Re:"I'm still waiting for my under $50 Macbook."
on
The $45 Windows Laptop
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I did just that when I bought my new laptop a couple of years ago. My Toshiba cost $1100 while the closest equivalent Mac -- AFAIR it had a sligfhtly faster CPU, less RAM and a smaller hard drive -- was about $2500.
Every time I've seen this sort of comparison, closer inspection has revealed that the Apple laptop in question has a number of other features that the cheaper one doesn't. Features that always drive the cost of any laptop up - and while these features may not matter to you as a purchaser, they clearly do matter to some people.
Typically these concern size, weight, construction materials and battery life.
ISTR the US legal system is notoriously reluctant to award costs, mainly to prevent cases where huge companies can use "We'll claim costs against you!" as a tool to intimidate smaller organisations and individuals.
I don't have a big issue with counter-attacks existing, and being nasty (let's face it, if you beat on me, I'm gonna beat on you). I do have an issue with the potential for counter-attack evolving into spying and pro-active stuff. I'm sure they're doing it already.
I'm quite sure the ability to do so has existed for many years.
Way back in the mists of time I administered a network with a CIPE VPN. (This was shortly after CIPE had been found to have a number of holes that weren't going to be plugged - it was in the process of being decommissioned but I digress). The straw that broke the camels back with that was when I spotted odd behaviour, ran tcpdump on each end of the VPN and discovered that a very particular type of traffic - VoIP as it happens - was going in one end of the tunnel but not coming out the other.
Of course, it's entirely possible the block was based on packet-type heuristics rather than realtime decryption - apparently it's possible to guess with a fair degree of accuracy what sort of traffic you're looking at simply by looking at the size and frequency of the packets. In any case, it's concerning enough that a telco thought this was appropriate.
I've always maintained that the biggest risk - once you've robbed the bank - comes from the evidence.
You're carrying around an enormous amount of cash; if the police come knocking, search your house and find it - you're going to have a lot of trouble explaining why exactly you keep £10,000 in used £20's in a cardboard box in the bottom of your wardrobe.
Solution? Rob a branch of your own bank - and once you've taken the money, deposit it directly into your account.
Nope, it's soldered in too. Which means you either buy all you're likely to need for the foreseeable future now or you prepare to upgrade much earlier than you otherwise would.
On the bright side, Apple's laptops typically hold their value much better than their PC equivalents. Which makes the trade-in option much more viable.
It would seem that Microsoft doesn't want to flood the markets with cheap Windows RT tablets.
If what we see on PC's is anything to go by, this sort of pricing strategy will have the exact opposite effect. Manufacturers will grit their teeth, pay Microsoft and then cut every other conceivable corner they can think of in order to build products down to a price.
Historically, devices to help speech and hearing-impaired people to communicate were fantastically expensive. Mainly because they comprised a lot of custom-built hardware that simply doesn't sell in sufficient quantities to get mass production economies of scale.
You needed to be rich and/or have some sort of a connection to an organisation that would fund such a unit for you. Make no mistake, if Stephen Hawking hadn't been blessed with the incredible good fortune to be a genius - and if he hadn't already started to establish himself as an excellent physicist before his ALS reached the point whereby he had difficulty with speech - it's much less likely he'd have had access to the sophisticated technology that allows him to communicate as early as he did.
The iPad, however, is a complete game-changer here. It's truly a disruptive technology - suddenly, reasonably sturdy hardware with a touch-screen that's large enough for someone who hasn't (for whatever reason) got particularly good hand/eye co-ordination can be had for under £400. Pair it with appropriate software and maybe some sort of case and you've got a complete solution for under £1,000.
Yes, the app's expensive. But the whole lot is still a fraction the price of a traditional solution.
I'm not surprised the developers are in court. The companies who produce the custom-built equipment are probably terrified that their entire business model is in the process of evaporating and they'll be left with a product that is basically unsellable.
"Partial" in this case usually translated to "practically non-existent".
The support was there, but I can't remember ever seeing a single peripheral that was supported on Win95 2.1.
(Actually, that's not strictly true. I do recall a scanner that - according to the box, at least - was supported on Win95 2.1. Could never get it to work, however. Worked just fine on Win98).
More to the point: I toyed with a policy of "never buy from a retailer that drops the ball even once".
It soon became apparent that this doesn't work. If you buy any appreciable amount of hardware, the rate at which new retailers pop up is considerably slower than the rate at which existing retailers drop the ball. Sooner or later you'll run out of retailers; you've got to look at the overall picture.
The way it used to be done (haven't actually tested this in a long time) was that they included a restore partition and software that would build a restore CD based on the restore partition.
That way you could create a restore CD months after you first used the computer and it'd still give you a clean install.
Why? A CD is a few pence; putting a slightly different image on the hard disk is zero.
It's a side-effect of the desperate race to the bottom PCs have become.
IIRC it's not that simple - my former employer did the same thing and they were very keen on making sure that not only were they legally based in Ireland, they moved as many functions to Ireland as they could so they could demonstrate they really were an Irish company. The former head office effectively became a branch office with only one function.
But the thing that sparked all this - LinkedIn's recent fiasco - involved both leaked hash material and lack of salting. There isn't much you can do about this, though.
I wrote a nice long reply rebutting every single point then lost it when I hit backspace and focus was in the wrong part of the window. Grrr.
The author gets lots of things confused:
- He seems unaware that a rainbow table is equally effective against a good password as a bad one.
- He seems to think a dictionary attack comprises wholly and exclusively of words taken from a dictionary with no added numbers, symbols or punctuation. Bruce Schneier doesn't seem to agree with this, and I'm far more inclined to believe Mr. Schneier.
- He believes that a likely avenue for attack is constantly guessing a given user's password on a website. Any half-sane web service will block you long before you've tried a few thousand passwords against one username.
- He fails to note that in the case of LinkedIn, the list of password hashes itself was leaked - and this is Bad News.
- He also fails to note that in the case of LinkedIn, the password hashes were unsalted - Much Worse News.
- He also fails to note that if an unsalted list of password hashes is leaked, then it doesn't really matter how strong your password is, it's going to get found rather quickly. There's very little you or I can do about this. You could refuse to use systems that have such terrible security, but usually you only learn their security is this bad when it's far too late.
- He tops it off by recommending 10 character passwords with symbols and/or numbers. In other words, he falls foul of the problem described by Randall Munroe in XKCD some time ago.
There's plenty of options, but relatively few that an individual might be able to purchase for a pet project or for a small number of prospective clients.
Off the top of my head, Dell offer an OEM scheme whereby they'll rebrand one of their servers with your logo and install your software on it before shipping it out to your customer; another company called NEI will do something similar. I've actually got an NEI box right next to me now - I'm the customer of a company that uses them.
That's why these ladies only do the job for one event and never look back,right? Because after the first time they know what they are getting into and shouldn't make the same mistake again, right? I somehow doubt that is the case though....
You'd be surprised. ISTR the average model only stays in the job for a couple of years; bet you those couple of years are roughly the length of time it takes to go from "Hey, I really want to do this!" through "Okay, this job's crap but the next one will be the big break!" to "Stuff this. I could answer phones for a living, I'd earn more money and I could choose who I flash my tits to".
Not entirely true. NASA, I believe, have a pretty good crack at 100% bug-free software.
So when quoting your client, make sure you quote in the same ballpark as a fifty-year space programme that's meant to put a man on the moon, send a whacking great telescope into orbit and make regular trips to maintain that telescope, get a robot to Mars and report findings back to Earth.
Slashdot Mirror
I did just that when I bought my new laptop a couple of years ago. My Toshiba cost $1100 while the closest equivalent Mac -- AFAIR it had a sligfhtly faster CPU, less RAM and a smaller hard drive -- was about $2500.
Every time I've seen this sort of comparison, closer inspection has revealed that the Apple laptop in question has a number of other features that the cheaper one doesn't. Features that always drive the cost of any laptop up - and while these features may not matter to you as a purchaser, they clearly do matter to some people.
Typically these concern size, weight, construction materials and battery life.
ISTR the US legal system is notoriously reluctant to award costs, mainly to prevent cases where huge companies can use "We'll claim costs against you!" as a tool to intimidate smaller organisations and individuals.
I don't have a big issue with counter-attacks existing, and being nasty (let's face it, if you beat on me, I'm gonna beat on you). I do have an issue with the potential for counter-attack evolving into spying and pro-active stuff. I'm sure they're doing it already.
I'm quite sure the ability to do so has existed for many years.
Way back in the mists of time I administered a network with a CIPE VPN. (This was shortly after CIPE had been found to have a number of holes that weren't going to be plugged - it was in the process of being decommissioned but I digress). The straw that broke the camels back with that was when I spotted odd behaviour, ran tcpdump on each end of the VPN and discovered that a very particular type of traffic - VoIP as it happens - was going in one end of the tunnel but not coming out the other.
Of course, it's entirely possible the block was based on packet-type heuristics rather than realtime decryption - apparently it's possible to guess with a fair degree of accuracy what sort of traffic you're looking at simply by looking at the size and frequency of the packets. In any case, it's concerning enough that a telco thought this was appropriate.
It's not cut & paste, it's a character map difference. Those A(TM)'s are almost certainly smart quotes.
I've always maintained that the biggest risk - once you've robbed the bank - comes from the evidence.
You're carrying around an enormous amount of cash; if the police come knocking, search your house and find it - you're going to have a lot of trouble explaining why exactly you keep £10,000 in used £20's in a cardboard box in the bottom of your wardrobe.
Solution? Rob a branch of your own bank - and once you've taken the money, deposit it directly into your account.
Probably; back before widescreen displays were all the rage there was a whole brace of screen sizes and resolutions available.
I want a laptop that's light, cool (thermally), powerful, reliable, cheap, good A/V and silent.
You're asking for the moon.
Nope, it's soldered in too. Which means you either buy all you're likely to need for the foreseeable future now or you prepare to upgrade much earlier than you otherwise would.
On the bright side, Apple's laptops typically hold their value much better than their PC equivalents. Which makes the trade-in option much more viable.
It means in 3 years a Macbook Pro will be sold on the used market for a LOT less than current models with a replaceable battery.
Which current models with a replaceable battery did you have in mind, exactly?
Okay, this bit I don't get:
It would seem that Microsoft doesn't want to flood the markets with cheap Windows RT tablets.
If what we see on PC's is anything to go by, this sort of pricing strategy will have the exact opposite effect. Manufacturers will grit their teeth, pay Microsoft and then cut every other conceivable corner they can think of in order to build products down to a price.
Historically, devices to help speech and hearing-impaired people to communicate were fantastically expensive. Mainly because they comprised a lot of custom-built hardware that simply doesn't sell in sufficient quantities to get mass production economies of scale.
You needed to be rich and/or have some sort of a connection to an organisation that would fund such a unit for you. Make no mistake, if Stephen Hawking hadn't been blessed with the incredible good fortune to be a genius - and if he hadn't already started to establish himself as an excellent physicist before his ALS reached the point whereby he had difficulty with speech - it's much less likely he'd have had access to the sophisticated technology that allows him to communicate as early as he did.
The iPad, however, is a complete game-changer here. It's truly a disruptive technology - suddenly, reasonably sturdy hardware with a touch-screen that's large enough for someone who hasn't (for whatever reason) got particularly good hand/eye co-ordination can be had for under £400. Pair it with appropriate software and maybe some sort of case and you've got a complete solution for under £1,000.
Yes, the app's expensive. But the whole lot is still a fraction the price of a traditional solution.
I'm not surprised the developers are in court. The companies who produce the custom-built equipment are probably terrified that their entire business model is in the process of evaporating and they'll be left with a product that is basically unsellable.
"Partial" in this case usually translated to "practically non-existent".
The support was there, but I can't remember ever seeing a single peripheral that was supported on Win95 2.1.
(Actually, that's not strictly true. I do recall a scanner that - according to the box, at least - was supported on Win95 2.1. Could never get it to work, however. Worked just fine on Win98).
IME, USB on 95 2.1 was a waste of energy. Windows 98, OTOH, was ok.
Dammit, I thought I'd killed off all those brain cells.
More to the point: I toyed with a policy of "never buy from a retailer that drops the ball even once".
It soon became apparent that this doesn't work. If you buy any appreciable amount of hardware, the rate at which new retailers pop up is considerably slower than the rate at which existing retailers drop the ball. Sooner or later you'll run out of retailers; you've got to look at the overall picture.
The way it used to be done (haven't actually tested this in a long time) was that they included a restore partition and software that would build a restore CD based on the restore partition.
That way you could create a restore CD months after you first used the computer and it'd still give you a clean install.
Why? A CD is a few pence; putting a slightly different image on the hard disk is zero.
It's a side-effect of the desperate race to the bottom PCs have become.
IIRC it's not that simple - my former employer did the same thing and they were very keen on making sure that not only were they legally based in Ireland, they moved as many functions to Ireland as they could so they could demonstrate they really were an Irish company. The former head office effectively became a branch office with only one function.
True.
But the thing that sparked all this - LinkedIn's recent fiasco - involved both leaked hash material and lack of salting. There isn't much you can do about this, though.
Actually, it's rather worse.
It's an article written by someone based on work by Steve "ZOMG INTERNET ZOMBIES! ONLY STEVE CAN SAVE YOU! WITH BLINK TAGS!" Gibson.
Steve might, but Steve didn't write the article. A chap called Kevin Fogarty wrote it.
I wrote a nice long reply rebutting every single point then lost it when I hit backspace and focus was in the wrong part of the window. Grrr.
The author gets lots of things confused:
- He seems unaware that a rainbow table is equally effective against a good password as a bad one.
- He seems to think a dictionary attack comprises wholly and exclusively of words taken from a dictionary with no added numbers, symbols or punctuation. Bruce Schneier doesn't seem to agree with this, and I'm far more inclined to believe Mr. Schneier.
- He believes that a likely avenue for attack is constantly guessing a given user's password on a website. Any half-sane web service will block you long before you've tried a few thousand passwords against one username.
- He fails to note that in the case of LinkedIn, the list of password hashes itself was leaked - and this is Bad News.
- He also fails to note that in the case of LinkedIn, the password hashes were unsalted - Much Worse News.
- He also fails to note that if an unsalted list of password hashes is leaked, then it doesn't really matter how strong your password is, it's going to get found rather quickly. There's very little you or I can do about this. You could refuse to use systems that have such terrible security, but usually you only learn their security is this bad when it's far too late.
- He tops it off by recommending 10 character passwords with symbols and/or numbers. In other words, he falls foul of the problem described by Randall Munroe in XKCD some time ago.
There's plenty of options, but relatively few that an individual might be able to purchase for a pet project or for a small number of prospective clients.
Off the top of my head, Dell offer an OEM scheme whereby they'll rebrand one of their servers with your logo and install your software on it before shipping it out to your customer; another company called NEI will do something similar. I've actually got an NEI box right next to me now - I'm the customer of a company that uses them.
That's why these ladies only do the job for one event and never look back,right? Because after the first time they know what they are getting into and shouldn't make the same mistake again, right? I somehow doubt that is the case though....
You'd be surprised. ISTR the average model only stays in the job for a couple of years; bet you those couple of years are roughly the length of time it takes to go from "Hey, I really want to do this!" through "Okay, this job's crap but the next one will be the big break!" to "Stuff this. I could answer phones for a living, I'd earn more money and I could choose who I flash my tits to".
Not entirely true. NASA, I believe, have a pretty good crack at 100% bug-free software.
So when quoting your client, make sure you quote in the same ballpark as a fifty-year space programme that's meant to put a man on the moon, send a whacking great telescope into orbit and make regular trips to maintain that telescope, get a robot to Mars and report findings back to Earth.
So does that mean, if we were to say a nominal fine of $100 per case, the US would be looking at a fine of one hundred billion dollars?
(inserts pinky finger in mouth).
IIRC x86-64 debuted on the Opteron, a server chip.