Additionally, Bluetooth 2.0 will be much faster than the current version. Specifically, it should reach 3Mbs, which is enough for good quality music streaming to headphones. As far as syncing a music collection, Bluetooth 2 would probably be sufficient for occasional syncs that only transfer a couple songs, but if you are moving a more extensive collection or a large file, you'd still want to use something else. Bluetooth 2's (theoretical) 3Mbs is a bit over twice as fast faster than USB 1.1, but nowhere near Firewire or USB 2.0.
If you choose to use Google Secure Access, your internet traffic will be encrypted and sent through Google's servers to the internet, then received from those servers to be encrypted and sent back through our servers to your computer.
Umm, yeah. That's what a secure VPN does. What did you expect?
Google may log some information from your web page requests as may the websites that you visit. We do this to understand how Google Secure Access is being used and to improve our services. Google Secure Access does not log cookies and strips potentially sensitive query data from the end of requests to help better protect your privacy.
This isn't really much of a surprise. You do realize that most websites you visit log this kind of stuff already, right? Its possible that your ISP does, but I doubt they would unless requested to by law enforcement. (If an ISP logged everything it'd overwhelm them.) Since Google Secure Access is a intermediary between the web and the user, much like a proxy, it doesn't surprise me that they might want to keep logs.
Google also logs a small set of non-personally identifiable information -- such as routing information, session durations and operating system and Google Secure Access client version numbers
Again, this seems like standard boilerplate to me.
...if we believe the Google Secure Access service is being abused,
we may for a limited period of time preserve additional internet traffic or other information.
Ok, so they reserve the right to keep their logs for a while if they think they are being taken advantage of, and probably for other reasons (law enforcement). That's kinda standard too.
Really, there isn't anything unusual here. I'm not saying that I like that these types of records are gathered, but its pretty common now.
The problem with a Google OS is that it would take a lot more work than creating a series of wifi hotspots in San Fransisco, or in several major cities. Additionally, its not really in their area, where as wifi that enables localized ads arguably is.
From the FAQ: "Why did Google develop Google Secure Access?
One of our engineers recognized that secure WiFi was virtually non-existent at most locations. As a result, he used his 20% project time to begin an initiative to offer users more secure WiFi access. Google Secure Access is the result of this endeavor."
That guy would need slightly more that 20% project time to help extending the service to the entire US..
I'm pretty sure that what they mean is that their engineers get to use 20% of their time for projects that they thought of themselves. Thus, this guy was probably working on the wifi project for the other 80% and thought about its insecurities. The 20% was just to write the VPN software, not to implement and deploy the network. Thus, it isn't unreasonable.
I have used allofmp3.com before because it has reasonable prices for the music I like and I'm not locked down by BS DRM. Give me quality music that I like, price it reasonably, and if there's going to be DRM, it must allow me to play it on any OS, under any program, and any media device I choose. I don't see it happening anytime soon since the recording industry has its head severely up its ass.
I too hate DRM for various reasons. However, I think it'll be a evil we'll have to make the best of. To demand that DRM plays on any OS is a bit too much. After all, requiring that DRM works on an ancient Atari isn't going to do anyone any good. Both sides have to be reasonable. Ensuring that the DRM is compatible with the top 5 OSes might be reasonable. I'm not sure, but I would think that would cover Windows, Mac, Linux, and BSD at least.
The thing I dislike the most is the notion that these DRM advocates have that the DRM will always work. Supposedly the servers that authenticate the DRM, particularly for subscription services like Yahoo's unlimited music or the "new" Napster, will never fail.
<sarcasm>The companies could never go out of business; and if they do, Microsoft will give you a valid key (Napster and Yahoo use MS' DRM). Of course, you shouldn't expect to keep your files for 30 years like you did with your tapes or vinal records; that just would be stupid!</sarcasm>
2) Two Towers had about 45 minutes worth of commercials that preceded it. By the time they were over and the film started, I wanted Frodo to get captured and tortured by some orcs.
So did you see The Return of the King, or read the book? I don't remember if the theatrical version of the movie has it, but in the books you certainly get your revenge.
OK, so according to one place in the article, they are proposing that these animals are placed in a wildlife preserve-like setting. However, in another, it talks about free-roaming cheetahs becoming an ecotourism alternative for ranchers. Many ranchers, and a significant portion of the general population, have put up a big fight against reintroducing wolves into their native habitat in North America. If they can't get people to agree to let overgrown dogs (over-simplification) roam around, how in the world do they think they'll get people to accept lions and cheetahs?
I can see your point if Lee was forced to leave his position at MS. However, he left voluntarily. If a persion is compensated when he has a non-compete clause and leaves the company for any reason then what's to prevent me from quitting my job and being a bum until the clause runs out?
The only reasonable situation in which a worker could be compensated for time that is restricted by a non-compete clause would be when he is laid off. Compensation when voluntary termination (quitting) or getting fired is the case opens the door for too much abuse by the employee. However, if this were the case, people would probably be fired instead of laidoff more often. Thus, there really isn't a very good solution other than what we have now.
The same day that Google announced its new hire, Microsoft sued Lee, claiming he was breaking a one-year noncompete agreement by joining Google.
I think you may be over reacting a bit here. Lee only has a one-year non-compete clause. Sure, a year is still a significant amount of time, but he certainly didn't sign a contract that would bind him for the rest of his life.
However, I do agree with you. I can see the good that non-compete clauses can do for the short term. It's perfectly reasonable for a company to want to be sure you won't learn their tech and then immediately run off to the competition. A year is probably a bit more than I'd like, but I'd be fine with it in lower doses.
No, manually unplugging and plugging in vacuum tubes is the most primitive computer interface. It may not be obvious to you -- or to Neal Stephenson, for that matter -- but today's Unix shells represent an extraordinary level of abstraction from the underlying bare metal.
I'm not sure how Neal Stephenson got into this, I can't find a reference to him above. Anyway, Stephenson did write about the Metaverse in Snow Crash, but that doesn't mean he doesn't appreciate the command line. In fact, he wrote In the Beginning... Was the Command Line. It's been a while since I read it, but I remember it being quite pro-CLI.
One of the problem with police states, and people of a similar mindset, is that there doesn't have to be a file to point at. I'm sure there have been plenty of people who have been tortured because someone thought they knew something. If they actually do know it or not doesn't really matter that much.
1) Four years of one of the most time intensive majors in colleges
I actually thought my CS classes were the easy ones. It was that damn Lit class that gave me hell.
Everybody has different things that are difficult for them. For me operating a computer is second nature, but for others its a complete mystery. On the other hand, I can't dance worth anything and there are plenty of people who love it.
Besides, he said that CS was time consuming. He didn't comment on it's difficulty. I went to Georgia Tech, and CS had reputation of being difficult and for keeping you up long hours. Personally, I didn't think it was that hard for the most part. However, it was definitely very time consuming.
3) Getting free soda in exchange for 80 hour work weeks at minimum wage
I don't get free soda, and I only put in 5 hours of overtime a week to run nightly processes. I get paid a good deal more then minimum wage.
Exactly. You have to find a good employeer; and they do exist in the US. I was recruited out of college (been out a year and a half) and make very decent money. Though I'm salaried, my employer hasn't taken advantage of that. Some weeks I put in 45-50 hours, but most of the time its been around 40.
4) Getting fired at age 28 for being too old
I'm only 26, so I can't say for sure, but my Boss (a former mainframe coder) is in his 50s, my team lead is in his late 30s and another developer on the team is in his mid 40s.
I don't know about all teams, but mine has 7 programmers. 3 of them are significantly over 30; they're there because they are still good coders. Our company does have more young developers than old, but I haven't seen any evidence that older developers are looked down on. Of course, that's just one company so YMMV.
Now imagine you had a component stereo, and you replaced your tuner with a "better" tuner with all the same jacks as the original. You'd plug it in and expect it to do the same work as the original tuner, just with better reception or fidelity or whatever. Now what if you plugged in the new tuner to the old connections, and suddenly its display read: "Sure, I have a two-plug RCA input, but it's not actually connected to anything, so you can plug in an RCA jack but no sound will come out". That's what having a method that throws MethodNotSupport is like: the jack -- or member function name -- is there, but the implementation is not.
That sounds like my cable TV box...
Although when I try to use its ethernet jack, I get a Com.Comcast.UserFriendlinessNotFoundException thrown at me.
Here you go: Malaysia car thieves steal finger With better scanners that can tell the difference between live and dead fingers, this might have been prevented. Of course, that would depend on the bad guys knowing that it wouldn't work...
You are totally missing the point. If it was a highly secured substance like smallpox, then the thief would more likely just kill you and remove your eye. So now you have a loose smallpox virus *AND* a one-eyed technician.
Ahh, but I would hope that the CDC would spring for a iris scanner that's good enough to detect detached or otherwise "bad" eyeballs. Of course, you'd have to make it obvious that a "bad" eyeball wouldn't work; otherwise you'd still have a very unhappy technician on your hands. Additionally, it probably wouldn't do anything to stop the "Splinter Cell method" of just holding a gun to their head and forcing them to give a reading. Still, even with its faults, we can both probably agree that for highly important systems its more secure than a password.
If it was something like your credit card number, then you would be better off with the password and just give it to the thief.
Exactly. There's no point in having security that has such a large risk vs reward ratio.
Well, the same concerns could be raised for any sort of biometric security. Hopefully, technologies will become widespread that make stealing somebody's eyes , fingers, DNA, etc useless. For example, some fingerprint readers can tell if the finger is alive or not.
Of course, in some situations, the very issue you mentioned is a boon to the system. For example, let's say that the CDC's Smallpox virus is protected by either a iris scanner or a password. If a scientist is faced with giving up a password or an eye, he'll probably be more likely to give up the password. Thus, if everything else is equal, the eye-based security is better.
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Additionally, Bluetooth 2.0 will be much faster than the current version. Specifically, it should reach 3Mbs, which is enough for good quality music streaming to headphones. As far as syncing a music collection, Bluetooth 2 would probably be sufficient for occasional syncs that only transfer a couple songs, but if you are moving a more extensive collection or a large file, you'd still want to use something else. Bluetooth 2's (theoretical) 3Mbs is a bit over twice as fast faster than USB 1.1, but nowhere near Firewire or USB 2.0.
Umm, yeah. That's what a secure VPN does. What did you expect?
This isn't really much of a surprise. You do realize that most websites you visit log this kind of stuff already, right? Its possible that your ISP does, but I doubt they would unless requested to by law enforcement. (If an ISP logged everything it'd overwhelm them.) Since Google Secure Access is a intermediary between the web and the user, much like a proxy, it doesn't surprise me that they might want to keep logs.
Again, this seems like standard boilerplate to me.
Ok, so they reserve the right to keep their logs for a while if they think they are being taken advantage of, and probably for other reasons (law enforcement). That's kinda standard too.
Really, there isn't anything unusual here. I'm not saying that I like that these types of records are gathered, but its pretty common now.
The problem with a Google OS is that it would take a lot more work than creating a series of wifi hotspots in San Fransisco, or in several major cities. Additionally, its not really in their area, where as wifi that enables localized ads arguably is.
I'm pretty sure that what they mean is that their engineers get to use 20% of their time for projects that they thought of themselves. Thus, this guy was probably working on the wifi project for the other 80% and thought about its insecurities. The 20% was just to write the VPN software, not to implement and deploy the network. Thus, it isn't unreasonable.
I too hate DRM for various reasons. However, I think it'll be a evil we'll have to make the best of. To demand that DRM plays on any OS is a bit too much. After all, requiring that DRM works on an ancient Atari isn't going to do anyone any good. Both sides have to be reasonable. Ensuring that the DRM is compatible with the top 5 OSes might be reasonable. I'm not sure, but I would think that would cover Windows, Mac, Linux, and BSD at least.
The thing I dislike the most is the notion that these DRM advocates have that the DRM will always work. Supposedly the servers that authenticate the DRM, particularly for subscription services like Yahoo's unlimited music or the "new" Napster, will never fail.
<sarcasm>The companies could never go out of business; and if they do, Microsoft will give you a valid key (Napster and Yahoo use MS' DRM). Of course, you shouldn't expect to keep your files for 30 years like you did with your tapes or vinal records; that just would be stupid!</sarcasm>
Uhh, the link seems to be missing. Therefore, here are the NASA and Wikipedia links to X-15 articles for your reading enjoyment.
OK, so according to one place in the article, they are proposing that these animals are placed in a wildlife preserve-like setting. However, in another, it talks about free-roaming cheetahs becoming an ecotourism alternative for ranchers. Many ranchers, and a significant portion of the general population, have put up a big fight against reintroducing wolves into their native habitat in North America. If they can't get people to agree to let overgrown dogs (over-simplification) roam around, how in the world do they think they'll get people to accept lions and cheetahs?
I can see your point if Lee was forced to leave his position at MS. However, he left voluntarily. If a persion is compensated when he has a non-compete clause and leaves the company for any reason then what's to prevent me from quitting my job and being a bum until the clause runs out? The only reasonable situation in which a worker could be compensated for time that is restricted by a non-compete clause would be when he is laid off. Compensation when voluntary termination (quitting) or getting fired is the case opens the door for too much abuse by the employee. However, if this were the case, people would probably be fired instead of laidoff more often. Thus, there really isn't a very good solution other than what we have now.
The same day that Google announced its new hire, Microsoft sued Lee, claiming he was breaking a one-year noncompete agreement by joining Google.
I think you may be over reacting a bit here. Lee only has a one-year non-compete clause. Sure, a year is still a significant amount of time, but he certainly didn't sign a contract that would bind him for the rest of his life.
However, I do agree with you. I can see the good that non-compete clauses can do for the short term. It's perfectly reasonable for a company to want to be sure you won't learn their tech and then immediately run off to the competition. A year is probably a bit more than I'd like, but I'd be fine with it in lower doses.
One of the problem with police states, and people of a similar mindset, is that there doesn't have to be a file to point at. I'm sure there have been plenty of people who have been tortured because someone thought they knew something. If they actually do know it or not doesn't really matter that much.
Everybody has different things that are difficult for them. For me operating a computer is second nature, but for others its a complete mystery. On the other hand, I can't dance worth anything and there are plenty of people who love it.
Besides, he said that CS was time consuming. He didn't comment on it's difficulty. I went to Georgia Tech, and CS had reputation of being difficult and for keeping you up long hours. Personally, I didn't think it was that hard for the most part. However, it was definitely very time consuming.
Exactly. You have to find a good employeer; and they do exist in the US. I was recruited out of college (been out a year and a half) and make very decent money. Though I'm salaried, my employer hasn't taken advantage of that. Some weeks I put in 45-50 hours, but most of the time its been around 40.
I don't know about all teams, but mine has 7 programmers. 3 of them are significantly over 30; they're there because they are still good coders. Our company does have more young developers than old, but I haven't seen any evidence that older developers are looked down on. Of course, that's just one company so YMMV.
Here you go: Malaysia car thieves steal finger
With better scanners that can tell the difference between live and dead fingers, this might have been prevented. Of course, that would depend on the bad guys knowing that it wouldn't work...
Well, the same concerns could be raised for any sort of biometric security. Hopefully, technologies will become widespread that make stealing somebody's eyes , fingers, DNA, etc useless. For example, some fingerprint readers can tell if the finger is alive or not.
Of course, in some situations, the very issue you mentioned is a boon to the system. For example, let's say that the CDC's Smallpox virus is protected by either a iris scanner or a password. If a scientist is faced with giving up a password or an eye, he'll probably be more likely to give up the password. Thus, if everything else is equal, the eye-based security is better.