Wrapping something in a metal, such as aluminum, creates a Faraday cage. It doesn't need to be a solid surface, of course, a mesh will do just fine - depending on the wavelengths you need to block.
Sounds like it's an app-launcher / wrapper-to-KDE. The need to wake up periodically is probably to check for signals, including if the program has finished. As the man page states, it passes input IT receives (i.e. the kwrapper receives the inputs and passes them to the program it was used to launch), tries to pass output from the app to the console (nay, konsole) and waits for the app to finish.
It seems that very few programs should be launched with kwrapper unless the input-passing or term-output is really needed.
kwrapper tries to make the application look like it was actually started directly and not via kdeinit. Like kshell it passes application name, arguments, complete environment and current working directory to kdeinit.
Additionally it
-
tries to redirect application output to the console from which kwrapper was started
-
waits for the application to finish (but does not return its return value)
-
passes most signals it gets to the process of the started application
The signal passing allows you to use Ctrl-C to break the started application or Ctrl-Z to stop it.
Note: With the use of kwrapper you will have one more process running and also the signal passing and output redirection may not work properly.
I pine for the days of being able to uninstall a program fully from my system by deleting its folder. Or being able to simply copy a configuration file from one computer to the next and having all my settings preserved.
Do you REALLY want your save games to be deleted when you "uninstall" an app?
This extends to all data created by applications, e.g. documents created by your word processor of choice. Clearly, this is bad practice. (User) data and configuration SHOULD reside elsewhere. And that's not even delving into the security issues this would present. You don't necessarily want to share your settings or data with other users of the same computer.
Another thing: Unless you use Windows Explorer (or command line) to navigate to and run a program, you can't uninstall a program FULLY by deleting its folder. At minimum, you would need to delete the shortcut to the program from somewhere else - unless you want Windows to be constantly scanning e.g. the Program Files folder for changes... but something tells me, you wouldn't appreciate that;-)
In total, we have three separate "components" to even a relatively simple application: user configuration, user data and the app itself. In most cases, the app should be accessible to all users of the machine, whereas neither user configuration or data should - in most instances, anyway (I would love for Picassa to be identical, including settings and data, for all users on the "family" computer). Ideally, these components would be be located in predefined locations (can anyone say "My Files"? No, not "My Documents", "My Files"), easily locatable by the user. Yes, that means burying them in the registration database (die!) or under "C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\[Program Name]\" (or the equally horrendous Vista version of it).*
A properly behaving uninstall program should delete the application (completely, not leave a friggin' empty folder or random "I was here" file) and PROMPT for deletion of configuration - and possibly data.
*Note that many of the problems associated with multiple users on a single WINDOWS system would be at least mitigated by introducing a "home" folder. This would have been an obvious feature to implement in Vista, but no such luck.
While risking being out of sync with Slashdot's schizophrenic stance on Microsoft-bashing, let me lower my hammer on this one:
"The changes include a possible addition to the list of banned API function calls"
That's exactly the problem with security under Windows! (okay, there are other problems as well)
Microsoft needs to apply a "default deny" policy to all aspects of Windows' security and this sort of thing wouldn't be a problem in the first place. There shouldn't be a list of BANNED calls, there should be a list of safe ALLOWED calls.
I'm not saying that other operating systems couldn't do a better job too, but security is one (huge) area where Microsoft really and truly sucks - and it isn't something they can solve overnight, either. It seems ingrained in their philosophy and permeates all aspects of Windows (and other products).
I could go on about how Microsoft isn't *really* making gaming hardware or how they've always made hardware (mice and keyboards), but that would miss the real point completely. The point is simply that:
XBox fits perfectly into Microsofts CORE business strategy: Everything should run Windows.
For consoles, this requires owning the ecosystem; having your own console. It's as simple as that.
Microsoft wants ATMs to run Windows (just as they want EVERYTHING to run Windows) and if that required actually making the ATMs, then I'm sure Microsoft would consider doing that. As it is, the volume probably isn't there and it doesn't matter, because it *doesn't* require owning the ecosystem. It just required waiting for IBM to stop supporting OS/2;-)
It's the same thing with PDAs, TVs and practically any other device (in wide-spread use) which requires an "interactive" OS. Microsoft's MO is pretty much the same every time. If there isn't a way to just stick Windows on it easily, they'll make the hardware themselves and show it off as prototypes. They've done this with complete computers, with servers, with PDAs, with TVs - and even with your Ford Refrigerators.
Firefox users by their very nature are the sort of people to try something new.
You are missing large groups of Firefox users. While I (and presumably most Slashdot readers) fall into the category you mention (well, kind of), you are missing a group I believe is much larger. How many users have *you* converted to Firefox? Users who would not fall into the normal "geek" category, you seem to believe in.
Personally, I've converted most of my family and close friends. They significantly outnumber me, so if other "geeks" do the same, the *average* Firefox user is going to be much closer to "average joe" than you assume - without a need to "try something new" or be a geek.
To anyone who thought this sounded a tad dubious, the National Electrical Manufacturers
Association (NEMA) and the Consumer Electronics Group of the Electronics Industries
Association (EIA) have actually investigated (and confirmed) this issue. A detailed report is available:
Actually, no, you'd probably be a lot better of being an engineer. And this is speaking as a physicist myself, although admittedly not a nuclear physicist.
Rocketry aside, building a nuclear bomb is almost solely an engineering challenge. The nuclear physics involved are extremely well-understood and not very difficult. Sure, you might not know EXACTLY how much and what kind of damage your bomb would cause (underground testing helps solve that), but so what? You're a little off on the yield. Compared to having or not having a nuke, that's a minor issue.
Determining the profit from a particular advertisement is actually quite easy in the online world. You can give each advertisement its own identifier and track the visitors from a particular advertisement and see how they relate to your sales.
This is completely worthless for anyone who is further upstream from the point of sale or anyone who also has a physical point of sale (a brick-and-mortar store). So Intel, ASUS, Coca Cola, NVIDIA, Toyota, Sony, Microsoft and 99% of all companies are completely out of luck using your method.
Even in the best-case scenario, you're still missing word-of-mouth (hey, you said you needed a new laptop? I saw this ad for a Dell...) and anyone who happens to use a different computer to place the purchase (most homes have two computers these days).
as for live cd's, bootable floppy's and usb keys; why is the bios allowing anything but the C: drive to boot, and why isint the bios passworded?
BIOS passwords? Oh, please, if you have physical access to the machine without oversight, a BIOS password won't do jack. Resetting it is trivial, although it does require opening the box.
Yay. Just want I want. All of my email being read, indexed, analyzed, and archived by Google.
That's exactly the problem with "GMail for Domains", but a problem that my suggestion would solve (or at least minimize). Instead of having a complete "GMail for Domains" solution, where everything works as per normal GMail (except for the email addresses not being @gmail.com), my suggestion would be to limit the solution to a pipe into Google's spam filter. Theoretically, Google could create a copy of all emails being piped through the filter, it would almost certainly be illegal for them to do so (since there would be a contract without language to explicitly allow Google to do so - the TOU for GMail is the only thing allowing Google to do it for standard accounts). It should be noted that Google would not have any clear reasons for actually reading the email (unless they wanted to embark upon a scheme of corporate espionage), since there wouldn't be any ads to serve.
And, as I said in my previous post, if this level of trust is not good enough, the problem could be further mitigated by limiting the emails transfered to those not passing a simple white-list filter.
The problem with mod-chips for the business model is that console makers are losing a lot of money on the hardware. This loss is then compensated for by increasing the prices of games.
This is fundamentally the same issue as in the mobile phone industry, where the phones are often sold at steep discounts - in exchange for being tied to a contract with increased costs of actually using the phone and/or a monthly charge.
At least here in Denmark, rules disallow many "deceptive" business practices, resulting in virtually all subsidized phones being sold with a contract that forces 6 months of payment (after which the monthly charge is typically reduced to zero (unless the plan includes free minutes / text messages or the like)). Additionally, stores are required to give the total (minimum) cost of the phone over the contract period. This allows consumers to easily compare prices.
Thus consumers are perfectly willing to pay for a mobile phone by laying down X dollars now and Y dollars a month for Z number of months. Maybe some are deluding themselves into thinking, that they're actually getting something for those Y dollars a month, but I'd wager most aren't.
Why shouldn't this exact same "solution" work for console makers? Especially now that consoles feature internet accounts.
Microsoft could then sell its console for the same price as before, but include a contract for 6 months of "Xbox Live Diamond" access at some monthly charge.
At best, the rental DRM would be an "Open Standard" meaning anyone who pays RAND* patent fees and signs an NDA will be allowed to implement a device, and be given keys (specific to them) to decode the data.
No, no, no! Leaving aside the whole "DRM is inherently evil" debate, there's absolutely no reason that a DRM standard should be this closed. Why not have the whole thing open sourced and un-patent-encumbered? DRM is trivial to implement and doesn't rely on obfuscation or security-through-obscurity to work. It's a simple matter of encryption and key management.
This is actually something Google could sell. Access to their mail filter. I do realize that they have "corporate email", but that still smacks a lot of GMail and some businesses would rather avoid that. Instead, they could provide a simple access to their spam filter. Yes, requiring all email to be piped through a Google server if they don't want to make the filter available as a binary (presumably updated regularly).
To minimize bandwidth consumption and (partly, at least) allay privacy / corporate secrecy worries, the email piped through Google's servers could be limited to anything that didn't pass a white-list filter (e.g. removing all internal corporate email, as well as email from established business partners).
In The Netherlands and Belgium, American English is most spoken. Interestingly, these countries subtitle television and movies rather than dubbing it in their own language, so the people are exposed to a lot of (sitcom/movie/Oprah/...) american english at home, whereas France and Germany dub most of their TV and movies.
The same goes for Denmark, Sweden and Norway. None of them dub TV shows or movies (with the exception of some animated movies and series, especially those geared towards young children - e.g. saturday morning cartoons and their ilk).
It used to be that we even got to hear the English (US or UK) commentator on sports channels such as Eurosport. Sadly, that's no longer the case.
Some of the goofs in Beta2 (and earlier) were so clear-cut that the sceptical among us might be tempted to believe they were made on purpose to get exactly the kind of good PR exemplified by TFA.
Since your hand shakes somewhat, you might want to take an average of readings. But I would have thought that measuring perhaps 3 times a frame would be more accurate than a blending the input from the last 12 frames. Either their accelerometer isn't fast enough, or they're concerned about wii-mote battery life.
Or they could just use a lowpass filter on the console-end to get rid of any high-frequency "shakes".
One of my Logitech mice had a similar problem. The left button just required too much force for comfort. Significantly more than any other mouse I've worked with, but not so much as to make it impossible to work with. Just uncomfortable over long periods of time - and the wife didn't like it much either.
I folded a small piece of paper and stuck it under the button. This solved the problem completely (of course, the paper needed to be just the right thickness to get the best "click action").
As for durability, this is a mouse and... uhmm... it occasionally goes flying. Normal use doesn't shake the paper loose, but there's always a chance if the mouse is hit hard (could be a hand, could be the floor). Still, I don't think I've repositioned the paper more than a handful of times over the past 3 years of use.
Slashdot Mirror
Rather, tinfoil hat == tinfoil ANTENNA
Wrapping something in a metal, such as aluminum, creates a Faraday cage. It doesn't need to be a solid surface, of course, a mesh will do just fine - depending on the wavelengths you need to block.
Sounds like it's an app-launcher / wrapper-to-KDE. The need to wake up periodically is probably to check for signals, including if the program has finished. As the man page states, it passes input IT receives (i.e. the kwrapper receives the inputs and passes them to the program it was used to launch), tries to pass output from the app to the console (nay, konsole) and waits for the app to finish. It seems that very few programs should be launched with kwrapper unless the input-passing or term-output is really needed.
From the man page of kshell (link):
kwrapper tries to make the application look like it was actually started directly and not via kdeinit. Like kshell it passes application name, arguments, complete environment and current working directory to kdeinit.
Additionally it - tries to redirect application output to the console from which kwrapper was started - waits for the application to finish (but does not return its return value) - passes most signals it gets to the process of the started applicationThe signal passing allows you to use Ctrl-C to break the started application or Ctrl-Z to stop it.
Note: With the use of kwrapper you will have one more process running and also the signal passing and output redirection may not work properly.
Do you REALLY want your save games to be deleted when you "uninstall" an app?
This extends to all data created by applications, e.g. documents created by your word processor of choice. Clearly, this is bad practice. (User) data and configuration SHOULD reside elsewhere. And that's not even delving into the security issues this would present. You don't necessarily want to share your settings or data with other users of the same computer.
Another thing: Unless you use Windows Explorer (or command line) to navigate to and run a program, you can't uninstall a program FULLY by deleting its folder. At minimum, you would need to delete the shortcut to the program from somewhere else - unless you want Windows to be constantly scanning e.g. the Program Files folder for changes... but something tells me, you wouldn't appreciate that ;-)
In total, we have three separate "components" to even a relatively simple application: user configuration, user data and the app itself. In most cases, the app should be accessible to all users of the machine, whereas neither user configuration or data should - in most instances, anyway (I would love for Picassa to be identical, including settings and data, for all users on the "family" computer). Ideally, these components would be be located in predefined locations (can anyone say "My Files"? No, not "My Documents", "My Files"), easily locatable by the user. Yes, that means burying them in the registration database (die!) or under "C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\[Program Name]\" (or the equally horrendous Vista version of it).*
A properly behaving uninstall program should delete the application (completely, not leave a friggin' empty folder or random "I was here" file) and PROMPT for deletion of configuration - and possibly data.
*Note that many of the problems associated with multiple users on a single WINDOWS system would be at least mitigated by introducing a "home" folder. This would have been an obvious feature to implement in Vista, but no such luck.
While risking being out of sync with Slashdot's schizophrenic stance on Microsoft-bashing, let me lower my hammer on this one:
"The changes include a possible addition to the list of banned API function calls"
That's exactly the problem with security under Windows! (okay, there are other problems as well)
Microsoft needs to apply a "default deny" policy to all aspects of Windows' security and this sort of thing wouldn't be a problem in the first place. There shouldn't be a list of BANNED calls, there should be a list of safe ALLOWED calls.
I'm not saying that other operating systems couldn't do a better job too, but security is one (huge) area where Microsoft really and truly sucks - and it isn't something they can solve overnight, either. It seems ingrained in their philosophy and permeates all aspects of Windows (and other products).
I could go on about how Microsoft isn't *really* making gaming hardware or how they've always made hardware (mice and keyboards), but that would miss the real point completely. The point is simply that:
XBox fits perfectly into Microsofts CORE business strategy: Everything should run Windows.
For consoles, this requires owning the ecosystem; having your own console. It's as simple as that.
Microsoft wants ATMs to run Windows (just as they want EVERYTHING to run Windows) and if that required actually making the ATMs, then I'm sure Microsoft would consider doing that. As it is, the volume probably isn't there and it doesn't matter, because it *doesn't* require owning the ecosystem. It just required waiting for IBM to stop supporting OS/2 ;-)
It's the same thing with PDAs, TVs and practically any other device (in wide-spread use) which requires an "interactive" OS. Microsoft's MO is pretty much the same every time. If there isn't a way to just stick Windows on it easily, they'll make the hardware themselves and show it off as prototypes. They've done this with complete computers, with servers, with PDAs, with TVs - and even with your Ford Refrigerators.
You are missing large groups of Firefox users. While I (and presumably most Slashdot readers) fall into the category you mention (well, kind of), you are missing a group I believe is much larger. How many users have *you* converted to Firefox? Users who would not fall into the normal "geek" category, you seem to believe in.
Personally, I've converted most of my family and close friends. They significantly outnumber me, so if other "geeks" do the same, the *average* Firefox user is going to be much closer to "average joe" than you assume - without a need to "try something new" or be a geek.
Anything that takes a lawyer, takes a lot more than "a few minutes". A few HOURS, if you are lucky.
It's probably possible to cut down on the time required if you can find an existing contract that does pretty much what you need.
"for a girlfriend" isn't the same as "as a girlfriend" The OP's statement is thus only funny if your English skills are severely lacking.
To anyone who thought this sounded a tad dubious, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) and the Consumer Electronics Group of the Electronics Industries Association (EIA) have actually investigated (and confirmed) this issue. A detailed report is available:
http://www.neptunlight.com/files/IR-and-CFLs.pdf (PDF warning)
It also provides a helpful primer for anyone who doesn't actually know how one of these things work ;-)
Yeah, quarks will do that to ya!
There has to be an "entanglement" joke in there somewhere, but I'll be darned if I can find it.
Why does Israel need to acknowledge they have nukes? Everybody knows it. What possible difference could it make?
The fundamental problem with nuclear weapons is that they are relatively easy to make. The (remote) delivery system is the hard part.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to make a nuke...
Not if they include the year. Then it's second most, least, most significant. Yeah, that's nice all right. (It also stinks for SORTING).
This is completely worthless for anyone who is further upstream from the point of sale or anyone who also has a physical point of sale (a brick-and-mortar store). So Intel, ASUS, Coca Cola, NVIDIA, Toyota, Sony, Microsoft and 99% of all companies are completely out of luck using your method.
Even in the best-case scenario, you're still missing word-of-mouth (hey, you said you needed a new laptop? I saw this ad for a Dell...) and anyone who happens to use a different computer to place the purchase (most homes have two computers these days).
BIOS passwords? Oh, please, if you have physical access to the machine without oversight, a BIOS password won't do jack. Resetting it is trivial, although it does require opening the box.
That's exactly the problem with "GMail for Domains", but a problem that my suggestion would solve (or at least minimize). Instead of having a complete "GMail for Domains" solution, where everything works as per normal GMail (except for the email addresses not being @gmail.com), my suggestion would be to limit the solution to a pipe into Google's spam filter. Theoretically, Google could create a copy of all emails being piped through the filter, it would almost certainly be illegal for them to do so (since there would be a contract without language to explicitly allow Google to do so - the TOU for GMail is the only thing allowing Google to do it for standard accounts). It should be noted that Google would not have any clear reasons for actually reading the email (unless they wanted to embark upon a scheme of corporate espionage), since there wouldn't be any ads to serve.
And, as I said in my previous post, if this level of trust is not good enough, the problem could be further mitigated by limiting the emails transfered to those not passing a simple white-list filter.
The problem with mod-chips for the business model is that console makers are losing a lot of money on the hardware. This loss is then compensated for by increasing the prices of games.
This is fundamentally the same issue as in the mobile phone industry, where the phones are often sold at steep discounts - in exchange for being tied to a contract with increased costs of actually using the phone and/or a monthly charge.
At least here in Denmark, rules disallow many "deceptive" business practices, resulting in virtually all subsidized phones being sold with a contract that forces 6 months of payment (after which the monthly charge is typically reduced to zero (unless the plan includes free minutes / text messages or the like)). Additionally, stores are required to give the total (minimum) cost of the phone over the contract period. This allows consumers to easily compare prices.
Thus consumers are perfectly willing to pay for a mobile phone by laying down X dollars now and Y dollars a month for Z number of months. Maybe some are deluding themselves into thinking, that they're actually getting something for those Y dollars a month, but I'd wager most aren't.
Why shouldn't this exact same "solution" work for console makers? Especially now that consoles feature internet accounts.
Microsoft could then sell its console for the same price as before, but include a contract for 6 months of "Xbox Live Diamond" access at some monthly charge.
No, no, no! Leaving aside the whole "DRM is inherently evil" debate, there's absolutely no reason that a DRM standard should be this closed. Why not have the whole thing open sourced and un-patent-encumbered? DRM is trivial to implement and doesn't rely on obfuscation or security-through-obscurity to work. It's a simple matter of encryption and key management.
This is actually something Google could sell. Access to their mail filter. I do realize that they have "corporate email", but that still smacks a lot of GMail and some businesses would rather avoid that. Instead, they could provide a simple access to their spam filter. Yes, requiring all email to be piped through a Google server if they don't want to make the filter available as a binary (presumably updated regularly).
To minimize bandwidth consumption and (partly, at least) allay privacy / corporate secrecy worries, the email piped through Google's servers could be limited to anything that didn't pass a white-list filter (e.g. removing all internal corporate email, as well as email from established business partners).
The same goes for Denmark, Sweden and Norway. None of them dub TV shows or movies (with the exception of some animated movies and series, especially those geared towards young children - e.g. saturday morning cartoons and their ilk).
It used to be that we even got to hear the English (US or UK) commentator on sports channels such as Eurosport. Sadly, that's no longer the case.
Some of the goofs in Beta2 (and earlier) were so clear-cut that the sceptical among us might be tempted to believe they were made on purpose to get exactly the kind of good PR exemplified by TFA.
Or they could just use a lowpass filter on the console-end to get rid of any high-frequency "shakes".
One of my Logitech mice had a similar problem. The left button just required too much force for comfort. Significantly more than any other mouse I've worked with, but not so much as to make it impossible to work with. Just uncomfortable over long periods of time - and the wife didn't like it much either.
I folded a small piece of paper and stuck it under the button. This solved the problem completely (of course, the paper needed to be just the right thickness to get the best "click action").
As for durability, this is a mouse and... uhmm... it occasionally goes flying. Normal use doesn't shake the paper loose, but there's always a chance if the mouse is hit hard (could be a hand, could be the floor). Still, I don't think I've repositioned the paper more than a handful of times over the past 3 years of use.