Besides, a guy carrying a metal case (briefcase type) is probably less likely to get mugged than a guy carrying a leather laptop case.
You may improve it by putting a "Radioactive Material" or "Biohazard" sticker on the metal briefcase. A tested side effect is having more space around you in public transportation.
They don't "absorb" any costs. They pass those costs on.
They can sacrifice a little bit of their profit. A single megacorp's TV ad or a billboard can pay for quite some time of a technician.
While I agree with the latter, it costs money to move people away from a solution with which they are all familiar and comfortable.
That's true. However, the principles of most software are the same and only user interface details differ.
I own and run the domain anti-spam.org and can tell you that the spammers are jumping from one net to another, using zombie machines, etc. It's not that easy unless you block entire countries.
True. You won't get a 100% solution here, but you can alleviate things a lot using just a few domains (a thousand and half or so) and reject the mail if they are in MAIL FROM or HELO. Another thing is to reject the mail when HELO string has your own IP address, which is often used trick of the spammers.
Why should someone have to put up with ads for penis enlargers, breast augmentation, 'hot, horny coeds', miracle diets, and 'barely legal teens' at the office? Moving to a country with fewer legal protections for workers is a common, and despicable, tactic.
I didn't say "do nothing". I intended to say "prevent them from suing you for whatever slips through the countermeasures".
Please! The guy who changes flourescent lightbulbs and cleans up after functions doesn't have to understand "algorithms" to do his job -- but he probably does have e-mail so that he can get company-wide notices, requests for his services, etc. Don't be such a snob.
Misunderstanding. Algorithms aren't only computer-related; they may mean the sequence of acts needed to exchange a lightbulb as well as clicking the mail away as spam.
I don't know about you, but I have enough things to do at work that I don't want to have to read through suspect e-mail in order to avoid losing something.
If you set up the filters well, the uncertainities won't take that much work.
So people should chastise coworkers and managers who don't have OBEX-compatible phones and PDAs? Yeah, that's a great way to win friends and influence people. Whether it's OBEX or not, most PDAs and phones sync better with Outlook than with anything else.
Protocol compatibility should be considered when the device is purchased. Otherwise one gets locked to a platform, which is something to be mourned sooner or later.
You can't expect secretaries, marketing people, and HR personnel to learn W3C standards to design mail forms and stationary. Nor should they. You put a tool on their computer and they use it to do their jobs. If they use Outlook and it's easier to do using Outlook's proprietary formats and tools, then that's what they should use.
So either give them such tools or hire somebody to write them. With sufficiently-large company it may be cheaper in effect than licencing them.
Most large corporations who analyze applications based on business needs rather than open standards advocacy. That's why so many businesses use Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino servers. They serve the needs of the corporation.
The needs may change. The market situation may change. If you thought about standards in the beginning, a vendor going bankrupt or abusive won't be that big problem.
What the hell does Windows have to do with rack-mounted Cisco firewalls that exist all over the world?
Sorry, my fault. It's late here and I got blinded by the Exchange thing.
You need to back off with your anti-Microsoft rant and realize that "open standards" are often severely lacking. That's why we have the spam problem -- because SMTP has no authentication built into it and anyone can spoof anything.
Again, that's true, to certain degree (without some rudimentary authentication every server would be an open relay). However, you can add extensions, if the other side supports them too
1. It costs money to deploy a new mail client. Try doing it for a company with tens of thousands of computers.
With that size, a spam specialist is probably required. However, so big company can absorb the cost easily.
2. It costs money to train people in how to use the new mail client. Yes, many administrative people, secretaries, facilities support personnel, etc. will need training and support.
Been there. Migrated over 120 people from Lookout Express to Mozilla. Wasn't as difficult as I feared. Never looked back.
3. All advanced features of existing client, including calendar sharing, meeting scheduling, etc., disappear -- causing much disruption.
If they are used. There are alternative solutions for these too, often as an intranet app with a web interface. (Not everything has to be tightly integrated with a mail client.)
4. The spam still arrives, taking bandwidth and storage.
The worst offenders produce the most spam. They can be blacklisted on the server. "550 - mail rejected, you are on a spam blacklist. If it is by mistake, call XXXX to rectify the situation."
5. Employees can still sue the company for receiving sexually explicit spam.
Let them sign that they won't, during hiring. Or move to a country with less lawyers per capita.
6. Employees still have to train the anti-spam feature. Some will do it wrong. Some will be confused by it.
It can be done, providing the users aren't complete assholes. If they aren't able to understand a simple algorithm, it's likely they aren't able to understand other aspects of their work as well and the question is why they still are there.
7. Some "good" mail will be lost.
That's a valid point. Cursory check of the spam folder once per day solves that, together with a good whitelist. The risk depends on the model of the company, how many mail communication is by "stable" routes and how many tend to be new. A selective challenge-response can do the job here: request response, but only if the mail looks like spam, otherwise let it through.
Great idea if you are dealing with a six person office, but Spamassassin doesn't scale at all well for an enterprise type of environment.
Not every enterprise has to be that big. The ones where the cost of additional staff may be hurtful are the small ones. The big ones benefit from their size enough anyway. (And there are other kinds of mail filters, less resource-hungry than a perl monster.)
I work for an international corporation that employs over 120,000 people. Just about every one of those employees has a computer.
My one is about 500 times smaller. Otherwise pretty similar.
What happens when you deploy the new client and 5,000+ people complain that they can's sync their PDAs and cell phones with the new client?
You should've count with that possibility earlier and request usage of PDAs/phones with standard-compliant OBEX protocol. The standards are here for a reason.
What happens when someone's mail forms that they created for Outlook don't function with the new client?
Ummm... they will get redesigned to be W3C-compliant and the original author will be questioned why he didn't adhere to standards? Again, standards have a reason for their existence.
Who reconfigures the multiple firewalls to allow port 25 traffic to flow within the company (since Exchange doesn't use that port for its proprietary protocol)?
Who in their sane mind would use a proprietary protocol for a mission-critical application, if they don't want to become a vendor's puppet? Besides, Windows-based solutions are marketed as easy to maintain, so the reconfiguration should be an easy job.
You may like to rig the SMS alerts to add the message subject, and issue an official policy that the problem has to be briefly described in the subject line.
You may also consider to implement a digital signature scheme for the mail-to-SMS mails, and not beep you for unsigned mails; if the customers can't sign the mails themselves, you may set them up a simple web form that lets them beep you.
There are more solutions. What you pick depends on the exact nature of your problem.:)
Alternative:
3. Company switches to Mozilla (or any other client with antispam plugin) and teaches the employees to teach the built-in Bayesian engine by labeling spam as spam - even a monkey can learn a single click. The lone admin considers it good but it could be better, and adds a second layer of protection on the mailserver, along the lines of SpamAssassin.
4. Profit!
Spam is a problem. But usually not *that* big problem, maybe with exception of some ISPs.
You don't need the oxygen at all. What looks like burning is a thermal decomposition.
CaCO3 -> CaO + CO2
The second equation is correct:
CaO + H2O -> Ca(OH)2
The burns depend mostly on the concentration of the solution. Lime burns are well known injury between brickmasons; very nasty when that stuff gets into eyes during slaking the lime.
What about "the house with number X on its front side"? With sequential numbering along the length of the streets, no need for fancy projects and it's cheap.
BTW, I though that for medical emergencies there are other people than fire/police. What about paramedics, those people with yellow (at least here, or white) vans loaded with various medical equipment? Firefighters are usually better equipped for accessing inaccessible places and extinguishing fires.
No, an unenforceable law is a law which can be selectively enforced to political ends.
True. However, such attempts will further polarize the relations between The People and The Government, make people less likely to consent to searches and more aware of their rights to refuse various such requests. Any attempts of the government to counter this trend will lead to further polarization, then to an ultimate breakdown, which is the only thing that can really bring any change to the contemporary style of political process, considering the financial resources of We the People. Or, if the breakdown and the associated change won't happen, a dynamic equilibrium will be reached, with large-scale demand of the population for technologies ranging from anonymous communication to anonymous e-money, bringing the economy of scale benefits to black market. Cypherpunks developed the necessary algorithms for untraceable financial transactions during 90's.
Bad laws can be friends, when approached with the aikido logic.
Actually, you're still thinking of this as a technical, not a legal problem.
It is both legal and technical problem.
All that's necessary is to make it illegal to receive or record these signals with unapproved devices.
That's the legal part of the problem. But, because we the people don't have the lobbying power to influence it much, we are stuck with the technical part: let them make any laws they want, but render them unenforceable by technical means. An unenforceable law is an irrelevant law.
Which doesn't mean protests against bad legislation are not important. We just can't afford to not have a plan B.
While it would certainly be fun to play an FPS in a familiar
environment, a map designer would have to go through all sorts of
trouble once he was targeted in a terrorism investigation.
The strength here lies in the masses. Write a software that makes
generating FPS maps from photographs easy as a pie, and everybody and
their cat will start making them.
It's just not worth it.
I contend. People spend much more effort and sometimes even high
amounts of money to achieve that kind of instant worldwide recognition.
Imagine the popularity, the numbers of downloads, must-have status for
your map, all achieved by a single news report!
Besides, you can always organize the work the way it won't be clear who
made the map. Or you can wait a while until that kind of mapmaking
becomes widely-enough popular to become non-suspicious.
You Americans are too easily scared away from having fun.
The New York MTA was banning photos in the subway and this critter is a lot worse.
Not really enforceable. Just take a camera with a big enough memory card, the kind that doesn't have retractable lenses. Wear it on a strap on your neck, like a rank-and-file tourist. Wire it the way it takes a picture every 15 seconds, silently and without flash, with shutter limited to 1/30-1/40sec to keep the picture sharp even if slowly moving. Casually loiter around until the train comes. Get some practice beforehand to be able to aim the camera wherever you want without looking suspicious.
Some people like to get shit done, not wank superior over the REALLY UGLY FUCKING INTERFACES you fucking kids put together, if you even bother to put an interface together.
When I checked last, the computers are there to get things done. I'll pick a well-written software with solid insides and spartan (which some call "ugly") interface over something that needs Pentium-III just to launch the GUI and that was done by some mousehead who brags about "generating, not programming". Do you prefer a beat-up car with a top-notch engine, or a polished limousine for which you need to hire two MCSEs to push it when you need it to move?
Oh well, at least I know you'll submit your resume in an ASCII format so I can easily throw it into the dumpster.
With this attitude, no wonder you got stuck as a HR drone.
What are the penalties for importing, owning and operating FCC-noncompliant equipment? All I found when looking for "FCC offenses" was related to unlicenced *broadcasting* and/or causing interference, nothing about peaceful operation of a interference non-causing equipment.
Secondary questions: How do they plan to enforce it? How they intend to detect the noncompliant equipment? What about the black market that inevitably appears, fueled on one side by consumer demand and on the other side by all those electronics engineers whose jobs went to India?
Of course there are easy technical ways to bypass any such schemes if you can get your hands on uncrippled A/D hardware.
As long as students of electronics and computing will be as poor as usual for students, there will be a supply of such toys on every university and many high schools.
There is a parallel with the drug market, with the difference that electronics doesn't have characteristic smell, its use can't be detected from urine, and "homegrowing" of a banned circuit doesn't make a thermal signature on one's house. Not speaking about encryption for files and firmware, millions of ways to obfuscate things to pass a casual spot check, and generic-enough hardware to not be too much of proof.
Reminds me WW2, when people in occupied Europe were hiding radios and listening to banned stations. The punishment for listening to London was death. Not even mentioning the operators of the transceivers.
A nice battlefield with more opportunities to win than the Congress ground is a design and use of generic hardware modules. Units with function too generic to be banned on the basis of purpose (eg. "2-channel 16-bit AD/DA convertor with guaranteed data flow", if possible designed in a way that makes it really usable as a 'scope input, eg. with a DC input instead of capacitor-separated AC), which could be connected to any suitable amplifier on one side and an USB or Firewire port on the other side. Or even add some intelligence of its own, a microcontroller with uploadable firmware; a generic module for handling analog signals can have millions possible functions in measurement, data acquisition and automation. Document it fully. Design it so any broadcast flag crap would have to be implemented in software. Supply software as open-source. This way the vendor stays legal, and sooner or later (and more likely sooner) there will be firmware patches for removing the FCC-mandated software faults.
First, you may make a digital output, and use pulse-width modulation with a rather simple circuit to convert it to analog. Second, you may use some reversible form of audio scrambling, and have a math function before the DAC and an analog descrambler circuit after the DAC.
Even if they move to one big black chip, there are still "blank" chips - microcontrollers, CPLDs, FPGAs - on open market. Even now a do-it-yourself MP3 player or similar project appears on the Net. Another deciding factor is the growing power of embedded computers (or, "just get a XYZ module and put Linux in the boot ROM" approach).
Print notice on the back of the ones on the road that reasonably-priced souvenirs are available at the office or by mail-order at (x) for ($y) and how big the fine is for stealing THIS one. B-)
Improvement: Mount the sign to the post with either rivets, or rusty-enough bolts. Make the signs easier to buy than to "borrow" - and make the price actually reasonable.
GnuPG, as a standalone product and a sort of industry standard. OpenSSL, libmcrypt, and libmhash as libraries of algorithms and functions, the latter two also with PHP interfaces. And *many* more.:)
Companies are not going to put their mission critical phones on some open source thing. Would you?
I would. I would also put a mission critical email, web, and server systems on some open-source thing. Then I won't be so damn dependent on the vendor's mercy.
I prefer architecture designed to do things well over an architecture where doing things well is only a method to make money and where things that don't make money (or enough money to be profitable for the vendor) are neglected (and where doing things not-that-well is preferable over doing them better if the vendor's business plan asks for it).
The first time I ever heard such pseudo-words. Somebody came and wanted to kibi-tz, and kibi-byte was born.
We can borrow a precedent from existing units. There are metric tons, long tons, short tons - the latter two a little over and a little under a metric ton.
I already heard the term "vendor gigabyte" and "true gigabyte" when refering to disk capacities. Why not use this or similar nomenclature that's intuitive, instead of making new units that are incomprehensible for the outsiders and laughter-inducing for the insiders?
Nothing against neologisms that make sense, being it blog or plog or moblog - but kibibyte is just WAY too much.
Slashdot Mirror
You may improve it by putting a "Radioactive Material" or "Biohazard" sticker on the metal briefcase. A tested side effect is having more space around you in public transportation.
They can sacrifice a little bit of their profit. A single megacorp's TV ad or a billboard can pay for quite some time of a technician.
While I agree with the latter, it costs money to move people away from a solution with which they are all familiar and comfortable.
That's true. However, the principles of most software are the same and only user interface details differ.
I own and run the domain anti-spam.org and can tell you that the spammers are jumping from one net to another, using zombie machines, etc. It's not that easy unless you block entire countries.
True. You won't get a 100% solution here, but you can alleviate things a lot using just a few domains (a thousand and half or so) and reject the mail if they are in MAIL FROM or HELO. Another thing is to reject the mail when HELO string has your own IP address, which is often used trick of the spammers.
Why should someone have to put up with ads for penis enlargers, breast augmentation, 'hot, horny coeds', miracle diets, and 'barely legal teens' at the office? Moving to a country with fewer legal protections for workers is a common, and despicable, tactic.
I didn't say "do nothing". I intended to say "prevent them from suing you for whatever slips through the countermeasures".
Please! The guy who changes flourescent lightbulbs and cleans up after functions doesn't have to understand "algorithms" to do his job -- but he probably does have e-mail so that he can get company-wide notices, requests for his services, etc. Don't be such a snob.
Misunderstanding. Algorithms aren't only computer-related; they may mean the sequence of acts needed to exchange a lightbulb as well as clicking the mail away as spam.
I don't know about you, but I have enough things to do at work that I don't want to have to read through suspect e-mail in order to avoid losing something.
If you set up the filters well, the uncertainities won't take that much work.
So people should chastise coworkers and managers who don't have OBEX-compatible phones and PDAs? Yeah, that's a great way to win friends and influence people. Whether it's OBEX or not, most PDAs and phones sync better with Outlook than with anything else.
Protocol compatibility should be considered when the device is purchased. Otherwise one gets locked to a platform, which is something to be mourned sooner or later.
You can't expect secretaries, marketing people, and HR personnel to learn W3C standards to design mail forms and stationary. Nor should they. You put a tool on their computer and they use it to do their jobs. If they use Outlook and it's easier to do using Outlook's proprietary formats and tools, then that's what they should use.
So either give them such tools or hire somebody to write them. With sufficiently-large company it may be cheaper in effect than licencing them.
Most large corporations who analyze applications based on business needs rather than open standards advocacy. That's why so many businesses use Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino servers. They serve the needs of the corporation.
The needs may change. The market situation may change. If you thought about standards in the beginning, a vendor going bankrupt or abusive won't be that big problem.
What the hell does Windows have to do with rack-mounted Cisco firewalls that exist all over the world?
Sorry, my fault. It's late here and I got blinded by the Exchange thing.
You need to back off with your anti-Microsoft rant and realize that "open standards" are often severely lacking. That's why we have the spam problem -- because SMTP has no authentication built into it and anyone can spoof anything.
Again, that's true, to certain degree (without some rudimentary authentication every server would be an open relay). However, you can add extensions, if the other side supports them too
With that size, a spam specialist is probably required. However, so big company can absorb the cost easily.
2. It costs money to train people in how to use the new mail client. Yes, many administrative people, secretaries, facilities support personnel, etc. will need training and support.
Been there. Migrated over 120 people from Lookout Express to Mozilla. Wasn't as difficult as I feared. Never looked back.
3. All advanced features of existing client, including calendar sharing, meeting scheduling, etc., disappear -- causing much disruption.
If they are used. There are alternative solutions for these too, often as an intranet app with a web interface. (Not everything has to be tightly integrated with a mail client.)
4. The spam still arrives, taking bandwidth and storage.
The worst offenders produce the most spam. They can be blacklisted on the server. "550 - mail rejected, you are on a spam blacklist. If it is by mistake, call XXXX to rectify the situation."
5. Employees can still sue the company for receiving sexually explicit spam.
Let them sign that they won't, during hiring. Or move to a country with less lawyers per capita.
6. Employees still have to train the anti-spam feature. Some will do it wrong. Some will be confused by it.
It can be done, providing the users aren't complete assholes. If they aren't able to understand a simple algorithm, it's likely they aren't able to understand other aspects of their work as well and the question is why they still are there.
7. Some "good" mail will be lost.
That's a valid point. Cursory check of the spam folder once per day solves that, together with a good whitelist. The risk depends on the model of the company, how many mail communication is by "stable" routes and how many tend to be new. A selective challenge-response can do the job here: request response, but only if the mail looks like spam, otherwise let it through.
Great idea if you are dealing with a six person office, but Spamassassin doesn't scale at all well for an enterprise type of environment.
Not every enterprise has to be that big. The ones where the cost of additional staff may be hurtful are the small ones. The big ones benefit from their size enough anyway. (And there are other kinds of mail filters, less resource-hungry than a perl monster.)
I work for an international corporation that employs over 120,000 people. Just about every one of those employees has a computer.
My one is about 500 times smaller. Otherwise pretty similar.
What happens when you deploy the new client and 5,000+ people complain that they can's sync their PDAs and cell phones with the new client?
You should've count with that possibility earlier and request usage of PDAs/phones with standard-compliant OBEX protocol. The standards are here for a reason.
What happens when someone's mail forms that they created for Outlook don't function with the new client?
Ummm... they will get redesigned to be W3C-compliant and the original author will be questioned why he didn't adhere to standards? Again, standards have a reason for their existence.
Who reconfigures the multiple firewalls to allow port 25 traffic to flow within the company (since Exchange doesn't use that port for its proprietary protocol)?
Who in their sane mind would use a proprietary protocol for a mission-critical application, if they don't want to become a vendor's puppet? Besides, Windows-based solutions are marketed as easy to maintain, so the reconfiguration should be an easy job.
You may also consider to implement a digital signature scheme for the mail-to-SMS mails, and not beep you for unsigned mails; if the customers can't sign the mails themselves, you may set them up a simple web form that lets them beep you.
There are more solutions. What you pick depends on the exact nature of your problem. :)
3. Company switches to Mozilla (or any other client with antispam plugin) and teaches the employees to teach the built-in Bayesian engine by labeling spam as spam - even a monkey can learn a single click. The lone admin considers it good but it could be better, and adds a second layer of protection on the mailserver, along the lines of SpamAssassin.
4. Profit!
Spam is a problem. But usually not *that* big problem, maybe with exception of some ISPs.
CaCO3 -> CaO + CO2
The second equation is correct:
CaO + H2O -> Ca(OH)2
The burns depend mostly on the concentration of the solution. Lime burns are well known injury between brickmasons; very nasty when that stuff gets into eyes during slaking the lime.
BTW, I though that for medical emergencies there are other people than fire/police. What about paramedics, those people with yellow (at least here, or white) vans loaded with various medical equipment? Firefighters are usually better equipped for accessing inaccessible places and extinguishing fires.
For example, the smoke detectors.
True. However, such attempts will further polarize the relations between The People and The Government, make people less likely to consent to searches and more aware of their rights to refuse various such requests. Any attempts of the government to counter this trend will lead to further polarization, then to an ultimate breakdown, which is the only thing that can really bring any change to the contemporary style of political process, considering the financial resources of We the People. Or, if the breakdown and the associated change won't happen, a dynamic equilibrium will be reached, with large-scale demand of the population for technologies ranging from anonymous communication to anonymous e-money, bringing the economy of scale benefits to black market. Cypherpunks developed the necessary algorithms for untraceable financial transactions during 90's.
Bad laws can be friends, when approached with the aikido logic.
It is both legal and technical problem.
All that's necessary is to make it illegal to receive or record these signals with unapproved devices.
That's the legal part of the problem. But, because we the people don't have the lobbying power to influence it much, we are stuck with the technical part: let them make any laws they want, but render them unenforceable by technical means. An unenforceable law is an irrelevant law.
Which doesn't mean protests against bad legislation are not important. We just can't afford to not have a plan B.
The strength here lies in the masses. Write a software that makes generating FPS maps from photographs easy as a pie, and everybody and their cat will start making them.
It's just not worth it.
I contend. People spend much more effort and sometimes even high amounts of money to achieve that kind of instant worldwide recognition. Imagine the popularity, the numbers of downloads, must-have status for your map, all achieved by a single news report!
Besides, you can always organize the work the way it won't be clear who made the map. Or you can wait a while until that kind of mapmaking becomes widely-enough popular to become non-suspicious.
You Americans are too easily scared away from having fun.
Not really enforceable. Just take a camera with a big enough memory card, the kind that doesn't have retractable lenses. Wear it on a strap on your neck, like a rank-and-file tourist. Wire it the way it takes a picture every 15 seconds, silently and without flash, with shutter limited to 1/30-1/40sec to keep the picture sharp even if slowly moving. Casually loiter around until the train comes. Get some practice beforehand to be able to aim the camera wherever you want without looking suspicious.
Identification for the fire truck: "The house the smoke is coming from"
When I checked last, the computers are there to get things done. I'll pick a well-written software with solid insides and spartan (which some call "ugly") interface over something that needs Pentium-III just to launch the GUI and that was done by some mousehead who brags about "generating, not programming". Do you prefer a beat-up car with a top-notch engine, or a polished limousine for which you need to hire two MCSEs to push it when you need it to move?
Oh well, at least I know you'll submit your resume in an ASCII format so I can easily throw it into the dumpster.
With this attitude, no wonder you got stuck as a HR drone.
In that aspect, global == better.
Is it possible to receive it by a dish? If so, then - given the price of the equipment needed - denying the terrestrial licence is fairly meaningless.
Secondary questions: How do they plan to enforce it? How they intend to detect the noncompliant equipment? What about the black market that inevitably appears, fueled on one side by consumer demand and on the other side by all those electronics engineers whose jobs went to India?
As long as students of electronics and computing will be as poor as usual for students, there will be a supply of such toys on every university and many high schools.
There is a parallel with the drug market, with the difference that electronics doesn't have characteristic smell, its use can't be detected from urine, and "homegrowing" of a banned circuit doesn't make a thermal signature on one's house. Not speaking about encryption for files and firmware, millions of ways to obfuscate things to pass a casual spot check, and generic-enough hardware to not be too much of proof.
Reminds me WW2, when people in occupied Europe were hiding radios and listening to banned stations. The punishment for listening to London was death. Not even mentioning the operators of the transceivers.
A nice battlefield with more opportunities to win than the Congress ground is a design and use of generic hardware modules. Units with function too generic to be banned on the basis of purpose (eg. "2-channel 16-bit AD/DA convertor with guaranteed data flow", if possible designed in a way that makes it really usable as a 'scope input, eg. with a DC input instead of capacitor-separated AC), which could be connected to any suitable amplifier on one side and an USB or Firewire port on the other side. Or even add some intelligence of its own, a microcontroller with uploadable firmware; a generic module for handling analog signals can have millions possible functions in measurement, data acquisition and automation. Document it fully. Design it so any broadcast flag crap would have to be implemented in software. Supply software as open-source. This way the vendor stays legal, and sooner or later (and more likely sooner) there will be firmware patches for removing the FCC-mandated software faults.
First, you may make a digital output, and use pulse-width modulation with a rather simple circuit to convert it to analog. Second, you may use some reversible form of audio scrambling, and have a math function before the DAC and an analog descrambler circuit after the DAC.
Even if they move to one big black chip, there are still "blank" chips - microcontrollers, CPLDs, FPGAs - on open market. Even now a do-it-yourself MP3 player or similar project appears on the Net. Another deciding factor is the growing power of embedded computers (or, "just get a XYZ module and put Linux in the boot ROM" approach).
Improvement: Mount the sign to the post with either rivets, or rusty-enough bolts. Make the signs easier to buy than to "borrow" - and make the price actually reasonable.
Isn't life too short to waste time with petty bureaucracy?
Or do you people just want it to *feel* longer?
GnuPG, as a standalone product and a sort of industry standard. OpenSSL, libmcrypt, and libmhash as libraries of algorithms and functions, the latter two also with PHP interfaces. And *many* more. :)
I would. I would also put a mission critical email, web, and server systems on some open-source thing. Then I won't be so damn dependent on the vendor's mercy.
I prefer architecture designed to do things well over an architecture where doing things well is only a method to make money and where things that don't make money (or enough money to be profitable for the vendor) are neglected (and where doing things not-that-well is preferable over doing them better if the vendor's business plan asks for it).
We can borrow a precedent from existing units. There are metric tons, long tons, short tons - the latter two a little over and a little under a metric ton.
I already heard the term "vendor gigabyte" and "true gigabyte" when refering to disk capacities. Why not use this or similar nomenclature that's intuitive, instead of making new units that are incomprehensible for the outsiders and laughter-inducing for the insiders?
Nothing against neologisms that make sense, being it blog or plog or moblog - but kibibyte is just WAY too much.