It'll be interesting to see how society copes when all you can do is sit back and wait for mother nature. We have these things called trains busses and coaches. They aren't as fast as planes but still i'd bet you can reach an airport outside the ash zone in less than a day.
I'm looking for maps, but it doesn't seem to look that close...? Note: rectangular maps of the world distort distances. Rectangular maps use some variant of a cylindrical projection* so as you approach the pole east-west distances appear larger than they really are.
Still it is a bloody big ash cloud (note: also because of winds it's neither circular nor centered on the source).
*The variants differ in how they deal with north/south distances. Mercator's projection (the most common afaict) modifies the north/south distances as well so local shapes are correctly represented. Peters projection modifies north/south distances in the opposite way so it preserves area but distorts local shape even more than a straight cylindrical projection does.
mmm, and what's this bloody obsession with error codes. I was having trouble with windows update giving an error recently and the only expanatory information was an error code.
After some time searching online and finding various speculation I eventually found that the code basically translated as "connection problem" and that I should try again later. Why couldn't they have just fucking told me that in the first place?!
note that these people are in the age range where in most of the western world you have some but not all of the rights and responsibilities of an adult.
According to http://www.dol.gov/compliance/guide/childlbr.htm "Minors age 16 and 17 may perform any job not declared hazardous by the Secretary, and are not subject to restrictions on hours ". So these people are old enough that if they were US citizens they could work in the US. In the UK things are similar but slightly more complex (mainly that things are defined in terms of school years rather than actual age).
I'm not saying there aren't problems here but it's not exactly "child labour" in the conventional sense of the term.
My guess is that the h.264 patent holders would rather lose the web video market than take the losses in royalties that would be associated with relasing h.264 under a license that is sufficiantly compatible with the principles of opensource to satisfy mozilla.
Between an aversion to paying for things that used to be free, fear of giving out card details and a need to pay in relatively big blocks to keep the card fees manageable a LOT of users will be driven away by a paywall. This has happened many times over the history of the net.
And this is another reason why trim is important. Without trim the drive does not know what sectors are really in use, only what sectors have been used at some point.
If they fuck up really really badly then yeah it doesn't really make a difference. In my experiance though most fuckups are smaller in magnitude (sometimes they don't even double charge but only double authorise leaving you with an authorisation that you can't see cutting into your available balance but not your account balance).
because accessing the web on mobile devices has become increasingly common. And because mobile users don't generally have any choice of browser. Most PC users even if they use firefox normally will ususally have IE on hand. Furthermore most PC users will have flash installed!
HTML5 video sounds to me like it's the best workaround/compromise, rather than a good solution. Indeed, working around the fundamental problem that there is no baseline codec everyone can agree on.
Will google be able to get everyone to agree on VP8? I have my doubts.
H.264 Needs hardware support because it's a CPU intensive codec. Codecs such as Theora don't require hardware support because it is a simpler codec, hence it has the ability to run on more devices then H.264 does. But how many devices actually support theora (as apposed to just being technically capable of having support added) and don't support h.264?
How many firefox installations are there that don't have either flash or a flash clone that supports h.264 video installed?
Or Perhaps a combination of the two. H.264 with Theora fall back using HTML5's video tag. If you add a fallback to flash to that then you have pretty much covered all the bases.
The downside of course is that you have to double up on your encoding infrastructure since you have to produce.
For the likes of netflix and youtube I'd agree. The other stuff mentioned though is the sort of thing that once standardised stays pretty constant because unlike with PC based stuff you can't easilly change the codec with a software update.
However the problem I see is that a video codec is not an infrastructure type of software. I would disagree there. To allow full interoperability any protocol for sharing video needs to standardise on a baseline codec. That codec becomes essentially part of the protocol definition. A standard that doesn't specify a baseline codec is an incomplete standard.
If they standardise on an encumbered codec they put opensource projects in a bad position (IIRC you can get h.264 licenses that are just about compatible with the letter of GPLv2 but i'm pretty sure there is no way to get one that is compatibile with the spirit of FOSS). Meanwhile nokia and apple claim theora is a submarine patent risk and refuse to implment it.
Will this new release break the deadlock? only apple and nokia can answer that one.
IMO interoperability is more important than protecting codec vendors who can't stay far enough ahead to make their products worth buying.
This particular announcement is good news sure but google seems to be sending out very mixed messages at the moment. On the one hand they are supporting embedded development of theora. On another they are saying they will open up a codec that is apparently better than theora and on yet another they don't offer either of these on youtube nor have they announced any plans to do so afaict.
Google owns the most significant video sharing site on the internet. If they believe in free codecs they should lead by example.
The java language itself doesn't seem to have changed that much. Sure they added generics and autoboxing in 1.5 under pressure from C# but there is still no operator overloading and there is still a very inflexible type/parameter system that practically forces coders to generate a lot of small memory allocations many of which will quickly become garbage.
The libraries OTOH have grown hugely over the years.
PDF does lock you into the paper size on which it was originally printed:-) The size of standard office is unlikely to change hugely any time soon and slight changes like A4 vs letter vs legal can be handled acceptably by the scaling functionality built into acrobat reader.
More generally though pdf locks the document into a particular presentation form (page layout, page size, font choices and so on) and makes it difficult to edit. Sometimes this is exactly what you want (e.g. when you need to look up exactly what was on a particular page number) other times it isn't.
I believe the only responsible way to archive important documents is to archive in multiple formats e.g.
* The original format. This will preserve all the information but that information may be difficult to retrieve. * A pdf (or another similar format but frankly pdf is the best supported format of it's type). This is important if you need to see the document exactly as it would have been original printed with the same page numbers etc. Make sure fonts (especially any unusual ones) are embedded. * If practical an open format that will preserve most of the content while still being editable. For a word document appropriate choices might be rtf, html or odt. For an excel file csv or ods may be appropriate choices (csv is more widely supported and easier for an excel user to convert to but ods will likely preserve more information) * If it's some sort of CAD design the output files that actually need to be sent off to get the design made (e.g. gerber and nc drill for a PCB) * If the text is meaningful without any of the other content then a plain text copy as an ultimate fallback.
Don't even need to trick them, just put wrappers in place so that next time they try to use one of those tools it runs the malware. For bonus points design the malware so it takes what the user was originally trying to do as a command line parameter and runs that as well so the user isn't any the wiser.
The ability to load a different version of the jvm dll sounds like a debugging feature and normally someone running java from the command line would have the ability to run anything else anyway so it wouldn't really seem like a security flaw.
Processing untrusted stuff to allow it to be passed to an interface designed to take trusted stuff is known to be something that is easy to fuck up. Just look at all the sql injection attacks over the years.
Afaict it is possible to set up a "private" jvm and use it for just one app. Doing this for any apps that need it and either having no jvm installed where the browser can find it at all or keeping the one used by the browser up to date is probablly a sensible approach to reducing exposure.
Given access to a users profile it's pretty trivial to set a trap such that next time they use su/sudo*/a menu entry that asks for a password to become roote/etc the malware gets root.
Though frankly running as a normal user is enough to send spam, perform ddos etc anyway.
*assuming a sudo config that allows general root access, e.g. the default on ubuntu.
Having said that, it's not much use in this situation - when some other bastard chooses to grossly mismanage their[1] cash. mmm, in the UK the best strategy is probably to have an agreed overdraft even if you don't plan to use it.
That way when someone else fucks up and charges you more than they should have the charges (which will probablly be refunded in the end) are much lower and more importantly your account keeps working while the mess is being sorted out.
P.S. if you are an undergraduate student in the UK the halifax will give you a FREE overdraft!
Time is an expense While this is somewhat true for a buisness (even a one man buisness) we aren't discussing buisness here.
The whole POINT of entertainment is to fill ones free time (that is time the person either doesn't want to or can't spend earning money) with something you consider enjoyable or at least better than sitting around doing nothing so it really doesn't make sense to consider time an expense in this context.
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It'll be interesting to see how society copes when all you can do is sit back and wait for mother nature.
We have these things called trains busses and coaches. They aren't as fast as planes but still i'd bet you can reach an airport outside the ash zone in less than a day.
I'm looking for maps, but it doesn't seem to look that close...?
Note: rectangular maps of the world distort distances. Rectangular maps use some variant of a cylindrical projection* so as you approach the pole east-west distances appear larger than they really are.
Still it is a bloody big ash cloud (note: also because of winds it's neither circular nor centered on the source).
*The variants differ in how they deal with north/south distances. Mercator's projection (the most common afaict) modifies the north/south distances as well so local shapes are correctly represented. Peters projection modifies north/south distances in the opposite way so it preserves area but distorts local shape even more than a straight cylindrical projection does.
mmm, and what's this bloody obsession with error codes. I was having trouble with windows update giving an error recently and the only expanatory information was an error code.
After some time searching online and finding various speculation I eventually found that the code basically translated as "connection problem" and that I should try again later. Why couldn't they have just fucking told me that in the first place?!
http://xkcd.com/123/
note that these people are in the age range where in most of the western world you have some but not all of the rights and responsibilities of an adult.
According to http://www.dol.gov/compliance/guide/childlbr.htm "Minors age 16 and 17 may perform any job not declared hazardous by the Secretary, and are not subject to restrictions on hours ". So these people are old enough that if they were US citizens they could work in the US. In the UK things are similar but slightly more complex (mainly that things are defined in terms of school years rather than actual age).
I'm not saying there aren't problems here but it's not exactly "child labour" in the conventional sense of the term.
My guess is that the h.264 patent holders would rather lose the web video market than take the losses in royalties that would be associated with relasing h.264 under a license that is sufficiantly compatible with the principles of opensource to satisfy mozilla.
Between an aversion to paying for things that used to be free, fear of giving out card details and a need to pay in relatively big blocks to keep the card fees manageable a LOT of users will be driven away by a paywall. This has happened many times over the history of the net.
And this is another reason why trim is important. Without trim the drive does not know what sectors are really in use, only what sectors have been used at some point.
If they fuck up really really badly then yeah it doesn't really make a difference. In my experiance though most fuckups are smaller in magnitude (sometimes they don't even double charge but only double authorise leaving you with an authorisation that you can't see cutting into your available balance but not your account balance).
You could already get half this capacity in a laptop sized drive and a desktop drive is more than twice the volume of a laptop drive.
because accessing the web on mobile devices has become increasingly common.
And because mobile users don't generally have any choice of browser. Most PC users even if they use firefox normally will ususally have IE on hand. Furthermore most PC users will have flash installed!
HTML5 video sounds to me like it's the best workaround/compromise, rather than a good solution.
Indeed, working around the fundamental problem that there is no baseline codec everyone can agree on.
Will google be able to get everyone to agree on VP8? I have my doubts.
H.264 Needs hardware support because it's a CPU intensive codec. Codecs such as Theora don't require hardware support because it is a simpler codec, hence it has the ability to run on more devices then H.264 does.
But how many devices actually support theora (as apposed to just being technically capable of having support added) and don't support h.264?
How many firefox installations are there that don't have either flash or a flash clone that supports h.264 video installed?
Or Perhaps a combination of the two. H.264 with Theora fall back using HTML5's video tag.
If you add a fallback to flash to that then you have pretty much covered all the bases.
The downside of course is that you have to double up on your encoding infrastructure since you have to produce.
For the likes of netflix and youtube I'd agree. The other stuff mentioned though is the sort of thing that once standardised stays pretty constant because unlike with PC based stuff you can't easilly change the codec with a software update.
It does though I'd strongly disagree with the GPs assertion that it's "almost entirely based on online video"
Some of my favorites
http://www.theonion.com/video/ultrarealistic-modern-warfare-game-features-awaiti,14382/
http://www.theonion.com/video/warcraft-sequel-lets-gamers-play-a-character-playi,14240/
However the problem I see is that a video codec is not an infrastructure type of software.
I would disagree there. To allow full interoperability any protocol for sharing video needs to standardise on a baseline codec. That codec becomes essentially part of the protocol definition. A standard that doesn't specify a baseline codec is an incomplete standard.
If they standardise on an encumbered codec they put opensource projects in a bad position (IIRC you can get h.264 licenses that are just about compatible with the letter of GPLv2 but i'm pretty sure there is no way to get one that is compatibile with the spirit of FOSS). Meanwhile nokia and apple claim theora is a submarine patent risk and refuse to implment it.
Will this new release break the deadlock? only apple and nokia can answer that one.
IMO interoperability is more important than protecting codec vendors who can't stay far enough ahead to make their products worth buying.
This particular announcement is good news sure but google seems to be sending out very mixed messages at the moment. On the one hand they are supporting embedded development of theora. On another they are saying they will open up a codec that is apparently better than theora and on yet another they don't offer either of these on youtube nor have they announced any plans to do so afaict.
Google owns the most significant video sharing site on the internet. If they believe in free codecs they should lead by example.
The java language itself doesn't seem to have changed that much. Sure they added generics and autoboxing in 1.5 under pressure from C# but there is still no operator overloading and there is still a very inflexible type/parameter system that practically forces coders to generate a lot of small memory allocations many of which will quickly become garbage.
The libraries OTOH have grown hugely over the years.
PDF does lock you into the paper size on which it was originally printed :-)
The size of standard office is unlikely to change hugely any time soon and slight changes like A4 vs letter vs legal can be handled acceptably by the scaling functionality built into acrobat reader.
More generally though pdf locks the document into a particular presentation form (page layout, page size, font choices and so on) and makes it difficult to edit. Sometimes this is exactly what you want (e.g. when you need to look up exactly what was on a particular page number) other times it isn't.
I believe the only responsible way to archive important documents is to archive in multiple formats e.g.
* The original format. This will preserve all the information but that information may be difficult to retrieve.
* A pdf (or another similar format but frankly pdf is the best supported format of it's type). This is important if you need to see the document exactly as it would have been original printed with the same page numbers etc. Make sure fonts (especially any unusual ones) are embedded.
* If practical an open format that will preserve most of the content while still being editable. For a word document appropriate choices might be rtf, html or odt. For an excel file csv or ods may be appropriate choices (csv is more widely supported and easier for an excel user to convert to but ods will likely preserve more information)
* If it's some sort of CAD design the output files that actually need to be sent off to get the design made (e.g. gerber and nc drill for a PCB)
* If the text is meaningful without any of the other content then a plain text copy as an ultimate fallback.
Don't even need to trick them, just put wrappers in place so that next time they try to use one of those tools it runs the malware. For bonus points design the malware so it takes what the user was originally trying to do as a command line parameter and runs that as well so the user isn't any the wiser.
Personally I doubt this was deliberate.
The ability to load a different version of the jvm dll sounds like a debugging feature and normally someone running java from the command line would have the ability to run anything else anyway so it wouldn't really seem like a security flaw.
Processing untrusted stuff to allow it to be passed to an interface designed to take trusted stuff is known to be something that is easy to fuck up. Just look at all the sql injection attacks over the years.
Afaict it is possible to set up a "private" jvm and use it for just one app. Doing this for any apps that need it and either having no jvm installed where the browser can find it at all or keeping the one used by the browser up to date is probablly a sensible approach to reducing exposure.
meh
Given access to a users profile it's pretty trivial to set a trap such that next time they use su/sudo*/a menu entry that asks for a password to become roote/etc the malware gets root.
Though frankly running as a normal user is enough to send spam, perform ddos etc anyway.
*assuming a sudo config that allows general root access, e.g. the default on ubuntu.
Having said that, it's not much use in this situation - when some other bastard chooses to grossly mismanage their[1] cash.
mmm, in the UK the best strategy is probably to have an agreed overdraft even if you don't plan to use it.
That way when someone else fucks up and charges you more than they should have the charges (which will probablly be refunded in the end) are much lower and more importantly your account keeps working while the mess is being sorted out.
P.S. if you are an undergraduate student in the UK the halifax will give you a FREE overdraft!
Time is an expense
While this is somewhat true for a buisness (even a one man buisness) we aren't discussing buisness here.
The whole POINT of entertainment is to fill ones free time (that is time the person either doesn't want to or can't spend earning money) with something you consider enjoyable or at least better than sitting around doing nothing so it really doesn't make sense to consider time an expense in this context.