The fact that no one noticed until now is pretty strange, though.
Does anyone care?
The fact that no one has noticed/complained would to me indicate that no one wants them. If someone wanted them, they would look for them, not find them, inquire, and it would probably have been fixed.
Yes they should be there, and yes this should be fixed but is an (assumably) reasonable mistake this big a deal?
Would be different if someone was refusing to provide the source material or something, but this just seems like a case of “oops, forgot.. give me a sec..”. Certainly not what I would consider a VERY BAD MISTAKE!!! Can they be sued for this or something? Then maybe its bad
Then again this is RMS, and as we know he kind of sees things in a different.. reality.. then most of us.
Any before anyone accuses me of being a fanboy/astroturfing I _hate_ emacs. I’ve tried to learn to like it (it was used as the standard editor at a previous employer, with a variety of in-house plugins that made life easier) but I can’t.
For that matter, I’m not really a big fan of the GPL either in that I think it does more damage than it prevents in terms of wide scale open source adoption and especially compatibility.
Just to throw another data point into the soup.. I had one fail.. and it did so in a gradual and obvious manner. Basically it would periodically lock up for a few seconds, and I'd see the appropriate error message in syslog. These lockups became more frequent and eventually the drive just died (no longer recognized at boot).
It was no big deal because I had an up to date full backup of the drive. I have an internal file server where I keep most of my "real" files, and my desktop just has a small (the one that failed was 32GB, current one is 60GB) drive that is usually not even half full.
I ordered a new SSD when the old one started failing.. it arrived like a day before the drive finally died (good timing!).. swapped them out, restored, did a little tweaking with grub.. and back in business!
Even if SSD were insanely unreliable (and I don't think they are), I'd still use them for desktops/laptops. With the cheap cost of storage, backups are trivial. One fails, replace it! Meanwhile, enjoy the performance benifits (and don't worry so much about moving your running laptop around)! On my file server, I'll keep using traditional spinning disk, at least until SSDs have been around long enough to establish a track record of reliability.
Obviously my exact use case is somewhat specific and probably useless to the average consumer... but the general idea of "keep a good backup" definitely applies. Enjoy the nice speed and quiet operation / resistence to shaking you get with SSDs, and have the peace of mind knowing that if it dies, you don't lose anything.
Ever been to a symphonic concert? Or wind ensemble concert? Or any "classical" music concert (non-amplified)? Or a pipe organ in a cathedral?
Oh definitely not hating on bass... I love bass.. I just want my mid and high range with it!
And I agree that bass you "feel", and to the average Joe mp3 player, it's the first thing that jumps out (probably why they use it as the selling feature.. and why you walk into best buy and hear some bass test track every 10 minutes).
But (or at least I find) it's the mid and high that your mind follows. I'm a huge Pink Floyd fanboy... and can lean back in my chair, close my eyes, and just let my mind follow the music (and yes I know that sounds _ultra_ lame... but try it.. you almost zone out). Muddled mid and high really gets to you when doing this. It's like your mind is following a sound waiting for it to peak.. and it doesn't.. it just kind of roughly rounds off.. and your brain goes "ick".
Pro tip: if you do this, don't put "time" in the play list.. that ungodly noise at the start will probably take a few years off your life;p
Of course the downside of this method is having to have a remote with the CPU power to deal with RSA, especially larger keys, because the compute power to sign/decode goes up by the cube of the keylength (which means a 2048 bit key takes eight times as long to do stuff than a 1024 bit key.)
This is why it was excusable for keychain devices running off watch batteries to lack such measures. Any cell phone however could easily handle this.
Seriously.. anyone knows a bank in Canada (that services NS) that does this chime in! Paypal does it.. WoW does it.. why the hell won't the banks here do it!
RBC will do it if you are a corporate customer.. which is even more baffling. "We have it implemented... just not for you".
Are your dad's floor speakers actually filled with speakers?
Yup! The woofer extends to a few inches from either side of the cabinet.. dunno the exact dimensions, but it's a beast. The remainder of the cabinet is filled with 4 or 5 other speakers ranging in size to a few inches to about half the width of the cabinet.
Definitely familiar with the penis extension style speakers you refer to though.
I can understand small keychain devices being breakable but with all the power you’ve got available in a cell phone to not be able to come up with a secure challenge/response system seems ridiculous.
I’d also like to throw into the pile the complete obsession with bass in the current generation. It seems to have become the major selling point of speakers at the expense of the mid and high ranges. I like to feel my rib cage rattle as much as anyone else, but I also like those sharp, crystal clear highs.
And it’s of course mandatory to point out that current music sucks, and kids these days only listen to low quality mp3 versions of it anyway and no one has an appreciation for proper sound reproduction and other such “get off my lawn” arguments;p
I’d also like to note that modern speakers aren’t big enough! I don’t care about volume (personally I don’t like stuff ear-bleeding loud) but my dad’s huge (up to my neck) floor speakers have a presence that you just don’t get with the modern stuff I’m guessing because they just move more air due to their size.
Oh man.. nostalgia flashback to the geocities days:D
I remember entire sites dedicated to little bits of script you'd put in your pages to trick various the free website providers "ad insertion code" into pluggin their ad code into an invisible frame or commented out section or used javascript to remove the ad after the fact!
Largely my first thought. Not much of the web is static these days. Most people who just want "a basic page with some info on it" unfortunately just use facebook now. Even really simple pages tend to have _some_ dynamic widget on them that relies on server side activity.
May be useful if one seperated out static and dynamic content into seperate domains.. but for anything short of large scale this is a hassle.
Google says that Page Speed Service will be offered for free to a limited set of testers right now. Eventually, they will charge for it, and pricing will be “competitive”.
Also is there any sites left that are static? Could maybe be useful if you get a lot of traffic and seperate out static stuff (images, scripts, css, whatever) and dynamic stuff into two domains.. but for most of the internet?
Sorry, but I'm actually on paypal's side on this one.
I _hate_ companies who have great security at the login (secure password, security key) but then can be bypassed by social engineering someone and getting your password reset.
Resetting your password _should_ be an ordeal. You should have to jump through hoops.. prove your identity... and at the end of it, personal info (like bank account info) should be reset and need to be re-entered (or at least re-validated).
It's this "screw security, I want my account back" shit that leads to so much identity theft and grief.
Indeed.. wasn’t touched on in the article, but I would imagine some kind of serious sound proofing with appropriate baffling on the in and out ducts would be required. I've looked into so-called "sound reducing" enclosures and they cost a small fortune.. and they don't even completely eliminated noise.. just deaden it down to OH&S type levels.
I’d also be concerned with over-heating. Assuming you are relying on ambient air temperature for cooling.
Also things like power redundancy and network redundancy would be of concern (though I suspect this system would be setup such that a single (or multiple) "data furnace" could fail with no impact).
Oh no doubt. I mean they are using these things reliably as you said, so I'm sure it works. Same can be said about the heat issues (though I guess that would be dependant on external cooling as well).
Just saying that the mere mention of SATA multipliers makes me cringe and fear for my data/sanity:)
Yes, it's called a second laptop (oh and a decent OS).
Ok.. I'll bite.
I use linux, and I could easily do X forwarding and have my app display on this hypothetical second laptop. I could use synergy to make them share a keyboard and mouse (and clipboard and some other odds and ends). What I can't see how one would do is drag stuff between the two monitors.. and believe it or not.. this would be a deal breaker for me.
I travel very rarely, so I wouldn't bother either way.. one screen is plenty on the road (vice the 5 I have at home and the 3 at the office). But I'm curious... do you have a way to have that second laptop actually act as a proper second monitor. On Linux or some other OS?
The market for two monitors on a laptop can't be that large.
I can see the purpose in this for people who travel a lot and do a lot of work in hotel rooms, but this seems like an over-complicated solution to that problem. Article was sparse on details, but I’m assuming this laptop can’t work in a “single monitor mode” for use on say a plane, which to me would limit its usefulness.
Just get an external LCD monitor and run dual displays with your laptop being one screen.
From the article:
But if you’re on the road, then carrying that second screen isn't exactly convenient
But I think you are on the right track. Solution is to make that external monitor more convenient. You can buy laptop portable versions of just about everything, except monitors (or at least I’ve never seen that). Should be trivial to make a monitor with integrated short cables and where the stand folds into itself and fits nicely into a laptop bag, with maybe some kind of protective cover for the screen. Would seem a much simpler approach than this contraption.
Graceful degradation is something most websites fail to adhere to even when it's easily possible.
Not enough return on investment to be worth the bother of even thinking about it for the tiny fraction of users you turn away having a site not work without javascript.
Web accessibility is much like building accessibility. Totally not worth the owners money (from a purely business standpoint..). Unless it's done as a PR thing (someone whines loudly enough) or the law comes by and says "look, we know it's not financially worth it for you.. but do it anyway because it's the moral thing to do".. probably won't happen on the large scale.
And I really hope they don't legislate web accessibility! I think it's a great idea... but I have a feeling any laws mandating web accessibility would be so broken and ass-backwards that they would just make things worse.
Then again, most bank data is "protected" by such amazing "identity" information like a social security number and your mother's maiden name. It doesn't matter how complicated you make your passwords or encryption key, the information can be "hacked" with other very simple social engineering if you really want to get into somebody else's information. Of course, I find the whole notion of "identity theft" to usually be something absurd like this as those confirming identity are using information that really can't establish identity in the first place. Biometrics really are the only true way to establish identity, ranging from a handwritten signature to a finger print, a blood test, a DNA sample, and perhaps something like a retinal scan (something even twins have different). Identity establishment is intimately tied to passwords, as the point of a password is to prove that you are authorized to use a particular resource of some kind.
So much agree!
Personally I think using my credit card (or accessing my bank account, or changing my address, etc..) should involve some kind of two-factor authentication. I'm a big fan of the keyfob type systems... but even the "SMS a code to your phone" thing is ok. Combine that with a password and you have to be fairly determined to get at my account. I'm not a big fan of biometrics in the day-to-day login.. and definitely don't think it should ever be the sole means of authentication... simply because you only have one set of fingerprints... and you'd be using those same fingerprints at your bank and at the grocery store. You'd just end up with a cat and mouse game of copiers and people detecting copies of biometric info.
The problem becomes though, that users will lose those keyfobs and forget their password. This is where the weakness in these systems is. If I can call someone up and recover my password or get a new keyfob with a little social engineering... then what is the point. And then this is where biometrics should come in. To recover my password/get a new keyfob should be a _chore_ of epic proportions. I should have to go somewhere and have all kinds of biometric tests done to confirm I'm me.
The problem is most users value convenience over all else. They would totally baulk at a system like this. "Just let me into my damn account".
Slashdot Mirror
RMS will sue himself?
Oh now that's just redicu... hmm
Yup, he actually might!
The fact that no one noticed until now is pretty strange, though.
Does anyone care?
The fact that no one has noticed/complained would to me indicate that no one wants them. If someone wanted them, they would look for them, not find them, inquire, and it would probably have been fixed.
Yes they should be there, and yes this should be fixed but is an (assumably) reasonable mistake this big a deal?
Would be different if someone was refusing to provide the source material or something, but this just seems like a case of “oops, forgot.. give me a sec..”. Certainly not what I would consider a VERY BAD MISTAKE!!! Can they be sued for this or something? Then maybe its bad
Then again this is RMS, and as we know he kind of sees things in a different .. reality .. then most of us.
Any before anyone accuses me of being a fanboy/astroturfing I _hate_ emacs. I’ve tried to learn to like it (it was used as the standard editor at a previous employer, with a variety of in-house plugins that made life easier) but I can’t.
For that matter, I’m not really a big fan of the GPL either in that I think it does more damage than it prevents in terms of wide scale open source adoption and especially compatibility.
Just to throw another data point into the soup .. I had one fail.. and it did so in a gradual and obvious manner. Basically it would periodically lock up for a few seconds, and I'd see the appropriate error message in syslog. These lockups became more frequent and eventually the drive just died (no longer recognized at boot).
It was no big deal because I had an up to date full backup of the drive. I have an internal file server where I keep most of my "real" files, and my desktop just has a small (the one that failed was 32GB, current one is 60GB) drive that is usually not even half full.
I ordered a new SSD when the old one started failing.. it arrived like a day before the drive finally died (good timing!) .. swapped them out, restored, did a little tweaking with grub .. and back in business!
Even if SSD were insanely unreliable (and I don't think they are), I'd still use them for desktops/laptops. With the cheap cost of storage, backups are trivial. One fails, replace it! Meanwhile, enjoy the performance benifits (and don't worry so much about moving your running laptop around)! On my file server, I'll keep using traditional spinning disk, at least until SSDs have been around long enough to establish a track record of reliability.
Obviously my exact use case is somewhat specific and probably useless to the average consumer... but the general idea of "keep a good backup" definitely applies. Enjoy the nice speed and quiet operation / resistence to shaking you get with SSDs, and have the peace of mind knowing that if it dies, you don't lose anything.
Ever been to a symphonic concert? Or wind ensemble concert? Or any "classical" music concert (non-amplified)? Or a pipe organ in a cathedral?
Oh definitely not hating on bass... I love bass.. I just want my mid and high range with it!
And I agree that bass you "feel", and to the average Joe mp3 player, it's the first thing that jumps out (probably why they use it as the selling feature.. and why you walk into best buy and hear some bass test track every 10 minutes).
But (or at least I find) it's the mid and high that your mind follows. I'm a huge Pink Floyd fanboy... and can lean back in my chair, close my eyes, and just let my mind follow the music (and yes I know that sounds _ultra_ lame... but try it.. you almost zone out). Muddled mid and high really gets to you when doing this. It's like your mind is following a sound waiting for it to peak.. and it doesn't.. it just kind of roughly rounds off.. and your brain goes "ick".
Pro tip: if you do this, don't put "time" in the play list .. that ungodly noise at the start will probably take a few years off your life ;p
Of course the downside of this method is having to have a remote with the CPU power to deal with RSA, especially larger keys, because the compute power to sign/decode goes up by the cube of the keylength (which means a 2048 bit key takes eight times as long to do stuff than a 1024 bit key.)
This is why it was excusable for keychain devices running off watch batteries to lack such measures. Any cell phone however could easily handle this.
Most banks will give you a secureID fob for $5
Not here in Canada! :(
Seriously.. anyone knows a bank in Canada (that services NS) that does this chime in! Paypal does it.. WoW does it.. why the hell won't the banks here do it!
RBC will do it if you are a corporate customer.. which is even more baffling. "We have it implemented... just not for you".
Are your dad's floor speakers actually filled with speakers?
Yup! The woofer extends to a few inches from either side of the cabinet.. dunno the exact dimensions, but it's a beast. The remainder of the cabinet is filled with 4 or 5 other speakers ranging in size to a few inches to about half the width of the cabinet.
Definitely familiar with the penis extension style speakers you refer to though.
I can understand small keychain devices being breakable but with all the power you’ve got available in a cell phone to not be able to come up with a secure challenge/response system seems ridiculous.
I meant reading it .. but yeah.. I assumed it was copy+paste from somewhere.
Christ...
That's not a post.. it's a damn homework assignment!
I’d also like to throw into the pile the complete obsession with bass in the current generation. It seems to have become the major selling point of speakers at the expense of the mid and high ranges. I like to feel my rib cage rattle as much as anyone else, but I also like those sharp, crystal clear highs.
And it’s of course mandatory to point out that current music sucks, and kids these days only listen to low quality mp3 versions of it anyway and no one has an appreciation for proper sound reproduction and other such “get off my lawn” arguments ;p
I’d also like to note that modern speakers aren’t big enough! I don’t care about volume (personally I don’t like stuff ear-bleeding loud) but my dad’s huge (up to my neck) floor speakers have a presence that you just don’t get with the modern stuff I’m guessing because they just move more air due to their size.
Oh man.. nostalgia flashback to the geocities days :D
I remember entire sites dedicated to little bits of script you'd put in your pages to trick various the free website providers "ad insertion code" into pluggin their ad code into an invisible frame or commented out section or used javascript to remove the ad after the fact!
Largely my first thought. Not much of the web is static these days. Most people who just want "a basic page with some info on it" unfortunately just use facebook now. Even really simple pages tend to have _some_ dynamic widget on them that relies on server side activity.
May be useful if one seperated out static and dynamic content into seperate domains.. but for anything short of large scale this is a hassle.
For now...
Google says that Page Speed Service will be offered for free to a limited set of testers right now. Eventually, they will charge for it, and pricing will be “competitive”.
Also is there any sites left that are static? Could maybe be useful if you get a lot of traffic and seperate out static stuff (images, scripts, css, whatever) and dynamic stuff into two domains .. but for most of the internet?
Sorry, but I'm actually on paypal's side on this one.
I _hate_ companies who have great security at the login (secure password, security key) but then can be bypassed by social engineering someone and getting your password reset.
Resetting your password _should_ be an ordeal. You should have to jump through hoops.. prove your identity... and at the end of it, personal info (like bank account info) should be reset and need to be re-entered (or at least re-validated).
It's this "screw security, I want my account back" shit that leads to so much identity theft and grief.
On a desktop that's hard...
On high density rack mount gear (at least enough density to generate any substantial heat) .. I'll believe it when I see it... ..
Indeed.. wasn’t touched on in the article, but I would imagine some kind of serious sound proofing with appropriate baffling on the in and out ducts would be required. I've looked into so-called "sound reducing" enclosures and they cost a small fortune.. and they don't even completely eliminated noise.. just deaden it down to OH&S type levels.
I’d also be concerned with over-heating. Assuming you are relying on ambient air temperature for cooling.
Also things like power redundancy and network redundancy would be of concern (though I suspect this system would be setup such that a single (or multiple) "data furnace" could fail with no impact).
Oh no doubt. I mean they are using these things reliably as you said, so I'm sure it works. Same can be said about the heat issues (though I guess that would be dependant on external cooling as well).
Just saying that the mere mention of SATA multipliers makes me cringe and fear for my data/sanity :)
The multipliers make me more nervous!
Seriously... my experience with sata multipliers has been that they should be avoided at all costs.
* your ... oh man.. that's bad :(
Yup.. check option two in the form
You’re “flying car” is really:
1) A car that can kinda fly by adding some extra parts
(2) A plane that can kinda drive by removing some extra parts
Yes, it's called a second laptop (oh and a decent OS).
Ok.. I'll bite.
I use linux, and I could easily do X forwarding and have my app display on this hypothetical second laptop. I could use synergy to make them share a keyboard and mouse (and clipboard and some other odds and ends). What I can't see how one would do is drag stuff between the two monitors .. and believe it or not.. this would be a deal breaker for me.
I travel very rarely, so I wouldn't bother either way.. one screen is plenty on the road (vice the 5 I have at home and the 3 at the office). But I'm curious... do you have a way to have that second laptop actually act as a proper second monitor. On Linux or some other OS?
The market for two monitors on a laptop can't be that large.
I can see the purpose in this for people who travel a lot and do a lot of work in hotel rooms, but this seems like an over-complicated solution to that problem. Article was sparse on details, but I’m assuming this laptop can’t work in a “single monitor mode” for use on say a plane, which to me would limit its usefulness.
Just get an external LCD monitor and run dual displays with your laptop being one screen.
From the article:
But if you’re on the road, then carrying that second screen isn't exactly convenient
But I think you are on the right track. Solution is to make that external monitor more convenient. You can buy laptop portable versions of just about everything, except monitors (or at least I’ve never seen that). Should be trivial to make a monitor with integrated short cables and where the stand folds into itself and fits nicely into a laptop bag, with maybe some kind of protective cover for the screen. Would seem a much simpler approach than this contraption.
Graceful degradation is something most websites fail to adhere to even when it's easily possible.
Not enough return on investment to be worth the bother of even thinking about it for the tiny fraction of users you turn away having a site not work without javascript.
Web accessibility is much like building accessibility. Totally not worth the owners money (from a purely business standpoint..). Unless it's done as a PR thing (someone whines loudly enough) or the law comes by and says "look, we know it's not financially worth it for you.. but do it anyway because it's the moral thing to do" .. probably won't happen on the large scale.
And I really hope they don't legislate web accessibility! I think it's a great idea... but I have a feeling any laws mandating web accessibility would be so broken and ass-backwards that they would just make things worse.
Then again, most bank data is "protected" by such amazing "identity" information like a social security number and your mother's maiden name. It doesn't matter how complicated you make your passwords or encryption key, the information can be "hacked" with other very simple social engineering if you really want to get into somebody else's information. Of course, I find the whole notion of "identity theft" to usually be something absurd like this as those confirming identity are using information that really can't establish identity in the first place. Biometrics really are the only true way to establish identity, ranging from a handwritten signature to a finger print, a blood test, a DNA sample, and perhaps something like a retinal scan (something even twins have different). Identity establishment is intimately tied to passwords, as the point of a password is to prove that you are authorized to use a particular resource of some kind.
So much agree!
Personally I think using my credit card (or accessing my bank account, or changing my address, etc..) should involve some kind of two-factor authentication. I'm a big fan of the keyfob type systems ... but even the "SMS a code to your phone" thing is ok. Combine that with a password and you have to be fairly determined to get at my account. I'm not a big fan of biometrics in the day-to-day login .. and definitely don't think it should ever be the sole means of authentication... simply because you only have one set of fingerprints... and you'd be using those same fingerprints at your bank and at the grocery store. You'd just end up with a cat and mouse game of copiers and people detecting copies of biometric info.
The problem becomes though, that users will lose those keyfobs and forget their password. This is where the weakness in these systems is. If I can call someone up and recover my password or get a new keyfob with a little social engineering... then what is the point. And then this is where biometrics should come in. To recover my password/get a new keyfob should be a _chore_ of epic proportions. I should have to go somewhere and have all kinds of biometric tests done to confirm I'm me.
The problem is most users value convenience over all else. They would totally baulk at a system like this. "Just let me into my damn account".