesn't do a lot of other things very well.
From the article: "Interestingly, the BDR-101A neither burns nor reads CD media of any type. So if you still need CD burning or reading capability, you'll need an additional drive."
Anyway, the Blu-Ray disks are $19-29 USD. I will need to wait until I can buy a spindle of 100 Blu-Ray disks for 9.99 before I go out and buy one of these things.
I kind of knew NNTP was dead when all the "community" websites were starting to putting up software like vBulletin, Yahoo! Groups and such. Communities, or people with a common topic to discuss, had to flee NNTP because they were first hit by spam. But this turn from NNTP to self control seems to be way easier than Email 2.0. Being in sales, I will always need a way to give someone a business card and have them email me as easily as possible. I can't see a way around this right now that doesn't keep the doors open for spammers.
Maybe a seperate email system could be phased in over 10 years that does not connect to the original that where participaints are certified and heavily fined for not controlling spam. I would make space on the business card for this second address. This would prevent gateways but I bet our company would switch over if the cost was right.
However, I can see from the PKI movement that changing email is a very slow process and friction is easily dismissed and disguarded. I am a PKI user/nut myself and the mailers and standards are still a bit of a problem.
I was there when this happened. They first closed down main security but still had security for the T-Gates open which is like trying to drain an oil tanker with a straw but I think they shut those down as well soon after. Here was the crappy part: they didn't tell you what was really going on. You entered the airport and everyone was standing around and had a different story. About an hour and a half into this, some airport cop (not a whiteshirt) comes up on his Segway with a bullhorn and reads a paragraph that said basically that there was a security incident and thanked us for our patience.That is as specific as they got! They didn't SAY anything. There was no mention of a suspicious device and when they went to open it up, they just dropped the ropes and gave us an "enjoy your flight" look.
They were real good about opening up all the security lanes to clear the backlog. Actually, I had subscribed via web to the airport line monitor service. My first page before I left to the airport was 10 minutes and this was after a buddy at the airport told me to get my butt down there for my flight early. The second page said "over 2 hours", the third was 30-45 minutes and the last said 1.5 hours to get through security. Seems like this is based on wild ass guess rather than more industrial engineering means.
Don't write down the actual password but a hint that will remind you what the password is. Who is going to see "password:a bad dog" and guess the way you have chosen to spell the name of the dog that your parents used to tell an funny story about when you were a kid. Just make sure you haven't been still telling the same old "bad dog" story and using the dogs real name recently.
I have a theory that the Mac's (and Linux on the desktop) marketshare is part of its protection from evildoers. Do you really want to go to the trouble to build a virus that will help you launch DoS attacks but only works on Mac platform? If Mac's had the lion share of the market share then the bad program writers out there would be looking into that platform more closely and vunerabilities would be popping up more often.
And lets not forget that the OS itself is only responsible for only so many vunerabilities. What office suite is he going to be using?
The idea of a software developer paying for a software magazine is ludicrous.
There are three classifications of magazines.
Free: Well, not free. They require you to give up some information but that is almost free. You can even get these weekly but mostly the make for good BM reading.
Cheap: These are special interest (Linux, Boating, Golf, etc.) that I suppose put the extra into the articles such that they can or need to charge something for it.
Expensive: These are the periodicles that are basically collections of papers from industry experts and think tanks. These subscriptions are hundreds or even thousands of (insert your near USD currency here)
OK, there are probably more than 3 classifications of magazines. I like the free ones, I pick up and subscribe to the cheap ones whenever the mood strikes me and I can't afford the expensive ones but I would be interested in what they say.
I think you are saying that the advertisements should cover the total costs of the magzines. I'd like to know what a magazine insider had to say about that. Magazines often go under (I guess I mean here that magazine brands go under or re-purpose themselves) so I don't think they are making the killing that would allow them to not charge. The web is putting presure on them and in the tech sector alone, they have other problems. Will C/C++ Journal be around in 10 years? Will it have the readership to allow it to be free (it's not now) to all C/C++ users? That reminds me, My issue of PICK Users Weekly is late...
It works out for me that any given magazine (Linux Journal/Magazine/Format, Dr. Dobbs, etc.), 3 out of 12 issues are really awesome, 6 are just OK and I would read an article and put it down, and the other 3 just don't have anything for me. My price point is the cost of 3-4 issues I guess but everyone has their own price point.
Note: the above math only works for monthly magazines. Do not apply to other subscription deliver frequencies.
One Year - 4 Volumes $34.95 Not bad, but not too good either. I dropped my subscriptions to Linux Journal and Linux Magazine when their prices went this high. I'll probably buy one or two off of the shelf before I decide to subscribe.
I wonder where linking Nextel PTT with Sprint's PTT (called ReadyLink) falls in the merger plan. I got one of those ReadlyLink phones as a replacement and from what I can tell, I'm the only one with one. I have had it for 4 months now and have been unable to find someone with it to even test the silly service/technology.
What did I expect, it is only available to people if they purchase one of only 4 Sanyo phones.
99% of my cables are round, 1% are flat. My cable management tasks are going to concentrate on the round ones that I see and in some case trip over.
Sales of the Roomba Virtual Wall has risen 146%
on
Battle Roomba Tractor
·
· Score: 3, Funny
In response to this recent product announcement several middle eastern countries have purchased large quantities of the Roomba Virtual Wall accessories and it is rumored that these are being installed along territory borders.
Yes, a major manufacturer would be able to get a price break on components and possibly build one that would be new and under a $100 but then major manufacturers would have to build in back in too much company overhead (salaries, marketing, technical support, documentation, etc.) and that would push it back up over a $100.
The conference bike that would fit our team well would need 7 steering wheels and only one pedle because there are more people trying to direct us and much less than that doing the work. It should have 3 gears (-1, -2 and -3) and, well, let us be honest, breaks would never be used so they can be omitted.
I actually just put that into some feedback before I read your post and said as such. I think even if this version had PDF support that would take care of over 90% of my documents. Firefox and Y!Messenger would round it out for me but as Yahoo! is competing against Google right now I wasn't suprised to see Y!Messenger support.
The open source community would write all the document type adapters that google needed to dominate and then every other Google Desktop MeToo apps that come along will be forced to stick with the Google "Standard".
You are correct. In hindsight, I am quoting two different times. My Zire 31 will run probably 3-4 hours playing MP3s, 6-8 (or more) if I am reading an eBook or a week or two if I just use it as I used to use the original Palm devices (Calender, Contacts, Tasks and Notes only).
I will say that the wireless capability make it both more and less portable but right now because of cost (of the unit), battery life and wireless network coverage (not the device's fault but our fragmented wirless networks and coverages) that the 'less' outweighs the 'more' in the department of the portability. In 2+ years, I won't have this position because they will have improved batteries, made cheaper wireless devices (thus cheaper units) and wireless broadband will (hopefully) be better. So the wireless will be a necessary feature but there will still be devices that cost 70-80% of a laptop and has poorly implemented features.
Thank you for your comments and catching me on my unfair comparison.
I can't figure out where the palmtops are going the way they are. The first palmtop I had was a Palm Pilot (followed by a Hanspring Visor Delux and now, my favorite, Palm Zire 31). Palmtops (and even Palm themselves are mostly guilty of this) are leaving their core appeal: portability
How you might ask? Something is portable when I can:
Take it with me-Because of all these features, the devices are getting bigger and not necessarily smaller. Do we need two expansion slots? My laptop has 2 expansion slots (PC Card), couldn't a palmtop get buy with one?
Use it after I take it with me-The original Palms could run weeks without a battery replacement and these new palmtops are proud of the number of HOURS the allow you to use the device. How portable is it if you feel you have to take an AC Adapter with you if you plan on being somewhere doing something, God forbid, all day long.
Replace it after I drop it from when I took it with me-It is a PALMtop. Things fall out of palms. What is with the price of these things. I have seen people putting a $800-$900USD (depreciated value) laptop carefully into a padded laptop case while they are less careful than these new palmtops that cost $300-$600USD. The prices are getting closer and closer together. Portable to mean means that I can whip the thing out of a shirt pocket, use it and toss it into whatever gym bag I have next to me or wear it on my belt (given the width of doors in the US and my girth this must be very frightening for my Zire) which I would never do with even a very small laptop.
I consider my Zire 31 the better of the devices. I have an expansion slot, it is as small or smaller than the first palmtop I owned, I can go up to a week without needing a charge given normal usage and if (when) I break it, I need to spend only another $149USD to replace it. These new palmtops are just smaller laptops, not more advanced palmtops.
Maps and accessories baby...
on
Open Maps?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I was suprised when I bought my GPS unit. The maps (or unlocking the maps that we shipped with it) were almost as expesive as the unit itself. I have a Garmin eTrex Venture and between the Garmin US and DeLorme TOPO USA, I have paid more for this data than the hardware.
The maps are where the GPS device companies make their profit. That and accessories ($35USD for an AC car adapter!).
If I were to ever start my own Open/Free project, it would most likely be a call to all us GPS hobbyist out there to create our own Open/Free maps and GPS coordinates of useful landmarks.
Like most, I started with the Slackware floppies (N1, N2, N3...) and then found the RedHat CD around version 4 or something like that. I am now in the process of switching from Win to Linux on my Thinkpad as my primary desktop O/S. Redhat dropping (I don't call phone support but will miss my auto-update account) it's non-AS line prompted me to try another dist for the first time. I picked Gentoo. My findings are thus:
Learn (relearn) from Gentoo: Start with the lowest stage you can tolerate. You will learn a lot. The install process took me a week because I am not careful and choose to start over several times and make new decisions. Plan for a few days to a week before you are ready to pack it up and take it out and about.
Learn to read before you type: Very important that you undestand the install process and USE variables and such or you will end up with a system with very little of what you expect on it. But that is ok because emerge is there
Learn patience: Gentoo takes time to get where RedHat/Suse/Fedora might start you. Expect during the first few weeks that you will often type a command and it not work because you don't have it. An 'emerge' and some d/l and compile time later and you are back in business but you have to be patient.
Learn to interpolate: I used to start all trouble shooting adventures with a google query that started with "RedHat ~some problem~" I found with troubleshooting my Gentoo problems that stuff that was written to solve other dist (really HW) issues are pretty easy to apply to Gentoo. make sense as it is all really Linux
Learn to appreciate: I'll admit that RedHat's init system we something I never learned for various reasons (complicated, I never manually modified it with much success so I stopped trying). Gentoo's makes more sense and is a bit more kid friendly. Emerge/Portage is really pretty neat.
Learn to borrow: No need to rebuild an XF86Config file from scratch with the standard tools. The RedHat generated one the other hard drive was perfect. Just copy it over.
The bottom line is that it is still Linux. You are closer to the core/spritit of Unix (distributed with source code). Does compiling it for YOUR machine make a big performance difference? Maybe it was a little snappier...hard to tell. Does the "if you do not need it, it will not install" make a big difference? Nope, it is just disk space in many cases that you are wasting? You are no longer dependent on.rpm files to get new stuff but you are now dependent on the portage tree. Is there anything that I couldn't get working on Gentoo? Nah, not really. Am I going to go forward with my migration with Gentoo? Not sure, I have a HW problem to resolve on my T30 and after that, I may go to Fedora Core 1 because there are more resources out there and the company I work for software is being ported to support RedHat AS line so I will have better luck getting my Demo's working on a RH O/S. Picking a dist these days is really just a bunch of littler minor subjective decisions and feelings. I'll probably keep Gentoo around on a harddrive and punch it in every now and then. It has been fun and good for me.
OK, given what is in this thread, I ask this: In the popular browsers (IE, Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, Safari) how would I turn off "plain text" SSL. But if I could, would I want to? Would that break SSL authenication without encryptions type things and do a lot of sites do that?
For the record, I do look for the lock icon but because of that, I do turn off the "you are connecting to a secure site/you are leaving a secure site." 9 times out of 10, I do click on the lock and verify that the URL in the cert matches the url that I am pointing to...but I do understand that I'm especially paranoid in a nerdy kinda way.
C&S invented the SPAM concept on Usenet. I remember that it was not only meant to hit each group but that it was not cross-posted correctly (at all) and that you couldn't delete/kill/read(to be marked read) that message in one group and have it gone from all the other groups. This was a double no-no and wrong on more than one level.
Since SPAM has propogated on to email, I am reminded of my favorite lines out of the Unix Haters Handbook.
The thing that gets me is that one of the arguments that landed Robert Morris, author of "the Internet Worm" in jail was all the sysadmins' time his prank cost. Yet the author of sendmail is still walking around free without even a U (for Unixery) branded on his forehead. -- An email from dm at hri dot com dated 12-Oct-93 in Garfinkle, Weise and Strassman;
Unix Haters Handbook; May, 1994; IDG Books Worldwide
The interesting thing is that all this was published before the C&S Usenet spamming. How much time are admins spending on email management now?
SPAM has killed Usenet's usefullness for me. At least filters like Popfile and such are keeping SPAM over email bearable; even if they are not fixing the problem.
These agile/functional languages are great. And noteworthy, non-trivial systems have been written in them. The best part is that they can almost all be used inside of other apps as the "scripting" language. In one of our apps, users could use ECMA Script or Python (actually Jython). We eventually dropped Python because no one used it and the the next generation of our tool dropped ECMA Script because it was not considered mainstream (regardless of many lines web developers are writing and browsers executing at this very moment) and we took hits for that. The current generation of that tool uses Java only.
I enjoy learning new programming languages but because of stuff like this, I wonder why I should. I still will because I have done non-trivial stuff in them very easily but it is a big downer. At least they let authors write neat books for us geeks to take on vacation.
Slashdot Mirror
This saddens me but I understand it. Adoption of PKI for email in this multi-standard, multi-client fashion was just too difficult for the average email user. Yes, I usually have one or two accounts for secure messaging and I do use Thawte (I am a Notary) but it just doesn't work for most unless there is someone to walk them through. As much as I am aggravated by Lotus Notes, they self contained system (part of my aggravation) was able to pull this off 10 years ago and is still really the only app that I have seen do PKI well. Unfortunately it doesn't do a lot of other things very well.
Well at least not by the carbon-based sentient life forms on the 3rd planet from the sun in this very same solar system.
Just give it time
From the article: "Interestingly, the BDR-101A neither burns nor reads CD media of any type. So if you still need CD burning or reading capability, you'll need an additional drive."
Anyway, the Blu-Ray disks are $19-29 USD. I will need to wait until I can buy a spindle of 100 Blu-Ray disks for 9.99 before I go out and buy one of these things.
Maybe a seperate email system could be phased in over 10 years that does not connect to the original that where participaints are certified and heavily fined for not controlling spam. I would make space on the business card for this second address. This would prevent gateways but I bet our company would switch over if the cost was right.
However, I can see from the PKI movement that changing email is a very slow process and friction is easily dismissed and disguarded. I am a PKI user/nut myself and the mailers and standards are still a bit of a problem.
They were real good about opening up all the security lanes to clear the backlog. Actually, I had subscribed via web to the airport line monitor service. My first page before I left to the airport was 10 minutes and this was after a buddy at the airport told me to get my butt down there for my flight early. The second page said "over 2 hours", the third was 30-45 minutes and the last said 1.5 hours to get through security. Seems like this is based on wild ass guess rather than more industrial engineering means.
Don't write down the actual password but a hint that will remind you what the password is. Who is going to see "password:a bad dog" and guess the way you have chosen to spell the name of the dog that your parents used to tell an funny story about when you were a kid. Just make sure you haven't been still telling the same old "bad dog" story and using the dogs real name recently.
And lets not forget that the OS itself is only responsible for only so many vunerabilities. What office suite is he going to be using?
There are three classifications of magazines.
OK, there are probably more than 3 classifications of magazines. I like the free ones, I pick up and subscribe to the cheap ones whenever the mood strikes me and I can't afford the expensive ones but I would be interested in what they say.
I think you are saying that the advertisements should cover the total costs of the magzines. I'd like to know what a magazine insider had to say about that. Magazines often go under (I guess I mean here that magazine brands go under or re-purpose themselves) so I don't think they are making the killing that would allow them to not charge. The web is putting presure on them and in the tech sector alone, they have other problems. Will C/C++ Journal be around in 10 years? Will it have the readership to allow it to be free (it's not now) to all C/C++ users? That reminds me, My issue of PICK Users Weekly is late...
Note: the above math only works for monthly magazines. Do not apply to other subscription deliver frequencies.
One Year - 4 Volumes $34.95
Not bad, but not too good either. I dropped my subscriptions to Linux Journal and Linux Magazine when their prices went this high. I'll probably buy one or two off of the shelf before I decide to subscribe.
What did I expect, it is only available to people if they purchase one of only 4 Sanyo phones.
99% of my cables are round, 1% are flat. My cable management tasks are going to concentrate on the round ones that I see and in some case trip over.
In response to this recent product announcement several middle eastern countries have purchased large quantities of the Roomba Virtual Wall accessories and it is rumored that these are being installed along territory borders.
Yes, a major manufacturer would be able to get a price break on components and possibly build one that would be new and under a $100 but then major manufacturers would have to build in back in too much company overhead (salaries, marketing, technical support, documentation, etc.) and that would push it back up over a $100.
The conference bike that would fit our team well would need 7 steering wheels and only one pedle because there are more people trying to direct us and much less than that doing the work. It should have 3 gears (-1, -2 and -3) and, well, let us be honest, breaks would never be used so they can be omitted.
The open source community would write all the document type adapters that google needed to dominate and then every other Google Desktop MeToo apps that come along will be forced to stick with the Google "Standard".
I will say that the wireless capability make it both more and less portable but right now because of cost (of the unit), battery life and wireless network coverage (not the device's fault but our fragmented wirless networks and coverages) that the 'less' outweighs the 'more' in the department of the portability. In 2+ years, I won't have this position because they will have improved batteries, made cheaper wireless devices (thus cheaper units) and wireless broadband will (hopefully) be better. So the wireless will be a necessary feature but there will still be devices that cost 70-80% of a laptop and has poorly implemented features.
Thank you for your comments and catching me on my unfair comparison.
How you might ask? Something is portable when I can:
I consider my Zire 31 the better of the devices. I have an expansion slot, it is as small or smaller than the first palmtop I owned, I can go up to a week without needing a charge given normal usage and if (when) I break it, I need to spend only another $149USD to replace it. These new palmtops are just smaller laptops, not more advanced palmtops.
The maps are where the GPS device companies make their profit. That and accessories ($35USD for an AC car adapter!).
If I were to ever start my own Open/Free project, it would most likely be a call to all us GPS hobbyist out there to create our own Open/Free maps and GPS coordinates of useful landmarks.
Excellent Ask Slashdot question...
The bottom line is that it is still Linux. You are closer to the core/spritit of Unix (distributed with source code). Does compiling it for YOUR machine make a big performance difference? Maybe it was a little snappier...hard to tell. Does the "if you do not need it, it will not install" make a big difference? Nope, it is just disk space in many cases that you are wasting? You are no longer dependent on .rpm files to get new stuff but you are now dependent on the portage tree. Is there anything that I couldn't get working on Gentoo? Nah, not really. Am I going to go forward with my migration with Gentoo? Not sure, I have a HW problem to resolve on my T30 and after that, I may go to Fedora Core 1 because there are more resources out there and the company I work for software is being ported to support RedHat AS line so I will have better luck getting my Demo's working on a RH O/S. Picking a dist these days is really just a bunch of littler minor subjective decisions and feelings. I'll probably keep Gentoo around on a harddrive and punch it in every now and then. It has been fun and good for me.
For the record, I do look for the lock icon but because of that, I do turn off the "you are connecting to a secure site/you are leaving a secure site." 9 times out of 10, I do click on the lock and verify that the URL in the cert matches the url that I am pointing to...but I do understand that I'm especially paranoid in a nerdy kinda way.
I think the first spam was sent by Ray Tomlinson in 1971 saying, "Tired of paying the high cost of postage just to send short messages to friends..."
Since SPAM has propogated on to email, I am reminded of my favorite lines out of the Unix Haters Handbook.
The interesting thing is that all this was published before the C&S Usenet spamming. How much time are admins spending on email management now?
SPAM has killed Usenet's usefullness for me. At least filters like Popfile and such are keeping SPAM over email bearable; even if they are not fixing the problem.
I enjoy learning new programming languages but because of stuff like this, I wonder why I should. I still will because I have done non-trivial stuff in them very easily but it is a big downer. At least they let authors write neat books for us geeks to take on vacation.