Better to do small-scale experiments now than to try large ones when the emergency is here.
Because let's face it, CO2 reduction ain't gonna happen. Talk to the people: Every single one of them has an excuse for not reducing their CO2 output.
Politicians don't care much because it doesn't gain votes and by the time the shit hits the fan they'll be retired in a cozy mansion on a mountain.
Like it or not, all that's left is geoengineering.
Best way to stop carbon emissions is eliminate all the humans on one or more continent. Eliminate humans from China, America, Russia and India and the rest of the world would be OK for a few hundred years.
If Microsoft got what it demands, that ARM devices that runs Win 8 be permanently locked, then the only option that I have, as a consumer, is to NOT BUY THAT DEVICE
No point of supporting dictatorial regime, be it political dictatorial, or hardware dictatorial
What makes you think that Windows 8 will be a significant player in the market place? The significant player is the one that is first into the market.
There are far better products out there then a MS Windows 8 version, beginning with almost every other tablet vendor. Do you think that ARM vendors will stop selling Android, or Free Linux for the ARM tablet because MS says so, when the MS market will be under 10% ? Europe is way way ahead of the USA when it comes to hammering restrictive actions by a vendor. History will repeat itself with MS. woops,,, MS there goes another half billion in penalties.
That's a classic way to run a resistance movement. Mao, Marighella, the IRA, al-Queda, etc. It works fairly well in the early phases. As the revolution advances, tighter coordination is necessary. This leads to centralized leadership. In the end, there's a Stalin or a Castro.
The US is one of the very few countries to get a stable democracy out of a revolution. That's not what usually happens.
Actually, the way I see it, the USA is in the process of becoming an oligopoly form of government. Government of the rich for the rich, and to hell with the middle and lower classes.
what about there boot loader lock in that is even bigger.
Are you talking about UEFI secure boot? That's not a "microsoft" thing, that's a UEFI thing. Just to be clear, it was jointly developed by AMD, American Megatrends Inc., Apple Computer, Inc., Dell, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Insyde, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, Phoenix Technologies. All this whining about an optional security feature sounds like a lot of whining about nothing to me. If you want to load linux on a machine that shipped with windows (and therefore UEFI Secure boot enabled) you just turn off UEFI secure boot. It would be trivial for anyone capable of installing linux in the first place. If a vendor wants to sell pc's with linux preloaded, they can ship the pc with secure boot disabled. If an OS distributor wants to get their OS properly signed so they can use secure boot, they can do that too.
Get over this non-issue.
I do have an issue with it. What secure boot means is that everyone who wants to publish software, who has written a small freeware, or a major application, has to purchase a certificate. That means that some programs that I wrote, from what I understand of UEFI, wiill require me to purchase a certificate for each.
That is my issue. Am I wrong? Is the small guy being left out in the cold? And if I have to buy a certificate, what about the hackers? Can they not purchase a certificate that is MS compatible? All the hackers only need one to share between their fellow hackers.
Small, very cheap (proper computers are at least ten times as expensive), and can be run from a small pack of AA batteries.
If I need something that fits any of those criteria and doesn't require massive general computing power then the Pi is perfect.
Robotics, small distributed experiments, mucking around with programming, seeing what can be done, fitting a computer (almost) into an Altoids tin, low power.... I would say that at $35 this is pretty awesome. Heck, as it has the capability to decode HD video and has a USB port, WiFi, and a SD slot then it works fine as a main video computer, just connected to an old LCD. Great for the kids' room.
Oh yeah, and it's silent. Because of the low power it doesn't require fans.
So, small, cheap, silent, energy efficient..
Consider the issue explained
How soon before we have a network device that includes all the smarts. Firewall, proxy, dmz functionality, etc. Raspberry must be making Cisco shiver.
I worked on a gas pipeline in the 70's. Since the terrain was uphill and downhill, one could not test the 40 inch diameter pipes (1 meter diameter) with water, as the pressure would not be evenly distributed. One had to pressurize the pipe to 1035psi. Normal operation was around 935psi. The 1 mile section of pipe was laid open pit, awaiting the pressure test. The test was using natural gas and was going fine until a longitudinal weld gave way. In a fraction of a second, at a speed of a race car, the split went along the pipeline, as if a scissors was cutting it open, without having to move the scissor's jaws. And the damn thing caught fire. People from hundreds of miles on both sides of the pipe saw the large 1 mile flare. More than 1 mile of pipe had to be replaced. No lives were lost. By the way, first there was frost as the gas expanded and dropped in pressure, then it was followed by extreme heat as the gas burned away. Losses included widlife, and trees.
So accidents with pressurized caverns can also blow, and when it does, if the pressure is high enough, the result could appear as a localized volcano, spewing debree onto homes, cars, people.
Just an interesting bit of my past working experience.
If anything this should be more secure than the RFID credit cards already in everyones wallet up here. The phone shouldn't be transmitting any data until the app is opened and a password is entered. Sure someone could be intercepting the transmission at the checkout of the store, but that risk already exists with existing RFID cards and also with merchants not locking down their POS terminals and subjecting themselves to having them replaced with compromised ones.
The phone transaction should be very secure. RFID sends data in the clear. The phone has a processor to perform encryption.
In poor countries there is already a paperless society for banking. I person goes into an authorized location (pharmacy, bank, etc.) and puts $20.00 on his phone. There is a fee and it includes taxes. Now when he takes a taxi, he transfers an amount to the driver for payment. When he receives payment, it is transfered to his phone from the other phone. African countries find they do not have to produce many coins or bills.
This system is ubiquitous and should be implemented here in North America. It penalizes the banks by eliminating them from obtaining fees for many kinds of transactions.
If the phone is lost, the money is not. That is the beauty of their system. (and yes, the government could take a few pennies for each transaction. Perhaps they do).
Quote "Lamar Smith just can't get a break. The Texas congressman and widely despised author of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) ruffled the Internet's feathers once again this week with the quiet unveiling of a new piece of legislation that's drawing criticism for being plucked out of SOPA's language and rushed through Congress. The Intellectual Property Attaché Act (IPAA) would streamline the process by which the U.S. protects its intellectual property by enforcing U.S. copyright law abroad through specially assigned diplomats or attachés. These officers would report to a new agency-level position, the Assistant Secretary for Intellectual Property and push agendas that, according to the bill's language, are 'consistent with the economic interests of the United States, both domestically and abroad.'" endquote.
Just where does the congressman get his funding? He obviously doesn't recognize the will of the people and the will of the europeans who said NO NO NO to SOPA. How much damage will he be allowed to do before election time? Dump the man representing media mogals with deep pockets and vested interest.
I am waiting for a website like EBAY where musicians and small film makers can sell their wares. The BigBox stores with racks of DVDs and BlueRay disks are over. Technology has gone past them. If they sold me a protected USB with music or video or e-book that I want, then I might be interested. Just let me pay for it one time for all my devices.
Okay, first I'm not given a lot of info about what you are trying to do, so I am forced to make assumptions. First, you are doing this part-time. Second, you have a small amount of users. Third, I assume these users either email you or tell you about problems in person. Fourth, you don't have any need to formally update people on statuses.
I have a great solution for you. It is called a spreadsheet. The positive is that is it free, easy to use and modify to suit your needs. No, it isn't flashy, but I find that folks tend to use software as a replacement for their own brain and creativity. I've used spreadsheets for a lot of different utilities from project management, to bug tracking to help desk support in small environments. Once the user base sees limitations, they can begin to see what they truly need and it helps immensely in determinng what the desired solution really is versus what the Microsoft shill^h^h^h^h^h consultant tells them they need.
So, yes, use a spreadsheet. Heck, in your case it really sounds like a text editor would meet your needs.
Most programmers don't know how to fully use spreadsheets. You are stating the obvious, and so am I.
She and her husband continue to show the best side of capitalism. For those that assume that wealth necessarily leads to avarice, it's delightful to me to see the Gates Foundation making that case more difficult to prove.
It was reported elsewhere (flame me, because I cannot substantiate it) that the Gates Foundation makes more money from dividends from pharmaceutical companies than what the foundation spendsw on being charitable.
I fail to see how destroying competition by undercutting local shops is a good thing for the local economy in the long term. By the time you figure out what is going on, they will own the market, and the small shops will be long gone. You will have no option but to deal with a single merchant. Good luck with that. Be smart. Help the small guys, even if they are a bit more expensive. That will keep things in relative check.
I believe there is a falacy in your arguments. Currently many small shops form buying groups. They have banded together to pool their purchases, and in effect, are able to get the equivalent discounts that the big Online guys are getting.
The local store has humans in it, and we need a live person that we can talk to or to bring in our device for hands on help with it.
It would have made sense if people adopted the abcdef keyboard (alphabetical)
Why? Just because it's the most obvious layout, doesn't mean it's the optimal one for typing. At most it's going to make it slightly easier for complete beginners to find keys before they've learned where they are.
I'm not claiming that QWERTY is the best layout for typing- in fact, it's generally accepted that it almost certainly isn't.
But as you say, there have been countless attempts to do alternate layouts, and few have gained much traction. If we're talking about mobile devices (where, after all, people learned to "type" on a non-QWERTY 12-digit keyboard (*)) perhaps sticking with a full keyboard- albeit with different layout- isn't thinking far enough (**), and we should be considering something like Microwriter- which first appeared 30 years ago!
(*) And showed no inclination do use that on a computer
(**) I was going to say "not thinking far enough outside the box" but I really loathe that stupid cliche even though I can't think of anything better. Always found it ironic that "thinking outside the box" is such a cliched, unoriginal, unimaginative, corporate, stuck inside the damn box phrase(!!)
I write in English, French and Spanish. I use qwerty, azerty and latim keylayouts. I believe that qwerty / azerty are the best because, in typing, there is a need to also rest the finger muscles to prevent repetitive strain. the two layouts I indicated, do that. In fact latim layout is qwerty with the extra Spanish keys.
If you doubt the repetitive strain, check your mouse click finger. Is it not sore by end-of-day?
I think it's a fairly safe bet that when someone is shopping for a tablet, if there's a 7" iPad on the table next to a Nexus 7, they're still going to be making that purchase based on a wide variety of other factors than screen size. It really does boil down to ecosystem vs. ecosystem, or price, for most buyers. The fact there is no 7" iPad has nothing to do with Nexus 7 sales, because I think it's a pretty safe bet that given all the other factors out there to make a tablet purchase decision based on, the availability of one size versus another is pointless.
The Nexus 7 will primarily sell to people who don't like Apple, or want/need to buy the cheaper offering on the market versus Apple's offerings. If Nexus 7 sales dip when an iPad 7" hits the market, I won't be surprised, but I don't think it will be anything staggering.
My wallet likes open source software. My wallet likes hardware and software that is functional, affordable and green. I would jump for joy if the Nexus tablet has a field replaceable battery. Can the Apple Ipad battery be field replaceable?
We vote for him because Romney means we'd lose everything; the middle class would cease to exist and businesses would take over every aspect of our lives. So Obama is the lesser of two evils.
Or.. put another way... I think Obama will help to strengthen the middle class (i.e. restore the wealth of the middle 30% or so of the populace) and thus give us the means to power to reclaim the rest.
Step by step.
As an outsider of the USA looking in, I concur. In Canada, spending for elections has ceilings, and corporate spending is not allowed. Individual contributions to parties are how funding is raised. No billionaires buying a presidency.
as bad as O is, it would be worse with republicans in charge.
I dunno. I mean, we're seeing time, and time again how Obama is pushing for more Federal (and presidential) power concentration, and erosion of citizens'/states' rights and privacy.
He swapped his vote/position on the Telecommunications act awhile back...has shown nothing but support for Patriot act renewals, and now this.
Again, it bear saying: The definition of "Insanity" is doing the same thing over and over and over again...and expecting a different outcome.
I'm not a huge Romney fan....but while he is pretty much an unknown when it comes to these issues....we downright positively know how Obama and his administration treats and supports these issues.
I don't really see them repealing or even easing up on these types of issues and legislation on a 2nd term unrestricted by the need for re-election...do you?
Obama is one smart cookie. If he is moving legislation in this direction, then the reasons are obvious. The USA spy agency has determined that the American Infrastructure is frail, has no alternate backbone if it goes down, and that too much of the "traffic of significance" is encrypted and they can't find the decryption algorithm or keys to do the decryption and snooping.
So, a best offense is a good defense. If things get tough, such as interference with electric utilities, with train signaling, etc, etc, then there is a need to pull the plug or plug the ones doing the mischief.
I've used MS Word's grammar checking capabilities, and I agree that they can only be a supplement to someone who already has solid writing skills. It has prodded me to rewrite long sentences, fix subject-verb agreement, get rid of passive voice, other things of that nature. It's also caught my occasional typo and duplicate word--errors that are easy to skip over when you're re-reading your draft for the tenth time.
If someone is a poor writer in the first place, all the spelling- and grammar-checkers in the world won't fix that. They'll just paper over the more obvious defects. People should never, ever count on a software tool to fix their writing. It can only be a modestly-helpful guide, not a blunt tool to do the work for you. Natural language processing is just not very good. Even online translation tools do little more than find-and-replace words with their foreign language counterparts, then try to rearrange them into a grammar consistent with that language. You can usually get the general idea of the original text, but a human translation by someone fluent in both languages is almost always vastly superior. The bottom line is that computers are very bad at semantics, and even worse at "reading between the lines." This is not a fault of computers, either, but of software researchers and the industry as a whole.
Lay people often get the mistaken impression that because computers are now good at pattern recognition (picking out faces, analyzing voice samples into text, etc.) they are also good at figuring out the "meaning" of these things. They are not. Pattern recognition and semantics are totally different areas of research.
Please punctuate: The cat the rat ate. by telling me if a comma is required, and if so, where.
The only use I see for TPM is for storing personal information and for remote killing of the system via a blacklist. Intel can block the bios or even burn some fusable links on the Mother board to kill a stolen computer.
That was a really awesome reply, and really struck a nerve with me.. I am slowly realizing why a lot of the people do the things they do at my workplace, and though I thought it at first to be wisdom and age.. it is also because they've been knocked around and burned a lot in their earlier years trying new things. I'm not as far off from the path of the OP and makes me really think.. I should take a much more objective approach to them, rather than assuming they have more years experience and are ultimately right (even if they are 95% of the time). Thanks for that!
To the young man and me. -- Some ramblings. There are two types of technocrats in the world. The bits and bytes people, and the application/business oriented people. Sometimes a person has both skills. The people who griped are the clerical staff, not IT interested at all.
Now for age. For many people, scratchpad memory is not working from age 50 and beyond. They cannot remember a phone number or a sequence of steps until it is re-enforced by many many repetitions. These people then follow the rules mechanically, without understanding. For other people, they possess logic skills of deduction. Even they have short term memory problems, but at least they are open to change. And the third group are the ones for which age is just a number. These people are sharp, have good health, and memory abilities. Even with this latter group, some of them are in the group titled "fear of the new". So, what can you do about it?. The answer is to be able to identify each category/personality and make adjustments to your approach to them.
At age 22, your mind is a sponge, soaking up every new technology. You will remember a book and page number on which there was a smudge. At age 55+, you may not remember the book. My best advice is to concentrate on people skills while you maintain and hone your technical skills.
By the way, I am 70+, and am in the category of software engineering development. Age to me was and is just a number.
It's to prevent loading a compromised kernel image. A signed boot-loader chain will only load if uncompromisable with cryptographically verified signatures and checksums.
But this is not the threat to most users, most of the time.
And? If they are dumb or mistaken enough to get an infection that will compromise their OS image and ring-0 loadable software? They are going to be compromised in OTHER WAYS that will NEVER touch the system image. Secure system boot is a good way to protect a boot-loader for encrypted volumes - but not even needed for this to be effective.
It is a security chimera - with more opportunity for mistakes and misuse than protection.
I see the UEFI solution, is for future hardware which will have no micro usb port, no slot for external memory, a sealed unit and exist only as a tablet. Otherwise, one could have a read-only USB device that is UEFI compliant and since it is read-only, secure boot is achieved. The software in the USB device is used to verify the mother board bios, which is what is desired.
Here is my prediction. I believe that Microsoft itself is going to run into a few hundred million customer problems one day within 18 months of UEFI implementation, and that the mother board bios chips in these things will be white elephants, as will be Windows 8. I can see it now, a new update causes UEFI to fail. News at 11pm.
When you enforce Rube-Goldberg software designs to verify a bios, in the end you get bitten by unforeseen combinations of technology that is designed to lockout other vendor products.
Ask yourself, what percentage of a system's time and lifecycle are spent in boot? What percentage of the binary runtime image is loaded in this process?
"Secure boot" is FAKE SECURITY whose ACTUAL risk is GREATER than its SUPPOSED benefit. Lock boot images, and the real security problems for persisting on a host and hiding activity will only move to the next rung on this ladder.
The only thing "Secured" is vendor lock-in.
Sure, you can detect a compromised kernel at boottime. That is a FRACTIONAL coutermeasure, to actual risk. EVERY driver and ring-0 loadable module needs also to be signed. It's bullsht, in the real computing world - unless you have an XBox or iPad model.
The first introduction to secure boot came from the Intel/AMD/IBM/Industry spec for TPM (trusted platform module). The problem will be interesting for VMware or other Linux VM systems when they need to execute and to test secure boot. I have not read if the operating system that boots the hardware is the only one that owns the hardware. It could very well be that only MS based VM systems will be able to boot. In other words, booting Windows 8 under a Linux VM may never work. Moreover, without an internet connection, as with a warehouse terminal or some other internal (barcode) data logging facility, how is a secure boot going to work?
IBM has noted that with TPMs the virtual machine application (another operating system) may not boot. Why should that not be an issue for UEFI?
Not sure if you're trolling or indeed buy that "piracy=theft" argument. Let me explain it to you again: for theft to happen, the original owner would need to be deprived of the object stolen.
It's like in that "would you download a loaf of bread" argument. Of course I would, and if replicating bread would be cheaper than baking it (and kept the quality, like copying does), the society as a whole wins big time. Arguing that "but the bakers lose" is precisely glasser's fallacy.
I find that my collection of music and videos from open source satisfy my hoarding habits. I do use BT to download iso images of Linux distributions. I just think that most downloaders of pirated music are hoarders. Do they play or watch what they downloaded, or do they create traders. Shades of baseball card collecting come to mind.
I need to correct one major error in your response. The doctors are independent, and work on a fixed amount and a variable amount. The patient seeks out a doctor, it is not the government that says "Here is your doctor", You cannot be entirely correct in your views as there is room for governments which represent society as law and order protectors, provide rules to govern commerce, fraud protection etc, armies for emergencies and protection, etc.
The government does not assign you a doctor, one is required to go and find our own. My family doctor has been our doctor since we chose him at the time of our marriage, some 40+ years ago. He is a few years younger than me. When we need a doctor, I call for an appointment, just as you would do for your family doctor or specialist. Did you really pull the molar? Is it possible it could have been saved?
For example of medical treatment. I had a gradual hearing loss problem. Went to my family doctor, he scoped my ears and referred me to a specialist. It turned out blockage was not wax, but eczema. I got an ear-drop prescription (filling plus medication = $10.00) and that problem is cured. My hearing is as good now as it gets for my age.
We have drifted from the original topic of job and job security. Each person has a comfort zone where, if he is in it, he excels.
Back to Government and Medicine. As I see it, a major problem regarding illness in the USA is overproduction of food. The food is so cheap that fast food joints bigger it up to pull in the crowd, sell the extra large trios for a few pennies more. Obesity is your number one killer. And then there is the ethanol from corn, when the corn could be used to feed the starving in Africa, and by so doing, win America the praise of the (Muslim) world, a world with over a billion people.
The other problem of course, are medical malpractice lawsuits. Every doctor is never knowing if he was deficient in his practice, so trivial problems require exhaustive testing and of course, exhaustive costs.
I call the discussion a draw. I live my style, I am delighted with it, I want not, and I will hope to respond to many more slashdot.com subjects where I can add to, or tease the author with a different view.
I did think like you, until I reached 55. Then I was a) either too expensive to be hired or b) supposedly not up to date with technology or c) too old for a pseudo career.
That is when I started my independent consulting and it was the era that as I was lucked in, had one contract every 8 months (ERP specialist). Well, there are 8 months of living from savings, 8 months of choosing car repairs or mortgage payments and 8 months of covering school fees for my teenagers.
What do you do if somewhere in-between, without group insurance, one of the family gets sick. Your response was that of a single person, no family, no parents or grandparents, and lots of belief in autonomy. Well, we all are busy being born and then busy t'il death. And sadly, during being busy, what goes around comes around, such as pregnancy, illness, a broken leg, a chronic medical condition, etc. The unpredictable is something else.
Well, I am grateful to live in Canada. I twice caught the infamous flesh eating bacteria disease. I was 12 hours away from amputation of my leg when the anti-biotics kicked in. 12 days in hospital, $24,000 in fees and $1,000 per day in medication, xrays, nurse care etc.
With our wonderful Canadian medicare system, (what Obamacare is wanting to give to 30 million American poor and to the rich is Universal Medicare) did was allow me to walk away with a $250.00 out of pocket amount for antibiotics that I continued at home after hospital release. Before you blow up with a response, look at longevity figures for different countries. It is an indication of the general health of a nation. Low numbers indicate that the poor are dying and unable to survive.
Private insurance in Canada would cost me over $1000 per person ((we are 5 and my daughter has MS) and private insurers can and do refuse to accept you as a client. They also place limits on payouts.
My government insurance is about $1000 annually for the family. And it is part of my income tax. So I am grateful to pay. And now that I am 70+, and do not have an income, I am still covered. Wow,
So here is another thing for you to shoot down. I pay $10/mo per person for drug insurance. Thats under 150/yr. I pay 20% of the prescription cost. When or if my 20% of the cost exceeds $1000.00, the balance is at even a bigger reduced charge (just the pharmacies dispensing fee). Universal medicare is to prevent health costs from bankrupting a family.
So, paying the government for health is not a worry for me or my kids. The costs are reasonable. Ask your immediate family what they would do if they cannot purchase health insurance.
flyneye, Please stop watching cnn, fox, abc and learn how the rest of the G7 world lives. Don't follow the corporate propaganda. Universal medicare is not communism.
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Do not put in Electronic stuff. My 360k floppies have no readers, nor do my 1.2 meggers or the 1.44 ones.
Better to do small-scale experiments now than to try large ones when the emergency is here.
Because let's face it, CO2 reduction ain't gonna happen. Talk to the people: Every single one of them has an excuse for not reducing their CO2 output.
Politicians don't care much because it doesn't gain votes and by the time the shit hits the fan they'll be retired in a cozy mansion on a mountain.
Like it or not, all that's left is geoengineering.
Best way to stop carbon emissions is eliminate all the humans on one or more continent. Eliminate humans from China, America, Russia and India and the rest of the world would be OK for a few hundred years.
If Microsoft got what it demands, that ARM devices that runs Win 8 be permanently locked, then the only option that I have, as a consumer, is to NOT BUY THAT DEVICE
No point of supporting dictatorial regime, be it political dictatorial, or hardware dictatorial
What makes you think that Windows 8 will be a significant player in the market place? The significant player is the one that is first into the market.
There are far better products out there then a MS Windows 8 version, beginning with almost every other tablet vendor. Do you think that ARM vendors will stop selling Android, or Free Linux for the ARM tablet because MS says so, when the MS market will be under 10% ?
Europe is way way ahead of the USA when it comes to hammering restrictive actions by a vendor. History will repeat itself with MS. woops,,, MS there goes another half billion in penalties.
That's a classic way to run a resistance movement. Mao, Marighella, the IRA, al-Queda, etc. It works fairly well in the early phases. As the revolution advances, tighter coordination is necessary. This leads to centralized leadership. In the end, there's a Stalin or a Castro.
The US is one of the very few countries to get a stable democracy out of a revolution. That's not what usually happens.
Actually, the way I see it, the USA is in the process of becoming an oligopoly form of government. Government of the rich for the rich, and to hell with the middle and lower classes.
what about there boot loader lock in that is even bigger.
Are you talking about UEFI secure boot? That's not a "microsoft" thing, that's a UEFI thing. Just to be clear, it was jointly developed by AMD, American Megatrends Inc., Apple Computer, Inc., Dell, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Insyde, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, Phoenix Technologies. All this whining about an optional security feature sounds like a lot of whining about nothing to me. If you want to load linux on a machine that shipped with windows (and therefore UEFI Secure boot enabled) you just turn off UEFI secure boot. It would be trivial for anyone capable of installing linux in the first place. If a vendor wants to sell pc's with linux preloaded, they can ship the pc with secure boot disabled. If an OS distributor wants to get their OS properly signed so they can use secure boot, they can do that too.
Get over this non-issue.
I do have an issue with it. What secure boot means is that everyone who wants to publish software, who has written a small freeware, or a major application, has to purchase a certificate. That means that some programs that I wrote, from what I understand of UEFI, wiill require me to purchase a certificate for each.
That is my issue. Am I wrong? Is the small guy being left out in the cold? And if I have to buy a certificate, what about the hackers? Can they not purchase a certificate that is MS compatible? All the hackers only need one to share between their fellow hackers.
Small, very cheap (proper computers are at least ten times as expensive), and can be run from a small pack of AA batteries.
If I need something that fits any of those criteria and doesn't require massive general computing power then the Pi is perfect.
Robotics, small distributed experiments, mucking around with programming, seeing what can be done, fitting a computer (almost) into an Altoids tin, low power.... I would say that at $35 this is pretty awesome. Heck, as it has the capability to decode HD video and has a USB port, WiFi, and a SD slot then it works fine as a main video computer, just connected to an old LCD. Great for the kids' room.
Oh yeah, and it's silent. Because of the low power it doesn't require fans.
So, small, cheap, silent, energy efficient..
Consider the issue explained
How soon before we have a network device that includes all the smarts. Firewall, proxy, dmz functionality, etc. Raspberry must be making Cisco shiver.
I worked on a gas pipeline in the 70's. Since the terrain was uphill and downhill, one could not test the 40 inch diameter pipes (1 meter diameter) with water, as the pressure would not be evenly distributed. One had to pressurize the pipe to 1035psi. Normal operation was around 935psi.
The 1 mile section of pipe was laid open pit, awaiting the pressure test. The test was using natural gas and was going fine until a longitudinal weld gave way. In a fraction of a second, at a speed of a race car, the split went along the pipeline, as if a scissors was cutting it open, without having to move the scissor's jaws. And the damn thing caught fire. People from hundreds of miles on both sides of the pipe saw the large 1 mile flare. More than 1 mile of pipe had to be replaced. No lives were lost. By the way, first there was frost as the gas expanded and dropped in pressure, then it was followed by extreme heat as the gas burned away. Losses included widlife, and trees.
So accidents with pressurized caverns can also blow, and when it does, if the pressure is high enough, the result could appear as a localized volcano, spewing debree onto homes, cars, people.
Just an interesting bit of my past working experience.
If anything this should be more secure than the RFID credit cards already in everyones wallet up here. The phone shouldn't be transmitting any data until the app is opened and a password is entered. Sure someone could be intercepting the transmission at the checkout of the store, but that risk already exists with existing RFID cards and also with merchants not locking down their POS terminals and subjecting themselves to having them replaced with compromised ones.
The phone transaction should be very secure. RFID sends data in the clear. The phone has a processor to perform encryption.
In poor countries there is already a paperless society for banking. I person goes into an authorized location (pharmacy, bank, etc.) and puts $20.00 on his phone. There is a fee and it includes taxes. Now when he takes a taxi, he transfers an amount to the driver for payment. When he receives payment, it is transfered to his phone from the other phone. African countries find they do not have to produce many coins or bills.
This system is ubiquitous and should be implemented here in North America. It penalizes the banks by eliminating them from obtaining fees for many kinds of transactions.
If the phone is lost, the money is not. That is the beauty of their system. (and yes, the government could take a few pennies for each transaction. Perhaps they do).
Quote
"Lamar Smith just can't get a break. The Texas congressman and widely despised author of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) ruffled the Internet's feathers once again this week with the quiet unveiling of a new piece of legislation that's drawing criticism for being plucked out of SOPA's language and rushed through Congress. The Intellectual Property Attaché Act (IPAA) would streamline the process by which the U.S. protects its intellectual property by enforcing U.S. copyright law abroad through specially assigned diplomats or attachés. These officers would report to a new agency-level position, the Assistant Secretary for Intellectual Property and push agendas that, according to the bill's language, are 'consistent with the economic interests of the United States, both domestically and abroad.'"
endquote.
Just where does the congressman get his funding? He obviously doesn't recognize the will of the people and the will of the europeans who said NO NO NO to SOPA. How much damage will he be allowed to do before election time? Dump the man representing media mogals with deep pockets and vested interest.
I am waiting for a website like EBAY where musicians and small film makers can sell their wares. The BigBox stores with racks of DVDs and BlueRay disks are over. Technology has gone past them. If they sold me a protected USB with music or video or e-book that I want, then I might be interested. Just let me pay for it one time for all my devices.
Okay, first I'm not given a lot of info about what you are trying to do, so I am forced to make assumptions. First, you are doing this part-time. Second, you have a small amount of users. Third, I assume these users either email you or tell you about problems in person. Fourth, you don't have any need to formally update people on statuses.
I have a great solution for you. It is called a spreadsheet. The positive is that is it free, easy to use and modify to suit your needs. No, it isn't flashy, but I find that folks tend to use software as a replacement for their own brain and creativity. I've used spreadsheets for a lot of different utilities from project management, to bug tracking to help desk support in small environments. Once the user base sees limitations, they can begin to see what they truly need and it helps immensely in determinng what the desired solution really is versus what the Microsoft shill^h^h^h^h^h consultant tells them they need.
So, yes, use a spreadsheet. Heck, in your case it really sounds like a text editor would meet your needs.
Most programmers don't know how to fully use spreadsheets. You are stating the obvious, and so am I.
Kidding aside.
She and her husband continue to show the best side of capitalism. For those that assume that wealth necessarily leads to avarice, it's delightful to me to see the Gates Foundation making that case more difficult to prove.
To hear her explain the contraception issue:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/415947/june-27-2012/melinda-gates
It was reported elsewhere (flame me, because I cannot substantiate it) that the Gates Foundation makes more money from dividends from pharmaceutical companies than what the foundation spendsw on being charitable.
I fail to see how destroying competition by undercutting local shops is a good thing for the local economy in the long term. By the time you figure out what is going on, they will own the market, and the small shops will be long gone. You will have no option but to deal with a single merchant. Good luck with that. Be smart. Help the small guys, even if they are a bit more expensive. That will keep things in relative check.
I believe there is a falacy in your arguments. Currently many small shops form buying groups. They have banded together to pool their purchases, and in effect, are able to get the equivalent discounts that the big Online guys are getting.
The local store has humans in it, and we need a live person that we can talk to or to bring in our device for hands on help with it.
It would have made sense if people adopted the abcdef keyboard (alphabetical)
Why? Just because it's the most obvious layout, doesn't mean it's the optimal one for typing. At most it's going to make it slightly easier for complete beginners to find keys before they've learned where they are.
I'm not claiming that QWERTY is the best layout for typing- in fact, it's generally accepted that it almost certainly isn't.
But as you say, there have been countless attempts to do alternate layouts, and few have gained much traction. If we're talking about mobile devices (where, after all, people learned to "type" on a non-QWERTY 12-digit keyboard (*)) perhaps sticking with a full keyboard- albeit with different layout- isn't thinking far enough (**), and we should be considering something like Microwriter- which first appeared 30 years ago!
(*) And showed no inclination do use that on a computer
(**) I was going to say "not thinking far enough outside the box" but I really loathe that stupid cliche even though I can't think of anything better. Always found it ironic that "thinking outside the box" is such a cliched, unoriginal, unimaginative, corporate, stuck inside the damn box phrase(!!)
I write in English, French and Spanish. I use qwerty, azerty and latim keylayouts. I believe that qwerty / azerty are the best because, in typing, there is a need to also rest the finger muscles to prevent repetitive strain. the two layouts I indicated, do that. In fact latim layout is qwerty with the extra Spanish keys.
If you doubt the repetitive strain, check your mouse click finger. Is it not sore by end-of-day?
I think it's a fairly safe bet that when someone is shopping for a tablet, if there's a 7" iPad on the table next to a Nexus 7, they're still going to be making that purchase based on a wide variety of other factors than screen size. It really does boil down to ecosystem vs. ecosystem, or price, for most buyers. The fact there is no 7" iPad has nothing to do with Nexus 7 sales, because I think it's a pretty safe bet that given all the other factors out there to make a tablet purchase decision based on, the availability of one size versus another is pointless.
The Nexus 7 will primarily sell to people who don't like Apple, or want/need to buy the cheaper offering on the market versus Apple's offerings. If Nexus 7 sales dip when an iPad 7" hits the market, I won't be surprised, but I don't think it will be anything staggering.
My wallet likes open source software. My wallet likes hardware and software that is functional, affordable and green. I would jump for joy if the Nexus tablet has a field replaceable battery. Can the Apple Ipad battery be field replaceable?
The beginning of the end for Apple
Hope so.... Arrogance has no place in society.
We vote for him because Romney means we'd lose everything; the middle class would cease to exist and businesses would take over every aspect of our lives. So Obama is the lesser of two evils.
Or.. put another way ... I think Obama will help to strengthen the middle class (i.e. restore the wealth of the middle 30% or so of the populace) and thus give us the means to power to reclaim the rest.
Step by step.
As an outsider of the USA looking in, I concur. In Canada, spending for elections has ceilings, and corporate spending is not allowed. Individual contributions to parties are how funding is raised. No billionaires buying a presidency.
I dunno. I mean, we're seeing time, and time again how Obama is pushing for more Federal (and presidential) power concentration, and erosion of citizens'/states' rights and privacy.
He swapped his vote/position on the Telecommunications act awhile back...has shown nothing but support for Patriot act renewals, and now this.
Again, it bear saying: The definition of "Insanity" is doing the same thing over and over and over again...and expecting a different outcome.
I'm not a huge Romney fan....but while he is pretty much an unknown when it comes to these issues....we downright positively know how Obama and his administration treats and supports these issues.
I don't really see them repealing or even easing up on these types of issues and legislation on a 2nd term unrestricted by the need for re-election...do you?
Obama is one smart cookie. If he is moving legislation in this direction, then the reasons are obvious. The USA spy agency has determined that the American Infrastructure is frail, has no alternate backbone if it goes down, and that too much of the "traffic of significance" is encrypted and they can't find the decryption algorithm or keys to do the decryption and snooping.
So, a best offense is a good defense. If things get tough, such as interference with electric utilities, with train signaling, etc, etc, then there is a need to pull the plug or plug the ones doing the mischief.
I've used MS Word's grammar checking capabilities, and I agree that they can only be a supplement to someone who already has solid writing skills. It has prodded me to rewrite long sentences, fix subject-verb agreement, get rid of passive voice, other things of that nature. It's also caught my occasional typo and duplicate word--errors that are easy to skip over when you're re-reading your draft for the tenth time.
If someone is a poor writer in the first place, all the spelling- and grammar-checkers in the world won't fix that. They'll just paper over the more obvious defects. People should never, ever count on a software tool to fix their writing. It can only be a modestly-helpful guide, not a blunt tool to do the work for you. Natural language processing is just not very good. Even online translation tools do little more than find-and-replace words with their foreign language counterparts, then try to rearrange them into a grammar consistent with that language. You can usually get the general idea of the original text, but a human translation by someone fluent in both languages is almost always vastly superior. The bottom line is that computers are very bad at semantics, and even worse at "reading between the lines." This is not a fault of computers, either, but of software researchers and the industry as a whole.
Lay people often get the mistaken impression that because computers are now good at pattern recognition (picking out faces, analyzing voice samples into text, etc.) they are also good at figuring out the "meaning" of these things. They are not. Pattern recognition and semantics are totally different areas of research.
Please punctuate: The cat the rat ate. by telling me if a comma is required, and if so, where.
Did the rat eat the cat?
The only use I see for TPM is for storing personal information and for remote killing of the system via a blacklist. Intel can block the bios or even burn some fusable links on the Mother board to kill a stolen computer.
That was a really awesome reply, and really struck a nerve with me.. I am slowly realizing why a lot of the people do the things they do at my workplace, and though I thought it at first to be wisdom and age.. it is also because they've been knocked around and burned a lot in their earlier years trying new things. I'm not as far off from the path of the OP and makes me really think.. I should take a much more objective approach to them, rather than assuming they have more years experience and are ultimately right (even if they are 95% of the time). Thanks for that!
To the young man and me. -- Some ramblings.
There are two types of technocrats in the world. The bits and bytes people, and the application/business oriented people. Sometimes a person has both skills.
The people who griped are the clerical staff, not IT interested at all.
Now for age. For many people, scratchpad memory is not working from age 50 and beyond. They cannot remember a phone number or a sequence of steps until it is re-enforced by many many repetitions. These people then follow the rules mechanically, without understanding. For other people, they possess logic skills of deduction. Even they have short term memory problems, but at least they are open to change. And the third group are the ones for which age is just a number. These people are sharp, have good health, and memory abilities. Even with this latter group, some of them are in the group titled "fear of the new". So, what can you do about it?. The answer is to be able to identify each category/personality and make adjustments to your approach to them.
At age 22, your mind is a sponge, soaking up every new technology. You will remember a book and page number on which there was a smudge. At age 55+, you may not remember the book. My best advice is to concentrate on people skills while you maintain and hone your technical skills.
By the way, I am 70+, and am in the category of software engineering development. Age to me was and is just a number.
Boot sector virus is not the target, to be fair.
It's to prevent loading a compromised kernel image. A signed boot-loader chain will only load if uncompromisable with cryptographically verified signatures and checksums.
But this is not the threat to most users, most of the time.
And? If they are dumb or mistaken enough to get an infection that will compromise their OS image and ring-0 loadable software? They are going to be compromised in OTHER WAYS that will NEVER touch the system image. Secure system boot is a good way to protect a boot-loader for encrypted volumes - but not even needed for this to be effective.
It is a security chimera - with more opportunity for mistakes and misuse than protection.
I see the UEFI solution, is for future hardware which will have no micro usb port, no slot for external memory, a sealed unit and exist only as a tablet. Otherwise, one could have a read-only USB device that is UEFI compliant and since it is read-only, secure boot is achieved. The software in the USB device is used to verify the mother board bios, which is what is desired.
Here is my prediction. I believe that Microsoft itself is going to run into a few hundred million customer problems one day within 18 months of UEFI implementation, and that the mother board bios chips in these things will be white elephants, as will be Windows 8. I can see it now, a new update causes UEFI to fail. News at 11pm.
When you enforce Rube-Goldberg software designs to verify a bios, in the end you get bitten by unforeseen combinations of technology that is designed to lockout other vendor products.
Ask yourself, what percentage of a system's time and lifecycle are spent in boot? What percentage of the binary runtime image is loaded in this process?
"Secure boot" is FAKE SECURITY whose ACTUAL risk is GREATER than its SUPPOSED benefit. Lock boot images, and the real security problems for persisting on a host and hiding activity will only move to the next rung on this ladder.
The only thing "Secured" is vendor lock-in.
Sure, you can detect a compromised kernel at boottime. That is a FRACTIONAL coutermeasure, to actual risk. EVERY driver and ring-0 loadable module needs also to be signed. It's bullsht, in the real computing world - unless you have an XBox or iPad model.
The first introduction to secure boot came from the Intel/AMD/IBM/Industry spec for TPM (trusted platform module). The problem will be interesting for VMware or other Linux VM systems when they need to execute and to test secure boot. I have not read if the operating system that boots the hardware is the only one that owns the hardware. It could very well be that only MS based VM systems will be able to boot.
In other words, booting Windows 8 under a Linux VM may never work. Moreover, without an internet connection, as with a warehouse terminal or some other internal (barcode) data logging facility, how is a secure boot going to work?
IBM has noted that with TPMs the virtual machine application (another operating system) may not boot. Why should that not be an issue for UEFI?
Not sure if you're trolling or indeed buy that "piracy=theft" argument. Let me explain it to you again: for theft to happen, the original owner would need to be deprived of the object stolen.
It's like in that "would you download a loaf of bread" argument. Of course I would, and if replicating bread would be cheaper than baking it (and kept the quality, like copying does), the society as a whole wins big time. Arguing that "but the bakers lose" is precisely glasser's fallacy.
I find that my collection of music and videos from open source satisfy my hoarding habits. I do use BT to download iso images of Linux distributions. I just think that most downloaders of pirated music are hoarders. Do they play or watch what they downloaded, or do they create traders. Shades of baseball card collecting come to mind.
Hi Flyneye
I need to correct one major error in your response. The doctors are independent, and work on a fixed amount and a variable amount.
The patient seeks out a doctor, it is not the government that says "Here is your doctor",
You cannot be entirely correct in your views as there is room for governments which represent society as law and order protectors, provide rules to govern commerce, fraud protection etc, armies for emergencies and protection, etc.
The government does not assign you a doctor, one is required to go and find our own. My family doctor has been our doctor since we chose him at the time of our marriage, some 40+ years ago. He is a few years younger than me. When we need a doctor, I call for an appointment, just as you would do for your family doctor or specialist. Did you really pull the molar? Is it possible it could have been saved?
For example of medical treatment. I had a gradual hearing loss problem. Went to my family doctor, he scoped my ears and referred me to a specialist. It turned out blockage was not wax, but eczema. I got an ear-drop prescription (filling plus medication = $10.00) and that problem is cured. My hearing is as good now as it gets for my age.
We have drifted from the original topic of job and job security. Each person has a comfort zone where, if he is in it, he excels.
Back to Government and Medicine.
As I see it, a major problem regarding illness in the USA is overproduction of food. The food is so cheap that fast food joints bigger it up to pull in the crowd, sell the extra large trios for a few pennies more. Obesity is your number one killer. And then there is the ethanol from corn, when the corn could be used to feed the starving in Africa, and by so doing, win America the praise of the (Muslim) world, a world with over a billion people.
The other problem of course, are medical malpractice lawsuits. Every doctor is never knowing if he was deficient in his practice, so trivial problems require exhaustive testing and of course, exhaustive costs.
I call the discussion a draw. I live my style, I am delighted with it, I want not, and I will hope to respond to many more slashdot.com subjects where I can add to, or tease the author with a different view.
Happy belated July 4th.
Dear flyneye
I did think like you, until I reached 55. Then I was a) either too expensive to be hired or b) supposedly not up to date with technology or c) too old for a pseudo career.
That is when I started my independent consulting and it was the era that as I was lucked in, had one contract every 8 months (ERP specialist). Well, there are 8 months of living from savings, 8 months of choosing car repairs or mortgage payments and 8 months of covering school fees for my teenagers.
What do you do if somewhere in-between, without group insurance, one of the family gets sick. Your response was that of a single person, no family, no parents or grandparents, and lots of belief in autonomy. Well, we all are busy being born and then busy t'il death. And sadly, during being busy, what goes around comes around, such as pregnancy, illness, a broken leg, a chronic medical condition, etc. The unpredictable is something else.
Well, I am grateful to live in Canada. I twice caught the infamous flesh eating bacteria disease. I was 12 hours away from amputation of my leg when the anti-biotics kicked in. 12 days in hospital, $24,000 in fees and $1,000 per day in medication, xrays, nurse care etc.
With our wonderful Canadian medicare system, (what Obamacare is wanting to give to 30 million American poor and to the rich is Universal Medicare) did was allow me to walk away with a $250.00 out of pocket amount for antibiotics that I continued at home after hospital release. Before you blow up with a response, look at longevity figures for different countries. It is an indication of the general health of a nation. Low numbers indicate that the poor are dying and unable to survive.
Private insurance in Canada would cost me over $1000 per person ((we are 5 and my daughter has MS) and private insurers can and do refuse to accept you as a client. They also place limits on payouts.
My government insurance is about $1000 annually for the family. And it is part of my income tax. So I am grateful to pay. And now that I am 70+, and do not have an income, I am still covered. Wow,
So here is another thing for you to shoot down. I pay $10/mo per person for drug insurance. Thats under 150/yr. I pay 20% of the prescription cost. When or if my 20% of the cost exceeds $1000.00, the balance is at even a bigger reduced charge (just the pharmacies dispensing fee). Universal medicare is to prevent health costs from bankrupting a family.
So, paying the government for health is not a worry for me or my kids. The costs are reasonable. Ask your immediate family what they would do if they cannot purchase health insurance.
flyneye, Please stop watching cnn, fox, abc and learn how the rest of the G7 world lives. Don't follow the corporate propaganda. Universal medicare is not communism.