I can't believe we still have to pay for incoming calls in the U.S.
You have to pay for incoming calls but it's cheap for the caller. In Europe, you never had to pay for incoming calls but the caller has to pay outrageous rates to call your mobile. In either case, someone has to pay. No one system is better than the other.
You are safe because unlike 95% of the population you are a technical user. You know what you are doing. You need to consider the security of John Doe's computer : he's the one very likely to be infected with malware.
About appliance-like locked down computers
on
How to Save the Internet
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The article is interesting, long but interesting. The author is arguing among other things that PCs should stay mainstream because they are a motor of innovation since they are easily adapted to new applications. The author sees closed appliances such as tivos as a danger to innovation.
I too believe that PC are extremely important in our society. But I am not sure that the generalization of locked down internet-appliance would be a bad thing.
The main reason we are assaulted by spam and that botnets are rampant is that the average user is ignorant. A computer is a great tool and it's a very powerful one but as the other said "with power comes responsibility". But for a large portion of the users, the computer is a tool, that they use for a rather limited set of applications, and they have no deep understanding of how it works and what they have to do to use it properly : we can see that in the inability of so many to secure their computers.
To use the sacrosanct car analogy, computers are like cars that you can drive without license. Since you don't need a license, people don't bother learning how to operate it properly : they are not interested and I can understand that. The problem is that now computers are interconnected and interact with others computers the same as cars interact with other cars on the road. You could very well operate your car without learning anything other than how to turn it on and accelerate but in that case, it is required that every drivers learn how to use turning light and other things before they can go on the road so that they don't impact the welfare as the other users.
On the other hand, I'm sure that , those problems will be reduced in the future as children that have been brought up around computers and the internet will be more computer literate than their parents but the general level of computer illiteracy I see around me makes me think that it will take a long long time before the average joe can be trusted with a computer.
What could be done to reduce this problem :
-Nothing. Things are going to worsen but there is probably nothing we can do.
-Let OS vendors turn to trusted computing but that would destroy the power and usefulness of General Purpose computer for everybody.
-Hope people will turn to easy-to use appliance like device.
I think we are indeed seeing that on a level : we can already find appliance-like locked down computers in many houses : tivos, xbox, playstation, they all are lockdown computers. Not everybody need a PC and I think it would be good if people had the choice not to get a real PC if they don't have the skills to use it.
I don't need no friiggin S3 sleep on my computer ! The damn thing ingested an S2 engine the other day. Now I wont turn off even when it's not plugged-in !
I have been using Dvorak for about one year and I have never looked back. However it can be bit of a pita in some case, especially for coding. You can forget about VIM for example. When writing code, I believe the new layout is not much better than Qwerty in many case. But code is not what you write most of the time and Dvorak is great for typing regular english which i more commonly type than code.
One things that make things much easier is the Dvorak-Qwerty layout on the mac. The command+Key shortcut stays as Qwerty so that ergonomically chosen commands stays at the same place. I wish I had a similar layout for windows and linux.
Anyway concerning code, what I did is to customize the layout to add a few well placed key for the commonly used symbols. I put {}[]() and others signs on the home row + AltGr on my 109 keys keyboard.
Well since he is the guy that overhyped Kevin Mitnick case so he could make a profit selling his book and as a result got Mitnick to spend an unfairly long time in jail, I don't find it strange that's he's not liked too much on slashdot.
That's possibly what the guys selling the exploits are hoping for: that Microsoft buys it from them and as you say $50,000 isn't much for Microsoft. Actually, maybe Microsoft should actually start a program to reward people that submit vulnerabilities in relation to security risk caused by it. This might actually help make Vista secure quickly if they pay well. And if they have any confidence in the fact that Vista is a relatively secure OS, they shouldn't have to worry that it is going to cost them too much as each bug that disapear is a bug that won't be discovered anymore.
I think that you under-appreciate the value of advertising. As you point out, an ad is not going to make you go out and buy a can of beer of a particular brand but what has more value for the brand is :
-brand recognition : people are more likely to buy something they have heard about than something unknown. Ideally, you want the more consumers possible to associate what you are selling with your brand, like Budweiser succeeded as your post points out.
-brand perception : people are more likely to buy something they perceive to be of better quality, even if it's not, as long as it's what was told to them. Ads can go a long way to improve the perception of quality the consumer will have about your products.
So it is important for a brand to air as much ad as possible to remain competitive. Of course, it's not the only way to market a product and it's possible to be successful without advertisement but ad have values. If your product isn't anything special especially (Budweiser), you really have to rely on it. If advertisement didn't work, I think someone would know.
I find this absolutely ridiculous to blame Apple for your own stupidity. It's not like they force you to listen a the iPod at maximum level, isn't it ?
Also portable music system have been around since sony's walkman and since then the same claim as been made over and over.
It's true. Listening at full volume will damage your hearing but arent you supposed to know that by now ?
It's bad when people can't take responsability for anything they are doing nowadays. It's the same as how parents don't want to take responsabilty for how they raise their own children and will blame everybody but themsleves when something goes wrong...
Google Video wont work from several countries for a reason I ignore... Notably France and Germany are out.
Of course its easily bypassed by using a proxy but my favourite workaround is to use Google's own Google Translate Service available at http://www.google.com/translate_t
Just past the Google Video's URL and your up.
My experience with blank keyboards
on
Blank Keyboard
·
· Score: 1
What 80 bucks for that! Better be a damn good keyboard. I used to have a blank keyboard I bought for £5 in a discount store. I figure they dont sell so well among regular people so its should be easy to find bargains.
Off course I had bought mine for the sole reason of annoying my flatmates.
Interestingly the keyboard was meant for learning touchtyping and and an extra backspace key. The spacebar was cut in two: the left part was the second extra backspace; the right part was the specebar.
Concerning the touchtiping skill improvement, their claim that you are going to speed up you typing speed by 100% is ridiculous.
If you already know how to touchtype properly, having a blank keyboard wont do much. If you dont know how to touch type properlly, having one will disgust you before you can improve.
Only in the formal setting of a touchtyping course can they be really useful imho. Or to annoy other people they are great.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows Shipping with Gesture Recognition.
You have to pay for incoming calls but it's cheap for the caller. In Europe, you never had to pay for incoming calls but the caller has to pay outrageous rates to call your mobile. In either case, someone has to pay. No one system is better than the other.
You are safe because unlike 95% of the population you are a technical user. You know what you are doing. You need to consider the security of John Doe's computer : he's the one very likely to be infected with malware.
The article is interesting, long but interesting. The author is arguing among other things that PCs should stay mainstream because they are a motor of innovation since they are easily adapted to new applications. The author sees closed appliances such as tivos as a danger to innovation.
I too believe that PC are extremely important in our society. But I am not sure that the generalization of locked down internet-appliance would be a bad thing.
The main reason we are assaulted by spam and that botnets are rampant is that the average user is ignorant. A computer is a great tool and it's a very powerful one but as the other said "with power comes responsibility". But for a large portion of the users, the computer is a tool, that they use for a rather limited set of applications, and they have no deep understanding of how it works and what they have to do to use it properly : we can see that in the inability of so many to secure their computers.
To use the sacrosanct car analogy, computers are like cars that you can drive without license. Since you don't need a license, people don't bother learning how to operate it properly : they are not interested and I can understand that. The problem is that now computers are interconnected and interact with others computers the same as cars interact with other cars on the road. You could very well operate your car without learning anything other than how to turn it on and accelerate but in that case, it is required that every drivers learn how to use turning light and other things before they can go on the road so that they don't impact the welfare as the other users.
On the other hand, I'm sure that , those problems will be reduced in the future as children that have been brought up around computers and the internet will be more computer literate than their parents but the general level of computer illiteracy I see around me makes me think that it will take a long long time before the average joe can be trusted with a computer.
What could be done to reduce this problem :
-Nothing. Things are going to worsen but there is probably nothing we can do.
-Let OS vendors turn to trusted computing but that would destroy the power and usefulness of General Purpose computer for everybody.
-Hope people will turn to easy-to use appliance like device.
I think we are indeed seeing that on a level : we can already find appliance-like locked down computers in many houses : tivos, xbox, playstation, they all are lockdown computers. Not everybody need a PC and I think it would be good if people had the choice not to get a real PC if they don't have the skills to use it.
But with the iPhone your mom can too... That's what makes it different.
That's why it is bad to accidentally leave a Ganymede rock lobster in fridge for a Year.
I don't need no friiggin S3 sleep on my computer ! The damn thing ingested an S2 engine the other day. Now I wont turn off even when it's not plugged-in !
I have been using Dvorak for about one year and I have never looked back. However it can be bit of a pita in some case, especially for coding. You can forget about VIM for example. When writing code, I believe the new layout is not much better than Qwerty in many case. But code is not what you write most of the time and Dvorak is great for typing regular english which i more commonly type than code. One things that make things much easier is the Dvorak-Qwerty layout on the mac. The command+Key shortcut stays as Qwerty so that ergonomically chosen commands stays at the same place. I wish I had a similar layout for windows and linux. Anyway concerning code, what I did is to customize the layout to add a few well placed key for the commonly used symbols. I put {}[]() and others signs on the home row + AltGr on my 109 keys keyboard.
Well since he is the guy that overhyped Kevin Mitnick case so he could make a profit selling his book and as a result got Mitnick to spend an unfairly long time in jail, I don't find it strange that's he's not liked too much on slashdot.
That's possibly what the guys selling the exploits are hoping for: that Microsoft buys it from them and as you say $50,000 isn't much for Microsoft. Actually, maybe Microsoft should actually start a program to reward people that submit vulnerabilities in relation to security risk caused by it. This might actually help make Vista secure quickly if they pay well. And if they have any confidence in the fact that Vista is a relatively secure OS, they shouldn't have to worry that it is going to cost them too much as each bug that disapear is a bug that won't be discovered anymore.
I think that you under-appreciate the value of advertising. As you point out, an ad is not going to make you go out and buy a can of beer of a particular brand but what has more value for the brand is :
-brand recognition : people are more likely to buy something they have heard about than something unknown. Ideally, you want the more consumers possible to associate what you are selling with your brand, like Budweiser succeeded as your post points out.
-brand perception : people are more likely to buy something they perceive to be of better quality, even if it's not, as long as it's what was told to them. Ads can go a long way to improve the perception of quality the consumer will have about your products.
So it is important for a brand to air as much ad as possible to remain competitive. Of course, it's not the only way to market a product and it's possible to be successful without advertisement but ad have values. If your product isn't anything special especially (Budweiser), you really have to rely on it. If advertisement didn't work, I think someone would know.
Between this and this. It's a good time to be blind. Maybe blindness soon wont be the curse it once was.
I find this absolutely ridiculous to blame Apple for your own stupidity. It's not like they force you to listen a the iPod at maximum level, isn't it ?
Also portable music system have been around since sony's walkman and since then the same claim as been made over and over.
It's true. Listening at full volume will damage your hearing but arent you supposed to know that by now ?
It's bad when people can't take responsability for anything they are doing nowadays. It's the same as how parents don't want to take responsabilty for how they raise their own children and will blame everybody but themsleves when something goes wrong...
Google Video wont work from several countries for a reason I ignore... Notably France and Germany are out.
Of course its easily bypassed by using a proxy but my favourite workaround is to use Google's own Google Translate Service available at http://www.google.com/translate_t
Just past the Google Video's URL and your up.
What 80 bucks for that! Better be a damn good keyboard. I used to have a blank keyboard I bought for £5 in a discount store. I figure they dont sell so well among regular people so its should be easy to find bargains.
Off course I had bought mine for the sole reason of annoying my flatmates.
Interestingly the keyboard was meant for learning touchtyping and and an extra backspace key. The spacebar was cut in two: the left part was the second extra backspace; the right part was the specebar.
Concerning the touchtiping skill improvement, their claim that you are going to speed up you typing speed by 100% is ridiculous.
If you already know how to touchtype properly, having a blank keyboard wont do much. If you dont know how to touch type properlly, having one will disgust you before you can improve.
Only in the formal setting of a touchtyping course can they be really useful imho. Or to annoy other people they are great.