>Most people don't need a computer any more powerful than a 2002-era machine that has hardware accelerated video
Most people want a fast and capable machine that won't limit them. They may not see themselves as gamers but they may have kids who want to play a Sims game. They want want to mess around in Second Life or watch full screen HD video.
The argument that most people just need a basic browser capable computer has been debunked for a long time and is one of the main reasons we see linux fail in the desktop marketplace. Jane User not only needs capable machine but a fast one and she has 5 facebook pages open, outlook 2010 running, and all sorts of bloatware to run her multifunction printer and Darwin knows what else. She may also run XP mode for some old application or occasionally edit the videos and photos from her camera.
A modern multicore machine is in a whole different ballpark than a Windows 2000 circa machine. Your antivirus is locking up your browser. Flash doesn't beat up your computer. Heck, right now we're looking at affordable 128 megabyte SSDs coming into the mainstream. Jane User will want that level of performance. She'll see her friends computer that wakes from hibernation or boots up in 6 or 7 seconds and wonder why her machine takes 30 seconds.
Every so often someone makes your prediction "640k is all anyone will need" and they're always wrong. Turns out both developers and users will make use of faster hardware and the market will continue to demand it. No cell phone with a docking station will replace that unless we have some incredible mobile CPU breakthrough and people stop seeing their mobile devices as borderline disposable. Laptops and desktops will be here for quite some time.
is banned from the Windows market. I'm also curious as to why he thinks open systems will win in the end. Apple's walled garden is doing pretty well and my "open" vibrant is hardly open at all. T-mobile and Samsung do their best to conspire keep it closed.
Unfortunately, writeups like these play to the slashdot crowd but the issue is bigger than "ZOMG OPEN PHONE GOOD!!!" Why is my android phone so locked down that I can't do basic things with it like I could with a PC?
The real issues is that all these companies, including google, intel, MS, Apple, etc all fear the basic commodization of their technology. Phones don't need carrier branding, carrier apps, etc. They really just need a decent data connection. Lets us use our own VOIP apps and don't put undeletable carrier bullshit on our phones.
In the meantime we can't have those things because its so much more profitable to pretend phones are premium items. Its no wonder that people aren't seeing faux openness as the same as owning an Apple or a Win7 phone, because at the end of the day its all the same. Joe User isn't installing custom ROMs. He just wants something that works and that he can afford. I suspect in two years iOS, MS, and Android will be neck to neck in marketshare regardless of who is technically more open than the other.
I know OCZ has its own wipe utility and I believe intel too. Using wiping software designed for mechanical disks makes absolutely no sense and the results from this study are 100% predictable. Oh your Gutmann wipe pattern for circa1991 MFM drives doesn't wipe SSDs? You don't say! If you needed to securely wipe one, use the proper tool.
That said, it would be nice if there was some standard way of doing this.
The problem with these sandboxed browsers is that their plugins are not sandboxed, generally.
I think Chrome is doing well because it ships with its own PDF viewer, thus eliminating the big vector of Adobe's insecure PDF viewer.
I think IE8 is doing well on these tests because if you're using IE you might be a corporate user who's computer is regularly updated by the system admin.
Both these browsers running an insecure version of Java means instant exploit. The best advice is run any browser you want, but get rid of Java and use an alternate PDF reader.
Browsers themselves are now pretty secure, its the damn plugins causing all the issues. At least Google understands this and has a sandboxed secure pdf reader in Chrome. If only they would disable the java plugin by default or make it throw a UAC prompt everytime it needs to run. Java sitting there on the browser ready to run any applet is absolute madness.
You don't need to click on anything. The malware java exploits I've seen in the wild simply load up as applets. The malware writers get them signed with stolen keys. No need for the user to do anything. Blaming the user is common here, but its shit software owned by a shit company, and has a shitty security record.
Considering most people have no need for java the best advice isn't update, its uninstall it.
Your administrator has set your Sonicwall router to do that explicitly. Sonicwall as a corporation isn't blocking Facebook for all the world, your IT guy is. Take it up with him. Maybe your boss thinks you're dicking around too much on the internet.
I still feel the original ending made more sense. The threat from an exterior adversary wouldn't unite the world in peace but it would stop the run up to nuclear war, which the comic depicts. The entire point is that the world was about to burn in nuclear fire unless someone figured out how to convince the world powers not to launch. Luckily, in real life the demand for nuclear war the Politburo wanted was slowly brought down by sane levels by a very crafty Khrushchev. A lesser man might have failed at this.
Blaming Dr. Manhattan doesn't make much sense as the Soviets would just see it as the US's own weapon being even more dangerous and might aggravate the run up to war, no quell it.
>Downloading a JRE doesn't seem that big of a deal. Most people have that installed already.
Its a huge deal. Most people don't have it installed. There's very little reason for more end users to have java.
On top if it, if you read about the main vectors for malware, you'll see java vulnerabilities top the list. Having to install java and increasing your attack surface by a ridiculous degree isn't worth it for any office product. Imagine if MS forced people to install silverlight, slashdot would be having conniptions, but java is okay? No thanks. I don't let friends and family have java or use IE or Adobe Reader. Their malware levels are almost non-existent now. Funny how that works.
Right, thank goodness the proper magical bullshit has been protected. Imagine doing your weird cult-like activity incorrectly! Thank you Vatican overseers!
Actually the U3 drives give USB identifiers claiming to be CD drives. One partition acts like a read-only CD drive while the other is a read/write removable volume. Unfortunately, these pieces of junk will continue to work.
Its a real shame there isn't some standards based USB drive encryption that 'just works' on all platforms. Would it kill the industry to just do simple AES encryption and have a mandatory 8 character or more passphrase?
and McDonalds outsells the 5-star restaurants I like to go to.
I really hate this appeal to the masses. Why we believe that the lowest common denominator's buying habits should dictate what good tech is, is beyond me.
Funny, Apple fans used to make this argument, but now that they top sales they appeal to the everyman argument.
I switched back to Chrome from Firefox after trying Chrome a while ago. I really like the security features of Chrome, built-in secure pdf reader, sandboxed flash, etc. Flash ships with the browser and auto-updates itself. Its nice when things just work. The inspect elements feature is great for working with CSS. The extensions market for Chrome has exploded lately and IETab just works. I'm not even sure which IETab to use in Firefox, the last time I tried it it became nagware. Chrome is crazy fast too. Maybe FF4 will compete with it, but FF feels like yesterdays news. Now I just run Chrome and IE/IETab for testing.
ipods and ipads aren't mobile platforms. The headline is quite correct. Note we aren't counting non-mobile android applications like Nook or Samsung tablet sales.
This makes me wonder what the best management for large open source project would be. From what I can tell it goes like this (in order of best to worst):
1. Benevolent dictator (Linus). Seems the best route. With proper delegation you can have a 'mastermind' in charge without all the baggage the other two have. 2. Democratic bureaucratic (Mozilla). Generally slow-moving and cautious. 3. Corporate control (OO). Just like #2 but with also the detriment of worrying about profits, beating competitors, justifying to shareholders, etc.
Makes me wonder why so many geeks are so fiercely corporatist/libertarian.
Youd be foolish not to use it to take out anti-aircraft, power stations, tank formations, etc or anything that is a threat to conventional units. Not to mention you get to see it in live combat, build experience, and see its limitations. The real problem was that it was taken out under conditions stealth doesnt work right like in the rain.
I'm pretty skeptical that these pieces could really have led to a stealth fighter. Stealth tech isn't that tough to figure out and I'm sure the most you can gain from these pieces is what materials were used. If your country has a run-away military budget like the US fdoes you can make all the stleath you want. For reference the US's budget is 10x China's. If anything, why dont we have nicer toys? Oh right, the waste, pork, cronyism, etc that typifies the military-industrial complex.
As a side note, you gotta be shititng me about slashdots new commenting system. It took 5 minutes to reply to this, paste doesnt work in chrome, its ugly as sin, and probably the worst commenting system on the web. Just rollback to the old one please. Slashdot isnt ready for web 2.0.
Your comment just reminded me why I hated the sequels. Too much of this universe was too quickly explained. The movie went from this mysterious cyberpunk tale to a poor man's Tron with various programs giving exposition and destroying any mystery or wonder in the films. Note to filmmakers, stop explaining everything away. Leave some room for the imagination. Don't make sequels if the story is more or less done.
The tactic is "monetize, monetize, monetize!" Their advertisers demand more and more personal data. Now that FB is this defacto monopoly on all things social media, they'll keep handing it over for further profits. FB is a corporation, the sole reason for its existence is to make money. I don't know why people can't accept that. Its why I don't like to use it. I know that to FB we're datamining goldmines.
Ah yes, you must be too young to remember before the days of flash video. Things like "Windows Media Player has crashed" messages which takes down your entire browser. There's a reason why flash video won. If HTML5 doesn't specify ONE specific codec and if that codec isnt built natively into the browser then flash will continue to win. WebM has at least the advantage of being free and open source which allows easy integration into a variety of products without cost to the browser maker. The end user doesnt need to fiddle around with yet more plugs and codecs. The browser should just be able to play video. That's really the point of the video tag.
>MPEG-LA has already claimed that WebM most likely infringes upon their patents. If you adopt it, you risk a danger that is actually likely and in MPEG-LA's interest,
In other words if they lose in the marketplace against WebM they will try to win the courtroom with their stable of bullshit patents like "drawing to screen web-based device" and "putting data in framebuffer of mobile device"
Stop defending software patents as being legitimate concepts in a debate over formats. They're roadblocks society has long overgrown. Suggesting that we should align ourselves with the larger mafiosio because he has more guns is stupid, shortsighted, and shows you to be a MPEGLA shill even if that isn't your intention.
Thank you for writing this. I'm so sick of the "everything sucks" attitude that permeates sites like slashdot, reddit, etc. The level of hateful cynicism is intolerable. I guess the happy creative smart people don't post as much as the assholes of the world. Its easy in life to be a misanthrope and people are drawn to the critical asshole because as a species we're so vain and difficult that when we see something someone else has done that's interesting we need to find a way to cut him down and make ourselves look good. There's a real vanity to candor and criticism. I wish more people understood this.
First off, there are strict laws on arms on trading ships. Typically, if you want to pull into a port you have to be completely unarmed. Secondly, the cost of maintaining snipers on every ship is prohibitive. Thirdly, arms lead to an escalation of violence which means more dead sailors. Lastly, do you expect someone to fight to the death over cheaply made Chinese goods?
The solutions proposed are technical solutions that aren't banned weapons. Sound deterrents, lasers, etc. These systems can be operated by regular staff and don't run afoul of the law. Recently, a cruise ship used a non-lethal directed sound weapon to deter pirates. In other words, this stuff works and doesn't involve hiring extra staff or carrying guns and rifles.
Because all these players are trying to muscle in on the Android platform. They all think they can out-apple google, and theyre probably wrong. These stupid stores will lead to lock-in and fragmentation. Soon Amazon will cut deals with mobile phone companies to make their store the only exclusive store on your phone. Developers will have to deal with apple-like censorship and gouging.
I'm not seeing what possible advantage this has for the consumer nor am I seeing any huge problems with the google market. Heck, the google market app since its last update is pretty awesome.
These companies should be working with google and the open handset alliance to improve the platform not balkanize it. Soon your android phone will be a proprietary mess of vendor lock in that wont work with anything. Your unrootable Amazon partnered POS will be the final nail in android's coffin. The mobile companies are doing their best to be as little open as possible via shady deals and questionable policies. Dont encourage them.
Slashdot Mirror
>Most people don't need a computer any more powerful than a 2002-era machine that has hardware accelerated video
Most people want a fast and capable machine that won't limit them. They may not see themselves as gamers but they may have kids who want to play a Sims game. They want want to mess around in Second Life or watch full screen HD video.
The argument that most people just need a basic browser capable computer has been debunked for a long time and is one of the main reasons we see linux fail in the desktop marketplace. Jane User not only needs capable machine but a fast one and she has 5 facebook pages open, outlook 2010 running, and all sorts of bloatware to run her multifunction printer and Darwin knows what else. She may also run XP mode for some old application or occasionally edit the videos and photos from her camera.
A modern multicore machine is in a whole different ballpark than a Windows 2000 circa machine. Your antivirus is locking up your browser. Flash doesn't beat up your computer. Heck, right now we're looking at affordable 128 megabyte SSDs coming into the mainstream. Jane User will want that level of performance. She'll see her friends computer that wakes from hibernation or boots up in 6 or 7 seconds and wonder why her machine takes 30 seconds.
Every so often someone makes your prediction "640k is all anyone will need" and they're always wrong. Turns out both developers and users will make use of faster hardware and the market will continue to demand it. No cell phone with a docking station will replace that unless we have some incredible mobile CPU breakthrough and people stop seeing their mobile devices as borderline disposable. Laptops and desktops will be here for quite some time.
is banned from the Windows market. I'm also curious as to why he thinks open systems will win in the end. Apple's walled garden is doing pretty well and my "open" vibrant is hardly open at all. T-mobile and Samsung do their best to conspire keep it closed.
Unfortunately, writeups like these play to the slashdot crowd but the issue is bigger than "ZOMG OPEN PHONE GOOD!!!" Why is my android phone so locked down that I can't do basic things with it like I could with a PC?
The real issues is that all these companies, including google, intel, MS, Apple, etc all fear the basic commodization of their technology. Phones don't need carrier branding, carrier apps, etc. They really just need a decent data connection. Lets us use our own VOIP apps and don't put undeletable carrier bullshit on our phones.
In the meantime we can't have those things because its so much more profitable to pretend phones are premium items. Its no wonder that people aren't seeing faux openness as the same as owning an Apple or a Win7 phone, because at the end of the day its all the same. Joe User isn't installing custom ROMs. He just wants something that works and that he can afford. I suspect in two years iOS, MS, and Android will be neck to neck in marketshare regardless of who is technically more open than the other.
I know OCZ has its own wipe utility and I believe intel too. Using wiping software designed for mechanical disks makes absolutely no sense and the results from this study are 100% predictable. Oh your Gutmann wipe pattern for circa1991 MFM drives doesn't wipe SSDs? You don't say! If you needed to securely wipe one, use the proper tool.
That said, it would be nice if there was some standard way of doing this.
The problem with these sandboxed browsers is that their plugins are not sandboxed, generally.
I think Chrome is doing well because it ships with its own PDF viewer, thus eliminating the big vector of Adobe's insecure PDF viewer.
I think IE8 is doing well on these tests because if you're using IE you might be a corporate user who's computer is regularly updated by the system admin.
Both these browsers running an insecure version of Java means instant exploit. The best advice is run any browser you want, but get rid of Java and use an alternate PDF reader.
Browsers themselves are now pretty secure, its the damn plugins causing all the issues. At least Google understands this and has a sandboxed secure pdf reader in Chrome. If only they would disable the java plugin by default or make it throw a UAC prompt everytime it needs to run. Java sitting there on the browser ready to run any applet is absolute madness.
You don't need to click on anything. The malware java exploits I've seen in the wild simply load up as applets. The malware writers get them signed with stolen keys. No need for the user to do anything. Blaming the user is common here, but its shit software owned by a shit company, and has a shitty security record.
Considering most people have no need for java the best advice isn't update, its uninstall it.
Your administrator has set your Sonicwall router to do that explicitly. Sonicwall as a corporation isn't blocking Facebook for all the world, your IT guy is. Take it up with him. Maybe your boss thinks you're dicking around too much on the internet.
I still feel the original ending made more sense. The threat from an exterior adversary wouldn't unite the world in peace but it would stop the run up to nuclear war, which the comic depicts. The entire point is that the world was about to burn in nuclear fire unless someone figured out how to convince the world powers not to launch. Luckily, in real life the demand for nuclear war the Politburo wanted was slowly brought down by sane levels by a very crafty Khrushchev. A lesser man might have failed at this.
Blaming Dr. Manhattan doesn't make much sense as the Soviets would just see it as the US's own weapon being even more dangerous and might aggravate the run up to war, no quell it.
>Downloading a JRE doesn't seem that big of a deal. Most people have that installed already.
Its a huge deal. Most people don't have it installed. There's very little reason for more end users to have java.
On top if it, if you read about the main vectors for malware, you'll see java vulnerabilities top the list. Having to install java and increasing your attack surface by a ridiculous degree isn't worth it for any office product. Imagine if MS forced people to install silverlight, slashdot would be having conniptions, but java is okay? No thanks. I don't let friends and family have java or use IE or Adobe Reader. Their malware levels are almost non-existent now. Funny how that works.
is the best way to guarantee future Republicans.
Right, thank goodness the proper magical bullshit has been protected. Imagine doing your weird cult-like activity incorrectly! Thank you Vatican overseers!
Actually the U3 drives give USB identifiers claiming to be CD drives. One partition acts like a read-only CD drive while the other is a read/write removable volume. Unfortunately, these pieces of junk will continue to work.
Its a real shame there isn't some standards based USB drive encryption that 'just works' on all platforms. Would it kill the industry to just do simple AES encryption and have a mandatory 8 character or more passphrase?
> On others, you can reliably turn it off reliably without a cryptic adventure through the mess called the "registry"
Or easily via GP.
and McDonalds outsells the 5-star restaurants I like to go to.
I really hate this appeal to the masses. Why we believe that the lowest common denominator's buying habits should dictate what good tech is, is beyond me.
Funny, Apple fans used to make this argument, but now that they top sales they appeal to the everyman argument.
I switched back to Chrome from Firefox after trying Chrome a while ago. I really like the security features of Chrome, built-in secure pdf reader, sandboxed flash, etc. Flash ships with the browser and auto-updates itself. Its nice when things just work. The inspect elements feature is great for working with CSS. The extensions market for Chrome has exploded lately and IETab just works. I'm not even sure which IETab to use in Firefox, the last time I tried it it became nagware. Chrome is crazy fast too. Maybe FF4 will compete with it, but FF feels like yesterdays news. Now I just run Chrome and IE/IETab for testing.
ipods and ipads aren't mobile platforms. The headline is quite correct. Note we aren't counting non-mobile android applications like Nook or Samsung tablet sales.
This makes me wonder what the best management for large open source project would be. From what I can tell it goes like this (in order of best to worst):
1. Benevolent dictator (Linus). Seems the best route. With proper delegation you can have a 'mastermind' in charge without all the baggage the other two have.
2. Democratic bureaucratic (Mozilla). Generally slow-moving and cautious.
3. Corporate control (OO). Just like #2 but with also the detriment of worrying about profits, beating competitors, justifying to shareholders, etc.
Makes me wonder why so many geeks are so fiercely corporatist/libertarian.
Youd be foolish not to use it to take out anti-aircraft, power stations, tank formations, etc or anything that is a threat to conventional units. Not to mention you get to see it in live combat, build experience, and see its limitations. The real problem was that it was taken out under conditions stealth doesnt work right like in the rain.
I'm pretty skeptical that these pieces could really have led to a stealth fighter. Stealth tech isn't that tough to figure out and I'm sure the most you can gain from these pieces is what materials were used. If your country has a run-away military budget like the US fdoes you can make all the stleath you want. For reference the US's budget is 10x China's. If anything, why dont we have nicer toys? Oh right, the waste, pork, cronyism, etc that typifies the military-industrial complex.
As a side note, you gotta be shititng me about slashdots new commenting system. It took 5 minutes to reply to this, paste doesnt work in chrome, its ugly as sin, and probably the worst commenting system on the web. Just rollback to the old one please. Slashdot isnt ready for web 2.0.
Your comment just reminded me why I hated the sequels. Too much of this universe was too quickly explained. The movie went from this mysterious cyberpunk tale to a poor man's Tron with various programs giving exposition and destroying any mystery or wonder in the films. Note to filmmakers, stop explaining everything away. Leave some room for the imagination. Don't make sequels if the story is more or less done.
The tactic is "monetize, monetize, monetize!" Their advertisers demand more and more personal data. Now that FB is this defacto monopoly on all things social media, they'll keep handing it over for further profits. FB is a corporation, the sole reason for its existence is to make money. I don't know why people can't accept that. Its why I don't like to use it. I know that to FB we're datamining goldmines.
>Firefox has h264 added on with the MS WMP plugin
Ah yes, you must be too young to remember before the days of flash video. Things like "Windows Media Player has crashed" messages which takes down your entire browser. There's a reason why flash video won. If HTML5 doesn't specify ONE specific codec and if that codec isnt built natively into the browser then flash will continue to win. WebM has at least the advantage of being free and open source which allows easy integration into a variety of products without cost to the browser maker. The end user doesnt need to fiddle around with yet more plugs and codecs. The browser should just be able to play video. That's really the point of the video tag.
>MPEG-LA has already claimed that WebM most likely infringes upon their patents. If you adopt it, you risk a danger that is actually likely and in MPEG-LA's interest,
In other words if they lose in the marketplace against WebM they will try to win the courtroom with their stable of bullshit patents like "drawing to screen web-based device" and "putting data in framebuffer of mobile device"
Stop defending software patents as being legitimate concepts in a debate over formats. They're roadblocks society has long overgrown. Suggesting that we should align ourselves with the larger mafiosio because he has more guns is stupid, shortsighted, and shows you to be a MPEGLA shill even if that isn't your intention.
Thank you for writing this. I'm so sick of the "everything sucks" attitude that permeates sites like slashdot, reddit, etc. The level of hateful cynicism is intolerable. I guess the happy creative smart people don't post as much as the assholes of the world. Its easy in life to be a misanthrope and people are drawn to the critical asshole because as a species we're so vain and difficult that when we see something someone else has done that's interesting we need to find a way to cut him down and make ourselves look good. There's a real vanity to candor and criticism. I wish more people understood this.
Copy/paste doesnt work in Chrome too. No love for webkit based browsers.
First off, there are strict laws on arms on trading ships. Typically, if you want to pull into a port you have to be completely unarmed. Secondly, the cost of maintaining snipers on every ship is prohibitive. Thirdly, arms lead to an escalation of violence which means more dead sailors. Lastly, do you expect someone to fight to the death over cheaply made Chinese goods?
The solutions proposed are technical solutions that aren't banned weapons. Sound deterrents, lasers, etc. These systems can be operated by regular staff and don't run afoul of the law. Recently, a cruise ship used a non-lethal directed sound weapon to deter pirates. In other words, this stuff works and doesn't involve hiring extra staff or carrying guns and rifles.
Because all these players are trying to muscle in on the Android platform. They all think they can out-apple google, and theyre probably wrong. These stupid stores will lead to lock-in and fragmentation. Soon Amazon will cut deals with mobile phone companies to make their store the only exclusive store on your phone. Developers will have to deal with apple-like censorship and gouging.
I'm not seeing what possible advantage this has for the consumer nor am I seeing any huge problems with the google market. Heck, the google market app since its last update is pretty awesome.
These companies should be working with google and the open handset alliance to improve the platform not balkanize it. Soon your android phone will be a proprietary mess of vendor lock in that wont work with anything. Your unrootable Amazon partnered POS will be the final nail in android's coffin. The mobile companies are doing their best to be as little open as possible via shady deals and questionable policies. Dont encourage them.