I use Thunderbird on a Mac. It's allowed me to keep and organize my email locally, and support my previous move from Windows to OS X/MacOS, retaining the UI and metadata (no import with unknown conversion lossage). It's configured to download and delete my email every 10 minutes or so. My smartphone is configured to monitor the server using its built-in email client. So I can deal with important messages quickly on my phone before they move to my Mac, but they're safely off the server relatively quickly. If I need longer email access on my phone, I just shut down my Mac. When I no longer need the longer access, I just restart my Mac and it catches up. Thunderbird's also configured to use my Mac's Contacts, which is synced with my smartphone.
Any such system has compromises; I chose one that prioritizes getting the email off the server and to my backed-up Mac, while secondarily allowing most functions from my phone. MS Office 365's Outlook now offers a cross-platform solution to Thunderbird that would also work for me, but I don't want its bloat; I know how to use it well from work but choose not to at home.
I'm very interested to hear what Boeing vice president Phil Musser has to say about this event given his reported comment just 2 days ago in response to the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle 'that the company has “rigorous IT and security protocols.”'.
I raised this very question (Star Trek, transporter experiment) to my daughter when she was a teenager. Her response was, what's the difference? Our atoms have already largely completely changed over many times by now anyway. I recall reading years ago, I think it was a Time Life book or perhaps an educational movie, that we're all breathing, and thus by implication incorporating, some fraction of the actual atoms that Leonardo da Vinci breathed; a matter of statistics. Of course, that still leaves the question of whether your consciousness this very instant is already a different "thing" that it was a second ago, and only your current state of your memory leads you to believe that it is the same.
This reminds me of a similar deal that was similarly scuttled: the proposed purchase of Fairchild Semiconductor that was then owned by French company Schlumberger, to Fujitsu, a Japanese company. In either case, Fairchild would have been owned by a non-US company from a "friendly" country. National security was the given reason, but Japan's then-growing leadership in semiconductors against US companies was the understory.
I used to make jokes about which Volume 4 would publish first: Knuth's, or Star Wars (i.e., episode 1). Of course, even with all of the LucasFilm soap opera, it looks like episode 9 will beat it.
Yes, I've bought a few FLAC "CDs" online, but the last time I compared, the bits in the FLAC files with similar sample rate were mostly but not exactly equal to the bits on a real CD, and in interesting places. That tells me that downloaded copies are likely tagged by purchaser, with some unknown effect on sound quality.
Classical music is also very poorly represented by online services. I even need to go international to buy some of the better but out-of-print CDs.
Also, last time I checked, my shelf of DVD/Blu-ray discs has only a very tiny representation on the streaming services, and only somewhat better even with Netflix' DVD service. So I would otherwise have to wait some indeterminate time to view any of the media represented by my discs online. Never mind the extra material on the discs.
So I remain heavily into physical media, though I play my ripped CDs via a Squeezebox setup.
The only devices that I have that die quickly are over-the-top settop boxes for streaming TV.
However, since the OP specifically refers to events that can cause very long outages, I have some more:
Cable TV DVR. After 2 weeks, no more guide data. That assumes that cable TV is up but internet isn't. Recorded shows are always available.
Microsoft Office 365, even if installed and run locally ahead of time. It phones home every so often (39 days?) to verify your license. Think Puerto Rico.
Any documents or email kept in the cloud without local caching. Fortunately, I have none. I use a local email client.
I steer away from any of the other IoT devices such as thermostats or other appliances. I recently replaced an old smoke alarm/CO detector. I was hoping to find one that would set off the others in the house if one detected an issue, wireless without a full wireless ethernet connection. But the only options were for ones that required a full wireless internet connection back to the manufacturer's cloud service, making them full IoT devices with their attendant security issues. So I got one without such wireless communication.
Logitech has a history of this behavior. It did the same thing to its old Squeezebox product line, dropping hardware support and moving one of its remaining products (the Radio) to new software they thought would sell better (UE Smart Radio). It didn't. Fortunately, the original software was not as entangled with the Logitech-hosted service as the Harmony remotes, and both the server and client software are open source as well. So now there's ongoing support for the software, and other companies are making audio devices that are compatible with it. My setup continues to work just fine years after Logitech bailed. And my newest Squeezebox device is a RaspberryPi.
But I did research the software side of the Squeezebox product line before I originally purchased, expecting that there was a very good probability that the devices that I bought would possibly far outlast Logitech's stomach for supporting their devices (typically 5 years for consumer products). And it was the availability of open source software that clinched my decision to go with the product. One must really think twice when buying a consumer product with software in it, and thrice if that software depends on a cloud service or even regular updates.
Even otherwise simple standalone devices that have a settable timezone are exciting again, with the New England states beginning to consider dropping twice-a-year DST related changes. Can you update the software's timezone table when jurisdictions make these kinds of changes?
When our kids were in school, decades ago, our battles along these lines were many. There was McDonald's handing out arithmetic worksheets asking the students to add up the costs of Big Macs and fries, decorated with the company's cartoon characters. There were even charities that lobbied for sales or other fund raising activities, for themselves, during school instruction hours. So it's not simply big business (unless one also puts some charities in that same bucket). All of these activities had the strong support of the school district's leadership and it took a lot of effort to get these stopped or limited. Eventually, the primary supporter was voted out of office. Some district leaders continue to think of these programs as "free" instructional material or other supposed benefits. But it's all really designed to sell product or reduce instruction time, and should continue to be fought.
At the same time, we supported other fund raising activities, for the school itself, when they were held outside of instruction hours. That might be the annual Walk-A-Thon type event held on a weekend or a bake sale after school. And we involved our kids in our own charitable giving. But absolutely none of this on school time.
In the case of Google's offer, this might be a fine example to use to explain the concepts of copyright, fair use, and even open source to the targets of this unacceptable activity.
Yes, this is getting much closer to my objection to the quoted piece. Writing a program is essentially constructing a mathematical proof. Can you get from your desired inputs (assumptions) to your desired results (theorem)? Over the years, I've seen CS coursework reduce the underlying background in math, and specifically formal methods like proofs, in favor of getting in there and programming. That's a recipe for producing more programmers quickly, but not necessarily assuring that they have what it takes.
Separately, there seems to be a very strong incentive to let a cool prototype, with all that that implies about its (non-)handling of edge cases, say, turn into critical infrastructure as people pile on to enjoy the initial benefits. We as consumers accept this all the time, and often have neither the time (or think we don't) nor the capability to question things until it's too late.
A few years ago, an acquaintance was between jobs, controlling his budget, and had dropped his cable subscription. He knew about broadcast TV, but the thought of getting an exterior antenna (more money), mounting it on a roof, wiring it, aiming, etc. was daunting. I told him that where I lived, a plain old FM dipole antenna was sufficient to pull in all of the major local channels, since FM radio is close to TV channel 6. I could get sufficient signal for testing a new TV, say, just by pinning the dipole to the ceiling in the correct orientation. I had several FM dipoles sitting in a box, from various receivers I'd had over the years. I gave him one of mine and he was back in business, at least for the basics.
Years ago, I built a log periodic VHF antenna out of some random wooden stakes, some string, and some extra wire I had, put it in an unused upstairs bedroom, and aimed it at the nearest large city's towers. That was more than sufficient and cost practically nothing. We renamed the room the antenna room.
Years ago, my bank at the time sent a letter announcing a wonderful, new capability: they'd enabled my credit card to also be usable as a debit card; no change to the credit card number. Needless to say, I demanded that they remove this unrequested capability. They did, but the only way they could was by issuing a new credit-only card with a new number; a completely unnecessary inconvenience.
Yes indeed, exactly. And short of not using a card at all, there's really no alternative anyway. As someone else referenced here, the switch to chip cards has been a disaster in the US. Most stores I visit still don't accept chip cards; exactly one restaurant I've visited accepted chip cards, and the process was quite painful. I keep reading about new POS terminal updates designed to try to shorten/simplify the process, so it's far from stablized. And none of the stores I visit accepts a smartphone payment method yet. So even with a tinfoil wallet, my card's vulnerable to hacked or dishonest merchants anyway. Online, I could probably use a 1-time number, but why add to the transaction grief since my card's so exposed anyway? Credit card terms require the banks to limit my exposure to $50 if I report in a timely manner (a federal regulation), and most banks waive that too on a timely report (and I've exercised this more than once). And this limitation of liability with credit cards is one main reason why I've never had a debit card; it was many years before some banks provided similar coverage for them (but there are other reasons too).
Presumably, though, the banks have successfully offloaded the risk to merchants that have not switched to chip cards yet. And that risk is probably rather significant to those merchants, many of them small. The cost has to be paid, and eventually winds back to consumers like me as higher prices, but that's so indirect and invisible that nobody notices, so nobody complains.
But it's that hidden cost, plus the additional hidden (to me) cost of the basic transaction itself (that presumably no longer needs to include the bank's risk for this particular example) that leads me to pay cash for anything less than $10-20. It's the same reason that many small merchants want cash below a similar threshold (or charge a higher price for credit cards) even if the credit card companies' terms to them have forbidden that. But for purchases larger than that, cash is at least as impractical and risky. And the risk with credit cards is certainly nothing new (which shows that the banks didn't care from the get-go, and still don't).
Actually, the article gave all metric primary measurements, and English in parentheses for enough of them for the metric-impaired to understand the scale.
"...about 10 by 10 centimeters (4 by 4 inches) across and 2 centimeters thick"
The top extensions that I use are for features that used to be directly in the Firefox UI or even about:config but aren't now. So from my point of view, they've brought this bad situation on themselves.
Rolly Crump, one of the original Imagineers, mentions some of this in his "It's Kind of a Cute Story" book and "More Cute Stories" audio CDs that have come out fairly recently. Plus a lot more Disney history from around that era. (I have no direct interest, other than enjoying these a lot.)
My problem is this: too many sites don't even publish their password policies, so I can't even begin to tell what is an acceptable password. I may go to the trouble to use mixed case, only to find out that their password is case-insensitive. Or they may accept a long password but silently truncate it. Or they may not accept special characters, but "tell" me only with an error message when I try one. Or sites that turn right around and *send* me my new password so I won't forget it (again, without telling me ahead of time). Or this beaut from Verizon Wireless: to enter your billing password (a secondary password that you can't change if you forget even if you know your primary password there), if you have to on your phone, you convert its mixed-case letters via the phone's keys. The prompt (long after you've created your password) says that the password "abc2" is the same as "2222". In essence, they reduce everything to digits.
This is a completely new twist on "security by obscurity". Your password is defined under double secret probation.
At least most sites are now accepting greater than 8 characters. But even that took years.
Slashdot Mirror
I use Thunderbird on a Mac. It's allowed me to keep and organize my email locally, and support my previous move from Windows to OS X/MacOS, retaining the UI and metadata (no import with unknown conversion lossage). It's configured to download and delete my email every 10 minutes or so. My smartphone is configured to monitor the server using its built-in email client. So I can deal with important messages quickly on my phone before they move to my Mac, but they're safely off the server relatively quickly. If I need longer email access on my phone, I just shut down my Mac. When I no longer need the longer access, I just restart my Mac and it catches up. Thunderbird's also configured to use my Mac's Contacts, which is synced with my smartphone.
Any such system has compromises; I chose one that prioritizes getting the email off the server and to my backed-up Mac, while secondarily allowing most functions from my phone. MS Office 365's Outlook now offers a cross-platform solution to Thunderbird that would also work for me, but I don't want its bloat; I know how to use it well from work but choose not to at home.
I'm very interested to hear what Boeing vice president Phil Musser has to say about this event given his reported comment just 2 days ago in response to the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle 'that the company has “rigorous IT and security protocols.”'.
I raised this very question (Star Trek, transporter experiment) to my daughter when she was a teenager. Her response was, what's the difference? Our atoms have already largely completely changed over many times by now anyway. I recall reading years ago, I think it was a Time Life book or perhaps an educational movie, that we're all breathing, and thus by implication incorporating, some fraction of the actual atoms that Leonardo da Vinci breathed; a matter of statistics. Of course, that still leaves the question of whether your consciousness this very instant is already a different "thing" that it was a second ago, and only your current state of your memory leads you to believe that it is the same.
In some cases, removed pay phones have been restored by request: Pay phone at ranger station near Big Four Ice Caves is reinstalled.
And who remembers terms like COCOT?
This reminds me of a similar deal that was similarly scuttled: the proposed purchase of Fairchild Semiconductor that was then owned by French company Schlumberger, to Fujitsu, a Japanese company. In either case, Fairchild would have been owned by a non-US company from a "friendly" country. National security was the given reason, but Japan's then-growing leadership in semiconductors against US companies was the understory.
Just waiting for the first accident this causes.
This option is still available for some newsletters, and I use it.
I used to make jokes about which Volume 4 would publish first: Knuth's, or Star Wars (i.e., episode 1). Of course, even with all of the LucasFilm soap opera, it looks like episode 9 will beat it.
I did the comparison after uncompressing back to WAV format.
Yes, I've bought a few FLAC "CDs" online, but the last time I compared, the bits in the FLAC files with similar sample rate were mostly but not exactly equal to the bits on a real CD, and in interesting places. That tells me that downloaded copies are likely tagged by purchaser, with some unknown effect on sound quality.
Classical music is also very poorly represented by online services. I even need to go international to buy some of the better but out-of-print CDs.
Also, last time I checked, my shelf of DVD/Blu-ray discs has only a very tiny representation on the streaming services, and only somewhat better even with Netflix' DVD service. So I would otherwise have to wait some indeterminate time to view any of the media represented by my discs online. Never mind the extra material on the discs.
So I remain heavily into physical media, though I play my ripped CDs via a Squeezebox setup.
The only devices that I have that die quickly are over-the-top settop boxes for streaming TV.
However, since the OP specifically refers to events that can cause very long outages, I have some more:
I steer away from any of the other IoT devices such as thermostats or other appliances. I recently replaced an old smoke alarm/CO detector. I was hoping to find one that would set off the others in the house if one detected an issue, wireless without a full wireless ethernet connection. But the only options were for ones that required a full wireless internet connection back to the manufacturer's cloud service, making them full IoT devices with their attendant security issues. So I got one without such wireless communication.
Somewhat OT, but that would be Outlook Health, which is also being sued by its investors for alleged fraud related to reporting ads run on more screens than they'd installed. So in this case, it's not just the info(tainment) itself as directed to a captive audience, but also the service provided to the advertisers.
Logitech has a history of this behavior. It did the same thing to its old Squeezebox product line, dropping hardware support and moving one of its remaining products (the Radio) to new software they thought would sell better (UE Smart Radio). It didn't. Fortunately, the original software was not as entangled with the Logitech-hosted service as the Harmony remotes, and both the server and client software are open source as well. So now there's ongoing support for the software, and other companies are making audio devices that are compatible with it. My setup continues to work just fine years after Logitech bailed. And my newest Squeezebox device is a RaspberryPi.
But I did research the software side of the Squeezebox product line before I originally purchased, expecting that there was a very good probability that the devices that I bought would possibly far outlast Logitech's stomach for supporting their devices (typically 5 years for consumer products). And it was the availability of open source software that clinched my decision to go with the product. One must really think twice when buying a consumer product with software in it, and thrice if that software depends on a cloud service or even regular updates.
Even otherwise simple standalone devices that have a settable timezone are exciting again, with the New England states beginning to consider dropping twice-a-year DST related changes. Can you update the software's timezone table when jurisdictions make these kinds of changes?
When our kids were in school, decades ago, our battles along these lines were many. There was McDonald's handing out arithmetic worksheets asking the students to add up the costs of Big Macs and fries, decorated with the company's cartoon characters. There were even charities that lobbied for sales or other fund raising activities, for themselves, during school instruction hours. So it's not simply big business (unless one also puts some charities in that same bucket). All of these activities had the strong support of the school district's leadership and it took a lot of effort to get these stopped or limited. Eventually, the primary supporter was voted out of office. Some district leaders continue to think of these programs as "free" instructional material or other supposed benefits. But it's all really designed to sell product or reduce instruction time, and should continue to be fought.
At the same time, we supported other fund raising activities, for the school itself, when they were held outside of instruction hours. That might be the annual Walk-A-Thon type event held on a weekend or a bake sale after school. And we involved our kids in our own charitable giving. But absolutely none of this on school time.
In the case of Google's offer, this might be a fine example to use to explain the concepts of copyright, fair use, and even open source to the targets of this unacceptable activity.
And as the Wikipedia article states later, this technology dates to 1997, and includes a link to the patent from 1998. So this is not news.
Yes, this is getting much closer to my objection to the quoted piece. Writing a program is essentially constructing a mathematical proof. Can you get from your desired inputs (assumptions) to your desired results (theorem)? Over the years, I've seen CS coursework reduce the underlying background in math, and specifically formal methods like proofs, in favor of getting in there and programming. That's a recipe for producing more programmers quickly, but not necessarily assuring that they have what it takes.
Separately, there seems to be a very strong incentive to let a cool prototype, with all that that implies about its (non-)handling of edge cases, say, turn into critical infrastructure as people pile on to enjoy the initial benefits. We as consumers accept this all the time, and often have neither the time (or think we don't) nor the capability to question things until it's too late.
A few years ago, an acquaintance was between jobs, controlling his budget, and had dropped his cable subscription. He knew about broadcast TV, but the thought of getting an exterior antenna (more money), mounting it on a roof, wiring it, aiming, etc. was daunting. I told him that where I lived, a plain old FM dipole antenna was sufficient to pull in all of the major local channels, since FM radio is close to TV channel 6. I could get sufficient signal for testing a new TV, say, just by pinning the dipole to the ceiling in the correct orientation. I had several FM dipoles sitting in a box, from various receivers I'd had over the years. I gave him one of mine and he was back in business, at least for the basics.
Years ago, I built a log periodic VHF antenna out of some random wooden stakes, some string, and some extra wire I had, put it in an unused upstairs bedroom, and aimed it at the nearest large city's towers. That was more than sufficient and cost practically nothing. We renamed the room the antenna room.
This was my first thought also. Hope so, but it's been a long time.
Years ago, my bank at the time sent a letter announcing a wonderful, new capability: they'd enabled my credit card to also be usable as a debit card; no change to the credit card number. Needless to say, I demanded that they remove this unrequested capability. They did, but the only way they could was by issuing a new credit-only card with a new number; a completely unnecessary inconvenience.
Yes indeed, exactly. And short of not using a card at all, there's really no alternative anyway. As someone else referenced here, the switch to chip cards has been a disaster in the US. Most stores I visit still don't accept chip cards; exactly one restaurant I've visited accepted chip cards, and the process was quite painful. I keep reading about new POS terminal updates designed to try to shorten/simplify the process, so it's far from stablized. And none of the stores I visit accepts a smartphone payment method yet. So even with a tinfoil wallet, my card's vulnerable to hacked or dishonest merchants anyway. Online, I could probably use a 1-time number, but why add to the transaction grief since my card's so exposed anyway? Credit card terms require the banks to limit my exposure to $50 if I report in a timely manner (a federal regulation), and most banks waive that too on a timely report (and I've exercised this more than once). And this limitation of liability with credit cards is one main reason why I've never had a debit card; it was many years before some banks provided similar coverage for them (but there are other reasons too).
Presumably, though, the banks have successfully offloaded the risk to merchants that have not switched to chip cards yet. And that risk is probably rather significant to those merchants, many of them small. The cost has to be paid, and eventually winds back to consumers like me as higher prices, but that's so indirect and invisible that nobody notices, so nobody complains.
But it's that hidden cost, plus the additional hidden (to me) cost of the basic transaction itself (that presumably no longer needs to include the bank's risk for this particular example) that leads me to pay cash for anything less than $10-20. It's the same reason that many small merchants want cash below a similar threshold (or charge a higher price for credit cards) even if the credit card companies' terms to them have forbidden that. But for purchases larger than that, cash is at least as impractical and risky. And the risk with credit cards is certainly nothing new (which shows that the banks didn't care from the get-go, and still don't).
I've been in VR my entire life.
Actually, the article gave all metric primary measurements, and English in parentheses for enough of them for the metric-impaired to understand the scale.
"...about 10 by 10 centimeters (4 by 4 inches) across and 2 centimeters thick"
So apparently, it was the OP who took the queue from NASA.
The top extensions that I use are for features that used to be directly in the Firefox UI or even about:config but aren't now. So from my point of view, they've brought this bad situation on themselves.
Rolly Crump, one of the original Imagineers, mentions some of this in his "It's Kind of a Cute Story" book and "More Cute Stories" audio CDs that have come out fairly recently. Plus a lot more Disney history from around that era. (I have no direct interest, other than enjoying these a lot.)
My problem is this: too many sites don't even publish their password policies, so I can't even begin to tell what is an acceptable password. I may go to the trouble to use mixed case, only to find out that their password is case-insensitive. Or they may accept a long password but silently truncate it. Or they may not accept special characters, but "tell" me only with an error message when I try one. Or sites that turn right around and *send* me my new password so I won't forget it (again, without telling me ahead of time). Or this beaut from Verizon Wireless: to enter your billing password (a secondary password that you can't change if you forget even if you know your primary password there), if you have to on your phone, you convert its mixed-case letters via the phone's keys. The prompt (long after you've created your password) says that the password "abc2" is the same as "2222". In essence, they reduce everything to digits.
This is a completely new twist on "security by obscurity". Your password is defined under double secret probation.
At least most sites are now accepting greater than 8 characters. But even that took years.