You don't NEED anything but a hex editor and an instruction set reference card to do anything.;)
<voice="grumpy old man">Heh, hex editor! Whatta ya need that for? All you really need is your index finger to toggle the bits into the registers. Next thing you know you be wanting an assembler and a compiler and an IDE. Flim-flam. All that is for the weak.</voice> _____________
Ok, so they've created a pretty small barcode like scheme. So? Now you just have to be aware that bar codes can have this look (\/\/\/\/\///\\\/\/\/) rather than the usual vertical lines. Granted, they can be made smaller than Code39 or UPC codes, but they're still just bar codes. _____________
My point was that the differences between MS Word, Word Perfect, KWord and StarOffice are largely cosmetic. Each of these applications has a tool bar that contains pictures representing the most common operations, a large white space in which to write, a menu bar that contains a file menu for opening and saving documents and so forth. However, training users to recognise that the same basic concepts are to be applied would take far longer than a car dealer spends explaining the features of a new model. I consider these basic operations to be equivalent to the clutch, brake, gas, steering whell etc. The differences between them are more like turning on the high beams. Some cars you pull the turn signal (Chevy), some cars you push the turn signal (Ford), some older cars you tap a button with your left foot.
There is actually a sizeable portion of the population who would be very confused if you were to replace the word Start with a picture of a foot or a gear. Even though the reason to click the lower left corner remains to log off. In reality, from a user's perspective a bash or command.com CLI are strikingly similar. You type the name of the program you want to run. Save files in directories and move between them with the cd command. Likewise, the window environments are all quite similar. It would seem to me that it would be much easier to move from Windows to Gnome or KDE than to MacOS, but people seem to think that MacOS is easy to use so that's not given any consideration. _____________
Re:The end user doesn't want to deal with security
on
New flaws in 802.11B
·
· Score: 1
how many do you think will opt for a 128 bit hex string, as opposed to an easy to remember dictionary word ?
How's about both? 0xDEADBEEFDEADBEEFDEADBEEFDEADBEEFDEADBEEFDEADBEEF DEADBEEFDEADBEEF. Is a hex string that is made up of easy to remember dictionary words, especially if you're British. _____________
One thing that you may also want to consider is that you may wish for your wireless clients to be behind a firewall for one reason or another. In the case of most home users they probably need their firewall to assign non routable IPs via DHCP for all wireless connections. Thus, for the home user a DMZ of sorts would be an ideal solution. Naturally, your trust model for this DMZ would be different than for a DMZ that consists of webservers and such and would be on a different segment than the webserver DMZ. _____________
Possibly because the stock market as a whole has taken a real dive over the last 2-3 weeks. The Dow dropped over 300 points before lunch today and the NASDAQ ain't been looking to hot lately either. Somehow, I suspect that the root of all this isn't that every company in the US is going to go bankrupt this year. _____________
If automobiles were this way, you'd have to completely relearn how to drive on a completely different road system if you wanted to switch from Ford to Chevy.
If people reacted to automobiles the way that people react to computers they would need to be taught how to drive again when switching from a Ford to a Chevy. I can just imagine it.
"Ok, now. This car is very similar to the one you had before. Remember, the wiper lever is now on the left side of the steering wheel. It is not on the right like on your Ford."
"In this vehicle you will have to locate the air conditioning controls which are above the radio. They are no longer beneth the radio. No, I said above the radio. No, that's the ash tray. Move your hand up. Further up. up. up. up. There. I know, this car has knobs instead of sliders. Yes, that is the heater control. I know it looks different. I promise you, it is the heater control. You can do this. It's not that hard to learn."
I'm sure that all of you who have done tech support will identify with this. It's not that people wouldn't learn if they tried, they just won't try unless they have their hand held every step of the way. _____________
Overclocking a laptop is interesting and all, but why would you do it? That can't be good for battery life. In addition, that's a pretty hefty clockspeed bump it must get really hot when it's sitting on your lap. _____________
Thank you for posting this. I'm glad that there are a few other Physics people around here. I find people who know what they're talking about to be so much more interesting than the conspiracy theorists and sham science pushers that seem to predominate this forum.
Here's the simple truth. EM waves with a wavelength longer than UV light (this includes everything we call light, IR or radio waves) won't cause cancer. They don't have enough energy to break DNA and therefore can't cause the mutations that lead to cancer. The only effect that these longer waves can have to to produce some heating.
To give you an idea, of how minimal the exposure from devices like cell phones is keep in mind that most of these devices radiate RF power at 1 Watt or less into the open air (unless you put the antenna in your mouth at least 1/2 of the energy radiates away from your head). This contrasts with a microwave oven which produces 700-1000W of RF power and furthermore, has reflective sides to keep the waves in the oven until they are absorbed by the food. What this means is that it would be very difficult to heat something like your head with a mobile phone or wireless LAN. Your head is pretty similar to a plate with 3 dozen scrambled eggs on it. Think about how long it would take to warm said plate of eggs in a microwave oven. I'm betting somewhere in the neighborhood of a minute. Now imagine that the microwave is less than 1/2000th as strong and you've installed a liquid cooling system in the plate of eggs. I hope that I don't need to say any more. _____________
I would be damn happy if people pirated my software, because that would mean that more people are using my product, thus equating increased revenues when they go and buy the real thing.
Were you ever a marketing director for a failed.com media company? This sounds a bit too much like "mindshare is our biggest asset" for me to be comfortable with. _____________
i think you need a better example than priests and con artists. some of us are not sure what the difference there is.:)
I figured that someone would point this out sooner or later. I thought that priests seemed like the professional speachmaker most likely to produce images of good honest people. Especially when compared with the other obvious choice..... Senators. _____________
Hackers are people who thrive on being faced with problems and finding clever, innovative solutions to them. Crackers are people who break into computer systems. Confusing the two is like calling every martial-arts student a 'ninja.'
These guys aren't even crackers. They aren't breaking into computer systems or anything like that, they just steal credit cards. The only way in which they even resemble a hacker is that they use a computer to do their 'job'. But so do most receptionists. Confusing web con artists with hackers is like confusing real world con artists with priests because both make speaches as part of their work. _____________
Considering most people who run Windows run as root by default (9x, ME) or by choice (Administrator-equiv user on NT or 2k), it's not hard to conceive of them running as root on a workstation-based linux machine.
This is one thing that I think is really cool about Mandrake 7.2 (a distro intended for a somewhat less tech savvy group). It is one of the few installs that I've seen that sets up additional users before finishing the install process and has the option of directly logging in a selected non-root user upon reboot directly into their window manager of choice.
Obviously, thre is some security risk associated with havine the computer login for you, but it's a physical security problem and most home users probably aren't all that worried about physical security of their machines. Frankly, if someone I don't trust got into my house while I wasn't there I've got bigger problems than having them access my mp3 stash without a password. _____________
Do you seriously think you can be with you children (to be:)) 100% of the time? What is wrong with having control over your own TV set? As long as people and not the government have the ultimate control over the chip, I do not see a problem.
I have to agree with you here. When used correctly "saftey" devices are an effective aid to good parents. It isn't beneficial to childern to be fully supervised 24x7 by their parents. Tools like this make it possible for parents to allow children to learn to make decisions for themselves in an environment where they are less likely to make a "wrong" decision. Being a good parent isn't about making all of your kids decisions for them it's about showing them how to make the right decisions on their own. Using a V-chip gives the parent the ability to let their children choose which programs they wish to watch and learn some independence while still making it difficult to make bad decisions. _____________
I think that most people, even fairly libertarian ones like myself, would be able to put forth a pretty strong argument that a literate population is a public good. My life and yours are made better on a daily basis by the fact that the slack-jawed yokel at the gas station has at least a minimal ability to read and count change. Therefore I believe that investments in education produce the public good of citizens able to function at at least a minimal level in a modern society. _____________
This will break you out of anyone's frames which was the biggest problem that the BBB was complaining about in this case. Frankly, it's just not right to link to someone else's content within your framset to make it look like their content is your work. _____________
Right now, the standard is defined, but companies are so busy madly rushing products out the door that they don't bother following the specs or doing any compatibility testing.
The problem isn't so much that people are just ignoring the spec and rushing out products that aren't fully compatable, the problem is that the spec can't be followed. The protocol spec for Bluetooth is over 1500 pages and in some places is incompatable with itself. What we have here is a perfect example of design by committee and the problems that it causes everytime it comes up. It's simply impossible to be fully compliant with the entire spec so when designing a device so you have to choose which features you're going to support and which vendors you're going to be compatable with. Right now the leading vendor seems to be Ericsson, so if you're making a Bluetooth you want to have a chance, it'd better be compatable with Ericsson radios and your other products. Beyond that there isn't too much you can do.
_____________
It's really pretty surprising what banks will give away in an attempt go grab a few customers. I got a Palm IIIe from Citibank for signing up for a checking account. They promptly fucked me over by closing my account without warning (seems that I had to return a new signature card that they didn't send me). Turns out that landlords get pretty pissed off when you write checks against a closed account. _____________
Does Junkbuster have an easy interface that allows you to add a site to your allow cookie list briefly? Most sites with a shopping cart won't work if they can't set a cookie. _____________
I've always thought that it had pretty decent printing. Maybe it's just that my old workhorse printer isn't good enough to show print quality problems (HP deskjet 500, 10 years old, never jams, works pretty fast and still prints as well as the day it was made, which was pretty darn good in those days). The only beef I've had with KDE programs and printing is that they don't like to remember that I'm in the US and can't even remember the last time that I saw a piece of A4 paper. Why does my computer keep thinking tha I want that as a default? _____________
I've always wondered a bit about why there's so much republican bashing on this site. Anyway, I think that some of your points are a bit off the deep end here.
Poor people are poor because they want to be poor.
I'm pretty sure that nobody has ever said this except for liberals when they're attempting to ridicule conservatives. Some people see creating opportunities as a better solution than handouts.
Children do not deserve a quality education if they can't afford it.
Exactly, that's why school vouchers are a good idea. Education funding should be for students and not for schools.
A $500 tax cut for the average American is generous.
Damn straight. And I'm sure that the average American would have been even happier with a $501 tax cut from Gore. Let's see $500 divided by 26 paychecks a year is, wow, an extra $20, DAMN! now I can afford a Lexus.
A $40,000 tax cut for the upper.05% is fair because they pay more taxes.
Well damnit! I think that it would be more fair if everyone paid the same amount in taxes. Let's face it. Taxes in the US are pretty low. Cutting them by a few percent isn't going to amount to much unless you're paying an awful lot in taxes already.
Estate taxes are bad.
That they are. They aren't effective at keeping an effective aristocracy from existing and they hurt people who depend on owning business property like shops and farms for their income.
Oil is good.
Sure is. Oil is pretty essential to the modern economy and it's a far sight better than coal.
Fossil fuel dependency is good. the more oil we have access to, the more gooder the good is. Exploring alternative energy sources and encouraging efficiency is bad.
Nobody is saying that, but keeping energy costs low is important too. Bush has actually shown quite a bit of support for ethanol based fuels.
Government funded research is bad. Social programs are bad. Better weapons technology is good.
Government funded research should be accountable for producing results and new knowledge. Social programs that don't provide anything beyond a free paycheck are bad effective social programs provide opportunities for a whole community. Better weapons technology is good. It's a way of spending research money while producing a tangible benefit as well.
The middle class is thriving. The middle class has a higher standard of living than 10 years ago. There is a larger and more vibrant middle class today than ever before in our country's history.
And how is this a problem caused by the current administration?
Cheap foreign labor is good for America.
Yeah, Americans like to buy things.
Do you want fried with that?
No, I'd rather have onion rings today.
_____________
The thing is that as far as the common man is concerned the OS is free anyway.
That's right, I said that as far as anyone but a hardcore geek can tell windows is without cost!
Unless you build your own computer from parts it comes with an operating system. The common man doesn't build his own computer from parts. Hell, there's a lot of geeky sorts that don't do that. Granted, there are a few places where you can get a bare system, but they don't cost $150 less than the same system with Windows already installed.
The simple fact is that Linux will not be accessable to the common man until you can go to Best Buy and get the $500 reasonably modern computer with Linux preinstalled. This is what Apple is now doing. In a few months you will be able to go to a store and for less than $1000 take home a complete, modern computer with Unix preinstalled. There is so such Linux based product, so Linux is not avaliable to the common man.
Maybe this means that there's money to be made in that area. Perhaps people would buy the $1k Linux box if someone were selling and supporting it. If you think that this could be profitable, let me know. I'll take investments and give it a try. _____________
The thing about slashdot is that it really isn't a news site. This is true despite its tagline "News for Nerds. Stuff the Matters." Slashdot is first and foremost a discussion site, it's a place where people who like computers and Linux and stuff like that get together and talk.
As with most places where there is discussion there are certian topics that reappear from time to time. This is OK. Think about how many times you've had a discussion about the current lack/excess of precipitation in the last week. At the very least, Slashdot is more interesting and less repetitive than the typical discussions that happen around the office. _____________
You're right of course. I certianly didn't mean that there isn't often a problem between the chair and keyboard. We would all probably be dead by now if you had to teach people how to lower the windows in their car twice a week.
However, I don't think that that excuses the extremely poor reliability of the average personal computer (especially the onces that the "average guy" gets at Best Buy). There has to be a reason why software companies never offer a warranty on their product. Most people hold car dealers in pretty damn low regard, but have respect for companies like Microsoft. Why is that? You stand a much better chance of having a car dealer stand behind their product than a software maker. _____________
at $20,000+ the average car shouldn't break either...
The difference between your average car and your average piece of software is that if the car does break in the first couple of years the car maker will fix it for you. Microsoft on the other hand, will tell you to live with it or kindly sell you a service pack or SE version of the broken software that makes things worse rather than better.
_____________
Slashdot Mirror
<voice="grumpy old man">Heh, hex editor! Whatta ya need that for? All you really need is your index finger to toggle the bits into the registers. Next thing you know you be wanting an assembler and a compiler and an IDE. Flim-flam. All that is for the weak.</voice>
_____________
Ok, so they've created a pretty small barcode like scheme. So? Now you just have to be aware that bar codes can have this look (\/\/\/\/\///\\\/\/\/) rather than the usual vertical lines. Granted, they can be made smaller than Code39 or UPC codes, but they're still just bar codes.
_____________
There is actually a sizeable portion of the population who would be very confused if you were to replace the word Start with a picture of a foot or a gear. Even though the reason to click the lower left corner remains to log off. In reality, from a user's perspective a bash or command.com CLI are strikingly similar. You type the name of the program you want to run. Save files in directories and move between them with the cd command. Likewise, the window environments are all quite similar. It would seem to me that it would be much easier to move from Windows to Gnome or KDE than to MacOS, but people seem to think that MacOS is easy to use so that's not given any consideration.
_____________
How's about both? 0xDEADBEEFDEADBEEFDEADBEEFDEADBEEFDEADBEEFDEADBEEF DEADBEEFDEADBEEF. Is a hex string that is made up of easy to remember dictionary words, especially if you're British.
_____________
One thing that you may also want to consider is that you may wish for your wireless clients to be behind a firewall for one reason or another. In the case of most home users they probably need their firewall to assign non routable IPs via DHCP for all wireless connections. Thus, for the home user a DMZ of sorts would be an ideal solution. Naturally, your trust model for this DMZ would be different than for a DMZ that consists of webservers and such and would be on a different segment than the webserver DMZ.
_____________
Possibly because the stock market as a whole has taken a real dive over the last 2-3 weeks. The Dow dropped over 300 points before lunch today and the NASDAQ ain't been looking to hot lately either. Somehow, I suspect that the root of all this isn't that every company in the US is going to go bankrupt this year.
_____________
If people reacted to automobiles the way that people react to computers they would need to be taught how to drive again when switching from a Ford to a Chevy. I can just imagine it.
I'm sure that all of you who have done tech support will identify with this. It's not that people wouldn't learn if they tried, they just won't try unless they have their hand held every step of the way._____________
Overclocking a laptop is interesting and all, but why would you do it? That can't be good for battery life. In addition, that's a pretty hefty clockspeed bump it must get really hot when it's sitting on your lap.
_____________
Here's the simple truth. EM waves with a wavelength longer than UV light (this includes everything we call light, IR or radio waves) won't cause cancer. They don't have enough energy to break DNA and therefore can't cause the mutations that lead to cancer. The only effect that these longer waves can have to to produce some heating.
To give you an idea, of how minimal the exposure from devices like cell phones is keep in mind that most of these devices radiate RF power at 1 Watt or less into the open air (unless you put the antenna in your mouth at least 1/2 of the energy radiates away from your head). This contrasts with a microwave oven which produces 700-1000W of RF power and furthermore, has reflective sides to keep the waves in the oven until they are absorbed by the food. What this means is that it would be very difficult to heat something like your head with a mobile phone or wireless LAN. Your head is pretty similar to a plate with 3 dozen scrambled eggs on it. Think about how long it would take to warm said plate of eggs in a microwave oven. I'm betting somewhere in the neighborhood of a minute. Now imagine that the microwave is less than 1/2000th as strong and you've installed a liquid cooling system in the plate of eggs. I hope that I don't need to say any more.
_____________
Were you ever a marketing director for a failed .com media company? This sounds a bit too much like "mindshare is our biggest asset" for me to be comfortable with.
_____________
I figured that someone would point this out sooner or later. I thought that priests seemed like the professional speachmaker most likely to produce images of good honest people. Especially when compared with the other obvious choice..... Senators.
_____________
These guys aren't even crackers. They aren't breaking into computer systems or anything like that, they just steal credit cards. The only way in which they even resemble a hacker is that they use a computer to do their 'job'. But so do most receptionists. Confusing web con artists with hackers is like confusing real world con artists with priests because both make speaches as part of their work.
_____________
This is one thing that I think is really cool about Mandrake 7.2 (a distro intended for a somewhat less tech savvy group). It is one of the few installs that I've seen that sets up additional users before finishing the install process and has the option of directly logging in a selected non-root user upon reboot directly into their window manager of choice.
Obviously, thre is some security risk associated with havine the computer login for you, but it's a physical security problem and most home users probably aren't all that worried about physical security of their machines. Frankly, if someone I don't trust got into my house while I wasn't there I've got bigger problems than having them access my mp3 stash without a password.
_____________
I have to agree with you here. When used correctly "saftey" devices are an effective aid to good parents. It isn't beneficial to childern to be fully supervised 24x7 by their parents. Tools like this make it possible for parents to allow children to learn to make decisions for themselves in an environment where they are less likely to make a "wrong" decision. Being a good parent isn't about making all of your kids decisions for them it's about showing them how to make the right decisions on their own. Using a V-chip gives the parent the ability to let their children choose which programs they wish to watch and learn some independence while still making it difficult to make bad decisions.
_____________
I think that most people, even fairly libertarian ones like myself, would be able to put forth a pretty strong argument that a literate population is a public good. My life and yours are made better on a daily basis by the fact that the slack-jawed yokel at the gas station has at least a minimal ability to read and count change. Therefore I believe that investments in education produce the public good of citizens able to function at at least a minimal level in a modern society.
_____________
top.location.target="_top"
if(window.location.target != "_top") {
top.location.href=window.location.href }
This will break you out of anyone's frames which was the biggest problem that the BBB was complaining about in this case. Frankly, it's just not right to link to someone else's content within your framset to make it look like their content is your work.
_____________
The problem isn't so much that people are just ignoring the spec and rushing out products that aren't fully compatable, the problem is that the spec can't be followed. The protocol spec for Bluetooth is over 1500 pages and in some places is incompatable with itself. What we have here is a perfect example of design by committee and the problems that it causes everytime it comes up. It's simply impossible to be fully compliant with the entire spec so when designing a device so you have to choose which features you're going to support and which vendors you're going to be compatable with. Right now the leading vendor seems to be Ericsson, so if you're making a Bluetooth you want to have a chance, it'd better be compatable with Ericsson radios and your other products. Beyond that there isn't too much you can do.
_____________
It's really pretty surprising what banks will give away in an attempt go grab a few customers. I got a Palm IIIe from Citibank for signing up for a checking account. They promptly fucked me over by closing my account without warning (seems that I had to return a new signature card that they didn't send me). Turns out that landlords get pretty pissed off when you write checks against a closed account.
_____________
Does Junkbuster have an easy interface that allows you to add a site to your allow cookie list briefly? Most sites with a shopping cart won't work if they can't set a cookie.
_____________
I've always thought that it had pretty decent printing. Maybe it's just that my old workhorse printer isn't good enough to show print quality problems (HP deskjet 500, 10 years old, never jams, works pretty fast and still prints as well as the day it was made, which was pretty darn good in those days). The only beef I've had with KDE programs and printing is that they don't like to remember that I'm in the US and can't even remember the last time that I saw a piece of A4 paper. Why does my computer keep thinking tha I want that as a default?
_____________
Poor people are poor because they want to be poor.
I'm pretty sure that nobody has ever said this except for liberals when they're attempting to ridicule conservatives. Some people see creating opportunities as a better solution than handouts.
Children do not deserve a quality education if they can't afford it.
Exactly, that's why school vouchers are a good idea. Education funding should be for students and not for schools.
A $500 tax cut for the average American is generous.
Damn straight. And I'm sure that the average American would have been even happier with a $501 tax cut from Gore. Let's see $500 divided by 26 paychecks a year is, wow, an extra $20, DAMN! now I can afford a Lexus.
A $40,000 tax cut for the upper .05% is fair because they pay more taxes.
Well damnit! I think that it would be more fair if everyone paid the same amount in taxes. Let's face it. Taxes in the US are pretty low. Cutting them by a few percent isn't going to amount to much unless you're paying an awful lot in taxes already.
Estate taxes are bad.
That they are. They aren't effective at keeping an effective aristocracy from existing and they hurt people who depend on owning business property like shops and farms for their income.
Oil is good.
Sure is. Oil is pretty essential to the modern economy and it's a far sight better than coal.
Fossil fuel dependency is good. the more oil we have access to, the more gooder the good is. Exploring alternative energy sources and encouraging efficiency is bad.
Nobody is saying that, but keeping energy costs low is important too. Bush has actually shown quite a bit of support for ethanol based fuels.
Government funded research is bad. Social programs are bad. Better weapons technology is good.
Government funded research should be accountable for producing results and new knowledge. Social programs that don't provide anything beyond a free paycheck are bad effective social programs provide opportunities for a whole community. Better weapons technology is good. It's a way of spending research money while producing a tangible benefit as well.
The middle class is thriving. The middle class has a higher standard of living than 10 years ago. There is a larger and more vibrant middle class today than ever before in our country's history.
And how is this a problem caused by the current administration?
Cheap foreign labor is good for America.
Yeah, Americans like to buy things.
Do you want fried with that?
No, I'd rather have onion rings today.
_____________
That's right, I said that as far as anyone but a hardcore geek can tell windows is without cost!
Unless you build your own computer from parts it comes with an operating system. The common man doesn't build his own computer from parts. Hell, there's a lot of geeky sorts that don't do that. Granted, there are a few places where you can get a bare system, but they don't cost $150 less than the same system with Windows already installed.
The simple fact is that Linux will not be accessable to the common man until you can go to Best Buy and get the $500 reasonably modern computer with Linux preinstalled. This is what Apple is now doing. In a few months you will be able to go to a store and for less than $1000 take home a complete, modern computer with Unix preinstalled. There is so such Linux based product, so Linux is not avaliable to the common man.
Maybe this means that there's money to be made in that area. Perhaps people would buy the $1k Linux box if someone were selling and supporting it. If you think that this could be profitable, let me know. I'll take investments and give it a try.
_____________
As with most places where there is discussion there are certian topics that reappear from time to time. This is OK. Think about how many times you've had a discussion about the current lack/excess of precipitation in the last week. At the very least, Slashdot is more interesting and less repetitive than the typical discussions that happen around the office.
_____________
However, I don't think that that excuses the extremely poor reliability of the average personal computer (especially the onces that the "average guy" gets at Best Buy). There has to be a reason why software companies never offer a warranty on their product. Most people hold car dealers in pretty damn low regard, but have respect for companies like Microsoft. Why is that? You stand a much better chance of having a car dealer stand behind their product than a software maker.
_____________
The difference between your average car and your average piece of software is that if the car does break in the first couple of years the car maker will fix it for you. Microsoft on the other hand, will tell you to live with it or kindly sell you a service pack or SE version of the broken software that makes things worse rather than better.
_____________