I'm not sure about other eink devices, but the Kindle has support for "Active Content". One of those that I have installed is "Notepad": http://www.amazon.com/Notepad/...
That's all I use, but I was really hoping to see some more interesting answers than what has been provided. This is a very common "problem", and I know my text file solution has numerous deficiencies. The saving grace for a text file + vim is my proficiency with vim and the benefits that result from that. For example, there is no way in hell that a standard html + cgi based solution would ever suffice - way too slow to make updates, change status on things, move stuff around, etc. It's possible that a very rich web 2.0 thing may be able to do it, but it's got some big shoes to fill.
For detailed time tracking, I've used this before: https://projecthamster.wordpre... It's not really the same as note taking, but there's some cross over there. It was one of the easiest to use though, and that won some points in my book.
However, the cops wear body cameras and have dash cameras because we told that that's what we wanted. I don't see that as hypocrisy, really.
... pulling in the quote you replied to:
Why is it that cops aren't to be filmed, but it's okay for cops to wear body cameras and have dash cameras to record the public?
One of the reasons that "we" wanted dash/body cameras is because people were, reportedly, simultaneously being told they were not allowed to record the events and the events were violating rights. The hypocrisy is that they want to be able to tell the public when they can and can't record public events, while retaining the ability to control whether they are recording the event. The always on dash/body cam is what is being contested, because they can no longer (illegally?) force others to stop recording.
Maybe things have changed, but I used to work with several large data centers, and have also worked in many offices that also had diesel backup generators, and they were always out of the way (hidden behind fencing, or on the roof).
It was also rare that they were used. They were tested periodically, but that was like 5 minutes of minor rumbling. In those places that weren't in downtown, you may notice it, but it didn't last long and it wasn't the most obnoxious thing you'd hear. In downtown locations, you'd never know it was you and not some truck idling out back.
Really doesn't seem like enough reason to get rid of them, especially since a large datacenter means you have lots of sites VERY close to your population now, your power grid, while initially it may take a beating, will be better in the long run, and you'll get loads of transit into your neck of the woods.
But they also complained about POWER LINES!?!?! WTF?
..and set up SPF entries and reverse DNS. Also make sure Postfix is locked down and not acting as an open relay. It really is not that hard, this article comes off as whiny "I can't do it, so the world is against me" at best.
Did you even read the article? There's not much more than the summary, but there he does make note that reverse DNS and SPF records, among other things, were setup:
I've done this before,...: not on any blacklists, reverse DNS set up, SPF, DKIM and DMARC policies in place, etcetera. (Side note: mail-tester.com and Port25 are great for checking your setup.)
IPs not previously used to send email typically don’t have any reputation built up in our systems. As a result, emails from new IPs are more likely to experience deliverability issues. Once the IP has built a reputation for not sending spam, Outlook.com will typically allow for a better email delivery experience.
We will be happy if we can fly a paper plane in our own backyard anymore.
Yeah, these may be covered by any "drone" legislation as well: http://www.amazon.com/PowerUp-... (they also have a FPV one going up on kickstarter in 24 days)
... They'll be fixed up to drop remote transmitters, drop cameras into nearby trees and onto nearby buildings, and lots of other tricks.
Techniques like those are not what the majority of folks would do (and I'm skeptical that would help much at all).
This thing looks like it *will* work for all the stupid people that unbox and start flying shit where they're not allowed. Old school RC pilots are already used to following the rules (or being very careful not to get caught), so they're not the targets here. Military use aren't going to be using DJI Phantom's and off the shelf radios. I doubt they're on the same public frequencies, and they're already much more autonomous. If they do go down, they'll also self destruct when possible. These are also not the targets of this device.
The only two edge cases that are still the target demographic but may be working on countermeasures would be assholes, and maybe a very small number of semi-legit cases (reporters trying to get shots of government functions; small political groups doing a poor job of spying).
So if someone gets my phone, they can access my Yahoo accounts because all the knowledge needed to access my Yahoo accounts is contained on the phone and/or Yahoo will message it to the phone.
AFAICT, that is the case, but it's actually much worse than you imply. Unless I'm missing something, they don't need access to your phone, but just access to your SMS, which is NOT a secure channel (it's quite obscure to most people, but it's not secure).
On the other hand, and in their defense, all modern smart phones that I've seen only need to be unlocked from the lock screen (if they even have that turned on), and then you can access their email, facebook, etc etc etc without any additional auth. Even after freshly restarting a phone, you can go right into most apps with no additional auth needed.
I suspect there is a little more to it than just an SMS'd code. Perhaps the app also needs access to local account info (IMEI, etc) and compares that to the validity of the SMS'd code? This could help to mitigate attacks on the SMS channel. Still, if they get your phone, you're fucked.
... an e-ink tablet would be pretty crippled in the color display space, at least, commercially available e-ink as I have known about it thus far
I'm not absolutely certain on the exact specs, but here's an example of an always on color e-paper display in commercial use: https://www.pebble.com/pebble-... (I can't find a "hardware specs" sheet/page, but this page makes not of the e-paper: https://www.pebble.com/watches) It's also used for their Pebble Time Steel and Pebble Time. It's used on a watch face that can display a second hand, so I'm assuming it can do at least 1 refresh a second.
I doubt it'd be able to handle video, but that would be more than capable of handling the majority stuff that people do (slashdot, news sites, wikipedia, image sites, spreadsheets, word processing, data entry, etc).
I'd pay a premium for an android tablet with a decent color e-ink display and google play store (so I know i can get the Kindle, Nook, FBReader, and other standard apps). It may even be enough for me to consider entering Apple's walled garden.
And you'd think anyone with access to a laser cutter would have access to nails.
This seems better stated than most of the other rants that got upmodded.
It also seems trivial and obvious to continue that thought... the basic building supplies available world wide can be easily adapted to simple housing plans (for example, see the places that Habitat For Humanity builds... they're real houses with simple plans that ordinary folk can build out of inexpensive off the shelf materials).
How the hell is CNC milling all the parts more efficient than slapping together some 2x4's and/or cement blocks?
Their toy houses sound like an exagerated industrial design class experiment/project, but nothing with any real world applicability.
You are "doing it wrong". Using the "not wearing a condom" thing to make the charges look less serious assumes that the charge is directly related to not wearing a condom (ie. that, because of that, it is defined as "rape" there, though it may not be in most other places). No one is saying implying that an undeniably clear rape charge isn't as bad if the rapist was or wasn't wearing a condom.
FWIW, I don't have a horse in this race, and I'm not trying to make him look better or worse. Just trying to help explain one of the things people are saying.
I have no idea why you were modded down. You're absolutely right.
The OP apparently learned just enough to form those ideas and questions, but decided not to continue reading and find out that (more or less) all his proposals are already done.
1. On/off switch for "internet access". There's bunches of ways to do this. Many laptops come with a hardware switch to turn off wifi... that can do the trick. Just about any firewall software could do it, and most have a "panic" mode (including the very naive/etc/rc.d/init.d/iptables). You can up/down the network interface quite easily. All those fill his need here, but I suspect he just has no idea what he even wants - he probably doesn't want an internet access on/off switch, but one JUST for the browser, in which case, use a (local) proxy.
2. Start browser in fresh (virtual) space, but pre-populated with saved cookies. I'm ignoring the virtual/sandbox stuff, as it's unnecessary (but could be done via docker, a vm, bsd jails, chroot, etc). The browser can clear any and all data at the end of a session already, and can optionally not clear the cookies. There's also a cookies setting for "keep local data only until you quit your browser" allowing cookies to be created, but then those created during the session go away when you exit the browser. There are exceptions, third party blocking, and cookie managers.
2 - b. A good database of all the files in "my virtual space"... use your file manager. If you want to know what was newly created, use existing filesystem tools. You can even check the ~/.mozilla or ~/.config/google-chrome into git and diff it afterwards, or use etckeeper to maintain it, or a IDS like tripwire. Whatever level of detail you want.
4. When you decide to exit the browsing session, at least, the computer should save important cookies from sites you frequent for later restoration. Already done. See #2. If you want a partial save (only those you consider important, but not other ones you don't want), then you'll need to become more intimately involved with your cookie management. Start with the cookie manager and figure out what you want. Then script something to maintain your cookie DB as you see fit -that isn't really as hard as it may sound. The cookie DB is often a flat text file, or an SQLite DB. Google Chrome's is SQLite (on linux, ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Cookies)... you can use "sqlite3" and sql to manage it directly, or script something using your favorite language.
5. Shred the virtual space on exit.... if you really want this, then a short shell script can do it. Create loopback encrypted filesystem; mount; copy skel of browser directory into it; start browser using that profile; when it exits, copy out the cookies, then unmount and delete the file. I doubt that's really what is wanted though - have you thought about all the side effects?...
3. Why is it so hard to find the specifics of, step-by-step, how (not why or if) we are being conned and raped... WHOA! Hold up. This is not rape. You can watch every bit of data go back and forth, and you can control every bit of what you send or accept. Worst case (you don't trust the browser), use a local socks proxy and do your filtering there.
Are you just being incredibly obtuse? A "fake" app is one that is trying to pass itself off as another app but is not that app
Stop being an apologist. They shouldn't be referred to as "fake apps".
Back in the day, virus emails would include a "fake image attachment". It was fake because it wasn't an image, but was an exe. It was meant to get people to click it, or to get the email client to automatically run it. Things like, "flower.jpg.exe". Or using the unicode left to right override, such as "Great Song by [U+202e]3pm.SCR", which would be displayed as "Great Song by RCS.mp3", but executed as a screen saver.
Impostor, Scam, Phishing, Fraudulent... there's plenty of applicable names, but it's not a "fake app" unless it's not an app**.
** at the very very least, it shouldn't do anything like what its name suggests. For example, back in December 2014, there were 3 entries in the Apple App Store for "Quickoffice...". Two of them actually included a word processor and spreadsheet - those were not fake apps. One of them was just a grey screen with a button reading "TAP" that closed the window. Maybe the latter could be considered a fake app.
It's funny how we think that a Windows Phone OS market share that is 50% higher than Linux desktop OS marketshare is just laughable;) Latest numbers has Windows Phone share at 2.6% WW, and Linux Desktop OS share at 1.7%.
It's funny how Microsoft proponents primary excuse for the abundance of viruses affecting Windows versus other OS's was due to it's formidable market share.
We're now in the completely opposite situation on mobile platforms, and both Android/Linux (google play) and IOS (apple store) have FAR larger market share, and also address the "fake apps" faster and more thoroughly.
What's the excuse now?
PS: I'd also question the market share figures. Even if they were perfect, there's still the fuzzy definition of "desktop". I also doubt the number can be accurately reported, due to the way linux is distributed. All that said, 1.7%, while it looks like a small number, should actually prove its significance when one considers similar numbers and their impact - such as Windows Phone, which is considered to be doing poorly, but is still taken seriously.
Price per mb at the end of 2012: $0.0037/mb Price per mb Sep 13, 2014: $0.0085/mb Price per mb May 15, 2015: $0.0056/mb
Sure, it fluctuated, but it wasn't a big drop, and definitely not a historical low. The better question, is why isn't it going down further (especially on larger modules)?
Last time it was above $1/mb was in 2000. In 2002, it hit a low of $0.19/mb - THAT was a drop. First time it dipped below $0.05/mb was 2007 (got as low as $0.024/mb that year). It still hasn't hit another 1/10th the price drop ($0.0025 has never hit).
I'd like to get some more memory, but the last time I got 2x8gb, it was cheaper than it is now. Makes it hard to justify... I've expect it to eventually go down in price, and if I wait long enough, I'll have to get a different format - probably worth waiting at this point anyway (ddr4 instead of ddr3).
I assume there is nothing preventing this fork from contributing patches to the mainline kernel, and the mainline providing/porting patches to the fork assuming internal politics and code quality is in order. I can only see benefit for both sides.
Besides a hot puff of air while (slightly) publicizing some of the internal politics of the LKML (Linux Kernel Mailing List), that was exactly my thought as well.
If it does get picked up by any distros, it is very likely that only a patch made from it will be picked up. Redhat, for example, does that type of stuff all the time, and also backports many features. That's the way distros should work.
I had no idea what securelevel was, so I looked it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... It does sound somewhat useful, especially to jails/containers/vms, but it doesn't do all that much (it can be set to 1 of four modes affecting a variety of things; maybe making it a mask of sorts for more fine grained control would be better?). In any case, it does NOT sound like enough to pull people over to using it instead of the mainline.
These types of feature forks have been happening since the beginning.
$20 no need to do any hacking direct solution: http://www.monoprice.com/produ... It's a bluetooth transmitter and splitter. It splits the audio fed to it via 3.5mm TRS plug (headphone connector, like the output from your phone), and sends to up to two bluetooth speakers.
Or, just fix the wired connection on your speaker (open it up, re-soldier it), and use a normal wired splitter.
Or, open up your bluetooth speaker, and split the speaker wire to drive another speaker, and wire it to the other speaker you have.
Or use the correct speakers for your problem. For example, a bluetooth receiver, plugged into a normal audio surround receiver with normal speakers all over your house fed from that normal receiver.
Or, if you're just looking for something to do with the jawbone cause you find it useless as is now, rip out the bluetooth part and shove that into something else (like a pair of headphones).
Agreed. I don't find it difficult at all to dream up good business cases for this. They'd just be guesses, but it's easy to imagine cases.
* some enterprise based company has some windows only app. They want tablets in hands of users walking around (maybe for supervisors at a call center). Surface would make the entrance fee much higher than acceptable. Cheap android tables + a tweaked wine + their slightly tweaked app = MUCH cheaper. Could easily bring enough savings to be worth it.
* vm's still need a separate OS and license. Depending on the app, I'd rather (if forced to use a windows only app) use it under wine if possible. This would apply more-so to android tablets/phones, where I wouldn't want to install a full windows, even in a vm, and that likely isn't an option at all.
* android dongles and streaming media apps that don't support android... that dongle can do *almost* everything some (hypothetical) person wants, except one thing. Is it worth it to just give up and use a full blown windows box, or worth it to sacrifice that one special app you like, or try to use both pieces of hardware? If you can get acceptable use of that corner case and make the cheap, low power, small, device do it all, why not?
* The user never has to even see wine. It is both an executable, and a set of libraries. For example (not a great one, but a real world one nonetheless), Corel had "ported" Draw to Linux long ago using wine libs. It ran more-or-less like a native application. That was a fairly ambitious attempt and it had its issues, but it does show that it can work.
You're obviously one of the many that didn't look at the article.
Sadly, the car looks awful and is nowhere near the "ultimate" distraction it could be. I expected some actual coverage of the dash, console, steering wheel, projected heads up display, etc. Instead, it's one of the most boring looking designs I've ever seen. The only innovative coverage was the seats.... but why in the world would they put displays on the only parts that are likely to be covered? They even put big rectangular white things on the doors, but failed to make them displays. It looks like a toy made for a 2 year old.
Yes! Let's do the exact same thing again that didn't work! It will work this time for sure!
I can't tell... are you commenting on the exact same thing being the merger of the individual networks/companies, or the divestment of the local exchanges into RBOC's?
IMO, the problem is simple. The mergers had to be approved, and we (through the FCC) approved them. That was dumb. We had the means to keep them from growing too big, but, instead, we approve huge mergers (and I'd include the merger of Sprint and Nextel from 2004, which were the third and fifth largest at the time).
History is bound to repeat itself. Or, in this case, at least we can hope:-)
...It's basically the same thing as a magstripe, but different form factor....
I'm 99.9999% sure you are absolutely wrong!
Granted, the chip&signature that the US is adopting is far weaker than the chip+pin used elsewhere (the pin is "something you know" which prevents the card from being used by others, whereas the signature is just a scribble of anything you want and doesn't technically lock/unlock anything).
However, you can swipe a mag stripe and read all the info from it via VERY cheap hardware (for example, a free square reader). Doing so will give you every piece of info that is printed on the front of the card. It's the same info you'd get if you did an old style carbon copy rubbing of the card like gas stations used to use, and that's the same info you'll get off the new chip+sig mag stripes and imprints. The chip isn't there to prevent theft of the physical card.
If, however, you use the chip, then the merchant does not get the actual card number. There's a two way communication from your card, to the terminal, to the bank, and back, all using crypto. You can think of it like an SSL handshake. Once that handshake is complete, the merchant has a one time use token to use for the purchase.
What does this solve? It ensures that the merchant can't log your card number and store it in their insecure database for thieves to later take, ala the Target breach**, because they'll never have that number. More importantly for the banks, it's "proof" that the card was there, and not some cheap copy.
** I think that's what happened at Target, but there have been mixed stories, and I'm not 100% certain... maybe it involved data they got from the web instead, but I doubt that. I'm pretty sure it was card numbers scanned locally.
... but as mentioned before, the problem would be that the monitor would still tell the PC that it was connected even if the input was not set to that PC..
I was not aware of that behavior (I haven't tested it myself).
That said, there are simple software solutions for that: * man xrandr * man nvidia-settins... etc for GUI tools. Should be fairly simple to disable the display via software.
Maybe not ideal, but how often are they really going to be swapping around the displays? If it's more than a couple times a day, then I'd imagine that the desktop layout reconfiguration (from 1 to 2 screens and back) would affect workflow more than it would be worth... just connect a "main" desktop, and vnc (or similar) to the others as needed for quick-swap needs, and do the full change only when necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
Came here wondering the same thing... where the fuck is the story/documentation/info?
Where's the "Homeland" style setup (Doctorow, not Fox)?
You mean like this: http://www.battelle.org/our-wo...
I'm not sure about other eink devices, but the Kindle has support for "Active Content". One of those that I have installed is "Notepad":
http://www.amazon.com/Notepad/...
There's lots of alternatives too, and a bunch of other "apps" (ex. there's an official Scrabble app for the kindle). Unfortunately, I haven't found a good way to find them. If you go to the above link though, there's the "Customers who bought this item also bought" section that contains others, and I'm sure there's some way to find more on their site. Some other examples:
AccuWeather: http://www.amazon.com/AccuWeat...
Calculator: http://www.amazon.com/Calculat...
TakeNote: http://www.amazon.com/TakeNote...
Calendar: http://www.amazon.com/Calendar...
Notepad Plus: http://www.amazon.com/Notepad-...
I did find one way to find more just now... go to amazon, change department to Kindle eBooks, then search in that department for "active content".
Vi
That's all I use, but I was really hoping to see some more interesting answers than what has been provided. This is a very common "problem", and I know my text file solution has numerous deficiencies. The saving grace for a text file + vim is my proficiency with vim and the benefits that result from that. For example, there is no way in hell that a standard html + cgi based solution would ever suffice - way too slow to make updates, change status on things, move stuff around, etc. It's possible that a very rich web 2.0 thing may be able to do it, but it's got some big shoes to fill.
For detailed time tracking, I've used this before: https://projecthamster.wordpre...
It's not really the same as note taking, but there's some cross over there. It was one of the easiest to use though, and that won some points in my book.
However, the cops wear body cameras and have dash cameras because we told that that's what we wanted. I don't see that as hypocrisy, really.
... pulling in the quote you replied to:
Why is it that cops aren't to be filmed, but it's okay for cops to wear body cameras and have dash cameras to record the public?
One of the reasons that "we" wanted dash/body cameras is because people were, reportedly, simultaneously being told they were not allowed to record the events and the events were violating rights. The hypocrisy is that they want to be able to tell the public when they can and can't record public events, while retaining the ability to control whether they are recording the event. The always on dash/body cam is what is being contested, because they can no longer (illegally?) force others to stop recording.
Best news since, well, at least this morning: http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...
...and some ghastly diesel generators...
I don't understand this.
Maybe things have changed, but I used to work with several large data centers, and have also worked in many offices that also had diesel backup generators, and they were always out of the way (hidden behind fencing, or on the roof).
It was also rare that they were used. They were tested periodically, but that was like 5 minutes of minor rumbling. In those places that weren't in downtown, you may notice it, but it didn't last long and it wasn't the most obnoxious thing you'd hear. In downtown locations, you'd never know it was you and not some truck idling out back.
Really doesn't seem like enough reason to get rid of them, especially since a large datacenter means you have lots of sites VERY close to your population now, your power grid, while initially it may take a beating, will be better in the long run, and you'll get loads of transit into your neck of the woods.
But they also complained about POWER LINES!?!?! WTF?
..and set up SPF entries and reverse DNS. Also make sure Postfix is locked down and not acting as an open relay. It really is not that hard, this article comes off as whiny "I can't do it, so the world is against me" at best.
Did you even read the article? There's not much more than the summary, but there he does make note that reverse DNS and SPF records, among other things, were setup:
I've done this before, ...: not on any blacklists, reverse DNS set up, SPF, DKIM and DMARC policies in place, etcetera. (Side note: mail-tester.com and Port25 are great for checking your setup.)
The near-conclusion quote is his real point:
...from Microsoft's Postmaster Troubleshooting page:
IPs not previously used to send email typically don’t have any reputation built up in our systems. As a result, emails from new IPs are more likely to experience deliverability issues. Once the IP has built a reputation for not sending spam, Outlook.com will typically allow for a better email delivery experience.
We will be happy if we can fly a paper plane in our own backyard anymore.
Yeah, these may be covered by any "drone" legislation as well:
http://www.amazon.com/PowerUp-...
(they also have a FPV one going up on kickstarter in 24 days)
... They'll be fixed up to drop remote transmitters, drop cameras into nearby trees and onto nearby buildings, and lots of other tricks.
Techniques like those are not what the majority of folks would do (and I'm skeptical that would help much at all).
This thing looks like it *will* work for all the stupid people that unbox and start flying shit where they're not allowed.
Old school RC pilots are already used to following the rules (or being very careful not to get caught), so they're not the targets here.
Military use aren't going to be using DJI Phantom's and off the shelf radios. I doubt they're on the same public frequencies, and they're already much more autonomous. If they do go down, they'll also self destruct when possible. These are also not the targets of this device.
The only two edge cases that are still the target demographic but may be working on countermeasures would be assholes, and maybe a very small number of semi-legit cases (reporters trying to get shots of government functions; small political groups doing a poor job of spying).
So if someone gets my phone, they can access my Yahoo accounts because all the knowledge needed to access my Yahoo accounts is contained on the phone and/or Yahoo will message it to the phone.
AFAICT, that is the case, but it's actually much worse than you imply. Unless I'm missing something, they don't need access to your phone, but just access to your SMS, which is NOT a secure channel (it's quite obscure to most people, but it's not secure).
On the other hand, and in their defense, all modern smart phones that I've seen only need to be unlocked from the lock screen (if they even have that turned on), and then you can access their email, facebook, etc etc etc without any additional auth. Even after freshly restarting a phone, you can go right into most apps with no additional auth needed.
I suspect there is a little more to it than just an SMS'd code. Perhaps the app also needs access to local account info (IMEI, etc) and compares that to the validity of the SMS'd code? This could help to mitigate attacks on the SMS channel. Still, if they get your phone, you're fucked.
... an e-ink tablet would be pretty crippled in the color display space, at least, commercially available e-ink as I have known about it thus far
I'm not absolutely certain on the exact specs, but here's an example of an always on color e-paper display in commercial use: https://www.pebble.com/pebble-...
(I can't find a "hardware specs" sheet/page, but this page makes not of the e-paper: https://www.pebble.com/watches)
It's also used for their Pebble Time Steel and Pebble Time.
It's used on a watch face that can display a second hand, so I'm assuming it can do at least 1 refresh a second.
I doubt it'd be able to handle video, but that would be more than capable of handling the majority stuff that people do (slashdot, news sites, wikipedia, image sites, spreadsheets, word processing, data entry, etc).
I'd pay a premium for an android tablet with a decent color e-ink display and google play store (so I know i can get the Kindle, Nook, FBReader, and other standard apps). It may even be enough for me to consider entering Apple's walled garden.
And you'd think anyone with access to a laser cutter would have access to nails.
This seems better stated than most of the other rants that got upmodded.
It also seems trivial and obvious to continue that thought... the basic building supplies available world wide can be easily adapted to simple housing plans (for example, see the places that Habitat For Humanity builds... they're real houses with simple plans that ordinary folk can build out of inexpensive off the shelf materials).
How the hell is CNC milling all the parts more efficient than slapping together some 2x4's and/or cement blocks?
Their toy houses sound like an exagerated industrial design class experiment/project, but nothing with any real world applicability.
You are "doing it wrong".
Using the "not wearing a condom" thing to make the charges look less serious assumes that the charge is directly related to not wearing a condom (ie. that, because of that, it is defined as "rape" there, though it may not be in most other places). No one is saying implying that an undeniably clear rape charge isn't as bad if the rapist was or wasn't wearing a condom.
FWIW, I don't have a horse in this race, and I'm not trying to make him look better or worse. Just trying to help explain one of the things people are saying.
I have no idea why you were modded down. You're absolutely right.
The OP apparently learned just enough to form those ideas and questions, but decided not to continue reading and find out that (more or less) all his proposals are already done.
1. On/off switch for "internet access". There's bunches of ways to do this. Many laptops come with a hardware switch to turn off wifi... that can do the trick. Just about any firewall software could do it, and most have a "panic" mode (including the very naive /etc/rc.d/init.d/iptables). You can up/down the network interface quite easily. All those fill his need here, but I suspect he just has no idea what he even wants - he probably doesn't want an internet access on/off switch, but one JUST for the browser, in which case, use a (local) proxy.
2. Start browser in fresh (virtual) space, but pre-populated with saved cookies. I'm ignoring the virtual/sandbox stuff, as it's unnecessary (but could be done via docker, a vm, bsd jails, chroot, etc). The browser can clear any and all data at the end of a session already, and can optionally not clear the cookies. There's also a cookies setting for "keep local data only until you quit your browser" allowing cookies to be created, but then those created during the session go away when you exit the browser. There are exceptions, third party blocking, and cookie managers.
2 - b. A good database of all the files in "my virtual space"... use your file manager. If you want to know what was newly created, use existing filesystem tools. You can even check the ~/.mozilla or ~/.config/google-chrome into git and diff it afterwards, or use etckeeper to maintain it, or a IDS like tripwire. Whatever level of detail you want.
4. When you decide to exit the browsing session, at least, the computer should save important cookies from sites you frequent for later restoration.
Already done. See #2. If you want a partial save (only those you consider important, but not other ones you don't want), then you'll need to become more intimately involved with your cookie management. Start with the cookie manager and figure out what you want. Then script something to maintain your cookie DB as you see fit -that isn't really as hard as it may sound. The cookie DB is often a flat text file, or an SQLite DB. Google Chrome's is SQLite (on linux, ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Cookies)... you can use "sqlite3" and sql to manage it directly, or script something using your favorite language.
5. Shred the virtual space on exit.... if you really want this, then a short shell script can do it. Create loopback encrypted filesystem; mount; copy skel of browser directory into it; start browser using that profile; when it exits, copy out the cookies, then unmount and delete the file. I doubt that's really what is wanted though - have you thought about all the side effects? ...
3. Why is it so hard to find the specifics of, step-by-step, how (not why or if) we are being conned and raped...
WHOA! Hold up. This is not rape. You can watch every bit of data go back and forth, and you can control every bit of what you send or accept. Worst case (you don't trust the browser), use a local socks proxy and do your filtering there.
Are you just being incredibly obtuse? A "fake" app is one that is trying to pass itself off as another app but is not that app
Stop being an apologist. They shouldn't be referred to as "fake apps".
Back in the day, virus emails would include a "fake image attachment". It was fake because it wasn't an image, but was an exe. It was meant to get people to click it, or to get the email client to automatically run it. Things like, "flower.jpg.exe". Or using the unicode left to right override, such as "Great Song by [U+202e]3pm.SCR", which would be displayed as "Great Song by RCS.mp3", but executed as a screen saver.
Impostor, Scam, Phishing, Fraudulent... there's plenty of applicable names, but it's not a "fake app" unless it's not an app**.
** at the very very least, it shouldn't do anything like what its name suggests. For example, back in December 2014, there were 3 entries in the Apple App Store for "Quickoffice ...". Two of them actually included a word processor and spreadsheet - those were not fake apps. One of them was just a grey screen with a button reading "TAP" that closed the window. Maybe the latter could be considered a fake app.
It's funny how we think that a Windows Phone OS market share that is 50% higher than Linux desktop OS marketshare is just laughable ;) Latest numbers has Windows Phone share at 2.6% WW, and Linux Desktop OS share at 1.7%.
It's funny how Microsoft proponents primary excuse for the abundance of viruses affecting Windows versus other OS's was due to it's formidable market share.
We're now in the completely opposite situation on mobile platforms, and both Android/Linux (google play) and IOS (apple store) have FAR larger market share, and also address the "fake apps" faster and more thoroughly.
What's the excuse now?
PS: I'd also question the market share figures. Even if they were perfect, there's still the fuzzy definition of "desktop". I also doubt the number can be accurately reported, due to the way linux is distributed. All that said, 1.7%, while it looks like a small number, should actually prove its significance when one considers similar numbers and their impact - such as Windows Phone, which is considered to be doing poorly, but is still taken seriously.
Came here to same just about the same thing.
Even brought along some facts: http://www.jcmit.com/memorypri...
Price per mb at the end of 2012: $0.0037/mb
Price per mb Sep 13, 2014: $0.0085/mb
Price per mb May 15, 2015: $0.0056/mb
Sure, it fluctuated, but it wasn't a big drop, and definitely not a historical low.
The better question, is why isn't it going down further (especially on larger modules)?
Last time it was above $1/mb was in 2000.
In 2002, it hit a low of $0.19/mb - THAT was a drop.
First time it dipped below $0.05/mb was 2007 (got as low as $0.024/mb that year).
It still hasn't hit another 1/10th the price drop ($0.0025 has never hit).
I'd like to get some more memory, but the last time I got 2x8gb, it was cheaper than it is now. Makes it hard to justify... I've expect it to eventually go down in price, and if I wait long enough, I'll have to get a different format - probably worth waiting at this point anyway (ddr4 instead of ddr3).
I assume there is nothing preventing this fork from contributing patches to the mainline kernel, and the mainline providing/porting patches to the fork assuming internal politics and code quality is in order. I can only see benefit for both sides.
Besides a hot puff of air while (slightly) publicizing some of the internal politics of the LKML (Linux Kernel Mailing List), that was exactly my thought as well.
If it does get picked up by any distros, it is very likely that only a patch made from it will be picked up. Redhat, for example, does that type of stuff all the time, and also backports many features. That's the way distros should work.
I had no idea what securelevel was, so I looked it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It does sound somewhat useful, especially to jails/containers/vms, but it doesn't do all that much (it can be set to 1 of four modes affecting a variety of things; maybe making it a mask of sorts for more fine grained control would be better?).
In any case, it does NOT sound like enough to pull people over to using it instead of the mainline.
These types of feature forks have been happening since the beginning.
$20 no need to do any hacking direct solution: http://www.monoprice.com/produ...
It's a bluetooth transmitter and splitter. It splits the audio fed to it via 3.5mm TRS plug (headphone connector, like the output from your phone), and sends to up to two bluetooth speakers.
Or, just fix the wired connection on your speaker (open it up, re-soldier it), and use a normal wired splitter.
Or, open up your bluetooth speaker, and split the speaker wire to drive another speaker, and wire it to the other speaker you have.
Or use the correct speakers for your problem. For example, a bluetooth receiver, plugged into a normal audio surround receiver with normal speakers all over your house fed from that normal receiver.
Or, if you're just looking for something to do with the jawbone cause you find it useless as is now, rip out the bluetooth part and shove that into something else (like a pair of headphones).
Agreed. I don't find it difficult at all to dream up good business cases for this. They'd just be guesses, but it's easy to imagine cases.
* some enterprise based company has some windows only app. They want tablets in hands of users walking around (maybe for supervisors at a call center). Surface would make the entrance fee much higher than acceptable. Cheap android tables + a tweaked wine + their slightly tweaked app = MUCH cheaper. Could easily bring enough savings to be worth it.
* vm's still need a separate OS and license. Depending on the app, I'd rather (if forced to use a windows only app) use it under wine if possible. This would apply more-so to android tablets/phones, where I wouldn't want to install a full windows, even in a vm, and that likely isn't an option at all.
* android dongles and streaming media apps that don't support android... that dongle can do *almost* everything some (hypothetical) person wants, except one thing. Is it worth it to just give up and use a full blown windows box, or worth it to sacrifice that one special app you like, or try to use both pieces of hardware? If you can get acceptable use of that corner case and make the cheap, low power, small, device do it all, why not?
* The user never has to even see wine. It is both an executable, and a set of libraries. For example (not a great one, but a real world one nonetheless), Corel had "ported" Draw to Linux long ago using wine libs. It ran more-or-less like a native application. That was a fairly ambitious attempt and it had its issues, but it does show that it can work.
You're obviously one of the many that didn't look at the article.
Sadly, the car looks awful and is nowhere near the "ultimate" distraction it could be. I expected some actual coverage of the dash, console, steering wheel, projected heads up display, etc. Instead, it's one of the most boring looking designs I've ever seen. The only innovative coverage was the seats.... but why in the world would they put displays on the only parts that are likely to be covered? They even put big rectangular white things on the doors, but failed to make them displays. It looks like a toy made for a 2 year old.
Yes! Let's do the exact same thing again that didn't work! It will work this time for sure!
I can't tell... are you commenting on the exact same thing being the merger of the individual networks/companies, or the divestment of the local exchanges into RBOC's?
IMO, the problem is simple. The mergers had to be approved, and we (through the FCC) approved them. That was dumb. We had the means to keep them from growing too big, but, instead, we approve huge mergers (and I'd include the merger of Sprint and Nextel from 2004, which were the third and fifth largest at the time).
History is bound to repeat itself. Or, in this case, at least we can hope :-)
...It's basically the same thing as a magstripe, but different form factor....
I'm 99.9999% sure you are absolutely wrong!
Granted, the chip&signature that the US is adopting is far weaker than the chip+pin used elsewhere (the pin is "something you know" which prevents the card from being used by others, whereas the signature is just a scribble of anything you want and doesn't technically lock/unlock anything).
However, you can swipe a mag stripe and read all the info from it via VERY cheap hardware (for example, a free square reader). Doing so will give you every piece of info that is printed on the front of the card. It's the same info you'd get if you did an old style carbon copy rubbing of the card like gas stations used to use, and that's the same info you'll get off the new chip+sig mag stripes and imprints. The chip isn't there to prevent theft of the physical card.
If, however, you use the chip, then the merchant does not get the actual card number. There's a two way communication from your card, to the terminal, to the bank, and back, all using crypto. You can think of it like an SSL handshake. Once that handshake is complete, the merchant has a one time use token to use for the purchase.
What does this solve? It ensures that the merchant can't log your card number and store it in their insecure database for thieves to later take, ala the Target breach**, because they'll never have that number. More importantly for the banks, it's "proof" that the card was there, and not some cheap copy.
** I think that's what happened at Target, but there have been mixed stories, and I'm not 100% certain... maybe it involved data they got from the web instead, but I doubt that. I'm pretty sure it was card numbers scanned locally.
... but as mentioned before, the problem would be that the monitor would still tell the PC that it was connected even if the input was not set to that PC..
I was not aware of that behavior (I haven't tested it myself).
That said, there are simple software solutions for that: ... etc for GUI tools. Should be fairly simple to disable the display via software.
* man xrandr
* man nvidia-settins
Maybe not ideal, but how often are they really going to be swapping around the displays? If it's more than a couple times a day, then I'd imagine that the desktop layout reconfiguration (from 1 to 2 screens and back) would affect workflow more than it would be worth... just connect a "main" desktop, and vnc (or similar) to the others as needed for quick-swap needs, and do the full change only when necessary.