As they mentioned in the entry: writing tablets. A cheap bamboo tablet (you can get these in the sub $100 range) gives you most of the same functionality.
I'm all for the death of handwriting and specifically signatures. Won't happen for a few generations, but damnit, MY CHILDRENS CHILDREN WILL HAVE THE PAPERLESS OFFICE!!!
The workmanship and just overall appearance is impressive. It not only actually functions, but looks a lot nicer than where I live.
From the practical standpoint though, I agree entirely. I couldn't live in a place like that. In addition to having random piles of stuff everywhere, about once a year I move stuff around. It's not a schedule or anything... I just feel the need to try "something different"... so I move my desk across the room... replace some shelving with some different shelving... etc. This apartment is not only very static, but practically defines how you spend the time in it.
I'm talking about a big zipper case I can hide in a closet and forget about
Augh, yeah, missunderstood your post.. this is exactly what I was refering to as well!
I still buy audio CD's also BTW. I figure I'm better off paying $3 for an entire used album at a resale shop instead of paying by the song and having a backup that last indefinately instead of relying on a DRM server not to break.
I still buy CDs and DVDs for this reason... but as you said, they just serve as a backup.
I’m actually surprised stuff like the Seiko Data-2000 (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/bibuxton/buxtoncollection/detail.aspx?id=235) hasn’t come back! People could twitter even more effectively if they didn’t even have to pull the phone out of their pocket! Facebook status could be kept to near real time!
All kidding aside, this was kind of one of my geek fantasies having a house that you could control with something like this. I envisioned myself walking around my house tapping out commands.
I used to have a lot of interest in home automation, until the sad reality that beyond lights, temperature, and the coffee pot there really isn’t much else in a home that makes sense to automate beyond for the novelty of it.
On this topic, I would note that tech can fail not just because the implementation is poor, but because the idea is cooler than the practical application. The same can be said about voice recognition and virtual reality. The idea of barking orders to your computer or working on a “virtual desk” shuffling “virtual papers” around in 3D space sounds awesome but outside of a few niches, this approach just didn’t work.
A really interesting 5 part series to watch is “The Machine That Changed the World”. Aside from being a very good history of computers (first 3 hours/episodes.. and not those new fangled 40 minute hours but full 1 hour hours!), it’s very fascinating to see how some very intelligent people thought we would be using computers now based on some fairly sound thinking. It’s a nice mind exercise to try and figure out why they were wrong (or whether they are right and we are just the pre-cursory naysayers).
Assuming you are talking about those automated carousel type systems.. they are cool (friend of mine uses one for his audio CDs.. which he still actually uses for some reason) but don't seem to have a good CD/DVD to dollar ratio. My DVD collection is well over 500... and many of those are TV series with 4 to 6 discs. Thinkgeek sells one for around $100 that stores 150 discs. That becomes a very expensive proposition, especially if you are only keeping them as backups.
Yup.. all the info found in the DVD case/CD case can be found online now... if you had any interest in it to begin with.
I now even keep those DVD binders in the closet... having ripped them all to my internal file server. I'd like to say I made good use of the entire wall of space this cleared up... but nope... just put more junk there:(
You'd have to be obsessive compulsive to live in one of these places.
Leave you car keys anywhere but the designated spot.. whole system probably jams. Ok, maybe not that bad, but I suspect you'd have to be very tidy to keep this functional.
Indeed.. the PS3's are already bought and paid for.
It's gonna be the next round of consoles where Sony feels it. They need to have this burried in the very back recesses of everyones mind when PS4 comes out.
Just re-image all servers running the thing, one by one, to ensure no backdoors remain, and bring it all back up.
One would assume they are also beefing up security to prevent this from happening again. Re-imaging the servers back to the state that let them get hacked in the first place is probably not sufficient. Tell you the truth I can't see how they could do anything substantial within a period of weeks to take them from the clearly messed up state they are in now to a state where people will trust their info with Sony again. Something like this should take months.. but the horde of angry gamers won't wait that long.
In this case we have an army of paying customers locked out of a major feature of the product.
Indeed. That month of free access to something most people don't care about isn't gonna cut it for many. Sony is gonna have to make some serious reparations here. They've probably already lost a metric ass-tonne of customers regardless of what they do at this point, and there are probably a group of customers who don't care about this outage and will stick with playstation regardless. The larger middle angry gamer group however, they are going to need to find the right balance between cost of lost business and cost of keeping that business. Should be interesting to see what they do.
On a serious note, I don't even think Microsoft releasing the code at this point would be a good thing by any means.
When something starts out open source.. it's great. The obvious bugs get found while people are still playing with it. IE is in heavy production use... if you just just open it up at this point in the game you'd probably get an enormous influx of security holes.
All kidding aside, I'm amazed they announced this for exactly this reason. Unless the bad guys are completely incompetent, they are gonna be doing anything they can to mitigate the impact of this data getting out. Sure, there is gonna be a big chunk that can't be changed.. but why announce it. Is the PR value from this really worth decreasing that "actionable data" percentage?
This is, this is just the kind of ultra important stuff where some is _actually_ going to use obscene amounts of processing power and analysis if required to get access to the data.
Encryption is a deterant.. 99% of the time the effort required to break said encryption is out of imagination for the value of the data... in this rare case, all the resources of the US military and possibly even other governments are available for use. They'd analyse every IC in the machine and put entire server farms to work on it to get the key.. unless he was very good with his computing practices... they'd get their data.
I am looking forward to the show they will put on after this is over. Figure they will hire Bruce Scheiner and Theo DeRaadt. Fireworks. Maybe a hovercraft pulls up to Sony HQ and the team that took Bin Laden pours out, sets up a perimeter. Sony's CEO stomps onto the stage in a mecha and declares war on hackers. It is going to be amazing.
I have asked for this on my bank accounts... this would be totally awesome.
Problem is most people wouldn't like the bother. People can be silly that way... look at all the gamers who only care that they can't play games... who cares about all that identity theft stuff!
Personally I'd like putting something on credit to be a long, arduous task. It should involve pre-arranging authorization through a second channel, one time passwords, and traditional authentication. For instance I should have to take some kind of "order code" from the seller.. SMS it to my bank.. get an "auth code" back.. and have to plug that in, along with a one time password and traditional password. I value security over convenience, but I am in the minority.
The credit card is an easy fix, yes... usually they catch it and even if they don't they'll reverse it.
It's when those transactions make it into your credit report that the nightmare begins. You don't have to spend too much time asking around to find horror stories.
The big risk is in my opinion, to people who don't really need credit at the moment. The people who in 3 years when they go to buy a house find out their credit rating is in the toilet despite never being in debt. This is the part of the system that's fucked up. We need heavy regulation on credit reporting.
The credit card is no issue.. you call your bank when you see the charges, they reverse em and give you a new card, and all is well again. I wish there was more implace to prevent this (keyfob/some other one time password system) but it's not bad.
It's the credit reporting system that's fucked. Reversing the charge to your CC is trivial. Reversing the damage to your credit rating is a nightmare.
The solution is more regulation and laws relating to credit reporting.. or maybe even have it handled by the government directly (although that could end up being worse).
they are required to use to make an online purchase
Unless they arn't.
Seriously.. when verified by visa came out I thought: awesome.. that makes sense.
Until I realized it was optional on the merchant side. It's to protect the merchant from accepting fraudulent claims, not the card holder. Someone with your card can just use it at places that don't require verified by visa.
I really wish you could opt-in to some kind of "only accept online payments if verified by visa in use" or something. Maybe you can with some? I've asked.. you can't with mine:S
I know this is beating a dead horse... but the core problem here isn't Sony's epic failure... it's that the credit system is so broken that this information that was stolen is enough to seriously fuck with someones life.
I'm not trying to downplay Sony's screw up. I have a PSN account and as such am suitably nervous. This whole thing just reminds me of how messed up our system is.
focus is not on getting the work done so you can get out an live your non-work life. Which is a problem.
I actually think this is a good thing. Getting kind of "high in the clouds" here, but as a society, we take work way too seriously. Work _should_ be secondary to life.
But in my experience (your experience may differ) it is the more social person who lacks the technical skills. Simply based upon personality type. The stereotype of the nerd who spends his waking hours hacking on his computer instead of attending parties is a stereotype for a reason.
My experience has been the opposite, but I can see this happening in certain climates. I will say that you make it sound like it's all or nothing. I've personally spent a great deal of my own time and money working with computers as a hobby... an I attribute most of my professional success to this... but I still go out to the pub once in a while. You can be an "hours in your basement hacking away" type and still get out once in a while.
Not because they had the same religious / political / etc opinions as you.
I can be friends with someone with vastly different views. I even get along with a die hard bible thumping type from the finance department. Unless someone has views whcih actually offend me (rare), there is no issue with a little diversity in opinion.
might not be first on the list for layoffs and low on priority for raises.
Yup. It shouldn't matter... but it does. When the money runs short... it's a lot easier to let bill, who while not rude, is not exactly friendly go than to let tom, who we were just laughing with at lunch, go. Ted is also at the forefront of your mind when some opportunity comes up as well.
I guess it really depends on office culture. Where I work, we don't really go out to lunch as a massive team... but most people do kind of have a small group they "hang out with". These little groups in some cases are the team... in other cases spread across teams and departments... and it's not set in stone or official or anything, it just kind of happens that way. People with similar interests kind of "find each other" and you see the same groups going out for coffee breaks and so forth.
Also, shop talk is generally rare. It happens.. but way short of an unpaid meeting.
On a personal level, I'd say the whole "I'm here to work, not make friends" attitude has always seemed kind of weird to me. You spend a good chunk of your life at work.. why not make it more fun. I'm not saying you have to hang out with coworkers every weekend.. but mixing personal and work life a little bit has made the day go a lot nicer for me.
Normally I'd agree with you.. whining that a site doesn't work with noscript is pointless because as you said, once you use something like that you are out of the demographic most for-profit sites care about.
However in this case, Gawker really does have a screwed up web design.. and their public stats have shown that not only did their traffic practically get cut in half when they rolled out the new design... but their traffic has continued to decline.
So, exactly how 'green' or 'polluting' is the internet, really?
The more important question is, how exactly does one "choose" a green energy source. I don't know about other parts of the world, but up here in Canada we generally only have one choice of power provider. We don't get to shop around for which power plant we want to produce our power. I guess if you are big enough to be able to "choose a location for the new datacenter" then you kinda can... but for the large majority of users not so much.
Yes, there are alternatives, but they arn't ready for the masses yet. Doing anything for power besides paying the going rate in your local area is at best risky. Unless you can use it as a PR piece effectively to the point of being worth it or it saves your more money over a reasonable amount of time, no one is going to go for it.
The report (PDF) doesn't mention how much CO2 is saved by telecommuting and higher corporate efficiency, however.
Greenpeace.. biased.. who'd have seen that one;)
Seriously though, while I agree with some of the greenpeace message... I have very little respect for the organization and have a hard time taking anything they say seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
As they mentioned in the entry: writing tablets. A cheap bamboo tablet (you can get these in the sub $100 range) gives you most of the same functionality.
I'm all for the death of handwriting and specifically signatures. Won't happen for a few generations, but damnit, MY CHILDRENS CHILDREN WILL HAVE THE PAPERLESS OFFICE!!!
The workmanship and just overall appearance is impressive. It not only actually functions, but looks a lot nicer than where I live.
From the practical standpoint though, I agree entirely. I couldn't live in a place like that. In addition to having random piles of stuff everywhere, about once a year I move stuff around. It's not a schedule or anything... I just feel the need to try "something different" ... so I move my desk across the room... replace some shelving with some different shelving... etc. This apartment is not only very static, but practically defines how you spend the time in it.
I'm talking about a big zipper case I can hide in a closet and forget about
Augh, yeah, missunderstood your post.. this is exactly what I was refering to as well!
I still buy audio CD's also BTW. I figure I'm better off paying $3 for an entire used album at a resale shop instead of paying by the song and having a backup that last indefinately instead of relying on a DRM server not to break.
I still buy CDs and DVDs for this reason... but as you said, they just serve as a backup.
I’m actually surprised stuff like the Seiko Data-2000 (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/bibuxton/buxtoncollection/detail.aspx?id=235) hasn’t come back! People could twitter even more effectively if they didn’t even have to pull the phone out of their pocket! Facebook status could be kept to near real time!
All kidding aside, this was kind of one of my geek fantasies having a house that you could control with something like this. I envisioned myself walking around my house tapping out commands.
I used to have a lot of interest in home automation, until the sad reality that beyond lights, temperature, and the coffee pot there really isn’t much else in a home that makes sense to automate beyond for the novelty of it.
On this topic, I would note that tech can fail not just because the implementation is poor, but because the idea is cooler than the practical application. The same can be said about voice recognition and virtual reality. The idea of barking orders to your computer or working on a “virtual desk” shuffling “virtual papers” around in 3D space sounds awesome but outside of a few niches, this approach just didn’t work.
A really interesting 5 part series to watch is “The Machine That Changed the World”. Aside from being a very good history of computers (first 3 hours/episodes.. and not those new fangled 40 minute hours but full 1 hour hours!), it’s very fascinating to see how some very intelligent people thought we would be using computers now based on some fairly sound thinking. It’s a nice mind exercise to try and figure out why they were wrong (or whether they are right and we are just the pre-cursory naysayers).
Assuming you are talking about those automated carousel type systems .. they are cool (friend of mine uses one for his audio CDs .. which he still actually uses for some reason) but don't seem to have a good CD/DVD to dollar ratio. My DVD collection is well over 500 ... and many of those are TV series with 4 to 6 discs. Thinkgeek sells one for around $100 that stores 150 discs. That becomes a very expensive proposition, especially if you are only keeping them as backups.
Yup.. all the info found in the DVD case/CD case can be found online now... if you had any interest in it to begin with.
I now even keep those DVD binders in the closet... having ripped them all to my internal file server. I'd like to say I made good use of the entire wall of space this cleared up... but nope... just put more junk there :(
You'd have to be obsessive compulsive to live in one of these places.
Leave you car keys anywhere but the designated spot.. whole system probably jams. Ok, maybe not that bad, but I suspect you'd have to be very tidy to keep this functional.
Still, pretty damn impressive!
Indeed.. the PS3's are already bought and paid for.
It's gonna be the next round of consoles where Sony feels it. They need to have this burried in the very back recesses of everyones mind when PS4 comes out.
Just re-image all servers running the thing, one by one, to ensure no backdoors remain, and bring it all back up.
One would assume they are also beefing up security to prevent this from happening again. Re-imaging the servers back to the state that let them get hacked in the first place is probably not sufficient. Tell you the truth I can't see how they could do anything substantial within a period of weeks to take them from the clearly messed up state they are in now to a state where people will trust their info with Sony again. Something like this should take months.. but the horde of angry gamers won't wait that long.
In this case we have an army of paying customers locked out of a major feature of the product.
Indeed. That month of free access to something most people don't care about isn't gonna cut it for many. Sony is gonna have to make some serious reparations here. They've probably already lost a metric ass-tonne of customers regardless of what they do at this point, and there are probably a group of customers who don't care about this outage and will stick with playstation regardless. The larger middle angry gamer group however, they are going to need to find the right balance between cost of lost business and cost of keeping that business. Should be interesting to see what they do.
On a serious note, I don't even think Microsoft releasing the code at this point would be a good thing by any means.
When something starts out open source.. it's great. The obvious bugs get found while people are still playing with it. IE is in heavy production use ... if you just just open it up at this point in the game you'd probably get an enormous influx of security holes.
All kidding aside, I'm amazed they announced this for exactly this reason. Unless the bad guys are completely incompetent, they are gonna be doing anything they can to mitigate the impact of this data getting out. Sure, there is gonna be a big chunk that can't be changed.. but why announce it. Is the PR value from this really worth decreasing that "actionable data" percentage?
This is, this is just the kind of ultra important stuff where some is _actually_ going to use obscene amounts of processing power and analysis if required to get access to the data.
Encryption is a deterant.. 99% of the time the effort required to break said encryption is out of imagination for the value of the data... in this rare case, all the resources of the US military and possibly even other governments are available for use. They'd analyse every IC in the machine and put entire server farms to work on it to get the key.. unless he was very good with his computing practices... they'd get their data.
I am looking forward to the show they will put on after this is over. Figure they will hire Bruce Scheiner and Theo DeRaadt. Fireworks. Maybe a hovercraft pulls up to Sony HQ and the team that took Bin Laden pours out, sets up a perimeter. Sony's CEO stomps onto the stage in a mecha and declares war on hackers. It is going to be amazing.
That seriously made my day! Thanks :)
I've actually seen a surprisingly lack of "I told you so". I figured it would be every second comment at this point...
For the record, I'm Canadian!
And from the stories (admittedly not first hand experience) I've heard, those laws arn't really doing much down there.
Amen.
I have asked for this on my bank accounts... this would be totally awesome.
Problem is most people wouldn't like the bother. People can be silly that way... look at all the gamers who only care that they can't play games... who cares about all that identity theft stuff!
Personally I'd like putting something on credit to be a long, arduous task. It should involve pre-arranging authorization through a second channel, one time passwords, and traditional authentication. For instance I should have to take some kind of "order code" from the seller.. SMS it to my bank.. get an "auth code" back.. and have to plug that in, along with a one time password and traditional password. I value security over convenience, but I am in the minority.
The credit card is an easy fix, yes... usually they catch it and even if they don't they'll reverse it.
It's when those transactions make it into your credit report that the nightmare begins. You don't have to spend too much time asking around to find horror stories.
The big risk is in my opinion, to people who don't really need credit at the moment. The people who in 3 years when they go to buy a house find out their credit rating is in the toilet despite never being in debt. This is the part of the system that's fucked up. We need heavy regulation on credit reporting.
The credit card is no issue.. you call your bank when you see the charges, they reverse em and give you a new card, and all is well again. I wish there was more implace to prevent this (keyfob/some other one time password system) but it's not bad.
It's the credit reporting system that's fucked. Reversing the charge to your CC is trivial. Reversing the damage to your credit rating is a nightmare.
The solution is more regulation and laws relating to credit reporting.. or maybe even have it handled by the government directly (although that could end up being worse).
they are required to use to make an online purchase
Unless they arn't.
Seriously.. when verified by visa came out I thought: awesome.. that makes sense.
Until I realized it was optional on the merchant side. It's to protect the merchant from accepting fraudulent claims, not the card holder. Someone with your card can just use it at places that don't require verified by visa.
I really wish you could opt-in to some kind of "only accept online payments if verified by visa in use" or something. Maybe you can with some? I've asked.. you can't with mine :S
More rigorous checks required for issuing credit and much tighter regulation over credit reporting?
I'm not downplaying capitalism or the economy or anything here... just the way the credit system works.
I know this is beating a dead horse... but the core problem here isn't Sony's epic failure... it's that the credit system is so broken that this information that was stolen is enough to seriously fuck with someones life.
I'm not trying to downplay Sony's screw up. I have a PSN account and as such am suitably nervous. This whole thing just reminds me of how messed up our system is.
focus is not on getting the work done so you can get out an live your non-work life. Which is a problem.
I actually think this is a good thing. Getting kind of "high in the clouds" here, but as a society, we take work way too seriously. Work _should_ be secondary to life.
But in my experience (your experience may differ) it is the more social person who lacks the technical skills. Simply based upon personality type. The stereotype of the nerd who spends his waking hours hacking on his computer instead of attending parties is a stereotype for a reason.
My experience has been the opposite, but I can see this happening in certain climates. I will say that you make it sound like it's all or nothing. I've personally spent a great deal of my own time and money working with computers as a hobby... an I attribute most of my professional success to this ... but I still go out to the pub once in a while. You can be an "hours in your basement hacking away" type and still get out once in a while.
Not because they had the same religious / political / etc opinions as you.
I can be friends with someone with vastly different views. I even get along with a die hard bible thumping type from the finance department. Unless someone has views whcih actually offend me (rare), there is no issue with a little diversity in opinion.
might not be first on the list for layoffs and low on priority for raises.
Yup. It shouldn't matter... but it does. When the money runs short... it's a lot easier to let bill, who while not rude, is not exactly friendly go than to let tom, who we were just laughing with at lunch, go. Ted is also at the forefront of your mind when some opportunity comes up as well.
I guess it really depends on office culture. Where I work, we don't really go out to lunch as a massive team... but most people do kind of have a small group they "hang out with". These little groups in some cases are the team... in other cases spread across teams and departments... and it's not set in stone or official or anything, it just kind of happens that way. People with similar interests kind of "find each other" and you see the same groups going out for coffee breaks and so forth.
Also, shop talk is generally rare. It happens.. but way short of an unpaid meeting.
On a personal level, I'd say the whole "I'm here to work, not make friends" attitude has always seemed kind of weird to me. You spend a good chunk of your life at work.. why not make it more fun. I'm not saying you have to hang out with coworkers every weekend .. but mixing personal and work life a little bit has made the day go a lot nicer for me.
Normally I'd agree with you.. whining that a site doesn't work with noscript is pointless because as you said, once you use something like that you are out of the demographic most for-profit sites care about.
However in this case, Gawker really does have a screwed up web design.. and their public stats have shown that not only did their traffic practically get cut in half when they rolled out the new design... but their traffic has continued to decline.
So, exactly how 'green' or 'polluting' is the internet, really?
The more important question is, how exactly does one "choose" a green energy source. I don't know about other parts of the world, but up here in Canada we generally only have one choice of power provider. We don't get to shop around for which power plant we want to produce our power. I guess if you are big enough to be able to "choose a location for the new datacenter" then you kinda can... but for the large majority of users not so much.
Yes, there are alternatives, but they arn't ready for the masses yet. Doing anything for power besides paying the going rate in your local area is at best risky. Unless you can use it as a PR piece effectively to the point of being worth it or it saves your more money over a reasonable amount of time, no one is going to go for it.
The report (PDF) doesn't mention how much CO2 is saved by telecommuting and higher corporate efficiency, however.
Greenpeace.. biased.. who'd have seen that one ;)
Seriously though, while I agree with some of the greenpeace message... I have very little respect for the organization and have a hard time taking anything they say seriously.