Everything's relative. Compared to Windows, the Linux monolithic kernel is extremely lean and lightweight, because it is separated from the upper layers of the OS.
Microkernels aren't the answer if you botch the rest of the OS architecture - Windows NT being the shining example of this. When designing something new from the ground up instead of using a proven code base as your foundation, you vastly increase the chances of doing just that (botching the rest of the OS architecture.)
People have been bashing the Linux monolithic kernel architecture for "bloat" since the early days of the Torvalds vs. Tanenbaum flamewar. Look where Tanenebaum's "oh so superior" OS has gone in the past decade and a half compared to the "bloatware" Linus released.
In addition, Google has put quite a lot of work into making gmail usable (to some degree, such as reading already received emails and composing them) offline. First POP, then IMAP, and then Google Gears.
Most large screen displays ARE TVs. Anything above 30" or so and you are best off getting an HDTV.
That said, I would not get an "internet-enabled" HDTV. Just get a basic unit with HDMI inputs, a PC with DVI outputs, and a DVI-to-HDMI cable from Monoprice.
This way when the PC portion goes obsolete you can upgrade it, whereas the integrated "internet-enabled" HDTV sticks you with replacing the entire thing when the "internet-enabled" portion goes obsolete (guaranteed to happen long before the TV goes obsolete.)
Many of the 9/10 inch netbooks have a bit too much "extra space" on the screen bezel.
The end result is the 11.6" ones are not much larger physically.
To me, netbook means: 1) Significantly smaller than average screen (below the typical "price/performance" sweet spot - any normal notebook below 15" commands a price premium) 2) SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than ultraportables in its size class 3) No built-in CD-ROM (this is what allows #2 - below 15" or so in screen size, it's hard to fit an optical drive and all the other stuff you need. Remove the optical drive and the manufacturer doesn't have nearly as much miniaturization to do.) 4) Processor that permits well above average battery life (typically Intel Atom).
The problem with the 11.6" units is that you would typically think of these as being the "high end" netbooks - but they typically have the SLOWEST CPUs (due to Intel restrictions on what systems the Atom N270/280 can be used in - the Z500 series typically found in 11.6" netbooks doesn't have the same restrictions.)
So despite being a larger screen, the 11.6" netbooks were significantly slower and also had a graphics chipset 100% incompatible with Linux (GMA500). So yeah, Intel killed the 11.6" netbooks with restrictions on what systems the N270/280 could be used in.
That's exactly what happened to a friend of mine. The LIS in her Samsung phone was set off merely with New York State summer humidity, without any liquid submergence.
How old is that eTrex? As I understand it, the old "nitrogen filled" waterproff GPS units lose a lot of their waterproofness over the years as the nitrogen slowly leaks out. Plus the same tricks intended to keep water out keep it in once it gets in.
Newer waterproof Garmins have lots of rubber gaskets but not dry nitrogen filling, which means it's easier to dry out the unit in the event that water does enter the unit.
Pretty much unless you live in the American Southwest or the Sahara (or a similar extremely dry enviroment), there is significant risk.
Even moderate climates such as upstate New York have enough humidity in the summer to indicate a false positive on the LIS after a year or two - it happened to a friend with her Samsung phone. Never submerged, but the LIS was red anyway.
The funny thing is that RFID-enabled documents (at least New York State EDLs) come with small "RF protection sleeves" that effectively amount to a tinfoil hat for the RFID...
They should've used the foil protective sleeve provided with the document in question and reccommended by the organization who provided the document.
I don't know about the new passports, but RFID-enabled New York State Enhanced Driver Licenses come with a foil sleeve and a reccommendation to keep the license in the protective sleeve when not in use.
That's right - the government is providing tinfoil hats for your RFIDs already.
Yup, a sad artifact of the fact that all money the USPTO brings in from various fees goes into a general government budget pool that the USPTO has to fight for access to and receives no consideration for the fact that the money is there in the first place due to them.
Keep in mind that they didn't even DF this guy to catch him - they caught him because he eventually tried to return the radio for a reward and they recognized his voice!
A new secure, encrypted system (or at least one that implemented digital signatures for each transmitter) would probably wind up being smaller and lighter than many of the older radios installed on many planes.
The problem is: Key/certificate infrastructure? Transition period? Planes will need new antennas and potentially both systems installed simultaneously, unless the new system operates in the old frequency bands (may be too crowded for this)
In general, it's a massive organizational nightmare, and if the new system is in a different frequency band, there's the challenge of integrating it onto a massive pile of legacy aircraft platforms. Adding a new antenna to an aircraft is NOT necessarily an easy task. (Physically it is, but planning its location isn't always so easy.)
It sounds like the order came not from F-Secure corporate, but from a Three Letter Agency of some sort (Probably the FBI, but perhaps one of the FBI's counterparts in another country.)
It may not be that he was strictly ORDERED to keep quiet, but requested to do so and is honoring that request out of courtesy for the investigators.
Some stores still have a wide variety of components. (Usually but not always "strip mall" and "standalone" stores, but not always.)
Some stores only have a reduced selection.
Some stores (nearly all mall stores) have no electronic components.
In my case, Unicorn Electronics in Johnson City, NY is closer than all of the local Rat Shacks, and other than its reduced business hours compared to RS (Unicorn closes at 6), it's where I always go for components if I need them quickly.
I believe the primary difference in the "core engine" of LTSpice's simulator vs. straight SPICE is that Linear made some tweaks to make it more suitable for simulation of switching power supplies.
Well, it's bad phone design if the methods used to jailbreak the phone to permit it to run arbitrary user apps mess with anything CLOSE to the baseband processor.
At least on my AT&T Tilt, the core telephony functions run on a completely separate CPU than the user applications. If Apple is running everything on the same CPU - well that's just plain bad design.
WinMo phones have been open to app developers for years, I don't see them crashing cell towers.
Similarly, people have been "cooking" custom OS image ROMs for WinMo phones for years, and I haven't heard of them crashing cell towers either.
So either the iPhone has no way of crashing cell towers if arbitrary applications are run on it, or it has a severely deficient hardware/software architecture compared to Windows Mobile in terms of security.
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Same here. If it's not second, it's third with July being in the #2 position.
Everything's relative. Compared to Windows, the Linux monolithic kernel is extremely lean and lightweight, because it is separated from the upper layers of the OS.
Microkernels aren't the answer if you botch the rest of the OS architecture - Windows NT being the shining example of this. When designing something new from the ground up instead of using a proven code base as your foundation, you vastly increase the chances of doing just that (botching the rest of the OS architecture.)
People have been bashing the Linux monolithic kernel architecture for "bloat" since the early days of the Torvalds vs. Tanenbaum flamewar. Look where Tanenebaum's "oh so superior" OS has gone in the past decade and a half compared to the "bloatware" Linus released.
In addition, Google has put quite a lot of work into making gmail usable (to some degree, such as reading already received emails and composing them) offline. First POP, then IMAP, and then Google Gears.
Most large screen displays ARE TVs. Anything above 30" or so and you are best off getting an HDTV.
That said, I would not get an "internet-enabled" HDTV. Just get a basic unit with HDMI inputs, a PC with DVI outputs, and a DVI-to-HDMI cable from Monoprice.
This way when the PC portion goes obsolete you can upgrade it, whereas the integrated "internet-enabled" HDTV sticks you with replacing the entire thing when the "internet-enabled" portion goes obsolete (guaranteed to happen long before the TV goes obsolete.)
Many of the 9/10 inch netbooks have a bit too much "extra space" on the screen bezel.
The end result is the 11.6" ones are not much larger physically.
To me, netbook means:
1) Significantly smaller than average screen (below the typical "price/performance" sweet spot - any normal notebook below 15" commands a price premium)
2) SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than ultraportables in its size class
3) No built-in CD-ROM (this is what allows #2 - below 15" or so in screen size, it's hard to fit an optical drive and all the other stuff you need. Remove the optical drive and the manufacturer doesn't have nearly as much miniaturization to do.)
4) Processor that permits well above average battery life (typically Intel Atom).
The problem with the 11.6" units is that you would typically think of these as being the "high end" netbooks - but they typically have the SLOWEST CPUs (due to Intel restrictions on what systems the Atom N270/280 can be used in - the Z500 series typically found in 11.6" netbooks doesn't have the same restrictions.)
So despite being a larger screen, the 11.6" netbooks were significantly slower and also had a graphics chipset 100% incompatible with Linux (GMA500). So yeah, Intel killed the 11.6" netbooks with restrictions on what systems the N270/280 could be used in.
That's exactly what happened to a friend of mine. The LIS in her Samsung phone was set off merely with New York State summer humidity, without any liquid submergence.
LIS patches are notorious for false positives.
Yup, the cell phone LIS patches are pretty notorious for false positives in even moderately humid environments (like summer in upstate NY).
Yeah, that's some cheap but GOOD advertising.
If an ad said, "we stop rifle rounds" I'd be a bit skeptical.
If someone I trusted said, "my watch saved me by stopping a rifle round", I'd seriously consider that brand myself.
How old is that eTrex? As I understand it, the old "nitrogen filled" waterproff GPS units lose a lot of their waterproofness over the years as the nitrogen slowly leaks out. Plus the same tricks intended to keep water out keep it in once it gets in.
Newer waterproof Garmins have lots of rubber gaskets but not dry nitrogen filling, which means it's easier to dry out the unit in the event that water does enter the unit.
Pretty much unless you live in the American Southwest or the Sahara (or a similar extremely dry enviroment), there is significant risk.
Even moderate climates such as upstate New York have enough humidity in the summer to indicate a false positive on the LIS after a year or two - it happened to a friend with her Samsung phone. Never submerged, but the LIS was red anyway.
My New York EDL came with a foil-lined protective sleeve.
The funny thing is that RFID-enabled documents (at least New York State EDLs) come with small "RF protection sleeves" that effectively amount to a tinfoil hat for the RFID...
They should've used the foil protective sleeve provided with the document in question and reccommended by the organization who provided the document.
I don't know about the new passports, but RFID-enabled New York State Enhanced Driver Licenses come with a foil sleeve and a reccommendation to keep the license in the protective sleeve when not in use.
That's right - the government is providing tinfoil hats for your RFIDs already.
Yup, a sad artifact of the fact that all money the USPTO brings in from various fees goes into a general government budget pool that the USPTO has to fight for access to and receives no consideration for the fact that the money is there in the first place due to them.
Keep in mind that they didn't even DF this guy to catch him - they caught him because he eventually tried to return the radio for a reward and they recognized his voice!
A new secure, encrypted system (or at least one that implemented digital signatures for each transmitter) would probably wind up being smaller and lighter than many of the older radios installed on many planes.
The problem is:
Key/certificate infrastructure?
Transition period? Planes will need new antennas and potentially both systems installed simultaneously, unless the new system operates in the old frequency bands (may be too crowded for this)
In general, it's a massive organizational nightmare, and if the new system is in a different frequency band, there's the challenge of integrating it onto a massive pile of legacy aircraft platforms. Adding a new antenna to an aircraft is NOT necessarily an easy task. (Physically it is, but planning its location isn't always so easy.)
Of course, I thought of this AFTER posting, the closest terminology in computer circles to describe this guy would be "script kiddie".
Or, at the very least, modified a radio to operate on the CTA frequencies, but it sounds like he bought a stolen CTA radio.
Not a hacker or cracker by any sense of either word.
Well, a lot of botnets have been theorized to have connections with Russian organized crime.
Which probably got them connections to some disgruntled Russian ex-military types out of a job...
It sounds like the order came not from F-Secure corporate, but from a Three Letter Agency of some sort (Probably the FBI, but perhaps one of the FBI's counterparts in another country.)
It may not be that he was strictly ORDERED to keep quiet, but requested to do so and is honoring that request out of courtesy for the investigators.
It depends on the store.
Some stores still have a wide variety of components. (Usually but not always "strip mall" and "standalone" stores, but not always.)
Some stores only have a reduced selection.
Some stores (nearly all mall stores) have no electronic components.
In my case, Unicorn Electronics in Johnson City, NY is closer than all of the local Rat Shacks, and other than its reduced business hours compared to RS (Unicorn closes at 6), it's where I always go for components if I need them quickly.
I believe the primary difference in the "core engine" of LTSpice's simulator vs. straight SPICE is that Linear made some tweaks to make it more suitable for simulation of switching power supplies.
LTSpice does run quite well under WINE, I've done it.
LTSpice is by far my favorite circuit simulation software. It's easy to use and works well.
The only thing that can be hard is importing SPICE models for non-LT products (but it is possible).
Effectively, LTSpice is a marketing tool designed to sell Linear's IC products, but it is an *incredibly* high-quality tool in my opinion.
Well, it's bad phone design if the methods used to jailbreak the phone to permit it to run arbitrary user apps mess with anything CLOSE to the baseband processor.
At least on my AT&T Tilt, the core telephony functions run on a completely separate CPU than the user applications. If Apple is running everything on the same CPU - well that's just plain bad design.
WinMo phones have been open to app developers for years, I don't see them crashing cell towers.
Similarly, people have been "cooking" custom OS image ROMs for WinMo phones for years, and I haven't heard of them crashing cell towers either.
So either the iPhone has no way of crashing cell towers if arbitrary applications are run on it, or it has a severely deficient hardware/software architecture compared to Windows Mobile in terms of security.