Mobiles seem to be able to take a lot of abuse, at least if liquids are involved. One or two years ago I read a story in the newspaper about a man who accidentally dropped his mobile into a vat of hydrochloric acid. He got the mobile out, disassembled it, washed the parts separately, dried them, reassembled the phone and turned it on. It worked.
While the commercial is a bit abstract, for the European audience perhaps it has more meaning. (?)
Erm... "Firefox will give you amazing shouting powers capable of destroying an office building"?
How about an ad where the user clicks on an icon quite similar to IE's (with a name like "Internet Discoverer" underneath) and the computer says: "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that..." The user stares at the screen, cut, the Firefox logo with the slogan: "Guaranteed to not turn your computer into a crazy killing machine!"
Mac users as cannon fodder? Come on, every Mac emits an RD (Reality Distortion) Field, since every processor since the G3 is actualy a small clone of Steve Jobs' brain.
Better use the Macs as a crude shield until we can find an angsty teenager to stuff into our Eva.
Will this "ultra mode" bring back the functionality of my 486's Turbo button? My new computer doesn't have one and I'm worried that it might be slower since it doesn't have a turbo.
Note that sometimes it's a good thing that people decide to reimplement stuff in their language of choice. If people wouldn't, you'd be tied to the single implementation with whatever restrictions it has (like a C++ implementation not benefitting a Java app because it destroys binary portability).
From a "which engine uses fuel more efficiently" standpoint - yes. From a "which engine uses my money more efficiently" standpoint - no. At least in Germany, diesel is cheaper than gasoline (even biodiesel), so driving a diesel will save you money, because you have to refuel less often for less money.
Holy expletive, what are you guys doing with your diesels over there? Sulphur? No particle filters?
Over here in Germany diesel is cheaper than gas, has a better mileage and (once enough cars are using particle filters; most new diesels have one) not much worse, pollution-wise. At least not enough to offset the savings from buying less, cheaper fuel...
Hmm, if fewer line changes mean fewer accidents, maybe the German highway regulations are a good idea. FYI: In Germany you are required to use the lane which is as most to the right as possible unless you are about to get ahead of a slower car. Once it is safe to do so, you are to return to the right lane. You may only get ahead of cars by driving past their left side.
This has the benefit of dividing the traffic: Trucks, which may only drive at 80 km/h (~50 mph), usually stick to the right lane. Cars use lanes as appropriate (as they have no general speed limit). BMWs use the left lane, always. Then again, BMW drivers have a primal urge to drive at 200 km/h (~125 mph) or more whenever physically possible.
Easy window switching? With Exposé I just press F9, see all currently open windows and select the one I want to work with. Much superior to stuff like Alt-tabbing through a list of the applications, which might or might not give you the exact window you were looking for.
And if you want to find some window the currently focused app has opened you just press F10 and select it. Very easy and very useful (as some apps, like the GIMP, have the bad habit of opening dialog windows behind all other windows).
I don't see what Konfabulator has to do with this - maybe you were confusing Exposé with Dashboard?
Or, he's working on the assumption that people have learned from the iPod release that Slashdot is 100% wrong at predicting technology trends, and he is hoping to pick up some RAM share cheaply after the small dip resulting from his comment.
I think my brain hurts.
Maybe he has just bought some pharma stocks and wants to drive up aspirin sales...
I thought the answer would be "fix the broken string handling and general GUI toolkit mess".
I have pretty much given up on C++ for everything where I don't need high performance. Working with strings in C++ is a pain as you have two semi-compatible methods of string handling (char* and std::String), which means a lot of casting if you're working with a library which utilizes std::String - or if char* is too much of a PITA to use everywhere.
I also prefer one GUI toolkit that integrates everywhere over a dozen toolkits that (e.g.) look great with Gnome, somewhat decent with KDE, not very beautiful on Windows and like a complete violation of the entire look and feel concept on OS X. (I know that you can theoretically use Qt and GTK natively on OS X, it's just a mess if you're using Fink or Darwinports.)
Of course this is all just my opinion. I like OS X and Java, because stuff just works there. IMO (which certainly counts as flamebait on/.) C++ is C with OOP bolted on by means of a series of kludges which make the language neither elegant nor easy to use. Yay for "Real Programmers", but I want to work with a language, not fight against it.
I'm not an expert, but how would your dictionary know what everyone's password is? That implies to me that you keep a central list of passwords somewhere, which is surely a insecure situation.
I'm not an expert, either - steps 1 through 3 are current practice at my University. Step 4 is an attempt to tend to the problem of people keeping a single password for years. You are certainly right with pointing out the obvoius weak point.
A more secure version of step four might be a database of the password hashes used in the last months - then you'd have to change your password every N days, but the system wouldn't care about what you change it to, as long as the hash is different.
But the main question remains: Will it be performance-driven and consumer-oriented? I think that Microsoft should tackle development of their new browsing solution on a go-forward basis.
1.) Turn the workstations into a cluster every night
2.) Use the cluster to attack the users' passwords
3.) Bing! You've got a way to isolate the users with insecure passwords without annoying everyone else by bugging them about their (already secure) passwords. After one or two talks about how to create strong but memorizable passwords most users should get the trick
4.) Set modest password lifetimes. Every user may provide his/her own password, but after 90 or so days the password will be (temporarily?) added to a dictionary, which is used in step 2. Send the user a mail a few days before the password is invalidated, so (s)he can change it. Of course, this is a perfect job for a Very Small Shell Script(TM)
That should give you decent protection from trivial passwords as well as from the Post-It problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Mobiles seem to be able to take a lot of abuse, at least if liquids are involved. One or two years ago I read a story in the newspaper about a man who accidentally dropped his mobile into a vat of hydrochloric acid. He got the mobile out, disassembled it, washed the parts separately, dried them, reassembled the phone and turned it on. It worked.
While the commercial is a bit abstract, for the European audience perhaps it has more meaning. (?)
Erm... "Firefox will give you amazing shouting powers capable of destroying an office building"?
How about an ad where the user clicks on an icon quite similar to IE's (with a name like "Internet Discoverer" underneath) and the computer says: "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that..." The user stares at the screen, cut, the Firefox logo with the slogan: "Guaranteed to not turn your computer into a crazy killing machine!"
That's nothing you should tell jokes about. You could poke out someone's eye with one of those.
Mac users as cannon fodder? Come on, every Mac emits an RD (Reality Distortion) Field, since every processor since the G3 is actualy a small clone of Steve Jobs' brain.
Better use the Macs as a crude shield until we can find an angsty teenager to stuff into our Eva.
Wow, Greenland, Central Africa and Siberia must have really good antivirus software! Look at how few infections they've got!
Will this "ultra mode" bring back the functionality of my 486's Turbo button? My new computer doesn't have one and I'm worried that it might be slower since it doesn't have a turbo.
Note that sometimes it's a good thing that people decide to reimplement stuff in their language of choice. If people wouldn't, you'd be tied to the single implementation with whatever restrictions it has (like a C++ implementation not benefitting a Java app because it destroys binary portability).
From a "which engine uses fuel more efficiently" standpoint - yes. From a "which engine uses my money more efficiently" standpoint - no. At least in Germany, diesel is cheaper than gasoline (even biodiesel), so driving a diesel will save you money, because you have to refuel less often for less money.
Holy expletive, what are you guys doing with your diesels over there? Sulphur? No particle filters?
Over here in Germany diesel is cheaper than gas, has a better mileage and (once enough cars are using particle filters; most new diesels have one) not much worse, pollution-wise. At least not enough to offset the savings from buying less, cheaper fuel...
filler text
Hmm, if fewer line changes mean fewer accidents, maybe the German highway regulations are a good idea. FYI: In Germany you are required to use the lane which is as most to the right as possible unless you are about to get ahead of a slower car. Once it is safe to do so, you are to return to the right lane. You may only get ahead of cars by driving past their left side.
This has the benefit of dividing the traffic: Trucks, which may only drive at 80 km/h (~50 mph), usually stick to the right lane. Cars use lanes as appropriate (as they have no general speed limit). BMWs use the left lane, always. Then again, BMW drivers have a primal urge to drive at 200 km/h (~125 mph) or more whenever physically possible.
I find your ideas intriguing, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
But the "didn't anyone notice?" part was unintentionally funny.
I had no problems accessing google.de. What's strange is that some other people couldn't connect at all.
...it happens to a lot of people.
So, you're talking about the GamePark 32?
I'm still waiting for the gPod. That's what I call a sexy handheld.
Easy window switching? With Exposé I just press F9, see all currently open windows and select the one I want to work with. Much superior to stuff like Alt-tabbing through a list of the applications, which might or might not give you the exact window you were looking for.
And if you want to find some window the currently focused app has opened you just press F10 and select it. Very easy and very useful (as some apps, like the GIMP, have the bad habit of opening dialog windows behind all other windows).
I don't see what Konfabulator has to do with this - maybe you were confusing Exposé with Dashboard?
Or, he's working on the assumption that people have learned from the iPod release that Slashdot is 100% wrong at predicting technology trends, and he is hoping to pick up some RAM share cheaply after the small dip resulting from his comment. I think my brain hurts.
Maybe he has just bought some pharma stocks and wants to drive up aspirin sales...
I thought the answer would be "fix the broken string handling and general GUI toolkit mess".
/.) C++ is C with OOP bolted on by means of a series of kludges which make the language neither elegant nor easy to use. Yay for "Real Programmers", but I want to work with a language, not fight against it.
I have pretty much given up on C++ for everything where I don't need high performance. Working with strings in C++ is a pain as you have two semi-compatible methods of string handling (char* and std::String), which means a lot of casting if you're working with a library which utilizes std::String - or if char* is too much of a PITA to use everywhere.
I also prefer one GUI toolkit that integrates everywhere over a dozen toolkits that (e.g.) look great with Gnome, somewhat decent with KDE, not very beautiful on Windows and like a complete violation of the entire look and feel concept on OS X. (I know that you can theoretically use Qt and GTK natively on OS X, it's just a mess if you're using Fink or Darwinports.)
Of course this is all just my opinion. I like OS X and Java, because stuff just works there. IMO (which certainly counts as flamebait on
"Du for Fortran what Java did for C"...
So, it will feature a GUI toolkit that is cross-platform and doesn't look like ass on at least one operating system?
I'm not an expert, but how would your dictionary know what everyone's password is? That implies to me that you keep a central list of passwords somewhere, which is surely a insecure situation.
I'm not an expert, either - steps 1 through 3 are current practice at my University. Step 4 is an attempt to tend to the problem of people keeping a single password for years. You are certainly right with pointing out the obvoius weak point.
A more secure version of step four might be a database of the password hashes used in the last months - then you'd have to change your password every N days, but the system wouldn't care about what you change it to, as long as the hash is different.
But the main question remains: Will it be performance-driven and consumer-oriented? I think that Microsoft should tackle development of their new browsing solution on a go-forward basis.
1.) Turn the workstations into a cluster every night
2.) Use the cluster to attack the users' passwords
3.) Bing! You've got a way to isolate the users with insecure passwords without annoying everyone else by bugging them about their (already secure) passwords. After one or two talks about how to create strong but memorizable passwords most users should get the trick
4.) Set modest password lifetimes. Every user may provide his/her own password, but after 90 or so days the password will be (temporarily?) added to a dictionary, which is used in step 2. Send the user a mail a few days before the password is invalidated, so (s)he can change it. Of course, this is a perfect job for a Very Small Shell Script(TM)
That should give you decent protection from trivial passwords as well as from the Post-It problem.
Great. Teach the users to calculate MD5 in their heads and make them stick the hash of their password to the monitor...