To anyone who complains about not using network transparency of X server, I do use all the time and I do need it. And so do thousands of system administrators and power users.
I hope Wayland has some kind of network transparency support. It doesn't have to be X protocol, it could be something new and improved, but there must be a network transparency support.
I read rumors on the net that on the year when a lot of manufacturers announced ARM netbooks, Microsoft went and threatened them with cutting Windows licensing (or something) if they start selling those. So none of these devices actually went to market. People even saw things like Microsoft reps visiting manufacturer's booths in an expo, and ARM netbooks disappearing from the stands soon after.
On top of that, can I wipe whatever Google OS it is running and install Debian or Red-Hat or Ubuntu? What about open-source GPU drivers? We can get that for Intel (good drivers) and AMD (OK drivers) and even some Nvidia GPUs (still experimental) on normal laptops. While Linux drivers for GPUs used in ARM machines are mostly closed source crap.
I was just thinking the same thing. Decentralized social networking is a really good idea, but the problem is that noone will bother enough to run their own server. Like email these days, people just use most convenient option- gmail/hotmail/whatever, and don't care about security/privacy implications.
Of course you can implement it in a way that every client is also a server, but then:
* If you stop your client/server, your data must be distributed 3rd party nodes, that are owned by onknown people, so you don't get 100% guarantee your data is available if you close your client.
* You won't be able to use this social network if you only have a browser, or if everything except HTTP traffic is blocked.
* Add the usual about network effects, about how noone will switch because all their friends are already on facebook, etc. Also, NAT and piercing NATs is still an issue, especially if you are running something like this on your mobile.
Long story short, this would make a really nice project, but I don't see how it can become widespread. Maybe we should start selling people home entertainment appliances/home servers that run social network for entire family as well as one of the features? A server for every home, that could be somewhat hardened and keep all the family email/social networking/movies/etc in place, while keeping the privacy? But only people who care enough about privacy and geeks would buy it, which is a small market.
Maybe in USA where diesel fuel is frowned upon, and engines are huge and cars are unnecessarily heavy & big, prius was a game changer.
Here in Europe, where it has to complete with all modern 1.6l diesels, the added price & complexity & weight don't make much sense- fuel consumption will be very close. Well, people still buy it, but mostly as 'green' fashion statement.
European Commission are corporate whores. They don't really care about wants and needs of the people and never ever had. How is this news? They had same kind of "screw everyone, we'll do what we want" attitude when it came to software patents several years ago.
Just a note regarding legality- Android phones are sold all over the world, and plenty of countries allow recording calls. Calls are recorded in US in plenty of instances as well- in case you are talking to a broker, your call is recorded. Managers/sales people, etc record calls often. Nokia symbian phones did have this feature, and they were legally sold in US.
Answering machines also record calls all the time. Right now there is no possibility of implementing any of that on Android.
There might be an issue with security- an app could intercept your calls and send them to some 3rd party, but right now calls are handled by a binary blob- baseband firmware, which can also be hacked and forced to intercept your calls, even though it's more difficult.
As far as I know Android has massive issues with accessing the call voice stream. There have been bugs registered with hundreds of angry users yelling for better support for this.
Has JB improved that at all? I'll need to go test if my current phone has these streams working or not. And how about actually playing audio into the call? AFAIK old symbian phones had this.
Hmm, Car industry- car babes in trade shows. Yogurts- babes eating it in TV ads. Clothing/Fashion- babes wearing it. Alcohol & soft drinks- babes in ads. Furniture- babes using it in ads. Why should electronics be any different?
Sex sells. Every industry that can use sex for marketing will do so. Both men & women will be used for their sex appeal. If you think it's immoral- well corporations cannot have morals and do not have morals- they are not people.
I don't really like "cloud" as a solution for this, but I think desktop support is a waste of resources. Be it thin clients, remote administration, Linux on desktop or whatever, but anything that cuts down desktop support is a good thing in my book.
And if you are worried about lost jobs, well, breaking windows is also a job, but it does no good. These people would be more beneficial to society doing something else.
Their STATED goal is stamping out piracy. Their ACTUAL goal is make millions performing services of "stamping out piracy". So if piracy is up, the demand for their services and their profit obviously goes up as well- who else will defend poor huge software companies and their profits from the scary pirates?
An entity established to solve a problem will ensure that the problem will NEVER be solved. They will make sure they maximize their own gain from CONTINUING to solve the problem. Especially if its a government entity, but corporations like this work the same way.
You described a case when free software competes with commercial software. But imagine following scenario:
* There is an entrenched piece of software by company A used by most people that costs 700$.
* There is a startup company B producing similar thing that costs 50$.
Now in case you pirate the software produced by company A, that's not a lost sale for company A. That's more a lost sale for company B.This kind of behaviour will lead to demise of company B and company A will become a monopoly. Add to this network effects and zero distribution costs and file format lock-in etc- they will only speed things up.
What I want to say is that software market in general is easily dominated by big established companies. It's almost impossible to compete with established players, even if you sell a similar/better product for less. And piracy is one of the things responsible for that.
Now markets where you need to offer support or adaptation/localization of software (enterprise markets) are somewhat different. And that's where Linux shines.
Um, this most likely won't smash the SD card unless you take it out and snap it in half (takes too long in scenario you described). And flash chips on the phone are likely to be also recoverable after re-soldering them onto another phone or a flash reader, and you cannot remove them as easily as SD card. Flash storage media is quite resistant to physical damage- there are stories about people recovering some data from SD cards after a nail has been driven through them.
Anyway, I don't really understand why do they want to bother with physical access to the phone. They could just as easily push a rootkit via mobile operator and copy all the data remotely without even telling you. AFAIK all mobile devices have binary GSM device drivers that can be forced by operators to auto-update, i.e. download and execute a piece of code. But I suppose you need phone number or/and IMEI to do that.
Agreed, hack your phone. Install cyanogenmod + LUKS encryption for user data + sdcard, and you are good to go (it's all alpha quality for now, but possible. With more active users it could be made convenient). I wish meego/maemo/tizen would succeed so that we have some alternatives to this...
Of course, there are issues of UK police forcing you to hand over the encription keys (they have a legal right to do that in UK). And GSM/mobile network drivers are binary and probably a huge rootkit- your mobile can be forced to run any code by your mobile network operator. And your calls and texts are logged by mobile operators/government anyway. So you won't be able to hide much.
...and some smaller ISPs don't use it. Major ones do use it because of some "gentleman's agreement"- so screw them. I'm a happy customer of AAISP- they have usage limits which annoy me, but other than that service has been great so far. It looks like an ISP run by IT guys for IT guys.
If you are thinking about switching and want to check which ISPs are available in your area, check http://www.samknows.com/ It doesn't have all ISPs though and the smaller ones aren't listed.
Hmm, I think DOS is actually quite OK for embedded/control systems. Simple to program, simple to run, almost no complexity, low hardware requirements. Quite easy & direct hardware access. No multiple processes or congestion at CPU to worry much about so it's almost realtime. Ok there are interrupts...
Disclaimer- although I have never developed embedded control systems, I have developed software in C/C++ and assembly for DOS. I did know insides of DOS in and out. It's been more than a decade and I still do not know the insides of windows nor Linux well- these systems are just too complex to fit them in your brain and comprehend everything that is going on. OTOH I don't even bother with low level software development any more- and Java is good enough for enterprise & web.
Unless your messages are GPG or PGP encrypted when they leave your PC, you cannot be sure they are not intercepted, read, spied on, modified, data-mined and used to target ads, etc. It doesn't matter which company handles them. If you want your messages to be between sender & receiver- use proper encryption. There is no other way and there never was. Small shop Linux admins can cat/var/mail/ebonum just as well.
Now Microsoft has no duty to do anything. They provide messaging service for their own benefit & profit, not yours, with features they think benefit THEM most. Even if they include some encryption, it will be closed-source, lame and with backdoors. If you want to use their service, you have to accept these terms. If you don't- use something else. Jabber is still there, and so is IRC.
Ugly thing is that 99% of people using MSN will not know about these issues nor care about them. But that's just people. Unless it affects their salaries or pensions or benefits or religious sensibilities or beer prices, 99% percent of people will not care about it.
Oh, and even if you have GPG, you can still have a trojan or a hardware keylogger on your PC, so you'll never be 100% safe & secure. But you can tilt the odds somewhat in your favour.
I do agree that stealing credit card numbers is excessive. I don't condone in harming other people, especially people who aren't complicit in the wrongdoing. Corporations are different matter- no matter what the law says I don't consider them human. To be human you need to have morals and be mortal, and corporations don't have that.
I would probably stick to defacing websites or stealing internal documents or emails of executives or similar if I were a hacktivist. Anyway, it was nice having this discussion.
Next thing you know, they'll determine that Iraq had no WMDs and no relationship to 9/11 and war in Afghanistan does not decrease terrorism, and our glorious leaders lie, and the sky is blue! What is this world coming to! I'm shocked!
Um, Rosa Parks, Gandhi, Founding Fathers all broke the law as well. See how that turned out.
And I don't have the ability to make changes within the system. I'm not an American nor am I living in USA, but laws dictated by US corporations get pushed down our throats all the time. Even if I were, lobbying & greed would triumph most of the time anyway.
I consider corporations like RIAA & MPAA, BSA, and politicians lobbied by corporations to legislate censorship, spying & restrictions of internet usage the biggest threat to internet. Patents & restrictions on writing software are a close second.
When downloading or uploading information or cracking copy protection can ruin your life worse than committing grand theft or murder, I consider that action immoral and unjust. And I will consider any corporation supporting & pushing this kind of legislation a valid target.
While I agree that unlawful implies criminal, lawful doesn't necessarily mean right, and unlawful doesn't necessarily mean wrong. These days the laws are broken mess, and even when they aren't only the rich can afford to defend themselves, rendering justice system broken.
I have a Samsung laser printer/scanner all-in-one. It's useful for printing tickets I buy on-line, labels for packages I need to ship, text I don't want to read off the screen. It's really convenient, and it cost me peanuts, and the toner lasts forever. I can also copy & scan quickly. I used to print maps for unknown parts of the city if I need to go out, but now I have an OpenStreetMaps & GPS in my mobile. Guests who visit me do not though, so printer is useful again.
Ok, I still do print, sign, scan, probably because it's easier for me than PDF authoring. Oh, and I'm quite happy with Samsung drivers in Windows- I didn't get any unnecessary crap and it just works. Under Linux though, splix (http://splix.ap2c.org/) sometimes misbehaves.
I've heard idiots in Lithuanian government tried to ban Carl Sagan's "Demon-Haunted World" thinking it was satanist literature as it is listed as recommended reading in:
which is a "satanist" page:) If you actually take time to read what's on that page, it's 100% pure atheism/scepticism, no Satan worship involved. This was several years ago. Well, thankfully someone explained them who Carl Sagan is and what is that book all about. I have a strong suspicion 99% of people who want to ban books haven't read the books they want to ban and have no clue what they are talking about. Ignorance rules again.
I am slightly confused. Unless you want to do arbitrage between London Stock Exchange & Tokyo Stock Exchange, why not host your algorithmic trading servers at Tokyo? I think these days stock exchanges themselves offer hosting for lower ping times...
Anyway, lower latency is always good, I don't really care if it's going to be used for HFT or not.
Slashdot Mirror
To anyone who complains about not using network transparency of X server, I do use all the time and I do need it. And so do thousands of system administrators and power users.
I hope Wayland has some kind of network transparency support. It doesn't have to be X protocol, it could be something new and improved, but there must be a network transparency support.
--Coder
I read rumors on the net that on the year when a lot of manufacturers announced ARM netbooks, Microsoft went and threatened them with cutting Windows licensing (or something) if they start selling those. So none of these devices actually went to market. People even saw things like Microsoft reps visiting manufacturer's booths in an expo, and ARM netbooks disappearing from the stands soon after.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/microsoft_strikes_back_at_linux_netbook_push
You can probably find more.
--Coder
On top of that, can I wipe whatever Google OS it is running and install Debian or Red-Hat or Ubuntu? What about open-source GPU drivers? We can get that for Intel (good drivers) and AMD (OK drivers) and even some Nvidia GPUs (still experimental) on normal laptops. While Linux drivers for GPUs used in ARM machines are mostly closed source crap.
--Coder
I was just thinking the same thing. Decentralized social networking is a really good idea, but the problem is that noone will bother enough to run their own server. Like email these days, people just use most convenient option- gmail/hotmail/whatever, and don't care about security/privacy implications.
Of course you can implement it in a way that every client is also a server, but then: * If you stop your client/server, your data must be distributed 3rd party nodes, that are owned by onknown people, so you don't get 100% guarantee your data is available if you close your client. * You won't be able to use this social network if you only have a browser, or if everything except HTTP traffic is blocked. * Add the usual about network effects, about how noone will switch because all their friends are already on facebook, etc. Also, NAT and piercing NATs is still an issue, especially if you are running something like this on your mobile.
Long story short, this would make a really nice project, but I don't see how it can become widespread. Maybe we should start selling people home entertainment appliances/home servers that run social network for entire family as well as one of the features? A server for every home, that could be somewhat hardened and keep all the family email/social networking/movies/etc in place, while keeping the privacy? But only people who care enough about privacy and geeks would buy it, which is a small market.
--Coder
Maybe in USA where diesel fuel is frowned upon, and engines are huge and cars are unnecessarily heavy & big, prius was a game changer.
Here in Europe, where it has to complete with all modern 1.6l diesels, the added price & complexity & weight don't make much sense- fuel consumption will be very close. Well, people still buy it, but mostly as 'green' fashion statement.
--Coder
Right, so this tablet does keep data away from google. What about russian FSB?
--Coder
European Commission are corporate whores. They don't really care about wants and needs of the people and never ever had. How is this news? They had same kind of "screw everyone, we'll do what we want" attitude when it came to software patents several years ago.
--Coder
Just a note regarding legality- Android phones are sold all over the world, and plenty of countries allow recording calls. Calls are recorded in US in plenty of instances as well- in case you are talking to a broker, your call is recorded. Managers/sales people, etc record calls often. Nokia symbian phones did have this feature, and they were legally sold in US.
Answering machines also record calls all the time. Right now there is no possibility of implementing any of that on Android.
There might be an issue with security- an app could intercept your calls and send them to some 3rd party, but right now calls are handled by a binary blob- baseband firmware, which can also be hacked and forced to intercept your calls, even though it's more difficult.
--Coder
As far as I know Android has massive issues with accessing the call voice stream. There have been bugs registered with hundreds of angry users yelling for better support for this.
Take a look at this: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/MediaRecorder.AudioSource.html
There are VOICE_DOWNLINK & VOICE_UPLINK streams, but people accessing them get exceptions instead of working streams most of the time...
Has JB improved that at all? I'll need to go test if my current phone has these streams working or not. And how about actually playing audio into the call? AFAIK old symbian phones had this.
--Coder
Hmm, Car industry- car babes in trade shows. Yogurts- babes eating it in TV ads. Clothing/Fashion- babes wearing it. Alcohol & soft drinks- babes in ads. Furniture- babes using it in ads. Why should electronics be any different?
Sex sells. Every industry that can use sex for marketing will do so. Both men & women will be used for their sex appeal. If you think it's immoral- well corporations cannot have morals and do not have morals- they are not people.
--Coder
I don't really like "cloud" as a solution for this, but I think desktop support is a waste of resources. Be it thin clients, remote administration, Linux on desktop or whatever, but anything that cuts down desktop support is a good thing in my book.
And if you are worried about lost jobs, well, breaking windows is also a job, but it does no good. These people would be more beneficial to society doing something else.
--Coder
Their STATED goal is stamping out piracy. Their ACTUAL goal is make millions performing services of "stamping out piracy". So if piracy is up, the demand for their services and their profit obviously goes up as well- who else will defend poor huge software companies and their profits from the scary pirates?
An entity established to solve a problem will ensure that the problem will NEVER be solved. They will make sure they maximize their own gain from CONTINUING to solve the problem. Especially if its a government entity, but corporations like this work the same way.
--Coder
You described a case when free software competes with commercial software. But imagine following scenario:
* There is an entrenched piece of software by company A used by most people that costs 700$.
* There is a startup company B producing similar thing that costs 50$.
Now in case you pirate the software produced by company A, that's not a lost sale for company A. That's more a lost sale for company B.This kind of behaviour will lead to demise of company B and company A will become a monopoly. Add to this network effects and zero distribution costs and file format lock-in etc- they will only speed things up.
What I want to say is that software market in general is easily dominated by big established companies. It's almost impossible to compete with established players, even if you sell a similar/better product for less. And piracy is one of the things responsible for that.
Now markets where you need to offer support or adaptation/localization of software (enterprise markets) are somewhat different. And that's where Linux shines.
--Coder
Um, this most likely won't smash the SD card unless you take it out and snap it in half (takes too long in scenario you described). And flash chips on the phone are likely to be also recoverable after re-soldering them onto another phone or a flash reader, and you cannot remove them as easily as SD card. Flash storage media is quite resistant to physical damage- there are stories about people recovering some data from SD cards after a nail has been driven through them.
Anyway, I don't really understand why do they want to bother with physical access to the phone. They could just as easily push a rootkit via mobile operator and copy all the data remotely without even telling you. AFAIK all mobile devices have binary GSM device drivers that can be forced by operators to auto-update, i.e. download and execute a piece of code. But I suppose you need phone number or/and IMEI to do that.
--Coder
Agreed, hack your phone. Install cyanogenmod + LUKS encryption for user data + sdcard, and you are good to go (it's all alpha quality for now, but possible. With more active users it could be made convenient). I wish meego/maemo/tizen would succeed so that we have some alternatives to this...
Of course, there are issues of UK police forcing you to hand over the encription keys (they have a legal right to do that in UK). And GSM/mobile network drivers are binary and probably a huge rootkit- your mobile can be forced to run any code by your mobile network operator. And your calls and texts are logged by mobile operators/government anyway. So you won't be able to hide much.
--Coder
...and some smaller ISPs don't use it. Major ones do use it because of some "gentleman's agreement"- so screw them. I'm a happy customer of AAISP- they have usage limits which annoy me, but other than that service has been great so far. It looks like an ISP run by IT guys for IT guys.
If you are thinking about switching and want to check which ISPs are available in your area, check http://www.samknows.com/ It doesn't have all ISPs though and the smaller ones aren't listed.
--Coder
Hmm, I think DOS is actually quite OK for embedded/control systems. Simple to program, simple to run, almost no complexity, low hardware requirements. Quite easy & direct hardware access. No multiple processes or congestion at CPU to worry much about so it's almost realtime. Ok there are interrupts...
Disclaimer- although I have never developed embedded control systems, I have developed software in C/C++ and assembly for DOS. I did know insides of DOS in and out. It's been more than a decade and I still do not know the insides of windows nor Linux well- these systems are just too complex to fit them in your brain and comprehend everything that is going on. OTOH I don't even bother with low level software development any more- and Java is good enough for enterprise & web.
--Coder
Unless your messages are GPG or PGP encrypted when they leave your PC, you cannot be sure they are not intercepted, read, spied on, modified, data-mined and used to target ads, etc. It doesn't matter which company handles them. If you want your messages to be between sender & receiver- use proper encryption. There is no other way and there never was. Small shop Linux admins can cat /var/mail/ebonum just as well.
Now Microsoft has no duty to do anything. They provide messaging service for their own benefit & profit, not yours, with features they think benefit THEM most. Even if they include some encryption, it will be closed-source, lame and with backdoors. If you want to use their service, you have to accept these terms. If you don't- use something else. Jabber is still there, and so is IRC.
Ugly thing is that 99% of people using MSN will not know about these issues nor care about them. But that's just people. Unless it affects their salaries or pensions or benefits or religious sensibilities or beer prices, 99% percent of people will not care about it.
Oh, and even if you have GPG, you can still have a trojan or a hardware keylogger on your PC, so you'll never be 100% safe & secure. But you can tilt the odds somewhat in your favour.
--Coder
I do agree that stealing credit card numbers is excessive. I don't condone in harming other people, especially people who aren't complicit in the wrongdoing. Corporations are different matter- no matter what the law says I don't consider them human. To be human you need to have morals and be mortal, and corporations don't have that.
I would probably stick to defacing websites or stealing internal documents or emails of executives or similar if I were a hacktivist. Anyway, it was nice having this discussion.
--Coder
Next thing you know, they'll determine that Iraq had no WMDs and no relationship to 9/11 and war in Afghanistan does not decrease terrorism, and our glorious leaders lie, and the sky is blue! What is this world coming to! I'm shocked!
--Coder
Um, Rosa Parks, Gandhi, Founding Fathers all broke the law as well. See how that turned out.
And I don't have the ability to make changes within the system. I'm not an American nor am I living in USA, but laws dictated by US corporations get pushed down our throats all the time. Even if I were, lobbying & greed would triumph most of the time anyway.
--Coder
I consider corporations like RIAA & MPAA, BSA, and politicians lobbied by corporations to legislate censorship, spying & restrictions of internet usage the biggest threat to internet. Patents & restrictions on writing software are a close second.
When downloading or uploading information or cracking copy protection can ruin your life worse than committing grand theft or murder, I consider that action immoral and unjust. And I will consider any corporation supporting & pushing this kind of legislation a valid target.
While I agree that unlawful implies criminal, lawful doesn't necessarily mean right, and unlawful doesn't necessarily mean wrong. These days the laws are broken mess, and even when they aren't only the rich can afford to defend themselves, rendering justice system broken.
--Coder
I have a Samsung laser printer/scanner all-in-one. It's useful for printing tickets I buy on-line, labels for packages I need to ship, text I don't want to read off the screen. It's really convenient, and it cost me peanuts, and the toner lasts forever. I can also copy & scan quickly. I used to print maps for unknown parts of the city if I need to go out, but now I have an OpenStreetMaps & GPS in my mobile. Guests who visit me do not though, so printer is useful again.
Ok, I still do print, sign, scan, probably because it's easier for me than PDF authoring. Oh, and I'm quite happy with Samsung drivers in Windows- I didn't get any unnecessary crap and it just works. Under Linux though, splix (http://splix.ap2c.org/) sometimes misbehaves.
--Coder
I've heard idiots in Lithuanian government tried to ban Carl Sagan's "Demon-Haunted World" thinking it was satanist literature as it is listed as recommended reading in:
:) If you actually take time to read what's on that page, it's 100% pure atheism/scepticism, no Satan worship involved. This was several years ago. Well, thankfully someone explained them who Carl Sagan is and what is that book all about. I have a strong suspicion 99% of people who want to ban books haven't read the books they want to ban and have no clue what they are talking about. Ignorance rules again.
http://www.satan.lt/Video_audio_knygos/Antireliginiai_video_audio_knygos#Knygos
which is a "satanist" page
--Coder
I am slightly confused. Unless you want to do arbitrage between London Stock Exchange & Tokyo Stock Exchange, why not host your algorithmic trading servers at Tokyo? I think these days stock exchanges themselves offer hosting for lower ping times...
Anyway, lower latency is always good, I don't really care if it's going to be used for HFT or not.
--Coder