Oh for the love of God, not another/. "The corporations/government are out to get our freedom/data/money!" conspiracy. Perhaps it's just exactly the same as the vast majority of exploits for everything else with a processor, and it's somebody either proving a point or out to make a name for themselves.
There is of course an easy solution to the virus problem. Apply the damn patch, and if you want an open device you can play around with don't buy an iPhone in the first place!
Not trackball, a little one in place of a scrollwheel. And I'm not talking every few weeks here, I'm taking every few days. It just collects crap from your fingertip all day and you can't remove it to give it a proper cleaning.
If you need an ultramobile device to work on, but don't need to hook it up to wired networks that often, or use physical media whilst on the move, or will have it regularly kept at a static location (Such as your desk at home) then the MacBook Air is the one for you. It doesn't have 3 USB ports, firewire, Dual-Link DVI, ethernet, line-in and a CD-ROM drive because it's aimed at people who don't need them whilst moving around. It's designed for those people who will arrive at the home/office and the Air will hook up to the existing *wireless* network and use that for all the connectivity. You may use a Bluetooth mouse.
If, on the other hand, you do need more of the IO stuff whilst on the move, buy a straight MacBook or MacBook Pro.
I use an MBP because I'm a computing student, and often need to connect various external devices, disks, network and so on, or load files from a CD. If I were doing an English Language degree and only needed my laptop for typing things up and making lecture notes, the Air would be ideal because it's easy to take to lectures, I can take notes, then I get back home and it automatically backs up to my convenient Time Capsule, or I can connect one power line and one USB hub. In all honesty that's more or less what I do at the minute (Plus an ethernet cable) and that's *with* a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro because although I could have one USB port for every device, just using a hub is a far easier.
Just not the Apple one. The Mighty Mouse is susceptible to a nasty sticking scrollball problem, requiring you to turn it upside down and give it a good whirling round on a bit of paper. The only plusses are the fact it can run on either one or two batteries, and the scrollball is full 2-dimensional rather than locked to straight up/down, left/right. I would much rather have a Microsoft Bluetooth mouse (They're quite good actually) than my Mighty Mouse, I'm just waiting until it finally packs in.
Apple's Drag & Drop is starting to lose ground to the installers, many of which come with no sensible uninstaller. I keep having to clear crap out of my library folders which installers have put there and left no clear indication of how to tidy up again. I even had VMware Fusion leaving stray network rubbish lying around until I did some googling and worked out how to remove it (Not particularly nice for anybody not comfortable with the terminal).
Why not just introduce thermostats that can be 'hinted' at by the system instead of forcibly switched? I reckon that most people won't be able to really tell the difference if their thermostat is being subjected to rolling power-offs for 30 mins or has been turned up a degree or two, and if they feel they are getting too hot then they can hit the 'boost' button.
I'd be quite content if I could set a thermostat at a comfortable temperature but leave the fine details of how to best use the available power to an external system (Even at the cost of it being a couple of degrees warmer), especially if it can make use of other information such as "It'll be dusk soon, therefore I can leave these switched off for a bit longer" or "These buildings are large offices, so I can cool them down before the middle of the day and they'll take less energy to keep at a sensible temperature".
But as yet another argument in the never ending cycle, Windows and AD stuff makes it much easier to roll out config changes without having to resort to doing it manually or rolling out scripts. Just tweak the group policy and make sure it affects the right scope (Users, systems, locations, the possibilities are nigh on endless if you're fancy enough with groupings).
Not to mention the other important bit - Microsoft have an effective monopoly on the WMA DRM technology, and may refuse to licence it to Apple. If Apple could put a "Plays for Sure" logo on the iPod box then the Zune wouldn't stand a chance (Since that's not a PfS device anyway).
I think the best we can reach is that no single method of security is perfect. Your point about computers not making mistakes is valid, and the only reason I wouldn't wholeheartedly encourage computer behaviour tracking everywhere is because they are currently somewhere between bad and really bad at it. In the interim we have to make do with real people who have an idea what may constitute unusual behaviour. There is admittedly no substitute for experience here, but where experience is in short amounts training is better than nothing.
Talk to somebody in airport security and you'll find out that most of the security is already down to people watching for potentially dangerous things. I don't feel that my freedom is being infringed on if I have to go through security screening in order to fly, I can take the bus if I'm that bothered. I don't even care if somebody picks me out to have a few extra questions asked or have myself wanded down. It's mildly inconveniencing yes, but they are doing their job and when I fly I am fully accepting that there are security measures in place.
"The government is employing state-of-the-art behaviour tracking and monitoring software? Totalitarian! They want to store all your biometric details on a chip on your passport? Totalitarian!"
Fair enough. Now look at this:
"Airport security are being trained to look for unusual behaviour and nervous looks on people's faces? Totalitarian!"
I would be quite upset if airport security *weren't* trained to look for these things. It's not a faceless computer doing the work, it's not a magical checklist in the sky, it's not invasive, it doesn't need strip search, it requires you to carry no more documentation, it won't slow down security. It will help spot people doing unusual things or looking out of place with a certain element of humanity behind it. Yes this may include a few errors, but overall I'm a lot happier with a real human being trained to better spot dodgy behaviour than any of the other stuff.
Not every change to airport security is a massive invasion of your privacy. Grow up and realise that.
I've never heard it from TFTs or LCD displays before, but I have heard similar from chargers when there is no device plugged in so it could well be a transformer and not the flyback or something else I suspected. That would explain it.
Ah, for situations such as this we've got a new gadget called a connecting cable.
Shove some memory into the stethoscope and have it able to record what's going on. Alternatively upgrade all the bed-head stations whereby the patient's interactive screen doubles up as a medical computer (I've seen these used in places around the UK, but can't remember the brand name. Quite cool though) and include a USB port for a specialised external microphone (Think ultrasound scanner, but with the cold metal bit). That way anything recorded can be loaded straight onto the person's medical records, recalled by anybody who needs it (Even if the stethoscope has been removed), and processed far faster than an embedded device would manage.
A stethoscope is a glorified paper cone. Adding a recording ability would be cool. Replacing the pointy end with a high-gain microphone and headphones would be useful. Adding a filesystem, encryption and network stack?
There are more indie FPS games listed on Mod DB if anybody wants to give some different ones a whirl. There are also a few listed in the Mod of the Year Top 100 if you're looking for popular ones.
(Yes, I do admin there and this is a shameless plug which is why I've turned off my karma bonus for this post).
I'm much the same, which winds me up no end because the communal TV in my flat only whistles when it's turned off. Lord only knows why. It's not RF though, just the noise from various components such as capacitors (Much like camera flashes sound when you charge them).
My TV remote is terrible for the SELECT/OK/BACK nonsense - it has 4 directional keys with a SELECT button in the centre, which makes sense. It then also has an OK button above and to the right of the pad, which you need to bend your thumb at a funky angle to reach and a matching BACK on the opposite side. However, when in menus neither of these do anything and you press the RIGHT arrow to select an item and LEFT to go back. When in channel list mode you use UP/DOWN to pick the channel then SELECT. You only ever use OK if you're selecting a sub menu item (Eg the widescreen ratio, you press RIGHT to select the menu item, then UP/DOWN to pick the correct ratio, then OK to set it).
I spent most of the workshop (Practical) cursing at the user interface, only to be told by the instructor that it was the best UI because "it's what the professionals use". My first action after the workshop was to wander down a floor to the media suites where I could use Final Cut to do the same thing in half the time, without buttons where the top and bottom half do different things.
It makes sense if you think about it. If your printer is a replacement, you already have a USB cable so there's no sense in you having another. Having gone through a fair few printers (They just die from use) since USB became the standard connection, I'm kinda glad. There are only so many uses for USB A-B cables.
Yes the price of the cables themselves can be extortionate, but it's a one-off. USB connectors are very resilient by design, and if you get a decent cable from a proper parts retailer (I can get a 5m A-B for £1.49, around $3.00) it's not a problem given you're already spending 10 times that on the printer.
It's still a lossy format which strips out some of the audio detail. I'm no gold-connector-magnetically-balanced-shielded-cable audiophile, but I do appreciate being able to listen to the entire depth of a piece of music (especially classical).
Perhaps a better way of putting it would be 'the human ear cannot distinguish between 320kbps MP3 and FLAC if listened to on iPod headphones', which is fair enough. There's no need to include everything if all I'm going to do is listen to it on the bus. Which leads to my original point - MP3 is lossy. AAC which is my format of choice is better quality for the space and bitrate, but is still lossy. FLAC isn't, which means I could have my lossless FLAC copy on my desktop where there's easy storage space, then have iTunes automatically create reduced quality versions for carrying around on my iPod. Compression from lossless source is always better than compression from an already compressed copy.
Not to mention that the iTunes store *isn't* 320kbps. 128kbps for the normal content, 256kbps for iTunes Plus.
My N70 (S60) had the profiles and differing ringtones (Which I used as much as possible), but don't have any way of specifying different ring behaviours on a per-person-per-profile basis. I had a 'meeting' profile which sent everybody to vibrate, and a specific 'boss' ringtone, but no way of saying "in a meeting, make everybody vibrate except my boss". My boss's unique ringtone was only used if the ring volume was already up.
Good suggestion on the subject of Nokias though, I'll have a look and see if there's anything more versatile available for Symbian.
I've often wondered about why 'privacy' and 'silent' options on phones are so poor. What I'd like is the ability to set up rules similar to these: - Calls from this number are emergency, always ring. - Between 5pm and 9am, and all day weekends, defer this group to voicemail - When in 'meeting' mode send everyone to voicemail except for my boss, who gets a vibrate alert but not a ring. On andy device (Can you do those with Blackberry privacy profiles?). Perhaps also with some form of short range 'hinting' available for certain types of places, for example cinemas can suggest to your phone that they enter a discreet mode (Nothing except for your 'emergency' numbers for example), or for hospitals to suggest to phones that they enter a limited usage mode (Intensive care wards, A&E, theatres etc force phones to airplane mode)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh for the love of God, not another /. "The corporations/government are out to get our freedom/data/money!" conspiracy. Perhaps it's just exactly the same as the vast majority of exploits for everything else with a processor, and it's somebody either proving a point or out to make a name for themselves.
There is of course an easy solution to the virus problem. Apply the damn patch, and if you want an open device you can play around with don't buy an iPhone in the first place!
20 here, same mobile number for 6 years, over 4 different service providers. Unlike some of my friends, who seem to change theirs every 2 or 3 months.
Not trackball, a little one in place of a scrollwheel. And I'm not talking every few weeks here, I'm taking every few days. It just collects crap from your fingertip all day and you can't remove it to give it a proper cleaning.
Right, let's clarify here.
If you need an ultramobile device to work on, but don't need to hook it up to wired networks that often, or use physical media whilst on the move, or will have it regularly kept at a static location (Such as your desk at home) then the MacBook Air is the one for you. It doesn't have 3 USB ports, firewire, Dual-Link DVI, ethernet, line-in and a CD-ROM drive because it's aimed at people who don't need them whilst moving around. It's designed for those people who will arrive at the home/office and the Air will hook up to the existing *wireless* network and use that for all the connectivity. You may use a Bluetooth mouse.
If, on the other hand, you do need more of the IO stuff whilst on the move, buy a straight MacBook or MacBook Pro.
I use an MBP because I'm a computing student, and often need to connect various external devices, disks, network and so on, or load files from a CD. If I were doing an English Language degree and only needed my laptop for typing things up and making lecture notes, the Air would be ideal because it's easy to take to lectures, I can take notes, then I get back home and it automatically backs up to my convenient Time Capsule, or I can connect one power line and one USB hub. In all honesty that's more or less what I do at the minute (Plus an ethernet cable) and that's *with* a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro because although I could have one USB port for every device, just using a hub is a far easier.
Just not the Apple one. The Mighty Mouse is susceptible to a nasty sticking scrollball problem, requiring you to turn it upside down and give it a good whirling round on a bit of paper. The only plusses are the fact it can run on either one or two batteries, and the scrollball is full 2-dimensional rather than locked to straight up/down, left/right. I would much rather have a Microsoft Bluetooth mouse (They're quite good actually) than my Mighty Mouse, I'm just waiting until it finally packs in.
Apple's Drag & Drop is starting to lose ground to the installers, many of which come with no sensible uninstaller. I keep having to clear crap out of my library folders which installers have put there and left no clear indication of how to tidy up again. I even had VMware Fusion leaving stray network rubbish lying around until I did some googling and worked out how to remove it (Not particularly nice for anybody not comfortable with the terminal).
Why not just introduce thermostats that can be 'hinted' at by the system instead of forcibly switched? I reckon that most people won't be able to really tell the difference if their thermostat is being subjected to rolling power-offs for 30 mins or has been turned up a degree or two, and if they feel they are getting too hot then they can hit the 'boost' button.
I'd be quite content if I could set a thermostat at a comfortable temperature but leave the fine details of how to best use the available power to an external system (Even at the cost of it being a couple of degrees warmer), especially if it can make use of other information such as "It'll be dusk soon, therefore I can leave these switched off for a bit longer" or "These buildings are large offices, so I can cool them down before the middle of the day and they'll take less energy to keep at a sensible temperature".
But as yet another argument in the never ending cycle, Windows and AD stuff makes it much easier to roll out config changes without having to resort to doing it manually or rolling out scripts. Just tweak the group policy and make sure it affects the right scope (Users, systems, locations, the possibilities are nigh on endless if you're fancy enough with groupings).
*applauds*
Not to mention the other important bit - Microsoft have an effective monopoly on the WMA DRM technology, and may refuse to licence it to Apple. If Apple could put a "Plays for Sure" logo on the iPod box then the Zune wouldn't stand a chance (Since that's not a PfS device anyway).
I think the best we can reach is that no single method of security is perfect. Your point about computers not making mistakes is valid, and the only reason I wouldn't wholeheartedly encourage computer behaviour tracking everywhere is because they are currently somewhere between bad and really bad at it. In the interim we have to make do with real people who have an idea what may constitute unusual behaviour. There is admittedly no substitute for experience here, but where experience is in short amounts training is better than nothing.
Talk to somebody in airport security and you'll find out that most of the security is already down to people watching for potentially dangerous things. I don't feel that my freedom is being infringed on if I have to go through security screening in order to fly, I can take the bus if I'm that bothered. I don't even care if somebody picks me out to have a few extra questions asked or have myself wanded down. It's mildly inconveniencing yes, but they are doing their job and when I fly I am fully accepting that there are security measures in place.
Woah, hang on a second here.
"The government is employing state-of-the-art behaviour tracking and monitoring software? Totalitarian! They want to store all your biometric details on a chip on your passport? Totalitarian!"
Fair enough. Now look at this:
"Airport security are being trained to look for unusual behaviour and nervous looks on people's faces? Totalitarian!"
I would be quite upset if airport security *weren't* trained to look for these things. It's not a faceless computer doing the work, it's not a magical checklist in the sky, it's not invasive, it doesn't need strip search, it requires you to carry no more documentation, it won't slow down security. It will help spot people doing unusual things or looking out of place with a certain element of humanity behind it. Yes this may include a few errors, but overall I'm a lot happier with a real human being trained to better spot dodgy behaviour than any of the other stuff.
Not every change to airport security is a massive invasion of your privacy. Grow up and realise that.
I've never heard it from TFTs or LCD displays before, but I have heard similar from chargers when there is no device plugged in so it could well be a transformer and not the flyback or something else I suspected. That would explain it.
Ah, for situations such as this we've got a new gadget called a connecting cable.
Shove some memory into the stethoscope and have it able to record what's going on. Alternatively upgrade all the bed-head stations whereby the patient's interactive screen doubles up as a medical computer (I've seen these used in places around the UK, but can't remember the brand name. Quite cool though) and include a USB port for a specialised external microphone (Think ultrasound scanner, but with the cold metal bit). That way anything recorded can be loaded straight onto the person's medical records, recalled by anybody who needs it (Even if the stethoscope has been removed), and processed far faster than an embedded device would manage.
A stethoscope is a glorified paper cone. Adding a recording ability would be cool. Replacing the pointy end with a high-gain microphone and headphones would be useful. Adding a filesystem, encryption and network stack?
Funny? If I had points left, this would be more of the insightful.
I could have sworn the new cancer centre in Leeds has a set of these:
http://www.leedsth.nhs.uk/news/newsitem.php?newsID=278
No word on if they're actually for treatment or if they're just used to create radioisotopes though. 10 seems a bit many for just producing tracers.
There are more indie FPS games listed on Mod DB if anybody wants to give some different ones a whirl. There are also a few listed in the Mod of the Year Top 100 if you're looking for popular ones.
(Yes, I do admin there and this is a shameless plug which is why I've turned off my karma bonus for this post).
Mod DB has info and downloads without the WoP site. Give it a go, you'll probably like the gameplay.
http://www.moddb.com/games/350/world-of-padman
(Yes, I do admin there. Yes, I have turned off karma bonus).
I'm much the same, which winds me up no end because the communal TV in my flat only whistles when it's turned off. Lord only knows why. It's not RF though, just the noise from various components such as capacitors (Much like camera flashes sound when you charge them).
My TV remote is terrible for the SELECT/OK/BACK nonsense - it has 4 directional keys with a SELECT button in the centre, which makes sense. It then also has an OK button above and to the right of the pad, which you need to bend your thumb at a funky angle to reach and a matching BACK on the opposite side. However, when in menus neither of these do anything and you press the RIGHT arrow to select an item and LEFT to go back. When in channel list mode you use UP/DOWN to pick the channel then SELECT. You only ever use OK if you're selecting a sub menu item (Eg the widescreen ratio, you press RIGHT to select the menu item, then UP/DOWN to pick the correct ratio, then OK to set it).
Bloody pain in the ass is what it is.
"Introduction to Adobe Premiere"
I spent most of the workshop (Practical) cursing at the user interface, only to be told by the instructor that it was the best UI because "it's what the professionals use". My first action after the workshop was to wander down a floor to the media suites where I could use Final Cut to do the same thing in half the time, without buttons where the top and bottom half do different things.
It makes sense if you think about it. If your printer is a replacement, you already have a USB cable so there's no sense in you having another. Having gone through a fair few printers (They just die from use) since USB became the standard connection, I'm kinda glad. There are only so many uses for USB A-B cables.
Yes the price of the cables themselves can be extortionate, but it's a one-off. USB connectors are very resilient by design, and if you get a decent cable from a proper parts retailer (I can get a 5m A-B for £1.49, around $3.00) it's not a problem given you're already spending 10 times that on the printer.
It's still a lossy format which strips out some of the audio detail. I'm no gold-connector-magnetically-balanced-shielded-cable audiophile, but I do appreciate being able to listen to the entire depth of a piece of music (especially classical).
Perhaps a better way of putting it would be 'the human ear cannot distinguish between 320kbps MP3 and FLAC if listened to on iPod headphones', which is fair enough. There's no need to include everything if all I'm going to do is listen to it on the bus. Which leads to my original point - MP3 is lossy. AAC which is my format of choice is better quality for the space and bitrate, but is still lossy. FLAC isn't, which means I could have my lossless FLAC copy on my desktop where there's easy storage space, then have iTunes automatically create reduced quality versions for carrying around on my iPod. Compression from lossless source is always better than compression from an already compressed copy.
Not to mention that the iTunes store *isn't* 320kbps. 128kbps for the normal content, 256kbps for iTunes Plus.
My N70 (S60) had the profiles and differing ringtones (Which I used as much as possible), but don't have any way of specifying different ring behaviours on a per-person-per-profile basis. I had a 'meeting' profile which sent everybody to vibrate, and a specific 'boss' ringtone, but no way of saying "in a meeting, make everybody vibrate except my boss". My boss's unique ringtone was only used if the ring volume was already up.
Good suggestion on the subject of Nokias though, I'll have a look and see if there's anything more versatile available for Symbian.
Don't call him a monkey!
Oook.
I've often wondered about why 'privacy' and 'silent' options on phones are so poor. What I'd like is the ability to set up rules similar to these:
- Calls from this number are emergency, always ring.
- Between 5pm and 9am, and all day weekends, defer this group to voicemail
- When in 'meeting' mode send everyone to voicemail except for my boss, who gets a vibrate alert but not a ring.
On andy device (Can you do those with Blackberry privacy profiles?). Perhaps also with some form of short range 'hinting' available for certain types of places, for example cinemas can suggest to your phone that they enter a discreet mode (Nothing except for your 'emergency' numbers for example), or for hospitals to suggest to phones that they enter a limited usage mode (Intensive care wards, A&E, theatres etc force phones to airplane mode)