Why does this exist?
What has this got that a dedicated client doesn't?
When I first read about this, I thought they had somehow pulled a ninja using Flash's 3D api (does it have a 3D api?), Now THAT would be cool.
I'm also aware that this is flameware territory, but I can't let some of those claims against my beloved Python go unanswered...
Sometimes, on a continued line you might want to line the next one up with the open paren on the function call. Sometimes you might want to line it up with the second open paren.
Well, in Python, you don't need to use parens/braces around code blocks anyway.;) But seriously, to counter that particular example, Python doesn't care where a continued line starts. Nonetheless I realise that the underlying message you put forward is that the intent of the code may not always match the formatting. And I agree. Python fails in this particular situation. But this particular situation occurs so rarely that it simply doesn't matter.
You can run it through a code prettifier. Try that with Python, and you could end up changing what your code does
But then a code prettifier that knows how to deal with Python code should be smart enough to not do anything to change the code's behaviour. Not to mention that if Python code compiles, then it's already pretty;) (well, mostly, anyway)
Anyway, the point is, I am a total Python convert. It was definitely weird at first, but nowadays whenever I code in something that's not Python, it makes me cringe - every missed semicolon, every unmatched brace. Sure, I try to create matched pairs of braces as i go, and keep the formatting nice, but somehow it doesn't always work out as well as I planned. And frankly, I don't like distracting myself by having to worry about those kinds of things. I'd rather just debug the logic, not the syntax.
You are correct with regard to electronic OTP generators like RSA key chains...
... which is why I specifically restricted my statement to the kind where you tear them off a pre-printed list that you get from the bank, in which case you CAN just collect them and sit on them until you want to use them.
banks are too cheap and conservative to do this on their own
Phishing, and other such attacks, cost banks buttloads of cash. I know this, because I work in the security team of an IT outsourcer with a few big banks as our clients.
The cost of this device (and it DOES sound like an excellent idea) could end up saving the banks money, because they won't have to pay my company to deal with the fallout every time they get targeted by a phishing attack. So I wouldn't pin it on the banks being "too cheap" to do this, although "too conservative" might still be valid
The hardest part is getting the bank to even consider the idea, and then to plow through the existing beaurocracy and administrative inertia associated with getting such a project off the ground. Someone has to stick their hand up and make this project their baby, and gamble their credibility and possibly job on pulling it off successfully. It's much easier to keep your head down and go with the status quo.
At least, that's my experience in dealing with our bank clients.
By the way, here's my suggestions for methods to beat phishing (or at least make it much harder).
1) Send an SMS to the user every time they are about to make a transaction. Give details of the transaction and have a 24hr period in which the user can cancel the transaction, (and/or a few days in which the user can recall the transaction - ie funds are not accessible by the receiver until a few days later)
2) Send an SMS to the client after every transaction with details of the transaction and a verification code. They then need to enter the verification code into the webpage, or reply to the SMS with the code, to allow the transaction to proceed
Both of those introduce a bunch of other issues and inconveniences. But if the bank offered them as an optional service, I'd take it. I like these options because they introduce a second channel of communication, which the phisher now has to intercept. In particular, they'd have to find a way to stop your phone from receiving an SMS from the bank telling you you are about to tranfer $10 000 to an account in Russia. Admittedly, they could get pretty annoying if you do frequent web banking. But if you do frequent
web banking, perhaps you're savvy enough to spot a phishing site anyway, and wouldn't need this service
3) A browser plugin that performs analysis of a page to see if it is trying to spoof a known bank website. This'd be pretty tricky to get right (ie difficult to minimise false positives while still making it hard for the phishers to defeat). But perhaps it could be done, and it's worth a look, I reckon. If nothing else, it may force phishers to make their site look drastically different from the real site.
4) A browser plugin that remembers a hash of your bank account number/username/password, and warns you everytime you try to submit this info to a site that isn't your bank's site. This could also be beaten by having a phishing site that doesn't use forms to collect the login info (ie have an array of buttons, or use AJAX to send each keystroke through seperately), but it's yet another thing the phishers have to worry about, and forces them to make their site behave differently to the real site
These last two aren't going to help if your machine gets owned. And as always, asking users to install random software and plugins to provide additional security is asking for trouble.
Not very hard, but One Time Passwords won't help to prevent phishing much.
The phishing site will simply be a man in the middle and collect your OTP and then use it to access your account. Hooray.
But instead of using it to perform the transaction you wanted, they will use it to transfer the money out. They can even collect a few OTPs from the user (well, at least for the tear-them-off-a-business-card variety), by telling the user that the previous OTP didn't appear to be valid (even though it was), and asking them to enter the next one on the list.
Well, I guess that as the bouncy ball approaches the speed of light, its mass will approach infinity, so it will be impossible for the little blocks to pop up and push it further forward. Even if you made them pop up REALLY hard, I imagine the only thing you'd achieve would be severe compression/destruction of the little blocks, or perhaps destruction of the atoms that make up the little blocks
Where do you get this stuff from? It's not like what you're saying is some common misconception, or even some corruption of the truth, so I'm quite flummoxed as to how you came up with the figure of 20%? Why not 30%, or 40%. Hey, while you're at it, why not just make it 100% - and then you'd actually be correct.
The company for which I work pretty much does this internally...
Every department/group is considered a separate billing unit and must justify a profit in their own right.
The sales departments sell services to external customers. They then arrange for the work to get done by 'hiring' the services of any of the specialty groups inside our company. Presumably, the cost of the internal services is lower than the cost to the external customers, so the sales department makes a profit.
Even the departments which exist purely to facilitate the work of the "real" departments (eg building management, internal IT infrastructure, phones, intranet website) all make a "profit". They do this by charging every other department a small, ongoing service fee, rated against the number of employees in each department.
Ultimately, each manager ends up running a micro-business providing a specific service to other departments inside the main company, and they have to balance their revenue (as collected from other departments), and expenses (out to other departments and employee wages) to maintain a profit.
How about having an electronic switch built in to the passport, so that the chip only works when someone holding it wants it to work. For example, you could set it up so that the chip only works when the passport is opened flat on the details page at the front.
I can't imagine it being that hard in theory, although divising a reliable and rugged switch may be a bit more challenging.
Still, I bet it could be done, and it pretty much eliminates all the concerns about people reading the chip without your permission.
storage is difficult since it's a very tiny atom (one proton only...), so it tends to seep out of every container
One hydrogen atom is bigger than a helium atom, IIRC (although not by much).
But more importantly, hydrogen gas comes as H2 - two atoms joined together, which is even bigger again - probably a very similar size to Nitrogen or Oxygen gas molecules
And we seem to have storage of Helium, Oxygen and Nitrogen fairly well sorted, don't we?
This particular article doesn't make it clear, but the original paper describes a projection, not a prediction.
The difference? A projection is someone's guess at what will happen if current trends continue. A prediction is someone's guess at what will happen, taking into account changes in trends and feedback reactions.
For example, as others have pointed out, the paper does not take into account market forces, which will change the trend as prices go up in response to lower supply, which in turn will drive down demand.
Besides market forces, the publishers of the original paper have made it clear that they believe that humans will take collective action (perhaps in response to papers like this) which will prevent, or at least slow down, the decline in species.
By which I mean, we wouldn't possibly be able to destroy the oceans via electrolysis in order to obtain hydrogen, even if wanted to. I don't think we'd be able to get enough energy - the ocean(s) is(are) just too big. If you thought your rich uncle's new swimming pool was big, think again - the ocean is heaps bigger. And in addition to the energy requirements of the electrolysis, we'd need somewhere to store all the hydrogen we'd have created long before there was a detectable change in the ocean. Not to mention all the oxygen we'd either have to store or release to the atmosphere (which would probably cause bushfires to run rampant through all the world's forests).
But I forget my own main point, which was meant to be that...
Using water as a source of hydrogen for the purpose of using the hydrogen as a fuel does not "use up" water, at least not in the long term. Eventually the hydrogen and oxygen will be recombined to release energy, which also creates water (exactly as much as was used in the first place). So once we have siphoned off a (tiny) buffer of water that we can continually split and recombine, we won't need the ocean's water anyway. And any water accidentally or intentiaonally released to the atmosphere will end up precipitating out (probably). The one exception here is that hydrogen gas, being so light, tends to float up to the edge of the atmosphere where it can escape the Earth's gravity and fly off into space. But this would only be significant if we enefficiently leak hydrogen into the air wherever we handle it, and for some reason I reckon we can work out ways for that to NOT happen.
Are you kidding? Of course it does. It is one of the most restrictive "free" licenses I've seen (compared to "You can do whatever you like with this code - even claim it as your own if you want, although that would be pretty low" as is found on some exec extension to the NSIS installer framework From the preamble to the GPL...
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
You can use the vanilla software/code personally in whatever way you wish, but if you modify and/or redistribute it, then a whole bunch of restrictions come into play to define under what conditions you may do this.
Presumably the demand comes from those who would prefer to use Linux if only it had MS Office.
Until ODF becomes the industry/business standard, I (and many others) have to run MS Office at work (I run Windows in a VM for MS Office alone - it's not ideal, and hardly counts as "running linux").
Then again, by the time MS Office makes it to Linux, ODF will be the standard anyway, so any ODF editor could be used and MS Office won't be required (although it could conceivably be the best tool available, though probably not for the price)
To summarise the technology: An image is formed by directly drawing on the user's retina using a low powered laser. The image therefore is essentially overlayed over the "real world" as a type of HUD.
Experimental at the moment, but it might happen. Also, this doesn't answer the problem of ease of input.
But the applications of this are huge - combined with GPS and/or other positioning technologies, you could overlay your vision with all sorts of exciting information - a bit like Terminator Vision.
Just for starters, you could get dynamically provided directions that tell you whre to go in a shopping centre or an unfamiliar office building.
Tourists could access massive amounts of info about all the things they see around them - a bit like those self-guided museum tours with the headsets.
Not to mention the creation of completely new advertising medium. Goodbye dynamic street billboards, hello direct retinal personalised/targeted ads.
If these things became ubiquitous, we could even get rid of all the street signs that clutter our roads (or whatever) so that only those relevant to the user are displayed to them (no need to show the parking restrictions to someone who is just walking by)
Well, I better stop before I get too excited, but you get the idea.
Different prices for different quality seems incredibly unlikely for a few reasons. Firstly, I'm willing to bet that it is a minority of people out there who would care significantly enough about audio quality to pay more for it. Remember that most people are listening to these songs through iPod earphonse or their computer's speakers, neither of which are top of the line audio replication systems and are unlikely to realise a difference in quality for the user, even if the encoding of a file is technically superior. So in the end, most people will realise that paying more for the higher quality song is not worth it.
Secondly, having two levels of quality openly acknowledges the fact that quality is even an issue, which is not something iTMS would like to talk about. Most people probably don't ever concern themselves with the quality of the music, as long as it's listenable (see first point). Anyway, the point is that having two quality levels basically introduces the issue of quality into the public forum, which is only likely to make people more wary of online distribution.
Thirdly, people don't like choice. Well, MOST people don't like choice. Becauses choices are hard to make. So instead of deciding which song to get, they now also have to decide which quality as well. And that's tricky, because on one hand you want to save money, but on the other hand you like the higher quality, but then again can you even tell the difference in quality? but other people might THINK I can hear the difference if I have the higher quality ones. Hmmm, nah it's too hard I'll wait and see what everyone else does first. etc etc.
This last point in particular is important. By not having a differentiated pricing scheme it not only keeps thinghs simple, but also the focus is shifted from the cost to the product, which is a good thing. I bet this is the main reason why Jobs dug his heels in in the first place
Using host files to avoid certain sites is a kludge.
While it may be simple and effective, the hosts file is not the right place to block access to certain sites.
Blocking should be done by the browser itself or by a firewall, proxy, or some other software gatekeeper expressly designed for the purpose. Such an agent is theoretically able to perform a multitude of functions related to site blocking, such as temporary unblocking, content filtering (ie allow the HTML through but nothing else, or strip out javascript, or whatever), authentication for unblocking, management of blocked groups (eg separate black lists for porn, spyware, anti-chinese-government content).
Hosts files don't allow any of these functions, and are easy to bypass by using an ip address instead of a domain name. By skewing their function into a server filter, you are more likely to run into problems and frustrations, esp when you also want to use the hosts file for its intended purpose - to map names to ip addresses. It's going to be pretty annoying when someone makes a typo in the hosts list and you can no longer get to some site because the "connection was refused".
In short... Hosts file as a filter is an effective kludge for now, but a better solution is to use a... better solution designed for the purpose of filtering (if one exists).
1: "Hoo" invented this new chip 2: No "Hway"! 1: YES way! 2: That's what I said 1: What? 2: The name of the guy is pronounced "Hway", not "Hoo" 1: Oh. I thought it was "Hoo" 2: No it's "Hway" 1: I see 2: Yes. Well... Um... I have to go... over... there now 1: Ok...
My Walkman works for over 70 hours on one AA battery
70 hours on one AA? What walkman is that? Or maybe you're joking. I can't tell.
But in case you're not, give me a model number because I want one, if nothing else just to see how it pulls it off.
nah, "inter" just means "between"
"inter-national" means "between nations"
"inter-net" means "between networks", which comes from the fact that it is a medium that allows communication between entities which exist in two separate networks (both logically separate and geographicallly separate).
So if China sets up an alternative internet restricted to China, it would still be an "internet".
apple can make $1500 off a few million people if they sell computers. Or they can make $20 off of a few thousand geeks if they sell Mac OS by itself. Which do you think they will choose?
Slashdot Mirror
Why does this exist? What has this got that a dedicated client doesn't? When I first read about this, I thought they had somehow pulled a ninja using Flash's 3D api (does it have a 3D api?), Now THAT would be cool.
Sometimes, on a continued line you might want to line the next one up with the open paren on the function call. Sometimes you might want to line it up with the second open paren.
Well, in Python, you don't need to use parens/braces around code blocks anyway. ;) But seriously, to counter that particular example, Python doesn't care where a continued line starts. Nonetheless I realise that the underlying message you put forward is that the intent of the code may not always match the formatting. And I agree. Python fails in this particular situation. But this particular situation occurs so rarely that it simply doesn't matter.
You can run it through a code prettifier. Try that with Python, and you could end up changing what your code does
But then a code prettifier that knows how to deal with Python code should be smart enough to not do anything to change the code's behaviour. Not to mention that if Python code compiles, then it's already pretty ;) (well, mostly, anyway)
Anyway, the point is, I am a total Python convert. It was definitely weird at first, but nowadays whenever I code in something that's not Python, it makes me cringe - every missed semicolon, every unmatched brace. Sure, I try to create matched pairs of braces as i go, and keep the formatting nice, but somehow it doesn't always work out as well as I planned. And frankly, I don't like distracting myself by having to worry about those kinds of things. I'd rather just debug the logic, not the syntax.
Why 'gay'? - oh right, all surgeons are male, silly me.
You are correct with regard to electronic OTP generators like RSA key chains ...
... which is why I specifically restricted my statement to the kind where you tear them off a pre-printed list that you get from the bank, in which case you CAN just collect them and sit on them until you want to use them.
Phishing, and other such attacks, cost banks buttloads of cash. I know this, because I work in the security team of an IT outsourcer with a few big banks as our clients.
The cost of this device (and it DOES sound like an excellent idea) could end up saving the banks money, because they won't have to pay my company to deal with the fallout every time they get targeted by a phishing attack. So I wouldn't pin it on the banks being "too cheap" to do this, although "too conservative" might still be valid
The hardest part is getting the bank to even consider the idea, and then to plow through the existing beaurocracy and administrative inertia associated with getting such a project off the ground. Someone has to stick their hand up and make this project their baby, and gamble their credibility and possibly job on pulling it off successfully. It's much easier to keep your head down and go with the status quo.
At least, that's my experience in dealing with our bank clients.
By the way, here's my suggestions for methods to beat phishing (or at least make it much harder).
1) Send an SMS to the user every time they are about to make a transaction. Give details of the transaction and have a 24hr period in which the user can cancel the transaction, (and/or a few days in which the user can recall the transaction - ie funds are not accessible by the receiver until a few days later)
2) Send an SMS to the client after every transaction with details of the transaction and a verification code. They then need to enter the verification code into the webpage, or reply to the SMS with the code, to allow the transaction to proceed
Both of those introduce a bunch of other issues and inconveniences. But if the bank offered them as an optional service, I'd take it. I like these options because they introduce a second channel of communication, which the phisher now has to intercept. In particular, they'd have to find a way to stop your phone from receiving an SMS from the bank telling you you are about to tranfer $10 000 to an account in Russia. Admittedly, they could get pretty annoying if you do frequent web banking. But if you do frequent web banking, perhaps you're savvy enough to spot a phishing site anyway, and wouldn't need this service
3) A browser plugin that performs analysis of a page to see if it is trying to spoof a known bank website. This'd be pretty tricky to get right (ie difficult to minimise false positives while still making it hard for the phishers to defeat). But perhaps it could be done, and it's worth a look, I reckon. If nothing else, it may force phishers to make their site look drastically different from the real site.
4) A browser plugin that remembers a hash of your bank account number/username/password, and warns you everytime you try to submit this info to a site that isn't your bank's site. This could also be beaten by having a phishing site that doesn't use forms to collect the login info (ie have an array of buttons, or use AJAX to send each keystroke through seperately), but it's yet another thing the phishers have to worry about, and forces them to make their site behave differently to the real site
These last two aren't going to help if your machine gets owned. And as always, asking users to install random software and plugins to provide additional security is asking for trouble.
I particularly like options 1 and 2
Not very hard, but One Time Passwords won't help to prevent phishing much.
The phishing site will simply be a man in the middle and collect your OTP and then use it to access your account. Hooray. But instead of using it to perform the transaction you wanted, they will use it to transfer the money out. They can even collect a few OTPs from the user (well, at least for the tear-them-off-a-business-card variety), by telling the user that the previous OTP didn't appear to be valid (even though it was), and asking them to enter the next one on the list.
My girlfriend got done by this exact attack.
Oh wait
Well, I guess that as the bouncy ball approaches the speed of light, its mass will approach infinity, so it will be impossible for the little blocks to pop up and push it further forward. Even if you made them pop up REALLY hard, I imagine the only thing you'd achieve would be severe compression/destruction of the little blocks, or perhaps destruction of the atoms that make up the little blocks
Only 20%? respirate oxygen?
Where do you get this stuff from? It's not like what you're saying is some common misconception, or even some corruption of the truth, so I'm quite flummoxed as to how you came up with the figure of 20%? Why not 30%, or 40%.
Hey, while you're at it, why not just make it 100% - and then you'd actually be correct.
The company for which I work pretty much does this internally ...
Every department/group is considered a separate billing unit and must justify a profit in their own right.
The sales departments sell services to external customers. They then arrange for the work to get done by 'hiring' the services of any of the specialty groups inside our company. Presumably, the cost of the internal services is lower than the cost to the external customers, so the sales department makes a profit.
Even the departments which exist purely to facilitate the work of the "real" departments (eg building management, internal IT infrastructure, phones, intranet website) all make a "profit". They do this by charging every other department a small, ongoing service fee, rated against the number of employees in each department.
Ultimately, each manager ends up running a micro-business providing a specific service to other departments inside the main company, and they have to balance their revenue (as collected from other departments), and expenses (out to other departments and employee wages) to maintain a profit.
How about having an electronic switch built in to the passport, so that the chip only works when someone holding it wants it to work. For example, you could set it up so that the chip only works when the passport is opened flat on the details page at the front.
I can't imagine it being that hard in theory, although divising a reliable and rugged switch may be a bit more challenging.
Still, I bet it could be done, and it pretty much eliminates all the concerns about people reading the chip without your permission.
storage is difficult since it's a very tiny atom (one proton only...), so it tends to seep out of every container
One hydrogen atom is bigger than a helium atom, IIRC (although not by much).
But more importantly, hydrogen gas comes as H2 - two atoms joined together, which is even bigger again - probably a very similar size to Nitrogen or Oxygen gas molecules
And we seem to have storage of Helium, Oxygen and Nitrogen fairly well sorted, don't we?
So far, I've established that many people I've met have legs, and so does my mate's dog.
This particular article doesn't make it clear, but the original paper describes a projection, not a prediction.
The difference? A projection is someone's guess at what will happen if current trends continue. A prediction is someone's guess at what will happen, taking into account changes in trends and feedback reactions.
For example, as others have pointed out, the paper does not take into account market forces, which will change the trend as prices go up in response to lower supply, which in turn will drive down demand. Besides market forces, the publishers of the original paper have made it clear that they believe that humans will take collective action (perhaps in response to papers like this) which will prevent, or at least slow down, the decline in species.
By which I mean, we wouldn't possibly be able to destroy the oceans via electrolysis in order to obtain hydrogen, even if wanted to. I don't think we'd be able to get enough energy - the ocean(s) is(are) just too big. If you thought your rich uncle's new swimming pool was big, think again - the ocean is heaps bigger. And in addition to the energy requirements of the electrolysis, we'd need somewhere to store all the hydrogen we'd have created long before there was a detectable change in the ocean. Not to mention all the oxygen we'd either have to store or release to the atmosphere (which would probably cause bushfires to run rampant through all the world's forests).
But I forget my own main point, which was meant to be that
Using water as a source of hydrogen for the purpose of using the hydrogen as a fuel does not "use up" water, at least not in the long term. Eventually the hydrogen and oxygen will be recombined to release energy, which also creates water (exactly as much as was used in the first place). So once we have siphoned off a (tiny) buffer of water that we can continually split and recombine, we won't need the ocean's water anyway. And any water accidentally or intentiaonally released to the atmosphere will end up precipitating out (probably). The one exception here is that hydrogen gas, being so light, tends to float up to the edge of the atmosphere where it can escape the Earth's gravity and fly off into space. But this would only be significant if we enefficiently leak hydrogen into the air wherever we handle it, and for some reason I reckon we can work out ways for that to NOT happen.
From the preamble to the GPL
Presumably the demand comes from those who would prefer to use Linux if only it had MS Office.
Until ODF becomes the industry/business standard, I (and many others) have to run MS Office at work (I run Windows in a VM for MS Office alone - it's not ideal, and hardly counts as "running linux").
Then again, by the time MS Office makes it to Linux, ODF will be the standard anyway, so any ODF editor could be used and MS Office won't be required (although it could conceivably be the best tool available, though probably not for the price)
To summarise the technology: An image is formed by directly drawing on the user's retina using a low powered laser. The image therefore is essentially overlayed over the "real world" as a type of HUD.
Experimental at the moment, but it might happen. Also, this doesn't answer the problem of ease of input.
But the applications of this are huge - combined with GPS and/or other positioning technologies, you could overlay your vision with all sorts of exciting information - a bit like Terminator Vision.
Just for starters, you could get dynamically provided directions that tell you whre to go in a shopping centre or an unfamiliar office building.
Tourists could access massive amounts of info about all the things they see around them - a bit like those self-guided museum tours with the headsets.
Not to mention the creation of completely new advertising medium. Goodbye dynamic street billboards, hello direct retinal personalised/targeted ads.
If these things became ubiquitous, we could even get rid of all the street signs that clutter our roads (or whatever) so that only those relevant to the user are displayed to them (no need to show the parking restrictions to someone who is just walking by)
Well, I better stop before I get too excited, but you get the idea.
Different prices for different quality seems incredibly unlikely for a few reasons.
Firstly, I'm willing to bet that it is a minority of people out there who would care significantly enough about audio quality to pay more for it. Remember that most people are listening to these songs through iPod earphonse or their computer's speakers, neither of which are top of the line audio replication systems and are unlikely to realise a difference in quality for the user, even if the encoding of a file is technically superior. So in the end, most people will realise that paying more for the higher quality song is not worth it.
Secondly, having two levels of quality openly acknowledges the fact that quality is even an issue, which is not something iTMS would like to talk about. Most people probably don't ever concern themselves with the quality of the music, as long as it's listenable (see first point). Anyway, the point is that having two quality levels basically introduces the issue of quality into the public forum, which is only likely to make people more wary of online distribution.
Thirdly, people don't like choice. Well, MOST people don't like choice. Becauses choices are hard to make. So instead of deciding which song to get, they now also have to decide which quality as well. And that's tricky, because on one hand you want to save money, but on the other hand you like the higher quality, but then again can you even tell the difference in quality? but other people might THINK I can hear the difference if I have the higher quality ones. Hmmm, nah it's too hard I'll wait and see what everyone else does first. etc etc.
This last point in particular is important. By not having a differentiated pricing scheme it not only keeps thinghs simple, but also the focus is shifted from the cost to the product, which is a good thing. I bet this is the main reason why Jobs dug his heels in in the first place
What does XCCR do? I entered the numbers and got 3 keys, but it doesn't work anymore.
Google's cache shows a completely different site
Using host files to avoid certain sites is a kludge.
... better solution designed for the purpose of filtering (if one exists).
While it may be simple and effective, the hosts file is not the right place to block access to certain sites.
Blocking should be done by the browser itself or by a firewall, proxy, or some other software gatekeeper expressly designed for the purpose. Such an agent is theoretically able to perform a multitude of functions related to site blocking, such as temporary unblocking, content filtering (ie allow the HTML through but nothing else, or strip out javascript, or whatever), authentication for unblocking, management of blocked groups (eg separate black lists for porn, spyware, anti-chinese-government content).
Hosts files don't allow any of these functions, and are easy to bypass by using an ip address instead of a domain name. By skewing their function into a server filter, you are more likely to run into problems and frustrations, esp when you also want to use the hosts file for its intended purpose - to map names to ip addresses. It's going to be pretty annoying when someone makes a typo in the hosts list and you can no longer get to some site because the "connection was refused".
In short... Hosts file as a filter is an effective kludge for now, but a better solution is to use a
1: "Hoo" invented this new chip ... Um ... I have to go ... over ... there now ...
2: No "Hway"!
1: YES way!
2: That's what I said
1: What?
2: The name of the guy is pronounced "Hway", not "Hoo"
1: Oh. I thought it was "Hoo"
2: No it's "Hway"
1: I see
2: Yes. Well
1: Ok
But in case you're not, give me a model number because I want one, if nothing else just to see how it pulls it off.
nah, "inter" just means "between" "inter-national" means "between nations" "inter-net" means "between networks", which comes from the fact that it is a medium that allows communication between entities which exist in two separate networks (both logically separate and geographicallly separate). So if China sets up an alternative internet restricted to China, it would still be an "internet".
apple can make $1500 off a few million people if they sell computers. Or they can make $20 off of a few thousand geeks if they sell Mac OS by itself. Which do you think they will choose?
Can't they do both?